[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
But the truth is, if this line of reasoning is so foolish, why can’t you poke a single hole in it?[/quote]
I’ve poked the biggest fucking hole you can poke into it - there is no evidence to support it. Seriously. What more do you want?[/quote]
And you already admitted a lack of evidence to support science axioms. Science is therefore in the same boat. However, this is once again NOT the “chipping away” you once or twice claimed.
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
Well… I suppose it works for you to define science that way. Never mind all of the physicists and cosmologists who propose changing and even flexible laws of physics (gravity, time direction, thermodynamics, etc…) in different regions of space. Never mind Hawkings suggesting that the most fundamental law of cause and effect is reversed past the event horizon of a black hole.
I guess you’ve got it right, and they all have it wrong. Clearly this is a deterministic universe, and anyone who disagrees can not be a scientist.
And, no… that is not an argument from ignorance.
It is an argument with limited evidentiary support. [/quote]
No, you missed my point. laws being mathematically consistently varriable isn’t the same thing as laws not being continuous. Nor does changing theory indicate changing laws. Gravity can vary, but it is consistent. When I specifically singled out big G I was referring to Newtonian physics. The same concept applies to modern physics.
The definition from your link:
“It asserts that a proposition is necessarily true because it has not been proven false (or vice versa)”
But as I’ve already pointed out and you agreed to, the axioms of science are not supported by sufficient evidence anyway.[/quote]
No. You said the evidence is not sufficient. I said it was limited, and thus I remain skeptical of everything.
And, Newtonian mechanics are not NECESSARILY true because they have not been proven false. Newtonian proposed his mechanics to be valid because of sufficient evidence.
Do you understand the difference?
[/quote]
Swing and a miss. I was accepting Newtonian physics to be true for simplicity. If this bothers you so much, we can switch to general relativity. Why is C, C?
Or quantum, swap it out for planks constant.
It doesn’t matter. Science assumes that the laws of the universe are consistent. Situation A always causes event B. It cannot cause it one moment and not cause it or cause event C the next. If the universe’s laws are not consistent, science as a concept is wrong. I don’t know how to simplify this any more.
I’ve already shown that there can be no evidence for the validity of axioms. ITS WHY THEY ARE CALLED AXIOMS. Axioms are scientifically verified to a confidence of ZERO.
Once again the only reason we accept them is a lack of disproof. Which is by and large a rational thought, and one I support. HOWEVER, it is just as rational a process to arrive at the uncaused cause and certainly no less rational than to shut down the discovery process just because a question is not in the realm of science. Is it any more reasonable to ponder “why” and arrive at the conclusion there is no why, as you have apparently done?
Demanding physical evidence of a metaphysical concept is nonsense. Some people continue to reason even if the question can’t be answered by science.
Claiming there is a god is nothing more than claiming “why” is a valid question.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
Well… I suppose it works for you to define science that way. Never mind all of the physicists and cosmologists who propose changing and even flexible laws of physics (gravity, time direction, thermodynamics, etc…) in different regions of space. Never mind Hawkings suggesting that the most fundamental law of cause and effect is reversed past the event horizon of a black hole.
I guess you’ve got it right, and they all have it wrong. Clearly this is a deterministic universe, and anyone who disagrees can not be a scientist.
And, no… that is not an argument from ignorance.
It is an argument with limited evidentiary support. [/quote]
No, you missed my point. laws being mathematically consistently varriable isn’t the same thing as laws not being continuous. Nor does changing theory indicate changing laws. Gravity can vary, but it is consistent. When I specifically singled out big G I was referring to Newtonian physics. The same concept applies to modern physics.
The definition from your link:
“It asserts that a proposition is necessarily true because it has not been proven false (or vice versa)”
But as I’ve already pointed out and you agreed to, the axioms of science are not supported by sufficient evidence anyway.[/quote]
No. You said the evidence is not sufficient. I said it was limited, and thus I remain skeptical of everything.
And, Newtonian mechanics are not NECESSARILY true because they have not been proven false. Newtonian proposed his mechanics to be valid because of sufficient evidence.
Do you understand the difference?
