101. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75522 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 11:27 pm

ChrisMcL,

Why don't we just do with the "A" word what African-Americans have done with the "N" word.

Atheist, please!

102. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75511 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 10:20 pm

This is the speech that caused such an upset at the AAI? Harris deserves a hug, or at the very least a handshake, for going out on a limb like this and challenging his audience.
I can completely understand where Harris is coming from in this speech in regards to tactics, and I appreciate his romantic vision of 'guerilla rationalists', a diffuse crack force of individuals who are simply out to "destroy bad ideas" through conversation, one person at a time. This is a vision I admire, and I think it's a good representation of how ideas actually transmit through public consciousness, particularly when they break into mainstream entertainment media.

The negative reaction to his suggestions makes sense though, in that it's a vision completely at odds with the political mobilisation many other atheists are seeking, and it is clearly running right up against the group vibe one is going to find at a convention.

At first glance there are two problems with his suggestions:
- You cannot simply seek to evade usage of certain parts of language. Descriptive terminology is an important part of how we communicate. If you decide you're going to avoid using certain common terms, it's just going to frustrate and obfuscate conversation. It's true: 'Atheist' is a package of information which helps streamline the variables of dialogue, and can impact the potential of conversation in negative ways.
However, in dealing with this obstacle I think it is more effective to influence culture (with political and social visibility), and gradually alter the content of the package that ones brain opens when they hear someone say "I'm an atheist", rather than simply avoid using the term. Bad arguments against atheism will wane because old people die, and generation-to-generation transmission will have to compete with the accelerating transmission of its counter-arguments. To quote Harris, "reasons are contagious". :P

- Not everyone is comfortable with confrontation, and many just want better social standing for atheists. Harris is clearly a confident and articulate conversationalist, and he clearly spends a great deal of time mulling over and preconceiving lines of argument in his head, as I (and I'm sure a lot of us) often do. But it just isn't the case that all atheists can or want to do that.
I have definitely advocated the position here that people should seek to improve themselves intellectually, to become more confident as atheists, and besides scientific literacy this includes becoming good at presenting arguments, but to give some credence to a fellow poster I've clashed with over this, Yorker, not everyone can do that. And they shouldn't have to.
Political and social respectability is the very least the atheist deserves in the twenty-first century, and they should by no means have to spell out refutations for ontological arguments and creation science to get it.

I still respect Harris as much as ever - but he must surely concede that the 'destroyers of bad ideas' are just one flank of atheism as a demographic in the so-called culture wars, and avoiding all manner of self-description could only be considered part of a long-term plan to dismantle categorical discontinuity in language, not a means to benefit the lives of atheists here and now.

103. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #75357 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 11:50 am

bayareadude
I won't deny it was an ad hominem argument to put your experience all down to age/maturity, but at the same time I felt it did represent a potentially valid perspective. Your charge that Dawkins should simply become a certain kind of person due to his celebrity reeked of entitlement.

In any case, it's good that you DID enjoy yourself at the AAI - to clarify, I'm sorry to hear you didn't get a good impression of Professor Dawkins.

P.S. Use < blockquote> tags (without that space, obviously). Surrounding line breaks are added automatically when you post. :)

104. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #75330 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 11:01 am

Great write-up, Jack. :)

105. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #75310 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 9:44 am

revcort,

A primary problem with these is that it is known that these "gospels" were written under pseudonyms. Judas killed himself before writing anything. Thomas did not write the "Gospel of Thomas" either because he was dead before its writing. So, authorship is a major sticking point.

Woah, woah, wait.. you don't actually believe the synoptic gospels (plus John) were written by the named disciples themselves, do you?
Urgh.. don't answer that.
Dare I ask if you could possibly explain why this is any less ridiculous than the claim that the Gospel of Judas or Thomas were written by Judas and Thomas (a claim which I've never heard anyone credible make anyway).

If you're saying the original disciples were the authors, aren't you just magically bestowing these peasants with literacy?
If you're doing that, what language did they write it in?
If you didn't answer Greek, then what are you basing the the reliability of the Gospels on, when all New Testaments in existence have been translated from greek manuscripts, dating (at best) towards the end of the first century A.D?

106. Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds

Comment #75305 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 9:34 am

_J_

Is there a nice, clean, simple word for 'something that generates strongly held beliefs independent of, or contrary to, the weight of evidence'?

While the other students fidget at the question, Sam Harris sits at his desk, hand stretched as high as it can reach, an aching expression of urgency written across his face.

_J_: Yes, Sam?
Sam Harris: DOGMA!

107. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #75295 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 8:58 am

Dianelos,
So as to not appear dishonest - I will discuss why digitally compressed images of Lichtenstein paintings actually are comparable in complexity to digitally compressed images of Pollock paintings.

To present what you were trying to argue, I made a few pictures which do demonstrate significant differences in information content based on complexity.

Impressionist smudge, 72.9Kb

Regular pattern, solid colour regions, 43.3Kb

Clear lines, with solid colour regions, 27.3Kb

The compression explanation works when the information truly is easy to simplify, like scribblings made with simulated paintbrushes in a computer program. So why didn't it work with Lichtenstein?
It's because, just like ice (funnily enough), the painted images are full of the casual imperfections and inconsistencies we are accustomed to seeing in real world objects, which are barely perceptible, but which result in an unnatural image if removed. You need to recognise these inconsistencies in order to discuss the true information content available to us through visual stimuli.
Although in principle it would appear that Lichtenstein paintings are less complex, given his use of bold, solid colour regions, the information we receive when we look at that image is awash in the casual noise that comes from photons inconsistently bouncing off inconsistent surfaces. To demonstrate, I added a layer of noise to the lines picture, effectively doubling the information required to describe it:

Clear lines with solid colour regions, with added noise, 53Kb

Geddit?

Side note: Given that you are arguing for an experience simulation, the casual perceptual inconsistencies we experience must also be factored into your explanations regarding the information content of this simulation.

108. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #75252 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 6:33 am

Dianelos,

For example most people would judge a painting by Jackson Pollock to be more complex than a painting by Roy Lichtenstein. And sure enough, paintings by Lichtenstein (at any resolution of detail) will compress better when you save them as .jpg files than paintings by Pollock. The definition then is that "complexity" is the measure of how little the description of something can be compressed, or, equivalently, "complexity" is the minimum size of information needed to describe something.

Summary: You're wrong again.
You're trying to subtly blur the two words.

We could discuss complexity of Pollock and Lichtenstein in terms of the processes that went into their creation, the intention behind their 'structure' - Lichtenstein's painstaking pop art and Pollocks random emotionally-driven splatters. But whether or not "most people" would find a Pollock painting more complex than a Lichtenstein (really, do you know that for sure, or were you typing one-handed again?), I was intrigued and decided to test your claim about image compression.

I googled and downloaded three images of Lichtenstein paintings, and three of Pollock paintings. Then I resized them in Photoshop, so that the longest dimension was 400px, and exported them as jpeg's at the same quality settings. And no, I don't know why this is being rendered with such a large gap.

