On Hell and Forgiveness

[Amarok]

God's sense of justice requires that all sin be punished.

Yeah that's an absurd non answer

[SteveII]

You are confusing terms. There is no debate. These are definitions.

Exist: having objective reality or being

Objective: not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. Does not depend on the context. Anchored in some concept or fact
Subjective: based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. Depends on the context

Concrete Object: having physical referents and/or affecting those that do
Abstract Object: having no physical referents and no causal powers

The groupings I listed are binary classifications. A thing has to be one or the other. So, the number 4 is an objective concept. It is also an abstract object. So is a triangle. Abstract objects exist. Perhaps they are dependent on the mind to exist, but they do exist. Perhaps they do not depend on a mind. Doesn't matter, they still exist. 

No, the number 4 *does*, in fact, depend on context. As does the concept of a triangle. Neither is objective by your definition.

But, I would point out that your abstract objects only exist because there are brains that think them, not because of some independent existence.

In what context does the number 4 represent something else? I think you are just being difficult and AS USUAL never give a reason for ANY of your answers. It is getting old. 

I suspect you are still confusing definitions so I will be clear. Using the terms above, if God exists, he would have "objective reality or being" and he would be a Concrete Object because he can affect physical things. 

And anything that affects something physical is physical, by definition of the concept of 'physical'.

That is another assertion without a reason. Mental events (non physical) cause physical effects all the time. If you claim that mental events are themselves physical--well, that's your opinion--and not one based on science. 

That's because you have not looked back far enough. Contingency is a metaphysical concept that unpins the Philosophy of Science. Science cannot operate without a philosophy of science. Therefore contingency underpins science. This is not hard. You have this thing about Aristotle and see him under every rock. Deal with the argument, not what you think someone thought millennium ago that you read somewhere does not apply. 

I see the contingent/necessary division a false one that has limited utility. The philosophy of science is that ideas are tested by observation and modified or discarded when observations negate them. That means ideas need to be testable to be scientific. Contingency is irrelevant to that (yes, it is possible to test in the absence of it).

What division? I don't remember bringing up 'necessary'. You can talk about a concept without needed to bring up it's opposite. All scientific propositions are contingent propositions (by definition). It would be meaningless to test something without the concept of contingency--it is the very thing you would be testing for. 

Wait. You have extrapolated the indeterminacy of quantum particles to a lack of causation in the macroscopic world. That means we should see at every stage, moving from the very small to the large, a certain level of randomness in each level. Do we see molecules behaving unpredictably? Do we see groups of molecules (say a block of marble) behaving unpredictably? My car seems to always be where I put it. You seem to be saying that it is actually possible (albeit a small chance) that it not be.  

No, I have used the fact that quantum mechanics is non-causal, but rather probabilistic to *explain* how regularity of the type that is interpreted as classical causality arises through averages.

The spread of randomness from quantum effects is inversely related to the mass. That means for things larger than an atom (in most cases--not all), the range of randomness is small. That said, at very low temperatures, we can and do see these quantum effects becoming apparent at the atomic and small-molecular levels. The point? Planck's constant is small.

You are drawing a philosophical conclusion where there is none to be drawn. Quantum indeterminacy is meaningless at the macroscopic level. Philosophy has always been at the macroscopic level. Claims that "classical causality" is wrong is, well, wrong. We have a better description but not one metaphysical principle changes. You have a problem separating science/math from philosophy. Causality is a philosophical concept--not a scientific one. Science relies on it because it presupposes it (through a philosophy of science). 

Things like Common Decent, the evolution of complex organs, the evolution of biological networks/feedback loops, are not testable hypothesis--ever--BUT are required for the full theory. These steps are completely unknown, are not testable and are inferred. Glad to have you admit that the big overall grand theory of evolution is "unreliable". 

Yes, in fact, they *are* testable hypotheses: they allow for predictions that can be tested, including things like how populations can change over time due to genetic changes, etc. And yes, many of these things *are* known.

