Verifiable evidence for creationism?

[Thief]

I totally agree. I need to imagine things. Then I need to check with reality to see if they are real or not, because I can easily fool myself into believing that what I imagine must be real. That could lead to disastrous errors.

I very much so try to separate what is merely imaginary from what is imagined and REAL.

and science would have you believe.....
an object at rest will remain at rest.

science also leans to a singularity as a starting 'point'

can you 'see' this?

 

[Blastcat]

and science would have you believe.....
an object at rest will remain at rest.

science also leans to a singularity as a starting 'point'

can you 'see' this?

I said that we do use our imaginations. That's an important agreement between us, I think.
But science isn't about belief, so I don't know what you're talking about here.

I was asking you about your need to anthropomorphize the god you say you believe in, and specifically, how it can "feel" without a body, and "see" without eyes. Now, it SEEMS to me that you are saying ( and I am merely using my imagination at this point, I am "guessing" ) that your god can IMAGINE things.. So, therefore it would be able to "see" without using eyes, but by using his imagination, just like humans can. That's an anthropomorphism.

I still don't see how you get from human characteristics to your god's characteristics. This "imagination" explanation only pushes the anthropomorphism back a bit. If the god is IMAGINING, how can he do that without a BRAIN, the way that HUMANS imagine things?

 

[Thief]

I said that we do use our imaginations. That's an important agreement between us, I think.
But science isn't about belief, so I don't know what you're talking about here.

I was asking you about your need to anthropomorphize the god you say you believe in, and specifically, how it can "feel" without a body, and "see" without eyes. Now, it SEEMS to me that you are saying ( and I am merely using my imagination at this point, I am "guessing" ) that your god can IMAGINE things.. So, therefore it would be able to "see" without using eyes, but by using his imagination, just like humans can. That's an anthropomorphism.

I still don't see how you get from human characteristics to your god's characteristics. This "imagination" explanation only pushes the anthropomorphism back a bit. If the god is IMAGINING, how can he do that without a BRAIN, the way that HUMANS imagine things?

I never thought of Him as human
in the course of dialog.....we humans use verbs and nouns for the quick expression.

and if Spirit cannot exist without body....
then the singularity was 'self' starting
and science doesn't have a clue about reality.
shall we hold?.....science is true....
substance is not self starting

 

[Blastcat]

I never thought of Him as human
in the course of dialog.....we humans use verbs and nouns for the quick expression.

We humans also anthropomorphize our concepts. Sometimes, what we think of quickly isn't the best kind of thinking we can do.

and if Spirit cannot exist without body....

You say that as if we had evidence for a Spirit or we even know what that is. I do not know what you MEAN by "Spirit", and I have no evidence for any. Does this "Spirit" have a body in your opinion, or not?

then the singularity was 'self' starting

Then?

I do not see how you got from "Spirit cannot exist without body" to "THEN.. the singularity".. anything. What I see is an extraordinary leap of logic.

The argument "If Spirit cannot exist without body, THEN the singularity was self starting" has NO link at all between the premise and the conclusion.
This is an example of an extremely poor argument.

and science doesn't have a clue about reality.

Another completely unsupported conclusion that you seem to conjure out of the premise that "IF Spirit cannot exist without body", again WITHOUT providing a logical connection. This is called a "non sequitur". You have given us TWO of those.

shall we hold?.....science is true....

I would question someone's ability to know if anything at all is actually true, if they think that anything we can IMAGINE has to be true.

substance is not self starting

You say that "substance is not self starting" as if you have demonstrated this to be the ACTUAL case. Stating a BELIEF is not a demonstration that WHAT IS BELIEVED IN is true at all.

You seem to have a fine imagination. That's a good thing, we both agree.
However, your epistemology isn't reliable.

