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Originally written by Jumpin' Sarcasmon:

Tony...

The lecture is over. The podium has been removed. The keynote speaker already flew home. The next performance is Cats.

Why are you still ... doing this?

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Originally written by Stillness:

[b]

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

"Beyond time"(not "above time") is a typical 'transcendence-rationalization' of many theists and such for trying to explain away the apparent paradox be of 'omniscience' and 'free will' and such. When I point out that an omniscient being himself could not have free will(and hence neither can anyone else which does away with the rationalization that HUMANS are to blame for "evil" which is the typical rationalization offered in answer to The Riddle of Epicurus/problem of evil), they posit that he is "beyond time" and that this somehow means he COULD simultaneously know the future and make decisions.

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And this is why I’m saying you’re projecting opinions you’ve heard elsewhere here. God doesn’t know every single detail of the future.

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I do not deny the existence of things by virtue of me not understanding them. I logically rule out things which are NOT UNDERSTANDABLE(period). BIG difference.[/b]

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Is “logically rule out” = “deny the existence of”? This is what I mean by having a problem with not understanding things. If you say something is unreasonable so you can’t accept it, I can understand. If you say because you don’t understand a thing it doesn’t exist, you are unreasonable.

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I think that is the major qualm that I and the others are having with you. It may be just be lack of clear communication or we’re missing your point.

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If humans were a blind species, would color exist?

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If you are going to assert something that is nonsensical to the human, rational mind then you are going to have to back this up.

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Yes, but what have I asserted nonsensically?! Unless you qualify questioning your assertion as irrational assertion, I’ve done no such thing.

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p1. In defining "existence", we must be able to differentiate "existent" things from "imaginary" things. To not do so leads to inability to communicate or establish any existential truth or understanding of reality.

p2.The means by which we differentiate existential things from imaginary things is by sense contents primarily and logic(including linear sequential constraint…

p3. "Transcendent" and "supernatural" are defined as being "beyond observation-capability" and/or "beyond logic/rationality/linear constraint/etc".

C1 - Ergo, "transcendent things/supernatural things do not "exist" except as imaginary entities and concepts.

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p1. OK.

p2. OK, but ones logic and sense can be limited by lack of knowledge, experience, or ability. At the risk of beating a dead horse, it may seem nonsensical to some that 299,999m/s added to 299,999m/s gives us 300,000m/s, but based on current understanding it can.

p3. And this is why I said you define things supernatural out of existence.

Find the flaw: I hereby call all fruit “apples.” Therefore any fruit that is not an apple does not exist.

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Is it illogical to say there could be entities with a nature very different from our own?

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If not why? If so, is it possible we cannot fully grasp this nature? If not, do you believe that baboons know the nature of bacteria? Do bacteria not exist for baboons?

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C1. Does not follow logically.

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Yes, there IS a fallacy(or three) you committed above and you add another one here. You are citing a SUBJECTIVE text(the Bible) as if it were some OBJECTIVE source. The Bible, as all holy scriptures, is interpreted and everyone has their own interpretations. NO where does it explicitly say "Use reason" or anything like that. That does not stop you from interpreting it to say such but this is due to psychological quirks such as pattern recognition behavior in humanity.

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I say that is too broad of a statement. To support my position I cite a religions textbook viewed as the foundation for Christianity.

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Proverbs 14:15 Anyone inexperienced puts faith in every word, but the shrewd one considers his steps.

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Acts 17:2 So according to Paul’s custom he went inside to them, and for three Sabbaths he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving by references…

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Romans 12:1 Consequently I entreat YOU by the compassions of God, brothers, to present YOUR bodies a sacrifice living, holy, acceptable to God, a sacred service with YOUR power of reason.

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One cannot have Biblical faith without reason.

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Reading the Bible is a leading cause of atheism amongst critical atheists for example. The Bible simply cannot be justified as reasonable.

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Reading the Bible does not guarantee understanding it. Disbelief is not evidence that something doesn't exist. Some people read the Bible and are convinced it has all the answers and is what it claims to be. It is perfectly reasonable to them. What conclusion would you draw from that? [/qb]

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It is blatantly silly and bears all the earmarks of man-made doctrine. it makes perfect sense when we assume that it was written by nomadic sheep-herders of 2,000+ years ago(what with it's morality fables of children being slain for teasing bald men, tower of babel etc.) but makes no sense at all if we assume an omni-max deity inspired/wrote the thing.

