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Originally written by Thuryl:

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THe only grounds I would bother contesting your hypothetical god is if you are saying it is "wise" but has no physical brain. Sentience is a property emergent from brained entities. Something cannot have brain functions and lack a brain.

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So you believe artificial intelligence is impossible in principle too?

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Originally written by The Creator:

...yow, you two can type.

Distracting you both again, if you don't mind. Let's leave aside the theological implications for a moment. Say there was an actual miracle - a resurrection, for instance. How well would it need to be documented for you to take it seriously and/or believe it actually happened? At what point would the likelihood of falsification in your mind become smaller than the likelihood of a man coming back from the dead?

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Originally written by Thuryl:

You're talking about brains, I'm talking about minds.

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I hadn't even reached the point of discussing brains yet. (I'm the kind of philosopher who likes to prove everything from first principles. Bear with me.)

All of this is good evidence for a relation between brain and mind, but none of it reaches the level of unquestionable proof; you can never rule out the possibility that at some future time evidence contrary to this view will turn up.

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[b]In any case, my point had nothing to do with a mind/brain distinction, but rather a more fundamental thought/mind distinction. Even if we agree that thoughts are patterns of brain activity, do these thoughts together constitute a single, coherent entity that can be called a "mind"? Again, this is linguistics rather than logic.

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The existence of my mind, as a coherent, unified, definable concept rather than merely a series of thoughts and perceptions.

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[b]But you're still seeing one, even if it's not there. You can't doubt that you're seeing what you're seeing, even if you doubt that it "corresponds" to anything material. That was my point.

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So there's more doubt about one than the other. It's still possible to doubt both.

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As I've mentioned before, not every system of logic denies the possibility of something being both A and not A.

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My point is that they could throw out all of the information they have about brains and still make a science out of what's left, even if it would be a much less useful one.

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Science is a method for studying reality. In order for it to have any place we must "assume" there is a reality adn that we are percieving it.

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Science is most definitely not a single method. Talk to ten scientists and you'll get eleven different and incompatible definitions of what the scientific method is.

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If given reason tomorrow, I would become a non-materialist faster than you could say "Flip-flopper" at a republican convention. I would also be prepared to accept that 2,000+ years of experiement and observation were wrong and I know nothing and am incapable of knowing anything.

All I ask for before I do that is a pretty good reason... [Wink] .

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[b]It occurs to me that we may have different definitions of "materialism". If you mean a belief in the existence of matter, I'll agree that such an assumption is necessary for nearly all useful scientific progress (although, again, I think it merely needs to be held as a premise or theorem rather than necessarily as an axiom). If you mean a belief that nothing exists except matter, I certainly don't think that's necessary.

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Ah but there is the rub! Are perceptions what we start with? Or do we start with things to percieve? Materialists say the latter.

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The universe may well start out with things to perceive, but we don't. We experience our perceptions first and have to interpret them as "things" on our own.

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[b]We're not disagreeing. I just think it's best to hold as few axioms as possible.

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[qb]

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No, no, no...I do not "choose" to see the world a certain way. I SEE the world a certain way and it is consitent with how other humans seem to see the world.

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First you said that you held certain assumptions about the world because they were useful assumptions.[/b]

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Now you seem to be saying you have little choice about which assumptions are included in your view of the world. Which is it?

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Originally written by Andrew Miller:

I think it's simply a matter of whether one believes that science and semantics has an answer on the God question. SkeleTony, you seem to believe so; I choose not to.

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I disagree with the assertion that if I believe God must be a possibility, then I also must believe cartoon characters or an invisible dragon must be a possibility.

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It goes along with the "filling the cracks" notion: I know that a person creates cartoon characters,...

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I can go in a garage and wave my arms around and not touch a dragon.

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These are very small cracks, however, easily closed because its within my means to make these determinations, using scientific observation. On the matter of divinity, however, neither you nor I are able to travel to the limits of the universe, back and forth through time, or consciously across any other dimension (it's my understanding that there may be others, based on the very minute amount of reading I've done on string theory).

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[b] We do know, however, that the Earth, which pretty much incapsulates the wealth of our experiences, represents an infinitesimal amount of what's out there.

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Given that, what's left to fill is not a crack so much as an infinitely yawning abyss.

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To put it in material terms, there's an infinitely vast amount of material out there that no one knows anything about!

