Religion versus Fiction

[Habitat]

Einstein was able to capture the imagination of the masses with something unprecedented that portrayed the world in a new way, Any scientist that could make a similar breakthrough that would explain the very matter of existence, would trump that. It won't happen because no-one can even imagine such a thing. People were able to get their heads around Einstein's discoveries to at least some extent., if no can imagine it, it can't capture that imagination.

[psyche101]

57 minutes ago, Habitat said:

What ? You told me the science is In, correct weight, pay the winner !

Prove it wrong then. You claim to be science orientated. If so, you must know that is how it works. 

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, Habitat said:

I couldn't care less what Cox believes in, and I don't even know I'd say I "believe" in God myself, it being a completely undefined ,and must also be an undefinable proposition or we'd have to account for what lay outside the definition. But clearly few scientists are prepared to make the kind of bold "guesses" P101 is apt to. What I would say is that rational thinking can't account for the enigma of existence, and that is the sole reason God was "invented". The afterlife is a more defined proposition, but similarly can't be disproved.

It certainly couldn't account for it thousands of years ago. Its ridiculous to suggest that would be the case. That in no way validates God concepts. 

As for your blind support of afterlife theory, you have no credibility, nothing to support your views. Just a bad guess. It's plain to see you avoid the science because you got nothing. 

[Habitat]

2 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

It certainly couldn't account for it thousands of years ago. Its ridiculous to suggest that would be the case. That in no way validates God concepts. 

Creation myths of all kinds only exist because rational thinking is limited to within a system. It can't explain the existence of the system. Rational thinking is nothing new., hence creation myths are nothing new.  It is just a filler that tries to stop up the gap. No rationalization will work, and all religions and creation myths are rationalizations.

[psyche101]

12 minutes ago, Habitat said:

Einstein was able to capture the imagination of the masses with something unprecedented that portrayed the world in a new way, Any scientist that could make a similar breakthrough that would explain the very matter of existence, would trump that. It won't happen because no-one can even imagine such a thing. People were able to get their heads around Einstein's discoveries to at least some extent., if no can imagine it, it can't capture that imagination.

You honestly missed all the noise about Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing? Agree with it or not, Dawkins compares it to On the Origin of Species, and dramatically suggests it might be cosmology’s “deadliest blow to supernaturalism”. 

Now I'm not saying that is or is not the case. What I am saying is that there was a big noise. You apparently missed it. Krauss did world tours on the subject and the Dawkins / Krauss feature, The Unbelievers is based on it. 

It happened Rip Van Winkle. You must have been tuned into the Bold and the Beautiful in between morse code episodes and missed it all

[Habitat]

1 minute ago, psyche101 said:

You honestly missed all the noise about Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing? Agree with it or not, Dawkins compares it to On the Origin of Species, and dramatically suggests it might be cosmology’s “deadliest blow to supernaturalism”. 

Now I'm not saying that is or is not the case. What I am saying is that there was a big noise. You apparently missed it. Krauss did world tours on the subject and the Dawkins / Krauss feature, The Unbelievers is based on it. 

It happened Rip Van Winkle. You must have been tuned into the Bold and the Beautiful in between morse code episodes and missed it all

They would have probably interrupted the B & B to bring the staggering news to the public, but alas, no such scoop appeared. 

[psyche101]

33 minutes ago, Habitat said:

Creation myths of all kinds only exist because rational thinking is limited to within a system. It can't explain the existence of the system. Rational thinking is nothing new., hence creation myths are nothing new.  It is just a filler that tries to stop up the gap. No rationalization will work, and all religions and creation myths are rationalizations.

That's why QMs virtual particles are a very difficult concept to understand and in your case accept. Our brains are wired for the macro, not the micro. Leading physicists are our pioneers into this new world. QM is not what we consider 'rational'. But it does offer the most likely answer to existance. 

[psyche101]

4 minutes ago, Habitat said:

They would have probably interrupted the B & B to bring the staggering news to the public, but alas, no such scoop appeared. 

I bet they did, you probably slept through it

It was huge news. World tours even. 

[Golden Duck]

54 minutes ago, Habitat said:

You are endorsing the P101 "science rules out afterlife" dogma ? Be careful, he says it might all be revised if new information comes to hand. Science does not predict "no afterlife" but I would say it doesn't support one either. Not that I am hanging out for any news. I already know the answer. As to the how and why, I  know not. The enigma of existence is hardly inconsequential, it is the reason religion exists. To fill the gap where rational thinking no longer works. Not that any kind of rationalization works, and religious tales are all rationalizations.

