tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post3228413579417581399..comments2024-03-22T17:35:52.045-04:00Comments on Extra Thoughts: Things God can do to reveal HimselfLydia McGrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-84075677604985546582014-05-12T16:53:16.630-04:002014-05-12T16:53:16.630-04:00Of course, Ed's further insistence within the ...Of course, Ed's further insistence within the comments thread on the *necessary irrelevance* of complexity to any right-thinking argument from apparent design in nature only strengthens my case. His objections to ID should apply to some biblical evidences as well, some of which depend upon complexity. Saying, "That's just another matter" is not terribly convincing.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-32701272639840839822014-05-12T16:37:40.643-04:002014-05-12T16:37:40.643-04:00My original post, of course, does _not_ say that E...My original post, of course, does _not_ say that Ed thinks God is impersonal. Rather, it very clearly indicates _precisely_ that I think his animadversions against ID arguments do indeed have the danger of conducing to a picture of God insufficiently personal, and insufficiently willing to appear as a person, as the God of the Bible does.<br /><br />Similarly, I think the o.p. is quite clear that the problem regarding "arguments that don't get you all the way to the true God" is simply that, in my view, Ed's objections to ID do not leave him the space to countenance the biblical arguments I discuss. I'm well aware that he has said that "the problem isn't that the ID argument doesn't get you all the way to the true God but that it takes you away from the true God." The problem with that is simply that the kinds of biblical evidence I discuss has structural similarities to ID such that I believe in consistency (and eschewing arbitrariness), Ed's objections to ID should apply to them as well. And this is indeed related to the fact that the things done in those cases could in principle have been done by someone other than the true God of classical theism, for that is closely related to their "seeming like a person," which Ed holds is an incorrect view of the true God. Moreover, the kinds of scorn that Ed heaps upon ID because a movie-like caricature of God could be "pictured" as doing the things it describes, which certainly seems to have been part of the _argument_ (usually not a very conspicuous or very clear argument) for ID's alleged "wrong conception of God," could also be heaped upon the argument from these biblical miracles. They, too, could give rise to a movie-like, overly anthropomorphic picture of God, and so forth. <br /><br />There is much more that I could say. Again, I encourage deeply interested readers to see Ed's comments about Fred and the murder in the old thread linked above. But that is all I will say now, and more than I wished to.<br /><br />In fact, it's rather otiose. I think the main post and the comments thread before now speak for themselves.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-32523839336219172492014-05-12T15:25:46.582-04:002014-05-12T15:25:46.582-04:00Christopher McCartney,
If you read both Lydia’s o...Christopher McCartney,<br /><br />If you read both Lydia’s original post and my blog post replying to her, then it is utterly mystifying how you could say flatly that Lydia hasn’t misrepresented my views. Perhaps you could explain how she hasn’t, since she persistently refuses to do so.<br /><br />I appreciate your kind words about my work. If you’re wondering how I am able to write so much in the way of books, articles, blog posts and the like, here is one reason: I do my best to avoid spending hours and hours, days and days in combox discussions like this one. Hence, as I have said, I <i>simply have no time</i> to devote to rebutting everything Lydia has said here. Lydia posts an enormous number of comments. They are typically very long and convoluted, and in each one she routinely makes a number of sweeping and tendentious assertions. The arguments she has presented here that I have bothered to read have no force. The problem, though, is that if I tried to untangle and respond to everything she has said I would be doing nothing else this week but hanging out in Lydia’s combox.<br /><br />There is only one reason I responded to Lydia’s original post at all, and that was to set the record straight about some annoyingly common misrepresentations of my criticisms of ID and of theistic personalism which she had perpetuated in her post. As a courtesy because of my friendship with and respect for Lydia, I have taken time to reply to some of what she’s said here in the combox. But I’ve had other personal and professional matters to attend to, we have gotten farther and farther from the issue that brought me here in the first place, Lydia keeps bringing up more and more side issues and saying ever more tendentious things at ponderous length, and she keeps imputing to me things that I never said. That, and the fact that I have now wasted hours that should have been spent grading exams, meeting a pressing deadline on a writing project, etc. has taken a toll on my patience.<br /><br />Lydia could very easily have said something like: “Sorry if I originally gave the impression that Ed maintains that God is impersonal; of course he does not, and of course he has said many times that he does not. What I should have said is that I think some of his other views have a tendency to lead to an impersonal view of God.” She could have said similar things in response to my complaints about her other misrepresentations of my views. It’s just common decency in a debate context like this to try to make sure you’ve gotten someone’s views right, and to acknowledge his complaints when he says you have not. “OK, so you didn’t mean that; fair enough” or “Well, I think I didn’t actually misrepresent you, and here’s why…”<br /><br />Lydia not only has not done that, she explicitly refuses to do it. It’s not just rude -- though it is that -- it is intellectually dishonest. Yet she seems to think that the real reason I’m annoyed with her is that she’s somehow presented devastating objections that I cannot answer.