Non-question from Lukas:
This is not a question but a Christmas wish. I wish you all on this site Ask the Atheist all the people who wrote here if it are believers or atheists a great Christmas Holidays and a Happy New Year 2014. I also want to wish this to all providers of the site Ask the Atheist and thanks for all the answers and keep up the great work.
Cheers,
Lukas.
Answer by SmartLX:
Right back atcha Lukas. Merry Christmas. Rather than losing out to “Happy Holidays”, may the word “Christmas” continue to settle into the secular English lexicon until its religious meaning is all but forgotten, as it is with the days of the week. Happy New Year too.
Author: SmartLX
A Little More Than Kin, And Less Than “Kind”
Question from Anisa:
Is there any observable evidence of Darwinian evolution where there is a CHANGE OF KIND? By ‘KIND’, I mean from monkey to human etc. Not adaptation. CHANGE OF KIND.
Answer by SmartLX:
“Kind” in this context is used only by creationists as a pseudo-scientific term adapted from its use in the Book of Genesis, and a very inconsistently defined term at that. It has no place in actual biology, and nor does the Hebrew version “baramin”.
Regardless, there is plentiful evidence of the common descent of all living things, which means that no matter how you group them as separate “kinds” they are all descended from the same organisms, and their “kind” is irrelevant. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list here, ranging from geographical to genetic to morphological evidence, so I won’t cover it all redundantly.
You did ask the right question; “kind” seldom groups animals below the level of genus (except in the case of humans which are separated even from other apes in the genus Homo), so changes of that magnitude take far too long to be observed in a lifetime or even over all of recorded history. It is the evidence that is observed, not the full-scale phenomenon itself. That said, there have been many instances of observed speciation, where one species becomes two. You would dismiss such events as “adaptation”, as for instance a mouse becomes another kind of mouse, but there is no observed barrier to this process repeating and accumulating changes over sufficient time until the differences between relatives are greater than any “kind” could encompass. That a “kind” is a self-contained and somehow limited family is nothing more than an ill-informed assertion.
Deism by way of Michio Kaku
Question from “Alex the Deist”:
This last month, there has been some news about the existence of God proved by Michio Kaku, who asserts that the universe is perfectly ordered, “it could have been chaotic”, but it is not. He says that with this we could understand the mind of God. The ultimate argument for design.
Now, I know that Kaku is agnostic or pantheistic like Einstein, and that this is poetry, but nonetheless, it has theological implications. The first is that this would practically rule out the existence of personal gods, but this I think, makes deism stronger than atheism.
Consider the following case:
The universe is ordered / design.
The universe is ordered / blind chance.
We should expect that if there is a design behind the universe, this would be ordered. But we could not expect the same of blind chance. So, order gives a higher plausibility to design than to chance.
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On the other hand for example, Dennett says that we as rational beings find useful to think of things as involving a purpose, this makes easier to understand natural phenomena. Which is true, I accept that. But I think, that if we accept that; we should accept it is possible that a mind responsible for the universe exists, and that our understanding expresses cognition about it.
If we accept that this order is objective and not an invention of our minds (as I think every rational person would accept) we should be able to tell that such order expresses also some kind of objective rationality, that it is true that: we as rational beings can comprehend such order because/and it expresses rationality.
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This two things being said, I think deism has an extremely greater plausibility than atheism. How do you respond to this from an atheistic frame?
Answer by SmartLX:
It’s not really news that the universe appears to be entirely ordered in some sense. The laws of physics and the fundamental constants have so far seemed universal and unchanging, with nothing behaving contrary to them. It can be said, and I agree that no one would seriously argue, that there is at least some order in the universe, which leads into the rest of your argument. Thing is, people have been arguing that the existence of order demonstrates design and therefore a god for centuries, so it hasn’t been the most successful of arguments and Kaku is unlikely to change that.
You avoid affirming the consequent (a common fallacy) by restricting yourself to a probabilistic claim that design is more likely than chance, but nevertheless there is no way to establish the absolute or relative probability of either your hypothesis or the opposite. Minds are constantly observed to create local order, yes, but so are chance and undirected determinism. Rocks are worn smooth, sunflowers and pineapples follow Fibonacci patterns, a roughly shaken container will sort its contents according to size and density. A mind is not automatically more likely to have created universal order just because the majority of order we notice is the product of minds.
