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Crocus
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Nothing at all, in so far as your acknowledged experience of the Almighty God. You have the best apologists, above, at your disposal. You are free to hear them, or not. My admiration to them all.
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Damian
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I’m always fine to hear people, but don’t expect what works for you/them to work on me as well. Each person has a different lived life and thus has different levels of reason and evidence that they would need, that they believe, would convince them to believe what you/they do. Just like how each jury member at a trial has different reasons for believing or not believing someone’s testimony or presented evidence about the case. All I can do is tell you where a presentation didn’t work for me and what I found fault with it and what I think I would need for moving forward. That way people that try to change other people’s minds don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
I believe what I am asking for as “evidence” has nothing to do with asking the deity to do anything moral or immoral. Its like asking someone to show you the watch they’ve been going on about all day. Its neither a moral or immoral request, just an additional level of evidence they need to believe your claims all day. So the deity is either choosing to not present that evidence, can not present that level of evidence, or doesn’t exist. Either way not my problem since there’s nothing I can do about it at this point it seems. Just show me the watch already.
I believe what I am asking for as “evidence” has nothing to do with asking the deity to do anything moral or immoral. Its like asking someone to show you the watch they’ve been going on about all day. Its neither a moral or immoral request, just an additional level of evidence they need to believe your claims all day. So the deity is either choosing to not present that evidence, can not present that level of evidence, or doesn’t exist. Either way not my problem since there’s nothing I can do about it at this point it seems. Just show me the watch already.
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HarryStotle
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Except if you read the story and think about it, Adam and Eve had full possession of the truth and full knowledge of objective reality, which is why they had free reign to name the animals – they knew intimately and completely what each was and therefore had the capacity to name them.
Where Eve fell apart is that she was suckered into believing there was more to know, but the only possible MORE to be “known” were falsehoods, the very first of which was that God was holding back and there was more to be known. The entire truth about everything (aka God) had been staring her in the face, but she opted not to believe the truth and moved into the realm of trading actual knowledge for pseudo-knowledge – knowledge of good (what is) AND evil (what is not but pretends to be.)
Her virtue wasn’t pursuing knowledge for knowledge sake, it was denial of truth, of knowledge, for the sake of the capacity to determine what is true for herself. Not to learn what the truth is, but to create and accept the “truth” she wanted to believe, thus trading objective reality for her willed subjectivity to function as reality.
Knowing for the sake of knowing is one thing, but looking past the truth in order to fabricate it for oneself is another thing entirely.
You are correct, though, this is a very “human” thing to do, IF we define as “human” the fallen state we find ourselves in where willfulness supersedes the reality of the truth.
We do the same thing as Eve, by the way, when we deny the objective truth of morality and opt to define and decide morality for ourselves. My morality as opposed to your morality.
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Damian
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We’ll have to agree to disagree here. I don’t take this from the textual reading at all. Naming an animal has nothing to do with objective truth and full knowledge at all. I can name my cat a blablablala for example, have it put in the dictionary as that, still has nothing to do at all with any link to morality or truth.
So not her fault. Just like how a parent gets their toddler to suck a lemon for the first time. Hilarious, but not the fault of the toddler for making that mistake.
Knowing falsehoods still has nothing to do with morality. Your actions about these falsehoods is what makes something moral or not. But knowledge about something is not moral or immoral, its just knowledge.
Yes, she was curious and wanted to actually know more about reality than what her deity was telling her about. So apparently the deity failed at understanding that people can be told everything but we still want to go through the experiment ourselves for that direct experiential knowledge. If I tell you a lemon is sour, do you know what sour actually is? If I tell you that lying is bad, we’d still want to play pranks on each other to experience lying in a safe expressive way. That is being human.
Its called having an imagination. You can still play pranks on each other and still behave morally as well.
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Damian
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Yes, designed sick and commanded to be well. An immoral action of any deity. Individuals can be held accountable to the person they wronged, but if it is your nature to wrong that person, its not your fault for being that way. That’s like saying its wrong to have cancer.
