patrick.net

As a simple to-get-us-started primer, the following is agreed upon by everyone on both sides of the argument. (though BOTH is a bad word to use...who knows how many sides there are?)....

Zeno's Paradox has always been lots of fun. If I walk halfway to the wall and then walk halfway to the wall again and again and again...although i'm always making forward progress, I never reach the wall.

Well, Quantum Mechanics has messed up everyone's philosophical fun. According to Quantum Mechanics...Yes, you DO reach the wall. When you reach the Planck length you are there. You cannot take another halfway step to the wall, because nothing exists between those two positions. In terms of cause and effect, we assume when something moves from point A to point B, that it moves continuously and fluidly between them. Now we know that space at these dimensions is quantized. There is a minimum length and a minimum time (Planck Time). An object in motion actually jumps from one position to the next, it does not move smoothly between them. There is no paradox because there is no such thing as infinity at that scale (possibly not at the macro scale either). The building blocks of our existence are granular. Some say "digital". Not necessarily because there is someOne out there running a simulation like the Matrix, but perhaps just because "granular" and quantized is the most EFFICIENT form of existence.

The Penrose paper discusses the physical limitations of the human brain in relation to these facts, and whether it is indeed possible at all for the physical firing of neurons and related electrical activity to be fast enough and complex enough to result in what we define as consciousness. Penrose is at odds with the Singularity crowd (like Ray Kurzweil and other computer science types) who believe that not only are all of the calculations necessary for our minds to exist possible within the single physical structure of the human brain, but that it is inevitable that we will reproduce it digitally (in the form of Artificial Intelligence) and that at the moment the "Singularity" occurs where there is no difference between the consciousness that results from our AI calculations and those within our own brains.

If you think the Singularity crowd sound as nutty and religious as the Consciousness crowd, you're not the only one. Ironically, both sides are stuffed full of atheists. Penrose included. It is the Quantum weirdness forcing them to these conclusions, not their fear of death. These are logical conclusions.

Is Measurement=Consciousness ?

uomo_senza_nome says

You believe that there may be truths or realities beyond science's comprehension. So you actually believe in something without any evidence whatsoever.

Actually it isn't anything in particular I believe. I just find it highly unlikely that there is nothing beyond our reach.

Some truths or realities could be beyond our reach in any one of a number of ways. For example physically beyond our reach as in other universes, or other so called "planes of existence." I know this sounds all "cosmic," or whatever, but that's only because I don't really have language to describe possibilities of realities or intelligence that are totally beyond my comprehension.

Humans long ago thought that the countries they lived in were the center of the world. Later they got to where they thought Earth was the center of the universe. Even now, some think as if there can't be anything beyond what we now know ?

You realize and assert that we can learn much more than we know now.

I'm taking it only one step further and saying that even when you take what we can know to it's limit, it seems likely that this is not knowing anything close to everything. Many great thinkers in science and philosophy have shared views similar to this, taking this more or less to be an obvious axiom.

It's basically acknowledging that humans are limited, and our potential is limited. Some even think of us as severely limited.

This is not an assertion of gods existence, or me falling on the word 'god' for things we don't understand, nor is it me hoping for life after this life. As I said:

marcus says

By the way about afterlife: I find it to be extremely unlikely that my ego, personality, memories, or anything that I think of as "I," will persist after I die. Logic helps me conclude this, but it's a belief. (but this semantics - believe versus conclude is not interesting to me).

Maybe the problem is again semantics.

Maybe to you, knowing "everything" would mean knowing everything that we can possibly know. I'm simply saying, why would that be everything there is ?

leoj707 says

In the full quote Dostoevsky's response to the idea actually sounds a little like a response you would write Dan...

Ah, another quote taken out of context. Yet more reason not to appeal to authority.

leoj707 says

Zachary says

Famous Scientists Who Believed in God...

And your point is?

