Is Nature Omnipotent?

[Don Mc]

One of the common criticisms of theism is that omnipotence seems like a meaningless escape clause. The basic idea is that whenever Christian theists like me run up against a logical challenge such as an argument from evil, say, or a critique of the shrouded ontology of the Trinity, we can always handily resolve the dilemma by a blanket appeal to God's "mysterious ways" and thereby escape the burden of having to make sense of apparent contradictions. Though I think answers are available to such dilemmas beyond simply "God's mysterious ways," I do think the objection is a fair one on its face.

But I also think the kind of scientific-naturalistic view of the world shared so by many atheists faces a similar criticism. On scientific naturalism, nature, much like God, is credited with creating the universe from nothing (or else existing eternally), creating life from nonliving chemical constituents (the "dust of the earth"), and bestowing humanity with intelligence, an appreciation for beauty, and a sense of morality – among other seeming miracles. I've heard serious naturalist philosophers propose that even if it could be verified that Jesus rose from the dead, that would not mean there could not be a naturalistic explanation for it (and I think they're right). And the paradoxes of general relativity or quantum mechanics seem no less confounding than the Trinity or the Incarnation of Christ. It appears that as understood by advocates of scientific naturalism, nature, no less than God, can do (and explain) anything.

Questions for debate/dialogue:

1. In principle, can nature do anything God can do?
2. If so, does it require a metaphysical assumption of some sort to believe nature can do anything God can do?
3. If not, what limits does nature face that God does not?

[Don Mc]

I'm beginning to suspect that to this point ours has been a largely verbal disagreement.

I'm beginning to suspect our disagreement is entirely due to the lack of a shared epistemology (i.e. method of determining which claims are true, false, or unknowable). My epistemology is based on science while yours appears to be based on theism. Thus, our disagreement may not be resolvable unless we agree to operate within a single epistemology. For example, you used the phrase "truth of theism" as if theism is known to be true.

If I gave you the impression that I hold an epistemology based on theism, I will go ahead and blame myself for failing to communicate well. I seriously can't even imagine how such an epistemology would be supposed to work. Theism won't tell me if my wife and friends are trustworthy, it won't disclose the temperature at which water freezes or steel liquifies, it won't give me any insights into why Hitler opened up the Eastern front in the Summer of 1941, and it won't help me decide whether my car won't start because of an electrical problem, a fuel problem, or something else. Even if the existence of God is a proper object of knowledge, as I believe it is, theism would not generally be a reliable means of acquiring knowledge (an epistemology) for most of us. I suppose prophets would be a possible exception.

Perhaps instead of saying "the truth of theism" I should have said "my belief in the truth of theism…" Even then, context should have made it clear enough that I was not using theism itself as a basis for an epistemology, because in the next sentence I said, "Grounds for the Christian faith include experience (both personal experience and religious experience as a sociological phenomenon), historical evidence surrounding the resurrection and the rise of the early church, archaeological evidence supporting the biblical narratives, and yes, observations of the world around us that have inspired arguments from natural theology like the cosmological or teleological argument." In other words, the truth of theism can be rationally inferred from both experience and evidence.

By contrast I think a strictly scientific epistemology faces a problem, one you mentioned yourself a couple of times, namely that scientific theories are not really "true" and always falsifiable. It goes without saying that one cannot know a proposition to be true if it is, or very well might be, false. Given the basic understanding that knowledge is "justified true belief," and that scientific theories are not true but at best provisionally correct and ever subject to falsification, an epistemology based on the scientific method cannot be expected to deliver all that much in the way of knowledge (beyond raw data, field observations and such). We can know the truth of the conclusion of a sound deductive inference with utmost confidence, and therefore the inference provides us with knowledge, but I think most inductive inferences are too tentative to qualify.

According to my epistemology, theism cannot be known as true or false because it makes an untestable claim regardless of whatever "evidence" anyone presents for or against it. If you are claiming to have knowledge of theism being true, then your epistemology must axiomatically assert that a god exists with no further justification required. I am not willing to include that axiom in my epistemology as it seems intellectually dishonest in my opinion.

I don't think the consequent follows from the antecedent in that last statement on its own, though it might according to your epistemology. I already mentioned the potential viability of an inference to the best explanation from evidence of fine-tuning, for example, which would not axiomatically assert that a god exists. Even those of us who regard our belief in God as "properly basic" do not typically simply assert it, but appeal to personal experience of God's presence in the comforting and corrective ministry of the Holy Spirit – not to mention a lack of any better explanation for that experience. For others, God's existence essentially is axiomatic, in that for them otherwise nothing else could exist, or none of us could experience consciousness, moral awareness, etc. It would not necessarily be intellectually dishonest to have such a conviction, any more than it would be intellectually honest to deny having it.

Returning to my epistemology for a moment, although it might seem counter-intuitive given how science is discussed colloquially, it is not in the business of proving anything absolutely true. Within my epistemology, there are actually three types of "truth" and only two are obtainable. It is impossible to acquire knowledge of the absolute truth about our metaphysical reality because the unsolvable problem of solipsism limits our perspective in that regard. At best, we can only speculate about what our metaphysical reality might be. As such, any metaphysical claim about our external reality is unfalsifiable. Then there is conceptual truth and empirical truth which are both obtainable. For example, mathematics and logic are two ways we can acquire conceptual truths. However, what may be conceptually true is not necessarily empirically true. To acquire empirical truths, the epistemology I use defers to science as the most reliable method.

Now, to answer your question about falsifying the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, one of many ways it could be disproved would be by discovering a fossilized whale along side trilobite fossils in a rock layer dated to the Cambrian Period.

Yes, that's one way evolution could conceivably, if incidentally, be disproven. But as paleontologists have told us since Darwin, the fossil record is (given evolutionary theory) woefully incomplete due to a fossilization process which occurs so rarely that we are, as Dawkins is fond of saying, "lucky to have fossils at all." But if we are lucky to have any fossils at all, we would be lucky to have a Cambrian whale fossil – regardless of whether or not whales ever swam alongside trilobites. In other words, the same "gaps" in which millions of years of evolution theoretically took place could also mask any number of whales and other mammals that lived around the time the Cambrian strata were deposited.

Happening upon a whale in the course of routine field work is not really a test anyway. By "test," I mean a deliberately arranged experiment in which outcome x confirms the theory and outcome not-x falsifies it (or at minimum sends theorists back to the drawing board). Einstein's theory of general relativity, for instance, was tested in a specific, risky way, when he calculated the bending of light due to the gravitational effects of the Sun. Fellow physicist Eddington subsequently waited for a solar eclipse, made the relevant measurements, and confirmed Einstein's theory.

Furthermore, all experiments that have ever been conducted by the professional scientists who study the Theory of Evolution were designed to try and falsify it. As such, there is nothing remotely dogmatic or emotionally dependent in the way scientists approach the Theory of Evolution. The fact that the Theory of Evolution has survived every experiment designed to falsify it is precisely why it is accepted as the most reasonable explanation for the biodiversity we observe. The Theory of Evolution predicts what evidence scientists should find as it applies to each of their experiments, and the scientists could know the theory was false if they find contradictory evidence instead. However, in every experiment conducted thus far, the evidence the scientists discovered always precisely matched what the theory predicted they would find. To date, no contradictory evidence has ever been found to disprove the predictions made by the Theory of Evolution despite it being falsifiable. So, even though the Theory of Evolution could still be potentially disproved, its falsifiability has no relevance to its demonstrable reliability in making predictions. This also applies to every other established scientific theory in every scientific discipline.

That was a valiant defense of evolutionary theory, to be sure. But most of the above appears (ironically enough) too generalized to test or confirm. How would one go about confirming, for example, that "in every experiment conducted thus far, the evidence the scientists discovered always precisely matched what the theory predicted they would find"? Does any one source seriously have all that documented anywhere?

I would bet not, because I can think of at least one instance in which evidence discovered did not precisely match what the theory predicted. Back in the eighties when I was far more interested in all this, Dawkins had published The Blind Watchmaker, in which he stated boldly that the "strict hierarchy" of taxonomic nesting was unfailingly predictable: "The important thing about this system is that it is perfectly nested. Never, not on a single solitary occasion, will the rings that we draw [representing taxonomic clades] intersect…" (from the 1996 Norton edition, p. 259). This phenomenon was trumpeted as powerful vindication of universal common descent. But just a few years after publishing those words (originally 1987), scientists like Carl Woese began accumulating new and powerful evidence for horizontal gene transfer, which basically demonstrated some decidedly imperfect non-nesting happening near the trunk of the tree along with various other places in and among the branches. If evolution were falsifiable, that should have falsified it (or at least raised some questions about it). And that's only one example.

