Searching for GOD...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlunderer,

Actually Hillside I was going to ask why you have introduced probability into the definition of philosophical materialism......particularly after you had been warned that PM is an ontological statement. In PM there is only material........no probability about it.

You can't "warn" someone against something you've just made up you banana! "Truth" itself is probabilistic - you don't know what you don't know - because it rests on axioms. That's where you keep going wrong - assuming absolutism when there is none.

Good grief!

Oh, and you seem to forgotten to say, "OK blue - now I see where I went wrong when I wrongly said you'd agreed with me. Thank you for correcting me on that."

Oh well. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlunderer,

You can't "warn" someone against something you've just made up you banana! "Truth" itself is probabilistic - you don't know what you don't know - because it rests on axioms. That's where you keep going wrong - assuming absolutism when there is none.

Good grief!

Oh, and you seem to forgotten to say, "OK blue - now I see where I went wrong when I wrongly said you'd agreed with me. Thank you for correcting me on that."

Oh well.

Yeh why have you introduced probability into philosophical materialism?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlunderer,

Yeh why have you introduced probability into philosophical materialism?

Why have you introduced stuff falling downwards into gravity?

I haven't "introduced" anything - it's there anyway. Where you have and continue to go wrong is to assume that materialism claims that the material is all there necessarily is or can be. Materialism does no such thing - it merely says that the material is all there is that's reliably accessible and (probabilistically) verifiable. It says nothing to conjectures about the supposedly non-material, which are so much white noise until and unless someone finally manages a method of any kind to verify these claims.

Materialism has got there already and it's no use complaining that the tools of materialism cannot investigate claims of the non-material - no-one says otherwise. Your job though if you seriously expect others not just to point and laugh when you assert "god" is finally to come up with a method of any kind to investigate that claim...

...which of course is when you always run away.

'bye then.   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlunderer,

Why have you introduced stuff falling downwards into gravity?

I haven't "introduced" anything - it's there anyway. Where you have and continue to go wrong is to assume that materialism claims that the material is all there necessarily is or can be. Materialism does no such thing - it merely says that the material is all there is that's reliably accessible and (probabilistically) verifiable. It says nothing to conjectures about the supposedly non-material, which are so much white noise until and unless someone finally manages a method of any kind to verify these claims.

Materialism has got there already and it's no use complaining that the tools of materialism cannot investigate claims of the non-material - no-one says otherwise. Your job though if you seriously expect others not just to point and laugh when you assert "god" is finally to come up with a method of any kind to investigate that claim...

...which of course is when you always run away.

'bye then.

Oh dear after waiting for something informative the only profound thing about your post was its meaningless verbosity.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlunderer,

Oh dear after waiting for something informative the only profound thing about your post was its meaningless verbosity.

You do that a lot when your case has been shown to be demonstrably wrong - misdescribe the rebuttal as "meaningless" or some such in the hope that no-one notices that you have no counter-argument.

'Twas ever thus with you. And what happens next is that you will go quiet for bit, then reappear with your "philosophical materialism" mistake; I'll tell you that you're wrong; you'll demand to know why; I'll tell you why; you'll have no answer so you'll throw insult at it and then go quiet for a bit; then you'll reappear etc etc...

...and round and round we go. 

Tell you what - just bookmark this exchange, and when you repeat your mistake yet again a bit later on I can just refer you to it.

Deal?

[Alan Burns]

You assume a "that's hard, therefore a top down designer" paradigm whereas most complexity we're aware of emerges from the bottom up: ant colonies, learning software, urban growth, you name it - it all happen because relatively stupid components produce complex results with no plan, purpose or overarching design involved.

You are using a very bad example here.  The complexity of an ant colony is not derived from relatively stupid components.  The complexity of the ant colony is derived from the DNA molecule which builds the ant and defines its behaviour, and offers far more complexity than the properties of the colony.  And I could also state that learning software and urban growth have their origins derived from the complexity of the human DNA molecule.

[Alan Burns]

That's what our awareness is, basically, integrated sensory information; you are over complicating things.  We are not aware of the process of integration, that is the really cool thing, the brain does all that subliminally, so what we are left with is an integrated composited awareness of external and internal sensory information.

In order to recognise and name a process of integration we must be aware of it in some way.  We may not be aware of it at the time it happens, but we become aware on reflection.

It is hard to see how awareness fits in with the endless deterministic chain of cause and effect.  We have no definitive point at which we can say awareness occurs.  Neither do we have a process which determines how it materialises.  Nor do we know what precisely it is that becomes aware.

In other words, where is the "me" in this endless materialistic chain of cause and effect?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You are using a very bad example here.  The complexity of an ant colony is not derived from relatively stupid components.  The complexity of the ant colony is derived from the DNA molecule which builds the ant and defines its behaviour, and offers far more complexity than the properties of the colony.  And I could also state that learning software and urban growth have their origins derived from the complexity of the human DNA molecule.

