Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Christian Topic => Topic started by: Jack Knave on November 10, 2015, 01:33:15 PM
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
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Even if you couldn't, Jack, countless others have :)
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Even if you couldn't, Jack, countless others have :)
What, 100% without doubt? Why did some top philosophers say they couldn't in the late 80's then, as mentioned above. Who have done this?
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Even if you couldn't, Jack, countless others have :)
What, 100% without doubt? Why did some top philosophers say they couldn't in the late 80's then, as mentioned above. Who have done this?
Kant disposed of the ontological argument a couple of centuries ago. It is history outwith Christian apologists.
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
Surely this is just similar to Russell's statement on it that it feels hard to dispute because it doesn't really put anything forward. The problem with the ontological argument is not its power, but its emptiness. Arguing against it directly is like punching a shadow. the argument itself has no substance, so indulging it gives it too much credit.
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I've never met anyone who was impressed by it. Are there such people? Incidentally, Aquinas gave it a right kicking.
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I've never met anyone who was impressed by it. Are there such people? Incidentally, Aquinas gave it a right kicking.
I think it must be in the autobiography: as a young man Bertrand Russell was very briefly persuaded by it - he had a sudden epiphany coming out of the tobacconist and threw his tin of pipe baccy up in the air - until he stopped to think about it more and realised why he was wrong to have thought so.
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined).
The Invisible Pink Unicorn exists as an idea in the mind.
A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, Pinker than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
Thus, if The Invisible Pink Unicorn exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is Pinker than The Invisible Pink Unicorn (that is, a Pinkest possible being that does exist).
But we cannot imagine something that is Pinker than The Invisible Pink Unicorn (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being Pinker than the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined.)
Therefore, The Invisible Pink Unicorn exists.
The above is the version of the argument given by Wikipedia but with "God" replaced by "Invisible Pink Unicorn" and "Great" replaced by "Pink".The logic is thus identical in form to that of the Ontological Argument. Most people would claim that the conclusion is nonsense, therefore there must be something wrong with the argument.
There are a number of things wrong with it.
The first is the idea that there is a maximum possible pinkness/greatness. That seems to me like arguing that there is a maximum number. You imagine a maximum possible number, there's always a bigger one. Furthermore, is greatness even something that is quantifiable. Is Pele greater than Serena Williams or Fangio?
The second is the idea that being real is a property of an object that somehow enhances its other attributes. When comparing real objects, the attributes of imaginary objects all count for zero. The jeremyp Tower is made from sticky backed plastic and washing up liquid bottles. It's located in the Place de la Concorde and is 325 metres high. It's one metre taller than the Eiffel Tower. Is it the tallest tower in Paris? No. If Paris was levelled so that the tallest building left is a one story building on the Rue Morgue, would it be the tallest building in Paris? Still no. The fictional height of my tower counts for nothing in the real World. In comparison to an imaginary greatest being, I an greater than it is in the real World.
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined)
Except anything that isn't invisible and even the vaguest shade of pink.
Sorry Jezzer but Dulux fucked your argument decades ago.
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined).
What about Steven Pinker?
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined)
Except anything that isn't invisible and even the vaguest shade of pink.
Sorry Jezzer but Dulux fucked your argument decades ago.
Have you got anything to say about the substantial points of my post or are you picking nits with a minor point about the example because you've got nothing? Whether the unicorn is visible or invisible, if I'd chosen "tower" and "tallness" or "Christian" and "boneheadedness" the destruction of the ontological argument remains the same.
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined)
Except anything that isn't invisible and even the vaguest shade of pink.
Sorry Jezzer but Dulux fucked your argument decades ago.
Have you got anything to say about the substantial points of my post
Yes.......No matter what Pink you imagine.........Steven's Pinker.
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
Do you have the home address/telephone number/e-mail/facebook/twitter accounts for Jesus? He must have updated as the prayer line is defunct! ;D ;D ;D
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
Do you have the home address/telephone number/e-mail/facebook/twitter accounts for Jesus? He must have updated as the prayer line is defunct! ;D ;D ;D
A bit like these monks who just appear and disappear! ;)
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
Do you have the home address/telephone number/e-mail/facebook/twitter accounts for Jesus? He must have updated as the prayer line is defunct! ;D ;D ;D
You are so busy condemning rather than listening Floo that you pass right over Almighty God's Wi-Fi connection. It is set up by Jesus Christ who tells us that unless we try and follow him as accurately as possible we will never contact God. Now, if we follow that instruction we find that we must put on meekness and meekness is similar to the electric attitude of 'lilies in the valley' and this is the wave-length that Almighty God...Jesus Christ...every sincere Christian, and all life, finds the most rewarding because it gives us God's finest reward being a righteous attachment to God's 'love'...'dynamic energy'...'fountain of living waters'.
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined)
Except anything that isn't invisible and even the vaguest shade of pink.
Sorry Jezzer but Dulux fucked your argument decades ago.
Have you got anything to say about the substantial points of my post
Yes.......No matter what Pink you imagine.........Steven's Pinker.
You could have just said no.
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
Do you have the home address/telephone number/e-mail/facebook/twitter accounts for Jesus? He must have updated as the prayer line is defunct! ;D ;D ;D
You are so busy condemning rather than listening Floo that you pass right over Almighty God's Wi-Fi connection. It is set up by Jesus Christ who tells us that unless we try and follow him as accurately as possible we will never contact God. Now, if we follow that instruction we find that we must put on meekness and meekness is similar to the electric attitude of 'lilies in the valley' and this is the wave-length that Almighty God...Jesus Christ...every sincere Christian, and all life, finds the most rewarding because it gives us God's finest reward being a righteous attachment to God's 'love'...'dynamic energy'...'fountain of living waters'.
Listening to whom? I have read the Bible many times and the nicey, nicey deity of your vivid imagination is not featured in it!
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If you have a spare 45 minutes there was an In Our Time episode devoted to this. It's on the radio 4 iplayer. It was good.
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
Do you have the home address/telephone number/e-mail/facebook/twitter accounts for Jesus? He must have updated as the prayer line is defunct! ;D ;D ;D
You are so busy condemning rather than listening Floo that you pass right over Almighty God's Wi-Fi connection. It is set up by Jesus Christ who tells us that unless we try and follow him as accurately as possible we will never contact God. Now, if we follow that instruction we find that we must put on meekness and meekness is similar to the electric attitude of 'lilies in the valley' and this is the wave-length that Almighty God...Jesus Christ...every sincere Christian, and all life, finds the most rewarding because it gives us God's finest reward being a righteous attachment to God's 'love'...'dynamic energy'...'fountain of living waters'.
Listening to whom? I have read the Bible many times and the nicey, nicey deity of your vivid imagination is not featured in it
The quite staggering repetition of your ignorance is almost beyond description. You have never read the Bible many times: if you had you would realise that the love shown by Our Lord shines through. Shame on you for your deceit!!
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The quite staggering repetition of your ignorance is almost beyond description. You have never read the Bible many times
I don't know if Floo has read the Bible never, once, twice or many times; I do know however that for precisely the same reason you're in no position to refute her statement.
if you had you would realise that the love shown by Our Lord shines through. Shame on you for your deceit!!
Apart from the many times where it doesn't, of course. References (plenty of) available on request, boring as they are. No deceit involved; just the ability to read.
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Even if you couldn't, Jack, countless others have :)
What, 100% without doubt? Why did some top philosophers say they couldn't in the late 80's then, as mentioned above. Who have done this?
Kant disposed of the ontological argument a couple of centuries ago. It is history outwith Christian apologists.
It's first disposal came with Guanilo.....Lying or ignorant antitheists accredit it to Hume.
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Shaker,
"I don't know if Floo has read the Bible never, once, twice or many times; I do know however that for precisely the same reason you're in no position to refute her statement."
I studied the subject at College; taught RE all my working life, and continue to study the subject. I have a far greater experience of and knowledge of the Bible than Floo (or you, of course), and all that leads me to the pretty obvious conclusion that Floo talks ignorant, biased, and closed-minded nonsense about the Bible.
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... all of which little rant, beside being a masterclass in irrelevance to the point at hand that I made, is that you don't like what Floo says about the Bible and Christianity, not that she's wrong. So what?
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... all of which little rant, beside being a masterclass in irrelevance to the point at hand that I made, is that you don't like what Floo says about the Bible and Christianity, not that she's wrong. So what?
Not a rant - usual mis-representation by you, or perhaps just a failure to understand. And it was not i who introduced irrelevance to the thread - I simply respond the the comment of others. No, I don't like what she says, nor do I accept for a second her claim to have read the Bible "many times." But my main gripe is that she merely repeats the same silly and puerile comments daily, and makes no attempt to argue her case, simply ignoring every post addressed to her. She has not answered even one of my attempts to engage her in actual discussion. Yes, she is wrong, and, "so what?" Well, dear fellow, when someone is wrong you try to point it out to them, and talk it through. With Floo that, as I said, is not possible, for her mind is totally closed to all other views.
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If she is wrong, where have you demonstrated her to be so?
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If she is wrong, where have you demonstrated her to be so?
I have no intention of listing the silly and uninformed comments she makes about so many aspects of the Bible, which any person with a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible, can see. You have none, so you are out of the discussion. In any case, I think to expect you to discuss the Bible when your theological level amounts to describing Jesus as a "zombie on a stick," is a non-starter.
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I have no intention ...
Copping-out, then. Simple as.
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I have no intention ...
Copping-out, then. Simple as.
No, you are copping out, because you cannot discuss theology at any level, other than that of name-calling, because of your lack of knowledge. It's no wonder, then, that you have an affinity with Floo. Pathetic!
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There is no "level" at which rational people can discuss theology except as - as someone whose name escapes me temporarily defined it - the study of nothing.
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There is no "level" at which rational people can discuss theology except as - as someone whose name escapes me temporarily defined it - the study of nothing.
Now that is a cop-out!
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No, it isn't. It's a subject without an object.
It was, incidentally, that great man, Thomas Paine:
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
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No, it isn't. It's a subject without an object.
It was, incidentally, that great man, Thomas Paine:
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
You think he was a great man, but plenty would disagree: "Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine."
Also, rather at variance with your quote, he also said, "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life."
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You seem to think that that's a criticism of Paine. It isn't - it's a tribute to him, by another of the world's great critics of religion, Robert Ingersoll. Read it again. (Been Googling away I see, hypocrite).
I never said anything with regard to Paine's opinions on God (he was a deist) but on theology.
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You seem to think that that's a criticism of Paine. It isn't - it's a tribute to him. Read it again. (Been Googling away I see, hypocrite).
I never said anything with regard to Paine's opinions on God (he was a deist) but on theology.
All very well quoting another person's views on religion; but it conveniently avoids you having to become engaged in theological discussion on your own account, because you haven't the expertise. You simply rely on blanket denunciation, which is the greatest cop-out of all.
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Expertise in theology? Oh, very good. Tell us another one :D
And I never indulge in blanket denunciation. Blankets, unlike theology, serve a purpose and are actually useful ;)
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Expertise in theology? Oh, very good. Tell us another one :D
I was referring to your lack of expertise; I don't know what you thought. I suppose it's getting late for you. Dropping off, are you? Try and follow, or go to beddy byes. :)
"Blankets, unlike theology, serve a purpose and are actually useful." That inanity nicely demonstrates what I said: your total lack of expertise, and inability to make a positive comment, only the repetitive denunciation.
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And I was referring to the joke you made, the one about there being such a thing as expertise in theology.
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And I was referring to the joke you made, the one about there being such a thing as expertise in theology.
What a lame, petty, comment - nothing new there, then.
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And correct :D
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And correct :D
Lame, petty, and incorrect, as always. :)
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Then demonstrate me to be so. You'll have to do this by providing an objective yardstick of this so-called "expertise" in theology by which a scale of worst - bad - good - better - best can be ascertained as it can with, say, plumbing or science.
Best of luck with that ;)
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Then demonstrate me to be so. You'll have to do this by providing an objective yardstick of this so-called "expertise" in theology by which a scale of worst - bad - good - better - best can be ascertained as it can with, say, plumbing or science.
Best of luck with that ;)
Don't try and cloud the issue. You are simply unable to argue theological topics when they arise, because you lack any basic knowledge. Pick out any theological topic from this forum, and make your "informed" contribution, and prove you have some idea. Good luck with that - and don't try and google your way out of it. :)
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Don't try and cloud the issue. You are simply unable to argue theological topics when they arise, because you lack any basic knowledge. Pick out any theological topic from this forum, and make your "informed" contribution, and prove you have some idea. Good luck with that - and don't try and google your way out of it. :)
Not clouding the issue in the least - this is the crux of theology's uselessness. For there to be expertise in any area there has to be an objective scale by which this can be assessed. There are bad toilet cleaners and good toilet cleaners, there are bad electricians and good electricians, there are bad scientists and good scientists because we know how to tell one from the other - based on objective, observable, testable results. There's a way of knowing the difference.
Theology? Nope ;)
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Don't try and cloud the issue. You are simply unable to argue theological topics when they arise, because you lack any basic knowledge. Pick out any theological topic from this forum, and make your "informed" contribution, and prove you have some idea. Good luck with that - and don't try and google your way out of it. :)
Not clouding the issue in the least - this is the crux of theology's uselessness. For there to be expertise in any area there has to be an objective scale by which this can be assessed. There are bad toilet cleaners and good toilet cleaners, there are bad electricians and good electricians, there are bad scientists and good scientists because we know how to tell one from the other - based on objective, observable, testable results.
Theology? Nope ;)
I understand. By adopting that attitude, you can avoid getting involved in discussion, thus covering your ignorance. Good try: well, not a good try actually, just the same old cop-out.
And on the subject of out, I'm out of here. Good night.
