- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
rjonesx wrote:
I am just excited that you showed up :-)
Thanks! Me too! Sorry for taking so long -- I have a four year old and twin 8 month old girls and I'm in the midst of an intercontinental move, so I don't have a ton of time to engage, despite this stuff being on my mind so much right now. Luckily my wife is a philosopher too, so she understands. 
So, in your last response to me you asked specifically for my defense of these 2 premises...
2. Evidence Y1 shows no one else could fine tune the universe other than God.
3. Evidence Y2 shows that fine tuning the universe unintentionally is nearly impossible
No problem.
There are a couple of options for defending premise 2.
1. I could retreat and say something like "God is the most likely candidate for being able to fine tune the universe" and marshal the following arguments...
2. I could bring up other cosmological arguments in defense of it being a spaceless/timeless/blah blah you get the point.
3. I could point out that it would have to be intelligent, whatever it is, and that simply pushes back the question 1 more step, what made that universe finely tuned
4. I could simply ask, what else would have both the power and knowledge to create and finely tune a universe?
It seems to me that unless you are willing to deny the physical reality of this universe, it is hard to get past the "designer" as also being a "creator of physical reality".
In your defense of premise 2, are you taking 'God' to be the name of the Christian God or are you taking it to be the name of whatever is responsible for fine tuning? The claim "no one else besides God could have fine-tuned the universe" is trivial on the latter reading. So I'm guessing you are intending the former right? If that's true, can you elaborate on option 1? I don't understand option 3. Simply asking questions won't be sufficient for your argument, so I don't get option 4.
I don't get why the designer would have to be the creator of the universe. I can design a house and my wife can build a house. Why couldn't that happen with the universe?
Last edited by KevinScharp (4/16/2016 10:31 am)
- Jason
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Thank you Dr. Scharp for taking the time to come here, appreciate it. I would like to make two points here.
Firstly, our best scientific theories by definition only define “how” things are working in nature based upon repeatability and data that we have collected about them, this means that we are just emulating what really is happening in nature within those theories. They are by no means all encompassing or all knowing which I think you agree to (correct me if I am wrong). This means that we can only have a certain confidence in them based on repeatability. Miracles by nature are supposed to be a one time event only, so by nature, we are talking about two different things.
Even if we have lots of results for our theories and hence confidence, that is only because they are repeatable. Miracles on the hand are historical in nature and the confidence we have on that is based on how we build confidence in any other historical event. Pitching the confidence we have for scientific theories against confidence we have in miracles is unfair to say the least but also like comparing apples to oranges.
Secondly, even in our every day lives we can see that we are constantly “overriding” one natural law with another for instance we are overriding the law of gravity using the law of aerodynamics in planes and are able to fly. Even with our limited intelligence and understanding we know how to do that. So my question to you is why God who not only is the Creator of the universe but also its Sustainer cannot “override” any law(s) or even our best scientific theories?
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
I
Defending premise 3 would be accomplished in the same way as defending the premise that the universe with these constants/quantities would be improbable on chance. It would be improbable whether it was created or not. The improbability is only surmounted if it was intentional.
That being said, I think this is beside the point. They might be additional objections to the argument, but I don't think they resolve the Divine Psychology issue. It seems to me we have 3 options...
1. Necessity
2. Chance
3. Design
Now, the question is what probabilities should we assign to each? And then we can pick the one with the best probability. For the sake of argument, we have assigned 1 and 2 very low probabilities. We have no idea what #3 is. To me it seems that we should prefer an unknown probability over a known low probability. If I were coming up to 3 doors and I knew if I opened 2 of them there was a 1/1000000000 chance of me surviving the next minute, I would always open the door for which I did not know the probability.
I don't see why fine tuning would have been done on purpose. We have so many examples in evolutionary theory of something that is a side-effect of some other process but one could (and scientists have!) mistake it for the primary process selected for. It seems to me that we have no idea at all whether fine tuning would be a side effect or the intended effect. Can you say more about why you're ruling that out?
The bit at the end about necessity chance and design: are those the only three options (i.e., are they exhaustive)? If so, then you know their probabilities sum to 1.
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Thank you Dr. Scharp for taking the time to come here, appreciate it. I would like to make two points here.
Firstly, our best scientific theories by definition only define “how” things are working in nature based upon repeatability and data that we have collected about them, this means that we are just emulating what really is happening in nature within those theories. They are by no means all encompassing or all knowing which I think you agree to (correct me if I am wrong). This means that we can only have a certain confidence in them based on repeatability. Miracles by nature are supposed to be a one time event only, so by nature, we are talking about two different things.
Even if we have lots of results for our theories and hence confidence, that is only because they are repeatable. Miracles on the hand are historical in nature and the confidence we have on that is based on how we build confidence in any other historical event. Pitching the confidence we have for scientific theories against confidence we have in miracles is unfair to say the least but also like comparing apples to oranges.
