I didn’t read that anywhere in Dawkins’ book. I think he was saying that evolution makes God even more unnecessary than before.

That said, I have plenty of disagreements with Dawkins!

>>You say that we have “lots of evidence as to how life arose by natural causes.” What do you mean by “natural causes”? Do you mean that science has given us lots of evidence that natural selection was unguided, undesigned? That’s exactly what Plantinga was arguing against. The science has given us no such evidence.>>

Seriously? This is like watching me bake a cake from start to finish, then telling me that I’ve given no evidence that the cake was baked through natural causes, because it’s still possible there was an invisible magical force animating my every movement! The point is that we have lots of evidence for the casual relations between my natural actions and the baked cake, and no evidence for any causal relation between a magical invisible being and the baked cake.

>>If someone presents an argument against theism, pointing out that the premises MAY all be true even when the conclusion is false is sufficient to show that the argument is invalid. That’s actually a very good response to an argument. I don’t understand why you don’t like it.>>

No, no, that’s perfectly fine. The problem is that many Christian apologists seem to think that in establishing the logical possibility of God, they’ve established something more impressive than the logical possibility of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They need to take further steps if they want to do that.

>>I didn’t say that Dennett didn’t respond to that argument. I think he did gesture at a response. But I don’t think it was very good at all.>>

One of many problems in Plantinga’s argument is that naturalism need not assume the evolved reliability of the senses. In fact, in many cases, we are acutely aware of how our senses are unreliable. Our response has been to constantly seek methods of testing and qualifying the data that comes to us through our senses, through methods such as logic and science. That’s what Dennett was talking about with regard to the straight-edge.

Anyway, I’ll probably eventually write an article about this argument. For now, most of the ground has been covered in the Plantinga/Draper debate that begins here.

>>If it wasn’t an illicit retreat to the possible in the case of the shape of the Earth, it’s not an illicit retreat to the possible here.>>

The difference is that we now have great amounts of evidence for a round earth, but still no evidence (other than arguments from ignorance) that evolution has been guided. If we had tons of evidence for a flat earth (which we never had) and no evidence for a round earth (which was untrue even for the Ancient Greeks), then YES it would be a retreat to the possible to say that the earth COULD be round.

The thing is, every once in a while something is remotely possible IS true. But it’s very rare. Consider JUST god-ideas. There are millions of contradictory god ideas out there that possible – thousands, just counting the CHRISTIAN god ideas. They are all “possible.” But showing they are possible does not take any steps toward showing that any of them are likely to be true.

You have to give some other argument to show that God is probable. And many theists have offered such arguments, and atheists give responses as to why those arguments fail. Atheists also give arguments that assert the improbability and absurdity of popular god-ideas, and theists give responses as to why those arguments fail. This is the debate.

You and I look out at the horizon. You say “The Earth seems flat,” and you therefore believe it’s flat. I point out that the horizon would look this way even if the Earth were a giant sphere. So the Earth MAY be spherical, even though the horizon in some sense looks flat. That’s not an illicit retreat to the possible, right? That’s a sensible piece of reasoning.

Similarly, you and I read an evolutionary textbook. You say “Natural selection looks unguided,” and therefore believe that it is. I point out that things would look this way even if God had guided evolution. So natural selection MAY be guided, even though the facts of evolution look just as they do.

If it wasn’t an illicit retreat to the possible in the case of the shape of the Earth, it’s not an illicit retreat to the possible here.

Tell that to Richard Dawkins, who wrote a whole book about how the facts of evolution disprove theism. Many other people believe that the science of evolution (not philosophical theorizing) has shown that evolution is unguided, i.e. not the product of design.

What Plantinga is pointing out is that this is false. The SCIENCE shows no such thing. That’s an important point. It’s controversial. And it seems like Plantinga is right, or at least you and Dennett are willing to agree with him.

>>But now you seem to say “further argument is necessary from the atheist.” That’s rather bizarre.>>

The science itself doesn’t disprove or even call into question theism. Pointing to the science will not suffice to argue against God’s existence. What the atheist has to do is offer an additional argument about simplicity, explanatory impotence, etc. But these considerations go beyond what we’ve learned strictly scientifically.

