Freedomain Radio

"I've now accepted that I simply don't know and may never know."

Wouldn't that make you an agnostic and not an atheist? I admit I don't know either and may never know. Given all the admitted ignorance, why treat my position as unreasonable and boot me from chat?

That's a non-answer.  If there is no order, then we are not around to observe the lack of order. If there is order, then we can observe it, but we still have to figure out why there is order. "there just is, and we wouldn't be around to think about it if there wasn't" is as stupid as saying "god did it." Neither is a real explanation by itself.

Saying there is no reason why the physical constants all lie within the extremely narrow range neccesary for life to form is as unverifiable as Intelligent Design theory. There may be a reason that is presently unknown. The reason may be unknowable altogether, but science always presumes that there is a reason things happen the way they do and then seeks to find it.  Atheists are being logically inconsistent by presuming that the big bang, singularities, values of the physical constants and quantum fluctuations have no cause.  Lack of evidence for a cause is not evidence of no cause.

I was treated by Mr. Molyneux exactly the way I was treated by Vox Day when I explained to him that he cannot define away the problem of evil (theodicy).  I guess the theists have no monopoly on hostile reactions to opposing viewpoints. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy   

http://voxday.blogspot.com/

I admit again that I am not the most diplomatic person in the world and that I may have inadvertently offended someone by my choice of words and for that I again apologize, but I did not intentionally act in an uncivil manner, nor did I show a contempt for or an inability to reason. If I had been given a chance, I could have explained my position better.

I have convinced my friend Dr. Peter Drake to listen to the audio of Practical Anarchy. He is a life-long friend of mine who is a tenured professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. I have been praising SM and FDR to high heavens to all who will listen to me, but I must admit that now my enthusiasm is considerably dampened.

I know I have arrived at the truth when my position is logically valid and conforms to observed evidence.

The problem I see with your earnestness (if that's a word) to present your claim is that you have no more (or less) evidence than anyone else putting for a meta-physical explanation for the existence of the universe.  Does that make sense? 

When I say, "I don't know the origins of the universe," I'm not saying, "the origins of the universe may or may not be part of a natural process."  I know that the universe is governed by consistent laws based on its component parts with no extra-physical entity involved.  I know this to the same degree that I know I'm not a brain-in-a-tank or a computer simulation.  It is true that I might be a brain-in-a-tank or a computer simulation and the universe may have been created by something outside the universe.  There is, however, zero evidence for all three things.

Try this on: it is impossibly unlikely that the universe unfolded in such a way that your consciousness, the emergence of which you cannot even begin to explain, would come into existence.  The chain of events, from the "finely tuned universe" to the coincident formation of electified sludge that formed your ancestors hundreds of billions of years ago, through all the disasters that befell carbon based life on this planet, all the way to your parents meeting and creating the mind that inhabits your body--there's not enough room in all of space for the number of zeros that you would have to tack on to represent the probability of you not existing.  Your mind cannot be part of a physical universe in which it is so unlikely to exist.  It must therefore be a simulation by an advanced species outside of our comprehension, or a coincident dream in a random cloud of energy, or (fill in your own untestable theory here).

Try this next: You go to the store tomorrow and buy a lottery ticket for a global lottery with a prize of 100 billion dollars.  You win the lottery.  Instantly agents arrive at your house and arrest you for cheating.  You try and argue that you didn't cheat, but the evidence against you is pretty air tight.  The odds of you winning are so close to zero, that there's virtually no difference.  Of course this is absurd.  There had to be some outcome.

Lastly: I am right with you in marvelling at the stupendous nature of the universe.  Only a crippled mind won't find itself dumbstruck when considering the infinite depths extending in all directions, full of answers to questions that we haven't yet even conceived of.  Maybe the multiverse theory is correct, or maybe we are only one in endless serial reconfiguations of matter.  There are enough observable "miracles" that it *can be* seen as small minded to start tayloring unobservable ones.  I don't, btw, think you're small minded--between your lashing out at stef, I read alot of things that made me think and reexperience my own awe at our existence.

With this in mind, why do you feel it so essential to advocate for a designed universe (or any of the other possibilities you put forth)?  Do you see that the neutral position is one in which we assume an observable (and if we can see "the effect" of something, it is observable) answer to the questions that face us?