The things I mentioned are certainly not testable. All that is testable is "decent with modification". The rest of the grand evolution theory is one big inference. There is no debate here. It is simply a fact. 

Every philosophical argument for the existence of God is an inductive argument with only a couple of premises that are way more likely than not to be true. Seems to me, based on the above, that the arguments are on much firmer ground than say...evolutionary theory.

And you would be wrong. Evolutionary theory *is* testable and not simply based on induction, as you claim. And the assumptions made in 'proofs' of existence of deities are uniformly likely to be *wrong*.

Nope. You, like most people bring up this topic are equivocating on the word 'evolution'. When you need it to be "testable", you take the most narrow definition. Only small parts of evolution theory are testable. Very small parts. The problem is that the larger theory itself must infer things like common decent, how it might be possible to get around seemingly irreducibly complex functions, how biological networks came about, the story that fossils tell, why we can't make an evolutionary tree anymore, how convergent genetic traits came about, and perhaps most importantly, how traits with low selection coefficients get set in a population.

[polymath257]

In what context does the number 4 represent something else? I think you are just being difficult and AS USUAL never give a reason for ANY of your answers. It is getting old.

The number 4 represents something different when applied to oranges and to apples. It represents something different in the ring of integers versus in the field of real numbers.

Sorry, i thought you understood some of the basics. I guess not.

That is another assertion without a reason. Mental events (non physical) cause physical effects all the time. If you claim that mental events are themselves physical--well, that's your opinion--and not one based on science.

On the contrary. Everything we know shows that mental events are physical events. Mental phenomena are physical phenomena. But more broadly, there is and can be no clean separation between mental events and physical events because of the complex web of causal links between the two. To call mental events non-physical would be as perverse as calling electromagnetic effects non-physical.

What division? I don't remember bringing up 'necessary'. You can talk about a concept without needed to bring up it's opposite. All scientific propositions are contingent propositions (by definition). It would be meaningless to test something without the concept of contingency--it is the very thing you would be testing for. 

All this shows is that you don't grasp how testing is done in the sciences. Contingency, according to the definition you gave, is irrelevant. All that is required is correlation.

You are drawing a philosophical conclusion where there is none to be drawn. Quantum indeterminacy is meaningless at the macroscopic level. Philosophy has always been at the macroscopic level. Claims that "classical causality" is wrong is, well, wrong. We have a better description but not one metaphysical principle changes. You have a problem separating science/math from philosophy. Causality is a philosophical concept--not a scientific one. Science relies on it because it presupposes it (through a philosophy of science).

And I think you are simply wrong here. Causality is a scientific concept: how do events at one time affect the development of events at later times? That *is* what causality is all about.

And no, quantum indeterminacy is NOT meaningless at the macroscopic level. In fact, it can be measured at the macroscopic level given the right situation.

I'm sorry, but the notions of causality from classical philosophy are not just incoherent. They are actually irrelevant to how the world actually works. The macroscopic level is built up from the quantum level. And if philosophy ignores that, then it makes itself useless (well, more so).

The things I mentioned are certainly not testable. All that is testable is "decent with modification". The rest of the grand evolution theory is one big inference. There is no debate here. It is simply a fact. 

Sorry, but that is simply wrong. The issues surrounding evolution are tested in labs all around the world, including issues of randomness of mutations, the conditions required for selection, etc.

Nope. You, like most people bring up this topic are equivocating on the word 'evolution'. When you need it to be "testable", you take the most narrow definition. Only small parts of evolution theory are testable. Very small parts. The problem is that the larger theory itself must infer things like common decent, how it might be possible to get around seemingly irreducibly complex functions, how biological networks came about, the story that fossils tell, why we can't make an evolutionary tree anymore, how convergent genetic traits came about, and perhaps most importantly, how traits with low selection coefficients get set in a population.

Seemingly irreducibly complex functions, can be tested for reducibility. And, the results of such testing is that there are NO known examples of irreducible complexity. How biological networks come about can, and has been tested by watching volcanic islands denuded of life and how life returns and re-forms an ecosystem. In fact, literally all the things you mention not only *can* be tested, but *are* tested all the time.

