Philosophy is fine

Philosophy is fine, but to have the full experience of being alive, of engaging in reality without distraction, one must shun imaginary concepts such as ghosts and Gods.

God should be measurable

If God can affect humans, then there is a context in which God and humans coexist.

If this context exists, then humans should be able to access God.

If God can be accessed, then he can be observed and measured, thus proving the existence of God.

The fact that no theist has embarked on a successful quest to find this shared context and to access God for observation and measurement admits to one or more possible explanations. They may be too lazy. They may be afraid of what they'll find (which admits to a number of possible conclusions itself). The may not be capable of doing so. It may not exist. There are probably others that I've missed, but all of this leads us to a conclusion that God is not very probable, given that the people having the vested interest in proving the existence of God haven't done so.

That also leads to another possible conclusion - that they have a vested interest in not proving the existence of God, which allows them to define God for their own mysterious purposes.

Dr. Craig's First Rebuttal

Today, I'll start on Dr. william Lane Craig's first rebuttal in the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?". The first thing I noticed is - as others have pointed out - Dr. Craig is frequently dishonest. That he continues this dishonesty, and is revered for it in the fundamentalist community, drives non-believers crazy. Incidentally, Luke Muehlhauser at the now-inactive website Common Sense Atheism ranked this debate as "ugly" - meaning that Dr. C's opponent got hammered. So I'll bet Dr. Pigliucci doesn't call him out on this.

Previous reviews of this same debate can be found starting here through Dr. P concludes his opening remarks

Dr. Craig begins his first rebuttal:

Second Question
Now Dr. Pigliucci presents in my count about five arguments that he thinks would falsify the hypothesis that God exists. Let's look at each of these and see if they're persuasive arguments.

I have to stop right here and point out that immediately Dr. Craig says something that is not true. He says "Dr. Pigliucci presents in my count about five arguments that he thinks would falsify the hypothesis that God exists". Dr. Pigliucci clearly stated that he would not and can not falsify the existence of God - so he's explicitly not refuting it.

It's worth reiterating here that in both organized debate and in science, the burden of proof falls to the claimant. Dr. Craig, in claimimg that atheists have not been able to falsify the existence of God, is ignoring conventions that are fundamental to intellectual and scientific progress. It is wholly unproductive to allow charlatans to make unsubstantiated claims and waste the time of the public, but this is one of Dr. Craig's favorite tactics.

In everyday life, You would call this "a lie".

Argument from Imperfections
(1) He says the universe is not perfect. For example, squids have better eyes than human beings. I don't think that this argument in any way disproves God's existence. Let me mention three reasons.

First, that objection assumes a static theory of creation--that God created each individual creature, which never changes. But even creationists typically hold to a dynamic theory of creation which allows micro-evolutionary change within certain types, so that God could create a certain primal type of being and then there would be micro-evolutionary change within that type, and you might look at these sorts of imperfections (as he calls them) as by-products of micro-evolutionary pressures which gradually emerge.

"Dynamic theory of creation"? Really? Google this, and you get a bunch of creationist references. Citing fringe theories that the claimants have never lifted a finger to test is hardly compelling.

At this stage of the debate, we can't know what Dr. P will say in response, or whether he even cares to address this. Regardless, Dr. Pigliucci is not creationist. He clearly asserted principles of evolution, which don't require "static" or "dynamic" theories of creation - it doesn't require "creation" (in Dr. Craig's sense) at all. Dr. Craig is thus putting words into Pigliucci's mouth - lying.

Secondly, the objection presumes to know what God would do if He were to design something, that we know that God would create the eye in a certain way if He existed or He would create the digestive system in this way if He existed. And I personally think that's simply presumptuous. We have no idea how to speculate about what God would create if He were to exist. Maybe it's not important to God that we be able to have eyes to see in exactly a certain way, maybe there are other off-setting reasons why God permits systems designed in this way to exist. In other words, the argument is enormously presumptuous in thinking that we know what God would create if He were to exist.

