RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Casual Banter] >> Off the Grid

Message

Rule -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 6:57:28 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang But somehow I doubt believers separate out this area of their lives in the voting booth. quote: ORIGINAL: Rule Quite. But that does not pertain to the discussion in this thread, unless you want to change the subject. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang It is the subtext of my OP. So back to the opening post: quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang the vastness of space. I see this kind of beautiful scientific imagery and just cannot believe in the silly, grotesque and all too human god of the Abrahamic faiths. ... the people of those particular faiths cover most of the world and squabble over land, riches, and philosophical territories as if any of what they were doing mattered in some greater cosmic sense. We teeter on the brink of self-annihilation because of lies told and retold over thousands of years. I see what you mean. You are being melodramatic. Do you truly believe that it matters what people do in the voting booth? It does not. Nearly all politicians have the same agenda, even when they claim otherwise. Did it matter what people voted when GWB was elected? No, because the election and counting process in Florida was rigged. Why single out followers of Abrahamic faiths? People of other faiths and atheists also squabble. And yes: it matters in some greater cosmic sense, otherwise they would not be doing it. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang We must stop fighting over the body of mother earth and learn to cooperatively explore the greater universe as one people. You are dangerous; you are an idealist in denial of reality. Humanity will competitively explore the greater universe as divided peoples. quote: ORIGINAL: Rule The point is that you demand a proof that is logically impossible. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang No I don't. If you demand proof of this: quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang some mystical being without an evident physical reality and whose existence is logically impossible then you are demanding a proof that is logically impossible. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang I am willing to accept any actual proof you may have of any being that could act in a hypothetical god capacity. Fire when ready, Gridley. I know several human beings that by my definitions could act in a hypothetical god capacity. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang My examples are classic proofs that the common Judaic and Christian concepts of god are not rational. We know that already and those classic proofs are sound given their presumptions. That does not imply that the classic proofs are valid; in fact they are not. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang quote: ORIGINAL: Rule Paradoxes are always caused by misunderstandings, inaccurate information or falsehoods. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang I would say that very thing about every religious crackpot I have ever met - that they feed on misunderstandings and spout inaccurate information and falsehoods. That is also applicable to the classic proofs that you refer to. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang You may say that the contradictions exist in how we think of god - but that's all we have of god, people thinking about the possibility of him without any physical foundation to their thoughts. If you are refering to your mystical being that is correct: spirituality pervades our physical universe, but it is not part of our physical universe. Your mystical being is elusive. If however, you are refering to the incarnated gods, you are incorrect. There are Greek court proceedings extant in which Apollo and Athena attend the proceedings in the flesh. How much more physical foundation do you want? I reiterate: world mythology testifies unambiguously that the incarnated gods in the days of yore walked the Earth. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang To me this conversation has boiled down to something like this: Person A: I see the splendour of the universe and it makes me think that some people's conception of the cosmic infinite is quite puny. Person B: I see the wonders of nature and I see the work of the hand of god. Person A: I see planets and it makes me want to go there, to reach out and into the stars. Where do you see god? Person B: It's in everything. Even our thoughts indicate something beyond chance or natural occurrences. Person A: Yeah, but when I see a star or a planet that's what I see: stars and planets. Where do you see god? Person B: I can't explain it. My sense of it can't be analysed. But it's there. Can you accept irrational proof for the existence of god? Person B: [clucks his tongue like Daffy Duck] Again you generalize. You are person A and all others combined are person B. If you had paid attention, you would have noticed that I also am an A person and not a B person. In none of my posts have I claimed to see god in the physical universe.

meatcleaver -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 7:25:50 AM)
If god is not in the physical universe and we cannot step out of the physical universe to find out if there is a god or not, then you are basing you view that there is a god on purely nothing. I admit that I base my view god doesn't exist on nothing, the 'nothing' to indicate there is a god.

