I Am Absolutely Certain that 'God' Does Not Exist
Offline ...Since it's been argued by some that the above is a philosophically 'weak' position, I just felt like pointing-out a few things:
- 'God' is a crap concept. There no way it could possibly exist; it isn't even defined. It has the same likelyhood for existence as 'Shootle'. Some day in the future, we might come across something and decide to label it 'God', just as we might someday do the same for 'Shootle'. This does not mean 'God' exists; it means the term is just drifting about, waiting to be abitrarily attached to some quantifiable entity as of yet.
- God in the traditional sense of the word cannot exist. Yahweh violates several physical laws, and the books describing him and his actions are entirely erroneous. They were myths to explain things for which we had no previous explanation; now that we do have said explanations, these texts can and should be treated as fiction.
- God has been carried forward on the back of the afore-mentioned myths. These myths have been scientifically disproven; more reasonable theists have then had to invent new myths, based on areas of human understanding that are still fuzzy. But it's still the same old God - we've just tried prettying it up. The fact that we would recognize the myths as erroneous, but not the figure central to them, is borderline lunacy (...at least it's not total lunacy).
Theists? Care to rebuke these statements? Or at least define 'God' for me?
(...And Christians/Catholics? Care to explain how crackers = Jesus? Or justify how putting a nail through Jesus = bad, but eating and digesting Jesus = good? )
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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..... and living in California .... SUE the POPE
_______________________________
The state is the people, and the laws of the people are enough. The University should have no special authority over free speech against religion.
Atheism Books.
I love Poe.
Curious that you would quote the insane killer of The Tell-Tale Heart in your own defense, however?
It isn't 'bigotry' to point-out another person's lunacy. It's prudency. Catholics are quite allowed to work for the university; Ken Miller is one of my most favorite speakers about evolution, and he (to paraphrase him) makes no bones about his religious identity.
If someone nails a cracker to some paper, you get offended. Why? Justify this to me, totus. It's nothing but flour and water. There's nothing special about anymore than there's anything special about the paper Dr. Meyers ripped from his books.
This act was preceded by a case where a young man had taken a communion wafer home, and in so doing stirred-up a shitstorm. Pleas, death threats, hate mail... over what? A cracker? This sort of behavior needs to STOP! No religious institution or person has a right to react to criticism in such a manner, and they certainly deserve to be called-out on the insanity.
(And speaking of bigotry: Just FYI, did you know that the reason the churches really took to embracing the 'Eucharists' was so that they could level hatred at other groups? A very popular way of spreading anti-semitic propaganda used to be alleging that the Jews were involved in stealing and 'torturing' those precious wafers of yours, complete with graphic imagery of said wafers bleeding when stabbed or smashed).
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Okay, I'll also quote Eleizer 's take on it from that page, his use of language might come across better than mine (I will highlight the key phrases but quote them in context so that the meaning of them doesn't become lost):
In the debate I approached from a slightly different angle which gets more expediently to the conclusion than the Future of Humanity blog. By reducing the phenomenal universe to two spin fields and pointing out how the junction of them which gives rise to all our experiences just is at every point; I argued the same conclusion that everything exists as either perfectly local or perfectly global - I phrased it 'we can either say our minds belong uniquely to themselves or they belong to the whole universe equally', the human claim to its mind is perfectly equal to the global claim or it's as arbitrary as saying a rock possesses my mind.
So.. we don't 'possess' minds OR we do but only as everything does, this is the implication of the quantum physical reductionism.
The interesting point being that here we are from this arbitrary locale in configuration space, easily able to identify with the mentality within us. The human condition is that we take an arbitrary point in causal space and relate definitively via the fundamental computations of the universe, with its phenomenal consciousness. The human being is an it which can claim through causal relations a 'real' connection with the mentalistic properties which have arisen from the ontological fundamentals of the universe.
So to say, mentality is, and a human (think of a human like a program running on a vast computer) is capable of causally 'measuring in' mentality into the subjective experience. (It's necessary to understand that it's measured in from an arbitrary point in configuration space.) Essentially what follows is that you could shift the preferred basis two centimetres outside the biological entity and there is nothing in physical law to say that mentality cannot be 'measured in' from this relative point to another original entity encapsulating that space, this auric entity would be as much 'alive' in your consciousness as you are. The trick to understanding this is to dispel mythical notions about what being alive entails for you. You are not your body, or your mind, you are a unique set of results over their probable configurations from a specific basis at any given moment.
