Atheism

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October 19, 2006

Inexcusable Ignorance Part II

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Cosmological Argument, Dawkins, Philosophy, Theistic Arguments
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-For context see “Inexcusable Ignorance Part I“-

The same could be said of Richard Dawkins. On numerous occasions he has appealed to the supposed problem of the origin of God as an objection to theism and ID. It is central to his argument. I will quote a couple different versions so you can feel the force of his argument. During an interview on NPR Dawkins said:

It was the genius of Darwin to show that organized complexity can come about from primeval simplicity. It precisely does not require an original intelligence in order, or an original complexity in order to get it going. And it’s just as well that it doesn’t, because if it did we would be left with an infinite regress, saying, where does the original intelligence come from? … If life is too complex to have been produced by natural selection, then it’s sure as hell too complex to be produced by another complex agent; namely a divine intelligence. That is an absolutely inescapable piece of logic. If you are going to say that life is too complex to be explained by natural selection, then you cannot invoke an even more complicated agent. … The task of biology is to explain where all that complexity comes from. Now to invoke a complexity-an intelligence, a complex agent-as the designing being is to explain precisely nothing, because you are left asking where did the designer come from?
…
Some people are tempted to invoke…a creator to fine-tune the constants of the universe. Once again that cannot be right because you are left with the problem of explaining where the fine-tuner comes from. So wherever else the tuning comes from, it cannot come from an intelligent creator.[1]

And again:

Most of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself.
…
Even before Darwin’s time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born.[2]

Again, it is obvious that Dawkins does not do much reading of theistic apologists because the answer to this question is readily available. Such ignorance is unacceptable for an Oxford scholar.

As I wrote one year ago, science highly suggests and philosophy demands that the universe came into being a finite time ago. Everything that comes into being has a cause, so the beginning of the spatio-temporal-material universe must have had a cause as well. Whatever caused space, time, and matter to come into existence cannot itself be spatial, temporal, and material because you cannot bring something into existence that already exists. That means the first cause of the universe must be eternal, non-spatial, and immaterial.

So who caused God? Nothing. He doesn’t need a cause. As just noted, the First Cause of the universe must be eternal. By definition eternal things never come into being, and thus do not need a cause. The Law of Causality only applies to things that begin to exist. As an eternal being God never began to exist, and thus needs no cause. We conclude, then, that God is a necessary being, acting as the first cause of our contingent universe when He willed it into existence a finite time ago. So much for Dawkins secret weapon!

But let’s say the answer to Dawkins’ objection was not accounted for. Would it matter? Would it lessen the force of the argument that the universe needs a cause, and that the cause must be a personal, powerful, intelligent being? Dawkins thinks so. In The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins wrote, “To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like ‘God was always there’, and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say ‘DNA was always there’, or ‘Life was always there’, and be done with it.”[3]

Clearly this thinking is wrong-headed. We can still identify God as the cause of the universe even if we don’t know what caused Him. Our ignorance of His origin no more argues against His existence and causal necessity than the fact that I don’t know who my great-great-great grandparents were argues against the fact that my great-great grandparents are the cause of my existence.

Biologist, Stephen Jones, responded to Dawkins’s reasoning by pointing out that “if science was required to explain everything along an infinite regress, before it could explain something, then there could be no scientific explanation of anything new.”[4] Delvin Lee Ratzsch had similar sentiments:

Dawkins seems to be presupposing that if explanations are not ultimate they are vacuous. …. He seems to be assuming that no origin has been explained unless the ultimate origin of anything appealed to in the explanation has also been explained. In addition to being mistaken, that principle is surely as dangerous for the naturalist as for the theist. To take the parallel case, one could claim that to explain the origin of species by invoking natural processes is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of natural processes. And, of course, attempts to explain natural processes by invoking the big bang or anything else- will generate an exactly similar problem with anything appealed to in that explanation. Any explanation has to begin somewhere, and the principle that no explanation is legitimate unless anything referred to in the explanation is itself explained immediately generates a regress that would effectively destroy any possibility of any explanation for anything.[5]

Where did God come from? I’m glad we have an answer, but the answer is irrelevant to our recognition that the universe was designed by an Intelligent Designer. ID does not attempt to find the ultimate designer, but only the proximate designer. They could be one and the same, or they could be distinct. That is for philosophy to determine, not science.