Take a look at my reasoning below:

1. What can be imagined might NOT be real.
2. We know that people do imagine ALL KINDS of things that aren't real.
3. We do not know how you have arrived at your knowledge of any characteristics of the god you say you believe in.
4. Those characteristics ( feeling and knowing ) are KNOWN to be characteristics of humans.
5. Projecting human characteristics onto anything OTHER than humans is what is commonly known as "anthropomorphism".
6. Feelings and thoughts are human characteristics. How do you know that these characteristics are actually shared by the god you say you believe in?... ( for the sake of the argument, I will assume that you have demonstrated that the god you say you believe in IS real )

What are your thoughts?

 

[AndromedaRXJ]

imagination is the problem solving part of your mind
without it....there are no problems you can solve.....
and dragging you further through this conversation will be a problem.

That doesn't mean whatever you imagine is real. Imagination is thinking of possibilities and ideas. As Blastcat said, you don't stop there. You have to check with reality to see if whatever you imagine is real.

 

[idea]

What makes something real? Ex: Imagine you love someone, vs actually love them. Is materialism needed to make something real? Love proven through tangible sacrifice - such as the atonement. .

 

[Blastcat]

What makes something real? Ex: Imagine you love someone, vs actually love them. Is materialism needed to make something real? Love proven through tangible sacrifice - such as the atonement. .

What "makes" something real, you ask.

The word "real" is used to make a difference between what actually exists as a thing or occurring in fact as opposed to just being imagined or supposed. At least, that's what I would say about the usage of the word "real" in the context of trying to prove that something like a god exists.

We can ask "Does the idea of a god represent something that is real?"

If the god is REAL, I would say that it "actually exists". If it is NOT real, I would say that it's imagined or supposed, instead, and does NOT actually exist.

I don't now what you mean by your other question about "materialism". Love is among other things, an emotion. We know we have emotions. We can "feel" them in a material way, if that's what you mean. And yes, if love can be proved in a tangible way, I guess that's using "materialism", too.

I hope that answers some of your concerns.

 

[idea]

.... We know we have emotions. We can "feel" them in a material way, ....

Emotions are real, feelings are real - not the sort of real you can prove to another person, but within yourself you know of the quality of your own feelings and how real they are. God is real to me in the same way that my own feelings are real, in the same way that my own conscience is real. I can feel His presence, I can feel His guiding hand gently pushing me in one direction or the other. I'm not alone in these feelings, I believe everyone agrees on basic principles of right and wrong based on feelings and prompting which come from God to all of us.... call it your conscience, or call it God - there is a force for good pushing down on all of us. This force for good is real or we would have all killed one another off by now don't you think?

 

[Blastcat]

Emotions are real, feelings are real - not the sort of real you can prove to another person, but within yourself you know of the quality of your own feelings and how real they are.

Yes, and we can pretty much recognize the feelings of others by looking at their physical reactions and their actions.. Hate, anger, sadness, love, and so on are all emotions that we know are real, and that we can observe in others.

God is real to me in the same way that my own feelings are real, in the same way that my own conscience is real.

Ok, you feel or think that God is real just like your feelings are real and your inner sense of morality is real.

I can feel His presence, I can feel His guiding hand gently pushing me in one direction or the other. I'm not alone in these feelings, I believe everyone agrees on basic principles of right and wrong based on feelings and prompting which come from God to all of us.... call it your conscience, or call it God - there is a force for good pushing down on all of us. This force for good is real or we would have all killed one another off by now don't you think?

So when you describe what you might call is the experience of God would be like an emotion or a feeling that you get.
Yes. I would agree with that. I wouldn't agree that calling those feelings "God" is very useful, however.

But I would be interested in how you found out that these REAL feelings are about something real? We know that people can have feelings about things that are purely imaginary, after all.

In other words, your real feelings about god aren't evidence that god is real.

 

[idea]

Yes, and we can pretty much recognize the feelings of others by looking at their physical reactions and their actions.. Hate, anger, sadness, love, and so on are all emotions that we know are real, and that we can observe in others.

You cannot always tell by looking at someone what they are feeling. No one knows the heart of another - we have faith in one another, and can only believe one thing or another about those around us.

Ok, you feel or think that God is real just like your feelings are real and your inner sense of morality is real.