Now you can envision this as though each moment a basis was chosen local to the one of the previous moment, all the quantum calculations were redone, and it added up to normal experience, or if you're a little more capable of big thinking you can see the entirety of time and space laid out like a vast multidimensional arena with every locale and every computation for each locale done already and consider your experience as analogous to being only one possible entity within the configuration space at any give moment. Each moment from each basis comes equipped with a veiw, an experience, and a causal framework that gives the view and the experience reality. But the key thing to realise is that the causal framework is part of the equipment that comes with the locale, this is where biology fits in the ontologically fundamental universe, it is a causal framework, it's not the only causal framework, it's the one that computes to the relationship with consciousness inherent in human experience.
Anyhow, I'm starting to rant a bit because for all I'm saying I'm still not sure I've made it entirely clear consciousness does not belong to biology, the consciousness and biology relation is like a "quantum program" and not unique or exclusive in any ontologically basic way. However, it is the program that correlates to our human experience and in the event that we fail to discover any revolutionary practical applications for this knowledge, we are destined to experience only that relationship as real.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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Turns out the Chancellor of the University has enough sense to see this as not a violation:
The University of Minnesota, Morris (UMN) Chancellor on July 25, 2008 addressed the matter, stating: “I believe that behaviors that discriminate against or harass individuals or groups on the basis of their religious beliefs are reprehensible,” but that the school "affirms the freedom of a faculty member to speak or write as a public citizen without institutional discipline or restraint."[
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Bigotry is when an individual goes out of his way to defile something that another holds sacred. I'm very happy that Catholics are permitted to work for the university. Can a Catholic who has to work with Dr Myers, or can a Catholic who happens to be a student of Dr Myers hope to recieve fair treatment from him based on his past actions? I think that it is highly doubtful.
Absolutely. If you have issues with the doctrine of transubstantiation, I recommend you avoid attending Catholic Mass. I encourage you to write artices about it. Record a CD of rants against it. Hell, set up a soap box at he gates of the Vatican City and prostelytize against it. None of this would bother me in the least. I actually find Rosie O'Donnell's occassionaly forays into Catholic theology quite entertaining.
Why, then, should blacks be offended by a burning cross? It's nothing more than two wooden beams drenched in gasoline. Why would gay folks be upset were I to trample a rainbow banner? It's nothing more than a muticolored piece of cloth.
Dr Myers act was as clearly designed to inflame Catholics as a Ku Klux Klan rally is designed to offend the sensibilities of black persons.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Eloise: Thank you so much for putting that kind of time into your reply.
I can see more clearly now what you mean by "philosophical pantheist" and "gnostic". I think, in fact, I understand where you are coming from. (the next paragraph should make or break that.)
However, it still seems to me to be something of a leap to label anything "god". Even if I accept the idea that the quantum model suggests consciousness outside biology (which I don't) and that this is a zero-iterated thing (ubiquitous within the construct) then it is just a facet of that construct.
On the other hand, this could easily be a semantic problem. How do you define the word "god"?
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Nice try, but historically this argument doesn't hold water. The doctrine of transubstantiation has been a central tenet of Catholicism from its inception. It would hardly be beneficial to early Christians to provide such ammunition to their enemies in the early days of the Church when the Body and Blood of Christ was actually used as an excuse to persecute them (Catholics were openly accused of cannibalism on account of the Eucharist). The "let's institute an easily misunderstood doctrine now and give our enemies another excuse to kill us so that three hundred years from now our descendants can get revenge on the Jews" strategy doesn't fly.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Kinda reminds me of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It doesn't seem to be the first time that rusty nails were driven through the flesh of Jesus Christ and he was hurriedly disposed of. It's interesting that Dr Myers chose (whether conciously or not) to re-enact the Crucifixion. Irony, or what?
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Well, at least you have the comfort of knowing that in accordance with God's justice Dr. Myers will be forever boiling in Hell. Yup, that seems like a fair and equitable sentence for abusing a cracker.
Jill , Eloise. Sorry to be redundant, but it always comes out like this in my simple head.
God = eternal infinity, as all is ONE of zero separation. I find great peace and thrilling awe in this .... No master, no religion, no dogma to the best of my ability. You are god as I , as ALL is equally god .....
( this is why I find little, if anything, to argue with reading Eloise )
God definitions of traditional religions are idol separationists bunk. There is no debating god. Dismantling religion is a different needed goal.
Atheism Books.
The 'doctrine' is bullshit, totus. 'Transubstantiation' is a meaningless concept.
Jesus ain't in the damn crackers, and if he was, I doubt he'd enjoy being chewed and digested.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
O RLY?
It's sad that Catholics know so little about their church's history.
