Re: Intelligent Design: who designed the designer?
I found that video here:
http://apolojet.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/who-designed-the-designer/
“if you dropped into South Dakota and saw Mt Rushmore, for instance, you might know nothing about its origins, about the engineers and the sculptors that created it, but you could tell it was designed by its effects, by the specific patterns and complexity that it exhibits, this is how we always detect design. We don’t see design by peering into intelligent agents directly, we see the activities of intelligent agency by its effects, and then we infer to an intelligent cause. And so we can tell if something is designed, whether it’s a human artifact, or, in biology, without knowing where the designer himself or herself came from, that’s a secondary question. We can detect the activities of an intelligence whether we have any answer for the secondary question of the origin of the designer.”
The problem with this reasoning is that in every example of known design that Intelligent Design advocates ever give is always something that we conclude design due to direct experience of humans designing it. Thus we actually infer design because we know characteristics about the designer. For instance someone who wasn’t aware that Mt Rushmore existed, but did know that humans build statues, upon seeing Mt Rushmore would conclude, due primarily to the fact that Mt Rushmore is a likeness of 4 human heads, and the fact that the person would know that humans build statues of human likenesses, that Mt Rushmore was designed by a human. Even without knowledge of the fact that humans build statues a likely inference from the fact that the mountain is a likeness of 4 human heads would be that the mountain was shaped by humans.
Essentially Mt Rushmore’s obvious nature as a designed thing comes more from its similarity to not only human heads in general but 4 specific human heads that also happen to share the fact that they were important United States historical figures in common with one another. The complexity is actually a red herring. Anyone who tries to argue that Mt Rushmore is any more complex than any other mountain side is fooling themselves. If anything complexity had to be removed to make the shapes recognizably what they were intended to be. One has to wonder what standard of judgement is being employed here to assert that Mt Rushmore is more complex than, say, Mt St. Helen, or Mauna Kea. Not to mention the fact that not everything we know that humans design is complex. Sometimes the evidence for design is subtle, but unrelated to the appearance of complexity, for instance tool marks are often pointed to when identifying ancient adz’s. Very simple ax like tools from the stone age. In our every day familiarity with the world we live in we would all recognize pencils as something designed, though I don’t know anyone who would consider a pencil complex.
And then the famous watchmaker argument. Yes if a stumbled across a watch on a beach I would immediately infer design. Why? Because I know that humans design watches. Or more generally I know that humans build machines and electronics, which includes watches. If I somehow found myself on a distant planet that I knew that no human before me had ever visited and found it devoid of life but covered in the ruins of buildings and machines I would know that the buildings and machines were designed, why? Not because of the complexity, but because I have experience of intelligent entities designing and building machines and structures. Again I would not be inferring design from the effects so much as my experience a similar type of designer. In that instance humans would be the similar type of designer. We could then use the ruins and the machines to discover more about the differences between us and whatever left them, much the way we do here on earth in the field of archeology.
The problem is that while I have direct experience with known intelligent entities designing certain classes of objects, like machines, circuits, sculptures, works of art which are recognizable as such to me and other humans, etc. I have no direct experience of anything that could design a universe. Thus I wouldn’t be able to infer design or anything about a designer from properties of the universe alone.
Of course the assumption that complexity implies design is flawed and I could and probably will dedicated an entire entry to that point alone. Suffice it here just to say that complexity by itself is insufficient to prove or even imply design. Unless we assume some things about a designer (for instance existence) there’s no way to point to anything not known to have been designed by man and prove design. And to make the proof stick you would naturally have to convince everyone to accept the assumption of the existence of the designer in the first place.
Tags: argument from complexity, complexity, design, design inference, Intelligent Design, who designed the designer
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January 10, 2010 at 12:03 am
When you don’t believe in God it is infinitely more difficult to understand, understanding is granted by him. Having no relationship with God eliminates the concepts of Christianity, one being faith. Not believing in intelligent design does not mean God is not in control and is not the creator. God is the Alpha and the Omega (the beginning and the end) which renders the question “who created the creator” invalid.
