Can thought occur without physical complexity? Does science require faith?

[Moonstruck888]

Firstly, I want everyone to feel free to hijack this thread and digress, keep it interesting, see where it goes. Gaining some insight from understanding other people who don’t necessarily think the way I do is why I’m here…

So say you; the career atheist. Every other person that knows what they are talking about disagrees.

I don’t need to show evidence of thoughts with out a physical reaction since i am not trying to prove that human beings don’t process information with their brain. However i have given good reasons that strongly imply that ideas and thoughts are not ultimately a manifestation of physics, but rather of immaterial intellects. I have provided rational reasons that are supported from observing the evidence. You simply refuse to accept it for non-rational reasons. Anyway the OP has said that we are derailing the thread, which means you can’t reply to this. so… i guess i win the debate by having the last word.

I put it to you sir, that the processes behind thought must be hihgly organized and therefore cannot occur without complexity. Complexity in turn cannot occur without matter. Pure energy, as we all know, dissipates as a function of time along the square of the radius while for complexity to occur energy must be locked into pattens of matter that can remain stable for long periods of time.

We know, therefore, that any thinking being cannot be pure energy since energy cannot be organized with enough precision for the appropriate level of complexity to occur.

Now, as God is obviously more intelligent than us, he can create Univerese and we don’t have anyhitng like that level of understaning, it follows that God must be more complex than us, therefore physical and therefore…

Observable!

 

[kimmielittle]

**Does science require faith?

Absolutely, When I have a science test…it takes a lot of studying…AND prayer

The balance between studying and prayer …is very complex
**

 

[manygift1spirit]

I put it to you sir, that the processes behind thought must be hihgly organized and therefore cannot occur without complexity. Complexity in turn cannot occur without matter. Pure energy, as we all know, dissipates as a function of time along the square of the radius while for complexity to occur energy must be locked into pattens of matter that can remain stable for long periods of time.

We know, therefore, that any thinking being cannot be pure energy since energy cannot be organized with enough precision for the appropriate level of complexity to occur.

Now, as God is obviously more intelligent than us, he can create Univerese and we don’t have anyhitng like that level of understaning, it follows that God must be more complex than us, therefore physical and therefore…

Observable!

This is a continuation of something whose backstory I do not know. Nonetheless, between the aggressive (over)use of universal quantifiers (‘cannot’, ‘must’) and lack of coherence (e.g., the time / squared radius comment), I am not really sure that chain holds any water. This is a request to clarify it, if you may.

The conclusion itself is not unreasonable. If you are not talking about Jesus Himself (who clearly was observable), the preferable word would be “knowable”, a small difference perhaps but then again whole schools of philosophy schismed over small semantic differences. But again, I could not follow the reasoning to get there.

 

[edwest2]

I am amazed at people who want things like, “keep it interesting.” What was the point of that? Should I write fhjuhghjkj;kkl’lkkjkjjjlkjlk ??

Or, a long piece that ends with: But ya know, I could be wrong! My first thought after reading something like that is: Thanks for nothing ! And: So why did you bother to even type all that?

Thoughts occur at a level beyond physical complexity. Unless you want to think we’re all chemical robots, then human thought is our link to the spiritual.

There was a time when science and faith were inextricably linked, but today, the trend is going in this direction: we’re all just bags of chemicals that grew brains, built computers, and now we’re talking about it.

God, who did speak to human beings, made it clear that we are not Him.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Moonstruck888]

I am amazed at people who want things like, “keep it interesting.” What was the point of that? Should I write fhjuhghjkj;kkl’lkkjkjjjlkjlk ??

Or, a long piece that ends with: But ya know, I could be wrong! My first thought after reading something like that is: Thanks for nothing ! And: So why did you bother to even type all that?

I don’t recall saying that participation in this thread was mandatory, so feel free to drag that chip on your shoulder back out of it along with your snide insinuations and ill mannered remarks…

Thoughts occur at a level beyond physical complexity. Unless you want to think we’re all chemical robots, then human thought is our link to the spiritual.

I think thoughts are electrochemical in nature, yes. Do you think that God would have designed human beings to think using the most complex object in the known Universe if there were a simple etheric way to do it?

God, who did speak to human beings, made it clear that we are not Him.

Did he? My television set must have been on the blink at the time. When was this announcement made?