You can only have moral absolutes once you have been convinced of what the goal of the moral system should be. Once that is determined, then you can have absolute moral statements. Just like the idea of nutrition. Once you agree that, in reference to humans being healthy, nutrition is the goal. Now you can have absolute statements like eating fruit is good, drinking battery acid is bad, in reference to the goal of nutrition. We can have our tribal arguments over eating apples or oranges, but no one is arguing that drinking battery acid is good.
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HarryStotle
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That determination isn’t up to mere “textual reading.” If it were, then Joe Blow’s reading of Scripture would be as valid as that of the most brilliant Scripture scholar. Merely because you wish to put your spin on the narrative does not mean that spin was what the author(s) of Genesis intended.HarryStotle:
We’ll have to agree to disagree here. I don’t take this from the textual reading at all. Naming an animal has nothing to do with objective truth and full knowledge at all. I can name my cat a blablablala for example, have it put in the dictionary as that, still has nothing to do at all with any link to morality or truth.
Naming in ancient Hebrew and middle Eastern texts was reserved to those in position of author(ity). Authority, essentially was author’s rights over that which is named. This is why parents name their children.
In Genesis, God was/is the author of creation, but he delegated authority over the animals to Adam and Eve by having them name the animals. He wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t have the wherewithal to care for their well-being, i.e., knew fully what care of animals entailed.
That, however, is only a side point. God, in Judeo-Christian and classical theism is the Pure Act of Being Itself (Actus Purus). Being is the source of all truth, the truth in effect is the correspondence of a proposition to what is. Or as Aristotle stated, loosely translated, to say of a thing that is that it is is to tell the truth.
Adam and Eve in the Garden didn’t have a relationship with some superior being named God, they had a pristine relationship with Being Itself, the ground and source of all being. In classical theism truth, goodness and beauty are the great transcendentals. At the most basic ground, each of these are transposable with each other: truth just is goodness which just is beauty, because each reflect being – that which is. Adam and Eve had intimate knowledge of the complete truth because they were in a pristine relationship with Being Itself at the core of their own being.
To want to know anything other than that is to no longer want to know the truth – that which is, but to will to determine truth for oneself.
Your reading of Genesis just doesn’t hold up but, of course, you are entirely free to believe what you want as a descendent of Eve following her example regarding what “knowing” means.
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HarryStotle
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There are positive, although analogical descriptors that rational human beings, if they can rise to the level of rational, have to accept as “super-natural” in the sense of above the causal material order.
We all experience consciousness. We are the loci of our experiences, which puts each of us as subjects of conscious experience and self-awareness beyond the merely material or natural order.
We can, each of us, transcend the causal order, anticipate causal sequences, by rising above the current state of things and looking forward to what might be and why. We know that by originating this or that action, we can initiate new causal sequences and change what happens in the future. In that sense, we supersede the merely causal and transcend it.
It is not a stretch nor a merely negative descriptor to point at our own intellect, consciousness and will as positive attributes and propose that, since each of us transcend the causal order in these ways, that the causal order itself might be the effect of a Supreme Intellect, one that doesn’t merely construct ideas and imaginings, but whose ideas and imaginings are manifest in the physical, observable order we call nature or the cosmos.
This goes a long way to explaining why the universe is intellectually consistent, mathematically ordered, and why we intuitively expect that everything that occurs in the physical order is explainable and not merely brute fact. In fact, declaring that the universe, at some level, is merely inexplicable brute fact, is an intellectual cop-out since if it is inexplicable at ground, then we have no reason to think our explanations at any level are sound. Our entire enterprise of conceptualization becomes not only suspect, but meaningless.
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HarryStotle
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The problem here is that ultimately there is no certain way of distinguishing ideas about reality from reality itself. All we have are ideas about reality, so ideas of God are not unique in this respect.
