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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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"Probability is beside the point when it comes down to whether certain (lone) things are designed."
You're preaching to the choir, and again this is not a claim I am making, it is a creationist claim I am pointing out flaws in.
No, it is not. Explicitly pointing out flaws in a claim requires (1) giving the claim and (2) analyzing the content of the claim exactly. Your analysis was an enthymeme at best, and you neither stated the claim explicitly nor referred to its text in your analysis. The watchmaker argument, if it is formulated in probabilities, applies these probabilities to sets of many things to make claims like, `the animals were created especially.' Unlike your application of a probability to a single case, such as whether a god was designed, these arguments are formally valid in terms of their frequentist structure. If, as your last comment suggests, you did not know that frequentist probabilities cannot be applied to lone cases validly, or you had not noticed that frequentist formulations of the watchmaker argument are formally valid in terms of their frequentist structure, then I was not preaching to the choir.
" it is a creationist claim I am pointing out flaws in."
calhais "No, it is not."
Creationists don't claim complex things are designed? Or there are no flaws in their claims?
"Your analysis was an enthymeme at best"
Creationist claim that complexity implies design. The example I gave was Paley's watchmaker fallacy, one assumes you think I've omitted some complex details of the claim, what might those be?
My conclusion was that if (as creationists claim) complexity implies design, and they also claim a deity designed and created everything, then that deity would logically be more complex that it's design, then not applying that same rationale to the deity is a special pleading fallacy.
"Description: Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria, without providing adequate justification. Special pleading is often a result of strong emotional beliefs that interfere with reason."
To be clear claiming complexity implies design, then claiming everything was designed by a more complex deity, then denying the deity is itself designed is the very definition of a special pleading fallacy.
No, sorry. I meant that you had not pointed out flaws in a creationist claim because you had neither stated the claim nor given an explicit analysis of it.
Thank you for writing out your claims more explicitly; it makes your writing easier to understand. Though it is easy to get theists to agree with your proposition that ``the deity would logically be more complex than its design,'' it is, in science and mathematics, not a logical assumption to make; complex behavior can arise from simple rules. The first example of this that comes to mind is the system of functions describing the Lorenz attractor. Many differential and Diophantine systems produce complex behavior that is seemingly not encoded by the stated rules. I think also of the likewise famous Collatz conjecture. Computationally hard problems often ensue from small sets of simple rules, and computationally complexity is probably the kind of complexity we care about here. It is not necessarily true that a god that can create the universe is necessarily more complex than the universe, and it is not necessarily true that a god that can create the universe encodes in its own `matter' at least as much information as the universe because moving on without making clear what it would mean for a god to `create' the universe leads us into wonderland. Never have we observed the creation of matter, save for in particle-antiparticle pairs; the net energy of the universe is estimated to be about nil, and the creation of energy does not seem to be a necessary component of the creation of the universe. Before a comfortable argument about a watchmaker can be considered, the base proposition that the universe was created in some traditional sense of the word `create' must be settled. The relationship between a god that `created' (in the hand-wavy sense) the universe and the universe probably has a clearer analogy that avoids pulling the explosion principle into the argument.
Yours has been another example of poor technique in naming fallacies: naming the special pleading fallacy did not help you get to the bottom of anything, even though you named the fallacy correctly. There is a case to be made for the deity that creates the deity that creates the deity that creates . . . the deity that creates the universe: the `real deity' could be defined to include every deity in the chain. I am not aware of any complexity metrics that can be used to determine the complexity of the `real deity,' and it would not be rigorous to simply invent one and yet apply the usual theorems from information theory.
Perhaps I wasn't clear, but I'm not suggesting the claim holds any validity, quite the opposite. Your post seems to be refuting the creationist position, which I was using as an example of flawed creationist claims.
The infinite regression problem was merely an observation of where the creationist argument leads without special pleading for their chosen deity.
Obviously beyond that most creationists simply assume their deity is "the real one" in first cause Arguments they use. For example William Lane Craig's use of the Kalam cosmological argument.
"Before a comfortable argument about a watchmaker can be considered, the base proposition that the universe was created in some traditional sense of the word `create' must be settled"
Well of course but theists do tend to consider the matter settled, and so often put the cart before the horse in their assertions.
"Yours has been another example of poor technique in naming fallacies: naming the special pleading fallacy did not help you get to the bottom of anything, even though you named the fallacy correctly."
In epistemological terms of course I'm not obliged to counter any argument that is offered without proper evidence. quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs negātur. Hitchens's razor applies. Though the fact the argument contains informal fallacies is enough to establish it cannot rationally be asserted as true.
Of course I'd say it's in the nature of theistic apologetics to use special pleading fallacies.
Your previous comment (quote 1):
Now (quote 2):
Well, let's get this strait. When you write, "I'm not suggesting the claim holds any validity," do you refer to the claim that ``if (as creationists claim) complexity implies design, and they also claim a deity designed and created everything, then that deity would logically be more complex that it's design''? In good faith, I'd assume that you aren't referring to that claim. Quote 1 comes from a sentence that has two consecutive clauses starting with the word `then,' so you might understand my confusion.
I'd like to make sure we're on the same page by pointing out that the conclusion (prop. 1) that [you aren't obliged to counter any argument that is offered without proper evidence] is not an epistemological conclusion; though, you might use an epistemological argument to explain your motivation for asserting prop. 1. I know what Wikipedia says about it, but in my opinion as a mathematical modeler who has had some experience with mathematical logic, epistemology is not the proper realm of discourse to consider the burden of proof, except when the burden of proof itself is considered as a valid component of arguments toward disproof*. Hitchen's razor, applied or not, does not determine whether the burden of proof can be used as a component of a negative proof (though the modern formulation of the razor is suggestive).
