Omniscience and quantum mechanics

Muad Dib · Aug 30, 2009

I think God is going to have to be content with only knowing a vague amount about the position/momentum of a particle/wave. afaik its fundamentally impossible to know more than the heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates, so until science finds a possible way of knowing more, we cant really discuss the means by which a omniscient being could achieve something we believe to be impossible

Reading this last page though, Goddidit of course suffices, as long as goddidit we dont need to ask any more questions or try to find out for ourselves

ephraimanesti · Aug 30, 2009

Muad Dib said:
Reading this last page though, Goddidit of course suffices, as long as goddidit we dont need to ask any more questions or try to find out for ourselves

MY FRIENDS,

This is not accurate! With "Goddidit" Christians continue to "ask more questions and try to find out for ourselves"--in reality, MUCH MORE SO THAN BEFORE.

What "Goddidit" does is keeps us facing in the right direction and looking for the ULTIMATE answers in the right Place.

God has given His children minds for a reason. He has also given us a revelation of Himself so we know Who to thank.

A BOND-SLAVE/FRIEND/BROTHER OF OUR LORD/GOD/SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST,
ephraim

Wiccan_Child · Aug 31, 2009

Chesterton said:
That's what people have always called agnostic. Sometimes etymology is helpful, but it doesn't control here; usage does.

Actually, that's what you call them. There has never been a consensus on what the words mean. In my experience, self-professed atheists seem to use my vocabulary, and self-professed agnostics seem to use yours. Ironically, names aside, they're exactly the same group of people!

Chesterton said:
Okay, well, something happened. And I don't think you scientists can get around the metaphors of the universe being "created" or "formed" or "started" [to expand]. If you don't call it Creation, you have to call it creation. I guess the uppercase "C" is the difference between theists and atheists.

Indeed it is. However, having said that, it's not even entirely clear whether something actually happened at all; the possibility remains, however remote, that the universe has simply always existed, with nothing new being created/Created.

Chesterton said:
I don't think He "created a system"; it's just inherent in reality that if man is a product of God, and man rejects God, he cannot be happy. He's the source of our happiness, so asking to be happy without God is like asking to be warm without a source of heat; it's just not possible.

I'm not sure how that follows. First, I can be happy without God; chip butties make me very happy, but there's nothing Godly about them. Second, theists can be very unhappy, which I think is something we both agree on. Third, even if God is the source of happiness, why does our belief (or lack thereof) in him stop us from being happy? Why does our belief in him constitute a rejection of him?
A man can reject the idea that his body is made of water, but that doesn't change the fact that he is, in fact, made mostly of water.

Chesterton said:
Perhaps He could have made it any way he wanted, but as you note in your OP, some things are mutually exclusive or contradictory even for omnipotence. Taking the Christian understanding of God, there are three things He could have done: 1) not created at all 2) created automatons or 3) create beings with wills who could freely join in a relationship of love with Him, at the risk that many or even most of these beings would reject Him and ultimately suffer for it. Weighing all considerations in the balance, the choice is His to make; you may question His decision; I don't.

Why don't you? Surely you, as the created being, have a say in whether you want to be an blissful automaton or a suffering moral agent?

Chesterton said:
So genetic instruction is followed for the same reason that computer programming instruction is - external intelligence? Okay, I'm happy with that explanation; it's plausible and logical. I see no problem with it.

That's not what I'm saying, and I think you know that. The comparison was meant to show that they are followed because they have to be followed, not that they are both made by an intelligence.

Chesterton said:
Do you realize what you're saying? You're assenting to some type of pantheism or animism. You might possibly remove all the metaphors, but what you're describing is matter having intelligence and will and purpose. You scientists certainly are a primitive, superstitous lot.

Where did I say that matter has an intelligence or a will? I said the traits serve a purpose, because there is a reason that it is beneficial. Eyes serve a purpose, not because of any overarching design, but because they provide a specific benefit to the host.
So no, don't remove the metaphor, else you'll completely miss my point.

Chesterton said:
But ultimately "it-just-is" has to be the atheist answer; there just aren't that many choices. There is a thinking mind behind the universe, or else there isn't, or else there's some vague, pantheistic combination of will and purpose without mind.

My point is that neither "Goddidit" nor "it-just-is" are actually answers. They're just placeholders for whatever process 'did it'. They don't explain anything. An explanation for B tells us the events which took us from A to B (where A is the starting point of the explanation; stellar cosmogony starts with a dust cloud, but doesn't seek to explain where the cloud itself came from).

And besides, atheists aren't restricted to "it-just-is". We know with quite some accuracy how various things came to be; while the atheist cannot say 'God did it', he is quite free to say that anything else did it.

Chesterton said:
Because it's tautological. It's fallacious to say genes became coded for proliferation without intelligence because we know genes are coded for proliferation.

Tautologies cannot be fallacious; they are valid truths by definition. Anyway, I disagree that it is tautologous, fallacious, or circular: it's an example of peculiar population dynamics. In a population, the individuals vary by small degrees. By virtue of these variants, some are more likely to reproduce (and thus pass on their variants) than others. This may be because they're more likely to survive whatever hazards they encoutner.

In other words, the ones that survive are the ones that reproduce. The one's that don't survive, obviously don't reproduce. While you can die after you have kids, whatever made you predisposed to a premature dying will be inherited by your kids, thus making them that much more likely to die before they themselves have kids, thus halting your lineage.

Point is, saying "The ones which survive are usually the ones which code for traits which improve the odds of their own survival" isn't tautologous, since it isn't a statement of identity. It's simply a consequence of the system: there are genes which survive, and there are genes whose code improves their own odds of survival, and it just so happens that those genes in the former are mostly those that are also in the latter.

Chesterton said:
Because, starting with the Big Bang (or whatever the start was), everything is a result of a previous cause. Everything is another link in a chain of cause-and-effect. A leads B which leads to C and so on. Mindless physics and chemistry have to account for every thought you'll ever think exactly as they have to account for the Crab Nebula or a monkey.

Only in a deterministic universe. So what you're effectively saying is, "If we live in a deterministic universe, then the universe we live in is deterministic". Now that's a tautology .

Chesterton said:
But you said relativists can debate morality, so they must assert some point to debate. Are you saying that relativists are hypocrites?

Not at all. The point asserted by a relativist will usually be something everyone agrees on (say, "interracial marriage is not immoral"), and then use the reasoning behind that statement to justify the point they're making (e.g, "If same-sex marriages are immoral, then so too are interracial marriages. Since interracial marriages aren't immoral, then neither are same-sex marriages").
Relativists debate from a mutually agreed point, or from their opponent's views, or something. That doesn't mean they don't think moral codes are ultimately arbitrary and relative.

Chesterton said:
He offers happiness, but he doesn't force it on us. Don't you think forced happiness would be a contradiction? It wouldn't be real happiness unless there was something for it to be opposed to, just as I'm not sure how we could experience light or warmth if there was no such thing as the absence of light or warmth.

You have never experienced the absence of light or warmth, but you are quite obviously capable of experiencing and comprehending light and warmth (and, for that matter, darkness and coldness). Happiness is simply an emotion, forced or not. If God chooses to manipulate us into a state of happiness, just because it's forced doesn't mean we're any less happy.

Consider laughing gas. I've taken it, and I've been more happy than almost any other time in my life. Is it forced? Is it freely chosen? I chose to take the chemical, but I didn't chose its effects.

Chesterton said:
God is good, and He makes or constitutes everything, therefore anything which is not according to His will is bad. Freedom of will is a positively good thing, but it allows for evil. And it wouldn't be good if it didn't allow for evil. Make any sense?

Yes, but I disagree. Free will can be good (insofar as it does everything God wants of it) without allowing for evil. It allows me to walk without flying. It could quite easily allow me to help a starving child, while restricting me from carpet bombing a city.
That said, I'm not even convinced we have free will at all. At best, we have some small influence over our actions.

Chesterton said:
Some people, like me, think He has made His existence known.

In what way? Or rather, in any ways other than Jesus? I don't want to get into a debate about the historicity and divinity of Christ . We're already covering enough topics!

Chesterton said:
Check the etymology - "mundane" means "of the universe or world". Of course He works through that which He created. And remember, God thinks "it's all good", as the kids say. This happens to be a sticking point between Traditionalists and Protesants; Traditionalists don't mind God working through the magic which we call mundane, whereas Protestants seem to demand some sort of magic above and beyond the magic which is reality.

Even traditionalists demand some magic: the Creation was hardly done through mundane means. But my point was that

And I think you mean 'definition', not 'etymology' .

Chesterton said:
Until I see one of those miracle in person, I regard them the same as the claimed miracles of scientists, such as abiogenesis: I wasn't there to see it, so I don't know. Forgive my scepticism.

Yes, I believe he could have done whatever he saw good to do, but since by all accounts he was better "man" than I, I prefer not to question what he chose to do.

I'll do this a bit later

Chesterton · Sep 1, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
Actually, that's what you call them. There has never been a consensus on what the words mean. In my experience, self-professed atheists seem to use my vocabulary, and self-professed agnostics seem to use yours. Ironically, names aside, they're exactly the same group of people!

The problem with your view I think, is that a theist would be a person who knows there is a God, and an atheist would be a person who knows there is no God. Since no one from either camp has ever produced anything showing that they know, we have to assume neither person actually exists, or if they do, their knowledge is due to such personal experience that it could not be described with logic or empiricism. But a theist has an advantage, in that, if a person claims to know there is a God, they could be telling the truth even if they can't verify it. But if a person claims to know there is no God, they could not be telling the truth except by accident, because there's no way at all for them to know their claim is true, because if there is no God, there is no way to ascertain it. If there's no God, there is no means of revelation of that fact.

Indeed it is. However, having said that, it's not even entirely clear whether something actually happened at all; the possibility remains, however remote, that the universe has simply always existed, with nothing new being created/Created.

I guess you're talking about the old Steady State idea, or the idea of the singularity being a cyclical occurrence? I suppose they're different scientifically but not really different philosophically.

I'm not sure how that follows. First, I can be happy without God; chip butties make me very happy, but there's nothing Godly about them. Second, theists can be very unhappy, which I think is something we both agree on.

Well I thought we were talking about Hell, which is what I meant - eternal happiness or lack thereof. Sure, people can be temporarily happy in this world, though even that is elusive, as evidenced by the suicide rate and the often dysfuntional lives of the rich and famous.

Third, even if God is the source of happiness, why does our belief (or lack thereof) in him stop us from being happy? Why does our belief in him constitute a rejection of him?
A man can reject the idea that his body is made of water, but that doesn't change the fact that he is, in fact, made mostly of water.

Because we are corrupt, we are all tainted with sin which prohibits our sharing in His happiness. And, you can reject the idea of water, but you can't reject water itself and receive the benefits of water.

Why don't you? Surely you, as the created being, have a say in whether you want to be an blissful automaton or a suffering moral agent?

For pretty much the same reason I don't question phsyicists about physics. They have more knowledge of the subject than I do. And God is not only smarter but wiser. It's His decision, not mine. I had nothing to do with my coming into being, so no, I don't have a say in what I am. The cosmos is not a democracy. But if I did have a say, I find little appeal in the idea of being a happy robot.

Plus there is value in not being satisfied. This is particularly true for Christians, who find value and meaning in suffering.

That's not what I'm saying, and I think you know that. The comparison was meant to show that they are followed because they have to be followed, not that they are both made by an intelligence.

But the only reason a computer program has to be followed is due to the preliminary intelligence responsible for it. You don't have to make that comparison, but if you do, I think you have to accept what it implies.

Where did I say that matter has an intelligence or a will?

You're implying it left and right; you have to in order to explain life without God.

I said the traits serve a purpose, because there is a reason that it is beneficial. Eyes serve a purpose, not because of any overarching design, but because they provide a specific benefit to the host.

Eyes provide a relative benefit; they're not essential. Nothing is essential, not even life itself.

So no, don't remove the metaphor, else you'll completely miss my point.

You said my genes will make me feel guilt and shame. Without even using metaphor, you're attributing intelligence, will, purpose and desire to genes.

My point is that neither "Goddidit" nor "it-just-is" are actually answers. They're just placeholders for whatever process 'did it'. They don't explain anything. An explanation for B tells us the events which took us from A to B (where A is the starting point of the explanation; stellar cosmogony starts with a dust cloud, but doesn't seek to explain where the cloud itself came from).

I think "Goddidit" and "it-just-is" are both actual answers. Goddidit is only a placeholder in that it doesn't explain every detail, but why is that important? (Well, except for a scientist.) It's a placeholder the same as if you asked me where I got my computer and I said "at the store". My answer doesn't tell you lots of things, like which store, or how I got to the store, or whether I paid cash or credit or stole it, but the answer is true nonetheless. On the other hand, "it-just-is" is a placeholder for "I don't know".

And besides, atheists aren't restricted to "it-just-is". We know with quite some accuracy how various things came to be; while the atheist cannot say 'God did it', he is quite free to say that anything else did it.

I didn't know that - I'm all ears: what did the universe?

Tautologies cannot be fallacious; they are valid truths by definition. Anyway, I disagree that it is tautologous, fallacious, or circular: it's an example of peculiar population dynamics. In a population, the individuals vary by small degrees. By virtue of these variants, some are more likely to reproduce (and thus pass on their variants) than others. This may be because they're more likely to survive whatever hazards they encoutner.

In other words, the ones that survive are the ones that reproduce. The one's that don't survive, obviously don't reproduce. While you can die after you have kids, whatever made you predisposed to a premature dying will be inherited by your kids, thus making them that much more likely to die before they themselves have kids, thus halting your lineage.

Point is, saying "The ones which survive are usually the ones which code for traits which improve the odds of their own survival" isn't tautologous, since it isn't a statement of identity. It's simply a consequence of the system: there are genes which survive, and there are genes whose code improves their own odds of survival, and it just so happens that those genes in the former are mostly those that are also in the latter.

Yes, a tautology is true, it's just that it lacks explanatory power, yet atheists present such a tautology as if it explained something. I agree that life wanting to survive is a consequence of the system, but I attribute authorship of the system to God, not to nothing.

Only in a deterministic universe. So what you're effectively saying is, "If we live in a deterministic universe, then the universe we live in is deterministic". Now that's a tautology .

But you're the one saying we live in a deterministic universe. If your electro-chemical thoughts are not determined the same way every other thing is, explain how they're not.

Not at all. The point asserted by a relativist will usually be something everyone agrees on (say, "interracial marriage is not immoral"), and then use the reasoning behind that statement to justify the point they're making (e.g, "If same-sex marriages are immoral, then so too are interracial marriages. Since interracial marriages aren't immoral, then neither are same-sex marriages").
Relativists debate from a mutually agreed point, or from their opponent's views, or something. That doesn't mean they don't think moral codes are ultimately arbitrary and relative.

Well I'm confused, I thought you said moral codes were arbitrary.

You have never experienced the absence of light or warmth, but you are quite obviously capable of experiencing and comprehending light and warmth (and, for that matter, darkness and coldness).

We've all experienced some relative degree of absence of light and warmth.

Happiness is simply an emotion, forced or not. If God chooses to manipulate us into a state of happiness, just because it's forced doesn't mean we're any less happy.

But to my mind, it would mean we're less real.

Consider laughing gas. I've taken it, and I've been more happy than almost any other time in my life. Is it forced? Is it freely chosen? I chose to take the chemical, but I didn't chose its effects.

You know, I was going to bring up chemicals in the previous post. If you had a legal lifetime supply of laughing gas, or heroin for that matter, would you want to live your existence happy that way, or do you rather see more value in experiencing "real life"?

Yes, but I disagree. Free will can be good (insofar as it does everything God wants of it) without allowing for evil. It allows me to walk without flying. It could quite easily allow me to help a starving child, while restricting me from carpet bombing a city.

I disagree that one can be free while on a leash. Plus, we have to distinguish between ability and will. The inability to fly has nothing to do with your will; you're free to will yourself to fly all you want. As to restricting our ability for evil, God very well may do that; after all, humanity does still exist.

You know, more than once on CF I've seen a sceptic ask something to the effect of "if the Bible is the word of God, why doesn't it explain E=MC2? Why doesn't it give more complete, accurate scientific knowledge about the world? Why does it speak of the sun moving around the earth, for example?" But greater knowledge leads to greater technology, and greater technology being employed in an earlier more barbaric time might have been fatal. Some people lament the fact that Harry Truman had the power of the atom bomb at his disposal, but can you imagine that power in the hands of Genghis Kahn or Attila the Hun? It could very well be a great blessing for all our genes that God in His revelation perhaps "dumbed down" descriptions of the physical world.

That said, I'm not even convinced we have free will at all. At best, we have some small influence over our actions.

I think the term "free will" is redundant. If you have will at all, that means you have freedom. You're imagining a deterministic universe, but in order to do so, you have to exclude that tiny part of the universe which is your mind. In previous posts, I tried to explain my idea of a loophole which allows this possibility- God. I'd like to hear you explain your loophole.

In what way? Or rather, in any ways other than Jesus? I don't want to get into a debate about the historicity and divinity of Christ . We're already covering enough topics!

In personal ways. I touched on it in an earlier post.

Even traditionalists demand some magic: the Creation was hardly done through mundane means. But my point was that

Okay, I'll grant that before there was a mundus, there was no mundane.

And I think you mean 'definition', not 'etymology' .

Well it seemed you were saying God uses the normal or boring. If you didn't mean that, you're just saying that God uses worldly things to work in the world, which would seem to me to be, uh...normal?

Wiccan_Child · Sep 2, 2009

Chesterton said:
The problem with your view I think, is that a theist would be a person who knows there is a God, and an atheist would be a person who knows there is no God. Since no one from either camp has ever produced anything showing that they know, we have to assume neither person actually exists, or if they do, their knowledge is due to such personal experience that it could not be described with logic or empiricism. But a theist has an advantage, in that, if a person claims to know there is a God, they could be telling the truth even if they can't verify it. But if a person claims to know there is no God, they could not be telling the truth except by accident, because there's no way at all for them to know their claim is true, because if there is no God, there is no way to ascertain it. If there's no God, there is no means of revelation of that fact.

But that's the point: atheism and theism aren't about knowing whether God exists. It's about whether you believe God exists (knowledge implies belief, but belief doesn't imply knowledge). The theist believes God exists, the strong atheist believes God doesn't exist, and the weak atheist believes neither.

Chesterton said:
I guess you're talking about the old Steady State idea, or the idea of the singularity being a cyclical occurrence? I suppose they're different scientifically but not really different philosophically.

Either will do. The point is that it's nonetheless possible. Even the Big Bang theory doesn't say that the universe began 13.5 billion years ago, only that it's been expanding for that amount of time. What, if anything, went on before then is anybody's guess.

Chesterton said:
Well I thought we were talking about Hell, which is what I meant - eternal happiness or lack thereof. Sure, people can be temporarily happy in this world, though even that is elusive, as evidenced by the suicide rate and the often dysfuntional lives of the rich and famous.

