Searching for GOD...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Yes you are right what I should have said was butt out if you haven't got anything sensible to say...........oh.....you haven't.

That’s a very Vladdian reply – you’re given reasons and explanations that falsify you, but lacking the wit or the integrity to engage with or accept them instead you just eructate stock phrases (“turdpolishing”, “not sensible” etc) that you can hide behind while you make good your exit, ready to return for another day of evading, lying about or dully failing to comprehend the same reasons and explanations the next time they undo you.

Why do you bother with it? Why though?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I have been exposed to you lot on here to the max and yet have not been swayed by either your agnostic solutions nor your behavioural example.

Why do you suppose that is? Could it be:

A. Because the arguments you’ve been given are sufficiently poor that you’ve been able to rebut them with more robust reason and logic of your own; or

B. You just evade, misunderstand or lie about the arguments you’re given so that you never need even to attempt rebuttals of your own?

Hmmm…

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

On Friday I had an encounter with a policeman.

On Saturday I had an encounter with a leprechaun.

Do you accept these two statements as equally likely to be true, or would you want more evidence before accepting one of them as true?

Which one?

Why?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

But Torridon's doubt seems to be based on The unlikely ness of encountering the supreme being. I want to know why he thinks that should be the case.

I'm well aware of the demand for physical evidence but my question would be how would the necessary entity possibly leave  physical evidence?

For the same reason that you think my encounter with a leprechaun is unlikely.

Oh, and the evidence here is evidence that you weren’t entirely mistaken or delusional – that could be something only a god could have left behind, but it could also be your reasoning for convincing yourself you encountered a god (something you’ve never even tried to provide, other than telling us you felt all funny in your tummy or something).

(And the “necessary entity” part is just some shit special pleading you’ve added to muddy the waters.)

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Of course it's a physical event. God isn't physical.
God is at the base of all contingent hierarchies though so intervention in any of them is not an impossibility IMV.

Blind faith claims aren’t arguments.

Alan is claiming discernment of God's presence in this event.

Lots of people claim “discernment” of lots of supposed phenomena you find to be ludicrous. So what?

In my opinion Some atheists discern God's presence in the notion of the necessary entity and tend to dodge it at a stage before the conversation turns to God.

You haven’t told us who these supposed atheists are, let alone cited them so your opinion here is worthless.

Both Alan's and atheist response are examples of discernment.
I speak as a former Goddodger.

And as a current honesty dodger.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

er, as a physical event? It would also result in God being as they say Glorified I.e.praised and thanked, it may result in conversion, in increased faith and understanding of God's attributes.

Same for leprechauns then. I know this because it’s my faith belief that I can "discern" and have "encountered" leprechauns, so our respective faith beliefs are epistemically evens-stevens here.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

God is at the bottom of contingent hierarchies being the necessary entity on which all contingencies depend.for their physical existence or EVENTuality.

Except of course your “necessary entity” claim of a proof for “god” remains utterly fucked because you cannot or will not tell us how you would justify your assertion that the universe must be a “contingent thing”.

Try to remember this.   

[Sebastian Toe]

Sorry, not sure how what I put doesn't at least partly answer that question?

Sorry, I'm just not understanding what you are saying.
Is there another way of describing it, maybe?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

You remind me of a novel I read many years ago by (I think) Malcolm Bradbury. The set up was an American academic recently transferred to a teaching position at a British university. He puts on the radio and finds a Smashie and Nicey-style pop station with all that entails: the awful music, the fake bonhomie, the duff slogans and sound effects, you name it. The academic is thoroughly amused – it’s a brilliant pastiche he thinks of the worst of early 70s US west coast radio, seamlessly done without missing a beat. Thoroughly entertained he then waits for the next programme, only to find that it’s exactly the same – the first programme wasn’t a pastiche at all; this was what British radio was really like…

So to your efforts here: at first it seems to be a brilliantly done pastiche of a pathologically dishonest dullard. It’s all there – the semi-literacy, the sentences collapsing into apparently randomly selected and entirely unconnected words, terms consistently misused, the occasional attempt at a citation that you think supports you but then blows up in your face when it actually says the opposite of what you thought it said, the absolute commitment to never, ever, ever answering even a simple question transparently and straightforwardly (or at all)… it’s all there. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Here clearly is an intelligent person just pretending to be a stupid one. What’s not to admire about that, at least for a short while?

