Creation and Causality

[devolved]

I apologize in delays in response. I myself don't really like the "driveby shooting" type of discussion, but such is life recently.

Gravitational calculations can be derived with respect to any environment.

Of course these can be derived. Anything can be derived, but that's a assumption, which is what I'm pointing to.

Adding "quite a few books-on-epistemology-seized[sic] gaps in there," doesn't make our basal fundamental assumptions any less prescient.

You can assume anything you like, but you are trying to make a case that your assumptions are better, and you have not demonstrated it so far.

By "definite" we simply mean that they say something clear and unambiguous about how reality functions."

The above quote doesn't bode well for those making god claims, does it?

Clear and unambiguous is always a context of agreement with definable model. To someone who never picked up any pre-requisite physics material, quantum theory will look like ... as you would put it ... "word salad".

The point of this article is that falsifiability is not the hallmark of research and understanding, because it will always be contextual.

Other than theoretical physics, please describe a situation in which a model making unpredictable predictions is preferred.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Unpredictable predictions". Can you clarify or reword? Do you mean uncertainty?

Like Jesus Christ rising from the dead? All we can do is provide likely explanations, those that comport with reality. In the case of a dead man resurrecting, well, as they say, extraordinary claims require...

I think you don't really get the point of that story, hence you are clamoring to invalidate it via "dead people don't walk again". First of all, in the story Jesus is an incarnation of God who created this reality, so IN CONTEXT OF THAT MODEL.

You are evaluating it in context OF YOUR MODEL, and of course in that model people don't rise from the dead, and God does not exist. So, of course in that model of reality such things are nonsense.

Our provisional belief in any given claim resides on a axiomatic presuppositions that we frame as A PREFERENCE. You can't validate or invalidate axioms. These are not falsifiable. This is something that you seem to misunderstand when you attempt to "logically argue" here. Your logical framework resides in presuppositions of your models. Thus, if something outside of that model is fed into yours, it naturally becomes "illogical".

But you have yet to validate your assumptions that you claim should be valid IN ANY CONTEXT.

Which scenario better describes reality, in your opinion:
1. People who intentionally seek to illegally defraud the IRS, risk being prosecuted for it, and possibly spending time in jail.
2. People who intentionally seek to defraud the IRS, risk being rewarded with an annual income of @300K per year, for the rest of their life, tax free.

You still don't understand what we are talking about .

The above claims are contextual, and dependent on personal experience of any given party. In order to present this claim to a guy in Africa, you have to tell him a STORY about how monetary system works, and what is IRS, what are taxes, and what happens to someone when they don't pay it. And you have to describe it in the language that they can relate to.

In doing so, you have not validated anything. You've made a claim of how these things work. They may believe you. They may think it's ridiculous and won't believe you. In which case you can bring documents and show videos of people in jail. It's an evidence, but outside of context of understanding legal system and how jails work, etc... it's still an ambiguous claim. These people don't know you, and they are not certain of your intentions. You could be fabricating all of the evidence.

The point being is that we first would have to agree on our "axiomatic baseline" before we can even have conversations about what's a "better description of reality". Luckily for us, there are plentiful overlaps. And what we generally do is go by way of pluralistic pragmatism. And that's fine.

But what you don't seem to get is that because certain model of reality works in many contexts DOES NOT MEAN that it works IN ALL CONTEXTS.

Yes, there are plentiful claims which are limited in context, but you can only convince only if there are a good overlap match in baseline presuppositions.

Your #3 is as broad as it can be, and you can't demonstrably justify. All you are doing is throwing out individual cases, claiming that because this case is correct ... that means that the rest of them too.

I already said that I agree with it as a good principle, but as an axiom that's all it is.

You fail to understand what having "predictive value" means. For instance, when an ancient text claims that millions of Hebrews were lost in a ten square mile of desert for forty years, yet zero archaeological evidence exists to support such a claim, the claim can be considered as having zero predictive capabilities.

I already agreed with you that Biblical narrative is not a scientific or historical literature. Much like most of the narrative of that time is a form of "poetic tribal wisdom" that was aggregated over time and consolidated as a moral literary device.

Predictive usability of Biblical narrative does not rest in context of it's nominal claims. It rests in its sociological claims, many of which don't carry over well from that era. I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing here, but you seem to consistently presume much .

Incorrect, as 9.81m/s/s is independently verified and found so sound, that at this point in time, it is no longer considered scientific theory, but a "law."

A law in science is not an "upgrade of theory". Please look it up.

Theory is an explanation, and a law is a description of observable consistency. Theory of Gravity attempts to model gravity. Law of gravity describes consistent measurements that outline the "laws of gravity".

