Why the Teleological argument falls flat on it's face.

[MSC]

Some have said that the universe appears to have been designed intelligently and this has been cited as an argument in favour of a divine creator. 

Arguments have gone something along the lines of "Take the complexity of the human eye, whether it came into being 6000 years ago or evolved over millions upon millions of years, it looks kind of like how we would design a camera." 

There is a reason this argument falls flat on it's face. The same reason an argument in favour of the chicken coming before the egg would fall flat on it's face. There is a temporal bias at play wherein you see how we have designed things first and you see those same patterns in nature around you second; there lies the mistake because those patterns came first and are the basis of how we design things intelligently. The universe is not modelled after intelligence, rather our intelligence is modelled after the universe.

If you stumble upon a watch that may prove there is a watch maker but without time and space and the nature of those things being what they are, neither the watch or the watch maker would exist. Intelligence wouldn't exist. The universe was not designed intelligently, the universe designs intelligence. 

I am purely agnostic when it comes to the existence of the divine or some kind of creation. If something comes down from the sky with seemingly god like powers I'll be assuming technology that I don't understand before "This can only be a god." 

The Teleological argument has just never sat right with me due to this strange temporal bias at play within the minds of the religious and the spiritual. I'm open to hearing better arguments in favour of the existence of some kind of cosmic entity that actively cares about me as an individual but intelligent design just is not one of them. It would be like building a model of the golden gate bridge and then claiming the architect of golden gate bridge used your model. Unless you have a time machine it just doesn't make much sense. 

[exchemist]

4 hours ago, MSC said:

Some have said that the universe appears to have been designed intelligently and this has been cited as an argument in favour of a divine creator. 

Arguments have gone something along the lines of "Take the complexity of the human eye, whether it came into being 6000 years ago or evolved over millions upon millions of years, it looks kind of like how we would design a camera." 

There is a reason this argument falls flat on it's face. The same reason an argument in favour of the chicken coming before the egg would fall flat on it's face. There is a temporal bias at play wherein you see how we have designed things first and you see those same patterns in nature around you second; there lies the mistake because those patterns came first and are the basis of how we design things intelligently. The universe is not modelled after intelligence, rather our intelligence is modelled after the universe.

If you stumble upon a watch that may prove there is a watch maker but without time and space and the nature of those things being what they are, neither the watch or the watch maker would exist. Intelligence wouldn't exist. The universe was not designed intelligently, the universe designs intelligence. 

I am purely agnostic when it comes to the existence of the divine or some kind of creation. If something comes down from the sky with seemingly god like powers I'll be assuming technology that I don't understand before "This can only be a god." 

The Teleological argument has just never sat right with me due to this strange temporal bias at play within the minds of the religious and the spiritual. I'm open to hearing better arguments in favour of the existence of some kind of cosmic entity that actively cares about me as an individual but intelligent design just is not one of them. It would be like building a model of the golden gate bridge and then claiming the architect of golden gate bridge used your model. Unless you have a time machine it just doesn't make much sense. 

Aren’t you flogging a dead horse? ID was blown out of the water years ago and its inventor, the lawyer Philip E Johnson, has been dead for some years. The Argument from Design was taken apart by numerous people when ID was still a thing. Does anyone still use it now?

[MSC]

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

Aren’t you flogging a dead horse? ID was blown out of the water years ago and its inventor, the lawyer Philip E Johnson, has been dead for some years. The Argument from Design was taken apart by numerous people when ID was still a thing. Does anyone still use it now?

Unfortunately yes, people still use it. Not so much in contemporary philosophy but it is still used. I've also never really heard this argument against it used very much at all. 

So I don't think I'm flogging a dead horse in the sense that religion still exists and the religious still use variations of this argument. 

Edited June 3 by MSC
Spelling

[exchemist]

1 minute ago, MSC said:

Unfortunately yes, people still use it. Not so much in contemporary philosophy but it is still used. I've also never really heard this argument against it used very much at all. 

So I don't think I'm flogging a dead horse in the sense that religion still exists and the religious still use variations of this argument. 

OK. Must admit I have not come across this being used in religion recently - except perhaps in the widest sense that the order in the universe (i.e. what we sometimes call the "laws" of nature) may be seen by religiously inclined people as due to a creator (or in Einstein and Spinoza's case, as actually being the creator).