Nonetheless, they can be happy. Is God the source of all happiness, or only that happiness experienced in Heaven?

Chesterton said:
Because we are corrupt, we are all tainted with sin which prohibits our sharing in His happiness. And, you can reject the idea of water, but you can't reject water itself and receive the benefits of water.

But my belief in water doesn't change the fact that it exists, that I need it, and that I can drink it (people drank water long before they believed in the germs that inhabit it). Why does belief in God change anything? Does God stop being the source of happiness for those who don't believe in him? Does it really matter if we 'reject' him? How does one reject a god anyway?

Chesterton said:
For pretty much the same reason I don't question phsyicists about physics. They have more knowledge of the subject than I do. And God is not only smarter but wiser. It's His decision, not mine. I had nothing to do with my coming into being, so no, I don't have a say in what I am. The cosmos is not a democracy. But if I did have a say, I find little appeal in the idea of being a happy robot.

But you would be happy. Is that not the very definition of appeal?

Chesterton said:
Plus there is value in not being satisfied. This is particularly true for Christians, who find value and meaning in suffering.

What meaning is there in African famine? The Iraq war? Hitler's eugenics? These things are natural and man-made atrocities, not lessons for us to retroactively learn while we recline in our armchairs. And if they were, they could be learned in a not-quite-so-painful way. Indeed, most of the lessons put forth can be rendered moot; "Don't kill" ceases to apply if people can't die. "Don't harm" if people can't be hurt. "Don't steal" if people don't care about property or physical resources. Etc.

In other words, I reject the Irenaean theodicy as fundamentally flawed .

Chesterton said:
But the only reason a computer program has to be followed is due to the preliminary intelligence responsible for it. You don't have to make that comparison, but if you do, I think you have to accept what it implies.

On the contrary, I think you're over-extending the comparison. There are obvious limits to any metaphor, analogy, or comparison, and this is one of them. That computer programs are made by an intelligence is irrelevant, since that is not the comparison I'm making.

Chesterton said:
You're implying it left and right; you have to in order to explain life without God.

The whole point is that life can be explained without positing an intelligence. We can explain what matter does and why it does it, but that doesn't mean it's in any way intelligent. Is the rain intelligent, just because we can explain its mechanics?

Chesterton said:
Eyes provide a relative benefit; they're not essential. Nothing is essential, not even life itself.

All benefit is relative . Eyes are beneficial to us, but are a waste of resources to other organisms. Besides, they still provide a benefit, which is all that's needed for a selection pressure to exist.

Chesterton said:
You said my genes will make me feel guilt and shame. Without even using metaphor, you're attributing intelligence, will, purpose and desire to genes.

I really don't see how that follows. Genes don't make you feel those emotions because they are intelligent, wilful, purposeful, or desiring. They do it because the proteins, enzymes, and hormones that they code for interact with your brain in such a way as to cause those emotions. And your genes code for those particular enzymes because their benefit is sufficient to allow their evolution by natural selection.

No intelligence needed.

Chesterton said:
I think "Goddidit" and "it-just-is" are both actual answers. Goddidit is only a placeholder in that it doesn't explain every detail, but why is that important? (Well, except for a scientist.) It's a placeholder the same as if you asked me where I got my computer and I said "at the store". My answer doesn't tell you lots of things, like which store, or how I got to the store, or whether I paid cash or credit or stole it, but the answer is true nonetheless. On the other hand, "it-just-is" is a placeholder for "I don't know".

True. But if "Goddidit" is an explanation, then so too is "it-just-is": it's the same as saying "nothingdidit". Not that nothingness actually did anything, but rather that there was never any thing which did it; it just is. Or, to look at it another way, it says that God didn't do it.

Chesterton said:
I didn't know that - I'm all ears: what did the universe?

The universe before it? A quantum fluctuation 'in' the 'preceding' nothingness? A collision between two (or more) hyper-dimensional m-branes? An intelligent being that may as well be (but is not) God?

Chesterton said:
Yes, a tautology is true, it's just that it lacks explanatory power, yet atheists present such a tautology as if it explained something. I agree that life wanting to survive is a consequence of the system, but I attribute authorship of the system to God, not to nothing.

Neither do we. The system is a consequence of pre-existing systems, which themselves emerged from pre-existing systems, all the way back to the start of the Big Bang. That's as far back as we can look, right now.
But we don't attribute it to nothing. We attribute it to a well-understood system.

Chesterton said:
But you're the one saying we live in a deterministic universe. If your electro-chemical thoughts are not determined the same way every other thing is, explain how they're not.

By quantum mechanics. Things behave indeterminately, but, if you take the appropriate limits, things can be modelled with reasonable accuracy by classical mechanics. Neurology behaves more or less classically; the difference between quantum and classical is too small to have any real impact on how our brains behave.

That said, quantum mechanics allows for things to occur without any prior cause. Thus, by some weird quirk of nature, our brains could do something completely spontaneous, like turn to gold. That's all I meant.

Chesterton said:
Well I'm confused, I thought you said moral codes were arbitrary.

They are. But when debating, the relativist will start with some point everyone agrees upon (everyone, that is, in the discussion). That doesn't mean such an ethical conclusion is objectively right, thus invalidating the relativist's position; rather, it is a conclusion that everyone's come to by whatever means, and doesn't need to be debated.

Chesterton said:
We've all experienced some relative degree of absence of light and warmth.

Relative to a greater amount of light and heat, sure. But the total absence of either is tantamount to death. Likewise, happiness can still be experienced even if we've never ourselves experienced a complete absence of it.
My point is that happiness doesn't have to exist in opposition to some negative. I daresay there are happy people who have never been anything but happy (children spring to mind).

Chesterton said:
But to my mind, it would mean we're less real.

How so? How is it any different to happiness that is freely chosen? The state of the ends is not dependant on the means.

Chesterton said:
You know, I was going to bring up chemicals in the previous post. If you had a legal lifetime supply of laughing gas, or heroin for that matter, would you want to live your existence happy that way, or do you rather see more value in experiencing "real life"?

An interesting point. While heroin can cause unimaginable highs, I think the pleasures of a 'real' life are much better. Heroin cannot give me a family, nor can my use of it make others happy; a real life can.

Chesterton said:
I disagree that one can be free while on a leash. Plus, we have to distinguish between ability and will. The inability to fly has nothing to do with your will; you're free to will yourself to fly all you want. As to restricting our ability for evil, God very well may do that; after all, humanity does still exist.

But not by the grace of God. It is only recently that we have had the destructive capabilities to wipe our species off the planet (though we've always been capable of exterminated entire civilisations in the past), and it is with great struggle that we've had to reign in our governments from using them.

Chesterton said:
You know, more than once on CF I've seen a sceptic ask something to the effect of "if the Bible is the word of God, why doesn't it explain E=MC2? Why doesn't it give more complete, accurate scientific knowledge about the world? Why does it speak of the sun moving around the earth, for example?" But greater knowledge leads to greater technology, and greater technology being employed in an earlier more barbaric time might have been fatal. Some people lament the fact that Harry Truman had the power of the atom bomb at his disposal, but can you imagine that power in the hands of Genghis Kahn or Attila the Hun? It could very well be a great blessing for all our genes that God in His revelation perhaps "dumbed down" descriptions of the physical world.

It's one thing to withhold blueprints for atomic weaponry (or something even more devastating). But why not have clear instructions on how to eradicate disease? Heal broken bones? Ease painful deaths? With a life-expectancy of only 18 and an infant mortality that drove our species to the brink of extinction, it is a wonder why God didn't step in even then.

But, I suppose, you believe he did step in, in some small and undetectable way.

Chesterton said:
I think the term "free will" is redundant. If you have will at all, that means you have freedom. You're imagining a deterministic universe, but in order to do so, you have to exclude that tiny part of the universe which is your mind. In previous posts, I tried to explain my idea of a loophole which allows this possibility- God. I'd like to hear you explain your loophole.

For what, free will? I have absolutely no idea. I have opinions on most things, hypotheses and theories that explain this or that. But, if true free will exists, I have absolutely no idea what it is or how it operates. Nor do I have any idea what 'I' am, the thing that looks out through these fleshy eyes. While everything says it is just another evolved trait, it's nonetheless baffling.

In other words, I don't know. Which, I guess, is part of the reason I'm not a big believer in free will.

Chesterton said:
Okay, I'll grant that before there was a mundus, there was no mundane.

Sorry, I missed off the rest of my sentence. I meant to write:

"Even traditionalists demand some magic: the Creation was hardly done through mundane means. But my point was that the means by which God operates, manipulating the world in such and such a way, is indistinguishable from how things would have operated if God didn't interfere".

For example, God could nudge an oxygen atom slightly to the left, an event which has no real consequence whatsoever. While this is indeed an example of divine intervention, not only is it undetectable, but it is indistinguishable from the entirely natural movement of atoms.

You posit a god that acts in such a way that he will never be noticed. But this of course limits him to whatever nature can do; he will never wink a burning inferno out of existence (thereby saving countless lives) because he will be noticed.

Chesterton said:
Well it seemed you were saying God uses the normal or boring. If you didn't mean that, you're just saying that God uses worldly things to work in the world, which would seem to me to be, uh...normal?

Indeed, and isn't God paranormal? Supernatural? The spiritual to the physical?

Chesterton · Sep 3, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
But that's the point: atheism and theism aren't about knowing whether God exists. It's about whether you believe God exists (knowledge implies belief, but belief doesn't imply knowledge). The theist believes God exists, the strong atheist believes God doesn't exist, and the weak atheist believes neither.

I'm confused again. I thought you said those words were about knowing. So then how does a "weak atheist" differ from an agnostic?

Either will do. The point is that it's nonetheless possible. Even the Big Bang theory doesn't say that the universe began 13.5 billion years ago, only that it's been expanding for that amount of time. What, if anything, went on before then is anybody's guess.

True - so there is either an eternal mind(s) or eternal matter/energy, right? (Even if "our" Big Bang was not the only Big Bang.) Do you agree that there could never have been nothing - that no quirk of nature could take place if there is no nature to quirk? QM and branes can't do anything if they don't exist.

Nonetheless, they can be happy. Is God the source of all happiness, or only that happiness experienced in Heaven?

I'm sure no one is as happy as they'd like to be. I'm not even sure what that means; I don't know if there's an upper limit to happiness.

God is the source of all true happiness; He invented pleasure. But His gifts of temporal pleasures and happiness we can have, should not be mistaken for the source.

But my belief in water doesn't change the fact that it exists, that I need it, and that I can drink it (people drank water long before they believed in the germs that inhabit it). Why does belief in God change anything? Does God stop being the source of happiness for those who don't believe in him? Does it really matter if we 'reject' him? How does one reject a god anyway?

Belief isn't everything, but it's the starting point. And, if He were a tyrant, I guess you couldn't reject Him. But He is a lover, and you can reject a lover.

But you would be happy. Is that not the very definition of appeal?

Well yes when you put it that way, you're right, but, there'd be a high cost involved. The ideal, I think, would to be fully happy while retaining a fully conscious mind and free will.

If I believe all you say about an unintended chemical engineering of life, we are pretty much robots, so I ask you, why aren't we happy? Why do we generate in our minds a desire for something which life doesn't ever seem to provide enough of?

And a related question: why do living things die? Organisms start out on an upward trend regenerating their cells toward more health and strength and energy, then they hit a peak and start going downhill towards death. If we're engineered to live, why doesn't the initial trend continue indefinitely? The processes which did such an exemplary job of creating and sustaining and diversifying life, at some point just give up in every individual. Isn't that strange?

What meaning is there in African famine? The Iraq war? Hitler's eugenics? These things are natural and man-made atrocities, not lessons for us to retroactively learn while we recline in our armchairs. And if they were, they could be learned in a not-quite-so-painful way. Indeed, most of the lessons put forth can be rendered moot; "Don't kill" ceases to apply if people can't die. "Don't harm" if people can't be hurt. "Don't steal" if people don't care about property or physical resources. Etc.

In other words, I reject the Irenaean theodicy as fundamentally flawed .

I can't find meaning in other's suffering, only my own, possibly. But for all we know, God might be setting limits on suffering; maybe pain could be more painful or more frequent were He not.

There's a saying that "there are two sides to every story". That's why modern courts-at-law (at least the better ones) always allow a defendant the right to speak in his own behalf. If we hear of a person, who we otherwise suppose to be good, that they did something bad, it would be wrong of us to pass judgment without hearing his side of the story, i.e., whether he did it, or why he did it, etc. If we hold out that right to our fellow humans, even less should we pass judgment on God until we know. It may all be made clear someday.

On the contrary, I think you're over-extending the comparison. There are obvious limits to any metaphor, analogy, or comparison, and this is one of them. That computer programs are made by an intelligence is irrelevant, since that is not the comparison I'm making.

I don't think it's irrelevant. It's the essential core issue, because, you want me to understand that some chemicals got programmed towards some purpose, but you say there was no programmer and no purpose. Some chemicals just did something. It's "it-just-happened", the atheist version of Goddidit.

The whole point is that life can be explained without positing an intelligence. We can explain what matter does and why it does it, but that doesn't mean it's in any way intelligent. Is the rain intelligent, just because we can explain its mechanics?

But scientific explanations do not rule out an intelligence. Yes we can explain a lot about what matter does, but no, we can't explain why it does it.

Is rain natural just because we can explain its mechanics? If we fully understood the mechanics of all phenomena of the universe, would that itself be a basis to conclude nature is natural?

I really don't see how that follows. Genes don't make you feel those emotions because they are intelligent, wilful, purposeful, or desiring. They do it because the proteins, enzymes, and hormones that they code for interact with your brain in such a way as to cause those emotions. And your genes code for those particular enzymes because their benefit is sufficient to allow their evolution by natural selection.

No intelligence needed.

Why don't I feel guilt and shame whenever I hear of any stranger dying? Do these chemicals know whether I could have helped the stranger, and how and why would they differentiate between a situation where I could have helped and one where I couldn't have helped? Do you see what I'm saying? - "I" know whether I could have helped (whatever "I" is) - the chemical processes interact with my consciousness, they are not themselves my consciousness.

And what about criminals? You or I (hopefully) would feel shame at not helping another, but some people rob and kill others. What's different about their proteins, enzymes and hormones?

True. But if "Goddidit" is an explanation, then so too is "it-just-is": it's the same as saying "nothingdidit". Not that nothingness actually did anything, but rather that there was never any thing which did it; it just is. Or, to look at it another way, it says that God didn't do it.

Okay. If we agree our choices are "Goddidit" or "nothingdidit", I'm satisfied with my choice of belief. No matter how implausible, unlikely or bizarre the idea of an eternal God is, to me, the alternative is more so.

The universe before it? A quantum fluctuation 'in' the 'preceding' nothingness? A collision between two (or more) hyper-dimensional m-branes? An intelligent being that may as well be (but is not) God?

Alright, but all those raise the same question you'd ask the aboriginal tribesman - what's the turtle standing on, or what caused the cause?

Neither do we. The system is a consequence of pre-existing systems, which themselves emerged from pre-existing systems, all the way back to the start of the Big Bang. That's as far back as we can look, right now.
But we don't attribute it to nothing. We attribute it to a well-understood system.

The origin of life has been attributed to a well-understood system?

By quantum mechanics. Things behave indeterminately, but, if you take the appropriate limits, things can be modelled with reasonable accuracy by classical mechanics. Neurology behaves more or less classically; the difference between quantum and classical is too small to have any real impact on how our brains behave.

That said, quantum mechanics allows for things to occur without any prior cause. Thus, by some weird quirk of nature, our brains could do something completely spontaneous, like turn to gold. That's all I meant.

Does that type of spontaneity occur?

They are. But when debating, the relativist will start with some point everyone agrees upon (everyone, that is, in the discussion). That doesn't mean such an ethical conclusion is objectively right, thus invalidating the relativist's position; rather, it is a conclusion that everyone's come to by whatever means, and doesn't need to be debated.

I think I understand what you're saying, but the idea of debating a moral position has to involve the idea that "I am objectively right". Otherwise, you're saying "I'm subjectively right", and that would amount to a forfeit of the debate.

Seriously, if I were debating a person who claimed there was no objective right or good, I'd have to ask "then why are you debating?" I suppose the answer would be that he wants to argue for some position which would be a means to some end, but if he refuses to admit that he sees his end as objectively right or good, I'd ask again "then why do you want to advocate for it?" And this would go on until he either admitted that he really isn't all that relativist and he believes his idea is "right", or else he admits he simply likes his end. If he merely likes his end purpose, there's no debate to be had; he might as well try to argue me into having the same favorite color as him.

Relative to a greater amount of light and heat, sure. But the total absence of either is tantamount to death. Likewise, happiness can still be experienced even if we've never ourselves experienced a complete absence of it.
My point is that happiness doesn't have to exist in opposition to some negative. I daresay there are happy people who have never been anything but happy (children spring to mind).

But I think the happiness of children occurs precisely because of the absence of negatives. They don't have to work, pay taxes, they don't know they're supposed to keep up with the Jones's, are not involved in romantic relationships which confuse their minds and break their hearts...there are dozens of things which make adult life toil and trouble to which children are not yet subject.

How so? How is it any different to happiness that is freely chosen? The state of the ends is not dependant on the means.

Maybe less real wasn't what I meant, I guess I meant less alive, in the way that we are more alive than trees. Trees are alive, but having no consciousness, we presume trees can be neither happy nor sad. We humans have greater capacity of consciousness, therefore greater capacity for both suffering and joy, and I wouldn't want to relinquish any of my capacity.

An interesting point. While heroin can cause unimaginable highs, I think the pleasures of a 'real' life are much better. Heroin cannot give me a family, nor can my use of it make others happy; a real life can.

I agree.

But not by the grace of God. It is only recently that we have had the destructive capabilities to wipe our species off the planet (though we've always been capable of exterminated entire civilisations in the past), and it is with great struggle that we've had to reign in our governments from using them.

God couldn't cause people to engage in great struggles?

It's one thing to withhold blueprints for atomic weaponry (or something even more devastating). But why not have clear instructions on how to eradicate disease? Heal broken bones? Ease painful deaths? With a life-expectancy of only 18 and an infant mortality that drove our species to the brink of extinction, it is a wonder why God didn't step in even then.

But, I suppose, you believe he did step in, in some small and undetectable way.[/quote]

Well I think He would step in when the results would be devastating on the whole. But the other stuff just amounts to asking why isn't life better. But that's a relative thing, you know, maybe it already is better; maybe it could be a lot worse.

For what, free will? I have absolutely no idea. I have opinions on most things, hypotheses and theories that explain this or that. But, if true free will exists, I have absolutely no idea what it is or how it operates. Nor do I have any idea what 'I' am, the thing that looks out through these fleshy eyes. While everything says it is just another evolved trait, it's nonetheless baffling.

In other words, I don't know. Which, I guess, is part of the reason I'm not a big believer in free will.

Fair enough.

