The Parable of the Atom Seeker

A young student grows up in a society that holds the belief where she, like everything else, is made up of tiny unseen particles called atoms. So after learning something about the methodologies of science, she decides to understand what the science is behind the atom.

What strikes her at first is how the explanations for the atom didn't fit at all into the scientific method, but relied heavily on everyday experience. Furthermore, no modern physicists have witnessed such experiences, but rely solely on the accounts of early physicists. Some physicists claimed to have experiences that tangentially supported the experiences of the original physicists, but none of them could produce any evidence remotely like that which holds for other theories.

Upon further investigation, she realises that physicists disagree among themselves as to which experiences count as evidence of the atom. Some physicists argue that the experiences are interpreted too literally, while others hold to as literal a reading as possible. Some argue that the experiences can only be understood in light of arcane mystic writings and ancient mythic tales, and there is disagreement among those physicists as to the process this takes.

The quality of evidence is further called into question when other physical theories adequately account for the evidence for atoms without needing to posit atomic theory. She finds physicists will admit this in parts, but again there is disagreement between physicists over which scientific phenomena explain away the need for atoms in any given case. Some physicists spoke of the atom in metaphor, some shrouded knowledge of atoms in mystery, and some asserted that certain experiences of atoms were brute facts.

But not all physicists even agreed that evidence was important. Some physicists argued from first principles alone, invoking philosophical arguments that spoke of the atom's necessity in some respect. There were multiple of these arguments, though physicists disagreed among themselves as to the validity and significance of various arguments. Entire classes of arguments were championed by some physicists, while others favoured a different kind of arguments. She found the arguments for the most part lacking in any detail, and where there was detail it contradicted other established science. There was just no way to reconcile the arguments with the claims made about atoms.

She found some physicists who disagreed with both the arguments and the evidential approach. Some argued for the beauty of the idea as proof of the reality of atoms. Other physicists argued that atoms fit with our emotional needs. Some argued that the atoms were needed to keep social order. Some argued that their emotional response to the theory is its proof. Finally, some physicists admitted that a belief in atoms is a matter of faith, which a few embracing the idea of atoms precisely because they are an absurd concept.

The only constant she found in the exercise was the belief itself. Physicists couldn't decide among themselves what the implications were, let alone any detail that could be subject to the same scrutiny that other physical theories have. What follows is that the consensus among physicists is an artificial one, with no two physicist sharing quite the same view of what an atom is or how we know about it. And, finally, the reasons and evidence given in favour of atomic theory were unlike the various successful epistemologies that she had learnt about. At that point, there was nothing to do for the idea of atoms than to just walk away until such time the concept became more scientific... though she doubts that would ever be the case.

---

The question "does God exist?" has been the focus of more than enough academic inquiry that the inquiry itself deserves to be taken seriously. In any given field, outsiders looking in are looking at the promise of a discipline to be able to provide satisfactory answers on the questions it purports to cover. This isn't always easy, as academic discourse tends to become self-sustaining making it harder for outsiders to be able to make sense of it. So some latitude must be given for outsiders simply not to "get it" when it comes to the validity of the questions and the approach to answers the discipline offers.

Two things to recognise are that a) no human endeavour is truly in isolation, and b) there are a lot of ways to spend a lot of time asking wrong questions. Astrology and alchemy good examples of both. The methods of astrologers and alchemists throughout the ages have overlap with the methods used in science and philosophy. And both astrology and alchemy are nonsense notions that had a lot of ink spilled over a long time by some very smart and learned people. Very few of us are astrologers today, and none are alchemists, yet as outsiders we feel sufficiently qualified to write off both intellectual disciplines as failed truth-telling endeavours about the universe. It could have turned out both were true. It turned out neither were.

What I tried to do in the parable above was highlight my own experiences trying to understand the question of God as believers see it, including what philosophers and theologians have said about the question. I grant the possibility that there could be a theologian out there who has a legitimate case for God's existence, but I don't see the worth of exploring the subject in any great detail. Despite the towering intellects and sheer amount of manpower thrown at the problem, there doesn't seem to be the same conversation among learned believers about what God is and does - let alone a case made with the successful epistemologies we have developed. This stands out in contrast to the actual atomic theory - or any other scientific theory - where the scientists have general agreement as to what theories are and the state of the evidence, even if they sometimes disagree on detail.

