Is it okay to believe in God?

[fifty5]

Hi fifty; interesting comments. For now, I'll just look at a couple.

Pure's example statement 7. There are spirits of the dead actually in this world who occasionally have been seen or heard (simultaneously) by two or more of the living (through their usual 'five senses').

fifty Define 'dead'. Then remember that perception is 'merely' pattern recognition, which isn't always accurate. Finally add in statistics; and thus the recognition that unlikely events do happen. Unless some mechanical process also recorded the events perceived by people with senses, the evidence is not unquestionable.

Dead-- no brain waves. In the present case, likely buried in the ground or a bunch of ashes.

So, hypothethically, can John and Sally, at a given moment, see the spirit of their dead mother and both hear her saying the same thing, "don't you two get on that airplane, it's going to be hijacked and flown into the WTC." ("See" as in "I see a monitor" in front of me, not as in Macbeth "Is this a dagger I see before me.")

I don't find the 'unlikely events happen to be very much to the point. I do agree it's likely an almost unique event, so it's probability is hard to figure.

Especially so since your example is of siblings who (presumably) knew their mother and her mannerisms very well - and share many of their recollections.

They may also, for instance, have watched the same TV program dealing with aeroplane hijacking.

And if they are then going to get on the same plane...

What I'm saying is that out of all the billions in the world, that there are going to be a few who share enough to make sufficiently similar 'daydreams' for them to decide, post hoc, that those dreams were identical, is not that unlikely.

That doesn't prove that such events are not supernatural, but does offer an alternative explanation that does not require anything supernatural.

From what I remember of things I read long ago, things like this were more commonly observed as the relationship between the individuals was closer (siblings, identical twins). As the relationship is closer, so tends to be the quantity of common experience - making a non-supernatural explanation of common perception more likely too.

You apply the same statistical approach to two other cases.
fifty //Sometimes an unlikely outcome will happen.// applied to both 6. telekinesis(thoughts affecting a dice throw) and 8. prayer affecting a third party.

Focussing on 6. and 8. We are talking 'affect', i.e., cause and effect, or, more skeptically, a replicable pattern of conjunctions. I.e., NOT just that I thought of 'snake eyes' and then rolled it, but that my thought of (and will for) that, on more than one occasion, and over a period of say 1000 throws (apparently) affected the frequency of 'snake eyes' in the outcomes.

It is interesting that you introduced the first person there: "I" (also "my"). That seems to reduce the population of 'those of interest' to 1.

Note though, that the person who does win the National Lottery can do that - and be correct.

Statistics, though scientific, can have the appearance of magic to people who don't know the subject and its limitations well. It simply isn't valid to apply statistics (unthinkingly) to a Lottery winner after they have won - except to future Lotteries.

Most statistical analysis also only applies to 'independent' events (which is my get-out about the brother and sister cited in your reply: they aren't independent).

I think The Lottery is quite a good exemplar: the chances of any particular individual winning in any pre-chosen draw is so remote as to be negligible, but the chances of someone winning is very high - precisely because so many people take part.

That kind of statistical analysis has little or no survival value in evlotion: each individual is a sample of 1, so those mass statistics simply can't apply. The result of that is that the human brain hasn't evolved to appreciate this subject intuitively: probability theory can be learnt and understood - even become habitual in someone who studies the subject - but it is never inate (I exclude such exceptions as those who have Asperger's Syndrome <sp?> or similar who do not typify the species).

I did study Stats (until my mind went into a spin), precisely because Stats seem to me to make sense of a largely random world. I guess I'm unusual - though not as unusual as those whose minds don't go into a spin! I repeat what I said above: that because of that, the results have become habitual, but they'll never be inate.

My own seminal work was M J Moroney, Facts From Figures. 1951; 3ed Penguin 1956. If you can get hold of a copy, I think you'll find it interesting: especially the chapter on the occurence of rare events, entitled (IIRC) "Goals, Floods and Horse Kicks" (most moments of most football games, rivers and cavalry life do NOT include those events) - and the same goes for "John and Sally".

Eff

PS I was naughty asking you to "define dead." My own conclusion is that 'soul', just like 'mind', is a product of a functioning brain. Given that, then if their mother is dead, John and Sally's experience can only be a product of their brains - it cannot possibly be anything caused by their mother. That takes a conclusion as input to the next iteration, so isn't a valid argument unless you already share my opinion.

I still find it interesting that your definition, like mine, is in terms of biological/physical function. You could, hypothetically, have used terms that included 'life after death' - one of the iterms in the Christian creed.

