So what you’re saying is that my attempt at reductio ad absurdam wasn’t absurd enough for you. A gallant defense. Now of course there are two reasons why bananas are the way they are. Part of it is that the fruits of that family have that same general form, even small ones that don’t have to fit anything. The presence of many nutrients is just because they’re organisms and organismal tissues contain that sort of thing. But some of it is that they evolved as seed-dispersal vehicles, and thus natural selection has guided them to be attractive to the seed-dispersal vectors, including monkeys. Further selection happened upon domestication. Does that count as design, or do you deny that natural selection is a thing, or what? Some bananas are yellow while others are red; were they designed that way?
What I suggest is you think about if the evidence of discoverability equally supports your hypothesis of a chance event.
If you think about a chance universe that is discoverable how do you account for the origin of matter, light, unique living organisms and conscious living organisms? All necessary conditions for a discoverable universe.
But they aren’t. Not one of them. They’re only necessary conditions for the universe to be like it is, which is quite a different thing. I don’t think you’ve thought about what “discoverable” means.
I haven’t been putting forth a hypothesis about the universe. And just to be sure we’re talking about the same thing here—you are saying the property of discoverability is the evidence, yes? If so, I would maintain the evidence doesn’t favor either side because its being used circularly.
I suppose someone could account for one in a few different ways, perhaps lots of ways. I think, though, “chance universe” is a bit loaded and seems to imply a… I don’t know what word to use… metaverse? Something outside the universe that could subject to chance?
It’s very odd that you would choose that example, because quantum mechanics is an excellent example of how the universe is such that our brains are not particularly well suited to understand how it works at the most basic level. What our brains are suited to is figuring out ways to predict what is and is not likely to occur in our surroundings. That is what would be expected if our minds are the result of evolution and natural selection. Not if they were designed by an omnipotent being with the express purpose of allowing us to understand the universe.
Is there an alternative hypothesis you can think of that the evidence supports?
The pieces of evidence are the individual discoveries made. The double slit experiment is one example. The discovery of how photosynthesis works at the molecular level is another.
Those are just deceptions perpetrated upon us by the omnipotent god who created and controls everything.
Prove me wrong.
Bill, you’ve got it backwards. Evidence is supposed to support hypotheses. Hypotheses are supposed to predict evidence.
Hypotheses, even better, are supposed to uniquely predict evidence, or at least make it more likely than other hypotheses make it. Bill has not advanced to that first step, showing that design predicts “discoverability” more than non-design does. For that matter, he hasn’t even shown that design predicts discoverability more than it predicts non-discoverability. He hasn’t even shown that the universe is more discoverable than not. He has a lot of work to do, and he hasn’t even begun.
I think there are many, although by finding a hypothesis that supports the evidence this can hardly not be the case. Allow me to demonstrate:
The pieces of evidence [for an undesigned, discoverable universe] are the individual discoveries made. The double slit experiment is one example. The discovery of how photosynthesis works at the molecular level is another.
All of these discoveries reinforce my hypothesis that the universe is undesigned and discoverable. If you don’t find that particularly convincing, that’s about how I feel about this.
Why would you expect photosynthesis to work in an undesigned universe? Why would you expect photons to behave the way they do?
Focus, Bill. You are talking about “discoverability.” Not how things work.
He has agreed on discoverability. The question now is supporting the evidence for undesigned.
Claiming to know how God would think or intend? Claiming to know what he would create or why he would create it? Claiming to know how difficult God would choose to make the comprehension of the universe for his rational creatures?
As we established above, you can’t even find a single point of comparison between the doctrine of God in any religion and the statements of ID proponents, which indicates that you know almost nothing about the theologies of the world’s religious traditions, yet you know enough about God to say what God’s thoughts and motives would have to be?
Those of us who have spent appreciably more time than you have studying the texts that speak of God in the various religious traditions, tend to be less sure we know what God would think or do.
Why would you expect it not to work in an undesigned universe? Why would you expect it to work in a designed universe?
Hi, Bill. In this case, @Faizal_Ali is correct—I’d like to keep the focus on the discoverability issue before we go too far down the rabbit hole, because I don’t think we’ve agreed on anything. And now that I look back through our exchange, I don’t feel like we’ve connected with each other on these ideas yet.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to circle back to your earlier answer to one of the questions I asked so I can get some clarification:
On a second look, it appears to me you are not talking about discoverability here, but discoveries—so if you wouldn’t mind answering this question about this so I have a clear idea of what you’re positing:
Is it discoverability or is it discoveries that’s the evidence for a universe designed for discovery?
Hi Matt
Discoverability (by design) is the hypothesis.
Discoveries are pieces of evidence supporting the hypothesis. The nature of those discoveries is also evidence for the hypothesis.
In addition the utility of using pieces of the universe (matter and living organisms) to help examine evidence is also evidence for the hypothesis.
Exactly. Bill’s hypothesis (sic) requires that he know all these things. His “hypothesis” is useless until and unless he demonstrates how he can know them.
I’m glad you agree with me for once.
Again, this is probably more appropriately directed at @colewd . He’s not as well-educated as you keep insisting you are, so he might not have grasped my point quite as well as you have.
That’s at least two hypotheses:
- The universe is discoverable.
- The universe is designed.
Only after these hypotheses have been supported can we proceed to a third hypothesis
- The universe was designed to be discoverable.
And that hypothesis entails a number of additional claims:
- The universe could have been designed not to be discoverable.
- The universe would probably not have been discoverable unless that were a design goal of the designer, as most possible universes would not be discoverable.
- It was designed to be discoverable for some particular reason, which may or may not itself be discoverable.
Faizal Ali wrote:
When asked how he knew what an omnipotent being would intend, how he would design human minds, etc., Faizal now answers:
But the words I quoted were Faizal’s, not Bill’s. They represent Faizal’s freely offered opinion on what an omnipotent God would think or do. Whether Bill also offered opinions of that sort is irrelevant. I was not addressing Bill; I was addressing Faizal. Faizal cannot use, as an excuse for what he wrote about God’s intentions, that Bill also made claims about God’s intentions. Faizal wrote in his own name, indicating his own opinion. Yet when asked to justify what he wrote, he will not answer, but tries to deflect the discussion toward Bill.
I note that this is the second time on this page where Faizal has made a bald claim, and then, when asked to justify it, has sidestepped in an effort to avoid answering.
The first time, after claiming that ID was “bad theology”, he would not give even one example of “ID theology”, or even one example of a religious tradition whose claims about God clash with those of “ID theology”. Now, he will not answer the question about how he knows what an omnipotent being would think or do.
It appears that the making of claims that he cannot (or at least will not) defend is becoming a pattern for Faizal Ali.