Comments by epeeist

2651. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87843 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 10:35 am

Comment #87839 by steve99

All I believe is that stuff seems to happen and I want to use the simplest way of exploring it.

My main hassle with this objective/phenomenal view split arises when I put my contact lenses in.

If I don't get my finger at the right objective distance from my eyeball it can cause a phenomenal amount of pain.

2652. Onward Christian teachers?

Comment #87841 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 10:26 am

Comment #87838 by thirdchimpanzee

If Danielos really wants to assert that religion is making ontological claims, then the correct atheistic counterpart is science, which does make ontological claims that explicitly exclude the supernatural.

Are but science and naturalism can't make ontological claims don't you know ;-)

2653. Onward Christian teachers?

Comment #87783 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 5:18 am

Comment #87709 by flying goose

Ban all private education now. It gives the rich the right to buy 'better' education where their children are taught to look down on everybody else.( I am sort of joking.)

I will get the declaration out first - my two daughters went to Withington Girls' School (http://www.withington.manchester.sch.uk/), my wife is a teacher, an examiner and sits on syllabus panels for the QCA.

I have mixed feelings about your statement, mainly because I don't think the state (in the UK) does a particularly good job when it comes to education. It is centralist and tries to micromanage all aspects of the school system. Where it does appear to give some choice it does it without regard to local communities but with a good bit of cosying up to sectional interests (such as the Vardy group in the worst case).

I don't know what the solution is (or more likely - solutions are), I would like to see central government setting standards but leaving implementation much closer to the people who are involved directly.

Get the quality up and many independent schools would disappear, especially those that cater to what a friend of mine refers to the "suet crust" set, i.e. rich and slightly thick. Note - I used to live in the next village to the Beckhams, always referred to as "thick and thin".

2654. Onward Christian teachers?

Comment #87781 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 5:03 am

Comment #87639 by Dr Benway

What you need is "Bathwater No Mo!" Bathwater No Mo! separates the proverbial baby from the dirty water. It's guaranteed to remove useless and sometimes harmful things like "Christian tradition" while retaining worthwhile items like "education."

Send check or money order for $19.95 to Doc Benway's Emporium. Ask for "Bathwater No Mo!" You'll be glad you did.

The wee flea isn't about is he? He castigated me for making this remark before.

Dr. Benway is right - its a pyramid selling scheme.

2655. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87779 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 4:58 am

Comment #87768 by Dr Benway

Analogous to the null hypothesis we often assume without making explicit, we often oversimplify falsification because we know what we mean and we're busy.

Agreed

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician were traveling across Scotland on a train.

The engineer looked out of the window, turning to the others he said "The sheep in Scotland are black".

The physicist looked out of the window and responded "No, in Scotland some of the sheep are black".

The mathematician said "No, you are both wrong. In Scotland there exists at least one field which contains at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."

The statistics I have were taught to me by a wonderful man who had worked out in West Africa for a period of years. He claimed to have eaten everything the locals plied him with apart from elephant dung beetles.

There wasn't too much intellectual stimulation out there so he taught himself Japanese so that he could translate some of the early and seminal papers on fuzzy logic for cluster analysis.

The other thing I remember about is saying "Bach?" when he told me he sang in an early music choir. "Oh, no", he responded "nothing as late as that."

I often think of him when I am listening to a piece by Josquin or Tallis.

2656. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87766 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 4:05 am

Comment #87757 by Dr Benway

Please forgive and allow me to rephrase: If you examined the entire universe and you didn't see a single black hole, you'd falsify the proposition, "black holes exist (in the universe at this time)."

I think you would have to constrain it much more than this, but your basic thrust is correct.

The difficulty is that the more constraints or ad hoc sub-hypotheses you add, the less useful is your theory. I think the best illustration of this is the dragon in Carl Sagan's garage.

2657. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87738 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 2:08 am

Comment #87731 by Dianelos Georgoudis

I always found that idea to be a complete truism. After all your example is exactly equivalent to The proposition 'rabbits eat grass' is true if and only it's true that rabbits eat grass. But this does not explain what we mean by "truth".

Over the course of this thread I have been giving you feed lines, post 86718 was the most glaringly obvious of these. However you may want to glance at posts 86041, 86866, 87013.

What you have failed to recognise in all of these is what I was doing, the latest post is another example. Virtually all the posts contain extracts from philosophers and logicians all of which you missed.