 

[Pure]

fifty said, I think The Lottery is quite a good exemplar: the chances of any particular individual winning in any pre-chosen draw is so remote as to be negligible, but the chances of someone winning is very high - precisely because so many people take part.

That kind of statistical analysis has little or no survival value in evlotion: each individual is a sample of 1, so those mass statistics simply can't apply. The result of that is that the human brain hasn't evolved to appreciate this subject intuitively: probability theory can be learnt and understood - even become habitual in someone who studies the subject - but it is never inate (I exclude such exceptions as those who have Asperger's Syndrome <sp?> or similar who do not typify the species).

I agree that some kinds of statistical analysis are far from innate, and are indeed counterintuitive. Have you heard of Tverdky and Kahnemann, who've catatogued some of the mistakes even trained people make.

The are lots of interesting problems around 'rare events,' and I believe Poisson was the first to analyze deaths from horse kicks, in the army. From out pov, there always seems to be a reason; "I got kicked because I wasn't careful enough" (like some rape or other crime victims). These kinds of misinterpretations go against theories like amicus' or Rand's, that the mind is 'naturally' oriented toward knowledge of objective phenomena.

Besides lotteries, I like to look at tournaments that match pairs till there's a winner. There's bound to be one, even if the tournament is guessing coin tosses (heard of the 'rock paper scissors' tournaments?). When you ask the winner, s/he often tells of his/her strategy. To him/her it appears efficacious, but that may entirely be an illusion.

OTOH, rare or seemingly rare events can get dismissed by science: The classic example is the French academy's dismissal of a man's claim that a rock fell from the sky into his back yard (i.e., a meteor). Likewise there is a thing called 'ball lightning' which some dismiss as myth {{see excerpts posted at the end}}. Lots of rare events can't be programmed, so they defy analysis by experiment. So can there be a scientific account?

Let's take the example of the arising and origin of mammals. A scientific account should specify *sufficient conditions* (e.g., of how to make an A-bomb blast). But the so called account of mammal origins are incomplete; perhaps some are *necessary conditions*, like moving of life onto land, that that wont give a scientific account. (Imagine a physicist who said, you do x, y, and z; all these are necessary for the atomic blast;--- but I can't tell you if there will be one!( i.e., if the conditions are sufficient).

Some not so interesting rare events can be programmed, for example, generating coin tosses till one sees 10 heads in a row. Then one may examine the average time (tries) it took. Computers allow for billions or more of trials.

All of this is separate from the complications of chaos theory, where an event somehow causes a ripple/cascade effect of vastly disproportionate nature. (The snap of a tree branch triggering an avalance.) That too is a rare event. Often one sees chaotic processes generating apparently (pseudo) random events, but there's an underlying pattern which sometimes allows for a posssibility of statistical predictions.

Which bring us back to God. Well, into every life, there are some hugely improbably events; maybe one striking one in a life:
The train hits one's car broadside but the impact doesn't kill you in the *front seat*, though the back one disappears, and a passing ambulance is there to stop arterial bleeding which would have been fatal in another five mins. Well, that's "God" isn't it. It's enough to convert the sinner (self construed). "I dismissed God, but look at the manifestation of His power and grace in saving my life after my car was broadsided by a train."


----
Here's an account that, to me, shows lots of headscratching and a lack of answers:

Science news
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020209/bob8.asp


Week of Feb. 9, 2002; Vol. 161, No. 6 , p. 87


Anatomy of a Lightning Ball



An aerial wonder, pondered for ages, no longer seems so ghostly

Peter Weiss

Fiery blasts: QuickTime video clips.

Not many people get to see ball lightning, but those who do never forget it. Imagine a glowing orb suddenly materializing in front of you, possibly sizzling or exuding a bluish mist and an acrid smell. The globe may be larger than a beach ball and dart through the air, perhaps hovering occasionally as if considering its next move. The ball may also roll or bounce along the ground, climb utility poles, and skitter along power lines. As it travels, the fiery sphere may destroy electrical equipment, ignite fires, and even singe animals or people.

After only 10 seconds or so, the apparition typically vanishes abruptly. Some balls flick out in silence, like a lamp turning off. Others burst with sharp bangs and fiery streamers. Despite half-a-millennium's worth of anecdotal reports and two centuries of scientific investigations, no one yet can say for sure just what ball lightning is. Lately, however, a small group of researchers has developed theories and reported experimental results that appear to explain some features of ball lightning that previous models couldn't account for. Most eyewitness reports point to ordinary lightning as the trigger, but other electric discharges have also been implicated.

