The universe can exist without God? Hawkins says yes.
The universe can exist without moral right or wrong? I’d have to assume Hawkins would say yes. So then what? Hawkins believes in something he himself doesn’t actually believes exist? Now THAT sounds weird.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Oh, and Hawking’s “cold dead universe” does absolutely judge worth and unworth. He, after all, is a part of that universe, and therefore, inasmuch as he has ever called something good, the universe has.[/quote]
Poetic, but pure nonsense. [/quote]
How is it nonsense? I said nothing of the authority of his judgements, which is where your argument is correct. But you stretch it to existence and nonexistence, and here it crumbles. Of course “good” exists for Hawking. It’s just that it’s what he, by way of various evolutionary and rational and social impulses, decides that it be. This is the very opposite of unreality.[/quote]
Hawking can make a fiction reality?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
The universe can exist without God? Hawkins says yes.
The universe can exist without moral right or wrong? I’d have to assume Hawkins would say yes. So then what? Hawkins believes in something he himself doesn’t actually believes exist? Now THAT sounds weird.[/quote]
It isn’t without moral right and wrong. It’s with moral right and wrong as decided and enforced by the human mind. See my previous post for a more thorough explanation of this.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Oh, and Hawking’s “cold dead universe” does absolutely judge worth and unworth. He, after all, is a part of that universe, and therefore, inasmuch as he has ever called something good, the universe has.[/quote]
Poetic, but pure nonsense. [/quote]
How is it nonsense? I said nothing of the authority of his judgements, which is where your argument is correct. But you stretch it to existence and nonexistence, and here it crumbles. Of course “good” exists for Hawking. It’s just that it’s what he, by way of various evolutionary and rational and social impulses, decides that it be. This is the very opposite of unreality.[/quote]
Hawking can make a fiction reality?
[/quote]
No. See my last two posts. Hawking believes that that’s what “right” means, and that rightness exists. Inarguably.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
The universe can exist without God? Hawkins says yes.
The universe can exist without moral right or wrong? I’d have to assume Hawkins would say yes. So then what? Hawkins believes in something he himself doesn’t actually believes exist? Now THAT sounds weird.[/quote]
It isn’t without moral right and wrong. It’s with moral right and wrong as decided and enforced by the human mind. See my previous post for a more thorough explanation of this.[/quote]
So believing in stuff we KNOW and accept as actual fiction, and varies from person to person?
Now THAT is odd.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Oh, and Hawking’s “cold dead universe” does absolutely judge worth and unworth. He, after all, is a part of that universe, and therefore, inasmuch as he has ever called something good, the universe has.[/quote]
Poetic, but pure nonsense. [/quote]
How is it nonsense? I said nothing of the authority of his judgements, which is where your argument is correct. But you stretch it to existence and nonexistence, and here it crumbles. Of course “good” exists for Hawking. It’s just that it’s what he, by way of various evolutionary and rational and social impulses, decides that it be. This is the very opposite of unreality.[/quote]
Hawking can make a fiction reality?
[/quote]
No. See my last two posts. Hawking believes that that’s what “right” means, and that rightness exists. Inarguably.[/quote]
So he believes “rightness” exists. And his mathematical model is to be found where?
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
It’s with moral right and wrong as decided and enforced by the human mind. [/quote]
Whose human mind? The Taliban? The Pope? Hawking?
Which “favorite color” of right and wrong is “rightness?”
The whole thing is as nonsensical as saying the rightness of the right “favorite color.” Great, I’m sure Hawing has a favorite color, too. It’s as meaningless as his “rightness.”
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
It’s with moral right and wrong as decided and enforced by the human mind. [/quote]
Whose human mind? The Taliban? The Pope? Hawking?
[/quote]
All of them. You already know the answers to these questions, of course. As I said at the beggining, I am not talking about authority. I am talking about existence (because this is what you impugned). Rightness undeniably exists in Dawkins’ world.
There is no question of existence. None. The only question is, who decides what is right and what is wrong? Man or god?
The really interesting question is, which would we prefer?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The trilemma – heretofore reduced to a dilemma, but we can subdivide the possibility of fraudulence into innocent insanity (he believed his own lies) and malicious duplicitousness (he did not) – is a false trichotomy. There is the very obvious possibility that the claims to divinity attributed to Jesus are the product of mythmaking in the aftermath of his death and the early Christian period. Not only is this undeniably logically possible, but, given what we know about both human psychology (the problems of memory, rumor, wishful thinking, paritcularly in a time before the age of reason) and mythmaking vis-a-vis other historical events, it is positively plausible.
It is not even the case that a person telling a lie is necessarily an evil fraud. See Guido Orefice.[/quote]
Pick any one of the three scenarios; it matters not which one.
- Insane fraud
- Malicious duplicity
- Myth-making
Bottom line is if any of them are true there’s no sense paying attention to any of it. Just like I said.
In other words, if one wants to embrace the Judeo-Christian moral code that has served western civilization rather well for millenia…and reject the author of it, the Judeo-Christian God, well, good luck on your voyage to the land of rational thinking, because ye ain’t there yet, and lo, it is afar off.[/quote]
I disagree.
A fable needn’t have been “true” for its moral message to be valid. Does the proposition that there never was literally a frivolous grasshopper who played all summer while his neighbour the ant slaved away invalidate the moral virtues of preparedness and hard work? Are the virtues of honesty and the consequences of deception invalidated by the proposition that there was never was, in fact, a boy who cried wolf? And is the virtue of charity and gift-giving invalidated by the fact that Santa Claus does not really exist? *
The virtues that Jesus taught were not virtues he invented out of whole cloth, but were the distillation of the Torah as interpreted by Rabbi Hillel and others. The fact that these people neither claimed to be nor were worshipped as gods does not invalidate the truth of their teachings, any more than Jesus’s claims to divinity, either implied by himself or others, make them any more or less valid.
