I have some bad news for you, Enlightenment Thinker.
Another theology/philosophy thread. Go hit 4chan if this is not your thing.
I'd LJ-Cut this, but can't get that to work, so here we go.
Ockham's razor. Wikipedia, which is a crapfest, gives this definition for the principle:
"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities.
This often gets brought out to justify a kind of methodological naturalism with regards to science. Fair enough. It also tends to be abused utterly, particular when it comes to controversial subjects - the most common use is 'God created the universe, and God just exists. Or, the universe just exists. Ockham's razor slices the former.' This line was popular before "Flying Spaghetti Monster" usurped it for the position of 'mating cry of the ignorant schmuck'. But, I digress.
Let's put Ockham aside for the moment, so I can discuss something that's always bothered me about scientific discussions: Randomness. The funny thing is that, outside the context of scientific discussions, I absolutely love practical randomness as a concept - it's a central design principle for my favorite games, and I think its general utility and situational attractiveness is considerable. I'm almost a Discordian on the subject. But in scientific explanations, the reliance always struck me as odd - as if it was a metaphysical conjecture. There are a lot of references randomness in evolution (mutations, species development, etc), in cosmology, and so on. In these contexts, randomness being the assumption that these situations or developments are under no guidance, serve no purpose, are foreseen by no one - they just happened, and if it led to something (subjective, of course!) positive or negative, oh well, that's just luck. Insofar as God goes, the reigning attitude is similar to Laplace's famous response to Napoleon when it was pointed out his scientific treatise on the order in the universe left out references to God - "I have no need for that hypothesis."
The French. What're you gonna do, eh?
At first my response was an objection on metaphysical and practical grounds. From our perspective, these events may be random insofar as we ourselves cannot predict them. "For all practical purposes, random". But the speculation on whether things are 'really' random (rather than orchestrated by God, etc) is itself useless. In science, all you have to do is define what happened in a microcosm - 'this genome developed this mutation which led to this trait which', etc. You don't need to even broach the subject of teleology in any way - leave that to others. Especially because design in such an ultimate sense is beyond the power of science to detect. (Or for that matter, rule out. I have to draw the line at Intelligent Design for myself, because I truly, honestly because that you cannot bridge that design gap purely by conventional scientific methods. The ability to test for intentional is extraordinarily difficult for typical human beings and less complicated entities. For a superpowered but still conventionally material being, more difficult. For God, even if God is a brute fact, impossible. On the other hand, I see Intelligent Design as having popped up in response to smuggled in philosophy that asserts science has 'proven God was/is not involved'. The irony is that that is an Intelligent Design claim; if you assert the latter and call it science, you open the door for those in the former position to come in as a dissenting yet still scientific view. More on this another time.)
Recently, I realized that the situation is more grave than that. Somehow I came up with this while I was driving around at 4am, feeling restless. Since then, I've been trying to find where the flaw is - I see none. Listen carefully.
1. There are two fundamental ways for events to occur in the universe. Chance (unguided stuff just bounces around and, through the established laws of the universe, comes to a particular result/state) or intention (an intelligent being with the ability to act orchestrates processes and material towards a particular result/state).
2. We have a priori knowledge of the second 'force' - each of us engages in acts of intention routinely. We certainly know that intention exists.
3. Meanwhile, randomness - 'events that are unpredicted/unforeseen' - is merely postulated to exist. We have less direct evidence that the unorchestrated exists than we do the orchestrated - even when we get results contrary to our intentions, the entire set of events could itself be in accordance with the intention of another being.
4. In principle, absolutely every event - from the motions of atoms and smaller to the occurrences on/with planets and greater - could be orchestrated intentionally. Put another way, 'for everything we say resulted due to the force of chance, we could in turn say resulted due to the force of intention'.
5. Since intention can in principle explain everything chance explains, and we only have evidence of intention, Ockham's razor demands we remove chance as an explanation. "Randomness" is the equivalent of the phlogiston.
So what does this mean? It means that, philosophically, science cannot be grounded in atheism - because atheism presumes the existence of a force we have no direct evidence of. Methodological naturalism must, at heart, be built on a foundation of what is effectively deism. Every advance in our science - from the human understanding of fundamental forces in physics, to unlocking the biological history of evolution, to the introduction of computation and simulation - adds more (circumstantial) evidence to deism, and weakens the scientific case for chance, and therefore atheism.
I'm not saying that science proves there is a God. And certainly, even if there is a God, it doesn't make any particular religion true. But I'm pointing out that, if we're going to take rationalism and Occam's razor seriously, only deism escapes as the most rational philosophical position. Atheism is in the same boat as the greek pantheon - it proposes inexplicable, unobserved, unnecessary entities.
Where am I ultimately going with this? Well, towards two destinations.
One, this justifies my position in regarding the claims of Intelligent Design to be outside the scientific (but within the philosophical) realm, as well as my position as equating Chance believers with being on the same unstable ground as ID proponents when it comes to explaining the findings of science.
