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Sidewalker

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Childish God
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@Stephen
Jesus spoke about god at a very young age. His views did not evolve over time. Jesus even believed This childish god was his father.

The Boy Jesus at the Temple
Luke 2:41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”[a] 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
This story has always amused me.

Here we have a woman chosen by God himself above all other women on the planet to be birth mother of his son and not even noticing that their "treasured" holy charge was absent until after a whole day's travelling!?  And they only recovered him after three whole days!!?
 Some "blessed among all women" she was, wasn't she? I am sure social services would have something to say about that if it were to happen today. 😂

And why on earth were they "astonished"!? Had this "blessed among all women" forgotten that the child that she had given birth to was gods son? 

Why didn't "they understand what he was saying to them"!? He was the son of God!

What is really hard to believe is how our spiritual detractors can make claims to being more "intelligent" and "logical" while demanding literal translations of religious narratives, anyone with even a basic understanding of religious narratives, would not call this "intelligent" or "logical".

Religious narratives achieve greatness because of their power to generate meanings, not in their value as an historical record. 
Originative religious texts are not historical records. The unexamined assumption that both sides of these debates adopt is that of historicism, the presumption that religious texts are historical records. Historicism attempts a reinterpretation of the transcendent dimension in the story that defines it as religious in the first place, it assumes that narrative, implies record, it doesn’t.

I believe that this innane literalism is contrived by people with ideological agendas that want science and faith to be at odds. These dogmatic fundamentalists, both Theists and Atheists alike, presume a referential interpretation of the religious narrative, and when they do they are overlaying an alien intentionality onto the story. Historicism negates the religious text by forcing a referential interpretation onto it, a purpose it was never designed to serve. Even among believers this mistaken analytic treatment of religious texts only sharpens doctrinal debate and results in divisiveness, it does not foster religious awareness, and again, the text is negated. 
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Childish God
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@Polytheist-Witch
Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.


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Childish God
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@Stephen
I think you would be hard pressed to find a grade schooler that doesn't know that belief in God is a matter of faith,
Of course, it's a matter of faith and as you say; most 21st century grade school students understands this. 
And most of our most vocal atheists don’t.


how is it possible that so many Atheists can't grasp that concept?

Atheist probably understand this more so than the theists. 
Then why do they blather on and on about evidence, burden of proof, and unicorns.    
 
From the originating post: “It just seems that they are using the faith discussion to brag about how they are all grown up now and so they don’t believe in the invisible man in the sky anymore”.   I suppose I should have mentioned that they brag that they know more than theists.  Why is this asserted so desperately?

Are they really completely uninformed about the subject they are discussing?
To my knowledge, it is the atheist that studies these ancient scriptures more deeply than the theist. The theist for the most part is happy to sit back and allow the pastor or the priest to read out the biblical stories and have them translated and explained to them. and the reason for this I found is obvious- it is time.
That’s desperation, I almost forgot that atheists are the experts on theism, I guess that’s why atheists feel they need to tell theists exactly how to be theists. 
 
Oh great religious scholar, please tell me all about the invisible bearded man in the sky.

This mantra that if you have "faith" then you have a "burden of proof" so I win, is beyond childish.   
Well not quite. It is a case of belief and not necessarily faith.  One may well have faith in what he believes, and I have no reason to disbelieve that devout theists have faith in what they believe in.  But if one believes in something such as a god, then the burden of proof is most certainly on the believer when questioned about his beliefs - not to be confused with faith.
So you also don’t grasp the concept of faith either.  The theist professes faith in a transcendent reality, the assertion is that they have faith, the atheists that claims there is a burden of proof that assigns to faith doesn’t understand the word “faith”, and doesn’t understand the concept of burden of proof.

But this forum has covered the burden of proof many times to the point where the believer will attempt to completely change the universally accepted fact that the burden of proof lays with he that makes the claim. 
By “universally accepted fact” I presume you are asserting that it is an article of faith within your atheist fundamentalism,  Mommy Mommy, look at you, you’re swimming in the deep end LOL
 
Perhaps you could add a dictionary to all those ancient scriptures you study so deeply;
 
FAITH:
2. strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

Are they really completely uninformed about the subject they are discussing?
And are you informed about the subject you are discussing?
Yes, I even know how to use a dictionary.
 
But hey, you’re the expert, if I’m doing it wrong, please do teach me how to be a theist.

so I win, is beyond childish.   
You are welcome to your opinion..... "tradey".
Do you believe you are conscious?  Do you believe in the existence of a physical universe? 

If so, then you have the burden of proof, can you prove it?
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Trump keeps losing
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@RationalMadman
No, he is not, this is an illusion his small cult have, wait for the next primaries, he will lose.

He knows how to make Republicans lose, his revenge tour has been very successful, but I think you are right, he doesn't know how to make them win.  

He has made an utter fool if himself.

That he has, the problem is the more he makes a fool of himself, the more fanatically his base supports him, it seems that losing just energizes them.  We can't just ignore how dangerous these people are.
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Atheists are hypocrites
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@Double_R
Do you believe in the existence of an external reality, does the universe exist, if so, then the burden of proof is on you, and I win.

Do you believe you are conscious, if so, the burden of proof is on you, and I win.

Woo hoo, this debate thing is really kewl.
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Childish God
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@Ehyeh
Atheists are very frustrated that some people could possibly disagree with them. It terrifies them that some people are capable of being fine with uncertainty.

I think you would be hard pressed to find a grade schooler that doesn't know that belief in God is a matter of faith, how is it possible that so many Atheists can't grasp that concept?  Are they really completely uninformed about the subject they are discussing?

This mantra that if you have "faith" then you have a "burden of proof" so I win, is beyond childish.   
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Childish God
I think it’s common for young children to see the Bible as a story book and to have a childish understanding of God as an invisible man in the sky that grants wishes to those who pray.  Of course, as children age and mature their conception of God and their understanding of faith develops and matures beyond such childish ways of understanding things.

But apparently, that isn’t always the case. There seems to be a group of very vocal Atheists whose conception of God and faith did not mature as they got older and who spend a lot of time ranting about how much more intelligent, rational, and mature they are than people of faith because they now reject this childish idea of God. They apparently don’t understand that no adult Theist believes in the God they don’t believe in and yet, they really seem thrilled with themselves for their intellectual achievement  It just seems that they are using the faith discussion to brag about how they are all grown up now and so they don’t believe in the invisible man in the sky anymore, and when I read those posts I can’t help but recall the image of a little child I saw on vacation a few years back who was clinging to the wall of the hotel pool kicking his legs and yelling “Mommy, mommy, look at me, I’m swimming in the deep end just like a grown up”.

I’m sorry, but this type of Atheism just doesn’t appear to be all that grown up to me, and clinging to such childish ideas about God and faith isn’t what I’d call “deep”.

What do you think, does this explain a lot of the behavior we see on these boards?
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Atheists are hypocrites
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@Double_R
Yes, and I believe that Kurt Godel “proved” that the principles of logic cannot be clearly defined, at least not in a consistent and complete manner.
I don't know nor do I care to know who Kurt Godel is, but if you believe the principals of logic cannot be defined in a consistent manner then you don't know what logic is.

You are saying you choose to be uninformed about the subject matter you are accusing me of being uninformed about? Isn’t that precious.

