Serious Evolution/Creation debate

Max Carvalho

Que os jogos comecem
i'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, but I think you're trying to say that because nature is so efficient / powerful / good (which are all fairly subjective to begin with) and that technology currently isn't at that point, that there must be a creator greater than humans.

while this argument seems logical (i guess?) on the face of it, it ignores the fact that nature created this "ideal" structure of a horse's leg, or whatever, over millions of years and thousands of adaptations. evolutionism doesn't hinge even remotely on the idea that everything just -happened- randomly and we got these structures we now have today, but rather that natural selection constantly selects the best trait, leading to "optimal" species for their respective environments over time.

the argument also hinges on the concept that human technology will never be able to surpass that of the natural world, which is frankly myopic even while not considering the rate that technology is growing. yes, we can learn a lot from animal species, but that isn't equivalent to their being more "perfect" structures than humans can ever create.
Pardon for making my message not that clear, yes, I was talking about some logic. Think about it now; why do we, humans, have a conscience? Why do we create morals for us? Why do we care that much for the sick and the dead ones? Do moral principles help us anyhow in matters of surviving? Nope, deppending on the situation, if one want to do the "right" thing, one might explode himself in order to defend something he believes is right or to show the world something in his opinion is wrong (this happens in the real world duh). This trait was acquired by evolution? In order to adapt to the enviroment do we need morals and ethics? Bible happens to explain that; if we were created in the image of God, it simply means, differentely from any earth creation, we have free-will, a conscience, and we can express the main qualities of God; love, power, justice, and wisdom. No, it doesn't mean we have the same appearence as God, because Bible's message is mostly full of symbolisms. God is a spiritual corpse btw.
As I touched this point, do read the Bible. If you took evolution as your belief, but don't want to hear about anything else, because it is totally right for you, you just took evolution as your dogma; in other words, you've taken evolution as your own religion. Asfaic, Science doesn't estabilish dogmas right? Many people have died because they just tried to translate the Bible in a language not named latin; there might be a reason for that, don't you think? Also, read in order to understand it, not to just say "Oh I read it, so what?" That's pretty much I've got to tell, you simply cannot argue about Bible if you don't understand its message. Not like I can persuade Ppl on the internet to read the Bible tho.....
 
In order to adapt to the enviroment do we need morals and ethics? Bible happens to explain that; if we were created in the image of God, it simply means, differentely from any earth creation, we have free-will, a conscience, and we can express the main qualities of God; love, power, justice, and wisdom.
Just throwing this out there – humans aren't unique in having morals (I'm not entirely sure if this was one of your points, but I did want to clarify it). Primates have been shown to care for the well-being of their fellow animals – in one experiment, they were given two chains/buttons to press. One would produce an average kind of food, and another would produce a more desirable food (not entirely sure what it was, but you get my point). Naturally, the monkeys chose the desirable food consistently, at least until one of the monkeys got an electric shock after a monkey in another cage pulled the lever for the good food. After witnessing this, the monkeys immediately stopped trying to get the desirable food, and some even stopped taking any food altogether for a long period of time. According to the theory of evolution, primates are our closest relatives, so this could explain quite a lot. In fact, altruism is hard-coded in our brains – in one experiment, it was shown that giving a sum of money to charity produced more dopamine (the 'happy' chemical) in the human brain than taking it for oneself did.

And ethics do sometimes have an evolutionary advantage (although this is often debated) – humans (and primates, I suppose) are inherently social creatures, and someone who completely lacked morals and ethics would be excluded from the group.
 
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One is backed by scientific research, the other is propaganda, pandering to the gulible. Debating creationism (which is christianity based usually) is entirely pointless because the ground for having a debate hasn't been set.

It comes down to this: Theory vs Hypothesis.
 

Codraroll

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I think it also should be mentioned that Pappy777, the user who created this thread, seems to have logged in twice in his Smogon career. One time when creating this thread, basically spewing bovine excrements to trigger a debate, then a second time to fuel the fire by giving nonsensical replies to the few who bothered to refute him. All the posts he ever made was on this off-topic pointless PRATTy "debate". I doubt we'll ever see him again.

Trolling well achieved.
 
In a thread like this one, there's very little significance to the opening post. Discussion happens in the tail of the thread, and you can pretty much ignore the opening post. There are people with different opinions keeping this thread alive. It's hardly trolling on Pappy's part, he's irrelevant.
 

