I am going to give you a second chance. Please explain why the fact that the Pyramids were constructed as tombs - rather than, say, temples - is relevant. Please explain what point you were trying to make with that.
How generous of you.
Your argument seemed to be that one needed to know the motive of the designer in creating the world, before one could say that the world was designed. In my parallel, the motive was “to have a grand tomb for the Pharaoh.” My point was that even if we did not know that motive (or any other motive) for building the Pyramids, we could infer that the Pyramids were designed. We don’t detect design by using motives; we detect it by the arrangement of parts. A guillotine might be used to slice meats, or to behead political enemies; we don’t need to know what the motive is to determine that the guillotine is a designed object.
I would have considered a reasonable response to be: “I grant you that in the case of the Pyramids and in most other cases we do not need to know anything about a designer’s motive in order to infer design; however, I think the case of the universe is different in important ways from the usual case, and here is what I think the key differences are…” That would have been tonally constructive, and also would have moved more directly to the conceptual issues, allowing you to skip discussing historical facts about Egyptians and their construction methods, which historical facts didn’t affect the “motive” question I was addressing.
I’ve given you this answer in order to clarify what I meant, since you asked for clarification (asked, I would say, condescendingly rather than in the spirit of genuine intellectual partnership), but I’m not interested in beating the Egyptian parallel to death, so you may respond if you like, but I don’t promise to discuss it further, if I don’t think your answer is likely to lead to any insights or conclusions that we haven’t already aired.
I wouldn’t want to conclude that you are a shameless liar without giving you a chance to defend yourself.
In other words your point was entirely about the need to know the motive, and the actual motive for building the Pyramids was, as I said irrelevant.
Thank you for establishing that I answered your actual point, and that I certainly did not “arrogantly” dismiss it as irrelevant - and that you were perfectly aware of that when you made the accusation.
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This characterization of my answer, which was offered in good faith because you asked, is based on your misconstrual of the whole sequence of my replies from the start. It is also offered in your regular arrogant tone. I feared that you might abuse my reply, no matter what was contained in it, but I thought I should give you the benefit of the doubt. I turned the other cheek, and you slapped that one, too. No more.
I do not think that trying to fob me off with a non-answer really counts as “turning the other cheek”. Nor do I think it is reasonable to count me as the aggressor when I am responding to your unjustified - and apparently false - accusation.
We are agreed that you made the point that it was not necessary to know the motives and we agreed that I answered that.
However, you (implausibly) claimed to have also been making another point - a point which hinged on the use as tombs. It is that point that you accused me of “arrogantly dismissing as irrelevant”. It is that point that I specifically asked for. And in reply you give me the point that it is not necessary to know the motives - which is not the point you accused me of dismissing and is not the point I asked for.
I don’t think it is unreasonable for me to conclude that you were not making any such point when it is not apparent and you refuse to explain it when asked.
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It would be really helpful if we could all agree that analogs like pyramids, machines on Mars etc. etc. are quite irrelevant to the question if living creatures are designed.
If instead of a machine on Mars we found a Martian on Mars, would we still automatically conclude that he was designed?
That is the real analog, not things that clearly need external assembly for their existence.
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Irrelevant objection.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I believe it is possible I have overestimated you all along. You seem to have no comprehension of the basic logic behind Denton’s argument and my objections to it.
Let me try make it clear how I understand things:
Denton in his lecture (and I presume in his book) lists a number of physical parameters that exist here on earth without which human beings, or intelligent beings like us, could not possibly have evolved and thrived.
He believes there are so many such factors that the existence of even a single planet on which they all exist is so improbable that the most likely explanation is that these parameters were specifically set by a god.
However, empirical evidence shows that there are likely many, many billions of planets spread throughout the universe on which conditions similar to those on earth exist. And even though these remain a small number compared to the total number of planets, in absolute terms the number is enormous
Of this enormous number of planets on which the conditions under which which intelligent life could evolve exist, it therefore requires nothing more than chance to account for the fact that, on a single one of these planets, intelligent life did evolve.
It is similar to saying that if enough people buy lottery tickets the odds of one of them winning are pretty good, even though the odds are strongly against any particular ticket winning.
Whereas Denton is arguing that the situation is analogous to one in which only one person buys a ticket, and this just happens to be the winning number. One would be justified in suspecting that the draw was rigged in such a situation. But not in the first.
Now, if you think I have misunderstood anything about Denton’s argument please explain what I have misunderstood, in your opinion. (I realize that you refuse to watch the lecture on which my understanding of Denton’s argument is based. But for the sake of argument let’s presume that the video represents the main points of his argument accurately. If you raise any points that are inconsistent with or which were not covered in the video I will mention this, and we can see if it alters my position.)
Whereas if I have not misunderstood. then please respond to the counterargument I have outlined above.
(There are other problems with Denton’s argument which have been raised and which you have also not understood, chief among them his mistaken belief that all the parameters he discusses are free to vary independently of each other. But let’s try take things one at a time for now.)
That will never happen, because this promoting this fallacious analogy is the entire basis of the ID Creationist effort.
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In short, this finetuning argument is the Mother of all Texas Sharpshooters.
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No, chance plus rigged natural laws. It’s all set forth very clearly in Nature’s Destiny, if you want to read only one book, but again in the recent six-book series.
I saw no argument in the lecture to suggest the laws were “rigged”. Just that among the outcomes of these laws will be planets where human beings could evolve.
