Ontological Argument.......Really?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlud,

Yes ,yes,Yes Hillside but i'm afraid your posts constitute the sad bleatings of a traditional materialist who is shit scared of the origins of the universe.

Unfortunately we do not have to go back to origins for the laws of physics to break down so yes, it looks as though the universe does have an origin.

This is not the place for the faint hearted stalwart materialist Hillside. This is a place for those willing to think the unthinkable. Move aside Hillside Outrider and Jeremy P are the new kids on the block.

Oh dear. We can all "think the unthinkable". Your problem though is to figure out a way to ask a meaningful question in the first place, to establish even in principle the supposed fact on the non-material as a potential answer to it, and then to demonstrate just one manifestation of it as the actual answer.

Apart from that though...

[jeremyp]

I Think the point is Hillside is that the methodology doesn't seem to work around the Big Bang

No. The point is that you really don't have a methodology at all. There's science and there's guessing.

nor as an explanatory for the universe. Russell knows this Dawkins knows this too but for them the issue is a "move swiftly on" scenario.

And when we point out that you don't have an explanation for God, you'll move swiftly on.

If you don't think so. What is the methodology for establishing the origins of the universe?

The only one that has a chance of giving us the answer is science. By the way have you had any more thoughts about where your methodology for establishing the origins of God has gone?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlud,

Oh dear. We can all "think the unthinkable". Your problem though is to figure out a way to ask a meaningful question in the first place, to establish even in principle the supposed fact on the non-material as a potential answer to it, and then to demonstrate just one manifestation of it as the actual answer.

Apart from that though...

Yes Hillside....but claiming that questions are improper just because your particular philosophy or chosen methodology is not up to the job is a bit of a duck and a dive.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No. The point is that you really don't have a methodology at all. There's science and there's guessing.

And when we point out that you don't have an explanation for God, you'll move swiftly on.
The only one that has a chance of giving us the answer is science. By the way have you had any more thoughts about where your methodology for establishing the origins of God has gone?

I think it is unfalsifiable.

[BeRational]

I think it is unfalsifiable.

So, do you believe everything that is unfalsifiable?

[floo]

I think it is unfalsifiable.

Its unprovable!

[Nearly Sane]

Its unprovable!

Nearly everything is unprovable.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlud,

Yes Hillside....but claiming that questions are improper just because your particular philosophy or chosen methodology is not up to the job is a bit of a duck and a dive.

The irony of that statement will be lost on you, but...

...before you can even attempt yet another argument from personal incredulity ("how come the universe then?") you need to establish first some premises: what make you think the universe must have had an origin at all? How do you know that time itself isn't just a property of the universe? What would a time before time even mean?

Instead you're using your "particular philosophy or chosen methodology" just to assume these things and then to frame a question around them.

And that's before you just drop in some special pleading for an undefined, un-argued and un-evidenced "god" as the answer.

Apart from that though...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Instead you're using your "particular philosophy or chosen methodology" just to assume these things and then to frame a question around them.

No. Hillside I do do a philosophy. The only methodology I do is methodological materialism which I acknowledge doesn't seem to work at the point of the big bang.

You gussy the methodology up to become the philosophy and trumpet the methodology. While I salute the method, It's a bit of a bust flush on the origins of the universe as is your philosophy.....Unless you are suggesting it is some kind of platonic form which has truth value regardless of whether there is material or not.

You've been taken over the edge of philosophical materialism and your credibility of argument has fallen off the edge.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlud,

The irony of that statement will be lost on you, but...

...before you can even attempt yet another argument from personal incredulity ("how come the universe then?") you need to establish first some premises: what make you think the universe must have had an origin at all? How do you know that time itself isn't just a property of the universe? What would a time before time even mean?

Instead you're using your "particular philosophy or chosen methodology" just to assume these things and then to frame a question around them.

And that's before you just drop in some special pleading for an undefined, un-argued and un-evidenced "god" as the answer.

Apart from that though...

