Patter/design or infinite regress[]
p.114, Dawkins wrote
- ......This, in a nutshell, is the creationist's favourite argument - an argument that could be made only by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection: somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas - in the relevant sense of chance - it is the opposite............
p.114, Dawkins wrote
- ....A deep understanding of Darwinism teaches us to be wary of the easy assumption that design is the only alternative to chance, and teaches us to seek out graded ramps of slowly increasing complexity......
Applying Dakwins logic to his very sentence itself reveals its own self-refutational nature. Since design/chance isn't our only dichotomy then on what basis is Dawkins sentence either designed or the result of chance? His sentence could be for some other yet to be determined reason beyond Pattern or design, an infinite number or reasons in-fact, inducing infinite regress. It violates the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle law of excluded middle: either something is designed or not designed, there are no third option or it risks inducing an infinite number of options resulting in infinite suspension of judgement.
In philosophy it is recognized that any argument which leads to infinite regress is a Logical fallacy. The Platonic binary opposite of increasing is regressing , language derives its meaning strictly from semantic opposites as established by Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End Himself - Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Author and Finisher of our faith. The law of non-contradiction is predicated on the antonymity of contradiction the semantic contrast to non-contradiction.
Do you accept or reject Platonic primary binary opposites? A rejection has to implicitly assume that rejection is the opposite of acceptance and is thus self-refutational, inducing infinitism. The irony in atheists argument that there is no God is that the only way this could make sense is as the Platonic contrast to there being a God: God either exists or he doesn't . Thus the very language they use to deny His existence , implicitly assumes what they try to deny, a vivid example of what Freud would have termed the return of the Platonic repressed.
Carl Sagan at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan wrote: ...... Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence ........ The problem with Sagan's Positivism is that since the sentence itself is an extraordinary claim it needs extraordinary evidence itself. It conflicts with Christ's teaching on having faith the size of musterd seed. Various incantations of Positivism , verificationism is the central rhetorical trope in atheist polemics.
Osborne quoting Charles Kingsley 1922 Aug. 5th Nytimes: ".. Darwin is conquering everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by the mere force of truth and fact. The one or two who hold out against Darwin are forced to try all sorts of subterfuges as to fact or else by invoking the tedium theologium.... The state of the scientific mind; they find that now they have got rid of an interfering God - a master magician as I call it -- they have to choose between the absolute empire of accident and a living, immanent, ever-working God..." From http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C05E7DA1F30EE3ABC4D53DFB5668389639EDE&scp=1&sq=henry+fairfield+osborn&st=p
Platonic primary binary opposites regulates the flow of our mental traffic, the quote from Kingsley is predicated on the design/chance or non-random/random dichotomy. A driver at a traffic robot has only one of two choices with his vehicle: drive or remain stationary. If there is an infinite number of options beyond drive/stop, non-random/random and something/nothing then our mental traffic will freeze in an infinite suspension of judgement.
YEC believe that as created beings they neither create nor destroy information but only express it. Deism leads to infinite regress, the sentence: We don't know whether God exists or not is self-refutational because it means that we don't know whether the sentence itself is designed or not. The premise with the YEC Platonic argument is that Design can only beget design. Deism reduces to the sentence: We don't know whether human designers itself needs a Designer. Therefore we don't know whether the sentence itself is designed. Deism attempts to avoid the the negative term Atheism and the way this negativity contrasts with the positive affirmation of hope by theists.
In the beginning there was nothing and then something. How did nothing spawn everything? Note that woven into the question is the assumption of Platonic opposites nothing/something: there are no infinite options beyond nothing and something. What is significant about the atheist replies in various debates to the question is their unconscious assumption that the only answer to the question that makes sense will assume the nothing/something Platonic opposite. Aristotle believed the universe existed for eternity.
The sentence: I only accept science is itself not scientific and thus self-refutational. The sentence: I only accept those things that be not as though they were by faith doesn't contradict itself. Or another version: I only accept unfalsifiable(faith) propositions is itself not falsifiable and thus doesn't contradict itself. It avoids at the very least being self-refutational. Therefore at the very least the YEC position doesn't contradict itself in contrast to the Atheist position which at the very least contradicts itself. Applying the axiom of Platonic opposites to my very sentence reveals that it is only logically consistent if we assume that atheism derives its meaning as the semantic opposite of theism: Theism is positive affirmation and atheism is forced into a corrosive negative opposite by the very structure of the Language they try to deny.
