Metaphysical-Physicalism.

[Magical Wand]

There's a fair number of "if"'s and "assuming" in the paper. And unfortunately I'm not qualified to interpret Ken's argument well enough to comment. He's dealing with ideas found in the appendix to TLSD.

I understand Popper's arguments in the meat of the text. But didn't study the equations in the appendix.



John

I counted just one "if", and it was actually from Popper. "If Popper is right..."

 

[Brian2]

Methodological naturalism is an epistemology, and it doesn't assume no interference from the supernatural, which would be philosophical naturalism. Nor does it assume the Bible is wrong, so there is not such circular reasoning, presupposition, or bias. It simply acknowledges that we can only observe, study, and experiment within the reality we perceive around us, and that there is currently no evidence supporting supernatural claims or invisible metaphysical beings.

Please note that saying, "there is currently no evidence for X or any way to verify X" is entirely different from saying "X does not exist" or "X cannot exist." The first is methodological naturalism, the second and third would be philosophical naturalism, which most atheist don't think is justifiable because it makes unverifiable claims about ultimate reality.

The fact that there is no demonstrable evidence that specifically supports your claims that a god exists is your problem to overcome by providing evidence. It is not something that the rest of us seek to disprove, or need to disprove, in order for us to simply not be convinced that a belief in your claim is warranted.

By bringing methodological naturalism into the study of the Bible it turns into an assumption that prophecy does not exist and so the methodological naturalism turns into philosophical naturalism.

 

[Kooky]

I find it bizarre to believe that only atheists would use inductive logic as a method of reasoning.

What does this have to do with belief in the supposed existence of god(s) at all?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Induction results from acquiescence to a subjective separation of the finite from the infinite by means of the circumscribing of a finite self-centered subject inside an impermeable cell membrane. Once the inner world, circumscribed by the cell membrane, has been codified as the place in which reality is accurately perceived, the subject thereafter uses this inner environment as the whole paradigm for reality. The inner environment circumscribed within the cell membrane becomes the whole basis for the inductive logic which thereafter projects the subject’s inner environment outwards into the external infinite, to make believe that the inner environment is a mirror reflection of the real infinite exterior.

"When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense・- Edward Abbey

This is needlessly complicated and obfuscated. All we really need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. Exactly what underlies all of this is secondary. Whatever we think is true about what underlies the world we perceive, it is only a model for understanding what goes on in here. That is, the subjective is the realm we are inextricably immersed in and the one that matters most. The world we conceive of existing outside our minds and being the object of our subjective apprehensions - objective reality as we conceive of it - is of secondary importance There's a pervasive view that that world out there is more real than this one in here, and in here is only a faint projection of that, and thus secondary to it, derivative.

But this attitude misses the fact that it doesn't really matter how accurate our understanding of what is out there is if the model we are using allows us to effectively navigate the experience of consciousness over time in a way that facilitates desirable outcomes and avoids undesirable ones. That is, if you one day discovered that your model of reality was an illusion - perhaps we are brains in vats, or Descartes' demon is manipulating out experience to appear that there is something else besides that demon outside of mind, nothing changes.

Consider that it is literally true that you are in some matrix in some controlled mental state that you had always thought was your perception of a reality out there through the windows of the eyes and other senses, but you somehow suddenly learn that all of that is illusion. Now what? What do you do differently? Which of your rules for navigating your conscious experience needs changing? Is it OK now to put your fingers in a flame now that you know that the flame is an illusion? Not unless you want to feel the pain of fire that you now believe doesn't actually exist as it burns a fingertip that doesn't actually exist, either.

What are you going to do differently? Are you going to start doing what you previously thought was sticking an objectively real finger into an objectively real flame knowing that it hurt before and will again? Probably not more than once. And you'll likely continue thinking in terms of objectively reality underlying the show playing in the theater of the mind. It's a heuristic now, but just as useful as before.

Here's the bottom line: If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, and "doing A" achieves D, then belief B can be considered true even if action A doesn't actually occur. This alone is what is important to a sentient entity. Think about using a computer interface like Windows, where we sometimes play computer car race games. We conceive of the experience as actually being in a vehicle that doesn't exist, turning a wheel that doesn't exist, etc., without getting booged down in the actual reality of computer circuitry not moving at all, the actual "metaphysical" reality underlying the experience. Maybe you were too young to understand that when you first started playing, then was taught that it's all an illusion. Do you stop playing? Probably not. Do you try to conceive of the car as bits? No. Your older mental model of an actual car existing still works, and works better than conceiving of circuit boards flipping bits.

Once again, it's the subjective world that matters to us most, because that's where we live. The mental map we draw through life as we learn more and more about what appears to be out there and how the world works is actually the derivative (derived from experience and trial and error), not experience, which is often cast as something weak or inferior, something derivative, like the shadows in Plato's cave. It's the other way around. It doesn't matter what underlies the shadows in the cave if they are all that can be experienced, if the rocks conceived to be their objective counterpart can only be experienced subjectively as shadows.

One more illustration of the primacy of experience relative to whatever metaphysical reality is thought to underlie it: free will. There are good arguments supported by evidence that our desires are delivered to consciousness from what seems to be the brain's neural circuits, and that we happily obey them, mistaking them as ideas generated by the conscious agent, the self. The hypothalamus detects plasma hyperosmolarity (you're dehydrated), and sends the experience of thirst with a desire to quench it, so you do. Is that free will or the illusion of free will?

You say that you didn't have to drink - you could have waited just to prove you could make choices. But then you learn that this thought is also generated deterministically outside consciousness and delivered to it to do battle with the hypothalamus' instruction, and realize that you don't actually decide what you do even though it feels like it. You discover that you're that dreaded the robot the theists tell us that their god didn't want you to be, and so gave you free will. You discover that you're only an observer in your own mind, and not the source of any idea or desire, nor an agent in the process of conflicting desires playing tug-of-war. One day, you learn that nothing is how you thought it was. Your metaphysical reality has been upended again. Now what?

Same answer. You go on living as if you had free will exactly as before, but now realizing that whatever you "choose" to do is also the decision of deterministic neural circuitry.

I am inclined to think that scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas which are of a purely speculative kind, and sometimes even quite hazy; a faith which is completely unwarranted from the point of view of science, and which, to that extent, is “metaphysical.”

This is incorrect, and a common mistake. We are told that we only have faith in the principles underlying science by people who use that word to mean unjustified belief. Often, it is coming from a theist trying to put science and theology on an equal footing by arguing that scientists are also acting on faith.

