Not having an answer for a question does not make it a logical fallacy. It isn’t fallacious at all: it’s asking the obvious question.
Much of the Creationist doctrine is based on the claim that human intelligence cannot have arisen save by the direct application of intelligent design. It is not a fallacy, but ordinary logic, to say, “Wait a minute… Where did that designing intelligence come from, if intelligence requires intelligence to have designed it?”
The fallacy, instead, is the “special pleading” that says, “Human intelligence can only have come about by intelligent design, but God’s intelligence is not subject to that rule.” Why not?
I’m not a fundamentalist, but can you blame them, when cultural leftists are so often telling them that science is a threat to traditional values? In the other thread, wolfpupsaid that not believing in evolution is part of a larger “anti-science” stance that leads to “stupid decisions” based on “rampant ignorance” like restrictions on abortion and euthanasia.
Yes, you got more of the gist of what I was saying. I was using homosexuality as a synecdoche for “culture war” issues in general. But I still don’t think my claim is entirely wrong. I wasn’t talking just about the left’s “support” in a vague, abstract sense, rather, about why it’s such a hot-button issue. Along those lines, I think your last statement comes closer to the truth.
I agree with all of that. “Intelligent design” isn’t just wrong, it’s a particularly dimwitted, low-level kind of wrong that tries to argue for an anthropocentric kind of God who sits around a drafting board in a design studio up in the clouds and periodically releases new, improved life forms with longer warranties and built-in rustproofing. In that sort of context, which denies that intelligent life could arise spontaneously, it’s certainly fair to ask who created this cloud-dwelling champ.
But when one posits the sort of extra-natural God I was referring to, who exists entirely outside our perceived universe and was (perhaps) responsible in some incomprehensible way for its creation, asking where He came from makes the huge and unsubstantiated assumption that natural laws such as causality must apply in that extra-natural domain. Causality requires time, space, energy, and matter – all the ordinary things of our universe.
True enough, I suppose…except where someone suggests that this God has influence inside our universe, and then it’s fair to ask what the influence vector is.
A God such as you describe can only exist outside our universe. And…okay, that’s fine. It’s still an invisible pink unicorn, i.e., it’s defined as being beyond our ability to perceive. It can’t grant wishes, it can’t speak to prophets, it can’t part the Red Sea.
Also, “So where did he come from” is still a completely valid question: it’s just defined, now, as unanswerable. “Who knows, as the laws of causality and origins may not apply in the place – whatever it may be – outside our bubble of space-time.”
It’s not a logical fallacy to ask questions for which there aren’t answers. It’s a dead-end, but not fallacious. It’s like “Is there intelligent life elsewhere in our universe?” Maybe, but no one knows. We get to ask, but we have to accept that there isn’t any answer.
(The big difference, of course, is for the latter question, at least, we have possible ways of learning the answer.)
I wish there were fewer exceptions to this than there seem to be.
(Like my cousin, who, upon seeing a picture of a Kzin skeleton in the end-papers of one of Larry Niven’s science fiction books, shrieked, “That’s evolution! I don’t believe in evolution!” Staggering.)
I like this video. It is an interesting take on why a 6000 yer old earth is absurd.
From what I've noticed, the objection to old earth and evolution stems from it all invalidating the Bible. It's far worse (for a biblical literalist) than "liberuls just want gays to marry!!!".
If Evolution is true (and it is) Adam and Eve weren’t real. If Adam and Eve weren’t real, no Original Sin, and no need for Jesus to be sacrificed to absolve humans of their original sin.
I watched as far as 1:08, where the neolithic warriors were pushing a sledge full of ice and bottled beer.
Odd, as, up to that point, it seemed to be a serious exposition on the state of civilization re 6000 BC, but that one little note of blatant humor seems to falsify – or undermine – the seriousness of the documentary.
Should I have stuck it out and watched to the end?
(The serious point is that we know that there were civilizations, megalithic constructions, and complex early crafts such as beer-making, at a time when the young earth creationists claim the world hadn’t even been created yet.)
Thank you, wolfpup, you saved me some labor (and you write slightly better on this topic).
I like to consider myself an Agnostic A-religionist. That is,…call it a “central purpose or reason for the Universe” existed or is still existing, but that it is quite probably unknowable and we (at least at our current level) cannot validate or disprove it.
That said, I find NO religion, past, present, or future, to have any credibility or reason for me to follow it, and if there is a “God”, then He/She/It/They/Whatever, if they take any interest in this rock, probably point and giggle at what we are doing in the religious sense.
The visuals were just taken from old movies and such, not meant to indicate anything specific about the people he was talking about at the time. it’s really his speech that is relevant. he could have left it as a black screen the whole 10 minutes.
It seems you already realize the point of the video, so up to you if you want to hear what he has to say. I found it interesting, for the information about the state of the world 6000 years ago at least.
Was the sledge full of ice and bottled beer supposed to be a joke? Why throw a joke like that into the middle of a documentary?
That bit was just so damn weird. It made it impossible for me to credit the rest of the show with any seriousness. If he had a real point, he lost it completely by going for a cheap visual joke.