Does God exist? (4 Viewers)

[Gedi-Master]

I think this is the main point where we diverge. I understand your point and the logic behind it perfectly, I just think it works another way. I cannot for the life of me see any way around it. God creates the universe with knowledge of how it will unfold, and naturally creates it to reflect this, it is impossible to do otherwise. Thus there is only the one way for it to unfold. The universe and everything in it is bound by time, and due to God's knowledge there is only one path to be taken through time. This is the bit that gets me. For me this implies one path with no offshoots or branches or anything. In this scenario, there is clearly no distinction to be made between "will" and "must"; both apply. We are invariably fixed to a single future before the universe even begins, which is a direct result of God's omniscience.

Wow, now i can see clearly where your coming from, this post here is great as it is so to the point!

i understand now what your saying, and i can see why there is such a difference in opinion (i hope i can put it in words)


Okay, it is true that there is only one way that the universe and the future WILL unfold, and because that is objectively true, that the future will follow such a path, then that is what MUST happen as a result, as seen by God.

Thus, what WILL happen is in the end what MUST happen, as they are exactly the same, as seen by God

However as seen by humans there is a difference between will and must. There is a path that the future will follow, but there is no one way that the future must unfold, as there are many ways that it can unfold.

Certainly this is the case, that there is only one way that the future will unfold, and as mentioned before there are many ways that it could unfold, yet only one 'path' will be taken at the end of the day. (or at the start if your God lol)

Now to my point...

this one path that will be taken, was known by God at creation as we have stated, but does this mean that our choices are limited?

i think it depends on the way that you see this knowledge.

By God knowing how the future will unfold, rather than this being him pre determining what will happen, which would mean that he is directly influencing and directing our OWN choices, rather he knows what we would choose in a given situation. By knowing what we will do in each situation, doesn’t mean that we are less free, but that he knows what you will choose before you choose, which doesn't impact on our own ability to choose (too much choosing!!). Certainly, his omniscience in the end has allowed him to map out the way that things will occur, but he has mapped out the way that things will occur, through his knowledge of the way that things would hypothetically happen, and not because he decides 'this will happen here' and 'that will happen there', rather he has mapped things out based on his knowledge of the way things will occur.

Thus God deciphered how the future will unfold, in accordance with what we would choose.

He hasn't decided how the future will unfold by turning us into puppets that do exactly as urged, and directly forcing us into situations without our own choices.

 

[LachieM]

Wow, now i can see clearly where your coming from, this post here is great as it is so to the point!

i understand now what your saying, and i can see why there is such a difference in opinion (i hope i can put it in words)


Okay, it is true that there is only one way that the universe and the future WILL unfold, and because that is objectively true, that the future will follow such a path, then that is what MUST happen as a result, as seen by God.

Thus, what WILL happen is in the end what MUST happen, as they are exactly the same, as seen by God

However as seen by humans there is a difference between will and must. There is a path that the future will follow, but there is no one way that the future must unfold, as there are many ways that it can unfold.

Certainly this is the case, that there is only one way that the future will unfold, and as mentioned before there are many ways that it could unfold, yet only one 'path' will be taken at the end of the day. (or at the start if your God lol)

I'm extremely glad that you see what I mean here, although I would argue that the ways the future "can" or "could have" unfolded are just human-concieved hypotheticals, although this may be a different case from God's perspective, which I will expand on below.

Now to my point...

this one path that will be taken, was known by God at creation as we have stated, but does this mean that our choices are limited?

i think it depends on the way that you see this knowledge.

By God knowing how the future will unfold, rather than this being him pre determining what will happen, which would mean that he is directly influencing and directing our OWN choices, rather he knows what we would choose in a given situation. By knowing what we will do in each situation, doesn’t mean that we are less free, but that he knows what you will choose before you choose, which doesn't impact on our own ability to choose (too much choosing!!). Certainly, his omniscience in the end has allowed him to map out the way that things will occur, but he has mapped out the way that things will occur, through his knowledge of the way that things would hypothetically happen, and not because he decides 'this will happen here' and 'that will happen there', rather he has mapped things out based on his knowledge of the way things will occur.

Thus God deciphered how the future will unfold, in accordance with what we would choose.

He hasn't decided how the future will unfold by turning us into puppets that do exactly as urged, and directly forcing us into situations without our own choices.

Okay I think I understand this. It seems to be the same thing that Scorch was suggesting earlier, ie that God has knowledge of every possible future which may result from a given choice that we must make. Ie, if we choose to go right, God knows what will happen, but choosing to go left will result in a different future which God also knows.

I personally can't see much of a problem with this; it allows for the freedom of choice which knowledge of a single path does not. What I am undecided on though is whether or not knowledge of a hypothetical path which doesn't occur in reality would actually be regarded as knowledge at all. The truth of a statement of forknowledge, and thus whether it is foreknowledge at all, is decided by the ouctome of the event itself. I'm not sure whether this variability in "knowledge" is entirely compatible with the idea of omniscience. Although then again, the knowledge of the path which does actually unfold was there the whole time as well, so God would still be omniscient in that respect.

I still need to think about this some more. From this argument it seems like omniscience with a whole lot of speculation.

This is assuming that that's what you meaned. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[BradCube]

Again, I shall keep stating (to my eventual frustration) that I have not at all claimed God does not exist as a matter of fact.

What you have claimed is:

So in the absence of any evidence, I assert that I believe God probably doesn't exist and even if he did I would assert that we have no way of knowing the slightest thing about him or his nature, let alone anything meaningful about his intentions and personality

Regardless of whether you want to see this claim as matter of fact or not, I still regard it as a positive claim – one that requires some reasoning behind it. In the same way you would ask me to provide reason for the claim “God probably does exist”, I similarly expect you to provide reason for your disaffirmation.

If you are to question the consistency of my logic then you should suppose, for such purposes, that subjective/wishful interpretations of entirely natural phenomena ought not be considered as 'evidence' for the existence of any deity.

The merits of natural theology are a different issue. At the moment I am addressing the justification for your positive claims. If natural theology or any other epistemic grounding for belief is also lacking on the theists side, their claims will also be unjustified and without warrant.

As a result, the logical position is that such an entity could exist, but it is impossible to know anything meaningful regarding his nature. The important note to be made is that one should not claim knowledge that one has no means of possessing. I therefore hold that any specific claim about any supernatural deity or his nature is a claim to knowledge that no human could possibly possess.

Regardless of whether this sort of knowledge is possible, I question whether the theist needs to claim knowledge or merely claim belief. For example, must a theist claim to know that God is omnipotent or can he merely believe it to be so?

To leave that point hanging, we must dwell on the superficial differences between theism and deism. Theism claims, as opposed to deism, to know the more personal characteristics, aims, nature and wishes of such an entity. As stated above, I find such claims to be in contrast to a logical position of only claiming knowledge that one is actually able to possess, and thus meaningless in terms of what we can actually know about such an entity. It is important to note, as well, that the most important claims as to this nature are made by Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all of which are based on several thousand year old texts with no end of basic historical, factual and scientific mistakes and betray human, political motives and propaganda in their nature. The reason I note this is that such a fact means that the very idea that they are divinely 'inspired' (and thus immune to processes of logic as to what a human could rationally know and claim) stretches the imagination and credulity of a rational person considerably.