I'm not sure that I even have the words to explain to you how wrong you are here. There's nothing in ant DNA that tells them to take dead ants to a midden, to farm other creatures to harvest the food they produce, to tell fellow ants from their colony (but not from other colonies) where the food is and how much of it there is, to locate various areas of the colony exactly equidistant from each other, to....

All the DNA does is to provide the instructions for very simple actions - that's why ants are "stupid" - only it happens that other, more complex properties can emerge from those very simple instructions.

Imagine for example that you had a set of motorised snooker balls with basic instructions programmed in - "roll forward until you hit something", "turn 45 degrees left when you hit a red ball", "reverse when you hit a green ball" etc. At no point would those instruction say something like, "create the following pattern of snooker balls on the table" and yet, given long enough, sure enough such patterns would arise. Indeed it's entirely possible that at some point the balls would be perfectly racked up to start a game of snooker.

The point though is that it's entirely unnecessary to have an instruction that says, "rack them up for a game of snooker".

And that's emergence, albeit a basic type (called non-adaptive emergence if you're interested, whereas ant behaviour adaptively emergent) - complex, and sometime extremely complex, properties emerge from very basic instructions - there's no boss, no designer, no grand planner, no anything "top down" needed for it to happen; rather it all happens bottom up. That's how cities grow, Sim City works and for that matter consciousness arises.

Seriously - I pointed you toward a book on this a while back. If you read it you'll enjoy it I think, you'll earn an awful lot and maybe you'll even avoid falling flat on your face again here.     

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

In order to recognise and name a process of integration we must be aware of it in some way.  We may not be aware of it at the time it happens, but we become aware on reflection.

It is hard to see how awareness fits in with the endless deterministic chain of cause and effect.  We have no definitive point at which we can say awareness occurs.  Neither do we have a process which determines how it materialises.  Nor do we know what precisely it is that becomes aware.

In other words, where is the "me" in this endless materialistic chain of cause and effect?

Oh dear. You really are undeducable aren't you?

First, the point is that the consciousness that allows you to observe what you observe itself shows every sign of being an emergent property of the stuff of which you're made.

Second, you're essaying yet again - and at some length - the argument from personal incredulity, a basic logical error. That you personally find something "hard to see" says nothing to the fact that others can see it, and very clearly too.

I have tried to explain to you what "logical fallacy" means - why do you cling to them so assiduously nonetheless?

[Alan Burns]

There's nothing in ant DNA that tells them to take dead ants to a midden, to farm other creatures to harvest the food they produce, to tell fellow ants from their colony (but not from other colonies) where the food is and how much of it there is, to locate various areas of the colony exactly equidistant from each other, to....

All the DNA does is to provide the instructions for very simple actions - that's why ants are "stupid" - only it happens that other, more complex properties can emerge from those very simple instructions.

Imagine for example that you had a set of motorised snooker balls with basic instructions programmed in - "roll forward until you hit something", "turn 45 degrees left when you hit a red ball", "reverse when you hit a green ball" etc. At no point would those instruction say something like, "create the following pattern of snooker balls on the table" and yet, given long enough, sure enough such patterns would arise. Indeed it's entirely possible that at some point the balls would be perfectly racked up to start a game of snooker.

The point though is that it's entirely unnecessary to have an instruction that says, "rack them up for a game of snooker".

And that's emergence, albeit a basic type (called non-adaptive emergence if you're interested, whereas ant behaviour adaptively emergent) - complex, and sometime extremely complex, properties emerge from very basic instructions - there's no boss, no designer, no grand planner, no anything "top down" needed for it to happen; rather it all happens bottom up. That's how cities grow, Sim City works and for that matter consciousness arises.

Seriously - I pointed you toward a book on this a while back. If you read it you'll enjoy it I think, you'll earn an awful lot and maybe you'll even avoid falling flat on your face again here.     

I have not read the book, but I did view some url links you gave some time ago on the subject of emergent properties.

Emergent properties are simply the observed natural consequences of events.  Any perceived complexity or specific functionality must be derived from the cause of these events.  If a set of balls are correctly racked up for a game of snooker, the cause will have originated from the free will of the person setting them up.  The cause of the perceived functionality in an ant colony will be derived from ant behaviour resulting from many years of evolutionary development - and this will be sourced in the DNA of the ants.  The cause of a perceived snowflake pattern will be derived from the natural behaviour of ice crystals.  So an emergent property can have different causes, and to me it is not a valid explanation for human awareness.

[Sassy]

God is that person who makes us realise that we are not alone and that if man was to ignore Gods existence then evil could prosper and the most horrific events can become reality. In history everyone from Adam to the present day believers can see the reality of Gods love making a difference in the world.
What I would like to know is what made your love grow so cold you would ignore such evils so you do not have to believe?