With the two sides now on murky but level ground, a major difference between your hypothesis and non-deistic alternatives is that you are required to posit the prior (or timeless) existence of another extremely ordered entity for which there is no available, substantial evidence, whereas natural explanations leave open the nature of the progenitor, if any. I wouldn’t dispute that a creator god is possible as we have no means to rule it out (an agnostic atheist leaves room for any possibility), but that’s as far as it’ll go. It’s perilous to argue that one possible explanation is more likely or “stronger” because of what we “should expect” when it comes to the whole universe, because our intuition is woefully inadequate for this purpose.
The World of Leftover Energy
Question from Andrew:
Why do atheists like Stenger say that the universe can be eternal, when this does not hold?
Stenger argues that the universe can be eternal, non-created, extrapolating the law of conservation of energy-mass before the planck time, he says that because we do not see a violation to this law, the universe can perfectly be eternal.
But this is a fallacy as William Lane Craig exposed once. If the energy were eternal there would be no useful energy right now, it would have become useless, complete entropy an infinite time ago, and because we do not see this, the only conclusion is that the universe and the energy began a finite time ago. Where we Christians think, the best explanation is the creation by God.
Answer by SmartLX:
Even according to you, Stenger only said the universe can be eternal, not that it definitely is. If it isn’t, then God is only one possibility among who knows how many: spontaneous emergence (more on that in a sec), a previous universe, a deistic rather than theistic (let alone Christian) god and so on.
Anyway, there are at least three straightforward ways in which there can still be useful energy now after an eternity of existence. There might be others, but even one possible way is enough to keep someone like Craig from ruling out the possibility entirely.
1. There is infinite or potentially infinite energy as well as infinite time.
Our universe as we see it has existed for a finite amount of time since the Big Bang with a certain amount of matter and energy, but what if that only contained one portion of the available material of an endless universe or multiverse? Or can matter emerge regularly and spontaneously from the quantum foam as much as it likes, as long as the same amount of antimatter accompanies it and the total amount of “positive” energy stays constant? As Lawrence Krauss says, something can come from nothing if “nothing” is unstable.
2. The energy is periodically reclaimed.
Entropy doesn’t destroy energy (hence Stenger’s point), it only ends up radiating it towards the edges of the universe where it’s no use to anyone. If Big Bangs are regular rather than one-off occurrences, then there’s a long-standing hypothesis that the universe is first drawn together in a Big Crunch. The new singularity contains not only all the matter and energy of the crushed universe, but all the space as well. Whatever was lost to entropy is dragged back to a mathematical point, just like at the point of our own Big Bang, and the cycle can begin again.
3. The amount of available energy decreases exponentially.
The less energy there is, the slower it dissipates, the way a gush becomes a trickle when you tip out a bucket of water. Say that every billion years, the amount of available energy decreases by half. If so then a billion years ago there was twice as much, and two billion years from now there’ll be a quarter as much, but there will never, ever be none. It will approach zero (or, importantly, a non-zero constant) asymptotically, which is to say it will get closer and closer without ever reaching it. Perhaps the amount of energy we’re used to seeing in the world is practically nothing compared to the intense heat, light and motion that was everywhere in times gone by, with the universe in a state of near-saturation (perhaps asymptotically again). Without past reference points from before the Big Bang, which are probably impossible to attain, you can’t make a judgement that there can’t be this much energy now.
One final point: be very careful about expressions like “the best explanation” when discussing cosmology. If quantum mechanics have taught us anything, it’s that reality can be counter-intuitive, and the truth might well strike one as ridiculous. If there’s evidence for a claim then it’s a supportable claim, but if all it does is sound right then it’s worthless.
Eternal Imperative Redux
Question from Rick:
In previous discussions it appears that we have come to rational conclusions:
– Two positions of understanding exist: everything came from absolute nothingness or there is an “eternal imperative”. Most “thinking” people know that an “eternal imperative” is most logical.
– Science, thanks to people like Lawrence Krauss are close to proving that nothing within the Physical Universe was responsible for “everything”
– In conclusion: it appears that the most logical position is that there is in fact an eternal imperative and that eternal imperative is responsible for the existence of the Physical Universe.
