Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis
501. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #73054 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 24, 2007 at 2:03 am
Coel (post 137, or #72823):
Oh, come on. Dawkins discusses plenty of entirely spurious claims in TGD, and to good effect. If he thought that Hoyle's number is entirely spurious he would have demolished it. The fact that he didn't even mention the number, and much less tried to argue that it's fallacious, shows that Dawkins did not know how to do it. Hoyle is a Nobel level scientist you know, and here he is writing about a scientific matter. I think it's rather unlikely that his claim is "entirely spurious".Hoyle estimated that the probability for obtaining naturalistically the required set of enzymes for even the simples living cell (required for Darwinian evolution to start) was 1 in 10^40000. [. . .] Of course [Dawkins] never mentions how improbable that is supposed to be, I supposehe did not want to trouble his readers with estimates like 1/10^40000.The reason he doesn't discuss Hoyle's number is that it is entirely spurious.
The initial replicator would have been far simpler than that.That's what I too argued in post 132 above, and it's what Dawkins should have argued in TGD. But he didn't. Dawkins has done some work on the origin of life, so I can hardly assume that he was not aware of our simple argument. What I assume happens is that even concentrating on the idea of the simplest possible self-replicating organism nobody has been able to come up with a larger probability estimate that would make any difference in practice. To falsify Hoyle one should be able to build an argument (without begging the question of course) that the probability of the first self-replicating organism is larger than 1/10^50; anything bellow that would still be "impossible" for all practical purposes.
Again, I can hardly imagine that Dawkins is unaware of this line of thought, and the only way I can interpret the fact that he does not mention this in TGD is that he tries to hide it. Of course it's no shame to concede that the origin of life is both an unanswered and a hard problem for science. But for Dawkins that's not good enough. He feels so angry that he must show that theism is not only false but also trivially false. In TGD he even disapproves of agnosticism, because everybody should be able to easily see that "there almost certainly is no God". In this kind of context then any real trouble for naturalism must be hidden or covered up. Come to think of it there is a lot that TGD fails to mention, for example the argument from consciousness.
So of course the first replicator was not a whole cell; it was more likely just a molecule. Maybe it was a RNA polymerase ribozyme. SeeA replicating molecule by itself is not sufficient; you need a replicating organism that has the properties necessary for Darwinian evolution to take hold, and it seems to me that the RNA molecule by itself does not fit the bill. But suppose I am wrong and that it does. Then how probable is its spontaneous appearance of RNA anywhere in the universe? After all RNA is as complex as DNA. But my basic point is this: Dawkins certainly knows much more about this stuff than I, and he is demonstrably able to explain to a popular audience even complex and subtle ideas. Why should then I (or we) speculate here? Why didn't Dawkins himself in TGD explain on scientific grounds where Hoyle is wrong and why the naturalistic origin of life is a plausible hypothesis? The only answer I can think of is: because he did not know of any such scientific grounds. Which, again, is OK with science, but is not OK with Dawkin's project to show how trivially wrong theism is.
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/ligase.html
Dawkins's use of the anthropic principle here is entirely sensible and valid. He is saying that, yes, even the spontaneous assembly of a self-replicating RNA molecule is very likely highly improbable. But so what? It being highly improbable is amply good enough. Even if it had such a low probability of occurring that it had only a 1-in-a-billion chance of occurring in a wait of 1 billion years in a `testube' the size of the Pacific Ocean, that is still probable enough because there are a billion planets with billions of years each available.I am sorry Coel, but it seems to me you are dancing around the issue here. "Very likely highly improbable" means nothing at all and is a smokescreen in its own right. If the probability of the RNA molecule is anything like 1/10^40000 then it would not be probable to rise in a billion billion billion billion billion planets in a billion billion billion billion billion years. The facts are that Hoyle has claimed the 1/10^40000 number based on some scientific thinking, and Dawkins has written nothing in TGD to dispute that number – he didn't even mention it.
So here is one more reason why Christians should take TGD seriously: They can find out what popular naturalism tries to hide. My point is not that naturalism is obviously false; in fact I think that naturalism is an entirely serious ontological belief. My point is that Dawkins's efforts in TGD to show how trivially false theism is are self-defeating, because anybody who reads TGD with a critical mind (as naturalists Nagel and Orr - not to mention theist Plantinga - did) can see how TGD fails notwithstanding Dawkins's best efforts and notwithstanding Dawkins's intelligence, wealth of knowledge, and writing ability. Which evidences that theism is not in fact trivially false, and that it is not easy to show that "there almost certainly is no God". Which, anyway, was and is known to knowledgeable naturalists. And if Dawkins really thinks otherwise it probably only shows that he feels so angry that his better judgment is clouded.
502. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #73050 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 24, 2007 at 1:29 am
Dr Benway (post 140, or #72866):
the probability of life arising on Earth = 1Actually that's false. Perhaps you did not read about Hoyle's idea I mentioned in post 132 above.
503. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #73046 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 24, 2007 at 12:33 am
Irate_atheist (post 131, or #72778):
So I ask, yet again, Dianelos - where did your God come from?There is bit about this in post 108 above.
Incidentally perhaps it would be a good idea to try not to feel irate. It's well known that anger makes it more difficult to think well.
504. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #73043 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 24, 2007 at 12:28 am
Bonzai (post 124, or #72731):
To follow through your analogy are you suggesting that we may be far more intelligent than a simple "creator" aka "God"?We may, yes. Of course a little thinking shows that we in fact aren't.
505. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #73041 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 24, 2007 at 12:15 am
Quine (post 123, or #72723):
If you read the whole section you will see that RD has not made the case that the anthropic principle implies naturalism, but just allows it (i.e. removes counter argument).If the counter argument is that the probability of a naturalistic origin of life is less than 1/10^40000 then it does nothing of the sort. I really cannot see why Dawkins would not mention that probability estimate and try to show why it is fallacious, but would rather bring in the fairly irrelevant issue of the anthropic principle and that there are a "billion billion" planets in the universe and whatnot, except if a) he is himself really confused, or b) he tries to confuse his readers.
He does, also, spend some time arguing that the anthropic principle is misused by religious apologists against naturalism.I am not aware that theists use the anthropic principle in relation to the problem of how the first self-replicating organism came into being, but I may be wrong. I mean there are a lot of fallacious arguments around. As for the anthropic principle it just states the obvious: reality must be so as to produce all the evidence we have. To call it "anthropic" is a misnomer; after all reality must be so as to produce comets, or as to produce rock-n-roll music (so one might have called it the "cometic principle" or the "rock-n-rollish principle"). The idea has nothing to do specifically with the origin of human life.
506. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72914 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 23, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Janus (post 122, or #72712):
I never said that an intelligent being must be more complex than anything it creates.Right. But Dawkins does say that, in fact he bases his "unanswerable" ultimate Boeing 747 argument on precisely that premise. Here is what he writes on page 109: "A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right". I take it you don't agree with that. I don't either.
Intelligent beings must be complex because they have a complex behavior; in fact they have the most complex behavior we know of in the universe.I am not sure that's true; one could argue that the behavior of Earth's weather system is more complex than the behavior of any human being, but it's not like Earth's weather system is intelligent. In short it seems that "intelligence", "complexity", and "improbability" are pretty independent concepts. Dawkins appears to think that they are all equivalent.
I don't wish to engage with the rest of your argument in detail, but there are a few bits I found especially interesting:
Our universe's designer must have been formed by some sort of process from simpler entities, just as we have.Well, when I think of myself and all the intelligence/complexity I represent a big part of it came from learning. Don't you think that the designer of our universe could have grown in intelligence/complexity too by learning? In short, don't you think that, besides Darwinian evolution from simpler parts, learning is an alternative and entirely valid process for increasing intelligence/complexity?
As long as there remains a good possibility that we might be able to solve the problem once and for all (as long as there's no evidence for design), we have to look for a real, ultimate explanation. We have to assume that the universe is comprehensible as long as there remains a possibility that it is.Well, I understand what you are saying, and at first sight it seems reasonable enough. Certainly Dawkins uses this kind of reasoning too. But Plantinga in his review of TGD shows that in fact this kind of reasoning if fallacious (see: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html ). As he explains it's a basic logical error to believe that "we know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that p" implies "p is true". So, for example, the fact that we know of no irrefutable objections to the claim that the universe is comprehensible naturalistically it does not follow that it is reasonable to believe that it is. If you think about it you'll see he's right.
Fortunately, so far it does look as though the universe is comprehensible.You mean comprehensible naturalistically. I don't quite agree. Let's leave aside the question of the origin of life (not to be confused with the origin of the species) which is a scientific question and probably tractable. The apparent fine-tuning of the physical constants is a more serious problem which I don't consider scientific (strictly speaking science models phenomena and these constants represent parameters of these models), but it is a difficult problem for naturalism. Another extremely hard and purely naturalistic problem is consciousness. And finally there are some quantum phenomena that appear to contradict naturalism's very notions of objective physical reality (it's a long discussion). My point is that the widespread belief that a naturalistic understanding of reality works well is far from accurate.