There's a saying that scientific laws are descriptive and not prescriptive, meaning that laws are consistencies that we observe and label these as such. Just because WE SUBJECTIVELY describe consistency in a limited context, it doesn't apply to everything. It's our assumption, and it's pragmatic. Our brain works that way.

 

[HitchSlap]

You're spending an awful lot of time trying to convince us (you?) that there are equally valid alternatives to evaluating reality. As a matter of pragmatism, religions necessarily require this, as their particular brand of dogma only holds sway if the individual accepts their "axiomatic" claims. Granted, there are thousand of 'glasses' one may put on to view reality, as our brains allow this to happen - it's a survival mechanism - it's how brainwashing works.

You're arguing from your particular religious framework, as if your's is the only religion in existence. Once I'm done with you, I only have 32,999 other's to argue against. What you have failed to admit, is that positive claims require positive evidence - the kind of evidence that is objective and comports with reality. It's not up to me to demonstrate you can't walk on water, rise from the dead, heal blind men, throw pigs from a cliff, forgive sins, become a god... this is on you alone.

It's apparent you don't agree with my three basal assumptions, so I'll ask, what do you propose as a better metric for evaluating reality?

I apologize in delays in response. I myself don't really like the "driveby shooting" type of discussion, but such is life recently.



Of course these can be derived. Anything can be derived, but that's a assumption, which is what I'm pointing to.



You can assume anything you like, but you are trying to make a case that your assumptions are better, and you have not demonstrated it so far.



Clear and unambiguous is always a context of agreement with definable model. To someone who never picked up any pre-requisite physics material, quantum theory will look like ... as you would put it ... "word salad".

The point of this article is that falsifiability is not the hallmark of research and understanding, because it will always be contextual.



I'm not sure what you mean by "Unpredictable predictions". Can you clarify or reword? Do you mean uncertainty?



I think you don't really get the point of that story, hence you are clamoring to invalidate it via "dead people don't walk again". First of all, in the story Jesus is an incarnation of God who created this reality, so IN CONTEXT OF THAT MODEL.

You are evaluating it in context OF YOUR MODEL, and of course in that model people don't rise from the dead, and God does not exist. So, of course in that model of reality such things are nonsense.

Our provisional belief in any given claim resides on a axiomatic presuppositions that we frame as A PREFERENCE. You can't validate or invalidate axioms. These are not falsifiable. This is something that you seem to misunderstand when you attempt to "logically argue" here. Your logical framework resides in presuppositions of your models. Thus, if something outside of that model is fed into yours, it naturally becomes "illogical".

But you have yet to validate your assumptions that you claim should be valid IN ANY CONTEXT.



You still don't understand what we are talking about .

The above claims are contextual, and dependent on personal experience of any given party. In order to present this claim to a guy in Africa, you have to tell him a STORY about how monetary system works, and what is IRS, what are taxes, and what happens to someone when they don't pay it. And you have to describe it in the language that they can relate to.

In doing so, you have not validated anything. You've made a claim of how these things work. They may believe you. They may think it's ridiculous and won't believe you. In which case you can bring documents and show videos of people in jail. It's an evidence, but outside of context of understanding legal system and how jails work, etc... it's still an ambiguous claim. These people don't know you, and they are not certain of your intentions. You could be fabricating all of the evidence.

The point being is that we first would have to agree on our "axiomatic baseline" before we can even have conversations about what's a "better description of reality". Luckily for us, there are plentiful overlaps. And what we generally do is go by way of pluralistic pragmatism. And that's fine.

But what you don't seem to get is that because certain model of reality works in many contexts DOES NOT MEAN that it works IN ALL CONTEXTS.

Yes, there are plentiful claims which are limited in context, but you can only convince only if there are a good overlap match in baseline presuppositions.

Your #3 is as broad as it can be, and you can't demonstrably justify. All you are doing is throwing out individual cases, claiming that because this case is correct ... that means that the rest of them too.

I already said that I agree with it as a good principle, but as an axiom that's all it is.



I already agreed with you that Biblical narrative is not a scientific or historical literature. Much like most of the narrative of that time is a form of "poetic tribal wisdom" that was aggregated over time and consolidated as a moral literary device.

Predictive usability of Biblical narrative does not rest in context of it's nominal claims. It rests in its sociological claims, many of which don't carry over well from that era. I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing here, but you seem to consistently presume much .



A law in science is not an "upgrade of theory". Please look it up.

Theory is an explanation, and a law is a description of observable consistency. Theory of Gravity attempts to model gravity. Law of gravity describes consistent measurements that outline the "laws of gravity".

