Analysis of Christopher Hitchen's argument against God

Of course your argument will always lead back to the same place.
A place of infinite question begging that explains nothing at all.
You have Evolution needing a cause, the environment needing a cause, everything needing a cause, some unknown cause needing a cause.
Whereas evolving environment and evolving life have factual , substantial and empirical explanation running all through them with no signs or need at all for a creationist's cause imagining intelligent design.


Quote from OPTIONAL777:

Okay. Change by environment.

Leads us back to the same place...random chance change by the cause of the environment, not knowing what caused the environment to happen the way it did.

Not knowing is not knowing cause?

Nope, we don't know cause.

So since we don't know cause, we only at best know process following and preceding from cause, we observe effect only, not cause...there is no valid reason to assume chance over design...or vice versa.

The scientific models would produce the same results either way...
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Of course it takes us back to the beginning...at which time no one was there to witness who can testify to what happened.

A place of ignoring the important questions explains why people become dogmatic in their beliefs, like atheists who claim they know that no God exists.

Dismissing questions that you have no answer to is a form of willful ignorance...

Science has been always based on partial truths, as full knowledge of the workings of nature are not known...and for some to suggest they know through science what if anything preceded nature are intellectually dishonest.

Whereas evolving environment and evolving life have factual.

Change is obvious. Gee, great use of that noggin...what a discovery...things change. Gee, that's a real foundation for building any causative argument.

...substantial and empirical explanation running all through them with no signs or need at all for a creationist's cause imagining intelligent design.

Much of science these days when it comes to the deeper levels of reality are purely beyond empiricism demanding and requiring the use of abstract concepts beyond the physical senses ability to know or test with math and sophisticated models. They also involve the use of extremely advanced mathematics, which are know to contain logical inconsistencies. The leaps from pure empiricism to declarations of "substantial and empirical explanation" sufficient to dismiss what are possibly the most important questions is the hallmark of a person who doesn't want to actually put their own thinking to a test.

no signs or need at all for a creationist's cause imagining intelligent design.

I would ask you what would constitute "signs" for a cause beyond the random chance thingy...but you won't not give a straight answer to that...now would you?

I can equally say that there is need at all for a non creationist's no cause imagined ignorant random chance guess. Not unless you are fueled by some emotionalism that requires you deny something that you actually have no knowledge of.

You remind me of someone who has played to a draw in chess, but won't accept it...refusing to admit that they can't win.

Unless someone has embraced subjectivity as the method by which to measure something objectively, there is absolutely no method within the universe to study the universe objectively. Sure, anyone can take a point of view within the universe to create a point of view and examine parts to guess about the whole...but that is only a relativistic view, not a complete view sufficient to proclaim "knowing" cause of the universe.

I like science, and I really like honest scientists who always use words like "probably" or "generally" or "likely" because they know the foolishness of someone who states what are actually uncertainties as something that they believe is with full certainty. They play a lot of scientific "if" games, meaning they propose something they don't know, then see "if" they can fit some model to make their guess work out they way they want it to. If enough of current scientists agree with it, they feel all warm inside, although they know on the basis of history that the bottom may fall out on their theory with the next theory "fits" the "if" better.

The smart scientists know what they can actually know, the limits of that knowledge, and easily spot a true believer in practice when they see one...

You are a true believer, no question. That's a fact of empiricism. Truly, anyone who has even just a minute understanding of quantum theory has to accept more uncertainty about effects on a macro level than they ever thought imaginable.





Quote from stu:

Of course your argument will always lead back to the same place.
A place of infinite question begging that explains nothing at all.
You have Evolution needing a cause, the environment needing a cause, everything needing a cause, some unknown cause needing a cause.
Whereas evolving environment and evolving life have factual , substantial and empirical explanation running all through them with no signs or need at all for a creationist's cause imagining intelligent design.
More...
 
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Good piece on rationalism vs. empiricism.

My guess is that like classical mechanics of Newton vs. quantum mechanics, both rationalism and empiricism are true...at their own levels, and useful at their own level.

QM didn't reject Newtonism as being false on its own level or from that limited point of view, just that with QM there was a different level of reality where things did not work the same way.

You can't prove QM on a Newtonian level, any more than you can disprove Newtonism on a QM level. Different levels, different rules of the game.

Is a solid block of ice really solid?

If someone drops it on your head, sure thing you feel and believe you got hit by a solid object.

But on a deeper level of reality, is the block actually fully solid in the way we generally understand solid...or is our head even solid at a sub-atomic level?

This gap between what we can actually experience directly, and what is discovered through abstract math and rationalism is growing larger all the time. Our ability to even reason in an abstract capacity is not understood...yet many people have the ability to reason and think abstractly beyond the limits of the physical sense and empiricism.