Heh, and you know what AI researchers have been saying lately? That humans are probably not capable of designing intelligent beings after all, so the only solution might be to engineer a virtual environment in which evolution by natural selection could take place, and let intelligence evolve that way!Some think so yes, and I personally agree with them. Which leads us to an interesting question: If somebody writes a program using evolutionary algorithms (i.e. algorithms that mimic natural evolution), and that program finally achieves to create an intelligent program that passes the Turing test (i.e. displays human-like intelligence), then who is the designer?
507. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72902 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 23, 2007 at 11:31 am
Lauregon (post 120, or #72698):
I believe that for all practical purposes God does not interfere with the physical phenomena we experience. (I believe that God interacts with us in the non-objective part of our experiential life – but that's another issue.) On the other hand, if the appearance of the first replicating organism on naturalistic grounds turned out to be impossible then it would evidence that I (as well as all naturalists) have been wrong in this belief.Deism is the thesis that some designer set up the universe and then walked away, but if the appearance of the first replicator on naturalistic grounds turns out to be for all practical purposes impossible this will evidence the existence of a designer who is continuously interfering. - DianelosI believe you expressed the belief on the McGrath thread that "God" doesn't interfere, or at best interferes only rarely, so, which is it, Dianelos? Does "God" interfere, or not?
508. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72896 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 23, 2007 at 11:21 am
Dr Benway (post 114, or #72665):
The great majority of items in my kitchen are not suitable for my morning coffee. However small the minority of items just right for my coffee, it must be in one of them, because here I am drinking it.Well, if someone argues that the probability of something in your kitchen being suitable for your morning coffee is zero (or, to be precise, much less than 1/10^40000) and you respond giving the above argument, then surely you can see that you are begging the question. The fact that you are there drinking your morning coffee only evidences that something is suitable for your morning coffee, not that something from your kitchen is suitable for it.
509. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72895 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 23, 2007 at 11:18 am
Paul Creber (post 110, or #72659):
Even if you are right and an entire organization of people were needed to create a computer far more intelligent than we are, my argument remains: We would have a case where a particular system would be able to design another system that exceeds its complexity.
I wonder, are you personally convinced by Dawkins's premise that in order to design something of some complexity a more complex designer is necessary? Dawkins in TGD does not explain why he believes that, as if it were obviously true. Do you find that premise obvious in any way?
510. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72893 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 23, 2007 at 11:11 am
Epeeist (post 106, or #72625):
Agreed - but it still does not get rid of your arbitrary cut of the god series to one term.Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is to show that Dawkins's unjustified premise that a designer must be more complex than what he/she/it designs makes little sense. Can you see any reason why a designer can only design things that are less complex than he/she/it? Do you think that an intelligent computer could not possibly design an even more intelligent computer? Dawkins's premise strikes me as so obviously false that I find it really strange that everybody here appears to agree with it. And it's the basic premise of his "unanswerable" 747 argument.
And you still seem to be using the words "belief" and "opinion" as though they carried equal weight to "knowledge".Well, "knowledge" is commonly defined as justified true belief, but that definition has been found to be wanting. Not to mention that what is true is precisely where people disagree in most contexts, so what you consider "knowledge" need not be considered "knowledge" by anybody who disagrees with you. So, in practice it only makes sense to discuss beliefs and why we think it's reasonable to hold them.
And you still haven't responded to my hypothesis on the non-existence of god on the Haidt thread.I don't recall you asking something in that post; IRC you used some formalism to show that the proposition "no god(s) exist" is falsifiable, and I agree. Dawkins also agrees; on page 50 of TGD he writes: "If [God] existed and chose to reveal it, God himself could clinch the argument, noisily and unequivocally, in his favour." The question of course is how exactly would God achieve that. Once I asked a group of naturalists that very question, and one answer I got was quite interesting: "Nothing can possibly convince me that some supernatural being exist, because whatever the evidence I got it would be more probable that I was losing my mind, or else that some aliens with far more advanced civilization were playing mind-games with me or with all of us." So his argument was that the claim "god(s) exist" is so extraordinary that there cannot exist any sufficiently extraordinary evidence. So that naturalist at least believed that you can't falsify naturalism. Do you see any error in his reasoning?
Also in this context I wonder: what evidence would be sufficient for you?
511. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72787 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 23, 2007 at 1:18 am
Geraint (post 113 or #72663):
Before commenting specifically to your post, let's see what Dawkins actually writes in chapter 4 of TGD. First he misstates Hoyle's original 747 argument, writing on page 113: "Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747." In fact Hoyle did not estimate the probability of life origination on Earth but the probability of life originating in the universe. Dawkins coyly does mention actual numbers, but here they are: Hoyle estimated that the probability for obtaining naturalistically the required set of enzymes for even the simples living cell (required for Darwinian evolution to start) was 1 in 10^40000. So even if Hoyle had estimated that probability for Earth alone, the fact that there are 10^18 planets in the universe (Dawkins's estimate on page 137) is completely irrelevant. In fact it would not make any difference whatsoever if there were 10^180 planets around. (To get a sense of proportion: there are only about 10^80 atoms in our universe.)
But let's continue reading TGD's fourth chapter, its central argument. The title "The Worship of Gaps" of the section that starts on page 125 is designed to ridicule those who point out gaps in the naturalistic understanding of reality, which is a gambit beneath seriousness (I think TGD pretty much plays games with its readers' minds; its tools are more those of demagogy than of reason). As a matter of fact Hoyle was a top scientist who many believe should have won the Nobel (a co-worker of his did), so he is at least at Dawkins's level in the scientific pecking order. In any case, starting on page 135 Dawkins discusses the gap of the origin of life and on the next page he writes "What the religious mind then fails to grasp [ed note: religious minds are so very weak you see] is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives." So clearly Dawkins offers the anthropic principle as a solution to the gap. It explains the gap away; after all as Dawkins writes on page 145: "Once again, the anthropic principle does its explanatory duty". But the anthropic principle does nothing of the sort, unless one implicitly assumes naturalism. That Dawkins is unable to let go of his naturalistic preconceptions even while discussing ontology is apparent on page 137, from which I quote: "Nevertheless [the creation of life in the laboratory] hasn't happened yet, and it is still possible to maintain that the probability of its happening is, and always was, exceedingly low – although it did happen once!"(my emphasis). So Dawkins knows that life did start naturalistically once, therefore it might one day be recreated in the laboratory. I can't imagine how much more evident it could be that Dawkins is begging the question. Indeed it is evident that Dawkins is very impressed with the explanatory power of the anthropic principle. On page 138 he writes: "The beauty of the anthropic principle is that it tells us, against all intuition, that a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for the presence of life here." Against all intuition? I find it completely obvious: If life could arise naturalistically anywhere it might as well have arisen here. I fail to see what exactly the big discovery or great explanation is. He continues: "I do not for a moment believe the origin of life was anywhere near so improbable in practice." Of course he never mentions how improbable that is supposed to be, I suppose he did not want to trouble his readers with estimates like 1/10^40000. But what I find more interesting is that he states his belief that the probability is not anywhere close to that without giving any evidence or reasoning whatsoever. Sounds a little like faith, doesn't it?
Back to your post. You write:
I don't know if you've just phrased this badly, but asking if life could have arisen naturalistically isn't the same as the question of whether or not it did.You're right. On the other hand we can safely ignore the alternative that life could have arisen naturally but did arise supernaturally.
But the anthropic principle isn't being used to decide whether or not it's possible for life to arise naturalistically. It's saying that if life can arise naturalistically, even if this is so unlikely that it may happen on only one planet in the entire Universe, then this is sufficient to debunk the argument from design.I agree with you statement above, but what it basically says is "If the argument from design is wrong then it can be de debunked." After all what the argument from design claims is that the probability that "life can arise naturalistically" is zero (for all practical purposes).
[The anthropic principle] can't convince us that [life did arise naturalistically]. No-one's saying it can.Well, it seems to me Dawkins is clearly saying that (see above), at least in the sense that this is what virtually all readers would think he does. Otherwise why dedicate so many pages on the anthropic principle, claim that it does its "explanatory duty", claim that it's an "alternative" to God, and so on - in the context of discussing the gap related to the origin of life?
You must agree that it's valid to talk about the probability of life arising in a naturalistic Universe, since life at its most basic consists of replicators the behaviours of which can be explained naturalistically, and it would be possible (if improbable) for those to spontaneously form. Given that it is valid to talk about this probability, our question then moves to deciding what this probability is.I agree. Maybe this is a good point for leaving TGD's superficial analysis behind and discuss this issue thinking with our own heads. As it happens I agree that the origin of life can be understood naturalistically, so we are all in the same band as it were :-)
I think the first step is to recognize that the origin of life does represent a serious challenge to naturalism's view of reality. According to naturalism all phenomena we observe represent real events that have come about through naturalistic causes, namely matter/energy following physical laws. Darwinism only explains how species evolved but does not explain how the very first replicating organism came about. Moreover, natural evolution cannot be the answer because it requires the presence of replicating organisms in the first place. There is a huge jump of complexity between inanimate matter and the first replicating organism, and the only naturalistic process to increase complexity we know of is natural evolution – so there is a serious problem here.
How can the solution look like?