There's a saying that scientific laws are descriptive and not prescriptive, meaning that laws are consistencies that we observe and label these as such. Just because WE SUBJECTIVELY describe consistency in a limited context, it doesn't apply to everything. It's our assumption, and it's pragmatic. Our brain works that way.

 

[devolved]

Knowledge is always demonstrable, otherwise we refer to it as an unfounded claim. Either I have knowledge of purple pixies farting universes into existence, or I don't.

[similar concept]

[/QUOTE]

I thought I'd reply to both of you on this subject, because there are two levels to this concept. One is the conceptual "model of knowledge", and the other one is how that model relates to the other model that we have - that of function of our brain.

Please read the entire thing before you begin responding to it.

I'd say that most of scientists, religious people, and philosophers discuss these concepts apart from what these would mean in context of our neuro-physiology. Of course, we are still using the "high-level abstract language" to describe the "machine code of our brain", but I'd like to at least give you conceptual problem as it pertains to your definition of knowledge.

At the level of brain activity, there is no differentiation between these abstract concepts apart from a complex network of meaning that would map to our subjective understanding of these terms. But, when we are talking about the "machine language of the brain" there is no "knowledge", "belief", "facts". These are audio-visual labels we give to systematically describe what we see as a pattern, and surrounding context of that pattern among many other patterns.

At the level of the brain, verification, is the same thing as "contextual recognition" when it comes to the process. It simply means that your brain recognized a pattern in context of other patterns.

By itself, that process of "contextual recognition" means nothing outside of reality that there is some contextual sensory match. The meaning of that "pattern match" is what's more important when we are talking about broader conceptual models of reality.

The fact that 4393847 matches 4393847 is meaningless apart from behavioral context such pattern fits into. Otherwise, you just see a series of "numbers" with no inherent meaning. Is it knowledge because we can get a cognitive contextual match? I don't think so. What is knowledge then? 4393847 matches 4393847 ? But the meaning of 4393847 as a pattern is derived from network of other patterns.

How do we justify the meaning apart from copying context from your brain into mine so that the pattern would mean the same thing to you than it does to me? Generally, that's what we attempt to do with education, but the problems is that in context of human brain the meaning is always behavioral in context. We don't see a "hat". We see something that you put on your head when it's cold, hot, or when you need to fit into the crowd, or when you need to stand out from the crowd.

The question is not "What is the reality really like?". The question that our brains ask "What motor signals should I send when I match a pattern with this context?". And the context is never isolated, and the interpretation of context is different from person to person.

There's a generic problem of abstraction of religion / science / philosophy as some disconnected disciplines that are more valid than other. At the level of the brain activity all of these are the very same thing - an attempt by the brain to contextually analyze patterns, and derive and signal proper behavior in context of any given pattern.

That's what I would consider "knowledge". Knowledge, if we relate it to the reality of our brain, is a contextual "operation manual". Whatever our understanding maps to, it only maps to certain pragmatic necessity to direct our bodies one way in one context, and a different way in a different context.

As such, knowledge is a network of meaning that contains interrelated concepts. It's not some isolated concept that we reify and map to some context of reality.

We then consolidate this network of meaning into some form of cultural map of meaning that we collectively maintain, and that's what we call knowledge.

I don't want to write a book about this, but I'd like to merely conclude with a few things that may give you a perspective on religion that you don't seem to understand, given the above.

1) As I've mentioned, our brain is a networked mesh of interrelated patterns. As such, it's a "contextual behavior" mechanism. As such it is pragmatic, and somewhat "lazy" (or let's call it over-optimized) in the way that it works. It uses shortcuts most of the time, until it reaches something ambiguous, then it reroutes to broader recognition context, which takes more energy to accomplish.

In short, whatever analytical "thought" that it goes through, it does so that in the future it can distill contextual behavior that would play to "more food", "better sexual partner", or "contextual dominance" in that particular environment that would give one more food or better sexual partner.

2) What we would call "scientific methodology", is really nothing more than a brain activity that focuses on attempting to map and explore consistently-repeatable contexts to certain advantageous means. So, it's still mapping patterns to contextual behavior.

3) In scope of religion and sociology... it's not different, but context is broader. It's mapping patterns to contextual behavior of how we relate to our tribe and people, and how we idealize and justify such behavior.

I'll break here, and explain where I'm going with this.

 

[devolved]

The problem with concepts such as God, electron, dark matter, freedom, justice....

None of these match to observable reality apart from some surrounding process that we attribute to these concepts. These are not "things" we can point to, but rather concepts that exist in context of "knowledge-network" of the brain.

