Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 118

L&FP, 48L: Can we restore confident knowledge of moral truth?

Yes.

But it will be contested.

As Dallas Willard highlighted:

Human life has an inescapable moral dimension. That is, it essentially involves choices with reference to what is good and evil, right and wrong, duty and failure to do what ought to be done . . . . What characterizes life in so-called Western societies today, however, is the absence, or presumed absence, of knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice: knowledge that might serve as a rational basis for moral decisions, for policy enactments, and for rational critique of established patterns of response to moral issues.

In short, we are up against a culture-dominating, institutionally entrenched narrative that even though lacking warrant, is backed by big power factions in key institutions. This is to the point, where R Scott Smith commented: “As Willard once remarked to me, if people on a major university campus were to claim to know objective truth, they very well could be branded fascists.”

Of course, the irony involved is lost on those who would so brand and marginalise.

This is an example of how inescapable the moral dimension of our thought, speech and action is, reflecting the branch on which we all sit, pervasive first principle nature of the Ciceronian first duties of reason:

1st – to truth,
2nd – to right reason,
3rd – to prudence [including warrant],
4th – to sound conscience,
5th – to neighbour; so also,
6th – to fairness and
7th – to justice
[ . . .]
xth – etc.

Where, inescapable first principles that govern our reasoning are inescapably true, on pain of absurdity. Even objectors (as we have seen many times here at UD) cannot but appeal to said duties in order to gain persuasive force for their arguments.

Likewise, we have already shown how yardstick cases such as a kidnapped, sexually tortured and murdered child (and the holocaust etc) highlight points of moral knowledge where those who deny or evade show themselves morally defective, not merely critically aware. Indeed, the likely labelling as “fascist” Smith pointed to is an appeal to the manifest evil of the holocaust. there is no more reason to doubt our conscience expressed moral sense across the board as though it were a grand delusion, than there is to doubt our sight, hearing etc even though they can and do err occasionally.

From such, as we also saw, we can build . . . and historically have built . . . frameworks of moral knowledge and linked frames for law and government, with room for reformation. A good first step is to revise our approach to the story of the blind men and the elephant, to see that we can learn from diverse sound insights — the elephant in part is indeed like a rope, a tree, a snake, a wall etc — and seek to bring them together in a coherent, valid, legitimate framework for moral knowledge.

So, why don’t we see that, just as in book keeping, if results do not agree, it is time to search out and correct errors to restore a sounder view of the books?

Because, there are entrenched interests that do not see moral knowledge as legitimate. Often they try to use diversity, disagreement and appeal to tolerance to in fact invert moral knowledge. What do you think, it means when representative voices of some of our highest educational institutions would stigmatise someone who points to the objectivity of key points of moral truth, that such is a fascist?

So, the answer is, a counter-culture strategy, an uprising of truth, sound moral thought and reformation. Hold the truth and stand up for it, peacefully calling for reformation.

As with other major reformations (think, slavery and its trade), this will take time, but in the end, it will prevail. Let us hope, things don’t have to crash horribly before there will be willingness to change. END

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Airplane wing design: Design in nature was there first with owl wings

They solve all kinds of problems we are still working on:

The shape of owl wings, which help the animals fly quietly, can inform airfoil designs. Credit: Wang and Liu

Trailing-edge noise is the dominant source of sound from aeronautical and turbine engines like those in airplanes, drones, and wind turbines. Suppressing this noise pollution is a major environmental goal for some urban areas.

In Physics of Fluids, researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong University used the characteristics of owl wings to inform airfoil design and significantly reduce the trailing-edge noise.

“Nocturnal owls produce about 18 decibels less noise than other birds at similar flight speeds due to their unique wing configuration,” said author Xiaomin Liu. “Moreover, when the owl catches prey, the shape of the wings is also constantly changing, so the study of the wing edge configuration during owl flight is of great significance.”

American Institute of Physics, “Owl wing design reduces aircraft, wind turbine noise pollution” at Phys.org (January 18, 2022)

Rodents everywhere regret this development.