<br /><br />I’m happy to leave her to that fantasy. I’ve got too much other stuff to do, and I’ve already said a lot about these subjects before. Interested readers are referred to the “ID versus A-T roundup” and “Classical theism roundup” posts, which they can find by doing a search at my blog.Edward Feserhttp://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-82177054698940700522014-05-12T11:42:04.902-04:002014-05-12T11:42:04.902-04:00Thanks, Christopher McCartney, I appreciate that m...Thanks, Christopher McCartney, I appreciate that much.<br /><br />If anyone is wondering (it just occurred to me out of the blue that a reader might wonder), I have approved all comments for this thread. I am not filtering for only positive comments or anything of that kind.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-64676461137305670562014-05-12T11:31:55.416-04:002014-05-12T11:31:55.416-04:00I agree that you have not misrepresented Dr. Feser...I agree that you have not misrepresented Dr. Feser here. And I say that as someone who accepts classical theism as articulated by Aquinas and Scotus, and I think Dr. Feser is worthy high praise for how clearly and powerfully he presents the Aristotelian metaphysics and philosophy of nature, which I likewise endorse. (_Scholastic Metaphysics_ is on my bedside table right now.) But on this issue it seems to me that your arguments much stronger than his.Christopher McCartneynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-91228308782851769832014-05-12T01:16:39.458-04:002014-05-12T01:16:39.458-04:00I think commentator Otto has shown that he's k...I think commentator Otto has shown that he's kept his eye on the ball. Those are, indeed, important questions that arise from the actual substance of my main post, from the philosophical points I was making there regarding the structures of the arguments from the voice in the sky and from biological complexity.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-34392322715778652062014-05-12T00:50:11.800-04:002014-05-12T00:50:11.800-04:00No, no, I did not mean that. What I meant would be...No, no, I did not mean that. What I meant would be boring would be a metalevel argument about _whether_ I have misrepresented you. As for _determining_ that, for my own part, I have thought about it, read your post carefully, re-read mine, and even gone back and spent quite a bit of time re-reading some of our old discussions, and am quite convinced that I have not done so. It is, rather, making further self-defensive arguments that I am avoiding getting into, for several reasons, including, beyond boring the readership, making you even _more_ angry, as I am sure such self-defense would do. I certainly don't think such a wrangle as that would devolve into is necessary to my _knowing_ whether I've been guilty of misrepresentation.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-63489957994878338712014-05-11T23:23:42.883-04:002014-05-11T23:23:42.883-04:00I could have said more to defend myself from the c...<i>I could have said more to defend myself from the charge of misrepresentation. In fact, I usually think such meta-level spinoffs get very boring very fast</i><br /><br />So, determining whether you really have accurately represented the views you're attacking is "very boring." Even when the person in question is a friend of many years, who politely gives you clear evidence that you have misrepresented him.<br /><br />Unbelievable.<br /><br />After all the nasty misrepresentations you and your W4 co-bloggers have been subject to over the years, <i>that's</i> what you've got to say?<br /><br />You should be ashamed of yourself.Edward Feserhttp://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-36694737402390324522014-05-11T22:50:11.563-04:002014-05-11T22:50:11.563-04:00I could have said more to defend myself from the c...I could have said more to defend myself from the charge of misrepresentation. In fact, I usually think such meta-level spinoffs get very boring very fast, so I've kept my self-defense on that point, concerning the main post, brief and sketchy. I realize that's left me open to continual and, it seems, increasingly annoyed complaints to that effect, but I think this thread was more interesting without more self-defense to that charge on my part, so I'm going to keep it that way.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-50719857436966192722014-05-11T22:48:07.573-04:002014-05-11T22:48:07.573-04:00Ed, I'm very sorry, but I stick to my "ra...Ed, I'm very sorry, but I stick to my "rather clear failure" point. You said the following:<br /><br />"So, we need to abstract all that out if we’re to conceive of a “designer” in truly divine terms. We’re also going to have to abstract out from our conception of his effects in the world anything that has to do with what in a human designer would require skill in calculation, good design instincts, manual dexterity, ability to work with others and assemble a team, etc. Now, when we do this, I submit that what we’ll end up focusing on in each case are considerations that don’t have much to do with the specifics either of human artifacts or of human artificers. We’ll focus on things like the way that a thing can be directed toward an as-yet non-existent end (whether simple or complex) only insofar as there is a guiding intellect that so directs it by virtue of having that end in mind conceptually. That is to say, we’ll focus on just what the Fifth Way focuses on. (For how this argument works and why it requires an infinite intellect, see, again, what I’ve written on that subject.) The complexity of bacterial flagella, etc. drops out as irrelevant."