I don’t think that science has disproven, nor even suggests, that it is unlikely that an Intelligent Designer was responsible for the world, and intended it to come into existence.
I don’t think that science has, nor even can, prove that divine and/or miraculous intervention is impossible.
I don’t think that the fact that we can make good predictive models of the world (and we can) in any way demonstrates that how the world has observedly panned out was not entirely foreseen and intended by some deity.
I think the world has properties that make it perfectly possible for an Intelligent Deity to “reach in” and tweak things to her liking – and that even if it didn’t, it would still be perfectly possible, given Omnipotence, just as a computer programmer can reach in and tweak the Matrix.
I don’t think that science falsifies the idea of an omnipotent,omniscient deity – at all.
I think that only rarely has this even been claimed by scientists, and, of those, most of them were claiming that science has falsified specific claims about a specific deity, not the idea in principle of a deity.
I do think that the world is such that IF there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity, EITHER that deity does not have human welfare as a high priority OR she has very different ideas about what constitutes human welfare from the ones that most people hold (and as are exemplified, for example, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), OR she has deliberately chosen to let the laws of her created world play out according to her ordained rules, regardless of the effects of those laws on the welfare of human beings, perhaps trusting that we would value a comprehensible world more than one with major causal glitches. In my case, her trust was well-placed.
I do think that the evidence we have is far more consistent with the idea that life and its origins are the result of processes consistent with others we see acting in the world, and not a result of some extraordinary intervention or series of extraordinary interventions, regardless of any question as to whether a benign or otherwise deity designed those processes with the expectation that life would be a probable or inevitable result.
I don’t think that it follows that, were we to find incontrovertible evidence of a Intelligent Creator (for instance, an unambiguous message in English configured in a nebula in some remote region of space, or on the DNA of an ant encased in amber millions of years ago) that that would mandate us in any way to worship that designer. On the basis of her human rights record I’d be more inclined to summon her to The Hague.
I think that certain theological concepts regarding a benevolent deity useful, inspiring, entirely consistent with science, and may reflect reality.
I don’t myself, any more, believe in some external disembodied intelligent and volitional deity, simply because I am no longer persuaded that either intelligence or volition are possible in the absence of a material substrate. But I do understand why people think this is false, and that consciousness, intelligence and volition are impossible, even in principle, to account for in terms of material/energetic processes, and I also understand that, although I think, for reasons that satisfy myself, that they are mistaken, the case is not an easy one to articulate, not least because of the intrinsically reflexive nature of cogitating on cogitation.
I think that “free will” is an ultimately incoherent concept; I think that the question “do we have free will?” is ill-posed, and ultimately meaningless. I think the better question is: Do I have the ability to make informed choices for which I am morally responsible?” and I think the answer is clearly yes.
Anyone else want to unload?
Can you explain this? I don’t understand the value of a human life, if you feel that a human life is just one particular arrangement of chemicals. Why is the human arrangement better than say the one for arsenic?
Well, Robert, I don’t actually believe in your God anyway, but if there is one, it seems to me that the choice of pronoun is largely a matter of convention, and as “he” has had a good innings, and “it” doesn’t suggest a person, “she” is a reasonable choice for me. In any case, when I did believe in an omniscient, omnibenevolent God, I thought of that God as often as “she” as “he”. Why shouldn’t God be limited to the characteristics of human males? Why does she need a sex at all?
In science journals, mostly, if you want to read it.
Phoodoo, I’m not quite sure why you keep asking this question, when I’ve given very clear answers elsewhere, and linked to them in my responses to you (indeed some of them are direct responses to you).
I don’t think that human life is “just one particular arrangement of chemicals”. A human being is a complex organism with properties not possessed by any other kind of being to my knowledge and it is those properties, which include, as I said, the capacity to value his/her own life and the lives of others, that I am referring to.
If you can show me that some other “particular arrangement of molecules”, for instance a dolphin, or some entity you find on Mars, or even a pet rock, has these properties, then I will consider that the life of those have value too.
