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What Hacker News says
- I think the context matters. The original context for all of this is whether from the perspective of the Christian, in thinking rationally for himself/herself, must have an argument for Christianity. I think the answer is no, just as the atheist, in thinking rationally for himself/herself, does not need an argument for atheism. I think the context of a generic discussion of Christianity is different - if we set the topic of our discussion to be whether Christianity is true or not, then yes, obviously we cannot just take its truth as a premise.
Maybe I'll draw an analogy - a foundational premise of science is that the past resembles the future. If we determine certain laws of nature based on past experimentation, that's not going to change in the future. Does the scientist, in thinking rationally for himself/herself, need to have an argument for this belief? I don't think so - the scientist can go on analyzing and understanding things scientifically through the scientific worldview without ever needing to construct an argument for this foundational premise. He/she is, however, on the lookout for contradictions - things or events that science can't explain or seem to defy science. I don't think I've described an irrational person here. Of course, if we have a discussion about the enterprise of science and its validity as a whole, then it may come to questioning this premise. But does a scientist in doing science have some kind of burden of proving this premise? I don't think so, just as the Christian in looking at the world through the Christian worldview does not have some kind of burden of proving Christianity.
>I present some of my own thinking below... What you've outlined here is actually firmly in the scope of natural theology, the project of establishing certain theological claims through human reason alone, though not all Christians agree that this project is successful. You may be interested in section 5 of chapter 2 of The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology that addresses the Gap problem, which is exactly what you've described, the problem of the gap between the conclusion of a cosmological argument, i.e. the existence of an ultimate cause, and the traditional omnipotent/omniscient/omnibenevolent God.
Christians who don't buy natural theology would instead just say that God and His most important properties are self-evident through spiritual experience. (Even Christians who buy it would agree, I think, that this purely rational project doesn't really get you to the fullness of Christianity, and that spiritual experience is key to having the fullest sense of who God is, the presence of Christ here today, our role in the world, etc.)
As to your last point about whether we're being tricked, it is true that we cannot have certainty about these claims. Uncertainty is part of the human condition. But that doesn't prevent us from having knowledge of things. I know that there's a floor beneath me, even though I don't have a certain proof of it (it's not necessarily true - I could be dreaming, there could be an evil demon feeding me false sensory data, etc.)
>But I do get interested whenever religion wants to be an exclusive arbiter of reality and what's right or wrong. And every time, I have found it to fall short of all its claims.
Well, religion being an exclusive arbiter of reality is only something held by a fringe group of religious people I think. Most reasonable religious people will have no problem with mathematical proofs or scientific evidence revealing things about reality. Many religious people will also accept that those of other religions can have knowledge of moral truths. But if you just mean that religion wants to be the ultimate truth, well, yeah, it does.
- > But it does strongly suggest that he is starting with a conclusion and then working backward, which is the antithesis of proper scientific research.
His is not scientific research, but the book IMHO is a surprisingly effective and professional weaving of philosophy, history of philosophy, popular science, and history of science toward consideration of Natural Theology.
Point 1: Shannon applies. Point 2: s/supporting a hypothesis/required to support an interpretation/
He acknowledges IIRC that we do not know ranges for potential tunings of physical constants, if that description applies. Has his reference to unexplained low entropy in the Universe been eviscerated? I can't assess his arguments about sparse solutions in protein/fold design space; if you cite a rebuttal of course I'm interested.
- The article was quite difficult to read, the point was often lost in historical recaps and relationships between historical figures.
The central premise is wrong, natural theology was dicussed by hume and paley, but neither of their arguments disprove it.
Arguments about 'proving' god using end up being arguments about what 'kind' of evidence qualifies as proof, which is not explored here.
Paley's infinite regression of watches doesn't sidestep God, it moves God into the watch. Paley's argument about a stone being ultimately purposeless depends on knowledge he doesn't have.
The position you can't logically argue to God is JE Schellenberg's non-resistant, non-believer. As soon as you start arguing logical propositions, they have to end somewhere and it's always God if pushed far enough.
Douglas Adams' parody argument is fun, but is just wrong as a serious theological argument.
The 2005 version of intelligent design the article discusses was rejected from schools because it was an undeveloped young-earth creationist style religious proposition. Stephen meyer spent the rest of the 2000s debating phd scientists (buried in youtube) and found they couldnt challenge his claims and he also developed the idea into a scientific philosophy. That's the face of intelligent design the author should be addressing.