In light of the above considerations SmartLX rightly states that the fact of an eternal imperative does not prove the persistence of an eternal imperative. This fact does shift the discussion from “is there a god” to “who is/was God”? It also shifts SmartLX’s position from atheism to deism.
Adam admittedly is going to believe what Adam believes regardless of Science or Philosophical discussions.
Rohit is still committed to Science (because it is simpler) and he believes Science will discover how everything came from absolute nothingness.
Erick just doesn’t know!
So SmartLX, why don’t you create a site “Ask the Deist”, so our conversation can continue?
Answer by SmartLX:
Oh dear, where to begin.
The Eternal Imperative, the hypothetical thing which had existed forever and was responsible for everything else, either did or didn’t exist. In its place could have been not just “nothing within the Physical Universe” but actually nothing at all, according to Krauss, so it’s futile to try to bend his work towards supporting the idea of a god. Another alternative we didn’t discuss was an infinite number of finite “imperatives”, for example an endless series of lone universes. Until the relative mechanics and more importantly probabilities of the three (and any other) options can be calculated, it’s not logical to assume that any one of them is factual. Nor is it wise to go with the option that superficially makes the most sense to us personally, because if quantum mechanics teaches us anything it’s that reality can be counter-intuitive.
Yes, if there was an Eternal Imperative that doesn’t mean it’s still there. But if there isn’t one now, it doesn’t mean there ever was one, only that there’s a potential excuse for lack of evidence for one. If despite what I’ve just said everyone asserts an Eternal Imperative (and not just the party who really wants there to be one) then the discussion becomes about what the Eternal Imperative is. It only becomes about who/what God is if you totally conflate a creator God with the Eternal Imperative, and you haven’t even begun to argue that it’s God – besides pointing out similar qualities in two hypothetical objects, which is at best circumstantial and at worst a blazing logical fallacy. Did you really think you’d be able to slip the existence of a god into an argument with atheists as a starting premise and go unchallenged?
Even capitalising the name “Eternal Imperative” is a subtle implication that it’s a title for a person, not a thing. It’s why Prime Mover and Uncaused Cause are written that way. Mind you, after a quick look around it seems like it’s only you using it to mean what you think it means, here and in the other forums where you appear to be either calling in reinforcements or trumpeting your imminent victory. Among evangelicals and Baptists an eternal imperative usually means an eternal command, for instance to worship or to proselytise. So points for two words’ worth of originality, I suppose.
René, Alvin and EAAN
Question from Josh:
How can atheists be sure of the reliance of their cognitive faculties?
As Descartes and Plantinga proved, if naturalism is true, there cannot be reliance on our cognitive faculties. Only if our senses and brain were designed with the PURPOSE of revealing us the world, we can have such reliance upon truth values.
So, how can an atheist be sure of what her senses tell, if they were produced by blind evolution?
Can naturalists, evolutionists and atheists alike, respond properly to Plantinga’s EAAN [Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism]?
Answer by SmartLX:
They can indeed respond, and they frequently have. The reference section of the Wikipedia page on EAAN (for ease of reading, imagine I’m pronouncing it like the first name Ian) contains links to no less than a dozen academic responses, many of which are summarised in the article. Just Google “EAAN response” and you’ll be up to your neck in atheists. I’ll now contribute my response to your own expression of the argument.
Not only can we not be sure of what our senses tell us, we can be pretty sure that our senses are lying to us, and often. We all have literal blind spots, which we can demonstrate to ourselves by making small marks on paper disappear while moving our eyes. Our mental faculties are just as dodgy; we forget, we hallucinate, we jump to conclusions. That what we perceive is nowhere near reliable isn’t news to anyone, so deliberate design isn’t needed to explain any kind of incredible accuracy because it’s just not there.
EAAN makes a bolder claim: that without a system deliberately designed to perceive the world, we cannot know whether anything is true outside of our own existence. As bold as this sounds, it’s easily outdone by the idea of “hard solipsism”: that there is no sure way to know whether anything we perceive is real, regardless of the origin of our senses. Even if God made us, perhaps He made us as brains in jars having dreams of each other. So even claiming that our senses perceive some of reality because they were designed falls at the first hurdle, because maybe we don’t perceive ANY of reality. With this uncertainty, arguing that our senses are designed to be accurate because that means we’re happily living in the real world is an appeal to consequences, a common logical fallacy.
