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reggieM
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Maybe the second time is a charm here (or third if you count mine).
Waiting, Vera_Ljuba …
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Waiting, Vera_Ljuba …
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
And waiting … and waiting. :compcoff:
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Vera_Ljuba
Guest
Read post #570.
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reggieM
Guest
.
Materialism is not limited to the chemical properties. It is all of the matter and physical laws, forces and energies of the universe.
Molecules-to-man. Once you get to man, Materialism has Evolution to explain all the rest. That’s reductionism – everything is reduced to blind, unintelligent matter and physical laws.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
You still haven’t explained where the laws come from.
Unlike you, Einstein does explain where they come from, and its a reasonable inference on his part since no other explanation is offered by any materialist.
“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.” And again, on a later occasion, Einstein said “… everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.” Albert Einstein
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reggieM
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Materialism is that everything is reducible to matter and physical forces (energy) and physical laws.
If there is something else in the universe other than material/physical/natural reality, then that needs to be explained and we no longer have materialism.
If you’re saying that we have no explanation for why two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen combine to make something wet and that is water - instead of something that looks like peanut butter. Well, that is unexplained in materialism.
So also are all the physical laws - where did they come from. Why do we have certain chemicals bonding and others not? Why does pressure on graphite create diamonds and not some other thing?
You have not liked the question of origins, saying rather that things just are that way. But that’s not an explanation.
Materialism attempts to explain everything from matter and physical laws, all present in the initial conditions of the universe. But as mentioned, this does not explain the ordering of molecules - the various arrangements. Why isn’t the entire universe just random noise?
We haven’t gotten into fine-tuning but it’s the same question. Why are there certain finely tuned constants in the universe? Physicists struggle with that.
Atheists have come up with their own fairy tale - the multiverse, which can explain anything. It’s a magic, unknown, unknowable, unobservable force that answers all the problems.
Catholics will say that God is a much better explanation for the order we perceive and the fine-tuning and the physical laws. All of these show signs of intelligence involved - because our own human intelligence is the only known source of finely tuned harmonic synergies like what we find, especially in human life on earth.
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goout
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Materialism is not matter, or actions, or relationships, or properties, or attributes.
Materialism is an ideology surrounding the considerations you are mentioning.
A set of beliefs and ideas put into practice and proposed as true.
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Vera_Ljuba
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Incorrect. And I already explained why.
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Vonsalza
Guest
Sorry bro. “Materialism” is the “-ism” of the material. “Material” pertains to matter.
From Oxford (oh how I do love Oxford):
Philosophy
The theory or belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
Goout, you’ve done your job. You can’t make a man admit the sky’s blue. You can only show everyone else that he’s a fool to deny it.
Have a beer and celebrate your victory.
From Oxford (oh how I do love Oxford):
Philosophy
The theory or belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
Goout, you’ve done your job. You can’t make a man admit the sky’s blue. You can only show everyone else that he’s a fool to deny it.
Have a beer and celebrate your victory.
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Vera_Ljuba
Guest
Generic dictionaries are not a good source for specific disciplines. And if anyone would assert that mathematics and geometry are “composed” of matter, they have another think coming.
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Vonsalza
Guest
:hypno:
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Mathematics are at the center of the laws of nature.
You still haven’t explained where those laws come from if they are not composed of matter.
:coffeeread:
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reggieM
Guest
Blind, unintelligent, unguided natural movements and effects - cannot create something like mathematics or geometry.
That’s why materialism needs something other than matter and natural laws.
But what, exactly, is that something other?
That’s why materialism needs something other than matter and natural laws.
But what, exactly, is that something other?
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Bradski
Guest
Quite true. Maths and geometry are man-made systems used as a method of describing blind, unintelligent, unguided natural movements and effects.
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goout
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Seriously?
This violates basic reason and common sense.
Math is not simply manufactured by man. Mathematics is descriptive of what is real. It is a language for sure, but it is not an arbitrary invention. Like spoken language, mathematics brings human beings into touch with truth and reason. It makes mystery more accessible, it opens the universe to discover-ability and reason-ability.
Your positions here as one who relies on human reason defy credulity.
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goout
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If you compare language to math:
1)human beings are aware of others. A person can look out and say" there is another person like me", and so we are drawn to each other. We have an innate desire to share ourselves with one another through communication. Denying the otherness of humanity leads to a warped sense of self and others, obviously.
Before language is the reality of living in community. Language is not an arbitrary invention, it develops out of the recognition of “other-ness” and the desire to reveal one’s self to another, and to share community with others. “Revelation”
Mathematics similarly…reveals underlying realities that are prior to human attempts to define and describe them.
1)human beings are aware of others. A person can look out and say" there is another person like me", and so we are drawn to each other. We have an innate desire to share ourselves with one another through communication. Denying the otherness of humanity leads to a warped sense of self and others, obviously.
Before language is the reality of living in community. Language is not an arbitrary invention, it develops out of the recognition of “other-ness” and the desire to reveal one’s self to another, and to share community with others. “Revelation”
Mathematics similarly…reveals underlying realities that are prior to human attempts to define and describe them.
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Bradski
Guest
How do you do the very simplest of maths such as counting and adding numbers? Use base 10 by any chance? Invented by the Egyptians.
Something a little more complicated like algebra? The Babylonians came up with that.
How about geometry? Ever hear of Euclid?
Calculus? The genius Newton designed that.
All mathematical methods of describing the world. All designed by man. Just like languages. Or maybe you think that algebra and calculus and French and Spanish were always ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered.
None of them are arbitrary, but all of them designed by man for a purpose.
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Vonsalza
Guest
Ah, I’ll look into it. I thought that particular field was Indian in origin.
Learn something new everyday…
I’m not rebutting this point per se, but I am reminded of a quote by Michelangelo where he was describing some sculpture. The quote was something along the lines of “I see it inside the marble block and I’m just freeing it”.
I’m not sure you could say that with perfect surety as it pertains to mathematics. No doubt human beings have developed it. But it is a language that describes things that humans obviously did not create - even if you don’t believe in God. Humanity didn’t create “apogee” and “perigee”. We just labeled them and mathematically described them. The idea that math is completely man-made would also suffer further if we ever discovered intelligent life “out there”. I would imagine their computers and space machines would rely on similar operators, if not similar numbers.
It’s a proxy for things we did not create as a species; albeit a darn good one.
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goout
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Ok, so you are backing off your previous assertion. (I think)
So then, you agree that math expresses and describes something other than itself, right?
Or is your “invention” merely that, without reference to anything else real?
Did math just materialize out of thin air without reference to anything unself-ish?
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Bradski
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I simply repeated what I’d previously posted.
Maths is obviously something ‘other than itself’. It describes the world we live in. That is, the real world. And I don’t see a need to put invention in scare quotes. Can you not say that Newton invented calculus?
Incidentally, there are those on this forum (morning Tony) who might disagree with one or more of your terms ‘blind, unintelligent and unguided’. Sounds a bit Darwinian to me.
True. Using two methods we designed for that purpose. Maths and language.
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