Science is a process of reverse engineering, it is impossible for humans to reveal all of creations secrets. As superiorly intelligent one believes himself to be, he does not have the capacity to even fathom the intellect of the creator. We are limited as humans, our knowledge is given us by him and through faith we accept our limitations.
January 10, 2010 at 12:38 pm
You are of course assuming that a god exists to grant understanding and, I might add arrogantly assuming that the understanding you believe you have comes from this god instead of coming from an internal desire to believe or feel like you understand. Believing or not believing any specific thing means nothing more than one is convinced or unconvinced. What we believe or don’t believe has no bearing or effect on what is real. My goal for myself is to be reasonably sure before I will believe something that it corresponds as closely as possible to reality. I can only do this by ensuring that what I believe is not based in any significant way on anything subjective, or a personal desire for something to be real.
Also if you actually read my post you would see that nothing about it served as a defense of the “who created the creator?” question but was instead a response to the person in the video’s reasoning for why the question is invalid which was flawed for reasons completely unrelated to whether or not the original question is a good one or a bad one.
The assertion that god is anything at all at this point is nothing more than an assertion as no one can prove anything they claim about the nature or character of any deity that they happen to believe in without reference to faith. This more than anything else renders the “who created the creator” question if not “invalid” at least pointless.
Science is a method of discovery more than a process of reverse engineering. Scientists aren’t necessarily taking things apart to discover how they were put together so much as they are exploring relationships between things, seeking out evidence of things, etc. The very use of the phrase “reveal all of creations secrets” is dishonestly framing the discussion. There is no evidence that the universe or life was created thus referring to the universe of life as creation is a little premature. Existence is evidence of existence, at best evidence of cause, but even necessarily that. Creation is an intended intelligent cause, which existence in and of itself does not suggest.
But I can completely agree that we are limited as humans. However our knowledge is only given to us by any god entity if such an entity exists, a claim for which no proof or even compelling unequivocal evidence is ever given. And again you are arrogantly assuming that what knowledge you feel you have comes from this god entity which you believe in, ignoring the possibility that the knowledge you feel you have is not real knowledge and does not primarily have any external source.
It isn’t through faith that I accept human limitations, it’s through awareness of the obvious fact that they exist coupled with an understanding of essentially what they really mean and consequences of that for what we can learn about ourselves and the world we inhabit.
In fact it is essentially this awareness of our limitations, for instance the fact that the human brain is not capable of knowing whether or not something we believe is actually true in reality, that makes me the atheist I am.
January 10, 2010 at 11:54 pm
The title of your post indicated that the question was posed and I offered my explanation. I understood that you were offering a rebuttal to the gentlemen’s statement in the video explaining why intelligent design stands.
When I accepted Christ as my savior, an unexplainable transformation began, here is a humble attempt though; it was like the Holy Spirit filled me up with a resonating abundance of truth, love, peace and humility to every depth of my being. The experience was so overwhelming it brought me to slobbering tears with a great welling of gratitude that was beyond enormous, beyond a verbal description, I was in fact grateful to be but a filthy rag at his feet. He warned not to pine for death but to live each day with purpose, live life as he will not come but prepare for it.
What you mistake arrogance for is conviction that God indeed exists, with a profound purpose.
Other conversions took place within me as well and I’m sure these divine encounters uniquely affect people differently, but the information I captured from that first instance was undoubted confirmation that my decision was the correct one. Things become even more clear when you witness him working within your life.
So if you ask a Christian, evidence of God exists all around in the extreme complexity or simplistic beauty of the design and how everything has an implicit relationship to each other. The most important reason why this evidence is not revealed more blatantly as evolutionists need, is because irrefutable evidence would negate free will.
January 11, 2010 at 7:44 am
And I have no doubt whatsoever that that is how you would describe what your conversion experience felt like to you. What’s questionable is whether or not that the feelings and the description of them are an accurate representation of what actually happened.
