Do you think there is a God? If so, why?

[F1fan]

Yeah, did you actual read at least one of the article that explains that the probability rests on which assumptions you make. The problem is that we can't objectively decide which assumptions should be used to calculate the correct probability.
So yes, you could be in a Boltzmann Brain universe and you can't know if you are that or not.
But here is the core problem. Imagine you are in a Boltzmann Brain universe for the variation of a simulation, then you can't know if your assumptions are correct if they tell you are not in a Boltzmann Brain universe, because you are in a simulation and what you experience as real laws is a production of the simulation.
So what you get is this: I declare that this universe is real and therefore based on my experiences being real, the results are real and thus I am in a real universe. Can you recognize what that is? Can you say begging the question?

Does it shock you that scientists don't accept and apply the Boltzmann Bain idea in their work? Do you think this comprtomises their work?

How would assuming the Boltzmann Brain idea work for humans in every day life?

That is not even new, this problem. It is as old as the problem of what knowledge is. So that is how you get methodological naturalism. Use the following unprovable axiomatic assumption or in short beliefs without evidence: The universe is fair, real, orderly and knowable.

Fair is a vlaue judgment, and values are subjective. Real is objective for the most part with some uncertainty in the fringes of the human imagination. Order is observed, and doesn't rely on our judgments. We humans observe the universe behaving according to the laws of physics, that's a fact. It's objective. You can try to muddle our knowledge and understanding by being critical of humans being observers and our senses being limited. But this is why we rely on instruments, from eyeglasses to cameras to space telescopes. The axioms scientists (and most everyone else navigating life) are pracital and reliable. Your Boltzmann Brain idea only throws a ton of flies into the ointment of living. You have yet to explain how this fringe idea is useful for anyone beyond your own subjective desires.

Here it is by one you know:
"
A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt. ... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical.

How it is uncritical? Nature is nature, and we humans can observe nature. An orange on the table does not require too much thought about whether you are real, the orange is real, or whether you wanting to eat it is an actual experience of you as a real being in the universe. How much time to you need to stand there and ponder all this? Will the orange rot and now you are really hungry and no closer to solving that feeling.

Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.

— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, (Routledge, 2002), pp. 52–53, ISBN 0-415-27844-9."

So the problem is that the world is natural is a convention, a norm or to some dogma.

Yeah, so become paralyzed into non-action because you cause intellectual problems? I still don;t see how this is useful. If there were problems with the axioms we humans use in science and every day life they would become apparent. They haven't. It would be like treating your wife as if she is having an affair. There's no reason to think she is, but your treating her by assuming she is you causing problems. Maybe she is, but the point is you are causing a problem and don't seem aware that you are causing the problem by assuming one way, and not the other.

You can attack me, but I can't challenge you, because you only want to doubt me and not yourself. That is a double standard.

This is your imagination. We are engaged in discourse.

I know what this game is about. You don't in effect want to be challenged for your culture, because your culture is the correct one. Nothing else makes sense to you as based on your culture. So what is it that the dogmatic believers in culture do? They don't want their culture challenged.

I think this is projection. You are attached to a type of assumption and thinking that is not used by science or people in every day life. Your approach is impractical and to my mind self-sabotaging. If you really lived according to your axioms you wouldn't even be able to log into your computer and type thoughts. You are obviously assuming the world we engage in must be real in order to decide to sign on at all. So i think you have some awareness that your approach doesn't work, and you default to the axioms the rest of us rely on to get up, make breakfast, eat it, and then on to the next task of the day.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Does it shock you that scientists don't accept and apply the Boltzmann Bain idea in their work? Do you think this comprtomises their work?

How would assuming the Boltzmann Brain idea work for humans in every day life?

Fair is a vlaue judgment, and values are subjective. Real is objective for the most part with some uncertainty in the fringes of the human imagination. Order is observed, and doesn't rely on our judgments. We humans observe the universe behaving according to the laws of physics, that's a fact. It's objective. You can try to muddle our knowledge and understanding by being critical of humans being observers and our senses being limited. But this is why we rely on instruments, from eyeglasses to cameras to space telescopes. The axioms scientists (and most everyone else navigating life) are pracital and reliable. Your Boltzmann Brain idea only throws a ton of flies into the ointment of living. You have yet to explain how this fringe idea is useful for anyone beyond your own subjective desires.

