Logic 201:

1) Something that is abstract does not exist "outside" anything because "outside" is a spatial term applicable to physical spacetime, which itself is axiomatically defined according to abstract distance and temporal metrics.

2) A claim of a creator is impossible to disprove empirically, but not logically.  To disprove a claim of a creator would simply require proving the inverse of the claim to be true, i.e. logical falsifcation.  It's the exact same standard for the claim that observation has no effect on physical reality, which is the basis for Empiricism and therefore empirical science.  You really want to walk that line of intellectual hypocrisy?  Empiricism is empirically unfalsifiable (but not logically unfalsifiable).  A logical explanation of equal-or-greater scope trumps a scientific explanation 100% of the time, all the time, every time.

3) You third point is just all over the place.  Are you making an argument against the existence of God based upon what you personally think should be to case, i.e. in an "Well, if I were God..." kind of way?  Do you realize how silly that is?

BADecker didn't say the last part.  I did.  And, to counteract your (invalid) secret mashed potato rebuttal, here is more of, well, me to elucidate your fallacy:


Edit:  To this extent, I could put Richard Dawkins out of business.

This passage that you wrote is both a mathematical and logical formulation, adhering to the most fundamental algebraic structure of all -- language.  Any thought you will ever have, and every sentence you will ever communicate, is mathematical/algebraic.  "In the beginning was the Word," i.e. language, i.e. mathematics.


Another statement formulated according to an algebraic structure.


More math (in structure).


Math (in structure).

Edit:  Correct, there is no way to possibly know whether some higher form of logic exists.  That is why it is completely irrelevant to us and I will never entertain it in a discussion (nor should you) other than to say that, well...it's irrelevant.  Actually, it's irrelevant, quite literally, because it is unreal...because only that which we know is real accords to our logic.  Anything that our logic cannot account for is thus a priori unreal.

Name:     The Joint
Posts:      4361 (including this one)
Position:   Legendary member
Bitcoin address : 1HHrdYxRSN1vmDHr4wfW9v5vQgshfEqqND
Link to stat : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=24314

Except where they don't overlap, which you never acknowledge, and in which case you use the terms incorrectly (like when trying to communicate with virtually everyone who uses the words because of their distinctions).

But it doesn't matter, anyway, unless you're just trying to win a pointless semantic argument.  Could you contribute something of practical value?

1) Assuming God must therefore be outside the Universe could in this case be viewed as a semantic limitation of an empirical worldview.  I much prefer to use mathematical sets, specifically Real and Unreal.  If God is real, then He must necessarily be within the set of reality, and there could be nothing real enough outside of Reality so as to be able to determine it or create it (hence reality must create and/or determine itself).  I'd also point out that your own thoughts or feelings cannot be empirically observed.  Would you conclude they are unreal or outside of the Universe?

2) Yes, and I actually attempted to linguistically model this within this thread.  The most general modeling, which requires a lot of explanation, is that God : reality :: man : perceptions.  You could say God is trying to know Himself and self-actualize via a superpositional, singular act of creation; that reality is essentially a theory of itself; that we are stratified, isomorphic images of God who attempt to know ourselves and self-actualize via our perceptions of objective reality and the theories we derive therefrom.  Objectivity is a relation.  At the "god-level," He knows Himself objectively relative to his creation.  At the "stratified-level," we know ourselves relative to the theories we form about objective reality as it is perceived.  There must always be a subjective anchor by which objective reality can be known, and it is known in terms of the subjective anchor itself.  

Edit:  Phrased another way, consider God in terms of both objectivity and relativity, where "objective" God is monistic, and "relative" God is stratified, i.e. "objective god" is distributing its monistic structure or essence into its stratified constituents.  This stratification allows for diversity in essence.  Accordingly, one person who claims Jesus is the only way may be completely correct, and as correct as someone else who says Allah is the only way -- what the two share is a recognition of the monistic essence in spite of its diversity.  However, one who rejects the essence altogether may be in trouble, for he rejects the means by which he can self-actualize and know his true nature as a part of that essence.

Ah, I see


I'll get to this at the end of reply.  As a primer, let's just say that there are philosophical and logical reasons which provide a basis for the fact that invoking God as I do is not a spurious, wildy speculative claim.