Codraroll

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My point was, it's obvious Pappy registered only to kick off this thread. Notably, the discussion doesn't follow the topic at all, most members seem to perfectly agree that evolution is pretty much proved and creation as provided in religious texts is metaphorical at best. If it hadn't been for Smogon's thankfully well-behaved userbase, it would probably have devolved into bashing/defending of religions, as I guess happened on most of the dozen-ish other forums Pappy probably created this very same thread in.

I'm all for civil debate, but people should remember to debate what's being presently discussed, and not follow the absurdity of the opening post to create a harsh rebuttal that others might perceive as an attack on their religious beliefs, thus starting a debate, because this was seemingly the intent of the troll who originally created the thread.

All in all, just a little heads-up: Don't respond to the OP.
 

Cresselia~~

Junichi Masuda likes this!!
If you are Catholic, please be noted that Pope Francis has declared
'Evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God isn't 'a magician with a magic wand'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...snt-a-magician-with-a-magic-wand-9822514.html

This is more like what I had previously been taught in another Church.
"Evolution is not contradictory to Creationism, but rather, God may have included evolution during creation."
In which, this theory had been circulating in theology for quite some years by now.
(The argument of the book of Genesis shouldn't be in the bible is rather new compared to this one)
 
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Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
is a Contributor Alumnus
Kudos to the pope and all (seriously, given his position that's an extremely bold progressive stance to take)...
Personally I think "God planned, but god did not plan and decided fuck it after a point and start rolling dice" is a dubious and a very compromise ridden stance to take, but hey progress!
---

And also. I laughed when someone above said having certain qualities, especially "free will" is evidence of a God. Especially in the context of Abrahamic religions, the poster seems to be using. If you don't realize the irony of this, then it's just unbearably sad.
Same goes for Conscience and Morality as well. Shows a capricious lack of basic semiotic ethos.

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Re: unilateral support for evolution and rejection of creationism "dogmatic"/"akin to a religion itself".

No.
This argument is just as fallacious as moronically retarded as the "atheism is also like a religion" argument. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how a 'religion' operates. It operates on faith as a prerequisite. Faith being belief without evidence. So you can't ask me to be open minded and consider something which has zero evidence, and call me dogmatic if I don't. It's not dogma, it's rationalism 101.

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Re: The Bible, (selective Re: It's symbolic and allegorical)

Sample post said:
Why the hell is the Bible taken as a literal book? The message you should take from it is the subjective one, it tries to convey a message (an ethical one, most of the time), and if you are reading it as an historical or scientific (for lack of better words) you're just plain wrong. Both atheists and christians are wrong when they treat the Bible like that, and many people do it.
Okay, this has been something many people have been thumping about. I would rather not address it since it isn't strictly within the ambit of the creationism v evolution discussion, but this has snowballed into a little contested claim, holding the same veracity as say, a fact.

Again no.

This is a very apocryphal claim, and there is no historical proof that the bible was meant to be symbolic in any manner whatsoever. On the other hand all the proof exists that whatever group of despotic control freaks sat down to pen this shit, literally meant to hawk it as fact. From ordinary believers to kings, to members of the church and in multitudes of historical cases past Popes themselves have used the bible as a factual tool to justify some of the most barbaric and evil shit ever unleashed on humankind.

The "bible is metaphorical" is again a softcore compromise stance taken by some of your parents and local preachers, when these people could no longer explain away some frankly ridiculous/impossible bullshit in the book by the sheer virtue of blind faith.

Okay, let's say even despite all this we have it your way and discount all the historical evidence whatsoever. The Bible is meant to be read as a metaphorical text. Cool.
That is STILL very problematic on 2 levels.

A: Even if it's metaphorical is the end message of preaching being changed? Take the very first book for example. Even if Adam, Eve, Paradise, and Satan were all metaphorical. What metaphoric message is it trying to convey? That woman is a subjugate of man and the conduit of all sin? Does that really make it any better? Does not literally believing in genesis change the sexist morality being preached here?
Which brings me to, B: The problem with a text like the Bible is not if it's factual or not, but what it stands for. Trust me, it won't be all peachy if the Pope yells "The Bible is not literal guys!" from his rooftop tomorrow, because the problem is a more deep seated one. Yes there is the occasional good verse and preaching here and there, but that doesn't discount the vicious discrimination, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and oppression, scattered throughout the text, and the severe amount of submission to authority it demands while taking away the agency to think at the same time. That occasional snippet of the encouraging story of David v/s Goliath doesn't change the fact that The Bible is possibly the greatest agent of Manufactured consent and the most evil and deadliest weapon of mass destruction and fascism ever created by man.