Falsifiability isn't falsifiable, preventing Münchhausen infinitism. Ultimate reality must not be falsifiable or it would raise the question as to how one would falsify such and then falsify it again into infinity. Evidence itself has no evidence, falsifiability can't be falsified. This prevents infinitism, for if evidence itself had evidence, it would raise the question as to what it in turn would have evidence for. Faith and axioms prevents infinite regress of metaphor, inference and observation. The integer axiomatic system is the one we express our language in, therefore there is something about our language that we know to be true but won't be able to prove. What is referred to as 'evidence' is usually a metaphor for inference: a rock falling is an observation, but gravity is an inference.
The atheist asserts he only accepts evidence or that he has no beliefs. Because he believes his very sentence, he therefore asserts his belief that he has no belief. Even the act of doubting presusposes faith - the faith of the doubt. Therefore 'evidence', 'proof', 'scientific', 'falsifiable', 'tests' should be used as inference, and inference based on consciousness, the very act of measuring is an inference.
Numbers can't be measured[]
All falsifiable constructs involves the measurement of something using numbers, but numbers themselves can't be measured as pointed out by Fleeming Jenkin, this intuitively reflects Godel's incompleteness theorem : there is something about Popper falsifiability itself that can't be falsified. By extension language itself can't be measured yet all falsifiable physics equations are sentences. If numbers themselves could be measured it would raise the question as to what would measure such measurement and then the measurement of such measurement ad-infinitum: God constructed numbers so they can't be measured to avoid infinite regress. Numbers is a form of language, Jesus Christ as God, who is Language incarnate can't be measured, our language itself is bound and instantiated by Language Himself, which is why Antony Flew's falsification tests for God isn't raised.
God became a man Jesus Christ and said I am Language, but because language, numbers can't be measured God can't be measured. The number 7 is language, it is neither here nor there, it has no physical location. philosophyideas.com states that redness causes nothing to happen in the physical world, unless a consciousness experiences it. I extend this argument by noting that numbers don't cause anything to happen unless a consciousness implements it(philosphy#Brian Ellis). To falsify something is to measure something: that which is defined as unmeasurable is therefore unfalsifiable, hence Antony Flew's falsification questions aren't raised to begin with by logical necessity because it induces a Münchhausen Trilemmian regressive argument.
From the Münchhausen Trilemma we deduced that Platonic opposites is the axiomatic assumption woven into the fabric of our language that avoids a regressive argument. Our choices are between absolute certainty generated by bootstrapping the Platonic nature of our language into our conclusions in a virtuous circle or infinite regress.
Dawkins[]
- Dawkins wrote ...p.117 ...Who, before Darwin, could have guessed that something so apparently designed as a dragonfly's wing or an eagle's eye WAS really the end product of a long sequence of non-random but purely natural causes?..
Dawkins is bastardizing syntax, formulating a Meaningless sentence in order to revise terminology: non-random is the semantic opposite of natural causes(random). A rock falling off a mountain after the tornado struck, smashing the house is a random or natural cause. Natural causes are random by logical necessity and Dictionary of 1850 definition.
There was a perception before Darwin and a perception after Darwin. Before Darwin it was generally viewed that nature is the product of a non-random(God) cause. After Darwin it was what Charles Kingsley called the ...absolute empire of accident ...., therefore the was on p.117 should have been a weren't to designate the differences before the Platonic opposite of after. Before Darwin the view was non-random(God), after Darwin it was random accidents, with random the Platonic opposite of non-random(Purpose1.)
Dawkins should have written on p.117 ...Historically who(Kingsley) before Darwin, could have guessed that something so apparently designed as a dragonfly's wing or an eagle's eye WEREN'T really the end product of a non-random designer(God) but a long sequence of purely natural causes?..
From the premise that a meaningful sentence assumes Platonic opposites, Richard Dawkins formulated a meaningless sentence and attempted to equate randomness with non-randomness resulting in a suspension of judgement. Paul wrote that Christians judge everything keeping the good and discarding the bad. Dawkins deceitfully inserted was instead of weren't or were not revising history as laid down by Kingsley, Osborn, Prof. Janet, Charles Hodge, Darwin. (On an historical note Paul Janet was the first who asked whether Natural Selection can't be formulated in the design or non-random sense).
