1451. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55936 by steve99 on July 13, 2007 at 1:13 am

I'd rather say it has come into focus. Science by dispelling all the wrong theistic ideas of seeing God present in physical phenomena has actually helped theism look in the right direction.

Odd that. I would have called Jesus a physical phenomenon (assuming he existed), and if he was resurrected, that is something God did. So much for consistency.

1452. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55839 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 2:43 pm

Yes. Dianelos' worldview as he practices it is lovely

I really can't agree with that. It contains huge and obvious flaws that I personally realised were present in theistic veiwpoints even before my teens. I carried on with theistic beliefs for a few years, in the hope that someone would explain the flaws, but it ended up as a deep and rather embarassing shock that even adults had not overcome my objections. This forms part of my depressed view of humanity as result of this discussion - that Dianelos is persisting in propogating views that even some children realise are ludicrous.

1453. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55812 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 12:48 pm

But Dianelos' map has the added complexity of magic God-ink, and that sort of complexity is uncountable.

Sorry to confuse this even further, but Dianelos is also making judgements about others' maps, and territories. He is assuming that anyone who does not agree with him must assume a territory consisting entirely of little particles interacting in 'mechanical' ways. He does not seem to accept the existence of the territories of the abstract, the logical and mathematical imagination; in which additional truths can certainly be found.

I have to admit a certain frustration, in that I have never come across anyone who is so obviously highly intelligent as Dianelos, yet when clear, millenia-old flaws in their reasoning are pointed out, simply refuses to accept them and review their point of view.

I find this pretty depressing, and it diminishes my faith in humanity. I really had (obviously naive) hopes that Dianelos would listen to arguments, and realise the blatant flaws in his beliefs. Even more depressing is his claim that these challenges have in some way strengthened his beliefs. If anything, Dianelos has made me even less tolerant towards superstitious nonsense.

I now agree strongly with those who say that although the kind of belief and evidence-resistance that Dianelos shows (although certainly benign in his case - indeed, I wish him well), could be a serious problem for the future of mankind if other people follow the same route, with their own personal justifications and self-evident morals, constructing their own dangerously consistent frameworks.

Dianelos is not dangerous, but his worldview is.

1454. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55777 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 8:30 am

(Sorry if someone else has raised this - this thread is impossibly long to read all posts, for me at least).

Dianelos: You are also neglecting that your worldview has precisely the same 'hard problem' of consciousness that others have. This problem is not just 'why does consciousness exist', in is also 'why does red look like THAT?'. Your worldview hand-waves away the existence of of consciousness as 'fundamental' but the second problem remains. If you are going to hand-wave that away as well, as just being 'the way things are', that is equivalent to Dennett's similar (in my view) hand-waving away of qualia as 'not a problem', and therefore is no justification for a supernatural framework.

1455. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55759 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 7:10 am

it's only when you don't believe in God that the issue of miracles becomes important.

This isn't true either. Some of the most vocal campaigners about the miraculous origins of life (creationism and ID) are Christians. For them, the issue of miracles is of great importance.

1456. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55755 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 6:46 am

has no gaps

Wait a minute. Let's review Godel's Theorem for a minute. That proves beyond doubt that there will always be gaps in our knowledge.

Coherency.

Coherency is no indication of any degree of truth or usefulness. There have been some wonderfully coherent scientific theories in the past but which have been wildly wrong.

So that is yet another of the foundations of your worldview that crumbles.

We have dealt with the need for God to instantiate objective things - removed even to the extent where you are prepared to admit (at least for the sake of argument) that this is not the case.

We have dealt with the meaning of objectivity, showing you that you misunderstand what 'objectively true' means because you fall into the reification trap.

We have dealt with ideas of consciousness, where you use 'cannot arise from' arguments dismissing naturalism, but we aren't allowed to put them back to you with your worldview, so this point is dismissed because of inconsistency.

We have dealt with miracles, where it has been shown that as apparently convincing miracles can be performed by illusionists and charlatans, then there is no justification for believing any other miracle, other than wishful thinking.

We have dealt with the 'beauty' argument, where beauty = truth is perhaps only valid, if at all, in the narrowest of physical and mathematical areas, and certainly not in other fields.

Now we have dealt with coherency. (One of my favourite examples is Fritjof Capra's S-Matrix idea of quantum mechanics. Really coherent (and, indeed, beautiful), but failed the test of experiment a long time ago).

I don't think there is anything much left, other than wishful thinking :)

1457. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #55737 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 6:08 am

Ah yes, so you all believe that everything came from nothing....by accident! Now that's faith I admire.

Something comes from nothing by accident all the time. It is called the uncertainty principle, and the presence of 'something from nothing' virtual particles has been demonstrated in the lab.

Perhaps you could refer me to the scientific papers which have so convincingly descibed and proved the mechanism?

There are, of course, thousands. The explanations are available in popular science books in any good bookstore. If you want me to recommend some, I can.

1458. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55734 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 5:57 am

because a Mickey-Mouse Magical-Kingdom kind of environment is not the most efficient one for us to grow in virtue. So my worldview fits the objective evidence very well.

