It is simplified.

Some of the concepts are actually pretty hard to put into words and just are how they are. And for each cosmologist you speak to you will encounter a different opinion of the standard cosmological model or parts of its construction.

There are parts of it i don't like because i can't follow and feel comfortable with each step. The maths makes sense, but there's nothing logical and connected in my understanding. At first i didn't like that, but then i realised that we all accept quantum mechanics where charged particles accelerate without radiating, and "instantaneously" move between distinct energy levels.......

In other words, every physical law we've got is just our primitive way of understanding the signals sent from our senses to our brain. Things seem to make sense to us the more experience we have with it happening. We don't understand why matter moves towards other matter via "gravity" - a word which we accept and go 'ahhh gravity - i understand now' but why the hell should it and/or why should it exist in the first place merely to move towards one another?!

So gravity attracts things (why?!) and time only runs in one direction (why!?) and energy is quantized according to the planck constant (WHY!?) and ... the universe is more or less like it's shown in the video! But why why why!? Well, that's a question for a philosopher.

There is only one Moral imperative observable in nature. "Nothing is true and everything is permitted"

"Nothing is true..." :

All concepts of truth are relative and dependant upon a supporting paradigm(s) to facilitate meaning and context. To say "killing is wrong" would only be meaningful within a structure that defines both A. the intended meaning of the terms used (i.e. linguistic convention) and B. the causal relationships and imperatives of the ethical code/structure under which one is operating
(e.g. Christians might say "because God will get you", or Deontologists might say "because the act is always more important than the consequence, or Consequentialists that say the opposite of the Deontologists etc.)
Either way "Truth" is just a meaningless noise leaving ones mouth unless there is at least some intellectual structure in which to define it. Ascribing "truth" to "God" is just another such intellectual structure.

"......everything is permitted":

Given all moral/ethical imperatives are by their very nature intellectual constructs and that none (as we define them) appear irrefutably to occur in nature we must conclude that the only "moral judge/authority" that provably exists in the cosmos must be our own minds (you can't even prove 100% that other minds necessarily exist). The only acts prohibited by nature are those defined by its physical laws, one cannot commit a physical action that does not have an equal and opposite reaction for instance. Thus "everything is permitted".
However as the fact that ones own mind is and can be the only moral authority it is also implicit in this "truth" (see what I did there?) that one should endeavour to not be found wanting in the eyes of this ethical arbiter. After all your own conscience is the one person you can never avoid! Thus "everything is permitted" when "truly" understood (again lol) does not encourage one to "do what you want" but rather to consider your every action with the utmost care. No one knows your true motivations & desires better than your own sub-conscious and no one could ever punish you as hard for your mistakes.

Hardened violent criminals who repent their crimes rarely do so because prison is an unpleasant environment (they are often hardened men, accustomed to physical hardship). They repent because the enforced solitude forces them to confront themselves!

Thus I assert; moral behaviour is a product of wisdom and self awareness only! Anything else is brainwashing and (often dangerous) delusion as it deprives one of the true (and complicated) reasons for why some choices/beliefs would be mistakes. (e.g. the sexual repression of Christian culture that still remains firmly in place amongst many (most) atheists).

Love is the law, Love under will.
And do what thau wilt shall be the whole of the law.

At present this concept of design is just castle-in-the-sky nonsense. Empty piffle. A complete non-starter.

This is why the "mere mention" of "design" will get you "banned" from peer-review, because you could just as well have made a "mere mention" of Bigfoot and the loch ness monster in your zoology report, it's a big tell to your peers that you are a nut who fails to understand the nature of evidence and science, and a big sign that you are in for some fuzzy logic and dumb assumptions instead of solid science.

Design is a better hypothesis for the information we find in DNA, and the fine tuning we see in the physical laws. The reason design is a non-starter is because the idea this Universe was created by anyone is anathema to the scientific community:

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."

S. C. Todd,
Correspondence to Nature 410(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the unitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin, Harvard
New York Review of Books 1/9/97

No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.

Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182

After essentially nullifying and disproving everything we have learned about biology the last 200 years, you still have all the work ahead of you, I'm afraid. You now have to build a completely new framework and model for every single observation ever made in biology that makes sense of it all and explains why things are the way they are. Shouting that a thing is "complex" is not cutting it, I'm afraid. You need a new theory of DNA, Immunology, Bacterial resistance, adaptation, vestigal organs, animal distobution, mutation, selection, variation, genetics, speciation, taxonomy... well, as Dobzhansky put it: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" That quote is more relevant than ever.

Your error here is conflating micro and macro evolution. Creation scientists believe in micro evolution and speciation. That is part of the creationist model of how the world was repopulated with animals after the flood. Macro evolution, the idea that all life descended from a universal common ancestor, is not proven by immunology, bacterial resistance, adaptation, animal distribution, mutation, seclection, variation, speciation, taxonomy etc. The only way you could prove it is in the fossil record and the evidence isn't there. They've tried to prove it with genetics but it contradicts the fossil record (the way they understand it). So Creationists have no trouble explaining those things..and common genetics points to a common designer.

