I wasn't really a Alexander fan, but a Diogenes fan. Probably one of my most famous favorite philosophers, what other philosopher got into fights with people for being a dick?! One thing I did like about Alexander was his courage that was down right fool hearty. My favorite story is about Siege of Tyre where they build a road to an island, and the he climbed the battlements ahead of his troops and jumped over the wall and started fighting. His soldiers didn't, and slow to realize of his decision, they finally noticed Alexander fighting the city Guard completely by himself. This rallied his troops to the point that the Island of Tyre was taken by an ancient army without a navy, a thing of legend.

Sad to say, I have only a superficial knowledge of the teachings of the famous Thomas Aquinas. Most of my energies have been on more secular minds. With that said, though, some of my favorite Christian minds are Søren Kierkegaard and George Berkeley. I didn't realize that Existentialism actually has a Christian heritage, I found that rather shocking as most christian's seem rather dogmatic when it comes to finding meaning in their lives. It struck me as interesting that there wasn't a unified feeling among christions to the deeper questions of meaning in life.

George Berkeley's metaphysics are awesome. He represents the only metaphysical experience of the universe that I think humans minds could fully comprehend. Granted, that doesn't mean it is correct, but I think the human mind is really only satisfied with the notion of minds, it is why "Gods" have always been with us, we need minds to be in control.

Sadly, though, even those great christian minds could not save my faith. There were to many problem I had with Christianity and the Bible that my faith was finally crowded out by doubt. You might call me the seed that fell among the thorns that was quickly drowned out of the sun. To me, though, my "Thorns" are truth and knowledge, so I hardly feel embittered or lessened.

In reply to this comment by Lawdeedaw:
Ah, Alexander. I don't know why I think of him a hero--he was bloodthirsty and ruthless, but I guess I admire him neverthelss. (Saw your quote by him.)

BTW, a really good religious scholar (The only one I like) is Aquainis (SP?)

@chilaxe

"atrocious racial discrimination"

You mean little Johnny will have to go to Davis instead of Berkeley. Or Notre Dame instead of UCLA. Or (gasp!) De Anza instead of San Jose State. Oh the horrors!!!! Yeah, its worse than the Japanese Internment. Is that all? I bet latinos and blacks in Cali wish they could suffer the atrocities you say Asians have instead of the ones they are saddled with.

Ahhh thanks my fellow person of truth! I have embraced my ignorance, as the word seems to full of people with all the answers.


In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
Currently, I am very fascinated the metaphysical explanation of immaterialism of George Berkeley. There is a certain simplicity that makes it appealing. It is also unverifiable, thus making any means of discovering the truth of the mater impossible. Recently, I have started to become more of a strong agnostic rather than a weak one. It really does seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the question of real, certain truth as it pertains to our complete condition. Our current tools are a priory reasoning, science, and intuition; one only goes so far, one can't make truth claims, and the other can't show that it is right. There has to be some other form, that is what faith is supposed to be, divine revelation: that only an outsider could inject insight into your situation. Kind of like Newton's third law, you have to be acted on by an outside source to cause change in a given system. That is an actual scientific argument for faith being a method to discovering truth. It can't, however, tell us how, which one, when we are wrong...and so many other problems it is why I have abandoned it as my method.

that was really well said my man.
i use the term "seekers" often.
never heard of that book.it looks interesting.

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
Currently, I am very fascinated the metaphysical explanation of immaterialism of George Berkeley. There is a certain simplicity that makes it appealing. It is also unverifiable, thus making any means of discovering the truth of the mater impossible. Recently, I have started to become more of a strong agnostic rather than a weak one. It really does seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the question of real, certain truth as it pertains to our complete condition. Our current tools are a priory reasoning, science, and intuition; one only goes so far, one can't make truth claims, and the other can't show that it is right. There has to be some other form, that is what faith is supposed to be, divine revelation: that only an outsider could inject insight into your situation. Kind of like Newton's third law, you have to be acted on by an outside source to cause change in a given system. That is an actual scientific argument for faith being a method to discovering truth. It can't, however, tell us how, which one, when we are wrong...and so many other problems it is why I have abandoned it as my method.

that was really well said my man.
i use the term "seekers" often.
never heard of that book.it looks interesting.

