So you're an atheist? Not so fast.

[Spectrum]

Spectrum

LOL... did you consult with Kant on this? It would be interesting in a "metaphysical" way if you did.

It's all a bunch of gibberish that has nothing to do with what I said.

Again Spectrum, you must produce some philosophy, any at all, that stands alone to offer a "useful" perspective on reality without discussing theology. Otherwise, there is nothing to talk about.

This is what you said,

... until recently, when I realized that science and theism actually complement one another in describing an "object" of this discussion.

This is the typical path along with Science that theists make a desperate attempt and a great leap of faith [driven by the 'zombie parasite'] to convince themselves God exists.

Yes, I consulted Kant and what I presented is not my original idea. I had mentioned I spent a very long time researching and to understand Kant. Kant is one of the greatest philosopher of all time. If his arguments are not philosophy, what more do you [kindergarten compared to Kant] want?

I mentioned 'Know Thyself' from Socrates, another great philosopher of all time.

Weird, actually it is your lacking in philosophy that you are asking for more philosophy from me.

-- Updated Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:16 pm to add the following --

Again Spectrum, you must produce some philosophy, any at all, that stands alone to offer a "useful" perspective on reality without discussing theology. Otherwise, there is nothing to talk about.

You sound very confident of your 'philosophy' to denounce the philosophical views of others.

Just curious, how many philosophy books do you have in your library.
I presume you would have a main folder for 'Philosophy' in your computer directory, how many Files and Folders do you have in this 'Philosophy' folder?
How many years have you been involved in researching philosophy, Western and Eastern, etc.?
May be there is something I can learn from you.

[Dark Matter]

You hit the proverbial nail on the head, Ranvier. Spectrum doesn't understand that "Science deals with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal values. True philosophy grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate these quantitative and qualitative observations" (UB). Nor is he the first atheist to swear up and down that they are familiar with the idea of divine simplicity only to have no idea of what it means.

-- Updated September 15th, 2017, 11:47 pm to add the following --

I mentioned 'Know Thyself' from Socrates, another great philosopher of all time.

Funny you would say that, Spectrum, because Socrates was hardly an atheist.

-- Updated September 15th, 2017, 11:57 pm to add the following --

hehehehe "Another great philosopher of all time" infected by the "zombie parasite." Am I the only one to see the humor in this?

[Spectrum]

You hit the proverbial nail on the head, Ranvier. Spectrum doesn't understand that "Science deals with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal values. True philosophy grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate these quantitative and qualitative observations" (UB). Nor is he the first atheist to swear up and down that they are familiar with the idea of divine simplicity only to have no idea of what it means.

Spectrum doesn't understand that "Science deals with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal values.

That is the point, you just cannot mix 'oil' [Science -empirical] and 'water' [God - eternal values - transcendent] in an argument.

You just do not want to understand the following;

1. Science is based on the empirical and its man-made Framework and System which generate 'polished conjectures'.

2. Theism is grounded on faith, i.e. beliefs without rational reason nor proofs which take a leap of faith to assert God exists.

If you ever borrow Science as your major premise to conclude God exists, your conclusion at best is nothing more than a 'polished conjectural.'

What is worst is your conclusion [polished conjectural] cannot be testable like those [polished conjectural] of Science.

Whatever you assert of God existence with an argument that rely on Scientific theories as the major premise, there is no way you can escape this Fallacy of Equivocation, i.e.

• 1. Empirical: Science assert X exists.
  2. Transcendent: God has quality of X.
  3. Empirical + Transcendent: Therefore God exists.

For an argument and the logic to be sound, the premises must all be in the same sense. In the above case one cannot subsume a transcendent premise into a major premise which is empirical.
Still cannot see the 500 pound gorilla?

Prove me wrong on the above?

-- Updated Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:23 pm to add the following --

Funny you would say that, Spectrum, because Socrates was hardly an atheist.

Cheap counter.
Gregor Mendel was a monk, why are non-theists and theist relying on his work on genetics?