Finally, for the record, I do not endorse metaphysical naturalism but methodological naturalism.

Right, I gathered that, which is why I suggested that our disagreement on that particular score was mostly verbal. I was associating scientific naturalism with metaphysical naturalism, while you were associating it more with the methodological variety. For my part, whereas I don't think a presumption of methodological naturalism is actually necessary to practice science, I also don't see much problem with it other than its unfortunate tendency to spill over into metaphysical naturalism.

[bluegreenearth]

Perhaps instead of saying "the truth of theism" I should have said "my belief in the truth of theism…" Even then, context should have made it clear enough that I was not using theism itself as a basis for an epistemology, because in the next sentence I said, "Grounds for the Christian faith include experience (both personal experience and religious experience as a sociological phenomenon), historical evidence surrounding the resurrection and the rise of the early church, archaeological evidence supporting the biblical narratives, and yes, observations of the world around us that have inspired arguments from natural theology like the cosmological or teleological argument." In other words, the truth of theism can be rationally inferred from both experience and evidence.

The collection of criteria from your comments above precisely describe what I consider to be a type of theistic epistemology. The problem, from my experience, is that a consistent application of those epistemological criteria to all theistic claims produces competing or contradictory results. I have never encountered a theistic epistemology someone was using to justify a specific religious belief that wouldn't equally justify a competing or contradictory religious belief. Almost any theist could ground almost any theology in experience (both personal and religious), historical evidence surrounding a central theistic claim and the growth of the associated religious organization, archaeological evidence supporting the narratives of a holy book, and arguments from natural theology. How do you propose to solve this problem without appealing to a logical fallacy?

By contrast I think a strictly scientific epistemology faces a problem, one you mentioned yourself a couple of times, namely that scientific theories are not really "true" and always falsifiable. It goes without saying that one cannot know a proposition to be true if it is, or very well might be, false. Given the basic understanding that knowledge is "justified true belief," and that scientific theories are not true but at best provisionally correct and ever subject to falsification, an epistemology based on the scientific method cannot be expected to deliver all that much in the way of knowledge (beyond raw data, field observations and such). We can know the truth of the conclusion of a sound deductive inference with utmost confidence, and therefore the inference provides us with knowledge, but I think most inductive inferences are too tentative to qualify.

A fact often overlooked in theological debates is that "truth" is just a word which can be defined by whatever arbitrary metric we want when there is no agreed upon epistemological framework. For example, maybe I want to measure the truth of a proposition by its ability to make me feel emotionally satisfied or comfortable. Given that epistemology, I would be perfectly justified in believing my consciousness will survive beyond the physical death of my body because the proposition satisfies my instinct for self-preservation and provides me reassuring comfort. I could also define truth by anything which corroborates the perspective of an authority figure or holy scriptures in an ancient text. In that instance, I would be completely justified in accepting the proposition that all fossils are evidence of a global flood which occurred only a few thousand years ago because such a claim agrees with holy scriptures I’ve defined as being true. On the other hand, someone who defines truth differently will have no reason to accept those claims if they don’t satisfy the metrics set by their epistemology.

More commonly, truth is defined as that which corresponds with reality. This understanding of truth seems intuitive and tempts us to accept the definition without objection. The problem, though, is our perception of reality and what reality actually is may not be identical. Therefore, an objective method for determining if a claim corresponds with reality is not possible under that definition of truth. The limitation with many definitions of truth is that they are rendered useless by the fundamental and functional purpose for believing something is true in the first place. The pragmatic reason to believe anything is true at all is to use that information to guide our actions. Sooner or later, the truth of a claim is measured by its power to inform our decisions under the expectation of predictable outcomes. Decisions based on true beliefs will manifest themselves in the form of experiences that were correctly anticipated. Decisions based on false beliefs will eventually fail in that goal.

I don't think the consequent follows from the antecedent in that last statement on its own, though it might according to your epistemology. I already mentioned the potential viability of an inference to the best explanation from evidence of fine-tuning, for example, which would not axiomatically assert that a god exists. Even those of us who regard our belief in God as "properly basic" do not typically simply assert it, but appeal to personal experience of God's presence in the comforting and corrective ministry of the Holy Spirit – not to mention a lack of any better explanation for that experience. For others, God's existence essentially is axiomatic, in that for them otherwise nothing else could exist, or none of us could experience consciousness, moral awareness, etc. It would not necessarily be intellectually dishonest to have such a conviction, any more than it would be intellectually honest to deny having it.

People can imagine a number of inferences that, if true, would best explain all the available data. Therefore, we need some metric for rejecting all the alternative inferences to the best explanation in order to justify accepting just a single inference to the best explanation. One such metric is to first determine which hypotheses are possible. In other words, the inference to the best explanation is actually the inference to the best of the possible explanations.

Once the list of candidate inferences is narrowed to only those hypotheses which are determined to be possible, there needs to be additional metrics for rejecting all but the most correct hypothesis. One such metric is that the most correct hypothesis will be the least ad hoc. This is a problem for theistic claims because a necessary requirement for having the most explanatory power is that the hypothesis not only account for prior observations but also have predictive success. Therefore, while theistic claims provide an explanation of the known data, they do not make testable predictions. Without the ability to make testable predictions, a theistic inference to the best explanation is no more justified than any other imagined inference that has no predictive power.

Yes, that's one way evolution could conceivably, if incidentally, be disproven. But as paleontologists have told us since Darwin, the fossil record is (given evolutionary theory) woefully incomplete due to a fossilization process which occurs so rarely that we are, as Dawkins is fond of saying, "lucky to have fossils at all." But if we are lucky to have any fossils at all, we would be lucky to have a Cambrian whale fossil – regardless of whether or not whales ever swam alongside trilobites. In other words, the same "gaps" in which millions of years of evolution theoretically took place could also mask any number of whales and other mammals that lived around the time the Cambrian strata were deposited.

Happening upon a whale in the course of routine field work is not really a test anyway. By "test," I mean a deliberately arranged experiment in which outcome x confirms the theory and outcome not-x falsifies it (or at minimum sends theorists back to the drawing board). Einstein's theory of general relativity, for instance, was tested in a specific, risky way, when he calculated the bending of light due to the gravitational effects of the Sun. Fellow physicist Eddington subsequently waited for a solar eclipse, made the relevant measurements, and confirmed Einstein's theory.

Paleontologists used the Theory of Evolution to predict that the ancestor of all amphibians should be a transitional species featuring a skeletal structure with characteristics of both fish and amphibians. The Theory of Evolution also predicted this animal would have appeared between 360 and 390 million years ago because amphibian fossils from around the world do not appear in rock layers older than that. Going back further than 390 million years ago, fish are the only vertebrate fossils in the geologic record. After 360 million years ago, four-footed vertebrates that lived on land are observed in the fossil record. So, using the Theory of Evolution, the paleontologists predicted that a fossil of this unknown transitional species would most likely exist in sediments deposited around 375 million years old. Having formed a falsifiable hypothesis, these scientists decided to test their prediction by attempting to find a fossil that matched the predicted skeletal structure in rock strata comprised of sediment deposited during the predicted age range.

Previous research on amphibian evolution predicted that the transitional species would have lived in freshwater. Accordingly, the paleontologists consulted geologic maps for places in the world where rock strata composed of sediment deposited in ancient freshwater environments during the predicted age range were accessible for fossil hunting. Eventually, a site matching the predicted criteria was identified on Ellesmere Island in Canada. After five years of digging on Ellesmere Island, a fossil precisely matching the description of this previously unknown transitional species emerged from the rock as predicted by the Theory of Evolution. So, this wasn't at all a case of someone happening upon a fossil during the course of routine field work. It was a deliberately arranged and risky experiment in which achieving the predicted outcome would support the theory and achieving a different outcome would falsify it.

The discover of this new transitional species that the paleontologists predicted would have existed between 360 and 390 million years ago not only supports the Theory of Evolution but provides further support for the reliability of geological dating methods. This is demonstrable because the paleontologists had to rely on these dating methods to help them determine where they would most likely discover the fossil.

That was a valiant defense of evolutionary theory, to be sure. But most of the above appears (ironically enough) too generalized to test or confirm. How would one go about confirming, for example, that "in every experiment conducted thus far, the evidence the scientists discovered always precisely matched what the theory predicted they would find"? Does any one source seriously have all that documented anywhere?

