Thanks, I like that argument. I deny a deity, but I agree with the presence of something(s) out of which everything became.

We cannot make relationship with God

People seemed to have practiced religions from the get-go all over the world. Pew currently estimates 84% of the world claim to have some sort of relationship with God. There might be a joke in this...a few trillion people can't be all be wrong, or maybe there is another way to think about it, not in terms of an individual's faith, but in terms of how communities are constituted by faith.

Fancy argument that leads no where, since it implies that god is of one with nothing.

Gibberish.

Hey, I thought Thomas agrees with creation ex nihilo.

“It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electro­magnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in A Universe From Nothing--the laws of relativistic quantum field theories--are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on--and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.

Apparently, quantum fields must exist in order for something to come from Krauss's 'nothing', in Albert's pov.

You don't see " David Albert of Columbia said about Krauss’s book in The New York Times." in the article?

Look at Albert's criticism of Krauss which appeared in NYTimes review of books.

However, even if that is true, then it does not explain how the universe came to be, self aware or no. Nevertheless, the Big Bang Model and current advances in our understanding of quantum and classical physics suggest that the universe does indeed come from nothing.

There is a dispute about this.

From the universe's point of view it may be all based off chance, no intelligence required. Of course we don't like that idea.

Intelligent from who's point of view?

I thought there is evidence of a big bang?

Forget the theism/atheism debate here. I ask everyone, theists and atheists: does the concept of a being from before time creating everything make sense? If so, why? If not, why?

Why a being? Why not just a chance occurrence that set the ball rolling.

Choo-Choo 2u?

I don't think so. I can't get over the fact that evidence can be valid, without being dependent on whether or not people chose to believe in that evidence.

a=b is meaningless if no one believes a=b.

Zappa's One Note Theory

Spider: We are ... actually the same note, but ...
John: But different octave.
Spider: Right. We are 4,928 octaves below the big note.
Monica: Are ya ... are you trying to tell me that ... that this whole universe revolves around one note?
Spider: No, it doesn't revolve around it; that's what it is. It's one note.

Spider: Everybody knows that lights are notes. Light, light, is just a vibration of the note, too. Everything is.
Monica: That one note makes everything else so insignificant.

If you don't feel guilty about being a rich white male, or his fortunate wife, how did you manage to solve your guilt problem?

I didn't solve it and I live with it, but I also don't consider myself "a rich white male".

There is a moral argument that suggest that most of us ought to feel guilty. If someone in front of us were in need, most of us would try to see what we could do to help, and if several people needed help as in a disaster, we and others would try to do whatever we could do to help. It would be the moral way to react to such calamities.

There are people around the world that urgently need help, and morally we ought to accept that these people are just as needy as those people in front of you, or near you. If you agree with this then it is your moral duty to try to assist them, to shell out money to assist them, to help them in some manner. (Peter Singer argument)

Most could give more, and it would be a moral thing to do, but many don't and therefore we remain guilty.

Exactly. This makes me think beliefs are not necessary, because we can ignore beliefs that don't deal with evidence, and also, we can ignore beliefs that deal with evidence.

I think we can ignore beliefs that don't have evidence, any such beliefs are about faith and not about knowledge. Beliefs that are evidenced by facts or our abstraction of the facts, are essential to our survival and progress.

We could ignore evidenced based beliefs, because those are redundant, as the evidence doesn't care whether or not people believe in it.

You speak of evidence as if it were a simple thing, yet I think that evidence is the result of beliefs, and that beliefs acts as differentia or values separating the notion of a simple thing or state of affairs from their entailing something else beyond their simple existence as such.

And what is that criteria?

Could it be a power beyond the rules of the game, power that creates the context of the game, that allows the game.

Rule #8: Cavacava will not question my authoritah.

I don't think so, because I know many Christians who believe world was made in 6 days, and those beliefs disagree with science evidence. We can maybe then say scientific evidence doesn't care about beliefs?

Yes people can believe what ever they want to believe, but that does not make those beliefs knowledge. Knowledge as true belief implies the ability to demonstrate with evidence that a belief is rationally coherent, even if it can't be proven absolutely true.

Have you ever watched a skier run moguls? The decisions the skier makes are based on what his body understands, its training, its memory, the same habitual movements. I think the phenomena you are referring to is similar. It does not impinge on the notion of an existential will, in my opinion.

Yes, like that.

The status of evidence as such must be concluded, otherwise it is not evidence, and if conclusions are required then knowledge is required and if knowledge is required then belief is required.

That can be a rule about the thread, but it can't be a rule in the game :B

'Rule 4' and any other such rules that contradicts previous rules..Rule 2...are invalid, Rule 4



Rule 5, choose a side

I think we want better for our children. We want them to have good productive lives, not lives of chronic pain, but we understand that we are limited by the facts of life, the chance mix of pleasure and pain in life.

Humans are only just on the scene compared to the rest of creation. Civilization has progressed over the last 3000 years of recorded history, for both good and bad. However, over the last 200 or so years we have made great strides in mediating actual pain and suffering. Not eliminating it, but moving in the right direction IMHO.

We can now avoid many debilitating diseases, and other calamities. Medicine and modern technology seem to be making great strides with no sign of let up, only giving us more hope. If the history of the world as we understand it is correct then this is only the beginning. Give the species a chance, maybe someday chronic pain will be a thing of the past.

