"Evolution occurs" should not pose any issue to any theists.
"-Only- evolution occurs" as a complete, exclusive causal explanation for intelligent life does, but it also is an unscientific, untestable premise, and for these reasons shouldn't be taught as "science" anyway.
The latter equivocation is, unfortunately, the only form of the premise Dawkins et al care about, but their objectives in this respect have more to do with book sales than anything to do with science. Teachers just need to realize this--there is no issue with "evolution occurs" being properly taught, and that is exactly as far as you can assert without abandoning science and indulging in a personal non sequitur fallacy ("evolution occurs", therefore "only evolution has occurred") for your own, non-science, reasons.
Sure, you can play definitional games as much as you like, but like a software application that would demonstrate Hard AI, our sentience is, just simply and obviously, special.
I doubt even you believe otherwise, but if in fact you do, further discussion is indeed futile--there would be no meaning to "special" or any such related term, and such terms should be excised from our language entirely in that case. No application of "special" to any circumstance or thing anywhere could be more clearly called-for than in this case. Fortunately, I'm relatively confident you yourself are rational enough to not avoid using the term throughout all other circumstances in your life where equally called-for... otherwise I'd worry about you!
Sorry, but the outcome we are evaluating is not arbitrary.
If it were equivalently meaningful to the question of the Fine-tuned Universe premise whether there was intelligent life or one of a nearly-infinite varieties of "spacetime goo", then your analogy would hold. It is true that some random sequence of events, unspecified, would occur with a probability of 1.
At hand is whether the 1 attempt at 1 rather-specific outcome suggests Design. The notion at hand is of a sentient being causing sentient beings to exist, because that's the outcome the entity declared it wished to accomplish. If the notion of Design didn't include, well, something notably of a "designed-like nature", then we could indeed say that all outcomes equally meet what we are looking for to evaluate the idea.
If you told me you could flip a coin 30 times and end up with some sequence of 30 heads and tails, I'd be amazingly unimpressed. If you told me you could flip HHTTHTHHTTTHTHHTHTTHHTHTHTHHT as your next set of flips, and then did so, I would have to take seriously the idea that your ability to do so was something extraordinary.
Sorry, Occam's Razor says absolutely nothing about what's most likely, in this case or any other. It says the simplest explanation, all else being equal, is to be preferred for reasons of conceptual economy.
And since neither you nor I think "some bearded guy on a fluffy cloud" accurately restates any position of mine intended for serious debate, there isn't really anything there to discuss.
I have. And without reference to multiple "attempts", which is generally avoided as an argument due to its own problems of evidence that happens, that's literally the summation of the argument. "If we weren't here, we wouldn't be able to observe it". Fine. That is entirely irrelevant to the question of probability of the Fine-tuned Universe argument.
Right, I suggested this in another thread--that this factor eliminates the sheer absurdity of the "basic" Anthropic Principle argument, that the odds are altered by the outcome. The extreme odds could be accounted for if given a context where there can be many attempts.
Unfortunately, we have no demonstration of there being more "attempts" possible or made. And appealing to something for which there isn't any demonstrable evidence, tends to end up sounding pretty hypocritical on the part of the person forwarding the Anthropic Principle argument.
"Considering the other (non-existent) universe", though, is hardly our only means of approximating the odds. We can determine that simply by noting that changing any of the many constants of physical matter would, to all appearances, give us a large amount of energetic but quite non-sentient "goo".
If it were the only means, I might be able to see your argument as something other than saying a complete lack of evidence of something, is equal to the demonstrable existence and extensive evidence of something else, through obscure equivocation.
Sounds like a Reification Fallacy, though, personally. The "non-sentient universe" is a pure verbal abstraction, not something that demonstrably exists at all, to then refer to as a basis for any evidence whatsoever, of anything whatsoever.
And the odds of us living would be precisely what the were--though in the case of your analogy, more easily calculable.
That is the only question at hand in either argument. The results speak none whatsoever to those odds.