That’s not a line I cross, don’t really give a crap in terms of expecting others to see as I do, or whether or not they even take my beliefs seriously.
Then why are we talking? What is your purpose here?

Discuss and debate, see what other's have seen, what is your purpose here?  Are you saying you are here to get others to see as you do, and you want your belief’s taken seriously?  Sounds like you’re the one who’s got the burden of proof now.
 
Or maybe you think that anyone who comes to this site is obliged to make you see as they do?  Do you really think this site is all about you?

There is no faith required to not believe something.
I’m aware of the Atheist playbook, and that Pavlovian response is not rational, belief in the existence of a transcendent realm is clearly a matter of faith, you are passing judgement on whether or not you believe it its existence, your associated belief that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence” is a matter of faith. 
You are now having a conversation with yourself.

All I said is "there is no faith required to not believe something".  So you understand what this statement means? Do you disagree with it? Do you have a resonse to it that is based on the conversation we're actually having?

Yeah, like I said, I disagree with it. The existence of a transcendent realm is a matter of faith, you have faith that it doesn’t exist, and I’ll add that you are very dogmatic about your faith.

LOL, Pavlov all the way, so help me understand, the basis of your beliefs, is that you believe that the beliefs that compete with yours, have a burden of proof they cannot meet, and that’s the basis of what you believe?  That’s some circular logic you got there.
Never said any of this. Once again, having a conversation with yourself.

Yes, you did.  That puerile burden of proof game you play isn’t valid, it demonstrates that you do not understand logic.  “You have the burden of proof so I’m right” isn’t a logical argument.  

Yep, you either have faith there is a God, or you have faith there is not a God.
Or, you can look at the evidence and apply logic to arrive at a conclusion. I prefer the latter.

Yeah yeah, that’s how you arrived at your dogmatic beliefs, got it.

OK, so I’ll ask, what God is it you don’t believe in, and please “clearly define”.
I don't believe in a god that is perfect and yet created us with the desire that we worship him, because a perfect being would have no deficiencies and therefore have no need for others to worship him.

There are plenty more, but we can start there.

Your “lack of faith” is very explicit, how about the invisible bearded man in the sky, is that one of yours too? 

I'll address this in a new thread titled "Childish God".
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Atheists are hypocrites
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@3RU7AL

Please tell me more about your fantastic world on magic fairy dust and unicorns.  
please explain to me what you mean by "science and logic"

please provide your personally preferred definition of "explain"

and

please provide your personally preferred definition of "mean"



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Atheists are hypocrites
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@3RU7AL
I don't know, if you don't accept the real world of logic and science,
logic is defined as a sequence of CAUSAL relationships

science requires INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION of results

neither science nor logic offer any support for the validity of free-will

Please tell me more about your fantastic world on magic fairy dust and unicorns.  

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Atheists are hypocrites
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@3RU7AL
or present an alternative third option
 
OK, let’s go with the real world, perhaps as science tells us it is.  The deterministic laws of Newtonian mechanics have been subsumed into stochastic laws of quantum and chaos theory, and relativistic models of multidimensional space/time.  But unless I missed a memo, the scientific world did not conclude that therefore everything is random, cause and effect are no longer valid, and there is nothing but anarchy and chaos.
mixing "caused" and "uncaused" is NOT a "third option"

Oh, sorry, I'm just not that familiar with your magical world of fairy dust and incantations, so let me get this straight, a false dichotomy rules in your fantasy world?

please present your third option that does NOT contain (EITHER) caused (OR) uncaused events

I don't know, if you don't accept the real world of logic and science, I'm sort of at a loss, but hey, your fantasy world with the fairy dust and unicorns does sound pretty cool, but without the requisite drugs, I'm afraid I'll just have to stick with the real world.  

If I did decide to enter into your false dichotomy world, is there a magic word I say three times or what?

Oh, and mixing nouns and verbs is not an option, provide a response that does not contain (Either) nouns (OR) verbs. 


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Atheists are hypocrites
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@3RU7AL
The most obvious argument for the existence of free will is that we all observe it during every conscious moment, it is a fundamental and significant part of our experiential reality at all times, hence it is self-evident. 
ok, i'm willing to accept that free-will is an emotion (purely experiential, and NOT QUANTIFIABLE)

Experience isn’t quantifiable?  Did you just make that up?  In any event, you better let science know that their “observations” thing isn’t valid.

Consequently, the denial of free will is necessarily a rejection of the very concept of empirical evidence,
hold on,

empirical evidence is by definition QUANTIFIABLE

In what Universe is that the case?
 
Empirical evidence is information that is acquired by observation or experimentation,  it can be quantitative or qualitative.

and you just acknowledged that free will is "experiential" (QUALITATIVE)

Yeah, and observations are experiential too, are you working up another semantic false dichotomy?  

and the argument against Free Will becomes a rejection without “proof”, which eliminates induction as valid.
the claim "free-will is a real and valid concept" is the claim that requires empirical demonstration

It’s probably the most empirically demonstrated thing ever, the fact that we all observe it every waking moment empirically demonstrates it, the fact that you are making an argument empirically demonstrates it.

in the same way that the claim "bigfoot is a real and valid concept" requires empirical demonstration

I don’t know, maybe all you have to do take a definition of the word “big” and a definition of the word “foot” and draw a conclusion that it means something else, add fairy dust and unicorns, and repeat it three times, won’t that work?

in the same way that the claim "god is a real and valid concept" requires empirical demonstration

Which God are you talking about?





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Atheists are hypocrites
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@3RU7AL
and then recognize that determinism is not a conclusion of science.
without cause and effect, there is no "science"

without cause and effect, engineering is invalidated

Yeah, I know, and without free will, there is no science and engineering. 

Science, Logic, Philosophy, Engineering, Arguments, and Debates only apply to volitional beings who are free to interpret, plan, make choices about alternatives.

We are individuals, responsible for our own actions and the judgments that motivate those actions.

Your denial of free will is  self-referentially nonsensical, free will is axiomatic, to deny free will demands that you to select facts and arguments, and therefore is automatically self-refuting.
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Atheists are hypocrites
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@3RU7AL
Regarding the first conditional statement (#1); “caused by previous influences”, is not a logically conclusive process, the physical evidence has never justified the presumption of determinism by any stretch of the imagination. Regarding the second conditional statement (#2); “indistinguishable from random”. This argument introduces the logical fallacy of composition, while it may be true that randomness occurs in some quantum events, it is a hasty generalization fallacy to leap from the fact that some events are uncaused and involve chance, to characterize all events as undetermined and random.  It does not logically follow that if indeterminism is true, which appears to be a scientific fact about reality, that all events are therefore undetermined and random, and therefore we cannot be in control of our will.  Chance can indeed generate alternative possibilities for thought and action without being the necessary cause of our actions, which is to say that they can be adequately determined and therefore free will can exist and be compatible with determinism or indeterminism. 

