Evolution Vs Creation
Discussion
ChrisGB said:
I'm of the opinion that Gaspode's proof that logic is only valid when tested against reality is wrong, because his paradox and my Socrates example both prove that logic gives you truth independent of empirical checking.
Ok, so therefore you believe (as I do) that it is possible to construct logically valid arguments which cannot be tested against reality? I never intend to try to prove the converse, so sorry if I've confused you.If so, then there are 2 possible corollaries to this:
a) Such arguments may not be testable against reality yet - in which case, they fall into the class of scientific hypotheses which are waiting to be tested - like when Albert Einstein described the cosmological constant, but it took decades before the dark energy model became testable and was widely accepted around the turn of this century.
b) Such arguments may never be testable against reality, because they do not actually rely on reality for their validity. These are the arguments I call imagination, because they exist purely in the minds of the proponents. Such constructions can be extremely vivid and self-sustaining.
ChrisGB said:
But what is a force? If you say immaterial, materialism is false, naturalism is false. If they are inexplicable materially and naturally, we need some explanation beyond the universe?
You realise as well as I do that anything that has a beginning has a cause, so these forces cannot possibly be first mover. If you were serious, you would have to say Big Bang is prime mover, and then BB is just a brute fact, and then nothing at all is explainable. So it nearly works, if we don't worry too much about using nearly in a stretched way, but we still need to look elsewhere....
Forces are not inexplicable, we have no need to look beyond the universe. You realise as well as I do that anything that has a beginning has a cause, so these forces cannot possibly be first mover. If you were serious, you would have to say Big Bang is prime mover, and then BB is just a brute fact, and then nothing at all is explainable. So it nearly works, if we don't worry too much about using nearly in a stretched way, but we still need to look elsewhere....
Forces do not have a 'beginning', they are the end of the line. The reason I said they've been around since the big bang is because that's when time in our frame of reference started. It's entirely possible that the force of gravity existed before the big bang, but we have no way of knowing.
ChrisGB said:
Captain Muppet said:
ChrisGB said:
Captain Muppet said:
ChrisGB said:
Captain Muppet said:
ChrisGB said:
rxtx said:
Didn't think so. It's not your fault you were indoctrinated Chris.
(Why do I feel like Robin Williams?)
On this basis, every atheist would have studied in depth the arguments for and against God, so would have a ready refutation of prime mover, final causality, immateriality of mind? Those exact things conspicuous by their absence in this thread and anywhere else.(Why do I feel like Robin Williams?)
Sounds like double standards to me.
The problem comes from either side beleiving they are right and thinking the other side is wrong.
I've written a new version of the Lord's prayer to end this silly misunderstanding, obviously something similar will have to be rolled out to the rest of the religions:
Dear God, if you exist, you're ace.
Nice trick with the creation and lack of proof.
Given that we don't know the rules we made some up and hope we got them right.
But lets face it, you'd have to be pretty cruel and arbitrary to judge us either way.
Thanks for all the cancer,
Amen.
If you allow logic as a way of knowing, if rational argument can give you the truth, then God can be proven to exist.
You don't need to allow logic or reason.
Sorry, yes I was using "evidence" as just measurable stuff, data, things. I accept that it does limit my sources of knowledge.
Assuming that what you say is true, and that you can use logic to prove God exists, what use is that knowledge?
How does knowing there is a God change anything at all?
Where does the moral guidance come from?
Given that I'll have to invest quite a bit of time and effort to accept your argument that there is a god it'd be nice to know why I should bother.
There's no need to believe in God to know that the ideologies attached to atheism are also irrational and meaningless, and so the wrongness of them should be at least as, and more obviously, pressing a reason for abandoning them than the truth of theism.
Given a logical proof of God what are the practical applications of that knowledge?
I like the idea of a logical proof of the existance of God (I don't think there can be a logical proof that there isn't one), but without some kind of consequence it really doesn't matter, it's just an intellectual exercise, like working out what colour Cherenkov radiation is. Unless it makes a difference to your life it really can't be considered significant.
