Kanicbird, you are an idiot.

[jovan]

@Czarcasm

Put a load of crap in one hand, put a load of crap in the other hand. Now, how many loads of crap are you holding? 1+1=2 is a statement that describes what just happened. Now, before you hand off any loads of crap to us, realize that these word games won’t convince anyone of anything.

First of all, I’ll lay down my cards: I’m a hard agnostic. I am not in any way arguing from any sort of religious or spiritualistic position.

I simply find the notion that everything is physical and can be measured surprising. You seem to be rejecting all of logic and mathematics. Either that, or you are arguing that axioms are physical entities that can be measured, hence my asking “how do you measure ‘one’?”.

I am not playing games, merely stating that there abstract entities that cannot be investigated through scientific means. I am also making these statements in a respectful fashion, or at least that is how I mean it. I would appreciate the same kind of respect in return. Thank you.

[Czarcasm]

Mathematics follow measurable rules. Mathematics have a measurable pattern.

[Czarcasm]

Potentially, the very thought, “1+1=2”, can be measured as an electrical impulse in the brain.

[jovan]

Could you give a concrete example? How do you measure a mathematical rule? What is there to measure in the statement 1+1=2?

(And, just to be sure that we’re all on the same frequency, can you give your definition of “measure”?)

This may seem obvious to you, but it certainly isn’t to me.

[Czarcasm]

… + … = …
---- + ---- = --------
??? + ??? = ???

[Polycarp]

Okay, and this is not intended as a “Gotcha”. if you have a supernova/collapsar over a certain mass (I think it’s about 3.5 Sols left after explosion, could be wrong), the result does not stop with degeneracy pressure (white dwarf) or hadron exclusion (neutron star) but collapses into a black whole, the interior structure of which is not only presently but theoretically forever unknowable. We can study it from the outside using science – but science cannot tell us a thing about the interior. I read an absolutely mind-blowing essay by Jerry Pournelle on a presentation by Stephen Hawking entitled “The Breakdown of Physics in the Presence of Singularities.”

There is at least one known black hole – Cygnus X-1. More theoretically predicted – but at least one “observed” (in the sense that nothing but a black hole’s presence would account for the observed phenomena).

So we have at least one extant object that is not asmenable to scientific description.

Too, we can frame a valid question: “Why does the Universe exist?” – as distinguished from “How did the Universe come to be?” which science is not equipped to answer. Whether it is teleological – whether there is a “Why” – is a legitimate question to ask … but the proof or disproof, if any, are outside the realm of physics.

Does the human consciousness exist after the death of the physical body? In a sense, we as self-aware individuals are like programs running on the hardware of our brains. But can the ‘program’ be ‘saved’ (pun not totally intentional) after the firmware on which it operates ceases to be functional? Non-anecdotal evidence suggesting it does appears not to exist … but quite a lot of anecdotal evidence exists saying that it in fact does. Should we reject all that anecdotal evidence as delusional? If so, why?

I’m not arguing for blind faith here – I’m saying that there are real questions of metaphysics to which science does not and IMO cannot provide satisfactory answers. Do six-legged pseudo-lions breathing methane exist, somewhere in the Universe? Unanswerable at present, theoretically answerable with enough knowledge of life throughout the Universe. Do human ‘souls’ (defined as the self that is self-aware inhabiting human bodies) exist in some manner before or after the body’s independent existence? Can this question be answered with relative certainty, even theoretically?

My own experience of God has been a series of interior, subjective theophanies. I grant totally that they are interior and subjective; I do not expect anyone else to believe on the basis of my experience. I am quite well aware of reasons, from the Jamesian will to believe to the human propensity for self-delusion, why it might by a third party be rejected as not a valid experience. I have sound personal reasons for accepting it as valid – the one I would share publicly is that it precipitated some changes in my personality, thanks to later, unpredictable encounters with others, that have changed who I am personally for the better – I like myself much more than I did, I accept who I am when I did not before. And this was the result of a sequence of events that I would have recoiled from entering into before the experience but did feel guided to enter into after it, which included a close, life-changing relationship with someone I did not even know existed at the time of my theophanic experience and the resultant decisions. So for me, presuming that what purported to be God was not would mean that I either entered into a string of very positive-effect coincidences that strains probability to presume, or was deluded by my own subconscious which was clairvoyand and/or precognitive of changes that might occur. Either, I regard as more violative of Occam’s Razor than accepting what purported to be an experience of God at face value.

