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Old 01-20-2015, 02:33 PM
 
Location: Sitting on a bar stool. Guinness in hand.
4,428 posts, read 6,486,690 times
Reputation: 1721

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Quote:
Originally Posted by P47P47 View Post
Cannoli are fine, but may I have some biscotti instead, please?


Grazie.




Of course. Please do.
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Old 01-20-2015, 03:44 PM
 
Location: Hyrule
8,390 posts, read 11,553,374 times
Reputation: 7544
I'll have a Cannoli!

Random guy: Where do we come from?
Atheist: I don't know
Random guy: I think..................and then, ...............oh and if, .................because,......................... ....zzzzzzzzzzzz.
Atheist: Yeah, like I said, I don't know either. But I'll take a Cannoli!
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Old 01-21-2015, 03:38 AM
 
Location: Florida
23,155 posts, read 26,070,302 times
Reputation: 27887
Here's an analogy that should be understandable, Mystic.
IF a wife cannot locate her husband by phone every Tuesday evening, it indicates that he has a girlfriend.
IF the wife has a husband that has started going to a gym to improve his physique, it indicates that he has a girlfriend.
IF the husband has phone calls on his phone to an unrecognized number every Tuesday afternoon, it indicates that he has a girlfriend.
IF the wife was daydreaming and envisioned the husband kissing some strange woman and it made her very sad and angry, it indicates he has a girlfriend.
All of those things are facts but the conclusion is wrong since the facts are not complete. No matter how many hints there may be suggesting a possibility, an accurate conclusion cannot be drawn from them.

Your scientific 'facts' are not complete. You fill the incompleteness of your facts with supposition.
If you, like many others do, presented all this as a "what if?" contribution, you might get those that like to speculate to banter about it with you.
Actually, you've had several do so and at great length. You just didn't like the conclusion they arrived at that your 'facts' were either wrong or "Mystic's musing of the gaps".
You call it philosophical...I call it idle speculation of the 'what if?' genre.

(Disclaimer....I seldom write lengthy posts and I've only had one cup of coffee, so excuse or ignore if the above is rather incoherent)
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Old 01-21-2015, 06:49 AM
 
Location: Somewhere out there.
10,492 posts, read 6,105,970 times
Reputation: 6524
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
Don't flatter yourself. Penrose's works have been central to my understanding of consciousness from early on. I use Synthesis because it is NOT a purely scientific work. It is an effort to summarize my views in easy to understand terms for a friend who wanted more details about why I believe as I do. It encompasses my knowledge AND my beliefs. I compartmentalize the science knowledge supporting my hypotheses away from the spiritual, faith and belief aspects based on my personal experiences and study of the "spiritual fossil record." Most of my critics seem not to understand that and conflate them.For the umpteenth and one time anything measured EXISTS in our reality. Energy is measured and it EXISTS in the state the component measurements indicate. The two sets of indices give a clear indication of the underlying state of the phenomenon we call energy . . . MC^2=hf. Once something is converted to energy whatever it was is transformed and EXISTS as substances at a higher frequency of "molecular vibration." You are used to thinking that whatever it was converted from is destroyed. I see it as merely converted to different forms and still existing within the universe in states as indicated by the component measures. You are not used to thinking of energy as substance because you are not using a perspective of the entire universe taken as the system within which it exists. You are not used to using the math measures as indices of the underlying structure and state of the reality you are measuring and manipulating. That is for philosophers whose agenda differs from the physicists. My critics routinely do not seem to comprehend this . . . as you do not.
You use a lot of conjecture: "you are used to thinking" and "you are used to using" and so on. That's right. That's because I'm used to understanding the science as it is laid out, not as per the stuff you have made up in your head.
As I said before, you can dress it up anyway you want but the speed of light is a constant. I have explained this a million times before. Squaring it does not change its value. You simply do not understand the formula. It cannot be changed, it cannot be messed with. Or turned into something 'philosophical'. It is what it is and that's all there is to it.


