Re: New Proof of the Existence of God
Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:32 pm
Necro: For some reason I did not see this original post, which is why I wrote another one below.
For the discussion of all things philosophical, especially articles in the magazine Philosophy Now.
https://forum.philosophynow.org/
Point #1 is false. Life was not created by completely random processes. As with everything else in reality, life was created by the interplay of chaos and order. Chaos is not randomness, but apparent randomness. Much that appears to be random to us is ruled by fractal geometry.wisdomlover wrote: ↑Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:06 pmPremise #1: Life was created from a completely random process.
Premise #2: No finite being can create anything that is completely random.
Therefore: Life was created by an infinite being.
I upgraded my 3/15 argument with a new one on 3/19 in response to feedback.Greta wrote: ↑Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:52 pm
Point #1 is false. Life was not created by completely random processes. As with everything else in reality, life was created by the interplay of chaos and order. Chaos is not randomness, but apparent randomness. Much that appears to be random to us is ruled by fractal geometry.
Nor is even the quantum realm necessarily random. Who is to say that there's not much smaller Planck scale physics driving what we perceive as random fluctuations in subatomic particles? The fact is that we simply do not know; the best we can do is report what appears to be the case based on current technology and methods, aware that there's much experimentation to be done before any kind of certainty in this can be achieved.
Point #2 seems rather odd to me - when you talk about "finite" and infinite", let's make clear that the difference is academic. If all the possibilities of a "bubble" universe are limited, it's only barely the case. For all intents and purposes, the universe might as well be unlimited.
Point #3 assumes that life was created. However, much work has been done in observing chemical self-assembly, making clear that a creator as such is not needed (unless the creator has created the system of chemical self-assembly - and that is also a far from solid supposition).
Don't natural process also have an infinite number of options for things that could have been produced that way besides us?Science Fan wrote: ↑Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:46 pm ... the probability of our existence depending on an all-powerful God would have to be zero, since the probability would be 1 over infinity, representing an all-powerful God's infinite number of options for doing something else besides creating us. So, a theist cannot base his argument on the so-called low probability for our existence through natural causes, because their alternative is even less likely.
Heh, you sly dogwisdomlover wrote: ↑Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:05 pm... I put that mistake there on purpose (I am an atheist, and provided clues like making fun of him sitting on his throne & being bad at logic) ...
No, absolutely not! You are being selective toward a set of studies you choose to respect and throw the rest aside. I say some studies may describe something to the matter at hand, but they fail to catch the big points like others do, that the souls exist.Science Fan wrote: ↑Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:38 pm Necro: You are mentioning debunked claims. Take your claims about near-death experiences. We now know that when the brain is deprived of oxygen that it produces an hallucinogenic drug. So, this is what causes near-death experiences --- they are the product of the brain's own production of an hallucinogenic drug. Same with out-of-body experiences. They are hallucinations. We've had people claiming to see their own body from looking above, yet, they could not see the two dead bodies lying right next to their own body? We have some hospitals rigged with electronic messages that can only be seen from the ceiling, and yet, not a single person who claims to have floated out of their body has ever accurately reported seeing any such messages.
The more science advances, the less room there is for supernatural claims.
You sure are a false prophet, making up nonsense and babble grabbed out of thin air, the Tooth Fairy seems to be your consultant!wisdomlover wrote: ↑Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:06 pm All the classic proofs of the existence of god are old and worn out -- the first cause argument, the argument from design, the ontological argument, etc. They have been refuted so many times, it's like beating a dead horse to think about them.
Sitting there on his throne, dismayed that fewer and fewer people believe I him, god thinks it's time for people to ponder a fresh new proof. Why he chose to reveal it to me, I don't know. He works in mysterious ways. Here it is:
Premise #1: Life was created from a completely random process.
Premise #2: No finite being can create anything that is completely random.
Therefore: Life was created by an infinite being.
Both premises call for some discussion, but rather than anticipate what people might need more information about, I'll just leave it simple for now and see if there's a response.
If chaos is not random, but determined, then what is the difference between chaos and order?Greta wrote: ↑Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:52 pmPoint #1 is false. Life was not created by completely random processes. As with everything else in reality, life was created by the interplay of chaos and order. Chaos is not randomness, but apparent randomness.wisdomlover wrote: ↑Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:06 pmPremise #1: Life was created from a completely random process.
Premise #2: No finite being can create anything that is completely random.
Therefore: Life was created by an infinite being.
Nor is even the quantum realm necessarily random.