[/quote]
Swing and a miss. I was accepting Newtonian physics to be true for simplicity. If this bothers you so much, we can switch to general relativity. Why is C, C?
Or quantum, swap it out for planks constant.
It doesn’t matter. Science assumes that the laws of the universe are consistent. Situation A always causes event B. It cannot cause it one moment and not cause it or cause event C the next. If the universe’s laws are not consistent, science as a concept is wrong. I don’t know how to simplify this any more.
I’ve already shown that there can be no evidence for the validity of axioms. ITS WHY THEY ARE CALLED AXIOMS. Axioms are scientifically verified to a confidence of ZERO.
Once again the only reason we accept them is a lack of disproof. Which is by and large a rational thought, and one I support. HOWEVER, it is just as rational a process to arrive at the uncaused cause and certainly no less rational than to shut down the discovery process just because a question is not in the realm of science. Is it any more reasonable to ponder “why” and arrive at the conclusion there is no why, as you have apparently done?
Demanding physical evidence of a metaphysical concept is nonsense. Some people continue to reason even if the question can’t be answered by science.[/quote]
Man… what the fuck are you talking about?
Scientific axioms are reached via observation and verification.
BTW - you’ve as mush as admitted here in your second to last paragraph that you think arguments from ignorance (a classic logical fallacy) are valid arguments… this explains quite a bit.
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Can I pose another question to you?
Science works off the axiom that the universe is unchanging (big G is always big G and such). Now, I would like to ask you to do some simple statistics to support this claim. What is a sufficient experiment recording measures of G to ensure a confidence level of 5%, which is ridiculously low by science standards? Here is a hint, the population size is infinite.
The answer of coarse is that in an infinite system confidence is scientifically not existent. There is no test or evidence that can scientifically validate any axiom of science. The only reason we believe it is because of a lack of contrary evidence. Sound familiar?
[/quote]
[/quote]
You have a sampling level that affords you a confidence of 0. That is logically equivalent to no evidence. This is basic statistics.
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
Scientific axioms are reached via observation and verification.
BTW - you’ve as mush as admitted here in your second to last paragraph that you think arguments from ignorance (a classic logical fallacy) are valid arguments… this explains quite a bit.
[/quote]
I observe everything known has a cause. Therefor I think the universe has one. The concept of a causeless anything is irrational and against observation.
And no there is no possible verification. This has been repeated again and again. See above.
Any unfalsifiable answer is equally valid which renders the question moot.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Any unfalsifiable answer is equally valid which renders the question moot.
[/quote]
Including the claim “why” is not a valid question?
Edit:
You can relate it to spaghetti monsters all you want. But there is reason to believe in a cause, there is not reason to believe in that cause being and invisible spaghetti monster. They are not the same thing.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Any unfalsifiable answer is equally valid which renders the question moot.
[/quote]
Including the claim “why” is not a valid question?
Edit:
You can relate it to spaghetti monsters all you want. But there is reason to believe in a cause, there is not reason to believe in that cause being and invisible spaghetti monster. They are not the same thing.[/quote]
I’m not questioning your reasons for believing; i’m questioning the persisting insistence that this one specific belief is truth, and all the others are not.
Because, whether you like it or not, they are essentially the same thing.
It’s a powerful psychological desire to be permanent in some way. To belong, and to have a reason, and a goal. I understand that because the universe is a lonely place sometimes.
We’re all reaching out to eachother in some way.
And it doesn’t matter how we connect.
At all.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Any unfalsifiable answer is equally valid which renders the question moot.
[/quote]
Including the claim “why” is not a valid question?
Edit:
You can relate it to spaghetti monsters all you want. But there is reason to believe in a cause, there is not reason to believe in that cause being and invisible spaghetti monster. They are not the same thing.[/quote]
I’m not questioning your reasons for believing; i’m questioning the persisting insistence that this one specific belief is truth, and all the others are not.
Because, whether you like it or not, they are essentially the same thing.
It’s a powerful psychological desire to be permanent in some way. To belong, and to have a reason, and a goal. I understand that because the universe is a lonely place sometimes.
