Do we Atheists have a Burden of Proof? – Conflated and Misunderstood Terms: Vol 7

Comments (4) on “Do we Atheists have a Burden of Proof? – Conflated and Misunderstood Terms: Vol 7”

1. I agree with your following statement, Davidian:

   “Whilst the burden IS on the person making the claim to support their position, you equally hold a burden to make your position rational for not believing them.

   Every disbelief or skeptical stance is really just an alternate belief. For example, one can only disbelieve that life is the result of an intelligent cause from the vantage point of BELIEF that life is the result of an unintelligent cause. There is simply no way around this. Period.

   As a Christian, I am a deeply skeptical non-believer in atheist claims that life resulted from unintelligent natural processes. Why the skepticism? For one, physicists and mathematicians are able to mathematically quantify the information content which natural laws are capable of producing, and it falls FAR FAR FAR short of the information content in the genetic instructions of even the simplest organism.

   Realizing specifically why natural laws are completely incapable of producing life is crucial to understanding why the theistic explanation must be the truth, no matter how improbable it may appear to an atheist:

   Imagine if, one morning, you opened an email from a friend which read,

   ABC ABC ABC ABC ABC

   It is entirely besides the point that what your friend wrote is meaningless. What is more important to our discussion is WHY such a simple, regular, and repetitive pattern of letters is meaningless. According to information science (not to mention everyday common sense), in order for a set of symbols to contain meaningful information, it must be complex, irregular, and non-repeating, such as the symbolic sequence below:

   The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

   In the terminology of information science, a simple and repetitive pattern such as ABC ABC does not have the information bearing capacity necessary to contain a meaningful email message, or a set of instructions. The genetic code (the language of life) conveys instructions for an organism to develop, using a code consisting of four letters known as nucleotide bases. But if these symbolic sequences were created by natural laws, they would be very similar to the meaninglessly simple and repetitive message in your friend’s email. Nancy Pearcey eloquently elaborates on this point in her book Total Truth:

   “…In principle, laws of nature do not give rise to information. Why not? Because laws describe events that are regular, repeatable, and predictable. If you drop a pencil, it will fall. If you put paper into a flame, it will burn. If you mix salt in water, it will dissolve. That’s why the scientific method insists that experiments must be repeatable: Whenever you reproduce the same conditions, you should get the same results, or something is wrong with your experiment. The goal of science is to reduce those regular patterns to mathematical formulas. By contrast, the sequence of letters in a message is irregular and non repeating, which means it cannot be the result of any law-like process.”

   In the primary text on the application of information theory to the origin of life titled Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, physicist and information scientist Hubert Yockey explains how the simplicity and regularity of natural laws renders it mathematically impossible for such laws to produce life from non-life:

   “The laws of physics and chemistry are much like the rules of a game such as football. The referees see to it that these laws are obeyed but that does not predict the winner of the Super Bowl. There is not enough information in the rules of the game to make that prediction. That is why we play the game. [Mathematician Gregory] Chaitin has examined the laws of physics by actually programming them. He finds the information content amazingly small.”

   Yockey continues, in Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life:

   “The reason that there are principles of biology that cannot be derived from the laws of physics and chemistry lies simply in the fact that the genetic information content of the genome for constructing even the simplest organisms is much larger than the information content of these laws.”

   Renowned physicist Paul Davies (winner of the Kelvin Medal issued by the Institute of Physics) reflects Yockey’s above comments, and makes clear the distinction between the medium (the material aspect of an organism) and the message (the informational aspect of an organism). As an illustration, a song is an immaterial informational entity which may be stored on various material storage media, such as an iPod, a compact disk, an old vinyl record, or a cassette tape. But the song itself could not have been produced by unintelligent material processes, since it is not a material thing. Similarly, in regards to life, the unintelligent action of natural laws could possibly explain the material aspect of an organism, but not the informational aspect of the organism (the set of immaterial instructions codified in the genetic code). Indeed, it would be no more possible for natural laws to write a song than to produce instructions codified in the genetic code. In The Fifth Miracle, Davies makes this point:

   “The laws of physics, which determine what atoms react with what, and how, are algorithmically very simple; they themselves contain relatively little information. Consequently, they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules [such as even the most simple organism]. Contrary to the oft-repeated claim, then, life cannot be ‘written into’ the laws of physics. Once this essential point is grasped, the real problem of biogenesis [life emerging from unintelligent processes] is clear. Since the heady success of molecular biology, most investigators have sought the secret of life in the physics and chemistry of molecules. But they will look in vain for conventional physics and chemistry to explain life, for that is the classic case of confusing the medium with the message.”

