Dawkins' Atheist Bus

[IdleRich]

"Why is it so threatening to some when others question the veracity of someone's publicly professed beliefs?"

re the "threatening" thing, I don't think people are threatened by Waffle's (lack of) ideas so much as his incredible rudeness - though threatened probably isn't the right term. It's completely possible to have a reasoned debate with you or Jambo or Josef K or Gek-Opel or K-Punk or whoever, who may to a greater or lesser degree espouse similar positions to some of those of Waffle. The problem is that when his errors are pointed out, or just when he feels like it, he starts insulting people. I think you might have inadvertently hit the nail on the head though as to why he is so rude; when people start getting annoyed his reaction is to assume that it is the radicalness of his ideas that are doing it not his tiresome insults, allowing him to think that he's challenging people in a way that is very different from what is actually happening. Delivering a statement (never an argument) along with an insult means that people are almost certain to react and he can pretend to himself it's the power of the statement rather than the insult that's done it. Accusing people who disagree with him of being threatened is thus a standard and intellectually bankrupt response (along with the perennial favourite way of avoiding an argument "it's there but you can't see it" which was wheeled out once again last night I noticed).

 

[jambo]

Well, that's the big question isn't it? Is it possible for "intelligence" or beings with "purpose" to come into existence where before there weren't such beings? I think that assuming that not to be possible is begging the question isn't it? In other words, what you're saying here is that there can never be a point or sequence of points before which intelligence did not exist and after which it did, and then we're back to the most basic "something can't come from nothing" arguments of religion. Unless you are simply saying that there is no intelligence now and never can be.
Either way, my guess is that most proponents of evolution would say that something which can possess a purpose can arise from "blind natural selection" and that the process by which this occurs is evolution and that is pretty weird. So basically they would say that the car is intelligently designed. Just my guess though.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that most would. That would be the non religious consensus I should think.

What I'm wondering about though, what I'm suggesting, is does a covert belief in a creator deity keep sneaking in the back door? In a sense what is happening is that we as humans are posited as gods, as agents of creation. You can say that our ability to create and act intelligently arises, emerges, out of blind processes but doesn't this make us sound even more like gods, our origins and nature seemingly divine, supernatural and un-knowable? Further a creator can only be said to be acting intelligently if it's own creation arises out of intelligent design. So who made us?

So this is not so much a question of teleology as of agency, where that can come from and what it means. For instance according to something like Spinoza's radical immanence discussed above you would not have to talk about human technology as being intelligently designed. That would just be an illusion of perspective.

 

[waffle]

Does the discussion change when we drop the word "ultimate" from in front of the word "goal"? Actually existing goals tend not to be ultimate. Part of what I was trying to suggest in the discussion of the Laplacean system is that if the terminal state is entirely determined by the initial state, there's no room for "purpose" conceived as local governance.

Can a deterministic system have a goal, whether an 'actually existing' local or a 'final cause' global? I don't think so.

It's always amused me that some people think message boards and chat rooms are "degraded" forms of communication, while at the same time they think blogs are on the same level that a book is, a sacred object. As if blogs aren't *the* most masturbatory activity you could possibly engage in...

A Blog is a Web-log with the "We" removed?

 

[poetix]

There are two senses of the phrase "in order that" that we should consider. One is the sense that is used when we are talking of human purposes: "the building was wired with explosives in order that it should collapse in a controlled manner". The other is the sense that is used when we are talking about "divine" purpose: "I was afflicted with this hideous skin disease in order that I might learn the virtue of humility".

Both senses have it that a series of events was "ordained"; they differ as to the origin of the ordinance, and the type of agency involved in bringing it about. That which is divinely ordained might be brought about by "intervention", the exercise of supernatural but causally specific agency within history, or it may be simply be a matter of "the universe...unfolding as it should", fulfilling its predestiny. That which is humanly ordained may similarly be the result of discrete, deliberate actions, or "systemically" produced by particular forms of social organisation.

Now, it is not divinely ordained that replicators should replicate (a replicator is an entity that ordains, at a minimum, its own replication), or that species should evolve with particular characteristics: evolutionary theory's sense of what is "ordained" includes neither divine (trans- or extra-historical) nor human (individual or social-systemic) ordinance, but rather extremely local and short-term goal-execution that is a) massively parallel, and b) massively iterated (both for really very massive values of "massive"). However, it doesn't work without a split/correlation between "representation" and "instantiation", and a mechanism whereby the one "steers" the other. Claiming that it was without "purpose" in this sense would be like claiming that it was acausal: you'd be left with "blind chance" without any way of gaining traction in the material organisation of species. Evolution is exceptionally parsimonious with purpose: it involves the absolute minimum necessary to get things done; and it does so without there needing to be any larger purpose governing this distribution of low(est)-level purposiveness.

