I'm quite sure I understood perfectly well what you meant.



You're philosophically superior? Sounds like an ego screaming for attention to me.



You're supposedly a scientist and you are unware of the many deep mysteries that are still wide open to scientific research?

I've explained it so many time (in philosophical terms to boot!) but it seems to have gone completely over your head.

All science has done thus far is describe what the "philosophical dice" are doing. But science has absolutely no clue what the "philosophical dice are, or where they come from".

And, yes, from a practical point of view you can replace "philosophical dice" with "quantum phenomena" or "atomic and sub atomic particles".

You seem to be perfectly content with just describing what the "dice" are doing and you seem to be totally oblivious to the real mysteries behind the true essence of the "dice" themselves, and the fact that those dice constitute the sum total of our existence.

If the "dice" are coming from some unknowable mysterious void that we cannot even reach via our physical descriptions, then guess what? That means that we also come from that unknowable void! (i.e. Our true essence is far beyond anything that physics or chemistry can even dream of.)

And as it stands right now, even our scientific observations have indicated that the cosmic "dice" do indeed arrise from this potentially unknowable void which clearly exists.

That may not seem like a 'gap' to you, but for me it represents a mystery with such profound philosophical implications that it can only be described as an 'hole of infinite potentiality'.

Until science can say something about "where the dice come from" it really can't say much of anything at all. All it does is describe the dice that already exist and then some people act like that's all there is to know.

So from my point of view your not even in the philosophical ball-park, much less presenting a 'philosophically superior view'.

Hey, don't let it bother you. We all view things differently. It's ok!

But when you talk down to other people just realize that the ladder you're standing on isn't leaning on anything solid.

When all else fails, ad hom...

Lot's of people value it.

Two things here...

1.) If one's entire argumentative stance is based upon a known fallacious form, such as 'God of the gaps', then it is clearly lacking logical substance. That is assuming that one recognizes the inherent issues that go along with that line of thinking. It is a commonly used Christian fundamentalist argumentative form... the most common when faced with overwhelming contradictory evidence.

2.) The term ego is being used in a way that does not coincide with what it meant when coined by Freud.

The count is 0 and 2...



Did that answer the question yet??? Your insistence upon invoking meaningless descriptions like "philosophical dice" does nothing to add clarity to your already muddled position.

Science does not know where everything came from. So what is the point in continuing to say that? What does it matter?

No one knows that.



Nonsensical bullsh1t!!! Only someone who is confused about what makes things 'solid' or someone who knows but is being deliberately deceptive would say such a thing. In order to deal with the truth of a matter, one must get to it first. That is impossible with the semantic gymnastics and misuse of precisely defined terms which are being flaunted as though they support a position with merit.





Steeeeeeeeeeee RIKE Thuh-REEEEE.... your out!

Well, it appears that you're actually in total agreement with me then.

So it looks more like a HOME RUN from here!

I have no clue what points you're trying to make, but obviously you are in total agreement with my points, so that's all I care about.

Science can't say anything about the true essence of reality. That's the bottom line and it appears that we're all in agreement on that.

So I have no clue why you say things like "Three Strikes Your Out!"

You've just agreed with my position!

GRAND SLAM!

Thank you!

If your position is completely described by the above words which were invoked by me earlier and are now - once again - being displayed here in the beginning of this very post, then you're absolutely correct, I agree with that position.

Thank you!

Happy New Year Abra!

Now is the perfect time to mention the fact that we live in an intelligible universe. Because of that, there are things that we can know based upon consistent and repeatable observation. The fact that we do not know everything does mean that we do not know anything. The fact that we do not know exactly where or how the universe came into existence does not mean that we cannot know things about what does exist in an intelligible fashion.

The fact that we do not know everything about the atomic and sub-atomic world does not give spiritual arguments merit, it merely represents a loophole which amounts to a 'gap' in our knowledge. There have always been 'gaps' in our knowledge and there may always be, however that alone does not lend logical support to an argument which attempts to establish the existence of spirit by attributing that which goes unknown to spirit.