This does not mean that I therefore subscribe to the demon-haunted world that kanicbird posits, or the Divine Sadist that demands love under the threat of eternal torture that most nonbelievers hear defined by the typical evangelical preaching. It does mean that I put my faith and trust in God for exactly the same reasons as someone puts their faith and trust in a spouse or a best friend – they know him/her, know his/her love, and know him/her to be trustworthy. I know Him, and I know Him to be loving and trustworthy. By my personal standards, that’s adequate inductive evidence to believe. Others’ mileage will certainly vary, and I accept that fact.

[Czarcasm]

Now, let’s get back on topic(unless the topic is that God is nothing more than a vague idea, of course). Unless someone can come up with a concrete example something that lies outside the universe…no, fuck that.

Can someone please tell where the fuck “Outside The Universe” is?

[Czarcasm]

@Polycarp

So we have at least one extant object that is not asmenable to scientific description.

Yet. Yet. YET.
This is the magic word(if you will) that makes all the difference. This is the word that drives us to succeed, to prosper, to advance beyond all expectations. Without the word “yet” the first obstacle becomes the last obstacle, and the human race ends at the start line.

[Polycarp]

@Czarcasm

Now, let’s get back on topic(unless the topic is that God is nothing more than a vague idea, of course). Unless someone can come up with a concrete example something that lies outside the universe…no, fuck that.

Can someone please tell where the fuck “Outside The Universe” is?

Damn good question. Here;s a better one: The Universe is, by definition, everything that exists, correct? Is it, therefore, necessarily equivalent to what is usually termed the physical universe – those things detectable and measurable by the senses, actually or theoretically, as augmented by instruments (from neutrino detectors to electron microscopes to hypothetical gravity-wave detectors to gamma-ray telescopes)? Can non-detectable phenomena exist? If so, can they be said to be ‘in the universe’ by whatever definition of universe you care to advance?

[Polycarp]

@Czarcasm

Yet. Yet. YET.
This is the magic word(if you will) that makes all the difference. This is the word that drives us to succeed, to prosper, to advance beyond all expectations. Without the word “yet” the first obstacle becomes the last obstacle, and the human race ends at the start line.

Understood. My understanding of black holes (pretty laymanish) has led me to ‘believe’ (in the sense of think accurate) that the interior of a black hole is for all reasonable purposes not only presently unknown but theoretically unknowable. That’s why I used it as an example of something whose properties are beyond even theoretical physics to discuss, yet which is known to exist.

[Czarcasm]

@Polycarp

Damn good question. Here;s a better one: The Universe is, by definition, everything that exists, correct? Is it, therefore, necessarily equivalent to what is usually termed the physical universe – those things detectable and measurable by the senses, actually or theoretically, as augmented by instruments (from neutrino detectors to electron microscopes to hypothetical gravity-wave detectors to gamma-ray telescopes)? Can non-detectable phenomena exist? If so, can they be said to be ‘in the universe’ by whatever definition of universe you care to advance?

If it cannot be measured, it cannot affect us. If it cannot affect us, why consider it? Why worry about it? Why even consider the attributes of that which, by definition, has no attributes?

[jovan]

@Czarcasm

Potentially, the very thought, “1+1=2”, can be measured as an electrical impulse in the brain.

Okay, I missed that one.

I may be misreading you, but this doesn’t seem all that different from saying “here’s a rock, here’s another rock, there are two rocks.” This statement may be true, but it’s a statement about quantities of rock, not about the abstract entity “one”, which is defined axiomatically.

Liberal and Half Man Half Wit already discussed these issues in some depth, so I’ll not rehash what’s already been said. Where I’m much closer to HMHW than Liberal is in rejecting faith as a device for finding out truth. This is why I say I’m a hard agnostic. There are questions to which the only valid answer is “I don’t know”. Of course, I’m also a pragmatist, and I recognize that it is often useful to hold certain axioms as true, even though their truth cannot be proven.

[alterego]

@jovan

Could you give a concrete example? How do you measure a mathematical rule? What is there to measure in the statement 1+1=2?

(And, just to be sure that we’re all on the same frequency, can you give your definition of “measure”?)

This may seem obvious to you, but it certainly isn’t to me.

First order logic can be derived from simple relationships involving objects. All of mathematics can be proven from first order logic.