Oops. Hate it when you're made to look stupid like that, eh?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I never denied that atrocities took place in defense of the Eucharist. Nor do I condone such actions, as I made clear in my first post on this subject. What I deny is that the doctrine was promulgated as a justification for those atrocities. Your post, to which this isolated sentence was a reply, stated that such was the case. The doctrine of transubstantiation far predates the Middle Ages. The motivation for the doctrine of the Eucharist comes from John 6, and the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. It is alluded to in St Paul's letters, outlined in the Didache, defended in the writings of the Church Fathers in the 1st and 2nd century AD. The belief in the Eucharist as the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ is evident far before the ability of the Catholic Church to hurt a fly. Again, does it really make sense for a group to hold a belief detrimental to itself in the hopes that in a thousand, or perhaps 1100 years it can turn the tables on its oppressors?
You really should argue with what I write, not with what you want me to write. To quote a mind far more agile than mine, "Oops. Hate it when you're made to look stupid like that, eh?".
Perhaps dispensing with ad hominems and straw man arguments would help in keeping this exchange civil. That's my preference. It's getting kinda shrill in here.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Thank you, Jill and you're welcome.
I'm supposing that you mean to refer here to all the religious baggage that comes with the God label. I can fully understand why you'd object to hanging such a loaded word on the result, even while I can argue basically for a universal entity with a valid claim to conscious sentience, it seems to say nothing about commandments, convenants, salvation, angels or faith. So I agree it's fair to say I haven't properly covered the leap to the 'god' label with this and I'm aware that I haven't made a case for the majority of religious tenets but only for one or two syncretic forms such as Buddha consciousness - 'I am in the father and the father in me' . I have no argument with you that this ontology is anything more than it clearly is and no objection to you pointing that out and reserving your judgement on what I presented.
It may be the way you're phrasing it that is undermining the justification. The quantum model suggests that any existing entity relates to phenomenal consciousness using the exact same fundamental process that biology arises from. The key point is that biology arises from a more fundamental process which is capable of forming entirely different relational links no less valid than biology, so that entities which are not biological have a claim to consciousness qualitatively equal to ours. The rock in your hand arises also from a quantum program computing from the rock's basis to your action, you could say that the rock can claim just as you can claim you moved your hand to pick it up from the ground, that it moved your hand to lift itself from the ground. What you must understand here is that your consciousness is fundamentally the same process as that. The relationship is computed from the basis, the basis is NOT fundamental or exclusive.
I think I am agreeing with you that the issue is semantic, see the first paragraph. Basically all I have just told you is how I define God. Nothing more; the concepts of Faith and covenants for example, are further arguments and are not covered here.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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You've been made to look stupid so many times at this point.. it's embarassing me.
You really seem to enjoy attacking people and trying to belittle them. But in that constant attitude and your failure to admit even one point on issues you have been shown to be wrong, you show yourself to be intellectually dishonest and petulant.
I am continually surprised to find that you are taking the same antagonistic approach in your responses.
(I feel bad about writing this post.. because I'm not really a fan of using words such as "stupid" and "intellectually dishonest"--but I'm going to do it anyway to draw attention to an issue that I think is a problem in this thread).
Nice to see theists arguing ..... go Gizmo
You are one confusing person God.
I was addressing Kevin. I'm pretty sure he's not a theist. I do like arguing with theist though.
Try being god Gizmo , it is the most easy .... and obvious .... the christ in you
Me is not confusing, We are GOD ! Everything is equal , as in god speaking .....
Go Jesus/Buddha
All is ONE
Atheism Books.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Yes, there should be strict rules like that, and they shouldn't be able to put a term like that in the contract. But that doesn't change the fact that right now, they can, and if he agreed to it, then it does matter, because they've got the legal standing to take action. We can say 'damn, that's fucking unfair' until we're blue in the face, it won't change his legal position one iota unless we get the laws changed.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
No, I'm holding them up and saying 'if this is what he agreed to, then there must be consequences for violating that agreement'. That's basic social contract, and claiming that the people who were offended by an act he quite obviously committed with intent to offend are crazy for wanting him held accountable for his actions is, well, silly, and I highly doubt you'd feel the same way if you didn't agree with his act and his intention to offend the religious.
BTW, offending people? Not usually a successful way to get them to consider your viewpoint. And that's part of why universities have these kinds of rules: it's hard to hold yourself up as an attractive institute of learning to potential paying customers if you're pissing them off.
Also note that these kinds of rules don't get on someone just for 'offending' people. It's the intent to offend that matters. It's the 'I, someone whose classes are a means the university has for making money, am now going to specifically try to anger people who are potentially future customers, or have sway over potential future customers'. Even State Universities have to watch the bottom line, because tuition is part of their budget. It doesn't all go to the state to then have monies doled back out, but rather the monies doled out are given with an expectation of being supplemented by a specific amount of tuition.
