Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

Ok then demonstrate it. I don't mean give an example of a thought. No one denies we have thoughts. I mean a demonstration of controlling thoughts i.e where given exactly the same circumstances you were able to think a different thought than you previously did.

For example when I read the anti science nonsense you posted yesterday I though it was a load of bs, it doesn't seem to me that if time were rewound that I would find it anything other than a load of bs.

We cannot rewind time - the past is gone, but our future is ours to make.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

What I am saying is that the overwhelmingly precise conditions needed to bring life into existence combined with the unfathomable complexity of our human mind offer ample evidence of we are the result of conscious intent as opposed to an accidental outcome.  Our consciously driven ability to think things out is no accident. 

Yes I know what you’re saying, and I know too that it’s fundamentally wrongheaded reasoning. I’ve told you why it’s wrongheaded reasoning several times already here, and you’ve ignored the explanation each time I’ve given it to you. If you agree finally to address the explanation though, I’ll give it to you again. If not, there’ll be no point.

It’s still your decision.

[Maeght]

I do not see why you can claim circular reasoning.
There is valid evidence in scripture, in history, in science and in critical thinking that we are not just an unintended consequence of unguided random forces.  To believe otherwise requires putting a great deal of faith in what can be achieved within the chaotic, ever increasing entropy produced by an exploding cloud of gas.

There isn't.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

We cannot rewind time - the past is gone, but our future is ours to make.

So you can't demonstrate the thing you claimed was demonstrable then.

[torridon]

What I am saying is that the overwhelmingly precise conditions needed to bring life into existence combined with the unfathomable complexity of our human mind offer ample evidence of we are the result of conscious intent as opposed to an accidental outcome.  Our consciously driven ability to think things out is no accident.

So, if life, the universe and everything is just too complicated to arise naturally, therefore some higher conscious intent is required to bring it about, well, that higher conscious intent, how did that come about, then ?  A conscious intent capable of creating universes is even more complicated than that which it was invoked to explain.

Logic fail, false friend argument invoking infinite regress. Back to school with you.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Yes I know what you’re saying, and I know too that it’s fundamentally wrongheaded reasoning. I’ve told you why it’s wrongheaded reasoning several times already here, and you’ve ignored the explanation each time I’ve given it to you. If you agree finally to address the explanation though, I’ll give it to you again. If not, there’ll be no point.

It’s still your decision.

OK go ahead.
I honestly can't recall what your explanation was, so I will do my best to respond when you give it again.

[Alan Burns]

So you can't demonstrate the thing you claimed was demonstrable then.

It is easily demonstrated in our ability to drive our conscious thoughts to reach verifiable conclusions.  Without this ability there can be no way of validating what we postulate to be true.  What is the alternative - is it to rely on whatever emerges from physically driven sub conscious brain activity without any means of conscious control?

[Alan Burns]

So, if life, the universe and everything is just too complicated to arise naturally, therefore some higher conscious intent is required to bring it about, well, that higher conscious intent, how did that come about, then ?  A conscious intent capable of creating universes is even more complicated than that which it was invoked to explain.

Logic fail, false friend argument invoking infinite regress. Back to school with you.

From the materialistic view, in the beginning these was no conscious awareness.  There was no remit for a cloud of exploding gas to create entities of conscious awareness - so how did that come about then?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

OK go ahead.
I honestly can't recall what your explanation was, so I will do my best to respond when you give it again.

OK, I’ll take you at your word about that then.

First, you need to understand circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is the logical fallacy of the initial premise and the conclusion being the same thing. Hence the argument after the premise adds no new information to the premise. As an example: “Everyone should vote Tory because the Tories are the only electable party”.

Your contention is that the chances of evolution producing you without guidance are so remote that there must have been guidance to make it so – hence “God”: “…the overwhelmingly precise conditions needed to bring life into existence combined with the unfathomable complexity of our human mind offer ample evidence of we are the result of conscious intent as opposed to an accidental outcome.”     

This only follows though even in principle if as well as positing a guiding god you also posit a God to have intended you to be here in the first place – ie, a god both to decide that you're the plan ab initio and also to guide his own plan to fruition. And that’s circular reasoning.

