An argument foe Grand Design, maybe?

[Immanuel Can]

Spheres:

Got that dog yet?

Call me when you do.

[Greylorn Ell]

I was watching a discussion on whether the the universe is the way it is through design or by chance. The design theory is basically that the universe is such a complex entity and that for it to have evolved exactly as we see it, then it must have been designed. ...

Wait right there!! This is a non starter. Any designer has to be as remarkable, complex or ineffable as the creation. So you all you are doing is saying that the Universe is far more complicated and unbelievable than it already is.
Such a position requires no counter argument.

H.C.

You make an excellent point. The complexity of the designer is related to the commonly-selected designer's properties. It must know a lot of shit, enough to boggle the minds of a thousand Einsteins, Plancks, and Feinmans. After all, we are not writing so much about a designer-general, but about the classical omnipotent, omniscient creator of all things-- particularly the universe, whatever biological life we know about, mankind, and the human soul supposedly destined for an eternity or joy or misery according to the rules it chooses to follow.

Such an engineer/designer/God must possess extraordinary capabilities, so let's be honest enough to use the "God" label.

The traditional God-concept declares that God is a static being, always in existence, always knowing all things. But what if that is not the case?

Beon Theory describes a God who actually had a beginning, one of many entities coming into existence as the consequence of a catastrophic event, originally knowing nothing; thus powerless.

Your own life with its ongoing development of experience-based consciousness provides a useful analogy. You can do some things. I do not know your abilities in detail, but clearly you can compose literate and meaningful sentences. You are probably well-educated and well spoken, and have learned to earn a living to support yourself and perhaps others. Everything you know is what you have learned. Upon birth, you were not even conscious. Your body was sufficiently programmed to allow its survival, with the assistance of others.

Your primary attribute at birth was your potential for consciousness. With the gradual realization of that potential came the ability to learn, think, and create. As you learned, you became more complex.

Imagine a God (or several) born in a similar manner but without the support of other conscious entities, yet capable of self-deriving consciousness within a universe devoid of structure. Such an entity is clearly, by nature, a fundamentally simple being. It cannot possess anything akin to what we know of as a physical structure-- no brain, no body. After all, it was a long time away from figuring out how to create subatomic particles from the available dark energy.

The creators hypothesized by Beon Theory are the same kinds of entities that form the core, imaginative part of your own mind, and are inherently simple by nature, yet as complex as they choose to become.

Greylorn

[Greylorn Ell]

Greylorn:
I shall take the matter up with Roger Penrose's biographers. Consider me duly repentant on the question of mathematical notation.

You and I are good on "fine tuning," but I'm awaiting your rejoinder to earlier statements re: those properties.

What in particular, Greylorn?

I could point you to particular posts from a few days back, but feel that this would be a waste of time. You seem to be currently in the pearl-casting phase, and thus unprepared to address questions that involve your core beliefs. I'm hoping that after awhile you'll notice that the few ingested pearls eventually pass out via the ingestor's dorsal orifice, unchanged, and without effect. Perhaps then you can retrace this thread and move on to another conversational level. Or not, as per your choice.

BTW, I'd appreciate it if you did not include a reply to someone else amid your reply to me. Why? Most of the people who read this stuff are marginally competent readers, and will not mentally notice the change of addressee. Confused, many will associate me with material I did not write. I have enough credibility problems already.

Thank you.
Greylorn

[Greylorn Ell]

Beons being many specialized engineers coming up with a universe. As opposed to an omnipotent God who does all of the engineering by himself.

Yep, I get this.

But one has to wonder, if there are Beons, from whence the Beons?

For the one thing about the Supreme Being explanation is that, like it or not, it at least serves the function of providing a First Cause explanation. One can reject that explanation, of course, but it does have a "buck stops here" quality. And if we are looking for a causal explanation for the universe, a "buck stops here" explanation is precisely what we need. For otherwise, we get into an infinite regress, and an infinite regress does not provide any ultimate explanation at all.