How it is uncritical? Nature is nature, and we humans can observe nature. An orange on the table does not require too much thought about whether you are real, the orange is real, or whether you wanting to eat it is an actual experience of you as a real being in the universe. How much time to you need to stand there and ponder all this? Will the orange rot and now you are really hungry and no closer to solving that feeling.

Yeah, so become paralyzed into non-action because you cause intellectual problems? I still don;t see how this is useful. If there were problems with the axioms we humans use in science and every day life they would become apparent. They haven't. It would be like treating your wife as if she is having an affair. There's no reason to think she is, but your treating her by assuming she is you causing problems. Maybe she is, but the point is you are causing a problem and don't seem aware that you are causing the problem by assuming one way, and not the other.

This is your imagination. We are engaged in discourse.

I think this is projection. You are attached to a type of assumption and thinking that is not used by science or people in every day life. Your approach is impractical and to my mind self-sabotaging. If you really lived according to your axioms you wouldn't even be able to log into your computer and type thoughts. You are obviously assuming the world we engage in must be real in order to decide to sign on at all. So i think you have some awareness that your approach doesn't work, and you default to the axioms the rest of us rely on to get up, make breakfast, eat it, and then on to the next task of the day.

Yeah, I can't point to real or God, so I stop reading there.
We are playing this: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." Protagoras. And yes objective is a part of that. But it is still a human measurement act and not the only one.

 

[F1fan]

Yeah, I can't point to real or God, so I stop reading there.

Why can't you point to real? Do you not trust your senses? Do you doubt the orange is actually sitting on a table? That orange can nurish you, but what can your god do? Can your god do anything without your mind conjuring it, and distracting you from hunger?

We are playing this: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." Protagoras. And yes objective is a part of that. But it is still a human measurement act and not the only one.

You want to play. You seem mired in details that aren't problems, but you think of them as problems. Humans created temperature scales, created numbers, created weight scales, yard sticks, meter sticks, pints and milliliters, calendars, and so on. Are these problems that we created units of measure and use them so we can understand the universe? You seem to think so. I've yet to read your explaiantion of why you think there are so many problems about how humans work to measure and understand the universe. You've yet to explain a better way.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Why can't you point to real? Do you not trust your senses?

You want to play. You seem mired in details that aren't problems, but you think of them as problems. Humans created temperature scales, created numbers, created weight scales, yard sticks, meter sticks, pints and milliliters, calendars, and so on. Are these problems that we created units of measure and use them so we can understand the universe? You seem to think so. I've yet to read your explaiantion of why you think there are so many problems about how humans work to measure and understand the universe. You've yet to explain a better way.

Yeah, the social and mental are not really in the universe. I get natural science, do you get its limitations?

 

[F1fan]

Yeah, the social and mental are not really in the universe. I get natural science, do you get its limitations?

Better than you do. You seem willing to sabotage the capacity for humans to understand what they can. And notice you don't seem capable of anwering my questions. What's holding you back?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Better than you do. You seem willing to sabotage the capacity for humans to understand what they can. And notice you don't seem capable of anwering my questions. What's holding you back?

Okay, the objective can keep you alive and kill you. Yes, but so can other factors than the truly objective. So I won't play your game as you do it, because all humans are not you and as long as you believe in effect that all your argument are about the objective and you can't identitify your own subjectivity, there is not reason to do anything other that this.
E.g. "I still don't see how this is useful." First off, you don't see this as see. You understand it and useful is not objective. And as long as that don't register with you as subjective and not objective, there is no reason to go beyond that.

 

[Sand Dancer]

I see "god" as a spirit infusing everything. There are many names for this, but to me it is god-like. Nothing would survive without the universe.

 

[1213]

Who told you to interpret the Bible literally?

No one. I think all texts should be read as the writer intended it to be read, because in my opinion it is the only reasonable and fair way to read. If I would think I can twist the meanings by my whims, I could make any text mean what ever I want it to mean and in my opinion it would not be reasonable to do so.