The question about Dawkins I think is whether he sometimes speaks as if there were some "larger" purpose in evolution than the most minimal purposiveness demonstrated by his "blind watchmaker". I'm not convinced that he does; but it's arguable at least.

 

[IdleRich]

"What I'm wondering about though, what I'm suggesting, is does a covert belief in a creator deity keep sneaking in the back door? In a sense what is happening is that we as humans are posited as gods, as agents of creation. You can say that our ability to create and act intelligently arises, emerges, out of blind processes but doesn't this make us sound even more like gods, our origins and nature seemingly divine, supernatural and un-knowable?"

But why would it need to be unknowable? I'm sure that some would argue that one day they expect to know precisely how it arises by blind chance. Presumably then it would not be divine. But assuming that it was unknowable, does it then automatically follow that it is divine?

"Further a creator can only be said to be acting intelligently if its own creation arises out of intelligent design. So who made us?"

Aren't you just repeating what you just said above? The statement I referred to as question-begging? Like you just said, the non-religious consensus would be that a creator can be said to act intelligently even if that creater has itself arisen from blind chance. I agree that that may be a contentious statement but I think that its negation (ie what you just stated) is equally contentious.

"So this is not so much a question of teleology as of agency, where that can come from and what it means. For instance according to something like Spinoza's radical immanence discussed above you would not have to talk about human technology as being intelligently designed. That would just be an illusion of perspective."

Yes, definitely a question of agency.

 

[waffle]

that would be quite a different thing from Dawkins explicitly stating that evolution has a purpose.

He states it all the time. Read his works.

re the "threatening" thing, I don't think people are threatened by Waffle's (lack of) ideas so much as his incredible rudeness - though threatened probably isn't the right term. It's completely possible to have a reasoned debate with you or Jambo or Josef K or Gek-Opel or K-Punk or whoever, who may to a greater or lesser degree espouse similar positions to some of those of Waffle. The problem is that when his errors are pointed out, or just when he feels like it, he starts insulting people.

Here we go again, finding any arbitrary pretext to belch out more abuse. Look, first T invaded this thread with a succession of unprovoked insults, then YOU joined in, and you've been trolling this thread ever since. Indeed, it is all you've been doing in this thread. Your prejudice is pathological, as pointed out long ago. That's why you and T are flamer parasites hereabouts.

You haven't 'pointed out' any errors other than those in your own incoherent, irrational assertions. Reasoned debate disappears whenever you and T appear on the scene.

 

[jambo]

If it's a question of agency then it's a question of will.

What is suggested by holding the simultaneous beliefs that human creations are the result of intelligent design while human beings themselves are the result of bind processes is that something we could call will has simply appeared where it didn't exist before; agency has been born into the universe. I don't think there is any difference other than the terminology between this and what would in religious language be called divine, supernatural origins. Maybe we can work out a description of of how this happens but I suspect that would involve admitting into physics things that would presently be considered metaphysics. Then you have the problem of the how of the how...

So what I'm saying is that this is much closer to being a religious viewpoint than is generally admitted and acknowledged.

 

[IdleRich]

"He states it all the time. Read his works."

But I have read his works which I why I instantly knew what you said was wrong. A little further investigation lead me to his website where he provides a neat and up to date summary of his ideas in which he explicitly states that to say that evolution has a purpose would be completely wrong. By contrast all you've done is insist that it doesn't say what it says and provided a quote that is part of a bigger quote which in its entirety backs up what I'm saying.

"Here we go again, finding any arbitrary pretext to belch out more abuse. Look, first T invaded this thread with a succession of unprovoked insults, then YOU joined in, and you've been trolling this thread ever since. Indeed, it is all you've been doing in this thread. Your prejudice is pathological, as pointed out long ago. That's why you and T are flamer parasites hereabouts."

Not so. It's always you who starts the insults and always you who escalates them. That's why you always get banned and then come back under another name (and then sometimes pretend to email yourself as some kind of proof that you're not you - which was pretty funny I'll give you that).

 

[poetix]

Why is the appearance of agency in the universe where there was none before any more mysterious than the appearance of, say, pulsars where there were none before?

I would suggest that you can get from "no agency" to "human agency" incrementally, via material autopoeisis. Cranes, not skyhooks.

