Why is a \"designer\" so compelling? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 16:37 (5609 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt has raised several points under different threads, though they can all be related to this one. Thank you for yesterday's post, and for your gracious acceptance of my "tips". As frequently happens these days, I had drafted a reply to your previous posts, but you have been too quick for me! I have therefore added one final section in response to an additional point you have raised. - 1) Under Chance v. Design you wrote: "Process theology [...] offers a very comprehensive view that allows one to have a supernatural [see (2)] god without violating the scientific method." I need to know more about process theology (thank you for the website reference, which contains some interesting reviews), but generally I don't see why religious belief has to violate the scientific method. It's only when fundamentalists insist on the literal meaning of their dubious texts that there is a conflict. Charles Darwin said his theory of evolution was compatible with theism, and you are aware that in epistemological terms there is no way of knowing whether life is the result of chance or design. Every discovery science makes in this field can therefore be made to fit in with chance or with design ... hence the fact that not all scientists are atheists! - 2) You ask us to tell you why "a supernatural deity is an acceptable alternative" (presumably to chance). From my point of view it's not. And chance is not an acceptable alternative to a designer. But when you say a "supernatural deity", you are loading the question with a term which can be misinterpreted and which needs much closer scrutiny. As I tried to point out in my discussion with John Clinch, we do not know the bounds of nature. We are hamstrung here by language, because words like deity and God are loaded with associations. Design implies consciousness, i.e. some sort of unknown and probably unknowable conscious power. That's the design theory. It can and does lead to all kinds of speculation about the possible nature of a designer (and hence to the various religions), but these are not part of the theory itself. - 3) The invocation of a creator is "a direct statement of the old creationist 'god of the gaps'." I find this pejorative expression irritating. All theories are attempts to fill gaps. The theory of abiogenesis fills the gaps with chance or with unknown natural laws, so should we call that theory 'genesis of the gaps'? Every attempt to solve a mystery entails fixed points and filling the gaps between those points (see Gestalt theory). Why should the God theory be singled out? (For the falsifiability argument, see (5)). - 4) Under "The Difference of Man..." you wrote: "My REAL view ... I must distinguish this because I play devil's advocate so much that my real positions tend to be obfuscated ... is that we bring in outside assumptions (deities) if and only if all possible other alternatives have been completely exhausted." - Do you then REALLY believe there is the slightest possibility of other alternatives ever being completely exhausted? If you don't (and I don't see how you can), you know that you will never bring in outside assumptions, and therefore your REAL position is that you will never consider the possibility of a deity (or outside intelligence). This is tantamount to saying you have made up your mind that there can be no explanation of life other than chance. Is that a fair deduction? It's not a problem, of course ... you are in very good company! - 5) In your latest post (reiterating your framework post) you have written: "If we invoke a creator, there isn't really anything we can say or do or study about it. We just invoke it. It's also unfalsifiable, which is one of my criterion for accepting something ... anything ... as truth." - The statement that life came about through design is unfalsifiable. The statement that life came about by chance is equally unfalsifiable (as is the materialist belief that there is nothing beyond the material world - though see (2)). If falsifiability is indeed one of your criteria for accepting something ... anything ... as truth, you will have to discard both chance and design as your explanations. What can be studied is the process of how life came about, and that can be done without even mentioning an unknowable prime cause. The fact that you can discuss and study chance as a subject in itself is of course irrelevant, as is the fact that you can discuss and study "God".