Please demonstrate something accepted as true that can be independently verified without using the scientific method. Anything at all. Just one thing!
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I think I explained myself poorly, for which I apologiseâŚ
OF COURSE I accept scientific laws, theories as âtrueâ. EG Evolution, Newtonian physics. I do not accept they are necessarily absolutely true. They are true based on everything we know so far. EG Einsteinâs theory of General Relativity does not mean Newton was wrong. It means that Newtonâs theories were incomplete.
I hope that makes sense.
(yes I understand your question was not aimed at me. I wasnât happy with my answer.)
Makes sense. Yes, we build on previous knowledge.
I see itâs blind assertion time again from a mythology fanboy. But Iâm used to this, having seen this for over 12 years in dealings therewith.
You have two problems to address here, the first and potentially most serious of which, is that terms you are using in your posts, with the usual absence of diligence that is endemic to the whole business of magical thinking, are laden with prior semantic baggage as a result of several thousand years of myth making on the part of the human species. Indeed much of your opening post contained sufficient signals of the sort Iâve seen from enthusiasts for Neo-Thomist apologetics (Iâve had prior dealing with several of these), that itâs tempting on the basis of said data, to conclude that youâre one of that ilk. That post reads precisely as I would expect the output from one of the Edward Feser fanboys, who swallowed the whole âresurrection of Aquinasâ schtick without even bothering to taste properly what was being swallowed.
The second problem, arising as a direct corollary of the first, is that pretty much every human mythology in existence, contains as a core assertion, the assertion that the various magic entities described therein take the form of one or more familiar Earth organisms, or chimaeric constructs based thereupon. This, of course, to those of us who paid attention in class, merely points to the limited and parochial imaginations of the authors thereof. Indeed, thatâs a recurring theme in human mythologies - the idea that the various magic entities asserted to exist therein, possess both sentience and intent in a manner that is all too obviously human. Those mythologies are basically grand exercises in projecting our own intent upon our surroundings, while of course there is absolutely zero evidence that said projection is warranted.
As a corollary of the above, if you want to use the terms youâre using, while ascribing thereto meanings considerablty at variance with that past semantic baggage, you have a lot of work ahead if you want to be taken seriously, with respect to laying the foundations for your thus far manifestly ill-conceived and amateur theogony, by providing properly considered detailed definitions. Then you have the even harder task of providing evidence that your various constructs are something other than the products of the television in your head. Sadly, the track record of your ilk is dismal to put it mildly, when examining the ability thereof to conduct either task.
If youâre trying to put large amounts of distance between the obvious âmagic man in the skyâ assertion, that is a feature of several mythologies (and accepted to a naively literal extent by a good number of mythology fanboys where you live), and assert that your particular magic entity is something different, then youâd better put in the spadework to support your assertions, unless you want those assertions to be regarded not merely as discardable, but trite. Once again, you have that history of prior semantic baggage to deal with, an issue that was recognised as troublesome by individuals as diverse as Heidegger and Wittgenstein in their time.
For example, the very words âcreatorâ and âcreationâ, on their own need careful dissection, in order to tease out the past baggage associated therewith. Baggage that involves, for example, using âcreationâ as a sort of magic totem to describe a mysterious process for poofing entities into existence, that is purportedly the sole remit of the magic entity du jour of whoever is uttering this word. Detail, as always, is invariably absent from the requisite witterings.
Dealing with the above issues in a substantive manner should keep you occupied for the next three decades.
See above for why this is, in the absence of the requisite spadework, nothing more than vacuous assertion on your part.
Oh, the cans of worms this assertion opens up ⌠which are properly the subject for a complete new post.
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To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is manâs only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.
But such is not manâs end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of Godâs children on earth.
This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity.
And with that statement, youâve demonstrated that youâre ignorant of the relevant science.
The rest of your sanctimonious panhandling can be dismissed without further effort as a corollary,
Are you going to explain HOW or are you going to take the high road on this one?
First of all, evolutionary processes are well defined, as anyone who actually spent time in the requisite classes learned whilst doing so, and involve well-defined entities. Second, the only reason that some of the outcomes are subject to a probabilistic treatment (one involving other well-defined entities such as Markov chains) is because we lack complete genetic audit trails for those outcomes. You obviously never learned any of this.
According to the materialist our species becoming who we are was an ACCIDENT, chance, it didnât happen for any purpose, or any reason, it just did.
Also I donât deny that evolutionary processes are how we got here but I believe a God (more directly his other creatures)directed the process. They left here the original life plasma that evolved into what we see today.
Iâm not going to bicker with you though.
Youâve been speaking about âstatesâ and âstatelessâ things. Can you please explain, in detail, what you mean by that. Perhaps you could you give an example of a state, and an example of something that is stateless?
California is a state. Alabama is a state. The Pacific Ocean is Stateless. Itâs pretty simple.
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Tell that to Aquaman.
Universal complete non reality is more accurate
So you wonât be answering my question? I mean, thatâs cool; you are under no obligation to do so.
Ok - now I just shook my head⌠with a wtf expressionâŚ
This sentence is a good example of ânothingâ
NO THING was understood in it.
Universal complete (measured by science? What is this?) and then non-reality!!! What ⌠nothing to do with reality! Make believeâŚpretend - imaginary??? But even those are ârealâ in the brain thinking it.
Now if it has nothing to do with ârealityâ
Yah - Iâd say thatâs a good descriptor of godâŚ
I love how you reference something from The Simpsons when its creator is an atheist. Matt Groening is an atheist.
Seth MacFarlane creator of Family Guy alao atheist.
Both shows have their versions of god too.
But that doesnât say that thereâs actually evidence for a god.
The version of god in a robe and beard is the one it seems atheist refer to because they constantly call god a man in the sky.
Do you honestly believe I posted a picture from a cartoon as evidence for god?
Its almost exactly for the reasons you state in the above quote, that for me, life then seems all the more amazing and valuable. From the science that informs us how the physics and chemistry at both classical and quantum levels operate, it can be identified that not only DID it happen, but it HAD to happen, and not by mere accident but by determinable chance and predictable probability as established within the parameters that became undeniably apparent at Planck Time when the laws of physics as we understand them begin. If it lacked any of this stability and predictability it would be impossible for us to know anything about it.
No doubt you can hunt down and declare the hand of a god in all of it, because within the naturally recurring patterns and constants that pepper reality you would find at least enough constancy for a thousand deities (as we have) but as Laplace replied to Napoleon about âGodâs placeâ in his mathematical calculations of the solar system, "I had no need of that hypothesis.â
I donât share the despondent theist view you espouse in your âunbelieving materialistâ post that condemns the universe or life as dead and pointless or less without a divine mind to drive or control or delineate meaning within it. Rather I see the universe infinitely more significant and utterly more meaningful because of my one single puny mind alive and living in it, is capable of endlessly discovering, appreciating and delighting in the whole array of meanings discovered within it.
And speaking of cartoons âUniversal complete non realityâ sounds like something Stan Lee would have written for âDr Strangeâ.
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Cause itâs a fantasy, âitâ (canât even use the word it because then it becomes something) is an impossibility. Something always was.
You are just the latest in a long, long line of lunatics who came here and tried to convince us to believe in their nonsense. Except normally the lunatics are the ones demanding that the universe must have been created, and it is not eternal. But like you they insult anyone who is even remotely skeptical of their rank speculation.
So on this site Iâve chastised by theists for expressing skepticism in the idea that the universe is eternal. And Iâve been chastised by theists for essentially the opposite (for being skeptical that it was created). 