Debating an Atheist

[mattrose]

I did read it, and I commented on that already.

RE: "I don't think that Rask is suggesting that Darwinists CAN'T put their argument for evolution into a form that doesn't contain logical fallacies. "

Bart is saying that evolutionary theory is a logical fallacy of "affirming the consequent." I know this by discussions I'm having with him. It is even the very title of his book. It makes no difference to him how the argument is formatted.

I won't claim to know what is in Rask's head (though I highly suspect he understands that not all darwinists go the route of 'affirming the consequent.') Rask is beside the point.

My point is that MANY darwinists end up, in practice, 'affirming the consequent.' Indeed, my point is that you have done this at various points in this thread and/or in the two debates I've listened to. My point, to state it in yet another way, is that darwinists ultimately either affirm the consequent OR fail to argue for their first premise (similarity between species suggests descent). In the former they commit a logical fallacy, in the latter they either fail to admit or recognize their presuppositions.

I see no compelling reason to assume that similarity between species suggests descent without making a presuppositional decision that everything is best explained in a naturalistic worldview.

[CThomas]

It isn't so much that it is "wrong" but more that it is intellectually and academically lazy. For any claim, any at all, basic critical thinking processes entail analyzing all the possible hypotheses to see which makes the most sense.

RE: "These phrenology skeptics had no alternative theory of the mind to replace phrenology."

I think you are wrong about this. There are always alternative hypotheses to any claim.

To prove it, give me any assertion at all, and I'll give you some possible alternative hypotheses for it. It really isn't that difficult. It's really a matter of basic critical thinking processes.

Truman, let me take each of these in order.

First, you happen to be incorrect about the history of this particular instance, but it doesn't matter. Phrenology is an arbitrary example. If you read the critiques of phrenology you will see that they did not in any way survey alternatives or propose a better theory for the psychological phenomena explained by phrenology. They simply pointed out failures of the phrenological approach itself. Again, use some common sense here. We don't currently have a unified "theory of everything" in physics. Suppose I propose my own theory of everything, and it is ridiculous. You (or a competent physicist) would point out that my theory doesn't work and makes no sense. Nobody would say that it is a problem that this critic didn't have an alternative theory of everything to offer in its place. If I show that your dollar bill is a forgery it isn't a valid response to complain that I don't have a real dollar to spend in its place. It's exactly the same thing with evolution. Suppose the evidence and arguments in support of the evolutionary hypothesis were weak and flawed. (I'm not saying they actually are -- just assume they were.) It's obvious that there would be nothing wrong with pointing out the fallacies and showing that the evidence doesn't support the conclusion even if we had nothing better to offer in its place. A critical part of science is working hard to try to subject theories to rigorous criticism and examination. You have to do that whether or not you have a better theory to replace it with. That isn't "lazy," it's perfectly valid and in fact critically important.

Second, I said that phrenology skeptics had no replacement theory for it. You responded that there are always alternative hypotheses and challenged me to provide a counter-example. You completely missed my point. Obviously there are always innumerable possibilities. The point is that the critics of phrenology had none that they believed were scientifically established with well-supported evidence. So of course they were aware that there were lots of possibilities. My point was that they did not have one of those possibilities that they advocated as an alternative answer. That's the point that's relevant to this conversation.

Now I have my own theory that I am about to subject to empirical testing. Based on induction from prior observations, I predict that you will respond to this message by quoting one or two sentences out of this message and responding with a cursory one- or two-sentence reply that does not make a serious attempt to engage my reasoning on any serious level. I hope that this prediction is falsified and that we can actually have a substantive discussion of ideas on this point.

Best regards,

CThomas

[TrumanSmith]

I see no compelling reason to assume that similarity between species suggests descent without making a presuppositional decision that everything is best explained in a naturalistic worldview.

That's because you don't understand the evidence for evolution. Have you read, and understood, evangelical Christian Francis Collins book "The Language of God" and the evidence he presents for evolution? He's a big player in the debate, so you should be aware if you want to dismiss it. Otherwise you are like Steve Gregg that dismisses evidence without first understanding it. Collins is a top-notch scientist in my thinking.

[TrumanSmith]

It isn't so much that it is "wrong" but more that it is intellectually and academically lazy. For any claim, any at all, basic critical thinking processes entail analyzing all the possible hypotheses to see which makes the most sense.

RE: "These phrenology skeptics had no alternative theory of the mind to replace phrenology."

I think you are wrong about this. There are always alternative hypotheses to any claim.

To prove it, give me any assertion at all, and I'll give you some possible alternative hypotheses for it. It really isn't that difficult. It's really a matter of basic critical thinking processes.

Truman, let me take each of these in order.

First, you happen to be incorrect about the history of this particular instance, but it doesn't matter. Phrenology is an arbitrary example. If you read the critiques of phrenology you will see that they did not in any way survey alternatives or propose a better theory for the psychological phenomena explained by phrenology. They simply pointed out failures of the phrenological approach itself. Again, use some common sense here. We don't currently have a unified "theory of everything" in physics. Suppose I propose my own theory of everything, and it is ridiculous. You (or a competent physicist) would point out that my theory doesn't work and makes no sense. Nobody would say that it is a problem that this critic didn't have an alternative theory of everything to offer in its place. If I show that your dollar bill is a forgery it isn't a valid response to complain that I don't have a real dollar to spend in its place. It's exactly the same thing with evolution. Suppose the evidence and arguments in support of the evolutionary hypothesis were weak and flawed. (I'm not saying they actually are -- just assume they were.) It's obvious that there would be nothing wrong with pointing out the fallacies and showing that the evidence doesn't support the conclusion even if we had nothing better to offer in its place. A critical part of science is working hard to try to subject theories to rigorous criticism and examination. You have to do that whether or not you have a better theory to replace it with. That isn't "lazy," it's perfectly valid and in fact critically important.