Yes, and it's important to assert the falsehood of the argument on that count if the social situation lends itself to debate. But don't stop there! The point is to build arguments and learn the truth, not to focus solely on taking down trivial arguments.
What do you mean by that? It sounds like you're saying that there's a psychological reason why apologetic arguments tend to commit the special pleading fallacy.
*E.g., when an argument like `the burden of proof of claim A is Ron's, and Ron has failed to prove claim A, therefore claim A is probably false' constitutes a proof or pseudoproof; or, when the slightly stronger inference rule, `unproven(A) therefore probably_false(A),' holds.
"It sounds like you're saying that there's a psychological reason why apologetic arguments tend to commit the special pleading fallacy."
Not what I meant sorry, I meant to say that (to me) special pleading fallacies appear to be inherent in the belief a being exists which defies known (scientifically validated) facts about the natural world and universe, and for which no objective evidence can be demonstrated.
The rationale being that if this fallacious reasoning was applied universally then it would "validate" just about any belief the holder was minded to hold as true. Indeed the vast number of deities and vast number of varying religions built around each deity, would seem to confirm this idea.
If we don't allow special pleading (as logic dictates we should not) then first cause arguments (For example) would if sound, no more validate Jesus than they would Zeus or Appollo.
If my posts seem to lean towards brevity at the expense of substance it's because many months of seeing substantive answers dismissed and or ignored by theists with no real attempt to address what was said have left me a little jaded.
I have no knowledge of formal logic so make no comment or response. Informal logical fallacies on the other hand are relatively simple to understand and spot. And as the phrase common logical fallacies implies, are used often.
Calhais,
If one found a blob of pure aluminum in the beach sand it would be as convincing as finding a watch with respect to establishing manufacture (and a designer or designers). The correlation between complexity and manufacture is, indeed, in serious trouble. The one criterion that applies to both is that they are both out of place in nature. But, what would we compare plants and animals, or the universe itself, to in order to show that they are out of place in nature? Complexity is naively seized upon because, if you ignore life, nature can't duplicate the precise and complicated workings of a watch.
Creationists eliminate the only things in nature (organisms) that have complicated arrangements based on precise parts, then they note that all the complex things left are man-made. Thus, they conclude, everything with complicated arrangements based on precise parts must be manufactured!! A case of loopy logic.
Mostly fine but the very last sentence. Do you mean literally `loopy?' I don't see circularity in the propositional structure of the argument, so I wonder what you mean.
I would modify this to point out that the high-purity aluminum blob probably wouldn't be as convincing as the watch, but they might be about the same. I really don't know what's meant by the word `complexity' in the typical watchmaker argument. If the word `complexity' refers to information, then it is true neither that nature 'produces complexity,' nor that humans do. The overall argument that this information had to come from somewhere remains a thorn.
Genes are selfish.
To Spudnik (and anyone else interested)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352278
Its a free ebook or pdf entitled "Becoming Human: How Evolution Made Us" by Greg Downey, a lecturer in anthropology at Macquarie University, based on his free e-course with Open2study (www.open2study.com). The subject matter is in the title and covers a lot of issues concerning evolution. Its easy and surprising reading.
hey=== Thanks for the book!
My thoughts on the subject.
You can view evolution and reproduction from many different perspectives:
As long as you only look at it only from the perspective of the intelligent individual organism, it won't always make sense.
As the surrounding environmental conditions sometimes changes (and as other species undergoes changes) a species may become less successful at surviving then it previously was. Reproducing with small random variations allows for adaptations in the offspring to new conditions. Some variations are failures and dies out, others are successes and increases the rate of successfully surviving and reproducing.
A species that does tries to reproduce, is a species that has a good chance of continuing to exist through new generations. So this trait would definitively be expected to be found in surviving species.
As already mentioned, a species that doesn't try to reproduce, would quickly die out.
Side note: This does sometimes occur on an individual level, for example humans sometimes become asexual (they feel no sexual attraction to either men or women). But this trait resists spreading to new generations by its very nature, so it has no substantial effect on a species.
From the perspective of a gene: More new copies.
From the perspective of a species: New individuals, perhaps with some new positive adaptations.
From the perspective of an non-intelligent individual: No benefit, it was only following its own nature.
From the perspective of an intelligent individual: This is a philosophical topic of debate, nothing I will go into.
There are other factors as well, especially for social animals, where the offspring sometimes help out and increases the chances for the parents to not die, and increases the chances of survival for the group. There is food sharing, helping as lookout for enemies, grooming, etc.
To me, it seems strange to ask why a self replicating mechanism is replicating itself.
DNA is a molecule. It doesn't have a mind, it doesn't have a conscious goal.
It does not seem strange to me. It does seem strange to expect a philosophical or biological answer to the question, though, since the answer lies in biochemistry.
That is a good point, there is nothing wrong in asking why, as in "what is the cause".
I think I interpreted Spudnik's phrasing as if the "why" implied a conscious action.
The Pragmatic,
Delighted to see you back! Maybe I was just looking in the wrong places. Your patient replies have always been a model of calm reason.
A created man is walking along a created beach by a created ocean surrounded by created sand and created rocks with created trees growing on the created cliffs that were made by the created rocks where the created birds flew under the created sky and the created clouds when he suddenly looks down and sees the created crabs rushing to avoid the created water and there next to a created seashell he sees a created watch. In this world of created things, how does he recognize a watch as being created and even if he did there would be nothing special about it lying on the beach among all the other created things. The watchmaker who is created himself vanishes into a created world where all things are created and existent at the will of the all magical powerful omnipotent and omnipresent God. The argument from design fails miserably.
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