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Author | Topic: Easy proof for Inteligent Design | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MrQ Member (Idle past 5052 days) Posts: 116 Joined: |
Hi All
I have seen many religious guys in these forums use all kinds of just or unjust reasons to prove that evolution is not true. I don't really understand their logic. It seems that this is the new form of idol worshiping where the religion itself becomes the idol instead of true God. This is despite the fact that we expect religious people to behave more reasonably and more justly than other non-religious person. At least this is what they claim and the current situation in the forums prove that they are far from it. If you are religious you are bound to be just and investigate the situation carefully without any prejudice and bias. On the other hand, non-religious people also seem to be lost. They are claiming that they don't believe in any religion but in fact they are more dogmatic than religious guys as they adapt a total positivist approach with skepticism to everything from ground up. They truly represent a new kind of religious extremism that is called atheism! I think on the overall if everybody try to be in the middle ground both religious and non-religious people can learn from each other. Dogmatism is not good under any flag. Following is a logical proof that I think will prove a conscious originator. Remember this is not a proof for God of religious people! 1- In philosophy we have a concept which is called 'necessary truth'. 'Necessary truths' are true in all possible worlds in all times. One basic example is 1+1=2 or ~(~A)= A (two negatives will give you positive effect) 2- Assumption is that physical world can't create the concept of 'necessary truth' but these are only abstract ideas that exists only in a conscious mind. For example assume that there is absolutely nothing in the universe except one cube and one ball. They by themselves have no meaning. But if I ask you 'how many things do exist?' you would say 2. In this case you factored out dissimilarities of the two things and then count each and summed them and gave the answer. If I ask you 'how many cubes do exists?' you would answer one. In this case you recognize dissimilarities and selected the right object for your calculations. If there is no mind, there is no calculation and no abstract concept. Just simple existence of two things. 3- Abstract concepts doesn't need physical reality to exist. In other word, in the previous example assume that in reality we don't even have the cube or the ball available. I can ask you to imagine one cube and one ball and do your summation based on them. So physical reality is not needed to work out any abstract concept including 'necessary truths' 4- Law of physics are based on mathematics and mathematics is based on logic and 'necessary truths'. In other words, laws of physics can't exists unless 'logic' exist before it. If you consider all above statements we have following: Laws of physics depend on mathematics which depends on logic which in turn depends on necessary truths and abstract concepts which depends on a conscious mind. Therefore, for laws of physics to exist, we need to have a continuous mind in existence before it. Now all atheist agree that there should be at least a single originator or uncaused cause. This uncaused cause happen to be there and there is no reason for its existence. Only they assume that uncaused cause is a simple form of matter or energy with no conscious and no plans or goals. Their reasoning is that having a God would be far more complex than any existence and it should have a cause. The fact is that there is no proof for 'conscious mind' to be complex. In fact we don't know still what consciousness is. But based on the above proof. Mind should be simple so it can exist before anything else. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Add some more blank lines.
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AdminSlev Member (Idle past 4641 days) Posts: 113 Joined: |
Ok I'll promote this topic, but the main subject is the proof for intelligent design which is summed in this phrase:
quote: I precise this because it is a rather long text, and there could be many sub-subjects in it (particularly the intro) but I feel MrQ really wants to discuss his proof rather then side-subjects.
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AdminSlev Member (Idle past 4641 days) Posts: 113 Joined: |
Thread copied here from the Easy proof for Inteligent Design thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.
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Iblis Member (Idle past 3896 days) Posts: 663 Joined: |
4- Law of physics are based on mathematics and mathematics is based on logic and 'necessary truths'. In other words, laws of physics can't exists unless 'logic' exist before it. Nope, sounds like simple cognitive error. Laws of physics aren't derived from mathematics, they are observed in nature. The mathematics are merely a convention we use to communicate about them. It's rather like saying there are no oranges without migrant workers, so therefore there must have been an Original Migrant Worker involved in tree creation. Putting the cart before the horse.
