Atheism and the Celestial Teapot!

[Gordon]

Before bringing God into anything, I stopped at creator. Even if I didn't believe in God, I would still believe that something was responsible for the design & creation of life.

One observation on which to base a hypothesis? DNA! Here's a snippet from Wikipedia(1)
An interesting description! Instructions are made for a purpose. That implies forethought and intent. Show me any natural process that can think in advance and make decisions accordingly.

There is also a similarity with things designed and made by human beings that have similar characteristics, e.g.
- alphabet for books
- musical notes for music etc)
- computer instructions for software.

(1) DNA

Musical notes aren't manufactured or designed by humans though: they occur naturally. That humans manufacture devices to make sounds of certain pitches (A=440 etc) and then organise them into arrangements we call music is just one example of emergent properties - as is the symbolic representations that we use to convey meaning and sound.

[torridon]

There's a fine line here between an undiscovered/unknown natural cause and a non-natural cause. I would suggest that where something happens that goes against the way the natural world works, e.g. miracles.

How does one identify "something happens that goes against the way the natural world works".  Suppose you are at the cutting edge of what is known, a scientist working at CERN say, and you see a collision debris pattern you have not seen before, do you call it supernatural because it appears to defy previously known experimental data ? I put it to you that we cannot know what is supernatural and so an honest investigator will never use that description.  Rather, what we do is use the new evidence to enrich our models of reality.  Calling it supernatural is a dead end, it gets us nowhere.

[torridon]

The problem I have is with a gain in information. A gain in information means adding something that cannot come from what is already present. For example: a black-and-white photograph being turned into a colour photograph gains something, namely colour information. Not only that, but the colour has to be added in the correct place.

If all life evolved from a single common ancestor, then gains include the functionality for animal life, plant life and human life, including gender. If it didn't come from nothing, the ability to do so must have been there from the start, so where did that come from? If the ability wasn't there from the start, but came as a result of mutation+natural selection then you are talking about a gain in ability coming from nothing.

Last time I wrote along these lines, one charge was, argument from incredulity. Is there any experiment I can conduct that copies something and ends up with something greater than what I started with? Can I copy e.g. my CD's of Windows Vista imperfectly, select some copies, copy those again, select some copies, repeat until such point that I end up with Windows 7? That's an illustration of a gain in functionality. I would suggest that when something is copied, a perfect copying process yields an identical version of what you are copying. An imperfect copying process leads to a variation (e.g. colour information copied incorrectly will give another colour), or a loss. Only in common-descent evolutionary theories can you start off with something and end up with something greater than what you started with (Wikipedia's explanation for the alleged evolution of the eye, for example)

This sounds like a regurgitated Intelligent Design argument from about 15 years ago.  Biologists have no such problems as you describe.  Why should it be a problem for you if it is not for those working in the field ?

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

It sounds like that standard argument: we don't know how living cells emerged, therefore God did it.

That's not the argument.

In any case, human beings design and make things, so why are some here so against the idea that a creator could have designed/created cells?

[wigginhall]

I thought that a mutation by definition adds information; but this is only part of the process, since mutations can be selected for, as the environment also introduces new information.   Thus, recent studies on Darwin's finches (Galapagos), have shown that beak size (which affects which kinds of seeds can be eaten), is affected by climate.   Periods of drought or el Nino conditions favour finches with different size beaks, and the others tend to die out.   But beak size is continually oscillating via genetic variation, and is heritable. 

 http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/10/965.full 

[Dicky Underpants]

Yes. If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, no Christian faith.

Gordon has pointed out the unreliability of these ancient accounts, and I might go on to mention their huge contradictions. The text you seem to be alluding to is from St Paul, who had a very different view of the Resurrection from the gospel accounts.

Your problem is how to explain what the phrase "Christ rose from the dead" even means. It is true that those who have believed that it expressed some sort of reality have often been inspired to action (though often such actions have been extremely morally dubious), but all you really have to go on is that it seems to mean something to them. Those of the liberal wing of Christianity (inspired by the writings of Paul Tillich etc) don't seem to talk in terms of revivified corpses, but the latter seems to be at least part of the package of belief for a lot of traditional Christians.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

It’s all there: the failure to understand that logic leads where logic leads

Logic according to whom though? That's the point you keep on missing!

