Well, I guess an idealist would argue that everything we see, we take for granted as real when it is actually a product of mind. — Tom Storm

That sounds like the solipsist attitude (I have to be careful with words here though; is it an attitude?). L'éléphant appears to be one.

' The pain itself (the quale) is like the hole in a donut. — lll

I think pain is the donut tasting like shit. The hole is just empty space.

Dreams – Almost everyone, if not all, claims that they dream. We accept this claim without requiring proof. We use our own experience of dreaming to validate the other person’s claim of dream. — L'éléphant

If you hear people talking in their sleep you have proof of the dreaming. Likewise for animals. You might even put me under a brain-scanning machine. Then you could see if I dream when asleep. What proof do you need more? Are you a solipsist?

Thanks! If I remember them I'll tell you about them!

It's bedtime, and the Moon is fuller than ever! Catch you later, buddy! Always good discussion with you. Next time Hofstadter?

Well, he was influenced by Xenophanes, and I hold X responsible for the rise of the modern concept of one unified non imaginable omni God. And together with Plato he laid the basis for the modern notion of one and only never reachable reality. I don't like both and sympathized with the ancient gods. Not as a myth but as a reality. Empe seems okay though. Thought he was god and showed off his wealth. No problem. He did good things with his wealth.

You made me laugh, friend — lll

I owed you one, friend! Two, in fact! The coffee stains on my clothes are the silent witnesses!

Is this not just as weird as the idea of there being dead junk for no reason that eventually evolved so that it talk about itself ? — lll

I had the same thought. And you are right. But somehow eternal dead shit isn't dead and has to have gotten a divine spark to be farted into existence. I believe even fundamental particles posses elementary love and hate, and these could be the eternal beings like the gods. But still... if they are made with intention (or by accident as in my story...) seems somehow to give them more meaning.

Continue on with your fake entitlement though. :wink:
— chiknsld

I know the difference is apparently too subtle for you comprehend
— chiknsld

Acting innocent again, eh?
— chiknsld

you probably should have very little to say.
— chiknsld

It's almost like you keep forgetting that you don't believe in God
— chiknsld

you're just here to troll believers.
— chiknsld — Tom Storm

I was on your side @chiknsld but Tom made an excellent point here! If the atheist doesn't want to believe, this will not make them!

We have to be more sneaky and sleazy...

But it used to. 19th century physicists (and before), combined them happily. Mach, Bolzmann, Einstein, Planck... Where are the likes of them nowadays? They are rarities instead of the rule. Luckily there are exceptions, for the better of physics, I might add. Rovelli, Smolin, etc.

A classic objection to this approach is to ask where the gods come from — lll

Eternal beings. The universe is eternal too but too stupid too create its own basic stuff. Eternal intelligent beings don't need a creator.

There must be a 'The Physics Forum' where such issues are vehemently discussed. — Tobias

Isn't physics part anymore of philosophy? Or only metaphysics? About physics, that is.

Some pieces, like the |||, could only move through other pieces. — lll

Only through other pieces? So not over free fields? Interesting... I duuno though if this ghost piece is proof of gods.

The brilliance of the theory of evolution is that it makes the emergence of complexity and intelligence — lll

Yeah, it's fantastic and amazing how simple basic matter field can deliver the complexities of the organisms on our planet, between the heat of Sun and cold of dark universe. Somehow all creatures are equal. People=ant=elephant=... All conscious bodies. People being free and aware on top. There were only loose particles once. Intelligence, be it ant-like or human-like, are basically all the same, except that we can talk about it. The basic stuff is not intelligent. Where did it come from. This thread gave me a wonderful idea for a short story. I send it in when finished.

I have no idea what physics would say, I am not a physicist. If when physicists speak of reality they actually speak of 'laws and constants' that is well possible. — Tobias

The laws and constants are secondary. It are particles, their interactions, and their collective behaviors, that matter. Democritus told us that already.