No, it doesn't at all. The objective evidence has always been that the simplest explanation is that miracles are delusion and illusion. It is like spoon-bending. Once someone has shown you how it is done in a non-supernatural way, it is not reasonable to claim that at other times, it was indeed supernatural.

We know that the world is full of illusion, and we know that our minds are very good at generating delusion. Look at the example of the supposed face on Mars. The simplest idea was always that it was an illusion, and just a arrangement of some rocks. Sure enough, it was. You are welcome to use a worldview that believes in faces on other planets, but you can't claim it fits the evidence.

It is special pleading to claim true miracles happened in the past, and were related to Jesus.

I don't know how you mean that.

You condemn science as a tool for understanding reality, then use use the lack of scientific evidence in an argument.

1459. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55733 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 5:52 am

Maybe you are thinking of newborn babies in the very first months of their lives.

No... the self takes time to develop.

But even then I don't think it makes sense to call them solipsists. Solipsism is a worldview somebody arrives at after some thinking; newborn babies are just swimming in a sea of experiences they can't make sense of.

I think that this is misunderstanding solipsism in the same way as atheism is misunderstood.

1460. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55691 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 2:01 am

If an intuition is strongly connected (or at least compatible) with a worldview that is coherent, has no gaps, no paradoxes, no hard problems, does not clash with other deeply felt intuitions, explains more than any other worldview, is more experientially and ethically useful than any other worldview – then it's reasonable to consider that intuition reliable.

Fair enough. By my problem with this is that I see no evidence (at least in this discussion) that you are willing to change your view about the consistency of your worldview. Some of us have provided what I am sure you realise are serious questions about parts of that worldview, yet in response to those you seem not to question your worldview, but simply proclaim it having been tested and strengthened.

So I have to ask you - what would cause you to question the consistency of your worldview? Is talking to others of any consequence? Also, how would you feel if things that are now 'self-evident' to you turned out not to be? Would you be less inclined to trust your judgment about what is self-evident and absurd in the future?

At the moment I am not questioning your anti-naturalistic stance, I am concerned about the apparent (in my view) invunerability of your worldview to reasoned argument, which to me makes it simply another form of irrational faith.

1461. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55681 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 1:28 am

According to my understanding God virtually never breaks the order S/He causes in our conscious experience, so any claims of repeated miracles are almost certainly false. The case of Jesus' resurrection is a special case:

This is very common Christian attitude, but I find it deeply puzzling. There is just as much (or as little, depending on your attitude) evidence for the resurrection of Jesus as for a huge number of other supposedly supernatural events before or after. Why pick *that* one? What is your evidence?

In general, nobody has ever demonstrated any supernatural/miraculous abilities in a scientifically controlled setting.

But given your worldview, why should that matter one way or the other?

1462. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55674 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 1:03 am

First naturalism is the easiest/simplest way to understand our experience, so it stands to reason that that's the initial understanding we all reach when we are starting our carriers as cognitive beings able to build worldviews at about the age of three.

No, it doesn't. Children always

Solipsism is not only the view that no other minds exist, but rather that nothing objectively exist.

And that is clearly the view of very young children. This is a well-understood part of child psychology. They have not yet set up the barriers between 'self' and 'non-self', so effectively what they are exploring is all 'self', with little or no sense of what 'objectivity' means at all.

And as for what you daughter thinks, surely you realise that children of that age come up with non-materialistic ideas all the time: magic monsters under the bed, imaginary friends and so on.

Observing one child and generalising is about as false as observing your own mind and generalising, like you have.

In fact I think that as an adult you need such openness and wonder and power of imagination for understanding what's real and what's not :-)

True, but you have fallen into well-known logical and liguistic traps which have given you a false sense of this. If you want to understand what's real and what is not, you have to correctly understand what 'real' means.

1463. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55669 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 12:27 am

That's one case where God interfered with the natural order S/He causes in our conscious experience, but God is not a strict disciplinarian you know.

What about 'miracles' performed by current-day Indian mystics? Are those also God interfering, or are the just fake?

1464. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55665 by steve99 on July 12, 2007 at 12:01 am

Coming back to our discussion, by the age of three we all choose naturalism as our worldview, so naturalism is our initial choice. Makes you wonder ;-)

Makes me wonder where you get your understanding of three-year-olds. This is a ridiculous claim. Up to the age of three, most children are effectively solipsists, and the realisation that there are others out there of significance and value is a major part of psychological development. By the age of three most children in the world are also being taught about a God or Gods, and a significant number believe in a fat white-bearded man who brings presents at Christmas. Maybe my definition is too strict, but I just can't call those naturalistic.

Is this another of your 'self-evident' truths? Or this just something you have a vague feeling about?

Tell me... how do you distinguish between the 'self-evident' (but clearly unprovable) 'truths' you claim to know about, and the 'I am vaguely sure I am right about this' 'facts' like this?

1465. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55559 by steve99 on July 11, 2007 at 2:28 pm

What's your position here, Dianelos? In the society of torture-lovers, would you be the one man standing on a street corner screaming 'You're all wrong: gratuitous torture is objectively bad!'?

Well put. There is a very clear example of this. Slavery. In the USA a while back it would have been thought outrageous in some areas to claim that slavery was immoral.