Rule -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 8:15:11 AM)
Why do people persist in the use of the inaccurate and ambiguous and confusing concept 'god'? 1. Spirituality has to be experienced. If you do not, you will not have an awareness of Chaingang's 'mystical being'. That does not mean that this mystical being does not exist. Analogously nor does the fact that a colour blind man does not see a specific colour mean that that colour does not exist. 2. We can step outside of the universe. I have done so (1990-1995/6), argueing against the existence of god (we don't want him in science) to start my six year analysis of cosmology. The curious thing - as I stated in an earlier post in this thread - is that in about 2000 to my astonishment I realized that my conclusions described a binary computer 'larger' than and encompassing and pervading our universe. I am an extremely rational person, so per force I had to accept that this mystical computer is Chaingang's elusive 'mystical being', or - if you insist, though very inaccurate - God. I have experienced miracles and I have stepped outside of the universe. So no: I do not 'base my view that there is a 'god' on purely nothing'. I have arguments that suffice for me. They will not suffice for others, as my analysis of cosmology was never completed nor published, but that is not my problem but their problem. The best advice that I can give anyone is this: discuss the colour blue only if you can see it.

meatcleaver -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 8:30:48 AM)
We don't need to discuss blue, we could probably (except the blind etc.) all provide a sample of blue and no doubt the consensus would be that the colour we call blue exists. Many tones of blue have a name which many of us who are aware of them could immediately name. As to how we individually perceive blue is another thing but we are not talking about how we perceive blue but the fact that it exists. Yes, light reflecting on an object can change a colour but again, the colour exists.

WhipTheHip -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 8:39:36 AM)
Hi Susan, There is a logical method called "reducto ad aburdum." You start out by assuming something. Then try to see if it leads to contradiction. If it does, then that thing can't be truel. So, if you assume the existence of an omnipotent, loving God, and determine that this assumption does not square with oberservation, you must reject the premise that there exists an omnipotent, loving God. You start by assuming that which you wish to disprove. I've met a few religious people who not understanding "reducto ad absurdum" and find it ironic that an atheist would start out assuming that God exists. They ask why do atheists start ou assuming God exists, if they don't believe in God. Best regards, Michael.

WhipTheHip -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 9:09:41 AM)
> So - people blaming God for not existing simply because he didn't elminate > "evil" or create "good" seems kinda nonsensical from people who seem to > not want him to exist, by arguing God's existence. Hmmm. [:)] - Susan This is called "reducto ad absurdem." It is amazing to me that so many people who believe in God, don't understand the concept. In order to disprove something, you first assume it is true. If it leads to a contradiction, then it must be false. It is standard method to prove something is not true. I have found that lot of people who believe in God do not grasp basic logic principles. I've spoken to a lot of intelligent people who believe in God, who can't understand the "reducto ad aburdem argument," and who can't follow basic logic. On the other hand, it is wrong for atheists or anyone for that matter to insist on proof of anything. Proofs only exist for purely logical and mathematical assertions. All can muster for real world assertions is evidence. There is evidence for the existence of God, and their is evidence against the existence of God. The evidence for the existence of God is weak. The evidence against the existence of a loving, forgiving, just, and compassionate God is great.

LadyEllen -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 10:08:37 AM)
oh no! Not "Awaiting Approval" again!? I'm still not sure what was so awful about what he posted before! The divine (lets leave God out of this as he confuses the matter) must exist in the universe, if it exists at all. For it to be outside the universe makes no sense for one thing, as anything and everything we are aware of must exist in it - otherwise we would be unaware of it and not have the divine at all? That we are aware of the divine, whether we believe or have faith in it or not, must indicate that it is present in the universe - if only in the insignificant psychologies of a single species of intelligent ape that dwells on an insignificant planet orbiting an insignificant star in a backwater of an insignificant galaxy. I have experienced something that I would call the divine - impossible to put into words exactly I'm sorry, but a sudden and accidental slip into a total conciousness of everything, yet without the effort of conciousness and without any sense of me as the one experiencing it. It was utterly ............... (no word I can think of), just a state which made the Biblical "I am" a concept effortlessly comprehended within its scope. Its only happened once, and for a brief few seconds which yet felt like ages but did not possess time in itself. The scientist will tell me that my brain had a seizure of some sort, occasioned by subatomic chemical wotsits or some such. The religious will tell me it was an experience of God. In their own ways, both would be right and neither wrong. We can only experience the divine through the physical structures and reactions which science tells us reliably are what we are. NB that the above was not dependent on any form of religion, though it did take place at a time of spiritual contemplation. E

