The nomological argument for god

[Nearly Sane]

Article on a 'new' argument for god. Despite what it says in the article, I think it's just a reframing of the fine tuning argument from a less specific perspective. As with so many arguments like it, the obvious failing is that of special pleading, in that it creates an infinite regress unless one arbitrarily says the argument does not apply to something. 

https://buff.ly/3xIaQzK

[jeremyp]

I would describe it as a rehashing of the teleological argument. TBH as soon as it started talking about regularities, I lost interest.

[ProfessorDavey]

Article on a 'new' argument for god. Despite what it says in the article, I think it's just a reframing of the fine tuning argument from a less specific perspective. As with so many arguments like it, the obvious failing is that of special pleading, in that it creates an infinite regress unless one arbitrarily says the argument does not apply to something. 

https://buff.ly/3xIaQzK

It is, in my opinion, a very poorly thought through argument that clearly starts from a biased position. So virtually his opening statement is:

Suppose that you receive five consecutive royal flushes in a game of poker. What explains this? You could have received them by chance, but that seems unlikely. A better explanation is that someone has arranged the decks in your favor.

This is terribly flawed if then compared to the possibility of life in the universe for the following reasons:

1. There is no evidence for the equivalence of five consecutive royal flushes which would be life developing multiple and consecutive times on the same planet. Indeed we have no evidence that life has developed anywhere else, but on our planet it would appears that it arose once and developed from there. So the equivalence would be one royal flush which hardly seems unlikely. And of course you haver to factor in all the other players, and times when a royal flush was not received, recognising that a royal flush is no more, nor less likely than any other specific set of cards - it just seems significance due to our propensity to see patterns, and in that case of cards that this combination is advantageous in the rules.

2. In cards we know there is a dealer, who may be fairhanded or could arrange the deck. So the starting point for this argument is an assumption of a powerful and knowing guiding hand. That assumption cannot be made for the universe and to do so, and then use that starting point to argue for god is classic circular argument - to use your conclusion as a framework for the starting point of your argument.

3. It fundamentally misunderstands the notion of statistical probability and chance. As pointed out earlier the only reason why a flush is deemed significant over any other combination of cards is that it carries an advantage under the rules of the game. There is nothing statistically unusual about a flush over any other combination of cards.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It is, in my opinion, a very poorly thought through argument that clearly starts from a biased position. So virtually his opening statement is:

Suppose that you receive five consecutive royal flushes in a game of poker. What explains this? You could have received them by chance, but that seems unlikely. A better explanation is that someone has arranged the decks in your favor.

This is terribly flawed if then compared to the possibility of life in the universe for the following reasons:

1. There is no evidence for the equivalence of five consecutive royal flushes which would be life developing multiple and consecutive times on the same planet. Indeed we have no evidence that life has developed anywhere else, but on our planet it would appears that it arose once and developed from there. So the equivalence would be one royal flush which hardly seems unlikely. And of course you haver to factor in all the other players, and times when a royal flush was not received, recognising that a royal flush is no more, nor less likely than any other specific set of cards - it just seems significance due to our propensity to see patterns, and in that case of cards that this combination is advantageous in the rules.

2. In cards we know there is a dealer, who may be fairhanded or could arrange the deck. So the starting point for this argument is an assumption of a powerful and knowing guiding hand. That assumption cannot be made for the universe and to do so, and then use that starting point to argue for god is classic circular argument - to use your conclusion as a framework for the starting point of your argument.

3. It fundamentally misunderstands the notion of statistical probability and chance. As pointed out earlier the only reason why a flush is deemed significant over any other combination of cards is that it carries an advantage under the rules of the game. There is nothing statistically unusual about a flush over any other combination of cards.

The authors seem to have closed down recourse to oppose by appealing to Ockhams razor.

What is/are the argument/s for regularities arising impersonally?

[Stranger]

What is/are the argument/s for regularities arising impersonally?

A god, or any other mind, consists of regularities, not to mention requiring time (or something like it) in which to think. That's why it's just an infinite regress with special pleading, as NS said in the OP.

[ProfessorDavey]

The authors seem to have closed down recourse to oppose by appealing to Ockhams razor.

What is/are the argument/s for regularities arising impersonally?

Regularities are merely in the eye of the beholder. As I've pointed out the authors see a flush as a regularity, yet a flush is no more or less likely than any other combination of cards. So five flushes in a row is no more likely that any other five combinations of cards. The only reason we see this as remarkable is because we perceive it as significant and/or a pattern. But that is merely subjective - there is nothing remarkable about five flushes in a row, any more than any other combination of hands - each are statistically equally likely or equally unlikely.