William Lane Craig on The Problem Of Evil

I've been reading through The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, where William Lane Craig is the voice critiquing atheistic arguments and promoting theistic arguments. Of what he wrote, it's his critique of the problem of evil I want to explore.

Craig frames the problem of evil like so:

1. If God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist.
2. Gratuitous evil exists.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.

His contention is that (2) is the weak point of the argument. As Craig acknowledges "Everybody admits that the world is filled with apparently gratuitous suffering", but does Craig sufficiently deal with the problem? Here are his responses.

1. We are not in a good position to assess with confidence the probability that God lacks morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world.

"Once we contemplate God’s providence over the whole of history, then it becomes evident how hopeless it is for limited observers to speculate on the probability that some evil we see is ultimately gratuitous."

2. Christian theism entails doctrines that increase the probability of the coexistence of God and evil.

(i) The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God.

"Many evils occur in life that may be utterly pointless with respect to producing human happiness; but they may not be pointless with respect to producing a deeper, saving knowledge of God."

(ii) Mankind has been accorded significant moral freedom to rebel against God and his purpose.

"The horrendous moral evils in the world are testimony to man’s depravity in this state of spiritual alienation from God."

(iii) God’s purpose spills over into eternal life.

"Given the prospect of eternal life, we should not expect to see in this life God’s compensation for every evil we experience. Some may be justified only in light of eternity."

(iv) The knowledge of God is an incommensurable good.

"[T]he person who knows God, no matter what he or she suffers, no matter how awful his or her pain, can still truly say, “God is good to me!” simply in virtue of the fact that he or she knows God."

3. There is better warrant for believing that God exists than that the evil in the world is really gratuitous.

"[I]f God exists, then the evil in the world is not really gratuitous."

I would wonder just how viable each of those options are. (1) is an concession to our ignorance on matters at all. If the objection held, then we'd just as equally be able to say that the evidence of an all-evil God or a morally-indifferent God is just as likely as an omnibenevolent God. So whatever other reasons one would have to believe that there's a divine power, we'd have no reason to favour just what nature that divine power embodies. Would believers be comfortable in accepting that the universe is just as easily made by a malevolent deity as an omnibenevolent one?

(2) is a curious strategy, not least because it immediately conjures up the Epicurean objection: "Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent." Even if knowledge of God was an immesurable good, why would we need to have gratuitous suffering alongside it? If it doesn't matter, then it's powerful evidence against God's benevolence. One might be able to make the case iff suffering increased the likelihood of knowledge of God, but then that would require good evidence in its favour. Knowledge of the Christian God is largely based on the actions of Christian evangelism rather than by suffering directly. Most people throughout our species' history have suffered (sometimes gratuitously) without there even being the idea of Christianity, let alone the exposure to it. So the premises (2i), (2ii), and (2iv) don't even make sense for most of the suffering we have.

Furthermore, most life evidentially can suffer, and there's no question of a chimpanzee or an octopus having knowledge of God. Other animals react much the same to pain as we do, so why would a God allow them to suffer when none of the four responses even begin to address animal suffering? Craig's answer from elsewhere is "God has shielded almost the entire animal kingdom throughout its history from an awareness of being in pain!" Though almost doesn't include all animals beside from human, even if Craig is correct in interpreting the evidence as other great apes have the structures, yet don't have knowledge of God. So at best Craig has merely reduced the scope of animal suffering but not eliminated the problem.

The idea of heaven (2iii) seems to work against the notion of a benevolent God. Far from a saving grace, it highlights exactly what the problem of evil says - this world doesn't look like it was created by a benevolent God. If God could have created the world without gratuitous suffering, then why do we have gratuitous suffering? Also, why would a child need to die slowly and painfully of cancer before heaven rather than just getting into heaven without experiencing that suffering at all? Similarly, (2ii) asks the question of why a benevolent God would create us in such a depraved way. Quite a lot of atheists, for example, are quite civilised and don't contribute to the gratuitous suffering of our fellow humans. Their spiritual alienation from God doesn't lead to total depravity. Meanwhile there are believers who tortured others in the name of their faith. Did they have spiritual alienation? Besides, most suffering in the world has nothing to do with the actions of humanity - spiritually alienated or not.