With that avenue explored, let’s assume for a while that we do perceive some real things which help us to live our lives together in a real world with real consequences. Why would this automatically mean that our senses were designed to work? Is it entirely impossible that they simply developed, by natural selection for example, precisely because accuracy confers practical benefits which translate into survival advantages? Quite the contrary, it’s impossible to rule out even if you think it’s unlikely.
EAAN takes this into account though, and makes the point that without assuming deliberate design we can never be sure that our senses are at all reliable. Well, hard cheese. We’ve known that ever since the claim of solipsism, because we haven’t been able to effectively refute that either. That our senses are reliable has always been an assertion. This assertion is constantly backed up by sensory evidence, such as feeling that an object is there when we reach out to grab it, but since the same senses are picking up this evidence it only supports the idea that the world we perceive is consistent, whether or not it’s real. However, this is enough for most of us to confidently live our lives AS IF we’re in a real world, and control our destinies within that world as best we can. Whatever our true circumstances are, it’s easy enough to imagine that our senses could naturally develop at least this consistency. If instead you believe in design, you dismiss all of the little uncertainties in favour of one big uncertainty, and good luck to you.
Josh, this response is not worded in the same formal terms as the actual argument, and there’ll be a great deal about the complete form that I haven’t addressed, but as I said I’m addressing your specific expression of it. As shown, there are plenty of other responses which do the terminology, the probability expressions, the whole enchilada. If there’s an unexplored aspect of the argument you think strengthens it, then I’ll wonder why you didn’t include it in the first place but go ahead and add it in a comment (in your own words, so I at least know you understand it yourself).
Memories: Brain vs Soul
Question from Marie-Denise:
If memories and thoughts completely come from one’s brain and not from a person’s soul, then why do we keep our memories even though we know every cell in one’s brain is regenerated every few years? Thanks.
Answer by SmartLX:
Quite simply, they’re passed on.
Memories are stored in the brain as electrical patterns, which don’t reside in individual cells but travel around certain areas of the brain as needed, for instance when you’re figuring out where you left your keys. If a brain cell dies while hosting part of a memory, that part can often be recreated by the rest of the brain, or else there’s another copy in there somewhere, so the impact on your overall memory is minimal. (Daniel Dennett is fond of saying, “Every time you read it or say it, you make another copy in your brain.” He then repeats this twice.)
Actually, brain cells aren’t replaced like the other cells in the body. Glial cells are, but the all-important neurons hardly regenerate at all. Therefore maintenance of memory is not really a matter of tagteaming from old cells to new cells, but rather a process of shuffling between existing cells. The brain is only too happy to do this, because it’s by transferring memories and other thoughts from cell to cell that we “think” about them.
The idea that the soul is the source of certain thoughts carries its own conundrums, chiefly the fact that every known mental process can be permanently impaired or completely disabled by sufficient brain damage. If an ethereal soul is solely responsible for any observable function, that function should be impervious to physical injury, and this has never been observed. If instead the brain functions as a conduit for every “action” of the soul, there is no evidence for the existence of an independent soul. Don’t feel put-upon though – believers in an incorporeal “mind” independent of the brain have the same kinds of problems when justifying their view, so this is not purely a matter of theology.
Post-Quantum Cosmological Apologetic
Question from Andrew:
What if Quantum Mechanics are wrong?
What if the supposed undetermined, random events in quantum mechanics are actually under some kind of law and causality? Wouldn’t this be a stronger reason to think the cosmological argument is true?
Do atheists have other arguments to argue against the main premise of the cosmological argument for God; the existence of causality?
Answer by SmartLX:
Short answers: so what, no, and plenty.
As I mentioned in my original response to the cosmological argument (where you’ll find some other, unrelated objections), the behaviour of particles according to quantum mechanics suggests a possible contradiction to the argument’s premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause. If a cause is discovered for this phenomenon then we lose the contradiction, but this hardly matters because the premise has never been demonstrated in the first place.
We’ve never had evidence of anything physically “beginning to exist” in the way that the universe is supposed to have done. Every object which exists now is made up of material that existed before it, and simply came together to form something we then saw fit to quantify and name. As far as we know the matter that comprises you, me and everything we see has existed since the beginning of the universe, if any, and we have no idea how it first began to exist. Therefore there is no basis for the premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause, because the only available precedent is the very thing for which the argument is trying to establish a cause. Without an unrelated instance of creation or emergence ex nihilo with a known cause, the cosmological argument works by assuming its own conclusion or “begging the question”.