Thanks for the comments. About the first one -- I've heard this line before and I'm not sure who came up with it. It's definitely in Swinburn, but I don't know if he was it's originator. Either way, the reasoning is confused. Science does not just investigate repeatable events. Obvious counterexample: the big bang. Scientists do emphasize repeatability of experiments as part of the scientific method. But that has nothing to do with the phenomena studied by scientists. These need not be repeatable at all (it isn't even clear what that would mean).
Secondly, even in our every day lives we can see that we are constantly “overriding” one natural law with another for instance we are overriding the law of gravity using the law of aerodynamics in planes and are able to fly. Even with our limited intelligence and understanding we know how to do that. So my question to you is why God who not only is the Creator of the universe but also its Sustainer cannot “override” any law(s) or even our best scientific theories?
Airplanes do not defy the force of gravity. Gravity is still in effect, even for an airplane. It's just that there is an additional force, lift, which counteracts the force of gravity. So I think it's a mistake to say that we "override" natural laws in our everyday life.
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
This isn't controversial. You can just look at the theory and see that it has no such clauses. Look for yourself.
And, you can't just "suppose" that there are supernatural entities in a debate about whether supernatural entities exist. That's precisely the point at issue. The fact is that our best scientific theories have no such clauses. Many have no restrictions on their application at all (like general relativity and quantum field theory -- that's a necessary condition for them to be incompatible, by the way). To pretend like these theories have such clauses is really the wrong path. There has to be a better option for you.That the meaning of a scientific statement can be immediately be read off of scientists' statements of the theory is itself a controversial thesis in the philosophy of science. Pragmatists, for instance, wouldn't think so, and the existence of a unpredictable phenomenon 2000 years ago would not, on their terms, require rejection of a theory, if the theory remains effective today in generating predictions.
Other interpretations of scientific statements are possible (and might be more piecemeal and less radical than pragmatism). It is entirely open to the philosopher to argue that scientific laws include tacit clauses or have implicit but restricted domains of application; pointing to scientists' statements of the theories no more refutes iwpoe than it would refute the pragmatist.
Pragmatism about scientific theories is the controversial position -- its an extreme minority view. The view I've expressed is the consensus, but that doesn't mean it should be taken as authoritative. If you have some argument that my view is wrong and some other one is right, then I'm happy to hear it. Moreover, iwpoe is making a basic mistake, the pragmatist isn't. The pragmatist and I agree on what the scientific theory says. We disagree about the standards for what counts as a good theory. Iwpoe and I disagree about what the scientific theory says. Those are very different. So I don't think you analogy between the two disputes is apt.
- Dennis
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
You can just look at the theory and see that it has no such clauses. Look for yourself.
And, you can't just "suppose" that there are supernatural entities in a debate about whether supernatural entities exist. That's precisely the point at issue.
No. No one is supposing supernatural entities in a debate. It is purely a matter of ontology. Neither iwpoe, nor I. We haven't argued for it here, that's a different question. But that's altogether a different matter that concerns ontology.
That the meaning of a scientific statement can be immediately be read off of scientists' statements of the theory is itself a controversial thesis in the philosophy of science. Pragmatists, for instance, wouldn't think so, and the existence of a unpredictable phenomenon 2000 years ago would not, on their terms, require rejection of a theory, if the theory remains effective today in generating predictions.
I second this. Science will not tell you anything about the world unless there is a metaphysic to support it. You talk of scientific theories. What are those theories about? Are they helpful fictions of the mind? Are they ontologically loaded? You've restricted science to a methodological device. Given such a methodological device, this has its own baggage. Why do you stop here? This is where realism and anti realism enter the ring. You seem to avoid this at all cost. But that's your problem if you keep dodging this. Predictions for certain propositions grounded on evidence are about something. What are they about? Fictions, reality, or some nuanced position?
To pretend like these theories have such clauses is really the wrong path. There has to be a better option for you.
This has been dealt with. Just because things are left out for methdological purposes, it doesn't follow that it isn't so. This is a matter of ontology. I want you to focus on West's comments about concurrentism, ocassionalism and deism here. Classical theists don't simply suppose supernatural entities, nor supernaturalism.
Last edited by Dennis (4/16/2016 11:57 am)
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
I suspect Kevin is just going to say that the deism/concurrentism distinction relates to causes and (perhaps) natural laws, while he cares about scientific theories and generalizations. The generalizations are false if they do not describe how the world evolves from t1 to t2.
It's easy to make this conclusion into a bigger deal than it is.
Suppose strong versions of best scientific theories P, Q, and R are correct. P, Q, and R say that even in a concurrentist universe, certain things must occur in certain ways. Hence, by reductio, P, Q, and R aren't correct. If P, Q, and R are our best scientific theories, this sounds like a big deal.