For (3) to work, we would need to have greater confidence in the evidence for God's existence than the evidence for gratuitous suffering. Since we have very good evidence for gratuitous suffering such that Craig acknowledges the apparent gratuitous suffering, so it's setting a really high bar for evidence for God. It's not helped by the problem that other arguments for God, as Stephen Law points out, are neutral on the moral characteristics for God. So even if the other arguments are very persuasive, they wouldn't be evidence against the actual gratuitous suffering in the world. Perhaps a morally-indifferent God or an omnimalevolent God would be a better fit for the data. But even if we ignore that issue (perhaps God is necessarily omnibenevolent), that the morally-indifferent god or omnimalevolent god would be a better fit for the data would suggest that the evidence really doesn't favour God over the fact of gratuitous suffering.

Review: God in the Age of Science? by Herman Philipse

Generally speaking, one can divide religious critique into two categories. The first is to attack religion as a political institution, whereby the social effects of religion are examined and subject to scrutiny. The second is to go after the truth status of religious claims. While these two categories have some overlap, it's worth remembering that truth and utility aren't the same thing.

It is unfortunate that critiques of the utility of religion are taken as the reason for critiques on the truth of religion. It's not that God is a nonsense notion, it's that atheists have some psychological hatred of theism as it is practised that leads to the denial of God altogether. It's unfortunate because the critiques of belief itself are ignored as some outcome of one's impression on the utility of religion, they remain largely unaddressed. Explain the "reasons" for atheism and explain away the need to address atheism.

Herman Philipse's book completely focuses on the second category. This category is further narrowed by the distinction between natural theology and revealed theology, where the focus was almost exclusively on natural theology. The question the book explores is what to make of a concept like God in light of modern science, and is largely an exploration of the case made by the philosopher Richard Swinburne.

To understand the way Philipse laid out the critique, it's worth exploring the three dilemmas Philipse proposes the theist has to answer:
Claims about God's existence are (a) factual claims, or (b) non-factual claims.
If (a), religious belief (c) needs to be backed up by reasons evidence, or (d) it does not.
If (c), this can be done by (e) methods completely unlike those used by scientists and scholars, or (f) like those methods.

Although there are a few exponents of (b), the claims themselves are prima facie (a) claims. "God exists", is for most people an attempt to say something true about the world, and not just an attitude they take to it. For (d), there are a couple of chapters devoted to exploring the merits of Plantinga's argument for reformed epistemology. But the real concern is the answer to the third dilemma, with Richard Swinburne's cumulative inductive case for the existence of God taken as the paradigmatic example of how one ought to approach God in the age of science.

The chapters addressing Plantinga are instructive to the tone of the rest of the book. While Plantinga has weaved an elaborate logical defence, of ad hoc claims, bare assertions, defeater-deflectors and defeater-defeaters, one might be curious as to what purpose Platinga's argument would achieve. At no point do we have any evidence that our brains possess a sensis divinitus, let alone that it's actually at work in religious experiences, that it's faulty for most people, but less faulty for monotheists, and reliable when it comes to Christian beliefs. Yet this idea gets two chapters of logical objections!
v But the vast majority of the book is taken up with a critical analysis of Swinburne's ideas. His argumentation style, much like the opening of the book, often involves particular dilemmas, followed by why each horn of the dilemma is problematic. For dilemma 3 above, the danger of choosing (e) is choosing methodology that has no respectability among intellectuals, while the danger of (f) is that it opens God up to empirical disconfirmation.

The exercise begins by seeing whether Swinburne is successful in casting God as a successful theory in the way scientific theories are. Swinburne's approach is correct, but unfortunately God is not up to the task of being a proper scientific theory. There are obstacles to this, such as God being an irreducible analogy, or using personal terms to describe something that doesn't fit our use of personal language.

To examine Swinburne's inductive argument, he sets aside his earlier criticisms before forcefully showing the problems with Swinburne's approach. Some of the errors are quite technical, such as whether some of Swinburne's arguments are successful C-inductive arguments, but there's a lot of food for thought at each stage. The end result (predictably) is that Swinburne's approach simply doesn't have the predictive power attributed to it.

Like Plantinga's argument, there were times when the exercise bordered on the absurd. God being the simplest thing there is because infinites are simpler than non-infinites mathematically. Philipse deals with this argument early, but as a justification this keeps coming up in Swinburne's inductive argument. One could simply point out that since there is no way of measuring God, there is no way of knowing how simple God is, but the joke goes beyond the pale when Swinburne insists that infinite things are simpler than finite things of the same kind. It takes a lot of complexity to have finite persons with finite knowledge, but an infinite person with infinite knowledge is simple?!

