Defending the Fine-Tuning Argument for God
Last week I alluded to the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God, without mentioning my responses to standard objections. So I’ll do that today. Before diving in, I want to remind people that I used to be a “devout atheist” (my terminology), and if I do say so myself, I could talk a good game. That doesn’t mean I’m right, now that I’ve flipped sides, but it does mean that I honestly understand why the atheists/agnostics think they have knock-down arguments; I used to think so too. But after further review, the play is overruled. First down, Jesus.
First let’s deal with Aristos, who–as a good Catholic–wasn’t doubting my conclusion, but wanted to make sure we were using a valid argument. He asked:
Wasn’t it Feynman who posed something like, “What are the chances that a vehicle with that exact license plate passed before me at that exact time?”
I’m not rejecting God. I just wonder at the argument. Many things that are quantifiably unlikely (if that’s even a reasonable expression) are possible and occur everyday.
Yes, that was physicist Richard Feynman, a guy very high on my list of dead people I’d like to meet. I don’t remember the context of his observation, i.e. whether he was commenting on objections to evolutionary biology, or just about innumeracy in general.
But by all means, let’s delve into that analogy. Suppose a license plate has seven slots, any of which can be a number or a letter. So there are 36^7 ( = ~78 billion) possible license plates.
You and I are sitting in traffic. I remark, “Heh, I bet that guy in front of us didn’t vote for McCain.” You wonder how I can possibly know that. I say, “Look at his license plate–it says ‘LUVBAMA’. The chance of that happening randomly is 1 in 78 billion. It can’t be a coincidence.”
Now it would be silly for you to say, “Bob, no matter what sequence of digits and letters we observed, the probability of that particular string would be 1 in 78 billion. So we have no reason to deduce that that string gives us information.”
It’s the fact that the string of symbols appears meaningful that makes its improbability an indication of a mind at work. To be sure, there are lots of phrases that would have made me equally surprised, such as “HOPECHG” or “DEMOCRT”. So it’s not quite right to say the chance is 1 in 78 billion; maybe it’s more like 10,000 in 78 billion. Then when you throw in the fact that you will see (say) 5,000 different license plates this year, you can say, “The probability of me seeing a message that (apparently) meaningful, at any time during this year, is 1 in 1560.” So now it’s not so ridiculous to attribute it to pure chance, but it’s still pretty tenuous.
(Note I’m being a little vague on how we incorporate our prior knowledge about how typical it is for people to get vanity plates, etc. For example, if you were pretty sure that a state didn’t allow vanity plates, then you would be more willing to believe an apparently meaningful license plate was random.)
Anyway, I hope I’ve given enough to make my position clear: Yes, no matter what happens, it must have been possible–that’s what happened. But look at how we use our common sense in everyday life: If we’re walking along the beach, and see a bunch of rocks and shells arranged in order to spell “SHIPWRECKED PLEASE SEND HELP”, we are going to be dead certain that a human being did that. Somebody who said, “No, it could have been the waves randomly depositing the shells and rocks in that position, and we know it must be possible because it just happened” would be ridiculous.
This is probably a good time to throw out a thought experiment I came up with to challenge (what I consider to be) the untenable position of a lot of the “scientific” critics of Intelligent Design theory. (BTW, of course I acknowledge that a lot of the “Darwin’s from the devil!” crowd haven’t read much of evolutionary biology before spouting off.)
Anyway, suppose a biologist is doing some standard data entry on the human genome project, and is just screwing around playing with the DNA sequences that apparently don’t serve any purpose. I.e. everybody thinks this particular string of nucleotides is just taking up space. In fact it’s a compelling argument against those Bible-thumpers: Why would an intelligent God give us vestigial organs, and noisy stretches of DNA to boot?
So anyway, the analyst is playing around and on a lark he runs the sequence of A, C, G, T through a decoding algorithm that he had been working on, as part of his spy hobby. He almost has a heart attack when the following output shoots out:
1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
The analyst starts checking other parts of the sequence, and he realizes that the entire King James Bible is embedded in the human genome, in an area that scientists previously thought served no evolutionary purpose.
The analyst stays up through the night, making sure he is using the same “neutral” algorithm that he had been working on when he was pretending he was cracking the Enigma code; he wants to be sure someone isn’t playing a trick on him.
Finally, at about 6 am he makes the most important blog post in world history–he puts up his algorithm, and gives other biologists instructions as to where in the human genome to start applying it.
Within days word has spread from beyond the scientific community into the pulpits. Preachers who don’t know the first thing about the Intertubes are proclaiming absolute victory in the debate over the existence of God.
Yet the atheists aren’t flustered one bit. They explain–quite correctly–that the conditions of the earth must have been such that those nucleotides conferred an evolutionary advantage. In fact, it was a repudiation of science itself to start looking for mythical men in the sky to explain findings in the laboratory. In any event, there is a lot of room for “messages” to be embedded in DNA; it is an elementary fallacy to be shocked at the “unlikelihood” of the particular codes.
(In case the point of my story isn’t clear: Yes, of course we can “explain” our bodies, including our brains, by reference to the conditions of the material earth and what would have conferred an evolutionary advantage. But if the result still contains an incredible amount of information, then it just pushes back the problem one step: Why should it be, that we evolved in a world that favored the development of creatures like us?
This, incidentally, is Michael Behe‘s position. As I understand it, Behe isn’t bothered by the theory of common descent–which says that all living things on earth today, come from a single cell. What he is saying is that if this is true, then that single cell–in conjunction with the environment in which it started reproducing–had a heck of a lot of information packed into it, which can’t be due to blind chance.)
OK and now very briefly, let me deal with the anthrophic principle: This view says, “Of course we live in a universe where the charge on an electron is just right, and Jupiter protects the earth from killer comets. If we didn’t, then we wouldn’t be alive to wonder at our good fortune.”
The only way this works, is if we also buy into the many-universes view. For example, if every possible universe exists, then of course there will be intelligent beings in some of them.
I have said this before, and I’ll repeat it here: Of course I can’t prove that there aren’t an infinity of alternate universes; by definition, we can’t observe them. But notice that this view–which is critical to the entire edifice of the atheist’s worldview–is the epitome of (a) non-falsifiable and (b) a violation of Occam’s Razor.
In other words, it is literally impossible to come up with a theory that is more fundamentally non-falsifiable than that of the multiverse; you can’t possibly observe something that is not in your universe.
Second, as far as a theory relying on “other stuff” to work, you couldn’t possibly come up with something that requires more than the theory saying we must assume an infinite number of other potential universes in order to work.
So I admit, that doesn’t rule out the theory. But it’s a bit odd coming from people who often champion the criteria of falsifiability and Occam’s Razor as the hallmarks of science (as opposed to faith).
I still don’t see how this makes a compelling case for God’s existence at all. Sure you can say that the probability of earth having all the right conditions for life to spring forth was pretty low, but I don’t think you can say that the probability that some floating mass of atoms somewhere in this hyooooooj universe might create the right conditions for life is quite as slim. And of course whichever masses of land happen to give rise to life and eventually intelligent thought will probably attribute their good fortune to a deity. I guess I’m just rehashing the license plate argument, but I don’t think you answered it. You say:
“It’s the fact that the string of symbols appears meaningful that makes its improbability an indication of a mind at work.”
I don’t think the analogy holds. How do we know that life has meaning outside of the meaning we personally assign to it? It seems like you’re almost falling back on the “we can’t explain this, therefore God did it” argument.
But let’s say life was created by an intelligent deity. What makes you so sure it was the Christian God? Virtually every culture has invented a deity to explain the creation of life. What makes the Christian God any more plausible than the thousands of other omnipotent (or at least extra-human) invisible creators?
I don’t consider myself an atheist, but if there is some power greater than ourselves, I’m highly skeptical of anyone who claims to know even the first thing about this being, let alone his commandments or his words.
Gene Callahan might contradict, but I’ll point out again, as C.S.Lewis did that Christianity rests on faith in Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the Son of God. The historical record proves that he existed (inasmuch as an ancient can so be proven e.g. Julius Caesar). So it comes down to If he was crazy, a liar, or sincere. The historical record suggests that neither he nor followers were crazy nor liars, so that leaves us with sincere. No such reasoning can be made with the various other religions. Christianity comes down to Jesus, who lived. He’s not a legend. Call him a liar or a loon, but not a myth.
When in total doubt one way or the other, try Pascal’s Wager. It’s proof of nothing but still food for thought.
I’ve never understood this formulation (and see below – I used to be of the view that Jesus was divine and a savior).
Sure – one can be sincere. Does that mean that they were right? There was a rabbi claiming to be the messiah that lived in New York City who died just a few years ago. As far as I can tell, nobody suggested he was crazy and all indications suggest he was sincere and all his followers were sincere. I imagine that’s not enough for you to abandon Christ. So why is it enough for you to embrace him?
” Does that mean that they were right? There was a rabbi claiming to be the messiah”
This is the point when they start arguing over who fulfilled the Messianic prophecies and such.