Conversely, if you don’t insert your premise “God” and then just repeat it as your conclusion too you have instead a universe that’s indifferent to your existence, and indeed to the existence of any other possible type of life. Imagine for example that the odds against evolution producing you unguided were identical to the odds against winning a huge lottery, and that you won that lottery nonetheless. Would you conclude that with such odds the lottery company must have engineered the result in your favour, or that you’d won just as a matter of dumb luck?       

Can you see now why your thesis fails?

[Nearly Sane]

From the materialistic view, in the beginning these was no conscious awareness.  There was no remit for a cloud of exploding gas to create entities of conscious awareness - so how did that come about then?

Dunno. Why did you completely ignore torridon's post?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Just to illustrate the point further, consider some very, very long odds. The number of possible ways to order a pack of 52 cards is called “52!”' (“52 factorial”), which means multiplying 52 by 51 by 50 etc all the way down to 1. The number you get at the end is 8×10^67 (8 with 67 '0's after it). This is an astonishingly large number, so the chances of dealing at random any particular sequence of 52 cards are also astonishingly small.

To give you some idea of how small, consider this:

“Start by picking your favourite 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 metres).

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 kilometres 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 kilometres.) 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 levelled 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.”

You would agree I think that these are very, very long odds – perhaps as long as the odds against you appearing by chance too?

But now imagine also that you were the person dealing the pack of cards, neither knowing nor caring what the dealt sequence would be. Would whatever sequence appeared be entitled nonetheless to assert “…the overwhelmingly precise conditions needed to bring my sequence into existence combined with the unfathomable complexity the possible outcomes offer ample evidence of I am the result of conscious intent as opposed to an accidental outcome”?

Why not?       

[Outrider]

What I am saying is that the overwhelmingly precise conditions needed to bring life into existence combined with the unfathomable complexity of our human mind offer ample evidence of we are the result of conscious intent as opposed to an accidental outcome.

No. We have no way to know how precise the conditions for life might be, as we've only found one example of it - there may be innumerable ways for life to come about, in innumerable different sets of conditions. You are presuming not life, but specifically us, which is presupposing that we are somehow 'the point'.

Our consciously driven ability to think things out is no accident.

It's not even a thing, let alone an accidental thing.

O.

[Alan Burns]

It's not even a thing, let alone an accidental thing.

I entirely agree.
There is no way you can describe the process of consciously driven reasoning as a thing.
Can you define "reason" in material terms?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Belief can change people.

Could you provide examples of what you mean by that?
Do you mean belief in anything?⁶

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

You routinely elide terms like "naturalism", "materialism" etc into absolutist positions like "physicalism", "scientism" etc. When this deceit is explained to you you always run away, presumably so you can make the same dishonest accusations over and over again. What's the point though?

Sorry to have broken the news to you.

Naturalism and physicalism could be thought of as world views and certainly shape an individuals attitude in most things.
A materialist is bound to argue against the spiritual and it's possibility. They are more likely to be atheist.
The naturalist is more likely to be empiricist and certainly not religious but secular humanist and more likely to say the universe just is and there's an end to it.

[Maeght]

Could you provide examples of what you mean by that?
Do you mean belief in anything?⁶

Beliefs effect how we see the world. People change religions and change their behaviours, they change their politics and change behaviours, they join cults, they develop racist ideas, extreme left or right ideas, accept beliefs in pseudoscience that changes how they behave, the list goes on. Surely you can accept that.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

It is easily demonstrated in our ability to drive our conscious thoughts to reach verifiable conclusions.  Without this ability there can be no way of validating what we postulate to be true.  What is the alternative - is it to rely on whatever emerges from physically driven sub conscious brain activity without any means of conscious control?

That's just restating your assertion. Where is the demonstration?

For your benefit here is the request again:

Ok then demonstrate it. I don't mean give an example of a thought. No one denies we have thoughts. I mean a demonstration of controlling thoughts i.e where given exactly the same circumstances you were able to think a different thought than you previously did.

