1251. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #68376 by steve99 on September 7, 2007 at 3:19 am

In the context of cosmology and origins, he is making exactly the same mistake, in characterising all possible universes and their natures as being bounded in accordance to his entirely human-defined concepts of what a God could or could not do in making one.

As I have mentioned before - this is not a mistake, it is an entirely reasonable approach. The mistake is made by the those who claim aspects of God and what he can do that are beyond human-defined concepts: that is extremely flawed logic. Assuming there is a God, the only way we can experience Him is via our limited human minds. If there were any aspects of God that were beyond what we could imagine, then by definition we could have no knowledge of them, and so it is futile to discuss them: it is moving into invisible pink unicorn territory.

If you disagree, perhaps you could give us a description of an aspect of God that is beyond anything humans could conceive?

Do you see the paradox - the flaw in this argument?

1252. Interview with Richard Dawkins and John Cornwell

Comment #68360 by steve99 on September 7, 2007 at 2:08 am

Cornwell either: understood The God Delusion and chose to ignore or misrepresent it which makes him wicked; didn't understand it at all which makes him incredible; or didn't read it properly, if at all, which makes him a rogue.

I think this is too simple an analysis. As I have posted before, I think things work rather like this: Someone like Cornwell gets a strong gut reaction, which they trust, and which they feel they have to defend. Given this, they will obviously try and 'spin' what Dawkins says to match their prejudices. This is a pretty common human reaction. Science is about overcoming such normal reactions and learning how to be critical.

1253. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #68350 by steve99 on September 7, 2007 at 12:30 am

Cornwell is attacking Dawkins because he has the audacity to say "we doctors"? What is the reasoning behind this? Does it address any of the underlining arguments?

It does not have to address any of the arguments. That is not the way such debating techniques work. The idea behind this approach is to insist that if someone has to present their message in a rude or arrogant way (Cornwells reading of "we doctors") then their message can't be trusted.

1254. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #68348 by steve99 on September 7, 2007 at 12:16 am

Whenever RD is invited onto the Today programme, it always seems to be just before they're due to go off air, so it's always rushed and always has to stop just when it's getting going properly.

This happens to many guests.... in fact it happens so much has been frequently parodies in comedy shows like 'Dead Ringers'.

1255. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #68286 by steve99 on September 6, 2007 at 3:53 pm

What possible significant survival advantage (sufficient to create the necessary high selection pressure) actually arises from the above features of the human brain, sufficient to explain the formation of such powers in us?

There is one idea about how high human intelligence arose that I find rather appealing. We seem to have more intelligence that is really needed. After all, the other great apes have far less, and (at least before we turned up), the lived pretty good lives.

However, there are well-understood mechanisms by which such 'excessive' features as our high intelligence can evolve. It could be rather like the peacock's tail - a result of sexual selection: intelligence could be a way of demonstrating general fitness (this tends to work with features that would cause a penalty in less-fit individuals, as the peacock's tail definitely does). The brain takes a lot of building, and a lot of energy to maintain, so I find this analogy a good one...

1256. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #68199 by steve99 on September 6, 2007 at 10:30 am

I agree with jonecc, but I think there is something else more important going on as well. I think this is a matter of self-delusion. Believers often have a feelings towards their religion that is much like love... some may have a mild feeling like this, as if religion is an old family friend, but for others religion is like a new lover, and their feelings are intense. Just imagine what it is like trying to persuade someone that their love is false and corrupt. What you will get is a hostile reaction; you will get disbelief, and people will clutch at all sorts of straws to not quite hear what you are saying, or to accuse you of lying or falsifying evidence.

I think this is precisely what we are seeing with articles and comments from people like Cornwell.

1257. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #68088 by steve99 on September 6, 2007 at 5:20 am

Sorry Dianelos, but so many times in this debate you have pressed the 'reset' button and carried on as if previous arguments have not been made. I am sure you have done this politely, and you may think it is a reasonable way to behave, but I find it frustrating and pointless.

I have recently not been posting here to try and convince you, but I feel that some of the naive or just plain wrong views you have posted (such as your understanding of multiverse theories) need to be corrected for the the general reader. But I doubt there are any casual readers of this interminable thread any more :)

And if you are reaching to describing thermostats when talking about equivalents to the mind of God, I fail to see any way to progress, even if I had the energy :)

I actually DO have a lot of sympathy for an idealistic approach: I think it is a sound basis for a worldview. What I have no sympathy at all for is the reasons you give for justifying it, which clearly show a deeply flawed understanding of physics, logic and philosophy (such as you falling into the reification trap).

