Talk:Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit

message: As noted about I think the name is slightly unfortunate but we are probably stuck with it because Dawkins gave it to the argument and there appear to be no notable alternatives.  But if anyone can propose a alternative that has at least half as many notable commentators and ghits perhaps we should consider it.  Any suggestions?NBeale 18:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Probability of God would work (or Improbability of God, whatever) but we shouldn't restrict our focus to the one god but apply it to all gods so a title like Statistical arguments related to supernatural entities (though that does sound like a category). Then at least Christians can add why all the other gods from competitive foundation myths are unlikely and why just the one god they use is likely. Ttiotsw 19:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Probability of God is a book by Stephen D. Unwin. The Improbability of God is a book by Michael Martin So we can't use those at titles for this article. NBeale 22:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They could be distinguished by capitalisation. 1Z 12:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I think the discussion is very much open, and depends on what we want here. Having the title as it currently stands would center this article on Dawkins, and then I will be very tempted to further expand the article so that Plantinga's mischaracterization of the argument becomes more obvious. My first judgement was that Plantinga is right, but the more I think about this issue the more I'm leaning towards Dawkins. I think most disturbing is Plantinga's ridiculous formalization of the very process of normal science. This is perhaps due to his agenda to undermine science and push intelligent design into the classrooms, or he honestly and sincerely doesn't understand how the scientific intuition works. I think Yann Martel's Life of Pi was a convincing way to argue against Dawkins's demand to pick the best scientific theory, but characterizing the basic process by which we accept scientific theories as if these are based on a simple logically inference... well it only convinces me that Plantinga's understanding of science is quite sophomoric, except that's of course an insult to science sophomores... Anyway, the current title serves well for a battleground between Dawkins and his critics, but if we want a more general discussion of scientific arguments drawing on more sources, then we should change the title. I'm fine with it either way. --Merzul 11:00, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What would we re-name to? 

message: The community has alredy discussed at length whether this article should be deleted or merged or renamed and the result was keep.  It makes no sense to put up a merge tag immediately after this. NBeale 07:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger suggestion 

message: We are including a reference to Krauss saying "this is a weak argument", it's funny how I was refused including Graham Oppy and Dawkins's saying the same thing about the ontological argument, see Talk:Ontological_argument#Regarding "opinions". --Merzul 12:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Now, in any case, I did include Oppy's opinion on this page, although it's far from something that I consider a quality source. But I have immense respect for this guy, he is probably one of the most lucid philosopher of religion I know, and he has written the most carefully argued book on the ontological argument I've ever seen, it's no wonder he was asked to write the Stanford Encyclopaedia entry on the ontological argument. In any case, the fact that he isn't impressed by the argument in my opinion shouldn't be seen as POV-pushing on either side, for me as an atheist it just shows that atheists are fair and independent thinkers, and on the other side I'm sure NBeale is happy to have more people saying Dawkins is incompetent. What do you guys think? --Merzul 15:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Including opinions... 

message: H. Allen Orr in The New York Review of Books[19] suggests that Dawkins .......
Is this entry a critique of the "God Delusion"? It reads like the book review section of the NY Times. H. Allen Orr gives Dawkins two thumbs down ... New York Review. 
Your discussion page has suggestion for changing the entry title to something that reflects the true nature of the article. Perhaps you should reconsider those suggestions. --Random Replicator 16:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two Thumbs Up 

message: I have now edited the article to reflect what Dawkins not Plantinga considers his argument against the existence of God. Compare the situation to the following argument, which is not entirely isomorphic, but close enough to illustrate the point: 
# We need an explanation of why the stellar bodies appear on the sky the way they do.
# The natural temptation is to believe they are revolving around the earth.
# The ptolemaic system is a too complex, and therefore an unsatisfactory theory.
At this point we can express our dissatisfaction, but we cannot yet claim that Almost Certainly the Earth Is not In the Center of the Universe. Dawkins does not do this, he only rejects the Ptolemaic hypothesis of a designer when a simpler and better theory is available. This is incredibly important, and it is at the very core of Plantinga's strawman argument. He construes the rejection of empirical theism to be the argument against God; this is absolutely not what Dawkins is claiming. Nowhere in Dawkins's writing can you find anything implying something like "God would have to be monumentally complex, hence astronomically improbable; thus it is almost certain that God does not exist." Dawkins is saying: God is complex and improbable, and hence a bad scientific explanation of complexity. Therefore, when a better theory is available, it is prudent to reject the God Hypothesis. This is not my own personal reading, it is a very explicit in the book, especially the comment that Hume "caved in" because he didn't have a better theory. --Merzul 00:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but this is only because we depart from a common understanding of what constitutes good and bad scientific explanation. Those lacking that understanding depart from a different point, and have a different destination in mind. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:881E:A6AF:CA0:836A (talk) 08:45, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The argument, again... 