The purportedly “certain” ideas of science, for example, are themselves merely ideas collected to together to build an intelligible narrative about reality based upon the regularities we see around us in the observable world.
The reason the narrative appears to hold is because physical reality, at least our conception of it is relatively simple. We have reduced it to a level our minds can manipulate and comprehend. Therefore, we can build a set of theories – conceptualizations or bodies of ideas – which appear to be corroborated by the regularities in nature.
Now if you merely assume that physical reality is all there is IN REALITY, then anything we might conceive of beyond that simple narrative seems to be mere speculation, but that might only be because our simple narrative (our current set of ideas) is shallow and only captures a very simple layer of facts about the cosmos.
So if your criteria for “falsification” is whether or not some proposition or other fits into the simple narrative we call naturalism or materialism, then you have succeeded in convincing yourself that your current set of ideas about reality is the defining feature of reality, turning your method (or at least your narrative based upon your method) into your metaphysics.
In effect, you are making your current fantasy about reality – on that grounds that that fantasy is compelling – into your reality. Thus you are suffering from your own critique: “determining fantasy from reality can’t be distinguished,” apparently, from your own “process of making claims about reality,” except by the fact that you have talked yourself into believing your materialistic fantasy is reality.
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Damian
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Yes there is, it’s called the scientific process. Its the current best philosophical process for determining if our internal model of reality actually matches reality. We can verify this by having rockets go to the moon, medicines cure disease. As Richard Dawkins says, “…because it works…” Science isn’t a list of facts, its a philosophical process to create a model of how reality works based on those discovered facts about reality.
That’s where we start, then we see if reality matches our idea. Don’t know what you’re trying to argue here. This seems argumentative just to have the last word but not actually discussing anything of relevance or moving the topic forward.
Yes our scientific models are all models of reality, but they actually have predictive qualities about them. They predict the results of what reality will return based on our (name removed by moderator)ut to reality, like a rocket thrust, to predict that the rocket will actually rise. This is really starting to sound like you just want a rebuttal just to argue here. Trying to obfuscate where you don’t need to. Such as if I were to hit my hand with a hammer by accident and I tell you I’m in pain, you’d be responding with, “But you just have an idea of pain. Is your internal model of “pain” actually true?” I’d slap you in the head and see if you’re internal model of pain matches the pain on the side of your head. Stop this nonsense.
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Damian
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Yes you are restricted to understanding reality based on the instruments you have to use to look at reality, that includes our minds. So what? Regardless of some other truth out there that we have not experienced, we are restricted to our current justified truths of our models of reality as they are. Once we have a better tool to update our models, that is when we will update our model. So are you arguing that since we can have an infinite amount of half steps between the 1in marker on the ruler and the 2in marker, that we can’t actually have a model of reality based on a measurement of 1 inch? You can create models of reality with rounding errors because the rounding errors are soo insignificant for the application, that it doesn’t matter. That’s the difference between applied science and mathematicians. Mathematicians will argue over the accuracy of pi for the equation, while a scientist will use pi to the value they need to make a model of reality actually work. It doesn’t matter that the scientist’s model rounded pi to the 5th decimal place because reality didn’t care based on the results of the experiment. Reality will let you know how accurate you need to be in your scientific model, not your logic.
No I am not, I am arguing that justified belief about reality is what reality demonstrates to be there. Reality has to demonstrate its truths to us in a way we can understand and detect. Just like there could be a meteor coming to destroy our planet, but we’re not justified in believing that is actually the case because we have yet to discover that meteor in reality yet. We can imagine what it would be like to be hit by a meteor and make preparations for that, but only because we first know that meteors actually exist and that they actually have the ability to strike planets.
Yes if all you have to measure the ocean is a 5ml beaker, tough. That’s the best instrument you have until you have something better. You can imagine all you want for better instruments to find more information about the oceans, like microscopes, sonar, etc. But until you actually have those instruments, you are stuck with using the beaker to discover truths about the ocean.