[For goodness sake, if you are going to justify something based on such foundations, don't just make stuff up (like your understanding of the 'complexity' of multiverses) - learn something about them! You have made a good stab at it with the Bell Inequality, even though you refuse to understand the real consequences]

So, I personally do tend towards idealistic views. But the problem with your approach is, if I may be blunt, the unprovable nature of about God; on top of that the wierd idea that there is any evidence that He must be Good, and (sorry, but I have to say this) the sheer craziness of the idea of the Trinity. I had hugely more respect for your views before you mentioned that.

Your worldview is like a bad apple. It may look crisp, tasty and beautiful on the outside, but look deeper and you see increasingly rotten material at the core.

1258. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #68005 by steve99 on September 5, 2007 at 2:52 pm

I am always staggered when I see this quote appear in the side-bar, as it just did. I would love Richard Dawkins to tell us how he can happily assert this, without effectively claiming God-level (i.e. infinite) knowledge and status for himself!

This is a silly (but common) criticism of Dawkins and others. 'God' is a word used by humans to describe a supernatural entity that is supposed to actually exist by many - people presumably say that because they believe that have evidence of it: either their own thoughts, or what they observe of the universe. You don't need God-level knowledge to discuss what humans mean by 'God' - you only need a certain understanding of humans.

Just to give an example of what this means, humans use the word 'infinite' to describe God. However, the vast majority haven't a clue what 'infinite' really means - they are simply using their own labels for God. Therefore, we don't have to have a deep understanding of infinity to discuss God - all we have to know is that humans have a need to believe God is Very Very Big.

There may well be some vast hidden intelligence somewhere, but that is not what we mean by God: if it were hidden, we could have know knowledge or experience of it, so it could not be the source of our definition of 'God'.

1259. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #68003 by steve99 on September 5, 2007 at 2:41 pm

There is also something called "Primordial" blackholes (Theoretical objects that might have been created at the start of the universe (doubt it though- no evidence). These objects though could be more of God's deadly little "toys". If they came close to the Earth they would rip us apart, if nearby, they would still be a huge risk, they could explode at any moment, they are a ticking timebomb… and if they were created with the right mass – it could be right now they are set to go BOOM!.

No need to worry at all. There is a limit to the size of the primordial black holes that were created during the Big Bang, and that is about the mass of a large mountain. These would not be any kind of risk at all.

1260. Interview with BHA President Polly Toynbee

Comment #67957 by steve99 on September 5, 2007 at 11:27 am

It was a good interview, with Toynbee having excellent responses to Roger Bolton's questions.

1261. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67932 by steve99 on September 5, 2007 at 7:57 am

But, still one may ask: "Why hasn't then God directly and on purpose design the imperfect species we see around us? Why use the roundabout way of a mechanism (namely natural selection) that produces the complex but imperfect species required by God's prime motivation for creation?

I fail to see why you are misunderstanding such a simple point, but I'll try one last time.

The species we see around us are not designed, because the universe is not deterministic. The only way God could have ensured that the species around us arose is to continually intervene to push things in the right direction. No serious thinker or theologist really believes that anymore.

After all if God exists then everything, including natural evolution, evidences God. As I hope to have shown here :-)

All you have shown is your continued refusal to understand simple arguments i.e. when something shows no evidence of needing a designer, and no evidence of a designer exists, then it is nothing but bloody-minded stubborness and a refusal to accept reality to insist that

However, I would imagine you will simply ignore what I have said, and carry on as if I had never posted this.

Good luck to you. I have run out of energy and motivation to deal this any longer.

1262. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67844 by steve99 on September 5, 2007 at 1:49 am

LOL. Good point. I think I shall use it when arguing about the Trinitarian nature of reality.

This is what I don't get... and why I find your debating so frustrating.

You have experienced here a debate about the supposed Trinitarian nature of reality. You put forward reasons for it, in terms of both 'mind structure' and 'information processing'. I put forward what I believed was a clear argument that your reasoning was wrong. For example, you believed that humans could exist without instinct (which is clearly nonsense), that processing could proceed without software.

I think the whole matter is nonsense - to me it is like arguing about the fine structure of fairy wings - but I obviously showed that even if one assumes (as you do) that this is not nonsens, you are wrong even on your own terms, or at the very least your views are highly questionable.

So how do you get away with still arguing in favour of a Trinitarian viewpoint?