That sounds to me like a plea for science to stop being so unaccommodating to the idea of a God! Trouble is, you want the 'issue' explored and, let's be honest here, science is more than willing to explore anything and everything that it is reasonable to study, but as we have covered long-previously, you cannot define any element of this 'God' because, by its very nature, it is supposedly beyond our Universe. So how can we study something for which exists no definable characteristic other than the claimed omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence? The only way to study for something like that is to go all 'god of the gaps' which I'm sure you're not willing to accept as a reasonable position because it essentially says if we don't have an answer yet for what goes in that gap in our understanding, then God.[/quote]

This also ties in with my "primer."  For simplicity, I'll reserve my full reply until the end.


LOL, ok fair point. I know how much you love yourself plenty of philosophy. I'm just saying that you appear too ready to use broad philosophical brushstrokes to claim, "Hey, there could be a God", while ignoring the practical realities of what that actually translates to in terms of the difference between there being a invisible incorporeal floating dragon in your garage or something that you've probably just imagined up as being possibly there.


[/quote]

Okay, here we go.  Finally there

The problem here is two-fold:

First, it's a false-analogy to liken an omnipotent god to some imaginary dragon, even if you ascribe the imaginary dragon to be omnipotent.  This is where logic weighs in on things and can catch subtle distinctions which make a world of difference.  Instead of an imaginary dragon, let's use the well-know examples of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Russel's Teapot.  Again, for simplicity, let's just focus on the FSM.

Specifically, the problem is that the FSM, even if omnipotent, is a false analogy.  This is because the identifying characteristics (i.e. what constitutes its identity) of an omnipotent god is its omnipotence, whereas for the FSM it is both omnipotence and the topological characteristics of being a monster made of spaghetti who flies, i.e. its physical constraints.  So, an omnipotent god, or ID for "intelligent designer," is defined in terms of a total lack of constraint, whereas the FSM is defined in terms of both constraint and a total lack of constraint.

This is critically important because it means one cannot be the other.  If an ID omnipotently assumes a level of topological constraint, it does not lose any aspect of its identity because it remains omnipotent and thus is still equal to itself.  However, if an FSM omnipotently changes its topological constraints, e.g. it becomes a teapot or a dragon, then its core identity is changed and is no longer equal to itself.  An FSM who becomes a teapot is no longer an FSM no matter how omnipotent it is.

Second, and stemming from this first point, we must then concede that if an ID exists, it falls totally outside of observation and empiricism, and is therefore a priori untouchable by empirical science.  Therefore, Occam's Razor, which only applies to empirical phenomena, is irrelevant.  What then matters is whether an ID is implied by logical necessity, and the method of exploration required to determine this is in no way based upon observation of empirical events.  There needn't be any assumption of a "God-of-the-gaps" if you can determine what is logically necessary at a fundamental level, and at a 100% level of tautological confidence.

Oh, it's this guy again.  

Nothing to see here.  OP is completely off his rocker.  Check his feedback and post history, including the 15+ (!!!) negative feedback comments left for me in a single day.

He just makes up crap and tries to take everyone else down due to his own ignorance.  He was already recently banned for several months.  I wouldn't take a word of this seriously.

1)  Yes, I can see where your original question was confused a bit, with some misunderstanding to follow.  That being said, it is possible -- and I believe it is the case, though I will save the reasoning for now -- that an "objective" God imparts His essence into every individual, but that this essence can be expressed with variation.  Accordingly (again, saving explanation), it is possible for Jesus to be the only savior of one person, for Allah to be the only savior of another, etc.  Consequetly, one who says that Jesus is the only way may be very much correct, and as correct as another who says that Allah is the only way.  There is a way to model this in a way that is consistent with the other ideas I have mentioned throughout this thread and others.

2). Thank you! That's really very humbling to read.  I'm well aware of my aggressive, often-contrarian style of debate which can be intriguing to some and off-putting to others.  I typically don't often respond to posts or ideas I fully agree with because I question how useful it really is to do so.  I'm pleased to know you find value in my posts!

I don't want to speak for someone else, but I have a few questions and thoughts:

1)  What kind of proof are you looking for?