   Here is my evidence that life is the result of an intelligent cause:

   Atheism is grounded in the philosophy known as materialism, which suggests that all that exists is various arrangements of matter and energy. But if it were true that nothing exists except matter and energy, living things would be completely specified by their physical and chemical properties. Nowhere among such properties will you find a property known as MEANING. Put another way, material things such as rocks, thunderstorms, or the chair you are sitting in cannot be about anything. Meaning is not a property of mindless matter and energy, and can only be assigned by a conscious and intelligent agent, period.

   —-Many of the principles of human language apply to DNA, the language of life.—-

   In the primary text on the application of algorithmic information theory to the question of the origin of life, titled Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life, physicist and information scientist Hubert Yockey explains how many of the principles of human language are also applicable to the genetic code, the language of life:

   “Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” [1]

   —Symbolic representation is NECESSARILY the product of a mind.—

   Symbolic representation, such as the complex set of instructions symbolically communicated by the genetic code, requires a conscious and intelligent agent. Such is the case because the meaning which symbols convey is entirely arbitrary, and cannot be a property of the symbols themselves. For example, the letters C-A-T serve as a symbolic representation of a furry animal that purrs and meows only because the intelligent agents who created the English language arbitrarily assigned this meaning to this set of symbols. There is no physical or chemical relationship between these symbols and what they serve to represent, only a mental relationship.

   This is further illustrated by the fact that a set of symbols can have entirely different meanings in different languages. Yockey (in Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life) eloquently explains this crucial point:

   The messages conveyed by sequences of symbols sent through a communication system generally have meaning (otherwise, why are we sending them?). It often is overlooked that the meaning of a sequence of letters, if any, is arbitrary. It is determined by the natural language and is not a property of the letters or their arrangement. For example, the English word “hell” means “bright” in German, “fern” means “far,” “gift” means “poison,” “bald” means “soon,” “boot” means “boat,” and “singe” means “sing.” In French “pain” means “bread,” “ballot” means a “bundle,” “coin” means a “corner or a wedge,” “chair” means “flesh,” “cent” means “hundred,” “son” means “his,” “tire” means a “pull,” and “ton” means “your.”
   In French, the English word “main” means “hand,” “sale” means “dirty.” French-speaking visitors to English-speaking countries will be astonished at department stores having a “sale” and especially if it is the “main sale.” This confusion of meaning goes as far as sentences. For example, “0 singe fort” has no meaning in English, although each is an English word, yet in German it means “0 sing on,” and in French it means “0 strong monkey.” [2]

   ——The genetic code is a literally like a human language. This is no metaphor.——

   At this point, one can almost hear atheists shouting, “Suggesting that the genetic code is a language is only a metaphor, or a figure of speech! It is not literally true!” But, an entire school of thought in biology called biosemiotics considers language to be a primary lens through which living things must be understood, as Perry Marshall points out in his book Evolution 2.0. Marshall elaborates on the scientific reasons why the genetic code is a language in the most literal, not metaphorical, sense:
   Rutgers University professor Sungchul Ji’s excellent paper The Linguistics of DNA: Words, Sentences, Grammar, Phonetics, and Semantics starts off,

   “Biologic systems and processes cannot be fully accounted for in terms of the principles and laws of physics and chemistry alone, but they require in addition the principles of semiotics— the science of symbols and signs, including linguistics.”

   Ji identifies 13 characteristics of human language. DNA shares 10 of them. Cells edit DNA. They also communicate with each other and literally speak a language he called “cellese,” described as “a self-organizing system of molecules, some of which encode, act as signs for, or trigger, gene-directed cell processes.”

