Natural Selection Seems Insufficient

[Jal]

That's like saying a false dichotomy is a well known fallacy. Perfectly correct - once you've show a particular example to be a false dichotomy.  You have to do the work. In the same way, incredulity is a fallacy only when you've shown  a particular example to be a wholly unjustified incredulity. You have to do the work. Duh.

You've got the burden of proof backward again.  I don't need to show that your incredulity is unjustified, you need to show that your incredulity is justified.  Until you do, the defect is self-evident.

I don't think it's an Either-OR simplicity. It's  not one-sided.  Obviously the incredulous one offers a REASON (a justification) for his incredulity. To some extent, this shifts the burden of proof to the other party, who should try to show that the reasoning was inadequate.

[Jal]

You miss the point.  As the Humean argument goes, the more like an analogy the greater the force.  The less similar, the less force.  You were defending incredulity as your guide and it was shown that the analogy supporting your defense is unlike the analogized.  As an analogy in defense of argument from incredulity about these subjects it fails.  Instead of addressing that incredulity still has no legitimate defense, you simply change the subject toward another area where, without adequate justification, you use incredulity as a guide.  Hume himself pointed out how the watchmaker analogy is faulty, that you would defend it in this context, given that the relevant counter-argument has been clearly suggested by Hume's analysis, suggests you are rather dense and immune to reason.  



I don't "believe in" curved spacetime.  I simply don't find the concept incoherent as you do.  It's not a question of whether I can make sense of Einstein's equations but rather whether there is anything immediately contradictory about the concept of spacetime.  My training is in mathematics, so imagining difficult geometric concepts is something I have a strength regarding.  That you cannot imagine the concept of curved spacetime, despite the standard 2D explainer being readily available and well known simply again suggests that you are somewhat dense.



And the answer to that is that nothing follows from your incredulity unless it is informed by sound justification for your doubts.  Your little digression about the evolution of sex shows that not only do you present defective reasons for your incredulity (coevolution is a simple response), it shows that you are likely infected with a lot of dumb creationist and natural theology arguments which suggests greater scrutiny for the reasons you provide, not less.  You are a cloistered idiot who cannot simply accept the fact that he has departed into heretical ideas because the Christian bible on its face is a bunch of impossible to reconcile bollocks.  Hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you kept the bathwater and formed an ersatz baby from a bunch of other religiously embraced but largely rejected notions.  Like a drunk in the night, you seem to have issues simply leaving the lamp post behind.

One example of historic idiocy still prevalent among many Christians is bible-based epistemology, as though God intended bible-scholarship to be our primary avenue to religious knowledge.  A far better theory is Direct Revelation (prophethood) as our guiding Light. With this epistemology, the Bible need not be 100% inerrant and free from contradiction. Its main purpose is probably to inspire/ invigorate us by confirming things that Direct Revelation divulged to us. To that end it has ginormous amounts of inspirational text regardless if it has some trivial contradictions.  Personally I've found it difficult to find any contradictions in the Bible. Most such allegations turn out to be reconciliable.

Yeah keep telling yourself that you comprehend curved space. Like I said, you apparently have got yourself believing that you comprehend it.  Enjoy your delusion. If you're  not careful, one of these scholars will cause you to believe in square circles too.

[Angrboda]

You've got the burden of proof backward again.  I don't need to show that your incredulity is unjustified, you need to show that your incredulity is justified.  Until you do, the defect is self-evident.

I don't think it's an Either-OR simplicity. It's  not one-sided.  Obviously the incredulous one offers a REASON (a justification) for his incredulity. To some extent, this shifts the burden of proof to the other party, who should try to show that the reasoning was inadequate.

Fine. Present your reasons for your incredulity. So far all I've seen is the surface tips of a wave of tired creationist and natural theology arguments which are beyond tired (sexual evolution and appealing to Al Ghazali being two). Present your reasons and I'll provide the counters.

[Mister Agenda]

I didn't read all 23 pages up to this point. Did Jal explain why natural selection is insufficient to explain the following when it seems to exactly explain them?

Thus, in a reductionism, natural selection will fail because, in a blind causality:
- Hunger won't precipitate food-gathering and satiation.
- Libido won't precipitate mating and reproduction.
- Fear of attack won't precipitate flight.
- Mammals won't seek the needed shelter, hibernation, and migration.
The dominos will simply fall blindly and randomly, resulting in starvation and extinction.

[Angrboda]

Reductionistic atheism is too philosophically deficient to be plausible. If merely dead particles exist: 
- How did consciouness arise? Inconceivable. 

For someone who argues that there are degrees of sentience, this is a particularly daft objection. Consciousness evolved by degrees. Same as is required by your argument.

- What was the first mover that got the ball rolling? Inconceivable. 

