@ken: I would think at first blush that someone had

Comment on A “Christian Agnostic”? by Sean Pitman.

I would think at first blush that someone had made the [granite] cube if such a cube wasn’t normally found in nature.

That is exactly the basis of detecting design in numerous scientific fields – like anthropology, forensics, and SETI.

Then again a rainbow looks like a divine work of art until one knows the physics that created it. The same idea could be applied to snowflakes, crystals, the universe – don’t they at first blush appear to be designed instead of occurring vis a vis nature?

It is impossible to detect the need to invoke deliberate design vs. the non-deliberate products of an apparently mindless nature without having prior experience with the material in question as it relates to various mindless forces of nature. That’s why the detecting of design is a science that requires some investigative work. The more investigation that is done, the more confident one can be in one’s design hypothesis.

Can one ever become completely confident in one’s ID hypothesis? No. As in any real science, one can improve the predictive value of the hypothesis, but one cannot absolutely prove the hypothesis to be correct without perfect knowledge.

For me, agnosticism is the optimal state of inquiry precisely because we can’t know the exact, empirical truth about the divine.

My point is that you can’t know exact empirical truth about anything in the universe that exists outside of your mind. You can’t know for sure if any of your ideas about how the universe works are really true with absolute certainty. All such conclusions require a leap of faith to one degree or another. That’s the nature of science. Yet, if you saw a the type of granite cube I described above, you wouldn’t describe yourself as “agnostic” with regard to the most likely origin of the cube. You would say, as would most people, “Given the information that is currently available to me, this cube was most likely designed.”

The same is true for evidence of God’s existence. While we cannot know with absolute certainty, we can say that, “Given the information that is currently available to me, the God hypothesis carries the greatest predictive power.”

Take evolution for example. I don’t look at it with a faith or non faith bias. In my mind it is irrevelant to the existence or non existence of God. Have the vast majority of evolutionary biologists been duped, fooled or coerced into thinking it is correct? Unlikely but possibly. Could the theory be wrong? Possibly. Can the burgeoning discipline of Intelliegent Design punch holes in it. Maybe, and wouldn’that be nice! That remains to be seen by the majority of scientists, not that the majority is always right!

There you go, you just said that you believe it unlikely that the majority of biologists have been duped. That means that you’re not truly agnostic in this regard. You actually favor a particular position in this discussion. So, why not just admit that?

I know you like to think of yourself as non-biased in this discussion, but you’re really just kidding yourself. Everyone is biased to one degree or another. Even you, if you are honest with yourself, do in fact favor certain positions over others.

As to God, it is not merely the existence but the nature of God that agnostics concern themselves with. History, faith, philosophy and science all factor into the nature equation. The nature of God appears to be a moving target. Just look at religious schisms, or the very nature of this Adventist debate to appreciate that.

I agree. However, one has to start somewhere. If you don’t believe in the existence of a God or a God-like entity, you’re not going to concern yourself with trying to investigate the nature of God any further. So, determining that a God most likely exists in some form or another is the first step toward a relationship with God.

Respectfully, rather than a copout, I submit agnosticism is the pinnacle of rationalism when it comes to considering all the evidence as to a temporal understanding of the divine.

I respectfully disagree. It is fine to admit that one may always be wrong, but the avoidance of all risk of being wrong, of taking on any position because of the the potential for error, isn’t rational at all. It is anti-scientific at its core.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

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Sean Pitman Also Commented

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken:

Effective atheist, closet creationist, close to classic IDist or creationist?

Are you sure it is my agnosticism that is changing rather than your opinion of what I am?

I didn’t say that you were effectively an atheist. What I said was that your arguments for agnosticism were effectively atheistic. There’s a difference. Your arguments for God’s likely existence are obviously the opposite of atheistic – certainly not agnostic either.

After all, someone who claims to believe that the existence of God is “likely”, because of ultimate origin arguments, doesn’t match most people’s concept of an “agnostic”.

So, please do forgive me if I am still way off base regarding your true position…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken:

You have transported me from an atheist to a closet creationist in the width of a thread my friend. 🙂 I wonder what you will create me as next?

What have I done? – besides point out that someone who claims that God’s existence is “likely”, based on arguments for ultimate causation requiring a God-like intelligence and creative power, isn’t what most people would call an “agnostic”?

