Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[geoschmo]

That is twice now that Occam's Razor has been mentioned in this thread. And I have heard it many times before as an explanation by people who don't believe in God. And to be honest with you it has always struck me as a little odd that people would use it as such.

If you assume, as most scientific types do I suppose, that everything (and by everything I mean everything ) is ultimatly understandable to us given enough time to study and test our hypotheses, then I suppose once we (us as a speices) reach the point of complete understanding (a long time from now of course) then an eternal divine creator is a "more complex" option, and thus would be logically discarded.

However if your assumption is a belief in a creator, and that there are things in life which are the domain of the creator that we as a species are incapable of understanding without revalation of some sort, then your two options are just as clear. And the divine creator is much less complex one than the incredible string of random circumstances that would be required to produce life as we know it.

So to use Occam's Razor in defense of either argument, you basically have to decide which side you are on first. It is useless as tool in determining the truth of the matter.

(EDIT: Don't you love it when you come up with something totally off the cuff and then find something afterwards that appears to support it? Of course you have to accept my assumptions to agree, but here's an intersting link for what it's worth. http://skepdic.com/occam.html)

Geoschmo

[ December 13, 2002, 13:50: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[dogscoff]

No one would naturally look at the complexity found in nature and say, "Wow! That happened by chance!"

So where did the first atheist come from?

[Krsqk]

"So where did the first atheist come from?"

If you're a creationist, he was created on either the 4th, 5th, or 6th day of creation. If you're an evolutionist, he evolved from his distant ancestor Eoatheist. Eoatheist is either a member of the animal or vegetable family, again depending if you're an evolutionist or a creationist.

Or maybe he/she/it came from disgust at watching two religions squabble.

In all seriousness, my statement was not meant as a logical argument. Common sense, though, requires a designer for each design, a creator for each creation. It takes involved thought and argument to move away from that. I would submit that it is the reason why we have so many creation legends and so few evolution legends--creation is the natural starting point for the human mind. Whether that's by accident or design depends on your worldview.

[Fyron]

RE: Design argument in my own words. Here goes (I don't claim to speak for other creationists, but this is the design argument as I understand it)...

Intelligent design requires intelligent designer. Man creates (or more properly, organizes what is already created), based on his intelligence. It's like a child playing with Tinkertoys--he's not truly creating, but rearranging what's already been given him.
Given the fact that we see design and order around us, it is logical to assume there is an intelligent Designer behind it. So far, we're okay with Hume's representation, but here we must part ways.
Hume uses the wording "like results, like effects" to say that the process of creating nature is identical to man's creative process, only several orders of magnitude higher in ability. Thus, God's creative process, like man's, must be imperfect and subject to limitation. This renders God no longer infinite, and few Christians will accept that.
The problem lies in Hume's extension of the principle. To continue our analogy, he extrapolates the child building with Tinkertoys to the factory making the Tinkertoys from other materials (still an imperfect process, but much less limited than the child's ability). The correct analogy from creation would be the child building with Tinkertoys and the factory creating the Tinkertoys out of nothing (an infinite order of magnitude higher). Hume, as a materialist, is operating from the assumption that something had to exist for God to use in creation; otherwise, his analogy falls apart. It's just a fancy straw man.

Thank you for answering more than I asked.

But anyways, no, that is not really the design argument. I have never heard anyone use a tinkertoy before, and that just makes the analogy even worse than it has to be. Instead, I will use a house, as houses aren't built wholesale in factories (the tinkertoy technically works too, but not quite as you used it). A house does not just appear naturally, someone had to have designed and built it. A house is relatively ordered. Looking around the world, it appears ordered and so appears designed. So, an analogy is used to infer that since the house had a designer, the world (universe) must have had a designer. It has nothing to do with "creative processes" or anythign like that.

