Refuting Dawkin's Ultimate 747 argument

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There are so many problems with the creotards' 747 argument it would take a jumbo jet to hold them all.

State ten.

Google.

[Seth]

There are so many problems with the creotards' 747 argument it would take a jumbo jet to hold them all.

State ten.

Google.

How is Google a "problem" with the 747 argument?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There are so many problems with the creotards' 747 argument it would take a jumbo jet to hold them all.

State ten.

Google.

How is Google a "problem" with the 747 argument?

Where the caring?

[hiyymer]

[this is the final section of a long essay]
However, no amount of imagined universes can account for the problem that knowledge, power and intention exist and these three phenomena cannot have a material source.

I would recommend Hawking's new book "The Grand Design" written with Leonard Mlodinow. They specifically address the issue of the strong anthropic principle. I am not sure I find it that convincing, but the point is really that classical Newtonian "simplistically causal" reality went out with the revelation of the quantum nature of that which exists. We are in the universe we are in because it is the universe that has the highest probability of producing us. Causality is not predetermined. The quantum nature of reality is not a reason to think God could still exist, but rather a reason to think that God is unnecessary to the history of life on earth. At least that's their thesis. I think the jury is kind of out on the whole question. I don't buy your argument as conclusive either.

I am also reading Antonio Damasio's new book "Self Comes to Mind". In it he points out that simple living organisms have built into their form all kinds of complex behaviors that are goal oriented; the goal of maintaining homeostasis (the internal conditions of sustaining aliveness), and the goal of replication. One could say their behaviors are intentional, are powerful, and belie knowledge of how to react to their surroundings. But these organisms have zero neurons, zero brain, zero sentience in the way we understand it. The source of their behavior is material. It is in the evolved form itself. We can think of those organisms as agents with self-causation, deciding to do what they do outside of the physical laws of science, but it doesn't make it so. In fact we almost MUST think of them that way, because it is how our brain makes sense of the world. But our brain is a physical organ and the slave of the millions of non-neuronal cells in the body. It creates the representations that we experience so that the body/brain, the organism, can maintain homeostasis. Life is intentional, or it wouldn't be life, but that doesn't make our experience immaterially causal in actual fact. As Hawking/Mlodinow put it, "Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws."

To my way of thinking there is no agency in what really exists, as revealed by the rational deconstruction of physical reality. But agency exists all over the place in our experience, and for very good reason. It's how the brain functions to keep us alive. Homeostasis is maintained by anticipating what's happening, not just by reacting. The agent model is a very effective predictor. I don't think we can ever fully understand how profoundly our experience is what matters, and how profoundly our experience is pervasively not what really exists. The issue of the the "existence" of the things in our experience is, for me, a non-starter. There is no reason to single out God as existing or not existing. One's own agency is subject to the same test. The knowledge of what really exists does not make us better,more moral, more effective at surviving. Rationality gives us an amoral tool for getting what we "intend" as the physical expression of our evolved form. It does not free us from the tyranny of nature and our own brain. The experience of "us" is a creation of that brain.

[spinoza99]

But our brain is a physical organ and the slave of the millions of non-neuronal cells in the body. It creates the representations that we experience so that the body/brain, the organism, can maintain homeostasis.

If the brain creates does it create by choosing what it wants to do or is it like a computer and merely following instructions?

[MiM]

If the brain creates does it create by choosing what it wants to do or is it like a computer and merely following instructions?

My two pence:

Although I don't have a really strong opinion on the ultimate existence of free will, comparing the brain to a computer (as we usually think of computers) surely isn't right. A computer will normally work deterministically and give the same output every time you run it with the same program and input. The brain is full of randomness (probably even some on a quantum level)and flaws, that will make it produce unpredictable and unique results when performing complex calculations.

[spinoza99]

also, if the brain is a slave to neurons, then are the neurons creating? Are the neurons slaves also?

[spinoza99]

Although I don't have a really strong opinion on the ultimate existence of free will, comparing the brain to a computer (as we usually think of computers) surely isn't right. A computer will normally work deterministically and give the same output every time you run it with the same program and input.