WhipTheHip -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 10:39:23 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Rule So? I never trust the phantasies of physicists. I probably invented a many-worlds hypothesis myself in the mid-eighties - but must have discarded it for its logical impossibility. It is exponentially worse than the problem of who created the Creator. I don't trust the fantasies of physicsts, either. Physicists don't have many fantasies when it comes to the real world. They tend to be super realists. Many-Worlds is not a fantasy. I trust physicists description of reality. They are the brightest humans on Earth. So, I generally do trust what physicists say. I see nothing illogical about Many-Worls. You have not stated why you believe it is logically impossible, so I can't respond to your claim. Nor is it exponentially worse than the problem of who created the Creator. There is no reason to accept a supernatural explanation when there is perfectly good natural explanation. quote: Undoubtedly I do not comprehend the theory. Before you dispute a physics' theory supported by many world-reknown phyisicsts, you should first make an effort to understand it, and know what it really says. > However, if it entails that all choices / possibilities are realized, > then yes it is completely deterministic. It does. > Now cut away that googol of superfluous universes The other universes are not superfluous, but necessary. Given infinite time everything will happen, even the least likely thing. Religious people are always trying to limit the universe. > that clutter reality until you have only our one universe. If you assume a true assertion untrue, you can prove anything. > If we cannot communicate / interact with those other universes We can. First, learn the theory, then disagree with it. > they by definition do not exist. Not true. By your definition of existence, the past does not exist, nor do black holes beyond their even horizons, nor any part of our universe outside our light cone, because we have no way of interacting with these things. > Is our single universe than still completely deterministic? If you assume a true assertion untrue, you can prove anything. The universe includes multiverses. So, yes our universe is completely determinstic. If you don't look at the entire meta-verse, then our universe could look random. quote: ORIGINAL: WhipTheHip Schrodinger's equation is completely deterministic. > You probably say so because of these three assumptions: Negative. I say so because Schrodinger's equation is completely determinstic. It is a mathematical function that yields only one answer for any given point in time. > a. [The wavefunction has] an observer-independent objective existence and actually is the object. I don't know what you are trying to say. Observers have nothing to do with Schordinger's equation. > b. The wavefunction obeys the empirically derived standard linear deterministic wave equations at all times. Again, I don't know what you are saying. > c. The observer plays no special role in the theory and, consequently, there is no collapse of the wavefunction. True. > These are sensible assumptions. Does a tree make noise when it falls in the forest while no-one is around? Yes. If you reject Many Worlds, then nothing exists when no-one is around. This is one of Einstein's main objections to Borh's interpretation of QM. Einstein said, the moon exists even when no one is looking at it. Bohr and Heisenberg and every other phycist in the world agrees that if Bohr and Heisenbergs interpretation of QM is correct, then the moon does not exist when it is not being observed. This is patently absurd. This means the universe did not exist until there were observers to observe it. > But: when a particle of radiation interacts with a particle of matter, there is an observer, > to wit the particle of matter; the wave function does collapse. Not according to many-worlds. Particles do not qualify as observers. And this still leaves open the question of the existence of reality between interactions. According to you, nothing exists between interactions. But you raise an interesting point. I will have to do some research before I can fully respond to this suggestion. The suggestion is we do away with observers and measurements and just say the wave-function collapses whenever matter and energy interact. This is a good question. I will try to find ann answer to it. > Even without an observer the noise that the falling tree makes will affect > its immediate surroundings. Not according to the Coppenhagen Interpretation of of Quantum Mechanics. > When you aim a quantum mechanical particle at an obstruction with two > holes in it, it will go through both holes. How can one particle go through two holes a billion mile a part? > Once on the other side, though, there are not two particles, but only > the single one. Then how do you explain the interferance pattern. The double-slit experiment is the best proof of Many-Worlds. According to many- worlds, the particle goes through one slit in one world, and the other slit in another world. According to the mathatmaics, the two universes will interact and produce an interferance pattern which is exactly what we observe. Hence, the double- slit experment proves the existence of many worlds. > From this we must conclude that the universe will walk all paths > to arrive at its destination, but that there is only a single destination - > and that destination is determined by non-deterministic interference. No physicist in the world would agree with this statement. If this were true, you would not get an interference pattern on the wall between the two-slits. By interferance pattern, I mean a pattern of light and dark bands. If your theory was right, we would observe the following on a screen behind the two-slits: two dark bands directly behind each slit, and the bands would gradually get lighter and lighter, further and further away from each slit. But this is not what we observe. Even if shoot one photon or particle at a time at the two slits, we still get an interference pattern. > Weinberg says about quantum theory: > "The final approach is to take the Schrodinger equation seriously > [..description of the measurement process..] In this way, a measurement > causes the history of the universe for practical purposes to diverge into > different non-interfering tracks, one for each possible value of the > measured quantity. [...] I prefer this last approach" Weinberg believes in Hugh Everett's Many-Words. This is what he is saying here. And even though the universes don't interfere with each other, they do in the double-slit experiment. If you knew the many-worlds theory, you would understand why. I can't teach you the whole theory here. Cheers, Michael

