aa5874

When will your absudities end?? How in the world can BLIND BELIEF in the ADMITTED unknown be even considered Scientific and logical???

You have ZERO DATA to make any claims about a 'First Cause'??

Jaybees

It would have taken if I believed that "motives" is just another term for "mind"---which you now claim it is.

There's not much point in disussing anything with someone who changes meanings to suit himself.

Sheshbazzar

Perhaps because they think that it makes a bit more sense than to put faith in a claim that it is more scientific, and more logical that the universe came into existence through the agency of a two thousand year old Jewish zombie? :Cheeky:

spin

That didn't answer the question. You just labeled the view entailed in the question and relied on some notion of reality dictated by majority opinion. Reality is not particularly influenced by democratic processes. Would you like to try again or are you happy to hide from the question?

The most you can do is trust your experience, assuming you are the only person to have had the experience. Nash trusted his experience.

More assumptions about things you first assume. You were talking about the ability to do something (here, to create a universe in some way or manner that you cannot fathom, but dictated to you by your received beliefs). From this act you assume something about your hypothetical god's intelligence, which you have no reason to assume.

Because it seems to be the central pillar of religious belief: an ignorant view of the cosmos based merely on the phenomenal data processed by a primitive, necessarily unscientific, mind that has no other point of reference than him-/herself.

Your views show a tendency to the anthropocentric fallacy.

You misunderstand the notion. You make conclusions about inevitability in a mediated creation without considering the self-organization of the cosmos just happening to eventuate in this tiny part of it in the development of human beings.

Determinism is unable to deal with casual events, such as the fact that it just so happens that in an area of empty space there is 0.0000001% more matter in a particular area than another which leads to a slow inevitable clumping around that area. Worse though, your term "deterministic" is teleological which assumes guidance, not self-organization.

I'm sorry, how does that in any way contradict self-organization?

In an area of empty space there may be 0.0000001% more matter in a particular area than another. It only took about 5 million years for our ancestor common with the ancestor of chimpanzees to develop into the current dominant human species. You can track the human tooth development by the food opportunities during the period, human brain development through changes in the skull, female pelvic development through the increase in human skull size, all over very long periods of time for us. Self-organization. It happens in a context which limits the range of developments at any time. (Sexual reproduction causes about 30 genetic mutations naturally per individual every generation, which is the motor for the self-organization.) The brain has developed over a vast amount of time, developing long before the emergence of our hominid ancestors, slowly self-organizing through consistent social interaction with the physical world. The major self-organizing innovation has been cultural, allowing information to be passed on not through genetic means, but by communication, which in itself entails many steps in self-organization.

If you want to understand things, you'll get a clearer idea if you start by asking how quarks interact, rather than looking at things backwards. That will help you understand how protons and neutrons developed. Asking why so frequently leads one into crass blunders in ridiculous answers. You can ask "why is it so", which is really how it happens, but your "why" provides you with the unjustifiable step of creating a reasoner to explain the reasoning you want to insinuate. Before you do though, can you explain why green is green? Many "why" questions are futile in the poorly framed nature.

You're right. Asking why is your burden. You need a "why". Can you answer why an ebola virus exists? I can tell you basically how it came about, but the "why" question is pretty meaningless, isn't it? Asking why usually relates to imputing conscious reasoning. If the cosmos is self-organizing, it doesn't need a why, does it?

I am not an atheist and you are merely looking to feel not so lonely in your blundering with your deflection about what atheists willfully disregard.

From this you seem not to understand either science or logic. Science is happy to say that things are unknown. Logic has the limits imposed by its premises. Science does not deal with beliefs, but with data that can be received from the cosmos. Therefore, logically your belief cannot be "more scientific" than whatever it is you have in mind. That's like saying "green is faster than red". "Fast" is not a property of colors.

If it makes you feel better by believing such nonsense, I can't stop that. I can only point out that you are talking nonsense when you say such things.

Wouldn't it be better not to be so arrogant as to think that there are always easy explanations for the phenomenal world, be that a giant turtle belched the world into existence or Eve farted causing women to become second class humans or Ronald McDonald tempted humans with hamburgers so they became susceptible to viruses or whatever other fancy might strike you as an explanation? We only have one certain way that we learn about the world outside ourselves and that is through observing that world. There is just so much that we don't have access to so there is so much that we just don't know. It is better to admit ignorance and devise tests to help not be so ignorant than to give meaningless answers to things and stay just as ignorant.

You later added this:

At the moment the evidence is asymptotic: we get closer and closer to a possible beginning but have not reached evidence about the beginning itself. We don't know if the universe pulsates from the infinitesimal to some largest extent to be pulled back into the infinitesimal and so on. The notion of a first cause is untested, but can you think of how it can be tested?

And I have no problem in conceiving that there may have been a god or whatever that triggered the whole process. I've already conceded the possibility. It's just that we don't know--and that includes you--but you vainly insist on inserting a god into the formula when you have no evidence whatsoever for doing so. Why not insert the giant turtle? It makes just as much sense, doesn't it?

TedM

A recent post may be misconstrued as my saying that suffering for individuals is not as bad as it appears to others.

I want to state clearly that I know that suffering is real, and I am very disturbed by the suffering of anyone who has (seemingly) done nothing to deserve it. I don't understand it, and I have yet to hear a theological explanation of it that satisfies me.

TedM

Spin's original post was talking about motives. That's what prompted my 'mind of God' usage. That, along with the biblical verse that uses it in the same context. You simply were not aware of the background context. It wasn't your fault of course.

TedM

no it does not, but I would like one and don't think science will ever provide that answer. Does any serious scientist really think they can solve the First Cause question? If not, why are we looking to science for answers to the mysteries of existence?



Sure, but the atheist is not. I was comparing my view to that of an atheist. I agree I may have gone too far, and withdraw the statement.

I don't think so, because I don't think it makes sense for a turtle to create a universe, whereas a God whom we know nothing about could have.

outhouse

A purple unicorn we know nothing about could have


A bigfoot we know nothing about could have.


A santa claus we know nothing about could have

TedM

To the extent that those are just code words for the Creator, I agree. Thanks for sharing.

Sheshbazzar

And to think, all this time I'd thought that Christians believed and taught that zombie Jebus of Nazareth was their gawd and the creator of the universe.
You know, the old; 'All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. ....blah blah blah'.

It certainly would be nice if these Jebus freaks are finally getting around to fessing up that really know nothing about their imaginary creator of the universe zombie Jebus gawd.

The claim that a dead zombie Jew created the universe doesn't make any more sense than claiming that a dead turtle, chicken, or a centipede created the universe.