[MSC]

Just now, exchemist said:

OK. Must admit I have not come across this being used in religion recently - except perhaps in the widest sense that the order in the universe (i.e. what we sometimes call the "laws" of nature) may be seen by religiously inclined people as due to a creator (or in Einstein and Spinoza's case, as actually being the creator).

It depends on what you mean by being used as it may be a vast difference in venue that is driving our views. To be clear the people I've heard using this aren't academic philosophers or theologians but just your everyday average Muslims and Christians. 

There is another area, the teaching venue where you will hear about ID, in the sense that students in the right class or course will be told about ID as part of the history of philosophy and may even be assigned a task of providing arguments for or against it themselves. 

Contemporary philosophy has moved on but public philosophy lags behind due to the seemingly esoteric nature of today's philosophy to the layman.

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

It depends on what you mean by being used as it may be a vast difference in venue that is driving our views. To be clear the people I've heard using this aren't academic philosophers or theologians but just your everyday average Muslims and Christians. 

There is another area, the teaching venue where you will hear about ID, in the sense that students in the right class or course will be told about ID as part of the history of philosophy and may even be assigned a task of providing arguments for or against it themselves. 

Contemporary philosophy has moved on but public philosophy lags behind due to the seemingly esoteric nature of today's philosophy to the layman.

OK yes certainly, the religious “man in the street” may still cling to some kind of argument from design, without having thought much about it, especially if he has little familiarity with science I suppose. 
 

I’ve always been struck by the way in which the “laws of nature” bring order out of  the randomness at the molecular level, e.g.  in kinetic theory and statistical thermodynamics. Seems almost biblical 😉

[MSC]

4 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Seems almost biblical

Have ye a specific verse in mind?

[TheVat]

Hume shot the TA down neatly with his "Philo" essays.  Later thinkers, on to Dawkins and The Blind Watchmaker, elaborated those well.  As does your temporal argument, @MSC.  The natural order of the universe, like the fine structure constant, leads naturally to stable atoms, self-replicating chemistry, and organisms that gain selective advantage by gathering photons ---> eyeball.  The universe has the quality of not being chaotic but allowing randomness. 

 

 

[exchemist]

5 minutes ago, MSC said:

Have ye a specific verse in mind?

No, just thinking of the Genesis creation accounts and thinking of Einstein’s suggestion that the laws of nature may be, in effect, god.

[TheVat]

9 minutes ago, MSC said:

Have ye a specific verse in mind?

There shall, in that time, be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi-- with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock. Yea, it is written in the book of Cyril that, in that time, shall the third one...

[MSC]

37 minutes ago, TheVat said:

There shall, in that time, be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi-- with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock. Yea, it is written in the book of Cyril that, in that time, shall the third one...

Definitely not the Messiah, just a very boring prophet. 

57 minutes ago, exchemist said:

No, just thinking of the Genesis creation accounts and thinking of Einstein’s suggestion that the laws of nature may be, in effect, god.

If you put the laws of nature through apotheosis and accord them divinity then I can see how that interpretation could have some merit. This makes me ask though; Are the laws of nature something to be worshipped, understood or both? Would it make any sense for me to say grace by thanking the laws of nature for making my food possible or is it enough to know and understand how it works? To me, a god is something which has to have some form of sentience and awareness surpassing our levels of those. I don't think the laws of nature meet that definition. 

 

[joigus]

36 minutes ago, MSC said:

Definitely not the Messiah, just a very boring prophet. 

That's from Life of Brian, if I'm not mistaken.

 

I testify to the fact that the teleological argument has been receiving some attention lately. More of a cardiac massage, IMO.

[MSC]

4 minutes ago, joigus said:

That's from Life of Brian, if I'm not mistaken

You are not mistaken and have great taste just like @TheVat

5 minutes ago, joigus said:

testify to the fact that the teleological argument has been receiving some attention lately. More of a cardiac massage, IMO.

Oh so then maybe I'm not flogging a dead horse but putting a bullet into the brain of a would be zombie horse. 

That said you don't have to go very far back into the history of philosophy to realise that due to human nature being what it is, philosophers often find a need to repeat themselves and considering the state of the world right now and then, can you really blame them? Whether it's the ten commandments or contemporary ethicists we still find ourselves having to keep revisiting why murder is wrong. So where ID is concerned, it will keep rearing it's head and we'll keep doing our best to put it back down and revise what we know at each stage to speak to the times. 

I think what gives my temporal counter-argument an edge is it is very easy to explain.

[Genady]

13 hours ago, MSC said:

those patterns came first and are the basis of how we design things intelligently

No, they are not. Except very few, very rare cases.