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Given that, I think it is close-minded to weigh in so conclusively on the matter.

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Feeling this way, however, doesn't prevent me from usefully applying or working to advance science, or any other system or tool for that matter. I don't just say "I don't know" and leave it at that.

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I have a desperate need to find answers to these things, in fact, and I think that science is the best way to proceed with trying to find these answers. I believe that we are nowhere close to the pinnacle of knowledge, and I think it's close-minded to assume we are.

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Originally written by Kelandon:

No, SkeleTony, you are being closed-minded. The fact is that we can see atoms now with technology that wasn't even conceivable a thousand years ago, but we couldn't see them then.

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You've never demonstrated why a god that is powerful but not omnipotent, wise but not omniscient, beyond the reaches of current human understanding and therefore present in disparate places but not omnipresent, and not highly interventionist (perhaps even deist: created the universe but doesn't interfere past the point of creation) is illogical.

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I'd like to see that argument before I change my mind about you being closed-minded.

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Originally written by Beneath the Hill of Ilmarin:

You never defined "round", nor "square". If "square" a geometrical shape with four points connected by four equal lines at right angles to each other, then you're right.

"Square", as it does in Britain iirc, can also mean "a public, open area in a town" (or "plaza"), as in "Trafalgar Square". There are of course round squares in a lot of cities.

It is definitely a matter of language and definition.

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Originally written by Thuryl:

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No. I am saying that there are certain "useful assumptions"(we often refer to them as "axioms" or "first principles") that are not subject to, for example, scientific method. There can be NO knowledge or understanding without these base assumptions. Logic proceeds from the assumption that what makes sense to me, does in fact make sense(i.e. I cannot run towards you and get further away from you in the conventional sense and I cannot grow larger while shrinking) and science proceeds from the materialist axiom(though there are variations on materialism such as functionalism and computationalism etc.).

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I dispute your assertion that science must be inherently materialist.

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Psychology (except to strong behaviourists) is the study of mental processes. It may not be a mature or orderly science, but it still has definite scientific aspects

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(science, in its broadest sense, is merely the systematic accumulation of knowledge -- and if you try to define "knowledge" you open up a whole new can of worms).

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Certainly, these days psychology draws significantly from neuroscience, but some aspects of psychology can be retained without assuming anything about the matter sustaining the minds which are being studied.

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In regard to your first point, I'm comfortable with accepting the existence of matter as a premise, or as a useful model, but not as an axiom that's beyond doubt or change.

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I'd rather not accept materialism at all (in the sense of every process being reducible to description at the level of processes involving matter); strict materialist attempts to explain consciousness strike me as handwaving, and since our perceptions are what we start with before we conclude anything from them, it seems to make more sense to accept consciousness as axiomatic and get to matter from there.

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[b]And you're right -- at least until the day you take a run at the tree and pass through it as if it isn't there. It hasn't happened yet; most likely, it never will. But you can't prove it won't. You're only confident it won't because of observations made in the past which share common characteristics. That's inductivism, and it can never be absolutely reliable, no matter how many observations you make.

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(I wonder, if one day you did pass through that tree, would you be most inclined to attribute it to a vanishingly unlikely quantum fluctuation, or to some kind of hallucination, or would it make you rethink your assumptions?)

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So you choose to make assumptions about the world because they're useful.

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But the judgement of usefulness requires a judgement of the value of certain perceptions; you choose to see the world in a certain way because you predict that worldview will lead to perceptions which are judged as preferable to perceptions resulting from alternative worldviews. Once again, perceptions take precedence over material "reality".

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Originally written by Thuryl:

I'm familiar with the argument, but it strikes me as a linguistic argument rather than a logical one. We assume that thought requires a thinker, because we speak a language that attaches a subject to every verb.

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Some sentences, like "It's raining", have subjects only as a token gesture to the rules of English grammar; there are languages that don't require a subject in a sentence at all. "Perceive" or "think" could be seen as a subjectless verb, not requiring a perceiver or thinker. It doesn't seem to be impossible to doubt that thought requires a thinker; in fact, there's no shortage of serious philosophers who reject the concept of personal identity.

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Personally, I'd regard personal identity as one of the things I'm most certain of among all uncertain things, but still not quite on the same level as direct perception.

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Probably. Then again, throughout millennia of Western civilisation, nobody had ever seen a black swan.