One thing that I speculate will eventually happen as we delve deeper into the workings of our physical universe, is greater and greater weapons will be developed, with power to easily destroy an entire solar systems by working on a more fundamental level than the atomic level. Of course, at that level we will be able to harness the energy for good as well...but human nature, being a mixture of both positive and negative elements, will likely find a destructive way to use that energy.
 
Quote from jem:

also by the way, depending on your definition, evolution is not fact.
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Evolution is a fact.
Depending on YOUR definition, even a fact isn't a fact.
 
"This gap between what we can actually experience directly, and what is discovered through abstract math and rationalism is growing larger all the time. Our ability to even reason in an abstract capacity is not understood...yet many people have the ability to reason and think abstractly beyond the limits of the physical sense and empiricism."

Peeking again...

This is true (a la Einstein's "Thought Experiments"....

The scientific method is by definition bound to what we can bring (via instrumentation) within the realm of our senses for observation. But it is questionable whether that process can continue until we reach the foundational matter of the universe.

Superstring theory may explain the composition of the universe, but will we ever be able to observe a superstring? If not, it will remain philosophy, not science.

It is interesting to think that the ultimate answers to those kind of questions may end up full-circle back to philosophizing, and a "faith" that is not too different than when ancient man looked up and wondered..."Is there a God?"
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Good piece on rationalism vs. empiricism.

My guess is that like classical mechanics of Newton vs. quantum mechanics, both rationalism and empiricism are true...at their own levels, and useful at their own level.

QM didn't reject Newtonism as being false on its own level or from that limited point of view, just that with QM there was a different level of reality where things did not work the same way.

You can't prove QM on a Newtonian level, any more than you can disprove Newtonism on a QM level. Different levels, different rules of the game.

Is a solid block of ice really solid?

If someone drops it on your head, sure thing you feel and believe you got hit by a solid object.

But on a deeper level of reality, is the block actually fully solid in the way we generally understand solid...or is our head even solid at a sub-atomic level?

This gap between what we can actually experience directly, and what is discovered through abstract math and rationalism is growing larger all the time. Our ability to even reason in an abstract capacity is not understood...yet many people have the ability to reason and think abstractly beyond the limits of the physical sense and empiricism.

One thing that I speculate will eventually happen as we delve deeper into the workings of our physical universe, is greater and greater weapons will be developed, with power to easily destroy an entire solar systems by working on a more fundamental level than the atomic level. Of course, at that level we will be able to harness the energy for good as well...but human nature, being a mixture of both positive and negative elements, will likely find a destructive way to use that energy.
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QM is unequivocally proven on many levels.
Intelligent design creationism on non, not even making it to the level of reasonable.

I really don't think you need to be Einstein to realize or appreciate that observation or experience of the infinitesimally small atomic or particle QM scale, is not going to equate with experience in an immense magnitude of size to it.

Because it doesn’t , you seem to think that is reason to think abstractly apparently, that there must be or even could be a magical intelligent design creator instead!
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Good piece on rationalism vs. empiricism.

My guess is that like classical mechanics of Newton vs. quantum mechanics, both rationalism and empiricism are true...at their own levels, and useful at their own level.

QM didn't reject Newtonism as being false on its own level or from that limited point of view, just that with QM there was a different level of reality where things did not work the same way.

You can't prove QM on a Newtonian level, any more than you can disprove Newtonism on a QM level. Different levels, different rules of the game.

Is a solid block of ice really solid?

If someone drops it on your head, sure thing you feel and believe you got hit by a solid object.

But on a deeper level of reality, is the block actually fully solid in the way we generally understand solid...or is our head even solid at a sub-atomic level?

This gap between what we can actually experience directly, and what is discovered through abstract math and rationalism is growing larger all the time. Our ability to even reason in an abstract capacity is not understood...yet many people have the ability to reason and think abstractly beyond the limits of the physical sense and empiricism.

One thing that I speculate will eventually happen as we delve deeper into the workings of our physical universe, is greater and greater weapons will be developed, with power to easily destroy an entire solar systems by working on a more fundamental level than the atomic level. Of course, at that level we will be able to harness the energy for good as well...but human nature, being a mixture of both positive and negative elements, will likely find a destructive way to use that energy.
More...
So your ever drifting argument is science does wonderful things and proves stuff , but because it doesn't prove everything , therefore anything might be true?
Especially completely non scientific wildly unsupported imaginations around an idea that an invisible God Goblin caused everything except itself, just because you want it to.

Have your idea by all means, but why are you trying to drag it toward science ?
Science doesn't know everything… therefore intelligent design, is not much of a proposition by any stretch.
 
Quote from LORD KAL-EL:

Well first you might bother to actually define evolution before you declare it "factual".
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It would make no difference to those, possibly like yourself, to whom a fact is not a fact, whenever religious belief is taking precedence to pretty much everything else.
If you really don't know why Evolution is a fact by now, there is a world of Google out there to help you understand.
 
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