Take an already well shuffled deck of cards, Shuffle it.
Congratulations you are now almost certainly holding a 52 card deck in a configuration never before seen in the entire universe.
Something as simple as a deck of cards can produce something incredibly rare with reliability. Yet for many people something as complex as the universe cannot.
people are dumb.
The nature of the universe has been contemplated from antiquity. And no matter how far advanced we think we are today, the ancients were much wiser than we are today. Following is an excerpt from an ancient work that shows that their thoughts are still relevant today, and we are no closer today to settling the idea. Reading the rest of his works on human nature, and the relationship to higher thoughts, is also considered very much relevant today, and something for all to read, regardless whether someone is scientifically, or religiously minded; actual the ideal is to be both.
"All men who have any degree of right feeling, at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great, always call upon God. And we, too, who are going to discourse of the nature of the universe, how created or how existing without creation, if we be not altogether out of our wits, must invoke the aid of Gods and Goddesses and pray that our words may be acceptable to them and consistent with themselves. Let this, then, be our invocation of the Gods, to which I add an exhortation of myself to speak in such manner as will be most intelligible to you, and will most accord with my own intent.
First then, in my judgment, we must make a distinction and ask, What is that which always is and has no becoming; and what is that which is always becoming and never is? That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is. Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created.
I am asking a question which has to be asked at the beginning of an enquiry about anything-was the world, I say, always in existence and without beginning? or created, and had it a beginning? Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense and are in a process of creation and created. Now that which is created must, as we affirm, of necessity be created by a cause. But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible."
As your ID name tells us, a slow learner is one of those that it would be impossible to tell of God to, as our wise ancient stated above.
What ancients are you referring to, and why would having less knowledge then we make them wiser?
What ancient work?
edited to add: not in the mood for mysterious crap today.
I was going to go with “That’s nice Frank, but irrelevant to the discussion to this point.”
That was going to be the follow-up. It’s just that I’ve had a bad week, and anyone trying to go the “mysterious guru” route is going to get it with both barrels today.
It’s one of Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. The one introducing Atlantis, if I’m not mistaken.
Long winded but empty assumption.
Why ?
No, really, why?
Oh really?
Why?
English is not my first language, so I must ask “Grammatically correct, that is?”
Well you must hear the word Ancient pronounced in the correct mysterious and enigmatic way for it to have effect.
A lack of any sense of history also helps.
Well, they did know where Atlantis was-you gotta give 'em that, at least.
:rolleyes:
Yeah… No. Many of Plato’s theories and ideas, in particular platonic realism, are at best undemonstrated and at worst ludicrous. They had no access to many of the most phowerful philosophical and epistemological tools we have, in particular the scientific method and occam’s razor. For christ’s sake, these people were geocentrists. The idea that they were somehow “wiser” just because Plato and Aristotle are still taught in modern Social Studies classes (hey, you want to see ‘dated’? Check out basically anything Aristotle wrote) is simply untenable. Case in point:
See, this is complete nonsense based on absolutely nothing at all. What justification does the author have for such a claim? It basically comes down to poisoning the well right at the start - the moment someone objects, you can simply claim that they weren’t doing it “with any degree of right feeling”. But that’s bullshit, I’m sorry. Since my deconversion when I was 13, I have never called upon God in any form, let alone a specific religion’s deity. And I’ve done just fine for myself. This isn’t wisdom, this is a bunch of blind assertions based in entirely nothing.
I’ll take “ill-defined nonsense” for 500. What does that even mean? Frank, can you explain it in terms one of us might understand? Something which always is and has no becoming? Well, according to our current understanding of the universe, that describes virtually everything in our material universe, depending on how you want to define “always” - after all, everything in our universe is simply energy/matter in some configuration, and the concept of time before the big bang may or may not be coherent nonsense. The whole mess is ill-defined and virtually a complete non-sequitur.
You see what I mean about these guys not being the pinnacle of human wisdom?
We have literally no case of anything ever being “created”. Every single bit of matter and energy we have ever observed has always been there for as long as we can tell, and none of it ever suddenly popped into being.
Notice how he creates a false dichotomy (he has at no point established that everything with a beginning has to have been created), and does absolutely nothing besides a series of complete non-sequiturs to establish which branch of the dichotomy is true. I mean, seriously, try staging this as a typical syllogism.