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If this were so then you would be able to describe how this could be so. The only things we have such difficulty describing are non-existent and nonsensical things.

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Linguistics again. You seem to be assuming that ideas are inherently impossible because they can't be expressed adequately in our language. Have you never experienced something you were unable to describe to others?

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Originally written by Thuryl:

[b]

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Proving negatives is difficult and usually impossible but my answer to the BIAJ/Matrix/Taoist "butterfly dreaming it's a man" thing is that it does not matter if I am actually a brain in a jar. If my observations and experiences are concurrent with those of the other "brains" in said jar(even be they figments of my imagination) and I cannot "wish" or "deny" my reality so that it be something else, then for all intents and purposes, reality is reality.

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I agree with you, but demonstrating that the truth or falsity of a proposition is unimportant isn't the same as proving it false.

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"Red" also cannot paint itself onto a canvas but this does not mean that red is not a real color. "Painting" cannot itself paint and automotive engineering cannot itself engineer an automobile.

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If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying we ought to assess the validity of a system of logic by some other standard than itself.

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What standard do you propose? Merely our own intuitions, or perhaps the fact that it demonstrates no inconsistencies when applied to our observations in various ways? If the latter, our assessment that logic is consistent is inductive and therefore unreliable; it's based only on the fact that we've found many examples favouring it and none contradicting it. (You may be getting the impression that I regard inductivism and falsificationism as being two sides of the same coin.)

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In MY opinion? Yes. THere is much wrong with that because if you conclude that suspect 'A' murdered victim 'B' when in fact you have no reason to infer this, then you have made it very difficult to see the truth when it is within your sight. If I conclude that Zeus causes lightning then I am not open to learning about meterology or atmospheric conditions.

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I don't believe this is a problem as long as one maintains a realistic view of the possibility that one may be wrong.

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Originally written by Thuryl:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

No, round squares do not exist even as coherent concepts. They exist only as meaningless assertions in the mind of someone allegedly hypnotised. If you cannot describe a thing as simple as a geometric shape then it is because you cannot observe such a thing. The definition of "squre" precludes any "roundness".

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All the same, people hypnotised to see square circles are clearly perceiving something,...

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... and I feel it's worthwhile to question why it's so unreasonable for that something to be called a square circle;

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should mental space be held to the same rules as physical space?

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Is it necessary for the square circle to be a "shape" in the conventional sense at all?

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I suppose at this point I'd better show my hand; I'm much more of a phenomenalist than a materialist. I'm also a biology student with every intention of having a career in science; I don't regard phenomenalism as inherently inconsistent with empiricism (and modern science sometimes strays pretty far from empiricism anyway, so even if I did it wouldn't be an insurmountable handicap).

However, all knowledge of anything beyond our own perceptions is ultimately inductive, because the only way to receive information is by repeated perception of patterns of one sort or another (whether they be "Things tend to fall when dropped" or "This reference book tends to be accurate").

Inductive knowledge is inherently unstable, because there's always the possibility of a counterexample. The only things I find myself unable to coherently doubt are my own perceptions; not necessarily that they "correspond" to anything in "reality" (what does that even mean?) but that I am in fact perceiving them. They are as certain as my own existence, or perhaps even more so; there is no "I" that I can pin down as an experiential reality, whereas I find myself completely unable to entertain the proposition that I am not perceiving what I am perceiving.

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Were I to perceive something that I perceived as a square circle, I would therefore be forced to conclude that, in some sense, perceptions at least of square circles "existed".

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Originally written by Thuryl:

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Originally written by SkeleTony:

Not sure what your beef with me is in this little debate(If I have come off as irritating or calous or something then I apologise)

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It shows? Sorry about that. I was mainly annoyed with you because it seemed as if you had your own pet issue to push and you were trying to push it into an active discussion where it wasn't particularly on topic. Now that the original line of discussion's petered out, we may as well continue on to this one.

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[qbg]I fall into the weak atheist camp because I'm a fairly extreme sceptic about everything; after all, I can't even prove I'm not a brain in a jar (or a meta-brain in a meta-jar, if you insist on bringing up Hilary Putnam's argument against the BIAJ concept).[/qb]

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Nor can logic itself prove itself consistent (or at least I hope it can't; Gödel's theorem shows that any formal system of sufficient power can only prove its consistency if it's inconsistent).

