The problem is he has no proof for his idea, and noone else has any better ideas, and everyone is basically just saying "nevertheless, we somehow know it CANT have been an initial creator called God. It HAS to be something else, even if we dont know what". That attitude is quite ridiculous.
I have found it to be true that in order to deny the existence of God, one must generally deny causality, or deny it in certain circumstances-- I understand "Bell's theorem" is used to argue this, and not being a physicist I cannot comment on that. I would note that most people would probably balk if presented with the idea that "In order to reject God, you must deny causal relationships".
If youre looking for reasons why I find that book to be self-validating, I would note that, for one, unlike intuition and other sources of information which try to tell us that man is correctable, perfectible, and intrinsically good (which fails to account for basically all of human history), the Bible seems to offer insights as to the nature of man, and his will, that are dead on. It correctly understands that while government is a Good Thing, it is also corruptible and inevitably falls prey to corruption. It understands that there are a great many Good Things (wealth, sex, authority), but that man's instinct is to turn them towards evil-- greed, adultery, oppression, etc. There is noone in the Bible-- apart from Jesus-- who is set up to be without fault. Even those it labels "men of God" and "righteous" are, in their own narrative, shown to be terribly sinful folks (David, for example, being a murdering adulterer). Even Peter and Paul are shown to be just men, with their own many failings.
I am of the opinion that if two theories offer up predictions, and one of them is consistently wrong, and the other right, then the second theory is the most sound and the most likely correct. I find that when it gets to the question "what are we, fundamentally", the Bible is dead on.
It is sad because his family will miss him, and they will experience sorrow; and not knowing them, I nevertheless do not wish that on them. That is the best explanation I can come up with.
You are right it is inevitable, but to trying to pretend that grief has no place at a funeral is trying to deny human nature. We miss those we love when they die.
This whole discussion has degraded into hairsplitting over the word "why" vs "how". From GGP and my own post, I would have thought it was clear that "why" was simply referring to cause. I dont think OP was trying to determine what sort of intentionality causes oil and water to repel; very clearly we were discussing the physical cause.
As far as I have always been concerned, the distinction between "why" and "how" is a piddling one. Both are searching for a cause, a reason, an explanation for what is observed or discussed.
Really? Because the alternative to "God is the initial cause" is "something else is the initial cause", or else that "there was no initial cause, and the universe always was". I would note that current evidence seems to indicate the third option is right out, which leaves us with the second-- and you yourself have 0 proof of that.
He surely has his own reasons for believing in God as the initial cause; what are yours for believing in a different initial cause?
That would be the fallacy of equivocation-- you are changing the meaning of words halfway through the conversation. When you first used the word "lighter", it had a specific meaning, but in the followup you suddenly infer that "lighter" ceases to be an objective measurement, but simply one that depends on our definition.
Thats some clever word-work, but its nevertheless a fallacy.
Your grandfather isnt arguing that there arent natural causes; he is saying there is an initial cause at the beginning of it all.
In apparently trying to ridicule him, you show your own failure to comprehend what he was saying. I would also note that ridiculing ones grandfather is hardly something to be proud of doing, especially in front of everyone on the internet.
Having read that article, I would add, it says a "basic assumption"-- that is, a foundational assumption.
Every bit of knowledge and observation we have is fundamentally based on a set of assumptions; without them you would be left doubting everything, including your ability to doubt and your very existence.
If we stop assuming causality, how on earth do you go about setting up experiments? You would have no reason to believe that you could POSSIBLY reproduce anything, if effects are simply random occurrences.
GP was discussing blame, which indicates that setting your own prices and market entry dates is somehow a "wrong-headed" thing, with the implication that "wouldnt it be nice if we could force them to be ethical about it and make them hit certain markets and pricepoints".
True free trade allows that company to decide to whom it wants to sell its goods. The fact that more people want to be their customers doesnt affect that.
Q: Yes, you've named the force and given me a formula to calculate it but why does the apple fall to the ground? A: We don't know, and even if we ever find something more fundamental that explains gravity, then that again won't have a "why".
