"Atheism" : only nature :: "solipsism" : only me.
Nothing to do with one another. — 180 Proof

...Language can only exist and have meaning in relation to the empirical world and social/linguistic habits of communities of language-users. — Seppo

Provisional Closing: Three ISMs

Idealism

When the staunch atheist confronts the question of atheism & idealism, an apparent conflict, s/he encounters a bit of trouble WRT to the perennial debate about the ontological status of numbers. Are they discovered, or invented?

Pertaining to the real or ideal question, numbers fall betwixt and between. What is a number? It’s the ultimate marker. Because numbers firmly mark position, a function that affiliates strongly with time, space, energy, motion, direction, volume and momentum, they’re indispensable to science which, for the past three centuries or so, has firmly planted itself within the realist-physicalist camp. Problematically, numbers don’t grow on trees. Clearly, numbers are an abstract, mental construction and yet, they are essential to myriad foundational operations within the real world of empirical experience.

If one says numbers are discovered, then such person lands somewhere in the vicinity of the objective idealism camp. Abstracts objects that, nevertheless, are out there in the objective world of experience hark back to Plato’s Theory of Forms.

If one says numbers are invented, then such person lands somewhere in the vicinity of the subjective idealism camp. Abstract objects, originating in the cognitive operations of mind, hark back to Berkeley’s Immaterialism.

The two above choices pose a problem for the atheist because any type of idealism, being, cognitively speaking, the express lane to theism, looms as a threat to the purity of the atheist, many of whom are realist-physicalist scientists who count numbers as essential.

The Comprehension Restriction

If we think of theism as a whole, logically, we can represent this whole as an all-inclusive set that encompasses all theisms. This is the set of all theisms.

All-inclusive sets allow us to make generalizations in the form of categorical statements. However, categorical statements don’t always lead to valid generalizations.

At the start of the twentieth century, British mathematician Bertrand Russell discovered, along with others, a limit to set-theoretical generalizations. Regarding the set of all sets not members of themselves, if left unrestricted in scope, it terminates in paradox.

Let R = {x ∣x ∉ x}, then R ∈ R ⇐⇒ R ∉ R

If the set doesn’t belong to the set, then it belongs to the set

If the set does belong to the set, then it doesn’t belong to the set.

The theistic parallel to Russell’s Paradox is what you get if you try to refute all theisms by way of a refutation set with no comprehension restrictions.

*Regarding the set of all theisms not members of themselves,

If it is not a member of itself then,

It is a member of itself> it is a theism


If it is a member of itself then,

It is not a member of itself>l it is a not-theism

*A theism that is not a member of itself i.e., not a theism, is a not-theism, as in, “doesn’t exist.”

** In this parallel to Russell’s Paradox, the paradoxical switch, in addition to alternating between member of itself/not a member of itself, also alternates between theism/not-theism.

Just as a set cannot simultaneously be a member of itself and not be a member of itself, a theism cannot simultaneously be a theism and not be a theism.

The necessity of the comprehension restriction tells us that, regarding set theory, there can be no categorical inclusion set that encompasses an entire category and, likewise, there can be no categorical refutation set that refutes an entire category.

In application, this tells us that there is no inclusion set of all sets that are not members of themselves and, likewise, there is no refutation set of all sets that are not members of themselves.

Talking specifically, this means there can be no wholesale, set-theoretical refutation of all possible theisms.

Each specific theism must be refuted individually.

Conclusion – Atheism is a theory of not-theism. If offers no categorical refutation of theism as a whole. Instead, it strives to refute logically, every instance of physicalist evidence claiming to prove theism.

Therefore, atheism, like theism, is an article of faith. As the theist seeks evidence of a cosmic, teleological sentience, the atheist seeks refutation of a cosmic, teleological sentience.

Transcendence Is Essential

By inference from the above, neither theism, nor atheism, at the physicalist-materialist level of existence, can be a sufficient, stand-alone category. Neither category, alone, constitutes reality.

Sufficiency of being requires transcendence of being & transcendence of self across a spectrum that incorporates the empirical universe & the transcendent Logos of deity.

Moreover, this transcendence is bi-directional. The logos of deity needs the physicalist-materialist manifestation of its will no less than its material beings need Logos.

The connection between material being, let us say human, & Logos, effects a mystical duality that subsumes all upwardly dimensional evolutions of reality.

At the level of science, upwardly dimensional evolutions of reality will manifest themselves as stages of increasing empirical complexity.

Monism – Solipsism*

*Note On Solipsism Being a variety of Idealism, solipsism, through Idealism, links atheism to itself.

... Language can only exist and have meaning in relation to the empirical world and social/linguistic habits of communities of language-users. — Seppo

Seppo’s description of language absent cosmic, teleological sentience equals SYNECDOCHE for cosmic monism-solipsism. The rejection of Logos leads to separatism in cosmic solitude. Matter evolves upward dimensionally to the status of a conscious self with no dialogue between that physicalist-materialist self and a cosmically transcendent source. Dialogue with other humans doesn’t break this solitude as the cosmic dialogue between self & other is between categorical human & transcendent deity.