I find the Anthropic Principle argument literally astonishingly weak in this form, and find it difficult to believe anyone can give it a second thought unless overwhelmingly biased toward a particular worldview, to about the degree they'd deny 2+2=4 if it was similarly incompatible.
A much preferable form is the notion that either as a function of repeated "attempts" over time, or concurrent attempts through such a mechanism as an Everett Many-Worlds quantum interpretation, many attempts are actually made, of which we are only aware of the success--our own. For that variant, though, we lack strong evidence that is in fact the context of our universe, where many attempts can be and are made. And that is the only thing that would alter the odds, which is the only thing relevant to weighing the Fine-tuned Universe premise. Handwaving to "that's okay because the odds are actually determined by the outcome" is, IMHO, just absurd.
No, because it blatantly and desperately reverses cause-and-effect.
The odds of you winning the lottery is not made 1 by concluding that if you didn't win the lottery, you wouldn't be thinking about winning the lottery.
Known attempts at permutations of physical constants: 1 Success at creating intelligent life: 1
Of course, one could never argue against the line of reasoning suggested by the summary--whatever degree of life exists, arbitrarily declare there should be "more", and conjecture (yes, it's sheer conjecture--the actual results from modifying the cosmological constant would require far more calculation of than is provided) something else would have made it "better".
Personally, though I'm used to having my code second-guessed, they'd have to come up with a much better criticism than this...
There was the book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology...
That there was no further systematic explication beyond an "introduction", though, is telling.
Basically Rand is Aristotle, with the addition that by definition, her concepts are properly formed, and "proper epistemology" is essentially mirroring the entire content of her brain within yours for the "objective" scope and delimitation of each individual concept.
If you think I'm not serious, try The Passion of Ayn Rand, for examples of such objective declarations as which composers one is allowed to like, without being "irrational" as revealed by your preferences.
At the point of the formation of a hypothesis, it is not provable. The proposal of the hypothesis (even if only to oneself and one's peers) always precedes developing tests for it, much less "proof".
Since it is not provable at the point proposed, it should not be proposed, per the "burden of proof" criteria.
Since no such hypotheses can be proposed ("such hypotheses" being, all of them), no tests or "proof" will be generated.
And, so, science immediately halts.
Really, try some Karl Popper rather than Judge Judy for these issues. Or at least note that String Theory is science as it is direct inferences from testable scientific premises, even before a falsifiable test is generated.
I can assert that Keynesian framework is the best economic model.
You can assert that it is not.
Most everyone asserts that some economic system is the best or most accurate, according to their view and experience.
Same with their views on political parties.
Absolutely none of us can prove it, yet claims are made. We tend to call those "positions".
90% of all human domains of inquiry are exactly like this.
I'm not sure who has managed to reduce Western Philosophy to Judge Judy in popular discussion, but no, if the domain does not allow for proof, there is no "burden of proof". There are very few domains in which this supposed requirement is other than completely nonsensical.
It's an interesting test-case. I would contend you could not have a thought without the implied belief of having available a subsequent thought--much like you could not choose to analyze something without at least the -belief- you are sane and capable of the required chain of reasoning.
In any case, we'd probably have to delve into this more deeply to have it provide an interesting discussion, as we would to change your second paragraph to more than a simple set of Bare Assertion fallacies.
Since this isn't an active thread anymore, and I'll probably lack the motivation... I'll just leave the question for you to determine.
Are you saying that their behavior lowered the likelihood of their DNA propagation, and so is objectionable in that sense? We'd have to collect the data to determine the degree of genetic "success" that resulted, to evaluate it from that standpoint. Whether it worked for DNA survivability being all that would be relevant and all we need to know--and by that standard, it probably did work.
Of course, I'm making assumptions here. I don't know the ethical axioms you're using, or your demonstrable objective justification for mandating them in the context of your worldview, because you haven't made any such argument. You've just called out cases and made vibrations of disapproval, with nothing at all demonstrated for me to be able to make a normative evaluation according to your worldview.
To continue, I'd need to know what ethical axioms you are working with, as they aren't mine, and I know you aren't saying "religion is ethically in error, which we know by evaluating their correspondence to the correct ethical axioms religion espouses".