But that is obviously wrong. The fruits of science tell us that our assumptions are valid in the sense that acting as if they were valid - that nothing should be believed just because it is said or hoped, that the world is comprehensible and understood by examining it and deriving those dreaded inductions (laws of science) by applying reason to the evidence to generate useful generalization. How do these people miss the evidence supporting those assumptions such that they see it as faith - blind belief? The success of science is the evidence that the method and its assumptions are valid. Did the New Horizons probe make it to Pluto? Was Pluto where it was predicted to be when it was predicted to be there? Did the craft launch and its guidance systems get it to that same place at the same time? Did it's sensors and transmitters give us the data we went there for? Yes to all of these. The sine qua non of a correct idea id that it can accurately predict outcomes.

By this same reckoning, we know that the underlying principles of astrology are false. It has the opposite track record, the sine qua non of a wrong idea. No useful ideas come from those assumptions. They have no predictive or explanatory power. They are wrong. To equate faith in astrology (or religion) with the justified confidence we have in astronomy and the other sciences that made a successful mission possible is just incorrect.

And isn't that what the author you cite is doing here - essentially saying that science is based on a foundation of sand like astrology? No. That's astrology. And alchemy. And creationism. The assumptions of science are confirmed by its stunning successes, just as the assumptions of these faith-based systems are disconfirmed by their sterility.

Isn't that how we dispatched the intelligent design people? Their underlying assumption that because a god created man and the universe, there would be evidence of irreducible complexity in some biological systems that could only be explained by intelligence and intent. And had they found that, their assumptions would be validated. Their repeated failure to do so, and worse, to repeatedly offer examples of irreducible complexity that were not that, suggest that their assumptions were incorrect.

 

[Clara Tea]

It seems to me that belief in inductive logic is something like an atheistic placebo. It allows the vast majority of human beings to use the divine spirit God gave them while treating the abilities circumscribed by that divine spirit as though they're produced inductively --- naturally.

If it can be shown that they're not, then all persons would have to rise to the level of understanding possessed by Einstein and Chomsky (Popper too), which would, if nothing else, cause severe epistemological discomfort for those who prefer to lie in the crib and watch the dangling mobile with a ga ga, and a goo goo, now and then.

Most of humanity seems to be engulfed in something like a metaphysical-physicalism, which is, naturally, a tautological oxymoron.
John

One of the best arguments against the existence of God is that God said that he didn't exist.

 

[Clara Tea]

"When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense・- Edward Abbey

This is needlessly complicated and obfuscated. All we really need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. Exactly what underlies all of this is secondary. Whatever we think is true about what underlies the world we perceive, it is only a model for understanding what goes on in here. That is, the subjective is the realm we are inextricably immersed in and the one that matters most. The world we conceive of existing outside our minds and being the object of our subjective apprehensions - objective reality as we conceive of it - is of secondary importance There's a pervasive view that that world out there is more real than this one in here, and in here is only a faint projection of that, and thus secondary to it, derivative.

But this attitude misses the fact that it doesn't really matter how accurate our understanding of what is out there is if the model we are using allows us to effectively navigate the experience of consciousness over time in a way that facilitates desirable outcomes and avoids undesirable ones. That is, if you one day discovered that your model of reality was an illusion - perhaps we are brains in vats, or Descartes' demon is manipulating out experience to appear that there is something else besides that demon outside of mind, nothing changes.

Consider that it is literally true that you are in some matrix in some controlled mental state that you had always thought was your perception of a reality out there through the windows of the eyes and other senses, but you somehow suddenly learn that all of that is illusion. Now what? What do you do differently? Which of your rules for navigating your conscious experience needs changing? Is it OK now to put your fingers in a flame now that you know that the flame is an illusion? Not unless you want to feel the pain of fire that you now believe doesn't actually exist as it burns a fingertip that doesn't actually exist, either.

What are you going to do differently? Are you going to start doing what you previously thought was sticking an objectively real finger into an objectively real flame knowing that it hurt before and will again? Probably not more than once. And you'll likely continue thinking in terms of objectively reality underlying the show playing in the theater of the mind. It's a heuristic now, but just as useful as before.

Here's the bottom line: If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, and "doing A" achieves D, then belief B can be considered true even if action A doesn't actually occur. This alone is what is important to a sentient entity. Think about using a computer interface like Windows, where we sometimes play computer car race games. We conceive of the experience as actually being in a vehicle that doesn't exist, turning a wheel that doesn't exist, etc., without getting booged down in the actual reality of computer circuitry not moving at all, the actual "metaphysical" reality underlying the experience. Maybe you were too young to understand that when you first started playing, then was taught that it's all an illusion. Do you stop playing? Probably not. Do you try to conceive of the car as bits? No. Your older mental model of an actual car existing still works, and works better than conceiving of circuit boards flipping bits.

Once again, it's the subjective world that matters to us most, because that's where we live. The mental map we draw through life as we learn more and more about what appears to be out there and how the world works is actually the derivative (derived from experience and trial and error), not experience, which is often cast as something weak or inferior, something derivative, like the shadows in Plato's cave. It's the other way around. It doesn't matter what underlies the shadows in the cave if they are all that can be experienced, if the rocks conceived to be their objective counterpart can only be experienced subjectively as shadows.

One more illustration of the primacy of experience relative to whatever metaphysical reality is thought to underlie it: free will. There are good arguments supported by evidence that our desires are delivered to consciousness from what seems to be the brain's neural circuits, and that we happily obey them, mistaking them as ideas generated by the conscious agent, the self. The hypothalamus detects plasma hyperosmolarity (you're dehydrated), and sends the experience of thirst with a desire to quench it, so you do. Is that free will or the illusion of free will?

You say that you didn't have to drink - you could have waited just to prove you could make choices. But then you learn that this thought is also generated deterministically outside consciousness and delivered to it to do battle with the hypothalamus' instruction, and realize that you don't actually decide what you do even though it feels like it. You discover that you're that dreaded the robot the theists tell us that their god didn't want you to be, and so gave you free will. You discover that you're only an observer in your own mind, and not the source of any idea or desire, nor an agent in the process of conflicting desires playing tug-of-war. One day, you learn that nothing is how you thought it was. Your metaphysical reality has been upended again. Now what?

Same answer. You go on living as if you had free will exactly as before, but now realizing that whatever you "choose" to do is also the decision of deterministic neural circuitry.



This is incorrect, and a common mistake. We are told that we only have faith in the principles underlying science by people who use that word to mean unjustified belief. Often, it is coming from a theist trying to put science and theology on an equal footing by arguing that scientists are also acting on faith.