There's a couple of fundamental problems with your position, BS.

First off, the argument about tools having a purpose because they were created is invalid.  As Stef said in the chat room, the only way for a thing to have a purpose is to have rational consciousness.  Otherwise, it can be used for whatever something with rational consciousness wants to use it for.  So, a hammer is created for the purpose of pounding nails into wood, but I could also use it for the purpose of swatting flies, if I was fast and/or crazy enough.  Tools are used for purposes that they weren't created for quite frequently.  The purpose of a tool is not in it's existence but in it's use... and only a rational actor with a consciousness can put a tool to use.

But even assuming inanimate objects could have purposes in and of themselves, let's look at the metaphor you keep returning to.  So you said that the Universe is like a fridge that has been created for the "purpose" of storing us, it's life.  Well, if we were to look at what actually exists in the Universe fridge, we'd see a whole lot of empty space completely incapable of supporting life, billions of planets, planetoids, asteroids, etc. completely incapable of supporting life, billions of raging infernos of fusion energy completely incapable of supporting life, black holes, strange matter, and dark matter, all apparently completely incapable of supporting life.  So, I'd say that the purpose of the Universe fridge is.... to store shit that's completely incapable of supporting life.  We lucked into the one part of it that IS capable of supporting life and through about 2 billion years of waiting, it lucked into beginning to form.

Of course, this brings us to the next fundamental flaw of your premise.  You think that the improbability of life in the Universe leads to the conclusion that life in the Universe could have only been created by consciousness.  This flaw completely ignores the fact when you consider all of the inorganic material in the universe and its infinitely miniscule, yet existant chance of coming together to create life AND factor in the nearly uncomprehensible size of the universe and the number of chances for a life creating event to occur in such a vast area consisting of such an immense mass of material, statistically, life doesn't look so improbable anymore.  The narrow range of possibility of life only seems narrow from the eyes of a human being.  Considering the size and scale of the universe, it'd be more surprising if we were the only life in said universe.  There have been so many chances for life to spring up since the beginning of our current space-time continuum, it's unlikely that this infintessimely small rock in the middle of an obscure solar system on the outskirts of an obscure galaxy surrounded by billions of others is the only place where life does exist.

It seems like there was another flaw to your position as well, but I've forgotten it while getting lost in the vastness of the universe.... *shrug* this outta do you for a while... it's a lot to wrap your head around...

bearded spock:

 

I don't understand the position of atheists who claim that things like quantum fluctuations have no cause. If they have no cause then a god could have no cause. If a god (and everything else) must have a cause, then so must the quantum  fluctuations. Saying "nothing" caused the Big bang is a non answer exactly like saying "God did it."

First off, I have no idea what a quantum fluctuation is, so I can't properly say that 'atheists' say that they have no cause. Is it possible that like the big bang, the cause is 'unknown'? Saying that a cause is unknown is completely different from saying that it has no cause. And saying something is unknown isn't a cop-out; it's intellectually honest, assuming that the position is in line with the evidence available to you. And this is an age-old argument, but if God needs no cause, then why must we?

I like the refregerator analogy. If one compares the universe to a fridge, then one might infer that it's purpose is to refrigerate. One might also infer that is was designed to refrigerate. Now, a chunk of ice also make an effective heat sink and can "refrigerate" as well. The question is whether or not the universe is a refrigerator (designed to support life or designed for some other opurpose) or if it is a chuck of ice (something that just happens to support life). There is evidence to support both theories.

There is? Could you pick your favourite, say, 3 pieces of evidence for either theory, and present them as best you can?

with respect to the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, the physical constants support the former. The multiple universe theory supports the latter. If there is only one universe, then we need to account for the occurrence of the extremely improbable.

"We were just lucky" is a bogus answer, especially for people who claim to be skeptics.

Why? Can you use logic to demonstrate why improbable things can't just happen? If you flip a coin 1000 times, and record the string of H/Ts that you see, then the odds of you receiving that exact string of H/Ts are astronomically low. Yet I'm willing to bet that it did, in fact, happen. While this doesn't prove anything regarding our existence, it does demonstrate that the improbability of a situation occurring don't necessarily indicate that some form of intelligence was responsible for designing or guiding it.

bearded spock:

I know I have arrived at the truth when my position is logically valid and conforms to observed evidence.

