Philosophy Now Forum

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:50 pm I resolve not to talk with you but about you.

As Oscar Wilde said, "There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about."

I won't bother returning the favour.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:54 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:29 pm I am trying hard to find the truth, sometimes I am sleepless because I know I might die tomorrow.

You might check out The 10-Week Email Course. We offer both dental and final burial plans (at sensible prices).

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:57 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:29 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 6:46 pm Why not "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die"?

I am trying hard to find the truth, sometimes I am sleepless because I know I might die tomorrow.

Well, here's two more profitable responses: one is to get over it and go to sleep, because you can't change it. The other is to do something in light of it. But worrying...that doesn't get you anything.

Don't worry, my journey has been very fruitful.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:04 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:50 pm I resolve not to talk with you but about you.

As Oscar Wilde said, "There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about."

I won't bother returning the favour.

Whether you personally respond or not is irrelevant, you quack. There is a wide readership here and the topics engaged in are participatory. Since you have no response, all the points made STAND.

You are incapable, intellectually, philosophically and even theologically, of returning the favor. To return the favor would be expressed by having a defensible, coherent position in combination with an honest methodology. The fact is that you do not have any substantial content to offer. I try to point out that you are a charlatan:

[French, from Italian ciarlatano, probably alteration (influenced by ciarlare, to prattle) of cerretano, inhabitant of Cerreto, a city of Italy once famous for its quacks.]

I do not and I cannot take you seriously and my recommendation is that no one do so. Rather, I recommend an examination of the trappings and costume that you assume. In your case it is pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-scientific. Or better put it is a travesty of science-method and, on another level, a travesty of modern theology.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:21 pm Whether you personally respond or not is irrelevant, you quack. ...a travesty of modern theology.

Ah, the rage of the impotent!

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:01 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:57 am You wanted to know how human beings could be produced by evolution,...

No. I wanted to know about evolution. I wanted to know how it could happen without gene mutation passing through a particular mating pair. And you can't seem to explain how would even be possible.

That's correct, I can't explain it, but whatever it is that you're asking, I'm sure there are people who can explain. The point is that you expected to be able to ask questions and get answers, but when you are asked a question that you can't answer you blame the question for your inability.

IC wrote:

Harbal wrote:...well I'm asking how they could be created by God. You are making a claim when you are unable to explain how it could possibly be true.

No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that God is the right explanation, the First Explanation; and if you want something prior to that, you're asking for something logically self-contradicting.

I'm not asking about anything prior to God. I'm asking how God just creates things like human beings out of nowhere. I appreciate that you might not know exactly how he did it, but in order to accept that he did do it, you must have some idea of how it could possibly be done.

IC wrote:

Harbal wrote:You wanted to know how evolution could produce human beings,

No. See above. Read it carefully, because you seem to be having trouble understanding it. Then I'll answer anything you want to ask.

What I want to ask is this; by what method/mechanism/technique/process does God just create things like human beings?

Supplementary question: You referred earlier to God as being the "first cause", but how do you know for sure that God wasn't caused by something?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:01 pm No. I wanted to know about evolution. I wanted to know how it could happen without gene mutation passing through a particular mating pair. And you can't seem to explain how would even be possible.

Here I can induce IC to demonstrate how his *question* is really a type of subterfuge to embroil those he engages with in futile diversions from the real issues. The real issues, as I say, have to do with human phantasy, with psychological complexes, with the way that fanatical religious modes of understanding bleed into our actual perceptions.

So I could present a model such as this one: Let's imagine Africa which is understood to be the origin of the human species. Take Australopithecus africanus. Let us assume that there were a limited number of tribes spread over some part of the continent. There were then numerous mating pairs even within one group. But with many different groups, many different mating pairs. One group -- perhaps over a 5,000 or 50,000 year time span -- might have evolved certain traits, some successful, some perhaps not, but there were combinations and then recombinations and exchanges of genetic stuff over millions of years. The notion of a sole *mating pair* is a fallacy.

