Let's Carry on Carriering Part III

In this post I continue analyzing a blog post by super-duper, self-recommending professional atheist Richard Carrier. 

For most of the last two parts of this series (See Part I and Part II) I was actually getting on quite well with Richard's post titled The Problem with Nothing: Why The Indefensibility of Ex Nihilo Nihil Goes Wrong for Theists • Richard Carrier Blogs

I probably agree with Richard in so far as agreeing that many theists have muffed their arguments re. the existence of God. For example: The cosmological argument, the ontological argument, the fine-tuning argument, the Kalem argument, the first cause argument, the moral argument etc are for the most part polemical bodges.  In fact, we can drop all those arguments in this particular connection as my terms of reference are restricted to a critique of Richard's post; in my opinion his arguments as to the ultimate source of the cosmos are no less bodged than those arguments for God I've listed. (And I say that as Christian myself; for me theism is a retrospective sense making abduction)

As we saw in Part II crucial to Richard's argument is his concept of "Nothing", that is "Nothing" spelt with a capital N. "Nothing" is the hard kernel of irreducible logical truisms that you are left with when you've subtracted all logical contingencies; that is mere logical possibilities. It's unfortunate terminology that he's called it "Nothing" because as we saw in Part II it is clear that Nothing is in fact Something and a very sophisticated Something at that! This is clear because to create Richard's much desired randomness a very sophisticated source of creation is required. Other than that, however, Richard doesn't and probably can't give us much detail about just what constitutes Nothing (= Something). I can go along with Richard's identification of this mysterious irreducible Nothing (= Something). Moreover, it seems that this Something is the origin of our apparently highly contingent universe with all its ordered and random complexities. Wow!

But in the second half of Part II, it became very clear to me that as he developed his reasoning our Richard, in his enthusiasm to debunk theism, is utterly unaware that he goes completely off the logical rails. The consequences of the resulting train cash are then felt throughout the rest of his post. As we get to his Proposition 7 he continues to consolidate his error....

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Richard: Proposition 7: If nothing (except logical necessity) prevents anything from happening to Nothing, then every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing has an equal probability of occurring.

Every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing is as likely to happen as every other possible thing that can happen. This is a logically necessary truth. So it again cannot be denied without denying Proposition 1. Or, again, Proposition 4, if you want to desperately wrestle again with what it means for Nothing to be ungoverned by any rules about what happens—but you’ll lose every time; because that’s what Nothing logically entails. So the only way out left is to go all the way back to becoming one of those whackadoos who deny Proposition 1. Good luck with that.

My Comment: Well, as I said in Part II, I would want to enthusiastically embrace Proposition 1 and Proposition 4, but as I also said in Part II, I certainly wouldn't accept Richard's interpretations which he goes on to construct upon these propositions. 

As we've seen Nothing (= Something) is a very mysterious object, and Richard isn't elaborating it. That's fair enough though; we are all a bit in the dark about the Unknown God Something that is the origin of the universe. Richard acknowledges the existence of this Big Unknown in his entirely acceptable Proposition 3 where he says If there was ever Nothing, then nothing governs or dictates what will become of that Nothing, other than what is logically necessary.  Whatever the Big Unknown is it must be logically necessary.

But, and here's the kicker, in the above courier font quote Richard also tells us: 

if you want to desperately wrestle again with what it means for Nothing to be ungoverned by any rules about what happens—but you’ll lose every time; because that’s what Nothing logically entails.

Now compare that statement with Proposition 3 where we read If there was ever Nothing, then nothing governs or dictates what will become of that Nothing, other than what is logically necessary. Notice the difference? Richard has suppressed that Big Unknown; namely, "what is logically necessary". Clearly Nothing is governed by rules; that is the rules of logical necessity, whatever they may be. He also tells us above what he thinks one of those logical rules governing Nothing might be: Viz: 

Every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing is as likely to happen as every other possible thing that can happen. This is a logically necessary truth.

That is, Richard is trying to get past us the very questionable notion that equal a priori probabilities is a truism from which he can then deduce a dynamic which leads to every possible happenstance that can happen (presumably at random) at some point or other. But as I said in Part II, probability only coherently pertains to observer information about possible happenings. It is therefore contingent upon the existence of an observer whose information may vary from other observers; that is, equal a priori probabilities is an observer relative feature. Moreover, observers able to compute ratios of possibilities (which is how probability is defined) are necessarily very sophisticated entities, entities about which it is unclear whether they are logical necessities or not; certainly, when it comes to individual human observers it seems we are not talking logical necessity.

Richard then jumps from that error to another error: Viz: That of assuming that once one has a probability, it implies a dynamic about what then actually happens: I suspect he is thinking "randomness" here; randomness is a configurational object which does in fact display a highly complex form of contingency rather than being a logical necessity. Moreover, as we saw in Part II randomness does not necessarily follow from an observer relative probability. 

In noting these logical errors there is no need to deny Proposition 1 as Richard's whackdoos do. 

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Richard: In case it’s not obvious, here is why Proposition 7 is logically necessarily the case:

1. For any one possible thing that can happen to Nothing to be more probable than another, some rule, property, or power would have to exist to make it so.

2. By definition Nothing contains no rules, properties, or powers.

3. Therefore, no rule, property, or power would exist to make any one possible thing that can happen to Nothing more probable than another.

