God is essentially another working theory, no? Evidence to support god? Questionable at best. In fact, I believe many here would agree that testing the god theory is impossible.
How long would any untestable theory last in a scientific community?
At that point, I, speaking completely for myself here, might be willing to give god a 50/50 chance of existence. Right up until I look at the history of countless gods throughout man's history. It is circumstantial, but still, there is a long history of man creating god out of nothing. So why should I give any diety better than a 50/50 chance? Especially one that is all powerful and supposedly wants a relationship with me.
There is plenty I do not understand about the universe. That does not mean that anything in the universe has to be supernatural. It just means I do not understand it.
Dragons did not give us penicillin.
What does "supernatural" mean to you?
That is an excellent question. I suppose bacteria and viruses seemed 'supernatural' at one time. I would think god has to be the epitome of 'supernatural'. Whatever incarnation you are referring to, god is allowed to break the laws of the world as we understand it.
Taking that further, I guess I can see where you are coming from. Anything we do not understand has a 'supernatural' cause. Why is god any more or less valid than gravity?
I will think on this.
Should I be using a different source? This is what I found with a quick Google search and I want to make sure I am not the right trail.
I have not read all of it, but Prop XI jumped out at me. It smacks of Prima Causa, which, I do not buy into.
God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists.
If by 'substance', he means the entirety of the universe…sure…maybe.
By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself : in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
I suppose we could still be talking about the universe.
Proof.—If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist : then his essence does not involve existence. But this (Prop. vii.) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.
I can easily conceive that god does not exist. I can even easily conceive that the universe does not exist. Maybe Spinoza just needed a better imagination.
The universe does not resemble any diety I am familiar with, except maybe the tao.
"Complexity" and "Emergence" means that you can't decompose the action nor study it in a controlled environment.
Not exactly; "more difficult" =/= "impossible." I say this as a professional scientist, btw.
I can not even get out of his definitions before I am hit with base assertions.
I. By that which is self-caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent.
I can conceive of pretty much anything as non-existent. Or, by 'conceive' does he mean 'coming from'?
And I am still not sold that an infinite recursion is such a bad thing.
III. By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself : in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
VI. By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.
Would not infinite attributes also include non-existence and conceived dependently?
VII. That thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone.
How could you even prove something exists solely by the necessity of its own nature? Isn't this a base assertion that something…god, the universe, a giant turtle exists because it is necessary? We might agree the universe is necessary, but only because we are in it. Maybe it was created by us going back in time with some wacky black hole experiment.
It smells very circular to me and I am just as happy to jump on the infinite recursion train if we are going to go around in a circle.
"Complex systems" has a very precise meaning in science. A complex system is a system which possesses emergent qualities. "Emergent qualities" are qualities which do not exist in the individual components of the system, rather emerge as the components are combined.
A catalyst for a chemical reaction fits that deifinition. And we can study the effects of the individual components, and of the catalyst by itself, and the effects of the catalyst on the larger reaction, in a laboratory. The "emergent qualities" of these reactions have been well-studied and quantified.
Your statement that "Complexity and Emergence means that you can't decompose the action nor study it in a controlled environment" is not true.
...but, again, don't jump ahead of him.
I am not jumping ahead. I am saying I am not sure I buy into his base premises. If his foundation is not solid, I see no reason to put any further trust in the rest of his construction as lovely as it may be.
How exactly does one decompose a catalyst in order to study its catalytic quality? For example, water is often a catalyst. But, if we decompose it into hydrogen and oxygen, it is no water and no longer possesses water's ability to function as a catalyst.
I'd recommend a college level Chem I course with a lab -- the Paizo forums aren't the best venue for me to explain ionic bonding, Van der Waals forces, and so on.
How do you test morality?
I mentioned this question to my muse and she gave me a beautiful metaphor about growing a garden that I won't try to paraphrase. It came down to this: How do you test morality? By results, not by intent.
Charity for selfish reasons is good; abuse with good intentions is evil.
