Searching for GOD...

[Stranger]

I do not need calculations to illustrate the evidence for the conscious freedom needed to contemplate reality, reason, discern logic and draw valid conclusions.

Why do you think that completely ignoring what everybody says and just moronically repeating the same mindless drivel is going help your cause? Yet again, for the hard-of-thinking:

• Nobody has ever denied the "freedom" needed to do any of those things.
  
  
• You have never once given the slightest hint of a logical reason to suppose that those things require your self-contradictory, nonsensical ability to have been able to have done differently without randomness.

I have yet to see viable evidence that it can all be produced from subconscious brain activity driven by nothing but inevitable physically controlled reactions.

Where is the evidence for anything else? The evidence tells us that it's brains that do thinking.

Where is your "sound logic"?

[Gordon]

I think it was Sir Fred Hoyle who calculated the probability of the first living cell forming from combinations of amino acids as one in  ten to the power of eighty one, which is many magnitudes more than the estimated number of atomic particles in the known universe.

And it was a prominent scientist or mathematician who likened the process of unguided evolution to a blind man trying to solve a rubic's cube by randomly twisting the squares and asking his friend "is that it?".

And we have yet to discover how conscious awareness and consciously driven choices work in purely material terms.

It is impossible to calculate accurate probabilities for life as we know it to have come into existence on this earth, but from my own common sense perspective, the likelihood of it happening from nothing but unguided forces is a pretty good definition of absolute zero.

Then why mention probability at all?

P.S. Fred Hoyle is not necessarily an ideal authority to cite.

[ProfessorDavey]

I think it was Sir Fred Hoyle who calculated the probability of the first living cell forming from combinations of amino acids as one in  ten to the power of eighty one, which is many magnitudes more than the estimated number of atomic particles in the known universe.

Fred Hoyle is an astrophysicist so I'm struggling to understand why he has the expertise to be an authority on cell biology nor statistics. And your statement 'the first living cell forming from combinations of amino acids' fundamentally misunderstands what living cells are comprised of in terms of proteins, nor how they are considered to have evolved from more simple components.

[ProfessorDavey]

And it was a prominent scientist or mathematician who likened the process of unguided evolution to a blind man trying to solve a rubic's cube by randomly twisting the squares and asking his friend "is that it?".

Which of course works - if you randomly twist a rubic's cube every possible combination is equally likely and with enough twists a completed rubric's cube becomes not merely a possibility but virtually a certainty. Now firstly the completed rubic's cube is no more nor less likely as an outcome than any other combination, but we see the pattern - we might think it remarkable (it isn't, we just perceive it as such). Image further that the only way in which the rubic's dude reveals itself to us is if it is complete (the equivalence of us only being able to considered the evolved universe if it has evolved with conscious beings in it) and what do we get - the mere certainly of a completed rubric's cube and a situation that we perceive as remarkable as we can never see, nor could recognise the patterns in any other outcome.

[ProfessorDavey]

And we have yet to discover how conscious awareness and consciously driven choices work in purely material terms.

Rubbish - while we may still lack full understanding the basis concept that drive consciousness are very well understood in material terms - it is called neuroscience.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I think it was Sir Fred Hoyle who calculated the probability of the first living cell forming from combinations of amino acids as one in  ten to the power of eighty one, which is many magnitudes more than the estimated number of atomic particles in the known universe.

If it was one-shot deal, the odds against would be very high yes. You’re forgetting though the countless trillions of opportunities for it to happen so the probability of it occurring is actually quite high – some would say inevitable.

And it was a prominent scientist or mathematician who likened the process of unguided evolution to a blind man trying to solve a rubic's cube by randomly twisting the squares and asking his friend "is that it?".

Ah, the old reference point mistake – explained to you many times yet you repeat it over and over again. Why is that? Yet again… let’s say that a golf hole has several million blades of grass, the golfer tees off and 400 yards away the ball lands on one of them. Would the blade of grass the ball landed on be smart to think itself really special because the odds against the ball landing on it were so high, or would it have made a basic error in thinking?   

And we have yet to discover how conscious awareness and consciously driven choices work in purely material terms.

No we haven’t. We have a perfectly plausible model that explains it called emergence, albeit one that lots of people are working on to discover even more. By contrast we have your “it’s magic innit” soul about which you have precisely zero information. Yet somehow you think a jig-saw with no pieces at all will give you a more realistic picture than a jig-saw with some of the pieces. Why is that?   

It is impossible to calculate accurate probabilities for life as we know it to have come into existence on this earth,…

No it isn’t – the probability is actually quite high and seems likely to have happened independently in various ways (at hydrothermal vents being just one example).

… but from my own common sense perspective, the likelihood of it happening from nothing but unguided forces is a pretty good definition of absolute zero.

Then your “common sense” is entirely ignorant of the facts that show it to be misleading you.