So when you describe what you might call is the experience of God would be like an emotion or a feeling that you get.
Yes. I would agree with that. I wouldn't agree that calling those feelings "God" is very useful, however.

But I would be interested in how you found out that these REAL feelings are about something real? We know that people can have feelings about things that are purely imaginary, after all.

In other words, your real feelings about god aren't evidence that god is real.

"By their fruits shall ye know them", following the promptings from God to do and be good lead to real actions, character, a peaceful heart and mind. I spent part of my life fighting against the promptings - rationalizing/justifying/ignoring which resulted in feeling alone / ill-content / angry.... I'm not perfect, but I find the more closely I am able to follow promptings to do good, the happier and more fulfilled I am.

Here is another question - what is most important in life? Are the tangible materialistic things what are most important? Is it more important what someone looks like? What their tangible body is? or are feelings and character - thoughts, etc. most important? What is the most important quality about yourself? and what do you view as the most important quality of those around you?

 

[Blastcat]

You cannot always tell by looking at someone what they are feeling. No one knows the heart of another - we have faith in one another, and can only believe one thing or another about those around us.

You really want to introduce the epistemic method of faith, don't you? Unfortunately, using your faith in something isn't really going to tell you anything about reality OTHER than what you have faith in. You might have "faith" that someone loves you. Well, whoop dee diddely doo.

If all you GOT is faith, good luck with that love.

I'll just go ahead and use evidence, instead.

Now, it's true that a sociopath might lie about loving me, so I could be fooled about that. Nobody REALLY reads minds, after all. But then, no amount of FAITH is going to protect me from someone like that. If I have put faith or trust in a SOCIOPATH.. then good luck to me with that love.

"By their fruits shall ye know them", following the promptings from God to do and be good lead to real actions, character, a peaceful heart and mind.

Well, "fruits" are evidence. And as I have stated above, no amount of FAITH OR evidence is going to protect us from a dedicated sociopath. But it's better to at LEAST take a gander at these FRUITS instead of just using faith.

I spent part of my life fighting against the promptings - rationalizing/justifying/ignoring which resulted in feeling alone / ill-content / angry.... I'm not perfect, but I find the more closely I am able to follow promptings to do good, the happier and more fulfilled I am.

So, the better a person you are, the better you feel about yourself. Makes sense.
And on a more personal note, good for you !

Here is another question - what is most important in life?

That's a personal kind of a question that will vary from person to person. To some, it's skateboarding.

Are the tangible materialistic things what are most important?

Depends entirely on the person. Some people really get off on philosophy. AND skateboards.

Is it more important what someone looks like?

When it comes to looks, looks are important.

What their tangible body is?

When it comes to touch, tangibility is important.

or are feelings and character - thoughts, etc. most important?

The romantic thinks that feelings are the most important thing in life. Again, depends. To the moral theorist, perhaps character is the ticket.

What is the most important quality about yourself?

Life.

and what do you view as the most important quality of those around you?

Life.

Hope that helps you out.

 

[idea]

You really want to introduce the epistemic method of faith, don't you?

How familiar are you with the different theories of epistemological progression? Many are based on the works of Perry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Perry and begin with various forms of dualism (believing knowledge is absolute, that right/wrong or white and black exist), then progress to levels where they do not trust authority figures and recognize that for most things you cannot know the truth of it - up to the highest values which recognize that truth is relative and subjective - that there really isn't such thing as knowledge, only belief and faith.... The higher levels are usually only reached in older populations, post college, after some experience in industry etc. etc.

Unfortunately, using your faith in something isn't really going to tell you anything about reality OTHER than what you have faith in. You might have "faith" that someone loves you. Well, whoop dee diddely doo.

Faith is all there is - faith in banks, faith in people, faith in the laws of nature, in the food you buy from the store. .... It would be nice to have concrete answers for everything, but in reality all anyone has in anything is faith.

If all you GOT is faith, good luck with that love.

I'll just go ahead and use evidence, instead.

evidence is great, but it will only take you so far...

