Greetings ,I'm back. Mythicism

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis wrote:

I have decided to carry that idea forwards into everyday thinking to see how my perspective might change

I certainty gained a lot by seeing things more as probabilities than absolutes when absolutes are not necessary or justified. It’s helped a lot with predictions, work and being extremely aware of what Nicolas Taleb called “Black Swan Events” (highly improbable or rare but very possible events that have a seismic effect). That includes minor Black Swans in your own life. I very much prefer a probability approach than false binaries.

Given what we know about Biology, Ornithology, Heredity, and Genetics, the concept of a Black Swan is not a self-contradictory concept and we know that its occurence in nature has degrees of probability, depending on the recessiveness of the gene and how often it manifests in the phenotype of the bird’s offspring.

Theists, however, make binary, absolute claims of a god or gods and the attributes of that god or those gods.  Hence, it is valid to respond in kind, especially when those attributes are self-contradictory, contradictory of each other, and contradictory of phenomena in the Natural Universe.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis wrote:

No. There is no reason a being could achieve all of those qualities if it is more complex than the simulation itself and has an extremely complex mind. I’m not saying it is likely, however it is nonsense to say it is impossible. You are also pointing out contradictory qualities which I never mentioned. I was speaking only about omniscience and not omnipotence. I could not agree more that those two qualities are incompatible (in fact omnipotence is literally impossible).

Adding a simulated world (or Universe) and levels of complexity between the simulation and the creator is adding more than is necessary to the explanation of an already mind-cracking concept of a god.  Parsimony i.e. Occam’s Razor is always the best route to go on these things.

I point out the contradictory attributes given to a god to show that what is contradictory about the Abrahamic God equally applies to _any_ concept of god that claims the same attributes.  There’s no need to reinvent the wheel anytime someone asserts a new omnific god.

You are correct that omnipotence is self-contradictory, otherwise God could make a rock so big that He himself couldn’t lift it.  And if one retorts, like the Roman Catholic scholars, that God’s omnipotence is limited to what is logically and physically possible, then this rules out any possibility of the very Miracles they cite to prove God and the divinity of Jesus.

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis wrote:

There is nothing to “not know” if you have access to all information all the time all at once.

LOL

Just because you can string some words together grammatically, it doesn’t follow that they produce a comprehensible notion. For example, “Sing a few jaguars of barista smackdown for me, please” is grammatical but nonsense.  You can string together the words in ‘There is nothing to “not know” if you have access to all information all the time all at once,” but I don’t think anyone can explain them in a way that makes sense. It’s a nonsense sentence that simply appears to mean more than my silly example

If you are omniscient, then you you must know what you don’t know, which I don’t mean in the Socratic sense of knowing where you need to know more. I mean it literally: to be omniscient, you’d have to know everything including those specific facts of which you are ignorant. You can’t both know and not know X. A god can’t know everything that’s the future holds except for some things. That’s not omniscience.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by  Unseen.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Oh, I forgot, G’Day Glen D.

I hope all is well , and rest assured, even if the water swirls the other way and beasties are a little stranger down under, the laws of the Natural Universe are still intact everywhere.

The whole question of the historicity of Jesus is an interesting one which I hope to explore more.

The main thing to remember is that whether or not Jesus existed, the Miracles attributed to him are impossible and there was lots about him that wasn’t nice.

And the idea of a God coming down as his own son to commit suicide to pay for sins of man which He created to sin defies all reason and justice.

Please keep ‘me thinking down there and we’ll try to do it up here.

 

4

[UnseenParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Yes, but you wouldn’t be able to see God with your eyes.

So, in addition to the logical reason to know God doesn’t exist, we can add in the invisible (and presumable odorless and tasteless) nature of the deity, giving me practical evidence to add to my knowledge of his nonexistence. Thanks!

[PopeBeanieModerator]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

An assertion not found in evidence.

True. Think I went out on a limb glibly, kinda making fun of logical arguments that probably wouldn’t matter at all to those believers out there who will just make up their own logic (or ignore it) in any case. God was a human — specifically-patriarchal invention from the very start of those attempts to posit what an all-powerful “He” must be like. Logic had little to do with which descriptions got approved and passed on to future masses.

Why “of course He’s invisible”, “why of course he’s perfect”, blah blah, “why of course He’s not bound by mere mortal logic”. (BTW Jesus lovers, I’m not just picking on Christianity.)

Maybe the above is another way of me saying that some of the logic goes over my head and I’m too lazy to get into point by point rabbit holes. Observing my country’s recent deficit in clear thinking, I think our only hope may be to teach clear thinking to kids as early as possible.

Hey kids, do you think there’s a hippopotamus in your bathroom right now? Why or why not? And maybe a video clip from space with Earth rotating: Hey kids, does Earth look flat, or round? What is myth, and what is science?

[jakelafortParticipant]

Pope, you have touched on an important point. Education is critical to our future. Not only have we arrived at the point in a novel that is too farfetched to suspend disbelief but we are approaching Idiocracy.