4. Therefore, no possible thing that can happen to Nothing can be more probable than another.

So accepting Proposition 1, and thus Proposition 2, you must accept Proposition 7. As Proposition 7 merely states what is logically necessarily the case when 1 and 2. And 1 and 2 entail that that which is logically necessarily the case must always obtain whenever there is Nothing.

My Comment: The foregoing is utterly incoherent. Richard is trying to tell us that Nothing has no rules and yet he has admitted that it is constrained by what is logically true (fair enough) and then goes on to identify what he thinks to be one of those logical truths : Viz equal a priori probabilities (which isn't a logical truth and is observer relative) and then wrongly logically connects this with a dynamic with the ability to generate contingencies (at random?). So again, whilst we can enthusiastically embrace propositions 1 and 2, I must reject proposition 7 which is a fanciful invention of Richard's imagination and is certainly not a logical truism. 

In his proposition 8  Richard continues to build his house of cards.....

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Richard: Proposition 8: If every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing has an equal probability of occurring, then every logically possible number of universes that can appear has an equal probability of occurring.

This is logically entailed by the conjunction of Propositions 6 and 7. So again it cannot be denied without denying, again, Proposition 1.

My Comment: That's Richard's continued abuse of probability for you! As I've said probability is not logically fundamental or axiomatic.  For probability to be an intelligible concept one must first posit observers sophisticated enough to construct and understand ratios of possibilities. And again, Richard wrongly assumes that probability logically entails the dynamics of random happenstance. So, as with proposition 7, in his botched enunciation of proposition 8 Richard finds himself up a creek without a paddle. He tries to pressure our acquiescence to this nonsense by the intimidating suggesting that if we don't accept it then we commit the cardinal logical sin of not accepting proposition 1. And I thought it was only cult leaders like Ken Ham who try to intimidate! 

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Richard's suggestion as to the potential source of the cosmos is beginning to look suspiciously like the passe notion of a random generator as the source of the cosmos and that we necessarily exist in what by chance is a very ordered part of that immense maximally disordered cosmos. I'm not going to be too hard on him here because this common fanciful invention of the imagination, which conjures up the specter of a meaningless random universe, is a nightmare which confronts us all at some time or other as it did for example Conan-Doyle's hero Sherlock Holmes in the short story, The Cardboard Box:

“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes, solemnly, as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But to what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”

So, I'm in no position to be judgmental of genuine boarder-line atheists (like for example Mr. mice guy Brian Cox and that should also include Don Cupitt) who are an understandably having a struggle giving meaning to the cosmos.  But in Richard's case we must factor in that he is a professional atheist whose income depends on him fervently, vehemently and vociferously defending his brand of atheism just as theme park manager Ken Ham defends his lucrative brand of young earthism at all costs using the most insulting of spiritual terms about those who disagree with him, as we have seen.

...to be continued

INTERESTING LINKS

1. Sir Richard Attenborough's comments are worthy of applause in my view: 

Quantum Non-Linearity: David Attenborough on God

Let's Carry on Carriering Part I

 

This series has been triggered by my last post where I commented on a blog-post by evangelical atheist Richard Carrier.

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The cosmological argument, the ontological argument, the fine-tuning argument, the Kalem argument and the like are all arguments for the existence of God. I'm afraid to say that in spite of being a speculative theist myself I've found these arguments flawed and unconvincing; see for example here where I criticize the fine-tuning argument or here where I criticize the Kalem argument. There are I submit no "proofs" for God's existence, for like so many objects which we believe to exist, we only do so on the basis of the evidence provided by the sparse sampling of our experience and then attempt to abduct a sense-making narrative around those experiences. All significant objects are usually far too large (& often far too complex and/or epistemically inaccessible) for this sampling to be anywhere near exhaustive or logically obliging. (However, with the simpler accessible objects an ability to predict in advance the evidential samples these objects throw up does enhance their probability) No surprise then that evidence of God is going to be very partial and debatable; although that's not to say individuals can't have an epiphany which supports a strong intuitively held faith - but of course that's not readily shareable and classifies as subjective & anecdotal evidence. In this series of posts I look into the article I've linked to below by vociferous evangelical atheist Ricard Carrier who, not surprisingly, has little patience with those aforementioned arguments for God....

The Problem with Nothing: Why The Indefensibility of Ex Nihilo Nihil Goes Wrong for Theists • Richard Carrier Blogs

I will not here be mounting a defense (or critique) of those rather precarious traditional arguments for God's existence. Instead, I'm confining my terms of reference to a critique of the anti-god arguments used by Richard Carrier.

Firstly, let me register a point of agreement with the introduction to Richard's post:

Richard: I want to make perfectly clear from the start that what I am doing here is not what Krauss and others are doing, which they have been rightly criticized by theologians for as missing the point. That a multiverse is inevitable given an initial state of nothing is not because of quantum cosmological calculations showing it’s not just possible but actually likely that a complex universe or even a multiverse would spontaneously arise from any arbitrarily tiny bubble of absolute vacuum. Like the He-Gao-Cai thesis: “Spontaneous Creation of the Universe from Nothing,” Physical Review D 89 (2014). Because that still presupposes the existence of the vacuum, the bubble. They are starting from the assumption that some quantum of space-time exists, and obeys certain laws of physics. That’s still pretty impressive, one must admit. But theists will complain that we then have to explain how that quantum of space-time came about. Why was it there at all? Why does it obey those laws of physics? The theologian’s idea of nothing means absolutely nothing. Not even physics or tiny empty spaces. Hence, missing the point.