 

[ratiocinator]

No one. I think all texts should be read as the writer intended it to be read...

How do you know what the writers of the various parts of the bible intended? If it was meant literally why does it contain so many contradictions?

 

[Apostle John]

So that is the question. Do you think there is a God? Please describe how you envision this God. Thank you.

There is a God because stars do not make themselves. The remaining dust doesn’t coalesce to form rocks. These theoretical rocks do not collide at super high velocity to create orbiting planets, they would form dust again. Life doesn’t make itself by chemicals reacting in nature on their own without a chemist in order to grow into dna. God is the image of man in Spirit form and is the Creator. He holds the universe together according to the Bible.

 

[ratiocinator]

There is a God because stars do not make themselves. The remaining dust doesn’t coalesce to form rocks. These theoretical rocks do not collide at super high velocity to create orbiting planets, they would form dust again. Life doesn’t make itself by chemicals reacting in nature on their own without a chemist in order to grow into dna. God is the image of man in Spirit form and is the Creator. He holds the universe together according to the Bible.

What a lot of unargued, unjustified, and unevidenced assertions.

 

[Apostle John]

What a lot of unargued, unjustified, and unevidenced assertions.

Your position is just as easy to challenge, has no reason for existence and full of unevidenced assertions. What you call evidence can be reduced to only the fact that mutations of genes occur, that’s all. We creationists believe that as well.

 

[ratiocinator]

Your position is just as easy to challenge, has no reason for existence and full of unevidenced assertions.

Which is another baseless assertion and demonstrably false. You have been given the evidence and all you've done is just assert that it's wrong. You have provided no reasoning, counterarguments. or evidence - just empty contradiction.

What you call evidence can be reduced to only the fact that mutations of genes occur, that’s all.

Simply false. You've been given far more than this and ignored it. What does your book say about bearing false witness?

 

[Apostle John]

Which is another baseless assertion and demonstrably false. You have been given the evidence and all you've done is just assert that it's wrong. You have provided no reasoning, counterarguments. or evidence - just empty contradiction.


Simply false. You've been given far more than this and ignored it. What does your book say about bearing false witness?

Present one of your so call evidences and I will explain why it is not evidence.

 

[Colt]

So that is the question. Do you think there is a God? Please describe how you envision this God. Thank you.

Yes, because I have experienced God. God is the greatest reality that exists. No matter how far we progress in the universe ascension there will always be more to discover about God.

 

[ratiocinator]

Present one of your so call evidences and I will explain why it is not evidence.

I've already done this, for example, here: How does the story of Adam and Eve compatible with science? #642 and all you did was ignore it all and make baseless and rather silly assertions about genetics in general.

However, here you are again, take your pick:-

Genesis and the Genome (PDF)

Introduction | Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition | The National Academies Press

Read chapter Introduction: While the mechanisms of evolution are still under investigation, scientists universally accept that the cosmos, our planet, and...

nap.nationalacademies.org

Common Descent vs. Common Design: 4 Examples Explained Better by Descent - BioLogos

We who accept Descent should admit that there are some observations that can be explained equally well by Design. But there are other observations which seem to clearly favor Descent.

biologos.org

Testing Common Ancestry: It’s All About the Mutations - BioLogos

biologos.org

Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Evolution from DNA Sequences

We demonstrate quantitatively that, as predicted by evolutionary theory, sequences of homologous proteins from different species converge as we go further and further back in time. The converse, a non-evolutionary model can be expressed as probabilities, and the test works for chloroplast...

journals.plos.org

 

[Apostle John]

I've already done this, for example, here: How does the story of Adam and Eve compatible with science? #642 and all you did was ignore it all and make baseless and rather silly assertions about genetics in general.

