Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[Eli G]

The thing is that there is no such thing as "science." You can't magnify something that doesn't even exist.

Knowledge is not concentrated anywhere, and there are no humans who can be the bearers of everything that has been discovered so far.

Some mathematicians don't even know how to fry an egg.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

No, I'm not. I built models using empiricism but the models are arranged to generate nexialism.

That was a response to, "You, @PureX, and a few other RF posters are epistemic nihilists, but only in your musings. In daily life, you're empiricist like I am."

I illustrated what I meant by daily life and described it as all day every day. My words were,

"You make decisions all day every day based in the application of reason and memory (knowledge acquired experientially in the past) to the evidence of your senses. You see the toast, you see the butter, you remember that you like buttered toast, so you apply the butter to the toast and eat and enjoy it, possibly while posting on RF that 1+1=3."

You're an empiricist from the moment you wake up and notice reality and your conscious self in it. You're an empiricist when you look at the clock and determine the time. You're an empiricist when you switch on the bathroom light, when look for the toilet, when you shower, and when you brush your teeth, and you're only a few minutes into your day. In every moment except perhaps when daydreaming, you're taking in evidence, interpreting it, and acting on it. That's how you find the door and pass through it rather than walking into walls.

Believing that 2 + 2 = 4 in a reality where no two identical things exist is a belief in miracles.

No, it's a belief that combining two discrete objects with two more gives one four discrete items. They don't need to be identical. When my wife and I go out to eat with another couple, we request a table of four.

This is what I mean about making this stuff so complicated that it loses meaning while also talking about meaning being elusive - what I call epistemic nihilism, a form of solipsism. To make progress with thought, we need firm foundations, and we can have that. I have that. It's a result of training in critical thinking and accumulating a fund of knowledge including facts and remembered experiences.

And my words and their meaning should be very clear to any prepared mind, which is probably any that can read English without twisting something that an average high school student can understand if he has the vocabulary or can find and understand a definition IF he doesn't twist the words and his thoughts into something wrong or confused.

You ignored my point that sensation can't happen in a vacuum. You must have some kind of framework using models and experience to even know something is soft or blue.

No, I didn't. As I said, that framework is reason and memory - what we know about that evidence that has just become evident, that is, what it is evidence of. We can add affect, or feelings after that.

Here's the order of events: First an apprehension becomes evident to some external or internal sense. It is now evidence. But of what? It might be a sight, sound, or smell. It might be an impending sneeze sensation. It might be thirst.

Immediately thereafter, memory begins to add associations. Consider this instance of visual evidence being apprehended, comprehended, and generating an affective response: The bare apprehension is a vision, it's a face in front of me, it's a human, it's Bill, Bill and I are having lunch today and he's here, and I'm anticipating a good meal and some good conversation. First come the descriptors - what this apprehension is and means (its implications) - followed by the affective component if any, or how we feel about this understanding.

It's all very ironic and all caused by our propensity to know everything and our certainty there are no other ways.

You like to tell me and others what my problems or all of our problems are, but I don't see problems there. My way of thinking works for me. I have no problems because of it. In fact, I avoid many avoidable problems because of it.

I am not a nihilist.

Epistemic nihilist.

Look at the sentence above (containing the word "ironic." You like to talk about what can't be known and the problems communicating with language, and that is relevant in your life because of the way you process information and use words, but not in mine or most other people I know. Why? They aren't burdened with these thoughts, and they get through their days as best as their knowledge and experience permits, which is generally adequately.

And I just saw this from you - more non-problems that you call problems and more on how words don't have adequate meanings:

"It is these problems in communication that are leading us toward "Tower of Babel 2.0". It's not only that there is a growing failure of communication between scientists caused by proprietary knowledge and specialization but also an utter failure of communication between the few who understand science and laypeople who often worship at the Church of Science. The wealthy run science and government and they generally understand science EVEN MORE POORLY than the average college freshman."

I believe humanity can still exist in its current form in billions and billions of years. Remember there is no "Evolution" there is only change in species which we can successfully avoid so we don't end up like the Porpoises in Vonnegut's Galapagos (...so it goes).

Maybe.

If humans have living descendants in billions of years, they will not look human unless man can find the technology to prevent evolution, which I can't conceive of short of some type of cloning or specifying genomes in zygotes rather than natural reproduction, and I can't think of a reason to do that even were it possible. More likely is that evolution will proceed artificially. There's a name for that:

"Transhumanism is the position that human beings should be permitted to use technology to modify and enhance human cognition and bodily function, expanding abilities and capacities beyond current biological constraints."