I am trying to explain to you what my view is, but you seem to be fairly insistent that I hold some other view.
Please read my posts, and, in particular, my responses to you.
My invented deity kicks yours out of the park. My invented deity can make a universe where some bits of it interact to form what the bits themselves call “alive”.
Your weak-ass deity on the other hand can only create a boring universe that is unable to give the “spark of life” to anything so your weak-ass deity has to reach around inside and manually get things going.
My invented deity’s universe is orders of magnitude more elegant then yours, as mine runs from the start all on it’s own – no intervention required.
Whereas your weak-ass deity has to keep poking at yours, like it did not know what it was doing from the start! Omni-potent much? No, I’d say not at all.
In my worldview, what I actually experience is what I consider all I can know; that is what I consider to be fact. Everything else is belief and opinion. How I choose a belief is based entirely on what I actually, personally experience – meaning, it doesn’t contradict what I experience, and it serves my primary goals. This frees me up to believe all sorts of things if they help me enjoy life and help me feel like a good person.
As a matter of policy I don’t ever believe anything that directly contradicts my actual personal experience, or to act as if X when my experience is not-X. “My beliefs working” means “I am enjoying life and I feel like I am being a good person.” I either feel that way, or I do not. I do not attempt to believe X when my experience is not-X. That would be self-deception and contrary to the whole point of my belief system.
Evidently your “primary goals” do not depend on correctly understanding Genetic Algorithms.
So I’d suggest that, conveniently, what you choose to experience fits in nicely with what you don’t know.
You don’t understand GAs.
You don’t need to understand GAs.
Your job does not depend on your understanding of GAs.
So you can “choose to believe” that GAs contain the answers before they are even run, but as that belief does on impinge on reality (i.e. you don’t have to earn a living writing them) then the only side effect is that you flaunt your ignorance in places like this and then disappear, only to return a little later when that list of questions and corrections that have been put to you have scrolled off the screen.
So give that your “primary goal” appears to be to refuse to learn on the basis that you are right, and if you are not right then you’ll simply believe that you are right, you are doing that very well indeed.
But, once again, what you believe only matters inside your head. You’ve not changed the world at all have you? And that’s the difference between you and the people you are “arguing” with here. They have already changed the world, everyone world, measurably. You have not. You’ve simply adjusted your own world until it “serves your primary goals”. How’s that working out for you? Evidently not so well or you’d not be compelled to argue with people who not only know demonstrably more about the subject you are arguing about, but who are also not afraid to answer back.
For example, Lizzie has de-constructed many of your posts and illustrated your misunderstandings and corrected them. In repayment you have ignored everything that’s been said and carried on regardless, yet you expect the courtesy of continuing on as if nothing had been said.
Again, that works here but how’s it working out for you in the real world? Have you really nothing better to do then flaunt your ignorance time and time again?
GAs work.
GAs do not “contain the answers” in advance.
GAs were “invented” by observing how nature does it.
That you have avoided bringing any of this into your “personal experience” and thus allowing yourself to continue to believe your preferred ideas (they are evolutionist lies) is neither here nor there. You are simply wrong about it, except inside your own head.
And as noted, that’s really irrelevant in the wider scheme of things. No Nobel awaits you….
So whether or not my belief system is “working out” in total, for my whole life, can be meaningfully evaluated by how many times I post here, and whether or not that number arbitrarily represents a “compulsion”?
I might be able to see your point about being “compelled” if, hypothetically speaking, after I got booted off of this site I created a blog of my own dedicated to re-posting and responding to what people here said. Now that, I think, might be a compulsion and worth some introspective investigation.
That still wouldn’t mean to me, however, that their belief system “wasn’t working out”, generally speaking, for their life. You might ask Liz about that.
I am not insistent that you hold some other views. I am simply trying to understand the reasoning of someone who says that they believe all of life was caused by nothing more than that’s just how molecules happen to move-but at the same time I don’t feel you are particularly able to articulate how you think humans are more valuable than a rock.