<br /><br />You also said this: " I realize that they would abstract from those aspects of human designers. The point is that if they also abstract away everything else they would need to abstract away in order to arrive at a classical theist conception of God and his relationship to his creation, they’ll find that the complexity of this or that natural object really isn’t what is doing any work in getting from the order of the world to a divine intellect."<br /><br />Those are both instances of non sequiturs. _Huge_ non sequiturs. I'm just going to quote again the clearest statement of what does not follow: "We’re also going to have to abstract out from our conception of his effects in the world anything that has to do with what in a human designer would require skill in calculation, good design instincts, manual dexterity, ability to work with others and assemble a team, etc."<br /><br />Why in the world one would think that is just...beyond me. *Of course* we don't have to "abstract out from our conception of God's effects" anything that _would_ require humans to use manual dexterity, etc., to achieve. Just because we don't, in fact, assume that the designer requires manual dexterity, etc., to achieve those complex effects, we do not have to say that the complexity itself is *epistemically irrelevant*. <br /><br />That is what I am calling a rather clear failure in the attempt to explain the independent force of the "wrong concept of God" objection. Because it just is.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-67468027754128991052014-05-11T21:52:15.714-04:002014-05-11T21:52:15.714-04:00Lydia,
Perhaps I should bite my tongue, but your ...Lydia,<br /><br />Perhaps I should bite my tongue, but your remarks are too outrageous to let pass without comment.<br /><br />You asked me to address the question of whether ID leads away from a classical theist conception of God, but to do so without getting into questions in philosophy of nature. So I did. Then you raised an objection to what I said that <i>presupposed</i> certain answers to questions in philosophy of nature (since whether such-and-such is probable in the natural order of things <i>depends on how we conceive of the natural order of things</i>). Naturally there is no way I could address such an objection without getting into philosophy of nature. But <i>you</i> were the one who brought philosophy of nature back in, not me. Now you’ve got the nerve to say that my attempt to address the issue without bringing in philosophy of nature was “a rather clear failure.” It’s positively Orwellian.<br /><br />Furthermore, that you misrepresented me in your original post is <i>demonstrable</i>, and I provided the demonstration. In my original blog post responding to you, I provided <i>numerous quotes</i> from past writings of mine wherein I <i>explicitly said precisely the opposite</i> of the views you had attributed to me. The point was to provide actual documentary evidence that might get even the stubborn Lydia McGrew to admit she’d made a mistake. <br /><br />I now see that there is no such evidence. You will simply ignore it and persist in seeing only what you want to see. <br /><br />OK, that’s it. I’m gone. Happy Mother’s Day.Edward Feserhttp://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-58573992608365734552014-05-11T21:01:41.074-04:002014-05-11T21:01:41.074-04:00I was re-reading parts of this long thread last ni...I was re-reading parts of this long thread last night:<br /><br />http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2009/11/the_greek_atomists_and_the_god.html<br /><br />I thought several parts of it were very interesting. I particularly think, upon reflection, that Tim's (my husband's) discussion with Ed about the concept of referential opacity and whether ID is arguing to a "merely probable" God, thereby ruling out the true God, dovetails well with my main post. See the "Fred" example in their debate.<br /><br />I also though that this comment of Ed's in a different old thread was quite interesting in its own way.<br /><br />http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2009/11/the_trouble_with_william_paley.html#comment-84323<br /><br />It moves from sketching an example of a distinctively Aristotelian-Thomistic argument for special creation to implying that a real Thomist ought to countenance nothing _other than_ that type of distinctively Aristotelian argument with regard to creation. At least when it comes to creation and arguments about where things in creation came from and whether they required special creation. Complexity *must not* be taken into account. I would like to think that Thomists are _not_ committed to such a restriction upon the use of, in my view, highly relevant evidence, but...there's the statement. Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-63309803330847482072014-05-11T16:20:26.875-04:002014-05-11T16:20:26.875-04:00Saying, in the ID argument, that even if you view ...Saying, in the ID argument, that <i>even if</i> you view the substructures in the cell as if they were machines, you need intelligence to account for them, is not to say living things have only transuent causation. Even A-T philosophy, in identifying the "forms" of a living thing's substructures, allows that we have to think of the parts as retaining their own (elemental) "forms" at least virtually. Which is not to say that they REALLY retain real substantial forms different from the living substance as a whole. It is certainly the case that a biochemist can <i>successfully</i> study and model chemical processes in a living animal, without adverting to the kind of animal it actually is. <br /><br />Nothing about the ID argument requires rejecting immanent teleology, except when it proceeds by way of arguendo, and even there it merely rejects the notion in order to proceed within