What I would like to know is what makes any educated person continue to believe the daft stuff invented by men in an age when they knew no better.

There is no evidence for your stupid remark, and plenty of evidence that atheists are capable of as much love and empathy as any god follower.

I did not make a stupid remark. The evidence is the world today compared to 2,000 years ago and even before when the strongest conquered and ruled others. True Christianity is love and peace. The age of Christ, men saw and knew God healed and helped those whom came into contact with Christ. Christ gave to all whom asked. My reply to was to Shaker but you must have seen yourself reflected in it...

Of course there have been evil non-believers, just as there have been evil believers, but atheists by and large condemn wrong-doing just as much as believers ... not because "God" tells them to but because they have the intelligence to work it out for themselves.

But they don't stop doing the evil they commit when atheists, do they? That is until they meet the real Christ and come to God through him. You Leonard, whom do you give thanks to for your life and every beautiful new day?

[Sassy]

What 'evils' and who is ignoring them Sassy?

Hitler to name one! How did he manage to do what he did?

[Sassy]

Your version of the deity created evil!

What version is that?

You made a stupid remark and cannot back it up. WHY? Because God that deity is only evil in your mind and you have absolutely NOTHING to back it up in Christ. Furthermore you cannot pass judgement on God and his laws without passing judgement on the manmade laws which executed murderers. If a coven of witches or anyone meet of people actually sacrificed humans then under the laws of some countries they too would face death. Truth is you have no idea of right or wrong in a justice system.

[Sassy]

An easy mistake to make, but I think you're confusing my wife with God.

Yet men claiming God's existence perpetrate evils great and small, every day.

From the mass shooting in a hotel in Ouagadougou yesterday, through to the demands of African churches that the Anglican communion should punish the Episcopal churches for not being homophobic enough - God's love making a difference in the world. I'll pass, thanks.

What made your faith so blind that you fail to see?

O.

Sorry O, Only your replies appear when quoted.
So they make no sense without otiginal quotes from original post. Cannot be bothered too and frowing with the posts to answer. So blame the admin who deliberately ruined the board. We are capable of removing after answering but this makes no sense in the absence of what you answered. Sorry. Mods too proud to admit they made an error in judgement,

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I have not read the book, but I did view some url links you gave some time ago on the subject of emergent properties.

A good start. I hope you found them helpful.

Emergent properties are simply the observed natural consequences of events.

Sort of: “natural consequences of events” is a loose way of putting it, and they don’t have to be “observed” to occur nonetheless, but ok…

Any perceived complexity or specific functionality must be derived from the cause of these events.

“Perceived” or not, it’s “derived from” simpler components yes. The point though is that those simpler components need have no awareness at all of the complexity that ensues because of their existence – the complexity is in other words bottom up, not top down. 

If a set of balls are correctly racked up for a game of snooker, the cause will have originated from the free will of the person setting them up.

You’re falling back into your mistake about “free” will again I fear, but if they are “racked up” then someone will have done it. The point though of the motorised snooker balls example is that there’s no necessity to programme them with the instruction “arrange yourself racked up for a game of snooker” – only very basic instructions are needed (“turn 15 degrees right when you hit a red ball”, “wait five seconds when you hit a blue ball” etc) and, if you wait long enough, at some point you’ll find that they're arranged ready for a game of snooker with no top down instruction whatever to do so.   

The cause of the perceived functionality in an ant colony will be derived from ant behaviour resulting from many years of evolutionary development - and this will be sourced in the DNA of the ants.

Again, the point is there’s nothing in ant DNA that says “build a nest”, “remove the dead ants” etc (what language would the DNA even use to do that?). Instead all it has is very simple instructions – “if you find food, leave a pheromone trail to it” etc – yet from those very simple instructions astonishingly complex societies and behaviours emerge with no top down designer of any sort needed to make it so.

Your suggestion about evolution is though relevant to the extent that that’s what distinguishes ants from snooker balls for this purpose – ant behaviour is adaptively emergent, whereas snooker balls would be non-adaptively emergent because non-“successful” snooker balls don’t exit the genome while the others thrive.
 

The cause of a perceived snowflake pattern will be derived from the natural behaviour of ice crystals.

Perceived or not perceived, the pattern will be there nonetheless but ok…

So an emergent property can have different causes, and to me it is not a valid explanation for human awareness.

Aw no! You were actually doing quite well there, and then blammo – straight back in with an argument from your personal incredulity.

What a shame.

The point is that emergence is a well-understood phenomenon that very well explains how complex results can come from very simple constituent parts, and there’s no reason at all just to assume that consciousness isn’t another example of that phenomenon. That “to you” it’s not a valid explanation is a matter for you, but it is a valid explanation to those who actually study these things. Why would you think that that consciousness should arbitrarily be excluded from the principle, whereas other highly complex outcomes should not be if not for, "that looks hard, therefore God"?   

