Happy Atheist Forum

I think to be a Deist one would have to have three attributes:
 
1. Willingness to take intuition as a direct path to knowledge, instead of strictly to hypotheses.
2. Willingness to entertain unfalsifiable hypotheses.
3. Severe discomfort with the proposition that highly complex mechanisms are undesigned.
 
What Deism would represent for you is relief from the pressure of item 3.
 
But suppose the first two items don't apply to me - which in fact they don't.  How could I relieve the pressure from item 3?  I think there's a way.  It involves doing science.
 
Everyday experience for all of us is surely that, whenever we encounter comlex order, it is the result of either design or the laws of physics, examples of the latter being snowflakes and crystals.  Using my intuition, then, I construct a proto-hypothesis (not a hypothesis yet) consisting of the proposition that complex order found in DNA and the processes in which it plays a part is the result not only of the ordering factor already identified, namely, natural selection, but also of the laws of physics.  Deists aren't satisfied with natural selection as providing sufficient impetus toward complex order.  They want something more.  I have sympathy for that perspective and my intuition in fact really suggests to me that the laws of phyics play a role in both constraining and enabling what proteins can do, which in turn constrains and enables what mitosis can do, which in turn constrains and enables what ontogeny can do.  Physicists and biochemists could join forces in a quest to understand the foregoing, assuming it's there to be understood.
 
The empiricist responds to mystery either with indifference or with science, never with theology, not even of the Deistic sort.

I'm not sure I'm following...

Quote from: "ElizabethPeart"I'm not sure I'm following...

Do you agree that the following is probably experienced by Deists?

3. Discomfort with the proposition that highly complex mechanisms are undesigned.

I removed the adjective severe because I think it may be an exaggeration in at least some cases.

The highly complex mechanisms are of course you and me, and ducks, and mosquitoes, and moss, and bacteria.

If you don't agree that the above is probably experienced by Deists, how would you rephrase it to make it apply?  Or do you think it's so completely irrelevant to Deism as to be best simply jettisoned?  If the latter, what do you think drives a person to be Deist rather than atheist or scriptural theist?

I'm an atheist yet I could say that I experience some discomfort with the proposition that highly complex mechanisms are undesigned, although I wouldn't use those words, per se.  I understand the argument that natural selection, sufficiently short life spans, and hundreds of million years, could yield from sufficiently frequent mutation the wonders we see around us.  Even so, I still experience a little discomfort.  I intuitively want something to be constraining mutation on the front end, not merely on the back end.

Mutation is constrained on the back end in three ways.  First, its perpetuation is constrained by the ability of the creature carrying the mutation to survive in the wild long enough to be ready to reproduce, and then to actually reproduce, the latter being a separate hurdle which sometimes isn't cleared.  Second, prior to the first, the mutation's perpetuation is constrained by the ability of the creature carrying the mutation to survive at all for even a moment; I.e., to be born alive.  Third, prior even to the second, the mutation's perpetuation is constrained by the rules governing the DNA replication processes, specifically the error detection and error correction processes, which filter out many a mutation.  Most biologists (if not all) view these three back end constraints as sufficient, given sufficiently short life spans, sufficiently frequent mutation, and hundreds of millions of years, to yield the wonders we see around us.  My intuition still wants more, however.  Back end constraints combat what could be viewed as bad order or insufficient order or disorder, and that's fine, but I want to know what constrains mutation on the front end, if anything.  I want to know if there are laws of mutation.  

I dislike the notion that mutation is simply random, whatever that means.  In a deterministic universe, characterized by absolute causality, where every event and every element of every event has a logical antecedent, there really isn't any such thing as randomness.  When we call something random, all we're really saying is that we humans are unable to identify the logical antecedents.  A coin toss is only random from the perspective of the human observers.  The coin itself is constrained by the laws of physics, by its own shape, size, and weight, by the exact force and exact trajectory of the toss, by the movement of the surrounding air, and by the shape and mass of the spot where the coin lands.  If the human observers had perfect knowledge of all relevant antecedents, the human observers could predict with perfect accuracy whether the coin would come to rest heads or tails.  The relevant antecedents are there to be known.  Failure to know them is a failure of the human observers, not of the universe, nor even of the coin.
   
Likewise, mutation is only random from the perspective of human observers.  Every mutation event, and every element of that event, has logical antecedents.  If we had perfect knowledge of the logical antecedents, we could predict with perfect accuracy the mutation in all of its details.  Nor do scientists deny that these logical antecedents are there to be known.  Scientists would agree that if we had sufficiently subtle instruments monitoring the DNA replication processes, preferably without interfering with those processes, and if we had a sufficiently fast and subtle computer program continually evaluating the data in real time, that computer program could theoretically set off an alarm a few nanoseconds in advance of the mutation actually occurring, with details of what that mutation would consist of.  The logical antecedents are there to be known.  But I want still more.  I want there to be laws of mutation.  Laws of physics constrain the coin toss, and the laws of physics constrain mutation as well, but which ones, specifically, are most relevant?  Furthermore, mutation is constrained by the laws of chemistry as well.  Which ones, specifically, are most relevant?  I want a theory of mutation that lays out the laws of physics and of chemistry most relevant to mutation in such a way that mutation becomes too explicable for anyone to call it random in any sense other than, this particular mutation seems random to us because we lack sufficient particular knowledge, but mutation in general isn't random at all, for we know the laws that directly govern it.

I want a theory of mutation.  Biochemists are inching toward one, I think.  They may not articulate what they're doing in that fashion.  But some recent articles have made me think the direction of current research is toward the theory I want.  Time will tell.  I hope I live long enough to be amazed and gratified.

None of the above causes me to become a Deist, because in my case a simple rule is followed.  In the face of mystery, do science, not theology.

It occurs to me that Deism is compatible with apatheism.  Our universe is clearly indifferent to our survival, success, and happiness, since death, failure, and misery abound.  Logic suggests our universe's Creator, if it has one, must be similarly indifferent.  Common sense suggests indifference toward that which is indifferent toward us.  Deists and atheists could join forces in counseling anyone who will listen to live life as if there were no Creator, as a first step toward enshrining logic and common sense as the sole guides of man.