Intelligent Design

[Pixel42]

The "natural explanations" go so far as to to say that a person who is not on drugs, not disposed to mental aberrations, is not in an unusual or stressful situation, must have hallucinated. This is the ultimate denial.

You know perfectly well that the most likely "natural explanation" is actually that the person made a mistake, being inadvertantly fooled by their cognitive biases and fallible perceptions. Why do you continue to pretend otherwise, when you have been corrected on this point so many times?

And to predict the response to my post by most atheists? "Bah - Humbug." Or, "if I do not experience a remarkable event, I refuse to acknowledge the possible existence of the supernatural. I can get by on the fact that 99.9999% or better for physical laws to take precedence is good enough for me."

You know perfectly well that the most likely response is "I've experienced equally unlikely events but I know enough about probability theory to understand that they were not particularly remarkable, and there is no need to invoke the supernatural to explain them". Why do you continue to pretend otherwise, when you have been corrected on this point so many times?

 

[Peregrinus]

The "natural explanations" go so far as to to say that a person who is not on drugs, not disposed to mental aberrations, is not in an unusual or stressful situation, must have hallucinated. This is the ultimate denial.

No. It's merely one of the myriad possible explanations. To claim such an event must have been hallucination is to over simplify; fallacy of the excluded middle.

 

[Donn]

You know perfectly well .. Why do you continue to pretend otherwise, when you have been corrected on this point so many times?

You know perfectly well .. Why do you continue to pretend otherwise, when you have been corrected on this point so many times?

Yep. It's the state of the world writ small. Fail, repeat. Never apologize, never admit error.

 

[Donn]

As to deduction, I am referring to the fact that mankind is struggling to find a logical (not necessarily scientific) explanation for the origin of the universe and for the existence of intelligent life.

Sure, this kind of quest is what humans are all about. It generates all of our finest ideas and fictions; it is the genesis of every hypothesis.

Unfortunately, people also like to leap from this "explanation", over hypothesis and into fact. You state a thing as so and thus it must be so. Nope.

The theists claim that God is the prime cause on the basis of divine (supernatural) revelations, and claim that without God the world could not have survived the naturally hostile environment, and that it would not have had the propensity to form life. Prime cause comes down to "it just is".

A just-so story. Nice and all. Where's the evidence?

The atheists claim that the laws of physics and the quantum field are the prime cause and have always existed and "just are". They suspend their wonder at how some energy field forms matter, then galaxies, then planets capable of forming life, and serendipitously has a "geologically quiet" period to maximize the evolution of human beings to the point we are today.

It's only the theists who say what the "atheists" say. Funny that.

Of course the canards fly thick and fast. It's a real gusher.

If I had only a few unremarkable supernatural events I would be rather conflicted as to which hypothesis to chose. However, I have had a number of them, and some are hard to explain without God (created by a Cosmic Intelligence).

You fit the explanations to make the God-shaped puzzle that you already hold as fact.

There is much fraud and mistake. But once those are discounted then one has to look at a hypothesis of what is allowed and what is not allowed. This is not a scientific law or rule. It is figuring out the thought processes of the Cosmic Intelligence using observations of claims.

AKA the sharpshooter fallacy.

And to predict the response to my post by most atheists? "Bah - Humbug." Or, "if I do not experience a remarkable event, I refuse to acknowledge the possible existence of the supernatural. I can get by on the fact that 99.9999% or better for physical laws to take precedence is good enough for me."

Lol. You're a one-man show.

 

[Delvo]

They suspend their wonder

No, Oprah, we just admit that "wonder" is not a basis for drawing conclusions about how reality works.

The theists claim that God is the prime cause... Prime cause comes down to "it just is".

The atheists claim that the laws of physics and the quantum field... are the prime cause and have always existed and "just are".

These two statements in your quotations marks, which you equate with each other by writing them both this way, are not the same kind of statement.

• The theist's meaning by saying that something "just is" is that it doesn't need anything else to cause/explain its origin.
• The atheist's meaning by saying that something "just is" is that we can't say anything about its origin; its current existence is the limit of our knowledge.

 

[Darat]

Fudbucker does a nice balanced summary of fine tuning and its opposing multiverse hypothesis.

The "observation" I was referring to is that fact that many people claim to have experienced events that appear to have a supernatural explanation. My statement is a fact as I have crafted it.

It is not scientific proof, and is attacked on the basis that every single one of them has a "natural" explanation, no matter how difficult it may be to explain.

The "natural explanations" go so far as to to say that a person who is not on drugs, not disposed to mental aberrations, is not in an unusual or stressful situation, must have hallucinated. This is the ultimate denial.