The paper is open access.

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Why Roger Penrose’s cosmological theory doesn’t work

Here are some thoughts by Brian Miller on cosmologist Roger Penrose’s claim that there is no absolute beginning to the universe. (conformal cyclical cosmology):

Penrose’s model requires several highly questionable assumptions. First, it must overcome the implications of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem that proves that expanding universes must have an absolute beginning. To avoid this conclusion, Penrose must assume that the universe was infinitely large in the infinite past, which is philosophically problematic. Additional unproven assumptions include the following:

All particle masses dropping to zero.

Presence of a scalar field that becomes active at the right time to trigger crossover.

Mass of the scalar field rapidly increases after crossover.

Given the lack to supporting evidence and the ad hoc assumptions, CCC offers no serious challenge to the evidence that the universe had a beginning. Therefore, something, or more likely someone, outside of time and space must have created it.

Brian Miller, “Another Attempt by an Esteemed Cosmologist to Avoid a Cosmic Beginning Collapses on Inspection” at Evolution News (January 11, 2022)

You don’t have to believe in God but that’s less complex than the typical alternatives.

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People with too little to do worry about “privilege” in the animal world

Is it possible that a cavalcade of nonsense is now rounding on itself, increasing speed, and nearing collapse in a vortex?: From the New York Times “Researchers say the human concepts of intergenerational wealth and inequality are useful for studying some animals’ behavior.”

The Babylon Bee could go out of business if this continues.

From the Washington Free Beacon

Scientists, the experts we rely on to tell us how to live our lives, have been studying privilege and inequality among squirrels and other animals, according to the New York Times.

It all began as a conversation among behavioral ecologists at UCLA: “They saw how COVID-19 was highlighting health disparities and other inequalities around the world,” the Times reports. “The scientists began to wonder if they could learn more about inequality by studying it in animals.”

The experts began searching for examples in the animal kingdom of human concepts such as privilege, inequality, and intergenerational wealth. “When we started looking for it, we found lots and lots of examples,” Dr. Jennifer Smith told the Times. “To see this across so many different species was quite surprising. And we’re just touching the surface.”

Andrew Stiles, “NYT: Scientists Studying Privilege, Inequality in Animal Kingdom” at Washington Free Beacon (January 17, 2022)

The paper is open access.

Any idea where the crazy will end before it collapses? Has anyone looked into “privilege” among electrons?

PS: Anyone else ever tried breaking up a fight among tomcats? That individual would get a chance to see how much “privilege” amounts to in the animal world. (A bucket of warm water is, by the way, a great equalizer.)

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Claim: Protein structure may explain origin of life on Earth

Oh, not this sort of thing again: Well, yes:

The researchers explored how primitive life may have originated on our planet from simple, non-living materials. They asked what properties define life as we know it and concluded that anything alive would have needed to collect and use energy, from sources such as the Sun or hydrothermal vents.

In molecular terms, this would mean that the ability to shuffle electrons was paramount to life. Since the best elements for electron transfer are metals (think standard electrical wires) and most biological activities are carried out by proteins, the researchers decided to explore the combination of the two — that is, proteins that bind metals.

They compared all existing protein structures that bind metals to establish any common features, based on the premise that these shared features were present in ancestral proteins and were diversified and passed down to create the range of proteins we see today.

Evolution of protein structures entails understanding how new folds arose from previously existing ones, so the researchers designed a computational method that found the vast majority of currently existing metal-binding proteins are somewhat similar regardless of the type of metal they bind to, the organism they come from or the functionality assigned to the protein as a whole.

Rutgers University, “New study sheds light on origins of life on Earth” at ScienceDaily (January 14, 2022)

So, if that’s the story, why isn’t life coming into existence all the time? It should be happening in the dustpan. But it isn’t.

The paper is open access.