---

Is this book worth reading? It's a tough question to answer. There are many ways of addressing the truth questions of religion, and whether one feels it's worth digging into this book depends on whether natural theology is seen as the best way to assess the truth. This is in contrast to revealed theology (the specific doctrines of theistic religions) and in contrast to the idea that theology is a pseudodiscipline.

Philipse does his best to argue for the relevance of natural theology as the approach one ought to take, and he aimed at the best natural theology has to offer in his arguments. The end result is something quite technical, but still full of interesting approaches to particular problem. The arguments themselves cover a wide range of philosophical topics, covering not only philosophy of religion, but questions of language, epistemology, mathematics, and meaning. In that light, the case for natural theology is not as esoteric as it seems prima facie.

One of the strengths of the book is that it pushes the issue of theology in the scientific age, and is full of dilemmas facing believers at each potential turn. In that respect, the book is incredibly useful for the current debate about whether science and religion are compatible. Anyone who has an interest on this question will find this book invaluable.

However, this is not a book about how religion is practised, nor is it a book about revealed theology, and the arguments sometimes get bogged down in logical problems when empirical arguments would have been more to the point. And for those who see believing in God as an act of faith, there will be nothing in this book to change their minds. But for those who find the question interesting, and for those who seek a modern understanding of how to address the question, this book is well worth reading.

Adopting The Rational Stance

As a programmer, it's not unusual to have to justify my position, or to have to think through a problem, as well as listen to others do the same. We argue on logic, on solutions, on frameworks, on practices to code - and all this in an environment where no two people completely agree on anything. Yet despite this, what doesn't happen (at least not in my experience) is seeing one programmer dismiss a proposition by finding some emotional "reason" the proponent might happen to hold it for.

Are computer programmers under the illusion that humans are purely rational beings who have not understood the role of emotion in cognition? Perhaps, though it seems somewhat unlikely that programmers are divorced from the human tendency to see rationality in their own views and emotion in the views of others. What seems more likely, however, is that it's quite irrelevant to the task at hand. That is to say, even if programmers aren't fully rational, it's still right to adopt the rational stance.

Yet this only seems odd in light of online discussions, where experience has taught me the harsh lesson that rationality is at best a front. Unconstrained by a shared goal, folk psychology tends to dominate. It seems quite ironic that in a state of anonymity we get even more personal.

What I fail to see, however, is much of a distinction between the two activities. To be sure, programming might often benefit from being highly constrained compared to some of the more open questions that people tend to fuss over, yet the aim of the activity is fundamentally the same. It's not whether we can be fully rational, but whether we ought to adopt the ideal of trying to be rational. Failure to do this would be like playing chess for the purpose of flipping over the board.

Any debate over ideas is an invitation to adopt the rational stance - to treat a problem as an object of rational thought, and assess the relative merits as if it were put forward by a rational agent. The goal, normatively-speaking, is not to worry about how an idea is held, but whether holding an idea is warranted. No easy task in practice, but as an aim it's evidentially achievable. Programmers do it everyday, and there's nothing special about programmers.

Evolution and the God Debates

One of the most important aspects of any debate over a scientific issue is to separate out the science from the implications of the science. As non-experts, we aren't in a vantage point to comment on the scientific validity of certain propositions, as we lack the relevant expertise that would allow us to adequately assess the science. Thus any debate where we as non-experts try to comment on scientific validity is going to be a distraction from the real issues associated with the debate.

As non-experts on evolutionary biology, most of us aren't really affected by the debate over how natural selection works, or whether genetic drift is influential in the divergences between related species. Likewise, whether stochastic factors drive speciation doesn't matter to how we perceive evolutionary theory. Those are issues for experts to fight over in the peer review literature, and even if we think that we know the answer, our musings are not going to make a bit of difference because we are not part of the conversation biologists and philosophers are having with regards to evolution.

What we are interested in, however, and what we can have a say on, is how these facts fit into particular conceptions of how the world works.

It's easy to conflate the truth of evolution with the perceived implications of evolution, but it would be wrong to do so. As far as any debate ought to be concerned, it's only with the latter that we should concern ourselves with. If those particular implications are unpalatable, then too damn bad. I personally don't like the implications of what Nazism says about the human condition, but that doesn't give me recourse to deny the holocaust! And if I were to then deny the holocaust, people should rightly point out that my prejudices are seeping into my assessment of the history. As disturbing as I find the notion of genocide, it's a fact I have to live with*.