Chaingang -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 11:58:30 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: WhipTheHip This is called "reducto ad absurdem." It is amazing to me that so many people who believe in God, don't understand the concept. In order to disprove something, you first assume it is true. If it leads to a contradiction, then it must be false. It is standard method to prove something is not true. I have found that lot of people who believe in God do not grasp basic logic principles. I've spoken to a lot of intelligent people who believe in God, who can't understand the "reducto ad aburdem argument," and who can't follow basic logic. I think you are just being kind about it. If a person cannot follow the demands of simple logical then a conversation becomes nearly impossible without first establishing all kinds of ground rules and information that many of us take as given. SusanofO is claiming ignorance not only of basic assertions about god, but also of the rules of logic. Rule is making a special plea for us to disregard the rational and accept the irrational. That is where I start to lose patience. People can believe any damned fool thing they want, as long as it doesn't touch on my life. I have to accept this kind of live and let live policy but I remain concerned about what it says about society overall - and I know it leads us in dangerous directions (e.g. U.S. support of Israel because of some perceived claim that god gave them the city of Jerusalem despite Israeli warmongering bullshit on their own frontiers). Some people are basically insisting on the irrational because they have had some experience of the divine that is beyond their meager understanding - why can't they accept that they simply don't understand what happened and leave it at that? If they can't reproduce the experience then it provides no significantly greater spiritual insight than that of a car stalling in the middle of traffic - it's just a one off experience, forget about it! It was a fucking brain fart - move on. You can't base your whole life and hang your ethical system on a moment poorly understood and that never comes again. Certainly, I would not try to arrange my life thusly.

mnottertail -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 12:43:52 PM)
Schroedigers cat , the Danish interpretation as well as the Many Worlds are, in essence, different aspects of the same. We are back to the black sheep of scotland. What they all say in reductio ad animadverto is that it is IN THE VOID until observation. All are indeterministic until determined. We don't know if the fuckin' tree fell out in the woods unless we observe the condition somehow. Let us not get carried away here, boys. Schrodigers cat may die if we observe, it may live. The wave function is collapsed when it is observed to have collapsed. The World is e pluribus unum as observed by the one or ones in it. A second more or less, the tree is up or down. To gain in information, we must have a purchase to get it, thereby changing our aspect and losing the chance at other information. You know, Heisenberg uncertainty. (another aspect of velocity and position (and therefore) information and void). Now I know the tree in Einsteins yard is down, but don't know what happened to the one in Goedels. LOL, Ron Ron

Rule -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 1:27:38 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LadyEllen The divine (lets leave God out of this as he confuses the matter) must exist in the universe, if it exists at all. For it to be outside the universe makes no sense for one thing, No. You probably misunderstand what is meant by 'the outside' of the universe. The universe is not a volume with walls, but rather everything in the universe is part of its wall. It has no outside, but an 'outside'. Existence is only possible within the universe. 'Outside' the universe there thus is no 'outside', nor distance. 'Outside' is only nothingness - the chaotic Ymir (you know what I refer to). Thus the distance between the divine Ymir and any point in the universe is non-existent. quote: ORIGINAL: LadyEllen as anything and everything we are aware of must exist in it - otherwise we would be unaware of it and not have the divine at all? No. Without the divine the universe cannot function, therefore if the divine is part of the universe, neither the divine nor the universe can function. The divine is therefore required to not be part of the universe. However, the universe is part of the divine nothingness 'outside' it. The only thing required and the only way possible for us to become aware of the divine is for it to affect our universe - and that it does, acausally. quote: ORIGINAL: LadyEllen That we are aware of the divine, whether we believe or have faith in it or not, must indicate that it is present in the universe - if only in the insignificant psychologies of a single species of intelligent ape that dwells on an insignificant planet orbiting an insignificant star in a backwater of an insignificant galaxy. These days we like to slight ourselves. My impression is that possibly the whole universe within our 'light cone' and all of the divine is watching us. The evolution of humanity, I am convinced, is probably the most important event since the start of creation. What each of us do matters. quote: ORIGINAL: LadyEllen I have experienced something that I would call the divine - impossible to put into words exactly I'm sorry, but a sudden and accidental slip into a total conciousness of everything, yet without the effort of conciousness and without any sense of me as the one experiencing it. It was utterly ............... (no word I can think of), just a state which made the Biblical "I am" a concept effortlessly comprehended within its scope. Its only happened once, and for a brief few seconds which yet felt like ages but did not possess time in itself. That is what happens to natural slaves when they by torture are transformed into the goddess of love. Very interesting. Please tell me more by mail on the other side. Edited to add: It did not occur to me before, but this must also have been what the Buddha experienced when he became enlightened (but he simultaneously achieved radiance as well). (This is a major discovery.) quote: ORIGINAL: LadyEllen The scientist will tell me that my brain had a seizure of some sort, occasioned by subatomic chemical wotsits or some such. The religious will tell me it was an experience of God. In their own ways, both would be right and neither wrong. We can only experience the divine through the physical structures and reactions which science tells us reliably are what we are. Quite. But Chaingang will never accept your experience, notwithstanding that many others have had the same experience. To him anyone who reports a platypus is a fraud, for by his definitions there are no mammals with bills.