Sure, all said and done you can selectively read the good bits and judge the book on that merit. But by that logic I can ignore all the anti-semitism and racism in Mein Kampf and declare it to be a great read on statecraft and policy making. t's called cherrypicking. Geddit?
 
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Crux

Banned deucer.
I think you'd enjoy posting in r/atheism more mate!

Free will would, in fact, be reasonably persuasive evidence for the existence of God because, without a God, determinism is probably true. Some prime mover or intervener would reduce the likelihood of free will not existing exponentially. However, it's the kind of evidence you would never be able to confirm. I would call you out for being pretentious but I don't believe in a God so you didn't have the agency to not be pretentious so I won't confer moral blameworthiness on you, don't worry!

Support of evolution and support of creation are in fact almost precisely the same thing. Just like atheism, like any system of belief, regardless if it is deist or not, requires some degree of faith. As an atheist, the faith you have is just in the capacity of science to derive truths from the evidence that it collects. This requires faith that your senses and the senses of scientists are not deceiving you or them; faith that systems of logic and reason, which are just arbitrarily bestowed on your species as opposed to any other species, are legitimate ways of understanding the universe and deducing truths about that universe, despite the fact that your brain wouldn't allow you to understand the universe in any other way if logic and reasons were in fact false representations; faith that evolution is, at least to some extent, truth seeking, and that you can rely on your faulty faculties that have developed for survival functions not necessarily truth functions; faith in inductive methods in allowing you to deduce scientific laws; and faith that those things, assuming they are true, will continue to remain true into the future. Hmmm, seems like a list of things that require you to make a leap of faith. I wonder where I've heard that before???1!?!!??

I don't really care much about biblical interpretation because I'm not a believer, but assuming that the God of the Bible does exist then it would have to be a metaphorical / subjective test, because the interpretative faculties that that God bestowed upon us are necessarily subjective and would lead to different understandings of the same text. I feel like an omnipotent and omniscient God would understand death of the author and various strains of post-structuralist literary theory. Also, all of your other objections are also solved by human error / subjective interpretation / misinterpretation of the actual will of God, I'm entirely unclear why you think that any of the criticisms that you have made are interesting or persuasive.
 

Myzozoa

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"belief without evidence" Soul Fly you have precisely described why classic foundationalism, i.e common naturalism, is identical to faith.

In fact, a belief in evolution+naturalism might even contradict a belief in foundationalist naturalism, as the probability that your foundational belief-forming faculties are accurate under the hypothesis of evolution+naturalism is much lower than the probability of your foundational beliefs being accurate on the hypothesis that theism (or "god, being all good etc, would find it good that intelligent beings have reliable belief forming-faculties"): http://www.calvin.edu/academic/phil..._evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism.pdf

yall need to realize that it was christians who made up all most all the shit that you think disproves christianity. positing differences between classically foundationalist knowledge formations like the science proceeding from a theory of naturalism and christian epistemology is fallacious, both historically and philosophically: http://andrewmbailey.com/ap/Reformed_Objection.pdf

lastly on fine-tuning, http://www.discovery.org/a/91, this is the rigorous argument that fine-tuning is better evidence of theism than single universe atheism. However, the problem is that it is merely better evidence of any sort of designer with an intent, an evil designer, an experimenter, a sadist, a benevolent God, etc, so there is no reason to think that this argument is any sort of evidence for many theisms. <- This is actually the 'only' still-standing, widely accepted, non-fallacious (in terms of burden of proof fallacies), objection to fine-tuning as evidence of God. All the other objections are based on theories as speculative as conjectures about the existence of God, in fact many of the objections appeal to entities and systems much more complex than appeals to God do. Not that this means anything for the truth of 'the matter', but if theism significantly simplifies ones' world view compared to atheism, than perhaps the atheist ought to be called the one with too much faith in abstract entities.


