Why did God create humans?

[Halbhh]

No you cannot meaningfully use a methodology applied to engineering for what is behavioral and moral principles, how one ought to treat people, not how you ought to build something. This isn't about design, it's about practicing something, but understanding that it's not going to be consistent across all contexts because we aren't the same as artificial materials that have much more constraint in their reaction to situations.

You keep insisting this is somehow objective or detached from particular conclusions you could make, but the problem is that you seem to think this is some novel approach rather than just a category error masquerading as you being a "skeptic" about something and then reaching a conclusion that others could imitate. Thing is, that's not how one concludes something is true when you're talking about something of an ethical nature, because ethics is not purely about the results of actions taken or you'd just go to consequentialist ethics and be done with it.

What you appear to be doing is taking the results that confirm some broad notion of what you gather to be success and then conclude that it can only mean that the person saying them is somehow possessing of unique information rather than happening to get something right that may not be unique to them (golden rule is far older than Jesus, if you're going with the example you use of treating someone nicely: Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism all come to mind as having that principle and historically predate Christian texts by millennia)

You are acting as if I'm trying to prove something. That would be subject to questions about methodology of course. Though I perhaps have a better methodology than you imagine, it wasn't even at issue.

But.... I've not anywhere here attempted to prove anything.

That was no accident. In my mind, I never considered any of this provable. Not for a minute. Not even 25 years ago.

heh heh I think I've accidentally led you to be 'tilting at windmills' then, when I did give details about my actual tests and methods. You guessed, perhaps reasonably, this was some kind of attempt to prove moral principles? (I personally consider that impossible, for one human to prove such to another)

But, all the time, I've not actually been trying to prove anything.

No such goal. Instead, something far less ambitious.

From the start, I've been suggesting to people they try something.

See the difference?

 

[muichimotsu]

You are acting as if I'm trying to prove something. That would be subject to questions about methodology of course. Though I perhaps have a better methodology than you imagine, it wasn't even at issue.

But.... I've not anywhere here attempted to prove anything.

That was no accident. In my mind, I never considered any of this provable. Not for a minute. Not even 25 years ago.

heh heh I think I've accidentally led you to be 'tilting at windmills' then, when I did give details about my actual tests and methods. You guessed, perhaps reasonably, this was some kind of attempt to prove moral principles? (I personally consider that impossible, for one human to prove such to another)

But, all the time, I've not actually been trying to prove anything.

No such goal. Instead, something far less ambitious.

From the start, I've been suggesting to people they try something.

See the difference?

Pretty sure I didn't use the word prof and you're only, at best, insinuating it. But nonetheless, the confidence you have is the problem, because you're inferring something broader from isolated incidents that you think is a pattern, basically apophenia in a different form

Yeah, I'm not buying the snake oil, sorry, because your pitch is rhetorical spin, like it's my decision to try out your product rather than my decision to not take your notion that it works seriously in the first place. One is exercising skepticism, the other is credulity by being tricked into thinking you're making the decision when really you've been convinced by a trick mentalists use, reverse psychology. "Sure, don't try it, but then you're just narrow minded"

 

[Larniavc]

he wanted to create lesser beings in his own image to love.

Like pets?

 

[Halbhh]

Pretty sure I didn't use the word prof and you're only, at best, insinuating it. But nonetheless, the confidence you have is the problem, because you're inferring something broader from isolated incidents that you think is a pattern, basically apophenia in a different form

Yeah, I'm not buying the snake oil, sorry, because your pitch is rhetorical spin, like it's my decision to try out your product rather than my decision to not take your notion that it works seriously in the first place. One is exercising skepticism, the other is credulity by being tricked into thinking you're making the decision when really you've been convinced by a trick mentalists use, reverse psychology. "Sure, don't try it, but then you're just narrow minded"

You say I'm "inferring something broader from isolated incidents that you think is a pattern"

Ok, that's a plausible guess. But it's not the actuality. I admit the actual, real situation is that I test everything, and only believe the sun is still mostly the same today as it was last week because the sunlight outside looks about the same. I know this is unusual, but it's how I am. Maybe it would be easier for us to converse if you avoid putting me in a pigeonhole like that, and instead ask me more questions, instead of assuming such things.