For example when I read the anti science nonsense you posted yesterday I though it was a load of bs, it doesn't seem to me that if time were rewound that I would find it anything other than a load of bs.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Beliefs effect how we see the world. People change religions and change their behaviours, they change their politics and change behaviours, they join cults, they develop racist ideas, extreme left or right ideas, accept beliefs in pseudoscience that changes how they behave, the list goes on. Surely you can accept that.

Al you seem to be talking about here is that beliefs spawn other beliefs. You seem to be saying that’s true of any belief.

That must be true of everyone. How apart from intellectual consent or dissent which point to prior belief anyway, do these beliefs transform?

I think most people on here were raised in an agnostic environment and have not acquired a different view from that and basically haven’t then experienced the kind of change CS Lewis is talking about.

Perhaps then they consider change to be acquisition of facts and intellectual revision of speculation.

[Maeght]

Al you seem to be talking about here is that beliefs spawn other beliefs. You seem to be saying that’s true of any belief.

That must be true of everyone. How apart from intellectual consent or dissent which point to prior belief anyway, do these beliefs transform?

I think most people on here were raised in an agnostic environment and have not acquired a different view from that and basically haven’t then experienced the kind of change CS Lewis is talking about.

Perhaps then they consider change to be acquisition of facts and intellectual revision of speculation.

Lots of words there but don't really see it addresses the point. People believe things and as a result their behaviours change and there view of the world changes. Those beliefs may not be true - therefore people changing due toa belief doesn't mean that the change is true.

[torridon]

It is easily demonstrated in our ability to drive our conscious thoughts to reach verifiable conclusions.  Without this ability there can be no way of validating what we postulate to be true.  What is the alternative - is it to rely on whatever emerges from physically driven sub conscious brain activity without any means of conscious control?

That merely demonstrates that we think, which no one denies.  It doesn't demonstrate that we 'could have thought differently'.

[Outrider]

I entirely agree.

No, you don't, at least not in the sense that it was meant.

There is no way you can describe the process of consciously driven reasoning as a thing.

The fact you just defined the concept means that, in fact, I don't need to; you've done it for me.

Can you define "reason" in material terms?

Define it, yes. Describe how it happens, entirely, no. Can you explain it in non-material terms without just going round in circles of unjustifiable, unevidenced, baseless claims? Souls, spirits, gods...

O.

[Nearly Sane]

No, you don't, at least not in the sense that it was meant.

The fact you just defined the concept means that, in fact, I don't need to; you've done it for me.

Define it, yes. Describe how it happens, entirely, no. Can you explain it in non-material terms without just going round in circles of unjustifiable, unevidenced, baseless claims? Souls, spirits, gods...

O.

I'm not entirely clear what Alan means by material terms?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

OK, I’ll take you at your word about that then.

First, you need to understand circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is the logical fallacy of the initial premise and the conclusion being the same thing. Hence the argument after the premise adds no new information to the premise. As an example: “Everyone should vote Tory because the Tories are the only electable party”.

But there are valid reasons for believing that you were brought into existence as a result of conscious intent rather than being the unintended consequence of purposeless, unguided forces.  You may try to dismiss these reasons by making up alternative explanations - but in doing so you are starting from the premise that there is no God.  The circular reasoning works both ways.

Your contention is that the chances of evolution producing you without guidance are so remote that there must have been guidance to make it so – hence “God”: “…the overwhelmingly precise conditions needed to bring life into existence combined with the unfathomable complexity of our human mind offer ample evidence of we are the result of conscious intent as opposed to an accidental outcome.”     

This only follows though even in principle if as well as positing a guiding god you also posit a God to have intended you to be here in the first place – ie, a god both to decide that you're the plan ab initio and also to guide his own plan to fruition. And that’s circular reasoning.

Conversely, if you don’t insert your premise “God” and then just repeat it as your conclusion too you have instead a universe that’s indifferent to your existence, and indeed to the existence of any other possible type of life. Imagine for example that the odds against evolution producing you unguided were identical to the odds against winning a huge lottery, and that you won that lottery nonetheless. Would you conclude that with such odds the lottery company must have engineered the result in your favour, or that you’d won just as a matter of dumb luck?       