There are many objections to the first mover argument, Hawking-Hartle being one, but I prefer a more foundational answer. Giordano Bruno pondered what lay at the edge of the universe. If there was an edge to the universe, what was on the other side? If there was an other side, then we weren't really at the edge. It seemed to offer an irresolvable paradox. Yet whether you can wrap your head around curved spacetime or not, it is one logically coherent possibility, as is that space is self-contained and so there is no other side as in Bruno's imagination. Bruno's thought experiment embedded certain assumptions about mereological containment and linearity that are, in hindsight, not supported. As Kant's Critique made clear, our minds structure reality with certain preconceived assumptions which it is difficult to circumvent. Paradoxical questions such as "Why something rather than nothing?" and "What is the origin of motion?" contain similarly embedded assumptions which will yield only nonsensical answers until those foundational intuitions and assumptions are superseded. What was the beginning member of a linear series of events? Neither an infinite past nor positing a necessary being resolve the quandary satisfactorily. So my answer to your incredulity here is that your question is ill-conceived due to historical limits on human imagination.

- What is the nature of all the so-called "forces" such as gravity - what causes them?  Inconceivable. 

It's well known that explanations must have some terminus that is simply a brute fact. The same is true of your explanations as well. To argue that such a terminus is unreasonable with regard to basic forces such as gravity, but not with respect to your own brute facts is to engage in a double standard. Remove the beam from your own eye before you complain about the mote.

- How did natural selection occur?  Inconceivable (see below).
Reductionism is a determinism - a cause-effect dynamic tantamount to a domino effect which, as such, is inconducive to natural selection. 
Why so? Suppose I feel hunger and thus desire food. If free will moves matter, as I have claimed, I am not locked into a domino effect, I can freely lunge toward food and consume it.

Whereas, in a domino effect, my desire for food is irrelevant/ useless, as all motion is a blind causality wholly deterministic.  In a chain of dominos tipping rightward, for example, they will still fall to the right even if some of them desire the left, because desires would be irrelevant/useless, since a deterministic universe couldn't care less what we desire. 

Thus, in a reductionism, natural selection will fail because, in a blind causality: 
- Hunger won't precipitate food-gathering and satiation.
- Libido won't precipitate mating and reproduction.
- Fear of attack won't precipitate flight.
- Mammals won't seek the needed shelter, hibernation, and migration.
The dominos will simply fall blindly and randomly, resulting in starvation and extinction.

You are arguing that things like hunger, libido, and such are epiphenomenal. The response is simply to suggest that hunger and libido are parts of the domino chain and that your charge of epiphenomenalism ignores the very real evidence from psychology that things like beliefs and desires strongly correlate with behavior and thus suggest that the beliefs and desires rather than being epiphenomenon are actually a part of the causal chain.


Do you have any other incredulity you need answered?

[Deesse23]

That's like saying a false dichotomy is a well known fallacy. Perfectly correct - once you've show a particular example to be a false dichotomy.  You have to do the work. In the same way, incredulity is a fallacy only when you've shown  a particular example to be a wholly unjustified incredulity. You have to do the work. Duh.

I dont have to prove you are incredulous. You have to back your incredulity with ev-i-dence. Yet all you did was saying "i CAN NOT CONCEIVE". You arguing "I CAN NOT CONCEIVE" is a TEXTBOOK argument from incredulity.

THATS how ignorant you are. Now stop parading your ignorance around and start your journey of LEARNING.

[Jal]

I didn't read all 23 pages up to this point. Did Jal explain why natural selection is insufficient to explain the following when it seems to exactly explain them?

Thus, in a reductionism, natural selection will fail because, in a blind causality:
- Hunger won't precipitate food-gathering and satiation.
- Libido won't precipitate mating and reproduction.
- Fear of attack won't precipitate flight.
- Mammals won't seek the needed shelter, hibernation, and migration.
The dominos will simply fall blindly and randomly, resulting in starvation and extinction.

Allow me to rephrase the argument.  Let's suppose you are in a sailboat. Afar off you see an island known to have things that you hunger for such as wine and fine jewelry.

Unfortunately the wind is blowing your sailboat in the opposite direction, partly because it COULD NOT CARE LESS what you hunger for. That's the nature of domino-effect determinism. Where you end up, in such a metaphysics, HAS NOTHING TO DO with what you want. You will precisely NOT end up at the desired destination. Blind causality will simply take you wherever it HAPPENS to be heading. You will never  have opportunity to consume the food and drink that you hunger for. Hopefully you see the problem?

Reductionistic Natural Selection, then, does not provide a complete picture of reality. It is philosophically deficient/ defective. Something is missing here, in this deterministic domino cause-effect world view. In my OP I proposed self-moving free will as that missing link consistent with human experience and, as a bonus, also affords a First Mover solution. In other words by free will I can, at whim and will, lunge my body toward whatever I hunger for.  Such a self-moving conscious property is not likely an evolution - mostly likely it must be an innate property inherent to matter itself. This type of view is called panpsychism.

