I Know That God Does Not Exist

It is you who are using the book to push your belief on the rest of us and then claiming that all you are doing is quoting the book. The snake was subtle too, so I expect this sort of stuff from you. God may use you to sharpen me, but He also used satan to sharpen humanity...those that will make it, at any rate. We want you on that bus also, but you seem to insist that you drive.

I have no belief to push. We could be talking about Holden Caulfield or Tom Joad. I have no belief in those fictional characters either, and no vested interest in what their stories say. The difference between you and me is that I respect the literature and I will not twist it to fit any beliefs. But I am just quoting the book. Show us where I have made any claims that are not in the book.

One of the hardest things for us to learn is that when we get born again we really are changed, "a new creation," so that although it may not be obvious, (though I suppose it should be more so than it is), we can love hearing a good sermon while they absolutely abhor it. I heard one by John MacArthur yesterday that I really needed to hear, it may have saved my sanity, and much as I would love to share such a message here I thlnk I've finally learned that there's no point..HOWEVER, I wrote the above before I'd heard the Sproul audio and see it's not really what I had in mind about a "sermon." He does get into a lot of philosophical subjects.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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As you pointed out in your quote the observer doesn't "need' to be conscious.

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Which means that consciousness is irrelevant to the observer effect.

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Also, of course it takes a conscious observer to be able to measure the effect.

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Only if you insist on begging the question. Measurements may be taken by instruments perfectly adequately.

Just to say that article is quite confused with very confused phrasing like:
this interaction will inevitably alter the trajectory of that electron
whereas its momentum after the measurement is related toSince electrons don't have trajectories or momenta it's hard to parse this, at least in the standard view of QM.The observer effect, although it's not really called that in physics, is that measurements always require an alteration in one's probability assignments, increasing uncertainty for some properties. This is unlike classical physics.If you saw a car at the bottom of the road let's say you'd say it was away from you. If you then measured it to be going at that wouldn't really introduce any uncertainty to where the car is going to be later, it would be away.In QM you'd actually be unsure where the car would be measured to be. It might even be measured as passed you and be up the road from your position.Edited by Son Goku, : More accurate

No, they are not. Yet again you have hoisted yourself on the petard of your willful stoopidity. I know better than to ask when you will ever learn, because you work so diligently to prevent yourself from ever learning.We've been through this before. After Edwards v. Aguillard (1987 -- struck down the more evil twin of the infamous 1981 Arkansas law) set the legal precedence that "creation science" is indeed purely religious, creationists switched up their old game of "Hide of Bible" with a new game, "Hide the Creationism", for which they adopted ID and which brought ID to everyone's attention.Immediately, we were presented with ID's false and deceptive conflating of philosophical materialism/naturalism with the methodological naturalism of science. Philosophical materialism/naturalism is the philosophical position that the natural universe is all there is, that the supernatural does not exist. As such, it would properly serve the purpose of a position that is in opposition to theistic ideas. But that is not what ID is saying.Science does not employ nor does it in any way depend on philosophical materialism/naturalism. Instead, science employs methodological naturalism, which is not a philosophical position but rather a very practical consideration of the simple fact that science cannot deal with the supernatural and that the scientific method cannot make any use of supernatural hypotheses or other elements or considerations. That does not say that science denies and opposes the very idea of the existence of the supernatural, but rather that science realizes that it cannot deal with the supernatural and that the supernatural has no conceivable place in science. When you consider that it is beyond our ability to observe the supernatural or even detect its existence, the necessity of the practice of methodological naturalism in science is obvious -- and should be obvious even to you.But ID wants to go even further as evidence in their infamous Wedge Document, a multi-year plan to completely reform science to include supernaturalistic explanations, AKA "goddidit" (and indeed, this was where our criticisms of "goddidit" began). We even had a topic from 2007-Nov-27 to 2011-Jun-06, So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY), in which after nearly 400 messages posted over a period of nearly four years nobody could even begin to offer a reasonable suggestion of how science would be able to make constructive use of the supernatural -- one or two did make an honest effort, but still no cheroot. Taq summed it up nicely in the last message posted, Message 396: So shame on you for pushing ID's fundamental lie about science!Thuggee demonstrated in Message 1111 that he was at least aware of methodological naturalism, so he already knows more than you do.