Also it’s not a mistake, the conviction is an assumption that somehow a limited human such as yourself understands some inkling of the mind of some infinite deity despite the fact that many other people feel the same certainty the majority of whom would think you had it all wrong, whilst arrogantly believing with certainty that they were the ones who had it right. It’s the implicit denial of someone else’s perspective in the face of one’s own certainty that strikes me, not mistakenly, as arrogance.
Also people change in profound ways all throughout their lives. There are several instances of similar change for reasons unrelated to conversion to any religion. For the most part most changes are subtle. However certain events which effect every aspect of one’s life will bring about rapid change. A not exhaustive list of such events includes such events as:
Moving out of the parent’s house for the first time;
Going to college;
Falling in love;
Joining the military;
Becoming addicted to drugs;
Going to prison;
Getting married;
Having children;
Starting a new carreer;
etc.
What these events, and religion, all have in common, is that they will impact many aspects of a person’s life and how they perceive the world around them. This, in turn, results in rapid changes in behavior, understanding, perception, etc.
Don’t misunderstand, though, this isn’t to say that your explanation is not correct, I’m merely explaining why no one’s, not even my own, personal experience of something is ever going to be convincing on its own. Not unless it were coupled with direct nonequivocal evidence that the asserted causative factor is actually the causative factor.
It strikes me, though, that because of the simple fact that similar conversion feelings are described in every religion, and you don’t believe every religion is correct I’m sure, that the assumption of the cause of the conversion experience narrative is flawed.
Is it the result of a devine encounter? There are several reasons to doubt that it is, not least of which is lack of evidence of the existence of something devine to encounter.
Obviously to a christian evidence of god is everywhere, this primarily due to the fact that a christians neural networks will have arranged themselves around the concept that god is in everything, is the cause of everything, is omnipresent, etc. Part of the idea is to get it to the point where everything has one thinking about god. Not saying that it was planned that way, but I’m sure it was quickly observed that that makes for strong believers. We observe a similar phenomenon in addiction. Neurons that fire together wire together, so someone who has been a smoker all their lives has probably done everything with a cigarette, which means that when they try to quit all of these activities that they’re used to doing while smoking will trigger the desire to smoke.
And as I said in the original post I intend to go in more depth into the fallacy of equating complexity with design in another entry soon.
As for free will I would love a definition of it. What is “free will”?
January 11, 2010 at 12:56 pm
More people believe in God than do not. I have proof that an intelligent designer (God) exists via experience that was granted because I actively and earnestly pursued it. It therefore is unequivocal evidence. My failure, or more accurate, inability to translate that into tangible proof to you is the actual issue.
If you are just in considering this arrogance, then you also admit your arrogance, in fact everyone who is on either side of this fence would also be considered arrogant, the opposition has no proof their assumptions are correct.
The things you mention having a profound impact on one’s life do indeed but is not comparable on any level to the fundamental, extraordinary experience I tried to explain. The cool part regarding my impetus is not from a superiority point of view with satisfaction for winning an argument but wanting what I have for you. Motivation is important to detect and consider, it should always weigh heavily with every discussion. I would like you and everybody else to have a life insurance policy from Jesus Christ Mutual where all the premiums are paid. It has no benefit to me whether you believe or disbelieve, the most effect it has on me is my heart breaks for God not gaining that soul into the fold, or for your loved ones that were granted everlasting life and you not.
Regarding people of other religions and their transformative experiences, I am not an authority and have not studied organized religion intensely, nor am I a proponent. My understanding is that within all the religions of the world lies the total truth and that each religion may contain various segments of that same truth.
The belief that God is everywhere is primarily due to the fact that he is omnipresent, including knowledge of what’s in your heart. His hand is in everything because he created it, so everywhere you look you see God as well see him work within your life, even if you are a nonbeliever. All the times you think, “well that was weird”, or “that was amazing”, it was not coincidence.
Because of his grace and because he is such a loving God he did not force us to love or follow him, he gave us a choice and granted us free will. What good can be gained if someone has no other choice but to love you?
