A Good Way to Respond to it:
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Preview For my Book Now Available on Amazon
Click the link and you'll be able to read the first ten pages of my book (Click the cover where it says "Click to Look Inside":
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Mapping the Fine-Tuning Argument: Why Intelligent Design Fails
No amount of complexity, specification, or information found in the universe could ever lead us to conclude that it was caused by a cosmic creator.
Why is that? If we found something like a tractor on another planet, we would conclude that it was created by an intelligence (wouldn't we?). So if we discover fine-tuning in the laws of nature, shouldn't we conclude that it was caused by God?
No. Because for every possible state of affairs we can think of (a universe with only hydrogen, a universe with only three atoms, etc.) we can also think of some peculiar spiritual being who would desire exactly that kind of universe to be created. A creator who wants a life-friendly universe is therefore just as improbable as the life-friendly universe he is called on to explain. In fact, he is more improbable, given the facts I've outlined here.
People bring up a lot of challenges to this argument. For example, isn't this just asking for "an explanation of the explanation"? No, it isn't. When you truly explain something you have to provide an explanation that is more likely than postulating simple chance to explain event X. If you do not, then lucky chance is a more likely cause of event X than is your explanation, and therefore, we cannot accept your explanation.
Another objection is the following: what if we found tractors on another planet? Would people like you refuse to attribute this to alien intelligence? Couldn't people like you just say,
"For every possible state of affairs we can think of (a planet with only hydrogen, a planet covered in silly string, etc.) we can also think of some peculiar alien being who would desire exactly that kind of planet. An alien who wants a tractor is therefore just as improbable as the tractor he is called on to explain."
No, I couldn't say that. And here's why: In this case, there is reason to think that alien with the desire to build a tractor would not be equally likely to the other nonsensical possibilities. And that reason is that we have tractors on earth, we use them for harvesting food (which we, and certainly every other living being, needs) and this provides us with some backround knowledge that increases the initial probability that creatures on other planets will do the same.
However, we can't really extrapolate like this to God (or any other spiritual being that might exist). Our backround knowledge about intelligent agents means essentially nothing in regard to God and other hypothetical spiritual beings. And that is because we are physical beings who evolved, while God is not a physical being and did not evolve. Our desires and our ways of thinking were determined by natural selection. God's (or other spiritual being's) thinking was determined by... Well, whatever it was determined by it couldn't have been a process of evolution, and we don't really have a clue what could determine it.
Why is that? If we found something like a tractor on another planet, we would conclude that it was created by an intelligence (wouldn't we?). So if we discover fine-tuning in the laws of nature, shouldn't we conclude that it was caused by God?
No. Because for every possible state of affairs we can think of (a universe with only hydrogen, a universe with only three atoms, etc.) we can also think of some peculiar spiritual being who would desire exactly that kind of universe to be created. A creator who wants a life-friendly universe is therefore just as improbable as the life-friendly universe he is called on to explain. In fact, he is more improbable, given the facts I've outlined here.
People bring up a lot of challenges to this argument. For example, isn't this just asking for "an explanation of the explanation"? No, it isn't. When you truly explain something you have to provide an explanation that is more likely than postulating simple chance to explain event X. If you do not, then lucky chance is a more likely cause of event X than is your explanation, and therefore, we cannot accept your explanation.
Another objection is the following: what if we found tractors on another planet? Would people like you refuse to attribute this to alien intelligence? Couldn't people like you just say,
"For every possible state of affairs we can think of (a planet with only hydrogen, a planet covered in silly string, etc.) we can also think of some peculiar alien being who would desire exactly that kind of planet. An alien who wants a tractor is therefore just as improbable as the tractor he is called on to explain."
No, I couldn't say that. And here's why: In this case, there is reason to think that alien with the desire to build a tractor would not be equally likely to the other nonsensical possibilities. And that reason is that we have tractors on earth, we use them for harvesting food (which we, and certainly every other living being, needs) and this provides us with some backround knowledge that increases the initial probability that creatures on other planets will do the same.
However, we can't really extrapolate like this to God (or any other spiritual being that might exist). Our backround knowledge about intelligent agents means essentially nothing in regard to God and other hypothetical spiritual beings. And that is because we are physical beings who evolved, while God is not a physical being and did not evolve. Our desires and our ways of thinking were determined by natural selection. God's (or other spiritual being's) thinking was determined by... Well, whatever it was determined by it couldn't have been a process of evolution, and we don't really have a clue what could determine it.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Review: The Christian Delusion
The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails
is the greatest critique of Christianity I've ever read. It is a sharp, thorough, and devastating case against the Christian religion. Not only that, but the book has contributions from several prominent atheists (Hector Avalos, Bob Price, Richard Carrier, John Loftus). This gives the book a very refreshing variety, as the contributors write on a wide-range of issues and look at them from different perspectives.