It's another attempt to appeal to authority, which is a fallacy. Furthermore, most of the scientists quoted came from centuries where you'd be burned alive at the stake for coming out as an atheist. Funny how there were never any gay scientists until the 20th century as well. Come to think of it, no one was gay before the 20th century, if you go by what people claim to be when the Inquisition comes a-knocking.

Woo.

the drawing fails to show the next step of liberal thought, where the presenter of the baseball is made to prove the ball is a baseball, and then is attacked for pointing out the differences between types of balls.

And the Conservative Christian view might make sense like this: ... we see the baseball diamond, the bleachers, the baselines, the bases, the pitcher's mound, the pitcher's toe plate, the home plate, a team out in the field, a team in the dugout, a batter in the batter's box, a bat in the batter's hands, an umpire behind home plate, a crowd, an announcer, and everyone is looking at the pitcher's glove ... where we are pretty sure there is a baseball in there, and not a football or basketball, but we can't see it .... we just have faith that there is a baseball. Everything points to a baseball. Bob Uecker would be proud.

Bap33 says

the Conservative Christian view

LOL, that isn't "the conservative Christian view" (as if there were only one anyway), and in general their views are better summarized here:

"It’s almost as if these people are unaware that the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, various civil rights movements, and the entirety of social progress over the previous several centuries even occurred..."

In America or at least the GOP, "conservative Christian" has become a euphemism for divide and misrule. Everything in the universe doesn't really point to a baseball, nor a giant celestial teapot, although some Christians (unlike other religions) have sought "scientific proof" of Christianity. (I do take Marcus' point that the Templeton prize isn't expressly about Christianity, but only time will tell how they react to scientific disproofs of core elements, i.e. will they acknowledge that these lead to better understanding or will they react like the Vatican to Galileo.) If you can look upon your fellow human beings with love, then you can be said to understand the best of Christianity, but if you allow yourself to be caught up in a crusade to take away other people's marriages or their lives, then you've lost and your loss is the preachers' and politicians' gain.

We see crabgrass, infants dying of typhoid, that we're on a small arm of an average galaxy not centrally located at all, that religious people don't seem to live longer/better/happier lives than the non-religious, that all religious claims are non verifiable. Every prediction of religion: That we were the center of the universe/solar system, that prayer works better than medicine, etc. have been shown to be untrue. The measure of a theory's worth is it's predictive power.

Therefore, everything points to no deities.

But, like astrology, religion keeps trying to make a correct prediction, to find that hiding place for Yahweh. Now, apparently, it's in the behavior of subatomic particles. So the Triune Man-God Carpenter-Mountain Deity spend their time fiddling with the paths of particles, basically.

curious2 says

but if you allow yourself to be caught up in a crusade to take away other people's marriages or their lives, then you've lost and your loss is the preachers' and politicians' gain.

Care to elaborate?

freak80 says

Care to elaborate?

What part did you not get, the reference to the Crusades or Prop H8? I'll guess that you're familiar with the history of the Crusades, and thus answer with some links regarding Prop H8:

Poor saps donate life savings in favor of Prop 8

"We’re going to lose this campaign if we don’t get more money"

There Is a Dark Side to Mormonism

The campaign to pass [H8] is being organized primarily through churches and other houses of worship.

In every example, the syllogism is the same:
(1) We the preachers represent an omnipotent god who somehow needs your help;
(2) give us money and do what we say and you will be rewarded, or ignore us at your peril.
No refunds of course.

Conventional Logic: Non-metaphysics in your estimation.
Theistic: Metaphysics.

Philosophy= something that expresses itself through a life lived but the which has its principle in the mind for starters.
Are you than based off of your proposition above leading us to believe that because we cannot show "a philosophy" or an idea that it does not exist? That would be beyond fallicious. Philosophy and faith both can claim this. Theism like philosophy professes itself in a creedal way...it's propositions express itself "Incarnationally" through humans or through CREATION. I personally see evolution as a grand proof of God's existance and not of His non-existance. "Energy" is neither created nor destroyed according to thermodynamics...or as the Church Fathers would say "We are sparks off of the divine essence."