So, a few days ago (and what a lively and exciting few days they’ve been), I blogged a piece about atheism, arguing that I think it can, usefully and validly, be labelled as a belief system, or worldview. (I’m not a sufficiently cunning linguist to really differentiate between these two.) The ensuing debate in the comments got really quite intense and involved, which was great, but it didn’t always feel entirely constructive or benevolent, which was less great. I didn’t feel the need to get all moderator-y on anyone’s ass (though I relish the day when I will have to be wrathful and authoritative), but not everyone had quite got the hang of the idea of respecting other people, even if you don’t respect their ideas. I’ll get plenty contemptuous and snarky about things I’m writing about, but in personal interactions, I think it’s worth maintaining at least a pretense of civility, in the face of all but the most hateful views. There was more hostility erupting in that thread than I felt was called for, and although I’m not going to be banning anyone, I can see how that sort of thing might reach the point where it’s just not fun for people to engage any more.
Anyway: I’m going to try and clear up some of the points from that thread which remained unclarified, most of which stemmed from discussion on a couple of recent posts over at Eric’s own blog. Feel free to discuss further below, but let’s all play nicely together.
Eric requested that I…
…explain, atheistically, why our entire sense experience tells us that nature is uniform and why we trust that nature WILL BE uniform in order to use science.
By “nature is uniform”, we’re referring (I believe) to the fact that the fundamental physical laws of the universe apply constantly, are the same in all situations, and will remain the same at all times – or at least, it appears so. The second part of the question, why we trust that nature will continue to be uniform, seems easy to answer – we trust it precisely because it appears to have always been the case. Every observation ever made is consistent with the idea that the gravitational constant has precisely the same value wherever you measure it, and will have the same value again tomorrow. But it is additionally asserted that “no other worldview besides the Christian worldview can account for the uniformity of nature“.
So, I have a few things to say about that.
First of all, atheism doesn’t need to account for something like the uniformity of nature, necessarily. It’s okay for there to be gaps in our knowledge, and open questions not yet fully resolved. Any objection to a godless worldview is an assertion that you can better account for what we observe in the world by assuming the existence of a god, than by any other means. A simplified version of the argument might run, “Nature appears uniform; a worldview without a god cannot explain why this would be the case; therefore it is rational to believe that a god exists”.
But some centuries ago, people were reasoning along the lines of, “Lightning keeps occuring; a worldview without an angry god casting down thunderbolts from Mount Olympus cannot explain why this would be the case; therefore it is rational to believe that Zeus exists”. This may have been the most reasonable way to think, given the information available at the time, but in fact Zeus wasn’t the only thing that could explain the lightning – the universe just had more to it than people were then aware of.
Personally, I don’t accept the premise that the apparent uniformity of nature totally undermines a godless worldview (which, incidentally, isn’t so hopelessly dependent on “randomness” as Eric would suggest, sometimes five times in a paragraph). If you want to posit an underlying hypothesis, then that’s fine, even if that theory involves a god – but there’s going to have to be more to it than simply, “This idea says that God made nature uniform”. The rest’s going to have to stand up to some serious testing of its explanatory and predictive power as well, and if it doesn’t fit the data at least as well as the null hypothesis (no god), then it’s as good as useless.
Someone may at this point take a deist position. There might simply be a fundamental difference of opinion here, at which their judgment is different from mine: “Nope, I think that the existence of the universe and the constancy of the natural laws do imply that there is some sort of divinity out there which at least set things in motion, even if I don’t conclude from this that it’s likely to be any kind of a personal god.” And this is okay, and there’s not much I can do to argue with it. To be honest, I’m only just on my side of the fence on this point myself.
But that’s not as far as some people go. Eric, for example, is espousing the Christian worldview in particular, and God as described in the Bible, as being the only one that can satisfactorily explain things, and this is where all that talk about civility and respect up there could go straight out the window if I’m not careful, because it seems an utterly hopeless argument, biased to the extreme by his own ideology.
Although I can sort of understand the deist position, anything as vague as the uniformity of nature, or the existence of the universe, could only really be said to suggest the existence of some inspecific divine power – if you want to start trying to pin down which, if any, of the popular notions of God to go for, you’d need to get down to finer details. Well, unless you’re this guy. Eric, why is Jesus a more likely bet than Odin?