Infallibility or inerrancy of divine texts appears to be a secondary issue to me. It is not essential for belief in the God’s these texts presuppose. That’s not to say that inerrancy is impossible or that a defence of it cannot be made. I just don’t think it’s something you can take as a primary issue regarding Gods existence.

It is this knowledge of God's nature, personality, aims and wishes that I reject; this theistic claim to knowledge, hence my position is naturally atheistic.

But see, this type of a-theism you are proposing appears quite different to what you have stated before. As far as I can tell, you have more than a mere lack of theistic belief.

In this sense, belief in such a deity (separate to religion/theism; deism) is, again, a positive claim that cannot be verified (i.e. that God exists), yet it is less irrational than theistic belief in that it does not claim specific knowledge of his nature, intentions and thoughts.

And what if one was to claim belief as opposed to knowledge regarding these more specific areas?

We then come full circle, in that the only difference between a Deist and I would be not in our understanding of the possibilities of the existence of such a deity but rather the most rational way to interpret incidental evidence, in which case a far more meaningful dialogue can be established (as opposed to one between such a position and religion).

Out of interest, what is the incidental evidence, and which way do you interpret it?

I don't think that free will enters into it in the slightest. God, again, is acting within any parameters that he creates. Even if one were to agree that free-will is somehow a necessity, as opposed to something that God has endowed us with, that by no means closes any gap.

Woah, hold on! I’m not claiming that God must have endowed us with freewill out of logical necessity. I’m claiming that it is possible freewill was the best way to achieve the greatest good. There is a big difference there. It is not God’s endowing that is a logical problem, rather it us having genuine freewill that creates the problem.

What this recognizes is that God must then influence his creations in other ways than sheer omnipotent force.

The only way that one could then close such a gap is to argue that an omnipotent, omni-benevolent, omniscient God would be:
1. Unable, due to the logical consistency of free will, to force his creations to do anything.
2. He would then be forced to turn to other measures in order to influence his creations and bring about his 'greater good'.
3. Humanity was created such that the only way (because if there were others and God was choosing an extremely violent and painful one, that would make him capricious) that they are able to appreciate any such sense of greater good is by vicariously experiencing, in one form or another, the slaughter, en masse, of their fellow human beings.
Point 3 is a serious problem in such an assertion. God, as an omnipotent creator, is responsible for every single facet of the nature of humanity, he is also aware of all future potentialities (leaving the idea of free will aside for a second). That means that God, in creating humanity with such emotional limitation, was entirely aware that the only way he would be able to make them into such "responsible moral agents" would be to systematically and consistently allow them to be slaughtered by the natural forces of the world for millions of years; I find this to be capricious at worst and negligent at worst.

It is only capricious if you are looking at our happiness in the immediate life as the greatest good. Under this model however, that is not the greatest good. The greatest good involves raising responsible free moral agents who come into relationship with God.

I don’t understand how you are using the word negligent here. If anything it is the opposite of negligence. It is a calculated move before the world exists that works to bring the about the greatest good possible.

Accepting free will being as you say it is, it remains that any emotional limitation that makes such slaughter necessary in order to facilitate moral human behaviour (which find laughable in itself) is one of God's own creation.]

I don’t see what the problem is here. View it the other way round. It is entirely possible that our current emotional system is in fact the best way to bring it about that the most amount of people become responsible moral agents and are brought into relationship with God.

 

[BradCube]

It's ridiculous because it's putting God where he isn't needed. We have a perfectly capable, natural theory for life's physical intricacies, evolution, and proposing ID doesn't help anywhere. It's presumptuous because claiming support of ID in this area is equivalent to saying "I dont like the theory of evolution, but thankfully I believe in God so I can assume he did it all".

You’re attacking a straw man. Craig’s argument relies on the fine tuning of the universe, not the biological complexity of life.

Of course they do. And frankly I see no reason to.

The reason will generally fall back on the idea that the past cannot be actually infinite and so needs to terminate somewhere. This termination makes more sense as a God than anything else, since all other proposed possibilities seem to lack casual power (ie abstract objects such as numbers)

What Craig proposes is for all questioning to stop with the existence of God. "Why explain further? We have a perfect system here to explain everything." This is exactly the kind of attitude which ultimately causes religion to come second to science in explaining phenomenon. While an infinite regress does not itself directly assist science, the question and inquiry involved at each step is exactly what science is about.

Craig doesn’t at all propose that we stop scientific discovery because he believes God exists. He looks at the data we have available and proposes the most reasonable conclusions he can from it. In some cases this data isn’t even part of the natural world which science can easily test (ie moral arguments, or arguments concerning the origin of the universe).

Not a case for the scientific method, although he certainly inclues the paradigm as part of his argument to show the supposed severity of this questioning. I've seen him do it twice now, once in that "I'm refuting Dawkins" video and again in a debate with Christopher Hitchens. The man should know better.

I’m honestly not sure what you are getting at here. Would you mind quoting Craig specifically regarding what you take issue with?

, this is just God of the gaps. I see no scientific inquiry here. I see three possibilities, which I concede are set out and eliminated logically , but the end result is still "we don't have a natural explanation for it yet so God did it". The claim of fine tuning in the universe absolutely is a scientific claim and as such should be treated as a subset of the scientific sphere.

In arguing against a God of Gaps scenario you are implicitly using science-of-gaps. That is, you automatically assume there is in fact a natural explanation and we just haven’t discovered it yet. Even then, the argument from “fine-tuning” isn’t of merit because premise (2) (that fine-tuning is not due to physical necessity or chance) appears to be true – it is also because the “fine-tuning” makes a great deal of sense when its explanation is design (God or otherwise).

God fits the hole perfectly, granted, but is this practically the best explanation? No. It doesn't further our knowledge to any practical degree, so until we have a working, natural explanation for this, (if ever we do), I am content to say that I don't know. It was similarly argued in the past (and still is, even by Craig) that evolution is not the best explanation for life, at least not in it's purely natural form. Evolution still has its quirks; there is some small debate as to the exact mechanisms through which evolution actually occurs, but God again seems to fit the bill perfectly. What practical advances has the ID explanation here made? None. An understanding of evolution, on the other hand, has provided us with a greater understanding of viruses and immunities for greater efficiency in treating virus victims etc. If one is to have any explanation of the world, then I think it best to adopt that which has some scientific merit, as such implies it may eventually have some practical application. Settling for the God hypothesis is equivalent to saying, for all intents and purposes "I don't know", the only difference being that the God hypothesis for many people is all that is needed, and scientific inquiry is thus considered unnecessary by such people. There is nothing at all helpful about this.

A few things here:

• Helpfulness is not an argument for truthfulness.
  
  
• Craig doesn’t have a decisive opinion on evolution. He maintains that there are problems with a purely naturalistic explanation, yes, but he doesn’t go as far as saying it didn’t happen or denying its possibility.
  
  
• One does not need to say that we “know” that design is responsible for the fine turning we observe; it only needs to be more plausibly true than its denial. In such a case we should believe it to be true.
  
