(5 hours ago)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(9 hours ago)Jal Wrote: @BrianSoddingBoru4,

You think I'm an Aristotelian? Aristotle was a panpsychist? I don't think he was. Although I don't much care.

He originated the ‘unmoved mover’ concept, which (in my bolded bit above) you appear to support.

And, at the very least, Aristotle spoke rather glowingly about some aspects of panpsychism - ‘everything is full of gods.’

Boru

Aquinas as well, but dont mention his name three times, it may invoke a certain forum "member". 

(5 hours ago)Deesse23 Wrote:

(7 hours ago)Jal Wrote: Please don't lecture me on traditional assessments of Christian heresy. These assessments are formulated by the same kinds of scholars who
(1) Admit that the traditional theory of the Incarnation is incomprehensible and self-contradictory.
(2) Claim that an immutable God became man.
(3) Claim that God is immaterial, therefore indivisible into parts, and yet is a Trinity. 
(4) Claim that God is already fully/exhaustively present at every point in space - and yet pours out His Holy Spirit! Pours it where? Where He was already there?

These are examples of historic idiocy, and I can show you more.

Even Millard J. Erickson, whose systematic theology textbook is the most popular one in seminaries today, or at least was such in his heyday, admitted that the traditional rendition of the Trinity is logically "absurd from the human standpoint" (his words).

You made a heretic statement of partialism while clearly being completely ignorant/oblivious of the fact you were. You completely missed the point, as usual, and are backpedaling now. You defended Trinity when i called it incoherent. You didnt know that the trinity is NOT about your god having three parts. You didnt know the theology of your own religion. Now you quickly looked it up and condemn it yourself. 

(Today at 3:29 am)Jal Wrote: The Trinity is incoherent? Identifying three subsections of a material mind is incoherent?  In that case, which one cell of your brain is the real you? I mean, you're saying that multiple parts is incoherent, right? As usual, you're not making any sense.

Bolding mine

 I haven't backpedaled on anything. I simply pointed out that scholars who can't even provide a coherent Trinity cannot be trusted to properly define Trinitarian heresy.

Please lose the facade of, "I caught you making an error where you contradicted your own theology." Please. Spare me the crap. That's total nonsense.


"You didnt know that the trinity is NOT about your god having three parts." (Sigh) But that's exactly what the Trinity entails. Three physical parts. Three persons does not contradict one person.  Right now I have ONE piece of plywood in my truck. But wait, it's actually viewable as many pieces stitched together. I also gave you the example of the human brain. Many parts form one person.  Which cell is the real you? All of them. Multiplicity does not always contradict Unity. 

Do you understand the Christian concept of regeneration? It's yet another example of historic idiocy because the traditional view doesn't define the human unity as a multiplicity. (I can provide more details on this if needed).

Im done with you. You are too dense, and too dishonest.

(5 hours ago)Angrboda Wrote:

(Yesterday at 2:35 pm)Jal Wrote: Reductionistic atheism is too philosophically deficient to be plausible. If merely dead particles exist: 
- How did consciouness arise? Inconceivable. 

For someone who argues that there are degrees of sentience, this is a particularly daft objection.  Consciousness evolved by degrees.  Same as is required by your argument.

(Yesterday at 2:35 pm)Jal Wrote: - What was the first mover that got the ball rolling? Inconceivable. 

There are many objections to the first mover argument, Hawking-Hartle being one, but I prefer a more foundational answer.  Giordano Bruno pondered what lay at the edge of the universe.  If there was an edge to the universe, what was on the other side?  If there was an other side, then we weren't really at the edge.  It seemed to offer an irresolvable paradox.  Yet whether you can wrap your head around curved spacetime or not, it is one logically coherent possibility, as is that space is self-contained and so there is no other side as in Bruno's imagination.  Bruno's thought experiment embedded certain assumptions about mereological containment and linearity that are, in hindsight, not supported.  As Kant's Critique made clear, our minds structure reality with certain preconceived assumptions which it is difficult to circumvent.  Paradoxical questions such as "Why something rather than nothing?" and "What is the origin of motion?" contain similarly embedded assumptions which will yield only nonsensical answers until those foundational intuitions and assumptions are superseded.  What was the beginning member of a linear series of events?  Neither an infinite past nor positing a necessary being resolve the quandary satisfactorily.  So my answer to your incredulity here is that your question is ill-conceived due to historical limits on human imagination.