[SteveII]

In what context does the number 4 represent something else? I think you are just being difficult and AS USUAL never give a reason for ANY of your answers. It is getting old.

The number 4 represents something different when applied to oranges and to apples. It represents something different in the ring of integers versus in the field of real numbers.

Sorry, i thought you understood some of the basics. I guess not.

The problem continues to be that you can't really talk about anything outside of math or science and concepts such as objective are difficult to grasp. Your examples illustrate this clearly. There is not a person in the world that would agree that the number 4 is subjective. This is why RR asked your age. It's like discussing things with a college student who has had a couple of classes and all the sudden thinks they have a grasp on knowledge and if it wasn't covered in class, it is not worth knowing. 

That is another assertion without a reason. Mental events (non physical) cause physical effects all the time. If you claim that mental events are themselves physical--well, that's your opinion--and not one based on science.

On the contrary. Everything we know shows that mental events are physical events. Mental phenomena are physical phenomena. But more broadly, there is and can be no clean separation between mental events and physical events because of the complex web of causal links between the two. To call mental events non-physical would be as perverse as calling electromagnetic effects non-physical.

Nope. The "I" in "I will do such and such" or "I wish that..." is not understood AT ALL by scientist. Of course there is no clean separation between mental events and physical events because the mental relies on physical. The problem is that consciousness CLEARLY appears to be more than the sum of its parts. Therefore we have something that is not just physical (a cause) having a physical effect. So your claim that anything that affects the physical must be physical is in fact wrong. According the the rules, you have the burden of proof. There is no proof to produce. You lost this point as well. It is definitely coherent that the nonphysical can have an effect on the physical. 

What division? I don't remember bringing up 'necessary'. You can talk about a concept without needed to bring up it's opposite. All scientific propositions are contingent propositions (by definition). It would be meaningless to test something without the concept of contingency--it is the very thing you would be testing for. 

All this shows is that you don't grasp how testing is done in the sciences. Contingency, according to the definition you gave, is irrelevant. All that is required is correlation.

Semantics. Contingency is a metaphysical principle. Scientist don't use the word 'contingency' but they rely on the principle.  Correlation is the description of the relationship of actual data/observations. 

You are drawing a philosophical conclusion where there is none to be drawn. Quantum indeterminacy is meaningless at the macroscopic level. Philosophy has always been at the macroscopic level. Claims that "classical causality" is wrong is, well, wrong. We have a better description but not one metaphysical principle changes. You have a problem separating science/math from philosophy. Causality is a philosophical concept--not a scientific one. Science relies on it because it presupposes it (through a philosophy of science).

And I think you are simply wrong here. Causality is a scientific concept: how do events at one time affect the development of events at later times? That *is* what causality is all about.

Not at all. Causality is a metaphysical concept and CERTAINLY not a scientific one. Science PRESUPPOSES that causality is an objective feature of reality. Read more here.  You really really should have taken that philosophy class in college. 

And no, quantum indeterminacy is NOT meaningless at the macroscopic level. In fact, it can be measured at the macroscopic level given the right situation.

I'm sorry, but the notions of causality from classical philosophy are not just incoherent. They are actually irrelevant to how the world actually works. The macroscopic level is built up from the quantum level. And if philosophy ignores that, then it makes itself useless (well, more so).

What effect can be measured at the macroscopic level?

You are drinking someone's coolaid. Cause/effect are not scientific concepts (as established in the above link). As such, any sub atomic particle theories that have no effect above that level really have no bearing on it. Classical causality lives on!

The things I mentioned are certainly not testable. All that is testable is "decent with modification". The rest of the grand evolution theory is one big inference. There is no debate here. It is simply a fact. 

Sorry, but that is simply wrong. The issues surrounding evolution are tested in labs all around the world, including issues of randomness of mutations, the conditions required for selection, etc.

