Causal Knowledge

A space to follow my Interests in epistemology, science and philosophy, separate from @lightandshadow.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@darwintojesus When did you start cheering on your taxes?

See how that works? Or should I say, how that doesn’t work?

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

Cars are not programmable replicators. The complexity is what makes them programmable.

Charles’s Babbage, who independently came up with the design of the programmable computer before Turing, didn’t carefully go from nothing to computers. He first created the difference engine, which was not universal. It was an incremental process.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

I didn’t say we cannot analyze data. I said experience is neutral without first being placed in an explanatory framework.

For example, underlying any probability calculus related to evolution is background knowledge, assumptions if life was an intentional target to hit, assumptions if there are no other biochemical solutions to problems, etc.

Those assumptions have a huge impact on the claims that evolution is so improbable that it’s impossible.

There is also a framework about what knowledge is: does it grow? Can it genuinely be created?

For example, do you think can human beings, which are supposedly the poster child for intelligent design, can create genuinely new knowledge?

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@KalishJr @McClureShawn Last time I checked, one reason why the first cause is personal is because it supposedly solves the problem of an infinite past.

If there was no time before God’s choice, and God has always existed, this seems to undermine that conclusion.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

God created his own time so he would have time to create our time?

But that seems to suggest time can be created without time. So, what purpose does creating his own time serve?

This seems to be yet another convoluted theological elaboration, not unlike epicycles while explaining the motion of lights in the night sky.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@DivinelyDesined @DeeWaynee94 You seem willing to accept a source if you think it fits your theological commitments. But once it’s pointed out to you that it doesn’t, suddenly, it’s flawed.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

It’s naive to think we can “just analyze the data.” Our experience is theory-laden.

Not only is it that an unreasonable expectation, it’s also hypocritical.

In most cases DD doesn’t even present an accurate reflection of evolutionary theory.

Probabilities are proposed, but they are loaded with assumptions, like human beings were a target to hit, which includes a conclusion as a premise.

That “they all arose at once” isn’t “out there” any more than they evolved over time, etc. Experience is neutral without first being placed in some explanatory framework.

So, no. It’s not just a bunch of words. The request requires holding a philosophical view, and a rather poor one at that.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@AgainstAtheismX Explanatorally, they are on the same level because there can be no better explanation beyond “Zeus rules” in the sea of inexplicability that supposedly surrounds the bubble of explicability we exist in.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@darwintojesus @dannyphiltalk Isn’t that one of the arguments as to why God must be personal?

He decided to bring the universe into existence. There was nothing, then something.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@David_Kicinski @AgainstAtheismX People are not their ideas.

They are not essentially good or evil. That’s some kind of ancient, folk theory of human nature.

If God cannot separate ideas from the people that hold them, he doesn’t seem all that powerful.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@AgainstAtheismX A person is the ideas they have adopted? They are inseparable, even by God?

Why do you think your God is so limited?

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

You seem to be operating with something close to what Karl Popper criticized as the doctrine that “truth is manifest.”

The truth: evolution is false.

It’s manifest: you can discover that simply by looking honestly at “the data as it is,” without assumptions or speculation.

That sounds intuitive, but it smuggles in an entire epistemology.

Data does not arrive with some kind of tag attached to it with the correct interpretation written on it. Before an observation can even function as evidence for or against evolution, you need theories about what you’re observing, which facts are relevant, what would cause them, what alternative explanations predict, and what would count as a problem for any of those explanations.

For example, were human beings an intentional goal from the start? That would be a theological commitment. Are there alternative ways to solve biological problems? Before any kind of probability calculus could be generated , a vast number of assumptions must be made.

So saying, “I only mean no assumptions about causation or explanations of the data” actually makes the problem worse. Those are precisely the things you cannot get from the data without explanatory theories.

Popper’s point was that we don’t begin with theory-free observations and mechanically extract explanations from them. We encounter problems, conjecture explanations, and criticize those explanations using experience.

There is no epistemologically privileged procedure called “just analyze the data as it is.” You’ve already failed to meet your own criteria.

And if you really have discovered a method for starting with uninterpreted data and extracting causal explanations from it without conjecture, background assumptions, or explanatory theory, this argument about evolution wouldn’t be the only interesting consequence.

You’ve solved a major problem in epistemology.

That would be like casually solving a mathematical problem people had struggled with for decades. You’d have papers to publish, books to write, invitations to lecture at major universities, honorary degrees to collect.

You’d be famous.

So by all means, enlighten us as to how you’ve managed to achieve this.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@wendelltalks Saying “That’s just the way God must have wanted things to be” just pushes the problem into an inexplicable mind that exists in an inexplicable realm, that operates via inexplicable means and methods and is driven by inexplicable goals wanted it that way.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

You just said the same thing with different words.

But, from the perspective of epistemology, evidence is neutral without interpreting it through some explanation theory.

But, by all means, if it’s so simple, how does one…

“study it honestly, without assumptions, free from speculation, with an open mind..”

??

If you can figure out how to achieve that, you’d be rich and famous in the field of epistemology.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@darwintojesus @goodlifenvibes Atheists need not hold any philosophical view, let alone the view that knowledge is justified, true belief.

Where does this flaws assumption keep coming from?

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@darwintojesus @MikeT03045010 There are no basic-beliefs that we hold immune to criticism.

There are just ideas that we currently lack good criticisms of.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

@Robbservations2 @darwintojesus “What Bell’s theorem establishes is precise and non-negotiable: no local realist theory can reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics.“

This doesn’t take into account the Deutsch-Hayden Quantum Field Theory. https://t.co/kSDowkQzY6

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

It’s unclear how tentatively adopting the conjectured idea that has best withstood criticism is blind faith.

In contrast, that would be adopting a conjectured idea without criticism, or worse, holding it immune to criticism, interfering with the means of correcting errors, etc.

Worse yet, assuming some ideas are not conjectured in the first place, but are infallible by means of being received from an infallible source.

[Causal Knowledge @causalknowledge]

If you want to convince me, provide evidence that is better explained by your theory / concept of God, in comparison to other theories.

For example, in the case of evolution, ID should explain the same evidence, equally as well, in addition to explaining why the theory evolution is false, but appears to be true.

That means explaining why ID’s designer would design the biosphere the way he did, in contrast to some other way that was possible for him.

On one hand, the designer supposedly intentionally and specifically designed the biosphere, along with the constants of the universe, with full knowledge of the specific consequences that would have. Otherwise, how is that design?

But, on the other hand, that also implies the designer would have known one of those consequences would be the rise of the theory of evolution.

So, if this designer actually played the role you think it does, it would have also played a role in the rise of evolution, along with all of the people that died not believing in God due to evolutionary theory.

How do you explain this?

Are you suggesting the designer had no choice but to design the biosphere the way it did? Was it blindsided by the rise of evolutionary theory?