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?
Coming next, novel work on the implausibility of whale evolution and the avian lung. And Natural Selection – it’s not really selecting, is it, and it’s a result and tautologous and so forth. Consider your rebuttals pre-designated as ‘nonsense’. Whatever they may be.
That a set of things is “rich in distinctions” doesn’t mean that the entire set is not wholly nonsense, and doesn’t mean that those “rich distinctions” render the set – as a whole – capable of satisfying everyone’s intellectual, psychological or emotional needs.
The only way that morality, or any set of “shoulds”, can fulfill my needs is if morality is built on an absolute set of “shoulds” and “should nots” that carry with it necessary consequences.
Yes.
Suppose, arguendo, that an absolute set of moral rules exists out there. In what shape or form is it accessible to you? Aren’t these rules inferred and interpreted by fallible humans? That would make it subjective, not objective.
Alan,
My comment in that thread turned out to be quite prescient:
keiths,
True. I find the lack of curiosity a little saddening. But I guess we all have different interests and they won’t necessarily overlap.
The same way anything else that exists “out there” is accessible to subjective, fallible humans, whether it be a brick wall or oughts: we sense it, assume that what we are sensing is part of an objective world, then apply logic and models to make practical sense out of what we are sensing.
William J. Murray,
And how is that different from “it’s all in my imagination”?
More details please. Touch / taste / sound / sight. Where exactly are they? Are they all in one place? How do you know they’re the right ones?
Thanks!
Conscience is what humans use to sense the moral landscape. The moral landscape is an aspect of the mind that is universal – just as we have physical bodies that are part of a physical world and obeys its rules. What we use the term “mind” for actually covers a wide range of nonphysical phenomena/commodities.
Like the fundamental principles of math, geometry and logic, the fundamental principles of morality are part of universal, objective mind.
You develop a knowledge base of correct morality by beginning with self-evidently true moral statements then working from there to necessarily true moral statements, conditionally true moral statements, and generally true moral statements.
That sounds a lot like just making stuff up.
ETA change “awfully” to “a lot”. Even reads quaintly to me on second glance!
ETA change “anachronistically” to “quaintly”
Richard,
Don’t forget – – William doesn’t care whether his beliefs are true. He doesn’t need to find “the right ones”.
I am afraid there is a big difference between physical objects and the moral landscape that you claim we can sense.
You and I can independently test the properties of a brick wall and our results will agree. As long as we use the same measuring procedures, we will infer the same mass density of the bricks, the length of the wall and so on. That won’t happen with the moral landscape. You will find it completely moral to work on a Friday night, whereas an observant Jew won’t. It used to be completely moral to marry off girls as young as thirteen, but nowadays that is a moral no-no.
You can counter that in the latter examples people adhere to different rules and therefore come to different conclusions about the moral landscape. But then the question is how do you agree on the rules in the first place?
Imagination is one part of what we sloppily label “mind”. There are some things a person cannot imagine, and that represents the objective structure/nature of universal mind. For example, you cannot imagine a 4-sided triangle or a subset that is greater than than the whole. You cannot imagine a thing that is both “A” and “not-A” in the same way at the same time; you also cannot imagine it being morally good to torture children for personal pleasure.
Some aspects of mind are as rock solid and as real and universally applicable as a brick wall.
On a more practical level, the concepts “it’s all in my imagination” and “it’s an objectively real thing” – regardless of if there is any way to prove either view – should lead to very different modes of behavior concerning that thing.
Let’s test that theory out. Anyone here think it is moral – in any culture, time or place, by anyone with any mindset whatsoever – to rape and torture children for personal pleasure? Can anyone here imagine a 4-sided triangle, or a subset that is greater than the whole? Can anyone here describe an imaginary situation where 1+1=30?
Nope? Just as real, then, as your brick wall.
To the extent that mind is what the brain does, I agree with you. I’m glad to see we agree that dualism is an imaginary concept.