[Sy Borg]

Gosh, that conversation moved on quickly. Steve and DM, is it still worth replying to earlier posts or will that confuse things? :)

[Dark Matter]

Go ahead. Spectrum is just entertainment filling in the gaps.

[Sy Borg]

Thank you, Greta.

Ranvier, it's ironic that the same science many still believe pushes God out of the picture is the same science that opens the door to the divine foot. For the convinced atheist, physicists like Carlo Rovelli, who think there is sufficient reason to believe “we are complex nodes in a rich web of reciprocal information,” makes it all but impossible to overcome the situation described in the OP.

The divine foot :)

I think AI will make a difference because it will, unlike human experimenters, it will have the capacity to assess circumstances as a whole, including the experimenters. Up to now we have aimed for distance but QM results suggest that that distance may be more useful and convenient than reality-based.

Re: quantum foam:

Now we've established that this "physics of ultimate reality" is a reference to quantum foam, I guess the answer would be all of the observations that originally led to the development of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and all the other familiar Quantum Mechanics stuff that's been widely discussed on these forums. Electrons and twin slits. Photons hitting half-silvered mirrors. All that.

Not quite. The quantum foam is an emergent property of the Nexus (the point of convergence), which is time-transcending and pre-spatial. It is in this sense that a theist can say, "Creatorship is hardly an attribute of God; it is rather the aggregate of his acting nature." This is in keeping to the idea that atheists -- at least those in search of understanding -- might be closer to theism than they imagine.

An entity that is neither subject to time nor space. This is what life needs to evolve to become if it is to survive the final challenges thrown at it by the universe. It's easy to imagine that somewhere, sometime in the history of the universe there will come a branch of life that survives "the great filter" and, one by one, keeps solving the challenges of existence - the death of their planet, of their star, the disruption of their local galactic neighbourhood, the disruption of their galaxy and its eventual annihilation. Eventually the only way would be to no longer be dependent on matter, to be capable of living in and from spacetime itself.

If universes are serial and there have been many universes before this one, then such a hugely empowered entity (or entities) could conceivably exist!

The speculative ideas of today are either the science (or the discards) of the future. All scientific models necessarily represent the very most conservative, least creative and interesting picture of reality possible.

Yes, the scientific models that are actually used today are the ones that have already passed through the filter of falsification. So they're inevitably more dull than the ones that are still free to speculate and spread out.

The models are also, by design, an underestimation of reality's richness. All we have are sketchy models. I respect and would not contradict theories as they have been tested by great minds, but scientific theories are not designed to tell us what is actually real, they tell us the most recent steps in the shared reliable information that we've worked out about reality so far.

However, we are thrust into this existential situation of having to work out how to live our lives, which are not long enough to gain sufficient information or wait for science's answers. That means sharing ideas about the possible big picture, even if those ideas are not provable at this stage.

Investigations over the past couple of centuries have revealed an ever more interesting, complex, multifaceted and lyrical reality than had ever been imagined, and there's no reason to believe that that trend won't continue.

Yes, and one of the great consequences of that, I think, is that it forces us not to take for granted even the most basic models of reality that we learned as children. It forces us to observe without prejudice.

I would think that if observation without prejudice had not been practised thousands of years ago, we'd still be living in caves. That is simply what brought us to this point. However, the myth of truly objective observation has been contradicted by QM. A system is not just a system but a larger system that includes the observer, including all of the sensory limits.

A prejudice test: a recent experiment suggests that gravity does not impact on quantum spin. Assuming that the tests are duplicated independently enough times showing that QM and relativity truly cannot be reconciled, then would you then agree that dualism would then logically be true?

[Ranvier]

Greta

I admire the beauty and elegance of a concise thought...

However, we are thrust into this existential situation of having to work out how to live our lives, which are not long enough to gain sufficient information or wait for science's answers. That means sharing ideas about the possible big picture, even if those ideas are not provable at this stage.

This above may be especially useful to some people. Any model or "useful" theory, is better than no theory at all.

[Steve3007]

As always, the conversation has moved on overnight. I'll start where I last left off.