The idea of the multiverse (i.e. the idea that there is a huge number of parallel universes and we exist in one where life happened to appear) is not an acceptable hypothesis for me. Why not? First because it fails naturalism's own standards of rationality, namely that one should not posit invisible (not interacting) entities to explain anything. Second because if, when confronted with some improbable thesis, one is allowed to posit a sufficient number of parallel universes for that improbability to become viable then anything goes. For example a theist might accept Dawkins's claim that the existence of God is extremely improbable, but then claim that there are so many universes in the multiverse that ours happens to be one where God exists. This does not work. The multiverse is a harebrained idea.
Your idea of the spontaneous formation of the first replicating organism does not work even for the simplest replicating organism we know of. Hoyle's 1/10^40000 estimate is probably not far the mark. On the other hand maybe the simplest replicating organisms we know of are not the simplest replicating organisms possible. Hoyle himself speculated that life on Earth was seeded from outer space. So maybe a promising line of research would be to forget everything we know about biology and try to think what the simplest possible self-replicating organism might be. Indeed we need not limit our imagination with Earth's particular conditions. Only physics should be the limit. For all we know the first self-replicating organism might have come into being in interstellar clouds. What preoccupies me are the limitations of human imagination; so if it were up to me I would try to solve this puzzle not in the laboratory but in a computer: Simulate soups of atoms interacting with each other under extremely variable conditions and wait to see if something interesting happens. For the probability of the spontaneous creation of the first self-replicating organism to be viable that organism must have been an agglomeration of atoms much much simpler than what a biologist can imagine. If we managed to describe a probabilistically viable self-replicating organism then 99% of the problem is solved no matter how otherwordly that organism may turn out to be (maybe not even carbon based): Darwinian evolution is so powerful that one could then easily find ways for that organism to naturally evolve into an Earth biological one.
But maybe my brute-force idea above cannot work even if the software is right and even if the hardware is thousands of time more powerful than today's best. (When you don't know what exactly you are looking for it's very difficult to estimate how good a searching method is.) So people should keep thinking of ways that may have produced the first replicating organism. Autocatalytic sets of molecules might be one way. See the very good and very relevant to our discussion "At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity" by Stuart Kauffman.
So the idea of an extremely simple self-replicating organism spontaneously coming together is one possible solution to the origin of life problem. There are some more exotic possibilities. One might be that our biology is designed by some alien race we know nothing about. There is another, more exotic still, which I would like to quickly mention: Traditional naturalism imagines that objective reality produces phenomena directly, but another possibility (which offers several conceptual advantages including in the context of QM, of the hard problem of consciousness, and of the fine-tuning of the physical constants) is that the reality works indirectly via an intermediate computing mechanism. In short the idea is that we all exist in a computer simulation, but the expression "computer simulation" implies some designer when this is not really required: If reality consists of a computing mechanism then maybe that reality is self-organized by non-intentional principles (i.e. without a designer). These principles may tend to increase the phenomenal complexity computed and therefore must in the end produce life and intelligence. As I said it's a rather exotic idea, but it's another possibility. And contrary to the multiverse it does not posit invisible entities because that computing mechanism does affect us directly.
Anyway, while a naturalistic solution for the origin of life has not been found, I think the smartest stance naturalists can assume vis-a-vis people using the argument from design is: "Science does not yet know how life started, but it's working on it. There is no conceptual reason why life could not have evolved from matter, and considering science's great successes in the past I feel confident that science will explain the origin of life too. But, who knows, it may take a while; this may turn out to be a very hard problem. If you in the meanwhile prefer to believe that the best explanation for the appearance of life is to posit some supernatural action then be my guest." I think such a stance is pretty reasonable. There is no need to raise anthropic-principle smokescreens around; it's not serious.
512. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72628 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 22, 2007 at 1:45 am
Bonzai (post 87 or #72518):
Well the short answers are:Well, I suppose TGD is useful as a compendium of what kind of logic characterizes popular atheism (stuff like "there is no evidence for the existence of God", "if God made the universe then who made God?" and so on)Popular atheism it may be, but I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer from you or other theists for the two questions you put in parentheses.
1. There is no evidence for naturalism either.
2. When theologians say that God made the universe what they mean (and this would be obvious to anybody who actually reads a little theology) is that the best explanation for the existence of the universe requires the existence of God. If that argument is correct then to further ask what then explains the existence of God is an irrational question, because an explanation stands or falls on its own merit. As I wrote before, if an explanation were only valid if one can also produce an explanation for that explanation, then no explanations at all would be possible because they would all lead to an infinite regress.
In this context what I think really sinks TGD in the eyes of many knowledgeable people is that Dawkins feels so passionate that theism is obviously wrong that anybody should be able to see it just like that. So he makes the mistake to actually approve of clueless people, such as the blogger he quotes on page 134 who asks "where that bloke came from". You know, like "rain comes from the clouds, music comes from the loudspeaker, so God must be coming from somewhere too". No wonder more thoughtful atheists felt embarrassed with TGD.
To get around the question of who created God, theists of all stripes simply *define* God to be a "self creating" being that doesn't need a creator.I think what they are saying is that God is uncreated and exists eternally.
As for "self creating", do you think that's an absurd idea? Don't naturalists of all stripes define the universe to be "self creating" at the Big Bang?
If TGD is amateurish atheism all it demonstrates is that it doesn't take a lot of sophistication to expose the poverty of conventional religious thinking.They call TGD amateurish precisely because it does nothing of the sort. Have you read the reviews written by knowledgeable atheists I linked to in post 85? Do you really think that all the atheist authors who have written thick books and detailed arguments about this issue were all stupid, and that Dawkins's superior intellect had to come along to explain to the world how trivially easy it is to prove God's non-existence?
All the "design" argument accomplishes is to invent a name for our ignorance.If naturalism is true then you are right. But if naturalism isn't true then its gaps evidence its failure to be a viable understanding of reality. I know that begging the question is an easy fallacy to commit, and Dawkins in his TGD does it all the time. But maybe we can do better than that.
Instead of calling the unknown cause "God", we may as well just label it "X". This is intellectually more honest and would avoid all the linguistic and conceptual baggage and pitfalls associated with the word "God".Well, there is a lot of conceptual baggage and pitfalls, not to mention lots of disagreement, associated with the word "universe" too, but I don't see many naturalists proposing to call the universe "Y". What goes for the goose goes for the gander.
I think that "God" is a perfectly adequate word. The question is what God's properties are and if the existence of such a being is the best explanation for our experiences, or else whether the existence of a universe with such and such properties is the best explanation.
513. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72622 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 22, 2007 at 1:10 am
Janus (post 99, or #72606):
Positing an intelligent being (i.e. a complex and orderly being) to explain orderly complexity is beyond stupid.Why do you think that an intelligent being must be complex, or at least more complex than anything it creates?
I know that Dawkins thinks so and bases his 747 argument on this assumption. But he doesn't explain why he thinks so, and we don't have to believe everything Dawkins says, do we? We are free thinkers. So why do you think that an intelligent being must be more complex than anything it creates? I am really curious about your answer.
In fact let me help you along. There are many computer scientists who believe that they will someday create computers that are far more intelligent than they are. Now here is the question: If Dawkins and you are correct then these people are deluding themselves when they believe they can create things far more complex than they are, correct? Perhaps AI computer scientists are beyond stupid too.
514. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72620 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 22, 2007 at 12:45 am
Quine (post 96, or #72602):
As I wrote in post 97 I personally believe that there is a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. This is not my point. My point is that even though there is currently a gap in naturalism's understanding Dawkins in TGD tries to actually close this gap using obvious fallacious thinking (begging the question while waving the anthropic principle around), and it bothers me that many of his readers do not recognize logical fallacies when they look them in the face, or maybe pretend not to recognize them which is even worse.
515. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72618 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 22, 2007 at 12:20 am
Geraint (post 89, or #72544):
Ironically, in making the statement that, "Of course the question is whether life's minimum required complexity can arise naturalistically in any planet..." (my emphasis) you've used the anthropic principle.But I agree with the anthropic principle, as it is obviously true: However reality is (whether naturalistic or theistic it doesn't matter) it must be so as to produce the phenomenon of human life.
This is the point at which the anthropic principle helps us out in deciding whether a naturalistic stance offers us a decent chance of accounting for life on Earth.Just a moment. We don't know whether life can or can't arise naturalistically on any planet, simply because we don't know whether life arose naturalistically in the first place, correct? So how can the anthropic principle convince us that life did arise naturalistically, unless one begs the question by implicitly assuming that naturalism is true in which case by definition life did arise naturalistically?
I don't have TGD to hand so I don't know if this weak form of the anthropic principle is the one Dawkins employs in that particular argument.Here is his reasoning (page 136): "The great majority of planets in the universe are not suitable for life. However small the minority of planets with just the right conditions for life may be, we necessarily have to be on one of that minority, because here we are thinking about it." Of course there is no reason to believe that there is even a small minority of planets with just the right conditions for the naturalistic rise of life, unless one begs the question and assumes that naturalism is true. If conversely theism is true then there are zero planets where life can arise naturalistically. So Dawkins commits an obvious logical fallacy here.
516. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72603 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 21, 2007 at 10:09 pm
_J_ (post 86, or #72517):
I am doing fine, _J_. Investing more time posting here than I probably should though. On the other hand I think that the question of God's existence, which for much of the 20th century was relegated to the private sphere of likes and dislikes, is now being raised to the public discourse and I think only good can come out of this, because both sides will now be forced to offer their best thinking – which implies that both sides' worse thinking is apt to be selected against. And I think there is plenty of bad thinking both ways we'd better off without.
Not an auspicious start to your objections.Right, my mistake.
Still beating the god of the gaps drum?No, my point is this: Since there is arguably a greater jump in complexity between inanimate matter and the first simplest replicator than between the first replicator and modern species, the argument from design is alive and well, contrary to what Dawkins in TGD tries to sell. What's more we know for sure that the explanation for that cannot be a "crane" like evolutionary explanation of the kind that Dawkins likes, because natural evolution requires the presence of a replicator in the first place. So I am simply pointing out that if the argument from design for the existence of God is deemed to be a strong one pre-Darwin it must be deemed to be a strong one post-Darwin too, not to mention the fact that the argument from design is now much strengthened by the apparent fine-tuning of the fundamental physical constants, a fact that was unknown pre-Darwin. So I think that Dawkins's hand-waving away the argument from design is helping make clear that he is overselling Darwinism. This will backfire by helping (traditional) theists realize that their intellectual case is stronger than what they themselves thought.
Now, it's easy enough to call the origin of life just a "gap" in naturalism. It's a rather big gap (even though by far not as big as the gap of consciousness). And of course any ontological theory full of gaps is not as reasonable as an ontological theory without them.
My own personal opinion in this matter is that there is a plausible explanation for the appearance of life within a naturalistic understanding of reality. Whether science will discover it is another issue, even though I am an optimist. But I may be wrong: the appearance of the first replicator may turn out to be really so extremely improbable to have happened in our universe, that naturalists will have to posit the existence of invisible entities for which no objective evidence exists, such as parallel universes. Come to think of it, they are doing this already in the context of the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants. Dawkins himself, without any sense of irony, is proposing this view in chapter 4 of TGD. Of course if naturalists are allowed to posit invisible entities to shore up their ontological beliefs, so are theists.
This leaves a possible door open for deismNo I disagree. Deism is the thesis that some designer set up the universe and then walked away, but if the appearance of the first replicator on naturalistic grounds turns out to be for all practical purposes impossible this will evidence the existence of a designer who is continuously interfering. It's not like there were replicators there at the Big Bang.
I'll read the reviews.I'd be interested to know what you thought of them.
517. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously
Comment #72515 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 21, 2007 at 11:37 am
Well, I suppose TGD is useful as a compendium of what kind of logic characterizes popular atheism (stuff like "there is no evidence for the existence of God", "if God made the universe then who made God?" and so on). But TGD is useful on another level too that has escaped Richard Skinner: TGD is so mediocre that several knowledgeable naturalists were stimulated to write negative reviews about it. I am thinking here of people such as top philosopher Thomas Nagel and top scientist Allen Orr who have written reviews that fairly trash Dawkins's book (see Nagel's "Fear of Religion" at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/fear-of-religion.html and Orr's "A Mission to Convert" at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19775 ). Why is that useful to Christians? Because these reviews demonstrate what sophisticated atheists find wrong with popular atheism. For example Nagel makes it pretty clear I think that contrary to what TGD tries to convince its readers the argument from design is alive and well, because natural evolution requires the existence of the first replicator and nobody has really any idea how something as complex as the first replicator has appeared on Earth (and let nobody here confuse the origin of life with the origin of organic molecules). I assume that Dawkins is aware of the problem but in TGD tries to hide it beneath the really harebrained device of the "anthropic principle", which in short is the completely irrelevant argument that assuming that life can originate on naturalistic principles given the right conditions it follows that our planet has had these right conditions. Of course the question is whether life's minimum required complexity can arise naturalistically in any planet, so here Dawkins is transparently begging the question. (Which by the way is the common theme in his book, as I argue in my own review of TGD in Amazon.)
To my knowledge Dawkins has not responded to either of these reviews; I suppose he has better things to do. But Dawkins's intellectual ally philosopher Daniel Dennett has responded to Orr's review, and it's a remarkable read: Apparently he argues that since authors need not study the worse ideas about their subject matter before writing a book it follows that they need not study the best ideas about it either. Further he criticizes Orr for not explaining what his objections to Dawkins's famous and "unanswerable" 747 argument are, when Orr's has in fact done so in his review, there black and white for all to see. (For Dennett's and Orr's exchange see first http://www.edge.org/discourse/dennett_orr.html#dd and then scroll up to read Orr's response)
In short TGD is becoming useful for demonstrating how intellectually deficient popular atheism really is. Perhaps in the end, and with the help of all the negative response it elicited, TGD may help raise peoples' consciousness that the question of whether theism or naturalism is the best description of reality is in fact far from simple and far from settled.
518. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71940 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 20, 2007 at 1:06 am
Steve99 (post 163, or #71813):
I understand your argument but:Even something as extreme and as stupid as young Earth creationism would work, as science cannot possibly verify that a six day divine creation of our universe at about 4004 BCE did not take place.No, that does not work. You see, even if the universe really is only a few thousand years old, I have a far simpler explanation, which requires no God. Just wait long enough, and an entire Universe with everything as it was a few thousand years ago will arise as a random statistical fluctuation of the matter and energy of the universe. No need for a God.
1) It's not a scientific argument as there is really absolutely no objective evidence for the multiverse or anything like that and you, like Dawkins, are supposed to be offering a scientific arguments based on objective evidence and not just posit invisible entities just because it fits your ontological beliefs (that's what you criticize theists for doing, remember?)
2) Even should we accept that just like theism naturalism too should be allowed to propose invisible entities, even then I can't really see in what sense the idea of a multiverse is "more simple". I mean it's easy enough to write "just wait long enough", but have you any idea how absurdly long that is? And indeed how complex the world you describe would be? Now if you wish to call that monstrosity "simple" it's fine with me; but I beg to point out that for me it's the very opposite of "simple". To me a world where there is one God sufficiently complex (in Dawkins's sense) to create this one universe at 4004 BCE is much much simpler than the multiverse with its 10^100^100^+ universes that produces the same some time down the line.
3) Finally, even if I agreed with you that the multiverse is simpler, why exactly do you think God should care about your and mine sense of what is "simple"? Perhaps God created the world in such a way that your and mine sense of simplicity is way off the mark.
See where I am driving at? At least in our current condition we can't really "know" how reality is one way or the other, the very opposite of what Dawkins in TGD claims. Truth is we can only discuss what is more reasonable to believe about reality. And as I have argued for long in the McGrath thread when I compare idealistic theism with (say) Dawkins's naturalism I find the former much more reasonable. I know that you from your own point of view judge the opposite, which is fine with me. Here I am only making the points that a) the best we can do is compare alternative views about reality and see which is more reasonable, and b) it seems to me that many people believe that naturalism is more reasonable than theism simply because they conflate naturalism with science and/or only consider one of the more primitive versions of theism, such as religious fundamentalism.
519. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71935 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 20, 2007 at 12:55 am
Steve99 (post 162, or #71810):
I wrote:
… Now remove the relatively few histories that would appear to be statistically surprising …to which you respond:
… you would then remove all such [roulette] runs which appear to be statistically surprising, for example those where you get the same number in all runs.
No, this is in principle detectable. Suppose you found a particular roulette run that had the same number again and again.If these particular runs were removed you wouldn't find them, would you? Steve, our discussion would have been much more productive if you took your time to actually read what the other person is writing.
What physical state? Are you trying to put forward an argument which implies an objective physical state of the universe? But, you can't do that, as you claim no such state existsOn the contrary I must do that. If I want to show fallacious thinking in Dawkins's argument I must show that even assuming his premises (for example that the universe objectively exists) the conclusion he claims does not follow. Non sequitur and question begging are probably the two most basic logical errors one can commit and Dawkins's TGD is a case study of how full a book can be of such errors without any of the "admiring faithful" noticing, or maybe those noticing not speaking up. It seems Haidt's principles of authority/respect and ingroup/loyalty are very effective indeed.
520. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71798 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 19, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Steve99 (post 152, or #71528):
Oh, God's meddling could be both non-detectable and effective. Here is one possible way: Take the physical state of the universe when the first self-replicating organism appeared so that natural evolution can start, and tabulate all possible random mutations that could possibly happen and what kind of species each series would produce. To increase the number of alternatives even more add the effect of plausible "random" environmental parameters, such as the impact of asteroids on Earth and whatnot. So we get a huge number of possible histories each producing different species. Now remove the relatively few histories that would appear to be statistically surprising, i.e. where God's meddling would be detectable. (Here is an analogy: suppose you tabulate all possible histories of 100 roulette runs; you would then remove all such runs which even though equally probable appear to be statistically surprising, for example those where you get the same number in all runs.) All remaining histories of possible evolutionary processes would appear to be a completely natural process even if science had minute access to all the details of evolutionary history. After inspecting the huge number of alternative histories and the mix of species they produce God picks the one that satisfy His/Her specifications (namely the one we now observe around us). Then God brings that history about by supernaturally realizing the necessary "random" mutations. And voila: a God designed (or maybe designated) mix of species that does not contradict scientific knowledge about natural evolution in any way. Let me make clear that the above does not at all reflect reality in my view, but my claim here is that had God interfered in that massive way in the natural order of the physical universe in order to design the species science would not had found anything amiss.If God had interfered with these random mutations in a systematic albeit statistically undetectable manner then God could very well have designed the species including us without in any way contradicting what we know about natural evolution.No. Because if it is statistically undetectable then it might as well not have occurred. You can either have detectable and effective, or not-detectable and ineffective.