This kind of ignoring of counter-arguments and proceeding on blissfully as if no-one had said anything is no way to behave. One might expect it of, say, politicians, but not from someone of supposed ability to debate and think rationally.

If someone throws up a serious challenge to a belief the appropriate response is to put the stick a label on the belief as 'questionable' and put it away for a while until this doubts have been cleared up. To do otherwise is, in my view, to insult the intellect of those you are debating with, and the general readers.

1263. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67765 by steve99 on September 4, 2007 at 4:59 pm

Clearly you think any theist explanation of the existence and origin of the universe is absurd. So, give me an explanation (I know you won't have any evidence, but I can live with that), in a way that doesn't sound absurd.

Just to make it clear. I find the idea of a theist explanation of the existence and origin of the universe absurd, but orders of magnitude less absurd that the idea that a creator somehow designed the universe so that humans would end up in it. That completely contradicts our understanding of the nature of how the universe works.

OK, so having got that out of the way... I think the best idea I have heard of how why the Universe is that of Max Tegmark - the "Ultimate Ensemble" theory. There is a multiverse (not the Many Worlds one, I hasten to add) which consists of every universe that follows consistent mathematical and logical rules. He thinks that universes have a very deep link with mathematics: universes exist because mathematics exists.

However, I also think that it is highly suspect for us to claim any final knowledge of how and why our universe came into being. We have poor brains. We are just another species of Chimanzee basically. In a billion years our descendents may have intellects so far advanced we can't possibly imagine, and they may laugh at our feeble attempts to understand existence. This is why I find the continued attempts to hang onto a God as creator as the gaps for Him get smaller and smaller so absurd. I believe it is a form of arrogance - that God made this Universe for us.

1264. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67737 by steve99 on September 4, 2007 at 3:02 pm

Yes. I think the idea that there could be a universe, of this sort or any other, is ludicrous. I think any explanation of how there could be a universe like this will be ludicrous.

Apart from the fact this this does not follow, you are completely missing my point. You are confusing origination with design. There are two completely different issues: (1) Was the Universe created and (2) was the Universe designed?

The problem with (2) is that, as I explained, the universe is not deterministic, so any 'designer' would have to be highly interventionist to keep things on track. I don't know about you, but I see no evidence of such intervention, and the idea of intervention is now rejected by serious theologians.

So, you see, it is absurd to think that anyone could just 'press the button' at the start of the Universe and sit back to wait for us to turn up. Reality is not like that.

It is far less absurd (although still wrong in my view) to talk about a creator who started up a universe that may have been vaguely likely to produce some kind of complexity, but that is about it. You were designed for sure, but by Natural Selection.

1265. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67726 by steve99 on September 4, 2007 at 2:23 pm

It seems the only escape route for scientific realism is to posit a non-causal reality where the very objectivity of our objective observations is lost. I think that's close to the definition of a maximally magical reality, not to mention the very antithesis of the scientific mindset, and therefore I think that any reasonable person who checks the evidence will have to conclude that scientific realism (i.e. the worldview of almost all naturalists) is untenable.

I disagree with your statement about 'the only escape route', but assuming it is true, your conclusion is more far reaching that you realise.

This is what we have been trying to tell you, again and again:

If you assume QM is correct, then it possibly threatens a wide range of ideas of realism. If you decide that it threatens objective reality, it threatens objective reality. You can't simply pick and choose. You can't say 'I accept the observations of QM! Therefore *your* objective world based on atoms and particles is an illusion, but by objective world based on the mind-substance of God is not'. That is inconsistent.

If you aren't a solipsist, then you accept the observations of others along with your own. Those observations include the weirdnesses of QM. They are probing the nature of reality, no matter what kind of reality you care to postulate, be it idealistic or materialism. QM, at least as you interpret it, is as much a thread to idealistic objectivity as it is to materialistic objectivity.

1266. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67722 by steve99 on September 4, 2007 at 2:07 pm

Well, I find that the standard of Occam's razor is not applied consistently. For example the many worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (which is arguably the most popular description of reality among physicists today) is much more complex than any vast computer capable of producing our experience of physical phenomena.

This is nonsense. The Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is favoured by some because it is actually simpler than other interpretations of QM.

You are confusing complexity of outcomes with complexity of causes.

Imagine you find a single dice, landing in a certain orientation. Given that discovery you might thing that a dice has some sort of lack of symmetry, as a specific side is down. Without touching it you would suspect perhaps that one side was weighted, and add a new parameter to your idea of a dice (the weight). However, stand back and you see hundreds of dice, showing all possible sides. Now you can see that the situation is simpler. The dice is actually symmetrical, and no side is weighted, and the one you saw was a result of chance. You have removed the need for a parameter.

