Taking the fight to the real issue

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Well, there is no reason to think our conception of God is coherent, but at the same time, I'm a nominalist. I don't think words have an essence, so God being identified with an incoherent thing isn't a problem. God is apparently our label for that incoherent thing.


Well, ok, but the issue is that while we can't prove uniformity, we also have no reason to believe that uniformity is wrong, and the assumption of uniformity is very successful at explaining a lot of our data. We also can't prove that we aren't brains in vats, but despite that, for the most part, spending a lot of time wondering about this is fruitless.


Eh, the terms used are very crude conceptual categories. I think most people know what they mean well enough that further exploration isn't needed into the nature of these things.

If something does not even have a coherent meaning, then it is impossible to form any believe on it. The statement 'If a higher power existed, by definition it would exist out of sheer logical necessity' is just nonsense babble.

Well there is no commonly agreed upon definitions of terrorism, citizen, nation or state either. Are these things impossible to believe in too? Regardless of the lack of a commonly agreed upon definition; these things do indeed exist.




We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything – Thomas Edison

I like the story of the oracle in Delphi that chose Socrates as the wisest man in the world. When they asked him why it chose him, he stated ‘he was the only one who knew he didn’t know anything’.



So in part one you are providing your individual definition of the utility of religion. Something that most people agree is useful to them. In part two you are making your case as to why you should be allowed to define it. Both are based on the assumption that you are the one who should decide.




I see your point. I think you might find this interesting

'But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?'
– Charles Darwin

In response to this I suggest that you read Alvin Plantinga’s, Evolutionary argument against naturalism

Last edited by 91 on 19 Nov 2010, 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Monkeys do quite well in the environment for which they have adapted. Humans obviously have much to learn but to deny all knowledge and puff one's self up with his ignorance is despicable. It is almost as bad as fabricating fantasies and claiming they are as worthy as what little useful understanding humans do grasp and use to make a better world.

Newtonian descriptions of gravity appear to work just fine in day-to-day life, too.

Coherent and commonly agreed upon are different. Something can be coherent, but not agreed upon, something can be agreed upon, but not coherent.


That's a nice Thomas Edison quote, but the issue is that we know a lot, and we've gained a lot of knowledge since Thomas Edison was around. As PhD physicist points out, we know most of the physics relevant to our everyday lives. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmi ... nderstood/ This isn't a small thing, but rather is very relevant, and it does allow us some justification in saying that attributing the unknown to God is a "God of the gaps" situation.


*sigh*

No, it isn't just "my individual definition", but rather it is my effort to point out an area where religion does benefit people that they get without relying on it being true.

The second isn't my effort to define religion, only to point out that your argument fails due to broader irrationality. If people find value in a lot of concepts that we can be relatively certain are BS, then their having the concept of religion isn't much of an argument.


To go back to Charles Darwin's comment, we have very good reason to distrust the convictions of a human mind. I mean, right now, we're having a discussion on the existence of some "spiritual being", who loves us, cares for us, but like any absentee father, is so distant that a lot of people see no clear signs of affection. If we were creatures that thought more clearly, of the sort like a God would be expected to create, then paradoxically, in light of our situation, we would not be having this discussion because the non-existence of a God would be more obvious. The very discussion of this is, regardless of what position you want to take on the matter, profoundly absurd.

Where does Dennett say that?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb10QvaHpS4[/youtube]

(I have no idea why a Jedi is displayed at the end)

An Eternal Cosmos would be self causing (in a way).

Face it. It is either Turtles All The Way Down, or we have a fundamental contradiction.

ruveyn

Heh, that is an interesting question to ask. I mean, Dennett's subject in philosophy isn't metaphysics.

But even in that video (I think it was in response to a TED talk Craig gave in which Dennett responds right after) Dennett doesn't specify that the Universe is self-caused, only that Craig's argument doesn't neccessitate a personal God. He even has the humility to hand off the topic to "my friends in physical cosmology".

And his expertise is sorta relevant in a very percipheral way, as the Craig's version of the Kalam argument depends on a dichotomy between "scientific" and "personal" causes, something Dennett seeks to erase (as he noted in the video).

91's claim that Dennett claimed the Universe to be "self-caused" appears to come from William Lane Craig himself. I don't know where Dennett claims this, Craig could've just distorted his view or pulled it out of his rear-end (this is likely).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEvcSlLOwmg&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006), 244

"The vision of the creative process still apparently left a role for God as Lawgiver, but this gave way in turn to the Newtonian role of Lawfinder, which also evaporated, as we have recently seen, leaving behind no Intelligent Agency in the process at all. What is left is what the process, shuffling through eternity, mindlessly finds (when it finds anything): a timeless Platonic possbility of order. That is, indeed, a thing of beauty, as mathematicians are forever exclaiming, but it is no itself something intelligent, but wonder of wonders, something intelligible. Being abstract and outside of time, it is nothing with an initation or origin in need of explanation. What doesneed its origin explained is the concrete Universe itself, and as Hume's Philo long ago asked: Why not stop at the material world? It, we have seen, does perform a version of the ultimate bootstrapping trick; it creates itself ex nihilo, or at any rate out of something that is well-nigh indistinguishable from nothing at all." - Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (New York: Viking, 2006), p. 243 - 244

The "well-nigh indistinguishabel from nothing" may not be the total nothing that Craig interprets it to be. It could be "nothing" in the much more vernacular sense that encompases vacums.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_676IeyJNQ[/youtube]

^ The many problems with the phrase "nothing".

MP

Dr. Craig has noted that if the mutliverse theory is right then his argument will fail (which is why on page one, I used a modified Kalam). Based on the present consensus in physics and so there is no reason that it cannot stand on its own. The standard Big Bang model describes a universe which is not eternal in the past, but which came into being a finite time ago. Moreover,--and this deserves underscoring--the origin it posits is an absolute origin ex nihilo. For not only all matter and energy, but space and time themselves come into being at the initial cosmological singularity. As Barrow and Tipler emphasize, "At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo." There is no reason based on the standard model to presume that the something existed before the big bang. Space and time spread out with the big bang. Under the standard model quantum mechanics spreads out in the same manner

There have been challenges to the standard model, it is also incomplete in its explanation of the universe. No challenge so far has knocked it out of its status as the mainstream view. The alternative put forward in the video you posted is really a variation of the vacuum fluctuation model. The model never found a place in the mainstream view and was abandoned in the late 1980’s. On the vacuum fluctuation it is impossible to specify precisely when and where a fluctuation will occur in the primordial vacuum which will then grow into a universe. Within any finite interval of time there is a positive probability of such a fluctuation occurring at any point in space. Thus, given infinite past time, universes will eventually be spawned at everypoint in the primordial vacuum, and, as they expand, they will begin to collide and coalesce with one another. Thus, given infinite past time, we should by now be observing an infinitely old universe, not a relatively young one. About the only way to avert the problem would be to postulate an expansion of the primordial vacuum itself; but then we are right back to the absolute origin implied by the Standard Model. According to Christopher Isham this problem proved to be "fairly lethal" to Vacuum Fluctuation Models; hence, these models were "jettisoned twenty years ago" and "nothing much" has been done with them since.

Alternatively, one cans say the Cosmos in some form or fashion has always existed. In which case God is not necessary.

I accept Spinoza's axiom that there must be something that is eternal. Why? Because that is the only way we can avoid a "something from nothing" conundrum. There was always something or as the religious folk like to say -- there was always Something.

ruveyn

Ruveyn, I have to ask, did you read this thread? This point has already been raised and rebutted. It falls into Schopenhauer's Taxicab Fallacy.