Things are only self-evident about morality if that is the you are raised, and it depends on the culture. Things change from culture to culture and from time to time. This is so clearly the case that to claim any moral viewpoint is 'self-evident' is nonsense.

Dianelos: Have you ever believed something to be self-evident and subsequently discovered it not to be the case? I believe any intelligent person who thinks deeply about things has experienced this.

1466. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55395 by steve99 on July 11, 2007 at 2:11 am

That's like telling an astronomer that they are defending astrology, because the astronomer uses the same concepts astrologers use, such as planets, forces, orbits, and so on. Sorry, that does not make any sense: in reason one only has to justify one's own beliefs.

But that is the problem. You are justifying your beliefs only by what is acceptable and self-evident to you. That is using belief to justify belief. You have cut loose from rationalism in just the same way as fundamentalists.

1467. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55284 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 1:08 pm

No one is required to accept the multiverse hypothesis until we can use it to make some prediction we can test.

I have to admit I have changed my mind about the multiverse hypothesis recently. It was when I realised the similarity with complexity theory. One of the most astonishing discoveries of the past century was how complexity can be generated from simple starting points. I believe that we, in our universe which allows complexity, are like some imaginary beings finding themselves deep in the complex structures of the Mandelbrot or Julia Sets. They feel themselves to be special, but they really aren't. The entire structure of the set, including the few complex areas, are an inevitable consequence of the most trivial iterative process. They are there because that is where they can arise, but their environment is not random or trivial - it is as much a part of the basic theory as anywhere else.

1468. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55281 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 12:57 pm

EDIT - Ah - steve99 beat me to the intuition point by a country mile. Sorry for the repetition. Note to self: must review thread more carefully!

This does raise an interesting question as to how one reviews a thread of this length. Some of us have jobs and a private life.

1469. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55275 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 12:25 pm

I apologise again for the length of that, but not for posting it, because I think it important.

(I really wish I could write like you.)

My contribution is that to me, atheism has opened my mind to sense of wonder and a passionate desire for discovery. I felt my theistic viewpoint as a teenager to be stifling, and I feel the same about that of Dianelos. Dianelos is trapped within a cage of his own making - a framework of 'self-evident' beliefs and his sense of the absurd. That is such a petty and limited view. If the past century in science and philosophy has taught us anything, is that we need to abandon our preconceptions about what is and isn't reasonable, and let science and evidence reveal what is true and useful.

I find it deeply ironic that Dianelos so often quotes quantum mechanics, when a Dianelos of a century ago would have used the 'absurd' argument even about the foundations of this science (and, indeed, they did!). I would be interested to consult a Dianelos of perhaps the next century, when (if David Deutch is right) multiverse theories are not only proven, but part of our quantum mechanical technology. I can imagine a Dianelos of that time saying "OK, that is correct, but to me it is self-evident and absurd that...."

1470. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55237 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 10:10 am

I understand that theistic idealism is at first it is counterintuitive, but naturalism's hypothesis that reality consists of the universe's wavefunction (never mind the "many worlds" times the multiverse interpretation) is counterintuitive too.

But this is the problem isn't it? Many things are only counterintuitive to you. So that can't be used as any indication of anything.

1471. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55213 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 9:03 am

I find they form a remarkably precise God-shaped gap.

Oh come on! Of course that is the case when you design a God to precisely fit your imagined gap.

It's like if you consequently follow the implications of naturalism you'll find that God is missing. Which I must say is kind of neat and kind of telling.

Lots of other things are missing too. Elfs and Fairies for one thing. Santa Claus. Superman. I find that telling too :)

1472. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55203 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 8:40 am

Above I am not claiming that objective ethical propositions are true, just that they are meaningful – so whether I want to believe that such propositions are true or not is entirely irrelevant

Unfortunately, they aren't even meaningful. You can't get to 'objective ethical propositions being meaningful' as you define 'objective' in ways that are highly problematic.

Also I do have evidence that this is the case.

The only 'evidence' you seem to have is your own belief that some things are 'self-evident'.

You'll never understand the theistic position

As an ex-theist, I beg to differ.

as long as you keep using naturalism as premise.

As I have said, I personally are not using naturalism as a premise. I am simply arguing against what I consider to be your poor arguments against it.

1473. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55190 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 8:11 am

Here is a better kind of evidence (which I took from Sagan's "Contact"): that we should discover the gospels codified letter by letter in the digital expansion of pi.

Actually, this is a serious mistake by Sagan (well, he was not a mathematician). The digital expansion of PI is not under the control of any creator or deity.

Having said that, the expansion will contain any sequence of numbers if you look far enough, so it contains all possible messages.

1474. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55187 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 8:04 am

How questions are not always meaningful.

Except when you use them as an argument against naturalism.

We've already discussed this in several posts, including posts 168, 629 and 640.

You have discussed why you believe how questions are not always meaningful, but that is irrelevant.

You are providing a supposed alternative to naturalism because you claim naturalism fails to provide a 'how' for consciousness. If you are now going to claim that the original 'how' question is meaningless, then you can't use consciousness as an argument against naturalism. You can't have it both ways.


Edit.