Part 1 is entitled "Why Faith Fails" and I take it to be a refutation of the common notion that one needs no rational reason to believe Christianity to be true, you can just "take it on faith." It is amply demonstrated that "faith" (in the sense that is used here) is completely unreliable, due to, (among other things) the fact that people "have faith" in a wide variety of religions, and since only one (at best) can be true, it makes one's own faith very likely to be false if the faith has not been rationally scrutinized.
Part 2 consists of three chapters which argue that the Bible is not God's word. Ed Babinski convincingly shows that the writers of the Hebrew Bible were given no divine revelation about the world in which they lived: their writings reflect belief in a flat earth covered by a dome (the 'firmament') which was the sky, or heavens. These beliefs are extremely and inexplicably strange if the Bible was inspired by God, but completely to be expected if the Bible was simply a product of its time and culture and not inspired by God. Paul Tobin, author of the website and book The Rejection of Pascal's Wager, explains a few of the contradictions and failed prophecies in the Bible, and I have a feeling that his approach would be very persuasive to fundamentalist Christians. Tobin proves his thesis far beyond a reasonable doubt, to the point that anyone unconvinced that the Bible contains inconsistencies after reading his chapter would have to be in deep, deep denial. Indeed, they would have to be in pathetic denial. John Loftus wraps up the section by discussing the "failure to communicate" of the Biblical God. The problem, as Loftus explains, is this: if God actually inspired the Bible, then why the hell is that Christians can't agree on the meaning of so many passages, and even on the basic messages of the biblical books themselves? Loftus' point could be forcefully illustrated by the following webpage, which lists passages in the Bible that condemn alcohol consumption followed by some that condone it. At the bottom of the page is a list of Christian websites that believe the Bible condemns drinking... Followed by a list of Christian websites that believe the Bible condones drinking! Well, which is it? And if God wrote it, why didn't he make his message clearer?
I don't have the time to review the other parts of the book in such detail, but the highlights of the rest of the book include: Hector Avalos' chapter arguing that atheism was not the cause of the holocaust or the mass murders of communist regimes and Richard Carrier's chapter on the Resurrection (which forcefully and convincingly argues that such an event, given the poor evidence we have, is totally irrational-- even illogical-- to believe).
To sum up, this book should be read by anyone who wants to understand the case against Christianity.
is the greatest critique of Christianity I've ever read. It is a sharp, thorough, and devastating case against the Christian religion. Not only that, but the book has contributions from several prominent atheists (Hector Avalos, Bob Price, Richard Carrier, John Loftus). This gives the book a very refreshing variety, as the contributors write on a wide-range of issues and look at them from different perspectives.Part 1 is entitled "Why Faith Fails" and I take it to be a refutation of the common notion that one needs no rational reason to believe Christianity to be true, you can just "take it on faith." It is amply demonstrated that "faith" (in the sense that is used here) is completely unreliable, due to, (among other things) the fact that people "have faith" in a wide variety of religions, and since only one (at best) can be true, it makes one's own faith very likely to be false if the faith has not been rationally scrutinized.
Part 2 consists of three chapters which argue that the Bible is not God's word. Ed Babinski convincingly shows that the writers of the Hebrew Bible were given no divine revelation about the world in which they lived: their writings reflect belief in a flat earth covered by a dome (the 'firmament') which was the sky, or heavens. These beliefs are extremely and inexplicably strange if the Bible was inspired by God, but completely to be expected if the Bible was simply a product of its time and culture and not inspired by God. Paul Tobin, author of the website and book The Rejection of Pascal's Wager, explains a few of the contradictions and failed prophecies in the Bible, and I have a feeling that his approach would be very persuasive to fundamentalist Christians. Tobin proves his thesis far beyond a reasonable doubt, to the point that anyone unconvinced that the Bible contains inconsistencies after reading his chapter would have to be in deep, deep denial. Indeed, they would have to be in pathetic denial. John Loftus wraps up the section by discussing the "failure to communicate" of the Biblical God. The problem, as Loftus explains, is this: if God actually inspired the Bible, then why the hell is that Christians can't agree on the meaning of so many passages, and even on the basic messages of the biblical books themselves? Loftus' point could be forcefully illustrated by the following webpage, which lists passages in the Bible that condemn alcohol consumption followed by some that condone it. At the bottom of the page is a list of Christian websites that believe the Bible condemns drinking... Followed by a list of Christian websites that believe the Bible condones drinking! Well, which is it? And if God wrote it, why didn't he make his message clearer?
