Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

...my view rather than yours:

But science is rather a special thing, with its own methodology.

No it isn't. It is a sprawling jumble of different practices, loosely held together by observation, measurement and experiment.

From the wikipedia page you cited and might one day read:
"Though the scientific method is often presented as a fixed sequence of steps, these actions are better considered as general principles. Not all steps take place in every scientific inquiry (nor to the same degree), and they are not always done in the same order."

I don't really see that we're disagreeing. I didn't suggest that the scientific method had no options or flexibility, nor do I suppose you're saying it's just some undisciplined thing with no rules at all. I think we're merely discussing the essentials.

...as far as I know, Ibn al-Haytham not explicitly stating that his method should define science; that level of presumption does seem to originate with Francis Bacon.

Presumption? I would rather have thought it was a service to science to point out that one's method was not simply a choice among many, but could rather be adopted more generally, with such great results as Baconian method was. It certainly was a key spark to the Industrial and Technological Revolutions, of which we are today the inheritors and beneficiaries.

But perhaps that's the difference. Bacon recognized science as a methodology, but Al Haytham did not. That would account for the similarities in their methods, but also in the lack of any systematic methodology from Al Haytham that could inform the larger scientific community.

I'd also be interested in what his metaphysical assumptions were. With Bacon, they were certainly Theistic. Al-Haytham seems to have been a regular Muslim, so also a monotheist, one would have to presume, no? And unless he was a very atypical Muslim, that would represent a different variation, but would not undermine Whitehead's Hypothesis.

I have never heard of Whitehead's Hypothesis; nor could I find any reference to it. Do you have one?

His theory's spelled out in Science and the Modern World (1925). I apologize that it's a rather demanding text. To make it as simple as I can, for general understanding, I would offer this short quotation:

When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilisations when left to themselves, there seems but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality. Remember that I am not talking of the explicit beliefs of a few individuals. What I mean is the impress on the European mind arising from the unquestioned faith of centuries. By this I mean the instinctive tone of thought and not a mere creed of words.

In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect on instinctive habits of mind. Any definite occurrence might be due to the fiat of an irrational despot, or might issue from some impersonal, inscrutable origin of things. There was not the same confidence as in the intelligible rationality of a personal being. I am not arguing that the European trust in the scrutability of nature was logically justified even by its own theology. My only point is to understand how it arose. My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.

The rest, you can certainly find here. Chapter 1 pretty much covers it. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68611/6 ... 8611-h.htm

Whitehead or not, science does not rest on the assumption of stability and laws and certainly not a god.

Well, see the above, and decide what you think of his argument.

If we decided to start the history of scientific methody with Al-Haytham, Whitehead would still seem to be on good ground, in that regard.

It doesn't do much for your contention that science would not exist but for Christianity.

It does for Theism more generally. And Islam being evidently a false form of Theism, one has only one option left, one would think.

[Gary Childress]

What would be an open system?

The Earth.

So, you're saying that the universe is a closed system, but the earth is an open system.

Supposedly the universe is thought to be a closed system that does not acquire energy from other sources outside itself. All the energy in the universe is all the energy that the universe has. The same cannot be said of the Earth. The Earth can receive energy from the sun and other high energy sources and that energy is used by life on Earth to create more and more complex forms. That's my understanding of the 2nd LTD. It is not the case that it is impossible for order to arise in the universe. It doesn't contradict the theory of evolution in other words. I assume that's what is trying to be said. But the 2nd LTD does not negate the possibility of the theory of evolution to my understanding.

[iambiguous]

When consciousness is absent, so are identity and morality.

Yes. Because all three are mind phenomena. But "brain" remains. A corpse is simply a body and brain without a mind in it.

Anyway, I'm not going to concede that consciousness is supernatural, because I don't want to have to stop believing in it, or even worse, start believing in God.

Yo, IC!

Just for the record, I'm practically with you here. But only to the extent you are actually able to demonstrate that the Christian God does reside in Heaven as surely as the Pope resides in the Vatican.

If He does, then that gives me access to moral commandments here and now. And then for all the rest of eternity, access to immortality and salvation.

If the Christian God is "supernatural", so be it. Show me that based on substantial historical and scientific evidence He does exist and I'll accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior in a heartbeat.