Aha! Just what I was driving at in 1199. How does God pull off consciousness?: not meaningful. How does physical matter pull off consciousness?: unanswerable and therefore necessitating God hypothesis.

Bother... _J_ said it better.

Anyway, this seems to be yet another major flaw in the 'worldview'.

1475. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55154 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 6:04 am

Such an experiment does not count as a positive result neither for Davies's ontology nor for mine nor for anybody's worldview that is compatible with QM.

Of course it does, as it is the foundation of Davies' work. If that experiment came up with a false result, Davies' work could not proceed.

No, not really. There is no negative arrow of time in scientific theories.

Yes, really. There are certainly negative arrows of time in many scientific theories. Just take a look at solutions of General Relativity which involve cycles in time. Just look at Feynman's advanced wave theories.

QM which allows for superluminal speeds predicts that it is possible to observe a clock's hands moving backwards, but this does not amount to time flowing backwards, for the obvious reason that while we are making this or any other observation we keep experiencing time flowing forwards.

That is not a justification. Time is relative.

But I doubt it's so because my suggestion has nothing to do with the future negotiating with the past or redefining what time is; rather my suggestion is based on a simple generalization of standard quantum mechanics and its Copenhagen interpretation.

It is the future negotiating with the past, whether you doubt it or not. I am afraid I take John Wheeler's view of this over yours. It is a direct consequence of standard quantum mechanics. It would only be serious for causality of the future could *signal* the past, rather than send back the result of a random collapse.

1476. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55105 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 3:14 am

According to my worldview reality is the supernatural realm and its basic constituent is consciousness, so to ask me how consciousness could become conscious, is like me asking you how matter could become material.

Funny you claim that - because physicists are working right now on that question.

And I am afraid that your response isn't good enough. You can't hand-wave away a problem that you claim naturalism has simply by not calling it a problem. Anyone can justify any viewpoint that way. And, of course, even if your reasoning were true, there is no reason to bring in a God.

1477. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55093 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 2:24 am

Believing in God and believing in fairies is clearly not precisely the same thing, see post 708, or #50347.

It clearly IS precisely the same thing. Here is something posted on this site today from the respected philosopher A. C. Grayling:

That is the essence of the thing, no matter how slippery the gloss, how polysyllabic, how evasive and gestural, how cloaked in appeals to mystery and depth and the convenience of our own epistemic limitations, that theologians and apologists invoke in their continuous attempts to move the goalposts whenever they come into the firing line for holding what is, fundamentally, exactly the same kind of commitment - exactly the same intellectual delusion - as is involved in believing that there are pixies and gnomes lurking invisibly among the rhododendrons.

I think it is amazing how well his summary fits our discussion here!

As for rational explanations of things – can you describe how those who don't believe in God rationally explain how our brain produces consciousness? Because if they can't explain this greatest fact of all – if they don't have the very slightest inkling of an idea of how to explain it - then by your own measure they are like believing in an invisible process that somehow makes consciousness magically spring out of our brain. Sounds like believing in fairies, no? ;-)

It isn't up to them to do this. It is not like believing in fairies, as they are free to say "We don't know this (yet)".

You are the one claiming an explanation. So it is up to you to explain the mechanism by with God produces consciousness. Please go ahead and give it, if you can't, then you are exactly in the same position as 'naturalists' - you have to admit that you just don't know!

1478. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55070 by steve99 on July 10, 2007 at 12:25 am

But there is a much deeper problem: That in the naturalistic understanding of reality the very concept of an objectively good or bad act is meaningless.

It is only a problem if you want to believe that acts are objectively good or bad independent of any observer. But that is only what you want to believe. You have no evidence that this is the case, so it is no problem for naturalism. We make our own ethics through reason and concensus.

It is rather like having a firm belief in faries, and wishing that they existed so very much that you claim it is a problem with naturalism because we can't find them.

You seem to try to avoid that problem by asserting that objective propositions can be meaningful even if they don't make any claim about reality.

No, I am not saying that at all. They can make claims about abstract realities. Your mistake in your reasoning, as I keep explaining, is your reification of abstractions, forcing you to falsely require substance for all truths.

But, as I asked you before, if you have any proposition (never mind an objective But, as I asked you before, if you have any proposition (never mind an objective proposition) that does not refer to anything that exists in reality, how do you test it?
proposition) that does not refer to anything that exists in reality, how do you test it?

Exactly as epeeist has described earlier. With logic. I suggest you read up on the story of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. This shows well how such things are tested.

1479. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54952 by steve99 on July 9, 2007 at 12:29 pm

According the idealistic theism reality consists only of the spiritual realm, and that the physical facts and phenomenal order we perceive are caused by God's will.

How?

1480. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54914 by steve99 on July 9, 2007 at 10:02 am

You mean the idea that reality consists of a gargantuan number of physical universes, each with its own randomly selected values of fundamental constants and that we happen to exist in one of the extremely rare universes in which these values are such that intelligent life can evolve?

You need to read what I posted. The values are not necessarily randomly selected. I gave the example of the Mandelbrot set. Read it again. The entire set of values of constants may well be determined by a very simple process, and our particular set are as much a part of that process as the vast range that we aren't in. This is why multiverse theories simplify things.... just like anyone discovering the complexity of pictures of the Mandelbrot Set would realise its underlying simplicy when they found out the generating process.

