Muhahahahaha! Intelligent Grappling lives!

[elfs]

A long time ago, I wrote the "Intelligent Grappling FAQ," in which I proposed that gravity was such an important force in the universe that it could never have happened by chance, and that "gravity" was a weasel-term physicists used to confuse the public. "Gravity only attempts to describe what objects do. It does not explain WHY they do them. It is that challenge that Intelligent Grappling is intended to meet." Later, I added:

6. In order to accept Intelligent Design, must I accept Intelligent Grappling as well?

YES. Intelligent Design says that there is a non-naturalistic, conscious designer at work at the biological level. Intelligent Grappling says that there is a non-naturalistic, conscious grappler at the physicial level. Accepting a naturalistic explanation for one phenomenon but a non-naturalistic explanation for another is a philosophically corrupt position and we do not advocate it.

While this is an important point at the end, and the key philosophical point (if you accept a tinkerer god in biology, you must accept one in physics), I never thought that the ID folks would be so stupid as to actually adopt it.

I was wrong:

Everything is made of atoms. Atoms have no means to relocate themselves in a rapid and precise way to build any living thing. To make an average adult's replacement red blood cells alone, over 4900 quadrillion atoms per second must be sorted from the food we have eaten, selected, assembled, and delivered to our blood stream; that is every second of every day of our adult life.

Muahahahaha! It's not just biology, it's every physical reaction that requires constant, divine intervention in order to happen with the accuracy necessary to keep us alive. This is divine providence made creepy: you're not just a bag of wet meat, you're a bag of wet meat that would fall apart instantly if it weren't for the angels holding you together.

Comments

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Absent of any real proof, how can you rationally argue for either viewpoint? Why is "it's magical science that keeps things behaving orderly" vs. "it's magical divinity that keeps things behaving orderly?"

Both are invisible, magical forces. We might like to believe one is more reasonable than the other, but by its very nature, the two possibilities are equivalent in probability.

The argument that "such coincidence" that this necessary accuracy happens at all suggests an artificial influencer--this divinity--rather than "dumb luck" that things behave the way they do in such a specific and deliberate way.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

There are natural forces we can explain. Gravity and chemistry are among them. They are no more magical than 2 + 2 = 4; we know how it works and why it works and can do the same experiment a thousand times and get identical answers each time. Tada, proof of a natural order, unless one believes that we can force the hand of God to do our puny bidding. Whereas proof of the existence or nonexistence of God hasn't been discovered for many centuries.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Well, no. We can't "explain" gravity. What we can say is that there are no known violations of the regular operation of gravity. We've never seen gravity behave capriciously or without regard for other conditions in its frame of reference. The same is true of all four standard forces, and everything, even consciousness itself, can be adequately explained by the operation of those forces.

Dossy's attempting to make an equivalent "either your RIGHT or your WRONG" argument, a classic tactic of those who don't really understand how science works. As Asimov put it, "Once upon a time, people believed the world to be flat, and they were wrong. Many people today believe the world to be round, and they're wrong. But they're much less wrong than those who believed the world to be flat." Science operates by closing in on the "least wrong explanation", eternally provisional until further evidence is provided, not the "right" one.

The best description of the Earth, the least wrong description, is an oblate ellipsoid, just to stave off any "huh?" moments.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Ah, but conciousness cannot be defined nor measured. How long is your conciousness? How many cm^3? What are the units of measurement and what apparatus is used to measure it? For that matter, what IS it to begin with?

This is the fundamental problem with creating artificial intelligence. How can one model and simulate what one cannot even describe or explain? We cannot even begin to define intelligence, nevermind program it into a computer.

And yes, we can explain gravity. It is a deformation of space-time brought on by mass. Although some experimentation is ongoing to try and discover a messenger particle for this force (as other forces have), it remains theoretical and fails to explain how gravitational force extends in a spherical shell at infinite distances. So yes, we can explain it in the large scale, but not in the quantum scale. So it is both understood, and not understood at the same time.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Actually, you are confusing the "definition" of gravity with the "explanation" of gravity. The definition is something that we create out of our own defined parameters. We have defined gravity as "the deformation of space-time brought on by mass"...these are the parameters we created for "gravity".

But how gravity actually operates is another story. There is a force that we cannot observe with our physical skills (seeing, hearing, touching, etc) but we guess exists. We can observe with those same physical skills the resulting influence of this force of gravity on physical objects around us, and we get a repetition of those observations the exact same way that can be measured over and over. So we conclude that the force that we guess is there exists, and can be measured by the resulting response to the physical objects.

But we really don't know for sure what this force looks like, is composed of, etc. We guess.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

One such guess is "there is a extra-natural force, a supposed divinity, which exerts this force."

Another such guess is "this force exists autonomously, without any such actor."

Perhaps both are wrong. Theologists believe that the former is "less wrong." Atheists believe that the latter is "less wrong."

Neither can actually demonstrate that either is actually more or less wrong than the other, other than by pandering to personal emotional state.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

You are confusing things, just as the previous poster did. Let me be more plain.

Science is the observation of the natural world that can be measured. Explanations are derived as to how these natural phenomena operate.

What you seem to be doing is going beyond that to theology, and then demanding that science measure it...which is impossible. By definition, theology studies the realm of the divine, and one cannot measure it.

Science does not discuss or measure what cannot be observed in some way. Since there is no evidence of any "extra-natural force" acting on gravity, by definition the theory cannot include it until there is observation of such that can be measured.

