No.393
Hey guys /leftypol/ here.
Was walking around town and some dude gave me a letter named "Is it wise to be an Atheist?" and it states.
"God has given us plenty of evidence of His existence. There are tremendous marks of design, order and complexity all around us. Someone said of our solar system that it has been put together like a finely tuned clock. If we know anything about clocks, we know: a) they have to have a beginning and b) they don't come about by chance. An intelligent designer is behind the planning and the making of every clock that has ever existed.
If those things are true of the humble clock hanging on the kitchen wall, how much more must they be true of the wonderful planets of our solar system that hang on nothing at all."
What is it called again when you go X is like Y and Y is like Z so X is like Z?
No.396
>>393It's called an argument by analogy. It's not a fallacy, it's not even dumb. It's just that such arguments don't convince anyone that isn't already convinced.
P1. A creates Xs with purposeful design
P2. Human's create with purposeful designs
P3. The world is complex and functions with purposeful design
P4. The world must have a creator
P5. The creator of the world must be vastly greater than humans who create things with purpose
conclusion: The world is created by god
It's a ok argument, the problem is that you already have to believe the world does seem designed to begin with.
No.402
>>393Basically here is the argument he used
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy
No.403
If I knew how to write in LaTex, I'd be able to illustrate this for you more easily, but I'll have to write it in English:
In classical logic, this type of argument has been called a Hypothetical Syllogism (and is a valid one):
p>q
q>r
therefore: p>r
In non-classical logic, there are differing ways in which the Hypothetical Syllogism is treated - and it is usually referred to as the mathematical principle Transitivity. In Normal Modal Logic K, Transitivity is a constraint which dictates that for all worlds such that it is a member of the set of worlds in the interpretation, if 1R2 (world one is related to world two), and 2R3, then 1R3.
In Conditional logic C and its extensions, transitivity isn't valid, however. It takes into account certain cases in English in which transitivity would make for some counter-intuitive, weird sorts of syllogisms, such as the following:
"Suppose there are three people, <J,M,S>, and suppose J is dating M but S is in love with M. If J goes to the dance, M will also go to the dance; if J does not go to the dance, M will not go to the dance. But in the event that M were to go to the dance alone, S would also go to the dance (because S is in love with M and if S hears M is going to the dance alone he'll try to go there to make moves on M, right?). So, by transitivity, it follows in certain logics that if J goes to the dance, S will also go to the dance."
Or, fomally:
J>M
M>S
therefore: J>S (transitivity)
This is obviously ridiculous though and wouldn't happen in real life. Cases like these are what conditional logic tries to account for; antecedent-strengthening and contra-positives are other theorems in classical logic, along with transitivity, that aren't valid in conditional logic.
I haven't yet studied any other non-classical logics, so I can't tell you how they treat transitivity.
No.414
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that be circular logic and fallacious?
No.417
>>414As another anon said in the thread, if the premise "The universe was intelligently designed" is true, the conclusion that God exists would fall out of it in classical logic.
This is just my own useless opinion, but as far as I'm concerned: The claim that the universe seems to be intelliently designed because it seems to work so intricately (like clockwork) is a dubious claim that is difficult to defend. Suppose there was a race of intelligent beings whose understanding of the universe was vastly greater than our own (some sort of Lovecraftian Elder God, for instance); to them, the intricacies of the universe currently within the scope of human knowledge would seem just as crude and random to them as the material world closer to our everyday experiences seems to be, because they presumably would grasp even deeper intricacies about the universe that we currently can only make conjectures about and prove mathematically rather than perceive empirically.
Basically, to me, that claim that the universe is too intricately designed to not have been designed intelligently then seems like a matter of perspective and opinion rather than something verifiable by fact.
No.566
>>402The problem with this is naturally that the world is not like a watch.
A watch is purposefully designed for a function and all it's parts co-operate to fulfill it, the world is different, a fox is made quick to catch rabbits but rabbits were made quick to flee from foxes, the parts are in conflict.
The solution for this is that god works in mysterious ways but that's just jumping through hoops.
Faith is just that, faith, you can't prove it, you can't make sense of it and you certainly can't logically justify it, you just have it.
No.896
>>393This watchmaker analogy comes from a family of arguments called the "Teleological arguments for the existence of God". Intelligent Design theory is one of the many arguments that fall in this family.
Most of these suffer from the follow up question "What designed God?" If the answer to that is nothing, then why does the universe specifically need a designer. Unless you want Supergods designing each other, ad infinitum.
Honestly, it's a boring and uninteresting argument, that has been around long in Christian apologetics. It goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God. There are other valid criticisms, but the "Who designed God?" one is the simplest, and very damaging.
No.900
>>393The difference between the universe and a clock is that millions of people don't die a day inside my clock due to various horrible diseases and unnecessary conflicts, and my clock doesn't have an appendix inside it which serves no function but often cause painful death.
I also didn't acclimate to my clock through millions of years of evolution.
No.907
An analogical argument claims that, because object X (a watch) is like object Y (the universe) in one respect, they are therefore probably alike in another, hidden, respect (their cause i.e. having to be created by an intelligent designer).
An argument from analogy to be successful, the two things that are being compared have to have an adequate number of similarities that are relevant to the respect you are analogizing them with. For example, a kitten and a lion may be very similar in many respects, however just because a lion makes a "roar" it would not be correct to infer a kitten also "roars", because the similarities between the two objects are not similar enough and the degree of relevance to what sound they make is not relevant enough. The universe and a watch also do not have enough relevant or close similarities to infer that they were both created the same way. For example, the universe is made of organic natural material however the watch is made of artificial mechanic materials.
No.914
The fallacy aside, how do people who use this argument respond to pointing out that, following this logic, god also must have a creator?
No.923
>>396Its a shit argument because it would be very unlikely that said "intelligence" would be any less complex. Basically, you would add to your problem that all imaginable causes of the universe seem unlikely, the condition that the cause of the unieverse has an odd similarity to life itself (intellegence would be an odd similarity to life) making the remaining imaginable possibilities a lot less likely even.