Chance was a non-sequitur conclusion derived from the Adaptation premise by Darwin and Aristotle . Chance never followed logically from its tautological formulation and the chance conclusion was Popper falsified with the discovery of the complexity of the cell. Tautologies can't be falsified but this doesn't mean that the conclusions themselves can't b e falsified. Dawkins mangled grammar itself, formulating a Meaningless sentence in his book to escape the only Platonic alternative to chance,randomness: non-randomness.
Patrick Matthew[]
Patrick Matthew, who coined but didn't originate the concept of "natural means of chance,random like competitive selection" favoring the strong stated in his letter to Darwin 1872 -
- ".....A sentiment of beauty pervading Nature .... affords evidence of intellect. This principle of beauty is clearly from design & cannot be accounted for by natural selection. Could any fitness of things contrive a rose...I see it stated that you cannot account for useless parts by the laws of variation & competition, general laws cannot provide against accidents in all cases..........."
Matthew clearly contrasts the concept of 'chance'/accidents as binary opposite to 'design', with chance represented symbolically by Darwin with the term Natural Selection, the contracted shorthand for Matthew's natural means of competitive preservation of favorable attributes in the struggle(fitness) of life. Dawkins is trying to revise history form the fact that in the 19th century Language itself was used in terms of Platonic opposites.
In 1991 the AAASstatedthatevolution happens by chance. Journalist JerryAdler described ns as random. Fox TV catholic priest Jonathan FoxnewsJonathanPragmatics describes ns as random natural selection. In a text book 1995 by Kenneth Miller natural selection was labeled random by a co-author of the book (get citations). The concept that Darwin had with ns was chance as pointed out by Henry Osborn in NYtime article 1922 and by John Burroughsinhisarticle 1922 in The Atlantic. 5 August 1922 NYtimes Osborn wrote: "....happening by chance as Darwin had at one time supposed..." Burroughs wrote "....The Last Harvest(1922) ...Try to think of that wonderful organ, the eye, with all its marvelous powers and adaptations, as the result of what we call chance or Natural Selection. Well may Darwin have said that the eye made him shudder when he tried to account for it by Natural Selection. Why, its adaptations in one respect alone, minor though they be, are enough to stagger any number of selectionists... ..."
In 1874 Charles Hodge views OoS as denying all design(Wells did his thesis on Hodge). Hodge wrote "...Mr. Darwin says, They are due to the gradual and undesigned accumulationof slight variations...." Professor Paul Janet wrote of Mr. Darwin's theory. "According to us," he says, "the true stumbling-block of Mr. Darwin's theory, the perilous and slippery point, is the passage from artificial to natural selection; it is when he wants to establish that a blind and designless nature has been able to obtain, by the occurrence of circumstances, the same results which man obtains by thoughtful and well calculated industry." (p. 174) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19192/19192-h/19192-h.htm#Footnote_34_34
The reason we went from random natural selection to non-random natural selection was because probability calculations showed that even if given eternity a cell won't arise - Bio-evolution lacks both a dynamic and an object. Thus the evolutionists are revising history from the clear cut random ...absolute empire of accident ... in 1863 after Darwin ...rushed in like a flood .... in the letter by Kingsley to non-random by Dawkins.
Linguistlist dot org - ..Now it is considered as a result that while mutation is random, natural selection is non-random. ?!...But what does this mean?.... The issue of 'random evolution' is left untouched by this revised terminology. You can't have you cake and eat it too....."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_reactions_to_intelligent_design Uses undirected natural selection. Undirected is the synonym for random and random is the opposite of non-random(will, volition).
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design_%28disambiguation%29 undirected
notes[]
.....p.114 God delusion: The name comes from Fred Hoyle's amusing image of the Boeing 747 and the scrapyard. I am not sure whether Hoyle ever wrote it down himself, but it was attributed to him by his close colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe and is presumably authentic.58 Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. Others have borrowed the metaphor to refer to the later evolution of complex living bodies, where it has a spurious plausibility. The odds against assembling a fully functioning horse, beetle or ostrich by randomly shuffling its parts are up there in 747 territory. This, in a nutshell, is the creationist's favourite argument - an argument that could be made only by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection: somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas - in the relevant sense of chance - it is the opposite......
Which begs the question: What is a natural selection? Is Dawkins referring to Matthew, the person from which Darwin lifted the term.
p.114 ...the Darwinian is challenged to explain the source of all the information in living matter, in the technical sense of information content as a measure of improbability or 'surprise value'....