I would bet not, because I can think of at least one instance in which evidence discovered did not precisely match what the theory predicted. Back in the eighties when I was far more interested in all this, Dawkins had published The Blind Watchmaker, in which he stated boldly that the "strict hierarchy" of taxonomic nesting was unfailingly predictable: "The important thing about this system is that it is perfectly nested. Never, not on a single solitary occasion, will the rings that we draw [representing taxonomic clades] intersect…" (from the 1996 Norton edition, p. 259). This phenomenon was trumpeted as powerful vindication of universal common descent. But just a few years after publishing those words (originally 1987), scientists like Carl Woese began accumulating new and powerful evidence for horizontal gene transfer, which basically demonstrated some decidedly imperfect non-nesting happening near the trunk of the tree along with various other places in and among the branches. If evolution were falsifiable, that should have falsified it (or at least raised some questions about it). And that's only one example.

The statement, "in every experiment conducted thus far, the evidence the scientists discovered always precisely matched what the theory predicted they would find," was in reference to every experiment that preceded a currently accepted scientific theory. There have been, of course, numerous occasions where a previously supported scientific hypothesis had to be reconsidered or even rejected because of newly discovered data from an experiment. That is the self-correcting mechanism of science functioning as intended. However, it is important to acknowledge where an entire scientific theory is not necessarily or easily overturned by the falsification of a single and highly specific hypothesis, though the possibility does exist. In your described example, evidence for the mechanism of horizontal gene transfer would merely demonstrate where it is possible for an organism to very rarely acquire a new gene from another species and not exclusively through the usual process of mutation. As such, horizontal gene transfer would be included in the Darwinian gradual framework of the modern synthesis rather than falsify the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. An analogous scenario to this is when "alternative medicine" that has been scientifically demonstrated to work is labeled as "medicine."

[William]

The collection of criteria from your comments above precisely describe what I consider to be a type of theistic epistemology. The problem, from my experience, is that a consistent application of those epistemological criteria to all theistic claims produces competing or contradictory results. I have never encountered a theistic epistemology someone was using to justify a specific religious belief that wouldn't equally justify a competing or contradictory religious belief. Almost any theist could ground almost any theology in experience (both personal and religious), historical evidence surrounding a central theistic claim and the growth of the associated religious organization, archaeological evidence supporting the narratives of a holy book, and arguments from natural theology. How do you propose to solve this problem without appealing to a logical fallacy?

The fallacy may reside in the observation being too narrow in scope to fully appreciate the merging of Theology with Reality. You describe various parts of the process and therefore are able to point out what appear to be contradictions, only on closer examination, they also appear to be very similar in every way except how they are labelled and how the labels might effect how they are observed and subsequently expressed.

In reality nature also appears contradictory, so it seems only natural that - as a process - we should find contradictory narratives in all aspects of natural occurrence, not just the theist narratives.

And indeed we do.

We can choose to change our perspective so that the narrative has room to move through the apparent contradictions and emerge into a vastly freer perspective...knowledge and humans are like the way the Sun behaves...

If the core plasma represented all [localized] knowledge, and the reaction to the fusion of said knowledge is represented as information busting to get out, the information bounces around within the Sun contradicting the straight pathway from in to out.

So the knowledge is effectively bouncing off other bytes of knowledge as it finds a pathway to the surface - to getting out...into the vaster perspective...that represents data [something which can be made known] and in that analogy, one can observe the whole process as a complete - and reliable - interpretation of the information [Sunlight].

Because we know that the sunlight is more than just its parts. It represents the information of the suns wholeness. [whole knowledge of the Sun].

Can we discover everything there is to know about the Sun, by simply examining 1 neutron from it? If we examine 2 neutrons from the Sun, are they different from each other?

When it come to beliefs, we are best not to put too much stock in them as individual unrelated items. As you say, you have yet to come across a specific religious belief that wouldn't equally justify a competing or contradictory religious belief.

This should be adequate evidence that any problem arising from such a state isn't in the justifying, but in the interpretations which exclude the recognition that all religious beliefs are pretty much the same when observed without any accompanying prejudice - so it is the prejudice which is the problem, not Theism itself. Theism as a whole, it justifiable. In its parts, less so.

[Don Mc]

Perhaps instead of saying "the truth of theism" I should have said "my belief in the truth of theism…" Even then, context should have made it clear enough that I was not using theism itself as a basis for an epistemology, because in the next sentence I said, "Grounds for the Christian faith include experience (both personal experience and religious experience as a sociological phenomenon), historical evidence surrounding the resurrection and the rise of the early church, archaeological evidence supporting the biblical narratives, and yes, observations of the world around us that have inspired arguments from natural theology like the cosmological or teleological argument." In other words, the truth of theism can be rationally inferred from both experience and evidence.

The collection of criteria from your comments above precisely describe what I consider to be a type of theistic epistemology. The problem, from my experience, is that a consistent application of those epistemological criteria to all theistic claims produces competing or contradictory results. I have never encountered a theistic epistemology someone was using to justify a specific religious belief that wouldn't equally justify a competing or contradictory religious belief. Almost any theist could ground almost any theology in experience (both personal and religious), historical evidence surrounding a central theistic claim and the growth of the associated religious organization, archaeological evidence supporting the narratives of a holy book, and arguments from natural theology. How do you propose to solve this problem without appealing to a logical fallacy?

I don't see the problem. If theism can be grounded in these various experiences and evidence by any theist, that would seem to signal strength rather than weakness in theistic epistemology. What you seem to be pointing out is the differences that can be found among believers in virtually any particular theory or belief system.

We've already mentioned evolution a few times, so let's use that for an example. Almost any natural scientist would justify a particular version of evolutionary theory with evidence from the fossil sequence, comparative anatomy, genetics, etc. Yet evolutionists may be punctuationists, gradualists, or saltationists; traditional phylogenetic cladists or transformed cladists; uniformitarians or catastrophists; and so on. Even Lamarckism is still hanging around, and according to some is making a comeback. Take any theory – true, false, probable, improbable – and any number of people can and will propose competing explanations for it. Or as you said it, their epistemology produces competing or contradictory results.

Consider the row between Dennett and Gould back in the day: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/0 ... -exchange/. Note how Dennett closes his letter: "John Maynard Smith praises my book; Stephen Jay Gould attacks it. They are both authorities, but they can’t both be right, can they?" What I'm getting at is that they can both be right about the correctness of the larger claims of evolution (though I happen to think they are wrong), yet one or both still be wrong about its mechanisms and so forth. Likewise, it's possible that there is one God but different theologies (one task of a Christian theologian or apologist is to provide reasons to think Christian theology is correct). I don't think you are a relativist, but it's fairly relativistic, and not in the least scientific, to suggest that a plurality of competing claims somehow entails that none of them is true.

A fact often overlooked in theological debates is that "truth" is just a word which can be defined by whatever arbitrary metric we want when there is no agreed upon epistemological framework. For example, maybe I want to measure the truth of a proposition by its ability to make me feel emotionally satisfied or comfortable. Given that epistemology, I would be perfectly justified in believing my consciousness will survive beyond the physical death of my body because the proposition satisfies my instinct for self-preservation and provides me reassuring comfort. I could also define truth by anything which corroborates the perspective of an authority figure or holy scriptures in an ancient text. In that instance, I would be completely justified in accepting the proposition that all fossils are evidence of a global flood which occurred only a few thousand years ago because such a claim agrees with holy scriptures I’ve defined as being true. On the other hand, someone who defines truth differently will have no reason to accept those claims if they don’t satisfy the metrics set by their epistemology.

More commonly, truth is defined as that which corresponds with reality. This understanding of truth seems intuitive and tempts us to accept the definition without objection. The problem, though, is our perception of reality and what reality actually is may not be identical. Therefore, an objective method for determining if a claim corresponds with reality is not possible under that definition of truth. The limitation with many definitions of truth is that they are rendered useless by the fundamental and functional purpose for believing something is true in the first place. The pragmatic reason to believe anything is true at all is to use that information to guide our actions. Sooner or later, the truth of a claim is measured by its power to inform our decisions under the expectation of predictable outcomes. Decisions based on true beliefs will manifest themselves in the form of experiences that were correctly anticipated. Decisions based on false beliefs will eventually fail in that goal.

I'm inclined to write off all that as one big red herring, especially the more irrelevant and prejudicial bits about religious people who arbitrarily decide to believe in an "ancient text" for no other reason than that it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside. At least it helps me understand why you are not a theist. If I thought religious people were as naïve, intellectually dishonest, etc., as you keep suggesting, I would be an atheist myself.

But let's run with this for a moment. On the premise that Scripture was written, and is believed, for the purpose of human emotional comfort or wishful thinking, it's safe to say that the Bible would not include accounts of God's people repeatedly subject to divine judgment and subjugation by foreign nations, or Jesus repeatedly announcing that no one can be his disciple unless he denies himself and shares in his suffering, or warnings of eternal condemnation. But Scripture is filled with such accounts and warnings, and atheists themselves have been known to allege that the God of Scripture is an oppressive, capricious, monstrous tyrant. Thus Christian theology is not wishful thinking.

