Debunk the Teleological Argument for God

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Televangelists.

[mistermack]

I don't know why people set so much store on Socrates, and Plato and Aristotle, ect, as well as Thomas Aquinas.
In their day, they stood out, but they knew fuck-all.
You wouldn't want to try the cures for diseases that they used, so why would you give weight to their other theories?
If they were alive today, and learned what we know now, they would laugh at many of the things they believed then. They were working in the dark, they didn't have the foundation of knowledge that people have now.

[Coito ergo sum]

They were working in the dark, they didn't have the foundation of knowledge that people have now.

And, yet the vast majority of people around today know less and think less clearly than those guys fumbling in the dark...

[mistermack]

They were working in the dark, they didn't have the foundation of knowledge that people have now.

And, yet the vast majority of people around today know less and think less clearly than those guys fumbling in the dark...

Yes but the big difference it the body of knowledge.
Back in those days, a philosopher did everything. Music, science, mathematics, biology, medicine, religion. Nobody specialised.

Nowadays, the man who operates on your eye doesn't need to know anything about music, or very little about maths. The man making his machinery doesn't need to know anything about eyes, and the surgeon doesn't need to know how the machines are made.

We specialise, and all work together, each being expert in a tiny field.
But when you add it all up, the body of knowledge today is gigantic.

Their body of knowledge was almost non existent, and mostly wrong.
It's not what the average man knows today that counts. It's all of the knowledge, added together.

[FBM]

The OP is on the right track. The ID(iotic) proponents went out looking for irreducible complexity in nature in order to prove Intelligent Design and got their theoretical and factual asses handed to them by a couple of scientists who were just fiddling around in their spare time. Turns out, even electrons aren't irreducible: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 134847.htm

[amused]

I don't know if this rebuttal is specific to this argument, but the one I've heard is that any being that is complex enough to create a complex universe must also have been designed. What designed the designer? Something about turtles starts about here...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"You can't get something from nothing!"

"God has always been here."

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The thing about the teleological argument is that it is not a single argument - it is, instead, an argument template that can be adapted to absolutely anything that the questioner sees as suitably complex to not have arisen "naturally". It is the classic "argument of the gaps" - explain how one thing could have arisen without divine intervention and you immediately get a "OK, but what about...?"

The best counter is simply to point out that fact and refuse to be drawn into what will be one bollocks example after another until you come up against one that you have no immediate answer to and then they go, "Aha!" and you sigh and realise that you just wasted however many hours of your life...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Ambush debating is all they have, XC.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Ambush debating is all they have, XC.

Yep - but they do love to flog that hoss, however dead it might be, don't they?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Ambush debating is all they have, XC.

Yep - but they do love to flog that hoss, however dead it might be, don't they?

I've been taking notes while watch Jeff Dee and Matt Dillahunty. I don't let them get away with much.

[mistermack]

As far as I can see, all of the philosophical arguments for a god boil down in the end to the impossibility of a REAL infinity. They end up with almost the identical phrase, "therefore as a real infinity is impossible, it must have been done by a blah blah blah blah blah. ( meaning god, why don't they just say so in the first place ).
And to counter the obvious fact that they are just REPLACING one infinity with another, ( god ) they just say he's not infinite, he's OUTSIDE of matter, space and time.
What a monumental cop-out. They don't bother to define that, they just blandly assert it.
So it boils down in reality to a bland assertion of a god. It's just tarted up to look like a reasoned deduction.

In reality, we don't understand infinity. Maybe we never will. And that is the big gap that they insert their imaginary friend into. God of the one big gap. Infinity.

[Coito ergo sum]

They were working in the dark, they didn't have the foundation of knowledge that people have now.

And, yet the vast majority of people around today know less and think less clearly than those guys fumbling in the dark...

Yes but the big difference it the body of knowledge.
Back in those days, a philosopher did everything. Music, science, mathematics, biology, medicine, religion. Nobody specialised.

Nowadays, the man who operates on your eye doesn't need to know anything about music, or very little about maths. The man making his machinery doesn't need to know anything about eyes, and the surgeon doesn't need to know how the machines are made.

We specialise, and all work together, each being expert in a tiny field.
But when you add it all up, the body of knowledge today is gigantic.

Their body of knowledge was almost non existent, and mostly wrong.
It's not what the average man knows today that counts. It's all of the knowledge, added together.

Sure, but the stuff people refer to Aristotle, et al, about are timeless principles. Like the invention of logic. It's also good to have a classical education because it shows context and how we got here, and teaches people how to think, which is more important than knowing stuff. Not having that foundation produces muddled thinking.

[mistermack]

Sure, but the stuff people refer to Aristotle, et al, about are timeless principles. Like the invention of logic. It's also good to have a classical education because it shows context and how we got here, and teaches people how to think, which is more important than knowing stuff. Not having that foundation produces muddled thinking.

"invention of logic" is a bit of a claim. The Greeks may have been the first to bang on about it, but people have obviously been using it long before it was "invented".
And I've seen no evidence that having a classical education produces clearer thinking.
In fact, muddled thinking is rife among proponents of philosophy, that's the impression I get anyway.

[Thumpalumpacus]

In fact, muddled thinking is rife among proponents of philosophy, that's the impression I get anyway.

Hear, hear.