If I say 1+1=10, that is not a logical statement in base 10, but it is in base 2.

The logic you use is an assumed tautology (true by default), so it is not falsifiable. Therefore you make deductions based on it, e.g. dead men don't rise from the dead, a positive claim for which you don't have to present any kind of evidence and / or reasoning to support.

the avoidance of what circular reasoning actually entails

You mean reasoning like absence of evidence => evidence of absence, leading to
As there is no evidence of God's existence, He doesn't exist;
God doesn't exist therefore there is no evidence of His existence

and – as ever – the shifting of the burden of proof by never once suggesting an argument for his god.

And, according to you, neither has any other Christian ever on this forum!
 

And in other posts we see the most abject failure to grasp what emergence entails and thus the crudest Paley’s watch reasoning of, “if it looks complex it must have been designed”

That's your argument, not mine. But hey. If you (and Dawkins) have enough faith to believe that a blind watchmaker is more likely to build a watch that one that can see what they are doing, all credit to you! That's atheist logic for you!!

the continued misconstruing of Russell’s teapot as if the ridiculousness had anything to do with the underlying point and so on.

Well, you are the one who has to resort to inventing dancing pixies on keyboards, then comparing it to religious belief, but cannot see why the comparison is invalid.

Once again: The analogy with religious belief fails because the teapot is made up. It doesn't exist. If you compare it with religious belief, you are claiming (whether you want to or not) that religious belief is made up.

I see too that Vlad has returned with his standard tactic of, “lie, ignore the corrections and rebuttals and keep on lying.”

It's called a difference of opinion, clearly something you are not mature enough to handle.

What then should we make of this?

That your philosophy, when subject to the same scrutiny as religious belief is found wanting. It has no foundation because it is not based on truth.

To my virtual (and virtuous) friends here though, my very best wishes.

Au revoir...until Part 3 then 

[SusanDoris]

Just because you - and , yes, large numbers of others, believe that there **must have been** a creator of some sort does not make it true. Why should non-believers take on your faith in this belief which is entirely without a fact to back it up?

[SusanDoris]

Your denigration of one of our best and longest-posting members is, in my opinion, a disgrace. If you think your thinking is so much better, produce just one fact to back up your guessworked claims.

[Gordon]

Once again: The analogy with religious belief fails because the teapot is made up. It doesn't exist. If you compare it with religious belief, you are claiming (whether you want to or not) that religious belief is made up.

For crying out loud: the celestial teapot thought experiment is not analogous to religious belief - it illustrates a fallacy. If you are going to dabble in philosophy you really need to do some homework, unless you wish to continue looking uninformed.

That religious belief is made up is a separate matter involving the deployment of other logical fallacies beloved by theists.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

That is not something from nothing.  Complexity is a reference to the ways things are organised.  We have a word for properties that are evident at higher levels of complexity - emergence.

Which is just a clever way of saying something from nothing

Try that approach in Physics. I put a book on the ground. It springs three metres into the air. Was a force applied to the book, or did it self-emerge the energy to overcome gravity?

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

That's not a falsification test. 

All supernatural beliefs are unfalsifiable, that is implied by supernatural.

If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, there is no Christian faith.
If Jesus Christ did rise from the dead, there is a Christian faith.

So how is the resurrection of Jesus Christ not a falsification test?

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

What difference does it make to what natural mechanism is used if you believe a god creates those anyway?

Truth, specifically accuracy.

It's clearly an issue, otherwise why is there so much resistance to even the possibility of a creator being involved?

[Andy]

Truth, specifically accuracy.

It's clearly an issue, otherwise why is there so much resistance to even the possibility of a creator being involved?

It makes no difference to the truth of what natural mechanism is used. Why are you making out like it does?

[torridon]

If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, there is no Christian faith.
If Jesus Christ did rise from the dead, there is a Christian faith.

So how is the resurrection of Jesus Christ not a falsification test?

