Keeping in line with this week's theme of writing heaps, its time to shoot down the idea of Intelligent design. I'm not going to take credit for this one. I actually read an article in a magazine which had most of the ideas I'm about to put down.
For those of you who don't know what we mean when we say Intelligent Design (ID), let me lay it down for you. Basically its the notion that this universe is too well designed, too well structured, for it to be made by chance. The idea is that it could only have happened if someone, or something, wanted it to happen out of concious thought (or whatever the alternative to thought may be).
So thats their argument basically. The world is too perfect to have been made by chance. I think its silly because nobody actually knows what the alternative is. Nothingness, including the non-existence of space, is hard to imagine. I mean, you could imagine it, but all I can come up with is blackness. The thing is though, even blackness is something. How can you possibly have nothing?
I'll be one of the first to admit that this universe does seem to be rather nice. I mean, the weight of a quark is supposedly good. Apparently if it were slightly different, the universe would have collapsed in on itself before it even begun. The thing is though, we would never be here to consider the possibility of intelligent design if it were different. Now I don't know whether the existence of this 'perfect universe' is actually enough to say that someone designed it. The existence of a universe would only show that one exists, not that something created it. Its like saying I have good eyes because I must have eaten some carrots. It could be true, but it is impossible determine the cause you only know the effect.
Then we run into the age old infinite question of, if it was made by something, then what made that something? To put it more explicitly, if a God made the universe, then who made God? And so on and so forth. It just goes nowhere, and then we're only delaying the inevitable. These questions are always fun to ask, however.
Lets say something did design the universe. I wonder how many they flopped through before they came up with this one. Universes that go backwards in time (Red Dwarf anyone?), or what about the one where they didn't get it right and it flopped before it even started? The possibilities are only limited by our imagination, or those of our creators. It kind of reminds me of thse time in chemistry when we were trying to separate some flammable liquid or something, and instead of it falling through the tube, it caught on fire. Oh the memories. But I digress...
This is not to say that ID is such a bad thing. They've got a theory, and trying to find evidence to support it. However, the only evidence they have is existence. The problem is drawing a substantial argument to link the two together apart from "just because".
Oh the mysteries of the universe... This one is almost as hard to figure out as why Soh is always late. I have a feeling that one will stay locked away for all eternity.
6 comments:
yeah
i think it'd take more faith in me to believe that this world has no God than believing there's a God.
I think it comes down to the fact that, i think Christianity is truth... it makes sense, and i believe in it :) and i have that hope =) something in me that fills my desires and leaves me full rather than empty....
Oh the mysteries of the universe.
I guess what makes sense to some people doesn't make sense to others.
As for Jesus' body, it decomposed before the camera was invented. Either that or people eat it every time they have communion. Depends how literally you wish to take it.
LOL ez.
The only thing i know is that i don't know if i know anything... It's already getting near 2am and still half of semester one C&A to get thru. Sigh. Nothing like a bit of existential digression. Here's another attempt at a comment that's longer than the original post.
Absolutism is only as defensible as relativism. Only to me, relativism is open to less criticism on the basis that it cannot ever be wrong - it can only be relatively wrong :)
It's really going to be a semantic debate anyway because (like anon said) as soon as you say everything is relative you are making an 'absolute statement'. In fact, if you make any positive statement, you are making an absolute statement. We are bound by language, and if you want to try to express/convey meaning, you are going to have to deal with those restrictions...
Anyway i don't really want to try to shoot down the idea of I.D or any alternative. But i do want to write something about relativism v absolutism. For arguments sake (and to help make this post longer) let's say that we are talking about these two concepts of absolutism and relativism in the sense ordinarily used. That is in my view:
(1) absolutism is the belief in static external concepts that exist independently of ourselves - in a void forever unchanging.
(2) relativism is the belief that concepts exist and are only defined by their relation with other concepts (and ourselves).
Now what i find hard to understand about something like intelligent design is that it relies on absolutist concepts (like the concept of God's plan perhaps..)
Let me try to illustrate the problem i have. Take the statement: 'absolute altruism exists'. Here's why it doesn't make sense to me:
If it is a true statement then one can act PURELY on the basis of 'regard for others'. BUT, you can never 'choose' to do something selflessly for the benefit of another - because the very definition of 'choice' means that you have consciously made a decision that your course of action is necessarily preferable to another.