Painting Name (year)	Original dimensions and size	Compressed dimensions and size
Lichtenstein
"Drowning Girl" (1963)	424x432px, 313Kb	393x400px, 96.9Kb
"Girl with Tear III" (1977)	1063x1214px, 956Kb	350x400px, 86.0Kb
"Takka Takka" (1962)	803x665px, 163Kb	400x331px, 93.1Kb
Pollock
"Shimmering Substance" (1946)	835x1059px, 277Kb	315x400px, 90.9Kb
"Lavender Mist I" (1950)	1100x814px, 351Kb	400x296px, 87.1Kb
"The Key" (1946)	600x428px, 398Kb	400x285px, 90.0Kb

EDIT: to increase the comparative resolution of Pollock paintings used, I replaced my Lavender Mist painting. Original resolution/size: 800x592, 172Kb, resized to 400x296, 85.1Kb.

"Sure enough"?
To the contrary, Lichtenstein's paintings are on average larger when compressed, but ultimately the disparity is negligible. The information required to describe them is comparable, just like I keep telling you. The largest disparity, 96.9 and 87.1 kilobytes, (9.8 kilobytes) equals a binary difference of 78,400 bits - in favour of Lichtenstein. The smallest, 87.1 and 86 kilobytes (1.1 kilobytes), a mere 8800 bits of binary - in favour of Pollock. This is not impressive stuff.

I assume you did such a test too, before making a claim like that - maybe you could share your methods and we might figure out why your conclusion is so different from mine.
To be perfectly honest, I knew how this experiment would turn out before I spent time searching and tinkering with images in Photoshop - you're simply misusing image compression, and your argument is still a bad one. Worse, you're still not in tune with the fact that information compression requires systematic interpretation, some kind of algorithmic process to look at the data and figure out how to cut corners. For example, all of these images of paintings have gone through at least two compression processes - digital imaging which converted reflected photons into pixel information, at varying resolutions (measured in pixels/dots per inch), and compression to a resolution suitable for web viewing. One could point out that the images I've sourced have already lost so much information they're useless for comparison, but they'd still have to concede that Lichtenstein had lost LESS detail than Pollock, and yet its compressed versions (and the original - also compressed - versions) turned out altogether similar in size (though in fact larger). Perhaps the disparity is because they were they 'scanned' at a higher resolution? Pollock paintings are on average much larger than Lichtenstein's, if the scanning process involved photography Lichtenstein would definitely enjoy higher fidelity. Then again, the continuous diversity in colour and texture on Pollock paintings should STILL surpass Lichtenstein's, even when captured from a distance.
In any case, you're wrong, again. Lichtenstein's paintings, while enjoying high regularity and visual simplicity, contain comparable orders of information to Pollock paintings, which contain high levels of visual complexity. New example, please.

I hope it is clear that the information that describes an ice cube can be compressed much better than the information that describes the cupful of water. After all the range of values of the position and momentum parameters of all atoms in the former are much more restricted than in the latter, and so each of these values requires less binary bits of information for its representation.

Only if you're describing water in a glass as a distinct group of molecules which are all being described at once, as a set, like some video game sprite. Note the description "all atoms".
And precisely what kind of timescale are we viewing water and ice on? You can only claim complexity by potential position by making predictive extrapolations over time, and this can be fairly precisely predicted with Brownian motion, which again levels the comparison.
If taken at a literal instant, a quantity of ice or a quantity of water that has melted out of it, will both require a molecule by molecule description, of the positions, vectors and velocities of all particles (to what ever degree it is possible to know velocity and position at the same time, given Heisenbergian uncertainty and all), which, since they are the same matter, is necessarily the same.
This is honestly just a matter of your ignorance regarding how complex ice is. The crystalline lattice of any given quantity of ice, while pending towards a gross regularity, contains tremendous inconsistencies, mostly derived from microscopic variations in temperature exchanges, and conflictingly oriented subsets of crystalline structures. These inconsistencies don't only destroy ones ability to simplify the total molecular structure of the ice at an instant, but are - as with the positions of molecules in liquid water - in a constant state of flux, owing to the fine heat exchanges taking place all throughout the structure, in its attempt to reach a stable equilibrium. Again, your point mostly rests on you seeking to provide a more detailed description of liquid water than you wish to of solid ice. No sale, honcho!

If you are in any way interested in providing a consistent standard of information in both states, the amount of binary information needed to describe individual molecules is practically the same, whether it's in the center of an icecube or part of a bead of 'sweat' running down the side to join a growing pool of water.

New example, please.

109. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #75213 by Robert Maynard on October 2, 2007 at 4:02 am

We all, by posting content to it, are actually adding value for free

Don't flatter yourself.

110. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #75147 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 11:26 pm

bayareadude,

You automatically assume you're more mature (and presumably intelligent) than I am?

I can't let this pass, after you (rightly) called someone else out for putting words in your mouth.
VanYoungman made no claims as to your relative maturity or intelligence, he said you were young, and he said it from the perspective of a 70-something year old. So is he wrong? Or are you 70+ years old too, bay area "dude"? :P
(Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy yourself in any case - I still wish I could've gone)

111. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #75125 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 9:43 pm

steveroot,
Well, I can't discourage the man from trying. :P
I really would prefer if we could get back to what we had been discussing before, but in a sense this thermodynamics stuff is really getting to the core of those same issues, because Dianelos's arguments about information complexity are an important part of his belief that we are living in a simulated universe. If he really believes backwards things like "complexity is more probable than disorder," we can't proceed until that's dispelled, because the opposite of that premise is an important part of the Ultimate 747 argument.

112. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #75119 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 9:21 pm

Aw man, I missed most of this thread.. and in particular the charge of anonymity in criticising RRS.

My name is Robert Maynard, as is clearly displayed, and I have been an atheist for a mere seven years (on that note: I'm a 22 year old undergraduate studying interactive design), and I am utterly ambivalent about the efficacy and demeanour of the Rational Response Squad.

I think the Blasphemy Challenge was a fantastic grassroots campaign, which cleverly leveraged the power of the internet (specifically web 2.0 architecture) to spread a message. On the other hand I thought RRS's performance at the Nightline debate was poorly planned and executed - before it is brought up, yes, that does mean I think I could have done a better job.

In any case I think there is a distinction to be made between confrontation and aggression. We should absolutely not back down from correcting people, from engaging with people we disagree with. But I guess for me the words "Rational Response" carry implications of a kind of detached stoicism, a calm and thoughtful demeanour that can only come from holding an excellently though out position, and this doesn't always gel with their output. The "squad" part infuses it with a kind of hipness, of a group specifically formed to deliver these kind of responses with faux-authority, and they definitely succeed on that front. I'm just not sure I'm impressed by how angry they can get.

Once again, don't take that out of context to imply that one shouldn't be angry or worried about the state of irrational belief in the world, but, at the risk of sounding like a Manchurian candidate, I think it's wiser to "hate the sin, love the sinner". :P
If it is irrational ideas we are explicitly against, we should engage people who hold irrational ideas and try to weed them out, because it will likely make them better people. Our quarrel is not with people themselves, and there's no use getting angry at ideas. Satisfyingly showing that they're bad ideas should be enough for anyone to begin abandoning them (or at least changing them). I won't pretend I don't get angry with people I argue with, particularly here, but I shouldn't. Especially because it often contrasts badly with how serene deeply religious people can be.