This argument is enormously vacuous, to turn a phrase. Dr. Craig is defending a so-far-imaginary being by attacking Dr. P's observation that the human eye is less capable than other eyes. If this debate is about whether God exists, then neither participant can really make claims based on what God might prefer, because the question of God isn't resolved. So Dr. P's criticism is warranted, and Dr. C's defense is not..

And thirdly, perfection is a relative term, after all. These supposedly imperfect organs like the human eye function extraordinarily well. I mean, think of what the human eye has done in terms of art, literature, architecture, and so forth! This is hardly persuasive evidence, I think, that it could not be the product of an intelligent designer.

...sigh... Dr. Craig is making a blatant argument for intelligent design. ...sigh... Teleological arguments rely on the claimant being unwilling or unable to 1) reason about other possible explanations; 2)reason about the plausibility of their preferred explanation. There are several logical errors here: 1) it's a false choice; 2) it privileges the hypothesis (after Chris Hallquist); 3) it's argumentum ad ignorantium

Do I need to mention that Dr. Craig attributes art, literature and architecture to the eye? Did he leave anything out? A brain, maybe. And hands, we need hands!

In fact, that leads me to his other argument, concerning biological evolution. And I'm going to suggest that the idea that evolution could have occurred without an intelligent Designer is so improbable as to be fantastic. This has been demonstrated by Barrowand Tipler in their book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the odds of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4-360 (110,000), a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God! And here the Christian can be much more open to where the evidence leads. He could say, "Well, God could have used evolution; He could have used special creation. I'm open to the evidence." But, you see, for the naturalist evolution is the only game in town! No matter how fantastic the odds, no matter how improbable the evidence, he's stuck with it because he hasn't got an intelligent Designer. So it seems to me that the Christian can be far more objective on this point. After all, if you were to find watch lying on the ground, and, say, it didn't function exactly perfectly, it lost one minute per hour, would you therefore conclude that the watch was not designed properly?

The Barrow and Tippler book has been around since the mid-eighties, and made a splash in the Intelligent Design community, but that appears to be it. A blanket rejection of general Anthropic Principle variations is "we must fit the universe, the universe doesn't care". There are many objections to the many anthropic principle variations - see the Anthropic Principle Wikipedia page for a survey of them. A concise one-line summary from that page is: "According to Jürgen Schmidhuber, the anthropic principle essentially just says that the conditional probability of finding yourself in a universe compatible with your existence is always 1."

Dr. Pigliucci concludes his Opening Statement

I've finally made it through Dr. Massimo Pigliucci's opening statement from the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?" - I have a look at Dr. P's cases against Theism and for Naturalism. These are brief, and are coherent. So far, Dr. P's content has been good. I'll summarize positives and negatives for both participants' efforts after Dr. P finishes up.

Previous reviews can be found starting here through Dr. Pigliucci's Positive case for Naturalism.

Dr. Pigliucci begins his final arguments:

Problem of Evil

There also are some serious philosophical problems with the theistic position that I really have a hard time thinking how Dr. Craig can solve them. The main problem that I see is the problem of evil. The philosopher Bertrand Russell put it very nicely, and I can hardly do better than he did , so I'm going to read pretty much verbatim his quote. "If I had ten billion years and this is all I could come up with, the universe as it is, I should be ashamed of myself." Everybody in this room can think of a much better universe with no earthquakes for one thing and no snow storms, no murders, no rapists, and so on and so forth. It's very easy to come up with one. So if this God is supposed to be all powerful and all good, why do we have this mess down here? And please don't answer that question with "The devil did it!" because the devil also was a creation of God, and so it's still his fault anyway. And I really don't see a way out of that one, unless you want to argue that creation has unintended consequences, there are things that happen in the world that God really didn't want; but then we're pulling back into the category of the personal, failing God that nobody here probably believes in.

