Si Hoc Signum Legere Potes, Deus Nusquam Esse…
11 May 2008 by KA
“There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.” - David Hume
Again, I approach the teleological argument, aka the fined-tuned universe (or what I amusingly term, the ‘argument from long odds’).
We’ve all no doubt heard the worn canard, “The odds of our universe being able to support life are 10 to the 86th power” or some such twaddle.
What intelligent creature (outside of the addicted gambler) actually stacks the odds against itself? Doesn’t this run contrary to anything vaguely resembling sense? (I’ll refrain from saying ‘common’, because as Voltaire noted so aptly, “I do not know why they call it common sense, as it is not so common”.) I maintain that in fact, you have to have some other criterion - all these formulations are from one side of a fence only. Where is the criterion, then? Do we have other universes to compare to? If we had actual access to another universe, completely devoid of life, then there’d be something to compare our own against. Until then, this is idle speculation. Billions of years multiplied by billions of planets would produce some kind of spark, I’d bet.
(NOTE: am borrowing this from Hume, in my own clumsy way.)
Another hoary old chestnut is the “look at how complex life is! How could it be so, without someone designing it?” Then ensues the battle - the theist will round up some irrelevant figure, about how the human cell contains more info than the Encyclopedia Britannica or somesuch. Billions of years, compounded simplicity, anyone?
I say this: the diversity of life, the complexity of the cell, is a severe argument against intelligent design.
Occam’s own razor prevents it.
Cogitate on this: if an ‘intelligent designer’ who is all-knowing, omnipotent, all-powerful, designed the world as we know it, why are there so many errors and misses? Why were the dinosaurs even brought about? There were even human species that died off. It’s as if some blind mad scientist was using this world as a petrie dish, for some vague purpose beyond our comprehension.
(Oh, wait: I imagine I hear the burbling bullshit of apologists in the peanut gallery, preparing their cant, spouting their presuppositional silliness with such platitudes as “the ways of gawd are mysterious” or some other non-answer.) Do we have a concrete number as to how many misses there were, prior to hitting the bull’s eye with our existence? A million? A billion?
“So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.” - Asimov, Nightfall.
Till the next post then.
11 May 2008, on 5:32 am
The odds against us existing are 10 to the 86th power? i’ll take that bet, put me down for $100 for our existence
11 May 2008, on 12:52 pm
What intelligent creature (outside of the addicted gambler) actually stacks the odds against itself?
if an ‘intelligent designer’ who is all-knowing, omnipotent, all-powerful, designed the world as we know it, why are there so many errors and misses?
I’m sure that the apologists will never use this argument, but perhaps the reason is that god (or whoever) is really really really really stupid. Which, even as an atheist, I would have to agree makes a lot of sense.
11 May 2008, on 4:07 pm
God studied design under Rube Goldberg.
11 May 2008, on 4:41 pm
I love those arguments, hehe. Like we’re qualified to set the odds! I mean, observationally, the odds of us existing seem to be about 100%, furthermore.
11 May 2008, on 6:50 pm
Good point about the odds of existence of life. I have often wondered where apologists dug up this figure–they make up other non-sense–why not pull large numbers out of their asses as well? And even steep odds like that don’t prove the existence of a creator–just that we happened to “beat” the odds. It does happen from time to time.
I got into a discussion with a young man the other day about this subject. He admitted that he was not a fundamentalist (I would not have bothered discussing the subject with him if he was–I have realized I have better odds just butting my head against a brick wall with people like that) but he insisted there had to be an intelligence behind our existence.
“Look at how perfect the human body is.”
I quickly pointed out that, while amazing, many things, such as the same hole for air and food, indicates just the opposite of “perfect design.” Choking being the number one killer of children, and aspiration one of the leading killers of the elderly would indicate that if there was a creator, he was not interested in making the design of our bodies too terribly “perfect.”
“But look at the hand; it functions so well.”
