Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

divine fallacy (argument from incredulity)

The divine fallacy, or the argument from incredulity, is a species of non sequitur reasoning which goes something like this: I can't figure this out, so a god must have done it. Or, This is amazing; therefore, a god did it. Or, I can't think of any other explanation; therefore, a god did it. Or, this is just too weird; so, a god is behind it.

This fallacy is also a variation of the alien fallacy: I can't figure this out, so aliens must have done it. Or, This is amazing; therefore, aliens did it. Or, I can't think of any other explanation; therefore, aliens did it. Or, this is just too weird; so, aliens are behind it.

Another variation of the fallacy goes something like this: I can't figure this out, so paranormal forces must have done it. Or, This is amazing; therefore, paranormal forces did it. Or, I can't think of any other explanation; therefore, paranormal forces did it. Or, this is just too weird; so, paranormal forces are behind it.

further reading

Bad Moves: Arguments from incredulity by Julian Baggini

Well, I've managed to squeeze a "personal 45% god" out of you

... but beyond that, yes, you're definitely being intellectually dishonest by hiding your full hypothesis.

'Science can't explain everything, therefore my god!'

FBM wrote:

Well, I've managed to squeeze a "personal 45% god" out of you

     Yes, but you don't know what this actually mean and how to deal with it ... in benefit of your career.

FBM wrote:

... but beyond that, yes, you're definitely being intellectually dishonest by hiding your full hypothesis.

     I am not hiding anything - I told you that I am agnostic...

I don't honestly believe that you ever will come to know the assumptions of the Big Bang 'theory' with solid verification and validation and real truth values ... and I am not sure whether you even understand what that all means.

FBM wrote:

'Science can't explain everything, therefore my god!'

     No, my hypothesis is not that science cannot explain everything because my God must exist somehow - my hypothesis is that science really cannot explain everything because there are a lot of things that are definitely not stochastic - they have no signs of any stochastics, they have no probability distribution functions, most of them are impossible to appear by chance and out of nowhere and out of nothing, and some of the have so mind-blowing reason that it is highly improbable for that to have appeared by any chance.

Why cant you find DNA on some other planets, for example (within the SS for now)? We have been on the Moon several times and have brought there a lot of bacteria, viruses, etc. - why none of them has survived so far?

Because life is not simply cyanobacteria appearing out of an accidental lightning - life is a whole biosphere in continuous biological & physical equilibrium, and it cannot appear just so, when the Big Bang & its supporters decide that ... out of Nowhere and out of Nothing.

SATURDAY, JAN 3, 2015 11:00 PM KST
God is on the ropes: The brilliant new science that has creationists and the Christian right terrified
A young MIT professor is finishing Darwin's task — and threatening to undo everything the wacky right holds dear

The Christian right’s obsessive hatred of Darwin is a wonder to behold, but it could someday be rivaled by the hatred of someone you’ve probably never even heard of. Darwin earned their hatred because he explained the evolution of life in a way that doesn’t require the hand of God. Darwin didn’t exclude God, of course, though many creationists seem incapable of grasping this point. But he didn’t require God, either, and that was enough to drive some people mad.

Darwin also didn’t have anything to say about how life got started in the first place — which still leaves a mighty big role for God to play, for those who are so inclined. But that could be about to change, and things could get a whole lot worse for creationists because of Jeremy England, a young MIT professor who’s proposed a theory, based in thermodynamics, showing that the emergence of life was not accidental, but necessary. “Under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life,” he was quoted as saying in an article in Quanta magazine early in 2014, that’s since been republished by Scientific American and, more recently, by Business Insider. In essence, he’s saying, life itself evolved out of simpler non-living systems.

The notion of an evolutionary process broader than life itself is not entirely new. Indeed, there’s evidence, recounted by Eric Havelock in “The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics,” that it was held by the pre-Socratic natural philosophers, who also first gave us the concept of the atom, among many other things. But unlike them or other earlier precursors, England has a specific, unifying, testable evolutionary mechanism in mind.

Quanta fleshed things out a bit more like this:

From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.
...

Index to Creationist Claims,
edited by Mark Isaak, Copyright © 2004
Previous Claim: CI100.1 | List of Claims | Next Claim: CI102
Claim CI101:

Complexity indicates intelligent design.

Response:

This is a quintessential argument from incredulity. Complexity usually means something is hard to understand. But the fact that one cannot understand how something came to be does not indicate that one may conclude it was designed. On the contrary, lack of understanding indicates that we must not conclude design or anything else.

Irreducible complexity and complex specified information are special cases of the "complexity indicates design" claim; they are also arguments from incredulity.

In the sort of design that we know about, simplicity is a design goal. Complexity arises to some extent through carelessness or necessity, but engineers work to make things as simple as possible. This is very different from what we see in life.

Complexity arises from natural causes: for example, in weather patterns and cave formations.

Complexity is poorly defined.

but I'd guess that complexity arising out of molecularly efficient energy dispersion would be a lot more explainable than a magic wand waved by a cosmic Santa. I'm funny like that.

This is precisely what the supernatural hypothesis lacks.

This is precisely what the supernatural hypothesis lacks.

So, anyway. What about a small amount of something about your favorite Big Bang 'theory', Prof. Einstein: what is the math formal model of the Big Bang; what are the major characteristics & definition of the variables with the Big Bang - stochastics/determinism; brainlessness/creative abilities; plausibility/feasibility;

It is simply an attempt on your part to deny reality and evidence.

Let's reexamine your argument. You claimed that the Big Bang Theory didn't predict anything and you demanded evidence.

You can't admit that your own arguments are wrong when they clearly are.

Quote:

This is precisely what the supernatural hypothesis lacks.

Science has to stop being so damned smug about this. I do not know that life on earth IS NOT based upon pnspermia for xample.

Only time will solve many of these evidentiary things. If we go further nd further into space and find DNA the farther out we go, what does that really say about the origins of life? Craig Venter says that we will find that DNA is ubiquitous to the Galaxy and beyond. He has no basis or that assertion

I really want to see life based upon phosphorus or silicon.
However Right now we work under AN ASSUMPTION of "local" methodological naturalism based upon available evidence.

I quit responding to Herod because hes so full of **** that he is actually scary

Index to Creationist Claims,
edited by Mark Isaak, Copyright © 2004
Previous Claim: CH350 | List of Claims | Next Claim: CH401
Claim CH370:

The creation model predicts galaxies constant and stars unchanging, in the main. They may decay, but they were created entire and did not build up over time.
Source:

Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 13,24-25.
Response:

The claim is baseless. The formation of stars takes on the order of millions of years, so we cannot expect to see major changes as we watch, but that does not mean the stars are unchanging.

Given our knowledge of physical laws and our observations of stars and interstellar matter, we expect star formation to be occurring continuously, as molecular clouds form and condense. And we see molecular clouds, protostars, and young stars in all stages of formation, in close agreement with what we expect (Pudritz 2002; Ward-Thompson 2002).

The existence of stars with differing amounts of heavy elements is also in good agreement with star formation over time, since the heavy elements come only from supernovae of earlier stars.

Galaxies have changed over time, too. Quasars were more common in the earlier universe; there are no recent ones. We also see galaxies in various stages of colliding.
References:

Pudritz, Ralph E. 2002. Clustered star formation and the origin of stellar masses. Science 295: 68-76.
Ward-Thompson, Derek. 2002. Isolated star formation: From cloud formation to core collapse. Science 295: 76-81. (See also related articles in the same issue.)