A reader named Chris recently sent me an email that I'm publishing here (with his permission) because it's too good not to post. I like the way he thinks, because it forces me to question what I believe. Below his email I have included my replies as referenced footnotes. My intent in posting this is to clarify my opinions for him and other readers and to subject these opinions to criticism.
Chris wrote:
In what is apparently your current state of mind, all things are possible and interesting. This is not a virtue of logic or rationality; it is a virtue of imagination. [1] Hold onto it dearly because if you persist in your stated purpose, your imagination is the baby you'll need to salvage from the bathwater. I applaud your efforts and hope that you will have a fruitful journey. Toward that end I offer a few thoughts on the subject.
1. Whether or not there is anything beyond our universe (in the grand sense of our ability to perceive or measure) is utterly irrelevant, and most likely uninteresting except for flights of fancy. Why? Because, by definition, it cannot affect us. [2] The very instant that it affects us or becomes tangent in any way to our universe, it ceases to be THAT and becomes THIS. And THIS is the province of science. Anything that is defined as supernatural or metaphysical cannot be studied or understood by science, but who cares? No theist is interested in God's hobbies. It is the interface BETWEEN the natural and the supernatural (i.e. so-called miracles, etc.) that people are concerned with. In short, if there is a God who exists beyond the physical laws of our universe, it does not matter UNTIL He acts on our universe at which point He or His act is by definition part of our Universe and even if not constrained by our universe's physical laws, He or His act is certainly subject to our scientists' scrutiny. Read more at naturalism.org.
2. Your conscious or subconscious endorsement of the legitimacy of the evolution/ID "debate" if not your tacit endorsement of ID itself, is clear through your repeated use of the term, "design" throughout your site. I would predict that, if you are not being disingenuous, you probably believe that some kind of god or other-worldly force does exist and has either allowed or controlled the process of evolution. If I am correct in that prediction, please re-read #1 above after reading this. [3]
If your position is that "God"(or whatever) must exist because of the overabundance of order and apparent design in the universe generally and in biological systems specifically [4], think about this:
a. this is what is known as the argument from personal incredulity. "I, personally, find (it) difficult to imagine therefore (it) must be false." or conversely, "I find (it) easier to believe than something else so (it) must be true." Obviously, this can have no explanatory value to anyone, including the person making the argument. [5]
b. If your argument is that the universe and the biology found in it are too complex to have occurred via any means other than through the design of some vastly superior being you have explained precisely NOTHING. You are in the grips of an infinite regress. If the universe is so complex as to require a designer, then by the same very argument, THE DESIGNER ITSELF REQUIRES A DESIGNER (presumably the designer is at least AS complex as that which was designed). [6]
3. You may also have bought into the statistical hat trick suggesting that the universe is too statistically unlikely to have occurred via natural means (trick #1 is the use of the code term "by chance"). Ponder this: The odds of something happening that DID HAPPEN, no matter how unlikely, are precisely 1 in 1. [7]
4. Another recurrent theme in your repertoire seems to be a reliance upon the concept of free will (and I like the Rush song, too). I would caution you against overestimating it's value. The most that can be said of free will is that it is very a convenient illusion for our legal system to exploit in order to maintain it's own legitimacy, the status quo and prosecute those who are statistically unpopular. [8]
a. Several hundred years ago the study of philosophy determined that free will was another infinite regress since no one is their own "First Cause."
b. More recently Physics dropped the deterministic universe bomb. Briefly, at any single moment, there exists exactly one possible future. [9]
c. Neurobiology is currently dismantling the heart of the free will myth in ways that defy sound-biting. Suffice it to say, we are the product of two programs, one genetic and one environmental/cultural. Nature AND nurture AND...nothing else. There is no "you" passing judgment on you; no "you" beyond you deciding what to do, no matter how counter-intuitive this seems. [10]
That's right. I am saying there is no supernatural anything. No soul, no god, no consciousness guiding evolution or anything else in any sense that any religion has thus far suggested. This is not to say that we have figured it all out. I'm quite certain that there are forces at work in the universe with which we are not yet familiar (and may never be). I am equally certain that those forces, if they exist, exist in THIS universe, or they simply don't matter.