So, a lot of discussion that are happening here ends up being a word-labels slinging contest, and these words don't map to cultural context of meaning in the same way. Since there is no universal religion-to-science linguistic translator, then one side assumes that one thing was said, and the other side assumes something different.

Thus, religion can only make pragmatic sense at the level of how the religious narrative maps to behavioral reality, and whether it is detrimental or not to our being.

I would say that discussion of ontological viability would provide to be fruitless, because in either case we are talking about processes of reality. We merely map different models on these.

What eventually matters is whether religion is a viable model in context of preferred human behavior, and that's typically not the context in which we are discussing these issues.

 

[HitchSlap]

What eventually matters is whether religion is a viable model in context of preferred human behavior...

Sure, now which one do we pick...

 

[devolved]

Sure, now which one do we pick...

"We" don't pick anything. We are born into a culture that loads us with default presets that we subsequently recognize as such (if we develop enough meta-cognitive capacity to do so), and improvise on given the permissible boundaries of that culture which we test. We then modify the existing cultural presets to fit the current context of reality, and the process repeats. Each culture is a form of "religion" in respect how we collectively understand the reality and structure and enforce our collective behavior. The concept of God is different somewhat.

Religion is just as much of that process as the science, but the context is different. Methodology is different. And the purpose is different.

Likewise, religion is a process. While the Biblical narrative, for example, remains static... the interpretation and additional concepts added to enhance the narrative, or shift it to contemporary cultural development is on-going.

I think that criticism of religion as "outdated and irrelevant" is incorrect, because religion has always been a process and what we have today is very different from what it was a 1000 or even a 100 years ago.

 

[HitchSlap]

"We" don't pick anything. We are born into a culture that loads us with default presets that we subsequently recognize as such (if we develop enough meta-cognitive capacity to do so), and improvise on given the permissible boundaries of that culture which we test. We then modify the existing cultural presets to fit the current context of reality, and the process repeats. Each culture is a form of "religion" in respect how we collectively understand the reality and structure and enforce our collective behavior.

Religion is just as much of that process as the science, but the context is different. Methodology is different. And the purpose is different.

There is no context in which faith (religion) is preferable to sound reason and logic.

"We either base our 'confidence' on reason (evident probabilities, past experience, competence, etc) or we base our beliefs on faith, which is blind by definition. Faith is the most dishonest position it is possible to have, because it is an assertion of stoic conviction that is assumed without reason and defended against all reason. If you have to believe it on faith, you have no reason to believe it at all." -AronRa

 

[devolved]

There is no context in which faith (religion) is preferable to sound reason and logic.

That's right, there is no context in which faith is preferable to reason . Faith kicks in when the context is absent (or should we say lacking).

First of all, you are assuming that what you call "sound reason and logic" is always available in context of our perception of reality. In that respect you can't pull yourself out beyond your brain function and analyze your thoughts from "outside" and see how accurately these match your perception.

All you can do is compare your own subjective conclusions to your own feedback of how well do you think match reality.

Münchhausen trilemma - Wikipedia

In such your foundation assumptions are faith based. There's no way around it and it's not a matter of religion or scientific field either. That's how our reality works in respect to our perception of it, and that's the reason we are still having this conversation several thousand years later after Plato / Aristotle laid out their concepts.

Likewise faith and reason are not "preferable" . You can't walk over anywhere and say "hey, give me a gram or reason, or 5 grams of faith". These are concept labels that have no meaning absent of our brain activity. And at any moment of your brain function there's a good mix of what you would label as "faith", and what you would label as "reason". You seem to think that we can "choose" which of these run our brain activity, and it's absurd. These are subjective labels we place on concepts.

"We either base our 'confidence' on reason (evident probabilities, past experience, competence, etc) or we base our beliefs on faith, which is blind by definition. Faith is the most dishonest position it is possible to have, because it is an assertion of stoic conviction that is assumed without reason and defended against all reason. If you have to believe it on faith, you have no reason to believe it at all." -AronRa

I'm not sure why you would quote AronRa when I clearly disagree what I mean by both faith and reason.

These are not mutually-exclusive concepts in context of how our brain functions. Whenever your brain lacks context it has no choice but to go on faith. There are plentiful situations in which context will be lacking.

 

[The7thColporteur]

Not at all.

Rather, sounds like "not all claims are on even footing".

Again:
claim 1: "i know a guy named bob"
claim 2: "i know a guy named bob and he can shoot laser beams with his eyes"

If you are honestly going to stand there and say that these claims are equal in "acceptability" at face value… Then I don't know what else to say.

Do you have any friends?

 

[The7thColporteur]

I resurrect daily. What more need you know.