You dont have to trust scientists, most of the EVIDENCE is RIGHT FUCKING THERE, in front of you, in your pocket, in your hand, around your home, in every school, in every home, in every post office or courtroom, in the streets. ACTUAL REAL EVIDENCE, right there, PROVING, every second, that the universe is billions of years old.

Every scientist since Newton could be a lying sack of shit, all working on the same conspiracy, and it would mean fuck all, because the evidence speaks for itself.

The earth is definately NOT ten thousand years young.

Have you ever heard of the horizon problem? The big bang model suffers from a light travel time problem of its own, but they solve it by postulating cosmic inflation, which is nothing more than a fudge factor to solve the problem. First, it would have to expand at trillions of times the speed of light, violating the law that says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. There is also no theory compatible with physics that could explain the mechanism for how the Universe would start expanding, and then cease expanding a second later. It's poppycock. See what secular scientists have to say about the current state of the Big Bang Theory:

http://www.cosmologystatement.org/

As far as how light could reach us in a short amount of time, there are many theories. One theory is that the speed of light has not always been constant, and was faster at the beginning of creation. This is backed up by a number of measurements taken since the 1800s showing the speed of light decreasing. You can see the tables here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v4/n1/velocity-of-light

My justification is simply that it has a good track record. If you are really trying to say that I am unreasonable to assume that all physical laws will remain more or less unchanged for the next five seconds then you demonstrate your own stupidity.

The main problem with your justification is that it is logically fallacious. You're still using circular reasoning. Your evidence that the future will be like the past is the past. Is it correct reasoning to use logical fallacies?

You haven't demonstrated that we need to know anything with absolute certainty. Is there any practical value to it?

Can you show me one instance where knowing that something has been the case in every conceivable instance since the dawn of time is just too vague for you?

Things seem to hum along just fine under the crazy assumption that breathing in and out is the way to go.

Well, the thing is, we live in a world of certainty, not uncertainty. What this means is that you are living a double life of sorts. You are uncertain about everything in theory, but of course you never live that way in practice; you expect everything to continue as it has from the beginning of the Creation. You expect that when you jump up you will come back down again. You expect when you say the words "juniper tree" that the sound waves will carry those words to the other persons ear, and they, using universal rules of logic, will comprehend what you're talking about. You are living according to the ideals of a Christian worldview, but simultaneously denying it with your atheism.

Did you know, for instance, that the idea in science of nature being lawfully ordered is a Christian one? It was supposed by 12 century Christians who believed that the Universe was governed by Gods laws, and that we could suss out these universal laws by investigating secondary causes. Here is some of the history of all of that:

http://bede.org.uk/sciencehistory.htm#introduction

So this world of certainty we live in is based in no small way off of Christian ideals and principles. You could not actually justify any of it unless you invoke an omnipotent God who created and maintains all of these things, and will continue to do so. So, the argument is the impossibility of the contrary, which is not only a denial of the world of certainty that we live in, but also the loss of any basis for rational thought.

My justification is simply that it has a good track record. If you are really trying to say that I am unreasonable to assume that all physical laws will remain more or less unchanged for the next five seconds then you demonstrate your own stupidity.

You haven't demonstrated that we need to know anything with absolute certainty. Is there any practical value to it?

Can you show me one instance where knowing that something has been the case in every conceivable instance since the dawn of time is just too vague for you?

Things seem to hum along just fine under the crazy assumption that breathing in and out is the way to go.

The claim is that there is a special substance that is our consciousness, not that it causes our consciousness.

Those who propose that this is true usually attempt to support this with arguments showing not only do we not yet have any explanation for how consciousness could arise solely from physical matter (which is true), but we cannot in principle show that consciousness could arise from matter (which is debatable). If it is not possible to explain consciousness in terms of matter only, then we have to posit a non-physical substance--or at least non-physical properties. (The philosophers who argue for non-physical properties are called property dualists, like David Chalmers, and should be contrasted with substance dualists like Plantinga.) So, according to dualist philosophers of mind, postulating a non-physical substance is not an unnecessary complication, but an essential element of any complete account of the mind.

The arguments themselves can get very complicated. Philosophy of mind is a sonuvabitch.

>> ^messenger:

If someone's going to propose that there's a special substance that causes our consciousness and is non-physical, it has to be explained how this different substance creates consciousness AND how it interacts with physical objects. To propose an as-yet undetected type of physical matter (similar to how "dark matter" has mass, but remains undetected) only requires explanation of how it creates consciousness. Proposing that it's "non-physical" adds complexity, and doesn't provide any answers. It's a dodge.
@GeeSussFreeK
It's possible that we could know all the physical properties by empirical investigation, eventually. Why not? And if we can create robot intelligence, it might become superior to our own, as in chess. It might then create yet another higher form of intelligence, and so on until one is created that can derive all the physical laws of the universe and communicate them to us with proofs. We do have more than a billion years before the sun dries up all our water. Maybe we've got time.