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L&FP, 48k: Dallas Willard on the key self-referentiality in the Relativist thesis that there are no generally knowable, objective moral truths

In the preface to his posthumous The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge (2018), Dallas Willard begins:

Human life has an inescapable moral dimension. That is, it essentially involves choices with reference to what is good and evil, right and wrong, duty and failure to do what ought to be done. Any human community, whatever its scope, will exhibit patterns of such choices, more or less recognized as such by its fully formed members. Those patterns usually guide first responses to any question concerning what is to be done, and they provide a framework for further reflection on the appropriateness of actions, character traits, and social arrangements.

He soon adds:

Throughout history it has been knowledge—real or presumed—that was invoked to provide a place to stand in opposing, correcting, and refining moral and immoral traditions and practices. That stands out in Plato and in later Greek thinkers, as well as in the biblical experience, life, and literature—Jewish, and then the Christian. Biblical teaching (contrary to much contemporary misunderstanding) places a relentless emphasis upon knowledge of God and of what is good, as the basis for criticism and correction of human practices. For Plato and Aristotle, as well as for the Stoics and Epicurean teachers, it was putative knowledge of “the good” and of the human soul that served as foundation for their understanding of good and evil in human life and institutions, and of what should and should not be done . . . .

What characterizes life in so-called Western societies today, however, is the absence, or presumed absence, of knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice: knowledge that might serve as a rational basis for moral decisions, for policy enactments, and for rational critique of established patterns of response to moral issues. This is what I term, in this book, “The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge.” That “disappearance” is not necessarily a matter of moral knowledge being impossible. Nor does it mean that no one actually has moral knowledge—though some have claimed that to be so. It is simply that knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, does not, for whatever reason, present itself as a [publicly] accessible resource for living and living together. Such knowledge is—again, for whatever reason—not made available as a body of knowledge by those institutions of Western societies which are regarded as responsible for the development and communication of knowledge crucial for human life and well-being.

He then acidly observes:

One way of thinking about the disappearance is, of course, to regard it as just the way things must be, or ought to be, and to hold that any enlightened person would accept that as the case. The moral life, from such a point of view, is simply the kind of thing of which there can be no shareable, [publicly] sponsored body of knowledge—if there can be any knowledge of it at all . . . . On the other hand, a sensitive observer well might recognize in such a position an essentially moral point, and one making no uncertain claim to knowledge of what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is how it usually comes over, at least, and there is a clear presumption, by the advocates of that position, that their view is based upon knowledge of what is the case—of how things stand in reality. After all, why should people not impose their “knowledge” upon others if that seems right or it suits them to do so? Why should such imposition be treated as morally repulsive, or as something only reprehensible or evil people would do, unless one had knowledge that it was so?

Thus, he gently alludes to the point of key incoherence in the relativist position discussed in 48a and again in 48d using the story of the Blind men and the elephant. He concludes:

Here is, I think, only one manifestation of the fact that morality in life—moral discrimination, moral judgment, moral emotions, moral evaluation of people, practices, or institutions—is simply unavoidable, and of the fact that morality requires and admits of some significant justification in knowledge.

However, such a self referentiality clearly leads to a reductio, as one cannot have a claimed objective truth regarding right conduct and duty etc, that denies that there are such truths.

Nor, is it a reasonable answer to say that this is a simple observation as to what is the case about moral truth or knowledge claims, without imposing prescriptions etc. Though such a retort may attract some, it fails to reckon that necessarily, anything that denies objectivity to any and all claims regarding our being duty bound to right conduct etc, is by direct implication a denial of such claims. That is, it claims to be the known, objective truth regarding morality and may properly be regarded as such a truth claim itself. That is, it is a meta- claim, a general moral claim of great scope.

And no, we cannot tell morality by whether a sentence issues a command or prohibition etc. To say, rape is a crime against the person and an evil, implies commands, though it is not itself a command.

