My Beliefs- GDR

I have no idea how to answer that but that wasn't my point. My point was that I contend that our perceivable universe is part of a greater reality that our 5 senses don't perceive. I also contend that within that greater reality there exists a moral intelligence that is responsible for our existence.I find that answer less complex that the idea that we have evolved as sentient beings with a sense of morality from mindless particles, even without dealing with the question of the origination of the particles in the first place. Sure the way you view it interacting particles are less complex than God. The question can be phrased another way. Are the interacting particles dependant on God to create them in the first place?On the other hand I suggest that there is the possibility that the interacting particles are just a manifestation of something greater as I pointed out in my last paragraph. Pretty much the same answer as before but I'd add that either one is completely improbable from our perspective. For that matter we have no idea of how to even conceive the idea of "nothing" existing. I know that. It is just that I am so often accused of arguing from the point of "incredulity" that I can't pass up an opportunity to turn it around on you atheists. Yes, but that is a subjective conclusion. Heart knowledge is one thing but I don't suggest that is the only reason. I gave a number of other reasons in the OP. Actually in the end we can't know anything objectively. It all boils down to a degree of subjectivity until at some point on that scale we wind up calling it objective. Some things we can be very sure of, some things pretty sure of and some things very unsure of.

There are obviously natural processes. What I don't think is so obvious is that there ere "unintelligent processes". In fact I'd suggest that the term "unintelligent processes" is an oxymoron.For example we can have an assembly line that produces widgets where it is left to run while everyone goes home. It happens all on its own without any human input. However, it did take intelligence to bring it into existence.If some future scientist mixes some chemicals in a petri dish and creates a cell it will only show that in that case it took sentience to put those chemicals together and also note that the chemicals had to exist in the first place. Actually I agree with that. I wasn't suggesting that God intervened to make it happen, I'm saying that our understanding of time has a long way to go, with the suggestion that the idea of experiencing time differently than we do is not that strange of an idea.

From our perspective we can't know whether there is a compelling reason or not. We just know how things are and we come to our own subjective conclusions. Yes, I believe that our existence is dependant on an external intelligence, and I have given my reasons for coming to that conclusion but I acknowledge that there are those like yourself who have come to a different conclusion with your own reasons. As I said to NoNukes I agree with that position, but as I said to him, (on the assumption it is a him), I think it is because when it comes to understanding time, (how we perceive change) we have a great deal to learn.My only point was that either the natural law was suspended or we don't fully understand the natural law of time and I go with the latter. Certainly it has something to do with how the brain perceives change and I agree with Penrose and others, (not that I understand much of what Penrose has to say - what a brilliant mind eh?) that our experience time is a function of our consciousness.

I frankly think that or something close to it is correct. The key though is in your last couple of sentences. Our perception changes. Time or change is viewed in the way that we perceive it. If our perception changes time changes. I have no doubt that I perceive time differently as I grow older. As I said, I think we have a great deal to learn about time. My perception of time definitely slowed down as it has for many others in similar circumstances. It seems fairly clear to me that time is a lot more abstract than how it appears to us.

Hi PhatHere is a guy whose material I think you would enjoy reading or listening to. His name is John Lennox although not related to our discussion on time. I've heard that suggestion before but I don't think that it is correct.Here is a piece from this wiki article

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Psychologists assert that time seems to go faster with age, but the literature on this age-related perception of time remains controversial. One day to an eleven-year-old would be approximately 1/4,000 of their life, while one day to a 55-year-old would be approximately 1/20,000 of their life. This is perhaps why a day would appear much longer to a young child than to an adult. In an experiment comparing a group of subjects aged between 19 and 24 and a group between 60 and 80 asked to estimate when they thought 3 minutes had passed, it was found that the younger group's estimate was on average 3 minutes and 3 seconds, while the older group averaged 3 minutes and 40 seconds, indicating a change in the perception of time with age. People tend to recall recent events as occurring further back in time (backward telescoping) and distant events occurring more recently (forward telescoping).
It has also been proposed that the subjective experience of time changes with age due to changes in the individual's biological makeup.

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Here is another article on the subject.Here is a piece from Julian Barbour's web site on his take on time.