Challenged by who- Gitt perhaps? If you are referring to Gitt then at least cite his terminology. The measurement of a concentrate of energy on a transmission medium with sufficient accuracy to reconstruct the slope of the original signal that the generated concentrate represents has nothing to with information, it is communication theory as Shannon pointed out in his paper.
.... Or the argument may invoke the economist's hackneyed motto: there's no such thing as a free lunch - and Darwinism is accused of trying to get something for nothing. In fact, as I shall show in this chapter, Darwinian natural selection is the only known solution to the otherwise unanswerable riddle of where the information comes from......
Both Wilkins and I insist that Darwinism isn't defined. Is Dawkins referring to natural selection?
p.120[]
p.120 The God delusion - DAwkins: ....Natural selection is not only a parsimonious, plausible and elegant solution; it is the only workable alternative to chance that has ever been suggested.....
Darwin had the concept shown by Video type1 and not type2 as explained in this thread. The semantic object random,non-random, design etc. isn't the issue but what type of video type1 or type2 is represented with the semantic object. See http://tautology.wikia.com/wiki/Henry_Fairfield_Osborn
Dawkins states "...we must not assume that design or chance are our only option..." He therefore asserts that he can upload a third video alternative to video type1 or type2.
p.121[]
p.120 .... The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in series, the end product of the accumulation is very very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far beyond the reach of chance..........
Demonstrate this 'cumulative process' with a video of type1 or type2. Stop explaining Dawkins, demonstrate quantitatively. Is cumulative used in the Pattern or design sense.
"...He(creationists) doesn't understand the power of accumulation..." (Dawkins emphasis on accumulation)
- 1) There was an accumulation of rocks by the builder , forming a wall for the house. video type1
- 2) There was an accumulation of rocks on the ground after the tornado hit the mountain. video type2
Which concept 1) or 2) do YEC not understand and what would the third alternative be in term of the Law of Excluded middle? Aristotle's view was that the Composite Integrity of teeth assembled spontaneously without any mind, which Dawkins and Darwin rightly perceives as indistinguishable from a miracle by God. Yet Darwin recognized the principle of natural selection from Aristotle in that exact passage. Aristotle used dissimilar terms that implied one another to formulate an irrefutable proposition , making his conclusion(spontaneous chance generation) by the precepts of falsificationism a non-sequitur. Darwin copied this method of saying the same thing twice to formulate different watertight propositions from which he derived a different non-sequitur - gradualistic chance processes. Darwin and Aristotle differed on the perception of scale, like Dakwins differs from Gould, but all of them formulated their propositions tautologically.
On the wikipedia tautology article I wrote: Thus rhetorical tautologies guarantee the truth of the proposition, where the expectation (premise) was for a falsifiable construct, any conclusion is a non sequitur (logic).
p.124[]
"....Darwin may not have used the phrase 'irreducible complexity', or 'the smooth gradient up Mount Improbable', but he clearly understood the principle of both....."
Correct and neither did Aristotle use IC, he used spontaneous generation. Both Darwin and http://tautology.wikia.com/wiki/D%27Arcy_Wentworth_Thompson identified Behe's IC principle in the works of Aristotle.
Links[]
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
Notes[]
On Jul 20, 7:39 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wednesday, June 27, 2012 3:04:42 PM UTC-6, backspace wrote: > > On Jun 27, 9:22 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net>wrote: > > >backspace wrote: > > > >p.117 ...Who, before Darwin, could have guessed that something so > > > > apparently designed as a dragonfly's wing or an eagle's eye was really > > > >the end product > > > >of a long sequence of non-random but purely natural causes?.... > > > > > > > Doesn't parse on grammatical grounds. His was should be wasn't . In > > > > anycase Dawkins isn't using a dictionary from 1850 where non-random > > > > was the semantic opposite of random. Fun these word games ain't it? > > > > > >The solution to your conundrum is that a normal person is capable of > > >parsing that sentence quite easily. > > > Well, then maybe my English is not that good, I don't get it. > > > This makes more sense: > > Who, before Darwin, could have guessed that something so apparently > > designed as a dragonfly's wing ..... wasn't really the end product > > of .... non-random but purely natural causes?.... > > > This version Dawkins is saying that before Darwin it was believed that > > non-random directed intervention > > generated a dragonfly as opposed to random undirected forces. > > > Where am I misreading him? > Darwin is saying that today we known that biological structures are the product of the non-random but > natural processes of mutation and natural selection.