As an endnote, I don't think the RRS do themselves any favours by explicitly setting themselves up against theism only (it's on the banner of their webpage for goodness sake). There are plenty of non-theistic irrational beliefs that need responding to. One can claim that theism is so widespread and so threatening to public policy that we have to prioritise, but why limit yourselves in any case?

113. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #75099 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 7:45 pm

Dianelos,
The ability to simplify or compress information complexity is the product of a perceptual paradigm. Without a pre-existing system of rules for perceiving and processing information, "1212121212" is precisely as complex as "3713274281". For example, a computer cannot compress regularities in a data file unless it carries the interpretational paradigm of an information compressor, like Winzip. You really need to demonstrate that the Universe has external information processing apparatus which can describe information in the universe, and differentiate between regularity and irregularity, before claiming that entropy increases information, because the claim is meaningless if what you're describing is not actually information.
And even if you did, your only (non-number) example -

A cup of liquid water has more entropy and is more complex than an ice cube of the same mass.

- is still wrong. Your dice example and your phrasing sounds as though you think ice cubes are at a standstill, and maintain a regimented regularity. I repeat, they do not. "There are precisely as many fine structural irregularities and simple movement vectors in solid ice as there are in liquid water, and there is precisely as much substrate consistency in liquid water as there is in an ice crystal."
Ice consists of molecules operating at temperatures well above absolute zero, they are vibrating, they are shifting, the information describing their movement compared to water is of similar orders of complexity. Please come up with a different example, this one is false.

This whole attempt at equating entropy with information and complexity is so backwards and surreal I'm tempted to call Poe's Law on you. Seriously, we won't get mad if you just come out an admit you've been kidding this whole time.

114. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #75094 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 7:11 pm

revcort,

I do not think man is a worthless, pathetic puppet. If he were, he would have no value at all and Christ would not have died for us. So, we do have value, just not as much value as we think we have.

Right, except that a context in which only those who are chosen by God are saved clearly describes an unequal value amongst humans. In a determinist paradigm, Jesus only died for those who will be saved. And who will be saved is decided from the beginning, apparently by Jesus, funnily enough.
Therefore, some humans have less value than other humans, God does not love equally, and all are puppets. Evil.
I could argue he doesn't even necessarily love those he chooses, anymore than a child loves a plastic green army man he chooses to have triumph over another plastic green army man, in battles decided by whim rather than merit. The first and foremost consideration is "glory".

I've already said, as sad as it is, you're free to believe in an evil deity, and even pretend it's actually a nice deity, but don't try to pretend it here, because you've (so far) failed to make a case that what you're describing is a loving relationship, and have decided to simply assert it against better judgment, like a heavily bruised woman defending her wretched, drunken husband.

115. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #74994 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 9:59 am

*whispers*
God, this is so stupid.

*ahem!*
Brother John, I've yet to address you. To sum up where this disagreement is heading, revcort is a Calvinist, a determinist and biblical literalist who is completely comfortable with the fact that the Scriptures clearly describe a God who does not regret sending people to hell, and who is explicitly responsible for who receives salvation and otherwise.
In such a context, there is ample scriptural support that free will is illusory, that God regularly controls peoples minds (for lack of a better description), and that evil is an integral component in his plan, deliberately engineered and administered by him, for his "glory".

Despite agreeing with this, revcort maintains the position that God is blameless and humans are worthless, pathetic puppets, as opposed to acknowledging the obvious nature of this described relationship with God - it is abusive, and we can be justified in identifying God's actions as amazingly malevolent and 'evil', because in Genesis it is explained that we have knowledge of good and evil in alignment with God.

After a while of pointing this out, he just started ignoring me.. so good luck and all that. We need more moderates.

116. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #74966 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 8:21 am

[Theology] is left reflecting nostalgically on the significance it once held and struggling to justify and perpetuate the assumptions that it made during the centuries before there were specialised fields of study to address matters rigorously.

Yeah - like Feng Shui. :P

Sir, you do a great disservice to the noble profession of chainsaw juggling by lumping it in with rackets like theology and feng shui. For shame! I think you owe our many chainsaw-juggling allies a most sincere and humble apology. ;)

I'm just sayin'.. a lot less students make it to graduation.

117. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #74951 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 7:52 am

_J_,

(though why mature students should happily accept sub-par standards I'm not wholly sure)

I believe that in the UK mature-age studies are thought of as more of a purely intellectual pursuit, while there is an emphasis that "school-leavers" are to be provided with energetic and inspiring curricula which will help them gain useful qualifications, particularly in order to enter the workforce.

The cruel joke is that theology might not be able provide this level of education, and may be consigned to the ranks of.. er.. chainsaw juggling and Feng Shui classes.

118. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #74945 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 7:41 am

Dianelos,

It should be clear then that thermodynamic processes increase the complexity of a physical system, because they increase the amount of information one needs in order to describe that system's physical state.

This is wrong, on so many levels. It's exhausting just to look at, honestly.

The processes you described are neither explicitly 'thermodynamic', nor in any way true - you're simply willfully biasing your descriptions.

It would require roughly the same number of characters to 'describe' any large digit with the same number of decimal positions, be this in arabic numerals or binary code.

There are precisely as many fine structural irregularities and simple movement vectors in solid ice as there are in liquid water, and there is precisely as much substrate consistency in liquid water as there is in an ice crystal.

Ironically, it is the regularities that you claim to be 'simpler' that are less probable and more difficult to manufacture in random, natural systems. But seeking patterns is an affinity of human perception and cognition, and is in no way related to any intrinsic properties of 'simpleness' in the world.
To the natural world, structures with few features are probable precisely because there are usually more configurations that will 'break' features rather than 'build' them.

119. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #74923 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 6:26 am

Dianelos,

In any case Steve I find commendable that you at least suggested how you understood Dawkins's 747 argument. I suppose the others here either found Dawkins's argument incomprehensible or maybe felt that argument doesn't really work.

With all due respect to steve99, I think this is a more accurate breakdown of the 'Ultimate 747' argument:

- Complexity is less probable than simplicity.

- Chance becomes a less satisfying explanation as probability decreases.

- A regressive explanation for complexity should tend towards an initial state of simplicity, as a regression towards complexity invokes necessarily higher odds with each step, and is endlessly unsatisfactory in its explanatory power.

- The hypothesis that a mind lies at the bottom of all causation is more improbable than a hypothesis which regresses to simplicity, because minds are complex, and complexity is less probable than simplicity.


Dianelos, you clearly understand just how unsatisfying an answer it is to suggest that complexity is an explanation for complexity, as you've spent a good portion of our discussion attempting to demonstrate that a cognitive being can be less complex than anything it creates. The truth is that the 747 argument has already been articulated by multiple posters, you already understand what it means, but you alternatively spend time attempting to question its premises or skip around its implications.

120. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #74900 by Robert Maynard on October 1, 2007 at 4:13 am

Dianelos,

Please observe that world E above does not include a physical universe, just 7 billion persons' experience of it. So there is no physical universe there for it to be more complex than the sum of their experience of it. The facts and order of the phenomenal universe the 7 billion subjects experience is caused directly by 1 additional person (obviously God). It turns out that the naturalistic world M even at its simplest (no many-worlds or multiverse here :-) is many orders of magnitude more complex than this theistic world E. (E describes a simplified version of my idealistic theism.)

Okay, I think I'm a little clearer on what you were saying there. I thought you were describing a model where E is a set of complexity inside a larger set of complexity, M - in which case I said, "of course E is less than M, E is inside M."
But it looks like what you're saying is that E and M are alternative paradigms - E is a 'brain in a vat', Matrix-esque experience simulator, where subjective cognition is modeled to imply the existence of a complex universe. Meanwhile, M is an actual, objective world which we experience. Of these scenarios, E is clearly less complex than M, because while E can be scaled in line with the progress of the experiencers it models for, it will never be as large as what could potentially be experienced - but never will be - in a physical universe of real complexity, M.
What's important to note, now that I understand you, is that this possibility by no means solves your problems or removes your burden.

We were disputing the need for a creator to be more complex than its creation. To frame this with the Kolmogorov terms you introduced, the argument was "Creator of Universe M is more complex than Universe M."

You countered that the actual existence of M is a naturalistic presupposition (granted), but that the existence of our experience is a given (granted, to the level of the individual), and that by assuming the alternative existence of a universe defined only by subjective experience, we notice that..

a complex (i.e. "brain-like") mind able to produce/simulate that experience for all of us turns out to be several orders of magnitude less complex than the simplest naturalistic description of the universe

In other words, you countered,
"Ah, but the Creator of E is less complex than M"
Fair enough.

Unfortunately, assuming that E is true and not M, the comparitive complexity of a creator and the universe it didn't create is irrelevant.
I'm happy to delve into speculation about the characteristics of E, but ultimately you now need to argue against the proposition that "Creator of E is more complex than E," not M, because in this context, M doesn't actually exist, and requires no explanation.

We're back where we started, with different letters. Tragically absurd.
We can now ask various questions which are very similar to questions asked about where information came from when a Creator of M was designing M.

For starters, where do the fictitious physical standards simulated in E come from? How did the Creator of E come up with them? Why would the Creator of E possess the cognitive faculties for simulating a universe with various physical conditions, if said Creator had never (and would never) encounter a material world that such cognitions would make sense of? Is the Creator of E existing in a material universe akin to M, and is reproducing its conditions in a simplified form for its simulation?
If so, we're back to my original misinterpretation of your argument, that E is simply a subset of M. If this is not the case, where do the Creators cognitions come from? Where does the Creator come from?

The floor is yours.

121. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #74376 by Robert Maynard on September 28, 2007 at 10:42 am

Dianelos,

Consider the (Kolmogorov) complexity of two worlds, which we shall here call "E" (for experiential) and "M" (for material). E consists of about 7 billion subjects experiencing life exactly like we do, and 1 person imposing order in their experience (in particular imposing the physical facts and laws present in their experience of physical phenomena). M consists of an actual physical universe of the dimensions, complexity and laws that our physical universe has, and in which 7 billion people exist experiencing it (how that universe actually produces experience is irrelevant; we assume it does). I estimate that the complexity of E is many orders of magnitude less than M's.

You've agreed, here and elsewhere, that our cognition is more complex than what our cognition allows us to experience, in order to stress that there is complexity we don't perceive, which shows that the universe is more complex than its experiencers in aggregate. That is not what's in dispute, because such a question could have been dispelled with a simple mathematical statement. The material universe is more complex than subjects inside it that can experience it, because the material universe CONTAINS the experiencers, plus that which they're experiencing.

What was in dispute was the cognition necessary to fashion a universe with intent. Ones cognitive complexity must exceed what it can experience - you have agreed. In order to perceive the future of a universe, in such a manner as to engineer its formation, requires cognition of greater complexity than what is being experienced (or modeled) - in this case, the intricate and explicit details of an entire universe; M, if you like.
If you disagree with the description of god as possessing intentions, you're not addressing the God hypothesis as articulated in TGD.

Dr Benway,

Concede that reasonable people ought to require evidence for some entity before believing it exists.

Stop the tiresome misdirection of shifting the burden of proof from the theist to the atheist.

I completely agree. We already know what a 40-page thread looks like Dianelos, thanks.

122. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #74063 by Robert Maynard on September 27, 2007 at 6:16 am

I still have no understanding of how the flagging system works here - how did _J_ get consigned to the alternate comment thread? Shouldn't something as dire as that require multiple flaggings from unique IP's?

123. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #74041 by Robert Maynard on September 27, 2007 at 5:43 am

revcort,
As a fellow human being, it saddens me to see you here chastising yourself for having and expressing an opinion. Your comment echoes the remorse of someone in an abusive relationship, who feels they have no recourse but to sympathise with the framework of their oppression, and blame themselves for doing nothing wrong.

To see you deprecating yourself in so absolute a sense, for no reason beyond your inability to meet a metaphysically impossible standard, makes me feel like we have failed you as peers. Good luck.

124. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #74002 by Robert Maynard on September 27, 2007 at 4:13 am

I'm a great lover of humour.

...

125. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73997 by Robert Maynard on September 27, 2007 at 3:34 am

..Are you guys going to, y'know, be doing this all the time?
These pretend-religion bits?
Really?

126. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #73957 by Robert Maynard on September 26, 2007 at 10:10 pm

Paul,
I hope the intervening pages before I dropped by have not contained floundering atheistic arguments for moral relativism, as you've described. That would indeed be.. pretty absurd.
If they have, it sounds as though it's become that way as a result of the false dichotomy you've presented in what you believe. That "without God, there is only behaviour". That's misconstruing how our brains work, and how they internally react to our behaviour.
I would contend (had begun trying to contend here) that we can rationally derive ethical principles, which can be argued to apply species wide, due to the relatively low diversity in genetics and cognitive equipment present in humans. Because our phenomenological experiences are so similar (besides the occasional unfortunate outlier with warped equipment), we can build a rationally defensible system of ethics on nothing but the principle that suffering should be avoided, and happiness should be sought.

My challenge would be for you to come up with an immoral action which cannot be criticised on these grounds, and I'll rationally defend any practices which it won't cover. :D

127. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73820 by Robert Maynard on September 26, 2007 at 9:12 am

My faith is that He is real and my death will actually be the beginning of life. Your faith is that He is not real and your death will simply mean you cease to exist. If you're right, it won't matter that I've been deceived all my life. But if I'm right, well, I would tell you to pray that I'm not right, but what good would that do?

