Berkeley s Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson

Touchstone Magazine ^ | June 2002 | Touchstone interview

[yendu bwam]

Roger Penrose => raving nutter alert. He did some interesting math things in his day, but much of the stuff he has written discredits his sanity and is righly scoffed at by his peers. In other words, you don't want to reference this guy as an intellectual "big gun".

I think I know who deserves the raving nutter alert. Are you in Penrose's league, tortoise?

[yendu bwam]

Why do atheists feel they have to deconstruct the wonder and beauty of this universe in a fruitless effort to disprove the existence of God?

And where do they think wonder and beauty come from?

[yendu bwam]

And I'm still waiting to hear from the pure evolutionists where they think music came from? Why do humans spend so much time creating and listening to it? What part of natural selection caused that to happen?

[jennyp]

And where do they think wonder and beauty come from?

See post 149 for a succinct & respectful answer. Oh wait... nevermind.

[yendu bwam]

See post 149 for a succinct & respectful answer. Oh wait... nevermind.

Why don't you post a respectful answer?

[jennyp]

And where do they think wonder and beauty come from?

To paraphrase someone (who does not exist on FR and who has never existed on FR), things are wonderful and beautiful in the same way that jello takes the shape of the jello mould. It really shouldn't be surprising that we find some things beautiful and others ugly. A different sentient species would find different things beautiful. (He who does not exist on FR and who never existed on FR put it better than me.)

How about this: Why are some things tasty and other things taste bad? Why is the urge to sneeze such a compelling urge? Why is sex so pleasurable? Beauty is a much more subtle phenomenon than deliciousness or sex, of course, but there's no reason to believe "beauty" is some kind of supernatural floating abstraction or something.

[jennyp]

Why don't you post a respectful answer?

In case you haven't noticed yet, EsotericLucidity has been banned, which automatically deletes all a person's posts. #149 was one of them that answered your question. (Probably while you were away. What're you doing stepping away from FR anyway???)

[yendu bwam]

How about this: Why are some things tasty and other things taste bad? Why is the urge to sneeze such a compelling urge? Why is sex so pleasurable?

Well, this is pretty simple. Evolutionists would point out that some things are tasty to us and other things taste bad, because natural selection gave us defenses (imperfect ones) over time from eating poisonous or harmful plants. We have the urge to sneeze, they would say, as we developed through natural selection a means (necessary for survival) of ejecting foreign substances from our nasal passages. Sex is so pleasurable, because otherwise we wouldn't propagate our species. But I fear you missed the point. It is much, much harder to show, from a natural selection and survival of the fittest approach, that a species would be expected to develop such an elaborate system of sounds (music) and means to produce them - or that a species would devote so much of its time and energy to that pursuit. Music, as an example, does not fit well (or so it seems to many, including me) into evolutionary theory.

[jennyp]

Why do atheists feel they have to deconstruct the wonder and beauty of this universe in a fruitless effort to disprove the existence of God?

"Wonder" and "beauty" describe a relationship between a thinking person and the thing being pondered. Wonder is an emotion that keeps us searching for more answers, and beauty helps us concretize abstract notions of "the good", as influenced by our overall sense of life.

There are probably low-level perceptual things going on too that help explain things like rhythm, dissonance, pleasing vs. clashing color (art) or pitch (music) combinations, etc.

[yendu bwam]

In case you haven't noticed yet, EsotericLucidity has been banned, which automatically deletes all a person's posts. #149 was one of them that answered your question. (Probably while you were away. What're you doing stepping away from FR anyway???)

Saw that post #149 was banned. And I stepped out to go to my sons' scout meeting. But this is a great forum. Really great. I'm pretty new here. How does one get banned?

[yendu bwam]

and beauty helps us concretize abstract notions of "the good"

Where do those abstract notions come from?

[cornelis]

Dear jennyp, Touchstone produced an informative interview, and telling. It revealed that Johnson had a plan of action which he styled as political and like a debate in court of law. This admission of his ambition as strategist is hardly strange. Good debate teams have strategies. Not a single decisive law in our land is conducted without such strategy. We can even think back of the role of the law court for Cicero and how he dealt with the crucial issues of the day. But going back that far is really not necessary. All we need to remember, in the first instance, is that his style would only be discreditable in certain instances, not all.

[Woahhs]

Like the people that think "finite but unimaginably large" has the same mathematical consequences as "infinite" (it doesn't, not even close).

In what way does that impact the discussion at hand? How does the principle invalidate the assertion? Is a probability of 1 to the -50 power no longer the definition of mathematical absurdity?

Or the people that think their pedestrian definitions of "complexity" map to some mathematical concept (it doesn't).

What pedestrian definition are you referring to, and where does it fail?

Or that a tendency towards entropy is mathematically required (it isn't). Or that all finite sequences can't be expressed in finite time from a random number generator (they can, by the mathematical definition of "random").

If this is a reference to Huxley's probability argument, that was invalidated long ago, as a "randon number generator" has no mechanism to simulate equalibrium.

Or the fact that most people don't know what "entropy" actually means but use the word liberally.

