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Why Neil DeGrasse Tyson Should Stick To Science

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  • Cornell
    replied
    1.
    Not so; Quantum mechanics is well understood.
    Which interpretation?

    Classification adopted by Einstein
    The Copenhagen interpretation
    Many worlds
    Consistent histories
    Ensemble interpretation, or statistical interpretation
    de Broglie–Bohm theory
    Relational quantum mechanics
    Transactional interpretation
    Stochastic mechanics
    von Neumann/Wigner interpretation: consciousness causes the collapse
    Modal interpretations of quantum theory
    Time-symmetric theories
    Branching space–time theories

    If it’s so well understood, which interpretation should I follow?

    And why did Richard Feyman say this?

    “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”

    It explains the behaviour of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. This as opposed to Classical physics, as was understood by Aristotle et al, which explains matter and energy on a scale familiar to human experience and upon which they incorrectly based their metaphysical premises.
    Metaphysical premise? Don’t you mean logic? Now with that being said as Keith Ward points out the Hypothesis of God is especially attractive, because it does not really look as though the fundamental laws and states of the universe are very simple at all. There is a whole 'particle zoo' at the subatomic level. There is dark energy and dark matter. There are many complex equations in quantum theory. The scientific search for one neat "Theory of Everything", which would somehow embrace all lower-level physical laws, is looking very unlikely to succeed. The hypothesis that such a search will succeed is an article of faith in the power of science. It is not an unreasonable faith; there are good reasons, in the past success of science and the elegance of the laws so far discovered, to hold it. But to do so is as much a step of faith as is a commitment to the God hypothesis , which also has good reasons to support it, but cannot at present be conclusively established.

    Other than the fact that Aristotle was wrong in almost every argument and conclusion he made about physical science - as science has since shown! He had a great mind but could only work with the available information about the universe which, in his era, was extremely limited.
    So in other words you have no objection to what I just said, except the fact that Aristotle was old, and therefore he must have been wrong. Once you again you make another careless appeal to time.

    Without the 'View Post' facility I’m certainly not going back to search for the context of this remark.
    I don’t care anymore, as you’re not the type who ever admits that he’s wrong, so it doesn’t matter anyways.

    Again: One cannot define what does not exist. I’m saying there is insufficient evidence for God’s existence to warrant such a belief in the first place.
    If one couldn’t define what does not exist then we’d have no comic books, so this is wrong. I can make up a character, give it qualities and the definition alone gives you and idea of what it ‘ought’ to be like. This is why Wolverine has a tough time with Magneto, it’s because we work with what do know about reality, so IF these two mutants existed, Wolverine would always be at a disadvantage to Magneto.

    Now if you told me that Magneto actually existed, then I can know what to look for based on the properties that you’ve given me. First thing I’d ask is where was he last seen.

    The bolded is an unjustified bald assertion. It doesn't need a redundant deity to arrive at a "natural explanation".
    It’s a hypothesis, the God hypothesis (Philosophical) agrees completely with the argument that, if there is going to be a final explanation of the universe, it has to be in terms of an eternal and necessary being. But instead of having a huge set of complicated quantum laws and a very finely balanced set of fundamental physical forces, all of which are realized sooner or later by some unknown principle, it postulates just one being, a cosmic mind or consciousness.

    Whatever it’s provenance, analogy is NOT evidence.
    So what was wrong with it exactly? Is it wrong because you say so? Because you don’t like it?

    No, but as I said you have the satisfaction of acting according to your natural instincts – just as the instinctive nurturing of your infant daughter gives enormous satisfaction; it's the way we've evolved.

    And, while the universe is ultimately purposeless, it is perfectly meaningful in the course of our day-to-day lives. But, that said, the universe per se “doesn’t care” about whether or not humans are in existence just as it didn't care about the 99% of species that are now extinct.
    It’s still not genuine though, because we’re all living a ‘noble lie’. The purposeless godless evolution implants in our mind the fact that we are somewhat ‘meaningful’ only because it gives us a psychological advantage, so this ultimately means that this ‘satisfaction’ that we feel isn’t genuine, it’s BS just to aid in passing on our genes to more purposeless conglomerations of matter.

    And why do you speak of 99% of species? Why use species as a sample? Life has been around for billions of years, and this life makes a better measurement, because we’ve evolved from it, and therefore without ‘it’ we wouldn’t be here.

    There is no Libertarian Free-Will in a ‘Determined’ universe, only the illusion of it.
    Well there has to be a determined universe in order for that to be true, I know you’re big on illusions with this godless universe that supposedly makes all of these illusions the simpler explanation, but if free will doesn’t exist then we aren’t morally responsible for anything we do, but we why do feel sense’s of ‘justice’ when it comes to putting rapists in jail, when ultimately they weren’t morally in control of their decisions, because of determinism? I guess this is another illusion, right?

    Theism has nothing to do with it. Codes of behavior have existed far longer than the religions and its precursors are found among the other primates as well.

    Morals are derivatives of self-preservation and procreation consequent upon natural selection. They are naturally built into us, because those morals are beneficial to the breeding and survival of our species as social animals. That’s it; there isn’t any more.
    Codes of behavior have nothing to do with moral facts, unless you can point out to me a code of behavir that ends up being objectively true.

    As far as morals being derivatives of self-preservation and procreation consequent upon natural selection this doesn’t get us to moral obligations, all it does is tell us what is, not how things ‘ought’ to be, so all you’re saying is that humans are pointless conglomerations of matter living with yet another delusion that is morality, and I guess moral nihilism would be true if Theism was false.

    This is no more than an Argument from Incredulity Fallacy! There is no reason to think that rationality didn't develop incrementally via natural selection as did the rest of our component qualities.
    Give me a reasonable argument on how it happened and I’ll agree with you, so far you’ve failed at doing this.

    And why is your explanation simpler than ‘Rationality was inherited from a rational being’? Or do you deny simplicity as an important component with respect to gaining knowledge?
    Not “obligation”, instinct – do you get the difference?
    So my instinct makes me think that giving money to the poor is ‘good’…..I don’t really see a difference, so this sounds like an obligation to me. It looks like you’re just calling moral intuitions ‘instincts’. If you’re not then how do we distinguish moral intuitions from instincts?

    It is our evolved instinct as social animals to maintain social cohesion; it is not an externally imposed obligation. Evolutionary biologists and Socio-biologists have established that though human social behaviors are complex, the precursors of human morality can be traced to the behaviors of many other social animals. We are not unique, just the most intelligent.
    That’s not saying anything about morality with respect to genuine obligation and brings us right back to moral nihilism, so if you’re a moral nihilist then that’s fine, because I’ll concede the point in which if God doesn’t exist then moral nihilism is true, so humans are not objectively valuable and we don’t have any objective obligations to fulfill.

    God’s existence hasn’t been established in the first place due to insufficient evidence.
    God’s existence has been shown repeatedly to be better than the alternatives….whatever nonsense you guys believe in.

    Maybe! Except that there’s no evidence of a “necessary being”; it’s merely an assumed concept.

    Conversely, there is considerable evidence of the natural universe. And there IS evidence of consciousness. Thus the obvious conclusion is that it evolved via Natural Selection as have ALL of our other qualities. Introducing the unsupported notion of a Necessary Being to explain it is merely a god-of-the-gaps augment. And they have never fared well in history.
    You’re just calling ‘God’ the natural universe, because if ‘nothing is impossible’ then something has always existed, so there is your first piece of evidence for a necessary being. Let’s see if you can accept it.

    Come now! What is your view of how they will be answered?
    Do you even know what they entail or do I have to write up a thesis for you and waste more of my time than I already have?

    The “alternative” (i.e. the natural world), maybe a “joke” in your mind but it’s all we have substantive evidence for regardless of what you think.
    That’s not the alternative, ‘natural’ is not mutually exclusive with ‘God’

    The alternative I’m speaking of is this necessary nonrational, purposeless substance that is responsible for existence, and is the sustainer of everything that exists.

    Maybe you’re quasi-God that you make so easy to debunk isn’t natural, but I’m arguing for your quasi-God.

    You cannot give equal weight to two postulates when they are not equally supported by evidence. Thus for you to give equal value to the natural universe vis-à-vis the non-material universe is intellectual dishonesty. There is no substantive evidence for the latter but a great deal of substantiated evidence for the former, i.e. the natural universe. Thus, your alleged “neutral stance” is not “neutral” at all; it is heavily biased in favour of Theism.
    You don’t even know what Theism entails, as you try and dictate my position with silliness only because it makes it easier to knock down, however in the long run all you’re doing is attacking a strawman, so why should I even bother with you anymore? One thing I got out of you is that you look at God as some sort of supernatural being, well what the heck is ‘supernatural’ ??? in fact what does ‘natural’ mean?