Unless of course, one wants to apply the meaning of 'unknown' to spirit. Where could that possibly lead, because nothing further could reasonably be said about it.

I thought you'd finally left -_-;

I'm talking about when you pulled two quotes from me.

"You also haven't heard me claim that in this topic or any other one."
"You've made it abundantly clear that you can't convey any details of that sort so at the level you can handle YES it has all the answers."

And acted like they were a contradiction. I'll bold it differently this time for the very important part you seem to have skipped:

You've made it abundantly clear that you can't convey any details of that sort so at the level you can handle YES it has all the answers.

I actually prefer to not be in the spotlight but the actual meaning was not so much about how grand my philosophy is (I'm a bit disgusted to think that average could be very far below it,) but rather how weak yours is.

Philosophy doesn't even have right or wrong answers but you've still managed to adopt horribly flimsy and minimal function notions. The thing is philosophy uses a lot of the same things as Science and not-so-coincidentally they happen to be the same ones you want to sweep under the rug.

So that's what you mean by gap?

Well, you don't seem to be interested in taking a minute to comprehend the shape of the Earth thing so I can stop typing it up but not that you've sort of stepped out of safety for a whole split second to give a loose definition of what a gap is I should be able to talk about missing links.

*By the way, there's some pretty major hipocricy in accusing me of not knowing about things left to research when I've spent the last few pages asking you to show us that you've got any idea what they are. If you really want me to list off things I can do it but I know you won't ask because then you'd look bad for not being able to reciprocate.

So the old notion of a missing link between man and ape has been around quite awhile. Then we found one. Oh, but it wasn't solved by a long shot because the gap had not been filled- where was the missing link between ape-man and man or ape-man and ape? In the 90's we had something like twenty intermediates or close side branches but that just means more gaps.

The critical thing missing from the gaps argument is that the gaps have become smaller each time and now they're so small you couldn't even trip in them while walking along. In total disregard of this you and others claim that there are more gaps than ever. The people who see evolution as an opponent to their faith would never stop demanding missing links lest a full pedigree of every individual born be presented to them (and if you've ever looked into who your recent ancestors were you'll know you can't go back more than just a few generations before you can't find everyone. Personally it only takes 4 generations before it's impossible to keep tracing some of my ancestors back.)

So what you're saying here is really like if we had a fossil of Lucy and a fossil of her great grandson showed up you'd just have another gap between her and him. You hide it off in physics where your ignorance can more easily go about it's day but the truth of the matter is that the number of gaps means nothing. We've been cutting them apart and at this point they don't look like Swiss cheese but rather smooth concrete. There are still holes in it but they are tiny and for matters like faith they are effectively gone, unless you want to dice up your faith into equally small bits and scatter it about in all the gaps constantly shuffling them around whenever someone touches another gap and renders it too small for the already meaninglessly small bit of faith you tried to nestle into that spot.

There you go being religious at me again.
Tell me, is there anyone that doesn't agree with you for reasons other than "everything I say goes over their heads because they're stupid"? It seems horrible to live in a world where you think that abut so many people.

Strange that you'd tell me my own argument goes over my head. It's been awhile though so I don't recall who I explained it to. Do you remember who was talking about probabilities for our universe?

String theory is currently the best supported hypothesis about that and it may sound a bit familiar when I remind you that people are working on confirming it.
"Oh, but that would just mean the dice were actually smaller dice and science has never gone into what those dice are!" Well of course it hasn't, we're not there yet.

Now here's where we agree: the next step isn't going to be "it's made of smaller dice" any time soon, if ever. Your argument is that unless we get to the indivisible dice of truth (God) knowing about the rest isn't any better than knowing nothing. I'm taking a number line approach and saying that even if you stat at fifty billion each number you count in whatever direction is still one more than you had before. Now if you read carefully this is a very easy point for you to hound me on but I feel safe not having anywhere to go after the way you've been dealing with my posts so basically I don't think you'll know how to take advantage of it because you've got basically 0 adaptability in an argument.