Wow, so the Norse religion (in which Odin was the father of Thor, which is possibly what you meant) is easily proved to be entirely untenable and inconsistent, and yet nobody noticed that for all the centuries he was worshipped? It’s a shame you weren’t around to point this out to them sooner. Except, as far as I can tell, Odin essentially created the world when he and his brothers killed the frost giant Ymir, and his flesh became the Earth. This was in Ginnungagap, you see, the “vast, primordial void that existed prior to the creation of the manifest universe”.
There’s probably more nuance to the tale than what I’ve gleaned so far from Wikipedia, but it all seems very neatly internally consistent, and rather attractively poetic. Odin doesn’t need to be omnipotent, he just needs to be able to kill a frost giant, and with perhaps a few tweaks it’s entirely plausible that a story which explains such mysteries as “the uniformity of nature” could be put together from Norse mythology.
Yes, this is very, very tenuous. Obviously I don’t believe that this is any more than a story put together by a primitive culture to explain what they experienced as best they could. But compare this with the suggested Bible passages which supposedly make Christianity so much more credible a source:
Colossians 1:16-17: For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Hebrews 1:3: And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
That’s it, apparently. Eric’s whole point is that no other explanation is even asserted, in any other mythology, for such things as the uniformity of nature, but Christianity can completely explain it all, on the basis of these passages. I really can’t get my head around the kind of skewed perspective that makes this look convincing. What differentiates this from any other self-aggrandisement attributed to any other god in any mythology you care to choose? And how liberally do you have to be interpreting these passages to find any mention of uniformity, anywhere? Is the constancy of the laws of thermodynamics really what’s indicated by “in Him all things hold together”? You might as well read it as a reference to the strong nuclear force, and claim that the Bible predicted quantum theory. I’ve read crazier things.
Supposedly it makes all the difference that Allah never claimed to have created the Universe uniformly. Well, try Qur’an 29:61:
And if thou wert to ask them: Who created the heavens and the earth, and constrained the sun and the moon (to their appointed work) ? they would say: Allah.
See? “And constrained the sun and the moon“, clearly referring to setting the laws of motion in play, and the physical underpinnings of the universe that allow all the celestial bodies to maintain the orbits they do. Islam has totally got the uniformity of nature covered.
This is getting far too long, and probably diverged from my intended trajectory, and I want to hurry up and post it and go to bed, and I’ll probably have to come back and clarify some stuff tomorrow before this is any kind of a complete argument. But it’s hard, because we’re at the point where I struggle to even articulate a position beyond “Oh, come on“. It seems utterly asinine. Especially when you factor in all the many, many, many other things that the Christian worldview entirely fails to explain satisfactorily without some major wriggling and twisting about, starting with why the universe seems to be about 13.7 billion years old. But this is just an invitation to get diverted onto a whole other line of questioning about the evidence in favour of various scientific notions that contradict the Bible which, though important, aren’t really directly related to the interesting points of theory that we were discussing before I forgot what we were saying and just rabbited on for nearly two thousand sodding words.
Bleh. I’ll just post this for now and maybe hack it about tomorrow into something more coherent, or at least succinct. But Eric, honestly, I apprecate your willingness to debate seriously and openly, and your general restraint from becoming abusive or unpleasant, and some of the stuff you’ve encouraged me to think about regarding my own position… but man, you are so way off on this one. And I haven’t even got started on this strange theme of atheists “stealing” Christian ideas, as if things like “purpose” and “hope” and “free will” and “uniformity of nature” are concepts patented by Jesus, never heard of before the Old Testament, and which are entirely alien to any culture not closely familiar with the Bible (palpably untrue even looking only at the present day).
Sleep now. Make sense later.
“By “nature is uniform”, we’re referring (I believe) to the fact that the fundamental physical laws of the universe apply constantly, are the same in all situations, and will remain the same at all times – or at least, it appears so.”
You got it!
“The second part of the question, why we trust that nature will continue to be uniform, seems easy to answer – we trust it precisely because it appears to have always been the case.”
