Introduction: The Illusion of Design [Richard Dawkins]

Natural History Magazine ^ | November 2005 | Richard Dawkins

[Doctor Stochastic]

Material Causes need not be deterministic; Effective Causes have generally been held to be. Complete knowledge of a state may not tell one which subsequent event will take place (nor when, nor if.)

[b_sharp]

"I gather that b_sharp has illusions about human intellectual progress "progessively" displacing God -- on whose truth human intellectual progress has ever depended -- to the purpose of finally eradicating God in the end. [As if a person, or all of humanity collectively working together towards that purpose, could ever do that.]

If you would reread my post you will see I was referring to the idea of God and the idea of God's influence in the natural world. You will also see I never claimed science is intentionally shrinking that idea. Science explores those areas where our knowledge is incomplete and current tools allow us to gather information. The side effect of that investigation is that the idea of God is shrinking, not just in the minds of atheists but in the minds of theists. That is why theists move the ideal location of God further and further from where humans tread. If God exists, unless you conflate the idea of God in the minds of humans with the separate independent existence of God, the shrinking 'idea' will have no affect on the being.

"It has been observed (P. J. Raju, 1972) that we live in a "mysterious" universe; yet Raju insists the mystery is a rational one, not a "superstitious" one.

Who really cares?

"And Plato and Aristotle essentially had the same observation, in common.

Big deal. I'm sure a philosopher of some import could be found to back pretty much any idea you could come up with.

"I think if people could just get used to that idea, the enterprise of science would really prosper.

Science is prospering quite well using the methodology that has been developed over the last few centuries. Only those that fear what science may find want its methodology changed.

"Just between you and me, where does b_sharp think logic (among other things) came from to begin with?

Just between you and me, do you really think everything you do not know the origin of, has to have been created by a God? Logic is a construct derived from our use of language and observation of the world around us. Even logic isn't universal. Take for example the idea that A != !A. The idea that something can not be 'A' and 'not A' at the same time does not apply to quantum physics where photons, for instance, can be a 'particle' and at the same time be 'not a particle' but a wave.

[Alamo-Girl]

IMHO, the only solution is to take a cue from Ayn Rand, taking "Existence Exists" as an axiom and having done with it.

That is precisely what an atheist must do to self-justify his own spiritual temper tantrum and, frankly, I can think of nothing more tragic.

Going back to your original post at 683, I might as well make one more objection. You said:

Occam's Razor leads us to conclude that all subatomic decays have a random, causeless element, somewhere.

I assert that we cannot say something is random in the system without knowing what the system "is". In this case, we do not yet know what the space/time system "is".

[js1138]

You are going to have to wait a long time in order to know the full state of everything. Randomness can be discerned in a phenomenon without knowing everything.

[Liberal Classic]

Clinton couldn't have said it better.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Self-consistency is certainly desirable, but science lives continuously with the unexplained and with apparent contradictions.

Deeper still, science attempts to be consistent with the observed universe. If the universe is self-contradictory, so will science be. We tend to assume that the universe is internally consistent, but I highly doubt that such a thing is provable.

[js1138]

The universe will appear self-contradictory if we impose assumptions and axiomatic reasoning of our perception of it. I suspect that science is a prolonged session of attitude adjustment.

[Alamo-Girl]

You are going to have to wait a long time in order to know the full state of everything.

Actually, I would say that it will never happen because my understanding of "reality" is "God's will and unknowable in its fullness."

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! Thanks for the chuckle!

[hosepipe]

[ You are going to have to wait a long time in order to know the full state of everything. Randomness can be discerned in a phenomenon without knowing everything. ]

So then, not knowing the full exent of a system, in all its aspects, labeling random to some aspect of it is science then?.. and not philosophy.?. like labeling an unknown in math as X?.. and assuming X to be random occurrance, or at least highly variable.?.

[Alamo-Girl]

So then, not knowing the full exent of a system, in all its aspects, labeling random to some aspect of it is science then?.. and not philosophy.?. like labeling an unknown in math as X?.. and assuming X to be random occurrance, or at least highly variable.?.

Indeed. This goes back to betty boop's original objection to Dawkins' approach (at least one of them) - namely, that he never starts at the beginning, he proceeds from step n.

It is interesting to know what people take as axioms. An atheist must take "existence" as an axiom.