Which is how science works, and what it is all about. If we had no desire to climb further up the chain in causality, we would never do experiments.
Does gravity work because mass distorts space or because of gravitons? At the heart of it most science doesn't care why,
Those ARE the why. Asking "why" is asking "what caused the phenomenon in question". If its because of gravitons, the gravitons are the why, the distortion is the what, and so on.
Im not sure if we have a simple failure of communication here, or if people dont understand the definition of "why", or if people are actually denying causality.
And those also fall outside of "free trade", if you want to get super technical. They are restrictions on the free market more than setting your own prices is, is the point (not that they are necessarily bad).
Its a glorious day for Slashdot when an obvious offtopic troll flamebait post filled with logical fallacies (primarily the strawman, and ridicule) gets modded "funny". Humorous intent there may have been, but it really brings some perspective-- apparently you can be as gigantic of a troll as you want, so long as you make your ridicule funny enough.
For everyone chortling over how stupid and backwards the religious nuts are, note that you are giving approval to a gigantic logical fallacy and applauding the drowning out of reasonable conversation. Hope you all feel super proud of yourselves.
If science didnt believe there was a "why", it wouldnt bother with experiments in the first place. The why is what we are generally after-- what is the cause?
Slashdot Mirror
For me personally, I reject "God did it" because we have better answers now, and our only evidence for "God did it" is your ancient book of choice
We have NO answers now as to "where did matter come from, or how". Stephen Hawking recently (last year) stated,
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist"
The problem is he has no proof for his idea, and noone else has any better ideas, and everyone is basically just saying "nevertheless, we somehow know it CANT have been an initial creator called God. It HAS to be something else, even if we dont know what". That attitude is quite ridiculous.
I have found it to be true that in order to deny the existence of God, one must generally deny causality, or deny it in certain circumstances-- I understand "Bell's theorem" is used to argue this, and not being a physicist I cannot comment on that. I would note that most people would probably balk if presented with the idea that "In order to reject God, you must deny causal relationships".
If youre looking for reasons why I find that book to be self-validating, I would note that, for one, unlike intuition and other sources of information which try to tell us that man is correctable, perfectible, and intrinsically good (which fails to account for basically all of human history), the Bible seems to offer insights as to the nature of man, and his will, that are dead on. It correctly understands that while government is a Good Thing, it is also corruptible and inevitably falls prey to corruption. It understands that there are a great many Good Things (wealth, sex, authority), but that man's instinct is to turn them towards evil-- greed, adultery, oppression, etc. There is noone in the Bible-- apart from Jesus-- who is set up to be without fault. Even those it labels "men of God" and "righteous" are, in their own narrative, shown to be terribly sinful folks (David, for example, being a murdering adulterer). Even Peter and Paul are shown to be just men, with their own many failings.
I am of the opinion that if two theories offer up predictions, and one of them is consistently wrong, and the other right, then the second theory is the most sound and the most likely correct. I find that when it gets to the question "what are we, fundamentally", the Bible is dead on.
They also have an enormous amount of voice data to pull from due to their Google Voice and Google 411 experiments.
That was a miswording on my part; I was intending that insofar as the company is doing the selling.
It is sad because his family will miss him, and they will experience sorrow; and not knowing them, I nevertheless do not wish that on them. That is the best explanation I can come up with.
You are right it is inevitable, but to trying to pretend that grief has no place at a funeral is trying to deny human nature. We miss those we love when they die.
Well, I would agree that that is not pure free trade. But thats really not relevant to the discussion at all.
This whole discussion has degraded into hairsplitting over the word "why" vs "how". From GGP and my own post, I would have thought it was clear that "why" was simply referring to cause. I dont think OP was trying to determine what sort of intentionality causes oil and water to repel; very clearly we were discussing the physical cause.
As far as I have always been concerned, the distinction between "why" and "how" is a piddling one. Both are searching for a cause, a reason, an explanation for what is observed or discussed.