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Damian
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Once we can actually have a way to discover and study the supernatural, it will no longer be called the “supernatural” but just a new extension of the natural or reality. Right now we can’t do this, so the idea of the supernatural is stuck in the same are of the library with other imagined stories with magical realms of existence because you can not demonstrate that your imagined idea is actually part of reality at all, so far.
What fantasy? I side with the people who have scientific models of discovered reality that actually matches reality. The religious have a model of reality that matches the internal logic of their imagined reality but can not actually demonstrate that model matches actual experienced reality at all. Who’s got the “fantasy” here?
Explain how?
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Damian
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My fantasy about reality actually comes true though. Medicine works, rockets work. The religious’ claim about reality with deities, demigods, monsters, demons, etc. has yet to be demonstrated in reality ever since the first day these ideas were thought of. That’s a few 100 thousand years at least. Still waiting on one piece of evidence to vindicate these claims still it seems. Who’s got the bigger fantasy?
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Damian
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Yes we use “super-natural” in our vocabulary, but its still a nebulous term to me until you tell me what you mean by it, not what it isn’t, but what it actually is in positive descriptors. All you’re doing here is saying, Well if you don’t know, then I’m not going to tell you what I mean by the Supernatural. Well sorry, but that’s your term. You tell me what you mean by it. Might as well just say, Never-Never Land
Yes just like we all experience “Hunger” and “Digestion” of the stomach. Its an emergent property and function of the stomach just like Consciousness is an emergent property of the mind.
Disagree unless you explain how other than asserting it. For example, replace “conscious” in your statement with “digestion” or “hunger” and I can make the same statement.
How so? Can you choose to believe that Greenland doesn’t exist? Can you choose to not “want” to eat a cookie? You can choose to not eat a cookie due to some other “want” that is more powerful than the “want” to eat a cookie, like wanting to not spoil your appetite for dinner with your spouse so you can have an engaging dinner together, so that you can maintain your health, etc. But you can not choose to not have a desire to want a cookie. Just you have desires that supersede your desire to want a cookie and then you become conscious of those higher desires that your brain reveals to your consciousness for you to make a decision about things that don’t conflict with your filtered conscious desire. Like deciding to wait for dinner, to decide to prepare dinner ahead of your spouse coming home, etc. But are you going to spontaneously decide to drink battery acid? No, no you are not. You have limited free will because your biological design for a desire for life, socialization, propagation, etc. filtered out the choice for you to even consider drinking battery acid. Just like my nutrition example, you’ll be able to choose to eat a pear or an apple, but you’ll never choose to drink battery acid given that you’re not so depressed that you’ve become suicidal.
Example of this, there was a study done where neuroscientists, like Dr. John-Dylan Haynes, studied brain functions in an magnetoencephalography device while asking people Yes or No questions. The scientists could determine the brain pattern for the emerging decision of Yes or No before the person was conscious of it
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Damian
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Without the consistency of the laws of the universe, there would be no final state of us. We are the result of a series of ordered events, directed through the physical law constants of the universe that resulted with us. We’re not different as a result in this universe than a cone of sand is at the bottom of an hour glass. We have no idea if these laws of the universe are universal to every universe out there or how the laws came about, but to suggest your theory is the case is just dishonest. Yes it is comforting to some people to have an answer to an unanswered question, but honest people actually acknowledge what they don’t know and then help people be directed towards solving what we don’t know. I use “know” as “justified belief about reality” that has been reflected by reality when we investigated reality about our imagined idea about it. I know my pencil will fall just as I know there is no justified reason to conclude that the supernatural is actually part of reality. There’s justified arguments to go look for it, but not justified results to conclude it.
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Damian
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Who’s spinning here. I’m concluding based on what the texts actually say. You’re the one arguing that the texts don’t actually mean what they say but are some other poetic version of what it actually says.
If this is what you’re going to do when I point out something absurd about the biblical texts, then there’s no point in us arguing the text. You can geek out about your favorite book and what it means to have a soul with all the rest of your friends that love that book series. Don’t bother me with it then and don’t expect me to take it seriously at all because you’re just coming across as wanting to paint the arrow around the bulls eye.