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Closely related to this work is my study of time. Mach remarked It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction at which we arrive through the changes of things. Thus, time as such does not exist but only change. Much of my research has been devoted to the implications of this insight. I have shown how, alongside the relativity of motion, the notion of time as change can be built into the foundations of dynamics. In fact, this idea is contained in a hidden form within general relativity. Its potential consequences for the yet to be found quantum mechanics of the universe are profound. The quantum universe is likely to be static. Motion and the apparent passage of time may be nothing but very well founded illusions. This is the thesis of The End of Time (books), which is aimed both at the general reader and physicists.

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Time it turns out is definitely something of an enigma.

....but we don’t know if there is a requirement or not. Take evolution. We can observe the natural process of evolution in our world but we can’t know whether or not it required an intelligent designer. We aren’t compelled to seek an answer so from that point of view I agree. You used the word compelling so I went with it but it would be more accurate to ask if an external intelligence is necessary. Scientists can uncover all the natural process they like but it can’t be determined by the scientific method, even if we know how it was all done, whether or not the processes required an intelligent designer.We have natural laws and in our experience laws require a law giver and so in that sense the atheistic position requires relief from natural law. Webster’s definition of rational:

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a : having reason or understanding
b : relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason : reasonable

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I have given such a reasonable account of my position that it is completely irrational that you don’t agree with it.

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He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.

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Micah 6:8

I get your point that if God is more complex than humans then the natural complex is simpler and Occam tells us we should go with simpler. I just don’t believe the question can be framed like that. No matter how much more complex God is than the natural processes it tells us nothing about whether or not God is necessary for the processes to exist in the first place. But I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that we are an emergent property of a greater reality and out of that comes our first cause. The best that we can do in conceiving of nothing is completely empty space which is still a dimensional concept. We do have a way of conceiving of eternity though. For example we have 3 spatial dimensions. As a result we can travel spatially around our universe eternally or infinitely. We can even travel infinitely around our globe. If we weren’t locked into experience time in just one direction then we can actually conceive of eternity.Spatially I can travel from here to London and then back again as we have more than one spatial direction. If we had just two time dimensions I could continue on to tomorrow and then come back to today. If there were more than two I could travel to tomorrow take a side trip to last week and then return to today. We can conceive of eternity in a different way than trying to conceive nothing. Granted it’s a fine line, and maybe its too fine so I may have to give you this one. Heart knowledge= belief. The only difference I suppose is how we arrive at our beliefs. Knowledge is really just highly evidenced belief. I believe that the earth is going to continue to revolve and as a result I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. There is pretty strong evidence that I am right but I can’t know it with 100% certainty. Of course there is a difference. It is quite conceivable that all mankind could believe something and be wrong, particularly, particularly on things that aren’t directly perceivable or repeatable. If things are believed objectively then presumably it is a belief of something that is perceivable and most likely repeatable.

Hi StragglerI have read previously about different theories around the relationship between the physical world that we observe with time and consciousness. Part of my thinking is that the world we perceive only exists the way it does because we perceive it that way. I think that QM tells us something like that.I went poking around on the internet and came up with this paper where a philosopher looks at taking his philosophy and then working with what the physicists have to tell him. Here is a link to the paper and a couple of quotes from it. Space, Time and Consciousness

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Over the last century, however, a third theory has been developed. This suggests that a human being consists of a physical body made of ordinary matter
extended in physical space and, in addition, a consciousness module made of a
different kind of matter extended in a different space outside physical space. The
meaning of ‘outside’ here will be developed later. The two are connected by
Humean causal interactions.
The impetus to the new theory has come partly from philosophers such as C.D.
Broad and H.H. Price, partly from advances in introspective psychology, partly
from a developing understanding of certain findings in clinical neurology and
partly from recent developments in theoretical physics.
The theoretical physicist Andrei Linde (1990) has suggested that the world
consists of three different fundamental constituents space-time, matter and
consciousness, with their own degrees of freedom. My aim in this paper is to
explore this hypothesis further. My exposition will be presented in three
sections.
1. The role of the brain and consciousness in perception following the demonstration by recent experiments in neuroscience and psychophysics that we
do not perceive the world as it actually is but as the brain computes it most
probably to be, These findings refute the philosophical theory of perception
known as Direct Realism (Smythies, 1994b; Smythies and Ramachandran,
1998). This has important consequences for any theory of consciousness.
2. The need to delineate clearly between phenomenal space-time and physical
space-time. This will entail a consideration of recent theories in physics
(such as Kaluza-Klein, superstring and brane theories) that suggest that
space has more than three dimensions.
3. A consideration of the role allotted to consciousness in the block Universe of
Special Relativity.