Really? Because the alternative to "God is the initial cause" is "something else is the initial cause", or else that "there was no initial cause, and the universe always was". I would note that current evidence seems to indicate the third option is right out, which leaves us with the second-- and you yourself have 0 proof of that.
He surely has his own reasons for believing in God as the initial cause; what are yours for believing in a different initial cause?
That would be the fallacy of equivocation-- you are changing the meaning of words halfway through the conversation. When you first used the word "lighter", it had a specific meaning, but in the followup you suddenly infer that "lighter" ceases to be an objective measurement, but simply one that depends on our definition.
Thats some clever word-work, but its nevertheless a fallacy.
Your grandfather isnt arguing that there arent natural causes; he is saying there is an initial cause at the beginning of it all.
In apparently trying to ridicule him, you show your own failure to comprehend what he was saying. I would also note that ridiculing ones grandfather is hardly something to be proud of doing, especially in front of everyone on the internet.
Having read that article, I would add, it says a "basic assumption"-- that is, a foundational assumption.
Every bit of knowledge and observation we have is fundamentally based on a set of assumptions; without them you would be left doubting everything, including your ability to doubt and your very existence.
If we stop assuming causality, how on earth do you go about setting up experiments? You would have no reason to believe that you could POSSIBLY reproduce anything, if effects are simply random occurrences.
Science is fundamentally about learning things. What you described above is one of the methods we use.
Reproducibility implies an unchanging cause
Versus
No, reproducibility implies an unchanging mechanism, ie, a how
Im not seeing the material difference between the two statements. Are "how" and "the cause" different things?
It sounds like a semantic argument. Why, as I have understood the word, is an inquiry into causes.
Youre oversimplifying it. There isnt always just one "why"; there are usually several layers of causality that go into any event.
GP was discussing blame, which indicates that setting your own prices and market entry dates is somehow a "wrong-headed" thing, with the implication that "wouldnt it be nice if we could force them to be ethical about it and make them hit certain markets and pricepoints".
An absolutely free market certainly DOES mean that. What on earth do you think "laissez faire" means?
To be clear, I am not a believer in a full throttle laissez faire system, but that is basically a free market in a nutshell.
True free trade allows that company to decide to whom it wants to sell its goods. The fact that more people want to be their customers doesnt affect that.
Q: Yes, you've named the force and given me a formula to calculate it but why does the apple fall to the ground?
A: We don't know, and even if we ever find something more fundamental that explains gravity, then that again won't have a "why".
Which is how science works, and what it is all about. If we had no desire to climb further up the chain in causality, we would never do experiments.
Does gravity work because mass distorts space or because of gravitons? At the heart of it most science doesn't care why,
Those ARE the why. Asking "why" is asking "what caused the phenomenon in question". If its because of gravitons, the gravitons are the why, the distortion is the what, and so on.
Im not sure if we have a simple failure of communication here, or if people dont understand the definition of "why", or if people are actually denying causality.
You would be surprised at how many armchair scientists would declare causality to be simply a figment.
Reproducibility implies an unchanging cause, that is, a why. If there isnt a cause to something, you will be unable to reproduce it.
And those also fall outside of "free trade", if you want to get super technical. They are restrictions on the free market more than setting your own prices is, is the point (not that they are necessarily bad).
Its a glorious day for Slashdot when an obvious offtopic troll flamebait post filled with logical fallacies (primarily the strawman, and ridicule) gets modded "funny". Humorous intent there may have been, but it really brings some perspective-- apparently you can be as gigantic of a troll as you want, so long as you make your ridicule funny enough.
For everyone chortling over how stupid and backwards the religious nuts are, note that you are giving approval to a gigantic logical fallacy and applauding the drowning out of reasonable conversation. Hope you all feel super proud of yourselves.
If science didnt believe there was a "why", it wouldnt bother with experiments in the first place. The why is what we are generally after-- what is the cause?