So I would want to know how all these engineers -- clearly specialized and tailored to purpose -- came into being, and I would wish the explanation to have that "buck stops here" quality of finality. An infinite regress would be no explanation. It would just raise another, more basic question, the question of who made the Beons.

If the explanation for Beons is grounded in a Supreme Being, then "Beons" becomes merely an instrumental explanation...an account of how creation was done, (i.e. by mediation of Beons) but not ultimately why or ultimately by Whom. And then the Beons are contingent beings, just as we humans are contingent upon them.

Immanuel Can,

Your reply cancels my recent post re: pearls, so ignore that, and let's move on to the resolution of your excellent question.

All theories about the beginnings must start with the assumption of a miracle, namely the existence of something, the origin of which cannot be explained. Christianity's miracle is the existence of an almighty, omniscient God. Science's miracle is the existence of a cosmic micropea/singularity/or magical appearance of everything from nothing-- which bears a mysterious similarity to Christian beliefs that God created the universe from nothing.

Whatever, these assumptions share one characteristic in common: The precursor to the universe is a single thing or entity containing or capable of creating all the mass-energy in the universe and the physics principles needed to make them work in a coherent fashion.

It may be that the single-thing-at-the-beginning belief was adopted in accordance with the Occam's razor principle, but IMO it was foisted upon us by a brilliant crackpot, Hermes Trismegistus, who was kicked out of Greece several thousand years ago in a small boat that made it to Egypt, where he set himself up as a guru and convinced Pharaoh Akenhaten of his monotheistic God theory. His theory was soon rejected by Egyptians, but picked up by Hebrews and transported elsewhere. It is so popular that it now resides in the halls of "science" as Big Bang theory.

Beon Theory takes a different approach to the simplicity concepts of Occam's razor. Rather than assuming the miraculous pre-existence of a single, but extremely complex thing or entity, Beon Theory assumes the pre-existence of two simple spaces.

By simple, I mean that each space has only three fundamental properties:

1. Existence, implying non-creation, non-elimination.
2. The inherent manifestation of a single, simple force.
3. A boundary condition.

The relevant part of this hypothesis (for the purpose of this discussion) lies in the 2nd property of each, the manifestation of force.

Beon Theory hypothesizes that the force inherent in each of these spaces is a natural counterforce to the other.

One of these spaces (I've named it Aeon Space) is hypothetical. To my knowledge it has not been identified. I can only guess as to its properties, and so have fine-tuned the critical guess, property #2, to suit my theory. That does not sound too good at first; however, the existence of Aeon Space and its properties are empirically verifiable-- just not in my lifetime.

The other space has been known to science since Newton's work, but defined, sort of, as "energy." Its three properties are described by the Three Laws of Thermodynamics, thusly:

1. Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
2. Inelastic events in the universe take place in such a manner that they cannot be repeated by the same components involved in the first place. This is the law of entropy. It is the principle which determines that a glass of ice water in a normal room will reach the temperature of the room, although, theoretically, the ice could get colder.
3. From the first and second laws it is possible to calculate a lower boundary condition for energy, a temperature known as Absolute Zero. This temperature cannot be reached in any finite number of steps or processes.

A problem with energy, for the purposes of Beon Theory, is that its commonly known forms (heat, light, charge, mass, momentum, etc.) are all time-dependent. However, scientists have recently discovered a mysterious phenomenon they've correctly named, "Dark Energy."

Beon Theory hypothesizes that dark energy is a space onto itself, containing the core material from which other components of the universe are structured. The Three Laws are all time-independent. They apply to dark energy.

Aeon Space is a different thing. I know nothing about it and can only guess. I don't apologize for my ignorance. After all, energy has been investigated by a variety of excellent physicists since the publication of Newton's Principia, yet its most fundamental form was only discovered about a decade ago. Beon and the space that gave birth to it have only been theoretically discovered (exactly as the "energy" concept began), and have yet to be scientifically investigated. Understanding awaits.

Essential to Beon Theory: Aeon space's natural force property is a counterforce to dark energy's similarly natural 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This means that if the two independent spaces happen to collide, a serious explosion will result. Aeon will be split into individual components, beons. Of course I hypothesize that such a collision did occur, the real Big Bang, long, long before the universe went under construction.