My Comment: Yes, I agree, something-for-nothing-physics actually presumes the existence something; at the very least certain laws of physics. I touched on this subject in this post where atheist physicist Sean Carroll makes similar comments. Richard goes on to consider some of the eternal multiverse theories that have arisen out of quantum theory and inflationary ideas. These are still at the speculative and hypothetical stage, so I won't consider these. At this juncture our own universe is the only one for which we have overwhelming evidence.

Richard then considers the problem of "nothing". Let me say from the outset that I'm sympathetic to Richard's general idea that the concept of "absolutely nothing" is likely to be either incoherent or logically contradictory; after all we are clearly faced with a cosmos of something on a huge scale and this suggests to me that with regard to ultimate origins something somewhere with creative power has a necessary existence or aseity.

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Richard: Proposition 1: That which is logically impossible can never exist or happen......It’s really hard to fathom what one could even mean by saying logical contradictions can obtain in the real world, that the logically impossible is still nevertheless possible. And most theists really won’t go there. After all, they love the ontological argument, which argues that that which is logically necessary, necessarily exists. They try to get a god to be one of those things. That never works. But still. Finding such a proof is a Holy Grail of theology.

My Comment:  In my view the ontological argument advanced by Anslem is a wordy smoke and mirrors "proof" of the necessity of God's existence. I'd accept however that if God does exist then presumably his nonexistence is a contradiction, that is, his existence is a logical necessity. But my guess is that proving God's existence to be a logical necessity involves infinities and is therefore beyond finite human understanding (compare Heb 11:6). If that is the case, then the logical necessity of God's ontology cannot be humanly understood, but rather God's existence can only be apprehended through experiential evidence. So, as far as humans are concerned God's existence is derived from a synthesis of experience and not fancied logical truisms. (That's not say that there is no ontological argument for God's existence, but I suspect it is beyond finite human thought)

Now having admitted the dubiousness of those one-liner (or at most a few lines) logical proofs of God existence here's an interesting irony: We find that in his article Richard himself, like many a theist, is also on a quest for one-liner logical necessity, but not the logical necessity of God (a concept he clearly abhors) but instead one-liner proofs of the logical necessity of an insentient cosmos.  This is the holy grail of atheism.

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Richard: Nevertheless, the very notion that logically necessary things necessarily exist, necessarily entails logically impossible things never exist. Because one of the things that necessarily exists, is the absence of logically impossible things. Otherwise, we could not in fact say logically necessary things necessarily exist. Because that is claiming it’s logically impossible they could “not” exist; but we just admitted logically impossible things can happen! If the logically impossible can actually happen, then it’s possible logically necessary things don’t exist. Down goes the ontological argument.

There are actually good reasons to conclude the logically impossible cannot exist (in any meaningfully relevant sense), but I won’t go further into that here (see Sense and Goodness without God, index, “contradiction, nature of,” and my remarks on the point in response to Reppert). I’ll just say that the following argument is for people who are unwilling or honestly unable to deny this proposition.

My Comment: The foregoing is just back up for Richard's proposition 1 which states that logically impossible things can't exist. Let's not dispute this! As I think we will eventually see there's a lot of argumentative momentum and energy in Richard's reasoning that is going to prove very useful indeed. 

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·      Richard: Proposition 2: The most nothingly state of nothing that can ever obtain, is a state of affairs of zero size lacking all properties and contents, except that which is logically necessary.

This actually follows from Proposition 1, combined with the basic meaning of “absolutely nothing.” The most “nothing” nothing you can ever have, is by removing every possible thing that can be removed, until there is nothing left. Which thus includes any quanta of space or time, as well as laws of physics, particles, and so on. But since you can’t “remove” logically necessary things, or have a logically impossible state of affairs, it is logically impossible for any state of nothing to lack that whose existence or occurrence is logically necessary. Which in turn means it is logically impossible for any state of nothing to behave in a logically contradictory way. Because logical contradictions can never obtain. They therefore cannot happen. So they cannot govern what a “nothing” would do.

That gets us down to the most “nothing” nothing that could ever have obtained, by removing things until there are no more things we can remove without creating a logical contradiction. We can remove all durations of time, until time is a dimensionless point, representing “zero” amount of time. That’s what “no time exists” means. We can remove all height and width and depth, until space is a dimensionless point, representing “zero” amount of space, in every direction. We can remove all matter and energy. So, there are no particles, no contents. And we can remove all rules, properties, and laws of physics. Except anything we can prove is logically necessary. If removing something entails a logical contradiction, we can’t remove it. We are stuck with it. There can never have been a state of being that lacked it.

Which means if you still think that’s not “nothing,” but still something (namely, the presence of every logically necessary thing, and the absence of every logical impossibility), then you are admitting that nothing is logically impossible. 

My Comment:  Nice one Richard, I agree! But now just look at the following (With my emphases)....

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Richard: ...And down goes any argument you may have that requires the universe to have come from nothing without a god around. Because “nothing” can never have existed: it’s logically impossible. Therefore we no longer need gods to explain why there is something. That there would be something is logically necessary. By your own admission.