What happens next depends on the theorist. These researchers agree that an aerosol, a suspension of fine particles in air, is present in the balls. The particles react chemically and interact electromagnetically. Some of the theorists, however, picture a radiant network of filaments'a 'fluff ball of fire,' as one scientist described it. Another contends that the aerosol is an acid mist and that it encloses a gaseous, hot core of reactive chemicals. In all the models, the aerosol's action is critical in explaining the litany of often astonishing eyewitness accounts.

Alternative to plasmas Documented sightings of ball lightning date back to the Middle Ages. A Russian databank includes about 10,000 reports from the past several decades. In recent years, as science failed to decipher the phenomenon, pseudoscientific explanations have abounded. Those include matter-antimatter annihilations, clumps of the exotic dark matter of the universe, and spontaneous bursts of nuclear fusion.

Ball lightning has ?a big kook following and a scientific following because it's one of the great unexplained mysteries,? says Martin A. Uman of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who has studied lightning for some 30 years.

Of the many scientific theories of ball lightning, most depict the phenomenon as some kind of plasma, or hot gas of electrons and positively charged atomic or molecular ions. That's a reasonable expectation since ball lightning generally has been reported to occur along with thunderstorms whose ordinary lightning bolts ionize the air, creating columns of plasma along their paths.

Nonetheless, pure-plasma models for ball lightning are plagued by difficulties. 'None of them works,' scowls Graham K. Hubler, a physicist and materials scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C. He saw ball lightning 42 years ago as a 16-year-old, and he has never forgotten the experience. 'You're just so startled you can't move,' he recalls of the moment a whitish-yellow ball about the size of a tennis ball suddenly appeared in front of him one night in a park in upstate New York.

One major challenge to the plasma explanation for ball lightning is that plasma always expands unless great pains are taken to confine it. Fusion researchers ?build enormous [reactors called] tokamaks to do that sort of thing'to contain a plasma for a second' within a magnetic field for nuclear fusion experiments, Hubler notes (SN: 3/18/00, p. 191). 'Hot plasma in air has two tendencies'to disappear and to go up,? says physical chemist David J. Turner of Condensation Physics in Huntingtown, Md., a retired electric utility researcher who became interested in ball lightning while studying the behavior of ions in steam. The oppositely charged particles that make up the plasma tend to rapidly recombine, quickly annihilating it. Moreover, the buoyancy of hot plasma in air, which would make a ball rise, doesn't jibe with ball lightning's hovering, rolling, and flying horizontally, Turner adds.

He suggests that one way out of the conundrum is to add features of an aerosol to a plasma theory of ball lightning.

An aerosol's additional material can form a structure, host long-lasting chemical reactions, store electric charges, and otherwise account for observed ball-lightning properties, Turner and others argue. Says Turner, 'I don't think you can explain all the properties [of ball lightning] without accepting that it's an aerosol-related phenomenon.'

Dirty secret The notion that aerosols may be a part of ball lightning goes back to at least the 1970s, but it's currently winning unprecedented attention.
BALL OF NANOTWINE' An electron microscope image of residue on a filter from vaporized soil shows filaments of nanoscale particles, such as those proposed in a ball lightning theory.

Some of the theories don't include a plasma after the original lightning strike. Two years ago, chemical engineers proposed a specific and plausible mechanism by which a lightning strike on soil could produce an aerosol type of ball lightning. John Abrahamson of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and James Dinniss, who's now at the household chemicals firm Lever Rexona in Petone, New Zealand, described their hypothesis in Nature and reported on experiments that seemed to

====
another article

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s520317.htm

Ball lightning explained
Thursday, 4 April 2002



(Pic: Copyright Ern Mainka Photography. Used with permission.)
A New Zealand scientist may have finally explained the mechanism behind the extraordinary phenomenon of ball lightning.

Associate Professor John Abrahamson, a chemical engineer at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, explains his theory in the April issue of Physics World Digest.

Ball lightning appears as a glowing, hovering ball of light that moves slowly near the ground before disappearing or exploding. The ball usually measures about 30 cm in diameter, although two park rangers in the Australian outback reported seeing one in 1987 that was 100 metres wide.

There are hundreds of theories about why ball lightning occurs, said Associate Professor Abrahamson — but according to his theory, there are several basic requirements.

The first is regular lightning. Second, the lightning must hit a structure such as a building, soil, or a tree. The struck object must have a metallic or an oxide component.

"Soil contains silicon oxide and carbon," Associate Professor Abrahamson explained. "The lightning reduces this to silicon metal, which is how we make silicon industrially."

The silicon vapour condenses to form silicon nanospheres, which collect together in long strings.

