Holmes

19 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Oh I don't mean that the disguise was necessarily intentional on your part, just that that is what it amounts to, whether you realise it or not.

Well disguise implies a conscious intent and there is none.

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To claim that the universe must be "evidence of" something implies that something other than the universe must be somehow responsible for its presence - a cause for its existence, in fact. As you will know, if this is your line of country-  as it seems to be - this assertion of a First Cause is an old chestnut. 

Yes, it is variation of the argument from contingency I suppose but it is emphasizing how we can reasonably, rationally infer the supernatural from what we know about the universe.

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You have misunderstood me in imagining I don't think that "things have a cause". That is not at all what was saying. What I said - and if you have studied much science you will know this - is that there are uncaused events.  So it is not true to claim that every event must have a cause, though quite obviously most do.  

I'm not aware that the claim there are "uncaused events" is falsifiable, I see no reason to accept this belief as true.

18 minutes ago, MigL said:

I'm just waiting for Holmes to provide an example of ALL these paradoxes that apparently cannot be explained by science.

If it is a fact that everything has a scientific explanation then what is the explanation for this fact?

You cannot use science to explain science, you cannot use laws of nature to explain the presence of laws of nature.

Attributing the material to the material is a paradox.

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And why he thinks saying "The ghost of Alexander Keith did it" ( alegedly haunts his brewery in Nova Scotia ), resolves these paradoxes.

And, IF he should be able to provide such a paradox ( doubt it ), how is his explanation any different than not having an explanation at all.

Because "God created the universe" tells us there's some entity that has the capacity to produce a universe and the laws that operate within that universe and that this act was itself not a consequence of some laws but of will, directed, desire, intent - we can understand these concepts because we possess these, we posses will, intent, desire so why is it so hard to accept that as a fundamental aspect of reality?

Will gave rise to law, law cannot be the result of law.

This is very different to saying there is no explanation at all, if you have a better explanation then lets here it.

7 minutes ago, iNow said:

Depends on what you mean by exist

I mean is there evidence to warrant a belief that there are things called laws.

4 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

It's reasonable though, given your biases and tendency to assert without support.

Do you think this is interesting or meaningful? Not to me. It certainly didn't answer my question about what laws you think have been violated.

Please quote my post where I claimed laws of nature have been violated, because I did not say that and this shows that you have misunderstood me.

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

TBH, you’ve not offered me any good reasons to care what you think 

What a strange thing to say, very strange.

11 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Um, what?! Can you show me something that is allowed to violate a law in order to give rise to the law? What isn't subject to the Law of Conservation of Energy? I can appreciate that nothing I've heard of violates this law.

Do laws exist?

I think I can say they do, so then to what can we attribute the presence of these laws? 

Is there a law that gives rise to all the other laws? there may well be, there may be a theory of everything but if laws are explained through other laws what explains the presence of laws at all? it cannot be a law can it...

9 minutes ago, iNow said:

Correction: YOUR position is that a paradox is created using naturalistic explanations for the origin of the universe.

That's right and I think quite obvious when you carefully think about it. 

How can there be a naturalistic process for the origin of the universe when there can be no such processes until something exists? until laws, matter, fields exist?

There can't.

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YOUR position is that this paradox is only resolved by invoking supernatural conjectures.

My position is that something other than a naturalistic explanation (laws, matter, fields) must be invoked if we want to explain the origin of the universe, for obvious reasons I call that a supernatural explanation and explanation that is not based on laws, matter, fields etc.

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MY position is that this resolves nothing. It merely displaces the same question and leaves it equally unanswered, only THIS time with a bunch of pseudo woo woo horseshit in the middle 

All explanations displace the explained thing with other - often yet-to-be-explained things, this is a characteristic of scientific explanations, listen to Feynman above.

Just now, iNow said:

If you accept that no cause is needed to explain the supernatural, why not remove your fictional narrative (which adds nothing but complexity) and accept that perhaps no cause is needed to explain the natural?

Because that would not be an explanation, in addition science is about finding explanations it is explanations (aka theories) that give us the ability to predict, one of the main fruits of scientific inquiry.

Your position is - the universe has no explanation - which seems rather more vacuous to me.

Just now, Phi for All said:

Sorry, but science can answer "What makes the sky appear blue?", but not "why".