I suspect theists won’t go there. And those who do, will have to abandon their argument that without god we can’t explain why there is something and not nothing. Because they will have just conceded it is logically necessarily the case that there will be something, even without gods. The rest will bite the bullet and admit that yes, when they say that in the absence of gods there once must have been a state of nothing (from which nothing, they will insist, could have come), they can only mean the “nothing” I just described: the logically possible nothing; the one that still isn’t totally nothing, because it still must contain every logical necessity. But, they will be happy to note, it contains nothing else. No contents. No quantities of spacetime. No rules. At least that much of nothing is logically possible. It therefore may once have been the state of things.

My Comment:  I'll be coming back to these last two paragraphs in a bit, especially the bits I've emphasised. Richard goes on to qualify the foregoing with some physics patter telling us that of course we don't actually know from either empirical science or logic whether or not the cosmos is past eternal. But as he himself is aware that doesn't affect the main thrust of his argument, which is to simply set a lower limit on "nothing"; Viz: "nothing" so called is logically obliged to contain all that is logically true. No disagreement with that from my point of view! But what about this: It is logically necessarily the case that there will be something, even without gods!!

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He concludes this section on proposition 2 with the following:

Richard: But here we are just working out what must necessarily be the case if there was ever a state of total nothing, the most empty nothing logically possible. And that means such a nothing-state will be a hypersphere of zero size in all dimensions, with no contents, and governed by no rules or laws, except the laws of logical necessity. Which is at least a plausible hypothesis. We can ask what predicted observations that hypothesis entails, and how well that accords with what we see. So this is what we shall mean by the word Nothing (capitalized) heretofore.

My Comment:  Yes, it's a plausible hypothesis and I'm inclined to go along with it. But in stating the foregoing Richard has overlooked the obvious.... 

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Requoting parts of what I've already quoted above....

Richard: ...And down goes any argument you may have that requires the universe to have come from nothing without a god around. Because “nothing” can never have existed: it’s logically impossible. Therefore we no longer need gods to explain why there is something. That there would be something is logically necessary. By your own admission.

I suspect theists won’t go there. And those who do, will have to abandon their argument that without god we can’t explain why there is something and not nothing. Because they will have just conceded it is logically necessarily the case that there will be something, even without gods. 

My Comment: OK, so once all mere logical possible contingencies have been removed and we are reduced to entities or entities that are logical truisms  (that is, their non-existence would be a contradiction) how do we know that among those logically obliged objects we are not left with that dreaded unmentionable entity - and dare I say it ...... an entity which is both a logical truism (in a way we perhaps can't comprehend) and is actually sentient? After all, whatever the inadequacies and failures of the so-called ontological argument, the first cause argument, the fine-tuning argument and what have you (And I'm the first to be critical of them) it is at least clear that no theistic creationist is actually saying things come out of absolutely nothing because their starting point is God and such an entity (which is presumably logically necessary) can hardly be classified as nothing.

So, in the next parts of this series I'll be looking at what Richard is telling us about that much-loathed a priori theistic creative dynamic (which theology usually presumes to have aseity) and comparing it with the insentient a priori creative dynamic he is proposing. 

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Reflections and Speculations

There is a human intuition derived from our experience of the macroscopic world that identity is bound up with hypostatic identity; that is, identity is bound up with identity of substance. Hence for example when a human dies and their remains return to the earth we might ask, where have they gone? Some might answer (and I've heard this sort of thing at woodland inhumations and cremations) that the deceased has become part of the surrounding nature. But is this claim anything other than a comforting sentiment? Because for me human identity derives from configuration and pattern: Humanity is not a hypostatic identity; human uniqueness derives from its unique dynamic configurational form and the patterns it imprints on the medium of space-time.

It's true that in many macroscopic connections hyperstatic identity can be discerned; that is, we can follow through the hypostasis as it changes in form from configuration to configuration. But at the microscopic level the hypostatic model fails. The indistinguishability of quantum particles leads to quantum statistics where interchangeability of fundamental particles is a meaningless concept and must be canceled from the apparently logically possible combinations/permutations. (See appendix 1 in this document where I carry out a procedure of this type when calculating combinations & permutations)

We are actually familiar with this kind of indistinguishability even in some macroscopic cases: For example, computer bits: To talk of swapping the values of two bits set to "1" is a meaningless notion. But you can change and move an identified binary pattern impressed on a computer memory. In this context identity is found in pattern and configuration and not in hypostasis.  

With this concept of hypostatic indistinguishability in mind we find that ex-nihilo creation is in actual fact a relative thing; it's less about substance than it is about pattern: In the sense of pattern even I can create something from nothing: If I start with say either a blank canvass, or a blank computer memory or even blank neurons in my brain, my cognitive processes can fill these featureless empty media with wonderful patterns, thoughts and stories. It's well within the trammels of natural language use to say that as far pattern & configuration are concerned, I've created those patterns from nothing but my own cognition and will; they haven't emerged from antecedent patterns and in that sense they are created ex nihilo. In fact unless a medium contains pattern, it is questionable whether a medium can claim to intelligibly exist until it gains a pattern; for how can we define the metrics of the medium until it displays a pattern against which it can be measured and quantified?

So, with those thoughts in mind then common linguistic usage  allows me to say that I can create something from nothing. And yet at the same time what I create has not come from absolutely nothing because the starting point is me as a creator. It all depends on what you mean by "nothing". But there is one big difference to this kind of creation and the lower-limit "nothing" that Richard is talking about: Viz: Human creators are mere logical contingences, patterns and configurations of particles that can be extinguished without logical violation; they are not logical truisms. Nevertheless, human creativity can be used as a suggestive metaphor for the kind of creativity we are envisaging that might be the prerogative of a priori sentient deity. 

