Challenge: Make Your Case for Creationism

[outhouse]

Example. Our imagination to be able to imagine a predator hiding in wait is a survival tool. One can then go around dangerous areas that would be deadly.


Our intellect to be cautious around water where alligators exist.

Not to go out on skinny limbs.


There are factually millions of examples of survival and our conscious mind.

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

We have the most intellect out of any animal, and we are still primates, so we don't expect some imaginative amount of intellect you think should be required for this factual evolution of consciousness.



They are all factually required for survival. You just refuse to address the issue or are totally ignorant of the reasons. Either way its a personal issue on your part for not understanding why conscious is factually required for survival

You don't really offer any kind of argument here.

You don't see how developing reliable rational faculties would help us survive in our environment? Wouldn't "understanding our immediate environment" help an individual or a population "survive in our environments", and wouldn't "develop[ing] reliable rational faculties" help an individual "understand [their] immediate environment" thus helping an individual or a population "survive in their environment", and better yet, reproduce?

It's not a matter of being required to do so.

Actually, the EAAN is a probabilistic version of the argument from reason. It basically relies on us needing good reasons to trust our cognitive faculties and evolutionary implying there is no clear relationship between our the development of our cognitive faculties and their reliability when it comes to abstract reason. So, perhaps to talk of requiring is a bit strong, but, yes, there does, it seems, have to be a clear relationship established between the reliability of our cognitive faculties and their evolutionary utility.

Anyway, surely that evolutionary speaking it is a matter of coping or surviving in our environment. I am not sure how proto- and early humans would require any sort of reliable abstract reasoning. Indeed, where does the need to cope with the challenges of our environment necessitate the development reliable cognitive faculties for abstract thought (of the kind that could formulate a naturalistic evolutionary explanation of consciousness and reason), or at least give us strong reasons for thinking that such a development would arise?

Indeed, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, there seems, evolutionary speaking, why reason need enter into the matter at all. Simple response to stimuli might just as easily get the job done.

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

Example. Our imagination to be able to imagine a predator hiding in wait is a survival tool. One can then go around dangerous areas that would be deadly.


Our intellect to be cautious around water where alligators exist.

Not to go out on skinny limbs.


There are factually millions of examples of survival and our conscious mind.

Obviously, the argument I gave is about rational inference. None of the these examples shows why reliable rational inference, as required in abstract reasoning, would be required to cope with the challenges of our environment.

In fact, it is not apparent, again, why response to stimuli cannot furnish the outcomes you think come through the use of imagination, evolutionary speaking.

 

[Parsimony]

2. But our faculties do reliably reveal the nonapparent character of the world. (presupposition of rational inference)

What exactly is the "nonapparent character of the world"?

 

[outhouse]

why reason need enter into the matter at all.

Sorry if you cannot see why reason is important to survival, you can be taught little.

 

[outhouse]

You don't really offer any kind of argument here.

You didn't offer anything credible to debate.

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

What exactly is the "nonapparent character of the world"?

Those which are not ordinarily observable by human beings. Reppert uses the example of molecular and atomic structure of matter.

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

Sorry if you cannot see why reason is important to survival, you can be taught little.

I literally gave you an argument to suggest otherwise. At least twice now in our interactions in this thread you have shown a total unwilling, or inability, to argue sensibly and constructively. I sure hope you are not one of those internet atheists and sceptics who looks down on the reason of theists and the religious, because so far you have shown precious little evidence to support such smugness.

 

[outhouse]

I sure hope you are not one of those internet atheists and sceptics who looks down on the reason of theists and the religious, because so far you have shown precious little evidence to support such smugness.

You just refuse the facts I present.

But unlike you, have studied religion at a high level because I have a passion for it. I understand creation mythology in full. Your own religion refutes every aspect with science ever being involved.

But when we do get to science, what part of evolution is fact, don't you understand?

 

[outhouse]

At least twice now in our interactions in this thread you have shown a total unwilling, or inability, to argue sensibly and constructively.

There is no sensible argument against the facts of evolution.

It s taught worldwide as higher education in every credible university in every civilized country.


The ONLY thing to discuss is the laughable pseudoscience used by many who have no to little biological knowledge.

Would you like to pick a creationist fallacy to begin with?

 

[outhouse]

EAAN

Lets start with your what looks to be a fallacious older definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism

In the foreword to the anthology Naturalism Defeated? James Beilby wrote: "Plantinga's argument should not be mistaken for an argument against evolutionary theory in general or, more specifically, against the claim that humans might have evolved from more primitive life forms. Rather, the purpose of his argument is to show that the denial of the existence of a creative deity is problematic."[1]

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

I am not even arguing against evolution. My argument, if you pay attention, was about evolution being able to account for human consciousness (and most specifically reason). There is nothing in my argument that is against the rest of the evolutionary theory.

There are no non-question begging scientific accounts of how evolution can do this. If you believe there are then present them, and perhaps get around to actually responding to my argument above in a proper way.

Edit: Whilst I was writing this post you seem to have linked to the wiki from Plantinga's version, and quoted a passage that makes the exact same point about it not being an argument against evolution per se, but simply about an entirely naturalistic reading of evolution (especially when it comes to accounting for human reason).

I don't see what your point is when you talk about fallacious definitions.

 

[outhouse]

I don't see what your point is when you talk about fallacious definitions.

Plantinga contain serious errors.

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

If not evolution, where did consciousness come from?

Well, for a start, that is irrelevant to the question of whether reason can be evolutionarily accounted for.

Plantinga contain serious errors.

This is not an argument.

 

[outhouse]

My argument, if you pay attention, was about evolution being able to account for human consciousness

Being able or not being able?

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

Being able or not being able?

Well, the conclusion was that it was not likely to be able to account for it, but it is valid English grammar and syntax to say the argument was about if (ie., about the question of whether) evolution is able to account for human consciousness.

 

[outhouse]

evolution is able to account for human consciousness.

Agreed

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

There is absolutely no content to your posts on this subject. I really hope you don't think you are more rational than any believer, even a creationist or fundamentalist.

 

[outhouse]

There is absolutely no content to your posts on this subject.

And no credible content to EAAN.

 

[Jeremy Taylor]

Well, I will stop replying to you after this. But what you appear to be doing, again, is ignoring and dismissing my argument, without any real attempt to refute or even properly respond to it, and then claiming I haven't got an argument.

Any it is just a clear material fallacy to suggest that if one makes an argument against the evolution of reason one has to suggest another mechanism for the development of reason in humans, or one's original argument fails. In order to show A cannot be B, all I need to show is that A is non-B, not that it is C. This is basic informal reasoning.