  
• Holding God as the most plausible explanation does not mean one has to (or even should) stop scientific exploration. Scientific explanation can continue to teach us about the world and also help us refrain from falsely attributing supernatural explanations where they do not belong – these are things which a theist should encourage.

Craig does say ID trumps evolution in both videos I have seen of him so far (his debate with Hitchens and his deconstruction of Dawkins' arguments). I don't care for this whatsoever.

Again, it would be great if you could cite some references and quote Craig specifically on this. I don’t think the divide is as great as you propose it to be. Craig maintains that design is the better explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe and takes issue with naturalistic versions of evolution.

 

[Scorch]

What you have claimed is:

Regardless of whether you want to see this claim as matter of fact or not, I still regard it as a positive claim – one that requires some reasoning behind it. In the same way you would ask me to provide reason for the claim “God probably does exist”, I similarly expect you to provide reason for your disaffirmation.

... and I would say that this is simply because I have yet to be provided with a convincing argument as to why he exists, there is no objective evidence for his existence that does not involve subjective interpretation of otherwise self-contained explanations and thus there is no reason to believe he exists, since I think the only good reason to believe in something is if there is good evidence that such a belief is true.

As I have consistently stated, I do not believe that God exists because I lack the theistic belief that asserts that he does. Theism is an imposition on the natural explanations and my view of the world simply lacks that explanation.

Yet you have, as many theists do, extrapolated upon such statements, constructed a middle ground in terms of 'agnosticism' in order to depict atheism as irrational and rather frustratingly proceeded to ignore the fact that a-theism simply lacks a belief in a positive claim and is not making a positive factual claim itself.

I don't mean to be snippy, but this intellectual dishonesty is more than frustrating in terms of how you choose to discuss the issue with someone, and is quickly turning me away from this conversation.

But see, this type of a-theism you are proposing appears quite different to what you have stated before. As far as I can tell, you have more than a mere lack of theistic belief.

No. This is only so if you believe the existence of a God to be a primary, logical necessity and the logical basis from which other things proceed, yet this is not so.

I'm not entirely sure how you think that lacking theistic belief can be anything other than lacking belief in God. What you are attempting to do is create an entirely semantic difference between "I do not believe that God exists" and "I believe that God does not exist". For all intents and purposes they are exactly the same thing. Then we must consider personal realities; if I do not believe that God exists then by logical implication I believe he does not exist. Even if I temper this by saying that while there is no evidence that he does exist, our technological limitations currently don't allow us to rule it out, for all intents and purposes in my life I consider him not to exist, whilst I remain conscious of this distinction of positive claims.

There is a difference between nuanced differences of meaning and belief and semantic creations of claims where none exist.

And what if one was to claim belief as opposed to knowledge regarding these more specific areas?

Then it is faith, and no more justifiable than that of any other religion of any other time.

Woah, hold on! I’m not claiming that God must have endowed us with freewill out of logical necessity. I’m claiming that it is possible freewill was the best way to achieve the greatest good. There is a big difference there. It is not God’s endowing that is a logical problem, rather it us having genuine freewill that creates the problem.

It is only capricious if you are looking at our happiness in the immediate life as the greatest good. Under this model however, that is not the greatest good. The greatest good involves raising responsible free moral agents who come into relationship with God.

I don’t understand how you are using the word negligent here. If anything it is the opposite of negligence. It is a calculated move before the world exists that works to bring the about the greatest good possible.

This is where reasonable people such as yourself must demonstrate their credulity in such matters. You ask people to believe that an omnipotent God could not think of a better way to instrument the 'greatest good possible' without using his fellow creations as nothing but tools, by allowing them to be slaughtered in their masses by the natural forces he created, in order to operate within limitations that he created.

It is idiotic. I don't understand how any rational human being could believe that any God that was truly omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient would ever have to resort to using the violent deaths of his creations en masse to create 'responsible moral agents', such that the deaths of 200,000 east-Asian peasants, or hundreds of thousands of Chinese serfs in natural disasters would be necessary for an omnipotent God to do anything. It is not.

I don’t see what the problem is here. View it the other way round. It is entirely possible that our current emotional system is in fact the best way to bring it about that the most amount of people become responsible moral agents and are brought into relationship with God.

Again, you're showing a rather gratuitous amounts of credulity if you genuinely believe that any system that requires people to experience the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of their fellow human beings at the hands of natural disasters that God himself created and foresaw is the best way that God could achieve anything.

 

[LachieM]

You’re attacking a straw man. Craig’s argument relies on the fine tuning of the universe, not the biological complexity of life.

I am referring to Craig's critique of Dawkins and evolution, not his central arguments, although he doesn't hesitate to say ID>evolution.

YouTube - Who Designed The Designer? a response to Dawkins' The God Delusion by Dr. William Lane Craig

1:35 with the pottery analogy. Almost identical to arguments used by Ray Comfort. Pathetic.
2:31 onwards. "...Intelligent Design is the best explanation of biological complexity...". A man with this high an education should know better.

The reason will generally fall back on the idea that the past cannot be actually infinite and so needs to terminate somewhere. This termination makes more sense as a God than anything else, since all other proposed possibilities seem to lack casual power (ie abstract objects such as numbers)

I have never heard any atheist claim that the past is infinite, most are happy with the Big Bang theory and admit that we don't know the specifics. I do appreciate your use of "a God" rather than just "God"; at least you recognize the precariousness of attempting to claim this "God of the gaps" explanation as "evidence" for the personal God who listens to prayers and sends Christians to heaven and us bad people to Hell.

Craig doesn’t at all propose that we stop scientific discovery because he believes God exists. He looks at the data we have available and proposes the most reasonable conclusions he can from it. In some cases this data isn’t even part of the natural world which science can easily test (ie moral arguments, or arguments concerning the origin of the universe).

Although the mere fact he uses this poor explanation as evidence suggests he thinks this explanation is sufficient.

Craig's only moral argument that I have heard so far is that without God there is no objective morality. I fail to even see how this is an argument; it's merely a statement of fact.

I’m honestly not sure what you are getting at here. Would you mind quoting Craig specifically regarding what you take issue with?

About 3:00 into the video above. "You would never have an explanation of anything, which would destroy science". He uses the same argument in his debate with Hitchens, although I can't remember specifically which video that was, as there are 16 of them on youtube.

In arguing against a God of Gaps scenario you are implicitly using science-of-gaps. That is, you automatically assume there is in fact a natural explanation and we just haven’t discovered it yet. Even then, the argument from “fine-tuning” isn’t of merit because premise (2) (that fine-tuning is not due to physical necessity or chance) appears to be true – it is also because the “fine-tuning” makes a great deal of sense when its explanation is design (God or otherwise).

Not at all. I am merely arguing a "gaps are gaps" scenario. I in no place said "a scientific explanation will arise eventually". If we don't know, we don't know, but can still search for an explanation. Proposing God as a solution and attempting to use that as "evidence" for his existence does nothing but hoodwink less sophisticated minds into these feeble arguments. I see no way in which premise 2 conflicts with the pursuit of a proper explanation for the phenomenon, although perhaps I misunderstand what you have written. And again I come back to the fact that witht the ID argument, you're making an unscientific claim to fill a scientific gap. This does absolutely nothing.