That's evolution too, but not by natural selection. Darwinian evolution can continue at the same time if man cannot or chooses to not stop it (assuming he can).

 

[PureX]

That was a response to, "You, @PureX, and a few other RF posters are epistemic nihilists, but only in your musings. In daily life, you're empiricist like I am."

I illustrated what I meant by daily life and described it as all day every day. My words were,

"You make decisions all day every day based in the application of reason and memory (knowledge acquired experientially in the past) to the evidence of your senses. You see the toast, you see the butter, you remember that you like buttered toast, so you apply the butter to the toast and eat and enjoy it, possibly while posting on RF that 1+1=3."

You're an empiricist from the moment you wake up and notice reality and your conscious self in it. You're an empiricist when you look at the clock and determine the time. You're an empiricist when you switch on the bathroom light, when look for the toilet, when you shower, and when you brush your teeth, and you're only a few minutes into your day. In every moment except perhaps when daydreaming, you're taking in evidence, interpreting it, and acting on it. That's how you find the door and pass through it rather than walking into walls.

Now that you have turned empiricism into some Godlike form of wisdom, you seem to imagine that it's responsible for every decision every human makes in every circumstance always and forever. Much the same way the scientism cult has blown science up into this absurdly grandiose philosophical ideology that causes them to imagine that everything is either a form of science or it's abject nonsense.

The truth is that 95% of everything we humans do at any given time we do based on intuition, which is a combination of habitualized experience, subconscious semi-logical reasoning, and momentary whim or desire. This is HARDLY empirical! Though some aspects of it may be defined that way.

No, it's a belief that combining two discrete objects with two more gives one four discrete items. They don't need to be identical. When my wife and I go out to eat with another couple, we request a table of four.

Yes, it's a "BELIEF". Exactly. Just as believing that the Earth is flat is also a BELIEF. And like a great many of our beliefs, it will function as a truth so long as we never actually allow ourselves to recognize all the ways in which our belief is simply NOT true.

 

[Eli G]

Human history shows that society moves within temporary philosophical frameworks.

For example, in the late 18th century many spiritualist movements emerged. In the 1960s the use of narcotics gave a new twist to what was considered "spirituality." In certain minority modern social contexts, sex, drugs, the overvaluation of money, and violence for human survival are emphasized, because the life expectancy to which they are thrown by society pushes them to that kind of behavior.

In each specific framework, the "knowledge" of reality and the way of interacting with it is different, temporary, and inconsequential outside of that context. Modern neo-Marxist movements strongly emphasize the evolution of species and the elimination of God from the equation about reality, because where there are humans who wish to possess total control of humanity, belief in God is an inconvenience.

Who or what is moving this process? Truth liberates from the temporal.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The truth is that 95% of everything we humans do at any given time we do based on intuition, which is a combination of habitualized experience, subconscious semi-logical reasoning, and momentary whim or desire.

That's not my definition of intuition. Intuition is when you just know that something is correct but can't demonstrate it or explain why it is. Do you believe that you have libertarian free will because of a compelling belief that you do, one you can't demonstrate? That's an intuition. Do you believe that there is a reality outside of consciousness because the belief is irresistibly compelling, but you have no way to demonstrate that even to yourself? That's intuition. We might include instincts there and drives.

What they're not is knowledge a I defined it - demonstrably correct ideas useful in anticipating outcomes

Learned behaviors, irrational thought, and desire are not intuition as I'm defining it.

Yes, it's a "BELIEF". Exactly. Just as believing that the Earth is flat is also a BELIEF.

I wrote, "it's a belief that combining two discrete objects with two more gives one four discrete items."

Not exactly. One belief is demonstrably correct (knowledge) and the other false.

Now that you have turned empiricism into some Godlike form of wisdom

Here you go again introducing your hyperbole and religious beliefs. I don't think you'll ever understand my position.

you seem to imagine that [empiricism] responsible for every decision every human makes in every circumstance always and forever.

No. You still can't understand me. "Give it up! Don't try to understand!" Not that you need to be told that. You don't try.

I'm talking about how knowledge is accumulated, not how we make decisions.