I don't have the time to review the other parts of the book in such detail, but the highlights of the rest of the book include: Hector Avalos' chapter arguing that atheism was not the cause of the holocaust or the mass murders of communist regimes and Richard Carrier's chapter on the Resurrection (which forcefully and convincingly argues that such an event, given the poor evidence we have, is totally irrational-- even illogical-- to believe).
To sum up, this book should be read by anyone who wants to understand the case against Christianity.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Jesus' Resurrection Debate Done
Please vote for whomever you think argued their case more persuasively:
http://www.debate.org/debates/It-is-reasonable-to-believe-that-the-resurrection-of-Jesus-is-a-historical-event./1/
http://www.debate.org/debates/It-is-reasonable-to-believe-that-the-resurrection-of-Jesus-is-a-historical-event./1/
Monday, May 17, 2010
Mapping the Fine-Tuning Argument: The Puddle Analogy and Misc. Objections
Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
-Douglas Adams
The 'Puddle Analogy' seems to me to be simple, funny, and somewhat unoriginal. What is its relevance to fine-tuning? The puddle, of course, fits its hole so well not because anyone designed it that way, but because the water it is composed of adapts itself naturally to whatever shape the hole takes. The analogy that this would have with fine-tuning would be something like the following: 'Life is adapted to the universe, and not the other way around, so if the universe had been different life would be too. In other words, a different kind of universe would have yielded a different kind of life.' If that's what the analogy means, then it is simply a funny way of putting the 'Other Forms of Life Objection' that we have examined previously.
The Anthropic Principle
Some have responded to the fine-tuning by simply saying, 'Of course the universe has to be just so to allow our existence. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be here to comment on it.' The logic used here is undoubtable correct: the universe must be able to permit our existence, since if it wasn't we wouldn't exist, and we do exist. But people sometimes take this tautology and mistake it for an explanation of the fine-tuning. And it isn't: Your existence is a result of the fine-tuning. It is NOT a cause of the fine-tuning. Your existence in no way caused the universe to be fine-tuned, so it cannot explain the fine-tuning.
Circular Reasoning?
I've heard people say that the fine-tuning argument argues in a circle because the very word 'fine-tuning' implies that one has already established that some agent did tune the universe. But that can't be assumed in the argument because that is the very thing to be proved: whether there was a conscious agent who rigged the laws of physics. I think this is a weak objection. It's a semantic point masquerading as something more. The phenomenon we describe as 'fine-tuning' could be described in less anthropomorphic ways: it could be called 'improbable life-friendliness' instead, for example. Nevertheless, the phenomenon we refer to as 'fine-tuning' or 'improbable life-friendliness' still requires an explanation, and we want to find the best explanation available. The best explanation could be a designer, or a more fundamental law of nature, or a multiverse, etc. And we will begin comparing these explanations in later posts.
-Douglas Adams
The 'Puddle Analogy' seems to me to be simple, funny, and somewhat unoriginal. What is its relevance to fine-tuning? The puddle, of course, fits its hole so well not because anyone designed it that way, but because the water it is composed of adapts itself naturally to whatever shape the hole takes. The analogy that this would have with fine-tuning would be something like the following: 'Life is adapted to the universe, and not the other way around, so if the universe had been different life would be too. In other words, a different kind of universe would have yielded a different kind of life.' If that's what the analogy means, then it is simply a funny way of putting the 'Other Forms of Life Objection' that we have examined previously.
The Anthropic Principle
Some have responded to the fine-tuning by simply saying, 'Of course the universe has to be just so to allow our existence. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be here to comment on it.' The logic used here is undoubtable correct: the universe must be able to permit our existence, since if it wasn't we wouldn't exist, and we do exist. But people sometimes take this tautology and mistake it for an explanation of the fine-tuning. And it isn't: Your existence is a result of the fine-tuning. It is NOT a cause of the fine-tuning. Your existence in no way caused the universe to be fine-tuned, so it cannot explain the fine-tuning.
Circular Reasoning?
I've heard people say that the fine-tuning argument argues in a circle because the very word 'fine-tuning' implies that one has already established that some agent did tune the universe. But that can't be assumed in the argument because that is the very thing to be proved: whether there was a conscious agent who rigged the laws of physics. I think this is a weak objection. It's a semantic point masquerading as something more. The phenomenon we describe as 'fine-tuning' could be described in less anthropomorphic ways: it could be called 'improbable life-friendliness' instead, for example. Nevertheless, the phenomenon we refer to as 'fine-tuning' or 'improbable life-friendliness' still requires an explanation, and we want to find the best explanation available. The best explanation could be a designer, or a more fundamental law of nature, or a multiverse, etc. And we will begin comparing these explanations in later posts.
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