Freethought & Rationalism Archive

lpetrich · 01-25-2002, 04:38 AM

Claimed by "donotworry"; who could they possibly be, since I've never seen any evidence of that.

I wonder if he has in mind some followers of the Erich von Daniken sort of theory, in which our existence was brought about by genetic engineering by extraterrestrial visitors.

Alternatively, he may have an overactive imagination, since he may be trying to claim that his rejection of evolution is not motivated by his fundamentalist beliefs.

CodeMason · 01-25-2002, 05:02 AM

Evolution is the only known scientific mechanism for bringing about the variety of life we see around us, and has been powerfully confirmed by observation. So what's there to "not believe" in unless you have a severe case of cult programming?

bluefugue · 01-25-2002, 06:06 AM

I will quote a relevant passage by Richard Dawkins here, from The Blind Watchmaker:

Quote:

When it comes to feeling awe over living 'watches' I yield to nobody. I feel more in common with the Reverend William Paley than I do with the distinguished modern philosopher, a well-known atheist, with whom I once discussed the matter at dinner. I said that I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859, when Darwin's Origin of Species was published. 'What about Hume?' replied the philosopher. 'How did Hume explain the organized complexity of the living world?' I asked. 'He didn't,' said the philosopher. 'Why does it need any special explanation?'

Paley knew that it needed a special explanation; Darwin knew it, and I suspect that in his heart of hearts my philosopher companion knew it too. In any case it will be my business to show it here. As for David Hume himself, it is sometimes said that that great Scottish philosopher disposed of the Argument from Design a century before Darwin. But what Hume did was criticize the logic of using apparent design in nature as positive evidence for the existence of a God. He did not offer any alternative explanation for apparent design, but left the question open. An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for comlex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. I like to think that Hume would agree, but some of his writings suggest that he underestimated the complexity and beauty of biological design. The boy naturalist Charles Darwin could have shown him a thing or two about that, but Hume had been dead 40 years when Darwin enrolled in Hume's university of Edinburgh.

bluefugue · 01-25-2002, 06:27 AM

So the basic situation we have is the idea of Intelligent Design as a default explanation. This is why ID'ers like to discredit Darwinism -- they are not providing positive proof of ID, but leaving it as the only other conceivable option to explain the existence of life.

Whether your ID is a God or an Extraterrestrial seems almost moot (indeed, Michael Shermer has suggested that it would be impossible for us to tell the difference between the two, if the ET were sufficiently intelligent and powerful). Whichever you choose, you still have to deal with Infinite Regression. God made us: who made God? ET made us: who made ET? Theologians can get around this by arguing that God is qualitatively different from any biological organism and so is immune to the argument from design. This seems like a slippery rhetorical trick to me, but perhaps it has been worked out in better detail than I have represented.

In any case, the importance of Darwinism to atheism (as Dawkins has described in the above quote) opens evolution up to charges from religionists that it is merely a "dogma" specifically designed to prop up atheism. A creationist might argue that evolution is a desperate ad-hoc idea cobbled together in an attempt to prove that life can exist without God.

Where would we atheists be, if Darwinism failed? Would we be forced, out of logical necessity, to accept some form of intelligent design and abandon our atheism? But if Hume did in fact successfully dismantle the argument from design (I don't know whether he did, not having read Hume yet), then does that not leave us in a conundrum? As Dawkins hints, all we can do, failing Darwinism, is to shrug and say, "I don't know how life got here, but I refuse to jump to any easy goddidit conclusions all the same."

I think however that there are other levels at which this question can be addressed. Having solved the problem of life via Darwinism, we still must confront the infamous "fine tuning" arguments -- the idea that, of all possible universes, only a very small percentage of them would be able to harbor anything that might be called life. (Presumably most of them would just be random swirlings of matter, or they might have no laws of physics at all, or whatever... we don't know this, of course, but it can be speculated.) So one thing that is suggested to refute fine-tuning is the Many Universes idea: there is a vast, maybe infinite, series of universes, and we obviously exist in one of those few which can harbor life.

But here's the weird thing. If we are going to resort to a "many universes" argument anyway, do we really need Darwinism at all? Certainly if there were an *infinite* series of universes (as opposed to merely 10, or 100, or 1,000, or 1 googol), then we could speculate that eventually a universe would come into being in which *all the ordered complexity of biology* simply existed a priori, no Darwinism needed. Vastly improbable, but if you allow an infinity of universes, it could happen.

Of course, if you were to suppose that *our* universe came into being that way, then you would also have to suppose it was an "Omphalos" universe in which all the fossils simply poofed into existence in just the right order to make us think evolution had happened... and all the animals bore nested morphological characteristics in just such a way as to make us think evolution had happened... which decreases the probability of this occurrence a googolplex-fold. Surely, of all the possible "instant universes" where intelligent life simply "poofed" into being, it would be far more likely that they would poof into being in a world of no fossil record, no nested hierarchy, and moreover a world where every single species used a completely different biochemistry to propagate itself...