I agree

The brain is full of randomness (probably even some on a quantum level)and flaws, that will make it produce unpredictable and unique results when performing complex calculations.

The how does order come out of it?

[Seth]

also, if the brain is a slave to neurons, then are the neurons creating? Are the neurons slaves also?

I saw something on TV a while back indicating that neurons operate at the quantum level somehow. Something to do with the electrons being affected at the quantum level when they travel across the synapse. Not quite sure how that works.

My question is whether quantum entanglement in the brain might have something to do with, for example, the link between twins that seems to be rather strong.

[Coito ergo sum]

Fine tuning is the theists' most powerful argument?

Wow.

It's a fairly weak and feeble argument, so what does that say about the rest of their arguments?

[Coito ergo sum]

Spinoza99 - the argument isn't that since you don't know what causes X you don't know what causes Y. The argument is that SINCE you say that Y is too improbable to be caused by chance, and therefore X must have caused it - THEN X must be at least as improbable as Y, and therefore we're stuck with the same problem - where did X come from.

Nobody said - X caused Y, but you don't know what caused X therefore you don't know what caused Y. That's a mischaracterization of the logic. It doesn't matter that we don't know what caused X - we just know that if X caused Y it must be at least as improbable as Y.

That's Dawkins' argument, anyway.

[Seth]

Spinoza99 - the argument isn't that since you don't know what causes X you don't know what causes Y. The argument is that SINCE you say that Y is too improbable to be caused by chance, and therefore X must have caused it - THEN X must be at least as improbable as Y, and therefore we're stuck with the same problem - where did X come from.

Nobody said - X caused Y, but you don't know what caused X therefore you don't know what caused Y. That's a mischaracterization of the logic. It doesn't matter that we don't know what caused X - we just know that if X caused Y it must be at least as improbable as Y.

That's Dawkins' argument, anyway.

And the problem with Dawkin's so-called logic is that "improbability" is not really a concept that applies to science. It's an intellectual evasion. By "improbable" Dawkins actually means "supernatural." The problem with that is that nothing in science or physics says that a "creator" of THIS universe has to be even remotely supernatural. It merely has to be highly advanced and not presently detectable by our primitive scientific understanding.

As I've said many times before, nothing in physics or science precludes the existence of a tremendously advanced intelligence existing in a parallel "membrane" or "bubble" universe that is capable of injecting a monoblock of near-infinitely compressed matter into THIS universe, as nothing more sophisticated than a high-school physics experiment for adolescent other-universe intellects.

This hypothesis neatly dissects and destroys Dawkins' "it's turtles all the way down" fallacy.

The parameters of an adjacent universe, according to our own primitive cosmological theorizing, need not be remotely like our own, nor would that universe necessary be as young as our own. It could be billions of times older than our own, with evolved intelligences so vastly superior to ours that, as Arthur Clark puts it, their advanced technology would appear to be magic, or dare I say, divine action to us primitive human beings.

This does not resolve the "where did that entity come from" infinite regress, but so what? What's under consideration here is how THIS universe came into being, and the potential that intelligent design, or merely intelligent meddling and interference in natural selection, might have occurred.

Such an extra-universal intelligence would be entirely "natural" within it's own context while seeming to be supernatural within our context.

And there's nothing improbable about my hypothesis that isn't equally improbable about any multiple-universe cosmological hypothesis.

[spinoza99]

Fine tuning is the theists' most powerful argument?

Wow.

It's a fairly weak and feeble argument, so what does that say about the rest of their arguments?

prove that fine tuning is a weak argument

[spinoza99]

Spinoza99 - the argument isn't that since you don't know what causes X you don't know what causes Y. The argument is that SINCE you say that Y is too improbable to be caused by chance, and therefore X must have caused it - THEN X must be at least as improbable as Y, and therefore we're stuck with the same problem - where did X come from.

