I think my ability to generally imagine that there could some alternative reality where everything that we can evidence doesn’t apply is the crux of my issue. Your comment made me understand that this is might be a remote logical possibility but is not supported by any evidence at all so its probability is extraordinarily low.

That rebuttal is of course what this article is answering. Keith is correct.

First, the converse assumption that structure is only required for physical things is false. That’s why, for example, comparing a disembodied worm mind to a disembodied human mind to a disembodied god mind clarifies the issue: obviously that is still an escalating scale of complexity and specification. Thus, “physics” and “materials” and “parts” don’t matter to the specified complexity problem. God still faces it.

Second, an argument cannot be rebutted by simply being gainsaid. “One plus one equals two.” “No it doesn’t.” is not an argument. It makes no sense to say, “Well, God can do anything, so he can make one plus one equal three,” as that simply isn’t true (it’s logically impossible, so even a God could not do that).

The second argument made here (after the specified complexity argument) is that it appears that structure logically requires physics. This cannot be rebutted by simply saying “Nuh-uh.” The point is that this appears to be a logical impossibility, and thus God can no more keep thoughts and memories separate without a physical mechanism to hold the structure and keep them separate, than he can make one plus one equal three.

The only difference is that we don’t yet have the formal proof in this case, so it remains remotely possible that this is merely an apparent illogicality, and that somehow the apparent illogicality of maintaining structure without parts can be overcome with magic. But then that becomes an inherent explanatory problem for theism: it requires a power nowhere in evidence and quite improbable on plain analysis (as demonstrated here).

That necessarily reduces the epistemic probability of God relative to explanations of affairs that require imagining no such extraordinary, unevidenced, and unlikely power. And that reduction is in addition to the reduction from specified complexity (hence see the originating article, The God Impossible).

These two problems combine to expose, for example, a Hidden Fallacy in the Fine Tuning Argument. And likewise every other argument for God.

The same concern occupied me while reading the article as well.

It’s also the same argument that the intellectual theists I know (mostly Muslims) use when pressed with these questions as they always say that the questions are incorrect because they are based on an equivocation fallacy which applies the rules of the physical universe outside of it.

It’s an argument to a probability, not a certainty. So exacting syllogisms like that are not applicable. But you have at least the gist. It would be better phrased as:

1. If God has or is a mind he necessarily has parts that causally interact in a specified way.
2. Probably parts cannot be kept distinct and causally interact in a specified way without some material to preserve those distinctions.
3. Therefore, if by “God” one means a disembodied mind, then probably “God” does not exist.

Then one would build out syllogisms that establish 1. and 2, reflecting the arguments and evidence I present for each. And so on.

Note the first argument (that I explain isn’t the one I go into here but that I do present first) is that God must have parts whether or not preserved in a material and therefore God is not simple but in fact highly complex, and thus requires even more fine tuning than any universe. It will not do to explain one complex thing by appeal to an even more complex thing: that only reduces the probability of your explanation. The probability of such a vastly complex thing just “existing” uncaused is vastly improbable; unless you can explain it with some simpler process (like a “Big Bang” theory of God or a “multiverse of gods” or something, all of which are abhorrent to modern theologians; and in any event covered by a separate argument of mind in The God Impossible).

The second argument, the one I then go on to develop here, that we have no evidence components can remain distinct in a system of components without a material way of preserving their properties and independence (with no material, they all just dissolve into each other, into a random chaos without interacting parts; no causal system, no mind). We actually cannot even conceive of such a thing without using a material system to do it (our own brain). So for the same reason we have no reason to believe structure can survive without being preserved in some material (not necessarily atoms; could be a spiritual pneuma or psychic ectoplasm or exotic matter or who knows what; just, at least, something), we have no reason to believe anything supernatural can exist, least of all a god. The supernatural simply by definition even to imagine requires an impossible state of affairs.

This leaves the possibility of a Natural God (a physical, either process-evolved or Botzmann-spontaneous, superbeing). Which other arguments render improbable.

1. If God exists, then he has extraordinary specified complexity
2. Specified complexity requires parts
3. Parts must have a material or substance to keep them separate from each other
4. God is not made of material
5. If so, then God does not have parts
6. If so, then God does not have specified complexity
7. Therefore, God does not exist

Perhaps Richard will address this, but isn’t your question backwards? You are essentially asking why not allow wild speculation to inform the argument for god. I think the answer is because it provides no logical or demonstrable function. That a thing which does not follow the laws of physics might be able to do things not known by physics is practically a tautology. But the question we have to ask is whether we have reason to suspect that thing exists in the first place.

We can’t appeal to “maybe” to form a “probably.”