Your argument is logically refuted on all levels; the structure of the argument is a logical fallacy, as are both of its premises. 
i am extremely impressed with your analysis

Thanks, and I hope you also appreciate that I am  defending you (see my final comment)
 
but you missed one critical and tautological point
 
events are (EITHER) caused (OR) uncaused
 
No, as I’ve already pointed out, this is a false dichotomy.  It’s not a incantation that becomes true if you repeat it.
 
you have to choose one side or the other,
 
Nope, I don’t.
 
or present an alternative third option
 
OK, let’s go with the real world, perhaps as science tells us it is.  The deterministic laws of Newtonian mechanics have been subsumed into stochastic laws of quantum and chaos theory, and relativistic models of multidimensional space/time.  But unless I missed a memo, the scientific world did not conclude that therefore everything is random, cause and effect are no longer valid, and there is nothing but anarchy and chaos.   
 
mixing the two (caused and uncaused) together does not solve "free will"
 
because
 
(IFF) all events are caused (THEN) free-will cannot exist
 
but also, shockingly
 
(IFF) all events are uncaused (THEN) free-will cannot exist
 
OK, so this is like a Beetlejuice thing, you think if you repeat your false dichotomy incantation three times that it will manifest itself as true. 
 
no clever mix of these can solve their fundamental incompatibility with free-will
 
You should probably let the world of science and engineering know they no longer get to exist then, those guys are going to need to find a job now.

I can’t believe I have to argue with you guys to try to convince you that you are sentient, rational, human beings, it is just amazing to me how often I have to defend you from your own self-directed ad Hominem attacks, I find that aspect of the free will debate to be bizarre.









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Atheists are hypocrites
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@3RU7AL
The problem here is that this argument is simply a contrived dilemma designed to give the false appearance that it addresses the problem of free will when all it really does is put forth a false dichotomy logical fallacy; these two premises and their conclusions are not exhaustive, which is to say that they are not the only two options.  This is compounded by the fact that both arguments 1 and 2 are logically invalid premises.
awesome, instead of simply "disagreeing"

please provide your personally preferred definition of "free"

and

please provide your personally preferred definition of "will"

Oh pulease, you can't reduce a discussion/debate about free will down to a semantic parlor game,it's more important than that.  The reason that this concept has been so hotly debated for centuries is that it is it is a matter of our identity; it speaks to what and who we are as human beings., word games are not going to resolve anything. 

The existence of free will is the self-evident default state, if you want to deny the experiential reality of every waking moment and challenge the validity of every moral and legal system found in every known time and place where humans have existed, you have to do more than play word games. The existence of free will is implicit in your putting forth an argument, evaluating alternatives and making conclusions, in your ability to type it, in our having a conversation about it. The denial of the self-evident truth of free will is an extraordinary claim, such a claim requires an extraordinary argument back up by extraordinary evidence.   You need a lot more than taking the two words out of context.

 
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@3RU7AL
free-will is not only not justifiable as a necessity, it is logically incoherent

Oh pulease, how about you  explain this logically incoherent statement. 
Human "creativity" is (EITHER) caused by previous influences (OR) indistinguishable from random - - WILL cannot be random - - FREE action cannot be caused by previous influences - - FREE is incompatible with WILL

The problem here is that this argument is simply a contrived dilemma designed to give the false appearance that it addresses the problem of free will when all it really does is put forth a false dichotomy logical fallacy; these two premises and their conclusions are not exhaustive, which is to say that they are not the only two options.  This is compounded by the fact that both arguments 1 and 2 are logically invalid premises.

Regarding the first conditional statement (#1); “caused by previous influences”, is not a logically conclusive process, the physical evidence has never justified the presumption of determinism by any stretch of the imagination. Regarding the second conditional statement (#2); “indistinguishable from random”. This argument introduces the logical fallacy of composition, while it may be true that randomness occurs in some quantum events, it is a hasty generalization fallacy to leap from the fact that some events are uncaused and involve chance, to characterize all events as undetermined and random.  It does not logically follow that if indeterminism is true, which appears to be a scientific fact about reality, that all events are therefore undetermined and random, and therefore we cannot be in control of our will.  Chance can indeed generate alternative possibilities for thought and action without being the necessary cause of our actions, which is to say that they can be adequately determined and therefore free will can exist and be compatible with determinism or indeterminism. 

Your argument is logically refuted on all levels; the structure of the argument is a logical fallacy, as are both of its premises. 


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@3RU7AL

i'm glad you've managed to convince yourself, next time perhaps you might try and convince the person you're actually speaking with

I’d like to know more about your “free-will is not only not justifiable as a necessity, it is logically incoherent” nonsense.
i hesitate to make broad statements here,
 
I’d have to say, “free-will is not only not justifiable as a necessity, it is logically incoherent” was a very broad statement.
 
but some seem to be suggesting that nobody is arguing that a human decision is free from all previous influences. i think this is a fair statement.
 
Nope, that is not a fair statement, we don’t have to be “free of all previous influences” to have free will. Free will is a matter of whether we have the cognitive ability to conceive of future courses of action, deliberate about various reasons for choosing among them, determine our actions on the basis of such deliberation, and control our actions despite the presence of competing desires. If we can exercise these cognitive abilities to act without our freedom to act being negated or unreasonably compromised by deterministic external pressure, then we possess free will and human beings are morally responsible causal agents.
 
the best attempts at explaining free-will seem to suggest that there is some kind of influence-gap. that is to say, it has been suggested that a human decision is influenced up to some unknown point less than 100% and then there is some i-gap of unspecified quantity and free-will lives there spreading magic fairy dust, however small or improbable that i-gap might be. i have never heard anyone propose a way to measure this i-gap in order to perhaps somehow gauge how much free-will someone might have, or to figure out if children have it, and if not, when do they get it? the i-gap sounds to me more like an ignorance-of-influence gap (this would also seem like the compatibilist's opinion). if this is the case we should be able to dial up free-will by dialing up ignorance.
 
The attempt to deny the self-evident experiential reality of human consciousness and the associated fact that we are morally responsible causal agents is a very extraordinary claim and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Magic fairy dust and the unfounded and completely faith-based belief in determinism doesn’t constitute extraordinary evidence by any stretch of the imagination. 
 
the main problems i see with this proposal are as follows:
 
1) there is no way to measure the influence-gap. it is in all likelihood merely a knowledge-of-influence-gap or lack-of-precision-gap.

Or we could recognize that this contrived I-Gap argument presupposes determinism without establishing determinism as a fact, and then recognize that determinism is not a conclusion of science. On the contrary, since Laplace developed the concept in a thought experiment 200 years ago, there has been no actual scientific evidence that reality is deterministic, and a boatload of evidence that it is not. Determinism requires the causal closure of the material world, science has not even come close to establishing the causal closure of the material world and pretty much has abandoned any further attempts to do so.  The 200 year old idea that Newtonian physics translates into a mechanistic and deterministic model of the universe was never demonstrated, and that idea became even more unfounded when Newtoniam Mechanics was replaced by Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, currently our two best scientific models..

The strictly philosophical doctrine of determinism is nothing more than an archaic and failed concept that is in fact, unscientific.
 
2) even if the influence-gap is considered to be a real thing, wouldn't that gap simply increase the value of the other influences? how could the influence gap possibly be considered an influence? it's a gap that is by definition non-influential.
 
3) let's consider based on at least a small shred of logic, what could be in that pesky i-gap that might actually be an influence. well, whatever is in that i-gap can't be influenced since it is inside something defined as an influence-gap. so maybe there's an uninfluenced-influence in that i-gap; we could call it something mysterious like, an uncaused-cause, or maybe a first-cause, or better yet ex-nihilo. could that uncaused-cause be influenced or originated by anything at all? no, of course not because it's in the i-gap and it is defined as being uncaused. so could a human take credit for a decision or action that emerged from the i-gap? how could they possibly take credit or be responsible for something they had no conceivable control over? anything emerging from the i-gap would be indistinguishable from a random event. and randomness is incompatible with choice.
 