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In his recent book Stephen Hawking (2001) says: ‘It is a matter of common
experience that we live in a three-dimensional space. That is to say, we can represent the position of a point in space by three numbers, for example, latitude, longitude, and height above sea level.’ I would comment that this ‘matter of
common experience’ may be merely a visual illusion created by the virtual reality aspect of our mechanisms of perception. It is not at all ‘obvious’ that we live
in a three-dimensional space. It is certainly true that our physical bodies are
located in a three-dimensional (physical) space (or 4D space—time). It is also
clear than the phenomenal space of consciousness has three spatial dimensions.
One needs, for example, three numbers to locate a point in the body image or in a
dream. But it may well be that the co-ordinate systemsfor these two spaces are
different. That is what

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It is therefore quite in keeping with these trends in physics to suggest that consciousness is located in its own brane further external to the dimensions of the
physical world. By that I mean that the new space postulated by this theory to
contain a consciousness is not merely a Kaluza-Klein or a superstring space; it is
a new space in addition to all currently postulated physical space—times. These
provide merely an analogy for a new space of consciousness. The human organism thus may extend beyond the physical body to include a consciousness module (composed of the various sensory and image fields plus perhaps a subjective
Self) located in a brane of its own. To coin a pun: ‘Consciousness may be in the
brane not in the brain.’

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Contemporary ‘common sense’ thinks of the world as a collection of material
objects extended in three-dimensional space and enduring in a separate Newtonian time. Special Relativity unifies Newtonian space and time into space-time.
It does not recognize any special universal ‘now’ of time. Instead, it states that
objects consist, not of 3D entities enduring in time, but as 4D world lines existing and extended from the big bang to the big crunch. For example, the earth is not a
spheroid circling the sun, but a stationary hyperhelix wound around the world
lines of the sun. Thus the buildings of imperial Rome still stand it is just that
we cannot see them any more. The buildings of future cities already exist but
we cannot see them yet. It should be noted, however, that there is no more a distinguished present in Newtonian physics than there is in special relativity, so all
times must be treated symmetrically in regard to the distribution of matter. So, if
one wants to account for our psychological impression that there is a ‘now’ in
time and moreover that time in some way flows, we must look elsewhere than
contemporary physics, whether Newtonian or Relativity, to find it.

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This paper is obviously being written without any thoughts God or first causes but it does in my view correspond to what i believe in terms of life outside of the universe as we perceive it. If our consciousness exists in another dimension then what I have suggested earlier doesn't sound nearly as far fetched.Edited by GDR, : Poorly constructed sentence...

That is what science does so well. It can't tell us though whether the laws that allow for the interaction of molecules or for the law of gravity causing the stone to roll down hill required the intelligent tinkerer in the first place. I agree that it is not the greatest analogy but at the same time "natural law" had to come into existence and there is a coherence there that, at least in my mind, that suggests there was thought involved in that coherence. I did provide reasons for my belief in the OP.

