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@Mopac
I didn't open this thread to talk about God. I'm not against you doing it, however. Just know that your shouts will fall on deaf ears.
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@Stephen
If everything you said was a book, I'd read that book.
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@Stephen
Kudos on bringing a fresh story to the table.
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Just tell your story and whatever happens will happen.
I'll go first.
I was not raised as a fundamental Christian, but rather I was simply taught about God as a kid. My mom took us to church a few times, I went to Sunday school once and it was enough to drill the simple axiom into my young brain.
My mom kind of dabbled in The Bible at the time but generally avoided churches, she would go to one for a while, not like it and then put it off for a while and do it again later. I maybe went less then 12 times in my child hood and I never read The Bible too much back then but I had this cartoonish bible stories that I would read that were all old testament.
Fast forward to high school and I'm sitting in a social studies class one day and my teacher is talking to another student about something, I wasn't paying attention, but what caught my ear was one phrase that he uttered to a student in the class. "You know that some people don't believe that god exist right?". As soon as I heard this it was like a light went off in my head. I more or less became an atheist in that solitary moment.
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@mustardness
Well, I would agree that things are deterministic in the sense that whatever will happen will always have been what happened.
In the sense of "The inability to have done otherwise" I'd say this type of determinism is not currently provable. I would also say that's it's not currently possible to prove the negation of this position either. Some people would call the negation of this position free will. I'm not convinced that's the case either.
One recent thought I've had on this subject goes as follows: If we assume that everything is deterministic, should we not then ask in what way it's deterministic? For instance, let's so I have Group A which are things that interact with the 4 known forces in physics. Now let's suppose for a second that there was Group B which are things that reach with 3 different forces that don't interact with Group A at all. Now let's suppose that there is a Group C that can interact with 1 force from Group A and 1 force from Group B. Now we could say all of these things are deterministic within their groupings of the hypothetical Venn Diagram we've made, But one observation to be made here is that not every determination is able to apply to the whole of the system ubiquitously.
In short, I can imagine a possible world where the mind could have it's own set of separate interactions that are at the top of the deterministic chain and not affected by ALL of the same rules as the external world.
Does this prove free will? No.
Does it give me reasonable doubt about free will? No.
Does it give me doubt about free will? Only on the "free" part.
Thoughts?
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@mustardness
What makes a Black Hole supernatural?
If you mean that supernatural is something that is out of the reach of our observation, then I don't have a problem with your definition, but then know that your definition is vacuous because it will always be true in such a way that it never gives new information. It would essentially be a word that describes a perspective rather than an objective truth.
For instance, if a rock was something that had never been witnessed by humans before, it would be supernatural by definition and the moment that someone discovered it and documented it, it would then become natural.
so it's a vacuous truth at best.
If you're using a different definition, then I apologize as I don't quite know what is leading you to black holes being supernatural. If you'd like to elaborate as to what makes it supernatural, then I can either better understand your statement or at least tell you why I disagree with it.
Wait what are you saying about RNA? I don't want to try to sum it up because I feel like I would take you out of context.
Are you saying:
A) RNA forms under gravity?
B) RNA forms in black holes?
C) RNA forms due to dark energy?
D) Some combination of A or B or C.
E) Either A or B or C or D but instead of the word "forms" replace it with "coded" (In this case, I don't know how to interpret the worded coded, please explain)
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@mustardness
It has been shown that as long as the first and last letter are correct, then when context is also known, then that more often than not, the word can be figured out ergo it has meaning to the human.
This seems ad hoc to me.
It has a meaning to us in the sense that we invented the words and assigned them values. The process by which we obtain this meaning is arbitrary.
I'm fine with this being called meaning, but is it the same type of meaning that a nihilist is talking about? Because whatever mentalese that this person represents with the word "meaning" is what I want to talk about. What would you say to that?
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@TheRealNihilist
I did. Seems like a case of him selecting weak opponents. Could be a coincidence. No way to know for sure.
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@EtrnlVw
My Mom had a traumatic life and thinks she has to believe in those things because without them, nobody gets punished for the things they did. There's nothing rational about it.
The thing is, that I know when to and not to trust my Mom. When my mom gives me good honest testimony, She describes it in a clear and concise way that gets her point across. But once she jumps to supernatural, her entire train of thought changes. Like everything she knows goes out the window all at once.