And now my replies:
[1] I don't think that all things are interesting; I do have broad interests but find many things uninteresting. I do think it is an open question whether all things are possible, and my view is based at least partially on logic and not just imagination. Countless things have been demonstrated to be possible, but I don't think anything has ever been demonstrated to be impossible (perhaps proving that something is impossible is the only thing which is impossible to do?), and many things which had been previously thought to be impossible were eventually accomplished. Our universe does seem to have some limits on what can be known (e.g. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, etc), but these don't necessarily imply that there are states that our universe can't reach. I can't confidently say that everything is possible, but it's hubris to think we're smart enough to confidently say we know what will never be possible.
[2] Part of our apparent difference of opinion might be merely semantic, specifically in our usage of the word "universe". I typically use the phrase "our universe" to mean "the stuff that came out of our big bang", as distinct from "all that exists". It's possible that our universe is all that exists, or it's possible that our universe is an unimaginably small part of all that exists. I think the latter is more likely. I do think that what might exist outside our universe, and questions such as what happened "before" the big bang or what (if anything) caused it, are suitable topics for scientific research (once we're sufficiently intelligent to use clues within our universe about what's outside our universe), and therefore not supernatural.
I do have a minor objection to your claim that anything outside of our universe is irrelevant for how we should live. If one thinks a god created our universe for some purpose, and one believes that some clues as to this purpose can be discovered, then this should certainly be factored in to one's decision about how to live. You apparently do not accept these two premises (which is fine), but I think you'd admit that one who did should accept the conclusion.
Having said all that, I do occasionally think that speculating about what might lie beyond our universe is a waste of time, and that I do it not because it's important or because it will change how I live, but because I enjoy thinking about these things. But those feelings are based on the low probability that I'll figure out anything meaningful and not on the fact that such discoveries wouldn't be useful.
[3] My use of the word "design" might be confusing. I mean it in the same sense that some evolutionary theorists use it as a shorthand for "appears to be designed". Some writers include that explanatory caveat every time they use the word, but I find that cumbersome. I know that such confusion can be manipulated by intelligent design proponents for their political ends (just as they tried to claim that disagreements between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould about punctuated equilibrium implied that evolutionary theory wasn't on solid footing), but I care more about discovering the truth than about how such meme wars play out. Just to be clear, I have very little patience for religious fundamentalists who rally behind the intelligent design movement as a way to circumvent the Supreme Court ban on teaching creationism.
I consider myself an agnostic. But the distinction I made above between a creator of all that exists and a creator of our universe is important here. If I had to guess, I'd estimate the likelihood of a creator of all that exists (i.e. a first mover) to be 30%, and a creator of our universe to be 80%. Of course, these are just guesses based on limited and difficult-to-interpret data.
[4] My position is not that apparent design necessarily implies a creator, but that it ought to somewhat increase one's estimation of the likelihood that a creator exists.
[5] When deciding what to believe, I weigh empirical evidence much more heavily than my intuition; e.g. I accept quantum physics and relativity as true even though they seem profoundly absurd to me. But for anything that currently lies outside the empirical realm, what can I possibly factor in to my beliefs other than intuition (after examining ways in which my intuition tends to be flawed and making adjustments to the extent that I can)? And couldn't I argue that atheists are falling into the same trap, believing that there's no god because they can't imagine how there could be one? (e.g. "If there was a god, then what created that god? I can't wrap my head around that, so there must not be a god.")
[6] I do accept that my view (that there is at least a chance that there are "levels" above ours) doesn't remove the mystery. However, that alone doesn't mean it's not true. If we start to find evidence that there are indeed levels above ours, it would be silly to simply ignore that information on the grounds that it doesn't provide a full explanation and merely pushes the mysteries further up.