In terms of the god debates, arguments over evolution have been part of the conversation. I think there are three main reasons for this. The first is sociological, that there are many biologists who are also atheists taking part in the discussion. So there's the temptation to see the battle over evolution as being between atheists and theists, rather than as being an issue of science. Supporting this is that evolution-accepting biologists who are also theists such as Ken Miller and Francis Collins are attacked by other theists as being atheists themselves. In terms of ID, Philip Johnson's Wedge Strategy is built around changing the debate over evolution to a debate over the existence of God, though I wouldn't presume the strategy is a product of that line of thinking rather than causing that line of thinking.

The second issue would be a matter of theology, that evolution directly contradicts certain interpretations of creation accounts. It wouldn't matter in this case what the science says, because the supposition is that the biblical account of creation would be God's truth as opposed to the fallible truth of Man. There are a number of interpretations of the creation of man on this account, but what they all have in common is that they are based on scripture and have mankind as a special creation of God.

The final issue would be the philosophical inference to design, that without recourse to a particular theology, we would still have philosophical grounds for making an inference from the appearance of design in life to the cause of that design being the foresight and actions of a designer. We see a watch, we (reasonably) infer a watchmaker. We see something analogous to a watch in the natural world, so why wouldn't we then infer something analogous to a watchmaker as bringing about that order? Conversely, an atheist could argue that processes don't require a designer at all. Evolution by brute fact is one such process. So if evolution is true, then any designer would be superfluous.

With each of these three reasons, it's important to remember that such arguments are largely (if not wholly) tangential to the question of the science of evolution. In the first case, Philip Johnson and other ID proponents argue that science has been hijacked by philosophical naturalism, and thus biasing science away from design explanations. It's not a question of the validity of the science of evolution, but a question of the scientific enterprise itself. There are problems with Johnson's argument, but I won't go into detail here. In the case of theological issues, what the science says can be of no consequence to that view since Genesis is not a scientific text. It's only with the philosophical analogy to design that there's some overlap, namely whether the science has a coherence to it. And to that, again it's the science that would drive the arguments rather than the arguments driving the science.

What we are after, in effect, is a means of understanding the science in light of propositions in the god debates. If one is after a defeater argument for theism or atheism, then the science will prove a disappointment. The science may be able to rule on specific proposition (such as the age of the earth), but it requires further arguments beyond the scope of the science to make any sort of forceful point. The science of evolution does not imply atheism, just as the overturning of evolutionary theory does not imply theism. For both propositions, further argument beyond the science is required. The science itself should be left to the scientists.

---

*Some people take exception to analogies between holocaust denial and evolution denial on the grounds that the holocaust is morally repugnant, and its that moral repugnance the evolution-proponent is trying to capitalise on. But that would be missing the point that's being made. Holocaust denial is a view that is supported by a minority of scholars, and there are more scholars in the historical community who deny there was a holocaust than there are biologists who deny evolution. In each case it's a tiny minority, but the point would stand about non-experts trying to take a stance on the issue left for experts. On what grounds would we have, beyond our own prejudices, for favouring the extreme minority view among scholars?

Why Aren't There More Deists?

Imagine an argument that went as follows:

How could you not consider that there may be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? There's no reason to think that it's impossible since life appeared on earth. With there being 10^23 stars in the universe, with planets being found everywhere we look, it wouldn't be absurd to think that the conditions that allowed for intelligence life on this planet may exist elsewhere. And that's only taking into consideration intelligent life as we know it. Although more speculative, we don't have reason to exclude other paths to intelligent life under very different conditions. The range of possibilities and the vastness of the universe are strong indicators that we are not alone as intelligent life in this universe.

And then followed up with:

So UFO sightings ought to be taken as being caused by extra-terrestrial intelligence, crop circles being marks of these extra terrestrial intelligences, and alien abductions being authentic experience of these aliens.

If you weren't already convinced of the reality of alien interference on this planet, would you find the argument convincing? I'd wager not, as the original argument does little to establish the reality of interfering aliens. In other words, there's a gap between the premise and the conclusion.

This might sound like a contrived example, but it's the kind of argument I see all too often from theists. Just substitute in the cosmological or design argument on the premise, and the conclusion being the interventionist deity they happen to already believe in.