“Sure – one can be sincere”
If sincere and not mad they saw a resurrected man ascend into the sky and other miracles. Hard to reconcile their being honest, non-mad and making those claims. Seems to leave you with magic tricks and lies.
And as for Pascal’s Wager – if there is a God, Pascal must have infuriated him. What a condescending thing for Pascal to say! If there is a God, I doubt he’d appreciate faith-as-bet-hedging.
Not if you allow Pascal his premise that human reason cannot prove or disprove God’s existence. His wager was based on this.
If you take the Bible to be the revealed word of God, I don’t think God was ever under the impression that human reason can prove or disprove him.
I still think he wouldn’t appreciate faith-as-bet-hedging.
God did give us brains, and did say to love Him “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind“. Reasoning and thinking our way through this does not necessarily incur His disapproval. The limits of human reason is a recurring theme in Pensees – I don’t think you’re being completely fair to Pascal here.
Using your mind and being able to prove something with your mind are two completely different things, Daniel.
You can use your mind to make precisely the wager Pascal highlighted. What I’m suggesting is that I doubt this is really efficacious for salvation if you ascribe to any Biblical account of salvation.
It’s word games. The wager only makes sense if your belief is efficacious and my whole point is that I don’t think a Biblical worldivew could consider that sort of “belief” efficacious for salvation.
I don’t disagree with your last post. I submit that is where the heart and soul parts come in.
Also thanks for teaching me my new word for today – efficacious.
“That doesn’t mean I’m right, now that I’ve flipped sides, but it does mean that I honestly understand why the atheists/agnostics think they have knock-down arguments; I used to think so too.”
I know someone else in this position vis-a-vis a different subject.
Someone used a very similar example to your beach example with a train station… was it Michael Polanyi? Anyone remember?
Aristos, Buddha (who was as likely a historical person as Jesus) claimed to have achieved enlightenment. The historical record suggests that neither he nor followers were crazy nor liars, so that leaves us with sincere.
And, therefore…?
And, by the way, while I do believe that Jesus was a real person, the evidence on the ground is much, much weaker than for Julius Caesar, who, after all, had his face appear on coins issued during his life, had busts made of him, was written about extensively during his life, appears in official government records surviving from Roman times, who wrote books himself that survive to this day, etc. Now, we would expect that the leader of the Roman Empire would leave more historical traces than the leader of what, at the time of his death, was an extremely obscure religious cult, but that is no reason to deny that the historical evidence for Caesar’s existence massively outweighs that for the existence of Jesus, for whom the first historical evidence appears about 30 or 40 years after his death.
And and, you ignore my actual objections to the Lewis argument, which are that there are (many?) other choices than the three Lewis offers: sincere, not insane, but sincerely mistaken; sincere, but meant something different than the orthodox interpretation — and this is the line taken by many heretical Christian sects over the centuries, that Jesus was the Son of God just like all of us are, for instance — that he was real and sincere but his statements were distorted in a kind of “telephone” game by those who transmitted them, etc. etc.
For instance, what about this scenario: Mohamed was correct in seeing Jesus as a great prophet, but not God incarnate. However, Jesus’s followers, in the decades following his death, quite sincerely, with no attempt to deceive anyone, came to regard him as more than he really was (doesn’t everyone hope for a ‘savior,’ after all?), and to misinterpret and misremember things he said in a way that confirmed their (erroneous) belief.
In that scenario, no one is insane (just subject to the typical human flaws of wishful thinking and confirmation bias). No one was trying to deceive anyone. They were just sincerely mistaken.
Now, the above is NOT my position, but its mere possibility shows that Lewis fails to make the case he hopes to make. And isn’t the above very much the way most Christians would view, say, followers of Buddha?
Aristos, Buddha (who was as likely a historical person as Jesus) claimed to have achieved enlightenment. The historical record suggests that neither he nor followers were crazy nor liars, so that leaves us with sincere.
And, therefore…?
I think Buddha was probably a really enlightened guy. Did he claim that only through acknowledging him as the son of God, could one find salvation?
(I’m not being facetious; I don’t know much about Buddha. But it doesn’t threaten me if various people throughout world history stumbled upon the Truth. In fact it would make me worry if they didn’t.)
Jesus as “sincere but mistaken” doesn’t hold well as an option. Jesus didn’t just say that he was the messiah (there’s a difference). Generally speaking, the messianic tradition called for an annointed deliverer. Jesus didn’t just say that he was to deliver the Jews from persecution. He said that he was the Son of God. There’s a huge difference.
If he believed this sincerely, he was not sane. The point Lewis was trying to make is that you cannot use the Mohamed argument that Jesus was a wise man but not God. If Jesus wasn’t God, then he was a con-man, fool (I’ll throw that in for your “sincere but mistaken” perspective), or insane.
If the historical Jesus was hijacked by the generation that followed and the whole “Jesus is God” perspective an apostolic innovation, it was the most elaborate and successful con in history. Those guys who perpetrated it took it all the way to their early graves. I don’t see what Stephen, Paul, and Peter had to gain from dying for their faiths (if these men knew that their faith was a sham). Peter knew Jesus personally and saw him resurrected. Was Peter mistaken about the resurrection? Is there any other likely alternative belief if you saw Jesus die on Friday and be up and about on Sunday? We’re not talking about distorting Jesus’ words here. Are you saying, Gene, that Peter was a liar or that the Christians after Peter made up all that too?
There is a deep tradition of scammers using religion to enrich themselves, gain influence and fame. But it took centuries for anyone to improve his condition by proclaiming faith in Christ. My studies of history suggest that people don’t tend to delay gratification that long, especially for a lie or mistake.
“Peter knew Jesus personally and saw him resurrected.”
You are veering from verifiable into unverifiable history here. You say rightly that the Mohammed argument does not work because he is not claiming divinity. But there are lots of things comparable to this. We know Joseph Smith existed without a doubt and he claimed lots of miracles like this. He and his followers were persecuted and killed for their beliefs. Is this sufficient insurance that they were telling the truth? Is the fact that he and many of his followers were killed and persecuted evidence that he wasn’t lying? Why would a liar suffer like that, after all? It’s the same argument you use for a man we have considerably less information about than Smith.
Mormons after Smith buy all of this, just like Christians after Peter.
Here’s another question – the Gospels say that lots of graves were emptied that day. If the Gospel account of the resurrection is true, wouldn’t we have more historical evidence of this besides the Gospel record. Wouldn’t something like that be noted??? We have some decent verification of the existence of a Jewish teacher named Jesus. You can’t leverage that into verification of all these other details, reactions, and claims of all these other people.
“The point Lewis was trying to make is that you cannot use the Mohamed argument that Jesus was a wise man but not God.”
Shocking, Aristos. I just showed very clearly that you can use that argument, that Lewis was wrong, and that it does not (necessarily) involve anything like a “con” at all. And you simply ignored the scenario I posited and continued as if I hadn’t said a thing.
I posted in between meetings and didn’t have much time to review your comments, Gene. I am suggested that men such as Mohammed and Joseph Smith had much to gain here and now from their perspectives, but the apostles gained only early graves. I challenged you to deal with the simple question: were Peter, John, Mary, et al. lying when they said that they saw Jesus risen from the dead? Was Paul lying about the road to Demascus, or do you reject these stories as apocryphal deceptions?
This matters because it goes to motive and it is crucial for determining if the early church fathers were merely mistaken. How does one mistake the resurrection?
And Artios, my only motive here is that one should not use bad arguments for sound positions — it discredits the position!
I agree with you on the use of bad arguments. Where we differ is your hypothesis that the apostles were mistaken and our subsequently different analyses of their action.
You’re basically arguing that Jesus was cool but everything (at least the parts that you cannot deal with conveniently) written by his followers is innaccurate. But how can you trust that Jesus was cool or even real since you’ve rejected the primary sources that document his existence and teachings?
I don’t think that you can get enough from Eusebius to support your thesis, which means you’ve no foundation for your argument, just a hunch based upon cutting and pasting from accounts you’ve already called unreliable.
Bob, great retort to the many universe theory. But atheists are basically immune to counter-evidence: the empirical facts that religious people are happier and healthier, that kids in religious families wind up more successful (leading Bryan Caplan to control for religion in his child-rearing work), that every known culture ever discovered has religious beliefs, etc.
Can you imagine any atheist finding this much evidence for the survival value of any other trait in a species and declaring that trait to be a “delusion”?!
Survival value doesn’t indicate truth. (Cum hoc ergo propter hoc)
Could you explain why the fact that faith makes you happier and healthier and that every culture has a (different) faith is a proof for God?
Since when does the survival value of a belief have anything to do with its truth?
I think the causality may be reversed here too. The real survival value probably comes from having brains that can derive explanations and think abstractly. A by-product of that in an unscientific age is a multiplicity of religions. Religious belief itself probably isn’t the survival factor.
This is especially interesting because you’re making an argument atheists often make – that religion is a residual cultural artifact produced by human evolution.
DK, do you “believe in” mathematics? If so, why? How do you know it’s not just a convenient illusion that your brain engineers, to allow your genes to pass on?