Thus, a professor publicly doing something with the intent to reduce the number of people who consider the university a good place to spend their money (which is what happens when you offend potential customers, even if you haven't thought it through that far)? That can be viewed as indirect damage being done to the school's finances. Damage which the school might seek to recoup by, I dunno, reducing expenses by one professor's salary.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Why "worship" confusion when all must be ONE ?
( There are 2 different subjects being debated in this thread , as often happens )
~ When using the quote function, omitting the posters name can make following the discussion more difficult.
Atheism Books.
Actually, I did, I just felt like pointing out that the best example you could cite didn't actually back you up.
Except you're claiming absolute certainty. Absolute certainty is not possible on 'likelihoods'. That is why they are likelihoods: they are likely to be true, not certain to be true.
Why? Why is it curious that someone who doesn't believe in any deity would demand intellectual honesty from others claiming to represent that position? Just because I may be on the same side of an argument as someone else doesn't mean I don't hold them to at least as high a standard as I do my opponents. Are you willing to accept shoddy work if it gives you answers you like? I prefer to know the answer is right before I claim to be 'absolutely certain'.
And not one of those is necessarily true of all possible concepts of 'god'. For example: If some kind of divinity should exist, with the capacity to create the physical universe as we observe it, we have only the word of long-dead theists that such a divinity is 'all loving'. Perhaps that entity is a scientist itself, and it is merely observing without interfering in its experiment. If it is truly powerful enough to create an entire universe to the very specific tolerances theists claim it was created to fit, all in one magical 'poof', then creating the universe in such a way as to not make it appear created seems, by comparison, a trivial matter.
I'm not a theist. I don't believe in any god-concept. I also don't believe in slap-dash judgementalism. If you can provide some kind of positive evidence for the non-existence of God, and not simply, as idiots like Paisley or Llama might claim, 'atheism of the gaps', then great, please do so. Until then, I'm going to remain an agnostic atheist: There is no compelling evidence to conclusively demonstrate either the existence or nonexistence of the divine, so I'm not going to believe anything about it. I will leave it in the same category of thought as 'what is my girlfriend thinking?', and the answer remains the same: "Not a fucking clue."
A)I'm pretty sure you meant that last sentence to be 'If we'd had the knowledge then that we have now...' and I'm not even sure that's true. Too many people want someone or something bigger and wiser to take care of them. Just because there were fewer people back then doesn't change the likelihood that most of them, just like now, were sheeple.
B)I agree, given a high enough probability, it IS sensible to say 'we think we're sure how this works'. The problem is: You're making a blanket statement that claims to cover all possible models, and it doesn't. The reason it doesn't cover all possible models is the very same one you often bitch about: There's no conformity of concept. I'm sure to some people out there, 'God' could be defined as 'the Care Bears'. The concept of divinity is amorphous enough that any idiot out there can come up with an idea of god that doesn't fit the model you're using (and though you may not agree with them, I would at least hope you will agree folks like Eloise are not idiots). The model you're using certainly does demonstrate an exceedingly high probability that an all-powerful, all-loving deity doesn't fit the observations. It doesn't, however, demonstrate that Lovecraft's supreme being, Azathoth, for example, doesn't fit the observations. All-powerful, utterly insane amorphous entity that creates and destroys a billion forms of reality on a constant basis... any awareness we have of 'before now' is just as likely to be because we were created with those memories intact, blah blah blah.
And to be honest, I'm not sure there's a model out there that really can show a strong likelihood against that. Fortunately for me, there's no evidence for a being like that, and so I'm still not obligated to believe in it.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Well, then I applaud the Chancellor of the University for his magnanimity. We should all strive to be as tolerant, eh?
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
The collapse postulate has virtually nothing to do with this but I see why you are bringing up this line of questioning. I actually agree that the observer is as much a result as any thing else here and I've tried to make that implicit in the telling but I guess it was too subtle, I was attempting to imply it by pointing out that the observer is a computation over causal frameworks. A human observer does nothing special, it just is, lets say a quantum program compiles/d it and it's there.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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You must make for a great Islamic apologist, BMcD.
I have comprehensively defined God in my debate challenge thread. No problems have yet been found in the definition. (Hamby thinks he found a problem with "infinity" but he had to ignore two whole paragraphs of writing to conclude that. I'll explain it all whenever I have the time to sift through his fifty or so trivial objections.) This despite the prodding of all the people whose reasoning skills you praise so highly. I wonder what that means?
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
Are you kidding me, presup? Not only have you not clarified your concept since hamby's last rebuke, almost everybody who is an active member criticized the coherency of your definition.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Eloise; in what way is your claim falsifiable?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Actually, you're being dishonest by not bothering to respond to the quote where the article outright states, 'Absense of evidence is evidence of absense,' which is followed by a formula that demonstrates such.