(And to reiterate what I said about love: there is no definition without testing.)
Moff, CJ…either of you want to walk me through how worshiping Jesus is not a violation of the first commandment again. It is still bugging me. I know Jesus, god and the holy ghost are suppose to be one and the same, but can you give me some supporting verses out of the Bible?
For context, I was in church again Christmas eve and starting mulling this whole thing over again.
What I said is that the properties of water don't exist and aren't predicted by the properties of oxygen and hydrogen.
You're moving all over the place. The example I used was this: a catalyst leads to what you like to call "Emergent Qualities" in what I would call a catalytic reaction, and what you call a "Complex System." I stated that it can be preduicted how a catalyst will influence a reaction. You start talking about water in particular -- one of the few oddball compounds for which the standard properties of the component elements don't quickly show how the compound will behave.
But OK, let's talk about water, by all means. Is your claim that there is no possible system of analysis by which the properties of water would be predicted by the properties of hydrogen and oxygen? I would disagree. Indeed, going smaller, we can already predict the qualities of a sub-atomic particle by looking at the quarks -- and that's most certainly "emergent."
The emergent qualities of water do not exist in oxygen and hydrogen but emerge from the way oxygen and hydrogen are combined.See edit above. The fact that the properties of hydrogen and oxygen don't scream "WATER!" doesn't mean that there's no possible system by which those emergent properties can be quanitified and predicted.
I have no problem with there being such a thing as emergent qualities. I disagree with your earlier assertion that emergent properties cannot be quantified, predicted, or studied in a lab setting. Because they can.
[What I said is that it is not until we know how the atoms actually are combiined that we know what the emergent properties are.
That's not strictly true, which is why I recommended you study some laboratory chemistry. For example, from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen, we can predict the shape of the water molecule:
H........H
....O....
And from that shape we can reason that, given multiple such molecules, the + charged "H" ends of nearby molecules will have a tendency to align with the "O" bend in their neighbors, leading us to conclude that the final compound will be liquid at STP.
(The above is over-simplified, but it gives the gist of what I'm trying to convey). I'm a geologist, not a chemist, and it's been some time since I was last in a P Chem course, but there's a lot of interesting things like that you can pick up.
But if all you know is that oxygen and hydrogen are present, can you predict that you will have a water molecule and not a mix of hydroxide ions and dihydrogen?
No.
That is my point.
Yes, you can. You can even predict the relative proprotions that will result, depending on the ambient conditions.
So far, your broad asserions are easy to find counter-examples for, and your specific assertions aren't true.
Where exactly in the phrase, "if all you know is that oxygen and hydrogen are present" are you gaining knowledge of the thermodynamic equalibrium?
What exactly in the phrase "all you know is that oxygen and hydrogen are present" has anything to do with the laboratory setting we were talking about?
Next you'll tell me, "If the initial condition is that you don't know anything and can't find it out, then you can't predict anything."
So, you create a laboratory setting to take a small number of types of atoms (2) which can be combined in a limited number of ways, add energy in a specific and controlled way to ensure that those atoms are put together just right, and get a substance which has a set of desired properties.
You claimed that the properties of water could not be predicted, given the properties of hydrogen and oxygen, by study in a laboratory setting. I showed that they could. Controlling variables is exactly how a laboratory setting works.
You are takiing pains to make sure that your components are being put together in a specific manner and, yet, you argue that the properties of the end product can be predicted without knowledge of how the components are put together.
I made no such claim. I said the end product, and the properties of the end product, could both be predicted by the input parameters. And guess what? They can.
I, on the other hand, think you just proved my point.
If you in fact have some coherent point that you think you're making, please state it clearly. So far, what I'm getting boils down to "If the initial condition is that you don't know anything and can't find it out, then you can't predict anything."