“A convenient illusion” is one way of describing mathematics. Math is a system of conclusions derived from axioms that we just make up. It seems to describe things we observe very well, which makes it “useful”. And certainly what we observe is only partially “true” too. We only see three dimensions. We only experience the fourth in little bits at a time, and only in one direction. We only observe certain spectrums and we can only take in medium size stuff – not the very big or small. And to make matters harder our brains have evolved only to understand this stuff. So not only can’t we observe outside these parameters, but we have a hard time even conceiving of it.
So in that sense, all knowledge is “convenient illusion”.
We are left to arbitrate between things for which we have a partial basis and for which we have no basis at all.
If I can summarize your response, “No Bob, my worldview forces me to say that I don’t ‘believe in’ mathematics the same way you do.” 🙂
Well what does it mean to believe in an axiom that we just define? I’m not even sure what that would mean? I believe it’s a plausible abstraction.
It all depends on what you mean by “believe in”. Maybe you could clarify.
Math is just an abstract idea. I believe in the idea of a God and different things we can derive about him if we were to unquestionably accept certain premises (say – scripture), just like math. But the reality of a God is a very different thing to be talking about. Do you believe in Allah? Do you believe in Odin? Think about why you don’t and you’ll have a good sense of my hesitation. These are actual beings we’re talking about. It’s very different from an abstract, axiomatic logical language like mathematics.
See Chapter X on Atheism The Case Against God.
Just a short argument of many: this case for God results in a regress due to the necessity of explaining God’s complexity.
Yes – another excellent point.
Let’s say the universe is “just right” for us (which, as we’ve all been through, is a dubious way of thinking about it anyway).
Wouldn’t God have to be “just right” to the n+1 degree? He has to be (1.) just right as well, and (2.) able to bring into being a universe that is also just right. In that sense it’s even worse than an infinite regress.
Anyone like Bob, with a good working knowledge of the fatal conceit, should know what a substantial claim this is. If it’s true it complicates the fine tuning problem – it doesn’t make it easier.
I don’t think much of this matters until the point about the anthropic principle – I don’t buy much of the “atheist” (I think it’s better to say “agnositc”) argumetns you mention before that.
The anthropic principle, though, is substantial – and it changes how you should have framed your Obama license plate example. What if you could only survive and observe license plates if you were looking at an Obama license plate. Then there would only be two states of existence from your perspective (presumably other things may be able to survive other conditions). You could:
1. Completely fail to have a conscious existence, or
2. Have a conscious existence and be looking at an Obama license plate.
That’s the proper analogy. Assessments of probability are contingent on our fallible and imperfect observations of stochastic events, and under those conditions the probability that you will observe and Obama license plate is 100%, simply by virtue of the fact that observing an Obama license plate is contingent on observing anything.
I wanted to mention something about the multiverse too – that’s one possibility. And in fact some people have talked about evolutionary multiverses – survival of the fittest. But there’s another single-universe option too: regular regeneration of the universe. Universes with the wrong constants collapses in on themselves and recreate themselves.
Things like this completely explode the way we talk about probability, keep in mind too. Our best guess is that there are 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe – that’s stars, not planets. The universe is 13,700,000,000 years old and the observable universe (to say nothing of the universe whose light hasn’t reached our eyes) is 276,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. And this is the size and timescale of the universe we live in. This matter that composes us could have compressed and re-Big-Banged a trillion times before. It’s absurd to try to paramterize deep time with our limited understanding and experience.
We also don’t know what conditions are needed for intelligent life – what we know is what conditions we need for our sort of intelligent life. There’s an anthropic principle involved even in simply defining what we mean by the phrase “fine tuning”. We may not have evolved in another universe, but other intelligent beings that we can’t conceive of who survive in ways we don’t understand under other conditions could have evolved in every single kind of option.
In other words – we really don’t know what the numerator on this probability is, and our feeble brains have no way of conceiving how many times the dice have been rolled.
I also think are framing this wrong. This is not an “atheist argument”. This should be a good theist’s argument too. This does nothing to disprove God – what this does is say “he cannot be proven that way”. The very cultural phenomenon of “proving God” strikes me as a little bizarre – as if this being, if he exists, can be struck on by some blog musings or a few witty rhetorical flares.
I’m not an atheist – I used to be a quite committed theist (my twin is currently getting a doctorate in theology). So in the same way, but opposite, I know where you’re coming from too. I’m more of an agnostic now, although I keep that relatively quiet around my family. I would not be surprised at all if some being that we could reasonably call a “god” exists. It’s entirely plausible. What I find less plausible is talk of an “uncaused cause”. If there is a God he is an entity in the universe beyond anything we can conceive of – but not some metaphysical category that we plunk him in.
The other thing I hold to is that if there is a God, I think it’s absurd to think we know the details about him that some people claim to know. What is more likely – that (1.) one group of people hit on it exactly right and everyone else just made stuff up to fill in gaps in their understanding, (2.) that they all made stuff up to fill in gaps in their understanding, or (3.) that they’re all talking about a real thing that they all experienced slightly differently, and that they invented more details on subsequently?
(1.) is most likely pure hubris, possible, but the least possible. (2.) and (3.) are more likely. The bulk of evidence, I fear, lies with (2.). But (3.) is always a possibility too. Even (3.) does away with a lot of the presumptiveness of many religious claims.
So I changed my view in college for two reasons. First, I started thinking through these things and found that I was believing things without much justification. I was simply believing them because there was a primacy that was placed on faith in circular references. That was increasingly not cutting it in any other area of my life (in college, that is), and it seemed wrong of me to continue to think something for those reasons in my own spiritual life. The second reason was I did a few things (not that bad) that were identified as sinful, and after doing them I didn’t feel like the negative judgement on those activites was especially justified. Imposing codes of behavior that are more or less baseless seemed to me to be something an artificial system would do – not a system of belief based on the fundamental truth of existence.
So I’m curious – what converted you? I think the things that actually convert people provide the arguments that are most relevant, because clearly those are the arguments that people find convincing. Surely you weren’t converted by fine-tuning, were you? That wouldn’t have lead you to Christianity specifically so it had to be something else. What was it, out of curiosity?
DK, someday I will write up the full account, but the quick version: I was under a lot of stress and depression, and then I had a brilliant insight–I literally solved my problems through a great idea. I could actually feel all the stress and worry drain out of my body. I instantly went from craving things like egg rolls (from the Chinese place down the street), to having an intense desire to go buy orange juice.
I had really irritated skin around my nose that cleared up almost instantly. I.e. I “knew” the redness would be gone by the next day, and that I could stop consulting dermatologists to try to give me various creams etc to fix it.
Now at this point I was still an atheist. But for the first time I understood how Jesus’ ministry had “worked.” I.e. the most plausible explanation for me was that this guy went around claiming to be capable of curing people, and because I had just seen firsthand the power of your mind over your physical ailments, I recognized that somebody really could make lame people walk etc., particularly if those people grew up in a culture that said if you were a leper, it was because you or your family had committed some great sin.
And then once I started down that path, it wasn’t long before I realized that “this is just the kind of world that the God of the Bible would invent. Of course I can ‘explain’ all the miracles by reference to ‘natural’ causes–God designed nature and its laws. They are doing His bidding.”
That’s an interesting story – it’s not a very typical conversion story!
Let me just leave it at that I am interested in the “full account”. Getting from a healer to a God is an awfully big step.
Color me interested in the full story, too, since that “… this is just the kind of world that God… would invent…” is a path I’ve visited repeatedly since I dropped the word “atheist” from my self-identity.
Bob,
I believe that Feynman “quote” had to to with using the same data to both formulate and test a hypothesis. We see a license plate number and hypothesize that it must be some kind of unlikely event when in fact the same could be said of any plate. Had we predicted beforehand that we would see that particular plate number, we might be onto something. Feynman said that once one understands that analogy, it becomes clear why testing a hypothesis in this way is a fallacy.
Terry
And I think perhaps I’m putting the anthropic principle the wrong way by framing it as a probability (ie – since this being the only conditions under which we could exist and observe things, there would be no observation to speak of if these conditions did not exist).
Do you buy evolution? I haven’t gotten the impression you’re a six day, six thousand year earth creationist.
OK, if you do then this is probably better approached through evolutionary logic than probabilistic logic: if the universe is tuned to its current conditions then any life that evolves and survives will have to be the sort of life that is also tuned to these conditions.
That’s probably the better way of putting it – because the universe came first, not our observations of the universe that form the raw material of probabilistic thought.
DK I’m not committed to any particular timeline. It doesn’t threaten my faith in the Bible if the earth is 4 billion years old. I have written elsewhere that if the writer of Genesis saw a vision of the creation of the earth–and suppose for the sake of argument that it really happened over a long period of time–then it might be hard to convey that information to the writer.
In contrast, somebody who writes, “Jesus walked on the water to reach the disciples in the boat,” knows full well what he is saying.
Like Daniel, I’ve gone in nearly the opposite direction as Bob. Once upon a time, I was a very devout theist, but now describe myself as agnostic.