4) but what if it's the essence of "me" that is in the i-gap. are you kidding me?! i don't care if it's your grandmother, your dead child, or your ever lovin' god. if you put them in the i-gap they are at-best indistinguishable from random noise and at worst non-existent.
 
5) what if the gap is not an influence-gap but instead a black box? if the gap is not an influence-gap, there is no place for mr. free-will to spread his magic fairy dust because the gap instantly fills with influence and is then no longer properly described as a gap. additionally if the output of the i-gap is non-random, that is to say it emits some identifiable pattern, then whatever is happening in the i-gap must have some way of knowing what the hell is going on outside of the i-gap and this knowledge is definitely influencing its output thereby introducing influence into the i-gap which would then promptly disappear in a cute little puff of logic.
 
i think it's important to fully comprehend this influence-gap.
 
Actually, not so much, it is a contrived concept that has no basis in logic, science, or reason.  All we really need to know about it is that it obfuscates the issue by referring to some kind of gap between a presumed determinism and free will.  Presuming the truth of an idea that has not been established is not a valid argument, and focusing on some contrived gap is nothing but a diversion.  
 
imagine, if you will, that i am constructing a human being. when the recipe calls for me to add "a dash of free-will" i can't just add any old thing, willy nilly; i have to first construct a proper influence-gap to protect my human from the evil determinism. this would be some container that is impervious to all conceivable influence. i probably have a sound-proof, shock-proof, opaque, air-tight, empathy-proof, magic-proof, momentum-proof, time-proof capsule of some sort just laying around my house, i'll just set that to the side for now. ok, adding an empty box to the mix isn't going to do anything of course so we have to put something in it. since whatever is in this i-gap is supposed to advise me on important moral decisions my selection is of critical importance. well, the most intelligent and moral person i know of is my friend george, so since i don't seem to have a better option, i throw george in the i-capsule and seal him in tight. now days, weeks, and months have gone by and i've pretty much forgotten about george until one afternoon i am confronted with an intractable dilemma. i am faced with a decision with staggeringly profound moral implications and i must make a decision immediately. what do i do? well this sounds like a case for the magnificent george! so i locate my everything-proof capsule on which i have scrawled the descriptive term "i-gap" with my handy wax pencil, and i ask my question. i exhaustively explain all of the known factors leading up to and logical implications of this monumental decision to george, my moral, spiritual and financial advisor, and then i wait for an answer, any answer at all. nothing happens. things are getting desperate, so i beg george to give me an answer, to point me in the right direction. nothing happens. i light some candles and wave a magic wand over the i-gap, but still i can't divine any response from george. i realize there is a problem with the i-gap's design. so i quickly scour my garage for spare parts and retrofit a one way intercom system onto the i-gap so i can hear what george has to say. mind you he still can't hear anything or in any way perceive anything that i have to say, thus preserving the integrity of the influence-gap, but now he can speak directly to me, thus becoming an uncaused-cause. of course george has causes, he was born and raised and had both happy and sad experiences, but i'll just ignore all that for now. george is pretty much an uncaused-cause now that he is housed in the exclusive and luxurious, new and improved i-gap. so i ask george again to answer my plea for guidance. nothing happens. every once in a while george does actually say something but it's usually along the lines of "let me out of this f#cking box you god#amned muth#rf#cking muth#rf#cker!" heh, that george is such a kidder!
 
Better yet, imagine, if you will, that you are constructing an argument against free will in which logic and reason are backed up by evidence, which is to say, lets make it about science, rather than fairy dust. 
 
This is no small task because science provides the strongest argument for free will.  The most obvious argument for the existence of free will is that we all observe it during every conscious moment, it is a fundamental and significant part of our experiential reality at all times, hence it is self-evident.  Consequently, the denial of free will is necessarily a rejection of the very concept of empirical evidence, and the argument against Free Will becomes a rejection without “proof”, which eliminates induction as valid. These two aspects of the approach clearly reject the very basis of science and scientific knowledge, leaving nothing but detached abstractions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the real world. 

Philosophically, the very concepts of logic, reason, and the existence of arguments, presupposes conscious agents that posses free will.

Consequently the argument against Free Will is completely abstract and invalidates both perception and doing, it is a complete rejection of science as valid, and philosophically it amounts to a rejection of the very basis of logic, reason, and truth.

In the end, there is no valid basis upon which the rejection of Free Will can be said to be true of reality.
 
obviously george is constrained by the parameters of his confinement and is therefore incapable of offering any advice that would be requested from him.
 
the same would be true if you put jesus, or krishna, or a unicorn, or any conceivable entity or event in the modified i-gap.
 
Nope it’s still an incoherent argument, even if you include unicorns.
 
ipso-facto, no free-will.
 
Ipso-fact, you have not presented a logical argument against free will.

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@3RU7AL
The best argument for God is the argument from intelligent processes (my own argument).
nope, you forgot to rigorously define "intelligence"

The universe is nothing short of a succession of processes that create desired outcomes, that is, outcomes that benefit and sustain that which produces effects as if they knew what needed to be achieved hence....intelligence.
that's not the definition of "intelligence"

If intelligence involves the ability to view and understanding widely different things from multiple different perspectives, an aptitude for grasping a wide range of truths, relationships, and meanings, and the capacity for abstract and symbolic thought, then it follows logically that the contention that one can reduce reality to only one of its modes, to know it exhaustively in only one of its forms, is an unintelligent claim.

This goes without saying that an intelligent agency (God) is a perfect match for what we observe in the universe.
hold on, why did you say "perfect" ?

and, you forgot to rigorously define "god"

You spend a lot of time asking people to rigorously define “God”, is it possible perhaps, that you do not understand what the word “transcendence” means? 

The problem of evil is also dealt with when a person fully understands duality and free will in such an environment as the one we are experiencing.
free-will is not only not justifiable as a necessity, it is logically incoherent

Oh pulease, how about you  explain this logically incoherent statement. 

The argument from why there are many paths of religious thought and observation is easily dealt with when one understands the full scope of creation and that many, many countless societies exist outside the physical world that a soul can experience and sojourn...which is also the beauty and variety of creation as a whole.
no "one true god" makes way more sense. but how the hell are we supposed to pick the right one ?

How many do you think there are?

I can go on an on but honestly, there is no decent argument that can support that God does not exist.
which god are you talking about again ?

If you want us to choose among your various Gods, we are going to need you to list them or something, describe them, and you know, tell us if you’ve given them names.

which is substantiated by my own arguments if they are taken as they logically follow in any discussion.
i'm glad you've managed to convince yourself, next time perhaps you might try and convince the person you're actually speaking with

I’d like to know more about your “free-will is not only not justifiable as a necessity, it is logically incoherent” nonsense.
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@3RU7AL
no "faith" is required to "lack belief" in bigfoot
which bigfoot are you even talking about ?
the one you"lack belief" in

Who said I don't believe in bigfoot, fact is, I'm pretty sure my neighbor three doors down is bigfoot.
what about the one roaming the woodlands in the Blue Mountains, Okanogan County ?