Still nothing from Craig and the Reasonable Faith folks. How about you contacting them and inviting them here: viewtopic.php?t=40750

[Immanuel Can]

Yo, IC!

Be interesting, or be gone.

[iambiguous]

Yo, IC!

Be interesting, or be gone.

So, it doesn't strike you as "interesting" to explore my reaction to your own assessment of Craig's videos? After all, unlike any number of atheists here who seem utterly dismissive of religion and even contemptuous of those who believe in God, polemics aside, I'm really not one of them. I truly want to believe again. Otherwise, I go to the grave convinced that my own life is essentially meaningless and purposeless on the one hand, and ends in oblivion on the other.

It just doesn't make any sense that someone who sincerely believes that beyond a leap of faith or "it says so in the Bible", mere mortals do have access to actual substantive evidence that the Christian God does exist. Yet this part -- saving souls -- seems to be of lesser importance to you than yammering on and on up in the didactic clouds with others intent on pinning down the...philosophy of religion?

[Harbal]

After all, unlike any number of atheists here who seem utterly dismissive of religion and even contemptuous of those who believe in God, polemics aside, I'm really not one of them. I truly want to believe again. Otherwise, I go to the grave convinced that my own life is essentially meaningless and purposeless on the one hand, and ends in oblivion on the other.

Can I ask what purpose and meaning your life has when you believe in God?

[Dubious]

I truly want to believe again. Otherwise, I go to the grave convinced that my own life is essentially meaningless and purposeless on the one hand, and ends in oblivion on the other.

Such distinctions wouldn't exist or even be necessary if you simply lived your life without seeking to qualify it according to some purpose which doesn't exist. Existence, per se, never required a purpose for itself to be. Why, therefore, make the assumption that any particular manifestation of it would have its own inherent purpose somehow ingrained within it? Nature's designs don't conform to any such thing. No idea why that would bother anyone.

[Immanuel Can]

Yo, IC!

Be interesting, or be gone.

So, it doesn't strike you as "interesting" to explore my reaction to your own assessment of Craig's videos?

Not even slightly.

[Walker]

Supposedly the universe is thought to be a closed system that does not acquire energy from other sources outside itself.

Not according to Kahn because the universe has no surroundings, which means the definition of closed system doesn't apply to the universe, which makes it an isolated system in which the items inside the system can only exhange energy and matter with each other.

An open system can exchange both energy and matter with its surroundings. The stovetop example would be an open system, because heat and water vapor can be lost to the air.
A closed system, on the other hand, can exchange only energy with its surroundings, not matter. If we put a very tightly fitting lid on the pot from the previous example, it would approximate a closed system.
An isolated system is one that cannot exchange either matter or energy with its surroundings. A perfect isolated system is hard to come by, but an insulated drink cooler with a lid is conceptually similar to a true isolated system. The items inside can exchange energy with each other, which is why the drinks get cold and the ice melts a little, but they exchange very little energy (heat) with the outside environment.

Therefore:

Earth = closed system
Universe = isolated system

I assume that's what is trying to be said.

Who is trying to say what you said is trying to be said? You?

[Dubious]

The context here has been a vehement difference of opinion between the worldview of Immanuel Can, which also includes reasoning techniques and propensities, and that of a group operating on this forum which quite simply cannot see things as he sees them. One has to define what, exactly, he is seeing, and also what his *reasoning techniques* are, in order to nail down the precise quality of his viewpoint. So we can say, fairly, that he is a *Bible literalist* which means that he takes every biblical account as a *history*. But what is the fuel or the empowering agent standing behind and lending conviction to these literalisms? Well, whatever he means by the world *faith*.

One of the major differences between us, I regard IC and his type, of which there are many millions, as write-offs of no value whatever in offering any new or interesting insights. You regard him as a mystery; I perceive him as severely mentally inhibited in not ever allowing for other views, whether they be facts or not, to at least allow a reconsideration of what is offered. His responses depend solely on simple negation, complete distortion, and total neglect of the most fundamental questions and arguments presented. These techniques, if one may call it that, are the easiest to employ in refuting any argument regardless of its merit.

It's a serious waste of time and a major misconception to ever take someone like that seriously. These types have nothing to offer except what some scripture tells them in the most absolute terms, every non-conformist doomed to perdition. It's an old, stupid story whose success relies on highly organized cultist groups capable of infecting others for their triumphs.

