P1: If the shape of the earth is an oblate spheroid, then God exists.
P2: The shape of the earth is an oblate spheroid.
C: Therefore, God exists.
This argument is clearly valid, and P2 is also true. Therefore, if someone made this argument I would be obliged to ask him to elaborate on P1 and explain the logic behind the premise. Only then would I be in a position to determine whether I agree with the argument.
Now, consider this argument:
P1: If the earth is flat, then God exists.
P2: The earth is flat.
C: Therefore, God exists.
This argument is also valid. However, my knowledge of science is adequate to conclude that P2 is false. Therefore, the argument is unsound.
And if someone wanted to defend the argument by claiming he went to school for ten years and is really, really, really good at philosophy and most scientists are just a bunch of simplistic dunderheads and he has really, really, really good philosophical reasons for believing P1 is true, but he has no interest in defending P2 because that’s just for the scientific dunderheads, well, what should I do? Do I really need to take such a person seriously at all?
Your answer is not addressed to what I was saying. Let me restate. I want to know, not whether you agree with my thoughts on design, or any particular arguments I have made for design, but whether you agree that I have characterized my dialogical position correctly. I stated my dialogical position as follows:
Would you agree that the above characterizes my dialogical stance? If not, why not? Where have I deviated from what I have said above?
ID likes to invoke fine tuning, but only in terms of necessity. That is what Denton is arguing for. But for the majority, if not nearly all, of ID proponents, fine tuning is not necessary and sufficient. It is not capable enough to get the job done, so divine interventions are required to overcome hurdles along the way to the desired outcome; hence the appeal to irreducible complexity and infusion of information. That fine tuning is regarded as necessary but not sufficient is explicit in Meyer’s apologetic Return of the God Hypothesis. This is in contrast to the discussion by physicists, which would regard nature to be entirely sufficient for its present manifestation, fine tuning or otherwise.
At one time, I was that sort of Christian. So I don’t see a problem. Yes, @Mercer apparently believes in such a God. But he is not making claims about it. He does not allow it to influence his scientific decisions.
I guess it could be said that ID is not good science because it seeks to create gaps that science cannot fill, rather than attempting to fill as many gaps as it can with science.
This is part of why I do not make any multiverse assumptions. It has interesting mathematical implications, but it has not empirical support (IMO).
Getting back to Denton. It always seemed obvious to me that the world where we humans find we live in must support human life, for otherwise we would not be here. This seems near enough to a certainty, so I give it a probability of 1. But Denton is arguing that the probability is near infinitesimal.
Good point. The two questions need to be separated.
Why is “scientific” in there? It’s one of those “loaded” words. Why not just “our collective human experiences”?
But it has not been established that even all these processes combined can fully account for the actual results of evolution. It’s a working assumption of evolutionary theory, not something that has been demonstrated.
I don’t insist that it’s required, but if it’s compatible with what we see in nature, it should remain on the table as a hypothesis, whether “scientific” or “philosophical” or something else.
Nor of life emerging by accident, so the two hypotheses are even in their lack of evidence.
You introduce here as a fact something which is the conclusion of an argument, and a conclusion which is debatable. I don’t say it’s false, but it’s debatable.
I agree, we don’t know. So we should not rule out any logical possibilities.
I don’t say there is no evidence for such a thesis; I do say there is no proof.
Well, motivated reasoning is a widespread thing. But I think that you are really missing something if you don’t understand that a lot of atheists get to where they are precisely by battling against motivated reasoning. When I was young, the notion that death was probably the end of my existence and that my deceased loved ones would never be in paradise waiting for me to show up was quite depressing. Less extravagant notions of the persistence of life after death hung on with me for a long time; it was just hard to accept the alternative. And one day I fully took on board a fact: that my desire for a thing to be true in no way made it likelier, and that I had no reason – and still, today, do – to believe otherwise.
I am where I am solely as a result of being able to reject motivated reasoning. I suspect the same is true of many, many others. If you want to be an honest inquirer after the truth, you have to liberate yourself from such things as motivated reasoning. Nobody does it perfectly, of course, and we all strive to do better; but the notion that atheism or materialism (!) is somehow a product of wishful thinking is a bit rich.
It says a good deal more about your reading comprehension that you somehow draw this from what I wrote. I am astonished sometimes by these strange things you come up with.
Of course there is a continuum between purely philosophical religious speculations and empirical claims. Of course. That’s why I mention such things as intercessory prayer which used to be common beliefs and are increasingly the zone of the crackpot. It is clear today that the methods of religion are of no use on empirical questions, however, and that is why there is a big difference between scrutinizing the pure speculations and strange traditions of religions, which generally do not involve empirical claims, and scrutinizing the empirical claims made by religious traditions (e.g., that the world and everything in it is the product of a Designer no less talented than Martha Stewart).
I suspect that that’s often because those consensus beliefs get to be consensus beliefs precisely by being backed by evidence. But everyone, of course, will choose the topics that are important to him. That he does not choose ALL topics does not mean he is wrong on the ones he does choose.
Well, you know, perhaps some of those people share your concerns, and some of them don’t. But it is always everyone’s right to develop the cause he thinks he can do some good on, while neglecting others. I am reminded of people who will disparage the contributions of others to some civil rights cause by suggesting that another is more important (e.g., “how can you talk about women’s rights when racial discrimination is still such an issue in our society?” or “how can you talk about racial discrimination when women are still so harshly discriminated against?”). People who make objections of that character never turn out to be people who are DOING something about their chosen cause; they simply wish to disparage what others are doing about THEIR chosen causes.
