'To what point and purpose, young missy?'
The weather today was absolutely glorious - crisp and clear and somehow pale in that peculiar wintry way that makes everything seem very alive. The frost glittered on the grass as I walked to school, and the air felt fresh and clean.
Of course, it was also ridiculously mild for the last day of January. As I remarked to Helen's parents, 'I'm sure that an ice-cream van in January is a sign of the apocalypse.'
Continuing with yesterday's rather philosophical musings, today we covered the design argument, or at least began to, and I realised what an utterly appalling example of philosophy it is. It runs, approximately, like this:
1) If one were to find a watch on an otherwise deserted beach, one would not think that such an intricate and perfectly-balanced machine had come into being though chance; one would assume that it had been created by a watchmaker.
2) The universe is an incredibly intricate and perfectly-balanced system. If we assume that a watchmaker has made the watch, we must assume that God has made the universe.
3) Therefore God exists.
Let us examine this for a moment. We may very well assume that a watch was made by a watchmaker; it seems inconceivable that such a thing could have been assembled purely by chance. But, on a purely hypothetical level, there is no reason why it could not.
An easy example; you have a scrabble tile for each of the letters of the alphabet in a bag, and take them out one after another. It is highly unlikely that, in a random process, they will come out in alphabetical order; but mathematically speaking the probability of their doing so, whilst small, does exist. (It would be 1/26!, or circa 2.5 x 10^-27, which is very small.) The probability of this happening twice in a row is even smaller - (1/26!)^2 - but, crucially, it does exist. These things cn happen by chance.
And Paley's watch scenario, when examined under this light, is rather seriously flawed. If we accept that highly improbable things are necessarily possible and extend the 'desertedness' of the beach to encompass the complete lack of any evidence for the existance of the watchmaker whatsoever then we are faced with a choice between a very slim possibility and one that has no basis in fact at all. The choice is not very difficult.
Guess who's been reading his Dawkins?
The main thing about the teleological argument that irritated me, however, was the fact that the entire thing rests upon an assumption that is not backed up by any real logic or evidence. How exactly is that good philosophy?
[I also finished book 15 last night, which was Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was very very good, although quite disquieting. The figure that interests me most is certainly Lord Henry, who says many things and is the catalyst for the entire book, and yet is the only of the three main charaters not to be adversely affected - he's just old, or, at least, older.]
Of course, it was also ridiculously mild for the last day of January. As I remarked to Helen's parents, 'I'm sure that an ice-cream van in January is a sign of the apocalypse.'
Continuing with yesterday's rather philosophical musings, today we covered the design argument, or at least began to, and I realised what an utterly appalling example of philosophy it is. It runs, approximately, like this:
1) If one were to find a watch on an otherwise deserted beach, one would not think that such an intricate and perfectly-balanced machine had come into being though chance; one would assume that it had been created by a watchmaker.
2) The universe is an incredibly intricate and perfectly-balanced system. If we assume that a watchmaker has made the watch, we must assume that God has made the universe.
3) Therefore God exists.
Let us examine this for a moment. We may very well assume that a watch was made by a watchmaker; it seems inconceivable that such a thing could have been assembled purely by chance. But, on a purely hypothetical level, there is no reason why it could not.
An easy example; you have a scrabble tile for each of the letters of the alphabet in a bag, and take them out one after another. It is highly unlikely that, in a random process, they will come out in alphabetical order; but mathematically speaking the probability of their doing so, whilst small, does exist. (It would be 1/26!, or circa 2.5 x 10^-27, which is very small.) The probability of this happening twice in a row is even smaller - (1/26!)^2 - but, crucially, it does exist. These things cn happen by chance.
And Paley's watch scenario, when examined under this light, is rather seriously flawed. If we accept that highly improbable things are necessarily possible and extend the 'desertedness' of the beach to encompass the complete lack of any evidence for the existance of the watchmaker whatsoever then we are faced with a choice between a very slim possibility and one that has no basis in fact at all. The choice is not very difficult.
Guess who's been reading his Dawkins?
The main thing about the teleological argument that irritated me, however, was the fact that the entire thing rests upon an assumption that is not backed up by any real logic or evidence. How exactly is that good philosophy?
[I also finished book 15 last night, which was Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was very very good, although quite disquieting. The figure that interests me most is certainly Lord Henry, who says many things and is the catalyst for the entire book, and yet is the only of the three main charaters not to be adversely affected - he's just old, or, at least, older.]