But that is obviously wrong. The fruits of science tell us that our assumptions are valid in the sense that acting as if they were valid - that nothing should be believed just because it is said or hoped, that the world is comprehensible and understood by examining it and deriving those dreaded inductions (laws of science) by applying reason to the evidence to generate useful generalization. How do these people miss the evidence supporting those assumptions such that they see it as faith - blind belief? The success of science is the evidence that the method and its assumptions are valid. Did the New Horizons probe make it to Pluto? Was Pluto where it was predicted to be when it was predicted to be there? Did the craft launch and its guidance systems get it to that same place at the same time? Did it's sensors and transmitters give us the data we went there for? Yes to all of these. The sine qua non of a correct idea id that it can accurately predict outcomes.

By this same reckoning, we know that the underlying principles of astrology are false. It has the opposite track record, the sine qua non of a wrong idea. No useful ideas come from those assumptions. They have no predictive or explanatory power. They are wrong. To equate faith in astrology (or religion) with the justified confidence we have in astronomy and the other sciences that made a successful mission possible is just incorrect.

And isn't that what the author you cite is doing here - essentially saying that science is based on a foundation of sand like astrology? No. That's astrology. And alchemy. And creationism. The assumptions of science are confirmed by its stunning successes, just as the assumptions of these faith-based systems are disconfirmed by their sterility.

Isn't that how we dispatched the intelligent design people? Their underlying assumption that because a god created man and the universe, there would be evidence of irreducible complexity in some biological systems that could only be explained by intelligence and intent. And had they found that, their assumptions would be validated. Their repeated failure to do so, and worse, to repeatedly offer examples of irreducible complexity that were not that, suggest that their assumptions were incorrect.

If sense was common, why don't I have any?

"It ain't necessarily so" said: "Whatever we think is true about what underlies the world we perceive, it is only a model for understanding what goes on in here." Our finite minds hope to comprehend infinitely complex concepts with limited knowledge at our disposal.

"It ain't necessarily so" said: "Is it OK now to put your fingers in a flame now that you know that the flame is an illusion?" Suppose that the universe is an illusion set up by God. That would explain why a sane and just God would allow such cruelty. For example, a lion eating a water buffalo while it is still alive and awake, screaming in agony. So, if this world is just a holodeck, filled with pixels of what we perceive as reality, we could ask, again, is God cruel? The answer is that it doesn't matter if cruelty is real or imaginary, as long as we perceive it to be real. We are psychologically marred by observing fake cruelty.

Is this whole world a TV show for God? Does God, who knows future events, want to surprise himself by randomizing outcomes, so even he doesn't know what will happen?

"It ain't necessarily so" said: "There's a pervasive view that that world out there is more real than this one in here, and in here is only a faint projection of that, and thus secondary to it, derivative." It is like Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In that, Plato asserted that we are tied up in a cave, unable to see out to the real world. The only idea that we have of the real world is shadows on the wall. To us, that is reality. Then, one day, we are cut free, and allowed to wander out of the cave into the light of day. The light of wisdom is too bright for us, and at first we think that it is an illusion, rather than reality. It takes time for us to accept wisdom.

Perhaps, also, we lack certain senses to perceive the whole universe? Or, perhaps, we lack the intelligence to understand it?

"It ain't necessarily so" said: "Did the New Horizons probe make it to Pluto?" There are those who say that space exploration is a hoax, and pictures of it are merely Hollywood dubbed images (like images in a sci-fi movie). It begs the question...are we butterflies dreaming that we are people, or are we people dreaming that we are butterflies? It is existentialism (a branch of philosophy). Many argue that we are not here at all.

Astrology is not necessarily built on a foundation of sand. Some say that the motion of planets don't cause events. Yet, the hands of a clock cause you to go to work in the morning. The motion of stars are just like a clock (they tell time). So, if an astrologer says that when certain astronomical events occur, certain things will happen on earth, they are merely using the night sky as a clock or calendar. The trick, of course, is to accurately predict events and when those events occur.

Nostradamus made some of his predictions by noticing trends. For example, the seasons change yearly, and there are certain times one should plant crops. There are times when the red tide occurs. There are many seasonal changes. Once one notices all of them, and sees how they relate to each other, one can predict certain events using a clock or the stars as a timer. Thus, Astrology, if done right, works.

 

[John D. Brey]

This doesn't address my question, which was, "What is the belief in inductive logic? Can one not believe in it?" If only you wrote answers like, "Belief in inductive logic means... which is different from merely knowing what it is by being..." and "yes(or no, one need believe in it because...)."

For what it's worth, in one sense your question was answered in the thread-seeder which said:

It seems to me that belief in inductive logic is something like an atheistic placebo. It allows the vast majority of human beings to use the divine spirit God gave them while treating the abilities circumscribed by that divine spirit as though they're produced inductively --- naturally.​

Belief in induction is using the mental abilities that transcend the laws of physics but then retrofitting those abilities into the natural laws of logic, reason, and empiricism, since the person who believes in induction either doesn't believe in man's elevated mental status in the world, or else he does on Sunday mornings when he's sitting in the pew, but not on the weekdays when his peers not his pastor are peering at him.

I asked you what an atheistic placebo is. What you describe above is not a placebo of any kind. A placebo is something known to be inert that one believes will have a physical effect on them. You seem to be describing what you consider faulty or fallacious thinking - in this case, not recognizing a divine influence that is present and mistaking it for innate capability.

Induction is the placebo. It doesn't really do anything. But it works anyway to Aleve ( so to say) the pain associated with knowing a person has been given something so great there's probably a high price placed on its possession.

Induction is then like a pain-alleviating salve slathered over the guilt the atheist has about an innate knowledge that he possesses a God-given gift he, the atheist, damnsure wants to keep, but doesn't want to know where it came from, or why it's given.

I'd say that the opposite is likely the case - you mistakenly believe that your innate abilities are of divine provenance. This is what I consider the most likely explanation for people saying that they have experienced God in a way they can't share or demonstrate. They mistake a naturalistic mental state for something else. They're projecting their idea from their minds onto the world. What is really only "in here" is understood to be "out there."

Amen brother. This is precisely what we're talking about.

Which is why quoting agnostic thinkers of some level of sophistication saying that induction is an illusion, and that the mind appears to transcend physics, is able to grasp metaphysical truism ---lends itself to the idea that it's the atheist who is tricking himself about what his mind does, i.e., slathering induction all over a self-inflicted wound.

Incidentally, attributing inner thoughts to external agents is common in human history. The ancient Greeks had no concept of human creativity in the arts, and just assumed that all such inspirations were delivered to them from muses of poetry, music, etc.. The so-called prophets thought to be speaking for a God were simply not seen as being able to come up with such ideas, so divine messaging to them was assumed. Dreams are commonly interpreted as messages from an external source.

Many modern artists, Dylan comes to mind, say they don't create their greatest revelations. When asked how he produced his greatest lyrics Dylan said they're already out there. He just intuited how to grasp them and bring them home.