Generally, the Problem of Evil provides current and on-the-fence non-believers sufficient warrant to conclude a "good" God does not exist ... Dr. Pigliucci is smart to include it. His discussion of this is conversational, whereas other formulations are presented as syllogisms. I find these to be more direct and effective. Dr. P did not give this kind of detail, maybe with good reason. We'll have to see how Dr. Craig counters.

Dr. Pigliucci on Problems with Christianity:

Problems with Christianity

There's also some specific problems about Christianity. What I've said up to this point really applies to any positive definition of God. As I said, I'm not here to deny the existence of every single possible God. There are some Gods that are simply beyond any kind of speculative or scientific argument. But, for one thing, can you give me a good reason to believe in the Christian God in particular, as opposed to many other ones of the Gods that have been proposed so far? You've got ample choice there: you can believe in Zeus, you can believe in Baal, you can believe in Zoroaster--there's plenty of them! Well, why one over the other? I really can't see any particular reason for it.

Also Christianity makes some specific statements about the world and about humans. If you believe, for example, literally in the Bible (which I'm guessing Dr. Craig does not), if you really believe in the Bible, of course, you get in a bunch of problems. Science can answer that there wasn't such a thing as Noah's flood and certainly not as a world-wide event. Other things are: well, the sun never stopped anywhere in the sky because the sun doesn't move at all. It's the Earth that rotates around the sun, and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of specific statements in the Bible that simply cannot be taken literally. But even if you don't take it literally and you get some kind of general meaning, well, generally speaking, man is supposed to have fallen from somewhere, from grace supposedly. Well, evolutionary biology tells us that in fact man evolved in a positive way and is one of the most complex creatures in the world today. It's the end product of a very long process of evolution, I really see those two things in direct contradiction.

Finally, as far as Christianity in particular is concerned, there's plenty of archaeological, anthropological, and sociological evidence that Christianity is just one of several mythologies that evolved and changed throughout human history. It is a part of human culture; it can clearly be traced back to Hebrew traditions, to Babylonian traditions in Mesopotamia. A lot of the myths of Christianity are borrowed all over the place, as are other myths that we see today as to religions. Religions rise, they fall, they change, depending on their culture and social background of the populations that adopt them, and eventually they die, and then something will come up and replace them. That is the historical sequence that has happened over and over again, and I can really hardly see how anybody would look at that sequence and say, "Well, this particular sequence over here is an exception. This is not just not like another religion. It's different." Well, why, on what grounds?

Up through now, this appears to be Dr. Pigliucci's best, most concise argument. There is no reason to believe that the technical arguments for the existence of God (First Cause, Design, and others that Dr. Craig did not mention) will conclude with the Christian God. As Chris Hallquist points out, these arguments don't even guarantee a single god, or gods at all.

Dr. Pigliucci concludes:

The Problem of Morality

Finally, the problem of morality, which I'm sure we'll have more to say about--oh yeah, I agree with Dr. Craig when he cited Dr. Ruse, a philosopher of science. There is no such a thing as objective morality. We got that straightened out. Morality in human cultures has evolved and is still evolving, and what is moral for you might not be moral for the guy next door and certainly is not moral for the guy across the ocean, the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, and so on. And what makes you think that your personal morality is the one and everybody else is wrong? Now a better way of putting this is that it is not the same as to say that anything goes; it is not at all the same. What goes is anything that works; there are things that work. Morality has to work. For example, one of the very good reasons we don't go around killing each other is because otherwise the entire society as we know it would collapse and we'd become a bunch of simple isolated animals. There are animals like those.

Thank you!

Here Dr. Pigliucci has the same reaction that I did to Dr. Craig's claim that (paraphrasing) "if objective moral values don't exist, then God doesn't exist". We agree.