The odds in question are far greater than winning a single huge lottery.  They are more akin to me winning the national lottery every week for the rest of my life.  You may argue that no matter how great the odds, any combination is just as likely as the rest.  In the case of the cosmological constant, the precision needed for planets and stars to form has been estimated at one part in ten to the power of 120.  Far greater than the example you give in your following post.  The point is that in every other combination there would be zero possibility for any form of life to exist because there would be no planets or stars.  I know this cannot be taken as absolute proof of conscious intent, but surely you must accept that it is valid evidence of the likelihood of conscious intent.

[Outrider]

But there are valid reasons for believing that you were brought into existence as a result of conscious intent rather than being the unintended consequence of purposeless, unguided forces.

You keep saying that, but you keep failing to explain what they are. The only consistent offering you've made is that you find it hard to believe, but your incredulity is not an argument.

You may try to dismiss these reasons by making up alternative explanations - but in doing so you are starting from the premise that there is no God.

Yes. You start from the premise that we have nothing. No God, no physics, no maths, no observations. Then you see what you have that you can verify - we have multiple people making the same comment about observed phenomena, that's a reason to accept at least the notion of observable phenomena. We have multiple people independently testing those phenomena and opening up their findings to criticism, that's a validation of the scientific process of investigation. If you want to posit 'god' you need something to justify that suggestion, not just 'well it would fit'.

Yes, we start from the position of 'no god', and we will stay at that point until you can justify the claim.

The odds in question are far greater than winning a single huge lottery.

Are they? How do you know? Which of those factors that you've considered actually has any potential to be anything different? How many times have those chances had to come together? We have life on one planet, that we know of; one planet of nine, around one star of 100,000,000,000 in the milky way, which is one galaxy amongst an estimate 2 trillion galaxies; it took around 11 billion years for life to emerge on Earth, the universe is, so far as we can tell, 14 billion years old; we have no way of knowing if we are the only universe in existence or if there are tens, hundreds, millions, billions, trillions...

With all those possibilities, how small does a chance have to be for it to happen once? The think about lottery wins is, despite the preposterous odds, there are dozens of them around the world every week, and we only need life to happen once.

You may argue that no matter how great the odds, any combination is just as likely as the rest.

That's not something that needs to be argued, that's the definition of how odds work.

In the case of the cosmological constant, the precision needed for planets and stars to form has been estimated at one part in ten to the power of 120.

Firstly, that's the precision need for THESE planets and stars to form. Secondly, that 'cosmological constant' - the energy density of space - is a function of this universe, and may be intrinsically linked to all the other fundamental forces and states, there may not be a way for it to be different. And, if there is, we have no idea how many times it has been different, somewhere else - you're just fortunate to be here, rather than in one of the universes where everything fell apart like a Tory govern... oh, wait...

Far greater than the example you give in your following post.  The point is that in every other combination there would be zero possibility for any form of life to exist because there would be no planets or stars.

No. There would be approximately (but not absolutely) zero possibility of OUR forms of life existing, but we don't know if there would be something akin to planets, or physics, or light... but there might be other phenomena, and other interactions, and other forms of life based on those. You need to stop presuming that you are the point of reality, that if it's not us it's a failure.

I know this cannot be taken as absolute proof of conscious intent, but surely you must accept that it is valid evidence of the likelihood of conscious intent.

I'd stretch as far as to say that it does not disprove the conjecture, but not proving it wrong is a far cry from providing any evidence to support the notion.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Naturalism and physicalism could be thought of as world views and certainly shape an individuals attitude in most things.

Quite possibly, but they’re still qualitatively very different positions that you elide nonetheless.

A materialist is bound to argue against the spiritual and it's possibility. They are more likely to be atheist.

A materialist isn’t bound to be or do any such thing. A materialist merely considers the material explanations available to her to be the most reliable way to describe the observable universe.

The naturalist is more likely to be empiricist and certainly not religious but secular humanist and more likely to say the universe just is and there's an end to it.

True or not that has nothing to do with you routinely eliding terms like "naturalism", "materialism" etc into absolutist positions like "physicalism", "scientism" etc and then running away when the deceit is brought to your attention.