Gotta fumble in the dark if you wanna see the light
Offline Since everybody seems to be on the edge of the seat waiting for my speal about last week.
I feel what I said in this topic sums it up most
That was pretty much the stance I take, and the reason I got into science in the first place.
So now let me go out of my MO and give a little history [But don't get too comfortable with this] in order to understand why I did it, and why I got what I got out of it.
So in order to get a backround on this, you would have to, as some people already do, know that I was once atheist during my first couple years of university. The reason of course, is that I was of course a science major [picked science for the reason mention above] and as such took variety of courses. The reason for de-conversion I suspect was the common one, that science and God [or religion at least] were incompatiable. But then I began to dig a little deeper, and basically for the reasons that Nigel put up during his apologist post, began to ditch my atheism.
Another reason, which is ironically enough echoed by many atheists, is that I realized that there's no shame in not knowing. That I didn't have to know every last detail about the nature of the universe or God to actually hold a belief.
In a way I felt that atheism was just simply throwing your hands in the air and giving up. "We don't know so stop trying until we do for sure."
Which is why I went last week. To not give up and to ensure that I actually had adequete justification for my stance.
I do feel that I have adequate justification to assert that one is at least possible and somewhat likely, however if it turns out I'm wrong, or the data falls apart, then so be it, but I can still at least say I tried.
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Haha, if Kevin were here, he would be mocking you incessantly for this OP.
I agree that there is no shame in not knowing. We don't currently the know the ultimate origins of the universe. But then, my position is simply, I don't know. So, why do you choose to believe in God even though you aren't sure? Do you think it's been established beyond a reasonable doubt?
Naw, we haven't given up. Just because we don't know yet doesn't mean that we've stopped trying to know or lost our curiosity to want to know i.e. we're going to KEEP trying until we know for sure. Cosmologists are constantly studying and trying to understand the Big Bang and other aspects of our universe.
Although, an atheist, for the one billionth time, is just someone that doesn't believe in God, so atheists are atheists regardless of their desire to know.
Amen.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
I find this problematic. If this is how we are going to approach this, then the only option to take is agnosticism, since neither atheism nor theism can be proven beyond doubt IMO. I would welcome being corrected in this if I'm wrong.
(I am not saying that agnosticism is bad. Just that atheists aren't really being as rational as many of them puport to be, if this holds true.)
Atheism itself is just not believing in any god, hence it doesn't have to be proven. If theism isn't proven, then atheism is automatically the rational position.
It's also not incompatible with agnosticism. AFAIK most atheists are also agnostics, because agnosticism and atheism are about two different things: knowledge and belief, respectively. Agnosticism means you don't claim to know whether a god exist or not, while atheism means you don't claim to believe a god exist. See? Different things. You can be both an agnostic theist as well as an agnostic atheist.
Please read this essay.
That's absurd. How would we ever know for sure if we stop trying?
Also, explain to me how making shit up constitutes "trying". To me, that just means you're making shit up, which, you know, is more like giving up than anything. "We don't know, so instead of actually finding out, I'm just going to say it was magic."
This is perhaps not the position you would like to take, but that's all that "god" offers: baseless assertions of magic. If you want to claim that your assertion is justified - as you do - then that's something I would expect you to, you know, back up. Show us how it is justified, instead of just mysteriously saying that your trip confirmed that it is.
If you can't do that...
"Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy."
But once you see the light it's bat guano crazy to close your eyes to it so you can keep groping.
That's rather reduntent to say
Not beyond a doubt, which is why I'm agnostic, but some decent reasons I came up with is the nature of the universe and the pesky why something rather than nothing.
More to come
I just wanted to know how camp went. Did this post mean "well"?
It's interesting to say "giving up" to people who have refined their arguments over the years. Gods still haven't made an appearance.
Tried what? Believing in something that for all intents and purposes, isn't there? Has it escaped your notice that mystical and mysterious have the same geography? That magic and ignorance are the same territory entirely?