Why do you want to remove the meaning from a wonderful word like "why", and equate it with "what" or "how"? Definitions are critical when you are discussing science.

Use whichever terms you prefer my argument is unchanged.

Feynman very clearly understood this issue about explanations about "why" (or "how" or whichever way you choose to write this).

Just now, iNow said:

You’ve resolved nothing, merely displaced it. You’re now left with the need to explain the origin of the supernatural. It’s turtles all the way down. 

No, you misunderstand I think.

I'm not seeking to explain the supernatural but the natural.

It is clear that something not subject to laws must be the reason there are laws - surely that's something you can appreciate?

If you want to reject an explanation for X because it depends on unexplained things Y then you need to stop doing science, everything in science that is explained is explained in terms of things not themselves explained.

1 minute ago, Phi for All said:

You certainly are obsessed with "origins". If you stop thinking about the "why" part, it also resolves your perceived paradox. Science is about observation and prediction, the "what" and the "where/when/how" questions. The "why" is for philosophy.

Science deals with "why" all the time Phi, why is the sky blue? why does the moon always show the same face to the earthbound observer? etc etc.

There's an update to this:

https://www.space.com/nasa-investigates-hubble-space-telescope-computer-glitch

2 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

LOL, your a hoot!  If you assume something is supernatural, then since this thing exists that is evidence of the supernatural?  Really? 

Assuming the supernatural is real resolves the paradox of the natural being invoked to explain the origin of the natural, resolving paradoxes is what intelligent reasoning and rationality is all about.

Reasoning that leads to paradoxes is anathema to science so how can you seriously regard what you're saying here as an example of science? scientific reasoning?

2 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

Let me play this game.  There is no exact mechanism that explains red sprites, so I think they are supernatural.  Red sprits exist, therefore they are evidence of the supernatural!  Cool.🙄

As you wish.

1 minute ago, Phi for All said:

Whoa there.

1 minute ago, Phi for All said:

Science attempts to explain natural phenomena.

So how can science explain the origin of natural phenomena? how can science explain how laws came to exist?

1 minute ago, Phi for All said:

There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE of anything that violates that. EVERYTHING is observed to function within the parameters of the natural universe.

This is not good phraseology, how can you make claims that everything adheres to some pattern unless you've observed everything? how can one even falsify such a claim?

1 minute ago, Phi for All said:

If you're claiming something is outside that, or SUPERnatural, then you aren't doing science.

I never said I was "doing" science, I said we must abandon science to explain why there is a universe.

1 minute ago, exchemist said:

You made an assertion without evidence, namely that the the universe must be evidence "of" something other than itself. 

Well I say that because to attribute the presence of something to its self is paradoxical, I tend to reject paradoxical explanations personally, all the science I've studied takes that same view too.

If someone in this forum said the reason there's a moon is because there's a moon or magnetic fields exist because of magnetic fields I very much doubt you'd agree or regard that as sound scientific reasoning.

1 minute ago, exchemist said:

This seems to be a disguised way of stating the old canard about everything needing to have a cause. But why should this be true, when we have evidence that some events occur randomly?

I "disguised" nothing, I expressed my view as I expressed my view.

If you reject the view that things have a cause then on what basis do we even do science? what is a theory if not a mapping of causes/effects?

Just now, Bufofrog said:

This is just an unevidenced conjuncture.  If we say at this point that we don't know that simply means we don't know at this time, it does not mean we will never know, or something is unknowable.

So you claim a thing can be evidence for itself? 

Just now, Bufofrog said:

Ok, so you think supernatural stuff is real, well when you get some great evidence of supernatural stuff let me know.

The natural, the fact that that is here and we can observe it is evidence of the supernatural, that is a definition in fact of supernatural in fact - some thing that cannot be explained naturalistically (scientifically, laws etc).

Just now, Bufofrog said:

That is simply bovine feces.  You can infer whatever you like, don't include me in your little inferences.

As you wish.

1 minute ago, iNow said:

Did I stutter?

Really? you really want to descend into such pettiness so soon.

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. You can infer anything you want. It’ll never rise above the specious foundation of being just your opinion, supported by nothing more than personal faith and personal preference. 

Is that a rebuttal? what specifically did I write that you take issue with and why?

16 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

What is the evidence of that?