[1]Richard Dawkins, interview with Tom Ashbrook on Boston’s NPR radio show, 10 August 2005. Available from http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2005/08/20050810_a_main.asp and http://realserver.bu.edu:8080/ramgen/w/b/wbur/onpoint/2005/08/op_0810a.rm.
[2]Richard Dawkins, “Richard Dawkins Explains His Latest Book” available from http://richarddawkins.net/mainPage.php?bodyPage=article_body.php&id=170 as of 9/20/06, but subsequently removed on 9/23/06. It was reproduced at http://id-idea.blogspot.com/2006/09/richard-dawkins-explains-his-latest.html; Internet; accessed 03 October 2006.
[3]Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986), 141.
[4]Stephen Jones, “Frequently Asked Questions”; available from http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/idfaqs30.html; Internet; accessed 17 March 2006.
[5]Delvin Lee Ratzsch, The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL, 1996), 191-192.

 

October 19, 2006

Inexcusable Ignorance Part I

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Logic, Philosophy, Theology
1 Comment 

There are several popular objections to theism including the problem of evil, the problem of free-will, and the origin of God. These objections have been answered time and time again. While the answers have been improved upon over the years, some of them are centuries old. I expect the average run-of-the-mill atheist to be ignorant of their existence, but not learned scholars. And yet they are.

Darwinist, Robert Eberle showed his ignorance of theistic apologetics when he addressed the supposedly intractable problem of free agency in light of an omniscient God:

Aside from his simple declarations without any foundation that he believes certain biblical stories and miracles are true, he runs into major problems. One is the claim that God knows what was, is and will be. Collins asserts that there is still free will, but fails to explain his logic for arriving at this extraordinary conclusion. Either what will be is known and fixed or it is not. An infallible god that knows what is going to happen is in conflict with the idea that there is free choice and thus a responsibility for one’s actions.[1]

Not only is this not a difficult problem, it’s not a problem at all. Knowing what someone will choose to do in advance of their actually doing it does not cause them to do it. Yes, what will be is known and fixed, but what fixes God’s knowledge is not His will, but knowledge of our will. If we would will to choose A rather than B on October 12, 2006 God would have known A rather than B. He knows B because that is what He knows we will do. While God’s knowledge is chronologically prior to our acts, our acts are logically prior to God’s knowledge. Was that so hard?

Eberle’s ignorance of this is inexcusable. Either he (1) is totally unacquainted with the literature of his opponents, or (2) he knows his objection has been answered but continues to advance it because the ignorant find it persuasive. Either way, it is inexcusable.

[1]Robert K. Eberle, “The Language of God: If God Could Talk What Would he Say?” Review of Francis Collins’ book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Contained in an eSkeptic newsletter dated 02 October 2006.

 

October 19, 2006

Part-time Faith

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Religions, Statistics
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The Associated Press ran a story about a recent study that examined the religious beliefs of college professors. The study found that approximately 25% of professors are atheist or agnostic (which is about double the national average). What about the other 75%? According to the AP article “the rest say they believe in God at least part of the time, or at least in some kind of higher power.” That’s right, they are part-time believers! From 8am-5pm they are atheists, but theists from 5pm-8am.

 

This was not a slip of the pen, either. “Believe in Higher Power or God some of the time” was an actual category in the study, in contrast to “believe in God.” Funny stuff!

 

October 16, 2006

Yes sir, belief in materialism does require an imagination!