A few things here:

• Helpfulness is not an argument for truthfulness.
• Craig doesn’t have a decisive opinion on evolution. He maintains that there are problems with a purely naturalistic explanation, yes, but he doesn’t go as far as saying it didn’t happen or denying its possibility.
• One does not need to say that we “know” that design is responsible for the fine turning we observe; it only needs to be more plausibly true than its denial. In such a case we should believe it to be true.
• Holding God as the most plausible explanation does not mean one has to (or even should) stop scientific exploration. Scientific explanation can continue to teach us about the world and also help us refrain from falsely attributing supernatural explanations where they do not belong – these are things which a theist should encourage.

To point one: Agreed. I would add that the truth of an explanation should be determined by the evidence in favour of it. I was merely picking up on the coincidence that the scientific method is extremely capable of satisfying both truthfulness and practical application. I had assumed everyone was already familiar with the fact that science's very foundations are composed of the evidence that support its claims, implying truth.

Point two: He maintains that ID is a superior explanation. It is not. Nor is it needed for evolution, as many theists seem to suggest. I again say simply that he should know better.

Point three: Or maintain that no decent explanation it exists. ID runs into the barrier that it doesn't actually explain anything. It merely makes the unfalsifiable claim that the universe and life is designed. An argument on probabilities is far too vague to make a decisive judgement on if the "explanation" it is in favour of isn't an explanation at all. Such an argument should only be used if one is content with what is essentially a non-explanation. What we should believe is the truth of the matter; namely that no satisfactory explanation exists.

Point four: We diverge on this point only on where we think supernatural explanations are appropriate. I do think that proposing God as an explanation at all intrinsically limits the interest of some people in finding a proper explanation, which is the crux of my point there. It's an attitudes thing.

Again, it would be great if you could cite some references and quote Craig specifically on this. I don’t think the divide is as great as you propose it to be. Craig maintains that design is the better explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe and takes issue with naturalistic versions of evolution.

Again, I point you to the video I linked you to at the beginning of my post, and the series of videos of Craig's debate with Hitchens (these are the only videos I have seen of him so far). To clarify completely, my main quarrel with the use of ID to explain life is that it's false, and my problem with ID explaining the universe is that it doesn't actually explain anything and presupposes that a proper explanation will not be found. I argue that the origins and "fine tuning" of the universe should be currently regarded as unkown.

 

[Entrant]

looks like i tipped the voting to equal.
i voted there is a god, now its 465-465
=D

 

[BradCube]

... and I would say that this is simply because I have yet to be provided with a convincing argument as to why he exists, there is no objective evidence for his existence that does not involve subjective interpretation of otherwise self-contained explanations and thus there is no reason to believe he exists, since I think the only good reason to believe in something is if there is good evidence that such a belief is true.

As I have consistently stated, I do not believe that God exists because I lack the theistic belief that asserts that he does. Theism is an imposition on the natural explanations and my view of the world simply lacks that explanation.

Yet you have, as many theists do, extrapolated upon such statements, constructed a middle ground in terms of 'agnosticism' in order to depict atheism as irrational and rather frustratingly proceeded to ignore the fact that a-theism simply lacks a belief in a positive claim and is not making a positive factual claim itself.

I don't mean to be snippy, but this intellectual dishonesty is more than frustrating in terms of how you choose to discuss the issue with someone, and is quickly turning me away from this conversation.

I apologize if you find me to be intellectually dishonest. I’m honestly not trying to be, I see a genuine difference in what an atheist or an a-theist can be claiming.

I think the difference in opinion may stem from confusion between ontology and epistemology. That is, the difference between the claims “God does not exist” (ontology) and “I do not believe that God exists” (epistemology). Consider a rock, pen, cat, dog, beaver etc. All of these things “do not believe that God exists” (since they do not have any beliefs about anything), but neither do they “believe that God does not exist”. They have the middle ground here in that they neither confirm nor deny God’s existence (ontologically). They simply lack belief. If this is all you are claiming atheism to be (the lack of an ontological affirmation or disaffirmation) then I don’t find it to be much of a claim at all. It’s certainly not the case that you can say something like “God probably does not exist” within such a worldview – since this expresses an ontological claim based around the probability of God existence.

Of interest, I even find the claim “we cannot know if God exists” to be a positive claim to knowledge. One needs to provide reasons for how they know that one can’t know of Gods existence. Though, this is really a minor issue in comparison to the above.

No. This is only so if you believe the existence of a God to be a primary, logical necessity and the logical basis from which other things proceed, yet this is not so.

I'm not entirely sure how you think that lacking theistic belief can be anything other than lacking belief in God. What you are attempting to do is create an entirely semantic difference between "I do not believe that God exists" and "I believe that God does not exist". For all intents and purposes they are exactly the same thing. Then we must consider personal realities; if I do not believe that God exists then by logical implication I believe he does not exist. Even if I temper this by saying that while there is no evidence that he does exist, our technological limitations currently don't allow us to rule it out, for all intents and purposes in my life I consider him not to exist, whilst I remain conscious of this distinction of positive claims.

My previous post speaks to this but I see a huge difference (more than semantics) between the statements "I do not believe that God exists" and "I believe that God does not exist”. These are not the same thing. One is a negation of a positive affirmation (epistemology) and the other is a positive claim about the lack of existence (ontology). The person claiming that they don’t believe God exists is not committed to affirming that God does not exist – they can simply lack belief about God's state of existence. This is the case with a new born baby, a fish, tree etc.

Then it is faith, and no more justifiable than that of any other religion of any other time.

If it is belief with reason (as I am proposing) then this is what justifies the belief over other competing worldviews. Reason needn’t be full forced enough to take us to a state of knowledge – but it can still form beliefs.

This is where reasonable people such as yourself must demonstrate their credulity in such matters. You ask people to believe that an omnipotent God could not think of a better way to instrument the 'greatest good possible' without using his fellow creations as nothing but tools, by allowing them to be slaughtered in their masses by the natural forces he created, in order to operate within limitations that he created.

Again, it’s not because God couldn’t “think” of a better way – it is out of logical necessity. This is a limitation that he cannot ignore or change– it’s just logic.

It is idiotic. I don't understand how any rational human being could believe that any God that was truly omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient would ever have to resort to using the violent deaths of his creations en masse to create 'responsible moral agents', such that the deaths of 200,000 east-Asian peasants, or hundreds of thousands of Chinese serfs in natural disasters would be necessary for an omnipotent God to do anything. It is not.

This doesn't contribute anything to the argument. Calling it irrational or idiotic is not an argument – you need to demonstrate why it is so. I don’t mean to be rude, but as far as I can tell you have yet to demonstrate a logical contradiction between God’s being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. As long as the option I am proposing is even a possibility then you cannot claim that the concept of such a God is logically invalid or self-refuting.

Again, you're showing a rather gratuitous amounts of credulity if you genuinely believe that any system that requires people to experience the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of their fellow human beings at the hands of natural disasters that God himself created and foresaw is the best way that God could achieve anything.