Until quite recently what was thought did not include quantum physics or astrophysics. We still to understand them and there may be things beyond our capacities of understanding. — Fooloso4

The best way to understand them is imagining what it is to be a quantum particle or a cosmos. Quantum particles have properties were not familiar with from everday life, but it's still possible to sympathize with them.

So is it the case, that ultimately, any faith-based or belief-based proposal has AT BEST, the same status as a scientific hypothesis and is no more valid than any other human musings such as a faith in the proposal that Harry Potters ancestor, also conveniently called god created the Universe using the spell (first revealed here folks, on this very thread) 'Creatus Universeearse!' — universeness

So is it the case, that ultimately, any science-based proposal has AT BEST, the same status as a theist hypothesis and is no more valid than any other human musings such as a faith in the proposal that Harry Potters ancestor, also conveniently called "the scientist" created the Universe using the spell (first revealed here folks, on this very thread):

"Mani Fold, Calabi Yau
Super Sym, M-theo Ry
Strings Vibrate Twistor Tau
Holo, Brane, Let It Be!"

It does, but I was going for |||.

It's a symbol I used for a piece in a chess-like game I once made up. — lll

Chess-like? Curious...

or maybe you're hyperclocking — Agent Smith

Can we hyperclock? :chin:

Do you have evidence of anything that is not natural? I thought not... — Tom Storm

The existence of the universe and all creatures in it is the evidence of gods, considering it has no intelligence to create itself.

And you prove this constant once again, lil D-Ker: "stupid is as stupid does". — 180 Proof

And precisely because of my stupidity I understand the laws of nature. It's all just about love and hate. We are living proof. 90 for me, 90 for you. Mutually orthogonal. I guess orthonormality will never be reached.

'Time' is a metric of asymmetric change (i.e. physical transformations) ... — 180 Proof

In fact, we have exactly the same idea, but differently worded. Maybe I should look for new ideas... :kiss:

I think thermodynamic time Is constituted the irreversible processes. You can quantify these processes by putting a clock besides them. — EugeneW

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or can give an account of. — Fooloso4

To think what was, is, and will be is limited is a conjecture which can be experimentally verified. All current evidence points at an unlimited succession of time intervals [0,inf.). Every ending of an interval kicks the virtual, omnipresent, eternally fluctuating basis into reality, thereby creating a new [0,inf.) interval of time. In the by now famous words of @butimfeeling2022: "over and over again".

'Time' is a metric of asymmetric change (i.e. physical transformations) ... — 180 Proof

I hate to say it, let alone admit it... but this is a very... eeeh... a very... go... eeeh, damn... go... go... go..., excuse the stutter, booze. I sing it: this is a very gooood idea! Realistic even.

No asymmetric changes, no measurable time. — 180 Proof

No asymmetric changes, no measurable time. — 180 Proof

:down: ,eeeehh... :point: ,eeeeh :up:

You got a point! I merely add that the pre-big-bang-inflation symmetric time was not measurable indeed because it actually was a clock.

But it's doubtful whether it is coherent to talk about time itself having or not having a beginning or end in time. — Cuthbert

Thermodynamic time has a beginning by necessity. Forward time is determined by collective particle motions evolving towards higher entropy. If time had no beginning it logically follows that the current state of the universe was one of chaos simple and pure. That, we observe not, fellophilo's.

So, time had a beginning. But how can it begin without a kick? The modern-day physical ideas offer a solution. Before thermodynamic arrow of time shot, the bow was tense. The arrow consisted of virtual particles, a much debated idea in modern physics, actually close to Aristotle's idea of eternal circular motion. All basic virtual particles oscillate in time. Or better, they constitute
oscillating time. Real particles in motion interact by means of these eternal omnipresent virtual particles, and these constitute the time we're used to.