Steve3007:

... theism is the belief that a conscious being with a sense of purpose, analogous to a human being, created the universe and in so doing imbued that universe with his/her/its purpose.

Dark Matter:

Not necessarily. The doctrine of divine simplicity is radically non-anthropomorphic.

Dark Matter:

...It therefore behooves any atheist who wants to discuss theism to understand that when many theists ascribe human characteristics to God, like will or purpose, it' is of necessity analogical.

So you seem to be saying that I was right in saying that we see ascribe purpose to God by analogy with human purpose, yes? I thought so. Because, as I also said, there really isn't any way to define the concept of purpose without referring to things that possess it, is there?

[Sy Borg]

Yes Ranvier, there's numerous examples of both the religious and rational humanists leading ostensibly happy and successful lives so the "useful box" can readily be ticked, but the "actual reality box" is much more elusive due to our size and sensory biases.

[Ranvier]

Greta

Yes, that's my sentiment as well. Therefore, there is a limit to the "empirical" of science. Although, I consider imagination a "seventh" sense

-- Updated September 16th, 2017, 5:49 am to add the following --

Steve3007

The "purpose" only "works" forward in "time". Once we ascertain the purpose, then we can infer the "reason".

[Steve3007]

Greta:

Gosh, that conversation moved on quickly. Steve and DM, is it still worth replying to earlier posts or will that confuse things?

I'd say it is. If I've been away and the conversation has moved on I try, as far as available time allows, to look back and see if anybody has said anything that it looks like they want me to reply to.

Greta:

An entity that is neither subject to time nor space. This is what life needs to evolve to become if it is to survive the final challenges thrown at it by the universe. It's easy to imagine that somewhere, sometime in the history of the universe there will come a branch of life that survives "the great filter" and, one by one, keeps solving the challenges of existence - the death of their planet, of their star, the disruption of their local galactic neighbourhood, the disruption of their galaxy and its eventual annihilation. Eventually the only way would be to no longer be dependent on matter, to be capable of living in and from spacetime itself.

A curious thought (that concluding sentence). But if, as some people would say, the concept of space-time is a model that exists inside our own heads which is useful for explaining our observations of the way various objects move around and interact with each other, what then?

Greta:

The models are also, by design, an underestimation of reality's richness. All we have are sketchy models. I respect and would not contradict theories as they have been tested by great minds, but scientific theories are not designed to tell us what is actually real, they tell us the most recent steps in the shared reliable information that we've worked out about reality so far.

Here we're drifting back to a discussion of Idealism, Empiricism etc. Yes, it is a defining feature of models that they are incomplete - that they model a subset of our observations and neglect others for the sake of simplicity. I don't think you have to refrain from contradicting them. Just contradict them by pointing out where they don't reflect a particular observation and where, therefore, another model might be useful. For example, Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation was a venerable model, and still is. But it doesn't accurately describe a particular aspect of the orbit of the planet Mercury (its perihelion precession) hence the invention of another useful model that does - General Relativity. And hence the invention of the concept called space-time.

Greta:

However, we are thrust into this existential situation of having to work out how to live our lives, which are not long enough to gain sufficient information or wait for science's answers. That means sharing ideas about the possible big picture, even if those ideas are not provable at this stage.

As has been discussed recently in the context of "how" questions versus "why" questions, I think the problem of working out how to live our lives isn't going to be solved by some future scientific theory. So there's nothing to wait for there. We might as well decide how to live our lives now, if we can.

I would think that if observation without prejudice had not been practised thousands of years ago, we'd still be living in caves. That is simply what brought us to this point. However, the myth of truly objective observation has been contradicted by QM. A system is not just a system but a larger system that includes the observer, including all of the sensory limits.

Yes, but I think one thing that QM taught us was that there were still prejudices - mental models that we learn from a very young age that turn out not to be universally applicable and, indeed, misleading when we're searching for ways to describe and predict some classes of observations. Yes, the idea that observation is a detached activity in which the observer's role can be neglected (an idea that always existed) was solidified into a fundamental principle by QM.