Here we go again. I asked, "How does one use a divine spirit? I'm an atheist. Are you saying I do that? If so, what are you saying I'm doing? Am I getting that divine spirit to help me?" I don't see an answer there. Maybe you're telling me that the difference between a human being and the other beasts is a divine spirit. If so, how much nicer it would have been to write that sentence that directly and clearly. Instead, I still have to clarify what you are saying.

Yes. I'm saying the difference between other beasts and a human being is a marked difference in the quality of divine spirit possessed. The human being possesses enough divine spirit to know he possesses it. All other beasts posses it, but not to a degree that allows them to know that they possess it, or what it is.

This is important since no other beast is culpable for not acknowledging the divine spirit since they don't possess enough to know they have it. Every human being is responsible for acknowledging that he possesses divine spirit, and to respond to it. If he doesn't, he is worthy of great divine retribution for wanting to use the divine spirit to get his Tesla, or his large-breasted bride, but not to serve the Gift-giver who gave it.

Induction could be thought of as the salve slathered over the hole where the guilt comes out.



John

 

[RestlessSoul]

"When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense・- Edward Abbey

This is needlessly complicated and obfuscated. All we really need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. Exactly what underlies all of this is secondary. Whatever we think is true about what underlies the world we perceive, it is only a model for understanding what goes on in here. That is, the subjective is the realm we are inextricably immersed in and the one that matters most. The world we conceive of existing outside our minds and being the object of our subjective apprehensions - objective reality as we conceive of it - is of secondary importance There's a pervasive view that that world out there is more real than this one in here, and in here is only a faint projection of that, and thus secondary to it, derivative.

But this attitude misses the fact that it doesn't really matter how accurate our understanding of what is out there is if the model we are using allows us to effectively navigate the experience of consciousness over time in a way that facilitates desirable outcomes and avoids undesirable ones. That is, if you one day discovered that your model of reality was an illusion - perhaps we are brains in vats, or Descartes' demon is manipulating out experience to appear that there is something else besides that demon outside of mind, nothing changes.

Consider that it is literally true that you are in some matrix in some controlled mental state that you had always thought was your perception of a reality out there through the windows of the eyes and other senses, but you somehow suddenly learn that all of that is illusion. Now what? What do you do differently? Which of your rules for navigating your conscious experience needs changing? Is it OK now to put your fingers in a flame now that you know that the flame is an illusion? Not unless you want to feel the pain of fire that you now believe doesn't actually exist as it burns a fingertip that doesn't actually exist, either.

What are you going to do differently? Are you going to start doing what you previously thought was sticking an objectively real finger into an objectively real flame knowing that it hurt before and will again? Probably not more than once. And you'll likely continue thinking in terms of objectively reality underlying the show playing in the theater of the mind. It's a heuristic now, but just as useful as before.

Here's the bottom line: If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, and "doing A" achieves D, then belief B can be considered true even if action A doesn't actually occur. This alone is what is important to a sentient entity. Think about using a computer interface like Windows, where we sometimes play computer car race games. We conceive of the experience as actually being in a vehicle that doesn't exist, turning a wheel that doesn't exist, etc., without getting booged down in the actual reality of computer circuitry not moving at all, the actual "metaphysical" reality underlying the experience. Maybe you were too young to understand that when you first started playing, then was taught that it's all an illusion. Do you stop playing? Probably not. Do you try to conceive of the car as bits? No. Your older mental model of an actual car existing still works, and works better than conceiving of circuit boards flipping bits.

Once again, it's the subjective world that matters to us most, because that's where we live. The mental map we draw through life as we learn more and more about what appears to be out there and how the world works is actually the derivative (derived from experience and trial and error), not experience, which is often cast as something weak or inferior, something derivative, like the shadows in Plato's cave. It's the other way around. It doesn't matter what underlies the shadows in the cave if they are all that can be experienced, if the rocks conceived to be their objective counterpart can only be experienced subjectively as shadows.

One more illustration of the primacy of experience relative to whatever metaphysical reality is thought to underlie it: free will. There are good arguments supported by evidence that our desires are delivered to consciousness from what seems to be the brain's neural circuits, and that we happily obey them, mistaking them as ideas generated by the conscious agent, the self. The hypothalamus detects plasma hyperosmolarity (you're dehydrated), and sends the experience of thirst with a desire to quench it, so you do. Is that free will or the illusion of free will?

You say that you didn't have to drink - you could have waited just to prove you could make choices. But then you learn that this thought is also generated deterministically outside consciousness and delivered to it to do battle with the hypothalamus' instruction, and realize that you don't actually decide what you do even though it feels like it. You discover that you're that dreaded the robot the theists tell us that their god didn't want you to be, and so gave you free will. You discover that you're only an observer in your own mind, and not the source of any idea or desire, nor an agent in the process of conflicting desires playing tug-of-war. One day, you learn that nothing is how you thought it was. Your metaphysical reality has been upended again. Now what?

Same answer. You go on living as if you had free will exactly as before, but now realizing that whatever you "choose" to do is also the decision of deterministic neural circuitry.



This is incorrect, and a common mistake. We are told that we only have faith in the principles underlying science by people who use that word to mean unjustified belief. Often, it is coming from a theist trying to put science and theology on an equal footing by arguing that scientists are also acting on faith.

But that is obviously wrong. The fruits of science tell us that our assumptions are valid in the sense that acting as if they were valid - that nothing should be believed just because it is said or hoped, that the world is comprehensible and understood by examining it and deriving those dreaded inductions (laws of science) by applying reason to the evidence to generate useful generalization. How do these people miss the evidence supporting those assumptions such that they see it as faith - blind belief? The success of science is the evidence that the method and its assumptions are valid. Did the New Horizons probe make it to Pluto? Was Pluto where it was predicted to be when it was predicted to be there? Did the craft launch and its guidance systems get it to that same place at the same time? Did it's sensors and transmitters give us the data we went there for? Yes to all of these. The sine qua non of a correct idea id that it can accurately predict outcomes.

By this same reckoning, we know that the underlying principles of astrology are false. It has the opposite track record, the sine qua non of a wrong idea. No useful ideas come from those assumptions. They have no predictive or explanatory power. They are wrong. To equate faith in astrology (or religion) with the justified confidence we have in astronomy and the other sciences that made a successful mission possible is just incorrect.

And isn't that what the author you cite is doing here - essentially saying that science is based on a foundation of sand like astrology? No. That's astrology. And alchemy. And creationism. The assumptions of science are confirmed by its stunning successes, just as the assumptions of these faith-based systems are disconfirmed by their sterility.

Isn't that how we dispatched the intelligent design people? Their underlying assumption that because a god created man and the universe, there would be evidence of irreducible complexity in some biological systems that could only be explained by intelligence and intent. And had they found that, their assumptions would be validated. Their repeated failure to do so, and worse, to repeatedly offer examples of irreducible complexity that were not that, suggest that their assumptions were incorrect.

