Ch. 2 - THE GOD HYPOTHESIS

Chris OConnor · Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 8:28 pm Post subject: Ch. 2 - THE GOD HYPOTHESIS

Please discuss Chapter 2, THE GOD HYPOTHESIS, within this thread. ::204

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 1:41 pm Post subject: Re: Ch. 2 - THE GOD HYPOTHESIS

Quote:
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

-Thomas Jefferson

I just love this quote.

Mr. P.

Mr. P's place. I warned you!!!

Mr. P's Bookshelf.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Dissident Heart

TJ: Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

Hardly...ridicule is malice, and malice is not the only way to respond to human error. Unintelligible propositions may be malicious, thus making ridicule an intelligent response...but not all are; some spring from genuine curiosity, imagination, best guesses, and damned important hope. In these case ridicule would be stupid and dangerous...especially since malice so often requires dangerous stupidity.

TJ: Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them

Distinct ideas are important, and reason matters...but neither matter more than everything else; some things matter more.

TJ: no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity

I don't think a distinct idea of the Trinity is possible: nor is it important...it doesn't matter, at least not as much as some argue.

Then again, I don't think it possible to get a distinct idea of oneself either: especially in relation to the rolodex of relations in your life...intimate friends, aquaintances, customers, bosses, strangers, the whole of human history...as it relates to you, and you to it...all of it matters. Better, in defining these endless relationships, you are defining yourself.

What matters about these relationships is why you matter.

What matters about the relationships of the Holy Trinity is why God matters.

Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 1/3/07 3:29 am

FiskeMiles · Experienced Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 108 Gender:

Dear DH:

Quote:
Then again, I don't think it possible to get a distinct idea of oneself either

Evidently...

Fiske

Niall001

Just a quick thought, it's very frustrating that even though Dawkins claims he's going to examine the God Hypothesis as he defines it, he spends most of his time rambling on about things that have nothing to do with it.

Some much of what he includes is just padding, entertaining padding, so long as you're not the target of his tounge, but so far I'm getting the impression, that the whole book could have been cut down to a relatively short essay.

Diatribes are fun, but not productive.

Full of Porn*

http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

FiskeMiles · Experienced Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 108 Gender:

Niall:

Yeah, I got pretty much the same thing from chapter seven where he launches into a seriously long rant about Biblical stories that are obviously immoral from contemporary Western points of view. It is not that his argument is fallacious, only that he could have accomplished the same thing in a paragraph or two (rather than pages) and without the mocking and derisive tone.

Fiske

PS: I'm going to have to start concentrating on some of the good nuggets, though, or everything I have to say about the book will be negative...

Niall001

That's the problem, there's a lot of good stuff in the book, but it's difficult to get past the gaffs.

To be honest, I don't think anybody here on booktalk would get anything new out of the book, with the possible exception of the reverse argument from design, which I don't personally find very convincing.

I'd like to send copies of the book off to some fundies though, just to see if it might be possible to get them to try and think a little harder about the shit they spew. Then again, that little miracle might in itself invalidate the Dawkins' hypothesis.

Full of Porn*

http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

FiskeMiles · Experienced Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 108 Gender:

Niall:

Well, one of the problems with the good parts is if they aren't self-contained, that is, if they rely on any sort of external reference, you have to freaking check the reference directly to make sure old RD hasn't misrepresented his source material! (I have to wonder how much of the source material he has even read!)

I think we're in violent agreement.

Fiske

Edited by: FiskeMiles at: 1/3/07 6:38 pm

FiskeMiles · Experienced Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 108 Gender:

Niall earlier made a point that the arguments Dawkins provides in this book are weak and one doesn't have to go far to find an example. Page 31 provides a definition of the God hypothesis referred to in the book's preface on page 2:

Quote:
'the God hypothesis' is a scientific hypothesis about the universe, which should be analysed as sceptically as any other.

Here is how the hypothesis is defined on page 31:

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there exists a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us

I'm going to overlook the deliberately designed redundancy -- is it possible to "accidentally" design anything? (I guess I didn't overlook it.)

Why super-human? Could anything about the putative creator of our universe be human?