 BS. I've been following your posts and think you are a smart person with much to offer. I'm eager to get into a topic with you that is about real and actionable things.

Please let us know.

THanks.

bearded spock:

...must have a cause, then so must the quantum  fluctuations.

I am not going to comment on Deism, but will try to set epistemological questions straight.

Human mind has two categories to understand the sequences of events - cauality and teleology. That's all we have from evolution because they have been sufficient in pre-historic conditions with which our mind was dealing.

Now we are dealing with stuff our mind was not evolved to deal and trying to apply the same categories will lead us to nonsense.

Science works with causality - but we know that causality will not - cannot - ultimately explain the universe, due to infinity of causes (any cause must in turn be caused by something...)

Rather than automatically fall back to teleology - some super-being willed the stuff into existence - we should simply admit that some things we will not be able to understand and know because our brain is not equipped for understanding them.

I think blanket negations about our mind's capacities are perhaps "too brave"...

"We don't know yet" is a looong way from "it is impossible for us to know"

I don't know why I had my I.P. banned if it wasn't for simply contradicting the Big Chatty Forhead. I haven't been able to respond to any comments here. I am gravely concerned about what I infer is a lack of tolerance for alternative viewpoints and not merely an intolerance for my supposed sloppy reasoning.

Forgive me if I am not using the proper terminology, Perhaps under some definition I am not an agnostic Deist. I don't claim to have certain knowledge of a sentient creator, only a belief that may well turn out to be wrong or unknowable entirely. I am agnostic even in my agnosticism.I don't claim thar resolution of the issue is impossible, only that it may be impossible.

If we don't know yet, and we don't, then you don't know I am wrong, do you? I certainly don't know you are wrong, nor would I censor you as you have censored me even though you have every right to do so.

If I am wrong, show me my error. You seem to be claiming that something that is not rationally conscious cannot have a purpose. I do not understand that claim. To me, certainly something can be created for a specific reason or used for a specific reason regardless of how it came into existence and that is making the same claim that that thing has a purpose is it not? Even if it isn't the exact same thing, why all the quarelling over semantics?

Let's break it down logically. The must be absolute truth because the claim that "there is no absolute truth" is an absolute statement. That means that there must be at least one absolute truth even if that truth is that there are no OTHER absolute truths than the truth that no truth is absolute.

The problem in determining what truths are absolute is that only someone or something omnicient can know for sure what that truth is or those truths are while the rest of us have to rely on inductive reasoning. If all observed dogs have tails, we can assume that all dogs observed an unobserved have tails, but we can't know for sure unless we are all-seeing and all-knowing. Humility regarding such ultimate questions seems warranted.

Does not a philosophy grounded in individualism demand a certain tolerance for differences if the differing viewpoint is logically valid?

• Author Neal Stephenson discussed the issue of fine-tuning in the conclusion to his essay In The Beginning Was The Command Line, speculating on what might happen if an all-powerful entity had access to a computer program that could generate universes with any desired set of properties.

What makes the above type of scenario any less likely than the existence of infinite universes?

nexalacer:

The purpose of a tool is not in it's existence but in it's use... and only a rational actor with a consciousness can put a tool to use.

Is this really just about semantics?  This is like the sentient bomb issue in the movie Dark Star. A rational actor may be able to create a universe. There are predictions that such lab-created universes might be created in the future:

I in fact have worked with several other people for some period of time on the question of whether or not it's in principle possible to create a new universe in the laboratory. Whether or not it really works we don't know for sure. It looks like it probably would work. It's actually safe to create a universe in your basement. It would not displace the universe around it even though it would grow tremendously. It would actually create its own space as it grows and in fact in a very short fraction of a second it would splice itself off completely from our Universe and evolve as an isolated closed universe growing to cosmic proportions without displacing any of the territory that we currently lay claim to.

—Alan Guth^{[12]-from wikipedia}

There could have been a creator that intenionally created a universe that produced us, produced some kind of life, or accidentally produced life. There may not be a conscious creator at all.

