Dissing Teleology - I essay another.

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Being rested, I will try my hand at one more from Master Pedant's graciously provided list:

" A) The argument from Dysteleology: The world looks exactly as it should were it not designed in a top-down way (numerous advances in various natural sciences ad credence to this probablistic argument)."

Awesomely Glorious [they said I had an ego problem?] has an alternative formulation:

"1) Dysteleology: This world does not look like what it is reasonable to expect with a perfectly loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful being. There is too much suffering. There are too many poorly designed components of the world. (assuming basic models of purpose for a God) The things that are often considered important within this framework do not exist."

I rather prefer Master Pedant's positive statement, but no matter.

Once there was a magnificent Town Clock in the home of my Swiss ancestors. Every quarter hour two meter-high mechanical kobolds would come out and clash their shovels, once at the quarter, twice at the half hour, und so weiter.

On the hour three mechanical maidens with garlands of spring flowers came out and performed a symbolic dance, after which an angel appeared, flappsd its wings, and blew a golden trumpet to mark the hour.

One day a reporter from Scientific Svizzera showed up. He asked the angel, "Do you, as a major player in this magnificent town clock, believe there was ever a clockmaker?"

"Ach, nein!" said the angel. "Just look. I never get to kiss the girls, the kobolds get more time on stage than I do, I am stuck in the dark except for five minutes each hour, the sound does not really come out of my trumpet, and half the year it is dark at 6:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Why would God create such a crazy clockmaker?"

1. Okay. I will play nice and not point out that Genesis [and pretty much everybody else's creation narrative] explicitly says that what we see is not the nice world God designed but has been negatively impacted by humanity. The atheists, while mostly agreeing that the planet has so been negatively impacted, say Scripture is Bunk, and not all Christians go the literal seven days route, so let it pass.

2. But - well - is not one of Christianity's egregious errors, pointed out by rugged scientists, the deflated idea that Homo sapiens is center and lord of creation? That we are predictable chemical scum briefly grown on the epidermis of a piddling planet circling a minor and unexceptional star in one of God - sorry - Hawking knows how many galaxies in what is likely one bubble of a multiverse? If that be so - what makes me think hypothetical teleology would focus on me.

3. I think, therefore I am, and anything else is there because I perceive it. We all have the temptation to see ourselves as the hub. In my youth, I could have, would have said, this family is NOT ideally arranged, because a just and loving paterfamilias would see to it that my sisters obeyed me and we never had hard boiled eggs.

4. The angel has his gripes, I have mine, Descartes is Desgruntled [sic], and no, the universe does not look as if it was intelligently designed to suit me and mine. But - where stands it written [a quote of a quote from Pastor Jerry's seminary prof] that it was? We are never actually told [check it out] what the purpose of the universe is. But Master Pedant and I and the town clock angel can be pretty certain the purpose was not to suit the designs and satisfy the intellect of one absolutely insignificant species of organic scum.

5. Of course, Awesomely Glorious for all I know may in fact be the Center and Glory and Lord of Creation. But I have no idea what a world designed to be ideal for Awesomely Gorious mught be like.

Ah, but the issue is that one can have a clock-maker without having a God. We have lots of clock-makers in this world, but none of them are gods.

That being said, here's a list of possibilities:
1) God.
2) Demiurge (god-like being lacking in godly qualities)
3) Set of spiritual beings (none of these beings are god, possibly none of them are god-like, but together they have the power to create a universe)
4) Set of gods.
5) Set of impersonal rules that somehow lead to this conclusion through some form of historical process.
6) Set of impersonal rules that arrive at this conclusion through multiple trials. (multiverse)
7) Set of impersonal rules that are fundamental in a manner that specifies this particular universe and all of the details of it.

Now, I think possibilities 1-4 just don't make sense given that the current universe is not like a clock. Clocks we can see uses for. Clocks are used for telling time. What is this universe used for? Is it really the most plausible universe for whatever purpose proposed?

Now there you get to the point. The nub. The rub.

Those who have [however acquired, however delusional or otherwise] evidence for an intelligence [and, so true, god, gods, demiurge, selfconscious universe cannot certainly be disambiguated on this basis] underlying the whole shebang do NOT generally have a clear idea of the purpose.

Except for some of the selfconscious universe versions, which I believe have the ALL diversify into Universe because of being lonely and going nutso. or, I believe some Amerindian creations where there is a contest, most creations do not seem to have explicit purposes.