At one point folks thought the elements were the dice. We described what the elements did better and learned how to split them. I always try to avoid pointing out literary mechanisms but I guess I'll have to do so here to make it clear to you that I'm not talking about quarks.
We learned that air and earth and water were made of smaller things and that fire was something different. Then we described what the (new) elements did better and learned how to split them. Now we're describing what the (new-new) elements do better and we're working on splitting them.

The true essence of the dice has been smaller dice every time, simply because dice is such a vague and meaningless word when we go applying it to atoms or quarks or whatnot.

Again, not knowing what the smallest dice are isn't a big deal and asking such a thing is even meaningless if it turns out the dice get smaller infinitely. We aren't at the end right now so there's no way to know if there is an end (unless you'd like to enlighten me,[/sarcasm]) so really what you've been saying doesn't really mean anything. It sounds kind of deep and if you want to convince yourself it is then it feels deep but it's really about as shallow as the layer of moisture on my finger after it's been in my mouth.

Physics technically encompasses chemistry but the two fields split because the atom-stuff was getting in the way of what physicists preferred to be involved with and turned out to have it's own special set of uses that didn't really need much feedback from physics. It's not really relevant but as anyone reading may have gathered I don't think you are reading this.

Well, that and how my earlier description of your thinking we couldn't know any numbers before we knew the smallest one kind of already went over this exact thing.

Isn't it interesting how blind your "you just don't understand" arguments look when I'm not just giving relevant responses but even pre-empting future ones? How could it being going over my head when I've shown that I know where it's going?

It's looking like that phrase has stopped meaning anything and is basically just some buzz word fresh out of the box.
(psst, thinking outside of the box doesn't mean taking what you were doing to the other side of some cardboard and continuing exactly as you had been.)

So what exactly is unknowable?
Disclaimer: I'm not stating that we're going to know everything or anything like that. This is specifically about you explaining your own argument to show if it has any meaning or not.

Refer back to my posts from quite awhile ago where I said you wanted science ignorant so you could have something like this.

But really, what does knowing what it is change about what it actually is? It's not as if the Earth could have been a five point star or dodecahedron before people came along and cleaved away the potential until that sphere-ish shape was the only thing left. It was what it was long before we figured it out.

When the dice where materials they came from atoms latching on to each other. When the dice where atoms they came condensing energy and other atoms fusing together with more energy. Now the dice are mainly quarks and we may find that those come from strings. Once strings are established as the dice we'll start working on figuring out where they came from until we can be sure enough of it at which point we'll have something new to call the dice.

This is why your philosophy is weak and has been every time other people used it throughout history. You want to put the "true" dice a step or two into the unknown where you can always say we know nothing and there no risk or people figuring it out. Without that risk that comes from properly defining something it also completely lacks explanatory power. This total potentiality you talk about is much like sending full signals of red, green, and blue at a television screen: you just get a big chunk of nothing. There's no picture there until you take away blue potential is come places, green in others, and red wherever- as unlike the Earth these philosophical concepts are in our heads and their value comes precisely from our having defined them. Thoughts and ideas that are not clear are more like flatulence than brilliance and you have to work to impart value upon them.

The tragedy is that you seem to want to throw out everything that's been worked on like throwing out fine dining in favor of uncooked eggs and pus.

You forgot to include a reason for why your point of view was worth applying. As it stands you've given me no reason to adopt it lest I prefer to fill my life with slack jawed admiration for blurry outlines of concepts in the back of my head that I have to be careful to never try to understand lest I ruin them.

I know you'd never describe it like that but I'm quite convinced that you won't be able to explain how that's different from what you've been preaching (and I'm only using standards that an actual preacher would easily be able to fulfill.)

