universatile

Greetings all.
I read the first few posts and shall read the rest, but I wish to reply first in order to preserve the thoughts regarding this subject while they are fresh in my head. (for all I know someone already said what I am about to write and i have yet to read it, I apologize if this is the case)

Typhon-in your first post you reffered to what is percievable. i feel that this argument is essentially one of language. What we as humans may percieve and what we can succesfully describe using words are different in my opinion. Language falls short as a method of expressing what is most true on many levels, due to the boundaries which it sets for us in thought and communication.
In my experience there are many things i percieve but cannot describe, and this is why I am a mystic. Mystics speak so oft of innfefability because they too experience this.
Furthermore, the universe is so vast that no matter how much "knowlege" we achieve we will never achive all the knowlege there is, we will never be able to categorize and analyze everything in temporal and physical existance.

Science fails in that it complicates matters as Mr mathews said, when essentially the cosmos is not complicated, it is not seperable into neat little categories, it is a unified whole, seamlessly interconnected.

All these scientists stressing out about what goes where and when, while children live in an enchanted world and live life to its fullest. Now, tell me, who is wiser? The adults who are prudish and conditioned to think within limited bounds, or the children who embrace the mysteries of a world that they do not fully know nor waste their energy seeking to?

Also i wish people would stop using the words mysticism and cult and superstition as if they were synonimous. I feel that just because mysticism is so prevailent in religion does not mean that they are religion. In fact I feel that because mysticism is present in so many religions that seem to isolate themselves and lay claim to being "the only way" that it is a seperate way of thinking from religion. Personally I am undecided as to whether there is a god or creator, but I am a mystic and will always be.

just because someone is a mystic does not mean that they cannot be in science, as Mr Mathews said, many scientists affirm the mystery. This does not keep our bright minds from inventing and creating. It is the scientists that affirm the mysterious in fact that will always go on to be most succesfull, not the ones that limit their scope. Affirming the mystery allows for greater creative freedom, working within a boundless cosmos produces farther reaching results, whereas the unstated supposed fact that is so faultily embraced by many scientists is that humans are achieving knowlege which will one day be completed, as if the universe and its processions are finite.

I would like to thank you all for the most stimulating discussions I have discovered on the web thus far.
Gabriel

[ July 14, 2002: Message edited by: universatile ]

[ July 14, 2002: Message edited by: universatile ]</p>

Bracer

Uh, ‘scuse me here DM… Challenge! Isn’t this kinda stating the obvious?

Even in the absence of a god -- in fact, especially in the absence of a god -- this would be true. Duh.

The strange thing is, why would an Omnimax God allow such a thing to happen “In His (or Her) name”?

Use the words “ineffable”, “mysterious”, or any synonymous term thereof in your answer -- or simply answer a question with another question -- and you lose two points.

Ahem. Why you felt the need to respond to lpetrich twice, I have no idea. I don’t pretend to read minds.

But…

Your first reply is little more than a continuation of your above thought. In other words, humans are all imperfect and nasty and bad, yet somehow the Omnimax God (while dutifully recording the fall of every sparrow) not only created them this way, but allows such things to go on in His (or, again, Her) One Off and All Important Perfect Creation.

The second is a simple dodge -- “I don’t know, so go answer my supervisor…” And, as with many such middle managers, the idea that your supervisor isn’t terribly accessible seems rather inconvenient.

Again, using the the words “ineffable” or “mysterious” to respond, or answering a question with a question are unacceptable and lose you two points.

Funny. But this is in fact an interesting point to ponder. In 1947 a few bits of balsa wood and mylar fell out of the sky near Roswell, New Mexico. Add in one overly excitable Air Corps Captain (sorry, but the analogy to Saint Paul is a bit irresistible) and less than half a century later half the people in the U.S. seem to think there are alien bodies hidden in Area 51. If such a silly myth can spread in even modern times, how much easier must it have been for myths to spread 2000 years ago? Just a thought.

Oh. Right.”Humans bad. God good. Therefore, God exists” Y’know, if you keep saying it over and over again…

Nah, still doesn’t make sense.

Actually -- and I’ll re-phrase lpetrich’s above question -- how, exactly (and I mean EXACTLY), do you determine which parts of the Bible are “real” and which are meant “only in a sense”?