Thus beons came into existence as the result of a natural and inherently simple process, involving two independent, simple, non-complex, and non-conscious spaces. The buck stops at the existence of those spaces.

[Greylorn Ell]

Spheres:

You mean to say, "for existence of the only form of life we're aware of," surely.

Nope. I mean things like this: that if the strong and weak forces in the atom were different, it would fly apart or collapse. The precise balance they have keeps the darn thing together. So if some fine-tuning variables were not very precise, there would be no life at all -- unless you can conceive of life existing without atoms.
Nope, you're phrasing that, as if for one to make it. Which is not a given! You try and stack the deck, with your god, before we start. There is no such thing as fine tuning, as it calls for a tuner. You have a mental block that prevents you from understanding chance, and that mental block, in your case, is called religion. Chance means exactly that, "chance."

"chance [chans, chahns]
noun
1. the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled: often personified or treated as a positive agency: Chance governs all." --dictionary.reference.com--

That with billions for stars in billions of galaxies the CHANCE that the particular combination of elements that just by chance allowed for this particular life to exist, was arbitrary, random, chance.

And you're missing the point. Having "conditions for life" doesn't give us "life." How life suddenly "emerged" from entirely non-living matter is one of the profound mysteries of Evolutionary biology...and that's pretty much universally conceded by Evolutionary biologists themselves. No one has the foggiest notion how it can be done. That's why they call life an "emergent property": because we have no clue how it could happen, and we can't produce conditions for it at all. "Chemistry" doesn't do it for us.
I saw a documentary that in fact did create some of the beginnings of life, where have you been.

But it really wouldn't matter anyway, because the facts surrounding the origin of life on planet earth and us of today are separated by 3.5 "billion" years +(PLUS):

"Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds. The earliest life on Earth arose at least 3.5 billion years ago,[6][7][8] during the Eoarchean Era when sufficient crust had solidified following the molten Hadean Eon. The earliest physical evidence of life on Earth is biogenic graphite from 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks found in Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from in Western Australia.[10][11]" --Wikipedia--

Did you read that? They found "biogenic graphite!" Do you know what graphite is? look no further than your pencil. Yes graphite is a crystallized form of carbon, I, a carbon based life-form say, to another one.

Finally, "conditions" don't just spontaneously create life. If you buy yourself a dog house, that doesn't mean a dog comes with it. It just means you have a dog house, so if any dogs ever appear you'll have a place to put them. But how you're going to get a dog is going to be entirely unrelated to the presence or absence of your dog house.
And this is probably the single most stupid thing you've ever said. At least that I've read. As it proves you have absolutely no concept of time, specifically 3.5 billion years +(plus).

And your answer to this shall prove it, without seeking reference material, tell me, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

S.O.B.

One of the cool things about using "chance" as an explanation for phenomena is that chance can be calculated using a known set of mathematical principles. That's what makes it a potentially useful scientific explanation.

We know that these principles are valid. Casino owners use them to make scads of money, provided by gamblers who ignore the math.

However, if the principle of chance is invoked as an explanation for something but the numbers are not calculated, the explanation is just bullshit. You might as well invoke God, or a gang of tooth fairies by way of explanation.

So I invite you to perform a simple calculation-- the likelihood of a single small 900-base pair human gene being assembled according to Darwinian principles, i.e. random chance.

To simplify this calculation we can make some modifications to the real problem. For example, we will forget about how a gene must grow in length by the insertion of three base-pairs, a complete codon, and pretend that it can grow one base-pair at a time without being tested in a real biological environment.

Then, there is the nasty problem of end-caps, the codons at the beginning and end of a gene that are essential to its proper translation and production of a specific protein molecule. We will pretend that the end-caps are (randomly, of course) added to a gene after it is fully assembled.

This implies that the random changes to the growing DNA strand will occur at the highly reactive terminal points, and that the finished gene cannot be tested by "natural selection" until it is fully assembled and capped.

