Dawkins - FISH!!!

[Neuge]

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..........Just a few quotes from a book review by Plantinga (long time and well respected philosophy prof at Notre Dame)..........

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I've seen Plantinga speak and I read one of his papers prior to the talk that purported to use mathematics to prove his claims, and the supposed fact that he could supposedly use mathematics properly was supposed to be one of his strengths that impressed people. But as a professional mathematician I could immediately see that his arguments were complete rubbish. It's pathetic that someone with such flaky arguments as Plantinga gets respect, and the fact that he does is clearly a result of widespread pro-religious bias, rather than any kind of actual merit.

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Do you have a reference to one of these papers? I'd really like to read one.

[Magic_Man]

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We know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that p;
Therefore
p is true.

Philosophers sometimes propound invalid arguments (I've propounded a few myself); few of those arguments display the truly colossal distance between premise and conclusion sported by this one.


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Being as how this is a classic logical mistake, I'd hardly use the word "colossal distance" here, unless I was spouting rhetoric and being sensational. This mistake is nearly identical to:

If A, then B.
Not A.
Therefore, not B.

A mistake that is frequently made, and hardly colossal.

AT ANY RATE, I haven't read any Dawkins, but I assume this is not the argument that he makes. MORE LIKELY, he makes the following claim:

If A, then B.
If C, then not A.
B.
Not C.
Therefore, our confidence in A is strengthened, AND MORE IMPORTANLY, there is NO NEED YET to invoke further theories into the cause of B. This is also known as "the scientific method."

[ChrisV]

It's amusing that the writer spends the first couple of paragraphs on ad hominem against Dawkins' philosophical abilities, when he can't grasp some pretty simple stuff himself. He is completely bemused by the anthropic principle:

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Name our universe alpha: the odds that alpha should be fine-tuned are exceedingly, astronomically low, even if it's likely that some universe or other is fine-tuned. What is Dawkins' reply? He appeals to "the anthropic principle,".... Well, of course our universe would have to be fine-tuned, given that we live in it. But how does that so much as begin to explain why it is that alpha is fine-tuned? One can't explain this by pointing out that we are indeed here—anymore than I can "explain" the fact that God decided to create me (instead of passing me over in favor of someone else) by pointing out that if God had not thus decided, I wouldn't be here to raise that question. It still seems striking that these constants should have just the values they do have; it is still monumentally improbable, given chance, that they should have just those values; and it is still much less improbable that they should have those values, if there is a God who wanted a life-friendly universe.

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He has utterly missed the point. His argument runs something like:

1) Say there are 10 million universes
2) The one in which we live is #8,459,121
3) How improbable is it that specifically universe #8,459,121 should be the one with the constants required for life? Dude, that's totally improbable!
4) Therefore, God exists.

Anyone who can't grasp the weak anthropic principle shouldn't be insulting other people about their philosophical abilities.

The paragraph about the tractors is ridiculous. He's saying that it's OK to explain the complexity of life by palming it off to God, and we can leave explaining the complexity of God for another time. Literally anything can be explained away like that. Science would never have got off the ground.

His arguments against God being complex are deliberately obtuse. The whole intelligent design mantra of "a watch implies a watchmaker" assumes a complex designer. People can't design anything more complex than themselves. I can't, say, write a program that plays checkers unless I contain within my own mind the rules of checkers and the syntax of the language I will use.

His argument against the improbability of God is just laughable. It runs like:

1) Prove God is not a necessary being.
2) Ha! You can't can you?
3) Therefore, God has a probability of 1.
4) Therefore, God exists.

He's once again totally missing the point. Once you accept that God is at least as complex as the universe, then there's no difference between probability of God existing and the probability of the Universe simply popping into existence ex nihilo. (If you like, I can make the claim that the Universe is a necessary being and you can try to disprove me. Good luck).

Finally, he's only arguing against a single chapter of Dawkins' book (I think the weakest) and ignoring the rest.

[Magic_Man]

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If A, then B.
If C, then not A.
B.
Not C.
Therefore, our confidence in A is strengthened, AND MORE IMPORTANLY, there is NO NEED YET to invoke further theories into the cause of B. This is also known as "the scientific method."

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Contrast this with intelligent design, which runs like this:

B.
Therefore, God.

[ChrisV]

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Just a few quotes from a book review by Plantinga (long time and well respected philosophy prof at Notre Dame):

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Wow. Is this guy seriously a philosophy professor? How can you be a philosophy professor and so yet so completely fail to grasp the anthropic principle?

[Magic_Man]

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The premise he argues for is something like this:

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Per my post above, it's highly likely that the reviewer got the premise wrong. Why doesn't he just quote Dawkins so he can show us the error in context? It looks like a strawman to me.

[NotReady]

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Bottom Line. Both sides are morons.


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You're half right.

[ChrisV]

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The premise he argues for is something like this:

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Per my post above, it's highly likely that the reviewer got the premise wrong. Why doesn't he just quote Dawkins so he can show us the error in context? It looks like a strawman to me.

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It's pretty simple. What Dawkins is doing isn't mounting a logical argument, but refuting somebody else's argument. The intelligent design argument goes:

1. Some living systems are irreducibly complex.
2. Therefore, they must have been designed, rather than have evolved.

Dawkins is refuting point 1. It's true he then goes on to assert that natural selection is responsible, but so what? He isn't saying that that ABSOLUTELY MUST be the case, just that we should currently reasonably assume that to be the case. Plantinga's argument is basically this:

Me: All fires are caused by oxidation of combustible material.
Plantinga: While it's true that we have many examples of fires caused by oxidation, and that all fires reported to date COULD have been caused by oxidation, that doesn't mean they ALL WERE! Maybe God did it! What a philosophical idiot!

Well, great. If you want to continue believing that "God did it" is a reasonable explanation even though we have perfectly good naturalistic explanations available, then good for you.

[arahant]

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Bottom Line. Both sides are morons.


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You're half right.

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Don't be so hard on yourself.

[Magic_Man]

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Bottom Line. Both sides are morons.


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You're half right.

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NotReady, you seem to have an unhealthy hatred of Dawkins, and I think many of us here probably have similar theories on why this is so. Could you please quote a few of your favorite passages WRITTEN BY DAWKINS and discuss briefly why he is such a complete moran? "He is an insensitive jerk" is not a valid reason.