Now, what possible gain is there to Immanuel's central argument is any of this about a "mating pair"? Obviously, the pair he envisions is not a pair as pictured above! Those pictured above do not appear within his mythological pseudo-science or pseudo-scientific theology.

What he pictures is this:



So, what will I gain from even referring to the *real picture* of hominids in African millions of years back? Like the creatures pictured in the first image? If I say there was no *original pair* but rather a *pool of pairs* which interchanged over millions of years, what effect could this have on Immanuel's desired objective? (That being to demonstrate the truthfulness of the Genesis story).

No effect at all.

For this reason I wrote previously:

Since Immanuel Can has demonstrated that he is incapable to making any admission that could undermine the Biblical story, and insists that the issue is *up for debate*, he asks that people examine absurd *evidence* (those now-famous apologetic videos) where Christians present strange pseudo-scientific *arguments* to support the foundational belief in Adam & Eve, in The Garden, in an Ark, in the parting of the waters of the Red Sea (et cetera). Thus one is presented with two basic choices. One is to engage with the *arguments* that he imagines are even possible by reviewing the videos, by reading the faith-based essays, and attempting to refute the faith-assertions in those terms. Immanuel enjoys this *game* and feels it has validity.

The other is to refuse on all levels to engage with the absurd game. (This is my choice). To categorically state that if you really think that God materialized Adam & Eve -- and all creatures, and the entire cosmos -- in the way pictured in Genesis, then you are suffering a mental problem. If you take this tack you will be, eventually, forced to see fanatical religious belief as a type of mental disorder. And if you arrive at that point, I assure you, then all religious belief comes under the gun as it were.

What we have, in any case, is a manifest cosmos that arose in some way. We seem to try to explain it (and to understand the physics you have to be a physicist). No matter how one looks at the issue, there is an incomprehensible and I think ultimately incomprehensible mystery in that.

The more that things are looked at -- if only we focus on the understanding of planet formation and how utterly strange and weird everything is (and that is strictly local material) -- how things took the shape they have now and literally how could any of this be? That is really the question that stands behind the question of how humankind, and any kind, evolved. How could the complex cell have evolved? When its structures are astoundingly complex? Indeed, a zillion ultra-complex activities go on in a single cell that could never have been understood even 100 years ago.

So, evolution, to the degree it is true, and it surely appears to be operative, is simply one of a thousand -- a million -- unanswerable questions.

What Immanuel seems to desire to do -- and indeed he desires an outcome! -- is to reduce the grand mystery of existence (thsat things exist, that they can exist) to what is communicated in a child's story.

Harbal said that he has *the right* to believe whatever he desires to believe. I am not sure that that is the case. There is a difference between capability and 'right'. He is capable of reducing grand mysteries to tales provided to infants, yes, but I do not grant him justification to do so.

And this is why I say that the critique of Immanuel Can extends beyond him to a far larger critique of *ancient epistemes* (and all religions are based in ancient epistemes).

Nevertheless, it is wise to acknowledge that the influence of Christianity (and Islam) are not decreasing in reach but spreading. See this article.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:50 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:01 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:57 am You wanted to know how human beings could be produced by evolution,...

No. I wanted to know about evolution. I wanted to know how it could happen without gene mutation passing through a particular mating pair. And you can't seem to explain how would even be possible.

That's correct, I can't explain it, but whatever it is that you're asking, I'm sure there are people who can explain.

So...nobody you know, but you're sure they must exist, because...?

IC wrote:

Harbal wrote:...well I'm asking how they could be created by God. You are making a claim when you are unable to explain how it could possibly be true.

No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that God is the right explanation, the First Explanation; and if you want something prior to that, you're asking for something logically self-contradicting.

I'm not asking about anything prior to God.

You don't seem to realize that that's what your question requires to be the case. Nevertheless, that's what it does.

IC wrote:

Harbal wrote:You wanted to know how evolution could produce human beings,

No. See above. Read it carefully, because you seem to be having trouble understanding it. Then I'll answer anything you want to ask.

What I want to ask is this; by what method/mechanism/technique/process does God just create things like human beings?

