Philosophy Now Forum

Normally we consider creationism to be in the realm of religion, and something science can easily rule out with archeology (evolution), logic and reason.

But if science and technology themselves offer an alternative version of creationism in the shape of virtual reality, it leaves the boundaries of religion and becomes a scientific hypothesis. Doesn't it?

An idea without any god, that promotes intelligent design. What it that? Is it fringe science or scientific religion? Is it creationism? I don't think so!

In said virtual premises we could imagine the hosts of the machine we're in doing nothing but start it. They let it run without interference. Then there is no intelligent design. It's all random! If so, is it still creationism?

If you detected confusion in the above it's very deliberate! Coz if we are simulated, we will never know how or why. All options are possible!

I would also like to know if you consider "creationism" to be purely religious or not? And why?

BANG!

creation

-Imp

QuantumT wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 1:03 amNormally we consider creationism to be in the realm of religion, and something science can easily rule out with archeology (evolution), logic and reason.

But if science and technology themselves offer an alternative version of creationism in the shape of virtual reality, it leaves the boundaries if religion and becomes a scientific hypothesis. Doesn't it?

An idea without any god, that promotes intelligent design. What it that? Is it fringe science or scientific religion? Is it creationism? I don't think so!

In said virtual premises we could imagine the hosts of the machine we're in doing nothing but start it. They let it run without interference. Then there is no intelligent design. It's all random! If so, is it still creationism?

If you detected confusion in the above it's very deliberate! Coz if we are simulated, we will never know how or why. All options are possible!

I would also like to know if you consider "creationism" to be purely religious or not? And why?

I love Westworld too

First, we have build such a world and then, most importantly, the world would need to include genuine rather than simulated sentience. Westworld no doubt makes that look a lot easier than it will be - if it's possible at all, which we don't yet know.

QuantumT wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 1:03 am Normally we consider creationism to be in the realm of religion, and something science can easily rule out with archeology (evolution), logic and reason.

No we don't. Science can never have any opinion on creationism because the causal inteligence involved is not a proper subject for enquiry through scientific method. Science takes evidence from the natural world and investigates the phenomena therein. Science can never be directed at supernatural questions. Any attempt to describe science as disproving creationism is profoundly unscientific.

Religion isn't the only thing science cannot measure, interpret or dispute for these reasons. If a scientist ever offers you experimental proof that the Mona Lisa is superior to some painting daubed by a circus chimp, you may laugh at him as a fraud. Also you should laugh at Prof in the ethics subs when he tells you he can deliver a science of ethics. Science can never have an opinion on art, justice or miracles.

QuantumT wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 1:03 am But if science and technology themselves offer an alternative version of creationism in the shape of virtual reality, it leaves the boundaries of religion and becomes a scientific hypothesis. Doesn't it?

An idea without any god, that promotes intelligent design. What it that? Is it fringe science or scientific religion? Is it creationism? I don't think so!

This is a classic example of misusing scientific method, it involves speculation about supernatural entities.

QuantumT wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 1:03 amIn said virtual premises we could imagine the hosts of the machine we're in doing nothing but start it. They let it run without interference. Then there is no intelligent design. It's all random! If so, is it still creationism?

Yes. Those beings are outside the universe we inhabit, asnd clearly not limited by its physical laws, which makes them supernatural entities by definition, and therefore beyond the scope of scientific enquiry.

QuantumT wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 1:03 am I would also like to know if you consider "creationism" to be purely religious or not? And why?

Yes it is. It is a fundamentally unscientific project, born of religious belief, weakly disguised in purloined scientific language. Merely pretending not to have the religious problem does not remove the other issues. But you might as well start praying to these guys anyway as they still have the power to send you to heaven and hell on your death, irrespective of whether you happen to have included that in your theology or whether or not they have created a database called Hell yet.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 9:24 pm

So, if you play the game "The Sims 4", you become their god?
I'd rather call it an administrator. A god is eternal and omnipotent beyond dimensions.
Maybe your god definition needs a little maintenance?

QuantumT wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 9:53 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 9:24 pm

So, if you play the game "The Sims 4", you become their god?
I'd rather call it an administrator. A god is eternal and omnipotent beyond dimensions.
Maybe your god definition needs a little maintenance?

So Thor and Zeus are not gods then? Try harder, don't just write the first angry thing that comes into your head.

In so far as people in a computer game I control are capable of having beliefs at all, and if the game they inhabit is what we are going to describe as their universe, then I am from that perspective a supernatural being that is not within the game and yet controls it.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 10:05 pm So Thor and Zeus are not gods then? Try harder, don't just write the first angry thing that comes into your head.

In so far as people in a computer game I control are capable of having beliefs at all, and if the game they inhabit is what we are going to describe as their universe, then I am from that perspective a supernatural being that is not within the game and yet controls it.

I'm provocative, pushy, but very rarely angry. In the last 10 years I've maybe been angry 5 times.
I don't believe in anger or revenge. I find it primitive.