The problem is not, as Gene noted above, that atheists “are basically immune to counter-evidence”, but rather that many theists are unwilling to acknowledge alternative explanations for the phenomena they observe.
We can see this problem with Bob’s license plate example. Bob may be correct in believing that a person with the tag “LUVSBAMA” voted for Obama. They might, however, also be fans of Alabama football. Which is it? We can’t possibly know based on the information provided.
“It’s the fact that the string of symbols appears meaningful that makes its improbability an indication of a mind at work.”
Where do the symbols derive their meaning? I suspect that your license plate analogy is a poor one. The alphabet is a man made construct that we impart meaning to. Equating it with phenomena that you believe points to intelligent design is false equivalence.
Symbols impart information and, as you well know, information can be interpreted in a variety of manners. So even if the symbols have meaning, which interpretation of the information they impart is correct?
Ah, great point about Alabama football. More generally, I do think that yes, there is a God, but that no sect has fully understood all His attributes (which is actually impossible anyway). I think a lot of times arguments (like faith vs. works) are seeing two sides of the same coin.
However, I have to object when you and others refer to my “license plate analogy.” I didn’t bring that up, Aristos did.
“More generally, I do think that yes, there is a God, but that no sect has fully understood all His attributes (which is actually impossible anyway).”
How do you trust the attributes that you trust?
For example, on what basis do you consider Christian understandings of justification to be a reasonable understanding of the attributes of God, and not analagous understanding from another religion?
In other words – when you became a Christian one what basis did you decide on Christianity?
A fair objection, and my fault for not fully appreciating the context.
I agree that no sect would be able to comprehend all of an omnipotent being’s attributes. But the question, to my mind, at the very least, and one of the reasons I walked away from faith, is how do know that what we observe has a causal link with one (or all, I suppose) of His attributes? It’s always been a matter of knowledge. How do we know what we know?
“If we’re walking along the beach, and see a bunch of rocks and shells arranged in order to spell ‘SHIPWRECKED PLEASE SEND HELP’, we are going to be dead certain that a human being did that.”
Right. And that would equate to “the entire King James Bible [being] embedded in the human genome”.
And yet, no one has claimed anything even remotely as compelling as the above, so… what’s the point of your “rocks and shells” analogy?
Anon, the point is to demonstrate that the qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) arguments of some of the critics of Intelligent Design are unreasonable. A lot of the champions of the anti-IDers make very strong statements, like, “It is unscientific to ‘explain’ things in the natural world by reference to an intelligent designer.” So I’m saying that in the hypothetical scenario of the people finding the Bible encoded in DNA, the anti-IDers would surely be in an untenable position.
Or for that matter, suppose it just so happened that intelligent aliens–who had evolved on another planet, and whose cells did not exhibit what Behe calls irreducible complexity–had designed a supercell and seeded life on earth. Wouldn’t it be scientists who would make this discovery on earth? And yet, to take some of the strongest anti-ID arguments, that would be impossible. Science per se would be forever barred from entertaining the hypothesis that life on earth had been consciously designed by an intelligence.
Panspermia is accepted as a possibility by many scientists (also as a potential explanation for older life on Mars). I don’t think they’d reject that.
Design and planting life is a different story. I think what they’d say is “we clearly have evidence that life evolved here”… that doesn’t rule out a possible seeding of life. The question isn’t “was life seeded or not”. That doesn’t prove anything. The question is “was it seeded by a divine being or by something else quite regular”.
When we discovered the arsenic-eating bacteria the first thing I said was “we need to synthesize a ton of this stuff and send cannisters up to Titan to populate it’s oceans with life”. I was advocating that NASA seed Titan. Why? Becase true meaning, as far as we are aware – comes from life. Life allows for the appreciation of beauty and wonder. Why wouldn’t we want to seed other planets? Why wouldn’t we want to terraform and colonize Mars? I think any advanced civilization is likely to think and do these things.
That doesn’t make them Gods in the metaphysical sense that most theists understand the term, and that’s the point.
DK I grant you that when presented with the possibility of aliens seeding life, the scientists would reformulate their objections to rule out God, but allow aliens. But when they are attacking IDers, the gloves come off and they rule out aliens. I spent 5 minutes and found this, which is the Union of Concerned Scientists addressing falsehoods put out by the ID community:
* “Intelligent design is a scientific theory”: A scientific theory is supported by extensive research and repeated experimentation and observation in the natural world. Unlike a true scientific theory, the existence of an “intelligent” agent can not be tested, nor is it falsifiable.
* ” Intelligent design is based on the scientific method”: Intelligent design might base its ideas on observations in the natural world, but it does not test them in the natural world, or attempt to develop mechanisms (such as natural selection) to explain their observations4.
So if life on earth actually did come from aliens who designed the first cell to have all this cool information in it, the Union of Concerned Scientists would rule out any theory involving this historical fact as “unscientific”–at leas according to the criteria they use to blow up ID.
Well I don’t think any biologists are just jumping to suggest there’s evidence of alien seeding either! But it’s not a particularly implausible idea. We seed the Earth – why not other Earths? No great trouble there. But who just volunteers this? There’s no evidence at all of it. I think this sort of thing could lead to life emerging but as far as I know there’s no reason to think that happened on Earth.
Synthesizing life is one thing. If that’s all you mean by “intelligent design” then we’re almost there ourselves. Do you really think that’s controversial?
The concern is the relationship between intelligent design advocates and claims about God. That is an entirely unmerited leap.
Right now the concern with IDers is that they are being disingenuous.
If all IDers changed their tune and came out and said that the designer they had in mind was another evolved physical being – an alien – I think the concern would be that they have no evidence, not that they have a crazy theory.
Using the same logic in the cell analogy you quoted from Behe, we can argue:
A deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the universe must have already been vastly complex in the first place. In other words, if the existence of organized complexity implies the existence of a deity designer of that complexity, then God too must have also been designed by a deity, for God must also be incredibly complex.
This infinite regress implication is not accepted by the theist position. The theist position is that God is unexplained and is the ultimate “given” that has no prior cause. Therefore, the theist position must consider organized complexity as a given in the universe. The theist cannot point to atheists and say “You cannot explain the organized complexity, but I can.”
If the theist is permitted to propose an unexplained complex deity designer that is responsible for the organized complexity in the universe, then the atheist should be permitted to argue that moving the unexplained causal sequence back just one step does not mean that the theist has succeeded in explaining why there is any organized complexity at all. The theist takes the complexity of God as an unexplained given. How can the theist position be claimed as more explanatory than the atheist position?
As for “blind chance”, the position “I hold that God does not exist. The universe and all life to be the result of evolution by natural selection” does not require “blind chance”, and the lack of blind chance does not imply God exists. Evolutionary systems are random variation combined with non-random selection. The non-random selection does not imply God exists.
That a bird will always be harmed by fire explains why birds did not evolve in volcanoes. Any birds that lived in and around active volcanoes would be more likely to go extinct than birds living under the cover of trees and bushes.
This non-random cumulative selection process, in combination with correspondingly unrelated, “random” environmental events like volcanoes, can explain organized complexity. Organized complexity via evolution does not imply “blind chance”. Blind chance would call for a positive probability that a bird could live on the surface of the Sun, when evolution by cumulative selection can explain why that probability is zero.
Phew! I’m glad we totally disagree on something (though I wish it weren’t something so important). I think some people began to suspect Captain Freedom = Bob Murphy.
Hahaha,
Well, I am very sorry for any discomfort you may have felt, or any questioning of your integrity you may have received, on account of my intentional anonymity, and seeming agreement (up until now) with your arguments. I can certainly understand that.
At the same time, if anyone suspected you were me, then I can assure you that it reflects poorly on them, not you, because they would have to be taking the leap that you were being dishonest and misleading, which is more a projection of their own thought processes than anything else.
I remain anonymous on blogs because I want my ideas to stand and fall as ideas only, and then, hopefully, the consequences of the discussion will spread throughout society with no thought or worry regarding intellectual property.
Yes, there is a trade off, for example some folks dismiss what I say because they don’t see a prominent name behind them, but then again, those who dismiss ideas on those terms aren’t ideas driven people anyway, so I’m actually happy when that happens, for it exposes them as anti-intellectual intellectuals, and I can move on in my informal search for people of ideas. Anonymity almost acts as a filtration process.
Those who truly care about ideas won’t even care who I am personally. The great thing about this blog is that there are quasi-monetarists who visit here and they too show that they are ideas driven. You can’t ask for more than that.
It’s a complete fallacy that something simple can not generate something complex.
So if I see shells on the beach saying “SHIPWRECKED,” you disagree with my inference that an intelligence put them there?
I think what’s confusing is that sometimes you talk about “intelligent design” and sometimes you talk about a proof for God. Which is it, Bob?
“So if I see shells on the beach saying “SHIPWRECKED,” you disagree with my inference that an intelligence put them there?”
That would be an example of something complex generating something less complex. Matt’s point was that less complex things can come together in, how should I put it… a spontaneous and ordered way?