>>Most evolutionists would say something like, “We have lots of evidence for how life has arise through natural processes, and no evidence that it was created by Superman or Yahweh or advanced aliens or whatever.”>>

Yes, I’ve heard (you make) that argument before. That’s the “additional argument” that I was referring to. You can’t just point to the science to get reasons against theism. You have to make this additional step about simplicity, explanatory impotence, etc.

And your argument looks pretty shaky. It looks to make the mistake that Plantinga was warning you about. You say that we have “lots of evidence as to how life arose by natural causes.” What do you mean by “natural causes”? Do you mean that science has given us lots of evidence that natural selection was unguided, undesigned? That’s exactly what Plantinga was arguing against. The science has given us no such evidence. You seem to be assuming that it does. But then you’re making the same mistake that Dawkins makes.

>>This is a major problem I have with most Christian apologists. They seem to think that establishing the logical possibility of their God is compelling.>>

If someone presents an argument against theism, pointing out that the premises MAY all be true even when the conclusion is false is sufficient to show that the argument is invalid. That’s actually a very good response to an argument. I don’t understand why you don’t like it.

>>Also, Dennett did respond directly to Plantinga’s arguments about evolution being incompatible with naturalism, and quite persuasively.>>

I didn’t say that Dennett didn’t respond to that argument. I think he did gesture at a response. But I don’t think it was very good at all. Dennett said that we have good reason to think that natural selection would produce highly reliable syntactic engines. Plantinga is totally willing to grant that. Listen to Plantinga’s discussion of the frog. There’s good reason to think that having accurate indicator content is adaptive. But that’s not what Plantinga is talking about. He’s wondering whether natural selection would produce a highly reliable SEMANTIC engine, i.e. whether creatures like us would have mostly TRUE beliefs, and not just accurate indicator content. Dennett completely missed the boat.

But now you seem to say “further argument is necessary from the atheist.” That’s rather bizarre. Most evolutionists would say something like, “We have lots of evidence for how life has arise through natural processes, and no evidence that it was created by Superman or Yahweh or advanced aliens or whatever.”

So I think further argument is needed from the Theist to show shy he thinks Yahweh has been tinkering with evolution, but not Superman, advanced aliens, Allah, or millions of other potential designers.

This is a major problem I have with most Christian apologists. They seem to think that establishing the logical possibility of their God is compelling. That’s what analogies to the Invisible Pink Unicorn and The Flying Spaghetti monster are meant to make clear. Billions of absurd magical beings are logically possible, but that takes us no closer to thinking they are probable. This is the “retreat to the possible,” and I’ll keep calling it out wherever I see it, because the audience keeps mistaking logical possibility for real plausibility.

Do Christian apologists not realize that they could replace “Yahweh” with “Flying Spaghetti Monster” in nearly ALL of their arguments (ontological, cosmological, teleological, arguments from miracles, arguments from experience), and come up with the same results? Do they think they’ve thereby demonstrated the plausibility of the FSM?

Also, Dennett did respond directly to Plantinga’s arguments about evolution being incompatible with naturalism, and quite persuasively.

Um, I don’t know. I don’t think it was an appropriate response. This wasn’t really a debate, you know. It was a paper session at the APA. Dennett was asked to *comment* on Plantinga’s paper. So his task, really, was to engage Plantinga’s arguments. Plantinga was trying to argue that science and religion were compatible, and that naturalism and evolution were incompatible.

Dennett seemed to just grant Plantinga’s point about science and religion being compatible, but then said “So what? Science and supermanism is also compatible. Why is your religion to be preferred over supermanism?” That’s an interesting question and everything, but this really wasn’t a venue to ask Plantinga to make further arguments. Dennett was meant to engage Plantinga’s argument itself, not grant the conclusion and then ask a further question.

I have some experience with this sort of venue (presenting papers at conferences). If someone were to do to me what Dennett did to Plantinga, first I’d be kind of annoyed, because that’s not what a good commenter does, and second I’d think that my arguments were pretty good, since even my very smart commenter was willing to grant them.

You may think: “But who would disagree with Plantinga? It’s obvious that science and religion are compatible!” The fact is that many, many people think that they’re not compatible, that evolution somehow delivers the result that theism is false. Consider Dawkins’ subtitle: “The Blind Watchmaker: How the facts of evolution reveal a world without design” or something like that.

Dennett seems to agree with Plantinga that the facts of evolution reveal no such thing, and that further argument is necessary from the atheist. But that’s a very substantial and controversial point.

