I don’t understand how the Atheist gets from the Theist’s claims about the creation of the universe to “natural selection”. I thought that was the bad pattern-matching in the first example, but then they make the same mistake in the second example. Does the Atheist think the universe is an evolved creature?
The atheist doesn’t think the universe evolved; he thinks the complex things in the universe evolved. The theist I was modeling is thinking of -say- the human eyeball when he thinks about the complexity of the universe. But I agree the shorthand dialogue is ambiguous.
Some complex things in the universe evolved. But plenty didn’t. The ‘fine-tuning’ of physical constants arguments is quite fashionable at the moment.
Is interesting how easy it is to project a certain assumption onto arguments, though. Because your atheist response assumed natural selection, while a response above protests that the theist hasn’t experienced enough universes to generalise about them, so presumably interprets the statement to refer to the universe as a whole. All the more reason to make sure you understand what people mean, I suppose!
I don’t understand how the Atheist gets from the Theist’s claims about the creation of the universe to “natural selection”. I thought that was the bad pattern-matching in the first example, but then they make the same mistake in the second example. Does the Atheist think the universe is an evolved creature?
The atheist doesn’t think the universe evolved; he thinks the complex things in the universe evolved. The theist I was modeling is thinking of -say- the human eyeball when he thinks about the complexity of the universe. But I agree the shorthand dialogue is ambiguous.
Some complex things in the universe evolved. But plenty didn’t. The ‘fine-tuning’ of physical constants arguments is quite fashionable at the moment.
Is interesting how easy it is to project a certain assumption onto arguments, though. Because your atheist response assumed natural selection, while a response above protests that the theist hasn’t experienced enough universes to generalise about them, so presumably interprets the statement to refer to the universe as a whole. All the more reason to make sure you understand what people mean, I suppose!