Why do you keep giving @psyche101 the credit for ruling out the afterlife?

I've speculated you would need to find a gap for Carroll, Cox, Shermer, et al to be shown to be wrong. It's a similar situation to the Collatz Conjecture.

While you say you know what you know - but, not how or why - you've never said why it's impossible for you to be wrong.

Did you change your behaviour for the sake of the afterlife? If it doesn't demand consideration, it's inconsequential. 

[psyche101]

17 minutes ago, Golden Duck said:

Why do you keep giving @psyche101 the credit for ruling out the afterlife?

I've been assuming that it's because I'm extremely charismatic and likeable 

 

[+Liquid Gardens]

5 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

Just as long as you understand the opinion of “no good reason” IS NOT the same thing as “disproves”. The latter is untrue. 

'Disprove' is a judgment call though.  What is an example of something that has been disproven?  Have you truly exhausted all possibilities where whatever that thing is could be true?  How? 

If we believe creationism has been disproven then I don't know why we wouldn't say that the afterlife (as typically depicted) has been disproven, they seem to use parallel reasoning.

[cormac mac airt]

1 hour ago, Liquid Gardens said:

'Disprove' is a judgment call though.  What is an example of something that has been disproven?  Have you truly exhausted all possibilities where whatever that thing is could be true?  How? 

If we believe creationism has been disproven then I don't know why we wouldn't say that the afterlife (as typically depicted) has been disproven, they seem to use parallel reasoning.

To your first point, as it’s not my argument to begin with you’re asking the wrong person. To your second point I would agree as the latter is dependent on the idea that the former exists and is responsible for its existence. 

cormac

[+Pettytalk]

5 hours ago, eight bits said:

Hmmm... tricky business, Bayes' Theorem. Not many do apply it, not strictly, in the sense of using numbers, when there are no uniquely determined specific numbers to use. Statistics and labaratory situations often do produce hard, precise numbers for the "observation assuming each hypothesis" conditionals, but even then, the priors are apt to be ... aesthetic.

Hard numbers for questions that are barely well-posed? Not a chance.

However, Bayes is merciful, and there is salvation outside his church. There are many ways of thinking about the bearing of evidence that are "nearly Bayesian," especially those that abstract out non-numerical heuristics that reliably arrive at effectively the same conclusions that some faithful Bayesian would also arrive at, given the same information.

Psyche doesn't use prior probabilities at all that I can see, but that just makes him "likelihoodist." No harm in that; many people articulate the related heuristic by appeal to the advice sometimes attributed to Socrates, "Follow the evidence," say no more. You could do worse.

Psyche really has explained why the evidence available to him produces his estimate of a likelihood ratio which lopsidedly disfavors a personal afterlife in any sense where the words used have meaning. He just doesn't say it that way. OK. Neither did Reverend Bayes, and he turned out all right.

Also, there's a lot of method that has developed around Bayesian probability, but isn't "Bayes Theorem" as such. Like Psyche's "Teapot-or-Tooth Fairy Agnostic." OK, take that same thought, and run it through the cranium of Isaac Levi, who taught philosophy at Columbia. The language becomes elegant and non-dismissive, distinguishing the "seriously possible" as a proper subset of the merely "logical possible" hypotheses.  What comes out is as smooth as 18 year-old Jameson's, but has the same effect as psyche's rougher brew - and psyche gets you there quicker.

It is logically possible that there is some teapot in orbit out there, or that the tooth fairy exists, or Santa Claus, or ... anything at all I can say without contradicting myself might be true. But there is no foundation for many of those things.

Ordinarily, I might conclude that I can only dismiss such things, which is weaker than an adverse finding that they aren't real. The genius of a Levi is to appreciate that within a Bayesian regime, dismissal for complete lack of foundation is indistinguishable from an adverse finding.  Some version of that result will arise in just about all rich formal reasoning systems; it's not peculiar to Bayes.

Bottom line: I think it would be very difficult to overturn psyche's reasoning within a Bayesian regime (although, of course and as always, another Bayesian can disagree with psyche). Habbie? There's scarcely any reasoning on offer.

It is an insult to Bayes to say that the two cases are comparable.

 

If I know my Socrates, I would suspect that he would make you out a sophist who does not charge for sharing your art of sophistry with us, except perhaps to receive honor, as payment, from those of us who have the pleasure to "listen" to such an eloquent representation of the ongoing dispute between our two less articulate posters than yourself, of course.