Meanwhile my original point remains: however others might define truth, it is essentially defined in a scientific epistemology as that which cannot actually be obtained by the scientific method. That was the very point of the previous lecture on Popper and falsifiability, wasn't it? Despite reading many lines of text above, I can't seem to find an answer (or anything that looks like an attempt at an answer) to that problem. So again: can you agree that a theory that is not true cannot be a source of knowledge? Please keep in mind that I am not claiming to have a demonstrably superior epistemology; I am merely defending the idea that my beliefs are at least as well-grounded as yours – a proposition that's looking more like a true proposition all the time.

People can imagine a number of inferences that, if true, would best explain all the available data. Therefore, we need some metric for rejecting all the alternative inferences to the best explanation in order to justify accepting just a single inference to the best explanation. One such metric is to first determine which hypotheses are possible. In other words, the inference to the best explanation is actually the inference to the best of the possible explanations.

Once the list of candidate inferences is narrowed to only those hypotheses which are determined to be possible, there needs to be additional metrics for rejecting all but the most correct hypothesis. One such metric is that the most correct hypothesis will be the least ad hoc. This is a problem for theistic claims because a necessary requirement for having the most explanatory power is that the hypothesis not only account for prior observations but also have predictive success. Therefore, while theistic claims provide an explanation of the known data, they do not make testable predictions. Without the ability to make testable predictions, a theistic inference to the best explanation is no more justified than any other imagined inference that has no predictive power.

It sounds like you've confused abductive reasoning with inductive reasoning, and explanatory power with predictive power. Yes, predictive power is helpful if the question at hands lends itself to testability, but it's not a requirement of a sound inference to the best explanation. One approach to this kind of abductive inference would follow a schema something like this:

1. Unexpected fact x is discovered, which we want to explain.
2. We reason that fact x would not be unexpected given that hypotheses h1 and h2 are correct.
3. Because h1 is simpler and fully explains x, whereas h2 is more complicated or only partially explains x, we infer that h1 is the best explanation available for fact x.

Suppose I wake up one morning and discover that the power to my house is out. Surprising as that fact is, it would not be surprising if there had been a thunderstorm within the last few hours, or if I had not paid my monthly bill. But I know that I paid my bill just a week ago, and when I go outside I notice that the ground is wet and that there are no lights on at any of the other houses on my block. While it's still possible that my payment didn’t go through for some reason, and that the lights aren't on at the other homes because the residents didn't happen to turn them on the night before or they didn't pay their own bills, I determine that the thunderstorm hypothesis accounts for the facts without adding these unnecessary and improbable complications, and conclude that a recent thunderstorm best explains our loss of power.

Notice that my conclusion doesn't follow deductively from any premises, but to your point, neither is it confirmed by any kind of test or experiment. Now consider the various lines of evidence for fine-tuning in physics. These are relatively recently discovered phenomena which are wholly unexpected, and even quite difficult to explain, on a naturalist-evolutionary view of the world, but which are not surprising at all given traditional theism and the theology of creation. Between theism and naturalism, then, theism is the best explanation for fine-tuning in physics. The same holds for specifiable complexity in biology.

That's all I can manage for the moment. Thanks for your input here, though. I do need to find time to answer your argument for the confirmation/falsifiability of amphibian evolution, maybe this evening.

[bluegreenearth]

I don't see the problem. If theism can be grounded in these various experiences and evidence by any theist, that would seem to signal strength rather than weakness in theistic epistemology. What you seem to be pointing out is the differences that can be found among believers in virtually any particular theory or belief system.

We've already mentioned evolution a few times, so let's use that for an example. Almost any natural scientist would justify a particular version of evolutionary theory with evidence from the fossil sequence, comparative anatomy, genetics, etc. Yet evolutionists may be punctuationists, gradualists, or saltationists; traditional phylogenetic cladists or transformed cladists; uniformitarians or catastrophists; and so on. Even Lamarckism is still hanging around, and according to some is making a comeback. Take any theory – true, false, probable, improbable – and any number of people can and will propose competing explanations for it. Or as you said it, their epistemology produces competing or contradictory results.

Consider the row between Dennett and Gould back in the day: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/0 ... -exchange/. Note how Dennett closes his letter: "John Maynard Smith praises my book; Stephen Jay Gould attacks it. They are both authorities, but they can’t both be right, can they?" What I'm getting at is that they can both be right about the correctness of the larger claims of evolution (though I happen to think they are wrong), yet one or both still be wrong about its mechanisms and so forth. Likewise, it's possible that there is one God but different theologies (one task of a Christian theologian or apologist is to provide reasons to think Christian theology is correct). I don't think you are a relativist, but it's fairly relativistic, and not in the least scientific, to suggest that a plurality of competing claims somehow entails that none of them is true.

If scientists dogmatically defended each competing or contradictory scientific claim involving the Theory of Evolution the same way theists dogmatically defend their competing and contradictory theological claims, you would potentially have a point. However, in the scientific community, there is a distinction between hypotheses defended by scientific speculation and conclusions supported by scientific experimentation. Where competing or contradictory hypotheses are each defended by scientific speculation, scientists acknowledge that those proposed explanations remain open to further investigation and falsification by experimentation. In other words, those scientific ideas are not conclusions that have received support through scientific experimentation. Meanwhile, the "larger claim" of the Theory of Evolution is a conclusion that is routinely supported by scientific experimentation. On the other hand, the "larger claim" of theism is not a conclusion that is objectively demonstrable. This doesn't mean that none of the theological claims are true. It just demonstrates where we cannot know if any of those theological claims are true (or false).

I'm inclined to write off all that as one big red herring, especially the more irrelevant and prejudicial bits about religious people who arbitrarily decide to believe in an "ancient text" for no other reason than that it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside. At least it helps me understand why you are not a theist. If I thought religious people were as naïve, intellectually dishonest, etc., as you keep suggesting, I would be an atheist myself.

But let's run with this for a moment. On the premise that Scripture was written, and is believed, for the purpose of human emotional comfort or wishful thinking, it's safe to say that the Bible would not include accounts of God's people repeatedly subject to divine judgment and subjugation by foreign nations, or Jesus repeatedly announcing that no one can be his disciple unless he denies himself and shares in his suffering, or warnings of eternal condemnation. But Scripture is filled with such accounts and warnings, and atheists themselves have been known to allege that the God of Scripture is an oppressive, capricious, monstrous tyrant. Thus Christian theology is not wishful thinking.

The example I gave in my explanation was not to be taken literally. It was merely a fictional scenario designed to illustrate the point that the word "truth" can be defined by whatever arbitrary metric someone chooses.

Meanwhile my original point remains: however others might define truth, it is essentially defined in a scientific epistemology as that which cannot actually be obtained by the scientific method. That was the very point of the previous lecture on Popper and falsifiability, wasn't it? Despite reading many lines of text above, I can't seem to find an answer (or anything that looks like an attempt at an answer) to that problem. So again: can you agree that a theory that is not true cannot be a source of knowledge? Please keep in mind that I am not claiming to have a demonstrably superior epistemology; I am merely defending the idea that my beliefs are at least as well-grounded as yours – a proposition that's looking more like a true proposition all the time.

No, the definition of "truth" I gave was that the truth of a claim is measured by its power to inform our decisions under the expectation of predictable outcomes. Decisions based on true beliefs will manifest themselves in the form of experiences that were correctly anticipated. Decisions based on false beliefs will eventually fail in that goal.

It sounds like you've confused abductive reasoning with inductive reasoning, and explanatory power with predictive power. Yes, predictive power is helpful if the question at hands lends itself to testability, but it's not a requirement of a sound inference to the best explanation. One approach to this kind of abductive inference would follow a schema something like this:

1. Unexpected fact x is discovered, which we want to explain.
2. We reason that fact x would not be unexpected given that hypotheses h1 and h2 are correct.
3. Because h1 is simpler and fully explains x, whereas h2 is more complicated or only partially explains x, we infer that h1 is the best explanation available for fact x.

Suppose I wake up one morning and discover that the power to my house is out. Surprising as that fact is, it would not be surprising if there had been a thunderstorm within the last few hours, or if I had not paid my monthly bill. But I know that I paid my bill just a week ago, and when I go outside I notice that the ground is wet and that there are no lights on at any of the other houses on my block. While it's still possible that my payment didn’t go through for some reason, and that the lights aren't on at the other homes because the residents didn't happen to turn them on the night before or they didn't pay their own bills, I determine that the thunderstorm hypothesis accounts for the facts without adding these unnecessary and improbable complications, and conclude that a recent thunderstorm best explains our loss of power.

