Michael Behe\'s son is an atheist (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, September 01, 2011, 19:45 (4832 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I come up with the following exquisitely absurd argument: our own intelligence is so complex that it can only be the result of an act of creation, whereas the immeasurably more complex intelligence that created it cannot have been the result of an act of creation. Welcome to Wonderland.-DAVID: That is not Wonderland. It is the recognition of 'first cause', a philosophic gift from our ancient Greek Friends. If everything has a cause, there must be an uncaused first cause. There can not be an infinite regression to nothing.-You can argue with equal logic, and equal inconsequentiality, that if everything has a cause, there cannot be an uncaused first cause, and so there has to be an infinite regression to something.
 
The 'first cause' argument is a philosophical placebo. A child comes to you with a mysterious ailment. "Ah," you say, "that's called ploxyboxyosis. Just take this pill and you'll be OK." So there's no mystery after all, the child sucks the sweetie, and lo and behold, all is well. The thinkers have a problem: There is no effect without a cause, but we haven't a clue what started it all (if anything did start it all) so we'll call whatever it was (or wasn't) "first cause". Now that it has a name, we know what it is. Then we give the patient a dose of God, and he'll stop worrying about it.-This is not a way out of the logical impasse I have described above, and it explains absolutely nothing. Why not admit that we're confronted by an insoluble mystery, and join me on the fence of the don't-knows-can't-knows? Oh, and beware of Greeks bearing gifts.