Also, you think I'm trying to sell you 'snake oil' -- lol.

Ok. Again, another guess about motives, and trying (or even worse, just assuming you can) to read my mind, etc. These are not good habits for you, I can say, from general life experience. Such guessing about people doesn't actually align to how they are.

 

[jacks]

Like pets?

This would explain why some dogs do look like their owners. (In their image?)

 

[Sketcher]

Like pets?

That is inadequate to describe it, though humans having pets teaches us a piece of God's love for us.

 

[muichimotsu]

You say I'm "inferring something broader from isolated incidents that you think is a pattern"

Ok, that's a plausible guess. But it's not the actuality. I admit the actual, real situation is that I test everything, and only believe the sun is still mostly the same today as it was last week because the sunlight outside looks about the same. I know this is unusual, but it's how I am. Maybe it would be easier for us to converse if you avoid putting me in a pigeonhole like that, and instead ask me more questions, instead of assuming such things.

Also, you think I'm trying to sell you 'snake oil' -- lol.

Ok. Again, another guess about motives, and trying (or even worse, just assuming you can) to read my mind, etc. These are not good habits for you, I can say, from general life experience. Such guessing about people doesn't actually align to how they are.

If you speak in a way that isn't trying to convince me to believe in something with insufficient evidence, maybe I wouldn't characterize you as selling snake oil and the like in terms of your rhetoric, which relies on mere plausibility rather than anything even falsifiable in nature regarding Jesus not being as unique or correct as you conclude him to be

 

[Halbhh]

If you speak in a way that isn't trying to convince me to believe in something with insufficient evidence, maybe I wouldn't characterize you as selling snake oil and the like in terms of your rhetoric, which relies on mere plausibility rather than anything even falsifiable in nature regarding Jesus not being as unique or correct as you conclude him to be

If I summed up my many posts on this into the simplest nutshell that captures the real content, it would be:

"Try for yourself and find out. Try and see"

 

[muichimotsu]

If I summed up my many posts on this into the simplest nutshell that captures the real content, it would be:

"Try for yourself and find out. Try and see"

That assumes there's value in what you're offering in any sense beyond your confidence in it and supposed "evidence" you think is sufficient because you're convinced no other explanation makes sense, which is confirmation bias or appeal to ignorance. There's nothing substantive here in the same way I can't just think Islam is true because Muslims say their life was changed, that's practically the same notion of what you're offering.

It supposedly has some effect that you perceive, but if all you can do is appeal to yours and others' similar relative experiences that aren't reliable as to the efficacy of whatever principles you put into action, then you're relying on either argument from credulity or popularity, among other possible fallacies in thinking

 

[Halbhh]

That assumes there's value in what you're offering in any sense beyond your confidence in it and supposed "evidence" you think is sufficient because you're convinced no other explanation makes sense, which is confirmation bias or appeal to ignorance. There's nothing substantive here in the same way I can't just think Islam is true because Muslims say their life was changed, that's practically the same notion of what you're offering.

It supposedly has some effect that you perceive, but if all you can do is appeal to yours and others' similar relative experiences that aren't reliable as to the efficacy of whatever principles you put into action, then you're relying on either argument from credulity or popularity, among other possible fallacies in thinking

That's a lot of false accusations.

"Projection" is when people imagine some thing(s) in other people's thoughts or actions and then accusing them of those thing(s), instead of looking to themselves.

 

[muichimotsu]

That's a lot of false accusations.

"Projection" is when people imagine some thing(s) in other people's thoughts or actions and then accusing them of those thing(s), instead of looking to themselves.

Yeah, you can sound like you know what you're talking about, but you don't have evidence that I'm doing that, so you're practically worse, when I can point out your own words in terms of the arguments you've made in other threads that boils down to you correlating results from you supposedly testing Jesus' principle and that means Jesus is reliable and has some special knowledge.