P1: The universe is visible, tangible, and has a body and can therefore be sensed
P2: All things that are sensed are created
C: The universe is created
Except that premise two is a complete non-sequitur with no justification whatsoever. Once you strip away how hard it is to read this crap and boil it down to what the logic actually is, it becomes painfully obvious just how crap this is. This is the esteemed “wisdom” of the ancients? Seriously, try it sometime. Strip the flowery language out and reduce it to logical syllogisms. It’s really, really bad.
Also, your parting shot about those who cannot hold this discussion being “slow learners”? OY! YOU WITH THE RAT POISON! STEP AWAY FROM THE WELL!
It’s a little like Rudyard Kipling’s bit of “wisdom” in The Jungle Book:
“The punishment is death where the murderer can be found; and if you think for a minute you will see that this must be so.”
It’s a charming bit of circular reasoning, for, if you don’t see that it must be so, you clearly haven’t thought it through properly.
Anyone that has read a little philosophy could have, easily, noticed that I was in jest regarding “slowlearner.” But I see that with you I will have to be in earnest. My oh my! Player, aren’t you riding high on others’ shoulders; hind sight sees everything. Perhaps if you had been around back then, humanity would have had no need for those wise, ancient men. You would have, with one swoop of your genius, and absolute logical mind, put all the ancient sages to shame. But not only them, as history would have not known; Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Plank, etc., if only you had been born then and not now, what giant leaps our civilization would have made; human kind would have already traveled to the Andromeda galaxy and back. Shame on you, don’t you have any respect for the dead, as you are offending them, especially Plato and Aristotle? Of course you must surely be very familiar with both our dead philosophers’ work; otherwise how could you be so arrogantly wrong in your demeaning them? Did you get a good share of Social Studies in your formal education, or did you elect to study these sages on your own account? You say they were geocentrists, and I suppose that you find it appalling. I will not defend them against such a mighty adversary; you are too logical and know too much, compared to them. Besides, what chance do I have, where my idols have failed, since I could never muster up enough wit to tackle you, as you are armed not only with scientific method, but with a razor to boot. What kind of razor is this occam, is it like a switchblade? Why don’t you do all of us a favor and go read a while. Apparently you cannot recognize the difference between Plato and Aristotle. Do you even understand what is denoted by centrism? Never mind the Geo in relation to our solar system, although you think you are on its surface, but you are not; you are on “cloud nine,” a million miles from reality, and you are doing fine, as you belong there. Can you see infinity from up there? Don’t you realize that anyone point contained anywhere within an infinite scale is always the center?
It’s obvious that what I posted went way over your head. And this tells me that you are in a condition even more deplorable than a slow learner; you will never learn. You were not born stupid, as you have always been stupid, even from before the Big Bang. You are eternal, an idiot for all time and beyond; for sure you did not, suddenly, popped into being.
I think it’s pretty clear that the contemporary rationale for geocentric models of the solar system was not that an infinite plane contains an infinite number of centerpoints. Do your hands get tired from all that waving?
I have no intent on pissing on the acheivements of the ancients. Plato had some interesting ideas, and a lot of the Nichomachean Ethics, while exceedingly dated, was foundational for modern civilization. But that’s just it - it was a foundation. We’ve moved further. To claim that we’re no wiser than the antiques is like saying we’re no more well-informed than the people in Newton’s day.
I respect them. I also realize that many of their ideas are fundamentally silly. I mean, Isaac Newton spent much of his life working on religious texts and alchemy. Placing these people on a pedestal because their works were fundamental is asinine - let’s not diminish their achievements, but let’s also not be unwilling to say “Hang on, this is nonsense”. The theory of gravity stands up on its own merit. The passage you posted doesn’t. It falls flat. What, am I not allowed to critique it on its own merit because Plato was such an incredible philosopher?
We spent almost a year of my high school ethics class dealing with the ancients and their philosophical meanderings. The teacher had a high opinion of them; I did not. But I don’t particularly care. My point in bringing up these issues is to point out that your appeal to authority is completely unfounded, and I continued to back up that point by taking apart the bit you quoted.
I don’t find it appalling, I just think it’s a reasonable point to be made when you put these men up on an unassailable pedestal. Look, your entire last post was basically “we will never measure up to the wisdom of the ancients, and they believed in god, therefore we should believe in god too”. And then you quoted a bit of philosophy that was phenomenally poorly-written, and have since not addressed any of my objections. Not to be a dick, but why not? I basically took apart the entire argument presented, and you’re focusing on middling details, distracting from the issue.
In geocentrism? The sun goes round the earth.