[7] That is true. However, if I flipped a coin and it came up heads, even afterwards I would still be able to say that the a priori chance of it coming up heads was 50%. Granted, the matter of our existence is different due to the Anthropic Bias. You might be right that existence isn't a mystery in need of explanation, but I just can't get past the firing squad analogy: If you woke up to find that you had just faced a firing squad and all the shooters had somehow missed you, you would not simply say "it's not remarkable that I'm still alive, because if I wasn't then I wouldn't be here to ponder the situation".
[8] I talk a lot about free will not because I understand it and want to educate others, but because I don't understand it and hope others can educate me. I'm not confident that I'll ever understand free will (people much smarter than me have spent years thinking about it without success), so this might fall in the category of things that are fun to think about but are unlikely to really affect how we should live. I do grant that some people believe in free will because they want to believe in it; but obviously this alone doesn't make it false. I also admit that it's possible to overstate the importance of free will, but I think it's also possible to understate its importance. Consider the following list: life, intelligence, consciousness, morality, free will. Several things strike me about this list: They're interrelated; They feel valuable and fundamental; They make a universe interesting; They are among the few things that humans don't understand; They might somehow open the door to an unexpected outcome; etc. I might be biased by the fact that I'm a living, intelligent, conscious, moral, partially free entity. But if I were creating a universe, I'd probably bake stuff like this into the system. I don't know how important free will is. But given that philosophers can't even agree on a definition (e.g. "ability to do otherwise"... ok, so what does that mean?), I don't see how we can confidently say that free will is not important.
[9] Even if I accept the claim that in our universe the causal path we're on cannot be changed, I don't think that implies that the same must be true outside our universe. And in any case, compatibilists argue that there could be some form of free will in a deterministic system. I haven't found compatibilist arguments persuasive, but we shouldn't simply dismiss them as non-existent.
[10] I definitely agree that most people live like robots, doing whatever their genes and memes "want" them to do. But I do think that it's possible (at least in theory, if not by current humans) to break free from our default programming and have some degree of free will. One possible route to such freedom may be found in the concept of higher-order desires and preferences described by Harry Frankfurt and others.
Chris wrote:
In what is apparently your current state of mind, all things are possible and interesting. This is not a virtue of logic or rationality; it is a virtue of imagination. [1] Hold onto it dearly because if you persist in your stated purpose, your imagination is the baby you'll need to salvage from the bathwater. I applaud your efforts and hope that you will have a fruitful journey. Toward that end I offer a few thoughts on the subject.
1. Whether or not there is anything beyond our universe (in the grand sense of our ability to perceive or measure) is utterly irrelevant, and most likely uninteresting except for flights of fancy. Why? Because, by definition, it cannot affect us. [2] The very instant that it affects us or becomes tangent in any way to our universe, it ceases to be THAT and becomes THIS. And THIS is the province of science. Anything that is defined as supernatural or metaphysical cannot be studied or understood by science, but who cares? No theist is interested in God's hobbies. It is the interface BETWEEN the natural and the supernatural (i.e. so-called miracles, etc.) that people are concerned with. In short, if there is a God who exists beyond the physical laws of our universe, it does not matter UNTIL He acts on our universe at which point He or His act is by definition part of our Universe and even if not constrained by our universe's physical laws, He or His act is certainly subject to our scientists' scrutiny. Read more at naturalism.org.