Your philosophy appears to not be very deep, so either it isn’t very deep, or I am missing your point, so I am just trying to reason which it is. I don’t believe you have given a very clear answers, and I am not criticizing this, but I think just saying, well, its more valuable because its human life, seems pretty vague and meaningless.
But believe me, I don’t mind what others believe at all, debating is for the purpose of educating yourself in my opinion, not in trying to convince another. So like I say, it doesn’t matter to me at all what people find comfort in, but here you wrote this very long piece trying to make sense of the possibility of an intelligent designer, but your own explanation for your own philosophy of life seems like you never even pondered it. Its boil down to, well human life is valuable because its human life, of course, see?
No I don’t see. I see no contemplation at all.
I want to give this post an earnest reply, but I can’t find anything in it. My only participation in this thread is ascertaining where some people find value in life that they believe is really just a mechanical accident. Your post doesn’t address that in any way that I can see, so not much to say.
Quite amusing. Well said.
The rules of this blog notwithstanding, I can’t characterize this as anything other than a willful distortion.
It has been pointed out to you time and again, phoodoo, that we do not consider physics or chemistry to be the ultimate explanation of life. You keep drawing this caricature despite our outright denials that this is how we think. Either you have no reading comprehension or you willfully distort our views.
You keep missing our points, phoodoo, and it is getting a little too repetitive.
But you have never stated what is the ultimate explanation of life then, so how am I supposed to see otherwise?
Lizzie said something about humans possess chemical arrangements that are different from many other kinds of structures. But so does steel, and so does a venus flytrap. They all possess their own set of characteristics. So that clarifies nothing.
Don’t be obtuse, phoodoo. We have told you explicitly that we don’t think that chemistry explains biology. Yet you keep attributing that view to us. Cease that practice and the discussions can continue.
olegt,
Also Olegt, your are posts are some of the rudest out there, you have been rude from the very beginning, so I don’t know why you are always trying to say I am the one breaking the rules. For asking why someone believes the way they do?
No. You don’t ask why we believe what we do. You put words in our mouths, attributing to us beliefs we do not hold, even after that has been pointed out to you multiple times.
Why does it have to be one or the other?
How about instead of claiming that you already stated what you believe is the specialness of life, just state it, instead of claiming you have. I can’t find anywhere were you or Lizzie has said this, in anyway that is clear.
Then why do you not respond to my points, instead of just repeating what you think I think?
I have never said anything like “all of life was caused by nothing more than that’s just how molecules happen to move” – in fact most of my recent posts on this blog have been attempts to challenge the idea that evolution posits “chance” or “happenstance” as a cause of anything. Of course I’m not addressing the fine-tuning argument – it may be that a divine intelligence designed the laws of physics so that we would turn up in the end. But that is a quite different inference from saying that there must be a designer to move the molecules around so that they make us. I’ve made it very clear that the reasons we value human life is that humans are entities that have the property of getting a kick out of life and therefore wanting it to continue. You might like to ask why humans appeared with that property, but the fact is that they are hear and we do, and nobody, whatever they think about ID thinks any different.
Well, I appreciate your efforts to understand my philosophy, and suggest that your second option, that you are missing my point, is the correct one, and I also suggest that it is because you are telling me I’ve said things I haven’t. I didn’t say “well, its more valuable because its human life”. I said: human beings have the property of valuing their own lives. That’s because they have all kinds of features that enable them to do this, including the capacity to recognise their need for food, and warmth, and shelter, the drive to mate, the need to nurture, to protect themselves and their kin from predation and danger, etc. I think those capacities evolved – you may think they were designed specifically.
But neither of us has any doubt that humans do have these capacities, and I’m saying that it is on account of those capacities that we value our own lives and the lives of others.
Well, that seems nothing like a precis of what I wrote. I don’t think what I wrote “boils down” to that at all. Perhaps you would like to go through what I wrote in detail, and ask me specific questions about claims I actually made, and say why you think they “boil down” to something that I certainly did not intend.