Steve has claimed you as a full blown creationist. I offer two other possibilities, either you are a fraud or just not very bright.

2658. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87723 by epeeist on November 13, 2007 at 1:18 am

If we clubbed together and bought DG one of these http://www.hawkin.com/rkmain.asp?PAGEID=20670&STK_PROD_CODE=09882 would it count as reification?

2659. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87708 by epeeist on November 12, 2007 at 11:28 pm

Comment #87650 by Dr Benway

Well if you examined the entire universe and you didn't see a single black hole, you'd falsify the proposition, "black holes exist (in the universe)."

Unfortunately you wouldn't. You have to look both back and forward in time as well.

Black holes do not exist is falsifiable in the same way as I pointed out to DG that "gods do not exist" is.

2660. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87505 by epeeist on November 12, 2007 at 10:29 am

For Dianelos

Here is a picture of two apples - http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/2414485/2/istockphoto_2414485_two_apples_green_and_yellow.jpg

Here is a picture of the number two - http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/829/35085997.JPG

Two apples and the number two are different. The first is concrete, the second is abstract.

2661. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87478 by epeeist on November 12, 2007 at 8:33 am

Comment #87476 by Dianelos Georgoudis

If that's what you believe then you disagree with scientific naturalism. You see, scientific naturalism claims that everything that objectively exists, exists in the physical universe that (according to scientific naturalism) science studies.

REIFICATION

2662. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87465 by epeeist on November 12, 2007 at 7:43 am

Comment #87458 by Dianelos Georgoudis

(A metal can be any alloy, and there is an unlimited number of different alloys which sometimes have wildly different properties, and that's why this proposition cannot be falsified even though it's clearly scientific.)

A distinct case of equivocation. You said "metal" not "alloy" or "metallic alloy".

While the latter two are not falsifiable, the former is.

While I may not working in this area any more my lady wife teaches chemistry, is actually an examiner for the subject and sits on the English and Welsh syllabus panels. I don't think she would be amused by your philosopher's dabbling in something he obviously doesn't have too much clue about.

2663. Dr Bari: Government stoking Muslim tension

Comment #87426 by epeeist on November 12, 2007 at 5:09 am

Comment #87420 by black wolf

I recommend to all commenters here to leave their comments on the telegraph site via the 'Your View' link in the left margin.

Personally I recommend all UK residents to write to their MP.

2664. Dr Bari: Government stoking Muslim tension

Comment #87408 by epeeist on November 12, 2007 at 3:40 am

Comment #87405 by IanG

We have to take him very seriously: he wields much more power and influence than you and I do

Agreed.

The only good thing to come out of this particular incident is the fact that he has made an enormous tactical error. As people have said, the cat is now out of the bag. It is now obvious what his end game and people do seem to have woken up to the fact.

2665. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #87208 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 1:31 pm

Comment #87206 by Bonzai

I never read Stenger but if he claims that science actually has a proof against the existence of any God imaginable then he is definitely overstating his case.

Agreed - the best he can do is to raise the hypothesis that the class of gods is empty. If the theists could actually raise a consequence of the hypothesis that was falsified then they would have falsified the atheist position.

Now the theists have been unable to do this, which you could take as a strong inductive indication that gods do not exist. However inductive arguments only give you a probabilistic result.

2666. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87202 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 1:01 pm

Comment #87196 by Dianelos Georgoudis

So I believe that P is objectively true.

Peter Pan: There oughta be a fairy for every girl and boy.
Wendy: Oughta be? Isn't there?
Peter Pan: Oh, no. Children know such a lot now. Soon they don't believe. And every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies", there's a fairy someplace that falls down dead.

2667. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87170 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 11:30 am

Comment #87165 by steve99

All that means is that they have to specialise in terms of science. It gives no indication of their knowledge of other areas, be it art, philosophy, cricket...

No, please no - don't let DG loose on cricket

2668. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87164 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 11:21 am

Comment #87158 by Dianelos Georgoudis

Let me think a little how to put in writing what I think about this important issue. Meanwhile, if you wish, it would be interesting if you explained what you mean by "truth".

Oh, I think to say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true just about covers it.

Alternatively one could say:

S is true iff p

where p can be replaced by any sentence for which truth is being defined and 'S' is to be replaced by the name of the sentence which replaces p

For example 'Rabbits eat grass' is true iff rabbits eat grass.