2. Your conscious or subconscious endorsement of the legitimacy of the evolution/ID "debate" if not your tacit endorsement of ID itself, is clear through your repeated use of the term, "design" throughout your site. I would predict that, if you are not being disingenuous, you probably believe that some kind of god or other-worldly force does exist and has either allowed or controlled the process of evolution. If I am correct in that prediction, please re-read #1 above after reading this. [3]
If your position is that "God"(or whatever) must exist because of the overabundance of order and apparent design in the universe generally and in biological systems specifically [4], think about this:
a. this is what is known as the argument from personal incredulity. "I, personally, find (it) difficult to imagine therefore (it) must be false." or conversely, "I find (it) easier to believe than something else so (it) must be true." Obviously, this can have no explanatory value to anyone, including the person making the argument. [5]
b. If your argument is that the universe and the biology found in it are too complex to have occurred via any means other than through the design of some vastly superior being you have explained precisely NOTHING. You are in the grips of an infinite regress. If the universe is so complex as to require a designer, then by the same very argument, THE DESIGNER ITSELF REQUIRES A DESIGNER (presumably the designer is at least AS complex as that which was designed). [6]
3. You may also have bought into the statistical hat trick suggesting that the universe is too statistically unlikely to have occurred via natural means (trick #1 is the use of the code term "by chance"). Ponder this: The odds of something happening that DID HAPPEN, no matter how unlikely, are precisely 1 in 1. [7]
4. Another recurrent theme in your repertoire seems to be a reliance upon the concept of free will (and I like the Rush song, too). I would caution you against overestimating it's value. The most that can be said of free will is that it is very a convenient illusion for our legal system to exploit in order to maintain it's own legitimacy, the status quo and prosecute those who are statistically unpopular. [8]
a. Several hundred years ago the study of philosophy determined that free will was another infinite regress since no one is their own "First Cause."
b. More recently Physics dropped the deterministic universe bomb. Briefly, at any single moment, there exists exactly one possible future. [9]
c. Neurobiology is currently dismantling the heart of the free will myth in ways that defy sound-biting. Suffice it to say, we are the product of two programs, one genetic and one environmental/cultural. Nature AND nurture AND...nothing else. There is no "you" passing judgment on you; no "you" beyond you deciding what to do, no matter how counter-intuitive this seems. [10]
That's right. I am saying there is no supernatural anything. No soul, no god, no consciousness guiding evolution or anything else in any sense that any religion has thus far suggested. This is not to say that we have figured it all out. I'm quite certain that there are forces at work in the universe with which we are not yet familiar (and may never be). I am equally certain that those forces, if they exist, exist in THIS universe, or they simply don't matter.
And now my replies:
[1] I don't think that all things are interesting; I do have broad interests but find many things uninteresting. I do think it is an open question whether all things are possible, and my view is based at least partially on logic and not just imagination. Countless things have been demonstrated to be possible, but I don't think anything has ever been demonstrated to be impossible (perhaps proving that something is impossible is the only thing which is impossible to do?), and many things which had been previously thought to be impossible were eventually accomplished. Our universe does seem to have some limits on what can be known (e.g. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, etc), but these don't necessarily imply that there are states that our universe can't reach. I can't confidently say that everything is possible, but it's hubris to think we're smart enough to confidently say we know what will never be possible.
[2] Part of our apparent difference of opinion might be merely semantic, specifically in our usage of the word "universe". I typically use the phrase "our universe" to mean "the stuff that came out of our big bang", as distinct from "all that exists". It's possible that our universe is all that exists, or it's possible that our universe is an unimaginably small part of all that exists. I think the latter is more likely. I do think that what might exist outside our universe, and questions such as what happened "before" the big bang or what (if anything) caused it, are suitable topics for scientific research (once we're sufficiently intelligent to use clues within our universe about what's outside our universe), and therefore not supernatural.
I do have a minor objection to your claim that anything outside of our universe is irrelevant for how we should live. If one thinks a god created our universe for some purpose, and one believes that some clues as to this purpose can be discovered, then this should certainly be factored in to one's decision about how to live. You apparently do not accept these two premises (which is fine), but I think you'd admit that one who did should accept the conclusion.
Having said all that, I do occasionally think that speculating about what might lie beyond our universe is a waste of time, and that I do it not because it's important or because it will change how I live, but because I enjoy thinking about these things. But those feelings are based on the low probability that I'll figure out anything meaningful and not on the fact that such discoveries wouldn't be useful.
[3] My use of the word "design" might be confusing. I mean it in the same sense that some evolutionary theorists use it as a shorthand for "appears to be designed". Some writers include that explanatory caveat every time they use the word, but I find that cumbersome. I know that such confusion can be manipulated by intelligent design proponents for their political ends (just as they tried to claim that disagreements between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould about punctuated equilibrium implied that evolutionary theory wasn't on solid footing), but I care more about discovering the truth than about how such meme wars play out. Just to be clear, I have very little patience for religious fundamentalists who rally behind the intelligent design movement as a way to circumvent the Supreme Court ban on teaching creationism.