   This comparison between cell language and human language is not a loosey-goosey analogy; it’s formal and literal. Human language and cell language both employ multilayered symbols. Dr. Ji explains this similarity in his paper:

   “Bacterial chemical conversations also include assignment of contextual meaning to words and sentences (semantic) and conduction of dialogue (pragmatic)— the fundamental aspects of linguistic communication.” This is true of genetic material. Signals between cells do this as well. [3]

   ——It is a case of the God of what we know, not the God of the gaps.——-

   The arrangement of symbols (such as letters) according to a language is not something that can be accomplished, even in principle, by unintelligent physical or chemical processes. Werner Gitt is a former Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig) and former head of the Department of Information Technology. In his book Without Excuse, he discusses the substitutive function of what he terms “Universal Information “(UI), as it relates to the genetic code, the language of life:

   “Universal Information is always an abstract representation of some other existing entity. Universal Information is never the item (object) or the fact (event, idea) itself but rather the coded symbols serve as a substitute for the entities that are being represented. Different languages often use different sets of symbols and usually different symbol sequences to represent the same material object or concept. Consider the following examples:

   -The words in a newspaper, consisting of a sequence of letters, substitute for an event that happened at an earlier time and in some other place,

   -The words in a novel, consisting of sequences of letters, substitute for characters and their actions,

   -The notes of a musical score substitute for music that will be played later on musical instruments,

   -The chemical formula for benzene substitutes for the toxic liquid that is kept in a flask in a chemistry laboratory,

   -The genetic codons (three-letter words) of the DNA molecule substitute for specific amino acids that are bonded together in a specific sequence to form a protein.”[4]

   The substitutive function of the the symbols in a code or language is something that can only be set up by the activity of a conscious and intelligent mind because, again, what a set of symbols serve to substitute for is entirely arbitrary and cannot be a property of the symbols themselves. Symbolic representation is by necessity a mental process. As information scientist Henry Quastler put it,

   “The creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”

   Biologists with less rigid ideological commitments to atheism (or at least more intellectual integrity) have been frank enough to admit the necessity of mind (a conscious and intelligent agent) in the origin of life. The Nobel Prize-winning, Harvard University biologist George Wald, although certainly not an ideological ally of theism, admitted the following in his address to the Quantum Biology Symposium titled Life and Mind in the Universe:

   “It has occurred to me lately—I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities—that both questions [the origin of mind and the origin of life from nonliving matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality—the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals.”[5]

   The genetic code is a language (because it utilizes abstract, substitutive, symbolic representation) that is very similar to a computer language. Microsoft founder Bill Gates writes, “Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any we’ve ever created.” Natural processes do not create anything even vaguely resembling a computer program. Gitt makes this point clear in his book In the Beginning Was Information:

   …According to a frequently quoted statement by the American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) information cannot be a physical entity: “Information is information, neither matter nor energy. Any materialism which disregards this will not survive one day.” Werner Strombach, a German information scientist of Dortmund, emphasizes the non-material nature of information by defining it as an “enfolding of order at the level of contemplative cognition.” Hans-Joachim Flechtner, a German cyberneticist, referred to the fact that information is of a mental nature, both because of its contents and because of the encoding process. This aspect is, however, frequently underrated:

   “When a message is composed, it involves the coding of its mental content, but the message itself is not concerned about whether the contents are important or unimportant, valuable, useful, or meaningless. Only the recipient can evaluate the message after decoding it.”

   “It should now be clear that information, being a fundamental entity, cannot be a property of matter, and its origin cannot be explained in terms of material processes. We therefore formulate the following theorem. Theorem 1: The fundamental quantity of information is a non-material (mental) entity. It is not a property of matter, so that purely material processes are fundamentally precluded as sources of information.”[6]

   Atheism relies on mindless material processes to explain life. But the insurmountable problem for atheism is that such mindless processes can never account for the fact that the genetic code is a language which utilizes arrangements of symbols with arbitrarily assigned meanings…just like a human language. Much as the chemistry of the ink and paper that constitute a newspaper cannot explain the arrangement of the letters in the words of a newspaper, the chemistry of a DNA molecule cannot explain the arrangement of letters in a DNA molecule. Michael Polanyi, a former Chairman of Physical Chemistry at the University of Manchester (UK), who was famous for his important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, emphasizes this point:

   “As the arrangement of a printed page is extraneous to the chemistry of the printed page, so is the base sequence in a DNA molecule extraneous to the chemical forces at work in the DNA molecule. It is this physical indeterminacy of the sequence that produces the improbability of occurrence of any particular sequence and thereby enables it to have meaning–a meaning that has a mathematically determinate information content.” [7]
   ————————————-
   1. Hubert P. Yockey. Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life (Kindle Locations 128-129). Kindle Edition
   2. Hubert P. Yockey. Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life (Kindle Locations 137-138). Kindle Edition
   3. Marshall, Perry. Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design (p. 167). Kindle edition
   4. Gitt, Werner. Without Excuse, p. 73
   5. Wald, George. Life and Mind in the Universe. Source: International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, Volume 26, Issue Supplement 11, 16 APR 2008
   6. Gitt, Werner. In the Beginning Was Information (Kindle Locations 427-428). Kindle Edition
   7. Michael Polanyi, Life’s Irreducible Structure. Source: Science, Jun. 21, 1968, pp. 1308-1312
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   1. Hi Scott,

      Great to hear from you as always, even if I don’t always agree with everything you have to say I think it important that folks get a well rounded look on these topics.
      I’ll be honest with you, I care less and less about the question of god existing and more about the faulty arguments on both sides about an array of a number of different topics.

      // Every disbelief or skeptical stance is really just an alternate belief.//

      Indeed although you are missing the 3rd form of belief.
      So whilst the Proposition (P) is “God Exists” – believing that to be true makes one a theist
      Disbelieving it to be true, logically speaking, is the same as believing it to be not true. The belief God does not Exist – the classic atheist position.
      There is of course the third belief position. Someone who has considered P, and finds nothing strong enough to convinced them that P or not P are true.
      They withhold judgment, and are in a state of Unbelief. This is the classic agnostic position, although these days is often referred to as agnostic atheism.

      // Nowhere among such properties will you find a property known as MEANING.//

      It does sound like you are saying that without god, life has no meaning. Is that correct?

      I will get to your other points in time, but we risk having blocks of comments larger than the post – and would rather deal with this in small sections. (I’m also rather busy, and equally would like to read your references in more detail than just the quotes you have supplied)

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      1. Davidian,

         Yes I certainly understand your need to keep the discussion is small enough portions. I will try to keep my replies more brief.

         Only beliefs or truth claims can be true or false. A “non-belief” or a withholding of judgement cannot contain truth. If atheism does not make any truth claims or hold any beliefs, then it cannot contain any truth. This would make the statement “I am an atheist” every bit as meaningless as the statement “wibble, wibble, wibble.” Andy Bannister elaborates:

         “The problem is that only beliefs or claims can be true or false. For example, it makes perfect sense to ask whether a statement such as “It is raining today” or “The Maple Leafs lost at hockey again” are true. Those are claims, they are beliefs, and they have what philosophers call a “truth value”. They are either true or false.”

         “On the other hand, it is utterly meaningless to ask whether the color blue, a small off-duty Slovakian traffic warden, or Richard Dawkins’s left foot is “true”. That would be a bizarre category error. These things are not claims or beliefs and thus do not possess any kind of truth value. They simply are.”

         “So what about atheism? Well, as far as I can make out, I think my atheist friends are claiming that their belief is true; that they really, really believe it to be true that there is no God. Well, if that’s the case, then it makes atheism a positive claim and claims must be defended, evidence martialled, and reasons given. Otherwise, if atheism is not a claim, it cannot be true or false. It simply is, and to say “I am an atheist” is up there with saying ‘Wibble, wibble, wibble’”.

         No, I was not saying that without God, like cannot have meaning. Rather, I was making a point about the genetic code, the language of life. Sequences of genetic code contain meaningful sets of instructions codified in the genetic code. But atheism is grounded in the philosophy known as materialism, which suggests that all that exists is various arrangements of matter and energy. And if it were true that nothing exists except matter and energy, living things would be completely specified by their physical and chemical properties. Nowhere among such properties will you find a property known as MEANING. Put another way, material things such as rocks, thunderstorms, or the chair you are sitting in cannot be about anything. Meaning is not a property of mindless matter and energy, and can only be assigned by a conscious and intelligent agent, period.

         Symbolic representation, such as the complex set of instructions symbolically communicated by the genetic code, requires a conscious and intelligent agent. Such is the case because the meaning which symbols convey is entirely arbitrary, and cannot be a property of the symbols themselves. For example, the letters C-A-T serve as a symbolic representation of a furry animal that purrs and meows only because the intelligent agents who created the English language arbitrarily assigned this meaning to this set of symbols. There is no physical or chemical relationship between these symbols and what they serve to represent, only a mental relationship.