Of course, when we do that, such entities become removed from the scientific method due to not being falsifiable, which is what my theorem above states.

Epistemically, all unfalsifiable claims revert to their prior probabilities. Thus infinite complexities are eliminated by their own definition. They cannot be restored to probability by making them untestable; to the contrary, making them untestable is what ensures their extraordinary improbability.

This is why we can never be warranted in believing unfalsifiable claims (except when they are so commonly true we don’t have any reason to doubt them). In short, there is no analytical difference between theoretically and practically unfalsifiable claims in terms of their epistemic probability. Their only analytical difference is that one of them has fewer theoretical opportunities to ever be tested than the other (given that zero is always fewer than every other number). But that has no effect on the epistemic probability of untestable claims.

See my analysis of why Cartesian Demons are always unbelievable (on present evidence). Defining them as unfalsifiable does not escape the analysis.

Believers in the supernatural may not be aware of this, but imho they certainly are not logically contradicting themselves just by their beliefs.

I think your sentence might be misformulated. That they don’t know their beliefs are self-contradictory, does not permit the conclusion that they are “not logically contradicting themselves just by their beliefs.” They certainly are. They just don’t know that they are.

But as to this specific case, where we actually have not formally proved supernatural claims self-contradictory, it is true that we cannot say for certain that believers in those claims are contradicting themselves merely on that basis. They typically do however have a lot of contradictory beliefs (and are unaware of that being the case), but they would be contradictory even if none of them were supernatural beliefs.

For example, believing a complex entity is simple. That is a contradiction. One most theists harbor. It remains a contradiction even if that entity wasn’t even proposed to be supernatural. It just so happens that it’s being so proposed might also entail a contradiction. What we would have to say instead is that they have not proved that belief to be coherent (which is not the same as saying we have proved it to be incoherent). Whereas the other contradiction (that a complex entity is simple) remains a demonstrable incoherence.

I call that an axiomatic intelligent being – as opposed to an emergent intelligence as the result of underlying natural processes.

In other words, if the “designer” (or any “supernatural cause/entity” such as souls etc.) is declared to be incomprehensible, then by axiom it cannot ever be understood in terms of underlying mechanisms, comprised of simpler non-conscious rules.

This implies that no definitive conclusions can be drawn that could rule out the hypothesized “cause”/entity, which means it is not subject to the scientific method.

However, your point goes even further and so far I am not at all convinced of the supernatural already being a logical contradiction, even though I would certainly love that being the case.

I think the root of my skepticism lies within the phrase “complexity without components”.

But before I talk about my problems with the underlying argument, I want to applaud it because it successfully removes the foundation of apologetics responses to the critique of the “first cause/unmoved mover” arguments.

Their typical reaction is that god is atemporal/eternal and therefore does not require a cause, hence they try to explain away the special pleading fallacy that allows them to cut short the infinite regress.

However, if we do not talk about “temporal” causality, but simply about underlying mechanisms irrespective of spacetime and the origin of such a being, that still leaves the question of its internal complexity, which still requires them to commit a special pleading fallacy.

On the other hand… and this brings me back to my criticism of you argument… If we hypothesize (and then presume) a being of infinite complexity, (without getting into the potential problems for defining such a term), it will be rendered incomprehensible by axiom.

Of course, when we do that, such entities become removed from the scientific method due to not being falsifiable, which is what my theorem above states.

Believers in the supernatural may not be aware of this, but imho they certainly are not logically contradicting themselves just by their beliefs. The logical problems only arise once they start reasoning and justifying their beliefs in the supernatural. That’s why it is called faith for good reasons. Faith in the supernatural is not self-contradictory by definition, because by definition is belief without sound reasons. Only the attempt to find sound reasons is bound to be void of logical soundness.

But we have no idea what an intelligent mind unbound by our physical reality and wholly existing outside our spacetime will be like. Why would this mind need separate components and pathways for storing and processing information? If this information is not in the form of mass or energy it would be wholly unimaginable to us. How can we even apply our notions of complexity to it?

There isn’t any need to address his speculations in particular, since they are refuted by the same general arguments. Which is why all non-fundamentalist scientists reject them and he never gets any of this published under peer review.

See my discussion of the Bayesian problem with the fine tuning argument for a start. And on origins of life, my article in Biology & Philosophy on why all creationist protobiology statistics are bogus; or my colloquial summary thereof in Sense and Goodness without God, the section on the origin of life. I also have an old blog article that touches on it too: Statistics & Biogenesis.

There are others. Drop down and category menus on both my current and old blog include “biogenesis” and “cosmology” as subject heads.