    What do you mean when you say these words? If you mean ‘natural’ in the sense of ‘material’ then I can understand you, because then we can call ‘God’ a disembodied mind, and I’ll accept that as ‘non-natural’

    Otherwise I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about when you say ‘supernatural’

    You miss the point. In a pre-scientific era the only means to explain otherwise inexplicable events – lightening strikes, earthquakes, eclipses floods etc – was attribution to invisible spirits or gods. And then, as now, these gods had to be placated with offerings and/or sacrifices. This applied to the alleged "God of everything" just as much the the earlier nature gods like Thor.
    No, Thor came from Odin, so obviously Thor isn’t the God of everything as Thor is CONTINGENT upon Odin for his existence.

    I hope you’re getting it now.

    Science does not claim that is can “lead to all knowledge”. Science is not about objective metaphysical truth; it is a collection of methods for making abstract models of nature and then testing those models against reality. In principle even the most established scientific facts (e.g. gravity) are potentially falsifiable. Conversely metaphysics claims absolute truths when in actuality the best it can hope for are logically consistent arguments based upon an axiomatic premise.
    I agree!!!!

    The claim and context refer to new facts about nature, not trivial day-to-day learning experiences.
    This is too vague, how do we distinguish between ‘new facts about nature’ and ‘trivial day-to-day learning experiences’ do we do this through your bias?

    All correct. The “vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules” has resulted in many social animals such as us evolving instinctive behaviours geared towards maintaining social cohesion.
    And this social cohesion is a genuine lie, right? Because nothing really matters and we have obligation to maintain social cohesion, so I guess this is another illusion put forth by the godless evolution.

    Really! Well you’ll have to make do because that’s all there is as far as we can tell. You can delude yourself with escapist fantasies if you wish.
    Wow so that’s it?

    You live with the fantasy of
    “I say I’m special, therefore I’m special’ and that’’s the best you got?

    Hmmm well now I must ask one question regarding those philosophical facts and trivial day to day learning experiences.

    If a person named chuck reaches the age of 18 and then says ‘I say I’m special, therefore I’m special’ is this a philosophical truth about the world or is it a trivial day-to-day experience?

    This is demonstrably untrue. Most of us lead lives of purpose and meaning. It’s rather sad that some can only find meaning via the forlorn, unevidenced hope of post mortem rewards. Life is not a dress rehearsal, its the actual show.
    More emotional wishful thinking,

    We find meaning through the lie of a purposeless evolution that gives us a psychological advantage just so we can propagate our pointless dna.

    By the way was your life special when you weren’t old enough to realize it, or does it become special when you’re aware that it’s supposedly special?

    There is no reason to think that abiogenesis didn’t occur via natural processes. Science is a work in progress and how abiogenesis initially occurred is not yet known – although there are several promising hypotheses currently being tested. But to argue that we don’t know “therefore god”, is merely another of your god-of-the-gaps arguments, which seems to be ALL that the so-called Arguments from Reason are.
    I know the godless love believing that purpose came from purposeless matter and that life came from non-life and all this magic , but you didn’t answer the question.

    Did the first organism have the potential to mutate, yes or no? Give me something to work with, because these god of the gap objections are getting old.

    Do you ever think that one day you’ll use this logic?

    “We don’t know, because the view doesn’t make sense, so let’s change our view”

    Or is it hopeless?

    Rhetorical trick which answers nothing. The fact remains that there are no proven absolutely true premises, except ones we have defined to be true (such as 2+2=4).
    Same jam, you're still absolutely certain of the fact that you are uncertain (as you KNOW this to be true with absolute certainty), however I'm more interested in whether or not you are absolutely certain that there are no proven absolute premises, except ones we have defined to be true?


    If you think my opinion is incorrect you need to supply evidence of proven absolute truths, rather than play recursive word-games.
    Sez who? Are you absolute sure about this?

    The above demonstrates just how useless in practical terms metaphysical word-games are. This is a metaphysical problem, NOT a scientific problem. Scientific knowledge is not about objective metaphysical truth. It is a methodology for testing hypothetical models of nature against reality. And it has shown itself to be enormously successful in discovering new factual truths about the universe; metaphysics hasn't!
    So in other words it’s useless because you say so, it’s a word-game because you say, and you don’t need to worry about this because, regarding your philosophy this isn’t a scientific problem, and scientific knowledge isn’t about objective metaphysical truth, so therefore it is absolutely true that scientific knowledge isn’t about objective metaphysical truth.

    Gotcha

    “Godless Universe”!? You don’t need an argument for it; you’re living in it.
    Bare assertion with no support other than your emotions and dire need to live in a godless universe, because it brings you such great comfort…how do you KNOW it’s a godless universe, what should I be looking for (this should be interesting)

    No! Science is NOT individual interpretation, it is collaborative. It is the acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence using observations, hypotheses and deductions to develop testable, falsifiable theories, which can also make predictions. These theories are reinforced by continuing experiments from which further technologies and theories can develop.
    I think what you’re saying is incomplete, science a collaborative that works off of individual interpretations, and the best interpretation that becomes a part of the collaborative. I agree that it would be hard for one person to be in charge of biology, physics, geology etc, but that’s not what I was saying.

    As for your “godless conclusions” why would “godly conclusions” even be considered when there is no substantive evidence for gods?
    Your God perhaps, but I don’t buy into your concept of God. When you argue with me and the God that I’m presenting, then we’ll see whether or not you can accept the obvious substantive evidence.

    ALL gods supposedly account for existence, just not very well. They were primitive attempts to understand a frightening, seemingly inexplicable universe. But the gods have been superseded. Science is demonstrably much better equipped to do this.
    Once again you’re totally lost clinging to your ignorance and you have no clue on what you’re talking about

    Dionysus was the god of wine, how in the world does that make him the God of existence…..If you can’t answer then by all means, concede a point, admit that you were wrong. I promise I won’t make a big deal about it.
    Last edited by Cornell; 08-03-2014, 03:49 AM.

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  • Cornell
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post


    it really must be embarrassing to be you Jim.
    Sparko if that's a philosophical statement then it's automatically wrong, as I'm told that philosophy can't produce new facts about the universe :)

    Leave a comment:


  • Cornell
    replied
    Tassman

    You are. You offered magic as a possible solution.
    A necessary rational being is not magic, it’s just the necessary material substance that you follow + rationality, so to say that rationality is magic absolutely makes your necessary material substance that supposedly is the reason for why existence exists an implausible explanation, because if your explanation is necessary why didn’t it have a component of reality back then, like we see now? With this being said how exactly does a necessary substance create new components that it doesn’t already have the potential to make? Your view on reality makes absolutely no sense.

    Complexity has demonstrably evolved from simplicity via Natural Selection.
    Yes and this simplicity came about from a necessary rational being that entails no parts, so I agree with you. God is definitely simpler than whatever in the world you pose as an explanation.
    You should understand how Natural Selection works. Educate yourself:

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-...o-biology.html

    “The most common action of natural selection is to remove unfit variants as they arise via mutation. [Natural Selection: differential reproductive success of genotypes] In other words, natural selection usually prevents new alleles from increasing in frequency”. There is no reason to suppose that “rationality” did not arise in this way. To say we don’t know “therefore God”, is an Argument from Ignorance, i.e. a god-of –the-gaps argument.
    In other words you don’t know, because your explanation fails in explanatory scope and power. I mean is this the best you got?

    With respect to the very first increment, how did it prevent an increase in frequency, and what happened? All your saying is godlessevolutiondidit, so I don’ t need to educate myself, because your buddies don’t have any clue what happened. I don’t know isn’t an education it’s a cop-out, well I have simple explanation, there is a necessary rational being, this rational being made us inherit rationality from it. We been told about this hundreds of years ago, but people just don’t want to listen because their emotions get involved. Imago dei, it’s so simple that I see no reason why people can deny it and tell me with a straight face how this nonrational substance created rationality by a natural selection wasn’t rational.

    I’m not saying ‘I don’t know, therefore God’ what I am saying is that “God provides the best explanation because the alternatives are garbage and can’t do the job.” If you knew you’d have something that can do the job, or at least give me something to work with so I can have some metaphysical optimism, but you can’t, because what you believe is FALSE. There is natural selection that pulls rationality from nonrationality, and this is clearly shown. There is no such thing as ‘god of the gaps’ it doesn’t exist, and all your doing is presupposing atheism and then trying to dictate how no one can ever use God as an explanation, because if they do it’s always God of the gaps. How about trying to find what actually happened and then I’ll stop saying “God did it” though I highly doubt you’ll find anything, because the alternative just makes no sense.

    Reductio ad Absurdum; how you love your Logical Fallacies.
    In other words you don’t know, and all you have to work with is, ‘god of the gaps’ as that’s your saving grace for everything you don’t know, because that ultimately makes atheism look like the correct view on the nature of reality.
    Argument by Prestigious Jargon Fallacy. And so much of it.....

    And again: “How does God help your case?”
    I can’t help the fact that you’re too lazy to look at the jargon, I can’t help the fact that you’re so hellbent on doing everything possible to deny the obvious fact that Theism is true.