Oh wait a minute… that’s the whole premise of free market economics, that the entire range of complex economic phenomena we observe is generated and regulated by individual human action. No god, despot, or bureaucracy required to design, create, or regulate it.
That would be an example of something complex generating something less complex.
I never said what generated it. All I said was, we see “SHIPWRECKED” in shells on the beach. See, you are so 100% sure that that had to be created by a human, that you don’t even realize you are assuming the very thing under discussion.
I am trying to show you guys that in some contexts, you wouldn’t believe your own arguments (against ID). If we saw “SHIPWRECKED” written in shells, and I said I thought the surf could have done it, you would say, “Bob you’re nuts. That’s way too complex and meaningful to be due to random chance.” And then would it be a knock-down argument if I said, “Whoa! I could see someone from the German Historical School uttering such nonsense, but a Hayekian? How inconsistent of you!”
But Bob, I think you’re crossing your wires here.
The idea that some things are designed and that we can conceive of evidence that would persuade us something is designed is one thing. Nobody denies this.
But we have to ask ourselves two questions: (1.) is there evidence of a design, and (2.) what does that say about the designer?
In answer to question (1.) we’ve said there is no evidence of design, although there’s nothing implausible about the idea that something could be designed. If you see shells on the beach or messages in DNA or a license plate that is evidence of design. We are saying there is nothing comparable in the universe. Call us when you find the KJV in DNA or when you find evidence that the universe was designed (we’ve explained why “fine-tuning” isn’t really evidence of anything), and in the meantime don’t pretend we’re rejecting the very idea of design.
On question (2.) even if you find evidence of design we all then have to grapple with “what does this say about the designer”. Intelligent? Yes. Lot’s of resources? Most definitely. Long-lived relative to us? Certainly. An omnipotent, omniscient being who sent his only begotten Son to bear the burden of our sin and justify us before the Father? That hardly follows.
This is the struggle that agnostics/atheists have with ID. Is it conceivable? Sure it’s conceivable. Lot’s of things are conceivable – aliens seeding Earth are too. But you won’t find aliens seeding Earth in textbooks for the same reason you won’t find ID in textboooks – there’s no evidence of it. That’s a strong enough case for why we raise our eyebrows at IDers. But the ID argument gets even more frustrating when it pops up in blog posts with “argument for God” in the title.
If you are not promoting ID as an argument for God, then that’s great – we’re in agreement that it never could be one. We should look around, see a lack of evidence for design, and then proceed to drop the issue entirely.
And if you insist we speculate, we’re happy to admit that intelligent alien life is considerably more likely than divinity.
Agreed.
I mean, just look at the Mandelbrot set, which incidentally Murphy has in the heading of this blog.
z(n+1) = z(n2) + c
This simple equation generates the most complex object currently known in the universe.
Noiselull make’s a good point above on the infinite regress of theism, and it makes me think of the Austrian disposition in general. You don’t have to be Austrian to understand and accept spontaneous order, but Austrians place special emphasis on it. Don’t you think it’s odd that an Austrian of all people would feel the need to reach out to design arguments to explain complex order???
As an atheist I appreciate your critique of the multiverse which I always had a problem with.
Dr. Murphy,
Have you read any of Nancy Pearcey’s books? I thought her book Total Truth was very good! Anyways, I very much enjoy your theological postings! You’re developing quite a body of work these days and it is appreciated.
God to me is not a probability issue. I don’t believe in god because his/its existence is extremely unlikely, I don’t believe in god because god himself/itself is illogical.
And pointless. I mean, god’s existence is as relevant to me as the existence of a long-lost uncle who lives on the other side of the world, with whom I’ll never speak, and who will never come visit me, and with whom I have absolutely no interaction at all. That, from a relevancy standpoint, is exactly the same as not having a long-lost uncle at all.
I think furthering a belief in god is akin to creating a speculative bubble. It can cause people to make decisions they wouldn’t normally make based on propped-up scenarios and false consequences.
“Could you explain why the fact that faith makes you happier and healthier and that every culture has a (different) faith is a proof for God?”
I never said it was. It is, however, evidence that there MIGHT be something to this religion thing.
“Since when does the survival value of a belief have anything to do with its truth?”
Well, we might think they would track each other at least roughly.
“The real survival value probably comes from having brains that can derive explanations and think abstractly.”
Then why TODAY does religiousness correlate with happiness, longevity, etc?
Well there’s certainly “something to this religion thing”. It’s not some weird meaningless blip. I don’t think you’ll find anyone that says its not a siginficant, meaningful, essential human phenomenon.
“Well, we might think they would track each other at least roughly.”
I think that would be a big mistake. You need look no farther than kosher dietary restrictions. It’s easy to see how these beliefs could be highly functional without being divine in origin.
“Then why TODAY does religiousness correlate with happiness, longevity, etc?”
Wouldn’t you think the emotional reassurances of faith, the strictures on good living, the presence of a caring fellowship, etc. would have positive effects on health and longevity? Again, I don’t think there’s any great mystery here. There’s no need to appeal to the truth of any of these beliefs. It would be interesting to compare truly humanist atheists with an equally reassuring worldview to, say, more nihilist or drifting atheists. I imagine you’d find the true enlightened humanists have better outcomes too for much the same reason that religious people have better outcomes. We have yet to see what a really godless society would look like. We’re in a transition stage. There’s a lot of really messed up atheists, I imagine, who have lost something that has been essential to being human for centuries now, and they’re still not sure what comes after that. Over time this will change, of course. But for the time being “losing your religion” is still a jarring experience.
“I don’t believe in god because god himself/itself is illogical.”
Somebody needs to look up ‘logical’ in a dictionary.
Well, or at least elaborate the point. I can imagine a reasonable person saying the idea of a God is illogical. This one-liner, admittedly, does not give us much to work with.
“So if life on earth actually did come from aliens who designed the first cell to have all this cool information in it, the Union of Concerned Scientists would rule out any theory involving this historical fact as “unscientific”–at leas according to the criteria they use to blow up ID.”
Bob,
You have it totally wrong here. The objections you list to ID are not about rejecting facts- they are about rejecting tautology. An IDer’s argument STARTS from the assumption that god exists and created man in some manner. He then uses observations based on that assumption- we have big brains = proof god wanted us to have free will and dominion over all the plants and animals. Any evidence can be altered to fit a hypothetical motive of god. If every one was born with scoliosis then we could imagine that god wanted us to suffer as his one true son suffered. If not we can imagine that god is merciful and great and sent his one true son to suffer so that we don’t have to. Neither of these is testable though which makes it meaningless to postulate about them.
Your seashell analogy is missing a stage. If we were to walk along a beach and see the message we do not first have to postulate that man EXISTS, and then postulate that he was here and then that he made the message. Because we know man exists (with as much certainty as we can) and we know what man is capable of we can identify that the theory that man made such a message and left it is plausible. We can also estimate that it is much more likely that man left the message than random wave chance. We then go with man left the message.
No Tom, an IDer argument does not start with the assumption that God exists. It just doesn’t rule that out as unscientific.
Change the DNA analogy. Suppose instead the messages read, “We seeded life here about 4 billion years ago, as measured by the earth’s revolutions around your star. Sincerely, Your Favorite Martian.”
Go look at that Union of Concerned Scientists’ criteria for science. It would be “unscientific” for us to hypothesize that that message came from aliens. We would have to come up with a “natural” explanation.
And if I said, “Geez, I think it came from an intelligent designer,” you would say, “Nope Bob, you are assuming there are Martians, and then reasoning from that fact. Please try to be more scientific in the future. We don’t know that Martians exist.”
Bob –
Biologists don’t have concerns about ID because they reject the idea of design. They have concerns because they see no evidence for design.
It is “unscientific” because there is no evidence for it, not because it impossible in the abstract. The alien explanation IS a natural explanation – just not a natural explanation there is any evidence for.
This has nothing to do with the wider purpose of this post, though – fine tuning as an argument for God. In an alien design situation that scientists can accept, there’s no assumption that the aliens doing the designing are an uncaused cause. Don’t present ID and fine-tuning in the same breath and act surprised when we point out that the possibility of design, the probability of design, and a proof of God are three very different things.
DK you just keep plowing through with your statements, unperturbed by the counterevidence I offer to you. Here again is the Union of Concerned Scientists:
Unlike a true scientific theory, the existence of an “intelligent” agent can not be tested, nor is it falsifiable.
So yes, they are flat-out saying it is non-falsifiable and unscientific to say that an intelligent agent designed life here on earth. So if it just so happens that aliens seeded life, we’re screwed–no scientist can ever entertain this hypothesis, at least not while he’s on the clock.
Now of course, if you asked the scientists who wrote that statement to clarify, they would say, “Oh no, sorry for the confusion, we meant the existence of an omnipotent, non-physical, intelligent agent is untestable. We didn’t mean Martians.”
But that’s not what they said. And this is the modest point I was making.
Also, I didn’t include this in the original quoting, but go check out their link. They explicitly say that the idea of a God falls outside of science. I.e. that is their assumption going into it. So we shouldn’t be surprised that they feel “there is no scientific evidence for God” since they’ve decided that before looking at the evidence.