The narratives we construct to make sense of our world are woven not so much from illusion, as from our own limited perception of the infinite possibilities with which we are surrounded. Time and space are real to us, though the more we know about them, the less we understand. Still, we have to live and to act - to fulfil our dharma - bound by the seemingly immutable laws of nature, or of just that much of nature, from which our stories are enacted.

But once we recognise the insubstantial nature of the material world, once we begin to see that even the rock on which we build our houses is not a thing at all but merely a fleeting process holding itself in temporary equilibrium, then two revelatory possibilities present themselves;
one, that clinging to outcomes in the material world is as vain as clinging to vapour, and two,
that if everything is a dream, there may be an awareness of more enduring value, to which we shall some day awake.

 

[John D. Brey]

Animals obviously learn from experience. Isn't that what induction is?

Popper's point is that repeated experience are obviously real but that no number of repeated experiences implies either that a mind take note of the repetition, nor respond in a thoughtful way to it.

Because mind's typically do take note of repetition, and typically do respond to them, make it seem natural to take note, and to respond.

What Popper and Einstein came to realize, by trying to figure out how scientific-thought arose, and grew so fast in the West, is that what appears to be a natural aspect of minds, in truth has no natural, logical, or inductive, genesis or law to make sense of the fact that it occurs, or how it occurs. In other words, living organisms, particularly mammalian minds, take note of repetition, and use that noticing to respond to the repetition. But nothing in the repetition, or the natural functioning of the mind, accounts for the mind noticing the repetition, or responding to it.

Chomsky went to great lengths to show that the common sense understanding of human grammar is as backwards as the common sense belief in induction as a natural process.

Chomsky proved to any logical or thoughtful person that human grammar is irreducibly complex such that there's no known, and appears to be no possible logic, for how it came to be, since in Chomsky's parlance, you need a particular complexity of grammar to make the human level of grammar work, and you can't to that level of grammar without that level of grammar already existing.

Chomsky explains that because we learn grammar in the cradle at such an early age we take it for granted that it's the most natural thing in the world to learn it. But it requires a grammar module that is literally miraculous already be present in the brain before the language can be learned.

As many philosopher have come to point out, the human ability to speak and write is the genesis of the ability to transcend the animal level of cognition. Human language is the divine gift given to man in many ancient myths even as it's true that it is something unnatural that man, in his natural frame, possess, as a gift from God, which, gift, is so stupendous, that any living thing knows it's not given without some strings attached ---and it's the desire not to know what the price of the pearl of great value is that makes the induction-salve producers get top dollar for producing the thickest, most opaque, product.



John

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

"It ain't necessarily so" said: "Is it OK now to put your fingers in a flame now that you know that the flame is an illusion?" Suppose that the universe is an illusion set up by God. That would explain why a sane and just God would allow such cruelty. For example, a lion eating a water buffalo while it is still alive and awake, screaming in agony. So, if this world is just a holodeck, filled with pixels of what we perceive as reality, we could ask, again, is God cruel? The answer is that it doesn't matter if cruelty is real or imaginary, as long as we perceive it to be real. We are psychologically marred by observing fake cruelty.

I think you missed the point that what goes on "in here" is what matters most to us, and ideas of what is going on "out there" only meaningful insofar as they help us predict outcomes successfully. If you are suffering because a God orchestrating some deception such that the source of your suffering is something other than what you thought, it's the same to you unless this new knowledge can help you mitigate or alleviate that suffering. So, yes, the God you described is cruel whether it uses pixels or not to create suffering.

The is no justification for allowing cruelty. We can allow suffering such as forcing a child to take a vaccination despite its terror at seeing the needle approaching, but that's not cruelty or gratuitous suffering. If the process can be made less terrifying safely, it should be.

From a call-in cable show: "You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, 'When you're done, I'm going to punish you' .. If I were in a situation where I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That's the difference between me and your God." - Tracie Harris

I agree. If the God in question is thought to cause or allow cruelty (gratuitous suffering), then the god is cruel by definition.

Is this whole world a TV show for God? Does God, who knows future events, want to surprise himself by randomizing outcomes, so even he doesn't know what will happen?

Maybe. Does it matter if true? What changes today and tomorrow for either of us if it is? I say that nothing changes, making the both the question an any answer moot.

"It ain't necessarily so" said: "There's a pervasive view that that world out there is more real than this one in here, and in here is only a faint projection of that, and thus secondary to it, derivative." It is like Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In that, Plato asserted that we are tied up in a cave, unable to see out to the real world. The only idea that we have of the real world is shadows on the wall. To us, that is reality. Then, one day, we are cut free, and allowed to wander out of the cave into the light of day. The light of wisdom is too bright for us, and at first we think that it is an illusion, rather than reality. It takes time for us to accept wisdom.

The metaphor of the cave has to be modified to include a cave that can't be exited, and an external reality as source of the shadows that can't be experienced directly. Plato's guy could potentially turn around and experience the greater reality underlying his experience on the cave walls. You and I cannot get outside of our consciousness to see directly what we are conscious of.

"It ain't necessarily so" said: "Did the New Horizons probe make it to Pluto?" There are those who say that space exploration is a hoax, and pictures of it are merely Hollywood dubbed images (like images in a sci-fi movie). It begs the question...are we butterflies dreaming that we are people, or are we people dreaming that we are butterflies? It is existentialism (a branch of philosophy). Many argue that we are not here at all.

Astrology is not necessarily built on a foundation of sand. Some say that the motion of planets don't cause events. Yet, the hands of a clock cause you to go to work in the morning. The motion of stars are just like a clock (they tell time). So, if an astrologer says that when certain astronomical events occur, certain things will happen on earth, they are merely using the night sky as a clock or calendar. The trick, of course, is to accurately predict events and when those events occur.

If you believe that the stars control the lives of men, or that they can be read to accurately predict future events, and attempt to do those things, you will fail, and should conclude that your assumptions weren't valid.

If you give the stars no such power, but notice that certain astronomical arrangements correspond other discernible events, then that observation will lead to a belief that bears fruit. It can be used to predict outcomes. That is not astrology. That is science.

I've suggested that these are the criteria for correct and wrong ideas - can they be used to accurately predict outcomes not predictable without them? If not, you have a pseudoscience. If you can, you have uncovered a useful idea - what I am calling truth (I generally tend to avoid that word, because people often mean something other that what I do here - perhaps something they call absolute truth, or objective truth, meaning the reality that we don't experience that we assume explains what we do experience.

Nostradamus made some of his predictions by noticing trends. For example, the seasons change yearly, and there are certain times one should plant crops. There are times when the red tide occurs. There are many seasonal changes. Once one notices all of them, and sees how they relate to each other, one can predict certain events using a clock or the stars as a timer. Thus, Astrology, if done right, works.