Probably a cousin or something.
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@3RU7AL
no "faith" is required to "lack belief" in bigfoot
which bigfoot are you even talking about ?
the one you"lack belief" in

Who said I don't believe in bigfoot, fact is, I'm pretty sure my neighbor three doors down is bigfoot.

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@FLRW
Yep, you either have faith there is a God, or you have not seen one single bit of evidence that there is a God.

So you believe that absence of evidence is evidence of absense? 

What evidence do you have that "evidentialism" is valid?
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@Double_R
Belief in God is a matter of faith and it is about faith in a transcendent reality, it makes no sense to require a transcendent reality to be “clearly defined”.   

So you believe in something you cannot clearly define.
 
Of course I do, and I’ll contend that there are plenty of things you believe in but cannot clearly define.    
 
Not being facetious here, genuinely asking... Do you believe in the principals of logic?
 
Yes, and I believe that Kurt Godel “proved” that the principles of logic cannot be clearly defined, at least not in a consistent and complete manner.
 
Belief in God is a matter of faith, there is no “burden of proof”.

Anyone who makes a claim carries with it, a burden of proof. So technically, sure, merely believing in something does not obligate you to prove your beliefs to anyone else. But when you cross that line by expecting others to see as you do or to even take your beliefs seriously, you absolutely have a burden to prove it.
 
That’s not a line I cross, don’t really give a crap in terms of expecting others to see as I do, or whether or not they even take my beliefs seriously.  How about you, is that a line you have crossed?  I’ll be happy to volley your “burden of proof” over the net back to you.
 
Theism is a choice one makes, as is Atheism, the Theistic conclusion in not logically coercive, neither is the Atheist conclusion, neither is a matter of proof, both are a matter of faith.

There is no faith required to not believe something.
 
I’m aware of the Atheist playbook, and that Pavlovian response is not rational, belief in the existence of a transcendent realm is clearly a matter of faith, you are passing judgement on whether or not you believe it its existence, your associated belief that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence” is a matter of faith. 
 
To claim that theist and atheism are not logically coercive means that no position on this subject can be.
 
Yep, that’s how Metaphysics works, Metaphysical frameworks, are not constrained or verified by observation and measurement.  Is it your contention that Atheism is logically coercive? If so, I’ll be happy to serve that burden of proof right back.

So on what basis do you believe anything?
 
Right back at ya, on what basis do you believe that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence”, in fact, on what basis do you believe anything?
 
 
Theist and Atheist present themselves as competing beliefs, defining Atheism as simply a lack of belief obfuscates the issue and is not explanatory. 

It's not atheists presenting atheism as a competing belief, that's a strawman theists invented in order to convince themselves that they are not the only ones who have a burden of proof they cannot meet.
 
LOL, Pavlov all the way, so help me understand, the basis of your beliefs, is that you believe that the beliefs that compete with yours, have a burden of proof they cannot meet, and that’s the basis of what you believe?  That’s some circular logic you got there.
 
Are you telling me that you can meet the burden of proof for everything else that you believe? 
 
The term atheist doesn't need to explain anything other than an individual's position on whether there is a god, just as the word theist tells us nothing other than an individual's position on whether there is a god.
 
Yep, you either have faith there is a God, or you have faith there is not a God.
 
These terms do not tell us what god, they don't tell us whether the individual is religious, they don't tell us how long they have believed nor how convinced they are. If you want to know more about an individual's position, just ask. Expecting a single word to convey all of this is just lazy and is not an argument against the notion that atheism is simply a lack of belief.
 
Man, you are really passionate about this "lack of belief" you have. 
 
OK, so I’ll ask, what God is it you don’t believe in, and please “clearly define”.
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@3RU7AL
both are a matter of faith
no "faith" is required to "lack belief" in bigfoot

which bigfoot are you even talking about ?
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@3RU7AL
Yep, we all “choose” our beliefs.
not exactly

one is either convinced or not convinced

Are you saying you aren't the one responsible for what you believe?  Who was responsible for convincing or not convincing you of what you believe then?  And how did they choose what you believe?

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@3RU7AL
anyone can believe anything they wish for any reason they wish
 
Yep, we all “choose” our beliefs.
 
but if you're going to expect someone else to believe what you believe
 
It seems that there are as many evangelical Atheists as there are evangelical Theists.
 
you need to be able to explain what the hell you're talking about.
 
The basis of faith is not inferential reason, it is personal encounter with the values, meaning, and purpose that can be apprehended in and through ordinary experience.

The believer does not commit to an inferred God whose existence depends on the strength and validity of the arguments that are devised for proving or disproving his likely existence. Faith does not move in the arena of historical or metaphysical probabilities, it moves in the arena of inwardness, of self-knowledge. 

Faith is total commitment to a discernment, it brings depths of new discernment, opportunities for new commitment and empowerment for realizing our unique potentialities.

To believe in God is primarily to believe in the objectivity the meaning, value and purpose found in the experiential reality of a human being.  That view is not based on evidence but is an axiom that makes a life of faith – of seeing all experience in the light of such objective value and purpose – possible.  Such a belief is confirmed primarily by the sense it enables people to make of their lives.  It is also confirmed by the greater vitality, happiness, and moral dynamism that it reportedly brings to those who accept it.
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@Double_R
I did, but then I went on to explain how this shows us that refuting god's existence requires us to start with a clearly defined example, and since everyone will define him differently there is no way any one person can conceive of let alone take a position on the existence of every god proposed.
 
Belief in God is a matter of faith and it is about faith in a transcendent reality, it makes no sense to require a transcendent reality to be “clearly defined”.   
 
The point here is twofold; first it explains what atheists are mostly talking about when they say God is not real. That is, they're talking about whatever they are conceiving him to be, not necessarily what you are.
 
Almost all adult believers are conceiving of God to be transcendent, this idea of it being a matter of faith and transcendence is not really a secret, Atheists who pretend they don’t know that are either completely uninformed about the subject matter, or have an agenda and this disingenuous misconception is nothing but a tactic.
 
This is why the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence for it, because if you want the conversation to be about the god you believe in then you need to propose it first. And the burden is on the person who makes the claim.
 
Belief in God is a matter of faith, there is no “burden of proof”.  Theism is a choice one makes, as is Atheism, the Theistic conclusion in not logically coercive, neither is the Atheist conclusion, neither is a matter of proof, both are a matter of faith. To the believer that choice to have faith provides an intellectually satisfying way of making sense of the broadest possible band of human experience, of uniting in a single account, the rich and many layered encounter that we have with a reality that is experienced as having value, meaning, and purpose.
 
It also explains why atheism should not be defined as the belief that God doesn't exist, because no one who holds such a belief could possibly do so while taking into account every god concept. Lack of belief is far more rational and accurate understanding of the position, because that is the one thing every atheist has in common.
 
If Atheism is defined as “lack of belief” it leaves no basis for distinguishing between Atheist and Agnostic.  Most Atheists are explicit in their contention that God does not exist, and practically speaking, Theist and Atheist present themselves as competing beliefs, defining Atheism as simply a lack of belief obfuscates the issue and is not explanatory. 
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@Bones
What are theists's honest opinion on atheists, vice versa?