 

[Moonstruck888]

**Does science require faith?

Absolutely, When I have a science test…it takes a lot of studying…AND prayer

The balance between studying and prayer …is very complex
**

In a science test I should stick to the studying… Divine intervention in a college lecture hall seems improbable…

 

[manygift1spirit]

{we are not [God]}

When was this announcement made?

Do you really need an announcement? I am not being flippant, this is obvious.

We are created. Thus there is a creator. One may hold different impressions on what exactly this creator is, but it needs to be. And it ain’t us.

Interestingly, when this current ~100 years or so is seen in hindsight 1 millenium or so from now, the canonical sin of the era will be seen to the the negative of the the statement you questioned. Doubly interestingly, it is the same sin of Eden and the Fall: We are God.

I apologize for the lack of charity shown you in this thread.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Do you really need an announcement? I am not being flippant, this is obvious.

We are created. Thus there is a creator. One may hold different impressions on what exactly this creator is, but it needs to be. And it ain’t us.

Interestingly, when this current ~100 years or so is seen in hindsight 1 millenium or so from now, the canonical sin of the era will be seen to the the negative of the the statement you questioned. Doubly interestingly, it is the same sin of Eden and the Fall: We are God.

I apologize for the lack of charity shown you in this thread.

Charity is neither wanted nor required, so don’t apologize. Just tell me how you can be sure we are created. I see absolutely no evidence of that. In fact it’s an assumption based on wild surmise.

I don’t know how the Universe got here, ergo God must have made it… I’m afraid that comes nowhere near to satisfying my criteria for belief…

If you could perhaps describe, in quantitative terms, the method that God utilized in the creation of the Universe?

In another millennium, science will have explained away the soi disant “creation” of the Universe to such a point that sin will be a vestigial word that has faded from our understanding…

 

[manygift1spirit]

Charity is neither wanted nor required, so don’t apologize. Just tell me how you can be sure we are created. I see absolutely no evidence of that. In fact it’s an assumption based on wild surmise.

I don’t know how the Universe got here, ergo God must have made it… I’m afraid that comes nowhere near to satisfying my criteria for belief…

If you could perhaps describe, in quantitative terms, the method that God utilized in the creation of the Universe?

In another millennium, science will have explained away the soi disant “creation” of the Universe to such a point that sin will be a vestigial word that has faded from our understanding…

1. We once were not here. Now we are. Thus we were created. I suspect your difficulty is you have a narrow preconceived notion of what I mean by “created” that would imply a very particular theological explanation. I mean it in a very broad sense, broad enough that your seeing no evidence to that effect is just nihilistic, if you rightly understood what I meant.
2. But you do believe it is here. You cannot both disbelieve it exists and yet believe it is here. So it has a creator.
3. Many people more qualified than me are trying to answer that question. I’ll defer to them. But I will say that by restricting your question to quantitative terms, you’ve restricted it unduly. There can be a qualitative aspect to creation which the most competent quantitician would be helpless to address.
4. Remember what science does, it explains how. It very well might come to do a good job explaining how creation happened. But it doesn’t explain why. So it cannot be the explicator of sin, at least not fully.

 

[Moonstruck888]

1. We once were not here. Now we are. Thus we were created. I suspect your difficulty is you have a narrow preconceived notion of what I mean by “created” that would imply a very particular theological explanation. I mean it in a very broad sense, broad enough that your seeing no evidence to that effect is just nihilistic, if you rightly understood what I meant.

Broad enough that you can’t define it and it could mean absolutely anything or nothing? That’s why I have a problem believing you…

1. But you do believe it is here. You cannot both disbelieve it exists and yet believe it is here. So it has a creator.

That is the assumption that is the linchpin of the fallacy of your argument. A painting needs a painter. A bridge needs an engineer. A house needs a builder. None of these things can multiply spontaneously. Life on Earth can. If a painting could give birth to baby paintings, then no painter would be necessary to explain paintings.

1. Many people more qualified than me are trying to answer that question. I’ll defer to them. But I will say that by restricting your question to quantitative terms, you’ve restricted it unduly. There can be a qualitative aspect to creation which the most competent quantitician would be helpless to address.

That is true, but that does not mean that one should replace research with assumptions.

1. Remember what science does, it explains how. It very well might come to do a good job explaining how creation happened. But it doesn’t explain why. So it cannot be the explicator of sin, at least not fully.

