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You really are obsessed with the attributes that are only BELIEFS
Again my issue is not with beleifs, but with unsubstantiated and baseless beleifs. Nor do you often present your tirades as beleifs, but as facts.
You do not often say things like: 'I beleive the universe itself is concoius but that is just my belief and I have no basis for it'.
You do often say things like 'The universe must be conscious because a universe that is not conscious could not contain conscious beings'.
So you can call them beliefs all you want but that does not change the facts that:
1) They are unsubstantiated and baseless beliefs
2) You present them most of the time as facts not beliefs.
Also again I am not sure what your obsession with "nature" is. I rarely if ever use the word and I think you are just conflating me with rifleman. I do not really care whether you call "everything" "nature" or "god" or "Cake". The relabeling just seems pointless to me, and dishonest when you deliberately choose a word like "god" which carries a weight of metaphysical association in peoples heads.
It is what you do AFTER the pointless relabeling that is the issue. So if you have a problem with the word "nature" then that is your problem to get over on your own. If however you find someone saying something ABOUT the thing they have labeled "nature" that is baseless, then by all means highlight it.
So when you call "everything" simply "god" I find that pointless and partially dishonest, but when you then say that this "everything" that you are calling "god" has specific attributes that you present as fact, I am going to highlight that and I do not apologise for doing so.
You really are obsessed with the attributes that are only BELIEFS . . . while you ignore or refuse to contemplate the implications of the ones that are real . . . and I have told you before that the process you need to follow is simple.
1) Define exactly and clearly what you mean by "Nature" (you never do this and you reference it vaguely at best).
2) List exactly the evidence for the existence of this entity (you never do this)
3) Explain exactly how what was listed in 2 supports what was defined in 1. You NEVER do this.
Your current approach is more like:
1) Vaguely repeat your refusal to consider the philosophical implications of what you claim supports your position.
2) Repeatedly list some process you refuse to perform for your God "Nature".
3) Start whining about added and baseless attributes assigned to God as BELIEFS . . . not science.
4) Repeatedly ask for the evidence you refuse to acknowledge or understand the implications of.
It is a rhetorical game against unsupported BELIEFS not evaluating the evidence of EXISTENCE that you play.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
Also again I am not sure what your obsession with "nature" is. I rarely if ever use the word and I think you are just conflating me with rifleman. I do not really care whether you call "everything" "nature" or "god" or "Cake". The relabeling just seems pointless to me, and dishonest when you deliberately choose a word like "god" which carries a weight of metaphysical association in peoples heads.
What seems pointless to you are the very things you refuse to even consider about your unquestioned acceptance of "Nature" as the concept of choice for our reality. That is superficial thinking. That is why I want you to try to do for whatever you think the default is ("Nature" or not) that you ask me to do for my default God. Again . . . see if that breaks anything loose from your intellectual logjam.
Quote:
It is what you do AFTER the pointless relabeling that is the issue. So if you have a problem with the word "nature" then that is your problem to get over on your own. If however you find someone saying something ABOUT the thing they have labeled "nature" that is baseless, then by all means highlight it.
So when you call "everything" simply "god" I find that pointless and partially dishonest, but when you then say that this "everything" that you are calling "god" has specific attributes that you present as fact, I am going to highlight that and I do not apologise for doing so.
There are stages of knowledge between baseless and fact that you seem unable or unwilling to credit . . . unless of course it is presented as science (eg. String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity, etc.). When you say my consciousness field as the answer to the universal field is baseless you completely ignore the exemplar of our own consciousness upon which it is based. Your refusal to engage the philosophical implications of the existence of consciousness and imagination in a supposedly purely materialist world is probative of the depth of your intellectual understanding . . . and very annoying for a science literate human being.
Again you are mistaking me for rifleman as I do not often use the word "nature" and when I do its in a completely different context. I tend to use it to mean "All of the flora and fauna that are not us". So I say things like "When you look in nature you see animals doing X...."
We have a reality. It is fascinating. At our level, at the micro level, at the macro level. It throws no end of wonders and questions and mystery at us and it is wonderfully exciting for it.