Quote:
Except that the ONLY attribute of our sensory experience that directly corresponds to reality is time.. Everything else we sense is indirect. In Helmholtz's words,

. . . Events, like our perceptions of them, take place in time, so that the time relations of the latter can furnish a true copy of those of the former.

According to Helmholtz, time is the only feature which is shared by both physical reality and our consciousness. (This is extremely important to understand and think about its implications.) In all other things, perception is only symbolical and the dissimilarity of the stimulus and its conscious registration is striking. For example, the impact of photons is translated into visual qualities, the impact of air waves into auditory qualities, molecular impacts as touch, taste, scent, cold, warmth, etc. Only time has a structural equivalence in the physical world and in our consciousness. That is why I refer to it as timespace . . . NOT spacetime.
In other words, you are taking Einsteins word, flipping it, using your own definition to make it sound like it is something scientific, when actually you just made it up.

This reminds me of Deepak Chopra, on speaking to Richard Dawkins, when he claimed that scientists had 'hijacked' the word 'quantum' for their own use. Very funny.

Well go at it Mystic.
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Old 01-21-2015, 09:26 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,081 posts, read 20,507,234 times
Reputation: 5927
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruithne View Post
....

This reminds me of Deepak Chopra, on speaking to Richard Dawkins, when he claimed that scientists had 'hijacked' the word 'quantum' for their own use. Very funny.

Well go at it Mystic.
You know, you are not the first to be reminded of Dipak Chophra when reading Mystic.
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Old 01-21-2015, 09:43 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,770 posts, read 13,299,066 times
Reputation: 9776
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freak80 View Post
MysticPhd appears to be doing the Gish Gallop:

Gish Gallop - RationalWiki

Just throw as much BS into the debate as possible. It's impossible to refute someone when the stream of BS is never ending.
Thanks for this. I had never heard the term "Gish Gallop" before but I instantly knew it had to have been named after Duane T. Gish, former president of the Institute for Creation Research. And so it was!

Mystic is far from alone. It is used by others here and on other forums. The basic pattern is always that the person claims to be quite erudite, to have extensive scientific education and experience that you as a mere plebe cannot possibly understand, along possibly with an extensive spiritual quest or practice that is likely to go beyond the efforts or norms of anyone else on the forum, at least in claim. They then proceed to dress up standard arguments like "god of the gaps" in baffle-speak and august, pedantic academic arguments, and makes sure that the constant s__tstream is never-ending.

Mystic at least to a degree admits that some of his evidence is personal and subjective, and that indeed this personal subjective evidence is key and does not constitute scientific proof; that any particular person would have to pursue his meditation practice for potentially years to arrive at similar conclusions. I have known most other such folks to simply insist that they are correct, period. Sometimes though Mystic gets frustrated at how unattractive his ideas are to most of us, that they do not motivate us to go down the path he has gone down, with high hopes we'll find his pot of gold.

The irony is that, as many theists will regularly claim, if you try hard enough, suspend disbelief enough, and hope enough, you probably WILL succumb to the same agency inference and confirmation bias as the claimer. Because we're all wired to see certain classes of things if we get our pesky intellect sufficiently out of the way. This also explains the fundamentalist claim the unbelievers are just being obstinate and need to "just believe" -- as they do. What we try to explain is that "just believe" is precisely the problem. Belief must be withheld when it is not substantiated and justified -- not just offered because of personal desire or group pressure.

