Review: Theism and Explanation

[QuestionMark]

If we were designed like every other creature on earth then we wouldn't be unique.

Come on JM, that was an easy one.

[JustMyron]

Ah, so our "design" can't possibly be flawed, because we're human beings and human beings are by definition awesomer than anything else ever, even if they're clearly not because other animals can do things we can't. We can time travel, metaphorically speaking. Gotcha.

Why didn't you say so earlier? Would have saved me a bunch of time if I'd known you'd pull a "but we can time travel  " out of your arse rather than admit to the possibility you might be wrong.

Counterpoint: We can't time travel.

[QuestionMark]

Actually we can time travel. One of the things that sets humans apart from animals is a very well developed sense of time, progression, and sequence. We can think far ahead and plan our actions, and we can think far behind and learn from our mistakes in a very abstract way.

Anyway, I'm not saying we can't possibly be flawed, I'm just saying your arguments are far too weak to say confidently that we ARE flawed. If you make a robot to work under water it doesn't need a very serious cooling system, because the water will cool it. If you make humans to eat fruit all day, they don't need a gene for vitamin C. And that's just a creative explanation, I have no idea why God would make us without that gene, or even if He did. Perhaps there was a gene and it has become corrupt. Who knows. You don't :D

[JustMyron]

Actually we can time travel. One of the things that sets humans apart from animals is a very well developed sense of time, progression, and sequence. We can think far ahead and plan our actions, and we can think far behind and learn from our mistakes in a very abstract way.

QM, other animals can reason and remember, just like we can. I even recall a study (although I'm not sure I could find a link for you now, this was a while ago) where it was found that apes can do basic math in their heads better than most college students.

[QuestionMark]

Really. If other animals can reason and remember just like we can, why don't they come on the forums and talk with us?

Maybe they are so advanced they realized that nothing gets accomplished on forums?

[JustMyron]

I have no idea why God would make us without that gene

And yet you insist there must be a good reason for it, so that you can hold onto your belief that human beings are well designed. And I say "if it looks like a flaw, most likely it's a flaw". If you have to admit that maybe we were designed with this gene, then even you are admitting that it appears we'd be better off if we had that gene. Which is what I was saying. Instead of insisting on the possibility that maybe we were designed perfect and just became imperfect over time for some reason you can't provide, why not just admit that it appears we weren't designed at all, and our imperfections are because we evolved, and evolution doesn't give perfect results, it just gets pretty close over time.

Common sense.

Really. If other animals can reason and remember just like we can, why don't they come on the forums and talk with us?

I'm going to assume this is not a serious question. It's too silly to even bother answering.

[QuestionMark]

If by good you mean purely functional then no I don't insist there's a good reason for these 'flaws'. I think functionally God designed us poorer than we could have been. As I already stated, we could theoretically go without sleep, or material sustenance, or air for that matter. God could have done whatever He wanted. But the Bible is pretty clear about making us understand that we are creatures, and though we may be like gods on the earth we should be humble about it since we still are creatures.

As for common sense, you might want to check yourself on some of the things you've been spouting lately about animals and engineering when you have no knowledge of them.

And yes, it was tongue in cheek, because you couldn't seriously be saying that animals have the same mental faculties as humans. The obvious proof is that they don't, they haven't split the atom, discovered the electron, used fire, developed syntactical language, or any of the other thousand things that humans use day to day to get on a forum and type their thoughts to people in thousands of locations thousands of miles away.

If you think animals and humans are the same, it is YOU who has to go in search of common sense.

[Waldo]

Animals have souls.  They were created just a little below man, who was created a little below angels.  Same Creator.  I do not doubt His ability to have breathed into them the same breath of life He breathed into the man.  Nor do I doubt His ability to make them as intelligent in their own enviornment.  He formed them out of the same dust of the earth as He did the man.