But if someone really has a good reason to think there is a godhttp://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50846
Religious people trust doctors more if they think the doctors share their values? Trusting doctors tends to lead to better medical outcomes? Astonishing. People who are able-bodied enough to go to regular religious meetings are healthier than those laid up in bed? Shocking. You know I bet people who can make a weekly gaming session are healthier than those who have just had all the bones in their legs broken too. Clearly D&D is real magic. :)
None of this constitutes any kind of evidence for the veracity of any religious claims, merely salesmanship trifles.
http://www.imagery4relaxation.com/article-benson.htm
Does this ever get past the obvious point that relaxation can reduce stress and placebos 'work'? I read the first few exchanges and skimmed the rest, being less than encouraged by having read the first article in its entirety.
Sometimes a person does something not because they can explain why it is a good idea to do it, but because evidence shows that doing it is a good thing.
Your rationale for supplying me with the previous two relatively uninformative and unenlightening links contradicts itself. If a person can't explain why it's a good idea to do something, then they can't have evidence for it. If they did, that would be the explanation of why it's a good idea to carry out the practice. That is unless we're just talking about someone being very inarticulate, which I didn't think was your intention.
We're right back to evidence again despite attempts to dodge it.
Science is an important tool, but only a fool of the greatest sort thinks that science is the key to absolute understanding of everything - and I say this not as a religious person, but as a professional who is daily making his living in a field of expertise that science just simply isn't able to explain much of importance about.
Without science, how do you know you understand anything? How would you distinguish understanding everything from complete ignorance and total incomprehension of everything without science? You have turned your back on the only way to ever test your understandings and separate them from errors, make-believe, and wishful thinking with any confidence at all.
I don't go way out of my way to read religious apologists since there's only so much time and effort I have available to dispense and I can think of lots better areas to focus it on than a topic I consider thoroughly decided centuries ago.And why should a…say YEC… go way out of his way to read about some 'theory'?
Evidence! You say. Well, he has 'evidence' too.
Actually they don't. I've examined their claims. So have people with far more expertise than I have in the matters at hand. They haven't got a leg to stand on.
As a pragmatic matter I'm not going to constantly revisit the issue because some new fraud or new set of packaging for old lies has been invented. I leave that to cable news. If something genuinely new comes up, I will hear in due course when it withstands scientific scrutiny.
Does a laboratory magic trick tell us what will happen in the real world? No. It tells us what might happen, but it doesn't tell us what does happen. In the real world, we might have carbon or some other element present. We might have some unknown thermodynamic equalibrium. The real world is messy.
What we can do in the lab is create a set of tightly controlled conditions and say what will happen under those conditions, but are those tightly controlled conditions guaranteed to have any relevance to the real world? No.
That's why scientists talk about "failing to disprove X" and not "proving X".
Okay, so now the goalposts move again. We started with "emergent properties can't be predicted," showed that to be wrong, and now we're off to "too many parameters to keep track of."
The thing is, from our earlier lab experiments, we can predict which parameters will affect the outcome, and how, and so when we get into the field, we can look for those things, too. Equally importantly, if things don't turn out the way we predict, we have a starting point to investigate WHY they turned out the way they did. We do not have to throw up our arms and give up as you imply -- good thing, because I do this for a living, and I'd hate to be looking for another job in this economy. Luckily, my predictions based on field observations are generally accurate -- and when not, I can find out what additional data I need and get it on a subsequent trip out, so my services are still useful.
Lab conditions absolutely have relevance to the real world, because the lab is in the real world, and follows the same natural laws. The field has more parameters than most particular lab settings, and they're less easily controlled, but that doesn't in any way mean that the natural laws are suspended or absent, or that we can't possibly learn or predict anything.
In my professional environment, we work with the resources available to us. It makes no sense to suspense a crazy amount of money to test everything when the payoff is likely going to be far less than the time and money invested testing.
Which is why I don't go out and test for everything -- just the stuff most likely to be relevant. It's only when that stuff isn't enough to fit the picture that I have to go back out and figure out what else to test for -- and that's a rare occurrence. But when dealing with a contaminated drinking water supply, I don't have the luxury to say, "well, it might be too expensive to fix, so let's just leave it as is."