I will give Mystic credit though. He reminds me of the latest "most interesting man in the world" TV commercial: "he has made diamonds with nothing more than peer pressure". ;-)
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Old 01-21-2015, 12:32 PM
 
Location: USA
18,436 posts, read 9,056,292 times
Reputation: 8475
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
The irony is that, as many theists will regularly claim, if you try hard enough, suspend disbelief enough, and hope enough, you probably WILL succumb to the same agency inference and confirmation bias as the claimer. Because we're all wired to see certain classes of things if we get our pesky intellect sufficiently out of the way. This also explains the fundamentalist claim the unbelievers are just being obstinate and need to "just believe" -- as they do. What we try to explain is that "just believe" is precisely the problem. Belief must be withheld when it is not substantiated and justified -- not just offered because of personal desire or group pressure.
You sum it up well. If the beliefs of an engineer or doctor don't match reality, bad things will tend to happen. "Just believing" would be disastrous. It seems that many religious believers simply don't care whether or not their beliefs correspond with objective reality. The outside world, with all of its invalidating evidence, can actually become the enemy. The evidence for evolution is a prime example, in the context of fundamentalist Christianity.

One blogger compared religion to a placebo. As you know, a placebo gets its power from belief, as well as the authority of the doctor. This blogger went on to suggest that many people "just believe" in religion because it makes them feel good...even when the beliefs cannot be substantiated. And, like a placebo, religion gets much of its power from authority (the Bible, the preacher, the pope, the church, etc.).

Yes, any crank can put anything on the Internet, but I think that blogger is on the right track. I can send you the link if you'd like.
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Old 01-21-2015, 03:42 PM
 
63,461 posts, read 39,726,177 times
Reputation: 7792
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
Don't flatter yourself. Penrose's works have been central to my understanding of consciousness from early on. I use Synthesis because it is NOT a purely scientific work. It is an effort to summarize my views in easy to understand terms for a friend who wanted more details about why I believe as I do. It encompasses my knowledge AND my beliefs. I compartmentalize the science knowledge supporting my hypotheses away from the spiritual, faith and belief aspects based on my personal experiences and study of the "spiritual fossil record." Most of my critics seem not to understand that and conflate them.For the umpteenth and one time anything measured EXISTS in our reality. Energy is measured and it EXISTS in the state the component measurements indicate. The two sets of indices give a clear indication of the underlying state of the phenomenon we call energy . . . MC^2=hf. Once something is converted to energy whatever it was is transformed and EXISTS as substances at a higher frequency of "molecular vibration." You are used to thinking that whatever it was converted from is destroyed. I see it as merely converted to different forms and still existing within the universe in states as indicated by the component measures. You are not used to thinking of energy as substance because you are not using a perspective of the entire universe taken as the system within which it exists. You are not used to using the math measures as indices of the underlying structure and state of the reality you are measuring and manipulating. That is for philosophers whose agenda differs from the physicists. My critics routinely do not seem to comprehend this . . . as you do not.Except that the ONLY attribute of our sensory experience that directly corresponds to reality is time.. Everything else we sense is indirect. In Helmholtz's words,

. . . Events, like our perceptions of them, take place in time, so that the time relations of the latter can furnish a true copy of those of the former.

According to Helmholtz, time is the only feature which is shared by both physical reality and our consciousness. (This is extremely important to understand and think about its implications.) In all other things, perception is only symbolical and the dissimilarity of the stimulus and its conscious registration is striking. For example, the impact of photons is translated into visual qualities, the impact of air waves into auditory qualities, molecular impacts as touch, taste, scent, cold, warmth, etc. Only time has a structural equivalence in the physical world and in our consciousness. That is why I refer to it as timespace . . . NOT spacetime.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruithne View Post
You use a lot of conjecture: "you are used to thinking" and "you are used to using" and so on. That's right. That's because I'm used to understanding the science as it is laid out, not as per the stuff you have made up in your head.
As I said before, you can dress it up anyway you want but the speed of light is a constant. I have explained this a million times before. Squaring it does not change its value. You simply do not understand the formula. It cannot be changed, it cannot be messed with. Or turned into something 'philosophical'. It is what it is and that's all there is to it.
In other words, you are taking Einsteins word, flipping it, using your own definition to make it sound like it is something scientific, when actually you just made it up.
This reminds me of Deepak Chopra, on speaking to Richard Dawkins, when he claimed that scientists had 'hijacked' the word 'quantum' for their own use. Very funny.
Well go at it Mystic.
I take offense at the repeated use of "made up" that characterizes my critics' posts simply because they do not understand my philosophical use of the math formulas as analogous measured indices of our underlying reality. In truth most mathematicians have little to no appreciation for the philosophical implications of their extremely useful and revealing formulations. Let's cut to the chase, Cruithne . . . you seem not to engage in philosophical speculation of any kind. But whether or not anyone likes it . . . ANY discussion of God is speculative philosophy . . . otherwise there would be no need for discussion. You and your cohort of critics of my views keep attacking them AS IF they were presented as proven. In fact my most annoying critic keeps asking for that proof despite repeated attempts to clarify it for him. That indicates deliberate baiting, IMO.

