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Yes, it's very tedious - it's an indirect form of the 'tu quoque' fallacy ("Well they do X, which is just as bad, or worse..."). The sad thing is, it's based on a misapprehension of the other arguments (i.e. the fallacy content is itself fallacious).... This line of argument is very tiring as your only justification for your ideas is to attempt to point out the flaws in other arguments.
If I presented a new idea to you and my only justification was, "well there are a lot of stupid ideas that people believe" you would have no reason to believe me either.
Analogs have to work the same way, not just be used in an analogy.
Again analogs need to have some similarity.
You're proposing a scale change from the movement across a neuron being almost instantaneous to taking billions of years.
This would mean God would be relatively dim compared to a mouse.
You would have to show some evidence that there are congruence between the brains of living organisms and the layout of the universe, as you have not yet done so. You showed me one picture.
We need the circuitry to act like a semi unified being for it to be aware like a brain is aware yes.
Well your floating brain concept was first hypothesized as a purposefully absurd concept so It wasn't looking very promising when I started.
Right, sometimes things look the same, but those two things are pretty differn't.
Again, YOU were the one comparing the cosmic scale thing to a neuron.
Fantasy when compared to well evidenced reality.
You've not demonstrated any similarity though.
The coincidence would be that there are some natural phenomena you can call or view as "circuits", because that's all you have here.
An example? If you found some sort of recognizable pattern that would denote something like "brain activity", it would be fairly convincing.
It's generally very ill defined in terms of what kind of observations would be very likely to exist if it indeed existed, and more importantly what observations should be excluded and falsify the idea. I don't consider you much of a reputable source on the matter because "people tend to believe in it" is one of your observations leading you to believe.
You're not just arguing physics, you are arguing that the universe is aware like a life form.
So, any discipline that has something to say about how awareness works could weigh in.
Yes the "body" of the thing is pretty important to your idea, but, I am talking about the awareness not being carried by a living organisms body.
Regardless, neuronal brains are built to be part of a living organism in a very intimate way that I don't see an analog for with the universe.
The information transfer and storage is what they are FOR, and the scaling is an obvious problem.
Yes, it's very tedious - it's an indirect form of the 'tu quoque' fallacy ("Well they do X, which is just as bad, or worse..."). The sad thing is, it's based on a misapprehension of the other arguments (i.e. the fallacy content is itself fallacious).
I don't know if you intended that ironically, but it's a typical example of the indirect 'tu quoque' I was describing - complete with nested fallacy.Atheists are constantly putting themselves into the role of judge, jury and executioner with respect to the term "evidence" as it relates to the topic of God while turning a blind eye to how "evidence" actually works in "science".
Technically the *effect* of something can be detected even if the hypothetical mass/energy cannot. We can see the effect of God on peoples lives.
Atheists don't necessarily reject all ideas that fail to show up in controlled experimentation in the lab, just any ideas that relate to the topic of "God".
Atheists are constantly putting themselves into the role of judge, jury and executioner with respect to the term "evidence" as it relates to the topic of God while turning a blind eye to how "evidence" actually works in "science".
Sooner or later whatever you wish to compare Panetheism to will need to be "more justifiable" in some way. Given the current state of affairs in astronomy today, I fail to see how that's even possible.
What effect?Technically the *effect* of something can be detected even if the hypothetical mass/energy cannot. We can see the effect of God on peoples lives.
I don't know if you intended that ironically, but it's a typical example of the indirect 'tu quoque' I was describing - complete with nested fallacy.
Must you really do everything in your power to turn every thread into a discussion about this nonsense?
I suspect you'll find that's true of pretty much anyone who is unfamiliar with the scientific definition or sense of 'evidence' - and that would probably be the majority of people....I'm just noting that atheists tend to define the term "evidence" with respect to the concept of God to suit themselves, and they don't use that term in any scientific sense.
I suspect you'll find that's true of pretty much anyone who is unfamiliar with the scientific definition or sense of 'evidence' - and that would probably be the majority of people.
Most of the few atheists I know who talk about such things seem to have basically scientific requirements, i.e. for 'hard' evidence;
necessarily fairly general requirements -
It's not possible to be specific about an ill-defined phenomenon that many proponents claim to be implicitly undetectable...
But perhaps can you describe the two different definitions you think they use?
It's generally very ill defined in terms of what kind of observations would be very likely to exist if it indeed existed, and more importantly what observations should be excluded and falsify the idea. I don't consider you much of a reputable source on the matter because "people tend to believe in it" is one of your observations leading you to believe.
How would you even begin to "tell"?
Simplicity is NOT what we find in biological brains when they are fully functional. Biology is usually only simple when we're dealing with the building blocks, not the formed structure as part of a whole organism.
The elegance is how you take simple pieces and make them into something so complex it is mind boggling.
You would need to find evidence for the information your "nerves" are transmitting and how that works.
Universes would need to exist as population and evolve with respect to a larger environment like lifeforms do.
Also there would need to be a method for keeping the info about how to build universes as they do.
FYI, if that were actually a motivation, I'd tend to embrace LCDM like everyone else. The fact that people believe in things doesn't make them right by default and I tend to reject the consensus whenever and wherever it deviates from pure empirical physics.
