[stone monkey]

Cold Iron;178657 said:

...a kind of infinite and incomprehendable collection of accountability, positive thinking, empowerment, self-correction, evolutionary instincts, subconscious mind, inner-self, fuzzy-logic, neural association, living interaction, web-of-life, causality, memory, learning, natural laws, decisions, relationships, desires...

A universe without brains would be missing several of these things, a universe without life even more of them.
You're being inconsistent. By your own definition, consciousness has to matter.

[Cold Iron]

stone monkey;178987 said:

A universe without brains would be missing several of these things, a universe without life even more of them.
You're being inconsistent. By your own definition, consciousness has to matter.

Many of those are the effects on us, so of course I would cite them as otherwise, this idea is even less meaningful that you have several times remarked. However, without us, the universe is still there, and without life at all, the universe still has variables, chance and "the way things turned out", which is also part of it.

potsherds said:

Lying bastard...

well that is slightly more similar, but still ignores the point that there is more to this than simply "everything".

Quote

I'm so glad that someone smarter than me is tackling the inconsistencies of your ideas.

My explanations may be inconsistent, but not my ideas. I am also glad that someone is bothering to tackle them.

[stone monkey]

Like most devotees of woo, you're moving the goalposts.

Oh well. I think I'll give up. The one thing you've convinced me of is the futility of trying to argue with someone whose arguments are so protean.

[Cold Iron]

Damn. Ok so if what I'm talking about is directly related to our own experience and interpretation of the universe, then its all in my head, if it's not then it's blind chance and causality with no hint of the divine...

Give up if you want but you've given me something to think about.

If it's any consolation, I'm not intentionally trying to change the argument, these things are by nature difficult to pin down. Cut me some slack.

[Dolorous Menhir]

You sound like a Spinoza fan, Cold Iron. If you haven't already you should look him up, he's a 17th century philosopher who is pretty much on the same page as you.

[Cold Iron]

Thanks for that, DM, just read his wiki article, fits quite nicely, i'll be looking into it further, happy to know that my ideas are only 350 years old . Pots, you can put a label on me now, I'm a Spinozist.

[quote name='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinoza']His unique contribution to understanding the workings of mind is extraordinary, even during this time of radical philosophical developments, in that his views provide a bridge between religions' mystical past and psychology of the present day.
...
The pantheism controversy
In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism, after Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time of being called an atheist. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Moses Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual difference between theism and pantheism. The entire issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time, which Immanuel Kant rejected, as he thought that attempts to conceive of transcendent reality would lead to antinomies in thought.
...
Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted the most influence on his world view (Weltanschauung). Spinoza equated God (infinite substance) with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity. In 1929, Einstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."[/quote]

Make that thank you very much, DM.

[Darkwatch]

Reminder: No Attacks, No insults. And this is NOT about convincing, Not rigth or wrong, this is about stating and understanding.

[Dag]

For me, God ist the mysterious constant X among a bunch of variables which make up that endlessly long equation my brain has to keep processing day after day in order to cope with the world I live in.

[Cold Iron]

Nice, dag. Any particular reason you called god the constant rather than just another variable?

[Dag]

@CI

The cynic in me would call it "pure convenience".

It's easier to define God as a constant. This world is full of variables, those mean, ever-changing, unpredictable things I have to deal with every day anew. So, God as a constant is a kind of counterweight to those variables, an anchor that keeps my mind from drifting too far away from that area labeled as "sanity". In that long equation, it always stands for: "However unlogical the result may seem today, for some reason it is correct. So keep calm, everything is just as it should be, just push a bit harder and that reason will become obvious to you".

Want to call it "spiritual crutches"? Yes, that's probably close to truth. Want to call me "weak"? No, I disagree in that point - I need those crutches exactly because my whole life I keep running around, chasing those changes, trying to make sense out of them. That "chasing" part has a lot to do with stumbling, so if I don't want to break my neck every time I hit the ground, I need those crutches. Or even better - a good emotional airbag. And that's where God comes in.