Sorry, I missed off the rest of my sentence. I meant to write:

"Even traditionalists demand some magic: the Creation was hardly done through mundane means. But my point was that the means by which God operates, manipulating the world in such and such a way, is indistinguishable from how things would have operated if God didn't interfere".

For example, God could nudge an oxygen atom slightly to the left, an event which has no real consequence whatsoever. While this is indeed an example of divine intervention, not only is it undetectable, but it is indistinguishable from the entirely natural movement of atoms.

You posit a god that acts in such a way that he will never be noticed. But this of course limits him to whatever nature can do; he will never wink a burning inferno out of existence (thereby saving countless lives) because he will be noticed.

How do you know what nature can do? Above, you said our brains could turn into gold; the Bible says the Nile once turned into blood. But, even if God limits himself to what nature can do, that's simply not evidence of anything. If London gets 10 inches of rain on a given day, we don't know who did it - nature or God.

Indeed, and isn't God paranormal? Supernatural? The spiritual to the physical?

Well yes. But I guess paranormal for us is normal for Him.

Wiccan_Child · Sep 4, 2009

Chesterton said:
I'm confused again. I thought you said those words were about knowing. So then how does a "weak atheist" differ from an agnostic?

A weak atheist affirms neither the existence nor non-existence of God; they neither believe they exist, nor believe they don't exist. They remain neutral.
An agnostic says that we cannot, even in principle, know whether God exists.

Gnosticism refers to knowledge, while theism refers to belief. That's why you can have agnostic atheists, agnostic theists, gnostic atheists, and gnostic theists.

Chesterton said:
True - so there is either an eternal mind(s) or eternal matter/energy, right? (Even if "our" Big Bang was not the only Big Bang.) Do you agree that there could never have been nothing - that no quirk of nature could take place if there is no nature to quirk? QM and branes can't do anything if they don't exist.

Indeed they don't, but my personal belief is nothingness did exist (insofar as 'it' can exist at all). I don't see why there couldn't be a beginning to everything; I don't see why there must be something that has existed for all eternity, not least because time itself is mutable.

Chesterton said:
I'm sure no one is as happy as they'd like to be. I'm not even sure what that means; I don't know if there's an upper limit to happiness.

But again, even if we're not completely happy, we can still be partially happy. So I still don't think God is the source of happiness, that we need God to be happy (eternally or otherwise), etc.

Chesterton said:
Belief isn't everything, but it's the starting point. And, if He were a tyrant, I guess you couldn't reject Him. But He is a lover, and you can reject a lover.

Lover's don't let you suffer if you reject them. Well, the bunny boilers do...

Chesterton said:
Well yes when you put it that way, you're right, but, there'd be a high cost involved. The ideal, I think, would to be fully happy while retaining a fully conscious mind and free will.

If I believe all you say about an unintended chemical engineering of life, we are pretty much robots, so I ask you, why aren't we happy? Why do we generate in our minds a desire for something which life doesn't ever seem to provide enough of?

For the same reason that the tastiest things in the world are also the rarest: by giving us pleasure when we find them, we are more inclined to seek them out. It's like asking why we feel pain. We feel it because it is useful to feel it, albeit not particularly pleasant.

Chesterton said:
And a related question: why do living things die? Organisms start out on an upward trend regenerating their cells toward more health and strength and energy, then they hit a peak and start going downhill towards death. If we're engineered to live, why doesn't the initial trend continue indefinitely? The processes which did such an exemplary job of creating and sustaining and diversifying life, at some point just give up in every individual. Isn't that strange?

In nature, organisms rarely live to old age; there are far too many dangers. That's why our bodies fail so spectacularly when we get old: it is only relatively recently that we've lived old enough for these things to happen. Selection pressures can only shape our evolution if they exist; Alzheimer's or osteoporosis can't be selected against if it doesn't actually occur in any members of the population. Our bodies fail because they were never meant to alive that long.

Chesterton said:
I can't find meaning in other's suffering, only my own, possibly. But for all we know, God might be setting limits on suffering; maybe pain could be more painful or more frequent were He not.

There's a saying that "there are two sides to every story". That's why modern courts-at-law (at least the better ones) always allow a defendant the right to speak in his own behalf. If we hear of a person, who we otherwise suppose to be good, that they did something bad, it would be wrong of us to pass judgment without hearing his side of the story, i.e., whether he did it, or why he did it, etc. If we hold out that right to our fellow humans, even less should we pass judgment on God until we know. It may all be made clear someday.

Indeed it might. God is perfectly capable of explaining his complete absence from human affairs, yet he remains just that: absent. He makes no attempt to justify his inaction.

I would love for someone to give me a consistent theodicy, a believable explanation for why God lets us suffer, but I find it telling that no one has yet been able to.

Chesterton said:
I don't think it's irrelevant. It's the essential core issue, because, you want me to understand that some chemicals got programmed towards some purpose, but you say there was no programmer and no purpose. Some chemicals just did something. It's "it-just-happened", the atheist version of Goddidit.

Hardly, but again, that's not the point. I never said they were programmed towards some purpose; I said that genes are expressed because that's just how the system works. I compared it to a computer program, but I'm really starting to regret.

Chesterton said:
But scientific explanations do not rule out an intelligence. Yes we can explain a lot about what matter does, but no, we can't explain why it does it.

Is rain natural just because we can explain its mechanics? If we fully understood the mechanics of all phenomena of the universe, would that itself be a basis to conclude nature is natural?

If you can explain the distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural', I could give you an answer. Is 'supernatural' anything from God? Is it anything we don't yet understand? Is it will-o'-the-wisps and ghosts?

Chesterton said:
Why don't I feel guilt and shame whenever I hear of any stranger dying? Do these chemicals know whether I could have helped the stranger, and how and why would they differentiate between a situation where I could have helped and one where I couldn't have helped? Do you see what I'm saying? - "I" know whether I could have helped (whatever "I" is) - the chemical processes interact with my consciousness, they are not themselves my consciousness.

Well, obviously. Do you consciously think "Oh, that was unfortunate, I'm going to send a rush of guilt hormones round my system", or does it happen despite your efforts to quell it?
I (hopefully) explained how and why emotions evolve, but I didn't explain how the body knows when to emote. That, my friend, is the job of your brain.

Chesterton said:
And what about criminals? You or I (hopefully) would feel shame at not helping another, but some people rob and kill others. What's different about their proteins, enzymes and hormones?

That's the question, really, isn't it? What drives criminals to do the things they do? Why do people rape, steal, murder?

Chesterton said:
Okay. If we agree our choices are "Goddidit" or "nothingdidit", I'm satisfied with my choice of belief. No matter how implausible, unlikely or bizarre the idea of an eternal God is, to me, the alternative is more so.

How so?

Chesterton said:
Alright, but all those raise the same question you'd ask the aboriginal tribesman - what's the turtle standing on, or what caused the cause?

The point is that there isn't a cause. The turtle isn't standing on anything.

Chesterton said:
The origin of life has been attributed to a well-understood system?

Yes: the chemistry of pre-biotic Earth. The theory isn't as airtight as evolution, but it's accepted by the scientific community nonetheless.

Chesterton said:
Does that type of spontaneity occur?

Yes, in that there are many phenomena which only occur because of it. No, in that something like a brain turning to gold is far too unlikely to ever really happen. Our brains could do that, but it's so unlikely that we can safely ignore it.
Spontaneity occurs in things like quantum tunnelling, which is what makes atomic spectroscopy work, and also makes the Sun about 100 times hotter than it might otherwise be.

Chesterton said:
I think I understand what you're saying, but the idea of debating a moral position has to involve the idea that "I am objectively right". Otherwise, you're saying "I'm subjectively right", and that would amount to a forfeit of the debate.

Seriously, if I were debating a person who claimed there was no objective right or good, I'd have to ask "then why are you debating?" I suppose the answer would be that he wants to argue for some position which would be a means to some end, but if he refuses to admit that he sees his end as objectively right or good, I'd ask again "then why do you want to advocate for it?" And this would go on until he either admitted that he really isn't all that relativist and he believes his idea is "right", or else he admits he simply likes his end. If he merely likes his end purpose, there's no debate to be had; he might as well try to argue me into having the same favorite color as him.

The relativist can do more than just debate an ethical point. He could debate the nature of morality itself, or something. Besides, the relativist isn't trying to convince you of a position he himself considers arbitrary; like you said, that would be like convincing someone to change their favourite colour.
But being a moral relativist doesn't mean you have no ethics at all. They still have a moral code. I'm a relativist, but I still think that torture is immoral.

Chesterton said:
But I think the happiness of children occurs precisely because of the absence of negatives. They don't have to work, pay taxes, they don't know they're supposed to keep up with the Jones's, are not involved in romantic relationships which confuse their minds and break their hearts...there are dozens of things which make adult life toil and trouble to which children are not yet subject.

Exactly: unhappiness isn't the absence of happiness or pleasure, but the presence of pain and suffering.

Chesterton said:
Maybe less real wasn't what I meant, I guess I meant less alive, in the way that we are more alive than trees. Trees are alive, but having no consciousness, we presume trees can be neither happy nor sad. We humans have greater capacity of consciousness, therefore greater capacity for both suffering and joy, and I wouldn't want to relinquish any of my capacity.

But that isn't dependant on free will. Relinquishing your free will doesn't mean you're any less concious than you are right now.

Chesterton said:
God couldn't cause people to engage in great struggles?

He could, but that begs the question of why. Why would God cause people to enact something when he could just do it himself? It's needlessly wasteful.
But my point is that humans have given us our monumental achievements. As you point out, at best all God did was nudge us in the right direction.

Chesterton said:
Well I think He would step in when the results would be devastating on the whole. But the other stuff just amounts to asking why isn't life better. But that's a relative thing, you know, maybe it already is better; maybe it could be a lot worse.

Oh, it could definitely be a lot worse. But if this is God trying his best to make the world a better place, he's not exactly doing a very good job.

Chesterton said:
How do you know what nature can do? Above, you said our brains could turn into gold; the Bible says the Nile once turned into blood. But, even if God limits himself to what nature can do, that's simply not evidence of anything. If London gets 10 inches of rain on a given day, we don't know who did it - nature or God.

Nature did it; what, exactly, is God supposed to have done?

Chesterton said:
Well yes. But I guess paranormal for us is normal for Him.

Hence why I reject the whole dichotomy as meaningless.

ephraimanesti · Sep 4, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
Nature did it; what, exactly, is God supposed to have done?

Perhaps God is an Eternally Existing, Limitless and Boundless, All-Encompassing, Sentient, Loving, Proactive, Engaged and Engaging, Self-Revealing, and Infinitively Beneficent Quantum Field in which all things created come to be as they are lovingly and tenderly thought into existence by Him and Who, above all, desires personal interaction and Loving engagement with all that He has made.

May God forgive any hint of levity in the above!
LORD, WHATEVER YOUR FORM, YOU ARE AWESOME BEYOND OUR UNDERSTANDING
OR THE POWERLESSNESS OF OUR DESCRIPTIVE WORDS!

ephraim

Chesterton · Sep 7, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
A weak atheist affirms neither the existence nor non-existence of God; they neither believe they exist, nor believe they don't exist. They remain neutral.
An agnostic says that we cannot, even in principle, know whether God exists.

Gnosticism refers to knowledge, while theism refers to belief. That's why you can have agnostic atheists, agnostic theists, gnostic atheists, and gnostic theists.

Goodness, these are the tedious semantics we said we didn't want, but... think of it this way: your definition of agnostic is a contradiction, or, it is actually atheism. If a person takes the philosophical position that we cannot know whether God exists, then how do they respond to a person who might say "I know God exists"? The agnostic's response has to be "We cannot know whether God exists, so no, you don't know that". The agnostic would have to say the claimant is either deluded or lying, because the only other choice, that the claimant actually knows God exists, is impossible according to agnosticism. Therefore, an agnostic is actually an atheist, because according to your view, he has to believe that there is no God which could make Himself known to any person.

As I said, etymologically you're correct, but the customary usage of "agnosticism" means not knowing whether to believe there's a God, not asserting that no one can know whether there's a God.

Indeed they don't, but my personal belief is nothingness did exist (insofar as 'it' can exist at all). I don't see why there couldn't be a beginning to everything; I don't see why there must be something that has existed for all eternity, not least because time itself is mutable.

I wish you could elaborate on that idea, or define how you mean "nothing". I've seen you in other posts claim something can come from nothing, and attribute that to QM, but that means your idea of nothing is really something: mechanical processes, and I suppose some physical "stuff" on which the processes can act.

But again, even if we're not completely happy, we can still be partially happy. So I still don't think God is the source of happiness, that we need God to be happy (eternally or otherwise), etc.

If God created or allowed for the creation of the wheat and other stuff which comprises burritos (excuse me, chip butties) which make you happy, then you need God to be even partially happy.

(I had to look up what a "chip butty" was. I'm surprised that's not an American concoction. It sounds deliciously unhealthy. )

Lover's don't let you suffer if you reject them. Well, the bunny boilers do...

But if you reject love, you will suffer. (Now here's some good semantics - notice it's your will.) The only way God has of not letting us suffer is by loving us, but if we will not have His love, we will suffer.

A bunny boiler (something else I had to look up) does not love. That's nearly the opposite of love - that's pure selfishness.

For the same reason that the tastiest things in the world are also the rarest: by giving us pleasure when we find them, we are more inclined to seek them out. It's like asking why we feel pain. We feel it because it is useful to feel it, albeit not particularly pleasant.

But I'm asking about the reason for the desire for the effect, not the reason for the effect itself. If happiness is desired only because it's useful, we should desire both happiness and pain; we should desire whatever's useful. And that's not terribly farfetched. Are you familiar with the Italian Futurists, who advocated violence and destruction for their own sakes, and advocated war because they called war "the hygiene of the world"?

In nature, organisms rarely live to old age; there are far too many dangers. That's why our bodies fail so spectacularly when we get old: it is only relatively recently that we've lived old enough for these things to happen. Selection pressures can only shape our evolution if they exist; Alzheimer's or osteoporosis can't be selected against if it doesn't actually occur in any members of the population. Our bodies fail because they were never meant to alive that long.

Of course there have always been short lives, but we have to assume there have always been lucky long lives too. So, I'm not sure you addressed the question, except in that last mysterious sentence about our bodies not being meant for something... I know, it's another metaphor which you really didn't mean literally, but I'm continually struck by how all scientific and evolutionary metaphors seem bound to suggest previously existing religious ideas, and are so hard to avoid. You may say all these metaphors are just a shortcut "way of talking" but I can't help thinking, a shortcut to what? A "way" to what?

Indeed it might. God is perfectly capable of explaining his complete absence from human affairs, yet he remains just that: absent. He makes no attempt to justify his inaction.

His absence from human affairs is not a fact.

I would love for someone to give me a consistent theodicy, a believable explanation for why God lets us suffer, but I find it telling that no one has yet been able to.

I would love that too. I know, though, that suffering pushes us toward God. Pain makes us realize we need God, pain can make us want God. Recall the seemingly odd things Jesus said, such as blessed are they who mourn, blessed are the poor, and that it's nearly impossible for a rich man to enter heaven. This world is not our home; but when we are completely comfortable here, it's easy to mistakenly think it is, which is perhaps the worst mistake we can make, worse than any temporal suffering.

Honestly I think the problem of suffering is really a problem for naturalists, in fact a problem for everyone except Christians, who understand that we are fallen. For a naturalist, we humans are where we're "supposed" to be, according to the laws of the universe. But Christian optimism in the face of suffering is based on the fact that we are corrupt beings in a corrupt world, and we don't fit in here. Or as G.K.C. said, "I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal...But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity." Do you know the Christmas cartoon "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" with its Island of Misfit Toys? Earth is that island.

There's something else though. We believe an evil being is somehow the "prince" of this world, and there can be evil forces at work here. Offhand you may think I'm contradicting myself by saying suffering has a good end and yet can be from Satan. But God can make use of evil; God and His plan are insuperable. Three Christian ideas come into play: the scripture that says "with God, all things work together for good", the idea that God transforms all things, even bad things, and the idea that evil doesn't exist on it's own, that all evil is perverted good.

A parallel to God using evil is the Church's adoption of un-Christian things for itself. Some people try and use as evidence against Christianity the fact that early on it co-opted pagan things from the surrounding cultures, e.g., the date used for Christmas. This criticism betrays a genuine lack of understanding because, if we had our way, we Christians would co-opt everything, in fact we'd have to. If Christianity had taken root in India, we might possibly portray angels with blue skin color. There's nothing inherently bad, except for bad itself. Anyway, the point, and it's writ large from Genesis to Revelation, is that God uses everything, because everything is His.

Hardly, but again, that's not the point. I never said they were programmed towards some purpose; I said that genes are expressed because that's just how the system works. I compared it to a computer program, but I'm really starting to regret.

Sorry about that. But...genes are "expressed"?

[See the earlier comment about science metaphors. ]

If you can explain the distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural', I could give you an answer. Is 'supernatural' anything from God? Is it anything we don't yet understand? Is it will-o'-the-wisps and ghosts?

I could've said that differently - "natural" is a tricky word. At least in one sense it means to me, that which is not interferred with by intelligence or reason. I guess you see those things as natural themselves, but I think I can show a distinction with something like the idea of the toothbrush. Brushing our teeth is an expression of intelligence and reason interfering with our teeth's natural state. If we never brushed, and left our teeth to their natural state, after some time we likely wouldn't have any teeth.

But no, I don't think "supernatural" is just anything we don't yet understand.

Well, obviously. Do you consciously think "Oh, that was unfortunate, I'm going to send a rush of guilt hormones round my system", or does it happen despite your efforts to quell it?
I (hopefully) explained how and why emotions evolve, but I didn't explain how the body knows when to emote. That, my friend, is the job of your brain.

I'd say more specifically the conscience rather than the brain, but okay.

That's the question, really, isn't it? What drives criminals to do the things they do? Why do people rape, steal, murder?

My answer is that we are not as thoroughly chemically engineered as you claim. We are made of matter, and are free moral agents. As if by magic.

How so?

Because we humans are creative - we make artifacts which would not exist without our intelligence and reason; we make chairs and weapons and art and music, all kinds of things. So there is experiential evidence; we've seen ordered things made by intelligence, we haven't seen nothing make anything (including Casimir).

The point is that there isn't a cause. The turtle isn't standing on anything.

I guess this is similar to your second quote above where you say you believe nothingness did exist, so I'll see what you may say about that. But it seems writing off anything as uncaused is very unscientific. "Nothingdidit" again.

Yes: the chemistry of pre-biotic Earth. The theory isn't as airtight as evolution, but it's accepted by the scientific community nonetheless.

You're talking about the general term "abiogenesis" as a well-understood system?

Yes, in that there are many phenomena which only occur because of it. No, in that something like a brain turning to gold is far too unlikely to ever really happen. Our brains could do that, but it's so unlikely that we can safely ignore it.
Spontaneity occurs in things like quantum tunnelling, which is what makes atomic spectroscopy work, and also makes the Sun about 100 times hotter than it might otherwise be.