Our species has a history of betterment. Sure there were/are wars and are terrible events, but there has also been considerable progress and improvement.

Children are our future X-)

I think what we feel guilty about is a social construction but that we feel guilt is because it is an inherent human trait. Freud thought that guilt was due to the internal conflict between the Ego and the Superego. I think our feelings of guilt arise from actions which we recognize consciously or unconsciously as not cohering with our internal, historic sense of self. Guilt represents the responsibility we feel when we have acted in ways that run afoul of what we consider to be good and proper. I think it is the product of our freedom of choice and the concomitant sense of responsibility we feel for to the choices we have made.

The doctor/patient relationship favors the doctor over the patient, in a power dynamic. The patient's desire to feel better merges with the patient's desire to please the doctor. It biases the choice of goals in favor of the doctor's views of what is normal or not. That is why I think it is a kind of a brainwashing or mind control.

CBT works. It diminishes symptoms, but I do not think it reaches the source of the issues that caused the symptoms in the first place. It displaces the patients problems with a set of agreed upon goals, ways to solve or avoid symptoms. It is popular because it is quick and therefore easier to study on a clinical basis. From what I read about ACT it seems to seek the core values of the patient and to use these values to assist the patient in creating goals in line with their core beliefs, which makes sense.

The notion of "Cognitive Distortions" is related to Cognitive Behavior Theory, which I think is a kind of brain washing, the substitution of an ideology to solve neurotic problems. It solves the immediate manifestations of individual problems, by displacing them with whatever the dominant ideology favors, which sinks their causes deeper into the psyche, IMHO.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

In Shoutbox

The problem that I am trying to highlight in OP is exactly due to existence of material and consciousness.

K

Everything we experience we experience consciously. Man thinking a world independent of his thought is a performative contradiction. If man has a physical relationship with the world then the laws circumscribing that relationship ought to be logical, but it does not work that way because there is no reason to believe that the structure of thought mirrors the structure of reality,

Yet the laws we derive from the world are amazingly accurate and useful. I think man's relationship with the world is based on probabilities, and the laws that men abstract from the manifest, idealize what is experienced. Laws that can the formally manipulated and reapplied/utilized in the world. If it works then fine, if not then we revise, and reapply.

Transcendental realism looks at our pragmatic experiences including their history and their advances and it tries to determine what they must presuppose in order to be as we experience them. This is an epistemic move, and not an ontological one (the world as it is in itself is unknowable),TR thereby proposes to avoid the paradox (maybe).

It seems to me that without a dieus ex machina argument, consciousness must have evolved from matter, that consciousness must be a potential state of matter as configured by nature in its evolution over the eons. Matter must contain within itself the configuration potential to become spiritual, as a potential state of its being. I don't think there is logical alternative...or else how does the spiritual arise in the universe.

Conversely, in case said entity already knows everything at an earlier time, then that means the knowledge is true.
Which, in turn, cannot be false later on, and hence means the entity cannot change mind by then, since otherwise it would be false.

This is similar to the argument I had in mind. God if you assume he is just, cannot not affect our freedom of action, but the Bible suggests otherwise. Judas's betrayal, and Peter's denial were foretold and they behaved as Jesus described. They were predestined to act the way they acted. If Jesus is god then he foretold what he already knew, and Judas and Peter had no choice but to play out their roles. Jesus's free act denies theirs.

How? If this is god then what he says is all there is, regardless of what they think.

You mean like he told Judas or Peter.

"The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born." Judas, who betrayed him, answered: "It isn't me, is it, Rabbi?" He said to him: "You said it."

“this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”

He played his own story?

Still like my argument.

I think 'soup' is an analogical concept, one that describes variations in liquid food, such as cold, hot, sweet and sour, thick/thin...soup. The game enables its player to shape a conception of what soup can be, and that conception is a digital mediation the game's author creates by providing pathways (its dialectic) of control embedded as possibilities for its players. The author controls the paths, which go somewhere, backwards or nowhere leading the player's by a limited set of digital possibilities, tangential possibilities, but at the same time the game can approach but it cannot encompass it's project because a soup's aesthetic is essentially analogical and not digital.

Also most common nouns are only informative in so far as they are ambiguous, up to a diminishing point at around 50% flexibility in meaning, after which point meaning is lost.

If god is construed as omniscient, then god knows everything, from the beginning to the end of time, the whole shebang, but if this is so then his knowledge of our decision/actions is similar to our reflections on past events, which neither he nor we can change, in this way we are free to do what we will, because god can't change them, god is past them.

Thinking about how the Trolley Problem might apply in the world.

It seems that many if not all cars in the near future may have automatic controls (some cars already have versions of this option) so that a person may, or perhaps must give up control of the car and hand it over to an on board computer system. The computer probably will face situations similar to the Trolley Problem....where multiple dangerous courses of action are possible and that it must make a split second decision.

Two possibilities
a) The car have a mandatory values system that common to all autonomous driving vehicles which is built in, and that regulate its normal as well as its course in extraordinary cases.
b) The owner gets some say in the ethics of the car, perhaps by prioritizing the car's occupants welfare over the welfare of those external to the vehicle.

My guess, option a is the only one that I can envision insurance companies accepting. Autopilot is expected to reduce accidents and injuries, so if it works as advertised, insurance companies will go along with it, but my guess is that they will want say in any ethically auto driven procedures.

We can all hope for big inspirations in our life