Making stuff up is not an argument

Against my better judgement I followed a link posted by Unbelievable? on Facebook (and also apparently on Twitter):

Exploring Why Richard Dawkins Is Chickening Out « With All I Am

It's part of the general Christian hay-making over Richard Dawkins' refusal to debate William Lane Craig. I've already stated why I think Dawkins is right not to waste his time so I won't reiterate that here. The purpose of this post is to deal with repeated nonsense of Craig's that some theists think are valid arguments.

Craig claims to have refuted the arguments Dawkins uses in The God Delusion. The first time I saw these refutations I was unimpressed but didn't consider them further. So I'm a little surprised (perhaps I shouldn't be, now that I'm more familiar with Craig's modus operandi) to find them still quoted — as they are in the linked post:

First, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn’t have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn’t be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn’t be able to explain the designer.

Sorry, but if you don't have any kind of explanation for the designer, you can't claim the designer as an explanation for anything else. Craig's example of finding alien artefacts on the far side of the moon would lead us to further investigations. We wouldn't simply stop there and say Aliensdidit. That wouldn't be an explanation, it would be mere speculation.

Secondly, Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the universe, the designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained, so that no explanatory advance is made. This objection raises all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations; for example, how simplicity is to be weighted in comparison with other criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, and so forth. But leave those questions aside. Dawkins’ fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine designer is an entity comparable in complexity to the universe. As an unembodied mind, God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity. Dawkins has evidently confused a mind’s ideas, which may, indeed, be complex, with a mind itself, which is an incredibly simple entity. Therefore, postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent an advance in simplicity, for whatever that is worth.

This is a spectacular failure in argumentation. Craig's description of "an unembodied mind, as a remarkably simple entity" is sheer invention. There's nothing whatever to back up this assertion. "A divine mind is startlingly simple," says Craig. Based on what? He's making this stuff up and pretending it's real. It's not, and it's certainly not a refutation of Dawkins' argument or anyone else's.

Burnee links for Thursday

Thought for the Day comes under new scrutiny
I'm in favour of secular viewpoints being included in Thought for the Day. The excuses given for not allowing this are indefensible. But it's not going to happen — the BBC is wedded to the idea that ethics and morality can only be based on religious principles. It's immovable on this issue, and wrong.

Breaking Out from the Prison of Religion | The Hibernia Times
Paula Kirby explores why Christians appear so unwilling to question their faith.

BCTF > Of science and cellphones
What science is, and why it works.

EARTH Magazine: Creationism creeps into mainstream geology
Reflections on a creationist-led geology field trip.

Faith-based groups are too often just state welfare by another name | John-Paul King | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
John-Paul King seems to be tacitly opening the door to faith-based discrimination in public services. See NaomiBHA in the comments.

this is not the six word novel: weird things customers say in bookshops
Apparently these things (that people say) are all true. Laugh? I nearly opened a bookshop.

Enjoying the cut-and-thrust of online debate

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong blogs, but I've been struck recently by what I consider serious impediments to rational discourse. Unfortunately I can't (or rather won't) link to examples because doing so would entirely defeat the point of this post. What I've seen are discussions carried out in the most acrimonious terms. Ad hominems à gogo is how I would characterize these arguments, and if we're talking about the theist-atheist divide (and in these cases that is what I'm talking about), both sides are guilty.

Personally, when I engage in online debate (in my case this is mostly written debate — in blog-comments or forums) I try to do so in a polite manner. I will occasionally draft a reply of biting invective, but I will delete it or moderate it before posting. I know there are people on both sides who relish the cut-and-thrust of the well-honed verbal barb, but such flourishes are unlikely to sway the opposition. In fact the opposition is hardly ever going to be swayed by even well-judged argumentation — so what's the point? The point is that the opposition is not the only consumer of the exchange. There may be onlookers in the background — lurkers — who could possibly be swayed by a polite but cogent argument.

These lurkers, however, are unlikely to give serious consideration to arguments couched in uncharitable terms. Appropriate gentle mockery is another matter, and implied ridicule can be effective, but insults and name-calling are counter-productive.

So here's my message to those engaging in rambunctious exchanges: have fun, enjoy yourselves — but don't kid yourselves. You're doing this for entertainment, and that's fine, but you're not going to make a difference to anybody else.

Dembski claims to identify design — we're still waiting

Are we on to the big guns yet? Maybe, maybe not. William Dembski's first contribution to his book Evidence for God (co-edited with Michael Licona) is "Intelligent Design — A Brief Introduction". SETI, Mount Rushmore, the bacterial flagellum — all the old favourites are lined up to illustrate the contention that intelligent design "...purports to find patterns in biological systems that signify intelligence. ID therefore directly challenges Darwinism and other materialistic approaches to the origin and evolution of life." (p 104.)

Hang on a minute. Dembski is clearly saying that ID is a challenge to "materialistic approaches". That means he's proposing an immaterial intelligence. He's going beyond what ID proponents normally admit, which is that ID doesn't say anything specific about the designer. ID proponents say that the designer isn't necessarily God — it could be aliens, but presumably these aliens would be material aliens. Dembski is saying, however, that the designer is — or could be — outside the material realm. Therefore, for ID to be science, and for the designer to be at the same time immaterial, science needs to be able to say something about the immaterial realm — such as, that it exists. Science of course says no such thing; speculations about the existence or non-existence of an immaterial realm are beyond its remit.

