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III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

#133: Sept. - Nov. 2014 (Non-Fiction)
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Interbane

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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Flann wrote:It strikes me as a pleasant if absurd fantasy, that the Marx brothers are eternally enacting such as the following scene
They are not eternally enacting the scene. At least in the sense that I understand the word eternal. The word eternal means that the predicate extends infinitely across the dimension of time, or that time itself is unending. It is a reference to time, not a specific reference to a point within time. Their scene exists on the timeline, in the past. That doesn't mean it is eternally existing. It exists, very much real, on the past landscape of time.

You're trying to wrap your head around this concept by misapplying terms, but it just won't work like that. What other way is there to understand it, I know. You need to envision it without words, the abstract concepts themselves. The analogy to a landscape helps. But even then, the only real way to understand it is by running math that neither of us are equipped to run.
How an evolving multiverse could not have a beginning is surely a problem.
Why? Why would it be a problem for a multiverse, but not what you conceive as a god?
In the final analysis Carrier is simply putting his faith in theories such as multiverse theory and eternalism.
Faith, but not faith alone. Faith, with a bit of method in the mix. Faith alone leads us to all sorts of fantastical conclusions. Faith with a bit of reasoning narrows that down. First, the conclusion we have faith in should not be anything more than the minimum to explain what we see(You should have faith in an infinite number of gods, or a family of them, or a lineage). Second and related, the conclusion we have faith in should lead to the least number of ad hoc assumptions.
explain how anything could have come from nothing.
Flann, what makes you think it's impossible for our universe to come from nothing? Avoid this: Fallacious incredulity, and give me a logical or otherwise well supported reason. If something truly did come from nothing, there is no more way for us to conceptualize that than to conceptualize infinity. There are things in our universe that defy conceptualization, because we are puny humans. Wave/particle duality in quantum mechanics, for example. Superposition and spooky action at a distance. What's inside black holes. Eternalist time, the equivalence of matter and energy. We've come to realize, despite our incredulity, that these things are true.

If we believe that something did come from nothing, then it's simply a brute fact that must be taken on faith. If you argue that it needs explanation, then your brute fact does as well. Why is there god and not no god? Beware the endless list of fallacious appeals. Why did god exist for an eternity before creating the universe? Beware the endless list of fallacious appeals. Our brute facts must simply be believed, if we have any ground to stand on to move forward. Every time your mind balks at something coming from nothing(or the alterntive brute fact of eternalism), instead try to explain your own brute facts. What was going through god's omniscient mind for an eternity before he created the universe? Or was he as thoughtless as a buddhist monk?
Hi Dexter, Carrier thinks his explanation is better. I'm saying it's not.It's absurd and entirely faith based.
Calling something absurd is textbook argument from incredulity. Calling his explanation faith based is hypocritical. Isn't yours faith based?
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Flann 5 wrote: Carrier seems to me to be trying to accommodate two conflicting ideas here in relation to time. He wants to say our experience of passing time is real and fiction at one and the same time,ironically. Eternalists; as far as I can tell, reject as illusion the reality of the passing of time,and our experienced perception of it as illusion. Carrier wants to include it but it's useful fiction.
For the eternalist, Napoleon Bonaparte, Groucho Marx and Sigmund Freud exist since past,present and future exists static and unmoving. They are both dead and alive somewhere on that eternal time plain.
The idea of all time as fixed (the road is a useful metaphor) is not Carrier's by the way. He's talking about point of view here. From our point of view, time is something real and experienced like the frames of a comic strip. From a POV fixed outside our experience, all points in time are fixed.

Carrier: "From an imaginary point of view outside of everything (the way things would look to a transcendent God, for example), the entire multiverse looks like a giant interconnected forest. . . "

This is all kind of related to Einstein's relativity, isn't it? Time is relative to the observer. This appears to be a paradox, but is explained by the fact that Time passes differently for different observers, depending on the observers' motion. The prime example is that of the two hypothetical twin sisters: One of them stays at home, on Earth. The other journeys into space in an ultra-fast rocket, nearly as fast as the speed of light, before returning home to find that her stay-at-home sibling is much older than she.

http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/Twins
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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I understand that time is relative.
In fact the whole business of trying to understand time is difficult, and philosophers have different theories and understandings of it.
Whether that the Marx brothers are permanently making their movies, is implied by Carrier's version of time I'm not sure.It is a theory that is challenged and whether it's proponents can demonstrate it's veracity is the question.
My main point is that his opting for it, and the mutiverse seems more for philosophical reasons than any inherent proof that either of these beliefs are demonstrably true.
Can it be shown that chaos theory, or more precisely his simple fundamental chaos can produce laws such as we find in our universe and a multiverse. He believes it can.

