further on Flew, inter alia
I wrote a response, a bit of feedback, yesterday, to the article on Alister Mcgrath, and got this response from one of the moderators of the site, known as internet infidels, re types of atheism: There are other posts on this issue, but I supplied a number of definitions of "atheism" from respected authoritative sources just eight posts back. These definitions indicate that belief, or lack of it, is an important element in the accepted definitions of "atheism." That is one issue that is more or less settled, so far as I can see.
I’m not sure that I agree, for to say that ‘belief, or lack of it’ is an important element etc’, is like saying x or not x is important, which hardly gets us any further. The various dictionary definitions provided are mostly of the ‘belief that there is no god’ or strong atheist (or even polyatheist) type, and they include, interestingly, the Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and the Free Online Dictionary of Philosophy. So I’ll stick to my view that atheism implies a positive belief in the non-existence of a putative entity, or a set of putative entities.
And so to Flew’s claim that the teleological argument has become stronger. First, Flew is impressed with the difficulties involved in the origins of life. “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote to Philosophy Now last spring. He has a point, though his concern about Darwinism’s failure to account for it does seem misplaced. The theory of evolution by natural selection is designed to account for the origin of species, not of life. Something very different is required to account for that particular origin. But has Flew exaggerated the difficulty, and what of the current candidates? It does seem on the face of it, a positing of a god of the gaps. Extraordinarily, Flew has admitted that he hasn’t examined any of the material published on the science of life’s origin in the past decade or so (he’s eighty-one, but is that an excuse when you base your arguments, or your doubts, largely on this issue?)
By the way, apropos of almost nothing, here’s a great website providing 78 solid arguments for the existence of the Christian god.
More seriously, on another part of the same site there are some interesting reflections on abiogenesis (‘a hypothetical organic phenomenon by which living organisms are created from non-living matter’). This little article clarifies some of the conditions required for replicating forms to develop, and touches on the most complex self-replicators so far discovered/created, and the simplest life forms known (Mycoplasma genitalium has a genome of only 400 units).
An interesting quote from the article (grammatically corrected):
In order to explain all life as we see it today, all we need is one single molecule capable of replication and mutation. Once we have that, evolution will take over. This can be achieved in a molecule containing a sequence of only 32 amino acids. If we can order 100,000 coloured balls in 5 minutes, how long will it take to order just 32 molecules out of the billions of billions of atoms available over a period of billions of years? Remember that these molecules are attracted to each other and will readily bond together given appropriate conditions.
Put this way, it all sounds a bit more promising. So, before tackling teleology more broadly, I’ll focus next on abiogenesis.
I’m not sure that I agree, for to say that ‘belief, or lack of it’ is an important element etc’, is like saying x or not x is important, which hardly gets us any further. The various dictionary definitions provided are mostly of the ‘belief that there is no god’ or strong atheist (or even polyatheist) type, and they include, interestingly, the Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and the Free Online Dictionary of Philosophy. So I’ll stick to my view that atheism implies a positive belief in the non-existence of a putative entity, or a set of putative entities.
And so to Flew’s claim that the teleological argument has become stronger. First, Flew is impressed with the difficulties involved in the origins of life. “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote to Philosophy Now last spring. He has a point, though his concern about Darwinism’s failure to account for it does seem misplaced. The theory of evolution by natural selection is designed to account for the origin of species, not of life. Something very different is required to account for that particular origin. But has Flew exaggerated the difficulty, and what of the current candidates? It does seem on the face of it, a positing of a god of the gaps. Extraordinarily, Flew has admitted that he hasn’t examined any of the material published on the science of life’s origin in the past decade or so (he’s eighty-one, but is that an excuse when you base your arguments, or your doubts, largely on this issue?)
By the way, apropos of almost nothing, here’s a great website providing 78 solid arguments for the existence of the Christian god.
More seriously, on another part of the same site there are some interesting reflections on abiogenesis (‘a hypothetical organic phenomenon by which living organisms are created from non-living matter’). This little article clarifies some of the conditions required for replicating forms to develop, and touches on the most complex self-replicators so far discovered/created, and the simplest life forms known (Mycoplasma genitalium has a genome of only 400 units).
An interesting quote from the article (grammatically corrected):
In order to explain all life as we see it today, all we need is one single molecule capable of replication and mutation. Once we have that, evolution will take over. This can be achieved in a molecule containing a sequence of only 32 amino acids. If we can order 100,000 coloured balls in 5 minutes, how long will it take to order just 32 molecules out of the billions of billions of atoms available over a period of billions of years? Remember that these molecules are attracted to each other and will readily bond together given appropriate conditions.
Put this way, it all sounds a bit more promising. So, before tackling teleology more broadly, I’ll focus next on abiogenesis.
posted by Stewart at 1:46 am
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