This is precisely analogous to ideas of multiverses: they are simpler.

1267. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67662 by steve99 on September 4, 2007 at 8:26 am

My argument is that the world is structured the way it is because God designed it.

This is such bad science it is hard to know where to begin. Not only do we know how complexity can arise spontaneously from simplicity without a designer, but we also know that the universe is fundamentally unpredictable in its evolution, and not just due to quantum mechanics, but due to chaos. A God would have to intervene with infinite accuracy an unimaginable number of times to ensure anything vaguely predictable happened. The best evidence that the universe is not designed is that it would take so much work for a designer to get out of it anything barely resembling their original intention.

It might have been at least vaguely possible to imagine a non-interventionist designer when we believed the Universe was simply deterministic and mechanical, centuries ago. But not now. The idea is ludicrous. The problem is that theologists usually now reject the idea of an interventionist designer....

1268. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67650 by steve99 on September 4, 2007 at 6:11 am

The question is, what SHOULD we prefer? Which preferences are GOOD? What is it RIGHT to choose?

I think the real question is - why should this have anything to do with the existence or otherwise of a God?

1269. In God we doubt

Comment #67484 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 3:09 pm

I couldn't agree with you more, Steve. Many people will respond with their gut until and unless they're taught how to respond with their head. Sadly, the notion has taken hold of late that a gut-driven response is as reliable as a head-driven response, which I find both infuriating and very sad.

There is another aspect to this. Because people respond 'with their gut' they also get very emotional and defensive.

I've mentioned in a thread on the Forum that I'd love to see Richard Dawkins (and others) present some TV programmes introducing science next - including one on exactly how science works, what the scientific method is, the kinds of questions science asks and how it sets about finding the answers, why scientific knowledge changes at what can sometimes seem like frequent intervals, why scientists often disagree with each other - that kind of thing.

An interesting idea. A sort of equivalent of the majestic 'Civilization' and 'Ascent of Man' series perhaps.

1270. In God we doubt

Comment #67473 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 2:30 pm

Northern Bright: I think there is a major problem in that so many people simply aren't trained in how to think logically and critically, and don't understand what is happening when someone tries to argue against their points of view and think that debate is the same as 'angry attack'.

I remember the first time I was taught how to logically analyse arguments, from an excellent English teacher in secondary school. It was a revelation. School was followed by University, during which ideas of debate and reasoned argument were further explained.

The thing is, not that many have the advantage of such training in thinking. Also, there is a certain mindset that comes from being in science (as I have been on and off for most of your mind). This is that truth is sometimes not a matter of opinion. Humphrys (and many other critics of Dawkins, Harris et al) is not a scientist. He deals with politics. I am sure that much of the methods of reasoning and argument that Dawkins and other use just passes him by.

The existence of God is a scientific question. The majority of people aren't scientists. I don't think debate will win the argument; I think religion will diminish with improved education, including a better understanding of science.

1271. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67456 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 1:44 pm

So is this another example of Alibhai-Brown attributing something to RD that he didn't say and then attacking it, in the hope that we won't notice the sleight-of-hand?

I suspect it is more like responding to second- or third-hand reports of what is in the God Delusion.

1272. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67402 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 9:53 am

The Easter Islanders chopped down all their trees to build these huge tributes to their God and suffered irreversible environmental disasters as a result, a once lush habitat was turned into a wasteland and the barren background made these huge heads even more grand and mysterious. They literally worshiped themselves to extinction.

That is not my understanding. They chopped down the trees for a variety of purposes, including boat-building, but they were a renewable resource. There was nothing fundamentally mistaken about the way they were harvested. However, a variety of factors probably reduced the trees - climate change, introduced rats eating seeds, and so on. Population was also severely diminished by the raids of slave traders.

1273. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67384 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 7:25 am

However, I happen to believe Alibhai-Brown is correct in her criticism of RD for going so far as to liken religious upbringing to child abuse.

I don't believe he does. My understanding is that he describes the labelling of children with religions as a form of abuse, not the upbringing.

1274. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67338 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 4:45 am

Faith is the light of the moon above and that light in the sea, reality and spirituality, both making you tremblingly conscious of forces vast and beyond words. Impertinent scientists cannot know what they speak of.