There are many open questions about it. Questions we are working hard to answer and that is a good thing. However people like yourself are gravitating towards those unanswered questions (such as what is consciousness and imagination and how do they really work) and pretending like our current lack of answers for them indicates an inability to EVER answer them and so you label it all "god" and start making things up to fit the gaps. You can not explain where consciousness comes from so you simply invent a conscious god and declare by fiat that it hands consciousness down to us, so it is all now explained. It is almost like you would latch on to any world view at all, no matter how baseless or ludicrous, just so long as the world view has no open questions left unanswered.
But no one is sitting back and just "accepting nature". We are doing the opposite. We are questioning and researching and explaining it slowly, piece by piece, with dogged determined excitement and awe. There will likely be gaps in our full knowledge for a long time to come, and hence there will likely be charlatans operating in those gaps and espousing nonsense. Such is life, but I have made it part of my day to stand up in the same places as those charlatans and say "What you are saying here is not just slightly, but entirely baseless and throwing out personal insults at those who point that fact out is not going to change the fact".
We have a reality. It is fascinating. At our level, at the micro level, at the macro level. It throws no end of wonders and questions and mystery at us and it is wonderfully exciting for it.
There are many open questions about it. Questions we are working hard to answer and that is a good thing. However people like yourself are gravitating towards those unanswered questions (such as what is consciousness and imagination and how do they really work) and pretending like our current lack of answers for them indicates an inability to EVER answer them and so you label it all "god" and start making things up to fit the gaps.
Again with the gaps BS! Have you had ANY philosophical training or coursework at all???It isn't the missing answers for them that poses the issues for your preferred worldview . . . it is their EXISTENCE . . . and the implications of their existence for your purely material world that you seem unable or unwilling to contemplate. They EXIST so there are no evidentiary issues involved . . . just philosophical implications for your material worldview that you refuse to engage.
Quote:
But no one is sitting back and just "accepting nature". We are doing the opposite. We are questioning and researching and explaining it slowly, piece by piece, with dogged determined excitement and awe. There will likely be gaps in our full knowledge for a long time to come, and hence there will likely be charlatans operating in those gaps and espousing nonsense. Such is life, but I have made it part of my day to stand up in the same places as those charlatans and say "What you are saying here is not just slightly, but entirely baseless and throwing out personal insults at those who point that fact out is not going to change the fact".
Of course you accept it unquestioningly . . . you see no implications at all for your worldview in that acceptance. Your self-congratulatory harangue against imagined straw men "charlatans" and self-imputed insults will not change the utter superficiality with which you engage these issues.
As I said you deny it vehemently but then you practice it anyway. When you go around declaring that consciousness or imagination can not be explained and start explaining it anyway by recourse to a god, then god of the gaps is exactly what you are implementing, no matter how distasteful you find having that pointed out to you.
Yes, you are right, these things exist (you keep pointing this out in many posts even those I never contested it ever, I guess to help you ignore answering the things I actually do contest), there are open questions on them and answers we do not yet have.
But open questions are not a basis for simply inventing a god and explaining away the open questions by saying your god handed those things down to us.
It answers nothing because you have not shown there even is a god.... and it answers nothing because it does not answer the same questions when applied to that god.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Of course you accept it unquestioningly
The complete opposite of what I just said, and a perfect example of how you ignore what is said to you and you attack straw man instead.
We are NOT accepting it unquestioningly. We are questioning it a lot, over and over, and very slowly getting more and more answers. They are open questions and we are working on them. Hard.
So a lot of questioning is going on, not none as you falsely paint it. I want very much to understand the universe and where it comes from, consciousness and where it comes from. What I do not want to do is to give up and just accept made up answers such as the ones on offer from you and those like you.
Last edited by Nozzferrahhtoo; 02-15-2012 at 08:31 AM..
Reason: wrote "is" instead of "it".
Again with the gaps BS! Have you had ANY philosophical training or coursework at all???It isn't the missing answers for them that poses the issues for your preferred worldview . . . it is their EXISTENCE . . . and the implications of their existence for your purely material world that you seem unable or unwilling to contemplate. They EXIST so there are no evidentiary issues involved . . . just philosophical implications for your material worldview that you refuse to engage.