Consider the definition of theist provided on page 18:

Quote:
A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation.

When I reread this section, the latter part of the definition, the part about God still influencing his (its?) creation startled me. I recognized that I have been defining a theist as someone who only asserts the existence of God. I checked the definition of "theist" in my dictionary (an American Heritage), and found that RD's paraphrase is surprisingly accurate -- I guess the difference between a theist and a deist, subsequently defined by RD in the same paragraph on page 18. So, a question: why doesn't the God hypothesis include the second part of the theist definition -- that God is still influencing our universe?

Here is the next part of the argument on page 31:

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This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.

Of course, that assertion is based on causal observations of the natural world: that the same causal relationships apply to a supernatural realm is presumed by RD with no proof. I'll let that go because the next statement is the real howler.

Quote:
Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.

What in the heck does this statement have to do with God? God, being supernatural, would not be part of the universe. If he did create the universe, he must have existed before it did. If it was necessary for God to evolve, why is it that the evolution could not have taken place before our universe was created? Of course, there is no empirical way to test or observe any of this but so what? The underlying assumption here (MadArchitect is laughing already, I'm sure) is that if we don't have empirical proof of something it couldn't have happened. Really? And how would one prove that? This isn't a rational argument. In fact, it's not an argument at all.

The final assertion, that "God, in the sense defined, is a delusion" is meaningless because an argument concerning the recent development of creative intelligence in the natural world cannot be meaningfully applied to a supernatural creator. So, in fact, the title of this book rests on a meaningless argument. Impressive.

Fiske

Saint Gasoline · Intern Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 151 Gender:

Quote:
Of course, that assertion is based on causal observations of the natural world: that the same causal relationships apply to a supernatural realm is presumed by RD with no proof.

I don't think this is a very good criticism of Dawkin's argument. For instance, let's phrase it in terms of something more secure, in order to see why the objection is so startlingly wrong:

Let's say that I assert that A=A and A cannot equal ~A ever. Someone responds to me arguing that this assertion is only based upon my being part of a "logical" world--I assume without reason that the same logical relationships would apply even to an "alogical" world.

Of course, I think Dawkins misses this finer point because he doesn't really go to any depths with his argument. Essentially, it is not an objection to say, "But this argument doesn't apply in 'magic realm' where 'causality/logic/whatever' does not apply." It is not an objection for the same reason that it is no objection to the person who asserts that A can never equal ~A for one to remark that maybe the laws of logic don't apply in some mystical land of illogic. What reason do you even have to bring up such a realm of existence? Does it even make sense? Can one conceive of an "illogical" existence or a "supernatural" existence?

Quote:
an argument concerning the recent development of creative intelligence in the natural world cannot be meaningfully applied to a supernatural creator

I think that the point Richard is making is one that is frequently made in debates concerning contingency and necessity in regards to existence. The question asked is, "Why does something exist rather than nothing?" And the answer is supposed to be that God explains this. But then we are left with the question, "Why does God exist rather than nothing?" and the stock response is that this question does not apply to God, it would only apply to contingent matter and energy.

In terms of Richard's point, the question is, "Why does complexity exist", and the answer critiqued is "God creates complexity." Richard is essentially arguing that this doesn't really answer that question, because God himself must be pretty complex. Instead of answering the question, the theist is essentially saying, "Complexity doesn't need to be explained, I can posit a being that lives in a realm that dodges these explanations". Does this mean that Dawkins' argument doesn't apply? Not really. He at once proposes an answer to the question verified by experience and all we know, "Complexity exists because it is the end product of selective pressures and random changes", and at the same time shows how the "God hypothesis" doesn't really answer the question at all, and instead just avoids it.

The fact that God is complex, that God is not nothing, only goes to show that positing him isn't a very good explanation for ultimate existence or the order of the universe. Why posit a complex entity outside of the world we know when we can posit entities within our experience that fulfill these functions--we can explain complexity with evolutionary functions and we can explain existence by making "energy" a necessity (it can't be destroyed or created) or else noting that seeking a "necessary" existence isn't really...well...necessary.


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