If Antony Flew of all people could become a Deist, then the position should at least merit consideration from lesser philosophers such as us.

No, it's not "just" about semantics, BS.  You have once again changed your position in order to keep your belief.  You originally claimed that the universe has a purpose, so it must have had a creator, now you say that it could just be that the universe is some uber-intellect's science project.  Of course, you're completely free to change your position like this, but since the latter requires proposing the existence of an entity that we cannot have any knowledge of, by definition (as it exists outside of this universe, the only place where we can measure reality, thus have knowledge of), you're still wrong.  Comparing this proposal with the understood statistical probability of our universe naturally coming into it's current form and using Ockham's Razor, we have to reject the theory of the supernatural (i.e. outside of this universe) creator and stick with the current theory of the origin of the universe as talked about scientifically.  That is, the big bang, and its results.

bearded spock:

If I am wrong, show me my error. You seem to be claiming that something that is not rationally conscious cannot have a purpose. I do not understand that claim. To me, certainly something can be created for a specific reason or used for a specific reason regardless of how it came into existence and that is making the same claim that that thing has a purpose is it not? Even if it isn't the exact same thing, why all the quarelling over semantics?

The problem with what you're saying is that you're dancing around with different definitions of 'purpose'. A thing designed by a sentient being to achieve a task has a purpose, which isn't necessarily discernible to any other sentient being. This is the first definition of 'purpose': something which is specifically designed with the intent of achieving a specific goal.

Alternatively, one can find an object and ascribe a purpose to it. "This rock could work well to open this coconut". Do you consider that it's logically valid to say that the fact that a rock can help to open a coconut, means that the rock was designed with that intent, by a sentient being (the first definition)? 

You claim this is a semantic difference?! They might as well be completely different words, as the implications of each are hugely different! When people use the fact that our little corner of the Universe caters to a single lifeform (if you accept evolution, that is) as showing its purpose, all they have actually (reasonably) concluded is the second definition of purpose, yet they then equate it to the first ("They're the same word, after all. Right?!"). So far they've gone from observing purpose2, to flipping that into purpose1, then they make the bold step of saying that this implies a designer. Do you see why you can't make that leap?

Let's break it down logically. The must be absolute truth because the claim that "there is no absolute truth" is an absolute statement. That means that there must be at least one absolute truth even if that truth is that there are no OTHER absolute truths than the truth that no truth is absolute.

The problem in determining what truths are absolute is that only someone or something omnicient can know for sure what that truth is or those truths are while the rest of us have to rely on inductive reasoning. If all observed dogs have tails, we can assume that all dogs observed an unobserved have tails, but we can't know for sure unless we are all-seeing and all-knowing. Humility regarding such ultimate questions seems warranted.

You're right, if we don't know the answer, we shouldn't readily dismiss

other viewpoints. You describe yourself as a deist though, so you do BELIEVE that there is a creator of some kind. That's not the same as saying 'the jury is out'. You're saying that the jury is out, but you're going to cling to an unsubstantiated viewpoint anyway. I'm an agnostic atheist (I don't say there is no God, I just don't believe in one. Though I do say the Christian God doesn't exist... but that's pretty much not-so-common sense).

What makes the above type of scenario any less likely than the existence of infinite universes?

I created the Universe, using software similar to the 'Sim' game franchise, yesterday. I'm now communicating from outwith the in-game Universe from my computer chair. Any particular reason this scenario is less likely than any of yours? If not, is it worth entertaining?

nexalacer:

only a rational actor with a consciousness can put a tool to use.

Is it a rational use of a tool to use it for a purpose for which it was not originally created, for example, using a hammer to swat flies?

What could be said of me (or my invention) were I to fix a heavy mallet and a steel claw to a wooden handle and call it a "fly swatter"?

Welcome to the boards, I see you've had some initial frustrations with Stef and other members on the site. Not unlike myself on a simmilar topic. If you'll stick around you'll find that Stef is a resonable fellow and as are most of the other people on this site. If you would like to discuss the topic of Deism with me, you'll find me much more receptive on the subject.

A word of caution, I find that bringing up the topic of God or intelligent creator to be something that can stir some emotions around here so I tend not to discuss it unless somone brings it up to me, first.