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But it was not just written by shepherds, that’s a major fallacy and it that betrays the claim that one has read the Bible critically.

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If you had you would know that the penmen of the Bible included military generals,

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kings, high ranking imperial officials, lawyers, physicians, priests, judges, and tax collectors.

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What do you see in the Bible that conveys it is man-made?

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In all fairness we should probably take this to another thread. I have a suspicion it may get closed by the powers that be, but we could give it a go.

http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=004455#0000 00[/QB]

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Originally written by Maimonides:

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Originally posted by SkeleTony:
Time and such exist as useful concepts which we employ to measure the passage of events. Sequence is simply the way things have to be for a s4ensible existence(i.e. an existence where things are not both 'A' and 'Not A' simultaneously).
Time and such do not "exist" in the way that you or I or a planet "exists".

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Your opinion on this matter is not widely held by working theoretical physicists.

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The idea that "time has a beginning" still does not make sense though because the very act of the "beginning"(the "bang" or what have you) would itself require sequential linear time to accomplish.

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It would not.

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This is another appeal to ignorance fallacy. You ARE presenting a logical contradiction and justifying it by an appeal to some imagined lack of understanding we have about time.

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It is not. He is not. You are not "we"; SoT is not the one with a lack of understanding of time.

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Why does a beginning entail a moment before the beginning?

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Because that is what "beginning" means. Can you have a "beginning" to a race if the cars have all been driving eternally in circles in infinite regress?! Infinite regress, by definition negates a "beginning".

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An infinite regress is not the only alternative to a beginning with a moment before it.

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If time has "a beginning" then how can this be in the absence of sequence that comes with the existence of time(or more accurately the existence of non-static material objects for which events can transpire). In other words how was the "balloon" initially 'inflated' with no moment in which such could occur?

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It does not appear to have occurred to you that since the "balloon" was spacetime, the "balloon" was the moment in which its own inflation occurred.

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The fact that you do not understand how time can expand is not anything more than a demonstration of your lack of understanding of quantum mechanics.

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"Beginning" DOES imply a preceding moment where the event(of said "beginning") had not yet occurred or the phenomenon did not yet exist. I explained why this was in a preceding post.

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It does not. You did not.[/QB]

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Originally written by Kelandon:

There is nothing in the term "beginning" that implies that anything preceded it.

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Originally written by Kelandon:

There is nothing in the term "beginning" that implies that anything preceded it.

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Originally written by Kelandon:

[quote=Synergy]
[qb]Who is SkeleTony, anyway and what planet is it from?

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Energies may be invisible, but they follow principles to do what they do. If there are energies harnessed by a "spiritually-focused" person to create an effect upon the material, is it supernatural, or merely a natural law of energies in operation which we don't understand yet?

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The fact that some energies seem to be able to travel at the speed of light/speed of thought around the world, as in the curious, sometimes psychic link of twins, for instance, does not make it unscientifice or magical. I don't see any ultimate division between the "spiritual" and the scientifiic. There are energetically-based principles of connectedness in the universe which I don't think we grasp yet, and I believe they can appear to supersede time and space in the conventional sense.

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Uh, "energetically-based principles of connectedness in the universe"? I'm reminded of the EPR paradox, but that has nothing to do with energy (more with transfer of information).

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

If the universe had a "birth"(and i agree that this one DID) then this entails a preceding moment in which the universe did not exist, followed by the "bang" and so on...
Hence linear temporal sequence has ALWAYS existed.

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Eh, one of the ways of making sense of this is to think that time actually looks more like a radius than like an axis in Cartesian coordinates. If you're on the surface of a balloon and someone is blowing air in, as time passes, the radius of the balloon increases and the surface expands. The radius can be measured in units of time, and in the universe, the radius is time.

If the balloon is sufficiently big, the surface looks 2-D, even though the balloon itself is a 3-D object. The universe is doing something similar, except the universe is big enough that it looks at a given point in time 3-D, even though it is actually 4-D. And just as with the balloon, time is a radius, and the Big Bang happens at r=0.

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What was before the Big Bang? Well, the universe before the Big Bang would be a sphere with negative radius. No such thing exists. Stephen Hawking's line is that asking what was before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole, and my rendition of that is that it's like asking what a negative-radius sphere looks like.

