Reply to Re: Religion
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September 8th 2009, 01:19 AM
SkeleTony
Scratcher:
"I never generalized it like that. I said that it's flimsy as proof that god can't exist (as an aside, even if they disagreed they're way too scared to offend your religion to say anything against that in college). You're the one trying to apply my reasoning to everyday situations."
That is exactly what I was addressing. I simply cannot for the life of me understand why you think this is so?! As Sagan used to point out with some regularity, we do not live in an "anything is possible" reality. We just don't! If we did then you would have no grounds to believe you were doing anything you thought you were doing on a daily basis. When you thought you were feeding the kids you would have no grounds to not think you were murdering them with 'mind beams'. and simultaneously replacing them with dopplegangers you constructed with your own mind.
To me there is no significant difference between being 'impossible' and being '99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%' unlikely and to even dwell on such is far beyond splitting hairs...it is madness!
I say that God is impossible. You say he is just 99.999999999999999999999999999% unlikely. If I see some evidence that he is not impossible, I will change my mind and say he is...to whatever degree probable.
So you are again just hiding behind semantics here. Neither of us are going to live our lives with the consideration that there may be such a thing in existence so this is a rather moot point.
"When talking of highly theoretical concepts, god, the universe, how can you be so certain your logic and laws will always be absolute and flawless?"
Straw man.
You cannot hide nonsensical postulations behind the constructed straw man of some self-important guy who thinks his ideas are "flawless" and such because that has no bearing on MY case. And either the case you are("You" in general, not you specifically) putting forth(or halfheartedly defending) is rational or it is IRRATIONAL. If it is irrational then dodging behind the above straw man does not make your case any more rational than it was when you started.
Like it or not, the universe operates by certain laws and some things are just not possible. By the evidence and knowledge we have I feel I can safely say that SOME specific claims are impossible. Cheetahs that get further away as they move towards you, automobiles made entirely of fog and the Judeo-Christian God are some of these.
I will happily eat crow if you can make a contrary case but until you do, I stand by these.
" Doesn't the birth of the world itself go against the law of non-contradiction?"
Not at all. You are trying to assign a probability to an event retroactively and that is a no-no. To illustrate why this is I implore you to perform a little controlled test for me:
Take a deck of cards and shuffle them.
Next throw them up in the air and let them hit the floor.
Now take note of each 'face up' card, it's value/suit and the precise distance it is from each other card.
Now tell me what the odds are you would achieve THAT specific result from a random toss of a shuffled deck?
See the problem? The correct answer is that the deck was 100% certain to come up as they did because they HAD to come up in SOME sort of configuration!
Same goes for how the cosmos formed, the way life on earth evolved etc.
"Something can't just start existing from nothingness, this also means it couldn't have always existed."
Wrong on the second count. Existence DOES happen in infinite regress. There was no 'beginning' to existence itself(only to our specific universe at best). Think about it...your first assertion above is what proves your second assertion false! You correctly ascertain that an existence of complete 'nothingness' cannot at any point produce 'something' and this means that there always had to be 'something'(whether some sort of sub-atomic nano-existence or what have you) in order for 'other things' to come about.
" That's just one thing among many the human mind can't understand. In that light, how can you say with absolute certainty that a judeo-christian god could never exist?
See above.
Long answer made short: That which exists STILL must do so in a way that makes sense. Reality cannot be if every time you add 2+2 you are able to get a random answer ranging from '4' to '9,376' to 'spaghetti sauce'.
"...but if something that contradicts the law of non-contradiction really did happen once, I wouldn't have to change my mind. "
Yep. Let me know when that occurs. I think we both know it will not.
"Not really, there's a huge difference. You're right in that an omniscient being can't ponder things. However, that doesn't negate having a personality"
Objection! Relevance...?
"If you know that there is free beer in the pub, and that you will definitely go there (based on the type of person you are), do you ponder about it?"
False analogy. I am not omniscient. AM omniscient personality could not ponder or make any decision. He either KNOWS with his Godly certainty that he will drink free beer at a pub(and does so) or he is not omniscient. There are no other options here.
"You would never choose not to go because you are you. If god didn't want to create humans it wouldn't have happened."
Not relevant. Either he can make a decision to create humans(or not) OR he knows, one way or the other whether he does or not. The mistake you are making is you keep limiting "God" to HUMAN(non-omniscient) limitations. Of course a HUMAN can make decisions and not be a robot. But for God this would be impossible.
"He may not spend time wondering what to do, but since what happens is based on who he is and not someone forcing him to do contrary to his will, I don't think that undermines "free will". Isn't pondering just a way to find out what you want to do? An omniscient being would know that by default."
EXACTLY! And therefore he could not make such a choice. In order for his previous omniscient knowledge to remain 'True' he MUST do as said foreknowledge dictates. You are trying to fudge the decision to occur before the omniscience but that cannot be for an omniscient and eternally existent being. No matter how far you go back to place that decision, his knowledge supersedes.