a more constricted field of discussion than would (eventually) prove that final causality (and immanent teleology) must exist. <br /><br />I am a Thomist and I give no quarter to the neo-theism that is typical of IDers. But their argument from complexity simply doesn't require or use theistic personalism, not in principle. (Of course, they will present a version of the argument that is <i>compatible</i> with their view of God, but that's all accidental trimmings. Ed says that my version of such a design argument is "trivial." So be it - it still takes down atheism by the complex substructures of living things, a non-trivial result in today's world. And it is, essentially, the very same core argument as the ID argument is.Tnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-13079141496798720272014-05-11T16:19:15.716-04:002014-05-11T16:19:15.716-04:00After going through Ed's 4-year old reply to V...After going through Ed's 4-year old reply to Vincent Torley's distinguishing of 4 different senses of mechanism and stating that ID doesn't rely on mechanism for its argument, I begin to see the form of the mistake. At least, this is my guess. <br /><br />When ID responds to atheistic Darwinists, who believe in no sort of final causality, they proceed by way of an arguendo argument that is, also, the beginning of a reductio. "You reject final causality, so for this discussion we'll let that be. I will not assume there is final causality. Let's examine complexity in living things...we eventually see that there must indeed be an intelligent source of living things." Now, if the IDer were to press forward, he would be able to further say that if there is an intelligent agent, then there is final causality, thus displacing the initial absurd starting point. But as a body ID isn't committed a conclusion about causality in general, only about the causes of complex living structures, so he doesn't bother going further. Note, however, that the ID RESULT does, of necessity (once one takes into account what intelligence is actually like) imply final causality. Which completes the reduction. <br /><br />Note, also, that for any reductio, you start with something that you are going to show is impossible. But with that erroneous starting point, it is often possible to show a MULTIPLICITY of outrageous implications, not just the one you are focussed on. If you start an algebraic analysis with the statement that X=4 when (by other premises) X=5, then you can derive all sorts of weird impossible algebraic nonsense, you might get X = 0/X, and X=2X. So also, here, if you start with a universe independent of final causality, you can get lots and lots of absurdities, not just one. But that doesn't mean that the IDer arguing by way of arguendo (or a reductio) is committing himself to <i>all the other</i> absurdities than the one he is going to prove is implied and completes the reductio. Yes, all the other absurdities are indeed linked to the absurdity he starts out with. He doesn't require them or intend them. <br /><br />In principle, ID proceeds by showing that even if you don't presume an final causes to begin with, you have to use intelligence to explain complex structures in living things. Or rather, more precisely, those complex structures cannot be explained adequately without intelligence - a negative formulation. It is NEITHER a claim that about the form of that intelligence, nor about the intermediate causes (if any) that lie between the intelligence and the living thing., nor about the manner in which the structures exhibit immanent or transuent teleology. The fact that the intelligence may have been the cause by reason of direct creation, or by reason of artifice, or by indirect operation of primary substances, or any other intermediate notions is irrelevant to the conclusion, as is whether the structures discussed operate immanently or transuently. Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-41176951771040712132014-05-11T14:51:29.795-04:002014-05-11T14:51:29.795-04:00Let me add, too, that "I never said that comp...Let me add, too, that "I never said that complex phenomena can never in any way or under any circumstances be especially useful as a divine sign. I wasn’t even addressing that" hardly amounts to a credible accusation of misrepresentation against me. I was pointing out that your _principles_ are such that there is no good reason to disallow the type of argument in the one context but allow it in the other. It is arbitrary to block the use of complexity in talking about God's means of making an animal with a visual biochemical cascade but to allow the use of complexity as a consideration when talking about voices from the sky! So I've pointed out an arbitrary line-drawing in your position. The fact that you didn't _mean_ to block the use of complexity in talking about voices from the sky doesn't mean that I've misrepresented you. It means that I've shown that your position involves drawing arbitrary lines to block consequences you do not wish to accept concerning the detection of miracles as they are recounted in the Bible.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-39591227167454079982014-05-11T14:43:44.788-04:002014-05-11T14:43:44.788-04:00As I said, Ed, I think you misunderstood the stren...As I said, Ed, I think you misunderstood the strength of my claim in the main post, thinking it weaker than it was, and this was why you took me to be misunderstanding you. I've tried to explain how this arose and won't try again, but I definitely don't think I actually misrepresented you. In my opinion, the _structure_ of the argument to an entity who _might or might not_ be the true God is going to be such that very often complexity _does_ matter, that very often it _is_ an ID-type argument, and therefore your animadversions against the latter are going to be pretty closely intertwined with this whole issue of "this could just be Zeus" and so forth. You really have not provided, in my opinion, a good enough argument for your insistence that the designer of ID _must_ be someone other than the true God. I know you've asserted that, but I don't think you've shown it.