[JustMyron]

QM, we're animals, just like other animals. Yes, we can do some things better than other animals, but they can do some things better than us, too. We aren't a superior species, we're just different. We are basically the same as we have been for millennia, well before splitting the atom or inventing the Internet. Without large numbers of us working together and a base of knowledge to work with, there are a lot of animals that could out compete us in most ecological niches. A very, very slight edge in some forms of intelligence, plus a healthy dose of luck, has allowed us to slowly take space from the other species on the planet, but the difference between us and them is still very, very slight, and in almost all cases and situations except the technological cocoon we have created for ourselves, we are at a disadvantage to other animals. Put you down naked in a forest with no tools, so that you can't stand on the shoulders of other human beings, and let's see how much smarter than other animals you are.

It's kind of funny that you talk of humility and human superiority to all other forms of life in the same post without seeing the contradiction.

As for the argument you are now making, that we could be better than we are (although you contend without evidence that the reason we're not is because God decided to make us flawed), thanks for admitting I was right, that we could have been engineered better, and as we come to understand more about how we work, we will be able to re-engineer ourselves in ways that represent improvements. Probably within our lifetimes, we'll be able to fix that vitamin C defect, if we want.

Now, let's review the flow of the conversation so far:

QM: Just because you can reverse engineer something doesn't mean it wasn't designed.
JM: That's true, but if we can reverse engineer something and then reengineer it better than it was, we can reasonably infer that it wasn't designed by an all-powerful and all knowing designer.
QM: (Implicitly accepting the premise that design flaws would indicate a non-omnipotent or non-omniscient designer, without stating this so as to leave himself an out for later in case things didn't go well): What could you reengineer?
JM: Here are a few things.
QM: Those don't work because _____
Others: QM, you're not making sense.
JM: QM, you're not making sense
QM: Yes I am!
JM: No, you're not. Here's why.
QM: OK, well, perhaps God designed us flawed, but that doesn't mean we weren't designed by God. And maybe he didn't design us flawed, you don't know, maybe there could be a reason why making us better would be worse, you're not making sense, you're not an engineer! Human beings are special!
JM: No, they're not. Human beings are animals.
QM: If we're animals, why aren't other animals talking to us on the forum?

You're getting increasingly incoherent and off track. Here's the bottom line: You have effectively acknowledged that if we are designed, we are designed with flaws built in. A perfect designer deliberately designing something flawed doesn't make sense unless you're so wedded to the idea of a perfect designer you just can't let it go. Certainly flaws aren't evidence for a perfect designer, and the best you can do is try to undermine the idea that they are evidence against (which you didn't try to do at first, because you knew it was a relatively untenable position). I contend instead that we are not designed by an omnipotent, omniscient creator. I welcome the forum to review this conversation, and decide for themselves who is being more reasonable.

[QuestionMark]

Heh.

[Pastafarian]

JM you rock dude! It's always so hard for me to articulate exactly HOW an argument is just mental gymnastics, devoid of sense but you're like a surgeon in this thread.

QM, knowing that I have respect for your intelligence, can you see what happened here? Seriously, with love and respect, brother, can you see how you turned off your reason in favour of a contortionist's act?
I'm just really interested to know is all   

[QuestionMark]

Pastaferian, at what point was my reasoning flawed, brother?

[Pastafarian]

I think JM was pretty damn clear on that!
Your response, I assume, I hope, testifies to that. Right?
 

[QuestionMark]

Pastaferian,
At what point was my reasoning flawed, brother?

[Pastafarian]

Ever the artful dodger huh?

Look Jim, a triple sumersault with a corkskrew armpit pullup, finished with a tuck and roll. I think he'll seal the win with that one.

Pity.

[Pastafarian]

I think JM was pretty damn clear on that!
Your response, I assume, I hope, testifies to that. Right?
 

are you hoping we'll repeat the same moves if 3 times in a row so you can claim a draw? Lol
bump. What does ''meh" mean?

[QuestionMark]

Pasta,
Do you know if I made any errors in reasoning or fact?

[Pastafarian]

Reasoning. How can there be any "facts" when discussing a hypothetical perfect design/designer for an imperfect product of evolution?!
But you know that, which is why "meh" is all you have to say to JM at this point.