You are holding Ace of hearts, King of hearts. The flop shows Queenof hearts, Jack of hearts, 10 of hearts.
See? Absolute certainty is possible on the merit of likelihoods alone.
I'll take you all in, BMcD. How much you care to wager that no God exists at all?
It's curious because you're trying to shift the burden of proof like any ol' theist. Evidence has to be presented before any certainty can be seriously taken at all; I don't have to provide any evidence at all because the burden isn't on me to do so. You want to say that there is just maybe some slim possibility that perhaps God exists? That's up to you to explain why.
What fucking 'shoddy work'? Shoddy work like the scientific method? Shoddy work like evolutionary theory? Shoddy work like astrophysics? All of these fields have completely thrashed every conventional model of god once proposed - so theists have had to keep shifting their goalposts. The endeavor is both silly and moronic.
See: Falsifiability.
None of the above postulations are falsifiable - which means that they're inherently faulty, and certainly not good logic.
That's the whole Goddamn problem, BMcD. If we can't show how a theory would be incorrect, it is not falsifiable. If it's not falsifiable, it's not worth any consideration at all. Not the smallest little bit. It's worthless, or as in the case of most religions, less than worthless - and perfectly harmful.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
No, because once that flop drops, it's not likelihood, it's established positive evidence.
Why would I bet on a non-issue? More importantly, how are we supposed to bet on something you can't actually prove? And if you're going to try taking my money, I want actual proof, just like I would from a theist. See below.
I'm not shifting the burden of proof, you're assuming the burden of proof when you move from the passive stance of 'I do not believe god exists' to the active stance of 'I believe god does not exist'. You have, at that point, made an assertion and a claim of knowledge. Once you do, the burden of proof is on you to back up your assertion, just like it's on them to back up theirs.
No. Not the scientific method, evolutionary theory, or astrophysics, all of which I heartily endorse. I mean shoddy work like say... you, in this thread, trying to assume an active stance and make a positive, assertive claim of certainty of knowledge and then trying to hide behind 'I'm not the one who has to prove it'. Yes, you do. You became the person who has to prove your claim the moment you made an active claim. Once you do that, you assume the burden of proof.
Saying that you can make an active claim and not have to back it up... that's shoddy work. It's the kind of shit I'd expect out of Llama or Paisley, not you. You're better than that. You're smarter than that. And if you didn't get your back up and go all defensive whenever someone disagrees with even the smallest thing you say, you'd get what I'm saying here.
Pot, meet Kettle The entire topic is unfalsifiable unless you have some means to compel god to demonstrate his existence.
EXACTLY. ANY active claim about god is ultimately speculation. Reasonable, rational speculation in many cases, but speculation only. It's untestable hypotheses. Claiming to draw conclusions from untestable hypotheses is not science. The entire question of 'God' isn't a scientific one because there's no parameters for testing. Science is far better served saying 'we don't know, and frankly, we don't care'. Moving beyond that is moving beyond science into philosophy, and the only "sophie" I know of that's really worth my time is my cat, Sophie.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
This reads as "we will fire you for professional misconduct." He would be fired for making up data to publish, and I'd be willing to bet he's completely on board with that idea for all faculty. Research ethics have very little to say about someone saying "I am going to act like belief X is false" and then acting like belief X is false.
So what criticism could he make of the cracker that someone, somewhere would not consider "harassment"? Have devout Catholic graduate students in his lab been given poor reviews, unequal lab space or time, tutelage? What about in his department? Has he specifically given lower grades to students he knows to be believers in transubstantiation? Has he threatened Christian faculty members? Has he gone on record as saying that anyone who can prove him wrong should not present their data?
No.
Did he? He said "someone send me a cracker!" and he got some. So unless you're likening this to getting a TV that "fell off the back of a truck" this argument does not hold water. Or are you trying to say that he is somehow "in receipt of stolen goods" for getting something that churches around the world routinely give out for free?
Hmm. Being respectful of others does not necessarily imply "going along" with their idiosyncratic beliefs. He would be one of the first in line to see verifiable evidence of transubstantiation, and yet...none has been found, ever, anywhere.
Actually, you make an important admission in that last sentence: "insult a central tenet of their faith". See, he didn't insult a Catholic, he said "that is a stupid belief". How is a scientist, whose very stock in trade is evidence and data, saying "it's a frackin' cracker!" an ethical breach? He refused to kowtow to anyone's curious and unsubstantiated beliefs (there was a mistreated Koran and a copy of The God Delusion in this story, too, if you missed it). Are you really saying "he made me feel bad, so he should lose his job"?