(Yesterday at 2:35 pm)Jal Wrote: - What is the nature of all the so-called "forces" such as gravity - what causes them?  Inconceivable. 

It's well known that explanations must have some terminus that is simply a brute fact.  The same is true of your explanations as well.  To argue that such a terminus is unreasonable with regard to basic forces such as gravity, but not with respect to your own brute facts is to engage in a double standard.  Remove the beam from your own eye before you complain about the mote.

(Yesterday at 2:35 pm)Jal Wrote: - How did natural selection occur?  Inconceivable (see below).
Reductionism is a determinism - a cause-effect dynamic tantamount to a domino effect which, as such, is inconducive to natural selection. 
Why so? Suppose I feel hunger and thus desire food. If free will moves matter, as I have claimed, I am not locked into a domino effect, I can freely lunge toward food and consume it.

Whereas, in a domino effect, my desire for food is irrelevant/ useless, as all motion is a blind causality wholly deterministic.  In a chain of dominos tipping rightward, for example, they will still fall to the right even if some of them desire the left, because desires would be irrelevant/useless, since a deterministic universe couldn't care less what we desire. 

Thus, in a reductionism, natural selection will fail because, in a blind causality: 
- Hunger won't precipitate food-gathering and satiation.
- Libido won't precipitate mating and reproduction.
- Fear of attack won't precipitate flight.
- Mammals won't seek the needed shelter, hibernation, and migration.
The dominos will simply fall blindly and randomly, resulting in starvation and extinction.

You are arguing that things like hunger, libido, and such are epiphenomenal.  The response is simply to suggest that hunger and libido are parts of the domino chain and that your charge of epiphenomenalism ignores the very real evidence from psychology that things like beliefs and desires strongly correlate with behavior and thus suggest that the beliefs and desires rather than being epiphenomenon are actually a part of the causal chain.    


Do you have any other incredulity you need answered?

"For someone who argues that there are degrees of sentience, this is a particularly daft objection.  Consciousness evolved by degrees.  Same as is required by your argument." That's somewhat like conflating abiogenesis and evolutoin, claiming they are the exact same thing. Emergent consciousness is claim vastly less probable than the claim that consciousness was already present but matured in degrees. 

"You are arguing that things like hunger, libido, and such are epiphenomenal. " That's precisely the opposite of my claim. I regard them as innate, albeit initially in negligible degrees of acuteness. 
  
"To argue that such a terminus is unreasonable with regard to basic forces such as gravity, but not with respect to your own brute facts is to engage in a double standard." I am not convinced it's a double standard. LOGICALLY and EMPIRICALLY, I cannot pull your body from a distance. I must reach out and touch you. Gravity contradicts what we seem to know. yet it is easily explained by a physical God whose hand is doing precisely that - reaching out and touching matter.

(5 hours ago)Jal Wrote:

(5 hours ago)Angrboda Wrote: For someone who argues that there are degrees of sentience, this is a particularly daft objection.  Consciousness evolved by degrees.  Same as is required by your argument.


There are many objections to the first mover argument, Hawking-Hartle being one, but I prefer a more foundational answer.  Giordano Bruno pondered what lay at the edge of the universe.  If there was an edge to the universe, what was on the other side?  If there was an other side, then we weren't really at the edge.  It seemed to offer an irresolvable paradox.  Yet whether you can wrap your head around curved spacetime or not, it is one logically coherent possibility, as is that space is self-contained and so there is no other side as in Bruno's imagination.  Bruno's thought experiment embedded certain assumptions about mereological containment and linearity that are, in hindsight, not supported.  As Kant's Critique made clear, our minds structure reality with certain preconceived assumptions which it is difficult to circumvent.  Paradoxical questions such as "Why something rather than nothing?" and "What is the origin of motion?" contain similarly embedded assumptions which will yield only nonsensical answers until those foundational intuitions and assumptions are superseded.  What was the beginning member of a linear series of events?  Neither an infinite past nor positing a necessary being resolve the quandary satisfactorily.  So my answer to your incredulity here is that your question is ill-conceived due to historical limits on human imagination.