Much like how you are acting. You're calm and rational, but once we get onto the supernatural, you become emotional and illogical.
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@EtrnlVw
Again, not rules, what rules did I say?
You said ghost can choose when to be visible. You might not call it a rule, but that's effectively what it is.
OMG, why don't you try asking questions instead of asserting things? you seriously think I don't know that when I see a spirit I saw a spirit? that's a bold assertion there.
Yes, that is seriously what I think. All you know is that you saw something. So you either named it a Spirit or you called it a Spirit because it met some standard for what you or other people might consider a spirit. Either way, this doesn't prove that it was a spirit nor does it mean that you know it's a spirit. You're hypothesizing that it's a spirit, there's a difference.
Oh wow a question what do ya know! but not really a sincere question, first you're already doubting what I observed before you asked me. Try again without the nonsense before it. In other words, just be courteous.
The only one being insincere is you. How about you drop the attitude and answer or don't. You don't get to tell me my questions aren't sincere. My question is a question and if you have a good answer, then it doesn't matter.
Because number one they were beings, not objects and not shadows,
That's a claim. how do you know they were beings?
I explained all of this I never skipped any steps bro, did you read anything I wrote?
You gain your whole explanation yes. That doesn't mean your explanation was complete. You go straight from unidentified object to ghost without any in between. You're not ruling out the other possibilities.
That's absolutely absurd, and really the problem with this conversation so far. You come across to me as a pretty objective, rational person, only when you move into the spiritual arena all that flies out the window.
That funny, because I would say that about you actually. You keep that supernatural in a box of special pleading. You say "physics makes sense.... accept when it doesn't in case X" It's not logical. Between the two of us. I'm the one who's beliefs are consistent.
Actually it was your assertion there was no evidence, and as of right now that's what I have been challenging to put you on the right path, after that I challenge you with my own observations to answer all your objections sufficiently but you must allow me to do that and stop doubting it.
Cool. If that's the case. Then what do you have that's not testimony?
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@EtrnlVw
My mom used to claim to see ghosts. She also claimed that she had dreams about people before they died. The funny thing is how there was always a more logical explanation and she always jumped to the supernatural one first. I thought nothing of this as a kid, and even claimed to have strange things happen to me as well. When I got older, I was able to explain all of it with ease.
It wasn't spirits talking to me. It was me being indoctrinated and seeing what I wanted to see.
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@EtrnlVw
When I spoke of speculation. I was specifically talking about the rules that you said ghost have to abide by. Not necessarily the rest of it. I understand that you base them off of testimony. but it's still speculation.
Okay, I have to disagree strongly here. Ghost and spirits have not been known for any amount of time. This is why I draw the line at speculation. If ghosts were known, then we'd have actual data to confirm them instead of data to confirm that people think they might have sighted them. I'm not trying to poke fun at you when I say this, but you're being intellectually lazy when you do that. If you want people to take your claims seriously, you need to make sure your evidence is rigorous and leads you through ever step. When you skip a step like that, you create a non sequitur and under mind your claims.
Well you can't say that you've seen a ghost because you don't have anything objective to compare it to. You seen something and you don't know what it is so you call it a ghost because it seems to fit the bill. While what you seen might have actually been seen by you, that doesn't make it a ghost. What if it was just something that looked like a ghost, but really it was some other incorporeal being. What if it wasn't a being at all? What if you just witnessed dark matter for a moment? I mean, if we're assuming that unseen things can be seen sometimes then why does it have to be a ghost? It could be a lot of things that we normally don't see. Maybe it was a bundle of neutrinos(those actually can blink in and out of observation). What if it was a hole to another dimension? This is why I say you need to not skip steps. You're leaving the door open for vacuity.
Well when I said rules, I was talking about natural laws. Which are just descriptions. Since ghosts don't have solid evidence behind them, we have no descriptions to go off of. Therefore, any "rule" that you profess has no justification for being right. At best, it's just your hypothesis.
So it's not that people don't understand what evidence is. But when people ask for evidence, there's a contextual implication that they want the evidence to be sufficient to either justify the claim or at least send people on the right path. Testimony accomplishes neither of these things. Technically, just about anything could be evidence. That's not the problem. You need sufficient evidence.