However, here you are again, take your pick:-

Genesis and the Genome (PDF)

Introduction | Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition | The National Academies Press

Read chapter Introduction: While the mechanisms of evolution are still under investigation, scientists universally accept that the cosmos, our planet, and...

nap.nationalacademies.org

Common Descent vs. Common Design: 4 Examples Explained Better by Descent - BioLogos

We who accept Descent should admit that there are some observations that can be explained equally well by Design. But there are other observations which seem to clearly favor Descent.

biologos.org

Testing Common Ancestry: It’s All About the Mutations - BioLogos

biologos.org

Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Evolution from DNA Sequences

We demonstrate quantitatively that, as predicted by evolutionary theory, sequences of homologous proteins from different species converge as we go further and further back in time. The converse, a non-evolutionary model can be expressed as probabilities, and the test works for chloroplast...

journals.plos.org

Just as anticipated, your evidence is based on modelling and is highly theoretical. This is what was said in one and will be the same for any ‘evidence’ you give trying to predict life thousands of years ago.

“It is basic to science that we have never tested all possible hypotheses; consequently we never obtain final and absolute knowledge about any aspect of the universe. Nevertheless, the scientific method provides us with the best form of knowledge that humans can attain, and ensures that we use the most thoroughly tested understanding at any time”.

You might be content with this ‘type’ of evidence but it is only flawed manmade conjecture, they even say “they never obtain final and absolute knowledge”. Presently today you know nothing other than the mutation of genes as fact, what I had explained before.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Just as anticipated, your evidence is based on modelling and is highly theoretical. This is what was said in one and will be the same for any ‘evidence’ you give trying to predict life thousands of years ago.

“It is basic to science that we have never tested all possible hypotheses; consequently we never obtain final and absolute knowledge about any aspect of the universe. Nevertheless, the scientific method provides us with the best form of knowledge that humans can attain, and ensures that we use the most thoroughly tested understanding at any time”.

You might be content with this ‘type’ of evidence but it is only flawed manmade conjecture, they even say “they never obtain final and absolute knowledge”. Presently today you know nothing other than the mutation of genes as fact, what I had explained before.

Yeah, I have absolute knowledge and you don't. I can't be wrong, because I have absolute knowledge and any counter you make is wrong, because I have absolute knowledge and you don't.
That is absolute and can't be doubted, because it is absolute. That is how simple it. It is absolutely so that I have absolute knowledge and thus it can't doubted, because it is absolute. BTW you will burn in Hell.

 

[ratiocinator]

Just as anticipated, your evidence is based on modelling and is highly theoretical.

So you didn't read it.

For example, there is nothing 'highly theoretical' about mutated versions of genes that used to be functional in our ancestors and the ability to compare the mutations that disable them with other species. Why would these things appear in the genome unless we evolved from a common ancestor? Why would humans have a broken version of the gene for making egg yoke? Why are the statistics of different mutations between individual humans pretty much identical to those between humans and chimpanzees?

As predicted, you've just ignored the evidence and made a silly, baseless, generic assertion.

You might be content with this ‘type’ of evidence but it is only flawed manmade conjecture, they even say “they never obtain final and absolute knowledge”.

There is a huge space between conjecture and certainty. The evidence that evolution happened is way more than conjecture. It is one of the best supported theories in all of science.

Presently today you know nothing other than the mutation of genes as fact, what I had explained before.

This is still bearing false witness.

The joke is that you believe your god without the slightest hint of objective evidence with nothing but blind faith and you reject evolution despite the endless objective evidence that supports it. It's kind of comical.

 

[Apostle John]

So you didn't read it.

For example, there is nothing 'highly theoretical' about mutated versions of genes that used to be functional in our ancestors and the ability to compare the mutations that disable them with other species. Why would these things appear in the genome unless we evolved from a common ancestor? Why would humans have a broken version of the gene for making egg yoke? Why are the statistics of different mutations between individual humans pretty much identical to those between humans and chimpanzees?

As predicted, you've just ignored the evidence and made a silly, baseless, generic assertion.


There is a huge space between conjecture and certainty. The evidence that evolution happened is way more than conjecture. It is one of the best supported theories in all of science.


This is still bearing false witness.

The joke is that you believe your god without the slightest hint of objective evidence with nothing but blind faith and you reject evolution despite the endless objective evidence that supports it. It's kind of comical.

You have no proof about mutated versions of genes just conjecture by comparing genomes. The statistics of different mutations is the same between humans and chimpanzees because they have existed as long, since 6000 years ago side by side. Do you get it?