Nor is it the case, that this misrepresents the position of key relativists. As was noted in 48a:

Relativists typically emphasise diversity of opinions among individuals and cultures etc, but that has never been a matter of controversy. Nor, do presumably well informed relativists merely intend [to confess their inexplicable] ignorance of such accurately described states of affairs regarding duty, right conduct etc, they imply longstanding want of warrant and no reasonable prospect or even possibility of such warrant. That is, my summary statement accurately reflects the bottomline stance of relativists.

Instead,

manifestly, we are an error-prone race, and across time, space etc have many, many areas of profound disagreement. The normal procedure in such areas, is to identify sound first principles for the area, starting with first principles of right reason, logic. Then, if self evident first truths can be listed, a framework for the field can be identified and developed into a body of well warranted so reliable and objective knowable truth independent of the error proneness of our individual or collective opinion-forming. From which, we then have a body of knowledge and best practice to work with.

This, of course, was explored in 48g. Taking yardstick cases where conscience, shocked, cries out, such as a child kidnapped, sexually tortured and murdered for fun, we recognise that those who deny or evade such cases do not simply exhibit due skepticism — and that is already a demand for warrant, right reason and establishment of truth — but instead reflect moral defects. think here, of the holocaust etc. Such yardsticks then allow us to speak to the civil peace of justice which duly balances rights, freedoms and duties. From such a framework of reasonable moral knowledge can be developed.

However, a point Swinburne noted on inductive arguments to best explanation across competing hypotheses is relevant in response to hyperskeptical dismissiveness:

Note that it is no objection to a P-inductive or C-inductive
argument from e to h that some contrary hypothesis h*
is also compatible with e, as some writers on the philosophy of religion seem to think. They seem to think that if, for example, the order in the universe is compatible with ‘God does not exist’, then there is no good argument from it to ‘God exists’. But one has only to think about the matter to realize that this is not so. In any non-deductive argument from e to h, not-h will be compatible with e; and yet some non-deductive arguments are good arguments.

That is, the issue is a matter of balance on the merits, involving comparative difficulties across factual adequacy, coherence and balanced explanatory power. Where, no, an argument that misses facts or is incoherent — as is relativism — is not a good candidate to be deemed best explanation.

Even, if it is institutionally entrenched. END

–> discussion remains open at 48a

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At Evolution News: Abstract: Lönnig on Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery” (of flowers)

Darwin had a hard time explaining flowers but we will let Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig tell it:

Editor’s note: Geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig brings to our attention a new publication of his that we highly recommend: “On the Inordinate Amount of ‘Living Fossils’ in the Flowering Plants (Angiospermae).” What follows is the Abstract, in which all emphases have been added by Dr. Lönnig, a distinguished retired scientist from at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany. For background, see mathematician Granville Sewell’s recent post, “Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig: An Intelligent Design Pioneer.”

As illustrated for the monocots (virtually the same situation in the dicots1), the figure below shows that Darwin’s “abominable mystery” has become even more “abominable” and “mysterious” during the last 50 (not to speak of the last 150) years. 

Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Abstract: Lönnig on Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery”” at Evolution News and Science Today (January 10, 2022)

You may also wish to read: Lönnig on carnivorous plants, including the one that tried to eat Nick Matzke: Geneticist W.-E. Loennig Replies To Darwinist Nick Matzke: Which Is More Important: Darwin Or Facts?

Note: Loennig fetched a pole and fished Matzke out of the tank, forcing the carnivorous plant to return to eating… bugs until it managed to acquire an account with DoorDash, after which it ate junk food exclusively. (This part of the story, following “Note,” is exclusive to Uncommon Descent Late Nite Entertainment News and is not represented to be true in any way.)

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At Mind Matters News: Did the octopus really know she was dying? Was she trying to say goodbye?

Well, not exactly. But we are learning that invertebrates can have feelings in the same way vertebrates do. An octopus might be somewhat like a cat:

It’s impossible to know if the octopus was waving goodbye. A cat who is about to be put to sleep by the vet (due to, say, no-longer-treatable kidney failure) can easily be interpreted as acting like he knows he is about to die. But we humans are probably over interpreting his behavior. He knows he feels rotten but understands nothing of the conversations between humans as to the cause or the outcome of his problems.