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HarryStotle
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Well, no, actually.
Our “models of reality” are only models of the physical observable world. You would have to make a huge unfounded inference to claim that the physical world just is all of reality.
One big problem with this leap of faith is that the observable physical world doesn’t explain its own existence. Since all space-time, energy and matter came into existence some 14 billion years ago any explanation for STEM that uses space-time, energy and mass to explain their existence is basically arguing in a vacuous circle.
The “models” you tout are not explanatory, they are descriptive and can effectively predict what will come about if this or that occurs because they rely on the mathematical regularity of the physical world. That, however, is far from explaining why the physical world is mathematically regulated, nor how it came to exist in the first place, nor what is required to sustain it in existence. Some try to explain away the WHY question altogether or dismiss it as unnecessary, but that hardly addresses it properly.
Really?
Do you have physical proof of this?
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Damian
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Yes, Consciousness is the descriptor we use for our brain functions of analyzing (name removed by moderator)ut from the experienced reality. We have physical proof of functioning brain processes.
Just like “running” is the descriptor of someone moving fast or “digestion” is the word we use for the process of the stomach performing its function with food.
There’s no “consciousness” molecule just like there’s no “running” molecule or “digestion” molecule as religious arguments believe there is. Its a descriptive term for a brain process.
Just like “running” is the descriptor of someone moving fast or “digestion” is the word we use for the process of the stomach performing its function with food.
There’s no “consciousness” molecule just like there’s no “running” molecule or “digestion” molecule as religious arguments believe there is. Its a descriptive term for a brain process.
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Damian
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Okay you seem to have missed a huge part of my position that I thought was fairly presented before. Guess you missed it or are just being argumentative for the sake to be argumentative. I am not talking about knowing all of reality to have justified belief, only that we can only have justified believe/conclusions about reality that we have actually interacted with. What reality demonstrates to be the case is the reality that we have actually interacted with. I don’t know how you missed that. It was literally the 5th sentence of my opening statement of this thread.
I even gave an example indicating that with my Einstein example of Gravity Waves.
I have only ever argued that the theistic model of reality is a model of reality that reality has not demonstrated to be correct to believe is the case. We do this with every other model we think of for ideas about reality. That’s how we have justified belief about our medications for example. We come up with an idea of a type of medicine, based on what we know about reality, and then test it in reality to see if that is actually the case. If you can’t test it, then its not a justified conclusion to hold that your idea of medicine will actually be the case in reality. Same exact thing with the idea of the supernatural and demons and ghosts and deities.
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Damian
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Why is this a problem? All you’re doing is stating, “The evidence we have doesn’t explain X.” I agree. I challenge you where I made a statement where this wasn’t the case. So the honest answer is, “We don’t know how X happened.”, not to provide the religious explanation because they can’t verify if that is the case or not. This would be a problem if I presented a reason for what the process was for kicking off our universe, but I haven’t have I? I challenge you to find one instant in this thread where I presented that.
Since I know I didn’t, I’d like everyone here to notice what this person is doing. Creating a problem where there wasn’t one and then trying to gain a point by presenting a solution to an argument we’ve never actually had yet.
Sorry that you don’t like having unanswered questions. But it’s just Thanos, thought you knew that. Its not the supernatural, its Thanos. It answers all these problems just fine if I use the religious process of having justified belief claims about reality. Internally logically consistent with no way to verify it against reality at all.
“Why” is to imply there could of been a “why not” which implies a “choice” which is to smuggle in the idea that a mind made a decision to do X instead of Y. Why something natural happened without agency is like asking “what does yellow smell like?”. Its not a correct question to ask. The proper way to present questions about naturally occurring processes in reality is, How, not Why.
“How did the universe start?” does not have agency of a mind smuggled into the question the same way “Why did the universe start?”
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