Inasmuch as I understand you, I don’t see why that follows. I see no reason to suspect you are basing your personal philosophy on anything sounder than your imagination and apart from the odd comment on the internet I don’t see much evidence of how your behaviour is much different from a great many other people living in the US.
Too easy. How about a slightly more complex example, William?
Anyone here think it is moral – in any culture, time or place, by anyone with any mindset whatsoever – to marry off girls at age thirteen?
See, you just agreed with me and proved my point; there are some moral statements that are so obviously and self-evidently true that knowing everyone else will agree with you is “too easy”. Well, guess what: getting people to agree with you about the length of a wall is “too easy” because it’s an example that easily, obviously supports the conclusion that it is in fact an objective commodity – just like my morality example.
That’s the whole point.
That there are disagreements about what is moral, or moral ambiguities is no more relevant to the argument than the fact that eyewitness reports to an actual, physical event can vary wildly and often contradict each other, like crime witnesses who can’t even agree if the suspect was male or female, black or white. Does that mean the crime was just all in their imagination? Of course not – it means that people can and do often subjectively interpret objectively existent phenomena in wildly different, often contradictory ways. That doesn’t mean the thing itself is “all in their imagination”.
There is framework to the mind that is as certain as anything physical. That I could come up with a moral statement that you refer to as “too easy” in itself demonstrates my point and supports my argument.
We can increase our knowledge of the world and develop more sophisticated ways of conceptualizing and interacting with it; the same is true of the mental landscape.
Alan said:
If by “imaginary” you mean “resides in the mind”, all concepts reside in the mind. Not everything in the mind, though, is “imaginary”. As I said before, “mind” is a term that is used in a very sloppy and imprecise way, and in my worldview, there are both objectively existent and entirely subjective things that are slapped together as “mind” in the way people describe or characterize mental phenomena.
I am afraid, William, that the disagreements aren’t of that nature. It used to be completely moral to marry off girls at thirteen. Virgin Mary was reportedly that young when she was married to Joseph. Everyone’s moral compass back then said it would be OK. But not these days. Pretty much everyone in the US today would agree that letting your daughter marry at thirteen would be immoral.
What does this slightly more complex example teach us? That the morals change as societies evolve. The standards of morality are set by people.
I wonder what William thinks people argue about if it isn’t about what is moral and what is immoral.
I can. 1 NBA team + 1 NBA team = 30 basketball players
(By rule NBA teams carry 15 players on their roster)
Just because you have a weak mind and a limited imagination doesn’t mean everyone else does.
I’m sure you realize categorical switches don’t count. My point stands.
Only if you assume your conclusion. People used to believe to the point of calling it knowledge that the earth was the center of the universe; does that mean that the earth was the center of the universe? Or that the sun revolved around the earth?
Again, just because a culture agrees that an objectively existent phenomena is X, doesn’t mean that it is actually X.
You didn’t specify any categories. I met your “impossible” challenge because your imagination was too limited. Your inability to see beyond your own nose causes you to fail that way quite often in your “it’s obvious” arguments.
And just because a culture finds a moral proposition self-evidently true doesn’t mean that it actually is true.
Because any reasonable person knows what I meant. You could also say one drop of water + 1 drop of water = 1 drop of water, or 1 piece of glass + 1 piece of glass (one dropped on the other) = dozens of pieces of glass.
I don’t bother attempting to qualify every bit of an argument or point for those intent on avoiding the obvious.
Then we have no way of knowing whether that “objectively existent phenomena” [sic] is actually X. Back to square one, William.
I agree. I was asked about my conceptualization of morality. I provided it, along with a basic defense to some challenges – but I’m not attempting to prove my view is true. Whether or not it is actually true is entirely irrelevant to the fact that I have chosen to believe that morality is rooted in an objective, absolute commodity.
Residing in the Plato’s Cave of our own subjective sensory experience, we have no way of knowing if any perceived X is actually X – including brick walls – but that doesn’t stop us from acting as if various X’s are actually X. This could all be a hallucination. So? We still have to act as if some things actually exist objectively.
This is a god example of how combinations of molecules can come to represent something greater than their parts?
