Philosophy Now Forum

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 3:15 pm All the evidence we have indicates that the universe existed before humans evolved - and, therefore, independent from humans

Evidence lol.

What amounts to "evidence" before humans existed?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 8:54 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Sep 01, 2023 5:38 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Sep 01, 2023 11:53 am Given that none of those you have presented so far have been persuasive (if anyone has been converted by Immanuel Can's efforts to date, please say so) do you not think it time to roll out something you have kept up your sleeve?

It depends on what you ask. It seems that people want to recycle the same debates. And maybe, as you say, that's because I'm insufficiently clear or persuasive. Maybe.

It's not you that is insufficiently clear or persuasive, nor is recycling the same debates limited to this forum. The work of Behe, Meyers, Dembski, Swinburne, Plantinga, Lane Craig and a host of others is all recycling the same debates, tweaking them to accommodate developments in science and logic - always following, never leading.

Well, what about the works of Newton, Bacon, Collins and Penfield? These are all leading Theistic scientists, not philosophers of science or apologists. And what about somebody secular, like Nagel or Kuhn? Are you going to argue that they, too, have no right to speak, since they only speak after science has done its work, and do not generate new science themselves? But the job of producing scientific results is not meaningful apart from the "following" task of interpreting them: and the people you list are solidly in the field of the debates over the implications of science.

One of the difficulties in science as a field is that those who do experiments are not always the most skilled at discerning the implications of their findings. If they were, things like alchemy and phrenology, to say nothing of the monkey-to-man embarassment, would never have happened. And we might add that scientists also tend to be terrible ethicists -- Oppenheimer (the real guy, not the movie guy) being a stunning recent example of a scientist who simply had no interest in the ethics of his inventions. In rare cases, the best scientists are also the best philosophers: but in most cases, that's not so.

It is a very good thing we have after-the-fact thinkers of considerable accumen generating conversations about what pure science is doing: otherwise, we'd not only have limited scientific ethics but also no adequate understanding of scientific implications. And science itself thrives on such debate.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Sep 01, 2023 5:38 pmOr maybe it's because people choose their Atheism for reasons other than intellection, and thus intellection is unable to dislodge them from their commitments.

Either way, we shall see.

There may be some who do so,

Oh, a great many...there's no doubt. Dawkins, for example, reports he came to his Atheism at the ripe old scientific age of 17 years. If teenagers make good scientists or philosophers, we may suppose he came to his ideology for scientific reasons; but we may well suspect his "conversion" was a product of not much more than regular teenage petulance and resentment. And he's far from being the only such case.

I suspect that thoughtful men may become agnostic, but that only obdurate ones become Atheists.

but the main issue is that the arguments for God are only persuasive to those who will themselves to believe them - and you know it:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:50 am...you have to really want to know Him. He does not come and perform tricks to satisfy cynics.

Well, "want" is too strong a word for the case. What the Bible says is that a person who comes to God must a) believe that He exists, and b) suppose He could be One who rewards those who diligently seek Him. (That's in the book of Hebrews, actually) That seems very little to ask: that a seeker must at least think the Object of his search could be real, and that it could be a good thing to find Him. Absent those two beliefs, I can't even see how a person would even start searching for God.

It's not how Freud thought it was: that religion is just a "wish fulfilment fantasy," and Freud gave us nothing to support the suggestion that it was. In fact, Freud's argument works just as well (or even better) as an indictment of Atheism: "you only believe because you want there to be a God" works just as well as "you only DISbelieve because you DON'T want there to be a God."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Sep 01, 2023 5:38 pmHow good are your a prioris?

Very good, I now think. Confirmation has come ex post facto. When I began, I was rather tentative about the whole thing, I confess: my "faith" was little more than a mustard seed size, I think. But it's become very robust in the wake of having lived for a few decades in light of the thesis, and I now have plenty of reason to be pleased with that initial decision.

The reasons it has to work that way are fairly straightforward: that relationship with God is the goal. And relationships require that the participants have particular attitudes to each other. On God's side, that's not a problem -- He can always have the right attitude. But on my side, there's less reliability; I can know there's a God and view Him with doubt, suspicion or even hostility. My realization that there IS a God does not take me so far as necessarily making me His friend. It might induce me, instead, to become merely a cringing slave to an overwhelming realization of His existence that I cannot fight or deny. The power imbalance between Him and me being what it is, He has to proceed carefully and gradually, so as to induce a relationship that's truly free-willed on both sides. Thus is it necessary, for my sake, that God remain at least somewhat concealed from me, especially at the first, so that I can make a free decision about what I want to do in relation to Him. But that concealment is temporary; and it need not last very long, as time goes: so soon as I have truly made a free decision, and as soon as I have developed a positive and trusting relationship with Him, He is able to become more generous in His self-revealing. And we find that He is just that -- a God who actually delights to make Himself known, but only to those who, in free and faithful response, desire to know Him.

Just because confirmations are hard to find at the start doesn't mean they're equally hard to find further down the road, you see.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 3:45 pm Just because confirmations are hard to find at the start doesn't mean they're equally hard to find further down the road, you see.