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Not unexpected :)
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Don't try and cloud the issue. You are simply unable to argue theological topics when they arise, because you lack any basic knowledge. Pick out any theological topic from this forum, and make your "informed" contribution, and prove you have some idea. Good luck with that - and don't try and google your way out of it. :)
Not clouding the issue in the least - this is the crux of theology's uselessness. For there to be expertise in any area there has to be an objective scale by which this can be assessed. There are bad toilet cleaners and good toilet cleaners, there are bad electricians and good electricians, there are bad scientists and good scientists because we know how to tell one from the other - based on objective, observable, testable results. There's a way of knowing the difference.
Theology? Nope ;)
Poor Shaker revealing his ignorance of what theology is and promoting the big fat lie that everything that isn't science is failed science.
Theology is also based on agreed experience and pastoral experience.
Your scientism is just based on circular argument.
A better example of failed science is the decades of dashing young blades working on string theory and not coming out with very much. One of these young blades is a board pin up boy who now wants to squeeze science into string theory by removing falsifiability from science.
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Perhaps you can tell us how you get a level of "expertise" in theology, then, Vlad. Seeing as BA has blobbed it and all ;)
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Then demonstrate me to be so. You'll have to do this by providing an objective yardstick of this so-called "expertise" in theology by which a scale of worst - bad - good - better - best can be ascertained as it can with, say, plumbing or science.
Best of luck with that ;)
What about the army of string theorists who haven't come up with very much?
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What about you sticking to the question you've been asked for a change?
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What about you sticking to the question you've been asked for a change?
What about the questions asked of you guys?
You are acting as though you have the sole right to the inquisitorial role by portraying yourselves as the people who just want to know and who raise no questions in what you believe?
I've answered all your questions and will do again but for the time being this should be enough to keep anyone going......There is knowledge that only you can know yourself i.e that you are conscious of your own existence in a way no one else can be. Having established that then other similar types of knowledge, the existence of god for example are possible.
That is my overarching answer to your ''issues''. Shaker, it has been given. To continue as you guys always do that your questions go unanswered is a fat lie.
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What about you sticking to the question you've been asked for a change?
What about the questions asked of you guys?
You are acting as though you have the sole right to the inquisitorial role by portraying yourselves as the people who just want to know and who raise no questions in what you believe?
I've answered all your questions and will do again but for the time being this should be enough to keep anyone going......There is knowledge that only you can know yourself i.e that you are conscious of your own existence in a way no one else can be. Having established that then other similar types of knowledge, the existence of god for example are possible.
That is my overarching answer to your ''issues''. Shaker, it has been given. To continue as you guys always do that your questions go unanswered is a fat lie.
Absolutely spot-on. I have made this point before. The atheists on here seem to think that it is the business of this forum to grill theists constantly. They have nothing else to offer; and by now nothing new to ask. Best thing would be for them all think of something else to do: they could try and be less confrontational and discuss subjects maturely (talk of fairies, etc, is the stuff of the playground); failing that, take up pottery, or something!
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One wonders if that evil so and so (every bad word in all languages) of a deity was sitting on its cloud rubbing its hand and getting off on the terrible events in Paris. If it was omnipotent it would have been capable of stopping it! >:( >:( >:(
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One wonders if that evil so and so (every bad word in all languages) of a deity was sitting on its cloud rubbing its hand and getting off on the terrible events in Paris. If it was omnipotent it would have been capable of stopping it! >:( >:( >:(
A sick comment, bred from ignorance. Shame!
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Absolutely spot-on. I have made this point before. The atheists on here seem to think that it is the business of this forum to grill theists constantly.
It seems to be the business of theists here to reel out baseless assertions and unsubstantiated claims on a daily basis and not expect to be grilled on them, adding hypocrisy into their toxic mix by demanding evidence from all and sundry yet going into hiding when somebody asks them to justify their assertions. That's not the way it works, and nor should it.
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It seems to be the business of theists here to reel out baseless assertions and unsubstantiated claims on a daily basis and not expect to be grilled on them, adding hypocrisy into their toxic mix by demanding evidence from all and sundry yet going into hiding when somebody asks them to justify their assertions. That's not the way it works, and nor should it.
You will keep on throwing out the same "accusations," and in doing so entirely validate my point. It's luducrous, especially so from one ( you ) who has little Biblical knowledge.
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Then show the accusations to be wrong. You don't get to be validated by simply saying that you are - that would be 'luducrous.'
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Then show the accusations to be wrong. You don't get to be validated by simply saying that you are - that would be 'luducrous.'
I'm not under cross-examination, by you, or anyone. If you want to find some answers, do some more of your prolific googling; or read a little theology. After all, to listen to you one might think you've read most of the other books in the world by now! Perhaps you could ask Floo to help you out: she's read the Bible many times; though at present she's busting a gasket - she seems to be taking a leaf out of your book with her obscenities.
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Absolutely spot-on. I have made this point before. The atheists on here seem to think that it is the business of this forum to grill theists constantly.
It seems to be the business of theists here to reel out baseless assertions and unsubstantiated claims on a daily basis and not expect to be grilled on them, adding hypocrisy into their toxic mix by demanding evidence from all and sundry yet going into hiding when somebody asks them to justify their assertions. That's not the way it works, and nor should it.
If people post on forums they have to expect their beliefs to be challenged. I make no apology at all for making comments about the Biblical deity, which are not to the taste of some. However, although of course I don't believe it exists, I detest the way some of those that do behave. We have a few posters who have the temerity to call themselves 'Christians' whom Jesus might have been ashamed if he had been a halfway decent person. They slag others off, but have a total inability to see how unpleasant they are! I am repeating myself, a habit my husband frequently points out to me! But I will continue to bang on about the hypocrisy of those who give Christianity a bad name, as it does the Christians who are very good people no favours at all!
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Absolutely spot-on. I have made this point before. The atheists on here seem to think that it is the business of this forum to grill theists constantly.
It seems to be the business of theists here to reel out baseless assertions and unsubstantiated claims on a daily basis and not expect to be grilled on them, adding hypocrisy into their toxic mix by demanding evidence from all and sundry yet going into hiding when somebody asks them to justify their assertions. That's not the way it works, and nor should it.
Do you ever actually address the specific questions put to you? You seem to class any Christian who questions your views as a "bad" Christian. Would that be a valid criticism? (Sits back and waits for an answer - expecting a very long wait.)
If people post on forums they have to expect their beliefs to be challenged. I make no apology at all for making comments about the Biblical deity, which are not to the taste of some. However, although of course I don't believe it exists, I detest the way some of those that do behave. We have a few posters who have the temerity to call themselves 'Christians' whom Jesus might have been ashamed if he had been a halfway decent person. They slag others off, but have a total inability to see how unpleasant they are! I am repeating myself, a habit my husband frequently points out to me! But I will continue to bang on about the hypocrisy of those who give Christianity a bad name, as it does the Christians who are very good people no favours at all!
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I'm not under cross-examination, by you, or anyone.
A perfect illustration and example of my point.
Perhaps you could ask Floo to help you out: she's read the Bible many times; though at present she's busting a gasket - she seems to be taking a leaf out of your book with her obscenities.
Which obscenities might these be?
Did she go and say 'bum' again, Bashers?
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I'm not under cross-examination, by you, or anyone.
A perfect illustration and example of my point.
Perhaps you could ask Floo to help you out: she's read the Bible many times; though at present she's busting a gasket - she seems to be taking a leaf out of your book with her obscenities.
Which obscenities might these be?
Did she go and say 'bum' again, Bashers?
Read the post, and if you don't consider she has used obscenities, then it just says something about your standards.
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#52?
Are we talking about the same post? There are no obscenities in it.
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#52?
Are we talking about the same post? There are no obscenities in it.
I'm referring to "God's Love," M37
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Nope, didn't see any there either.
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Nope, didn't see any there either.
Surprise, surprise!
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All:
It is very sad when God's words of, great tribulations...wars and rumours of wars...difficult times hard to deal with, come to fruition. Almighty God didn't even spare his son from great atrocities administered by evil but left the redress to be made, exclusively, by resurrection, and my confidence is such that the innocent and the faithful here, and in past events, and future events of this type, will be resurrected.
Floo's initial reaction can serve as a learning curve in these events...we want to hit back and injure those who injure us and this is what is happening on the world stage and why we can confidently say that WW3 is just around the corner.
We can't be entirely sure how these things will unfold and how it will affect us personally but we can be sure that by following the accurate teaching of Jesus Christ we aren't adding to the distress and we have a chance of resurrection, through God's love and Jesus' teaching of righteousness.
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Nope, didn't see any there either.
Surprise, surprise!
Well, tell me where you think the obscenity is or obscenities are.
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Absolutely spot-on. I have made this point before. The atheists on here seem to think that it is the business of this forum to grill theists constantly.
It seems to be the business of theists here to reel out baseless assertions and unsubstantiated claims on a daily basis and not expect to be grilled on them, adding hypocrisy into their toxic mix by demanding evidence from all and sundry yet going into hiding when somebody asks them to justify their assertions. That's not the way it works, and nor should it.
If people post on forums they have to expect their beliefs to be challenged.
Yes..........please start expecting.
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If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
That's lovely, I have a copy of his rather inventive manifesto statement, complete with all the supernatural trimmings, but could you tell me when his constituency hours start? I'd like to talk to him about some his claims, but he doesn't seem to answer...
O.
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The quite staggering repetition of your ignorance is almost beyond description. You have never read the Bible many times: if you had you would realise that the love shown by Our Lord shines through. Shame on you for your deceit!!
It doesn't shine through on us quite as hard as it shone through on Sodom and Gommorah, though, or on the first-born of Egypt, or on the children ripped apart by bears, or on all the occupants of the Earth except Noah and his immediately family, or the 150+ people killed yesterday in Paris.
You see love shining through, I see some nice ideas interspersed with some horrific ones. That people can have different interpretations should not come as surprise; shame on you for an accusation of 'deceit' just because someone doesn't feel as you do.
O.
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Absolutely spot-on. I have made this point before. The atheists on here seem to think that it is the business of this forum to grill theists constantly.
It seems to be the business of theists here to reel out baseless assertions
I have told you the basis on which I operate. Talk of scientific validation is mere scrabbling about in the toolkit and coming out with 'Empiricism' for a quick fix. Try going the whole hog on empiricism and see where that gets you......of course it's empiricism today, scientism when it suits.
I don't with science here.
Mt disgreements are with the obvious philosophies people dress the science up in....and no ..............philosophies can't be validated.
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Nope, didn't see any there either.
Surprise, surprise!
Well, tell me where you think the obscenity is or obscenities are.
It is obscene to refer to God using that particular word b- word; even she admitted to being "crude;" referring to God as performing a particular act. I am treading carefully so as not to repeat the actual words, or some clever clogs will say I'm using bad language.
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If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
That's lovely, I have a copy of his rather inventive manifesto statement, complete with all the supernatural trimmings, but could you tell me when his constituency hours start? I'd like to talk to him about some his claims, but he doesn't seem to answer...
O.
Reply #15 covers it adequately Outrider.
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Absolutely spot-on. I have made this point before. The atheists on here seem to think that it is the business of this forum to grill theists constantly.
It seems to be the business of theists here to reel out baseless assertions and unsubstantiated claims on a daily basis and not expect to be grilled on them, adding hypocrisy into their toxic mix by demanding evidence from all and sundry yet going into hiding when somebody asks them to justify their assertions. That's not the way it works, and nor should it.
If people post on forums they have to expect their beliefs to be challenged. I make no apology at all for making comments about the Biblical deity, which are not to the taste of some. However, although of course I don't believe it exists, I detest the way some of those that do behave. We have a few posters who have the temerity to call themselves 'Christians' whom Jesus might have been ashamed if he had been a halfway decent person. They slag others off, but have a total inability to see how unpleasant they are! I am repeating myself, a habit my husband frequently points out to me! But I will continue to bang on about the hypocrisy of those who give Christianity a bad name, as it does the Christians who are very good people no favours at all!
Yes you can take the above line.
To me it just shows up the elephant in the room.....Human sin.
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Expertise in theology? Oh, very good. Tell us another one :D
I was referring to your lack of expertise; I don't know what you thought. I suppose it's getting late for you. Dropping off, are you? Try and follow, or go to beddy byes. :)
"Blankets, unlike theology, serve a purpose and are actually useful." That inanity nicely demonstrates what I said: your total lack of expertise, and inability to make a positive comment, only the repetitive denunciation.
The argument from authority is a logical fallacy to start with, but when in an areas where the very concept of authority is questionable - theology - it's doubly so. You can be an expert on the history of theology - who made up what, when - but theology itself is merely spouting on conjecture about hypothetical maybes.
O.
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Expertise in theology? Oh, very good. Tell us another one :D
I was referring to your lack of expertise; I don't know what you thought. I suppose it's getting late for you. Dropping off, are you? Try and follow, or go to beddy byes. :)
"Blankets, unlike theology, serve a purpose and are actually useful." That inanity nicely demonstrates what I said: your total lack of expertise, and inability to make a positive comment, only the repetitive denunciation.
The argument from authority is a logical fallacy to start with, but when in an areas where the very concept of authority is questionable - theology - it's doubly so. You can be an expert on the history of theology - who made up what, when - but theology itself is merely spouting on conjecture about hypothetical maybes.
O.
Why "spouting?" Can't you show any respect for the views of others?
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I'm not under cross-examination, by you, or anyone.
A perfect illustration and example of my point.
Perhaps you could ask Floo to help you out: she's read the Bible many times; though at present she's busting a gasket - she seems to be taking a leaf out of your book with her obscenities.
Which obscenities might these be?
Did she go and say 'bum' again, Bashers?
I haven't used any obscenities. ::)
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Expertise in theology? Oh, very good. Tell us another one :D
I was referring to your lack of expertise; I don't know what you thought. I suppose it's getting late for you. Dropping off, are you? Try and follow, or go to beddy byes. :)
"Blankets, unlike theology, serve a purpose and are actually useful." That inanity nicely demonstrates what I said: your total lack of expertise, and inability to make a positive comment, only the repetitive denunciation.