message: I'm actually quite happy with it, I think it states the argument in Dawkins's own terms, and I really really did my best to present the best criticism that I could find, and most of the stuff that is now on the page I think is very strong on both sides of the argument. Any comments? --Merzul 18:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On first reading nothing glaring stuck out and said "bite me". A grammar error (bold) in "When theologians hold God to be simple, who is scientist like Dawkins "to dictate to theologians that their God had to be complex?" in which I think it needs the indefinite article "a" added. I say excellent job mingling the references we were given. Ttiotsw 19:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, but I don't recall taking ownership of this article, and my English is not that good, so please do edit the article :) I will fix this one though. About mingling the sources, I can tell you that the hardest part was trying to make sense of Plantinga, I'm not at all impressed with what he had to say. I frankly think the less of him we have here, the stronger the criticism section, but out of respect for his authority I tried to keep some of his arguments.  --Merzul 20:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

text:  (My edit summary "fixing grammer" was not a deliberate attempt to prove my point. If only 'a' and 'e' were adjacent on the keyboard...) --Merzul 21:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, it's difficult to say, all of his reasoning is difficult, the version with all the quotations are here, so I have to see actually what I threw out. The main trimming was to throw out the alternative formalization as the criticism is quite adaptable to Dawkins's own formulation, and the alternatives leave out Dawkins's twist with natural selection, which therefore reduces this to Hume's argument. Below are some of the difficult parts where my summary might need some checking. (I have signed my comments there so people can comment after each bullet.) --Merzul 21:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alright, massive change, so what are the opinions? 

message: A difficult topic to retain neutrality. I saw red on the Orr article; no doubt I came in this one expecting the worst. I had prepared my epistle for this discussion page; which as it turns out will not be needed.   Personally, I have never seen such a good faith effort of maintaining neutrality than what has been demonstrated by Merzul. 
One observation. The article is written on a very high level. Sentence structure, vocabulary, etc... are considerably above the average reader. I level this criticism frequently, as it is an inevitable outcome of highly educated writers. Especially when they are walking a tightrope trying to please other editors, circling like wolves around a wounded buffalo. Granted the “average” reader is not likely to pursue this topic; however, if you see any opportunities to extend the range of your audience, you should consider doing so. The easiest is through word selection and reducing sentence length. I would offer some assistance … but even a minor word change might upset the very fine line Merzul is walking.  Snalwibma is a very skilled writer and does have a knack for shifting between technical and general writing. I hope he revisits this work, I would be very curious as to his overall perceptions of your efforts.  --Random Replicator 14:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, thank you very much for the compliments, I did indeed try very hard to keep neutrality, and yet there are always cases when one's POV slips through. I'm referring to what was fortunately fixed here. As this was a sensitive topic, I tried to stay as close to the originals as I possibly could. I'm also not entirely fluent in English, so please be extremely bold in changing what I have written. If there are any concerns that that the meaning might change, I and others can point it out here, and we can discuss it. The intention should be to make both sides of the argument as clear and lucid as possible, and then perhaps while doing this, we will learn more about the merits of the argument and the criticism. I will contribute a bit over the weekend, but I will be very busy in real life now. In any case, I am in full agreement with your criticism, especially the part about me being highly educated :D  --Merzul 15:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately, I have been quite engaged in useless meta-activities :), I will come back to earth and take a look at this again sometime soon. --Merzul 22:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Informative vs Opinionated  

