OK, but you do seem to be confusing:
We (or, more specifically, you) do not fully understand how “X” could come about by naturalistic causes.
with:
X cannot have a naturalistic cause.
Sorry, in a rush so one of my responses above was posted below the wrong quote. One more and then I’ve got to go:
What are the odds of our natural universe existing without antecedent? Isn’t that the same question? The cosmological argument proposes the need for a first cause, particularly since our universe clearly had a beginning. You can argue until you’re blue that there’s simply no need for the first cause (because “something is more stable than nothing,” or any other variety of explanations), but there’s just no evidence whatsoever to back up any theories of what happened prior to the Big Bang, and you certainly haven’t ruled out the notion of a first cause as impossible, merely “unscientific.” I understand that the atheist is taking the “humble” approach of saying “hey, we just don’t know,” but why is it so unacceptable, especially in view of the multitude of other reasons for which people posit a creator (innate religious belief, need for intelligent design, claimed supernatural experiences, etc.), to consider an intelligent first cause as a possibility, and then examine whether or not the evidence supports it? If we were to present an ironclad, irrefutable argument that spontaneous generation of life is so remotely improbable as to be considered impossible, would you still be satisfied with saying “by the same criteria, your proposed God is similarly impossible, so I therefore accept neither explanation, and I’ll just have to wait until science finds something else.”? Is that really reasonable?
Or is it more reasonable to consider a variety of possibilities and see which best fits the available evidence, without ruling out an option based on a strict logical argument that doesn’t allow for possibilities that haven’t actually been ruled out (for example, “God would require a designer” doesn’t consider the possibility of necessary entities, or entities which do not have to be caused, as any “first cause” would inherently be). In other words, the argument that intelligent design doesn’t require a designer because the designer would require a designer presupposes that the cosmological argument is false, rather than simply accepting that it may or may not be valid. After all, doesn’t the atheist generally argue that he’s simply not convinced that there’s reason to believe in a god, not that such an idea is impossible? Open-mindedness to the available options would therefore require considering possible explanations. You’ve used the “should I believe in fairies?” argument to counter this, but this is a strawman response because I’m not suggesting that fairies exist, I’m suggesting that there’s an intelligent designer, and the evidence for that starts with what we’re discussing right now.
Why?
This is false. There are a number of hypothetical models. You are misinformed. That’s what you get for reading Behe.
Sorry, but none of this is true.
There is no such thing as “non-physical evidence.” If it’s not physical, it’s not evidence. Evidence is physical by definition. If you want to posit supernatural explanations for something, you first have to prove that natural explanations are inadequate. So far you have not come close to doing hat but have only tried to argue from assertion it has to be magic.
What do you find problematic about flagella? Are you under the impression that it arose intact? That it is “irreducible?” It is not. Behe’s argument from bacterial flagella is a complete canard.
First, it’s unnecessary. Adding in a spontaneously generated or always existing creator to create the universe is an unneeded step when you can say that the universe itself was spontaneously created or always existed.
Second, it’s much more improbably. The more complex something is, the less likely it is to be spontaneously generated. A being capable of creating the universe, not to mention any other attributes, would be unbelievably complex. Trying to assert a creator as an explanation is much more complex than an explanation without one.
Open-mindedness to the available options has to be limited by probability. Wildly improbable explanations have much less weight and should be considered only after all other explanations have been proven wrong. Seeing as how we don’t have any evidence of god at all, after all this time, I don’t see a reason to give the ‘god did it’ explanation much weight at all.
What? How does this discussion constitute evidence of an intelligent designer? I’m not seeing it.
I think it’s courageous to seek the truth, even if that might turn out to be something inconvenient or uncomfortable for us, and folly to avoid doing that, motivated by fear of the consequences of knowing the truth.
What’s more, science — as a method of conducting inquiry under rigorous conditions — is far and away the most effective method we have yet devised for identifying and eliminating error and delusion, regardless of origin. In no other field of human endeavor is there a formally organized methodology for rooting out unfounded assumptions, incorrect information, bad argument, deliberate or self deception, and all other forms of misunderstanding. If for no other reason than this, science deserves respect and continued vigorous pursuit.
Better than the odds of an all powerful magical wizard arising to create it.
Nobody argues that. The Cosmological argument is countered in much better ways than that. On a quantum level, no “cause” is needed.
There is no such thing as “before the Big bang.” Time is a property of the universe itself. There are no theories about “what happened before the Big Bang.” There are hypotheses as to the cause (which include things like multiverse theory). What we have *not[/ui] seen is any need for magic.
What it is is unproven. It as not been proven that the universe requires a first cause (or that the universe is the first effect).