None of you unbelievers in God seem willing to engage in the philosophical reasoning of the SCIENCE that underlies my HYPOTHESES . . . with the exception of Gaylen. If you did we could find out why you disagree with my understanding of it. You attack my analogies AS IF they were literal and make no attempt to see them from a philosophical perspective as indices of the underlying structure and nature of our reality. My HYPOTHESES derived from the SCIENCE and my personal experiences . . . form the basis for my FAITH/BELIEFS. You and my other critics insist on asking for proof or evidence for my faith/beliefs . . . NOT for the derivation of my hypotheses or any errors in my understanding of the science you might think exists. IF you only see the physics as physics . . . and what it represents or can be used for . . . you are not open to any philosophical speculation about what its measured formulations actually reveal about the underlying structure of our reality. That is very sad because every measurement event captures the essence of our reality and reveals glimpses into its underlying structure and function.
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Old 01-21-2015, 03:58 PM
 
Location: Florida
23,155 posts, read 26,070,302 times
Reputation: 27887
Maybe you should be postulating on the Philosophy forum instead of the religious ones?
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Old 01-21-2015, 04:05 PM
 
63,461 posts, read 39,726,177 times
Reputation: 7792
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
I take offense at the repeated use of "made up" that characterizes my critics' posts simply because they do not understand my philosophical use of the math formulas as analogous measured indices of our underlying reality. In truth most mathematicians have little to no appreciation for the philosophical implications of their extremely useful and revealing formulations. Let's cut to the chase, Cruithne . . . you seem not to engage in philosophical speculation of any kind. But whether or not anyone likes it . . . ANY discussion of God is speculative philosophy . . . otherwise there would be no need for discussion. You and your cohort of critics of my views keep attacking them AS IF they were presented as proven. In fact my most annoying critic keeps asking for that proof despite repeated attempts to clarify it for him. That indicates deliberate baiting, IMO.

None of you unbelievers in God seem willing to engage in the philosophical reasoning of the SCIENCE that underlies my HYPOTHESES . . . with the exception of Gaylen. If you did we could find out why you disagree with my understanding of it. You attack my analogies AS IF they were literal and make no attempt to see them from a philosophical perspective as indices of the underlying structure and nature of our reality. My HYPOTHESES derived from the SCIENCE and my personal experiences . . . form the basis for my FAITH/BELIEFS. You and my other critics insist on asking for proof or evidence for my faith/beliefs . . . NOT for the derivation of my hypotheses or any errors in my understanding of the science you might think exists. IF you only see the physics as physics . . . and what it represents or can be used for . . . you are not open to any philosophical speculation about what its measured formulations actually reveal about the underlying structure of our reality. That is very sad because every measurement event captures the essence of our reality and reveals glimpses into its underlying structure and function.
Quote:
Originally Posted by old_cold View Post
Maybe you should be postulating on the Philosophy forum instead of the religious ones?
I call your attention to the bold in my post above, old_cold. Philosophical speculation about God is definitely on topic for this forum. In the final analysis . . . that is what religion actually IS.
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