Phoodoo,
Obviously, the answer to your question about how materialists justify their view that human life has meaning is: that is how they have been programmed by nature to feel, just as nature has programmed some fish to consume their own young, and programs some animals to commit mass suicide, and has programmed some humans to not value human life.
It’s all the luck of the materialist draw. Liz and I and several others here are just lucky that nature didn’t program humans (for the most part) to eat their elderly!
It’s possible that there is a glaring flaw in what I wrote, and it really does boil down to the circular argument that phoodoo thinks I am making.
But in that case, phoodoo needs to do a somewhat more detailed unpacking of what I did say, in order to demonstrate the circularity he thinks is there, rather than just restating what he thinks my argument “boils down to”.
First, you must acknowledge that you have misrepresented the views of your opponents and retract these distortions. Then we can discuss “the specialness of life” or what have you.
If chemistry doesn’t explain biology than what does, its a very simple question, that you are avoiding.
I am not avoiding that, phoodoo. I have asked you to read Anderson’s short essay that deals with this very topic. Did you read it?
I haven’t misrepresented anyone’s views, I have stated the conclusion that the belief in a unguided, purposeless theory of how life evolved ultimately leads to. If it doesn’t lead to that conclusion, then the point si to explain why it doesn’t.
Phoodoo,
I think the question of why atheists value human (and even non-human) life is interesting, but in the end, theists and atheists are pretty similar in this regard. It’s hard to distinguish between believers and nonbelievers at a funeral.
I’m not sure about your religious beliefs, but I’m guessing you believe in a personal god. If so, suppose one day the sky opened up and your god appeared and announced that He is leaving our universe forever. He isn’t going to extinguish all life on earth, but rather He will leave all the fundamental laws of physics in place, so everything will seem the same, except that He’s getting out of the design business. Heaven and hell are now gone; when you die, that’s it. No one is listening to your prayers anymore. However, human life potentially could still exist for thousands of generations.
With G_d out of the picture, would you then regard other humans, including those in your immediate family, as no more valuable than a heap of arsenic?
I didn’t ask for his views. How am I to know what the relevant part is that means something to you, or to Liz, or to someone else. I didn’t ask him. Are you incapable of explaining it in your own words? If that s the case fair enough, just say you can’t. And then allows others to attempt to answer it.
Well, like most explanations voiced in the passive, that isn’t really explanatory – it simply moves the question back a step. The more interesting question is: why should we, as a society, think it right to spare others suffering, and help the infirm?
And when did this outbreak of empathy begin? It certainly wasn’t nearly as apparent in previous eras as it is now. We don’t, on the whole, torture cats or bait bears for fun, or go to watch convicts being hanged, drawn, and quartered, and, in most countries, don’t have capital punishment at all, let alone as a public spectacle. Why? Why have our sense of what is morally unspeakable changed? Stephen Pinker has some interesting ideas, one of which is universal literacy and the rise of the novel – and with it, the ability to experience by proxy what it is like to be someone else.
Human life used to be far cheaper than it is now. I don’t think the answers are obvious, but I certainly welcome them.
Actually, in some human societies, they did and do – it’s not a particularly irrational strategy, in an environment in which resources are scarce, and it happens, sometimes more humanely than others.
Part of civilisation has been a growth in the shared assumption that life has intrinsic value.
I missed that link and can’t find it – what essay do you mean?
Yes, you have.
Here is what you wrote:
That was done after Lizzie explained to you, yet again, that she does not hold that view:
You are either not arguing in good faith, phoodoo, or you are simply unable to understand what your opponents say.
More is Different. You can find plenty of free copies on the internet.
Thanks – got it!
Well, its an interesting theoretical point, but I don’t have a belief in any one particular God, accusations to the contrary notwithstanding. But in such a case, at least we would know that in fact we are correct in guessing that this universe was designed to exist for some reason, that we as curious being want to understand and help us to make our life’s decisions.