The argument from authority is a logical fallacy to start with, but when in an areas where the very concept of authority is questionable - theology - it's doubly so. You can be an expert on the history of theology - who made up what, when - but theology itself is merely spouting on conjecture about hypothetical maybes.
O.
Wjy "spouting?" Can't you show any respect for the views of others?
I respect your right to it, but how I can give it any respect - it's a field based on absolutely nothing. Profound statements based on attempting to apply tortuous logic to a fundemantally undemonstrated conjecture. You can't say anything with any authority because there's no firm foundation on which to base anything.
O.
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If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
That's lovely, I have a copy of his rather inventive manifesto statement, complete with all the supernatural trimmings, but could you tell me when his constituency hours start? I'd like to talk to him about some his claims, but he doesn't seem to answer...
O.
Reply #15 covers it adequately Outrider.
You think?
"You are so busy condemning rather than listening Floo that you pass right over Almighty God's Wi-Fi connection. It is set up by Jesus Christ who tells us that unless we try and follow him as accurately as possible we will never contact God. Now, if we follow that instruction we find that we must put on meekness and meekness is similar to the electric attitude of 'lilies in the valley' and this is the wave-length that Almighty God...Jesus Christ...every sincere Christian, and all life, finds the most rewarding because it gives us God's finest reward being a righteous attachment to God's 'love'...'dynamic energy'...'fountain of living waters'."
That's, essentially, a claim that you don't have to justify the claim: if you don't accept it that's your fault, and if you do accept it you'll only know the truth for sure after your dead when you can no longer communicate that fact back. There's convenient.
It's an untestable claim, and therefore just an assertion which can be dismissed as you've not made your case.
O.
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What about the questions asked of you guys?
No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'god(s)'; we say 'prove it'.
I've answered all your questions and will do again but for the time being this should be enough to keep anyone going......There is knowledge that only you can know yourself i.e that you are conscious of your own existence in a way no one else can be. Having established that then other similar types of knowledge, the existence of god for example are possible.
No. The point of, say, Descartes and 'I think therefore I am' is that it establishes some knowledge is not gathered from outside, via the senses, but can be deduced from internal evidence. God is not internal, and any deduction must be based on knowledge supplied by sensory evidence. It is, therefore, subjective and needs to be verified in some way.
O.
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If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
That's lovely, I have a copy of his rather inventive manifesto statement, complete with all the supernatural trimmings, but could you tell me when his constituency hours start? I'd like to talk to him about some his claims, but he doesn't seem to answer...
O.
Reply #15 covers it adequately Outrider.
You think?
"You are so busy condemning rather than listening Floo that you pass right over Almighty God's Wi-Fi connection. It is set up by Jesus Christ who tells us that unless we try and follow him as accurately as possible we will never contact God. Now, if we follow that instruction we find that we must put on meekness and meekness is similar to the electric attitude of 'lilies in the valley' and this is the wave-length that Almighty God...Jesus Christ...every sincere Christian, and all life, finds the most rewarding because it gives us God's finest reward being a righteous attachment to God's 'love'...'dynamic energy'...'fountain of living waters'."
That's, essentially, a claim that you don't have to justify the claim: if you don't accept it that's your fault, and if you do accept it you'll only know the truth for sure after your dead when you can no longer communicate that fact back. There's convenient.
It's an untestable claim, and therefore just an assertion which can be dismissed as you've not made your case.
O.
Naturalism is an untestable claim as you know.
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What about the questions asked of you guys?
No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'god(s)'; we say 'prove it'.
No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
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What about the questions asked of you guys?
No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'god(s)'; we say 'prove it'.
No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
No, we claim a methodology that gives provisional explanations. Science doesn't prove anything, I'm pretty sure we've mentioned this before.
O.
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If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
That's lovely, I have a copy of his rather inventive manifesto statement, complete with all the supernatural trimmings, but could you tell me when his constituency hours start? I'd like to talk to him about some his claims, but he doesn't seem to answer...
O.
Reply #15 covers it adequately Outrider.
You think?
"You are so busy condemning rather than listening Floo that you pass right over Almighty God's Wi-Fi connection. It is set up by Jesus Christ who tells us that unless we try and follow him as accurately as possible we will never contact God. Now, if we follow that instruction we find that we must put on meekness and meekness is similar to the electric attitude of 'lilies in the valley' and this is the wave-length that Almighty God...Jesus Christ...every sincere Christian, and all life, finds the most rewarding because it gives us God's finest reward being a righteous attachment to God's 'love'...'dynamic energy'...'fountain of living waters'."
That's, essentially, a claim that you don't have to justify the claim: if you don't accept it that's your fault, and if you do accept it you'll only know the truth for sure after your dead when you can no longer communicate that fact back. There's convenient.
It's an untestable claim, and therefore just an assertion which can be dismissed as you've not made your case.
O.
Naturalism is an untestable claim as you know.
Our experience is subjective. All claims are ultimately untestable, or resting on unverifiable assumptions. All knowledge devolves to the sollypsism. In practical terms, though, we appear to collaborate in a consistent, physical world. Even if the things we learn are only valid in that appearance of reality, that's a frameowork in which we have reason to claim their validity. Religious claims, by contrast, don't have that.
Yes naturalism is an assumption, but it's an open one, and the deductions that follow from it continue to justify it. Religion, on the other hand, stands as an untestable assertion.
O.
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
or put more honestly nature just looking at itself, explaining itself in it's own terms and making a punt that this is all there is. Naturalists being people sliding serrupticiously from a method to a philosophy hoping no one notices.
That the methodology works on nature doesn't help you out in anyway.
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
or put more honestly nature just looking at itself, explaining itself in it's own terms and making a punt that this is all there is. Naturalists being people sliding serrupticiously from a method to a philosophy hoping no one notices.
That the methodology works on nature doesn't help you out in anyway.
No, naturalism works on refining our understanding of nature, and the continued accuracy of the scientific method in predicting future discoveries validates the idea. It has nothing to say on whether there's anything else anywhere else, but unfortunately for you neither do you.
If you want to justify claims of spirits, gods, afterlives, souls and what-not you need more than just assertions, you need a methodology with openly stated and accepted limitations.
So far, it seems, you don't have that.
O.
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined)
Except anything that isn't invisible and even the vaguest shade of pink.
Sorry Jezzer but Dulux fucked your argument decades ago.
:-[
Ooh you naughty boy!
Lucky for you that BA seems to have missed this post otherwise he would have been all over you like a bad rash.
Possibly posting something like this to you?
You are nothing but a foul-mouthed, pretentious hypocrite. I wonder if you talk like this to family and friends, or whether you are just one of those Walter Mitty saddos who lives his life out on the Internet? This is not abuse, but a considered evaluation of your behaviour.
or maybe
You have no control and only a sparse vocabulary.
or
I'm merely pointing out how disreputable your language is.
or even;
you are a very immature and foul-mouthed old guy. Go and wash your mouth out with carbolic soap. :D
I'm sure that it is nothing other than a rare oversight on his part and nothing to do with the fact that you are not an atheist! ::) :-\
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It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being than which none Pinker can be imagined (that is, the Pinkest possible being that can be imagined)
Except anything that isn't invisible and even the vaguest shade of pink.
Sorry Jezzer but Dulux fucked your argument decades ago.
:-[
Ooh you naughty boy!
Lucky for you that BA seems to have missed this post otherwise he would have been all over you like a bad rash.
Possibly posting something like this to you?
You are nothing but a foul-mouthed, pretentious hypocrite. I wonder if you talk like this to family and friends, or whether you are just one of those Walter Mitty saddos who lives his life out on the Internet? This is not abuse, but a considered evaluation of your behaviour.
or maybe
You have no control and only a sparse vocabulary.
or
I'm merely pointing out how disreputable your language is.
or even;
you are a very immature and foul-mouthed old guy. Go and wash your mouth out with carbolic soap. :D
I'm sure that it is nothing other than a rare oversight on his part and nothing to do with the fact that you are not an atheist! ::) :-\
;D ;D ;D
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
or put more honestly nature just looking at itself, explaining itself in it's own terms and making a punt that this is all there is. Naturalists being people sliding serrupticiously from a method to a philosophy hoping no one notices.
That the methodology works on nature doesn't help you out in anyway.
No, naturalism works on refining our understanding of nature, and the continued accuracy of the scientific method in predicting future discoveries validates the idea.
O.
And that's it....not whatever else you are dishonestly trying to gussie it up into.
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What about the questions asked of you guys?
No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'god(s)'; we say 'prove it'.
No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
i don't say naturalism. I don't know what it is. You come up with something and I don't care how supernatural it is, whatever that means.
Just define your terms and avoid oxymorons like "fully God and fully man" and remember death is irreversible by definition.
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#52?
Are we talking about the same post? There are no obscenities in it.
I'm referring to "God's Love," M37
God's love is an obscenity?
Yes. A God that condemns people to death for not kow-towing to his son; a god that requires you to be complicit in his son's execution - that god's love is certainly an obscenity.
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#52?
Are we talking about the same post? There are no obscenities in it.
I'm referring to "God's Love," M37
God's love is an obscenity?
Yes. A God that condemns people to death for not kow-towing to his son; a god that requires you to be complicit in his son's execution - that god's love is certainly an obscenity.
But Jeremy. You need to consider whether, as scripture says, you are crucifying Christ all over again on a daily basis.
Only you and he knows that.
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Pretty sure only one does.
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But Jeremy. You need to consider whether, as scripture says, you are crucifying Christ all over again on a daily basis.
Only you and he knows that.
I'm completely certain that I've never crucified anybody in my life.
I'm also completely certain that Jesus is dead and doesn't care if people are still crucifying what's left of him.
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Pretty sure only one does.
Fingers crossed.
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Pretty sure only one does.
Fingers crossed.
No.
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I'm reading a book that was written in the late 80's and it states that this argument is still alive and kicking and philosophers, though they feel it is wrong, can't put their finger on it.
Is this so? I find this hard to believe!!!
And are there any Christians (or anyone else, but it was posited by a Christian) who still use this in their argument for the claim for the existence of God?
I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
If you want to know about Almighty God the best person to ask is Jesus Christ. He portrayed him and told us everything we need to know,...This being that God is the figure-head of all universal knowledge...mainly because he is the living voice of all that energy, all that science, and all that creativity...This is why he is known as an All Knowing God...and why we are invited to share in all that knowledge.
Do you have the home address/telephone number/e-mail/facebook/twitter accounts for Jesus? He must have updated as the prayer line is defunct! ;D ;D ;D
You are so busy condemning rather than listening Floo that you pass right over Almighty God's Wi-Fi connection. It is set up by Jesus Christ who tells us that unless we try and follow him as accurately as possible we will never contact God. Now, if we follow that instruction we find that we must put on meekness and meekness is similar to the electric attitude of 'lilies in the valley' and this is the wave-length that Almighty God...Jesus Christ...every sincere Christian, and all life, finds the most rewarding because it gives us God's finest reward being a righteous attachment to God's 'love'...'dynamic energy'...'fountain of living waters'.
Listening to whom? I have read the Bible many times and the nicey, nicey deity of your vivid imagination is not featured in it
The quite staggering repetition of your ignorance is almost beyond description. You have never read the Bible many times: if you had you would realise that the love shown by Our Lord shines through. Shame on you for your deceit!!
Bashy, love doesn't come from a page. If you think that your life must be very sad!!!
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
or put more honestly nature just looking at itself, explaining itself in it's own terms and making a punt that this is all there is. Naturalists being people sliding serrupticiously from a method to a philosophy hoping no one notices.
That the methodology works on nature doesn't help you out in anyway.
At least it has something to look at. Where's your God?
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
or put more honestly nature just looking at itself, explaining itself in it's own terms and making a punt that this is all there is. Naturalists being people sliding serrupticiously from a method to a philosophy hoping no one notices.
That the methodology works on nature doesn't help you out in anyway.
At least it has something to look at. Where's your God?
Look at Jesus Christ....
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Do you think that's wise?
-
Do you think that's wise?
When did you become an expert on wisdom?
-
Do you think that's wise?
When did you become an expert on wisdom?
Oh, ages ago.
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
or put more honestly nature just looking at itself, explaining itself in it's own terms and making a punt that this is all there is. Naturalists being people sliding serrupticiously from a method to a philosophy hoping no one notices.
That the methodology works on nature doesn't help you out in anyway.
At least it has something to look at. Where's your God?
Look at Jesus Christ....
How?
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Look at Jesus Christ....
How does that help? He's dead.
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And that's it....not whatever else you are dishonestly trying to gussie it up into.
What dishonesty? We have sensory input that suggests a physical reality. We presume that's valid - openly accepting that this is an assumption - and then test that assumption to see what we can discover about that physical reality. From that continued consistency we have a validation of our assumption - still provisional - and we have reason therefore to think that we might be right.
You, and others like you, then throw in ideas like 'gods' and 'souls' and don't have any justification beyond 'but I feel like it', and you pretend like that's therefore worthy of consideration.
I'm not dishonest, I'm perfectly open in what I'm saying. I might, occasionally, misphrase something, or give an incorrect impression, I might even be holding positions that aren't justifiable from those presumptions and you're more than welcome to come an point them out, if you find them.
Doesn't change the facts of the situation: I've presumed physical reality, and the body of scientific evidence reinforces that. You've presumed God, and that's as far you've gotten.
O.
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And that's it....not whatever else you are dishonestly trying to gussie it up into.
What dishonesty? We have sensory input that suggests a physical reality. We presume that's valid - openly accepting that this is an assumption - and then test that assumption to see what we can discover about that physical reality. From that continued consistency we have a validation of our assumption - still provisional - and we have reason therefore to think that we might be right.
You, and others like you, then throw in ideas like 'gods' and 'souls' and don't have any justification beyond 'but I feel like it', and you pretend like that's therefore worthy of consideration.