What a pathetic waste of time typing this on what is a piece of obvious straw clutching. Naturalism is shit and materialism is a fat ponce waiting for a free meal deal.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlud,

No. Hillside I do do a philosophy.

Your whateverpopsintomyhead-ism is not a philosophy.

The only methodology I do is methodological materialism which I acknowledge doesn't seem to work at the point of the big bang.

Why would you "acknowledge" something you cannot know to be the case? Lots of people are trying to unravel what happened at the Big Bang, and they do so using the only method available to them - methodological materialism. Whether it will provide the answer is as yet unknowable, but even if it doesn't what alternative method of discovery would you propose?

Palm reading?

Seaweed observation?

Tea leaf reading?

What?

You gussy the methodology up to become the philosophy and trumpet the methodology. While I salute the method, It's a bit of a bust flush on the origins of the universe as is your philosophy.....Unless you are suggesting it is some kind of platonic form which has truth value regardless of whether there is material or not.

And for those of us working in English?

I really, really hope that you aren't about to return to the real "busted flush" here - your crass straw man version of what philosophical materialism actually entails that you've had handed back to you in pieces so many times now.

You aren't are you?   

You've been taken over the edge of philosophical materialism and your credibility of argument has fallen off the edge.

Further gibberish noted.

What a pathetic waste of time typing this on what is a piece of obvious straw clutching. Naturalism is shit and materialism is a fat ponce waiting for a free meal deal.

Your usual dull incomprehension is noted too.

If ever you feel like telling us why you think the universe necessarily did have an "origin" though, by all means share. I'll alert the world's scientific press...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Hillside
Firstly philosophical materialism is only as good as long as there is material as is methodological materialism.
Secondly you are suppressing the very question which exposes you to this.

[Outrider]

Firstly philosophical materialism is only as good as long as there is material as is methodological materialism.

Any justification for thinking there's anything other than material of one form or another? Not a reason - I want it to be the case is a reason - but any justification? Bearing in mind 'material can't yet explain x' isn't an argument for anything other than more research being required.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Any justification for thinking there's anything other than material of one form or another? Not a reason - I want it to be the case is a reason - but any justification? Bearing in mind 'material can't yet explain x' isn't an argument for anything other than more research being required.

O.

But hey Outrider. you've just written another post wishing it IS material.

Christians and other philosophers of the platonic strand have happily used the word substance long before the term was absorbed into materialism.

To suggest that somehow materialism survives beyond the big bang carries no evidence in methodological materialist terms.

Sean Carroll knows this but tries to eek out the materialist magisterium into multiverses because he tries to make science fit into philosophical materialism by wanting to retire falsifiability and replace it with elegance.

He knows that at the boundaries of what science can handle, materialism and naturalism are washed up. Not that science provides a basis for materialism and philosophical naturalism apart from a leap of faith.

At the end of the day it's your problem because PM and PN were forged in the days when Hoyle was the rage. Religion lived quite happily with the idea of an infinite universe because it really asks why something and not nothing.....oh and just for Hillside's information, one doesn't have to conclude a hypothesis is real before suggesting it as a hypothesis.

Sorry guys but for me the magic of philosophical materialism has rather worn off.

[Outrider]

But hey Outrider. you've just written another post wishing it IS material.

No. Should I take your failure to address the question as the answer 'I have no justification, I just want a god in my life'?

Christians and other philosophers of the platonic strand have happily used the word substance long before the term was absorbed into materialism.

And? Did they have a justification for their claims that you can borrow?

To suggest that somehow materialism survives beyond the big bang carries no evidence in methodological materialist terms.

Evidence? No, it doesn't, I've not claimed that it does. I've suggest that it's an hypothesis deduced from our current understanding of the universe and the possibilities of the broader reality beyond it. I've explained, step-by-step, why I think it's at least a reasonable framework of an explanation for the broader reality.

So far you've offered no logical objections other than 'that's not proven', which wasn't claimed, and no justified alternative explanations.