Sin can be pretty well explained by folly of human conceit, the idea that we are above nature and cannot accept it when we are forced to conceed that we can never be perfectly behaved all the time…

 

[manygift1spirit]

Broad enough that you can’t define it and it could mean absolutely anything or nothing? That’s why I have a problem believing you…​

That is the assumption that is the linchpin of the fallacy of your argument. A painting needs a painter. A bridge needs an engineer. A house needs a builder. None of these things can multiply spontaneously. Life on Earth can. If a painting could give birth to baby paintings, then no painter would be necessary to explain paintings.​

[snip] but that does not mean that one should replace research with assumptions.​

Sin can be pretty well explained by folly of human conceit, the idea that we are above nature and cannot accept it when we are forced to conceed that we can never be perfectly behaved all the time…

1. There is only so much obtuseness I can tolerate… Things come into existence that did not exist before. This is creation. If you assert this does not happen then no mote I can give you will remove your nihilistic plank. I acknowlege the possibility, but rue it.
2. In your example, you have describes a birthing from a painting. A birthing, a noun. You have ducked around a painter yet only to assume this process relating to a painting, even if implicitly. This cannot be excaped; one can only assert different formulations as to the nature of this creating. The discourse here is to elucidate such nouns. There is no fallacy.
3. There is no talk of replacing. Merely of augmenting research with more complementary research, of a different modality. And a fruitful one, if one chooses to examine it.
4. While I wouldn’t choose those exact words, the first half of your sin comments (up to ‘above nature’) actually parse decently. Your term “perfectly behaved” is a pebble in the shoe. A rhetorical question: how do we know what this means?

 

[_Locke]

Alright, I’m gonna take a crack at this…

1. Premise: Thoughts are highly organized and complex.
2. Premise: Complexity requires matter.
3. Conclusion: Thinking has a wholly physical basis (from 1 and 2, fallacious because you’re mixing the organizational and physical definitions of complexity, you should define it if you’re going to use it two separate ways)
4. Premise: God is intelligent in human terms, i.e. thinks biologically (I think you’re gonna need a little bit of argument to back this up)
5. Conclusion: God is matter (From 3 and 4)

Here’s the problem. You conclude that thoughts have a wholly physical basis (using two different definitions of complex) and make a huge leap on the 4th premise, making the final conclusion invalid.

 

[manygift1spirit]

Alright, I’m gonna take a crack at this…

1. Premise: Thoughts are highly organized and complex.
2. Premise: Complexity requires matter.
3. Conclusion: Thinking has a wholly physical basis (from 1 and 2, fallacious because you’re mixing the organizational and physical definitions of complexity, you should define it if you’re going to use it two separate ways)
4. Premise: God is intelligent in human terms, i.e. thinks biologically (I think you’re gonna need a little bit of argument to back this up)
5. Conclusion: God is matter (From 3 and 4)

Here’s the problem. You conclude that thoughts have a wholly physical basis (using two different definitions of complex) and make a huge leap on the 4th premise, making the final conclusion invalid.

Thanks for this attempt; the OP can clarify if needed. I apologize to all for any earlier lack of charity I showed due to my frustration.

I did not get past premise 2 without a hiccup. P1’s ‘complex’ is an adjective which in general is somewhat abstract. But there is a spectrum of how abstract it is in any given context; in that context it means ‘complicated’, ‘non-trivial’, etc., which is on the abstract side (without further clarification). When one speaks of irreducible complexity, there is implied a concrete metric. Entropy, K-L information, etc., are closely related terms which have a very specific and concrete meanings. ‘Complexity’ in P2 would likely have to be a more concrete thing for it to make any sense.

Then I read your line 3 which says (perhaps much better) the same thing I am saying. So yeah, this line needs to be reworked to be useful.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I put it to you sir, that the processes behind thought must be hihgly organized and therefore cannot occur without complexity. Complexity in turn cannot occur without matter. Pure energy, as we all know, dissipates as a function of time along the square of the radius while for complexity to occur energy must be locked into pattens of matter that can remain stable for long periods of time.

Sounds like something Richard Dawkins would say. Organization cannot exist with out matter? Do you have a metaphysical argument to back this up, or are assuming that because you have only seen white ducks that therefore there are no black ones. You have seen physical organization and thus have assumed that such must be synonymous to complex information merely because you have see the two have an effect on each-other. This is not proof of the belief that therefore the only complexity that can exist is physical complexity.

We know, therefore, that any thinking being cannot be pure energy since energy cannot be organized with enough precision for the appropriate level of complexity to occur.