Actually Cubik, that’s not an answer. You are begging the question. When I ask, “What explains the uniformity of nature?” and you say “Well the fact that nature appears to be uniform explains the uniformity of nature” just leads me to ask the question again. You are basically saying, “It is because it is”. So you haven’t explained or answered anything.
How do you KNOW that G will be constant in the future? Do you have knowledge of the future? No, you trust that it is so, you BELIEVE that G will be constant forever. I’m not saying that belief is bad, I’m saying that to not have a REASON for that belief is to be irrational. The Christian has a reason for that belief, the atheist does not.
“First of all, atheism doesn’t need to account for something like the uniformity of nature, necessarily. It’s okay for there to be gaps in our knowledge, and open questions not yet fully resolved.”
I’m not asking for anyone to have perfect knowledge of any given phenomena. Are you saying that it is ok to not have a reason for something that you believe (nature is uniform and will be so in the future)?
” “A simplified version of the argument might run, “Nature appears uniform; a worldview without a god cannot explain why this would be the case; therefore it is rational to believe that a god exists”.”
That’s accurate.
” “But some centuries ago, people were reasoning along the lines of, “Lightning keeps occuring; a worldview without an angry god casting down thunderbolts from Mount Olympus cannot explain why this would be the case; therefore it is rational to believe that Zeus exists”. This may have been the most reasonable way to think, given the information available at the time, but in fact Zeus wasn’t the only thing that could explain the lightning – the universe just had more to it than people were then aware of.”
There are some huge problems with your out of hand dismissil of the transcendental argument using this Zeus example.
1. It is a strawman of epic proportions. You are equating my uniformity of nature question (a fundamental property of existence) to a question about an empirically verifiable phenomena. You are comparing a metaphysical question to an empirical question. It’s a non-sequitor, it does not follow.
2. AT BEST, this is a “naturalism-of-the-gaps” argument. You are basically saying, “Well, we may not have the naturalistic means of explaining the uniformity of nature YET, but someday we will”. You have faith that naturalism can explain the uniformity of nature without a reason for this belief.
In short Cubik, you have not even provided an argument in refutation of the transcendental argument for God’s existence. You created a non-sequitor strawman and answered it with a “naturalism-of-the-gaps” argument.
“Personally, I don’t accept the premise that the apparent uniformity of nature totally undermines a godless worldview. . .”
Obviously, since you are an atheist, however you have not provided a reason for this belief.
“The rest’s going to have to stand up to some serious testing of its explanatory and predictive power as well, and if it doesn’t fit the data at least as well as the null hypothesis (no god), then it’s as good as useless.”
I’m not sure if I understand this statement. Are you saying that a belief in a law-like God doesn’t allow us to expect a law-like universe?
“Someone may at this point take a deist position . . . And this is okay, and there’s not much I can do to argue with it. To be honest, I’m only just on my side of the fence on this point myself.”
I’m taking this as you waving a white flag. It seems that you have just admitted that, in the face of the transcendental argument, you can’t refute that their might be some diety out there. However, you just PREFER to believe that there isn’t. Do you consider this rational?
“Wow, so the Norse religion (in which Odin was the father of Thor, which is possibly what you meant) is easily proved to be entirely untenable and inconsistent, and yet nobody noticed that for all the centuries he was worshipped?”
So, you’re saying that those Norse individuals were all attempting to rationally think through why nature appeared to be uniform and found that Odin was still able to explain it? Wait, that’s not possible because, they didn’t have science!!! They had no idea that empiricism was a viable way to see the world. Because THAT was my point; that, this side of the Scientific Revolution, all those gods go out the window who are not able to explain the uniformity of nature.
The flesh of a frost giant would lead the Norse to a desire to discover “how” the Earth works? Nope, it didn’t so they didn’t. Only a belief in a law-like, rational God led the likes of Descartes, Newton, Bacon, Galileo, Copernicus (all theologians by the way) to desire to discover how the world works, believing a priori that it was uniform based solely on that belief of a law-like God.
“That’s it, apparently. Eric’s whole point is that no other explanation is even asserted, in any other mythology, for such things as the uniformity of nature, but Christianity can completely explain it all, on the basis of these passages.”
Exactly. Incredulity doesn’t make the passages less true or valid for this discussion.