note: i would call myself an atheist.
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
Hi, could you just explain this in more detail? I don't necessarily disagree, and you clearly have reasoning behind this point, but I just would like to see the logic behind it to learn. It's slightly counter-intuitive because religious people always cite "God's perfect plan" (or similar phrases) that imply a determined universal plan while some important nonbelieving thinkers (Sartre for example) hold that free will does exist. Again, not looking for a debate, just a question
The argument is basically:
P1: Some form of determinism is true
C1: All of the choices that you make have been pre-determined from the beginning of your life (/time depending on the type of determinism you find persuasive)
P2: In order for you to have free will, causal determinism must be false
P3: We have free will
P4: Causal determinism can only be false if some external actor intervenes in the determined series of events, giving you free will
C2: God exists.
 
Even if we do have free will (which is debatable), that doesn't really prove the existence of god exactly, as I understand the concept, a soul could function similarly (though describing a soul is a bit of a grey area imo- it could range from a bit of inexplicable neuron activity to some mystic force). I admit it's fairly similar spiritualish stuff, but there's a distinction between a soul and an omni-potent/scient/whatever else creator.

Also Crux, earlier when you talked about accepting evolution as being faith-based, I'd like to point out that there's a massive discrepancy between the level of faith required for creationism and for accepting evolution. To question creationism is primarily to question the word of whoever it was that wrote that particular section of the bible, plus whatever supposed "evidence" has been cobbled together by creationists in recent years. Whereas the faith you're talking about for accepting evolution revolves around a more fundamental point, namely the question of whether anything we sense is real. In the case of questioning reality, assuming it's true is a far more reasonable assumption than accepting the bible as true
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
Hence why I said having free will would be reasonably strong evidence for a God. I don't believe we do have free will.

There is literally no difference between the kinds of faith required. I listed many leaps of faith required to believe evolution, not just senses, which you just asserted was a more reasonable leap of faith without actually outlining any particular difference. Go read Plantinga or something or my posts they have interesting things in them.
 

Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
is a Contributor Alumnus
Crux I think conversely you'd enjoy posting more in r/sweepinggeneralizations friend!

Never once did I say in my post that GOD doesn't exist. That's a completely different argument.


I am still inclined give you some generous benefit of doubt because my critique of Free Will (though it may have come off as otherwise) was, as stated, completely under the Abrahamic image of God, which the earlier posters used to purport their logic. And later about the Bible, which should go without saying, is under the ambit of Christianity again, so obviously a subset of the same set of notions.
As a clarification, my critique was a very Nietzchian one, entirely about this very human institution of religion. I'm talking about the Semitic God (in the bible/koran/torah whatever, take a pick) which is supposed to be perfect and whole but ironically suffers from a narcissism complex that needs for devotees to continually show devotion or face consequences, that would drive a man to murder his firstborn to prove his devotion, that doles out arbitrary punishments and retributions for slights and faults, primary of which: not believing in this deity. Thus in essence becomes a paradox that wants you to fear him and love him at the same time. And hence easily identifiable as something that only a man would create, where the idea of God is prostituted as a fear-inducing big brother and provider with the purpose of exerting control and total hegemony over a populace. A construct that seeks to take away your agency to question, your rational impulses, because it becomes a taboo, when there is such an exacting entity involved.

[Though I don't think I couldn't be any more clearer but if you find my exposition lacking, I'd refer you to 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra', where Nietzsche famously quipped "God is Dead"]

Crux:
Your post seems rather solipsistic, as in it questions the very veracity of human perception and senses, but that's deconstructing the very idea of "faith" itself amd conflates affiliation to a rational belief with a seemingly irrational one based on this ideal of "leaps of faith" which do technically exist for both (while disregarding the relativism). If it was supposed to be a reply to me it would be an unfair one, because you are countering my macrocosmic idea based on a sociological premise, with a microcosmic one based on an entirely different fundamental philosophical line of enquiry. It's pretty obvious to make some reasonable base assumptions while making a directed response in a given context, and you can literally counter the most perfect argument if you suddenly decide to junk the context and move the argument in a different sphere. You go ahead and say you don't care about the biblical interpretation, which was all my post was about, and strictly under the ambit of the said book, and then go ahead and make some parallel argumentation while slipping in some sly ad hominem about pretentiousness. It's rather cool and all, but rather daft as a response.
I'm not sure if my arguments were supposed to be interesting or persuasive yours certainly weren't, as a suitable reply to any of my argumentation whatsoever.