We started with "emergent properties can't be predicted,"No, we started with
Which you haven't showed to be wrong.
Complex systems" has a very precise meaning in science. A complex system is a system which possesses emergent qualities. "Emergent qualities" are qualities which do not exist in the individual components of the system, rather emerge as the components are combined.
You went far beyond the definition. Let's take a look at what else you said:
"Complexity" and "Emergence" means that you can't decompose the action nor study it in a controlled environment.
Which I showed to be wrong.
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Moff, CJ…either of you want to walk me through how worshiping Jesus is not a violation of the first commandment again. It is still bugging me. I know Jesus, god and the holy ghost are suppose to be one and the same, but can you give me some supporting verses out of the Bible?
For context, I was in church again Christmas eve and starting mulling this whole thing over again.
I'm not Moff or CJ but I may be able to take a crack at this one. The holy spirit and Jesus are viewed by many christian religions as manifestations of "God". Many monotheistic non-trinitarian christians see Jesus as the physical manifestation of "God" and not a separate entity they see Jesus like the burning bush that spoke to Moses, or the cloud that lead the Israelites by day, and the pillar of fire that lead them by night while in the wilderness. They don't see these beings as divisible from "God". In D&D terms think of Jesus as the Avatar of the deity he's just what the deity looks like around people who can't conceive of what he looks like. But there is a whole discipline of theology called "Christology" all about the different views of what Christ was or is. Not all christians view it the same way many of these differing views cause schisms which is one of the reasons why we have so many christian sects.
How do you grade the results?How do you test morality?By results, not by intent.
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean s%~@.
Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"
Curly: [smiles] That's what *you* have to find out.
(I may have less cryptic answer later.)
However, this represents only an exceptionally small percentage of all systems in the real world.
??? You can get a close enough approximation for all reasonable purposes with about 99% of the systems I can think of. Like I said, you need not control every variable.
A sensitivity analysis is a nice tool -- in any system, some of the input parameters can vary wildly without noticeably changing the end result.
We can look for those elements we know about - of course, presuming an unlimited amount of time and money to test for those. But, then, we're talking about the real world - who has unlimited time and money?
Unless Judgment Day rolls around or we actually manage to knock ourselves back to the stone age we, in fact, do have unlimited time and money. Just means are answers might take a while in coming.
In 99% of the systems I can think, you can't. Economics, cultural systems, computer security, urban planning,..the list goes on.
Hmmm... continuing the previous conversation, I was thinking of natural systems; conversely, every single one of your examples is a human system. So maybe I should specify, "in almost all cases you can, unless the human element renders them unpredictable."
1. Your implication that, if humans are involved, then it isn't a natural system (humans aren't natural?) is interesting, but not something I find compelling.
2. As for systems which don't involve humans but which are too big to control all the variables of, it's not particularly hard to come up with examples. Life is a readily obvious one.
1. Are you honestly unfamiliar with the terms? OK, here's a nutshell. Humans are natural, but they also behave in irrational ways. It's an advantage built into a large brain -- lets you think outside the box and so outfox predators with unpredictability -- but it also creeps into all human-designed systems. They're harder to predict than other systems, because of that human element.
2. The workings of biological life are quite well-understood indeed, so yet another one of your endless incorrect examples fails. We understand the variables well enough to custom-design microbes in a lab. However, I'm assuming you know as little of biology as you do of chemistry, so you'll ignore that and flit on to some other example. Or do you actually mean human life, despite your claim that this example wouldn't have to do with humans -- as in "what's the meaning of it?" If the latter, see item #1, above.
And just to head you off at the pass, because I'm starting to be able to predict your next direction, claiming that "we don't understand every single itty bitty detail of every aspect of life" (e.g., no cure for cancer) fails as well. Not being able to cure it at this time doesn't mean we'll never be able to. It wasn't that long ago that we couldn't vaccinate, either. But with the sequencing of the genome and so on, we've got an excellent handle on the basics, and the rest is coming faster and faster. Life is not in any way "so complex we can never understand it."