I think that Dr. Pigliucci closes strongly - his "Problems with Christianity" and "Problem of Morality" being two of his clearer, more concise arguments. Do I think he makes the stronger overall positive case than Dr. Craig? I really can't say - particularly when I can't see an actual video of the contest. Just for fun, let me re-sequence the arguments that Dr. P used - without adding or removing a section, except to add a brief recap of the positive case at the end:

Dr. Pigliucci made his opening statement in this order:

1. (his intro)
   
2. Clarification of the Term "God"
   
3. Argument from Design
   
4. God and Nature
   
5. Argument from Fine-Tuning
   
6. Problems with Theism
   
7. The Case for Naturalism
   
8. Problem of Evil
   
9. Problems with Christianity
   
10. The Problem of Morality

Given the same material, I can see re-organizing this to fit my proposed intro-positive case-initial rebuttal-recap format thus:

1. (his intro)
   
2. Clarification of the Term "God"
   
3. The Case for Naturalism
   
4. God and Nature
   
5. Problem of Evil
   
6. Problems with Christianity
   
7. The Problem of Morality
   
8. Argument from Design
   
9. Argument from Fine-Tuning
   
10. Problems with Theism
    
11. (a recap of the positive case)

This is a pretty minor reshuffling ... with the exception of his section "God and Nature" - it appears that all Dr. Pigliucci did was offer initial rebuttals to Dr. Craig's Arguments first, then finish with the "positive construction for non-belief". It's kind of a toss-up.

Next time we start on initial rebuttals.

Dr. Pigliucci counters Craig's Argument from Design

Next up in my ongoing review of the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?" is the second installment of Dr. Pigliucci's opening statement. Dr. Pigliucci is speaking second, and will address Dr. Craig's "Argument from Design".

I've previously discussed the opening statements starting here through here.

Note that the debate transcript says that Dr. Pigliucci addresses the "Argument from Design", which may be how Dr. P had it outlined. Dr. Craig's argument is specifically "The complex order in the universe", which - I presume - is a personal formulation Dr. Craig cooked up to address the fine-tuning of the initial conditions that the universe appears to have had. The two concepts address essentially the same broad theological argument - that what we observe has the appearance of design, which implies a designer, therefore God exists.

Reading ahead into other sections of Dr. Pigliucci's opening statement, he follows the "Argument from Design" section with a "God and Nature" and an "Argument from Fine Tuning" section. Since I just declared that the Design and Fine-Tuning arguments are essentially the same, I'll be interested in how he integrates the two. I'll say in advance that I believe that either can be refuted without getting mired in details. The most succinct riposte is capsulized by Douglas Adams:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"

Dr. Pigliucci:

Argument from Design

Let's start with the argument from intelligent design, which Dr. Craig raised at the beginning of his talk. The argument from intelligent design says that the universe is so complex that it must have had a designer; that is, if you find a watch somewhere, you know that there was a watchmaker. What science is telling you is that, well, no, that may be true for the watch, but seeing a design doesn't mean that there is a conscious, intelligent designer. Notice here that I am acknowledging that the world had been "designed." Natural selection, for example, in the case of biological evolution is definitely a designer. But it is an unconscious designer, a designer that works mechanically. It doesn't work pursuing any higher goals. So we do agree that there is a designer. The question is who is the designer or what is the designer.

Dr. Pigliucci does something I think is peculiar here - he acknowledges design in the universe. I wouldn't have done this for several reasons. First, I really can't conceive of anything that genuinely appears "designed" in the natural world. Certainly the behavior of the galaxies and stars and planets follow a predictable pattern, but pattern does not imply an a priori design. Second, "design" is a human concept. We formally design things when they are so complicated that the details of their implementation cannot be reliably and permanently held in our minds, or conveyed to external implementors unambiguously. We commit design when we have a purpose that we want to realize in the world. Third, the fact that we see patterns (a capability of many life forms, not just humans) and infer design is just a side effect of our propensity to assign purpose to external entities. Following Dennett, the increasing abstraction from the physical stance to the design stance to the intentional stance are progressions in understanding that we attempt to make, but we fail to acknowledge that, without actual evidence, design and intent cannot be assigned to anything.

