kajarainbow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kajarainbow) wrote2004-02-06 09:10 am
kajarainbow) wrote2004-02-06 09:10 am
Rejected arguments
I suspect a lot of people reading this will either find this tedious (sorry, Mikey!) or outright offensive (no apologizes!). Eh, I'm doing it anyway.
1. Off the top of my head, the Prime Mover argument. Oh, it's a true enough argument, what annoys me is that the person then assumes something from it that doesn't necessarily follow. Basically, it simply states that since everything has a cause, there must be a first cause. That is a paraphrasing, because I dislike the way they phrase it, with the words "Prime Mover" and so on. The phrasing used by that original writer of the argument suggests intelligent actions, "Prime Mover" has stronger connotions of intelligence, far more so than "first cause".
Yes, I'm nitpicking based on semantics, but I think this is an important instance of how, with the magic of connotions, you can suggest concepts that are not actually directly implied by the core concept you are attempting to express. Seriously all this argument establishes is there must be a first cause. The rest is just your assumptions about the nature of that first cause. This argument doesn't address the nature of the first cause!
2. Lifted from a story in the Sandman comic: (Metaphor) You don't find a watch in the desert and think that it just happened to exist. There has to be a watchmaker. The problem with argument by metaphor: you have to show that the metaphor actually applies! Comparsions to a watch isn't valid if the universe doesn't have watch-like qualities. One might as well compare it to a flamingo. My countermetaphor: do you find a rock in the desert and assume that it had an intelligent creator? Is the universe a watch or a rock? Either argument involves assumptions about the nature of the universe that have to be backed up!
3. The universe/life/intelligence/some other random thing is too magical and improbable and complex to possibly exist without direct intelligent cause. The person using this tends not to actually have a clear understanding of the sciences involving those, frankly. Physics aren't simple, they're complex, and they frequently produce complex results. Life is formed out of molecules and compounds that have a natural tendency to form anyway in the right conditions, and there're immensely vast numbers of stars out there, enough that even if a tiny fraction of them have habitable planets, that's still a fricking lot of habitable planets! And, intelligence? It, along with everything else biological we have, is filled with random useless or counterproductive items as well as the good traits, the whole thing has a definite 'jury rigged' appearance. Evolution is not random, it's the result of natural selection causing the more reproductively useful of random results to tend to persist. Evolution tends to produce order by its nature!
The news.talk.origins FAQs produces some very good explanations, as an example of those biological processes.
My primary beef with this is that their immediate response to something they consider unlikely is, "God must have done it!" instead of finding out how this unlikely event can occur. This is not a tool for rational thinking.
4. The universe is too magically just right for life. I like Douglas Adams' take on this, the example of the puddle that believes the hollow it fills was created just for it, because it fits in the hollow perfectly. And then the sun dried it up. The universe is not custom-fitted for life, in fact life persists in quite inhostile conditions because it is its nature to adapt and mold to what happens to be there.
5. Uses of the WRONG version of Occam's Razor, the completely bastardized popular "the simplest argument is right" version. The original, created by Ockham, a theologican who wanted to discourage efforts to rationalize a belief in God, is "we should not multiply entities unnecessarily". This takes a little explaining. In effect, when creating rational arguments, one should only use the number of "entities" that is needed to actually explain matters. If an argument is simpler but it doesn't really explain, it's useless. This link explains it well.
By the way, if you can't understand why Ockham would devise something that seems to undermine his own faith, it's important to be aware that Ockham's basic philosophy was that one must believe in God by pure blind faith alone. He would approve greatly of the uses that atheists tend to put his principle to, but not of their refusal to believe blindly in God anyway.
6. "The holy text said so, and the holy text is the word of my god." No thank you, I don't want your brainwashed circular reasoning. Why is the holy text right? Because it's your god's word. How do you know it is your god's word? Because the holy text said it is. How do you know the holy text can be trusted? Because it's your god's word.
Don't expect me to magically "intuit" that the holy text is right. And, if it's the Bible, I've already read the Gospels many times and random portions of everything else.
A friend, Kimberly, said, "And parental programming. Remember, the #1 reason for faith is not its truth, but your Geography." as part of a conversation we were having.