Good thing God makes those particles unpredictable. You physicists would eventually be super-alchemists turning rocks into gold, and that would not be good for the world economy.

The relativist can do more than just debate an ethical point. He could debate the nature of morality itself, or something. Besides, the relativist isn't trying to convince you of a position he himself considers arbitrary; like you said, that would be like convincing someone to change their favourite colour.
But being a moral relativist doesn't mean you have no ethics at all. They still have a moral code. I'm a relativist, but I still think that torture is immoral.

I agree that relativists have moral codes.

Exactly: unhappiness isn't the absence of happiness or pleasure, but the presence of pain and suffering.

Okay, sorry, I think I misread your previous post.

But that isn't dependant on free will. Relinquishing your free will doesn't mean you're any less concious than you are right now.

Will and consciousness must be related to some extent. When we're asleep we're much less willful; we can't choose to do anything because we're unconscious. The idea of reliquishing will while retaining our same level of consciousness reminds me of an audience member used in a nightclub hypnotist's act. The hypnotist alleges that the person is fully conscious, but the person is unable to act on their own; they just stand there until the hypnotist says "act like a chicken" or something, and then the person acts like a chicken.

He could, but that begs the question of why. Why would God cause people to enact something when he could just do it himself? It's needlessly wasteful.

If God's going to hold our hands and micro-manage our wills regarding everything, why create free beings at all?

But my point is that humans have given us our monumental achievements. As you point out, at best all God did was nudge us in the right direction.

I don't know what achievements you mean; we were talking about the fact that we haven't killed ourselves off. As I said earlier, science does nice stuff, including medical science which improves quality of physical life for people. But people will still live a while and then die. I guess it comes down to your worldview; for an atheist who believes this is all we've got, those nice little things mean a lot more than they do for a person who doesn't believe that overcoming nature really solves anything in the great scheme of things. And considering human nature, if nature were ever fully controllable, it seems inevitable that some kind of nightmare scenario would follow.

Certainly humans have discovered and done things which bring monumental changes, but not overall critical changes. And I'm not disparaging science, but before there was the wheel, or the printing press, or airplanes or computers, humans ate, slept, worked, fought, procreated, entertained themselves. pretty much all the things we do today.

Oh, it could definitely be a lot worse. But if this is God trying his best to make the world a better place, he's not exactly doing a very good job.

He might step in to protect us from extinction, but I don't think He's trying to make the world a better place. The world is pretty nice, but we people can be pretty lousy.

Nature did it; what, exactly, is God supposed to have done?

He caused nature to do it.

Hence why I reject the whole dichotomy as meaningless.

?

Wiccan_Child · Sep 9, 2009

Chesterton said:
Goodness, these are the tedious semantics we said we didn't want,

Hah, aye.

Chesterton said:
If a person takes the philosophical position that we cannot know whether God exists, then how do they respond to a person who might say "I know God exists"? The agnostic's response has to be "We cannot know whether God exists, so no, you don't know that".

Agreed.

Chesterton said:
Therefore, an agnostic is actually an atheist, because according to your view, he has to believe that there is no God which could make Himself known to any person.

No: theism does not imply gnosticism. Saying you believe God exists isn't the same as saying you know God exists. For example, epistemologically speaking, I do not know you exist, but I nonetheless believe you exist. Likewise, the theist can believe God exists but still acknowledge that she doesn't know God exists.

So you agnosticism doesn't necessarily imply atheism.

Chesterton said:
As I said, etymologically you're correct, but the customary usage of "agnosticism" means not knowing whether to believe there's a God, not asserting that no one can know whether there's a God.

I disagree, for all the good it will do .

Chesterton said:
I wish you could elaborate on that idea, or define how you mean "nothing". I've seen you in other posts claim something can come from nothing, and attribute that to QM, but that means your idea of nothing is really something: mechanical processes, and I suppose some physical "stuff" on which the processes can act.

I'll try.
By 'nothingness' I mean the complete absence of any thing, including the spacetime continuum. Even the so-called vacuum of space isn't a total vacuum (there's actually a very low density plasma permeating throughout space). Quantum mechanics shows that events can occur without prior cause (or, at least, that causality isn't as concrete as we might naïvely assume).
That is, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, something could pop into existence without any prior cause. The universe could have come into being spontaneously at a time when no other thing existed (insofar as 'time' makes any sense).

This doesn't mean something came from nothing, since nothingness itself can't do anything; it's not even worthy of the 'it' pronoun, but English is a limited language.

Chesterton said:
If God created or allowed for the creation of the wheat and other stuff which comprises burritos (excuse me, chip butties) which make you happy, then you need God to be even partially happy.

Only if God is necessary for the existence of wheat, which I think is far from proven.

Chesterton said:
(I had to look up what a "chip butty" was. I'm surprised that's not an American concoction. It sounds deliciously unhealthy. )

It's like a heart-attack wrapped in bread.

Chesterton said:
But if you reject love, you will suffer. (Now here's some good semantics - notice it's your will.) The only way God has of not letting us suffer is by loving us, but if we will not have His love, we will suffer.

I find it hard to believe that the God who created the universe itself, is so limited. A few questions: why will I suffer if I reject love? Does this just refer to God's love, or any form of love? How, exactly, does one 'reject' love? Why does God's love for us in any way affect human suffering? Isn't inaction itself proof that God doesn't love us, much as a father's inaction at his daughter burning in a fire proof that he doesn't actually love her?

I'm all for the touchy-feely inner fuzz, but throwing around nebulous terms doesn't change the facts.

Chesterton said:
A bunny boiler (something else I had to look up) does not love. That's nearly the opposite of love - that's pure selfishness.

Nonetheless, the boiler loves their target. Love can be one-way, often with tragic results.

Chesterton said:
But I'm asking about the reason for the desire for the effect, not the reason for the effect itself. If happiness is desired only because it's useful, we should desire both happiness and pain; we should desire whatever's useful. And that's not terribly farfetched. Are you familiar with the Italian Futurists, who advocated violence and destruction for their own sakes, and advocated war because they called war "the hygiene of the world"?

I am not, though negative utilitarianism says that we should eliminate all pain, and the best way to do that is to kill everyone painlessly.

Anyway, we desire the effect because pleasure evolved to be, well, pleasurable. Pain is useful, but only if it is something we desire to avoid. We feel pain when we step on something sharp or too hot because that's our body's way of saying "Oi, that's damaging, don't do that". What would be the point of pain if we enjoyed it?

Chesterton said:
Of course there have always been short lives, but we have to assume there have always been lucky long lives too. So, I'm not sure you addressed the question, except in that last mysterious sentence about our bodies not being meant for something... I know, it's another metaphor which you really didn't mean literally, but I'm continually struck by how all scientific and evolutionary metaphors seem bound to suggest previously existing religious ideas, and are so hard to avoid. You may say all these metaphors are just a shortcut "way of talking" but I can't help thinking, a shortcut to what? A "way" to what?

A way to articulate complex ideas and concepts. Why should we avoid metaphor if it can expedite the process? We use metaphor because English is idiomatic in nature; we've borrowed heavily from other languages, and it grew up steeped in Christianity.

Chesterton said:
His absence from human affairs is not a fact.

If you can demonstrate that God is present, I'm all ears. But despite what the adage says, an absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I agree with Dawkins when he says that, if God exists, we would expect to see a very different universe.

Chesterton said:
[snip for brevity]

Does God use evil because he has no other choice, or because it's convenient? If the former, how can the creator of the universe be so limited in ability? If the latter, why would a loving deity resort to evil when there are more humane means at its disposal?

Chesterton said:
Sorry about that. But...genes are "expressed"?

[See the earlier comment about science metaphors. ]

It's not a metaphor, it's the correct, scientific term for a when a gene's nucleotide sequence is used to make a protein. It's 'expressed' in that the protein is the cell's way of using the information stored on the gene.

Chesterton said:
I could've said that differently - "natural" is a tricky word. At least in one sense it means to me, that which is not interferred with by intelligence or reason. I guess you see those things as natural themselves, but I think I can show a distinction with something like the idea of the toothbrush. Brushing our teeth is an expression of intelligence and reason interfering with our teeth's natural state. If we never brushed, and left our teeth to their natural state, after some time we likely wouldn't have any teeth.

Lots of animals brush there teeth

Chesterton said:
But no, I don't think "supernatural" is just anything we don't yet understand.

Then what is it? Anything that's been influenced by an intelligence?

Chesterton said:
My answer is that we are not as thoroughly chemically engineered as you claim. We are made of matter, and are free moral agents. As if by magic.

Perhaps, but I've yet to see any indication that this magic ingredient does indeed exist. I contend that we are chemistry through and through because that is all we've found evidence of: chemistry.

Chesterton said:
Because we humans are creative - we make artifacts which would not exist without our intelligence and reason; we make chairs and weapons and art and music, all kinds of things. So there is experiential evidence; we've seen ordered things made by intelligence, we haven't seen nothing make anything (including Casimir).

And nor shall we: we are in a state of somethingness, not nothingness. We haven't seen nothing make anything because we have no experience of nothingness; we've never seen it, period.

Chesterton said:
I guess this is similar to your second quote above where you say you believe nothingness did exist, so I'll see what you may say about that. But it seems writing off anything as uncaused is very unscientific. "Nothingdidit" again.

Indeed, which is why we don't. Science doesn't comment on the origin of the universe because we can only look back ~13.5 billion years. Looking beyond that requires a more accurate understanding of reality which we just don't have yet.

Chesterton said:
You're talking about the general term "abiogenesis" as a well-understood system?

Yes. There are a few competing theories, but there is a consensus on when it happened, the conditions under which it happened, and even the broad mechanism by which it happened.

Chesterton said:
I agree that relativists have moral codes.

Do you agree that, because their codes differ, there is no 'true' code? That the codes are as arbitrary as anyone elses?

Chesterton said:
Will and consciousness must be related to some extent. When we're asleep we're much less willful; we can't choose to do anything because we're unconscious. The idea of reliquishing will while retaining our same level of consciousness reminds me of an audience member used in a nightclub hypnotist's act. The hypnotist alleges that the person is fully conscious, but the person is unable to act on their own; they just stand there until the hypnotist says "act like a chicken" or something, and then the person acts like a chicken.

Hmm, I guess. But just because you lose your will when you lose conciousness, doesn't mean you lose conciousness when you lose your will. Imagine someone else controlling your body, making you speak, eat, and otherwise go about your business; you'd have no will, but you'd have conciousness.

Chesterton said:
If God's going to hold our hands and micro-manage our wills regarding everything, why create free beings at all?

Because we quite clearly cannot take care of ourselves. Under the Christian paradigm, we've buggered the entire universe up just by eating a piece of fruit!
Children have free will too, but we humans are at least smart enough to boss them about. Just because they can exercise their free will and fire a gun doesn't mean we should let them.

Chesterton said:
I don't know what achievements you mean; we were talking about the fact that we haven't killed ourselves off. As I said earlier, science does nice stuff, including medical science which improves quality of physical life for people. But people will still live a while and then die. I guess it comes down to your worldview; for an atheist who believes this is all we've got, those nice little things mean a lot more than they do for a person who doesn't believe that overcoming nature really solves anything in the great scheme of things.

I agree. The humanist believes that improving the quantity and quality of human life is an end unto itself, while the non-humanist theist doesn't see any goal in human endeavour.

And considering human nature, if nature were ever fully controllable, it seems inevitable that some kind of nightmare scenario would follow.

Certainly humans have discovered and done things which bring monumental changes, but not overall critical changes. And I'm not disparaging science, but before there was the wheel, or the printing press, or airplanes or computers, humans ate, slept, worked, fought, procreated, entertained themselves. pretty much all the things we do today.[/quote]
True, but humanity is vastly improved on both an individual and on a societal level. Human life is longer and better, and there are simply more of us. Way back when, humanity bottlenecked with only ~1000 individuals who lived to about 18 in disease and malnourishment. Now, we have ~6.7 billion individuals living to their mid-70s, and we've eradicated disease and malnourishment for a large portion of us.

We haven't changed ourselves, which is why we still perform the same basic functions (eating, drinking, sleeping, procreating, etc). But that doesn't mean we haven't made great accomplishments, even from a non-humanist perspective.

Chesterton said:
He might step in to protect us from extinction, but I don't think He's trying to make the world a better place. The world is pretty nice, but we people can be pretty lousy.

I doubt lousy humans are responsible for malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tsunamis.

Chesterton said:
He caused nature to do it.

That's a rather broad statement. What, exactly, did he do? When does God step back and natural laws take over? Did God create the universe and sit back, or does he move each and every particle in seemingly predictable ways? A chessplayer moves pieces according to arbitrary rules, but can at any moment break said rules (much to the dismay of the pieces).

Chesterton said:
?

As far as I can tell, there is no real difference between a so-called 'natural' phenomenon and a 'supernatural' one (or normal and paranormal, physical and spiritual, etc). What, exactly, differentiates a 'natural' neutrino from a 'supernatural' ghost?

Chesterton · Sep 11, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
I disagree, for all the good it will do.

One last try: a person who says "we (meaning all humans) cannot know" has to be a person who says God cannot make Himself known, agreed? So what type of god cannot make himself known? A deistic god, who doesn't care enough? Even the little Greek and Roman gods could make themselves known on occasion.

Substitute the idea of God with the idea of mermaids. If I'm agnostic about the existence of mermaids (according to your definition), and someone says "I've seen mermaids", I have to say "No you haven't, because no one can". What basis would I have to say "no one can see mermaids"? The only basis I'd have would be the belief that mermaids don't exist. Because, if there's the slightest possibility that they exist, someone could see one some day.

I'll try.
By 'nothingness' I mean the complete absence of any thing, including the spacetime continuum. Even the so-called vacuum of space isn't a total vacuum (there's actually a very low density plasma permeating throughout space). Quantum mechanics shows that events can occur without prior cause (or, at least, that causality isn't as concrete as we might naïvely assume).
That is, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, something could pop into existence without any prior cause. The universe could have come into being spontaneously at a time when no other thing existed (insofar as 'time' makes any sense).

This doesn't mean something came from nothing, since nothingness itself can't do anything; it's not even worthy of the 'it' pronoun, but English is a limited language.

1. So when you say nothing existed, you mean nothing except quantum mechanical processes? But aren't they something? If I conceded that the process of "driving a car" could exist without there being any such thing as cars, even then, "driving a car" would be something which existed, so I couldn't say there was "nothing", right?

2. Are you saying that QM exist outside or independent of the spacetime continuum?

3. What's your basis for the idea? Do QM testify on their own behalf? I mean, do QM somehow offer evidence that QM can exist without prior cause?

I find it hard to believe that the God who created the universe itself, is so limited. A few questions: why will I suffer if I reject love? Does this just refer to God's love, or any form of love? How, exactly, does one 'reject' love? Why does God's love for us in any way affect human suffering? Isn't inaction itself proof that God doesn't love us, much as a father's inaction at his daughter burning in a fire proof that he doesn't actually love her?

I'm all for the touchy-feely inner fuzz, but throwing around nebulous terms doesn't change the facts.

There's a saying in America something like "your freedoms end at the tip of my nose". You could say of God that His freedom and power end at the tip of your will. It's contrary to God's will that you reject His love, but it's in accordance with His will that you have the freedom to do so. You know the old question "can God make a rock so big that He can't lift it"? Since all things are possible with God, I think the answer is "yes", and He did just that; that's what human free will is - the rock God cannot lift. But then I have to betray my own answer and say yes He could lift it, but that He simply doesn't; He won't. He sees that it is good not to. And I agree with Him. I wouldn't want a happy life on heroin, without my true senses of life. I wouldn't want to be a happy will-less robot.

Another thing we say in America (although in a more or less military context) is "freedom is not free". It has a cost.

Nonetheless, the boiler loves their target. Love can be one-way, often with tragic results.

The boiler wants their target, because the boiler wants his or her own satisfaction, and the target is perceived as a means to that end. From the Christian perspective, the boiler does not love its target. Love cannot include a selfish desire to possess something against its will for one's own satisfaction. That's a diabolical impulse.

I am not, though negative utilitarianism says that we should eliminate all pain, and the best way to do that is to kill everyone painlessly.

Anyway, we desire the effect because pleasure evolved to be, well, pleasurable. Pain is useful, but only if it is something we desire to avoid. We feel pain when we step on something sharp or too hot because that's our body's way of saying "Oi, that's damaging, don't do that". What would be the point of pain if we enjoyed it?

What would be the point of pain if we enjoyed it? I think you may have answered your other questions about theodicy.

A way to articulate complex ideas and concepts. Why should we avoid metaphor if it can expedite the process? We use metaphor because English is idiomatic in nature; we've borrowed heavily from other languages, and it grew up steeped in Christianity.

Regardless of whether or not they're complex (religious ideas and concepts are complex too), the point is that metaphors point out similarity; they say "A has the characteristics (or parallel characteristics) of B". What does it mean to speak of a "law" of nature?

If you can demonstrate that God is present, I'm all ears. But despite what the adage says, an absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I agree with Dawkins when he says that, if God exists, we would expect to see a very different universe.

I didn't say I could demonstrate it, but I'll submit that you have no way of knowing if every breath you draw is a gift from God.

I think Dawkins would expect to see amino acids with little printing that says "Made In Heaven". I really think he's pretty shallow.

Does God use evil because he has no other choice, or because it's convenient? If the former, how can the creator of the universe be so limited in ability? If the latter, why would a loving deity resort to evil when there are more humane means at its disposal?

You want the Divine to be more humane? More human? You want Him to see things our way, but He's not us.

He uses, or transforms, evil just because it's there. God could get rid of evil by getting rid of human will, but God's not a negative utilitarian.

It's not a metaphor, it's the correct, scientific term for a when a gene's nucleotide sequence is used to make a protein. It's 'expressed' in that the protein is the cell's way of using the information stored on the gene.

I know it's a specific scientific term, but it's a metaphor at the same time, as is natural "selection".

Lots of animals brush there teeth

Only ones with brains. (And teeth).

Then what is it? Anything that's been influenced by an intelligence?

No, because natural things certainly can be influenced by an intelligence. As I mentioned before, natural is what's inside a door-less, window-less house you're in. Supernatural is what's outside the house, and what caused the house and everything in it.

Perhaps, but I've yet to see any indication that this magic ingredient does indeed exist. I contend that we are chemistry through and through because that is all we've found evidence of: chemistry.

Two things wrong with that are: forming a conclusion as if science has concluded, and considering the matter to be subject to scientific inquiry when it very well may not be.

And nor shall we: we are in a state of somethingness, not nothingness. We haven't seen nothing make anything because we have no experience of nothingness; we've never seen it, period.

That's what I said to you in another thread. But what's more, we can't even imagine it for the sake of a thought experiment. Imagining nothing (and I don't think we can even imagine "nothing"), imagining nothing producing something is as contradictory as imagining 2 + 2 = 5.

Indeed, which is why we don't. Science doesn't comment on the origin of the universe because we can only look back ~13.5 billion years. Looking beyond that requires a more accurate understanding of reality which we just don't have yet.

