1. More atheists are sharing their views

Comment #254829 by pizza-gut on September 26, 2008 at 9:29 am

Flying Goose:

'Religion its seems to me is a natural part of human life. I find Richard's writings very religious in a naturalistic kind of way'


Whilst humans are almost certainly genetically predisposed to religion, I am wary of using terms such as religious or spiritual to describe the awe and reverence that humans quite rightly feel when they contemplate existence, or the altered states that can be attained through ritualised behaviours; as I think they contain the potential for equivocation with supernaturalist dogmas. However I entirley agree that such desires and practices seem a wholly appropriate response to existence.

Paula Kirby wrote (much) earlier on this thread that she thought it inappropriate to worship a list of things which included 'nature' and whilst not wanting to put words into her mouth or necessarily disgree with her, I would not consider nature worship to be wrong, so long as it only entailed showing reverence and awe and stopped short of the deference which 'worship' can frequently slip into. If Paula was refering to this type of supplication then I entirely agree with her that it is not desirable.

2. More atheists are sharing their views

Comment #254794 by pizza-gut on September 26, 2008 at 8:08 am

My partner could loosely be described as 'pagan' and yes that does lead to some very enthusiastic debates regarding such topics as precisely what constitutes the grounds for reasonable belief and so on. We met as I was just coming to the end of a phase in my life when I was searching for some vague deeper meaning, which I am somewhat ashamed to confess lasted until my mid twenties, despite the fact that I never once found any of the 'new age' type activity remotely satisfying. Fortunately the writings of Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan opened my eyes to the fact that the naturalistic world view is every bit as wondrous and awe inspiring as any religious or spiritual outlook and of course it also has the fairly relevant property of being 'real'!

However this awe inspiring aspect of science is something that for some reason does not come across to many who continue to perceive it as cold and detached and this opens the door to other world views which profess to offer more. My girlfriend is still somewhat unable or unwilling to grasp this concept and believe me I have tried!

Perhaps paradoxically I have since taken part in some of her group's ritual activities (anything for a weekend in the country!) and in concurrence with denial, I have found that if you are able to divest yourself of the meta-twaddle, you are left with an activity that has the potential to temporarily alter your experience of consciousness, in a way that is relaxing and clarifying. There is merit in these experiences and I wholeheartedly support Sam Harris in his belief that we need to uncover their neuro-psychological basis and as Hitchens puts it, divorce the numinous from the supernatural.

As for the discussion of Hume, he is one of my favourite philosophers. I particularly like his cynicism regarding the veracity of religious beliefs based upon revelation, as for him the formation of belief adheres to natural laws the same as everything else and belief that springs from revelation contravenes these laws and can thus be considered miraculous.

3. Teachers should tackle creationism, says science education expert

Comment #246230 by pizza-gut on September 12, 2008 at 2:11 am

Astrology isn't a misconception either, it's just an alternative world view and as such should be included in economics lessons. I can just see the rewritten text books now:

'Neoclassical labour market theory asserts that wage differentials are a function of relative skill scarcity, combined with labour demand factors, which are in turn a function of variable conditions within product markets.

However in their groundbreaking study entitled "Treacherous times for Taurians but Leo's Labour Stars are rising" Megg, M & Grant, R et al (2009) argue that neoclassical labour theory can not account for all of the diversity observed in labour markets. For them, the fact that economic agent A receives more income than agent B can actually be attributed to the fact that agent A was a Capricorn and 2008 was a particularly fortuitous time for Capricorns entering into financial negotiations, as, as fig 2 illustrates, at this time Libra was entering the 2nd house of Aries for the first time this century'!!!

4. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #240733 by pizza-gut on September 1, 2008 at 1:34 am

An old under graduate philosophy of religion essay of mine covers this:


Does the Argument from Design prove the existence of God?


I am going to make a case that the argument from design fails to prove the existence of God. In arguing this position I shall appraise the strength of the argument from design by looking closely at two variant forms of the argument and the criticisms that can be applied to each. The first of these arguments is by William Paley, who attempts to demonstrate that the universe has a designer by drawing an analogy between designed human artefacts and natural phenomena that possess the appearance of design. We will see that arguments of this type are prone to criticisms disputing the strength of the analogy that exists between these two sets of phenomena. The second, more modern argument that we shall scrutinize is the anthropic principle advocated by scientists such as Russell Stannard. This position argues for the property of design in the cosmos, on the grounds that the universe appears too finely tuned for the existence of life for it to have so come about without such intentioned design. We shall see that, amongst other difficulties, this argument runs into problems concerning its attribution of the property of improbability to what is, from our perspective at least, an empirically unique universe. In addition to appraising the strengths and weaknesses of these two arguments from design, attention will be directed towards a consideration of precisely what an acceptance of such arguments would actually demonstrate. Here we will note that even if the aforementioned criticisms could be adequately addressed, these arguments from design would only determine that some form of intelligent creation was at work; they would not straightforwardly tell us anything specific about the nature of that creative force and would certainly fall far short of supporting the existence of an omnipotent, omni-benevolent creator God akin to the one advanced by the Abrahamic religions.