Unless it makes a difference to your afterlife, in which case I'll be wanting a logical proof of that too.
As a side issue: those of you who have been dead, is it possible that the transition to the afterlife takes longer than you were dead for? I can't get on the internet within 5 minutes of starting my old lap top, but that isn't proof the internet doesn't exist. Not experiencing an afterlife in that period of time doesn't really prove anything other than you didn't experience an afterlife in that period of time. That's science.
I'd suggest the practical implications are huge, and that that is an understatement.
If you didn't accept a particular revelation (Judaic or Christian), then I think you would have to follow natural law theory as your moral guide, as it is proved on the same premises as some of the proofs of God.
NLT is, its advocates say, an objective morality. It is also just about the most conservative version of morality there could be, timeless, changeless, one size fits all. I think it is very dry, but undoubtedly true. This would be your guide to living a good life in accordance to the plan of the thing you had come to accept thanks to the other Aristotelian proofs.
If you accept revelation from this thing proved is possible, you will be in a moral system based on Aristotle and the religion in question, so will have a variation, and in some cases a very thinned out variation, of NLT as your guide to the good life.
Proof of afterlife: there is something immaterial in minds, namely the intellect, and something specific like this and immaterial is not subject to death, as death is physical. So something survives. I don't know if you get further than that on a purely neo-Aristotelian account without Thomism, but you get at least that far.
About the afterlife: I have a question. You state "there is something immaterial in minds, namely the intellect, and something specific like this and immaterial is not subject to death, as death is physical". How can you be sure immaterial things are not subject to death? If they died and went away how could you tell?
Also, obviously, even if this was true, which it might well not be, there is no way of telling if what happens in the afterlife (if anything does happen and assuming your personality will be intact enough to recognise it happening) is in any way based on what you did in life, regardless of how well you stuck to natural laws. So once again the existance of God is entirely unimportant.
Captain Muppet said:
Atheists can live to the same natural laws as theists, proving the unimportance of God. God is only important if it's dressed up in one of the many conflicting and fabricated organised religions.
About the afterlife: I have a question. You state "there is something immaterial in minds, namely the intellect, and something specific like this and immaterial is not subject to death, as death is physical". How can you be sure immaterial things are not subject to death? If they died and went away how could you tell?
Also, obviously, even if this was true, which it might well not be, there is no way of telling if what happens in the afterlife (if anything does happen and assuming your personality will be intact enough to recognise it happening) is in any way based on what you did in life, regardless of how well you stuck to natural laws. So once again the existance of God is entirely unimportant.
Quite. And in any case, Chris himself has accepted that the existence of thought (and therefore the intellect, whatever that might be) is dependent on the physical functioning of the brain. With no working brain there cannot be any thought and therefore no consciousness or intellect.About the afterlife: I have a question. You state "there is something immaterial in minds, namely the intellect, and something specific like this and immaterial is not subject to death, as death is physical". How can you be sure immaterial things are not subject to death? If they died and went away how could you tell?
Also, obviously, even if this was true, which it might well not be, there is no way of telling if what happens in the afterlife (if anything does happen and assuming your personality will be intact enough to recognise it happening) is in any way based on what you did in life, regardless of how well you stuck to natural laws. So once again the existance of God is entirely unimportant.
Gaspode said:
Quite. And in any case, Chris himself has accepted that the existence of thought (and therefore the intellect, whatever that might be) is dependent on the physical functioning of the brain. With no working brain there cannot be any thought and therefore no consciousness or intellect.
Chris seems to be claiming that the immaterial 'aspects' of thought are somehow associated with the 'form', whereas the physical functioning of the brain is related to the material that comprises the brain. Damage the brain and you somehow mystically alter the 'form', and thus impact the intellect. However, as you cannot destroy the 'form' completely, when all the material is destroyed the 'form' lives on in the afterlife.Complete and utter b
ks of course, but that is what he appears to believe. Quite how he reconciles damage to the material altering the 'form' when the 'form' is supposed to be immaterial and unchanging, or how he concludes that it can be damaged but not destroyed, I guess falls into the WOO bucket that he calls 'revelation' rather than the bit he claims can be proved by logic.ChrisGB said:
But what is a force? If you say immaterial, materialism is false, naturalism is false. If they are inexplicable materially and naturally, we need some explanation beyond the universe?