Science doesn't comment on the origin? Someone needs to tell that to a certain biologist named Dawkins. And an astronomer named Sagan. And a physicist named WiccanChild.

Yes. There are a few competing theories, but there is a consensus on when it happened, the conditions under which it happened, and even the broad mechanism by which it happened.

Since we're talking about a lot of things, I'll leave it to you if you want to talk about abiogenesis. It probably won't be very fruitful though, because if you could magically show me a videotape of the actual abiogenesis occurring on earth, I'm sure I'd say "Goddidit". I know you've read the Hebrew story of how God created man from dirt, which contains all the chemicals comprising the human body. Even if it's just folklore, it's astute folklore of a very high quality.

Do you agree that, because their codes differ, there is no 'true' code? That the codes are as arbitrary as anyone elses?

No, because the fact that codes differ, superficially anyway, is not itself evidence that there is no true code.

Hmm, I guess. But just because you lose your will when you lose conciousness, doesn't mean you lose conciousness when you lose your will. Imagine someone else controlling your body, making you speak, eat, and otherwise go about your business; you'd have no will, but you'd have conciousness.

I guess we'd have to distinguish what kind of consciousness we're talking about. Human consciousness, which can say "I"? I think a puppet with human consciousness would be a very angry puppet.

Because we quite clearly cannot take care of ourselves. Under the Christian paradigm, we've buggered the entire universe up just by eating a piece of fruit!
Children have free will too, but we humans are at least smart enough to boss them about. Just because they can exercise their free will and fire a gun doesn't mean we should let them.

True, but children don't remain children, and eventually they have to take care of themselves. I think you'd agree that the idea of a mother and father taking care of their healthy 40-year-old son is rather repugnant, but it seems that's what you'd like God to do for us.

I agree. The humanist believes that improving the quantity and quality of human life is an end unto itself, while the non-humanist theist doesn't see any goal in human endeavour.

True, but humanity is vastly improved on both an individual and on a societal level. Human life is longer and better, and there are simply more of us. Way back when, humanity bottlenecked with only ~1000 individuals who lived to about 18 in disease and malnourishment. Now, we have ~6.7 billion individuals living to their mid-70s, and we've eradicated disease and malnourishment for a large portion of us.

We haven't changed ourselves, which is why we still perform the same basic functions (eating, drinking, sleeping, procreating, etc). But that doesn't mean we haven't made great accomplishments, even from a non-humanist perspective.

So more humans who stick around longer is a goal - funny, because there is a school of humanism which says there's too many of us! (Apparently they don't travel much outside of urban areas.) And there are schools of humanism which declare that not all humans are human, and should be killed, and that still other humans are physically or mentally defective humans, and should be killed. Ironically (or not), humanism results in the most inhumane ideas.

I think we sometimes lose track of how philosophy really matters. I don't know if you know of it, but we're having a remarkable national debate now on public health care in America. Among others, utilitarians are advocating for government control; and one imagines men like Peter Singer are positively salivating as they make out their list of who gets killed first. If you're familiar with Singer, you'll know how much or how little I may be exaggerating. He's a cesspool of despicable ideas (infanticide, euthanasia for the handicapped and aged, beastiality, etc.), and Obama has appointed to his health care committee two men of the same ilk, only less extreme (or maybe just quieter about their views). Sorry if I digress.

I doubt lousy humans are responsible for malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tsunamis.

Christianity says that physical creation is fallen, along with man. Or if not fallen itself, it suffers because of the fall of man. Christianity was preaching the "butterfly effect" long before that term was coined. In a spiritual sense and/or in a physical sense, humans could be responsible for the things you mention. I couldn't possibly describe how, but man is part of this system called Earth, and I'm sure you understand better than I that a tiny alteration in the initial state of a system can have large and far-reaching consequences in how the system plays out.

That's a rather broad statement. What, exactly, did he do? When does God step back and natural laws take over? Did God create the universe and sit back, or does he move each and every particle in seemingly predictable ways? A chessplayer moves pieces according to arbitrary rules, but can at any moment break said rules (much to the dismay of the pieces).

Well it has to be a broad statement. I believe He has the capability to influence nature, and reserves the right to, but of course I can't answer any of that.

As far as I can tell, there is no real difference between a so-called 'natural' phenomenon and a 'supernatural' one (or normal and paranormal, physical and spiritual, etc). What, exactly, differentiates a 'natural' neutrino from a 'supernatural' ghost?

I agree there's no difference, except that I consider both, and all things, to be supernatural. But I think that's a peculiar semantics thing of mine; I've had TE scientists dispute with me on that.

Wiccan_Child · Sep 12, 2009

Chesterton said:
One last try: a person who says "we (meaning all humans) cannot know" has to be a person who says God cannot make Himself known, agreed? So what type of god cannot make himself known? A deistic god, who doesn't care enough? Even the little Greek and Roman gods could make themselves known on occasion.

Not necessarily. The agnostic could appeal to epistemological grounds: since we can never know anything other than our own existence, any attempt by a deity to prove its existence is ultimately futile. Or the agnostic could believe in God's existence, but contend that he will not prove his existence; faith is paramount, so God remains steadfast in his absence.

The agnostic could also add a caveat: we cannot know whether God exists in this life, but in the afterlife, God will make himself known to us.

Chesterton said:
1. So when you say nothing existed, you mean nothing except quantum mechanical processes? But aren't they something? If I conceded that the process of "driving a car" could exist without there being any such thing as cars, even then, "driving a car" would be something which existed, so I couldn't say there was "nothing", right?

2. Are you saying that QM exist outside or independent of the spacetime continuum?

3. What's your basis for the idea? Do QM testify on their own behalf? I mean, do QM somehow offer evidence that QM can exist without prior cause?

Your questions are somewhat related, so I'll answer them en masse. Quantum mechanics throws our intuitive understanding of causality (namely, that events require a preceding cause) out the window, so on those grounds I contend that it is entirely possible for an event (say, the creation of the universe) to occur without a prior cause.

Quantum mechanics is just a theory created by humans to explain how very small things behave. It doesn't exist any more than pi exists.

Chesterton said:
There's a saying in America something like "your freedoms end at the tip of my nose". You could say of God that His freedom and power end at the tip of your will. It's contrary to God's will that you reject His love, but it's in accordance with His will that you have the freedom to do so. You know the old question "can God make a rock so big that He can't lift it"? Since all things are possible with God, I think the answer is "yes", and He did just that; that's what human free will is - the rock God cannot lift. But then I have to betray my own answer and say yes He could lift it, but that He simply doesn't; He won't. He sees that it is good not to. And I agree with Him. I wouldn't want a happy life on heroin, without my true senses of life. I wouldn't want to be a happy will-less robot.

Another thing we say in America (although in a more or less military context) is "freedom is not free". It has a cost.

So God could, but chooses not to. OK.
Question: why wouldn't you want to be perfectly happy?

Chesterton said:
The boiler wants their target, because the boiler wants his or her own satisfaction, and the target is perceived as a means to that end. From the Christian perspective, the boiler does not love its target. Love cannot include a selfish desire to possess something against its will for one's own satisfaction. That's a diabolical impulse.

Then I guess we have very different ideas about what constitutes 'love'.

Chesterton said:
What would be the point of pain if we enjoyed it? I think you may have answered your other questions about theodicy.

How? I know what pain is for, but the problem stands: we suffer pain because it helps us avoid damage. But why would God let us be damaged in the first place? Moreover, pain is not always useful: we must use anaesthesia when we perform life-saving surgery, because the pain is otherwise too excruciating to allow surgery (the fact that we need surgery at all is another indictment on God...).

Pain is useful in an imperfect world, because it's the lesser of two evils. The problem of evil thus remains.

Chesterton said:
Regardless of whether or not they're complex (religious ideas and concepts are complex too), the point is that metaphors point out similarity; they say "A has the characteristics (or parallel characteristics) of B". What does it mean to speak of a "law" of nature?

Behaviour in the natural world that follows rules akin to those imposed by the judicial system. As I said before, English is steeped in Christianity, and 'law of nature' stems from the belief that there was a grand lawmaker akin to mortal lawmakers.

Chesterton said:
I didn't say I could demonstrate it, but I'll submit that you have no way of knowing if every breath you draw is a gift from God.

I am comfortable with the null hypothesis, since there is no evidence suggesting otherwise. The onus, as always, is on the claimant.

Chesterton said:
I think Dawkins would expect to see amino acids with little printing that says "Made In Heaven". I really think he's pretty shallow.

How so? Is it shallow to demand evidence for claims as extravagant as those made by Creationists?

Chesterton said:
You want the Divine to be more humane? More human? You want Him to see things our way, but He's not us.

He uses, or transforms, evil just because it's there. God could get rid of evil by getting rid of human will, but God's not a negative utilitarian.

I contend that God could get rid of evil without getting rid of human will.

Chesterton said:
I know it's a specific scientific term, but it's a metaphor at the same time, as is natural "selection".

I suppose it started out as a metaphor, but it's adoption into the vernacular of as large a community as the scientific community warrants its own definition. That is, 'selection' began as a metaphor, but the scientific definition now has its own place alongside the original one. Anyway, semantics.

Chesterton said:
No, because natural things certainly can be influenced by an intelligence. As I mentioned before, natural is what's inside a door-less, window-less house you're in. Supernatural is what's outside the house, and what caused the house and everything in it.

Since you're inside the house as well, how do you know there's anything outside it? Indeed, how do you know we're inside the house at all? We can detect a vast number of things that are not immediately detectable by our senses; we can see beyond our small slither of the EM spectrum and deduce the existence of particles that pass harmlessly through us in the billions. Where, exactly, are the boundaries of human knowledge?

Chesterton said:
Two things wrong with that are: forming a conclusion as if science has concluded, and considering the matter to be subject to scientific inquiry when it very well may not be.

If it is not subject to scientific inquiry, then it has absolutely no affect on us whatsoever. No matter how indirect its affects are, or how ineffable it may be, if it can interact with us, then it's subject to scientific inquiry.

I've always encountered people who object to scientists probing the 'supernatural', be it the efficacy of prayer or the veracity of ouiji boards. I reckon it's because they know that a detailed scientific study would reveal it as false. But that's just me.

Chesterton said:
That's what I said to you in another thread. But what's more, we can't even imagine it for the sake of a thought experiment. Imagining nothing (and I don't think we can even imagine "nothing"), imagining nothing producing something is as contradictory as imagining 2 + 2 = 5.

Agreed, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. We don't have to be able to imagine something to posit that it happened. We can talk about hyperdimensional space, the warping of spacetime, black holes, and even atoms: all are unimaginable. We have to use metaphor and analogy to explain these concepts to the uninitiated. Atoms, for instance, are initially explained as tiny balls of stuff which make up everything around us.

Anyway, just because we cannot imagine nothingness doesn't mean it never existed (or rather, doesn't mean some thing always existed); it just means that our fleshy brains cannot comprehend certain things.

Chesterton said:
Science doesn't comment on the origin? Someone needs to tell that to a certain biologist named Dawkins. And an astronomer named Sagan. And a physicist named WiccanChild.

We can comment on it, but science itself does not. Science goes where're the evidence may lead, but no one wears their science-man hat all day every day. As a scientist, I stop where the evidence stops. But, as an inquisitive human, I have my own ideas about what might have happened.

It may seem like hair-splitting, but you wouldn't believe how people go from the above to "SCIENCE IS GODLESS ATHEZM".

Chesterton said:
Since we're talking about a lot of things, I'll leave it to you if you want to talk about abiogenesis. It probably won't be very fruitful though, because if you could magically show me a videotape of the actual abiogenesis occurring on earth, I'm sure I'd say "Goddidit". I know you've read the Hebrew story of how God created man from dirt, which contains all the chemicals comprising the human body. Even if it's just folklore, it's astute folklore of a very high quality.

I agree that it is remarkably astute. But such coincidences can be found throughout religion (for example, the Vedic texts describe the universe as billions of years old; it is the only religion that gets the time-scale right).
You ask for a videotape, but you know that we can't do that. Instead, we have the next best thing: evidence.

Do you have video evidence of the existence of Queen Elizabeth I? If not, how do you know she existed?

Chesterton said:
No, because the fact that codes differ, superficially anyway, is not itself evidence that there is no true code.

True, but it certainly casts doubts. If there is some objective moral code inscribed on the hearts of men, why does everyone disagree on what that code is?

Chesterton said:
I guess we'd have to distinguish what kind of consciousness we're talking about. Human consciousness, which can say "I"? I think a puppet with human consciousness would be a very angry puppet.

One which has had its free will removed without consent, sure. We're used to being in control, it's how our brains are wired. But you forget just how powerful God is: he could overcome all these difficulties and obstacles; he could make us perfectly happy and perfectly will-less.

Chesterton said:
True, but children don't remain children, and eventually they have to take care of themselves. I think you'd agree that the idea of a mother and father taking care of their healthy 40-year-old son is rather repugnant, but it seems that's what you'd like God to do for us.

I don't find it repugnant, though it certainly places strains of the finite resources of the parents. God, however, has no limitations.
Parents allow their children to suffer (within reason) because it teaches them a lesson, and they avoid dangerous scenarios in the future. But God needn't do that: he can watch us 24/7, covering up unforeseen manholes and poofing avalanches and diseases out of existence.

But he doesn't.

Chesterton said:
So more humans who stick around longer is a goal - funny, because there is a school of humanism which says there's too many of us! (Apparently they don't travel much outside of urban areas.) And there are schools of humanism which declare that not all humans are human, and should be killed, and that still other humans are physically or mentally defective humans, and should be killed. Ironically (or not), humanism results in the most inhumane ideas.

By your standards. By theirs, they are advocating the best for mankind. Humanism does indeed seek to improve the quality and quantity of human life, but humanists disagree on how to get there. Some believe that, by denying life to a few, they will improve life for the many, thus enacting a net good. Some disagree, arguing that denying life to any can never be outweighed by consequent good.

Chesterton said:
I think we sometimes lose track of how philosophy really matters. I don't know if you know of it, but we're having a remarkable national debate now on public health care in America. Among others, utilitarians are advocating for government control; and one imagines men like Peter Singer are positively salivating as they make out their list of who gets killed first. If you're familiar with Singer, you'll know how much or how little I may be exaggerating. He's a cesspool of despicable ideas (infanticide, euthanasia for the handicapped and aged, beastiality, etc.), and Obama has appointed to his health care committee two men of the same ilk, only less extreme (or maybe just quieter about their views). Sorry if I digress.

It seems you have rather strong views on singer. Do you consider him a "cesspool of despicable ideas" because he conflicts with your own ideas about morality? What, exactly, do you find despicable about infanticide, euthanasia, and bestiality?

(I'm not being facetious, I want to see where you're coming from).

Chesterton said:
Christianity says that physical creation is fallen, along with man. Or if not fallen itself, it suffers because of the fall of man. Christianity was preaching the "butterfly effect" long before that term was coined. In a spiritual sense and/or in a physical sense, humans could be responsible for the things you mention. I couldn't possibly describe how, but man is part of this system called Earth, and I'm sure you understand better than I that a tiny alteration in the initial state of a system can have large and far-reaching consequences in how the system plays out.

True, but that tends to be a particle being here instead of there. I have a hard time believing that roses magically grew thorns and mosquitoes manufactured malaria, simply because of the chaotic repercussions of Eve's diet. Doesn't Genesis say that God cursed Adam and Eve? Doesn't that imply an active hand, an actual instance of divine intervention, rather than God working through nature?

Chesterton · Sep 14, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
Not necessarily. The agnostic could appeal to epistemological grounds: since we can never know anything other than our own existence, any attempt by a deity to prove its existence is ultimately futile. Or the agnostic could believe in God's existence, but contend that he will not prove his existence; faith is paramount, so God remains steadfast in his absence.

The agnostic could also add a caveat: we cannot know whether God exists in this life, but in the afterlife, God will make himself known to us.

Okay, but I would say the above are not the belief called agnosticism, but grounds for agnosticism. You've described a person who posits a God who cannot make Himself known, and a person who posits a God who will not make Himself known. Neither position tells us anything about the belief of the person as to whether such a being exists. They are really ideas about epistemology rather than ideas about God.

Your questions are somewhat related, so I'll answer them en masse. Quantum mechanics throws our intuitive understanding of causality (namely, that events require a preceding cause) out the window, so on those grounds I contend that it is entirely possible for an event (say, the creation of the universe) to occur without a prior cause.

Quantum mechanics is just a theory created by humans to explain how very small things behave. It doesn't exist any more than pi exists.

If that's what QM is, then until there were very small things, there was no QM. So when you say the universe could "occur without a prior cause", that's not the same as saying something could come from nothing, is it? Or is that what you mean?

So God could, but chooses not to. OK.
Question: why wouldn't you want to be perfectly happy?

Well I thought we somewhat agreed on that before. I'd love to be perfectly happy, but not at any cost. If it meant surrendering my will and/or consciousness, that's too radical; I'd be something other that what I am.

Then I guess we have very different ideas about what constitutes 'love'.

Given that your idea of love could theoretically be expressed on a chalkboard with math describing the actions of enzymes, hormones and whatnot, I suspect we do have different ideas.

How? I know what pain is for, but the problem stands: we suffer pain because it helps us avoid damage. But why would God let us be damaged in the first place? Moreover, pain is not always useful: we must use anaesthesia when we perform life-saving surgery, because the pain is otherwise too excruciating to allow surgery (the fact that we need surgery at all is another indictment on God...).

Pain is useful in an imperfect world, because it's the lesser of two evils. The problem of evil thus remains.

This is such a hard thing to talk about because at present I'm a healthy, pain-free person. Some of the things I want to say would come off sounding insensitive, like "oh, pain's not so bad". But as a Christian I think there are worse things than being damaged or being in pain. For example having a seared conscience. As Christ said, if your eye offends, it'd be better to pluck it out, than to go to hell with two good eyes. Better to be a crippled Mother Theresa than a healthy Hitler.

Behaviour in the natural world that follows rules akin to those imposed by the judicial system. As I said before, English is steeped in Christianity, and 'law of nature' stems from the belief that there was a grand lawmaker akin to mortal lawmakers.

I agree with the first part, but not so much the second. I'm pretty sure others before English Christians, such as ancient Greeks and Romans, spoke of natural laws. And then there's the tao (way), the rta (order), and dharma (law), words all rooted in the idea that the natural universe is lawful and ordered, or ordained.

I am comfortable with the null hypothesis, since there is no evidence suggesting otherwise. The onus, as always, is on the claimant.

Hey, you can't be holding the null hypothesis. I am.

How so? Is it shallow to demand evidence for claims as extravagant as those made by Creationists?

No, not at all. If someone offers ideas as scientific ideas they should be treated as science, and evidence should be demanded. Dawkins being shallow is just a general impression I get. For example, he says he was raised Christian, and admits that coming to understand evolution was the reason he became an atheist. That's not exactly evidence of a deep thinker. He may be an excellent biologist though.