    Why don’t you just cut the chase and just say ‘ I don’t want a God to exist, this is why I’m happy with saying “ I don’t know, but I’m sure my silly atheist friends will find out one day’
    This is getting ridiculous, you have absolutely nothing to work with. I’ve asked you dozens of times for an explanation of how evolutiondidit and all you do is give me the definition of evolution as if that’s going to explain it away.

    God helps my case, because God is a necessary being, what exactly is your alternative. Like what am I looking for in an atheistic universe, everything you guys come up with is so ad-hoc to the evidence.

    Is a godless universe supposed to necessary? Is it supposed to be contingent? Is it supposed to magically create rationality ex nihilo from nonrationality? How does it work?

    To invoke a “rational being with free will” is a Special Pleading Fallacy; it answers nothing.
    It doesn’t invoke special pleading because the alternative doesn’t have those properties. That’s like saying it’s special pleading to say that Lebron James is a greater basketball player than the average joe, because the average joe doesn’t possess the property of being talented at basketball.

    And why does it have to explain itself?
    It demands an explanation, because as Timothy O’connor points out we can still coherently ask for an explanation of why THIS chain of things, and not another. The rejoinder at this point is to point out that a fully contrastive explanation of why this chain of explanations is as it is, if it existed, would convert the contingent chain to a necessary one. But O'Connor responds by saying that we can still seek a complete explanation, even if it is a non-fully-contrastive one.

    So now comes the question that the godless never answer, and then try and downplay it as if there is no reason to answer, and this is because they don’t have an answer, so I’ll ask this again what is the explanation to this godless reality?

    There is no other means of establishing a “true premise”. Philosophy must rely upon conjecture based upon the Laws of Nature as understood at present by science. It has no means to establish new facts.
    Ok let’s put this to the test then:

    You said “There is no other means of establishing a true premise”

    ^how do we prove this premise?

    you said “Philosophy must rely upon conjecture based upon the Laws of Nature as understood at present by science. It has no means to establish new facts”

    ^prove this premise then

    The rules of logic are essential to science within their limitations and the limitations, as stated numerous times, are that they can only reformulate existing facts about the universe. They are not able to discover new facts about the universe; only science has the methodology for this.
    This is egregiously false, so let me give you an example of how logic can build on other types of knowing. Take the proposition: "All bachelors are unmarried men." Now on inductive, physical evidence we could never completely verify this since we have the famous "black swan" problem of induction. We would only be able to state that as far as we had tested it the proposition always held true. But logic can demonstrate the necessary truth of the proposition by considering it to be true by the meaning of the words and therefore it can be known to be absolutely true analytically a priori. This is an instance of logic assuring knowledge which goes beyond that of the senses and that of induction.

    Therefore, logic can give us new knowledge

    You’re tripping over your own feet in your attempt to evade the straightforward fact that a metaphysical premise cannot be established as true on its own account; it can only be based upon existing knowledge. It doesn’t have the methodology to acquire new facts about the natural world. Conversely, science does.
    No this is not true, see above.

    Hence, while new scientific facts can prove a metaphysical argument to be wrong, the reverse is not the case. Namely a metaphysical argument cannot prove a scientific argument to be wrong as Aristotle’s successors found out when scientific methodology discovered the heliocentric universe as opposed to the intuitive geocentric universe.
    No it can’t The natural sciences ASSUME objective logic. Just as science also borrows an epistemology and often a metaphysical framework as well. Science cannot disprove the metaphysical argument that uses Occam’s razor to argue the case that we aren’t in the matrix.

    Aristotle’s geocentric universe wasn’t intuitive, it was empirical.

    Remember conceptual facts =/= empirical facts

    The geocentric universe wasn’t a part of aristotle’s metaphysics, it was a part of his physics.
    Intuition = non-inferential knowledge, Aristotle didn’t use non-infernetial knowledge to argue for geocentrism, as he used empirical means with respect to the way the Sun, Stars and Planets revolved around the Earth. Aristotle was making an ‘inference’ and therefore he wasn’t using ‘intution’ so have you absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and judging at how poorly you are at conceding a point, I’m starting to think that this debate is a waste of time.

    So your argument is that you don’t know how pure spirit connects with the material body - you just know that it does. Gotcha!
    No, my argument is that I don’t need to argue for a materialistic way on how the immaterial connects with the material, the question you’re asking is nonsensical, as it presupposes the truth of materialism in its conclusion. That’s like me asking you how the material brain connects with immaterial thoughts if materialism if your worldview is true.

    Anyways, I’m with William Hasker, I’d argue that perhaps body has some identifying characteristic, unique to itself, that is has throughout its career. Or perhaps God not only creates but also sustains the causal interaction between the soul and the body. All and all while the argument is designed to show that there is some aspect of the human person that has the essential capacity to perceive logical connections, that entity still could very well be spatially locatable

    Or we can go with emergent dualism! It does feel good on the fact that I don’t have to deal with the “problem of intentionality” that materialists have to deal with.

    Uh, no! I see no credible evidence of any sort for a deity.
    Of course you don’t, but I was asking whether or not your proposition was true, so

    If God existed, then God would be contingent, is this true or false?

    And here’s me thinking that Aquinas formulated the "argument from contingency", following Aristotle. So you’re saying that he didn’t claim that there must be a non-contingent entity to explain why the Universe exists. My mistake! <sarcasm>
    I think you’re confusing Aristotle’s ‘prime mover’ Cosmological argument and not realizing that the argument from contingency is a modal argument that was derived from G.W Leibniz.
    There are a few formulations with respect to Leibniz

    https://bearspace.baylor.edu/Alexand...apers/LCA.html

    http://www.maverick-christian.org/20...ument-for.html

    http://moduspownens.wordpress.com/20...m-contingency/

    http://www.amazon.com/Theism-Ultimat...mothy+o+connor

    Perhaps I can let that one slide, since I wasn’t clear on the modal implications


    And YOUR mistake is that I hold to the verificationist epistemology; I don’t. I know you want a stick to beat me with but this is not it.
    Let me hold my stick aside for a second and ask you: Do you think that science is the only method towards gaining NEW knowledge about the universe, yes or no?

    Once again: If a hypothetical deity can exist eternally then so can the matter of the universe –
    Sez who? All you do here is beg the question and assume that matter has always existed.

    and there is actual evidence for the latter based upon the Laws of Nature and NO credible evidence for the former.
    There is absolutely no evidence for a universe filled with matter that was always here, zero, zilch, nothing, just emotional people who would do anything to refuse to believe in a God, if only they used half the amount of skepticism against the godless view of reality as they do with God, I guarantee they’d be Theists.

    If there as a sliver of evidence for a godless necessary material universe I’d have no problem accepting this.

    A law of physics states that that energy cannot be created, and even in apparent nothingness actual nothingness appears to be impossible. This is the quantum vacuum and it is hypothesized that it has existed eternally.
    And that law of physics only deals with closed systems, so this doesn’t work.

    The point is not that you are necessarily wrong, but that you can’t show that you are right. Metaphysical conjecture doesn’t have the methodology to do this.
    Do I really need to go over possible world semantics? Or how there are a priori truths that we can just grasp clearly and distinctly?

    Certainly, IF there was a divinity – large or small. This is where you come unstuck; there is no substantive evidence of a divinity existing. That's why I'm an atheist.
    You’re and atheist because you don’t look hard enough, and you’re not skeptical enough towards a godless universe.

    You mean that there is no evidence of anything more than the natural universe, as governed by the laws and constants of nature. I agree! So why are you a theist?
    Because God is the author of nature, and rationality existing as an initial feature of reality isn’t supernatural. The term supernatural wasn’t used until the 16th = 17th century, so one doesn’t need to accept the distinction.

    Pretentious gobbledygook! ALL of this verbiage is conjecture without a single solid fact to support any of it. You would e better served to acknowledge that science is a work in progress and what we don’t know now we most likely will know in future. And even if we don't, invoking a god-of-gaps argument is not the way to go.
    I made no such supposed "god of the gaps" argument. All of the arguments for God's existence I hold to are based on what we do know and not on the gaps about what we don't.
    I have a friend that pointed this out to some one who loved using God of the gaps, he said rightly argued that this phrase is far overused. Some non-deductive inferences from "gaps" provide evidence for God and others don't.

    Let me explain. First off, it's fallacious to move from many gaps in science have been naturalistically explained to all gaps will be filled with naturalistic explanations. After all, direct actions of God are, even given theism, far and few between.

    If we want to pursue a theistic explanation of a scientific fact (or any fact in general), then we have to have reasons for thinking the scientific fact to contain a significant theological context. Theists were mistaken to use God to explain lightning because they had no reason to think that P(L/T) was higher than P(L/~T) (where L=lightning and T=theism).
    The mistake with prior theistic explanations like the one above was that there was no reason to suppose the fact was more probable given theism--that part of the ratio was ignored.