Pseudoscience is on the march, and some forms of it – ID, in particular – are part of a broader culture war which threatens to make the world unsafe for civilized people. And so this is what some people choose to pit themselves against. Nobody is saying that if you think huge oppressive institutions are a threat, you shouldn’t do something about it; but it’s a bit strange to take someone who IS doing useful work combatting nonsense and demand that he change his priorities. If you see somebody not doing the work you think is important, well, DO it, don’t complain.
You’re avoiding the problem. I am not asking Mercer to let anything influence his scientific decisions. I’m asking him why he believes in something extraordinary, when most of the scientists (and self-appointed spokespersons for science) here think that such a belief is unwarranted. What causes him to believe in:
Odd that on two different websites, both run by Christians and with the intention of generating discussion that can potentially bring together Christian and scientific thought, and given complete liberty for 10 years or more to speak of his faith any time he wishes, a Christian scientist would never offer any reasons for holding the core belief that he does.
If this were a pure science website, a pure biochemistry website, etc., I could perfectly understand such a 10-year reticence about a fundamental statement of faith. But given that this site was founded to foster dialogue between people of faith and people without faith, scientists and non-scientists, it is incomprehensible to me why a particular Christian scientist would for 10 years never give any indication that he sides with Christian posters on core beliefs of the faith.
We agree on this.
There is good reason, since many of your posts, and many posts of others here, have mischaracterized my dialogical position. I want to pin you down here, so that (if you agree with my self-description) you can’t misrepresent me in the future, and so that, if others do so in the future (as some certainly will), I can cite your agreement with me. If you are conversing in good faith, and not merely to win arguments, I don’t see why would object to answering my question, and giving reasons for your answer.
I don’t say it always is. And I accept your own personal account, i.e., that you became an atheist by using reason to overcome your prejudices. But surely you are aware of people who have used reason in the other direction? C. S. Lewis, Antony Flew, Edward Feser (now a professor of philosophy, and quite capable of rigorous argument regarding Aquinas, Descartes, etc…), and many others.
I agree with this part of your answer, and in other contexts, I am “doing” it.
I am, but I have found the reasons given to be woefully insufficient. I think that the difference is that I am of the view that pure philosophy, after cogito ergo sum, has largely shot its bolt. After that, philosophy may inform empirical inquiry but it can contribute only the mechanisms of reason, not the material upon which reason’s work can be performed.
I didn’t ask you to judge anyone. I’m speaking about the normal expectations for Christians. Are you not aware of the Christian belief that one should not hide one’s faith under a bushel?
Lots of Christians in these debates have defended contemporary science. They say things like “As a Christian, I believe the world was created by a wise and powerful God who cares for his creatures, though I do not claim to be able to establish that belief on scientific grounds.” I can find statements like that for most of the BioLogos Christians, for most of the ASA Christians, for Joshua and other Christians here, but none from John Mercer. The same people frequently go on to give reasons for their belief, e.g., the existence of conscience in humans, or fine-tuning (both reasons given by Francis Collins), evidence for a historical Resurrection, etc. I have not heard any such reasons given by John Mercer. And given that his reasoning on every other subject he discusses closely matches that of those here who find the claim of an intelligent designer “extraordinary” and unwarranted, I just wanted to know why he accepts the “extraordinary” claim. Presumably it’s because of his Christian beliefs, but how he puts the two together remains a complete mystery. I’m just asking for clarification of his thinking regarding Christian faith and the creation of the world – which is a natural question for someone in my academic field. And I’m not asking you to answer for him. He is quite capable of speaking for himself.
I wasn’t asking you to agree that their arguments are strong. I was merely asking you to concede that these people had motives for wanting atheism to be true, and thus had to overcome prejudices, just as you did. For the record, I disagree with you about the role of philosophy, but that is neither here nor there for my point.
I don’t know what particular motives any of them might have had for wanting atheism to be true. It’s very hard to imagine much in the way of such a motive, and usually when I do hear such a motive expressed it’s cartoonish and bizarre, and it is only expressed in a rear-view-mirror kind of way, bearing no resemblance to anything ever said by any actual atheist. My experience is that when people endorse pseudoscience or bad reasoning of any sort, they tend to introduce the topic by saying, “mind you, I was the BIGGEST skeptic in the whole wide world, so, y’know, if this convinced a hard-core skeptic like me, well, it should probably convince you, too.” That, as I recall it, is more or less the line taken by C.S. Lewis.
It’s obvious to everyone, including Denton. The question is, placing yourself mentally prior to the existence of all worlds, and assuming for the sake of argument that no intelligent designer ever existed, in how many of all the possible worlds that might emerge would you expect the laws, constants, etc. to so cohere and mutually reinforce each other so as to be able to produce, without guidance or tinkering, highly intelligent rational beings such as ourselves? Most of them? Some of them? Very few of them? Of course I’m not demanding an exact number, but the raising of the question should give you a better idea of what the issue is.
Speculative. Why don’t you read the authors I mentioned, and find out?
I am not automatically endorsing people such as you describe. I suspect you have in mind mostly uneducated or half-educated American fundamentalists. I was asking you to comment on highly educated people such as Lewis, Feser, and Flew.
That is not my reading of Lewis, though I have seen similar statements in some apologists.