Is it actually proven that all complex things must come from simple things? It's a definitional truism to say that complex things are made of simpler components. The God delusion book is complex physically and linguistically but simpler than it's author Dawkins and the printers who printed it.It did not evolve itself or it's ideas.
The eternalist view, philosophically removes the universe from nothing problem and the mutiverse hypothesis alleviates the fine tuning problem.I think that's why he prefers them.
Interbane suggests a universe from nothing is not a problem. Good luck with that.
Carrier's ideas are fraught with serious problems. He tries to downgrade theism as if he has something better. What God is and does depends on what God we are talking about.The Christian God is trinitarian while essentially one. As far as time is concerned we are told that one day is as a thousand years to him and a thousand years as a day.God is a purposeful being and our universe has innumerable indicators of purpose.
Matter and energy are purposeless.
Carrier's brute fact is inanimate,mindless, purposeless energy and matter. For Christian theists God is a necessary,personal and eternally self existent being, who can be known by humans.
I don't think Carrier has made a good case for his beliefs at all, or that it is a better explanation of reality.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Sun Aug 31, 2014 1:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Flann wrote:Interbane suggests a universe from nothing is not a problem. Good luck with that.
I need no luck Flann. I see no problem. If accepted as a brute fact, this is far less troublesome than thinking a god existed for an eternity with nothing but his own thoughts to occupy himself. Again, if you think there is a problem with it, let's hear it in detail. Your quote above is a veiled argument from incredulity.
God is a purposeful being and our universe has innumerable indicators of purpose.
List one of these innumerable indicators. I have yet to see one that passes the tests of method - mainly logic.
I don't think Carrier has made a good case for his beliefs at all, or that it is a better explanation of reality.
That's a given. The vast majority of men, after being set in their worldview, will find no combination of words in existence that could change their mind, even if they were wrong. It's the nature of man to entrench himself(I have an excellent analogy to explain this if you wish). This understanding is part of the reason why Carrier's view(and my own as well) are more probably true. With this understanding, I change my beliefs when proper method shows me to be wrong. In a sense, my worldview is nothing but an algorithm. I follow what proper method shows to be true. This is what I mean when I always say that my worldview is built from "the ground up". The conclusion that arises from adherence to method is metaphysical naturalism. It truly is a more robust and reasonable worldview than any other I've come to understand. If you were to show me to be wrong about metaphysical naturalism, using the listed methods, I would change my beliefs.
My main point is that his opting for it, and the mutiverse seems more for philosophical reasons than any inherent proof that either of these beliefs are demonstrably true.
Philosophical reasons? Such as logic? I think Carrier effectively dismantled arguments against the eternalist view of time. At least, at the time he wrote the book. As geo said, this theory of time isn't held by Carrier alone. It's held by many intelligent mathematicians and cosmologists.
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Where is the past on a snapshot of an eternal timeline?
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Where is the past on a snapshot of an eternal timeline?
Behind the point in time I write this. ???
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Interbane wrote:
Where is the past on a snapshot of an eternal timeline?
Behind the point in time I write this. ???

At what point in time did you think of your response within a eternal universe?
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Interbane wrote:What was going through god's omniscient mind for an eternity before he created the universe? Or was he as thoughtless as a buddhist monk?
Hi Interbane,
Any God capable of creating the universe with it's macro and micro complexity and diversity,could not be mentally bankrupt, or bored for that matter.He is the one being,capable of being eternally present and fully aware of all events such as ours would be.
It has been said that God was thinking mathematically when he made the universe with it's laws,such is the amazing mathematical describability of it with mind blowing accuracy and precision the rule. Carrier reckons a fundamental simple chaos could produce or mimic this. He's kidding,right?

Besides,though I know it's not logically possible to explain, the Christian godhead consists of three persons and is relational.

You explain things in terms of natural mechanisms, and neo Darwinism which is not all it's cracked up to be.
Nature reveals wonderful and complex varieties of life with what looks like purposeful working and design.
Anyone who points to problems with neo Darwinism identified by paleontologist,biologists or other experts in this area are simply accused of "quote mining". It's not one big happy family, though there is the sacred cow itself,which must not be slaughtered.
I'll probably move on to his determinism part now.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Sun Aug 31, 2014 4:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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ant wrote:At what point in time did you think of your response within a eternal universe?
At a point a few seconds before typing the response. Is there are point to this veiled gotcha? We use the same sort of relative reference in infinite spatial dimensions.
Flann wrote:Any God capable of creating the universe with it's macro and micro complexity and diversity,could not be mentally bankrupt, or bored for that matter.He is the one being,capable of being eternally present and fully aware of all events such as ours would be.
There are two ad hoc assumptions here Flann, but you didn't answer my question. If he existed as the sole entity, prior to his creating something from nothing, what thoughts could he possibly have? What is the power he possesses that allows him to create something from nothing? Does this power not elicit the same incredulity as the act itself? If not, why not? Why would he not have made the universe eternal, so that he did not have to endure an infinite amount of time alone with his own thoughts? Why did he not create the universe the instant it occurred to him? Or if it occurred to him "eternally", why did he wait? Why make it appear as if the universe started 13 billion years ago? Is he deceitful?

There is far more incredulity here than thinking something came from nothing. The idea of a god is simply nonsensical.
It has been said that God was thinking mathematically when he made the universe with it's laws,such is the amazing mathematical describability of it with mind blowing accuracy and precision the rule.
It has been said? Sure, but it's still an ad hoc assumption.
Carrier reckons a fundamental simple chaos could produce or mimic this. He's kidding,right?
No, he's not kidding. This is another veiled argument from incredulity, a type of fallacy.
Nature reveals wonderful and complex varieties of life with what looks like purposeful working and design.
Again, purposeful in what sense? The apparent purpose of nature, where phenotypes fit the niche? Yes, that appears purposeful. But we know that it is a product of an algorithm.
though there is the sacred cow itself,which must not be slaughtered.
I know you find comfort in this belief, but the conclusion(the theory of evolution) was arrived at by following method. If method shows the sacred cow to be false, then it will be rejected. If there is a sacred cow in the room, it is method. Or rather, the belief that we should outsource the acquisition of knowledge to method, in order to minimize our biases and avoid fallacies.
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Re: III. What There Is - "Sense and Goodness Without God"

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Isnt it an ad hoc assumption that the theory of evolution itself has the power to make predictions like any good scientific theory is supposed to?

(No, I am not saying it is therefor false)

Ps.
No rhetorical or grammatical tautologies, please.
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