The illogic of Atheism

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(2018-04-10, 02:35 AM)malf Wrote: In practical terms, what then is the difference between "Brahman" and "nature"? 

None, if you don't restrict you definition of nature the way "naturalists" do.

malf Wrote:The only "faith" I have is that I really can't know for sure. And I'm leery of anyone who says they do.
Then at least we are agreed on something. Smile
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Freeman Dyson
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(2018-04-10, 02:56 AM)Kamarling Wrote: None, if you don't restrict you definition of nature the way "naturalists" do.


It would be wisest to avoid restrictions as it gives one more wiggle room Wink . What restrictions are you referring to?



Quote:Then at least we are agreed on something. Smile

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(2018-04-10, 03:14 AM)malf Wrote: It would be wisest to avoid restrictions as it gives one more wiggle room  Wink . What restrictions are you referring to?

As discussed at length in another thread, naturalism ... well, Wikipedia defines it quite well:

Wikipedia Wrote:In philosophy, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world." Adherents of naturalism (i.e., naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws.

"Naturalism can intuitively be separated into an ontological and a methodological component." "Ontological" refers to the philosophical study of the nature of reality. Some philosophers equate naturalism with materialism. For example, philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other physical and chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no "purpose" in nature. Such an absolute belief in naturalism is commonly referred to as metaphysical naturalism.

Assuming naturalism in working methods as the current paradigm, without the unfounded consideration of naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailment, is called methodological naturalism. The subject matter here is a philosophy of acquiring knowledge based on an assumed paradigm.

With the exception of pantheists—who believe that Nature and God are one and the same thing—theists challenge the idea that nature contains all of reality. According to some theists, natural laws may be viewed as so-called secondary causes of God(s).

That quote mentions pantheism but not panentheism which is the subject of another Wikipedia definition:

Wikipedia Wrote:Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God", from the Ancient Greek πᾶν pân, "all", ἐν en, "in" and Θεός Theós, "God") is the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond time and space. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.

In panentheism, God is viewed as the soul of the universe, the universal spirit present everywhere, which at the same time "transcends" all things created.
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Freeman Dyson
(This post was last modified: 2018-04-10, 03:34 AM by Kamarling.)
(2018-04-10, 01:51 AM)Steve001 Wrote: You should be 100% certain that quote is from Heisenberg. 

 You have a mistaken understanding I think. They are not LAWS implying they are somehow writ in stone handed down from the physics priests, no they are discoveries made by men and women, they are descriptions of how nature works, nothing more, nothing less. Faith you say, it's nothing of the sort.

Yet again, you do not understand. It's not faith in what the laws are - it's an actual understanding of what they represent and what can be drawn from them, as well as questions about why it is they are what they are.
(2018-04-10, 02:25 AM)malf Wrote: Interesting:

https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2016/0...the-glass/

Google Books has at least four mentions of the German version of the quotation before the 1988 source cited on that page, going back as far as 1979. Unfortunately they are only snippets, so it's not clear whether they cite other sources.
(2018-04-10, 02:22 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: Are you saying it's not Heisenberg? I remember someone had it as their signature, and it seemed to check out. But really does it seem surprising, looking at what other physicists said who were around for some of the early forays into QM:

“I go to the Upanishad to ask questions"
 ---Bohr, referring to a religious Indian text

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.”
---Erwin Schrodinger

Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter..

---Sir James Hopwood Jeans

Of course I could go on, but I'll finish with pointing out the preface Einstein wrote for Upton Sinclair's book about telepathy.

Re: laws as discoveries - I'd agree there are just regularities that still have no explanation save for being brute facts. Why do the regularities hold enough to be thought of as inviolate laws?

I'm saying you should fact check. That includes Alberts thoughts on ESP. Jim Smith has it in his signature.
Why do you trust those physicists when you do not apparently trust Lawrence Krauss, Carl Sagan, Lisa Randall, Neil Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Isaac Asimov?

No physicist would state the laws of physics are inviolate.
(This post was last modified: 2018-04-10, 12:00 PM by Steve001.)
(2018-04-10, 03:43 AM)Dante Wrote: Yet again, you do not understand. It's not faith in what the laws are - it's an actual understanding of what they represent and what can be drawn from them, as well as questions about why it is they are what they are.

