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Author | Topic: The Anthropic Principal - Cosmology | |||||||||||||||||||||||
bebotx1 Member (Idle past 6242 days) Posts: 32 Joined: |
quote: Yes, and that is why the statement is a truism. It MUST always be true. It's obviously true. And it says nothing. I think this is probably one of those things were people just end up shouting louder and louder at each other without ever finding the common ground.
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Dan Carroll Inactive Member |
That was quick - I thought you'd be on that site for hours. You sound so smart when you insist that I'm a jesus freak. Really, you should keep doing it. It makes you sound like a genius.
Actually - this post is talking about how AP is just a description of how things are and RD claiming it is some kind of explanation is nuts. Little hint about this newfangled "internet" thing... when a word looks like this, it's a link. If you click it, you can go read your exact words.
Yes of course if the earth was intentionally created it would be an explanation of why it was here. Are you gonna argue with that? Sure, even since you've qualified the fuck out of it. (I guess we can assume you know you were wrong with your first phrasing?) Saying the earth was intentionally created says nothing about what the intent was. Therefore, it doesn't explain why the Earth is here. It just says it is, which we already know. "I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut." -Stephen Colbert
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bebotx1 Member (Idle past 6242 days) Posts: 32 Joined: |
quote: I'm not sure. Can you show me what I said with the internet linking trick again please. Actually it was RD's alternative in the book (TGD)
quote: Well maybe you'd find that out along the way. If it was intentionally created perhaps you could get in contact with the creators or find clues about why they did it and what they were like.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: As I said at the start it isn't so obvious that it doesn't sometimes need saying. If it didn't then why would anyone ask the question in the first place ? Why would we have people arguing that this planet is so life firendly it had to be set up for us by a god, for instance ? All logical truths are tautologies. Every valid logical argument is a tautology. If tautologies said nothing then logic would be of no use whatsoever. Thus the fact that logic is useful proves that identifying a tautology CAN tell us something.
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Dan Carroll Inactive Member |
Actually it was RD's alternative in the book (TGD) Wow, apparently you do need help reading your own words. When responding to the statement, "Positing the existence of a God doesn't actually help the matter one bit," you said, "but at LEAST it would be an *explanation*." You were very, very wrong.
Well maybe you'd find that out along the way. Great. Maybe along the way, it'll become a valid explanation. For now, it's meaningless. "I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut." -Stephen Colbert
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bebotx1 Member (Idle past 6242 days) Posts: 32 Joined: |
quote: Perhaps you havn't understood me. The statement is ALWAYS true. Lets assume for a moment (purely hypothetically) that God specially created the earth especially for people to live on. The statement would STILL be true. This is my whole point.
quote: Every valid argument is not a tautology. Deductive logic is a system to validly get from a set of premises to a conclusion, the truth of the conclusion still rests on the premises. The generation of tautologies is not it's primary purpose.http://thinker.blog.co.uk/...ngu_does_some_reasoning~1904805
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Positing the existence of a God doesn't actually help the matter one bit. Now you have to explain why the creator happened to choose to make a universe for this kind of life over any other feasible life (or other feasible state of the universe, life or not, that would please God). It actually makes the whole question worse: what is the rest of the universe for and why is it so apparently neglected.
... to explain the extraordinary coincidence that God happens to like universes like ours. And why the peculiar fondness (not just for beetles) for this particular planet - what's so special\necessary about this one out of all the gazillions? Enjoy. compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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bebotx1 Member (Idle past 6242 days) Posts: 32 Joined: |
Are you saying I'm lying about it being RD's point in the book. 'Cos I have it open in front of me.
quote: And I'm sorry to have to tell you but yes, it would count as a valid explanation for it being there. You can't just tack on extra conditions like intent and insist on them. Are you saying unless you can show intent it's false? Edited by bebotx1, : shorten quote
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote:Obviously you haven't understood me, or you wouldn't say that. quote: Mabe. However we cannot conclude that that is the case from the mere fact that we exist on a life-friendly planet. And some people need to be informed of that. Thus, they at least, are being told something by Dawkins' point.
quote: On the contrary, every logically valid argument is a tautology (at least in the simple logics typically used). I've formally studied logic in a degree-level course and was one of the basic points of the course. Indeed it is how ordinary deductive logic works - the conclusion contains nothing that is not found collectively in the premises. Thus if the premises are true the conclusion has to be - because all the rest of the argument adds nothing. I'm not sure of the point of the blog reference is as it adds nothing to this discussion (and says nothing that hasn't been said far better elsewhere - for a good introduction to logic, try this Good Math, Bad Math). Given that the author of the blog you link to seems to make the same mistakes as you in interpreting Dawkins, perhaps it is your blog and you are just trying to drive up the hit count. If this is the case I advise you to get some better content. If it is not, then I suggest you find a better source.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1425 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
But at LEAST it would be an *explanation*. Where as this AP thing just plain isn't. What you are failing to see and failing to deal with is the fact that regardless of the start of life - whether by accident or design - that once life was existing on this planet that it would become better and better adapted to this planet. By the time intelligence could evolve to the point that it could consider the question it would be very well adapted. As suggested in Message 7 and Message 12 this "AP thing" is looking at the wrong end of the situation. Life adapts to environment. If you do not understand this then you do not understand evolution. If the environment were not able to support life as we know it then it would not have evolved. This explains the lack of life on other planets. The God-did-it "*explanation*" doesn't explain that and leaves open the whole question of why NOT life on the other planets. The God-did-it "*explanation*" is okay for ONE planet, and it 'worked' when that was all that was known in the cosmology of the times. We now know there are not only other planets in this system but planets around other stars. The God-did-it "*explanation*" FAILS to explain the apparent absence of other life on equally designed and created planets. Seems like a waste eh? A rather extravagant waste. Enjoy. ps - welcome to the fray. also: type [qs]quote boxes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:quote boxes are easy Edited by RAZD, : tyop compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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bebotx1 Member (Idle past 6242 days) Posts: 32 Joined: |
quote: Definitiley. No, of course you could not conclude that. I guess it would make them think about it. Forget the logic it's getting off topic. Edited by bebotx1, : No reason given.
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bebotx1 Member (Idle past 6242 days) Posts: 32 Joined: |
quote: yea, i guess I was just on about the AP thing. I wasn't really considering the alternatives. The design type explanation could take a lot of forms I guess. It would depend on what the designers wanted out of the situation.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
So long as you insist that tautologies tell us nothing the logic is definitely on-topic. Identifying tautologies does tell us something and obviously there are people who haven't identified this particular one (although it isn't quite a tautology - if there was a God it could keep us going even in an environment we "shouldn't" be able to survive in).
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bebotx1 Member (Idle past 6242 days) Posts: 32 Joined: |
quote: I think something that is trivially true is called a truism. A tautology is a completely true statement relying on zero assumptions. I thought this one didn't say much, but maybe for some...
quote: Very good observation - I missed that. Edited by bebotx1, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote:Since Dawkins is answering an argument that some people are actually using it can't be so obvious that everybody sees it. Nobody would waste time with an argument that everybody could see to be fallacious. They must either think it good themselves or believe that others will think it to be good.
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