My own views of such a display leaves me to believe that Sherapy's diminutive expression of addressing you as eighty is numerically tenfold short, as you are no eight bits, but every bit worth 800, using specific numerical figures.

[+Pettytalk]

 

[cormac mac airt]

5 hours ago, Habitat said:

I heard an Nobel winning physicist say information is "never lost". If so, an afterlife becomes a lot easier to explain.

Said physicist was likely referring to “within a black hole” as such has been stated in that regard. How is that conducive to the existence of an afterlife? 

cormac

[+Liquid Gardens]

55 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

To your first point, as it’s not my argument to begin with you’re asking the wrong person.

Sorry I may have misread you then.  When you said, 'the latter is untrue', it seemed to be that you were referring to something being disproven, and you are arguing that it has not been.  If that something is the afterlife, then I don't know that it is 'untrue' to say that it has been disproven.

59 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

To your second point I would agree as the latter is dependent on the idea that the former exists and is responsible for its existence. 

Interesting, I didn't look at it that way but I think I see what you're referring to.  My thinking addresses the two cases independently.   Most flavors of creationism are 'disproven' by evolution, we have evidence and knowledge concerning how species came to be.  Using the same reasoning, if the afterlife includes our memory or personality or what have you carrying on, then that has been 'disproven' by neurology, we have evidence and knowledge concerning what is required for memory to exist and continue.

[cormac mac airt]

3 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Sorry I may have misread you then.  When you said, 'the latter is untrue', it seemed to be that you were referring to something being disproven, and you are arguing that it has not been.  If that something is the afterlife, then I don't know that it is 'untrue' to say that it has been disproven.

Interesting, I didn't look at it that way but I think I see what you're referring to.  My thinking addresses the two cases independently.   Most flavors of creationism are 'disproven' by evolution, we have evidence and knowledge concerning how species came to be.  Using the same reasoning, if the afterlife includes our memory or personality or what have you carrying on, then that has been 'disproven' by neurology, we have evidence and knowledge concerning what is required for memory to exist and continue.

Sorry LG but what I was referring to to psyche101 is that it is untrue to use “disproves” as somehow synonymous with “no good reason”. The latter “may” be suggested but the former IS untrue as he’s used it. 

cormac

[+Pettytalk]

4 hours ago, Habitat said:

You must have been tuned into the Bold and the Beautiful

CORRECTION. The Bald and the Beautiful.

[jmccr8]

7 hours ago, Habitat said:

You mean this sentence ?

"There is a difference between there is no god and there is no evidence of god/afterlife which is what the majority are saying so to start your premise is faulty and have built an argument on the sand"

Total misrepresentation, I am totally relaxed with people who say there is no evidence of a god/afterlife, I an not relaxed with frauds who claim science has effectively disproved those propositions, which is stock-in-trade of "old mate" P101. My premise was that such proof does not exist, jmccr was blowing smoke out of his rear end, as usual. So if you agreed with him that that was what I was doing, try again !

Hi Habitat

You are projecting meanings, I have maintained that Psyche has presented his position with documentation that supports it and that you have not addressed the information that has been given with equal refutation by showing how there is a weakness in the material presented which is all I have asked you for and you are unwilling to engage. 

I have many times expressed that I have a different concept of what god is to me that you overlook and choose to infer that I am an atheist which is why I ask you to argue the material rather than the person who provided it as it tends to cause friction and reduce the value of discussion. Yes I have said there is no evidence to support that there is god or afterlife and it is not my intention to prove it either way because, for the most part, it has no significant impact on my life but am curious as to why it is important to others and this is a forum where it can be explored. 

jmccr8

Edited June 18, 2019 by jmccr8
spulling

[+Liquid Gardens]

39 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

Sorry LG but what I was referring to to psyche101 is that it is untrue to use “disproves” as somehow synonymous with “no good reason”. The latter “may” be suggested but the former IS untrue as he’s used it. 

Ah thanks, gotcha.  So taking this thought a little further (so I can bring up something with a little actual content instead of Hab's latest barrage of empty declarations), would we then say that 'disproving' requires not just 'no good reason' but also 'good reasons against' the idea being disproved?  Not only is there no good reason to believe God creates species, there is an alternative explanation, evolution, that just seems to follow impersonal natural laws, thus we're on better ground saying creationism is disproven.