And then as time passes and exactly the same thing happens over and over again the awful truth dawns – far from being an intelligent person pretending to be a stupid one it turns out that your posts indicate exactly the opposite of that.

So there we have it: either you’re so pathologically dishonest and uncomprehending that you’ll never even try at least to engage with what’s actually said here or perhaps – just perhaps – there’s just enough of a shred of integrity and wit left despite what your faith has done to you finally for you to try at least actually to do the decent thing.

My hopes aren’t hight here, but hey – you never know… 

…so, and without ever more of your endless fucking around, why not just set out in your own words why you think the universe must be a “contingent thing” without running slap bang into the fallacy of composition?               

Can you do that?

[Nearly Sane]

Vlad,

You remind me of a novel I read many years ago by (I think) Malcolm Bradbury. The set up was an American academic recently transferred to a teaching position at a British university. He puts on the radio and finds a Smashie and Nicey-style pop station with all that entails: the awful music, the fake bonhomie, the duff slogans and sound effects, you name it. The academic is thoroughly amused – it’s a brilliant pastiche he thinks of the worst of early 70s US west coast radio, seamlessly done without missing a beat. Thoroughly entertained he then waits for the next programme, only to find that it’s exactly the same – the first programme wasn’t a pastiche at all; this was what British radio was really like…

Changing Places by David Lodge?

[bluehillside Retd.]

NS,

Changing Places by David Lodge?

That's the very one! I tip my hat to you Sir - thank you.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

You remind me of a novel I read many years ago by (I think) Malcolm Bradbury. The set up was an American academic recently transferred to a teaching position at a British university. He puts on the radio and finds a Smashie and Nicey-style pop station with all that entails: the awful music, the fake bonhomie, the duff slogans and sound effects, you name it. The academic is thoroughly amused – it’s a brilliant pastiche he thinks of the worst of early 70s US west coast radio, seamlessly done without missing a beat. Thoroughly entertained he then waits for the next programme, only to find that it’s exactly the same – the first programme wasn’t a pastiche at all; this was what British radio was really like…

So to your efforts here: at first it seems to be a brilliantly done pastiche of a pathologically dishonest dullard. It’s all there – the semi-literacy, the sentences collapsing into apparently randomly selected and entirely unconnected words, terms consistently misused, the occasional attempt at a citation that you think supports you but then blows up in your face when it actually says the opposite of what you thought it said, the absolute commitment to never, ever, ever answering even a simple question transparently and straightforwardly (or at all)… it’s all there. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Here clearly is an intelligent person just pretending to be a stupid one. What’s not to admire about that, at least for a short while?

And then as time passes and exactly the same thing happens over and over again the awful truth dawns – far from being an intelligent person pretending to be a stupid one it turns out that your posts indicate exactly the opposite of that.

So there we have it: either you’re so pathologically dishonest and uncomprehending that you’ll never even try at least to engage with what’s actually said here or perhaps – just perhaps – there’s just enough of a shred of integrity and wit left despite what your faith has done to you finally for you to try at least actually to do the decent thing.

My hopes aren’t hight here, but hey – you never know… 

…so, and without ever more of your endless fucking around, why not just set out in your own words why you think the universe must be a “contingent thing” without running slap bang into the fallacy of composition?               

Can you do that?

A contingent universe is the default position live with it.

As for anyone's inadequacies. I understand Imax are consulting you on the next generation of projection screens.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Me:

My hopes aren’t hight here, but hey – you never know…

…so, and without ever more of your endless fucking around, why not just set out in your own words why you think the universe must be a “contingent thing” without running slap bang into the fallacy of composition?               

Can you do that?

You:

A contingent universe is the default position live with it.

So that's a "no" then.

I thought that would be the case, but wanted to give you the opportunity finally to attempt a "why" answer rather than just a "what" answer. No matter how low I set the bar, somehow you always manage to wriggle under it don't you.

Oh well.   

As for anyone's inadequacies. I understand Imax are consulting you on the next generation of projection screens.

Not that you'll care about having this (lying) fallacy explained to you any more than you care about the various other fallacies on which you routinely rely explained to you, but this one's call the "tu quoque":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Sorry, I'm just not understanding what you are saying.
Is there another way of describing it, maybe?