Of course the text and title are two different subjects, I'm thinking the real intent is to invite the typical on-line subject matter conflict, so I'll give my honest opinion about that.

Huston Smith was one of our foremost scholars and interpreters of the world’s religions, he said that “There are really two dogmatic fundamentalisms in America today. Dogmatic secular modernity came first and produced conservative religious fundamentalism as a reaction to it.”

I find that more than just interesting as I do in fact see two groups of extremist posters here that taken by themselves, are inexplicable within the context of their respective positions and which do in fact represent these two “polar opposites” categories of one and the same extremism that Huston Smith is describing here. On one side of this polarity is an excessively dogmatic secular modernism that doesn’t appear to be true to science, and on the other side of the coin, it is opposed by a dogmatic religious fundamentalism that doesn’t appear to be true to Jesus.

Maybe Huston Smith was providing the key to understanding here, to say that “opposites” are “polar” is to say much more than they are opposed or separated; it is to say that they constitute a whole. There is a reciprocal, transactional relationship being described. Polar opposites don’t even exist without each other, they are contingent upon each other, you just can’t have the one without the other. Polar opposites are like the two sides of a coin, or the two ends of a stick; they reference two opposing aspects of one and the same thing. Such extremists are closer together than either of them is with the reasonable, middle view.

This would certainly explain why there are more similarities than differences between the online posts of Atheists and Believers, they only appear to be opposites but are in fact inseparable opposites; they constitute a whole. Seen as mirror images of one and the same extremist, they are not mutually exclusive at all; in fact they are mutually sustaining, reciprocal in their true nature.

I think they are a lot like the dog barking at his inverted mirror image.
 

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@SkepticalOne
Knowledge is "justified true belief". If someone can not show their belief is true, then it is not justified or knowledge.

Can you show that this belief is true?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
You should have titled the thread "Trump Followers Hypocrisy"
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@dustryder
Presumably if Trump did in fact wield his powers to declassify the materials in established procedure, such materials would no longer bear markings of classification.

Though more frankly, while you are correct, this is simply the court of public opinion. We cannot judge his guilt/justification of the raid on the basis of those laws if we don't know the relevance of those documents with respect to those laws. What we can judge, however, is his handling of classified material, as he once did with Hillary.

True, and so the approprite response is "Lock him up, lock him up, lock him up"

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@dustryder
Greyparrot's quote, and your article concern specifically the Presidential Records Act, and while that is what some of the media is raising a debacle about, the actual laws cited in the warrant however are 


So the questions to me are quite simple:

1. Did Trump have the power to declassify the materials he took?
2. Did he wield those powers to declassify the materials he took in established procedure before leaving the presidency?

If you actually read the laws you posted, then you would know that they do not in any way raise the questions you raised, they are non-sequitors.

The laws mention nothing about the classification of the subject information, legally it just doesn't matter whether or not he declassified the documents. None of the three crimes depends on whether the documents are classified, that contention is just a typical Trumpist Pavlovian response.

The list of items that the search warrant approved F.B.I. agents to seize were:

1) “documents with classification markings”
2) “any government and/or presidential records created between Jan. 20, 2017, and Jan. 20, 2021” — the dates of Mr. Trump’s presidency
3)  “any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction or concealment of any government and/or presidential records, or of any documents with classification markings.”

Item 2 and a review of the three laws mentioned in the search warrant make it clear that all this whining about whether or not Trump declassified the documents is irrelevent. Even if he did mysteriously engage in some kind of secret declassification as is contended, the search warrant refers to “documents with classification markings”, if the mysterious declassification didn't remove the "classification markings", then again, the contention is irrelevent regarding the lawful seizure of the documents.
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List of men that should get sterilized
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@PREZ-HILTON
If the list is retroactive, then WyIted's father should be on it.
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@Double_R
I'm thinking you are some kind of superhero, who's  superpower is patience. 

Faced with impenetrable conspiracy armor you fight the good fight, reason and facts just bounce off of course, and yet, you are still right there, firing away.   Impressive. 


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@FLRW
Isn't this title insulting to Idiots?

LOL, well done FLRW
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@Greyparrot
Oops, sorry about that, I've declassified it for you.

Trump claims he declassified all the documents at Mar-a-Lago. Even if that’s true, it probably doesn’t matter.
Aug. 12, 2022

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump claimed on Friday that before leaving office, he declassified all the documents the F.B.I. found in this week’s search of his Florida residence that agents described as classified in a list of what they seized — including several caches apparently marked as “top secret.”

“It was all declassified,” Mr. Trump asserted in a statement.

The claim echoed an assertion in May by Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official and a major supporter of Mr. Trump, after the National Archives found materials marked classified in boxes of documents it removed from Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and estate. He asserted that Mr. Trump had deemed those files declassified shortly before leaving office, but that the markings had not been removed from them.

Mr. Trump has offered no details, but if he is saying he made a blanket, oral invocation that all the files he took to Mar-a-Lago were unclassified, without making any formal, written record, that would be difficult to prove or disprove. Even if there is no evidence that Mr. Trump followed normal procedures for declassifying certain types of information, his lawyers could argue that he was not constitutionally bound to obey such rules.

But in any case, such a claim would not settle the matter. For one thing, two of the laws that a search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago this week referred to — Sections 1519 and 2071 of Title 18 of the United States Code — make the taking or concealment of government records a crime regardless of whether they had anything to do with national security.


For another, laws against taking or hoarding material with restricted national-security information, which generally carry heavier penalties than theft of ordinary documents, do not always line up with whether the files are technically classified.
That is because some criminal laws enacted by Congress to protect certain national-security information operate separately from the executive branch’s system of classifying documents — created by presidents using executive orders — as “confidential,” “secret” or “top secret.”

In particular, a third law the warrant references was Section 793, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison per offense. Better known as the Espionage Act, it was enacted by Congress during World War I, decades before President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order creating the modern classification system for the executive branch.

As a result, the Espionage Act makes no reference to whether a document has been deemed classified. Instead, it makes it a crime to retain, without authorization, documents related to the national defense that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.

Prosecutors could argue that a document meets that act’s standard regardless of whether Mr. Trump had pronounced it unclassified short before leaving office; by the same token, defense lawyers could argue that it fell short of that standard regardless of how it had been marked.

“Because the Espionage Act speaks in terms of national defense information, it leaves open the possibility that such information could be unclassified as long as an agency is still taking steps to protect it from disclosure,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

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@IwantRooseveltagain
Plus, it doesn't matter whether or not he "secretly" declassified the documents.

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@sadolite
Oh, you know exactly why Trumps home was raided. Please tell us what exactly what the FBI was looking for. No generalizations.  A warrant must be specific. But we wont get to see that warrant will we? 

Here you go.


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FORMAL REQUEST to ADD "HISTORY" as a NEW CATEGORY FORUM
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@oromagi
Well done, I think a History forum was conspicuously absent, I'm sure it will be a popular category.

Also looking forward to that being where all the Trump posts belong :)
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@Vici
Your contentions here are based on a contrived presumption that the theory of evolution in some way contradicts Christian faith, it doesn't.

What you are contending requires a direct refutation of the most general principles of most of our physical and biological sciences. As a unifying theory of biology, evolution holds true. Its mechanisms are by no means completely understood and it does not in any way eliminate the mystery of life, question the existence of God, or bring into doubt any of the basic tenets of Christianity.