It's not that we do not know, but we cannot know.Who is to say that there's not much smaller Planck scale physics driving what we perceive as random fluctuations in subatomic particles? The fact is that we simply do not know; the best we can do is report what appears to be the case based on current technology and methods, aware that there's much experimentation to be done before any kind of certainty in this can be achieved.
Point #2 seems rather odd to me - when you talk about "finite" and infinite", let's make clear that the difference is academic. If all the possibilities of a "bubble" universe are limited, it's only barely the case. For all intents and purposes, the universe might as well be unlimited.
Unless the chemicals are themselves primitive forms of life. Nonlife cannot create life; either life is not life or nonlife is not nonlife. Either way is fine for me, whether I'm alive or a machine, but there can be no differentiation between the two.Point #3 assumes that life was created. However, much work has been done in observing chemical self-assembly, making clear that a creator as such is not needed (unless the creator has created the system of chemical self-assembly - and that is also a far from solid supposition).
Time. Over time orderly systems - areas of concentration - emerge in chaotic systems through probability.Serendipper wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:51 pmIf chaos is not random, but determined, then what is the difference between chaos and order?Greta wrote: ↑Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:52 pmPoint #1 is false. Life was not created by completely random processes. As with everything else in reality, life was created by the interplay of chaos and order. Chaos is not randomness, but apparent randomness.wisdomlover wrote: ↑Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:06 pmPremise #1: Life was created from a completely random process.
Premise #2: No finite being can create anything that is completely random.
Therefore: Life was created by an infinite being.
If results seem impossible to predict, then why assume that that will always be the case? Maybe predictive methods are not strong enough or less effective in the realm of the very small. Given that Planck scale entities are posited to perhaps be impacting on the quantum scale, and given that our knowledge of Planck scale entities is minimal and theoretical, then Bell has only provided practical guide, not an ultimate ontological position. Either that or he's presenting an educated guess as fact.Serendipper wrote:Nor is even the quantum realm necessarily random.
It took a while, but hidden variable theory was eventually disproved by John Bell, who showed that there are lots of experiments that cannot have unmeasured results. Thus the results cannot be determined ahead of time, so there are no hidden variables, and the results are truly random. That is, if it is physically and mathematically impossible to predict the results, then the results are truly, fundamentally random. http://www.askamathematician.com/2009/1 ... andomness/
Yes, "we cannot know" - yet. We need a means other than atom smashers to investigate the smallest realms. We've taken that method of piercing the shells of subatomic entities about as far as practicality and budget can stretch.Serendipper wrote:It's not that we do not know, but we cannot know.Who is to say that there's not much smaller Planck scale physics driving what we perceive as random fluctuations in subatomic particles? The fact is that we simply do not know; the best we can do is report what appears to be the case based on current technology and methods, aware that there's much experimentation to be done before any kind of certainty in this can be achieved.
Seemingly so.Serendipper wrote:Point #2 seems rather odd to me - when you talk about "finite" and infinite", let's make clear that the difference is academic. If all the possibilities of a "bubble" universe are limited, it's only barely the case. For all intents and purposes, the universe might as well be unlimited.
The universe is finite, but the nothingness outside it is unlimited. The finite universe could expand forever inside of the nothingness, but the universe will never be infinite until the day that forever arrives. Even claiming the universe is unbounded in size could be and probably is false, since there will come a time that the distances between particles is too great.
I quite like the poetry of that last sentence. It nicely captures both the connections and emergence that appears to be taking place.Serendipper wrote:Unless the chemicals are themselves primitive forms of life. Nonlife cannot create life; either life is not life or nonlife is not nonlife. Either way is fine for me, whether I'm alive or a machine, but there can be no differentiation between the two.Point #3 assumes that life was created. However, much work has been done in observing chemical self-assembly, making clear that a creator as such is not needed (unless the creator has created the system of chemical self-assembly - and that is also a far from solid supposition).
Consciousness is not a complicated form of mineral, but mineral is a simple form of consciousness.
But a chaotic system is an orderly system, right? A chaotic system is a deterministic system that is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. What is the difference between order and disorder? Are clouds ordered? The difference seems subjective. Mom used to think my room was disordered, but it looked ok to meGreta wrote: ↑Mon Apr 02, 2018 1:40 amTime. Over time orderly systems - areas of concentration - emerge in chaotic systems through probability.Serendipper wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:51 pmIf chaos is not random, but determined, then what is the difference between chaos and order?