This is sad. It seems she has read, or seen, or taken in, nothing of what Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins or Jonathan Miller have written or presented about the incredible wonder of the universe. As Hitchens puts it... if you want to feel real wonder and awe, just think about cosmic forces beyond anything we can being to imagine, like the event horizon of a black hole.

1275. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67328 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 4:25 am

Who allows these morons anywhere near a keyboard?

What is so depressing is that Alibhai-Brown is certainly not a moron. She is a respected commenter on things religious and political.

Perhaps Richard Dawkins needs to write a new book: "A Response to What Everyone Who Has Not Actually Read 'The God Delusion' Thinks It Says"

1276. In God we doubt

Comment #67314 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 3:35 am

And not really that much different from saying that all religions are evil because extremists use them as power bases to bomb and murder.

Are you really dumb enough to post such nonsense after having read all the detailed explanations about what objections to religion really are? Are are you just trolling? I am afraid I suspect the latter.

1277. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67277 by steve99 on September 3, 2007 at 2:21 am

I am rather shocked by this. I had a lot of respect for Alibhai-Brown, but no longer.

1278. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67236 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 10:02 pm

It (my worldview) is ethically empowering.

It is ethically corrupting, as it assumes that your personal ethics, based only what you consider right and reasonable, have some sort of objective cosmic existence. I think it is a positively dangerous attitude.

It is experientially fulfilling. It is intellectually satisfying.

It is intellectually bankrupt, as it encourages you to put on a blindfold and reject that which you don't understand, or approve of. Many new and exciting and awe-inspiring ideas are rejected because they don't pass Dianelos' Absurdity Filter. This is a Flat-Earther attitude; a Geocentric attitude, and I find it very sad. It is evidence to back up Hitchens' claim that religion poisons everything.

1279. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67232 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 9:32 pm

The Divine manifests in four, and only incompletely in three.

Ah... so you might think, but wait until you hear my revised theory that God is actually composed of 42 parts (and Douglas Adams was His prophet).

1280. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67226 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 8:01 pm

"there are no kinds of things other than physical things" is most often associated with so-called "naive materialism" which is considered untenable (for example it has trouble accounting for the existence of numbers which certainly exist and which certainly are not physical things)

Not this old mistake again! How often do things have to be explained? I thought we had got over this.

The kind of 'existence' that numbers have is not the kind of 'existence' that we are dealing with in terms of theism or naturalism. Numbers only exist in the abstract. They have no form or substance, and so have no bearing on the debate. This also applies to ideas like 'morality'.

As I explained (so many times!), you have fallen into the 'reification' trap, which is a well-known logical fallacy whereby someone assumes that abstractions have some sort of reality.

1281. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67223 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 7:00 pm

and for naturalism to remain possible it wouldn't make a difference if the distance were 10 light years.

No, no, thrice no. I am afraid your understanding of this leads me to classify you as a 'naturalism denier' in the same way as some people who aren't experts in climatology are 'global warming deniers'. You, not being an expert, have decided what you want to believe and will only listen to those who interpret things the way you want, and you then claim the truth of this. It is as false to claim that QM threatens all objective reality as it is false to claim that global warming isn't happening.

You are also inconsistent. You cherry-pick the implications of QM that you like. When someone wildly claims that all objective reality is in some way threatened, you seem to like that and you use that to support your views, yet at the same time you rubbish QM because of its absurd implications.

Make up your mind... are you willing to believe in QM and accept the general views of physicists in this matter, or are you going to dismiss QM as wild and crazy? Neither of these alternatives allows you to use QM to reject objective reality.

1282. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67189 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 2:51 pm

No, because instinct is not necessary. I cannot conceive of a person (i.e. conscious subject) who misses either awareness, thought or will – these three are necessary. But I can conceive of a person without instinct.

Of course you can't! Just to give one example, babies sucking at the nipple is instict. Without it, they would be dead. All through evolution we have survived primarily through instinct. The layer of intelligence above that is recent.

The fact that you are deeply wrong about this is proof of the lack of foundation of your ideas.

in fact any information processing organism displays the same high-level structure, namely input, processing, and output.

Again, my model is far better than yours. You have forgotten something - the software. Otherwise, their can be no processing. That software is equivalent to the fourth aspect - instinct.

Do you see what I am getting at here? Your metaphorical support for the Trinity is arbitrary. I have been able to show that it is just plain factually wrong in one case (the matter of instinct). I am pretty sure I could counter it with an equally arbitrary model of my own in every case.