And also, I really wasn't contesting with the idea of God as a separate entity, so I really don't have any direct beef with your seemingly post structural reading of this entity within the scope of the given topic, since it moves beyond the Christian image of God. Though again, as general criticism, I find it a little ironic that you'd mention Death of the Author, and then talk about the subjective/mis-interpretation of the actual will of God. AND on another note, as far as I recall, any understanding at all of God we have is subjective, and there isn't any bona fide sign board proclaiming "THE WILL OF GOD. ® ™...", so that argument sort of falls on itself. Obviously all of my problems will be resolved if we consider it to be "human error", since I was chiefly talking about the human construct of religion in the first place. :/

(As a sidenote, I have larger philosophical differences with the idea, but we've already digressed far offtopic already and I would choose not to do so, since this clearly belongs to another discussion, but I personally find the Barthes' essay, that you refer to, sort of problematic. I suggest this excellent lecture by Foucault titled; 'What is an Author'. Also you might find the Post-Atheist movement as an interesting counterposition to your views)

Again, what my post was NOT about:
Existence of God / Bible = God.

....

Myzozoa
I honestly do not know enough about Naturalism to fashion a proper response. But I find that line of thought very intriguing. In fact I find it to be somewhat complementary to my line of argumentation regarding the Bible. But I'm very interested in the last link. I think it's very thought provoking, and I'd definitely like to discuss more of this once I have a proper handle on what the article is saying. The idea Design, I must admit, is a statistically persuasive one, but I tend to err on the side of caution, ascribing non-explanation as evidence. I'd love to discuss more of this somewhere, sometime.
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
I don't care about the part of your post that deals with biblical interpretation because I don't find it interesting and was more interested in responding to the earlier parts of your post.

With regard to the nature of religion:
Why is religion a human construct? Why are certain religions not true? Why is it important that it is a human construct any more than, say, reason and what you refer to as "rationality"? Those are the questions my post was getting at.
Your post seems rather solipsistic, as in it questions the very veracity of human perception and senses, but that's deconstructing the very idea of "faith" itself amd conflates affiliation to a rational belief with a seemingly irrational one based on this ideal of "leaps of faith" which do technically exist for both (while disregarding the relativism). If it was supposed to be a reply to me it would be an unfair one, because you are countering my macrocosmic idea based on a sociological premise, with a microcosmic one based on an entirely different fundamental philosophical line of enquiry. It's pretty obvious to make some reasonable base assumptions while making a directed response in a given context, and you can literally counter the most perfect argument if you suddenly decide to junk the context and move the argument in a different sphere. You go ahead and say you don't care about the biblical interpretation, which was all my post was about, and strictly under the ambit of the said book, and then go ahead and make some parallel argumentation while slipping in some sly ad hominem about pretentiousness. It's rather cool and all, but rather daft as a response.
I'm not sure if my arguments were supposed to be interesting or persuasive yours certainly weren't, as a suitable reply to any of my argumentation whatsoever.
Yes, I am questioning the veracity of human perception and senses. I don't think it's fair to make assumptions about them under the pretext that they exist or are legitimate, especially when you're ridiculing similar assumptions. I'm questioning whether or not your beliefs are rational, or that you can know that they are irrational, or that you can differentiate between rationality or irrationality. Or, assuming that you could, that you could identify scientific processes as rational. Absolutely the purpose is to conflate what you consider rational and irrational beliefs because you haven't presented, and I don't believe that you can present, a justification for so-called "rational beliefs" that includes the sciences and not religious inquiry. I don't think it is reasonable to make any of those "base assumptions"; to do so would be to make the exact "leaps of faith" that you were sceptical of in your original post. This isn't a difference between two separate inquiries (macro/microcosmic or whatever you thought that meant), rather questioning the entire basis of your philosophical inquiry as opposed to any other line of philosophical inquiry, see: religion etc., which you have not bothered to justify.

The last part of this is pretty funny.
Never once did I say in my post that GOD doesn't exist. That's a completely different argument.
I didn't make any claim that you did not did I fashion a claim to respond to that indicated that you did. Nothing in your post actually responds to anything I said, you seem to have misread my claims.
 

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase
is a Contributor Alumnus
Wow, how is this still going on?

