Epistemology of Design (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Thursday, December 10, 2009, 14:43 (5248 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt: A month or so back dhw pointed out to me an important case in dealing with design: How can we say that nature was designed when we have nothing to compare it to?-We usually come to the same conclusion, but arrive there by different routes! My argument has actually been in the other direction, because we have had Jason Rosenhouse, Greta Christina, Victor Stenger and others parroting out the same silly claim that nature/the universe/life look exactly as we would expect them to look if they were NOT designed. I have therefore asked how the heck they could possibly know. This argument against design is pure speculation, while the argument for design, as David has stressed, is the negative one of complexity. Life is unique in our experience, and so it seems to me absurd to pretend we know what designed/non-designed nature would look like. -You say: "In all of the universe, only THIS planet is known to have this fine tuning. The universe at large is downright hostile to life; therefore it is not the case that the universe is fine-tuned for life." I don't know if this is true. Just how dependent is life on factors outside our planet? Obviously we depend on the sun, and on all kinds of physical constants within our solar system. Maybe our solar system itself depends on factors elsewhere. And in any case, a different sun, or different physical factors could lead to a different form of life, but equally "fine tuned". This is where speculation runs riot. Dawkins argues that there could be life on a billion planets, and neither you nor I exclude the possibility of life elsewhere. But it IS all pure speculation, and even if other forms of intelligent life were discovered, it still wouldn't solve the design issue, though some of us might revise our ideas. (In my view, though, it would badly damage the anthropocentric view of life!)-As for atheism not being "tenable due to the nature of what we can know", I would prefer to say that neither atheism nor theism is supported by what we do know ... which is all we can base our present beliefs on. Each approach requires faith (in chance or in a designer), but in all fairness to the theists of my acquaintance, they admit this. Most atheists I know scream blue murder if you tell them their scepticism is based on faith.-This leads me to our only point of disagreement. You refer to my scepticism as being "near paralyzing". I would argue the opposite. It's belief that's paralyzing, and the stronger the belief, the less movement there is. Fundamentalists (theist and atheist) have formed their pattern, and they will tie themselves in knots in order to shut out the problems arising from it. Scepticism will only lead to paralysis if you automatically reject every possibility ... and that in itself is a sort of fundamentalism. I would like to think that in my case and in yours, it's balanced by open-mindedness. While we do not believe, we do not reject. For instance, we don't rule out chance, we don't rule out design, we have respect for science, but we also have respect for certain forms of mysticism. Paralysis, in my opinion, only comes with closure.