If someone's going to propose that there's a special substance that causes our consciousness and is non-physical, it has to be explained how this different substance creates consciousness AND how it interacts with physical objects. To propose an as-yet undetected type of physical matter (similar to how "dark matter" has mass, but remains undetected) only requires explanation of how it creates consciousness. Proposing that it's "non-physical" adds complexity, and doesn't provide any answers. It's a dodge.

@GeeSussFreeK
It's possible that we could know all the physical properties by empirical investigation, eventually. Why not? And if we can create robot intelligence, it might become superior to our own, as in chess. It might then create yet another higher form of intelligence, and so on until one is created that can derive all the physical laws of the universe and communicate them to us with proofs. We do have more than a billion years before the sun dries up all our water. Maybe we've got time.

I didn't want to join this tired discussion but decency requires someone oppose the appalling 'birth is magic - never kill a newborn' consensus. This is superstitious nonsense; wads of animal meat aren't supernaturally imbued with humanity by being shoved through a cunthole.

There's confusion and arbitrariness everywhere on this simple topic because nobody bothers to ground their moral sense in any kind of rational foundation. They look at a cute baby and their instincts and emotions destroy any hope of intelligent thought. Forget abortion, stop thinking about babies and heartbeats, it's moronic; go back and work on your basic understanding of ethics.

Why don't we kill people? Is it because we haven't been given a mandate; that there's no explicit cosmic distinction to separate one lump of matter from another, giving one the right to disrupt the other? Then we're all just bits of physics bumping into each other, and there's still no reason to prefer a foetus to its host; no more than a cancer sufferer to their tumour or indeed the whole of humanity to a grain of sand.
Is it because they're alive? Then we'd better learn to photosynthesise, because our existence requires the daily destruction of life. Life has no inherent value. It's just one peculiar way that our universe is shaped by its bizarre physical laws, with no mystery or significance - unapprehending molecules forced into the illusion of purpose.
Is it because they're human? Why do we value that species, is it only that it happens to be our own, or is there some particular quality of humanity beside their kind that requires moral treatment? There must be, or else to be consistent we would say that when a rock shatters another it commits a terrible crime among rocks, because one may not harm ones own kind.
Isn't it that we don't kill people because we recognise that the aggregation of their perception and understanding of reality, their cognitive excellence and continuity of personal identity gives rise to the new phenomenon of Mind - I give Mind a capital letter in that silly and somewhat religious way because it is the absolute centre and cause of moral necessity; without it there is simply no reason to be moral. Only by the application of Mind can there be a reality to be moral in. Mind is the universal source of all meaning.

So the question you ask yourself when considering the rights of a creature is 'what is the condition of its intellect; to what extent is it conscious; is it Mind?'

Everybody already agrees with me if they had the sense to see it. If I could produce a tomato with a mind equivalent to a human, which I was able to demonstrate could think and talk and feel and reason like any one of us, would we be happy to chop it into a salad? What about a human with the mind of a tomato? Well they already exist; they're called babies.

It is credible to believe that the Universe was designed and created by God.


This is something I should have clarified before - my use of the word "universe" includes any sort of God (who would, then, have created the rest of it - presumably). This term gets used a lot of different ways in different contexts, and I don't think the way I'm using it is, in any way, more correct and my use of the term over different conversations is likely inconsistent. Anyways, how we're using the term certainly has a huge impact on the discussion. So, to be clear, when I say universe I mean absolutely everything: God (or Gods or whatever), laws, matter, and anything else that can be said to be. So it makes no sense for me to say "God created the Universe", but it certainly makes sense to say "God created everything else in the Universe" or (if you see things a different way) "Everything in the Universe is part of God" (or some variation). Hopefully that clarifies my position.

Anyways, if you have a universe that includes a God with certain properties, that God goes ahead and designs and creates a bunch of other stuff and you end up "here". The minimum we need for this kind of universe to proceed is one being, with certain properties.

The minimum we need for a Godless universe to get to "here" is a certain set of arbitrary physical laws, and possibly some matter (matter may be optional - but, to be clear, "nothing" is not an option - the universe at very least would need physical laws to get going.. and that is very much something, and it's something that's unavoidably arbitrary).

The point I'm trying to make is, I don't know isn't a theory. What most atheists mean when they say "I don't know" is "I know it isn't the Christian God, but otherwise I don't know". The next thing they say is, you believe in God because you're afraid. That I "chose" God because I am scared of death, or because the Universe is too big and scary for my mind to handle the uncertainty of not knowing.


Well.. I, for one, don't know it isn't the Christian God. I just don't have any real reason to believe that right now. And I didn't mean to suggest YOU accepted an idea because you're "scared" - rather, what I meant to say (and didn't say clearly) is that it wouldn't be a good idea to accept something just because "something" is better than "I don't know". I prefer no explanation to accepting one that I don't have reasons to accept (and, again, I'm not saying you don't have reasons - I'm saying I don't have them).

And to be clear: I wasn't saying Devil's Tower is a current mystery (one of sufficient import) or that it wasn't caused by water action (I was making a little crack at old timey semi-scientists that explained lots of stuff away by referencing the Biblical flood).