Again, calling beliefs credulous or similar does not help support your argument. You need to demonstrate why it is so. All I am saying is that it is possible that our current emotional system is the best way of God bringing about the greatest good through our freewill.

 

[BradCube]

I am referring to Craig's critique of Dawkins and evolution, not his central arguments, although he doesn't hesitate to say ID>evolution.

YouTube - Who Designed The Designer? a response to Dawkins' The God Delusion by Dr. William Lane Craig

1:35 with the pottery analogy. Almost identical to arguments used by Ray Comfort. Pathetic.
2:31 onwards. "...Intelligent Design is the best explanation of biological complexity...". A man with this high an education should know better.

- You need to show why it is pathetic, not just state that it is so.
- I think you are reading a bit far into this if you think that this is Craig’s way of saying that evolution didn’t happen. For Craig, even if a naturalistic form of evolution took place, this is still contingent upon there being a universe that is capable of sustaining life in the first place. Also, you are talking about an off the cuff remark in response to someone else's claims – he’s not even giving a defense of his own arguments for ID here.

I have never heard any atheist claim that the past is infinite, most are happy with the Big Bang theory and admit that we don't know the specifics. I do appreciate your use of "a God" rather than just "God"; at least you recognize the precariousness of attempting to claim this "God of the gaps" explanation as "evidence" for the personal God who listens to prayers and sends Christians to heaven and us bad people to Hell.

There are plenty of atheists that claim that the universe is eternal. A lot of the times this can be due to the casual problems the big bang raises. If the universe is eternal then it needn’t have a cause because it didn’t begin to exist. If it did begin to exist, then one needs to explain why it did begin to exist.

Although the mere fact he uses this poor explanation as evidence suggests he thinks this explanation is sufficient.

Craig's only moral argument that I have heard so far is that without God there is no objective morality. I fail to even see how this is an argument; it's merely a statement of fact.

I’ll leave both of these statements until we start teasing out the arguments when we look at natural theology. For now, I’ll leave you with the knowledge that there are quiet a few atheistic philosophers who believe in objective morality. Even “new atheist” Sam Harris comes pretty darn close to a belief in objective morality.

About 3:00 into the video above. "You would never have an explanation of anything, which would destroy science". He uses the same argument in his debate with Hitchens, although I can't remember specifically which video that was, as there are 16 of them on youtube.

I think this may steam from a slight confusion on your end. Craig is not saying that we should not look for further explanations of explanations. What he is claiming is that we should not shy away from proposing explanations even if those explanations don’t have explanations themselves.

To borrow your example, one should not shy away from using the law a gravity to explain a particular phenomenon even if we don’t have a complete explanation of gravity. This would destroy science, because before we could propose an explanation for anything we would need an explanation of everything – this is just not the way science works however. We put weight in an explanation because it fits the data best and has other less specific epistemic virtues.

Not at all. I am merely arguing a "gaps are gaps" scenario. I in no place said "a scientific explanation will arise eventually". If we don't know, we don't know, but can still search for an explanation. Proposing God as a solution and attempting to use that as "evidence" for his existence does nothing but hoodwink less sophisticated minds into these feeble arguments. I see no way in which premise 2 conflicts with the pursuit of a proper explanation for the phenomenon, although perhaps I misunderstand what you have written. And again I come back to the fact that witht the ID argument, you're making an unscientific claim to fill a scientific gap. This does absolutely nothing.

Your last sentence gives away your position and seems to concur with my original point. The fact that you assume it is a scientific gap to be filled, means you have a priori ruled out that it could be a gap caused by something else. I’m not really fussed whether you want to regard it as a scientific claim or not – it’s a philosophical argument that looks for the best explanation (scientific or otherwise) .

Point two: He maintains that ID is a superior explanation. It is not. Nor is it needed for evolution, as many theists seem to suggest. I again say simply that he should know better.

I don’t understand why you are equating ID as the opposite of evolution? They can both be integrated into the one view – especially if one is only referring to ID in regard to what makes the universe life permitting.

Point three: Or maintain that no decent explanation it exists. ID runs into the barrier that it doesn't actually explain anything. It merely makes the unfalsifiable claim that the universe and life is designed. An argument on probabilities is far too vague to make a decisive judgement on if the "explanation" it is in favour of isn't an explanation at all. Such an argument should only be used if one is content with what is essentially a non-explanation. What we should believe is the truth of the matter; namely that no satisfactory explanation exists.

Why does ID not explain anything? It explains the “fine-tuning” of the universe. It can be falsified by showing another competing theory to be of greater explanatory power.

Point four: We diverge on this point only on where we think supernatural explanations are appropriate. I do think that proposing God as an explanation at all intrinsically limits the interest of some people in finding a proper explanation, which is the crux of my point there. It's an attitudes thing.

So essentially you are saying that you don’t like the idea of proposing a supernatural explanation because you fear some people will stop searching for naturalistic explanations? If that is the case, why think that the irresponsibility of others creates a good reason for you not allowing the possibility of supernatural explanations?

Again, I point you to the video I linked you to at the beginning of my post, and the series of videos of Craig's debate with Hitchens (these are the only videos I have seen of him so far). To clarify completely, my main quarrel with the use of ID to explain life is that it's false, and my problem with ID explaining the universe is that it doesn't actually explain anything and presupposes that a proper explanation will not be found. I argue that the origins and "fine tuning" of the universe should be currently regarded as unkown.

I think I’ve addressed the points for the video now. I haven’t seen you propose any reasons why intelligent design is false (indeed, you have called it unfalsifiable)? I’ve only seen you make a case for why you don’t think it counts as a good explanation (if an explanation at all). This doesn’t imply its falsity however.

I would say that the origins and fine-tuning of the universe currently have no viable scientific explanation. We can call this God-of-Gaps if you want. Honestly I don’t mind – I’m just after the best explanation and don’t discriminate on the basis of whether it is naturalistic or not. If God does exist and is in fact the cause of the universe we observe then we would expect there to be some scientific gaps.

 

[ibbi00]

Now in our bodies we have 100 trillion cells all of which contain DNA. DNA contains the instructions on how to make each and every part of the body ranging from the shape of your eye to the length of your tooth. Now how did such information come to be? Now consider you were once walking in a Midleeastern desert and you stumbled upon a mobile phone. Mobile phones are essentially made from plastic (oil) and silicon chips (sand). Both oil and sand are abundant in said area. But no one picks up a mobile phone in the desert and says look a product of billions of years of chance and coincidence! The oil bubbled... The wind blew... The sun shone... The lightning struck... The camel trod... And after billions and billions of years of these things happening by an amazing coincidence this phone formed itself. So how is it that you have justified the existence of humans to be a product of chance and coincidence when mobile phones don't even compare to the complexity of DNA structure.