Recently, I have kept a focus on the literalist description of both a Garden, a Couple, and the most important element of this symbolic picture, The Fall. What interests me about the notion of a Fall, or put another way what I am not inclined to dismiss (in absolute terms) as *unreal* and *non-valuable* is the connotation of a fall.

Considered in connotational terms which can incorporate many meanings, neither would I be inclined to dismiss it. It's much more interesting and insightful as an allegory holding variables of meaning relating to human nature itself. Taken literally, it's the story of an idiot god who gave humans a brain and then ordered them not to use it.

How then could I hold to, entertain, contemplate, or let's say deal on a spiritual level, with the ideas that stand behind the notion of a Fall which is, I must note, a universal concept and not only a Christian one? The answer is by resorting to what I call a metaphysical way of thinking. Or to engage with the sense of the idea through allegory and metaphor. But what else? What I notice is that the destruction of a *picture* such as that of The Fall of Man, by we moderns who in different ways are acute literalists, seems to me to result in the destruction of what I might refer to as fancy and imagination (these were topics Coleridge wrote about and were of concern to him). Obviously, I am referring on one hand to the value or the importance of *poetic value* but also to a type of mental and spiritual means or method of being in the world; seeing things; as well as connecting things through an associative activity. So I could drop the notion of metaphysics as *otherworldly* or *supernatural* or as being, somehow, an unreal part of human experience.

What you describe here is opposite to any enforced belief system which lobotomizes the brain allowing it to think in one direction only. The metaphysical or symbolical, in contrast, as denoted here, is unique in its ability to flow and glide conceptually from one plane to another which is precisely the quality imagination imposes upon a mind which mandates itself to think and grow. It was the snake which fired up the imagination in Eve to transgress the boundaries imposed upon her and hubby. But prior to the advancement into a domain of spirituality is the physical itself from which the former emerges. Taken from that perspective, its incipient layers get subsumed into its meta-edition to breach the confines of that which allowed for its existence.

You have often used phrasing like this: "using imagination [to create] supernatural scenarios of all kinds and all types". What you have done, and this is something central to your way of thinking and seeing and I have no interest in arguing against it, is to have asserted that these *scenarios* are created.

...and why not? From prehistory forwards, it's been our function to create, where every physical manifestation was first sourced by it conceptualization and finally into conceptualizations which had no external manifestation but existed only as operational paradigms. Admittedly, the ability to create may also end in a cul-de-sac from which there is no exit, imagination frozen into scripture.

So, circling back around, and as always keeping the topic on what has been going on here locally, I recently said (but there is little animus in it) that Immanuel Can's mind functions at an *inferior* level. Why? What happened to him that he has decided that this brand of *realism* is the best way, and perhaps the only way, through which his soul can be saved? (And he says this is the most important thing: getting saved).

I don't know. Perhaps, in the future, a CT scan of the brain will reveal the root for the absurdities communicated by the IC types. The brain is beyond bizarre in its ability to reorder reality into non-existent domains. Only from a clinical perspective are these types interesting, i.e., what it says about the brain itself and the nature of consciousness; how the brain is not only a reality machine but also one capable of grossly distorting it.

You see, what I notice is that Immanuel Can's mind, like all of our minds (it is a question of degree) imitates a machine eye. It is a kind of seeing (perceiving, interpreting) that has few moving parts. It corresponds (this is my speculation) to mechanical ways of seeing that are common today. He is attempting to apply a realistic-oriented science model (to see things as they are, and not to embellish) to his faith-position in Bible literalism.

...and whenever those spurious concatenations fail, which is always, he simply ignores all the main arguments against it. It's not only that his views are a dead end; he brings all resistance against them to an equal dead end.

As I say: He does more to destroy a *conceptual pathway* to an appreciation of the value-content in Christianity (and there is a great deal) by his insistence that there is only one way (his way) to look at it. And in this sense he is in a condition in which *higher meaning* has actually been destroyed and this corresponds to the perceptual-situation of many of those who is locked into Mortal Combat with, a a new Literalist Man.