So their appeal to Occam's razor is totally ill founded - the most simply explanation (and therefore most plausible) is that this combination or cards (which is statistically no more or less probably than any other combination of cards) is simply a chance occurrence - we wouldn't comment on any other combination of hands, so why comment on this.

The only reason why we might appeal to a biased dealer is because we know there is a dealer of the cards. In the case of the universe there is no reason to suspect, nor any evidence for, the equivalent of the dealer of the cards so Occam lends us to a conclusion that this is merely a chance occurrence not a biased dealer of cards. The latter falls foul of Occam as it requires an additional, complicating scenarios - that there is the equivalent of a dealer of the cards.

[bluehillside Retd.]

"Suppose that you receive five consecutive royal flushes in a game of poker. What explains this? You could have received them by chance, but that seems unlikely. A better explanation is that someone has arranged the decks in your favor."

Oh dear.

Any randomly dealt deck of cards will produce a sequence whose odds against are 52 factorial (52!). 52! written in full is: 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000.

Amazing right? Why then doesn't the author claim divine intervention for any randomly dealt pack of cards given the extraordinary odds against that particular sequence appearing? Oh yeah, that's right – it's because he's committing a basic error in reasoning called the reference point fallacy. Just because a sequence of numbers might look significant to him does not mean that it actually is significant.

0/10. See me.   

   

[ProfessorDavey]

"Suppose that you receive five consecutive royal flushes in a game of poker. What explains this? You could have received them by chance, but that seems unlikely. A better explanation is that someone has arranged the decks in your favor."

Oh dear.

Any randomly dealt deck of cards will produce a sequence whose odds against are 52 factorial (52!). 52! written in full is: 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000.

Amazing right? Why then doesn't the author claim divine intervention for any randomly dealt pack of cards given the extraordinary odds against that particular sequence appearing? Oh yeah, that's right – it's because he's committing a basic error in reasoning called the reference point fallacy. Just because a sequence of numbers might look significant to him does not mean that it actually is significant.

0/10. See me.   

   

Indeed.

To think otherwise indicates a profound lack of perspective and an inability to see beyond the narrowness of human perspective and experience.

To think that a flush (or even five flushes in a row) is somehow more remarkable than any other combination of hands (except due to a perceived importance of a human defined pattern) is naive nonsense.

[Stranger]

TBH I think that it's not only a bad argument, it's poorly explained. The analogy of consecutive royal flushes doesn't really fit with what the actual argument (such as it is) is about.

It's not about why the universe or its laws seem to be special or improbable in some way (fine tuning argument) but why there are laws at all. So I guess what they're trying to do is compare the fact that (for example) every time we do the same experiment in science, we get the same result (regularity) to consecutive royal flushes, so any combination of cards would have done as well (just as long as it was the same every time). The royal flush just invites misunderstanding.

Of course, it's still just an infinite regress with special pleading because we can just ask the same question about any god as we did about the fact that there are physical laws (regularities). It's also circular in the sense that they describe god as a person and ascribe things like aesthetics, pragmatism, morality (and implicitly rationality, thought, and the ability to choose) to it and then use creating the conditions for those things as reasons why god might do so!

"Similarly, we can think of pragmatic, aesthetic, and even moral reasons why God might want to impose regularities on nature: notably, most of the valuable things we know of (such as happiness, love, rationality, knowledge, or meaningfully free choices) cannot be realized in worlds without regularities. And since God is a person, we have reason to think that God might have moral and aesthetic preferences."

[jeremyp]

"Suppose that you receive five consecutive royal flushes in a game of poker. What explains this? You could have received them by chance, but that seems unlikely. A better explanation is that someone has arranged the decks in your favor."

Oh dear.

Any randomly dealt deck of cards will produce a sequence whose odds against are 52 factorial (52!). 52! written in full is: 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000.

Amazing right? Why then doesn't the author claim divine intervention for any randomly dealt pack of cards given the extraordinary odds against that particular sequence appearing? Oh yeah, that's right – it's because he's committing a basic error in reasoning called the reference point fallacy. Just because a sequence of numbers might look significant to him does not mean that it actually is significant.

0/10. See me.   