Also, as it turns out I’ve been listening to the Plantinga-Dennett debate in patches throughout the day – a very fun debate! I’m a bigger fan of Plantinga than Dennett (though Dennett is a better writer), but Dennett’s “Superman response” is pretty much what I would have said to Plantinga in that situation.

You said “If we are hard-wired to believe in X, the burden of proof is on the skeptic of X.”

I feel like this deserves another post. :)

KH: You have not read much FSM theology. The FSM has always been conceived of as immaterial, non-spatial, and non-contingent. In contrast, Yahweh was conceived of as spatial and perhaps even material long before he was Platonized, and you know it.

I Samuel 6:19-And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men
Numbers 25:4-Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun
Numbers 16:35-And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense (limited monstrosity)

KH> Nice try! But these are examples of various theophanies and judgements of God (who by nature is immaterial, non-spatial, non-contingent, etc).

The best the FSM adherent can do is offer that his noodlyness is an incarnation (and that without any evidence).

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=262996

I’ve been trying to communicate to you that belief in God is not best compared to belief in the FSM, a cosmic teacup, fairies, etc.

The burden of proof is certainly on believers in a FSM. But we should agree that the burden of proof is not on believers in other minds, an external world, the reality of the past, etc.

Theists (should) claim that belief in God is more analogous to belief in other minds than belief in a FSM. After all, both belief in other minds and belief in God spontaneously arise in humans. Humans seem ‘hard-wired’ to believe in God, as well as other minds. We watch the behavior of human bodies, and just find ourselves believing that there are other minds. Similarly, we watch a beautiful sunset, or a crazy volcano, or whatever, and just find ourselves believing various things about God.

If we are hard-wired to believe in X, the burden of proof is on the skeptic of X.

We’re not hard-wired to believe in a FSM. But we are to believe in God. So while the burden of proof is on the believer in a FSM, the burden of proof is not on the theist.

I recently listed Ibn al-Haytham as the 2nd most important thinker of all time, behind Aristotle:

http://listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.37925

His noodlyness is offended by the suggestion that he doesn’t belong in the same category as his Jahwehness.

Genesis 3:8 – Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze (spatial)

Genesis 12:7 – So Abram built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him (material)

I Samuel 6:19-And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men
Numbers 25:4-Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun
Numbers 16:35-And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense
(limited monstrosity)

Wow, what a killer analogy. Yep, politics=metaphysics, for sure. :rolleyes:

Islamic blogs? You do realize I was talking about formal debates… right?

KH> Wow! And you were doing such an excellent job chronicling the debate! And in one fell swoop you screwed it up!

Bringing up the Flying Spaghetti Monster shows you either don’t know what a Category Error is, or you accidentally missed it. Flying (spatial) Spaghetti (material) Monster (a limited monstrosity).

Thanks for linking to my podcast with Bill Craig. Let me know what you think of some of the others.

Kevin

Not inside the Islamic world.

“How often do you see an atheism vs. Islam debate? ”

How about you look at the Islamic blogs on the internet?

“The fact that communists are the only ones who are willing to stand up and debate capitalism is FAR more of a credit to communism’s validity than to capitalism’s.”

Give credit where credit is due.

Just use word substitution.

“At least you admit that Islam had a rich intellectual history. Most critics tend to downplay the contributions of Islam to science and philosophy.”

Then the Mongols came… half a milenia of progress halted in a few short bloody years.

“It should be noted that the debate is not really between atheism and theism, but between atheism and Christianity. Though apologists for other religions exist, there hasn’t been a significant contribution to the philosophy of religion from another religion that I’m aware of since the 12th century. Even Islam and Judaism, which at times had fine intellectual histories, have not mounted much of a philosophical defense for their religions since the middle ages. And frankly, I don’t see them coming back.”

That is the miracle of the net- I’ve seen Muslim, Hindu, Buddism and more arguing the truth of their faith on the net. You don’t see them because the US tends to only get the Christian stuff in print.

“Atheism has intellectually defeated hundreds of religions, and only one remains with a credible defense among scholars: Christianity.”

Atheism has never destroyed a religion- all faiths have fallen to other faiths. At long last we might see a different victory than one madness for another.

“human existence about, say, political philosophy or moral ontology.”

I thought taking care of 8 billion people was higher on the list.

At least you admit that Islam had a rich intellectual history. Most critics tend to downplay the contributions of Islam to science and philosophy.