[Sebastian Toe]

I think it was Sir Fred Hoyle who calculated the probability of the first living cell forming from combinations of amino acids as one in  ten to the power of eighty one, which is many magnitudes more than the estimated number of atomic particles in the known universe.

...but magnitudes less than the estimated number of photons in the universe, 10 to the power 89.

[Stranger]

And we have yet to discover how conscious awareness and consciously driven choices work in purely material terms.

Which makes, logically impossible, self-contradictory magic so much more believable.

The rest of your post is just distraction. Look at what just happened.

I gave you a source to show you what "sound logic" actually entailed. You started off by accusing me of not following it, with your usual peerless hypocrisy. Then when I answered you and and pointed out that it was you who were trying to prove a proposition and had claimed "sound logic" and you might like to use the resource to actually provide it (or admit you couldn't). Then you went off on an irrelevant tangent about whether causes might be discernible or not, regurgitated more of your script that has been addressed countless times before, and now you're off talking about the probability of abiogenesis and "unguided evolution" (by some unnamed "prominent scientist or mathematician").

If you're not deliberately throwing up a smokescreen to cover the fact that once again you have been unable to produce what you said you could and can't answer the arguments against you, then there is a delicious irony in that it must be your subconscious mind doing the real "thinking" behind what you post.

[Alan Burns]

• Nobody has ever denied the "freedom" needed to do any of those things.
  
  

Do you honestly believe that such things as logical deductions can be achieved with a freedom similar to that of a boulder rolling down a hill?
For that is precisely the type of freedom entailed by nothing but inevitable reactions.

[Alan Burns]

Where is your "sound logic"?

It certainly does not exist within uncontrollable physical reactions.
It exists in the power of the conscious human mind.

[Stranger]

Do you honestly believe that such things as logical deductions can be achieved with a freedom similar to that of a boulder rolling down a hill?
For that is precisely the type of freedom entailed by nothing but inevitable reactions.

I notice the careful editing of my post to exclude the question you have never answered.

Where is the first hint of a logical reason to think that anything humans do requires the self-contradictory, nonsensical ability to have been able to have done differently without randomness? How would that in any way help with logical deductions?

[Stranger]

Where is your "sound logic"?

It certainly does not exist within uncontrollable physical reactions.
It exists in the power of the conscious human mind.

Still running away.   

Can you produce anything remotely like a logical argument or not?

[Alan Burns]

I notice the careful editing of my post to exclude the question you have never answered.

Where is the first hint of a logical reason to think that anything humans do requires the self-contradictory, nonsensical ability to have been able to have done differently without randomness? How would that in any way help with logical deductions?

According to your "logical" deductions, I could not possibly have deduced anything but what I deduced, and I could not possibly have posted anything but what I posted.  What type of freedom is that?

[Stranger]

I notice the careful editing of my post to exclude the question you have never answered.

Where is the first hint of a logical reason to think that anything humans do requires the self-contradictory, nonsensical ability to have been able to have done differently without randomness? How would that in any way help with logical deductions?

According to your "logical" deductions, I could not possibly have deduced anything but what I deduced, and I could not possibly have posted anything but what I posted.  What type of freedom is that?

How about actually answering the question?

[Gordon]

According to your "logical" deductions, I could not possibly have deduced anything but what I deduced, and I could not possibly have posted anything but what I posted.  What type of freedom is that?

Seemingly it is your freedom to evade (as well as indulge in your usual fallacious mangling).

Thank God (pun intended) that I wasn't ever involved with Christianity.

[torridon]

Do you honestly believe that such things as logical deductions can be achieved with a freedom similar to that of a boulder rolling down a hill?
For that is precisely the type of freedom entailed by nothing but inevitable reactions.

Rather a simplistic understanding there.  A boulder behaves in deterministic accordance with its nature within the wider context; given a slope and a push start, it will always roll downhill, never uphill. A squirrel burying nuts in my lawn is also acting according to its nature within the broader laws of nature. A human contemplating his navel is also acting according to his nature.  All things are constrained according to their nature; where a human may be a structure exponentially more complex than a boulder, it still must behave in accordance with nature.  This accordance manifests rather obviously in the boulder, never rolling uphill, it also manifests in correspondingly more complex structures like minds although in correspondingly more subtle and complex ways. We cannot, for instance, control the ways our minds work at a fundamental level, we cannot choose what to remember or what to forget, what to like or what to dislike, what to find plausible or what to find implausible.  At base, minds are every bit as consistent with the laws of nature as that boulder, and if that were not the case, minds would never have evolved to ponder their navels in the first place.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Why is it that when you post a mistake or a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of an argument and you’re corrected on it you never, ever own the problem and reply to the rebuttal? Instead you just go quiet for a bit, and then make exactly the same mistakes etc a bit later on.

