Yet, I'm not so much trying to defend my "idiosyncratic" personal philosophy, as to defend a besieged moderate position in a polarized world. — Gnomon

In the arguments you have provided, you are defending one particular position that you characterize as moderate. If I say that I don't find your argument convincing, that doesn't mean I reject the idea of moderation.

Therefore, my middle-of-the-road position may be sympathetic with some mind-based Eastern philosophies (not religions), but it is still compatible with (post-Quantum) Western matter-based science. Unfortunately, from the polarized perspective of Scientism, "East is East and West is West", period. So, I'm fighting an uphill battle to change that binary & exclusive attitude. — Gnomon

No, not really. You are fighting an uphill battle to defend one particular view. One that I, and some others on the forum, don't find convincing.

I'm an atheist, and I can't make enough sense of the concept of God to motivate myself to even think "yeah, I should belief." — Dawnstorm

I intend this as a serious question and not at all as a criticism of what you've written - If that's how you feel, why get into this particular discussion at all? Most atheists here on the forum have a bone to pick. You don't seem to.

I always say that I am not a theist or that I'm not a follower of any religion. I don't say I am an atheist. I come to discussions about God for two reasons. 1) It's a place where people who call themselves rational come to show off their ramshackle rationality. Their arrogance pisses me off. And, more importantly 2) There is an aspect of humanity's relationship to reality that is at least acknowledged by religious or spiritual understandings that is denied by more rationalist approaches.

Sometimes I think we can. People have tried to rationally justify a belief in God at least since the ancient Greeks.
— T Clark

Raitionally justifying belief can help you if you're seriously consider the belief. — Dawnstorm

I could, for example, decide on a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach, — Dawnstorm

I was serious when I said "Sometimes I think we can," and it was "fake-it-till-you-make-it" I was thinking about.

Nuff said... — EugeneW

Hey!! "Nuff said" is my catchphrase! Me and J. Jonah Jameson.

I understand your confusion. — Gnomon

I didn't say your position is confusing, I said it is difficult to defend.

How would you characterize that approach ? Does it seem confrontational, or adversarial? — Gnomon

There is nothing wrong with the way you express your thoughts. You are generally civil and even-tempered. "Difficult to defend" just means I'm not convinced.

So my lack of sophisticated technique results in a crude seat-of-the-pants approach to the give & take of dialog. Consequently, I may seem like a bull-in-a-china-shop. — Gnomon

Again, no - we're all, or mostly all, amateurs here. I have no problems with the way you present your discussions. As I said, I'm just not convinced. I don't find focusing on information a useful approach, at least not the way you do it.

Yet, since moderation is often mistaken for weakness, a firm stand is necessary to avoid being blown-away by the Trolls on both sides. — Gnomon

I don't see a lot of trolling in the responses to your posts. Your ideas just get the typical dismissal that all mystical/spiritual ideas do here. People here can be arrogant jerks. Welcome to the forum.

I can wrap it up in a Christian-Judeo-Islamic tradition but that doesn't make the evidence stronger. — EugeneW

You just called it evidence. What more needs to be said? I can see why you call the evidence weak, but weak evidence is still evidence. Evaluating the quality of the evidence is part of a reasonable discussion of the issue. Rejecting the evidence out of hand is not.

the greatest flaw is that the logic is built on fear. — stressyandmessy

the person will believe in God they are doing so because of fear and not because they believe in the values that God provides. — stressyandmessy

Making a decision based on fear is a common and rational reaction.

The reason why this is problematic and an issue is because the belief is not genuine and instead of believing in God for the values that they offer. — stressyandmessy

You're right. That is a problem. Can we just decide to believe something? Sometimes I think we can. People have tried to rationally justify a belief in God at least since the ancient Greeks. I guess Pascal is just a theological pragmatist. That's probably a good reason to reject his argument.

I think the question for atheism is not the lack of evidence for god/s so much as the reliability of the evidence provided. — Tom Storm

I agree and that's my problem with many atheists. Just because you don't think the evidence provided is reliable, that doesn't mean there's no evidence. Questioning evidence is part of reasoning. Rejecting evidence without that reasoning is not good philosophy.

Unfortunately personal accounts of religious experience offer very little to others who haven't had this experience and/or doubt its veracity. — Tom Storm

I acknowledge there are verification issues with personal reports. As I said, that's a reasonable argument for doubting them as evidence. On the other hand, we use them all the time in the real world.