message: This article is still too POV. It also seems to cover the same content as the page about the book and several hundred wiki pages with variations on the theme of religous philosophy. The article lacks references, structure and balanced POVs. To be honest, after reading the page on The God Delusion, this article was a real let down. I think things could be improved if this articles content is summarised, sorted into categories and merged with the relevant articles. I'd do it myself but I think I'd be a little over zealous with the editing. 90.152.12.130 14:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: I have no idea what the "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit" is, but only that some presumably really smart people think some other really smart people are whacked. And vice-versa.  There's a place for a play-by-play of the great god debate, but it's not here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.68.128.53 (talk) 21:32, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Leaving aside the NBeale-frustration, which thanks to my break from Wikipedia I no longer feel, I fully agree with what you say. Just like the reviews section of The God Delusion, it would be nice to have less names and fewer quotation! Instead one could focus on actually trying to explain the critique in human-readable form. By this time, yet another person finding the argument unconvincing isn't really that interesting... (Actually, one of the earliest attacks on this argument was in the review by Thomas Nagel, and in my opinion, very little new has been added in subsequent reviews). --Merzul 11:48, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Just plain silly

message: My previous attempt to harmonise the spelling/usage of "Dawkins's" or "Dawkins' " in this article was sharply reverted (see here and here). I reiterate: having two different spellings/usages in the same piece is sloppy and unencyclopaedic: Both usages seem acceptable, according to Apostrophe#Singular nouns ending in s, z, or x, but there is the strong proviso that "the best advice is to respect [...] consistency". I propose to correct this inconsistency once again, probably going with the majority—eight examples from nine—although in the real world the balance of usage is reversed.
--Old Moonraker 14:44, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Alternatively ... I have just changed Dawkins's to Dawkins' throughout the article, except for one occurrence in a quote, which clearly needs to be retained. OK? Snalwibma 15:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hadn't noticed the quotation: well spotted! --Old Moonraker 16:08, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

text: See WP:ENGVAR. In the context of an article about a British subject, this is not a "mis"spelling. The word is correctly spelt (yes, spelt) sceptical. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 11:20, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

text: Fowler holds that apostrophe-s is the regular formation, even when the name ends in an S. Thus we have Bridget Jones's Diary. At the same time forms such as Jesus' are time-honoured and Fowler sees no compelling reason to abandon forms that are traditional. The rationale is that if you write Jesus's, that will tend to take the reader's attention away from what you are trying to say. We can agree that Dawkins does not quite belong in that pantheon of apostrophe-only names, and accordingly his name should go as Bridget Jones's name does. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:881E:A6AF:CA0:836A (talk) 08:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consistent spelling 

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: I try to understand both parties points of view  (Dawkins atheism and religious theism)
Definition of God: God is generally defined as the creator and designer of Universe (incling but not limited to Earth, biosphere and our life)
Dawkins (probably most atheist) : The Universe has no creator.  The first cause of life and universe is just a simple element.  Because there are natural law exists before universe formed, and we need those physical law to let it evolve . In other words, Universe is generated by the Physical law.  Physical law is the first cause.
Religious and Theist:  God create the universe and physical law (including time).  Some theist believe that God directly create the universe, the earth, life and human.  Other may believe that God create the physical law only and let it evolve.  So that it is possible that one can believe the God, the Big Bang theory and Evolution theory simultaneously.  
But many religious scripture stated explicitly that God directly create human.  So the major argument between both parties today is that, whether or not God are directly create the Earth and Human.
However, because we are using the present science and technology to discover the past. No one can go to past directly, and most theory has developed only for few hundred years, it is always not able to convince other parties to "convert people's belief" by science theory.  Religious text is based on faith, so it is also challengable and difficult to use religious text to "convert people's belief".
203.186.23.196 (talk) 02:17, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it is not all that clear what physical law really means, and whether or not we may adopt a pan-theistic type stance vis a vis this law (whatever it is) itself, so that it becomes God. The conception of a personal God as conceived by many, maybe most, believers would appear to be untenable. The Abrahamic religions were assembled out of older materials that espoused concepts of gods somewhat different from our own (to put it very mildly), and I suspect this is one reason why bible scholarship and understanding of these texts in their original form and contexts remains something that is dimly viewed in fundamentalists circles (oh irony). 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:881E:A6AF:CA0:836A (talk) 08:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summarization 