We’re all reaching out to eachother in some way.
And it doesn’t matter how we connect.
At all.[/quote]
But claiming there is a god is distinct from claiming there is a specific god. No claim is made as the the specific nature of the cause/god/whatever. It acknowledges of itself all of those possibilities.
I mainly am only taking offense to the claim that a cause is somehow less rational and less thought out.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
But claiming there is a god is distinct from claiming there is a specific god. No claim is made as the the specific nature of the cause/god/whatever. It acknowledges of itself all of those possibilities.
I mainly am only taking offense to the claim that a cause is somehow less rational and less thought out.[/quote]
You also take offense if i compare that belief to the great FSM?
Why?
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
But claiming there is a god is distinct from claiming there is a specific god. No claim is made as the the specific nature of the cause/god/whatever. It acknowledges of itself all of those possibilities.
I mainly am only taking offense to the claim that a cause is somehow less rational and less thought out.[/quote]
You also take offense if i compare that belief to the great FSM?
Why?[/quote]
You can apply it all you want. FSM is equally valid to any other specific un-reasoned claim about god. It is not however equally valid to the general acknowledgment of a god. The church of the FSM makes claims about the nature of god, I do not.
While it is a counter argument to a religion, it is not a counter to what I’m discussing.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
But claiming there is a god is distinct from claiming there is a specific god. No claim is made as the the specific nature of the cause/god/whatever. It acknowledges of itself all of those possibilities.
I mainly am only taking offense to the claim that a cause is somehow less rational and less thought out.[/quote]
You also take offense if i compare that belief to the great FSM?
Why?[/quote]
You can apply it all you want. FSM is equally valid to any other specific un-reasoned claim about god. It is not however equally valid to the general acknowledgment of a god. The church of the FSM makes claims about the nature of god, I do not.
While it is a counter argument to a religion, it is not a counter to what I’m discussing.[/quote]
The existence of a god can’t be proven. At best, it may be infered from how we perceive reality based on wishful thinking.
And thus we enter the realm of beliefs.
So how would you go about making a rational positive claim on the existence of a god?
[i realise you probably covered this already]
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
But claiming there is a god is distinct from claiming there is a specific god. No claim is made as the the specific nature of the cause/god/whatever. It acknowledges of itself all of those possibilities.
I mainly am only taking offense to the claim that a cause is somehow less rational and less thought out.[/quote]
You also take offense if i compare that belief to the great FSM?
Why?[/quote]
You can apply it all you want. FSM is equally valid to any other specific un-reasoned claim about god. It is not however equally valid to the general acknowledgment of a god. The church of the FSM makes claims about the nature of god, I do not.
While it is a counter argument to a religion, it is not a counter to what I’m discussing.[/quote]
The existence of a god can’t be proven. At best, it may be infered from how we perceive reality based on wishful thinking.
And thus we enter the realm of beliefs.
So how would you go about making a rational positive claim on the existence of a god?
[i realise you probably covered this already]
[/quote]
I personally see existence necessitating a god. We exist, therefore god. Or, we don’t exist, therefore I’m not wrong =0)
But you have to understand that “science is replacing god”, or “god is a silly concept” is logically equivalent.
The only way to “take the high ground” logically is to avoid the question. That is the only way not to have an unfounded belief. And to be honest, that just doesn’t sit well with me. To me that is the equivalent of shutting down your rational brain.
I love these discussions some times. They don’t change my mind as much as make me realize what I believe sometimes. Even if I’m not arguing from my exact beliefs.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
The existence of a god can’t be proven. At best, it may be infered from how we perceive reality based on wishful thinking.
And thus we enter the realm of beliefs.
So how would you go about making a rational positive claim on the existence of a god?
[i realise you probably covered this already]
[/quote]
I personally see existence necessitating a god. We exist, therefore god. Or, we don’t exist, therefore I’m not wrong =0)
But you have to understand that “science is replacing god”, or “god is a silly concept” is logically equivalent.