Now, it's true that a sociopath might lie about loving me, so I could be fooled about that. Nobody REALLY reads minds, after all. But then, no amount of FAITH is going to protect me from someone like that. If I have put faith or trust in a SOCIOPATH.. then good luck to me with that love.

There are no guarantees for anything in life, uncertainty is something everyone has to admit and deal with at some point or another. Faith is not a protection, there is no ultimate protection... Live in fear never loving never risking anything, or live with faith and occasionally get hurt, those are the choices.

Well, "fruits" are evidence. And as I have stated above, no amount of FAITH OR evidence is going to protect us from a dedicated sociopath. But it's better to at LEAST take a gander at these FRUITS instead of just using faith.

So, the better a person you are, the better you feel about yourself. Makes sense.
And on a more personal note, good for you !

That's a personal kind of a question that will vary from person to person. To some, it's skateboarding.

Depends entirely on the person. Some people really get off on philosophy. AND skateboards.

skateboarding and philosophy are a fun combination

When it comes to looks, looks are important.

When you are old and grey haired - if for no other reason than self-justification, I'm sure you'll come around (like most of the rest of us do) to holding non-materialistic quantities like character / loyalty / honesty / integrity / reliability / wisdom / experience on a higher pedestal.

When it comes to touch, tangibility is important.

The romantic thinks that feelings are the most important thing in life. Again, depends. To the moral theorist, perhaps character is the ticket.



Life.



Life.

Hope that helps you out.

Life is amazing - the difference between someone who is alive, and someone who is not? rocks don't think, are not self-aware ... it's the non-materialistic things that make someone really alive...

It was fun chatting with you!

 

[Thief]

We humans also anthropomorphize our concepts. Sometimes, what we think of quickly isn't the best kind of thinking we can do.



You say that as if we had evidence for a Spirit or we even know what that is. I do not know what you MEAN by "Spirit", and I have no evidence for any. Does this "Spirit" have a body in your opinion, or not?



Then?

I do not see how you got from "Spirit cannot exist without body" to "THEN.. the singularity".. anything. What I see is an extraordinary leap of logic.

The argument "If Spirit cannot exist without body, THEN the singularity was self starting" has NO link at all between the premise and the conclusion.
This is an example of an extremely poor argument.



Another completely unsupported conclusion that you seem to conjure out of the premise that "IF Spirit cannot exist without body", again WITHOUT providing a logical connection. This is called a "non sequitur". You have given us TWO of those.



I would question someone's ability to know if anything at all is actually true, if they think that anything we can IMAGINE has to be true.



You say that "substance is not self starting" as if you have demonstrated this to be the ACTUAL case. Stating a BELIEF is not a demonstration that WHAT IS BELIEVED IN is true at all.

You seem to have a fine imagination. That's a good thing, we both agree.
However, your epistemology isn't reliable.

Take a look at my reasoning below:

1. What can be imagined might NOT be real.
2. We know that people do imagine ALL KINDS of things that aren't real.
3. We do not know how you have arrived at your knowledge of any characteristics of the god you say you believe in.
4. Those characteristics ( feeling and knowing ) are KNOWN to be characteristics of humans.
5. Projecting human characteristics onto anything OTHER than humans is what is commonly known as "anthropomorphism".
6. Feelings and thoughts are human characteristics. How do you know that these characteristics are actually shared by the god you say you believe in?... ( for the sake of the argument, I will assume that you have demonstrated that the god you say you believe in IS real )

What are your thoughts?

so use your imagination combined with the science you believe in....

then attempt the answer to the question....
Spirit first?.....or substance?

if substance first.....science has lied

 

[Thief]

That doesn't mean whatever you imagine is real. Imagination is thinking of possibilities and ideas. As Blastcat said, you don't stop there. You have to check with reality to see if whatever you imagine is real.

see above post

 

[Blastcat]

How familiar are you with the different theories of epistemological progression? Many are based on the works of Perry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Perry and begin with various forms of dualism (believing knowledge is absolute, that right/wrong or white and black exist), then progress to levels where they do not trust authority figures and recognize that for most things you cannot know the truth of it - up to the highest values which recognize that truth is relative and subjective - that there really isn't such thing as knowledge, only belief and faith.... The higher levels are usually only reached in older populations, post college, after some experience in industry etc. etc.