The monist cognition of atheism is stoic, as human, by nature, wants to talk to the creation as a whole. The demands of human nature don’t stop there. Human wants creation to talk back. Human wants to experience cosmic dialogue. The essential gravity of sentience is other sentience. Sentience-to-sentience, on the cosmic scale of self & other, alone can satisfy the soul.

The theism-atheism dialectic boils down to the dualism of sentience-to-sentience vs. the monism of sentience upwardly evolved from non-teleological matter.

The monism-solipsism of realist-physicalist atheism and, therefore, of humanity, as viewed through this POV, is the result of expunging the upwardly dimensional (i.e., beyond three-dimensional reality) presence i.e., deity from existence.

Theism says human is mystically connected to the upwardly dimensional, divine presence which is transcendently real & transcendently sentient. Through this connection, human, in turn (as above in heaven, so below on earth) becomes transcendently real & transcendently sentient.

The chief attribute of this connection is, arguably, faith.

Put in everyday language, faith (vis-à-vis the material world) is the unseen window in a room without windows.

Life, then, under theism, is never completely containable as material substance. It begins in transcendence & whilst it persists, endures in the transcendence of sentience-to-sentience. This is the explicit stance of Neo-Platonists & Christians.

For the atheist, sentient life is only upwardly evolved, and thus upwardly dimensional from matter, but is not transcendently real & is not transcendently sentient. There is no trans-rationality of faith. There is only rationality. If the room has no windows, there is no way out. This is the rationality of physicalism-realism.

And yet, QM continues to pose challenges to this. QM is upwardly dimensionalizing 3-space articulation, thereby reducing its finality.

Jesus, being claimed as the physical manifestation of God, obligates atheists to refute the resurrection of Jesus as God in the flesh.

Since atheism denies the resurrection of Jesus on the cross, it must refute verbal evidence handed across two millennia with contrary evidence, say, another verbal account, contemporaneous with the crucifixion of Jesus.

If human understanding leads to reason-logic-truth, wherein the advent of human has no prior, cosmic, teleological sentience as its cause, but rather follows from a numerical probability of animate physical processes combined absent intent, then the forces driving history & evolution forward are probability and self. This is cosmic monism wherein animal kingdom, with human apex, forms a monist universe arisen probabilistically.

It doesn’t matter if the self takes human form, or some other form. Still, there is only one categorical self. Under the rubric of atheism, the universe is both monist & solipsistic. To be clear, under atheistic evolution, monism-solipsism prevails in the relationship between the collective self and its circumambient universe. Interrelationship between individual instances of selves has no bearing on this.

This monist universe of self-willed human stands in distinction from the binary universe of God-the-other and human, united in the cosmic mystery of LOVE.

Solipsism of Atheism 1 – It’s due to human consciousness being a probabilistically evolved sentience vis-à-vis its circumambient cosmos, or generative matrix. There is only a probabilistically evolved and then self-willed & self-directed self. There is no pre-existing cosmic sentience intending the human self into being. This is a MONIST universe WRT sentience.

Human sentience intended into being via a pre-existing cosmic sentience i.e., God, forms a DUALIST universe WRT to sentience.

Solipsism of Atheism 2 – The physical universe, by including a possible combination of factors that lead to sentience, provides physical evidence that allows recognition of the universe as neutral on the question of cosmic, teleological sentience. This cosmic duality is the essential component of LOVE. Its structure consists in the SELF-OTHER dynamical relationship.

This innate possibility for cosmic duality, through human acknowledgement, leads to the essential component of LOVE. Its structure obtains in the SELF-OTHER dynamical relationship.

To deny cosmic neutrality on the possibility of teleological sentience ordaining the advent of human sentience as a mathematical probability, atheism must postulate a physicalist universe wherein no possible combination of physical factors leading to sentience exists.

Since the agent of this project must necessarily be a sentient being, it’s doomed from the start.

The default option for atheism is to propound a theory featuring an auto-expansion of sentience paralleling the Big Bang.

This is an argument over whether possible combinations of physical factors that prove to be sentience-bearing only occur absent intent. If these combinations can be described & therefore predicted according to mathematical probabilities, then they are not randomly occurring.

The atheism project to deny a cosmic & teleological sentience can, at best, stipulate a paradoxical atheism since the agent of the project, a non-randomly evolved human sentience exists as a contradiction to its own project.

In a solipsistic universe of a monist self, probabilistically evolved and, at some point, self-directed in its upward evolution, LOVE is narcissistic.

It is undoubtedly absurd to talk about 'before," or to use any temporal language to describe the period (another temporal term) before God created time and space. After all, there is no time, so how can we talk about a time before time existed? — Raymond Rider

This is sound reasoning through the lens of three-dimensional set theory.

I agree that the two problems you articulate need to be addressed for the sake of the legitimacy of theism.

If I'm not mistaken, I see an additional problem for theism in your solution to the first time problem. Traditional theism, I think, asserts that God is prior to everything else.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Given the above quote, I'm skeptical about traditional theism accepting that time is co-eternal with God (even if God says so!).

As to the second time problem, as you say, there's no apparent rational start time for populating an empty existential set.

As to the second issue of the second time problem, the infinite causal regress, things perhaps start to get a little bit interesting. If you look at the problem of infinite-regress-in-general through the lens of set-theory, you can give yourself some maneuvering space by looking at the comprehension restrictions that limit the scope of inclusion of sets.