[ July 15, 2002: Message edited by: Bracer ]</p>

Answerer

Sorry David, but this is a serious generalizing statement, not all humans behaved the same way you had stated, what you had said, occurred only to some humans and you can't accept a few humans to represent all mankind right?
Furthermore, your examples only show how egoistic humans are rather than how evil they are. Humans doesn't = demon.

Theli

David...

How do you know?
know... know... not too mysterious.
I thought god was just a big mystery, and all attributes he was given was allegorical.
Does this mean that "omniscience" is false, or do you actually know this?

Oh, god's existence is known?
Is that trustworthy?
But we know nothing else about him, so there is really nothing we can call "god".

God everything we are not...

More fairydust.
Are the atoms that my body consists of "god" or is it "me"?
Is the chair I'm sitting on, "god"?
This chair doesn't seem too mysterious to me.
Is "we" you and me, is it humanity, is it life, is it everything on this planet.

So, you do lie?
If I regard myself as being a 12ton giant, do I not lie?

Again, here's that "know god exists". You assume god exists.
And this assumption is based on air.

How do you know?
Can you gaze into the future and check out everything science knows, and can know?

Probable outcomes...
All facts and all knowledge is built on probablility. Only liars claim to know things that are unfounded.

Give me an example. And something relevant.

Philosophy is important, I agree with that.
Theology I'm not that certain of though.

And David sprinkles some fairydust on my questions.
I thought knowledge informed us.

1. When has this happened?
2. If don't save our lives, how can we live?
3. Do we die (on the inside) from treating diceaces?
4. What do you reffer to as "living"?

I didn't say that. But those interesting things does make our lives alot easier. We don't have to die at the age 24, and we don't have to walk for miles to get to the job and we don't have to starve to death.
Take for instance a supermarket. And now imagine what that supermarket would look like if we had no scientific knowledge at all. There wouldn't be any. For you to get food, you would have to run out in the forrest with a sharpen stick and hunt, like some caveman.

1st off, who are you to tell people what is most important.
The second point is good, I leave that for now.

If we needed the first to fulfill the second we would not deserve the second from the people who loves us.
Do we really need to be forced to love people?
I love people?
Am I forced by god?
And how does the first obligate the second?

I have a doubt.


Religion is a failure made by man. Better?

WJ

David!

Awsome posts! I agree with almost every argument you posit. There are so many they are too numerous to post, but just a couple worth repeating;

"David: Can you explain God? You can't even explain your own existence, nor can you justify your own existence. Under these circumstances the claim to explain God seems like an empty boast."

This statement is absolute and true!

Also your point about 'humbling oneself' is well taken. What follows is a 'faith' in science and/or faith in Deity.

Your opponents don't get it. They're not listing. If I say that 'every event has a cause', is it absolute and true? The answer is that it is true, but we don't know if it is absolute in the context of exnihilo, nor do we know if it applies to all existing things. And that goes back to the various cosmological arguments and existential arguments about existence being unknown, so on and so forth. And it certainly goes back to placing a faith in science itself and/or Deity (as that former statement is a metaphysical synthetic apriori).

You must have read paul davies', 'The Mind of God'!

Anyway, we *can* have it both ways, however, at some point, Pascal's wager rears its ugly head. Why? Because as you mention, the great mystery will *never* be uncovered thru human reason alone. Like you, I believe mystery exists for good reason.

Point I'll make here is, if asked to take a position on some thing that is, at any time unknown or mysterious, what kind of 'concept' does one articulate in response to it that adequately captures its existence?

I challenge any atheist to respond to it, as the choice in words (and justification thereof)would be most interesting... .

Walrus

PS, David Mathews:

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

davidm

David Matthews,

Earlier in this thread you said: "I love science."

Later you said: "Humans have created this monster called science and it is threatening to drive us to extinction."

So, you love a monster? Care to explain?

Or, do you really not love it?

I can see why you would hate it. It has eaten away huge portions of your "ineffable mystery," and, contrary to your unsupported speculation, there is no reason to think that the scientific method will hit a wall anytime in the foreseeable future. By the way, scientists have never claimed to be omniscient. That is what you have claimed for your God.

Religion depends on appeals to ignorance and fear. The ignorance is the lack of knowledge about the universe. People were ignorant for thousands of years, until science came along. Science has pried loose religion's choke hold on humanity's collective neck.