It's not just that the arguments don't validate their particular theism, it's that they don't validate any form of theism! There's a huge gap between the arguments and the conclusion, with much left resting on assumptions that are snuck in with the individual's prior belief.

What strikes me as curious is that there aren't more deists around. If one were to follow the arguments, deism would be the most parsimonious conclusion, yet deism isn't the view defended with such arguments.

Now I am fully aware that the human mind isn't completely logical, and that arguments are more justifications of an existing position than something followed to their logical ends. Even so, it does surprise me that there isn't more of a spread among believers. The range seems to be from externalising to internalising the personal god, rather than from a personal to an impersonal one.

Fodor vs ID

A few months ago, I was on a facebook group where an ID proponent kept posting numerous links to pro-ID articles, coupled with grandiose points about the death of Darwinism. One thing that struck me about the links was link linking to Jerry Fodor, a philosopher who made a big splash a few years ago as the coauthor of a book called What Darwin Got Wrong. I took this opportunity to go back over what Fodor was (and wasn't) saying, to see how well Fodor's view sits with Intelligent Design. Long story short: it doesn't.

The sources are linked below for anyone who is interested. Listening to his discussions, Fodor said nothing that would even indicate that an intelligent designer was needed. He seemed quite content with accounts of biology involving the classic examples of enhanced survival value. His main contention was that the examples followed from the biologist's understanding of nature and not from the theory itself. His charge against Darwin was that Natural Selection is empty, and isn't a theory that can predict anything without biologists using the theory as a ventriloquist dummy.

Yet this account doesn't give any credence for ID, nor does it cast doubt on existing processes to be the organising principles that biologists demand. The charge is simply that it's not Darwin's theory that describes how this happens. Biologists and philosophers of scientists have argued back as to why Fodor is mistaken on this account, but it doesn't change that Fodor's view isn't pro-ID.

So why are pro-ID advocates using Fodor to promote their view? My guess is for the same reason as they promote Thomas Nagel's recent attack on evolutionary theory - ID amounts to little more than Darwinian criticism. Even Behe's main argument (Irreducible Complexity) is that certain structures cannot evolve by a Darwinian process. Even if that were true (it isn't), it doesn't follow that a designer did it.

Fodor's arguments against Darwinism don't even begin to support ID. Any ID proponent who uses Fodor is using his views like a ventriloquist dummy.

---

A discussion between Fodor and scientist-turned-philosopher Massimo Pigliucci:

A discussion between Fodor and the philosopher Elliott Sober:

Grayling On Fine Tuning

Previously I mentioned how I had some suspicions of AC Grayling's analogy on fine-tuning, and now that I've gotten past the point in his book where he discusses design arguments, I can discuss those suspicions.

The fine-tuning argument, as far as I can tell, tries to make the case that the universe being the way it is demands an explanation. Or to be more specific, the configuration of the universe has the appearance of design for harbouring life. Of all the possible configurations of the universe, a very tiny fraction could even have life. So the best explanation for the fact that the universe has the appearance of design for life is that it was made by an agency who wanted life.

My suspicions about Grayling's analogy were due to the seeming disconnect between an improbability of a contingent history and the improbability of something with a design-like appearance. In other words, we wouldn't be able to appeal to a contingent history to explain away the design of a watch even if contingent history is a factor in watch-design. So when he says on page 80:

The 'Goldilocks dilemma' of my personal existence, and that of the universe's parameters and laws, is exactly the same thing.

I think that Peter S Williams had a fair reason to take exception with it. It doesn't obviously seem like the same thing at all, and requires further justification.

Grayling, however, hits the nail on the head with the final paragraph of the chapter:

We exist because the parameters are as they are; had they been different, we would not be here to know it. The fact that we exist because of how things happen to be with the universe's structure and properties entails nothing about design or purpose. Depending on your point of view, it is just a lucky or unlucky result of how things happen to be. The universe's parameters are not tuned on purpose for us to exist. It is the other way round: we exist because the laws happen to be as they are.

It's an important point to make. We necessarily live in a universe that can support us, so if any appeals to fine-tuning are to hold, they would have to show something more - that the universe was made for us. Of course we are going to be a product of whatever the universe can permit, and if the universe was any other way we wouldn't be here, but the same can be said of everything else that exists in a universe of the same configuration. Just as we exist, so do ants, and asteroids, and galaxies, and gamma ray bursts. All of it is a consequence of how the universe is. The fine-tuning view would be that everything else in the universe is a by-product of a universe designed for our purpose - a completely anthropic and unjustified assumption - rather than of us being a consequence of things being as they are.