That'd be self-contradictory on your part. If you do have some particular axioms you are using for the purposes of discussion, at least name them, before I naturally then ask you to demonstrate a) they are directly derivable from the natural facts of your worldview, and b) are non-subjective. Otherwise, well, they're useless and I'll ignore them, as I should.
Because I tend to dislike generally distorting people's understanding of basic philosophy (ethics) for the purposes of scoring some "religion bad" Slashdot points...
Babies are not "innocent". They are amoral. "Innocent" implies the ability to choose an evil act as an act of self-conscious will, and to have chosen against it.
Because, describing any event means you fully advocate that event happening. No need for any actual advocacy of the event to appear anywhere at all in the text, even--just like how we know all World War 2 historians are Nazis whenever they describe the 1940's.
I also enjoy inferring that if something is -mentioned- in a book, it is therefore -recommended- by that book.
Sometimes it's confusing when there is, like your example, no evidence or statement of this position whatsoever, anywhere in the book, but it's neat how edgy it makes every single World War Two historian author seem.
Similarly, translations of The Republic existing refutes it being the "true philosophy of Plato".
Oh wait, it doesn't in any way. You can run down a Wittgensteinian rabbit-hole here, but if the words convey consistent meanings across the translations, or the precise meaning is determinable by further analysis, the words accurately represent the content they reference, as far as words ever can. Maybe you were looking for some other impossible criterion you already know you'd never apply to anything else, because you noted it's a religious text that's being discussed?
I'm unmoved by your link. Naturally, the only possible interpretation of that statement is that I'm claiming to be permanently physically stationary, relative to everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
"Evolution occurs" should not pose any issue to any theists.
"-Only- evolution occurs" as a complete, exclusive causal explanation for intelligent life does, but it also is an unscientific, untestable premise, and for these reasons shouldn't be taught as "science" anyway.
The latter equivocation is, unfortunately, the only form of the premise Dawkins et al care about, but their objectives in this respect have more to do with book sales than anything to do with science. Teachers just need to realize this--there is no issue with "evolution occurs" being properly taught, and that is exactly as far as you can assert without abandoning science and indulging in a personal non sequitur fallacy ("evolution occurs", therefore "only evolution has occurred") for your own, non-science, reasons.
A universe with sentient life is "special".
Period.
Sure, you can play definitional games as much as you like, but like a software application that would demonstrate Hard AI, our sentience is, just simply and obviously, special.
I doubt even you believe otherwise, but if in fact you do, further discussion is indeed futile--there would be no meaning to "special" or any such related term, and such terms should be excised from our language entirely in that case. No application of "special" to any circumstance or thing anywhere could be more clearly called-for than in this case. Fortunately, I'm relatively confident you yourself are rational enough to not avoid using the term throughout all other circumstances in your life where equally called-for... otherwise I'd worry about you!
Sorry, but the outcome we are evaluating is not arbitrary.
If it were equivalently meaningful to the question of the Fine-tuned Universe premise whether there was intelligent life or one of a nearly-infinite varieties of "spacetime goo", then your analogy would hold. It is true that some random sequence of events, unspecified, would occur with a probability of 1.
At hand is whether the 1 attempt at 1 rather-specific outcome suggests Design. The notion at hand is of a sentient being causing sentient beings to exist, because that's the outcome the entity declared it wished to accomplish. If the notion of Design didn't include, well, something notably of a "designed-like nature", then we could indeed say that all outcomes equally meet what we are looking for to evaluate the idea.
If you told me you could flip a coin 30 times and end up with some sequence of 30 heads and tails, I'd be amazingly unimpressed. If you told me you could flip HHTTHTHHTTTHTHHTHTTHHTHTHTHHT as your next set of flips, and then did so, I would have to take seriously the idea that your ability to do so was something extraordinary.
Sorry, Occam's Razor says absolutely nothing about what's most likely, in this case or any other. It says the simplest explanation, all else being equal, is to be preferred for reasons of conceptual economy.