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

Absence of evidence is some of the strongest evidence of absence we can possibly have! The above makes for a cute slogan but it is not logically sound. You also have to keep in mind the difference between ordinary claims and extraordinary claims. Not having positive evidence that my aunt works for NASA is NOT evidence that she does not. That would be true. But not having evidence that my aunt is a vampiric telepath from dimension 'x934' IS evidence that she is not.

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Uh, no. You have to make some sort of appeal to a form of Occam's Razor, here, or you're stabbing blindly in the dark.

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

[quote=SkeleTony]
[qb]
[M]y own view ... is that time does not even exist and therefore CANNOT be affected, tangibly.

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Time does not exist, but yet somehow it does, and possesses certain necessary properties? It may well be that you have a coherent theory of time that is hard to explain, but I'm afraid this is word salad to me right now.

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If the universe had a "birth" ... then this entails a preceding moment in which the universe did not exist, followed by the "bang" and so on...

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Why does a beginning entail a moment before the beginning?

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I agree that most moments are preceded by other moments, but the Big Bang is a unique case. I simply don't see why every moment must necessarily have a predecessor.

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The sphere model I described is a perfectly clear explanation of how time can have a beginning; it is not meaningless word salad.

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No logical contradictions are involved; only conflicts with your intuitions about time.

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But many people's intuition is that a roadrunner who runs off a cliff will travel horizontally for a while, then fall straight down.

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If you're not prepared to let a concord between extensive data and clear theoretical explanations overrule your intuition, then your rationality differs from that of natural science.

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Originally written by Stillness:

[quote=SkeleTony]

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Originally written by Stillness:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:
[b]
What does it mean, for example, for a God to "create the universe" if there was not a preceding moment where the universe did NOT exist

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It’s not the preceding moment, but the preceding eternity that gets us.

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Very "Sphynx-like"(See Mystery men) but does not answer the question.

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If a being has no beginning and no end and can accurately foresee and control events as he sees fit does that mean he is “above time?”

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It seems to me that you have a problem understanding not understanding. You want to define everything as things you can understand or are aware of and anything you can’t understand as nonexistent.

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As has been pointed out, that is not sound logic.

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You want to place the ball in my court as if I was the one that made the matter of fact statement about what is and is not possible.

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Again, I did not. I questioned you about your statement as I thought you had some novel logic that would preclude a spiritual realm and was curious. So here’s an exercise that the gang here forced me to do when my logic was unclear. It will expose soundness or lack thereof. It helped me to be surer of my position and so I am forever grateful. DELINEATE YOUR LOGIC.

1. Only things I can comprehend exist.
2. I cannot comprehend supernatural entities.
3. Supernatural entities do not exist.

That is what you seem to be saying. Fix it if it is not representative of your position.

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A bald assertion and hinting at a No true Scotsman fallacy here. Reason MAY be a part of SOME Christian faiths(depending on how one is defining these terms)....

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I can somewhat agree with your latter statement though. Some religions discourage logical examination of doctrine. Some is different from all though, which is what you seemed to be implying.

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Yes Drew, this thread has been hijacked.[/QB]

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Originally written by Stillness:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

What does it mean, for example, for a God to "create the universe" if there was not a preceding moment where the universe did NOT exist[/qb]

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It’s not the preceding moment, but the preceding eternity that gets us.

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We’re accustomed to things having a start. It’s difficult to imagine something that doesn’t.

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I’m glad we can agree that there is though. That means that we can agree that something exists that we can’t quite wrap our brains around.

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

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It also seems a pretty bold claim to assume we know everything must be natural and physical – that was your claim.

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Not at all bold. By definition all things must be natural and physical for we live in a natural and physical reality. This fact remains until one of you can cough up reason to infer otherwise.

What you are doing here is citing the lack of proof for your own speculation as the case for your speculation being true. If we DO live in a material reality(as all evidence points to) then we CANNOT have evidence for or against a 'non-physical' reality, which is why we have that "burden of proof" thing that falls on YOU making such a claim.

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I think you are projecting some other discussion you’ve had on me.

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It also seems a pretty bold claim to assume we know everything must be natural and physical

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False. If someone is employing methodology to arrive at understanding then they are using reason . I am not saying that no religious people use reason(quite the contrary). I am just saying that this is not part of a religious foundation itself.