I'd be really glad if you'd realized that this was why I started talking to you in the first place but you've got some kind of mental force field in place to prevent yourself from ever evaluating your beliefs. Really I'd have expected this from the start except that you said you weren't religious. We can really tidily sort out all of the trouble I've had with your view if you switch from calling yourself agnostic or whatever to saying you're religious. Just one little thing will make it all make sense.

The first one was good but #2 is a dumb point. He shouldn't have to and his use of language is clear.

If he's had the word misuse/misrepresent thrown at him unfairly in the past it's definitely appropriate in this case.

Quote mining?

Would you say it went over your head?

So you're much bolder about trying to claim territory when you're not talking to me. Interesting.

We've been agreeing that science doesn't know everything from the start. I've spent pages explaining this to you.

I've even already explained that the issue is what you want that to mean.

I prefer to talk about negative evidence. You cannot completely prove that anything doesn't exist, you can only find the things that are there.

There might be a teacup in Earth's orbit on the exact opposite side of the Sun from us. It's certainly possible although not remotely probable. We can't prove there isn't first of all because it's hard to get somewhere with a line of sight to such a location, secondly because even if we could no telescope would be able to resolve a teacup at-

ok, little aside. Most of our satellites and such are less than 6,325 kilometers from the surface of the Earth. That number happens to be the radius of Earth and I've only chosen it to give a sense of scale. The Moon is 385,000 kilometers away.
So to the point: While the satellites that scan the surface of the Earth to make pictures like those used in Google Earth or whatever map/weather service are able to resolve things human-sized or around that if you point them at the moon they would have a hard time resolving something more like the size of a house. Now the Earth is about 150,000,000 kilometers from the sun so if you just went sideways enough to see the other side of our orbit you'd have to look almost 300 million kilometers to see the supposed location of the teacup.

-that location. Even if we sent some rocket full of people there they'd have no hope of searching an earth sized area for a teacup. If we send a bunch of satellites there to just do picture scans for teacups there would be lots of places where some bit of dust created a cone shaped blind spot where the teacup could be.

So basically we could bankrupt the resources of the Earth looking for this teacup but never prove it wasn't there. However, if it actually was there we might find it with a single astronaut in a single day and then it would be settled. Bam. Teacup. Right there. Saw it and took pictures. 0 doubt left.

This is what makes strong arguments strong and weak arguments weak. "Compound x is the chemical in the snake venom that acts as the poison" so if you remove it and the venom is still poisonous you know the claim was wrong while if you remove it and the venom no longer works (and you've done a proper control so that you know the way you remove it didn't mess up some other component,) then you know it was right. Philosophy obviously doesn't deal with examples like that, otherwise it would be science before being tests, but the same concepts apply.

I agree, and an age-old defense/argument for those who argue 'God'/spirit is "Well, you cannot prove that it does not exist." At that point in time, one can focus upon the argumentative form and show how the exact same argument lends the exact same logical validity to any argument for any imaginable creature. Should that demonstration be effectively used to support the notion of an obviously imagined creature, then it shows the weakness of the form itself.

Some do not get it though...

Well the difference between invisible pink unicorns and my god is that my god is better because I say and feel so and if anybody says or feels otherwise they don't count. You can say that about invisible pink unicorns. Ok, you can but then it wouldn't count as per above.

It occurs to me that the argument for and against things that cannot be proven to exist objectively boils down to an argument for and against reality in general.

In determining reality, and what is real it is the observer who makes the decision. What exists and what does not exist is decided by the observer. The observer makes that decision and then he looks for someone in agreement with him. When agreement is not enough to convince everyone, the scientist steps in and presents his objective proof for what he has decided is real.

The scientist (a club of sorts) have claimed the authority to state what is real and what is not real objectively, but they have forgotten that the decision about what is real is still one that an observer makes. They only give weight to their tested and "proven" observations and scientific agreements. Sometimes some of them will even take up a position about what is not real or simply assume something does not exist because there is no evidence to prove it does exist. This is perfectly reasonable to them.