Sean Carroll knows this but tries to eek out the materialist magisterium into multiverses because he tries to make science fit into philosophical materialism by wanting to retire falsifiability and replace it with elegance.

I have no idea who he is, but given that I'm not doing that, I'm unsure why someone else's overreach applies here?

He knows that at the boundaries of what science can handle, materialism and naturalism are washed up. Not that science provides a basis for materialism and philosophical naturalism apart from a leap of faith.

And back to trying to hide within the ambiguity of the word 'faith'. There's trust - belief based upon justified prior events - and there's faith - belief regardless of prior events'.

At the end of the day it's your problem because PM and PN were forged in the days when Hoyle was the rage. Religion lived quite happily with the idea of an infinite universe because it really asks why something and not nothing.....oh and just for Hillside's information, one doesn't have to conclude a hypothesis is real before suggesting it as a hypothesis.

It's not my problem, I have a model of reality that works and is - so far - continuously verified by the available evidence. I don't have a gap in my explanation that you've shown other than 'not proven yet', which is fine by me. You have the problem, in that this working, viable model doesn't require your magical interventions, but you don't have a viable model that does.

Sorry guys but for me the magic of philosophical materialism has rather worn off.

So you fall back on 'real' magic, instead. Good luck with that.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlud,

Firstly philosophical materialism is only as good as long as there is material as is methodological materialism.

Insofar as I can unscramble that sentence into a comprehensible thought, it's axiomatic that materialism deals with the material. You and I can speculate as much as we like about the supposed non-material - gods, leprechauns, whatever - but materialism could never have anything to say about how real any of those speculations might be.

The problem though - your problem in fact - is that neither can anything else.

And as we both know that I've chased you all over this mb asking you finally to produce a method of any sort to validate your personal claims of the non-material only for you endlessly to avoid answering, you're stuck with your problem until you finally at least attempt to address it.

No-one else has ever managed it by the way, so good luck with it!

Secondly you are suppressing the very question which exposes you to this.

No doubt you'll be along any time now then to tell us what this "question" is that I'm apparently "suppressing".

I see by the way the you've avoided again answering your difficulty about framing a question that's meaningful. If you take an entirely parochial, Paley's watch level approach to the "the universe" - "it's made of stuff, stuff comes from somewhere, therefore it must have had an origin" etc - then the "what's the origin of the universe then?" - question makes a kind of limited sense, even when you use it as a precursor to yet another argument from personal incredulity.

The problem though is that the universe actually appears to be a lot more complex and nuanced than that. When time itself is likely to be a property of the universe, questions about what happened "before" time just break down. Maybe the universe - or lots of universes - are eternally old; maybe there was a true "nothing" and a quantum borrowing event occurred; maybe, maybe, maybe...

The thing is though, people are working on these questions as we speak using the only tools available that have been shown verifiably to work - the tools of science. That some oaf says, "ah, but science hasn't got all the answers yet so it must be a piece of iron-age folkloric myth wot did it" is so preposterously ludicrous that I wonder that you bother with it, but there it is nonetheless. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Outy,

I have no idea who he is...

Author of the very good "The Particle at the End of the Universe", research professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He took William Lane Craig apart a while back when the latter blundered into science for support for his theism.

Needless to say, Carroll does not do what Vlud claims him to do. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Outy,

Author of the very good "The Particle at the End of the Universe", research professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He took William Lane Craig apart a while back when the latter blundered into science for support for his theism.

Needless to say, Carroll does not do what Vlud claims him to do.

Outy

Sean Carroll is also the author of this:

http://edge.org/response-detail/25322

[jeremyp]

Outy

Sean Carroll is also the author of this:

http://edge.org/response-detail/25322

You just read the headline without understanding the article, didn't you.

[Outrider]

Outy

Sean Carroll is also the author of this:

http://edge.org/response-detail/25322

Carroll thinks people outside of science fail to understand the complexities of science, and thinks that falsifiability isn't the be all and end all of science, especially at the forefront of speculative research.

