Philosophy Now Forum

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 4:57 am

No worries, always a pleasure to chat with you, even though you have too much faith in a simple form of universe.

Well, you know, in my mental domain, simplicity rules which is the reason I haven't advanced beyond the kindergarten version of quantum theory!

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:04 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 4:57 am

No worries, always a pleasure to chat with you, even though you have too much faith in a simple form of universe.

Well, you know, in my mental domain, simplicity rules which is the reason I haven't advanced beyond the kindergarten version of quantum theory!

I think maybe I should have used "simpler" form of universe! I think it was Sean Carroll I heard say if anyone tells you they understand quantum mechanics they are lying..

My point was that the universe, or at least our perception of reality is more complex, that it does have an intelligence operating at its fundamental core. It does fly in the face of occam's razor, God's existence only raises more questions rather than answering any - when it comes to physics.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:11 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:04 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 4:57 am

No worries, always a pleasure to chat with you, even though you have too much faith in a simple form of universe.

Well, you know, in my mental domain, simplicity rules which is the reason I haven't advanced beyond the kindergarten version of quantum theory!

I think maybe I should have used "simpler" form of universe! I think it was Sean Carroll I heard say if anyone tells you they understand quantum mechanics they are lying..

My point was that the universe, or at least our perception of reality is more complex, that it does have an intelligence operating at its fundamental core.

Perhaps! My impression is that the laws under which the universe operates gives the impression of intelligence. Since laws require organization it's easy to regard the universe as guided or driven by an intelligence which may yield a purpose for its existence...which I absolutely do not believe.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:20 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:11 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:04 am

Well, you know, in my mental domain, simplicity rules which is the reason I haven't advanced beyond the kindergarten version of quantum theory!

I think maybe I should have used "simpler" form of universe! I think it was Sean Carroll I heard say if anyone tells you they understand quantum mechanics they are lying..

My point was that the universe, or at least our perception of reality is more complex, that it does have an intelligence operating at its fundamental core.

Perhaps! My impression is that the laws under which the universe operates gives the impression of intelligence. Since laws require organization it's easy to regard the universe as guided or driven by an intelligence which may yield a purpose for its existence...which I absolutely do not believe.

Fair enough. What's the main reasoning you have that there is no intelligence behind what we perceive of reality?

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:28 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:20 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:11 am

I think maybe I should have used "simpler" form of universe! I think it was Sean Carroll I heard say if anyone tells you they understand quantum mechanics they are lying..

My point was that the universe, or at least our perception of reality is more complex, that it does have an intelligence operating at its fundamental core.

Perhaps! My impression is that the laws under which the universe operates gives the impression of intelligence. Since laws require organization it's easy to regard the universe as guided or driven by an intelligence which may yield a purpose for its existence...which I absolutely do not believe.

Fair enough. What's the main reasoning you have that there is no intelligence behind what we perceive of reality?

...for one thing, there is no intelligence implied in all of physics which requires an external lawgiver. If there were an Intelligence which likewise presupposes a purpose behind the whole facade, an overlord entity would be mandatory to supply it at which point science ceases creating a barrier beyond which no discovery is possible.

Wherever or whenever a god is involved a mental cul-de-sac emerges and proves to be our greatest limitation. God as Cause remains a remnant of an ancient imagination which has more to do with poetry than the hard facts of prose. Whenever I wrote poetry eons ago god in some form was usually included, counter to prose when the god concept itself disintegrated into a nonentity.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:28 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:20 am

Perhaps! My impression is that the laws under which the universe operates gives the impression of intelligence. Since laws require organization it's easy to regard the universe as guided or driven by an intelligence which may yield a purpose for its existence...which I absolutely do not believe.

Fair enough. What's the main reasoning you have that there is no intelligence behind what we perceive of reality?

...for one thing, there is no intelligence implied in all of physics which requires an external lawgiver.

External to what?

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 amIf there were an Intelligence which likewise presupposes a purpose behind the whole facade,

I don't think it does...although as an individual to learn the TRUTH of it seems a reasonable quest. (ya know, through lifetimes of being tested).

I once asked it what it wants from me, from us..."I learn from you" was the reply.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 am..an overlord entity would be mandatory to supply it at which point science ceases creating a barrier beyond which no discovery is possible.