[Angrboda]

An infinite past is one way in which things could have always been in motion.   There being no initial temporal boundary in the beginning being another.   You imagine the former but not the latter and prematurely close the inquiry.  This is the problem with incredulity as an argument, it is limited to what we know and can imagine.  Given the arguments you've made, and my experience with similar arguments, I know from experience that your incredulous doubts do not hold up to scrutiny.  Now, if you want to pass judgment on what experts believe as a purely personal matter, determining what you wish to believe, that's your prerogative.  As a matter of you being here, you are making an argument that we should accept your conclusions, it's no longer a question of your belief, your argument need overcome our skepticism.  For a variety of reasons it fails to do so.  You're welcome to believe that you have presented a good case, but your presentation reveals that it is informed by ignorance, a lack of imagination, a general lack of logical rigor, and several logical flaws which despite your attempts to mitigate them with inappropriate analogies continue to bedevil the wholer edifice.  In short, the only person you've managed to convince is yourself.  And as Feynman observed, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."  The evidence from people that know what they are talking about, not those with limited imaginations and distinctly cloistered knowledge bases (you), find the things you consider implausible wholly plausible.  So I have two options.  I can remain agnostic about your conclusion, my preferred stance, or if forced to weigh your opinion against that of experts, come down decidedly on the side of experts.  That's your starting point.  And so far you haven't moved the ball any with logically constructed argument or informed explanations.  Why should I believe your opinion about the credibility of these things?  Give me one good reason why I should grant your incredulity a shred of credibility?  Like many arguments rooted in religion, what you present is not likely to persuade any but those who are already sympathetic to your conclusions.  That's a telling sign that all your blather cannot overcome.

Occam's Razor. If I can easily account for stuff without recourse to gibberish such as an infinite past, it probably behooves me to do so.

I wasn't suggesting that you appeal to an infinite past. You apparently have reading comprehension issues.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@BrianSoddingBoru4,

You think I'm an Aristotelian? Aristotle was a panpsychist? I don't think he was. Although I don't much care.

He originated the ‘unmoved mover’ concept, which (in my bolded bit above) you appear to support.

And, at the very least, Aristotle spoke rather glowingly about some aspects of panpsychism - ‘everything is full of gods.’

Boru

[Deesse23]

A very basic education in any science, particularly the ones you are criticizing and a demonstration of yours that you actually have understood your lessons. What Level of scientific education do you have?


...unless your are so ignorant you dont know how ignorant you are. The people you may criticize are potentially wrong, but you possibly are too ignorant to make valid points against them.
On what basis do you determine that evolution is wrong? Its a well established theory for over 100 years and entire generations of scientist have devoted their entire life to critically examine it. So far there is a mountain of evidence in favour of it and nothing has been presented yet to disprove it. Are you so arrogant to believe these hordes of PhD holders who invested their entire professional lives, did some "stupid" mistakes like missing that 2+2=4 or that consciousness can only come from consciousness. DO you seriously think that was never considered?
Your entire attitude shows me  that you did NOT have any scientific education, because you lack the humility to LISTEN and UNDERSTAND before you try to criticize. Me and many of my co-students were the same, in our first year at university, and we were QUICKLY disabused of the notion that our professors who had decades of study and lecture under their belt did some "stupid mistakes" and that we "exposed" this stupidity.

I am going to shortly address, passing by so to say, that you not only dont know what you are criticizing, you dont even know what you believe. When i told you the trinity is incoherent you answered by suggesting you understand trinity as partialism. Actually partialism is a heresy, and the trinitarian belief is the belief that all three entities (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit) are the SAME entity at the same time. This mere fact should make you stop in your track immediately and critically examine your beliefs and epistemology. Add to that the fact that most christians disagree with your theology, most philosophers with your philosophy and scientists with your claims about science.

Please let that sink in for a second before you hit the reply button.

Please don't lecture me on traditional assessments of Christian heresy. These assessments are formulated by the same kinds of scholars who
(1) Admit that the traditional theory of the Incarnation is incomprehensible and self-contradictory.
(2) Claim that an immutable God became man.
(3) Claim that God is immaterial, therefore indivisible into parts, and yet is a Trinity. 
(4) Claim that God is already fully/exhaustively present at every point in space - and yet pours out His Holy Spirit! Pours it where? Where He was already there?

These are examples of historic idiocy, and I can show you more.

Even Millard J. Erickson, whose systematic theology textbook is the most popular one in seminaries today, or at least was such in his heyday, admitted that the traditional rendition of the Trinity is logically "absurd from the human standpoint" (his words).

You made a heretic statement of partialism while clearly being completely ignorant/oblivious of the fact you were. You completely missed the point, as usual, and are backpedaling now. You defended Trinity when i called it incoherent. You didnt know that the trinity is NOT about your god having three parts. You didnt know the theology of your own religion. Now you quickly looked it up and condemn it yourself. 

The earth is not flat genesis 1 is wrong on every single claim, bats aren't birds, we have found nobody  dwelling in the outer atmosphere, and Trinity is logically incoherent

The Trinity is incoherent? Identifying three subsections of a material mind is incoherent?  In that case, which one cell of your brain is the real you? I mean, you're saying that multiple parts is incoherent, right? As usual, you're not making any sense.

Bolding mine