I consider myself an agnostic. But the distinction I made above between a creator of all that exists and a creator of our universe is important here. If I had to guess, I'd estimate the likelihood of a creator of all that exists (i.e. a first mover) to be 30%, and a creator of our universe to be 80%. Of course, these are just guesses based on limited and difficult-to-interpret data.
[4] My position is not that apparent design necessarily implies a creator, but that it ought to somewhat increase one's estimation of the likelihood that a creator exists.
[5] When deciding what to believe, I weigh empirical evidence much more heavily than my intuition; e.g. I accept quantum physics and relativity as true even though they seem profoundly absurd to me. But for anything that currently lies outside the empirical realm, what can I possibly factor in to my beliefs other than intuition (after examining ways in which my intuition tends to be flawed and making adjustments to the extent that I can)? And couldn't I argue that atheists are falling into the same trap, believing that there's no god because they can't imagine how there could be one? (e.g. "If there was a god, then what created that god? I can't wrap my head around that, so there must not be a god.")
[6] I do accept that my view (that there is at least a chance that there are "levels" above ours) doesn't remove the mystery. However, that alone doesn't mean it's not true. If we start to find evidence that there are indeed levels above ours, it would be silly to simply ignore that information on the grounds that it doesn't provide a full explanation and merely pushes the mysteries further up.
[7] That is true. However, if I flipped a coin and it came up heads, even afterwards I would still be able to say that the a priori chance of it coming up heads was 50%. Granted, the matter of our existence is different due to the Anthropic Bias. You might be right that existence isn't a mystery in need of explanation, but I just can't get past the firing squad analogy: If you woke up to find that you had just faced a firing squad and all the shooters had somehow missed you, you would not simply say "it's not remarkable that I'm still alive, because if I wasn't then I wouldn't be here to ponder the situation".
[8] I talk a lot about free will not because I understand it and want to educate others, but because I don't understand it and hope others can educate me. I'm not confident that I'll ever understand free will (people much smarter than me have spent years thinking about it without success), so this might fall in the category of things that are fun to think about but are unlikely to really affect how we should live. I do grant that some people believe in free will because they want to believe in it; but obviously this alone doesn't make it false. I also admit that it's possible to overstate the importance of free will, but I think it's also possible to understate its importance. Consider the following list: life, intelligence, consciousness, morality, free will. Several things strike me about this list: They're interrelated; They feel valuable and fundamental; They make a universe interesting; They are among the few things that humans don't understand; They might somehow open the door to an unexpected outcome; etc. I might be biased by the fact that I'm a living, intelligent, conscious, moral, partially free entity. But if I were creating a universe, I'd probably bake stuff like this into the system. I don't know how important free will is. But given that philosophers can't even agree on a definition (e.g. "ability to do otherwise"... ok, so what does that mean?), I don't see how we can confidently say that free will is not important.
[9] Even if I accept the claim that in our universe the causal path we're on cannot be changed, I don't think that implies that the same must be true outside our universe. And in any case, compatibilists argue that there could be some form of free will in a deterministic system. I haven't found compatibilist arguments persuasive, but we shouldn't simply dismiss them as non-existent.
[10] I definitely agree that most people live like robots, doing whatever their genes and memes "want" them to do. But I do think that it's possible (at least in theory, if not by current humans) to break free from our default programming and have some degree of free will. One possible route to such freedom may be found in the concept of higher-order desires and preferences described by Harry Frankfurt and others.
posted by howtolive.org at
4:37 PM
10 Comments:
Hmmmm... interesting dialogue. I want to say two things:
First, to the emailer Chris, although I agree with much of what you said, I have to disagree when you say
"The most that can be said of free will is that it is very a convenient illusion for our legal system to exploit in order to maintain it's own legitimacy, the status quo and prosecute those who are statistically unpopular."
