Lord Emsworth
Je ne suis pas une de vos élèves.
- Oct 10, 2004
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It wasn't me who used the word "thinkingly"; it was you. If you are not able to understand what the word means, that raises the question of why you used it.
Well, you used "unthinkingly" a lot. (For instance in stating that if the universe "was created unthinkingly, there's no reason why the universe should have matter.") I have picked that "unthinkingly" up and turned it into "thinkingly" in an attempt to inquire about the reason for the universe having matter, it it was created ... you see ... "thinkingly."
On the original point, nothing in my post was intended to address the question of whether the universe should have matter; rather, it proceded from the observable fact that the universe does have matter, as well as movement, regularity, physical laws, and so forth. Let me repeat the argument in numberical steps. (1) The universe began at a specific time; we call this beginning the Big Bang. (2) The cause of the Big Bang was either something with intelligence or something without intelligence.
And this is where IMO the failure lies. This is were more defining, explanation, justification etc is needed; much, much more than that what has been given, is being given, (and will ever be given.)
After all, if you are making an argument, then with that there comes a responsibility for your premises.
A place to start could be establishing this:
- Something with intelligence could be the cause of the universe
Establish, with all the bells and whistles, of course.(3) If something without intelligence caused the Big Bang, then the features of the universe arose randomly without any design.
Here instead of making a positive case for the Big Bang being caused by "something with intelligence", the argument nominally for ID attacks the other possibility of the would-be dichotomy from premise two.
Now this would not even be verboten, but only if you can both
- demonstrate premise number two, where it is up to you to define your terms, (i.e. 'intelligent', 'non-intelligent', etc) and defend its truthfulness,
- and totally exclude the other possibility, which in this case was "something without intelligence".
Tall order. - and totally exclude the other possibility, which in this case was "something without intelligence".
And as it is here in the argument that you present now, so it was in post number three; lacking in positive support for whatever you wish to demonstrate. (And so it is in biology, when it comes to the "intelligent design" and "creation" of animals. And so it is with anything ID.)
And each one of the words in the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" has meaning too.(4) Among all possible universes only an insignificantly small percentage could support us or any thinking being, hence the odds of that our universe arose randomly are vanishly small. (5) Hence we can dismiss the idea that the universe was created without intelligence as being ridiculously improbable, and by process of elimination we arrive at the conclusion that the universe was created with intelligence.
Now all of those statements have meaning,
so for you to call them "empty blah, blah" or "meaningless and void" is a cop out. Instead, you should explain which of the five statements you disagree with and give reasons for your disagreement.
Okay, if you'd like to debate the entirey of the argument advanced by proponents of intelligent design I'm willing to do so. Which books by intelligent design proponents have you read, and what specifically did you find lacking in their arguments?
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