I've pointed it out several times 1 glaring problem: Jesus' wisdom is demonstrably not unique, particularly on the golden rule, which predates the gospels by millennia, practically. If you aren't even willing to consider that, then you ARE engaging in confirmation bias and ignoring contrary evidence because it'd mean your whole experiment in terms of that "wisdom" was fundamentally flawed and you should rethink it entirely

 

[Halbhh]

I've pointed it out several times 1 glaring problem: Jesus' wisdom is demonstrably not unique, particularly on the golden rule, which predates the gospels by millennia, practically. If you aren't even willing to consider that, then you ARE engaging in confirmation bias and ignoring contrary evidence because it'd mean your whole experiment in terms of that "wisdom" was fundamentally flawed and you should rethink it entirely

Have I not answered on that to you?

I know I've written on it many times, but possibly not to you?

Here:

Truth is not an original work of art or the like. It's not invented or built.

In general a "truth" is a best solution to a fixed or consistent system.

i.e. mathematical solutions are such, but also physics theories can be such within limits, such as General Relativity being the best known current description of the existing reality we typically call gravity.

These solutions are only discovered -- they already exist. They exist before anyone has discovered them.

They can be discovered independently by many people of course, possibly.

Human nature is fixed in certain innate characteristics we all share, in our common genome.

Therefore human nature implies there is a (already existing!) set of best possible rules for living together. These best rules can be labeled "truth" -- meaning they are superior to alternative ways or rules.

Such truths about how best to live ought to be discovered over and over!

Even millions of times.

For some rules, perhaps billions of times they will be independently discovered.

Often when people hear them articulated, they simply recognize it's an articulation of what they themselves have already realized.

It's a trivial fact that of course the basic truths about living have been found over and over around the world.

 

[muichimotsu]

Have I not answered on that to you?

I know I've written on it many times, but possibly not to you?

Here:

Truth is not an original work of art or the like. It's not invented or built.

In general a "truth" is a best solution to a fixed or consistent system.

i.e. mathematical solutions are such, but also physics theories can be such within limits, such as General Relativity being the best known current description of the existing reality we typically call gravity.

These solutions are only discovered -- they already exist. They exist before anyone has discovered them.

They can be discovered independently by many people of course, possibly.

Human nature is fixed in certain innate characteristics we all share, in our common genome.

Therefore human nature implies there is a (already existing!) set of best possible rules for living together. These best rules can be labeled "truth" -- meaning they are superior to alternative ways or rules.

Such truths about how best to live ought to be discovered over and over!

Even millions of times.

For some rules, perhaps billions of times they will be independently discovered.

Often when people hear them articulated, they simply recognize it's an articulation of what they themselves have already realized.

It's a trivial fact that of course the basic truths about living have been found over and over around the world.

Numbers and scientific theories are not innate to existence, that's where you're mistaken, because you've failed to demonstrate there's a mind behind them apart from humans that construct those ideas, numbers a fundamental one, but not fundamental to the point they exist even if humans never came to be in a parallel universe, they're an integral idea, but necessarily require a mind

Your use of truth in terms of the best explanation contradicts the notion you put forward that they are necessarily extant apart from minds, because the best explanation means they are provisional in nature, however consistent they might be (numbers evolved in our understanding, the idea of negative numbers, decimals, etc, for an even more basic idea than say gravity or germ theory, etc)

You're engaging in what I'm almost certain is Platonism, assuming some ideal form exists and that we strive towards it without any evidence that it exists apart from speculation. And God is just an extension of those Platonic forms to something you want to be perfect and thus not able to be questioned without it being someone's willfullness or denial or the like. That way you can make it so that you get to blame humans and gaslight yourself into thinking that this must be the right way or you're just a nihilist or such

There isn't a singular truth for things that is necessarily inflexible in its nature, particularly when it comes to more indeterminate and variable contexts, wherein it will arguably be different and not contradictory either because it admits to underlying ideas that are nonetheless applicable in different ways (love in its various manners, never perfect, only as "ideal" as we strive towards, which is not necessarily perfect, but consistent)

If your argument is somehow that Jesus has the best enumeration of this supposed truth, that's irrelevant because you've failed to demonstrate that even if one somehow granted your ludicrous notion of ideal forms and us just accessing them rather than it being human innovation along with things like empathy and the like that are combined in terms of formulating the best manner we can conceive without concluding it is ABSOLUTELY true, which is inflexible and dogmatic.