There are numerous examples of code and pattern in our universe; they do not appear without an intelligent designer.
January 11, 2010 at 3:39 pm
If appeals to popularity or majority were relevant no one today who be anything but geocentrists. The work of Copernicus would never have been able to gain majority support if majority support were the most important considerations in determining what’s real. You have subjective evidence and that’s all that a god exists, subjective evidence, however, is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as a valid subjective proof of anything objectively true.
Actually my position is not based on an assumption that I am right, which makes my position not an arrogant one. I’m not the one assuming that I know anything specific about the universe, my position is based on what has consistently been established by observation and is supported by logic. I’m perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that the universe itself is inconsistent and therefore everything I know is wrong, however observation so far does not support that possibility. I’m not the one claiming to know that a god exists and what that god thinks or wants contrary to what the majority of other people who believe that a god exists might believe that that god thinks or wants.
Also nothing about anything you said is in any way actually more profound than any of the life changing examples I listed. The impacts are expressed different and that’s all. And the mildly amusing part regarding your impetus is that again you are arrogantly assuming that you know something you can’t prove objectively, arrogantly assuming that I cannot possibly be right to doubt you even though you admit that there is an issue in your inability to translate what you feel is proof because you feel certain that it’s true into something tangible. And yet you seem somehow to think that you want something for me that I need or should need or want. Which is something not established by any rational argument to date either. I also tend to think you’re not going deep enough into your own motivations when you assert that it has no benefit for you whether I believe or disbelieve. In fact it would be a huge psychological benefit for you to convert me. You could come away from the experience having provided for yourself further confirmation of your correctness. Ironically you’ll find a way to do the same thing in failing to convert me.
Your view of other religions is an example of what I was talking about, though, in which your understanding of god feels certainly correct to you, however is in disagreement with the majority of other people who feel equally certain that they understand god. If there is contradiction someone has to be wrong. And if someone has to be wrong but everyone feels certain it’s not them it should be obvious that certainty by itself is insufficient to establish real world correctness.
In reality the belief that god is omnipresent is nothing more than an assertion with no evidence which serves as the obvious basis for the neural networks that form and associate god with everything and making it easy for a believer to see proof of god in everything. As for knowledge of what is in my heart. That phrase comes from a time when people believed that the heart was the seat of consciousness which is obviously not true. An omniscient entity should have known that. My heart is a muscle that pumps blood it doesn’t hold thoughts, memories, feelings, intentions, etc. The only support for the assertion that in all instances when I think, “well that was weird”, or “that was amazing” there is no coincidence is simply an assumption that there is no coincidence or that you know the cause. However it’s far more likely that you only see god as a cause there because neurons that fire together wire together and you’ve gotten used to seeing god as the cause. Not that it can’t be, but in the lack of evidence establishing a deity as the actual causal factor there’s no reason to believe that it is, and in the lack of evidence of even the existence of a deity to be considered a causal factor it does seem unlikely.
It is possible that it is because of “grace” and love that a god does not force us to love or follow him, but that doesn’t make sense to me. Because of grace or love he won’t explicitly force us, however he will try blackmail or extortion? At least according to the majority of people who believe in a deity. Likewise the assertion that “god doesn’t want robots” fails because apparently god does want robots. He will only bring to him those who willingly chose to be robots, and discard all those who don’t. Even under the assumption that hell is not a lake of fire and the “torment” implied comes only from being separated from god, if there is torment how can it be said that god is loving for making one endure it for eternity? Also why force separation for decisions made before sufficient information was available to make a truly informed decision? I don’t understand why his love requires faith and a decision made before death and any decision made after death is irreversible.
There are numerous examples of pattern in our universe, the assumption of codes requires an assumption of an intention behind patterns. DNA is not a code. That’s what we call it because it makes it easy for us to understand it because we make codes. DNA is more of a protein template. Thinking of DNA in this way has the benefit of being more accurate and less misleading. Codes do require an intelligent cause, patterns do not. So the question becomes are there any non man made codes in the universe? Right now as far as anyone can determine there are not.