[councilor]

i listened to a debate between an anglican priest and a physicist at my uni a couple of days ago. the priest cam eup with this idea of god

1 everything that has a beginning has cause (which is everything)
2 the universe has a beginning (believed to be so)
3 there fore the casue must be something timeless, all powerful etc ect. (uh, what?)
4 only thought and intelligence can cause the universe to be as it is, with a ll the laws - therefore there must a being that is all powerful, etc, which is god (i got lost somewhere here. it's like fuzzy maths without the attendant logic.)

he also said that being athiest, that means we must have a cold amoral view of the world. for exmaple, to the situation in africa and middle east, what we should be thinking, as athiests, is meh, that's life. if we can't then we are not really athiests.

[stone monkey]

1 Is a logical fallacy (which, I suppose, is what you get when you rely on the Principle of Induction too much), which means that 3 may not be applicable which would imply that 4 doesn't have to apply either.
It's a very medieval argument - actually, I think it's a combination of Plato (or Aristotle - I forget which) and Paley's Argument from Design, so I suspect your Anglican priest must have had a very low opinion of his audience - this stuff dates back to St. Thomas Aquinas. I'm surprised he didn't try to fly the Ontological Argument past you. Your uni should have tried to get hold of a Jesuit, he would at least have treated his audience like intelligent adults.

The standard religious argument is that atheism implies amorality - which is one of the fallacies the religious like to hold about atheists so that they can kid themselves that believing in a mythicical creator (or creators) in some way makes them better human beings.

[Obdigore]

councilor;206279 said:

1 everything that has a beginning has cause (which is everything)
2 the universe has a beginning (believed to be so)
3 there fore the casue must be something timeless, all powerful etc ect. (uh, what?)
4 only thought and intelligence can cause the universe to be as it is, with a ll the laws - therefore there must a being that is all powerful, etc, which is god (i got lost somewhere here. it's like fuzzy maths without the attendant logic.)

he also said that being athiest, that means we must have a cold amoral view of the world. for exmaple, to the situation in africa and middle east, what we should be thinking, as athiests, is meh, that's life. if we can't then we are not really athiests.

I am going to quote this to lay it out. I know, councilor, that you did not advance this as your own idea of what god is, however I do feel the need to respond to this.

1: Ok, so we take this theory.
2: Fine, universe had a 'beginning'.
3: If 1 is true, then 3 cannot, as there cannot be anything that is 'timeless' or 'all-powerful' because everything has to have a beginning (1).
4: This is based on 3 being correct, and is another card to hold up the card house of his belief.

In my mind, 1 and 3 cannot co-exist in this explanation. This person is saying, to me, that Everything must have a beginning (1) and, The universe was created by something WITHOUT a beginning (3).

I utterly agree with Stone Monkey on what he wrote regarding 'athiesm'.

Now, as to my view on god, the universe, and everything:

Agnostic:
If there is a god (which I have seen no evidence either way...) then he/she/it does not appear, to me at least, to have any impact on a humans (at least mine or anyone I know(s?)) lives, so why does it matter?

I have yet to see a religion whos entire doctrine I agree with. I also, however, have yet to see any irrefutable proof against their being a 'god.'

[Menandore]

@councilor - I'm glad I wasn't there. I would get very pissed off with someone trying to suggest I am without morals simply because I think god is as real as santa claus

[Tes'thesula]

technically, obdigore, he said 'everything that HAS a beginning, has a cause,' not that everything MUST have a beginning.

[Obdigore]

Ahh fair enough Tes. Foot in my mouth and all that.

I will leave my post up so everyone can make fun of me ;P

[Dolorous Menhir]

If someone tries St. Thomas Aquinas' proofs of the existence of god on you then they deserve to be shot down.

[Cold Iron]

Don't worry obdi, i can save you! Saying the universe has a beginning is the same as saying everything has a beginning.

Also, there is no way of proving that the universe had a beginning. Using this as a basis for a subsequent proof is fundamentally flawed.