Do you simply need me to say that I wouldn’t have put it how the Union of Concerned Scientists put it?
I didn’t think that was “counter-evidence”, I just thought it was a poorly worded opinion. I didn’t realize I had to account for them.
Shall I find some equally problematic quotes about evolution from Christians and expect you to defend it? There are many that argue that evolution is not true science either. I’m not sure how this impacts my points!
I think your logic on their view of God is circular Bob. They think God falls outside of science precisely because there is no way to formulate evidence for him one way or the other! You’ve got it exactly backwards.
What evidence could there be for the divine? I’m not sure if there could be any. But I think you’re getting their logic backwards.
“Biologists don’t have concerns about ID because they reject the idea of design. They have concerns because they see no evidence for design.”
Well, they have no evidence because the postulates of their discipline prevent them for searching for such evidence, i.e., a presupposition of all of the physical sciences, including biology, is that the proper sort of causes to search for are mechanical causes that operate without intelligence or design. So of course they see no evidence of intelligent design — they deliberately don’t look for it!
Now, I think this is the RIGHT way for them to do research. Their job is to see how far they can take the principle of mechanical causation. They are mistaken only if and when they base silly pronouncements like “Evolution shows their is no place for God in the world” on that research!
Now
Mechanical causation is a very slippery concept, Gene.
Let me make sure everyone understands my Bible-in-the-DNA example. Here is a quote from the Union of Concerned Scientists talking about why ID is not a scientific theory:
The scientific method is limited to using evidence from the natural world to explain phenomena. It does not preclude the existence of God or other spiritual beliefs and only states that they are not part of science. Belief in a higher being is a personal, not a scientific, question.
This is the kind of PC gobbledegook that my example is meant to explode. If it just so happened that people found the King James Bible encoded in human DNA, then I think we can all agree it would be scientific to entertain the hypothesis that the God of the Bible exists. In which case, the above definition of the boundaries of science would clearly be bogus.
So do we currently have evidence as air-tight as the Bible in human DNA? Of course not. But I submit we have evidence that is on that spectrum, just not anywhere near as extreme. And yet the Union of Concerned Scientists is saying that such talk, by definition, is not science.
So that’s the point of my thought experiment. It is to show that the opponents of ID are proceeding by a priori definitions, when they fancy themselves to be sober analysts of the raw facts.
No.
It would be scientific to entertain the idea that someone designed humans. It seems to me there is a gaping chasm between design and divinity. A betting man may convert after that, but there’s no scientific evidence for divinity – only for design. I won’t go as far as saying that there can’t be evidence for the metaphysical properties of the God of the Bible – but I will say that finding a code in DNA would not amount to that sort of evidence.
How does evidence of human design give you any evidence for any of the metaphysical properties of the divine, Bob? What’s the connection???
You also probably shouldn’t conflate a website statement by the Union of Concerned Scientists that they themselves would probably phrase differently if pressed with “the opponents of ID”. Most opponents of ID have nothing wrong with the idea of design, they just (1.) see absolutely no evidence of it, and (2.) don’t see how evidence of design would imply divinity.
“It would be scientific to entertain the idea that someone designed humans.”
Fighting a middle ground war against Bob and Daniel simultaneously, I retort: No it wouldn’t! That’s a (potential) historical fact, and thus an historical hypothesis. True, it would nullify certain areas of biological research (we’d stop inquiring as to how humans evolved!) but the addition to biological science would be zilch.
Why?
I would think it would just expand our understanding of biology and social science. Clearly there is some other planet where organisms developed and developed high technology and that needs to be explained.
Is all social science just non-scientific history too then, Gene?
I don’t buy this. When a monkey figures out how to use a tool to achieve desired ends, it’s science. When a human (or a Martian) figures out how to use a tool to achieve desired ends, it’s somehow not science. How in the world does that make sense? That’s pure sentimentalism.
We could scientifically approach understanding the action of a divine being too, but nobody has even come close to offering any serious claim about what this would be or how one would do it. There’s no point in ruling it out. One day we could study divinity scientifically if such a metaphysical state as “divinity” actuall existed. But right now it’s all word games with no guidance at all of what that might entail.
The actions of biological organisms – be they unicellular, human, or alien – are certainly open to scientific study.
“When a monkey figures out how to use a tool to achieve desired ends, it’s science.”
No, it isn’t. That’s technology.
I refer you to the line of thinkers stretching from Kant through Hegel, Schelling, Bradley, Collingwood and Oakeshott on the modality of knowledge and the presuppositions of science. I think what I say here is ably and fully defended in that tradition. I can’t rehearse all of their arguments in a blog post, but I highly recommend you check them out — if you’d like particular recommendations shoot me an e-mail.
Note – I’m not “plowing through your evidence” here. I am standing unconvinced by it.
“If it just so happened that people found the King James Bible encoded in human DNA, then I think we can all agree it would be scientific to entertain the hypothesis that the God of the Bible exists.”
OK, unlike you and Daniel, who argue in different ways that the Concerned Scientists are wrong, I think they are absolutely correct. It would most definitely NOT be a scientific hypothesis, no matter what was found in DNA, to posit the God of the Bible exists. That evidence might be a good reason to frame such a hypothesis, but that doesn’t make it a scientific hypothesis!
These guys are spot on: science *assumes* a world of mechanical explanation and seeks to illuminate that world. “God made it that way” may ultimately be the correct explanation for everything but it is certainly not a scientific explanation. (Nor would the Martian explanation be a scientific one — it would be an historical explanation, and would add nothing at all to our scientific knowledge. If you doubt that, ask yourself what universal law we could draw from Martians having seeded life on Earth?)
Oh I agree with this, Gene. I think the statement is wrong to say it wouldn’t be evidence of design. It would be evidence of design. What it would not be is evidence of the God of the Bible.
I disagree with your Martian point. Is it unscientific to note that human engineers are the source of genetically engineered crops? The Martian scenario would admittedly be a more of a social scientific claim if there were any evidence of it – but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be scientific.
Maybe there’s a way to talk about divinity in a scientific way too – I don’t see why science has to make any particular metaphysical assumptions. I just don’t know what a science of the divine would be. Bob certainly hasn’t offered any thoughts on that question either.
“Is it unscientific to note that human engineers are the source of genetically engineered crops?”
Well, it’s not “unscientific” in the sense that, say, someone might say relying on voodoo for curing pneumonia is unscientific. But it’s no part of science to note this. Science consists of universal, time-independent laws. The fact that so-and-so did such-and-such at one time is not a part of science.
And various philosophers and scientists concur with this point in differentiating science from natural history.
Are you of the mind that social science is not science?
I don’t know, Gene. Is the work of geologists and biologists on the Chicxulub crater not science because they trace important geological and biological developments to a specific, historical meteor?
What about astronomers working on this meteor that struck Jupiter. That’s a historical instance, so that must not be science, huh?
Social scientific laws and the study of their operation in society are universal, time-independent laws, are they not? Different context and contingencies cause the laws to operate differently in different circumstances, but I really don’t follow why you’re excluding this on the basis of the singular nature of a particular subject.
I don’t know if you’re just trying to make an observational/experimental distinction or what – but a lot of the science that we think of as science and the scientists who call themselves scientists are of this variety of science.
“So that’s the point of my thought experiment. It is to show that the opponents of ID are proceeding by a priori definitions, when they fancy themselves to be sober analysts of the raw facts.”
Well, Bob, we know there are no “raw facts” and that of course any science brings to the table a priori assumptions, don’t we?
DK I’m putting my response down here because the nesting has reached its limit above… You wrote:
Do you simply need me to say that I wouldn’t have put it how the Union of Concerned Scientists put it?
I didn’t think that was “counter-evidence”, I just thought it was a poorly worded opinion. I didn’t realize I had to account for them.
See, this is why it’s frustrating to argue with you. I claim that some of the anti-ID people use arguments that would rule out even extraterrestrials.
You say, “No they don’t.”
So I give you explicit quotes where they do just that.
You don’t acknowledge that I just proved my point, and continue to argue that no anti-ID person lays down criteria that would rule out aliens seeding life.
I repeat the quote I had from them, saying explicitly that very thing.
You then say, “Oh OK I don’t like the way they phrased it. I didn’t realize I was supposed to account for their wording.”
I.e. you’re acting like I’m pulling some nitpicky thing that is tangential to the argument, when that has been my point all along.
Back to you:
They think God falls outside of science precisely because there is no way to formulate evidence for him one way or the other! You’ve got it exactly backwards.
What evidence could there be for the divine? I’m not sure if there could be any.
Let me try this again: Suppose for the sake of argument that a biochemist finds the King James Bible encoded in the human genome. We don’t have to take his word for it; thousands of biochemists around the world reproduce his results.
Now would that not be “natural evidence” for the existence of the God of the Bible?
And yet, you continue to claim that you can’t even imagine what natural evidence for the existence of God would look like. This is why I like that example so much. It proves (to me at least) that you aren’t even trying. You have decided a priori that “science” and “the natural world” do not admit of something that would be evidence of a creator.