The first problem with this is that it is an analogical argument. For analogies to work, the things being compared must be nearly identical to each other. The universe and a house (or a clock, tinkertoy, ship, whatever) are absolutely nothing alike. They arent even in the same domain. eg: You could use an analogy comparing a dog to a cat, as they are both mammals. It wouldn't be very good, because cats and dogs are very differen't animals. But, the analogy works on a basic level because they are both mammals (and animals). You could say, a cat has a heart, so a dog, which is kind of like a cat, must also have a heart. But, you could not compare a cat to a tree or a rock, as there is no basis of similarity. There is no basis of similarity between the universe and a house/tinkertoy. So, the argument by analogy does not work here.

Secondly, the design argument can not say anything about the perfection, infiniteness or unity of God, assuming you still want to say that it proves some sort of intelligent designer exists. Architects (or those that design tinkertoys) do not only design 1 house. They do not work alone. So, you can not use the design argument to say that there is only one universe, or that there is only 1 god. Also, architects design some bad houses before they become good. So, is this universe a bad universe that God made while still learning to make a universe? You have no way to tell. You would have to have another universe to compare it to. Of course, it is assumed that God is perfect and made no mistakes when designing the universe, and so he did not have to make any "test" universes. But, this can not be infered from the design argument.

Continuing to expand upon the flawed analogical argument, the architect (or designer of a tinkertoy) does not stick around to care for the house (or tinkertoy). So, you can not infer that there is a benevolent God from the design argument.

At best, the design argument shows that there could be many gods, they/it are not necessarily perfect, they/it are not necessarily benevolent, and not necessarily infinite.

[Krsqk]

I realize any analogy will be flawed, given the vast difference between human creation and the universe. This flaw is inherent to Hume's criticism as well, though. He argues that God and man must be similar since their results are similar (house~universe). The design argument (ok, at least my understanding of it) infers the infinity of God from the infinite magnitude of the difference.

[Fyron]

No, Hume does not argue that God and Man are similar. He said that the creations are entirely different, so you cannot assume anything about the creator of the universe based on the design argument, if there was one.

The "infiniteness" of God does not come from the design argument. That is taking the belief you already hold an using it as evidence to support itself. You cannot do that.

[jimbob]

Three items
1) how far can analogy go
2) how far can the 'design argument' go
3) one twinkie at a time

1) As to analogy, I *personally* see no reason why the universe cannot be compared to any other complex object, for example a car, a house, or even a twinkie for that matter. Depending on how you compare two objects (ie. the frame work of discussion) it could be invalid to compare the proverbial cat to the proverbial tree (they are both alive, they should both have hearts), or it could be valid to compare the cat to a tree (they are both alive, they must both have circulatory systems). Analogy is a sticky thing, but it is one of our most powerful tools of communication, so I'm not naturally inclined to discard it.

So my thought (apologies to Hume) is that the scale of relatednes in the case of universe vs. house is very distant, but what we demand of the objects in terms of similarity is only the characteristic of extreme complexity - not function. As such, I personally find the complexity issue to be compelling, requiring an "answer" of some sort.

2)
IF said:

At best, the design argument shows that there could be many gods, they/it are not necessarily perfect, they/it are not necessarily benevolent, and not necessarily infinite.

Personally, I agree here - that the design argument does not/should not speak to the identity of said 'designer' at all. It should be merely employed to suggest that the degree of complexity observed does not appear to be due to chance (probability). It could be a god as we think of a god, it could be aliens that have a degree of ability that we conceive as those associated with a god(s). It could be many uber-powerful entities, it could be one.

3) For the sake of keeping all the lines of discussion clear however, I think it may be useful to take on just one line of thought/thread at a time - lots of us think that the Christian God sucks eggs, but that's not a good argument for evolution! Lots of us think He's a hip dude, but that's not a good argument for design! Lots of us are agnostic (should that be capitalized?) but that's not a good argument for them both being true simultaneously!
And so I'd tend to think that the question of the robustness of evolutionary theory, the question of design and the question of the putative designers identity/characteristics are actually three separate questions, that should probably be discussed separately... more for clairity's sake than the entertainment value

night y'all, hope you take no offense, as none has been intended.

jimbob

[ December 14, 2002, 08:04: Message edited by: jimbob ]