I'm not dishonest, I'm perfectly open in what I'm saying. I might, occasionally, misphrase something, or give an incorrect impression, I might even be holding positions that aren't justifiable from those presumptions and you're more than welcome to come an point them out, if you find them.
Doesn't change the facts of the situation: I've presumed physical reality, and the body of scientific evidence reinforces that. You've presumed God, and that's as far you've gotten.
O.
You are dishonest when you say I throw gods into it. I don't I throw God into it. That you cannot discriminate between the two concepts is either deliberate ignorance or you are being dishonest.
Physicalism, Materialism or any of those leave there own question mark when they say that ''there is only the physical'' or there is only the material''. Any agnostic could make the arguments I make here.
God the uncaused cause is perfectly reasonable once you establish any precedence for ''uncausality''.
Your logical contortions and floundering when challenged on origins just to maintain your position as ''senior prefect for antitheism merely demonstrates how large God looms in Cosmic explanation.
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Doesn't change the facts of the situation: I've presumed physical reality, and the body of scientific evidence reinforces that. You've presumed God, and that's as far you've gotten.
O.
Yes it's like Johnson kicking a stone to disprove Berkeley. But I am not making Berkeley's argument and what you say merely tells us a physical universe is there......not that it is the whole of reality....Now that is really you gussying something up
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You are dishonest when you say I throw gods into it. I don't I throw God into it. That you cannot discriminate between the two concepts is either deliberate ignorance or you are being dishonest.
So you aren't suggesting that a god exists? This is news - who is that's being dishonest, here?
Physicalism, Materialism or any of those leave there own question mark when they say that ''there is only the physical'' or there is only the material''. Any agnostic could make the arguments I make here.
How can you read what I put and not see an element of 'agnosticism' in it? Naturalism is an openly stated assumption. I don't say 'there is only physical', I say 'we only have reason to accept the idea of material'. We keep asking for a methodology by which we could validate the claim 'god'; until then, agnosticism is quite happily saying your case remains unproven, and therefore I have no obligation to accept it.
God the uncaused cause is perfectly reasonable once you establish any precedence for ''uncausality''.
No, an uncaused cause is begging the question 'why do we need an uncaused cause, what's wrong with an infinite reality'. You have not established any precedence for 'uncausality', and even if you had you have missed the step where you went from 'uncaused cause' to God.
Your logical contortions and floundering when challenged on origins just to maintain your position as ''senior prefect for antitheism merely demonstrates how large God looms in Cosmic explanation.
I didn't realise I'd been promoted. As for logical contortions, what logical contortions? We have an established, well-evidenced system of cause and effect that holds in as much of reality as we are able to determine. So far you've offered nothing to undermine the idea that reality could be infinite and therefore not require any 'creator'. That's not 'logical contortions' unless you're logically challenged.
O.
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Yes it's like Johnson kicking a stone to disprove Berkeley. But I am not making Berkeley's argument and what you say merely tells us a physical universe is there......not that it is the whole of reality....Now that is really you gussying something up
I haven't said 'there is only physical'. I've said there's reason to accept physical, give us a reason to accept something else or I will continue on the presumption that there's only physical.
O.
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why do we need an uncaused cause, what's wrong with an infinite reality'. You have not established any precedence for 'uncausality',
An infinite reality would be uncaused. You establish the precedence every time you propose an infinite reality.
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why do we need an uncaused cause, what's wrong with an infinite reality'. You have not established any precedence for 'uncausality',
An infinite reality would be uncaused. You establish the precedence every time you propose an infinite reality.
No, the concept of an ultimate cause is irrelevant in an infinite reality, nothing is uncaused
O.
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why do we need an uncaused cause, what's wrong with an infinite reality'. You have not established any precedence for 'uncausality',
An infinite reality would be uncaused. You establish the precedence every time you propose an infinite reality.
No, the concept of an ultimate cause is irrelevant in an infinite reality, nothing is uncaused
O.
No
1 something that has no beginning or end is definitionally uncaused. An irrelevance argument here is a red herring.
2You haven't considered the why something and not nothing.
3. Why is it this way? (The question of laws)
4: If you state it is an infinite reality then there is no warrant for the question 'who created God'
5: The universe we live in appears to have had a beginning or at least a point beyond with the laws we observe don't function.
6: Explain why entropy begins 30 billion years ago.
7: Explain the phenomenon of cause.
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1 something that has no beginning or end is definitionally uncaused. An irrelevance argument here is a red herring.
It makes no sense to consider the 'causation' of an infinite thing.
2 You haven't considered the why something and not nothing.
You haven't given any reason to think there's a why.
3. Why is it this way? (The question of laws)
Are there any other options? Are there other examples with different options?
4: If you state it is an infinite reality then there is no warrant for the question 'who created God'
Only if you can a) demonstrate God and b) demonstrate that God is that infinite reality. If you'd done that we wouldn't be having this discussion.
5: The universe we live in appears to have had a beginning or at least a point beyond with the laws we observe don't function.
Yes. Our universe is not all of reality.
6: Explain why entropy begins 30 billion years ago.
I presume you mean ~13.8 billion years ago, our current best estimate of the age of the universe. Entropy began at that point because it was the point at which time was instigated. It's possible time and entropy - or their corollaries - existed in that broader reality, but we have no evidence to make a determination.
7: Explain the phenomenon of cause.
Cause is that identifiable precursor event which leads to effect. Cause can be any number of different phenomena depending on the scale being observed and the effect identified. It's a conceptual framework that works over a range of contexts.
O.
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1 something that has no beginning or end is definitionally uncaused. An irrelevance argument here is a red herring.
It makes no sense to consider the 'causation' of an infinite thing.
2 You haven't considered the why something and not nothing.
You haven't given any reason to think there's a why.
3. Why is it this way? (The question of laws)
Are there any other options? Are there other examples with different options?
4: If you state it is an infinite reality then there is no warrant for the question 'who created God'
Only if you can a) demonstrate God and b) demonstrate that God is that infinite reality. If you'd done that we wouldn't be having this discussion.
5: The universe we live in appears to have had a beginning or at least a point beyond with the laws we observe don't function.
Yes. Our universe is not all of reality.
6: Explain why entropy begins 30 billion years ago.
I presume you mean ~13.8 billion years ago, our current best estimate of the age of the universe. Entropy began at that point because it was the point at which time was instigated. It's possible time and entropy - or their corollaries - existed in that broader reality, but we have no evidence to make a determination.
7: Explain the phenomenon of cause.
Cause is that identifiable precursor event which leads to effect. Cause can be any number of different phenomena depending on the scale being observed and the effect identified. It's a conceptual framework that works over a range of contexts.
O.
You are conflating reality by which you mean unconscious matter with infinite reality.
first of all you are left with the following problems.
1: Demonstrating that material is all the reality there is.
2: Demonstrating that it had no beginning. Just saying matter is infinite does not make that true.
3 Demonstrate that matter is exclusively non conscious.
4 demonstrate why infinite matter is not conscious, has never been conscious
5 why are you specially pleading infinite unconscious reality?
6 What happened to your timeless matter argument.
7: You cannot hope to argue against other options of how the universe is without encountering a demonstrable big bang.
8: The question of laws. Are you just redefining matter as it is or are you proposing some kind of platonic nature of the laws if so what is the connection between the world of forms and this universe?
It seems the big bang militates against your argument of infinite material.
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You are conflating reality by which you mean unconscious matter with infinite reality.
No, I'm presuming 'unconscious matter' because there's no reason to presume anything else.
first of all you are left with the following problems.
1: Demonstrating that material is all the reality there is.
Again? When have I said that, definitively, that's all there is? All you need do to lever in something else is give a reason to think that there is something else. Until then, given that there is justification for presuming physical reality exists, I'll work on the physical reality.
2: Demonstrating that it had no beginning. Just saying matter is infinite does not make that true.
No, it doesn't. That's a deduction from the fact that everything we see is an effect of a prior cause. In the absence of any effects which do not have a cause, we can either deduce that the chain continues infinitely or arbitrarily decide that there must have been an uncaused cause. I think the former introduces fewer unevidenced elements, but if you can make a case either for an uncaused cause or against infinite reality I'm happy to review.
3 Demonstrate that matter is exclusively non conscious.
I don't need to demonstrate that. There is ample matter for which we have no evidence of consciousness. We have evidence that consciousness we have is not beholden to any particular piece of matter. We have evidence of consciousness being strongly correlated with particular patterns of behaviour of physical matter. We therefore hypothesise that consciousness is emergent from those patterns, we test those hypotheses and so far that evidence has validated the hypothesis. That's provisional - do you have any evidence to suggest that it's wrong?
4 demonstrate why infinite matter is not conscious, has never been conscious
I won't presume consciousness in the absence of evidence for it. The burden of proof is on you to prove consciousness if you think it's there.
5 why are you specially pleading infinite unconscious reality?
I'm not, but bonus points for the irony of accusing me of dishonesty then popping that little straw nugget in.
6 What happened to your timeless matter argument.
You mean infinite reality - that's what this is.
7: You cannot hope to argue against other options of how the universe is without encountering a demonstrable big bang.
You're conflating reality with the universe. The universe originated with a Big Bang, by the best current model we have. That Big Bang happened, in this model, in a broader, infinite reality.
8: The question of laws. Are you just redefining matter as it is or are you proposing some kind of platonic nature of the laws if so what is the connection between the world of forms and this universe?
I don't understand what you're asking, here.
It seems the big bang militates against your argument of infinite material.
No, because I'm not saying that the universe is all of reality.
O.
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You are conflating reality by which you mean unconscious matter with infinite reality.
No, I'm presuming 'unconscious matter' because there's no reason to presume anything else.
We are matter and we are conscious............ there's one reason
You are presuming this universe is not all of reality....what is your reason for that?
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...................... we can either deduce that the chain continues infinitely or.............
Which makes the chain uncreated.
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I don't need to demonstrate that. There is ample matter for which we have no evidence of consciousness. We have evidence that consciousness we have is not beholden to any particular piece of matter. We have evidence of consciousness being strongly correlated with particular patterns of behaviour of physical matter. We therefore hypothesise that consciousness is emergent from those patterns, we test those hypotheses and so far that evidence has validated the hypothesis. That's provisional - do you have any evidence to suggest that it's wrong?
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We have no evidence for any consciousness since we cannot prove we are not just intelligent automata.
Except that we know it ourselves.
Therefore a human being is the only reliable means of detecting consciousness.
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You are conflating reality by which you mean unconscious matter with infinite reality.
No, I'm presuming 'unconscious matter' because there's no reason to presume anything else.
first of all you are left with the following problems.
1: Demonstrating that material is all the reality there is.
Again? When have I said that, definitively, that's all there is? All you need do to lever in something else is give a reason to think that there is something else. Until then, given that there is justification for presuming physical reality exists, I'll work on the physical reality.
2: Demonstrating that it had no beginning. Just saying matter is infinite does not make that true.
No, it doesn't. That's a deduction from the fact that everything we see is an effect of a prior cause. In the absence of any effects which do not have a cause, we can either deduce that the chain continues infinitely or arbitrarily decide that there must have been an uncaused cause. I think the former introduces fewer unevidenced elements, but if you can make a case either for an uncaused cause or against infinite reality I'm happy to review.
3 Demonstrate that matter is exclusively non conscious.
I don't need to demonstrate that. There is ample matter for which we have no evidence of consciousness. We have evidence that consciousness we have is not beholden to any particular piece of matter. We have evidence of consciousness being strongly correlated with particular patterns of behaviour of physical matter. We therefore hypothesise that consciousness is emergent from those patterns, we test those hypotheses and so far that evidence has validated the hypothesis. That's provisional - do you have any evidence to suggest that it's wrong?
4 demonstrate why infinite matter is not conscious, has never been conscious
I won't presume consciousness in the absence of evidence for it. The burden of proof is on you to prove consciousness if you think it's there.
5 why are you specially pleading infinite unconscious reality?
I'm not, but bonus points for the irony of accusing me of dishonesty then popping that little straw nugget in.
6 What happened to your timeless matter argument.
You mean infinite reality - that's what this is.
7: You cannot hope to argue against other options of how the universe is without encountering a demonstrable big bang.
You're conflating reality with the universe. The universe originated with a Big Bang, by the best current model we have. That Big Bang happened, in this model, in a broader, infinite reality.
8: The question of laws. Are you just redefining matter as it is or are you proposing some kind of platonic nature of the laws if so what is the connection between the world of forms and this universe?
I don't understand what you're asking, here.
It seems the big bang militates against your argument of infinite material.
No, because I'm not saying that the universe is all of reality.
O.
Given you think it unreasonable to presume that which you cannot see. Why presume what you have just said?
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You are conflating reality by which you mean unconscious matter with infinite reality.
No, I'm presuming 'unconscious matter'
Which brings us back to the question of laws. What is the nature of the laws governing infinitely unconscious material?
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I don't need to demonstrate that. There is ample matter for which we have no evidence of consciousness. We have evidence that consciousness we have is not beholden to any particular piece of matter. We have evidence of consciousness being strongly correlated with particular patterns of behaviour of physical matter.
Or to put it more correctly..... we have no way of knowing whether we are looking at sophisticated non conscious intelligence or consciousness.
There is therefore no such thing as consciousness (Dennett) or we are the means of the detection of it.
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3 Demonstrate that matter is exclusively non conscious.
I don't need to demonstrate that.
It is a positive assertion.
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It makes no sense to consider the 'causation' of an infinite thing.
Yes because it is by definition uncaused.
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You are conflating reality by which you mean unconscious matter with infinite reality.
No, I'm presuming 'unconscious matter' because there's no reason to presume anything else.
first of all you are left with the following problems.
1: Demonstrating that material is all the reality there is.
Again? When have I said that, definitively, that's all there is? All you need do to lever in something else is give a reason to think that there is something else. Until then, given that there is justification for presuming physical reality exists, I'll work on the physical reality.
A ''have cake and eat it'' argument. Hedging the bet.