That is not the atheist approach. We’re not humble and we don’t accept “I don’t know” as an answer.
Because it multiplies entia beyond their necessity, because there isn’t the slightest bit of evdience for it and because it hypothesizes an entity even more complex than the thing you’re trying to argue needs a designer.
Science does not posit that life, as such, arose “spontaneously.” You’re arguing from a false premise. There were many intermediate steps between non-life and life.
That’s exactly what scientists already do. Magic just isn’t a hypothesis necessitated by any of the evdience.
This is logical gibberish. If you’re wizard doesn’t need a designer, then neither does the universe. You can’t just remove your argued necessity for a designer by fiat. You actually have to explain how an all powerful wizard can arise from nothing. You acn’t just wave the question away.
The argumnet is that there is no such thing as any sort of demonstrated Intelligent Design.
[quote]
because the designer would require a designer presupposes that the cosmological argument is false[.quote]
The Cosmological Argument IS false, or at least unconvincing, and by positing an uncreated creator, you yourself are contradicting the Cosmological argument.
There are an infinite number of hypothetical, magical scenarios whicj=h “may or may not be valid.” Scientific method is not about “accepting” what sort of magical scenarios may or may not be valid, but about finding out where the actual evdiuence leads.
Actually,. you are suggesting EXACTLY that. What is God, but a giant invisble fairy? What’s the difference? Why is your conception of a creator God any more likely than an invisible magic fairy in a tutu waving a wand?,
You have yet to present any evidence. Show us an actual example of demonstrable ID and maybe well get somewhere.
Dertulm, you’re moving the goalposts.
To the question: “Does the universe require a creator?”
You reply: “You can’t prove that it doesn’t!”
To the question: “Does the creator require a creator?”
You reply: “You can’t prove that it does!”
You can’t have it both ways, my friend. Either **everything ** has a cause, including a creator. Or some things do not have causes – in which case the Universe may be one of those things.
Ultimately, metaphysics gets us nowhere. All we can do is look at the physical evidence. So far we have observed no evidence of a creator. Therefore, such a hypothesis is a unnecessary complication.
I would take slight issue with this, not because it’s wrong, but because it should be clarified.
Presuming that by “atheist approach” in this context one means the non-theist non-supernatural rational-cause empirical approach (because, of course, scientists can be religious, and atheists can be nonscientific), I think it would be better to say that we don’t accept “we can’t know” as an answer. After all, there are lots of places where the only responsible answer is “we don’t know” (e.g. proportions and composition of dark matter in the universe). The important thing, though, is that it’s a qualified “we don’t know,” perhaps better expressed as “we don’t know yet.” The connotation of this phrasing is that while not all material things are known, they are, ultimately, knowable, via responsible, disciplined inquiry, and we will continue our investigations until we do know.
In the rare instances where “we can’t know” is a valid response to a given question (e.g. “is an intelligent designer secretly guiding evolution by deliberate invocation of mutation mechanisms, below the level of possible perception”), we shrug off the “can’t know” items as basically irrelevant. If we can’t know something, if it’s outside our experience and ability to question, then by definition it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t affect us.
Perhaps I should have phrased it as “we don’t accept not trying to know.”
Part of Dertulm’s argument is that life’s genetic machinery is very complex. Since evolution requires some form of inheritance, how could that complex set of genetic machinery evolve without some sort of complex genetic machinery?
The answer is that evolution doesn’t require genes as we know them today.
When considering the origin of life, stop thinking about genes and start thinking about replicators. The simplest replicators are autocatalyzing molecules, and we know that certain types of RNA are autocatalytic…these RNA molecules create more RNA molecules like themselves when they have the neccesary raw materials. They aren’t genes, they aren’t alive, but they can undergo a process of natural selection in the sense that any error in catalysis will either produce an RNA molecule that is more effective at autocatalysis or less effective. Guess which sorts of molecules will be overrepresented over time, and which molecules will be underrepresented?
Other sorts of molecules are self-organising. They aren’t organized by genes, they organise themselves simply due to their physical properities. Drops of oil form bubbles in water, simply because non-polar molecules don’t dissolve in a polar solvent.
And so it is very likely that the first prebiotic replicators weren’t alive, but rather were various sorts of self-organizing and autocatalyzing molecules. So we know that the early Earth had lots of different organic molecules that formed naturally, we know that some molecules are self organizing, we know that some molecules are autocatalytic. And there we have the first ingredients for prebiotic natural selection. And once we reach the stage where one of those prebiotic replicators could be called “alive” it quickly begins to eat all the other prebiotic replicators and in short order the prebiotic world has vanished.