Disappointed with Shermer

_{Mark

April 6, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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From EXPELLED Dr Caroline Crocker.

“Recently I attended a lecture by Michael Shermer at the UCSD Biological Science Symposium (4/2/09). His title was, “Why Darwin Matters,” but his topic was mostly religion. He started by defining science as “looking for natural explanations for natural phenomena” and said that his purpose was to “debunk the junk and expose sloppy thinking.”

We were all subjected to an evening of slapstick comedy, cheap laughs, and the demolition of straw men.

His characterization of ID was that the theory says, 1) If something looks designed, 2) We can’t think how it was designed naturally, 3) Therefore we assert that it was designed supernaturally. (God of the gaps.) Okay everyone, laugh away at the stupid ID theorists.

I was astonished at how a convinced Darwinist, who complains about mixing science and religion, spent most of his time at the Biological Science Symposium talking about religion.”

Get the full text here.

Comments

I'm pretty sure this is a trick, that you think you're about to lure me into some sort of semantic cul-de-sac and beat the illogic out of me. But I'll play along. Sure, I'll accept [684], with the following caveats: I do wish you wouldn't combine negatives and positives in a single statement. It muddies the waters. You should also keep the grammar consistent and parallel. Also, It's not really a "therefore" -- it's more like restating the premise -- and in syllogistic logic, a "therefore" is a consequence of two premises. Let me rewrite it for you. Premise 1: No thing that has always existed can begin in time. Premise 2a: All effects are things. Premise 2b All causes are things. Therefore (a): No effect that has always existed can begin in time. Therefore (b): No cause that has always existed can begin in time. I'll accept the restatement. Note: I still think it's tautological, but I'm stipulating for the purpose of argument that it's also true (many truths are tautologies). Also, philosophically a premise would not be valid, because validity applies to the form of arguments and not to individual premises. Also, I reserve the right to question what "in time" means. But otherwise I'm ok. Next.David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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----David: "I’ll stipulate that StephenB’s premise is true. Where can you go from there?" OK, David. I'll settle for one person who understands that a self-evident truth qualifies as a valid premise. Thanks and receive from me a tip of the hat. I am speaking to you and no one else, because others will want to break in later and derail the discussion. Here we go: Steps one and two. Premise: For all things that have always existed, none can begin in time. 1. Therefore: All effects that have always existed could not have begun in time. 2. Therefore: All causes that have always existed could not have begun in time. OK, so far?StephenB_{April 17, 2009
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Having scanned through the thread, I hope it won't be too much a derailment for me to chime in with a few words of agreement: 1) Mark Frank's point about the conditionality of necessity and contingency is significant. Arguments like those from Dembski and Abel hinge on the notion of contingency, and the question that the reader should ask is, "Contingent given what?" The failure to answer this causes unnecessary confusion, such as Dembski's and Barry Arrington's contradictory positions on whether the shape of a spilled ink stain is contingent. 2) Even if I found StephenB's thinking persuasive (which I don't, but that's just one person's opinion), I would still agree with those who have warned that reality is beholden to neither our axioms nor rules of logic. Let's be grateful that reality often accords with our thinking, but in matters beyond our experience, we need to recognize that reality holds the trump card and has played it often.R0b_{April 17, 2009
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Let the record show that I sought to present a reasoned argument beginning from a perfectly reasonble premise: Here is the premise: FOR ALL THINGS THAT HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED, NONE CAN BEGIN IN TIME. I wanted to show where that leads. As it turns out, I cannot reason from that premise because no one will accept it. The responses were are follows: Hazel: “Its a tautology but not meaningful.” “You can’t take it anywhere.” Diffaxial” “It’s only a tautology.”
Since the most consistent response has been an objection to the tautological nature of your premise, why don't you, at long last, address yourself to that objection? "It isn't a tautology because..." or "It still works despite being a tautology because..." To date you haven't been able to bring yourself to so much as utter the word in this thread. And of course you are entirely free to set forth your reasoning regardless of whether we raise objections. What you can't do is lay a Socratic trap for the those who assent to your premises without first identifying the problems with those premises. One has to assume that this is your (frustrated) intention, given your unwillingness to proceed without assent. It is hard not to conclude that your frustration arises from our unwillingness to walk this particular garden path with you.Diffaxial_{April 17, 2009