*By definition* not observing any "extra-natural force, a supposed divinity" that can be measured will result by default in a definition that the force exists autonomously. It is not a guess...it is the only result that can be made.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

I think we're actually in agreement, then.

Can science then be used to refute theological claims?

If I understand you correctly, science must remain silent on assertions made by theology.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Can science then be used to refute theological claims?

If I understand you correctly, science must remain silent on assertions made by theology.

Of course science can. How many times has theology wandered into the realm of observable science, making this claim and that that can be refuted by observation? The most obvious one is the theological claim that the earth is only 6000 years old because the bible says so. That can easily be refuted using time-tested scientific techniques.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I guess I wasn't being clear. What can science assert about the existance (or non-existance) of a extra-natural divine force that maintains the perceived order of the universe that we observe?

Science cannot refute theology's claims about the cause, as only the effect is measurable.

[(Anonymous)]

It's irrelevant that science can't refute theology's claims about the cause, because theology can't support those claims in the first place -- there's nothing for science to refute. Except perhaps a violation of parsimony, which has a pretty good track record, epistemologically speaking.

Number 127

[omahas.livejournal.com]

That's not exactly true.

Theology is an explanation of the divine, not the physical, world. By definition, the divine is ultimately not explainable by mere human observation...we can only attempt to understand it through our experience of the physical and an attempt to connect with the divine. And, more importantly, each person's connection with the divine is, by definition, different, so it cannot be measured in the way that science measures the observable world.

So, to claim that "theology can't support those claims in the first place" is ignoring the core concept of what theology is...or supposed to be. The two are not supposed to be operating within the same realm.

[(Anonymous)]

"Theology is an explanation of the divine, not the physical, world."

What reason is there to suppose there is such a thing as a divine world?

Number 127

[omahas.livejournal.com]

What reason is there to suppose that there isn't? This is where belief comes in. You don't have to abandon science to also have belief. You don't have to believe in divine to practice science. But trying to force both to operate in the same plane is stupid.

They don't. They weren't meant to. And doing so is what creates stupidity like Creationism and ID.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't suppose there isn't, but until the existence of the divine can be demonstrated, I don't see any usefulness in discussing an explanation of its nature, any more than I can see the point of talking about what the invisible elves dancing on my lawn like to eat.

Number 127

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Science's job is not to refute the claim's of anything that is not observable...by definition, if you can't in some way observe it, you can't very well measure it and come to a conclusion that it doesn't exist.

That being said, you do seem to have missed an important point. Lacking evidence of the existence of something, one can *only conclude* that the "something" does not exist. This does not mean that it does not exist, but that the evidence does not reveal any existence of it. This is an incredibly important point in science that layman *do not get*.

Therefore, lacking any evidence that angels or any other divine intervention operates the force of gravity, I can only conclude that that divine intervention *does not exist* on the force of gravity. Until I discover further physical observations that tell me that it does, my scientific observations say that it doesn't exist.

My theological belief? That's my own personal opinion, based on my own connection to the divine, and not one to be refuted by anyone but me. And not one for me to force upon anyone else (no pun intended).

[dossy.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to understand you. Thank you for taking the time explaining this to me.

Has science concluded that infinity doesn't exist? One can never - by definition - measure something which is infinite. You might be able to reason about it, using an inductive proof, but it's outside the realm of the empirical. Yet, I imagine, many scientists would probably tell me they understand the concept of infinity.

So, without being able to measure or observe something which is infinite, a scientist can still assert the truth and existance of a concept's validity based purely on reasoning alone. Or, woudld you say that mathematicians and logicians find the concept of infinity useful, but science concludes that it does not exist because none such thing can be observed or measured?

Gnarly, confusing ...

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Of course, there's the question of how you define what the Earth is. If you're just talking about the solids, liquids, and gasses, then yes. If you're talking about the magnetic field it's really lumpy and irregular. The Ionosphere is shaped like a raindrop, tapering off in the direction opposite the sun. If you're talking about it as a gravitational body, it's a shallow dimple in spacetime with a smaller depression overlapping it (the moon). But yes. All of those agree. The earth is not a sphere. :)

The real problem as I see it with the religious point of view is that it's too egocentric and myopic. Pretend for a second that God exists. Okay, great. So now God is spontaneously created out of the void and chaos instead of the universe. So either some other process created God came from somewhere else and if he came from somewhere else, then what created that elsewhere? It's a simple scoping problem. At some level, something has to have been spontaneously created from chaos and nothing.

The real question is simply: Do you believe that emergent thing was a bunch of matter and energy which had the potential to give rise to life and then thought or do you believe that emergent thing was a fully formed consciousness capable of creating something as complex as the universe.

Faced with those two choices, one is considerably more plausible than the other.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Who created the truth behind "2 + 2 = 4"? We like to claim that it is a priori. That same actor may have created the God-force.

[qtplatypus.livejournal.com]

Well the truth of 2+2=4 is a consequence of the axioms of the natural numbers.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

heheh.

Let us take it a step further, then.

If every single electrical and chemical and physical effect was driven exclusively by God, then every evil deed, naughty thought, vile act and sin of every size and stripe is DIRECTLY the act of God himself! For if no activity was possible but through his power, then his power created the action. So God not only condones sin, but actually causes it to begin with.

You may want to step back a little as their heads explode...