"You're getting increasingly incoherent and off track. Here's the bottom line: You have effectively acknowledged that if we are designed, we are designed with flaws built in. A perfect designer deliberately designing something flawed doesn't make sense unless you're so wedded to the idea of a perfect designer you just can't let it go. Certainly flaws aren't evidence for a perfect designer, and the best you can do is try to undermine the idea that they are evidence against (which you didn't try to do at first, because you knew it was a relatively untenable position). I contend instead that we are not designed by an omnipotent, omniscient creator. I welcome the forum to review this conversation, and decide for themselves who is being more reasonable."

[Switch]

Dude, Newton is a Christian. He didn't believe that it was just nature, and He didn't believe it was a miracle. He believed that it was a work of God(like all of nature) that followed orderly laws because God is a masterful designer.

But how do you know that he held that specific view? All Christians don't believe the same things, and from my own reading Newton believed that the motion of the planets was created and maintained by God and not the laws of nature.

You're really not though. If God designed the rules, and ordered them to turn out in a certain way then you can't say God didn't do it. How many times do I have to say this? If it's hard to prove God, it's harder to disprove God. You can't say "God didn't do it", it's harder to prove that than to prove that God did do it.

No, you'd have to say that the rules God made are the reason. And whether God made the rules or not is a separate debate. I don't believe he did because I don't think he exists for a variety of reasons.

That might be your personal opinion, but you haven't shown that it is a correct opinion. Besides, if mere nature can account for the happenings of history, why introduce God to explain it?

Well mere nature can't, but even if it could it's not the best explanation. Probability can account for a lot, but that doesn't mean probability is the answer.
[/quote]

Why can't mere nature account for it? And why is God the best explanation?

[Switch]

And when the poor realize that they're not poor any more but have eternal reserves of energy, how will you stop them from using this power for evil?

If I was all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good then I would simply change the desires of all the people to completely good desires, I'd grant them omniscience and omnipotence. That way they would always know the right thing to do, have the power to do the right thing, and of course being all good they would do the right thing. People take whatever options they see and they choose the one that they believe bestfits their desires, you know.

Can anyone say: U-N-F-A-L-S-I-F-I-A-B-L-E?

I can say falsifiable, it's a fun word to say. :)
[/quote]


How are your views on God falsifiable at all?

[QuestionMark]

"You're getting increasingly incoherent and off track. Here's the bottom line: You have effectively acknowledged that if we are designed, we are designed with flaws built in.

If God wants us to be humble, then 'flaws' could actually be limitations. If He wants us to realize our dependence on other people, then we would have needs not satisfied by ourselves. If He wants us to know that we are connected meaningfully to a place, then we'd have requirements met by that place. Design flaws are in the eye of the beholder. One designer has one task in mind, and another a different one.
     It would be extremely hard(if not impossible) to tell what was a flaw and what was purposeful unless you knew the engineer intimately. What I know about God from the Bible fits our apparent flaws as I mentioned: We rest at night so that we do not labor non stop(we are human beings, not human doings), we need one day in seven to cease entirely from our labor(we should be thinking about our days meaningfully, not of ourselves as incessant machines), if we were to eat fruit as a major part of our diet(being placed as we first were in a fruit garden) then we wouldn't have a significant problem finding vitamin C.
     There is a known history of people saying that humans have design flaws for things like the thymus, appendix, and various other 'vestigial organs' but these lists have been so greatly reduced that most are cautionary toward using the concept at all. Remember we used have this concept called junk DNA, and now we find out it actually has regulatory functions and no one knows if there is any significant amount of 'junk' DNA in our genome at all.
     In short, if there were even one human or a group of humans that were so great at engineering and so insightful that they could design something perfectly for their own purposes THEY STILL WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SAY THAT SOME OTHER DESIGN WAS WRONG, WITHOUT KNOWING THE INTENT OF THE DESIGNER. But that's a non issue too, because JM isn't even a reasonably good engineer. In his world, armpit smells are more culpable for God than purposeful rape(by the way he talks) by a human. Not only is JM biased, but he's just not of the quality of intelligence that you'd want to judge a person who potentially created the universe.