You're overlooking more than a few possibilities, revcort. The God of Abraham is not the only Lord of the Universe whose existence has been articulated by humans.
If you're wrong, it doesn't necessarily follow that atheism is right, and there are no consequences for your belief. If BOTH of us are wrong, and we both stand before an entirely different God, your decision to worship the God of Abraham may matter just a little, maybe as much as our disbelief (maybe more). In fact, given that this is an entirely non-disprovable enterprise, your odds actually get worse the more potential wrathful creators anyone cares to comes up with.
There could be a creator that looks favourably on theists in general and punishes only atheists - or vice versa. There could be a god that was responsible for fathering various strains of ancient tribal mythology, who only punishes members of religions who carried out missionary work. A god that hates colonialism. A god that hates communism. A god that hates people who eat chocolate. A god who hates people who don't drink alcohol.

Given the infinite set of potential dictatorial Lords you might face when you die, I would not be so confident in passing your position off as the safe bet you're trying to.

128. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73746 by Robert Maynard on September 26, 2007 at 4:01 am

Corylus, #73739,

I have a nasty feeling that Revcort is 'Rapture Ready', Robert.

I suspect as much. It's just a guilty pleasure of mine to hear people lay out their myopic, groundless cases for the degradation and depravity of modern civilisation and the world. For example, if the miracle that revcort was defending is any indication, one of society's problems is that it's heading east at an alarming rate. :P

129. There Go The Dinosaurs

Comment #73697 by Robert Maynard on September 25, 2007 at 10:17 pm

MattinOz, there's no clear-cut process. One of my oldest friends is a Pentecostal and biblical literalist, and although it doesn't get in the way of our friendship, it's still a process of awkward, passive-aggressive probing whenever talk turns to religion.

The very worst part of these infrequent discussions is that there seems to be no way to consolidate progress. That is to say, I and others can argue him into accepting a point, or admitting that a point of his is deeply flawed, but then next time it comes up, all that groundwork has been washed away. One of my friends has referred to this problem as "evangelical amnesia", but I obviously couldn't say for sure how strongly it effects your friend.

My simplest advice would be, ask him questions about his beliefs, get an idea of where his beliefs end. Understand exactly where his disagreements with science begin.
Don't be hasty in giving him answers to big questions, unless you're confident you can carry them through to their conclusions - eg. don't assert the scientific age of the earth unless you can counter anti-radiometric dating arguments and confidently explain the techniques (and preferably the basic physics). He will remember concessions of deference to 'orthodoxy' in science. :)
Devour science literature, because that will help you discuss the big topics from a scientific/atheistic standpoint (besides that, scientific literacy is its own reward).
Above all, remember that he's your friend (aww). Some friends are all about one-upping each other, and comfortable, uninhibited disagreement (these are the best kind of friends) but there are usually limits to this. :P

130. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73679 by Robert Maynard on September 25, 2007 at 8:08 pm

revcort,

Of course I realize this- but you must realize that IF God can stop the earth from rotating, He can stop the cataclysmic events that might normally happen from happening too. The Scripture teaches that by Him all things consist. (are held together) In other words, it is by the very grace of God that this planet is still in one piece. If He removed His protective control, it would literally begin to fall apart. (oh, by the way, that's the very thing He is doing- He is gradually letting go and the world is gradually falling apart)

Some design.
Corinthians 1:17 is yet another example of the role God necessarily plays in maintaining the existence of evil for his own purposes.

On that note, "gradually falling apart"? In what sense?

131. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #73355 by Robert Maynard on September 24, 2007 at 8:29 pm

Dianelos Georgoudis, #73084

Are you sure you are not here changing the meaning of the concept "personal design", or if you prefer "intentional design"? Are you saying that it's not really they that did the designing, but rather they and all their ancestors including prokaryotic bacteria of 2.5 billion years ago?

Well, no, because if you kept reading you would see the line "Were [our prokaryotic ancestors] mindlessly reproducing with that end in mind?" I was implying "no", which you'd know if you had read the next line. "That's not design, bub".

You were so close to getting this when you speculated on who credit belongs to for programming an evolutionary simulation using real-world algorithms. Our society as a whole is wrangling with the implications of intellectual property, as we're still in a frame of mind where people think you can legitimately 'own' information, or take credit for information, as though you create it out of nothing. It ain't the case. All our innovation is made possible by a growing (er.. upside-down) mountain of historical precedent. And when you acknowledge a regression like this, there is no true point where it ends. Von Neumann went to school, Beethoven was heavily tutored, the Manhattan Project didn't invent nuclear fission, or powerful explosives, nor did they invent the utility people see in powerful explosives which guaranteed their funding. These are not cases of individual creative agents pulling ideas out of nowhere, their work is set against a backdrop of unconscious and relentless memetic transmission.

So the God hypothesis, as defined by Dawkins, allows for that designing intelligence to have evolved by some means too. As a matter of fact it allows for that intelligence to be some kind of alien race living in some unknown world where they have the capability of designing and creating universes like ours.

It says "supernatural". Did.. did you miss that? Because there's a word in the phrase "natural selection" which doesn't mix with a word meaning "above nature". I don't know what else to say to that..

The existence of the physical universe as understood by naturalism is not a given; what is given is our experience of the phenomenal universe. And a complex (i.e. "brain-like") mind able to produce/simulate that experience for all of us turns out to be several orders of magnitude less complex than the simplest naturalistic description of the universe

I'm not clear on what you're saying here. Is it -
"What our mind can perceive is more complex than our mind"?
Because that is incorrect. Given our experiential paradigm, the amount of complexity we can phenomenologically perceive with our evolved sensory apparatus is actually a lot less complex than what is there. It is deliberately simplified, pruned by selection to focus and represent what is of primary importance to animals of our sort. Our evolved brains miss enormous amounts of superfluous detail, which is only revealed with tools which allow us slim glimpses at things we didn't evolve to care about, and what we perceive with those tools does not exceed the complexity of our brains (of course, I feel this talk of complexity is dangerously mixing notions of information and structural intricacy). You couldn't even say we can perceive anything of even equal complexity, because we can't perceive the complex processes in other peoples brains or even our own with our natural equipment, and we can't take a good look at another humans brain without significantly augmenting our sensory apparatus with a gigantic machine (which even then, prudently simplifies the complexity present).
Worse still, it's not like you could calculate the complexity we can observe in aggregate, because the example you're criticising is of moment to moment individual perception.
My claim was that to perceive/measure all of it, even for an instant, one would require a means of information processing more complex than what it's perceiving, and you haven't demonstrated otherwise as yet.
A good example - consider the highly detailed images given to us by the Hubble space telescope. They are a range of highly detailed patterns of radiation that we could not possibly perceive with our naked eyes or occipital cortices, without the benefit of gross simplification on the part of Hubble, NASA and their computers. Hubble's perceptual apparatus are fantastically complex, tremendously moreso than the patterns of radiation that it "perceives". Hubble is not, however, more complex than the GIANT GALAXIES that produce the radiation it regards. Hubble loses a lot of information this way. If Hubble were a God, it would need to know every detail of those galaxies, and thus would require apparatus many orders of magnitude more complex than the galaxies themselves.