I contend that God could get rid of evil without getting rid of human will.

How? If I want to hit you with a club, would God turn the club into Nerf? And if I try to choke you suddenly my arm muscles won't function? How would that work in a material world?

Since you're inside the house as well, how do you know there's anything outside it? Indeed, how do you know we're inside the house at all? We can detect a vast number of things that are not immediately detectable by our senses; we can see beyond our small slither of the EM spectrum and deduce the existence of particles that pass harmlessly through us in the billions. Where, exactly, are the boundaries of human knowledge?

I believe there's something outside of it, and one reason, as we are discussing, is the problematic idea of the house creating itself. I'm speaking with the assumption that we and the universe actually exist, so we are in something.

I don't see the relevance of differentiating between reality we detect with our senses versus without our senses. I guess we touched on the boundaries of knowledge question earlier. Who knows about that? How far can we subdivide? I remember the first time I ever heard of String Theory - "What are the strings made of?"

If it is not subject to scientific inquiry, then it has absolutely no affect on us whatsoever. No matter how indirect its affects are, or how ineffable it may be, if it can interact with us, then it's subject to scientific inquiry.

I've always encountered people who object to scientists probing the 'supernatural', be it the efficacy of prayer or the veracity of ouiji boards. I reckon it's because they know that a detailed scientific study would reveal it as false. But that's just me.

I think that's just wrong. Scientific inquiry is just seeking answers and explanations in a formal way. The scientific method has proven very powerful in studying nature, but the idea in the word "supernatural" of course is "beyond or outside of nature". But if you deny any distinction, I can see why you'd say that. In the case of things such as prayer and ouiji boards, you're a mind inquiring into another mind. It would sort of be equivalent to asking a person "What are you thinking about?" Whatever they answer, you can't scientifically know it's the truth. If you have access to the person, you might get some information from a brain MRI or a sodium pentothal injection, but if the mind belongs to a god, angel or demon, you don't even have that access.

I have done my own personal scientific study on prayer though, and found that it works.

Agreed, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. We don't have to be able to imagine something to posit that it happened. We can talk about hyperdimensional space, the warping of spacetime, black holes, and even atoms: all are unimaginable. We have to use metaphor and analogy to explain these concepts to the uninitiated. Atoms, for instance, are initially explained as tiny balls of stuff which make up everything around us.

Anyway, just because we cannot imagine nothingness doesn't mean it never existed (or rather, doesn't mean some thing always existed); it just means that our fleshy brains cannot comprehend certain things.

"Something from nothing" is in a class by itself. Do you know of a metaphor or analogy for it? I don't think it's comparable to the things you mentioned.

We can comment on it, but science itself does not. Science goes where're the evidence may lead, but no one wears their science-man hat all day every day. As a scientist, I stop where the evidence stops. But, as an inquisitive human, I have my own ideas about what might have happened.

But some write books, and debate and lecture using their scientific findings as evidence for their beliefs: life forms evolve, therefore there's no God; the universe is vast, therefore there's no God; the sub-atomic world appears chaotic, therefore there's no God. In a nutshell, those are the kind of logical leaps some people make, and they're simply fallacious.

It may seem like hair-splitting, but you wouldn't believe how people go from the above to "SCIENCE IS GODLESS ATHEZM".

Yes I've heard silly things like that. But it goes the other way, too. Despite the facts of history, some people think "Christianity is science-less superstition".

I agree that it is remarkably astute. But such coincidences can be found throughout religion (for example, the Vedic texts describe the universe as billions of years old; it is the only religion that gets the time-scale right).
You ask for a videotape, but you know that we can't do that. Instead, we have the next best thing: evidence.

Do you have video evidence of the existence of Queen Elizabeth I? If not, how do you know she existed?

My point was only that if abiogenesis were an indisputable fact, it would not constitute evidence that God didn't use that means to create life. If you think about it, you could say abiogenesis is a sense actually a Judeo-Christian concept.

True, but it certainly casts doubts. If there is some objective moral code inscribed on the hearts of men, why does everyone disagree on what that code is?

At a fundamental level we don't disagree. No one in their right mind has ever admired hatred, betrayal, cowardice, laziness, etc. Depending on circumstances, men may find a traitor or a [wash my mouth] useful, but no man wants his son to be traitor or his daughter to be a [wash my mouth].

One which has had its free will removed without consent, sure. We're used to being in control, it's how our brains are wired. But you forget just how powerful God is: he could overcome all these difficulties and obstacles; he could make us perfectly happy and perfectly will-less.

It's very hard to wrap my head around that. Maybe he did make some beings that way; we do have the saying "happy as a clam".

I don't find it repugnant, though it certainly places strains of the finite resources of the parents. God, however, has no limitations.
Parents allow their children to suffer (within reason) because it teaches them a lesson, and they avoid dangerous scenarios in the future. But God needn't do that: he can watch us 24/7, covering up unforeseen manholes and poofing avalanches and diseases out of existence.

But he doesn't.

I didn't mean "taking care of" as just helping out or even supporting, but fully controlling his actions and coddling and the like. Basically treating an adult as a child. But anyway... Just because God doesn't cover up some manholes doesn't mean He doesn't cover up any of them.

By your standards. By theirs, they are advocating the best for mankind. Humanism does indeed seek to improve the quality and quantity of human life, but humanists disagree on how to get there. Some believe that, by denying life to a few, they will improve life for the many, thus enacting a net good. Some disagree, arguing that denying life to any can never be outweighed by consequent good.

They advocate the best for some of mankind, at the expense of others. That's how slavery works.

It seems you have rather strong views on singer. Do you consider him a "cesspool of despicable ideas" because he conflicts with your own ideas about morality? What, exactly, do you find despicable about infanticide, euthanasia, and bestiality?

(I'm not being facetious, I want to see where you're coming from).

Oh no, Singer doesn't conflict with my ideas of morality, I just think he picks the wrong classes of people. We should kill people we don't like, such as heinous criminals and enemy soldiers. The very young and the very old are rarely criminals or soldiers, and are usually quite likable.

True, but that tends to be a particle being here instead of there.

Isn't everything that exists a matter of a particle (or a whole lot of particles) being here instead of there?

I have a hard time believing that roses magically grew thorns and mosquitoes manufactured malaria, simply because of the chaotic repercussions of Eve's diet.

I think you're being a little facetious here.

Doesn't Genesis say that God cursed Adam and Eve? Doesn't that imply an active hand, an actual instance of divine intervention, rather than God working through nature?

Yes, but the curse is not the Fall. They were cursed because they fell. Did God use an active hand? Maybe, I don't know. What difference does it make?

Wiccan_Child · Sep 15, 2009

Chesterton said:
Okay, but I would say the above are not the belief called agnosticism, but grounds for agnosticism. You've described a person who posits a God who cannot make Himself known, and a person who posits a God who will not make Himself known. Neither position tells us anything about the belief of the person as to whether such a being exists. They are really ideas about epistemology rather than ideas about God.

Which is exactly my point: agnosticism is unrelated to a person's belief in gods. That's why you can have agnostic atheists and agnostic theists.

Chesterton said:
If that's what QM is, then until there were very small things, there was no QM. So when you say the universe could "occur without a prior cause", that's not the same as saying something could come from nothing, is it? Or is that what you mean?

Well, I try not to say 'something from nothing', but it's a handy shorthand, not least because opponents of the idea characterise it so.
The point about QM is that it shows us yet another way in which our intuitive understanding of how things work is woefully inaccurate. Causality is not as prime and proper as it is in classical mechanics (much to Einstein's chargrin), so we shouldn't be so quick as to dismiss the idea that something can spontaneously arise without prior cause.

Another way to look at it is this: consider nothingness, the total absence of any thing (including the spacetime continuum in which things are apparently suspended). I believe that, were nothing to exist, something would come into existence all on its own. Nothingness is an impossibility because spontaneous generation ensures that something will always exist.

Chesterton said:
This is such a hard thing to talk about because at present I'm a healthy, pain-free person. Some of the things I want to say would come off sounding insensitive, like "oh, pain's not so bad". But as a Christian I think there are worse things than being damaged or being in pain. For example having a seared conscience. As Christ said, if your eye offends, it'd be better to pluck it out, than to go to hell with two good eyes. Better to be a crippled Mother Theresa than a healthy Hitler.

Then we are at an impasse: I consider it the lesser, while you consider it the greater, of two evils. I don't think we'll solve this age-old riddle in the course of this discussion... but we can damn well try!

Chesterton said:
Hey, you can't be holding the null hypothesis. I am.

Hah, sneaky!

Chesterton said:
No, not at all. If someone offers ideas as scientific ideas they should be treated as science, and evidence should be demanded. Dawkins being shallow is just a general impression I get. For example, he says he was raised Christian, and admits that coming to understand evolution was the reason he became an atheist. That's not exactly evidence of a deep thinker. He may be an excellent biologist though.

If one's faith is based on Creationism (i.e., you believe in God because you have no other way of explaining life), then refuting Creationism refutes your faith in God. Just because he lost his faith through this and that (if memory serves, evolution was the last nail in an already-sealed coffin) doesn't mean he didn't thoroughly investigate his faith.

I too was a Christian, but, after digging deeper into my faith, I ended up losing it. After a stint as a Pagan, I'm now an atheist.

Chesterton said:
How? If I want to hit you with a club, would God turn the club into Nerf? And if I try to choke you suddenly my arm muscles won't function? How would that work in a material world?

By the grace of God, presumably. God making sure that I don't suffer would have to ensure that you don't suffer either. Presumably, he could plug as all into our own, personal, virtual realities wherein the suffering imparted to you is irrelevant: you are just a figment of my reality, and don't actually suffer yourself.

That's one way.

Also, wasn't Eden a pain-free paradise before the Fall? However the mechanics worked then, that's another scenario.

Chesterton said:
I believe there's something outside of it, and one reason, as we are discussing, is the problematic idea of the house creating itself. I'm speaking with the assumption that we and the universe actually exist, so we are in something.

I don't see the relevance of differentiating between reality we detect with our senses versus without our senses. I guess we touched on the boundaries of knowledge question earlier. Who knows about that? How far can we subdivide? I remember the first time I ever heard of String Theory - "What are the strings made of?"

Chesterton said:
I think that's just wrong. Scientific inquiry is just seeking answers and explanations in a formal way. The scientific method has proven very powerful in studying nature, but the idea in the word "supernatural" of course is "beyond or outside of nature". But if you deny any distinction, I can see why you'd say that. In the case of things such as prayer and ouiji boards, you're a mind inquiring into another mind. It would sort of be equivalent to asking a person "What are you thinking about?" Whatever they answer, you can't scientifically know it's the truth. If you have access to the person, you might get some information from a brain MRI or a sodium pentothal injection, but if the mind belongs to a god, angel or demon, you don't even have that access.

True, but scientifically probing the mind is a vast topic, since the mind can be quantified in any number of ways. But efficacy of prayer is different, in that it can be quantified in a single parameter: the question of "Do people heal quicker (or at all) if they are prayed for?" can be studied quite easily.

Either praying for someone to get better will work, or it won't. In either case, there are theological ramifications. This is just one of the reasons I don't consider even God to be beyond the scope of science.

Chesterton said:
I have done my own personal scientific study on prayer though, and found that it works.

I'd be wary of conducting private studies; statistics has a nasty habit of doing what you least expect. The gambler's fallacy, the survivor's fallacy, the Monty Hall problem, etc, are all common ways in which a person's statistical analysis turns out to be completely wrong.
Not that I'm dismissing you as incompetent, mind!

Chesterton said:
"Something from nothing" is in a class by itself. Do you know of a metaphor or analogy for it? I don't think it's comparable to the things you mentioned.

It's comparable in that it too cannot be imagined.

Chesterton said:
But some write books, and debate and lecture using their scientific findings as evidence for their beliefs: life forms evolve, therefore there's no God; the universe is vast, therefore there's no God; the sub-atomic world appears chaotic, therefore there's no God. In a nutshell, those are the kind of logical leaps some people make, and they're simply fallacious.

And, most importantly, they're not scientific leaps. Scientists may make them, but they're neither speaking from the evidence nor speaking for the scientific community as a whole.

Chesterton said:
Yes I've heard silly things like that. But it goes the other way, too. Despite the facts of history, some people think "Christianity is science-less superstition".

Well, it's hardly set up a very good standard. Besides the first scientists being Christians looking for evidence of Biblical literalism (Noah's flood, etc), the various churches have fought tooth-and-nail against scientific advances that encroach on their territory. It's not for nothing the biggest detractors of evolution, abiogenesis, 'old Earthism', 'round Earthism', the big bang, etc, are all religious fundamentalists.

Chesterton said:
My point was only that if abiogenesis were an indisputable fact, it would not constitute evidence that God didn't use that means to create life. If you think about it, you could say abiogenesis is a sense actually a Judeo-Christian concept.

Ah, I see. Well, Genesis is more accurate than most in that we were formed from the 'dust'. But you can find spooky accuracies in most texts if you look hard enough.
But I agree, neither evolution nor abiogenesis pose a problem for Christianity; it's core concepts and beliefs are unrelated to the origin and development of life.

Chesterton said:
At a fundamental level we don't disagree. No one in their right mind has ever admired hatred, betrayal, cowardice, laziness, etc. Depending on circumstances, men may find a traitor or a [wash my mouth] useful, but no man wants his son to be traitor or his daughter to be a [wash my mouth].

In our culture, perhaps. But cowardice is sometimes favoured in a soldier: 'live to fight another day', and so you might actively want someone to be a coward. Likewise, sexual promiscuity (which is what I think the censors were blocking...) might be seen as morally good in a society that is crippled by a high mortality rate.
Point is, you can always find people who love what others hate, who condone what others condemn. Even the 'big two', murder and rape, aren't seen in the same way by everyone.

And notice that blasphemy has all but gone from our respective cultures. In times gone by, I would be killed on the spot for half the things I've said.

Chesterton said:
It's very hard to wrap my head around that. Maybe he did make some beings that way; we do have the saying "happy as a clam".

Ignorance is bliss...

Chesterton said:
I didn't mean "taking care of" as just helping out or even supporting, but fully controlling his actions and coddling and the like. Basically treating an adult as a child. But anyway... Just because God doesn't cover up some manholes doesn't mean He doesn't cover up any of them.

But it does make one wonder why he doesn't cover them all up.

Chesterton said:
They advocate the best for some of mankind, at the expense of others. That's how slavery works.

More or less. But again, that's only some humanists.

Chesterton said:
Oh no, Singer doesn't conflict with my ideas of morality, I just think he picks the wrong classes of people. We should kill people we don't like, such as heinous criminals and enemy soldiers. The very young and the very old are rarely criminals or soldiers, and are usually quite likable.

I haven't read much about Singer, so I don't really know why he says that killing newborns is morally acceptable. But then, I disagree with his premise: to me, killing any person without consent is immoral.

(my definition of 'person' includes the Great Apes, and excludes foetuses and 'vegetables').

Chesterton said:
Isn't everything that exists a matter of a particle (or a whole lot of particles) being here instead of there?

Yes, but, by and large, a particle being a few microns to the left is very unlikely to have any large impact; it will mostly be drowned out by the white noise of Brownian motion.

Now, a few Avogadro's number of gold atoms spontaneously popping into existence on my bed? That's significant .

Chesterton said:
I think you're being a little facetious here.

Only a little . I know that the Fall actually resulted in humanity's disobedience of God. But even then, I think it's a wee bit harsh to bring into existence pain and suffering.

Chesterton said:
Yes, but the curse is not the Fall. They were cursed because they fell. Did God use an active hand? Maybe, I don't know. What difference does it make?

But what did the Fall do? Was it humanity's disobedience that caused thorns to grow, or was it God's curse? Either way, it seems like God actively introduced pain and suffering into the world to punish humanity for Adam & Eve's mistake (or, more metaphorically, for human disobedience).

Chesterton · Sep 16, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
Which is exactly my point: agnosticism is unrelated to a person's belief in gods. That's why you can have agnostic atheists and agnostic theists.

Most of my life I didn't know whether to believe there was a God, but I saw no grounds to rule out someone else knowing. I considered myself agnostic. I abstained from having a positive belief one way or the other (and that's what some modern atheists claim is atheism). If there can be agnostic theists and atheists, then that would have left me with no choice but to call myself a gnostic agnostic, which is just silly and confusing.

Well, I try not to say 'something from nothing'...

[snip for brevity]

I agree that our intuitive understanding of things work may be woefully inaccurate. I also agree that logical contradictions are impossible. No one has proven that what appears to the human mind as causelessness in QM is in fact causelessness. When you say something could happen uncaused, what you're actually saying is that the thing caused itself. But that would mean the thing existed prior to itself, which is impossible. You're breaking a very basic law of non-contradiction, aren't you?

Then we are at an impasse: I consider it the lesser, while you consider it the greater, of two evils. I don't think we'll solve this age-old riddle in the course of this discussion... but we can damn well try!

Ah, "When Worlds Collide" (or Worldviews) But I'm not sure what you meant by "it" in the sentence. You mean being immoral is better than being in pain, or what?

If one's faith is based on Creationism (i.e., you believe in God because you have no other way of explaining life), then refuting Creationism refutes your faith in God. Just because he lost his faith through this and that (if memory serves, evolution was the last nail in an already-sealed coffin) doesn't mean he didn't thoroughly investigate his faith.

I too was a Christian, but, after digging deeper into my faith, I ended up losing it. After a stint as a Pagan, I'm now an atheist.

I see what you're saying, and it's true that if your faith is Creation-anity, evolution would be a problem. But the whole Creationism issue is so small in the context of Christian history. It's a 20th century thing, and I think largely an American thing. For most of 2,000 years, the Church properly did not see how God did something as being of crucial importance. The issue was occassionally discussed, but nothing significant was riding on the answer.

But, Dawkins doesn't confine himself to attacking Creationism. In accordance with the worldview he's chosen, he attacks all that he thinks is morally bad: belief in religion, the supernatural, etc. He was a biologist, now he's a moralist.

By the grace of God, presumably. God making sure that I don't suffer would have to ensure that you don't suffer either. Presumably, he could plug as all into our own, personal, virtual realities wherein the suffering imparted to you is irrelevant: you are just a figment of my reality, and don't actually suffer yourself.

That's one way.

Make reality unreal? I guess that would be an option, but we're talking about this real reality.

Also, wasn't Eden a pain-free paradise before the Fall? However the mechanics worked then, that's another scenario.

Having allowed for a creature to be free, the mechanics didn't work out well. No fault of God's though.

True, but scientifically probing the mind is a vast topic, since the mind can be quantified in any number of ways. But efficacy of prayer is different, in that it can be quantified in a single parameter: the question of "Do people heal quicker (or at all) if they are prayed for?" can be studied quite easily.

Either praying for someone to get better will work, or it won't. In either case, there are theological ramifications. This is just one of the reasons I don't consider even God to be beyond the scope of science.