So the dysteleology is really a mirage. We can't say the universe is no good for ANY purpose - it seems to be fairly good for breeding stars and the occasional black hole. And any specific purpose we shoot down - big deal if it ain't THE purpose.

More to the point would be, how can you theists be so sure there is an intelligent planner, when you can't identify the plan? THAT one I would not have much of a response for.

I have [however acquired, however delusional or otherwise] evidence that leaves me with thre conviction, the faith if you will, that the purpose exists.

But what it might be - insufficient evidence to support anything bus speculation, which I would not publish outside the inner circle - those with who I can talk without coding.

One thing I might add here - in an eternal plane this life is perhaps 80 or 90 years with some luck, any sense that the world is too absurd for a loving God to have created it is an utterly localized viewpoint, ie. we have no idea of what was before, what's after, and therefor no sense of context for events aside from what we can glean here and now. Just as God could easily not exist, God's intent for creating this world and even being all loving could pan out in numerous different ways.

Exactly so - one more factor in a seriously limited perspecive. Did I quote the proverb - The one who has never travelled believes his mother is a good cook?

I once told someone this attempt to see into prehistory was handicapped by binocular vision with inadequate separation of the eyes.

The character on screen rarely knows where the film is going.

We are told - again explicitly - that certain data are NOT vouchsafed us.

The main point is that God pretty much also designed the Genesis situation and with perfect divine foresight, could have seen the problems in creating entities absolutely ignorant of what one should or shouldn't do (hence the lack of knowledge over whether disobeying God was really "wrong") and mixing them with a sinister Snake.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY6Dn0_hBOY[/youtube]



While traditional teleological arguments assume an anthropocentrism, we would equally assume a focus on any being capable of sustaining suffering. In which case, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God's done a piss-poor job (given his unlimited ability) at ensuring each entitie's well-being. Even if we allow for the standard Free Will defense, God has still designed (with his perfect foresight) a Universe where toddlers are drowned by Tsunamis.

Needless to say, my original argument didn't so much go into the argument of suffering as how consistent the Universe is with the Universe one would assume were it just purpolessly, thoughtless matter acting in response to other thoughtless matter confined by regularities. One may assume that regulatities need a regulator, but I don't see that as given and it needlessly multiplies entities.



Okay, explain how the dysteleological model of the Universe is at all undermined, even if we grant this top-down lawmaker freedom from focusing on Homo sapiens or even sentient life.



Again, how does this undermine the dysteleological model of the Universe?



I'm sorry, but this post seems like nothing more than a bunch of red herrings.

Okay, so you're basically saying that God doesn't really care about the individual or, at best, is something of a supernatural extreme Utilitarian, willing to induce great suffering among the "parochial" viewpoints of numerous individuals to achieve some greater purpose in some indefinite point in the future? While I hold Utilitarianism is the most coherent moral theory and hence the one I subscribe to, the only reason I do so is because I'm not infinitely powerful. If a being is omnipotent they should be able to create anything and harmonize the welfare of an infinite number of sentient beings in the future and past. Anything less is sub-omnipotence.

As for the much weaker sense of "god", while I'm sure a less than omnipotent yet still ultra-potent being could have designed the Universe for some unknown goal, I still find the evidence much more compatible with the assumption natural, thoughtless processes are leading to equally thoughtless results constrained by various regularities (dysteleology).

By my language use, red herring requires volition on trhe part of the one dragging..

Feel free to cry lousy reasoning - knock yourself out - but I except when - like someone else - challenging the sarcastically challenged - talk straight. I can e ignorant, I can be dumb, I play fair and expect it back.

If your red herring idiom does not imply volition, no big deal, just laying down ground rules.

Anyhow, to say it short without rhetoric or documentation:

My point: I [forget any other human] do NOT have enough range of vision / perception in any direction on any dimension including time to decide on dysteleology.

You know the Solon and Croesus story story - or if you don't watch out cause I will tell you.

Croesus thought he was happy. When I had to sample hard boiled egg I thought I was unhappy. It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the daya - and we have but the teensiest corner of the story.

Tell me "I do not see how the structure of the universe advantages me" - I hear you, man. Not by sight.

Not exactly what I was getting at. From what your saying, you've sort of conceptually locked all possibilities into the box of earth, things that are supposed to strictly work in a mathematical sense 'here', to even theorize on something external to this is to take that limiter completely off.

