Evidence for a god. Do you have any ?

[Amarok]

Job creation. Scientists already spent 100 billion dollars on useless ISS

Look everyone! Dmitry answered a question! And added an additional claim, that the International Space Station is useless. It never accomplished anything and we never learned anything from it. Sounds about on a par with the rest of your claims, Dmitry.

Yeah because no jobs are needed to create or assemble the modules used to build the space station and it's not being used to advance science in any way 

[Mister Agenda]

Every scientist has observed qualia by experiencing them directly.

That's subjective experience not scientfic experiment.

You can go so far with discounting subjective experience that it becomes a rabbit hole only you can dig yourself out of. I can't help you if you're that far down the hole. The Galileo experiment? Experienced subjectively because everything is experienced subjectively. If you can't trust a scientist to report an internal state of mind, which is what consciousness is you can't trust that their subjectively experienced experiments have any meaning either. Or that there even is an external state to observe. All we have for sure is the reality we each perceive, if you can't make the leap that the points on which we can find agreement constitute objective verification, then you might as well believe that you are the only thing that is real and everything you experience is imaginary.

Are you going to answer the question of your personal position on p-zombies? Do you think they actually exist? Do you believe everyone but you is one?

Scientifcially we are all p-zombies

Scientifically, if there's not even a hypothetical way to experimentally verify it and it has no observational or mathematical basis, it has nothing to do with science. And I asked you what YOUR position is. A straight answer, please.

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So if he was attesting to the events he writes about and it was 50 years earlier, that would be 50 reasons. Are you willing to apply that reasoning elsewhere?

The answer I gave was 'reasons' why Plutach's writing was different than the NT docs. I rounded.

In other words, each year does not count as a 'reason' and you would never accept that line of thought as a valid reason to discredit a writing you accept. You were going for a funny.

[SteveII]

Even in your theory of time, time is just coordinates that reflect an exact arrangement of matter in the universe. Your would never assign two time coordinates to the same exact arrangement of matter in the universe. So, who is driving the bus? A relative coordinate or physical change? 

I know you think metaphysics is "bunk", but time is not only a scientific concept.

Let's imagine an immaterial being existing in a state of complete changelessness with absolutely nothing else in existence (a possible world if you will).  Tell me, is there a passage of time?

Let's imagine the same being then has a thought about something. And subsequently has another thought. How much time has passed between the only two changes?

Well, spacetime is the basis of the geometry. You are correct that the specific coordinates used are rather arbitrary, but the future light cone is part of the actual geometry and it is only within that light cone that causality manifests.

Time is not only a scientific concept? Really? Well, neither is chemistry, I guess. But it is, at base, a scientific concept.

In your description, you already have an internal contradiction: you have a 'being' that is changeless. Now, I might accept an *object* that is changeless, so let's go from there. if you have an object that is the only thing in the universe, with no background space or time (so it can be changeless), then there is no time. But there is also no causality *because* the universe in this model is changeless.

The being could not have a thought, because such would be a process, in other words a change. having two thoughts would also be a change, thereby destroying your whole setup as illogical.

Given that you didn't describe the spacetime geometry of said object, all we have in your scenario is two *different* objects: one with one thought and another with a different thought. Even to say they are the same object in this scenario requires the introduction of physical laws and time.

You just admitted that something needs to change for there to be time. Time does not exist without a change. I said earlier: Causality does not require time--time requires causality (events). The problem is that you want to make it a scientific concept and therefore want to drag all that baggage along about light-cone and block universe theories. Metaphysically speaking, all that is required for some type of time (which is only ever a metric) is change because otherwise there is nothing to meter off of.

[Mister Agenda]

hypothetical qualia

You're not suddenly demanding that qualia be held to a different standard than absolute scientific proof are you? By your standards, the scientific default should be that there are only p-qualia.

[Dmitry1983]

You're not suddenly demanding that qualia be held to a different standard than absolute scientific proof are you? By your standards, the scientific default should be that there are only p-qualia.

Do you experience qualia?

[SteveII]

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The answer I gave was 'reasons' why Plutach's writing was different than the NT docs. I rounded.

In other words, each year does not count as a 'reason' and you would never accept that line of thought as a valid reason to discredit a writing you accept. You were going for a funny.
[/quote]

Yes! It is part of the joy of talking to Grand. He get's kudos just for telling me I'm wrong and I get to amuse myself with comments I am sure are going over his head. A win-win.

[polymath257]

Well, spacetime is the basis of the geometry. You are correct that the specific coordinates used are rather arbitrary, but the future light cone is part of the actual geometry and it is only within that light cone that causality manifests.

Time is not only a scientific concept? Really? Well, neither is chemistry, I guess. But it is, at base, a scientific concept.