By his all-powerful Word. Genesis is very explicit on that.

Science actually backs that claim. For it now shows that, underneath all existence, is a kind of "code" or intelligibility of things. The natural world operates by rationally-detectable "laws" or "rules," a thing which we should never have expected, had things come into existence by pure random chance. And the same is true of other particular things within that Creation. Human beings, for instance, have DNA, which is a meaningful code sequence of allyls, spelling out the genetic 'blueprint' of each human being. So the deep truth about us is that our composition is a "word," an intelligible message, a code. And if that's right, then perhaps this is the 'word' God spoke into existence when He created the first human being.

Supplementary question: You referred earlier to God as being the "first cause", but how do you know for sure that God wasn't caused by something?

If He were, then -- by definition -- He would not be either the First Cause or God. He would be what's called a "contingent being," meaning "an entity which might not have existed, and which depends for its existence on something prior to it."

Humans are "contingent beings." God is the sole Necessary Being. If what you are imagining is something less than that, then what you are imagining is not what Monotheists understand to be God, but something less than God.

Harbal: That's correct, I can't explain it, but whatever it is that you're asking, I'm sure there are people who can explain.

IC: So...nobody you know, but you're sure they must exist, because...?

That’s very true: there are specialists who dedicate their lives to branches of science (evolution for example) and who attempt to explain, within limits they acknowledge, how it happened that modern man evolved from primitive forms.

No one of the specialists that I might name ever proposes the materialization of any organic being, or anything at all, and not man, from out of the cloud of God’s will ::: poof ::: and into manifest existence. That would be an explanatory theory that explains nothing. It is an evasion.

Immanuel’s gambit here is one useful as an apologetic tool among those who are unfamiliar with complex science. Especially effective against the unlettered and badly educated in the Global South (where Islam and Pentecostalism flourish).

“Oh, so you cannot explain evolution, eh? So why do you believe it?” The attack is from one episteme (religious mythology) against a modern episteme (scientific research, theory and speculation) the purpose being to weaken confidence in the latter and adherence to a congeries of belief of which the former is composed.

One must discern the purpose: conversion.

Very tricky Immanuel. Very tricky! But you’ve been spotted, Old Boy.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 10:47 pm Science actually backs that claim. For it now shows that, underneath all existence, is a kind of "code" or intelligibility of things. The natural world operates by rationally-detectable "laws" or "rules," a thing which we should never have expected, had things come into existence by pure random chance. And the same is true of other particular things within that Creation. Human beings, for instance, have DNA, which is a meaningful code sequence of allyls, spelling out the genetic 'blueprint' of each human being. So the deep truth about us is that our composition is a "word," an intelligible message, a code. And if that's right, then perhaps this is the 'word' God spoke into existence when He created the first human being.

Here is a good example of the former episteme (excuse the repetition of the term) attempting to overtake and re-subdue an emergent epistemological system.

“Yes! Science is now realizing what Genesis and the Bible propose. Perhaps [perhaps!] this is the 'word' God spoke into existence when He created the first human being.”

So, many apparent truths are enlisted, illicitly, to supplant the unalterable modern view with an ancient one.

No, Manny, Adam & Eve were not dropped by God into a Garden. The evidence points to strange and complex processes that are unfathomable, deeply strange, and still riddled with mystery and many unresolved questions.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 10:47 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:50 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:01 pm
No. I wanted to know about evolution. I wanted to know how it could happen without gene mutation passing through a particular mating pair. And you can't seem to explain how would even be possible.

That's correct, I can't explain it, but whatever it is that you're asking, I'm sure there are people who can explain.

So...nobody you know, but you're sure they must exist, because...?

Okay, so I don't personally know any evolutionary biologists, yet I have faith in their existence. It's not like I'm saying any of them are ultimate beings, or the first cause of anything.

IC wrote:

Harbal wrote:What I want to ask is this; by what method/mechanism/technique/process does God just create things like human beings?

By his all-powerful Word. Genesis is very explicit on that.

Oh well then, case closed.