It's well known that explanations must have some terminus that is simply a brute fact.  The same is true of your explanations as well.  To argue that such a terminus is unreasonable with regard to basic forces such as gravity, but not with respect to your own brute facts is to engage in a double standard.  Remove the beam from your own eye before you complain about the mote.



You are arguing that things like hunger, libido, and such are epiphenomenal.  The response is simply to suggest that hunger and libido are parts of the domino chain and that your charge of epiphenomenalism ignores the very real evidence from psychology that things like beliefs and desires strongly correlate with behavior and thus suggest that the beliefs and desires rather than being epiphenomenon are actually a part of the causal chain.    


Do you have any other incredulity you need answered?

"For someone who argues that there are degrees of sentience, this is a particularly daft objection.  Consciousness evolved by degrees.  Same as is required by your argument." That's somewhat like conflating abiogenesis and evolutoin, claiming they are the exact same thing. Emergent consciousness is claim vastly less probable than the claim that consciousness was already present but matured in degrees. 

"You are arguing that things like hunger, libido, and such are epiphenomenal. " That's precisely the opposite of my claim. I regard them as innate, albeit initially in negligible degrees of acuteness. 
  
"To argue that such a terminus is unreasonable with regard to basic forces such as gravity, but not with respect to your own brute facts is to engage in a double standard." I am not convinced it's a double standard. LOGICALLY and EMPIRICALLY, I cannot pull your body from a distance. I must reach out and touch you. Gravity contradicts what we seem to know. yet it is easily explained by a physical God whose hand is doing precisely that - reaching out and touching matter.

Logically and empirically, you ARE pulling my body right now. Moreover, you’re pulling every massed particle in the universe and they’re pulling you. Invoking God to do the pulling is just plain dumb and stupid.

Boru

Over a hundred posts in less than 24 hours...seems a bit manic.

(4 hours ago)awty Wrote: Over a hundred posts in less than 24 hours...seems a bit manic.

It’s almost…Trumpian.

Boru

…..and I still don’t understand why we’re choosing to come up with theodicies for one set of contradictions with observed reality and not the other set. Biology is a heavy lift. We know that natural selection occurs. We know that artificial selection occurs. In fact artificial selection only works -because- the set of interactions we call natural selection make it possible.

The idea that a creator god is yanking levers assumes the levers…..

(5 hours ago)Jal Wrote: "For someone who argues that there are degrees of sentience, this is a particularly daft objection.  Consciousness evolved by degrees.  Same as is required by your argument." That's somewhat like conflating abiogenesis and evolutoin, claiming they are the exact same thing. Emergent consciousness is claim vastly less probable than the claim that consciousness was already present but matured in degrees. 

On what basis do you conclude it is less probable? We know that mind comes in varying expressions among animals. We don't know that there is an expression of it in rocks, for which there is no evidence. That's an asymmetry you need to answer with something other than assuming pansychism.

(5 hours ago)Jal Wrote: "You are arguing that things like hunger, libido, and such are epiphenomenal. " That's precisely the opposite of my claim. I regard them as innate, albeit initially in negligible degrees of acuteness. 

  
Innate isn't opposed to epiphenomenal. Try learning what words actually mean.

(5 hours ago)Jal Wrote: "To argue that such a terminus is unreasonable with regard to basic forces such as gravity, but not with respect to your own brute facts is to engage in a double standard." I am not convinced it's a double standard. LOGICALLY and EMPIRICALLY, I cannot pull your body from a distance. I must reach out and touch you. Gravity contradicts what we seem to know. yet it is easily explained by a physical God whose hand is doing precisely that - reaching out and touching matter.

Gravity doesn't present any obvious contradiction any more than sentient rocks presents a contradiction to what we know. The charge of a double standard remains unanswered.

Oh my fucking god. I was trying to argue with someone who rejects gravity.