“What differentiates this from any other self-aggrandisement attributed to any other god in any mythology you care to choose?”
Your admittance that God DOES explain the uniformity of nature and your apparent inability to explain it any other way. That, and the fact that NO OTHER religion or mythology makes these assertions, nor claims to have a God that has the power to create the world how He sees fit. Before I tackle your Islam point…
“And how liberally do you have to be interpreting these passages to find any mention of uniformity, anywhere? Is the constancy of the laws of thermodynamics really what’s indicated by “in Him all things hold together”?”
So because the passage does say the word “uniformity” you are throwing them out? God created the universe and “saw that it was good” and “in Him ALL things hold together” and since nature APPEARS to be uniform…apparently He created it uniform and maintains it as such.
“See? “And constrained the sun and the moon“, clearly referring to setting the laws of motion in play, and the physical underpinnings of the universe that allow all the celestial bodies to maintain the orbits they do. Islam has totally got the uniformity of nature covered.”
1. Now YOU’RE reading into the passage. This passage specifically says “the sun and the moon” while the Bible says “ALL”. That’s the difference.
2. But that’s fine, lets say that I grant you that this passage is Allah accounting for uniformity. Where do you think Muhammad got his idea of Allah? As I mentioned in my post, by the time the Qur’an was written, Christianity had been established for about 700 years and had been official state religion of the world power, Rome, for about 350 years. AND any Muslim will tell you that the God of the Bible and Allah are the same being. SO, based on the fact Allah can also account for the uniformity of nature, if you want to subscribe to a book of war (the Qur’an) that demands all infidels be killed, then be my guest.
Sorry it’s been a while in coming – but this is still pretty interesting, and there is some stuff that, on a re-read, I’ve really not explained well.
“Actually Cubik, that’s not an answer…”
I think I might just be answering a different question to what I thought you were asking. We tend to work under the assumption that nature can be trusted to continue in its uniformity, because it’s given us a pretty continuous appearance of uniformity so far. If it ever started behaving genuinely randomly and unpredictably, then science would be in trouble, as predictive power is a crucial part of any scientific study. But that’s not been a problem yet, and extrapolating the idea that the physical laws in the future will continue to behave much as they have in the past has done us well enough so far, and we wouldn’t really have been able to make a start on any scientific experiments without it.
As for why nature should be this way, that seems to be an open question. It’s not something yet fully explained in any scientific model of reality. The simple inductive method (things behave this way up to a certain observable limit; therefore they are likely to continue to do so beyond that limit) is not entirely satisfactory, and I don’t think there’s really anything in a godless, scientific worldview which can explain why stability is more likely than random change.
It’s a working hypothesis, and it does seem to be working for us, in that we do seem to be increasing our understanding the more we investigate. It’s a hypothesis we have to be willing to reconsider and adapt if it doesn’t hold up, so if we want to be rational we should be tentative about granting it a favour like “belief”. This isn’t a fatal weakness until something with better predictive and explanatory power is suggested, and I don’t believe that any Christian worldview fits that description.
“There are some huge problems…”
1. Still not seeing the straw. A strawn man argument would involve describing your position inaccurately, attributing a set of beliefs to you which you do not actually hold, and arguing against those instead of against what you’re really saying. It has nothing to do with what I may or may not be equating.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the form of the argument again, in both cases (uniformity of the nature, and lightning in the sky) there were observed facts which wanted explaining, and the information available at the time was asserted to lead to the conclusion, “Only such-and-such a worldview can adequately explain this set of observed phenomena”. Before, it was lightning, or the Sun moving across the sky, or the regular flooding of the Nile. Now it’s the value of the gravitational constant, among others. What’s so different that makes the reasoning sound in this case, where it wasn’t before? Is there some other reason why there’s really, really definitely not some other explanation this time?
2. It’s not so much that someday we will understand the naturalistic means, but that there may exist naturalistic means. Unless the logic is sufficiently different from all those times before that have ended in “therefore, God”, it’s still just an argument fron ignorance. I try not to have faith that naturalism necessarily will explain everything in nature – that wouldn’t be rational – but I think it’s possible enough that we don’t need to assume there must be a God to sort it all out.