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No Vlad; it's called evidentialism, or proportioning your tentative and provisional beliefs to the available evidence.
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No, it doesn't. That's a deduction from the fact that everything we see is an effect of a prior cause. In the absence of any effects which do not have a cause, we can either deduce that the chain continues infinitely or arbitrarily decide that there must have been an uncaused cause. I think the former introduces fewer unevidenced elements, but if you can make a case either for an uncaused cause or against infinite reality I'm happy to review.
So, to remove an unobserved creator what you are invoking is Ockhams razor........by introducing infinite unobserved causes and infinite unobserved effects!!!!??????
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No Vlad; it's called evidentialism, or proportioning your tentative and provisional beliefs to the available evidence.
Which goes out the window on invocation of multiverse, infinite series, chains which are neither created nor uncreated or any other similar stuff Outrider has intentionally or unintentionally proposed.
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God the uncaused cause is perfectly reasonable once you establish any precedence for ''uncausality''.
So is the Uncaused Universe, and we have good evidence the Universe exists.
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God the uncaused cause is perfectly reasonable once you establish any precedence for ''uncausality''.
So is the Uncaused Universe, and we have good evidence the Universe exists.
Yes Jeremy but can't you see the big bang puts a big question mark over the uncaused bit since er,there is no evidence of anything before it.
In fact your assertion that it is here and everything that we see was caused points to a caused universe. I'm afraid you then have to make recourse to something you can't evidence.
Why the hell you blokes don't heed the advice of St Bertrand of Russell and St Richard of Meme and treat the providence of the universe as a 'Don't go there'......beats me.
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God the uncaused cause is perfectly reasonable once you establish any precedence for ''uncausality''.
So is the Uncaused Universe, and we have good evidence the Universe exists.
Yes Jeremy but can't you see the big bang puts a big question mark over the uncaused bit since er,there is no evidence of anything before it.
In fact your assertion that it is here and everything that we see was caused points to a caused universe. I'm afraid you then have to make recourse to something you can't evidence.
Why the hell you blokes don't heed the advice of St Bertrand of Russell and St Richard of Meme and treat the providence of the universe as a 'Don't go there'......beats me.
If you consider how the age of the Universe has been calculated, it's easy to see why it's imagined to have started out as a tiny speck .... but it aint necessarily so. The direction and angle of travel that the galaxies take is computed back to a single dot, just in the same way as drawing perspective, all angles and lines are taken back to a single focal point.
Imagine standing on a dead straight railway track and seeing the two rails gradually run back to a single dot. If you actually travelled down to that dot, it would no longer be a speck. The same goes for the Big Bang.
Another way to look at it is to imagine an intelligent virus sitting on a tiny piece of shrapnel that is rushing through the air after a bomb has exploded. If it wondered where it had come from it could measure all the other pieces of shrapnel flying away in all directions and calculate correctly that the point where they all converged was where they all originated. It would be simply a single point but we know that in fact it started at something much larger than the piece of shrapnel . a whole bomb.
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God the uncaused cause is perfectly reasonable once you establish any precedence for ''uncausality''.
So is the Uncaused Universe, and we have good evidence the Universe exists.
Yes Jeremy but can't you see the big bang puts a big question mark over the uncaused bit since er,there is no evidence of anything before it.
No it doesn't.
Just because there was a Big Bang doesn't mean the Universe it was in has a cause.
Your uncaused cause is a busted flush. Anything you can say about it with reference to your god I can say about it with reference to the Universe. And I have the advantage of talking about something that exists.
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Anything you can say about it with reference to your god I can say about it with reference to the Universe. And I have the advantage of talking about something that exists.
But we know that things which exist in the universe have a cause .Point to something therefore which didn't.
Uncaused cause a busted flush. You both want uncaused to be the state of the universe and calling uncaused a busted flush.
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But we know that things which exist in the universe have a cause .
The Universe is not in the Universe. There's no evidence or reason that it has a cause.
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But we know that things which exist in the universe have a cause .
The Universe is not in the Universe. There's no evidence or reason that it has a cause.
No reason?...You mean it couldn't possibly have a cause
The universe is not in the universe? Is it now outside itself?
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But we know that things which exist in the universe have a cause .
The Universe is not in the Universe. There's no evidence or reason that it has a cause.
No reason?...You mean it couldn't possibly have a cause
There's no reason why it should have a cause.
The universe is not in the universe? Is it now outside itself?
So your argument stands on your belief that you can put an object inside itself. Do you realise how stupid that sounds? If not, I suggest you go find a box or a bag and try to put it inside itself. It should give you hours of entertainment.
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But we know that things which exist in the universe have a cause .
The Universe is not in the Universe. There's no evidence or reason that it has a cause.
No reason?...You mean it couldn't possibly have a cause
There's no reason why it should have a cause.
Ah, so cause and effect is out of the window. Can you point to anything that has popped out of nothing?
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But we know that things which exist in the universe have a cause .
The Universe is not in the Universe. There's no evidence or reason that it has a cause.
No reason?...You mean it couldn't possibly have a cause
There's no reason why it should have a cause.
The universe is not in the universe? Is it now outside itself?
So your argument stands on your belief that you can put an object inside itself. Do you realise how stupid that sounds? If not, I suggest you go find a box or a bag and try to put it inside itself. It should give you hours of entertainment.
Are you saying there is no universe inside the universe? You said the universe is not in the universe. Where is it then?
The universe is a bag is it or box according to you.......are the things in the bag not the universe?
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No, it doesn't. That's a deduction from the fact that everything we see is an effect of a prior cause. In the absence of any effects which do not have a cause, we can either deduce that the chain continues infinitely or arbitrarily decide that there must have been an uncaused cause. I think the former introduces fewer unevidenced elements, but if you can make a case either for an uncaused cause or against infinite reality I'm happy to review.
So, to remove an unobserved creator what you are invoking is Ockhams razor........by introducing infinite unobserved causes and infinite unobserved effects!!!!??????
Everything we see is cause and effect. Everything. So we either arbitrarily decide that's not viable for ever, or we deduce from it that there's an infinite reality. Infinite reality is a deduction from the evidence; God is an arbitrary invention to avoid the conclusion from that evidence.
Yes, Occam's razor shaves falls on the side of the infinite reality.
O.
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You are conflating reality by which you mean unconscious matter with infinite reality.
No, I'm presuming 'unconscious matter' because there's no reason to presume anything else.
first of all you are left with the following problems.
1: Demonstrating that material is all the reality there is.
Again? When have I said that, definitively, that's all there is? All you need do to lever in something else is give a reason to think that there is something else. Until then, given that there is justification for presuming physical reality exists, I'll work on the physical reality.
A ''have cake and eat it'' argument. Hedging the bet.
Do you believe there's sufficient evidence to be conclusive? Obviously not, or you wouldn't be questioning.
The difference is that I'm following the evidence as far as it takes and no more, you're taking the lack of absolute certainty and running with fairy tales through the gaps.
O.
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We are matter and we are conscious............ there's one reason
We are matter, but the consciousness does not reside in the matter. If we remove chunks they are not conscious. If we insert chunks they do not acquire consciousness. If we change certain elements we can alter the consciousness, but only when we alter the pattern of activity.
Consciousness, the evidence suggests, is in the pattern of activity, not resident within the matter.
You are presuming this universe is not all of reality....what is your reason for that?
The law of cause and effect suggests that the Big Bang must have been initiated by something - that something must have been in whatever reality exists outside of the universe.
O.
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...................... we can either deduce that the chain continues infinitely or.............
Which makes the chain uncreated.
Which makes the concept of creation inapplicable.
It's the difference between an empty set and a null set.
O.
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I don't need to demonstrate that. There is ample matter for which we have no evidence of consciousness. We have evidence that consciousness we have is not beholden to any particular piece of matter. We have evidence of consciousness being strongly correlated with particular patterns of behaviour of physical matter. We therefore hypothesise that consciousness is emergent from those patterns, we test those hypotheses and so far that evidence has validated the hypothesis. That's provisional - do you have any evidence to suggest that it's wrong?
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We have no evidence for any consciousness since we cannot prove we are not just intelligent automata. Except that we know it ourselves.
More than that, though, we have measurements of conscious activity in the brain which is consistent across the populace to show that it's a consistent sense and activity. We lack a clear conceptualisation of exactly what consciousness it, but I see no reason why we should presume that it's impossible for 'intelligent automata' - by which I presume you mean anything purely deterministic - to be conscious.
Therefore a human being is the only reliable means of detecting consciousness.
No. Measurement of neurological activity can detect consciousness.
O.
[/quote]
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Given you think it unreasonable to presume that which you cannot see. Why presume what you have just said?
Deduction, not presumption.
O.
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Which brings us back to the question of laws. What is the nature of the laws governing infinitely unconscious material?
I don't know that it's possible to know. It is nature, it may be that there are an infinite regress of causative mechanisms down through layers that we cannot perceive, yet, it may be that there is a 'fundamental' level at which nature operates.
O.
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Or to put it more correctly..... we have no way of knowing whether we are looking at sophisticated non conscious intelligence or consciousness.
Do you have any reason to think the two aren't, or can't be, the same? Why presume the consciousness is not emergent from sufficiently sophisticated or complex intelligence?
There is therefore no such thing as consciousness (Dennett) or we are the means of the detection of it.
No, you have not made the case, you have asserted consciousness cannot be merely the same as advanced intelligence.
O.
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3 Demonstrate that matter is exclusively non conscious.
I don't need to demonstrate that.
It is a positive assertion.
No. We have non-conscious matter - i.e. rocks. We have no conscious matter. We have arrangements of matter which display consciousness (i.e. people) whilst identical arrangments of matter (i.e. dead bodies) don't evidence it. That suggests that whilst the activity that demonstrates consciousness might be linked to matter and material activities, it's not resident in the matter.
That doesn't preclude the possibility of conscious matter, but I'm not going to presume that it's there until and unless there's some evidence to support the claim. I'm not claiming it's impossible, but I'm not including it in the model without reason, and so far there's no reason.
O.
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And that's it....not whatever else you are dishonestly trying to gussie it up into.
What dishonesty? We have sensory input that suggests a physical reality. We presume that's valid - openly accepting that this is an assumption - and then test that assumption to see what we can discover about that physical reality. From that continued consistency we have a validation of our assumption - still provisional - and we have reason therefore to think that we might be right.
You, and others like you, then throw in ideas like 'gods' and 'souls' and don't have any justification beyond 'but I feel like it', and you pretend like that's therefore worthy of consideration.
I'm not dishonest, I'm perfectly open in what I'm saying. I might, occasionally, misphrase something, or give an incorrect impression, I might even be holding positions that aren't justifiable from those presumptions and you're more than welcome to come an point them out, if you find them.
Doesn't change the facts of the situation: I've presumed physical reality, and the body of scientific evidence reinforces that. You've presumed God, and that's as far you've gotten.
O.
God the uncaused cause is perfectly reasonable once you establish any precedence for ''uncausality''.
But with this the word God has nothing to do with Christianity or any other religion but becomes a nebulous concept. As I have said before elsewhere you could just as well use the word or term "Something". Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster...
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No amount of us answering questions will change the fact that the fundamental burden of proof remains on those making the claim. You assert 'Naturalism'; we say 'prove it'.
Nope. The proof bit has been covered already; what I would add is that naturalism is a tentative, in fact conservative conclusion justified by a methodology with a proven track record of success in consistently serving up reliable knowledge of the nature of the world. If you want to make claims outside that, that's when we start asking interesting questions about the existence and nature of the methodology you propose to use - questions which are, without exception, continually deflected and dodged and just plain old ignored.
or put more honestly nature just looking at itself, explaining itself in it's own terms and making a punt that this is all there is. Naturalists being people sliding serrupticiously from a method to a philosophy hoping no one notices.
That the methodology works on nature doesn't help you out in anyway.
At least it has something to look at. Where's your God?
Look at Jesus Christ....
Still waiting for an answer, Vlad, on how to carry this out. Or are all you Christians full of vacuous advise?
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Which makes the chain uncreated.
Which makes the concept of creation inapplicable.
That's just a fancy way of avoiding the fact you have established that something can be uncreated.
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So, to remove an unobserved creator what you are invoking is Ockhams razor........by introducing infinite unobserved causes and infinite unobserved effects!!!!??????
Everything we see is cause and effect. Everything. So we either arbitrarily decide that's not viable for ever, or we deduce from it that there's an infinite reality. Infinite reality is a deduction from the evidence; God is an arbitrary invention to avoid the conclusion from that evidence.
Yes, Occam's razor shaves falls on the side of the infinite reality.
O.
Why have you switched from infinite chain of events to calling it an infinite reality?
I'll let you explain before I expose you.
I take it you mean a chain of material events.....That presupposes that material equals reality.......
How is that ''deduced''? ;)
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That's just a fancy way of avoiding the fact you have established that something can be uncreated.
No, I've established that finite things are created in an endless chain. Nothing within that it is 'uncreated', and it has no point at which it could be created - the concept is meaningless.
Why have you switched from infinite chain of events to calling it an infinite reality?
I'll let you explain before I expose you.
I take it you mean a chain of material events.....That presupposes that material equals reality.......
How is that ''deduced''?
The infinite chain of events occurs within the infinite reality - it depends on what I'm talking about which I use. Are they material events - presumably, given that we have no reason to think any other kinds exist, but I'm not ruling out other possibilities, just waiting for someone to give a reason to accept them.
O.
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No, I've established that finite things are created in an endless chain.
yep, and that is uncreated.
And if it is a chain of cause and effect observed in material then the material is uncreated......or is it ? Because we are still left with the question....all join in.......why something and not nothing.
As an aside...........why can't the chain be a circle?
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The infinite chain of events occurs within the infinite reality - it depends on what I'm talking about which I use. Are they material events - presumably, given that we have no reason to think any other kinds exist,
How have we no reason?(this should be good)
Can you show this infinite chain beyond the big bang when time started. I would have thought time starting would rather rule out the concept of infinite cause and effect.