I didn't even know you had a stance.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Maybe it's a similar feeling, it seems to me that atheists try to understand everything immediately, otherwise they refuse it. They personally don't have always perfect and completely proven theories, but they demand nothing else than perfection from others. They tolerate no other jargon than theirs. And there is a belief in a subjective illusory world, opposed to objective real world. This is in my opinion the same fallacy as microevolution versus macroevolution. If something exists subjectively, it must also have some objective form and cause. Believing otherwise is irrational. Therefore, sentences "it was just a phantasm" or "forget it, that's not possible" should not be in a phrase book of an open-minded person.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI
The statements you note are fine for open-minded people in many cases.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
I believe we're defining these terms differently.
By your definition of agnosticism and atheism, I would be more of an agnostic with regard to an intelligent creator and more of an atheist with regard to the Gods of specific religions.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
First to clear up my "giving up" line, I'm talking about giving up thinking outside the box. Going outside the comfort zone and fumbling in the dark looking for the light swtich.
As for my trip [it wasn't "camp", I was alone] I found an excellent spot near the lake. I basically set up tent there and then mostly went hiking, did some reading and went into town for supplies/shower. I of course laid back and watch the sun set/rise and took in the view from the other aspects.
As for the bug bites, got some, mostly on my legs, no ticks or bears or anything like that.
I take it you haven't read Sartre's take on that: "It is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of a human expectation."
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Never heard of Sartre
You were asking a philosophical question, so I figured Jean-Paul Sartre could weigh in. That's from his book "Being and Nothingness" which is a bizarre read. Mind bending. I'd also recommend Merleau-Ponty or Husserl for another perspective on why there is something rather than nothing. (Other than just the words, of course.)
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I have a question for you good Captain, oh, and congratulations on your pleasant trip.
If one of the reasons you believe in god, or the cosmic unconsciousness, or whatever supernatural entity you believe in (please feel free to correct me on any of the finer points of your beliefs) is that there remains the 'pesky' (I like that word, it fits) problem of why something rather than nothing, how, exactly, does the supernatural entity you are including change this
After all, wouldn't we be able to apply the exact same question to the existence of this entity itself? Or, should this entity be a conscious entity, and your solution to the first question is 'because it wanted there to be something' (I don't think this is your stance, however I am covering it anyways), can we not apply the question to the desire of this entity for there to be something?
I truly want to know how you feel the introduction of this entity solves this problem instead of simply pushing it back, and why we cannot, to quote Carl Sagan, 'Save a Step.'
On the subject of the Agnostic vs. Atheism debate, I propose the intorduction of a new Compound Term;
'Agnostically Gnostic Atheist'
The above being; an Individual who holds no Positive Belief in any sort of God or Gods, and who holds that knowledge of such a God or God's existence is both Knowable and Unknowable simultaneously, such that although Localized Definitions of God may be falsifiable, the braod concept remains unfalsifiable, at least so far. Check back Later.
Thus; INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER
In unrelated news, Screw Smoked Cheese, Long Live Muenster.
When you say it like that you make it sound so Sinister...
My line of thought is as follows:
Whatever was at the begining pretty much had to be complicated seeing how a single simple thing can't do much such as getting the ball rolling, but a series of simple things can, and what's a complicated thing but a series of simple things?
As for the actual question, I just think that a God always exisitng makes more sense than say a time-space vortex always existing.
And for the record Will, you should come up with a better blogger name.
What made god since that had to be even more complicated because a complex being can't just simply exist, because it's made up of more simple things, that make up the complex thing and those simple things just couldn't have existed by themselves and just some how randomly created this complex being that then made simple things that made more complex things naturally....incase you didn't see nature, simple things can become complex things.....but I think you missed out on that.
But I don't see how the logic of a complex being always existed is more logical than a simple thing (energy) always existed which can form complex things. Just some how you lost me with that illogical logic of yours there.
It's spacetime.
The universe (defined as everything) existed before the BB. Because something cannot come from a state of absolute nothing, the universe always existed. Something, whatever it was or is, always existed.
It has not been proven that space existed before the big bang, and/or even if it did, that space has always existed; but time did exist at some scale before the BB. To claim time had a begining would result in an infinite regression because whatever is to be claimed to have started time had to have existed with time (time is simply the measure of movement).