Quantum mechanics actually does suppose that certain particles emerge from “nothing”, but again, no cause is known. If a cause were discovered, then the beginning of the universe would be theorised to have not just A cause but THAT particular cause. Furthermore, if the nature of the cause allowed it to be discovered by science in the first place, it would likely not be a god.
D to the N to the A
Question from Al Jih:
How in the world is DNA created from your theories guys?
Tell me how it’s created and got its beginning.
Answer by SmartLX:
Today’s DNA is created when older DNA makes copies of itself – but the copying process isn’t perfect, so the genome changes over time. By examining the similarities between the DNA of various lifeforms (I won’t go into details just now) it is reasonable to conclude that all known DNA is related, which is to say that it originates from a common strand that existed millions of years ago.
Where the original DNA came from is unknown, but we do have some clues. Experiments in the 1950s showed that an atmosphere rich in chemicals like hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide, like that which existed on Earth billions of years ago, can produce amino acids when electricity like that in lightning is applied. RNA, an accompanying chemical, is simpler but can do much the same job, which suggests the possibility that a DNA-based genome developed from an RNA-based one.
With all this uncertainty, why shouldn’t we just accept the ready-made explanation that a god designed DNA in order to create us? There are a fair few reasons, so here are some.
– Investigating DNA and its development leads to a greater understanding of DNA and life in general, so even if we never find the answers we seek we get all kinds of advances in biological and medical science.
– The alternative progenitors, like swamp gases, lightning and RNA, are at least known to exist.
– Even if there is some kind of god, there’s no guarantee that it’s responsible for DNA, or has had anything to do with Earth and its inhabitants.
– If you use a god to explain the unexplained, you end up with an even bigger unexplained phenomenon, namely the god itself. Hardly advisable, especially if you’re not sure it’s real.
The Consistent Electron
Question from Andrew:
How do atheists explain the existence of symmetry?
How do you explain for example; that all electrons have the same charge and mass, and that they are all negative if they are the product of blind chance, and purposeless mechanisms?
How do you explain this, if blind chance and purposeless mechanisms don’t know that this is necessary for life to exist?
Answer by SmartLX:
When a hose or a faucet is dripping, why is every droplet the same size? Because in that particular situation, the weight of the water that gathers at the lowest point of the opening overcomes the surface tension holding it on when it reaches a specific volume, and unless you move things around that volume doesn’t change. Similarly, all the nearby droplets in a given rainstorm are about the same size because each one begins to fall when a specific amount of water vapour precipitates at one point inside a cloud. No one is there inspecting all the droplets on a production line before they fall, they just all end up being alike because conditions are constant.
So it is with the universe as a whole. Outside of certain extremely rare conditions, some properties of matter and energy are exactly the same no matter where you are: the gravitational constant, the strong and weak nuclear forces, the number of spatial dimensions and so on. This means that the amount of matter that forms a proton or the amount of energy that forms a discrete electron is the same everywhere. They don’t need an auditor to check that every particle is built to code, because they simply can’t be any other way.
We don’t know why these properties have the numerical values they do, but as it turns out they are hardly “fine-tuned” for life. In his book Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees finds that the force of gravity for example could vary by up to a factor of 3000 before stars couldn’t form, so there’s a wide range of gravitational constants that would still allow the building blocks of life (carbon, oxygen, etc.) to form and gather. I did a piece on this a while ago, so here it is.
We also don’t know why these properties stay constant and homogenous, but we do know that life couldn’t exist for long if they weren’t. So if there are multiple universes where they may or not be constant, we’re in one of the ones where they are. That’s one possible explanation; another is that a universe simply has that property as part of what holds it together. If you prefer the idea that God ensured and continues to ensure that the fundamental constants of the universe don’t budge, then you’re assuming the existence of an eternal, powerful, purposeful entity which has stayed constant for even longer than the universe without outside help, and should by your reasoning be regarded as even more unlikely. Asserting something unexplained or inexplicable to explain something else does not increase understanding, when there is otherwise no clear evidence that the explanatory entity even exists.