Is the infinite chain of events the infinite event or is the material in which they occur the infinite reality.
If it is the material then the material is uncaused.
If it is the chain then the chain is uncaused.
We are then faced with the question why something and not nothing or in this context why is the material there.
The big problem is do you go with the scientists universe created with time.
or do we go with a universe which has a start in time.
It seems to me that an infinite regression of cause and effect is unfalsifiable.
Also a loop of causation is more sensible than an infinite chain.
so instead of the ....is caused by whatever which causes a which causes b which causes c which ad infinitum.
We have a which causes b which causes c which causes a. To shortened it.
How does infinite cause and effect ride with the laws of thermodynamics etc.
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Ah, so cause and effect is out of the window.
Aha. The penny finally drops.
Can you point to anything that has popped out of nothing?
Your god apparently.
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The Universe is not in the Universe. There's no evidence or reason that it has a cause.
No reason?...You mean it couldn't possibly have a cause
There's no reason why it should have a cause.
So your argument stands on your belief that you can put an object inside itself. Do you realise how stupid that sounds? If not, I suggest you go find a box or a bag and try to put it inside itself. It should give you hours of entertainment.
Are you saying there is no universe inside the universe?
Are you being deliberately stupid?
You said the universe is not in the universe. Where is it then?
The universe is a bag is it or box according to you.......are the things in the bag not the universe?
I tell you what, you find something physical that is inside itself and we'll all revise the laws of physics. The Tardis doesn't count.
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yep, and that is uncreated.
And if it is a chain of cause and effect observed in material then the material is uncreated......or is it ? Because we are still left with the question....all join in.......why something and not nothing.
As an aside...........why can't the chain be a circle?
Why presume there is a why? If it's infinite, the absence of an opportunity for cause obviates the idea of a purpose.
Why couldn't it be a circle - conceptually that's difficult. No obvious reason why it couldn't, it doesn't feel right but I can't express why. I'll work on it.
O.
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How have we no reason?(this should be good
As yet no-one's given a sufficient one.
Can you show this infinite chain beyond the big bang when time started. I would have thought time starting would rather rule out the concept of infinite cause and effect.
No, that's why it's deduced and not demonstrated. As to which dimensions it might be infinite in, that's undetermined in the absence of data.
Is the infinite chain of events the infinite event or is the material in which they occur the infinite reality.
The infinite chain of events is (some of?) the activity within the infinite reality. We, and our universe, are part of that infinite chain of events.
If it is the material then the material is uncaused. If it is the chain then the chain is uncaused.
The concept of cause is still meaningless.
We are then faced with the question why something and not nothing or in this context why is the material there.
No, we aren't. There is no cause to think there is a purpose or a reason. In an infinite chain, with no validity to the concept of 'cause' there is no opportunity for anything to introduce a purpose or implement a reason - it's infinite.
The big problem is do you go with the scientists universe created with time.
The likelihood that our concept of time is not represented outside of the universe makes conceptual understanding of an extra-universal reality difficult, I'll grant you, but it doesn't preclude the possibility of some corollary dimension being 'available'.
or do we go with a universe which has a start in time.
The available evidence as it stands doesn't support that.
It seems to me that an infinite regression of cause and effect is unfalsifiable.
Possibly, yes.
Also a loop of causation is more sensible than an infinite chain.
Why? You have the bootstrap paradox to contend with in looped time, which does not occur with linear infinity.
How does infinite cause and effect ride with the laws of thermodynamics etc.
The general principle that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only reformed still holds, although what those concepts mean outside of our understanding of time is questionable. The other thermodynamic are more explicitly linked with our understanding of time and quite possibly don't apply outside of the universe. If they do, they would apply to other dimensional constraints that we can't, in the absence of data, adequately define.
O.
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As yet no-one's given a sufficient one.
No, that's why it's deduced and not demonstrated. As to which dimensions it might be infinite in, that's undetermined in the absence of data.
The infinite chain of events is (some of?) the activity within the infinite reality. We, and our universe, are part of that infinite chain of events.
The concept of cause is still meaningless.
No, we aren't. There is no cause to think there is a purpose or a reason. In an infinite chain, with no validity to the concept of 'cause' there is no opportunity for anything to introduce a purpose or implement a reason - it's infinite.
The likelihood that our concept of time is not represented outside of the universe makes conceptual understanding of an extra-universal reality difficult, I'll grant you, but it doesn't preclude the possibility of some corollary dimension being 'available'.
The available evidence as it stands doesn't support that.
Possibly, yes.
Why? You have the bootstrap paradox to contend with in looped time, which does not occur with linear infinity.
The general principle that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only reformed still holds, although what those concepts mean outside of our understanding of time is questionable. The other thermodynamic are more explicitly linked with our understanding of time and quite possibly don't apply outside of the universe. If they do, they would apply to other dimensional constraints that we can't, in the absence of data, adequately define.
O.
Dearest Outrider
First of all you are being fast and loose with the term evidence. Postulating the idea of an infinite regress of cause and effect is not the same as evidence for it. You appeal to science for evidence and yet an infinite regression of cause and effect is unfalsifiable. The problem is this if you are asserting that an unfalsifiable is the explanation of the universe you cannot then discount anything that is reasonable and unfalsifiable.
Infinity is not observed in the universe. While it is reasonable as a reasoned deduction it is therefore not the immediate course reason can follow and you are thus wrong to posit your theory as the only reasonable one. We see a universe for which there is no evidence of infinity( An infinite future has not after all happened. Cause and effect in the universe therefore might lead us reasonable to think that it had a cause.
Finally in terms of Ockham's Razor you could well have not only introduced entities beyond necessity but comprehensively done so by suggesting infinite causes when one infinite cause would do.
It is ridiculous to suggest as you do that cause is irrelevant in an infinite chain of causation, since you provide an infinity of causation.
I don't feel you have adequately shown that the infinite chain of causation was neither created nor uncreated.
In terms of energy not being able to be created or destroyed the question still remains.....why is there any energy anyway?
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I reckon I can blow this argument out of the water for good.
Could you get on with it then?
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First of all you are being fast and loose with the term evidence. Postulating the idea of an infinite regress of cause and effect is not the same as evidence for it.
I've suggested it's a deduction from the available evidence - everything we can measure or detect is part of a chain of cause and effect. If we deduce from this that everything is an effect of an earlier cause, we have an infinite regress. I've been quite open about that process, there's no 'fast and loose' with it.
You appeal to science for evidence and yet an infinite regression of cause and effect is unfalsifiable.
It is falsifiable - all you need do is provide a reliable basis for accepting an effect without a cause, and my deductive logic is undermined.
The problem is this if you are asserting that an unfalsifiable is the explanation of the universe you cannot then discount anything that is reasonable and unfalsifiable.
I've not asserted anything, I've deduced it from the available evidence.
Infinity is not observed in the universe. While it is reasonable as a reasoned deduction it is therefore not the immediate course reason can follow and you are thus wrong to posit your theory as the only reasonable one.
I didn't say it was the only reasonable one. If you think there's a better explanation feel free to posit it, along with the supporting evidence and rationale.
We see a universe for which there is no evidence of infinity( An infinite future has not after all happened.
That rather depends on your view of what time is, and whether our perception of it is limited. It's entirely possible that the entirety of time co-exists as a block, a dimension through which our awareness has limited capacity to alter its flow.
We do see evidence for infinity - we see no uncaused effects, which means whatever we can deduce is itself the result of a precursor. That we lack reliable data means we rely on deduction rather than direct confirmation. Our mathematical models, which have made predictions which were then experimentally verified, suggest an infinite future for our universe.
Cause and effect in the universe therefore might lead us reasonable to think that it had a cause.
I don't see how, but by all means make the case.
Finally in terms of Ockham's Razor you could well have not only introduced entities beyond necessity but comprehensively done so by suggesting infinite causes when one infinite cause would do.
If you do not have an infinite chain of causes you are forced to try to explain your singular infinite cause. The infinite chain of events does not require anything new to be added to the model, your singular infinite cause is of a different nature - Occam's Razor is not in your favour on that.
It is ridiculous to suggest as you do that cause is irrelevant in an infinite chain of causation, since you provide an infinity of causation.
So you have causation for any given element, but the idea of 'A' definitive or original cause is nonsensical. It's asking 'what's the other side of an infinite horizon', what's 'infinity plus one' - it isn't defined.
I don't feel you have adequately shown that the infinite chain of causation was neither created nor uncreated.
I feel it's quite apparent from the available evidence - we have no example of anything that's not the effect of a prior cause. Why presume for no reason that at some arbitrary point there was one?
In terms of energy not being able to be created or destroyed the question still remains.....why is there any energy anyway?
And, again, you're begging the question. Why presume there's a justification? Why presume 'why' has any meaning. What are the other options? What is the underlying nature that means an absence of the capacity for energy is a viable concept.
O.
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I've suggested it's a deduction from the available evidence - everything we can measure or detect is part of a chain of cause and effect. If we deduce from this that everything is an effect of an earlier cause, we have an infinite regress.
No all we can deduce is that the universe had a cause.
That is the first stop.
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It is falsifiable
No falsifiability is a scientific concept based on testability and an infinite regression is not testable.
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We do see evidence for infinity - we see no uncaused effects,
But infinity is an uncaused effect. And once you allow one etc.
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we have no example of anything that's not the effect of a prior cause.
Except the material in which the chain of cause and effect is occurring.
Checkmate.
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No all we can deduce is that the universe had a cause. That is the first stop.
No, we can deduce that all effects have causes, which are themselve effects. That's the pattern we see everywhere. If you want to disprove that, just demonstrate an uncaused effect.
And, of course, a methodology for validating it.
O.
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No falsifiability is a scientific concept based on testability and an infinite regression is not testable.
But the precepts upon which the deduction are made are.
O.
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But infinity is an uncaused effect. And once you allow one etc.
No, again, the notion of a cause of infinity is meaningless. It's not a valid concept. You have an infinitely long chain - how do you get to the end to pull it?
Similarly, you have an infinite chain of events, how do you get to the 'first' one to cause it?
O.
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Except the material in which the chain of cause and effect is occurring. Checkmate.
Causing the infinite chain is still nonsensical - saying that the metal is not infinite even though the chain is is just silly.
O.
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Causing the infinite chain is still nonsensical - saying that the metal is not infinite even though the chain is is just silly.
O.
Non sequitur
If you have a materialistic infinite chain of cause and effect the material in which it occurs cannot have a cause.
Checkmate.
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Non sequitur
If you have a materialistic infinite chain of cause and effect the material in which it occurs cannot have a cause.
Checkmate.
No, the material IS the chain of cause and effect.
O.
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No, the material IS the chain of cause and effect.
O.
No. material is merely material. it is merely shaped or allocated by the passage of time.
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No all we can deduce is that the universe had a cause.
How?
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If you want to disprove that, just demonstrate an uncaused effect.
The spontaneous decay of carbon-14 into an electron, an anti neutrino and nitrogen-14
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No. material is merely material. it is merely shaped or allocated by the passage of time.
And those shapings and allocations are the events, and the material that we have is one of the outcomes of prior events, and the material that this material came from was itself the effect of prior causes still.
O.
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The spontaneous decay of carbon-14 into an electron, an anti neutrino and nitrogen-14
Is it uncaused, or do we simply not know the cause? Whilst any individual atom appears to randomly decay, the fact that half-lives are incredibly consistent suggests that there's an underlying mechanism that we haven't yet discovered. In the absence of a mechanism we'd expect to see random decay, but we don't.
O.
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Could you get on with it then?
It was done at the start by JeremyP, around post 7, I think. Rather long winded but essentially all the elements were there.
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And those shapings and allocations are the events, and the material that we have is one of the outcomes of prior events, and the material that this material came from was itself the effect of prior causes still.
O.
Oh so we're not talking about material that we observe in this universe then......so matter in any meaningful sense may not have existed as whatever caused this universe.
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Is it uncaused, or do we simply not know the cause? Whilst any individual atom appears to randomly decay, the fact that half-lives are incredibly consistent suggests that there's an underlying mechanism that we haven't yet discovered. In the absence of a mechanism we'd expect to see random decay, but we don't.
O.
Half lives are incredibly consistent because of the incredible number of atoms involved. Half lives are a statistical property of a material. All we can say about individual atoms is that, over a certain period of time there is a 50% chance that they will decay, but nothing actually cause a particular atom to decay at a particular time.
In fact, at the level of quantum mechanics, the notion of cause and effect isn't really useful. There are simply events and interactions.
So when Vlad claims that everything in the Universe has a cause, he is actually talking bollocks just like his absurd suggestion that the Universe is inside the Universe.
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Half lives are incredibly consistent because of the incredible number of atoms involved. Half lives are a statistical property of a material. All we can say about individual atoms is that, over a certain period of time there is a 50% chance that they will decay, but nothing actually cause a particular atom to decay at a particular time.
In fact, at the level of quantum mechanics, the notion of cause and effect isn't really useful. There are simply events and interactions.
So when Vlad claims that everything in the Universe has a cause, he is actually talking bollocks just like his absurd suggestion that the Universe is inside the Universe.
youre not really proposing scrapping cause and effect are you Jezzer?
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youre not really proposing scrapping cause and effect are you Jezzer?
I thought at the quantum level there is no cause and effect?
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youre not really proposing scrapping cause and effect are you Jezzer?
Yes.
At quantum level, there is no cause and effect, there is just interactions between particles. Nothing causes a C14 atom to decay into an electron and an N14 atom, it just does it.
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Oh so we're not talking about material that we observe in this universe then......so matter in any meaningful sense may not have existed as whatever caused this universe.
I've tried to use the term 'material' so as not to imply matter, but I may have erred - matter as we understand it probably wouldn't exist outside of the universe, no. It's reasonable to deduce that something would, but what form it would take is difficult to make a judgment on.
O.