Science actually backs that claim. For it now shows that, underneath all existence, is a kind of "code" or intelligibility of things. The natural world operates by rationally-detectable "laws" or "rules," a thing which we should never have expected, had things come into existence by pure random chance. And the same is true of other particular things within that Creation. Human beings, for instance, have DNA, which is a meaningful code sequence of allyls, spelling out the genetic 'blueprint' of each human being. So the deep truth about us is that our composition is a "word," an intelligible message, a code. And if that's right, then perhaps this is the 'word' God spoke into existence when He created the first human being.

IC wrote:

Harbal wrote:Supplementary question: You referred earlier to God as being the "first cause", but how do you know for sure that God wasn't caused by something?

If He were, then -- by definition -- He would not be either the First Cause or God. He would be what's called a "contingent being," meaning "an entity which might not have existed, and which depends for its existence on something prior to it."

Humans are "contingent beings." God is the sole Necessary Being. If what you are imagining is something less than that, then what you are imagining is not what Monotheists understand to be God, but something less than God.

So you are saying that God wouldn't be God if he weren't the first cause, but he is God, so he must be the first cause. That's very compelling.

And don't think I haven't noticed that you didn't answer the main question that cam before the supplementary question.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 10:47 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:50 pm What I want to ask is this; by what method/mechanism/technique/process does God just create things like human beings?

By his all-powerful Word. Genesis is very explicit on that.

This fits in perfectly with "veritas aequitas's" claim also that through the 'word' then this is when all things come to exist. One however says and claims through the 'word' of God, while the other one says and claims through the 'word' of human beings.

Now, if we can just get to the bottom of whose 'words' are creating 'who', then this seemingly endless 'puzzle' here will surely be resolved, right?

Also, do you "Immanuel can" really not yet see the contradiction in claiming that 'genesis', which was actually written down by human beings, is the direct 'word' of God? In that you say and claim what you do here as though human beings are infallible and/or that it would be impossible for human beings to misinterpret messages given to them.

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 12:23 am

IC wrote:

Harbal wrote:Supplementary question: You referred earlier to God as being the "first cause", but how do you know for sure that God wasn't caused by something?

If He were, then -- by definition -- He would not be either the First Cause or God. He would be what's called a "contingent being," meaning "an entity which might not have existed, and which depends for its existence on something prior to it."

Humans are "contingent beings." God is the sole Necessary Being. If what you are imagining is something less than that, then what you are imagining is not what Monotheists understand to be God, but something less than God.

So you are saying that God wouldn't be God if he weren't the first cause,

Not quite. That much might be true, but I was only making a simpler claim. It's only that if you want to talk about what Christians believe, you have to be willing to talk about the God they believe in. It's no good you inventing one for them that does not fit the profile, and then being annoyed because they won't defend your version of "god."

And for us, "God" means "First Cause," "Supreme Being," "Necessary Being" and "the Grounds of all other being." If you're asking questions about a different entity, then all we can tell you is that you don't know what we mean by "God."

That doesn't even go to the question of whether or not God exists, which you can still doubt, if you wish -- it only goes to the question of whether or not you know what we mean when we say "God."

And don't think I haven't noticed that you didn't answer the main question that cam before the supplementary question.

I can't see any coherent question I haven't answered. But if you point it out, I'll give it a go.

Immanuel Cant wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 2:23 am
I can't see any coherent question I haven't answered. But if you point it out, I'll give it a go.

There is simply no way that he can actually believe that this true unless, in my view, he is first of all deluding himself. Over and again with me alone he transfigures into Mr. Snippet and Mr. Wiggle. And over and again others here note the same thing. He basically ignores points that he really has no capacity to address in depth.

In fact, more and more I'm convinced this all comes back around to one or another "condition".

Even assuming that we live in a free will universe, it's beyond his control, in my view. Why? Because his frame of mind [like my own once was] has become the embodiment of the psychology of objectivism.

Start here: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/comfort

Sustaining the solace embedded in these emotional and psychological states has always been the whole point of God and religion.