God can intervene because he is at the bottom of all heirarchies of contingent dependency e.g. Us dependent on molecules which are dependent on atoms which are dependent on subatomic particles and so on all the way down to the necessary entity or you your parents, their parents etc and at the bottom of all things is God. How does God intervene? By altering the state of the first contingent entity would be one way and let determinism do it's stuff and that, I suppose could be done by God maybe by making the slightest of adjustments. The appearance of a virtual particle here, the disappearance of a virtual particle there and letting the butterfly effect work. Or by changing the first contingent in multiple hierarchies.

I don't know how it's done and I appreciate that not knowing is a noble virtue in an atheist but unforgiveable in a theist. But it seems like a Kosher idea to me.

[Sebastian Toe]

God can intervene because he is at the bottom of all heirarchies of contingent dependency e.g. Us dependent on molecules which are dependent on atoms which are dependent on subatomic particles and so on all the way down to the necessary entity or you your parents, their parents etc and at the bottom of all things is God. How does God intervene? By altering the state of the first contingent entity would be one way and let determinism do it's stuff and that, I suppose could be done by God maybe by making the slightest of adjustments. The appearance of a virtual particle here, the disappearance of a virtual particle there and letting the butterfly effect work. Or by changing the first contingent in multiple hierarchies.

I don't know how it's done and I appreciate that not knowing is a noble virtue in an atheist but unforgiveable in a theist. But it seems like a Kosher idea to me.

That's ok, at least it's an attempt at an answer. Appreciated.
I'll need to study the concept and get back to you.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

God can…

That’s quite a talent you have there – falling apart after just two words. Do you not though think you should trouble yourself with justifying your premise (“God”) before troubling yourself with what this supposed god supposedly can or cannot do?

Just a thought.

…intervene because he is at the bottom of all heirarchies of contingent dependency e.g. Us dependent on molecules which are dependent on atoms which are dependent on subatomic particles and so on all the way down to the necessary entity or you your parents, their parents etc and at the bottom of all things is God. How does God intervene? By altering the state of the first contingent entity would be one way and let determinism do it's stuff and that, I suppose could be done by God maybe by making the slightest of adjustments. The appearance of a virtual particle here, the disappearance of a virtual particle there and letting the butterfly effect work. Or by changing the first contingent in multiple hierarchies.

Yes, I guess when you just declare your premise into existence and ignore the complete absence of evidence for it and the manifold contradictions it gives you you can just make up any old shit about it. Me, I reckon leprechauns use magic ray guns purloined from aliens on Alpha Centauri, but that’s just my conjecture too.   

I don't know how it's done…

“It” presumably being the utter bollocks you’ve just reified (another fallacy)  here? 

…and I appreciate that not knowing is a noble virtue in an atheist but unforgiveable in a theist. But it seems like a Kosher idea to me.

Wrong again. Not knowing the answers to big questions about a phenomenon whose existence is established and agreed (ie, the universe) is fine, and the point about being honest about these don’t knows is that they give you no licence whatsoever to fill the gap with any superstitious bollocks that takes your fancy. The don’t know you’re trying here though is of a different category – it’s a don’t know about the conjecture you make about the methods of a premise you’ve just conjured into existence with no supporting justification at all. As ever you won’t give a damn I’m sure about the logical fallacy on which your latest tottering edifice of piffle rests, but for what it’s worth it’s called begging the question:   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question   

[ekim]

That's ok, at least it's an attempt at an answer. Appreciated.
I'll need to study the concept and get back to you.

Of course, rather than planning change, God might use the Hindu idea of Lila (Divine Play) e.g. He picks up some earth, plays around with it and accidentally makes a human. Ah, that's interesting.  I'll make another.  So he snaps out a rib and makes another human from it, but to improve upon the manufacturing process he creates a small factory or womb in the second human whom he calls a wombman. He now decides to get the first man (Adam) involved in the manufacturing process and looks around for ideas and says "What do you think?" to a nearby snake.  Snake rises up like a cobra and says "Don't look at me". "Got it" says God and gives Adam a suitable appendage.  The rest is the history of Adam and Madam.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Ekim,

Of course, rather than planning change, God might use the Hindu idea of Lila (Divine Play) e.g. He picks up some earth, plays around with it and accidentally makes a human. Ah, that's interesting.  I'll make another.  So he snaps out a rib and makes another human from it, but to improve upon the manufacturing process he creates a small factory or womb in the second human whom he calls a wombman. He now decides to get the first man (Adam) involved in the manufacturing process and looks around for ideas and says "What do you think?" to a nearby snake.  Snake rises up like a cobra and says "Don't look at me". "Got it" says God and gives Adam a suitable appendage.  The rest is the history of Adam and Madam.