 

[Halbhh]

Numbers and scientific theories are not innate to existence, that's where you're mistaken, because you've failed to demonstrate there's a mind behind them apart from humans that construct those ideas, numbers a fundamental one, but not fundamental to the point they exist even if humans never came to be in a parallel universe, they're an integral idea, but necessarily require a mind

Your use of truth in terms of the best explanation contradicts the notion you put forward that they are necessarily extant apart from minds, because the best explanation means they are provisional in nature, however consistent they might be (numbers evolved in our understanding, the idea of negative numbers, decimals, etc, for an even more basic idea than say gravity or germ theory, etc)

You're engaging in what I'm almost certain is Platonism, assuming some ideal form exists and that we strive towards it without any evidence that it exists apart from speculation. And God is just an extension of those Platonic forms to something you want to be perfect and thus not able to be questioned without it being someone's willfullness or denial or the like. That way you can make it so that you get to blame humans and gaslight yourself into thinking that this must be the right way or you're just a nihilist or such

There isn't a singular truth for things that is necessarily inflexible in its nature, particularly when it comes to more indeterminate and variable contexts, wherein it will arguably be different and not contradictory either because it admits to underlying ideas that are nonetheless applicable in different ways (love in its various manners, never perfect, only as "ideal" as we strive towards, which is not necessarily perfect, but consistent)

If your argument is somehow that Jesus has the best enumeration of this supposed truth, that's irrelevant because you've failed to demonstrate that even if one somehow granted your ludicrous notion of ideal forms and us just accessing them rather than it being human innovation along with things like empathy and the like that are combined in terms of formulating the best manner we can conceive without concluding it is ABSOLUTELY true, which is inflexible and dogmatic.

This might help: no humans can reliably read the minds of other people, especially not strangers they barely know. Try to think on all the implications of that. Sorry to lecture, but you've been lecturing, so maybe it's fine. So...you are human so therefore you cannot generally know others' thoughts or experience that they don't tell you about or write about. It would be wiser not to assume how others think and what they experienced. Make sense? Basically you need to throw most of your guesses about my thoughts and experience above in the trash, since they aren't accurate.

 

[Halbhh]

scientific theories are not innate to existence

This deserves a separate response.

It's not a very good understanding of what we find in nature. What we find is that nature appears to perfectly obey consistent 'laws', which we have found over the centuries that we can discover approximate forms (transforms, versions) of and put down in equations typically.

That's only fact of course. But think on the implication more carefully.

It means gravity works the way it does, consistently by some fixed rules, before we have any understanding of those rules, any version of them.

Before anyone discovers them.

Those 'laws of nature' exist independently of us. They do not rely on us to exist.

We can find approximate forms or representations that correspond to such fixed objective laws of nature. That's what physics does basically. Make guesses and then try to find out which guesses are correct. The brilliance of Einstein was to correctly surmise some good representations of some fundamental laws of nature, or transforms thereof, so that he could arrive at equations that reliably predicted things that had never before been observed.

Hundreds of various observations have been made to test General Relativity, and they have confirmed the validity of his equations. Thus the equations are at least an accurate approximation of the ultimate laws of nature across a wide domain of conditions we can observe.

The laws of nature don't depend on us. Perhaps that's a discussion for a different thread, if you don't agree. Or you could just take some courses in physics, as a way to learn why the above is well supported.

 

[muichimotsu]

This might help: no humans can reliably read the minds of other people, especially not strangers they barely know. Try to think on all the implications of that. Sorry to lecture, but you've been lecturing, so maybe it's fine. So...you are human so therefore you cannot generally know others' thoughts or experience that they don't tell you about or write about. It would be wiser not to assume how others think and what they experienced. Make sense? Basically you need to throw most of your guesses about my thoughts and experience above in the trash, since they aren't accurate.