<br /><br />As far as my representing your two objections as either hermetically sealed or so intertwined as not to be able to be discussed separately, I have never insisted on the former, but I have asked that you _do_ try to discuss the "wrong concept of God" separately in such a way as to show that it has _some_ independent force against ID. Since you have represented it as having some independent force, I actually think it has been an excellent exercise to ask you to spell that out in response to my sketched ID argument. It ought to be possible to show that--what is it about that argument that requires a wrong concept of God apart from the alleged wrong concept of nature? I understand that you think the wrong concept of nature leads to _additional_ issues with a wrong concept of God. But it ought to be possible to spell out the problems that do not depend on that. This you have, in fact, attempted to do! So I don't think you have any complaint there of misrepresentation.<br /><br />Since your attempt has, in my view, been a rather clear failure, that does rather make one think that perhaps there _is_ no independent "problem of ID's univocal use of language" and that everything _does_ reduce to your strong commitment to _something_ about immanent teleology and what-not which you believe, somehow, shows that ID must be wrong. If you are so crippled by not running into that complicated metaphysical web concerning your views on the nature of living things that you can't make any good argument at all for an intrinsic ID wrong concept of God, yes, I do think that is revealing.<br /><br />And, I repeat, you did try. It just didn't work. So I don't admit any misrepresentation at all.<br /><br />Emotion? On the contrary. I don't think there's been emotion here. Not on my part, anyway. Just hard-hitting analytical philosophy of a kind that both you and I generally enjoy.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-15681002253082179242014-05-11T13:42:25.325-04:002014-05-11T13:42:25.325-04:00Lydia,
Let me address the first claim you make in...Lydia,<br /><br />Let me address the first claim you make in these latest comments of yours. When I have said that my objections to ID boil down to two main issues, viz. (i) a mistaken conception of God and (ii) a mistaken philosophy of nature, I have never said (A) that the two issues were absolutely 100% hermetically sealed off from one another and that one could address the one without in any way addressing the other. But neither have I said (B) that they are so deeply intertwined that one simply cannot say anything at all about the one without saying everything about the other. Neither of these extremes is a correct description of my position. In fact there are a number of sub-issues involved in each topic, and some of them overlap. So, to some extent the two themes can be addressed separately, but to some extent they cannot be.<br /><br />Anyway, in the many years I’ve been discussing this topic, this was never an issue until you tried, bizarrely, to manufacture such an issue here in your combox by pretending that I’d somehow represented myself as taking the first extreme view (A) and then later, apparently under the heat of your withering analysis, switched to the second extreme view (B). Thus you seem to think you’ve caught me pulling a fast one. But this is sheer fantasy on your part and the issue completely phony. Once again you are attributing to me absurd claims I have never made, and before you know it we’re wasting enormous amounts of time going down a rabbit hole. <br /><br />So, that’s the problem with just the first claim you make in this latest round of comments. And I have not bothered to read through the rest of your comments and will not bother responding to them. As I demonstrated in my reply to your original post over at my own blog, not only had you had badly misrepresented my views in that original post, but you had attributed to me views I have <i>many times explicitly rejected</i> over the years. Anyone who’s actually read my stuff could see that you were way off base. And yet here again you persist in attributing to me things I have never said, and insist on vehemently and at ponderous length attacking these figments of your imagination rather than my actual views. You seem constitutionally incapable either of trying to understand what I’ve actually written, or, when your mistakes are pointed out, of just admitting “OK Ed, maybe I misread you, sorry.” On this subject of ID you seem stuck permanently in “bee in the bonnet” mode, too blinded by emotion to do justice to your opponent’s views, and it is a waste of time discussing it with you. <br /><br />It would be a waste of time even if I had the time, which, as I have said, <i>I don’t</i>. I’ve got final exam grading to do, a writing deadline I’m trying desperately to meet, and a blog of my own to attend to. Plus it’s Mother’s Day. I’ve thrown away the better part of two days on this already and I’m done. Goodbye and God bless.Edward Feserhttp://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-18252355425759867162014-05-11T02:33:45.000-04:002014-05-11T02:33:45.000-04:00I'd Like to have two brief clarifications from...I'd Like to have two brief clarifications from Ed:<br /><br />1) Do you think that when hearing "a voice from the sky" one can make a probability inference that it was caused by a personal cause such as God, not an impersonal cause such as thunder, based on the likelihood of the complicated functional pattern of the sentence being caused by thunder?