[Czarcasm]

@jovan

Okay, I missed that one.

I may be misreading you, but this doesn’t seem all that different from saying “here’s a rock, here’s another rock, there are two rocks.” This statement may be true, but it’s a statement about quantities of rock, not about the abstract entity “one”, which is defined axiomatically.

Liberal and Half Man Half Wit already discussed these issues in some depth, so I’ll not rehash what’s already been said. Where I’m much closer to HMHW than Liberal is in rejecting faith as a device for finding out truth. This is why I say I’m a hard agnostic. There are questions to which the only valid answer is “I don’t know”. Of course, I’m also a pragmatist, and I recognize that it is often useful to hold certain axioms as true, even though their truth cannot be proven.

There are no questions where the only valid answer is “I don’t know.”

[Der_Trihs]

@Polycarp

Too, we can frame a valid question: “Why does the Universe exist?” – as distinguished from “How did the Universe come to be?” which science is not equipped to answer. Whether it is teleological – whether there is a “Why” – is a legitimate question to ask … but the proof or disproof, if any, are outside the realm of physics.

We don’t know that it is.

@Polycarp

Does the human consciousness exist after the death of the physical body? In a sense, we as self-aware individuals are like programs running on the hardware of our brains. But can the ‘program’ be ‘saved’ (pun not totally intentional) after the firmware on which it operates ceases to be functional? Non-anecdotal evidence suggesting it does appears not to exist … but quite a lot of anecdotal evidence exists saying that it in fact does. Should we reject all that anecdotal evidence as delusional? If so, why?

Because such “ancedotal evidence”, aka religion has always been wrong in the past, and it contradicts known physical laws. There’s simply no rational reason to believe that afterlives or souls are anything but wishful thinking.

@Polycarp

Do human ‘souls’ (defined as the self that is self-aware inhabiting human bodies) exist in some manner before or after the body’s independent existence? Can this question be answered with relative certainty, even theoretically?

Yes, and the answer is “no”.

[jovan]

@Czarcasm

There are no questions where the only valid answer is “I don’t know.”

“Is the answer to this question no?” (Paradoxical questions.)
“Why does the universe exist?” (Teleological questions.)
“Are there particles that do not interact in any way with matter?” (Certain physical hypotheses – possible, but there is no way to test.)

I can’t answer any of these questions because of the way they are asked. “I don’t know” is the same as “this question cannot be answered.” Note that it’s not the same thing as “this question has no answer,” which may be true of the first two, but not of the third.

[Czarcasm]

@jovan

“Is the answer to this question no?” (Paradoxical questions.)
“Why does the universe exist?” (Teleological questions.)
“Are there particles that do not interact in any way with matter?” (Certain physical hypotheses – possible, but there is no way to test.)

I can’t answer any of these questions because of the way they are asked. “I don’t know” is the same as “this question cannot be answered.” Note that it’s not the same thing as “this question has no answer,” which may be true of the first two, but not of the third.

The first is a trick, not a valid question.
For the other two, see post #188.

[Czarcasm]

Who here has the intellectual authority to say that “this question has no answer”? Who here is the one that can say, with absolute certainty, that any scientific line of questioning has reach a dead end?

[KGS]

@Czarcasm

Who here has the intellectual authority to say that “this question has no answer”?

The Japanese, apparently: Mu Answer.

[jovan]

@Czarcasm

The first is a trick, not a valid question.
For the other two, see post #188.

Without the first question, we wouldn’t have Gödel’s first Incompleteness Theorem. It’s a question that doesn’t have an answer but it’s a question nonetheless, and an unavoidable one at that. I’m seeing a True Scotsman in your argument: all questions have an answer; questions that do not have an answer aren’t valid questions to begin with.

The second question in unanswerable to science because it cannot be posed in scientific terms. I’m not asking about how the universe came into being, I’m asking what is the purpose of its existence. “Purpose” cannot be observed and a statement about purpose cannot be falsified.

The third question isn’t about the existence of a particle that cannot be detected now but that cannot ever be detected. Hypothesis: There is a particle x that has the property that it can never be observed. Question: Does x exist?

You may call the last question also a trick, a question of no consequence or just bullshit, but that’s essentially the same thing as saying that it can’t be answered.

This isn’t about scientific lines of questioning, it’s about particular questions that are unapproachable, by their very nature, to either science or logic, and are hence unanswerable.