By the way, a completely unrelated, silly link! Mmm, forbidden pictures of a sign forbidding taking pictures, now sadly down.
1. Off the top of my head, the Prime Mover argument. Oh, it's a true enough argument, what annoys me is that the person then assumes something from it that doesn't necessarily follow. Basically, it simply states that since everything has a cause, there must be a first cause. That is a paraphrasing, because I dislike the way they phrase it, with the words "Prime Mover" and so on. The phrasing used by that original writer of the argument suggests intelligent actions, "Prime Mover" has stronger connotions of intelligence, far more so than "first cause".
Yes, I'm nitpicking based on semantics, but I think this is an important instance of how, with the magic of connotions, you can suggest concepts that are not actually directly implied by the core concept you are attempting to express. Seriously all this argument establishes is there must be a first cause. The rest is just your assumptions about the nature of that first cause. This argument doesn't address the nature of the first cause!
2. Lifted from a story in the Sandman comic: (Metaphor) You don't find a watch in the desert and think that it just happened to exist. There has to be a watchmaker. The problem with argument by metaphor: you have to show that the metaphor actually applies! Comparsions to a watch isn't valid if the universe doesn't have watch-like qualities. One might as well compare it to a flamingo. My countermetaphor: do you find a rock in the desert and assume that it had an intelligent creator? Is the universe a watch or a rock? Either argument involves assumptions about the nature of the universe that have to be backed up!
3. The universe/life/intelligence/some other random thing is too magical and improbable and complex to possibly exist without direct intelligent cause. The person using this tends not to actually have a clear understanding of the sciences involving those, frankly. Physics aren't simple, they're complex, and they frequently produce complex results. Life is formed out of molecules and compounds that have a natural tendency to form anyway in the right conditions, and there're immensely vast numbers of stars out there, enough that even if a tiny fraction of them have habitable planets, that's still a fricking lot of habitable planets! And, intelligence? It, along with everything else biological we have, is filled with random useless or counterproductive items as well as the good traits, the whole thing has a definite 'jury rigged' appearance. Evolution is not random, it's the result of natural selection causing the more reproductively useful of random results to tend to persist. Evolution tends to produce order by its nature!
The news.talk.origins FAQs produces some very good explanations, as an example of those biological processes.
My primary beef with this is that their immediate response to something they consider unlikely is, "God must have done it!" instead of finding out how this unlikely event can occur. This is not a tool for rational thinking.
4. The universe is too magically just right for life. I like Douglas Adams' take on this, the example of the puddle that believes the hollow it fills was created just for it, because it fits in the hollow perfectly. And then the sun dried it up. The universe is not custom-fitted for life, in fact life persists in quite inhostile conditions because it is its nature to adapt and mold to what happens to be there.
5. Uses of the WRONG version of Occam's Razor, the completely bastardized popular "the simplest argument is right" version. The original, created by Ockham, a theologican who wanted to discourage efforts to rationalize a belief in God, is "we should not multiply entities unnecessarily". This takes a little explaining. In effect, when creating rational arguments, one should only use the number of "entities" that is needed to actually explain matters. If an argument is simpler but it doesn't really explain, it's useless. This link explains it well.
By the way, if you can't understand why Ockham would devise something that seems to undermine his own faith, it's important to be aware that Ockham's basic philosophy was that one must believe in God by pure blind faith alone. He would approve greatly of the uses that atheists tend to put his principle to, but not of their refusal to believe blindly in God anyway.
6. "The holy text said so, and the holy text is the word of my god." No thank you, I don't want your brainwashed circular reasoning. Why is the holy text right? Because it's your god's word. How do you know it is your god's word? Because the holy text said it is. How do you know the holy text can be trusted? Because it's your god's word.
Don't expect me to magically "intuit" that the holy text is right. And, if it's the Bible, I've already read the Gospels many times and random portions of everything else.
A friend, Kimberly, said, "And parental programming. Remember, the #1 reason for faith is not its truth, but your Geography." as part of a conversation we were having.
By the way, a completely unrelated, silly link! Mmm, forbidden pictures of a sign forbidding taking pictures, now sadly down.