So complexity cannot be caused by pure energy and thus complex physical reality cannot follow from energy?

Now, as God is obviously more intelligent than us, he can create Universe and we don’t have anyhitng like that level of understaning, it follows that God must be more complex than us, therefore physical and therefore…
Observable!

Your premises make big assumptions that i don’t think you can support. Physical structural complexity is not necessarily synonymous to “complex information”. Artificial information in some cases perhaps requires or generates complexity because its foundation necessarily have parts, but i see no universal absolute that justifiably allows the belief that information cannot possibly exist apart from complex physical processes. Complexity cannot create objective meaning. Objective meaning must precede physical complexity; and meaning is information.

 

[JimG]

I don’t doubt that for human beings, the organizing of sensory data requires complexity. Sensory (name removed by moderator)ut comes in from the senses and is integrated in the brain. But does that constitute thought? I don’t think so. Humans are capable of abstracting from the particular to the abstract.

I’ve seen a lot of cats, and they have certain common characteristics, and the (name removed by moderator)ut data representing them comes in from the senses at various times and places. Yet I also have the abstract idea of a cat, and that idea has no physical characteristics whatsoever. The case for abstraction as an immaterial process seems even stronger when it comes to pondering concepts that are already immaterial, such as mathematical and philosophical ideas.

There is a difference between consciousness and thought. A lot of animals are conscious. Most of them don’t communicate in abstract ideas or even join in internet forums. Many animals possess consciousness; yet they don’t seem to possess self-consciousness. They are aware, but not self-aware. They do not self-reflect on their consciousness.

For an abstract idea to be produced, all the matter must be sucked out of it. Then it is a universal rather than a particular. For that, simplicity, not complexity, is required.

Dawkins suggests that God must be the most complex being of all. Yet Catholic theology has never suggested such a thing. It proposes that God is utterly simple, having no parts and no extension in space or time, not being composed of matter or energy. But it also views the human soul in a similar matter–simple and indivisible, not complex.

I’m not going to develop a thesis on this. There are already books available.

If I thought that human thought and human will were ultimately materially based, I would simply have no confidence whatever in human law; since ultimately all behavior could be traced to material, and therefore non-culpable, causes.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Dawkins suggests that God must be the most complex being of all. Yet Catholic theology has never suggested such a thing. It proposes that God is utterly simple, having no parts and no extension in space or time, not being composed of matter or energy. But it also views the human soul in a similar matter–simple and indivisible, not complex.

How can something simple design something complex? In order for me to accept this and have it pass my criteria for belief, I’d need some kind of basic explanation to examine.

 

[Moonstruck888]

1. There is only so much obtuseness I can tolerate…

I was thinking the same thing about your half baked evasiveness…

 

[Moonstruck888]

Alright, I’m gonna take a crack at this…

1. Premise: Thoughts are highly organized and complex.
2. Premise: Complexity requires matter.
3. Conclusion: Thinking has a wholly physical basis (from 1 and 2, fallacious because you’re mixing the organizational and physical definitions of complexity, you should define it if you’re going to use it two separate ways)
4. Premise: God is intelligent in human terms, i.e. thinks biologically (I think you’re gonna need a little bit of argument to back this up)
5. Conclusion: God is matter (From 3 and 4)

Here’s the problem. You conclude that thoughts have a wholly physical basis (using two different definitions of complex) and make a huge leap on the 4th premise, making the final conclusion invalid.

Since no one can explain how God can be simple and yet still have more intelligence and higher consciousness than humanity in anything but the most vauge and half baked terms, I really don’t see how I can take any of this seriously.

Does no one have any kind of working hypothesis on what God could be that actually bears up to the most rudimentary scrutiny?

 

[manygift1spirit]

How can something simple design something complex?

There are some things there which are ambiguous as stated. So…

Do you have a particular simple thing in mind, and a particular complex designed thing in mind? If so, spell them out and we’ll have a go.

Or are you asking this: “How can it be that something simple can design something complex?” Note that is a vastly different question. I can provide a partial answer in the sense that it doesn’t explain how, but demonstrates that it still is the case by construction. Take “omnipotence” in the Platonic sense. Simple as can be, but, yep you guessed it, it can design something complex. I know this may not be exactly the answer you were looking for, but hopefully it is a start.

Or (to be complete) were you asking yet something else?

 

[buffalo]

moon, follow this through - what are your thoughts?

A Proof of the Existence of God