2669. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87107 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 8:13 am

Comment #87102 by krisking

If you want to look at atheistic societies

Russian tried to impose atheism on its society..

as did China....

how well do you think they did?

About as well as the Aztecs?

2670. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87104 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 8:11 am

Comment #87096 by Dianelos Georgoudis

So, if I understand you correctly, you believe that mathematical objects (such as numbers) exist objectively, but without any substance (either physical or supernatural). So, I wonder, where exactly in the universe are these objects?

As I said, you can consider them as Platonic ideals.

2671. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87103 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 8:09 am

Comment #87072 by Dr Benway

You've said this a few times. It seems a simple thing, establishing the melting point of some metal. So I'm puzzled by your meaning here.

It is actually part of a larger quotation.

Also, valid scientific statements such as "black holes exist" or "all metals melt at some temperature" cannot be falsified.

However, he can't see the difference between the two statements.

2672. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87091 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 6:57 am

Comment #87081 by krisking

And as you go further, you will find that even these are deemed pointless and of no avail.

A bit like Weland in "Puck of Pooks Hill" you mean.

2673. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87088 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 6:51 am

Comment #87074 by krisking

well, that is an excellent question. Who do you think is to say which is right?

Well that was opportune - A Jehovah's witness just knocked on our door (honest), he brought his daughter with him. I hate to say it Steve but he was wearing a hat just like yours.

Anyway, he told me the JWs were right. I didn't get a chance to ascertain the reason, he disappeared quite quickly when I raised the topic of blood transfusions.

2674. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87080 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 6:39 am

Comment #87074 by krisking

well, that is an excellent question. Who do you think is to say which is right?

Perhaps we ought to ask God? Preferably on something like James Randi's show. I don't think we can really accept that, for example, God has had a private word with Ted Haggard.

2675. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87069 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 6:17 am

Comment #87052 by krisking

The point of the Bible is surely that it tracks God's dealing with his chosen people. They were not chosen to be an exclusive group apart from the world, but to bring the truth about God to the world. They failed God in this mission. The Old Testament is full of exhortations to the Jewish people to return to God and to become what he intended them to be.

What chance of a second edition? You know 2000 odd years since the last version is quite a long time.

It would be nice to know how he wants us to deal with slavery now, as well as answering some questions as to whether we should be following the pope, Fred Phelps or even the Dalai Lama. A little advice on things like contraception and stem cell research would be good too.

2676. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87047 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 5:22 am

Comment #87045 by krisking

You are quite right to denounce any Christians or People who purport to be Christians who use the Bible to justify slavery. I think that this is where to confusion lies for Atheists. Being a Christian who follows what God requires of him i.e. "to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6 v8) is not the same at all as someone who claims to be a Christian and uses the power of the church institution and quotes from the Bible to justify his own selfish ends.

But the NGK would have claimed it was following the Bible, after all they were (are?) strict followers of Calvinism.

2677. Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky's Intellectual Progeny

Comment #87039 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 4:32 am

Comment #87038 by keith

But surely you must have noticed that this is not what he actually SAID. This is what he SAID about what he actually SAID.

Just as a total aside - have you noticed that whenever Tony Benn is interviewed there is a dictaphone somewhere about.

2678. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87021 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 2:40 am

Comment #87020 by steve99

You also owe me an experimental prediction of idealistic theism - remember?

And don't forget my definition of truth.

2679. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87019 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 2:26 am

Comment #87013 by Dianelos Georgoudis

What you write here is factually true if by "reality" you mean "phenomenal reality", but is factually false if by "reality" you mean "objective reality".

Sez you. What you say three times doesn't make it true.

As far as objective reality goes the great physical theories of the 20th century have falsified many of the previous intuitions of how physical reality is and have left scientific naturalists more perplexed not to mention more in mutual disagreement than in any other time in history.

I really didn't think you would fall for so transparent a piece of second intention.

Pre-20th century physics wasn't "perplexed" simply because they didn't have the observations that we have. If they had then their world view would have been in even more disarray than you claim for 20th century physics. With the advent of the three theories I named things have actually become more coherent, we can explain reality in a much more satisfying way than previously.

As I have said the theories are incomplete (and as always contingent), but a theory that can predict phenomena to 1 part in 10¹¹ as QFT can (with 1 part in 10¹⁴ apparently possible for GR) must be on the right track.

Oh, and go to bed tonight with this thought it mind. Just because the sun rose this morning doesn't prove it will rise tomorrow. All we have is strong corroboration that it will do so.