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Phage0070 Inactive Member
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Fundamentally what you are talking about is the ancient question: If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
I view reality as completely separate from the mind; that is to say, a tree can fall without being observed and still make a sound. In addition, two observers could agree that a tree fell and made a sound, *and be wrong*. In a way you could define reality as that which would occur regardless of observation or understanding. This is due to the observation that minds can be mistaken about reality, and that unexpected and unknown events can occur that later interact with those minds. I realize of course this can be explained away if we presuppose some omni-mind, but that wouldn’t be justified at this point. You talk about necessary truths that must be true in all possible worlds at all times. I don’t agree that this is an accurate assumption for a variety of reasons. I could point out concepts like a Bose-Einstein Condensate or quantum entanglement that blur the lines between when objects are distinct or not, but that would just muddle the issue. In the end, when a philosopher says that a truth is necessary they are saying I don’t understand how it could be otherwise. It is an argument from ignorance, and is invalid. For example, picture a reality where 1+1=3, where A = ~A; can you do it? Does it make sense? Well too bad, it is real! Perhaps if you were smarter (or less sane) you would be able to picture such a reality, but your ability to understand such a thing has no bearing on it being real. Now about your second point; Yes, the abstract process of counting and the assignment of numbers is based on the mind. However you provide no compelling argument that such assignments are necessary for the functioning of such a reality. In fact the abstract concept you envision has no manifestation in the reality whatsoever; that cube and ball are actually made up of the field interactions of subatomic particles and on the atomic level are lumpy, jittery, hazy zones of probability that are nothing like you envisioned. To suggest your concept of a cube is at all required for those atomic structures to take a form you would identify as a cube is lunacy. Abstract concepts don’t require physical reality to exist. But then again, they don’t really exist in the strict sense of the word. To conflate the two concepts is a gross misuse of terminology. Now for your last point: The laws of physics are not based on mathematics. Logic and mathematics are based on observations of reality, the descriptions of which are termed the laws of physics. Before we had any understanding of logic, mathematics, or physics, the universe functioned just the same. To claim that a mind was necessary for reality to exist is begging the question. It is also completely untrue that every atheist accepts that there should be at least a single originator or uncaused cause. I for one disagree, because while all of our evidence points toward an origin for our reality, I have no basis for concluding that the behavior we have observed of our reality must necessarily hold true for its origin. For instance time itself is theorized to have come into existence in the origin event, so there is no reason to expect that before that event has any validity whatsoever. As cause and effect also require time to be meaningful, we cannot assume such things were required.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2
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quote: I think this argument is confusing our descriptions of reality with reality itself. The laws of logic and mathematics are tools we use to build our descriptions and models. Those descriptions and models obviously require a conscious mind. But we cannot say that reality itself - what is described - depends on our descriptions. In fact the whole point of necessary truths is that they are necessarily true. They cannot be false in the absence of a conscious mind because - by definition - they cannot be false under any circumstances. If your argument denies this , then your argument is wrong.
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Parasomnium Member Posts: 2224 Joined: |
PaulK writes: In fact the whole point of necessary truths is that they are necessarily true. They cannot be false in the absence of a conscious mind because - by definition - they cannot be false under any circumstances. If your argument denies this , then your argument is wrong. This is a very good point. If necessary truths are dependent on something, then they are not necessary in themselves. 'Dependent' means that the absence of something - in this case mind- makes a difference for things that depend on it. This refutes the necessity of MrQ's necessary truths, since he defines them as being dependent on a conscious mind. In a universe with only a cube and a sphere the question of how many things there are can neither be asked nor answered, unless the cube is talking to the sphere. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2295 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined: |
Parasomnium writes:
It goes even further than that. They would need to be omniscient as well. How else would they know they are the only things in there, can they observe everything?
In a universe with only a cube and a sphere the question of how many things there are can neither be asked nor answered, unless the cube is talking to the sphere.