Do you believe that you are made of matter, say the same as a motor vehicle or computer, or cell phone, or book?

Do you read books?

Do you believe in historical things?

 

[The7thColporteur]

Not at all.

Rather, sounds like "not all claims are on even footing".

Again:
claim 1: "i know a guy named bob"
claim 2: "i know a guy named bob and he can shoot laser beams with his eyes"

If you are honestly going to stand there and say that these claims are equal in "acceptability" at face value… Then I don't know what else to say.

I wouldn't need extra evidence for claim 2. I would only need to know the truthfulness and reliability and consistency of the person making the claim, and so it has nothing to do with extraordinary evidence.

For instance: These Contacts Let You Shoot Lasers From Your Eyes

Wonderful things happen all of the time in history, children falling from 13 stories and being instantly caught by a person below, etc. People surviving explosions, and so on.

 

[HitchSlap]

That's right, there is no context in which faith is preferable to reason . Faith kicks in when the context is absent (or should we say lacking).

First of all, you are assuming that what you call "sound reason and logic" is always available in context of our perception of reality. In that respect you can't pull yourself out beyond your brain function and analyze your thoughts from "outside" and see how accurately these match your perception.

All you can do is compare your own subjective conclusions to your own feedback of how well do you think match reality.

Münchhausen trilemma - Wikipedia

In such your foundation assumptions are faith based. There's no way around it and it's not a matter of religion or scientific field either. That's how our reality works in respect to our perception of it, and that's the reason we are still having this conversation several thousand years later after Plato / Aristotle laid out their concepts.

Likewise faith and reason are not "preferable" . You can't walk over anywhere and say "hey, give me a gram or reason, or 5 grams of faith". These are concept labels that have no meaning absent of our brain activity. And at any moment of your brain function there's a good mix of what you would label as "faith", and what you would label as "reason". You seem to think that we can "choose" which of these run our brain activity, and it's absurd. These are subjective labels we place on concepts.




I'm not sure why you would quote AronRa when I clearly disagree what I mean by both faith and reason.

These are not mutually-exclusive concepts in context of how our brain functions. Whenever your brain lacks context it has no choice but to go on faith. There are plentiful situations in which context will be lacking.

^^^ All this word-salad woo is a spurious attempt to justify your cognitive dissonance. You have religious beliefs that are reconciled with metaphysical claims. You've done nothing to demonstrate their validity, whatsoever.

When you're ready to discuss reality in a sound way, let me know. Until then, feel free to spark it up and wax philosophical woo with someone who's interested.

 

[HitchSlap]

Do you believe that you are made of matter, say the same as a motor vehicle or computer, or cell phone, or book?

Do LEGO's count?

Do you read books?

Depends what context "read" means. I don't want to make any assumptions.

Do you believe in historical things?

Sure, but does history believe in you?

 

[devolved]

^^^ All this word-salad woo is a spurious attempt to justify your cognitive dissonance. You have religious beliefs that are reconciled with metaphysical claims. You've done nothing to demonstrate their validity, whatsoever.

When you're ready to discuss reality in a sound way, let me know. Until then, feel free to spark it up and wax philosophical woo with someone who's interested.

Anotherwords, you can't demonstrate where and how my argument is wrong ... therefore .... "word salad" and quotes from ArronRa.

I salute you, sir !

 

[HitchSlap]

Anotherwords, you can't demonstrate where and how my argument is wrong ... therefore .... "word salad" and quotes from ArronRa.

I salute you, sir !

On the contrary, you've yet to demonstrate your woo is relevant to reality.

(you know, the real reality... the one that doesn't go away in spite of mental gymnastics)

In fact, I challenge you to name one thing where my three basal assumptions might fail to provide the best answer.

 

[The7thColporteur]

Do LEGO's count?

Yes. Thus again:

Do you believe that you are made of matter, say the same as a motor vehicle or computer, or cell phone, or book?

Depends what context "read" means. I don't want to make any assumptions.

I do not believe you for a moment.

Do you read books?

... Sure, but does history believe in you?

Absolutely, as I am in the Bible [KJB], as are you, and all that have ever existed, from God to the least ...

Even the unfallen beings on other worlds.

 

[devolved]

In fact, I challenge you to name one thing where my three basal assumptions might fail to provide the best answer.

Best answer to what?

 

[HitchSlap]

On the contrary, you've yet to demonstrate your woo is relevant to reality.

(you know, the real reality... the one that doesn't go away in spite of mental gymnastics)

Best answer to what?

Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something.

 

[The7thColporteur]

Best answer to what?

What was the foundational criteria for "best"?

 

[HitchSlap]

What was the foundational criteria for "best"?

Not worst.