You mean Dawkins says this, if Darwin had meant this sentence , then quote him from his works. Darwin never used the term non-random or random in his works only chance, like he never said differential reproduction.
Dawkins wrote ...p.117 ...Who, before Darwin, could have guessed that something so apparently designed as a dragonfly's wing or an eagle's eye was really the end product of a long sequence of non-random but purely natural causes?..
- Lets rephrase the sentence and your interpretation of Dawkins(not darwin):
1) .. Dawkins is saying that today after Darwin in contrast to before Darwin we know that biological structures are the product of the (non-random) but (natural processes of mutation and natural selection).
- rephrase:
2.. Dawkins is saying that today after Darwin, in contrast to before Darwin we now known that creatures are the product of the (non-random) but (natural processes of mutation and natural selection).
- replace (non-random) with X and (natural processes of mutation....) with Z
3.. Dawkins is saying that today after Darwin, in contrast to before Darwin we now known that creatures are the product of (X) but (Z).
- Generalize further (Darwin) replace with (Q), (creatures) replace with (Y)
4.. Dawkins is saying that today after (Q) in contrast to before (Q) we realize that (Y) is the result of (X) but (Z).
- reduce:
5.. (D) is saying that today after (Q) in contrast to before (Q) we realize that (Y) is the result of (X) but (Z).
- rephrase:
6.. After (Q) in contrast to before (Q) we realize that (Y) is the result of (X) but (Z).
- reduce:
7) After (Q) we realized that (Y) is the result of (X) but (Z).
- Finally correct version:
After (Q) we realized that (Y) is the result of (X) not (Z).
> Folks prior to Darwin, such as W. Paley, did not try to understand biology, but what they interpreted as "designed structures" as evidence to support their belief in a creator.
> Then circularly they claimed that the hand of the creator "explained" the complexity of biology.
They like me assumed their premise in their conclusion, which is not the same thing as circular reasoning.(this argument is pending, I will elaborate later. See my explanation of circularity, begging the question, raising the question on the main Wikipedia Rhetorical tautology article second paragraph:
A rhetorical tautology is defined as a series of statements that form an argument, whereby the statements are constructed in such a way that the truth of the proposition is guaranteed or that, by defining a dissimilar or synonymous term in terms of another self-referentially, the truth of the proposition or explanation cannot be disputed. Consequently, the statement conveys no useful information regardless of its length or complexity making it unfalsifiable. It is a way of formulating a description such that it masquerades as an explanation when the real reason for the phenomena cannot be independently derived. A rhetorical tautology should not be confused with a tautology in propositional logic, which by the precepts of empiricism is not falsifiable. Rhetorical tautologies state the same thing twice, while attempting to imply that it's saying two or more different things. The inherent meanings and subsequent conclusions in rhetorical and logical tautologies or logical necessities are very different. Thus rhetorical tautologies guarantee the truth of the proposition, where the expectation (premise) was for a testable construct, any conclusion is by the precepts of falsificationism a non sequitur (logic). Circular reasoning differs from tautologies in that the premise is restated as the conclusion in an argument, instead of deriving the conclusion from the premise with arguments, while tautologies states the same thing twice. If the argument that separates the conclusion from the premise is a logical fallacy such as a rhetorical tautology, then the premise is merely restated as the conclusion and did not derive in a logical fashion from the premise. The form the arguments are allowed to take, either falsifiable or unfalsifiable(logical validities) dictates in what way the conclusion can logically derive from the premise, without merely restating the premise. Aristotle's "begging the question", 'begging the premise' or 'requesting the premise' means a conclusion is stated without specifying the premise which is not the same concept as a circular argument. Without knowledge of the premise it isn't possible to determine if the conclusion derives logically from the premise. To "raise the question" or to "raise the conclusion" means a specified premise raises a question or a series of questions that will determine in what way any conclusion derives logically from the premise. In both the phrases "raising the question" and "begging the question" the same term 'question' is used as a dissimilar reference to premise and conclusion respectively. The phrases derive their meaning by reflectivity to each other in the same way that light is understood as the semantic opposite of darkness. Because the same term - 'question' - is used as a dissimilar reference to two dichotomous concepts it leads to them being confused with one another.