He mentioned his proof is subjective.  If it's 110 degrees outside and I tell you that it's cold outside because I happen to feel cold, how can I prove this to you?  A thermometer won't cut it except saying that 110 degree is cooler than, say, a paper fire.  Do you allow any room for experiential proof?  It would certainly be valid to say that my feeling and knowledge of being cold is experiential proof despite my inability to prove this to you or anyone else.

2) Do you generally believe proof must be empirical proof?

3a) If so, what place do you think logical or mathematical proofs have in rational discourse?

3b) Also, if so, by what means could one falsify the belief, or prove to the contrary, that empirical proof is not the only kind that matters?

A few comments I'd like to make about this post:

1)  "Woo" is certainly abundant.  Woo exists most prominently when someone looks at some evidence or experiment and makes unwarranted assumptions about it, e.g. how Deepak Chopra might look at ideas of quantum non-locality and use it alone to make statements about all of us being 'one,' or something to that effect.

Woo does not exist where there is a valid or sound logical argument that either provides a basis for bypassing scientific explanation altogether, or for framing scientific explanation within a broader, valid philosophical context.

2)  Agreed, ad populum proves nothing.  Just make sure you recognize this also applies to the countless persons who believe Empiricism is the end-all to knowledge acquisition.  There are both things which provably exist outside the scope of empirical explanation, and methods of knowledge acquisition which provably trump Empiricism in terms of general explanation (e.g. how Philosophy can explain and validate empirical exploration whereas Empiricism cannot, etc.).

To this end, scientific "woo" also exists, and usually takes the form of, "Look how far science has taken us technologically and in terms of our understanding of specific natural processes, therefore science is the best method of exploration." 

3)  Also keep in mind there is no empirical evidence that validates the scientific method.  Science as a working method is validated entirely by Philosophy.

4)  Automatically equating things like God or Intelligent Design to "paranormal" is a form of intellectual dishonesty (for, if such things exist, they are not paranormal but real).  What we can do is equate "paranormal" with "unreal," thereby elucidating my point -- one who assumes that God or I.D. must be paranormal is intellectually dishonest in that he a priori dismisses these things as unreal without any rational basis to make such an analogy.

Sentence fragment.  "Simply because [what you said afterwards]," then what?  I'm not getting on your case for a typo.  I'll assume the 'then what' is what follows in your next sentence.


This is incorrect, aside from the fact that it says virtually nothing.  When I say it is "incorrect," I mean that it is actually you, here, who is introducing unnecessary assumptions.  You are assuming that it is "more likely" correct that an omnipotent God is not the missing explanatory element, which itself is likely based upon another, unspoken -- and more fundamental -- assumption that there is no means of determining whether an omnipotent God is necessary or not.  If there is a means to determine whether or not God must exist by necessity, then we would also have a means of making such a determination in the absence of any assumption.

And when I say that "it says virtually nothing," I'm speaking to the obvious fact that no explanation/theory includes that which is outside of its own scope.  You're essentially saying something along the lines of, "A theory can be assumed to be more correct because of that which it can't account for."  It might not seem to you like this is what you are saying, but in the absence of any knowledge about whether there is actually a means for accounting for what is beyond current explanation, then it is indeed what you are implying.



The type of "description" you reference here is merely relative description.  Aside from the fact that any data provided by such "technological tools" are always subject to the frailties of our own perceptions (i.e. it doesn't matter how good the tool is if the tool itself, and the gathered data, are also subject to the frailties of perception), we already have examples of where such "technological tools" provide us with empirical data that lends to contradictory explanation.  A powerful telescope is a great example:  

On one hand, a telescope can provide us with data that lends to the extrapolation of an expanding universe from a single point in space; on the other hand, the fact that we observe galaxies in similar stages of development equidistant to our relative locality (i.e. to our right, we see galaxies at age x and at distance y, but we also see this if we look left, up, down, etc.) seems to suggest that we are always at the center of the Universe.  Empirical methods have no means of resolving empirical paradoxes, and it is only by deferring to abstract methods such as logic and mathematics that we can possibly resolve these paradoxes.


In a practical sense, of course.  We needn't even consider cosmology to go about our daily life.  But without knowing 'all that we can know,' we 1) can't assume God does or does not exist, and 2) can't assume that exploring the issue and possibly arriving at a conclusion won't yield practical value that is currently unknown to us.