Religious experiences also cancel each other out - the Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu all have 'unique' experiences that to them 'prove' the authenticity of their version of god/s and how we should to live. — Tom Storm

I don't find this a convincing argument. Actually, the reverse is probably true. The fact that experiences of God are found in so many different cultures and which apparently developed independently is evidence that the experience is a common human one. Is it really surprising that the specific interpretations and expressions of that experience differ from culture to culture? I don't think so.

The claim 'there is no evidence for god' is false. — Tom Storm

Yes. I think this is important.

But is that evidence? — EugeneW

Yes.

Then what's the evidence? A personal experience? God talking to us in our mind? What's your measure of evidence? Someone saying he/she has seen them? — EugeneW

I was pretty clear in the post you are responding to.

I'm merely trying to dissociate Metaphysics (the mental aspects of the world) from that prejudice. — Gnomon

I don't consider metaphysics as "the mental aspects of the world," and I doubt Aristotle did. Admittedly, that opinion is based on what I've read others say Aristotle said, not on a personal reading.

Normal matter is fairy dust in a universe where all moves opposite. The laws of TD are asymmetrical in time not because fairy dust is involved but because of initial conditions. Why are they not the reversed end conditions? Why not is the end of our universe a begin in reverse? Why not is the end the begin and aren't we heading back to the begin? What's so special about the begin? That its ordered? But why is that special? Does a reversed universe heading for the singularity needs incredible finetuning? So the stone jumps from the floor, together with broken glass and reversed sound, a window gets healed, and the stone is caught by a boy? — EugeneW

I wrote "Nuff said" six hours ago, but here I still am. Ok, this time I really mean it. Nuff nuff said.

Yes - note the semi-colon. It’s (quote=Sourcename; url including https). That will put (sourcename) under your quote hyperlinked to the source. — Wayfarer

Thanks. I'll try it next time I quote something from an outside source.

Took me years to work that out! Here’s a hint: select an instance and click QUOTE and you will see how it’s done. — Wayfarer

Here's what I got:

[ quote="Richard Lewontin;https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/)"]Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.[/quote]

Note - I put a space between [ and q at the beginning so our webpage wouldn't interpret the quote symbols.

Do I have to put in the person and link by hand?

Well the theory that all our theories are wrong, must be wrong, because if it were right then not all our theories would be wrong. Therefore fairy dust necessarily exists. — unenlightened

QED

It's a question about how fairy dust works.

So that's a 'no'. — unenlightened

Fairy dust is like dark matter. The only evidence that it exists is that all our theories will be wrong unless it does.

I've recently experienced counter-productive dialogues with posters who seem to have an anti-metaphysics agenda. — Gnomon

Metaphysics discussions are always contentious. The word "metaphysics" means many things to many people. As you've noted, there are many who mistake it for religion or the occult and dismiss it out of hand. On the other hand, metaphysics is at the heart of how I understand our, people's, relationship with the world.

This confusing mix is made even more complicated by your idiosyncratic understanding of what metaphysics; or as you put it, meta-physics; is. Even I, who am sympathetic to discussions of the subject, find your approach difficult to defend.

How did he know to stretch out his hand just at that moment? — unenlightened

Is that question intended as rhetorical?

it is exactly what would happen. — EugeneW

I'm pretty sure the only way that could happen is if fairy dust were involved.

Second law of TD in time-reversed universe:

All closed physical systems evolve towards lower entropy (with local patches evolving to higher entropy, but these don't constitute time reversion). — EugeneW

It seems like you are saying that, in a time-reversed universe, the system evolves from a more probable state to a less probable one. That...doesn't make any sense.

Did he die? — EugeneW

Alas.

The jealous God dies hard. — Wayfarer

I'm generally sympathetic to non-scientific ways of seeing the world and criticize scientific rigidity, but I don't find the Lewontin quote very convincing.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs — Richard Lewontin

For me, the main power of science is the absurdity of some of its constructs. That's the point, if it was all common sense, we wouldn't need science at all. Well... maybe.

its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life — Richard Lewontin

That is a great straw man argument. I'm going to keep it around in case I ever need a good example.

Hey!! How do you get quotes that have a direct link to a source outside the forum? I've never noticed that before.