I am basically just rambling a bit at this point. But here's another thing. Darwinism is often supported on the grounds that a complex thing should be explained in terms of simpler elements. In other words, it is apparently easier for us to imagine the a priori existence of an atom, than the a priori existence of an elephant. Darwinism tells us how we can get an elephant from an atom, but it cannot tell us how we got the atom in the first place (though obviously cosmology and physics are taking a whack at that question). But is the existence of an atom really any less of a conundrum than the existence of an elephant? Does the atom get a free pass merely because it is *simpler* than the elephant? Why should that be so? This train of thought leads us almost to collapse the Arguments from Design and First Cause into one and the same thing... which might be satisfying except, of course, that the proposed solution to either argument (God) seems merely a verbal prop, a way of redescribing our ignorance.

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>

simian · 01-25-2002, 06:44 AM

That Dawkins quote has always annoyed me. Knowledge always marches on (OK, OK, there are times when it is actively destroyed). There will always be the next unknown. The fact that an atheist always reaches some subject where he/she has to say "I don't know" does not make the atheist any less fulfilled. Indeed, I would say that statement, and the search for the answer is what leads to intellectual fulfillment.

Theophage · 01-25-2002, 07:47 AM

We often make the assumption that just because someone does not belive in the existance of a god, that they also hold other rational opinions, such as acceptance of science. While the odd are indeed in favor of this, this is not always the case.

An example of a group that is inherently atheistic, yet does not accept evolution whatsoever:

<a href="http://www.rael.org" target="_blank">http://www.rael.org</a>

It's intelligent (but physical) designers all the way down, folks...

Daniel "Theophage" Clark

ecco · 01-25-2002, 08:38 AM

Quote:

Where would we atheists be, if Darwinism failed?

I was an atheist long before I ever heard of evolution. TOE has done nothing to make my

Quote:

�of all possible universes, only a very small percentage of them would be able to harbor anything that might be called life.

Whether there is one, three or an infinite number doesn�t matter. If life could not exist in a given universe there would be no one to ponder the question.

bluefugue · 01-25-2002, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Whether there is one, three or an infinite number doesn�t matter. If life could not exist in a given universe there would be no one to ponder the question.

I don't think it's worthless to examine the question of "what are the odds that we would be here"? The fact is we don't know whether this is the only universe, we don't know whether the physical constants of this universe are arbitrary or determined by something deeper and inescapable, and we don't know what percentage of possible universes (if there be any other possible universes) would have physical laws that would allow life, or some sort of organized complexity, to exist. If we did know these things, or if we could at least harbor an educated guess as to them, then we could venture a guess as to whether our universe is "improbable," or "typical," or "inevitable."

If it turned out that our universe was "improbable" -- which is obviously what the fine-tuners believe -- and if it turned out that this universe (i.e. our collection of galaxies, existing under the physical laws we observe) was the only one, then I think we would have a bit of a problem to deal with. If we could definitively ascertain, say, that there was only one shot to have a universe, and the odds of a life-harboring universe were a trillion to one (note that I am well aware neither of these premises has been demonstrated adequately: this is a hypothetical), then I for one would not be particularly satisfied with "we just got lucky 'cause here we are" as an explanation. I don't think it's just anthropocentric chauvinism that would make me feel this way, but I may be wrong.

Quote:

I was an atheist long before I ever heard of evolution.

During this time, when you were an atheist and did not hear of evolution, did you ever ponder the complexity of life and wonder how it came to be, or did it just not cross your mind? Do you disagree with Dawkins that life demands an explanation of some sort?

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>

Dr Rick · 01-25-2002, 09:10 AM

This thread is a reminder that despite many theists' implicit arguments to the contrary, atheism is not evolution, and it also reminds us that theists do not hold a monopoly on ignorance.

tronvillain · 01-25-2002, 09:28 AM

I too was an atheist long before I heard of evolution. Life may demand an explanation, but "God" is not a good one.

01-25-2002, 04:38 AM	#1
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	Agnostics and atheists who reject evolution? Claimed by "donotworry"; who could they possibly be, since I've never seen any evidence of that. I wonder if he has in mind some followers of the Erich von Daniken sort of theory, in which our existence was brought about by genetic engineering by extraterrestrial visitors. Alternatively, he may have an overactive imagination, since he may be trying to claim that his rejection of evolution is not motivated by his fundamentalist beliefs.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

01-25-2002, 05:02 AM	#2
CodeMason Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 226	Evolution is the only known scientific mechanism for bringing about the variety of life we see around us, and has been powerfully confirmed by observation. So what's there to "not believe" in unless you have a severe case of cult programming?