Rather, I was suggesting a hypothetical wherein I had discovered Devil's Tower and didn't have any ideas about it's cause (which is not incomparable with where we're at with abiogenesis). In both cases, my point is that even without a real candidate theory it's not crazy to assume the explanation will be similar to other explanations we've accepted, and to guess that the explanation will not introduce large new assumptions.

For a geologic feature, you'd expect to be able to explain the feature through known mechanisms - erosion, glaciation, deposition, tectonic activity, geothermal weirdness, etc.. and you'd try to find an explanation using those sorts of things before you'd look further afield. You certainly couldn't guarantee the explanation isn't something more extraordinary, but your incoming bias against that possibility is not irrational - it's just following a reasonable search pattern.

Similarly, we can instantiate in enough physical rules to get the "chance" universe you describe going, and its rules could get it to the current state either determinalistically or with some element of randomness. I guess I understand how you're using "chance" here... but I don't know that it's terribly useful. Why should "what humans can predict" be of any relevance philosophically? And if we're using it that way, couldn't we similarly describe God's actions as chance? I mean, surely humans (or angels) can't predict everything he's going to do. Chance seems like a pejorative when applied to God.. and to me it seems like a pejorative when applied to the operations of the universe (except where, again, that operation is actually random).

However, again, I don't think this difference is terribly important. I think I understand what you're getting at, I just see things very differently.

The difference between chance and design is the most important distinction there is. If you don't like the word chance, I will use the word "unplanned", or "mindless". An unplanned Universe has no actual purpose; it is just happenstance. Meaning, your life is just a product of mindless processes, and concepts like morality, justice, and truth have no essential meaning. It means you are just some blip on a grid and there is no rhyme or reason to anything. It also means you will never find out what happened or why it happened because no one knows what is going on or ever will. This will *always* lead you to nihilism.

A designed Universe, on the other hand, does have a purpose. A purposeful Universe means that life was created for a reason. It means that there is a truth, a truth that only the Creator knows. Which means that all lines of inquiry will lead to the Creators doorstep, and that trying to understand the Universe without the Creator is completely futile. It is like looking at a painting with three marks on it..you could endlessly speculate on what the painter was thinking when he painted it. However, no matter how clever you were, you don't have enough information to be sure about anything. To refuse to seek the Creator would be to stare at that painting your whole life trying to figure it out when you have the painters business card with his phone number on it in your pocket.

I don't think you're phrasing this in a terribly fair way. Yes, many people assume there's a natural explanation for abiogenesis. This is partly because having another explanation introduces arbitrariness into the system. Say I'm a geologist and I discover Devil's Tower. It's really weird, but my inclination from the very start is that it was formed by similar processes to ones that have explained weird things in the past. Even if I can't postulate even a guess as to why it has those weird columns, I'm not crazy to guess that eventually we'll figure out an explanation that doesn't involve, say, new physical laws or aliens. (And it's certainly not helpful to say "maybe it was made in the flood").

The whole thing is arbitrary to begin with. Naturalistic explanations are assumed apriori, and then the evidence is interpreted through the conclusion. That isn't how science works. You come to the conclusion because of the evidence, not the other way around. I would also note that you would never accept this kind of reasoning from a creationist. Neither does a mountain of circumstantial evidence prove anything.

Abiogenesis is a bigger problem and it's also one that's "lost to time" a bit. It almost certainly requires a mechanism we have yet to identify (or a mechanism someone has guessed at, but hasn't provided good details or evidence for). But, like Devil's Tower, there's no reason to expect that mechanism won't be identified - or that it will require significant changes to our understanding of the rest of science. Again, there's plausible ideas already floating around, and I think we'll probably recreate the process (though likely not with the same actual process) within the next 30 years or so.

Anything sounds plausible, apparently, when you have billions of years to play with. As the earlier quote said, time itself performs the miracles for you. How do you know that the mechanism hasn't already been identified but you have rejected it?

http://creation.com/devils-tower-explained

No... that, I think, is probably our strongest point of disagreement. I'm very much OK with "I don't know", and literally everything I believe has a bit of "I don't know" attached (kind of similar to how everything you believe in has a bit of God attached).

I'm not worshipping ignorance or something - knowing IS better than not knowing. But I'm also not scared of not knowing things - and I'm certainly not just going to pick something and believe in it because I don't like having some of my answer pages blank.

For you, is Scientology better than "I don't know"?

The point I'm trying to make is, I don't know isn't a theory. What most atheists mean when they say "I don't know" is "I know it isn't the Christian God, but otherwise I don't know". The next thing they say is, you believe in God because you're afraid. That I "chose" God because I am scared of death, or because the Universe is too big and scary for my mind to handle the uncertainty of not knowing.

I have to say that this idea of a bunch of hokey. The Christians I know believe in God because they have a personal relationship with Him. It has nothing to do with making a choice..God chose us. He would chose you too, if you were open to Him.