Here's an old Harry Belafonte song our band covered (I first heard it from the Grateful Dead). The last line is for you. If you'd like to hear it but want to hear only this verse, you'll find it at in the video 4:17, but I recommend that you don't miss the improvisation beginning at 2:50 immediately before it. Although empiricism was very much a part of preparing for that, very little empiricism was employed when playing this music. One doesn't think when improvising - he just softens his focus, goes into feeling (right brain) mode, and lets the engrams take over:

Ever since the world began
Women been imitating the ways of men
But listen 'cause I've got a plan
Give it up, don't try to understand

 

[Pogo]

This is how bias forms and becomes blindly endemic. Being able to be versatile in conceptualizing and inter-relating representations of reality via math, metaphor, debate, or creative imagination opens the mind up to possibilities that would otherwise be cut off in the stubborn defense of an biased axiom.

The mathematical formula is an excellent example of how we can all too easily overlook the various conceptual possibilities "hidden" within even the simplest cognitive operation by taking the abstraction as a reality unto itself, when it is not. "X + X =?" can involve a lot of different possible resolutions depending of what each of the five symbols is intended to represent, exactly.

Before you accuse me of bias, you ought to recognize your own bias in not understanding the word axiom and their use. Axioms are those things that you need to state so that you can take your ideas and develop them into a coherent structure that can be presented for others to evaluate using an established set of axioms of a logic.
Otherwise all you have is a pile of assertions.
Go ahead and develop your 1+1=3 and see if you can show us how it creates a new math. Then we can evaluate whether it seems internally consistent and even more interestingly, does it provide any insights into any of the human conundrums.

 

[Pogo]

No, I'm not. I built models using empiricism but the models are arranged to generate nexialism. Other people use their models in other unique ways using reason to create them. They did not necessarily use the same empiricism or the same methodology to create and use them.

Believing that 2 + 2 = 4 in a reality where no two identical things exist is a belief in miracles. Believing that consensus defines reality is a belief in miracles. Believing that scientific theory is set in concrete after reducing reality to experiment is a belief in miracles. Believing theory can be founded on anything other than experiment is a religion.

Believing science is always right and always changes one funeral at a time is a contradiction, a paradox, and an oxymoron.

Believing there is only one way to skin a cat is short sighted and naive.

As I said to @PureX Develop a set of axioms of your logic and show us how your axiomatic set is coherent and then useful in understanding the observed.

 

[Pogo]

Humans are too limited, which affects the discovery of new knowledge:

1. Humans are limited in instrumentality. For example, we cannot even directly photograph some physical realities because they cannot be focused with our instruments. In order to observe “farther away” we must improve our instruments or methods.
2. The above causes us to be limited also in observation capacity. By not being able to observe real objects that are beyond the capacity of our most powerful instruments, we cannot develop more complete theories about reality and its laws.
3. Our paradigms change at an accelerated pace, and this prevents the establishment of a single “science” that allows the connection between all the natural sciences existing today, that is truly stable and helps make knowledge holistic.
4. Also the scope (and methodology) of human educational systems is deficient, being accessible not to people with advanced minds but to people who can pay for classes, turning information into merchandise.
5. There are selfish interests opposed to disseminating fundamental truths, because the commercialization of knowledge is the current norm. Private companies handle an unimaginable amount of information that, if made public, would contribute to the increase of human knowledge of the truth.
6. Some are trying to form social classes that repeat the ancient rise of the “religious priesthood.” We see in this forum some “worshippers” of a utopian deity called “Science,” who believe themselves to be above the rest of society when in reality it is the money magnates who are controlling human forces, and not the participants in the task of discovering new knowledge.

In conclusion, humans are deficient in directing themselves. We need our Creator's guide.

Is this intended to be a description of the reasons for continuing to explore the unknown or just another diatribe to explain why you feel left out because you can't create a argument that gets beyond I don't understand so there must be a god? That by the way is just the god of the gaps argument and has never produced any useful knowledge.

 

[YellowFeather]

The laws that man follows even athiest, Do not steal, do not kill, do not lie, do not bare false witness against thy neighbor. etc come from the Bible. The miracles that man receives from God are the ones he gives to those who truly have faith and believe in him. When we pray God answer us. When God answers us he does not answer us as we expect. God answers us in a way that tells us this is what is best for you.

 

[PureX]

That's not my definition of intuition. Intuition is when you just know that something is correct but can't demonstrate it or explain why it is.

Yeah, that's what I said. But I also explained how it's generated. And although there is some logic involved, there are other equally motivating factors.

Do you believe that you have libertarian free will because of a compelling belief that you do, one you can't demonstrate? That's an intuition.

I don't believe much of anything. I find it to be mostly an egocentric waste of time. Nor do I care much if I'm "right" or not. So I'm happy to operate via intuition most of the time.

Do you believe that there is a reality outside of consciousness because the belief is irresistibly compelling, but you have no way to demonstrate that even to yourself?