A prejudice test: a recent experiment suggests that gravity does not impact on quantum spin. Assuming that the tests are duplicated independently enough times showing that QM and relativity truly cannot be reconciled, then would you then agree that dualism would then logically be true?

Dualism in the sense that there might, at a fundamental level, be more than one core principle of physics and that they might be forever separate? i.e. the loss of the concept of "Grand Unification"? Yes, if that's where the evidence leads. But it is interesting, isn't it, to ponder why we have that prejudice - that hunch - which tells us that there must be a single unifying principle to the universe? A kind of aversion to mess. That's why it was so disconcerting to many people when the nice neat models of particle physics started to get messed up with loads of new particles - a whole menagerie of them - a few decades ago. Or as a well known physicist said (in a restaurant analogy):

"Who ordered that?"

-- Updated Sat Sep 16, 2017 12:01 pm to add the following --

Correction of a typo:

When I said this:

Yes, the idea that observation is a detached activity in which the observer's role can be neglected (an idea that always existed) was solidified into a fundamental principle by QM.

I meant this:

Yes, the idea that observation is not a detached activity in which the observer's role can be neglected (an idea that always existed) was solidified into a fundamental principle by QM.

[Ranvier]

Steve3007

Most people need a "word" or an "image" to conceptualize a concept, or in other words, people need a pivot point to play around with an "abstract" in their mind. This is one of Einstein's great contributions in providing the "framework" of spacetime to conceptualize gravity. Based on such "framework" he was able to "visualize" the concept in his mind to generate the equation for General Relativity. With spacetime model, it's much easier for most people to "perceive" that planets and "stuff" of matter is not isolated in suspension in the "middle" of "nothingness". However, spacetime is just a "mold of the face" as a mask but not the actual gravity.

If we would take GR literally, then the gravity should be greater on the East than West along the Earth's orbit around the Sun. In other words, if mass bands the spacetime, then logically spacetime would be "bent" more along the Earth's procession.

West (-------- O--)) --> East

or

Since there is a constant increase in entropy in the expending and accelerating universe, the spacetime should become more "flat" with a constant decrease in gravity. Yet, we know that the universe is already "flat".

or

If one where to imagine being inside a hollow planet with the same mass as Earth, would one walk on the inner surface of the planet or "float" towards the middle of the empty space inside? Would there be less gravity inside? Would one age differently at the "core" of the planet vs the inner surface and who would age faster? How would the spacetime band in such a scenario?

or

Why is it exactly that we can't exceed the speed of light?

This may not be entirely relevant to this OP but it's interesting to think about the "limitations of the current model.

[Sy Borg]

An entity that is neither subject to time nor space. This is what life needs to evolve to become if it is to survive the final challenges thrown at it by the universe. It's easy to imagine that somewhere, sometime in the history of the universe there will come a branch of life that survives "the great filter" and, one by one, keeps solving the challenges of existence - the death of their planet, of their star, the disruption of their local galactic neighbourhood, the disruption of their galaxy and its eventual annihilation. Eventually the only way would be to no longer be dependent on matter, to be capable of living in and from spacetime itself.

A curious thought (that concluding sentence). But if, as some people would say, the concept of space-time is a model that exists inside our own heads which is useful for explaining our observations of the way various objects move around and interact with each other, what then?

In that case, the "stuff of space". Harking back to our old pal, Leo, we always agreed that space is not empty and only exists as a relativity. Energy is present everywhere in the universe at all times so one just needs to know how to harness it.

Consider the unlikely problems humanity has solved in it's short time as a technological species. If humanity survives the great filter, imagine the problems they would solve from there. Perhaps the Earth's heat death wouldn't even be fatal to a species with a a few million years of much faster advancement?

The models are also, by design, an underestimation of reality's richness. All we have are sketchy models. I respect and would not contradict theories as they have been tested by great minds, but scientific theories are not designed to tell us what is actually real, they tell us the most recent steps in the shared reliable information that we've worked out about reality so far.