I can only say amen to that.

immanuel Can is, for me, an obstacle that requires a transcendent leap. I admit that I am not very adept at it, but then my condition is not that different from all of our condition. In order to resolve the *discordancies* that have twisted Immanuel into a strange postmodernist Christian pretzel, I have to cross internal barriers.

To me, he's extremely easy to figure out; his responses are invariably streamlined into sameness and, with rare exceptions, responds as expected. What's not so clear is what caused the damage.

Being an obstacle only to himself, totally unrelated to any I may have, I require no such transcendent leap or any leap. If I do need one, a frog's jump would be enough.

[Gary Childress]

Supposedly the universe is thought to be a closed system that does not acquire energy from other sources outside itself.

Not according to Kahn because the universe has no surroundings, which means the definition of closed system doesn't apply to the universe, which makes it an isolated system in which the items inside the system can only exhange energy and matter with each other.

An open system can exchange both energy and matter with its surroundings. The stovetop example would be an open system, because heat and water vapor can be lost to the air.
A closed system, on the other hand, can exchange only energy with its surroundings, not matter. If we put a very tightly fitting lid on the pot from the previous example, it would approximate a closed system.
An isolated system is one that cannot exchange either matter or energy with its surroundings. A perfect isolated system is hard to come by, but an insulated drink cooler with a lid is conceptually similar to a true isolated system. The items inside can exchange energy with each other, which is why the drinks get cold and the ice melts a little, but they exchange very little energy (heat) with the outside environment.

Therefore:

Earth = closed system
Universe = isolated system

I assume that's what is trying to be said.

Who is trying to say what you said is trying to be said? You?

OK. Well anyway, as I say, the 2nd LTD doesn't preclude the process of evolution happening in a part of the overall system, from my understanding. So I'm not sure, then, why IC was bringing it up or how it relates to atheism vs theism.

[Skepdick]

OK. Well anyway, as I say, the 2nd LTD doesn't preclude the process of evolution happening in a part of the overall system, from my understanding. So I'm not sure, then, why IC was bringing it up or how it relates to atheism vs theism.

It's not about preclusion. It's about the explanatory gap in the categories.

If all evolutionary processes are open systems and the universe is NOT an open system the question remains. How do open systems emerge from a non-open system?

Is the universe even comprised of systems; and systems of systems or is it just one giant, unified, whole system that can't be broken down into constituents?

[Gary Childress]

OK. Well anyway, as I say, the 2nd LTD doesn't preclude the process of evolution happening in a part of the overall system, from my understanding. So I'm not sure, then, why IC was bringing it up or how it relates to atheism vs theism.

It's not about preclusion. It's about the explanatory gap in the categories.

If all evolutionary processes are open systems and the universe is NOT an open system the question remains. How do open systems emerge from a non-open system?

Is the universe even comprised of systems; and systems of systems or is it just one giant, unified, whole system that can't be broken down into constituents?

Is there something that says open systems cannot emerge from non-open systems? I mean, there is supposedly no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Our universe is all we have that we are aware of and it appears to have a finite amount of time in which there can be life. Hopefully, the end will be a long way down the road. Right now, all we have is the earth and we need to be better custodians of it. I suggest people cut back on creating children. Otherwise, we're going to burn through our resources rather quickly.

[Skepdick]

Is there something that says open systems cannot emerge from non-open systems?

Yes. The social norms of philosophy: deductive logic.

If the premise/input (starting condition) has some inherent quality that is its "closedness" and the conclusion/output (resulting condition) loses that quality then the transformation is not quality-preserving.

It's the same as getting black-and-white photos from a colourful subject. Something's lost in the process.

What's lost is logical validity. Continuity.

Somewhere in this transformation color becomes non-color. Closedness becomes non-closedness. X becomes non-X.

[Gary Childress]

Is there something that says open systems cannot emerge from non-open systems?

Yes. Deductive logic. If the "premise" (starting condition) has some inherent property that is its "openness" and the "conclusion" (resulting condition) loses that property then the transformation from open to non-open is not property-preserving.

It's the same as getting black-and-white photos from a colourful subject. Something's lost in the process.

What's lost is logical validity. Continuity.

What do you mean? How is logical validity lost? How does logic tell us that an open system cannot emerge within a non-open system? The world is what it is and it is either that life has a finite time in the universe or it does not. How does logic tell us one way or the other which is the case?