In short, your “agnostic” arguments are the very same ones used by atheists like Dawkins and Hawking and your “God likely exists” arguments are essentially the same ones used by IDists and creationists. How then can I be faulted for suggesting that you’re not really an agnostic or an atheist? While you’re not a classic creationist or IDist by any means, you seem to me to be, at least for now, far closer to such than to pure agnosticism… which is a very hard position to hold, in its pure form, for very long I would think. Certainly Hawking couldn’t do it for long. Eventually one decides, like you, to try to figure out which way the turtles seem to be going…

Of course, you could end up falsifying my hypothesis… 😉

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken:

Now I think Hawkings thinking about our universe has evolved since he wrote Brief History of Time, because he is looking at turtles ( metaverses) a level or two upwards. However Grand Design implies grand designer doesn’t it. Can design ever be mindless?

Yes, Hawking has apparently evolved, or devolved if you prefer, from the position of agnosticism to atheism since he wrote A Brief History of Time.

As far as your question as to if a “design” can be “mindless”, the answer to that question is yes – depending upon what you mean by the term “design”. As far as we can tell, anyway, what appears to be “mindless nature” does in fact have certain creative powers (discussed further below).

Who or what created the matter for the first turtle? Ever seen a turtle appear out of nothing, ex nihilo?

This is exactly the reason why many scientists and philosophers have come to the conclusion that the “first cause”, whatever it may be, had to itself have been eternal. Of course there are those, like Hawking for instance, who argue that something can indeed come from nothing… but that belief certainly isn’t scientific in that it is not testable in a falsifiable manner and has no useful predictive power.

I told you I was intrigued by Intelligent Design and Deism didn’t I? And I still say that creation of the original matter for the original universe out of nothing is not a rational proposition. Why? Because science and mathematics can not explain infinity, first cause or infinite regress. And philosophy doesn’t seem to do much better (Munchhausen Trilemma).

Now you’re sounding like a creationist 😉

Can turlles read? For their sake I’ ll state it again: when the atheists, sceintists or philosphers rationally explain to me how ‘original’ matter and energy, that ultimately led to intelligent life, arose out of the mindless void, then I’ll become an atheist.

Me too! The only difference between you and I is that you are impressed with the unlikely appearance of original matter/energy out of nothing without a pre-existent eternal intelligence, while I am also impressed by the origin of the informational complexity needed to get otherwise random non-directed energy/matter to produce useful stuff. Consider that the origin of useful information is just as problematic for the atheistic mindset as is the origin of basic energy/matter itself (By the way, atoms and basic atomic particles are informationally rich, as are the fined-tuned fundamental constants of the universe).

If a faith construct ever satistifactority answers my questions then I’ll join that religion. (All come up relativistically short so far).

Science itself is a faith construct. You cannot make any conclusions as to the likely nature of empirical reality without taking a leap of faith, to one degree or another, beyond that which can be absolutely known.

This was Wesley Kime’s point in arguing that faith and science are forced to walk hand-in-hand. This is also the point of well-known philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn. You simply cannot avoid taking on a “faith construct” of some kind – no one can. The only choice any of us really has is which faith construct to take on…

Part of the problem is what we mean by mindless. Can a human mind know the mind of God?

Not in totality of course since we are finite and God, by definition, is infinite. However, we can known what God has given us to know about himself. In other words, we are capable of comprehending certain limited aspects of God.

What may appear as mindless nature may not be mindless at all if we figure out the Grand Design. I think both Einstein and Hawkings understood and understand this dilemma. In fairness and with great respect I think in what you and Dr. Kime in your own way are trying to do as well: marry faith to science for a more fuller and optimistic view of reality. Please note, especially my friend Wes, that I have stated that this is laudable. Not toying around here, I mean what I say.

Faith and science are already married since one cannot exist without the other. It is just that some fail to recognize when they are in fact taking leaps of faith.

Beyond this, you seem to be making the same point that the founders of modern chaos theory made. In short, randomness cannot be proven. What appears to be a random sequence from one perspective may actually be determined by a simple formula from another perspective. The same thing is true about what appears to be the result of a mindless mechanism. Ultimately, from a different perspective, the same phenomenon may have been known or produced by some deliberate purpose.

The problem, of course, is that our perspective is limited. We can only deal with the limited information that we currently understand. So, the best we can say is that certain phenomenon appear to be the result of apparently mindless mechanisms while other phenomena (like highly symmetrical polished granite cubes, or your automobile) much more clearly require the input of deliberate intelligence.

Might I be stretching the boundaries of agnosticim in saying that even though I cannot prove it – because ultimate creation ex nihilo and infinite regress makes no sense to me – the case for an ultimate grand designer/ force makes more rational, ‘likely’ sense?

You are definitely stretching the boundaries of agnosticism to argue for God’s “likely” existence. This is why I have been saying for some time now that you are not a true agnostic. You are a closet creationist to at least some degree. You present some of the very same arguments used by intelligent design advocates and even creationists in favor of the very likely existence of a God or God-like intelligence behind it all.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com