The third requirement is the presence of 'fulgerides' — long sausage-like holes in the soil full of hot vapour. These are created by lightning hitting the ground.


(Pic: Copyright Ern Mainka Photography. Used with permission.)
"The lightning strike on soil digs a hole in the ground, forming a very hot channel," said Associate Professor Abrahamson.

"Geologists have dug them up afterwards and found them to be made of frozen molten glass oxides, often in the form of tubes."

The silicon vapour is then ejected back out of the soil, forming a vortex ring — "like a smoker's puff" — which forms a sphere.

Once in this shape, the ball can move long distances, said Associate Professor Abrahamson.

"You have quite a robust structure, which continues to oxidise, and stays hot and visible," he explained.

The layer of oxide on the surface of each of the particles slows the process down, until eventually each particle runs out of metal. At this point the ball either fades away or explodes.

Ball lightning is not as dangerous as regular lightning, but it does carry very high levels of energy.

"People have been killed by ball lightning," Associate Professor Abrahamson warned.

"The metal in the high-energy balls will react with any water-containing substance, including flesh. If you touch ball lightning you could be severely burnt."

Understanding ball lightning is useful because its chemistry relates to that of ordinary lightning, he added.

"People haven't thought about the chemistry of ordinary lightning very much — this fills in that part of it."

A special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in January 2002, edited by Associate Professor Abrahamson, added to more than 10,000 scientific reports on the subject of ball lightning.


Danny Kingsley – ABC Science Online

 

[cantdog]

I stand with fifty5 on your lists, except in no case would I have said that the placebo effect is false.

But these are surface phenomena, out there in the fuckin open where any ass can lay a measuring stick to them. Most of them are yes-no things, hence easy grist to the mills of logic.

The ambiguity is the simultaneous daydreams and the rest of that. "I had a vivid dream, my father told me to do [whatever it is]. Sure enough, he had died, and if I hadn't done it, I'd be toast!"

I haven't seen these as mysterious since junior high. For me, anyone's belief about them tells me about the person who holds a belief about them.

I have "figured things out" intuitively, without intermediate steps that I was aware of, and "known" things I didn't have a clue how I knew them. I believe that my mind was using data I had filtered out or remembering things I had forgotten. The mind is certainly many-chambered. I can observe it, so "I" and "it" must necessarily be disconnected from one another somehow. The idea, then, that one factor of my brain may be acting without another factor's knowledge is no mystery.

Magoo-a-scene

I think it was Boy's Life that had this one, which Bobby Stover pulled on me. It gave me insight into prestidigitation and mentalist acts.

We were lazing around of a summer's day, as twelve- and thirteen-year-olds will do. I denied telepathy, citing experience (all twelve years of it! A lifetime!). He said he thought it could be done, and proposed an experiment.

"Ten-thirty tonight 'til eleven, you listen. I'll try to send a thought." So the pact was made. He lived next door and we both slept on the second floor.

Ten-thirty and I experienced my first difficulty shutting up the mind's incessant chatter to itself. The problem would recur when I tried to induce trance states later, to meditate, but this was my first brush with it. Eventually I restricted my attention to the complex grinding "tick" of the bedside alarm clock. With the pillow wrapped around my head I could still hear it, chuckling metallically over the passing of each second. My mind improvized ditties to the beat, but I could hold it to just that, and eventually the test period ended.

Despite my every attempt to damp the tendency to think about other things, I did hear nonsense syllables. They adapted to the clock song: scene scene magoo-a-scene, scene scene magoo-a-scene.

Obviously a failure.

So I reported the next day. But he said wait a minute.

"I didn't send real words," he told me. "We've been together every day in the summers for years, any thing I said could have been something you might have thought of. We do a lot of stuff together, see the same shows on TV. No, I sent nonsense syllables, so it'd be a real test!"

I allowed there had been nonsense syllables over the half hour in question.

"Ooh! Early or late in the half-hour?"

"Pretty late. I didn't get it dumbed down enough--"

"I didn't start sending until late!"
He pressed me for them, seeming excited, and eager to hear what they had been.

Reluctantly I coughed up. "It's really fucked up, but it was scene scene magoo-a-scene, scene scene magoo-a-scene, over and over."

"No machree-a-scene?"

"What?"

"I sent "magoo-a-scene, machree-a-scene. Many times."

