Features

sloth · #1

preechr, i'd be happy for you to dismiss the relevance of linguistics if you at least grasped the point I was trying to make, but when you talk about the 'constants' and 'the way things really work' you are implicitly appealing to an order that exists outside language. the problem is, light acts in a stable manner because we symbolise it, or find words for it, such that its behaviour can be described in laws. strictly speaking there is no light outside language: it exists in the same unbroken fabric of reality as everything else. its a prejudice of language that the word should precede the object, which you see throughout the bible - "and god said let there be light; and there was light" - and philosophy like Plato's forms.

it sounds like you read me as making a weak claim to the effect that (the) language (of physics) does not adequately explain the structure of the universe, but what i am trying to explain is that the very notion of structure is a sleight of hand introduced by language. it throws these ideas in front of itself and spends forever trying to reach them, which is why we may continue to refine the sciences, but a final, satisfactory scientific theory is necessarily impossible. hopefully this might explain why (imo) it a mistake to refer to the so-called hard sciences to demonstrate that there might be similar absolute truths in morality.

Preechr · #2

Ok... Now I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, since you sound very sincere and, unlike Kahl, not just "going with your gut" and arguing for arguments sake (and badly.) You seem to know what you are talking about, though I don't yet.

With your first post, it seemed to me that you were trying to dismiss my thoughts by talking around them. Now that you've clarified your position, I'm actually more confused. Where I give you the benefit of the doubt is where I will continue under the assumption that you are talking WAY over my head, and I ask the same of you in that I really am trying to grasp your point, of view at least.

Let's start over here: the "unbroken fabric of reality."

That hints to me that you believe that the thing that we refer to as light and the other things we discuss in our sloppy and ultimately meaningless linguistic musings on the nature of reality do actually exist in some form "outside language" though we can never hope to completely describe that one eternal thread in that fabric that stretches out in all directions to infinity plus one until we can adequately describe all the threads and all their weavings and their weaver and his shoe size.

That is, in this discussion, what I would refer to as a minor, though entirely appreciable, point. My point is that that fabric does exist in reality. Everything is, whether we get it or not. I'm Ok with the idea that our study of nature's infinite complexity will never, ever be complete. I'm a deist, which means that I believe in a God we have no hope of ever understanding completely on any level. Just as, though, I believe the study of bits and pieces of Physics, even with the extremely limited capacity we have to understand what we are seeing, does produce tangible positive results on the quality of our lives in general, I believe in a similar "unbroken fabric" of decisions that connects us all, throughout history to the end of time, that, though we'll never completely understand it nor really ever be able to make great use of it, we will benefit from studying and attempting to apply to our personal interactions whatever knowledge we might be able to glean from such study, as ultimately futile as it may be.

Preechr · #3

KAHL:

I WILL NOW RANDOMLY AND CHRISTMASLY RESPOND TO VARIOUS COMMENTS YOU HAVE SO FAR MADE.

Kahljorn: you said morality was the physics of human interaction or something didnt you so wouldnt killing the entire human race for the sake of the planet or something inhuman be "Immoral" in some sense? You see how complicated these calculations can be!

Preechr: No and yes.

Kahljorn: lol seriously though good things always have good consequences? that's so vague and ambiguous, and so useless for morality! How could you ever use that as the compass of your being unless you were omniscient and knew what would have the best result? You ascribe to a very deterministic view point. I think that there is some base "design" in which things can have good results, but it's not so concrete at all, and that doing bad things might have good results sometimes. But i don't think that's any reason to act badly. Do you?

Preechr: What I said was that there is, in my opinion, an underlying order to human interactions. Yes, these interactions are very messy and complicated, and No, we can never hope to fully figure out how they all interrelate, but the order still exists, and we can benefit from the search for patterns in our actions and the subsequent reactions caused by said actions.

To do this as efficiently as possible, we will have to factor in for an infinite number of possible impurities introduced into our experiments, just like chemists, and, just like chemists, we will ultimately fail in getting it "exactly right." In a general sense, if I lie to you, the net value of that action taken will likely be negative to me, you and everyone touched by that action. Sure, I can see a situation in which my decision to lie to you might actually stop you from killing a thousand innocent children (Yes, Kahl... I really do think you are sexually attractive dressed up in your mother's bathrobe and fuzzy Winnie-The-Pooh slippers...) yet that lie (value -1 in this theoretical "equation..." not to scale...) is morally insignificant when compared to the total value of the net positive moral decisions made by all those little kids you killed when I told you the truth.