I don't understand that, maybe because I chopped it up!

Personally I am not certain that this intelligence some call God is sentient. Intelligent certainly, but perhaps it's not conscious....until it became human. (fuck nose)

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:36 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:28 am

Fair enough. What's the main reasoning you have that there is no intelligence behind what we perceive of reality?

...for one thing, there is no intelligence implied in all of physics which requires an external lawgiver.

External to what?

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 amIf there were an Intelligence which likewise presupposes a purpose behind the whole facade,

I don't think it does...although as an individual to learn the TRUTH of it seems a reasonable quest. (ya know, through lifetimes of being tested).

I once asked it what it wants from me, from us..."I learn from you" was the reply.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 am..an overlord entity would be mandatory to supply it at which point science ceases creating a barrier beyond which no discovery is possible.

I don't understand that, maybe because I chopped it up!

Personally I am not certain that this intelligence some call God is sentient. Intelligent certainly, but perhaps it's not conscious....until it became human. (fuck nose)

It's 2:50 am. I'm hitting the sack. What's the fuck nose all about?

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:50 amIt's 2:50 am. I'm hitting the sack. What's the fuck nose all about?

Mmm. It's a long story since 1997 to explain all the "he knows" being called out, with people rubbing their nose..

Sorry, I feel I should not use expletives with you, i know it's 'frowned' upon in the US.

Good night.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 am Wherever or whenever a god is involved a mental cul-de-sac emerges and proves to be our greatest limitation. God as Cause remains a remnant of an ancient imagination which has more to do with poetry than the hard facts of prose. Whenever I wrote poetry eons ago god in some form was usually included, counter to prose when the god concept itself disintegrated into a nonentity.

This seems so. One might, or might as well, propose a god-designer, but since no proof is nor will ever be available, the belief is in that sense a poetical choice.

But a “religious” choice to define a god is more than merely poetic, or the poetic is more than merely poetic whimsy, since so much hinges on religious-cosmological definitions.

A depth-study of Shakespearean cosmological concepts (late Scholasticism and borderline scientific) makes this plain. A “world of value” emerged from it and we still live within that world.

But to uphold the conventional religious mythology today (in the case of our own culture’s Hebrew-based Christianity) is certainly a dead-end intellectually as IC makes extremely evident — that much is clear.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 1:21 pm

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 am Wherever or whenever a god is involved a mental cul-de-sac emerges and proves to be our greatest limitation. God as Cause remains a remnant of an ancient imagination which has more to do with poetry than the hard facts of prose. Whenever I wrote poetry eons ago god in some form was usually included, counter to prose when the god concept itself disintegrated into a nonentity.

This seems so. One might, or might as well, propose a god-designer, but since no proof is nor will ever be available, the belief is in that sense a poetical choice.

But a “religious” choice to define a god is more than merely poetic, or the poetic is more than merely poetic whimsy, since so much hinges on religious-cosmological definitions.

A depth-study of Shakespearean cosmological concepts (late Scholasticism and borderline scientific) makes this plain. A “world of value” emerged from it and we still live within that world.

But to uphold the conventional religious mythology today (in the case of our own culture’s Hebrew-based Christianity) is certainly a dead-end intellectually as IC makes extremely evident — that much is clear.

Jacobi, IC fundamentalism aside, if you seriously think that Christ (based on a nice cup of tea and a Jew wish) is a dead-end you are intellectually flawed.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 1:37 pm Jacobi, IC fundamentalism aside, if you seriously think that Christ (based on a nice cup of tea and a Jew wish) is a dead-end you are intellectually flawed.

Those who have, over centuries and millennia delved into “relationship with Jesus” (and also with saints and also angels — it is quite involved) — relate the tales of that relationship. Take St John of the Cross as one example. He said things like:

“Contemplation is nothing else but a secret, peaceful, and loving infusion of God, which if admitted, will set the soul on fire with the Spirit of love.”

“The soul that is attached to anything however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken the bird cannot fly.”

I could post a hundred quotes from different mystics and devotees of Jesus Christ.

But I could also submit quotes of those who delve into a relationship with Krishna (or more properly Krishna/Radha or Chaitanya) that have a similar, though distinct tone.

So “mystical relationship” is not something I deny or even dismiss.