See above.

That's intuition. We might include instincts there and drives.

I think you're missing the mark when you keep trying to imply that intuition somehow leads to "belief". I didn't just run to the store because I believed in it. I ran to the store because I intuitively determined that that was then next thing for me to do. And by intuitively, I mean mostly subconsciously, partly by logic, partly by habit, and partly by desire. And probably by some other unnoticed motives as well. But belief was not a part of it.

Learned behaviors, irrational thought, and desire are not intuition as I'm defining it.

Yeah, but as usual you're wrong.

I wrote, "it's a belief that combining two discrete objects with two more gives one four discrete items."

Yep, that's a belief alright. And it's why I tend to avoid that stuff.

Not exactly. One belief is demonstrably correct (knowledge) and the other false.

Lots of different beliefs are "demonstrably correct" depending on the input and the objective. "The Earth is flat" is demonstrably correct given a specific information set and practical objective.

I'm talking about how knowledge is accumulated, not how we make decisions.

No you aren't. You're talking about how you determine that the information your encounter is "right". You have a bit of an obsession with this idea of "righteous knowledge". "Correct knowledge". "Objectively demonstrable correctness" and so on. This is not normal. Most humans do not expend so much time and energy worrying about the correctness of what's happening in their brains. Perhaps we should do more, but we don't. We operate on 'automatic' (intuition) the vast majority of the time and mostly don't even care what's correct and what's not. If it achieves an immediate goal, that's all the "correctness" most humans care about.

 

[PureX]

Before you accuse me of bias, you ought to recognize your own bias in not understanding the word axiom and their use.

I am not accusing you or anyone else of bias, though we ARE ALL biased. I am simply stating a fact: that when we accept "X" as an "axiom", we are rejecting the possible alternative perspectives. Just as when we become "believer" in "X", we also become blind to the other ways of understanding and recognizing the truth.

Axioms are those things that you need to state so that you can take your ideas and develop them into a coherent structure that can be presented for others to evaluate using an established set of axioms of a logic.

Yes, and you just defined a big fat bias.

Otherwise all you have is a pile of assertions.

Or, rather, a myriad of possibilities. Any number of which might be relatively or equally "correct" depending on the input and the goal.

Go ahead and develop your 1+1=3 and see if you can show us how it creates a new math.

"New math" is as irrelevant as "old math". Math is just a kind of language we can use to abstract and then inter-relate aspects of our experience of reality. In scenario "A", 1 + 1 = 1. In scenario "B", 1 + 1 = 2. In scenario "C" 1 + 1 = 3. And these are just the possibilities we've come up with over a couple of posts. There can easily be more. And they are all "correct" depending on the input being abstracted and the goal of the exercise. And each of these can be easily "demonstrated" (since some of you seem to really need that).

 

[cladking]

As I said to @PureX Develop a set of axioms of your logic and show us how your axiomatic set is coherent and then useful in understanding the observed.

I've done so many times. You ignore it.

 

[PureX]

I've done so many times. You ignore it.

It's always the same thing ... "Come stand before me in my kangaroo court so I MAY JUDGE THEE AND DISMISS THY "EVIDENCE"!!! (And thereby maintain my own biased righteousness!)

 

[cladking]

That's not my definition of intuition.

Do you ever use a real dictionary? Siri is an idiot that has dumbed down everything and allowed anyone to use only a single definition of every word. I almost never have used the word to mean what you say it means to you. Doesn't this disturb you in the least? I say one thing and you hear something else! You hear what you want to hear even AFTER I define words for you. The unabridged dictionary has several hundred words to define "intuition" and its forms but you want to tongue tie everyone to use it only as you think it should be used. The FIRST definition just like the FIRST definition of "metaphysics" is the one I mean; a way of knowing without reasoning or doing the calculations. I move through life intuitively rather than inductively. When I do the math I use deduction instead because i don't trust inductive logic; remember I don't believe in taxonomies, categories, and sets. These are semantical and mnemonical tools and are not reflective of reality.

I've to0ld you before why I use intuition but obviously you parsed all those sentences incorrectly as well because you you think words have a single definition and the best one is the second or fifth.

AGAIN, you don't get to define how other people use words. If I say "metaphysics" is the basis of science that becomes thew only possible definition in THAT sentence.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

No two identical things exist so what does the number "2" even mean? Does a third of an orange plus a third of an apple plus a third of a hammer equal most of a smashed fruit.