    Moreover, God's direct activity is properly limited to specific past events with a significant theological context, not repeatable events and regularities. This is another reason why a supernatural explanation is an appropriate explanation of the origin of the universe or in the resurrection of Jesus but not in explaining lightning.

    Now we come to the fine-tuning of the universe. Does this unique scientific event have deep theological context? Well, yes. And so it seems inappropriate to hand-wave this theistic explanation.



    Once again: There is no reason to assume that rationality did not arise incrementally via natural selection as have the other human qualities.

    When there's so much data and emerging science in areas like neurobiology, conventional biology, sociobiology, human psychology, emergence, evolution, physics, etc. that actually can and will provide real answers, why should one care about metaphysical speculation based upon a static world-view?
    That’s a lot of blind faith you have, and I’m glad that you think that you have enough to be optimistic about your views, but you still have this problem, Reppert argues the case where physical information leaves it indeterminate as to what, say, a speaker of foreign language means by the word ‘gavagai’. There is no fact of the matter as to whether the native is referring to ‘rabbit’ or ‘undetached rabbit parts.” Therefore, would not this argument also show that there is no fact of the matter as to what one means by ‘materialism’ when he says ‘materialism is true’?

    The argument then goes as follows:

    1) If materialism is true, then there is no fact of the matter as to what someone’s thought or statement is about

    2) But there are facts about what someone’s thought is about. (Implied by the existence of rational inference.)

    3) Therefore, materialism is false.

    This is an argument from ignorance, i.e. a god-of-the-gaps argument. There is no reason to assume that rationality did not arise incrementally via natural selection as have the other human qualities.
    You haven’t taken me back and time and explained how it arose incrementally or at least give me something to work with so you have no answer. I argued simplicity,
    Rationality was an inherited feature of reality

    I received no objection, only a god of the gaps plea. A plea that I’ve pretty much answer repeatedly now.

    So, in your mind prayer, tithing, church service, baptism etc is knowledge of how the natural universe functions is it – right up there with quantum theory and the speed of light? Nonsense! It is “knowledge” of how certain communities function, nothing more.
    Well those communities according to the godless evolution should have died off because those communities were lacking true beliefs.

    Oh and if the godless evolution is so concerned with truth as it supposedly aids survival, why do religious people live longer than non-religious people?

    From the article “Research into liver transplant patients found those who were actively “seeking God” had a better survival rate than those who did not hold religious beliefs, regardless of which faith they held.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...-suggests.html

    I also see things on spirituality too, so I guess the godles evolution is doing something fishy here.

    Give it a rest. How do the snipped three paragraphs relate to teaching arithmetic to your young cousin vis-à-vis religious mythology?
    You said that a priori beliefs require assumptions, so I guess you’re backpedaling now, eh?

    You have yet to demonstrate how “intentionality” or any other property of the mind is not of natural origins. This is the most obvious solution given that to date ALL the substantive evidence we have acquired over the centuries about the workings of the universe, points to naturalism, and none of it points to anything else.
    IT doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘natural’ origin, unless by ‘natural’ you mean ‘material’ and if that’s the case, then you have a problem, how does physical matter say something about physical matter? States of mind have a relation to the world we call intentionality, or about-ness, how does matter do this exactly?

    Despite the lack of substantive evidence, that'd be right. Where is the nexus between the material body and the immaterial soul again?
    Ask that materialist who needs to explain the immaterial substances in our universe, if you want to beg the question so can I.

    If you disagree with it then you need to show the mechanism whereby philosophy can acquire new facts about nature. This as opposed to the scientific method which demonstrably can!
    No, you need to show me why I need to show you the mechanism whereby philosophy can acquire new facts about nature. You seem to be using this philosophical statement of yours as some sort of yardstick that I’m supposed to meet, but according to you I can’t meet it, because philosophy can’t tell us new facts about the universe, unless someone disagrees with you, and when that happens….all of a sudden

    it then you need to show the mechanism whereby philosophy can acquire new facts about nature.

    What is this some sort of brute fact about reality that I don’t know about it? Perhaps it’s one of those conceptual truths that I’m trying to get you to agree with, well if you want to just say ‘ you just know this, as it seems clear and distinctly true’ then we are getting somewhere.

    That is not what I said. Only science has the methodology to generate new knowledge about how the universe functions. Philosophy has many uses including the ability to reformulate the truths contained in our existing models, theories and laws as arrived at by science. Only science has the methodology to generate new knowledge about how the universe functions. As said previously, philosophy is useful within its limits.
    Well how do I distinguish what’s new knowledge and what isn’t, because I feel like I’m learning a lot about how the universe functions from all of your philosophical statements.

    Oh, so you agree that “evolution-did-it”? My mistake; it came across as mockery.
    Yes, evolution + God, not the silly evolution + God

    Let’s break this down

    Evolution + God = Evolution + Necessary, rational being
    Evolution – God = evolution + necessary, nonrational being
    So where did evolution and that increment….ah I’ve asked plenty of times already, you just don’t know how.

    What part of incrementalism via favourable mutations over millions of years did you not understand?
    The very first increment, what happened, since you probably don’t know what year I’ll let that slide. So what happened?
    Last edited by Cornell; 08-03-2014, 02:29 AM.

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  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    The problem with you guys is that you just don't know the difference between the two.


    it really must be embarrassing to be you Jim.

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  • Tassman
    replied
    Originally posted by Cornell View Post
    Tassman

    The counter intuitive microscopic universe (that physicists still have a problem explaining) still does nothing to their arguments, and this is why I admire those who were so on point thousands of years ago to which they are still teaching modern humans a thing or two about the universe.
    Not so; Quantum mechanics is well understood. It explains the behaviour of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. This as opposed to Classical physics, as was understood by Aristotle et al, which explains matter and energy on a scale familiar to human experience and upon which they incorrectly based their metaphysical premises.

    Quantum physics is in no way shape or form deadly to Aristotle or Aquinas, because as John Haldane points out, if we can appeal to objective, nondeterministic natural propensities in quantum systems to account for the phenomena they exhibit, this will suffice to provide us with the sort of explanation the Aristotelian claims every contingent thing in the world must have. Therefore there is no problem for Aristotle’s astonishing metaphysics.
    Other than the fact that Aristotle was wrong in almost every argument and conclusion he made about physical science - as science has since shown! He had a great mind but could only work with the available information about the universe which, in his era, was extremely limited.

    Demonstrate the fallacy, otherwise this retort of yours is nothing more than ‘tassman says cornell is wrong, therefore cornell must be wrong, because tassman says so’. This isn’t persuasive.
    Without the 'View Post' facility I’m certainly not going back to search for the context of this remark.

    If you can’t define what X is, then there is no way to tell whether or not there is sufficient of insufficient evidence for X, because one has no idea of what we mean by X, so you just don’t’ understand X.
    Again: One cannot define what does not exist. I’m saying there is insufficient evidence for God’s existence to warrant such a belief in the first place.

    It should have a natural explanation because God is the author of nature, so now we have to go to explanations that invoke agency, and when it comes to rationality, morality, causation Theism wins out due to agency.
    The bolded is an unjustified bald assertion. It doesn't need a redundant deity to arrive at a "natural explanation".

    Well if this is good sermon material then I’ll have to write up an email to the atheist philosopher Evan Fales and let him know this, as this is where I got this brilliant argumentation from. It’s good to know that there are atheists in academia who realize the fact that there is a purpose to existence.
    Whatever it’s provenance, analogy is NOT evidence.

    The satisfaction doesn’t mean that I had a prior obligation to do this moral act though. The only obligation I have in a godless universe is to propagate my pointless dna, but even that is purposeless, because the unconscious, unintelligent, purposeless universe doesn’t care about whether or not humans are in existence,

    SNIP.
    No, but as I said you have the satisfaction of acting according to your natural instincts – just as the instinctive nurturing of your infant daughter gives enormous satisfaction; it's the way we've evolved.

    And, while the universe is ultimately purposeless, it is perfectly meaningful in the course of our day-to-day lives. But, that said, the universe per se “doesn’t care” about whether or not humans are in existence just as it didn't care about the 99% of species that are now extinct.

    IF evolution is the cause for religion, then it receives the blame for religion, the only way you can blame something else is if humans had a free-choice to choose otherwise, but if humans have free will then you open up pandora’s box and we can start asking whether or not materialism is true.
    There is no Libertarian Free-Will in a ‘Determined’ universe, only the illusion of it.

    SNIP.

    Morality isn’t an aid to get to heaven, morality or at least moral facts can only exist if Theism is true.
    Theism has nothing to do with it. Codes of behavior have existed far longer than the religions and its precursors are found among the other primates as well.

    Morals are derivatives of self-preservation and procreation consequent upon natural selection. They are naturally built into us, because those morals are beneficial to the breeding and survival of our species as social animals. That’s it; there isn’t any more.