January 12, 2010 at 7:06 pm
You have lack of evidence, I do not. My inability to give you tangible proof has been constructed to prevent violation of your faith and your free will.
I have imparted an honest, accurate account of something I know to be true, you have easily explained it away as assertions, assumptions, arrogance, neural transmissions and cause. Do you not suffer from self constructed barriers and constrictions to the carnal world, relying too heavily on evidence you can only see?
There is a carnal realm and a spiritual realm, the spirit has a heart that contains feeling, intentions, motives etc. The carnal flesh holds a muscle that pumps blood also called the heart.
One may choose to view what God has set in place as something negative like extortion, it never dawned on me to view it as such, I viewed it as a gift. God said we may come to him out of love or come to him out of fear as he is the only one who can obliterate your soul; knowing he was a just God abolished further thought. Of his free will he gave us two choices, one allowing Satan to work within us or for God to work within us, thus choosing to follow good or evil. Satan gathers followers by granting reward of power on earth making it very attractive for those relishing instant gratification. He also has an arsenal of things he uses against us, causing souls to be lost. God grants you everlasting life, only by accepting Christ as your savior, believing he died on the cross for your sins, and was resurected. I would be more inclined to view Satan’s activities and motives more inline with extortion and blackmail.
Accepting Christ (the only thing required) and doing your best to fight evil does not constitute “drones” or “robots”.
In God’s master plan and according to events that he had written to forewarn us, every human has the opportunity to choose light over dark; those that refuse light will be condemned as he cleanses the earth from the existence of evil.
Genetic code is code as DNA is code (mechanisms to hold information) and is the genetic instruction for all living organisms. DNA binds to and interacts with protein but is infinitely more complex than simply a protein template.
Patterns are evident all over the universe, too complex to happen randomly or by chance.
January 13, 2010 at 10:03 am
The assumption behind your first statement being that being able to prove something robs others of free will. Which is ridiculous. Not to mention “free will” is an ill defined concept which makes talking about it for the purpose of establishing any kind of rigorous framework not a good idea until or unless a rigorous definition of free will is established. Also, of course I lack evidence, and of course you don’t think you lack evidence. On the other hand I have probably been provided the same evidence that you have been provided, with the difference being a recognition that the evidence is not unequivocal, and thus does not establish the reality of a god.
Honesty and what is true are actually not as closely related as you might think. I don’t doubt your honesty, but I do doubt your accuracy. A person can tell the truth and be wrong, afterall. All honesty tells me or suggests is that you believe what you’re saying, which has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not you’re telling the truth exactly, by which I mean whether or not what you’re telling me is true in reality. I haven’t explained it away as assertions, it has been assertions. Assertions are statements, any statement, you made statements. Where you tried to support your statements with facts I explained why the attempted support was unconvincing, but for the most part your supporting facts were also just statements, and not established facts. By the way, for clarification, even established facts standing alone without the information that establishes them as factual are assertions. I also haven’t used neuroscience to explain anything away, only to explain why appeals to beliefs are unconvincing. It is just a simple fact, which I could explain in detail, that the brain neither knows or cares whether or not the concepts contained in its neural networks as true are true in reality or not. You can’t believe anything you don’t think is true, that’s just how the brain functions. But believing something is true has no bearing on whether or not that something actually is true. This is, obviously, why people are sometimes wrong.
As for the self constructed barriers thing, the question can easily be turned on you, do you not suffer from self constructed barriers and constrictions to the so-called spiritual world, relying too heavily on evidence you felt?
The existence of a carnal realm and a spiritual realm is another example of assertion. What, exactly, is a “spiritual realm” and how do you know one exists? What are “spirits” and how do you know they exist? How do you know that the “spirit” has a heart and that the heart in “spirits” contain thoughts and motives and intentions?