The universe is evidence of something it cannot be evidence of itself and it cannot be evidence of anything subject to laws so it must be evidence for something else, something different, something that is not itself a law. Thus it is an inference, a rational inference.

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I don't think that is self evident

If one is steeped in philosophical materialism, mechanistic reductionism then I understand, such a view insists that all explanations be mechanistic, reductionist, "physical" yet we have no right to insist that this is true, it is a belief and must be abandoned if it leads to paradoxes and believing laws are the origin of laws is such a paradox.

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So if we don't have an answer to something, the answer must be supernatural?  I definitely disagree with that.

Well that's no surprise, again if one believes that the material realm can be explained only in terms of the material realm then you will hold the view you do, but it is paradoxical and we must reject any belief that leads to a paradox if we want to make sense of reality.

When a mathematician discovers a paradox, contradiction in his/her reasoning they understand that the reasoning is flawed or that one or more of the axioms is flawed.

Putting all this together we can infer that the universe was created in a way that cannot be described scientifically, that was not the result of laws acting on things, so we can also infer that there is a thing we can call "will" an innate ability to act not in accordance with deterministic laws.

God is that which brought the universe into existence, God can be rationally inferred from that observation, it is a definition of God.

We cannot logically, ever have a scientific explanation for the presence of the universe ("universe" being all matter/energy/laws/fields etc. that exist) it is beyond the ability of science to explain it's presence.

All theories in physics refer to pre-existing material quantities, refer to laws that underpin material interactions, therefore in the absence of material quantities and laws no theory could be developed, the true "theory of everything" would be a blank sheet of paper.

The explanation for the presence of the universe (matter, energy, fields, laws) must be non-scientific, therefore scientific explanations are not the only form of legitimate explanation.

21 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Again, in the context of "set of possible people allowed by our DNA" vs "set of actual people", you're wrong. 

Again, that's not analogous to the situation in context. 

I think you're being a bit too generous to Dawkins here, this is what he wrote in English, the man has an excellent vocabulary, his knowledge of English is certainly very good, yet he wrote:

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Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born

Things that are not born cannot be referred to as "people" it is not the kind of language I'd expect from a serious, competent scientist. Dawkins is mainly a pop-science writer though.

19 hours ago, beecee said:

You don't like Richard Dawkins I take it?

While I prefer scientists [which Dawkins is] and scientific principles,  to philosophers, and philosophical claptrap, does not stop me accepting that philosophy is still at the foundation of science. But I do prefer Sagan over Dawkins, and actually see him as the greatest educator of our time.

With relation to the thread title though "Can life-affirming athiests prove their beliefs?" it is obviously arse about face. It is far more scientifically logical for believers to prove that their deity of choice does indeed exist. That as yet has never happened.

I don't regard Dawkins as a scientist in any traditional sense, he is primarily a writer of popular science books, his contributions to science are somewhat intangible.

Consider this from an article published in 2016 in the UK's The Independent (emphasis mine)

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Though Dawkins wasn’t a part of the interview process, and researchers didn’t ask about him, 48 of the 137 British scientists they spoke to mentioned Dawkins. Of those 48 that referenced him, 80 per cent said they thought that Dawkins misrepresents science and scientists in his books and public speeches, according to the study by Rice University, Texas.

I also don't see how you can expect anyone to prove their beliefs, even in the physical sciences we never prove anything as I'm sure you know.

22 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Spurred forward? Or merely allowed to continue as long as the nod to god was given?

Yes, it may have, I cannot prove that of course. There seems to be evidence that believing in the supernatural did not inhibit the study and exploration of the natural, you can look at the list in that Wikipedia list.

18 hours ago, beecee said:

The Copernicus's, Galileo's, Newton's of this world, were not aware of what modern day science tells us. While certainly even today some scientists may still believe in a God of choice, most don't. Nothing wrong imho with such belief for individual scientists, as long as that belief does not inhibit scientific progress.  

Well of course people in the past prior to more recent discoveries will not have been aware of those more recent discoveries, that an always-true statement.

Beliefs always change because they are beliefs, there were scientists who believed eugenics was a way to improve society for example but very few seem to believe that today.

The statement "most people don't exist" is not a scientific statement.

It is not testable experimentally, it is IMHO meaningless.

Consider: most members of the set X are not members of the set X.

