every logical attack has met with a corresponding defence.
I'm glad I'm not the one charged with coming up with a defense against logic!
The Dawkins Deception (bogus reasoning on the "improbability" of God)
by hooberus 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Galileo
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BurnTheShips
I'm glad I'm not the one charged with coming up with a defense against logic!
You wish you could be me.
BTS
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mkr32208
Beginnings and Endings only have meaning within the context of Time. Remove Time and there are no Beginnings and no Endings. Time began with the Universe. Of course, it's difficult for us to imagine Timelessness (aka Eternity), but it's just as difficult for us to imagine a Universe with more than three physical dimensions. We are limited by our own senses and experiences. We're all Flatlanders. Mathematics, however, is not as limited by our perceptive weaknesses so we can describe some things mathematically that we can't conceive of properly otherwise.
I'm constantly amazed (and a bit frightened) that such intelligent people can be reduced to such insanity as this! This is literally psychic physics!
"I think the universe is donut shaped!"
"Why?"
"Just because I do so don't argue with me!"
We have reached a point in our civilization where merely pointing at an old woman and shouting "witch" isn't enough. PROOF is required. Why should it be ANY different if you point at the sky and shout "god?"
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funkyderek
hooberus:
Recently I carefully read (and highlighted) Chapter 4 of Richard Dawkins book "The God Delusion".
Well done! Good to see you doing something other than copy-and-pasting from AIG or the like.
There are several problems with Dawkins argument, however the main problem is is equating improbability of coming about by chance with improbability of existence.
They might be slightly different but both are about the improbability of something complex just happening to exist. If we allow that something might exist without having a beginning (which I'm quite happy to do, despite the absence of evidence) it soon becomes obvious that the probability of something like a simple set of rules always existing is much much higher than the probability of a person with memories and plans and emotions always existing. Although, to be fair, it's hard to quantify either of those probabilities. So let's (generously) allow that they're equally likely. Unfortunately for your hypothesis there are so many things that might have always existed that it again becomes vanishingly unlikely that the thing you have imagined is actually the one that exists. Why not a complex computer program being executed by a complex (but non-sentient) computer. Ah, you say, but who wrote the program? Nobody, it always existed. As did the computer. Why not a giant dandelion spewing out universes like seeds on the wind? Or a hedgehog whose wanderings around the multiverse determine the fundamental constants of our universe? It could be anything you can imagine and more. Why would it be an old man with a foreskin fixation?
By inventing an exception to the rule that complex things cannot come about by chance, there is no limit to the possibilities that can be hypothesised. Your god is only one of an infinite number of these, and as his existence is unnecessary (i.e. it has no explanatory power) there is no good reason for hypothesising such a being.
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Galileo
Wow, mkr and funnyderek, great posts both of you.
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence” - David Hume
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BurnTheShips
I'm constantly amazed (and a bit frightened) that such intelligent people can be reduced to such insanity as this! This is literally psychic physics!
Since you think the statement evidences insanity please point out the insanity the statement. The statement is logically coherent and is supported by the best facts we have.
BTW, WTF is "psychic physics"?
We have reached a point in our civilization where merely pointing at an old woman and shouting "witch" isn't enough. PROOF is required. Why should it be ANY different if you point at the sky and shout "god?"
You have faith in your senses, how do you know theu aren't eluding you? You have faith in your memory, how do you know it is an accurate register? Do you believe in minds other than your own? You believe in things without evidence, but they are justified beliefs.
BTS
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mkr32208
Psychic Psychics are when someone like Anne hecht (sp) or Tom Cruise decides to expound on the physical make up of the universe based not on facts but on how they FEEL things should be. Or how some alien told them in a dream things should be. Now I'm not saying that they aren't RIGHT. I'm merely saying it will require proof.
It's very similar to saying "time doesn't exist" well yes , yes I'm afraid time DOES exist. Our arbitrary measurements of time into days weeks hours seconds and what not clearly exist. 99.999% of things in the KNOWN universe happen in a sequential manner. We know that we can TIME those events and we assign those segments of time into days weeks years etc. Our RECORDS are purely arbitrary however time itself is NOT. If I drop a rock off a cliff it does not hang in the air or go halfway down and come back up... EVER! Everything in the known universe has a beginning therefore your god must have had a beginning. If you want to postulate about "unknown" then I can't help you...
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hooberus
There are several problems with Dawkins argument, however the main problem is is equating improbability of coming about by chance with improbability of existence.