These assumptions are highly favorable to Darwinian principles. They are also highly unlikely. Perhaps this will compensate for the fact that several codons will code for the same amino acid.

To make things easy for you, the relevant equation from probability theory is simple: P = n exp p. (n to the power p). "n" is the number of events to be included, which in this example is 900. "p" is the probability for one event. There are four different base-pair possibilities, so the probability for any one of them is 1/4, or 0.25. "P" is the net probability.

I invite you to perform this simple calculation, thus putting some real numbers behind your assertions. See what you think of the result. Don't be shy about sharing the result of your calculation, but please don't actually write out every zero appearing after the decimal point-- use the same crude form of exponential notation as above-- i.e. "exp" means that the next value is an exponent.

Then, just for fun, calculate the net probability for the random assembly of a complete 23,000-gene human genome. To simplify this work, feel free to use the 900 base-pair gene size, although the maximum size of a real gene is 1500 and the average is around 1200. Let us know how the result fits your common sense understanding of reality.

If you need help with the reality part of your scientific evaluation, a comparison might help. You'll find that the commonly accepted scientific standard for "absolutely impossible" is 10 exp -40.

Greylorn

[Hobbes' Choice]

Imagine a God (or several) born in a similar manner but without the support of other conscious entities, yet capable of self-deriving consciousness within a universe devoid of structure. Such an entity is clearly, by nature, a fundamentally simple being. It cannot possess anything akin to what we know of as a physical structure-- no brain, no body. After all, it was a long time away from figuring out how to create subatomic particles from the available dark energy.

The creators hypothesized by Beon Theory are the same kinds of entities that form the core, imaginative part of your own mind, and are inherently simple by nature, yet as complex as they choose to become.

Greylorn

Such a god can have no desire, no want, no needs. Though consciousness is a part of it, it is also apart from it; It is beyond consciousness. Such a thing is the necessity of cause and effect. It can no plan, nor does it engineer evolution or change. Such a thing is the inevitable unfolding of necessary forces. Why call it god?

[Immanuel Can]

Greylorn wrote:

You seem to be currently in the pearl-casting phase, and thus unprepared to address questions that involve your core beliefs. I'm hoping that after awhile you'll notice that the few ingested pearls eventually pass out via the ingestor's dorsal orifice, unchanged, and without effect.

Ah, but before passing judgment on the potential porcine proclivities of any interlocutor I always feel I owe him/her a shot at proving himself/herself unporcine. A fair chance seems, at least, to be warranted.

However, I admit I must remain attentive to the Biblical dictum on the disposition of jewelry, and so shall accept your rebuke. And yes, there has probably been sufficient time to discern whether further dialogue is likely to prove profitable in one or two cases...and yes, I concede it probably is not.

BTW, I'd appreciate it if you did not include a reply to someone else amid your reply to me... I have enough credibility problems already.

Fair enough.

[Immanuel Can]

Greylorn wrote:

Your reply cancels my recent post re: pearls, so ignore that, and let's move on to the resolution of your excellent question.

Thank you. Yes.

It may be that the single-thing-at-the-beginning belief was adopted in accordance with the Occam's razor principle, but IMO it was foisted upon us by a brilliant crackpot, Hermes Trismegistus, who was kicked out of Greece several thousand years ago in a small boat that made it to Egypt, where he set himself up as a guru and convinced Pharaoh Akenhaten of his monotheistic God theory. His theory was soon rejected by Egyptians, but picked up by Hebrews and transported elsewhere. It is so popular that it now resides in the halls of "science" as Big Bang theory.

This may be. But two things we need to bear in mind are as follows: 1.) Correspondence doesn't prove causality -- the fact that two similar things happen, or even that one happens then the other, does not conclusively show one is the cause of the other.

It's like the old joke about the blonde who goes to her doctor and says, "Doctor, every time I drink tea my eye hurts." And the doctor replies, "Take the spoon out of the cup." She pegs the cause as tea, because the two things happen successively...but tea is not the cause: a third thing is. So the existence of HT doesn't prove his causality (or invention) of monotheism. He may, in fact, have discovered it.