First, I again remind you of the fundamental and crucial point that "philosophical gymnastics" are what allow the scientific method to work in the first place.  Science is predicated upon empiricism which is a theory of knowledge acquisition.  Empiricism defers to philosophy to say, "Okay, in order to explain 'objectively' in terms of empirical phenomena, we are going to control for the possible effects of observation by simply assuming that observation has no effects on physical phenomena."  This is an entirely philosophical assumption, and it is empirically unfalsifiable.  To empirically falsify this assumption would require that one collect empirical data of physical phenomena by means of observation in a universe totally void of observation (a contradiction).  You must then ask yourself why you are willing to make what Hume calls "a complete departure from science" in order to explain it, but you are unwilling to make such a departure for anything else.

Second, Harry Potter by definition is a false analogy to an Intelligent Designer.  Is is theoretically possible to empirically prove or falsify Harry Potter because Harry Potter falls within the scope of Empiricism.  It is not theoretically possible to empirically prove or falsify an Intelligent Designer because an I.D. falls outside the scope of Empiricism by definition.

However:   Your reply entirely misses the point about the requirement of a theory to explain theories in general.  

Edit:  The most intellectually dishonest point you make is even saying things like "philosophical gymnastics" to begin with.  Absolutely all knowledge is predicated upon logic and Philosophy.  Hearing you talk like this is like hearing BADdecker refer to the theories of science as "science fiction."  A logical explanation, equal-to or greater in scope, trumps a scientific explanation 100% of the time, all the time, every time.

I'm not religious.

And yes, you first reference Western tantra which, like Western yoga, really misses the point of what tantra and yoga are really meant to achieve.  They're bastardized versions.

Your second reference just reinforces the point in my last reply to you. 

A meditative state, as previously explained, occurs at the instant one's perception of "self" disappears entirely.

It is a universal phenomenon that arises similarly for everyone who attains it.  There is no variance.  Accordingly, it's not about personal preference, opinion, or subjectivity.  If you achieve a meditative state, it will be the same as any other.

Sex =\= sex + meditation

If sex + meditation > sex, then sex is not the 'ultimate,' is it?  That is, something can be added to it to make it greater.

So, we then look at just meditation (specifically, a meditative state) to see if this in itself is greater than sex.  Here, I re-refer you to my edits two posts ago.

Incorrect.  Tantric sex is sex performed with ritualistic, meditative focus.  If sex (in general) is the ultimate nirvana, then there should be no accompanying method by which it could be made 'more ultimate.'

Please see edits in previous post.

Edit:  If technology can facilitate such meditative states, I'm all for it.

I don't have to assume anything when you have stated all the information necessary to reach such a conclusion, unless you are a liar.

If sex is the ultimate nirvana, then why is tantric sex (axiomatically) more blissful?

Edit: Yes, meditation can simply be calming, even significantly so.  But this calming feeling is infinitely different from a meditative state.  There is absolutely no mistaking a meditative state.  The primary difference is that one achieves a meditative state at the instant the perception of one's "self" disappears entirely.  I'm particular with my language, and to say a meditative state is "infinitely" more blissful is a poignantly chosen phrase, and in no way euphemistic.  There are no boundaries invoked by a self in which the bliss can be contained, and accordingly the bliss is "non-finite" or infinite.

Edit 2: I would possibly concede to a semantic distinction between "pleasurable" and "blissful" whereupon sex could be described as more pleasurable, but certainly not more blissful or 'heavenly.'

Then it is self-apparent you have never achieved a meditative state, which is infinitely more blissful by definition.

What sane person, having achieved a meditative state, would believe an orgasm is a heavenly state?

With all due respect -- and I say that because I know from your posts you do value intellectual honesty -- you have no basis to say there is no "need" for God or an Intelligent Designer.  In the absence of a comprehensive scientific explanation for reality, and given that certain mathematical explanations such as ex-nihilo creation or otherwise fall short of such comprehension, your current perspective must acknowledge a horizon of knowledge exists whose threshold you have yet to surpass.

I strongly encourage you to consider the problem that none of these current explanations provide an explanation for theories themselves, which are the basis for all of our conceptual understanding.  For example, you can't comprehensively explain theories in terms of the brain because what we know of the brain is a theory of it (and that means we put the cart before the horse).

To have a comprehensive theory of what reality is all about, the theory we have about reality requires that it can account for itself.