A colossal accident?

[warpspeedpetey]

Warpspeedpetey,

Much of what I have been doing is trying to show that my position is not identical to empiricism, which you say contradicts itself.

It seems like you think it might not be a contradiction, though its been demonstrated to you many times and it is a bare hisotircal fact on top of that. You can read the history of it yourself, you need not take my word for it.

Your approach has been to say both that I’m wrong AND I’m pushing empiricism.

My approach has been to demonstrate that Russell was right in that every formulation of a proposition where knowledge depends on experience is self refuting.

Interestingly, you have offered no comment on an article which offers an argument for empiricism.

Yes, I did comment on the article.

However, I might as well show that my position is not wrong, and therefore that it cannot be identical with a failed empiricism - whatever it is.

We have proven your position wrong, it was proven long before either of us arrived on the scene.

As to atheism in general, you said you have reasons to believe. Finding theistic reasons unconvincing, (or lacking the belief in those reasons) I do not.

which ones are you talking about and why do you find them unconvincing?

I think you would be hard pressed to justify why one should have evidence for faith anyway when you have spent so long trying to proclaim that requiring evidence for a position is nonsense. If one does not require evidence for faith, one can believe literally anything.

As we have repeatedly demonstrated physical evidence isn’t necessary for a statement to be true/meaningful. I have no idea where you get the idea that one can believe anything either. That’s just ludicrous.

Hang on, a bit of revelation is coming to me… Yes, it’s from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He says he’s just beaten the Christian God, who now no longer exists, and he has established ever greater divine hegemony for pasta lovers everywhere! Permissible to believe in your worldview, not in mine.

Why would you think that such a thing is permissible to believe in our world view? And how do you think its not in your worldview? You accept a logical contradiction as true, which means that anything can be true. things can exist and not exist, A=notA, is a true statment, etc. Things get really weird when you start to accept logical contradictions as true. Our worldview doesn’t allow any of that where logic holds. Only yours does.

 

[James1215]

As the Flying Spaghetti Monster is simply a meme parody (a poor one at that), your revelation ostensibly cannot be construed as real. The argument for God is centralized around the creation of the Universe and one tuned for self-aware life. Try to construct a satisfying theology around the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a transcendent being but a finite temporal being subject to the materials laws of the Universe, you will not reasonably succeed. Hence your attempt at parody grievously fails and demonstrates your lack of critical evaluation skills for theological positions.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not negotiate (as far as I can tell), and does believe in atheists even if they do not believe in Him. He created the universe and everything, why do you think pasta is such a good source of carbohydrate?

But you are spot on, I too think that my ‘revelation’ ‘cannot be construed as real’. But wouldn’t that be to beg the question of needing to ask for evidence…?

 

[James1215]

I can say right this instant how it is not a contradiction.

A statement is meaningful if it is comprehensible, and comprehensible if it deals with perception.

A statement can be true even if it is not comprehensible or evidenced.

If one wants to know that one is saying a true statement (have knowledge or believe in its truth), one has to have evidence for it.

Evidence must include the empirical because the empirical is consonant with ‘perceptible’

You might have a different sense in which something ‘is meaningful’, but I think this sense is valid.

 

[James1215]

Also, tonyrey argued that everything goes through subjectivity or is subjectively apprehended. Therefore, knowledge being a thing, it too is based on experience. Everything is!

 

[James1215]

As we have repeatedly demonstrated physical evidence isn’t necessary for a statement to be true/meaningful.

The FSM is very true and very meaningful by this admission. I also say perceptible evidence, which means physical but not intuitively solid/material evidence.

Yet later you ask, in response to the FSM’s divine revelation:

Why would you think that such a thing is permissible to believe in our world view? And how do you think its not in your worldview?

Well in my view, we have no reason to believe (therefore should not believe) if there is no evidence for something. Your position seems to be that such a statement is contradictory, meaning of course that it is perfectly permissible for me to acknowledge my creator, through the medium (tedium) of pasta.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I can say right this instant how it is not a contradiction.

Then you don’t really know it isn’t. Your just hoping it isn’t. Ignoring the bare historical facts isn’t going to change them.

A statement is meaningful if it is comprehensible, and comprehensible if it deals with perception.

This is just a repetition of the contradiction.

A statement can be true even if it is not comprehensible or evidenced.

Sure

If one wants to know that one is saying a true statement (have knowledge or believe in its truth), one has to have evidence for it.

Again with the contradiction. Physical evidence is not necessary.

Evidence must include the empirical because the empirical is consonant with ‘perceptible’

Non sequitur. It does not follow that evidence must be physical if two words are synonymous. Nor is empirical synonymous with perceptible. Why don’t you just use words the way they are supposed to be? It doesn’t fool us so your just wasting time.