Nope. You, like most people bring up this topic are equivocating on the word 'evolution'. When you need it to be "testable", you take the most narrow definition. Only small parts of evolution theory are testable. Very small parts. The problem is that the larger theory itself must infer things like common decent, how it might be possible to get around seemingly irreducibly complex functions, how biological networks came about, the story that fossils tell, why we can't make an evolutionary tree anymore, how convergent genetic traits came about, and perhaps most importantly, how traits with low selection coefficients get set in a population.

Seemingly irreducibly complex functions, can be tested for reducibility. And, the results of such testing is that there are NO known examples of irreducible complexity. How biological networks come about can, and has been tested by watching volcanic islands denuded of life and how life returns and re-forms an ecosystem. In fact, literally all the things you mention not only *can* be tested, but *are* tested all the time.

You really don't know what any of those things I mentioned are, do you? No one has a clue how an eye was formed--only theories inferred from, well, the eye. No organism has a half an eye. The steps from a light spot to my eye is entirely inferred. You don't even know what a biological network is (I even gave a link in my response). You have made zero progress showing the grand theory of evolution isn't one gigantic inference--a cornerstone of science. So, my original point was that inferential arguments are used all the time--even in science is definitely true.

[Angrboda]

There is not a person in the world that would agree that the number 4 is subjective.

*bzzzt* Wrong answer. If you were aiming for hyperbole, well, mission accomplished!

[robvalue]

The number 4 is an abstract concept. It does not represent any distinct subsection of reality. It is only represented by symbols and language. And yes, it’s subjective. Its use depends on the particular mathematical system being employed.

I’d say that someone who thinks “4” exists in the same way that objects exist is either delusional or is misusing language (perhaps unintentionally).

It shows a general problem I’ve seen in many religious people: blurring the lines betweeen the existent and the abstract. Luckily, science keeps on working, numbers keep on being abstract tools and god carries on being indistinguishable from nothing, regardless of what anyone believes.

[Neo-Scholastic]

There is not a person in the world that would agree that the number 4 is subjective.

*bzzzt* Wrong answer.  If you were aiming for hyperbole, well, mission accomplished!  

Indeed. He should have qualified his statement by saying that no rational person believes that the number 4 is subjective. When SteveII asked Polymath for his age, he might has well have added "checkmate."

The number 4 is an abstract concept.

Of course it is abstract. The process of abstraction entails abstracting from a thing or group attributes that are actually manifest in those objects. Every true description is a description of something that is actually the case, i.e. a fact. The recognition of those attributes is used to form a mental concept. Mental concepts are also 'real', just in a different category of being. I love how you can talk about things as if they were real and then turn around and say they are nothing at all.

[Angrboda]

*bzzzt* Wrong answer.  If you were aiming for hyperbole, well, mission accomplished!  

Indeed. He should have qualified his statement by saying that no rational person believes that the number 4 is subjective. When SteveII asked Polymath for his age, he might has well have added "checkmate."

Fine. Show me an example of the number four existing in the universe. As I've already stated, I'm a mereological nihilist. I don't think you're going to get very far along this track. But show me what you've got. I need a good laugh.

[RoadRunner79]

Indeed. He should have qualified his statement by saying that no rational person believes that the number 4 is subjective. When SteveII asked Polymath for his age, he might has well have added "checkmate."

Fine. Show me an example of the number four existing in the universe. As I've already stated, I'm a mereological nihilist. I don't think you're going to get very far along this track. But show me what you've got. I need a good laugh.

If I owed you a dollar, and gave you three quarters, I’m guessing that the objective nature of the number 4 would be cleared up pretty quickly. Maybe you wouldn’t be too concerned about a quarter but, but we can always increase the value.

[Angrboda]

Fine.  Show me an example of the number four existing in the universe.  As I've already stated, I'm a mereological nihilist.  I don't think you're going to get very far along this track.  But show me what you've got.  I need a good laugh.

If I owed you a dollar, and gave you three quarters, I’m guessing that the objective nature of the number 4 would be cleared up pretty quickly.   Maybe you wouldn’t be too concerned about a quarter but, but we can always increase the value.

No, it wouldn't. But by all means, further underscore my opinion of you as an idiot.