I mean, for me I think that the key concept of any free will theory is that it holds people morally responsible for their actions. And determinism is not really this huge problem for free will that so many people make it out to be. It just depends on how you define free will. If free will means "One could have chosen to act differently if time had been rewound back to a universe with exactly the same material state", then obviously there is no free will in our deterministic universe. But this metaphysical libertarian view is not a useful definition, and is irrelevant to moral responsibility.
Something along the lines of "One can be held morally responsible if one's actions stem from one's beliefs and desires" is much better, and in fact this is perfectly in alignment with a deterministic universe. Our actions stem from a beliefs, and sure our beliefs are caused by other factors (eg upbringing, genes etc.) but this doesn't matter. Of course our beliefs are caused by other factors. It seems the free will debate is very much just a semantic squabble. Choose the definition you want, and it can work. But of course the metaphysical libertarian view seems to be not only a worse definition, but also just wishful thinking (because we can be fairly confident we do live in a deterministic universe! It's science people!)
Howtolive, I would be interested in hearing what your reasons are for being agnostic. From reading your posts, I'm assuming you don't find any credit in the "evidence" of holy books etc. and of course we have purely naturalistic explanations for the rise of life. There is still the big question we're stuck with: Where did it all come from!? I'm thinking this is your reason for refraining from atheism? Now I agree the Deist God you seem to be expressing is much more plausible than the typical, interfering in our lives, sending people to heaven and hell God, but I am still confused, because it seems to me this conception of a creator can be wiped off the table with Occam's Razor. Complex systems arise after time from simpler ones.
By
DL, at 6:17 PM
here is a taste of Naturalism.org
Inclusive naturalism – the view that human beings and human behavior are completely included in the natural world – implies that we don’t have libertarian free will, the capacity to cause without being caused in turn. Under naturalism there are no causally privileged agents that could have done otherwise in situations exactly as they arose. Those sympathetic to naturalism often suppose that this view of human agents as only proximate, not ultimate, originators of their behavior will attenuate the tendency to place blame (or credit) solely on the individual. After all, factors unchosen by the person play an essential role in shaping action, and when those factors are appreciated, this can dampen our retributive impulses. And in turn, as the desire for retribution diminishes, we are better able to look outside the person to the wider causal context, with an eye to the more effective prevention of future offenses.
By
Chris, at 9:08 PM
I wonder, dl, where do you suppose "one's beliefs and desires" come from?
By
Chris, at 9:19 PM
dl -
> Howtolive, I would be interested in hearing what your reasons are for being agnostic.
Great question. I'll plan a new post in the next couple weeks detailing my position.
> I'm assuming you don't find any credit in the "evidence" of holy books etc.
That's correct.
> Deist God you seem to be expressing... can be wiped off the table with Occam's Razor.
There might be some validity to this point, but keep in mind that Occam's Razor is simply a rule of thumb that we found to work well within our universe, it's certainly not an absolute law on the same footing as something like the law of gravitation, and I don't think we can confidently say that it must also apply outside our universe. Having said that, I do weigh Occam's Razor in the balance along with other clues for/against a creator.
chris -
I'll plan to check out Naturalism.org. You might be right that inclusive naturalism and libertarian free will are incompatible, but I am not nearly as confident as you are about this. My suspicion is that there is a meaningful type of freedom that's analog (i.e. spectral) rather than digital (i.e. yes/no). I think most humans have almost none of this type of free will, some have a little, and life elsewhere in our universe might have a lot more.
I do agree with your point that an appreciation for the fact that most people are not thinking or acting freely but are being pushed around by their genes and memes can help us be more understanding and less judgmental of others.
If you have opinions on my other replies to your comments I'd love to hear them as well.