What do you think they present that can be non subjectively independently verified?
(This post was last modified: 2018-04-10, 12:14 PM by Steve001.)
(2018-04-10, 11:21 AM)Steve001 Wrote: I'm saying you should fact check. That includes Alberts thoughts on ESP. Jim Smith has it in his signature.
Why do you trust those physicists when you do not apparently trust Lawrence Krauss, Carl Sagan, Lisa Randall, Neil Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Isaac Asimov?

No physicist would state the laws of physics are inviolate.

You can't even explain Tallis' arguments after all these years but insist he's a "damn fool" - I'd prioritize having the minimal ability to understand what people are talking about over triple checking some random quote Jim had in his signature. LOL

For my purpose in that post it doesn't matter really if Heisenberg said it, the point I was making just quoted him for brevity's sake. It goes back to the Lewontin quote I mentioned twice in this thread about how there is a desire to take non-theisitic claims at face value in order to keep science academia divorced from God. After a point, asking "why" and "how" leads to hypotheses that can include something like a god/God - this is a point the Nobel Prize winning physicist Josephson has made.

FWIW I've checked the Einstein thing a few times, IIRC you even accepted it on Skeptiko?

I didn't say I trusted those physicists, the arguments that convinced me are like the ones that convinced Sam Harris - they don't have to do with just gathering of data, given scientists believe all sorts of things while accepting the fundamental conclusions about uncovered Patterns in Nature (Bernardo is an Idealist who worked at CERN, for example. Penrose is a Platonist).

I just put the quote attributed to Heisenberg in context of what the "quantum fathers" were thinking.

Perhaps you could explain what the physicists you quote are saying - what is in their arguments that is convincing beyond them saying what you like to hear? I've looked at a few of them and it wasn't very convincing, Feser has pointed out their failures to grasp the arguments they challenge regarding God's existence.

And some like Tyson are often just silly:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Is a Black Hole, Sucking the Fun Out of the Universe


Surprised to see you mention Krauss though, like Carrier he seems to be another case of materialist-grounded morality being a failure?:

The Krauss Debacle: More Allegations Surface
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


(This post was last modified: 2018-04-10, 01:54 PM by Sciborg_S_Patel.)
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(2018-04-10, 01:52 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: You can't even explain Tallis' arguments after all these years but insist he's a "damn fool" - I'd prioritize having the minimal ability to understand what people are talking about over triple checking some random quote Jim had in his signature. LOL

For my purpose in that post it doesn't matter really if Heisenberg said it, the point I was making just quoted him for brevity's sake. It goes back to the Lewontin quote I mentioned twice in this thread about how there is a desire to take non-theisitic claims at face value in order to keep science academia divorced from God. After a point, asking "why" and "how" leads to hypotheses that can include something like a god/God - this is a point the Nobel Prize winning physicist Josephson has made.

FWIW I've checked the Einstein thing a few times, IIRC you even accepted it on Skeptiko?

I didn't say I trusted those physicists, the arguments that convinced me are like the ones that convinced Sam Harris - they don't have to do with just gathering of data, given scientists believe all sorts of things while accepting the fundamental conclusions about uncovered Patterns in Nature (Bernardo is an Idealist who worked at CERN, for example. Penrose is a Platonist).

I just put the quote attributed to Heisenberg in context of what the "quantum fathers" were thinking.

Perhaps you could explain what the physicists you quote are saying - what is in their arguments that is convincing beyond them saying what you like to hear? I've looked at a few of them and it wasn't very convincing, Feser has pointed out their failures to grasp the arguments they challenge regarding God's existence.

And some like Tyson are often just silly:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Is a Black Hole, Sucking the Fun Out of the Universe


Surprised to see you mention Krauss though, like Carrier he seems to be another case of materialist-grounded morality being a failure?:

The Krauss Debacle: More Allegations Surface

Ya, missed the points. Each and everyone that you and me listed are expressing their opinions (you got that?) on the existence of God. Point 2. You only choose scientists that agree with you.
Tallis is an idiot I'm my view because he refuses to acknowledge that consciousness is an emergent characteristic of the human brain.

Don't attribute a quote if you don't  know it's provenance, it's meaningless.

I doubt I misunderstood Albert.

P.S. Feser too is proferring opinion too.
(This post was last modified: 2018-04-10, 04:50 PM by Steve001.)
(2018-04-10, 04:22 PM)Steve001 Wrote: Tallis is an idiot I'm my view because he refuses to acknowledge that consciousness is an emergent characteristic of the human brain.
It isn't, though. That's not proven.
(This post was last modified: 2018-04-10, 04:43 PM by tim.)
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