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Strictly speaking, is there anything wrong with choosing to believe an unlikely hypothesis that answers a question when the only alternative would be to leave the question unanswered?

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Originally written by Thuryl:

Except that round squares do exist, at least as conceptual objects. People under hypnosis when told to see a round square have claimed they were able to see one. They're invariably unable to describe the experience of seeing a round square to others in terms that are coherent or comprehensible, but subjectively the experience is very real. Similarly, people have claimed to have personal experiences of God. Is it really completely out of the question that such people are genuinely experiencing a mode of perception that people don't normally have access to?

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Originally written by The Creator:

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Originally written by Thuryl:

I fall into the weak atheist camp because I'm a fairly extreme sceptic about everything; after all, I can't even prove I'm not a brain in a jar (or a meta-brain in a meta-jar, if you insist on bringing up Hilary Putnam's argument against the BIAJ concept). Nor can logic itself prove itself consistent (or at least I hope it can't; Gödel's theorem shows that any formal system of sufficient power can only prove its consistency if it's inconsistent).

I think the choice between theism and atheism comes down to whether you want a belief system that explains as many things as possible or whether you only want to believe things for which there's compelling evidence. This is basically a philosophical choice (perhaps even an aesthetic choice). Strictly speaking, is there anything wrong with choosing to believe an unlikely hypothesis that answers a question when the only alternative would be to leave the question unanswered?

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Out of interest, what would you accept as reasonable evidence of God's existence?

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Originally written by Kelandon:

As far as I can tell, Andrew Miller is saying that it's possible that some sort of divine thing exists, and SkeleTony is saying that one should discount things that are possible but not reasonable certain.

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That is, I don't think either of you disagree on the degree of possibility involved in the existence of divinity: you both think it is possible but not currently demonstratable. You disagree about what one should think of such things: AM says that one should be open-minded about such possiblities, and SkeleTony says that we should ignore them until they have reasonable evidence supporting them.

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I think that's a personal preference, not a matter of being right or wrong.

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But SkeleTony, about the "color" argument: consider atoms. People have been saying that matter consists of atoms since the Ancient Greeks, and although atomic theory has changed dramatically over time, it survived. Little evidence beyond some common sense (matter must be made of something, right?) supported this theory, and no one could sense atoms at all. Modern technology gave us the ability to find them, though — Democritus was right.

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[b]That is, Democritus more than two thousand years ago made statements that could not be verified by observation but were correct.[qb]

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[qb]This is a more proper analogy than color, I would think, since no disability (beyond the simple limitations of our sense) prevents us from seeing atoms, yet we cannot see them, despite the fact that they do exist. Some sort of divine thing could very well be similar.[/b]

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Originally written by Andrew Miller:

[quote=SkeleTony]
[qb]Our universe has limits as described by our physical laws and theories and these same laws of behavior/operation rule out transcendent gods.

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Throughout human history, new laws and theories have surplanted old ones, turning the scientific world on its head.

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Isn't it a bit brazen to assume that what we understand now is truth?

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At best, you're applying an imperfect tool to a potentially infinite subject. How can you be so confident?

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Originally written by Macrsp:

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logically consistent God-concept

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God has to follow the man made rules of logic?

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Our universe has limits as described by our physical laws and theories and these same laws of behavior/operation rule out transcendent gods.

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Inherently contradictory

The rules rule out something that is above the rules. The thing that was above the rules probably wouldn't be affected by being ruled out by the rules. Especially if he created them.

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Originally written by Andrew Miller:

SkeleTony: I still think that everything you're asserting is flawed because it's limited by what you're able to perceive, whether on your own or with some tool.

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We *now* have the tools to prove to a blind person that color exists, but that wasn't so a hundred years ago.

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We have the tools to accomplish and prove all kinds of things that previously didn't exist. Who are you to say we won't develop the tools or the senses to discover whether God exists? That seems short-sighted to me.

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I'm willing to agree that, going head to head, the Christian God is as unbelievable as Santa Claus. This is because there's pretty good evidence that both were constructed by man. However, there is nothing close to an adequate explanation for existence, of which our world represents an infinitesimal part. Assuming you accept the Big Bang theory, there are still big questions out there: What happened before that? How can something come out of nothing?[/qb]

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It really can't, based on the logic that you espouse, because your logic is chained to the existence of time and the laws of cause and effect. It seems to me that there must be something else going on that's bigger than/different than/outside the fourth dimension.