This sounds like a lovely theory. I will take a look at it, thanks.

Faith is all there is - faith in banks, faith in people, faith in the laws of nature, in the food you buy from the store. .... It would be nice to have concrete answers for everything, but in reality all anyone has in anything is faith.

Faith is all there is.. interesting. I suppose it all depends on how we use the term "faith". Perhaps you mean that we can trust trustable things and people. There is no need or reason to trust those who are not trustable and in order to know if something or someone IS trustable, we should use evidence. In "reality" I never use faith to know things.

In your example above of banks, for example, the reason we TRUST a bank is because we have enough evidence of their RELIABILITY. To only use trust is to be utterly naive and.. a prey. Not all banks are trustworthy, unfortunately.

But perhaps you think that because we don't have ALL the evidence that we should abandon WANTING evidence. I think that would be foolhardy to the extreme. Demand evidence. You might not always be able to get it, but at least demand it.

Bull**** artists don't offer any good evidence, and ask that you "trust" them, or use your "faith". That's how they GET you.

As I challenge the beliefs that I absorbed as a young person, I actually divest myself of useless beliefs. I ONLY want to trust things that I have good evidence for. I only want to believe things that are true. Faith does not get me to truth.

It gets me to a nice feeling.

evidence is great, but it will only take you so far...

That's true. It can only take you so far. Faith will get you only as far as what you already believe A lot of people use the word "faith" interchangeably with "trust". To me, the ONLY reason to trust or to have "faith in" anyone or anything is due to the evidence, which, as you say will only get us so far.

You seem to really like faith, but it's an unreliable method to KNOW anything, if it's used to mean a conviction. We can be convinced and wrong. If you mean to use it the way we use TRUST, it would be foolhardy to trust in something without any evidence.

There are no guarantees for anything in life, uncertainty is something everyone has to admit and deal with at some point or another. Faith is not a protection, there is no ultimate protection... Live in fear never loving never risking anything, or live with faith and occasionally get hurt, those are the choices.

I agree. There are no reason to think that we can be certain about anything in an absolute way. Faith is not a guarantee for truth, in any case. The best we can do is use sound reasoning for that.

skateboarding and philosophy are a fun combination

I would agree.

When you are old and grey haired - if for no other reason than self-justification, I'm sure you'll come around (like most of the rest of us do) to holding non-materialistic quantities like character / loyalty / honesty / integrity / reliability / wisdom / experience on a higher pedestal.

I am old and grey haired. The only reason for that is age.
I have "come around" to all of these "non-material" quantities without ever using faith.

Life is amazing - the difference between someone who is alive, and someone who is not? rocks don't think, are not self-aware ... it's the non-materialistic things that make someone really alive...

I agree. Life is amazing.

Just because SOME beings who are alive think does not mean that all beings that are alive think. However, if you are talking about HUMAN beings, we know that we are capable of thinking. It would be best to think as well as we can. But of course, thinking isn't the only thing that makes life worth living, there IS after all, skateboarding.

It was fun chatting with you!

We should do it some time.

 

[Blastcat]

so use your imagination combined with the science you believe in....

Of course, I use my imagination. We agree that the imagination is a good thing to use.
However, we should be aware that what we can IMAGINE might not be REAL.

then attempt the answer to the question....
Spirit first?.....or substance?

I have no idea what you precisely MEAN by either term, so my attempt to answer the question will only be approximate.
If by "substance" you mean "things",I would say that the universe is made up of things. We say the universe ( and everything in it ) began when things first made their appearance. As far as I know, minds came later.

If by "spirit" you mean "mind", it's quite obvious that we need brains to think. We don't say that rocks have minds, or can think.
So, by those definitions, "substance" being things, and "spirit" being minds, it's quite obvious to me that substance had to come first.