 

[IdleRich]

"If it's a question of agency then it's a question of will.
What is suggested by holding the simultaneous beliefs that human creations are the result of intelligent design while human beings themselves are the result of bind processes is that something we could call will has simply appeared where it didn't exist before; agency has been born into the universe."

Sure, that's what I was getting at before wasn't it here?

"Well, that's the big question isn't it? Is it possible for "intelligence" or beings with "purpose" to come into existence where before there weren't such beings?"

And I'm not disagreeing with you as such. But isn't this just the same argument that religion has always made? For something (usually matter when this is most crudely stated but you could equally well replace that word with agency) to come into existence when it didn't exist before requires the divine. Not to knock it but it's strange that after forever we're still at the same place.

"I don't think there is any difference other than the terminology between this and what would in religious language be called divine, supernatural origins. Maybe we can work out a description of of how this happens but I suspect that would involve admitting into physics things that would presently be considered metaphysics. Then you have the problem of the how of the how..."

Maybe so. Maybe not. I guess that's the (other) question isn't it? If one wanted to deny your description that posits the divine then the answer here would be to state that maybe it is theoretically possible to understand how this happens (and how the how) within physics. In other words, how do you justify the "I suspect" part of what you said? Isn't this where your position approaches religion? Obviously I see that the same argument would apply to the other side, ie what makes the scientist believe that his science will indeed come up with the answers. I guess this faith is how you can liken science to a religion (though maybe the answer to that would be to say that they are agnostic as to whether it can or can't but they're going to give it a go). Anyway, I'll stop there as I'm debating with myself.

"So what I'm saying is that this is much closer to being a religious viewpoint than is generally admitted and acknowledged."

Fair enough.
What about taking the other direction from the assumption that agency cannot come to exist if it did not always exist. By which I mean, what if we say that the car isn't intelligently designed? That is, agency didn't exist and therefore it still doesn't.

 

[jambo]

Why is the appearance of agency in the universe where there was none before any more mysterious than the appearance of, say, pulsars where there were none before?

Well it's all mysterious in that sense but what I'm talking about is what is implied when an atheistic position makes that fundamental distinction. Viz. human activity is intelligent, pulsar activity isn't.

I would suggest that you can get from "no agency" to "human agency" incrementally, via material autopoeisis. Cranes, not skyhooks.

Maybe so but it seems a funny kind of material that allows for this wouldn't you say? Almost as if something like distributed agency is present in the substance but only takes on the appearance of local agency when concentrated in a sufficiently complex organisation.

 

[poetix]

You only need "distributed magic" to explain the appearance of "local magic" if you think that local magic is magic. Again, we don't need to theorize a distributed pulsar-ness in the cosmos in order to explain the appearance of pulsars.

 

[jambo]

What about taking the other direction from the assumption that agency cannot come to exist if it did not always exist. By which I mean, what if we say that the car isn't intelligently designed? That is, agency didn't exist and therefore it still doesn't.

Yes indeed, some would say that is the case.

 

[waffle]

But I have read his works which I why I instantly knew what you said was wrong.

You haven't, and the quote you provided earlier further confirmed his teleology.

Not so. It's always you who starts the insults.

T AND you initiated the abuse on this thread, still continuing. Indeed, neither T nor yourself have responded to any of my posts on this thread without centrally embedding insult, your posting 'teleology' here. The rest of your post is meaningless fantasy.

 

[poetix]

Essentially the problem with Intelligent Design is that it begins with the assumption that intelligence is magic: that it's exceptional (rather than merely rare) with regard to matter in general, and that it can only exist as a result of the action of some pre-existing intelligence.

 

[waffle]

Essentially the problem with Intelligent Design is that it begins with the assumption that intelligence is magic: that it's exceptional (rather than merely rare) with regard to matter in general, and that it can only exist as a result of the action of some pre-existing intelligence.

Which is to say it is attributed to supernatural causes, to positing Cartesian duality?

Why is the appearance of agency in the universe where there was none before any more mysterious than the appearance of, say, pulsars where there were none before?

Do you stress the appearance of agency to suggest that an underlying causal process has been misrecognized as agency, such misrecognition as mysterious as something from nothing?

 

[jambo]

And I'm not disagreeing with you as such. But isn't this just the same argument that religion has always made? For something (usually matter when this is most crudely stated but you could equally well replace that word with agency) to come into existence when it didn't exist before requires the divine. Not to knock it but it's strange that after forever we're still at the same place.

Yeah, that's one of the points I've been making. What you hear from atheists still often has this curious religious flavour. But I also think there is more of a qualitative distinction made between the appearance of matter and then at the level of human beings suddenly you have intelligence and agency and purpose.