Currently, I am very fascinated the metaphysical explanation of immaterialism of George Berkeley. There is a certain simplicity that makes it appealing. It is also unverifiable, thus making any means of discovering the truth of the mater impossible. Recently, I have started to become more of a strong agnostic rather than a weak one. It really does seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the question of real, certain truth as it pertains to our complete condition. Our current tools are a priory reasoning, science, and intuition; one only goes so far, one can't make truth claims, and the other can't show that it is right. There has to be some other form, that is what faith is supposed to be, divine revelation: that only an outsider could inject insight into your situation. Kind of like Newton's third law, you have to be acted on by an outside source to cause change in a given system. That is an actual scientific argument for faith being a method to discovering truth. It can't, however, tell us how, which one, when we are wrong...and so many other problems it is why I have abandoned it as my method.

@MycroftHomlz

We could check for the existence of bias by looking at what happens when discrimination at colleges is made illegal.

After California made "racial engineering" illegal in our universities in 1996, the proportion of students of Asian descent at UC Berkeley, the best school in the UC system, skyrocketed to around 45%.

http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n12/htdocs/berkeley-breathed-273.php

@GeeSussFreeK I'm going to pick and choose from your comment instead of quoting, since it's huge.


There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

I'm not sure you can say that something doesn't exist, just because we cannot observe it directly anymore. Galaxies moving away from ours at greater than light speed still have had an effect on things around them and we can see the "traces" of them, which at least suggests that they exist - like black holes, which we cannot see directly either. Futhermore, we can observe on the galaxies moving parallel or at least along side our own, how they move and can thus estimate the position of the big bang and theorize from the given evidence that galaxies moving in the opposite direction should exist even if we cannot see them or in essence EVER interact with them again.

A similar argument can't be made for God.


Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago.

You are being a bit facetious here, I suppose? We are quite a bit, actually a huge leap, closer to the basic ideas than we were thousands of years ago. The problem is that the target keeps moving further back. First cells, then molecules, then atoms, now quantum entanglement (or what its called).

For instance, how to objects move? Force is applied to an object making it move relative to the world. The world moves in the opposite direction, but only relative to the opposite force, which means very, very little.

If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time?
It isn't and they wouldn't.

What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts?
I'm not a physicist, so I won't venture too far off ground here. It's understood as far as I know. @Ornthoron could you perhaps confirm for me?

Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital?
Macron objects are perceived as analog, because we don't look closely enough and in short enough time spans. Any perceived analog object can be simulated digitally if you use enough data to do it. This is my understanding, anyway.

We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind.
This is a distinction between what is and what something is perceived as. Essentially you're touching upon qualia, which some cognitive scientists believe in and others don't. Blue is a real thing in so far as it's a wavelength of light. As for the rest, I don't know. It's a much harder question than you lead on, because a theory of mind is one of the hardest questions there are left.

I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.


There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe.

I think you are confusing a dream with the idea of a dream. You rarely have any control in dreams and even lucid dreamers don't have 100 % control. How a dream actually is made/dreamed is also a point of discussion in itself. A fundamental problem with this hypothesis is that WE think. Actors in our dreams don't think or do anything that has any effect in the world other than our memory of them. Like our thoughts, dreams don't have wills of their own.

Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But all other things aren't really equal here. Some thing are just inherently complex, like gravity or magnets. When you don't think about the details, it's easy to think your hypothesis is correct, but when you dig deeper it falls apart.

Actually, even if you accept the premise, it still means that the dreamer is completely removed from us; he has no control, because not even traces of it has been observed in our reality (the dream). So the complete lack of evidence also points to this hypothesis being false.

When you think it even further, we run into the ever present homunculus argument. Who's dreaming of the dreamer? And so on.