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Half lives are incredibly consistent because of the incredible number of atoms involved. Half lives are a statistical property of a material. All we can say about individual atoms is that, over a certain period of time there is a 50% chance that they will decay, but nothing actually cause a particular atom to decay at a particular time.
Again, we don't know the mechanism but that's not in itself reason to presume there isn't one. If it were random, the half-life for all materials would be the same, but it isn't - some materials decay significantly faster than others, which means there has to be a mechanism involved somewhere.
In fact, at the level of quantum mechanics, the notion of cause and effect isn't really useful. There are simply events and interactions.
There's some interesting - and highly speculative, I'll grant - work being bandied about on the fringes of quantum mechanical research that's showing some promising mathematical results when time is removed from the equations at the quantum level. As I understand it, it doesn't work for all interactions, and it throws up other issues, but it's an intriguing idea that some quantum activity is outside of time: in which case, of course, the idea of cause and effect would need to be heavily modified at the very least.
So when Vlad claims that everything in the Universe has a cause, he is actually talking bollocks just like his absurd suggestion that the Universe is inside the Universe.
To be fair to Vlad, it's my argument in this instance that is predicated on the idea that every effect has a cause, and that it's therefore reasonable to deduce an infinite chain of events stretching back. Even at the quantum level, whilst cause and effect might be co-temporal, they are still interwined.
I haven't intended to give the impression that the universe is in the universe, but inside a broader reality of some description.
O.
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Again, we don't know the mechanism but that's not in itself reason to presume there isn't one.
Yes it is. Bell's theorem tells us that this is the case, and I believe it has now been verified experimentally.
If it were random, the half-life for all materials would be the same, but it isn't - some materials decay significantly faster than others, which means there has to be a mechanism involved somewhere.
Quantum mechanics can predict the probability of an atom decaying within a certain time frame but it cannot predict when the atom will decay.
To be fair to Vlad,
Why? He doesn't play fair.
it's my argument in this instance that is predicated on the idea that every effect has a cause, and that it's therefore reasonable to deduce an infinite chain of events stretching back. Even at the quantum level, whilst cause and effect might be co-temporal, they are still intertwined.
So let's say that every effect has a cause. In that case, the Universe has a cause and so does the cause of the Universe etc ad infinitum. Vlad, however, wants to bestow a special property on his god that means of all the things that there are, it is the only one without a cause. This is just an arbitrary decision on his part based on the fact that he wants his god to be real and not to have been created in itself.
It is just as legitimate for me to bestow the same property on the Universe. This is just an arbitrary decision on my part based on the fact that I don't believe any God is real. Looked at that way, Vlad's viewpoint and my viewpoint are very similar, but I have the advantage in that, most of us agree that the Universe probably exists.
I haven't intended to give the impression that the universe is in the universe, but inside a broader reality of some description.
No, it was Vlad who claimed that. It's totally absurd and a measure of his desperation.
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Just to pick up from jeremyp's post, even were we to ignore any quantum effects, I don't think the cosmological argument reneging to work. The statement that everything that begins to exist has a cause, is (a) only inductively true and should not be taken as an absolute and was already in my view comprehensively challenged by Hume in terms of cause and effect, (b) is specifically materialist and built on materialist methodology.
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NS,
...is specifically materialist and built on materialist methodology.
* That being the only methodology available.
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Yes it is. Bell's theorem tells us that this is the case, and I believe it has now been verified experimentally. Quantum mechanics can predict the probability of an atom decaying within a certain time frame but it cannot predict when the atom will decay.
Bell's Theorem, though, has two possible interpretation in its impact, though, and one of those is an absolutely determined universe which is what we're predicting.
To be fair to Vlad
Why? He doesn't play fair.
Maybe not, but I don't set my standards by other people's lack of them :)
So let's say that every effect has a cause. In that case, the Universe has a cause and so does the cause of the Universe etc ad infinitum. Vlad, however, wants to bestow a special property on his god that means of all the things that there are, it is the only one without a cause. This is just an arbitrary decision on his part based on the fact that he wants his god to be real and not to have been created in itself.
Exactly my point. The apparent randomness - and/or possible timelessness - of quantum interactions undermines that absolute chain of cause and effect and gives a 'gap' into which gods can be liberally inserted.
O.
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NS,
* That being the only methodology available.
No. Hope and Vlad have a methodology for the non materialistic, but it is a secret and we are not allowed to know what it is. But it definitely does exist and Hope has posted about it here and elsewhere along with others , always just before the last purge.
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jeremyp,
No. Hope and Vlad have a methodology for the non materialistic, but it is a secret and we are not allowed to know what it is. But it definitely does exist and Hope has posted about it here and elsewhere along with others , always just before the last purge.
Do they? Hope claims to have answered the question but mysteriously suddenly finds he has to talk to someone on the other side of the room whenever he's asked where exactly he did it, but Vlud I think just ignores the problem in the hope it'll go away or we'll all forget that his "whateverpopsintomyhead-ism" isn't a method of any sort.
Incidentally, as various theists here have claimed the ontological argument in support have any of them actually manage to explain why given its well-trodden lineage of rebuttal?
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jeremyp,
Do they? Hope claims to have answered the question but mysteriously suddenly finds he has to talk to someone on the other side of the room whenever he's asked where exactly he did it, but Vlud I think just ignores the problem in the hope it'll go away or we'll all forget that his "whateverpopsintomyhead-ism" isn't a method of any sort.
Incidentally, as various theists here have claimed the ontological argument in support have any of them actually manage to explain why given its well-trodden lineage of rebuttal?
I Think the point is Hillside is that the methodology doesn't seem to work around the Big Bang nor as an explanatory for the universe. Russell knows this Dawkins knows this too but for them the issue is a "move swiftly on" scenario. It is ok for methodological materialism to fail at the point of origin it has done it's duty ................to push it further is to polish the turd of philosophical materialism.
If you don't think so. What is the methodology for establishing the origins of the universe?
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Bell's Theorem, though, has two possible interpretation in its impact, though, and one of those is an absolutely determined universe which is what we're predicting.
Why? He doesn't play fair. Maybe not, but I don't set my standards by other people's lack of them :)
Exactly my point. The apparent randomness - and/or possible timelessness - of quantum interactions undermines that absolute chain of cause and effect and gives a 'gap' into which gods can be liberally inserted.
O.
Unfortunately any natural explanation leaves room for God.
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Vlud,
I Think the point is Hillside is that the methodology doesn't seem to work around the Big Bang nor as an explanatory for the universe. Russell knows this Dawkins knows this too but for them the issue is a "move swiftly on" scenario. It is ok for methodological materialism to fail at the point of origin it has done it's duty ................to push it further is to polish the turd of philosophical materialism.
If you don't think so. What is the methodology for establishing the origins of the universe?
You're still confused. No-one says methodological materialism has all the answers, nor even that conceptually it necessarily ever could. What is being said though that is that - for now at least - it's the only game in town because there is no other method on the table.
Oh, and you might want to trouble yourself with establishing that the universe even did "originate" at all before attempting yet another argument from personal incredulity: "I don't see how materialism could answer that, therefore - um - whatever pops into my head must be the right answer" etc.
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Vlud,
You're still confused. No-one says methodological materialism has all the answers, nor even that conceptually it necessarily ever could. What is being said though that is that - for now at least - it's the only game in town because there is no other method on the table.
Oh, and you might want to trouble yourself with establishing that the universe even did "originate" at all before attempting yet another argument from personal incredulity: "I don't see how materialism could answer that, therefore - um - whatever pops into my head must be the right answer" etc.
Materialism the only game in town.......maybe. But the question of the origin of the universe means this is not the only Town. If you think materialism is the only game in this town......use the method to establish the origin of the universe.
I am afraid materialism needs to be presented with the universe like a fat ponce in a subsidised canteen.
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Unfortunately any natural explanation leaves room for God.
I'm not aware that I've suggested otherwise, it certainly wasn't my intention. What I set out to do was demonstrate just one reason why the Ontological argument fails to be a proof of any sort of god, let alone a specific one. The fact that there could be an entirely natural explanation for the universe and/or the broader reality in which it sits does that more than adequately.
O.
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Vlud,
Unfortunately any natural explanation leaves room for God.
Yes and no. Axiomatically materialism can concern itself only with the material. If you want to hypothesise the non-material, you have all your work ahead of you still to show by a method of some sort that it exists, and only then could you make a case for one manifestation of it being your god.
Good luck with it though!
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I Think the point is Hillside is that the methodology doesn't seem to work around the Big Bang nor as an explanatory for the universe.
Hypothetically, it works fine. That needs verifying with data, of course.
Russell knows this Dawkins knows this too but for them the issue is a "move swiftly on" scenario.
Not really. For them the lack of a definitive explanation for the universe results in 'I don't know' rather than 'therefore God'.
It is ok for methodological materialism to fail at the point of origin it has done it's duty ................to push it further is to polish the turd of philosophical materialism.
And you were doing so well, I thought you'd kicked that habit, but here you are plumbing its depths again.
If you don't think so. What is the methodology for establishing the origins of the universe?
No idea, yet, we're still working on adequately demonstrating what we think happened in the Big Bang, let alone what goes 'before' it, with whatever the concept of 'before' might entail. How does the lack of a current test protocol in what is a provisional and expanding body of knowledge undermine the case? Why does 'I don't know what's at the far edge' somehow invalidate everything in between?
O.
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Vlud,
Materialism the only game in town.......maybe.
Don't be upset - so far as I'm aware no-one else either has managed to produce a method for distinguishing his claims about a god from just guessing. Until someone comes up with a method to do that though, then yes - materialism remains the only methodological game in town.
But the question of the origin of the universe means this is not the only Town. If you think materialism is the only game in this town......use the method to establish the origin of the universe.
Again, you have still to establish that "the universe" needs to have had an "origin". What's the point even in attempting another argument from personal incredulity when you can't establish in the first place that the question is a meaningful one?
I am afraid materialism needs to be presented with the universe like a fat ponce in a subsidised canteen.
Don't be afraid - embarrassed will do.
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Vlud,
Don't be upset - so far as I'm aware no-one else either has managed to produce a method for distinguishing his claims about a god from just guessing. Until someone comes up with a method to do that though, then yes - materialism remains the only methodological game in town.
Again, you have still to establish that "the universe" needs to have had an "origin". What's the point even in attempting another argument from personal incredulity when you can't establish in the first place that the question is a meaningful one?
Don't be afraid - embarrassed will do.
Yes ,yes,Yes Hillside but i'm afraid your posts constitute the sad bleatings of a traditional materialist who is shit scared of the origins of the universe.
Unfortunately we do not have to go back to origins for the laws of physics to break down so yes, it looks as though the universe does have an origin.
This is not the place for the faint hearted stalwart materialist Hillside. This is a place for those willing to think the unthinkable. Move aside Hillside Outrider and Jeremy P are the new kids on the block.
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Vlud,
Yes ,yes,Yes Hillside but i'm afraid your posts constitute the sad bleatings of a traditional materialist who is shit scared of the origins of the universe.
Unfortunately we do not have to go back to origins for the laws of physics to break down so yes, it looks as though the universe does have an origin.
This is not the place for the faint hearted stalwart materialist Hillside. This is a place for those willing to think the unthinkable. Move aside Hillside Outrider and Jeremy P are the new kids on the block.
Oh dear. We can all "think the unthinkable". Your problem though is to figure out a way to ask a meaningful question in the first place, to establish even in principle the supposed fact on the non-material as a potential answer to it, and then to demonstrate just one manifestation of it as the actual answer.
Apart from that though...
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I Think the point is Hillside is that the methodology doesn't seem to work around the Big Bang
No. The point is that you really don't have a methodology at all. There's science and there's guessing.
nor as an explanatory for the universe. Russell knows this Dawkins knows this too but for them the issue is a "move swiftly on" scenario.
And when we point out that you don't have an explanation for God, you'll move swiftly on.
If you don't think so. What is the methodology for establishing the origins of the universe?
The only one that has a chance of giving us the answer is science. By the way have you had any more thoughts about where your methodology for establishing the origins of God has gone?
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Vlud,
Oh dear. We can all "think the unthinkable". Your problem though is to figure out a way to ask a meaningful question in the first place, to establish even in principle the supposed fact on the non-material as a potential answer to it, and then to demonstrate just one manifestation of it as the actual answer.
Apart from that though...
Yes Hillside....but claiming that questions are improper just because your particular philosophy or chosen methodology is not up to the job is a bit of a duck and a dive.
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No. The point is that you really don't have a methodology at all. There's science and there's guessing.
And when we point out that you don't have an explanation for God, you'll move swiftly on.
The only one that has a chance of giving us the answer is science. By the way have you had any more thoughts about where your methodology for establishing the origins of God has gone?
I think it is unfalsifiable.
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I think it is unfalsifiable.
So, do you believe everything that is unfalsifiable?
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I think it is unfalsifiable.
Its unprovable!
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Its unprovable!
Nearly everything is unprovable.
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Vlud,
Yes Hillside....but claiming that questions are improper just because your particular philosophy or chosen methodology is not up to the job is a bit of a duck and a dive.
The irony of that statement will be lost on you, but...
...before you can even attempt yet another argument from personal incredulity ("how come the universe then?") you need to establish first some premises: what make you think the universe must have had an origin at all? How do you know that time itself isn't just a property of the universe? What would a time before time even mean?
Instead you're using your "particular philosophy or chosen methodology" just to assume these things and then to frame a question around them.
And that's before you just drop in some special pleading for an undefined, un-argued and un-evidenced "god" as the answer.
Apart from that though...
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Instead you're using your "particular philosophy or chosen methodology" just to assume these things and then to frame a question around them.
No. Hillside I do do a philosophy. The only methodology I do is methodological materialism which I acknowledge doesn't seem to work at the point of the big bang.
You gussy the methodology up to become the philosophy and trumpet the methodology. While I salute the method, It's a bit of a bust flush on the origins of the universe as is your philosophy.....Unless you are suggesting it is some kind of platonic form which has truth value regardless of whether there is material or not.