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@mustardness
Not false. Testimony is data. It might not be great data. But it's data nonetheless.
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@mustardness
Oh the irony. how many people have to not understand your nonsense before you realize it's not plain English? I guess you must think the entire world runs off ego besides you.
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@Outplayz
By those two standards, we could call chimps ghosts.
I'll tell you the same thing I told him. In order for Loki to do that. He necessarily would not be able to know what he will be popping into. So there will factors out of his control that could contribute to him being spotted and in the modern world, it would basically be a guarantee that he get caught.
why do you assume that scientists don't take it seriously? Scientists don't go there because there's no evidence. That's not the same as just be dismissive. Do you expect science to vigorously test for Unicorns when they're already quantifying every conceivable piece of reality they can find and see no unicorns?
Well it's not so much that we follow the rules of our reality. It's more like the rules are all determined by interactions. So your "rules" depend on what you can and can't interact with at any given moment. That's why interaction is necessary to perceive reality. This is the problem with the blinking ghost. the ghost would have to be able to change it's physics some how. But this wouldn't be a smooth super accurate process, this would be slow and sloppy and people would see ghosts a like the same way we see neutrinos when they happen across the right forces even though that we are normally not able to detect them in any possible way.
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@Outplayz
Well there's plenty of things that exist that aren't detectable to the human eye. But we don't call them ghost.
Testimony is data. But the testimony needs to add up the right way and it doesn't. Even if it did, we then need other methods to verify the accuracy of the testimony. So where's the extra factor?
Okay so you make generalized assumptions based off testimony. That's not the worst thing you could possibly do I guess. But how do you know which testimony to disregard for these rules? It seems like we would need an objective way to ground these rules the same way we would in physics. You might say that modern science can't observe these things. But once we could observe them, we would most definitely use science to do it because it's just the best way.
So ghost don't want to manifest because they might stop being ghost? Maybe. Seems like a stretch. Natural laws don't change because they're not intrinsic things. They're a descriptive truth based on relative interactions of things in the cosmos. So I could get behind the idea of ghost physics even if it's only hypothetically. However, I see no reason to suspect that ghost would be able to change their natural laws, maybe their own bodies. In that case it would appear identical to changing laws but a lot more plausible.
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@mustardness
Does me not understanding your words makes me illogical? If so, then why?
Could it be possible that I'm logical at least to mediocre extent, but I simple can't understand you?
Don't you think that it would be more productive to speak in a way that I can understand you instead of trying to make me do all the leg work?
Why don't you have to make any effort to understand me?
Why is this a one way street?
Why do you accuse me of having ego problems when you're ironically doing that very thing to yourself?
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@secularmerlin
Excellent observation.
I should clarify that it's only hypothetically possible. I'm not saying it's objectively verifiable.
The only real distinguishing feature would be that people would have free will in their mind, but wouldn't be able to exercise it in reality. This is problematic because we should be able to detect as much in real life. But one could always throw another assumption in and say that we don't experience it because it's one of god's limitless superpowers.
Generally speaking, from an outsider's perspective. Free will under control would probably look exactly like no free will at all.
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@secularmerlin
I would agree that it's a popular position by theist. But there are ways to explain it that are logically coherent, although the soundness is in question since they need many bold claims to support it.
They have to assume that god both made us with free will and then also imposed on it which effectively obsoleted the need for free will. Doesn't make much sense. But it is technically possible if all the assumptions it implies were also true.
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@mustardness
That's false, I've addressed specific parts of your arguments and told you the problems with them, you just don't address it afterwards. You know who you remind me of? Darth Dawkins. That crazy apologist who doesn't let people rebut his position and then insults the people who try.
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@mustardness
That's because you state the same thing no matter what I say. If I agree with you, then you say Win/win. Otherwise, you insult my ego and say it's my fault that we're disagreeing. Seriously an AI could argue like this. Are you an AI? I think you're an AI.
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@mustardness
While those descriptions somewhat make sense. It seems that their divisions are arbitrary, I don't see why gravity and dark energy need their own metaphysical space. that makes your definitions interchangeable and vacuous.
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@mustardness
You're not listening. I can't address your comments because you refuse to clarify them.
You insulting my ego isn't going to change that.
Please set aside your ego and explain your argument in plain English.