Notice that my conclusion doesn't follow deductively from any premises, but to your point, neither is it confirmed by any kind of test or experiment. Now consider the various lines of evidence for fine-tuning in physics. These are relatively recently discovered phenomena which are wholly unexpected, and even quite difficult to explain, on a naturalist-evolutionary view of the world, but which are not surprising at all given traditional theism and the theology of creation. Between theism and naturalism, then, theism is the best explanation for fine-tuning in physics. The same holds for specifiable complexity in biology.

That's all I can manage for the moment. Thanks for your input here, though. I do need to find time to answer your argument for the confirmation/falsifiability of amphibian evolution, maybe this evening.

To begin with, you haven't demonstrated that theism is a possible explanation for it to serve as a candidate explanation in the first place. Secondly, I'm still waiting for apologists to resolve the existing and long-standing objections to the fine-tuning argument. Once those objections have been resolved, the fine-tuning argument may be reconsidered. Finally, there is no such thing as specifiable complexity in biology. That is an unfalsifiable claim creationists made up.

[Don Mc]

Yes, that's one way evolution could conceivably, if incidentally, be disproven. But as paleontologists have told us since Darwin, the fossil record is (given evolutionary theory) woefully incomplete due to a fossilization process which occurs so rarely that we are, as Dawkins is fond of saying, "lucky to have fossils at all." But if we are lucky to have any fossils at all, we would be lucky to have a Cambrian whale fossil – regardless of whether or not whales ever swam alongside trilobites. In other words, the same "gaps" in which millions of years of evolution theoretically took place could also mask any number of whales and other mammals that lived around the time the Cambrian strata were deposited.

Happening upon a whale in the course of routine field work is not really a test anyway. By "test," I mean a deliberately arranged experiment in which outcome x confirms the theory and outcome not-x falsifies it (or at minimum sends theorists back to the drawing board). Einstein's theory of general relativity, for instance, was tested in a specific, risky way, when he calculated the bending of light due to the gravitational effects of the Sun. Fellow physicist Eddington subsequently waited for a solar eclipse, made the relevant measurements, and confirmed Einstein's theory.

Paleontologists used the Theory of Evolution to predict that the ancestor of all amphibians should be a transitional species featuring a skeletal structure with characteristics of both fish and amphibians. The Theory of Evolution also predicted this animal would have appeared between 360 and 390 million years ago because amphibian fossils from around the world do not appear in rock layers older than that. Going back further than 390 million years ago, fish are the only vertebrate fossils in the geologic record. After 360 million years ago, four-footed vertebrates that lived on land are observed in the fossil record. So, using the Theory of Evolution, the paleontologists predicted that a fossil of this unknown transitional species would most likely exist in sediments deposited around 375 million years old. Having formed a falsifiable hypothesis, these scientists decided to test their prediction by attempting to find a fossil that matched the predicted skeletal structure in rock strata comprised of sediment deposited during the predicted age range.

Previous research on amphibian evolution predicted that the transitional species would have lived in freshwater. Accordingly, the paleontologists consulted geologic maps for places in the world where rock strata composed of sediment deposited in ancient freshwater environments during the predicted age range were accessible for fossil hunting. Eventually, a site matching the predicted criteria was identified on Ellesmere Island in Canada. After five years of digging on Ellesmere Island, a fossil precisely matching the description of this previously unknown transitional species emerged from the rock as predicted by the Theory of Evolution. So, this wasn't at all a case of someone happening upon a fossil during the course of routine field work. It was a deliberately arranged and risky experiment in which achieving the predicted outcome would support the theory and achieving a different outcome would falsify it.

The discover of this new transitional species that the paleontologists predicted would have existed between 360 and 390 million years ago not only supports the Theory of Evolution but provides further support for the reliability of geological dating methods. This is demonstrable because the paleontologists had to rely on these dating methods to help them determine where they would most likely discover the fossil.

Let me say up front that the Tiktaalik seems on its face to be a pretty impressive finding in support of evolutionary theory. Because of such findings, you will never hear me say "There is no evidence for evolution." There is evidence for evolution, though for many of us that evidence seems relatively sparse, inconsistent, or inconclusive, and for me it pales compared to evidence for design.

I haven't studied this case in depth, so for now I will concede the "confirmation" part of your argument, where confirmation means the discovery of evidence that makes a theory more probable. But I still think there are problems with the "falsification" part. You say for example that in the case of the Ellesmere Island experiment, "achieving a different outcome would falsify" the theory. But you also say that the desired fossil was only found after five years of digging. In other words for five years the "test" actually did produce a different outcome, which means that for five years the paleontologists did not consider producing an unexpected outcome sufficient to falsify evolution. Had they not found the desired fossil when they did, they presumably would still be digging today. That's a testimony to their work ethic, I suppose, but also a testimony to the tenacity (and practical unfalsifiability) of their belief.

Of course, failure to find fossils as expected has never been a falsification criterion for evolution, which is precisely why the theory's defenders so often remind us that "we are lucky to have fossils at all." Thus we may, for instance, find an "explosion" of sparkling new body plans in the Cambrian, but shrug off the seeming scarcity of viable precursors for most of them as a consequence of their having soft parts that fail to fossilize. Again, the practical upshot is that when it comes to fossils, the evidence is only allowed to confirm, but never falsify, evolutionary theory.

Now let's say someone were to discover a living Tiktaalik specimen. Would that falsify evolutionary theory? Evidently not. An ancient fish called the Coelacanth was presumed, based on fossil evidence and the standard dates assigned to geological strata, to have gone extinct some 65-80 million years ago (and thought by many to have been a close ancestor of amphibians). Then someone caught one in 1938. Evolutionists were surprised, but simply tagged the modern Coelacanth a "living fossil" and went about their business. Does evolutionary theory predict that sharks, cockroaches, gingko trees and horseshoe crabs would remain virtually unchanged for millions and even hundreds of millions of years? Only in the sense that evolution theorists can find a way to accommodate any findings whatsoever. True believers, it seems, aren't troubled by theoretical anomalies.

[bluegreenearth]

Yes, that's one way evolution could conceivably, if incidentally, be disproven. But as paleontologists have told us since Darwin, the fossil record is (given evolutionary theory) woefully incomplete due to a fossilization process which occurs so rarely that we are, as Dawkins is fond of saying, "lucky to have fossils at all." But if we are lucky to have any fossils at all, we would be lucky to have a Cambrian whale fossil – regardless of whether or not whales ever swam alongside trilobites. In other words, the same "gaps" in which millions of years of evolution theoretically took place could also mask any number of whales and other mammals that lived around the time the Cambrian strata were deposited.

Happening upon a whale in the course of routine field work is not really a test anyway. By "test," I mean a deliberately arranged experiment in which outcome x confirms the theory and outcome not-x falsifies it (or at minimum sends theorists back to the drawing board). Einstein's theory of general relativity, for instance, was tested in a specific, risky way, when he calculated the bending of light due to the gravitational effects of the Sun. Fellow physicist Eddington subsequently waited for a solar eclipse, made the relevant measurements, and confirmed Einstein's theory.

Paleontologists used the Theory of Evolution to predict that the ancestor of all amphibians should be a transitional species featuring a skeletal structure with characteristics of both fish and amphibians. The Theory of Evolution also predicted this animal would have appeared between 360 and 390 million years ago because amphibian fossils from around the world do not appear in rock layers older than that. Going back further than 390 million years ago, fish are the only vertebrate fossils in the geologic record. After 360 million years ago, four-footed vertebrates that lived on land are observed in the fossil record. So, using the Theory of Evolution, the paleontologists predicted that a fossil of this unknown transitional species would most likely exist in sediments deposited around 375 million years old. Having formed a falsifiable hypothesis, these scientists decided to test their prediction by attempting to find a fossil that matched the predicted skeletal structure in rock strata comprised of sediment deposited during the predicted age range.

Previous research on amphibian evolution predicted that the transitional species would have lived in freshwater. Accordingly, the paleontologists consulted geologic maps for places in the world where rock strata composed of sediment deposited in ancient freshwater environments during the predicted age range were accessible for fossil hunting. Eventually, a site matching the predicted criteria was identified on Ellesmere Island in Canada. After five years of digging on Ellesmere Island, a fossil precisely matching the description of this previously unknown transitional species emerged from the rock as predicted by the Theory of Evolution. So, this wasn't at all a case of someone happening upon a fossil during the course of routine field work. It was a deliberately arranged and risky experiment in which achieving the predicted outcome would support the theory and achieving a different outcome would falsify it.