We use science and math to reduce things to patterns but then we mistake these patterns for reality itself. We see what we believe so people believe in the miracle of seeing reality. When science becomes your religion anomalies become invisible and reality a mirage seen through a kaleidoscope.

Why on Earth would things need to be identical to count them?

Don't worry. I've gotten used to this, so I don't expect an answer.

 

[cladking]

No, I didn't. As I said, that framework is reason and memory - what we know about that evidence that has just become evident, that is, what it is evidence of. We can add affect, or feelings after that.

I've said all living things are conscious. I've even pointed out that stellate ganglia are conscious and the job of the medulla oblongata is to block messages from other consciousnesses within the body. The entire brain/ body is the seat of consciousness which also makes the amygdala a part of this system which gives rise to emotions. You are trying to reduce logic incarnate without even so much as defining it and then denying it to everything except the human brain for which you have quite obviously put the cart before the horse. You make so very man assumptions and then forget you made them because somewhere there's a book with every answer in it and you probably read it even if you don't remember such fundamental concepts as the nature of consciousness and how it affects your estimation of science or its ability to reflect reality. This is all mystical thinking; no, not on the level of the mysticism that says pyramids mustta been tombs dragged up ramps, but it's still mysticism. It is as mystical as the fit must survive as the unfit must die.

I've shown several times now that "reason" is what we believe and that "evidence" is confirmation of what we believe. Decades of experiment show this and believers in science just hand wave it away. No matter how inane an hypothesis is it can be adopted by science and peers because we are homo omnisciencis. We know not only how to find reality but we already did. Reality is the current paradigm supported by every living scientist.

Hear us boast.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

No, I'm not. I built models using empiricism but the models are arranged to generate nexialism. Other people use their models in other unique ways using reason to create them. They did not necessarily use the same empiricism or the same methodology to create and use them.

Believing that 2 + 2 = 4 in a reality where no two identical things exist is a belief in miracles. Believing that consensus defines reality is a belief in miracles. Believing that scientific theory is set in concrete after reducing reality to experiment is a belief in miracles. Believing theory can be founded on anything other than experiment is a religion.

Believing science is always right and always changes one funeral at a time is a contradiction, a paradox, and an oxymoron.

Believing there is only one way to skin a cat is short sighted and naive.

What is believing in 40,000 year old science or language without any evidence of it?

What is believing you know what brains looked like 40,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago? So that you can compare and contrast them to modern brains.

What is believing that assigning random, meaningless nomenclature means that humans are different species?

 

[cladking]

Why on Earth would things need to be identical to count them?

Don't worry. I've gotten used to this, so I don't expect an answer.

So what does one apple plus one orange, plus one idea equal?

There can never be any possible answer that lists the specific characteristics of any of the fruit or idea. Your answer is by definition meaningless as is the answer to what is one apple plus one apple plus one apple because each of the three apples is unique.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I've said all living things are conscious. I've even pointed out that stellate ganglia are conscious and the job of the medulla oblongata is to block messages from other consciousnesses within the body. The entire brain/ body is the seat of consciousness which also makes the amygdala a part of this system which gives rise to emotions. You are trying to reduce logic incarnate without even so much as defining it and then denying it to everything except the human brain for which you have quite obviously put the cart before the horse. You make so very man assumptions and then forget you made them because somewhere there's a book with every answer in it and you probably read it even if you don't remember such fundamental concepts as the nature of consciousness and how it affects your estimation of science or its ability to reflect reality. This is all mystical thinking; no, not on the level of the mysticism that says pyramids mustta been tombs dragged up ramps, but it's still mysticism. It is as mystical as the fit must survive as the unfit must die.

I've shown several times now that "reason" is what we believe and that "evidence" is confirmation of what we believe. Decades of experiment show this and believers in science just hand wave it away. No matter how inane an hypothesis is it can be adopted by science and peers because we are homo omnisciencis. We know not only how to find reality but we already did. Reality is the current paradigm supported by every living scientist.

Hear us boast.

You say lots of things. You never show it. Not that I've ever seen.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

So what does one apple plus one orange, plus one idea equal?

Three.

There can never be any possible answer that lists the specific characteristics of any of the fruit or idea.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. It is likely irrelevant anyway. You can count them even when they are not identical. Just because you create a group that includes fruit and ideas, doesn't mean you can't count the units in that group.

Your answer is by definition meaningless as is the answer to what is one apple plus one apple plus one apple because each of the three apples is unique.

It doesn't matter how unique they are, you can still count them. You can add a fourth apple or take one away.

If find this system you outline to be constructed of some rather silly notions.