Nobody said - X caused Y, but you don't know what caused X therefore you don't know what caused Y. That's a mischaracterization of the logic. It doesn't matter that we don't know what caused X - we just know that if X caused Y it must be at least as improbable as Y.

That's Dawkins' argument, anyway.

Dawkins is not very careful with his prose because specifically says if you posit he Deity then you immediately raise the question of his origin. but since other atheists seem to believe that Dawkins does in fact not say what I claim he sais then we'll drop the issue. So now let's discuss: " Y is too improbable to be caused by chance, and therefore X must have caused it - THEN X must be at least as improbable as Y, and therefore we're stuck with the same problem - where did X come from," which is a fair argument.



To define complexity I will use Dawkins own definition taken from the Blind Watchmaker which is essentially correct, incidentally many opponents of ID, such as Jeffrey Shallit and Mark Perakh, do not accept it.

Nonspecified complexity is just a jumble of parts or, if it forms a pattern, such as a crystal, then it is simply a repetitive pattern. Chance and physical laws can produce non-specified complexity, but chance and law cannot produce specified complexity. Specified complexity is the managing of parts so that it achieves a highly improbable result that is indicated in advance. Here is how Dawkins describes it:

To borrow an analogy from an eminent astronomer, [Fred Hoyle] if you take the parts of an airliner and jumble them up at random, the likelihood that you would happen to assemble a working Boeing is vanishingly small. There are billions of possible ways of putting together the bits of an airliner, and only one, or very few, of them would actually be an airliner. ... There are billions of ways of throwing together the bits of Mont Blanc, it might be said, and only one of them is Mont Blanc. So what is it that makes the airliner and the human complicated, if Mont Blanc is simple? Any old jumbled collection of parts is unique and, with hindsight, is as improbable as any other. The scrap-heap at an aircraft breaker’s yard is unique. No two scrap-heaps are the same. If you start throwing fragments of aeroplanes into heaps, the odds of your happening to hit upon exactly the same arrangement of junk twice are just about as low as the odds of your throwing together a working airliner. So, why don’t we say that a rubbish dump, or Mont Blanc, or the moon, is just as complex as an aeroplane or a dog, because in all these cases the arrangement of atoms is ‘improbable’? ... It is specified in advance. Of all the millions of unique and, with hindsight equally improbable, arrangements of a heap of junk, only one (or very few) will fly. ... Now, if you consider all possible ways in which the rocks of Mont Blanc could have been thrown together, it is true that only one of them would make Mont Blanc as we know it. But Mont Blanc as we know it is defined with hindsight. Any one of a very large number of ways of throwing rocks together would be labelled a mountain, and might have been named Mont Blanc. There is nothing special about the particular Mont Blanc that we know, nothing specified in advance. ... The minimum requirement for us to recognize an object as an animal or plant is that it should succeed in making a living of some sort (more precisely that it, or at least some members of its kind, should live long enough to reproduce). ... However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive. You may throw cells together at random, over and over again for a billion years, and not once will you get a conglomeration that flies or swims or burrows or runs, or does anything, even badly, that could remotely be construed as working to keep itself alive.

Now, can we apply that definition of specified complexity to the Immaterial? Again, I want to restate that I believe that the three qualities of the Immaterial are: Power, Will/Intention, Intelligence/Knowledge. None of those three qualities are made up of parts. There are no two phenomena that combine to form power, for example.

Now, one might reasonably ask: aren't power, will and knowledge parts of the Immaterial? No, they aren't. Power, will and knowledge are ways of describing what is necessary for a designed action to occur. It's not that you have to place will, power and knowledge in the right SEQUENCE a designed action occurs, rather when a designed action occurs knowledge, will and power exist. You can not take away will and have power and knowledge remain. Even the desire to do nothing is itself a desire.

Let me describe what I mean by a designed or an intended action. The adjective is necessary to distinguish it from events that can be attributed to chance or physical law. (William Dembski is credited with dividing the cause of all phenomena into three categories: chance, law and design). Phenomena due to chance or physical law are not what I would call actions. They are events, but those events are not due to a combination of will, knowledge and power.