And the above is just one example; I can think of many other ways for God to design the species in a way that science could not possibly detect. Even something as extreme and as stupid as young Earth creationism would work, as science cannot possibly verify that a six day divine creation of our universe at about 4004 BCE did not take place. But maybe you think that young Earth creationism can be shown to be false by some radiocarbon dating, or by some other scientific test. But the hypothesis is that at about 4004 BCE God created the universe exactly like we observe it today, including all the pieces of objective evidence that science today is based on, so by the very definition of the hypothesis of young Earth creationism it's impossible for science to detect anything amiss.
I know that Dawkins in his TGD argues that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis and hence falsifiable by science, but this is one more case where Dawkins is wrong. Not even young Earth creationism is falsifiable by science, and that's saying something.
521. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71697 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 19, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Epeeist (post 151 or #71526) and Steve99 (post 153 or #71530)
I claimed that Newtonian mechanics in no way contradicts our intuitions about the objective existence of the universe around us, so it's a red herring to respond about intuitions in general. That quantum mechanics in contrast to non-classical physics does challenge our intuitions about the very objectivity of physical reality is common knowledge; that's why people speak of quantum mechanics being paradoxical and mysterious and so on.
522. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71522 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 19, 2007 at 1:03 am
BAEOZ (post 147, or #71329):
If that is the case,then then taken to its logical conclusion nothing can be taken as evidence for god.Right, there is no objective evidence for theism. As there can't be any objective evidence for any view about how reality is. Objective evidence can only be against a particular view of reality, namely when such a reality would fail to produce that objective evidence. And as I was discussing with Epeeist above we now have objective evidence that falsifies at least the naive naturalistic understanding that most naturalists adopt. Objective evidence is a knife that cuts both ways you know. I think it would be best if naturalists would not let themselves be misguided by Dawkins's superficial TGD and feel so cocksure about their ontological beliefs, but rather started studying more serious books – by all means books written by atheists by the way. It's really not as simple as Dawkins thinks, and I find it positive that atheists such as Haidt are coming out.
523. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71514 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 19, 2007 at 12:51 am
Lauregon (post 146, or #71326):
OK, but I notice you haven't really proposed any objective evidence for naturalism. Surprising that there aren't any, no? Before criticizing other peoples' ontological beliefs it's a good idea to try to apply the same standards to one's own. What goes for the goose goes for the gander.
524. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71512 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 19, 2007 at 12:47 am
Epeeist (post 145, or #71242):
I start with a hypothesis and try to work back from there. That's entailed after all in the very concept of "hypothesis". And even though my hypothesis is similar to the core aspects of traditional theism's (that's why I call it "theistic") it's also quite different from it in many important aspects. For example it's an idealistic hypothesis of reality, whereas traditional theism agrees with naturalism in affirming the objective reality of the physical universe.I make the hypothesis that God with such and such attributes is the deepest structure of reality and then investigate how well that hypothesis works against other ontological hypotheses such as naturalism. I am not doing anything new; that's how discovery in general works.No you don't, you start with a conclusion and try to work back from there.
No, I don't. To my knowledge Newtonian mechanics does not in any way contradict our intuitions about the objective existence of the universe we observe around us. On the contrary the fact that it worked so well for describing many physical phenomena made it easier for people to conflate science and naturalism – an illusion that lies at the heart of the naive naturalism that Dawkins epitomizes. We now know for a fact that even if naturalism is true physical reality is nothing like what we see when we look around.Surprisingly enough it turns out that the naturalistic hypothesis (as understood by the vast majority of naturalists including Dawkins) does appear to contradict observational facts (related to quantum mechanics), so one can argue that naturalism is not even possible.I don't know why you get all hung up about QM. You do realise that there are ontological implications in Newton's theories as well don't you?
It should be clear by now that both naive naturalism and naive theism are not tenable. So both must and will evolve. In the McGrath thread I have proposed two naturalistic views that are more viable, one that asserts that consciousness is a fundamental principle of reality (remarkably the same conclusion that David Chalmers arrived at from a completely different direction), and another that asserts that the physical reality that causes our experiences is not direct but works indirectly through some computing mechanism, in short that we live within a computer simulation. Now, clearly, our cognitive capacity for investigating reality is far less effective than our cognitive capacity for investigating phenomena (and natural evolution easily explains why that is so). On the other hand we do have some capacity for thinking about reality and ever so slowly our ontological thinking is apt to become more sophisticated. One possibility is that as John Hick says our experiential environment is religiously ambiguous, and that therefore both naturalism and theism will for ever remain viable options – but my guess is that theism will quickly trump naturalism, particularly when people realize that to conflate naturalism and science is an obvious fallacy.
525. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #71216 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 18, 2007 at 4:13 am
Corylus (post 2315, or #70332)
Some smarts types (aka. showoffs!) seem to be able to make text appear in different colours and fonts and embed links.To display some text in blue start use bracket font=blue bracket and then bracket /font bracket. ("brackets" are "<" and ">"). Valid colors are red, blue, green, brown, gray, etc.
The simplest way to display a clickable link is to use Word: after typing an Internet address there it automatically becomes a clickable link; then simply cut and paste it into your edit window here. I bet this works with the free OpenOffice too.
526. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #71163 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 18, 2007 at 12:59 am
Bonzai (post 142, or #71023):
It never ceases to amaze me that people like Dianelos can start with an empty premise that God exists without a shred of evidence [snip]Without a shred of objective evidence. On the other hand there is not a shred of objective evidence for the view that the physical universe is real either.
[cont.] and then go on to argue matter of factly about what his purpose or intention may be, what he does and doesn't do and what his attributes are.Not matter of factly. I make the hypothesis that God with such and such attributes is the deepest structure of reality and then investigate how well that hypothesis works against other ontological hypotheses such as naturalism. I am not doing anything new; that's how discovery in general works.
Maybe this happened, maybe that.. Yeah, everything is possible in an absolute sense. It is certainly *possible* that we are kept in incubators to provide bio energy for evil robots like in The Matrix.Well, not all ontological hypotheses are possible even in principle. For example if an ontological hypothesis contradicts some observational facts then it's not a hypothesis that is even possibly true. Surprisingly enough it turns out that the naturalistic hypothesis (as understood by the vast majority of naturalists including Dawkins) does appear to contradict observational facts (related to quantum mechanics), so one can argue that naturalism is not even possible.
But we have been discussing all that in the McGrath thread for some time now, so maybe it's not a good idea to start all over again here. Here we are discussing some (in my view valid) criticisms of new atheism in general and of Dawkins's TGD in particular.
527. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70945 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 17, 2007 at 9:48 am
BAEOZ (post 136, or #70788):
the god of the Jews, Christians and Muslims is not a hidden god, he interferes in the material world when he chooses.Right. The question though remains about how often if ever does God so choose, and about how God then interferes if S/He so chooses. What we do know is that if God interferes with the natural order it can't happen in a way that contradicts observational facts.
[That God interferes in the material world] is a statement of fact open to the scientific method.Not always. The question of what kind of interference with the natural order could be detected scientifically is an open question, and indeed a scientific one. Take for example the random mutations that are necessary for natural evolution. If God had interfered with these random mutations in a systematic albeit statistically undetectable manner then God could very well have designed the species including us without in any way contradicting what we know about natural evolution. Now I personally don't believe the above; I am only pointing out that had such interference happened it would be all the same for science. I think it's useful to realize that there are limits to scientific knowledge and that it is unreasonable to apply science beyond its field of applicability.
528. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70942 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 17, 2007 at 9:45 am
Elentar (post 133, or #70755):
My understanding of Haidt's article is that apart from the two traditional foundations that explain human moral behavior, namely fairness/justice and care/protection of the vulnerable, there are three more, namely the ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. He argues that the first two fail to explain a broad range of moral behavior and that therefore the other three are required. This sounds plausible to me; indeed I cannot explain some of the moral indignation evidenced in some posts in this site without the ingroup/loyalty and authority/respect principles. Now you say that Haidt should not have affirmed "the validity of these three primitive emotions as genuine foundations of morality". Why not? If they do explain human moral behavior (as you do not seem to object) why shouldn't Haidt have affirmed them as genuine?
Science is in the business of noting observational facts and developing explicatory models for them; I don't think that science is in the business of passing value judgments one way or the other and point out how things ought to be. Once a person, or society for that matter, has decided how things ought to be on ethical grounds then science can help us realize that goal. The fact that science can explain ethical behavior does not imply that therefore science can tell us what is ethical; that's the naturalistic fallacy. Let's be aware of the limits of scientific knowledge.
529. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70786 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 16, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Lauregon (post 130, or #70646):
Surely you are not saying that one can conflate theism with religious fundamentalism, are you? After all "theism" means belief in God, "religious fundamentalism" means belief that the Bible is the literal word of God, and the two are obviously quite different things.and should avoid the common strawman of conflating theism with religious fundamentalism- DianelosNot only are you doggedly attempting to redefine "God," Dianelos, but now you're trying to redefine theism too.
Here we are discussing Dawkins's errors and I wouldn't like to start discussing mine, but let me just very quickly point out that my definitions of God as what best explains all our experience of life, and that God is a perfect person, are definitions that virtually all Jews, Christians, and Muslims would accept. I don't think that any of them would object and argue that there are better explanations for our experience of life, or that God is some kind of flawed person. So I don't think I am redefining anything. On the other hand consider what Dawkins writes in page #2 of TGD:
'the God Hypothesis' is a scientific hypothesis about the universe. - DawkinsThat, I dare say, would be news to almost all theists.
Look, you can prove almost anything if you base your logic on premises of your own choosing. You don't even have to redefine God. Let me give you what I think is the shortest proof of the non-existence of God which does not use a false definition of God:
1. Only material things exist in reality. (premise)
2. God, as understood by virtually all people who believe in God, is not a material thing. (premise)
3. Therefore God, as understood by virtually all people who believe in God, does not exist in reality.
Why doesn't the argument above convince any theist of the non-existence of God? Obviously, because they don't agree with premise #1, but Dawkins clearly does. Why? Because all scientific hypotheses are related to material things, so if Dawkins believed that also non-material things exist in reality, and which therefore cannot be the object of a scientific hypothesis, then he would not claim that non-material God is the object of a scientific hypothesis. So Dawkins by using an implicit premise he may find obviously true but which theists find obviously false has written a book which just fails to make contact with theism's basic ontological beliefs. Which implies that he spends the rest of his book criticizing an ontological position of his own making.
But perhaps, when Dawkins wrote that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis he didn't really mean it. Perhaps he meant that the God hypothesis even though not scientific should be studied like any scientific hypothesis would. That is using the scientific method, based on objective evidence and, I don't know, maybe peer reviewed experiments, and so on. If that was his meaning I don't think he justifies it in any way whatsoever. By any measure, the idea that non-scientific hypotheses should nonetheless be investigated scientifically is an extraordinary claim and requires some extraordinary justification, which is completely missing for TGD. Dawkins's belief that the God hypothesis is a scientific matter evidences that at least as far as ontology goes his whole book is built on a misunderstanding.
How could somebody as intelligent and honest as Dawkins fall for that misunderstanding? Well, I think the basic reason is that many theists make claims that are amenable to scientific investigation, such as claims that the factual claims of the Bible are true, that God regularly performs miracles, and so on. But to infer from "many theists make scientific claims based on their religious beliefs" "therefore theism is a scientific hypothesis" is a huge non-sequitur. Why? Because when attacking an ontological position one should find out the most powerful expression of that position, otherwise one commits the strawman fallacy. And clearly the most powerful theistic position does not entail neither the factual accuracy of ancient mythological texts nor the presence of regular spooky actions in the natural order.
530. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70631 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 16, 2007 at 11:39 am
Russell Blackford (post 123, or #70312):
I disagree with the idea that an argument is obviously wrong because its error is obvious once pointed out, but maybe that's a semantic issue.
The point of my analogy of a theologian writing about natural evolution without understanding it was to show that people should not write books outside their field of expertise without first making their homework. Before judging "new atheism's" popular books perhaps we should pause and think about how a good book on religion should be. First we should notice that there are two types of books on religion: Those that discuss religion as an ontological claim and those that discuss religion as a social phenomenon. The former is a philosophical issue, the latter a scientific issue. What I would like to see in each type of book is the following:
Books that discuss the ontological claims of religion, and specifically the existence or non-existence of God, should be based on an analysis of the best arguments for and against the various ontological views, and should avoid the common strawman of conflating religion with religious fundamentalism as well as the fallacy of thinking that scientific knowledge is ontological (i.e. that science describes reality; science only describes phenomena and is agnostic about what reality produces them).
Books that discuss the phenomenon of religion should be structured the way any scientific thesis is structured, namely based on all the objective evidence there is and pointing out how that evidence is explained by the relevant scientific theory, or else how theory must evolve to account for the evidence. Haidt's article is a good model in this sense.
And I think it goes without saying that in a non-fiction book there is no place for inflammatory language and the use of selective evidence; these are the tools of demagogy. So, I think that under the prism of how a book about religion should and shouldn't be, Dawkins's TGD does not fare very well. Further I take well Haidt's point that its analysis of the sociological phenomenon of religion follows emotion rather than scientific principles. In my view the single greatest error of TGD is that it misstates the question as an opposition between theism and science, when the opposition is between the ontological views of theism and naturalism. This is such a fundamental category error that any subsequent discussion is rendered not only irrelevant but also misleading.
531. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70306 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 14, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Russell Blackford (post 121, or #70283):
You say that maybe Dawkins only wanted to give his readers an "impressionistic" and "humorous" idea of how problematic arguments for God are. If so he apparently failed because, as we see in this very thread, people came away with the idea that he was using the rigor of science when discussing them. In any case, religion is a very complex as well as important phenomenon – and Dawkins is clearly trivializing the whole issue. Do you think that's a good idea? Is this kind of superficial approach to a matter of mayor personal and social importance the kind of book the world needs from top scientists? Similarly, if a religious authority who does not understand natural selection were to write an eminently readable book trivializing it and showing how prima facie ridiculous the whole idea is, and would moreover argue that to read serious books about natural selection is comparable to reading serious books about voodoo – do you think that would be a good idea?
As for Dawkins's subjective intentions, I feel kind of embarrassed suggesting this, but I think he is probably trying to protect civilization as we know it and even perhaps save humanity itself from the gravest danger that faces it, which, he apparently believes, is religion. It's difficult to understand what could cause somebody of Dawkins's intellectual capacity and also, you know, a nice person, to delude himself so much in this. I mean hasn't he heard of the failures of education, of increasing social injustice, of the destruction of the environment, of the danger of pandemics, of the continuing risk of nuclear annihilation, of nationalism and the schizophrenic fragmentation of the world in nation states, and so on? Even Harris is now saying that it's only arguable that religion causes more harm than good.
Finally I take issue with you writing that there are obvious problems with all arguments for God. I am not sure whether you mean that Dawkins believes that or that you believe that too, but it's not true anyway. Perhaps it's reasonable to think that theism is false, but if one thinks that theism is obviously false then this only evidences one's ignorance.
532. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #70112 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 14, 2007 at 5:39 am
Eppeist (post 2309, or #70061):
Hello there, you've been missed. Recently we have been discussing so much about quantum mechanics and Bell's theorem that some got the impression I justify my belief in God on quantum mechanics :-) Your insights would have been helpful. No matter.
533. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70110 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 14, 2007 at 5:23 am
Steve99 (post 97 or #70070):
In post 96 I wrote:
… if in some abstract sense of truth …to which you comment:
… whatever exactly the concept of "truth" means …
Having said that my own position is that reality is such that there is no contradiction between pragmatism and our common sense of truth.
Well, that is clearly wrong. "Our common sense of truth" has been shown to be a very poor guide to reality. "Our common sense" has told us that the world is flat, that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe, that time and distance are absolute. The fatal flaw in the reasoning you have used when you post on this site is your reliance on what you personally consider "common sense".What I meant above by "our common sense of truth" was "our common sense of what truth means", as should be abundantly clear from the context, and not "our common sense of what is true" as you understood, and what in any case does not make any sense in the context of our discussion of theism versus atheism. Perhaps you should take some time to try to comprehend what the other person means and not just reflexively react and point out that they are "clearly wrong" and what their "fatal flaw" is and whatnot. Take your time thinking, it's a good habit.
(post 98 or #70079):
What an arrogant attitude. Are you seriously comparing Hitchens - one of the finest essayists and Dawkins - a many-time winner of awards for science and science writing, a member of the Royal Society and Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, as equivalent to McDonalds.Yes. And I am not sure Dawkins's qualifications as a scientist are any good outside of his field of expertise. As for Hitchens, you know, demagogues are fine essayists also, so I don't see that qualification as especially relevant either.
Please, let us know of your qualifications to judge them.I have always wondered about how often "new atheists" use the "we" pronoun. You do feel like belonging to a tribe, don't you?
Anyway here are my qualifications: I have read what they write and have heard what the say, so I am certainly qualified to compare them to John Leslie Mackie and Michael Martin, who I have also read and who I find to be far more sophisticated and coolheaded atheist writers. Surely you don't mean that the readers of bestselling authors Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens should not judge them unless they are adequately qualified to do so (maybe by having won awards in science themselves), but should only unquestionably believe what they read? Indeed I am happy to see that several posters in this thread do judge them, so not all is lost for atheist free thought.
534. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70069 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 14, 2007 at 1:19 am
NakedCelt (post 88 or #70044):
Haidt finds a specific quote by Dennett, and counters it with data (including a specific study) that contradict Dennett's claims. The proper thing to do is to examine Haidt's evidence and accept or reject his criticism of Dennett on its merits, not to sneer at the fact that Haidt hasn't suggested a motive for Dennett's getting it wrong. Haidt isn't obliged to attribute motive; he has evidence.Yes, good point.
My take on Haidt is that he is arguing that there is also the pragmatic side of the human condition to consider. Truth cannot be divorced from pragmatism. For example, if, in some abstract sense of truth it were true that walls do not exist it would be absurd to actually believe that walls do not exist because this would cause people many painful experiences of disregarding their illusions of the existence of walls.
I think it's clear that whatever exactly the concept of "truth" means it's a meaning that must be contingent on human experience. If, hypothetically speaking, a theistic understanding of reality were conducive to personal and social well-being whereas a non-theistic understanding of reality were conducive to nihilism and self-destructive behavior then it is questionable in what sense exactly theism is false and non-theism true.
I suppose what I am saying is that human experience is more fundamental or valuable than intellectualizing about truth. Having said that my own position is that reality is such that there is no contradiction between pragmatism and our common sense of truth. But when thinking about reality it's a good idea to always keep in mind that it is possible for such a contradiction to exist.
535. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #70066 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 14, 2007 at 12:56 am
Sidfaiwu (post 71 or #69953):
As David Sloan Wilson said in his review of Haidt's article, "Religions are not the only belief systems that can become detached from reality. [snip]"Well, "new atheism" too appears to be detached from reality. After all consider some of the claims of the founding members: Harris (as discussed in post 64 above) claiming that only in religion do grown-ups pretend to know things they manifestly do not know, and Dawkins claiming that religious fundamentalists never change their minds (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1779771.ece) when many people posting in his own site describe how they used to be fundamentalists but are now atheists.
Now I think it's nonsense to brand "new atheism" some kind of "fundamentalist faith" or "a new religious tribe". But I think it's fair to point out that "new atheism" does share some of the characteristics of fundamentalist faith and religious tribes, such as a passionate black-and-white understanding of the issues, a tendency to easily believe in obviously counterfactual claims (such as the ones mentioned above) and indeed a lack of self-critical thought which is rather substituted by predictable self-congratulations (see for example the first post in this thread), a clear sense of belonging to a superior group of people, and, most alarmingly of all, a self-righteous sense of fighting against some great evil which only the group perceives and which threatens civilization. From where I stand it doesn't look pretty. I miss the sophistication, thoughtfulness, tolerance, and cool-headedness of the "old atheist" school of the likes of Mackie and Martin. I know that "new atheism" books are all bestsellers but I wonder what that says about their quality. McDonalds sells a lot of food too.
536. A Response to Jonathan Haidt
Comment #69932 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 13, 2007 at 8:01 am
From Sam Harris's last paragraph:
Finally, I should mention that Haidt fails to acknowledge the central point of "new atheist" criticism. The point is not that we atheists can prove religion to be the cause of more harm than good (though I think this can be argued, and the balance seems to me to be swinging further toward harm each day). – Sam HarrisThe soft tone of this surprised me. Isn't according to "new atheism" all religion supposed to be the greatest danger facing civilization and threatening even the very survival of humanity, and so on? And now it's only arguable that religion causes more harm than good?
The point is that religion remains the only mode of discourse that encourages grown men and women to pretend to know things they manifestly do not (and cannot) know. – Sam HarrisIf that's the point of "new atheism" then it's factually wrong. Hasn't Harris ever heard of astrology and the hundreds of millions, maybe billions, who believe in it? Hasn't he heard politicians speak for that matter? Or of people who claim to have devised a method to beat the casinos at roulette? I mean it's really not difficult to find outside of religion grown-ups who "pretend to know things they manifestly do not and cannot know". Some argue that Dawkins playing philosopher of religion is just such a case.
What's more important though: I have always wondered how Sam Harris could get it so wrong when he argues about how dangerous religion is. Reading his response above I think I understand the conceptual error he committed:
Perhaps Haidt's thinking on this subject has been powerfully distorted by his own atheism, as he seems incapable of seeing the world as the faithful see it. We might well wonder, at this juncture, just which of us atheists are in danger of "misunderstanding religion." At least Dennett, Dawkins, and I have made some attempt to understand what it might be like to actually believe what people of faith say they believe. – Sam HarrisOK. Let's overlook the fact that what people say they believe is often not really what they believe, but what they think is expected of them to say they believe. One way or the other it's probable that there are many millions of genuine religious fundamentalists around. So Harris tried to understand "what it might be like to actually believe" what these people do actually believe. The only way to achieve that is for Harris to take the core beliefs of religious fundamentalists, copy them in his own mind, and see what happens. And what happened was flabbergasting: He discovered that somebody who believes that God wants them to commit barbarous acts and will actually reward them eternally for committing such acts is apt to commit such acts. But why so, pray, exactly? Because logic demands it; if by killing a few infidels at a suicide bombing one earns eternal rewards in Paradise then one will naturally tend to commit them – Harris found out. And that's Harris's conceptual error I am afraid. You see, minds that believe that a clearly flawed as well as self-contradictory book is the literal Word of God are not minds characterized by logical thought and which would make all the logical inferences from their religious beliefs. The problem I think is that Harris imagines religious fundamentalists having the same kind of quality mind he possesses except that theirs is infected by religious ideas. But somebody who actually is a religious fundamentalist does not have the structured and consequent kind of mind that Harris has, so Harris gets it all wrong when he tries to understand "how it is like" to be a religious fundamentalist. Which should be obvious from the start. After all, obviously, even though there are certainly many genuine religious fundamentalists in Texas only a vanishingly small proportion of them behaves consequently and goes out and, say, stones somebody who breaks the Sabbath. My own best guess is that the mind of the typical religious fundamentalist is a murky situation of many contradictory beliefs, compulsions, hopes and fears all set in a context of generalized ignorance - but also of basically the same aspirations for dignity and peaceful co-existence that characterizes all humanity. And you don't have to look for the group of religious fundamentalists to find such a messy mental landscape: Just look at the millions who smoke, or who play at casinos, or who have re-elected George W Bush.
All the same, isn't religious fundamentalism dangerous? I agree it is (particularly when found in a social situation characterized by desperation and injustice). But so is ignorance in general, and frankly I wonder whether "new atheism" is working to dispel ignorance or to increase it. And as for the important issue of how dangerous religious fundamentalism is, the uncomfortable fact for those who claim that it is the most dangerous thing of all (the elephant in the room as Dawkins puts it) is that by far most crimes that have been committed in the last 100 years of our civilization were not motivated by religious beliefs, but rather by nationalism, greed, political beliefs – you name it. At this juncture Harris might argue that it's only today that some fundamentalist nutcase might get some nuclear device and detonate it in some US metropolis. Well, true. But how probable is that really? And is demonizing Islam (as "new atheism" preferably does playing on 9/11) really a positive way to make such an event less probable? What about, you know, some non-stupid foreign policy in the Middle East for a change? And anyway shall we talk "sense of proportion" here? What other dangers face the average person, how probable are they, and how much is invested in the war against them?
537. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #69890 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 13, 2007 at 4:59 am
Phil Rimmer (post 2287, or #69864):
What if the cancer patient became aware of the situation and volunteered?In that case my own opinion is that the doctor should give him an easy death and save the other five people. On the other hand that's irrelevant to my argument. The situation I was referring to in post 2285 (or #69858) is one where the cancer patient would object – I hope that was clear.
Corylus (post 2288, or #69865):
There you go again with the impossible thought experiments. If a patient is highly likely to die within a month of cancer than this is because that cancer has metastasised. None of their organs would be suitable for transplant.Are you sure about that? To my knowledge some cancers kill long before metastasizing, for example brain cancer. But in any case all that is irrelevant to my argument; I need some flexibility of thought here. Even if you are right about cancer I could easily change the example, for example suggesting that the first patient has suffered an accident and that unstoppable internal bleeding will surely kill her in a few days, or something like that. Or change the example altogether, say, suggest a situation where scientists discover that 90% of all violent crime is caused by people who have a particular combination of genes, and then based on consequentialist principles a world-wide effort is implemented to identify them all and sterilize them, forcibly if necessarily. Or that in order to save the environment a law is enacted that prohibits the birth of a second child in a family and that punishes transgressions by death not only for that child but for the entire family. I can think of a million cases where consequentialism gives the wrong answer. The interesting question is: "How do we know the right answer in the first place?"
As for the impossible ethical situations you criticize me for, the most powerful example I have suggested here is a case where somebody finds a wallet full of money in a dark alley and where keeping that money clearly offers more advantages than returning it. That's far from impossible, indeed that's the typical ethically challenging situation. (After all, any situation where doing the right thing is what in fact offers most personal gains can hardly be called ethically challenging.) I think it's very difficult for naturalism to explain why a naturalist in any such situation would do the right thing and be thinking rationally at the same time.
