Jim

Simon Paynton wrote:
Maybe God is a description of certain properties of the universe, like energy is. Maybe God is our common humanity, which has properties of its own (e.g. maximising).

Simon, again, you are projecting higher level abstract concepts, and highly culturally loaded ones, onto what needs no higher level abstract.

The properties of…[Read more]

Clearsky,

Just so you know it’s all been a parody lampooning of a Christian who used to visit here. Of all his brilliant appologetics his greatest was that, like God, energy is just a concept. By the way, he was also a physicist…or so he claimed.

In other words, energy, God, they’re both just concepts, help you understand the world and yada…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
That energy and matter are two different states of one thing is a fact.

Unseen my brother, the only thing in God’s great universe that can be two things in one is the Lord and his son as himself and a holy lord thrown in there plus his love for all the people he sent to his eternal torture chamber and his divine plan. Okay, that’s…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
I burned some energy thinking about the concept of that fire.

Good. You know, it’s not like I take pleasure from the fact that secularist philosophers are being roasted in the eternal underground torture chamber. But how else could God express his love for his own commandments and undeniable truth? Okay maybe I get a…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Kant has had a few mentions recently. It was he who said “existence is not a predicate” when he spoke of logical and material possibilities. The concept of god is logical possible but that does not imply god exists.

And that’s why one day humanity will smarten up and burn his books…in a fire far more ferocious tha…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
So Davis how do you distinguish something real (exists whether we conceive of it or are unaware) from something that is not real?

Well you know, I read what a lot of commentators say. Theologists have spent centuries thinking about all of this and writing down down facts and powerful arguments based on our slightly…[Read more]

Re: Unseen,

So energy is a double concept. Energy AND matter only exist in our minds, TWO concepts, and it all depends on what centuries of appointed energy commentators have written on it (liberally borrowing better philosophers material)

Re:Reg:

I see where you are going with this but the concept of a concept is also a concept so you might as…[Read more]

Yes Simon, per thriving…it’s a good definition but it’s not the best one cause not all creatures follow this. In a significant number of creatures a large number (if not an entire gender) don’t reproduce and some insects make no particular effort to stay alive and in some creatures with few natural predators strength can be rather unimportant (i…[Read more]

Simon you keep using thrive in a way which is just extremely confusing because thrive is conceptual when it comes to humans and, as far as we know, that is until we can access or are told by other animals, it is not conceptual with other creatures. If we just stick to non-human mobile individual creatures…what do you mean by thrive?

• stage one…

[Read more]

I suppose after the First billion years ui heaven i will have mastered all the worlds languages and mathematics and physics. I’ll likely spend the next billion years inventing new languages and logic annotation. In the third bout of a billion years I’d learn everything worth knowing and would be sick to death of meeting other alien species who…[Read more]

tom sarbeck wrote:
Ehhhh Davis. Energy is just a concept until a lightning bolt strikes you.

Ehhhhh. I can’t understand why you atheists want energy to be real? Would that somehow give you a reason not to strike down all the people you long to murder?

Ehhhh Tom. Energy is just a concept.

jakelafort wrote:
We don’t credit organisms or animals driven exclusively by instinct as sentient but are we certain that they are not self-aware? If so, how?

Hofstadter was one of the first mathematician/theory of mind/philosopher to posit feedback loops. In his book, only humans have strange loops (putting it extremely generally…where only b…[Read more]

Language comes naturally to us. The written word comes to us a lot sooner and more easily than advanced math. We learn it faster, retain it longer, make less mistakes with it and use it our whole lives. We can describe most of the universe as we know it through words, express ourselves through words…live every day with words. And yet…I’m not…[Read more]

tom sarbeck wrote:
Only by first studying math can he “know” that. He then “attaches” the limited math he knows to the limited universe he perceives. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

+1

You are both right. Evolution didn’t stop. Of course it didn’t. There is an enormous difference between how we can handle the heat, certain foods, skin color, endurance, blood type and much more. It has only been a near microscopic number of generations since man went sedentary and lived in large groups.  It’s true all species to have a potenti…[Read more]

It’s also more than just evolutionary pressure. We evolved to live in tiny groups of people roaming Savannah with mostly enough resources to get by, not too much violence and using ingenuity and speculation to adapt to slowly changing environments.

Having a detailed world view or a supernatural creation explanation is a consequence of this,…[Read more]