Yet they know that they do not know everything, so to assume a thing does not exist is jumping to a conclusion. The most they can say honestly is that they don't know if such a thing exists.

So instead of keeping an open mind, some of them spend more time resisting the idea (that is obviously being forced upon them) than just doing their job of observing things objectively.

Whether something unknown to us exists or not is silly to argue about. Being annoyed because someone else believes in something like spirit, or God is a waste of time, but if what they believe to be a false belief is being foisted upon them and upon society, I can understand their being a resistance to it.

The arguments persist because people who have decided what is real are still looking for agreement. It is like Sky has be saying. Reality is determined (decided)by agreement.

The solution is to continue on your solitary path in the quest for truth and keep an open mind. The bottom line is that it might be hard to decide which is more important, what is actually true or what we believe is true.

If we actually do create reality with our minds and our beliefs, then what we believe to be true may be the final thing that matters to the individual.

JB,

One does not 'decide what is real'. If I drop a 10 pound weight on your foot, you cannot decide that the weight nor the pain do not exist simply through a conscious decision.

Objectivity aims to remove all bias. Because we realize that that is impossible to actually do, it is an upper limit which is strived for yet not quite ever attained. The fact that all bias cannot be removed does not place all observational methods nor methodological thinking upon equal footing.

Evidence is an objective measure. While the assessment is always through subjective means because people do it, that assessment can be shown and weighed for it's validity/soundness/truth-value.

Of course one does. It is such a natural process you may not even realize you are doing it.



Yes you can. If you are good at self hypnosis. Pain is only a message from the receptors to the brain. That message can be blocked.

Yes, the observer does decide what is real. (You have decided that this is not true. That was your decision. )



I have nothing against objectivity or its purpose. Neither did I say that I placed all observational methods on equal footing. I don't disagree with what you have said above but that does not change the fact that the observer does make the decision about what he believes is real. Groups (scientific) back up their observations with "evidence" to give their decisions weight.

Your approach is that 'something else' determines what is real. Who or what, besides the observer determines that?

Your approach is more like "what is just is." We observers have nothing to do with it at all. We are simply the product of what is.

Your approach is more like a belief in an outside creator or God than mine.

That's a really dead on summary. Yup.

To tell the truth I don't care about what's true. True doesn't mean anything to me the way you've used it. The snarky thing I said in my last post is essentially why.

So really it's been about strong philosophy and all the long reminders of how science works are just here because certain people turn every fight against them into a "me vs science/religion" thing and I fit into the one much more easily than the other.

You sort of can decide they don't exist but you need a lifetime of practicing doing that and most people are never going to learn to shut off their perception like that.

But nonetheless if you mangle both of their legs they can decide that their legs are fine all they want but they're not going to be able to walk and very shortly they'll probably have to decide that their nose didn't just hit the ground to keep their own little "reality" going.

And you definitely don't get to decide that you didn't get shot in the head 32 times or anything like that.

From the premise you are working from you are correct. Most people would not consciously decide that in this life they will be getting shot in the head 32 times or how ever they die.

But from the spiritual premise I work from, yes you can. Nothing can happen to you that you do not allow.

We live many lives and we die many different ways. Yes, we decided to allow our deaths. That was the agreement we made before we incarnated into this reality.

I know, you don't remember.

JB, you are speaking of deciding on what would come to pass, which is different than deciding on whether or not it has happened. Suppose Jill, on your spiritual terms, decides that her cancer will go in remission, and it does.

Does that mean that her cancer has in fact gone in remission? Can she decide that such never happened, retroactively?

For me, for the most part, the question of 'choosing ones destiny' is different than 'acknowledging that which has happened as real'.


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Yeah,

There is a huge difference between deciding what to believe and determining what is real.