The discover of this new transitional species that the paleontologists predicted would have existed between 360 and 390 million years ago not only supports the Theory of Evolution but provides further support for the reliability of geological dating methods. This is demonstrable because the paleontologists had to rely on these dating methods to help them determine where they would most likely discover the fossil.

Let me say up front that the Tiktaalik seems on its face to be a pretty impressive finding in support of evolutionary theory. Because of such findings, you will never hear me say "There is no evidence for evolution." There is evidence for evolution, though for many of us that evidence seems relatively sparse, inconsistent, or inconclusive, and for me it pales compared to evidence for design.

I haven't studied this case in depth, so for now I will concede the "confirmation" part of your argument, where confirmation means the discovery of evidence that makes a theory more probable. But I still think there are problems with the "falsification" part. You say for example that in the case of the Ellesmere Island experiment, "achieving a different outcome would falsify" the theory. But you also say that the desired fossil was only found after five years of digging. In other words for five years the "test" actually did produce a different outcome, which means that for five years the paleontologists did not consider producing an unexpected outcome sufficient to falsify evolution. Had they not found the desired fossil when they did, they presumably would still be digging today. That's a testimony to their work ethic, I suppose, but also a testimony to the tenacity (and practical unfalsifiability) of their belief.

Of course, failure to find fossils as expected has never been a falsification criterion for evolution, which is precisely why the theory's defenders so often remind us that "we are lucky to have fossils at all." Thus we may, for instance, find an "explosion" of sparkling new body plans in the Cambrian, but shrug off the seeming scarcity of viable precursors for most of them as a consequence of their having soft parts that fail to fossilize. Again, the practical upshot is that when it comes to fossils, the evidence is only allowed to confirm, but never falsify, evolutionary theory.

Now let's say someone were to discover a living Tiktaalik specimen. Would that falsify evolutionary theory? Evidently not. An ancient fish called the Coelacanth was presumed, based on fossil evidence and the standard dates assigned to geological strata, to have gone extinct some 65-80 million years ago (and thought by many to have been a close ancestor of amphibians). Then someone caught one in 1938. Evolutionists were surprised, but simply tagged the modern Coelacanth a "living fossil" and went about their business. Does evolutionary theory predict that sharks, cockroaches, gingko trees and horseshoe crabs would remain virtually unchanged for millions and even hundreds of millions of years? Only in the sense that evolution theorists can find a way to accommodate any findings whatsoever. True believers, it seems, aren't troubled by theoretical anomalies.

I probably should have specified that finding a fossil with different characteristics than what was predicted would have falsified the proposed hypothesis. As for the "living fossils" objection, the modern coelacanth is not the same species as the one found in the fossil record but an evolved version. The same is true for all the other examples you listed. Yes, the Theory of Evolution does predict that some animal and plant species will continue to evolve with minimal changes to their overall structure as long as they are sufficiently adapted to survive in the environments where they are found. The reason scientists are surprised by their discovery is because they can't always predict which exact species would be expected to evolve with minimal changes into the modern age despite the prediction that some species will display an almost identical body structure to their ancient common ancestor.

[Don Mc]

Sorry I'm just now getting to this, BGE. Besides this being a really busy week for me, it takes me considerable time and thought to answer you. There's more to your posts than thoughtlessly repeating "That's not evidence..." or "I also don't believe in leprechauns..." For that I commend you.

If scientists dogmatically defended each competing or contradictory scientific claim involving the Theory of Evolution the same way theists dogmatically defend their competing and contradictory theological claims, you would potentially have a point. However, in the scientific community, there is a distinction between hypotheses defended by scientific speculation and conclusions supported by scientific experimentation. Where competing or contradictory hypotheses are each defended by scientific speculation, scientists acknowledge that those proposed explanations remain open to further investigation and falsification by experimentation. In other words, those scientific ideas are not conclusions that have received support through scientific experimentation. Meanwhile, the "larger claim" of the Theory of Evolution is a conclusion that is routinely supported by scientific experimentation.

Interesting. Per the above, competing evolutionary hypotheses about mechanisms and whatnot are speculative, but the broader implications of the theory ("descent with modification" from a common ancestor) are supported by scientific experimentation. But that seems backwards to me. The more far-reaching and generalized a theory, the less it enjoys direct empirical support. (So a "theory of everything," as Swinburne points out, cannot be explained by anything because what requires explaining is precisely everything.) By this principle, a theory of time travel is less empirically grounded than a theory of mass-energy equivalence, and less grounded still than a theory that light travels at roughly 300,000 km/sec in a vacuum.

In the same way, an evolutionary theory of common ancestry reaching back millions and even billions of years is substantially less empirically accessible than a theory of mechanism such as natural selection, mutation, or genetic drift. What is evolution, after all, if not a mechanism (or set of mechanisms) proposed to account for the present state of biodiversity in the world? If there are disputes about the mechanism(s), and there are, then there would have to be disputes about the theory at large – and therefore the best explanation for biodiversity is still up for grabs.

On the other hand, the "larger claim" of theism is not a conclusion that is objectively demonstrable. This doesn't mean that none of the theological claims are true. It just demonstrates where we cannot know if any of those theological claims are true (or false).

I agree that theism is not scientifically testable, if that's what you mean by "objectively demonstrable." Otherwise I'd say there are various justifiable inferences to theism based on everything from personal experience to scientific and historical evidence. And I would add that countless seemingly true propositions are objectively demonstrable even if not scientifically testable (like the derivation of a mathematical theorem or the conclusion of a sound deductive argument).

The example I gave in my explanation was not to be taken literally. It was merely a fictional scenario designed to illustrate the point that the word "truth" can be defined by whatever arbitrary metric someone chooses.

Okay, but for whatever reason the example you gave just happened to fit a negative anti-Christian stereotype. At least we agree that it's fictional.

No, the definition of "truth" I gave was that the truth of a claim is measured by its power to inform our decisions under the expectation of predictable outcomes. Decisions based on true beliefs will manifest themselves in the form of experiences that were correctly anticipated. Decisions based on false beliefs will eventually fail in that goal.

More specifically, your definition of truth depends upon an expectation of predictable outcomes as established by the scientific method and its criterion of falsifiability. But such a definition of truth leads to some strange conclusions – for instance that quantum mechanics actually became true in the twentieth century, before which time it was false; or that spontaneous generation became false in the nineteenth century, before which time it was true. I would say that there's something wrong with an epistemology in which beliefs are true only until they are false, and false only until they are true.

Notice that my conclusion doesn't follow deductively from any premises, but to your point, neither is it confirmed by any kind of test or experiment. Now consider the various lines of evidence for fine-tuning in physics. These are relatively recently discovered phenomena which are wholly unexpected, and even quite difficult to explain, on a naturalist-evolutionary view of the world, but which are not surprising at all given traditional theism and the theology of creation. Between theism and naturalism, then, theism is the best explanation for fine-tuning in physics. The same holds for specifiable complexity in biology.

That's all I can manage for the moment. Thanks for your input here, though. I do need to find time to answer your argument for the confirmation/falsifiability of amphibian evolution, maybe this evening.

To begin with, you haven't demonstrated that theism is a possible explanation for it to serve as a candidate explanation in the first place.

Since when is it a requirement to first demonstrate that a hypothesis is possible before proceeding to confirm that it's probable? Does that mean that scientists need to be schooled in metaphysics and justify their hypotheses with analyses of modal logic and the ontology of possible worlds before presenting evidence for them? Of course not. The great thing about evidence is that when it demonstrates a proposition to be probable (to even the slightest degree) it also demonstrates it to be possible, because anything probable is a subset of the set of all possibilities by definition.

Einstein, for example, was not required to first demonstrate the possibility that time slows or accelerates under certain conditions before citing evidence in support of that theory. Had he been required to do so he would have failed, because most people had an existing "common sense" understanding of Newtonian physics by which time dilation was thought impossible. For Einstein's many skeptics and critics, it was the evidence of its probability that inspired their belief in its possibility, not the other way around. Or consider a non-scientific example. One Tuesday morning In 2001, my sister-in-law called to tell my wife and me that the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York were under attack. We didn't think that was possible and thought she was joking until she convinced us to turn on the news. Then evidence of the attacks quickly became sufficient to overcome our prior disbelief.

Secondly, I'm still waiting for apologists to resolve the existing and long-standing objections to the fine-tuning argument. Once those objections have been resolved, the fine-tuning argument may be reconsidered.

Not sure what to say to this. I'm an apologist and would be happy to at least take a shot at resolving the objections (or else admit that I can't presently resolve them), but I don't know which ones you have in mind. What would you consider the strongest objection against the fine-tuning argument?