I honestly don’t care about your rationalization about an infinite plane having an infinite number of central points; these people believed the stars and sun orbited the earth. No amount of perspective can make that model work.
Yawn
If you’re done being full of yourself and insulting, and you have any interest in actually addressing the counter-argument, let me know. See, There’s this pyramid of responses thingy:
The higher up the pyramid you are, the better your argument is. You’ve basically stuck well within the bottom 4, none of which are actually considered “arguments”. Just thought I’d mention that.
Seriously, dude, got anything more substantial? Like, I dunno, a valid and sound logical syllogism or something? Maybe some evidence? “Dead smart people said it” ain’t good enough for me, especially when their logic (as I pointed out in the above post) is so bad. Why not address my counter-arguments, rather than spend a long time handwaving and providing absolutely no rational argument to support your position or rebut the counterposition? Or just admit you were wrong.
Frank111-
I’m going to give you a warning for this post.
While it is possible to disagree vociferously on the Straight Dope Message Board it is forbidden in Great Debates - and indeed anywhere outside our BBQ Pit forum - to directly insult another poster. Our rule is always ‘attack the post, not the poster’. We use this rule as a way to keep our discussions civil and above the petty flame wars of a great deal of the rest of the Internet.
I hope you enjoy your time herre at the SDMB and that you find a great many ways to while away the hours here.
Jonathan Chance
Moderator
(And yes, for those wondering, I do know that Nichomachean ethics was Aristotle, not Plato.)
The claim is obvious nonsense. If tweaking the third decimal place, much less the thirteenth, produced such radically divergent results in reality, then the theoretical models would have likewise produced results that obviously don’t square with observation, since our measurements of the basic constants are always a bit inaccurate (more so for the measurements available when the theories were first formulated).
In short, this is an example of the author profoundly failing to understand, not this or that field of science, but the entire basis of scientific reasoning.
Mr moderator…Are you, by chance a moderate, and a fair being, such as your motto states? And are you, the judge, knowledgeable enough to have understood, clearly, my initial post, in response to post by “slowlearner”? If you are, then I must ask: What is Justice? I do not quite understand, yet, if you too, judged my response to “slowlearner” as warranting a warning, or does your warning relate only to my post directed at “Budget Player Cadet”? In any event, is it justice to warm me and not other offenders? Are you a judge over us, and yet dispel justice unjustly? I plead my case to you on the basis of “freedom,” freedom of “speech.” Is this allowed? What is the rule? Is sarcasm allowed to be posted? Is satirical irony allowed, when appropriate and truthful? How obviously clear must sarcasm and satire be stated? Does not the level of comprehension have to be considered of the audience, but especially of the subject of the satire?
This is my case, without further ado, but containing some long winded details; to be or not to be guilty?
My original post was directed solely to guest, slowlearner. It was meant as an invention to his/her curiosity of his/her needing to know, not only if God exists? but also, and justly I may add, the essence of God; what is God? And on my part, the wanting to further the “dialogue” between us, not only as to the wish expressed by slowlearner, but also of one of Plato’s dialogues that deals with, not only the essence of God, but also of the nature of the universe, since they were/are relevant and inseparable, and still today, very relevant and without any absolute certainty, still. Therefore, this being my aim, I took a certain amount of “liberty” to use a little “irony.” But I did not insult “slowlearner,” but merely used the posting ID used by this unknown person, “slowlearner,” and tied it to Plato’s sentence of: “But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out, and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible.” What Plato means, I think, is that this impossibility of explaining the essence of God, if it were possible at all, it could only be related and seriously contemplated by persons which were considered to be true philosophers by Socrates. And according to Socrates, some of the attributes needed to be on your way to being a true philosopher, and a “Guardian” of a “Just” government (State), is clearly listed in another of Plato’s dialogue, Republic, and which is that one must be the opposite of a slow learner, a quick learner. Therefore, I did not state that “slowlearner” was indeed a slow learner, obviously, since I could not know if the person that “freely” chose to use the ID “slowlearner” is in reality what is, generally, “considered by society” as a slow learner. I have hope that “slowlerner” understood my post as it was intended, and perhaps that is why, so far, “slowlerner” has not responded. However, I cannot be certain of that, since there exists the possibilities that “slowlerner” has not read my post, or if read, has no wish to comment on it, one way or the other.