   

A royal flush is significant under the rules of the game of poker and even if it wasn't, his argument was that it is incredibly unlikely that you would get a royal flush five times in a row. Getting a royal flush once is nothing special (except under the rules of poker), in fact you're four times more likely to get a royal flush than a hand consisting of the two and five of hearts, seven of spades, king of diamonds and jack of clubs. But, if you have been dealt that nothing special hand once, and then you are dealt it again, you'd suspect skulduggery. If you are then dealt it three more times, you'd be certain that the dealer is doing it deliberately.

There are several problems with the argument that I can see. Firstly, it is an argument by analogy. It is thus, fallacious. If I get dealt five royal flushes in a row, I would assume that the dealer had something to do with it. By analogy, I apparently must assume the creator of the Universe is like a poker dealer i.e. an intelligent being. But poker dealers are humans. This argument by analogy therefore leads me to assume that God is a human.

Another problem is that we only know one Universe. If the analogy is correct, we are still on the first deal. Not only that, but we've looked at the cards we were dealt and have made up a game (or assumed a game) in which the winning hand consists of those cards.

As an addendum, your number of the possible ways of shuffling a deck of cards massively overestimates the number of different poker hands. There are, in fact, only (52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48) / 5! different poker hands because you are only dealt five cards and it doesn't matter which order you get them in. There are 2,598,960 poker hands, of which four are royal flushes.

[ProfessorDavey]

TBH I think that it's not only a bad argument, it's poorly explained. The analogy of consecutive royal flushes doesn't really fit with what the actual argument (such as it is) is about.

It's not about why the universe or its laws seem to be special or improbable in some way (fine tuning argument) but why there are laws at all. So I guess what they're trying to do is compare the fact that (for example) every time we do the same experiment in science, we get the same result (regularity) to consecutive royal flushes, so any combination of cards would have done as well (just as long as it was the same every time).

But it isn't just consecutive hands that count here. Any specific combination of hands in cards has the same probability as any other, even though most wont be noted as having a pattern, or a 'regularity'.

Perhaps easier to explain with rolling a dice. So applying this example to the authors arguments, they'd imply something remarkable about throwing a dice 10 times and it coming up with a 6 every time. But that is no more or less likely than any other combination. So

6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

has exactly the same probability as:

6, 6, 3, 1, 5, 4, 1, 2, 6, 3

The only reason why someone might consider the former to be remarkable and not notice that the latter is every bit as remarkable is a naive human centric focus on 'pattern' or 'regularity' rather than any fundamental understanding of probability.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

A royal flush is significant under the rules of the game of poker and even if it wasn't, his argument was that it is incredibly unlikely that you would get a royal flush five times in a row. Getting a royal flush once is nothing special (except under the rules of poker), in fact you're four times more likely to get a royal flush than a hand consisting of the two and five of hearts, seven of spades, king of diamonds and jack of clubs. But, if you have been dealt that nothing special hand once, and then you are dealt it again, you'd suspect skulduggery. If you are then dealt it three more times, you'd be certain that the dealer is doing it deliberately.

There are several problems with the argument that I can see. Firstly, it is an argument by analogy. It is thus, fallacious. If I get dealt five royal flushes in a row, I would assume that the dealer had something to do with it. By analogy, I apparently must assume the creator of the Universe is like a poker dealer i.e. an intelligent being. But poker dealers are humans. This argument by analogy therefore leads me to assume that God is a human.

Another problem is that we only know one Universe. If the analogy is correct, we are still on the first deal. Not only that, but we've looked at the cards we were dealt and have made up a game (or assumed a game) in which the winning hand consists of those cards.

As an addendum, your number of the possible ways of shuffling a deck of cards massively overestimates the number of different poker hands. There are, in fact, only (52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48) / 5! different poker hands because you are only dealt five cards and it doesn't matter which order you get them in. There are 2,598,960 poker hands, of which four are royal flushes.

Not sure that poker dealers are necessarily Human or that the universe is a dealt hand of poker.

[jeremyp]

Not sure that poker dealers are necessarily Human or that the universe is a dealt hand of poker.

Glad you agree with me on the second point, at least.

I suppose a poker dealer need not be a human, it could be a computer, but computers and their programs are made by humans. If I was dealt five royal flushes in row in a computer game of poker, I'd still suspect skulduggery on the part of the programmer.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Jeremy,

A royal flush is significant under the rules of the game of poker and even if it wasn't, his argument was that it is incredibly unlikely that you would get a royal flush five times in a row. Getting a royal flush once is nothing special (except under the rules of poker), in fact you're four times more likely to get a royal flush than a hand consisting of the two and five of hearts, seven of spades, king of diamonds and jack of clubs. But, if you have been dealt that nothing special hand once, and then you are dealt it again, you'd suspect skulduggery. If you are then dealt it three more times, you'd be certain that the dealer is doing it deliberately.

