Why bother with God? (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 23, 2011, 10:54 (4743 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt thinks that belief in design is a way of dodging hard problems. I maintain that if this is so, one can level the same criticism at belief in chance.
 
MATT: I've said before this is a false dilemma. That's why I don't raise it.-The hard problem in this context is: How the heck could inanimate, unconscious matter just happen to form itself into living self-replicating, adapting and innovating matter? The answer "sheer luck" might as well be: "It just did" ... and that is "dodging". (But neither theism nor atheism need prevent or influence the scientific quest for knowledge ... see below.)-MATT: As for the eye, Hubble was a much better eye than the human eye. [...] I would say that in terms of design, Hubble outclasses the human eye in every categorical fashion. -Hubble, I gather from one of the websites, is 508.5 inches long and weighs 25,000 lbs! Let me be a little more precise in my objection to the "bad design" argument: when humans have designed a machine weighing let's say 140 lbs, which can reproduce, repair itself, see, hear, taste, touch, smell, think, imagine, remember, learn, feel, reason, take decisions etc., they can start criticizing. Until then their criticism, in my view, proves absolutely nothing.-DHW: I see no difference between a theist scientist and an atheist scientist trying to unravel the mysteries of life and the universe: the one will claim to be studying how God did it, and the other how chance did it. ...
MATT: The difference is in that in general, theist scientists are looking to prove something, notably that it is acceptable to believe in God.
 
In trying to discover how life - or the universe - originated, neither theist nor atheist scientists will get away with falsifying data (we hope). In this respect, God's existence is irrelevant, so I still see no difference. Were Newton's discoveries invalid because he believed in God? We agree, though, that people like Behe and Dawkins should not pretend that science supports their personal agenda.-MATT: [...] the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. If you claim God exists, it's up to you to demonstrate it. This is how the game has always worked. On close examination Atheists make one less argument about the world than a theist. -I made the same point myself: atheism is a far simpler choice. But that doesn't prove anything, and the same burden of proof lies with the claim that chance is capable of assembling the mechanisms of life and evolution. This is where, in my view, you and Pigliucci totally misunderstand the argument:-MATT: You charge that by strongly or weakly rejecting God, atheists implicitly accept chance as the cause of everything. Pigliucci denies this. He writes "For some reason, many people--not just creationists, seem to think that if something is natural then it must also be random (in the sense of being undirected and therefore, in the minds of those with a misunderstanding or ignorance of natural selection, clearly not designed).
He then posits a simple formula, that Adaptation is the result of at least two forces:
Adaptation = Mutation + Natural Selection
David's theory would simply add another term:
Adaptation = Mutation + Epigenetics + Natural Selection 
Only Mutation is random. Natural Selection is NOT random. Epigenetics would not be random either. (Both NS and Epigenetics require environmental causes.) 
Dennett clearly calls natural selection design. 
All of this (though relating to evolution) is a demonstration that overall—the whole process is NOT random, and by not knowing what caused abiogenesis, we don't know how "random" it was in the first place, either. -You and Pigliucci fail to take into account that for evolution to occur, not only must the first living matter have been able to reproduce itself, but it must also have borne within itself the mechanisms for ADAPTATION and for INNOVATION. If those mechanisms had not existed, life would quickly have died out or simply stayed in its most primitive forms (after all, bacteria have managed to survive unscathed). Atheists expect us to believe that ALL these mechanisms were assembled by blind chance. Once they were in place, then of course the adaptive processes were no longer random. However, innovation, which Darwinism explains as being due to random mutation and which you don't even bother to mention, is crucial: without it, we would not have the vast variety of organs that bacteria don't have. You and Pigliucci cling to the same old atheist line of focusing on Chapter 2 of the story, and dismissing Chapter 1 as a kind of minor irritant. (I haven't read Pigliucci, so that's a bit unfair. I can only go by your representation of his arguments.)
 
dhw...your negative judgement on ALL matters relating to the paranormal ... including the acquisition of otherwise inaccessible knowledge during NDEs ... remains a puzzle for me.
MATT: The USAF researcher's model accounts for all of this. We could discuss this further if you wished.-If you are convinced that the USAF researcher has accounted for all the paranormal experiences related by Pim van Lommel, David, BBella and myself, plus a few hundred thousand others, I doubt if there would be much point.