2) Its wrong to suppose that either a culture must have only completely wrong beliefs or completely right ones. An ancient culture could be possessed of many faulty beliefs, and yet some could -- even accidentally -- be true beliefs. In fact, I think that empirically that is the sociological situation we face in reality. Even in cultures we don't like/agree with/find rational, we still find individual beliefs that are good ones, and that remains true even if the overall package is toxic.

Poisoned apples are dangerous because they mix good and bad...if they were all bad, they'd be no danger to anyone.

Consequently to these two points, if HT did espouse monotheism, it would neither give us reason to think he "caused" that belief, and far less that he "foisted" anything upon anyone. It could be the case that the Jews discovered monotheism on their own. Or it could be they learned from HT, but in this case, that HT was simply right, despite being an ancient and perhaps being off in his other beliefs. So we just can't say without more data.

One of these spaces (I've named it Aeon Space) is hypothetical...the existence of Aeon Space and its properties are empirically verifiable-- just not in my lifetime.

Or maybe not. Absent empirical evidence, it is a faith position. But it a rightly privileged one, or a low-probability one? I guess that's the question, isn't it?

Understanding awaits.

Indeed. That, of course, does not mean you're wrong. It just means we can't tell right now, and have no means yet to do so. Fair enough.

Essential to Beon Theory: Aeon space's natural force property is a counterforce to dark energy's similarly natural 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This means that if the two independent spaces happen to collide, a serious explosion will result. Aeon will be split into individual components, beons. Of course I hypothesize that such a collision did occur, the real Big Bang, long, long before the universe went under construction.

Thus beons came into existence as the result of a natural and inherently simple process, involving two independent, simple, non-complex, and non-conscious spaces. The buck stops at the existence of those spaces

Not quite, I think. When we speak of "natural" processes, we are positing a pre-existing "nature." That's immediately problematic, since "laws" about how things like Aeons and beons must interact have already to be in place. So how did they come to be in place?

Whether we like it or not, the advantage of a supernatural explanation is that it can actually step to the end of the causal chain. I think you've perhaps just added one link, not terminated the sequence, since you're still looking to "natural" explanations. You're missing the consciousness that makes rational the original laws that make "nature" possible at all.

Or so it would seem. Thoughts?

[Arising_uk]

...
If Darwinism is really how DNA molecules developed, every distinct critter must have beaten those ridiculous odds. In order for biological life to exist, the same odds must have been beaten, independently, by every critter on the planet. If the odds against a pig's genome being assembled, Darwinian style, are 1 x 10exp-15,000,000, and if we figure that horses, tigers, elephants, giraffes, whales, bears, wolves, rats, and housecats are about the same, the probability for these 10 critters evolving Darwinian style is 1 x 10exp-150,000,000. ...

But you ignore that these critters pretty much share over 80% of their DNA? That the vast bulk of their genome was formed long before these critters evolved, we share 18% with yeast!

[Greylorn Ell]

Imagine a God (or several) born in a similar manner but without the support of other conscious entities, yet capable of self-deriving consciousness within a universe devoid of structure. Such an entity is clearly, by nature, a fundamentally simple being. It cannot possess anything akin to what we know of as a physical structure-- no brain, no body. After all, it was a long time away from figuring out how to create subatomic particles from the available dark energy.

The creators hypothesized by Beon Theory are the same kinds of entities that form the core, imaginative part of your own mind, and are inherently simple by nature, yet as complex as they choose to become.

Greylorn

Such a god can have no desire, no want, no needs. Though consciousness is a part of it, it is also apart from it; It is beyond consciousness. Such a thing is the necessity of cause and effect. It can no plan, nor does it engineer evolution or change. Such a thing is the inevitable unfolding of necessary forces. Why call it god?

H.C.

Perhaps if you explore the concept a bit further (my book does this, of course) you'll understand its depth and potential.