Do you think this is somehow heretical? Seems relatively straightforward to me.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Carroll thinks people outside of science fail to understand the complexities of science, and thinks that falsifiability isn't the be all and end all of science, especially at the forefront of speculative research.

Do you think this is somehow heretical? Seems relatively straightforward to me.

O.

Ah, The courtiers reply.

.............particularly as his own theories are unfalsifiable.

[jeremyp]

Carroll thinks people outside of science fail to understand the complexities of science, and thinks that falsifiability isn't the be all and end all of science, especially at the forefront of speculative research.

Do you think this is somehow heretical? Seems relatively straightforward to me.

O.

Carroll works with String Theory (it should be "String Hypothesis" really). People dismiss it on the grounds that it can't be falsified. Carroll doesn't like that.

I think he's arguing that people shouldn't dismiss scientific hypotheses just because we can't tell if they are true or false yet.

[Outrider]

Ah, The courtiers reply.

.............particularly as his own theories are unfalsifiable.

You could think of it as the courtier's reply, if you'd like, but that would purely be accepting your own abject ignorance in the situation. That's not really a secret, obviously, but I wouldn't be so rude. The fact that the information is out there, that the article is very clear on what he means, and my potted response of it is a reasonable summary, of course, means that it's not the courtier's reply.

You're trying to undermine Carroll for reasons I can't fathom - perhaps because you agree that he robustly destroyed WLC's special pleadings in debate - which would be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that none of us were reliant on Carroll, and indeed I seem to recall it was you that brought him up, almost as though you were trying to erect a strawman of some sort.

O.

[jeremyp]

You could think of it as the courtier's reply, if you'd like, but that would purely be accepting your own abject ignorance in the situation. That's not really a secret, obviously, but I wouldn't be so rude. The fact that the information is out there, that the article is very clear on what he means, and my potted response of it is a reasonable summary, of course, means that it's not the courtier's reply.

You're trying to undermine Carroll for reasons I can't fathom - perhaps because you agree that he robustly destroyed WLC's special pleadings in debate - which would be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that none of us were reliant on Carroll, and indeed I seem to recall it was you that brought him up, almost as though you were trying to erect a strawman of some sort.

O.

Carroll is Vlad's new poster boy because he wrote an article which appears to suggest that falsifiability is not an integral part of science. Carroll indulges in the kind of wishful thinking that Vlad likes in the article and in his mind that validates his point of view.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You could think of it as the courtier's reply, if you'd like, but that would purely be accepting your own abject ignorance in the situation. That's not really a secret, obviously, but I wouldn't be so rude. The fact that the information is out there, that the article is very clear on what he means, and my potted response of it is a reasonable summary, of course, means that it's not the courtier's reply.

You're trying to undermine Carroll for reasons I can't fathom - perhaps because you agree that he robustly destroyed WLC's special pleadings in debate - which would be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that none of us were reliant on Carroll, and indeed I seem to recall it was you that brought him up, almost as though you were trying to erect a strawman of some sort.

O.

Of course the beef I have with Carroll is that he has trumpeted the triumph of philosophical naturalism as the truth of the matter.

His own fields of study have  stubbornly remained at the hypothesis stage and some scientists wonder if these fields are testable or falsifiable in any case.

There are two ways to face that criticism that is to announce the conditions under which they would be falsifiable or testable do not exist......or specially plead for a dispensation from the accepted scientific conventions.....as philosophical naturalism pleads for exemption from methodological materialism.....You know that there are debates among people who do really understand.

Carroll is too close to New Atheism and it's dogmatic assertion that true science can only flow from a firm philosophical naturalist brain to avoid suspicion that he is confusing his philosophy with science.

There is no doubt he is brilliant and perhaps he is making strides in what would be better described as Natural Philosophy or Cosmological mathematics but it is dogmatic belief that allows acceptance of one unfalsifiable....a multiverse and refusal to accept another one .....God.

The King has no clothes.