As you might know, around 1900 A.D., logicians saw that unlimited scope of inclusion of sets leads to a paradox that simultaneously places the ultimate set in two contradictory positions.

If I'm not mistaken, this very same problem of paradox-of-unlimited-inclusion applies to popular notions of God as all-encompassing and beyond. Following this line of reasoning, God is comparable to a set without comprehension restrictions. In short, God, so posited, is paradoxical.

Now, of course, Christian theology does address paradoxicality in the form of The Trinity (which is not mentioned in the bible).

Curiously, The Trinity is an assertion of paradoxicality within the material world of empirical reality.

Also curious, in the science world of realism, is the assertion that our universe has no center, nor any boundaries.

These two examples of complexities pertaining to the boundary ontology of sets alerts us to an important question - What about the complexities pertaining to the boundary ontology of sets?

In the literature I've read thus far pertaining to the comprehension restrictions, no issue is made about boundary ontology. I think it's up to the philosopher to address this question.

I find that QM is strongly impelling me towards a notion of upward-dimensionality as a lens through which to examine a concept of God as a phenomenon of four-dimensional set theory.

:up:

Fair Damsel - Oh, Leibniz. Your monads are so devine!

Leibniz- Alright, baby! Lemme show you what I've got upstairs. We'll plot the curve of this spiral staircase as we ascend.

Regarding time without direction (pre-Big Bang), can you elaborate some behavioral details? For example, do past-present-future evolve simultaneously?

Can one who is unintelligent not practice philosophy? If the practice of philosophy does not make one a philosopher, why must there be other characteristics to define a philosopher? — CallMeDirac

Can one not be dedicated to a field without education in the field? If one requires education in a field to be considered in the field, how can one found a field or school of thought? — CallMeDirac

You ask highly intelligent and thought-provoking questions. More power to you. A Person-On-The-Street type of philosopher is much needed. Perhaps you can join the ranks of those who keep philosophy street-level.

When your child takes her first steps, it ain't ballet. But you, an inveterate walker, stand there, ready to catch her when she falls forward into your arms.

When the philosopher-royal, momentarily bored by the priesthood, steps out of bounds of university for a Sunday walk, but nonetheless refuses to dialogue with the curious rabble, suddenly affrighted; s/he reaffirms the public face of philosophy*: ill-tempered snobbery.

*In this context, philosophy refers to higher learning without regard to a particular discipline.

I guess some believe 'to enjoy using knives' (e.g. carving the holiday turkey / ham) 'makes one a surgeon'. :mask: — 180 Proof

Just an aside - When you're destroying one of my propositions, try to do it with some of the wit shown above. :blush:

We live in different worlds. Put differently, we interpret ideas
in accordance with a larger worldview that each of us carry around with us. — Joshs

A given culture consists of many worldviews that often don’t understand each other, as our politically polarized times demonstrates. — Joshs

If a philosopher or writer or scientist offers an idea that we cannot assimilate within our worldview we will reject or misinterpret that idea, or it may simply be invisible to us. — Joshs

It does t matter how many ways you try and package the content of a given philosophy. You could translate it into poetry, have it delivered by a stand-up
comedian or by corporate-style bullet point presentation. — Joshs

The central problem won’t be the delivery or language or style, but the readiness of the recipient to assimilate it into their worldview. — Joshs

The statements above contain an excellent summary of the daunting challenges facing any person seeking to communicate in depth.

Is not communication in depth the main project of the philosopher? If so, then, as I believe, the project to communicate in depth is a good way to define both philosophy & the philosopher.

What is communication (in depth, or otherwise)?

Jon Anderson, vocalist for rock band Yes, sang it to us when he sang, "Don't surround yourself with yourself."

This is the challenge posed to all of us by the effort of communication.

As a philosopher, don't you want to reach as many people as you can?

Josh presents us with a brilliant elaboration of the work before us as both human beings & as philosophers. But look at his attitude, as evidenced below,

The ‘everybody’ you talk about is a fiction. It can take hundreds of years for segments of a given culture to grasp the ideas of a certain era of philosophy. Conservative America is a long way from understanding post-Hegelian thought, which is already 200 years old, and you can’t blame it on the messenger. — Joshs

He sees clearly the work that needs doing, and yet the clarity of his vision seems to be in service of a cynical despair about the possibility of success.

Of course it's impossible to be a philosopher. That's why everybody laughs at us. We're errant fools for trying.

"Any bloke wit common sense knows 'ees better off quaffin' a pint 'n tryin' to explain the world."

Donald O'Connor, of Singin' In the Rain told us about storytelling, "Make 'em laugh!"

Alrighty then. Who's got a couple of post-Hegelian jokes?

Sleep deprived students with an attention span that can be measured in seconds may find something dull, boring & sleep-inducing that requires alertness, attention, and hard work. — Fooloso4

There’s an important distinction needing to be made here, as the difficult & the boring are very different things.

Just now, we’re evaluating the boring, not the difficult.

The general public has never been equipped to read or understand great philosophy. The demand to be entertained is one of, but certainly not the only reason they are ill-equipped. — Fooloso4

I suspect you proceed from the premise that entertainment has no truck with communication of important (and therefore serious) ideas & information.