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What R0b said. I'll stipulate that StephenB's premise is true. Where can you go from there?David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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StephenB:
Because I have to have everyone’s ageement that the premise is perfectly valid to reason from. If they, like you, do not understand that, then I cannot help them. I am not playing games. You are playing games by refusing to say, “Yes, your premise is valid.” Otherwise, when you see where the proof is going, you will stop the proceedings and question the premise.
Premises are not valid or invalid, they're true or false. Yours is true, and would be true even if nothing existed in reality.R0b_{April 17, 2009
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StephenB @666 Interesting coincidence on the message number....
Again, here is my perfectly reasonable premise, which all five commentators refused to consider. They claim I may not logically use that premise to proceed to my demonstration. DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY?
Since you asked, sure. Declaring your premise to be "perfectly reasonable" is not the same as demonstrating it to be so. If five people point out that it is a mere tautology, you might want to consider that view, purely as an intellectual exercise, of course. JJJayM_{April 17, 2009
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Clive [647], sorry for the delay. I think the dyamic Lacan describes (and that seems to be described by Lewis) is real. I'm not sure if it arises exactly as Lacan describes it. What I do like about Lacan's treatment is that such desire is a consequence of a psychological dynamic (the emergence of the desiring subject). In other words, the equivalent of Sehnsucht (I'll capitalize it, because that's what happens with nouns in German) in Lacan is not an existential, preexisting reality or anything theological (though it may feel that way): it's an effect of subjective structuration. But thanks for pointing that out to me. I've read most of Lewis but not The Weight of Glory. It's always good to encounter something new.David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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Well, that was poorly written. Corrected:
To disagree with a premise is not playing games. To say that a premise is tautological, or assumes the independence of a dependent variable (time), is not playing games. It may be that the people who take these views do not need to be “helped.”
David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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To disagree with a premise is not playing games. To say that a premise tautological, or assumes that the independence of a dependent variable (time), is not playing games. It may be that the people who take this views do not need to be "helped."David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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----Hazel: "What I said it was true by definition, but I doubted that it could be meaningfully applied" Yes, I know what you said, but you, David, and Diffaxial are all wrong about that.StephenB_{April 17, 2009
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To my comment [583] add [671] as another case in point.David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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----Hazel: "I don’t understand why you don’t just “proceed with your demonstration” and let us see what you think you’ve got. Why play these games?" Because I have to have everyone's ageement that the premise is perfectly valid to reason from. If they, like you, do not understand that, then I cannot help them. I am not playing games. You are playing games by refusing to say, "Yes, your premise is valid." Otherwise, when you see where the proof is going, you will stop the proceedings and question the premise.StephenB_{April 17, 2009
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Upright BiPed, I'm not calling for a victory lap. Thanks for your kind words though. You're a beautiful human being.David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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No one has accepted my premise @655. Everyone, and I mean everyone put a condition on it, which means that they didn't accept it. The premise is not only valid, it is self-evidently true. Yet, not one person said, "yes, I accept your premise as a premise. Not one. The question is why don't they accept something that is self-evidently true as a premise so we can reason forward from there. Everyone's assertion (via Hazel) that we cannot reason forward from there is false. Are they fearful that if we do reason forward from this perfectly valid premise (they don't come any better) they will find that all their dogmatic assertions about the limitations of reason will have be refuted?StephenB_{April 17, 2009
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David, if your'e calling for a victory lap, you might want to remember - you've advanced nothing.Upright BiPed_{April 17, 2009