Money only has a value because we have named it as such. Do you think Japanese yen money would have any value to a alien living on mars? Its value can change according to the whims of any group of people.
So are you saying the value of human life is just a man-made construction of an idea, that is arbitrary based on convenience? Because that is exactly what you imply by such a statement.
Also, indeed we know that the laws of physics cause different combinations of matter to have different properties. No one is arguing that they don’t. What we are asking is WHY is this combination (the one that makes us), worth preserving more than the combination that makes charcoal.
People are valuable in the same way that calling money a representation of value are similar concepts? So once the psychopaths are in power, and we use a credit card system of payment, human life can also be used very justifiably as fuel for incinerators-according to all the great “evolutionist-emergians.”
So I suggest that a lot of your statements about ideas you don’t follow to their logical conclusion, instead you just sort of confuse the essence of the meaning in long worded distractions that don’t go to the heart of the matter.
Your telling people to go study the concepts of geometric algorithms to grasp a better meaning of life is easily retorted by suggested to you that you first go study up on the works of the great eastern philosophers of the early middle kingdom.
Well, as the game rules are to presuppose good faith on the part of all participants, you’ll have to qualify, dear William.
Neil,
I think that is a big point of this thread, exploring what are the logical positions which can exist between those two dichotomies. I would be interested in hearing your position, how is life precious and sacred, without imagining a higher spiritual authority or purpose to our existence.
We are forced to pause and think, gosh, this thing we call consciousness, it sure appears to be more than just a by product of random forces, it seems like there is actually a purposeful system of some kind going on here, which has rules and meaning to it, what is this thing that our minds are telling us to ponder about ourselves. It really does seem like we are part of a much bigger picture. Is my mind just fooling me.
And I would add to that Neil, that some people’s answer to that question is simply that natural selection is the bigger picture, its not random, its the purpose we are seeing (“there is beauty in life because we are able to see it”). I don’t find that to be a very sophisticated answer personally.
Hello William,
If you leave the possibilities wide open, certainly, yes.
We can construct a society where raping and torturing children is moral. Say, for example, rape and torture of the children of a much stronger tribe dead set on wiping your tribe off the face of the earth, requiring the most radical “othering” imaginable in order to effect survival.
Or, there’s always the mad scientist: a dead-man switch scenario where one is wired up to a doomsday device that will wipe life off the planet if prescribed actions are not undertaken.
The immediate problem with absolute morality standards is they don’t seem to exist for anything but the most extreme scenarios. And even this is ineffective. When they rely on flight into the most absurd scenarios, they can always be matched by equally extreme counter-examples.
A more important objection is the disconnect between these scenarios and life as it’s actually lived. I don’t imagine anyone here has ever been placed in a position where they had to decide whether to rape or torture a child. In order for this rule against raping and torturing children to be applicable, at all, it must be applicable by comparison to a decision that will actually be made. Morality by comparison. That’s relative morality. And while relative morality is sufficient to itself, absolute morality cannot function without it.
But I’m neither a moral philosopher nor a scientist, mad or otherwise, so I’ll leave those questions for others. I’m a mathematician. What caught my eye here was the lack of rigor in your mathematics, allowing a peek into my world’s “locked room murder mysteries.”
I can imagine a four-sided triangle. You could too, if prompted correctly. I like this example because it requires so little mathematics. As a hint, recall that two sides can be congruent without being identical. Now, if you’d called for a four-angled triangle …
I can imagine a subset that is greater than the whole. It’s an argument from duality, relying on the lack of specificity in the term “greater” allowing us to invoke a contra-ordering on the whole set. Now, if you’d called for an element of a subset that wasn’t included in the whole set …
I can describe an imaginary situation where 1 + 1 = 30. In fact, though, the situation is not at all imaginary, other than in the broadly abstract sense that numbers are not actual. The integers mod 2 will do nicely. In this system, all even numbers and odd numbers are identical to all other even and odd integers, respectively. 2, in particular, is equal to zero, and equal to 30 as well. If we extend this system to include multiplication and then division except by zero, we arrive at a “field” which can be mapped to a Boolean algebra, which can be used to design circuits such as the ones allowing us to carry on this conversation. Now, if you’d called for … hmm, even I can’t seem to find a way to rescue you from this one. As an example, it was far too naive.