         Werner Gitt is a former Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig) and former head of the Department of Information Technology. In his book Without Excuse, he discusses the substitutive function of what he terms “Universal Information “(UI), as it relates to the genetic code, the language of life:

         “Universal Information is always an abstract representation of some other existing entity. Universal Information is never the item (object) or the fact (event, idea) itself but rather the coded symbols serve as a substitute for the entities that are being represented. Different languages often use different sets of symbols and usually different symbol sequences to represent the same material object or concept. Consider the following examples:

         -The words in a newspaper, consisting of a sequence of letters, substitute for an event that happened at an earlier time and in some other place,

         -The words in a novel, consisting of sequences of letters, substitute for characters and their actions,

         -The notes of a musical score substitute for music that will be played later on musical instruments,

         -The chemical formula for benzene substitutes for the toxic liquid that is kept in a flask in a chemistry laboratory,

         -The genetic codons (three-letter words) of the DNA molecule substitute for specific amino acids that are bonded together in a specific sequence to form a protein.”

         The substitutive function of the the symbols in a code or language is something that can only be set up by the activity of a conscious and intelligent mind because, again, what a set of symbols serve to substitute for is entirely arbitrary and cannot be a property of the symbols themselves. Symbolic representation is by necessity a mental process. As information scientist Henry Quastler put it,

         “The creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”

         Biologists with less rigid ideological commitments to atheism (or at least more intellectual integrity) have been frank enough to admit the necessity of mind (a conscious and intelligent agent) in the origin of life. The Nobel Prize-winning, Harvard University biologist George Wald, although certainly not an ideological ally of theism, admitted the following in his address to the Quantum Biology Symposium titled Life and Mind in the Universe:

         “It has occurred to me lately—I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities—that both questions [the origin of mind and the origin of life from nonliving matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality—the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals.”

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         1. //Only beliefs or truth claims can be true or false. A “non-belief” or a withholding of judgement cannot contain truth. If atheism does not make any truth claims or hold any beliefs, then it cannot contain any truth. This would make the statement “I am an atheist” every bit as meaningless as the statement “wibble, wibble, wibble.” Andy Bannister elaborates://

            the “non-belief” or “lack of belief” definition of atheism is actually relatively new, and I do not hold to it. It is actually closer to agnosticism.
            However, what we can infer from it is that the person who is agnostic in regards to god’s existence feels they have not been given enough information or evidence to hold a belief as to whether a god does or does not exist.

            Agnosticism: https://www.answers-in-reason.com/religion/agnosticism/what-is-agnosticism-how-does-it-relate-to-knowledge-and-beliefs/
            Problems with the lack of belief definition of atheism: https://www.answers-in-reason.com/philosophy/language-philosophy/definitional-problems-with-lacking-belief/

            //“So what about atheism? Well, as far as I can make out, I think my atheist friends are claiming that their belief is true; that they really, really believe it to be true that there is no God. Well, if that’s the case, then it makes atheism a positive claim and claims must be defended, evidence martialled, and reasons given. Otherwise, if atheism is not a claim, it cannot be true or false. It simply is, and to say “I am an atheist” is up there with saying ‘Wibble, wibble, wibble’”.//

            Here we are getting in to the nuance between the difference between beliefs and truth claims.

            A belief does make a claim about your cognitive state.
            It is saying “this is probably what I think the case is to be”

            Beliefs can be rational, irrational, or arational.

            The burden on a belief position is not to prove it true, but prove it is rational to hold that belief.
            You are not saying “this is true” you are not saying “I KNOW this is true” you are saying “I think this is most likely the case”.

            So with a theist saying they “believe god exists” they have to show the belief is rational.
            If a theist says “GOD DOES EXIST”, or “I KNOW GOD EXISTS” this is making an absolute claim that carries a burden to prove it true.

            So for an atheist to say “I believe god does not exist” it carries that burden to prove that belief as rational.
            for the contemporary internet atheist that says “I just lack belief in god existing, I don’t believe God does not exist” they are essentially stating they lack belief in a god existing and a god not existing.
            They still have the burden of nationality.

            If any atheist claims they KNOW NO GODS EXIST, that again is an absolute claim, they are stating it with epistemic certainty, and therefore their BoP moves from proving their belief to be rational to proving their claim to be true.

            This analogy between belief and claim might explain things a bit more for you: https://www.answers-in-reason.com/religion/atheism/the-burden-of-proof-belief-vs-claim-court-room-analogy/

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