Let it be that time is constituted by collective motions of particles. Let is also be that time can be understood in terms of before-and-after processes but that time itself is not one of those processes. And let it be that time is an affect of motion - that motion is what makes time what we understand it to be. It seems to me that EugeneW, 180 Proof and Aristotle are not so far apart after all — Cuthbert

I think thermodynamic time Is constituted the irreversible processes. You can quantify these processes by putting a clock besides them. A clock is an ideal process though. Only in our minds a truly periodic motion (with constant period time) exists. And of this clock, say a pendulum, you can't say it goes forwards or backwards in time. That's exactly the case with virtual particles. They fluctuate in time. When the circumstances are right, this fluctuation is turned into unidirectional real-particle time. Everywhere in empty space, virtual particles fluctuate in time. Before inflation, virtual particles were the only players around. So all what was present was a kind of virtual real ideal clock, without yet processes to measure time of. The events of a faraway universe accelerating towards infinity were the trigger of thermodynamic time. Not sure what 180 says about this. @180 Proof, what's your idea?

Time exists outside of motion — god must be atheist

How can the clock tick without motion?

I choose the wrong option. Aristotle is correct. Time needs a first kick to take off in one direction. His eternal rotational motion comes in a modern package. The eternal rotational motion of virtual particles in the vacuum. These particles were the only available ones before the universe took of in a blaze of inflation. The particles fluctuated (rotated) in time on the singularìty. When the circumstances, determined by a preceding temporally unidirectional universe, were right, the starting sign said all systems to go. To take off in one direction. So the fluctuating time of the virtual became the unidirectional of the reals. Note that time, cause, and effect, could have gone in the opposite direction as well. Which means, a universe collapsing from infinity towards the singularity, disappearing in it, and setting a new universe in motion at infinity. But the gods were lazy and liked forward, normally causative motion. They throw a ball after thinking about it.

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time. — Harry Hindu

In other words, things can oscillate in time, like virtual particles in the vacuum, or have a timelike direction, like virtual particles turned real.

Time cannot exist without change — Harry Hindu

But only in space they can change.

Create themselves? :brow:
What does that have to do with anything anyway? — jorndoe

This thread is about the invalidity of atheism. The laws of nature are stupid. Can't bring themselves into existence, nor the matter they are about. So it needs intelligence to bring them about. Gods, that is.

The apparent outcome of evolution leading to one species controlling and messing up the planet is arbitrary. But there is hope. Balance can still be restored. That's not arbitrary but determined.

I agree with this. I also challenge the claim that motion defines time. It does not. Motion makes time measurable, but it does not define it. Time exists outside of motion. — god must be atheist

Time can't exist without space. Your conception of time makes you think it can go one direction only. But it can go up and down. It can oscillate. In fact, the vacuum is oscillating in time.

Further, how can there be any 'before' and 'after' without the existence of time? Or how can there be any time without the existence of motion? If, then, time is the number of motion or itself a kind of motion, it follows that, if there is always time, motion must also be eterna

This argument fails if time is assume to go forward only. If it goes up and down, as before the unidirectional inflation, spawning the real from the virtual, time can have a beginning. As it must have a beginning. If this weren't the case, we would observe chaos only.

And if you agree (which you can't, seeing you have no education in science) that scientific teachings are not a matter of belief but a matter of knowledge based on evidence; — god must be atheist

I can agree precisely because I have such education. And let me tell you, there is no difference between the scriptures once taught and those taught at our schools and universities, where the minds of our children are brainwashed with objective sounding BS, turning the young into mindless computer-like colorless adults, brabling and repeating the objective sounding BS they were so eagerly to learn about.

In the valley of the gods in Utah, the atheist can find counter proof of their unholy assumption.

If mama giant made them eat, it's proof of an unfree will. Poor babies! — EugeneW

Sweet lord Jesus... Where has the philosophical debate on free will come to? Not to mention this thread which is about proof of atheism, which clearly can't be given.

lll
111 — lll

III matches 111 rather nicely.

Some! Proof of free will? — Agent Smith

If mama giant made them eat, it's proof of an unfree will. Poor babies!

Right! Which makes one wonder:

Kan het zijn dat de kwijlende reuzen iets verkeerds gegeten hebben?

Goddamnit III, you're on a roll! Gonna drink my coffee later... Misschien zijn we per ongeluk in bestaan geruft door voetballende goden of zwetende douchers...