But for me it does not end there. We in the Occident have been forced to see excavated out from under us the platform of coherent description of what God is. A mythology went up in smoke.

And what is left?

You are a man of a specific type. And clearly (though I or anyone may regard it as batty) you have a mystical (intuitive-artistic — even poetically rich) relationship. There is no sense in undermining that subjective relationship. It is infused in your personality.

But you are a absolutely non-traditional, utterly subjective heretic neo-Christian so far outside of traditional dogmatic and even historical forms as to be a totally unique case.

But this is (supposedly) a philosophy forum. And like it or not all those who write here could be described as post-Christian and, I think, strongly influenced by Heideggerian existentialism. A rediscovery of and a re-confrontation with BEING.

So by that I mean that we have to reconfront, through very different terms and say methods, the deciphering of what BEING HERE means.

It is likely that what I say here won’t make sense to you and you’ll launch into one of your subjective rambles (replete with images and word-games). But some reading here will, I think understand and possibly agree.

atto,

you are a absolutely non-traditional, utterly subjective heretic neo-Christian so far outside of traditional dogmatic and even historical forms as to be a totally unique case.

Don't feel bad: friendships and enemy-ships are not cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, affairs.

Yours, with IT, is what we all ought strive for.

The Russell, Bertrand reflection of the day.

"If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate law-giver. In short, this whole argument from natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have."

Note how god faces the same problem in the euthyphro dilemma. Only here, the problem is concerning how, if god wanted to create the best possible world, he would be able to decide what and how to do it, arbitrarily. That is to say, do it other than how creating the best world would be done. That's the problem. The fact that there is a 'certain way' a best possible world needs to be created, means that the laws are not arbitrary, not some whim of god's, and that god would not be free to choose or act differently in creating the best possible world. Same with the 'good' in the euthyphro. In this case it's a physics matter rather than ethics matter.

The reason why god gave the laws that he is alleged to have given in the universe is becuz he couldn't have given otherwise and still succeeded in creating the best possible universe. Meaning, he was logically obligated to follow the 'laws of creating the best possible universe'.

Discuss.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:19 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 8:28 am Fair enough. What's the main reasoning you have that there is no intelligence behind what we perceive of reality?

...for one thing, there is no intelligence implied in all of physics...

Now I know that you're not (nor never have been) interested in my metaphysics, but your statement above is a real hoot, Dubious.

Indeed, that's what I imagine an ant would think (if it could think, that is) about its surroundings as it traversed the vast surface physics of a 70-story office building,...

...or the metal wing of a 747 Jumbo Jet,...

...or the motherboard of your computer,...

...or as it negotiated a pathway through the jungle of hair on your arm.

From the ant's low conscious perspective, it would not be able to recognize the presence of intelligence even if it was laid-out right before its very eyes, let alone in that puff of Raid that ended its journey.
_______

Some deeply mystical religious experiences of the christian type could be described as kind of a surrender before an immense concentration of various existential anxieties. The feeling of mortality (the thought of dying), the indescribable suffering millions experience every day, the senseless wars, the social degeneracy everywhere, alienation, all this dread contracts into a singularity and the individual falls to his knees and pleads for something to help him. And this collapse before the unknown infinite is one of the sweetest experiences, don't kid yourself. And the fact that the christian secretly still considers that he/she might be wrong and that there is no 'god', sends him/her into an even more inward frenzied passionate state, ecstatic even. He/she denies it in an inner argument with himself/herself. It's a kind of madness that the mind makes of itself when suffering, mystery (ignorance and the unknown), knowledge of death and the hope and faith that it's all justified and for a reason, becomes finally overwhelming and he/she breaks. Usually in private.

Here's the thing tho. An intelligent adult human being can literally talk to god in his/her head and act as if this isn't a completely imaginary thing happening. I think it's something we retain in us from childhood. The ability to fantasize and pretend-act. The christian will also tell himself/herself that the belief in this particular god is not something entirely incredible and as a result is able to maintain the play-act (the personal relationship with G) without the personal embarrassment that would come with believing something one absolutely feels is indisputable nonsense.

In other words, the christian may doubt the existence of god a little but not entirely... not enough for him to count it as nonsense and feel embarrassed for believing it.

Bro i feel like i could beat Kierkegaard in an argument becuz i get down in there like he duz.