First, I think there would very well could be an observer effect when studying prayer. Second, Christians don't claim that prayer works in the way you would be testing for. A prayer is a request (though not all prayer is) to a Living God. Sometimes God grants the request, sometimes He doesn't. St. Paul himself prayed repeatedly for removal of the "thorn in his side", but God didn't remove it.

I'd be wary of conducting private studies; statistics has a nasty habit of doing what you least expect. The gambler's fallacy, the survivor's fallacy, the Monty Hall problem, etc, are all common ways in which a person's statistical analysis turns out to be completely wrong.
Not that I'm dismissing you as incompetent, mind!

Put it this way: I say prayer works, then I say it doesn't "work" the way you would test for. I've found that things I prayed for at one point in my life were not granted, and many, many years later I realized it would have been disastrous if they had been. There comes a point where too many coincidences are too improbable.

It's comparable in that it too cannot be imagined.

Neither can 2 + 2 = 5. Unimaginability is not evidence that something's possible.

And, most importantly, they're not scientific leaps. Scientists may make them, but they're neither speaking from the evidence nor speaking for the scientific community as a whole.

Agreed. But judging from what they say, some certainly seem to think they are speaking from the evidence. There is also the separate issue of the general public confusing ideas. If you stand an uneducated peasant next to Richard Dawkins, and the peasant says "I believe there's a God" and Dawkins says "No", people will tend to give more credibility to Dawkins' view, because he's educated and intelligent. But he's not educated as to the existence of God any more than the peasant is. People do rightfully esteem science and scientists. But with elevated status comes elevated responsibility. If you have actual evidence for atheism, by all means, bring it forward and show us. But illogical personal deductions such as I mentioned previously are not helpful, and are misleading for many.

Well, it's hardly set up a very good standard. Besides the first scientists being Christians looking for evidence of Biblical literalism (Noah's flood, etc), the various churches have fought tooth-and-nail against scientific advances that encroach on their territory. It's not for nothing the biggest detractors of evolution, abiogenesis, 'old Earthism', 'round Earthism', the big bang, etc, are all religious fundamentalists.

You're not criticizing scientists for looking for something are you? If you don't look for it, you won't ever know it's not there.

I can think of only two instances of purported church-vs.-science: heliocentrism and evolution. I commented above on Creationism, and that applies here: it may loom large to us because we're in the midst of it, but I think it's really a small, recent, even regional, issue.

Have you ever looked into the facts of the Galileo case? The common perception is wrong. Galileo was not persecuted for telling a truth that the church didn't like. It'd be lengthy to go into, but briefly, (some of) the Catholic Church had it's science right and it's conclusion wrong, while Galileo had the right conclusion for the wrong reasons.

The science detractors may all be religious fundamentalists, but not all Christians do that. You just can't judge Christianity by what some Christians do, any more than you can judge homosexuality by what some homosexuals do. Christians as early as St. Augustine said the earth was likely very much older than a literal reading of the Bible would indicate. And you do know that it was a Catholic priest who first formulated the Big Bang theory, and that many atheist scientists "fought tooth-and-nail" against the idea, because they didn't like the universe having a beginning?

Ah, I see. Well, Genesis is more accurate than most in that we were formed from the 'dust'. But you can find spooky accuracies in most texts if you look hard enough.
But I agree, neither evolution nor abiogenesis pose a problem for Christianity; it's core concepts and beliefs are unrelated to the origin and development of life.

You summed it up nicely. I wish some of my creationist friends understood as well as you.

In our culture, perhaps. But cowardice is sometimes favoured in a soldier: 'live to fight another day', and so you might actively want someone to be a coward.

But that's not cowardice, that's tactics: as an officer once said during the Korean War: "We're not retreating. We're advancing in the opposite direction."

Likewise, sexual promiscuity (which is what I think the censors were blocking...) might be seen as morally good in a society that is crippled by a high mortality rate.
Point is, you can always find people who love what others hate, who condone what others condemn. Even the 'big two', murder and rape, aren't seen in the same way by everyone.

I think you're stretching here, and contradicting yourself. In a previous post, you mentioned the ancient high mortality rate of humanity on the whole. So the farther back we look into history, the more highly admired we should find promiscuous women to be. But we don't find that.

Regardless of the details, the thing to notice about morality is that everyone everywhere has had the ideas of "I should" and "I should not" do certain things. And relativists, humanists, and people who claim to reject "traditional" morality, all hold "should" ideas as passionately as anyone else.

And notice that blasphemy has all but gone from our respective cultures. In times gone by, I would be killed on the spot for half the things I've said.

I think blasphemy is particular to the Abrahamic religions, so it doesn't really fall under general human morality. Although, taken as profaning whatever is sacred, it's probably universal, and it is still with us. There's a certain racial epithet applied to black people which society says, unless you're black, you cannot utter. You can only refer to it as the "N-word". Non-black people in America almost automatically are fired from their jobs if they are heard to say the word publicly. There have been legislators who have sought to officially criminalize the use of the word. A man was once fired for using the word "ni-gg-ardly" in a sentence, because although he used it appropriately, someone complained about the fact that it simply sounded like the inappropriate word. (I had to put dashes in the word because I got the [wash my mouth] thing. I guess that sort of makes my point.) It's a modern sacred idea that you don't disparage another's race. So blashphemy isn't gone, we just change its subject from time to time.

Ignorance is bliss...

And you call yourself a scientist...

But it does make one wonder why he doesn't cover them all up.

You're talking about an absolutely different world, not a relatively different world. We can't know if what you ask is possible, because we can't know if it's self-contradictory or not. Solid material objects appearing out of nowhere, and gravity not doing what it's supposed to do with snowpacks? You're conceiving of isolated parts of a whole which you can't know is even possible.

The possibility of untimely death keeps us ever mindful that the stakes are high, and that we need to make a decision about our relationship with the cosmos. "The day of salvation is now" as scripture says. Like love itself, the world is beautiful, but risky and dangerous. As Lewis said, we can be happy, we can have fun, on rare occassions even experience ecstacy, but we are never safe. And this world is not our home anyway. Making this world completely safe and comfortable would be somewhat like moving your entire book collection into a motel room in which you were only going to spend one night. You're not supposed to feel permanent in a temporary lodging. And though it may sound callous, whether by manhole or avalanche or old age, we all die someday.

I haven't read much about Singer, so I don't really know why he says that killing newborns is morally acceptable. But then, I disagree with his premise: to me, killing any person without consent is immoral.

(my definition of 'person' includes the Great Apes, and excludes foetuses and 'vegetables').

We all once agreed that a person was a human. What changed? Have we aquired some new information which dictates a revision of the concept? Is it only the physical similarity? That seems strangely arbitrary. A cloud and a watermelon are both 98% water; should we define clouds as fruit based on that?

Since I mentioned something similiar in the last post, we now also have an Obama-appointed Czar who believes dogs should be able to hire lawyers and sue their owners. Things are changing fast for we old-fashioned Americans who cling to outdated ideas such as "people are people and animals are animals". I want to be fair, so before making up my mind, I'm waiting to hear the animals' side of the story. I'm waiting for a good treatise written by a gorilla explaining how he and I are equally special (or equally ordinary).

Yes, but, by and large, a particle being a few microns to the left is very unlikely to have any large impact; it will mostly be drowned out by the white noise of Brownian motion.

Now, a few Avogadro's number of gold atoms spontaneously popping into existence on my bed? That's significant .

I don't know what you just said. I could Google it, but I'll just suppose we agree particles do whatever they do, and don't do what they don't do.

Only a little . I know that the Fall actually resulted in humanity's disobedience of God. But even then, I think it's a wee bit harsh to bring into existence pain and suffering.

Every child who's ever seen a pretty flame of fire, and reached to touch it only to get burned probably had the immediate thought "Gee, that outcome was unnecessarily harsh". Harshness merits attention and action.

But what did the Fall do? Was it humanity's disobedience that caused thorns to grow, or was it God's curse? Either way, it seems like God actively introduced pain and suffering into the world to punish humanity for Adam & Eve's mistake (or, more metaphorically, for human disobedience).

It was humanity's disobedience. God did not actively introduce pain (on the grand scale anyway). That's what I believe, it's orthodox Christian doctrine; if you want further clarification, you'd have to ask a theologian. I could share my sketchy, uninformed thoughts, but I don't know very much.

Wiccan_Child · Sep 19, 2009

Chesterton said:
Most of my life I didn't know whether to believe there was a God, but I saw no grounds to rule out someone else knowing. I considered myself agnostic. I abstained from having a positive belief one way or the other (and that's what some modern atheists claim is atheism). If there can be agnostic theists and atheists, then that would have left me with no choice but to call myself a gnostic agnostic, which is just silly and confusing.

Actually, by my vocabulary, you would be a gnostic atheist: you don't believe gods exist, but you believe we could, in principle, know about them.

Chesterton said:
[snip for brevity]
But that would mean the thing existed prior to itself, which is impossible. You're breaking a very basic law of non-contradiction, aren't you?

Actually, that's not what I'm saying, for the very reason you point out. If something is uncaused, then it has no cause. Something which caused itself does have a cause: itself. So no, they're not the same.

Chesterton said:
Ah, "When Worlds Collide" (or Worldviews) But I'm not sure what you meant by "it" in the sentence. You mean being immoral is better than being in pain, or what?

Pain and damnation (for want of a better word). I consider pain to be worse than damnation, while you consider damnation to be worse than any earthly pain.

Chesterton said:
I see what you're saying, and it's true that if your faith is Creation-anity, evolution would be a problem. But the whole Creationism issue is so small in the context of Christian history. It's a 20th century thing, and I think largely an American thing. For most of 2,000 years, the Church properly did not see how God did something as being of crucial importance. The issue was occassionally discussed, but nothing significant was riding on the answer.

But, Dawkins doesn't confine himself to attacking Creationism. In accordance with the worldview he's chosen, he attacks all that he thinks is morally bad: belief in religion, the supernatural, etc. He was a biologist, now he's a moralist.

Is that so bad? He considers religion to be morally bankrupt, so he rallies against it. If only we all fought for what we believed in, perhaps the world would be a better place.

Chesterton said:
Make reality unreal? I guess that would be an option, but we're talking about this real reality.

The notion of reality gets a bit stretched when you introduce all-powerful deities into the mix. If God can created whatever he wishes, if he can bend existence to his will, then reality loses its prominence as something we can stick to. Empiricism goes out the window.
Nonetheless, one need only appeal to the power of God to justify the possibility a 'better' world.

Chesterton said:
Having allowed for a creature to be free, the mechanics didn't work out well. No fault of God's though.

On the contrary, he set up the mechanics knowing full well that, if humans chose to disobey God (a choice God knew full well in advance), pain and suffering would result.

Chesterton said:
First, I think there would very well could be an observer effect when studying prayer.

How so? Scientists have had centuries to refine techniques to remove any and all bias. Typically, the patients only know that they are in a trial; they don't know who, if anyone, is praying for them, or how, or to whom. The scientists and doctors recording the results don't know which patients are being prayed for. Those doing the praying are given what information they need (a name, an affliction, etc), but otherwise have no contact with the patients.

I honestly can't see a flaw in such an experiment. If they believers' prayer for healing has any effect, it would show up as a subtle (but significant) statistical trend.

Unless, of course, God ignores the plight of anyone who would dare undergo scientific trials.

Chesterton said:
Second, Christians don't claim that prayer works in the way you would be testing for. A prayer is a request (though not all prayer is) to a Living God. Sometimes God grants the request, sometimes He doesn't. St. Paul himself prayed repeatedly for removal of the "thorn in his side", but God didn't remove it.

Which is what we atheists have been saying would happen for as long as there have been atheists.
But your description of prayer doesn't seem problematic for such experiments. The actual mechanics are irrelevant; people believe that praying (or talking quietly to God with your hands clasped, if you prefer)for the sick can help at least some people in some fashion. The studies show otherwise.

Chesterton said:
Put it this way: I say prayer works, then I say it doesn't "work" the way you would test for. I've found that things I prayed for at one point in my life were not granted, and many, many years later I realized it would have been disastrous if they had been. There comes a point where too many coincidences are too improbable.

You'd be surprised how many coincidences are just that: coincidences.

Is it divine providence that the size of the Sun and Moon, as seen on Earth, are almost identical?

Chesterton said:
Neither can 2 + 2 = 5. Unimaginability is not evidence that something's possible.

Absolutely. But neither is it a disproof: just because we can't imagine it, doesn't mean it is false, or impossible.
The logical default is to consider everything as 'possible', until such time as evidence or rationale proves otherwise.
Hence why I'm an agnostic atheist.

Chesterton said:
Agreed. But judging from what they say, some certainly seem to think they are speaking from the evidence. There is also the separate issue of the general public confusing ideas. If you stand an uneducated peasant next to Richard Dawkins, and the peasant says "I believe there's a God" and Dawkins says "No", people will tend to give more credibility to Dawkins' view, because he's educated and intelligent. But he's not educated as to the existence of God any more than the peasant is. People do rightfully esteem science and scientists. But with elevated status comes elevated responsibility. If you have actual evidence for atheism, by all means, bring it forward and show us. But illogical personal deductions such as I mentioned previously are not helpful, and are misleading for many.

If they're illogical, by all means, demonstrate how. But just because Dawkins has no formal training in theology doesn't mean his conclusions are necessarily false or unworthy of consideration.
You reject Dawkin's arguments because of who he is. Isn't it the very definition of an ad hominem?

Chesterton said:
The science detractors may all be religious fundamentalists, but not all Christians do that. You just can't judge Christianity by what some Christians do, any more than you can judge homosexuality by what some homosexuals do. Christians as early as St. Augustine said the earth was likely very much older than a literal reading of the Bible would indicate. And you do know that it was a Catholic priest who first formulated the Big Bang theory, and that many atheist scientists "fought tooth-and-nail" against the idea, because they didn't like the universe having a beginning?

True, but notice how atheists and scientists have now accepeted it. The only people who still seriously doubt it are religious fundamentalists (and a handful of others). I'm not trying to broad-brush, I'm just pointing out that it's religious people, not atheistic people, who will fight well-established scientific knowledge long after it's been accepted by everyone else.

Chesterton said:
I think you're stretching here, and contradicting yourself. In a previous post, you mentioned the ancient high mortality rate of humanity on the whole. So the farther back we look into history, the more highly admired we should find promiscuous women to be. But we don't find that.

Actually, we do. Until very recently, being chaste or at least monogamous was seen as a virtue, and anything else was unthinkable. But before that, sex was so valued that even the religions of the time were based around it: animism and fertility religions were the first forms of spirituality man developed.

And promiscuity is not limited to just women.

Chesterton said:
Regardless of the details, the thing to notice about morality is that everyone everywhere has had the ideas of "I should" and "I should not" do certain things. And relativists, humanists, and people who claim to reject "traditional" morality, all hold "should" ideas as passionately as anyone else.

Agreed. But no one says they don't hold 'should' ideas. The relativist freely admits to having a moral code. But just because everyone has a moral code doesn't support the idea of an objective morality. As I said, what one person considers obviously evil is what someone else has considered obviously good.

I also find it interesting that you say "people who claim to reject traditional morality", as if relativists and humanists are secretly lying about it .

Chesterton said:
I think blasphemy is particular to the Abrahamic religions, so it doesn't really fall under general human morality. Although, taken as profaning whatever is sacred, it's probably universal, and it is still with us. There's a certain racial epithet applied to black people which society says, unless you're black, you cannot utter. You can only refer to it as the "N-word". Non-black people in America almost automatically are fired from their jobs if they are heard to say the word publicly. There have been legislators who have sought to officially criminalize the use of the word. A man was once fired for using the word "ni-gg-ardly" in a sentence, because although he used it appropriately, someone complained about the fact that it simply sounded like the inappropriate word. (I had to put dashes in the word because I got the [wash my mouth] thing. I guess that sort of makes my point.) It's a modern sacred idea that you don't disparage another's race. So blashphemy isn't gone, we just change its subject from time to time.

I disagree that social taboos are on par with blasphemy. The punishments associated with both 'crimes' are rarely alike (just look at the Middle-East; a woman was killed for dropping a Qu'ran).

Chesterton said:
You're talking about an absolutely different world, not a relatively different world.

What's the difference?

Chesterton said:
We can't know if what you ask is possible, because we can't know if it's self-contradictory or not.

Actually, we know it's possible preciesly because no one's disproven it.

Chesterton said:
Solid material objects appearing out of nowhere, and gravity not doing what it's supposed to do with snowpacks? You're conceiving of isolated parts of a whole which you can't know is even possible.

On the contrary, because I can imagine it, it must be possible. Unless God's power is limited somehow, I don't see why he couldn't move the atoms of an avalanche to exactly where he wants them.

Chesterton said:
You're not supposed to feel permanent in a temporary lodging. And though it may sound callous, whether by manhole or avalanche or old age, we all die someday.

The inevitability of death isn't what I'm worried about. It's the pain and suffering that we experience while we're still alive that concerns me.

Chesterton said:
We all once agreed that a person was a human. What changed? Have we aquired some new information which dictates a revision of the concept? Is it only the physical similarity? That seems strangely arbitrary. A cloud and a watermelon are both 98% water; should we define clouds as fruit based on that?

Of course it's not physical similarity; such a categorisation gives you names like the Koala Bear, even though it's nothing of the sort. As the concept of personhood has been developed, deciding those to whom it could be applied has always been challenged. The underage, the mentally disabled, even women, have all been considered 'sub-human', or otherwise not entitled to the basic rights of other humans.

It's not that new information has been acquired that magically expanded our understanding, but rather it's just another step in the very long quest for deciding who gets what rights.

Chesterton said:
I'm waiting for a good treatise written by a gorilla explaining how he and I are equally special (or equally ordinary).

Have you ever gone up to a gorilla and asked? Rejecting the personhood of a creature you've never met seems awfully rash.

Chesterton said:
I don't know what you just said. I could Google it, but I'll just suppose we agree particles do whatever they do, and don't do what they don't do.

Can't God influence them at all? You said before that God manipulates events, albeit on a small scale. My question remains: what, exactly, does he do?

Chesterton said:
Every child who's ever seen a pretty flame of fire, and reached to touch it only to get burned probably had the immediate thought "Gee, that outcome was unnecessarily harsh". Harshness merits attention and action.

Indeed, but harshness tends to fit the danger. Fire is extremely dangerous, so elicits a stronger result.
But I think Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden (or humanity's fall into sin) is nonetheless too harsh. So what if we disobeyed God? God gave us free will, but punishes us when we use it. We have a word for that: coercion. "Use your free will to choose option A, or I'll kill you" doesn't sound like the ethos of a God who wants us to choose to love him.

Chesterton said:
It was humanity's disobedience. God did not actively introduce pain (on the grand scale anyway). That's what I believe, it's orthodox Christian doctrine; if you want further clarification, you'd have to ask a theologian. I could share my sketchy, uninformed thoughts, but I don't know very much.

It's a pretty big problem to have not given it much thought. Surely you've encountered common arguments against religion and God, and come up with your own refutations?