Death is a reality for all life forms, as experienced — but it is an abstraction, as contemplated. Knowledge of death is a sort of gulf between us and the animals whom we can befriend.

Perhaps it’s better that way. News, “Did the octopus really know she was dying? Was she trying to say goodbye?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: It’s an interesting fact that intelligence in animals is not nearly as firmly fixed in a hierarchy of evolution as we used to believe. Octopuses are extreme outliers and we are only just beginning to get to know them.

You may also wish to read: Is the octopus a “second genesis” of intelligence?

and

Octopuses get emotional about pain, research suggests. The smartest of invertebrates, the octopus, once again prompts us to rethink what we believe to be the origin of intelligence. The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues.

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Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is getting mugged by reality

Again, it would seem. Yes, the author of Why Evolution Is True has enemies. No, they are not us:

In this case it’s the hostage situation in Texas, where a devout Pakistani/British Muslim named Malik Faisal Akdram took four worshipers (including a rabbi) hostage in a synagogue. …

And, like Weiss (click to read below; I think it’s free [as of 5:00 pm PST yes]), I’m angrier than I am about previous attacks on Jews, though less sorrowful since nobody was murdered. Why? Because I watched the media in real time (except for the right-wing media) do its best to whitewash the story, arguing that it was not an attack targeting Jews (sure—the guy was walking down the street in a small Texas town with guns and saw a synagogue and thought, “Hey, that’s a good place to take hostages!”), and it was not motivated by anti-Semitism. Even some on this site have tried to exculpate the left-wing media for its timorous coverage of the situation, even though papers like the New York Times have a long history of distorting the news to favor Palestinians and to demonize Jews.

And even Joe Biden, at the time when his own National Security advisor said that the attack was one of terrorism and anti-Semitism, was arguing, despite all the known facts, that there was no evidence for anti-Semitism

Jerry Coyne, “Bari is back: Weiss on the Texas hostage situation and what the reaction means” at Why Evolution Is True (January 17, 2022)

But Jerry, you helped build this world. You could also help take it down and build a better one.

All: Unplug the TV. Those people can no longer afford to be friends of truth in any meaningful sense. That includes anything to do with evolution controversies.

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L&FP, 48j: Dallas Willard’s (partial) list of reasons for the unwarranted disappearance of moral knowledge

As we continue to explore the issue of the marginalisation of moral knowledge, let us highlight from 48b, Willard’s (incomplete) list of key causes:

(2). How did this disappearance [of moral knowledge] come to be the case?

Not through a discovery of some kind: e.g. that there was no such knowledge.

But through a lengthy historical process of idea change. Some components:

(A). The dismissal of theology from the domain of knowledge [i.e. the study and systematic knowledge of God, cf Rom 1:28 – 32], and the failure to find a secular basis for ethics [–> how can evolutionary materialism found ethics?].
(B). Disappearance of the human self and knowledge of the self from “respectable” knowledge. (The “soul” from Plato on.) [–> the self-moved, rational, responsible, conscience guided significantly free agent]

(C). All cultures come to be regarded as “equal.” None are morally inferior [–> diversity and radical tolerance]. Just “different.” Then there is no moral truth of the matter across cultures. [–> the denial of warranted, generally knowable objective truth on duty to right conduct, virtue etc; which is itself a claimed objective truth regarding duty to right conduct etc; it is thus a claimed objective moral truth that denies the possibility of such. It is self referentially incoherent, so false. (This will of course be hotly denied, but the logic is clear.)]
(D). Moral distinctions and standards viewed as power plays. (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud) [–> might makes right]
(E). Fear or resentment of knowledge itself as oppressive. Colonialism. [–> linked disappearing of logic and truth backed by warrant so of knowledge]
(F). Growth of the idea that it is always wrong to make moral judgments: that only bad or disgusting people do that. [–> the test case of a kidnapped, sexually tortured, murdered child] Pushes moral judgments out of the public domain. [–> marginalisation]
(G). The failure in Philosophy to recover moral knowledge. [–> institutional failure, the mutiny on the good ship civilisation issue]