Well 2000 years on I think all hope of any evidential basis for that claim is gone.  It is not something we can test, all people do is put interpretation on ancient claims, that is not the same as testing.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

If by "naturalistic philosophy" you mean believing that only the natural exists, then you have just scored a massive own goal. If you believe that this position can't be falsified, then you have inadvertently conceded that your super/non-natural position can't be confirmed in any way, as doing so would falsify this "naturalistic philosophy".

It's not so much me believing that the position can't be falsified, but the philosophy being set up so it isn't falsifiable. So it asks religious believers for evidence of their faith, whilst denying them the ability to do so. It claims a position of being true without ever having to give an account of why.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

And that something doing the designing and creating couldn't be life.

In my opinion yes; some kind of intelligent life.

[Andy]

It's not so much me believing that the position can't be falsified, but the philosophy being set up so it isn't falsifiable. So it asks religious believers for evidence of their faith, whilst denying them the ability to do so. It claims a position of being true without ever having to give an account of why.

So who is it that's claimed that only the natural exists?

[Andy]

In my opinion yes; some kind of intelligent life.

Then your argument is circular.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

You are looking down the wrong end of the telescope: those may be the odds of you winning the lottery but the probability that someone will win the lottery is very different, as is confirmed by the simple fact that jackpots are won on a regular basis.

That was my point Gordon. The odds are high, yet as you say, the jackpots are won regularly. Therefore it shows that just because the probability of something happening is high, it doesn't necessarily mean that it should be considered unlikely to the point of dismissing it.

[Gordon]

That was my point Gordon. The odds are high, yet as you say, the jackpots are won regularly. Therefore it shows that just because the probability of something happening is high, it doesn't necessarily mean that it should be considered unlikely to the point of dismissing it.

You still don't get it: for Camelot that someone (as in anyone) will win is quite probable but for you or I it is quite improbable but possible, since people do win.

So, the odds of one person surviving being dead for around 3 days is what exactly? Try consulting several undertakers, apply some induction and I think you'll find no examples at all on which to calculate probability. 

[Gordon]

If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, there is no Christian faith.
If Jesus Christ did rise from the dead, there is a Christian faith.

So how is the resurrection of Jesus Christ not a falsification test?

Because it is indistinguishable from fiction: to claim the resurrection as fact is on a par with claiming you are in possession of the favourite pipe of Sherlock Holmes.

[Andy]

If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, there is no Christian faith.
If Jesus Christ did rise from the dead, there is a Christian faith.

So how is the resurrection of Jesus Christ not a falsification test?

Talk about a false dichotomy.

[Gordon]

Anything is indistinguishable from fiction at first glance because you can write fiction about anything.
However since you have made a positive assertion Gordon i'll let you provide evidence that it is fiction.

Yours, Not holding his breath Vlad.

Bring back Bluehillside. I'm fed up with Hillside manqué.

Don't be a silly boy, Vlad.

I've said it is indistinguishable from fiction and not that it is fiction, and in relation to that I've frequently asked you guys how you have assessed the risk of mistakes or lies in these NT resurrection accounts, and so far no takers - so that the resurrection of Jesus tale is indistinguishable from fiction is a reasonable conclusion.

You could try doing some distinguishing.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hi Susan,

Your denigration of one of our best and longest-posting members is, in my opinion, a disgrace. If you think your thinking is so much better, produce just one fact to back up your guessworked claims.

As you know, I've withdrawn now from this board at least until someone posts an argument that hasn't been rebutted countless times. I had to look in briefly though to thank you for your very kind comments.

I see that Sword has returned with repetitions of exactly the same arguments that have been undone already, but has made no effort to deal with the rebuttals that unhorse him. To be frank, this kind of thing only vindicates my decision to step away. There are only so many times that you can explain bad reasoning before it becomes dull to do and, I suspect, dull to read. If anyone does engage with the counter-arguments then I may well respond. As things stand though, there doesn't seem to be much point.

Maybe there needs to be a new corner of this site called, "Space for Theists Who Actually Want to Engage with the Arguments Rather than Ignore or Lie About Them" or some such, but until then...

My very best wishes to you, and good luck with the tapdancing