RE: Debunking Christianity? It's actually quite as simple as asking "why?"
April 5, 2012 at 8:47 am
(April 4, 2012 at 2:58 pm)Boris Spacek Wrote: My point was that anything, if properly conceived, (that is, building upon the laws of nature), can be brought into existence. We're literally doing it all the time, but proper conception is the key. If you deny this, you're saying that science cannot work: you're saying that from many smaller conjectures, you cannot build new ideas or invent new machines.
I'm not saying that everything conceived is able to be generated from matter--thought some Idealists do believe this. I'm saying that an idea that's well constructed enough exists long before someone "tests" it using nature. Scientific progression leans heavily upon this definition of existence. For something to 'exist', as everybody accepts the notion of the word, it only needs to be built. Supposing that the way it were built could be known by man, then he could essentially claim to know and understand it, even prior to witnessing it in real life, etc. All a concept is is a very heavily compacted representation of the thing itself, supposedly containing all the information required to build it. In the mind, it can even behave the same way its real facsimile would.
On these terms, conception certainly can allow any number of impossible entities to feign existence, but perfect conception or complete conception cannot involve impossible entities because you've already recognized what makes them impossible by the time you've perfectly conceived of them
In response to your second point, indeed that may be true. In some cases I've agreed that it is true; however, cannot one combine concepts formed from observation to create a concept that has no corresponding physical entity? A griffin, for example. Now, we don't say that griffins don't exist because we've never seen them--we're not that naive--instead we say they don't because there is no evolutionary pathway that could have led to such a bizarre crossover. It is because we cannot perfectly conceive of it that we believe it doesn't exist. True, many extant organisms are independent of our perfect conceptualization of them: we'll meet many cattle before we fully appreciate their complex digestive system. But my argument is that well formed concepts have a kind of existence that is appreciable compared to how 'real' physical entities seem to us.
To clarify, I'm neither a realist nor an idealist. I'm just siding with the idealists on a few points.
It seems more like you are agreeing to my points.
1. You speak of being properly conceived, instead of just conceived - which means the characteristics of the object must be derived from and be consistent with material reality. You spoke only of the capacity to perfectly imagine how it would work for it to possibly exist, but that is not enough. Every part of that imagination must be consistent with the working of natural laws. All the information you have about it would not matter if some of it is false.
2. Yes, combination of concepts is possible, but for the resultant entity to have a possible physical existence, the combined features must be consistent with natural laws.