Of course it never occurred to you to view god as an extortionist, however it’s interesting to me that you are willing to embrace the idea. As you said god doesn’t care if we come to him out of love or fear. Also I don’t see how it’s much justice if it’s arbitrary, and if there is no objective standard for judgement completely distinct from what god himself decides is justice, then it is arbitrary. Another example of assertion here is that god is just or that anything he does is justice or out of love.
I don’t see how free will restricted to only two choices is very free, especially in light of one choice coming with a positive consequence and the other coming with a negative consequence and god intentionally not giving people sufficient information to chose either with certainty. But maybe a rigorous definition of free will would clarify that.
Also the idea that the only two options are let satan work in your life or let god work in your life is another example of an assertion. Just as it isn’t proven that god exists it’s equally unproven that satan exists. It would also seem to be something of a false dichotomy to assert that the only options are satan and god. Again it could be true, however in the absence of any unequivocal evidence or proof and in light of its structure matching the false dichotomy fallacy so perfectly, I am compelled to conclude that the argument is fallacious. Again for the sake of clarity, that doesn’t mean the conclusion is false, only that the argument is unconvincing.
I don’t understand why an all powerful entity has to establish such a convoluted process for us if his ultimate goal really were to save as many souls as possible, nor do I understand what we need to be saved from except possibly his own mistakes. Unless Satan is not a created entity, that is. Or unless god intentionally created satan, in which case there is no mistake I guess. And this is, of course, all assuming for the sake of argument, that a god and a satan exist in the first place. In the absence of that assumption the story seems even more convoluted. Also telling people that they only get a certain reward if they do a specific thing, or that they should do a specific thing if they don’t want to receive a specific punishment is bribery and extortion respectively. Thus god saying believe in me and go to heaven is bribery, and god saying if you don’t believe in me you will go to hell for eternity is extortion. Whatever satan’s activities, god’s activities are equally in line with extortion.
No “accepting christ” does not constitute being a drone or a robot, but never being allowed to question or disagree with god does.
How convenient that he cleanses the earth of the existence of evil, where did evil come from I wonder if god created the universe? The free will assertion as the source of evil is problematic because, for one thing, the tree of knowledge of good and evil would seem to suggest that evil already existed, and that god had knowledge of it though he created adam and then eve without that knowledge. Of course this is, again, in addition to the fact that “free will” as a concept is ill defined thus we can’t really reason out the consequences of it. If god created the universe, the entire universe, where did evil come from? If god created evil why did he create evil? And more importantly if god created evil then how is it just that he destroys souls that he also created to cleanse the earth of evil? Of course lots of people like to make the “might is right” appeal. God created all of us he can do whatever he wants to us and it’s right.
Genetic code is a designation, and a handy way for us to understand what genes and DNA do, again, though, you’re making the mistake of assuming that a handy convention for us says anything about reality. DNA is not a code because true codes are made intentionally. Of course you believe that DNA was made intentionally but can you prove that without appealing to the assumption that DNA is a code? The reason I ask is because DNA is only a code if you can prove that DNA was made intentionally. By appealing to “codes” in nature you’re begging the question, implicitly though. In reality you can only prove that something a code in nature by proving that it was intentionally arranged. For that reason proving that something intentionally arranged something in nature by pointing to something and referring to it by a term that implies or requires that it was intentionally arranged is begging the question. This is what creationists and intelligent design advocates attempt to do when they point to DNA and say it is a code. DNA is referred to as a code not because it is a code, but because it, like everything in the universe, contains information. And because humans like to anthropomorphise, it’s appealing to say that the information is encoded in it.
Fundamentally DNA is a string of nucleotides, I won’t go into great detail, but I will say that the string of nucleotides gets converted into sets of shorter RNA strings of nucleotides which are bound to by ribosomes which attach tRNA bound to amino acids to specific matching parts of the RNA strand, the ribosome then causes the matched amino acid to bind to the previously matched amino acids forming a peptide or polypeptide chain which, afterward, either folds, or is transported for assistance folding, into a protein. There are massive portions of un-transcribed DNA in almost all genomes. In many, like the human genome, that un-transcribed portion is the majority portion. There is also nothing which requires that every transcribed protein have a function.