Agreed. Emergent properties are like that. They result in properties that would not seem to be present in their constituent parts. Like the complex piping and pumps and water emerging into the perceived “art” of a fountain.Philosophers love this kind of stuff. They can speculate for centuries on the “is”-ness of a casaba melon that in the end is not very useful. That is not what I think I hear you thinking. Others have already addressed this so, thankfully, I don’t have to. No one suggested the human body’s user-interface into our local environment was anything simple. It is indeed a highly complex interplay of chemistry, synaptic patterns and electrical impulses.And just to muddy the waters, there is the thought that the sub-conscious mind is the actual driver of all we think and do while the conscious mind is the not-so-simple facade to interface mind to world.

I hesitate to respond as this is well above my pay grade. I do confuse the "observer effect" with the "uncertainty principle" and only have the vaguest grasp of either.Can you in the layest in laymen's terms tell me how consciousness plays into all of that.Edited by GDR, : typo

What assertion? That evidence is needed? If so then I'll assert that everywhere every time. Actually it is Methodological Naturalism ... on steroids. That's already been done. You just haven't accepted that reality.

"There is still the question of what was behind the process that gave the universe those properties."That is indeed an interesting question. But our experience has been that whenever we study something in nature to find out what's "behind" it we come up with a purely natural explanation - no wizards behind curtains controlling everything. Until someone comes up with some actual evidence for an intelligence propping up our natural world, I'll continue to consider arguments saying the universe is so marvelously intricate there must be intelligence lurking behind it somewhere to be . . . non-starters.In the meantime, consider this: everything in the universe, the locations of every atom, the history of where every atom was throughout history could be encoded as a string of numbers. A very long, complex string of numbers, but still just a coding. In fact, you could code it as a single number if you choose, even a binary code: 011110010100...So perhaps we don't exist at all, we are just characters in an elaborate book. And every different number is a different universe with a different history.But in reality nothing exists, because even if nothing exists, there must still be numbers, even if nobody is there to think of them.

nope

Great moniker by the way, and you even seem to live up to it.
I don't see an intelligence behind curtains controlling everything. I see a world that appears to run on natural processes without any divine intervention. I'm inclined to think that intervention of the natural processes happens but I have no idea of how often. As I have said before, even with the evolutionary process I am agnostic on whether there was intelligent intervention in the process along the way or if everything needed was in place at the outset.I'd also add that science is only equipped to measure repeatble processes or to examine the effects of natural processes that have already taken place. Would that be anything like the holographic theory?

Please refer to my reply to Faith, Message 1131, in which I explained the difference between Philosophical Naturalism (what science does not use but what ID is actually talking about) and Methodological Naturalism (which science does actually use and which is not at in the least the same thing as Philosophical Naturalism, but which ID conflates as being the same thing nonetheless). Since you still express confusion about the differences (despite knowing the term), reading that will hopefully clear things up for you.Part of the problem is that IDists are lying to you when they describe Methodological Naturalism as being the same as Philosophical Naturalism. Another part of the problem is that their published agenda, the infamous Wedge Document, presented a multi-year plan for public relations campaigns to completely reform science to include supernaturalistic explanations, AKA "goddidit" (and indeed, this was where our criticisms of "goddidit" began).In response to Beretta in the topic Why Creationism (actual title: should creationism be taught in schools?), I created a topic which I just referred to Faith, So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY) (2007-Nov-27 to 2011-Jun-06, 396 messages), in which my OP concluded thus:

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Now, an extremely valuable by-product of all this hypothesis building and testing is questions. In science, the really interesting and valuable discoveries are the ones that raise new questions. Because questions help to direct our research. Because by realizing what we don't know and what we need to find out, we know what to look for and we have some idea of where to find it. Without those questions, science loses its direction and gets stuck.

