Comments

  • Objection to the "Who Designed the Designer?" Question
    Are you denying the existence of intelligent design? — Andrew4Handel
    I don't deny "ID" any more than I deny "magic". :roll:

    Do you believe my phone created itself from a primeval soup?
    I know the primeval soup is not an artifact like your phone or house or the city. Compositional fallacy, Andrew: just because there are designed artifacts in the universe or that physical regularities appear "designed" to us in no way entails they are "designed" or the universe it is "designed". Same applies to "cause" – causes in the universe do not entail that the universe is the effect of a cause In both cases, the evidence against cosmic "creation / design" is e.g. (1) quantum uncertainty > (2) planck-radius universe > (3) low entropy past > (4) deep time > (5) deep space ... (6) autopoeisis > (7) evolution. :fire:
  • Mind-body problem
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    :eyes:
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    ↪Fooloso4
    IMO, "atoms and void" is a roughly analogous picture of quantum field excitations (events) and vacuum. :wink:
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    Agnostics are essentially skeptics. — Agent Smith
    Skeptics, however, are not "essentially" agnostics.
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ↪Agent Smith
    Pascal (deliberately) leaves out e.g. 'one does not believe and yet one lives forever' ... 'one believes and yet one does not live forever' ... etc.

    Are you pushing for honesty  (agnosticism)?
    Confused / uncertain about g/G-belief, agnostics are not particularly "honest". As you know I'm a disbeliever.
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ↪Agent Smith
    "Pascal's Wager" is a false dilemma.
  • Objection to the "Who Designed the Designer?" Question
    ↪Sam26
    :rofl:
  • Mind-body problem
    I would like to hear the explanation of how a strawberry emerges from atoms. — Andrew4Handel
    I'm no molecular biologist or botanist, but off the top of my head:
    atoms –> organic molecules –> DNA –> germination + nitrogen + water + photosynthesis –> strawberry
    Broadly, those seem to be the steps.
  • Objection to the "Who Designed the Designer?" Question
    People ask where is the evidence for design. Well it is all around us. — Andrew4Handel
    So you must believe we're alway being watched because "all around us" on sunny days we see 'faces in clouds'.
  • Objection to the "Who Designed the Designer?" Question
    ↪Sam26
    Sir, my initial comment on "ID" states what "counts as evidence"
    ... ID makes no unique, testable predictions either. — 180 Proof
    and yet you asked anyway and I replied with two links to articles which corroborated my initial comment. Clearly, you've either not read what I've proffered or do not understand what you read or you're disingenously denying the facts stated therein. In any case, I'm not going waste any more time discussing "ID" unless, of course, you can demonstrate that "ID" is an explanatory model and thereby derive testable predictions from it (which none of it's proponents have done to date).
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ↪T Clark
    :smirk: Why don't you take issue with the strongest arguments against theisn made by principled atheists (like me or other disbelievers I can name if you can't find them), son, rather than just lazily picking the low-hanging fruit of 'contrarian rabble rousers' as representative strawmen to torch so smugly?
  • Objection to the "Who Designed the Designer?" Question
    180 Proof So, what would count as evidence of intelligent design? In other words, what evidence would you require? — Sam26
    In short I would require that the following points made in the following article be refuted. They haven't been and stand as defeaters of the so-called "argument".

    https://phys.org/news/2007-02-wrong-intelligent.html

    Also, quite famously, it was determined in a US court of law that "ID" is not in any peer-reviewed sense a scientific theory.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
  • Objection to the "Who Designed the Designer?" Question
    This brings us back to, "Is there evidence of intelligent design in our universe?" — Sam26
    There isn't a shred of evidence, and ID makes no unique, testable predictions either.
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    Atheists put theist ideas in boxes, by which I meant they mischaracterize their beliefs based on their own biases. — T Clark
    Well, speaking only for myself, I take theism at face value and demonstrate that its sine qua non claims about g/G are not true (i.e. either incoherent or false). I suppose the relevant "bias" here is I reject untrue claims.
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    Most broadly speaking, reduction is not about ontology. — frank
    :up:
  • Objection to the "Who Designed the Designer?" Question
    ↪gevgala
    If "the designer" does not presuppose a designer, then why can't the universe not presuppose a designer (given that the universe, from within the universe, only appears designed to us based soley on very limited, human experience or imagination)?
  • Arche
    ↪Wayfarer
    I don't see how you can generalize from speculative physics to "current culture" as a whole. That doesn't follow at all. Given that the predominant influence in culture is still Judeo-Christian, it's much more reasonable to assume that "current culture" consists of a "Biblical cosmology" (that is seen by many to be "at war" with non-Biblical "evil" alternatives).
  • Mind-body problem
    ↪bert1
    :clap:
  • Mind-body problem
    @bert1 – It must be a slow Monday. :rofl:
  • Arche
    I suggest that current culture does not have a cosmology as such. — Wayfarer
    Elaborate please.
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    The inability of science to deal with the qualitative character of human experience is a feature not a bug. — Janus
    :up:
  • Mind-body problem
    ↪bert1
    Non sequitur.
  • Emergence
    No one would conflate gravity with God and no one should conflate the Enformer with God. — Agent Smith
    Except that @Gnomon himself does just that ...
    @Agent Smith

    My position [Enformationism, BothAnd, Meta-Physics] is a kind of Deism, specifically PanEnDeism.
    — Gnomon     — 180 Proof
    ... aka god-of-the-gaps (sophistry) :smirk:

    ↪universeness
    :clap: :100:

    I can only say that Gnomon simply can't be a sophist. — Agent Smith
    :lol:
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    ↪javi2541997

    Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    Do you mean to imply math-based scientific descriptions (maps) are (necessarily) incomplete? — Agent Smith
    Of course.