When you speak as you do, thinking that I can clearly understand what you mean is your mistake when I can interpret it based on lack of tone and particular context to whatever you might be entailing in the argument

Instead of constantly griping about how you're being misinterpreted, maybe don't leave so much vagueness in your statements in the first place

 

[muichimotsu]

This deserves a separate response.

It's not a very good understanding of what we find in nature. What we find is that nature appears to perfectly obey consistent 'laws', which we have found over the centuries that we can discover approximate forms (transforms, versions) of and put down in equations typically.

That's only fact of course. But think on the implication more carefully.

It means gravity works the way it does, consistently by some fixed rules, before we have any understanding of those rules, any version of them.

Before anyone discovers them.

Those 'laws of nature' exist independently of us. They do not rely on us to exist.

We can find approximate forms or representations that correspond to such fixed objective laws of nature. That's what physics does basically. Make guesses and then try to find out which guesses are correct. The brilliance of Einstein was to correctly surmise some good representations of some fundamental laws of nature, or transforms thereof, so that he could arrive at equations that reliably predicted things that had never before been observed.

Hundreds of various observations have been made to test General Relativity, and they have confirmed the validity of his equations. Thus the equations are at least an accurate approximation of the ultimate laws of nature across a wide domain of conditions we can observe.

The laws of nature don't depend on us. Perhaps that's a discussion for a different thread, if you don't agree. Or you could just take some courses in physics, as a way to learn why the above is well supported.

We approximate the laws, they're not prescriptive, they're descriptive, because we also know there's a great deal of variation, unlike someone saying that somehow if we got just a bit closer to the sun, we'd burn up, which is flat wrong, considering the elliptical orbit. And still, we're not getting to the laws in themselves, because that assumes agency behind nature rather than us taking our anthropic principle in terms of understanding things and describing it as a law or a theory or the like.

Gravity works, the law of gravity is human insinuation upon that force in the same way as density, mass, etc. We can manipulate and better understand those forces, but that doesn't mean our understanding and structure in a descriptive model is the same as those things, that's equivocation

And you're stretching it into the notion that somehow math is innate to the universe rather than, again, it being a human description to better understand and model our investigation of the world, but not appropriate some essence, because, like the puddle and water, we are not finding some agency behind the universe, we're making it more cogent to our minds as humans.

I'm not buying into your loaded statement about the laws of nature existing apart from us in the same vein as whether I believe something can come from nothing, because it's nonsensical. The laws of nature don't exist independently of us, because that's all they are, constructs and predictive models to describe the world, not actual laws in a prescriptive sense that entails an agency, because that's weaseling in a god to the discussion that isn't about that

Agreeing with the descriptive aspects in regards to physics does not mean I buy into your borderline intelligent design nonsense, because that's a logical leap you're making

 

[Halbhh]

We approximate the laws, they're not prescriptive, they're descriptive

While you may have a clear sense of what you meant, this is a vague wording to someone with a background in physics.

Whatever that meant, it's correct or incorrect to the extent it lines up with this reality --

Precisely, General Relativity (GR) equations make predictions about orbits and light paths for instance (among many predictions) -- and these predictions from the equations were made before anything like such observations had ever been made. Predictions made about phenomena no one had a hint might exist before GR. When astronomers were then finally (years and decades and for some things nearly a century) able to make observations to test those predictions, entirely new types of observations, they have over and over and over confirmed General Relativity predictions. GR has been tested against observations in hundreds of instances.

 

[muichimotsu]

While you may have a clear sense of what you meant, this is a vague wording to someone with a background in physics.

Whatever that meant, it's correct or incorrect to the extent it lines up with this reality --

Precisely, General Relativity (GR) equations make predictions about orbits and light paths for instance (among many predictions) -- and these predictions from the equations were made before anything like such observations had ever been made. Predictions made about phenomena no one had a hint might exist before GR. When astronomers were then finally (years and decades and for some things nearly a century) able to make observations to test those predictions, entirely new types of observations, they have over and over and over confirmed General Relativity predictions. GR has been tested against observations in hundreds of instances.