Then, with that mindset, you look out at the world, and report that your scientific inquiry has concluded that there is no evidence for a creator.
Bob –
Ha! Well this is exactly why it’s frustrating to argue with you. You can’t take a quote and tell me that’s the argument I have to defend. I think that they’re wrong (or at least awkwardly worded) and you’re wrong. I am happy to admit there are scientists out there that make illegitimate critiques of ID. I like to think I have made some legitimate critiques of ID, and that others have too.
re: “and continue to argue that no anti-ID person lays down criteria that would rule out aliens seeding life.”
If I said this earlier I was wrong to say it, but I read the comment I made immediately above and I did not make this claim, Bob. Some certainly do lay down criteria that would rule out aliens seeding the planet. What do I have to say to get it through to you that I agree with you those people are wrong?
re: “Now would that not be “natural evidence” for the existence of the God of the Bible?”
1. A betting man would probably convert. I might.
2. No, that’s not evidence for any divine being at all, regardless of what a bettering man would do. How could it be?
This would be evidence that humans were designed, yes. You’re still not articulating how evidence for design is the same thing as evidence for the divine. Let me put it this way – what possible information could having the KJV in our DNA give you about the nature of the designer? It would not tell you they were ominpotent. It would not tell you they were omnipresent. It would not tell you they were omniscient. It would not tell you they were uncaused. It would not tell you they were triune. It would not tell you they were lords of heaven and Earth. It would not tell you they offered themselves as a sacrifice for the salvation of man. You keep repeating that it would be evidence for the God of the Bible as if I missed the claim you were making. I understand the claim. I understand why someone would change their life after a discovery like this. I don’t understand what it proves scientifically.
Maybe God can be proven scientifically. I’m not personally aware of how that could be done, but I’m not going to completely rule out the prospect.
re: “You have decided a priori that “science” and “the natural world” do not admit of something that would be evidence of a creator.”
Evidence of a creator or evidence of a God? Those seem to be two very different things, Bob.
DK wrote:
2. No, that’s not evidence for any divine being at all, regardless of what a bettering man would do. How could it be?
DK I think we can stop with this portion of our discussion. I could not have asked for a better confirmation of my claim that at least some atheists/agnostics even in principle could not see evidence that the God of the Bible exists.
You are here saying, not merely that the actual King James Bible itself, embedded in the human genome, would constitute no evidence at all for the existence of the God of the Bible.
No, you go further and say, “how could it be”?
So it’s that phrase that is really key. It’s not so much that you consider my example, and then reject it. No, you are sure going into the discussion that there could not be natural evidence for a Being Who has the properties of the God of the Bible.
If you want to take that position, OK fair enough. But then it’s not more evidence on your side when you claim that we have yet to discover any natural evidence for the existence of God. You have demonstrated that your framing of the issues makes that literally impossible.
* * *
Let me say one last thing on this and then I think I have to drop it. Suppose for the sake of argument, DK, that the God of the Bible exists. As you note, it would be very hard to convey His properties to us. In fact, just about the only way I can think of Him doing it, would be to tell us about Himself.
And that of course is exactly what Christians believe happened.
Now if you say we can’t trust the testimonials of people who claimed to have first-hand revelation, what else might be open to such a God? Well, He could give incontrovertible evidence of the authenticity of His revelations by, say, encoding them in the human genome.
And yet you have said above that even this would be no good.
So isn’t it odd, that even if we assume for the sake of argument that there is a God with the characteristics described in the Bible, that there is nothing at all He could do to convince you of His nature?
Even if you saw a burning bush, and it said, “I AM who AM. I knew you Daniel before you were conceived. I saw you when you were 6 years old and Jimmy hit you in the head with a Rothbard book, thereby making you suspicious of Austrian economics for life. And I am telling you Daniel, I am triune, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.”
Based on your arguments above DK, you would say, “OK wow, that was evidence for someone who is at least 30 years old, and who is a pyrotechnical wizard with a good sound system. But I have yet to see evidence of the God of the Bible. How could I?”
Do you at least see what I am saying here DK?
My “how could it be” was refering to the fact that showing something is designed is different from showing that it is divine.
I’ve said several times at this point it may be possible to scientifically prove divinity. I admit I have no idea of what that would consist of, but I wouldn’t rule out that possibility. Stop saying I’m ruling that out.
All I’m saying is that proving the divine and proving design are two entirely different things.
P.S. – I do not hate free markets. I’m an enormous fan of free markets. An illustrative example, I know – but just to be clear 🙂
OK you’re right that I wasn’t allowing you wiggle room on the distinction between “evidence” and “scientific” evidence. But even acknowledging that, my point still holds, as you yourself say: You admit that you can’t even conceive of what “scientific evidence” for God would look like. That’s why I’m saying it’s not surprising that you don’t think we have yet seen any.
Also, I edited it from “hate free markets” to “suspicious of Austrian economics.” Of course either way it was supposed to be funny, but I tried to make it more accurate. (It’s funny because it’s true!)
Yes – if it’s not clear what “it” is people are going to be hesitent about whether they’ve seen “it”.
I don’t see how this is a failing on the part of science.
Don’t you have trouble conceiving of what scientific evidence for divinity would be too???
I <3 the Austrians too… just think they can be a little overconfident sometimes. Note in my RAE article I never claimed ABCT didn't explain 1920-21!
I think there are big differences between
1. Having scientific evidence for something
2. Having information or experience that leads you to believe something
You seem to infer from my hesitance on what the first would even consist of implies I think the second is absurd or impossible. If I saw a burning bush or the KJV in DNA I would almost definitely start going to church again. I would still not consider it scientific evidence of divinity.
We don’t always act and believe on the basis of science, Bob. That’s part of it, but it’s not all of it. The modern proclivity to think we always should leads people to say the sort of things your saying and consequently minimize the role of faith.
Bob,
You can count me as an atheist who would convert if something like your bible code was discovered. So, j agree ID should be on the table, but that may not imply as much as you’d like.
Thanks Mike, for acknowledging what I consider to be the tiniest teensy little concession. An atheist should proudly declare that if my Bible-in-the-DNA story ever came true, then he would very seriously entertain the notion that the God of the Bible exists.
In case onlookers are wondering why I’m investing so much effort in a hypothetical, it’s because of DK’s continued refusal to grant me even that. Look at his latest response above; he still maintains that if the actual King James Bible were embedded in the human genome, that would be no evidence for the God of the Bible.
In fairness, I am open to people framing equally implausible scenarios that would make me question my faith.
Why are you acting like “entertain the notion that the God of the Bible exists” and “scientific evidence for the God of the Bible” are even remotely the same thing Bob????
I’ve said from my initial comments that I entertain the notion that the God of the Bible exists. I find it plausible, simply improbable. I think that even without KJV encoded in the DNA! It doesn’t change the question of what would constitute scientific evidence for divinity.
“Look at his latest response above; he still maintains that if the actual King James Bible were embedded in the human genome, that would be no evidence for the God of the Bible.”
KJB in human DNA would be evidence for the existence of an ENTITY (we’ll grant it intelligence, for the sake of argument) that had access to human DNA.
But does logic compel us to accept that a god-entity corresponding to the description in the KJB is the ONLY entity capable of inserting the KJB into human DNA, or could a non-KJB god-entity or even a non-god entity theoretically do so as well?
“In fairness, I am open to people framing equally implausible scenarios that would make me question my faith.”
What if there were significant and abundant parallels between the life of Jesus and the life of another world-historic figure? And what if the parallels taken together could be calculated to have a one in a trillion probability of occurring randomly? Could this possibly be evidence that the life of Jesus was a literary creation modeled on the life of this world-historic figure? Or, contrarily, could it be evidence that the life of this world-historic figure was a literary creation modeled on the life of Jesus?
Absolutely. There is plenty of evidence for the conclusion that there isn’t a God, or that Jesus is not who Christians believe. But that doesn’t mean I find the evidence more persuasive than the other evidence I have for the opposite conclusion.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that these literary parallels between the life of Jesus and the life of another world-historic figure exist, and assuming that the probability of them being a mere coincidence is one in a trillion, we might conclude that Jesus was in fact a literary creation, like Hercules or Odysseus.
What evidence do you have that is more compelling than that but leads you to the opposite conclusion, that Jesus existed in the real world, not just on paper and in people’s minds.
I’m not going to get into my reasons for believing in Jesus, in the 95th or so comment of a blog post. I’ll do that as a separate post sometime in the future. That’s obviously a huge topic. Right now I’m talking about the existence of God per se.
I’m looking to forward to hearing what it was that converted you to Jesus. I’m personally agnostic and tend to agree more with theists than atheists. I used to agree more with the atheists and then when I became an acap it convinced me they must be wrong. Sometimes I feel like a minarchist who has yet to find the literature of the ancaps when it comes to religion. It does tend to seem that most of the people I respect tend to be atheists or followers of Jesus which bothers me because I disagree with both positions. I might be an atheist if communism produced more prosperity than capitalism but I can’t see how it makes sense to say there is no God when we see how complex life is and how it would function best under the conditions of freedom. I’ve never been convinced of Jesus being the son of God either and I find it hard to believe that unless I’m convinced this is true and believe it in my heart that I am damned for eternity. I mean it isn’t like I don’t want to be convinced, especially if my soul is on the line, but I can’t just accept it on faith. I find it hard to believe that God would damn all those who don’t find the right religion whether they are good or not.