“I’m not sure if I understand this statement…”
Yeah, that’s because it wasn’t written very well. The point I was trying to make is that there’s a lot more to the Christian worldview than simply a handy explanation for the uniformity of nature. Even if you count that one thing as a significant point in its favour, it would still have to explain a whole number of other things about the observable world, which I don’t believe it can do as well as a godless worldview can. (The problem of evil is just the start, but that’s a whole other conversation. Quite a lot of other conversations, actually. Not bad or unimportant ones, just different from the one we’re trying to make work now.) And, indeed, there are others you’ve already brought up which you would say also seem to require the Christian worldview for a satisfactory explanation, such as morality and free will. Again, there are reasons I’m not convinced by any of these, and there’s plenty of opportunity for digression here too, but all I was getting at originally was that, even if the Christian worldview does explain this aspect of nature, this is still far from conclusive, as there’s still a lot more about the world to consider.
“I’m taking this as you waving a white flag…”
What I wasn’t trying to say here is that I have no reason for opining the way I do on this matter except my own personal preference. What I meant was that, although I believe that my position is well-supported, this may be one of those points where genuine differences of opinion come out, on which two people might never be reconciled, even in possession of all the same facts and faculties.
I was at work not long ago and got involved in a discussion with a born-again Christian colleague. She thought evolution was a ridiculous idea, and I tried talking to her about this a bit (though I’m not that well suited to spontaneous debate, as anyone familiar with my usual outgoing and lively [/sarcasm] personality can attest). Although we were coming from completely different starting points, it was actually several minutes before we found anything we truly disagreed on. When she described a few things that sounded ridiculous to her, they were ridiculous, and they also had nothing to do with evolution. It took some digging to find any actual disagreement, which is what I find interesting about discussions like these.
I’m not trying to derail things again; but when somebody says that, because the universe even exists, there must (or is likely to) be a supernatural deity to explain it all, I think we’re talking about the exact same thing and may have all the same facts, but are arriving at diverse conclusions. Once you’ve got down to that basic layer, I’m not sure there’s really anywhere left for the discussion to go. But in this case, it seems we’ve got plenty more ground to turn over before that stage.
“Incredulity doesn’t make the passages less true or valid for this discussion.”
True, but I still found it worth expressing.
“Your admittance that God DOES explain the uniformity of nature…”
Only in the sense that saying “The Christian God created nature to be uniform” is an answer to that one question. But if all you have is the empty assertion that that’s what he says he did, then what good is that? Why is that any better than believing Allah created nature to be uniform, but he just didn’t feel the need to spell it out for us in perfectly obvious terms? Your god apparently doesn’t need to use perfectly obvious terms, or the word ‘uniform’, either. You said later…
“…since nature APPEARS to be uniform…apparently He created it uniform and maintains it as such.”
So, it looks like now you’re admitting that it’s not even asserted that your god created nature to be uniform – only that he created the universe (not even close to being a unique claim) and because it appears uniform, “apparently” he must have done it that way. This can applied equally well to any creation story you care to name.
Anyway, why does it make all the difference that there happens to be an “assertion” on this subject in the Bible, which you claim doesn’t exist in any other religion? I could create a religion tomorrow which asserted anything I like about how my god created the universe. It could be more specific, and use the word “uniform” in describing the universe, and precisely describe and explain many other things that we see in nature, claiming that my god did things that way. It could be less ambiguous about how to treat people, far less confusing generally, and I could make sure there were hardly any places where it failed to jive with science (something not remotely true of Christianity).
I’m pretty sure I could come up with as many assertions to explain as many aspects of reality as you like. Certainly better than the Bible can do. Why wouldn’t this be just as good? Okay, I’d have admitted that I’ve done it deliberately to make a point, and I wouldn’t have millennia-old texts to lend their authority, but those are different arguments – I’d have a book with some assertions about stuff which “explained” things just as well as your idea. But neither of these would actually resolve the question. In my case, even if I was granted that my text explains the uniformity of nature by saying “Bob created the universe, and made the laws of nature uniform”, I’d have to also explain why this divine revelation was supposedly revealed to an atheist trying to make a point on the internet, and I wouldn’t have much to say to that. In your case, we’re back to all the other aspects of reality that fail to fit with the world as described by the Bible.