But when we add that we're replacing them with nearly identical theories, S, T, and U, that are for all practical purposes indiscernible from P, Q, and R, we realize we at first overreacted. That is, our “best scientific theories are false” sounds like a much bigger deal than “Our 'best scientific theories' are false, but replaced by nearly identical theories that are for all practical purposes indiscernible from them.”[1]
All this assumes classical theists have made independent arguments for a concurrentist universe.
[1]Some Quineans would still dislike it, but that has to do with certain meta-ontological rules they set down for themselves at the start of their inquiries.
- Jason
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Thank you for your quick reply.
Thanks for the comments. About the first one -- I've heard this line before and I'm not sure who came up with it. It's definitely in Swinburn, but I don't know if he was it's originator. Either way, the reasoning is confused. Science does not just investigate repeatable events. Obvious counterexample: the big bang. Scientists do emphasize repeatability of experiments as part of the scientific method. But that has nothing to do with the phenomena studied by scientists. These need not be repeatable at all (it isn't even clear what that would mean).
Yes and I agree but the only reason why the big bang theory was even considered to be a theory was because we had repeatable experiments that gave us confidence that it did happen. You cannot say the same thing for every historical event / phenomena that has happened. Most historical events are analyzed based on archeology and writings of historians, there are no repeatable “scientific” experiments for them, so going back to the original point you cannot compare the two.
Airplanes do not defy the force of gravity. Gravity is still in effect, even for an airplane. It's just that there is an additional force, lift, which counteracts the force of gravity. So I think it's a mistake to say that we "override" natural laws in our everyday life.
Well airplanes do in a sense defy the force of gravity. Overriding does not mean that force of gravity is removed in an airplane (it is very much there) and I agree the additional force of lift counteracts it but that actually makes my point about the addition of God even more clearer. So I ask (in a slightly different way) why the addition of God who is not only the Creator of the universe but also its Sustainer cannot counteract any law(s) or even our best scientific theories?
- Greg
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Pragmatism about scientific theories is the controversial position -- its an extreme minority view. The view I've expressed is the consensus, but that doesn't mean it should be taken as authoritative. If you have some argument that my view is wrong and some other one is right, then I'm happy to hear it. Moreover, iwpoe is making a basic mistake, the pragmatist isn't. The pragmatist and I agree on what the scientific theory says. We disagree about the standards for what counts as a good theory. Iwpoe and I disagree about what the scientific theory says. Those are very different. So I don't think you analogy between the two disputes is apt.
This is not correct; one topic in the philosophy of science is the meaning of scientific statements. Not all pragmatists agree with realists about what scientific statements say. Some do not even think scientific statements should be read truth-functionally. Honestly, some realists do not think all scientific statements should be read truth-functionally (for instance, Nancy Cartwright, as well as realists who admit that some sciences invoke theoretical fictions).
That was the point of bringing up pragmatism, just to point out that it is entirely legitimate--and a question of philosophy of science, not science--to dispute that scientific theories mean exactly what they seem to say, read literally.
I have posted a few times about what I take to be the relationship between scientific theories and natural laws, and why I think that account undermines the argument you are trying to make. You haven't responded to them.
Last edited by Greg (4/16/2016 1:03 pm)
- KevinScharp
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Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?
Some people are starting to go in circles.
It's worth drawing the distinction between deism and concurrentism, Kevin. Deism says that God created the world, but doesn't need to conserve it in existence. It also says that after God creates the world, everything can operate through purely non-God causes. Concurrentism says that natural objects have real, built-in causal power, but that it can't be exercised for even a moment unless God “concurs” with such exercise as cooperating cause.[1]
I think that if deism is right, your argument succeeds.
Suppose, however, that concurrentism is right. If concurrentism is right, there is no reason to think that (say) Newton's second law would force its way through in miraculous cases. God could just withhold his consent from whatever natural effects would have otherwise occurred.[2]
I think this is why Christians seem so puzzlingly puzzled by your argument. They're concurrentists.
[1]There is also occasionalism. Occasionalism is the view that God, not the sun, melts my ice cream. Occasionalism is absurd.
[2]Our scientific theories might be perfectly accurate descriptions of how things operate when God concurs (e.g. powers theorists would say the behavior and effects associated with our best scientific theories otherwise occur normally as a result of created entities' natures).
Thanks, that's a helpful diagnosis. However, I'm not assuming that God cannot intervene in the world, so I'm not assuming that "(say) Newton's second law would force its way through in miraculous cases." Also the deist thinks that God does not intervene at all. One could imagine a view that God doesn't need to intervene but does intervene. That would be between deism and concurrentism as you've defined them. If I were a Christian I would take that as the default view. Also, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss occasionalism (again, if I were a Christian). It's not to dissimilar from the view that it's the particles that make up the sun that melt your ice cream, not the sun (a view familiar from heroic mereological positions like nihilism or organicism).
I think people are getting tripped up on thinking I'm talking about natural laws. It's this mistake that leads them to think I deny that God can intervene in the world.