But it is absolutely central to science.

The theory of evolution is the great unifying principle of biology, as powerful a model to biology as Newton's model was to physics. The conceptual framework of the theory of evolution makes sense of a profoundly wide range of scientific facts and it does it in a magnificent and comprehensive way. It provides a principle of unity, a framework by which science can attempt to explain, to unify, and to order, a vast amount of disparate data into a consistent whole providing tremendous coherence and clarity. To deny evolution you must bring into question the entire interwoven fabric of scientific research.

Flat out denial of the theory of Evolution requires the concomitant denial of an astounding range of scientific disciplines, not just the disciplines of geology, paleontology, archeology, radiometric dating, genetics, and zoology but also such fundamental disciplines as physics, astronomy, astrophysics, chemistry, biochemistry, geophysics, biology, botany, microbiology, and meteorology, and many others. Because of the interrelated aspect of the sciences you can't really propose that the theory evolution is false without being fundamentally anti-scientific. You can contend that the theory of evolution is incomplete, nobody claims it is complete. If you could in fact, deny the theory of evolution, it would, in effect, unravel the world of science.

And I just don't see why anyone would want to do that. I simply do not see evolution challenging any of the basic tenets of Christianity; unfortunately, I can't say the same thing about your contention here. In order to support the belief that evolution is false, you accordingly have to postulate a deceptive God don't you?

You would need to propose a God who would create Man with a rational mind, a sense of wonder, and seeking intellect, while creating a universe with the false appearance of tremendous age with the overwhelming evidence of "evolution" occuring in creation as a trick or something. This concept of a deceptive God is very hard to accept, it strikes me as a much greater challenge to Christianity than any damage the concept of evolution could ever hope to do.
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@Vici
you are describing the change of an animal. I am arguing that Abiogenesis is impossible. it is logically impossible for something not alive to become alive 

The originating post didn't say anything about abiogenesis, but OK.

The Genesis account of creation says that on "day 3" that's exactly what happened, it gives a chronology of creation in which life came into existence on the "3rd day", are you saying that the Genesis account is "logically impossible"?
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@Vici
For the life of me I will never understand this conflict between evolution and Christianity. I think it is simply contrived and ridiculous. It is very much like the grief Copernicus got for his discovery, he was attacked "as if" the theory that the sun and planets revolved around the earth were a tenet of the Christian faith, but it wasn't.

A Christian faith that is threatened by the theory of evolution is certainly a very weak faith. I would like to propose another way for Christians to look at the theory of Evolution.

First, lets recognize that the "mechanism" Darwin proposed is a tautology. Survival of the fittest really says that in hindsight, the survivors survived...ok...no great shakes there.

But what was Darwin's real accomplishment?

At a point in time when Science was at it's peak of materialistic and deterministic hubris, Darwin applied the scientific method to the history life, and here is what he found.

1) That life was contingent. Contingent upon the rest of creation, its growth and development was a mysterious interplay between nature and nurture, between the individual and the environment, between the part and the whole. He proclaimed all of life to be a unity and stated that in time and space we are all interconnected to each other and to everything else.

2) That life was probabilistic, and consequently, it was not deterministic. Darwinian evolution has no predictive quality, life is open ended, filled with infinite possibility, and its history shows endless variety.

3) That all of life is one life. He demonstrated that all life is interconnected, all of life is related to each other and to the rest of the world. In time, he demonstrated that all life had descended (ascended would have been a better word) from one initial instance of life. He did not explain away the mystery of life, to date, science has not even touched upon the mystery of life. 
4) That life is transcendent,

Darwin, by applying the scientific method, rigorously and in a comprehensive way, to life, determined that life was contingent, probabilistic, and it constitutes a unity. He put science to Genesis, in no way contradicting it in word or in spirit. He correlated the facts of science to the overriding image provided by theology.

This was at the peak of Science's deterministic and materialistic arrogance, and in one fell swoop he turned science around, he changed the direction of Science's journey so to speak. Somewhere along the line, the prodigal son of Science had diverged and gone astray and now, with centuries of new knowledge and experiences under it's belt, it had turned back around and begun a journey down a path that would some day intersect and converge with the original path.

I just don't understand what all the contrived conflict is about. Please don't give me that he provided design without a designer. First of all, he didn't, second of all we are talking about a transcendent God, objective proofs are not possible and in fact, are considered to be a form of idolatry, in that they focus on the concept of God rather than the experience of God. There are no objective proofs of the existence of God and there can't be, so this does not hold up as an argument against the concept of evolution.

Rather than just blindly follow Kent Hovind’s anti-science rants, can you explain what the real problem with this theory is?
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@TWS1405
Interesting, a new member telling old members how the forum works, and a racist appealing to "diversity", that's not something you see everyday.

Oh wait, yes it is, in fact it's two of the basic principle taught in the Klan's "How to disrupt on-line discussion boards 101" class.


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LIZ CHENEY: AMERICANS MUST UNITE to DEFEAT TRUMP
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@oromagi
“America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious. It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.” - Liz  Cheney


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What is the Universe Expanding Into?
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@Ramshutu
It’s not hard to see that science has built a self-sustaining system, a mathematical tissue of concepts, its gone way beyond interpretation of observations to become a tower of abstraction that is completely detached from the reality it was meant to interpret.
 
It is easy to get carried away, taking our symbols for reality instead of as mere tools of description.  Are we uncovering a preexisting order, converging on the way the universe really is, or is it all just a human construction, just a fitting of the data into a carefully crafted mental framework? When are we doing physics? When are we just conjuring with numbers? 
 
It is becoming harder and harder to tell how much of the order is truly woven into the world and how much is imposed by the brain’s hunger for pattern.  We build these systems to represent the world, and then we are left to wonder what they mean. 
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What is the Universe Expanding Into?
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@FLRW
This isn’t a question that physics can answer with our present knowledge or without some form of qualification.

Then to conclude that it is expanding is not really explanatory, is it?

The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago, so there is nothing beyond the universe. However, much of the universe exists beyond the observable universe, which is maybe about 90 billion light years across. Because the universe is homogenous on this scale, we imagine that what is beyond our observation looks much the same as what we can see.If the universe is infinite, there is nothing beyond it, by definition. A finite expanding universe conjures up the idea that it would have a boundary or edge, separating it from something beyond. Of course, the universe has at least four dimensions (three for space and one for time) which is nigh on impossible for us to visualise.

If the universe is infinite then how can it be expanding?  If it’s finite, then it is expanding relative to what?  Perhaps we are confusing the tools of science with the substance of science, confusing the map with the territory, interpreting the abstract mathematics rather than the reality the mathematics is supposed to represent. The metric expansion of space is only one way of interpreting the mathematics associated with redshift, it could just as easily indicate the universe is getting heavier, the farther away the galaxy is the older it is, and therefore the heavier it is.  Maybe light is losing energy to the medium of space, if that were the case then the farther the light travelled the more redshifted it would be. 

Expanding relative to nothing, finite without borders, expanding into nothing, it’s clear that the conclusion that it is “expanding” is conceptually inadequate, the word “expanding” is not explanatory in this context. 

However, space could be represented as two dimensions, confined to the gossamer-thin surface of a sphere. You could travel in any direction on the surface without encountering an edge. If the radius were to increase, the “universe” would expand as ours does, but it wouldn’t be expanding into anything.