If I were to give an example of something I'd think of as a possibility, of an omnipotent and all loving God, it would come from the notion that he can create perfect beings but, as he can't necessarily create a square circle, he can't create much self awareness within them if they're whole existence is in paradise and sharing knowledge close to his own level. The general school of thought if we're to go sort of new-agey is that we have an all loving God who puts us here, not to learn - that would be a waste - but to gain perspective. Book smarts and wisdom are two completely different things, and learning in heaven would be similar to nothing more than book smarts. Now, pushing someone into a place where they have no clue or memory where they came from, filled with enough pain and barbarism to where they can earnestly and honestly debate whether a God exists at all, that's a pretty strong catalyst. In that notion we agreed to this, knew what it was, and as the people we are have no more identity than half mom and dad + environment and nothing of themselves, their desires nor motivations, to fully call their own, it means that humanity is really just a box of filters. Life in that sense is like being Alex in Clockwork Orange watching movies but strapped down tighter in a rollercoaster where if you see it about to take a sharp dive into a septic field - about all you can do is close your eyes and mouth hoping it doesn't go up your nose and hoping you don't drown in it, and, sometimes you're literally meant to.

You may well debate that hypothetical as unjust or unethical from your own POV, then again if its eternity afterward of Neverending Story type living that shifts the sliding scale of perspective considerably where, if these experience, chosen not forced, are assets in heaven, things that add to who the broader self is (which perhaps dips into many lives) and, if we were to take the Gnostic route that even that state isn't full knowledge of God but simply that you've joined the Pleroma in trying to learn of him - that no one, not even the greatest elders of that place, can fully understand him and that its an eternal drive to love all of existence; do you see what I mean? I'm not trying to sell you on this point of view but indicating that our vantage point, *if* we take all limits off, is quite limited.


And I can't deny that that could be true as well. Intuition is a funny thing though, it guides almost everyone's hunches in any direction they would take. Just like we aren't our own selves, and taking that on a strict materialist note it would mean that there is no such thing as self, it works out that our intuitions aren't our own - much like where they lead us. Because we only have so much time and energy to give to things we have the tendency to go with what our gut tells us is the strongest case (well, unless it inescapably collapses on itself) and then play triage with distinct possibilities that seem like they'd need an impossible chase. What a theist won't have that an atheist would have is a full intimate construct of what a world without God is. As far as the possibilities of things like miracles, faith healing, psychic phenomenon, paranormal, etc., most atheists would throw their hands up in the air, say that even if there were such a thing they'd never find it under the mountains of fraud, and it puts a stop to examination. Not saying either of those are necessarily illogical, we all have lives to lead though and very few people would want to abandon everything to become 24/7/365 philosophers or investigators of ultimate realityuntil they passed, especially when they'd get the sense that there's little they could even glean from living in a capsule like that. Even scientists, to drill deep enough to get somewhere, tend to need a very narrow sliver of the picture, philosophy might be easier as its macro and tries to map the results of other people's drudge work - even with that it's uncertain whether an answer could ever materialize here, just like its just as uncertain whether we already might have the answer - that were nothing more than monkeys and when the TV goes off with all other senses its off forever.

Okay, let me break down what I've interpreted your main points to be.

1) Omnipotence is limited to being able to do all logically possible things, it does not include the ability to contravene the laws of logic.
2) An omnibenevolent being would make moral judgements in a sort of ideal utilitarian way, with growth, self-knowledge, and perspective on top of the hierarchy of ideals.
3) This God or god-like figure is omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
4) This being could not achieve growth for sentient lifeforms without subjecting them to immense hardships without contravening the laws of logic. Hence suffering in this world.
5) A sort of "reincarnation" occurs where sentient entities continually experience hardships in various lives to gain spiritual perspective.
6) Nirvana is an end-state of paradise attained by the spiritual maturity gained through lives of suffering.
7) This is only one of several teleological possibilities.

I have trouble with number four, but admit that I'd have a damn hard time proving that growth and lack of suffering are logically contradictory.



Your main points here seem to be that:

1) My argument is mainly based on personal intuitions and experiences, which are to an extent parochial.
2) We all base our evaluations of numerous claims on a hidden background of assumptions and worldviews and that we limit "approperiate" or "sensible" investigations on the basis of these.

