h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I agree that it is flawed. It's like that time in a geometry test when I tried to pull one on my teacher when doing a proof by writing 'if A looks congruent to B, then it is.' Only in this case, we have a vague notion of what A is (how much our limited sensory organs can contribute to knowlege is another debate entirely), and we have presupposed what B is. This is why Descartes was such a stinker. If A, in this case, the universe is complex, then B, God exists and is behind it. Really? Why? If we can think of any alternative for B, and anyone with any creativity can, then the argument doesn't work. And we can, so there you go. And how do we go about making a case for anything using ambiguous words like 'it's complicated,' and 'it works'? Is there any agreement on what is meant by those two assertions?

I was also going to mention Dawkins, I'm an atheist but that doesn't mean that design isn't a good arguement. My best argument for the nonexistance of God is the belief in wildly different Gods and religious structures and the hierarchy within the Christian church itself. And don't give me, 'they are all the same god or the others are a product of the devil......'.

You mean the created-ness of God. Wait..does that mean *we* created the universe?

Jon. Your argument doesn't work. It's like saying that the phlogiston theory is false, therefore there's no such thing as fire. People can talk all the rubbish they like about God and it doesn't mean that He doesn't exist!

My fave argument *for* His existence is the kalam cosmological argument. Very briefly, something non-material must have caused/created the material universe.

toxx

Oiseau. We routinely go for the simplest explanation in science. That is more or less Occam's razor. Complicated is simply the opposite - the other end of the spectrum.

'Works' is a trickier concept as it is essentially teleological and relative to purpose. What is the intended function of the object? If we'd never seen a watch before, we would not know to wind it or how to read it. Assuming it's going, we would at least notice that the hands move. If we thought it was supposed to be a paperweight, we might think it was fine. As a knife it would be a definite failure!

toxx

I guess it would also be helpful for the argument to define 'god.' Does any being with the capacity to put together a universe qualify? What qualifies as 'being'?

that seems to me to be if not a flaw a serious ? about the Kalam arguement

even if a non-material being/force had created the universe it might not come close to any defenition of god anyone has dreamed of

That's another interesting problem...at what point does the expression of something inherent to the universe become the expression of a will? Is an atom making an electron bond demonstrating a will? Why or why not?

Cat. You make a fair point, but the kalam answers it to the extent that the creator has to be a person. At least, we only know of two kinds of causes: material and personal. Hence the cause of the material universe has to be a person. A material cause has its effect as soon as it is there. A person chooses to act - so there is no need for an immediate effect from an eternal God.

Oiseau. This also helps with your point. We will have to do much more work to infer what other properties the Creator has. Clearly He is outside time and therefore 'eternal' in that sense. He has to be pretty well omnipotent in order to create the universe, and pretty well omniscient in order to know how to do it. That takes us a fair bit of the way to the God of Theism.

toxx

I'm taking the option , especially as I'm agnostic

Toxx:

"At least, we only know of two kinds of causes: material and personal."

And you a philosopher. We only KNOW of one kind of cause: material. All the personal we know is also material. The inference that there is another kind of personal which is non-material is a leap of faith.

F

"The laws of nature appear to have been carefully choreographed too."

We live in an universe which runs according to its own rules. These rules were not created, they just are! If they were different, we wouldn't be here.

Alji

>> "At least, we only know of two kinds of causes: material and personal."

A bit of a circular argument, I'm afraid. For those without a belief in a nonmaterial soul, *all* causes are material, since 'personal causes' are simply the result of thought, which is simply an organic form of computation.

If you believe in supernatural things, the argument might work. If you don't, it doesn't.
At best it can be used to argue there always has to have been something somewhere for the universe to exist now, even if that something is off in another dimension.
Taking 'universe' in its widest sense, including pre-big-bang, and extra dimensions, it is no harder logically to imagine a material universe that has always existed (or somehow emerged out of nothing) than to imaginge a nonmaterial deity that has always existed (or which created itself).

There is some *practical* value in the 'Why are there so many different gods?" question. Whilst it may not answer the existence question, it does raise the question of how to decide which god to believe in.
Also, whether one believes in a particular religion or not, if one does not take the view that all the gods are aspects of the same being, nor that they are the work of some devil, then it seems clear that there is something within most humans which drives them to create imaginary gods.
If there *is* some innate need in many people to look up to some superior being (possibly quite understandably - I recommend reading Clive Bromhall's excellent 'The Eternal Child') then at least that can help the analytical mind try and ignore the fervency of believers.
Whilst it is natural for people who really believe in something to be convincing, knowing that people may be strongly driven to belief for internal reasons enables one to stand back a little when trying to work out what the score is.

Mmmm - a rather slow simulpost.
Did I *really* take 30 minutes to write that posting?

Hmmm, well I don't see that changing the watch in any way means it won't work. It won't work just as well, but it will still work. For example removing some parts of it might mean it would no longer show the correct date, but the minutes and hours would still work. Or even of the minutes stopped working, you would still get a good indicatino of time by looking at the hour hand.