2680. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87003 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 12:59 am

Comment #87000 by krisking

Recently, there has been a film about William Wilberforce and his efforts to abolish slavery. I wonder what motivated him, in the face of enormous opposition from the wealthy slave owners of his time. I think he would have said it was his Christian beliefs that both motivated him to try to get slavery abolished and which helped him to keep going when it seemed impossible.

There is some controversy about Wilberforce's beliefs and the timing of his attempts to abolish slavery. But for the sake of argument I will acknowledge your point.

But, you have also got to acknowledge the slave owners in the antebellum south who used the Bible to show that blacks were inferior and that slavery was their natural position in life (see "Noah's Curse : The Biblical Justification of American Slavery" by Stephen Haynes for more details.)

2681. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87002 by epeeist on November 11, 2007 at 12:52 am

Comment #86910 by krisking

He says, "Britain did not become a tolerant nation by accident. We had a civil war in the 17th century, and some of the very very great people like John Milton and John Locke did the hard thinking about what is means to live in a society where people have strong, conflicting beliefs and have to live together.

Before that of course we have the switching between Catholic and Protestant in Tudor times and all the persecutions and killings that involved. We have a king who believed in witches and the trials that came out of that. We also had a king who believed in his divine right to rule and an equally religious opposition.

Tolerance only really started during the age of Enlightenment as a reaction against religion.

I think that the problem that atheists have not yet realised about their position is that their own system of morals is based on Christian morality

And this applies to the people of Asia and China as well I presume? They too take their morality from the Bible?

Perhaps you have heard of Aristotle, he actually managed to come up with an ethical system nearly half a millennium before Jesus. How about the Buddha, have you heard of him, how about Confucius? They also developed ethical systems long before Jesus.

Why is the Bible and the morality it proposes more correct than these?

2682. On Being Not Muslim Enough

Comment #86952 by epeeist on November 10, 2007 at 2:00 pm

Sorry, wrong thread. I thought we were talking about the fact that the UK isn't Muslim enough for Muhammad Abdul Bari - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7088325.stm.

He apparently doesn't want his daughter to wear a bikini amongst other things.

2683. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86894 by epeeist on November 10, 2007 at 11:43 am

Comment #86893 by mejdrich

I'm also waiting for you to admit the obvious contradiction in this statement of yours:

God's being all-powerful doesn't mean that He can do the logically impossible.

This is a fairly old one. God cannot be both omniscient (in which case he can see every action that has, is being, or will be made) and omnipotent.

If he is omniscient the question is can he change an action that he has already foreseen. If he can then he can't be omniscient, if he can't then he is not omnipotent.

2684. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86891 by epeeist on November 10, 2007 at 11:29 am

Comment #86888 by ADH

When we say "Elisabeth has been on the English throne for more than 50 years" we don't mean that the poor lady has been sitting there, getting bored out of her mind (though perhaps she might as well have been) for the last 50+ years!!

We doctors call this equivocation. It is one of many logical fallacies.

2685. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #86866 by epeeist on November 10, 2007 at 10:48 am

Comment #86852 by Dianelos Georgoudis

Doesn't work I think. It's true you can corroborate (most) proofs, but proofs are only formal production systems.

This surely depends on whether you are an idealist or not.

But you can't corroborate what counts which is the truth

Besides all the other things you have been asked, and for which you have provided no evidence, could you also tell us what you mean by "truth"?

Dr. Benway - I think you may have a patient waiting.

2686. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #86718 by epeeist on November 10, 2007 at 2:47 am

Comment #86711 by Dianelos Georgoudis

I find the trick of pushing the burden the proof around to be shameful, because reason requires one justify all claims no matter their form (and I approvingly notice that Dawkins in his TGD at least did not shy away from trying to justify his belief in the non-existence of a creator God). But let me play this childish game and change my claim into: "No subjective ethical concepts exist". That's a negative existential claim and I don't need to justify it, correct? And if you disagree with it and claim that subjective ethical concepts exist it's you who have the "burden of proof".

As with virtually everything else you push you have a half understanding beyond which you are not prepared to go.

The great physical theories of the 20th century (GR, QM and QFT) provide a convincing view of reality though it is obvious that they are not complete.

If you wish to counter this with another theory then the burden of proof is on you to show where the failures are and what your theory can do that is better.