And I'd largely agree - the Quinean coherentism is probably the most accurate epistemological theory and it does describe how most humans actually think pretty well. I would say, though, that physicalistic webs of belief seem a lot more consistent with what we've absurd from the sciences so far and have the virtue of being parsimonious. Party of my argument for the argument from dysteleology is that it's much more parsimonious to assume thoughtlessness in the Universe than to posit some super-mind whose properties and regularities we know nothing about who designed the Universe on the basis of an inherentl incomprehensible plan.

The dysteleology argument is more about the Universe being best explained as the haphazard happenings of various thoughtless process. While perhaps some impersonal or personal God designed the Universe for some quirky, incomprehensible to humans, reason (i.e. they or it wanted to see supernovas every once in a while or desired that dust accumulate on asteroids), it still doesn't undermine the fact that the Universe looks as it would were it merely the result of regularities constraining the movement of matter in spacetime.

I wish I had a better grasp on the concept of emergent patterns - not my pidgin and I only ran across it relatively recently. There are some indications that it may be one of the concepts that does not readily pack into my thoughtspace.

But if I come closer to getting it, I think the idea is that genuine complex patterns arise out of interactions of very simple forces. To be contrasted, I believe, with the claim I have heard from here and there that if a pattern-seeking mind - like mine - looks at what is in essence chaos, it will perceive pattern that in fact holds at best for a very small sample. The behavior patterns of Torontonians, for example, contrasted with the cloud image of a crocodile snapping at a hippo.

The big question would be, are there patterns in the universe which cannot be explained as one or another, as a consequence of the nature of quarks or sentient eyes fooling sentient brains?

I have to say, I dunno. I suspect / expect you have to say you dunno. And you can go on to say you see no evidence of an intelligence revealing itself in the structure of the universe. And I can go on to say that the universe is consistent with a God who - for reasons best known to himself, though I may understand to a degree - reveals himself only to certain members of the audience and then only in part and in code.

Which is where Solon comes in. How can we with the data and hardware at our disposal know definitively what the world should be like if this or if that?

Our friend the anthropic principle - great to talk about and marvel at. But it [even if no one challenges the alleged facts] falls flat as an argument. So sure, the odds agin the perceived structures immense. So? People tend to forget that nasty little fact of probability: all it has to do is fall together once - once out of that 10 to the how manieth - and here we are. And that is even before we note that the Rhodium chloride based life forms on Braxis VIII perceive the universe and their star system as constructed -highly improbably - so as to produce their form of life.

Fortunately for me, I talk this stuff not to convince [because I could not even have convinced the Philologlet I was before the critical percepts impacted me] nor to be convinced - since what I have seen, be it Basque origins or the shared features of conifer based homeopathic remedies, or the possible relevance of string theory to theistic cosmology, I cannot unsee it, I can only move toeward whatever liers beyond. I talk it because it helps to whet and polish especially in interaction with other perspectives.

Your pretty close but, I'd tweek five and six a bit. For five - being in heaven before and after for a long enough time to have a much different attitude of what was endured before going back in. Some people have felt that, if we have souls, we've lived as other types of sentient beings and in that sense enough of us have perhaps reincarnated with much broader intervals than simply the second we die or even twenty to fifty years after we die necessarily. Also six - nirvana perhaps, if you believe in the Buddhist structure. The need for nirvana is based on a chain of life after life after life with no choice of stepping out or opting whether to go back or not.



Your main points here seem to be that:

1) My argument is mainly based on personal intuitions and experiences, which are to an extent parochial.
2) We all base our evaluations of numerous claims on a hidden background of assumptions and worldviews and that we limit "approperiate" or "sensible" investigations on the basis of these.

And I'd largely agree - the Quinean coherentism is probably the most accurate epistemological theory and it does describe how most humans actually think pretty well. I would say, though, that physicalistic webs of belief seem a lot more consistent with what we've absurd from the sciences so far and have the virtue of being parsimonious. Party of my argument for the argument from dysteleology is that it's much more parsimonious to assume thoughtlessness in the Universe than to posit some super-mind whose properties and regularities we know nothing about who designed the Universe on the basis of an inherentl incomprehensible plan.[/quote]
I'd wholeheartedly agree that one can junk most theories that neither accept nor account for the findings of science. I say most because some may have a blend of good or bad ideas. For the suggestion of a soul though, its more a suggestion that there's something extra-dimensional sitting within us and that - if it weren't there - we'd still likely behave exactly the same.