Please list the names of every person at UMM Prof. Myers treated negatively in terms of education, training or employment because of their religion. Please note: pointing out that people of any religion believe stupid, demonstrably false things does not equate to harassing them. Saying "that is false" is not verbal assault. If it were, there would be no math departments anywhere.
I feel myself moved to ask you something: I am certain that Myers kills ants, eats hamburgers and grades papers on Saturdays. Given that these three activities could, using your reasoning, be considered calculated attempts to make Buddhists, Hindus and Jews, respectively, feel uncomfortable, would you have backed any complaint against him for these activities, which I am certain he has done more frequently than cracker perforation? Or are you all for him losing his job because it happens to be your specific falsifiable beliefs that he violated? The continued existence of Israel is quite troubling to members of Hamas; should any UMM faculty who speaks in favour of Israel be fired if a Hamas member complains?
What I think you are refusing to accept is that, to anyone who is not a Christian (and even some Christians), it is "a frackin' cracker", and to pretend otherwise is hokey at best and condescending at worst. We're back to the old trope: put up or shut up. People who believe in transubstantiation believe magic happens when the right person says the right words over a wafer and some wine; you want us to have your faith, to treat it as a given that the magic has occurred.
--
maybe if this sig is witty, someone will love me.
If they served other things would that become other Jesus stuff? Would angel hair pasta become "The hair of Christ?" Would lemonade be "The piss of Christ?" Wuld tartar sauce become the holy jizz?
Seriously, the whole eucharist thing is really fucking weird and not even original. I can't remember exactly, but there was a pagan harvest god hat pretty much said the same thing (except it was to guarantee a good harvest instead of a salvation thing.)
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
I am SO avoiding catholic tartar sauce now. Thanks SO much...
Seriously, though, I don't even think the transubstantiation thing is really the important part of it to most Catholics. To the dogmatic orthodoxy of the church, yeah, but I think for most Catholics, it's about joining with the rest of their community (ideally, though most don't know the folks they sit near in church these days) in a participating in their 'mystery of faith'.
It's a strange thing, but in the apathy toward dogma that most rank-and-file catholics demonstrate, I think they're probably far closer to the intent of the pre-Pauline church than they would have been in more... devout? times: Focus on remembering the life and teachings of their exemplar, not on consuming his magically delicious lucky charms.
Eh, there are no original ideas in fiction.
Those of us trying to make money in the field need to remember that the challenge isn't inventing a new tale, but finding new and engaging ways to retell all of the old archetype tales that have endured for thousands of years.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
BMcD: Since my logic is so faulty, you tell me - which currently postulated idea of god do you think might hold water?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Hi Kevin, glad to see you still interested. There are any number of falsifiable parts in this because I am basically giving you a quantum theoretical reduction of the system we are living in. If any part falls my conclusion falls because it is based on taking very very seriously the purest predictions of quantum mechanics and relativity.
Any claim here particular in any way to my mind is nothing more than an interpretation of well established and reliable mathematical models. The models themselves are the science and those ones which I have drawn on for knowledge are just not contentious, they don't require any falsification because they are demonstrably reliable and have been for quite some time. Just getting that out of the way...
As for my interpretation, well that's not strictly mine either, I am speaking of embracing a paradigm shift in the nature of physical reality which is already quite well underway on it's own scientific merit. That scientific merit is more given to a Kuhn criteria than Popper, which just means that it can advance science through its explanatory power which then leads to predictions which are falsified within the new paradigm.
Before I would even begin to give you falsifiable predictions from this explanation you'd have to show that you could think as though it were true, otherwise, you wouldn't understand the reasoning behind the test even for a moment. Asking me to falsify the paradigm betrays your inability to see that it is one and your lack of knowledge as to why a such radical antirealism is being taken so seriously by the scientific community.
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Okay (I'll be honest; I have no idea what this means).
But what are the falsifiable predictions? Is there any way to explain in layman's terms what there is to be tested (and is therefore falsifiable)?
...Which suggests opinion, rather than fact.
That's fair enough. But what are the predictions? This is more or less just double-talk; if we're reaching into a new frontier, that's awesome. But we'd best be going there with the rigors of the scientific method in mind.
Eloise, look at the tenets of the scientific method. Our golden rules, as it were. What's one of the biggest ones?
Presupposing a conclusion, and then fitting evidence to said conclusions, is bad science.
If what you have is good science, I shouldn't need to show any kind of predisposition towards it as all. I should be able to test the predictions on their own merit (I = some accredited scientist with actual expertise).
I'm not saying, 'falsify it'. I'm asking you, 'What are the testable predictions of your theory that can be falsified?'
