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Bugmaster comments on The Wonder of Evolution - Less Wrong
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First of all, what are you defining as a "world view" and why is that a useful definition to have? It seems like you're trying to say "You believe things, beliefs are dogmas, you're being dogmatic". That is whole manners of cheating.
Secondly, you're right. It is possible that the universe was intelligently designed. But the Kolmogorov complexity formulation of Occam's Razor necessarily requires I assign that a very small probability prior. In order to simulate a universe designed by God, a computer must first simulate God, including why ey would create the universe the way that it is, then simulate that universe, as opposed to just simulating the universe.
FWIW, I have heard a more generalized version of Ghazzali's argument, which goes something like this:
I'm not endorsing this worldview (and I'm probably not even rendering it properly here), but I do believe it to be pretty much argument-proof. You can't have a rational discussion with someone who denies the value of rational discussions.
That's not quite true. You can't use evidence to convince a machine that runs on anti-induction, but luckily humans are at least somewhat intuitively swayed by evidence, even when they claim not to be.
That's a good point; humans are not perfect "anti-induction machines". That said, each person who'd presented this argument to me had spent a lot of mental effort during his or her life to embrace and perfect this worldview. In the same way as a rationalist would train himself to use Bayesian reasoning and distrust his biases, the anti-rationalist trains himself to trust his faith/emotions/ESP/etc., and ignore scientific evidence. Thus, even when the anti-rationalist feels the intuitive sway of evidence, he or she will strive to ignore it.
BTW, I'm using slash-separated lists in my posts because I'd heard this argument multiple times, from multiple people, each of whom had a different set of ancillary beliefs. Thus, it seems like this worldview is not tied to any particular religion or philosophy.
Not quite what I am saying.
I do believe in the truth of empirically reproducible results. However, other than stating facts I do not see how these results force me to believe in anything. It is my belief system or personal philosophy that makes me conclude a interpretation of those facts.
For example:
Evolution is seen by many people through the lens of materialism/atheism. That means that while studying evolution these people ASSUME the world has no creator and and is purely physical and closed system, free from anything super-natural....and so on.
In that way, any discovery in biology is treated in this interpretation and millions of dollars of research money is used to search for evidence in that way.
Something as so fundamental to us as consciousness and free will is ignored as illusion because it doesnt fit into these peoples world view of a purely mechanical universe. Where did they get this idea that the universe is purely mechanical and material?? NOT from science, it is from their personal philosophy or belief system. Everything in science is interpreted towards that end.
Those who believe in intelligent design also have their assumptions, and will look at evolution in that way. They will tend to be looking for evidence of a super natural involvement in biology, and dedicate their research dollars in that direction.
For you to accept the intelligent design bias and not see your bias is amazing.
Science is neutral, it is your belief system that interpretes these 'facts'. The real argument is in the varying philosophies, not in the actual data of science.
If we found in every single mammal a long conserved sequence in its genome which had its own extra code to help conserve it and it spelled out in easy substitution code the entire text of some religious text, you can be very sure that every biologist would stand up and take notice. Moreover, your claim doesn't really follow since there are many religious biologists (like Ken Miller, a very religious Catholic) who are perfectly ok with evolution and the entire standard understanding of biological history.
Let's imagine that there exist two universes, M and E. Universe M is purely material. Universe E contains etherial things in addition to material ones. However, the material things that E contains are exactly identical to the material things that M contains, down to each individual quark or cosmic string or whatever everything material is made of. The material objects in two universes are perfectly synchronized; for example, whenever a drop of water falls into a pond in universe M, and identical drop falls into an identical pond in E, etc.
If you were accidentally transported into one of these universes, is there any way you could tell which of them you ended up in ?