You can see the steps in the deception, but it was a marvelous thing for Douggy, who heard the report and the discussion after the fact. He believed we'd done it.

cantdog

 

[amicus]

Interesting piece on Ball Lightning...thanks..

amicus

 

[fifty5]

[BThe are lots of interesting problems around 'rare events,' and I believe Poisson was the first to analyze deaths from horse kicks, in the army. [/B]

Thanks for mentioning Poisson: I was trying to remember that name, but didn't.

My point was that intuition - re stats & especially Poisson - isn't reliable; and that evolution makes that an expected situation. Further, that chaos theory shows how even simple situations can lead to unexpected (unpredictable) outcomes.

Take those with the evolutionary tendency to perceive patterns and it seems to me unremarkable that humankind (still) needs to hypothesise an ultimate being to explain what to most people seems inexplicable.

Your train crash is a great example. Humans want to be able to see a pattern. If there isn't one, they'll invent one: "God".

That train of 'reasoning' seems to me to explain a belief in God better than the actual existence of a real God explains it....

I may not be right, but applying Occam's razor, believing in the belief seems a simpler explanation than believing in God.

 

[fifty5]

I stand with fifty5 on your lists, except in no case would I have said that the placebo effect is false.

I didn't mean to say it was false, just that it was psychosomatic, rather than biochemical.

But these are surface phenomena, out there in the fuckin open where any ass can lay a measuring stick to them. Most of them are yes-no things, hence easy grist to the mills of logic.

The ambiguity is the simultaneous daydreams and the rest of that. "I had a vivid dream, my father told me to do [whatever it is]. Sure enough, he had died, and if I hadn't done it, I'd be toast!"

I haven't seen these as mysterious since junior high. For me, anyone's belief about them tells me about the person who holds a belief about them.

I have "figured things out" intuitively, without intermediate steps that I was aware of, and "known" things I didn't have a clue how I knew them. I believe that my mind was using data I had filtered out or remembering things I had forgotten. The mind is certainly many-chambered. I can observe it, so "I" and "it" must necessarily be disconnected from one another somehow. The idea, then, that one factor of my brain may be acting without another factor's knowledge is no mystery.

Magoo-a-scene

I think it was Boy's Life that had this one, which Bobby Stover pulled on me. It gave me insight into prestidigitation and mentalist acts.

We were lazing around of a summer's day, as twelve- and thirteen-year-olds will do. I denied telepathy, citing experience (all twelve years of it! A lifetime!). He said he thought it could be done, and proposed an experiment.

"Ten-thirty tonight 'til eleven, you listen. I'll try to send a thought." So the pact was made. He lived next door and we both slept on the second floor.

Ten-thirty and I experienced my first difficulty shutting up the mind's incessant chatter to itself. The problem would recur when I tried to induce trance states later, to meditate, but this was my first brush with it. Eventually I restricted my attention to the complex grinding "tick" of the bedside alarm clock. With the pillow wrapped around my head I could still hear it, chuckling metallically over the passing of each second. My mind improvized ditties to the beat, but I could hold it to just that, and eventually the test period ended.

Despite my every attempt to damp the tendency to think about other things, I did hear nonsense syllables. They adapted to the clock song: scene scene magoo-a-scene, scene scene magoo-a-scene.

Obviously a failure.

So I reported the next day. But he said wait a minute.

"I didn't send real words," he told me. "We've been together every day in the summers for years, any thing I said could have been something you might have thought of. We do a lot of stuff together, see the same shows on TV. No, I sent nonsense syllables, so it'd be a real test!"

I allowed there had been nonsense syllables over the half hour in question.

"Ooh! Early or late in the half-hour?"

"Pretty late. I didn't get it dumbed down enough--"

"I didn't start sending until late!"
He pressed me for them, seeming excited, and eager to hear what they had been.

Reluctantly I coughed up. "It's really fucked up, but it was scene scene magoo-a-scene, scene scene magoo-a-scene, over and over."

"No machree-a-scene?"

"What?"

"I sent "magoo-a-scene, machree-a-scene. Many times."

You can see the steps in the deception, but it was a marvelous thing for Douggy, who heard the report and the discussion after the fact. He believed we'd done it.

cantdog

Been there, done that - but for me it didn't work.

I'd guess that many young folk have tried it. As you imply, it isn't that surprising that there are a very few who can interpret the result as 'success'. The others simply don't get reported.

In this case, the "a-scene" is sufficiently close to geologic ages (eg oligocene) to be common experience, while the 'magoo'/'machree' element only scored 50%. That doesn't prove Douggy's interpretation wrong, but it does mean that it isn't conclusive.

 

[cantdog]

Oh but, it was an entire put-on. Bobby waited for me to report my nonsense syllables. He knew there'd be some! How could there help but be some damn thing in an entire half hour of spinning the wheels, mentally?