Thinking is a subject that ought to be added to the curriculum beginning in first grade. We need individuals to understand their biases, confirmation bias, history, human nature, the influence of technology on human behavior and politics and above all to question and analyze everything. From K through 12 and into higher education it must have the importance of reading, writing and the other core subjects combined. It is not enough to be educated. We can’t continue with ideology and ideologues and expect a good future. An intelligent electorate will automatically resist racism and the polarization attendant to ideology. An intelligent electorate will fundamentally change government and human relations.

Maybe. Maybe not…

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Yes, and one of the problems with thinking ideologically is that it insists on certainty.  Something “should” be a certain way, no matter what it actually is or is not.

Another problem in thinking is that people identify their ego (i.e., goals and well being) with the success of their ideas, so that if the ideas fail, they fail as a person.

[DavisModerator]

Unseen you are defining omniscience in a fairly novel way I’ve never heard before. Redefining things doesn’t help your case. Nice try.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Pope Beanie and Jake,

Pope, I had the Spidey-Sense tingling that your hypothesis might have been tongue-in-cheek, but had to be sure. 😁

I agree with you both that it is a problem of education, though the source will have to be enlightened parents, enlightened peer groups, and kid-friendly media such as DVDs, streaming, Web Sites, podcasts, and gaming with lessons in rational, critical thought.

I wouldn’t rely on government schools.  They’ve spent upwards of Trillions of Dollars on all levels over decades and the very first encounter we all have with government schools is a big Argumentum ad Bacculum (Appeal to Force Fallacy.)  Columbine and all the other horrors afterward have been from the lab mice who took government schools at their word.

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis wrote:

Unseen you are defining omniscience in a fairly novel way I’ve never heard before. Redefining things doesn’t help your case. Nice try.

All knowing means knowing all. Always has. Always will. You can’t knows all if you are dumb when it comes to the future.

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis, as I understand it, you hold open the possibility, however slim, that the universe actually was created through an act of magic by an invisible, tasteless, odorless, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ sorcerer. For me, that doesn’t pass the snicker test.

You have picked a side. The side the believers are on. And your sort of reasoning gives them oxygen and encouragement to go out and spread the word.

[DavisModerator]

No unseen I haven’t picked a side. It’s a serious problem you have that you think you have to pick any side with absolute confidence, definitively without doubt. It is a false dichotomy. I choose accepting claims that are accompanied by evidence (attributing a higher probability of it being the case the better the evidence) or if they are logically sound and to not shut the door on anything that is not logically impossible (giving most silly ideas an infinitely close to but not quite 0% likelihood…ideas which deserves none of my time).

I wouldn’t claim with absolute certainty a nasty vicious evil God (that doesn’t have inherently impossible qualities or conflicting qualities) doesn’t exist just because it is abhorrence, against my interests, anti-intuitive or seems silly to me. I don’t understand why your brain cannot process the difference between not taking claims seriously and definitively ruling them out. Try it like…for just a week…and see how things go. Of course a mean vicious God does to me seem abhorrent, insanely unlikely, very much against my interests and quite anti-intuitive. But alas Unseen, just like you, I am not omniscient, I seriously lack an enormous amount of information and refuse to make unjustifiable negative existential claims. That is the team you should be on…as should all rational skeptics. Atheists who claim to know that there cannot be Gods make me roll my eyes.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Unseen wrote:

You have picked a side. The side the believers are on. And your sort of reasoning gives them oxygen and encouragement to go out and spread the word.

I’ve redacted what I first wrote here. It was just a silly, anoxic observation.

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis wrote:

No unseen I haven’t picked a side. It’s a serious problem you have that you think you have to pick any side with absolute confidence, definitively without doubt. It is a false dichotomy. I choose accepting claims that are accompanied by evidence (attributing a higher probability of it being the case the better the evidence) or if they are logically sound and to not shut the door on anything that is not logically impossible (giving most silly ideas an infinitely close to but not quite 0% likelihood…ideas which deserves none of my time). I wouldn’t claim with absolute certainty a nasty vicious evil God (that doesn’t have inherently impossible qualities or conflicting qualities) doesn’t exist just because it is abhorrence, against my interests, anti-intuitive or seems silly to me. I don’t understand why your brain cannot process the difference between not taking claims seriously and definitively ruling them out. Try it like…for just a week…and see how things go. Of course a mean vicious God does to me seem abhorrent, insanely unlikely, very much against my interests and quite anti-intuitive. But alas Unseen, just like you, I am not omniscient, I seriously lack an enormous amount of information and refuse to make unjustifiable negative existential claims. That is the team you should be on…as should all rational skeptics. Atheists who claim to know that there cannot be Gods make me roll my eyes.

Well, gee, Davis, what do you know? How do you know things? Applying cartesian doubt or thinking in terms of the world of The Matrix, which sounds like your view, what can anyone know?

Your view would seem to imply that knowledge, for any being less than a god, is impossible.

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