Does the universe need intelligence to order it?

[McBell]

But take a look at your posts on this and the assumption that you have made that there is only one God and that it is the God as found in the Bible. How could you possibly know there's only one God? How could you possibly know that the Biblical rendition of this God is accurate?

geez.
I wonder what the odds are that not only does god exist, but that the Bible got it right?

Funny how some theists do not hesitate to trot out the "probability argument" for evolution, but suddenly forget it when it comes to their specific deity existing.

 

[YmirGF]

You're not really saying anything here, and no, I don't trust you.

Okies... so far, so good.

You are confusing factual knowledge with understanding.

Say what? Do you actually know what you are talking about?

Once again: show me just one thing where science provides information about the true nature of Reality. You say the question is flawed, but you are the one who made the claim the question is addressing. Do you want to rescind your claim?

Then do me a favor and point out this claim. I'm sure we can set your misunderstanding straight in fairly short order.

To be clear: I am not saying that some have more knowledge than do others. I am saying that some have awakened consciousness, while others are asleep.

But, in those terms, I too awakened a rather long time ago now. Yet, I disagree with your stances in so many areas. It's a mystery, really. In theory, I should be your greatest cheerleader...

 

[Robert.Evans]

The BB is not "metaphysical", nor is something "metaphysical" simply because it has changed. Matter of fact, science deals heavily with the issue of change.

Have a Merry Christmas, btw.

I don't imply that the BB is. But it has changed form as the Divine has. So neither can be shown in the form you want to see them.

Thankyou for the greeting! I hope you have a good one too, and to any others who read this post

 

[Robert.Evans]

Me too, it was the identification of that failure early in my youth that put me on my current path.

I do not practice magic, I do not worship luck, I put one foot in front of the other and move forward. That's all, I waste as little time as possible contemplating my navel or worrying about omnipotent beings who demonstrate their superiority by trying to trick stupid humans ... that's obviously foolish.

Life most likely arose slowly, step by step, and our inability to see something go from dead to alive in a single lighting flash does not surprise me. Even today we have a few candidates remaining for that gap between dead and alive ranging from clay surfaces and self replicating molecules to prions and viruses. You are looking for the abiogenesis equivalent of a crocaduck, something no one claims existed but whose absence the foolish will cite as proof that it never existed ... very strange.

I think we've already discussed the propensity of some physicists and mathematicians to go round the bend after their most productive years are over.
Calling the portion of our intelligentsia that is best equipped to deal with continuous change "Prehistoric" while you cloak yourself in bronze age ignorance would be funny where it not such a tragic loss of human potential.
Chance, luck, whatever you want to call it is your hobgoblin strawman ... not mine.

It should be obvious to anyone with a lick of intelligence that the scientific method has many tools and approaches. If you think that discetion is all that there is, that simple reveals your lack of knowledge concering and your experieince with science and the scientific method. You have proven yourself unqualified to comment on the subject.

"Rationally what (sic) does not operate within the realm of Reason" You are kidding ... right? You think that sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste, can be deceptive yet believe your own internal and quite possibly delusional mental state b?
That's just an argument from ignorance.
Your analogy is badly flawed and, in any case, represents naught but a strawman of your own creation.
Again your analogy is badly flawed and, in any case, represents naught but a strawman of your own creation.

Been slaving in the quote mine long? Probably not since you don't even do that well. BTW: Atheists don't have priests, high or low.

Your analogy is badly flawed, one again a strawman of your own creation. You seem to forget that is is the scientists who know how to design and construct the piano as well as write and play the music, those of you with nothing but bronze age tools at your disposal are limited to just playing "Fiddlesticks."

So you think that non-factual knowledge is what the nature of Reality actually is? Give us a break, take a deep breath and rethink what you just plopped face down into.
Hear! Hear!
There is no alter of Holy Science and Technology, no one asks us to tremble or be fearful, those are all concepts of religionists that atheist reject, and no misplaced allusion to Plato (something any decently educated middle school student might use) is going to change that.
Reality is the building, facts are the bricks and mortar, without the facts your are building with only cards, without science to provide the mortar, the best you can do is to dry fit cards together ... no much of a structure.

You havebeen busy. Have a good Christmas!

 

[Robert.Evans]

Yes, but then unlike religion, science doesn't just make **** up as it goes along and then threatens those who disagree with going to hell for eternity even when proven flat out wrong.

No... it would make a A b-mb and then drop it on your head.

 

[Robert.Evans]

because it is as unproven a premise as "god exists".


Will you ever get tired of whooping up on that strawman?


lack of convincing evidence is even more powerful than your alleged god.


you assume a who.
you assume an intelligence.

I am not saying that there isn't a who or intelligence behind it.
I am saying that one you remove the logical fallacies, wishful thinking and bold empty claims, what is left over is not convincing evidence.