For example, if it became general knowledge that one might be bumped off in hospital in order to have one's organs harvested then this might stop people seeking medical treatment - which could very well lead to more deaths than just five.Not really. Even if people knew that there is a good possibility that they would be killed painlessly a few days before their illness would kill them anyway in order to harvest their organs, the best strategy for people suffering from cancer would still be to seek medical treatment.
I don't personally think that it is helpful to view all moral dilemmas in strictly consequentialist terms, but I don't think most consequentialists do that, of for that matter argue that this is possible.Fine, but my basic point is this: Why discuss a particular ethical theory such that its results must always be checked by our own ethical intuitions to find out if they are any good?
538. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #69878 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 13, 2007 at 4:10 am
PaulEmecz (post 2272, or #69754):
The clearest evidence of inconsistency I know of is this: Naturalists often (and rightly in my view) use Euthyphro's argument to show the unreasonableness of the common theistic position that "something is ethical (or else evil) because God says so". But that argument requires the premise that ethics is objective. (And therefore that ethics does not depend on God's opinion. This premise is not explicit in Plato's dialogue because it is assumed as obviously true.) But often the same naturalists when challenged to explain how a naturalistic reality can account for objective ethics contradict their previous stance claiming that ethics is not objective after all.
I think it's a fact that our intuition about the objectivity of ethics is absolute; I personally cannot conceive any normal human being doubting whether to torture a child for fun may not be wrong after all. The same way I cannot conceive any normal human being doubting whether they possess free will. That being a fact of our condition, what is the strongest naturalistic response possible? (It's best to always consider the strongest opposing view, otherwise one wastes one's time with strawmen.) The strongest naturalistic response to the argument from morality I can come up is this:
"There is no doubt in my mind that at least some ethical precepts are objective, in the sense that they are true independently of social convention or personal opinion. So I cannot doubt that some ethics is objective. On the other hand naturalism implies that there is nothing objectively good and hence that no ethics is objective. This seems to be a contradiction, but that's not so. The fact that I find it impossible to doubt that some ethics is objective does not say something about objective reality at large, but only something about how my own brain works. Today we don't understand the structure of our brain well enough to explain why our brains are such that it is impossible for us to doubt that some ethics is objective. But one day science will probably be able to explain that. Meanwhile it is clearly possible that our brains have for some reason evolved in such a way as to make it impossible for us to doubt that some ethics is objective. But I can only think using my own brain, so I cannot overcome its intrinsic cognitive limitations. So there is not really a contradiction between "I believe no objective ethics exists" and "It's impossible for me to doubt that some ethics is objective". The fact that I am incapable of doubting the objectivity of some ethics only implies that there are some illusions I will have to live my whole life with, simply because I will have to live my whole life with the same brain."
539. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #69861 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 13, 2007 at 2:56 am
Lauregon (post 2262 or #69572):
And here we back to your insistence that the word "morality" is something absolute and derived from "God."Ethics is a major field of philosophy, and maybe it's no wonder that it's difficult to communicate what we mean. What I am delighted to see is how ethics has dominated this thread; it seems ethics much more than ontology is what is relevant in our lives. The whole discussion and especially Paul's question of why one *should* do anything in the first place motivated me to try to write up my views on ethics, but this is taking some time. Meanwhile I would like to suggest two points:
1. I don't think that Paul is insisting that morality is absolute (or rather is objective, which means independent of personal opinion). I think that for him the meaning of the concept "ethics" entails objectivity. Indeed I dare say the vast majority of people would agree that at least some ethical precepts are objectively true, i.e. true independently of personal opinion. Those who are convinced by Plato's argument in Euthyphro (see post 2229 or #69336) are people for whom it's obviously true that ethics is objective – and it's interesting to note that most of those who use Plato's argument are naturalists thus evidencing that they believe in the objectivity of ethics. Even so Paul recognizes and accepts that there is no logical incoherence in denying that ethics is objective, and indeed some naturalists, indeed some very knowledgeable ones such as Mackie, do exactly that. I would like no note though that other naturalist philosophers disagree. So it's interesting to try to understand why some naturalist philosophers adopt the position that ethics is objective and why some that it isn't.
2. If I understand Paul's position correctly his argument is not exactly that ethics is derived from God, but rather that he sees no way for the concept of objective ethics to make any sense if God does not exist. The reason is that the understanding of a reality which is not based on an intrinsically good spiritual reality, such as naturalism, gives no grounds for the existence of objective ethics. In other words he points out that if naturalism is true then objective ethics does not exist. That's a powerful argument based on the observation that any ethical precept expresses a value judgment about what is good, and in a naturalistic understanding of reality there is noting objectively good; there is no way to go from what objectively is to what objectively ought to be. (Originally Hume used this argument against theism, but it turns out it is much more powerful against naturalism.) Even though the problem is real and difficult some naturalist philosophers prefer to confront it and argue that nevertheless objective ethics can exist in a naturalistic reality, and it's interesting to study how they argue that position. (A flawed but even so very good book – to my knowledge it's the best of its type – is "God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist" where two academic philosophers use their best arguments for and against the belief that God exists. If you read the readers' comments in Amazon's site you'll find out something interesting: both theists and non-theists readers agree that both debaters did a good job and that who "won" the debate is not black and white; of course theists ultimately judge that the theist philosopher had the best arguments and non-theists judge the opposite. I say that's interesting, because it's the closest one can come to objective evidence which falsifies Dawkins's claim that belief in God is comparable to belief in fairies. Well, anyway, to my judgment the most powerful argument that the theist philosopher used in that book and the one the one the atheologian philosopher found more difficult to counter was the so-called argument from morality, the same that Paul is using. I highly recommend this book, it's an eye-opener that will at the very least teach both theists and non-theists that the truth in this matter is not obvious one way or the other.)
[1] In this context, "independent of personal opinion" includes God's personal opinion too. God's opinion about ethical issues is always right of course, but that does not imply that ethical truth depends on God's opinion.
It's beyond obvious that human ideas about "God's" morality have changed over millenia.Right.
HOW could anyone be certain the discoverer wasn't putting forth his own ideas as the morality of "God?"How do you mean that? Of course the discoverer would be putting forth their own ideas. If he or she is the discoverer then who else's ideas would he or she be putting forth? That's the way it works with any discovery. For example when Einstein discovered a better way to describe gravitational phenomena he put forth his own ideas. Ah, maybe the confusion is this: When a theologian claims that X is true then it is also implicitly claimed that God would agree that X is true; but this fact does not imply that it is God who claims X and that the theologian somehow knows God's claims, or that the theologian justifies the truth of X by pointing out that that's what God thinks. To claim that that's what the theologian is always doing is just a strawman.
The intellectual dishonesty required by Christian faith drove me out of the Church 22 years ago, and more recently away from theism altogether.Surely you are not implying that theistic belief requires intellectual dishonesty do you?
I'm going to go out on another limb here and suggest that just possibly, the brains of theists and non-theists may work differently.Well, strictly speaking the brains of any two people work differently; on the other hand I don't think the differences between any two groups of people of normal cognitive capacity can be so great as to invalidate reason. And of course there is only one objective truth. So as there is only one truth and all normal people can reason about it I think that sooner or later most people will gravitate towards one understanding of reality. We'll see.
540. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #69858 by Dianelos Georgoudis on September 13, 2007 at 2:29 am
Newatheist (post 2249, or #69417):
Well, maybe too simple. First of all, do *you* really believe what you are writing here? If it turned out that sharia law is what's objectively best for a society would you agree that your own society should adopt it? Do the ends always justify the means? Let's be careful here. Take for example fascism. What characterizes fascism is the view that what's important is the wellbeing of the whole of society (i.e. "the state") no matter the rights or interests of individuals or particular groups. So, according to fascist ideology, as the birth of a Down syndrome baby hurts the interests of the whole of society that baby should therefore be eliminated. Similarly if a religious or ethnic group hurts the interests of the whole of society it should be eliminated too (an idea that led to the Jewish Holocaust). Surely you are not OK with such.IF a society is happier and more stable with sharia law than with the Golden Rule, then sharia law is actually better than the Golden Rule. - PaulEmeczYes! That's true. And IF a society is happier and more stable with the Golden Rule than with sharia law, then the Golden Rule is actually better than sharia law. My goodness! Simple really.
The idea that what a moral act is justified by its consequences is called, naturally enough, "consequentialism". At first it sounds very plausible, in fact utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory. But consequentialism suffers from two major problems:
1. Assuming it's feasible to reliably compute all consequences before deciding for a course of action (which is normally not the case), how does one compare the value of the consequences of different courses of action? Consequentialism moves the problem from "what should I do?" to "what is good?" which is just as hard a problem.
2. When using broadly accepted values consequentialism often gives the wrong answers. For example we all agree that human life has a very high value. Now suppose you are a medical doctor with 6 patients. The first has terminal cancer and will die with 99% probability in the next 30 days. The other 5 urgently need an organ transplant and will all die with 99% probability within the next 3 days if they don't get one, but if they get one each has a 90% probability of living for the next 10 years. Consequentialism would require that you kill the first patient and harvest her healthy organs in order to save the life of the other 5 patients. But I trust you agree that to do so is clearly wrong, notwithstanding the fact that the consequences of such an action are very good.