People find confirmations for all sorts of things... so what does confirmation really mean?

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 4:17 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 3:45 pm Just because confirmations are hard to find at the start doesn't mean they're equally hard to find further down the road, you see.

People find confirmations for all sorts of things... so what does confirmation really mean?

That's an very general epistemological kind of question. I'm speaking of personal confirmation, but there may well be something to be said for more general confirmation as well.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 4:23 pm

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 4:17 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 3:45 pm Just because confirmations are hard to find at the start doesn't mean they're equally hard to find further down the road, you see.

People find confirmations for all sorts of things... so what does confirmation really mean?

I'm speaking of personal confirmation

Me too. What are the implications of people having a wide range of personal confirmations?

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 5:22 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 4:23 pm

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 4:17 pm
People find confirmations for all sorts of things... so what does confirmation really mean?

I'm speaking of personal confirmation

Me too. What are the implications of people having a wide range of personal confirmations?

I don't understand what you're asking.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 3:27 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 1:44 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 9:16 am emerge to be realized as real within a FSR_FSK which is subject interacted

lmao

Before the noumenal object is percieved, it's just THERE.

Here, there, anywhere, nowhere, everywhere, somwhere. It's all mind-dependent talk.

Try again.

No it's not. I'm pointing to a noumenal object in noumenal space. Duh?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 5:38 pm

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 5:22 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 4:23 pm I'm speaking of personal confirmation

Me too. What are the implications of people having a wide range of personal confirmations?

I don't understand what you're asking.

Since there is no singular belief system arrived at from a vast range of confirmations all throughout humankind, isn't it reasonable to consider that the implication is that there's 'greater truth' larger than any/all of them?

Atla wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 6:07 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 3:27 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 1:44 pm
lmao

Before the noumenal object is percieved, it's just THERE.

Here, there, anywhere, nowhere, everywhere, somwhere. It's all mind-dependent talk.

Try again.

No it's not. I'm pointing to a noumenal object in noumenal space. Duh?

So that's mind-independent pointing, is it?



Welcome to the simulation.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point ... ogramming)

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 6:14 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 5:38 pm

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 5:22 pm
Me too. What are the implications of people having a wide range of personal confirmations?

I don't understand what you're asking.

Since there is no singular belief system arrived at from a vast range of confirmations all throughout humankind, isn't it reasonable to consider that the implication is that there's 'greater truth' larger than any/all of them?

Hmmm...well, you're making what's called "the bandwagon fallacy" again. It's the feeling people get that because a lot of people believe something, it becomes true...or more likely to be true. But we can easily see that it isn't: many people have believed many untrue things...sometimes for centuries. And no doubt, some of our beliefs widely held today are false. We'll see, I guess.

What confirmations of a personal nature anybody has, you obfiously cannot know. What you can know is that you can have your own personal experience of such confirmations -- providing you're willing to take the steps necessary to get them. But as I said before to Will, they are ex post facto of at least a modicum of good intention, and most particularly of the willingness to consider the possibility that God exists and will reward such a search. And then, of course, of the willingness to undertake the search on the terms God has provided.

Most Atheists, by becoming Atheists, have done their best to cut themselves off from such an opportunity at the very first post. They won't even consider the possibility that God could even exist, let alone that His intentions toward them could be beneficent and sincere. And if they have, there's not much that one can do for them, except hope that their Atheism is not indicative of a final commitment. If it is, they're just done for that.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 6:43 pm So that's mind-independent pointing, is it?



Welcome to the simulation.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point ... ogramming)

Of course it's mind-dependent pointing. But it points to the mind-independent. You're not very bright eh?

Atla wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:00 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 6:43 pm So that's mind-independent pointing, is it?



Welcome to the simulation.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point ... ogramming)

Of course it's mind-dependent pointing. But it points to the mind-independent. You're not very bright eh?

Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.

Anything being pointed to is a part being isolated from the whole. By a mind.

Which pointing-independent thing are you talking about, again?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:05 pm Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.

Anything being pointed to is a part being isolated from the whole. By a mind.

Which pointing-independent thing are you talking about, again?

A mind can point outside itself to the noumenon.

Yes you didn't quite catch that, because you've been missing the obvious your whole life.

Atla wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:15 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:05 pm Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.

Anything being pointed to is a part being isolated from the whole. By a mind.

Which pointing-independent thing are you talking about, again?

A mind can point outside itself to the noumenon.

Yes you didn't quite catch that, because you've been missing the obvious your whole life.

Yeeees, I bet you think the world comes pre-categorized.

All in nice, neat, discrete boxes for you to point out.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:18 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:15 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:05 pm Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.

Anything being pointed to is a part being isolated from the whole. By a mind.

Which pointing-independent thing are you talking about, again?

A mind can point outside itself to the noumenon.

Yes you didn't quite catch that, because you've been missing the obvious your whole life.

Yeeees, I bet you think the world comes pre-categorized.

All in nice, neat, discrete boxes for you to point out.

No, the world doesn't come pre-categorized. Try again