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StephenB said, "They claim I may not logically use that premise to proceed to my demonstration." Nope we didn't say that. What I said it was true by definition, but I doubted that it could be meaningfully applied. You may logically use that premise to proceed to the next step. If your next step is about that definition then it may be easy to say "sure, that follows." If you next step inserts some content about how the world is, then we may ask that you provide some evidence for that. I don't understand why you don't just "proceed with your demonstration" and let us see what you think you've got. Why play these games?hazel_{April 17, 2009
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StephenB:
They claim I may not logically use that premise to proceed to my demonstration.
If that's so, then why not prove us wrong by using the premise, which we have accepted as true, to proceed to your demonstration?R0b_{April 17, 2009
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StephenB, I have something else to say. Surprised? :-) Your quote of me is fine, but my commment about Augustine was an aside. My real objection was much earlier:
The claim “that which always was cannot begin in time” is hard for me to apply to the cosmos if time itself is a consequence of the universe’s existence. “Begin in time” applied to the universe implies a time before time.
I might accept a premise like THINGS THAT HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED CAN BE SAID TO BEGIN WITH TIME ITSELF Or something like that. That's pretty muddy, but I don't know that it's any worse than what you offered.David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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I want to conclude my part by arguing that there is real positive value in doing what Stephen describes negatively -- so negatively that the terms are nearly apolcalyptic. That is, there is real positive value in doubting immutable truths. One such truth (I mentioned it earlier) is the truth that the heavens differ substantially from the sublunary world. Another such truth is that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. This is true in Euclidean geometry but not always. Because Euclidean geometry was a mathematical truth and therefore "immutable," the development of non-Euclidean geometry was stalled for over two thousand years. What about the principle of non-contradiction? Many mathematical and scientific advances began as thought experiments that took contradiction seriously. The square root of a negative number? A contradiction! A cat that is there and not there at the same time? A contradiction! A "fuzzy" set in which members are both inside and outside? A contradiction! A two-dimensional object having only one surface? A contradiction! The answer to "what is the sum of the angles of a triangle" is not 180 degrees but "it depends what kind of math you use." It depends on your frame of reference. Are philosophical truths more reliable than mathematical ones? I would say they are less. Certainly they're a lot less useful. StephenB has said that if we doubt immutable truths, we have abandoned rationality. But one scientific and mathematical advance after another has come from such doubt.David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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Let the record show that I sought to present a reasoned argument beginning from a perfectly reasonble premise: Here is the premise: FOR ALL THINGS THAT HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED, NONE CAN BEGIN IN TIME. I wanted to show where that leads. As it turns out, I cannot reason from that premise because no one will accept it. The responses were are follows: Hazel: "Its a tautology but not meaningful." "You can't take it anywhere." Diffaxial" "It's only a tautology." Nakashima: "God is the first axiom of your thought, or He has a master, and wears a collar made of Logic." ----Hazel: "The old Aristotelian/Newtonian notion of time is that it exists indefinitely in both directions, like the x-axis on a coordinate system. Anything that comes into existence begins at a certain time. Therefore, anything that has always existed, such as God, as always been in time but has no starting or ending point - it exists all along the line." Rob: "Of course, it’s still no less tautological than “all black swans are swans”. David: "One could even say that something like this was arrived at by Augustine, whose thoughts on time are probably his only real contribution to philosophy proper." Hazel: "The truth is that Stephen does start with God as an axiom, but because of what he and other theists see as the threat of modern thought, he strives to prove his axiom to those who otherwise don’t believe." Now, here is a question for onlookers or moderators or anyone else. Compare all those responses with the premise that was presented and ask youself what it could mean. Hazel, Diffaxial, Nakashima, Rob, and David have had their say. Does anyone else have anything to say. Again, here is my perfectly reasonable premise, which all five commentators refused to consider. They claim I may not logically use that premise to proceed to my demonstration. DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY?StephenB_{April 17, 2009