This is what bothers me about fine-tuning arguments: any reality in which we exist is necessarily able to hold us. If we were made of a different material under a different configuration, the same argument would apply equally well. The reason being is that we are complex entities, dependent on things being as they are for that complexity to emerge. In between the two quotes from the book above was an illustration of this absurdity involving Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire's Candide:

"Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles."

We can see the absurdity right there. That the nose holds spectacles doesn't mean the nose is formed for the purpose of wearing spectacles. That the universe harbours human life doesn't mean the universe is formed for the purpose of human life. Even if the universe was purposefully designed so that 13.8 billion years later our species would emerge and God would show himself in Jesus form, the apparent design of the universe doesn't warrant that conclusion. Grayling's book explains why.

Big-c Cake

Cake, n. (1) A piece of cake that can be both kept and eaten.
(2) A solution to the problem of having one's cake and eating it too achieved through the use of capitalisation.

Caking, v. A rhetorical misdirection in order to rescue a concept from fatal objections via capitalisation. His argument relies on Caking the concept of good.

The Pin Analogy

I was listening to the Unbelievable podcast today, which consisted of a discussion between AC Grayling and Peter S Williams on the topic of Grayling's new book: The God Argument. The book, incidentally, is sitting on my shelves waiting for me to find the time to read it. The discussion centred around Grayling's portrayal of the arguments for God, with Williams and the host highlighting what they saw as the problems with Grayling's thinking on the arguments.

It might be worth getting into the discussion around the moral argument another time, but for now I want to focus on an analogy that Peter Williams gave for the fine-tuning argument. The analogy goes something like this: lets suppose I've taken your bank card and I've tried to withdraw money from an ATM, but I did not know your pin. Yet despite this limitation, I was able to guess the pin and withdraw the money. It seems really improbable that I was able to do so, and you'd be sceptical that I was able to do so without that knowledge. For a four-digit pin, that's ~1/10000 chance. Yet when we look at all the ways the universe could exist, the fraction that allows for something even remotely like life is near infinitesimal. It follows that just like we see someone guessing as an unlikely explanation, that to say the universe happened by chance for our benefit is an unlikely explanation.

The next step, as far as theism is concerned, is to use design as a way of providing an explanation. This analogy is contrasted with Grayling's own analogy of trying to think about all the unlikely circumstances that would lead to his existence - that things had to happen for his parents to meet and for them to reproduce when they did, and so on back through the ages, whereby the chain of events is incredibly improbable, yet that fact doesn't require any other explanation.

While I do have suspicions about Grayling's argument in the way it was presented, I'll reserve judgement until I've read his book. Prima facie, Williams looks to have a point about the inadequacy of such a statement, but I think that Williams analogy is a step in the wrong direction. The reason has nothing to do with how to calculate the probabilities of life and how universes come about - as I lack the sufficient knowledge of physics to even begin to ponder the meaning of the question - but that in what we do know about the history of life in this universe, Williams' analogy seems utterly nonsensical.

Contingency already plays a huge role in the world as it is now. If the non-avian dinosaurs weren't wiped out by catastrophic events 65 million years ago, then there wouldn't have been the rise of mammals, the evolution of hominids, and even analogies like the ATM machine one. Yet the extreme unlikelihood of those events for our existence don't suggest that we should think of the plate tectonics and killer asteroids as being guided by a purposive designer for our benefit.

Even if the universe could be argued to be improbable on its own, it seems apparent that we cannot tell the story of our own existence without invoking chance and contingency in a sufficient and explanatory way. For the analogy, it's worth reflecting on just how lucky we are to be here with no other explanation beyond the happenings of how life evolved on this planet given the circumstances of the planet. The pin analogy makes it seem like the idea of fine-tuning means that we're the product of this fine-tuning. Yet there's no reasonable reason to think this is so.

QFT

"A politics emptied of substantive moral engagement makes for an impoverished civic life. It is also an open invitation to narrow, intolerant moralisms. Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread." - Michael Sandel

QFT

"Many people are way too confident in their moral views." - Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Ownership: Inventing Mine And Yours

There is no objective ownership. This isn't a controversial statement, nor is it one that people particularly lament. Sure, at times, people will decry that others don't see the value that they do in something particular, but in general I don't think that there's any serious defence of ownership being objective.