Not to mention that the “Judaeo-Christian” moral code itself didn’t parthenogenetically manifest itself any more than Jesus did: it evolved over centuries, influenced greatly by the legal and moral codes of Babylon, Egypt, and Greece, cultures which certainly didn’t worship the “Judaeo-Christian” god.
- Which is not to say that there never was a Santa Claus. Saint Nicolas actually existed: he was a 4th century Greek bishop living in what is now Turkey, who was famous for giving generous gifts to the poor. Notably, he gave rich dowries to three poor Christian girls so that they wouldn’t have to be prostitutes. This was, one presumes, the origin of St. Nick’s catchphrase, “ho, ho, ho”.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
The whole thing is as nonsensical as saying the rightness of the right “favorite color.” Great, I’m sure Hawing has a favorite color, too. It’s as meaningless as his “rightness.”[/quote]
And he should no more call his imaginary-personal-standard for himself “rightness” as he would his favorite color “right.”
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Rightness undeniably exists in Dawkins’ world.[/quote]
One shred of evidence, since it is “undeniable.” I want to be able to measure it with SI units.
Hawkings’ universe can exists without God, he says. Well, ok. The human mind simply doesn’t make God true.
Hawkings’ universe can also exist without it being morally wrong (without moral right or wrong) for Pat to refer to him as a “crippled retard.” The human mind doesn’t make Pat wrong in doing so.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
The whole thing is as nonsensical as saying the rightness of the right “favorite color.” Great, I’m sure Hawing has a favorite color, too. It’s as meaningless as his “rightness.”[/quote]
And he should no more call his imaginary-personal-standard for himself “rightness” as he would his favorite color “right.”
[/quote]
This being, on Hawking’s worldview, your own subjective judgement, which is no more or less real than his (opposite) subjective judgement. He wants (by and in accordance with mechanisms already enumerated) certain things he calls “right,” and he wants to enforce them vis-a-vis others, and you cannot claim that this process does not exist. Because it does. (This answers the “shred of evidence” challenge from your other post, as well.)
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The really interesting question is, which would we prefer?[/quote]
I’ve read the book of Job a few times. I’ve also read The Stranger and The Trial a few times. The “morality” and “justice” of the world depicted in all these works seem pretty similar to me. Whether its god, nature, or the man, something or someone is inevitably handing you your ass for reasons that you don’t know and can’t really explain.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The trilemma – heretofore reduced to a dilemma, but we can subdivide the possibility of fraudulence into innocent insanity (he believed his own lies) and malicious duplicitousness (he did not) – is a false trichotomy. There is the very obvious possibility that the claims to divinity attributed to Jesus are the product of mythmaking in the aftermath of his death and the early Christian period. Not only is this undeniably logically possible, but, given what we know about both human psychology (the problems of memory, rumor, wishful thinking, paritcularly in a time before the age of reason) and mythmaking vis-a-vis other historical events, it is positively plausible.
It is not even the case that a person telling a lie is necessarily an evil fraud. See Guido Orefice.[/quote]
Pick any one of the three scenarios; it matters not which one.
- Insane fraud
- Malicious duplicity
- Myth-making
Bottom line is if any of them are true there’s no sense paying attention to any of it. Just like I said.[/quote]
I disagree. I don’t believe that the Iliad is “true,” but I certainly think it’s worth paying attention to.
[quote]
In other words, if one wants to embrace the Judeo-Christian moral code that has served western civilization rather well for millenia…and reject the author of it, the Judeo-Christian God, well, good luck on your voyage to the land of rational thinking, because ye ain’t there yet, and lo, it is afar off.[/quote]
I can do it pretty easily. You said it yourself: It “has served western civilization rather well for millennia.” That is, it makes it less likely that I will be killed for no good reason, or that my girlfriend will be raped by a pack of roaming and unrestrained hedonists. I don’t want to be killed, and I don’t want my girlfriend to be raped, so I will adopt away.
(Actually, this is a hypothetical “me” who is a strict atheist, which I am not. I happen to believe that objective morality exists and that, by means that were not quite coincidence, the human authors of religion got some of it very right.)
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
I disagree. I don’t believe that the Iliad is “true,” but I certainly think it’s worth paying attention to.
[/quote]
Funny. I was going to use the Iliad in my response above, but went with Aesop instead.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Are the virtues of honesty and the consequences of deception invalidated by the proposition that there was never was, in fact, a boy who cried wolf?[/quote]
Now it’s time for me to tell you that I couldn’t have said it any better. Indeed, maybe there is objective morality – a mysterious one, endowed mysteriously by a mysterious something-or-other – and we intuit it, and then we lay our lies atop. If the lies help to convey the intuition, then they are not worthless, and they should not be ignored even if they should not be mistaken for factual truths.
[quote]
- Which is not to say that there never was a Santa Claus. Saint Nicolas actually existed: he was a 4th century Greek bishop living in what is now Turkey, who was famous for giving generous gifts to the poor. Notably, he gave rich dowries to three poor Christian girls so that they wouldn’t have to be prostitutes. This was, one presumes, the origin of St. Nick’s catchphrase, “ho, ho, ho”. ;)[/quote]
Bravo to this.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Rightness undeniably exists in Dawkins’ world.[/quote]
One shred of evidence, since it is “undeniable.” I want to be able to measure it with SI units.
[/quote]
Rectitude is measured in microns.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
I disagree. I don’t believe that the Iliad is “true,” but I certainly think it’s worth paying attention to.
[/quote]
Funny. I was going to use the Iliad in my response above, but went with Aesop instead.[/quote]
I think the saying is, “great minds think alike at first but upon reconsideration think slightly less alike (but still pretty alike).” ; )