Neither was I afraid of death when I was an agnostic, and I wasn't afraid of saying I don't know (that's why I was an agnostic, because I didn't know). I believe in God because He revealed Himself to me, and that is the only reason. If He hadn't, I would still be an agnostic.

It is credible to believe that the Universe was designed and created by God. We can see that whomever made the Universe is unimaginably powerful, intelligent, exists outside of space and time, etc. Scientology isn't credible and explains nothing. God can explain everything.

Also, thanks for using the big boy version of the Bible. I quite like the Bible artistically, but I can't stand some of the new translations (despite whatever benefits some parts may have in terms of clarity).

Most of the new translations butcher the scriptures. They remove entire verses, words, water down meanings, or just flat out mislead. I can't stand them either. The KJV is the best word for word translation that we have, and although the language is archaic, it is comprehensible with a little research.

>> ^jmzero

If we can boil all of the possibilities down to design and chance, how could you tell which Universe you were in?


I kind of abandoned this part because I don't think our differences on this matter are terribly interesting. But I'll come back to it for a second to clarify. To me, there is no important difference between these two things you're talking about.

I don't see myself as terribly different than a falling rock. While it's useful in many situations to think of myself as designing something, in absolute terms me building a house is no different than water eroding through a rock - they're just things that happen following from the state and rules of the universe. What you're calling "design" and "chance" are both, to me, just parts of "the rules for moving from one state to another" and I don't see a big philosophical difference between them (I also don't think there's any important philosophical reality to "free will", if that helps you understand my position).

If we have a start state with a certain kind of benevolent God, the rest of the stuff flows from that through state change rules of some sort - and I don't find it terribly interesting what sorts of rules and processes are involved to get from that start state to the current one (or, at least, only to the extent that those rules and processes may imply more or less arbitrariness in the start state).

Similarly, we can instantiate in enough physical rules to get the "chance" universe you describe going, and its rules could get it to the current state either determinalistically or with some element of randomness. I guess I understand how you're using "chance" here... but I don't know that it's terribly useful. Why should "what humans can predict" be of any relevance philosophically? And if we're using it that way, couldn't we similarly describe God's actions as chance? I mean, surely humans (or angels) can't predict everything he's going to do. Chance seems like a pejorative when applied to God.. and to me it seems like a pejorative when applied to the operations of the universe (except where, again, that operation is actually random).

However, again, I don't think this difference is terribly important. I think I understand what you're getting at, I just see things very differently.

Yet, it is assumed to be true because "there must be a naturalistic origin to life".


I don't think you're phrasing this in a terribly fair way. Yes, many people assume there's a natural explanation for abiogenesis. This is partly because having another explanation introduces arbitrariness into the system. Say I'm a geologist and I discover Devil's Tower. It's really weird, but my inclination from the very start is that it was formed by similar processes to ones that have explained weird things in the past. Even if I can't postulate even a guess as to why it has those weird columns, I'm not crazy to guess that eventually we'll figure out an explanation that doesn't involve, say, new physical laws or aliens. (And it's certainly not helpful to say "maybe it was made in the flood").

Abiogenesis is a bigger problem and it's also one that's "lost to time" a bit. It almost certainly requires a mechanism we have yet to identify (or a mechanism someone has guessed at, but hasn't provided good details or evidence for). But, like Devil's Tower, there's no reason to expect that mechanism won't be identified - or that it will require significant changes to our understanding of the rest of science. Again, there's plausible ideas already floating around, and I think we'll probably recreate the process (though likely not with the same actual process) within the next 30 years or so.

I think you'll have to admit that God is a much better theory than "I don't know".


No... that, I think, is probably our strongest point of disagreement. I'm very much OK with "I don't know", and literally everything I believe has a bit of "I don't know" attached (kind of similar to how everything you believe in has a bit of God attached).

I'm not worshipping ignorance or something - knowing IS better than not knowing. But I'm also not scared of not knowing things - and I'm certainly not just going to pick something and believe in it because I don't like having some of my answer pages blank.

For you, is Scientology better than "I don't know"?

Edit:
But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.


Also, thanks for using the big boy version of the Bible. I quite like the Bible artistically, but I can't stand some of the new translations (despite whatever benefits some parts may have in terms of clarity).

@renatojj

Morally, ideology and action are indistinguishable. Will you say everyone should be free to act in absolutely any way we want? Then why believe whatever we want? All evil that doesn't stem directly from our universe's general poverty or ridiculous physical laws is due to defective ideologies on various scales. The reality of Soviet Russia didn't materialise from nothing; ideology spawned its every detail.

The natural state of things is people bashing each others heads in and stealing their stuff. Modern economic practice may be considered a somewhat more sophisticated means of achieving the same end.

We're in complete agreement on the impossibility of centrally directing every economic event. Does that make all intervention impossible or even undesirable? As I wrote before, the reasonable approach is using the market in its wild condition as a starting point, then shaping and improving it where we can.

In its ideal form trade is a miraculous thing, two people can trade together and somehow both become richer. It's almost supernatural, but when the trick goes wrong and we start getting poorer instead it's necessary to take corrective action.