The fourth reason I wouldn't concede that there is design in the universe - having just acknowledged that there is no objective design - is the "atmospherics" of conceding a point to your opponent. There is no reason, in my opinion, to assent to an opponent's point unless you either 1) need it to build your own affirmative construction; 2)want to dismiss it from further discussion. Dr. P appears to want to discuss it further, so 1) is the only possible reason to concede the issue of design, as far as I can tell.

In fairness to Dr. Pigliucci, a lot of material has been written on why the argument from design is bad - but it shouldn't have been a point to concede, even in 1995.

Dr. P trots out Darwin:

One of Darwin's best arguments against the theistic position was that if you really look closely at the universe--and you don't even have to look that closely--, you'll find out that it is not perfect at all, and therefore you can question to what extent it actually reflects a designer. For example, the so called perfection of human beings has been called into question: you might know that human beings have a bizarre structure in their eye. The eye used to be a favorite example of theists. It's the kind of structure that you really cannot explain except by design. Well, it is pretty badly designed because, for example, we have blood vessels right in front of our retina, which means that under certain light conditions especially some among us see these funny little things flying all over the place across the visual field. Well, that's not a good design. Not only that, but there are organisms that are better designed. Squids, for example, have their blood vessels in the back of their eyes, so they actually see much better than we do, even though otherwise the two kinds of eyes are very similar. So my question to you is: are we better designed because God liked squids more than human beings? That seems to be the message.

Dr. P gets back on track somewhat, but I'd prefer not trotting Darwin by name, only because the audience in Tennessee is, I presume, not receptive to the mention of "Darwin". If the point is to change minds, then secularists are receptive, theists are (often) not, and the omission of Darwin's name doesn't detract from the ability to make the case that the universe and life do not appear designed.

Another source of bad design is the fact that most chemical reactions that occur inside everybody's bodies--humans, animals, and plants--are actually pretty inefficient, and if you ask a physicist or a chemist to do some calculations, it's pretty easy, and they will show you that the metabolism of most plants and animals, including humans, is really badly designed. It doesn't work very well, it's wasteful, it produces a lot of waste products. So if there is a designer, he's not a good designer.

Furthermore, there are other questions that a theist that believes in perfect design really has a hard time explaining. Have you ever wondered why people get hemorrhoids? Well, the reason for that is because we have this tendency to walk upright, but we are not very well designed for it, and we paid for that with several consequences, including hemorrhoids and varicose veins. So this ought to lead to the point that if there is a designer it wasn't a good one.

The general point that some scientists at least make, and I agree with them, is that the more we know about nature, the more we realize that in fact the world is the result of two things: chance, which is sometimes called historical contingency, and necessity, which is usually associated with natural selection. Therefore my position is not that we are the result of chance because chance alone, Dr. Craig is right, has no way to create such a complex structure as an ecosystem. But chance and natural selection is a different matter. Natural selection can work very effectively over longer periods of time.

Dr. P returns completely to solid ground in the prior several paragraphs. I probably am being too critical of what he says ("Darwin") previously, since it occurs in the space of a minute, but I can't stress the idea that changing minds (and thus winning the debate, in the absence of a formally trained debate judge) is the goal here.

I would have been more comfortable with avoiding the word "chance" in the prior passage altogether, though. The "chance" trope is anathema to the folks that think they're designed by god for a higher purpose. The phrase "historical contingency, and necessity" could have been made clearer to serve Dr. Pigliucci's purpose as well. Since probability is at work in everything we do, it would be interesting to see if a treatment of chance, without using that word, could be given in the time allotted to the opening statement.

A final nit - Dr. P does not clearly close this portion of his statement by saying something that indicates that he thought he had invalidated Dr. Lane's argument from design (complexity, whatever). A "closer" such as "thus we can see that Dr. Lane's argument from complexity is clearly unproven and illogical" would have fixed the idea that he had met the challenge and defeated it.