<br /><br />2) What is the essential difference between this form of argument and the ID-arguments?Ottohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02453602304002688008noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-15860672593163071892014-05-10T19:18:38.549-04:002014-05-10T19:18:38.549-04:00"Anyway, it seems clear enough that we’ve est...<br />"Anyway, it seems clear enough that we’ve established that your original post was based on a couple of misunderstandings of my views, and that’s all I wanted to point out in my original response."<br /><br />Actually, again, no, I don't think you've shown anything of the kind. I might with more justice complain that, by interpreting me as making a *weaker* claim that I was making in my original post, you have misunderstood me! As I pointed out in my very first comment on this thread, I was not _just_ saying that you object to arguments from things that could in theory be done by someone other than God. Rather, I was saying that the _structure_ of such arguments as that from the voice in the sky and the burning bush is such, across the board, that such arguments should earn your disapproval just as much as ID arguments and for the same reasons. Since my claim was stronger than you took it to be, it was not in fact based on a misunderstanding of your position. In fact, I've put a great deal of time and energy into understanding your position, over a period of years.<br /><br />" I realize that they would abstract from those aspects of human designers. The point is that if they also abstract away everything else they would need to abstract away in order to arrive at a classical theist conception of God and his relationship to his creation, they’ll find that the complexity of this or that natural object really isn’t what is doing any work in getting from the order of the world to a divine intellect."<br /><br />Completely wrong. That does not follow. Compare: If we "abstract away" the idea that Someone was speaking from the sky using vocal chords and a brain, do we also abstract away the epistemic relevance of the *complexity* of the linguistic utterances to the inference that the voice out of the sky was not the result of natural causes but rather of a personal cause? Nope. Not even close. The fact that _we_ create complex effects using our hands or technology or other physical means (such as our voices) does not mean that complexity becomes irrelevant when the complex effects are not created by those physical means. The complexity is still epistemically highly relevant even if we do not guess or assume that it was achieved by finite means such as we ourselves use.<br /><br />In fact, that claim is such a serious epistemic blunder that I was astonished when I reread your earlier comment and saw that that was what you were saying. Yet you repeat it here. I'm sorry, but it's just flatly wrong.<br /><br />Perhaps this blunder is what lies at the heart of your repeated claims that ID arguments picture God in anthropomorphic terms as "tinkering with his creation" and such, "making things from pre-existing materials" and so forth. I don't agree with everything Vince Torley has said on these subjects, but I noticed in one post that he pointed out *expressly* that ID arguments do not require such a position regarding some specific means by which the designer did what he did. You should take that point seriously, because it is absolutely true. But perhaps you have difficulty doing so because you literally believe that, if we don't take the Designer to have used finite _means_ such as we use to achieve complexity, we cannot take complexity to be epistemically important! That is a real error.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-27292428278165807012014-05-10T19:09:51.683-04:002014-05-10T19:09:51.683-04:00(Not necessarily in order.)
"Ed, justify to ...(Not necessarily in order.)<br /><br />"Ed, justify to me your claim that ID arguments from natural objects to God tend toward an overly anthropomorphic conception of God, but without getting into the Aristotelian conception of natural objects."<br /><br />No, I already addressed that. Quite specifically. What I said, and will say again, is this: Allegedly (and you have confirmed this) the allegation that ID arguments intrinsically must involve a wrong concept of God is supposed to have _independent_ force, in addition to the claim that ID arguments represent an incorrect view of nature. If you literally cannot explain that independent force without going back into the "ID presupposes mechanism" accusation, then this leads to the suspicion that there is no such additional force, no "and also they have a wrong conception of God" argument, but _merely_ your view about the nature of nature.<br /><br />Now, you have indeed attempted to articulate that independent force, and I appreciate that. But I have answered it, I think, more than adequately, and at this point you cannot cry unfairness yet again because you have been asked to justify giving special and additional force to this accusation about the wrong concept of God.<br /><br />" I was addressing the nature of ID-style inferences from biological complexity, specifically, versus Fifth Way-style arguments. Not everything God does is the same. The phenomena teleological arguments appeal to is one kind of effect, requiring one type of explanation in terms of divine intelligence. Unusual phenomena like voices from the sky in such-and-such a specific cultural context are a very different kind of effect, and require a different analysis."