(Yes, my hypothetical deity is called Bob. It’s a fine name for a respectable supernatural being.)
“1. Now YOU’RE reading into the passage…”
Yes, yes I am. This is my point, it’s virtually impossible to read anything without reading into it, especially with a text that uses particularly poetic and evocative language. From the Qur’an passage I quoted, we see that Allah created “created the heavens and the earth”; it’s clear from the next line (or so it could be argued) that the phrase “the sun and the moon” is used to continue describing creation as a whole, but in slightly more colourful prose. Obviously it’s not just the sun and the moon that are so constrained. I don’t see that this is stretching interpretation any more than reading an assertion of uniformity in “in Him all things hold together”.
“Where do you think Muhammad got his idea of Allah?…”
…”if you want to subscribe to a book of war (the Qur’an) that demands all infidels be killed, then be my guest.”
This whole paragraph is an entirely divergent argument. First of all, you criticise the originality of Islam. Fair enough, but a lot of concepts attributed to Jesus are also seen previously in other sources.
And your closing line implies that I should be deciding which religion is most likely to be true, based on my own moral judgment of the laws laid down therein. This is far from being terrible advice, but… have you read your Good Book lately?
Deuteronomy 13:6-10
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
Classy.
Cubik
“Which sounds unusual, coming from someone who – unless my Christian theology is severely out of wack – believes that the universe was created solely in order for us to live in it. That would seem to set our position pretty high.”
I meant our position in the comparison to the Creator, not the other beings/objects in the universe. He chose to create us so we are at His whim. Good thing the Christian God is benevolent and rational.
“If a being who is all-powerful, who knows what’s going on down here, and who loves us unconditionally, has created the world and all the rules by which it runs, and created us and put us here, then yes, he has a responsibility to us, he owes it to us not to neglect us and allow needless suffering.”
Now you’re getting into muddy waters. Who are you to decide what “suffering” is? And why is suffering bad? What if a certain amount of suffering leads to a greater good? You are assuming that suffering is pointless, how could you know this? Here’s the main thing about that statement however: You can’t have your free will and an end to suffering too. Let me explain; if you want God to rid the world of suffering, he’d have to change us into moral zombies that only do what is good and right without any choice of our own.
“We’re human beings, you don’t get to walk all over us just because you’re bigger and more powerful. We deserve better. Has Spiderman taught you nothing about what traditionally comes with great power?”
And God has given us better. God is Holy and Just. He can’t change that about Himself so He has no choice but demand it of us as well, if we’re going to dwell with Him that is. So instead of going “oh well, humanity will never live up to my standard (the Ten Commandments)”, He provided us with a payment for our violation of his Just and Holy Law, His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus died so that we may be eternally dwelling with God in a perfect place. That sounds a bit better than your temporal, fleeting desire to end suffering on this Earth.
Ok now on to your response in the discussion portion:
“As for why nature should be this way, that seems to be an open question. It’s not something yet fully explained in any scientific model of reality.”
Right, because science requires the assumption and any testing done to answer the “why” question would just beg the question.
“The simple inductive method (things behave this way up to a certain observable limit; therefore they are likely to continue to do so beyond that limit) is not entirely satisfactory, and I don’t think there’s really anything in a godless, scientific worldview which can explain why stability is more likely than random change.”
EXACTLY. If we were to follow the a godless worldview as closely as possible, we’d have no reason to expect nature to be uniform. And THAT’S the point. Think about this for a second, no really, think about what I’m about to say, it’s alittle heady and out there but I suspect you like that sort of thing. So think about it, here it goes: Where did we get the idea of an orderly universe? No really, where? If the universe came about by pure chance, and we no reason to think it continues to be any different, and our brains are governed (or not) by the same randomness, where did we even get the idea? Was it just a fancy of our collective imagination that led the great thinkers to explore the idea? The fact that we are able to assume uniformity, and that assumptions makes SENSE to us, is evidence for God.