Two, it explains why - despite the love atheists have for employing their quotes - both William of Ockham and Pierre-Simon Laplace were Catholic.
I'd LJ-Cut this, but can't get that to work, so here we go.
Ockham's razor. Wikipedia, which is a crapfest, gives this definition for the principle:
"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities.
This often gets brought out to justify a kind of methodological naturalism with regards to science. Fair enough. It also tends to be abused utterly, particular when it comes to controversial subjects - the most common use is 'God created the universe, and God just exists. Or, the universe just exists. Ockham's razor slices the former.' This line was popular before "Flying Spaghetti Monster" usurped it for the position of 'mating cry of the ignorant schmuck'. But, I digress.
Let's put Ockham aside for the moment, so I can discuss something that's always bothered me about scientific discussions: Randomness. The funny thing is that, outside the context of scientific discussions, I absolutely love practical randomness as a concept - it's a central design principle for my favorite games, and I think its general utility and situational attractiveness is considerable. I'm almost a Discordian on the subject. But in scientific explanations, the reliance always struck me as odd - as if it was a metaphysical conjecture. There are a lot of references randomness in evolution (mutations, species development, etc), in cosmology, and so on. In these contexts, randomness being the assumption that these situations or developments are under no guidance, serve no purpose, are foreseen by no one - they just happened, and if it led to something (subjective, of course!) positive or negative, oh well, that's just luck. Insofar as God goes, the reigning attitude is similar to Laplace's famous response to Napoleon when it was pointed out his scientific treatise on the order in the universe left out references to God - "I have no need for that hypothesis."
The French. What're you gonna do, eh?
At first my response was an objection on metaphysical and practical grounds. From our perspective, these events may be random insofar as we ourselves cannot predict them. "For all practical purposes, random". But the speculation on whether things are 'really' random (rather than orchestrated by God, etc) is itself useless. In science, all you have to do is define what happened in a microcosm - 'this genome developed this mutation which led to this trait which', etc. You don't need to even broach the subject of teleology in any way - leave that to others. Especially because design in such an ultimate sense is beyond the power of science to detect. (Or for that matter, rule out. I have to draw the line at Intelligent Design for myself, because I truly, honestly because that you cannot bridge that design gap purely by conventional scientific methods. The ability to test for intentional is extraordinarily difficult for typical human beings and less complicated entities. For a superpowered but still conventionally material being, more difficult. For God, even if God is a brute fact, impossible. On the other hand, I see Intelligent Design as having popped up in response to smuggled in philosophy that asserts science has 'proven God was/is not involved'. The irony is that that is an Intelligent Design claim; if you assert the latter and call it science, you open the door for those in the former position to come in as a dissenting yet still scientific view. More on this another time.)
Recently, I realized that the situation is more grave than that. Somehow I came up with this while I was driving around at 4am, feeling restless. Since then, I've been trying to find where the flaw is - I see none. Listen carefully.
1. There are two fundamental ways for events to occur in the universe. Chance (unguided stuff just bounces around and, through the established laws of the universe, comes to a particular result/state) or intention (an intelligent being with the ability to act orchestrates processes and material towards a particular result/state).
2. We have a priori knowledge of the second 'force' - each of us engages in acts of intention routinely. We certainly know that intention exists.
3. Meanwhile, randomness - 'events that are unpredicted/unforeseen' - is merely postulated to exist. We have less direct evidence that the unorchestrated exists than we do the orchestrated - even when we get results contrary to our intentions, the entire set of events could itself be in accordance with the intention of another being.
4. In principle, absolutely every event - from the motions of atoms and smaller to the occurrences on/with planets and greater - could be orchestrated intentionally. Put another way, 'for everything we say resulted due to the force of chance, we could in turn say resulted due to the force of intention'.
5. Since intention can in principle explain everything chance explains, and we only have evidence of intention, Ockham's razor demands we remove chance as an explanation. "Randomness" is the equivalent of the phlogiston.
So what does this mean? It means that, philosophically, science cannot be grounded in atheism - because atheism presumes the existence of a force we have no direct evidence of. Methodological naturalism must, at heart, be built on a foundation of what is effectively deism. Every advance in our science - from the human understanding of fundamental forces in physics, to unlocking the biological history of evolution, to the introduction of computation and simulation - adds more (circumstantial) evidence to deism, and weakens the scientific case for chance, and therefore atheism.
I'm not saying that science proves there is a God. And certainly, even if there is a God, it doesn't make any particular religion true. But I'm pointing out that, if we're going to take rationalism and Occam's razor seriously, only deism escapes as the most rational philosophical position. Atheism is in the same boat as the greek pantheon - it proposes inexplicable, unobserved, unnecessary entities.
Where am I ultimately going with this? Well, towards two destinations.
One, this justifies my position in regarding the claims of Intelligent Design to be outside the scientific (but within the philosophical) realm, as well as my position as equating Chance believers with being on the same unstable ground as ID proponents when it comes to explaining the findings of science.
Two, it explains why - despite the love atheists have for employing their quotes - both William of Ockham and Pierre-Simon Laplace were Catholic.