Oh, good, another made-up looking and untestable naturalistic worldview.

That is your worldview, not the one of Paul Davies. It is entirely testable. The delayed choice experiment on which this worldview is based has been done, and has given positive results.

Nice, huh? I mean my hypothesis explains the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants by just generalizing quantum mechanics's simplest interpretation, affirms the existence of only one universe and is therefore much less complex than the multiverse with its gargantuan number of actual universes (it's 10^99, or 10^99^99?), and is much less wild than Davies's with its spooky negotiation between future and past and playing fast and lose with the arrow of time.

First the matter of playing fast and loose with time is not wild. It is established scientific fact. This only shows how useless personal judgment is in these matters. You are trying to use your judgment about what is absurd to reject what you think might be unreasonable when it is already known to be true! There is an important lesson here - absurdity is no measure of truth.

Secondly, do you realise you are basically quoting Davies' ideas? After ridiculing what he is saying, you are coming up with just the same thoughts!

1481. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54877 by steve99 on July 9, 2007 at 8:09 am

In fact one thing you can't understand without God is consciousness itself. At this juncture a naturalist often responds: Oh, here comes the God of the gaps again

But that is precisely what it is. Until you actually come up with a mechanism by which God produces consciousness, it is just as much a supposed problem for theism as it is for naturalism.

1482. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54863 by steve99 on July 9, 2007 at 7:05 am

What kind of evidentiary rules should apply for it to become collective belief?

Not being founded on philosophical fallacies would be a start.

1483. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54834 by steve99 on July 9, 2007 at 4:32 am

This is a fundamental failure of naturalism, and will remain so while nobody is able to at least propose some testable idea about how something material could become conscious.

Please provide a testable idea about how something supernatural could become conscious.

1484. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54825 by steve99 on July 9, 2007 at 3:49 am

Religious ideas are real and are serious; believing in God is really nothing like believing in fairies.

It is precisely the same. In both cases people are believing in invisible supernatural beings because of a lack of understanding of the scientific and rational explanation for things.

So, let people decide for themselves how reasonable these ideas are.

That would be fine if this was just a matter of personal belief, but it isn't.

1485. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54801 by steve99 on July 9, 2007 at 2:11 am

We were discussing your claim that I have evidence with which my worldview does not fit. So what is the evidence I have with which my worldview does not fit?

Well, for one, the evidence that the world is not deterministic.

I mean: For me it's self-evidently true that objective ethical precepts (such as that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong) are meaningful.

And that is the problem. Because that is no proof or evidence for anything, as you know. You are an intelligent fellow, and so you know that millions of people have held 'self-evidently true' beliefs that we know are nonsense (such as the flatness of the Earth).

But in any case what you believe about these issues in no way affects me, does it now?

Yes, it does. Because it means that a major platform of your worldview is false.

Now you keep repeating that "something objective does not need any kind of 'reality substance' to arise from". I understand you believe that (even though I find it irrational, and I have explained why I find it irrational).

This is what is so infuriating. You supposedly find it irrational even though you have clearly been shown it is the case.

What facts exactly? Can't you be a little more specific? Or maybe you mean that your own personal beliefs about "reality substance" and so on should be accepted as "facts" by me?

They aren't my personal beliefs. They are the beliefs of just about every philosopher and scientist who has ever lived. Your personal beliefs about this are so widely recognised as being mistaken that there is even a classical logical fallacy that describes them - "reification".

So you don't know if there is something objectively real out there, something that does not depend on anybody's opinion? Your mind is open to the idea that maybe there is no objective reality at all?

Yes.

Surely you are not saying that the Bell Inequality implies that physical reality is not deterministic, are you?

Yes, of course I am. That is what it implies.

Well, it's all of that. After all, reality is all there is, so it must indeed account for consciousness and for morality and for physical phenomena and for how it feels when it hurts and so on. So all of that is subsumed in one's description of reality: one's worldview.

You don't get it. You can't just take something that supposedly deals with consciousness and morality, and spread it out to cover the no universe, with no evidence for that.

1486. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54691 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 1:36 pm

It doesn't give me morality, which makes the designer option more in line with my experience of there being right and wrong,

I have never understood this argument. Even if there were a designer, why would this help us with morality? Suppose the designer did hard-wire some sense of morality into us - how do we know anything about the morality of the designer? I am afraid that going to a universe-designer for any sense of morality solves nothing.

Clearly, what Paul Davies is exploring shows how far away from FACT any of science is. I'm ignorant of this, but aware that reality is not as straightforward as theists or atheists often claim.

What Paul Davies is exploring is entirely based on science fact, and those facts are very strange indeed. What it is based on is John Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, and interpretations of quantum mechanics based on ideas from Richard Feynman.

There is no doubt now that what experimenters do in the present can influence the past. The delayed choice experiment shows that decisions made after a particle has been through some apparatus can influence what that particle does in the past, when it passes through that apparatus.

I think that those of us who aren't internationally respected physicists aren't in any position to criticise the work of those who are.