Chesterton · Sep 20, 2009

Wiccan_Child said:
Actually, by my vocabulary, you would be a gnostic atheist: you don't believe gods exist, but you believe we could, in principle, know about them.

I also didn't believe God didn't exist. Why wouldn't I have been a gnostic theist?

Actually, that's not what I'm saying, for the very reason you point out. If something is uncaused, then it has no cause. Something which caused itself does have a cause: itself. So no, they're not the same.

A thing uncaused. Do you see this as a religious idea or a scientific idea? I'm asking seriously because, QM notwithstanding, this doesn't appear to be a scientific idea.

Pain and damnation (for want of a better word). I consider pain to be worse than damnation, while you consider damnation to be worse than any earthly pain.

I see. I suppose that's because you don't believe there is any damnation?

Is that so bad? He considers religion to be morally bankrupt, so he rallies against it. If only we all fought for what we believed in, perhaps the world would be a better place.

I didn't say it was bad in itself, I was just pointing out what he's doing. Preachers preach God, Dawkins preaches man.

The notion of reality gets a bit stretched when you introduce all-powerful deities into the mix. If God can created whatever he wishes, if he can bend existence to his will, then reality loses its prominence as something we can stick to. Empiricism goes out the window.
Nonetheless, one need only appeal to the power of God to justify the possibility a 'better' world.

We are real, we are free, we can love and hate, we can do good and evil. How can you get any better or higher than that, unless you really want to be a puppet or a clam?

On the contrary, he set up the mechanics knowing full well that, if humans chose to disobey God (a choice God knew full well in advance), pain and suffering would result.

Yes, but He allowed for something to be able to be contrary to His will. I mean, He granted us the dignity of being real live intelligent choosing beings, then when we mess things up, we want to blame Him for giving us too much freedom. That's a very human thing to do (Eve tried to blame the serpent, and Adam tried to blame Eve), but it's not right.

How so? Scientists have had centuries to refine techniques to remove any and all bias. Typically, the patients only know that they are in a trial; they don't know who, if anyone, is praying for them, or how, or to whom. The scientists and doctors recording the results don't know which patients are being prayed for. Those doing the praying are given what information they need (a name, an affliction, etc), but otherwise have no contact with the patients.

I honestly can't see a flaw in such an experiment. If they believers' prayer for healing has any effect, it would show up as a subtle (but significant) statistical trend.

Unless, of course, God ignores the plight of anyone who would dare undergo scientific trials.

Which is what we atheists have been saying would happen for as long as there have been atheists.
But your description of prayer doesn't seem problematic for such experiments. The actual mechanics are irrelevant; people believe that praying (or talking quietly to God with your hands clasped, if you prefer)for the sick can help at least some people in some fashion. The studies show otherwise.

The major flaw would lie in getting any good Christian to be a participant. Thou shall not tempt the Lord your God, and if I were asked, I could not participate. I can't imagine why a Christian would. No offense, but it's a crass idea. I believe in God, and I love Him, and He loves me; I'm not going to test Him.

Anyway, suppose the results are, say, 20% of the prayed-for people were helped. What do we conclude? God answered 20% of the prayers.

You'd be surprised how many coincidences are just that: coincidences.

All coincidences are co-incidences. The question is why are they coincidences.

Is it divine providence that the size of the Sun and Moon, as seen on Earth, are almost identical?

Of course.

Absolutely. But neither is it a disproof: just because we can't imagine it, doesn't mean it is false, or impossible.
The logical default is to consider everything as 'possible', until such time as evidence or rationale proves otherwise.

Everything except contradictions, right? "Something from nothing" is a logical contradiction.

Hence why I'm an agnostic atheist.

Oh my head hurts. If you believe you cannot know, how did you decide to be an atheist rather than a theist - flip a coin?

If they're illogical, by all means, demonstrate how.

Man biologically evolved, therefore there's no God. It's a non-sequitur.

But just because Dawkins has no formal training in theology doesn't mean his conclusions are necessarily false or unworthy of consideration.
You reject Dawkin's arguments because of who he is. Isn't it the very definition of an ad hominem?

No, I didn't mean that. I promise I reject his arguments on their merits (as above). AFAIK there is no scientific idea which tells us one way or the other whether there's a God. I think he mistakenly argues that scientific evidence about how the world works is somehow evidence against God. And of course he's entitled to his opinion like everyone else,* but you have to admit, the very term "scientific opinion" is a loaded term. If a scientist says "it's my scientific opinion that ___", it's presumed, especially if he's renowned, that there must be good evidence for ___, and in this case there's not.

But since you brought it up, it would be nice if he knew theology better, because one should understand well what one is criticizing. I actually don't think it's always intentional, but he does often wind up attacking a strawman of Christianity, and I think it's due to insufficient understanding.

* There's a Dawkins debate on YouTube where he comes very close to saying that we really shouldn't allow people to believe in religion. So I'm not sure everyone would be entitled to their opinion in a Dawkins perfect world.

True, but notice how atheists and scientists have now accepeted it. The only people who still seriously doubt it are religious fundamentalists (and a handful of others). I'm not trying to broad-brush, I'm just pointing out that it's religious people, not atheistic people, who will fight well-established scientific knowledge long after it's been accepted by everyone else.

Okay, point taken. But then again, there are almost always minority scientific opinions which don't agree with the concensus, and they fight too. I guess that makes them crackpots, but every great once in a while the crackpots turn out to be right.

Actually, we do. Until very recently, being chaste or at least monogamous was seen as a virtue, and anything else was unthinkable. But before that, sex was so valued that even the religions of the time were based around it: animism and fertility religions were the first forms of spirituality man developed.

And promiscuity is not limited to just women.

Alright, but promiscuity is not the same as fertility. After all, my God told the first couple to be fruitful and multiply.

If sexuality were actually seen as expressing bona fide spirituality, or being a bona fide religious practice, I think that might not fit our definition of promiscuity. That is to say, the person engaging in it would not be seen as a "loose woman", but apart from the religion there could still be loose women in that same society. But I'm just thinking out loud, you may be right, I'll concede the point. I don't know much about the fertility religions.

Agreed. But no one says they don't hold 'should' ideas. The relativist freely admits to having a moral code. But just because everyone has a moral code doesn't support the idea of an objective morality. As I said, what one person considers obviously evil is what someone else has considered obviously good.

I also find it interesting that you say "people who claim to reject traditional morality", as if relativists and humanists are secretly lying about it .

No, I don't mean they're lying, but that they don't think it through. If I snatch a relativist's wallet from him and ask him why I shouldn't keep his money, he ultimately has no recourse other than to say it would be "wrong". He can talk about evolution and genes and society and utility, but I have a will all my own, so none of that really enters into it. My snatching his wallet involves only he and I. There's no reason thou shalt not steal, it's too fundamental for reason. It's axiomatic truth. My point is they may think they're rejecting traditional morality, but they're not really, they're more or less tweaking it (not that good or bad tweaking can't be very important).

I disagree that social taboos are on par with blasphemy. The punishments associated with both 'crimes' are rarely alike (just look at the Middle-East; a woman was killed for dropping a Qu'ran).

Punishments may differ, but I think the idea is generally the same.

What's the difference?

Actually, we know it's possible preciesly because no one's disproven it.

On the contrary, because I can imagine it, it must be possible. Unless God's power is limited somehow, I don't see why he couldn't move the atoms of an avalanche to exactly where he wants them.

As a scientist, you'd be out of a job, because if matter and energy behaved the way you described, you'd be in a world with no law and order; there could be no science. Virtue would also be out of a job because with no chance of pain, there'd be no need for courage, compassion, pity, sacrifice, etc.

The inevitability of death isn't what I'm worried about. It's the pain and suffering that we experience while we're still alive that concerns me.

I think one has to do with the other.

Of course it's not physical similarity; such a categorisation gives you names like the Koala Bear, even though it's nothing of the sort. As the concept of personhood has been developed, deciding those to whom it could be applied has always been challenged. The underage, the mentally disabled, even women, have all been considered 'sub-human', or otherwise not entitled to the basic rights of other humans.

It's not that new information has been acquired that magically expanded our understanding, but rather it's just another step in the very long quest for deciding who gets what rights.

True to an extent. We may have said some humans were lesser persons, but I don't think we ever said any non-humans were persons.

Have you ever gone up to a gorilla and asked? Rejecting the personhood of a creature you've never met seems awfully rash.

No I have not.

Can't God influence them at all? You said before that God manipulates events, albeit on a small scale. My question remains: what, exactly, does he do?

Sure He can influence them, but from our perspective, it would still appear that they just "do what they do". I'm not really sure what you mean by asking "what exactly does He do?" Even man can manipulate nature to an extent.

Indeed, but harshness tends to fit the danger. Fire is extremely dangerous, so elicits a stronger result.
But I think Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden (or humanity's fall into sin) is nonetheless too harsh. So what if we disobeyed God? God gave us free will, but punishes us when we use it. We have a word for that: coercion. "Use your free will to choose option A, or I'll kill you" doesn't sound like the ethos of a God who wants us to choose to love him.

We speak of wills as something we have, but really, we are wills. The poet Heraclitus said "The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts." What you think, say and do is what you are. We aren't just chemicals - for better and worse, to be human is to have a certain quality.

God doesn't punish humanity because we did the wrong thing. They say virtue is its own reward, likewise, vice is its own punishment. For our happiness, our wills, our selves should fit into God as a key fits into a lock, but if the key is bent so that it will not fit, it's not the lock's fault.

It's a pretty big problem to have not given it much thought. Surely you've encountered common arguments against religion and God, and come up with your own refutations?

Well I was talking specifically about the, well, mechanical details of the Fall. What problem are you referring to, and are you talking about arguments in regard to that, or other arguments also?

Wiccan_Child · Sep 23, 2009

Chesterton said:
I also didn't believe God didn't exist. Why wouldn't I have been a gnostic theist?

A theist is someone who believes God exists. Since you did not fulfil this criterion, you were not a theist.
An atheist is someone who is not a theist (i.e., they do not believe God exists). Since you were not a theist, you must therefore be an atheist.

You were an atheist because you did not believe in God. The fact that you didn't believe God didn't exist is neither here nor there.

Chesterton said:
A thing uncaused. Do you see this as a religious idea or a scientific idea? I'm asking seriously because, QM notwithstanding, this doesn't appear to be a scientific idea.

I see it as an idea. I don't make a distinction between 'religious' and 'scientific' ideas.

Chesterton said:
I see. I suppose that's because you don't believe there is any damnation?

No. I don't believe in damnation because I see no reason to. Presumably, you don't believe in Buddhist ideas about the afterlife for the same reason.

Chesterton said:
I didn't say it was bad in itself, I was just pointing out what he's doing. Preachers preach God, Dawkins preaches man.

Everyone preaches. The question is who you listen to. That's why I prefer Dawkins to the pulpit: he advocates logic and reason, self-scrutiny and critical evaluation. Religions, on the other hand, seem only to advocate blind faith, double standards, and inconsistent moralities (this might seem like I'm broad-brushing, but I've yet to see a religion that doesn't do all three).

Chesterton said:
We are real, we are free, we can love and hate, we can do good and evil. How can you get any better or higher than that, unless you really want to be a puppet or a clam?

1) Remove our ability to hate.
2) Remove our ability to do evil.
3) Remove our ability to experience anything but pure bliss.

Any one of those would make the world a better place, don't you think?

Chesterton said:
Yes, but He allowed for something to be able to be contrary to His will. I mean, He granted us the dignity of being real live intelligent choosing beings, then when we mess things up, we want to blame Him for giving us too much freedom. That's a very human thing to do (Eve tried to blame the serpent, and Adam tried to blame Eve), but it's not right.

I disagree. If a parent gives a child a gun, who do we blame when the gun goes off? The child, for having the moral agency to fire the gun? Or the parent, for being so irresponsible as to hand a child a gun in the first place?

Chesterton said:
The major flaw would lie in getting any good Christian to be a participant. Thou shall not tempt the Lord your God, and if I were asked, I could not participate. I can't imagine why a Christian would. No offense, but it's a crass idea. I believe in God, and I love Him, and He loves me; I'm not going to test Him.

Nonetheless, there are more than enough people willing to pray. Is God so petty that he ignores the sick just because someone dares hold a clipboard? Surely it's better to a) demonstrate that prayer works, and b) heal the sick?

Chesterton said:
Anyway, suppose the results are, say, 20% of the prayed-for people were helped. What do we conclude? God answered 20% of the prayers.

Which begs the question: what about the other 80%? Why did God let them die (or otherwise remain ill)?

Chesterton said:
All coincidences are co-incidences. The question is why are they coincidences.

Hah, true. But the human mind is very tempted to infer a causal relationship between two events where none exists. That's why we have to be so careful when performing experiments, especially our own.

Chesterton said:
Of course.

So God specifically created the Sun and Moon to have those particular shapes and sizes? It's not just a result of how interstellar dust behaves? I suppose you could say that, since God made the rules, anything that happens is divine providence. But I think you know that's not what I'm talking about...

Chesterton said:
Everything except contradictions, right?

Right.

Chesterton said:
"Something from nothing" is a logical contradiction.

By all means, present your disproof.
Bear in mind that "something from nothing" isn't something I advocate, at least not literally.

Chesterton said:
Oh my head hurts. If you believe you cannot know, how did you decide to be an atheist rather than a theist - flip a coin?

Because an atheist is someone who doesn't believe God exists (i.e., someone who isn't a theist). Since I don't believe God exists, I must therefore be an atheist.

Chesterton said:
Man biologically evolved, therefore there's no God. It's a non-sequitur.

Agreed. But who makes such a claim?

It could be said that 'God is an intelligent being which poofed all life into being fully formed', in which case evolution does refute God's existence: since life didn't pop into existence, but rather evolved gradually from simple ancestor organisms,

Chesterton said:
No, I didn't mean that. I promise I reject his arguments on their merits (as above). AFAIK there is no scientific idea which tells us one way or the other whether there's a God. I think he mistakenly argues that scientific evidence about how the world works is somehow evidence against God. And of course he's entitled to his opinion like everyone else,* but you have to admit, the very term "scientific opinion" is a loaded term. If a scientist says "it's my scientific opinion that ___", it's presumed, especially if he's renowned, that there must be good evidence for ___, and in this case there's not.

Agreed. But does Dawkins ever say "It's my scientific opinion that God doesn't exist"?

Chesterton said:
But since you brought it up, it would be nice if he knew theology better, because one should understand well what one is criticizing. I actually don't think it's always intentional, but he does often wind up attacking a strawman of Christianity, and I think it's due to insufficient understanding.

That's actually a fallacious way of dealing with critics: "If you understood it more, you wouldn't be criticising it. Since you're criticising it, you obviously don't understand it as well as I do". Could it not simply be that Dawkins understands Christianity as well as you do, if not better?

Chesterton said:
* There's a Dawkins debate on YouTube where he comes very close to saying that we really shouldn't allow people to believe in religion. So I'm not sure everyone would be entitled to their opinion in a Dawkins perfect world.

Can you show me this video?

Chesterton said:
Okay, point taken. But then again, there are almost always minority scientific opinions which don't agree with the concensus, and they fight too. I guess that makes them crackpots, but every great once in a while the crackpots turn out to be right.

Which is why we evaluate claims based on their own merits, not on their author's crackpotisity.

Chesterton said:
No, I don't mean they're lying, but that they don't think it through. If I snatch a relativist's wallet from him and ask him why I shouldn't keep his money, he ultimately has no recourse other than to say it would be "wrong". He can talk about evolution and genes and society and utility, but I have a will all my own, so none of that really enters into it. My snatching his wallet involves only he and I. There's no reason thou shalt not steal, it's too fundamental for reason. It's axiomatic truth. My point is they may think they're rejecting traditional morality, but they're not really, they're more or less tweaking it (not that good or bad tweaking can't be very important).

As I said before, the relativist can argue from two points of view: his own, personal moral code, or from your moral code. He can call your theft 'wrong' because, for whatever reason, you both agree that it is indeed wrong. You have different bases for why you believe what you believe, but you nonetheless believe the same thing.
The dilemma occurs when you believe different things (such as abortion, gay rights, or other deliciously controversial issues). I see objectivists going "A condemns B, so therefore so should we", while relativists say "nothing condemns B, so therefore it should not be condemned".

The relativist doesn't appeal to an objective morality, but nonetheless has her own moral code. Where she got it varies from person to person. Evolution can explain why we have a 'sense of morality', and why certain things are 'just wrong' (such as killing a child), but that's all it can do.

Chesterton said:
Punishments may differ, but I think the idea is generally the same.

Would you punish a woman for dropping a Qu'ran? What do you say to someone who wants to kill you for committing the grave crime of wearing red on a Thursday? Do you appeal to the Objective Morality, or what?

Chesterton said:
As a scientist, you'd be out of a job, because if matter and energy behaved the way you described, you'd be in a world with no law and order; there could be no science. Virtue would also be out of a job because with no chance of pain, there'd be no need for courage, compassion, pity, sacrifice, etc.

So?

Chesterton said:
I think one has to do with the other.

Why? Death has nothing to do with pain; I can feel pain without necessarily dying or being mortal, and I can be mortal without necessarily feeling pain. Pain is a result of the world I live in, while death is the inherent limitation to my fragile body. One can be removed without perturbing the other.

Chesterton said:
True to an extent. We may have said some humans were lesser persons, but I don't think we ever said any non-humans were persons.

We never called anyone a person until relatively recently. We also didn't give women the vote and paraded the physically and mentally disabled in circuses.
Luckily, laws are not stagnant. While we may not have considered Gorillas as 'persons' in the past, that doesn't stop us from re-evaluating the concept of personhood and deciding that, in fact, Gorillas are indeed persons.

Chesterton said:
ure He can influence them, but from our perspective, it would still appear that they just "do what they do". I'm not really sure what you mean by asking "what exactly does He do?" Even man can manipulate nature to an extent.

Aye, and we know how man does it. But my point is that in the past you've said that God can influence the world. I don't know how else to ask "what does he do". Does he nudge atoms around? Does he nudge people's thoughts around? How does he influence the world? What, exactly, does he do?

Chesterton said:
We speak of wills as something we have, but really, we are wills. The poet Heraclitus said "The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts." What you think, say and do is what you are. We aren't just chemicals - for better and worse, to be human is to have a certain quality.

God doesn't punish humanity because we did the wrong thing. They say virtue is its own reward, likewise, vice is its own punishment. For our happiness, our wills, our selves should fit into God as a key fits into a lock, but if the key is bent so that it will not fit, it's not the lock's fault.

Indeed: it's the fault of the one who bent it, or set it up to be bent. That person is God.

Chesterton said:
Well I was talking specifically about the, well, mechanical details of the Fall. What problem are you referring to, and are you talking about arguments in regard to that, or other arguments also?

The problem of evil, mainly.

christandisrael · Sep 23, 2009

Without an origin; there is nothing else.

98cwitr · Sep 23, 2009

^^^except eternity

Omniscience and quantum mechanics

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