Also not astrology. Science: empiricism (observation), induction (rules derived from observations), and deduction (predictions made using inductions). Thales is said to be the first to accurately predict the time of an eclipse. If so, he or someone before him must have observed (empiricism) the heavenly bodies and devised some accurate general rule (induction) about their movements and what an eclipse is, then used the general rule to accurately predict a future eclipse (deduction) - very different from astrology.

 

[John D. Brey]

​

My belief is that if one pokes deeply into scientific thinking and procedure, one will arrive at many concepts and assumptions that seemingly lack sound justification and may by their nature be exceedingly hard to justify. Our logical intuitions about deductive validity for one.

That recognition in no way implies that the human mind possesses supernatural abilities. It just suggests that our deeper and more fundamental intuitions might not be as well-founded as we would like.

And I'm doubtful whether Popper would be willing to go as far as I just did.

I think Popper was very much in line with what you're saying here. And as an agnostic/atheist, it clearly bothered him and his friend Einstein that they couldn't get away from metaphysics.

Another philosopher friend of Popper, the Oxford Professor Bryan Magee (himself an agnostic) said this:

My attempts to get him [Popper] to address his mind to the possibility that empirical reality might not be everything were in vain. He would agree at once and without argument that this was a possibility, but he would always add that there was nothing anyone could say about it and no way in which we could make any use of it in our thinking, and therefore that we should proceed on our way without regard to it. I see this as invalid both historically and actually (Confessions of a Philosopher, p. 439).​

In my opinion, Bryan Magee is spot on. Whereas Popper knew induction was an illusion used to deny the metaphysical powers of the mind, he nevertheless tried to believe that the metaphysical aspects were in some way neither he nor Einstein could figure out, subsumed in the natural elements of the mind.

This is to say that whereas lesser minds can't see through the salve of induction, to the hole where the metaphysics come out, Popper and Einstein could. This didn't cause a conversion experience for them. It just made them wish they could find something other than induction that could account for the undeniably metaphysical powers of the human mind.

In my opinion, if Einstein and Popper were alive today, to see Elon Musk preparing, as a mere private citizen, to send men to Mars, or could see the latest Mars rovers, or the internet, or advanced AI, they would both beat a fast path to the nearest Baptist church they could find and beg to be baptized before He returns and finds them naked and an wallowing in mental petroleum jelly.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

Is that a "No"?

Yes that's a no. Yes?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

He obviously doesn't mean "supernatural" here.

. . . Because if he did you'd be wrong. It's the mind prone to interpret truth by looking backward into the epistemological prism that already exists ---i.e., a sort of asymmetrical logic ---- that's part and parcel of the fallacy of induction.

In other words, time asymmetry, or the asymmetric acquiring of knowledge (knowledge growing piece-by-piece, past-to-future) is set against a metaphysical deductive revelation whereby the human mind can perceive things it hasn't yet the natural abilities to perceive, such that it must retrofit that quasi-miraculous revelation into the natural asymmetrical epistemological biases that believe knowledge must grow asymmetrically.

I know that sounds like a meaningless word-salad. But I don't know if taking another stab at it will make the tomatoes small enough to swallow, or merely waste time making the whole salad too tepid to consume?

In the normal physics of the world, knowledge must be acquired, and must be built from past to future, from simple truism to more complex truisms. That's how things work according to the normal physics of the world. But the human mind jumps way ahead of that process all the time. And nowhere so much, and so often, as in exegeting the holy scripture, and or creating, and doing, modern science.

Because Popper and Einstein were in the thick of things, regarding this process, they noticed, unfortunate to their own naturalistic epistemology, that their own minds, Einstein's most notably, were able to jump way ahead and grasp concepts that far from coming from a natural, asymmetrical, cause and effect, in truth were way ahead of the game, such that it took great mental effort to force-fit the new truth into the wine skin of the old truth. In most cases the old wine skin burst and a new one had to be made to hold the new truth.

. . . Ok. See. I told you. Now the original word salad is spoiled!



John

 

[John D. Brey]

In Popper's view, Greek atomism is a metaphysical idea, John. And yet, we know atomism doesn't require anything supernatural or beyond the physical world.

. . . I think he meant it took a metaphysical perch for the Greeks to grasp the idea. It's from that metaphysical idea, that the modern concept of the atom became "natural."

Popper is pointing out what I tried to point out in my last response to you: that it's metaphysical to see a new truth that isn't already presupposed in the natural understanding of the world at the time.

What this means is that the human mind isn't subject to the asymmetrical arrow of knowledge's growth: it, the human mind, jump-starts the existing level of knowledge by grasping far-future ideas that it then squeezes into the old wine-skin to produce a bulging new truth that should shock people into appreciating what's going on.

Take Daniel Dennett for instance. Or Ray Kurzweil. They realize that if it took billions of years for life to get to the period of the Civil War, where men still rode horses and sent information through the Pony Express, then there is no expression of normality that could tell a Civil War general that his grandson would be able to board a ship and travel to the moon, or have his heart replaced when it quits ticking, or speak with his wife on the other side of the planet real-time.

If it took modern man thousands of years to go from bi-ped travel, to the great and momentous invention that is a horse saddle, what are the odds that he'd be traveling to Mars in another hundred years or so?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I don't know where you're going with all this. I don't see how this approach will help you create a gap for your divine to fit into, unless you're holding back the climax that you somehow have special abilities through a divine that others just can't access.

What a timely and perceptive statement since this thread began when in the thread on Genesis 2:21 as a Speciation-Event, I realized that there was no way to get from where your contextual understanding of how science and the mind works, to what I was trying to say about gender as a speciation event.

In that thread, everyone was using the fallacy of induction to assume that my hypothesis that the evolution of gender was typical of a speciation-event is just plain silly, since neither the current scientific landscape, nor the thinking of current scientists, would lend much weight to the evolution of gender as a speciation-event.

Nevertheless, just as Popper states in TLSD, it takes bold unfounded conjectures to move thought and understanding forward; not merely the brick-by-brick, inductive inference generated, activity that is how most people think.

My theory that gender is a speciation-even isn't just a wild-eyed metaphysical speculation. It comes from using both what we already know, and the ability to grasp hypotheses, that are not yet known, to try to solve an important problem that would eliminate a log-jammed of wrong-headed thinking to move mankind's knowledge far forward toward the golden age known in the Bible as the kingdom of God, where there's no more death, no more want, no more tears.

That place is a real future place that mankind will arrive at, probably sooner than anyone suspects. And what few suspect is that that world is perceivable through the metaphysics of the mind, so that certain minds are able to grasp elements of the knowledge known far future, or at least somewhere in the future, and force-fit it into the wine-skin of the current knowledge of the world.

