Enlightened rants...

[pocaracas]

The known things I mentioned are not restricted to the seen things.
And I'm not advocating a purely solipsistic view of the world... just one that makes practical sense.

What are the known things you're referring to "in this comment"?
I revised the previous post and found nothing.
"solipsist" is another word I can't seem to understand or find a translation for.

Known things are things that we know to be so: Everything that goes up, must come down, unless it goes up fast enough that it escapes the planet's gravity; you die of lack of oxygen; light moves in straight lines; etc; etc; etc; etc; etc

Solipsism is a philosophical position in which I can only be sure that my mind exists... everything else is only apparently existing... and I can't be sure of it, including you. I'm not sure you exist.... you might be some fabrication of my own mind.
I'm sure you understand why this position leads to zero discussion, as nothing can be known, under it.

Yeah... but... the argument from design proposes a designer, a conscious entity responsible for designing what we call Nature.
The cause and effect from Science only considers causes and effects we can measure. If we can't measure, science can make educated guesses, but they only become accepted when they actually get measured. No need to hold beliefs in the guesses, but it makes the proponents feel good.
Until recently, scientists were hunting for the Higgs Boson. The theory required its existence. The measurements were not providing it. A few years ago, after a costly upgrade to the LHC, it was found. The theory turned out to be correct.
Had the boson not been found, much of the known particle physics had to be reviewed. As it turned out, the edifice stands. No need to believe that the particle exists, it has been shown to exist and the description of how to achieve the same result can be found in the literature.

The designer has been believed in for ages... still hasn't been found and shown to exist. When should we just give up and say it's not there?

We stop expecting his existence when the design ceases to exist.
That's exactly what I described the argument from design to be: hence what I said:

I believe what Mohammed said about that cause being "God".

Nature, Gaia, "The Great Engineer", God, Krishna...etc are all names for the same conclusion across civilizations.
Logic says that science is only valid in our bubble of existence. Outside of this bubble, science has no meaning.

Why would science have no meaning "outside our bubble of existence"?
Science concerns itself with reality. Just because our current measuring devices can only probe so far, does that mean that future devices can't probe further?
If a god is real, then it should be measurable, somehow.

All those names are not the same.
Nature is understood to be the unguided way things just are.
Gaia, if my Captain Planet watching days are representative of the real myth, is just the spirit of the Earth... it's just an anthropomorphism of the planet Earth itself.... anthropomorphizing, something humans are very fond of doing!

The great engineer, God or Krishna may be similar representations of the same concept. Still, the question remains, how did that concept appear in human minds? If it comes as a potential explanation of a perplexing question, then it is no better than wishful thinking.

If some people say one thing and others say a different thing, then none of you know what you're talking about. Case pretty much not closed.

Then what is the use of logic, investigations, and all the hassle the UN and Law-Enforcement agencies give us?
Criminals always say they are innocent, unlike the prosecution attorney.

Criminals would be lying, then, no? And they'd be very aware of it, too.
Not exactly the same sort of claims we're considering here, are they?

I'm not here to discuss things written in books. I'm here to discuss ideas. You are alluding to the God idea, as the designer of this Universe.
At its most fundamental core, that is what a monotheist god is, right?
An entity from beyond our Universe, from beyond our space-time, which designed and built our Universe.
From the scientific point of view, that is a hypothesis that, if we can somehow measure things beyond our Universe, should be available for scrutiny. What does "beyond our Universe" mean, however... is a question for others...
From present day (and past) perspective, however, the question must be: how would anyone that lived far before the telescope was invented have come to possess any information about what lies beyond the Universe?
You may answer this question with some "spiritual connection" to that entity.... but that then raises the other question of "how".
I may tentatively answer that question with a pre-existing belief within a population that has a propensity to accept the divine as an explanation..... which makes us ask, from where did such propensity come? And one can also tentatively respond with the inability to understand many of the natural events all around the early nomadic humans, but equipped with an inquiring mind, they came up with an out-of-view explanation... which grew... grew into being so important that communities would stay together around that concept, as it gave them hope for their future.... and whoever doubted the concept, was shunned from those communities, drastically diminishing their chances of survival and breeding, weeding out the doubting genes and enhancing the believing genes. Brain complexity and plasticity meant that such weeding out was slow.... too slow... eventually science came into the picture and the few who doubted felt vindicated in some of the new discoveries... and now.... now, doubting is not such a bad thing anymore, for most communities in Europe, at least.

Books are the main medium for ideas to be kept and also presented; it's the way humans copy their personal state of mind through the generations.
The belief springs from observing what is around the person since birth. That's what leads to the belief that there is a designer.

The observations may lead one to consider the existence of a designer, but they are far from providing any certainty on the subject.
Such lack of the most basic certainty should be telling.

As for why he stays hidden in person; is given explanations across the different religions worldwide; and it's up to your choice to believe what you want, or disbelief altogether too.

See?... religions, religions, religions.... the religions are man-made hierarchical institutions designed to preserve a particular belief. As questions arise concerning the thing being believed, religions employ their best thinkers and come up with plausible explanations, always within the framework of the belief.
So, as far as I'm concerned, any explanation provided by a religion is useless.
If a god exists and it wants me (and every single human being) to acknowledge its existence, then that god should do its part and not remain hidden for the whole history of mankind. That it does remain hidden and doesn't engage with us so we accept it as part of reality, tells me that either it doesn't care that that we acknowledge its existence, or it doesn't exist. Either way, all religions are wrong - if the god does exist, they are going against its will of not desiring humans to know about it; if it doesn't exist, well... religions are wrong, too!

I believe that it's very egotistical to think humanity can calculate and measure anything. The further time goes, the more we discover, and learn that so many things are bigger than us. Your brain is so limited in terms of storage. I don't think humans can even measure what God is.

Yes, human brains are limited.... so we extend them with machine brains. Computers are becoming more and more adept at analyzing big data and making sense of everything... consider how far we've come since the 19th century... think of how far we'll be 3 centuries from now...

Doubting Christianity is one thing; but stats prove that it is Muslims who are growing so much in Europe; not atheists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion

What is the fastest growing religion in Europe?

By 2030, Muslims are expected to make up 8% of Europe's population including an estimated 19 million in the EU (3.8%), including 13 million foreign-born Muslim immigrants. Islam is widely considered as the fastest growing religion in Europe due primarily to immigration and above average birth rates.

And in the whole world; actually. It seems like people need something that they didn't find in atheism and Christianity.

In Europe it's growing thanks to immigration... and large family sizes because the majority of those that are born in Europe are children of immigrants. Let the second or third generations settle in and those numbers will stabilize and eventually decline, as the people become a part of the European mentality.
8% of Europe being Muslim doesn't concern me, considering that most are Christian and in a state of not caring much about the religion.... and those falling out of Christianity are joining the ranks of the "none"s - not religiously affiliated, even if some still call themselves spiritual. I saw an estimate, some time ago, that put those nones at 80% of the UK population (even though the official numbers are more like 60% Christian and 25% none). The UK has a population of 65million, 80% of those are some 50 million people (25% are 16 million)... the UK alone can have more non-religious people than all the European Muslims combined. How religious do you think the Germans are? and the Dutch? and the French? and the Swedes? And Italians? and Spaniards? And Czechs?
The Muslims flooding in will integrate into their communities.... if not on the first generation, then maybe at the second generation... or maybe only by the third... but they will very very very likely have integrated fully by the 4th generation. Give them 100 years of living in a culture where their treasured honor and religion are mostly ignored and they too will come to ignore those backward things.