Arguments from design are also known as teleological arguments as they are centred upon the notion that there is a deliberate, forward looking purpose at work in the universe. William Paley attempted to demonstrate the existence of this God-like, purposeful intention by drawing an empirical analogy between phenomena witnessed in nature and explicitly designed human artefacts; in the hope that by demonstrating that natural phenomena were similar to human artefacts in some respects, they would also be seen to be similar in the respect of their having been designed.

Specifically, Paley drew analogies linking the telescope with the eye and the intricacy of watch design with the general complexity in nature. For him these were appropriate analogies because he considered that in just the same way as the complex adaptation of means to ends exhibited by telescopes and watches is a direct consequence of their having been designed, the highly intricate application of biological means to the meeting of specific ends, exemplified by the eye and pervasive in nature, can only be explained in terms of their also possessing the property of design. Thus he concludes that: 'every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature' (Paley in Brown p.68) and that 'there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it' (Paley in Brown p.68).

However, there are many who dispute that such analogies are as strong as Paley believes and in order to illustrate their concerns it will be helpful to set an argument like Paley's out formally, as below:

Premise 1: An entity within nature is analogous to a human artefact in certain relevant respects.
Premise 2: That human artefact possesses these like qualities precisely because it is the product of design by human agency.
Premise 3: Analogous effects typically have like causes.
Conclusion: Therefore it is probable that the entity within nature possesses these analogous qualities because it too is the product of design.
(Del Ratzsch 2005)

Setting the argument out like this makes it clear that whilst premise 2 is uncontroversial for human artifacts its relevance to natural entities is only established via premise 3, which is highly suspect. Despite Paley's insistence that we have 'precisely the same proof' for design in the eye as we do for design in the telescope; the fact is that whilst we have direct experience of the general design processes involved in the generation of human artifacts, we have absolutely no corresponding experience of any design processes relating to natural phenomena. There could be any number of alternative explanations for the apparent design in nature and any such competing explanation would weaken Paley's analogy and hence his argument considerably.

The corrosive effect of competing explanations upon design theories is exemplified by instances of design being misattributed as the cause of perceived order in the cosmos, where it has later transpired that the phenomena have an entirely non teleological explanation. The prime example of this is the sweeping Darwinian explanation for the existence of highly adaptive features in organic biology. The identification of such crane like sources of complexity pose serious problems for Paley's argument, as their provision of an alternative explanation for natural phenomena having the property of intricately suited means to ends, calls into doubt the premise that this observed similarity with human artifacts is likely to have an analogous cause. If these like properties turn out to have a non-design cause, then Paley's argument from design begins to lose its foundation.

Having noted these criticisms, it is important to recognise that they are not entirely damning to Paley's argument. The success of non teleological explanations for the existence of order in nature remains entirely compatible with a teleological universe, if we allow that the designing agent is the ultimate rather than the immediate cause of design properties. The suggestion here is that whilst the immediate cause of the order experienced in nature is the mechanistic process of natural selection, a designing intelligence may have deliberately initiated the particular conditions necessary for such a process to unfold. So the Argument from Design may still be persuasive.

Against this, Dawkins has argued that although this indirect causation is conceptually compatible with Darwinism and as such cannot be disproved by its findings; in postulating the pre-existence of an ordered, designing intelligence, 'guided evolution' (Dawkins in Brown p.155) theories fail to provide an explanation for that which is at issue, the origin of ordered complexity. This is in stark contrast with the theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a complete and naturalistic, causal account for the existence of biological complexity, where design plays no explanatory role. With notions of design being superfluous to our explanation of the order in nature we can consider that, whilst not entirely refuted by these explanations, Paley's argument has failed to prove the existence of a designer, as the presence of design indicative phenomena that he cites as evidence, can be explained by wholly non teleological means.

We will now turn our focus to a more modern argument for design, which focuses upon design as the ultimate causal factor in the generation of our life-sustaining universe; the anthropic argument of Russell Stannard. The anthropic principle begins with a recognition that the conditions in our universe had to be just right, to a remarkably precise extent, in order for human life to have arisen. For instance, if the energy levels of the big bang had differed slightly, then our universe would either have collapsed back in on itself, or expanded too rapidly to allow for the formation of life sustaining stars and planets. Similarly, had the physical constants governing gravitation and electrical charges been even remotely dissimilar then carbon would not have existed in a form compatible with it becoming the basis of biological life. That these conditions and constants were just right, to an astonishingly exact degree, provides a prima facie case that they could not have come about in this way by mere chance and this paves the way for the suggestion of a designer, fine tuning conditions in order to facilitate life.

However, whilst the seemingly crushing odds against our universe being just right for life appear to advance a very strong case for the presence of design, there are alternative explanations. Firstly, there exists an admittedly tentative, scientific account as to why the universe's expansion rate had to be as it is and as science advances, there remains the possibility that further explanations will be developed, providing a similarly causal account across the range of physical constants. However, these attempted explanations are at the forefront of physics and their outcome is far from clear.

