At 07:08 PM 09/03/2000, you wrote:
>Hi Chris,
>Do you actually believe you are going to convince people that "random
>mutation and natural selection" are an adequate explanation for the creation
>of nature's complexity by telling everyone how stupid they are?
Chris
Is this even *remotely* related to the topic of any of my recent posts?
Does this show that you have good reasons for your belief in ID? Does it
show that there is a flaw in the reasoning for naturalistic evolutionary
theory?
And, who did I say was stupid? I may well have said that certain people do
stupid things, that they behave stupidly, and that many people effectively
*seek* to be stupid by keeping themselves ignorant and unthinking.
>Your defense
>of the theory is a little more imaginative than others I've read, but
>basically, is nothing new. You believe nature's complexity occurred without
>plan, purpose or design.
Chris
No, I don't. I don't believe that Nature's complexity *occurred* at all,
any more than a typical Christian theist believes that God "occurred"
(i.e., that God once did not exist and then came into existence).
Complexity is simply a basic fact of the way the Universe is. A miniscule
amount of this complexity shows up in living things under special
conditions. Most of the complexity of the Universe is non-living, and is in
the form of "random" photons, hydrogen atoms moving in a "random" way,
etc. Evolution merely provides a mechanism whereby a *tiny* portion of the
complexity of the environment is built into complexity in living things. I
don't regard life and its environment as, fundamentally, two separate
things. The complexity of life is not distinct from the complexity of the
world it is a part of. That is, living things are a *part* of Nature, and
the overall level of complexity in the Universe never changes. These same
considerations apply to information; no information is originated in life
in any basic sense; a tiny portion of it is merely moved from a non-living
form into one that is living, from complexity in non-living things to
complexity in living things.
Bertvan
>Since the existence of purpose in nature is not
>something anyone is likely to demonstrate conclusively, your insistence that
>everyone agree with your position is puzzling.
Chris
When have I insisted that everyone (or *anyone*) agree with me? Besides, I
don't claim that there is absolutely no purpose in Nature. Human beings are
a part of Nature, and we definitely have purposes. Further, you have to
understand that I don't agree with your fuzzy-wuzzy ideas as to what
purpose *is*.
I do deny that there is any purpose to Existence as such, to the basic
whatever that exists. It is not logically even *possible* for it to have a
purpose, because that purpose would have to be provided by something else.
Whether there is any purpose to what we typically call "the Universe" is a
different matter. I don't think there is, and, aside from living things
(which seem to amount to such a small fraction of the total mass of the
Universe as to be essentially inconsequential), there is not even any good
excuse for believing that there is purposefulness. So, if there is some
purpose to the Universe that the designers had in mind (i.e., such as
scientific research in universe-building), *we* are not being given any
evidence of it, and certainly no evidence that it is somehow designed *for*
us. Rats might think a sewer was built just for them. Would they be right?
Bertvan
>You seem upset that anyone
>should think differently than you on the subject.
>
>WHY SHOULD YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE BELIEVE ABOUT MATTERS THAT CAN NOT BE
>CONCLUSIVELY DEMONSTRATED?
Chris
Why do *you* care about what *I* believe (as indicated by the "yelling" above)?
And, how do you know that they cannot be conclusively demonstrated? Can we
conclusively demonstrate that the gravity is a fact? Can we conclusively
demonstrate that the theory of relativity is sufficiently nearly right to
enable us to produce atomic bombs?
In general, I care because stupidity, irrationality, ignorance,
unthinkingness, gullibility, quackery, crackpottery, and so on are
extremely damaging to the human race, of which I'm a member. I care because
I care about people and I hate to see the ignorant being taken advantage of
by people like Johnson. I care because I don't want to see the human race
slide into another Dark Age.
Am I upset that others think differently from me on the topic? No. I
*never* got upset with Glenn Morton, for example, because he seemed
honestly seeking the truth, and seemed *honestly* free from any desire to
forcibly impose his views on others. You do *not* seem honest in this way,
nor does Jones, and *certainly* not Johnson. You *talk* about not imposing
your views on others, but whenever someone provides a well-reasoned
argument for any position you happen (apparently almost *purely* for
psychological reasons) to disagree with, you start complaining about that
person attempting to impose his views on others.