Here we're drifting back to a discussion of Idealism, Empiricism etc. Yes, it is a defining feature of models that they are incomplete - that they model a subset of our observations and neglect others for the sake of simplicity. I don't think you have to refrain from contradicting them. Just contradict them by pointing out where they don't reflect a particular observation and where, therefore, another model might be useful. For example, Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation was a venerable model, and still is. But it doesn't accurately describe a particular aspect of the orbit of the planet Mercury (its perihelion precession) hence the invention of another useful model that does - General Relativity. And hence the invention of the concept called space-time.

Good point. I think the biggest problem for science, and society, is the non-standard. For instance, if you saw an alien ship doing a flyby - broad daylight, unmistakeably not human made - how do you prove it? With a blurry and grainy photo? :lol: :lol: Evidence for the rare can be just about impossible to catch, so science must necessarily focus on things that are common enough to allow for a body of knowledge to be built on them.

However, we are thrust into this existential situation of having to work out how to live our lives, which are not long enough to gain sufficient information or wait for science's answers. That means sharing ideas about the possible big picture, even if those ideas are not provable at this stage.

As has been discussed recently in the context of "how" questions versus "why" questions, I think the problem of working out how to live our lives isn't going to be solved by some future scientific theory. So there's nothing to wait for there. We might as well decide how to live our lives now, if we can.

I think the issue is time. Meaning does not emerge in a lifetime (aside from the usual mating malarkey) but over many generations. In lieu of deeper understanding we can take on responsibilities and/or enjoy a little with hedonism to provide "surface meaning" because there's not much else we can do, but I think it helps to see ourselves as links in the chain towards something greater (or at least more intelligent and sophisticated) than ourselves.

I would think that if observation without prejudice had not been practised thousands of years ago, we'd still be living in caves. That is simply what brought us to this point. However, the myth of truly objective observation has been contradicted by QM. A system is not just a system but a larger system that includes the observer, including all of the sensory limits.

Yes, but I think one thing that QM taught us was that there were still prejudices - mental models that we learn from a very young age that turn out not to be universally applicable and, indeed, misleading when we're searching for ways to describe and predict some classes of observations. Yes, the idea that observation is not a detached activity in which the observer's role can be neglected (an idea that always existed) was solidified into a fundamental principle by QM.

A prejudice test: a recent experiment suggests that gravity does not impact on quantum spin. Assuming that the tests are duplicated independently enough times showing that QM and relativity truly cannot be reconciled, then would you then agree that dualism would then logically be true?

Dualism in the sense that there might, at a fundamental level, be more than one core principle of physics and that they might be forever separate? i.e. the loss of the concept of "Grand Unification"? Yes, if that's where the evidence leads. But it is interesting, isn't it, to ponder why we have that prejudice - that hunch - which tells us that there must be a single unifying principle to the universe? A kind of aversion to mess. That's why it was so disconcerting to many people when the nice neat models of particle physics started to get messed up with loads of new particles - a whole menagerie of them - a few decades ago. Or as a well known physicist said (in a restaurant analogy):

"Who ordered that?"

Aside from "more than one core principle of physics", we are talking about more than one domain of reality, with the domains seemingly not so far from Descartes's dualism. How are your prejudices going now? :) Then again, reality must logically be one thing - at some scale it must be - with any dual aspects being flipsides of the one coin rather than truly separate.

So the tendency towards monist thought is probably more than just tidiness (and I suspect you were being a tad playful there anyway). Meanwhile, the "beautiful" and "elegant" equations are regularly found to correlate with reality, thus the enthusiasm for string theory. I think we should blame the LHC, which simultaneously undermined "elegant" string theory and revealed such a zoo of particles that many physicists now suspect that something is wonky with particle "taxonomy".

[Dark Matter]

Family emergency. I'll get back in a couple of days. In the meantime, can someone please explain to Spectrum the difference between equivocation and correlation?

[Steve3007]

Greta:

In that case, the "stuff of space". Harking back to our old pal, Leo, we always agreed that space is not empty and only exists as a relativity. Energy is present everywhere in the universe at all times so one just needs to know how to harness it.

