(March 31, 2016 at 11:23 pm)robvalue Wrote:

(March 31, 2016 at 8:27 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Completely wrong. These are common observations about reality. Which of those listed do you consider an inaccurate description?

Did you watch my video?

You're creating an extremely simple model of reality based on some very broad observations, and just hoping there's nothing you're missing that will affect the reliability of your model. You're then applying these observations wholesale not just to all of reality but to reality itself. Even if the observations are consistent with our local area, and even within all of reality, it's a fallacy of composition to apply those to reality itself.

It's up to you to demonstrate your extremely simple model, your abstract version of reality, is in any way similar to the one we live in. You do this via evidence. You have made no predictions, and so have nothing to test. You have collected no data. You're exploring an imaginary reality in your head. Expecting me to prove that this isn't the same as our reality is the argument from ignorance, since you've got no evidence that it is. You're expecting me to prove you haven't missed any possible detail that could render the results invalid. "It sounds like it" or "It's consistent so far" is not enough when you expect to apply it as your only method of getting a result. Your conclusions are packed inside your premises; even if this is all logically sound, which it is not. Where on earth did God come from? At best you have "a cause" which you've defined into existence as having special properties which defeat your own rules that you're relying on.

You're even claiming to be able to out-do all scientific study ever done by creating this incredibly simple model and just waltzing past the plank time with your everyday intuitive logic. The chances of your imaginary reality in your head bearing any resemblance to what our reality is like at this point becomes near to zero. And past this point, even going external to our reality, you're simply making it up. The only way to check the reliability of the model is to test it via predictions, and you have no access to what happens external/previous to our reality.

You're not doing science at all. And this is why your conclusions are vague, suspect, unverifiable and entirely useless. If you resort to current scientific methods to show the validity of your models, then you can't simply ignore them when you regress towards the Big Bang and announce you've found a way to go through it.

Except I did not make an argument or present a conclusion. What I am saying is that these few observations are commonly acknowledged. How to interpret them is certainty up for debate. You could argue that I confused data with evidence. The question remains do you deny any of the initial observations?

You said the existence of God logically follows from the observations.

Is that not an argument, and a conclusion?

If you were simply noting a logical tautology, then fine. That's of no consequence to anything.

Your observations seem OK at a very intuitive, simplistic level. To assume they are universally true, and that there are no further rules which wouldn't interfere with your conclusion, is wild speculation. But if you're not even making an argument, then I needn't rebut it.

My video and my criticisms apply equally well to Aquinas and all that stuff. All apologetics that doesn't invoke any evidence. It's all wild speculation, as above.

I'd like a good old fashion parting of a sea on BBC! Oh and the finger touching cloud thing too.

If I had a finger touching cloud thing, I'd never leave the house.

Define what a god is first then we can know what evidence would be required to establish whether it existed or not.

That too!

To recap: a logical argument in which the premises are based in reality, but which isn't checked against reality at any other point, is completely dependent on those premises being totally 100% accurate and exhaustive.

To assume that you have managed this is folly. This is why predictive models are so important, to check back with reality that our premises are good enough for what we are trying to learn about.

It's different in some soft sciences such as history, where literally all we can do is gap fill to the best of our ability based on the evidence we do have. But still, we are using evidence to reach reasonable probabilistic conclusions. We're not just pulling stuff out of the air. And we're never announcing the existence of previously undemonstrated phenomena. We're working within the framework of what we at least know to be possible.

I wouldn't consider anything to be evidence for God. Evidence for God is absolutely impossible. Thank you Karl Popper.

(April 5, 2016 at 3:26 am)robvalue Wrote: ...a logical argument in which the premises are based in reality, but which isn't checked against reality at any other point, is completely dependent on those premises being totally 100% accurate and exhaustive.

Are you placing mathematical objects and logical structures outside of reality?

They are abstract concepts. They don't literally exist. Or at least, we have not observed them doing so. There is no manifested "number 7". So it's not "outside" reality; it's just not anywhere. There are groups of 7 real objects, which we model using the abstract "number 7". And obviously we use a symbol to represent the concept. And we can represent the concept in our brains.

In an abstract logical system, you only need show that conclusions follow from the premises. You don't, however, have any guarantee that the conclusions will have any correlations with reality. Sometimes they will have applications, sometimes they won't. Sometimes applications don't become clear until much later.

So by drawing out premises and using a logical argument, you're creating an artificial, abstract reality. Whether or not that reality is anything like our reality depends on the accuracy of the premises. To just assume you've been bang on is to say you know everything about how reality works. That's a bold statement, and if you really did know everything, I'm sure you'd be able to demonstrate it rather than theorise it.

(April 6, 2016 at 4:13 am)robvalue Wrote: They are abstract concepts. They don't literally exist. Or at least, we have not observed them doing so. There is no manifested "number 7". So it's not "outside" reality; it's just not anywhere. There are groups of 7 real objects, which we model using the abstract "number 7". And obviously we use a symbol to represent the concept. And we can represent the concept in our brains...In an abstract logical system, you only need show that conclusions follow from the premises. You don't, however, have any guarantee that the conclusions will have any correlations with reality....

Anti-realism, such as you seem to advocate above, offers an incomplete account of abstraction and concept formation. It also tends to confuse the notions of "abstract" and "conceptual".

During abstraction a knowing subject perceives a sensible object to distinguish between its accidental and essential features to form a mental concept. Mental concepts are about essential features shared among sets of objects and are by extension objects of knowledge. The essential features must be in some sense real, otherwise the features could not be perceived and no objective concept could be formed. To perceive something that is not really there is a fantasy.

So for example, all sensible objects share the essential feature of numerability, otherwise they could not be counted. If numerablity is not a real feature shared among objects then it must be a fantasy. Concepts formed from fantasies have no relationship to external objects. As such, the world is not truly intelligible. Scientific knowledge is reduced to a story fabricated from the subjective phenomena of knowing subjects. Any claim to objectivity is mere pretense.