That is a really good point. The Bible tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I have just sort of run with that without putting a lot of thought to it. I have always put it in terms of "first cause" but in light of what you say I think that is the wrong way to look at it, which I think is closer to what science would suggest.If what I have speculated about is anywhere close to the truth then the universe wasn't created at all. It just always existed but as part of something greater than the 4D universe that we perceive.In one sense using the term "first cause" is correct in that I am talking about a first cause for the universe as we perceive it, but the problem is that it also implies the idea of creation from a previous nothing.What I should be talking about is God who is the intelligence that is responsible for our existence in the way that we perceive it. We are at present created beings who "see through a glass darkly" only perceiving a limited part of the total reality with our 5 senses. The first part of that sentence really helped me to think my previous paragraph through in understanding that we really don't need a creative intelligence for our universe to exist if it always existed. Thank you.The fact still remains, (from my POV both scientifically and theologically), that we only perceive a part of the whole. I agree that I am taking theological answers from that that aren't scientific, but they are just theories that can be adjusted as we learn more. That article I quoted essentially talks about time being dependant on our consciousness which exists externally to our 4D universe. That doesn't have to be true, but it does open up ideas of how we could connect with God in ways that aren't directly perceivable to us. I agree that we don't have direct evidence of a higher intelligence but I do believe we have reasons to come to that conclusion. There is the argument of how finely tuned the universe is; the idea that an idea is real but not physical, the fact that we perceive beauty, joy, compassion etc, and even the the fact that human minds of been able to unlock so many hidden scientific truths about our existence. I find the argument convincing - however it seems you a little less so.

No, and I haven't done that. Sure, but we can understand the forces that formed the sand. We can't say that about natural laws.Actually, if you read my last post to Straggler you can see that his post caused me to change my view somewhat. If we are indeed an emergent property from a greater reality, and if that greater reality experiences time or change in such a way that it is eternal, then that could mean that our natural laws are also eternal thus not requiring a first cause.

Ya I know....science of the gaps. The grain of sand is directly perceivable and the intelligent designer isn't.

I disagree with that. I would say that both are advancing into the gaps. My personal view which is far from unique is that science is essentially a natural theology. As science advances our knowledge of the world I as a theist continue to be amazed at the wonder of our existence. Of course I can. I can't objectively know but I can subjectively conclude that he does.

But I do. You don’t understand the point I was making. There are only gaps when we understand the holy books of any faith to be inerrant and then understood to provide scientific information. My theistic beliefs when boiled down to their essence are that our existence is the result of a greater intelligence that is not directly perceivable to us and that this intelligence is perfectly loving and perfectly just. I am a Christian so I refer to that greater intelligence as God. I also believe that God has created us to image His love to the world. Those beliefs are all taken on faith. Tell me how science can either prove or disprove those beliefs.What makes me a Christian is belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The belief that Jesus was resurrected into a new bodily form, which is a precursor of what God will do for all creation when time as we know it comes to an end is something else that science can’t investigate. The resurrection of Jesus as per the Christian faith is a onetime only event in the middle of history. Science can say that we have no evidence for such an occurrence or it can say that no matter how hard we try we can’t replicate it. As a Christian I agree that there is no empirical evidence to support the claim and that it is a matter of faith, and so again it isn’t a gap as it is something if it happened is contrary to natural law.I mentioned that I see science as a natural theology as it is through scientific study, not the study of any holy book, that we learn how it was that God brought life into existence, so as far as I’m concerned when science makes a new discovery it is in some way both a scientific and theological advance.There is also another way that I see science as theology. The Christian belief is that at the end of time God will renew all creation including our planet and in that renewal bring about perfect healing for all in the same manner that He did with Jesus at the resurrection. IMHO the healings that God brought about through Jesus are a foreshadowing of the full renewal of all things. Science has been responsible for advancements that have almost miraculously brought healing to millions. Those healings too are a foretaste of God’s renewal.That is what I meant by both science and theology advancing into the gaps. But that isn’t a reasonable argument. My beliefs can only be reasonable if we as a pre-condition accept the possibility of God. If one holds to a strictly materialistic belief then it is impossible to view my views as reasonable. The views that I hold are also the views of many highly intelligent individuals including many very highly intelligent scientists which I don’t maintain proves them, but it does indicate a degree of reasonableness and/or rationality.

You can keep asserting this but if you actually read what I wrote it would help. My theology does not retreat science it advances with science. Science examines that which is in one way or another perceivable by us. Your argument rules out any position except for a completely materialist world view, and then calls every other position unreasonable. If that's how you want to define reasonable that's ok by me but don't expect me to agree. .....which is true for people who agree with your beliefs, that only your beliefs are reasonable.