 

[tommykins]

Now in our bodies we have 100 trillion cells all of which contain DNA. DNA contains the instructions on how to make each and every part of the body ranging from the shape of your eye to the length of your tooth. Now how did such information come to be? Now consider you were once walking in a Midleeastern desert and you stumbled upon a mobile phone. Mobile phones are essentially made from plastic (oil) and silicon chips (sand). Both oil and sand are abundant in said area. But no one picks up a mobile phone in the desert and says look a product of billions of years of chance and coincidence! The oil bubbled... The wind blew... The sun shone... The lightning struck... The camel trod... And after billions and billions of years of these things happening by an amazing coincidence this phone formed itself. So how is it that you have justified the existence of humans to be a product of chance and coincidence when mobile phones don't even compare to the complexity of DNA structure.

Lol. You haven't read the first post have you?

And your analogy bloody sucks, you're comparing a living organism that has developed through thousands of years via the means of natural selection and survival of the fittest, to a technological development ?

 

[Scorch]

I apologize if you find me to be intellectually dishonest. I’m honestly not trying to be, I see a genuine difference in what an atheist or an a-theist can be claiming.

I think the difference in opinion may stem from confusion between ontology and epistemology. That is, the difference between the claims “God does not exist” (ontology) and “I do not believe that God exists” (epistemology). Consider a rock, pen, cat, dog, beaver etc. All of these things “do not believe that God exists” (since they do not have any beliefs about anything), but neither do they “believe that God does not exist”. They have the middle ground here in that they neither confirm nor deny God’s existence (ontologically). They simply lack belief. If this is all you are claiming atheism to be (the lack of an ontological affirmation or disaffirmation) then I don’t find it to be much of a claim at all. It’s certainly not the case that you can say something like “God probably does not exist” within such a worldview – since this expresses an ontological claim based around the probability of God existence.

Of interest, I even find the claim “we cannot know if God exists” to be a positive claim to knowledge. One needs to provide reasons for how they know that one can’t know of Gods existence. Though, this is really a minor issue in comparison to the above.

My previous post speaks to this but I see a huge difference (more than semantics) between the statements "I do not believe that God exists" and "I believe that God does not exist”. These are not the same thing. One is a negation of a positive affirmation (epistemology) and the other is a positive claim about the lack of existence (ontology). The person claiming that they don’t believe God exists is not committed to affirming that God does not exist – they can simply lack belief about God's state of existence. This is the case with a new born baby, a fish, tree etc.

If it is belief with reason (as I am proposing) then this is what justifies the belief over other competing worldviews. Reason needn’t be full forced enough to take us to a state of knowledge – but it can still form beliefs.

We seem to be saying the same things over and over, to be perfectly honest. Unless you have a new point to make, I'd rather we focus on the point of conversation below, as I find it to be far more productive. Unless you'd like to clarify points that you feel I have misunderstood.

Again, it’s not because God couldn’t “think” of a better way – it is out of logical necessity. This is a limitation that he cannot ignore or change– it’s just logic.

Again, there is nothing that logically necessitates that God create a system whereby the slaughter of human beings by the natural forces of the world, every facet of which he is responsible for, is the only way for him to bring about responsible moral agents. This is an entirely arbitrary statement.

You need to demonstrate why it is so. All I am saying is that it is possible that our current emotional system is the best way of God bringing about the greatest good through our freewill.

... and I am saying that to truly believe that this is the best we can possibly be demonstrates either a misplaced faith in the perfection of humanity or a very low opinion of God's power, given that such a system has necessitated, again, that God systematically wipe out billions of humans simply by natural disasters of his creation over the history of humanity.

 

[LachieM]

- You need to show why it is pathetic, not just state that it is so.

Because it's completely ignoring that a perfectly capable natural explanation already exists.

- I think you are reading a bit far into this if you think that this is Craig’s way of saying that evolution didn’t happen. For Craig, even if a naturalistic form of evolution took place, this is still contingent upon there being a universe that is capable of sustaining life in the first place. Also, you are talking about an off the cuff remark in response to someone else's claims – he’s not even giving a defense of his own arguments for ID here.

I agree. I'm fairly sure that he says ID is the best explanation with specific reference to biological complexity. Again, I come back to the fact that evolution explains this perfectly without any need for ID.

I’ll leave both of these statements until we start teasing out the arguments when we look at natural theology. For now, I’ll leave you with the knowledge that there are quiet a few atheistic philosophers who believe in objective morality. Even “new atheist” Sam Harris comes pretty darn close to a belief in objective morality.

Please enlighten me on this natural theology, then.

Sam Harris does come close to belief in objective morality, although by no means objective in the same sense that God's existence would imply, but again I wouldn't say it's an argument for anything, just as Craig's assertion that without God there is no objective morality isn't really an argument for anything.

I think this may steam from a slight confusion on your end. Craig is not saying that we should not look for further explanations of explanations. What he is claiming is that we should not shy away from proposing explanations even if those explanations don’t have explanations themselves.

Understood.

Your last sentence gives away your position and seems to concur with my original point. The fact that you assume it is a scientific gap to be filled, means you have a priori ruled out that it could be a gap caused by something else. I’m not really fussed whether you want to regard it as a scientific claim or not – it’s a philosophical argument that looks for the best explanation (scientific or otherwise) .

You're correct in my making that assumption. I make it because I regard the scientific explanation as the best explanation, and if such an explanation does not exist then I regard it as unkown. The closest one can get to the truth outside of mathematics is through the scienfitic method, and I see little point in an attempt at a non-scientific explanation while the problem continues to be pursued by scientists.

I don’t understand why you are equating ID as the opposite of evolution? They can both be integrated into the one view – especially if one is only referring to ID in regard to what makes the universe life permitting.

Of course ID is compatible with evolution if it's used merely to explain the origins and physical conditions of the universe itself. Using ID to explain complex life isn't exactly the opposite of evolution (depending on one's interpretation of it), but even in its most watered down form it's simply adding an unneeded supernatural layer to a functional natural explanation.

Why does ID not explain anything? It explains the “fine-tuning” of the universe. It can be falsified by showing another competing theory to be of greater explanatory power.

It explains the phenomenon at an extremely superficial level, which for me isn't an explanation at all. It seems our definitions of "explanation" are quite different. I argue that it's non-falsifiable because even if a superior natural explanation is discovered, ID can be asserted over the top of it at again a superficial and unneeded level (eg evolution). With this kind of thinking, ID is indeed unfalsifiable.

So essentially you are saying that you don’t like the idea of proposing a supernatural explanation because you fear some people will stop searching for naturalistic explanations? If that is the case, why think that the irresponsibility of others creates a good reason for you not allowing the possibility of supernatural explanations?

Basically yes. People aren't going to want to pay for expensive scientific endeavours if they are already satisfied with an existing explanation. Again I say that I consider supernatural explanations void because they are inferior to scientific explanations, should they arise, and that in admitting a supernatural explanation (case in point ID) one might as well admit that it's an unkown.

I think I’ve addressed the points for the video now. I haven’t seen you propose any reasons why intelligent design is false (indeed, you have called it unfalsifiable)? I’ve only seen you make a case for why you don’t think it counts as a good explanation (if an explanation at all). This doesn’t imply its falsity however.