Okay, I just wanna say that I hear a lot of creationists conceding that microevolution does, in fact, happen. However, microevolution is merely evolution at its smallest scale - If you accept microevolution as fact, you accept evolution as fact. Do you not think these small changes could add up over time? That's just simple logic. I honestly find it laughable that they think accepting microevolution makes their argument any more credible, especially when they're essentially accepting evolution as fact by accepting microevolution.

Also, I don't know how free will got brought up, and I don't really care. Francis Crick once said something along the lines of "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." Do you honestly think that constitutes free will? Honestly, I think people want to believe we have free will just out of convenience. Even then, who gives a shit? You would not feel any different even if you did have free will. You'd still have morals, you'd still have ethics, and you'd still have a desire to fuck. However, I'd like to say that having free will would not necessarily prove the existence of a god, and not having free will would not necessarily disprove the existence of a god. (note: I am an atheist, as a lot of you have probably gathered from my other posts)

But, free will isn't the point of this thread. Honestly, the Catholic church accepts Evolution, so it seems to me that even they know that the bible should not be interpreted literally. Just because you're religious does not mean you are incapable of accepting scientific evidence of anything (especially when your holy book really should be seen as symbolic instead of literal,) so stop saying that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and stop saying we were "intelligently designed."

But if ID were really true... Then men would have their testicles inside of their body. Just, what kind of designer would put them outside? We also have organs that often fail, and we breathe, eat, and drink through the same hole, pretty much guaranteeing that a small percentage of us will choke to death every year. ID logic doesn't even make sense from a design perspective.

/thread

edit: Neil deGrasse Tyson describes it better than me:

 

Woodchuck

actual cannibal
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Testicles are outside the body to preserve the optimal temperature for sperm.
And how many holes are you gonna put in the body?

 

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase
is a Contributor Alumnus
Testicles are outside the body to preserve the optimal temperature for sperm.
And how many holes are you gonna put in the body?

I know why they're outside of the body, but that doesn't explain how that makes sense from a design perspective; if anything, that only proves that it only makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Neil deGrasse Tyson explained it pretty well in the video when talking about what's between our legs - "No engineer would design that AT ALL." If I were designing a species, I'd think to myself, "Hey, maybe I should find a way to put these important reproductive organs... inside the body? Seems like they'd be too vulnerable if they're just hanging outside." I mean, unless said designer is just extremely sadistic and also happens to have a thing for slapstick comedy. And I don't think having separate holes for breathing and eating is too much to ask for; you could just have separate passages for them. Is that too much to ask a *cough* designer to do? But of course, evolution can't just make us have separate holes, so knowing this, which theory should be accepted? (Of course, evolution should be the one accepted regardless since all the evidence points to it)

Shrug - I'd just like to point out that neurons are very often in competition with one another; in fact, said competition is necessary for refining neural circuits. Crick probably said something about that in wherever that quote came from (I know there's an SMBC comic that brings up neuronal competition)
 

mattj

blatant Nintendo fanboy
The "This couldn't have been designed because I would have designed it so much better" objection is the dumbest objection of them all. No you wouldn't have designed it better. You've never designed a living creature nor will you ever. It works perfectly well as it is. You have no way of telling if your changes would help or hinder.

How do these people not realize how dumb they sound when they say "Whulp. I woulda dun programed its dee-enn-aye tah do it dis way instead"? Balloney. What a blowhard.
 

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase
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The "This couldn't have been designed because I would have designed it so much better" objection is the dumbest objection of them all. No you wouldn't have designed it better. You've never designed a living creature nor will you ever. It works perfectly well as it is. You have no way of telling if your changes would help or hinder.

How do these people not realize how dumb they sound when they say "Whulp. I woulda dun programed its dee-enn-aye tah do it dis way instead"? Balloney. What a blowhard.
The argument is, "If we were designed, then the designer did a bad job." Not like it works "perfectly well as it is" anyway; testicular torsion is just one of the problems I can mention that arises from your nuts being located outside of the body, and I could go over so many other failings; it's not like this is the only problem. The point is to delegitimize creationism by showing that this alleged all-powerful, all-knowing god didn't design us very intelligently, but of course you'll just reject that offhand since you're a creationist. Anything to continue to justify it in your head, I guess. But that aside, what do you say to the piles of evidence for evolution, but the complete lack of any evidence for creationism? All of your evidence just comes from a book that was *cough* written by man.