EDIT - having second thoughts on space; I dont think it is possible for change/movement to occur without space. I conclude that spacetime had to have always existed.
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
Sartre is also notable for this partial quote... "Hell is other people"
Meh. Saint Will is what Mark (IAMGODASYOU) called me before he died, so I kept it. Or do you mean the name of the blog itself? (I'll have to check if that's still there.)
Are there blogger name standards that I don't know about? Should I have numbers instead of letters in my name? Or what? I'm turning a positively ancient 33 in about a week, so what's the difference whether or not I'm cool with the kids?
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
It is kinda hard to follow from my posts, but I haven't figured out if that's because it's illogical or it's just I have a hard time expressing it.
I take it you didn't see many Snowflakes on your camping trip. Actually, given that you state that simple things can come together to form complex things however, I remain uncertain where you intend to go with this. Regardless however, any Physical Laws in this Universe need not necessarily apply to whatever whatsit might be beyond, indeed, if there even is 'anything', as we would traditionally be want to call such a thing, beyond. Thus while common and simple may require numbers to form complex within this Frame, this need not be the case in another.
Why?
Quite literally, why does it make more sense? From where I am sitting, now that I'm back, it only needlessly complicates the entire concept. At the best of possibilities, the two are largely indistinguishable from one another in their currently known* attributes. We know literally nothing about whatever might exist beyond this Frame, and as such both remain without definition, as but mere speculation.
Indeed, the functional difference between God and the Whatsit is largely nothing, as they both are currently just placeholders for an area with nothing else conclusive to be sat within. The Only difference I can see is that God generally has defined attributes despite the utter lack of evidence to support them, while the Whatsit is simply, honestly, expressed as merely a placeholder until we can actually find something to put there.
I agree, it is hard to express the Cosmic Whatsit, so don't. At this time, there remains nothing to express, it is literally undefined, to try to express it would be to Divide by Zero, and while those pictures are funny, I do not consider them to be a serious description of the phenomena, nor would I attempt to use them in an academic discussion.
This is why I didn't comment on you regarding the order of the universe as a piece of evidence for the existence of a God, because it is really a matter of interpretation. I see it as evidence only of a stable existence that operates according to Laws. In other words, if Geology can carve the Waterfall on its own, why should there be need for Direction from God?
Regardless of this new problem however, your comment does not answer my question. I didn't ask why you prefer God over a Monolithic Subspace Whatsit Continuum. I asked you how the introduction of this entity answers the question of 'Why there is Something rather than Nothing.'
From what I can see, the introduction of the God entity only pushes this back by 'answering' the question with 'because God wanted it to exist.' This may even be the case, but it doesn't answer the question, it just rewords it from 'Why does the Universe Exist' to 'Why did God want the Universe to Exist'
Ultimately however, just because something seems to make more sense, doesn't mean it is even slightly true, and I remain curious and confused of why you would wish to believe in something with no evidence to indicate it, instead of simply positing it as a possible idea, and filing it away for further study as the situation develops, to be possibly reevaluated on such time as the available information has changed.
And how can you make a claim of the likeliness of anything without any statistical data to back this claim up?
On a side note, Invest in Candles. Or do what I did, and invest in a Badass Laser-Pointer/Flash-Light Keychain.
*Known, not Believed, nor Attributed.
When you say it like that you make it sound so Sinister...
My opinion is that your having a hard time expressing something that is illogical, it's really a contradiction. You stated this "Whatever was at the begining pretty much had to be complicated seeing how a single simple thing can't do much" then state this "what's a complicated thing but a series of simple things". So then god had to have had an even more complex creator because he is a complex thing that is made up of simple things.
The problem lies now is this "I just think that a God always exisitng makes more sense" so energy the thing that kinda makes things happen cannot exist always because it's a simple thing? So a complex being can always have existed even though it is made up of simple things because complex things are made up of simple things as you stated. This is the illogical reasoning you are using to justify your belief in a god or sorts.