"Right, but that's how people are anyway. If I lived my life again without previous knowledge about having lived it before, everything would go exactly as it goes now, we would be having this exact same conversation. That's of course under the assumption being omniscient is possible; there are no random chances and such. This is not something I believe, but I'm humble enough to NOT be absolutely certain my beliefs are the only possible truth."
You are welcome to your beliefs. I have no use for such in my life but I certainly do not go around trying to discourage or bar others from such.
But I will drag out Gould's Contingency theory here to point out that it is not necessarily so that you, being able to hypothetically rewind the tape of life would do exactly as you have done this life. In fact it is highly unlikely.
To complex for this thread but there are just too many variables that go into creating 'Butterfly effects' in such a hypothetical.
And being "humble" has nothing to do with this. You seem to be taking unwarranted jabs at me here. I am as humble as they come but I have noticed that when someone holds a view that most common folk disagree with(be it about belief in God, time travel, ghosts etc.), it is almost guaranteed they will be attacked as being 'conceited' or 'not humble'.
"They can provide "proof" on par with your claim that god cannot exist beucase he contradicts the law of non-contradiction."
False. You are welcome to go try and find one of these though(good luck with that!)!
"To use the creation of the world as an example again, since the universe couldn't have just sprung up from nothingness, god must exist. They use a higher power to explain stuff that is otherwise unexplainable. Can you logically explain how or why the world came to be?"
A good rule of thumb to have when considering the worth of evidence: If that same evidence could be offered in support of uncountable claims you yourself would NOT assent to, then that evidence is worthless. Saying that existence itself is evidence of God is right up there with saying it is evidence of 'world fairies', 'genies', That we are all just figments in the imagination of a sleeping child, ad infinitum.
In order for evidence to be worthwhile for a claim it must DIRECTLY infer said claim's veracity and we must be able to apply Ockham's razor to the whole thing. Someone allegedly witnessing someone else telekinetically lift a couch and spin it in the air is, by itself worthless. Someone telekinetically lifting and spinning a couch under proper controlled conditions while scientists observe and record the event DOES count as good evidence.
Really though, I agree much more with your points than the points made by most religionists. But until logic and science can completely explain everything, how can you say they're definitely wrong?
I have no grounds to say that logic and science CANNOT explain everything(remember that "has not yet" does NOT = "CAN NOT EVER").
"I never generalized it like that. I said that it's flimsy as proof that god can't exist (as an aside, even if they disagreed they're way too scared to offend your religion to say anything against that in college). You're the one trying to apply my reasoning to everyday situations."
That is exactly what I was addressing. I simply cannot for the life of me understand why you think this is so?! As Sagan used to point out with some regularity, we do not live in an "anything is possible" reality. We just don't! If we did then you would have no grounds to believe you were doing anything you thought you were doing on a daily basis. When you thought you were feeding the kids you would have no grounds to not think you were murdering them with 'mind beams'. and simultaneously replacing them with dopplegangers you constructed with your own mind.
To me there is no significant difference between being 'impossible' and being '99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%' unlikely and to even dwell on such is far beyond splitting hairs...it is madness!
I say that God is impossible. You say he is just 99.999999999999999999999999999% unlikely. If I see some evidence that he is not impossible, I will change my mind and say he is...to whatever degree probable.
So you are again just hiding behind semantics here. Neither of us are going to live our lives with the consideration that there may be such a thing in existence so this is a rather moot point.
"When talking of highly theoretical concepts, god, the universe, how can you be so certain your logic and laws will always be absolute and flawless?"
Straw man.
You cannot hide nonsensical postulations behind the constructed straw man of some self-important guy who thinks his ideas are "flawless" and such because that has no bearing on MY case. And either the case you are("You" in general, not you specifically) putting forth(or halfheartedly defending) is rational or it is IRRATIONAL. If it is irrational then dodging behind the above straw man does not make your case any more rational than it was when you started.
Like it or not, the universe operates by certain laws and some things are just not possible. By the evidence and knowledge we have I feel I can safely say that SOME specific claims are impossible. Cheetahs that get further away as they move towards you, automobiles made entirely of fog and the Judeo-Christian God are some of these.
I will happily eat crow if you can make a contrary case but until you do, I stand by these.
" Doesn't the birth of the world itself go against the law of non-contradiction?"
Not at all. You are trying to assign a probability to an event retroactively and that is a no-no. To illustrate why this is I implore you to perform a little controlled test for me:
Take a deck of cards and shuffle them.
Next throw them up in the air and let them hit the floor.
Now take note of each 'face up' card, it's value/suit and the precise distance it is from each other card.
Now tell me what the odds are you would achieve THAT specific result from a random toss of a shuffled deck?