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Very, very good, Nakashima. (Although I think you meant to write "Which, after all, is the more important, the axiom or the theorem?") The truth is that Stephen does start with God as an axiom, but because of what he and other theists see as the threat of modern thought, he strives to prove his axiom to those who otherwise don't believe. Although this may look like the expedient thing to do in the face of this erosion of faith, it actually diminishes the God that Stephen would like people to believe in. This is why his reasoning seems persistently circular - because the conclusion he wishes to reach is embedded in the heart of all his premises. Ir would be much better, in my opinion, for him, or any other theist, to describe what they believe and witness to the good that their belief does for them than to try to make the existence of their God the object of a logical or scientific search. God stands outside of logic and outside of scientific investigation. He should be approached with the humble acceptance that he is beyond human comprehension - he can't be reduced to a syllogism or an empirical investigation.hazel_{April 17, 2009
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hazel: "To say that the universe began at a certain time is not meaningful - that’s the old paradigm. We have no idea whether anything comparable to time exists apart form the universe." That was my point. One could even say that something like this was arrived at by Augustine, whose thoughts on time are probably his only real contribution to philosophy proper.David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
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Of course, it's still no less tautological than "all black swans are swans".R0b_{April 17, 2009
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In StephenB's defense, it seems that "things that have always existed" is a proper subset of "things that cannot have begun in time", as the latter also includes "things that can never exist".R0b_{April 17, 2009
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Mr StephenB, My points are irrelevant. But not untrue? In any case, I see that you have admitted to Hazel that there is a choice of axiomatic systems available in mathematics. Well, there are such choices in logic as well. What truth means in each of them is well defined and stable, not in flux. I know you prefer that one of those logics be privileged as the 'correct' one. But the mere existence of others undercuts your logical necessity claim, and that is all I have ever been interested in saying on this thread. If we are in the mood for summing up and winding down, let me offer this. I understand the deeply conservative impulse which is distressed at modern life, and perhaps at modern science as well. However, even accepting that impulse, I would be extremely distrustful of a path of reasoning in which God is a theorem, not an axiom. Which, after all, is the more important, the axiom or the postulate? So to my mind, reasoning to a belief in God is far down the path to setting up a false idol in the temple. God is the first axiom of your thought, or He has a master, and wears a collar made of Logic. It is this brass assumption about God that is refuted at the end of the Book of Job. My 2 yen from within your system of right reason.Nakashima_{April 17, 2009
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The phrase is tautological because both clauses, "things that have always existed" and "things that cannot have begun in time" mean the same thing. You may as well insist that it is true that for all things that have always existed, they are things that have always existed.Diffaxial_{April 17, 2009
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God help us all. Is there anyone who will accept my premise: For all things that have always existed, none can begin in time.StephenB_{April 17, 2009
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Stephen, I don't think I could be any clearer: I accept the premise as a tautologically true statement, by definition, but I'm not sure it is very meaningfully applicable. Let me say something about why I am not sure that the tautological statement "For all things that have always existed, none can begin in time," is very useful. The old Aristotelian/Newtonian notion of time is that it exists indefinitely in both directions, like the x-axis on a coordinate system. Anything that comes into existence begins at a certain time. Therefore, anything that has always existed, such as God, as always been in time but has no starting or ending point - it exists all along the line. Modern physics has made this picture outdated. Time as we know it began with the Big Bang, and is inextricably bound up with space and motion. To say that the universe began at a certain time is not meaningful - that's the old paradigm. We have no idea whether anything comparable to time exists apart form the universe. So saying "For all things that have always existed, none can begin in time" is not very meaningful. We don't know whether anything has "always existed", or even what "always" might mean in whatever world our universe came out of, because we don't know whether time, or anything analogous to it, exists outside our universe.hazel_{April 17, 2009
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Hazel, please, do you accept the premise?StephenB_{April 17, 2009
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