You mean we can interpret some abstract mathematics and decide that it is explanatory regarding the universe?  Isn’t that self-defeating?

Finally, we could speculate that our universe is part of a multiverse with many other universes beyond our own, but it is unlikely that we are expanding into them.

Yeah, you see a lot of speculation about the so-called multiverse, but that’s all it is, speculation, it’s not science, and it’s unfounded.  That is the problem with confusing the tools of science with the substance of science.

We can never accept that our theories might be wrong or at least incomplete, it must be the universe that is wrong or incomplete.
We observe that Galaxies spin in contradiction of our laws of gravity, so there must be something that is holding the galaxies together, something unobserved and perhaps unobservable – some kind of unseen matter that emits no radiation, and we say we know it by its secondary effects, it is an “inferred” phenomena. And what is that secondary, inferred phenomena?  It is the fact that the current theoretical framework doesn’t explain the observations.  Galaxies spin wrong, the universe is observed to be flat, so to preserve the theories, we adjust the facts to include dark matter and dark energy, unobserved and unobservable, then we notice that the universe appears to be fine-tuned so we say there are an infinite number of undetectable universes and we just happen to live in one that looks fine tuned, viola, reality is a multiverse.

Somewhere along the way, the observed universe we were trying to understand with our theories was no longer reality, it was just 4% of reality, the rest was “theoretical”, unobservable, a matter of abstract mathematics. and then one day that contrivance wasn’t even the universe anymore, it was just one infinitesimal piece of reality, one of an infinite number of universes, all of them unobserved and unobservable of course, and all so the sacred theories could remain intact.

The enterprise of science had largely abandoned its reliance on observations and gone into the business of manufacturing unobserved and unobservable realities in order to support the theories.  I’m not really sure what this process is, but I know what it isn’t, it isn’t science.
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What is the Universe Expanding Into?
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@RationalMadman
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
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Trump breaks all the rules
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@IwantRooseveltagain
IwantRooseveltagain, are you trying to say that people who believed Trump when he said Putin is your friend and the American people are your enemy are stupid?

I mean, cmon, that's like saying people who abandon democracy for a Russian backed Autocrat because he hugged a flag aren't patriots.  You don't think that's stupid do you?

I suppose you think people who can be controlled by conspiracy theories  aren't critical thinkers, or maybe that racists aren't good people.  

Maybe you just don't understand alternative facts. 


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What is the Universe Expanding Into?
According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, the Universe is temporally and spatially finite, and it is expanding. 

The question becomes, what is it expanding into?
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The Existence of Green is Disproved
The Existence of Green is Disproved

In another thread, on a far away board, much like this one, angry Evangelical Colorblinds (ECs) finally proved that Green does not exist. Here is a report by someone that was actually there...

For centuries it has been said that Green was both blue and yellow, and yet, it was neither blue nor yellow.

The Evangelical Colorblinds (ECs) pointed out the obvious contradictions in this paradoxical statement, it was proven that something can not be both and yet neither at the same time, and Green was shown to be illogical and irrational.     

Those who believed in Green pointed out that people everywhere, in all times, always, have reported having experienced the color Green.

The ECs explained that those people lived in a pre-scientific age, which is equal to unscientific of course, and therefore Mankind must in fact have always been wrong and that Mankind has just always been delusional, simply wishing that there was a color Green.

It was shown that what is referred to as Green by pre/unscientific man is merely a particular wavelength of light within the visible spectrum of the electromagnetic field, and that in fact, the color Green had therefore been explained away by science. It was determined that Green has no objective existence.

It was pointed out by the people that believed in Green that they do in fact experience the color Green themselves.

These people were told that the burden of proof was on them, that no one can prove the existence of Green, and it had already been proven that Green had no objective reality anyway. The EC's then explained that these people were also delusional, anti-scientific, illogical and irrational; they mocked them, called them names, and proclaimed them stupid.

The believers said that Green was the color of photosynthesis, that photosynthesis transforms light into life, and that the air we breathe is nourishing because of this process. It was said that no color chart is complete without Green.

The ECs proclaimed that Green was the color of envy and the color of money and so it was a function of greed. The ECs went on to show that most of the wars of mankind were fought by people wearing Green uniforms, so that Green has obviously been the cause of mayhem and murder for centuries, and it was shown that all of the terrorists of 911 had Green cards and so in our day, Green was nothing but the cause of terror and destruction also. It was stated that if men would simply accept science and renounce Green, the world would be a better place and we would have peace on earth.

I became frustrated by this thread and wanted a break from the discord and so I went to look at the Color Forum to read other threads to see what the believers had to say among themselves, I wanted to see people pronouncing the glory of Green in all its shades and hues.

But all I found were posts by the Forests mocking the Hunters and the Hunters mocking the Forests. People were telling the Azures and Turquoises that they had allowed the one true Green to become polluted by adopting the royal blues of the Romans and Greeks, and the sky blues of the Native Americans into their Green. People were telling the Emeralds and the Jades that they had allowed an eastern yellow to pervert and pollute the one true Green. The Pales were attacking the Darks, calling everyone neo-darks, and the Darks were attacking the Pales, saying they were Greenless. Ranging from patronizing to blatant anti-Olivism, it seemed everybody was picking on the Olives, some even said the Olives had killed Green. Teals were fighting with Chartreuses, there was a Seventh Day Avocadoists telling everyone that the world was coming to an end in capital letters, and some nutcase offering people a free toaster if they would accept Limeism and tithe. Everyone was proclaiming that their Green was the one true Green, and that all other Greens were false Greens.

I realized that nobody was really discussing Green; they all just seemed to be waiting for their turn to talk and then speaking about themselves, and I just didn't see the point of it all.

I realized that over half of the people in the world had developed their color charts on the basis of the color chart of the ancient Olives and so I think they must have been on to something. I also knew that the ancient Olives had believed that one should not even utter the word Green so as not to turn Green into an object and forget that the word Green was referential to a relationship. I was beginning to understand why the Olives tried not to use the word Green and so I decided that I would never again say the word Green as long as I lived, and having so resolved, I turned off my computer and went for a walk in the woods.

After a while I just didn't think about it anymore, I didn't try to put words to it, I just felt the grass under my feet and looked out at the plants and trees, the vastness of the blue sky filled me with a sense of awe and wonder, and the yellow sun warmed me. I breathed the fresh air and I was surrounded by an abundance of life, and I realized that it didn't matter what anyone had to say about the color Green, for I beheld that the quality of Green is within me.

I experienced something real and genuine that day. I don't exactly know how to express it with out saying the word, all I can say is that what I experienced that day was both blue and yellow, and yet, it was neither blue nor yellow.
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STOP blaming POLICE for doing their job!!!
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@TWS1405
Before another of TWS1405's threads descend into emotive outbursts and name calling , lets look at the underlying issue scientifically. Again and again, peer reviewed scientific studies have identified the root cause of racism to be:

Penis Envy

In fact, there is a linear relationship between the degree of racist attitude and smallness of naughty parts, and by applying the Stanford Racism Equivalency Test to the number and type of TWS1405 posts,  we find that TWS1405's racial attitudes result from deep feelings of inadequacy associated with the fact that his tiny member looks like a button.
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