1487. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54689 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 1:28 pm

Steve:

I am in awe of you. I have indeed learned so much already from you and other posters on this thread.

You flatter me. I have learned much too. That is why I get involved in these arguments, and why I am so persistent in them. I have had to research much, and to work to tidy up many of my own ideas and beliefs. I have got some things wrong, but at least I know why, and have learned from that.

What is so frustrating here is Dianelos' immunity from the reason he claims to support so much. We can hack away at one of the pillars of his beliefs (such as objectivity), yet even when it is gone, he carries on, like the Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail, claiming it is a 'mere scratch'.

1488. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54682 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 1:04 pm

In other words, to believe that these laws, which very precisely allowed the evolution of intelligent life, which would not have if the slightest tiny detail were changed, were just the result of hugely improbable chance, would be to accept the very unlikely in the face of a far better explanation.

There are two explanations I have come across that seem to have some power to me.

The first is the multiverse one.

I am not talking about a multiverse of randomness and chance. I have recently thought of an analogy that might be useful.

I am sure you have heard of the Mandelbrot Set. It is a beautiful illustration of how infinite complexity can come from the simplest of origins. A trivial mathematical formula, combined with an iterative process produces the wonder that is all the images of the set that we see often published.

But, the complexity we see is the smallest fraction of the results of the iteration, yet an inevitable consequence of it.

I see the multiverse as the same - almost all barren, but with an apparently insignificant proportion suitable for life and complexity. But, that proportion is not really insignificant - it is as much an inevitable part of the multiverse as the rest.

The other explanation is one being explored by Paul Davies, based on ideas by the great physicist John Wheeler. This is that time is not what we think it is, and neither is causality. The past and future are the result of an on-going 'negotiation'. Conscious life arises in the universe because it selects past values of physical constants that allows it to arise, simply by observing. This sounds pretty wild, but it is interesting.

1489. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54670 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 12:26 pm

In fact, it is hard to imagine how scientists could get to the point of saying, with anything like certainty, that intelligent life does not exist elsewhere in the universe. And given that scientists usually limit themselves to the contents of this universe (though not always!) it's hard to see how they could ever make that assertion about the existence of intelligence outside this universe.

I really don't think you have grasped the issues involved. Believers in God aren't making claims about the existence of intelligence outside of the universe in the same way that scientists are making claims about intelligence outside of this planet. These are fundamentally different matters.

The big difference is that we can understand that extra-terrestrial intelligence can exist without any visible evidence. We can look up at the stars, and wonder.

But that is not what is claimed for God. God is The Creator, the Prime Mover, who listens to prayers, forgives sins, sends offspring to planets.

Believers don't claim God is hidden away, skulking in other dimensions too distant for scientists to discover, they claim he influences our universe, and that is the basis of their belief.

1490. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #54632 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 8:42 am

If this huge and complex world causes so much stress to somebody by virtue of having no known cause

As I tried to explain to darwin2 in another discussion... this huge and complex word does not need a huge and complex cause. After all, we only get real complexity in a very few places that are far from equilibrium, and our current understanding of physics and thermodynamics explains how that arises pretty well. So, darwin2's need for a creator to provide complexity is absurd. However, he refuses to accept modern science, and would rather remain in comfy ignorance; an ignorance that requires a God.

1491. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #54631 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 8:34 am

If God promises to make our consciousness persist without the necessary physical support, then the new consciousness will lack these characteristics.

And would be about as aware as a jellyfish.

1492. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #54617 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 7:15 am

The God I believe in is infinite.

Interesting. What kind of infinity? There are many kinds, you know. Is he countably infinite? Or one of the higher orders of infinity?

If you know what kind of kind of infinity, how do you know?

You see, this is the kind of thing that gets me about such silly statements... "God is infinite" sounds suitably cosmic and far-out, but is meaningless.

It reminds me of this scene from Monty Python's "Meaning of Life":

Chaplain: Let us praise God. O Lord...
Congregation: O Lord...
Chaplain: ...Ooh, You are so big...
Congregation: ...ooh, You are so big...
Chaplain: ...So absolutely huge.
Congregation: ...So absolutely huge.
Chaplain: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You.

1493. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54605 by steve99 on July 8, 2007 at 5:12 am

15. As far as I am aware, no one has proven that God does not exist.

Well, actually, I think we have pretty much done that in a ways that should make sense to reasonable people. One of the main justifications for God was as an explanation for all kinds of things - goodness, badness, life, the cosmos and so on. When God is reduced to the level at which Dianelos describes him - an unnecessary sort of 'reality force', that is merely compatible with science and not required, then I see this as a last ditch attempt to try keep God around even though He has effectively no explanatory power.

When you get reasoning like... "OK, so you don't NEED God, but that doesn't prove He doesn't exist", then I think we have really won the argument.

1494. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54445 by steve99 on July 7, 2007 at 6:34 am

As I have explained before for me "objective" means "pertaining to reality, and hence independent of anybody's personal opinion". Further, according the idealistic theism all reality is exhausted in God, so, for example, objective goodness is objectively instantiated in how God objectively is. You are free not to agree with any of these of course, but I don't see what in my worldview does not fit, on the contrary everything fits very well.