You might have a different sense in which something ‘is meaningful’, but I think this sense is valid.

Except the historical fact and the many demonstrations that disprove the idea here.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Also, tonyrey argued that everything goes through subjectivity or is subjectively apprehended. Therefore, knowledge being a thing, it too is based on experience. Everything is!

I have no idea what this means either, but as has been repeatedly demonstrated to you, not everything is based on your physical senses, which is what exerience means in this context

 

[James1215]

Do you actually believe what you are saying? If so, and as belief does not require evidence in your eyes, your own view can logically and consistently be total nonsense.

When I say:

A statement is meaningful if it is comprehensible, and comprehensible if it deals with perception.

You say:

This is just a repetition of the contradiction.

Do you honestly think an incomprehensible statement about imperceptible matters can be meaningful? That seems like an unusual meaning of ‘meaningful’. I reckon it is because you have compressed true belief/awareness of true belief into one thing, as a consequence of theism which requires you to accept the implausible as reality. In theism, perception does not matter because the truth is posited by faith and cannot be tackled by evidence, as a learned response to the fact that the evidence of our eyes is not incontrovertibly in favour of God. Take the doctrine of Original Sin - we are faulty and prone to erring. Take Satan - disbelief is his greatest weapon. Take heresy - individual thought is wrong.

I know I am putting this strongly, but these are my interpretations

 

[James1215]

Warpspeedpetey,

I agree that one does not need empirical evidence at every point in order to reason that something is true. However, can you tell me anything about the perceptible world without empirical evidence at all?

The police reason about what a suspect’s personality is from their mode of operating, but they do not sit there imagining things that have no connection to the mode of operating. They do not employ mathematics or a study of the Forms to get to who the guy is and what he’s about to do.

You say that we do not need physical evidence to know something about the world is true, so I would ask you for an example. If you say that is verification, and verification is false, I’ll eat my hat.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

The FSM is very true and very meaningful by this admission.

Why would you think that? There may or may not be a FSM, its not logically impossible or a contradiction like the ICU. That doesn’t make it true or meaningful.

I also say perceptible evidence, which means physical but not intuitively solid/material evidence.

physical is physical. Particles is particles, so to speak. Your ability to sense them doesn’t make a difference. It looks like you are trying to paly word games to avoid admitting a historical fact. Its not going to work.

…Well in my view, we have no reason to believe (therefore should not believe) if there is no evidence for something.

Yes, you accept that logical contradictions can exist. That means anything can be true.

Your position seems to be that such a statement is contradictory,

It’s pretty much the conclusion of every one who was involved in formulating the various empirical epistemologies. I also demonstrated it for you repeatedly.

meaning of course that it is perfectly permissible for me to acknowledge my creator, through the medium (tedium) of pasta.

So since empirism is a logical contradiction, you think that means you have to believe that the FSM exists? That doesn’t make sense at all.

• even were that correct, it still doesn’t make the contradiction true. Trying to drive to Vegas in a broken car doesn’t work just because its the only car you got. It’s like your saying that an airplane without wings must be able to fly because its the only one you have and you really want it too. lol

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Do you actually believe what you are saying?

Of course, so did atheist extraordinaire Bertrand Russell, and every other logician involved in the development of the arguments from the Vienna Circle to Popper and Ayers. The fact that you refuse to accept a logical contradiction accepted by all those people, even when it is directly demonstrated for you means that you simply refuse to accept the truth. I understand. This lie was drilled into you for years of school, you can’t imagine how the world can work otherwise, so you resist and deny truth that is obvious. Its called cognitive dissonance, and we are currently in the stage called dissonance reduction. Feel free to Google it.

If so, and as belief does not require evidence in your eyes, your own view can logically and consistently be total nonsense.

Belief does not require physical evidence as demonstrated, that is my belief along with everybody else in the field. Yourre the one insisting all the experts who worked on the problem for decades is wrong but cannot generate an argument proving it.

When I say:

A statement is meaningful if it is comprehensible, and comprehensible if it deals with perception.

You say:

This is just a repetition of the contradiction.

Because that is exactly what it is, do you need me to go back and repost the empirical/verification/falsification statement again?

Do you honestly think an incomprehensible statement about imperceptible matters can be meaningful? That seems like an unusual meaning of ‘meaningful’.

Sure, look in any math book. You don’t have to understand the math for the statement to be true. It doesn’t seem strange to anyone else.

I reckon it is because you have compressed true belief/awareness of true belief into one thing, as a consequence of theism which requires you to accept the implausible as reality.