Once I had told him it was "Something about fig trees" he could have come up with a slight variant and claimed to have sent it. Since I said "No coherent words at all" he said he'd sent nonsense syllables and drew me out.

I gave him the syllables and he laid claim to them, with a variant. Because if you just claim, "Yes! That's exactly what I sent!!" then everyone knows you're lying. See how it works?

He probably just went to sleep, dude. The whole thing was a put-on, a technique. It was in Boy's Life, the boy scout or cub scout magazine. Bobby saw it in there and tried it on me.

I didn't wholly trust it, because I'd had the real experience. It didn't seem likely someone had sent anything at all. "Magoo-a-scene," it seemed to me, was merely a random flash in the mental pan. But Douggy watched the conversation and he was sold, man. He was so sure I must have actually caught a telepathic signal.

No, that's a prank, is what that is. Bobby showed me the column in the magazine which gave him the idea.

cantdog

 

[fifty5]

Not sure about this one, but...

How does an earthquake at Christmas (Boxing Day) affect this one? 23,000 dead on Christ's festival...

What a way to remember Him for so many Asiatics!

 

[cantdog]

If this was the thread with the coincidences and the synchronicities, then yes, I suppose it has a bearing. Let me weigh in on the side of "meaningless" insofar as the timing of the event.

On the other hand, thousands of people are going to act with extraordinary heroism. Nothing at all meaningless about that.

 

[cantdog]

developed atheism

We live in an unjust world. Writings about the God of the monotheists make it clear that the injustices are of man, not of God. To an atheist, this is not news.

Once you get off the fence, and give up agnosticism, you have to consider what life means with no God in it. In most Deist positions, the situation is the same. God is not going to step in and make it all better. Judgement is not His, after all. If any measures are ever taken against those who torture from mere politics, those who slaughter for mere economic advantage, the ones to take those measures will be us. People are responsible, other people must do any fixing that gets done.

because we are all people together in an unjust world, we can, equally, only count on one another. As an atheist, you have to come to grips with that in a complete and integrated way.

Therefore you support Amnesty international, Oxfam, Medecins sans frontieres-- because there is no God. Therefore you believe in hospitality and the commonalty of mankind-- because there is no God.

That is why the timing of the undersea quake is of no consequence, and it is also why the heroism, which results from it, people helping one another when their self-interest argues otherwise, is very important. It is what we are here for.

cantdog

 

[Pure]

Cant said, If any measures are ever taken against those who torture from mere politics, those who slaughter for mere economic advantage, the ones to take those measures will be us. People are responsible, other people must do any fixing that gets done.

because we are all people together in an unjust world, we can, equally, only count on one another. As an atheist, you have to come to grips with that in a complete and integrated way.

Therefore you support Amnesty international, Oxfam, Medecins sans frontieres-- because there is no God.

Sorry, I must have missed something there. Let's leave aside you personally (an individual, we'll assume, of exemplary character, innate compassion, and human disposition) -- who is certainly entitled to move from atheism to support of the SPCA as you are so inclined. What possible reason is there, in general terms to have one's atheism linked with support for Oxfam, as opposed say, to the Rosicrucians or the Russian mafia.

Also, I fail to follow this para:

Cant Once you get off the fence, and give up agnosticism, you have to consider what life means with no God in it. In most Deist positions, the situation is the same. God is not going to step in and make it all better.

You seem to imply that agnostics and deists may be less charitably inclined than the atheists. I.e., that atheists, with a better grasp of the big picture, are more likely to decide to do the decent thing. I do not see your reasoning at all.

Taking the deism that A. Flew, the former atheist philosopher, is considering now, it says that there may well be a 'first cause' and possibly a 'designer of the universe', but don't look to 'him' for any further assistance, intervention, etc. This is the deism of a T. Jefferson or Voltaire. Why wouldn't such a person be equally inclined to participate in human efforts to alleviate suffering? (For though he has a 'god', that god isn't doing anything lately, except contemplate his creation and shed a tear for the miserable SOBs therein.)

 

[cantdog]

Cant said, If any measures are ever taken against those who torture from mere politics, those who slaughter for mere economic advantage, the ones to take those measures will be us. People are responsible, other people must do any fixing that gets done.

because we are all people together in an unjust world, we can, equally, only count on one another. As an atheist, you have to come to grips with that in a complete and integrated way.

Therefore you support Amnesty international, Oxfam, Medecins sans frontieres-- because there is no God.

