wow this +1

The pure awesomeness of our existence.

Seriously, think about it. How many different things had to go right during the last 14 BILLION YEARS for us to be here enjoying the lives we enjoy? Its like the perfect storm, except on a much, much, much larger scale. Im as much of a proponent for the law of large numbers as the next guy, but holy ****. So many things could have gone wrong that its insane.

This applies to everything. An apple falls from a tree. Think of all that had to occur for this apple to fall from the tree. It's the same "perfect storm" of events that led to you existing.

Of the millions and millions of ancestors I have, every single one of them made it through infant mortality challenges, childhood mortality, and lived long enough to mate. Every one of them!! All while millions and millions of their peers through time were dying without offspring.

I must be AWESOME.

This is a minor point and not really relevant to our discussion. But I'll try to explain. I don't understand what you were trying to say in your first paragraph, so I'll just briefly clarify what logicians mean by "validity." When I say an argument is valid, what I mean is that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. Or, an argument is valid if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

The reason why I say that analogical arguments are invalid is that the epistemic warrant they provide does not come from the validity of the argument form. You'll note that the general form of analogical arguments I provided above is an invalid argument form. But that is fine. Not all good arguments are valid--only good deductive arguments. The justification provided by analogical arguments comes from some other principle of reason--exactly what is controversial, but not from the argument form itself.

So, looking at your example. Here's a cleaned up version.

1. All complex objects have a designer.
2. The universe is a complex object.
3. The universe has a designer.

This is a valid argument. The problem is that it isn't the design argument. Rather it assumes the design argument in the first premise. Pretty much everyone agrees with (2). So for this argument to be successful, we must have good reason to accept (1). What is this reason? And here is where we get an analogy between complex objects like watches or cars and complex objects like eyes and galaxies.

Putting this into argument form:

4. Eyes and watches both have ordered complexity.
5. Watches were made by an intelligent being.
6. Therefore, eyes were [probably] made by an intelligent being.

As you can see, this argument is not valid. Might be a good argument still, but on different grounds than deductive force.

Or another example:

7. All complex objects we've seen created were made by an intelligent being.
8. Therefore, all complex object are created by an intelligent being.

Again, this is an invalid argument--but that doesn't make it a bad argument (though it is not an analogical argument). Why? It is the old black swan story. People used to say that all swans observed are white, therefore, all swans are white. Nothing wrong with that as an inference. However, it is of course true that there could be non-white swans that have just not yet been observed (as ending up being the case). Thus, even though inductive arguments of this sort can be very powerful, it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false and so it is an invalid argument form. Of course, this is all a bit misleading--we shouldn't even be discussing the validity of inductive arguments as validity only applies to deductive arguments.

Final point, and here I'm really being particular, you say that (3) is logically valid. But validity is a property of arguments, not statements, and so it doesn't make sense to claim that a statement is logically valid.

"That there are atoms at all, much less the intelligent beings they come together to make possible, is a string of monumentally unlikely events." -Krauss

Coincidentally, Reppert is in the process of discussing this idea on his website:

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/

It looks like it's being developed into a full blown theistic argument. I'm going to have to look into this a bit more closely.

I have great desire to become a beautiful rose. There is nothing on Earth that can satisfy this desire. Therefore, reincarnation must be true? Seems like the same argument.

In the last sentence, did you mean invalid? But again, you're wrong. The premises don't have to be true for an argument to be valid. And when I said 3 is valid I meant a valid conclusion, obviously.

The teleological argument can be presented as an analogy or as deduction. I think Paley phrased his book more as a deduction type argument whereas Hume was attacking the analogical form, and perhaps that is why Paley wrote the way he did.

But the formal objections aside, for me the force of the teleological argument, excluding the fine-tuning refinement going on now, is that it isn't unreasonable to infer a designer from the appearance of design. The analogy comes in when you claim there is appearance of design. Given that appearance, which most people, even atheists (but not AIF)admit to, then a deductive argument can be constructed.

I think historically people who have made the argument are not talking about an analogy between physical similarities of human artifacts and natural objects, but the existence of purpose, structure, order, etc. It is those qualities that give appearance of design, the indication of intelligence. The dissimilarities in the "accidentals" are mostly irrelevant to the point of the analogy.

I think our existence is a bit more awesome than an apple falling from a tree. There is probably life of some sort on other planets, and the chances of those planets having apple trees obeying the laws of gravity has to be way higher than the chances of them having a species as ballin as humans.

Seriously the universe is just way too cool sometimes for me to comprehend the notion that it happened on accident.

Nope. I phrased it correctly. An argument is valid if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Also, I did not say that the premises have to be true for an argument to be valid (as indeed they don't, nor does the conclusion have to be true). Anyway, I think you're being a bit sloppy here (conclusions aren't valid either--only arguments are), but it really isn't that big of a deal.

Look up the first three entries for "supreme." "Being" is self-explanatory.

lolol ok i now see that my original comment can be interpreted way differently than i intended, ill try to rephrase.