Desires and needs for beons at that level are an acquired taste, much like the exotic tastes that some humans acquire with time, practice, and influence, like raw oysters and liver and kinky sex.

A typical need for such entities is variety, especially in terms of incoming imagination. Beon is, by nature, a seeker and creator of information. Look at yourself, by way of example. Why are you on this forum exchanging remarks with someone with whom you disagree? That component of you is beon.

The component that insists upon the truth of its programmings and learnings is merely your brain.

I use the term "God" here so as to avoid linguistic obfuscation. My book defines my creator concept more precisely, and in it I use the term "Geon."

Greylorn

[Hobbes' Choice]

Imagine a God (or several) born in a similar manner but without the support of other conscious entities, yet capable of self-deriving consciousness within a universe devoid of structure. Such an entity is clearly, by nature, a fundamentally simple being. It cannot possess anything akin to what we know of as a physical structure-- no brain, no body. After all, it was a long time away from figuring out how to create subatomic particles from the available dark energy.

The creators hypothesized by Beon Theory are the same kinds of entities that form the core, imaginative part of your own mind, and are inherently simple by nature, yet as complex as they choose to become.

Greylorn

Such a god can have no desire, no want, no needs. Though consciousness is a part of it, it is also apart from it; It is beyond consciousness. Such a thing is the necessity of cause and effect. It can no plan, nor does it engineer evolution or change. Such a thing is the inevitable unfolding of necessary forces. Why call it god?

H.C.

Perhaps if you explore the concept a bit further (my book does this, of course) you'll understand its depth and potential. ....

Greylorn

Nope. Spinoza said all there needs to be said on this topic.
Read his Ethics, and you will not bother with the flim-flam man you are promoting.

[Greylorn Ell]

It may be that the single-thing-at-the-beginning belief was adopted in accordance with the Occam's razor principle, but IMO it was foisted upon us by a brilliant crackpot, Hermes Trismegistus, who was kicked out of Greece several thousand years ago in a small boat that made it to Egypt, where he set himself up as a guru and convinced Pharaoh Akenhaten of his monotheistic God theory. His theory was soon rejected by Egyptians, but picked up by Hebrews and transported elsewhere. It is so popular that it now resides in the halls of "science" as Big Bang theory.

This may be. But two things we need to bear in mind are as follows: 1.) Correspondence doesn't prove causality -- the fact that two similar things happen, or even that one happens then the other, does not conclusively show one is the cause of the other.

It's like the old joke about the blonde who goes to her doctor and says, "Doctor, every time I drink tea my eye hurts." And the doctor replies, "Take the spoon out of the cup." She pegs the cause as tea, because the two things happen successively...but tea is not the cause: a third thing is. So the existence of HT doesn't prove his causality (or invention) of monotheism. He may, in fact, have discovered it.

I.C.

I'll deal with your comments one at a time.

This one reminds me of an experience many years back where I needed to avoid a fight with someone who was upset that I'd made a mildly disparaging comment about some female-- a female whom he had previously described as ornery, not too bright, and not actually looking as sexy as she thinks she is. Why the squabble? It turned out that the female in question was his ex-girlfriend.

I'm in complete agreement about the correspondence-causality relationship, yet I cannot help but notice how well it works as a determinant of human behavior, and how effective it has been throughout the history of science. Had this relationship been ignored, for example, you'd not know of Louis Pasteur.

If a particular cause-effect sequence occurs once, it is likely to be coincidence. However, if the same sequence occurs repetitively, it is conveying useful information, e.g. your tea-drinking example.

When the scientific method is employed, repetitive correspondence does indeed prove causality and is a core component of the scientific method. Experiments must be capable of being duplicated before they are regarded as valid.

There are gradualist exceptions to this principle. For example, Big Al's prediction that starlight passing near to the sun would be bent by the sun's gravitational field. That was an absurd prediction, contrary to all conventional physics theory at the time. It was tested only because Al's math was awesome, and as we know, verified by experiment. That single experiment established the validity of General Relativity, but only because it had been suggested by the theory.