I will get rid of my ''whooping'' over luck as your answer when you open your eyes and realise that is what you are worshipping.
Have a nice Christmas, I should I say holidays.

 

[godnotgod]

Say what? Do you actually know what you are talking about?
Then do me a favor and point out this claim. I'm sure we can set your misunderstanding straight in fairly short order.

In Post #725:

YmirGF said: ↑
Factual information that tells us nothing? Are you trying to be serious? Heaven forbid that facts intrude on your thinking, LOL. Oddly, we have learned a great deal about the true nature of reality by "dissecting" it. We are currently exploring reality from many different angles and to pretend that those meaningful investigations will tell us "nothing" is absurdity on steroids.

What do you think you've learned about the true nature of Reality by dissecting it? Just name one thing.

But, in those terms, I too awakened a rather long time ago now. Yet, I disagree with your stances in so many areas. It's a mystery, really. In theory, I should be your greatest cheerleader...

I'm not looking for a fan club, as you are.

 

[godnotgod]

BTW, artificial photosynthesis has been with us since the late 1960s.

That's a joke! It required years of brain power research and testing, and is a singular case, employing special materials. Can it reproduce itself like a blade of grass can? No. Can it do it on a mass scale? No. Can it do it without a brain? No. Can it do it with commonly available, free materials? No. It pales in comparison.

It's unnecessary to make your case? Then what are you doing here in a debate forum. Retire to you place of contemplation and see what you can do for the hungry of the planet singing, "ohm, ohm [sic] on the range."

This is in reference to my statement:

godnotgod said: ↑
Not that it is irrational, but that it is non-rational. With all the new facts coming up about the universe, science is more in paradox than ever before.

The case is made via its own evidence, which is that science, in spite of all its discoveries, still cannot provide an answer as to the true nature of Reality. That is the paradox.

re: om: Those who realize their Enlightenment can only shed their light on the world so that others can see. With light, we can find our way to solutions to hunger and the cessation of warfare. But this can only occur when individuals SEE that the current path of ignorance and hatred cannot possibly find those solutions, but instead only lead to more hunger and warfare.

'Where there is light, there is no nescience'

(note: 'ohm' is an electrical term. The term you intend is OM, or AWM)

Penrose, Goswami and Sheldrake, well, at least the first two, were bona fide scientists, physicists. There is a rather well known phenomena in which math types and physicists (same thing really) tend to make their contributions early in their career and go bonkers late in life. Truly a shame to go out that way. My read of Sheldrake is just that he's and out and out fraud.

Passing personal judgments without understanding is what we call ignorance. The fact is that, something dawned on these people that is much bigger in scope than what materialist reductionism provided. They had to be exposed to it first before they realized its shortcomings, and that is what the pattern has been. In general, these people have been mavericks with exciting new information, and mavericks, as we know from history, are almost always rejected by the keepers of the old paradigm. In the case of Penrose, he was a Nobel Prize candidate in Physics in 2008. You're saying he's 'bonkers'? Come now! You imply they have some sort of mental disease.

Demonstrate that a spiritual view exists in something more real than your overheated imaginator and I'll give it serious consideration. Otherwise you are, once again, just arguing from ignorance.

Are you a conscious being?

I will be seeking for all my days, that's the nature of the beast. Yes it will lead to more questions and each of those questions will lead to more answers, and so on. I do not see an end to it, it is one of the many infinities that we are faced with. I do not expect each new discovery to be some huge epiphany, I just expect each new discovery to add to the calculus so that I approach the limit I will never reach but that I am a step closer to. You get further and further away with all your he-haw of holisticism that you really don't practice because you are so afraid of the size of the whole that you can't even begin to try and embrace it. That failure is what creates your spirituality, your mysticism, and your inability to cope with the complex and infinite reality.

Incessant seeking is NOT the nature of the beast, but it is indeed bestial. You are being driven by something you fail to understand, thinking it to be some worthwhile exercise, while knowing all along it can only lead to more questions, and while not knowing what it is you're seeking. The evidence on the table shows us that such seeking leads nowhere. As I already pointed out, mystics have already nailed this question, centuries ago, and new mystics continue to validate their realizations independently of each other. What you fail to grasp is that, what you call a 'complex and infinite reality' is all unified by a sameness lying underneath. IOW, you are focusing on the varietal differences in the universe, when all forms emerge from the same source. What is true of something here is also true of something over there.

Reality is not something one copes with; it is something one experiences. If coping is all you are capable of, you're not really living. You're just being pulled along as a spectator.

 

[Muffled]

Erm...We were talking about the chances that our universe might exist as is without a god.
You are free to believe as you wish.

In that case I would say it is an equal chance. The problem is that there is evidence that God created it but there is no evidence that the universe just existed.