Sam Beckett’s Godot, when performed in prisons, usually lands forcefully with audiences there; they enjoy it as much as other audiences. Given that prison audiences oftentimes include some of our most educationally-deprived citizens, this tells us something important about capacity of comprehension by the general public.

Most everyone has heard, and enjoyed, Gershwin’sRhapsody In Blue. It’s everywhere because the public likes it. No need to be a chamber music habitue to appreciate Gershwin’s sublimities.

Is the demand for entertainment a matter of indifference to the cognoscenti?

I say meeting the demands of the general public, in any field, establishes the most correct yardstick for measuring success.

Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist who focused on spacetime, quantum mechanics & black holes, would seem to be a poster boy for the difficult. True enough. If the general public is ill-equipped for the difficult, how come A Brief History of Time was a best seller?

From the cognoscenti to the skid row bum, and all points in-between, people are the same.

So why not talk to everybody, if you have something to say? Doing that successfully, however, entails being interesting, as in being entertaining.

Being entertaining in one's work, philosophical or otherwise, is an individual trait... — Garrett Travers

I think you’re saying for any philosopher, being able to entertain the audience with emotional gratification coupled with the excitement of learning is an added-value attribute that serves the mission of philosophy (as well as education in general) as a grace note, lovable, but non- essential.

This argument is formidably sound; it’s familiar to most us.

I have a lament, probably familiar to you. It concerns the package in which the contents are delivered.

In the performing arts, delivery is critically important, even if not of the same status as content. Consider the standup comic. If s/he flubs a line reading of a joke – especially if it be the punchline (barring a great ad lib) – the joke (and sometimes the comic) is dead.

Even with a letter-perfect delivery, sans great timing – sometimes improved for the audience of the moment – the joke might very well land with a thud.

Likewise the singer. On paper, more than one great song looks like next to nothing. Why is it a great song & perennial favorite? It’s the packaging, the delivery by the performing artist.

Here’s an ad lib question from me. Considering the importance of delivery, which is to say, packaging, in the performing arts, is there an existential difference between storytelling for entertainment and storytelling for science (i.e., philosophy)?*

*Might this be a serious question under aesthetics?

How come the scientists & the philosopher-royals get to stand up there in lecture hall and drone on in monotone as s/she slogs through bland techno-babble, devoid of enlightening metaphors, and permanently divorced from anything resembling wit?

This brings us to another familiar argument: the dialectic of form vs. content.

There’s evidence science does have an aesthetic standard. We’ve all heard about the elegance of simplicity pertaining to equations & theories.

Seems to me the reason is obvious why everyone knows Einstein’s equation, whereas Schrödinger’s equation?

Philosophy & the philosopher, if they're any good, embody an important sub-division under the rubric of entertainment.

The philosopher, if s/he's any good, entertains the general public with explorations of the deep & intriguing questions.

Nietzsche is a name that rings loud & long within the public's imagination because he is a very entertaining writer. The drama, the emotionalism, the sweep & direction of human history and the high stakes of the Ubermensch gambit have many of us enthralled. Moreover, the fact he was a handsome man who cut a dashing figure didn't hurt.

The deep shade covering part of Nietzsche's character & legacy embellish his memory with a frisson of darkness & evil. Was he the metaphysician who empowered Nazism?

Entertainment is, arguably, the most important human behavior of them all.

Three of the perennial questions posed by philosophy are: What's the meaning of life? What's the purpose of life? What makes the good life?

Oftentimes, the big three questions are used as hammers to bash philosophy. Pie in the sky! Pretensions of the leisure class! Ivory tower speculations entertained by eggheads! Now that you've solved the problems of the world, can you come down from Mt. Olympus and get a real job?

Not to worry fellow travelers. Philosophy has a simple, one-word, unpretentious answer to the big three questions.

Entertainment. Yeah. That's what we're supposed to be doing whilst we live. Telling stories to each other & keeping ourselves entertained. And that is what we're doing, most of the time.

Gather a bunch of folks into a great hall & make them wait for something, say, an important event of some kind or other. Before long, the great hall is buzzing with exchange of narratives flying about every which way.

We must fill up our time with entertainment!

As a human being, it is your duty to be entertaining!

The successful performing artist lives as a god because s/he brings interest, excitement & diversion into the lives of others.

To be entertaining is to be noble.

A philosopher fails not when s/he embraces wacky concepts supported by faulty logic, but rather whenever s/he is dull, boring & sleep-inducing.

Who are the great philosophers? They're the one's who get read by the general public, generation after generation.

Great ideas & great philosophy are two different things because great ideas presented in a bland, dull, impenetrable narrative IS NOT READ. So who knows about it? No one. Philosophy is not great until it is read about & known by the general public.

Question - What is entertainment? It is education in its highest manifestation. Public, formal education, alas, all too often is NOT entertaining. Ever had a good teacher? They were entertaining!

The above statement is the popular definition. Below lies the boring definition. (Forgive me.)

Entertainment is the bi-directional -which is to say, dualistic - experience of the witness to a transformative - which is to say, life-changing - narrative.

Here's what I mean by bi-directional: when you entertain me, I have a simultaneous experience of two opposing connections: a) I'm drawn out of myself by interest in the life of the main character of the story (that's you); AT THE SAME TIME b) I'm pushed into myself by self-identification with the life of the main character of the story (that's me).