As to deduction, I am referring to the fact that mankind is struggling to find a logical (not necessarily scientific) explanation for the origin of the universe and for the existence of intelligent life.

The theists claim that God is the prime cause on the basis of divine (supernatural) revelations, and claim that without God the world could not have survived the naturally hostile environment, and that it would not have had the propensity to form life. Prime cause comes down to "it just is".

The atheists claim that the laws of physics and the quantum field are the prime cause and have always existed and "just are". They suspend their wonder at how some energy field forms matter, then galaxies, then planets capable of forming life, and serendipitously has a "geologically quiet" period to maximize the evolution of human beings to the point we are today.
If I had only a few unremarkable supernatural events I would be rather conflicted as to which hypothesis to chose. However, I have had a number of them, and some are hard to explain without God (created by a Cosmic Intelligence).
The deductions I talk about are also a matter of applying logic to the many claims others have of the supernatural. There is much fraud and mistake. But once those are discounted then one has to look at a hypothesis of what is allowed and what is not allowed. This is not a scientific law or rule. It is figuring out the thought processes of the Cosmic Intelligence using observations of claims.

And to predict the response to my post by most atheists? "Bah - Humbug." Or, "if I do not experience a remarkable event, I refuse to acknowledge the possible existence of the supernatural. I can get by on the fact that 99.9999% or better for physical laws to take precedence is good enough for me."

We know this to be a lie.

If you recall in the thread about your claim of having evidence that we live in a simulation (which I know you did rescind) it was found out that you had never done any of the research which would be neccessary to even claim anything particularly strange never
mind outside of normal experience had happened to you.

 

[Meadmaker]

And to predict the response to my post by most atheists? "Bah - Humbug."

Your predictive abilities are indeed quite strong, at least in this case.

 

[Fudbucker]

I think that you misread slightly, then, as he referenced PartSkeptic's observation and deduction claim. *shrug*



They do exist. Serious people do debate their merits. Those two things are technically true.



Ontological argument(s), more specifically. By this point, it's a category of arguments rather than a specific argument.



It could, but there's no need to go that far. Without even an actually working theory of everything or something similar, having a sample size of 1 to work with means that the fine-tuning argument in cosmology is close to dead on arrival. By close to dead, I mean that it cannot actually be alive yet for lack of basis outside of unindicated speculation. Only after we have calculations that actually work could it become a meaningful argument rather than an attempt to build a stone castle on a foundation of air. The puddle analogy only really comes into play when one starts trying to marvel about the incredible unlikelihood of us being in a universe that allows for life in the first place, which, given that we could only be in a universe that allows for life (short of generally continual outside inference), actually has a probability of effectively 100%, rather than being even remotely unlikely.



The only fascinating point about them is that anyone would treat them as valid arguments in the first place. As a general rule, they're little more than examples of playing with semantics, generally with notable and easily demonstrable fallacies invoked. Redefining "god" to mean "the sum total of everything" or "the greatest thing that can be imagined that exists," for example, does not actually support the claim that the Christian god exists.

Having a sample size of one doesn't necessarily mean anything. If I design a new lottery, and run it for the first time, and the winning numbers are 3141592653, I'm going to conclude a lot, just from that one run. I don't need to run it again to know it's not a fair lottery.

 

[Pixel42]

Having a sample size of one doesn't necessarily mean anything. If I design a new lottery, and run it for the first time, and the winning numbers are 3141592653, I'm going to conclude a lot, just from that one run. I don't need to run it again to know it's not a fair lottery.

Is your existence contingent on the winning number being 3141592653? No? Then that example is not analogous to the universal constants being in the range necessary for our existence.

 

[Fudbucker]

Is your existence contingent on the winning number being 3141592653? No? Then that example is not analogous to the universal constants being in the range necessary for our existence.

If my existence were contingent on winning such a lottery, and I found myself still alive, with a winning ticket that suspiciously has the first X digits of Pi, it would not stop me concluding the lottery was rigged.

Finding ourselves alive in a universe like this is directly analogous. If you think not, reread that wiki article you linked, then chase down the references.

 

[Thor 2]

Is your existence contingent on the winning number being 3141592653? No? Then that example is not analogous to the universal constants being in the range necessary for our existence.

That number is Pi x one million. Why choose it? Is there some message in this.

Ops we crossover.

 

[Pixel42]

If my existence were contingent on winning such a lottery, and I found myself still alive, with a winning ticket that suspiciously has the first X digits of Pi, it would not stop me concluding the lottery was rigged.