They might be slightly different but both are about the improbability of something complex just happening to exist.
They are more than "slighty different" for many reasons. However most importantly for this thread the fact remains that an argument based on the improbability of coming about by chanceproves nothing against the probability of existence of something that did not come about by chance.
Dawkins argument is fallacious.
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dorayakii
This all strikes me as a very strange thread. How do you measure the probability of something's existence? The probability of something coming about by chance can be graded, because there are a number of factors involved. However, with existence, there is only one factor involved, whether it is there, or not. Therefore the probability of something's existence is either 1, 0 or unknown.
If the theist position is that the probability of God's existence is 1 (and not 0 or unknown), one question which I've asked many times is: what prevents us from using the same argument for the universe itself? Why can't the universe and all it's "finely-tuned" measurements just Be? The probability of the universe and life arising by chance may be very low, but the probability of their existence is necessarily 1, because we are here breathing and experiencing life. Why is it that God gets to just simply Be, but the universe (or multiverse) doesn't? The universe is as endless and beginningless in both time and space as is a circle. It's "beginning" at the so-called "Big Bang" wasn't really a beginning in the sense that we understand it, because a beginning needs time. It is therefore inaccurate to talk about the "beginning of time". The nature of the space-time continuum is such that if I travelled in a straight line toward the "end" of the universe, I'd make it back to the same spot. Time works in a similar fashion. Our minds cannot think beyond time or space, and our bodies can never experience anything other than time and space, so if we're not an astro-physicist or quantum-mathematician trained in analogising, and we don't understand the import of the physics, the significance of multi-dimentional space or the mathematics involved, it is meaningless for us to speculate on what could exist "beyond" the universe let alone try to explain the very existence of it. (Again "beginning of time", "end of the universe" and "beyond the universe" are meaningless terms).
There are all sorts of things that *could be*, or more specifically, there are all sorts of things that could have a probability of 1 or 0. We could be in some sort of input-controlling Matrix, our universe could be a little marble some otherworldly kid carries in his pocket, or it could even have been created by some sort of practically omnipotent God, or an unknown advanced alien race. But we would never know, these things are by nature unprovable in our present state of knowledge. If we believed one of these theories had a probability of 1, then we get stuck in an endless logical loop.
The choice of believing the unprovable is a right that we all have, but in my humble opinion, non-belief (as a passive action) is the healthiest course.
In a way I do disagree with Dawkins trying to prove that God doesn't exist, yet I don't think he is so unintelligent as to actually use that as a real argument. I do believe that he is doing it for the purpose of using the theist's own arguments against them. In fact, many times he states that he is NOT really an atheist, but an agnostic. He admits that God cannot be proven or disproven and that in reality all atheists are agnostic. YET he has made it quite clear that for practical purposes he is an atheist in the same sence as most people are atheists with respect to the gods Thor or Baal or Zeus. Many theists try to prove that God exists by elaborate probability calculations or by untouchable claims of divine eternity, but in the end, they shoot themselves in the foot. All both sides are trying to do is prove the unprovable or disprove the undisprovable.
The only two logical responses to such a cosmic challenge are (1) "I don't know, so I won't think about it" (the majority of us), or (2) "I don't know, I'll probably never know, but I'm not satisfied, I want to find out more" (scientists). A third option "I know that God did it", is an untenable position because we can't know without proof. Science is "knowledge of something acquired by study and evidence". Hence, the only way to get proof is through scientific study, and our scientific study is not yet at the level to explain such things. . Without science, without study, without empirical evidence, all we have is speculation and conjecture which have no right to dogmatically claim the status of truth, so the default stand must necessarily be non-belief in such tall tales of pseudo-knowledge.
The only thing we do know is that time = change. Anything "outside" of time doesn't change. It doesn't think, doesn't move, doesn't create. It may exist, but it would not be able to "do" anything even if it did. It would not be dynamic like the temporal universe we live in. It would be eternally static.
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funkyderek
hooberus:
Dawkins argument is fallacious.
Not at all. Merely simplified. He could have included the trivial absurdity you postulated, namely that a powerful intelligent entity can just be, without having to come into existence. But as such a hypothesis has no explanatory power, no evidence in its favour and nothing to make it more likely than any other entity or situation just happening to exist, it has no place in a serious discussion except perhaps as a qualifying footnote to the effect that it cannot be categorically disproven that the universe may be such that the existence of any entity anyone is capable of imagining is possible.