Oh, by the way, fun fact, by using the ToE we KNOW that it had to be the egg ( actually many eggs, but no matter ) first, not the chicken.

if substance first.....science has lied

All the scientists are lying?
It would be interesting to know how you arrived at that startling conclusion.

But apart from these side issues about imagining things and then taking them all to be real, something you wrote earlier struck me, and I wished that I had addressed. You wrote earlier that your god isn't human. I have to ask you then why attribute to it human characteristics like feeling and thinking? We know we need to have brains to think, and bodies to feel things with, after all.

If you recall, I was asking you why you anthropomorphize your god concept?

 

[Thief]

Of course, I use my imagination. We agree that the imagination is a good thing to use.
However, we should be aware that what we can IMAGINE might not be REAL.



I have no idea what you precisely MEAN by either term, so my attempt to answer the question will only be approximate.
If by "substance" you mean "things",I would say that the universe is made up of things. We say the universe ( and everything in it ) began when things first made their appearance. As far as I know, minds came later.

If by "spirit" you mean "mind", it's quite obvious that we need brains to think. We don't say that rocks have minds, or can think.
So, by those definitions, "substance" being things, and "spirit" being minds, it's quite obvious to me that substance had to come first.

Oh, by the way, fun fact, by using the ToE we KNOW that it had to be the egg ( actually many eggs, but no matter ) first, not the chicken.



All the scientists are lying?
It would be interesting to know how you arrived at that startling conclusion.

But apart from these side issues about imagining things and then taking them all to be real, something you wrote earlier struck me, and I wished that I had addressed. You wrote earlier that your god isn't human. I have to ask you then why attribute to it human characteristics like feeling and thinking? We know we need to have brains to think, and bodies to feel things with, after all.

If you recall, I was asking you why you anthropomorphize your god concept?

you're not following well......
are you doing so on purpose?

at this point you are simply repeating yourself and avoiding the previous task.

the question....Spirit first?.....or substance?

 

[Blastcat]

you're not following well......
are you doing so on purpose?

at this point you are simply repeating yourself and avoiding the previous task.

the question....Spirit first?.....or substance?

I asked you for clarification. I took a wild guess as to your possible meanings.
Repeating your question in exactly the same way wont clarify anything.

And by the way, I gave you an approximate answer based on my best guesses.
I have NOT avoided any "task".

I have yet to get an answer as to why you feel the need to anthropomorphize your god concept, which was the SOLE purpose of me having a conversation with you. I think you might be avoiding "that" task, if you wan to call answering direct questions a task.

So, I won't repeat myself. I urge you to go back and actually READ my reply to your "task". And if that's not satisfactory, help me accomplish it by way of CLARIFYING what you mean.

Thank you in advance for your thoughtful answers.

 

[Thief]

you already know what substance is.
you believe science?....an object at rest will remain at rest...

so imagine you can 'see' the first singularity.

but is it substance first?.....of Spirit?

try guessing

 

[Blastcat]

you already know what substance is.
you believe science?....an object at rest will remain at rest...

If you agree that "substance" DOES mean "THING", as I guessed, then, yes. I already know what things are.
And yes, I have no reason to disbelieve "science", unless it's BAD science or pseudo-science.

I don't believe it's probable that all scientists are liars.

so imagine you can 'see' the first singularity.

I can imagine anything that I choose. So, ok, I can imagine that I "see" a first singularity.
Great.

but is it substance first?.....of Spirit?

try guessing

I already did try guessing. I gave you a guess.
I had to guess because I'm not quite sure what you precisely MEAN by either term, so I guessed at your meaning and gave you my approximate answer already.

I will repeat my answer in other words in case it helps you understand my previous answer :

Using my guesstimate on what you mean by the terms "Spirit" and "substance", I would say that matter has to come before mind, so, for me, my guess is Substance first, "Spirit" after.

That's my guess.

But since I have answered your question, could you answer mine, this one time, since it's what I'm really asking you?

Why do you anthropomorphize your god concept?