I'd like to know: When did rational argument, and pointing out stupidities
that others may not have noticed, become a vice rather than a virtue? When
did it become a good thing to pretend that irrationality, gross illogic,
circular reasoning, and bizarre non sequiturs are simply to be ignored in a
discussion supposedly aimed at discovering the truth? When did you decide
that repeated refusal to consider what an opponent actually claimed when
attacking his views was an acceptable way of arguing? When did you decide
that merely asserting your views as if they were somehow too obvious to
even bother supporting was the way to go, rather than bothering yourself
with actually understanding your own views in order to defend them?
Bertvan
>If your argument is such an obvious truth, you have nothing to fear from ID.
Chris
I agree. I've already pointed that fact out. There is nothing to fear from
ID in itself. It is the one of the purest examples of empty crackpot
theories I can imagine. There *is* something to fear from state religions
in government and science, though, and there *is* something to fear from
living in a society devoted to religion posing as science, superstition
posing as knowledge, crackpot theories posing as well-reasoned and
well-supported truth.
Bertvan
>Most supporters of ID accept that a majority of scientists presently believe
>RM&NS is responsible for nature's complexity. You go your way and IDs will
>go theirs. Personally, my only concern is in trying to see that ID is not
>misrepresented. ID is not "creationism".
Chris
Technically, you are right. However, nearly all ID supporters believe that
God created the Universe and life. That is, while ID theory, *as such*, is
not creationism, nearly all ID supporters are in fact creationists of a
sort and are in fact pushing a creationist version of ID. This is part of
the dishonesty of Johnson, for example, who wants ID treated as science
while claiming simultaneously that God did it, who wants it treated as
science but who campaigns for supernaturalism (i.e., *religion*) in school
science classes.
Bertvan
>ID assumes design.
Chris
So does creationism. Is it any wonder they are regarded as essentially the
same by so many?
Bertvan
>Some IDs
>believe the Christian God is the origin of that design. Others consider the
>origin of the design irrelevant.
Chris
This is a secondary point, and, in most cases is not relevant. Further,
nearly *all* ID supporters believe in some variant of the Christian God.
Bertvan
>I'm not interested in addressing specific points you raise. They have been
>addressed by scientists
Chris
If that were true, we wouldn't be having this debate. Further, many of the
points I raise do not require sophisticated science to evaluate. They
require the ability to think logically, to *analyze* concepts, ideas, and
descriptions of processes. Further still, recently, much of what I have had
to say has been of the form, "Given the aspects of evolution that ID folk
accept, they are either committed to accepting evolution in general, or to
claiming mystical/magical barriers to macroevolution." This sort of thing
does not require a degree in microbiology to evaluate. It requires
understanding the logical relationships of, and the logical *implications*
of, *ideas*.
Bertvan
>more convincingly than I could manage. Go to the ID
>discussion board. They will probably address them if you wish.
>
>http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro
Chris
Suggesting ARN as a source of *scientific* refutation of the points I raise
is like suggesting that I go to a thirteenth century peasant farmer for
details on the programming of modern computers.
Bertvan
> As I've said before, you have a well thought out materialist philosophy. I
>have no desire to dissuade you from being a materialist. If you are going to
>be so frustrated by everyone who expresses something outside materialism,
>you are in for a rough life.
Chris
My life was rough long before I heard of the argument from design being
updated to be called "Intelligent Design" theory, so that will not be a
change. But, in fact, I'm not usually bothered by most non-materialist
views, even though I do in fact regard them as a major failure of
self-education, and it is obvious that they are harmful to human life.
Non-materialist views are harmful because they are falsehoods about
important issues and thus cause people to act in destructive ways, but the
people harmed by them most are usually the non-materialists themselves. Of
course, there was the Dark Ages, and Nazism, and even Marxist Communism,
which, while nominally materialist, proposed a view of the nature of
history that implied a hidden non-materialist foundation. It would not be
possible for history to be the way Marx claimed without some underlying
teleological (i.e., non-material) basis.
The real culprit is not so much non-materialism as it is subjectivism,
faith, the pretense that mind has the mystical power to know reality
without cognitive mediation or to *control* reality by merely believing in
the reality one wishes (for example, the belief that many people have that
they can *make* it true that God exists merely by believing in Him).
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