14 billion years ago every single point had the same probability of one day containing life. thats a long ass ****in time, during which many "contenders" were eliminated just because mathematically the right combination of "stuff" couldnt accumulate in such a manner to make a star/planets/life. (bullet dodge number 1)

but our tiny little spot in the universe managed to form with like 100 elements (bullet dodge 3), a couple of which somehow ended up being our first single celled organism. already, this is like 8 billion years after the big bang so who knows wtf was goin on elsewhere and how many potential planets were destroyed by black holes, meteors, gamma ray bursts, all that ****. (5 billion years safe, bullet dodge 4)

this little single cell ****er reproduced and reproduced somehow until he had lots of bros and sisters and lil single cell juniors. its safe to say all these cells were stupid, at least relative to us. but wait! they kept coming together for MILLIONS of years and eventually became highly diversified. tons and tons of different species took their turns ruling earth in one way or another. everything is going fine, then BAM! mass extinction! looks like all the highly specialized fkers that spent millions of years evolving are no more. bye bye life on earth.

....hold on a second! some of these creatures survived in places that were safe from all the different catastrophes!? sharks!? HOLD ON, SOME OF THE ANIMALS HAVE GROWN HAIR AND CAN NOW WEATHER EXTREMELY COLD TEMPERATURES!?!?!?!?!? well ill be, if jen tilly isnt the hottest poker player alive!!!

then after millions and millions of years, some idiot monkey decides to be cool and walk on 2 legs. **** sapiens are born! so a couple hundred thousand years (still a relatively incomprehensible time frame but merely a BLIP in regards to the universe) go by, and humans develop SPEECH. probably the sickest evolutionary development EVER, and wow i dont even know what else to say. now we have gotten to the point where we can look at stuff billions of light years away, effectively seeing into the past, we have produced things that would be LOL to even think about other planets being able to produce and holy crap so much more.

and this is just the OBVIOUS stuff. the odds of everything coming together so perfectly are far far far far farrrrrrrrr smaller than Pletho entering the world series and hitting a royal flush every single hand on his way to knocking out 9,000 other entrants and winning the main event. it would be like, him doing that in every single event (except razz where he makes the nut low) at every single tournament he ever entered in his life, and then his kids and grandkids doing the exact same thing.

I am not sure what you mean by "is not unreasonable" here. Does this mean "is reasonable?" And do you mean by this, acceptable but not required? Are you saying that the design argument makes it rationally acceptable to believe in God, but not rationally required? How do you distinguish between these?

As to the actual teleological argument, there are many different ways it can be formulated, and no response will apply to all of them. That's why I am trying to make you pick one of them rather than gesturing broadly to a whole bunch of vague ways to sort of guess that there is a designer.

My most basic response to most design arguments is that they rest on a false premise, that ordered complexity requires an intelligent creator. This premise is just assumed by many theists, and then they try to prove their case by proving that the world is really, really complex. Well, duh. That is not the controversial premise. Rather it is the idea that ordered complexity is evidence of design by an intelligent being. And the only way you get there is by analogy with human intelligence. So I don't think you can avoid this issue (unless you go off into probability and the anthropic principle and even here I am doubtful). And if people are ignoring this point, then they are ignoring the crucial claim in this argument.

My guess is that I should lower the stakes a bit in this discussion--I'm worried that I'm provoking an overly defensive attitude. My claim is that the design argument fails. This doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. It merely claims that a particular philosophical argument for the existence of God is not successful. This fact alone should be no threat to your faith as there is an infinite number of unsuccessful arguments for God's existence. Furthermore, it also doesn't prevent you from seeing evidence of God's design in the universe if you have a prior belief in God. All I am claiming is that you cannot infer God exists from the complexity of the universe. But I also can't infer that you exist from the complexity of the universe. But yet I still believe you do.

Often when I find myself in these spots I find it useful to also rethink the words, because words are often coloured by perspective in themselves. So when we think we are being neutral, we're being coloured by opinion.

Such as in this case, maybe it is "accident" that needs a closer look.

Original Position should post more around here and in SMP.

I suppose I would ask you to consider the following:

Consider the winner of a multi-state lottery. That individual had perhaps a 1 in a 100 million chance of winning. It is clearly unlikely that individual would win.

But, with over 100 million people playing, it's actually quite likely that someone would win, and it would be more surprising if no one won.


So given the billions and billions of stars, and the billions and billions of years everything has been around, and the trillions of planets, moons, etc. Wouldn't it actually be more surprising if no animal with a brain to body mass of humans evolved?

Agreed. It's nice seeing such precise and correct formulations of the principles of logic.

+1, OP welcome and look forward to reading more from you!

He's probably too busy to respond to this.

Edit: your "NotReady score" is very high indeed.

Your desire to be a rose isn't something that is "universally" shared. The desire not to die is something that is "universal". I use quotes because there are the occasional nutballs(people who commit suicide) so it really isn't universal. Still....Your analogy fails.

Thanks!

It's a bit tricky to get representative samples to support your claims I would say.

In reading over our discussion, I realized I had missed this crucial passage. So let me give a response here. You are correct that the theory of evolution is a complex idea, which if true, would be another example of the universe operating in an ordered fashion. Thus, if you assume that all complex things must be created by an intelligent designer, then yes, the laws of evolution would also have to be created by an intelligent designer.

However, that misses the force of evolution as a counterexample. I am not using evolution to prove that the universe is not ordered and complex. As I said above, everyone accepts that. What I am using it for is to show that the assumption that ordered complexity can only arise from intelligent design is false. The idea of natural selection is a story of how more complex objects can come from less complex objects. And it does so without reference to an intelligent designer. Thus, to argue that since evolution itself is an ordered idea and so provides evidence of ordered complexity is specious.

It is also worth pointing out that evolution would still be a counterexample even if it is false. All that is necessary is that natural selection is a coherent idea.

We don't have one of those desires.