That our reality is actually a real, physical one is a much better explanation, because it neatly explains itself more completely - thereby actually fulfilling Occam's razor better.


Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

Correlation does not imply causation. We have much supporting evidence of causation though. Forces are demonstrably interactive. Whether they were secretly set up to seem as if they interact aren't necessarily relevant, because demonstrably they do. There is no evidence to the contrary at all.

In your clock example, it is a physical room, so there are plenty of things to test the hypothesis that the clocks cause each other to ring. Are the clocks identical? Are there cogs inside the clocks? If we break one, will the chain still go on without it? Etc etc.

From observing X number of clocks you cannot strictly speaking extrapolate that to all clocks. That's the essence of the induction problem. Your hypothesis is based on limited data, and on further analysis it falls apart. Causality itself hasn't fallen apart yet. I'd like to see a proper argument against it, for certain.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.

It's a good start to all questions to say "I don't know". I do that too on many, many things. It's a much better starting point than when preachers usually say, "I know".

Your questions are interesting to me, because they deal with a lot of philosophical and physical stuff, I like those.

On a purely pragmatic level though, they are largely not that important. look at it this way, do you live your life as if causality exists? If you do and it works as you expected, then causality probably exist. If you live as if it doesn't exist, then the world is suddenly a very strange place. Do you live as if what you observe as blue is actually blue? Do others see it as blue as well? If they all do, then it's probably just blue. Does it make a difference if some people see it as green? Not really, I'd think.

Do you live your life as if there's a God? Do others? Does it make a difference? That's a very basic test of whether he actually exists. I argue that it doesn't make any difference at all, other than expected behavior of either party - some live as if a God exists and other live as if he doesn't exist. If the only difference in the people themselves, then the God falls out of the equation.

I think I've sufficiently trudged through this now. Sorry for the wall of text, hope it makes sense.

There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago. For instance, how to objects move? If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time? What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts? Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital? We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind. I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.

There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe. Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.
>> ^gwiz665:

It can be know, because that's the way the world works. There is nothing "outside" the world as it exists. While you technically might say that there could be something wholly removed from the physical universe, there is no overlap - there is no manifestation here or there of the other. Therefore, even though you could on a purely theoretical basis make the argument, it is ultimately a waste of time and futile.
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^gwiz665:
If a god is like the regular God, a deity that just is eternal, then no they cannot exist.

"Cannot"? As is the existence of a being that exists outside of what we perceive as time is impossible? How can that be known?

Do you realize that you are reinforcing the thesis of this video with these poor examples? >> ^quantumushroom:

How is exposing failed government programs, wasted tax dollars and ignoring the Constitution "violent rhetoric"?
OH THOSE PEACEFUL LEFT-WING LIBERALS.

I want to go up to the closest white person and say: ‘You can’t
understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my
mental health — New York city councilman Charles Barron

It's good (Michelle Malkin's) in D.C. and I'm in New York. I'd spit on
her if I saw her. -- Geraldo Rivera

I have a good news to report; Glen Beck appears closer to suicide - I'm
hoping that he does it on camera; suicide is rampant in his family, and
given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am
only hoping that when Glen Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls
the trigger, that it will be on television, because somebody will capture
it on YouTube and it will be the most popular video for months. -- Mike
Malloy, radio "personality"

"It's about time that we have an intifada in this country that changes
fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every --
They're gonna say some Palestinian being too radical -- well, you
haven't seen radicalism yet." -- U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian
fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American
intifada

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not
'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION,
the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." -- Michael Moore

In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby
killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn’t happening now, but I will tell
you – there has never been an army as violent and murderous as our
army has been in Iraq. -- Seymour Hersh

“I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like
many black men do, of heart disease.... He is an absolutely
reprehensible person.” -- USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk
show host Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, Nov. 4, 1994,
on PBS’s “To the Contrary.”
"This administration is waging war on poor children," said "The
reality is that they are steadily and surely trying to turn the clock back
on all of the programs and supports that working families and their
children need and deserve. --Hillary Rodham Clinton

OH THOSE PEACEFUL LEFT-WING LIBERALS.