    (e.g. Compare Aristotle-Ptolemy's models to Copernicus-Galileo's models and Newton's model to Einstein's model.)

    Shouldn't we then do something nonscientific? You know, to get the whole picture?
    I suppose we should first question – speculate on – whether or not there is a "whole picture". For instance, the mathematical concept of infinity (re: continuum hypothesis?) implies there cannot be a "whole". There's also the ancient concept of the apeiron – endlessness – that radically calls "the whole" into question too. All it seems we can know it everything we can know is encompassed by an unsurpassable – transfinite? – horizon. Is that "nonscientific" enough for ya, amigo? :smirk:
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    Mathematics isn't just grammar, is it? :chin: — Agent Smith
    Math is formal grammar (i.e. logical syntax).

    The math models seem to correspond one-to-one with the physical world.
    Have you forgotten, Smith, that the only "model" (map) that "corresponds one-to-one with the physical world" (territory) is "the physical world" (territory) because map =/= territory?
  • Arche
    The Big Bang is not so much the beginning of the universe as it is an end of our [current scientific] understanding.
    — Sean Carroll (physicist)     — Agent Smith
    :up:
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    ... math is one step ahead of physics and also that at all scales, mathematical objects abound — Agent Smith
    ... physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ...
    — Agent Smith

    Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.     — 180 Proof
    So Shakespeare's plays & sonnets can be "reduced to" Elizabethan-era grammar (which was "one step ahead" of the Bard)? :sweat:
  • Arche
    ↪Agent Smith
    (My) arche :point:
    ↪180 Proof
    :fire:
  • Arche
    Bur what is the word? — Agent Smith
    The koine greek translation of the Gospel of John employs 'logos' which is an Attic /Ionian concept used by philosophers to denote 'rational account'. I suspect the gospel scribe meant, given the scriptural context, 'story' – In the beginning was th(is) Story – which is 'divinely revealed' rather than a 'mȳthos' written by (fallen / saved) mortals.

    As for the arche, it seems beyond our event horizon. — Agent Smith
    Perhap 'the arche' is our – reason's – horizon ...
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    ↪180 Proof The 'subject of experience' is the being to whom experiences occur. — Wayfarer
    So this "being" is any living, complex organism? (à la e.g. panpsychism, Berkeleyan idealism, etc)

    The 'problems of philosophy' are (for example) the kinds of problems about the nature of mind, nature of universals, number, ontology, metaphysics and so on.
    Do they have definite (testable) solutions like math problems, logic problems & scientific problems? If not, I think 'speculative puzzles (aporia) or questions (gedankenexperiments)' are more accurately used in philosophical discourses than "problems".

    The problem of reductionism arises in the attempt to apply the quantitative approach of the sciences to the qualitative problems of philosophy.
    Both are conceptual approaches – especially insofar as the latter is applied to the former – so this "quantitative-qualitative" distinction seems to make only a trivial difference.

    Anyway, thanks for clarifying, Wayfarer. :cool:

    ... physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ... — Agent Smith
    Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.

    Materialism reduced ... to im-materialism.
    Embodied X "reduced ... to" dis-embodied Y. :roll:
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    That they're 'unclear to you' is not an argument against it. — Wayfarer
    I didn't propose an argument, Wayf. I wonder if you can clarify those phrases – what you mean by those terms.
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    What is Christian faith supposed to be about, in philosophical terms? I would put it like this: it is about realising one's identity as a being directly related to the intelligence that underlies the Cosmos, a direct familial relationship, not as abstract philosophical idea. — Wayfarer
    :roll:

    ... many of the arguments about 'theism' are based on very confused accounts of what really is at issue.
    No doubt this is the case with the so-called "New Atheists" (except Victor Stenger or Rebecca Goldstein) which is why I consider their arguments (those of e.g. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett) to be irreligious humanist polemics instead of philosophical critiques of theism or theology.
  • The case for scientific reductionism
    Reductionism as an approach has been astoundingly successful. But difficulties arise when it is applied to philosophical problems, because these are problems that concern subject of experience, not objects which can be quantified. — Wayfarer
    It's unclear to me what kind of things are "philosophical problems" or a "subject of experience". Also, the only object of scientific reduction is what Descartes, Galileo and Locke called "primary qualities", and therefore the criticism that reductionism cannot address or account for anything else is a category mistake (i.e. playing one language-game in terms of another). Thomas Nagel's idealist – mysterian – objection to modern physics is, I think, patently incoherent and amounts to an argument from incredulity.
  • Arche
    ↪Agent Smith
    You've lost me again.
  • Arche
    Schopenhauer's The Will? — Agent Smith
    ???
  • Arche
    Any guesses as to what the first word was that issued forth from God's lips? — Agent Smith
    אֶהְיֶה‎ (’Ehyeh).
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    Pascal's wager — Agent Smith
    I suspect no one has ever believed in g/G because of a Pascal's Wager who wasn't already riding the fence up his sacramentally Confirmed keester. Pascal, the mathematical rationalist, was a religious fideist and proposed the wager as a prophylactic against promiscuous doubt rather than as "a reason to believe".

    So what other non-reason reason you got, Smith?
  • Emergence
    ↪Agent Smith
    Spinoza was a Jew, not a Christian. More to the point: an 'anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, supernatural and teleological deity' like the God of Abraham didn't make any sense to him during rabbinical studies by his late teens, and vocalizing this 'theistic skepticism' eventually got Spinoza excommunicated (cherem) from the very insular, observant Sephardic community (ghetto) of Amsterdam. Reason – freethought – "motivated" Spinoza. :fire:
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ↪Agent Smith
    No.
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