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science
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Darwinist, Robert Eberle, shows his faith in materialism and his willingness to mischaracterize ID in a recent review of Francis Collins’s book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Eberle wrote:


 

Although elsewhere in the book he is highly critical of the “god of the gaps” argument employed by Intelligent Design creationists, who chase down the gaps in scientific knowledge to proclaim that this is where God intervenes, Collins’ deduction that evolution cannot account for the Moral Law is just another gap. He reviews some of the modern evolutionary explanations for the evolution of the moral sentiments, but he dismisses them as inadequate, and then draws his conclusion. This is the fallacy of personal incredulity — “I can’t think of how X can be explained naturally, ergo X must have a supernatural explanation.”[1]

 


These sort of comments about ID are aggravating. All creationists are IDers (in the basic sense of the word), but not all IDers are creationists. The two views are different in principle. Calling ID a creationist movement is a rhetorical device intended to dismiss ID out of hand (since the courts ruled the teaching of creationism in school unconstitutional, and since scientific data seems to disconfirm creationism proper).

 


Furthermore, ID is not supported by “god of the gaps” (GOG) reasoning (where God is invoked to explain that which we are ignorant of). A genuine GOG argument is an appeal to God when we lack understanding, not when we possess it. In the case of ID, it does not invoke an Intelligent Designer to explain what we do not understand, but rather to explain what we do. Design is being inferred from positive knowledge, not ignorance. It is illegitimate to label a position a GOG argument as Eberle has done, when an Intelligent Designer is appealed to as the best explanation of the evidence.


 

Looking at Eberle’s last two sentences, it seems as if he recognizes this. Collins examined all the naturalistic explanations, and found them explanatorily inferior to the Intelligent Designer hypothesis. The existence of an Intelligent Designer better accounted for the data, and thus Collins concluded an Intelligent Designer does exist. Eberle called this a lack of imagination. Why should Collins have to imagine anything? I thought science was about an empirical investigation of the world, not speculation! Why should Collins have to imagine possible future evidence that would unseat ID? Why can’t he just accept that as a valid and true conclusion? Why is that conclusion off-limits? Because science has been hijacked by materialism, and demands that our explanation of the cosmos be limited to purely natural causes.

This restraint is not only unfair and unprincipled, but silly. We should draw our conclusions on the evidence available to us now, not some imagined evidence that could theoretically surface in the future. If no naturalistic proposal works, and the theistic explanation makes the best sense, how can Collins be faulted for opting for it? Could a naturalistic explanation be found that is superior to the theistic one? In principle, yes. But until that day he is justified adopting the best explanation given the current evidence. The author would rather have Collins exercise faith in materialism than follow the evidence where it leads.

 

The real problem is not Collins’s lack of imagination, but Eberle’s overactive imagination. He is so committed to a particular philosophy that when science does not confirm it, he dogmatically maintains his faith, hoping his philosophy might be vindicated in the future. It just goes to show that belief in materialism requires an imagination, not evidence.

[1]Robert K. Eberle, “The Language of God: If God Could Talk What Would he Say?” Review of Francis Collins’ book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief; available from http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-10-03.html; Internet; accessed 03 October 2006.

 

October 4, 2006

Quotes of the Day

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Quote of the Day
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Barry A (from William Dembski’s blog) wrote:

 

Many people say Darwinism is a scientific theory, and as such does not speak to morality or ethics. Strictly speaking, this is true, but like ID, Darwinism also has profound implications for morality and ethics. It is not for nothing that Dawkins said Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. And as Nietzsche was honest enough to admit, an atheist is compelled to say that morality, ethics and justice are illusions. The only thing that exists is a brutal competition of wills. There is no right and wrong. There is only strong and weak. The 20th century was one long bloody lesson in the practical application of Nietzsche’s ideas.

We must always be very careful to distinguish between our science and our metaphysics. ID is science and Darwinism is science. Neither ID nor Darwinism addresses morality, ethics or justice, but both have implications for these matters. ID is consistent with my hope that a loving God exists Who has established a transcendent moral order. Darwinism is consistent with atheism, which in turn is inconsistent with the very idea of objective morality.

“Salvation obtains when accurate knowledge is combined with active trust.”—Greg Koukl, “Truth is Stranger Than it Used to Be”

 

September 21, 2006

Intelligence comes from chance, not intelligence?: the absurdity of atheism

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism
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Science fiction stories are filled with visions of artificial intelligence (A.I.). Recent movies depicting robots with human-levels of artificial intelligence include I-Robot and A.I. Is this pure science fiction, or is it a genuine possibility in not-so-distant future? Peter Kassan answered this question in an article written for Skeptic magazine.

