I skimmed over a lot of this and IMO, you could have done better with this debate, Dan.
First, your opener. Appeals to the authority of academy of science members aren't a strong argument. The bit about Abrahamic gods being invented by ancient people who didn't know much is ofc specific to those gods and is also a bit meh imo. Then you point out all these silly things that the bible says. To me this doesn't make for a strong metaphysical argument that god doesn't exist, it's just that you wouldn't want it to be that god.
Your opp brings up the first mover argument and fine tuning. Although they're both flawed arguments, they at least strike at the heart of the matter.
You should research a bit more on a response to the fine tuning argument and the anthropic principle. Just saying "meh idk what happens when you tweak constants" isn't very strong imo. There is simulation based research about what happens under different constants which gives some evidence that life would be unlikely. It's also bad to reject models of science for lack of certainty etcetc.
Wrt his first mover and boxcar bzns, he's throwing around a lot of terms he hasn't defined and playing some language games. It's hard to disentangle in this format.
I skimmed over a lot of this and IMO, you could have done better with this debate, Dan.
ReplyDeleteFirst, your opener. Appeals to the authority of academy of science members aren't a strong argument. The bit about Abrahamic gods being invented by ancient people who didn't know much is ofc specific to those gods and is also a bit meh imo. Then you point out all these silly things that the bible says. To me this doesn't make for a strong metaphysical argument that god doesn't exist, it's just that you wouldn't want it to be that god.
Your opp brings up the first mover argument and fine tuning. Although they're both flawed arguments, they at least strike at the heart of the matter.
You should research a bit more on a response to the fine tuning argument and the anthropic principle. Just saying "meh idk what happens when you tweak constants" isn't very strong imo. There is simulation based research about what happens under different constants which gives some evidence that life would be unlikely. It's also bad to reject models of science for lack of certainty etcetc.
Wrt his first mover and boxcar bzns, he's throwing around a lot of terms he hasn't defined and playing some language games. It's hard to disentangle in this format.