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Parasomnium Member Posts: 2224 Joined: |
Huntard writes: They would need to be omniscient as well. Not necessarily. Cube: "How many things are there in the universe?"Sphere (puzzled): "Beats me." "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2295 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined: |
Touch!
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MrQ Member (Idle past 5052 days) Posts: 116 Joined: |
or example, picture a reality where 1+1=3, where A = ~A; can you do it? Does it make sense? Well too bad, it is real! Perhaps if you were smarter (or less sane) you would be able to picture such a reality, but your ability to understand such a thing has no bearing on it being real. In fact the whole point of necessary truths is that they are necessarily true. They cannot be false in the absence of a conscious mind because - by definition - they cannot be false under any circumstances. If your argument denies this , then your argument is wrong. The answer to above argument is that without mind even the question, can't exist! This is a paradox that people usually fall in at this stage. When there is no mind, you can't ask any question let alone talking about necessary truths. Also '1' and '+' and '3' don't exist. The cube and balls are just a bunch of atoms gather somewhere. You can't in anyway define any kind of relation. Because even their shape is recognized and named by a mind. Their identity also created by a mind. That's why you can't do anything without the mind. Even now when me and you are asking the question, this is the mind that imagines the whole universe without anything except two things. It freely travels back and forth in time and understand the question and analysis it. With no mind, everything would be just a bunch of mass or energy randomly scattered. Any relationship between them or between fundamental forces have no meaning. Edited by MrQ, : summerize
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5018 days) Posts: 206 Joined:
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quote: Mr Q, I agree with others in this thread that this reasoning is backwards - the physical world comes first. Our equations model what we find there. But I think there is a very interesting question here - in fact a number of them. Not my own, of course, these have been thought of by many people. - in what sense does 'mathematics' exist? Is it purely a creation of the human mind or does it have some kind of independent existence? Personally I find it very hard to imagine it's invented. For example, I think it's likely that once the concepts of integer and prime are defined, then all mathematicians must judge the same integers to be prime. This seems to be a property that's 'out there' rather than in our heads. But if so, where and how do 'prime numbers' actually exist? I really can't get my head around this one! - where do physical laws come from? Why is mathematics so effective in describing physical reality? However, I don't think either of these implies that there is a mind behind the universe.
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Phage0070 Inactive Member |
MrQ writes: With no mind, everything would be just a bunch of mass or energy randomly scattered. Any relationship between them or between fundamental forces have no meaning. You seem to be claiming that if there were no minds that the fundamental forces of the universe would cease to function; matter, space, and time would cease to be. You don't only say that their interactions would be void of "meaning", something which is certainly assigned by the mind, but also that those interactions would cease to take place. Basically you believe that if you were the only mind in the universe, if you went to sleep the universe would cease to be. I posit that such a position is raving lunacy.
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MrQ Member (Idle past 5052 days) Posts: 116 Joined: |
You seem to be claiming that if there were no minds that the fundamental forces of the universe would cease to function; matter, space, and time would cease to be. You don't only say that their interactions would be void of "meaning", something which is certainly assigned by the mind, but also that those interactions would cease to take place. Basically you believe that if you were the only mind in the universe, if you went to sleep the universe would cease to be. I posit that such a position is raving lunacy. Having no meaning doesn't necessary mean ceasing existence. I don't know how did you come up with that?! There can be scattered random forces and energy and matter. But all are have no meaning. The point is they have to be random and true random!
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Phage0070 Inactive Member |
MrQ writes: Having no meaning doesn't necessary mean ceasing existence. I don't know how did you come up with that?! There can be scattered random forces and energy and matter. But all are have no meaning. The point is they have to be random and true random! No. The cube and sphere of matter are held together by the four basic physical forces: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak forces. These forces, not our conceptual image of the object, govern their interaction and continued orientation and structure. These forces are not random, as proven by extensive observation. They do not change function based on if people are thinking about them or not, and they do not exist contingent on the existence of a mind.
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