The joys of life without God

[Godless]

So you're saying that there's no empirical evidence of (self)conscience?

Haven't you figured it out yet? Lightee is not conscious!

 

[lightgigantic]

Funkstar

tentative hypothesis and vague ideas are not empirical evidence ”

So you're saying that there's no empirical evidence of (self)conscience? What an odd position. And wrong, of course.

Of course its wrong - just as we can see that even on sciforums its not uncommon for a user to enlist several sockpuppets (false identities) in an attempt to establish their actual self (even though it is only conceptualized self as opposed to self as context), even if one only has sockpuppets to go by, its still prett obvious that somewhere someone must actually exist

- my point however was that the grounds that you determine for evidence of god (the reductionist model of empirical evidence) does not even allow for the proof of consciousness - evidence of consciousness in scientific circles comes from the philosophical aspects of human psychology - which is grounded in behaviouralism as opposed to reductionism

“ (empirical) science operate sout of sense perception - how is it possible to see what you are seeing with? ”

Inference, for one thing. They figured out the error of the Hubble telescope by looking at pictures generated by it. But there's no reason to look at your own particular consciousness. We can observe others instead.

What will one see if they have rose coloured glasses on? In other words in th eultimate issue it is not appropriate to examine the nature of consciousness as context without first addressing one's own consciousness

“ why is it not good reason to perceive that the universe is directed by intelligence? Is there anything in our experience of known phenomena of complex material constructuions that do not owe their existence to intelligence - like for instance if you cannot help but look at a plastic model of th e universe and wonder who manufactured it, how is it that you can observe the actual universe and not wonder who manufactured that? ”

Just because you personally are ignorant of the mechanisms involved doesn't mean that it isn't mechanistic. Your personal incredulence carries no weight at all as a formal argument. You wouldn't dream to suggest to a mathematician that wavelet analysis is "magic", just because you don't understand it. Why should the evolution of the universe be special?

If a plastic model of the universe was discovered, would you think that someone had manufactured it or that it had evolved through blind interactions of nature?
The general principle is if it is obvious that simple things require intelligence, why is it obvious (particularly in the absence of evidence) that things that are uncountably million s of times more complex do not require intelligence?

Now, there are, of course, plenty of complex structures that do not need intelligence for us to explain them. Stars, for instance, have tremendously complex structures and are essentially explainable as immense amount of hydrogen under the effects of gravity. Such self-organizing systems are all around us, and require no intelligence at all.

They are labelled as self organizing simply because the forces that direct they are unseen (any fundamental axiom of physics requires a "mysterious" quality to be axiomatic - like gravity for example - physics can't tell us why gravity is there), this is actually an example of, as you previously stated,

Just because you personally are ignorant of the mechanisms involved doesn't mean that it isn't mechanistic. Your personal incredulence carries no weight at all as a formal argument.

You cannot use a star as an example because there are just simply too many unanswered questions (ie axioms) innvolved in the explanation to be clear evidence of self organization

“ every gap? - on the contrary science seems to labour under the epitah "the more you know the more you don't know" - for instance in darwins time it was thought that cells were just globs of matter and quite easily replicatable once the foundations of atomic structure could be dilineated - however closer examination of the cell reveals an infrastructure more complex than the electricity supply net work of NYC - more gaps just seem to keep on popping up ”

Of course, new knowledge leads to new questions. But the more things are found to be explainable by scientific means, the more contrived the religious argument becomes. You wouldn't argue that a thunder god creates lightning, today. But lightning would have been proof of the gods' power in ancient times. Frankly, I think it a very silly argument to make that our increased scientific knowledge of the universe should lead to a conviction that the religious position is strengthened.

even thunder relies on axioms

Contrary to the old adage, I do not think that religion and science are entirely orthogonal. Increased scientific knowledge lessens the need for religious explanations.

Not sure what you mean here - do you mean that neither religion or science are orthogonal (meaning bereft of inebrieties) or that comparitatively religion and science are not orthogonal (they are capable of existing in a unified medium)? Or do you mean something else?

 

[lightgigantic]

Haven't you figured it out yet? Lightee is not conscious!

 

[Godless]

you sorry idiot! I've been here quite longer than your sorry ass, hardly a troll! dipshit!

 

[lightgigantic]

you sorry idiot! I've been here quite longer than your sorry ass, hardly a troll! dipshit!

With evolution nothing is constant

If you have been around longer than me it seems more likely that you may have evolved into a troll, since the distinct changes in evolution are visible over long periods of time


(actually I mentioned trolling specifically, not sock puppeting)

 

[Fire]

It seems lightgigantic is turning to comedy to cover the idiotic nature of his arguments. That's one method to get them to stop laughing at you.

 

[SoLiDUS]

That settles it then; You are just a nut job much more like your just as delusional as LG, or further gone. Take a look at what you wrote, give it to some psychologist. "Warning" you might get admited in the psycho ward.

i don't want to becuz i think most psychologists are psychos...

LOL

Am I the only one who got a kick out of that reply??

 

[Godless]

No but I think it was worthless to coment! Funny though