No, it doesn't. Let me try yet again to explain what does not fit. If something is objective it is objective. It does not need any kind of 'reality substance' to arise from. As I explained over, and over, it is nonsense to claim that God defines many things we know are objective, such as mathematical truths. Why is it nonsense - because we know that these truths could not be otherwise, God or not.

Of course, and indeed some things in my worldview are objective. So again, what is it that doesn't fit?

The facts don't fit. What you don't seem to get is that is that wanting something to be objective does not make it so.

Further, I must say am rather surprised: Doesn't your worldview require that some things be objective?

I actually don't know. I don't claim that kind of certainty, like you do. My mind is open.

Well, it's true that mainstream naturalism does not consider that all objective mathematical truths describe properties of the physical universe, as the strongest version of naturalism I can conceive affirms. But again, as I explained in post 858 when comparing idealistic theism with naturalism I wouldn't mind at all to use the weaker mainstream version of naturalism. In this context there is one point though I strongly disagree with you: For me it's irrational to claim that proposition X is both objectively true and completely divorced from reality. blocAnd that's why for me the objectivity of mathematical truths creates one more problem for mainstream naturalism.

This is a major problem with your understanding. As I have explained ad nauseam, there are kinds of reality (such as abstractions) that are not the same as the physical reality that for some strange reason you insist must form the basis of everything in naturalism. This is your reification fallacy.

As for my "huge misunderstandings of quantum mechanics" I have no idea what you are referring to. Could you explain what huge misunderstandings are these?

You just don't get the deep meaning of what is implied by the Bell Inequality and subsequent work. You flip back and forth between some sort of ultimate determinism defined by God, and some kind of lack of determinism that allows excercise of will. It is a mess of philosophical inconsistency.

Incidentally I would also want to know what you think about my numbered propositions in post 1041. I claim these propositions are true even under the premise that theism is false.

I think that many of them are wildly simplistic, and misuse terms like 'compatible'. For example

2. Theistic worldviews are trivially and entirely compatible with scientific knowledge, because God, being omnipotent and all, could produce all the phenomena that science studies.

A theist worldview which is trivially and entirely compatible with scientific phenomena may be compatible, but is redundant, as it can't be distinguished from an infinite number of alternative compatible worldviews.

I came up with an analogy in some other discussion elsewhere that may be useful. Imagine someone claimed that in addition to the normal mechanics, cars also worked by the intervention of small magic imps that pushed the pistons. Surely you would ask for some kind of proof? But if they they said "ah.. but the action of the imps is entirely compatible with the mechanical explanation, so can't be detected", wouldn't you immediately dismiss this as useless nonsense? Yet that one interpretation for what you claim for God. Of course, there is another interpretation - that God actually produces the phenomena. But that is philosophically redundant too, as we see no evidence for that, and if we assumed it anyway, it would block investigation, as research would be redundant.

What I am trying to say here is that it is not reasonable to expand a position like yours to cover areas over which even you claim it has no way of being distinguished from any alternative, and it has no way of being detected.

What you have is not a world-view, but a consciousness-view and a morality-view. Of course, I would dispute the validity of even those views, but what I find totally unreasonable is to to try and extrapolate those views to other areas where they are irrelevant. Sure, let's debate God and consciousness, but to try and expand the discussion to cover all of materialism and physical realism is not sensible.

What you are doing is spreading your God so thinly that he might as well not exist.

1495. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54438 by steve99 on July 7, 2007 at 5:12 am

Fine, but I for one am not willing to bend my mind into contortionist cognitive positions just because it fits naturalism - especially when there are other worldviews that fit perfectly well.

Why do you keep ignoring repeated arguments that show that your worldview does NOT fit perfectly well? How many times do we have to post things before you take notice?

Yet again - your worldview requires that objective things need a deity to 'instantiate' them. It has been explained to you clearly over and over again that this contradicts what 'objective' means.

Your worldview requires that some things are objective. It has been explained to you clearly pver and over again that this is simply what you want to be the case, and not in any way 'true'.

All your worldview fits is your comfort zone of belief - a combination of what you want to be the case morally and what you are prepared to consider acceptable from science.

Setting up straw-men positions of imaginary naturalist as some counterpoint to your positions does not justify them.

I'll let you into a secret, Dianelos - I am not a naturalist, at least not the way you think of the term. However, I am certainly not a theist.

The reason I have been arguing so forcefully for naturalism is that you arguments against it are so poor, and I want to get you to either put up decent ones, or abandon your flawed ones.

Your view of what naturalism claims and the way science works, which includes huge misunderstandings of quantum mechanics, bears little relation to mainstream thought. That is why I posted the 'flat earth' analogy earlier.

1496. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54407 by steve99 on July 7, 2007 at 12:43 am

To the contrary he has presented his God system with his explanations and is subjecting it to vigorous testing by all comers.

I would hardly call repeatedly misunderstanding and ignoring criticism vigorous testing.

You have noticed that DG has been no slouch in looking for science to back up some of his thoughts.

But he then rejects science that he considers 'absurd', and basically ignores criticism of his often poor understanding of the science he quotes.