Recently for example you cited the Hoyle calculation but made the mistake of excluding the number of opportunities there were for the rare thing to happen. You were corrected on it but just ignored the correction. Why is that?

Does 1 Peter 3:16-17 not apply to you?: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

Then you made the reference point mistake of thinking that the fact of the outcome “you” (or the outcome of the blade of grass with the golf ball on it) meant the system must have been geared to produce that outcome. You were corrected on that too but ignored the correction. Why is that?

Does 1 Peter 3:16-17 not apply to you?: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

Then you made the mistake of claiming there to be no explanation for consciousness. You were corrected on that too, and also asked why you think an incomplete explanation is less plausible than an explanation with no information at all. You ignored that too. Why is that?

Does 1 Peter 3:16-17 not apply to you?: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.
 
And so it goes – you have the sheer brass neck to cite approvingly a biblical quote whose exhortation is one you’ve never practised.

What does this say about you do you think? 

   

[ProfessorDavey]

Recently for example you cited the Hoyle calculation but made the mistake of excluding the number of opportunities there were for the rare thing to happen. You were corrected on it but just ignored the correction. Why is that?

And another glaring error is to assume that the number of different possible arrangements of a series of individual entities is the same as the number of entities.

So to use the rubic's cube analogy that AB also mentioned. Well a rubic's cube has 26 elements (the individual movable blocks) but it doesn't have 26 possible permutations - nope it has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 permutations apparently - and a rubic's cube limits some possibilities.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Why is it that when you post a mistake or a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of an argument and you’re corrected on it you never, ever own the problem and reply to the rebuttal? Instead you just go quiet for a bit, and then make exactly the same mistakes etc a bit later on.

Recently for example you cited the Hoyle calculation but made the mistake of excluding the number of opportunities there were for the rare thing to happen. You were corrected on it but just ignored the correction. Why is that?

Does 1 Peter 3:16-17 not apply to you?: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

Then you made the reference point mistake of thinking that the fact of the outcome “you” (or the outcome of the blade of grass with the golf ball on it) meant the system must have been geared to produce that outcome. You were corrected on that too but ignored the correction. Why is that?

Does 1 Peter 3:16-17 not apply to you?: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

Then you made the mistake of claiming there to be no explanation for consciousness. You were corrected on that too, and also asked why you think an incomplete explanation is less plausible than an explanation with no information at all. You ignored that too. Why is that?

Does 1 Peter 3:16-17 not apply to you?: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.
 
And so it goes – you have the sheer brass neck to cite approvingly a biblical quote whose exhortation is one you’ve never practised.

What does this say about you do you think? 

These so called "corrections" are just alternative ways of observing the same facts and coming up with differing opinions about the implications - illustrating the truth in Sassy's opening post which suggests that many on this forum choose to seek reasons not to believe in God rather than reasons to believe.

[Nearly Sane]

These so called "corrections" are just alternative ways of observing the same facts and coming up with differing opinions about the implications - illustrating the truth in Sassy's opening post which suggests that many on this forum choose to seek reasons not to believe in God rather than reasons to believe.

And back to your trope that those disagreeing with you are just lying. That maundering whining post about treating people you disagree with with respect was just you patting yourself on the back for behaviour you don't actually show.

[Alan Burns]

Rather a simplistic understanding there.  A boulder behaves in deterministic accordance with its nature within the wider context; given a slope and a push start, it will always roll downhill, never uphill. A squirrel burying nuts in my lawn is also acting according to its nature within the broader laws of nature. A human contemplating his navel is also acting according to his nature.  All things are constrained according to their nature; where a human may be a structure exponentially more complex than a boulder, it still must behave in accordance with nature.  This accordance manifests rather obviously in the boulder, never rolling uphill, it also manifests in correspondingly more complex structures like minds although in correspondingly more subtle and complex ways. We cannot, for instance, control the ways our minds work at a fundamental level, we cannot choose what to remember or what to forget, what to like or what to dislike, what to find plausible or what to find implausible.  At base, minds are every bit as consistent with the laws of nature as that boulder, and if that were not the case, minds would never have evolved to ponder their navels in the first place.

The uniqueness found in human conscious awareness and free will was first illustrated in the cave art paintings of the Lascaux Cave if France, dating from about 20,000 years ago (very recent on the evolutionary time scale).  What is illustrated in these cave paintings is the human ability to choose to replicate what they perceive in their conscious awareness.  It was not just the mechanical replication performed by some bird species, but a conscious choice to replicate what they perceived in a different media by drawing it on the cave walls.  This shows the human ability to consciously choose what we do with our perceived data rather than just react to it.  This is not the automated reactions found in rolling boulders or other animal species, but the unique combination of self awareness and free will which many humans take for granted as being categorised in the same way as other animal behaviour.