Except that misses the point still. The “unlikeliness” of an event is defined by reference to the number of opportunities there are for it to happen. Thus if, say, the cards were dealt only five times and five royal flushes appeared that would indeed be extremely unlikely. Given a vastly greater number of hands being dealt though, the chances of the same five cards being dealt five times consecutively (regardless of what those five cards happen to be) increases in line with he greater number of same event opportunities. It's the same phenomenon of longer and longer sequences of consecutive heads or tails appearing the more often the coin is tossed. 

That’s the mistake creationists make by the way (ok, one of many). Not only do they wonder at the unlikelihood of them specifically appearing (the royal flush error), they also fail to factor in the countless bajillions of opportunities there were for evolution itself to start.     

There are several problems with the argument that I can see. Firstly, it is an argument by analogy. It is thus, fallacious. If I get dealt five royal flushes in a row, I would assume that the dealer had something to do with it. By analogy, I apparently must assume the creator of the Universe is like a poker dealer i.e. an intelligent being. But poker dealers are humans. This argument by analogy therefore leads me to assume that God is a human.

Another problem is that we only know one Universe. If the analogy is correct, we are still on the first deal. Not only that, but we've looked at the cards we were dealt and have made up a game (or assumed a game) in which the winning hand consists of those cards.

Yep.

As an addendum, your number of the possible ways of shuffling a deck of cards massively overestimates the number of different poker hands. There are, in fact, only (52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48) / 5! different poker hands because you are only dealt five cards and it doesn't matter which order you get them in. There are 2,598,960 poker hands, of which four are royal flushes.

Yes I know – that’s why I referred specifically to randomly shuffled deck of cards. The point wasn’t the size of the odds against a specific event, rather it was to illustrate the reference point error. When we bring our own narrative to an event such that it seems significant because of that narrative – the rules of poker, a car mileometer ticking over to 100,000 miles, our being born at all etc – we’ll often attach some special meaning to that event because of the narrative we bring even though there’s none at all. It’s known as the reference point error.       

[Stranger]

But it isn't just consecutive hands that count here. Any specific combination of hands in cards has the same probability as any other, even though most wont be noted as having a pattern, or a 'regularity'.

Perhaps easier to explain with rolling a dice. So applying this example to the authors arguments, they'd imply something remarkable about throwing a dice 10 times and it coming up with a 6 every time. But that is no more or less likely than any other combination. So

6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

has exactly the same probability as:

6, 6, 3, 1, 5, 4, 1, 2, 6, 3

The only reason why someone might consider the former to be remarkable and not notice that the latter is every bit as remarkable is a naive human centric focus on 'pattern' or 'regularity' rather than any fundamental understanding of probability.

I understand all that - but I don't think that's the point of the argument (which is why I said it was poorly explained). If every time you flipped a coin ten times you got (say): HHTHTTHTTH (or any other pattern you choose). Now compare to every time we measure (say) the gravitational constant we get the same value, or even every time we observe that gravity always attracts any mass to any other. What I took to be the point is that there is no more reason to expect consistent physical laws as there to expect consistent results from flipping a coin or dealing cards - which is still a bad argument but for different reasons.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It is, in my opinion, a very poorly thought through argument that clearly starts from a biased position. So virtually his opening statement is:

Suppose that you receive five consecutive royal flushes in a game of poker. What explains this? You could have received them by chance, but that seems unlikely. A better explanation is that someone has arranged the decks in your favor.

This is terribly flawed if then compared to the possibility of life in the universe for the following reasons:

1. There is no evidence for the equivalence of five consecutive royal flushes which would be life developing multiple and consecutive times on the same planet. Indeed we have no evidence that life has developed anywhere else, but on our planet it would appears that it arose once and developed from there. So the equivalence would be one royal flush which hardly seems unlikely. And of course you haver to factor in all the other players, and times when a royal flush was not received, recognising that a royal flush is no more, nor less likely than any other specific set of cards - it just seems significance due to our propensity to see patterns, and in that case of cards that this combination is advantageous in the rules.