And how do you know we wouldn't design it better if we were this designer? Also, why does UV radiation give us cancer and cause age-related eye problems? You know... The kind of radiation the sun puts out? Stupid design.
 

Jorgen

World's Strongest Fairy
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I had an issue with Collins' claim. To try to specify and articulate what seemed to my gut to be wrong with this, I used a Bayesian framework (Bayes is love, Bayes is life, all admissible decision procedures are just Bayesian algorithms in disguise) to try to work through the problem myself. Pardon my terminology, if the term "prime mover" has been passé since Aristotlean times, substitute your favorite word or phrase that means "basically god, but not quite as loaded a term".

If the hidden post below seems impenetrable, ivory-tower gobbledegook to you, let us assume a practical case where this sort of thing actually matters: medical testing. Let us assume here that θ is the hypothesis that one has, say, ebola, and that x is the result of a test for ebola. We magically know that this test is very sensitive and that therefore p(x|θ) = 0.9999999. Furthermore, we also magically know that the test does not give a lot of false positives: p(x|~θ) = 1e-7. We know that roughly 1 in 10 million people in the world has ebola, so p(θ) = 1e-7. What can we infer about a person's ebola given a positive test result?

p(θ|x) = p(x|θ) p(θ) / p(x)
p(θ|x) = (0.9999999)(1e-7) / [p(x|θ)p(θ) + p(x|~θ)p(~θ)]
p(θ|x) = 9.999999e-8 / [9.999999e-8 + (1e-7)(1 - 1e-7)]
p(θ|x) = 0.5

This person is 50/50 for ebola! But our test is basically perfect! Unfortunately, our prior is also so small that our perfect test just isn't perfect enough. If we throw off the conditional probabilities to more realistic values of 0.99 sensitivity and 0.01 specificity, the prior probability of having ebola in the first place means that a positive ebola test result paradoxically says you're still way more likely not to have ebola. This is actually a serious and real phenomenon in medical testing, so hopefully that provides a more concrete basis for the argument below.


Let us take Θ to be a hypothesis regarding a prime mover. Let θ be the particular hypothesis that such an entity exists, set the universe in motion with the intent that life as we know it would come into existence, and had the means by which to make that a certainty.

Furthermore, let us take x to be our evidence regarding θ; namely, that life as we know it exists. Let us assume for the purpose of this exercise that it is possible that this is observed by some entity guaranteed to exist across all possible universes to get around weak anthropic principle trickery.

We can infer the likelihood of Θ = θ as follows:

p(θ|x) = p(x|θ) p(θ) / p(x)

We know that θ implies x, therefore p(x|θ) = 1.
We do not have prior knowledge of θ, but let us assume a very tiny prior probability p(θ) = α among a vast distribution of other hypotheses regarding the existence of a prime mover and the properties such a being would possess. Therefore, the numerator is α.

We can calculate p(x) as follows:

p(x) = ∫p(x,Θ)∂Θ

There are only two cases of Θ that we are interested in: θ and ~θ. Therefore, we can rewrite the previous equation as

p(x) = p(x,θ) + p(x,~θ)

which in turn is rewritten as

p(x) = p(x|θ) p(θ) + p(x|~θ) p(~θ)

We already know that p(x|θ) p(θ) = α. We also know that the complement of p(θ), p(~θ), is equal to 1-α. We can make the not-so-unreasonable assumption that the vast space of alternate parameterizations of the universe would render the likelihood of life as we know it very unlikely given the lack of a sufficiently powerful prime mover intending to give rise to it. Let us call this tiny probability p(x|~θ) = β. Therefore, the denominator is α + (1-α)β.

(Note that I introduced the epistemic possibility of an ontologically necessary observer because I didn't really want to talk about the weak anthropic principle (WAP). That said, a brief synopsis of the WAP goes like this: we would assume that the implied background information for our Bayesian inference includes the presence of some observer to make the gathering of evidence possible, lest p(x) be 0 and our expression indeterminate. For this question in particular, this observer is typically assumed to be x itself, therefore p(x|~θ) is reinterpreted as p(x|~θ,x), which reduces to 1).