Absolute economic freedom is an excellent device where both of the following statements are true:

1. Every participant is a perfect intellect.
2. All resources are infinite, having only a time cost to harvest.

You've done some nice cherry picking here. Sepacore, my hope in this conversation is that you will be intellectually honest to address the substance of the arguments, rather than trying to find some angle to make your point so you can *avoid* addressing the substance. I don't think that is too much to ask.

My point exactly.
Therefore to call it 'evidence' rather than 'subjective experience' is an at best misleading if not false claim, as the term 'evidence' used in conversation with others generally refers to something provable to others.

To say something like "I had a subjective experience that is evidence to me" would be fine, as it has a buffer around the term to denote that 'evidence' in this case is in no way substantial or transferable to others, i.e. not evidence to others and can be discarded.. and any line of poetic words can not change this.

Jesus made a claim, that if I put my faith in Him, He would send me the Holy Spirit to supernaturally transform me, and live within me. If that happens, it is objective evidence that His claim is true. You may have other theories as to why it happened to me, or that it happened at all and I am simply deluding myself, but something has happened, and I have changed. Whether it is subjectively experienced, it can be objectively observed in my life. I am a different person, and those in my immediate family and circle of friends have certainly noticed it.

Let's look at the definition of evidence:

ev·i·dence
   [ev-i-duhns] Show IPA noun, verb, ev·i·denced, ev·i·denc·ing.
noun
1.
that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2.
something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
3.
Law . data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.

As you can see, not all evidence can be empirically tested. Personal testimony is sufficient to send people to the electric chair in our court system. My personal testimony, and the testimony of billions of others, does count as evidence. This is all beside the point:

If you understand the above point (one you made yourself), then you may agree that those who 'require evidence' (regardless of what some guy poetically said), can not genuinely accept your use of the word 'evidence' as having the same value as what now has to be refereed to as 'actual evidence' for clarity after the term has been devalued to host a non-transferable personal experience (i.e. not evidence to others), and therefore swapping out this term for a personal 'reason to believe' is not only required for more clearly followable terminology within a conversation but is more accurate in general discourse of 2 opposing views.

You have completely ignored the entire point of my argument, and it seem you deliberately left out the key part of what I was saying:

"but it is something you can test on your own"

I am not telling you, I experienced God so believe in God on that basis. I am telling you that Jesus made a claim which you can empirically test. You have constantly objected that there is no empirical evidence for God, yet you have failed to validate whether this is true. You have merely assumed it is true, through many other lines of reasoning, except the one that would, if the claim was true, produce any results. Again, Jesus said directly that you would have no experience of God outside of going through Him, and your experience directly matches His claim; No have no experience of God. You assume its because there isn't a God, which is natural to assume, but Jesus said it is because there is no way to even approach God or know anything about Him except through Jesus.


Re Jesus said, Jesus said etc

The notion that one would give another great tools/resources like logical processing, rational thought and critical thinking and then put forward a reward of 'subjective experience based evidence' only achievable by those that disregarded such 'gifts' enough so as to have a chance of achieving this form of evidence is absurd.

If there is a God, then you are using none of these tools correctly. If you've ever read the book "flatland", then you can understand how two dimensional creatures would consider the possibility of a 3D world illogical and irrational. Thus, so does a materialist consider the spiritual reality to be illogical and irrational. This is why I say atheism is a religion for people who have no experience of God.

The bible anticipates your argument and your skepticism:

1 Corinthians 1:18-22

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

Men have always taken great pride in their intellectual accomplishments, yet none of them have ever given even one shred of revelation about Almighty God. The wisdom behind the cross is much higher than this worldly wisdom, and it in fact proves it all to be vanity and foolishness, but the world cannot see that, because it is wise in its own eyes:

Romans 1:22

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

No offense taken as you've missed the point. Firstly there is a difference as i do not claim to 'know' that God doesn't exist. I claim to have 'reasons to believe' that it is unlikely. Knowledge of mental deficiencies, emotions, subjective experiences, experience recognition mental softwares and the way humans make mass assumptions to quickly gain degrees of understandings of any/every situation alone take me right up to that hairsbreadth away point. Whereby it can take time and effort explaining to people the difference between agnostic (don't know/care), agnostic-atheist (don't know, doubt it) and atheist (believe not), I'm happy to wear the tag as a generality in non-specific and non-in-depth discussions.

However I'm aware that a God identical to your claims 'could' be hiding in the shadows just outside of human detection and actual evidence as the religious coincidentally claim to those who request proof (yet then in the same breath can state 'but I have personal evidence'.. yes, seems convenient and unlikely).
Just like I'm aware that there 'could' be a 700 story tall pink dragon that farts rainbows named Trevor that simultaneously exists and doesn't exist inside both of my kidneys without being split into 2 parts..
Or someone 'could' prefer their beliefs enough to unknowingly and automatically do mental acrobats around anything that would disrupt them including acknowledging that their position is unsubstantiated outside of a mind that wants to believe (this is in fact what can occur when someone suffers from a delusion).
Debating possibilities is a waste of time, whereas debating probabilities is where you might actually get some results or at least supportable reason to belive.