Of course you accept it unquestioningly . . . you see no implications at all for your worldview in that acceptance. Your self-congratulatory harangue against imagined straw men "charlatans" and self-imputed insults will not change the utter superficiality with which you engage these issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
As I said you deny is vehemently but then you practice it anyway. When you go around declaring that consciousness or imagination can not be explained and start explaining it anyway by recourse to a god, then god of the gaps is exactly what you are implementing, no matter how distasteful you find having that pointed out to you.
Yes, you are right, these things exist (you keep pointing this out in many posts even those I never contested it ever, I guess to help you ignore answering the things I actually do contest), there are open questions on them and answers we do not yet have.
But open questions are not a basis for simply inventing a god and explaining away the open questions by saying your god handed those things down to us.
It answers nothing because you have not shown there even is a god.... and it answers nothing because it does not answer the same questions when applied to that god.
Have you had ANY philosophical training or coursework . . . because your inability to see the actual issues here is frustrating? What consciousness and imagination ARE is an existential issue transcending any explanations of them. HOW they could possibly manifest in a purely material world are the issues you refuse to engage. Conjoining them with the existence of God is NOT the issue . . . God exists. You just refuse to acknowledge it and prefer to address it as a mystery to be discovered . . . so be it. The central issue remains HOW could consciousness or imagination possibly EXIST and manifest in a purely material world? Until you engage these issues at the level at which they must be explored everything will seem to be "made up" or unsubstantiated to you.
Have you had ANY philosophical training or coursework . . . because your inability to see the actual issues here is frustrating?
And more personal comments which I will ignore and deal with any actual content I can find in your post....
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
What consciousness and imagination ARE is an existential issue transcending any explanations of them.
Says you. But now you are presuming to know what something is, that we do not know everything about what it is.
What consciousness and imagination ARE are phenomena for which we have not yet got full explanations. That is all. We are working on it, as we are many open questions in science.
Until they are answers questions you have no position to make the declarations you do, you are just making it up. Illness for example was once unexplanable and people likely said the same things you are about them too. Then the Germ Theory of disease came along and now it is all answered. The same is true of many things.
But there is always open questions and there is always people operating in the area of them, making stuff up, and presenting them as facts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
HOW they could possibly manifest in a purely material world are the issues you refuse to engage.
Again this is the opposite of the truth. What they are, how and why they work and manifest, and how they came about are EXACTLY the issues that are being engaged with and worked on. They are open questions. Only one of us is inventing baseless answers. The only thing I "refuse to engage" is unsubstantiated claims invented to slot into the gaps of our knowledge. You seem to want to equate not accepting YOUR answers with not engaging with the issue at ALL. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
God exists.
Evidence, arguments, data and reasons backing up this statement please. I keep asking, you never provide. You just repeat the claim periodically and run.
Have you had ANY philosophical training or coursework . . . because your inability to see the actual issues here is frustrating?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
And more personal comments which I will ignore and deal with any actual content I can find in your post....
You did not answer my question that pertains directly to your ability to understand or engage in this level of discourse about these issues. Just answer the question . . . although my repeated fruitless tries to get an answer suggest what it is. You keep talking about Gaps . . . but I am addressing what we DO know and what the philosophical and scientific implications are of what we DO know. The above suspected lack of training or coursework in philosophy of science seems to be the culprit here . . . so I will leave you to your delusions of being the arbiter of truth for humankind until you have corrected your deficiencies. The reduced frustration will be easier on my health as well. Ciao!
You are in no position to demand that other people answer your questions, especially when they already have.
I have been asking questions for many many posts now such as "What exactly is "god"" and "What evidence have you got that there is a god" and "What do you mean by the phrase "pure energy"" and much... much more. All you have done is deflect, avoid, insult and even wish me dead. At no point have you actually answered a single thing.
So no, you do not suddenly get to ask a question and demand people answer it when you have not done so yourself for a multitude of pages on a multitude of posts now, especially when in fact I have answered these things. Asking what my training or education is is just ad hominem attempts. If I say 2+2=4 then I am either right, or wrong.... whether I have a phd in maths or a diploma in cookery would not change whether I am right or wrong one iota.
So deal with my posts, and answer my questions. My points are either right or wrong, questioning my training is irrelevant, especially from someone pretending to have a phd in their nickname.
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