By
howtolive.org, at 9:42 AM
In reply to:
1. One of the inherent problems of mystical thinking is that it weaves a web of fantasy around the mind(read that,"Brain")the effect of which is the mind assigning roughly equal merit to what we call scientific facts and the "you can't disprove it" category. Into this category fit Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, elves, God, Thor, Astrology, the Moral Majority,and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, among a literally infinite and ever-expanding cadre of fantastic theories and creatures. It is astonishing how much time and effort are put into these fantasies, not to mention how many people have been KILLED in order to protect them. Once you fully appreciate this point you can start to assign an appropriate degree of merit to those flights of fancy that can make life fun for kids and interesting for the rest of us. Don't get me wrong, fantasies have a value. In fact I think that our capacity to imagine was part of the driving force behind the evolution of our big brains. But at this point in History it is imperative that we, as a species, put mystical thinking in its place, and that place is not guiding foreign policy or our childrens' science class curriculum.
Suggested readings are: An End To Innocence; and The Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
By
chris, at 11:40 AM
chris,
Your latest comment combines several different points, so let me break it down so it's clear where we agree and where we disagree:
a. It is faulty logic to assume that everything that can't be proven is equally likely.
b. The likelihood that our universe was created by some type of intelligence is about the same as the likelihood that Santa Claus exists.
c. Traditional religion is a negative for humanity.
I certainly agree with a.
I disagree with b. The chance that Santa Claus exists within our universe is essentially zero (barring the exceedingly unlikely, e.g. vast conspiracy, god tricking us, brain in a vat, VR delusion, etc). I have yet to see a good argument from anyone justifying why they are confident the chance that our universe was created by some type of intelligence is less than 10% (or greater than 90%). Again the distinction needs to be made here between a first mover, which seems less likely to me, and a creator of our universe, which seems more likely (for just two of the many possible reasons, see Smolin's cosmological natural selection idea and Bostrom's simulation argument).
I don't think c is as obviously true as some atheists claim. On the balance traditional religious belief was probably beneficial until a few thousand years ago, and is probably detrimental now, and will become extremely detrimental in the very near future, as technology continues to progress exponentially. But I do consider this a separate issue from the question of whether a creator exists, and is related only to the extent that you fear (1) my comments might be encouraging others to believe in destructive, faith-based forms of religion (which seems unlikely to me), or (2) my probabilistic assessment of the likelihood of a creator and its possible purposes for us might lead me to a way of living which infringes upon others' lives in the way that traditional religions often do (which also seems unlikely to me).
By
howtolive.org, at 1:42 PM
Chris:"I wonder, dl, where do you suppose "one's beliefs and desires" come from?"
From the state of matter in the universe and one's brain at that moment, which is of course dependent on the state of the universe at previous moments, assuming determinism is true.
I had a quick look at the site you linked to, and it was interesting, but I disagreed when they said determinism leads to no free will, because the authors were working with the libertarian definition of free will (Person X could have done otherwise if time was rewound to the same moment), not explaining the compatibilist view (Person X has free will because he could have done otherwise If He Had Wanted To).
Moral responsibility comes in from pragmatism, it simply makes things better if we hold people accountable for their actions even though there is such huge outside influence on our lives out of our control. So the responsibility is not ground in the metaphysics, but it comes from a pragmatic argument.
Yikes I'm rambling a bit.
By
dl, at 2:42 PM
I apologize for being a bit untidy in making the "a." point. No. What I meant was; It is faulty logic to assume that something un-dis-provable is "roughly" equally likely as something as-yet-unproven.
b. I agree with your paraphrase ob this one. Real statistics are based on real evidence. I am very curious how you arrive at a statistical probability for a creator or for Santa Claus for that matter. If there was credible evidence of the existence of this creator, then that would really change the equation! "Apparent Design" is strictly a subjective call, and is no evidence of a creator in any case.
By
chris, at 3:27 PM
> I am very curious how you arrive at a statistical probability for a creator
Stay tuned... dl also asked me this and I'm planning to take a shot at it in a new post within the next week or two.
By
howtolive.org, at 5:08 PM
> I'm planning to take a shot at it in a new post within the next week or two.
Unfortunately this is going to be delayed. I started working on it and was making good progress but then I discovered that an author (Stephen Unwin) has already written a book very much along the lines of what I was doing. I want to get it right so I'm going to read his book before finalizing my post. This will push things back by probably a couple months. Sorry...
By
howtolive.org, at 10:30 AM
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