    Yes there are plenty of reasons, the biggest is pointing out how silly and magical it is to say rationality came from nonrationality, just as it’s silly to say that ‘meaning’ came from ‘meaningless’ matter.

    Nonrational universe -- poof… from some mystery rationality just magically appeared on the scene and incrementally went into humans, though no one ever tells us how,

    SNIP

    ...therefore I reject this silly nonsense and accept the personhood of a personal being that is necessary.
    This is no more than an Argument from Incredulity Fallacy! There is no reason to think that rationality didn't develop incrementally via natural selection as did the rest of our component qualities.

    Naturally selected instincts put forth by an impersonal substance results into another illusion, because there is no obligation to maintain social cohesion, because the unconscious, purposeless, impersonal universe didn’t give us a goal in which we ‘ought’ to fulfill, therefore I reject this silly nonsense and accept the personhood of a personal being that is necessary.
    Not “obligation”, instinct – do you get the difference? It is our evolved instinct as social animals to maintain social cohesion; it is not an externally imposed obligation. Evolutionary biologists and Socio-biologists have established that though human social behaviors are complex, the precursors of human morality can be traced to the behaviors of many other social animals. We are not unique, just the most intelligent.

    Because God’s existence isn’t dependent upon old religious arguments, (though some older arguments are still good today)

    SNIP.
    God’s existence hasn’t been established in the first place due to insufficient evidence.

    No, this doesn’t work because IF, as is hypothesised the universe is itself eternal AND has the property of consciousness and agency as an initial feature than the concept of a necessary being fits nicely with this concept.

    Last, philosophy and science have to work together, if science doesn’t understand a simple concept such ‘other minds exist’ then he will be trapped in his own solipsism, but this isn’t what we see in science, we notice that scientists assume that other minds exist, and that they are trying to give data from their experiments to people that they believe to exist
    Maybe! Except that there’s no evidence of a “necessary being”; it’s merely an assumed concept.

    Conversely, there is considerable evidence of the natural universe. And there IS evidence of consciousness. Thus the obvious conclusion is that it evolved via Natural Selection as have ALL of our other qualities. Introducing the unsupported notion of a Necessary Being to explain it is merely a god-of-the-gaps augment. And they have never fared well in history.

    Yes they can, how often do you read philosophy texts? What is your view on counterfactuals? Sets? Numbers? Propositions? Possible Worlds? These questions when answered will provide substantial facts about reality.
    Come now! What is your view of how they will be answered?

    Yes there is, there are good arguments in favor, and the alternatives are a joke, you should try some skepticism some time instead of just blindly accepting the alternatives.
    The “alternative” (i.e. the natural world), maybe a “joke” in your mind but it’s all we have substantive evidence for regardless of what you think.

    That’s only true if these angry spirits don’t exist, so all you do here is punt to your atheistic presuppositinalism and beg the question.

    Try doing what I do, start off with no presuppositions and take a neutral stance towards the evidence for both sides, then show an equal amount of skepticism towards both stances. This is how you start, hopefully you’re open to the suggestion that you might be wrong. \
    You cannot give equal weight to two postulates when they are not equally supported by evidence. Thus for you to give equal value to the natural universe vis-à-vis the non-material universe is intellectual dishonesty. There is no substantive evidence for the latter but a great deal of substantiated evidence for the former, i.e. the natural universe. Thus, your alleged “neutral stance” is not “neutral” at all; it is heavily biased in favour of Theism.

    This bleeds of bias, you admit that your arguments are primitive, but it’s a good kind of primitive, because they aren’t religious.

    Lightening gods are not the God of ‘everything’, because a god of lightening is just that, and I don’t see how the word ‘god’ is being used in the same sense.
    You miss the point. In a pre-scientific era the only means to explain otherwise inexplicable events – lightening strikes, earthquakes, eclipses floods etc – was attribution to invisible spirits or gods. And then, as now, these gods had to be placated with offerings and/or sacrifices. This applied to the alleged "God of everything" just as much the the earlier nature gods like Thor.

    This is just words with no science, (you're telling me something about the world, right?) so please demonstrate by empirically tested science how ‘it cannot claim it can lead to all knowledge’ as you say, then demonstrate by empirically tested science how ‘knowledge-claims about the natural world cannot be shown to be true without it’ because I don’t see any empirically tested science being used IN THIS STATEMENT.
    Science does not claim that is can “lead to all knowledge”. Science is not about objective metaphysical truth; it is a collection of methods for making abstract models of nature and then testing those models against reality. In principle even the most established scientific facts (e.g. gravity) are potentially falsifiable. Conversely metaphysics claims absolute truths when in actuality the best it can hope for are logically consistent arguments based upon an axiomatic premise.

    Is it true today that ‘philosophy is useful in that it can ensure self-consistency and prevent more errors of false inference’? If it is then there is a new fact that I learned today, and if it stays true tomorrow then it doesn’t fall victim to the problem of induction, and yet it becomes another new fact that is learned. The fact is ‘it has been now X amount of days and this proposition is still true’ You can repeat this ad-infinitum and always learn something new every day. Therefore your claim is demonstrably false.
    The claim and context refer to new facts about nature, not trivial day-to-day learning experiences.

    Ah so I’m not controlled by my instincts, how exactly did I get around that? And why is it that Atheists such as Thomas Nagel say things like this “There is no room for agency in a world of neural impulses, chemical reactions, and bone and muscle movements.”

    - ‘The view from nowhere’ pg 111,113

    Or Francis Crick – Our sense of identity and free will is ‘Nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”

    - ‘The astonishing hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul’ pg 3
    All correct. The “vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules” has resulted in many social animals such as us evolving instinctive behaviours geared towards maintaining social cohesion.

    We give our life meaning isn’t big enough and sounds like emotional wishful thinking, besides it sounds arbitrary, as terrorists give their lives meaning too, so what’s the big deal? IF your view is true then we are equally pointless as a terrorist.
    Really! Well you’ll have to make do because that’s all there is as far as we can tell. You can delude yourself with escapist fantasies if you wish.

    And you missed my point, it doesn’t really matter if we live or die, there is no a priori obligation in which ‘we ought’ to fulfill. Pointlessness begats pointlessness

    Valuelessness entails valuelessness.
    This is demonstrably untrue. Most of us lead lives of purpose and meaning. It’s rather sad that some can only find meaning via the forlorn, unevidenced hope of post mortem rewards. Life is not a dress rehearsal, its the actual show.

    That doesn’t help you at all, because now I can ask, did the first organism have the ‘potential’ to mutate?
    There is no reason to think that abiogenesis didn’t occur via natural processes. Science is a work in progress and how abiogenesis initially occurred is not yet known – although there are several promising hypotheses currently being tested. But to argue that we don’t know “therefore god”, is merely another of your god-of-the-gaps arguments, which seems to be ALL that the so-called Arguments from Reason are.

    You’re still in the same jam, now it just becomes ‘are you absolutely sure that this is to the best of our knowledge there are no absolute truths except’

    You can’t get out of this, no one ever has, it is what it is
    Rhetorical trick which answers nothing. The fact remains that there are no proven absolutely true premises, except ones we have defined to be true (such as 2+2=4). If you think my opinion is incorrect you need to supply evidence of proven absolute truths, rather than play recursive word-games.

    Same problem, are you absolutely sure that to the best of our knowledge the nearest we can get to absolute truths are the established theories of science ….yada, yada, yada,
    You can’t get out of this, no one ever has, it is what it is

    There are absolute truths, ie: ‘It is absolutely true that there are either absolute truths or there aren’t absolute truths’ this doesn’t rely on definitions, it relies on discerning reality for how it actually is.

    I think that the obvious response to this is that, if we cannot be sure we know anything then we cannot be sure we know the thesis itself. If therefore we cannot be sure that we know the thesis itself, we only think that we know the thesis. Yet, given these points, how can we be sure that we know that we think we know the skeptical thesis?

    In other words, statements are about a subject matter, and given the fact that the skeptical thesis is a statement about the nature of knowledge and must therefore itself be an item of knowledge, the skeptical thesis must invalidate itself. That is to say, that the skeptical thesis that no one can be sure they know anything is 'self-refuting'.
    The above demonstrates just how useless in practical terms metaphysical word-games are. This is a metaphysical problem, NOT a scientific problem. Scientific knowledge is not about objective metaphysical truth. It is a methodology for testing hypothetical models of nature against reality. And it has shown itself to be enormously successful in discovering new factual truths about the universe; metaphysics hasn't!

    What scientific arguments are you talking about, so far I haven’t seen one decent argument for a godless universe.
    “Godless Universe”!? You don’t need an argument for it; you’re living in it.