[torridon]

These so called "corrections" are just alternative ways of observing the same facts and coming up with differing opinions about the implications - illustrating the truth in Sassy's opening post which suggests that many on this forum choose to seek reasons not to believe in God rather than reasons to believe.

You and logic, just don't get on do you ? The burden of proof lies with those making a positive claim; you would understand this to be a flaw in Sassy's premise if you had read the pdf on Critical Reasoning that Stranger posted up, or indeed, if you had paid attention to the hundreds of times this has been clarified for you on this thread.  I'm guessing heaven must be choc a block with confused, illogical thinkers.

[Stranger]

These so called "corrections" are just alternative ways of observing the same facts and coming up with differing opinions about the implications...

No, Alan, mistakes in logic (fallacies) are mistakes in logic. The fact that you don't understand logic, doesn't mean that it's just a different opinion.

...illustrating the truth in Sassy's opening post which suggests that many on this forum choose to seek reasons not to believe in God rather than reasons to believe.

There you go again with the misplaced burden of proof fallacy. That is a logical mistake, just as much as saying 2 + 2 = 7 is a mathematical mistake. Nobody needs a reason not to believe but the dishonest, illogical, evasive, mindlessly repetative drivel you post here is providing a never-ending supply of reasons to disbelieve, should anybody actually want some.

[torridon]

The uniqueness found in human conscious awareness and free will was first illustrated in the cave art paintings of the Lascaux Cave if France, dating from about 20,000 years ago (very recent on the evolutionary time scale).  What is illustrated in these cave paintings is the human ability to choose to replicate what they perceive in their conscious awareness.  It was not just the mechanical replication performed by some bird species, but a conscious choice to replicate what they perceived in a different media by drawing it on the cave walls.  This shows the human ability to consciously choose what we do with our perceived data rather than just react to it.  This is not the automated reactions found in rolling boulders or other animal species, but the unique combination of self awareness and free will which many humans take for granted as being categorised in the same way as other animal behaviour.

None of which presents a serious challenge to a deterministic account of mind, given that 'consciously choosing' is a just of process of determination within a deterministic system. It may be more complex than many other phenomena in nature, but there sure ain't no reason to imagine it some sort of impossible magic.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

These so called "corrections" are just alternative ways of observing the same facts and coming up with differing opinions about the implications…

Flat wrong. Again. Logic is logic is logic – the whole point of it is to eliminate the subjective, the opinionated, the biased and to replace it with the objective, the independent, the verifiable.

Baby steps now Alan, baby steps. Take this example: If B > A and if C > B, then C must be > A. It doesn’t matter how many “alternative ways of observing the same facts” you claim to have – the (objective) logic always trumps your (subjective) opinions.   

Still with me? Good - hang on to your hat, we’ll move now from mathematical logic to rhetorical logic. You commit so many fallacies that it’s hard to know where to start, but let’s pick any one of them – the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy for example. This means that correlation doesn’t imply causation, so the fact of event B following event A does not imply that event B was caused by event A. So let’s say that I really like egg and chips for my tea, and that I tell myself that if I don’t step on a single crack in the pavement on my way home there’ll be egg and chips waiting for me. And sure enough, that’s what I do and there is indeed egg and chips waiting for me. Would I be right to claim that my walking pattern had caused the selection of my evening repast? No of course I wouldn’t, and I think that you have at least enough of a glimmering of an understanding of logic to know that too, no matter how many “alternative ways of observing the same facts and coming up with differing opinions about the implications…” you might have right? Right? You can look at the facts in as many ways as you like, yet still there’s no logical path that takes you from careful walking to egg and chips on the table.

Still hanging in there? Good. Now’s here’s your version of exactly the same fallacy: “I couldn’t find my car keys. I prayed to god. I found my car keys. Therefore god”.   

Can you see that these two arguments are identical – ie, they’re both examples of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy? And can you now also see that, as with the first example, no matter how many ways you claim “alternative ways of observing the same facts and coming up with differing opinions about the implications…” still you’d have no logic at all to take you from praying to finding your keys?

Got it now? Good. OK, now you understand that logic is in its very nature independent of the subjective and so your “alternative ways” effort is utter bullshit, perhaps you can realise too that not only is it utter bullshit in respect of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, it’s also utter bullshit in respect of all the other fallacies you regularly collapse into – all of them: the negative proof fallacy, the argument from personal incredulity, the circular reasoning, the argumentum ad populum, the argumentum ad consequentiam, the etc (and wearily) etc. All of them.             

- illustrating the truth in Sassy's opening post which suggests that many on this forum choose to seek reasons not to believe in God rather than reasons to believe.

Oh, and I should of course have mentioned yet another of the fallacies you’re so fond of – the shifting of the burden of proof. If you still seriously think there to be a “god”, then make an argument to justify the claim that isn’t logically fucked.

What’s stopping you (aside that is from not having one)?