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Stealing from God: Intentions and the Laws of Nature

5/23/2018

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So far, we’ve covered causality, reason, and information in Turek’s C.R.I.M.E.S. acronym. But there is another “i” he mentions: intentionality (by which he simply means the characteristic of having intentions, rather than what that term means in the philosophy of mind). Acting intentionally is acting with purpose, or toward some goal. Most of this section of the book, however, is concerned with a more fundamental idea: That there are goals or purposes in all of nature. This is an idea that Turek learned from religious philosopher Edward Feser, who in turn got it from Aquinas. In fact, it’s the basis of Aquinas’s fifth way of proving the existence of God. 

It’s easy to find purposes within living things. The organs of animals serve certain purposes for their owners. But what about in the nonliving world? What purposes or goals could possibly be found there? I was initially surprised by Turek’s basis for claiming that even inert matter is “directed toward an end.” The reason he offers is simply that nature behaves in a regular, law-like way: 

“Electrons reliably orbit the nucleus of their atom; atoms consistently form certain molecules but not others; and planets follow a precise orbit — they don’t fly off into oblivion or start and stop randomly.” 

But what could this possibly have to do with purposes or goals? Turek never says, but in The Last Superstition, Feser explains it this way: 

“In each case, the causes don’t simply happen to result in certain effects, but are evidently and inherently directed toward certain specific effects as toward a ‘goal’.” 

In other words, the fact that every time water reaches 100 degrees C at sea-level pressure, it begins to boil means that it “aims” at boiling under such conditions. Or so Feser and Aquinas claim. (Feser says that Aristotle also claims this, though I don’t think that’s the case. But I don’t want to get side-tracked here. I merely mention this because the entire argument is based on Aristotle’s concept of a “final cause,” by which Aristotle meant that for which something exists. Thus, the final cause of a hammer is to pound nails, the final cause of the heart is to pump blood, and so on. According to Aristotle, not everything has a final cause, however.) 

The problem is that the above is at best a very misleading way of putting it. I don’t know why anyone would want to describe the fact that water always boils under conditions C as water having the “goal” of boiling under conditions C, or “aiming” to boil under such conditions. But if one does so, one can’t then use such a misleading description to conclude that therefore there must be some intention behind it — which is what Aquinas, Feser and Turek proceed to do. For, as Feser further explains: 

“…it is impossible for anything to be directed toward an end unless that end exists in an intellect which directs the thing in question toward it. And it follows, therefore, that the system of ends or final causes that make up the physical universe can only exist at all because there is a Supreme Intelligence or intellect outside that universe which directs things toward their ends.” 

Aquinas’s argument, then, is basically this: There are causal laws in the physical universe such that identical causes lead to identical effects. This means that someone intends those causes to produce those effects. Therefore, God exists. 

And so the whole thing really turns out to involve intentions. But the problem, of course, is that the mere fact that there are causal laws doesn’t lead to this conclusion at all. There is nothing incoherent in the idea that the world just is law-like, so that whenever conditions C are present, effect E occurs. It doesn’t follow that the effects must in that case be “aimed at” by anything, or be the “purpose” of the cause in question. Hence, it doesn’t follow that someone must have aimed them. 

And even in those cases where it makes sense to talk of actual purposes existing in the nonconscious realm — such as in the inner workings of organisms — there is no reason to talk of intentions. Nature is capable of producing such organization without anyone having planned it beforehand. Aquinas never heard of Darwin. Feser and Turek, however, have no excuse. 



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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STEALING FROM GOD: TUREK’S FLAWED INFORMATION ARGUMENT

5/14/2018

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In chapter three of Stealing from God, Turek asks us to imagine walking along a beach and seeing the words “John loves Mary” scribbled in the sand. We would never think that a crab making random marks on the ground was responsible. And the reason we wouldn’t, he says, is because “John loves Mary” contains information: That’s how we know that someone with a mind was responsible. But, Turek goes on, DNA also contains information. In fact, it contains far more information than “John loves Mary.” Therefore, we should conclude that a mind was responsible for it as well. 

There’s just one problem with this argument: The reason it makes no sense to believe that “John loves Mary” might have been scribbled by a crab is not because it contains information. Rather, it’s because it is extremely unlikely at this level of complexity for an accidental pattern to end up matching a given pattern — just as it is extremely unlikely for a shuffled deck of cards to come out in perfect suit order. It is because of this that we can conclude that the scribbles contain information, and not the other way around. 

Scribbles in that particular pattern do not necessarily mean what we take them to mean. If, by some amazing coincidence, we saw a crab actually scribbling such a pattern, it wouldn’t be informative — at least not in the same way. We could not conclude, based on such markings, that there is someone named John who loves someone named Mary. 

So Turek has it backwards. We don’t start with the fact that there is information, and then conclude that a mind is responsible. Rather, we start from the fact that such a pattern was almost certainly created by something with a mind (as anything else would be extremely unlikely), and then conclude that it therefore contains information. 

But, someone might counter, when it comes to DNA, we already know that it contains information. After all, DNA is basically a complex biological “program” — one that, in the words of Bill Gates, is “far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” So doesn’t it follow in this case that a mind must have been responsible? 