Well, there will be doubters for a while I suppose:If results seem impossible to predict, then why assume that that will always be the case? Maybe predictive methods are not strong enough or less effective in the realm of the very small. Given that Planck scale entities are posited to perhaps be impacting on the quantum scale, and given that our knowledge of Planck scale entities is minimal and theoretical, then Bell has only provided practical guide, not an ultimate ontological position. Either that or he's presenting an educated guess as fact.Serendipper wrote:Nor is even the quantum realm necessarily random.
It took a while, but hidden variable theory was eventually disproved by John Bell, who showed that there are lots of experiments that cannot have unmeasured results. Thus the results cannot be determined ahead of time, so there are no hidden variables, and the results are truly random. That is, if it is physically and mathematically impossible to predict the results, then the results are truly, fundamentally random. http://www.askamathematician.com/2009/1 ... andomness/
That's a good point. Bell actually disproved his own conviction, along with Einstein's. Nobody wants to believe in randomness.So many "certainties" and "proofs" have fallen by the wayside in life that I take anything proclaimed as certain as provisional if it does not make sense.
My theory is that randomness is not uncaused, but caused by things we cannot know and that's most likely because we are continuous with the universe and therefore cannot make an observation without affecting what we're observing. Due to infinite regression, we cannot make a prediction.True randomness - the breakdown of cause and effect - makes no sense because that implies an extra actor in reality - God - which may be so, and also may not. The positing of God as certain and true is a game, generally one to reassure oneself that one's posthumous prospects don't seem so bleak.
True, but again, if it's impossible to predict due to inability to take precise-enough measurements, then it may as well be random.It's perfectly possible that what we conceive of as randomness is actually chaos, with traceable causes and effects all the way down with sufficient technological means.
Time is an artifact of space in this universe and a speed limit on information from our perspective. Outside the universe (ie before inflation), there is no such time as time or space. Light observes no time or space now and from that point of view, the last 13 billion years was instant. I can't imagine an eternity of no-time; I have nothing for my mind to grab onto.Consider other ideas that make no sense, such as "there was no before" before the big bang.
There was probably a time before quantum foam too. Everything had to come from something, except consciousness which couldn't have come from anything; either it doesn't exist or it has always existed.It's magic thinking - positing the miracle of creation out of absolute nothing, without allowing questions as to what came before just looks like an updated creation myth with non anthropomorphic actors acceptable to modern minds. Logically, the big bang was more likely a state change than a beginning, a birth rather than an ultimate origin. There must have been time before the BB, but there were no clocks to measure the seething activity in the "quantum foam" - no stellar or planetary orbits or rotations, no great cosmic cycles - rather countless cycles at the smallest of scale, each perturbation in the fabric of reality appearing an disappearing in its own infinitesimal time. Completely subjective time (albeit without observers, only peers).
Panvitalist, I like thatI quite like the poetry of that last sentence. It nicely captures both the connections and emergence that appears to be taking place.Serendipper wrote:Unless the chemicals are themselves primitive forms of life. Nonlife cannot create life; either life is not life or nonlife is not nonlife. Either way is fine for me, whether I'm alive or a machine, but there can be no differentiation between the two.Point #3 assumes that life was created. However, much work has been done in observing chemical self-assembly, making clear that a creator as such is not needed (unless the creator has created the system of chemical self-assembly - and that is also a far from solid supposition).
Consciousness is not a complicated form of mineral, but mineral is a simple form of consciousness.
It's clear to me that biological life is not the only living state. By our current definitions, living systems like stars and planets are "dead", nonliving objects. So I'm a panvitalist these days, taking into account that all living systems need "space" to survive - to be surrounded by less animate things (otherwise they would be consumed by competition), but that's not to say these other things are "dead" as such. So, unlike almost everyone. I don't see rocks as "dead", rather dormant entities within living systems (like minerals in one's body).
wisdomlover wrote: ↑Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:06 pm All the classic proofs of the existence of god are old and worn out -- the first cause argument, the argument from design, the ontological argument, etc. They have been refuted so many times, it's like beating a dead horse to think about them.
Sitting there on his throne, dismayed that fewer and fewer people believe I him, god thinks it's time for people to ponder a fresh new proof. Why he chose to reveal it to me, I don't know. He works in mysterious ways. Here it is:
Premise #1: Life was created from a completely random process.
Premise #2: No finite being can create anything that is completely random.
Therefore: Life was created by an infinite being.
Both premises call for some discussion, but rather than anticipate what people might need more information about, I'll just leave it simple for now and see if there's a response.