Post by Kaiouss Khalizad on Jan 16, 2007 1:19:50 GMT -5
dan said:
I don't understand your point - all I'm doing is trying to show that an intelligent designer exists. Certainly that designer must be intelligent by definition, because He created us and gave us the ability to think and reason in the first place.
But that's just my point. Our concept of intelligence comes from what we experience through active consciousness. How intelligent, exactly, those experiences are is a matter of rhetorical relativity (in the sense that the concept every person has for the concept of "intelligence" is compared with the most extreme of these concepts among any human being and, clearly, a matter of guesswork. And if the statement that the being that created the universe must be anthroporphic in nature would immediately lend to the idea that the being must possess some intelligence. There is no reason, logically or otherwise, to believe that such a being is the HEIGHT of intelligence. But it also depends on your theory of Creation. If God designed the universe, but paid no particular attention to humans, no intelligence is required. God could have easily spontaneously flicked a particle awkwardly through spacetime. Spacetime that He created. An oddly specific being to exist before existence. Theists criticize Atheists for theorizing that something came from nothing, but it seems a much further stretch to me to assume that something came from everything (which also means that there's no such thing as nothing--ironic, yeh?)
Is this Designer benevolent? I think that's reasonable to conclude, because we as humans have a sense of virtue, and of the concept of "right" and "wrong." The fact that we have this sense of morality indicates that our Designer programmed us with this, and must be morally good Himself.
Yes, we have A sense of virtue, not THE sense of virtue. And the rise of ethics, from the standpoint of an atheistic worldview (as I explained in another post) makes more sense in this regard. You punch someone, they punch you back, and you're afraid to punch that person from then on makes more sense than you're always afraid to do anything that you know is wrong transcendentally through the grace of a perfectly good being (a good that, according to you, cannot even be precisely defined; I certainly hope that heaven isn't full of the moral goodness of baby slaughter!)
And a pattern or even universality does not even necessarily indicate an actual law. Even physical laws are abstract principles that explain patterns that we observe--these laws don't physically exist and are hypothesized to change between universes. If I splash paint on a piece of paper and fold it over (referring to a Rorshach), is the pattern necessarily the result of an artist? Nope. It's not so hard to imagine the creation of the universe happening in a similar fashion. The Big Bang splashes matter all over an area of space time and some are suspiciously organized (life), some are suspiciously artistic (nebulae), but this does not require an intelligent smattering, just a smattering.
Remember that I am not challenging your assertions with a particular alternative, simply stating that as long as reasonable alternatives exist, you have not proven the existence of a God or even given good reason to put one's absolute trust in such a God. Not only may this being not exist, but this being may be infinitely evil and toying around with the universe (if you've ever heard of Luciferianism, that is the reasonable alternative I'm referring to wherein theological argumentation and evidence is given to support the assertion that Satan is humanity's saviour from a corrupt and evil tyrant God. The idea may seem ridiculous to you, but only because you are looking at it through the lens of someone who has studied the only source of knowledge of God and that knowledge, according to some, comes straight from God Himself or perhaps even through His supporters.)
This is where the argument from intelligent design falls short - we must look elsewhere to find exactly who God is, and what He's like. At this point I appeal to the historicity of the resurrection of Christ, or successful predictions of the future in the Bible, both of which provide evidence that the God of the Bible (that is, the God of Christianity) is the true God. From there we depend on revelation (God revealing knowledge to us through His written word) to find out more about the actual nature of God.
And for some of us, when we're dealing with perhaps the most important question we will ever answer, an idea that "falls short" just isn't enough. At least where science falls short, there's a chance of knowing; whereas where many religions fall short, there is not only no chance of knowing, but no present reason to believe there may ever be (or ever was). Actually, I'm a Social Science major and my concentration is in History, so the topic of the Resurrection has always interested me. Because as many people who are at least mildly involved with academic fields know, the story told to the public and the story told by the historian, researcher, etc are often very different tales. A good example was the popularization of this baby Mozart business. The actual experiment showed that the babies' increase in IQ only lasted for 20-30 minutes after waking and that no amount of Mozart would cause a permanent increase. Interestingly, what IS known is that constant noise or light from a cd player next to a crib can disrupt the child's biological clock and possibly slightly wear down the child's immune system.
Anyway, I actually watched a debate that was hosted by two major organizations one of which I believe was Center for Inquiry. I have the tape around, but I don't have time to find it. (I could simply clarify the points myself, but it was interesting in the debate) The Christian representative, a famous apologist with a degree in Philosophy, had been referencing New Testament scholars including (and especially) historians who had claimed the truth of the story of the resurrection. Ironically, the CFI Director of Education also had a degree in Philosophy and knew the historian his co-speaker had referenced. So he messaged him in gmail and apparently the misunderstanding was clarified literally by the author himself. He had actually referenced a series of normal psychological responses that would have caused the apostles to agree upon seeing the same resurrected Jesus. There is no substantial record of the women at the grave and you may be surprised to know that Jesus was a fairly common name back in the day.
