Yeah, I guess so. Stating that it was a replay of the Hood, Bismarck battle would have been over the top.
Posted on 10/28/2006 7:47:16 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Well I agree with you there, jwalsh07. I think Quinn nailed Dawkins' hide to the barn door in this exchange. Still, I'm interested in hearing from edsheppa, to learn what he regards as a "hole" in Quinn's reasoning. He might have noticed something that you and I missed.
Thank you for writing!
Thank you felvit for the link to the "fun listen!"
Looks to me as if Dawkins got his clock cleaned in this debate. Wish I had seen it.
Premise one is false. There is no guarantee of that.
Well, if not, then sin does not exist starting ... now.
arent you a dawkins fan?
Thanks for writing!
Yeah, I guess so. Stating that it was a replay of the Hood, Bismarck battle would have been over the top.
I read one of his books a while back and thought he had some great insights. Haven't followed him lately, but the guy's smart as heck.
Thanks.
Thanks for the ping!
Had a little free time this afternoon after all, edsheppa. So here's me taking a crack at the weaknesses you identified in David Quinn's arguments vis-a-vis Richard Dawkins. Let me take these in the order you gave:
* * * * * * *
People stop believing in fairies when they grow up.
The statement is a truthful generalization; most adults do not believe in fairies. But I believe that Dawkins is using the word “fairies” in a different manner than Quinn. Quinn is using it in its conventional meaning, denoting a mythical being of folklore and children’s stories having diminutive form and magical powers. Dawkins is using the word as a trash bin into which he can chuck stuff he doesn’t like — such as bogeymen, imaginary friends, God. Quinn is correct to point out that Dawkins is using a strawman argument here, equating fanciful, mythical creatures with God, then beating up on the fanciful creatures to “get at” God. Of course, this sleight of hand begs the question of whether fairies and God really are equivalent. (I’ve noticed Dawkins uses this tactic quite a lot.) Quinn makes it clear that he doesn’t think so, pointing out that children usually come to disbelieve in fairies as they get older, but may not similarly come to disbelieve in God. Thus fairies and God cannot be equivalent.
Existence of matter is evidence for God.
Quinn doesn’t say this. What he says is he doesn’t know for a certainty where matter came from, and that he doubts that science can settle the issue. Certainly science has so far not explained the origin of matter; it is not a question that science has ever taken up. Quinn says:
The theory of evolution explains how matter — which we are all made from — organized itself into for example highly complex beings like Richard Dawkins and … other human beings but what it doesn’t explain just to give one example is how matter came into being in the first place. That, in scientific terms, is a question that cannot be answered and can only be answered, if it can be answered fully at all, by philosophers and theologians.I think Quinn is absolutely right about this. The scientific method is based on direct observation and replicable experiments. “Ultimate origin events” — be they of life, the universe, or matter — logically had no human witnesses around to directly observe them. And we can’t reverse time so as to step into the “Way-Back Machine” to go look.
[Although WRT the origin of the universe, the COBE satellite observations of the CMB conducted by 2006 Nobel physics laureates Mather and Smoot come pretty close to that!]
So origin events in general are not proper subjects for the scientific method. The origins of life, the universe, and matter are all ontological questions (ontology being the philosophical discipline or science of being).
So Quinn is right, I think, to say that the origin of matter is a question that, if it can be answered at all, must be answered by philosophy and theology, not science. The great physicist Niels Bohr said the origin of life is, from the scientific point of view, either undecideable or flat-out unknowable. I think the same insight pertains to the origin of matter.
But Dawkins tendentiously states: “But if science can’t answer that question [i.e., the origin of matter], then it’s sure as hell theology [or philosophy presumably] can’t either.”
The man’s entitled to his opinion — but that’s all it is. It is not supported by reasoned arguments. He’s simply declaring his prejudice, and then refusing to enter into reasoned debate. It’s a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposition with him. And so I happen to think Dawkins’ “dog-in-the-manger” approach to rational discourse is intellectually dishonest from the get-go.
Dawkins does not deny that matter had an origin, or cause. What he insists on, however, is that its cause be a natural one. But if matter had a natural cause, that cause would have been dependent on space and time. For without space and time, there can be no natural causation; i.e.., nothing can “happen.” Cause-and-effect refers to temporal events, and a “place” wherein they can occur. So space and time are “prior” to matter. Where did they come from; i.e., what was the cause of space and time?
Further, it is not at all evident to me what, in nature, could have been the cause of matter; for nature wouldn’t even exist without matter. In short, nature is the result, not the cause, of matter.
Again, where did matter (and space and time) “come from?” To ask that question, and propose a trial answer – that since there is no evident cause of matter from within the spatiotemporal natural world, it must have had an extra-cosmic or “supernatural” cause (which we might call God) — does not constitute hard “evidence” for the creation of matter by God. But the trial answer is neither illogical nor irrational.