In your description, you already have an internal contradiction: you have a 'being' that is changeless. Now, I might accept an *object* that is changeless, so let's go from there. if you have an object that is the only thing in the universe, with no background space or time (so it can be changeless), then there is no time. But there is also no causality *because* the universe in this model is changeless.

The being could not have a thought, because such would be a process, in other words a change. having two thoughts would also be a change, thereby destroying your whole setup as illogical.

Given that you didn't describe the spacetime geometry of said object, all we have in your scenario is two *different* objects: one with one thought and another with a different thought. Even to say they are the same object in this scenario requires the introduction of physical laws and time.

You just admitted that something needs to change for there to be time. Time does not exist without a change. I said earlier: Causality does not require time--time requires causality (events). The problem is that you want to make it a scientific concept and therefore want to drag all that baggage along about light-cone and block universe theories. Metaphysically speaking, all that is required for some type of time (which is only ever a metric) is change because otherwise there is nothing to meter off of.

If there is a before and after, there is already time. Time is a measure of a certain type of change.

But space is a different sort of change.

By the way, change and causality are not identical things.

[Mister Agenda]

You're not suddenly demanding that qualia be held to a different standard than absolute scientific proof are you? By your standards, the scientific default should be that there are only p-qualia.

Do you experience qualia?

Yes, but I have the advantage of believing that my subjective experience of it counts as evidence for its existence. You've been singing a quite different tune.

[downbeatplumb]

Are you sure you have the right issue that it was? Because in the movie as well as in real life all the doctors they went to said there wasn't a cure for what the little girl had. Many some treatments can help but they said no cure and she was cured fully from hitting her head.

[SteveII]

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No. I was granting the concept to you for the sake of your example about miracles so that I could investigate the method by which you distinguish a natural cause from a supposedly supernatural cause, what ever that actually is.  In response, you gave me a fallacy, plus some bizarre reasoning about how particles behaving strangely under a microscope wouldn’t be a miracle, but strangely-behaving particles not looked at through a microscope would be. (?)

I stand by my statements earlier; that the concept of a supernatural event or object has no coherent, meaningful applicability to reality, as the word is defined by what it is not, rather than what it is.  And, that there is no reason to think that anything interacting with, and leaving behind evidence in this world, is not a part of it.  If it’s a part within the whole of this world, and it is evident, then it would fall under the purview of scientific inquiry.  

I’m still waiting for you to explain how you determine that a cause for an event can’t be explainable by science, and I’m still waiting for you to tell me what a supernatural thing is, using positive descriptors. As I said before; you are trying to create a new and entirely separate category of things using the knowledge gaps of a category of things that already exists.  Can you please describe in detail the mechanism behind a ‘something other than natural, but we don’t know what it actually is’ cause, generating detectable, physical effects within the natural world, yet itself remaining completely undetectable?

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First, I want to point out the bold to Mister Agenda. It would seem I understood your position perfectly.

Second, you throw around the word fallacy a lot. What did I say that you think is a logical fallacy.

I don’t, actually.  And I try not to unless I’m fairly confident that I’m correct in my charge.  Even then, we all make errors from time to time. That’s how you hone a skill. I’ve already explained to you exactly which fallacy I believe you committed, but I’ll get it:

If a whole church is praying for a little boy (like my brother-in-law) who had a brain tumor and on the morning of his surgery he had a CT scan for the surgeon to map his cuts, there was no tumor. Never came back. That might be a miracle.

So, again; rare medical phenomena happen.  How do you rationally determine that the cause can’t, and never can be explainable via science, versus a natural cause that science can and may be able to explain at some point in the future?  Because, people prayed first? I know you know what a ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ fallacy is.

I said "might be a miracle". I can't have used the fallacy unless I was making an argument. I was explaining the the probability that if anything is a miracle--context can be a clue--not proof. 

Many words are defined by what it is not. 'Darkness', 'evil', 'cold' off the top of my head.

You’re right.  We also have the words, “light”, “good”, and “warm”.  I can tell you what these things are by describing their characteristics.  If someone asks me what light is, I don’t need to default to, “well, it’s not dark.”  What positive descriptors do we have for the supernatural?  That’s what I’m asking you for.

You may have missed the point of the three examples. Each of them is defined by what they are not--entirely. You can't flip it around. If you ask what is 'light', darkness is not part of the definition. What positive descriptors do you have for darkness, evil or cold?

That is not to say we can't know more about what is supernatural. If you believe in the supernatural, you probably believe in entities like God, angels, human souls, demons and places like heaven and hell. Descriptions of what is supernatural help firm up the concept. Here's a good example: if we have a soul, then by definition it is more than the sum of our electro-chemical processes and is considered supernatural right? Further, we believe we have free will and can act with intentionality. We (our soul) effect the physical world by deciding to direct our bodies to do something. There--supernatural causation. Even if you don't believe it, it is coherent.