 

Kassan argued persuasively that the quest for A.I. has been, and will continue to be a dead-end street. Scientists have been unable to duplicate the intelligence of even the simplest of creatures, yet alone human beings. For example, although scientists have studied and mapped the neural patterns of the simple C. elegans worm, no one has been able to duplicate its base level of intelligence. C. elegans possesses a mere 300 neurons, compared to the human brain which contains 100 billion (100,000,000,000). Our cerebral cortex alone contains 30 billion neurons, and 1000 trillion synapses (1,000,000,000,000,000). That is 100 million (100,000,000) times the number of neurons, and 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) times the number of synapses of C. elegans. In light of such figures it becomes painfully obvious why developing human A.I. is nowhere on the horizon.

 

Advocates of A.I. retort that the task of replicating human intelligence is only a problem of time. They observe that computers double in capacity and speed every 18 months. Based on this they argue that given enough time, computers will be large enough and fast enough to create A.I. comparable to the human brain. But as Kassan points out, computational speed of computer processors is not the problem! The problem is the software. A.I. would only be as good as the program being run by the computer. While computers double in performance and capacity every 18 months, computer programs don’t. They increase in complexity at a far slower rate. Furthermore, experience has shown that the larger software programs get, the slower they become. Additionally, the larger the program the more room for error. A software program simulating the human brain would contain 20 trillion errors at a minimum. Kassan describes this “programming problem” by way of analogy:

 

If each synapse were handled by the equivalent of only a single line of code, the program to simulate the cerebral cortex would be roughly 25 million times larger than what’s probably the largest software product ever written, Microsoft Windows, said to be about 40 million lines of code. As a software project grows in size, the probability of failure increases. The probability of successfully completing a project 25 million times more complex than Windows is effectively zero.

What I found so interesting about the article was not so much what it had to say (although it was very interesting), but who was saying it. While I do not know Kassan’s precise beliefs about God, the fact that he wrote an article for Skeptic magazine tells me he is probably an atheist and advocate of Darwinian evolution. As such he does not believe the universe is the result of a designing intelligence, but rather blind, unintelligent, random chance processes. As part of the universe, human intelligence must have been produced by the same chance processes. Herein lies the absurdity of Kassan’s worldview.

 

Kassan recognizes the near-inconceivable complexity of human intelligence, and argues persuasively that intelligent designers (humans) will never be able to re-create it artificially. While I agree with Kassan this invites a question: How can time + chance create what time + intelligence cannot? If time + intelligence cannot produce anything similar to the complexity of human intelligence, surely time + chance would fail as well. Kassan would have us believe time + chance is better equipped to create complex intelligence than time + intelligence; that blind, unintelligent, random chance processes are better designers of intelligence than the most intelligent beings on the planet. That is a rational absurdity! How is it possible for chance to be better equipped to create an extremely complicated machine than human beings? How do natural processes create something that is 25,000,000 times more complex than the most complex program created by intelligent beings?

 

When Kassan boots up Microsoft Windows on his personal computer, does he ever think for a second that this extremely complex program consisting of 40 million lines of coded information was produced by unintelligent, random chance processes? Of course not! It is far too complex for that. How, then, can he look at something 25,000,000 times more complex than Windows and say it was created by time + chance? The disconnect in Kassan’s worldview is so glaring that I cannot understand how he can miss it. While atheists pride themselves on being rational, believing time + chance can produce complex intelligence whereas time + intelligence cannot is anything but rational.

 

This is just one more example demonstrating that atheists’ problem with Christianity is not one of the intellect, but one of the will. Christianity is not only intellectually plausible, but explanatorily superior to atheism. It is rejected, however, because people do not want to bend the knee. They want to be their own lord. Rationality takes a back seat to their perverted will.