This model suggests to me that if a divine sentient entity of some sort is the logical truism remaining after one has eliminated all mere logically possible contingencies, then the mind of this entity is the cognitive medium on which the art of logically possible contingent pattens and configurations are reified, developed, changed and perhaps even destroyed. But of course, it is a highly debatable and contentious point that a fundamental sentient cognitive medium is the irreducible logical kernel upon which those ephemeral created patterns are reified. That a hard-core logical reduction leaves behind this divine cognitive medium when all mere logically possible art has been removed is likely to go down like a feather sandwich with the Richard Carriers of this world. But we know what St Paul thinks. In Acts17:24ff we read:

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

Carry on Carriering

I think that question should read: "Does Quantum Physics
 Create the multiverse?"

I thought I'd more or less finished looking into Richard Carrier's thinking but I must admit I'm very tempted by this post of his...

Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco • Richard Carrier Blogs

...where he writes this:

 What I showed is that once you actually allow for there to be nothing—nothing whatsoever—then a quasi-infinite multiverse is the inevitable, in fact unstoppable outcome. Because removing all barriers to what there can be or what can happen entails allowing all potential outcomes an equal chance at being realized (given only a single constraint: that logically contradictory states have a zero probability of coming to pass). There is nothing there to prevent that, nothing around to keep “nothing” a stable absence of everything. “Nothing” is, by its own defining properties, unstable.

This belief that somehow Probability/randomness furnishes us with an invisible creative dynamic I've come across before. I need to look into this particular instance of it in more detail, but in the meantime, here is a footnote I wrote on the question in part IV of my Carry-on Carriering series:

That's not how probability works. Probability isn't a dynamic capable of generating something from nothing: it is about the level of observer information. Moreover, the physics of probability is about describing random patterns and not about the "instability of nothing". Probability and randomness are in no way an argument for the impossibility of "nothing"; trying to use them to generate aseity is well beyond their scope of usage. 

I've seen similar misinterpretations of the Uncertainty Relationship: As Richard is doing here, the principles of probability and randomness are glorified by raising them to the level of a kind of transcendent god-like dynamic or propensity capable of at least creating randomness from nothing. They don't see randomness as being only the mathematical description of a class pattern we meet in the universe rather than being a transcendent creative dynamic.

Another point: The principle of equal a priori probabilities concerns human information levels. That in itself isn't a sufficient condition that automatically translate into reified patterns of randomness.

Richard isn't going to get this one past me! My view is that the descriptive mathematical devices we use to delineate the cosmos are meaningless without a material instantiation, but some thinkers have raised these mathematical principles to the level of a transcendent invisible but mindless "god" creator. ("mindless" and yet ironically randomness is the most complex mathematical object of all!) This kind of notion formation may be what's happening in Richard Carrier's head. I think I need to look into it a bit further if I get time. 

However, there are plenty of authorities and principalities out there that are drawing my attention just at the moment and so that may be as far as I get on that one - we'll see. 

And while I'm here on the subject of authorities and principalities, I'll mention this article on the North American ID (NAID) website "Evolution News"

 The Fine-Tuning Argument by Elimination | Evolution News

In my view the NAID community put too much emphasis on the fine-tuning argument in exactly the opposite kind of way Richard Carrier was doing. Moreover, as can be seen from the above NAID article they perpetuate the "Physical Necessity" vs "Chance" dichotomy - something I suspect that is also part of the intuitions of Richard Carrier.  "Physical Necessity" and "Chance" are in fact the opposite ends of a sliding spectrum of platonic possibility; in the absolute sense of the word neither are strictly "necessary"; both are in fact possible contingencies. But more about all that another time. 

Examining Mr. R. Carrier's use of Bayesianism. Part II

 

Christian Theology according to Mr.R. Carrier

This is Part II of a series where I am going through Mr. Richard Carrier's critique of the fine-tuning argument for theistic creationism.  His post can be found here:

Why the Fine Tuning Argument Proves God Does Not Exist • Richard Carrier Blogs

Part I of this series can be found here. 

The signs are that Richard Carrier is a fairly abrasive character and would likely be a very snappy customer to anyone who has an inclination toward theism and that would include, of course, a Christian like myself. But having said that it is also likely that I would find common ground with him on the subject of the recent bullying excesses of Trumpite, Alex Jonesian and far-right Christianity. See for example the two posts below on Richard's blog where he criticizes the extreme rhetoric of the far right. This rhetoric is so extreme that it seems democratic compromise is out of the question for them, and they would only be satisfied with the complete destruction of all who democratically oppose them, not only of atheists but also what they would unthinkingly identify as "woke" Christians like myself.

Behold Babylon USA! • Richard Carrier Blogs

Debunking John Davidson's "Pagan" America • Richard Carrier Blogs

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Much of the following content has its roots in my understanding of randomness and probability. 

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As I said in the first part of this series, I've never liked the fine-tuning argument myself; it suggests that the mystery of creation is confined to the boundaries of the cosmos. It is in fact a big step toward deism as it draws attention away from the truism that the mysterious organised contingency of the cosmos is everywhere and everywhen. It is therefore no surprise that just as the fine-tuning argument is not the best of arguments for theism, conversely it doesn't work well when Richard Carrier tries to turn fine-tuning around as evidence of atheism. 