Kahljorn: yeah, well wut if won of thos kidz wuz HITLER?!?!!!one one

Preechr: Yep. It's very complicated. So is particle physics, but I think it's generally good that particle physicists are getting evaporated in the ongoing attempt to make me a way to someday, hopefully soon, beam me out of this discussion just like in Star Trek.

AChimp: Looks like I win once again!

Canada ROCKS!!!!

Kahljorn: lol ok ignore that what but seriously do you not see how what you're saying doesn't prove or even illustrate that atheists can't be moral, not even in theory?

Preechr: Did I say that? I don't think I did. What I believe, though I have not yet said it, is that atheists are fictional. They don't exist among those of us that possess enough cognitive ability to avoid drooling on our shoes. You know me... I don't look words up. I make up meanings to words, which is why I'm always right. Atheism is the belief that the belief in God does not exist, which is an obviously retarded thing to think.

Kahljorn:

Preechr: Yes, I know you never said that, but what did I tell you about letting me control a conversation?

Kahljorn:

Preechr: Face it: Nobody on this planet has been raised through childhood with an intact environmentally unaffected view of a universe absent a Deity. Atheists believe in an absense of God, which is a belief in God.

AChimp: I Win!! I Win!!

Preechr: Canadians and Atheist each make up about 6% of the world's population... about 9% combined... which is easy to discount from the 10,000 feet up view.

kahljorn · #4

Quote:

Preechr: Face it: Nobody on this planet has been raised through childhood with an intact environmentally unaffected view of a universe absent a Deity. Atheists believe in an absense of God, which is a belief in God.

Or maybe atheists know that the universe doesn't require a god and the thiests just believe in the absence of the lack of requirement of a god, which is a belief in the lack of requirement of a God. So it's really religion that's fictional!

Your statement is riddled with the presumption that god exists and that all thought is an attempt to get away from God, when really, I think at least, all thought is designed to understand "God."

Anyway, the other thing I said is that perhaps what athiests believe in when it comes to the universe and morality can be similar to what a religion thinks because the notion of "God" is kind of a label that attaches some type of trait but maybe "God" isn't something all that special, and maybe athiests can just attach a seperate label to the same thing and have the same understanding as if they considered it "God." Maybe they call it "Todd."

as to your pm response which you sent I thought of a better example than balls rolling down hills. Is it possible that a complex organism could work better with it's insides outside and outside inside? The mouth, eyes and nose could be where the stomach is, and the mouth could be some gross tube shaped organ. Is it even theoretically possible that such a thing could exist and thrive, short of having the universe inside it or something?
Does it require a God to make it like that?

Quote:

The basic fiber of existence, if that's the best you can do when you get around to coming up with names for things, brings into existence"

Well, what is the first and most essential thing that is required for anything to exist? Existence?

Quote:

I see the world and the universe as a beautiful and wonderful thing, and I find it very difficult to summarily write that off to happenstance.

Me too, but do you think that God personally painted the shit or that the various forces of nature formed it through a long process? I think God might be that process and the possibility of a process. How else could God have the qualities of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence?
But that's irrelevant. Whatever you're saying, the thing you're relying on the most is that things having a design, and being so beautiful, necessarily entails that there is a designer or artist behind everything. What I'm saying is that it's not necessary for there to be a designer, because there are certain things which likely could not be changed. It's just like you said, "If everything changed, then everything would change (or disappear)." But maybe, because of this, it is impossible to truly change.

Quote:

Your basic fiber of existence is responsible for the perfection of the universe that contains us, as silly and self-destructive as we are.

I guess. Maybe that's just part of the design or something i dont know dude why don't you take it to the pastor. Oh wait here's an answer: I don't know maybe this is a contradictive statement! "SO PERFECT" "SO SILLY AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE." Perfection is self-destructive and silly, apparantly. Maybe the notion of perfection is silly and smug.

Quote:

but your basic fiber of existence decided for whatever reason to hand us the reigns, at least from what I perceive your point of view to be.

Decide? Decision making authority? I don't know what to say about this right now, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it necessitates this being a "Decision." Why does the universe have to be some fucking dialogue for you are you insane or something. "What will you have, Mr. God" "i think I'll have an entire race of thinking human beings which contemplate my existence all the time but they can never guess it right because they never guess that I'm just a regular guy in a tuxedo."

and why do you think humans have the "Reigns?" What type of gangelous cockfaced deranged monster are you? More like left the reigns fucking dangling while he ditched the cart on the side of the road and we've been stuggling to grab them but we're only 1 mm tall.