P.S I'm really worried that I'm using 'complex' to relate to shifting concepts here. When I refer to the total complexity of the universe, and the complexity one needs to access in order to "perceive" all of it, I'm not simply referring to the arrangement of its atomic constituents. I'm also necessarily referring to the state of these atoms, where they're going, what speed they're moving at, things like that. The sheer volume of data represented by the measured states of everything in the Universe is what's "complex". We can't conceive of that magnitude of data, we also can't perceive it. We can take samples of it, for very specific things we're interested in, but no - we can't actively cope with that much data.
Returning to a deity, in order to "deliberately design the Universe and everything in it," it must possess predictive computational powers which could simulate a causal future - for the entire Universe. You have said these computational demands are an assertion compromised by naturalist thinking, but again, you have no reasons or grounds to suggest there are other ways in which information can behave, and its dishonest to simply pretend there are.

132. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73191 by Robert Maynard on September 24, 2007 at 11:52 am

Thanks, black wolf - I have seen a similar explanation for the discrepancy, but it doesn't sit right with me.
He doesn't tell us exactly what contextual use of "man" is used in Mt 1:16; While he confirms the use of a phrasing identifying a Joseph as "husband" elsewhere, he stays silent on which variation is actually used in the place where it counts, verse 16. In actual fact, (according to my handy-dandy E-Sword), the Greek word used in 1:16 is anèr, the same word used in Matthew 1:19, the one which is ambiguous and generally 'male', but is used not three verses later to clearly refer to a husband. Why not use something like pater, specifically for "father", or better yet, why not use the word indicating someone begotten, gennaò, like had been used for the other 40 generations sitting right on top?

We're left postulating that the greek manuscripts used in translation contained a copying error from an earlier manuscript, but this is pure speculation based on an assumption that the original author didn't either make a counting mistake with those generations, or was simply bluffing.

133. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #73175 by Robert Maynard on September 24, 2007 at 11:00 am

revcort,

(and I won't be responding to others)

AWW.
Don't you have anything to say to my last comment to you? I haven't been "vulgar" towards you, have I?

134. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #73057 by Robert Maynard on September 24, 2007 at 2:18 am

Dianelos,
This discusses problems in abiogenesis probability calculations.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

If we don't currently know 'exactly' how abiogenesis can take place, and all the factors involved, it should be simple to reason that such calculations are based on shaky premises to begin with.

135. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #73051 by Robert Maynard on September 24, 2007 at 1:33 am

Dianelos Georgoudis

There is a bit about this in post 108

Ooh, I hadn't read this one. Maybe I'll respond to it while you ignore me move towards addressing my criticisms.

You know, like "rain comes from the clouds, music comes from the loudspeaker, so God must be coming from somewhere too". No wonder more thoughtful atheists felt embarrassed with TGD.

I don't see why issues of causality would be unimpressive to a 'thoughtful' atheist. You can't satisfyingly and validly end problems of causation by asserting the existence of something somehow "uncreated", when by our only measure of causality the Big Bang itself is uncreated (it has no measurable cause because the local measure for causality, time, was included in the event), and this rightly has failed to satisfy our curiosity. If we are going to postulate extra-universal dimensions from which things can cause other things with their own local measurements, and we refer to the former as a cause, there are no grounds to conclude that our explanation has ended - we've just postulated that our time isn't the only measure of causality, so why should it stop there?

Our explanation has simply been deferred to another level (and done so, might I add, without a scrap of data). This is the case with the multiverse, the weird, materialist equivalent of extra-universal causation (through entirely speculative means). It would be a higher dimension (or set of dimensions) from which we might conceptualise causality on a whole different level, but this wouldn't end our explanation, just push it further back. I am inclined to agree with you that this is harebrained - I just don't see how you jump from that to 'a god did it'.

If these so-called "thoughtful atheists" did not pick up on the poverty of explaining local histories with foreign histories (which are, within their own frame of reference, local and thus also in need of explanation) they're not 'thoughtful' atheists - they're lazy, uppity losers.

Don't naturalists of all stripes define the universe to be "self creating" at the Big Bang?

Naturalists do not define the Universe as being a self, because it's development is one of non-conscious, interacting elements. They do not refer to stars as 'self creating' through the 'third-person' force of gravity, and they do not refer to species as 'self-creating' in response to external Darwinian selection, probably because that is such a stupid and meaningless way of putting it.

136. 1996 Richard Dimbleby Lecture

Comment #73009 by Robert Maynard on September 23, 2007 at 7:06 pm

Great lecture. If you enjoyed this, I recommend reading Unweaving the Rainbow!

137. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #72976 by Robert Maynard on September 23, 2007 at 4:53 pm

Doctor Benway,

He got some 'splaining to do, even if He toopid

True. :P
If the Universe as it exists is the result of intent, I can't imagine how different it might look if it was the result of naturally emerging laws and forces.

*cough*

..maybe you can, Dianelos?

138. Religion advances despite science (and thanks to Dawkins)

Comment #72949 by Robert Maynard on September 23, 2007 at 3:53 pm

But instead of building bridges and a dialogue

"There are bridges and there are gangplanks" - Sam Harris

139. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #72940 by Robert Maynard on September 23, 2007 at 3:39 pm

We need not specify God's relative complexity

That's not quite true, Doctor B. While stupid engineers can create more sophisticated computers, this is precisely because they enjoy the benefits of a long and rich cultural inheritance, of advancing technology and scientific understanding, thus requiring them to generate very little innovation at any given step.
A pre-universal, singular deity does not enjoy this benefit, and must necessarily be tremendously more complex than anything it may create, precisely because anything it devises, it devises on its own, in a single 'generation'.

140. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #72923 by Robert Maynard on September 23, 2007 at 2:20 pm

Dianelos Georgoudis

Don't you think that the designer of our universe could have grown in intelligence/complexity too by learning?

...

..are you serious?

Learning involves perceiving new observations, or through reflection, building on prior observations.
If a deity could "learn" how to create a universe, what precisely was it observing and reflecting upon when it did so? Was it pre-existing universal conditions, and if so.. WHERE THE FUCK DID THEY COME FROM?

141. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #72909 by Robert Maynard on September 23, 2007 at 1:04 pm

Dianelos Georgoudis,

We would have a case where a particular system would be able to design another system that exceeds its complexity.

If this were an accurate analysis of the "Ultimate Boeing" argument, Dawkins couldn't count himself as a Darwinist, because the whole history of evolution is one of simpler systems giving rise to more complex ones. The important point to make is that there is no ex nihilo design in nature, and all design work in nature takes place from a darwinian perspective, as a cumulative process of algorithmic selection from a pool of random variation.
This principle extends to a hypothetical superhuman computer. Such a machine would be the cumulative result of years of design work on unrelated pursuits, themselves the result of preceding achievements. You can't argue that the inventors of the transistor did so with the explicit intent that one day improvements on their design would be used to create a computer with cognitive abilities superior to humans. Yet they must be included in the credits for such a machine (even if its a quantum computer, because the technology necessary to develop quantum computing necessarily involved transistors, obviously). But the credits don't stop there. We must credit human inventions all the way back to a point where we must begin crediting Darwinian selective pressures which gave us the cognitive prowess and the dexterous physiology required to develop tools. You can make an endlessly regressive case that our prokaryotic ancestors share the credit for such a supercomputer, just as they share credit for the direct lineage which gave rise to humans, creatures with cognitive abilities which are also far more complex than any preceding creature. Were they mindlessly reproducing with that end in mind? A superhuman computer wouldn't be design, bub - it's just more evolution.