Dembski's problem is this, which he acknowledges in his third paragraph:

What has kept design outside the scientific mainstream since Darwin proposed his theory of evolution is that it lacked precise methods for distinguishing intelligently caused objects from unintelligently caused ones. For design to be a fruitful scientific concept, scientists need to be sure they can reliably determine whether something is designed. (p 104-5.)

For ID to be scientific, it needs to be able to distinguish actual design from the illusion of design. Dembski claims that this can be done, but examination reveals only buzzwords and vague promises. He's constantly running up blind alleys:

As a theory of biological origins and development, ID's central claim is that only intelligent causes can adequately explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology and that these causes are empirically detectable. To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist well-defined methods that, based on observable features of the world, can reliably distinguish intelligent causes from undirected material causes. (p 105.)

The problem, however, is that these well-defined methods are ... never defined. Dembski repeats that there are methods to detect design, but again and again these methods are revealed to be nothing more than, "If it looks designed, it must have had a designer."

That Dembski includes SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, as an example of design detection, is surprising, because SETI researchers are emphatically not looking for patterns in radio signals from space. What they're looking for is a narrow-band signal — any modulation of a potential carrier wave is expected to have been smeared out with time and distance, so there's likely to be no information present.

Dembski elaborates on his favourite buzz-phrase, specified complexity:

Within the theory of intelligent design, specified complexity is the characteristic trademark or signature of intelligence. It is a reliable empirical marker of intelligence in the same way that fingerprints are a reliable empirical marker of an individual's presence at the scene of a crime. Design theorists contend that undirected material causes, like natural selection acting on random genetic change, cannot generate specified complexity. (p 106.)

Unfortunately he never elaborates on how to identify specified complexity, other than variations of "if it looks designed, then it must have had a designer."

At the top of this post I wondered if we were on to the big guns. Apparently not, for this pea-shooter consistently fails to fire:

ID's chief claim is this: the world contains events, objects, and structures that exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected material causes and can be adequately explained by recourse to intelligent causes. Design theorists claim to demonstrate this rigorously. (p 107.)

That's what they claim, but they don't do it — not rigorously, or at all.

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4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952955

An inference to the only valid admission: "We don't know"

After blogging about 4thought.tv's series last week, "Is it possible to believe in God and Darwin?" and discussing it during the recording of Skepticule Extra 007 yesterday, I checked out Alastair Noble's introduction video again, at the Centre for Intelligent Design's website. The video is embeddable, so I include it below:



Noble is saying much the same as he did in his 4thought.tv contribution, but expanded a little. He appears to be claiming that methodological naturalism is an unwarranted philosophical constraint on the progress of science, and that intelligent design is an inference to the best explanation. But I still don't see how "Someone did this, we don't know who (and even if we think we do know, we're not saying)" is any kind of explanation. If you can't tell how something happened, how is it scientific to conclude that someone must have done it? The correct conclusion is to admit that you don't know how it happened, and then to attempt to find out. If you convince yourself that someone must have done it, where do you go from there?

Why don't anti-evolutionists understand evolution?

I sometimes wonder if certain Christians' objections to "Evilution" would be less if they understood even the basic idea of evolutionary theory. If someone goes to the trouble of producing a YouTube video claiming that evolution is a fairy tale because the theory claims that an animal evolved in a particular way for a particular reason, it's a good idea to know what evolutionary theory actually states.

http://youtu.be/p_Kgv_iJ8hA


In this video much scorn is poured on the reason given for the evolution of the giraffe's long neck. But anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with the process known as "Darwinian evolution by random mutation and natural selection" will be aware that the giraffe's neck did not get longer by stretching. So this video misses its target completely.

The video's producer is in need of some fairly basic education regarding evolutionary theory, and usually there's no shortage of commentary in that vein. But in this case comments are disabled. Why is that, I wonder?

Burnee links for Sunday

How William Lane Craig misleads his followers | The Uncredible Hallq

Craig genuinely is better informed than most apologists. That does set him apart from the pack. He just doesn’t use his knowledge to make his followers better informed. Instead, he uses his knowledge to put out a series of misleading half-truths and unsupported claims, while side-stepping any discussions that he knows would go badly for him.

The more prominent Craig becomes, the more people see through his debating shenanigans.

Follow-up to the above:
Biblical scholars are not a bunch of baffled skeptics (also: Craig lies about Ehrman) | The Uncredible Hallq

Science is my God | Science | The Guardian
Oh look, there's some space on our website. Let's fill it with rubbish.

Science is not my God | Martin Robbins | Science | guardian.co.uk
Not rubbish.


DarkOptics : Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation - Photography By Darren Nisbett
Here's an unusual photography project. See the eerie ghost town of Pripyat in the website gallery, or visit the exhibition itself in Eton in July — it's in a good cause. The infra-red treatment makes everything look as if it's glowing with radiation (which I suppose, technically, it is). I was reminded of Christy Moore's "Farewell to Pripyat" (lyrics by Tim Dennehy) on his album Voyage — also available on iTunes in The Box Set (1964-2004).

Kevin Myers: Myth of Dawkins as an intolerant, atheist crusader is just that -- myth - Kevin Myers, Columnists - Independent.ie
Good article, shame about the pic.

OMG! It's Richard Dawkins - Tom Whipple - The Times - RichardDawkins.net
More from the Dublin convention. I challenge anyone who has met Richard Dawkins, or seen him in person deliver a talk, to substantiate the claim that he is shrill, strident or angry.