[MSC]

17 minutes ago, Genady said:

No, they are not. Except very few, very rare cases.

Explain what you mean.

[Genady]

Just now, MSC said:

Explain what you mean.

Humans do not design things by following designs they observe in nature.

[joigus]

33 minutes ago, MSC said:

Oh so then maybe I'm not flogging a dead horse but putting a bullet into the brain of a would be zombie horse. 

I don't think so. AAMOF, ideas like "we live in a simulation" or panspermia sound to me dangerously close to trying to revive the idea of an intelligent creator, but with an aura of scientism about it.

All of them (and the ones to come) equally vulnerable to the infinite-regression argument: Who simulated the simulators?, and Who seeded the seeders? etc.

[MSC]

11 minutes ago, joigus said:

don't think so. AAMOF, ideas like "we live in a simulation" or panspermia sound to me dangerously close to trying to revive the idea of an intelligent creator, but with an aura of scientism about it.

Agreed. I've always leaned more toward the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum phenomena so I don't believe we are in a simulation and don't hold with this 50/50 chance nonsense of being in one. I like the bayesian explanations as to why that 50/50 number is a load of waffle but I wouldn't do a good job of explaining it. 

 

19 minutes ago, joigus said:

All of them (and the ones to come) equally vulnerable to the infinite-regression argument: Who simulated the simulators?, and Who seeded the seeders? etc

Yup. The day(that probably won't come) someone proves we are in a simulation is the day the simulator has to realise they are probably in one too. 

That said as literary devices and storytelling mediums, simulation theory and many worlds theory are very entertaining, despite being scientifically unsound. 

33 minutes ago, Genady said:

Humans do not design things by following designs they observe in nature.

That's literally all we do and it's completely unavoidable. 

[Genady]

8 minutes ago, MSC said:

That's literally all we do and it's completely unavoidable.

No, it is literally what we do not do, did not do, and will not do.

 

[TheVat]

50 minutes ago, Genady said:

Humans do not design things by following designs they observe in nature.

 

😁

[MSC]

4 minutes ago, Genady said:

No, it is literally what we do not do, did not do, and will not do.

 

Give examples. Mine are very simple. Let's look at the concept of shelter. We build very complex shelters now but at one point our ancestors switched from natural shelters to crafted shelters. The required features for crafted shelters were modelled after natural forms of shelter. Here is an example from contemporary expressive language. If I decide that I'm going to put a pool table, a bar, a tv, a gaming system in my basement as a place I can go to find some solitude, why would I affectionately refer to said sanctuary as a man-cave?

2 minutes ago, TheVat said:

 

😁

Sometimes a picture really does say more than words. Updoot. 

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, TheVat said:

 

😁

Yep. This is what happens when they try.

[MSC]

Seriously as soon as you commit to making a 2D or a 3D objects, nature is already deciding what all the probable outcomes are. 

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, MSC said:

Give examples. Mine are very simple. Let's look at the concept of shelter. We build very complex shelters now but at one point our ancestors switched from natural shelters to crafted shelters. The required features for crafted shelters were modelled after natural forms of shelter. Here is an example from contemporary expressive language. If I decide that I'm going to put a pool table, a bar, a tv, a gaming system in my basement as a place I can go to find some solitude, why would I affectionately refer to said sanctuary as a man-cave?

Airplanes do not fly like birds.

Submarines do not swim like fish.

Automobiles do not move like horses.

Computers do not work like brains.

...

Most of our designs do not have even functional analogs in nature. Telescopes. Spaceraft. Electronics. Assembly lines. Transmitters. Refrigerators. Steam engines. Wheels. Railroad. SCUBA. 

The list of examples is endless.

 

[TheVat]

@MSC and @Genady

I think you two fellows are taking slightly different meanings on "design from nature."  My ornithopter was to make the point that we see evolved structures in nature but then will innovate something different that is actually easier to craft and works better.  

I think MSC is saying that nature dictates certain structures because they just make sense for a purpose.  A camera has to project an image onto an emulsion or CCD through a lens, the way an eye projects an image onto the retina through a lens, because the natural laws of optics suggest this is the way to do it.

Genady is stressing that we seek certain goals in engineering something, but that we take our cue from natural laws and then go our own direction on innovating something.  So we get jets instead of ornithopters, extension ladders instead of knotted vines, IC engines instead of mitochonddria, wheels instead of artificial feet, and so on.  

x-post with Genady