Chaingang -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 1:47:57 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Rule But Chaingang will never accept your experience, notwithstanding that many others have had the same experience. To him anyone who reports a platypus is a fraud, for by his definitions there are no mammals with bills. It's not a semantic game, there is simply no evidence of a god. However, there is a series of logical refutations for a certain conception of god - but the real problem is in how people are conceiving their god, not in the logic itself. Why should logic be considered to fail just because people contradict themselves in their own ideas and assertions? I will concede this much: there could be a god that is the first cause - but there is no evidence of such a god nor of any of his possible attributes. Reality is utterly mute on the subject.

WhipTheHip -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 2:10:53 PM)
> U.S. support of Israel because of some perceived claim that god gave > them the city of Jerusalem despite Israeli warmongering bullshit on > their own frontiers. I don't see Israel as war mongering at all. The Jews living in Israel are the majority, and have the right to self-determination. Israel is the historical homeland of the Jews. Jews have no other nation to call their own. Palestinians have a country where they are in the majority, where their religion is the majority religion, and their language is the majority language. This country welcomes them, and will give them a passport and citizenship. All they have to do is ask. That country is Jordan. Jordan was created for Palestinians. This is a very similar situation to Bosnia, Serbia Croatia, Herzogevenia. Jews living in Arab countries lost their all their land and all their possessions in order to emigrate to Israel.

Rule -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 3:46:20 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang It's not a semantic game To the contrary: semantics is essential to logic. Every time you use inaccurate words to reflect your thoughts - like the persistent use of the extremely inaccurate and confusing concept 'god' - you demonstrate that you fail to grasp this. Garbage in results in garbage out. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang , there is simply no evidence of a god. Your god-concept simply is wrong. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang However, there is a series of logical refutations for a certain conception of god - but the real problem is in how people are conceiving their god, not in the logic itself. In that we agree. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang Why should logic be considered to fail just because people contradict themselves in their own ideas and assertions? Please clarify. quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang I will concede this much: there could be a god that is the first cause - but there is no evidence of such a god nor of any of his possible attributes. Reality is utterly mute on the subject. Why do you think that 'there could be a god that is the first cause'?

Chaingang -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 4:01:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Rule Your god-concept simply is wrong. I don't have a god concept. WTF? Are you stoned? quote: ORIGINAL: Rule Why do you think that 'there could be a god that is the first cause'? As there is no evidence either way, I am open to the possibility. I am also open to an untold number of other things that could also be the first cause and are not god. In what way is that not self-evident? The first cause is unknown. It could be anything.

Chaingang -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 4:03:01 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: WhipTheHip Israel is the historical homeland of the Jews. How so?

meatcleaver -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 4:07:23 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Chaingang quote: ORIGINAL: WhipTheHip Israel is the historical homeland of the Jews. How so? Because Frieseland, Schieswig-Holstein and Denmark are the historical homelands of the English and we shall reclaim them in the name of Hengus and Horsa.