And DNA is simply a protein template. DNA is not complex at all. DNA does not bind with anything, it isn’t even directly involved in protein transcription, it gets split and translated into an RNA strand, then reforms its double helix and waits in the nucleus. When a cell reproduces the DNA strands split and each side is copied from the simple fact that Adenine only binds chemically to Thymine, and vice versa and Guanine only binds chemically to Cytosine and vice versa. DNA strands are arranged into a double helix due to the strand’s chemical properties, and in the nuclei of I believe just about all eucaryotes the strands are wound tightly around proteins known as histone. DNA is not only not infinitely more complex than proteins, it’s far less complex than any given protein. It has fewer interactions than most proteins, and a smaller range of even possible interactions, though admittedly fewer components. However the majority of the components in a DNA strand do very little or nothing at all.
And yes patterns are evident all over the universe, many of which are complex, and while random chance is ruled out in most of these, the effects of gravitation, chemistry, mechanics, etc, are not random. And are sufficient alone to explain many of the complex patterns we observe in nature. Thus we see that nonrandom causes of complex patterns does not require one to leap immediately to divine intervention as a probable cause.
January 13, 2010 at 12:29 pm
You are trying to intellectually figure out something that is impossible, we do not contain the capacity to intellectualize God nor could we know his infinte wisdom, knowledge and reason. He has given what we need to know. Instead of pasting science pages, we may want to say that we agree to disagree, like many before us.
You have the unalienable right to be the master of your own universe, but you will never split time. In the end, if you are right then we both receive the same fate.
January 13, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Actually I’m merely asking questions which are answered in different ways by different people but whose answers lack accompanying evidence. Instead the answers tend to serve as means of reconciling the facts in question with specific beliefs about the character of their god. I’m not trying to intellectualize anything, though. The question of whether or not a god exists is actually a nonissue for me unless someone else decides to try to convince me. At which point I’m interested in the arguments but I will point out any flaws as I see them. By pointing out flaws I’m explaining why the argument is unconvincing.
Again though, you’ve served up another example of making an assertion. We don’t know, for instance, that even if a god existed that he is “wise” we also couldn’t even begin to judge whether or not his wisdom, assuming he possess any, is “infinite”. We wouldn’t be able to know whether or not such an entity really possessed “infinite” knowledge either. In fact it isn’t necessary for anything to be able to possess infinite knowledge to know everything that can be known about our universe. And more to the point it’s an assertion devoid of any supporting evidence that a god has given us any knowledge at all, much less all that we need for…something.
I’m perfectly willing to agree to disagree, but by explaining why I disagree I’m trying to give you the foundation for a better argument in the future. That is if you took the time to understand why I disagree.
Actually no one is the master of any universe. You can assert that I have an inalienable right to be the master of my own universe but that won’t make it real. I do not control the universe I live in, I do not control the people I share my existence with, as a result I do not control the majority of aspects that influence my circumstances. But I do have some much larger degree of control over myself. I may not control my involuntary functions, but I do control my voluntary ones. Thus I don’t concern myself with having control or being in control of a given circumstance, I can only control my reactions, myself (to some extent), and I can manipulate and position things in my vicinity. This can be handy in creating for ourselves the illusion of control, it’s not an illusion I crave. In the end, since I am not claiming anything specific about the end I can neither be right nor wrong.
January 19, 2010 at 9:01 am
May I add a quote from Ayn Rand:
“God… a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive.”
ED
January 19, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Thanks Ed, I am familiar with Ayn Rand. If only I had just said that in the first place.
January 20, 2010 at 9:13 am
And if you had that would have essentially made my point. The definition doesn’t in any way establish what god is, only what god isn’t. And what it would establish god as not being is conceivable. Doesn’t tell us anything at all, which is, essentially, why I, like Ayn Rand, am an atheist.