Suppose that the experiment had preceded the theory, that for the fun of it a crew of astronomers had set up a temporary observation post to measure the apparent position of stars whose light was passing close to the sun during a solar eclipse, and found that the stars appeared to be out of place. Would that experiment, by itself, have been hearlded as a scientific discovery? Of course not. It would have been ignored. Had its perpetrators been convinced of its validity and gone on to make similar observations as solar eclipses appeared around the planet, they'd have been ignored, dismissed as persistent crackpots.

There is no way to go from such an observation to the remarkable theory that predicts and explains it.

Evidence for that assertion? Before Einstein's time, astronomers had observed that the orbit of Mercury did not fit Newtonian mechanics. This observation did not lead them to relativity theory, which easily explained the orbit.

Now back to point. As a philosopher I don't give a shit about proving anything. That's not my job, and I do not have the requisite laboratory facilities. IMO philosophers who dip into science to make an argument are being ever so slightly phony, given what little science any of them have actually practiced. However, as someone with physics/engineering creds, I've engineered my philosophical ideas to fit observed reality, and assure that they are verifiable.

Scientists often get their ideas by examining cause-effect relationships, but most of them are dullards who ignore relationships they cannot explain. Roentgen's discovery of x-rays provides a fine example. He got onto the phenomenon by paying attention, wondering why images appeared on photographic plates that should not have been exposed. After the research and publication of Roentgen's discoveries, third-rate scientists crawled out of academia's woodwork, like cockroaches, claiming they'd been the first to discover x-rays because they'd observed spurious plate images long before Roentgen.

The discovery of X-rays offers an excellent example of the potential validity of cause-effect relationships. Dismiss such relationships at the risk of becoming one of the lurking cockroaches. Does that role really suit you? I'm hoping otherwise.

Finally, you wrote, " So the existence of HT doesn't prove his causality (or invention) of monotheism. He may, in fact, have discovered it."

I have several quibbles with this, and should precede them by noting that there is no evidence for HT's existence, just like there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. Neither of them wrote down anything that they supposedly taught. There is only lore, third-hand or derivative information about either of them. Yet, cults have formed around their alleged teachings.

I base my assertion that HT invented monotheism upon the writings of his surviving cult members, exactly in the same manner that Christians follow the writings of Christ's followers.

I do not "know" about the validity of this, but I appreciate a good story with a credible plot. I know that monotheism is attributed by modern scholars to Akhenaten, but I don't buy that. Kings don't have the time or energy to devise metaphysical concepts, but are noted for their susceptibility to cleverly presented influence. I'm going with HT, but it really does not matter. I really don't care about the origins of monotheism, for the same reason that I do not care about the origins of phlogiston theory, except as the origins of incorrect beliefs teach me about the peculiar processes going on within easily deluded human minds, mine included.

HT cannot have "discovered" monotheism, no more than LeMaitre "discovered" Big Bang theory or Darwin discovered how life evolved. The only things that can be discovered are those which actually exist. The rest is invention.

I prefer invention, because it requires imagination, for which the inventor must take responsibility. "Discovery" can be as accidental and as bogus as finding a rock from Mars perched atop the Antarctic snowpack, conveniently placed in the path of wandering geologists, or glancing into the mirror on the way out of a men's room and discovering an errant booger lodged in one's mustache. No imagination required.

Greylorn

[Greylorn Ell]

Human engineers do their work one item at a time. Before building a transistorized radio it was first necessary to manufacture a transistor. Large projects require the parallel efforts of many engineers, according to their abilities. The guy who programmed the Space Shuttle's computers was not the same guy who designed the rocket thrusters. And the guy who designed the fuel pumps for the thrusters never met the rocket or computer guys.

Beons being many specialized engineers coming up with a universe. As opposed to an omnipotent God who does all of the engineering by himself.

Ginkgo,

Pretty much right on!

Inasmuch as beons are accidental remnants of a dismantled space and not created by some higher entity, they will each have different propensities. Surely not all are engineers. I've never met an engineer who wanted to buy his girlfriend flowers, much less create such structures.