I think 180 Proof is referring to the ongoing Enlightenment project of human knowledge which has incrementally dismantled the notion of god/s and the usefulness of religious models as a foundation for all human thought - also the unravelling of Greek models of absolute reality such as Platonism. — Tom Storm

Thanks. I still don't see what that has to do with my point. No, no... Please don't explain.

Yes yes and yes again. The state of gas corpuscules being together in one corner of a container can be realized in way much less ways than them being all over it. That's no issue. The issue is why all motions of particles have the direction they have (which turns out to be compatible with the chances). Why don't they have the opposite velocities, so they meat in a corner? — EugeneW

I took my best shot. Nuff said.

I've decided to write "nuff said" from now on when I think the conversation is over in honor of Stanley Martin Lieber.

Emptiness is the only spiritual concept that I think, or feel, gives me clearer understanding of the universe. True that it’s a religious concept, even though I’m anti-religious. It makes rational sense while at the same time relieves existential anxiety. I can’t imagine it not being true and yet I don’t know if it is true. Perhaps somehow things can have an essential and independent existence. — praxis

I think there are many ways to describe the experience of God or spirituality I'm talking about. As usual, my approach comes from an intellectual direction. Someday I'll start a thread "T Clark Finally Puts an End to All This Philosophy Bullshit" and explain it.

Again, probability has nothing to do with it. It explains why time goes forward given initial conditions. If a flipped coin lands 10 000 000 times on the floor with heads up, and 2 times on tails, is the reason it lands on heads so often that it has a higher chance? No. The reason is the die itself. Likewise for time. The basic question is why the begin state of the universe is not situated at its end with all motion reversed. — EugeneW

From Wikipedia:

The interpretation of entropy in statistical mechanics is the measure of uncertainty, disorder, or mixedupness in the phrase of Gibbs, which remains about a system after its observable macroscopic properties, such as temperature, pressure and volume, have been taken into account. For a given set of macroscopic variables, the entropy measures the degree to which the probability of the system is spread out over different possible microstates. In contrast to the macrostate, which characterizes plainly observable average quantities, a microstate specifies all molecular details about the system including the position and velocity of every molecule. The more such states are available to the system with appreciable probability, the greater the entropy. In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways a system can be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder" (the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder). This definition describes the entropy as being proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of possible microscopic configurations of the individual atoms and molecules of the system (microstates) that could cause the observed macroscopic state (macrostate) of the system. The constant of proportionality is the Boltzmann constant.

Why don't gas molecules behave like steel balls, settle at the bottom of their containers? — Agent Smith

Gas molecules are bound together much more weakly than solid molecules. They bounce quickly around inside any container - off the walls and each other. Temperature is a measure of the molecules' average kinetic energy. The warmer it is, the faster they move. Molecules are also affected by the force of gravity, but I guess the energy associated with gravity is much smaller than the heat energy.

Try this experiment: put a bunch of steel ball bearings (representing particles) in a box, shake the box and record a video of the balls moving randomly in all directions. Now, call two friends to your house. Play the video you recorded normally (forwards) to one friend and play the video in reverse (backwards) to the other friend. Ask both of them this question: Was the video played forwards/backwards? They won't be able to answer this question. — Agent Smith

There is a clear direction of time in a box full of moving steel balls. Perhaps you can hide it by continuing to add energy to the box, but the minute you stop the balls will all fall to the bottom.

I believe that one of the key reasons why a man will hate women is because of the power they seem to hold over him as sexual objects of desire. A woman can make a man want (to possess) her and yet also deny him access to her, thereby frustrating his desire. Women are perceived to be intentionally taunting men with their bodies, like a carrot on a stick, and men resent this. Hence why men often see sex as a form of conquest, in which a woman is finally dominated and put in her place. Sex is a form of revenge for these men. However, this very thing that men hate women for doing to them (manipulating their sexual desires) is itself often a form of revenge on men by women, who resent men for objectifying them. — _db

This gets my vote as the creepiest post of the year.

Probabilities have nothing to do with this. — EugeneW

You're wrong. Please don't go spreading your ignorance.