I stand by my statement that ID is unfalsifiable, and while I agree that it's feebleness as an explanation doesn't imply falsity, the mere fact that it is not known for sure does not mean that there is a great, equal, or even small chance of it being true at all. If one is looking for truth, then airy-fairy supernatural explanations are not the way to go. One could easily propose any other supernatural concept and apply it to the same problem and be satisfied with it merely because it provides a very shallow explanation of why something might be so. I needn't go into where this line of selective, largely presumptuous thinking leaves the truth of such statements. This is why I regard all the supernatural explanations I have heard as flat out insufficient., and regard the gap as unkown.

 

[tommykins]

Intelligent design is an oxymoron | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

 

[BradCube]

I think the difference in opinion may stem from confusion between ontology and epistemology. That is, the difference between the claims “God does not exist” (ontology) and “I do not believe that God exists” (epistemology). Consider a rock, pen, cat, dog, beaver etc. All of these things “do not believe that God exists” (since they do not have any beliefs about anything), but neither do they “believe that God does not exist”. They have the middle ground here in that they neither confirm nor deny God’s existence (ontologically). They simply lack belief. If this is all you are claiming atheism to be (the lack of an ontological affirmation or disaffirmation) then I don’t find it to be much of a claim at all. It’s certainly not the case that you can say something like “God probably does not exist” within such a worldview – since this expresses an ontological claim based around the probability of God existence.

Of interest, I even find the claim “we cannot know if God exists” to be a positive claim to knowledge. One needs to provide reasons for how they know that one can’t know of Gods existence. Though, this is really a minor issue in comparison to the above.

My previous post speaks to this but I see a huge difference (more than semantics) between the statements "I do not believe that God exists" and "I believe that God does not exist”. These are not the same thing. One is a negation of a positive affirmation (epistemology) and the other is a positive claim about the lack of existence (ontology). The person claiming that they don’t believe God exists is not committed to affirming that God does not exist – they can simply lack belief about God's state of existence. This is the case with a new born baby, a fish, tree etc.

If it is belief with reason (as I am proposing) then this is what justifies the belief over other competing worldviews. Reason needn’t be full forced enough to take us to a state of knowledge – but it can still form beliefs.

We seem to be saying the same things over and over, to be perfectly honest. Unless you have a new point to make, I'd rather we focus on the point of conversation below, as I find it to be far more productive. Unless you'd like to clarify points that you feel I have misunderstood.

At this point, I don’t know where to step because I regard the above as critically important when debating what a person should believe. We are essentially arguing for what justifies a belief. Without a level playing field on this issue, all other debate seems pointless in my opinion.
I’m unsure (based on your response) whether you agree or disagree with what I have stated. It’s almost as if you can’t be bothered to continue the discussion?

Again, there is nothing that logically necessitates that God create a system whereby the slaughter of human beings by the natural forces of the world, every facet of which he is responsible for, is the only way for him to bring about responsible moral agents. This is an entirely arbitrary statement.

I’ve explained why this is the case though. In God’s bringing about the greatest good it’s possible for him to endow humans with freewill. It’s conceivable that God must use people’s freewilled response to natural disasters to bring about the greatest good possible (which includes bringing the maximum amount of people into knowledge of him and raising responsible moral agents). I’m not sure which part is causing the confusion here? It is our freewilled response that necessitates Gods creating such a world and acting in such a way.

... and I am saying that to truly believe that this is the best we can possibly be demonstrates either a misplaced faith in the perfection of humanity or a very low opinion of God's power, given that such a system has necessitated, again, that God systematically wipe out billions of humans simply by natural disasters of his creation over the history of humanity.

Why does it demonstrate misplaced faith or a low opinion of God’s power? If it is our freewill that is the determining factor here, then it is our response that causes God to set up the world in such a way.

 

[Scorch]

At this point, I don’t know where to step because I regard the above as critically important when debating what a person should believe. We are essentially arguing for what justifies a belief. Without a level playing field on this issue, all other debate seems pointless in my opinion.
I’m unsure (based on your response) whether you agree or disagree with what I have stated. It’s almost as if you can’t be bothered to continue the discussion?

Well quite frankly I cannot be bothered to continue this part, because despite all I have said you are still arguing with a first premise I never claimed.

I’ve explained why this is the case though. In God’s bringing about the greatest good it’s possible for him to endow humans with freewill. It’s conceivable that God must use people’s freewilled response to natural disasters to bring about the greatest good possible (which includes bringing the maximum amount of people into knowledge of him and raising responsible moral agents). I’m not sure which part is causing the confusion here? It is our freewilled response that necessitates Gods creating such a world and acting in such a way.

You keep saying this over and over but it is a terribly weak excuse, really. For example endowing humans with freewill does not necessitate endowing them with a sense of emotions that he was fully aware would require the experience of vicarious suffering of other human beings in order to make them 'responsible moral agents' in the first place.

It's not conceivable in the slightest, if you hold the nature of human emotion and morality to be based on our experiencing of the suffering of, again, 200,000 East-Asian peasants, for example, that this is the best possible way for things to function.

There is nothing about our free will that necessitates the creation of any facet of our emotional reactions or 'flawed' nature. God's omnipotence allows him, again, to have created us with any sense of emotions; perhaps one with an inherent understanding of morality and good and evil, as opposed to one that requires violence, the death of his fellow creations and disaster in order to raise 'responsible moral agents' and create the 'greatest possible good'.

Again, you cannot simply point to free will as a catch-all excuse, because, even if free will is entirely necessary, it does not restrict any facet of God's creation of our emotional nature as human beings. If our emotional systems require us to see disasters, destruction, death and suffering of other human beings in order to simply be moral people (something I disagree with entirely anyway, but taking your premise anyway) then this is a system entirely of God's making; and he was entirely aware of it.

 

[cosmo kramer]

shut up who cares

 

[Garygaz]

thanks for that champ

 

[BradCube]

Because it's completely ignoring that a perfectly capable natural explanation already exists.

What natural explanation exists for the fine-tuning of the universe that is better than the designer hypothesis?

I agree. I'm fairly sure that he says ID is the best explanation with specific reference to biological complexity. Again, I come back to the fact that evolution explains this perfectly without any need for ID.

I think you may need to read more of Craig's work honestly. I did some digging for you and came across some Q and A's that deal with complications Craig see's specifically with a naturalistic version of evolution (that is to say, it ignores the point that a finely-tuned universe is needed for evolution to even be possible). From these it should be clear that Craig doesn't believe that naturalistic evolution does provide an air-tight explanation. Question 82, Question 84

Please enlighten me on this natural theology, then.

I will be more than happy to once Scorch and I have talked through our remaining issues

Sam Harris does come close to belief in objective morality, although by no means objective in the same sense that God's existence would imply, but again I wouldn't say it's an argument for anything, just as Craig's assertion that without God there is no objective morality isn't really an argument for anything.

I'm unsure of what definitional difference objective morality would have between Craig and Harris's view here. Certainly the implications of objective morality will differ - but in either case they are both still held as objective. Perhaps this is all you meant?

You're correct in my making that assumption. I make it because I regard the scientific explanation as the best explanation, and if such an explanation does not exist then I regard it as unkown. The closest one can get to the truth outside of mathematics is through the scienfitic method, and I see little point in an attempt at a non-scientific explanation while the problem continues to be pursued by scientists.