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@mustardness
Yes, when you present a claim to someone as being true, it's called an argument. Not to be confused with an argument that two people have when they scream incoherently at each other. Although your shallow insults tend to emulate the second one.
You want specifics?
Your definitions of physical and metaphysical are incoherent. They don't adhere with any dictionary that I've ever read, nor do they adhere to epistemological dictionaries, nor scientific, not even urban dictionary.
You claim you're speaking plain English, but if that was true, then 80% of the dictionaries I use should have your definitions, but they don't.
Now there's nothing wrong with that by itself. But when you add the fact that you absolutely categorically have refused to ever once explain your definitions and we have a recipe for incoherence.
Is that specific enough for you?
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@Fallaneze
The Big Bang traces back to a singularity, which is a mathematical point. It doesn't involve estimation or probability.
On paper, that's correct. But in reality, the math breaks down at the plank time and doesn't match the paper model. You're aware of that right?
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@mustardness
That's convenient, ignore my source completely.
Read the source and respond to it or you're just making mouth noise.
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@mustardness
I understand the words you use just fine. They just don't add up the way you use them.
You cherry pick the parts of definitions that you like ignoring what they imply in the real world when you rig them like that.
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@mustardness
Write your argument in plain English, or you're making mouth noise. I'm not playing your ego game anymore.
You're speaking gibberish.
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@secularmerlin
If a being exists which has an all encompassing and irrefutable plan which applies to each of us personally and guides us through our everyday lives then freewill is logically incoherent.
It would depend. You say "guides" as if we have a free will, but he simply imposes on it when it goes against his plan. Small difference.
If you're saying that he determines all of our actions in advanced, then I agree.
If the two ideas are logically contradictory then can a belief in both positions be rationally justified?
So if I go with the second possibility from the first statement. I would generally say no, but there is one philosophical position that could attempt it.
Some philosophies think that the law of noncontradiction doesn't hold up. I forget which ones off the top of my head. That would be the only way.
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@EtrnlVw
So the reason I call it speculation, is because we have no data for it. So that means we're just hypothesizing how a ghost could possibly behave or what rules of physics do or don't apply and what metaphysical rules do that have that we may not know about. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with speculation, as long as we understand that you don't know it well enough to say it's true.
The problem here is that you keep saying X thing about ghost as if it's an objective fact. I would rather we say what a ghost "might" be like rather than plainly stating it to be the case.
Now if you're saying it that way because you know for sure that ghosts exist, then we have to stop and answer a critical question before I accept any of that..... How do you know all these things you say about ghost are actually true?
I don't necessarily asking if you know how ghost exist, but rather how you know all these weird and specific rules about them.
Couldn't they exist, but all of your rules are inaccurate?
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@mustardness
Stop that pettiness. My claim is verifiable as opposesed to your made up, cherry picked, half definitions.Huh, your very confused person and spinning truth to be false
Huh? A rock is not metaphysical. Are you on prescription medication? Are you not taking your prescribed medicines?
This shows that you don't know what meta means and proves my point.
Yes, beyond is one of the interpretations of meta. However, the concept of a meta relates directly to what we know. So if we know 50% then the meta is beyond us. But if we know 100% of something. Then we are at the meta and it's observable.
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@3RU7AL
Your definition seems a bit problematic.
propositional attitudes, as you say, come from beliefs as you say. But the description you gave of Qualia also seems to match propositional attitudes in at least some, if not all cases.
I understand what your definition entails, but I don't think that's how the term is used in the modern era and I don't really care about how it was used in the past except to get context.
Qualia tends to be a term to describe our experiencing of agency. That's similar to what you said, but I feel like yours wasn't restrictive enough.
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@3RU7AL
I've never seen qualia used in the way you just used it. Care to elaborate?
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@mustardness
So we can presume you now understand my original comments regarding Greek >< meta. Maybe you still dont see the connection and think meta is just mustard speak.
I know what meta means and that's the problem. You don't apply it's etymology correctly. You say it means "beyond" but it doesn't. it means "at or beyond the limits of"
That means that something meta could also be within the observation realm as well. If we know something 100% then it's metaphysical regardless of what it is.
Whatever a rock actually is, that's what it is metaphysically. That's why I asked you about your comments about the 4 kind of metas that you stated and an honest person would have explained it because it's arrogant and ignorant of you to think that people know the same words the same way you do ESPECIALLY when you don't use the definitions in a traditional way.