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Not being able to think of all of the infinite possibilities, I couldn't say. All I can say is: I haven't found one yet I can believe in.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
First let me explain what I mean about the crux of what I have said being a paradigm, and then I will try to answer your questions:
Falsifying a paradigm isn't something you can completely do and you can't really even reject a paradigm unless you can clearly think in it first. Thinking in the paradigm is is how you test its explanatory power. When it fails to make sense of matters that you know are real, then it's obviously bullshit. 'God did it' is a kind of paradigm, and it seems on the surface to have unlimited explanatory power, but when you think in it you start to notice any number of things that just don't make sense, so you can be fairly sure that 'God did it', is a bullshit paradigm, because it's explanatory power is too weak.
Like "Goddidit", a paradigm can make no sense and/or yield no practical benefit; that makes it bullshit to work with but it doesn't 'falsify' it ,though, it only points to its weaknesses thereby giving reason to move away from thinking in that structure. So to reject a paradigm intellectually it's best to move into it, think through it's explanations, and if and when it stops making sense as an explanation then you raise the objection. If the paradigm is universally well accepted, one objection probably won't change much about it. That objection will be relegated to a list of problems where it will stay until it is either solved in the paradigm, or declared intractable. This can be a long process but it's not until this process is done a few times and the intractable list starts getting in the way of normal epistemological progress that a shifting of paradigm is considered. Ideally, once we have a respectable new paradigm, the process starts again.
So, as I am speaking of a paradigm entailing a timeless configuration space cosmology, the falsifiability of it is out of the question, thinking in these terms has been done by too few people, and of those there is yet to be an explanatory problem raised. It hasn't failed to explain anything so far, and it immediately solves a literal heap of problems in the generic paradigm. All I can do at this point is ask you to understand and question the paradigm, tell me what you think it cannot explain. You asked for my definition of God, whereas I have always maintained that I don't believe it's worth telling anyone what I define God to be so long as the paradigm that people think in is solely the one with all the age old epistemological problems, and worse still is telling people who are barely aware that those problems exist.
Most predictions of Quantum mechanics and relativity have already stood up to rigor. I have given you the further predictions, already, And they are posted in the blog pages I directed, like the prediction that you can model the universe without time, there are a number of cases where this has proved really successful - see Carl Rovelli and/or the Wheeler De Witt equation - I'm sure you're familiar with the practice of putting together key variables and calculating the outcome then comparing it to the empirical observation. That's basically how these predictions have been so far tested and models without time are proving to be astonishingly accurate.
Not necessarily, we're interpreting maths here, not art. This doesn't come down to opinion, it comes down to insight, that's why it is called a paradigm. You can give an opinion on a mathematical equation (like for example it's tricky, or it is beautiful) but not on what it means, what it means is strictly encoded in it and isn't given to interpretation. You can gauge an interpretation of mathematics for insight objectively because the underlying laws are so well defined that any projection onto them outside their explicit meaning becomes quickly obvious. Because math is a clear language, interpreting what it is saying is a very objective process and it would be quite easy for another math didact to call me out here if I was just forwarding opinion.
But the paradigm has presented itself from the evidence, Kevin, it wasn't made up to be presupposed. The laws of science are useless if they apply to the point of impediment, saying you shouldn't think in a paradigm in order to see it's results is like saying you should stand outside the universe with your eyes closed to do empirical science.
Being able to detect is not a predisposition it's an empirical necessity. Read again what I said "you'd have to show that you could think as though it were true" key point here being that "could think as though" Does Not Equal "are willing to think it is". As I said in the first section, I can only ask you to think through the paradigm and tell me... do you think it doesn't explain something? You don't want to waste time with wacky predictions at the end before you even know whether you can dismantle the beginning.
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I didn't ask you which one that might possibly be contrived, out of all the infinite ideas, might interest you, BMcD. I asked which of the ones currently postulated you think are of some merit.
Straight answer, please.
If the second part of your answer is any indicator, you're in exactly the same position as me. You just don't have the intellectual honesty to admit it; all of the 'God' theories are wrong, and there is no reason to lend any of them credibility. As has already been pointed-out, they're not even defined or falsifiable.
Sure, some day in the future, we might possibly come across something that we eventually decide is God. But it's not going to fit any of the current ideas drfiting about, and in any case, this is just mental masturbation. It's not useful to postulate, 'Oh, well, geez; I guess some day in the future, there might be something we call God, so I guess I don't know God isn't real.'
It's much more honest and useful to say, 'God, as far as the concepts that are currently being discussed, is non-existent.'
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Yes, that's fine; I understand that Quantum mechanics are a perfectly sound field of study. However, I also understand that you have to really twist logic in order to equate quantum mechanics with God.
...The paradigm that reality is actually a computer program?