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Reason is inherent to Christian faith.

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Originally written by Stillness:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

What does it mean, for example, for a God to "create the universe" if there was not a preceding moment where the universe did NOT exist[/qb]

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It’s not the preceding moment, but the preceding eternity that gets us.

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We’re accustomed to things having a start. It’s difficult to imagine something that doesn’t.

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I’m glad we can agree that there is though. That means that we can agree that something exists that we can’t quite wrap our brains around.

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

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It also seems a pretty bold claim to assume we know everything must be natural and physical – that was your claim.

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Not at all bold. By definition all things must be natural and physical for we live in a natural and physical reality. This fact remains until one of you can cough up reason to infer otherwise.

What you are doing here is citing the lack of proof for your own speculation as the case for your speculation being true. If we DO live in a material reality(as all evidence points to) then we CANNOT have evidence for or against a 'non-physical' reality, which is why we have that "burden of proof" thing that falls on YOU making such a claim.

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I think you are projecting some other discussion you’ve had on me.

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It also seems a pretty bold claim to assume we know everything must be natural and physical

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False. If someone is employing methodology to arrive at understanding then they are using reason . I am not saying that no religious people use reason(quite the contrary). I am just saying that this is not part of a religious foundation itself.
[/qb]

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Reason is inherent to Christian faith.

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Originally written by Student of Trinity:

[quote=SkeleTony]
[W]e have EVERY reason to assume that time is time. What does it mean, for example, for a God to "create the universe" if there was not a preceding moment where the universe did NOT exist, followed by the act of "creation" and then the post-creation span? The "beyond time" or "Non-linear experience of time" is just word salad nonsense. Like claiming that square shaped circles might exist in Bizarro World without explaining HOW such a thing could be.

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Scientific cosmology is an awfully long way from being able to do that. We think we have a rough understanding of how things went after the first few microseconds or so, but our inability to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics prevents us from making sense of the Big Bang itself. People are working on it.

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What we believe we already do know, though, is that time can in fact behave very differently from the way it seems to behave in day to day life on earth.

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In particular we have a clear mathematical model for the Big Bang, which we know is incomplete at best because it ignores quantum mechanics, but which we think ought to be accurate enough after the earliest moments of the universe. It accords very well with all available data, and by now there is quite a decent amount of data available, which not just any model could fit.

And in this model, time itself begins at the Big Bang.

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It is not easy to picture the model in its full four dimensions, but if for visualization we can replace the three dimensions of space with a simple one dimensional circle, then we can picture spacetime in only two dimensions. But this two dimensional spacetime is not flat, like a plane. It is curved, like (at least a part of) a sphere. At any one instant in time, space is like a parallel of latitude on the sphere; and time flows south along meridians of longitude. The instant of the Big Bang is like the north pole. At the north pole, space has zero size, everywhere is together at one point, and time begins. As time moves forward, space expands.

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That is an explanation of how time can have a beginning. It is the currently orthodox scientific theory of the early history of the universe, not some hypothetical example I just cooked up. Current scientific consensus is that time itself is only about 15 billion years old. The earth is not eternal, but it is roughly a third as old as time.

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What was there before time began? In what sense could anyone or anything cause the beginning of time, when causality as we know it is about succession in time? These may be philosophical or theological questions, but they are also physical questions. We don't know how to answer them, but there is nothing wrong with them as questions except that they are hard. Theoretical physicists have been happy to make models and speculate. Theologians are entitled to do the same.

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Originally written by The Almighty Do-er of Stuff:



SkeleTony, it appears you are commiting an Appeal to Ignorance fallacy. (See *NOTE at end of post before talking about the page the preceding link directs you. Feel free to disagree after you have read it, but I ask that you back up your argument with logic.)

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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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I shall give you two examples:

In medieval times, humans had no observable evidence that what we now call black holes existed. Therefore, by the logic you appear to have used in your posts in this thread, because there was no evidence for them, it was reasonable to conclude that it was 100% certain that they did not exist.

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You might say this is absurd, because we now have tools and methods for seeing them that medieval people did not and through their use we now do have evidence for their existence. However, could the same situation that applies to medieval people with regard to the existence of black holes not also apply to ourselves at the present with regard to the existence of currently undetectable souls and deities?