I want to go up to the closest white person and say: ‘You can’t
understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my
mental health — New York city councilman Charles Barron


It's good (Michelle Malkin's) in D.C. and I'm in New York. I'd spit on
her if I saw her. -- Geraldo Rivera


I have a good news to report; Glen Beck appears closer to suicide - I'm
hoping that he does it on camera; suicide is rampant in his family, and
given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am
only hoping that when Glen Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls
the trigger, that it will be on television, because somebody will capture
it on YouTube and it will be the most popular video for months. -- Mike
Malloy, radio "personality"


"It's about time that we have an intifada in this country that changes
fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every --
They're gonna say some Palestinian being too radical -- well, you
haven't seen radicalism yet." -- U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian
fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American
intifada


The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not
'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION,
the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." -- Michael Moore


In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby
killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn’t happening now, but I will tell
you – there has never been an army as violent and murderous as our
army has been in Iraq. -- Seymour Hersh


“I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like
many black men do, of heart disease.... He is an absolutely
reprehensible person.” -- USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk
show host Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, Nov. 4, 1994,
on PBS’s “To the Contrary.”

"This administration is waging war on poor children," said "The
reality is that they are steadily and surely trying to turn the clock back
on all of the programs and supports that working families and their
children need and deserve. --Hillary Rodham Clinton

How is exposing failed government programs, wasted tax dollars and ignoring the Constitution "violent rhetoric"?

OH THOSE PEACEFUL LEFT-WING LIBERALS.


I want to go up to the closest white person and say: ‘You can’t
understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my
mental health — New York city councilman Charles Barron


It's good (Michelle Malkin's) in D.C. and I'm in New York. I'd spit on
her if I saw her. -- Geraldo Rivera


I have a good news to report; Glen Beck appears closer to suicide - I'm
hoping that he does it on camera; suicide is rampant in his family, and
given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am
only hoping that when Glen Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls
the trigger, that it will be on television, because somebody will capture
it on YouTube and it will be the most popular video for months. -- Mike
Malloy, radio "personality"


"It's about time that we have an intifada in this country that changes
fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every --
They're gonna say some Palestinian being too radical -- well, you
haven't seen radicalism yet." -- U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian
fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American
intifada


The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not
'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION,
the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." -- Michael Moore


In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby
killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn’t happening now, but I will tell
you – there has never been an army as violent and murderous as our
army has been in Iraq. -- Seymour Hersh


“I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like
many black men do, of heart disease.... He is an absolutely
reprehensible person.” -- USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk
show host Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, Nov. 4, 1994,
on PBS’s “To the Contrary.”

"This administration is waging war on poor children," said "The
reality is that they are steadily and surely trying to turn the clock back
on all of the programs and supports that working families and their
children need and deserve. --Hillary Rodham Clinton

UC Berkeley? I am not rich or hip enough to fight for the poor and oppressed. Neither are you.

Knowing this is part of my job: Berkeley Bionics was founded by UCB faculty. The research was done at UCB. To quote Berkeley Bionics's website:

2005: Berkeley ExoWorks™ is founded by Dr. Homayoon Kazerooni, Russ Angold, Nathan Harding, and other individuals associated with the Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory. The new company enters into a licensing agreement with the university to commercialize innovative exoskeleton technology developed at the lab. ... 2007: Berkeley ExoWorks becomes Berkeley Bionics™.

Berkeley Bionics is a private company, but it is very much an academic venture, founded on academic research in exoskeletons and other robotic efforts.

>> ^oxdottir:

Did you see the soldiers carrying 200 pound loads with this thing, safely? And the money went to Berkeley, not a defence contractor. The commercialization for civilians followed later, and is encouraged by the DoD.


Berkley Bionics is not Berkley University. It is a private, for profit, company.