We therefore can deduce that p(θ|x) = α / (α + (1-α)β). However, we can determine the magnitude of neither α nor β outside of estimating both as "very small". Note that we would be in error to assume only one of these variables negligible and therefore infinitesimal (for those arguing for the necessity of theism, this would be β; for the necessity of atheism, α), as there is no information to suggest that the other is not just as negligible.

Note that it really doesn't matter whether θ is specific enough to imply x. It just makes this problem easier to think about. If we chose θ such that x were likely, we'd just end up with a non-negligible constant term (let's call it γ) that propagated through the equation to yield p(θ|x) = γα / (γα + (1-α)β). The number would be different, but the lack of a conclusion would remain constant.


TL;DR: I think that my main problem with Collins' argument is that he considers the possibility that our existence given the lack of God is unlikely, and that our existence given God exists is likely, but does not consider that the God claim itself is best assumed to be based on a very low-likelihood prior, thereby screwing up the inference.

Also RE: imperfect design, the way this argument tends to be presented is asinine but the core of the argument is basically along the same lines as using the problem of evil to demonstrate the paradoxical nature of the "Omni" God. Specifically, an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good god would be unconstrained by anything when designing organisms (e.g., why even have a poop-hole, why not just have solid waste sublimate into the ether?); would know exactly how to make his will a reality; and would will that all beings be designed in a manner to never suffer from natural evil, even from mere inconveniences wrought by inefficiency.
 

Myzozoa

to find better ways to say what nobody says
is a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
thats not his argument though, his conclusion is that the so called 'fine-tuning' is better evidence for the theism hypothesis than single-universe atheism hypothesis, you could argue that he's begging the question by 'assuming' relative probabilities for the two hypotheses, but he definitely doesn't really try to prove more than his argument shows, I think he's pretty honest that this is not evidence for god's existence just an argument for the 'rationality' of being a theist compared to an atheist.

Also I'm not really sure that ppl would accept your medical testing analogy, they can just apply like some principle from probability theory that tells you to always assign relative values as best you can, in the absence of perfect information (can't remember what the principle is, and you don't have to hold it, but then you have to like do some more rationalizing for why you should withhold ascribing relative probabilities to the hypotheses being compared). Like, even though it's still unlikely that an ebola positive means an actual ebola case, would you want to make a bet on what card I'm holding after I tell you that it's a heart, or after I tell you that it's a heart and a face card? Same thing really. Your argument is kind of like saying that there are too many cards in the deck, right? Thats not gonna make it any less irrational to bet on what card it is when I tell you it's a heart, as opposed to when i tell you it's a heart and a face-card (given the two options you would choose to bet in the latter case). You should try to apply as much info as possible.

Honestly, the problem of evil is a really serious objection, but that just passes the debate to being about whether some of the properties they ascribe to God are inconsistent, but then I think you're really gonna lose since, after all, its their fucking bullshit faith so they can make up whatever theology they want in order to win this part.

like watch this argument:

(2+2=5)v God Exists
-(2+2=5)
therefore, God Exists.

thats kind of the type of begging the question shit that you just can't avoid when someone has an opportunity to figure out a way to define gods in some way that doesn't make their properties inconsistent. obviously this argument is valid, but it's only sound for people who believe God exists, same thing with problem of evil shit.

i think the stronger play, the one that avoids all this, would be to just really reject the entire study of natural theology or philosophy of religion, that part that deals with proofs and arguments. The entire discourse is just a hugely false dichotomy, imo. Since they spend all this time comparing just two or three 'different' positions that are pretty much all so much less justifiable positions to hold than to reject each of them as they come up.
 
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Jorgen

World's Strongest Fairy
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Past SPL Champion
Yeah, I understand he's not using it as definitive proof or anything. But he's still making a claim of relative likelihood without addressing the notion of a Bayesian prior, instead relying on this strange thing called the "prime principle of confirmation", which holds when the prior and its complement are within the same order of magnitude, but not in general.

Yeah, too many cards in the deck is basically what I'm talking about.
 

mattj

blatant Nintendo fanboy
Adamant Zoroark I know you wouldn't design it better because you have not and never will design anything living creature better. This is the definition of being a blowhard. My god that is a dumb objection.

"Testicle torsion! Therefore Genesis must be wrong!"

what nonsense

Now let me tell you guys, if I ever designed a computer it would have a 20 inch flexible screen and be solar powered and have a Terrabite of RAM and weigh an ounce! That's how I'd do it!
 
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