Not based on Turek’s argument. We may conclude that if a particular pattern was created by a mind, it contains information. But that doesn't mean we can argue in the opposite direction, from the fact that a pattern contains information to the conclusion that it must have been created by a mind. One could, of course, appeal to something else. One might use some version of the argument from design, for example — though that, too, can be refuted. But that’s not Turek’s strategy. Instead, he insists on claiming that atheists would never believe that a pattern like “John loves Mary” could occur naturally because it contains information, and thus are inconsistent when they believe that DNA occurred naturally. And that’s just false. 



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD: REASON, PART 2

5/7/2018

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There’s a lot more to chapter two than the argument we considered last time. Turek raises several additional problems that the materialist supposedly faces, since, as he erroneously believes, “the category of immaterial reality is not available to the atheist.” Much of what he says just shows that he doesn’t have a good grasp of the subject. For instance, after pointing out that practically all the cells that were in our bodies fifteen years ago have since been replaced, he asks, “if the mind and the brain are the same, how could you remember anything earlier than fifteen years ago?” I doubt many materialists will lose any sleep pondering that one. The main issue he addresses, however, is that of the existence of logic itself. 

Turek claims that the laws of logic are immaterial and therefore “would not exist if the purely material world of atheism were correct.” Thus, if there are logical laws, there must be a God. 

This is a favorite tactic of presuppositionalists. The point is to immediately put a stop to any atheistic argument. If logic depends on God, then any reasoning the atheist uses presupposes that God exists and is therefore self-defeating. 

Judging by YouTube, the tactic works on many. It isn’t easy to explain the existence of logic itself, after all, and presuppositionalists use this to their advantage. It’s an easy way to trip-up their opponents. 

But of course the idea that it is logically possible for logical laws to not apply is incoherent. What would a world without logical laws be like? Does Turek think that if there were no God, a cat could fail to be a cat, or that two plus two might sometimes equal seven? Just as our physical laws apply to the actual world, logical laws apply to any world there could be. They describe what must be the case no matter what. It makes no sense, therefore, to claim that they are dependent on anything, including God. 

The claim that they do depend on God can be understood in two ways. It can either mean that God decides what logical laws will be true, or it can mean that logical laws are part of God’s nature. The first option really makes no sense. Not only is it impossible for principles like the law of identity to fail to apply — God could not exist, or do anything, unless logical laws apply. But the second option makes no sense either if it is meant to imply — as the presuppositionalists believe — that the laws are part only of God’s nature, and not of anything else. 

The confusion here is due to thinking that, since the laws of logic aren’t physical, they must be mental — and so must be the properties of some mind. (And, the presuppositionalist adds, because our minds change and don’t always agree, unchanging, objective logic cannot be a property of our minds.) But that’s a bit like arguing that, since justice isn’t blue, it must be some other color. 

If logic were a mental property, it would not apply to a world without minds. And that’s simply illogical. 


See also:


PRESUPPOSITIONALISM, PART 2 - LOGIC

ON MATT SLICK'S TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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stealing from god: reason, part 1

5/1/2018

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In chapter two, Turek elaborates on a point he initially raises earlier in the book, namely that given atheism, we cannot trust any of our reasoning. In a godless universe, he claims, “we are mere meat machines without free will,” and thus “have no justification to believe anything we think, including any thought that atheism is true.”

What he’s essentially arguing, then, is that the absence of free will is incompatible with reasoning — which means he’s now conflating atheism not just with materialism, but with determinism as well. 

At any rate, the idea behind the argument is that reasoning only occurs when we freely accept conclusions. If the conclusions we reach are the result of deterministic laws of cause and effect, then we have no choice but to accept them — and in that case, how can we know that we’ve reached the correct conclusion? As Turek puts it, given atheism, you have “no control over what you are doing or what you are thinking.” 

This argument has actually been around for a while, and many people (including many atheists) find it persuasive — as an argument against determinism. But what, exactly, does freely accepting a conclusion have to do with reasoning? Apparently nothing. 

Suppose that you are asked to consider the following argument: 

All women are mortal; Xanthippe is a woman; therefore, Xanthippe is mortal.

The reasoning here is obviously valid. Does it make any difference whether you “freely” accepted that fact or did so as a result of your brain operating in accordance with causal laws? If so, I fail to see what it is. What makes an instance of reasoning correct has nothing to do with the nature of the thing performing it. Computers and calculators obviously arrive at the correct answer to a problem even though they operate entirely deterministically. And in any case, are you really free to arrive at the conclusion that Xanthippe is mortal — or does the fact that your mind works logically compel you to do so? 

I think the underlying reason the above argument convinces so many people has to do with the different ways we naturally view the mind and other things, including the brain. We experience our minds from a first-person point of view, everything else from a third-person point of view. Turek believes that in order to reason, one needs an immaterial mind. The brain, on this view, cannot do so because after all it is made up of parts, and those parts must work together in one way rather than another. This appears inconsistent with how the mind feels to us from the inside. How could there be something underlying our thought processes if our thought processes are free and due only to ourselves? 

Note that those like Turek never explain how the immaterial mind manages to do what the brain supposedly can’t. How does it operate? They never say. But there’s a very good reason for that: They don’t have an answer because any answer would raise exactly the same problem that they see with respect to the brain. The “magic” of the mind would in that case disappear. 



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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