One of the reasons Dr. P may not have offered a "closer" is that his next two sections - as I noted at the start of this post - "God and Nature", and the "Argument from Complexity" may still bolster his counter-argument. There is no doubt some bleed-over between the three sections, so I'll chill out and enjoy it.

A final thing to learn from this is that Dr. P doesn't know in advance precisely what Dr. C will present, in what order, and what specific anecdotes and supporting evidence he will weave into his opener. As Dr. Craig has stated before, he's offered the same five arguments for over twenty years (meaning that they were only "stable" for three years before this debate took place). But since the apologia is ever-changing as the gaps in which God might exist continue to shrink, Dr. P could only have used what Dr. Craig previously argued, and could hardly anticipate how Dr. Craig might tailor those arguments further to fit the gaps. The takeaway may be that one's opening statement (also commonly referred to in debate parlance as a "positive construction") should really stick to the positive points that you want to make for your position, and only deviate into rebuttal of the opponent's positive construction if and when time allows. We'll see how Dr. Pigliucci performs this in the coming several posts.

...and a final-final - no shit really final remark: I really owe it to myself to attempt a 20 minute positive construction to oppose the proposition that God exists, followed by a 12 minute "first rebuttal" of Dr. Craig's positive construction and his first rebuttal, in order to walk a mile in Dr. Pigliucci's shoes. Remember that I'm a complete amateur, and have no standing to give either of the participants scholarly criticism of the their debate performances. My criticisms are at street level - I am reflecting on how their statements affect my understanding of the subject.

Next time: Dr. Pigliucci on "God and Nature", and the "Argument from Complexity".

The Serenity Meditation

I will find serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

One of the things that we must admit to ourselves - the unbeliever and believer alike - is that we humans can draw inspiration from secular and religious sources. It does not mean that the motivation for the words (religious or not) confirms or disconfirms the reader's world view. It just confirms that the words and acts of others can touch us, regardless of the motivation that the other has in performing them.

I like the Serenity Prayer - it is simple and direct, and speaks to a need that reoccurs in my life - I need serenity, courage and wisdom all the time.

In keeping with my disbelief in the supernatural in general, gods more specifically, and the specific god referred to in the Bible, I believe it's consistent to remove the word "God" from that prayer, while continuing to use the words as a meditation to achieve the same result. Thus - The Serenity Meditation.

Book Review - The Moral Landscape

I'd mentioned that I was reading "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris some time ago. I finished it last weekend - it was a book to be savored, much like reading the "Return of the King" in high school, I was sad to see it end.

My experience of the book revolves around having heard Harris speak in numerous videos ("Does Good come from God?" and this vid at AAI 2007 - for starters) - his calm cadence, the thoughtful pauses, the sly and very understated humor that he throws in - sometimes undetected by the audience. As I was reading this book, I was hearing it in his voice - it has the same characteristics.

I've forgotten what some of the formal reviews of the book said, which is good, but I believe one criticism was that it was too philosophical. Whether or not anyone in fact criticized it for being too philosophical, I found that aspect very engaging. For example, Harris talks about our ability to imagine maximizing human well-being.

...maximizing human well-being...

I let that sink in, because it's has overtones of both idealism and practicality.

What does it mean to maximize human well-being? Although he doesn't prominently address the political and policy implications of such a project, you can imagine this being a fulcrum around which debate could lever back and forth for centuries ... but it's worth considering now, and Harris makes the case that we can know what it is.

Morality, Harris states, has right and wrong answers that are objectively true, and can be discerned. This differs from a general feeling (in the media, at least) that morality is either relative to people and groups, or absolute in terms of religious texts. He goes on to distinguish "answers in principle" and "answers in practice" - saying that the "answers in practice" may not be possible. I presume this to mean that the political, logistical, efficacy and economics of such a project would be implausible in the present world.

Clearly this is a book worth reading - both for its explorations of human misery and well-being, good and evil, and the direction needed to begin understanding and acting on what he claims are universal questions of morality.