By your skewed definition I'm not a materialist and I suspect none here would be if they have an appreciation of the underlying physics. Gravity appears to have no particle/material associated with it and is a force in the same sense as the weak and strong nuclear forces. In that sense they appear to be immaterial (to use your narrow and directed definitions). This is not at odds with a science-based outlook and odes not create a world where there is need for a supernatural. The immaterial of the materialist interacts with and defines our material realm. The immaterial of the superstitionist, by definition, does not interact with the material in any detectable manner.ChrisGB said:
You realise as well as I do that anything that has a beginning has a cause, so these forces cannot possibly be first mover. If you were serious, you would have to say Big Bang is prime mover, and then BB is just a brute fact, and then nothing at all is explainable. So it nearly works, if we don't worry too much about using nearly in a stretched way, but we still need to look elsewhere....
When you say 'explainable' what do you actually mean? I think you're assuming that explanation would give meaning where one defines meaning as something bigger, deeper even, than a purely causal meaning - some mystical sense.IainT said:
By your skewed definition I'm not a materialist and I suspect none here would be if they have an appreciation of the underlying physics. Gravity appears to have no particle/material associated with it and is a force in the same sense as the weak and strong nuclear forces. In that sense they appear to be immaterial (to use your narrow and directed definitions). This is not at odds with a science-based outlook and odes not create a world where there is need for a supernatural. The immaterial of the materialist interacts with and defines our material realm. The immaterial of the superstitionist, by definition, does not interact with the material in any detectable manner.
Quite. The only answer to the question "What causes the Force" is that they are caused by visual particles winking in and out of existence from nothing i.e. there is no material, detectable, origin of the particles which themselves are unobservable and unmeasurable. What strikes me about Chris' 'first cause' argument is that it rests on the contention that there cannot be an infinite chain of causality. As science discovers more and more about the nature of reality, we keep getting back to first causes. So might contend that the 4 fundamental forces are the prime movers. But rather than accept this, Chris asks "But what causes Gravity?" to which the answer is "Virtual Particles", which in turn brings the question "What causes them?", and we get "Quantum Foam". and then we get "Where does that come from?"
It seems to me that Science gives us a means of answering the questions, but in an effort to prove this metaphysical notion of First Cause, Chris is constantly adding new layers to the causal chain - in other words, he is demonstrating that it is indeed possible to have an infinite chain of causality, because you can always ask a 'Where from?' question, and at no point is it necessary of desirable to answer it "Because God". There is no place for the god of the gaps to reside.
Gaspode said:
and at no point is it necessary of desirable to answer it "Because God". There is no place for the god of the gaps to reside.
It is not only desirable but also necessary if you have a lot vested is the answer.I prefer to go where evidence takes us and that's not a 'man in the sky'. Chris likes to fall back on the 'wisdom of ages' to prove his points, likely because that's all the supports them, High Priest Feser is unconvincing.
ofcorsa said:
ChrisGB said:
The Aristotelian definition of form - everything in the world being a composite of matter and form. In other words, everything IS some distinct thing, and everything is MADE OF something.
That relies on separating the form and the matter. Doesn't it? Needless to say, Aristotle did not believe that a specific instance of a form (i.e. the form of a particular human being) would survive the complete destruction of the matter that made up that form.
Gaspode said:
ChrisGB said:
I'm of the opinion that Gaspode's proof that logic is only valid when tested against reality is wrong, because his paradox and my Socrates example both prove that logic gives you truth independent of empirical checking.