    Science does not explain what happened. Science doesn't 'say' anything. That is the fallacy of reification. It takes an individual to interpret the evidence. That individual is influenced by his worldview. A faulty worldview will cause an .individual to interpret the evidence inaccurately. It all comes back to a starting point ie God's Word or the skeptical philosophical mind working backwards. The latter will never be satisfied with anything but a godless conclusion
    No! Science is NOT individual interpretation, it is collaborative. It is the acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence using observations, hypotheses and deductions to develop testable, falsifiable theories, which can also make predictions. These theories are reinforced by continuing experiments from which further technologies and theories can develop.

    As for your “godless conclusions” why would “godly conclusions” even be considered when there is no substantive evidence for gods?

    Nordic god’s fail because none of them can account for existence, they also have a pecking order.

    How could THor be the creator of existence if he is contingent upon Odin? Makes no sense, Is Thor a Trinitarian God or something?
    ALL gods supposedly account for existence, just not very well. They were primitive attempts to understand a frightening, seemingly inexplicable universe. But the gods have been superseded. Science is demonstrably much better equipped to do this.
    Last edited by Tassman; 07-29-2014, 10:31 PM.

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  • JimL
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    Gee. sounds just like you when you argue for science and against philosophy. Using a philosophical argument.
    The problem with you guys is that you just don't know the difference between the two. That quote from Lucretius is a philosophical argument proving the error in ones logic, not an empirical proof regarding the nature of the physical world.

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  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    He that says nothing can be known, o'erthrows his own opinion.
    For he nothing knows, so knows not that.
    What need for long dispute?
    These maxims kill themselves,
    themselves confute!
    --------------------------------Lucretius
    Gee. sounds just like you when you argue for science and against philosophy. Using a philosophical argument.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by Tassman View Post
    Typical bald assertions followed by the usual Appeal to Ridicule Fallacy.
    It's only a fallacy if your argument and you are not ridiculous.

    You have shown over and over by your posts that you don't have a background or understanding of either topic: science or philosophy. So you are just in here bloviating because of your ego and the dunning-kruger effect. You are a waste of time.

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  • JimL
    replied
    Originally posted by Cornell View Post
    JIML is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy
    He who knows nothing, knows not that!

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  • Cornell
    replied
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    He that says nothing can be known, o'erthrows his own opinion.
    For he nothing knows, so knows not that.
    What need for long dispute?
    These maxims kill themselves,
    themselves confute!
    --------------------------------Lucretius
    JIML is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy

    Leave a comment:


  • Cornell
    replied
    Tassman


    Oh well, if you say so. <sarcasm>

    Employing the View Post facility, so your interlocutor can refer back to the relevant part of the debate if necessary, is NOT “hand-holding”, it's the accepted convention. It’s particularly necessary when dealing with the interminable posts you choose to indulge in.
    It never causes a problem on Facebook or Youtube, so I don’t see why it’s necessary here. What’s accepted for you, might not be accepted for everyone else. You don’t set the bar for the ‘convention’


    “Belittlement” is never justified; it's resorting to an infantile name-calling in lieu of substantive debate.
    If they can belittle philosophy then I can belittle scientism, it’s fair game, if they opposition needs a handicap then too bad.

    [QUOTE ] That’s not the argument. The argument is that new facts about the universe can only be acquired via scientific methodology. Philosophy is only able to reformulate the existing knowledge, i.e. the current world-view. [/QUOTE]

    AS I’ve demonstrated above, one can definitely discover new facts about reality using philosophy. They might be discovered from the armchair, but that’s not my problem. Any introductory book in metaphysics and epistemology would show this.




    Well I’ll take my personal experience of living and working in a 98% Buddhist country (with my Thai Buddhist wife) for the past 13 years rather than rely on your academia, if you don’t mind. Karma and future existences were considered to be a law of nature which even the gods were subject to. Although, I acknowledge that Buddhism as practised by the majority is indeed religious and very syncretistic - especially regarding Hinduism.
    Sorry, but I take academia much more seriously than anecdotal arguments. There are Christians who think that God is subjected to the laws of nature as well, (Keith Yandell with respect to morality) so what’s your point? If you want to go that route then there are Christians who are not religious.







    Your personal opinion based as usual on supposition not fact.
    I’m not Robert Jastrow


    [QUOTE} You miss the point that you made a conditional statement, not a factual statement, as indicated by “IF”. [/QUOTE]
    So what? Conditionals tell us true things about the world. If my birthday didn’t land on an even date then it landed on an odd date.

    …which does not alter the fact that the notion of “agency and consciousness being initial features of reality" are merely “supposition” NOT fact; your own quotes said so.
    I’ve demonstrated this numerous times by pointing out how the opposite fails to explain reality. Materialism just doesn’t cut the mustard, so that’s not my problem. It isn’t a supposition, because this is demonstrated through reasoning.

    Maybe not, but “absence of evidence” does not equal credible evidence for God either.
    Agreed




    This is not the point. You claimed that: “I actually think superhuman control or anything involving agency isn't necessary”. This is NOT the common understanding of what “religion” means - which was the point I was making.
    Common understanding with respect to who? Common to me? Because it isn’t, common to academia? Because it isn’t, though you just said that you’ll take anecdotal means over academia so there is no reason for me to argue this point if you dismiss the experts.



    Indeed! But I didn’t say that ALL applications of Logic have limitations. But Logic IS limited when it comes to acquiring new facts about the universe – which was the point - although it’s useful as a component of scientific methodology.
    How is logic limited when it comes to acquiring new facts about the universe when we’re basically forced to use it? When we learn about the universe we obviously have to use the laws of logic otherwise we end up with nonsense like this ‘The Earth is finite, but yet infinite at the same time’

    . In order to obtain a true conclusion in a Deductive Argument one must begin with a true premise. And the premises of Deductive Arguments can only be based upon the existing world-view of the day - which may or may not be “true”.
    True premise, as in absolute truth?

    Thus, "time periods" DO change what was THOUGHT to be true at a given point in time, e.g. Aristotle’s geocentric universe was shown not be true thanks to Galileo and scientific methodology.
    Luckily for Aristotle, that had nothing to do with his metaphysics.

    As for your: “truth is true in actuality”, this is merely a truism.
    It’s merely a case of searching for objective truths that tell us how reality, really is, so this goes far and beyond the white flag that is pragmatism.





    By the criteria of Deductive Logic (not just my criteria), without a true premise in a deductive argument one cannot arrive at a true conclusion other than by chance - this applies to arguments about God and to every other Deductive Argument.
    See above (do you mean ‘true’ by absolute truth?)

    There isn't.
    exactly



    with that being said scientific knowledge doesn’t account for all knowledge, and verificationism still works off of metaphysical presuppositions such as the reliability of the senses, and the uniformity principle. William Lane Craig has taken this down as well

    You’re arguing against a straw-man. I’m NOT defending Logical Positivism (i.e. Verificationism), because it’s a self-refuting argument. I've already said so.
    Ok so then are you telling me that you agree me on the case that there is knowledge that we can know without appealing to verification?

    But while Verificationism is rightly dismissed as an epistemological system, the thrust of its main argument has not been similarly dismissed. The verification of hypotheses about the natural world remains an essential, productive and proven component of science.

    Note the bolded.
    Sure, as long as you don’t think that all knowledge is scientific or that it comes from verification then we don’t have a problem.





    Well yes. So…..?
    Well why do you saying that ‘well science keeps coming up with new findings’ ???? Who cares, God is a metaphysical question.

    I guess YOU missed that the premises are not necessarily “true” just because you believe them to be true; there’s a difference. “Certainty” regarding the truth of a premise in a Deductive Argument is essential if you want to claim your conclusion is “true”.
    That’s nonsense, because past the point of conceptual truths there would be no reason to use deductive reasoning.

    Your problem comes about with this statement of yours itself.
    P1) Certainty regarding the truth of a premise in a deductive argument is essential if you to claim your conclusion as being true.
    P2) Premise 1 has never been shown to be true through absolute certainty
    C) Therefore Premise 1 is false



    . Without the View Post facility, which you refuse to use, I can’t refer back to what I said. I’m certainly not going to waste my time scouring the endless verbiage of this thread searching for my quote.

    But from memory, I was referring to Aquinas’ argument regarding his assumed necessity for avoiding an infinite regress as an “Argument from Ignorance”. Because it doesn't take into account what we now know of quantum physics.
    No, you don’t know what you’re talking about

    You said:

    “Thus is merely an Argument from Ignorance!”

    Because I said this

    “It would only be superfluous if there was another explanation that could do the job better than a deity.”
    Because of this statement that you said:

    “A deity could hypothetically use natural selection but there’s no evidence that a deity did, nor even that a deity exists. And parsimony suggests that adding a deity into the equation is superfluous.”
    There that wasn’t too hard now was it..

    The natural universe demonstrably exists thus, adding an external component, e.g. a deity, is obviously adding an extra step to the process. As to “how” nature-did-it is still under investigation. But there is no reason to suppose that non-natural forces were responsible.
    You beg the question that your universe it what it is, you just call it ‘natural’ and work with. So what you’re doing here is disingenuous

    You define reality as such (natural), then God define as such (magic, supernatural) then with definitions alone try and push God away because he doesn’t fit what you would consider ‘natural’

    and I don’t see God as an external component.