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Perhaps it's not even undetectable simply due to being beyond the limitations of our current scientifically determined methods like telescopy and infrared photography, etc. (for instance, if it is only unobservable until we die, as some religions claim), but simply because they're beyond the limitations of our current technology (i.e. far enough away that our most powerful telescopes can't see it and that its gravitational effects are miniscule to the point where we can't currently detect them).

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Perhaps somewhere very far away dragons and unicorns do exist. You can say that there's no evidence and that it's therefore 100% certain that they don't exist, but then the same could be said of black holes in medieval times.

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Here is my second example:

You claim that nothing non-physical/material/observable exists. Can you offer proof that such things do not exist?

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I posit that you cannot. However, can anyone offer proof that they do exist? I don't believe that anyone can, and if I understand your argument properly I would say you agree with that statement.

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Therefore, there is no evidence for the lack of non-physical/material/observable things, and therefore it is 100% certain that there is no lack of non-physical/material/observable things.

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Therefore, they both exist and don't exist simultaneously. I find that this does not make much sense. Perhaps you disagree with me?

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As it turns out, logically, in order to argue that the existence of non-physical/material/observable things isn't logical in the face of evidence against their natural/physical/material/observable occurrence, you have to put faith into the reliability of evidence.

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If observable evidence turns out to be false (for instance, if a Flying Spaghetti Monster is always there altering the data as we collect it, as The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (a.k.a. Pastafarianism) asserts, or if you are a Boltzmann brain), then your argument is moot. Appearances can be deceiving, of course, and logic appears to tell us that.

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The implication of all this seems to be that we know nothing at all with absolute certainty (as RandomSam from the thread at Venganza observed) by this definition of "certainty" (which, incidentally, is actually the one used by most dictionaries from what I can tell).

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However, it seems that we may as well behave as though we do because it appears to make things significantly easier. Just because nothing being truly certain is an uncomfortable thought doesn't mean it can be disregarded out of hand.

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So to sum up, yes, you can say it is impossible for things that are non-phsyical/natural/material/observable to exist, in the understanding of all in the discussion that "exist" is redefined to mean what you describe. I don't disagree and I don't think Thuryl does either (him being a scientist himself and all). We (or me at least, and Thuryl as far as I can tell) were merely playing devil's advocate.

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I still say it's perfectly valid to say that logic and reason are fallible, although thankfully ("thankfully" in my opinion at least) the majority of our society tends to agree that reason is good, and thus, due to social contracts, in most developed countries we run scientific medical hospitals instead of sacrificing pigs and praying to the gods of health to heal us (although many combine prayer with science, and those that rely solely on mystics tend to die and/or kill/maim someone and/or get arrested.)

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*NOTE: I linked to that Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy page because I find the basic form and explanation of what the fallacy is that the page gives to be essentially satisfactory. However, it does say this

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When extensive investigation has been undertaken, it is often reasonable to infer that something is false based upon a lack of positive evidence for it. For instance, if a drug has been subjected to lengthy testing for harmful effects and none has been discovered, it is then reasonable to conclude that it is safe. Another example is:

If there really were a large and unusual type of animal in Loch Ness, then we would have undeniable evidence of it by now.
We don't have undeniable evidence of a large, unfamiliar animal in Loch Ness.
Therefore, there is no such animal.

As with reasoning using the closed world assumption, auto-epistemic reasoning does not commit the fallacy of Argument from Ignorance.

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and one therefore might be tempted to argue that, if one's argument falls under that exception, then the argument is not an Appeal To Ignorance Fallacy. However, the author of the website does not appear to be infallible. I posit that the part of the Appeal To Ignorance Fallacy page I quoted is, or at least appears to be, itself committing an Appeal To Ignorance Fallacy. Of course, it depends on how you define "reasonable". "Reasonable" does not necessarily mean "true" or "perfect". It could simply mean "good enough and useful given that observable evidence is true" (practical instead of logical, as Thuryl said). A lot of scientific philosophy and logic goes on the assumption that appearances are true.[/qb]

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By what rule must a real being be subject to time? Do you believe there was always something? Or always nothing, then something from nothing?

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If I’m not mistaken the general consensus is something. If that something is someone, it does not seem farfetched, even if difficult to understand, that time is not the same for them as for us.

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It also seems a pretty bold claim to assume we know everything must be natural and physical – that was your claim.

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quote:Religion has no methodological approach.