Ok, so therefore you believe (as I do) that it is possible to construct logically valid arguments which cannot be tested against reality? I never intend to try to prove the converse, so sorry if I've confused you.If so, then there are 2 possible corollaries to this:
a) Such arguments may not be testable against reality yet - in which case, they fall into the class of scientific hypotheses which are waiting to be tested - like when Albert Einstein described the cosmological constant, but it took decades before the dark energy model became testable and was widely accepted around the turn of this century.
b) Such arguments may never be testable against reality, because they do not actually rely on reality for their validity. These are the arguments I call imagination, because they exist purely in the minds of the proponents. Such constructions can be extremely vivid and self-sustaining.
I would suggest that people who believe their imagination describes objective reality are commonly described as 'delusional'.
mattmurdock said:
I think you are being generous here Gaspode - Chris would say that reality does not consist only of those things that can be empirically checked, and therefore logically valid arguments via rational thought are capable of defining objective reality just as much as empirical observation is.
I would suggest that people who believe their imagination describes objective reality are commonly described as 'delusional'.
I would think that your suggestion is absolutely bang on the mark!I would suggest that people who believe their imagination describes objective reality are commonly described as 'delusional'.
There are three lines of posts here since I was last, sorry if I miss any out with this:
1. The posts about what the "bottom line" is in the universe.
Any talk of things popping into existence out of nothing is nonsense, these things may come into existence, but we are already here, not nothing. You can show using logic that there is no way something comes from absolute nothingness.
The other issue is about first mover. If gravity or quantum foam or similar were first mover, it alone would be the thing that, while remaining unchanged, imparts all causal power to a chain of concurrent causes. If it makes sense to ask how we account for the existence of gravity, gravity is not first mover. I admit to knowing very little about this sort of frontier physics, but I do know that there is no way part of the universe is going to be that which accounts for there being a universe, including that part.
2. I think on the relationship between logic and "reality", by which I think is meant just empirically verifiable reality, we have proved that logic tells you about reality independently of any empirical verification. We know from logic alone that crossing a finite gap subdivided into an infinite number of infinitely small gaps takes a finite time, and though we can check this by measuring, no checking is needed in the logic for the logic to be right. If this were not the case, there would be no way ultimately to know how to interpret what one observed. We don't think Socrates is mortal because we have checked every past and future man and seen them die, we know he is mortal because he is a man and all men are mortal.
Logic that can't be verified empirically is true and certain in so far as the argument is sound. This is why it matters that the premises of the prime mover argument (viz. ie. to wit. some things change; no change changes itself; no series of concurrent changes can be infinite) are not open to refutation.
3. Natural law is available to atheist and theist alike, though it relies on final causality that atheists seem to not see anywhere, even in their thoughts being about something. So if an atheist can know objective morality and that not following it would lessen human flourishing, then it would be daft not to follow it.
Immaterial things can't die - I think this is just because death happens to things made of matter only. Many mathematicians accept a sort if immateriality of numbers, and there would be no sense in saying the number 2 could die, would there?
As intellect is immaterial, it can in principle not die. To what extent does that mean our personality survives death? Well the form of the body is immaterial and the particular intellect of an individual is too, so I would probably argue about some connection between the two, the form of a particular human, unlike other things, doesn't disappear when the body does.
You can tell that this is going into areas where I am not as fluent as I plan to be, but I think at the least that careful thinking about intellect and forms on an Aristotelian-Scholastic view will leave a classical theist not subscribing to a revealed religion at least aware that the good life is lived according to natural law and that something of the individual human certainly survives. This doesn't alone amount to heaven and hell, agreed, but imagine the moment you meet your maker:
"Oh, whoops, I knew you existed, I knew I should follow the natural law, and I knew I somehow continue after death, but I had absolutely no idea I should link those ideas in any way and be responsible for my thoughts and actions, its not like you told me or anything...." I'd suggest that isn't the smartest possible approach?
1. The posts about what the "bottom line" is in the universe.
Any talk of things popping into existence out of nothing is nonsense, these things may come into existence, but we are already here, not nothing. You can show using logic that there is no way something comes from absolute nothingness.