Greylorn

[Immanuel Can]

Greylorn wrote:

Why the squabble? It turned out that the female in question was his ex-girlfriend.

Nice. Diplomacy at its best. I'm vastly entertained.

I'm in complete agreement about the correspondence-causality relationship, yet I cannot help but notice how well it works as a determinant of human behavior, and how effective it has been throughout the history of science. Had this relationship been ignored, for example, you'd not know of Louis Pasteur.

If a particular cause-effect sequence occurs once, it is likely to be coincidence. However, if the same sequence occurs repetitively, it is conveying useful information...
Well, can I agree but modify? I would say if a cause-effect sequence occurs more than once it can increase the likelihood there's a common cause worth detecting; but what it still cannot imply is that we know what that cause is. In my example of the tea-drinking woman, she may have repeated her "experiment" a hundred times or one; but either way, her attribution of cause was simply wrong, and repeated trials increased her certainty she had a problem, perhaps, but led to no increased likelihood that tea was hurting her eye.

That's a distinction worth noting, I think.

Now back to point. As a philosopher I don't give a shit about proving anything.

Not even rationally? Not even to yourself?

Finally, you wrote, " So the existence of HT doesn't prove his causality (or invention) of monotheism. He may, in fact, have discovered it."

I have several quibbles with this, and should precede them by noting that there is no evidence for HT's existence, just like there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. Neither of them wrote down anything that they supposedly taught. There is only lore, third-hand or derivative information about either of them. Yet, cults have formed around their alleged teachings.

This is what I would call an unjust analogy. There are multiple sources and witnesses, plus written accounts for the latter, plus demonstrable after effects of His activities, and only speculation for the former. From a dispassionate historiographical perspective, the high degree of agreement in disciples' testimony has to be viewed as useful evidence and considered. After all, even today eyewitness testimony is enough to send a man to jail for life. So to reject coordinating testimony merely because it is from a bygone age would seem an arbitrary decision, especially if we continue to accept present-day testimony on a more generous footing, wouldn't you say? I dare say we would have little or no historical knowledge of any kind if we imposed so stringent a standard.

HT cannot have "discovered" monotheism, no more than LeMaitre "discovered" Big Bang theory or Darwin discovered how life evolved. The only things that can be discovered are those which actually exist. The rest is invention.

I don't disagree with your last two sentences. But I see no warrant for your first claim. It would be pure assumption to say "monotheism cannot be discovered," if it is an existent fact. That is, in fact, the important question.

Thanks for your lengthy and thoughtful reflections.

[Melchior]

Greylorn:
I shall take the matter up with Roger Penrose's biographers. Consider me duly repentant on the question of mathematical notation.

You and I are good on "fine tuning," but I'm awaiting your rejoinder to earlier statements re: those properties.

What in particular, Greylorn?

Spheres:

You mean to say, "for existence of the only form of life we're aware of," surely.

Nope. I mean things like this: that if the strong and weak forces in the atom were different, it would fly apart or collapse. The precise balance they have keeps the darn thing together. So if some fine-tuning variables were not very precise, there would be no life at all -- unless you can conceive of life existing without atoms.

And you're missing the point. Having "conditions for life" doesn't give us "life." How life suddenly "emerged" from entirely non-living matter is one of the profound mysteries of Evolutionary biology...and that's pretty much universally conceded by Evolutionary biologists themselves. No one has the foggiest notion how it can be done. That's why they call life an "emergent property": because we have no clue how it could happen, and we can't produce conditions for it at all. "Chemistry" doesn't do it for us.

Finally, "conditions" don't just spontaneously create life. If you buy yourself a dog house, that doesn't mean a dog comes with it. It just means you have a dog house, so if any dogs ever appear you'll have a place to put them. But how you're going to get a dog is going to be entirely unrelated to the presence or absence of your dog house.

Has no one ever explained to you the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions? Consider fertilization of an egg. The egg must be ripe (necessary), but without sperm you don't get little blue-eyed Jimmy. We know that life began spontaneously, because we know that there is no other possibility. "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015 ... -conundrum