At the heart of Richard's argument is his theology: OK he's an atheist and I don't blame him for that; but like many an atheist he has proprietary and a-priori theological conceptions; that is, knowledge about the notion of God. That's no surprise to me: I doubt that the resources of human cognition which deal with the divine are a complete blank slate. In fact, it is apparent that Richard knows (whether true or false knowledge) quite a bit about God, whether he believes in God or not. Although I'm Christian myself I'm easy on at least some atheists and have no a-priori antipathy towards them. I have sympathy with many of them, especially for example a nice guy like Brian Cox with whom I feel I have a lot in common. Brian Cox has honest doubts about God's existence given the cosmic perspective. Richard Carrier also has trouble squaring the cosmic perspective with the Christian concept of God, but in his keenness to promote his evangelical atheism he vigorously deploys his key theological notion of what the universe should look like if created by the God of Christian belief.  Take a look at this (My emphases).....

RICHARD: But here I want to bring into focus the way Fine Tuning itself turns into a proof of atheism. This will in turn serve as a tutorial on some of the ways Bayes’ Theorem reveals how to employ the logic of probability correctly....

The conclusion is clearest, of course, with traditional definitions of God (the only kind of God anyone on Earth actually believes in), whereby God is someone who intends to create a universe for life and for that life to know They exist. But one could instead posit a Bizarro God, an all-powerful intelligence who deliberately decided to make the universe look exactly like a universe with no God in it, thereby deceiving us into the conclusion that God does not exist; or who had some other bizarre reasons (compulsory or voluntary) to do essentially that same thing—such as lacking any interest whatever in life and only, let’s say, wanting to make a universe that would generate black holes, and who is actually annoyed or indifferent to the mere accidental byproduct of that effort being life.

MY COMMENT: Richard's key concept here is that there is such a thing as a universe that looks exactly like a universe with no God in it, In Richard's theology there are universes which we would not expect God, God as most people understand the term, to create.  Yes, I can give qualified agreement to that; there are universes that Christian theism would fail to make sense of; for example, as I said in part I:

A completely random universe is not the kind of universe a divine intelligence would have anything to do with.... at a very deep gut level I personally find the postulation of an infinite randomness hopelessly absurd, implausible and above all meaningless.

But what about our universe? Can it be a purely chance outcome in an immense sea of randomness? Well, it's just conceivable that the context beyond the observable cosmos is so absolutely huge that rare tracts of it, very, very, very rare tracts indeed, display enough organisation for a temporary manifestation of the laws of physics to simply be a sheer chance occurrence!  If that was the case the obvious question arises: When faced with an observable cosmos such as ours, a cosmos very strictly controlled and ordered by universal physical principles, what is the probability we are actually observing either an intrinsically organizing dynamic or simply a small domain that is purely a chance event in an all but infinite sea of randomness? Clearly this sea of randomness would have to be much, much larger in time and space than our tiny observable universe whose dimensions are expressible using numbers which only run into a hundred digits or so. For such a "chance event" to occur with a realistic probability the "containing" cosmos would have to have dimensional magnitudes expressible in billions upon billions of digits. 

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But before we consider the plausibility of a universe of random configurations so immense that everything happens somewhere or other we first need to look at a concept that Richard himself introduces: This is what he calls the bizarro god. The meaning of this concept is best appreciated if we consider the "bizarro" equivalent in the world of science which I will do in my next comment.

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RICHARD: Basically, any theory can be “gerrymandered” with multiple (usually bizarre) theoretical ad-ons so that it exactly predicts any evidence.....

Because all theories can be gerrymandered, the ability to gerrymander a theory cannot render it any more likely. And indeed, that is exactly what happens in the probability logic: all gerrymandering logically does is move an improbability in our equation from the evidence column to the prior probability column, producing no net gain in the probability of the theory—and often a serious net reduction in its probability. This is why all Cartesian Demon arguments fail to gain any credibility. And “Bizarro God” is just another Cartesian Demon. We can therefore simply dismiss this God out of hand. Lacking any evidence for it, it is simply always too improbable to credit. You can only change this assessment if you find specific evidence for that gerrymandered God—meaning evidence independent of what that gerrymander was created to explain, as for any other Cartesian Demon.

MY COMMENT: What Richard refers to as "gerrymandering" doesn't just include Cartesian Demons and a "bizzaro god" it also embraces any kind of theorizing which is willing to multiply entities willy-nilly in order to get a theory to fit the facts. In general, it is possible to fit a mathematical curve to any sample of data points if one is prepared to throw Occam's Razor out of the window and multiply entities and hidden variables at will. But this procedure of multiplying entities does actually have a very useful and moreover a very instructive application; namely, that of compressing data. For example, jpeg image compression tries to reduce the size of an image's data by creatively fitting the data points to Fourier curves. For natural pictures jpeg compression works well. The general idea behind all data compression is to allow the multiplication of entities in order to fit the data points but to minimize this multiplication as far as possible so that the multiplied entities constitute less data than the original data set. 