Genius! 

[Alan Burns]

First, let’s correct your terminology (again): “physically driven" is wrong – it implies a driver or some such, when all that’s necessary here is a naturalistic model for consciousness.

Second, you have no idea how improbable naturally occurring consciousness is. Nor have I. Let’s agree though that it’s a very improbable (though also perhaps not as improbable as you might think – even a trillion-to-one against event that has an opportunity to occur a trillion times will give you a probability of 1, and in any case the only necessary a priori outcome for consciousness would be single-cell life, on which evolution could then do it’s thing) but anyway, let’s agree that it’s very improbable in any case – in the trillions to one against range perhaps.   

Still with me? Ok then…

Now consider how many possible combinations of 52 randomly dealt cards there are. It’s a big number. Really, really, really big. That number is called “52 factorial”, and it’s written like this: 52!

OK, so how big is 52! then I hear you ask. This is what it looks like written in full:

80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824

Big eh? As it’s so hard to conceptualise though, try this:

“This number is beyond astronomically large. I say beyond astronomically large because most numbers that we already consider to be astronomically large are mere infinitesimal fractions of this number. So, just how large is it? Let's try to wrap our puny human brains around the magnitude of this number with a fun little theoretical exercise. Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0. We're going to see how much fun we can have before the timer counts down all the way.

Start by picking your favorite spot on the equator. You're going to walk around the world along the equator, but take a very leisurely pace of one step every billion years. The equatorial circumference of the Earth is 40,075,017 meters. Make sure to pack a deck of playing cards, so you can get in a few trillion hands of solitaire between steps. After you complete your round the world trip, remove one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean.

Now do the same thing again: walk around the world at one billion years per step, removing one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean each time you circle the globe. The Pacific Ocean contains 707.6 million cubic kilometers of water. Continue until the ocean is empty. When it is, take one sheet of paper and place it flat on the ground. Now, fill the ocean back up and start the entire process all over again, adding a sheet of paper to the stack each time you've emptied the ocean.

Do this until the stack of paper reaches from the Earth to the Sun. Take a glance at the timer, you will see that the three left-most digits haven't even changed. You still have 8.063e67 more seconds to go. 1 Astronomical Unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, is defined as 149,597,870.691 kilometers. So, take the stack of papers down and do it all over again. One thousand times more. Unfortunately, that still won't do it. There are still more than 5.385e67 seconds remaining. You're just about a third of the way done.

To pass the remaining time, start shuffling your deck of cards. Every billion years deal yourself a 5-card poker hand. Each time you get a royal flush, buy yourself a lottery ticket. A royal flush occurs in one out of every 649,740 hands. If that ticket wins the jackpot, throw a grain of sand into the Grand Canyon. Keep going and when you've filled up the canyon with sand, remove one ounce of rock from Mt. Everest. Now empty the canyon and start all over again. When you've leveled Mt. Everest, look at the timer, you still have 5.364e67 seconds remaining. Mt. Everest weighs about 357 trillion pounds. You barely made a dent. If you were to repeat this 255 times, you would still be looking at 3.024e64 seconds. The timer would finally reach zero sometime during your 256th attempt. Exercise for the reader: at what point exactly would the timer reach zero?”

https://boingboing.net/2017/03/02/how-to-imagine-52-factorial.html#:~:text=Similarly%2C%20Scott%20Czepiel%20has%20a,number%20is%20beyond%20astronomically%20large

Now can you see how easy it is to “compare the probability of randomly shuffled cards coming out in a particular sequence to the probability of physically driven naturalistic subconscious brain activity coming up with rationally thought out conclusion “? As you now accept that it’s improbable rather than impossible, can you now see that he odds against any specific sequence of 52 cards being dealt randomly are likely many, many times greater than the odds against consciousness emerging, probably over and over and over (and etc etc) again?

