novel<\/em> crappy argument that
\nI haven’t seen before.<\/p>\n The basic idea of it? The fact that we are not<\/em> perfect means that we must have been created by a perfect God. Is it me, or is there something a bit weird about that argument?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Before getting to what I’ll generously call the content of the page, let
\nme take a moment to talk a tiny bit about structure. Anyone who’s taken a
\nwriting class knows that the standard structure rule that most people are
\ntaught about writing an argumentative piece is: “Tell them what you’re going
\nto tell them; Tell them; and then Tell them that you told them.” That’s
\ngenerally a pretty good rule. You introduce your topic by explaining what
\nyou’re going to say, and why the reader should care. Then you present your
\nargument. And you close by summarizing what they should take from what you
\nsaid. What that rule emphatically does not<\/em> say is “repeat
\nyourself”.<\/p>\n Our intrepid author clearly needs clarification on that last point.
\nBecause he presents he two<\/em> nearly verbatim copies of the same
\nargument. First, he presents what he calls the “shorter” version of the
\n“proof”. It is shorter, but not by much. The “short” version is about 3100
\nwords. The long version is about 4600 words. And the long version includes its
\nown introduction and conclusion, which overlap with the introduction and
\nconclusion to the entire page, and which aren’t part of the proof. Care to
\nguess how long the introduction and conclusion of the “long” version are?
\nAbout 1500 words. <\/p>\n The main difference between the two versions in terms of content is that
\nthe “long” version includes three graphs which supposedly illustrate his
\narguments. The graphs are particularly pathetic examples of what I call
\nobfuscatory math – which is the use of mathematical terms, formula, or
\nimages in order to make it look<\/em> like there’s some kind of
\ndeep mathematical content to an argument. <\/p>\n Oh, and the long version is subtitled “All known queries, hundreds in fact,
\nare answered in the details herein”. This guy is certainly not lacking in the
\nego department.<\/p>\n
So… What is this wonderful proof? He claims that it’s got
\nfour steps. Now, when math people talk about a four step proof, what
\nwe assume is that you’ve got some set of axioms, and then using four
\ninferences, you arrive at your conclusion. But typical of arrogant
\nignorant twits, this guy clearly has absolutely no concept of what
\na proof even is<\/em>. Here are his four steps:<\/p>\n\n- Exponential progression of conscience disallows an eternity of the past of
\ncause and effects.<\/li>\n - Everything in nature has a cause so the universe can’t cause itself.<\/li>\n
- Don’t misrepresent the god of the bible.<\/li>\n
- Exponential progression of conscience disallows an eternity of the past outside
\nthe natural realm.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n Therefore, God exists.<\/p>\n
Seriously. That’s his proof. Our brilliant friend clearly isn’t familiar
\nwith what mathematicians and logicians mean by “proof”. But let’s ignore
\nthat for the moment, and look at the actual statements. They’re really quite
\nsilly.<\/p>\n
Statement one: “Exponential progression of conscience disallows an
\neternity of the past of cause and effects.”<\/p>\n
What in hell does that mean<\/em>? <\/p>\n The “exponential progression of conscience” means, according to him, that
\nwe are engaged in a continual process of self-improvement. If that’s true, and
\nwe’ve existed for an infinite amount of time, then according to our author,
\nthat means that we would have reached perfection by now. Since we’re clearly
\nnot<\/em> perfect, that means that we haven’t existed forever. <\/p>\nTo attempt to restate that mathematically: the measure of goodness of the
\nmoral state of humanity is in a process of monotonic exponential increase.
\nTherefore, if humanity had existed forever, the measure of goodness of human
\nmorality would be infinitely large. It isn’t, therefore we haven’t existed
\nforever.<\/p>\n
There are just so many things wrong with that statement that I have a hard time
\nchoosing one to knock first.<\/p>\n
\n- Does anyone<\/em>, anywhere, claim that humanity has existed forever?
\nI’ve never heard anyone, theist, atheist, agnostic, solipsist, or even lunatic,
\nwho seriously claimed that humanity had existed forever. Even if the Universe had
\nexisted forever, we<\/em> haven’t. And if we haven’t, then the whole “you had
\nan eternity to become perfect” schtick falls apart. (This is actually an example
\nof one of the most common, and most irritating traits of idiots: they equate
\nhumanity with the universe. By their arguments, the limits of human existence
\nare the limits of the universe. The limits of human imagination are the limits
\nof the universe. And so on. It’s a remarkably shallow view of existence.) <\/li>\n- Are we really on a monotonically increasing path of improvement? I don’t think
\nthat there is any<\/em> way you can claim that. Human history has been
\na roller coaster. The overall pattern has been, roughly, that civilizations rise,
\nand when they do things usually get better; civilizations collapse,
\nand things usually get worse. The dark ages in Europe certainly weren’t part
\nof any process of improvement on the past. The collapse of the Emirate in Africa and
\nEurasia certainly wasn’t a process of improvement. The rise of the Nazis in Europe
\nduring the 20th century wasn’t part of a process of improvement. The rise of
\nthe Mao revolution in China wasn’t a part of a process of improvement. The main
\ndifference between today and the past is technology – we’ve become a hell of lot
\nmore capable of doing big things – whether those things are good or bad is
\nirrelevant: when we do good, we can do more good than people did before. But when
\nwe do bad, we can do a hell of a lot more bad that people did before.<\/li>\n- Even if we were on a monotonically increasing path, and we’d existed
\nforever, does that mean that we’d be perfect? Think of a mathematical
\ncurve, with “degree of perfection” on the y axis, and time on the x axis.