But this point is moot anyway in the context of our discussion: I don't have to show that idealistic theism is falsifiable because I am not claiming that idealistic theism is true. Rather my claim is that it is more reasonable to believe that idealistic theism is true than to believe that naturalism is true.

And it clearly isn't, as nearly all the foundations on which your idealistic theism are based have been shown to be faulty ... the latest being the idea of a Trinity. It isn't even metaphorically useful.

Strictly speaking theistic idealism is falsifiable, because it makes various falsifiable predictions about our future experiences,

That is not what falsifiable means in logical argument. This is about debate between people. You have to be able to communicate the result.

Oh I agree. The experimentally confirmed Bell test results are observational facts, and reality, whichever form it has, must be compatible with these facts. The problem for naturalism is that these results are incompatible with the premise that material objects are objectively real, and that's a very big problem for virtually all naturalistic views about reality.

I am afraid that is not a widely held opinion, so you can't claim this.

The same implication is not a problem for idealism, because according to idealism material objects and the laws they follow are not supposed to be objectively real in the first place, but are understood as stable patterns present in our experience of physical phenomena.

This sounds like New Age mish-mash to me. 'stable patterns present in our experience of physical phenomena'? What patterns? Why are they stable?

You may ask: If it's true that these observations falsify the view that material objects are real then why hasn't that momentous insight become common knowledge?

Easy. Because it is not a momentous insight. It is wildly extreme to claim that Bell's Inequality 'falsifies the view that material objects are real'. It only questions certain interpretations of reality.

I think all interpretations of QM that posit the existence of an objectively real physical world are wrong, so it's not really a case of liking or disliking.

It certainly is a case of that... you have no basis for claiming they are wrong other than your feeling that they are 'absurd', which is certainly a form of liking or dislking.

(For example surely you don't find it very credible that each time you switch on a light you cause the entire universe is split into a huge number of copies, do you?

It isn't. This shows a deep misunderstanding of the Many Worlds interpretation. In that interpretation there is a 'split' at the place at which the light is switched, which propogates out. It does NOT split the entire universe.

Or that you will live for ever in some these physical universes?)

I won't. This shows another deep misunderstanding. The different worlds are only what is physically possible, and part of the nature of QM is that they aren't me!

it is not compatible with naturalism and its view that the physical universe is real

You really are going to have to stop saying this. It does not become more true the more often you repeat it.

but then you can't use naturalism to build a better airplane either.

I am glad you aren't into plane design... as that is precisely what happens.

I am sorry, I am not sure I understand what you mean by this question.

I know, and that is because I believe you really aren't understanding the implications of QM.

If there is ANYTHING 'out there' that is common between different minds - ANY objectivity OF ANY KIND, then we have to explain the observations of QM. It does not matter if that objective reality is made up of God's Mind, fairy wings, or warped space or anything. The implications of QM, Bell's inequality and other subsequent work are profound... they deal with the nature of that objective reality.

According to idealistic theism all change is ultimately caused by personal will and personal will is not deterministic.

Why not?

1283. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67185 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 2:19 pm

Steve like the new avatar.

Thanks. My partner did it. Took some work.

Answer: Not from religion, not from God. It is here for the same reason we are here, for the same reason you have 2 legs instead of none, a big brain rather than a small one, why you developed the eye; it is simply more beneficial to be an altruistic, kind and moral little monkey, than a mean, self-centered one.

Absolutely. I think the answer is the one that the religious worry about ... there is no objective morality. Morality varies from person to person, and culture to culture. There seems to be some common basis, which is the Golden Rule, however what does seem to change is the what different people and cultures consider to be 'one of us'. Education, far more than religion, has been an important factor in this, as we learn that those odd-looking foreigners are really people like us, that women are equal, and that homosexuality is normal and natural. As that happens, we tend to broaden who we apply The Golden Rule to.

1284. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #67174 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 12:29 pm

However, my question still stands, if I am wrong about God, how could there be morality?

Sorry to jump in at a late stage... but I think the bigger question is... why on Earth should morality have anything to do with God? There is either morality or there is not. God does not have to be moral (indeed, in some religions God(s) aren't).

1285. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #67145 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 7:35 am

The language employed by Dawkins and his followers is often discourteous and polemical and your letter rather bears this out.

I do find this rather hypocritical. Vickers herself accuses Dawkins of "sleight of hand", "dishonesty" and "ignorance". Somewhat discourteous at the very least I would say.

She seems to be in a state of considerable confusion about what she actually believes. One minute she is at pains to point out how unprovable things can be really true, but then attempts to pass of angels as metaphors.