How is this liberal usage of "entropy" invalid? What is the proper term for the concept they are trying to communicate if this is an illegitimate growth of the language? I can remember many a liberal that hung his hat on the webster's definition of "conservative," in abject refusal to acknowledge the modern vernacular.

And so on. I've regularly seen people refuse to believe mathematical concepts that have to be true by definition of the concept. Math illiteracy abounds, but it is apparent that most people don't know just how illiterate they actually are.

That may well be, but I have to wonder how much of the pristine conceptual landscapes of mathematics are correctly applied to the world the illiterates know experientially.

[jennyp]

It is much, much harder to show, from a natural selection and survival of the fittest approach, that a species would be expected to develop such an elaborate system of sounds (music) and means to produce them - or that a species would devote so much of its time and energy to that pursuit. Music, as an example, does not fit well (or so it seems to many, including me) into evolutionary theory.

First off, I'm trying to understand why music should be selectively harmful! But there are plenty of things we do a lot, like purely recreational sex for instance, that probably are marginally detrimental (risky) in an immediate sense, so I can't throw your question out immediately...

Maybe it's the long-term risk of having such a powerful and generalized thinking machine inside our heads.

I'm no expert on the different theories on the development on the human brain, but here's what I think happened: Our ancestors' big brains proved very helpful in surviving in their environment, and our appreciation for things like music & art & humor & junk food are all side-effects of that big-brain capability. Similarly, civilization and the moral codes that make it possible have been very beneficial to humanity, yet there are those who fret that our compassion for the sick will eventually hurt the gene pool as a whole. If we assume this is true, its harmful effects (in a population genetics sense) haven't outweighed the positive benefits of the civilization that generated it ... yet.

Here's another example: Until the rise of the Industrial Revolution, the most prosperous societies didn't necessarily have smaller family sizes than the poorer countries, because they were all agricultural societies and more children meant more loyal farm hands. But today the prosperous societies (which tend to be more industrialized & capitalist) have far smaller families on average than the poorer peasant societies. In the long run the prosperous societies could theoretically go extinct. According to your question's logic this should never have been able to happen in the first place. Obviously the answer is that a long term negative consequence takes time to hurt the conditions that made it possible in the first place.

[jennyp]

Where do those abstract notions come from?

Our rational minds. Or our brains, depending on which aspect of the total entity you're concentrating on.

Where do you think they come from?

[jennyp]

I'm off to ingest a liquid caffeine delivery system - minus the caffeine. Now that I think of it, how's that for a frivolous pursuit! :-)

[yendu bwam]

A thoughtful response, Ms. JennyP. Thanks. It is strange that people would devote so much time and effort to music. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, and the beautiful music and drumming created by those in my village, and the time they spent on it, precluded them from spending limited and valuable time in the fields (which was absolutely necessary for survival). And I agree that music is possible because of our big brain ability - but what would have created our need for it? Now the idea that it might be a risk... That's very interesting! And of course, in today's world (where to some degree evolution has stopped working, because the non-fit survive in most cases), maybe the risk is gone. Again, thanks for your response.

[Gladwin]

Women throw themselves at rock stars. Then, people with musical ability should have more children than those without. Women may prefer musical ability because it is like a peacock's tail. Or, musical ability could imply health - mental and physical. (Although that seems less likely)

[yendu bwam]

Where do you think they come from?

Well, you won't like the answer I think (or you'll scorn it), as I am a religious guy. But I do think that some of our human abilities (especially in the areas of abstraction - like beauty, understanding good and evil, our longing to know the truth of our existence, our abilities to create (things like Shakespeare's plays or Beethoven's music), our imaginations) may stem from more than just natural selection. Think about this: As I said in the previous post, we have stopped evolution to some extent (the unfit survive). Yet we have the knowledge and abilities to change the very fabric of life (cloning, DNA rebuilding, etc.). Evolutionists believe, in a sense, that life has no purpose other than survival of the species. Religious people, like me, believe that there is a definite Godly (and intelligent) purpose to the drawing up of intelligent life out of the chaos of the universe. But now WE (humans) have the ability to decide what purposes human life will have (and the form it will take). In that sense, for better or worse (I think worse, naturally), we are becoming our own Gods. It is our abilities of abstraction that allow us to do that. Does it not seem that there is some purpose there that gave us those abilities (or allowed them to develop). Or are we still just doing all things human in the name of species survival? - And me too - time to hit the sack. Best, Yendu Bwam

[yendu bwam]

For example, take three polarized lenses (sunglasses are a good source); look through two of them and rotate one until no light is transmitted. Then put the other lens in between. How does the light get through now? Hard to explain without non-collapsing wave functions.

Hey Dr. Stochastic - forgot to answer this one. The above - Hard to explain without wave functions. But you wouldn't see any light unless the wave function collapsed. You still can only infer the existence of the (non-collapsed)wave function. You still can't touch, see, feel or hear it (or directly prove its existence). Is it real, or just a mathematical procedure? And on that note, mathematics, real and pre-existent, or just convenient human invention? (I believe the former.) And again finally, the same for many about God. Can't touch, see, or feel God, but many believe can infer existence.