You're still not getting it. In order to be analogous it's not enough for your continued existence to be contingent on that particular number coming up, you ever existing in the first place must be contingent on it.

The only way your existence could be contingent on that particular number coming up in a lottery would be if your conception was a direct result of your parents celebrating a win with that number. And then how remarkable would it be that you exist in a universe in which that number came up in that lottery?

 

[Fudbucker]

You're still not getting it. In order to be analogous it's not enough for your continued existence to be contingent on that particular number coming up, you ever existing in the first place must be contingent on it.

The only way your existence could be contingent on that particular number coming up in a lottery would be if your conception was a direct result of your parents celebrating a win with that number. And then how remarkable would it be that you exist in a universe in which that number came up in that lottery?

Lol. If my birth were contingent on a parent winning a one-time "birth" lottery with Pi as the winning lottery number, then I would conclude my existence was not a chance event; it was determined by a rigged process.

You keep digging this hole deeper. Seriously, read about the Flatness Problem.

 

[Aridas]

Having a sample size of one doesn't necessarily mean anything.

*raises an eyebrow* It means plenty. It is not the only thing of potential value, sure, but even if we had, say, a working theory of everything, it would certainly still mean something.

If I design a new lottery, and run it for the first time, and the winning numbers are 3141592653, I'm going to conclude a lot, just from that one run. I don't need to run it again to know it's not a fair lottery.

Hmm? In this scenario, you designed it. You wouldn't even need to run it in the first place to know whether it's either not a fair lottery or that that number would be coincidence. On the other hand, without separate knowledge of the design to work with, any non-trivial conclusions from the result 3141592653 would be easily disputable for numerous reasons, not least being the lack of valid evaluation criteria. And that brings us to where we are. We don't have knowledge of the design of the "lottery" and theories of everything can be reasonably treated as attempts to figure out the design. Until at least one actually works, though, no answers can reasonably be derived.

 

[Pixel42]

Lol. If my birth were contingent on a parent winning a one-time "birth" lottery with Pi as the winning lottery number, then I would conclude my existence was not a chance event; it was determined by a rigged process.

Then you would be making the same mistake as the fine tuning argument makes. If your existence is contingent on a particular ticket winning a lottery then the only universe in which you could possibly find yourself is one in which that number had won the lottery, so there would be nothing at all surprising about the fact that the universe you actually find yourself in is indeed that universe.

You keep digging this hole deeper. Seriously, read about the Flatness Problem.

You keep missing the point of the puddle analogy. Seriously, think about it again.

 

[Darat]

Lol. If my birth were contingent on a parent winning a one-time "birth" lottery with Pi as the winning lottery number, then I would conclude my existence was not a chance event; it was determined by a rigged process.

You keep digging this hole deeper. Seriously, read about the Flatness Problem.

That's a misunderstanding, the wining numbers in a lottery being the same as the first six digits in Pi is just as likely or unlikely as any other series of six numbers including 1,2,3,4,5,6. That is not the point about the "fine tuning" arguments.

 

[Pixel42]

Seriously, read about the Flatness Problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatness_problem

One solution to the problem is to invoke the anthropic principle, which states that humans should take into account the conditions necessary for them to exist when speculating about causes of the universe's properties. If two types of universe seem equally likely but only one is suitable for the evolution of intelligent life, the anthropic principle suggests that finding ourselves in that universe is no surprise: if the other universe had existed instead, there would be no observers to notice the fact.

 

[Fudbucker]

That's a misunderstanding, the wining numbers in a lottery being the same as the first six digits in Pi is just as likely or unlikely as any other series of six numbers including 1,2,3,4,5,6. That is not the point about the "fine tuning" arguments.

Uh huh. And if you flipped a coin 50 times and got heads each time, you would conclude the coin is fair, right? After all, 50 heads is just as likely as any other combination. A fair coin could do that, right?

This is why I "lol" so much on these kinds of threads.

 

[Donn]

Uh huh. And if you flipped a coin 50 times and got heads each time, you would conclude the coin is fair, right? After all, 50 heads is just as likely as any other combination. A fair coin could do that, right?

This is why I "lol" so much on these kinds of threads.

You lol? You make no effort to communicate clearly and then you lol? You mangle and warp and spit lols?

Whatever man.

 

[MikeG]

Uh huh. And if you flipped a coin 50 times and got heads each time, you would conclude the coin is fair, right? After all, 50 heads is just as likely as any other combination. A fair coin could do that, right?

This is why I "lol" so much on these kinds of threads.

50 heads is NOT as likely as any other combination. That's a ridiculous claim.