If there was never any spiritual guidance, and this is really just what happens when dust moves, then ethics and values are pretty meaningless in my mind. I don’t think any philosopher over the ages has adequately been able to answer the question of where you arrive ethics from in a Godless world.
I agree that at a funeral everyone is equal in their feelings. But for half of the people there they see the person as a soul, as an unbreakable entity, and for the other half they believe that life has no purpose, but they still can’t help feeling that person was a real, eternal being of value. I feel their feelings don’t match their stated beliefs. They can’t explain their contradiction. And there in lies the empirical evidence for having faith. People believe in a unique value to life, even when they have no reason for doing so. They think, therefore they are spiritual.
I don’t believe that Lizzie making that statement understands what she believes. Salt has different properties than chlorine, so that’s why humans are special? Everything that is not something else has different properties by definition. Its a meaningless statement. The fact that different things are made up of different things, is no explanation for the value in life.
Heh. Is there any point in engaging phoodoo any further?
Which to evolutionists is just an illusion.
This post is clearly against the rules. But certainly you don’t have to engage, as you have not done thus far.
It takes two to tango, phoodoo. You are a sloppy thinker and you haven’t done your homework. On top of that, you misrepresent the views of your opponents. It’s not surprising that you can’t be engaged effectively in a discussion.
Lizzie, this is what you said:
” human beings have the property of valuing their own lives.” in response to my question about what gives life value.
A long, convoluted explanation is not necessary to see that this is circular reasoning, pure and simple.
olegt,
Then don’t Olegt.
Thanks for the reply. Just for the record, as an atheist, I don’t claim to have a complete, logical explanation for why I value human life (and non-human life, and even some non-living things, for that matter!) My guess is that much of it is hard-wired.
On the other hand, I’m not very moved by theists’ explanations for why they value human life either. And in your case, if you don’t have specific beliefs in a particular god, how can you derive anything from this very general form of theism? How do you know “God” is good? How do you know what “He” wants you to do?
If your only reason for valuing human life is that it must be valuable because a powerful Designer created it, the same reasoning applies to the protozoans that cause malaria (and other even more disgusting organisms). I’m not seeing that your explanation is any better than mine.
The only meaningful answer under physicalism/materialism is: physics/chemistry/the environment happens to program us that way.
All “shoulds”, under physicalism/materialism, reduce down to this. So, the only interesting thing about that question lies in how it ignores and glosses over what the term “should” actually means and contradicts the implied meaning of the post.
If physics/chemistry/the environment programmed Liz and most others to torture cats and give whippings with lashes to children and beleive we should do so, and that it was an improvement over not doing so, that is what Liz would say, and it is what Liz would believe and advocate.
And how I have to respond for the consequences of my actions?
Oh, I don’t have any reason for believing God is good, other than my own personal experiences. God may well not be good. God may well not have a choice in the matter.
I do happen to believe I serve a purpose, but as I said, that is derived from what I see as empirical evidence for that. I essentially believe in karma, but you can only see and feel that karma in your own life. You can’t look at others situations, and say, well, he has bad things that happen to him, and he doesn’t deserve that. Others experiences are only theirs to evaluate, you can only evaluate your own.
Exactly. Liz is saying that humans should value human life because they do value human life. Similarly, a sociopath shouldn’t value human life because he doesn’t value human life.
You are entitled to your opinion, WJM, but we obviously don’t have to share it.
Yes. In fact I think people torture logic all the time, you can see them doing it right here, and yet they don’t seem to feel the least bit of guilt about it.
I think logic has feelings.
You are, of course, free to hold irrational views. Unless of course you’d like to postulate some other cause for what a person thinks they “should” do, besides – ultimately – physics/chemistry/the environment?
Thumbs up!
phoodoo:
It’s long been my theory that many people are actually zombies in the manner of the Zombie post, except that they cannot act/respond exactly like a person with actual consciousness. At least, that goes a long way in explaining some of the things they say. There are some things that I think are undeniably obvious to a person with consciousness that would be utterly lost on a biological automaton.