A perfect designer deliberately designing something flawed doesn't make sense unless you're so wedded to the idea of a perfect designer you just can't let it go. Certainly flaws aren't evidence for a perfect designer, and the best you can do is try to undermine the idea that they are evidence against (which you didn't try to do at first, because you knew it was a relatively untenable position). I contend instead that we are not designed by an omnipotent, omniscient creator. I welcome the forum to review this conversation, and decide for themselves who is being more reasonable."

I contend that God did not design us to be God, but rather humans. We are the crowning achievement of earth, but when it comes to realms beyond our own we are the lowest. That's how it was meant to be.

“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Hebrews 2

[QuestionMark]

If I was all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good then I would simply change the desires of all the people to completely good desires, I'd grant them omniscience and omnipotence.

Yes, I know you hate yourself so much you can't tolerate free will. You don't have to keep saying it.

How are your views on God falsifiable at all?

In the sweet by and by, I will see my maker and know Him even as I am fully known.

[JustMyron]

If I was all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good then I would simply change the desires of all the people to completely good desires, I'd grant them omniscience and omnipotence.

Yes, I know you hate yourself so much you can't tolerate free will. You don't have to keep saying it.

What you say he said bears no resemblance to what he actually said.

[Pastafarian]

I get what you're saying QM but, well we don't need to know who the engineer of an airiplane is, for example, to see flaws in it's design.

Humans were not designed though, and your tying your mind in knots trying to make clear shortfalls in our apparent design fit the model of a perfect design is transparent: god MADE us perfectly, even with our imperfections... Ok then.   

[JustMyron]

As I've said before:

"You're getting increasingly incoherent

For example:

Can anyone say: U-N-F-A-L-S-I-F-I-A-B-L-E?

I can say falsifiable, it's a fun word to say. :)

But then you also say:

It would be extremely hard(if not impossible) to tell what was a flaw and what was purposeful

On the one hand, you say that your belief that we are designed is falsifiable, and on the other you say that it is impossible to falsify (until after you're dead, when you assume you will get to know God).

When people talk about falsifiability, they're talking (naturally, as I'm pretty sure you're aware) about whether you might possibly admit you're wrong based on any argument they might possibly make. "I'm going to keep this belief until I'm dead, and then I believe I'll find out if I'm right or not" = "my belief is not falsifiable".

[Switch]

I don't hate myself, and that comment strikes me as extremely puzzling.

Nor do I disbelieve in free will. I just happen to have a coherent and sensible conception of what it is.

[Pastafarian]

In the sweet by and by?!
I missed that first time. Who talks that way?

[Waldo]

Christian song writers.  We write and sing songs to fit our indoctrination.

[Pastafarian]

yes I know that Waldo. I'm a songwriter/producer by trade. I used to write worship songs.
But nought hast I been sorely tempted to pen such pious bullocks. Uh uh, no masser, not meums sir.
It's frikkin 2010 for goodness sake! Let's get real people 

Speaking in Christianese is a symptom of piety. Piety is a symptom of bulls**t.

[QuestionMark]

I get what you're saying QM but, well we don't need to know who the engineer of an airiplane is, for example, to see flaws in it's design.

Humans were not designed though, and your tying your mind in knots trying to make clear shortfalls in our apparent design fit the model of a perfect design is transparent: god MADE us perfectly, even with our imperfections... Ok then.  

Pasta, do you know what humility is? I'll assume you do and ask the next question, what natural reason does a person with no flaws retain so that humility applies to them? I don't think it does. I think humility naturally applies to conscious beings who have shortcomings. If they were better than natural(better than instinctual animals) then humility might apply to a compassionate being even without shortcomings, but if nothing essential in one's character forces you to be compassionate then how would humility apply to you? I don't think it would.

From the natural perspective, if God made us without shortcomings or weaknesses then we would have no natural reason to be humble. Since God created us with the stated purpose of being servants and image bearers(you could say standard bearer, if you think in military terms) it would be improper to have us be without shortcomings and it would be improper for us to disparage God by nature. So He made us higher than every creature on earth in natural power, and lower than every creature in heaven. This was revealed in the Bible and beforehand, long before man ever started critiquing his own body's engineering.

This may seem confusing to you because you come from a fundamentally insane perspective of naturalism... but it's not that hard to understand.