And since neither you nor I think "some bearded guy on a fluffy cloud" accurately restates any position of mine intended for serious debate, there isn't really anything there to discuss.
I have. And without reference to multiple "attempts", which is generally avoided as an argument due to its own problems of evidence that happens, that's literally the summation of the argument. "If we weren't here, we wouldn't be able to observe it". Fine. That is entirely irrelevant to the question of probability of the Fine-tuned Universe argument.
Right, I suggested this in another thread--that this factor eliminates the sheer absurdity of the "basic" Anthropic Principle argument, that the odds are altered by the outcome. The extreme odds could be accounted for if given a context where there can be many attempts.
Unfortunately, we have no demonstration of there being more "attempts" possible or made. And appealing to something for which there isn't any demonstrable evidence, tends to end up sounding pretty hypocritical on the part of the person forwarding the Anthropic Principle argument.
"Considering the other (non-existent) universe", though, is hardly our only means of approximating the odds. We can determine that simply by noting that changing any of the many constants of physical matter would, to all appearances, give us a large amount of energetic but quite non-sentient "goo".
If it were the only means, I might be able to see your argument as something other than saying a complete lack of evidence of something, is equal to the demonstrable existence and extensive evidence of something else, through obscure equivocation.
Sounds like a Reification Fallacy, though, personally. The "non-sentient universe" is a pure verbal abstraction, not something that demonstrably exists at all, to then refer to as a basis for any evidence whatsoever, of anything whatsoever.
And the odds of us living would be precisely what the were--though in the case of your analogy, more easily calculable.
That is the only question at hand in either argument. The results speak none whatsoever to those odds.
I find the Anthropic Principle argument literally astonishingly weak in this form, and find it difficult to believe anyone can give it a second thought unless overwhelmingly biased toward a particular worldview, to about the degree they'd deny 2+2=4 if it was similarly incompatible.
A much preferable form is the notion that either as a function of repeated "attempts" over time, or concurrent attempts through such a mechanism as an Everett Many-Worlds quantum interpretation, many attempts are actually made, of which we are only aware of the success--our own. For that variant, though, we lack strong evidence that is in fact the context of our universe, where many attempts can be and are made. And that is the only thing that would alter the odds, which is the only thing relevant to weighing the Fine-tuned Universe premise. Handwaving to "that's okay because the odds are actually determined by the outcome" is, IMHO, just absurd.
No, because it blatantly and desperately reverses cause-and-effect.
The odds of you winning the lottery is not made 1 by concluding that if you didn't win the lottery, you wouldn't be thinking about winning the lottery.
...you can't argue with success.
Known attempts at permutations of physical constants: 1
Success at creating intelligent life: 1
Of course, one could never argue against the line of reasoning suggested by the summary--whatever degree of life exists, arbitrarily declare there should be "more", and conjecture (yes, it's sheer conjecture--the actual results from modifying the cosmological constant would require far more calculation of than is provided) something else would have made it "better".
Personally, though I'm used to having my code second-guessed, they'd have to come up with a much better criticism than this...
The critical piece that's missing from all discussions of induction I'm aware is the creative role of definition.
Yes... and as Pirsig ably illustrated, there is no algorithm for hypothesis-formation, either.
...by the wildly rhetorical False Dichotomy of "physicists" versus "voodoo priests". Practically an Objectivist signature, that.
There was the book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology...
That there was no further systematic explication beyond an "introduction", though, is telling.
Basically Rand is Aristotle, with the addition that by definition, her concepts are properly formed, and "proper epistemology" is essentially mirroring the entire content of her brain within yours for the "objective" scope and delimitation of each individual concept.
If you think I'm not serious, try The Passion of Ayn Rand, for examples of such objective declarations as which composers one is allowed to like, without being "irrational" as revealed by your preferences.
Okay, science then.
At the point of the formation of a hypothesis, it is not provable. The proposal of the hypothesis (even if only to oneself and one's peers) always precedes developing tests for it, much less "proof".