The appeal to fear is implicit in some of your posts. While you yourself may be a decent and sincere person, you have alluded to the dread that some may feel in meeting their God. And you have pointed out that when we die, we will be forgotten; that when humanity becomes extinct, its efforts will have been to no purpose. These are appeals to fear, to existential dread. To cure this fear, religion offers the quack remedy of God. But just because we are mortal, it does not follow that God and an afterlife exist. You have yet to product a scintialla of evidence for your God and his realm.

As time goes by more people will reject a "cure" that is worse than the disease. In fact, there is no disease. The proper response to the inevitability that we will die and cease to be is: "So what?"

sandlewood

I haven’t had, and don’t have, time to respond to every point. So let me save time and get right to the crux of the argument as I understand it from your posts.

One premise is that scientific methods have or will hit a “wall” and will bear no more fruit at some point. There is no support for this claim. The quotes you’ve are merely people remarking on how vast and complex they think the Universe is and the emotional response they get when thinking about it. None of them suggest that the scientific method will stop providing answers to the nature of the Universe.

You need to be clear about what questions you expect the scientific method to help you answer. It answers questions about the reality of the Universe. It does not answer questions about morality or justice. These subjects are addressed by philosophy and I don’t know that there are any “answers” to them. We need to decide them for ourselves.

If the scientific method is not the best way to gain knowledge about the nature of the Universe, you need to provide some other method and show how it is a more reliable way to gain knowledge. Religion has not been shown to be a reliable way to gain knowledge about the Universe. It only makes unsupported assertions. It doesn’t tell us the details of how the sun works; it didn’t tell us about the Big Bang, or how to make useful drugs out of plants. It is not going to tell us what the next smallest nuclear particle is.


Your definition of the “ineffable mystery” is vague and wishy-washy. In one place you say it is the cryptic question “why?” which means both “what is the purpose of everything?” and “what is the cause of everything?” which are two different questions. In another place you give a quote by Fontenelle that suggests the ineffable mystery is an inability to find ones own identity. You attempt to claim that the scientific method cannot answer this question, but you cannot even define what the question is. (This is why I thought the reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide was so appropriate since, after they had the answer, they had to build a bigger computer to figure out what the question was).
Is that all? Well then I think there nothing more to debate. I think we already are humble when we contemplate how much there is yet to learn (which is not “a mystery”). The reason we don’t believe a god exists is not because we think we know everything. It’s because there has yet been no evidence of a god.
Yes. It may not. In assuming that is does, we also assume that something had a purpose for it. That means you presuppose that it was created by a being with a mind similar to ours.
Yes, perhaps. I understand that that is a very unpalatable thought for a lot of people. But I’m not saying that an individual person’s life has no purpose or meaning. We’re talking about the species as a whole. If the species has a purpose, then it means something created the species for a purpose. And the evidence does not support that that is the case.
If I walk outside, look down and see a stone on the ground, I might ask “why” is that stone there and not over there instead. In this case, I’m probably talking about the cause and not the purpose. The cause probably has something to do earth moving around and Newtonian physics. But there is no purpose for the stone being there and not somewhere else. So I don’t think the questions of cause and purpose are the same, and I don’t think the question of purpose is always applicable. If you think it is, I might ask you why God exists. What’s the purpose?
I agree; nothing is obligated to make sense to us. The Universe is what it is. It is our job to conform our minds to what the Universe actually is if we are going to survive in it. You have already mentioned how some aspects of quantum mechanics don’t make sense. Shouldn’t this be evidence that there is no purpose?
Your claim was that science will hit a brick wall. Isn’t it
more unwarranted to make such a claim when the available evidence indicates just the opposite? There is no need to make a claim that we can answer all questions. All that is claimed is that the scientific method seems to be the best way we have of acquiring reliable knowledge.

They certainly are not. Not when they are claims about reality and the nature of the Universe. You have offered no reliable way to differentiate between fact and fiction.

Religion also attempts to answer questions that can also be answered by scientific methods. That is, it makes claims about the nature of the Universe. Religion has not been shown to be a reliable source of knowledge. It is a collection of unsupported assertions.

I think religion is obligated to justify its existence. Why shouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that be arrogant?

Religion and science are not equally responsible for evils in the world. Science and technology are merely tools for causing harm. Religion is justification for it.

emphryio

Typhon, I rather envy your writing style.

sandlewood

With over 500 posts, I’m surprised you would still mix up the meanings of the word “faith”. In fact, it appears you even knew you were committing an equivocation fallacy because you put the word “faith” in single quotes when applying it to science.

Theli

WJ...

What is there to get?