01-25-2002, 06:27 AM	#4
bluefugue Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 1,427	So the basic situation we have is the idea of Intelligent Design as a default explanation. This is why ID'ers like to discredit Darwinism -- they are not providing positive proof of ID, but leaving it as the only other conceivable option to explain the existence of life. Whether your ID is a God or an Extraterrestrial seems almost moot (indeed, Michael Shermer has suggested that it would be impossible for us to tell the difference between the two, if the ET were sufficiently intelligent and powerful). Whichever you choose, you still have to deal with Infinite Regression. God made us: who made God? ET made us: who made ET? Theologians can get around this by arguing that God is qualitatively different from any biological organism and so is immune to the argument from design. This seems like a slippery rhetorical trick to me, but perhaps it has been worked out in better detail than I have represented. In any case, the importance of Darwinism to atheism (as Dawkins has described in the above quote) opens evolution up to charges from religionists that it is merely a "dogma" specifically designed to prop up atheism. A creationist might argue that evolution is a desperate ad-hoc idea cobbled together in an attempt to prove that life can exist without God. Where would we atheists be, if Darwinism failed? Would we be forced, out of logical necessity, to accept some form of intelligent design and abandon our atheism? But if Hume did in fact successfully dismantle the argument from design (I don't know whether he did, not having read Hume yet), then does that not leave us in a conundrum? As Dawkins hints, all we can do, failing Darwinism, is to shrug and say, "I don't know how life got here, but I refuse to jump to any easy goddidit conclusions all the same." I think however that there are other levels at which this question can be addressed. Having solved the problem of life via Darwinism, we still must confront the infamous "fine tuning" arguments -- the idea that, of all possible universes, only a very small percentage of them would be able to harbor anything that might be called life. (Presumably most of them would just be random swirlings of matter, or they might have no laws of physics at all, or whatever... we don't know this, of course, but it can be speculated.) So one thing that is suggested to refute fine-tuning is the Many Universes idea: there is a vast, maybe infinite, series of universes, and we obviously exist in one of those few which can harbor life. But here's the weird thing. If we are going to resort to a "many universes" argument anyway, do we really need Darwinism at all? Certainly if there were an infinite series of universes (as opposed to merely 10, or 100, or 1,000, or 1 googol), then we could speculate that eventually a universe would come into being in which all the ordered complexity of biology simply existed a priori, no Darwinism needed. Vastly improbable, but if you allow an infinity of universes, it could happen. Of course, if you were to suppose that our universe came into being that way, then you would also have to suppose it was an "Omphalos" universe in which all the fossils simply poofed into existence in just the right order to make us think evolution had happened... and all the animals bore nested morphological characteristics in just such a way as to make us think evolution had happened... which decreases the probability of this occurrence a googolplex-fold. Surely, of all the possible "instant universes" where intelligent life simply "poofed" into being, it would be far more likely that they would poof into being in a world of no fossil record, no nested hierarchy, and moreover a world where every single species used a completely different biochemistry to propagate itself... I am basically just rambling a bit at this point. But here's another thing. Darwinism is often supported on the grounds that a complex thing should be explained in terms of simpler elements. In other words, it is apparently easier for us to imagine the a priori existence of an atom, than the a priori existence of an elephant. Darwinism tells us how we can get an elephant from an atom, but it cannot tell us how we got the atom in the first place (though obviously cosmology and physics are taking a whack at that question). But is the existence of an atom really any less of a conundrum than the existence of an elephant? Does the atom get a free pass merely because it is simpler than the elephant? Why should that be so? This train of thought leads us almost to collapse the Arguments from Design and First Cause into one and the same thing... which might be satisfying except, of course, that the proposed solution to either argument (God) seems merely a verbal prop, a way of redescribing our ignorance. [ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>

01-25-2002, 06:44 AM	#5
simian Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: St. Louis, MO area Posts: 1,924	That Dawkins quote has always annoyed me. Knowledge always marches on (OK, OK, there are times when it is actively destroyed). There will always be the next unknown. The fact that an atheist always reaches some subject where he/she has to say "I don't know" does not make the atheist any less fulfilled. Indeed, I would say that statement, and the search for the answer is what leads to intellectual fulfillment.

01-25-2002, 07:47 AM	#6
Theophage Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Tucson, AZ USA Posts: 966	We often make the assumption that just because someone does not belive in the existance of a god, that they also hold other rational opinions, such as acceptance of science. While the odd are indeed in favor of this, this is not always the case. An example of a group that is inherently atheistic, yet does not accept evolution whatsoever: <a href="http://www.rael.org" target="_blank">http://www.rael.org</a> It's intelligent (but physical) designers all the way down, folks... Daniel "Theophage" Clark

01-25-2002, 09:10 AM	#9
Dr Rick Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: USA Posts: 5,393	This thread is a reminder that despite many theists' implicit arguments to the contrary, atheism is not evolution, and it also reminds us that theists do not hold a monopoly on ignorance.

01-25-2002, 09:28 AM	#10
tronvillain Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Alberta, Canada Posts: 5,658	I too was an atheist long before I heard of evolution. Life may demand an explanation, but "God" is not a good one.

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.