See the problem? The correct answer is that the deck was 100% certain to come up as they did because they HAD to come up in SOME sort of configuration!
Same goes for how the cosmos formed, the way life on earth evolved etc.
"Something can't just start existing from nothingness, this also means it couldn't have always existed."
Wrong on the second count. Existence DOES happen in infinite regress. There was no 'beginning' to existence itself(only to our specific universe at best). Think about it...your first assertion above is what proves your second assertion false! You correctly ascertain that an existence of complete 'nothingness' cannot at any point produce 'something' and this means that there always had to be 'something'(whether some sort of sub-atomic nano-existence or what have you) in order for 'other things' to come about.
" That's just one thing among many the human mind can't understand. In that light, how can you say with absolute certainty that a judeo-christian god could never exist?
See above.
Long answer made short: That which exists STILL must do so in a way that makes sense. Reality cannot be if every time you add 2+2 you are able to get a random answer ranging from '4' to '9,376' to 'spaghetti sauce'.
"...but if something that contradicts the law of non-contradiction really did happen once, I wouldn't have to change my mind. "
Yep. Let me know when that occurs. I think we both know it will not.
"Not really, there's a huge difference. You're right in that an omniscient being can't ponder things. However, that doesn't negate having a personality"
Objection! Relevance...?
"If you know that there is free beer in the pub, and that you will definitely go there (based on the type of person you are), do you ponder about it?"
False analogy. I am not omniscient. AM omniscient personality could not ponder or make any decision. He either KNOWS with his Godly certainty that he will drink free beer at a pub(and does so) or he is not omniscient. There are no other options here.
"You would never choose not to go because you are you. If god didn't want to create humans it wouldn't have happened."
Not relevant. Either he can make a decision to create humans(or not) OR he knows, one way or the other whether he does or not. The mistake you are making is you keep limiting "God" to HUMAN(non-omniscient) limitations. Of course a HUMAN can make decisions and not be a robot. But for God this would be impossible.
"He may not spend time wondering what to do, but since what happens is based on who he is and not someone forcing him to do contrary to his will, I don't think that undermines "free will". Isn't pondering just a way to find out what you want to do? An omniscient being would know that by default."
EXACTLY! And therefore he could not make such a choice. In order for his previous omniscient knowledge to remain 'True' he MUST do as said foreknowledge dictates. You are trying to fudge the decision to occur before the omniscience but that cannot be for an omniscient and eternally existent being. No matter how far you go back to place that decision, his knowledge supersedes.
"Right, but that's how people are anyway. If I lived my life again without previous knowledge about having lived it before, everything would go exactly as it goes now, we would be having this exact same conversation. That's of course under the assumption being omniscient is possible; there are no random chances and such. This is not something I believe, but I'm humble enough to NOT be absolutely certain my beliefs are the only possible truth."
You are welcome to your beliefs. I have no use for such in my life but I certainly do not go around trying to discourage or bar others from such.
But I will drag out Gould's Contingency theory here to point out that it is not necessarily so that you, being able to hypothetically rewind the tape of life would do exactly as you have done this life. In fact it is highly unlikely.
To complex for this thread but there are just too many variables that go into creating 'Butterfly effects' in such a hypothetical.
And being "humble" has nothing to do with this. You seem to be taking unwarranted jabs at me here. I am as humble as they come but I have noticed that when someone holds a view that most common folk disagree with(be it about belief in God, time travel, ghosts etc.), it is almost guaranteed they will be attacked as being 'conceited' or 'not humble'.
"They can provide "proof" on par with your claim that god cannot exist beucase he contradicts the law of non-contradiction."
False. You are welcome to go try and find one of these though(good luck with that!)!
"To use the creation of the world as an example again, since the universe couldn't have just sprung up from nothingness, god must exist. They use a higher power to explain stuff that is otherwise unexplainable. Can you logically explain how or why the world came to be?"
A good rule of thumb to have when considering the worth of evidence: If that same evidence could be offered in support of uncountable claims you yourself would NOT assent to, then that evidence is worthless. Saying that existence itself is evidence of God is right up there with saying it is evidence of 'world fairies', 'genies', That we are all just figments in the imagination of a sleeping child, ad infinitum.
In order for evidence to be worthwhile for a claim it must DIRECTLY infer said claim's veracity and we must be able to apply Ockham's razor to the whole thing. Someone allegedly witnessing someone else telekinetically lift a couch and spin it in the air is, by itself worthless. Someone telekinetically lifting and spinning a couch under proper controlled conditions while scientists observe and record the event DOES count as good evidence.
Really though, I agree much more with your points than the points made by most religionists. But until logic and science can completely explain everything, how can you say they're definitely wrong?
I have no grounds to say that logic and science CANNOT explain everything(remember that "has not yet" does NOT = "CAN NOT EVER").