[Leonard James]

I agree with everything you say, blue, except the following.
 

Again, the point is there’s nothing in ant DNA that says “build a nest”, “remove the dead ants” etc (what language would the DNA even use to do that?). Instead all it has is very simple instructions – “if you find food, leave a pheromone trail to it” etc

I think even that is more complicated than the reality. I don't think the ant is aware of any instructions, much less follow them. Its DNA is such that due to a mutation the single act of finding a food source triggers leaving the trail. I'm sure it's not a conscious action on the part of the insect.

[Alan Burns]

The point is that emergence is a well-understood phenomenon that very well explains how complex results can come from very simple constituent parts, and there’s no reason at all just to assume that consciousness isn’t another example of that phenomenon. That “to you” it’s not a valid explanation is a matter for you, but it is a valid explanation to those who actually study these things. Why would you think that that consciousness should arbitrarily be excluded from the principle, whereas other highly complex outcomes should not be if not for, "that looks hard, therefore God"?

The reason for my incredulity is that human perception is not just complex - it has no feasible definition in material terms, so I do not see how it can be defined as an emergent property, since emergent properties are just observable complex behaviour of material elements.

[floo]

What version is that?

You made a stupid remark and cannot back it up. WHY? Because God that deity is only evil in your mind and you have absolutely NOTHING to back it up in Christ. Furthermore you cannot pass judgement on God and his laws without passing judgement on the manmade laws which executed murderers. If a coven of witches or anyone meet of people actually sacrificed humans then under the laws of some countries they too would face death. Truth is you have no idea of right or wrong in a justice system.

Sass you have created your own version of the deity to suit your perspective of the world.

As for the deity featured in the Bible it is EVIL, darling Satan couldn't be any worse. I will pass judgement on it, and would try to exterminate it if it existed, which I don't believe it does! 

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The reason for my incredulity is that human perception is not just complex - it has no feasible definition in material terms, so I do not see how it can be defined as an emergent property, since emergent properties are just observable complex behaviour of material elements.

You're not getting it still. "Human perception" has just as much "feasible definition in material terms" as has farming activity by leaf cutter ants. "Awareness", "perception", "behaviour" etc are all observable phenomena that occur because of the much more basic physical properties of the creatures that have them, and that requires no top down designer to make it so.   

Seriously dude - read the freakin' book!

[ippy]

I did not make a stupid remark. The evidence is the world today compared to 2,000 years ago and even before when the strongest conquered and ruled others. True Christianity is love and peace. The age of Christ, men saw and knew God healed and helped those whom came into contact with Christ. Christ gave to all whom asked. My reply to was to Shaker but you must have seen yourself reflected in it...
But they don't stop doing the evil they commit when atheists, do they? That is until they meet the real Christ and come to God through 5th him. You Leonard, whom do you give thanks to for your life and every beautiful new day?

4/5 debateable

ippy

[ippy]

Hitler to name one! How did he manage to do what he did?

0

ippy

[ippy]

What version is that?

You made a stupid remark and cannot back it up. WHY? Because God that deity is only evil in your mind and you have absolutely NOTHING to back it up in Christ. Furthermore you cannot pass judgement on God and his laws without passing judgement on the manmade laws which executed murderers. If a coven of witches or anyone meet of people actually sacrificed humans then under the laws of some countries they too would face death. Truth is you have no idea of right or wrong in a justice system.

2

ippy

[ippy]

Sorry O, Only your replies appear when quoted.
So they make no sense without otiginal quotes from original post. Cannot be bothered too and frowing with the posts to answer. So blame the admin who deliberately ruined the board. We are capable of removing after answering but this makes no sense in the absence of what you answered. Sorry. Mods too proud to admit they made an error in judgement,

0

ippy

[Maeght]

Hitler to name one! How did he manage to do what he did?

Sassy, you said 'What I would like to know is what made your love grow so cold you would ignore such evils so you do not have to believe?'. Not sure where Hitler comes into that. Can you explain?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

You're not getting it still. "Human perception" has just as much "feasible definition in material terms" as has farming activity by leaf cutter ants. "Awareness", "perception", "behaviour" etc are all observable phenomena that occur because of the much more basic physical properties of the creatures that have them, and that requires no top down designer to make it so.   

Seriously dude - read the freakin' book!

Once you try to define perception in physical terms it just becomes a series of discrete reactions with no definable point at which you can say perception occurs.

We take the amazing gift of perception so much for granted

Just try to imagine the scenario:
God brings into existence a whole series of self replicating biological machines which can survive through the naturally hostile conditions of this universe.  Then He gives one of these creatures the amazing ability to percieve all that has been created.  A whole universe comes into existence in the perception of each one of these creatures.  The universe was made to be perceived!