Noah -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 4:17:06 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: WhipTheHip quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver I think human free will is overstated, just look at society. How many people believe in certain religions without any evidence? If free will was at play one would assume beliefs would be more evenly spread yet we see great geographical blocks of certain beliefs which suggests belief is learnt. We are beginning to understand biologic and psychological behaviour, people don't appear to display free will outside certain perameters, we are more like ants than we care to admit. Not only does mankind not possess "free will" The concept of "free will" is a contradiction. "Free will" is a logical impossibility. We each have will, but none of us choose our will. What would it mean to have "free will'? We would have to create ourselves. There is no difference between the "will" we have and the "will" other animals have. None of it is free. What is evidence of "free will"? How could it ever be proved or disproved? The concept of "free will" is inheriently meaningless. Whip, you're obviously a bright and educated guy, educated in physics, anyway. I've been disappointed in your contributions here in this thread, though (I'm sure that's upsetting; here's a Tums.) With as much training as you've evidently had you should be able to tell slimy, wool-over-the-eyes argumentation from something with integrity and I think we should all try to stick with the latter, eh? From what does it follow that self-creation is a requirement for free will? Okay I retract the question because the claim I'm criticising here is patent silliness and you should know it. You position yourself as offering a logical critique of the concept of free will and in that context you use "self-created" as if it didn't rule out the thing you disingenuously claim to be measuring with it. Not that it rules anything out explicitly, of course. It is just a pair of words which become nonsense when juxtaposed as you have juxtaposed them. If you chose something for which you can never give an adequate definition as the criterion for the existence of something else, what do you suppose is gonna happen? Hell, that's just the sort of complaint you're making against the expression "free will" but rather than try to make the case you throw this baloney around. Cut it out. At some later point i the thread--as I recall, maybe it was earlier--you repeat a previous claim of yours in bold type the second time apparently based on that venerable theory that stuff gets truer when you say it louder and oftener. I suspect you could have settled down and tried to make a case for something, or against something, and if I smell through your petulant rhetoric properly I think the thing you might have been attacking, in the end, is some radical notion of free will which no one but you has ever posited. Sure you can argue that nothing or no one if free if you demand an unreasonably strict enough definition of the word free. If free means utterly unconditioned then nothing it free. So what. Look from teh top to the bottom of the OED entry and you won't find that definition, I'll wager. Hell, I can argue that beside the fact that no one is free in that sense, no one is tall either. No one is tall because someone else is always taller, and that person is shorter than trees and they are shorter than mountains and mountains are shorter than the beams of light rising from Ground Zero when they turn those memorial lights on and those beams of light themselves are 186,300 miles less tall than they're gonna be in one second anyway. So nothing is tall. There's a proof with all the majesty (and probity) of the one you offer against Free Will. No one uses the term "free" in the expression "free will" in the sense you're arguing against. Your old logic prof probably called that move of your's the Straw Man gambit--or maybe he gave it some Latin name but he told you it was bullshit and he was right. Oh and by the way, what does "inherently meanigless" mean that "meaningless" doesn't? And of the subsequent poster who holds the opinion that everything is inherently meaningless I'd like to ask: What do you mean? As for Cleaver's idea: "If free will was at play one would assume beliefs would be more evenly spread yet we see great geographical blocks of certain beliefs which suggests belief is learnt." And why in the fuck would any resonable person assume this? What is this, the Theory of Epistemologically Random Free Will or something? Does this go also for, say, the belief that when you drop something it will fall down? I see a large geographic cluster of people with this belief. The boundaries of this cluster coincide with those of the inhabitted regions of the Earth. Under your theory, given free will I guess my brother would be statistically likely to believe that shit falls up and my sister to believe that shit falls sideways? And my brother and sister don't believe those things so I guess we've disproved Free Will again? Gimme a fuckin' break, guys. I think Free Will is indeed a tricky bit of business, something which bears a critical look. I think it warrants a discussion of its own so I'll let it go here but fer Chrissakes whatever you wanna argue about argue like honest grownups.

Noah -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 4:21:00 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: WhipTheHip > If a creator exists you should be able to prove it This is not true either. Very little can be proved. You can't even prove 1 + 1 = 2, without assuming axioms, arbitrarily setting up criteria for what constitutes a valid proof, and so forth. Good and well said. As Whip obviously knows, when you get much past the surface of discussions like this you won't get far at all without getting clear on your notion of proof. Thanks, Hip.

Noah -> RE: The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken (9/13/2006 4:30:14 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cuddleheart50 quote: ORIGINAL: Level quote: ORIGINAL: cuddleheart50 Noah, You are one long winded man! [:D] A bright one, too. Of course, that goes without saying. Hey. If you'd ever read this Noah guy's posts you'd know that nothing EVER goes without saying. But, garwsh. Thanks.

Page: << < prev 11 12 [13] 14 15 next > >>

Collarchat.com © 2025

Terms of Service

0.0625