In fact, Jesus or (now, these are the letters spelled out) Yah Heh Shin Vah Heh (without the Shin, it's Yah Heh Vah Heh which is commonly referred to as YHWH, YHVH, or Yahweh), so his name was essentially Joshua. I'm not surprised it was changed though; the monks who translated the Bible did so on a fast of meade oatmeal and, in case you aren't aware what meade is, they were drunk. A large part of the time.
Needless to say, many New Testament scholars are (go figure) Christians, but there are still alternative explanations that leave reason to doubt the resurrection of Jesus (some say even the existence, but that IS far more difficult to prove).
It does, but then you still need to explain how all all those universes could be generated in the first place. The process of universe-creation must be complex, no matter what type of universe is generated.
The particle existing, the organization of those particles, any of these things are complex. You'll also notice that there's a lot of space without these particles. If there were as many universes as particles, one might easily say that while a majority of universes perish, several flourish and still some create life. Again a personal observation of mine, but it does seem to me as though complexity indicates happenstance and evolution rather than intelligent design. You'd think that an intelligent designer could design it correctly the first time, yet humans are even still curing their own diseases caused by organs we don't even use any more. A pile of trash has, within it, a complex piece of modern art as does a square mile of twist ties, but each of those things is more sensibly thought of as happening randomly, one step at a time, from nothing and without a plan; rather than an idea for the end game of the artist.
I remember hearing this interesting analogy once and I like the point that it makes. Take 1,566 dice and roll them. What is the probability of getting that exact roll? And even in the instance that there are not multiple universes, but a universe that continually dies and is reborn (not a stretch at all, given even the observations of basic cosmology) in time that is not linear (it's not anyway, but the point is important), whichever of these universes had life, that universe is where we'd be having this argument, in all likelihood. Because even this universe, scientifically or biblically, will not exist forever and what's God going to do after judgement day? Sit around for eternity? How long before the creation of this universe did God sit around? If there was nothing before God, then presumably it was for eternity. If it's all outside of time, then heaven is no eternity in any sense of the word. Not only will it terminate, but it will dissipate. That would suffice to address the issue of fine-tuning in randomness being rare (for now).
To briefly redress the anthropic coincidence, I will once again reiterate that you say the universe is uniquely fine-tuned to support life (also, that's not true, as I mentioned in my post--I took an interest in quantum mechanics and cosmology during High School, so the understanding of life-supporting you're demonstrating is the one that typically comes from classical physics and is, even then, poorly calculated) If the universe were not uniquely fine-tuned to support life, would we be here having this conversation? There may be plenty of universes without life, but no lifeform would ever experience them. Go figure. In fact, in a recent poll of lifeforms, 100% lived in conditions which would allow life. The desert/ocean analogy is precisely correct. Except the proportions are a bit off. If all that were on Earth were an island, land creatures would marvel at how they ended up existing on land when they just as easily could have existed in the sea. A very long short existence, to be sure.
This is truly tragic, but it seems to be part of the larger question as to how suffering can exist in a universe with a good God. One thing to realize is that if God does exist, then the babies who suffer as harlequin fetuses will probably spend eternity in heaven after they die! So in the long run, it really isn't all that bad. In fact, it's worse for someone who is born healthy but rejects God when he grows up, resulting in spending eternity in hell.
But the end result for the harlequin fetus and a good Christian dying peacefully in his or her sleep is the exact same. There is no REASON for innocent children to suffer unnecessarily. Again, I reiterate that there is absolutely no way of knowing, so probability is, in fact, against most religion and may put you in an even worse position in the afterlife. Let's take moderate forms of Christianity and Mormonism as the only two religions that exist in a hypothetical world. And we're also assuming that one of these two religions MUST explain what happens after death (hardly the case in our world). Also we're assuming religious exclusivity in this world. So if you're Christian, you have a 50% chance of going to Christian heaven and a 50% chance of going to Mormon hell. If you're a Mormon, the same, but vis versa. As an atheist who specifically rejects both sets of teachings and abandons the search for a "moral", "good", etc life is certain to go to Hell. But what of someone who is simply willing to admit that he or she does not know? In both cases, the nonbeliever (agnostic, as I've related it) is given certain entry to either a place between heaven and hell or a place where one might earn entry into heaven. Of course, this is no reason to be an agnostic, but it is a good reason to reject all of that "better safe than sorry" nonsense that theists love to spew.
Comparing that with are world, Christianity and Mormonism are maybe two in five hundred religions with varying degrees of acceptence. In theistic afterlives, however, only the most extreme cases deny agnostics a chance to get into heaven or whatever the comfortable end-game might be. Also, to me, if you're going to choose one religion in 500, you better have extraordinarily good reasons for rejecting all aspects of those 499 alternatives and asserting that you are right while everyone else except those who agree with you is/are wrong.
Finally, the person who chose to do wrong was exercising Free Will. Something which is (supposedly) important to this "Creator". Why does someone who will abuse Free Will have that right while a harlequin fetus is not only denied the chance, but is subjected to abject suffering and pain? By the logic you proposed above, we should consider abortion a favor and make it a policy to kill all children before birth. They may not live life, true, but as a parent, you are responsible for an eternity of their happiness.