Just this morning, while responding to dialogue in this thread, a voice inside said to abandon this and get back to the real science associated with retrofitting the evolution of gender into the framework of a speciation-event, since that is real science work, while this thread is almost surely mostly a waste of all of our time.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

The picture of science of which I have so far only hinted may be sketched as follows. There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making.

David Miller, Popper Selections, p. 122.
​

I don't see how this means our minds exist beyond the laws of physics. This simply means there may be a difference between the "appearance" of the world (i.e., the phenomenal world) and reality itself (viz., the nuomenal world).

The idea is that if our natural means of perception, our empirical perception of the world, is faithful to reveal the world in all its reality, then the aboriginal man would still people the planet since he would have no reason to posit any other world. Worse, he'd have no impetus to change the world.

There are aboriginal tribes right now who trust the natural appearance of the world so much that they would never believe their people could, in a few hundred years, go from the brilliance of their lady-folk crushing corn with a stone, and their men folk designing and implementing spears with pointy-addendum, to sending a man to another planet.

Westernized man has gone from the quasi-aboriginal world of the Civil War days, to space-travel and AI, Tesla's, the Internet, nuclear weapons, etc., in all of one-hundred and fifty years.

There's no inductive process that can account for that. Someone, somewhere, and we know who it was, i.e., the Bible-toter Newton, believed the Bible so much, that he used it as a prism for seeing a potential but true world, rather than relying on his own lyin eyes (2 Corinthians 5:7):

One thing that has always struck me forcefully about this doctrine of Kant's is that it legitimates important components of a belief which he had held since long before he began to philosophize, namely Christian belief. It is a standard part of the traditional Christian faith that time and space and material objects are local characteristics of this human world of ours, but only of this world: they do not characterize reality as such . . . But what he [Kant] did, unmistakably (and unremarked on to an extent that has never ceased to astonish me), is produce rational justification for many aspects of the religious beliefs in which he grew up [Christian belief] (Magee 97, p. 249,250).
​

What Popper began to suspect, and said implicitly, toward the end of his life, was that religion, and religious myth, had some kind of metaphysical tool, that allowed them to perceive, and posit, metaphysical ideas, which, when agnostics attempted to refute them, instead led to scientific-knowledge. In other words, the religions, and religious mythologies, had metaphysical truths not yet known to mankind which they packaged as mythological metaphors, like worshiping the sun as the center of all things, that, the mythological mythologies, turn out, in the act of trying to refute them, to have been real, unknown, metaphysical truism, the attempted refutation of which lead to these previously metaphyscial truism becoming orthodox scientific knowledge.

Dozens of world-class scientific thinkers have noted the bizarre example of the previous paragraph as it exists in the story of Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley wrote a philosophical treatise whereby he stated that using the Biblical idea of the illusory nature of the empirical world he could posit a sound truism that a chair doesn't exist when it's not being perceived.

This Christian mythology, based in the New Testament scripture, pricked at agnostic thinkers and scientists until by Popper's own word, and the word of his fellow scientist and friend, John Wheeler, the agnostics turned Bishop Berkeley's metaphysical myth (a chair requires a perceiver to even exist in a state that can be perceived) into the most modern science of our day, quantum physics:

How does quantum mechanics today differ from what Bishop George Berkely told us two centuries ago . . ."

John Wheeler.​

Wheeler goes on to say:

In broader terms, we find that nature at the quantum level is not a machine that goes its inexorable way. Instead what answer we get depends on the question we put, the experiment we arrange, the registering device we choose. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening (At Home In the Universe, p. 120).​

There's a difference between the human mind's ability to actually make things happen, stupendous things like heart transplant, and space travel, and in the extremely near future, the elimination of senescence, versus the aboriginal idea that we are at the mercy of the laws of physics, or that your lyin eyes serve up the only reality that will ever be.

The picture of science of which I have so far only hinted may be sketched as follows. There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making.

David Miller, Popper Selections, p. 122.​

Myths are quasi-religious, metaphysical speculations, that most of the true myth-makers say they received as revelation from God. So myths aren't made, like the science that derives from them. They are, in Wittgenstein's parlance, what is mystical, metaphysical, i.e., truths from the future, brought to the present, in order to transform the present into the future.

In this light, Professor Joseph Henrich's The WEIDEST People in the World, is too apropos since in it he uses the scientific-method to show that not only did Jews and Christian accept the great myths that led to modern science, but he show, using the scientific-method, charts, and historical data, that, since the Christian myth wasn't changing the world fast enough to suit him, Martin Luther changed the structure of the Western world, cognitively, purposely, and effectively, so that not only did he jump-start the ability of the Western man to turn the Christian myth into reality, but as an adjunct, according to Henrich, who is Harvard's biology professor, he changed the very biology of the Western man, making him the perfect machine to transform the Christian myth into scientific reality.

Christian Bible-toters like Kant, Berkeley, Newton, and Martin Luther, are the archetype and genesis for the development of the modern Western world. And the degree to which this is self-evident, historical, posits that we devise some theory as to why something so self-evidently true is still hidden in the educational system that still wants to glorify the fallacy of inductive logic. . . To use the same religious mythology that led to the modern, scientific world, we should probably try to devise an actual science of the Devil, a real, scientific Devil, as the purveyor of the asininity that the world evolved naturally and through inductive, asymmetrical, processes born out of the [w]hole of father nature (Genesis 2:21; 1 Corinthians 15:22).



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I find it bizarre to believe that only atheists would use inductive logic as a method of reasoning. . . What does this have to do with belief in the supposed existence of god(s) at all?

It's not just atheists who believe they use induction. Almost everyone does.

The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. I have even been suspected of being insincere - of denying what nobody in his senses can doubt. . . . But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observations alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd.

Popper.​

Popper goes on to carefully examine "theory impregnation" of reality and realizes, like his friend John Wheeler, that this theory-impregnation of reality is very much like a man's impregnation of a woman: what is born of the theory-impregnation is not the world, or the theory provider, but a Duke's mixture of both.

After examining that truth deeply, Popper came to realize that if theory is a real part of reality (in The Self and Its Brain he shows that even our organs of perception are impregnated with theories about what they should be perceiving) then there isn't a reality sitting out there waiting for us to perceive it and react to it. And worse, modern science is clearly the most profound example of men positing their power over reality and changing it. A nuclear bomb never existed, and never would exist, ever, if men didn't perceive their supernatural power to grasp elements of the world with which to construct a new world in the image of their hopes, dreams, and necessities.