 

August 9, 2006

“Progress” and “Better” in an Atheistic World

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism
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In a purely material world there can be no progress, no “better.” Physical things cannot experience progress; only change. Progress implies a trajectory toward a purposeful end, with that end being better than all previous states. Only a transcendent source such as God could invest the world with teleological purpose. If there is no God there can be no end, and thus no progress, and no way to measure “better.”

 

Indeed, the concept of “better” is an arbitrary fiction without God. In a purely material world change cannot be better; only different. One form/state of matter is no better than another form/state of matter. Everything just is. How is it, then, that we are able to identify certain changes as good and better (non-physical judgments)? Such identification requires an objective, transcendent standard by which such progress can be measured. Such a standard cannot be found in, or reduced to physical parts. Only God is sufficient to ground that sort of a standard.

 

Technically speaking we can’t even determine what is practical if God does not exist, because to determine what is practical requires that we know what is better than other things.

 

 

June 13, 2006

You Can’t Know if There’s a God

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Theism
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Some like to dismiss the issue of religion by claiming we can’t know if God exists or not. I have always found this to be a strange position to take because it is intellectually indefensible. How might we respond to such an assertion?

The best weapon of any apologist is the question. The first question we might ask is one of clarification: “Are you saying it is logically impossible to know whether God exists, or are you just saying it is practically impossible?” Relatively few would opt for the former. Most recognize that there is nothing inherently contradictory between the existence of God and our ability to know of His existence.

The second question to ask is one of justification: How do you know that, and why do you believe it to be true? I doubt you will get a coherent response. Most people who make this assertion have not given much thought to the matter. It’s not as though they have thoroughly investigated the question, and after having completed an exhaustive study of the matter were forced to conclude that religious knowledge is simply impossible. No. It’s a pat answer that usually works to silence those who would try to convert them, and gives them the justification they need for intellectual laziness and/or ungodliness. If we can’t know whether God exists, they reason, there is no reason to explore the issue. [Pascal’s Wager is enough to show the fallacy underlying this sort of thinking. It confuses epistemology with ontology. Even if we could not know for certain (epistemology) whether God exists, the fact remains that He either does or He doesn’t (ontology). The possibility that He does is reason enough to consider the question, particularly when our post-death existence might be affected by our beliefs about the answer. See my April 24th post entitled Pascal’s Wager Under Attack for further reading.]

The person who believes no one can know whether God exists presupposes only two possible sets of reality: (1) A world in which there is no God; (2) A world in which there is a God, but one who does not reveal Himself to man. Neither state of affairs would afford us the ability to answer the question of God’s existence. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it sets up a false dichotomy. There is at least one more possibility: (3) A world in which there is a God who reveals Himself to man. If (3) is a logical possibility then it would be possible to know if God exists. To answer the question of God’s existence all we would need is a legitimate revelation of Himself to man. This is where the intellectual leg-work comes in. Many claim to have received revelation from god(s). These claims must be examined. Their truth-value must be based on the quantity and quality of the evidence. If there is good reason to believe that one or more of these supposed revelations is indeed from god(s), then we can possess knowledge of God existence.

For further reading see my article entitled How to be a Good Agnostic

 

March 13, 2006

Are All Lives Worth Living?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Bioethics, Euthanasia
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Al Mohler has a great post today by the above title. He examines the issue of “wrongful life” claims that are growing in popularity. While the entire article is worth reading, the last two paragraphs are worth repeating here:


When any life is deemed to be unworthy of living, every single human life is cheapened, discounted, and threatened. We are living in an age increasingly without moral rules–an age in which choices about life and death are now commonly made with specific reference to what kind of child we would welcome, and what quality of life we will accept and protect. The Christian affirmation must be that every single life is worthy of living–every life is worthy of our protection, our care, and our welcome. No one should ever discount the difficulties of dealing with children who are born with severe genetic abnormalities or serious diseases. Most of us, within our extended families or circle of friends, are intimately familiar with just how excruciating many of these situations can be. Nevertheless, these are the very same issues we will all face in terms of issues at the end of life, and at many points between birth and death.

The eugenic temptation is, in this modern age of advanced medical technologies, always too close at hand. If we do not learn to resist it, human dignity will soon rest in the dustbin.

 


 

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