Simultaneous bi-directionality leads to TRANSPORT. When I experience transport in response to a narrative, I'm de-localized by interest in the other person, but at the same time I'm centered within myself by interest in my identification with the other person.

We're not happy when we're just ourselves. We're happy when we're just ourselves, and at the same time, paradoxically, not just ourselves. That's entertainment! That's sex!

People my age have Beatlemania for an example of transport. The four mop tops pulled us out of ourselves with their difference, la (that's supposed to be French). Also, they pushed us more vividly into ourselves through our identification with their difference, la

An earlier generation had Elvis. A later generation had Michael Jackson.

Question - Who's transporting today's young people?

Indeed. U=IR. I is time dependent. PV=nkT. Dynamical balance — Schootz1

:up:

When there is a cause, change occurs. When change occurs, it has a cause. — ucarr

Do you deny this? If so, show me a change that has no cause. In this instance, your example can be a phenomenon of change that takes time to occur.

Also, do you think the above is philosophy? I think it's common sense.

There are a few physical formula in which time does not play a role. Each of these is an example of cause without time. The resistance of a circuit and the colour of a black body are two more examples. — Banno

you cannot accept them as falsifying your hypothesis. — Banno

Hence your need to move the goalposts from change to causation. — Banno

You obviously think change & cause are two very different things.

I think they're directly connected. When there is a cause, change occurs. When change occurs, it has a cause. If this direct relationship is true, and we both know it is, then your claims about change over distance imply a cause. You should therefore have neither complaint nor critical commentary in response to being asked to supply one. Elaborating how it comes to pass that some type of change over distance is caused is a basic part of your job in supporting your claim with an argument. Your examples thus far have brought forth denials supported by commonplace, definitive evidence.

When you assert that change over distance is a timeless phenomenon within our empirical reality, you're advancing a radical claim that naturally excites calls for elaboration of scientific truth unknown to most observers.

You're obviously hunting around for qualifying examples. Thus far, you haven't found any.

resistance of a circuit > drop in current flow CAUSED by resistance of a circuit is not timeless

change in color of a black body > measurement of color temperature as based upon a theoretical black body is not timeless

The measurement problem in physics relates to Heisenberg and Schrodinger... — Edmund

Are you referring to quantum measurements of vectors when the wave function is operational?

...but in essence revolves around the possible "influence" of the observer/measurer. — Edmund

Are you asserting the presence of the observer as the main cause of Heisenberg Uncertainty? If so, I suspect this is a major proposition you should propound.

Berkeley's view that to be was to be perceived seems therefore particularly precient? — Edmund

I suppose we know that observer-observed are contemporaneous. What do you have to say about unobserved things? Do they exist?

A weight sitting on a cushion deforms the cushion. The weight cause the cushion to change over distance. — Banno

State 1: cushion without weight = shape of cushion 1
State 2: cushion with weight sitting on it = shape of cushion 2

Question - What causes shape of cushion 1 to become shape of cushion 2?

When asking about causation, we're asking about a connection or relationship between two states of being. We're asking about the before and the after.

What's at the center of our focus here is connection, or relationship. We're not looking at State 1 and then jumping to look at State 2. Such a jump, like a cut in a motion picture from one scene to another, can be conceptualized as being timeless, but, in phenomenal reality, there are no timeless cuts.

In your head, you can visualize a motion picture like cut and imagine it to be timeless, however, in phenomenal reality, as Schootz1 points out, the weight deforms the cushion via the action of gravitation upon its mass, which causes movement across an interval of time of positive value.

You can talk about juxtaposing two points of view of a material object and say they express two different forms of the same object. You can call this a juxtaposition of different forms, but change of, or change over - outside of time - don't apply.

You have not given a single example of change of state of being outside of time. Your persistence in claiming such is based on a misuse of change over distance.

Banno, I think you're saying causation is trivial. Please elaborate by giving us a trivial, mundane cause of
change in the state of a material object with time equal to zero for the change.

CAUSE, like CHANGE, refers to an alteration in the state of things, over time. The deformation of the cushion, involving motion, consumes time.

The deformed cushion, a rest state, doesn't exemplify change.

Exercise leads to (causes) big muscles. This is, clearly, change in the state of a physical body over time.

As long as you use CHANGE in your proposition, you will need to demonstrate a change of state of one thing that consumes zero time.

What causes change over distance?

In the case of everyday physics, change over time via motion is caused by a change in the inertial state of a material object.

A real-world, specific example goes thus: a boulder sits at the base of a hill. Its inertial state is rest. Another boulder, rolling down said hill strikes the first boulder, setting it in motion. It rolls for a distance of 20 feet over a time interval of 29 seconds.

This change over time via motion was caused by a change in the inertial state of the resting boulder to the inertial state of a rolling boulder.

Can you give a real-world, specific example of a cause that effects a change over distance, with elapsed time equal to zero?

I'm not sure the matter is sufficiently well-defined to answer the question definitively. It doesn't appear to be logically impossible (it doesn't appear to entail a contradiction), but whether it is nomologically/metaphysically possible is ambiguous (which is, again, itself a problem for theism's credibility). — Seppo

Question – How does an agent in the non-physical category (spirit) cause observable effects in the physical category (physics)?