I wonder how few who take existence as an axiom are willing to take "life" as an axiom - or "soul, spirit, mind or consciousness" as an axiom.

[hosepipe]

[ It is interesting to know what people take as axioms. An atheist must take "existence" as an axiom. ]

True.. makes me think that a smart honest atheist would/should at least say;
"If there is no God, well, there ought to be one"..
and inventing one would/should be mandatory to proper human progessive education..
Starting with a God concept and educating yourself out of it.. and thats the way it SHOULD BE..

Yeah.. a spiritual temper tantrum seems to be the diagnosis.. Maybe an atheist is just a spoiled intellectual brat.. i.e. They want what they want and thats all it is too it.. They want there to be no God.. And by GOD thats all there is to it.. LoL..

[Liberal Classic]

:)

[PatrickHenry]

It is interesting to know what people take as axioms. An atheist must take "existence" as an axiom. I wonder how few who take existence as an axiom are willing to take "life" as an axiom - or "soul, spirit, mind or consciousness" as an axiom.

Gotta pin definitions down very carefully, or the discussion will go nowhere. Life isn't an axiom, because existence without life is certainly possible. Roughly speaking, a philosophical axiom (I'm not speaking of math, which has its own way of looking at things) is a proposition that is so fundamental that it can't be developed from simpler propositions, and without which no thinking can be accomplished. This website has some useful discussion: Axiom.

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOLOL! What a delightful way to envision it!

[Physicist]

I assert that we cannot say something is random in the system without knowing what the system "is".

Fair enough. But experiments reveal something about what the system is NOT. It is NOT deterministically causal; any such system is constrained to respect Bell's Inequality, which the universe sometimes does not. There are also valid interpretations that involve information propagating backwards in time, and the like.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your insights and that engaging link!

Indeed, we do need to define what we mean by axiom if we wish to discuss it further. Here's a comparison from Wikipedia:

In epistemology, an axiom is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest, from which other knowledge is built up. Not all epistemologists agree that any axioms, understood in that sense, exist.

In mathematics, an axiom is not necessarily a self-evident truth but rather, a formal logical expression used in a deduction to yield further results. Mathematics distinguishes two types of axioms: logical axioms and non-logical axioms.

WRT our discussion of existence, life, soul, etc. - I am intending the epistemological definition.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply and acceptance! I of course agree with you that we can speak to what the system (in this case, space/time) is not - but, not yet, what it fully "is".

[Physicist]

That is precisely what an atheist must do to self-justify his own spiritual temper tantrum and, frankly, I can think of nothing more tragic.

It's what a theist must do to justify his own spiritual syrupy goodness. "God exists!" they say. I'm sorry...God what? Yeah, I thought as much. God can't exist unless existence exists. "Why is there God and not just nothing" is no deeper a question than "why is there something and not just nothing".

[aNYCguy]

Well, that's exactly right, aNYCguy. But you still haven't told me what, on your view, is specifically "wrong" with this understanding/formulation.

You create out of whole cloth an axiomatic assumption -- some form of "everything which exists must be priorly caused to exist by something else," itself a very shaky assumption -- then promptly violate it when you've reached the place in the causal chain which suits your aesthetic preference. I do not see this as a good argument.

Playing with semantics by defining "The Universe" as something other than "The set of things which exist" does not shore up the argument, in my mind, nor does declaring a particular domain of existence (the domain which contains your preferred first cause) to be somehow immune to logic in a logical argument.

So here's a list of what I see as flawed:

1. The causal axiom is far from self-evident. This is not strictly "wrong," it being an assumption, but you seem unduly confident that it corresponds to reality.

2. Either the causal axiom applies to everything which exists, or it does not. If it does, you have a recursive chain. Again, this conclusion would not be wrong, but you seem to have illicitly eliminated it from the possibilities unless you've clarified in later posts.

3. If the causal axiom does not apply to everything which exists, the argument is a non-starter. The energy in the universe does not need something separate to have created it.

4. If you divide the set of things which exist into two domains, to one of which the axiom applies and one not, You can call the things in the inapplicable domain "God," as long as you acknowledge that "God" may very well be a long-destroyed singularity, and that there's really no particular reason why "God" would have any attributes you'd like it to, not to mention that the entire argument is seriously ad hoc by this point.