Neither, Zadger o' mate. The message is about rationalisation of human thought and the influence of imagination on reality. The undertone of what god means to us is only what irrational ideas that have given rise to a gods invention.

(January 9, 2010 at 7:59 am)TruthWorthy Wrote: Neither, Zadger o' mate. The message is about rationalisation of human thought and the influence of imagination on reality. The undertone of what god means to us is only what irrational ideas that have given rise to a gods invention.

At the time religion was created it wasn't irrational.

It was the best explanation for the nature of the world based

on the available evidence.

However, since much better evidence has became available

due to improving technology and science, the continued use

of God to explain the universe(at least the Abrahamic God)

can only be viewed as irrational.

Time has no effect on rationality

And

Are you a beat generation poet?

Lay it on me

Daddio-O!

Rhizo

(January 9, 2010 at 9:28 am)Zen Badger Wrote:

(January 9, 2010 at 7:59 am)TruthWorthy Wrote: Neither, Zadger o' mate. The message is about rationalisation of human thought and the influence of imagination on reality. The undertone of what god means to us is only what irrational ideas that have given rise to a gods invention.

At the time religion was created it wasn't irrational.

It was the best explanation for the nature of the world based

on the available evidence.

However, since much better evidence has became available

due to improving technology and science, the continued use

of God to explain the universe(at least the Abrahamic God)

can only be viewed as irrational.

And their view was humanistic and small and has developed over time. The things that science can't fully explain and are intangible (such as QM) I haven't tested as much as I've tested God. It still is the simplest and most logical answer to the Gaps not filled by science as supposed by the "God of the Gaps" fallacy.

Just thought I would post this link for your perusal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observation

Some quotes of note:

Quote:Human sense impressions are subjective and qualitative making them difficult to record or compare. The idea of measurement evolved to allow recording and comparison of observations made at different times and places by different people.

Quote:Human observations are biased toward confirming the observer's conscious and unconscious expectations and view of the world; we "see what we expect to see".

Rhizo

And I can assume you're reffering that to a Christian's predisposition to believe in God and that being the suposition to his beliefs? I was speaking of observation in philososphy and that rational or irrational in the above case was far less irrational and more rational to me personally. Thanks for the article , one interesting thing in there "In quantum mechanics, which deals with the behavior of very small objects, it is not possible to observe a system without changing the system, and the 'observer' must be considered part of the system being observed."

If God has the same ratio to the universe as the universe has to us, then maybe there is soemthing to us seeing God within our universe and we're all little quantum expirements to God

(January 8, 2010 at 6:20 pm)LukeMC Wrote: Purple Rabbit, I don't understand XOmniverse's comment on a god's omnipotence where he says "is it determined by cause and effect?" etc. It sounds like an updated version of creating a rock you cannot lift, defying logic, etc, but I feel pretty confident that I've misunderstood him. Any chance you could clear that up?

XOmniverse is talking about omnipotence, one of the alleged attributes of a rather popular god concept, when he is rhetorically asking "what determines what he does? Cause and effect?". I understand him as saying somehing like this:

- If god is omnipotent, he by that definition is not bound by anything, not even causality, not even logic
- IOW, in that case his potence cannot be understood by logic alone but has also illogical properties
- IOW, this makes no sense, this 'omnipotence' ends in illegible nonsense

Indeed that is a more general form of the argument of god lifting a rock that cannot be lifted. But a crucial difference is that it is not the atheist presenting an illogical argument to the theist like "can your god lift rocks that are too heavy to lift" which places the atheist in the dubious role of using illogic to prove illogic, but instead brings the burden of proof back to where it belongs, on the plate of the theist. For to understand what omnipotence means, it is legit to ask the theist if omnipotence means that logic and causality are circumvented.

Note that a denial of that last question reduces theism to deism: omnipotence does not mean that god can circumvent the laws of nature, defy causality and logic.

It's interesting that some people refuse to accept existing knowledge as up to date fact and only live a subjective experience of reality, which oddly accepts god.

(January 9, 2010 at 4:18 pm)tackattack Wrote: And I can assume you're reffering that to a Christian's predisposition to believe in God and that being the suposition to his beliefs? I was speaking of observation in philososphy and that rational or irrational in the above case was far less irrational and more rational to me personally. Thanks for the article , one interesting thing in there "In quantum mechanics, which deals with the behavior of very small objects, it is not possible to observe a system without changing the system, and the 'observer' must be considered part of the system being observed."

If God has the same ratio to the universe as the universe has to us, then maybe there is soemthing to us seeing God within our universe and we're all little quantum expirements to God

Invalid comparison.

The effect is only applicable to sub atomic systems.

Macroscopic systems aren't affected by observation.(unless,of course,they know they are being watched)

(January 9, 2010 at 4:18 pm)tackattack Wrote: I was speaking of observation in philososphy and that rational or irrational in the above case was far less irrational and more rational to me personally.

When one speaks of observation in philosophy generally a reflection (so a conceptual activity) regarding some aspect of reality is meant, not an eperimental observation. Though it must be said that a new discipline of experimental philosophy is emerging in recent years

(January 9, 2010 at 4:18 pm)tackattack Wrote: Thanks for the article , one interesting thing in there "In quantum mechanics, which deals with the behavior of very small objects, it is not possible to observe a system without changing the system, and the 'observer' must be considered part of the system being observed."

This sentence about an observer being part of the system being observed, has on its own caused the emergence of a vast army of quantum flapdoodle and new age freaks (one of them Deepak Chopra) with idiotic unscientific claims that try to sell their mystical mental soda pop to the masses.

Firstly, in physics the 'observer' is a general term for anything that is able to register a specific outcome of an experiment. It can be man or measurement device. So 'observer' does not imply intelligence or agency.

Secondly, this sentence stems from one specific interpretation of QM, the Copenhagen Interpretation. There are other interpretations of quantum mechanics (such as the transactional interpretation) that don't require such a statement. In most popular explanations of quantum mechanics the Copenhagen Interpretation has been prevalent for decades. Fuel for new age quantum morons has been the problem of how to interpret wave function collapse, the condensation of physical possibilities into a single occurrence. The best explanation nowadays thereof is the mechanism of quantum decoherence which esentially describes the interaction of a small system with typical quantum mechanical behaviour with large systems with typical classical behaviour resulting in classical physics.

Be assured that the wave function collapses all the time all over the place without us looking. But some people still try to make us believe that in some deep mysterious way science has found that trees don't grow in the woods when nobody is looking.