message: It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 "Why there almost certainly is no God" of his 2006 book The God Delusion.
If I remember, Dawkins already wrote about this in The Blind Watchmaker. Maybe not as much than in The God Delusion (that I haven't read yet), but if we say “introduced”, that doesn't work. Nicosmos (talk) 16:39, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The previous books (Climbing Mount Improbable and Blind Watchmaker) address the misguided claim that because chance could not assemble a Boeing 747, so natural selection could not assemble a complex organism. The "ultimate" twist was first introduced in The God Delusion (i.e. that if the existence of a complex organism demands a designer God, so that complex designer demands an earlier designer. Johnuniq (talk) 01:19, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The God Delusion? 

message: This "Gambit" needs to add the much more powerful arguments against the "747 in a windstorm" that exist such as "no 747 was designed from scratch", "747 EVOLVED over 120 years and MILLIONS of design iterations", "nothing built for the first heavier than air craft was designed originally for heavier than air craft including fuel, motors, control surfaces, etc.", "when an airplane receives a wound, it cannot repair itself", "designed and built by committee/team", and DOZENS of other arguments. User talk:MISTERWHITE111 Moved from article by Editor2020, Talk 03:05, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no idea where the OP is heading with this jumble of quotations. For, against, does he believe they add up to a convincing argument, or does he want to overthrow them? 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:881E:A6AF:CA0:836A (talk) 08:35, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Powerful Arguments 

message: How can we deal with eternal matter, and the unknown, if not entities or gods? Thanks.--2001:569:7702:9E00:DC11:FF32:EF1D:95C5 (talk) 18:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: do we need to deal with eternal matter? do we even have a clear idea of what we are talking about? 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:881E:A6AF:CA0:836A (talk) 08:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  How do we deal with eternal matter? 

message: In the anti-evolution movie "The Atheist Delusion" an "atheist" uses the argument that "it is like an explosion creating a 747". It is odd that he used the 747 argument and the movie talks a lot about Richard Dawkins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChWiZ3iXWwM&feature=youtu.be&t=6m29s  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Legowolf3d (talk • contribs) 08:25, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: it is not that odd. The 747 argument goes back to creationists' arguments for as long as the 747 has been in production. I suspect Dawkins played on it for precisely the reason that it is a creationist evergreen. It is not surprising then that the creationists are piqued. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:881E:A6AF:CA0:836A (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Atheist Delusion 

message: This page was created by a Christian propagandist with an agenda of creating pages to promote his religious views (he brags about this on his user page) and it still shows, with a heavy emphasis on Christian apologists and their bogus attacks on Dawkins' argument. -- Jibal (talk) 09:42, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: This is true. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:881E:A6AF:CA0:836A (talk) 08:33, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christian propaganda 

message: Hi all,
I know WP pages about the God debate tend to get quite heated, so I apologize in advance if I'm rehashing anything or stepping on anyone's toes, but I have conerns about the reliability of the source given for the claim "Concepts such as Kolmogorov complexity have also been used to argue that God is or would need to be complex" under the section "Assessment and criticism." The source given is to a non-peer-reviewed blog post by an amateur whose main source on Kolmogorov complexity is the wikipedia article on the topic. Moreover, the author concedes in the comments that they misunderstood the implications of Kolmogorov complexity for the argument. I tried several searches such as "Kolmogorov complexity God" and "Kolmogorov complexity philosophy of religion" on Google Scholar and could not find a parallel argument being made in any peer-reviewed philosophy, theology, or philosophy of religion journal. It therefore seems like at best we are dealing with a mildly unreliable source and citation loop, and at worst we are reproducing an extreme fringe view in both complexity science and philosophy of religion.
Can anybody produce a more reliable source for the defense of the Boeing 747 gambit from Kolmogorov complexity? I really want to give the benefit of the doubt here, but I think the claim should be deleted if we cannot find a better source.
CasualUser10 (talk) 14:47, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kolmogorov Complexity Source