But even though a method of compression may be very successful in compressing data this is not to say that the compression method constitutes some kind of mathematical law intrinsic to the data compressed. The mathematical "curves" of compression are added retrospectively to the data with the aim of fitting the target data to "curves" which can be expressed as a reduced or compressed data set. What is very unlikely however is that the compression method can be used to predict further data points should there be further data to compress. Data compression methods are not meant to be predictive of further data but to merely compress data already at hand. If a data compression method does succeed in predicting further data, it then suggests that a known law has been anticipated in advance and this law is embodied in the algorithm of the data compression method.  See here where I wrote a short paper showing that if predictions have been correctly made it is evidence that the predicting agent has very probably become aware that there is an underlying law governing all the incoming data and has embedded this law in his/her compression algorithm. 

What is the relevance of the foregoing comments?  What these comments tell us is that there is a close relationship between post-facto data compression and the genuine laws we use to predict the cosmic dynamic. Both methods are descriptive of the data the world throws at us and both, very importantly, are means of compressing a complex profusion of data into more succinct theoretical structures. This compression, particularly in the case of genuinely predictive laws, is possible because cosmic data is not randomly distributed but is highly organized. The crucial point we need to take away with us here is that the observable cosmos is highly organized. Further; the low statistical weight of organized configurations means that the high order of the cosmos has a very, very tiny unconditional probability.

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At the start of a section entitled: The Odds on God Given the Observed Facts of Fine Tuning. Richard in passing mentions what I believe to be a valid criticism of the fine-tuning argument: 

RICHARD: The standard trick pulled by all Christian apologetics is to make an argument by leaving out all the evidence that would, if restored, entirely reverse that argument’s conclusion. I gave ten examples of this in Bayesian Counter-Apologetics. The Fine Tuning Argument does this by only looking at the arrangement of what are, actually, bizarre and logically unnecessary physical constants (everything from the relative strength of gravity and electromagnetism to the relative mass of the quark and electron), and noting that almost any other configuration of them would have prevented any life from arising in the universe (which is then argued to require intelligent design).......One can challenge that claim;

MY COMMENT: Apparently, Richard has challenged this claim elsewhere but doesn't take it up in his post. However, his point is valid; we don't know for a fact that other values of the fine-tuning constants can't also lead to life - all we know is that a slight displacement from the current values makes life, as we understand it impossible. However, without further proof it is just conceivable that a particular configuration of constants with large displacements away from the current values could also allow life of some form to exist. But because life is such a highly organized phenomenon and dependent on the cosmos sticking to those organizing principles we call the laws of physics, then it follows that in the immense space of what is logically possible the class of universes which bear life has an extremely low statistical weight compared to the overwhelming statistical weight of sheer randomness. It follows then that configurations of fine-tuning constants which favour life must themselves be few and far between and the chance of choosing them at random will be extraordinarily low. 

But leaving this issue behind Richard goes on to frame the question he wants to address as follows.....

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RICHARD: One can challenge that claim; [Already considered in my last comment] but it isn’t necessary to. Because, as we’ll see, it doesn’t matter. So it won’t be challenged here. For the sake of argument, let’s just take it as if it were proved that “almost any other configuration of fundamental physical constants would have prevented any life from arising in the universe.” The real problem here is that this leaves out pertinent evidence. Because we are here testing two competing hypotheses to explain observations: either (A) chance accident produced that alignment of constants or (B) someone or something intelligently selected them......

So we have two hypotheses, and each makes a number of predictions (not just the one), and therefore to compare them requires looking at all those predictions, not just “cherry picking” the one single prediction we like and ignoring all the others that didn’t go the way we want.

MY COMMENT: Well, straight away there's an issue with competing hypothesis (A). Viz: The fine-tuning constants are inextricably bound up with the organizing physical principles they are part and parcel with; they are meaningless numbers without those principles/laws. Therefore, the two competing hypotheses should be framed as follows (A) Is our highly organized physical regime an unconditional chance accident or (B) Someone or something intelligently selected that regime....

Richard goes onto to consider those predictions he speaks of...

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RICHARD: So what different predictions do our two hypotheses make? Theory A predicts the following:

[T]he only way we could [observe ourselves existing] without a God is by an extremely improbable chemical accident, and the only way an extremely improbable chemical accident is likely to occur is in a universe that’s vastly old and vastly large; so atheism predicts a vastly old and large universe; theism does not (without fabricating excuses—a bankrupt procedure, as I already explained … ).

Similarly, the only way we could [observe ourselves existing] without a God is by an extremely long process of evolution by natural selection, beginning from a single molecule, through hundreds of millions of years of single cells, through hundreds of millions of years of cooperating cells, to hundreds of millions of years of multicellular organisms; so atheism predicts essentially that; theism does not …

Likewise, … we should expect [the universe we observe] to be only barely conducive to life, indeed almost entirely lethal to it (as in fact it is), since there are vastly more ways to get those universes by chance selection, than to get a universe perfectly suited to life throughout (indeed … by countlessly many trillions to one). Design predicts exactly the opposite (again, without a parade of convenient excuses).