If so, I think'd I have two comments. First, I'm having trouble thinking of an example of a proposition whose ontological status merely involves 'no good reason' without also having reasons against (with full acknowledgment on my part that what constitutes a 'good reason' is subjective).  Second, with the things we discuss here, there is the complicating factor of propositions that involve 'magic' or powers or even unknown science that nonetheless, if true, pull the rug out from our basis of disproving things.  If magic exists we can't say really anything about it or what restrictions or boundaries it has, we don't understand it, thus I'm not sure we have any 'good reason against' it other than there's 'no good reason' to believe magic exists. If I can't disprove magic then I'm not sure that I can then disprove any being proposed to be magical (leprechauns, some dragons, Santa, etc).  Yet most have no problem saying Santa doesn't exist, although there is nothing inconsistent with magical Santa existing and there also being what appears to be a literary/fictional foundation for him like we have now.

I don't think my opinion is very firm on whatever point I'm trying to make here, I think I'm making arguments both for and against, just trying to think it through.

[cormac mac airt]

I’d agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph. As to the rest I myself would be inclined to replace “no good reason” with “no scientifically verifiable evidence” and do away with the former phrase as it’s both inadequate and imprecise. The latter “disproves” along with its opposite “proves” are limited by our current understanding of physics/QM and can in no way be seen as definitive to the subject IMO and therefore useless to same. 

One of many things that I take exception to is the attempt by some to try using QM as if it supports an afterlife, it doesn’t. Nor is Habitat’s implication, overall, of a physicist claiming “no information is lost” relevant to any such discussion. 

cormac

[Habitat]

5 hours ago, jmccr8 said:

Hi Habitat

You are projecting meanings, I have maintained that Psyche has presented his position with documentation that supports it and that you have not addressed the information that has been given with equal refutation by showing how there is a weakness in the material presented which is all I have asked you for and you are unwilling to engage. 

I have many times expressed that I have a different concept of what god is to me that you overlook and choose to infer that I am an atheist which is why I ask you to argue the material rather than the person who provided it as it tends to cause friction and reduce the value of discussion. Yes I have said there is no evidence to support that there is god or afterlife and it is not my intention to prove it either way because, for the most part, it has no significant impact on my life but am curious as to why it is important to others and this is a forum where it can be explored. 

jmccr8

You just don't get it, what this chap P101 has produced as "evidence", is worthless, not "fit for task", in the least degree. Despite what 8 bits tells us, this is simply not a falsifiable proposition to start with, there being no prospect of any satisfactory definition of either "God" or afterlife. IT IS NOT A TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS ! Except, perhaps when we die, we  will become the experiment ! What he presented is the personal opinion of a scientist, an argument from authority and if you can't see that has no cut-through in these matters, I can't help you with your enquiry. It really is quite tragic how these scientists go off into wild and sometimes laughable excursions into speculation, cloaked with a veneer of science. The best case I can think of, the late Professor Hawking, who claimed the universe arose spontaneously, and the Laws of Physics allowed such. No problem, but what "allows" the Laws of Physics ? He solved nothing, Carroll solved nothing, of the great mystery. Hawking declared death was definitely the end. So does Carroll. They are guessing. Guessing isn't science. These people don't deserve a minute of my time, when they go off into guesswork.

[Habitat]

6 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

Said physicist was likely referring to “within a black hole” as such has been stated in that regard. How is that conducive to the existence of an afterlife? 

cormac

I don't recall his name, but he was fairly young. No, he wasn't talking about black holes, it was in the context of his saying the past, present, and future were equally "real", and "there", and that information is never lost, in the least degree. That did pique my interest. We are apt to think that what is gone, is irrecoverable. Maybe not ! But, "imprisoned" in time as we are, what may appear to us "cut and dried", may be not so at all.

[Habitat]

10 hours ago, Golden Duck said:

I've speculated you would need to find a gap for Carroll, Cox, Shermer, et al to be shown to be wrong. It's a similar situation to the Collatz Conjecture.

They simply can't demonstrate that their speculation is correct. This isn't science, it is "trust me, I'm a physicist". I don't need anyone to tell me that death is the end of life "as we understand it", I already know it, as does anyone who can function in the world !  

[cormac mac airt]

7 minutes ago, Habitat said:

I don't recall his name, but he was fairly young. No, he wasn't talking about black holes, it was in the context of his saying the past, present, and future were equally "real", and "there", and that information is never lost, in the least degree. That did pique my interest. We are apt to think that what is gone, is irrecoverable. Maybe not ! But, "imprisoned" in time as we are, what may appear to us "cut and dried", may be not so at all.

So basically hear-say on your part and irrelevant to the discussion of an afterlife. The only currently relevant discussion on the matter, discussed by Hawking, Wallace and many others is the Black Hole-Information Paradox which leaves you with a non-argument. 

cormac