No, I don't see how that explains something that hasn't been explained in better terms already. Again, this would be where your predictions would come in handy for supporting your case.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Well I showed you the logic earlier but I'll reiterate it to make it simpler:
The paradigm: Configuration space reality.
The prediction: perfectly local or perfectly global entities
A human being is neither perfectly global nor perfectly local so it's not ontologically basic. The generic human identity in this paradigm has the form x=y as P(x)=P(y) and the only identity of this form which is an identity by definition x=x is the global identity : x≡y The logical equivalent of a panendeity.
Unless the paradigm is twisted, there is no problem with this logic. You have to attack the paradigm if you're going to attack it at all, you see?
Well not really. More like that the nature of reality is fundamentally like a quantum computer program.
And that is our problem here. You don't see what it explains that hasn't been explained by other paradigms, unless you do there isn't any point giving you a prediction, it won't make any sense to you.
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...So now we're just stuck.
(To be fair, this is my fault for being abysmal at math and deciding that physics was no an area of interest for me).
Erm. So.
Has the weather improved? (...I guess it must be winter down there right now, given it's summer up here).
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
For me, I never accepted supernatural religious definitions of god. God is simply the paradigm of the all connected "Oneness". Science is the study of the paradigm (or g-o-d). Philosophy seeks to communicate science linguistically. I have few kind words for religion, and think it best serves as an important lesson in wrong thinking.
I think of Jesus/Buddha as non religious philosophy, surrounded by dangerous superstitious interpretors and hypocrites.
My toothache has returned to further mess with my messy mind. I hear the religious saying "god is punishing me" ..... the kind that killed story jesus and and wished buddha dead .... as they still do ....
Sharpen your swords, louder, go communication evolution .... "Ye are god"
Atheism Books.
Please list all of the "currently postulated" ideas for God, then. Because I don't know what all of them are. I don't know if you're including polytheism in that as well, for example, and as much as I find the idea incomprehensible, I do know folks who worship archaic pantheons, and do so with all the sincerity of the devout.
It also doesn't matter whether or not I think any of them have merit. Because you can't disprove them. You can only show them to be incredibly unlikely. And that's fine. I have no problem saying 'God almost certainly doesn't exist', just like I have no problem saying 'Gravity almost certainly works in more or less the way we think it does'.
We can say things like 'we know how gravity works', but really, we're just using a kind of linguistic shorthand. It's easier to say and think in those terms, even though we know that the operation of gravity, while currently appearing to conform to our models pretty damn well, isn't actually proven yet, because all of the data isn't in, and never will be in.
And if it's not proven, then your claim of "absolute certainty" is premature. "Reasonable certainty"? Sure. "Near certainty"? Back you 100%. But not absolute certainty, because absolute certainty demands positive proof of conclusions, and we can't even test our hypotheses!
Oh no, I have no problem saying that: I have not yet found a single god theory that can be demonstrated to be right. I have not encountered a single one that I can give even the slightest credence to.
I simply also have the intellectual honest to say that I haven't found a single god theory that can be conclusively disproven, either. In short, I haven't found one that can be tested whatsoever, and so make no active assertion of knowledge in a matter where we cannot test our hypotheses.
It has nothing to do with what we might learn in the future. It has to do with what we can test and demonstrate, since you have become adverse to the word 'prove'. Theists cannot demonstrate that their god-concepts are true. We can't actually demonstrate they're false. We can demonstrate that there's no evidence in support of them. We can demonstrate that there's no reason to believe them to be true. But that's not the same as demonstrating that they are false.
And so I put it to you that it is actually more honest and useful to say, "God, as far as any concept we have any record of being discussed, cannot be shown to exist, and there is no reason to believe he/she/it/they does exist. Beyond that, God is not the purview of science any more than leprechauns and unicorns."
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Wait... IAGAY... that was sedate, comprehensible, and straightforward...
Are you drunk? High?
Who are you and what have you done with I AM GOD AS YOU?!?!?!?
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Ask the important questions, dammit! :
IAGAY;
IS THE RUM GONE!?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Seeing the dentist once a year is good advise, and a personal gift, damn me .... keep your teeth for cheap .... tell the kids ....
Atheism Books.
A) We can disprove the bronze age mythological versions.
B) The rest of them aren't falsifiable. End of story. Unfalsifiable = Unfactual.
EDIT:
Consider the stupidity that we even need to argue about these kind of naked assertions at all. We may as well be arguing about the certainty that an army of giant robots, self-assembled in a hidden base beneath the Pacific, are preparing to mount an attack on us.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
That's alright, it happens. Are you sure you want to leave it at that, though?
Yeah it's winter for one more month.... It improved a little today but we've been warned that tomorrow morning will go to zero and I'm not looking forward to that.
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