Finally, there is no such thing as specifiable complexity in biology. That is an unfalsifiable claim creationists made up.

That's not exactly true. Intelligent design theorists may have popularized the particular phrase, but I was first introduced to the concept by Richard Dawkins some years prior – and I'm almost certain Dawkins is not a creationist. Here's a relevant passage from The Blind Watchmaker:

"We were looking for a precise way to express what we mean when we refer to something as complicated. We were trying to put a finger on what it is that humans and moles and earthworms and airliners and watches have in common with each other, but not with blancmange, or Mont Blanc, or the moon. The answer we have arrived at is that complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone. In the case of living things, the quality that is specified in advance is, in some sense, 'proficiency'; either proficiency in a particular ability such as flying, as an aero-engineer might admire it; or proficiency in something more general, such as the ability to stave off death, or the ability to propagate genes in reproduction" (p. 9).

Whether it's Dawkins or Behe describing it, the basic idea is of a specifiable function that is dependent on a high level of complexity. He offers as more specific and detailed examples of this kind of specifiable but complicated proficiency the theft-deterrence function of a combination lock, vision in mammals, and echolocation in bats.

[bluegreenearth]

Interesting. Per the above, competing evolutionary hypotheses about mechanisms and whatnot are speculative, but the broader implications of the theory ("descent with modification" from a common ancestor) are supported by scientific experimentation. But that seems backwards to me. The more far-reaching and generalized a theory, the less it enjoys direct empirical support. (So a "theory of everything," as Swinburne points out, cannot be explained by anything because what requires explaining is precisely everything.) By this principle, a theory of time travel is less empirically grounded than a theory of mass-energy equivalence, and less grounded still than a theory that light travels at roughly 300,000 km/sec in a vacuum.

In the same way, an evolutionary theory of common ancestry reaching back millions and even billions of years is substantially less empirically accessible than a theory of mechanism such as natural selection, mutation, or genetic drift. What is evolution, after all, if not a mechanism (or set of mechanisms) proposed to account for the present state of biodiversity in the world? If there are disputes about the mechanism(s), and there are, then there would have to be disputes about the theory at large – and therefore the best explanation for biodiversity is still up for grabs.

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is a conclusion that is routinely demonstrated through experiments such as the prediction and subsequent discovery of transitional fossils such as tiktaalik, the prediction and direct observation of shared genetic traits between species, the prediction and direct observation of speciation in a variety of organisms, the prediction and direct observation of pesticide resistant insects, the prediction and direct observation of drug resistant bacteria, the prediction and subsequent discovery of the gene for teeth in birds, and hundreds of other experiments which made equally accurate predictions.

Basically, it is a fact that evolution has occurred and continues to occur. We don't need to directly observe the microscopic genetic mechanism of evolution to observe that "descent with modification" occurs. Meanwhile, the routinely successful predictions achieved through the Theory of Evolution demonstrates where it provides the most reliable explanation for how evolution occurred and continues to occur through the natural selection process. So, even if some of the details regarding the precise natural mechanism driving evolution are still debated, there is absolutely no legitimate debate about the fact that evolution occurred and still occurs. In other words, no professional scientists denies that "descent with modification" is directly observable. However, the exact genetic mechanism controlling how those modifications come about remains open for further investigation (at least as far as I'm aware).

Now, before someone accuses me of dogmatically defending the Theory of Evolution as though it were a religious belief, I am open to the possibility of it being false. If someone were to provide demonstrable evidence falsifying the Theory of Evolution, I would be compelled by intellectually honesty to encourage and support new scientific research into other falsifiable candidate explanations for biodiversity. However, proving the Theory of Evolution false would in no way support any unfalsifiable Intelligent Design (i.e. Creationist) explanation for biodiversity. Intelligent Design is still required to demonstrate its reliability as an explanation by conducting experiments that succeed at making novel testable predictions. Unfortunately for Intelligent Design proponents, the only thing it does is offer post-hoc and ad-hoc rationalizations with no ability to succeed in making novel testable predictions.

I agree that theism is not scientifically testable, if that's what you mean by "objectively demonstrable." Otherwise I'd say there are various justifiable inferences to theism based on everything from personal experience to scientific and historical evidence. And I would add that countless seemingly true propositions are objectively demonstrable even if not scientifically testable (like the derivation of a mathematical theorem or the conclusion of a sound deductive argument).

Mathematics and Logic are considered "conceptual truths" because they are mental concepts in much the same way that language is a mental concept. In fact, both mathematics and logic are defined as formal languages in Philosophy. This is because they function as abstract representations of the reality we experience. For instance, the mathematical expression 1 + 1 = 2 is defined as the abstract representation of the observation that combining an existing real thing into a set with another existing real thing results in a real thing and another real thing existing together as a set in reality. Therefore, the mathematical expression 1 + 1 = 2 is the agreed upon conceptual language we use to describe an observed property of reality, and the actual observed property of reality is the "empirical" truth. So, 1 + 1 = 2 is conceptually true by definition and the observed property of reality is the empirical truth.

The same applies to Logic. The logical expression "A equals A" was defined as the abstract representation of the observation that each observed thing in reality is identical with itself. Therefore, the logical expression "A equals A" abstractly represents an agreed upon description of an observed property of reality, and the observed property itself is the "empirical" truth. So, "A equals A" is conceptually true by definition and the observed property of reality is the empirical truth.

Consequently, you are making a category error by claiming "conceptually" demonstrable truths and "empirically" demonstrable truths are equally justifiable.

Okay, but for whatever reason the example you gave just happened to fit a negative anti-Christian stereotype. At least we agree that it's fictional.

Well, I at least hope the example is fictional. However, I'm not going to claim that there never was nor will be someone who matches that stereotype as it doesn't describe an impossibility. Nevertheless, we can agree the example doesn't describe the way you define "truth."

More specifically, your definition of truth depends upon an expectation of predictable outcomes as established by the scientific method and its criterion of falsifiability. But such a definition of truth leads to some strange conclusions – for instance that quantum mechanics actually became true in the twentieth century, before which time it was false; or that spontaneous generation became false in the nineteenth century, before which time it was true. I would say that there's something wrong with an epistemology in which beliefs are true only until they are false, and false only until they are true.

Firstly, quantum mechanics wasn't false but unfalsifiable prior to the twentieth century. Given the counter-intuitive concepts inherent to the idea of quantum mechanics, scientists were highly skeptical of the hypothesis but didn't have the technology to test if it was false. Alternatively, the "Theory of Spontaneous Generation" was not necessarily accepted as "true" (at least not in the sense you've implied) but as the most reasonable explanation given the evidence available prior to the nineteenth century. Secondly, while the scientific method has been demonstrated to be the most reliable means for acquiring a functional knowledge base, I would be open to another method if one can be demonstrated as more reliable. However, to date, there doesn't appear to be a more reliable method.

Granted, I understand the discomforting and unsatisfying feeling which comes from the prospect of accepting a truth that is tentative rather than absolute. Unfortunately, though, reality routinely demonstrates the impossibility of knowing absolute "metaphysical" truth beyond knowledge of our own individual existence. On the bright side, we can at least acquire empirical truths about the reality we experience that functions to inform our decisions on the expectation of predictable outcomes. Meanwhile, as fallible observers, we should expect to make occasional mistakes in our understanding of reality but have the ability to remain vigilant by accepting the possibility of being wrong about what we believe to be true. However, to reject empirical truths acquired through the scientific method because of the possibility that they could be falsified in the future would leave us with no superior alternative for acquiring reliable knowledge. I mean, if someone is unsatisfied with or distrusting of the knowledge acquired through the scientific method, that individual is welcome to replace it with a less dependable method and live with the consequences of making decisions based on less reliable knowledge as along as those consequences don't cause harm to anyone else. After all, they don't call it the "Darwin Awards" for nothing.

Since when is it a requirement to first demonstrate that a hypothesis is possible before proceeding to confirm that it's probable? Does that mean that scientists need to be schooled in metaphysics and justify their hypotheses with analyses of modal logic and the ontology of possible worlds before presenting evidence for them? Of course not. The great thing about evidence is that when it demonstrates a proposition to be probable (to even the slightest degree) it also demonstrates it to be possible, because anything probable is a subset of the set of all possibilities by definition.

Einstein, for example, was not required to first demonstrate the possibility that time slows or accelerates under certain conditions before citing evidence in support of that theory. Had he been required to do so he would have failed, because most people had an existing "common sense" understanding of Newtonian physics by which time dilation was thought impossible. For Einstein's many skeptics and critics, it was the evidence of its probability that inspired their belief in its possibility, not the other way around. Or consider a non-scientific example. One Tuesday morning In 2001, my sister-in-law called to tell my wife and me that the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York were under attack. We didn't think that was possible and thought she was joking until she convinced us to turn on the news. Then evidence of the attacks quickly became sufficient to overcome our prior disbelief.