How more open can he be than exposing his findings at this appropriate site for all to scrutinise?

By putting more effort into understanding the nature of debate and discussion, which means responding and accepting criticism, and not repeatedly 'resetting' the conversation back as if certain criticisms had not been made and certain questions had not been asked.

I see no evidence of DG having changed his mind about anything, in spite of major flaws in his reasoning having been exposed.

1497. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54329 by steve99 on July 6, 2007 at 11:43 am

So, apart from rejecting other peoples' ideas when I find that in my case they make no sense, what evidence would you say I have rejected?

Well, first of all, I really feel you have a problem understanding what 'evidence' means in this context. Let's take the example of gratuitous torture being supposedly objectively wrong. You say that you take as evidence your feeling that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong. But what is this evidence of? It is nothing more than evidence that you have the feeling... it is NOT evidence that gratuitous torture IS objectively wrong. I think this typifies a problem with your reasoning here - you confuse different levels of meaning.

At least in part I do that, yes. Why shouldn't I? If it fits, it fits.

But it doesn't fit, does it? You are having to reject much of what others consider might be real because you just don't like it. The only thing your view fits is what you want it to fit.

People (be it in the context of math, or in the context of science, or in the context of searching for a mate) often make a hypothesis and then test it by working backwards to see how well it fits. Working backwards is a big part of reasoning. Come to think of it, working forwards into the unknown hardly ever works.

The problem is that your ideas are not testable.

Einstein was quite open about this: he wanted a hypothesis to work because it struck him as being beautiful;

The difference is that he was working with ideas that could be actually checked by experiment.

And, happily enough, I find it works really very well. Indeed our discussion here and the unforeseen challenges many posters, including yourself, have offered have helped me verify how well it really works.

That makes me sad. The more I have discussed here, the more flawed your ideas appear. I know exactly why and how they are flawed (such as your problems with abstraction and reification, and your use of your personal judgement about what is and isn't absurd). I am sad that you can't (or won't) see this, as I feel that if you could, it would open your mind to so much more.

Theistic idealism explains very well why that is

This is just silly. There is no relationship between truth and beauty at all. It is true that most animals in the world suffer from parasites. How beautiful is that?

1498. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54195 by steve99 on July 6, 2007 at 1:45 am

Rather we must take all evidence we have, all data, be they objective or subjective and everything we know about these data (via science or whatever) and then consider which worldview fits the whole evidence best. My claim in this forum is that this is the only reasonable way to go about it;

But that is not what you are doing. You have repeatedly said that you reject certain evidence and ideas because you find them absurd and unacceptable. So, you aren't taking all evidence - only that which fits with your worldview.

You are doing precisely what so many religious people are criticised for - starting with what you want to believe, and working backwards.

1499. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54145 by steve99 on July 5, 2007 at 3:42 pm

If a belief works best in life how can it be false? I don't know

Oh come on, of course you do. Don't be naive. Most people have not the slightest ideas about relativity of quantum mechanics. Their ideas about reality are quite different, but work for them. But are they true? Of course not!

And as for determinism, the most popular interpretation of quantum mechanics between physicists is Everett's many worlds interpretation which describes a deterministic physical reality. So many naturalists have continued to believe that physical reality is deterministic over the last century.

That is NOT the most popular interpretation. Yet again you are picking up on amateur science stuff. The most popular interpretation is not to interpret at all - it is the 'shut up an just calculate' approach. And still, among the rest, the most useful approach for general use is the Copenhagen interpretation.

1500. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54135 by steve99 on July 5, 2007 at 2:31 pm

I suggest you read "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness"

And I suggest you get educated about quantum mechanics to a degree level. You are not an
expert in QM. You can't simply pick and choose the odd book that backs your viewpoint.

All reality is objective by definition

That is a very strong claim. Where do you get that from?

But if you can't find any example where the concept of "causality" is necessary then don't you think it's reasonable to consider that concept superfluous?

Here you go with your 'ifs' - your false premises. I can find the concept of causality necessary, as I am not a believer in ultimate determinism

In short the concept of causality only makes specific sense within idealistic theism. In naturalism, the concept of causality is superfluous.

Yet again, you claim something about theism without justification. Why does causality make sense within theism?

The words in the post you are now reading are caused by my will. Random quantum events are truly random and are uncaused.

Even by God?

So for example, the correlations between physical events (and in general all order present in physical phenomena) are caused by God's will.

Please, just give me even the slightest evidence for that...

God exhausts all reality but opens experiential space in it for us to exist and exercise our will.

You can't exercise your will if there is no causality, as exercising your will can have no effect.

As for "ultimate bleakness" I must say it's an expression I often encounter in relation to naturalism (not to mention materialism). If mechanical order rather than personal will is what's fundamental in reality then reality is rather bleak.

The problem, as always, Dianelos, is that you are only referring to your own personal, straw-man version of naturalism, not any version of naturalism recognised by modern
scientists or philosophers.

You are simply trying to falsely set up naturalism to involve mechanical order in a poor attempt to position it as an intolerable alternative to your theism. Naturalism has not implied mechanical order for over a century.

You have to get up-to-date with an understanding of what materialism means.