Along the same lines, and completing the thought . . . It’s not just that a godless universe “could be” random, is that it would HAVE TO be. And it’s not that a godless universe “could” some how turn out orderly with universal, absolute laws (you know, the universe we are living in now) it’s that that would be IMPOSSIBLE as random does not become order all by itself. So, the atheist, in order to expect an orderly universe must literally STEAL the Christian idea of an orderly universe, because an orderly universe is contrary to a godless one. And the fact that we HAVE an orderly universe is evidence for God.
“This isn’t a fatal weakness until something with better predictive and explanatory power is suggested, and I don’t believe that any Christian worldview fits that description.”
Admitting that you don’t have an explanation but rejecting the explanation because you don’t like it isn’t a rational decision, it’s an emotional one.
1. “Before, it was lightning, or the Sun moving across the sky, or the regular flooding of the Nile. Now it’s the value of the gravitational constant, among others.”
That’s the strawman. The Gravitational constant, big G, is observable. The uniformity of nature is not, it’s a metaphysical question. You are attributing to me a God-of-the-gaps type argument towards an empirically verifiable phenomena. The uniformity of nature is not empirically verifiable.
2. “Unless the logic is sufficiently different from all those times before that have ended in “therefore, God”, it’s still just an argument fron ignorance. I try not to have faith that naturalism necessarily will explain everything in nature – that wouldn’t be rational – but I think it’s possible enough that we don’t need to assume there must be a God to sort it all out.”
As I thought we already agreed, a purely naturalistic, godless universe CAN’T have an explanation for uniformity because it wouldn’t make any sense for chance to form order all on it’s own. But I guess this sticking point. If you’re willing to have faith in “well someday we COULD have the answer” while presently rejecting God who DOES have the answer and wants to reveal Himself to you, if you’re ok with this faith, then there is nothing I can do to stop you.
“even if the Christian worldview does explain this aspect of nature, this is still far from conclusive, as there’s still a lot more about the world to consider.”
And if you’re willing to concede this point in Christianity’s favor, we can move on to any other the others.
“Only in the sense that saying “The Christian God created nature to be uniform” is an answer to that one question. But if all you have is the empty assertion that that’s what he says he did, then what good is that?”
Actually, it’s that without an orderly, rational, omnipotent God, uniformity WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE. And yet here we are, in an orderly, uniform universe. You are having faith in an possible, someday future explanation that, by definition of the words “chance” and “order” couldn’t possibly explain uniformity.
“So, it looks like now you’re admitting that it’s not even asserted that your god created nature to be uniform – only that he created the universe (not even close to being a unique claim) and because it appears uniform, “apparently” he must have done it that way.”
Yea, bad choice of words. What I meant by that is we have God specifically saying that “He saw that it was good” and “In Him all things hold together” and since we live in an apparently uniform universe (uniformity is still an assumption so I can’t say “definetly”) then those passages explain uniformity. What else could “good” mean besides “it works”?
“I could create a religion tomorrow which asserted anything I like about how my god created the universe.”
But see now we’re getting into the veracity of Scripture which is an entirely different topic. The Christian God’s sole ability to explain uniformity, and it being impossible any other way, does warrant a conversation about Scripture so I’d love to tackle it with you.
Yea, your links show that you have been fed alot of crap from internet sites about what the Bible says, that should be remedied at some point.
“Yes, yes I am. This is my point, it’s virtually impossible to read anything without reading into it, especially with a text that uses particularly poetic and evocative language.”
Yea, we could read anything into anything that we like. However, that doesn’t mean you’d be right. The correct way to read the Bible is to attempt to discern what the authors meant to say.
“This whole paragraph is an entirely divergent argument. First of all, you criticise the originality of Islam. Fair enough, but a lot of concepts attributed to Jesus are also seen previously in other sources.”
The idea of a Messiah is an exteremely old Judaic idea, other religions picking up on this is not a surprise and not a knock on Christianity.
“And your closing line implies that I should be deciding which religion is most likely to be true, based on my own moral judgment of the laws laid down therein.”
No, that’s not what I think at all and I apologize if it seems I implied that because I strongly disagree with that statement. However, a good beginning point is to examine the actions of the founder of the religion, and that’s what I did, VERY briefly, with Islam.
The Deuteronomy passage: See, now we’re going to get into what is “right” and “wrong” and how you personally decide and where your morals originate. This is definetly a conversation worth having and we can switch at any time.