There are also instances in nature, where someone has found something complex and felt that it must have been manmade. But it has turned out to be made by animals or simple geology. So I don't see that complexity necessarily says there must be much in the way of intelligence behind it.

It is a matter of dispute whether there is any element of design in the universe. Those who believe that the complexity and diversity of living creatures on the earth is evidence of a creator are best advised to read the newsgroup talk.origins for a while, or consult the archive at http://www.talkorigins.org/.

There is insufficient space to summarize both sides of that debate here. However, the conclusion is that there is no scientific evidence in favor of so-called Scientific Creationism. Furthermore, there is much evidence, observation and theory that can explain many of the complexities of the universe and life on earth.

The origin of the Argument by Design is a feeling that the existence of something as incredibly intricate as, say, a human is so improbable that surely it can't have come about by chance; that surely there must be some external intelligence directing things so that humans come from the chaos deliberately.

But if human intelligence is so improbable, surely the existence of a mind capable of fashioning an entire universe complete with conscious beings must be immeasurably more unlikely? The approach used to argue in favor of the existence of a creator can be turned around and applied to the Creationist position.

This leads us to the familiar theme of "If a creator created the universe, what created the creator?", but with the addition of spiralling improbability. The only way out is to declare that the creator was not created and just "is" (or "was").

From here we might as well ask what is wrong with saying that the universe just "is" without introducing a creator? Indeed Stephen Hawking, in his book "A Brief History of Time", explains his theory that the universe is closed and finite in extent, with no beginning or end.

The Argument From Design is often stated by analogy, in the so-called Watchmaker Argument. One is asked to imagine that one has found a watch on the beach. Does one assume that it was created by a watchmaker, or that it evolved naturally? Of course one assumes a watchmaker. Yet like the watch, the universe is intricate and complex; so, the argument goes, the universe too must have a creator.

The Watchmaker analogy suffers from three particular flaws, over and above those common to all Arguments By Design. Firstly, a watchmaker creates watches from pre-existing materials, whereas God is claimed to have created the universe from nothing. These two sorts of creation are clearly fundamentally different, and the analogy is therefore rather weak.

Secondly, a watchmaker makes watches, but there are many other things in the world. If we walked further along the beach and found a nuclear reactor, we wouldn't assume it was created by the watchmaker. The argument would therefore suggest a multitude of creators, each responsible for a different part of creation (or a different universe, if you allow the possibility that there might be more than one).

Finally, in the first part of the watchmaker argument we conclude that the watch is not part of nature because it is ordered, and therefore stands out from the randomness of nature. Yet in the second part of the argument, we start from the position that the universe is obviously not random, but shows elements of order. The Watchmaker argument is thus internally inconsistent.

Apart from logical inconsistencies in the watchmaker argument, it's worth pointing out that biological systems and mechanical systems behave very differently. What's unlikely for a pile of gears is not necessarily unlikely for a mixture of biological molecules.

/my 2p's worth

Those are sound arguments, vbloke.

Also, if the universe was produced by intelligent design in the same way that the watch is you might expect the same kind of efficiency of function and purpose.

Intelligent design implies an end purpose. Watchmakers are in business because people need watches. A watch is, on the whole, adequate for its purpose without being overstated.

Why was the universe constructed in the first place? The theological view is (usually) to give humanity somewhere to live. The universe as a whole is hugely wasteful of space and materials if its primary purpose is merely to provide a home for us. Why, for example, are there stars and galaxies we cannot even see? And why is it so unimaginably dangerous? If that is intelligent design it does seem to have some questionable elements.

F

"But if human intelligence is so improbable, surely the existence of a mind capable of fashioning an entire universe complete with conscious beings must be immeasurably more unlikely?"

Hmm... not sure how I can phrase this. Well, we'll give it a whirl...

Not necessarily. The argument is that in a universe where most things are relatively simple, especially compared to the human body, the odds of something as complicated as an intelligent, fully-functional human arising by chance are ridiculously small. However, that is within the confines of the universe, where we can compare things to the human body. If the universe had not been created yet, then there is nothing to compare to. The odds of a God being created can't be measured.

Actually, it is almost assured. If something existed before anything else existed (God) then either He was always there, or He created Himself. There is no other way for Him to be there. In the universe, it is technically possible to humans to arise on their own, but the odds are horrendous. With God, it is not possible that something led to His creation, because nothing was there before He was. Of course, this is all assuming that God created the universe, which of course not everyone will agree with. My overall point, in case I'm not getting it across very well, is that you can't determine the "odds" of God existing based on other things in the universe, because God supposedly existed before the universe and therefore is not bound by any of its rules.

OK, as an atheist here is my response:

It is supposedly obvious that the watch was designed by an intelligent being. It is complicated and it "works." When you say the watch works, what you mean is that it was designed to tell the time, and that it does tell the time. If you just mean that it seems to do something, but you're not sure what it does or what it is supposed to do, how do you know it is operating correctly?

What is the world supposed to do, ie: what is its function? Since this is not obvious, we clearly need an instruction manual, or a better user-interface.