The Nature of this Conflict (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, January 25, 2010, 11:52 (5224 days ago) @ George Jelliss

I wrote a satirical romance about globules of matter that accidentally bumped into each other and accidentally created a mechanism that enabled them to replicate, adapt, produce new organs etc. George, who is normally sceptical of romances, is happy to swallow this one.-GEORGE: However, dhw wants us to bear in mind that all this bumping around and evolving just might perhaps, in some far-fetched way, have been guided by the intervention of some brainy interspatial quintessence of a disembodied sky fairy [...] we have better things to do with our time than worry about highly improbable unlikelihoods.-I'm not quite sure why you've used "we". You and the other members of your congregation, the editorial "we", or even the royal "we"? But I love the colourful language and the emphatic style, both of which make for entertaining reading, even if ridicule is no substitute for reason. There's only one thing really strange about the content. That is the fact that while you dismiss the existence of a God as a highly improbable unlikelihood, you consider it a highly probable likelihood that brainless globules of matter could accidentally create a mechanism so complex that the brainiest of human brains can barely comprehend let alone recreate it. However, we all set our own limits of credulity. By the way, I'm convinced that the lottery ticket I have for next week will win £1 million. May I offer it to you for a mere £100,000?-On a more rational note, you write: "lack of evidence for gods does provide evidence for atheism (i.e. not believing in gods)." I'd put that rather differently. Lack of what an atheist considers to be evidence for gods may provide what he considers to be evidence for atheism (i.e. believing there are no gods). Conversely you might argue: "Lack of what a theist considers to be evidence for materialism, which is essential to atheism, may provide what he considers to be evidence for theism (i.e. believing that there are gods). Another variation, which I like best, would be: Lack of what an agnostic considers to be evidence for gods and for materialism provides what he considers to be a good reason for agnosticism (i.e. not believing or disbelieving in gods).-You also write that the "presence of evidence in everything being made of atoms with mass, does provide evidence for materialism (i.e. believing in chemistry)."-First of all, materialism does not mean believing in chemistry. It means believing that physical matter is the only reality. It is perfectly possible to be a theist and to believe in chemistry as the science that explains how God puts things together.-Secondly, "the presence of evidence in everything being made..." doesn't make sense to me. Evidence of what?-Thirdly, the existence of a physical world made of atoms with mass (which no-one in their right mind would deny) only provides evidence of the existence of a physical world made of atoms with mass. It cannot provide evidence that physical matter is the ONLY reality, as that would entail proving that there is no reality outside the physical world, which is impossible. I'm sorry to say, then, that if that is what you mean, your statement is what some people might call a "logical fallacy".