I'm not talking about probabilities. Jesus was a real person, and He made claims. These claims can be tested.

As far as the difference between God and trevor goes, one has explanatory power and one doesn't. Neither does anyone believe in trevor; he isn't plausible. He isn't even logically coherent. No one believes in flying tea pots, and flying tea pots don't explain anything. God does explain something, and in many cases, is a better explanation for the evidence, such as information in DNA and the fine tuning of our physical laws. Asking whether the Universe was intelligently designed is a perfectly rational question and there is evidence to support this conclusion. Do you know that 40 percent of biologists, physicists and mathematicians believe in a personal God? I am not appealing to an authority here, but I think this statistic shows that people trained in science do believe that the evidence points towards God.

understanding of stellar evolution is actually very primitive

The arguments relating to 'we don't know everything yet' is not a basis in which to claim 'X is just as, if not more so, likely to be true'. Claims require their own 'evidences' to support them. Pushing ideas onto people requires 'transferable evidence' and just because there is a question mark at a stage whereby most other aspects of a theory hold true enough to be accurately predicted during tests, does not reflect on another theory being more likely but may indeed reflect on another theory as being less likely.

Again, this is just cherry picking and I think you have lost track of the thread, or you don't want to follow it. You said that part of your skepticism about God creating the Universe was that we understood things about stellar evolution, which is to say we don't need to invoke God as an explanation. I pointed out that not only is our understanding primitive, but even if it were perfect, how does that rule out a Creator? You are confusing mechanism for agency. The stars didn't create themselves, the laws that govern the cosmos caused them to form, and ultimately the laws that caused them to form also had an origin. You have to explain the agency before you can say you don't need God to explain something.

I won't reply much to this as it merely shows that you're already geared to ignore actual evidences that would support the idea of the universe not requiring a God (note that this readiness to disregard facts is what occurs within delusions so as to keep degrees of stability withing fantasized worlds).

I can just as easily say this:

And I won't reply much to this as it merely shows that you're already geared to ignore actual evidences that would support the idea of the universe requiring a God (note that this readiness to disregard facts is what occurs within delusions so as to keep degrees of stability withing fantasized worlds)

Although we haven't figured everything out yet, we've only had about 400 years worth of good studying and scientific thinking on the matter of a 13.7 billion year old case... how much can you honestly expect us to know definitively when so much of our combined time goes towards supporting notions that can't actually be proved?

I don't, and therefore, I wouldn't expect you to say that what has been described actually proves anything one way or the other.

Yes I know that humans must make assumptions so as to figure things out, in fact it was one of the if not THE main focus of my previous post.
Could you ask your question if their wasn't uniformity in nature? No. The fact that there is, is what allows for those that can question it to arise. Our mere being here says nothing as to whether there is a God, in fact nothing in science thus far (to my knowledge) says anything as to whether there IS a God, however some things do say as to whether or not a God is required.

So what is the experiment that proves science is the best method for obtaining truth if you have to assume things you cannot prove to even do science?

Our being here doesn't prove there is a God, necessarily, but we should be surprised to find ourselves in a Universe that is so finely tuned for life.

Scripture (your one and others) say a lot of things, some things vaguely, somethings specifically, and some things contradictorily (Google 'bible contradictions' for examples), but most of all, it says things poetically somewhat like a manipulating salesman whose product you're not allowed to touch, until you've handed over the money. Scripture also doesn't say things as well as some writers over the years could have, but hey it's only the word of God.. I'm interested in things outside of scripture, things that are testable, things that are comparable to an alternate source than where they came from.

You're cherry picking, and dodging the substance, and now even the point of the argument. You were agreeing with Sageminds contention that if God is perfect, then He is also perfectly evil. I pointed out that scripture describes God different, and I also gave you a logical argument outside of scripture for it:

It would be less perfect for God to be a mixture of good and evil versus being perfectly good.

Do you have a response to that argument?

Cheap shot: proof please. I require it in order to respond to the statement & question.
Na just kidding I don't expect any proof for these claims, just like I can't provide you any proof about Trevor.. * whispers: because Trever doesn't actually exists *. In these cases we'll just dismiss each others unsubstantiated claims until the other provides either evidence or acceptable reason to believe said claims.

It's your claim that God does evil in the bible, and so I am asking you why, hypothetically, is it wrong for God to take a life? Since we're talking about the God of the bible, He is the creator of all things, and so has ultimate responsibility over His creation. He is responsible for every aspect of your life, and has the say over your continued existence. Therefore, what makes it wrong for Him to take life just as He gives and maintains life?

Conflict.

Christian claim: God gave humans free will and allows them to use it whereby they will be judged in the afterlife.
Christian claim: God may affect the world in your benefit if you pray (or as your hypothetical, affect the world against you if you're naughty).
Christian claim: God exists outside of detection.
Christian claim: God can do anything.
Christian claim: God.
Christian claim: God is mysterious / we can not understand the will of God
Christian claim: God likes X, God doesn't like Y.