None of this you have done (or even got close to).

Similarly with your claim for "objective morality". You have been shown that different cultures and different times have different sets of behaviours. You claim that the "moral zeitgeist is improving" but offer no evidence that this is because of the existence of objective morality. You offer no way that objective morality could be recognised. You haven't even managed to show that even if it existed objective morality would have a religious basis.

2687. The good that comes from belief

Comment #86676 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 11:58 pm

This sounds like a poor version of the Brook's book (Religious Faith and Charitable Giving) which purports to show that the religious give more to charity and volunteer more than the non-religious.

As has been pointed out though religions are charities and any money donated or work done for them counts in they tally.

I haven't read the book itself, but I have read an article which is an extract. I would be interested to know what a real statistician would think both of the book and this study.

2688. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #86468 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 10:47 am

Comment #86421 by Tibor

The problem of free will: The idea of morality postulates the existence of free will, but as far as I can see, this is only possible if there is a part of human nature that is indipendent of the physical world.

Free will doesn't really help anyway.

It only works for the person with his finger on the trigger of the gun. The person on the receiving end has no choice in the matter, no free will at all.

And again, you are assuming the conclusion of your question.

2689. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #86448 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 8:48 am

Comment #86421 by Tibor

Morality either exist and than it is absolute or it doesn't exist. A relative moral code is not morality at all. It cannot provide the functions that morality should provide. That's why you need God to explain morality.

At one time it was moral to keep slaves, Billy can give you chapter and verse from the Bible (OT and NT) as to where and under what conditions. Presumably since you claim morality in an absolute sense then it is still moral to do so?

This isn't the only example, I could raise many more.

Oh, and whose God? I am presuming you mean the Christian one, does this mean that Hindus or followers of the Great Spirit are immoral?

- The definition of moral and immoral: this is what I've tried to present so far. To define morality we have to use the words good and bad. But what is the meaning of these words in the physical word? What can they mean if they have no connection with a) God and b) the transcendent soul of human beeings.

This looks like petitio elenchi to me. You are assuming both that God exists, and that people have souls though you have demonstrated neither.

- The motivation for good: In this world the morally good act and the most profitable act are not the same. If there is no afterlife then how could you motivate someone to be good?

I have friends, a wife, two daughters, work colleagues all of whom will be affected by my actions. Poor moral behaviour on my part will affect them.

I have wider "circle of concern" which could also affect my in-group. For example, it is in the long term interest of my in-group to see women's education brought to the fore so that a poor, ill-educated population will not be a burden to them in the future.

You do need to realise that all of this has been raised since long before the time of Jesus. You need to look at what was produced by the likes of Aristotle, Plato, the Buddha, Confucious to see other thoughts on this. If you are looking for things that are more recent then read Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche.

2690. I didn't know the FLEA CIRCUS was back in town!

Comment #86388 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 6:02 am

Comment #86381 by Dianelos Georgoudis

I think you are imagining some ideal world, but not the world in which live. Reality is that in many cases one party does have the might over the other.

There are many domains of discourse, forte main is only one of them. Others include quarrels, debate, persuasion, negotiation and critical discussion.

2691. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #86352 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 3:13 am

Comment #86348 by irate_atheist

Hey! Stop wasting good beer!

Ok - here's another analogy instead.

Anyone with children will tell you that the one thing they enjoy is throwing their toys out of the pram. You pick them up, dust them down, put them back in the pram. Two yards further on, another flying teddy bear (science models physical phenomena, naturalism is in a crisis, atheists can't cope with objective morality).

2692. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #86349 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 3:07 am

Comment #86347 by steve99

Strictly speaking science only models physical phenomena.

Oh, I had missed this joke.

Probably because you have seen it (and refuted it) so many times before that your mind just didn't register it.

And yes, DG is just another creationist. I had thought him a bit more dangerous than the likes of the AiG people because he sounds a bit more plausible. However he has become a joke in a similar, but lesser, way to Behe (see the panning Abbie Smith gives him).

At the moment the other person on the site that he reminds me of most is ADH.

2693. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #86341 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 2:33 am

Comment #86214 by Dianelos Georgoudis

Strictly speaking science only models physical phenomena.

99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer.

Knock one down, turn it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall.

98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer.

Repeat ad nauseum

2694. Mother dies after refusing blood

Comment #86290 by epeeist on November 9, 2007 at 12:00 am

Comment #86156 by Tyler Durden