Let us highlight A, by noting from the Author’s preface to Richard Swinburne’s influential The Existence of God, 2nd edn, Oxford 2004 (revised from 1979 and 1991):

By the nineteenth century . . . philosophical theology began to
feel the powerful sceptical influence of Hume and Kant. These
philosophers produced principles designed to show that reason
could never reach justified conclusions about matters much beyond the range of immediate experience, and above all that reason could never reach a justified conclusion about the existence of God. In recent years many others have argued in the same spirit, so that, both among professional philosophers and outside their narrow circle, there is today deep scepticism about the power of reason to reach a justified conclusion about the existence of God.

As I construct my positive arguments, I shall briefly give my
grounds for thinking that the principles of Hume and Kant are mistaken and that reason can reach justified conclusions outside the narrow boundaries drawn by those philosophers. Those who believe in the ability of modern science to reach justified (and exciting) conclusions about things far beyond immediate experience, such as subatomic particles and nuclear forces, the ‘Big Bang’ and cosmic evolution, ought to be highly sympathetic to my enterprise; Hume and Kant would not, on their own principles, have had a very sympathetic attitude to the claims of modern physical science.

Swinburne continues:

I shall, however, argue that, although reason can reach a fairly well-justified conclusion about the existence of God, it can reach only a probable conclusion, not an indubitable one.

I would of course adjust to “warranted” (post-Gettier) and would prefer plausibility rather than probability, as scaling becomes an issue. What is being put forth is that this major issue is being addressed in effect on inference to the best explanation, which — as does much of modern physical science — involves entities and states of affairs that are not directly observable by us.

He develops a summary on Confirmation Theory:

It will be useful to introduce at this stage the symbols of confirm-
ation theory that I shall use from time to time in subsequent chap-
ters. I represent by lower-case letters such as e, h, p, and q
propositions. P(p | q) represents the probability of p given q. [–> technically, a conditional probability] Thus p might represent the proposition: ‘The next toss of this coin will land heads’, and q might represent the proposition: ‘505 of the last 1,000 tosses of this coin have landed heads’. Then P(p | q) represents the probability that the next toss of the coin will land heads, given that 505 of the last 1,000 tosses have landed heads. (The value of P(p| q) would then generally be supposed to be 0.505.) However, the relation between p and q may be of a much more complex kind; and clearly we normally assess the probability of claims on evidence other than or additional to that of relative frequencies. p may be some scientific hypothesis—say, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity—and q may be the conjunction of all the reports of the evidence of observation and experiment that scientists have collected relevant to the theory. Then P(p | q) represents the inductive probability of Einstein’s General Theory given all the reports of relevant observations and experiments. Inductive probability is thus to be distinguished from statistical probability, which is a property of classes of things (for example, inhabitants of a certain town, say Tunbridge Wells) and is a measure of the proportion of things in the class that have some other property . . . .

A hypothesis up for investigation is often represented by h. Then
P(h | e & k) represents the probability of a hypothesis h given evidence (e & k). It is often useful to divide the evidence available to an observer into two parts—new evidence and background evidence; if this is done, the former is often represented by e and the latter by k. Background evidence (or background knowledge, as it is sometimes called) is the knowledge that we take for granted before new evidence turns up.

Thus, suppose that detectives are investigating a murder. h could represent the hypothesis that Jones did the murder; e could represent the proposition that reports all the new evidence that detectives discover—for example, that Jones’s fingerprints were found on the weapon, that he was near the scene of the murder at the time it was committed, etc., etc. k could represent the proposition reporting the detectives’ general knowledge about how the world works—for example, that each person has a unique set of finger-prints, that people who touch metal and wood with bare hands usually leave their fingerprints on them, etc., etc. Then P(h | e & k) represents the probability that Jones did the murder, given detectives’ total evidence.