Since it is not provable at the point proposed, it should not be proposed, per the "burden of proof" criteria.
Since no such hypotheses can be proposed ("such hypotheses" being, all of them), no tests or "proof" will be generated.
And, so, science immediately halts.
Really, try some Karl Popper rather than Judge Judy for these issues. Or at least note that String Theory is science as it is direct inferences from testable scientific premises, even before a falsifiable test is generated.
I can assert that Keynesian framework is the best economic model.
You can assert that it is not.
Most everyone asserts that some economic system is the best or most accurate, according to their view and experience.
Same with their views on political parties.
Absolutely none of us can prove it, yet claims are made. We tend to call those "positions".
90% of all human domains of inquiry are exactly like this.
I'm not sure who has managed to reduce Western Philosophy to Judge Judy in popular discussion, but no, if the domain does not allow for proof, there is no "burden of proof". There are very few domains in which this supposed requirement is other than completely nonsensical.
It's an interesting test-case. I would contend you could not have a thought without the implied belief of having available a subsequent thought--much like you could not choose to analyze something without at least the -belief- you are sane and capable of the required chain of reasoning.
In any case, we'd probably have to delve into this more deeply to have it provide an interesting discussion, as we would to change your second paragraph to more than a simple set of Bare Assertion fallacies.
Since this isn't an active thread anymore, and I'll probably lack the motivation... I'll just leave the question for you to determine.
Curious, because I wouldn't want failing at your goal of avoiding "delusion" to be the capstone of your life...
Will the implied belief of being able to have a next thought, during your final thought, be a delusion?
Okay, what about it?
Are you saying that their behavior lowered the likelihood of their DNA propagation, and so is objectionable in that sense? We'd have to collect the data to determine the degree of genetic "success" that resulted, to evaluate it from that standpoint. Whether it worked for DNA survivability being all that would be relevant and all we need to know--and by that standard, it probably did work.
Of course, I'm making assumptions here. I don't know the ethical axioms you're using, or your demonstrable objective justification for mandating them in the context of your worldview, because you haven't made any such argument. You've just called out cases and made vibrations of disapproval, with nothing at all demonstrated for me to be able to make a normative evaluation according to your worldview.
To continue, I'd need to know what ethical axioms you are working with, as they aren't mine, and I know you aren't saying "religion is ethically in error, which we know by evaluating their correspondence to the correct ethical axioms religion espouses".
That'd be self-contradictory on your part. If you do have some particular axioms you are using for the purposes of discussion, at least name them, before I naturally then ask you to demonstrate a) they are directly derivable from the natural facts of your worldview, and b) are non-subjective. Otherwise, well, they're useless and I'll ignore them, as I should.
Thanks... I could indeed use a refresher on the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.
Because I tend to dislike generally distorting people's understanding of basic philosophy (ethics) for the purposes of scoring some "religion bad" Slashdot points...
Babies are not "innocent". They are amoral. "Innocent" implies the ability to choose an evil act as an act of self-conscious will, and to have chosen against it.
Because, describing any event means you fully advocate that event happening. No need for any actual advocacy of the event to appear anywhere at all in the text, even--just like how we know all World War 2 historians are Nazis whenever they describe the 1940's.
"I have not observed it" != "not observable"
I also enjoy inferring that if something is -mentioned- in a book, it is therefore -recommended- by that book.
Sometimes it's confusing when there is, like your example, no evidence or statement of this position whatsoever, anywhere in the book, but it's neat how edgy it makes every single World War Two historian author seem.
Similarly, translations of The Republic existing refutes it being the "true philosophy of Plato". Oh wait, it doesn't in any way. You can run down a Wittgensteinian rabbit-hole here, but if the words convey consistent meanings across the translations, or the precise meaning is determinable by further analysis, the words accurately represent the content they reference, as far as words ever can. Maybe you were looking for some other impossible criterion you already know you'd never apply to anything else, because you noted it's a religious text that's being discussed?
I'm unmoved by your link. Naturally, the only possible interpretation of that statement is that I'm claiming to be permanently physically stationary, relative to everything else.