The other issue is about first mover. If gravity or quantum foam or similar were first mover, it alone would be the thing that, while remaining unchanged, imparts all causal power to a chain of concurrent causes. If it makes sense to ask how we account for the existence of gravity, gravity is not first mover. I admit to knowing very little about this sort of frontier physics, but I do know that there is no way part of the universe is going to be that which accounts for there being a universe, including that part.
2. I think on the relationship between logic and "reality", by which I think is meant just empirically verifiable reality, we have proved that logic tells you about reality independently of any empirical verification. We know from logic alone that crossing a finite gap subdivided into an infinite number of infinitely small gaps takes a finite time, and though we can check this by measuring, no checking is needed in the logic for the logic to be right. If this were not the case, there would be no way ultimately to know how to interpret what one observed. We don't think Socrates is mortal because we have checked every past and future man and seen them die, we know he is mortal because he is a man and all men are mortal.
Logic that can't be verified empirically is true and certain in so far as the argument is sound. This is why it matters that the premises of the prime mover argument (viz. ie. to wit. some things change; no change changes itself; no series of concurrent changes can be infinite) are not open to refutation.
3. Natural law is available to atheist and theist alike, though it relies on final causality that atheists seem to not see anywhere, even in their thoughts being about something. So if an atheist can know objective morality and that not following it would lessen human flourishing, then it would be daft not to follow it.
Immaterial things can't die - I think this is just because death happens to things made of matter only. Many mathematicians accept a sort if immateriality of numbers, and there would be no sense in saying the number 2 could die, would there?
As intellect is immaterial, it can in principle not die. To what extent does that mean our personality survives death? Well the form of the body is immaterial and the particular intellect of an individual is too, so I would probably argue about some connection between the two, the form of a particular human, unlike other things, doesn't disappear when the body does.
You can tell that this is going into areas where I am not as fluent as I plan to be, but I think at the least that careful thinking about intellect and forms on an Aristotelian-Scholastic view will leave a classical theist not subscribing to a revealed religion at least aware that the good life is lived according to natural law and that something of the individual human certainly survives. This doesn't alone amount to heaven and hell, agreed, but imagine the moment you meet your maker:
"Oh, whoops, I knew you existed, I knew I should follow the natural law, and I knew I somehow continue after death, but I had absolutely no idea I should link those ideas in any way and be responsible for my thoughts and actions, its not like you told me or anything...." I'd suggest that isn't the smartest possible approach?
mattmurdock said:
1. I think you are being generous here Gaspode - Chris would say that reality does not consist only of those things that can be empirically checked, and therefore logically valid arguments via rational thought are capable of defining objective reality just as much as empirical observation is.
2. I would suggest that people who believe their imagination describes objective reality are commonly described as 'delusional'.
1. Thanks Matt, yes.2. I would suggest that people who believe their imagination describes objective reality are commonly described as 'delusional'.
2. Would those who imagine ( with no possible empirical evidence (in a system that demands empirical evidence at every turn) and in spite of the refutation given by the existence of final causality in thinking ) that the material world is all there is, be among these "delusional"?
ChrisGB said:
There are three lines of posts here since I was last, sorry if I miss any out with this:
1. The posts about what the "bottom line" is in the universe.
Any talk of things popping into existence out of nothing is nonsense, these things may come into existence, but we are already here, not nothing. You can show using logic that there is no way something comes from absolute nothingness.
So presumably if you were presented with empirical evidence that it is indeed try that something can come into existence without cause, then you would be arguing that the interpretation of reality that is wrong, and not the logic - which as we know is an internal mental model used to interpret and understand what we think - and as it is a shared model, it is therefore a cultural artefact?1. The posts about what the "bottom line" is in the universe.
Any talk of things popping into existence out of nothing is nonsense, these things may come into existence, but we are already here, not nothing. You can show using logic that there is no way something comes from absolute nothingness.
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