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That's a pretty big crack to fill - do you have a good or sound explanation?

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I don't worship God because, like you, I don't see evidence of any sort of interaction with the world. We could be just as insignificant as ants, for all I know. However, I am unable to rule out the possibility of something divine out there, because for me everything about existing is just so crazy, when I stop to think about it. Maybe I'm just not that smart and am too easily overawed, but it seems to me to be foolish to rule out possibilities, however unsettling they may be.

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Originally written by Kelandon:

I think there are logical contradictions involved in being omnipotent, and probably in being omniscient, too.

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I think there's some sort of Catholic theology from some point (Aquinas, maybe? don't know) that says that although good exists independent of God, God loves good and things that are good and nice and pretty and wonderful, so he tries to make everyone do good whenever possible and he pets happy bunnies and that sort of thing. And he's not all-powerful, just super-powerful, avoiding the dangerous contradictions involved in omnipotence.

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Originally written by Andrew Miller:

A blind person could make a similar assertion about color not existing, if he was limited to his terms and his current comprehension of color.

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As things stand, our current comprehension of a god/gods/God is based on our understanding of concepts like infinity/omniscience/omnipotence which, based on our very finiteness, I believe are impossible to conceive of in full, just as a blind person can't conceive of color.

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[b]Certainly, for practical purposes, color does not exist for the blind person.

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[b] Likewise, for you and I, God as defined by any of the world's religions may not be apparent. However, using the logic you present to rule out the existence of a god/gods/God, even one couched in the terms of one of the major world religions, seems to me to be the height of arrogance, because frankly, you and I have no means of truly comprehending the infinite, omnipresent, and omniscient, let alone what's occurring on Earth outside of the realm of our experience).[qb]

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[qb] It's as though we lack a sense to perceive these things, just as a blind person lacks sight.[/b]

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Given that, it seems a bit hasty to me to make such a weighty assertion such as "God does not exist in reality."

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EDIT: Please also note that I think that the major world religions are just as arrogant in asserting that they have the monopoly on the concept of the divine. Given how little any of us know about "Life, the Universe, and Everything," I think the most reasonable assertion is that the jury's still out on divinity.

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Originally written by Andrew Miller:

[b]To SkeleTony - I think you've done a good job defining how ours is a world of limitations. I think that using this as a basis for explaining god(s) out of the picture is incorrect, however. In your definition, you assert that a god would have to follow the limitations of our universe. In essence, this seems to me to be assuming that a god would have to obey the rules as we understand them. I think the flaw here is that we certainly don't have a monopoly on the rules (they've tended to change over the years, and undoubtedly will continue to do so), and given that, there's no reason why god(s) could not exist outside the scope of our (what I perceive to be very) limited perception and obsession with limitation. It does not follow that because I am finite, everything else must be. A person declaiming the existence of God seems to me not disimilar to a blind person declaiming the existence of color.

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To Alex - Lighten up, man. This is all for fun.

For others - Does the root of evil necessarily have to be evil itself? I would argue that sapience/sentience is not.

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Originally written by Macrsp:

And going over the thread again, I read this.

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Written by SkeleTony:
What Thuryl said(er...asked).

The absolutist/moral objectivist runs into some serious problems answering those questions. If what is "good" is simply whatever "God" says is good, then God could concievably declare child molestation to be good and the theistic absolutist must either agree or rebel against his God in that hypothetical. IF "good" and "evil" simply ARE(independent of God's arbitrary decree) and God is just one who recognises these things for what they are, then the absolutist is conceding that God is not necessary for morality.

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I think you misunderstand. If God was the definition of "good" and he was a child molester than that would be "good" (at least according to the argument that I am running with)

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However you do make me realize something. What I am talking about is not absolutism. It is still relative. Good and Evil would change based on the "mood" or whatever of the defining god. Probably why the statement that "God is the same yesterday, today, and forever" is needed

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Originally written by Turumby:

In modern interpretations, God is usually thought of as infinitely wise. While the Old Testament seems to conflict with this at some points, the Abrahamic tradition more or less agrees on God's limitless knowledge AFAIK. Therefore, if anyone is in a position to figure out what the most practical standards of morality are, it's God.

And, of course, power doesn't hurt. The courts can only tell us what to do because they have the police to back them up, but most people don't see that as proof that their judgements are inherently invalid.

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