Andy McIntosh - Atheism vs. God - Part 6 (Experts)

This is part 6 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well.

For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0

The Rest

This post will address the rest of the presentation by McIntosh.

One note: my response to many of these is that they represent an argument from authority.  I would like to pre-clarify that this is a response to the McIntosh presentation, not the external source.  Nagel may have a valid argument, for example, but we weren't presented with his argument.  We were just asked to accept it.

And this is why I'm usually not swayed by these sort of things.  Rarely do you actually get presented with an argument.

You get presented with experts and emotions.

McIntosh does not go deep into these points, and I will not either.  I suspect the reason is time.

Balfour (54:26)

[...] all creeds which refuse to see an intelligent purpose behind unthinking powers of material nature are intrinsically incoherent.  In the order of causation they base reason upon unreason.  In the order of logic they involve conclusions which discredit their own premises [...]

Argument from authority: the actual argument is not presented.  We are just asked to accept it because Balfour said it.

Chesterton (55:30)

Take the first more obvious case of materialism.  As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity.  It has just the quality of a madman's argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of leaving everything out.  Contemplate some able and sincere materialist... and you will have exactly this unique sensation.  He understands everything and everything does not seem worth understanding.  His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cogwheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world.

Argument from authority regarding "everything does not seem worth understanding".  We are just asked to accept it because Chesterton said it.

Argument from final consequences regarding the conclusion: you may not like the consequences of an idea, but that doesn't mean the idea is wrong.

Branch (57:30)

McIntosh states:

Particles and molecules do not think.  Rationality transcends matter, and it has to.

I expect that McIntosh is either relying on previous statements (already disputed) or future statements such as quotes from Nagel (see below).  On its own, this is just claimed to be true.  As stated other places, yes, if you first assume immaterialism, then materialism doesn't make sense.

Nagel (58:01)

Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself [...]

Argument from authority: we are not presented an argument showing this, we are just asked to accept it because Nagel said it.

There is the start of an argument here, but it needs to be developed.  If we were to judge it as stated, it would be a baseless assertion: McIntosh has not shown that evolutionary theory undermines the reliability of human capacities.

Lewis (58:30)

Nature is quite powerless to produce rational thought: not that she never modifies our thinking but that the moment she does so, it ceases (for that very reason) to be rational.  For, as we have seen, a train of thought loses all rational credentials as soon as it can be shown to be wholly the result of non-rational causes.

Argument from authority: we have not seen Lewis' actual argument.  Lewis states, "For, as we have seen," but we have not seen Lewis' argument.

Wigner (1:01:59)

[...] it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to posses"

This argument seems to be: Human reasoning seems to be perfect, therefore something.  But human reasoning does not seem to be perfect.  The whole "science" thing exists because of how flawed human reasoning seems to be.

Godel / Lucas (1:03:09)

Godel states:

[...] there are statements that [...] a computer cannot evaluate to deicde if they are true or false

Lucas follows:

[...] a machine we construct [...] will [...]  [have] a forumla unprovable-in-that-system [that] a mind can see [...] is true.

This is also an argument from authority as these statements are just declared as true.  As for the underlying argument, is it valid?  My first question for Godel and Lucas would be, "Can the mind prove it is true, or does it just believe it?"  If it just believes it, I see no barrier to building a machine that believes things true that it can't prove is true.  That certainly seems to be consistent with the way our minds work.  Yes, maybe "the mind always has the last word," but the mind often gets it wrong.