2. In cards we know there is a dealer, who may be fairhanded or could arrange the deck. So the starting point for this argument is an assumption of a powerful and knowing guiding hand. That assumption cannot be made for the universe and to do so, and then use that starting point to argue for god is classic circular argument - to use your conclusion as a framework for the starting point of your argument.

3. It fundamentally misunderstands the notion of statistical probability and chance. As pointed out earlier the only reason why a flush is deemed significant over any other combination of cards is that it carries an advantage under the rules of the game. There is nothing statistically unusual about a flush over any other combination of cards.

I get that a royal flush is as likely as any other designated hand of cards.
What attracts me to aspects of what they say about Ockhams razor. For example an external explanation for the universe is rejected for being an extra entity or step. Occam's razor though rejects having unnecessary entities or steps. However the universe is full of contingency so there must be something about it that makes it necessary and the final step. a ''something'' constitutes an extra entity or step.

[ProfessorDavey]

Not sure that poker dealers are necessarily Human or that the universe is a dealt hand of poker.

The point about the universe not being a dealt hand of poker is that there needs to be a dealer in poker (whether human or not) while there is no requirement for there to be the equivalent of a dealer for the universe and no evidence that one exists. Therefore under Occam the authors argument fails as it adds an unnecessary complexity and additional step that need not be required.

[jeremyp]

Jeremy,

Except that misses the point still.

No it doesn't. I'm explaining his argument which everybody else seems to be misunderstanding.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

There is no requirement for there to be the equivalent of a dealer for the universe.

That's a positive assertion. You know what you have to do.

I hope you're not thinking that occam's razor favours the explanation with the least steps. Rather than favouring the one which has no unnecessary steps.

[ProfessorDavey]

What attracts me to aspects of what they say about Ockhams razor. For example an external explanation for the universe is rejected for being an extra entity. Occam's razor though rejects having unnecessary entities. However the universe is full of contingency so there must be something about it that makes it necessary and final a something is an extra entity.

The argument in the article fails under Occam as it adds an additional complexity and entities that have not been demonstrated to be necessary. Hence it moves beyond the simplest explanation.

The analogy with poker is poor because the dealer (whether human or not) is a necessary entity, hence it isn't being added and an explanation for a surprising set of hands may involve a biased dealer under Occam as the dealer is already necessary.

The analogy is not comparably to the universe where an entity that is the equivalent of the dealer is not necessary and therefore suggesting there is one is adding an unnecessary additional entity.

[ProfessorDavey]

That's a positive assertion. You know what you have to do.

I hope you're not thinking that occam's razor favours the explanation with the least steps. Rather than favouring the one which has no unnecessary steps.

Indeed and there are explanations for the universe that do not require the equivalent of a poker dealer and therefore to include one adds an unnecessary step and fails under Occam.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I get that a royal flush is as likely as any other designated hand of cards.

Good.

What attracts me to aspects of what they say about Ockhams razor. For example an external explanation for the universe is rejected for being an extra entity. Occam's razor though rejects having unnecessary entities. However the universe is full of contingency so there must be something about it that makes it necessary and final a something is an extra entity.

Still you misunderstand Occam’s razor. Put simply, it’s that the conclusion requiring the fewer number of assumptions is to be preferred to the conclusion requiring the greater number of assumptions.

The number of assumptions for five of the same cards to be dealt five times in a row though is a function of the number of times the trial is run. Given enough opportunities, five of the same cards dealt five times consecutively is just what you’d expect to see with no appeal to purpose (eg, divine intervention) necessary for that at all. The fact that someone might happen to be there to witness it (and then to make the reference point error in response) is irrelevant.   
 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

The argument in the article fails under Occam as it adds an additional complexity and entities that have not been demonstrated to be necessary. Hence it moves beyond the simplest explanation.

Firstly you have made a positive assertion effectively that the universe just is and needs no explanation.
That's wrong...... it needs an explanation. In other words what is it about the universe that makes it necessary rather than contingent? The puzzle that this raises is then what are atheists doing arguing against necessary entities in the necessity/contingent sense while supporting the idea when it comes to explaining the universe?

Wow....two birds ,one stone. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Good.

Still you misunderstand Occam’s razor. Put simply, it’s that the conclusion requiring the fewer number of assumptions is to be preferred to the conclusion requiring the greater number of assumptions.

Not sure that isn't just another ''fewer steps the better'' argument rather than ''not multiplying entities beyond necessity''.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Not sure that isn't just another ''fewer steps the better'' argument rather than ''not multiplying entities beyond necessity''.

What are you trying to say here?