Or it could be because a logical contradiction is always false and I go with reason, not emotion. I started out as an atheist anyway.

In theism, perception does not matter because the truth is posited by faith and cannot be tackled by evidence, as a learned response to the fact that the evidence of our eyes is not incontrovertibly in favour of God.

That’s not in any theism I have heard of.

Take the doctrine of Original Sin - we are faulty and prone to erring. Take Satan - disbelief is his greatest weapon. Take heresy - individual thought is wrong.

The first two are true, but the third is not.

I know I am putting this strongly, but these are my interpretations

Of course, this is how the dissonance reduction works. You are excusing your acceptance of a logical contradiction by asserting irrationality on my part in order to maintian your cherished belief. In the next few posts you’ll probably jump threads. Or at least that’s the usual pattern. In the diagram, you would still be trying to smoke the cigarette or on step 6.
http://revolutioniz.com/revolutioni...application_and_assessment_of/images/fig2.gif

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Warpspeedpetey,

I agree that one does not need empirical evidence at every point in order to reason that something is true.

Then why are you arguing against it? You’re agreeing with me.

However, can you tell me anything about the perceptible world without empirical evidence at all?

Dubito, logic, and math are all good examples.

The police reason about what a suspect’s personality is from their mode of operating, but they do not sit there imagining things that have no connection to the mode of operating. They do not employ mathematics or a study of the Forms to get to who the guy is and what he’s about to do.

This is a false assertion, I was an LEO in a former life. We used math everyday and “forms” from the psychological world, to get a bead on someone.

You say that we do not need physical evidence to know something about the world is true, so I would ask you for an example. If you say that is verification, and verification is false, I’ll eat my hat.

Dubito, logic, and math.

*use the standard terminology, if you don’t know it say so, this is ridiculous. All the experts in the world are wrong but you, the guy who isn’t sure what the terms mean

 

[tobias]

tobias;8152636:

Your use of the term “order” is idiosyncratic. Chaos is "any confused or disorderly collection or state of things; a conglomeration of parts or elements **without order **

or connection". Both order and chaos presuppose the existence of several or many thing**s. **

I was implying that the usual usage of order and chaos make the terms pointless. Just look at the definition you offered ‘a conglomeration of parts or elements “without order” or connection’, just how can we even speak of them as elements if they, as you say, have no bearing to any other thing? How could they still be classified as elements, or how could it be known it is just a conglomeration? The very fact that the state of ‘things’ can be defined as such makes it an order, if it were no longer perceptable or definable, then perhaps it could be spoken of as ‘without order’, I’m just not sure that you or I can do this with our finite intellects.

Itt is logically impossible for one thing by itself to have order in the usual sense of the term because there is nothing to which it bears any relation.

That is untrue, I believe we can speak of space as having an order, measurable by any unit of measure cubed. Time also has an order, movement of matter or energy. These things bear no relation to any other thing, yet they have and order. Unless you can offer an example of space being ‘without order’ or time being ‘without order’.

There could be such a world because elements could be in different locations and never come into contact!

Sorry, I thought that I had implied by my posed world that there were only the 3 molecules and the the space to contain them, and of course movement. But being in different locations doesn’t speak to the point, the point was a world where the elements ‘could not’ form into water.

Which is absurd! But it is possible that other worlds have things which are not like things in this world or similar to some or all of them.

It is not absurd if you posit that known elements of this world could have different properties in other worlds, similar, maybe, the same thing, definitionally- no. If it is logical to call a different element hydrogen in another world, then it is logical to call a pyramid spherical in another world, but neither is true.

 

[Faithdancer]

This is a great thread, right up my alley of interest. I just typed a couple of paragraphs with which some accidental keystroke, I inadvertently deleted, grrrrr!
At any rate, I should know by now to compose in a word program, save frequently then cut and paste to forums, emails, etc.

At any rate, one of my primary theological interests is a point by point comparison of Scripture, the Summa Theologica, etc. and the contemporary theories of modern cosmology and quantum mechanics. The gist of this is, physicists can describe what happened nanoseconds after the Big Bang began, but have no (name removed by moderator)ut on what may have initiated the Big Bang or what came before the Big Bang. Physicists have as little to offer, at least in terms of scientifically supportable theories, about causation, either accidental/random or purposeful/necessary causation.

What does this say about the limitations of physics?
What does this say about the limitations of theology (a human endeavor, despite its divine subjects)?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

This is a great thread, right up my alley of interest. I just typed a couple of paragraphs with which some accidental keystroke, I inadvertently deleted, grrrrr!
At any rate, I should know by now to compose in a word program, save frequently then cut and paste to forums, emails, etc.