But, I do recognize my fault of having, too plainly, satirized “Budget Player Cadet.” And even though mine was only a reprisal to having been insulted, unjustly without a trial, by this person first, whose insult made me out to be a hateful person, “poison,” and insinuating that I should not have the right to post, I admit I made a mistake. I had no need to define this person as an idiot, as the person behind the ID, “Budget Player Cadet”, needed no help from me. Am I to take the blame for a misunderstanding on his/her part?
Player, the rational genius of all time, should now be on trial, too. According to this genius and most rational gifted person, armed with scientific method, and Occams’s razor, tells us his truths; Plato, Aristotle and the rest of the ancient sages are just puffed up idiots, and did not even know that it was the earth going around the sun, and not the other way around. Why, “Player” cannot even find his/her way around in distinguishing the writings of Plato from Aristotle’s, just as a starter. Yet, as was put: “They had no access to many of the most powerful philosophical and epistemological tools we have, in particular, the scientific method and Occam’s razor.” ……………But let us remind the judge and jury of William of Ockham, who was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian (another geocentrist, and Platonist, to boot). In the philosophy of religion, Occam’s Razor is sometimes applied to the existence of God. William of Ockham himself was a Christian. He believed in God, and in the authority of Scripture; he writes that “nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture.“In Ockham’s view, an explanation has no sufficient basis in reality when it does not harmonize with reason, experience, or the Bible (we will exclude the Bible for my case, and his). The principle states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better. The origins of what has come to be known as Occam’s Razor, are traceable to the works of earlier philosophers such as; John Duns Scotus Robert Grosseteste, Maimonides (Moses ben-Maimon, and even Aristotle. Aristotle writes in his Posterior Analytics, “we may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses. Ptolemy stated, “We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.
Little does the above historical traceability and account of our razor, take into consideration Plato/Socrates, because what does this mean to anyone of modern science that claims to have a rational mind? MICHAEL B. GREEN (University of Cambridge): We feel, as physicists, “””“that if we can explain a wide number of phenomena in a ““very simple manner,”” that that’s somehow progress.
And Plato said? “””” Plato: “””“but if it is possible to set forth a great principle in a few words, then that is just what we want.””“” (Plato’s Timaeus) Is not, E=MC2 (Energy= Mass times the speed of light and then squared), a great principal expressing apparent, and absolute natural laws of physics in a few words? But apparently, Cadet has sharpened his razor a bit too much, as it doesn’t even cut the mustard, since he/she doesn’t need any hypothesis; he/she knows for certain. What need has Cadet of a razor’s sharpness? And what need have I of Aristotle, when it’s his master that I’m quoting? Besides, Aristotle lost his way, and even after studying 20 years under Plato, he failed to grasp the kernel of true philosophy, The Good. And so Aristotle went the wrong way; he put body before soul (mind), and so “grounded” all earthly men who followed him, especially the church. The study of the material world, the sensible, is not the main goal of the true philosopher, although one will use it just as any other tool, to get a glimpse at the true artificer and Father of the material world; only a glimpse is possible for any of us, though.
Scientific Method: According to a “rational” and well informed scientist, Our “Cadet”: “We have literally no case of anything ever being “created”. Every single bit of matter and energy we have ever observed has always been there for as long as we can tell, and none of it ever suddenly popped into being.”
Present day Science: Before the Big Bang?
While much about the universe’s first few moments remains speculative, the question of what preceded the Big Bang is even more mysterious and hard to tackle. (so much for Cadet’s statement)
Plato said? “All men who have any degree of right feeling (hypothesis, theories), at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great, always call upon, God (the one and only ultimate God, the Good). And we, too, who are going to discourse of the nature of the universe, how created or how existing without creation, if we be not altogether out of our wits, must invoke the aid of Gods and Goddesses (the Material gods and goddesses; Mercury, Moon, Venus, Mars, Helios, etc; in other words, the spheres of the Solar system) and pray that our words may be acceptable to them and consistent with themselves. Let this, then, be our invocation of the Gods, to which I add an exhortation of myself to speak in such manner as will be most intelligible to you, and will most accord with my own intent.
For starters, the question itself may be nonsensical. If the universe came from nothing, as some theorists believe, the ““Big Bang marks the instant when “time” itself began.”” In that case, there would be no such thing as “before,” Carroll said. (Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech.)
Plato said? Plato: ““Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant” in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together.
Science: But some conceptions of the universe’s birth can propose possible answers. The cyclic model, for example, suggests that a contracting universe preceded our expanding one. Sean Carroll, as well, can imagine something existing before the Big Bang. “It could just be “”“empty space””” that existed before our Big Bang happened, then some quantum fluctuation gave birth to a universe like ours," he said.