The Ultimate Boeing 747 argument was articulated as a smackdown for mind-first teleology, intelligent creation out of nothing.

In order to know and plan the continuity of the Universe, one must possess the cognitive complexity to be capable of representing the entire causal history of this universe as simulation. Beyond the stuff of physics, this requires predictive knowledge of every cognitive agent, that's including (but not limited to) the mind of every human that will ever live. The complexity required to conceive of this complexity far exceeds the complexity being conceived. Even if we were to restrict or entirely remove complete foreknowledge from our hypothetical deity's 'abilities', the computational complexity required to observe every variable in the universe in a single instance exceeds the complexity IN the universe by many orders of magnitude. Omega of story. :P

142. Poll: Are Dawkins and Hitchens good for humanism?

Comment #72881 by Robert Maynard on September 23, 2007 at 10:17 am

scooternyc,
Perhaps you misunderstood my statement, seeing I agree with your post.

I said it was disrespectful to "employ different standards of interaction", and that is what I meant by how we should 'treat' one another. I did not say that within a so-called 'standard of interaction' there can be no gradations of tone or emotion.
How could I possibly stress the importance of discourse and disagreement, if I was also saying we should display consistent agreeableness with everyone?

Of course it would be absurd to interact with all people in the same way, and give no regard to their actions or character. We wouldn't be able to keep close friends or intimate relationships without being inconsistent in our dealings with strangers, just for starters.

But how we treat one another should always first and foremost be as individuals - fellow human, moral agents, of equal value and dignity to us, and we should strive to deal with one another at this level, by this standard. To partition this, and interact with different 'kinds' of people differently, whether we're distinguishing 'kind' by sex, race, politics or religious creed, is to hold these properties as differentiating enough to treat someone as a different subset of homo sapiens, which is empirically indefensible.
(a good example might be your assertion that learned notions, like democracy/freedom, can be "inherent" to some humans and not others, as though babies stolen from violent jihadists couldn't be raised as completely civil people, or that their fundamentalist parents couldn't in principle - though with great difficulty - be convinced that their worldview was flawed. If that's not what you meant please clarify.)

P.S Don't take my reference to sex to mean that I'm denying that men and women are physiologically and psychologically different creatures (though usually in quite shallow ways) - the point is that our phenomenology and cognitive equipment is similar enough (ie. practically identical) to count our agency as equal, and the same goes for any other arbitrary distinction we might care to make. The only grounds for different standards starts at the species level. We couldn't really criticise chimpanzees that improbably began practicing genital mutilation, for example - and it would, despite its hideousness, be incredibly fascinating to study.

143. Poll: Are Dawkins and Hitchens good for humanism?

Comment #72727 by Robert Maynard on September 22, 2007 at 1:22 pm

Part of developing an equal and open society of humans (a principle of humanism) will involve changing what it means to respect someone you don't agree with.
The current conception of respect for differing views as a kind of 'isolationist' policy must be fully eroded, because our reluctance to exchange views and pursue our disagreements rationally is what is keeping us separate, and merely bottling our disagreements. The solution to conflict is not to suppress it, and pretend it isn't there. By endorsing these kinds of attitudes, cultural relativism is an insidiously subtle form of discrimination, on par with racism and sexism in all but how we act on these prejudices. In many ways, the harm from this discrimination can come simply by doing nothing while our fellow humans do things they'd probably be wise to avoid.

What is disrespectful is to treat any individual differently from the next - to employ different standards of interaction with different individuals, particularly when we disagree with their ideas (eg. "Hey, yeah, hack off your kids labia, it's your thing")


To this extent, Dawkins and Hitchens (and Harris) are doing important work by trying to shove this currently impolitic (but desperately necessary) culture of discourse into the public spotlight, a culture which is essential to humanism.

144. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72574 by Robert Maynard on September 21, 2007 at 6:06 pm

revcort, #72522, #72555

It looks as though I slept through the end of this, and your departure, which is a shame. Perhaps I'll switch to CHeard, though he is already heavily engaged, and moderates are even more slippery on these matters..

First of all, you ignored my requests for clarification on those Bible verses. I'll go for the jugular this time: According to scriptural authority, who was [father of Jesus] Joseph's father? (you may pick between the answer in Matthew 1:16 or Luke 3:23 - at least one is incorrect)

Onto your last reply:

The eternal component of [our lives] is fore-ordained and unchangeable.

At the same time, there is a very practical component to faith which is lived out every day. And it is in this sense that all men have a chance for salvation.

These statements are incompatible.

When the result is already in, the chance component has ended. What you're suggesting is like saying God rolls a die for every future individual at the beginning of time, and everyone who gets a 6 lives forever, but then claim that everyone has a chance to change their result to a six. Only it's worse, because there weren't even dice involved, just his fickle fancy.

It's a paradox of sorts.

It's a false statement.

Now, He doesn't take pleasure in the death of anyone. Ezekiel 18:23 "Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked," declares the Lord God, "rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?"

This is scripturally inconsistent with Isaiah 46:10, where God boasts "Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure".
Everything ultimately turns out the way he wants - "to his pleasure". The individual outcomes of all men and women are his explicit will, and likely pleasure. At the very least, it is impossible that God might "regret" the outcome, because that would imply that his will, how he'd like things to turn out, has not been accomplished in the fullness of time, which is impossible (Job 42:2). Furthermore, your quoting of Ezekiel 10 is also incompatible with your claim that man is not self-determinate, and also depicts God as not having his will fulfilled.

Oh, and yes, God is loving. He has shown His grace to all, to a certain degree.

By these descriptions, God is certainly self-loving - but there is no consistent scriptural evidence for a universal love for humankind.

145. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72510 by Robert Maynard on September 21, 2007 at 10:51 am

Norman:

revcort said they had to become birds

Who is they? Fish? revcort said humans are like fish (which are described as moving in a medium of 'sin') who have to become birds (which move in a medium of 'virtue').

At this point in an analogy so bizarre I think it's clear we are not talking about the actual animal kingdom. :P

146. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72497 by Robert Maynard on September 21, 2007 at 9:59 am

revcort, #72484,
I understand you don't see man as self-determining. This is why it is impossible to describe God's judgment of humans as fair in this analysis, given that they lack the executive power to follow his orders. If our actions are entirely a product of his will, exactly what part of us is he judging?