Yet, if we reflect on it for even a second, valuation of ownership is integral to our lives. We could not function even in small groups, let alone as a society, without having a set of similar values towards the notion of ownership. Among our friends and family, we may have different ways of treating ownership than we would with a stranger, but we do none the less think that our ownership is beyond the mere subjective and ought to be respected and even protected among the society we live in.

We even go so far as to teach children from a young age about the rights and obligations of ownership, and hold those who don't respect it accountable. We will gladly punish those who violate this notion, even though this valuation is by our own reckoning subjective. We have no problems recognising ownership as something that performs an integral role in our lives even though it has no meaning outside of our personal agency.

So the question is, why is it problematic if we substituted morality into the same argument? Why can't morality be useful without it needing to be true?

Thus Spake Zarathustra

"Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another [..] Never did the one neighbour understand the other: ever did his soul marvel at his neighbour's delusion and wickedness." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Thought Of The Day

Pascal's Wager isn't an argument for the reasonableness of a belief in God, it's a concession that God isn't a matter of rational argument. Thus any pretence of rational justification has been merely a foil for an unshakeable faith.

QFT

"In terms of its gross effect on the outcomes of physical processes, knowledge is at least as significant as any other physical quantity." - David Deutsch

Thus Spake Zarathustra

"[O]nce upon a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?
Ah, yet brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!
A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not unto me from the beyond!" - Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spake Zarathustra

"I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Thought Of The Day

No-one online complains about the epistemic viability of methodological naturalism until after they turn their computer on.

Metacricket

It's Australian summer, once again, meaning a new season of cricket. And a new season of cricket means once again it's time for us to analyse, praise, and criticise, the players and events of our beloved sport.

When we talk of a bowler bowling too many bad balls, or a batsmen playing a good shot, just what does that mean? It seems a fairly odd question to ask. A bad ball is one that allows the batsman an easy scoring shot or is unlikely to take a wicket, or a good shot is a deliberate stroke that is able to beat the field as it is set. A bad ball can still take a wicket (a long hop that gets lofted to the fielder) or a bad stroke can still get runs (a french cut), but it's clear the words actually mean something.

When it comes to cricket, or any other sport, we can have this conversation about the IS and OUGHT of the game without so much as an eyebrow raised. People can and do disagree about the quality of players, balls, strokes, tactics, etc. Yet there's no real problem with this conversation turning into one about prescriptive nihilism, or that the objective description of cricket is proof of God's existence.


Perhaps if we examined cricket closely enough, any sense to talk about it would be futile. That there are no good or bad balls, or that good and bad are merely human contructs imposed onto the game. Or that there's only one's subjective opinion about what constitutes a good or bad ball, a ball dispatched to the boundary and one that traps the batsman are merely expressions of our preference. Or that objectivity of cricket would have to be imposed onto our material universe, and thus would qualify as a miracle.

Or we could go further and ask what it means to be good. Can a ball really be a bad one if it leads to a wicket? Perhaps we should be consequentialist about cricket. A run is a run, a dot ball is a dot ball, a wicket is a wicket. A long hop dispatched to a fielder would be a good ball, while an inside edge for four is a good shot. Would cricket fans go for such a view?

Perhaps consequentialism is not for them, and instead they are virtue cricketers. A spell of bowling that fails to yield a wicket can be good if the ball is put in a place that would more likely yield a wicket than a spell that yields a wicket but was there to be punished. An inside edge for four would be a bad shot while a defensive stroke would not be, even though one puts runs on the board.


It would seem absurd to see an argument like:

1. If God doesn't exist, then objective cricket values do not exist.
2. Objective cricket values exist.

---

3. Therefore, God exists

while giving a justification along the lines of knowing that playing a hook shot to a yorker on the stumps is really the wrong shot to play. And it would seem absurd to say that two people disagreeing about whether an inside edge to the boundary is a good shot would mean both are right because it's true for one person and not true for the other person. Or that there's no such thing as a good or bad field setting, there's just field settings.

There may be reason, at times, to take a step back and reflect on how it is we describe cricket. To try to see the game from different perspectives and look to concepts as a means of resolving disagreements. But at the end of the day, it's still cricket we are talking about. Abstract it too much, bury it in idealism, or try to dissolve any grounds for disagreement, and, well, it's just not cricket anymore.