Plato said? Plato: This new beginning of our discussion of the universe requires a fuller division than the former; for then we made two classes, now a third must be revealed. (obviously this third is “space”, the receptacle containing our universe) The two sufficed for the former discussion: one, which we assumed, was a pattern intelligible and always the same; and the second was only the imitation of the pattern, generated and visible. There is also a third kind which we did not distinguish at the time, conceiving that the two would be enough. But now the argument seems to require that we should set forth in words another kind, which is difficult of explanation and dimly seen. What nature are we to attribute to this new kind of being? We reply, that it is the “”“receptacle,”“” and in a manner the nurse, of all generation. I have spoken the truth; but I must express myself in clearer language, and this will be an arduous task for many reasons, and in particular because I must first raise questions concerning fire and the other elements, and determine what each of them is; for to say, with any probability or certitude, which of them should be called water rather than fire, and which should be called any of them rather than all or some one of them, is a difficult matter. (Plato’s Timaeus)
Another excerpt from a current magazine on a scientific article of theoretical nature: New theories suggest the big bang was not the beginning, and that we may live in the past of a parallel universe.
Whether through Newton’s gravitation, Maxwell’s electrodynamics, Einstein’s special and general relativity or quantum mechanics, all the equations that best describe our universe work perfectly if time flows forward or backward……
“Arthur Eddington coined the term ‘arrow of time,’ and famously said the shuffling of material and energy is the only thing which nature cannot undo,” Barbour adds. “And here we are, showing beyond any doubt really that this is in fact exactly what gravity does. It takes systems that look extraordinarily disordered and makes them wonderfully ordered. And this is what has happened in our universe. We are realizing the ancient Greek dream of order out of chaos.”
Plato said? Plato: “Let me tell you then why the creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men: God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable. Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other.” (Plato’s Timaeus)
I can go on to more, but I’m afraid that it would not be appropriate for posting, nor necessary for making my case, for escaping the worst possible punishment available to the judge and moderator; banishment from further postings on this site.
In defending myself, as is allowed in our courts of law, I only ask that I may be allowed to post my defense, and also be allowed to present my concluding statements for the defense.
In utilizing and posting just a small excerpt from one of the many works of Plato, which was, in my opinion, more than appropriate for the subject being discussed by the other posters, I have “spoken” for Socrates/Plato; may they forgive my incapacity. And unlike Timaeus’ success with me, I have failed with some of you, to speak in such manner as will be most intelligible to you, and will most accord with my own intent. And my intent was to show that some, not all, of our ancient sages have the right answers for us, although they all have to be credited as extraordinary men/woman, considering what they had to work with. Plato/Socrates, in my opinion, were two of some of the many eminent sages of our past, and such that had the answers before us in the present. And without appearing to worship any man, I say only that they were God sent. I worship only “God,” the ultimate Good, the Father and maker of this wonderful, beautiful and mysterious universe (hoping that it will stay that way; mysterious forever, to enchant us forever; for what are we immortal souls to do for eternity without getting bored? Find a soul that thinks it knows everything, and you will find a very boring and bored soul. The truth is that God only knows, and I think that he gave us free will, within the limits and confine of his decreed eternal physical laws, so that He too, can escape His boredom. God does know how the war will end, but the small conflicts amongst us, keeps Him guessing, and entertained.
Oh yes, I was forgetting to explain, in my opinion, of course, regarding this: “First then, in my judgment, we must make a distinction and ask, What is that which always is and has no becoming; and what is that which is always becoming and never is? That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.”
That which is always the same (the never changing natural physical laws), and has no becoming, is alluding to God, the law giver, in eternity. His laws just did not pop out of nothing, nor, afterwards departed as a pop-corn fart, as “slowlearner” jokingly, proposed of God, the cause of these laws which governs all throughout the visible and sensible universe. This eternal sameness, this Being, and the laws decreed, are only grasped through intelligence. That which is always becoming and never is, is the material world, both energy and matter that we sense, and is always in flux and ever changing, but only in accordance with the intelligibly apprehended, and never changing laws of nature. Space is the third being, the “receptacle,” that which contains all matter and energy, and our “play ground”.
Let me remind all what are considered as the three anchor points of rationalism:
That’s a word salad way beyond my appetite.
Oliver Wendell Douglas couldn’t have said it better.
Brevity as a virtue is always striking to me.