True, but that’s just an example of something that works very well for the environment in which it exists–far from perfection. If I had had the time, I would have pointed out the lack of perfection in the hand (the cmc joint of the thumb, one of the most crucial joints to function, also being one of the joints most susceptible to arthritis; the existence of the palmaris longis tendon–an entirely vestigial muscle, useful only for tendon transplants; the median nerve running through the same tunnel as the flexor tendons, leading to carpal tunnel syndrome in many people, etc). Instead, I just pointed out that there wasn’t anything about the body that couldn’t be explained as the effects of natural selection. I also asked him “what is ‘perfect’ anyway.”
He’s young and open minded. I remember thinking like him once–I hope I had some kind of impact. My life changed once I started thinking more critically, and I feel better and happier for it. If I can help catalyze that in one person, I will have felt my time spent on this earth to be worthwhile.
11 May 2008, on 11:00 pm
Kz
Thanks for all of this. There is no god for any of it. It must leave the believers in a state of schock.
11 May 2008, on 11:54 pm
I saw something recently that suggested the only thing the universe appears really good at is…creating black holes.
Intelligent Design my ass.
12 May 2008, on 1:37 am
PYRETTE - good luck finding a bookie on that 1.
OV - Ha! Very good. I’m thieving that 1.
Chris:
Most of this twaddle seems to come from proponents of the anthtropic principal (AKA, the ‘goldilocks effect’ angle).
Fritzy:
I had a debate w/an ID’er, who put forth the idea that the black holes were actually the glue holding the universe together.
It seems that religious people will believe any damn thing, provided their book might be able to vaguely support it via allegory.
12 May 2008, on 11:17 am
“God studied design under Rube Goldberg.”
Yes, Old Viking…
I’d say a very, very…supremely nasty, and most sadistic Rube Goldberg; and kind of a typical…
“I should give a shit?”, numbnuts (no nuts castrati?), ultra-Paternalistic style total fuckhead.
Take childbirth, with all its inherant, drawn-out painfulness and subsequent dangers…
Yeah…as a ‘Post Mothers Day’ example, of course!
Think of all the pain and suffering which goes on DAILY, and ad infintum, with the carrying and birthing of human reproduction…not to mention, of course (Whoops, too late!), all the other nightmarish creature reproductive ‘insanity’.
I guess, RATIONALLY, one can let slide the machinations of a totally non-personal, billions of years in the making, evolutionary process; but a so-called “Purpose driven”, personally PLANNED out notion?…
Uh-uh!
At least…I can’t!
As I think Lloyd M. Graham remarked in his mostly ignored, excellent, dissecting book…”Deceptions and Myths of the Bible”…(assuming the literal existential notion of a god)…
Can man ever forgive God for His egregious offenses toward His creatures! [Or, Something like that.]
I contend, that given the endless, myriad, horrific examples of so-called “Intelligent Design”, who’d even WANT to be an “Almighty” creator, if, indeed, THAT’S what an “infinite” being becomes in fulfilling some insanely “divine” ultra-cumpulsion to create!
A being, whom I, and most atheists, I presume, would concur…is certainly NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, WORTHY of any kind of bowing down or knee bending worship!
Or should we call it…WHORE-SHIP?…Nah!…more like…
HORSE-SHIT? [Sorry horses!]
Like…do I faintly hear a repentant divine voice saying something like…
“Somebody stop me, PLEASE, before I do even MORE damage with my uncontrollable “Divine Addiction!”
What!…You mean…”Gods Anonymous?”
[Talk about a "BIG Book"...(AA reference)]
12 May 2008, on 1:56 pm
John Allen Paulos has been on a couple of atheist podcasts recently (Point of Inquiry, FFRF’s Freethought Radio), discussing his latest book IRRELIGION, which addresses head on some of the mathematical nonsense that apologists frequently pull out to defend themselves. He very effectively calls b*llshit on them, time and again.