MY COMMENT: I wonder if Richard is really aware just how improbable that extremely improbable chemical accident is if we are thinking of its unconditional probability? Moreover, is he really aware of just how vastly old and vastly large a universe has to be in order to raise unconditional probabilities to realistic levels? For example, if set within the context of absolute randomness that so called "chemical accident" (which is in fact a sequence of "chemical accidents" and conditioned on the validity of those highly contingent organizing principles we call laws) has an unconditional probability measured with a value which has billions of zeros after the decimal point. If life is to have a realistic chance of emerging in the relatively tiny cosmos available to our observation it must be conditioned on the highly contingent particulars of our physical regime and that doesn't just include those "fine-tuning" constants but also those organizing physical principles which hold everywhere and everywhen and of which the fine-tuning constants are a mere part. Let me repeat: Whilst the conditional probability of those sequences of chemical accidents leading to life is relatively large, in comparison their unconditional probability in the context of absolute randomness is a value so tiny that it would require a number consisting of billions of digits after the decimal point to express it. In fact, even without the emergence of life just the fact that the universe is governed by those elegant organizing principles called the laws of physics is a fantastic improbability. But that those organizing principles have provided conditions where the probability of life emerging is enhanced beyond belief, means that I draw the very opposite conclusion to Richard: Namely, that the universe we observe is highly conducive to life. See for example this post where I drew the conclusion that if evolution of some kind is the process behind the emergence of life, then it is so remarkable and miraculous that its creation on steroids!

But does atheism really predict a vastly old and large universe, and theism does not?, and does atheism predict the only way we could [observe ourselves existing] without a God is by an extremely long process of evolution by natural selection, beginning from a single molecule.......  Does atheism predict this long process and theism does not? Well, let's see....

 

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RICHARD: Almost the entirety of our universe is a lethal radiation-filled vacuum, almost the entirety of its contents are lethal stars and black holes, and almost the entirety of what isn’t stars and black holes is a lifeless wasteland of rocks and dust on which nothing can naturally live. The universe is also billions (not mere thousands) of years old; and billions (not a mere handful) of light-years across; and life only slowly arose over billions of years of meandering, unguided natural selection from an initial, single, self-replicating molecule, which evolved into single cells, then into rudimentary colonies of cells, then into the advanced colonies of cells that we now call bodies; and exists now only as, indeed, a scaffolding of cooperating colonies of single-celled organisms (which we know as cells), an outcome only predicted by atheism—as that is the only way for intelligent life to arise without a God; whereas a God has no need of any such bizarre construction procedure, much less the billions of years of time it took.

MY COMMENT:  "Billions of years", in terms of what is configurationally possible is in fact a tiny number; I can commit a number in the order of tens of digits to memory whereas I can't commit to memory the numbers that enumerate the logically possible configurations available to something with the size of our observable cosmos. Moreover, as I've already said in my last comment, if those billions of years and billions of light years display some remarkable and highly contingent organizing principles favouring the emergence of life even on just a single planet, I'm talking miracles (at least in the colloquial sense). Is this really "an outcome only predicted by atheism" and that it "is the only way for intelligent life to arise without a God"?  Show me how atheism predicts this miraculous process of life emergence? It is clearly a miraculously low probability event, and therefore I can't see what atheism has to do with it, accept perhaps on the following grounds:

a) Atheists like Galen Strawson and Bertrand Russell who simply tell us that the universe with all its contingent principles "just is" and that's the end of the matter, so shut up.

b) The bizarre notion that the highly organized universe of our observation is just an absolutely minuscule part of an unimaginably immense context of an all but infinite sea of randomness and it's just an observational perspective effect of beings such as ourselves who necessarily observe a small but anthropically favorable part of that super-random cosmos. 

I'd agree that the super-random cosmos is not the sort of cosmos I'd expect a Christian God to create and if there was evidence of such (in fact there isn't) I'd doubt the existence of a creator God; maybe that's why evangelical atheists are so keen on infinite multiverse ideas.

But there is no evidence for super-randomness; in a super-random universe we'd expect more anomalies, exceptions and erratics than we see in our small slice of the super-universe. In a super-random cosmos our piece of apparently stable improbability would forever be trying to dissolve back into the utter randomness of that background of super-randomness; in fact, the overwhelming number of chance patches of life-hosting sub-universes would be doing just that. But the laws of physics we observe have next to no exceptions and are emaculate. So, in the absence of evidence for super-randomness I can say that our universe isn't the one Richard is looking for to back up his case for atheism; in his vision of an atheist universe the physical regime would have to show evidence of being much closer to the high disorder of randomness and it is simply not vast enough nor random enough to satisfy his atheistic predictions. 

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On the subject of evolution, it is clear that Richard holds a similar notion of evolution to the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community who caricature evolution as an "unguided natural process", or as Richard puts it:

Life only slowly arose over billions of years of meandering, unguided natural selection

See here where I've critiqued the NAID community on their "blind natural forces vs Intelligent Design" dichotomy.  This isn't to say that I'm an evolution supporter: It's just that in my opinion NAID anti-evolution concepts are naive and they argue against evolution with a conceptually flawed toolkit they share with atheism.  They only get away with it because they have become an embattled academic community who bond and console one another via a lot of mutual back-slapping and congratulation. They despise the mainstream academic community who, to be honest, have abused them in turn. No surprise then that the NAID community have pundits in their midst who look to be on the far-right and very probably will be voting Trump. 

One final breath-taking irony:  As I've said, I'd likely agree with atheists that a super-random universe is not the sort of creation I'd expect God as conventionally understood would create. But as it stands speculations which use a posited super-random universe to explain away the amazing, ordered contingency of our cosmic slice is the most extreme case of gerrymandering one can think of. It has next to no evidence going for it and through the most extravagant multiplication of entities in contravention of Occam's Razor it can be used to fit anything one observes. Thus, using Richard's own terminology against him one might accuse him of believing in a Bizzaro Universe!

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In Part III of this series, I will be looking at some of Richard's theological concepts. These play an important part in his rejection of creative theism.