At any rate, one of my primary theological interests is a point by point comparison of Scripture, the Summa Theologica, etc. and the contemporary theories of modern cosmology and quantum mechanics. The gist of this is, physicists can describe what happened nanoseconds after the Big Bang began, but have no (name removed by moderator)ut on what may have initiated the Big Bang or what came before the Big Bang. Physicists have as little to offer, at least in terms of scientifically supportable theories, about causation, either accidental/random or purposeful/necessary causation.

What does this say about the limitations of physics?
What does this say about the limitations of theology (a human endeavor, despite its divine subjects)?

Your absolutely right. Their empirical bent disappears when its convenient, every cosmologist working on problems prior the WMAP resolution is no longer practicing any conceivable version of the scientific method. When you say theology here you are using it like the word “metaphysics”. Metaphysics is the study of “being” as opposed to “quantities” in mathematics.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not negotiate (as far as I can tell), and does believe in atheists even if they do not believe in Him. He created the universe and everything, why do you think pasta is such a good source of carbohydrate?

But you are spot on, I too think that my ‘revelation’ ‘cannot be construed as real’. But wouldn’t that be to beg the question of needing to ask for evidence…?

I think you may have missed the point of my statement but I shouldn’t incite the situation. However, I do love pasta so a conversion is not out of the question.

 

[James1215]

Warpspeedpetey,

Let’s stick with that example of detective work to see whether my proposition that every proposition requires evidence is evidenced. Evidence from just a few examples like detective work will not necessarily prove or verify what I am saying, but as my position only seeks inductive evidence, this is all that is necessary for demonstrating its consistency.

Mathematics do not do the work of investigation, that much is easy to say. It is not maths which tells us that a gun was fired, but ballistics which says where the bullet was fired from, once it is empirically evident that a murder/shooting has occurred. So that is science working, not pure maths. Secondly, using psychology is of course relying upon the empirical, because even psychological commonplaces were once argued over on the basis of evidence. Both of these fail to uphold your position that we can believe something is true or have knowledge without having evidence for it.

As investigation and the whole legal system are aligned behind my position, either my proposition is true or everyone is wrong. But could the legal system function in any other way? Could a witness stand up in court and say “I didn’t see anything, but if you want my non-empirical speculation…” Could an arrest be made without empirical evidence? And doesn’t the criminal justice system produce knowledge?

 

[James1215]

I think you may have missed the point of my statement but I shouldn’t incite the situation. However, I do love pasta so a conversion is not out of the question.

Yes it wasn’t a serious point on my part, and not worth pursuing. I agree that no-one (hopefully) believes in the FSM, but if they did, out of a delusion, what grounds would we have to counter them? They could have a complex morality worked out in their head which they attribute to the FSM, it could be meaningful to them, they might think they understand the universe because of it, etc etc. So if there was a comparison between a religion and the cult of the FSM, one would have to treat them both equally skeptically.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

So if there was a comparison between a religion and the cult of the FSM, one would have to treat them both equally skeptically.

Not so. Why should it engender equal treatment if one is a parody while the other is a steadfast view with a theology? According to your reasoning, my claim to be ruler of the world should be duteously verified by all nations.

 

[James1215]

At any rate, one of my primary theological interests is a point by point comparison of Scripture, the Summa Theologica, etc. and the contemporary theories of modern cosmology and quantum mechanics. The gist of this is, physicists can describe what happened nanoseconds after the Big Bang began, but have no (name removed by moderator)ut on what may have initiated the Big Bang or what came before the Big Bang. Physicists have as little to offer, at least in terms of scientifically supportable theories, about causation, either accidental/random or purposeful/necessary causation.

What does this say about the limitations of physics?
What does this say about the limitations of theology (a human endeavor, despite its divine subjects)?

I wouldn’t write off physics just yet, from what I know of it I realise there is so much work being done that I will never know about. I have watched a debate between Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig (youtube) on some of these matters and there is a lot science has to offer on how the universe may have come about from whatever caused it. Much of what Krauss said was to do with various sorts of ‘nothing’. These nothings are not actually totally nothing, but they deal with various fundamentals. In a vacuum, quantum fluctuations of ‘virtual particles’ appear and disappear from and back to a zero energy state. But he also talks about the appearance of space and time itself, not just things within it, in terms of gravity quantumly understood. He also talks about how laws can form spontaneously. So the generation of matter/energy, space/time and even laws of physics are being theorised from current empirical evidence.

I expect that because physics is an active discipline - a process - of having interpretations/hypotheses based on evidence, we have no evidence from which to decide its boundaries. The limit will be whenever we run out of things to look at, or ways of looking, not whenever we reach a pre-determined horizon.