Deism for non-believers

[FallentoReason]

This is the trouble with defining intervention so that it excludes an act like creation. You've simply set a floor for acceptable mucking about. The mucking about of creation is acceptable and indeed required. But for whatever reason, other mucking about is not. Have you considered whether or not the reasons you gave yourself for throwing out intervention also apply equally to creation?

I'll simplify down my problem to two questions. How is creation intervention? Doesn't intervention imply something existed so that one could intervene?

Meh, I don't know anything at all about what you want. I'm wondering what in the statement you quoted led you to conclude this? I'd try to rephrase, but I can't honestly think of a simpler or more direct way to make those statements.

Sorry, maybe I was wrong. I just think we've lost a bit of traction between our arguments somewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in a nutshell you see the scale as useless because for a god to be a part of the set it requires the 'creator' label. We have established that mucking about in modern times or even before humans were around excludes a god from being plausible, therefore IF the very act of creation can be shown to be a sort of mucking about then the scale is the null set, hence why it would be useless. Correct?

Epic facepalm on the math. You could, if you wished, instead of checking the infinite ends of any given line, measure the distance between the two lines at defined points and see if the measurement was increasing, decreasing, or equivalent. Now, at some point beyond the horizon those two lines may change their respective angles and intersect, but for the purposes of the set of two lines of a known length this isn't an issue, now is it? It also isn't an issue for the set of two lines of indeterminate length whose angle never changes, now is it?

You can't ever draw me two parallel lines, but only a representation of what they would look like. If you're suggesting that you can absolutely measure their distances and guarantee they are parallel then I have to disagree. That brings with it its own problems similar to drawing the concept of a circle. It's quite literally impossible.

4 -is- the name of a concept which we use to describe a set of (insert whatever here). Are you proposing here that there is a "thing" 4 that is not the descriptor 4? Theres a name for that. If not, you've just explained exactly what 4 is precisely before saying that I couldn't show you what 4 is. Why would I have to, you seem to have it handled all by your onesies.

I can't make much sense of this. It simply does my head in.

All I'm saying is that you can't show me the concept of 4. You can show me how 4 can be used to describe something, like rocks in an arbitrary position that then are identified as 'four rocks', but that isn't showing me what 4 is.