Theism (theistic metaphysics) has a responsibility to propound spirit-matter transduction.

Atheism (atheistic metaphysics) has a responsibility to examine the same question, with intent to show impossibility.

Please see above post.

Do you allow that transduction between spirit-matter being possible is the premise of the atheistic seekers to whom you've been referring?

If you reject such transduction, then you assert that spirit-matter contact is rationally impossible, and the existence of spirit is scientifically undecidable, with extreme skepticism.

When a seeker tries to find physical evidence of immaterial being interacting with matter, that's a very specific search. If the speaker is reacting to claims made to that effect, then the seeker must proceed from the premise that the immaterial being possesses a physical component that makes contact with material onjects. This premise contains another premise > that material evidence can only result from material agents acting upon it. If the seeker doesn't commit to these premises, then s/he allows that transduction between matter and spirit might be possible.

Question to change over distance advocates. What causes change over distance?

In what context are you willing to answer my question about logic being independent or invented?
Sidebars into related topics have been ok before, or am I mistaken?
My question advances a line of attack on a type of atheist argument that uses the invented abstract structures of logic.

Is it not true that before the question of God's causal relationship with the physical world can be examined via the benchmark of physical evidence, the examiner must presuppose a physical component within God's being? I pose the question this way because the object to be examined i.e., God's contact with the physical world, logically requires a common ground where the two can meet. Either spirit converts to physical, or vice versa. The acceptance of this equalization upon a common ground of physicality by the atheist examiners you postulate is suggested by their seeking after physical evidence. In the absence of a physical component within God, one can ask how atheist examiners expect to find physical evidence left behind by pure spirit.

Why would linguistic/conceptual analysis showing that certain terms or predicates are mutually exclusive... — Seppo

...imply that "grammar of logic is extant independent of human reasoning"? — Seppo

There's a perennial debate whether numbers are discovered or invented. I'm asking a parallel question about logic.

If your answer is that logic is an invention of human understanding, do you acknowledge that together, human understanding and logic form a monism?

Is it your understanding that God's being includes a physical component?


Are you saying that grammar of logic is extant independent of human reasoning? I ask because if not, then you suggest atheist logicians, in refuting God, access the physicalist-spiritual point of contact. If this is denied, then independent grammar of logic is an objective idealism.

Do you know the sign God has no referent, or do you theorize the sign God has no referent?
— ucarr

It makes no difference in this context; either way, God's existence is what is in question, and so talking of "judging a being", as if there is a being there to judge, is question-begging at worst, an extremely awkward way of speaking at best. — Seppo

With my question, I was attempting to make a distinction between knowing by (2) possible standards: a) observation of phenomena within the empirical world; b) establishing an algorithm based on axioms.

Next, I was attempting to make a distinction between such knowing and propositions arrived at following reflection upon observations held in memory. With regard to the latter, a thinker can articulate a theory that postulates a line of reasoning that justifies a conclusion.

An important action here is to separate a proposition based on empirical observation from a proposition based on pure reasoning.

The gist of my argument is that God, being immaterial and therefore not subject to empirical observation, can only be denied via pure reasoning and that, moreover, pure reasoning, as a channel to valid conclusions, necessarily entails some measure of Plato's objective idealism.

Since we're dealing with a denial, there is a reversal of application of objective idealism. Since to deny God means denying objective existence of an absolute moral sentience, such denial entails embracing objective moral truth of a different sort from theism, or wholly denying objective moral truth, which entails embracing objective truth of a sort that excludes objective moral truth.

Further complicating the picture, denial of God gives the mind a central role in shaping a conception of reality through reasoning that leads to a configuration of the world that excludes immaterial, self-willed teleology. Since the denial, no less than the affirmation, operates without scientific experimentation, it follows that for yea or nay, the route to its conclusion travels through the realm of transcendent idealism.

Whatever the particulars, denial of God entails embracing a priori mental constructions of objective-transcendent idealism.

Let's have your argument supporting the sameness of a) questioning God's existence and b) judging claims about God's attributes.

I ask this question because I can claim there are no red German Shepherds, only black & gray ones. If someone denies existence of all shepherds, they must elaborate why canines can't exist, thus eliminating black & gray Shepherds.

Such an argument is a theory, even if no canines have ever been observed.

The point is merely that this talk of "judging a being" implies that the proper name "God" has a referent, when this is, of course, precisely what atheism denies... and so its a better and more accurate analysis of atheism as the position that neither the proper name "God" nor the common noun "god" has a referent, that there is not any being or entity to which either accurately applies. — Seppo

Do you know the sign God has no referent, or do you theorize the sign God has no referent?

Neither relativistic time dilation nor planck-scale uncertainty invalidates our authoritative knowledge of today's date (let alone any of the many other things we know quite authoritatively)- our dating methods are obviously relative to our own reference frame, and the calendar is a social convention and so the date just is whatever we agree that it is. — Seppo

Inertial reference frames of relativity assert the lack of a universal time. What we know in our frame is not known empirically in someone else's frame. So authoritative knowledge of the date, speaking empirically, is local; nonetheless authority is authority, whether local or otherwise.

Claims about God, however, typically speak of God's presence as something that transgresses all perceptible boundaries. Does atheism refute extant_God across all perceptible boundaries, or only within our empirical universe?