You are bordering very close to verificationism with this sort of view. That is, unless something can be empirically verified you regard it as unknowable and thereby also meaningless. The same criticism that has been raised against verificationism can also be raised against your view here. That is, "how do you know that scientific explanation is the best explanation"? Since the claim is philosophical in nature (and not scientific), your defense will rely on philosophical justification and not scientific explanation. Thus, your original claim becomes self-refuting since if you are able to demonstrate that scientific explanation is the only of knowing, you will have used philosophy to demonstrate that you know this - which refutes the original claim that scientific explanation is the only way of knowing.

And so proposing a sort of methodological naturalism when looking for best explanations seems too limiting in my opinion. I am quite happy to contend that we may not have naturalistic explanations for certain phenomenon, but I also do not want to exclude potential explanations simply on the basis that they are not naturalistic - especially if they fit the data well.

It explains the phenomenon at an extremely superficial level, which for me isn't an explanation at all. It seems our definitions of "explanation" are quite different. I argue that it's non-falsifiable because even if a superior natural explanation is discovered, ID can be asserted over the top of it at again a superficial and unneeded level (eg evolution). With this kind of thinking, ID is indeed unfalsifiable.

I would argue that this harks back to the idea that we don't need an explanation of an explanation for it to be considered a valid explanation. Under your use of "extremely superficial" one might also count the law of gravity as an extremely superficial explanation given that we don't have complete explanations for how gravity works.

On your second point, I'm not sure what you're saying really amounts to much against ID. One is not proposing that ID will be unnecessarily added on top of complete working naturalistic explanations. For example, ID proponents don't propose their views in spite of evolution, they propose them precisely because of deficiencies they see in evolution that would be better explain by ID.

Basically yes. People aren't going to want to pay for expensive scientific endeavours if they are already satisfied with an existing explanation. Again I say that I consider supernatural explanations void because they are inferior to scientific explanations, should they arise, and that in admitting a supernatural explanation (case in point ID) one might as well admit that it's an unkown.

This is not a good criterion for truth on your part. Excluding explanations on the basis of how other people uncritically sustain them is not grounds for them being excluded altogether.

If a scientific explanation exists, then sure, a supernatural explanation will be inferior. There would be no reason for posing one. However if no naturalistic explanation exists, why exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation? Sure, it will be scientifically inexplicable, but we already know that. You need to demonstrate why no supernatural explanation is ever valid. What concerns me is that you seem to be ruling out the supernatural a priori - that is, it is simply taken or assumed without justification. This is a concern because if anything supernatural does exist (and has casual power), your naturalism has ruled out discovering it without the necessary warrant.

I stand by my statement that ID is unfalsifiable, and while I agree that it's feebleness as an explanation doesn't imply falsity, the mere fact that it is not known for sure does not mean that there is a great, equal, or even small chance of it being true at all. If one is looking for truth, then airy-fairy supernatural explanations are not the way to go. One could easily propose any other supernatural concept and apply it to the same problem and be satisfied with it merely because it provides a very shallow explanation of why something might be so. I needn't go into where this line of selective, largely presumptuous thinking leaves the truth of such statements. This is why I regard all the supernatural explanations I have heard as flat out insufficient., and regard the gap as unkown.

In general an explanation will only go as far as that explanation requires. For example, an argument from design, will only explain the design of the universe. It won't claim that the explanation requires the designer to be omnipotent, supernatural, omniscient etc. This will greatly limit the amount of other "airy-fairy" explanations that will fit the bill.

 

[Rothbard]

What natural explanation exists for the fine-tuning of the universe that is better than the designer hypothesis?

Chicken and egg, yo. If the universe wasn't made in this way then we wouldn't be able to exist to examine it. We adapted to it, not vice versa.

I think you may need to read more of Craig's work honestly. I did some digging for you and came across some Q and A's that deal with complications Craig see's specifically with a naturalistic version of evolution (that is to say, it ignores the point that a finely-tuned universe is needed for evolution to even be possible). From these it should be clear that Craig doesn't believe that naturalistic evolution does provide an air-tight explanation. Question 82, Question 84

As in adaptation through species/geographical locations, etc?

I'm unsure of what definitional difference objective morality would have between Craig and Harris's view here. Certainly the implications of objective morality will differ - but in either case they are both still held as objective. Perhaps this is all you meant?

Harris' implication wasn't the existence of an 'objective morality' as much as the justification for ending the suffering of others through learned consensus.

That is, "how do you know that scientific explanation is the best explanation"? Since the claim is philosophical in nature (and not scientific), your defense will rely on philosophical justification and not scientific explanation.

It best represents the way we interact with reality (infinite recursion... GO). To manipulate this down to the level of abstract philosophy in order to justify a deity is just sophistry. Even if you imply that there is no empirical method of saying it's the best way of interacting with reality, it doesn't automatically imply a deity.

I would argue that this harks back to the idea that we don't need an explanation of an explanation for it to be considered a valid explanation. Under your use of "extremely superficial" one might also count the law of gravity as an extremely superficial explanation given that we don't have complete explanations for how gravity works.

Again we don't know the method through which it works, but we also don't know the method through which anaesthetics work, or many other things we take for granted in our day to day lives. This is just a matter of further understanding in the field.

This is not a good criterion for truth on your part. Excluding explanations on the basis of how other people uncritically sustain them is not grounds for them being excluded altogether.

But it is criterion for weighting them in far less esteem than a naturalistic explanation when something else invokes 'well a deity did x', when a naturalistic explanation can show a much more reasonable (for your average quantity of reason) path to the actual outcome.

If a scientific explanation exists, then sure, a supernatural explanation will be inferior. There would be no reason for posing one. However if no naturalistic explanation exists, why exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation?

Because then you open the scope of the suggestions within the debate to absolutely everything. What makes your particular realm of supernatural belief accurate?

Sure, it will be scientifically inexplicable, but we already know that. You need to demonstrate why no supernatural explanation is ever valid.

Because thus far, every supernatural claim for basically everything over the history of time that has been claimed for almost anything that has then been explained through naturalistic means has been proven to be bullshit. Call it pragmatism.

What concerns me is that you seem to be ruling out the supernatural a priori - that is, it is simply taken or assumed without justification. This is a concern because if anything supernatural does exist (and has casual power), your naturalism has ruled out discovering it without the necessary warrant.

Again in the context of the discussion arguing that it could potentially exist isn't the same as providing anything of a tangible nature that exists within the realm of this debate. Again, ruling out a supernatural cause comes entirely from pragmatism.

In general an explanation will only go as far as that explanation requires. For example, an argument from design, will only explain the design of the universe. It won't claim that the explanation requires the designer to be omnipotent, supernatural, omniscient etc. This will greatly limit the amount of other "airy-fairy" explanations that will fit the bill.

But this is separate entirely from the realm of views that you actually hold. Again, even if the universe is designed by an entity (or entities) it does not provide a teleological justification for 'x religious belief'.

Within the context of this discussion, God (for all values of God) is implied to be omnipotent, supernatural etc etc.

Otherwise the primary argument of 'is x y or z religion effectively right and if so why am I a follower' falls by the wayside.