Sorry, I must have missed something there. Let's leave aside you personally (snip). What possible reason is there, in general terms to have one's atheism linked with support for Oxfam, as opposed say, to the Rosicrucians or the Russian mafia.

Also, I fail to follow this para:

Cant Once you get off the fence, and give up agnosticism, you have to consider what life means with no God in it. In most Deist positions, the situation is the same. God is not going to step in and make it all better.

You seem to imply that agnostics and deists may be less charitably inclined than the atheists. I.e., that atheists, with a better grasp of the big picture, are more likely to decide to do the decent thing. I do not see your reasoning at all.

Taking the deism that A. Flew, the former atheist philosopher, is considering now, it says that there may well be a 'first cause' and possibly a 'designer of the universe', but don't look to 'him' for any further assistance, intervention, etc. This is the deism of a T. Jefferson or Voltaire. Why wouldn't such a person be equally inclined to participate in human efforts to alleviate suffering? (For though he has a 'god', that god isn't doing anything lately, except contemplate his creation and shed a tear for the miserable SOBs therein.)

Yeah, tha's the Deism I had in mind. Flevian, Jeffersonian, Voltairean Deism, which holds that god, as I said expressly, won't be intervening. Atheists also have to realize that a non-existent god is also certainly not going to be intervening.

If God won't be intervening, then who will? I believe I covered that, too. It has to be us people. Or no one.

Logically, of course, as usual, there is nothing to prefer one course over the other. You can just as well ignore injustice as not, you can just as well fight it as not. Bringing logic to bear gets no one any further in a moral discussion, because logic is amoral. Logically, no one need do jack, whatever their beliefs.

My argument was not an exposition of the logical necessity of atheists to haul up their sleeves and set about intervening.

It was an exposition of the moral basis for doing so, the idea that it is, if anything, the more imperative once you realize that no super power is going to get you off the hook for it.

 

[cantdog]

Agnostics

I dunno.

Agnosticism may be the only honest position to take, and all that jive, since there is insufficient data. Fine. But the agnostics I have known have come to that point and let the entire issue of spirituality hang fire right along with the central question of the deity's existence.

The question, "Will God intervene?" a deist and an atheist can answer: "No."

An agnostic can answer it too, but he says, "I dunno." This somehow seems to me to have a tad less effect. It doesn't dump the problems of the world as squarely on humanity's shoulders, to me.

 

[cantdog]

My first post on this page was the one which set me ranting about mature atheism. Because the meaning of the life we lead has to be colored by the decision one comes to about a God, or the lack of one.

So I was sketching out what I see as the meaning of it. Not just sole responsibilty upon humanity's part for humanity's failings, but also in the smaller, more intimate realms of human contact on a daily basis. Hospitality, that kind of thing.

cantdog

 

[Pure]

Here's an angle. Depending on the theism being considered (e.g. Christian traditional), atheism might be logically necessary.
You cannot have an omnipotent god/God.

Proof:

Suppose there was such a God faced with the following:

Can he make a stone so heavy he couldn't lift it? or devise a problem so intricate he couldn't solve it?

If 'yes', then his omnipotence is limited in lifting or solving.

If 'no', then his omnipotence is limited in making and devising.

Since neither 'yes' nor 'no' can be given as answers, the supposition is false (or fundamentally flawed in formulation).

 

[cantdog]

I rather think the scholarly view within Christian thought currently is, God is not omnipotent, not in that absolute way. Only sufficiently powerful.

Doesn't affect me, though. Omnipotent or a ninety pound weakling getting sand kicked in his eyes at the beach. Phooey on all gods. Ever notice how, when described, all gods seem like cutout figures, essentially flat? Humans remain more interesting. Because they are as real as it gets, and a god is like a bad fictional character.

 

[Pure]

OK, Cant,

Too bad the majority aren't talking on this one, but let me ask you, pagan to pagan, Is there any tendency in the Universe which is 'pro life' (i.e, friendly to its arising and continuance). Obviously the Universe isn't entirely inimical to life, so we'll assume that it's not totally hostile to it. So, as I see it, the choice is 'mildly inimical' or 'neutral' or 'positive' (pro life).

It's a more species centered and egoistic question if the universe is friendly, in particular to human life, so we'll put that aside for the moment, unless you have a comment.

 

[mismused]

OK, Cant,

Too bad the majority aren't talking on this one, but let me ask you, pagan to pagan, Is there any tendency in the Universe which is 'pro life' (i.e, friendly to its arising and continuance). Obviously the Universe isn't entirely inimical to life, so we'll assume that it's not hostile to it. So, as I see it, the choice is 'neutral' or 'positive' (pro life).

