Below is an entry he posted yesterday in an attempt to define intelligence. See if you can find any logical fallacies with his arguments:
I wonder how you can tell if an alien is “intelligent life.” Is there a test that fits all situations? For example, suppose we found a blob on Mars that moved under its own power and wasn’t a carbon-based life form. How could we tell if it was intelligent?
One way we could tell is if it did something that you associate with intelligent creatures. If it started a conversation with you (and passed the Turing test), that would seem intelligent. But there’s no reason to think that all intelligent beings use language. You’d need more tests of intelligence than just the ability to hold a conversation with a human.
Suppose the blob on Mars beat you at chess. That would tell you that the blob can “compute,” but it wouldn’t tell you if the blob was intelligent “life.” A computer can beat you at chess if it’s so programmed, and no one thinks your computer is intelligent life.
What if the blob authored a book?
Don’t answer too quickly because it’s a trick question. Remember, a trillion monkeys with typewriters can write a book if you wait long enough. So let’s up the ante and say that the blob on Mars writes lots of different books. And let’s say it composes some music, designs some evening gowns, and paints some lovely pictures too. Now do you conclude that the blob is intelligent?
It’s a trick question because atheists believe that the Big Bang did all of those things and more. The Big Bang caused the sequence of events that culminated in the Bible, the Koran, and most important – Dilbert comics. If the blob on Mars created literature, we would surely consider it intelligent.
I suppose some of you will argue that the Big Bang started a natural series of events that led to a chance development of intelligent life. And then the life did all of the intelligent stuff. But what is the logic behind arbitrarily picking a tiny slice of time and acting as if it’s the only important part of a process that requires many steps?
Consider the simple act of picking up a pencil. It requires your brain and your muscles, but it also requires you to exist in the first place. And that means that your mother and father are part of the process, as well as their parents, etc. Once you existed, and within your body, there was a vast sequence of cause and effect between your brain and your muscles to make it all happen. You might say that “you” picked up the pencil, but I look at the big picture and say the Big Bang picked up that pencil – with or without the existence of free will – because without the Big Bang, none of it would happen.
If you reject the Big Bang as being intelligent – after acknowledging that it created so many books and other works of art, it leaves you with no test for intelligence.
I take the practical approach – that something is intelligent if it unambiguously performs tasks that require intelligence. Writing Moby Dick required intelligence. The Big Bang wrote Moby Dick. Therefore, the Big Bang is intelligent, and you and I are created by that same intelligence. Therefore, we are created by an intelligent entity.
I don’t see how an atheist can think otherwise.
I got lots of thoughtful comments to yesterday’s post on whether the Big Bang was intelligent by definition. I wasn’t planning on following up on the topic, but I feel I owe it to you. Here are the top objections that people raised, along with my replies. If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, read it first.
Objection 1: The Big Bang is an event, not a thing.
I think most people realized I was referring to both the universe and what it did. People are the sum of their matter plus their actions. The universe is a sum of its matter plus its actions. To keep things simple and colorful, I’m going to call the universe and everything it does the Big Bang.
Objection 2: The Big Bang had no intentions. Intelligence requires intention.
You can’t have intentions without free will. And free will is an illusion, according to plenty of prominent scientists and big thinkers. At best, free will has never been defined in any way that would not apply equally to a human or a coin sorting machine. The coin sorter “chooses” which tube to redirect the nickel to in a deterministic fashion. Your brain chooses what to have for lunch in the same way, just more complicated, and with the illusion of intention. The Big Bang (okay, the universe) has no intentions, but neither do you, because it’s a nonsense superstition. You only have the illusion of intentions. So intentions must not be a necessary component of intelligence.
Objection 3: According to evolution, unintelligent processes can cause emergent phenomena, such as intelligence. The Big Bang was an unintelligent process, and the intelligence emerged later. (Implied: Duh!)
By this reasoning, people are not intelligent either. People are a collection of dumb molecules. The intelligence we exhibit is an emergent property of people, not a quality of the people themselves. No molecule in a human body is itself smart. Yet we still say the person as a whole is intelligent. And we generously include as “the person” all of his body parts that are not directly involved in producing intelligence. Your lungs, for example, are every bit as important as your brain in supporting the emergent intelligence you produce. They are both 100% necessary.
If I build a computer and the computer creates a spreadsheet, we don’t credit the computer with the creation. We credit the one who created and programmed the computer. People are every bit the machines as computers, but more complicated and moist. The Big Bang created people, and is therefore the ultimate author of what we in turn create. (Remember, we have no free will. We’re just like the computer in that way.)
Objection 4: But what created the Big Bang!
If there was a “before” to the Big Bang, I have no problem including it in the process and calling it intelligent. But there is no evidence to persuade me that time even existed before the Big Bang, so “before” might be a nonsense concept. And I certainly have no evidence for a sort of God with a personality and a to-do list.
Objection 5: It’s just semantics. All you did was say that whatever produces intelligent results must be intelligent. It’s a circular definition.
Of course it’s semantics. That’s the whole point. We’re trying to figure out what the word “intelligent” means. If the best definition that anyone can offer is circular, then it’s silly to say the universe does or does not have an intelligent designer. The phrase would have no meaning. But if we CAN define intelligence in some meaningful way, then we might be surprised to find that the definition applies equally to humans as to the Big Bang. (After you remove your superstition about intentions, and clear up your thinking about emergent properties.)
Objection 6: Dawkins said, “An intelligent life is intelligent enough to speculate on its own origins.”
My cat has intelligence, but I doubt she’s doing much speculating on her origins.
I think those were the best objections I got. Let me know if I missed any objections that are better than the ones I listed.
I'd love to see some student interaction here.
