stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
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This is pretty good:
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SeverskyJune 4, 2017 at 12:25 pm
Eric Anderson @ 38
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No-one, ever, infers design on the basis of improbability alone. (Yes, I’m sure you can do a Google search and find plenty of people who have failed to properly describe how they draw the inference and whose choice of wording gives the wrong impression.)
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That’s right. No one looking at Stonehenge, for example, would have to sit down and calculate probability or FSCO/I values before thinking it looked like it was designed. In the first instance, we recognize possible design intuitively, based on what we already know.
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It is the materialist who, as Dawkins has attempted to do, has the burden of proof to demonstrate that his claim of illusion is true. That things aren’t really designed, they just appear designed, and that the materialist can point to a naturalistic cause that can act as a designer substitute
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Not quite. It is not the materialist who is claiming that there is evidence of design in nature. It is ID proponents who are pointing to certain biological structures and processes and claiming that, for various reasons, they appear to be designed. The materialist might concede that there is the appearance of design but argue that without stronger evidence for the existence of a designer the appearance of design is just that, appearance and nothing else.
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The materialistic answer — a fully self-serving answer we should note — to this question is, yes, we must scrupulously avoid drawing any inference until, in your words we “exhaust all possible naturalistic explanations”.
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Speaking for myself, you are free to draw all the design inferences you want but that, without stronger evidence for a designer, all you have is conjecture. As a materialist, I freely admit I don’t have anything better to offer as an explanation for origins. We are both in the same boat, in that respect. I don’t have a naturalistic explanation of origins. I just lean towards the view that such an explanation exists based on the success of naturalistic/materialistic explanations in other fields and that I’m not aware of any credible evidence for the existence of a non-human designer capable of creating “life, the Universe and everything”. If you think you can build arguments and find evidence that could change that position then, by all means, have at it.
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The burden of proof is squarely on the materialist who claims this is all an illusion to offer a reasonable alternative. And that burden cannot be met by a handwaving assertion that until all naturalistic explanations — present ones, tentative ones, crazy ones, ones that haven’t even been thought up yet — have been exhausted. Such an approach is not science. It is materialistic philosophy masquerading as science.
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The burden of proof for a claim rests with the claimant. ID proponents are claiming that, not only are there structures in Nature that have the appearance of design, but that that appearance coupled with other arguments from improbability and incredulity provide sufficient support the design inference. The materialist, while conceding the appearance of design, finds the other arguments unpersuasive, that ID proponents have not yet met the burden of proof for such a claim. Without evidence for a credible designer all you are left with is the appearance of design, nothing more.
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Really? I hope you don’t think this is a serious argument against fine tuning. Do you really think the universe should have been set up so that humans should be able to exist in comfort in every part of the universe? What strange set of laws and constants would you propose that would make this possible?
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If the claim is that this entire universe was designed and created by some unimaginably powerful being for the sole purpose of fostering life on this planet in general and humanity in particular then I would say that, taking into account what we know of the cosmos, the claim is absurd on its face. I would argue that, if we assume an intelligence of such power, it should be more than capable of designing a universe that was far more hospitable to terrestrial life if that was its purpose, that the appearance of Earth, in contrast, is more that of a relatively benign nature preserve at best. In my view, if the Universe was designed with a purpose, it was not for us, at least not as we are now. |
| Code Sample | | https://uncommondescent.com/fine-tuning/fine-tuning-and-the-claim-that-unlikely-things-happen-all-the-time/#comment-632995 |
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