Secondly, it has been argued that an infinite number of universes, each with its own unique rate of expansion and physical constants, would neatly explain away the supposedly surprising conditions in ours. Whilst appearing outlandish, this counter argument is surprisingly difficult to dismiss. Stannard attempts to reject multiple universes on the grounds that alternative universes are beyond empirical verification and therefore such arguments amount to mere 'metaphysical speculation' (Stannard in Brown p.160), however one might counter that the existence of a designer is similarly speculative.

Additionally, Stannard opposes multiple universes as violating the principle known as Occam's razor, that theoretical entities 'should not be multiplied beyond necessity'. (Brown p.21). Here we have a guiding principle that we should always select the simplest explanation for any phenomena and reject unwarranted complexity. For Stannard, the infinite number of alternative universes clearly violates this principle and a single universe with a designer God would provide a far more economical explanation. However the correct interpretation of Occam's razor is not straightforward in this context. It could be argued that whilst infinite in number, different universes only constitute different types of the same kind of thing, whereas a designer God introduces an entirely new entity to our explanation. On this interpretation, infinite universes provide the more parsimonious account for the suitability of conditions in our universe and as such this is the explanation that we should accept, in conformity to Occam's Razor.

However, perhaps the greatest difficulty with the anthropic version of the argument for design is that it presupposes that it is unproblematic to assign the property of improbability to our empirically unique universe. When we speak of something as being unlikely in conventional terms, we usually have a clear conception that the unlikely outcome is just one out of at least two possible results. However where universes are concerned, we have absolutely no way of knowing whether alternative formations are possible at all, and in the absence of this awareness it is not at all clear that it makes sense to speak about the configuration of our universe as being improbable.

It could even be argued that to conceive of our universe as unlikely at all, is to presuppose the notion of a supernatural creator and therefore beg the question of assuming too much of precisely what is at issue. The line of argument here is that if the universe was generated via purely physical, deterministic mechanisms then it is not clear how it could have been otherwise and so the label of 'improbable' is inapplicable. If however the universe wasn't generated by such deterministic means, then one wonders what other mechanism is possible, other than something existing outside of the laws of nature. This contention is supported by Davies' aid to conceptualizing the universe as improbable, which utilizes the idea of a creator God selecting one universe from a 'world ensemble' (Davies in Brown p.76) of possible universes; a conceptualization which leads Brown to admit that we might need to adopt the notion of a creator to make sense of the suggestion that the universe is unlikely (Brown. 76).

Whilst initially promising then, a philosophical interrogation of the anthropic argument for design reveals that such an argument cannot be considered to have provided unequivocal proof for the existence of a creative designer, much less a wise and omnipotent creator God. Similarly Paley's argument even if accepted, would only demonstrate that some form of creative intelligence was at work, it would not tell us anything specific about the nature of this designer of intricate complexity, although we might conclude that the undoubted complexity demonstrated by disease organisms is suggestive that the design source falls some distance short of omni-benevolence. Both arguments have difficulties in clearly demonstrating the presence of a designing agency and the leap from this position to belief in the existence of God is not one that can be sustained on the basis of these arguments. Therefore the argument from design fails to prove the existence of God.

5. Atheism FLEAmix

Comment #226368 by pizza-gut on August 8, 2008 at 2:41 am

Unbelievable, I've just read the amazon extract of Mohler's book and he seems to be arguiing along the lines that 'new atheists' don't believe because they have the privilege of living in an advanced democracy where the fear of death isn't iminent (as though this were a bad thing!) and that if they had lived in previous times where death was more tangible, they would know fear for their souls and so believe. He of course makes no mention of the retreat of superstition that was fundamentally necessary to the attainment of this relatively secure position.

6. Springer opera court fight fails

Comment #94578 by pizza-gut on December 6, 2007 at 2:15 am

On the Beeb story there is a link to the Christian Voice website. Very unsavoury, there's a section complainning about gay police officers openly marching in uniform at a pride parade. Where do these vile, hate filled, condescending little pr*cks get off?!

7. In a consumer society, browsing for belief

Comment #87489 by pizza-gut on November 12, 2007 at 9:04 am

One that stood out for me was:

"It is better to trust in god than to have faith in your fellow man"

Now there's a positive message!!

8. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?

Comment #84161 by pizza-gut on November 1, 2007 at 10:30 am

ADH "common human decency" does indeed arise out of evolutionary processes. As hunter-gatherers, humans are pretty useless individually. Thus our survival was dependant upon developing processes of co-operation. This was achieved via neural mutations that facilitated feelings of in group empathy, preventing free loader behaviours. Individuals and groups that developed these behaviours became more successful hunters and as such, the genes and concommitant behaviours survived into future generations.

As for your rejection of the relevance of Standing's theological qualifications to the validity of his conclusions; theists repeatedly slam atheist criticisms as not being based upon a sound theological grounding. Now we have an atheist who does have a sound theological grounding and his assertions are rebuked because his rationalist outlook would have coloured his understanding of the theology! By this rationale the only people qualiifed to criticise religion would be theists with an understanding of theology!