The arguement that recently convinced me of god's existence

[Cyrus]

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Induction doesn't provide certainty, though. Axioms do.

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Aaargh. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Axioms do not provide certainty either.

Axioms are the arbitrary (i.e. without proof) foundations upon which a system of thought is built, through the laws of logical inference (themselves axiomatic) that we elect to employ.

The systems of thought that are thusly constructed do not necessarily provide certainty, in and by themselves. But they assist us to further understand, to promote our knowledge.

We arrive at certainty (perhaps, more precisely, conviction above a certain arbitrarily defined threshold) when empirical evidence is combined with systems of thought which have been constructed as above. Intuition is not necessarily correct, at all times, nor necessarily useful, e.g. Euclidian geometry, constructed upon its specific axioms, appeared to be intuitively, certainly correct for millenia but was proven last century to be insufficient for the description of our cosmos.

[NotReady]

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it's about it being mandatory that a designer leave evidence.


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Where did I say mandatory?

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1) it makes no sense to say "order produces order" so at least intitially, if order is 'produced' chance is the only source.


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So a car was produced by chance?

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3) Chance will always produce order, it has no choice. a)given enough time, every alignment is possible, including all the ordered ones.


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This is incomprehensible to me.

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A Much better question is "how could chance not produce order".


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By producing disorder.

[NotReady]

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We might give a superior mile at such a superstitious notion, and explain that the arranging was really done by the blind forces of physics, in this case the action of waves.


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It's a major, unprovable assumption that the forces of physics are blind. Physics also operates by natural law, not random chance. Dawkins assumes there is no mind behind the universe which is the question at issue.

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So the question is, how do we know whether there was a conscious force that structured the design with that particular end in mind?


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How do we know there wasn't? The point is that ID says there will be evidence of design in the universe, which there is. It's a prediction with some evidence that it's true, not an assertion of absolute truth.

[hmkpoker]

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A Much better question is "how could chance not produce order".

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By producing disorder.

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Amoebae. Extinction. Tornadoes. Cancer. Quantum randomness. Uranium. Cyanide. Schizophrenia. Geography. Entropy. Bipolar disorder. Platypi.

Your agrument is grounded in you qualifying everything as evidence of order, regardless of the fact that the appearance of order can arise independantly of conscious intent.

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Physics also operates by natural law, not random chance.

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You are the only one arguing in these terms. No one here other than you has said that things happen by random chance. If they did, why does causality seem to exist? The appearance of randomness is not true randomness, it is just our inability to understand it.

And lastly, David Sklansky's consistent winnings, as have all the big name professionals, come from "random chance." Golly, what are the odds!

[imported_luckyme]

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The point is that ID says there will be evidence of design in the universe, which there is. It's a prediction with some evidence that it's true, not an assertion of absolute truth.

[/ QUOTE ] Er, uhmmm, I think predictions are about outcomes unknown at the time of the prediction. Else I could predict, "A neat-freak fairy insists on order in the universe. There is order in the universe. Thus, that is evidence of a neat-freak fairy." Oh, sorry, that IS your claim... ooops.

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You think it's rational for my friend to think that "foosball is of the devil" because his mom told him God said it was?


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That's not what I said. I don't think the devil invented foosball. There is a way your friend could be rational and think his playing is due to Satan's temptation, however. Just as a hypothet, if he was totally addicted to the game, missed work so he got fired, missed school so he flunked out, ignored his wife so he got divorced - all because of his obsession with foosball, then it might be that Satan is using his addiction to ruin his life.

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So you think my friend is being irrational for thinking that "foosball is of the devil" because his mom said so?

Is that belief ("foosball is of the devil") rational? And his reason for that belief rational (because his mom said so)?

And, is dodging the question rational? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] I think so, but please answer the question.

[hmkpoker]

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You think it's rational for my friend to think that "foosball is of the devil" because his mom told him God said it was?


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That's not what I said. I don't think the devil invented foosball. There is a way your friend could be rational and think his playing is due to Satan's temptation, however. Just as a hypothet, if he was totally addicted to the game, missed work so he got fired, missed school so he flunked out, ignored his wife so he got divorced - all because of his obsession with foosball, then it might be that Satan is using his addiction to ruin his life.

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OR...it could be (given the scenario that foosball is ruining our fellow's life) that he's just dumb as a sack of hammers and Satan has nothing to do with it.

I don't see you saying that Satan is responsible for non-believers' atheism, it's always been our choice.

[maurile]

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Name one falsifiable prediction [Intelligent Design] makes.

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By the way (in response to one of your other posts), "predicting" that we will find evidence of design in the universe is not a falsifiable prediction. I might predict that we will find a pink unicorn, but that's not falsifiable, either, unless I specify where and when we'll find it. Otherwise, for every year that goes by in which we haven't found it, I'll just say that we're not done looking yet.

For ID to make a falsifiable prediction along the lines you've suggested, it has to come up with a way to observationally distinguish between designed things and non-designed things, which nobody has done. Then it will have to make a prediction about the characteristics of something that we haven't observed yet. (For example, it might predict that no new species of fish we find that live in total darkness in deep caves will have vestigial, non-functional eyes [since giving non-functional eyes to fish that live in total darkness would be stupd]. That would be a genuine prediction. It could actually serve as the basis for a research program. It would be falsifiable. It would be awesome. It would also most likely turn out to be wrong, but that's a step up from where ID currently is. Right now, it goes in Wolfgang Pauli's "not even wrong" category.)

[NotReady]

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I might predict that we will find a pink unicorn, but that's not falsifiable, either, unless I specify where and when we'll find it. Otherwise, for every year that goes by in which we haven't found it, I'll just say that we're not done looking yet.


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Do you think SETI is an unscientific waste of money?

[maurile]

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Do you think SETI is an unscientific waste of money?

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SETI isn't a scientific theory. It's a search. In any event, it is completely non-analogous to ID: SETI and Intelligent Design (by Seth Shostak, SETI Institute).