Regarding our calendar dates being what they are arbitrarily, the scientific method cannot ascribe its authorization to said dates via testing of reasoning or methods.

... Language can only exist and have meaning in relation to the empirical world and social/linguistic habits of communities of language-users. — Seppo

George - "Lord Alfred, the big wheel developer, intends to have the abandoned mill property razed to the ground. This in spite of public opposition."

Sidney - "A priori, it would seem that his reach, buttressed by high government connections, acts as an extension of that power."

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Doctor - "How ever did you know the locket, sight unseen, would be inside the vase?"

Holmes - "Deduction, my dear boy. Elementary deduction."


Question - Do the products of a priori reasoning possess ontic properties independent of the empirical?

1. Compassionate emotions and actions directed toward oneself. (Doing things that reflect a caring for self (in the same way we care for, for example, our children): exercise, healthy diet, avoidance of toxic people, places, relationships, etc.) — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well said, ZzzoneiroCosm

You call it self-love part 1. I call it self-esteem. I will say this, however; I see your list of reflexive actions as prep work towards experiencing the greatest adventure available in the universe: falling in love with another person unlike yourself.

I think the word "authoritatively" is doing a lot of work there. The only way this even remotely follows is if we're supposing that one can only know something "authoritatively" if one is omniscient. But that's dubious to say the least. I know its January 29th quite authoritatively, and am most decidedly not omniscient. — Seppo

You argument holds good up until the start of the 20th century and the arrival of QM. I resort to the empirical extremis, which greatly weakens my argument, but it's all I've got for now. In the approach & departure to & from 29 Jan, time dilation, grown significant at micro time intervals, perplexes the exact now of beginnings & endings of calendar days. Not only you do not know, authoritatively, the calendar date; no one does. Instead, we must make do with a cloud of probabilities describing our calendar date.

Curiously, in this situation, a cloud of probabilities images more precision than does the old Newtonian conceptualization of time & space eternal.

The authoritative, certain knowledge long sought by science has been partially derailed by science itself.

And "ha, ha, ha" chortles the existentialist as s/he wraps arms around absurdity.

To deny omniscience authoritatively from an atheistic perspective is to deny that the claims of theism are true. It makes no direct claim to "knowing there isn't a god," but instead knowing that based off available information, we know that this specific god does not exist. — Cobra

There's some incoherence between your first sentence and your second sentence.

The first sentence presents strong atheism, an extreme epistemological position that denies objective omniscience. You cannot authoritatively deny the objectivity of something without knowing it objectively (you can theorize the objective non-existence of something, with each successive moment offering possibility of refutation, or not>theories are not authoritative, but rather speculative ), a position that automatically culminates in the embodiment of what's denied. This paradox, as I've already said, resembles Russell's Paradox, wherein a set includes itself/doesn't include itself. The problem, as Russell pointed out to Cantor, is unrestricted inclusion. The same thing applies to refutation. There's a problem when refutation is unrestricted, as with the denial of omniscience.

Seppo tried to restrict the refutation of omniscience, but in the effort, nose-dived himself into deep idealism, a position, I suspect, he abhors.

In your second sentence, you too attempt to restrict the scope of atheistic refutation, knowing or sensing Russell's Paradox for unrestricted refutation looms large in the not-too-distant background. In the effort, you too make a sharp turn into idealism, characterizing - I suppose unwittingly - restricted atheism in a way that sounds more like agnosticism. This is the incoherence between the two sentences. The turn into idealism is your implication that restricted atheism is reaffirmed on a case-by-case basis. This renders the hard atheism of the first sentence as a speculation or theory. In consequence of this, the extreme epistemology of the first sentence becomes an ideal, a mental construction you treat as an existential reality of the mind, which you reaffirm, empirically, case-by-case.

And in any case, the atheist isn't judging a being (divine or otherwise), but a concept or proposition: the concept of God/proposition that he exists. — Seppo

You imply that a proposition can be analyzed & judged apart from its referent within the empirical world.

You therefore imply that language has existence & meaning independent of the empirical world it describes.

Your implications, because they imply cognitive constructions in language that are existentially real apart from their referents, possess a strong flavor of idealism.

I'm speculating that your implications are, given your commentary upon my Atheism & Solipsism argument, for you, untenable.

Could it be, considering my main theme - that atheism is no less an idealism than theism - that you are, unwittingly, providing corroborating evidence?

Perhaps I misread your above quote. Can you show me some errors in my logic?

No, an atheist does not believe god exists. It's not an ideal, it's an opinion. I am an atheist but I cannot prove there is no god, no-one can, but I am personally convinced as near to 100% as you can get.
I am not being idealistic, I am not aiming for perfection, I just refuse to be as duped as a theist. — universeness

Do you advocate for social justice through personal empowerment? Do you believe it's achieved through universal access to personal development in the form of housing, education & employment? Do you think that, where appropriate, businesses should be owned & operated by the public? Do you advocate for pluralism with respect to a person's metaphysical commitments, or lack thereof?

If any of the above is true for you, then you live by certain ideals you work to make realities to the best of your ability. This is a type of socialist idealism, which is not say it's tainted or fallacious thinking. Our mental constructions guide us. Empirical experience keeps forcing us to check, adjust and rethink our ideas & ideals on a daily basis. No one gets it right 24/7.