I can't simply *assume* that the 'experience" called "sight" is a mass delusions simply because I might personally be born blind. I wouldn't assume that everyone who experiences gravity is experiencing a mass delusion either, even if every math formula that presently exists to describe gravity turns out to be replaced by something new. I likewise wouldn't assume that every reported experience of God in a human life is a mass delusion either. I don't walk in their shoes.
Their shape and function seem to be my first indication that they do resemble living structures in living things. Since I don't really 'control' the universe however, it's not going to be easy to verify it, the way it might be easy to verify the awareness of various lifeforms on Earth.
I supposed I could try poking it with a needle to see what happens, but my 'needle" is bound to be downright puny compared to the scale of a whole universe. About the best I could continue to do is look for biological similarities.
Therein lies the rub in terms of cosmology. I might be able to trace circuity and such, but all the chemical transfer processes and such will be harder to detect.
True, but it's unlikely that I can even observe the entire universe from my current vantage point. I can only see so far before photons are redshifted into oblivion and light is simply absorbed and scattered. I could only hope to detect biological features in a the universe, and I can't be sure I even see much of the physical universe in terms of percentages.
Those would be called Birkeland currents (large and small), and mostly electrons and ions are exchanged through the circuitry. Electrons tend to do most of the work inside of our solar system in terms of current flow.
Based on the limits of light, you may be, and probably are asking for the impossible.An Ameba might be able to figure out what I look like on the inside, and that I'm a living thing, but they wouldn't be able to tell you who my friends might be. That's a bit beyond the scope of anything I would expect to be able to do.
I didn't technically build my own body, but it was all encoded in few bits of DNA.
I don't think it's even reasonable to ask expect every answer to every possible question, nor do I believe that is a requirement of any cosmology theory.
In terms of current flow and their generation of magnetic fields, they do work the same way.
I'm not sure how you're defining a single "neuron" in space. All structures in space and here on Earth are limited by the speed of the flow of current. Scaling issues will certainly apply, but as I said, I have no idea what the speed of awareness might be.
You could argue that it "thinks more slowly", but not "dim". There's more circuits in space than there are inside of a mouse.
You're welcome to read through Alfven's work, or or Peratt's work on circuit theory as it applies to objects and structures in space.
Well, it might.
The term "big bang" was originally used to ridicule that idea too, so I don't see how that makes any difference in terms of actual science or physics.
Other than scale you haven't demonstrated that they are all that different.
I'm simply noting the similarity in terms of mass layouts and the flow of current.
Is "dark matter" a fantasy or "well evidence reality" in your opinion? Are we comparing it to other scientific ideas, or empirical lab demonstrated physics only?
You mean *besides* the constant flow of current and the mass layouts?
That's all I have or that's all you'll acknowledge? You seem to be ignoring the "useful predictions" I can make with respect to humans and the higher power they seem to have been experiencing since the dawn of written civilization.
*Other than* current flow through circuits, what is "brain activity"?
Actually my argument was that humans report an *experience* of God, not just that they believe in it.
That is a physics argument, unless you're claiming that biology isn't about physics.
We're talking past each other then because I'm suggesting that "God" has a physical body, namely the entirely physical universe.
You don't want to see an analog as far as I can tell.
It depends on where storage takes place doesn't it?
As I've said before, the main difference is that the theories and hypotheses of physics and cosmology are not beliefs but provisional explanatory models for multiple observations, and are subject to continuous testing and revision. Atheists are typically unpersuaded by God concepts because those concepts are broadly antithetical to that methodology - ill-defined, dogmatic, lacking observational evidence, untestable (often by definition), and lacking explanatory and predictive power....The tend to get real "vague" about it when we start comparing atheists particle physics beliefs or their cosmology beliefs to their lack of beliefs related to God and evidence. There's usually a highly subjective use of evidence going on there.
As I've said before, the main difference is that the theories and hypotheses of physics and cosmology are not beliefs but provisional explanatory models for multiple observations, and are subject to continuous testing and revision.
Atheists are typically unpersuaded by God concepts because those concepts are broadly antithetical to that methodology - ill-defined,
dogmatic, lacking observational evidence,
untestable (often by definition),
and lacking explanatory and predictive power.
Well you did actually proffer that as your argument.
So it works for "God" but not LCDM, so, all that demonstrates is that you can cherry pick your justifications for belief.
I don't assume it. From MY frame of reference I can't tell the difference between people being delusional about God and actually experiencing it so it can't be used as evidence.
World A where God exists and people are actually experiencing it, can not be differentiated from world B where people merely think they are.
Since this isn't a type of thing where I can rely on other people to be a good judge of what they are talking about, It's simply not evidence.
There you go again. You don't know their "function". That is the end point of your argument not the beginning.
Well until you find some, it's simply going to be a pretty weak inference.
It's the information you should be looking for as I said.
Then you understand the difficulty in actually demonstrating what you are proposing.
Well if you have access to the current and flow then you should have some access to any patterning that would occur at our scale as well.
If the circuit is acting like a nerve it should give off some sign that you would be able to predict for demonstration purposes.
I think it would be very interesting to see what intelligent amoebas would be capable of.
You are much smaller than an amoeba in terms of the scales you have proposed though.
Not YOU proper thinking you no, but maybe a differn't version. And, regardless, the universe probably lacks DNA so that is a difficulty in your "cosmology".
Well the fundamental problems for how you think such a "being" would come to exist seems fair to me.
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