The only way to “take the high ground” logically is to avoid the question. That is the only way not to have an unfounded belief. And to be honest, that just doesn’t sit well with me. To me that is the equivalent of shutting down your rational brain.[/quote]
I agree with your last paragraph: why do you think i’m an atheist? Because the question can’t be answered without resorting to beliefs. On the other hand, altough i have no problem denying the existence of the god of Abraham, outright denial of the existence of something that may have started all of this; that’s something i won’t do.
If you are truly rational you, at one point in time, may have to admit that maintaining a positive belief in a god is irrational. Atheism is the only rational position here: the absence of belief and thus the question.
Doesn’t mean you can’t ponder the universe and your own existence, but you simply take a seat on the seesaw’s pivot between YES - NO and see both sides.
(:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I love these discussions some times. They don’t change my mind as much as make me realize what I believe sometimes. Even if I’m not arguing from my exact beliefs.[/quote]
Absolutely. Over the years, discussions like these on numerous board with more people than i can remember were vital for me. That’s something the web made possible, and i’m truly greatful for it.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
The existence of a god can’t be proven. At best, it may be infered from how we perceive reality based on wishful thinking.
And thus we enter the realm of beliefs.
So how would you go about making a rational positive claim on the existence of a god?
[i realise you probably covered this already]
[/quote]
I personally see existence necessitating a god. We exist, therefore god. Or, we don’t exist, therefore I’m not wrong =0)
But you have to understand that “science is replacing god”, or “god is a silly concept” is logically equivalent.
The only way to “take the high ground” logically is to avoid the question. That is the only way not to have an unfounded belief. And to be honest, that just doesn’t sit well with me. To me that is the equivalent of shutting down your rational brain.[/quote]
I agree with your last paragraph: why do you think i’m an atheist? Because the question can’t be answered without resorting to beliefs. On the other hand, altough i have no problem denying the existence of the god of Abraham, outright denial of the existence of something that may have started all of this; that’s something i won’t do.
If you are truly rational you, at one point in time, may have to admit that maintaining a positive belief in a god is irrational. Atheism is the only rational position here: the absence of belief and thus the question.
Doesn’t mean you can’t ponder the universe and your own existence, but you simply take a seat on the seesaw’s pivot between YES - NO and see both sides.
(:
[/quote]
Ah, but everyone separates belief from provable. Everyone always has beliefs that are beyond proof. Even if it’s only an acceptance that allows further investigation, like the axioms of science.
Existence itself is really irrational at heart, but nobody behaves as if they don’t actually exist.
I doubt you are as different as you think you are.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
The existence of a god can’t be proven. At best, it may be infered from how we perceive reality based on wishful thinking.
And thus we enter the realm of beliefs.
So how would you go about making a rational positive claim on the existence of a god?
[i realise you probably covered this already]
[/quote]
I personally see existence necessitating a god. We exist, therefore god. Or, we don’t exist, therefore I’m not wrong =0)
But you have to understand that “science is replacing god”, or “god is a silly concept” is logically equivalent.
The only way to “take the high ground” logically is to avoid the question. That is the only way not to have an unfounded belief. And to be honest, that just doesn’t sit well with me. To me that is the equivalent of shutting down your rational brain.[/quote]
I agree with your last paragraph: why do you think i’m an atheist? Because the question can’t be answered without resorting to beliefs. On the other hand, altough i have no problem denying the existence of the god of Abraham, outright denial of the existence of something that may have started all of this; that’s something i won’t do.
If you are truly rational you, at one point in time, may have to admit that maintaining a positive belief in a god is irrational. Atheism is the only rational position here: the absence of belief and thus the question.
Doesn’t mean you can’t ponder the universe and your own existence, but you simply take a seat on the seesaw’s pivot between YES - NO and see both sides.
(:
[/quote]
Ah, but everyone separates belief from provable. Everyone always has beliefs that are beyond proof. Even if it’s only an acceptance that allows further investigation, like the axioms of science.
Existence itself is really irrational at heart, but nobody behaves as if they don’t actually exist.
I doubt you are as different as you think you are.
[/quote]
I tend to either surprise or disappoint people, but i’m no more or less human than any of you [except for maybe Zeb].
but I have a 50% chance of being right.