    Why in the world should God be external to his own creation? God is the reason for why existence exists, so obviously he is a part of existence.

    Let’s put both positions next to each other

    Necessary nonrational substance that lacks consciousness , therefore  existence exists

    Necessary rational being that is conscious, therefore existence exists

    I don’t see any extra steps, just different traits, therefore the principle of parsimony doesn’t help you out.

    All you do is try and define the other persons position to the point where it’s silly and then you work with it, so all and all you’re attacking a strawman.

    Be back next week

    Leave a comment:


  • Cornell
    replied
    Tassman


    Yep, it does; it pretty-well wrecks their arguments. The arguments of Aristotle or Aquinas are based upon the intuitive concept of a macroscopic universe. They had no knowledge of the counter-intuitive microscopic universe which we now know to be the reality.
    The counter intuitive microscopic universe (that physicists still have a problem explaining) still does nothing to their arguments, and this is why I admire those who were so on point thousands of years ago to which they are still teaching modern humans a thing or two about the universe.

    Quantum physics is in no way shape or form deadly to Aristotle or Aquinas, because as John Haldane points out, if we can appeal to objective, nondeterministic natural propensities in quantum systems to account for the phenomena they exhibit, this will suffice to provide us with the sort of explanation the Aristotelian claims every contingent thing in the world must have. Therefore there is no problem for Aristotle’s astonishing metaphysics.

    Bald Assertions, i.e. Logical Fallacies.
    Demonstrate the fallacy, otherwise this retort of yours is nothing more than ‘tassman says cornell is wrong, therefore cornell must be wrong, because tassman says so’. This isn’t persuasive.

    One cannot define what does not exist. I’m saying there is insufficient evidence for God’s existence to warrant such a belief in the first place.
    If you can’t define what X is, then there is no way to tell whether or not there is sufficient of insufficient evidence for X, because one has no idea of what we mean by X, so you just don’t’ understand X.

    Why would you think that best explanation for why the universe “is like this” when every single phenomenon examined in detail by science has turned out to have a natural explanation? Without exception! Does theism have anything even remotely like that behind it?
    It should have a natural explanation because God is the author of nature, so now we have to go to explanations that invoke agency, and when it comes to rationality, morality, causation Theism wins out due to agency.

    Your colourful analogies about oak trees and acorns might be good sermon material but they are NOT evidence.
    Well if this is good sermon material then I’ll have to write up an email to the atheist philosopher Evan Fales and let him know this, as this is where I got this brilliant argumentation from. It’s good to know that there are atheists in academia who realize the fact that there is a purpose to existence.

    “Helping this old lady” means a great deal. You have the satisfaction of acting according to your natural instincts – just as the instinctive nurturing of your infant daughter gives enormous satisfaction. Don’t pretend that the only reason to act well is because God tells you it is the moral thing to do. Do you really only love your daughter only because God says you must – OR ELSE!!!
    The satisfaction doesn’t mean that I had a prior obligation to do this moral act though. The only obligation I have in a godless universe is to propagate my pointless dna, but even that is purposeless, because the unconscious, unintelligent, purposeless universe doesn’t care about whether or not humans are in existence, so the thing that we are contingent upon doesn’t give us an obligation to do anything, therefore satisfaction gets us no where. With God I can love my daughter with some legit meaningful, genuine love, because love isn’t just a bunch of pointless chemical reactions fizzing together only to give us a psychological advantage useful to a purposeless evolutionary process that doesn’t care about whether or not humans go extinct.

    So it isn’t because God said so, it’s because God is a person that I can relate too and I inherit God’s attributes of personhood. This person is necessary had ‘intent’ when creating humanity, on the other end things look bleak.

    Should I just tell my daughter that I only love her because I’m forced too by this pointless evolutionary process that in Bertrand Russells words shows how meaningless humanity really is?

    "That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; ...that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the aspirations, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- All these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."

    - Bertrand Russell ‘A Free man’s worship’

    Of course it is. That’s what Evolution is all about. Do you have a problem with that? What’s the alternative: That “morality is just an aid” to get to heaven and avoid eternal punishment.
    IF evolution is the cause for religion, then it receives the blame for religion, the only way you can blame something else is if humans had a free-choice to choose otherwise, but if humans have free will then you open up pandora’s box and we can start asking whether or not materialism is true.

    William Provine states “Free will as traditonally conceived – the freedom to make uncoerced and unpredictable choices among alternative courses of action --- simply does not exist. There is no way the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a bring that is truly free to make choices”

    - William Provine ‘evolution and the foundations of ethics’ Marine Biological Laboratory Science 3 (1988)

    The alternative is much better and makes more sense, because the acceptance of moral objective values assumes a kind of ultimate goal or design plan for humans, so with this design plan or ideal standard we all have obligations and duties that we ‘ought’ to fulfill. Divine commands partially serve as guidance in particular instances where there would otherwise be no moral obligations, so as Paul Copan points out

    “sometimes we know what to do intellectually, but the gentle prodding or even strong rebuke of a caring friend may be just what we need to spur us into action. Beyond this, we know that commands often add greater weight or seriousness to moral obligations of which we are aware. We be familiar with general ethical principles, but the command of a genuine moral authority often assists in our taking our duties more seriously than if we merely had a theoretical knowledge of general moral principles”

    ‘Debating Christian Theism’ pg 95

    Morality isn’t an aid to get to heaven, morality or at least moral facts can only exist if Theism is true.
    .
    Our ability to think rationally and draw reliable conclusions from our reasoning enhances our ability to survive. There is no reason to think that this quality didn't develop incrementally via natural selection. What in your view gave matter rationality, God? Evidence please.
    Yes there are plenty of reasons, the biggest is pointing out how silly and magical it is to say rationality came from nonrationality, just as it’s silly to say that ‘meaning’ came from ‘meaningless’ matter.

    Nonrational universe -- poof… from some mystery rationality just magically appeared on the scene and incrementally went into humans, though no one ever tells us how, they just say ‘evolutiondidit’ therefore that explains it, because ‘evolutiondidit’ has so much explanatory power to the point where it can explain everything, even though evolution didn’t occur until life emerged - Rationality exists

    We have hope though for the godless…..I think they have figured it out……uhhh

    As to why consciousness emerges in certain cases, David Papineau states “to this question physicalists ‘theories of consciousness’ seem to provide no answer”

    David Papineau ‘Philosophical Naturalism’

    "It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

    -J. B. S. Haldane FRS, evolutionary biologist & mathematician (atheist), "When I am Dead" in “Possible Worlds”

    "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons."

    - Francis Crick (atheist) biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist, in his book “The Astonishing Hypothesis”

    "Thinking about things can't happen at all….. When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong."

    - Dr. Alex Rosenberg (atheist), in his book “The Atheist's Guide to Reality”

    Gotta love the optimism from the godless!!!

    Nah this is silly, and lacks simplicity so I’ll stick with God

    Here is your evidence for God, you still haven’t refuted the argument

    (1) No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.

    (2) If materialism is true, then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.

    (3) Therefore, if materialism is true, then no belief is rationally inferred.

    (4) If any thesis entails the conclusion that no belief is rationally inferred, then it should be rejected and its denial accepted.

    (5) Therefore materialism should be rejected and its denial accepted.

    Of course they are - based upon the naturally selected instincts to maintain social cohesion; we are evolved social animals after all. There is no reason whatsoever to think they depend upon the magical thinking of theism.
    Naturally selected instincts put forth by an impersonal substance results into another illusion, because there is no obligation to maintain social cohesion, because the unconscious, purposeless, impersonal universe didn’t give us a goal in which we ‘ought’ to fulfill, therefore I reject this silly nonsense and accept the personhood of a personal being that is necessary.

    So your argument is that although religion got it so wrong in the past it will get it right in the future. Why would anyone believe that - just look at the appalling history of religion right up until today.
    Because God’s existence isn’t dependent upon old religious arguments, (though some older arguments are still good today)
    Besides do you honestly think that all of your boys have never made mistakes in the past? I can ask you the same question about anything atheist who made an argument about the world, in fact there are atheists who HAVE to be wrong, because they all don’t agree on everything. Guess what? Atheists aren’t omniscient, you guys have gotten things wrong as well, if you think otherwise then you are deluded beyond repair.

    Should I be a moral nihilist like Michael Ruse or a moral realist like Sam Harris? One of them has to be wrong, so if we follow your logic then I’m in the same place as you, therefore the only logical conclusion is to judge arguments made in modern times by their own merits.

    As for God’s existence "not being dependent upon a contingent being", IF, as is hypothesised, the universe is itself eternal the concept of a Necessary Being of any sort is irrelevant. And, for all your talk about the lack of absolute knowledge in science, it is philosophy which is dependent upon the evolving understandings of science for its world-view.
    No, this doesn’t work because IF, as is hypothesised the universe is itself eternal AND has the property of consciousness and agency as an initial feature than the concept of a necessary being fits nicely with this concept.