Perhaps an example will help illustrate what I mean. Suppose you bought two rats from a pet shop, and upon bringing them home, dunked one in blue paint. Setting them both down on a table, you begin to pronounce "ONLY BLUE RATS SHALL LIVE, BECOME BLUE OR SUFFER MY WRATH!" After the passing of some minutes, you lose patience with the unpainted rat, who appears to be defying your decree. Outraged, you set him on fire, and he squeaks in agony for the remaining moments of his life. Would you be responsible for that rats suffering? Yes. Would you also be a horrible person? Yes! Now imagine this same deal, of an administrating power knowingly setting a standard for beings under its control, aware they can never achieve these requirements alone, who then arbitrarily allocates the property of salvation to only a subset of them, and then proceeds to brutally torture those he didn't pick. But unlike for the comparitively fortunate rat, this torture is apparently eternal. A being who, furthermore, made these decisions in order to feel good about himself. Are we describing a being of monstrously unethical cruelty? ..I should think so! Are we also describing the God of the Bible? By your own descriptions, yes.

Furthermore, your opinion that man is not self-determining, and not able to choose good, also has no consistent scriptural basis.

This is a passage which suggests that humans, universally, are presented with the choice to repent.

"Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent." - Acts 17:30

It is from the Bible. Is it true?

And this is a passage in which people are instructed that they have a choice between following God's law and not, and are encouraged to choose the former.

"I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life." - Deuteronomy 30:19

It is also from the Bible. Is it true?

If you answer yes to either of these, does this not constitute a contradiction between previously discussed sections of the Bible (and your opinion, which is based on them), and these sections? If so, is the Bible untrue in at least one of these instances?

As for your inquiry about my personal background with Bible quotes, I have a close friend who is a Pentecostal Christian, and our conversations in high school were invaluable to my character as an atheist.

--
Norman Doering, #72493

Is a flying fish a bird, Norman?

147. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #72482 by Robert Maynard on September 21, 2007 at 8:34 am

Paul said:

If we looked at how our conception of space and time were formed, what would this tell us about space and time?

It would certainly articulate what difficulties we would need to overcome to transcend the limits of our perceptual and conceptual apparatus. For example, today we frequently need to construct dimensional models that reduce greater numbers of dimensions into being expressed as three or four, as we are aware that we are incapable of conceiving more than four dimensions, but more than four just so happen to exist.

What we "know" also has something, at least something, to do with the way the world is. There's a lot of scientists on this thread that would consider your comments fighting talk.

You are misconstruing my comments if you're suggesting that I said brains develop in isolation from the world. I can't imagine how one even begins to speak of psychology without referring specifically to the interactions between cognitive apparatus and a presumed objective world that they are attempting to represent.

However, if your comment about "the way the world is" was implying that anything we know about the world (misrepresentations included) is not somehow the result of sensory observation, biologically hardwired tendencies, or the active interaction of the two, but instead something innate to our knowledge, the floor is yours to demonstrate it.

148. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72471 by Robert Maynard on September 21, 2007 at 7:44 am

revcort, #72453,

By the biblical narrative and the actions of Adam and Eve, human beings have knowledge of good and evil of a standard consistent with God (Genesis 2:17, Genesis 3:5). This is precisely the Bible's justification for our self-determinate role in our own fates. We are told that the laws of God are "written on our hearts", and as such we must all be judged by the standards of God, since we are all capable of distinguishing sin from virtue.

Therefore you have no consistent scriptural basis for your claim that our standards of justice can misidentify the Just as the Unjust, particularly when the agent in question is God.

If what the Bible says is true, then God is behaving in a manner so self-serving, abusive and hypocritical, that our God-given (apparently) sense of morality can and must identify him as evil. Again, according to the Bible our understanding of 'evil' is explicitly in alignment with his own.

Now, since as you say, this isn't about justice for human beings, but rather about God orchestrating a scenario in which to feel "glorified", perhaps the principles at hand don't matter. Perhaps you are making a wise decision in identifying that the Universe is administered by the most horrifyingly overpowered tyrant conceivable, and while his actions and standards are visibly unfair, you feel it would be foolish to do anything but cowl to his demands for praise and superficially profess sympathy with his desire to appear benevolent. That when you pronounce every judgment and action of God to be "perfectly just", you do so as a means of forced and terrified flattery.

But if you've already agreed that God is not fair to humans, is single-mindedly concerned with his own "glory", and that it is his will, not his regret, that the apparent majority of mankind will be tortured forever.. I'm just not sure where to go from here.

Might I suggest that you should welcome, more than just about anyone else here, the reality that this celestial dictator does not exist?
I mean, most Christians justify their uncritical faith by stressing the appeal of a God. What's your excuse?

149. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72426 by Robert Maynard on September 21, 2007 at 3:18 am

You're right, revcort, I did not like Paul's answer.
It seems to me that Romans 1:20 (and 10:8-11) explicitly contradicts Romans 9:13-22, and lays bare the incongruity between choice and design.

Let's run through some propositions, which I hope will outline the problem. Assuming you are entirely in agreement with the Bible, I'll answer these propositions for you with Bible quotes.

• Did God create the universe?
  The Bible says: Yes. (Genesis 1:1)


• Did God, in doing so, possess full and complete knowledge of every outcome of his Creation process, for all time?
  The Bible says: Yes. (Revelation 1:8, Isaiah 46:10)


• Did God, in creating the angel Lucifer, therefore not only know of his intention to rebel, but necessarily engineered him to do so?
  The Bible says: Yes. (Revelations 4:11, Romans 9:22)


• Was God therefore not only capable of predicting the sinful "Fall" of man, but also knowingly designed and created every agent (including man himself) that made it so?
  The Bible says: Yes. (Isaiah 46:10, Job 42:2)


• Was it within God's power to create a universe in which nothing would ever go wrong?
  The Bible says: Yes. (Psalm 115:3, Jeremiah 32:27)


• So is the Universe, as it exists, complete with the full spectrum of sin and suffering, precisely as God designed and willed it to be?
  The Bible says: Yes. (1 Peter 1:20, Isaiah 46:10)


• Is God, therefore, responsible for the individual choices, beliefs, and actions of every human being who has ever, or will ever exist, for the entire duration of the Universe?
  The Bible says: Yes. (Romans 9:15-16)


• Is God then meting out approval or punishment, to be subjectively experienced by humans for eternity, on the basis of decisions he has made for them?
  The Bible says: Yes. (Matthew 25:46, Romans 9:21)

Contrast this with the following propositions

• Is God benevolent?
  The Bible says: Yes. (John 4:16)


• Is salvation equally available to all?
  The Bible says: Yes. (John 3:16, Romans 1:16)

I've yet to come across a Christian who can satisfyingly reconcile these conflicting lines of reasoning. Paul's unsatisfying attempt to address it in Romans 9 (boiling down to "Who are you to question God?") is suggestive that this nagging contradiction was intuitive to skeptics even as early as the first century of Christian ministry.

150. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #72140 by Robert Maynard on September 20, 2007 at 12:29 pm

revcort said:

18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.1 Corinthians 1:18

That's an amazingly insightful quote, revcort. It's so versatile too, especially when one realises they can freely redefine the state of 'perishing' to mean whatever makes the statement true. Thus 'perishing' conveniently comes to represent 'anyone who disagrees with this statement, which is in itself words spoken in testimony of the word of the cross'
Irrefutable! ..and circular to boot!

I wonder though, if the Gospel is therefore unintelligible to certain people, in what sense can they be considered accountable for their non-saved status?