Second, I said that phrenology skeptics had no replacement theory for it. You responded that there are always alternative hypotheses and challenged me to provide a counter-example. You completely missed my point. Obviously there are always innumerable possibilities. The point is that the critics of phrenology had none that they believed were scientifically established with well-supported evidence. So of course they were aware that there were lots of possibilities. My point was that they did not have one of those possibilities that they advocated as an alternative answer. That's the point that's relevant to this conversation.

Now I have my own theory that I am about to subject to empirical testing. Based on induction from prior observations, I predict that you will respond to this message by quoting one or two sentences out of this message and responding with a cursory one- or two-sentence reply that does not make a serious attempt to engage my reasoning on any serious level. I hope that this prediction is falsified and that we can actually have a substantive discussion of ideas on this point.

Best regards,

CThomas

I guess this reply proves your prediction wrong. There are plenty of things that you wrote that I disagree with. Some of it I can also agree to.

[CThomas]

Actually, you confirmed my primary hypothesis, but disconfirmed my subsidiary hypothesis about quotation. It's the progress of science.

[mattrose]

I see no compelling reason to assume that similarity between species suggests descent without making a presuppositional decision that everything is best explained in a naturalistic worldview.

That's because you don't understand the evidence for evolution. Have you read, and understood, evangelical Christian Francis Collins book "The Language of God" and the evidence he presents for evolution? He's a big player in the debate, so you should be aware if you want to dismiss it. Otherwise you are like Steve Gregg that dismisses evidence without first understanding it. Collins is a top-notch scientist in my thinking.

Whether I, or any other individual, understands the supposed evidence for evolution, is really beside the point. This is a thread about 'debating an atheist.' We are talking specifically about you (the atheist) and your interaction with various debate partners. In each case (whether with Steve Gregg or Bart Rask), you fail to present actual evidence. Your arguments either include un-admitted presuppositions or the logical fallacy that Rask pointed out.

As a debater, you shouldn't depend on your listeners having to read this book or that book. YOU should be able to make your case without recourse to presuppositions or fallacies. But this is exactly where you've failed. In other words, if I were (hypothetically) a NEW person to this entire debate... I'd still be waiting for you to provide REASONS why I should believe that similarity b/w species implies descent. You've simply provided evidence for similarity b/w species that both sides agree are to be expected. By definition, I point that both sides happily accept serves neither side of a debate.

Frankly, I am OPEN to believing in (Theistic) evolution. I think it is POSSIBLE to fit macro-evolution into a Christian worldview (some of my favorite Christian preachers and authors do it). But I am not going to just accept it for the sake of accepting it. I need to be persuaded! And, my point is, you have only made it more clear to me that the case is largely a matter of blowing smoke

All that being said... thanks for the book recommendation. I haven't read that one yet and am open to reading it. Though, I'd also advise you to continue reading on Christianity because you have demonstrated in this thread that you're not actually very familiar with scholarly interpretive options. It hurts your argument to make accusations against Christian beliefs that are so easily handled. Your overall thought seems to be that scientific discovery proves evolution AND that this renders Christianity false. Those are actually two different arguments. You could, potentially, convince me that scientific discovery proves evolution while still not even coming close to proving Christianity false. The reason you seem to think these two arguments are really one is your failure to understand the diversity within Christianity on such matters.

[Paidion]

I asked for a hypothesis, not an assertion. Give me your hypothesis and I'll show you some alternative ones. A hypothesis gives a theory about how something came to be or how it operates, etc.

We all know what a hypothesis is. But I don't know how you can say that you didn't ask for an assertion. In making your statement above, you yourself quoted that for which you asked, namely:

To prove it, give me any assertion at all, and I'll give you some possible alternative hypotheses for it. It really isn't that difficult. It's really a matter of basic critical thinking processes.

[TrumanSmith]

Whether I, or any other individual, understands the supposed evidence for evolution, is really beside the point. This is a thread about 'debating an atheist.' We are talking specifically about you (the atheist) and your interaction with various debate partners. In each case (whether with Steve Gregg or Bart Rask), you fail to present actual evidence. Your arguments either include un-admitted presuppositions or the logical fallacy that Rask pointed out.

As a debater, you shouldn't depend on your listeners having to read this book or that book. YOU should be able to make your case without recourse to presuppositions or fallacies. But this is exactly where you've failed.

I'm sorry, but you failed to pay attention, in the Bart debate at least. Look again at my slides. I talked specifically about genomic evidence, DNA genomic comparisons, codons, etc. I didn't talk details in the Gregg debate because of time limitations. There's also no need to waste time on it since it is already published everywhere; I just need to refer to it. YouTube has lots of it for free viewing. Why should I waste time in going over the details of the same material?

[TrumanSmith]

I asked for a hypothesis, not an assertion. Give me your hypothesis and I'll show you some alternative ones. A hypothesis gives a theory about how something came to be or how it operates, etc.

We all know what a hypothesis is. But I don't know how you can say that you didn't ask for an assertion. In making your statement above, you yourself quoted that for which you asked, namely:

To prove it, give me any assertion at all, and I'll give you some possible alternative hypotheses for it. It really isn't that difficult. It's really a matter of basic critical thinking processes.

Paidion- to get back on track, give me any hypothesis you want, and I'll show you some alternative ones. Like I said, it is elementary in critical thinking when analyzing any claim to look at all possible hypotheses and pick the best one. This should be an obvious point. It is insulting to peoples' intelligence to have to belabor it.

[TrumanSmith]

Actually, you confirmed my primary hypothesis, but disconfirmed my subsidiary hypothesis about quotation. It's the progress of science.

All your hypothesis is, is a negative attitude.