So, a living thing that is somehow composed of the background quantum foam? Or some such thing? You really do enjoy thinking outside the box, don't you?

A slight side point about energy always existing everywhere - remember the laws of thermodynamics. If energy did exist equally everywhere it wouldn't be any use. On our planet, it's not the fact that the Sun irradiates us with energy that is useful. It's that plus the fact that it doesn't fill the whole sky - there are cold parts of the sky into which that same amount of energy radiates back into space in a less useful form. Sorry, I do tend to revert back to what probably seem like boring technicalities.

Consider the unlikely problems humanity has solved in it's short time as a technological species. If humanity survives the great filter, imagine the problems they would solve from there. Perhaps the Earth's heat death wouldn't even be fatal to a species with a a few million years of much faster advancement?

If we did survive that long and didn't destroy ourselves and carried on developing technology at either the rate we develop it now in the 21st Century or at a rate which is linearly increasing at the same rate of increase of the last 400 years, or even at an exponentially increasing rate, then I'm sure the death of the Earth would be just a minor inconvenience. But of course those are big ifs. A billion years is an almost inconceivably long period of time on a human scale.

Good point. I think the biggest problem for science, and society, is the non-standard. For instance, if you saw an alien ship doing a flyby - broad daylight, unmistakeably not human made - how do you prove it? With a blurry and grainy photo? Evidence for the rare can be just about impossible to catch, so science must necessarily focus on things that are common enough to allow for a body of knowledge to be built on them.

I think this is essentially the idea that is summarised by the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". In other words, the stronger the patterns that have been established by past observations, the harder it is to convince ourselves (or to convince others) that an observation which doesn't fit the pattern is genuinely what it appears to be. This is a natural part of human nature. It's useful, but the unfortunate bi-product is that very well established patterns do sometimes need to be overturned, and it's hard to do so.

I think the issue is time. Meaning does not emerge in a lifetime (aside from the usual mating malarkey) but over many generations. In lieu of deeper understanding we can take on responsibilities and/or enjoy a little with hedonism to provide "surface meaning" because there's not much else we can do, but I think it helps to see ourselves as links in the chain towards something greater (or at least more intelligent and sophisticated) than ourselves.

It helps some of us. It probably helps a lots of the kinds of people that contribute to this forum. But I think we should also remember that there are loads of people, perhaps a large majority, that don't care about being a link in a chain. They're happy to go about their lives, falling in love, having children, enjoying food, sex, going to the toilet, going on vacation and being entertained. All that stuff. Nothing wrong with that. Takes all sorts.

Aside from "more than one core principle of physics", we are talking about more than one domain of reality, with the domains seemingly not so far from Descartes's dualism. How are your prejudices going now?

Possibly a bit strained! I guess I'd have to explore exactly what constitutes a domain of reality.

Then again, reality must logically be one thing - at some scale it must be - with any dual aspects being flipsides of the one coin rather than truly separate.

In order to decide whether I agree that reality must be one thing, I guess I'd have to figure out more of what you mean by this "reality" thing first. It's starting to get a bit vague now. You know me. I like to talk in terms that can be related back to something that can be observed. I have that Logical Positivist tendency to say things like "if it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck". I've never really been into the abstract concept of the "real duck" which exists independently of those various ducky observations.

So the tendency towards monist thought is probably more than just tidiness (and I suspect you were being a tad playful there anyway). Meanwhile, the "beautiful" and "elegant" equations are regularly found to correlate with reality, thus the enthusiasm for string theory. I think we should blame the LHC, which simultaneously undermined "elegant" string theory and revealed such a zoo of particles that many physicists now suspect that something is wonky with particle "taxonomy".

Poor old LHC. A lot of people seem to blame it for a lot of things! It's also often held up as the exemplar of impractical head-in-the-clouds blue sky research with no practical benefits. But seriously, yes, such high energy particle physics experiments have yielded a plethora of particles. And particle taxonomy does seem to get a bit mystical at times. The "Eightfold Way" for example.