For all propositions p and q P(p | q) = 1 if (and only if) q makes p certain—for example, if q entails p (that is, there is a deductively valid argument from q to p); and P(p | q) = 0 if (and only if) q makes ~ p certain—for example, if q entails ~ p. P(p | q) + P( ~ p | q) = 1. So if P(p | q) > 1/2, then P(p | q) > P(~ p | q) and it is on q more probable that p than that ~p. So (for background knowledge k) an argument from e to h will be a correct C-inductive argument if (and only if) P(h | e & k) > P(h j k), and a correct P-inductive argument if (and only if) P(h | e & k) > 1/2. [See here for my discussion of likelihoods in my always linked.]

The division between new evidence and background evidence can be made where you like—often it is convenient to include all evidence derived from experience in e and to regard k as being what is called in confirmation theory mere ‘tautological evidence’, that is, in effect all our other irrelevant knowledge.

He points to the issue of cumulative evidence:

A similar situation normally arises with any far-reaching scientific
or historical theory. Each separate piece of evidence does not make the theory very probable, and indeed taken on its own makes some narrower theory much more probable. But the cumulative force of the evidence taken together gives great probability to the wide theory. Thus each of the various pieces of evidence that are cited as evidence in favour of the General Theory of Relativity do not by themselves make it very probable, but together they do give it quite a degree of probability.

He further notes, on a fallacious objection:

Note that it is no objection to a P-inductive or C-inductive argument from e to h that some contrary hypothesis h*
is also compatible with e, as some writers on the philosophy of religion seem to think. They seem to think that if, for example, the order in the universe is compatible with ‘God does not exist’, then there is no good argument from it to ‘God exists’. But one has only to think about the matter to realize that this is not so. In any non-deductive argument from e to h, not-h will be compatible with e; and yet some non-deductive arguments are good arguments.

These observations allow us to evaluate relative degree of support for hypotheses and competing hypotheses. The upshot is, it is quite reasonable, on evidence and reasoning similar to that used to compare scientific or forensic or historical alternatives etc, to conclude that there is good warrant for concluding that God exists. But in the nature of such a case, it cannot deliver utter certainty. Which, is common for many cases we hold such results to be reliable knowledge. Thus, there was no good reason to institutionally and culturally marginalise the study of God and knowledge about him.

Applying this framework to evaluation of duty to right conduct etc, if we are willing we can readily see that, first (cf. 48a), the reductio that establishes that there undeniably are knowable, warranted, objective moral truths is certain.

Going beyond, on cases such as the gruesome kidnapping, sexual torture and murder of a child for fun, we find that those who would object or deflect or evade simply show themselves defective in moral thinking. Such extends to notorious cases such as the Nazi holocaust and similar mass murders such as those by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. From which yardstick cases of moral knowledge, we may readily draw out responsible frameworks of moral knowledge regarding justice, rights, duty to neighbour, prudence, warrant, duty to right reason and duty to truth. (Yes, those are the Ciceronian first duties and first law.)

That is, as was drawn out in 48g we have a viable framework for objective moral knowledge, which can be extended to the framing of responsible political and social order (cf 48h). In turn, such is plausibly a framework of valid knowledge, conferring “the right and perhaps the responsibility to act, direct action, formulate policy and supervise its implementation, and teach.” (Cf 48i.)

There is no good reason to resort to relativistic despair of objective moral knowledge, the blind men and the elephant notwithstanding (cf 48d). Plato, 2360 years ago, was right (48e). So was Orwell, when he warned on the corruption of language in support of corrupt state order (48f).

Of Lemmings, marches of folly and cliffs of self-falsifying absurdity . . .

Let us now return to moral sanity as a civilisation, before it is fatally too late. END

PS, as a reminder, here is Orwell speaking in the voice of Winston Smith:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.

–> discussion remains open at 48a

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