You've been taken over the edge of philosophical materialism and your credibility of argument has fallen off the edge.
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Vlud,
The irony of that statement will be lost on you, but...
...before you can even attempt yet another argument from personal incredulity ("how come the universe then?") you need to establish first some premises: what make you think the universe must have had an origin at all? How do you know that time itself isn't just a property of the universe? What would a time before time even mean?
Instead you're using your "particular philosophy or chosen methodology" just to assume these things and then to frame a question around them.
And that's before you just drop in some special pleading for an undefined, un-argued and un-evidenced "god" as the answer.
Apart from that though...
What a pathetic waste of time typing this on what is a piece of obvious straw clutching. Naturalism is shit and materialism is a fat ponce waiting for a free meal deal.
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Vlud,
No. Hillside I do do a philosophy.
Your whateverpopsintomyhead-ism is not a philosophy.
The only methodology I do is methodological materialism which I acknowledge doesn't seem to work at the point of the big bang.
Why would you "acknowledge" something you cannot know to be the case? Lots of people are trying to unravel what happened at the Big Bang, and they do so using the only method available to them - methodological materialism. Whether it will provide the answer is as yet unknowable, but even if it doesn't what alternative method of discovery would you propose?
Palm reading?
Seaweed observation?
Tea leaf reading?
What?
You gussy the methodology up to become the philosophy and trumpet the methodology. While I salute the method, It's a bit of a bust flush on the origins of the universe as is your philosophy.....Unless you are suggesting it is some kind of platonic form which has truth value regardless of whether there is material or not.
And for those of us working in English?
I really, really hope that you aren't about to return to the real "busted flush" here - your crass straw man version of what philosophical materialism actually entails that you've had handed back to you in pieces so many times now.
You aren't are you?
You've been taken over the edge of philosophical materialism and your credibility of argument has fallen off the edge.
Further gibberish noted.
What a pathetic waste of time typing this on what is a piece of obvious straw clutching. Naturalism is shit and materialism is a fat ponce waiting for a free meal deal.
Your usual dull incomprehension is noted too.
If ever you feel like telling us why you think the universe necessarily did have an "origin" though, by all means share. I'll alert the world's scientific press...
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Hillside
Firstly philosophical materialism is only as good as long as there is material as is methodological materialism.
Secondly you are suppressing the very question which exposes you to this.
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Firstly philosophical materialism is only as good as long as there is material as is methodological materialism.
Any justification for thinking there's anything other than material of one form or another? Not a reason - I want it to be the case is a reason - but any justification? Bearing in mind 'material can't yet explain x' isn't an argument for anything other than more research being required.
O.
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Any justification for thinking there's anything other than material of one form or another? Not a reason - I want it to be the case is a reason - but any justification? Bearing in mind 'material can't yet explain x' isn't an argument for anything other than more research being required.
O.
But hey Outrider. you've just written another post wishing it IS material.
Christians and other philosophers of the platonic strand have happily used the word substance long before the term was absorbed into materialism.
To suggest that somehow materialism survives beyond the big bang carries no evidence in methodological materialist terms.
Sean Carroll knows this but tries to eek out the materialist magisterium into multiverses because he tries to make science fit into philosophical materialism by wanting to retire falsifiability and replace it with elegance.
He knows that at the boundaries of what science can handle, materialism and naturalism are washed up. Not that science provides a basis for materialism and philosophical naturalism apart from a leap of faith.
At the end of the day it's your problem because PM and PN were forged in the days when Hoyle was the rage. Religion lived quite happily with the idea of an infinite universe because it really asks why something and not nothing.....oh and just for Hillside's information, one doesn't have to conclude a hypothesis is real before suggesting it as a hypothesis.
Sorry guys but for me the magic of philosophical materialism has rather worn off.
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But hey Outrider. you've just written another post wishing it IS material.
No. Should I take your failure to address the question as the answer 'I have no justification, I just want a god in my life'?
Christians and other philosophers of the platonic strand have happily used the word substance long before the term was absorbed into materialism.
And? Did they have a justification for their claims that you can borrow?
To suggest that somehow materialism survives beyond the big bang carries no evidence in methodological materialist terms.
Evidence? No, it doesn't, I've not claimed that it does. I've suggest that it's an hypothesis deduced from our current understanding of the universe and the possibilities of the broader reality beyond it. I've explained, step-by-step, why I think it's at least a reasonable framework of an explanation for the broader reality.
So far you've offered no logical objections other than 'that's not proven', which wasn't claimed, and no justified alternative explanations.
Sean Carroll knows this but tries to eek out the materialist magisterium into multiverses because he tries to make science fit into philosophical materialism by wanting to retire falsifiability and replace it with elegance.
I have no idea who he is, but given that I'm not doing that, I'm unsure why someone else's overreach applies here?
He knows that at the boundaries of what science can handle, materialism and naturalism are washed up. Not that science provides a basis for materialism and philosophical naturalism apart from a leap of faith.
And back to trying to hide within the ambiguity of the word 'faith'. There's trust - belief based upon justified prior events - and there's faith - belief regardless of prior events'.
At the end of the day it's your problem because PM and PN were forged in the days when Hoyle was the rage. Religion lived quite happily with the idea of an infinite universe because it really asks why something and not nothing.....oh and just for Hillside's information, one doesn't have to conclude a hypothesis is real before suggesting it as a hypothesis.
It's not my problem, I have a model of reality that works and is - so far - continuously verified by the available evidence. I don't have a gap in my explanation that you've shown other than 'not proven yet', which is fine by me. You have the problem, in that this working, viable model doesn't require your magical interventions, but you don't have a viable model that does.
Sorry guys but for me the magic of philosophical materialism has rather worn off.
So you fall back on 'real' magic, instead. Good luck with that.
O.
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Vlud,
Firstly philosophical materialism is only as good as long as there is material as is methodological materialism.
Insofar as I can unscramble that sentence into a comprehensible thought, it's axiomatic that materialism deals with the material. You and I can speculate as much as we like about the supposed non-material - gods, leprechauns, whatever - but materialism could never have anything to say about how real any of those speculations might be.
The problem though - your problem in fact - is that neither can anything else.
And as we both know that I've chased you all over this mb asking you finally to produce a method of any sort to validate your personal claims of the non-material only for you endlessly to avoid answering, you're stuck with your problem until you finally at least attempt to address it.
No-one else has ever managed it by the way, so good luck with it!
Secondly you are suppressing the very question which exposes you to this.
No doubt you'll be along any time now then to tell us what this "question" is that I'm apparently "suppressing".
I see by the way the you've avoided again answering your difficulty about framing a question that's meaningful. If you take an entirely parochial, Paley's watch level approach to the "the universe" - "it's made of stuff, stuff comes from somewhere, therefore it must have had an origin" etc - then the "what's the origin of the universe then?" - question makes a kind of limited sense, even when you use it as a precursor to yet another argument from personal incredulity.
The problem though is that the universe actually appears to be a lot more complex and nuanced than that. When time itself is likely to be a property of the universe, questions about what happened "before" time just break down. Maybe the universe - or lots of universes - are eternally old; maybe there was a true "nothing" and a quantum borrowing event occurred; maybe, maybe, maybe...
The thing is though, people are working on these questions as we speak using the only tools available that have been shown verifiably to work - the tools of science. That some oaf says, "ah, but science hasn't got all the answers yet so it must be a piece of iron-age folkloric myth wot did it" is so preposterously ludicrous that I wonder that you bother with it, but there it is nonetheless.
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Outy,
I have no idea who he is...
Author of the very good "The Particle at the End of the Universe", research professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He took William Lane Craig apart a while back when the latter blundered into science for support for his theism.
Needless to say, Carroll does not do what Vlud claims him to do.
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Outy,
Author of the very good "The Particle at the End of the Universe", research professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He took William Lane Craig apart a while back when the latter blundered into science for support for his theism.
Needless to say, Carroll does not do what Vlud claims him to do.
Outy
Sean Carroll is also the author of this:
http://edge.org/response-detail/25322
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Outy
Sean Carroll is also the author of this:
http://edge.org/response-detail/25322
You just read the headline without understanding the article, didn't you.
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Outy
Sean Carroll is also the author of this:
http://edge.org/response-detail/25322
Carroll thinks people outside of science fail to understand the complexities of science, and thinks that falsifiability isn't the be all and end all of science, especially at the forefront of speculative research.
Do you think this is somehow heretical? Seems relatively straightforward to me.
O.
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Carroll thinks people outside of science fail to understand the complexities of science, and thinks that falsifiability isn't the be all and end all of science, especially at the forefront of speculative research.
Do you think this is somehow heretical? Seems relatively straightforward to me.
O.
Ah, The courtiers reply.
.............particularly as his own theories are unfalsifiable.
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Carroll thinks people outside of science fail to understand the complexities of science, and thinks that falsifiability isn't the be all and end all of science, especially at the forefront of speculative research.
Do you think this is somehow heretical? Seems relatively straightforward to me.
O.
Carroll works with String Theory (it should be "String Hypothesis" really). People dismiss it on the grounds that it can't be falsified. Carroll doesn't like that.
I think he's arguing that people shouldn't dismiss scientific hypotheses just because we can't tell if they are true or false yet.
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Ah, The courtiers reply.
.............particularly as his own theories are unfalsifiable.
You could think of it as the courtier's reply, if you'd like, but that would purely be accepting your own abject ignorance in the situation. That's not really a secret, obviously, but I wouldn't be so rude. The fact that the information is out there, that the article is very clear on what he means, and my potted response of it is a reasonable summary, of course, means that it's not the courtier's reply.
You're trying to undermine Carroll for reasons I can't fathom - perhaps because you agree that he robustly destroyed WLC's special pleadings in debate - which would be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that none of us were reliant on Carroll, and indeed I seem to recall it was you that brought him up, almost as though you were trying to erect a strawman of some sort.
O.
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You could think of it as the courtier's reply, if you'd like, but that would purely be accepting your own abject ignorance in the situation. That's not really a secret, obviously, but I wouldn't be so rude. The fact that the information is out there, that the article is very clear on what he means, and my potted response of it is a reasonable summary, of course, means that it's not the courtier's reply.
You're trying to undermine Carroll for reasons I can't fathom - perhaps because you agree that he robustly destroyed WLC's special pleadings in debate - which would be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that none of us were reliant on Carroll, and indeed I seem to recall it was you that brought him up, almost as though you were trying to erect a strawman of some sort.
O.
Carroll is Vlad's new poster boy because he wrote an article which appears to suggest that falsifiability is not an integral part of science. Carroll indulges in the kind of wishful thinking that Vlad likes in the article and in his mind that validates his point of view.
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You could think of it as the courtier's reply, if you'd like, but that would purely be accepting your own abject ignorance in the situation. That's not really a secret, obviously, but I wouldn't be so rude. The fact that the information is out there, that the article is very clear on what he means, and my potted response of it is a reasonable summary, of course, means that it's not the courtier's reply.
You're trying to undermine Carroll for reasons I can't fathom - perhaps because you agree that he robustly destroyed WLC's special pleadings in debate - which would be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that none of us were reliant on Carroll, and indeed I seem to recall it was you that brought him up, almost as though you were trying to erect a strawman of some sort.
O.
Of course the beef I have with Carroll is that he has trumpeted the triumph of philosophical naturalism as the truth of the matter.
His own fields of study have stubbornly remained at the hypothesis stage and some scientists wonder if these fields are testable or falsifiable in any case.
There are two ways to face that criticism that is to announce the conditions under which they would be falsifiable or testable do not exist......or specially plead for a dispensation from the accepted scientific conventions.....as philosophical naturalism pleads for exemption from methodological materialism.....You know that there are debates among people who do really understand.
Carroll is too close to New Atheism and it's dogmatic assertion that true science can only flow from a firm philosophical naturalist brain to avoid suspicion that he is confusing his philosophy with science.
There is no doubt he is brilliant and perhaps he is making strides in what would be better described as Natural Philosophy or Cosmological mathematics but it is dogmatic belief that allows acceptance of one unfalsifiable....a multiverse and refusal to accept another one .....God.
The King has no clothes.
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Of course the beef I have with Carroll is that he has trumpeted the triumph of philosophical naturalism as the truth of the matter.
Has he, or is this 'he's a philosophical naturalist' in the same way that I'm an 'anti-theist'?
His own fields of study have stubbornly remained at the hypothesis stage and some scientists wonder if these fields are testable or falsifiable in any case.
I suspect that very few scientific questions are looked at with an eye to 'will they ever be testable?' - most scientists are humble enough to accept that just because something isn't testable yet doesn't mean that it never could be. I'd have a certain sympathy for someone who suggested it couldn't strictly be considered an hypothesis without at least a theoretical means of testing it.
There are two ways to face that criticism that is to announce the conditions under which they would be falsifiable or testable do not exist......or specially plead for a dispensation from the accepted scientific conventions.....as philosophical naturalism pleads for exemption from methodological materialism.....You know that there are debates among people who do really understand.
No, you could make a case that it's perfectly valid to be considering things that might, in the future, be testable science.
Carroll is too close to New Atheism and it's dogmatic assertion that true science can only flow from a firm philosophical naturalist brain to avoid suspicion that he is confusing his philosophy with science.
Too close for whom? I'm not aware of any strong thread of 'science progressing from philosophical naturalism' in any kind of atheism - most atheism, New or otherwise, comes from the fact that religion still hasn't made a case.
There is no doubt he is brilliant and perhaps he is making strides in what would be better described as Natural Philosophy or Cosmological mathematics but it is dogmatic belief that allows acceptance of one unfalsifiable....a multiverse and refusal to accept another one .....God.
Or at least it would be if he weren't saying 'this is how it might be'. If he were saying 'this is how it is', you might have a case.
The King has no clothes.
That would be more of an issue for us if it were our King and not just your straw-man with a crown.
O.