Anyway, I look forward to hearing your story and hopefully it can lead me to solving a problem I feel like there is no solution to at this point in my life. No pressure though, its just our souls on the line.
Dan – this sentiment of yours is incredible to me: “I might be an atheist if communism produced more prosperity than capitalism but I can’t see how it makes sense to say there is no God when we see how complex life is and how it would function best under the conditions of freedom.”
How can you, recognizing there is spontaneous order in human society, just dismiss the idea of spontaneous order in the universe. Why must you hypothesize a whole new metaphysical category and an “uncaused cause” to explain order and complexity in one system when you understand how these things emerge and evolve spontaneously in another?
What I mean is that if a guy like Mubarak was out there slaughtering people and that led to economic prosperity I would question the existence of a God. The fact that when we are good and peaceful things spontaneously work out and when we are evil and fighting it leads to misery leads me to believe in some higher power. I don’t think it is happen stance that spontaneous order rewards peace and punishes violence. Now if Hitler brought economic prosperity to all except the ones he was killing then I would question how could a God create a world that rewards such evil.
Also, I don’t really understand atheists. If they are right who cares. Why do they need to convince me of this? I understand why religious people try to convince me. They feel like they are trying to save my soul. What are atheists trying to save me from. I mean if religion tends to lead to healthier or happier lives then why do atheists try to bring this view down. Do they really believe the world would be a better place if people didn’t believe in any afterlife?
I don’t see why peace and love would be more characteristic of a world with a God than without. I’m not sure you’ve sufficiently explained that.
What Mubarak does represent is design and control – just as a God would. If you understand how life can go on peacefully without Mubarak you should be able to understand how life can go on peacefully without God. That’s not an argument against job – it’s just to say “I would have thought people who note spontaneous order and harmony in social life wouldn’t need to invoke a controlling or designing entity for the same order and harmony in the universe”.
As for atheists convincing you… I imagine it’s because people have an innate sense that we should pursue truth. Why don’t you want me to burn in hell? Because you think it’s bad to suffer. Why don’t atheists want you to believe in God? Because they think it’s bad to be ignorant. That sounds reasonable to me.
On top of that, the mindset that can embrace God in the midst of a complete lack of justifiable reason to believe in God seems like a dangerous sort of mind. In pre-modern times if you believed in God there was no particular reason to be concerned. It was a pretty good explanation of things, given the options. Today, I think the fundamental point is that atheists get concerned about credulity.
That’s not the only reason, of course. I’m not saying theists are dangerous people. But it is reasonable for atheists to be concerned when they see a group of people that is overly credulous.
*It’s not an argument against God
… not sure what’s with my typing today.
I’m not claiming my reasons prove there is a God. I expressed one of the reasons that I believe in a God. It isn’t important for me to convince others of my spiritual beliefs, unless I did believe in the bible because I would then have reason to fear for their soul. As of right now I do believe in God but don’t believe anybody has proven to me the one true religion. I’m perfectly willing to be convinced to become an atheist or a Christian or whatever if I thought the argument was true. I haven’t been convinced of either side at this point but do believe there is more to having these wonderful experiences and thoughts to only have them gone forever when you die.
Would it make you feel better if I said I felt that death was an empty void? I’m just not sure how my agnostic view presents you any problems. I could understand if my views required some great crusade to force people to abandon their beliefs in lieu of becoming agnostic how that could be threatening. I just don’t get how my view combined with my live and let live ways need to be corrected by atheists. Do you have some proof that God doesn’t exist or are you just not satisfied with why I’m agnostic? Should I have better reasons for holding my spiritual beliefs that conform to some set of standards that I must follow or can I just be me and you be you?
Dan – I’m clearly not understanding where you’re coming from. How are you an agnostic that believes in God?
I’m also confused on why you think I’m an atheist – I’m not. I’m an agnostic.
And I thought we were just conversing about a tough and interesting problem. In any situation like that I’m interested in telling people about what I think and convincing them. I’ll take being wrong and being convinced by others too – that’s fine. That’s progress. But everyone comes at a discussion like this thinking that they’re right (otherwise why would they hold their views?) and interested in convincing others.
Nobody is trying to make you be anything other than what you are – they’re just having a conversation about tough questions and trying to convince people of certain things.
I guess agnostic isn’t a very good description for me these days but it is a better description for me than atheist or theist. The reason I use the term agnostic is because I don’t know how you could prove or disprove the existence of a God but my belief is that there is a God. I understand that frustrates agnostics and atheists alike but that is my view at this moment. This is why I’m still looking for answers. If I ever come to the view that it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove or disprove the existence of God then I’ll stop looking for answers. At this point though I’m still open to hearing what people of religion have to say on the matter. If the atheists are right then it doesn’t matter anyway and I don’t see what I have to gain from their insights.
I also didn’t have any idea if you were atheist or whatever else. I wasn’t really curious. I was commenting that I was looking forward to Dr. Murphy’s story on his conversion and giving a short synopsis of where I’m at because he might be able to relate and give some guidance when he discusses the matter. I’m looking for answers and I’m open to hearing what he has to say. I wasn’t trying to convince anybody of anything so when you respond by challenging my views its annoying. It should have been clear from my first post that I wasn’t claiming to have answers but looking for them.
“Nobody is trying to make you be anything other than what you are – they’re just having a conversation about tough questions and trying to convince people of certain things.”
What exactly did you write to me that was supposed to convince me of anything? It seemed more that you didn’t like how my views of the world lead me to believe that it is more likely there is a God than not. I wasn’t looking for advice on how to be a better agnostic. If you got some information that can prove to me that searching for God is a waste of my time then I’m all ears. Otherwise I’m more interested in what Dr. Murphy or anyone else who feels they have found the answer has to say on the matter.
Dan, you said something I considered problematic and I said as much. If you’re that concerned about this sort of interaction, you should write Bob a private email, not write on a blog. I wasn’t being mean about anything – just sharing my thoughts with you. How should I know you’re not interested when you continue to respond?
re: “If you got some information that can prove to me that searching for God is a waste of my time then I’m all ears”
Same to you. I doubt either of us will come across that sort of information. The search continues!
The Krugman-Murphy debate oughta be a double-feature with a Dawkins-Comfort debate:
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/3626
Comfort could tag-team you if he’s having trouble.
What happens when Dawkins asks me, “Don’t you think the bananas are served by monkeys eating them and pooping them out in different spots in the jungle?”
I don’t think Comfort will like my answer.
Gene, you are right that I am was being sloppy with the difference between “scientific evidence” and “evidence”; I have agreed with Daniel that that’s what I was doing.
In my defense, there are plenty of anti-ID people who say that science shows there is no evidence for God, or (if they’re more careful) we have yet to see any scientific evidence of God, or science has no need to invoke God to explain the universe.
The average person is going to conclude that a bunch of open-minded smart people looked out at the world, and didn’t see anything that made them think God existed.
So I hope I’ve shown that that’s not really what’s going on at all.
But you’re right, I should have been more precise in my wording.
Incidentally Gene, I am not conceding your view of what “science” is. I am just acknowledging that I haven’t thought carefully about the boundary and then consistently used that definition in my arguments above.
For example, Gene, do you think forensics is a science? I mean, if somebody says he thinks Joe Smith is the killer, how in the world could that be scientific? What general law can we deduce from the (possibly correct statement about history) that Joe Smith killed Bill Jones?
Sorry, I didn’t see a reply button up above.
You wrote:
“I’m not going to get into my reasons for believing in Jesus, in the 95th or so comment of a blog post. I’ll do that as a separate post sometime in the future. That’s obviously a huge topic. Right now I’m talking about the existence of God per se.”
OK, but the god you refer to is the god described in the KJB, and if Jesus was a literary creation that would tend to imply that his “father” was as well.
Are you waiting to lay down your trump card? It seems like you have the historical figure upon whom Jesus is allegedly based up your sleeve, and you’re waiting for me to say the wrong thing and then BAM lay it on me. “Surprise! Jesus is patterned after Mel Brooks.”
“Are you waiting to lay down your trump card?”
There is no single trump card, but there is a body of evidence that must be rationally accounted for.
“It seems like you have the historical figure upon whom Jesus is allegedly based up your sleeve, and you’re waiting for me to say the wrong thing and then BAM lay it on me. “Surprise! Jesus is patterned after Mel Brooks.””
Hehe, not exactly. It’s just that, if you think a hidden message in human DNA would be compelling but a hidden message in the KJB itself would not, that contradiction would have to be addressed before it would make sense to present the actual argument.
I strikes me that if Gene is right, then it would not be a scientific statement to say that human beings evolved from other species or that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor, etc., as these statements refer to historical events rather than universal laws.