And yet deal a deck of cards randomly now and there in front of you will be a sequence of 52 cards whose improbability is so fast that it’s almost impossible to comprehend.

Do you get it now?     

I thank you for your very detailed attempt to explain about the realities of what improbabilities actually mean.  But none of this explains how the reality of your obvious ability to formulate reasoned arguments and draw conclusions can occur without the need for conscious control of your thought processes.  To imply that it can all just continue to drop out from sub conscious brain activity would be akin to the probability of me winning the national lottery every week for the rest of my life - it just would not happen.  The problem you have with the material model is that there can be no means of controlling your thoughts if they just emerge from material reactions which have already occurred.  Can you just stop to think about what is driving your thought processes?  If it is not your conscious self then what is it?  What is guiding your thoughts at this moment?  Could unguided sub conscious thought processes have come up with this detailed reasoning?

[Alan Burns]

Just to add that for every specific sequence of 52 successfully dealt there would have to be approximately 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277823 failed attempts.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I thank you for your very detailed attempt to explain about the realities of what improbabilities actually mean.  But none of this explains how the reality of your obvious ability to formulate reasoned arguments and draw conclusions can occur without the need for conscious control of your thought processes.

I’m losing the will to live here. “Conscious control of your thought processes” is wrong. It’s idiotic. It’s fundamentally, inherently, ineluctably self-contradictorily, self-evidently, necessarily utter bollocks because it would require something else with thought processes of its own, and so on forever.
 

To imply that it can all just continue to drop out from sub conscious brain activity would be akin to the probability of me winning the national lottery every week for the rest of my life - it just would not happen.

But I’ve already explained to you that very, very, very unlikely things happen all the time – the particular sequence of 52 cards you’ve just dealt for example is almost unimaginably unlikely to have occurred. Compared to that, winning the lottery every week for a million lifetimes times would barely make a dent in those odds.
 

The problem you have with the material model is that there can be no means of controlling your thoughts if they just emerge from material reactions which have already occurred.

Why is that a problem?

Can you just stop to think about what is driving your thought processes?  If it is not your conscious self then what is it?  What is guiding your thoughts at this moment?  Could unguided sub conscious thought processes have come up with this detailed reasoning?

Yes, or at least yes if you have any regard for the reason and evidence that strongly suggests that to be the case. To a very significant extent “you” are just a construction that makes sense of our lived experiences because they feel as though we have “conscious control of our thoughts” and, at a superficial, workaday, colloquial level that’s a functionally useful model to have. Your mistake though is never to dig deeper than the superficial, workaday, colloquial level – and if ever you did put your big boy pants on and found the courage to do that you’d see how wrong it must be.

Try to understand this.         

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Just to add that for every specific sequence of 52 successfully dealt there would have to be approximately 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277823 failed attempts.

I feel as though you think you're making a point here, but I don't know what it is.

What point do you think you're making?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

I feel as though you think you're making a point here, but I don't know what it is.

What point do you think you're making?

You can't expect a continuous stream of reasoned arguments to drop out of unguided thought processes beyond your conscious control.  If your thought processes are not guided by conscious control you should expect a lot more unreasoned arguments than reasoned ones.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Yes, or at least yes if you have any regard for the reason and evidence that strongly suggests that to be the case. To a very significant extent “you” are just a construction that makes sense of our lived experiences because they feel as though we have “conscious control of our thoughts” and, at a superficial, workaday, colloquial level that’s a functionally useful model to have. Your mistake though is never to dig deeper than the superficial, workaday, colloquial level – and if ever you did put your big boy pants on and found the courage to do that you’d see how wrong it must be.

Try to understand this.       

What is it that can have regard for reason and evidence?
What is it that can dig deeper that the superficial level?
Indeed, what is it that can recognise what constitutes a superficial level?

[Alan Burns]

I’m losing the will to live here. “Conscious control of your thought processes” is wrong. It’s idiotic. It’s fundamentally, inherently, ineluctably self-contradictorily, self-evidently, necessarily utter bollocks because it would require something else with thought processes of its own, and so on forever.
 

Only if you regard the human brain being solely under the mechanistic time related cause and effect scenario we observe in material behaviour.

To have conscious control of your thoughts all you need is a controller (You) with conscious awareness coupled with the ability to interact with the physical processes going on in your brain.