Maybe some religions, but not all.

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Originally written by Lt. Sullust:

How about the South Korean scientist who claimed to have cloned?

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Originally written by Lt. Sullust:

I wouldn't quite say that. I'd say most mathematicians love pi and pie...

As far as scientists breaking down walls with hammers. Some like to pretend that they have x-ray vision...

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Originally written by Stillness:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

Everything which exists(outside of the imagination) IS natural/material/physical and must be so by definition.

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I'm almost afraid to ask, but how do you know this? It seems you would have to know everything unless you define everything that exists with these terms, in which case your statement is meaningless.

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I would not say the sciences are religion anymore than a hammer is. It's a tool. But if a guy collects hammers, dedicates his time and mental energies studying them, decorates them, and thinks they hold the answers to any questions worth answering then hammers have ceased to be just a tool - he's made them his religion. Not the superhuman, supernatural definition of religion, but the kind that involves devotion and belief. There are without question people for whom science holds this place.

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Originally written by Thuryl:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

You are posing irrelevant questions here.

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Irrelevant to what? I'm just posting questions I find interesting. They may not be relevant to what you want to tell me, but they're relevant to what I want to know about you.

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It will still exist as a can of soda + water/frosting/piss regardless of what words you use to describe/label it. (emphasis added)

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This is exactly the kind of naive thinking habit I'm trying to break you out of.

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Have you really gone through your whole life without encountering, say, the Ship of Theseus paradox?

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To put it yet another way, what do two cans of soda have in common with, say, two horses?

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They both exist regardless of what we think/believe about them(or DON'T). An unaware person can trip over the can of soda and another person can come along an hour later without being cognizant of the can's presence and trip over the same can. A horse might trample both of them.

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I'll try again, since you're intent on deliberately misinterpreting me (and you accuse me of playing semantic games!): what do two cans of soda have in common with two horses that one can of soda doesn't have in common with one horse?

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I'm not convinced you've ever thought about what the word "two" means.

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That is absurd. What is illogical about understanding how things work and expecting them to work as inference would dictate by the mechanisms involved?

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How many times do you have to see a ball rolling down a hill in order to prove, without any possible room for doubt, that gravity works the way you think it does? Is one time enough? Is two enough? Is three enough? You need to give me an exact number when the principle is proven with 100% certainty.

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Originally written by Thuryl:

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If I grab what we now call "one"(a singular item) can of soda and set it next to my monitor next to ANOTHER can of soda, then I have TWO cans of soda, regardless of whether we call this quantity "two" or "Sleestack".

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The problem isn't in what we call "one", it's in what we call "cans of soda". There's no objective, unambiguous definition of a complex object such as a can of soda -- it's a social construct. Is a can of soda still a can of soda if you pour out 1% of the soda and replace it with water? What about 90%? 99%? Does the number two still exist if there are no objects for there to be two of?

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To put it another way, do you believe the number two is a real object or an imaginary object?

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According to you, if it's a real object it must be material: what substance is it made of? And if it's imaginary, it doesn't exist.

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To put it yet another way, what do two cans of soda have in common with, say, two horses?

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"There's two of them" is not an answer.

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

So you are saying that no matter how repeatably we can demonstrate a ball rolls downhill(as opposed to straight up into the sky or changing into a big marshmallow or whatever) when released from the top of said hill, we should not infer that gravity works as it apparently does?! That just because we do not observe splitting atoms to result, by direct inference, in gold coins spewing from volcanoes half a world away is not reason to conclude that there is no reason to infer such a thing?!

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I'm not saying there's no reason to; I'm saying there's no logical reason to, although there are perfectly good practical reasons to.[/qb]

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Have you heard of David Hume?

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Induction is certainly a useful way of gaining information in practice, but it's not logically valid, no matter how much you might like it to be. And because it's not logically valid, there's no way to reach a conclusion with 100% certainty through induction alone, no matter what axioms you start with.[/QB]

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Originally written by Post-Transital Disease:

Potions make sense. They're no more empirically sound or unsound than wands. I think Rational Mind is a refusal to use these reality-bending items more than anything else.

Lamps are a programming decision. The easy way to set up the trait was to prevent the use of items. Most usable items are magical. Light sources are collateral damage.

—Alorael, who perhaps should think of Rational Mind as Irrationally Fixated on Mundanity. It makes more sense that way.