Why would he not include this in the lecture, if he did indeed have such an argument? (By now, I know better than to ask you actually describe the argument. That is something that seems beyond your capabilities, for some reason.)
Nobody can. You just have to read all the books, because despite being divided into separate books the whole thing is one block, adamantine and indivisible. It has to be taken as a gestalt. So we are assured.
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Are you trying to understand the thought of Denton in its fullest and most articulate form, or are you trying to understand him only through an abbreviated, popularized version of just one of his books, put out by an organization which, if your suspicions of that organization are correct, might well be oversimplifying or omitting things? If you really distrust Discovery’s motives as much as you say you do, then you are not being logical in treating a video crafted by the DI as a completely reliable translation of the ideas of an author. It would make much more sense for you to suspect that Discovery is slanting Denton’s ideas for its own purposes. And given that you think along these lines, you should be reading Denton’s books. Of course, if your only reason for talking about Denton is to shoot him down, and not to learn what he thinks, then you will make use of any presentation of his thought that saves you time and effort, without regard for whether it’s the best presentation. And I think it’s pretty obvious that your only reason for talking about Denton is not scholarly, but polemical.
Were the video not a complete talk by Denton, unaccompanied by any other material, then that might be. But unless the DI happened to be holding a gun to his head and demanding that he present a series of comically bad arguments with which he disagreed rather than his own actual views, probably his own words represent what he claims his own views are.
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Even if there is no distortion in what is given, it does not follow that he presents a complete version of his ideas in a single video. I was responding to Faizal’s implied claim, or at least suggestion, that because a certain point is not found in a particular video, it is not something held by Denton. It’s evident from all of Denton’s writing that he thinks the natural laws are rigged, whether he says so explicitly in the video Faizal watched or not. If Faizal does not believe me, I don’t care, because he’s ignorant of the contents of Denton’s books and so his opinion about what’s in them is unimportant.
That’s called moving goalposts. First, @Eddie, you assert that an intelligent species living at depth would not ever have access to the wonders of astrophysics. Realizing you are wrong, you hit the clutch and …
Perhaps you can answer a followup to your question:
The answer (or the beginning) might lie in the pathways by which Denton believes the evolution of humans from the simple creatures that existed 3+ billion years ago occurred. After all, conditions on earth then were closer to our hypothetical deep sea paradise. Heck, it is rather possible that the first life actually arose in this paradise.
So, the question is - what are the crucial points in history where things took a turn down what Denton claims is a singular path towards humanity? Does Denton ever examine these junctions and explore, critically and completely, alternative pathways? For it is these alternatives that are the possible answer to your question.
I will confess to having read three of Denton’s books (including Miracle of the Cell) and snippets of others, and haven’t found quite what I believe could be the beginning of an answer. But, @Eddie, if you are going to hold up Denton as an authority, I think it is important to start with the crucial points as laid out by Denton, so we can be on the same page. So, from your encyclopedic knowledge of Denton, lay out his evolutionary timeline, with the relevant chemistry and other details.
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It wouldn’t be helpful, because it would be seriously misleading. I agree that machines are different in some respects (not all) from organisms, and therefore one should proceed with care in relating them, but comparisons between them are not “quite irrelevant.”
No, we would not “automatically” conclude anything. We would investigate both designed and non-designed options, and our conclusion would represent the preponderance of evidence – or we might leave the question undecided.
And the same would be true of an object which looked like a machine of some kind, say, some assemblage of metal that had gears and pointers and dials. We would not “automatically” conclude anything. We would consider the possibility that the particular arrangement of matter could have occurred by chance, by natural laws, or by a combination.
This would obviously be the right approach for a Pyramid on Mars. Since we know of no other intelligent beings in the universe, we would have to at least consider the possibility that conditions on Mars, unlike conditions on earth, could produce a Pyramid without design. But if investigation showed that there was nothing different about Mars relevant to the possibility of naturalistic Pyramid generation, then we would conclude that an unknown intelligent agent produced the Pyramid, and (by logical necessity) that such an unknown intelligent agent in fact existed.
He does say so. I understand that this is his position. I have never suggested otherwise. As usual, your inability to comprehend plain written English betrays you.
The issue is whether Denton provides sufficient evidence or argument to support his claim that the laws were rigged. There is no such evidence or argument given in the lecture. And you are unable to provide any such argument from his book. As has been said, it beggars belief that such arguments would exist in the book but would not be given in the lecture. It is only reasonable to believe that such a well-rehearsed and slick presentation as that video would be an accurate presentation of the quality of his argument, designed to whet the appetite of the viewer to read about it in further detail.
But the problem seems to be that his adoring fans and acolytes do not really have the required scientific knowledge or critical thinking skills to understand and accept how poor his argument is. And the video lecture is directed as those people. There is a reason he is so quick to distance himself from the quote that uses the obscene phrase “millions of years”, and to excuse it as merely the opinion of an “evolutionist.”
So I don’t think our disagreement will be resolved by you watching the video or by me reading his books. It will only be resolved by your improving your knowledge and thinking skills, or by my suffering an unfortunate insult to my brain that brings my cognitive processing down to the level of the average cdesign proponentsist.
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Then why did you write:
No, as usual, the problem is that your writing of English is not nearly so clear as you imagine it to be.
Do you think the above two statements from me are inconsistent or contradictory?
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It is interesting then that ID has very little interest in investigating the “designed option” - which it would need to do to establish a “preponderance of evidence”.
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