Preference is a matter determined by your own feelings/emotions etc. Thus any 'choice' must be, at some level, beneficial to yourself - be that a material gain or merely the satisfaction achieved. As soon as you say that there is no benefit to yourself you are no longer freely 'choosing': either you are being forced, or you made a mistake. Neither of which would be altruistic either. [altruistic action must be by free and conscious action]
Thus 'absolute altruism exists' is not a logically supportable statement. Now some of you there are probably thinking "but that's just a semantic problem!" - and it is. But the concept of 'altruism' is nothing other than that in the strict sense. If you start talking about doing things 'mainly for someone else's benefit' - you are really looking to relative or comparative ideas of what to you seems morally preferable.
And i guess it's this latter issue that crops up all the time when i think about concepts like 'right' and 'wrong'. Absolutism would say that the two concepts exist. And they can, and do - in a semantic (logical) sense. But from a more relativist point of view, the question that always goes begging is "but from who's point of view?"...
The concept of I.D similarly implies a need for there to be an absolute unchanging concept of the external. From our point of view though, might not the inexplicability of the universe's origins today be like our belief that the Earth was flat? (but who knows, maybe one day that will be shown to be 'right') To us now, the universe might seem to be too perfect to be the product of mere chance, but might that not merely be the result of our limited understanding? ... Even if everything IS 'perfect', random chance remains a possible explanation because, random chance is, after all, just that - random.
I'm not necessarily saying that this is the case. But jumping to the conclusion that it must be I.D. just because it seems unlikely to be chance (from what we can see now) is, in my view, starting out with a pre-determined conclusion..
Think about it a bit :)
hehe well, i'm sure u've done a bit of stochastical probability in your course and to put the whole universe as pure chance and our living and if some weight of something was just 1 digit off (being some 10^27 digits long) then everything wouldn't exist...... that probability would be a bit too big for my graphics calculator =p
Besides that, i watched an ID video a while back, and it talks about the actual mechanisms of cells and those microscopic thingies and how they function and alll this jargon, which of course i can't regurgitate coz i'm no good at chemistry or biology nor did i do any of that, but indeed my understanding of what it was saying wasn't just that the universe itself was 'perfect' it was more about the question of 'how the heck did those little cells get formed in such a complex hardcore way?'
they got like 10 dr/phd/nerds/geeks together and they'd written publishings upon publishings and some even wrote some against this idea and now they're going back on their word because as they dive further and further into it, they realise how wrong their statements and views are.....
something to do with our cells having this exterior motor like mechanism that rotates at 50billion times a second or something and the structure of the parts and blablalbablabl
anywayz, if u'd like to have a watch of this 1 hour video/dvd i'd be happy to grab it for u......... not that i'm trying to prove to u something........ just take a glance =)
When i say choice necessarily involves some level of benefit to oneself, i mean this:
Take the example of someone dying to save someone else. Let's say, for arguments sake, soldier A who takes a bullet (and dies) for soldier B on the battlefield back in WW1.
Ask yourself, WHY did they die to save them? If A just happened to be in the way of the bullet, then A didn't choose to save B. So A must have done something positive and had some control over whether or not (s)he would save B.
Let's just assume that A's choices were absolute here to make things more clear (just forget about random chance for a minute..). A could either:
(1) Save B and die;
or
(2) Not save B and not die
Now for A to consciously choose (1), there must be a reason. If there is no reason - for eg A didn't think before doing it - then we don't really have a proper choice.
Now if you say that A died because (s)he wanted to save B, that is a valid reason. But there is still the question of why: WHY did A decide (choose) that (1) was preferable to (2). I would argue it this way: IF (1) is preferable to (2), it must be the case that A derives some level of utility/benefit from (1) that exceeds the utility/benefit from (2). That utility/benefit might come in the form of a warm fuzzy feeling that A feels they are acting for the benefit of their fellow soldier. But it is still utility/benefit nonetheless. Thus A is not in the end making a choice solely 'for the benefit' of B, (s)he is making a choice for her/himself.
If this isn't the case, ie that A does NOT derive greater utility/benefit from (1) than (2), then we don't have a choice, we have a mistake. A is not making an informed decision. If A would really feel much better being alive, but somehow embarks on course of action (1), i don't think you can call that choice.
Don't know if that makes much sense but it's about as clear as i can make it..
And please don't take any of this the wrong way - i'm not trying be offensive or to say my ideas are better than anyone elses. I find this sort of debate interesting.. and I'm just trying to explain how i think and how i see things. And at the same time trying to understand how other ppl see things (differently) too.
hmmmmm, i kinda disagree about this benefit thing.......a choice is a choice, whether u benefit from it or not..... choosing to not go out, choosing to eat at a later time, choosing this choosing that, it's not about benefits for yourself all the time.
Being selfless is a choice, not by force
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