But you could just as well argue the other way round. If entropy only decreased, it would be very unlikely for time to go forwards. — EugeneW

I've given it my best shot, but I'll take one more swing. You're making this much more complicated than it really is. Entropy is the simplest thing in the world. Entropy isn't a force that directs events in a particular direction. It is just an expression of the fact that some events are more likely than others. Events that we identify as being in what we call the future are just more likely than those in what we call the past. Entropy is just another word for probability.

That's all I've got. Good luck.

I understand the arrow of time, but I don't understand why the arrow doesn't point from future to past. — EugeneW

But why doesn't it and all around it move backwards. Why isn't the law that entropy decreases? — EugeneW

For the same reason I'm more likely to be dealt a pair of twos than a royal straight flush. There's no reason time couldn't "flow backwards." It's just very, very, very, very....very, very, very....very unlikely.

So using the second law of thermodynamics to explain why this won't happen is of no use. — EugeneW

You can't write off the second law in so cavalier a fashion, not legitimately at least. Entropy just reflects probability. Higher entropy is just more likely than lower entropy because there are so many more high entropy events than low entropy ones. There is no physical reason all the air in a room could not gather all at once into one corner. It doesn't happen because there are just so many more ways the atoms could be distributed evenly through the room. Time moves the direction it does because there is just one way an egg broken on the floor could regather into an egg but there are a billion gazillion trumpillion ways it could just sit there in a yellow puddle.

There are other ways of looking at it. Wikipedia has a good writeup of the Arrow of Time.

Three types of paradox — EugeneW

Thanks.

Fortunately, in fact, Western "culture and philosophy" has been predominantly anti-foundationalist since the late 1500s CE (re: nominalism Copernicus/Galilleo, secularism, empiricism, Wallace/Darwin, pragmatism ...) — 180 Proof

I don't know what that means.

Read my last post, the post before you lost your mind. — Agent Smith

I went back and reread your posts. I don't think there is any misunderstanding between us about the issue on the table. We just disagree on the implications. I have four answers to the question "What difference does it make that language paradoxes seem to undermine the value of logic?" Those answers are, in no particular order, none, zero, zilch, and nada.

Oh! Sorry, my bad. You didn't read my post thoroughly. I explain why paradoxes are a big deal. — Agent Smith

I did read your post thoroughly, Mr. Snooty. Agent Snooty. The explanation doesn't make sense to me. What difference does it make other than providing a bit of agita to some philosophers and mathematicians?

It's not that complicated. — Agent Smith

I didn't say that the idea of paradoxes goes over my head, I said the excitement about them does. I just don't see why it's a big deal. They're not that hard to recognize. It's not like they can sneak up on you.

Escher's paradoxical ever up or down going stairs is about the angle of vision (that resolved the seeming contradiction). The twin paradox is about everyday experience and gravity, resolved by general relativity. "Contra-diction" is not always about diction. — EugeneW

You're right. After I wrote that about language, I thought of Zeno's paradox. Now I'm trying to figure out how Zeno's and Russell's paradoxes are different from the liar's paradox, if they are. I think the twin paradox is only a paradox if you don't understand general relativity, which, of course, I don't. As for Escher, I would call the things he drew optical illusions. Is that the same thing as a paradox, just in a visual rather than a verbal medium? I'm not sure.

I don't think that changes my impression that the strain paradoxes supposedly put on philosophy is illusory. It seems pretty unlikely that I've got it right while some of the smartest people in history have it wrong, so I'm hoping to be enlightened.

Perhaps my mixed metaphor confused you. Judaism and Greece are the foundations of the west not Christianity. Christianity is built on those foundations. — Fooloso4

For almost 1,000 years, the only philosophers in Europe were in the church. The church was the main thing that unified the west between the end of the Roman Empire and the Treaty of Westphalia. The church brought the philosophy of Greece to the west. The church transmitted a form of Judaism to the west. Did you think I meant that 2,000 years ago, St. Paul created the entire structure of western civilization without reference to what came before. I didn't.

I did not ask or address that question. What I said was, religious people often do not see eye to eye and so it cannot be said they understand the universe more clearly. How can they both understand the universe more clearly and yet understand it so differently? — Fooloso4

You're right, I did misinterpret your comment.

In philosophy, nobody agrees with anybody. Why would you expect religious/spiritual people to be any different? If you only allow philosophies with no confusion or disagreement... well, there's nothing left. Scientology I guess. Branch Davidianism.