Many of us agree that deity is idealism. Well, anti-deity is also idealism. John Lennon's Imagine describes a well-defined society worth striving for in earnest.

Practical use of ideals doesn't always place a believer within the realm of fundamentalist naivete.

"Atheism" : only nature :: "solipsism" : only me.
Nothing to do with one another. — 180 Proof

↪180 Proof Right. And at least traditionally, atheism has been akin to/friendly towards materialism/realism/physicalism, whereas idealism/anti-realism has been aligned with theism, and it is idealism, not materialism, which is always in danger of slipping off into solipsism.

(after all, the core epistemological argument for idealism that calls into question the material/physical world, similarly calls into question the existence of other minds by the very same token) — Seppo

180 Proof & Seppo make useful points here. They are succinct & clarifying examples of compare & contrast pertaining to theism/atheism.

Seppo,
Regarding the atheist who knows there's no all-present, all-powerful, all-effectual & transcendent sentience, does not such an atheist exemplify an ideal?

I ask this question because: a) within the epistemological discipline, there's no consensus about the possibility of certain knowledge; b) qualification for judging a sentient being of divine status implies divine status on the part of the judge.

I always find amusement when a theistic argument is placed in an academic frame in an attempt to give it scientific credibility. Such attempts are so transparent. — universeness

Do you think I'm a theist? If so, why? I've been examining some details of atheism. Does my exam imply pro-Theism? If so, please cite examples.

Your god properties are not well-defined, as if god was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent then it would have appeared in the center of London, New York, Paris and Washington D.C, simultaneously by now. — universeness

I think you're confusing abstract conceptualization with empirical verification.

Your response is logical & clear. I think I understand you. Here goes: You're saying that a necessary being must have an antecedent condition in virtue of which it necessarily follows.

In my question, I'm not concerned with the fact that Cantor's set logic, without a limiting condition applied to its comprehension principle, leads to a paradox.

I'm not trying to ascribe any degree of the paradoxical to your statement about an antecedent condition being required for a necessary being.

Instead, I'm looking at the two instances from a broadly inclusive, wide-angle point of view.

I'm asking if they're similar in that they have something in common: limiting condition required.

What is attributed to God, of course, is an absolute and unconditioned necessity. Which is, as I noted, and as countless philosophers going back to Hume have pointed out, simply meaningless- a misuse of terminology. — Seppo

Is there any similarity between the fallacious conceptualization you describe in the above quote and the problem that Georg Cantor ( considered the founder of modern set theory) discovered within his unrestricted comprehension principle?

To be clear, I'm asking if the lack of restriction in both instances links them together as similar fallacies.

Atheism's link to solipsism & monism, as presented in my argument, is simple.

To deny omniscience authoritatively means to be omniscience. By common sense, the self, outside of direct experience & possession of omniscience, has no basis for claiming omniscience non-existent.

Thus, refutation = verification. As with the unrestricted comprehension principle examined in Russell's Paradox, wherein inclusion = exclusion, we have an interesting paradox.

Frege's mission to reduce arithmetic operations to logic was thwarted by a deformation of non-contradiction.

I'm hopeful Godel's Incompleteness Theorem - any first-order math system will generate true statements not provable within the boundaries of that system - has something to say about the limit of Divine Solipsism, to the effect that Divine Omniscience generated human because The One is inadequate. Eternal solitude won't do.

As we all know, Christian Theology has something to say about the relationship between knowing & being - In the beginning, the word was with God, and the word was God.

Now we have solipsism & monism shaking hands, with cognition & phenomenon as one. God's thoughts are the real states of being that populate the universe. But this oneness is destined, by design, to break apart. This is where human slips into the creation.

The Sartrean exam of the relationship of knowing & being has human immersed within absurdity, thereby forced to make decisions that must be treated as axiomatic in the absence of enduring logic.

My take on this is that paradoxes have to be admitted into scientific orthodoxy. Of course I'm arrogantly stealing from Bohr, Planck & Einstein.

Since the digital age rests upon the platform of QM, and QM computing takes a categorical leap upwards in info processing, thus promising to reveal cognitive constructs previously unimaginable, I suppose internal contradictions aren't always the death knell for a theory.

I say the flaw in atheism as omniscient refuter of omniscience is its failure to embrace the paradox that verifies what it denies. This is to say that atheism should recognize its support of theism by the fact of its existence. Under this construction, paradox does NOT equal invalidation. Instead, we're right back to the stalemate: God, neither provable nor refutable.

On the other side of the paradox, theists should accept their Godly utterances as a spotlight throwing human as God-defier into relief, to everyone's advantage, a testified to in Milton's Paradise Lost.

Oh, yes. There's a cosmically mandated deformation of the monism of cognition & phenomenon. Human, Jesus included, drags problematical materialism into the mix.

The deformation of God's monist, Let there be light, echoed down here on earth by Descartes as, I think, therefore I am, let's in our monetized world of commodities, which QM has perplexed back towards the ying-yangish paradox of refutation equals verification.

Much of the above is gibberish. It does contain a few bits of what I want to say. I'm working on it. I need brutal excoriation from harsh critics. That's why I doing this in public.