(Off topic, but can anyone tell me how to put a picture up with your posts? I have searched (or so I thought) everywhere on this site, but can find no such facility).

1286. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #67107 by steve99 on September 2, 2007 at 1:35 am

Where it and the Sun are alike are is in the control Murdoch exerts over editorial policy.

Again, I feel you may be putting things far too strongly here. I really can't see writers like Stothard, Jenkins and Aaronovitch allowing anyone to dictate what they say.

1287. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #67041 by steve99 on September 1, 2007 at 1:33 pm

Well, it was before Murdoch took it over, these days it is a more upmarket version of "The Sun", i.e. longer words and no tits.

I think that is a little unfair. I would hardly consider journalists like Peter Stothard, Peter Riddell, David Aaronovitch and Simon Jenkins of "Sun" quality.

1288. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #67035 by steve99 on September 1, 2007 at 12:40 pm

But I do agree that it's extraordinary of them not to have included Richard Dawkins' comment. There's no justification for lambasting someone in print and then not giving them the right of reply.

Just a thought. Perhaps they are not sure that a comment posted by someone calling themselves 'Richard Dawkins' is actually from Richard Dawkins?

1289. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #67004 by steve99 on September 1, 2007 at 9:56 am

sometimes i wonder why anybody should bother commenting on a 'review' like this, its so self evidently flawed that nobody could take it seriously, could they?

The problem is that The Times is supposed to be a serious, quality newspaper.

1290. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #66980 by steve99 on September 1, 2007 at 7:22 am

From the tone of the comments that have been published so far on the Times website, it looks like this review will be something of an embarassment to the paper.

1291. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #66956 by steve99 on September 1, 2007 at 5:12 am

Nor is the Bible "a book" but, as the affable seraph points out, a miscellany of stories, letters, polemic, histories, fables and certainly some great moral teachings, as well as some outmoded and unacceptable social prejudices.

Therefore, it is perfectly respectable to "pick and choose" when reading the Bible, something that Dawkins takes Christians to task for.

This is an astonishing misunderstanding of how the "picking and choosing" is done. This is often not a matter of choosing particular books, stories or letters, but goes to the level of selecting particular phrases. Just look at how some parts of Paul's letters are rejected these days, with other parts are treated as valid guides to morality.

1292. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #66915 by steve99 on September 1, 2007 at 1:48 am

I've lost the will to respond.

I know how you feel. This almost makes one believe that there is some widely distributed alternate version of The God Delusion - so many who criticise it seem to have read an entirely different book from the version I have at home.

1293. The Sacrifice of Reason

Comment #66512 by steve99 on August 30, 2007 at 7:23 am

When I read stuff like that, I find it so embarrassing I hardly dare recommend this site to other acquaintances.

I really do think this is being a bit silly. I see no evidence at all of wild fandom in this thread. Each of those statements you quoted were mild, dignified and reserved. They are also factual. Sam Harris does indeed come up with interesting and new thoughts, and has a fine writing style.

1294. Another view

Comment #66187 by steve99 on August 29, 2007 at 7:48 am

This barefoot doctor guy is a well known nutcase, who has been the subject of much ridicule in the past, and shamefully has a natitional newspaper column.

it still wouldn't make homeopathy invalid. Under the right circumstances, people get great results. I was in practice for 20 years, and I wasn't treating idiots.

The idiot is not the one being treated.

There was a fantastic comment about homeopathy by James Randi, which described the dilution some of the supposedly more 'potent' homoepathic medicines. It goes something like this: (apologies if the details are wrong)

"Take an amount of substance the size of a peanut. Dilute it in a volume of water the size of... the Solar System. Now repeat that process a billion times."

Randi also demonstrated the nonsense of homeopathy, when he asked someone to buy packet upon packet of a certain homeopathic medicine. This medicine supposedly had a maximum safe dose(!). In his demonstration Randi kept on opening packet after packet, and swallowing pill after pill after pill...

1295. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #66023 by steve99 on August 27, 2007 at 11:57 pm

But it does. As I tried to explain in post 1999 it turns out that if photons had objective existence then we should observe the same color flashing with probability 1/3, but Quantum Mechanics predicts (and experiment confirms) a probability of 1/4.

No, it does. You are misunderstanding things. That is nothing to do with objective existence or not. It is to do with rejecting certain types of existence... such as local reality or not, or action at a distance, or not.

No. QM and experiment only falsify a particular class of objective realities, namely those that contain material particles following mechanical laws.