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Science cannot use supernaturalistic explanations, because they don't explain anything. We cannot observe the supernatural either directly or indirectly; we cannot even determine whether the supernatural even exists. Supernaturalistic explanations cannot be tested and hence cannot be evaluated nor discarded nor refined. They cannot produce predictions. They cannot be developed into a conceptual model that could even begin to attempt to descibe a natural phenomena nor how it works. And supernaturalistic explanations raise absolutely no questions and so provide absolutely no direction for further research. "Goddidit" explains nothing and closes all paths of investigation. Supernaturalistic explanations bring science to a grinding halt.

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In Message 245 I wrote:

And from what I understand of the Wedge Document, ID's goal is not really to "teach the controversy", but rather it is to eliminate evolution and to pervert science into their own image, effectively killing science as well.

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In Message 250, Beretta replied:

effectively killing science as well.

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Believing in ID cannot possibly kill science.

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I contend that Beretta is dead wrong. ID's goal is to reform science to be based on supernaturalistic explanations, or at the very least to include them. It is the inclusion of supernaturalistic explanations that will kill science.

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The task before Beretta and any other ID advocate is to prove that ID will not kill science. A required component of that proof is a detailed description of just how ID-based science is supposed to operate. Certainly their ID idols have already provided them the answer. And if even they haven't come up with a description of how their brave new science will function, then why not?

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In nearly 400 messages over nearly four years time, that challenge was not met (one or two actually made an honest effort, but no cheroot). Nobody could come up with a detailed description of just how ID-based science is supposed to operate. Back in Message 1110 you introduced a quote by a Discovery Institute member, Brian Miller, to which you muse: Well, that's part of their deception. It's just the same old hypocritical bullshirt "martyr complex" "everybody hates us Christians soooo much and persecutes us all the time" game that you (plural) "true Christians" keep playing and that we normals are fed up with and will no longer tolerate -- it's not because you're Christians (as you constantly complain) but because you're hypocritical arse-holes.And that is the exact same game that IDists are playing. They claim that scientists are involved in a conspiracy that follows a "molecules to man" philosophy tantamount to a religion which is Philosophical Naturalism, even though they misrepresent Methodological Naturalism as being that "religion" (the easier to deceive you when someone correctly points out that science uses Methodological Naturalism instead of the Philosophical Naturalism that ID is describing). Furthermore, they claim to be victims of persecution and censorship because of that philosophy -- eg, Ben Stein's movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, false claims about how some IDists have left their jobs. Just the same old tired hypocritical bullshirt.Are you beginning to understand Brian Miller's talk of a "'gospel' of materialism"?BTW, one of the big differences between ID and YEC is that ID's bullshirt is much stronger. YEC claims are so much easier to refute, because most YECs concoct and spread claims in fields that they know nothing about, so their lies are so much more apparent to anyone who knows anything about that field. IDs are generally better educated than YECs and they are much more likely to restrict themselves to subject matter that they do know something about. That way, in order to refute them you usually need to also have some expertise in their field. That is especially true when the ID starts throwing a lot of obtuse math at you.

I should have been clearer but I don't know if it would have mattered: The phrases about "gospel" and "faith" are intended to characterize whatever form of materialism or naturalism is practiced as nonscientific but more like a religion. that seems more to the point than the exact meaning of naturalism.

Uh, still completely off the mark. You should have read what I had written!What ID calls "the Gospel of materialism" is Philosophical Materialism/Naturalism. That is a philosophical position that the natural universe is all that there is, that the supernatural does not exist. It has absolutely nothing to do with the naturalistic methods of science!What science uses is Methodological Naturalism. That takes no philosophical position concern the existence of the supernatural nor of any supernatural entities. Rather, it is the very practical realization that science cannot work with the supernatural. Period! That also means that supernaturalistic explanations cannot be used in science because there is no way to even begin to observe or test them.Now since you are going to continue to be willfully stoopid and refuse to read any more than one or two words, could somebody else please explain these very simple facts to this willfully stoopid ####?