Snowflakes have complicated patterns, but are made up of simple things, water, water is made up of simple elements, hydrogen and oxygen, combined they make water. No god was used to combine those 2 elements, yet somehow you are stating a god was needed to combine them? Am I correct in your statement? Because if simple things can naturally form into complex things, why can't they start the ball rolling?
All my sources describe the universe/God as a fundamentally simple thing, which cyclically unfolds itself into extreme complexity and then sort of "folds back", when the universe is done. (explaining how would take a while, but the "folding back" should be qualitative, not spatial)
This unfolding, this invention of natural measures, is done according to sacred geometry. There had been originally one being in one point. The being did the only thing it could - it invented the direction "forward" into a distance n. Also, it invented the direction "backward" by that. Then, it invented the direction "up", simply by defining a direction vertical to the axis x. The being then moved to a distance n on every axis, x, -x, y and -y, and made a circle, containing these points. The being then used every point as a basis of another such a circle. And the result looked like Flower of life, a pattern which can be found everywhere in nature.
Such is a point in Drunvalo Melchizedek's book. He's has some crazy ideas which must be filtered out during reading of his book, but other his descriptions are interesting, like this one.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I don't see any actual arguments being made here that really require a response. I suspect our Captains belief stems from an emotional need or desire to have more to existence. As I've never considered such belief to be a threat in any way, and have long recognised that some people truly do need to believe in something beyond their senses to function properly, there's nothing for me to weigh in on.
Except luminon. Derailing is such a pain...but this
"This is in my opinion the same fallacy as microevolution versus macroevolution. If something exists subjectively, it must also have some objective form and cause. Believing otherwise is irrational."
just doesn't make any sense at all. Are you seriously trying to argue against science fact with philosophy? No wonder you're always incoherent.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Please remind me, what science fact? I don't remember arguing against anything in this topic, just for something.
I'm sorry to derail the thread, but since you've stated that there is nothing to respond to, I have two paragraphs of text put aside for that purpose. Otherwise, if you don't understand me, use your intuition, it will help. It's a useful thing to be trained, just like IQ or memory.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Subjectivity. Everything can be explained through different means but only one builds spaceships.
"Please remind me, what science fact?"
Evolution.
If you don't want to be misunderstood, then make sense. There's nothing wrong with my intuition, which I dare say is far beyond your own.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Although I have no idea how can you compare it, or how can you prove it, it is theoretically possible that your intuition is greater. I would be still surprised, because it seems to me, that intuitive mind and materialism doesn't go together well. (unless you play on stock market) Or maybe your intuition is only focused on a certain activity. I see you claim to be a good gamer. You surely know that situation when there is a game world and several ways to the target, and you automatically pick the only right one. Well, this is an example of intuition, but you could also apply it on the real world. I have met people who could intuitively understand what I say and nothing seemed incoherent to them.
I also value the intuition greatly and I work on it by regular meditations and testing it when I can.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Very little, if any, knowledge about the Universe can be "proven beyond doubt". So yours is the irrational position, since we do not need more than what was described in the post you quoted, namely "established beyond a reasonable doubt", which is the best we can hope for.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
" I don't say anything against evolution. I only described the false dichotomy which was thought to be between microevolution and macroevolution, while in fact, there is only microevolution."
Excellent, this satisfies me. I had been unable to determine what you were applying a fallacy to.
The intuition response I gave was made while feeling insulted that I should need to train my intuition due to not understanding an unspecified statement that I requested clarification on, and was perhaps a bit too aggressive.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I guess this will destroy the cinematic industry. The film plots are often already too much predictable.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Part of the problem was that I was annoyed at that guy posting a dozen crappy remakes of songs, and I didn't smoke a few bowls before switching threads. lol.
I haven't read a book, seen a movie, or played a game in years where I hadn't figured most of the end out by the half way point, including M Night Shamalan, or however you spell it. Even wrestling is too predictable now, and they put more effort into twisting you up than most anyone else does. Even music is not immune. Often I find myself singing along to a song I'm hearing for the first time. Not every word, but enough of them.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.