As ever, Jesse
Better to have a simple and correct answer than one that’s sophisticated but wrong.
Some questions don’t have easy answers.
People don’t all agree that life is precious and sacred. Suicide bombers don’t agree. Slave owners in the old south, many of them Christians, did not put a lot of value on the lives of their slaves. A higher spiritual authority did not seem to make a difference.
Biology is purposeful. Check my blog posts on purpose. As others have pointed out, you need to get away from that silly idea of “just a by product of random forces.”
What’s obvious is that you didn’t specify any categories and I met your “it’s impossible” challenge. I see above that new poster jesse has met it too.
The world isn’t limited to just what WJM personally finds “obvious” no matter how much you wish it to be.
I can’t open your blog, but I don’t really see how you have answered the question of where you fall in between materialism and spirituality?
Its not a silly notion of random forces when one believes in a purposeless world. The evolutionists concept is one of a lucky coincidence that some types of molecules replicate imperfectly. That is best described as a random process, by random forces (the undirected forces of the physical world). I am sorry if you don’t like being stuck with the word random, but it fits the situation evolutionists describe.
And not only that Neil, plenty of your fellow atheist evolutionists who are prominent spokesmen for this believe don’t have a problem at all with calling this a random process, as long as they can slip in the caveat that natural selection isn’t random, as if that somehow saves them from a world of randomness. Its a copeout really, because natural selection is not a force. Its still a random process in that it is believed to be a totally accidental consequence of imperfect replicators.
Please link to and provide the direct quote where Lizzie wrote this. I’m sure it’s another honest mistake on your part to attribute to her things she never said.
BTW it’s genetic algorithms, not “geometric”.
WJM:Anyone here think it is moral – in any culture, time or place, by anyone with any mindset whatsoever – to rape and torture children for personal pleasure?
Are you asking if one could imagine such a culture? Any culture which views property rights as the overriding principle, and views human beings as property. More specifically the pre civil war South. While it may have seemed a waste to use one’s property in such a manner, the moral right of one to use his property as he sees fit would be self evident. The abridgment of those rights ,now that would be immoral.
What always is interesting to me about that question is the qualifications necessary to produce a self evident statement
Torture apparently wasn’t enough,it was necessary to add rape . And while there may be non self evident moral reasons to r/t a child, personal pleasure is not one of them.And r/t adults? That seems to be a gray area.
Oh dear, you still insist on repeating the same silly Creationist strawman despite all the corrections. You also still seem confused by the idea of non-uniform probability distributions and processes involving feedback. I’m sure you’re doing it in good faith though.
I’m not sure why you would have a problem. It’s a regular wordpress.com blog and accessible to all.
I don’t think you specifically asked such a question.
I don’t subscribe to materialism, partly because I don’t agree with a lot of what materialists are said to believe. And I never could work out what “spirituality” was supposed to mean.
Thorton,
BTW it’s genetic algorithms, not “geometric”.
Amazing restraint,kudos.
Mutation is random. But then there’s trial and error testing. Making changes, and testing them, is not unlike what human designers do. You can think of it as a Monte Carlo method, I see that as fitting rather well with how evolution works.
In the country in which I live it can’t be opened, there you just learned something new.
So you may well be a spiritualist, once you more fully grasp what that means. I guess it just takes further exploration into what you think is the meaning of consciousness, and also what things about materialism you disagree with.
No, its nothing like what human designers do. because something is actually being designed. That is precisely why the process is random, nothing is being designed, and nothing is being manipulated. Its the random byproduct of imperfect replicators. Nothing more nothing less.
I did wonder if there was a web filter involved.
I do not argue for determinism or against free will; I do not consider the brain to be a computer; I do not think consciousness is an illusion.
I don’t describe it that way. I see evolution as a trial and error learning system.