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@mustardness
As long as your ego is leading the charge, then your mind will remain short-sighted aka narrow-minded in regards to anything Ive presented.
That's ridiculous. I've made several sincere efforts to understand you position and the only reason I don't is because of you. I've LITERALLY asked you to clarify your position multiple times and you refuse to do so. How is that my ego? You're the one slowing things down.
All you have to do is pull your head out of your butt and speak regular English long enough for me to understand you dialectic and we could actually have a conversation.
But your words are just a carrot on a stick.
You have the audacity to tell me what I think and feel.
You have the audacity to tell me that my ego is in the way when all I want to do is understand your position.
You: "Says strange thing"
Me: "What does that mean?"
You: "You already know what that means, your ego's just in the way"
Me; "No, I really just don't understand you"
You: ":That's because of your ego"
Me: "...……."
You: "You can't refute my position"
Me: "Well tell me your position and I'll refute it"
You: "You could if your ego wasn't in the way."
You: "Ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego."
You really think THIS?... is a solid unrefuted position? No. Your argument is self defeating and vacuous.
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@mustardness
For clarification (You know, the thing that honest people do) I call it a pseudo language because you purposely try to add mystique to it for whatever subjective reason you ultimately came up with. If you actually made an effort to explain it, then I would just call it language.
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@mustardness
Put your ego aside and you will realize that people understanding what you say, is more important than promoting your pseudo language.
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@mustardness
Please share when you have any rational, logical common sense ideas that add to or invalidate my Cosmic Trinity.
Sure, I'll take that challenge. You absolutely fail to explain your terms to people and they are not succinct, therefore, due to your inability to communicate your position, it is effectively incoherent. Your link might as well say "AS;DLKFJASD;LFKJASD;LKFJASD;LKFJA;SLKDJF" Because that's what your definitions amount to when you don't explain them.
Metaphorically, you're no different than a person who only speaks Spanish while being surrounded by only English speakers and you refuse to adapt to your surroundings.
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@mustardness
Plain means simple. You're explanations aren't simple. Not even remotely.
If you can't even admit that one small thing, then I'm not sure you're being intellectually honest with me or yourself.
The rest of the points fall moot to this one.
Thoughts?
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@mustardness
Yes, I read you link. The problem is that, while the link defines things, it doesn't explain why they are defined that way. You just say Spirit and Meta and add numbers and honestly it's kind of silly. Don't you care if your beliefs are true? How can you know your beliefs are true when you shield everyone from them?
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@mustardness
Okay, we need to nip this in the butt. Come on now mustardness. Let's be fair. Do you really think your word math responses pass as "plain English"?
They may well be perfectly defined and accurate. But plain, they are not. I also find it odd that you're so quick to say that nobody has ever countered your position, but I think that's only because you protect you position from being analyzed by not allowing people to understand your language properly.
It's a shame too, because a lot of what you say is very interesting, but I can't take any of it seriously because you won't let me look under the engine to see if there's equivocations afoot.
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@TheRealNihilist
For me, it depends what I'm talking about.
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@TheRealNihilist
Well that's something isn't it? Maybe he has stronger subjects
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@Alec
False. There has been cultural segregation in America for a long time and it even held strong as late as the 70's.
Immigrants would buy up whole neighborhoods and stay near each other to preserve their culture.
Never once has this destroyed America.
It's a false problem.
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@TheRealNihilist
@That1User
I would say that knowing falsehoods is practical and logical as it can grant you proof by contradiction of it's logical negation.
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@Fallaneze
It sounds to me like the Big Bang represents the beginning of the universe. I don't see how you arrived at the conclusion that logic is insufficient to make a determination about the universe's origin.
The problem with using logic is that we have no big bang to compare it to. This means that we can only get so far with our estimates and without pinpoint mathematical accuracy, there's just no way to know.
We can make arguments about probabilities, but that's about it.
I think it's way more likely, personally, that the big bang was not the first cosmic event. For all we know, there could be thousands of big bangs happening everyday in some far of stretch of the cosmos.
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@mustardness
meta is greek for beyond and there is four distinct kinds of meta-physical
I've never heard this before. Is this historical, dictionary based, or is this some kind of mustard speak?
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