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Originally written by Thuryl:

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Originally written by Locmaar:

But you don't have to a Platonist to find the very idea of things existing outside the human mind appealing. Either way, math as a language is a human invention, the principles behind it are at best human discoveries... I think... eh...

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That events happen we may accept for now as uncontroversial. That those events seem to happen in certain patterns is a useful observation. The idea that those humanly-constructed patterns (which are, after all, based on a large but finite data set) represent objectively existing universal laws is somewhat more problematic.

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I view a logic (I say "a logic", for there are multiple different kinds of logic used by different logicians, or by the same logicians at different times) as a kind of gentleman's agreement to refrain from considering the possibility that certain patterns which we consider most essential for analysing the world may not always apply.[/qb]

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Originally written by Thuryl:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

Neither is math and yet math is still a pretty solid method for determining that 2 + 2 does in fact = '4'.

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Ah, now this brings up a question for which I never got a straight answer out of you last time we talked. Are you a Platonist or not? Because your sentence as it stands is contradictory: either mathematical objects are purely human constructs and the only reason that 2 + 2 = 4 is that we define "2", "4", "+" and "=" so that it must do so (in which case saying "2 + 2 does in fact = 4" is vacuous, because you could just as easily define it to equal 5), or mathematical objects do exist independently of human agency.

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Everything which exists(outside of the imagination) IS natural/material/physical and must be so by definition.

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Question 2: are you a positivist? That is, do you believe that "to exist" means nothing more or less than "to have observable effects"?

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Because that's what this sentence seems to imply, but positivism is inconsistent with some of the claims you've made in previous debates.

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If you're not a positivist -- that is, if by "natural/material/physical" you mean something other than "having observable effects" -- then you're going to have to define what you mean by "natural/material/physical".

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I do not grant your re-definition of "science" here. Science is basically empiricism + logic, from a materialist axiom, relying on several methodological principles to distinguish "belief" from actuality.

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Science is not some singular, sentient entity

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Which of these do you believe? Is science something, or is it nothing?[/qb]

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Originally written by Synergy:


I'm curious what it is you think my religion is? I recognize the traits and inclination in myself which I think are humanly common and result in religions. I can think of little I hold to at this point which I would call a certainty in the realm of spirituality/reality. I sense and observe that there is always much more to everything than we know. This applies to science, which I love, lest anyone imagine otherwise.

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Spirit is a word that can often be equated to attitude. All institutions generate attitudes/spirit which color and shape them. Science is not a thing apart from human agency and coloring.

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Therefore it cannot be the godlike formula for truth its dogma declares.

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It is a very good method. What the spirit of science at this time lacks as a whole is humility and pause.

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It's too quick to be sure of itself, to think it's got a thing figured out, despite how perpetually it is revised over and over.

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I resist pride and arrogance before anything else in this world.

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I take up the fight in those places where I believe I see the arrogant spirit/dogma of science has taken root foolishly and may well be leading masses of people to live, think, and fear a certain way based upon likely unrealities.

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Everything is psychological. Everything is spiritual and attitudinal. These cannot be separated out from the human being or from "science" which is composed of collective human belief, practice, and behavior.

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Thuryl, regarding being wrong = being belittled. I would say that depends entirely if one believes it need be a blow to ego or self to be wrong, to admit one is wrong. Being wrong is nearly always part of the process of becoming right or more right in anything. What's wrong with being wrong? I'm more interested in how people are right and how they are wrong (attitudes/behaviors) than in the mere fact that they are or aren't. I'm happy to be wrong. Often. I may stick my ground doggedly on certain matters, but even in this issue here of global warming, I am saying, I don't know. My favorite mantra of my current life is, "I don't know."

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I wish science would admit this more often too.

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Scientists are the rock stars of the geek set.

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They know they have a perceived sense of power, wisdom, knowledge, authority.

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People listen to their conclusions.

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People alter their lives based upon what the scientists offer them. I tell you that on a psychological/spiritual level, this has a tremendous, yet subtle effect on what goes on in the realm of the scientist. Power corrupts. It is marvelously subtle and insidious.

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It is not that scientists are bad or that pastors are bad. It is what happens to people who find others believing in them. Ah, the intoxication of being somebody. People so intoxicated frequently soon come to buy their own press, and science is no exception.

-S-

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