Atheists must reject objective morality and free will.
I don’t think Quinn said that atheists “must reject” objective morality and free will. And yet Dawkins says he’s “just not interested in free will. It’s not a big question for me.”
I gather that an atheist evolutionary biologist can simply shunt the question of free will (and morality) aside. And of course, that stands to reason: For Dawkins knows that in the Western cultural tradition, (1) free will has long been understood as the gift of God; and (2) morality is the divine law designed to fulfill man’s true potential; i.e., it is another divine gift meant to serve man, not to “enslave” him. Naturally, if Dawkins has no use for God, then neither would he have any use for human free will (or morality).
If there is no free will, then “objective morality” is pointless. If morality is man-given, and not God-given, then there can be no “objective standard” for justice, and no need of personal accountability or responsibility. The moral order of the U.S. Constitution itself would be utterly destroyed if God is “bumped off.”
For the Framers, morality and human reason were understood as gifts of God. Such men as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Hamilton et al. believed that God is the Creator of the universe, and of man; and that God made man imago Dei, “in his image”; that is, possessing reason and free will as his natural birthright. On this understanding the Framers believed that the human person is innately endowed with certain inalienable rights — preeminently life, liberty, and the “pursuit of happiness” — that may not be violated, abridged, tampered with nor traduced with impunity by any other man or temporal authority. The heritage of Jerusalem and Athens — Judeo-Christian theology, together with its appropriation and synthesis of classical metaphysics — is the philosophical rock on which the Constitution was built.
And thus the idea of a dynamic rule of law of, by, and for a sovereign people under a system of equal justice for all men, not an arbitrary rule of kings (or, e.g., Marxist intellectuals, et al.) exercising their authority over other (unequal) men “by divine right,” was born.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Dawkins is one of those Western intellectuals who holds the wisdom of the ages in contempt, proposing instead that (1) God “exists” only as a human psychological projection; (2) the psyche, soul, is a superstitious illusion, because the soul itself is merely an epiphenomenon of physical processes; and (3) people who nonetheless respond to the life of the Spirit show themselves to be unenlightened, of inferior intelligence, irrational, or even insane.
Well, as I said earlier, Dawkins is entitled to his own opinion. But his diatribe against Quinn is pure bluster, with not a shred of evidence or rational analysis involved.
You must have an uncaused cause for anything at all to exist. Plus: The uncaused cause and that unmoved mover is, by definition, God.
I’m putting these two statements together because they are intimately related.
The idea of the uncaused cause, or Prime Mover, is Aristotle’s. His explanation of the necessity of a First Cause was logical in form. And interestingly enough, the prima causa is intimately bound up with the idea of a final cause (peras, or limit). [A final cause is a purpose, or goal.] In Metaphysics [Book 12], Aristotle wrote:
“The final cause is an end which is not for the sake of anything else, but for the sake of which everything [else] is. So if there is to be a last term of this kind, the process will not be infinite; and if there is no such term there will be no final cause. Those who maintain an infinite series do not realize that they are destroying the very nature of the Good, although no one would try to do anything if he were not likely to reach some limit (peras); nor would there be reason in the world (nous), for the reasonable man always acts for the sake of an end — which is a limit.”Aristotle thought that a limit is the necessary condition of rationality in action, that it is something inherent in reason. And as Eric Voegelin points out, for Aristotle, reason is embedded in the order of being, and it is the property of reason to have a limit. Now logically, there can be no “end” of anything that did not “begin.” That is, the limit cannot be the production of an infinitely regressive causal series: There must be a First Cause. To put it crudely: Nothing can have a limit, or an “end” in the sense of purpose or goal — a telos — that did not “begin” in the first place.
And since for Aristotle, reason is embedded in the constitution of being, as it were, then the prima causa, the First Cause, a/k/a the Unmoved Mover, must be an intelligent cause, just as the final cause is a “reasonable” or rational one. Thus following Aristotle, Voegelin would write: “A universe which contains intelligent beings cannot originate with a prima causa that is less than intelligent.”
Materialists often try to evade this fact, but they demand that every effect have a prior cause on their physical worldline precisely because they can only conceive of linear time — a time line moving from past, to present, to future. Philosophical realists, on the other hand, see time as a dimension and accept that there may be more than one temporal dimension.
Even in the model of scientific materialism, a/k/a metaphysical naturalism, regressing back from effect to prior cause to the cause that preceded it, etc., ad infinitum — there had to be a beginning, notwithstanding their preference likely would be an infinite causal series. After all, the theory of evolution — because it rests on the apparent randomness of matter in its motions (not intelligence), and the premise of “given enough time, everything will happen” — would be better served by an infinite causal past. And yet the great Greeks — who themselves embraced the eternal universe model — realized that nothing could come into existence without a beginning in Time, or be what it is and not some other way without a beginning in Time.