\nWhere is perfection? Is it a specific value of y? Personally, I don’t
\nthink so; I’d rate it more like positive infinity. If my idea of
\nperfection is right, then you can never<\/em> reach it. But let’s give
\nour brilliant friend the benefit of the doubt. Suppose that perfection is
\na specific finite value. Does that mean that a monotonically increasing
\ncurve must eventually reach it? No. Nope. No way. But our friend does
\nweasel around that. Because he doesn’t just say that our degree of
\nperfection is increasing monotonically. He says it’s increasing
\nexponentially<\/em>. So given infinite time, the curve would reach his
\n“perfection” value. But if our goodness is increasing exponentially, then
\nconsidering the horrible things going on in the world today, imagine what
\nwe must have been like in the past. The past has to have been
\nexponentially worse than Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao
\ncombined<\/em>. Do we see anything<\/em> like that in history?
\nNope. There are some incredibly barbarous events in the history of
\nmankind. But is there anything worse than the Holocaust? Or the
\ngenocide of the native americans? Or the great famines under Mao in China?
\nThe extermination of 1\/5th of the entire population of Cambodia by Pol Pot?\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n Ok, so point one is full of holes. And it’s one of his axioms! The whole
\nproof just collapses on that alone. But let’s keep going. Number 2:
\n“Everything in nature has a cause, so the universe can’t cause itself”. This
\nis, basically, another axiom. It’s also, by itself, a very common version of a
\nproof of God. But it’s silly. Why?<\/p>\n
First, cause and effect are something that we observe inside<\/em> the
\nuniverse. How can we assume that it must exist outside<\/em> the universe?
\nThis is part of a common misunderstanding of just what we really mean when we
\nsay “the universe”. The universe is everything<\/em>. Time isn’t something
\noutside<\/em> of the universe; it’s something that exists as part
\nof<\/em> the universe. The time before the creation of the universe is a
\nmeaningless phrase<\/em>. It’s a typical example of an invalid
\nGödelian self-referential statement. It cannot<\/em> be given a valid
\nmeaning: it’s an internally inconsistent statement.<\/p>\n While trying to make that argument, our brilliant friend even tries to use
\nthermodynamics to make his argument: “The 1st law of thermodynamics is
\nviolated if “nothing” outside the universe can somehow transform into the
\nuniverse. Nothing always derives from nothing.” But that’s still the same
\nproblem as the time thing: thermodynamics is a law of how things behave
\ninside<\/em> the universe. In fact, it’s a law of how things behave
\nas time passes<\/em> inside the universe. It’s just a restatement
\nof the inconsistent meta-circularity as the time argument.<\/p>\n But let’s ignore that. Suppose that what we call the universe is
\nactually a small bubble of space-time, and there’s actually some sort of
\nmeta-time, so that you can talk about “before” the universe. How did the
\nuniverse come into being? You could say that God did it. But that’s not
\na particularly useful statement: all it does is push back the question. If
\nGod did it, then where did God come from? If God could come into being
\nwithout a creator, then why couldn’t the Universe? The moment you allow
\none<\/em> uncreated thing, then you can’t argue that nothing uncreated
\ncan possibly exist. And if something uncreated can exist, then why can’t
\nit be the universe?<\/p>\n Step three isn’t in any meaningful sense a part of the proof. In fact,
\nit’s an incredibly strange thing to include as a “step” in a proof. It’s a
\ncautionary order to the reader; a “don’t you dare argue with me” that he
\nembedded, because… um… because… well, I don’t really know. It doesn’t
\nmake any sense. We’ll just write it off for now.<\/p>\n
Step four is, basically just a restatement of step one. It’s really not
\nany different, and it doesn’t in any way, shape, or form follow from any other
\nstatement in the “proof”. It’s another version of the “we’re not perfect yet,
\ntherefore the universe hasn’t been around forever, therefore God”. <\/p>\n
Now… If I wanted to be really<\/em> annoying, I’d copy the entire post so
\nfar, add a new introduction, and call it the mocking of the longer<\/em> proof.
\nBut I’m not that obnoxious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First, a quick status note: the blog has been really slow lately because I fell behind schedule on my book, and I’ve been putting all of my free time into catching up. I’m finally pretty much caught up, so I should have time to get back to the Chaos theory posts. I need a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debunking-creationism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-d5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}