 

[Muffled]

Pretty amazing that it does that though, eh? Two gases make a liquid! Reminds me of the Spirit of God hovering over the waters

The thing that blew my mind was that fusion takes place up to a point in the periodic table and then fission takes over. Then again maybe I didn't understand it all that well. There has to be a way of getting those higher weight elements and fusion seems like the logical method.

 

[Muffled]

In all of the pages of this debate did anyone challenge this question as being the accurate question? ...or even the author of the quote?

I have to admit it is a stretch. Monkeys could accidentaly spell a word and maybe rarely spell two words together but a whole sonnet seems absolutely impossible.

 

[godnotgod]

I have to admit it is a stretch. Monkeys could accidentaly spell a word and maybe rarely spell two words together but a whole sonnet seems absolutely impossible.

Even if it were, the monkeys would not know they had created a sonnet. Shakespeare was intelligently conscious of what he was doing all the while, with creative ideas always in mind. The monkeys are just having a bash.

 

[McBell]

I will get rid of my ''whooping'' over luck as your answer when you open your eyes and realise that is what you are worshipping.

I do not worship anything.
So we can add that to your growing list of strawmen.
Won't be long and you will be the strawman king, whooping up on strawmen cause you have nothing else to offer.

 

[McBell]

No... it would make a A b-mb and then drop it on your head.

I see you are at a loss for relevant reply.

 

[metis]

Wonderful. So now I have a question for you:

In your meditative experience, is there the of merging of subject/object?

You're going to have to explain that more fully as both terms used in this context can be taken different ways. But before you do that, in order to maybe save some time, let me just say that it appears to me that all "things" are likely to be interrelated, and one thing common in meditation is to try and envision these connections and attempt to see what the implications may be.

 

[apophenia]

Here is yet another example of where you seem to imply that you know the true nature of reality. For me, that is little more than arrogance fawning over it's own inherent insecurity.

"The true nature of reality."

Hmm.

Is there a false nature of reality ? ( Here we go ...)

What is the difference between 'the nature' and 'reality' ?

Is there a true nature of unreality ?

Does reality have 'a nature' ?

What does 'have' mean in this sense ?

What is 'reality' doing when it is' having' ?

Can reality sensibly be referred to as 'it' ?

Let's get a little ignosticism going on here ...

Firstly - What is meant by 'reality' ?

*g'day Ymir . I'm not debating you at all here, I just grabbed your post because it refers to that infinitely meaningless phrase, which peppers these crazy dialogues *

 

[metis]

I don't imply that the BB is. But it has changed form as the Divine has. So neither can be shown in the form you want to see them.

Thankyou for the greeting! I hope you have a good one too, and to any others who read this post

With the approach of Spinoza that I tend to lean towards, what you call the "Divine" is also all that we see or may not see, so change is inevitable with all. Therefore, with any object that I can point to, all I'm seeing is an image that is in constant change, even if I don't realize it is. As the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, has written, if there were to be a creator-god, then this deity would also logically have to change as well. Trouble is, what would make this creator-god change if at the beginning this deity was the only entity that existed?
Tough question, and I don't have enough intelligence to answer it.

Merry Christmas.

BTW, we have 35 people coming over our place to celebrate it today.

 

[YmirGF]

Seasons Greetings, my confused friend.

In Post #725:

What do you think you've learned about the true nature of Reality by dissecting it? Just name one thing.

Mathematics. Mathematics is one area that all human animals seem to agree on. Though that might make some folks uncomfortable, that reality can be reduced to a set of equations, for the most part, it can be. Where this runs off the rails is that such a clinical, calculated view of reality is not supportive of your fragile vision of reality.

I'm not looking for a fan club, as you are.

Actually, I'm not looking for a fan club either, godnotgod, I just have the good fortune of having other human animals like me. It's a character flaw, to be sure.

 

[YmirGF]

"The true nature of reality."

Hmm.

Is there a false nature of reality ? ( Here we go ...)

What is the difference between 'the nature' and 'reality' ?

Is there a true nature of unreality ?

Does reality have 'a nature' ?

What does 'have' mean in this sense ?

What is 'reality' doing when it is' having' ?

Can reality sensibly be referred to as 'it' ?

Let's get a little ignosticism going on here ...

Firstly - What is meant by 'reality' ?

*g'day Ymir . I'm not debating you at all here, I just grabbed your post because it refers to that infinitely meaningless phrase, which peppers these crazy dialogues *

My dear fellow, and I do mean that, you aren't debating a thing as far as I am concerned. Actually, you are underscoring my point. My guess is much of what you have written will fly right over the heads of many.

 

[Robert.Evans]

I do not worship anything.
So we can add that to your growing list of strawmen.
Won't be long and you will be the strawman king, whooping up on strawmen cause you have nothing else to offer.

Blind is as blind says.