. . . environments do not exist in the absence of organisms but are constructed by them out of bits and pieces of the external world . . . Everybody knows at some level of consciousness that . . . the environment of an organism is constructed and constantly altered by the life activities of the organism. . . . The picture of evolution that postulates an autonomous external world of `niches' into which organisms must fit by adaptation misses what is most characteristic of the history of life.

Harvard Professor Richard Lewontin.​

Realizing this truism, Albert Einstein said that the Judeo/Christian's hopes, dreams, and belief in their God-given authority over nature, is precisely what has erected the modern, Western, world. Jews and Christian believe man is endowed with, and empowered toward, his destiny to wrest from so-called nature, the original divinity he possessed in the mythological garden of immortality. We are almost there. And yet agnostics and atheist still cling to the bizarre, ahistorical, aphilosophical, atheological, belief that it's they, an not the Jew or the Christian, who are the engines of great scientific and historical change.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Astrology is not necessarily built on a foundation of sand. Some say that the motion of planets don't cause events. Yet, the hands of a clock cause you to go to work in the morning. The motion of stars are just like a clock (they tell time). So, if an astrologer says that when certain astronomical events occur, certain things will happen on earth, they are merely using the night sky as a clock or calendar. The trick, of course, is to accurately predict events and when those events occur.

Great point. As I myself noted, the fact that we don't know why bad s--t happens so often in August, or why on the other hand Leo's are such bad-arses, doesn't mean isn't true. Leo's are different than Scorpios. And being born in August is a cause whether we know why or not.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

One of the best arguments against the existence of God is that God said that he didn't exist.

Where did he say that? And how do you know he was God when he said it?



John

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

For what it's worth, in one sense your question was answered in the thread-seeder which said:

It seems to me that belief in inductive logic is something like an atheistic placebo. It allows the vast majority of human beings to use the divine spirit God gave them while treating the abilities circumscribed by that divine spirit as though they're produced inductively --- naturally.

Except that I told you that those words are ambiguous to me. They still are. I really don't know what you are trying to say or why you think that whatever it is you mean is an idea with value.

I've told you how to do better, how to use clear, succinct sentences to communicate what you are thinking, but you just aren't interested. So, I'll just answer for you: atheistic placebo means nothing. They're words you use to imply that you are thinking of something profound when in fact your ideas are confused and unintelligible.

If you think otherwise, here's your chance to demonstrate that your words are not from Deepak Chopra's wisdom generator. What else should I conclude after asking you to paraphrase yourself clearly and getting more garbled verbiage in response? Your words mean nothing specific, like Dylan's lyrics.

Belief in induction is using the mental abilities that transcend the laws of physics but then retrofitting those abilities into the natural laws of logic, reason, and empiricism, since the person who believes in induction either doesn't believe in man's elevated mental status in the world, or else he does on Sunday mornings when he's sitting in the pew, but not on the weekdays when his peers not his pastor are peering at him.

You're beginning with an unshared premise about mind transcending the laws of physics, so, nothing based on it will be meaningful to one who requires true premises in an argument.

Furthermore, you still never give a reason why you think whatever it is you mean ought to be of interest to you or others. Let's say your words were comprehensible, coherent, and accurate. So what? Why do you think whatever it is you mean should matter to others? How can your idea be used to generate anything of value, to understand life better, and live it better?

Once again, I suspect that you have no such idea, and can offer no reason for you to write those words, or for others to read them.

Induction is the placebo. It doesn't really do anything.

So you're just going to repeat this deepity? Induction is a powerful tool. Tools don't do anything until they are used.

Induction is then like a pain-alleviating salve slathered over the guilt the atheist has about an innate knowledge that he possesses a God-given gift he, the atheist, damnsure wants to keep, but doesn't want to know where it came from, or why it's given.

It's becoming clear that you don't know what induction is despite it being defined here repeatedly. Induction cannot be slathered. There are also many other words the use of which would be category errors if you used them. Induction also cannot be chewed. It cannot be painted. It cannot be weighed. And it cannot be slathered.

You are in fantasyland when you talk about imagined atheist guilt. Who told you we feel guilty?

And I have no reason to believe that you know any more about these matters than I do.

Which is why quoting agnostic thinkers of some level of sophistication saying that induction is an illusion, and that the mind appears to transcend physics, is able to grasp metaphysical truism ---lends itself to the idea that it's the atheist who is tricking himself about what his mind does, i.e., slathering induction all over a self-inflicted wound.

Quoting is not an argument. As others have said, what difference does it make what such people believe? Critical thinkers are interested in what they know and can effectively demonstrate, not their opinions. If somebody can make a compelling argument, then it still doesn't matter that the source believes it to me. All that matters is if I believe it. The source might actually be repeating somebody else's argument that he disagrees with, but if I agree with it, then the belief becomes mine, and I care not whoever agrees. This where ideas come from, not faith in sources and their insufficiently supported claims.

Nothing you have posted in this thread supports your position that atheists are misinformed. It's just another unsubstantiated claim, i.e., opinion. I don't collect those.

Many modern artists, Dylan comes to mind, say they don't create their greatest revelations. When asked how he produced his greatest lyrics Dylan said they're already out there. He just intuited how to grasp them and bring them home.

Again, why should this matter to the critical thinker? This is Dylan's opinion. He offers no argument to support the claim. There is no evidence that Dylan is not the source of his words.

Yes. I'm saying the difference between other beasts and a human being is a marked difference in the quality of divine spirit possessed.

But you haven't clearly defined what you are saying exists, or why you call it divine or spirit. What we know is that the difference between man and the other beasts is that man can think and speak in symbols and make moral judgments. Those are very helpful skills, but in the absence of evidence that they didn't arise through evolution just like the skills we share with other beasts, there is no reason to impute supernaturalism. Or maybe you mean natural, but like to call it divine anyway. Who would know with a writer who never explains himself clearly.

Let me leave you with this wisdom, which I hope you will see as an effective rebuttal; "Let me reciprocate and telepathically petition to Raël to focus the yin and yan of his inner eye on your chakra and astrally project your aura to the ninth cloud of Kolob"

Induction could be thought of as the salve slathered over the hole where the guilt comes out.

I'd say it's more of a balm or ointment useful in patching up holes through which guilt flows. I guess that's why I feel no guilt - it all leaked out through the hole despite the lotion or suspension or liniment of induction applied to the guilt-hole, located immediately beside the pompatus of love slathered with the balm of Gilead.

Am I getting your drift yet? Close, at least?

Great point. As I myself noted, the fact that we don't know why bad s--t happens so often in August, or why on the other hand Leo's are such bad-arses, doesn't mean isn't true. Leo's are different than Scorpios. And being born in August is a cause whether we know why or not.

OK, you've gone off the reservation with this. At least it's comprehensible, but not any more helpful than the rest.

But it's nice to see that you can write in comprehensible sentences when it suits you.