Maybe so. Maybe not. I guess that's the (other) question isn't it? If one wanted to deny your description that posits the divine then the answer here would be to state that maybe it is theoretically possible to understand how this happens (and how the how) within physics.

I'm not putting it forward as my position so much as pointing out that this is or looks to me like the position of many self professed atheists.

In other words, how do you justify the "I suspect" part of what you said? Isn't this where your position approaches religion?

No, it's just what I think - I don't need to justify a suspicion when I declare it as such.

Obviously I see that the same argument would apply to the other side, ie what makes the scientist believe that his science will indeed come up with the answers. I guess this faith is how you can liken science to a religion (though maybe the answer to that would be to say that they are agnostic as to whether it can or can't but they're going to give it a go). Anyway, I'll stop there as I'm debating with myself.

Some may scientists exhibit blind faith and that would be unscientific but I think confidence in the method would be necessary in order to get to the lab every day

I'm not trying to liken science to a religion in this sense at all.

 

[jambo]

Do you stress the appearance of agency to suggest that an underlying causal process has been misrecognized as agency, such misrecognition as mysterious as something from nothing?

Yes, something like that. I phrase it like that because that's where the unreconstructed (undeconstructed?) atheist makes the sudden and radical distinction and that's what seems interesting. Suddenly at the level of human beings we have this new thing and can speak of 'intelligent design', whilst simultaneously (and now loudly, evangelistically) holding that it absolutely did not exist in the universe before.

Essentially the problem with Intelligent Design is that it begins with the assumption that intelligence is magic: that it's exceptional (rather than merely rare) with regard to matter in general, and that it can only exist as a result of the action of some pre-existing intelligence.

Yes that's nice I think. If intelligence is defined as the processing and transmission of information then you could say that it is right there in the matter.

 

[IdleRich]

"Yes indeed, some would say that is the case."

Yes, and I can see why, but it feels unsatisfactory (doesn't it?) if that counts for anything.

"Yeah, that's one of the points I've been making. What you hear from atheists still often has this curious religious flavour."

My point is after all that's been said science vs religion are still at the same stand-off that they were always at - does something coming from nothing require the divine or not? Just kind of funny how it all boils down to the same argument we were probably having at playtime in primary school.

"But I also think there is more of a qualitative distinction made between the appearance of matter and then at the level of human beings suddenly you have intelligence and agency and purpose."

Not sure about this, I think if one can accept that matter can come from nothing without divine intervention then it's probably equally possible to accept that agency can arise from that matter in a similar way (whatever that is). Obviously it's human to say that intelligence is a different type of property from hotness (say) but is it? And if so, in what ways?

"I'm not putting it forward as my position so much as pointing out that this is or looks to me like the position of many self professed atheists."

You think that most atheists believe that physics is not sufficient to describe the rise of agency? That can't be right. Surely what you mean is that they assume that it is but they may be wrong and their assumption that it is is similar to faith?
Don't mean to put words in your mouth so tell me if I'm wrong here.

"No, it's just what I think - I don't need to justify a suspicion when I declare it as such."

Fair enough. But given that there has been no argument made to show that science is not up to the task of explaining intelligence then I don't think a suspicion that it's not is enough to say a hope that it will is a faith position.

 

[jambo]

Yes, and I can see why, but it feels unsatisfactory (doesn't it?) if that counts for anything.

What do you think is missing?

Not sure about this, I think if one can accept that matter can come from nothing without divine intervention then it's probably equally possible to accept that agency can arise from that matter in a similar way (whatever that is).

No it's just that apart from the language used they are not really very different.

Obviously it's human to say that intelligence is a different type of property from hotness (say) but is it?

A mix of both is best.

And if so, in what ways?

Ask the next mystical atheist you meet, it's not me making the distinction that is under discussion here.

You think that most atheists believe that physics is not sufficient to describe the rise of agency?

I've said nothing of the kind.

That can't be right. Surely what you mean is that they assume that it is but they may be wrong and their assumption that it is is similar to faith?
Don't mean to put words in your mouth so tell me if I'm wrong here.

You mean what I mean by a statement that I didn't make?

Yes you are entirely wrong. I think that most atheists say that agency and purpose and goals exist in the presence and actions of humans where they did not in the universe before.

Do you not get that this about looking at covert unacknowledged religious type assumptions in atheist thought which is barely obscured with a little sophistry and switched metaphors / terminology? You seem to think I am arguing against science or putting forward a religious viewpoint or something.