Point: Designed actions are not the result of the arrangement of parts that is "specified in advance." Designed actions ARE that which specifies.

Again, I want to drive home my point that designed actions, which the Immaterial causes are not themselves caused by anything else. The knowledge that is used to cause design actions certainly changes (I believe God is not omnipotent) but design actions do not have the following structure:

If
knowledge A B and C
then
action F 50% of the time, or action G 50% of the time

Proving the Immaterial

I now want to make a second attempt to prove that the existence of the Immaterial is not simply a blind assertion.


Fact: Humans can design
Theory: Design must necessarily not be the result of an inevitable obedience to physical laws or the result of chance.

Physical laws constrain material objects to operate in this fashion: for each input, there is a probability for a finite amount of outputs, especially at the atomic level, at the large level inputs to outputs are one to one.

Fact: For laws to work every input and output must be defined.

For example, boiling points of molecular substances are due to the strength of the atomic bonds holding them (provided they are at standard pressure). Boiling points act according to predictable law because the strength of every atomic bond can be defined. Both the input and the output are defined: the input is defined by the strength of the bond which can be measured and the output can defined by the temperature.

Fact: You can not write laws that will compel a human to write a piece of music because the diversity of inputs that affect a composers' composition are infinite, second, the output that the composer can compose is also infinite.

For example, in order to compile a list of all the phenomena that influenced Shostakovich's 10th you would literally have to write down a list of everything that Shostakovich could possibly encounter because, technically, if Sh encounters something which his machine-brain can not define then the output will not be returned (maybe, I'm still not exactly sure how computers react when they encounter an undefined variable). To define every phenomena that Sh could encounter is an impossible task and moreover where would this code be written? Certainly, not in the DNA since it is not big enough. Second, to define every output you would have to write down every possible piece of music that could ever possibly be written which again is infinite and could be written no where in the DNA code.

To summarize the proof for my theory in the simplest terms:

Proof:
1. Design is capable of choosing an answer from an infinite list or a huge list (larger than 10^150) often
2. Chance is capable of choosing an answer from a small finite set (less than 10^150) rarely
3. Law is capable of returning the same answer for the same question

For example, let's say the problem is: build a house of cards five stories high, within a finite space 1 cubic meter large. If you allowed law alone to accomplish this task, nothing would happen because the law of gravity compels cards at rest to stay at rest. If you combined law with chance such as blowing a random wind into the cards and seeing if the house of cards occurred spontaneously, it would never happen because the odds of that happening are well above the probabilistic resources of our universe which is 10^150. If we ask someone with intelligence, power and desire to perform this act he will succeed in this endeavor immediately. If he does not succeed then it is because he does not have the power or the knowledge. This person must by necessity be able to succeed in this endeavor because there is an immaterial mind that knows which neurons to fire in the brain and knows when to fire them, such that the arm will move properly.

Theory:
1. Organic and inorganic matter of made of the same elements
2. The Immaterial can control organic material
3. Therefore the Immaterial can control inorganic material within the limits set by physical law

I'm not saying that this is an irrefutable deductive argument that cannot be refuted if you accept the preference because it has this structre

1. A is like B
2. Imm can control A
3. Therefore Imm can control B

I realize that just because A is like B does not mean that they equal each other. However, it is not too outrageous a theory.

[spinoza99]

And there's nothing improbable about my hypothesis that isn't equally improbable about any multiple-universe cosmological hypothesis.

True, but both hypotheses fail because both rely on imagined evidence for the foundation of their world view. We need to build a world view on the evidence that we know of, not on wished-for or imaginary evidence. I believe we have strong evidence that the Immaterial can design the material, as I've shown in the previous post. Of course, I don't have an answer for how did something come from nothing, but we need to build a worldview based on the questions we can answer. It does not follow: you can't explain how something came from nothing, therefore atheism, nor does it follow you can't explain how something came from nothing, therefore God