Ok then. All of my original points stand then. The theory is inherently relgious because it definitely posits untestable supernatural entities as causes for observable phenomena, and valid scientific method can never accomodate untestable causation.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:01 pm Ok then. All of my original points stand then. The theory is inherently relgious because it definitely posits untestable supernatural entities as causes for observable phenomena, and valid scientific method can never accomodate untestable causation.

Right!

But if someone could ever definitively prove evolution, then by the rule of the excluded middle, one could argue that creationism just cannot be.

Right?

commonsense wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:09 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:01 pm Ok then. All of my original points stand then. The theory is inherently relgious because it definitely posits untestable supernatural entities as causes for observable phenomena, and valid scientific method can never accomodate untestable causation.

Right!

But if someone could ever definitively prove evolution, then by the rule of the excluded middle, one could argue that creationism just cannot be.

Right?

In a word. No.

There is nothing you can do to prove evolution's case against some other theory that uses supernatural entities of any sort to explain all the same stuff, it makes no sense to try. Nothing you can do proves that the world wasn't created by God last Thursday with everyone given a set of consistent memories for everything before that. There is no way to directly observe ancient instances of evolution without a time machine. And there is no scientific way to address the possibility that some great and all powerful overlord might have created the big bang and in so doing already known everything that would come to pass afterwards, including the dude with the time machine.

Evolution explains how the world came to be, with an implicit assumption common to all valid scientific works, that the world was capable of coming to be that way without any additional supernatural forces. This assumtion may or may not be true. Science has no way to answer that problem, because it has under any and all circumstances, no way to discuss the supernatural, at all, ever. Evolution is a good explanation, given what is knowable, it seems sufficient. But sufficiency is not the same as necessity, and no amount of wishing it were so will change that.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Jul 10, 2018 1:17 am

commonsense wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:09 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:01 pm Ok then. All of my original points stand then. The theory is inherently relgious because it definitely posits untestable supernatural entities as causes for observable phenomena, and valid scientific method can never accomodate untestable causation.

Right!

But if someone could ever definitively prove evolution, then by the rule of the excluded middle, one could argue that creationism just cannot be.

Right?

In a word. No.

There is nothing you can do to prove evolution's case against some other theory that uses supernatural entities of any sort to explain all the same stuff, it makes no sense to try. Nothing you can do proves that the world wasn't created by God last Thursday with everyone given a set of consistent memories for everything before that. There is no way to directly observe ancient instances of evolution without a time machine. And there is no scientific way to address the possibility that some great and all powerful overlord might have created the big bang and in so doing already known everything that would come to pass afterwards, including the dude with the time machine.

Evolution explains how the world came to be, with an implicit assumption common to all valid scientific works, that the world was capable of coming to be that way without any additional supernatural forces. This assumtion may or may not be true. Science has no way to answer that problem, because it has under any and all circumstances, no way to discuss the supernatural, at all, ever. Evolution is a good explanation, given what is knowable, it seems sufficient. But sufficiency is not the same as necessity, and no amount of wishing it were so will change that.

There's something lacking in your understanding of conditional statements, or else there's something lacking in your seeing "if" and "then". Re-read the following to yourself:

But if someone could ever definitively prove evolution,
(You chose to say I was not right, because no one could ever prove evolution, but I never said someone could prove evolution.)

then by the rule of the excluded middle, one could argue that creationism just cannot be.
(You say that no such argument could be made, because no one could prove evolution, which I did not say they could.)

If you don't learn to accept support when it's given,...

commonsense wrote: ↑Tue Jul 10, 2018 2:09 am There's something lacking in your understanding of conditional statements, or else there's something lacking in your seeing "if" and "then". Re-read the following to yourself:

But if someone could ever definitively prove evolution,
(You chose to say I was not right, because no one could ever prove evolution, but I never said someone could prove evolution.)

then by the rule of the excluded middle, one could argue that creationism just cannot be.
(You say that no such argument could be made, because no one could prove evolution, which I did not say they could.)

If you don't learn to accept support when it's given,...

Ok then, point taken. Agreed. IF somebody can prove the impossible then they can win the meaningless argument.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:01 pm Ok then. All of my original points stand then. The theory is inherently relgious because it definitely posits untestable supernatural entities as causes for observable phenomena, and valid scientific method can never accomodate untestable causation.

commonsense wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:09 pm Right!

But if someone could ever definitively prove evolution, then by the rule of the excluded middle, one could argue that creationism just cannot be.

Right?

Wrong!

In what way would the fact of evolution being true rule-out the possibility of a higher (transcendent) lifeform being responsible for the design and creation of the foundational context upon which the processes of evolution could then unfold?

No offense intended, but the supporters of the idea that evolution somehow eliminates any need for a designer of the universe seem to be almost as naïve as those who created the ideas that the evolutionists are attempting to dispel.
_______

A conversation between field voles:

- Be careful up there. There could be monsters!
- Don't worry! I've been up there a million times. Nothing ever happens!

QuantumT wrote: ↑Tue Jul 10, 2018 10:05 pm A conversation between field voles:

- Be careful up there. There could be monsters!
- Don't worry! I've been up there a million times. Nothing ever happens!

Under the circumstances, perhaps you should avoid making your point with parables.