    Last, philosophy and science have to work together, if science doesn’t understand a simple concept such ‘other minds exist’ then he will be trapped in his own solipsism, but this isn’t what we see in science, we notice that scientists assume that other minds exist, and that they are trying to give data from their experiments to people that they believe to exist.

    I agree. Philosophy and mathematics are the glue that holds the scientific enterprise together; they are essential components of science. But neither of these disciplines can establish new facts about the universe on their own. For this you need science.
    Yes they can, how often do you read philosophy texts? What is your view on counterfactuals? Sets? Numbers? Propositions? Possible Worlds? These questions when answered will provide substantial facts about reality.
    There is no good evidence to think theism is true.
    Yes there is, there are good arguments in favor, and the alternatives are a joke, you should try some skepticism some time instead of just blindly accepting the alternatives.

    But they were wrong about the necessity to appease the angry spirits, which was the point you missed.
    That’s only true if these angry spirits don’t exist, so all you do here is punt to your atheistic presuppositinalism and beg the question.

    Try doing what I do, start off with no presuppositions and take a neutral stance towards the evidence for both sides, then show an equal amount of skepticism towards both stances. This is how you start, hopefully you’re open to the suggestion that you might be wrong. \

    Very likely! But the most primitive are religious beliefs; they arose to explain the otherwise inexplicable – lightening gods etc – but scientific methodology has shown itself to more effective means to acquire knowledge and religion has been in slow but sure retreat since The Renaissance as a consequence.
    This bleeds of bias, you admit that your arguments are primitive, but it’s a good kind of primitive, because they aren’t religious.

    Lightening gods are not the God of ‘everything’, because a god of lightening is just that, and I don’t see how the word ‘god’ is being used in the same sense.

    Ah the Logical Positivist self refuting argument. Again! Where would you lot be without it? Once again: I am not applying Verificationism. It is demonstrably true that Empirically tested science doesn’t claim it can lead to all knowledge. But knowledge-claims about the natural world cannot be shown to be true without it.
    This is just words with no science, (you're telling me something about the world, right?) so please demonstrate by empirically tested science how ‘it cannot claim it can lead to all knowledge’ as you say, then demonstrate by empirically tested science how ‘knowledge-claims about the natural world cannot be shown to be true without it’ because I don’t see any empirically tested science being used IN THIS STATEMENT.
    Not “new facts”, only science can do that. But philosophy is useful in that it can ensure self-consistency and preventing errors of false inference. It's a useful tool of science.
    Is it true today that ‘philosophy is useful in that it can ensure self-consistency and prevent more errors of false inference’? If it is then there is a new fact that I learned today, and if it stays true tomorrow then it doesn’t fall victim to the problem of induction, and yet it becomes another new fact that is learned. The fact is ‘it has been now X amount of days and this proposition is still true’ You can repeat this ad-infinitum and always learn something new every day. Therefore your claim is demonstrably false.

    THere is a clear distinction. We instinctively believe things and behave in certain ways, e.g. we are not “forced” to nurture our children (in most cases); it is “instinctive that we do so.
    Ah so I’m not controlled by my instincts, how exactly did I get around that? And why is it that Atheists such as Thomas Nagel say things like this “There is no room for agency in a world of neural impulses, chemical reactions, and bone and muscle movements.”

    - ‘The view from nowhere’ pg 111,113

    Or Francis Crick – Our sense of identity and free will is ‘Nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”

    - ‘The astonishing hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul’ pg 3

    It matters even if it has no ultimate purpose. We give life its own meaning, e.g. (trivially) the FIFA World Cup has no ultimate purpose, but it’s excited the aims and aspirations of millions. Try telling Germany that their victory had no meaning.
    We give our life meaning isn’t big enough and sounds like emotional wishful thinking, besides it sounds arbitrary, as terrorists give their lives meaning too, so what’s the big deal? IF your view is true then we are equally pointless as a terrorist.

    You've clearly missed Dawkins’ entire point. The "blind watchmaker" does not make complete watches and leave them on beaches to provide fodder for Creationist arguments. You need to read his “Climbing Mt Improbable”, about the slow incremental nature of Evolution, otherwise you are displaying your ignorance for all to see.
    And you missed my point, it doesn’t really matter if we live or die, there is no a priori obligation in which ‘we ought’ to fulfill. Pointlessness begats pointlessness

    Valuelessness entails valuelessness.

    Evolution is about mutations and where they lead, not initially about instincts.
    That doesn’t help you at all, because now I can ask, did the first organism have the ‘potential’ to mutate?

    I’ll rephrase for the pedant: To the best of our knowledge there are NO absolute truths, except ones we define to be true such as 1+1=2.
    You’re still in the same jam, now it just becomes ‘are you absolutely sure that this is to the best of our knowledge there are no absolute truths except’

    You can’t get out of this, no one ever has, it is what it is

    I’ll rephrase for the pedant: To the best of our knowledge the nearest we can get to absolute truths are the established theories of science which have been shown to be true beyond reasonable doubt; the laws and constants of the universe have been verified to date and appear to exist throughout the entire universe.
    Same problem, are you absolutely sure that to the best of our knowledge the nearest we can get to absolute truths are the established theories of science ….yada, yada, yada,
    You can’t get out of this, no one ever has, it is what it is

    There are absolute truths, ie: ‘It is absolutely true that there are either absolute truths or there aren’t absolute truths’ this doesn’t rely on definitions, it relies on discerning reality for how it actually is.

    I think that the obvious response to this is that, if we cannot be sure we know anything then we cannot be sure we know the thesis itself. If therefore we cannot be sure that we know the thesis itself, we only think that we know the thesis. Yet, given these points, how can we be sure that we know that we think we know the skeptical thesis?

    In other words, statements are about a subject matter, and given the fact that the skeptical thesis is a statement about the nature of knowledge and must therefore itself be an item of knowledge, the skeptical thesis must invalidate itself. That is to say, that the skeptical thesis that no one can be sure they know anything is 'self-refuting'.



    Ah yes, mythological tales are often much more satisfying than scientific arguments, they appeal to our primal urges. Although the Nordic Gods do this much better than the Abrahamic. This doesn't mean any of them are true of course.
    What scientific arguments are you talking about, so far I haven’t seen one decent argument for a godless universe.

    Science does not explain what happened. Science doesn't 'say' anything. That is the fallacy of reification. It takes an individual to interpret the evidence. That individual is influenced by his worldview. A faulty worldview will cause an .individual to interpret the evidence inaccurately. It all comes back to a starting point ie God's Word or the skeptical philosophical mind working backwards. The latter will never be satisfied with anything but a godless conclusion

    Nordic god’s fail because none of them can account for existence, they also have a pecking order.

    How could THor be the creator of existence if he is contingent upon Odin? Makes no sense, Is Thor a Trinitarian God or something?
    Last edited by Cornell; 07-27-2014, 04:50 PM.

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  • Tassman
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    why am I arguing with someone who obviously doesn't understand philosophy or science?

    move along now. Go play with your leggos.
    Typical bald assertions followed by the usual Appeal to Ridicule Fallacy.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    Originally posted by Tassman View Post
    Nope. A metaphysical premise cannot be established as true on its own account - it can only be based upon existing factual knowledge, which may or may not be true. It doesn't have the methodology to acquire new facts, whereas science does. Thus philosophy can reformulate the existing known facts, sometimes enabling us to view them in a new way, but they remain grounded in the existing world-view. E.g. Aristotle's world-view was grounded in the intuitive notion of a geocentric universe. It took scientific methodology to prove that he was wrong.



    You don't actually. It is a process,not a discovery and it involves input from several branches of the natural sciences and multiple testing of hypotheses. There are very few "eureka moments" in science.
    why am I arguing with someone who obviously doesn't understand philosophy or science?

    move along now. Go play with your leggos.

    Leave a comment:


  • Tassman
    replied
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    You have already been given examples of how philosophy can generate new truths about nature. Especially OUR own nature. Or rather I should say "discover" new truths, since you don't "generate" truth, you just uncover it.

    utter fail on your part.
    Nope. A metaphysical premise cannot be established as true on its own account - it can only be based upon existing factual knowledge, which may or may not be true. It doesn't have the methodology to acquire new facts, whereas science does. Thus philosophy can reformulate the existing known facts, sometimes enabling us to view them in a new way, but they remain grounded in the existing world-view. E.g. Aristotle's world-view was grounded in the intuitive notion of a geocentric universe. It took scientific methodology to prove that he was wrong.

    Or rather I should say "discover" new truths,since you don't "generate" truth, you just uncover it.
    You don't actually. It is a process,not a discovery and it involves input from several branches of the natural sciences and multiple testing of hypotheses. There are very few "eureka moments" in science.

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