The reality is that we observe these things, not that we can demonstrate apart from our empirical observations and rational considerations, you don't appear to understand the distinction of a descriptive versus prescriptive idea. We as scientists being able to make accurate predictive models does not indicative a reality independent of us that makes it that way, but that we are able to structure the model and it consistently works. What you appear to be doing is ascribing an agency to nature which isn't necessary for it to be cogent and coherent in our explanations, which necessarily change as we consider new evidence and apply methodological stringency to our investigations.

Someone not knowing something beforehand and then discovering something in terms of a model they have is not evidence they've accessed some mystical reality that then conveyed this information to them, that's a needlessly complex explanation for what is better presented as ,"Humans create these models to try and explain through prediction, measurement, experimentation, etc, how the world works, but with the understanding that we could be wrong, because we cannot appropriate reality itself, we're necessarily working through a filter"

Your background is seemingly just understanding the formulae, which is arguably surface level in regards to philosophy of science, which, as someone who didn't study much science, I still find it fascinating and applicable in terms of such discussions of this nature because, as I recall in terms of learning about science, like philosophy, we all engage in it, effectively or otherwise to be determined as we criticize ourselves and refine our understanding and methodology

 

[Halbhh]

you don't appear to understand the distinction of a descriptive versus prescriptive idea. We as scientists being able to make accurate predictive models does not indicative a reality independent of us that makes it that way, but that we are able to structure the model and it consistently works.

Simply, you are making too many assumptions and guesses about what I think (however plausible these added assumptions seem to you, they are mistaken over and over, at a high rate, much higher than 50/50). Try to stop. If you can. Make an effort. I nowhere claimed nor suggested (unless I wrote unclearly) that somehow reality has to be fully independent of us. (To assume so would be an unawareness of Quantum Mechanics (QM) and the implications and possibilities of QM -- to assume one theory and reject the others, without a basis) No, I don't assume reality is fully independent of us even, not an assumption I do. I leave that correctly as an unknown in QM, we have yet to solve. I did write something else quite meaningful, connected to the reality of independent laws of nature, which is only the endless factual reality we run into all the time. This doesn't imply that reality is somehow unconnected to us. I could imagine how you could jump to that conclusion. It doesn't follow.

As to whether nature has agency, I think it's a poorly formed way of asking something, in that by 'agency' we typically mean actions done by a conscious being or actor. In contrast, nature definitely does actions, being that is the very thing it is -- physics (consistent actions of nature, as we have discovered over time). But one needn't add an assumption nature is then conscious or a being, etc. Perhaps some people might speculate on such, but I'm not such a person.

Someone not knowing something beforehand and then discovering something in terms of a model they have is not evidence they've accessed some mystical reality that then conveyed this information to them, that's a needlessly complex explanation for what is better presented as...

Lol. Is that how you imagine I think -- a kind of almost voodoo mysticism? lol!! Now, that's just funny. But....you'd have to read Einstein some if you are wanting to know his viewpoints. He did see nature as having a wondrous order. He was a brilliant mind. I suggest you read his own point of view if you are interested in knowing it better.

Then to contrast to the bizarre mysticism you tried to paint on me, you write the actually reasonable:
"Humans create these models to try and explain through prediction, measurement, experimentation, etc, how the world works, but with the understanding that we could be wrong, because we cannot appropriate reality itself, we're necessarily working through a filter"

Now this is actually a pretty good representation of how I see it. How did you get to imagining my thinking is instead that odd fantastical other way? (do you think you have a mind reading ability? Well, it's not working evidently.) There's something profoundly wrong in how you perceive other people. Just letting you know. My guess: you liberally assume all sorts of wrong guesses, and then...get used to those assumptions. Do you end up believing your guesses? Not a good way to think of other people, frankly. Not a good method.

Basically, assume less, ask more.