It would be better for the internet community to have a wiki-like or myspace-like battleground for theological interpretation so that we can all skip to the most recent developments and see the history of it like a git changelog, without having to endlessly quiz a Dominican monk about the arguments Aquanis conquered.
- I think it was difficult for you to read because you aren't viewing it from the required context. It made perfect sense to me, I was enraptured and thought it was written beautifully. But I also have the requisite beliefs to address the subject matter - sorta like trying to grok algebra without understanding division or multiplication.
>The central premise is wrong, natural theology was dicussed by hume and paley, but neither of their arguments disprove it.
This is a misunderstanding, I think, because the author was saying Hume and Paley are examples of natural theology, they weren't trying to disprove it. They were embedded in their own cultural and theological context, just as we are, and if they could view us (as we view them) then they'd understand just as little of our context as we do of theirs.
>Arguments about 'proving' god using end up being arguments about what 'kind' of evidence qualifies as proof, which is not explored here.
Right, because the piece was written to show the differing definitions of "proof" - how do you prove something immaterial using a material context? You can't, because that'd be attempting to connect two disconnected fields. It's like using math to define a word in the dictionary. The argument between spiritual and atheist people was never "does god exist", but rather "what is god's will (in relation to this phenomenon) / what is the scientific nature of this phenomenon", which is two ways of saying the same thing.
This isn't an attempt to say "Ha atheists are dumb and they suck, god rulezz" it's more of a peace offering - "Hey can we agree to focus on the authoritarian patriarchal evangelical zealots who want to condemn our children to a life of ignorance?"
>Paley's infinite regression of watches doesn't sidestep God, it moves God into the watch. Paley's argument about a stone being ultimately purposeless depends on knowledge he doesn't have.
I think you misunderstood Paley here - essentially he's saying the difference between seeing a rock by the side of the road and a watch is that with a rock you wouldn't presume any ultimate purpose, because it's just a rock. But a watch is intricate, it's mechanical, it clearly has purpose - therefore we can view other things with unclear purposes - like earlobes or mosquitos or geologic processes - as having some kind of purpose, even if we don't understand it. Therefore we shouldn't (I dunno) extinct dodos or something, because clearly there is some purpose in them simply because they exist at all.
I think it's important to note that "purpose" doesn't necessarily imply forethought, as discussed later in the article when they talk about how evolution and such is the most germane and lucid presentation of god's will.
>As soon as you start arguing logical propositions, they have to end somewhere and it's always God if pushed far enough.
Well, by arguing so, you're pushing them in a specific direction. Are you really surprised they end at the polar edge of their reasoning?
>Douglas Adams' parody argument is fun, but is just wrong as a serious theological argument.
Then give the author credit and take it as a fun burst of levity, and not as a serious theological argument.
>The 2005 version of intelligent design the article discusses was rejected from schools because it was an undeveloped young-earth creationist style religious proposition. Stephen meyer spent the rest of the 2000s debating phd scientists (buried in youtube) and found they couldnt challenge his claims and he also developed the idea into a scientific philosophy. That's the face of intelligent design the author should be addressing.
Yup. Almost as if we share a common enemy.
>It would be better for the internet community to have a wiki-like or myspace-like battleground for theological interpretation so that we can all skip to the most recent developments and see the history of it like a git changelog, without having to endlessly quiz a Dominican monk about the arguments Aquanis conquered.
That sounds good to me, but how do you distill it? I think nearly as much effort would be required in administrating and preparing the presentation of the conversation as would be in actually making them. And making arguments is the fun part.
- Actually, this statement of PG’s about Darwin’s contemporaries is pretty oversimplified. Evolution-like ideas had been “in the air” for several decades when Darwin published, and at the time, many regarded them as heresy (by default), while others had bought into them. Natural selection was indeed a new idea, but while it strengthened the argument for evolution tremendously by providing a plausible mechanism, and while the giant pile of evidence in Darwin’s book was extremely important, the debates at the time weren’t all that different in tone from the ones that happen today (except that today all of the legitimate scientists are on one side these days).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
Lamark’s main works were from the turn of the 19th century, as was Cuvier’s work on extinction, and Darwin’s uncle Erasmus’s descriptions of “metamorphoses”. Paley’s Natural Theology, which originated the famous “watchmaker” analogy for God, was from 1802. The Vestiges, published anonymously in 1844, sparked massive controversy that was the talk of “educated” people throughout the world. Indeed, when Darwin finally published the Origin in 1859, the scientific/religious debate had been widespread for 50 years, and in the general public consciousness for at least a decade or two; Darwin himself had been well aware of it as a young man.
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