Or to summarize: God exists outside of known existence and has the ability to create and destroy anything without exception.
This is the result of human intelligence evolving to the point of getting one of our psychological survival drives (hope) to an indisputable peak of performance.

My point is that believers over time have given themselves so much wiggle room, when we start talking about 'why God X, why not Y, can God Z' etc, then we enter the realm of imaginative flexibility where the desperate and delusional can simply change the variables of what they want to use regardless of the conflicts, and ignore any logical positions by getting caught up on their preferred ideological technicalities while rejecting other physical or metal technicalities or proofs.

Again, this is a hypothetical scenario involving the God of the bible. It's your claim that God has done evil, so you can back it up with a logical argument? I've outlined a few scenarios and asked you if God would be evil for doing any of those things. I am not talking about mysterious ways, I am talking about specifics.

I have to say 'proof please' again. The words of 1 source (the Bible) are not good enough, evidence requires testability and multiple sources of confirmation. Too much imagination and you can slip away from reality.

Again, we are speaking hypothetically of a scenario you engaged in; "how would you react if the God of the bible showed up at your door". You said you would react in such and such way, which is unrealistic considering how the God of the bible is described, which is what I pointed out to. Based on your modified understanding of the God of the bible, do you think you would react the same way?

Would have replied sooner, but was busy and then D3 launched =D

No problemo..take your time? How is D3?

>> ^Sepacore

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That feeling of unboundedness we have with regards to our choices is I think what Carroll was trying to get to. And it's not just a feeling either -- it's difficult to describe in words, but there is a qualitative difference, beyond it just being convenient to talk about humans that way. Babies have a different (reduced?) set of factors guiding their behaviour. We identify them as missing the ability to consciously choose what they do. They act on impulse only. We adults have the conscious choice of what we do, at least in comparison to babies, and that's what we call "free will".

Our free wills are indeed not randomizers, because then they would be free, but lack will. Rather, they follow laws, which could bring about a direction, but remove freedom. Either way, we clearly have more internal influence on our decisions than babies. Perhaps what we adults uniquely have is self-awareness, including the awareness that we can choose our behaviour. Other creatures don't know that. How does that sit as a definition of what we call "free will"?

Accepting this puts "free will" in the category of social constructs, like friendship, jobs, and personal property. Does anybody argue that friendship, jobs and personal property don't exist? No, as a social construct, something we can talk about and identify with surely exists. Whether we really have any control over what we do outside of determinism is a different question, and IMO the answer can only be "No".

As for Compatibilism, the beginning of the Wikipedia article says it well: "Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent. It may, however, be more accurate to say that compatibilists define "free will" in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism (in the same way that incompatibilists define "free will" such that it cannot)". Inasmuch as we know the general human concept of free will, it exists, and is compatible with determinism. Inasmuch as our will and actions are 100% determined by conditions and physical laws, they are not free, thus it cannot exist.>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

One of my favorite quotes on this is from Schopenhauer
"We can do as we will, but we cannot will as we will"
I have never heard a good explanation for free will ever. Properly defined to the strength we all mean it by, it makes no sense, and try and change it into something we can make sense of, it is no longer the thing which we meant by free will. Let me expand on that.
What we all want to mean when we first set out on talking about free will is the notion that we (our consciousness) are self determining demigods in a sense. That our consciousness somehow is able to transcend all conditions, and make unbound and almost other worldly interjections on our behalf. I am not a materialist, so this isn't a problem for me on the onset. However, even if our brains contains some otherworldly processing engine, the data which populates it for most all decisions in life are from this existence. And those "things" all seem to behave in a way that is bound by predetermined rules. In fact, it is impossible to think of a realty that is not bound by conditions and rules. All reality that we can understand comes from reason and associations. In a world where something could exist by not existing, or where circles are also squares...would make no sense to us. The only world we can understand is a world where things change in a way reason can map to. This undermines the entire notion of a transcendent, boundless "free will", for even the will itself would have a set of rules and conditions it was playing by, or else just be a random number generator of sorts. And when we talk about free will, random number generation isn't what comes to mind, but it is the only thing that can remain if you take away reason, and determinism.
However, I do submit that our choices "feel" unbounded. There is a "feeling" of free will that defies an ability to define it well. But that is typically how feelings operate, outside of ways to completely explain them. But that doesn't make what they appear to represent any more real, only the feeling is real. I can have a feeling that contradictions exist, for example, but be bound by the laws of how I think to not be able to resolve that in reality (IE, if I believe conditions exist, I could still not preform one, like draw a circular square).
That is why many philosophers turns to certain forms of Compatibilism, while others changed what free will meant in their Compatibilism. I think the latter is cheating, and the former is how we as humans experience "free will". Ultimately, if the universe doesn't exist on causality, then my argument will be undermine, and indeed, some form of Occasionalism might be the true nature of reality. Even so, even Occasionalism can't account for free will, only random number generation can, and that isn't what we mean by freedom, or willing.