Like much of Dawkins' writing it is fancy, word play, speculative.

I think the various TV series from James Burke are about as good as it gets when teaching science to the uninitiated or younger students. For example consider this for starters:

On 6/23/2021 at 9:36 AM, Implications said:

In "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins writes

 

Later Richard Dawkins wrote "Unweaving the Rainbow"

 

This belief is common among athiests, and I am going to argue that Richard is wrong.

It is a matter of fact that every single one of us is going to suffer, and this is ample evidence that Richard Dawkins is wrong.

I argue that believing that we are lucky to be alive when you accept the reality of suffering, is bit like believing in God when you believe that life on Earth was all formed by evolutionary and physical processes. This does not represent a true acceptance of the facts.

The title "Unweaving the rainbow", refers to John Keats criticism of science, that it had "destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism." Richard Dawkins claims this is wrong. I claim that Richard is not drawing quite the right conclusion. What science shows is that the rainbow is not inherently beautiful, beauty is a mere aesthethetic. There is nothing poetic about a rainbow.

I argue, that science shows there is no spiritual, transcendent or philisophical quality to the universe and that  the existence of life  or rainbows does not have value.

What science shows is that there is an objective universe and as such I beleive that Richard's claim, that we are are lucky to be alive, can be false.

I propose that the correct response to this unspecial nature of the universe, is something resembling stoicism or philisophical Buddhism. We must accept that suffering exists and respond compassionately to others and ourselves. We must be careful to not panic in the face of suffering, or else we will make it worse.

We must destroy the myth that things other than welfare have value.

PS:

One thing some of you may find confusing is the idea that emotions are in some way objective and that someone can make an objective statement about wether life is nice or not.

What I claim to be true, is:

Emotions are the only measure of welfare, welfare is the only measure of morality, and it is an objective fact that all affective beings will suffer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Dawkins has a poor understanding of science to be honest, his celebrity is often mistaken for competence. In this though he has a lot in common with many - not all - atheists, a weak grasp of philosophy and the foundations of science.

When I read claptrap like "Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born" I know he's reached the limits of his understanding, how one can say "most" about things that don't exist escapes.

Most things will never cease to exist because they are never going to exist - see?

Dawkins often represents much of what is intellectually poor in atheism and sadly far too many take him seriously.

On 4/9/2021 at 7:53 AM, starchaser137 said:

Imagine a CPU sitting idle. It doesn't have any program loaded, nor is it a part of some large system.

It is just connected to power. What parts of the CPU are used during this time?

This arises primarily from the nature of MOS transistors which are used to build everything, even the basic logic gates are made from such transistors.

With CMOS there are two switches (transistors) in series and where they meet is the "output" by design only one of these switches is ever "on" (which is where the term "complimentary" comes from, they switch on/off in opposite senses when they are activated).

When a state change occurs then the transistor that is on goes off and the transistor that is off goes on, imagine two mechanical switches geared together so the when you switch one on the other goes off and vice versa.

There is a problem though and that is that the transition from off-to-on or on-to-off is never instantaneous, it takes time, perhaps picoseconds but there is a point in time where both switches are half on and half off, that means some current is flowing - very briefly - through both switches and that is where the waste comes from.

In a static digital circuits CMOS consumes close to no power at all, no transistors are passing current power is only consumed when there are transitions, other technologies can switch faster (or this was the case, not so sure nowadays) but always consume some power whether a switch is on or off.

So with CMOS the higher the clock rate the higher the number of times we get this half on/off state and so the higher the number of times current is flowing.

On 10/1/2020 at 1:05 AM, Mnemonic said:

According to the bible Jesus Christ was a supernatural character who could walk on water, occasionally talked to Satan, and could turn water into wine, amongst many other marvels.

Can you be a scientist and still believe in this stuff? As far as I am concerned, you should not be called a scientist or be allowed anywhere near any scientific endeavor if you believe in fictitious myths.

Am I being too aggressive in my attitude? Probably, however science and the scientific approach to research application is a serious technical field that should not be sullied by ridiculous fairy tales.

 

>Please move to the Religion section..

Belief in God and Christian doctrine may have spurred science forward actually. Most of the seminal contributors to the scientific developments from Copernicus onwards all had a form belief in God, in design, and so on. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_science_and_technology