<br /><br />Even granting your interpretation of Aquinas's fifth way, I *strongly disagree* that the ID argument must either be a competitor for your interpretation of the Fifth Way or nothing at all. I have argued, at length, in detail, that the argument from a voice in the sky *against a naturalistic explanation* *just is* and ID argument. It is an argument from complexity, it is an argument from the deliberate arrangement of parts, and so forth. I have gone into all of this again and again. It is mere foot-stomping, I'm sorry to say, to insist that we cannot and must not analyze ID arguments the same way, apparently on the purely arbitrary grounds that they concern things like the origin of animals rather than voices in the sky. I _do_ consider that ground arbitrary and do not grant that the two "require a different analysis." Nor is the fact that the voice from the sky occurred in a "cultural context" relevant to the point that I have been making concerning the reasons people had, immediately, for realizing that it was *not the result of natural causes.* Let me also add that Moses' discussion with God in the burning bush had, actually, very little cultural context. God hadn't been in touch with His people in more than four hundred years. It's not even all that clear what they knew or believed about Him. The burning bush was, in an important sense, a beginning of an era. It was an important part of _creating_ the cultural context of the New Testament. It came to Moses "out of the blue," as it were, while he was just tending sheep in the desert. And how did he know that it wasn't a natural phenomenon? Yeah, we can say, "Well, duh!" but the fact is--it had something to do with the improbability given natural causes. <br />Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-8173566795873980022014-05-10T17:44:21.694-04:002014-05-10T17:44:21.694-04:00Lydia,
First, if you’re not prepared to take a po...Lydia,<br /><br />First, if you’re not prepared to take a position on whether God is an instance of a kind, that’s fine. But in that case it is not reasonable for you to insist on going on about how we classical theists, despite agreeing with you wholeheartedly that God is personal, still aren’t sufficiently enthusiastic in your eyes about referring to God as “a person.” Until you address our <i>reasons</i> for having reservations about that phrase, you’ve really got no business complaining.<br /><br />Second, re: the “visual biochemical cascade” argument, you seem to me to be missing the point. Yes, I am of course well aware that iD theorists don’t think of God as being a quick study, using tools, etc. I realize that they would abstract from those aspects of human designers. The point is that if they also abstract away everything else they would need to abstract away in order to arrive at a classical theist conception of God and his relationship to his creation, they’ll find that the complexity of this or that natural object really isn’t what is doing any work in getting from the order of the world to a divine intellect.<br /><br />Third, re: the probability of the visual cascade, or of anything else, arising in the natural order of things, there is no way I can address that sort of question without getting into the differences between an Aristotelian conception of nature and a mechanistic one -- which you have asked me not to do.<br /><br />With all due respect, Lydia, the way you insist on proceeding here is really quite silly. “Ed, justify to me the classical theist’s reservations about the formulation ‘God is a person,’ but without asking me to take a stand on whether God is an instance of a kind. Ed, justify to me your claim that ID arguments from natural objects to God tend toward an overly anthropomorphic conception of God, but without getting into the Aristotelian conception of natural objects.” Unless you’re prepared to get into all that, then we simply can’t fruitfully address the questions at issue.<br /><br />Fourth, re: your statement that “there is nothing whatsoever in Scripture that supports the idea that more complex things cannot be special signs of divine design,” I never claimed or implied otherwise. I never said that complex phenomena can never in any way or under any circumstances be especially useful as a divine sign. I wasn’t even addressing that. I was addressing the nature of ID-style inferences from biological complexity, specifically, versus Fifth Way-style arguments. Not everything God does is the same. The phenomena teleological arguments appeal to is one kind of effect, requiring one type of explanation in terms of divine intelligence. Unusual phenomena like voices from the sky in such-and-such a specific cultural context are a very different kind of effect, and require a different analysis.<br /><br />With respect, it seems to me that we are jumping around here from point to point to point, and I don’t see much of a clear theme other than that it ticks you off that we A-T types don’t like ID theory and that you’d like to show us we’re wrong without having to try very hard to understand or address the details of our position. Sorry, that’s not the way it works.<br /><br />Anyway, it seems clear enough that we’ve established that your original post was based on a couple of misunderstandings of my views, and that’s all I wanted to point out in my original response. I have neither time nor inclination for a long combox exchange on all the intricacies of the general dispute between ID and A-T or between classical theism and theistic personalism.Edward Feserhttp://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-19851906281809055502014-05-10T16:15:15.203-04:002014-05-10T16:15:15.203-04:00Scripture simply contradicts any kind of egalitari...Scripture simply contradicts any kind of egalitarianism about divine signs. There is nothing whatsoever in Scripture that supports the idea that more complex things cannot be special signs of divine design more than things that more readily arise by natural causes. *Very much to the contrary*. Scripture is full of the language of signs and wonders. Scripture constantly tells us that God reveals Himself by doing special things, by _arranging_ things to happen in a special way.<br /><br />Rejecting the ID argument because it somehow makes us think of God as a guy with manual dexterity and the ability to work with tools is like rejecting the sign of the voice from the sky because it allegedly makes us think of God as a guy who has the skill of using his vocal chords to produce sound waves. After all, that's how we do it.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-6674377628805323982014-05-10T15:58:35.833-04:002014-05-10T15:58:35.833-04:00Another *very important* point:
If we look at the...Another *very important* point:<br /><br />If we look at the voice from the sky case, we also see that the details matter, and in exactly the same way. (This is why I said in the main post that the voice from the sky really is an intelligent design argument, not just analogous to one.)<br /><br />If arguing with the idiot who says it was just thunder, we _would_ have to point to the _details_ and talk about (what should be obvious, but apparently isn't to him) how improbable it would be that some natural process would arrange the sound waves in that complex fashion. The complexity of the language involved is very much the same kind of thing that ID theorists are pointing to. I mentioned this in the main post.<br /><br />If you reject the possibility of arguments that focus on the details, on complexity, and that imply that some things are _special instances_ of Someone's revelation of Himself, because of this complexity, then, once again, you have no way to analogize and admit the epistemology of the voice from the sky. Why was it obvious that that was not caused by natural causes? Because of complexity, arrangement, adequation of means (the arrangement of the sounds) to ends (the communication of a specific meaning) *in the details*.<br /><br />I say again: If the argument that the voice from the sky was the result of a personal agent does not require the univocal use of language and a wrong concept of God, neither does the ID argument. If it does, then your metaphysics needs to change to accommodate Scripture. Either way...Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-40140218176225825162014-05-10T15:48:47.087-04:002014-05-10T15:48:47.087-04:00And actually, I also strongly disagree that the re...And actually, I also strongly disagree that the relevant "considerations...don’t have much to do with the specifics either of human artifacts or of human artificers." In fact, the considerations about means-end adequation are connected *extremely strongly* to those specifics, because one can see the working of the guiding intellect *in the details* as well as in the whole, taken as a whole. Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20704380.post-9938851021176398112014-05-10T15:43:26.928-04:002014-05-10T15:43:26.928-04:00Ed, thanks for your answer. I do disagree with it ...Ed, thanks for your answer. I do disagree with it pretty fundamentally. First of all, there is *nothing at all* about the ID use of complexity or the concept of the designer that requires that God is a quick study, works with dexterity, using tools, and so forth. Of all the things you listed, the only thing that _might_ have an analogous (!) counterpart in God is your phrase "sound engineering intuitions," but I want to stress _very_ strongly there that I really do mean "analogous." My point there would simply be that the designer or Designer obviously has vast _knowledge_ of the physical properties of matter at all levels and is able to make use of those physical properties in a way that creates, for example, highly specific biochemical reactions that perform highly specific functions. In a human being, we might refer to something analogous as "being an excellent engineer." As far as "skill in calculation," I would substitute something like "knowledge" or "wisdom," because, again, something analogous to knowledge and wisdom in us is required for knowing what will happen if *this* is arranged like *this* with *that*. But all the rest, no.<br /><br />Now, the reason that these complex entities are special examples and have a force of their own is a pretty straightforward probabilistic reason: Their complexity is relevant to the probability of their existence by means of natural, or what the theist calls secondary, processes. Like it or not, the probability of a hunk of rock coming into existence on planet earth given secondary causes operating uninterrupted from the Big Bang onwards is *much higher* than the probability of a creature's coming into existence on planet earth having a visual cascade. Moreover, even _given_ the existence of some kind of ur-animal, the probability of its developing a visual cascade, when it didn't have one before, by purely secondary causes, is much lower than the probability of one rock's breaking off from another rock. Or of there being a rock in this field at all.<br /><br />From a Bayesian point of view, one compares the probability of the evidence given the hypotheses in question--preferably using a partition of the probability space. Complexity is relevant to the probability given the negation of design.<br /><br />Moreover, again, like it or not, complexity is relevant to the probability given design, for many reasons having to do with wisdom, understanding, and intention, as I have sketched above. Epistemologically, this is just _true_, but I do not see any reason why we cannot also say, once we conclude that the designer is God, that "wisdom," "understanding," and "intention" are understood to apply analogously rather than univocally to the One we actually believe to be the designer. At an earlier stage of the argument (see my "fork" statement, in a previous comment), the question is disjunctively open and can go either way.<br /><br />None of this, as far as I can see, requires univocal predication. What I do see is that this is how the epistemology works, and that the argument does work, and that it is necessary for one's metaphysics to be able to accommodate that fact.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.com