[BTW, the COBE satellite experiments mentioned earlier have been interpreted as furnishing evidence that the universe did indeed have a beginning in time, approximately 15 billion years ago.]
And at that point, there is nowhere else to appeal except to an uncaused cause, a prime mover that is not in Time — which is to say, to God Himself.
I claim to know the probable answer (of the origin of matter).
Given the foregoing, this statement is neither illogical nor irrational. Still I think we humans do not possess absolute knowledge, nor ever will: So a little humility is always a good thing.
Thanks so much for writing, edsheppa!
First, note that it's the interviewer Tubridy who uses the specific term "fairies," not Dawkins. Now I haven't read Dawkins's book and maybe he does use this term there but, even if he does, it is clear from the discussion in the interview that it is one example among many. So to call it a straw man argument as Quinn and you do is wholly unfair.
But let's talk about it anyway. Quinn is saying, sure kids may believe in stuff like fairies but they grow up and get over that nonsense. Hence it's unfair to equate a child's delusion with an adult's belief in God.
The problem is that adults don't invariably grow out of it. Even today there are adults who believe in the moral equivalent of fairies. We call them animists.
Then there are the many other adults today who believe in similarly ludicrous things - astrology, magic crystals, superstitions, 9/11 conspiracy theories, ghosts, UFO abductions, afterlife virgins for suicide bombers, all delusional and all believed by adults. Being an adult doesn't provide immunity from delusion.
One could try to escape from that by pointing out that these adult delusions aren't very widespread. But just turn the clock back and you'll find many, many more adults adhering to delusional nonsense. At one time long ago I'm sure nearly every living adult human was an animist of some flavor.
So this entire line of argument, that adult belief in God isn't delusional because adults aren't generally subject to delusions, isn't very convincing. Quinn must instead show that adult belief in God isn't delusional because it is reasonably founded. And he must avoid a strawman argument and specifically address the kinds of belief Dawkins means, because he clearly differentiates them from others (e.g. Deism) he says aren't delusional.
By the way, speaking of strawmen, let's also note that Quinn builds one himself here. What he should do is address Dawkin's observations about human psychology. Instead he lumps them under the heading of "fairies" and hopes the association will carry the day.
Jeepers, it sorta seems like you didn't read my essay, edsheppa.
In the first place, no one is saying that adults don't have delusions. The point is, DAWKINS sets himself up as the one who diagnoses who is delusional. He finds people who believe in God belong to that category. In short, the people who he finds delusional are the ones who simply disagree with him. Go see if you can find a rational, objective standard there. Good luck!
I provided an argument that demonstrates the illogic of demanding a natural cause for matter, or of space and time, for the simple reason that nature is constituted by these things, and is completely contingent on them. So how could it be the cause of such things?
I didn't mention it, but the very idea of a physical law being the product of a random or accidental development is illogical (as Aristotle argued). But if reason and logic actually were products of a random evolutionary development, then why should we trust them? After all, they just might continue to "evolve" and become different than they are now. But if we can't trust them, what does that do to science as a going concern? Plus there was Voegelin's insight, that a universe that contains intelligent beings cannot have less than an intelligent cause. These are all matters of logic and reason.
To illustrate the problem: Strictly speaking, Darwinist evolutionary theory does not deal with the origin of life. But that doesn't mean that Darwinists like Dawkins, Morowitz, et. al., or NASA's origin of life project, or the Origin of Life Prize are not thoroughly committed to the idea of life arising spontaneously from a prebiotic soup because of "clever chemicals" (so to speak).
But as Hubert Yockey puts it, "The fable about the origin of life from protoplasmal primordial atomic globules in a racemic Urschleim cannot be killed with facts, does not fade away, and appears to be immortal!" Even though biologists of the stature of Crick and Yockey have well founded evidence that the "proteins-first" rise of life is logically impossible. As Yockey put it, "no code exists to send information from protein sequences to mRNA or DNA. Therefore, it is impossible that the origin of life was "proteins first" from the Urschleim [i.e., pre-biotic chemical soup]."
But it's okay: For people who are wedded to a favorite theory, nothing -- NOTHING -- will pry them away from it.
Or so it seems to me.
One might argue that Dawkins' evident refusal to engage reason and logic is itself delusional. So by your definition -- or Tubridy's if you insist -- Dawkins must believe in fairies, too.
Let me quote from my own post to you, the very first line.
That's a very long response. I'll be happy to discuss them one by one if you like. Let's start with fairies.If you can't discuss one topic at a time, I think I'll pass. OK?
Well, that would certainly be okay, but probably not the best solution. I'd be happy to go one by one, and certainly I don't have all the answers. This is really tough stuff.
If you want to proceed, isolate the topic of your choice and get back to me. We can start from there.
If you don't have the time, I'll understand.
Meanwhile, thank you for your conversation thus far, edsheppa!
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