Einstein wasn't claiming a magic leprechaun was responsible for slowing down or speeding up time. All the components of Einstein's hypothesis were previously demonstrated to exist. Gravity, light, and time were all known to be possible because they were all observable, even if the precise influences they have on each other wasn't yet demonstrable. The same is true for the claim that the World Trade Center in New York was under attack. Every component of that hypothesis describes something that was known to possibly exist independently, even though you hadn't yet observed their particular interaction with each other. The World Trade Center is known to exist in New York which is also known to exist, airplanes are known to exist, and the ability for terrorists to hijack a plane was known to exist. It is not like someone claimed a giant invisible dragon was attacking a building made entirely of pudding somewhere in Narnia. No component of that hypothesis is known to exist in realty for it to be possible.

So, for theism to be a possible candidate explanation for something observed in reality, at least the existence of a God must have been previously demonstrated. However, some would argue that even if a God was demonstrated to irrefutably exist, we couldn't know he was the cause of anything without additional evidence to demonstrate the possibility. Of course, once that God provided additional evidence demonstrating it would be possible for him to be the cause of the specified something, then we could proceed to investigate the plausibility of theism as the explanation for the specified something observed in reality. Otherwise, we have no way to know if theism can only be a conceptual (i.e. imagined) explanation for something or if it can also be an explanation that has an empirical existence in reality.


Note: This post has already become rather long and unmanageable. So, I will continue my response in a separate post.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to Don Mc in post #48]

Not sure what to say to this. I'm an apologist and would be happy to at least take a shot at resolving the objections (or else admit that I can't presently resolve them), but I don't know which ones you have in mind. What would you consider the strongest objection against the fine-tuning argument?

Below is the basic structure of the Teleological argument as I understand it:

Premise 1) The fine tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
Premise 2) It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
Premise 3) Therefore, it is due to design.
Premise 4) That designer is God.
Conclusion) Therefore, God exists.

The argument is proposing to solve an unlikely phenomenon known as Cosmic Fine Tuning. Basically, the physical laws of the universe indicate their values must be within extraordinarily precise tolerances or life would not be possible in the universe. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when theists apply confirmation bias to this observation and immediately jump to conclude the "fine tuning" of physical constants proves the universe must have been designed by their specific God. Even if we offer no contention to the entire argument, what predictive power does it offer us? What experimental measurements confirm the proposition is true in the external reality we all experience? How does knowing a divine cosmic designer was responsible for creating the universe help us make decisions which have empirical consequences? The lack of answers to those questions exposes this argument to be nothing more than a biased framework for concluding God exists without demonstrating the existence of God. Nevertheless, let's continue and examine the first premise.

Premise 1 of the Teleological argument for the existence of God fallaciously presents a false trichotomy. How was it concluded that fine tuning was only explainable by one of three philosophically exclusive options? The concept of "physical necessity" proposes the physical constants could not possibly have any other values. As such, there is nothing to fine tune because no other options are available to choose from. Then there is the concept of "chance" where the values of physical constants are purely random variables, but our universe just happened to acquire the life permitting values. The possibility is not all that unlikely because we observe favorable results from random chances in nature relatively frequently. For example, because our galaxy is estimated to contain more than 300 billion stars, it should be no surprise that at least one of those solar systems contains a planet in the habitable zone. Do apologists find it at all compelling that we routinely observe examples of unlikely events occurring by chance and physical necessity in nature but never any observations of God let alone God designing anything?

The notion is that an omniscient and omnipotent being had the capacity to create the universe on an arbitrary whim but was somehow restricted to fine tune the physical laws in order for life to emerge. Even if God can only do what is logically possible, how does this theistic proposition not describe a paradox? Furthermore, the best this God could construct was a universe which is mostly inhospitable to life. To illustrate the absurdity of this idea, imagine a brewery generating a thousand tons of waste each day to produce one molecule of beer per century. According to logic of the argument, the observable properties of the universe implicate its creator to be embarrassingly incompetent and weak.

When the scientific experts refer to fine tuning, they don't highlight life as the only beneficiary of the physical constants. Everything in the observable universe depends upon those precise conditions in order to exist. Stars, galaxies, planets, black holes, and the nuclei of atoms would not be possible had the physical laws been slightly different. The phrase could just as easily have been, "finely tuned for black holes." In fact, the premises of the Teleological argument are more supportive of black holes as the objects for which the universe was created rather than life. Indeed, the time and energy required for the construction of a black hole far exceeds that which is necessary for the development of a self-replicating organic molecule.

Another inconvenience for apologists is the fact that the experts are discovering the physical constants are not so finely tuned after all. The electroweak force, for instance, used to be considered finely tuned because slight deviations in its value would prohibit the fusion of heavy elements in stars. The false assumption is that the electroweak force is the only one adjustable at a given time. If other variables simultaneously adjust accordingly, it is entirely possible for the universe to function without a weak nuclear force.

Anyway, there is no practical purpose in proceeding further with the Fine Tuning argument because it can be rewritten to mirror the apologist's intended logic:

Premise 1) Either cosmic fine-tuning was designed by the God from classical monotheism or it was not.
Premise 2) Theistic dogma supersedes any possibility that a naturalistic explanation accounting for fine-tuning will ever be discovered.
Conclusion) Therefore, God designed the universe and theists are exempted from the burden of proof.

Obviously, in addition to its reliance upon fallacious logic, the argument makes no predictions we can test. It makes unsupported assumptions. It fallaciously asserts a false trichotomy. It disregards the fact that finely tuned parameters are found in nature with no need of a supernatural designer. It limits the power of the omnipotent deity it asserts. It rejects alternative theories for the same flaws inherent to its own premises. Finally, the argument depends on psychological tools of manipulation which appeal to the human desire for cognitive closure.

That's not exactly true. Intelligent design theorists may have popularized the particular phrase, but I was first introduced to the concept by Richard Dawkins some years prior – and I'm almost certain Dawkins is not a creationist. Here's a relevant passage from The Blind Watchmaker:

"We were looking for a precise way to express what we mean when we refer to something as complicated. We were trying to put a finger on what it is that humans and moles and earthworms and airliners and watches have in common with each other, but not with blancmange, or Mont Blanc, or the moon. The answer we have arrived at is that complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone. In the case of living things, the quality that is specified in advance is, in some sense, 'proficiency'; either proficiency in a particular ability such as flying, as an aero-engineer might admire it; or proficiency in something more general, such as the ability to stave off death, or the ability to propagate genes in reproduction" (p. 9).

Whether it's Dawkins or Behe describing it, the basic idea is of a specifiable function that is dependent on a high level of complexity. He offers as more specific and detailed examples of this kind of specifiable but complicated proficiency the theft-deterrence function of a combination lock, vision in mammals, and echolocation in bats.

I am tempted to once again refer you to the existing and long-standing refutations to the "specified complexity" objection, but you'll probably ask me to supply you with that information nonetheless:

The first problem is that something can be perceived as irreducible until it has been demonstrated to be reducible. Every ‘irreducibly complex’ example provided by Intelligent Design proponents has been subsequently refuted by a reasonable natural explanation. In other words, the assumption of irreducible complexity is the claim; not the evidence.

The false assumption is that there is an intentional progression from simple to complex. However, in evolution, there is no intentionality but a process of passing on genes. A feature on a particular species will have one function but then acquire a different function at some point after the feature has been passed along to subsequent generations. Evolution produces the appearance of complexity by modifying existing features on animals; not by designing features from scratch. Furthermore, a particular characteristic may not even be essential for the animal's survival but is transferred to the next generation simply because that animal had other features which helped it succeed in creating offspring before it died.

Secondly, "specified complexity" assumes the existence of a designer when labeling a particular complexity as having been ‘specified’ and then claims the existence of that complexity proves there must be a designer. All this does is move the presupposition of a designer back a step in the imagined creation scenario. This is a "begging the question fallacy" because it assumes an explanation for an existing phenomenon and then claims the existence of that phenomenon is evidence for the assumption. The assumption of specified complexity is the claim; not the evidence.

Finally, biological evolution is not random but guided by the process of natural selection. That is why the theory is called "The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection." So, the claim that Intelligent Design is a better explanation for "specified complexity" than random chance would seem to be reasonable except for the fact that the Theory of Evolution does not claim the appearance of biological complexity results from random chance but from the process of natural selection. Since "natural selection" is demonstrable and "specified complexity" is not, the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection remains as the most reasonable explanation.