No, this is not true. QM does not specify anything at all about the *substance* of reality. For all we know, what we are measuring may actually be tiny fairies whizzing about. It doesn't matter.

Theistic idealism does not posit any such kind of reality and therefore is not contradicted by QM.

If there are positing that there is some reality at all which we share and which we observe, then it is subject to experiment and the results of those experiments. It does not matter if the experiments are being performned on particles, on fairy wings or on God's breath. We have done experiments, and we have seen the results. You can't (for example) say 'special relativity only applies to material things, therefore fairies can travel faster than light' unless you have actually seen fairies zoom about at high speed :) Our experiments probe what is objective, whatever its nature. If you use QM to claim that what is objective is made up by our minds, then you are shooting yourself in the foot.

1296. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #65951 by steve99 on August 27, 2007 at 2:26 pm

Dianelos - you have got the thread to over 2000 and appear to have coaxed a response from just about every regular commenter on this site - well done!!!

I am not sure praise is appropriate. There is no merit in going around in circles and ignoring any significant criticism of your views.

1297. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #65929 by steve99 on August 27, 2007 at 11:54 am

So, what's your definition of naturalism?

My definition of naturalism is that there is no magic, and that there is some objective reality. I really don't think that we have even the slightest idea about what that reality is; why should a slightly more evolved chimp have anything like the final insight into what is really going on?

This is what I find so baffling and troubling about religion - it has always put mankind at the centre of things. We know God(s), and God(s) treat us as special. As Martin Rees says... people often wonder how humanity will survive the end of the Earth when the Sun finally dies. Well, we won't. We won't exist. That is billions of years away, and life on Earth at that time will be as different from us as we are from bacteria.

Dianelos - imagine those future minds, and imagine how they might understand reality. It will be nothing like we do, I am sure. As you are bright enough to understand this, I am troubled that you think you understand not just how the universe is structured, with this 'God person' at the centre, but you also feel that you are in any position to declare what is sensible and what is absurd about interpretations of physics. Such arrogance and hubris in one whose species is so young! The only honourable and honest approach is to say "We don't know". I am find it deeply puzzling that you don't understand this.

1298. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #65926 by steve99 on August 27, 2007 at 11:42 am

I thought the spontaneous fluctuations were frequent and pervasive enough to jump in to any situation at any time. The reason we don't see the spontaneous particles as often as they happen is because opposite particles are constantly annihilating each other. I'm no doubt mistaken.

The fluctuations create virtual particle pairs, which have to annihilate within a certain time (determined by the mass of the particles). 'Action at a distance' can happen with massive particles at a far greater distance than the appropriate virtual particle pairs could travel before their time was up.

1299. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #65891 by steve99 on August 27, 2007 at 9:19 am

Here I would like to explain what Bell's inequality is

Fine, but this is a diversion.

But, even so the point is this: Anyone who looks for loopholes to deny these experimental results is betting on Quantum Mechanics being wrong, because Quantum Mechanics predicts precisely the experimental results we got and not the experimental results somebody who believes in the objective existence of matter would expect. Quantum Mechanics contradicts a naturalistic understanding of reality.

You are making a completely false logical step here. Quantum mechanics DOES NOT contradict a naturalistic understanding of reality. All it does is challenge our ideas of casuality and time - it challenges Dianelos' "What I believe to be consistent and not absurd" definition of naturalism.

And you are, still, ignoring the true point of this. Your argument is a gun that shoots both ways. If you are going to use QM to (falsely) dismiss naturalism because it says there is no objective reality, then you are claiming.... that there is no objective reality of any kind.

But.... hold on. One of the reasons you want to believe in idealistic theism is because it provides a foundation for the objective existence of things like morals.

So, you can either assume that your interpretation of QM is right, and there is no objective reality, in which case you have to abandon any objective morals, or you can admit that QM does not destroy ideas of objective reality, in which case you can't use it to attack materialism.

1300. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #65861 by steve99 on August 27, 2007 at 6:46 am

To me, a non-physicist, it seems reasonable and it removes the notion of spooky action at a distance.

I think it is a pretty poor model, and solves nothing. The quantum fluctuation would have to originate at precisely the right time and place so as to 'emulate' the action at a distance - an arbitrary fluctuation would not do. What would have to happen for this to work is a signal back in time to point 'C' to initiate the correct fluctuation. This is reminiscent of the Transactional Interpretation of QM, which also does not involve action at a distance - one simply has to allow for the fully implications of the wave equation, and include the 'advanced wave', which is time-reversed.