=========================

A "tendency in the Universe which is 'pro life' (i.e, friendly to its arising and continuance)."

That seems to be a matter of the perspective one wants to take.

One writer says:

"Nature is neither good nor bad. Nor does nature care about individual life, or even whole civilizations. Life is simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and likewise death tends to be a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One may devote oneself to wondering whether this is a result of chance or predestination, but I don't see much value in the whole debate."

There are said to be about 400 billion suns in our galaxy, and at least as many galaxies in the visible universe. I'm not that good at math, but 400 B X 400 B seems like an awful lot of stars, and SETI hasn't yet found any life anywhere else. The stars are said to be greater in number than all the grains of sand on the beaches and deserts of the earth. Humbling stuff, that.

We, homo sapiens, are an unusual lot, but we've only been around for 40,000 years, maybe 50,000, while Earth is 4 and a half billion years old. One or the other seems to be true, then again, maybe its as the writer says, nature is neither good nor bad, and if so, possibly the universe is the same as nature.

Not to dodge the question, I can only say that I am mystified by it all, and remain a professional wondered, and am enthralled by it all.

mismused

 

[cantdog]

If, as seems likely, life is pretty easy to come by, given a good water soup and some energy input, then I suppose we must allow a chemical open door to its formation. A force in the universe is a large assumption, by contrast. I don't ascribe the open door to any such force.

That's personal on my part, but you did ask. I like the open-ended life in the Cambrian seas! So diverse! Whole phyla which have since lost out in the evolutionary struggle. An incredible variety.

And it does, as your question implies, depend upon so much serendipity, if you want to look at it that way. Beginning with the gravitational constant which allows an expanding universe which is yet dense enough for population II stars to form, continuing through the ideal temp range for water oceans, and the benign moon, the double planet thing.

But for me, it doesn't look so much like serendipity. I see the immense number of possible planetary and stellar configurations. Maybe it is a rare thing after all. But we, of course, are on a "fortunate" planet in a "fortunate" place, in a "fortunate' sort of universe. We could hardly be otherwise and still be here, if you get me.

How biased the cosmos is toward life depends on how rare our situation is. Whatever the answer to that question may be, it still doesn't imply a force in the universe, much less a benign Providence or any intention in the process.

That's the short answer.

cantdog

 

[amicus]

And a good answer, no presumptions all within the bounds of reason and knowledge. Happy New Years!


amicus

 

[cantdog]

Thanks, amicus. Have a better one! A New Year. They are coming faster all the time.

 

[Pure]

Cant,
Personally, I'm drawn to self-organization theory as regards these 'life' questions: the work of Stanley Kauffman, Haken and Eigen, to take a couple.

For those unfamiliar, here's a url from which I've taken a brief intro:

Principia Cybernetica website.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/COMPNATS.html

Self-organization and complexity in the natural sciences


An important strand of work leading to the analysis of complex evolution is thermodynamics. Ilya Prigogine received the Nobel prize for his work, in collaboration with other members of the "Brussels School", showing that physical and chemical systems far from thermodynamical equilibrium tend to self-organize by exporting entropy and thus to form dissipative structures. Both his philosophical musings (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984) about the new world view implied by self-organization and irreversible change, and his scientific work (Nicolis & Prigogine, 1977, 1989; Prigogine, 1980) on bifurcations and order through fluctuations remain classics, cited in the most diverse contexts. Inspired by Prigogine's theories, Erich Jantsch has made an ambitious attempt to synthesize everything that was known at the time (1979) about self-organizing processes, from the Big Bang to the evolution of society, into an encompassing world view.

The physicist Hermann Haken (1978) has suggested the label of synergetics for the field that studies the collective patterns emerging from many interacting components, as they are found in chemical reactions, crystal formations or lasers. Another Nobel laureate, Manfred Eigen (1992), has focused on the origin of life**, the domain where chemical self-organization and biological evolution meet. He has introduced the concepts of hypercycle, an autocatalytic cycle of chemical reactions containing other cycles, and of quasispecies, the fuzzy distribution of genotypes characterizing a population of quickly mutating organisms or
molecules (1979).
-----


** see, on life origins, also

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ORILIFE.html

----
FAQ on self organizing systems:

http://www.calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm

There is also a nice paper on self organizing systems (in pdf format)

"The Science of Self Organization and Adaptivity," by F. Heylighen, at

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/EOLSS-Self-Organiz.pdf

 

[cantdog]

Well, this thread will languish a bit, now. This will take a moment. Catch you Tuesday or so.

 

[mismused]

Cant,
Personally, I'm drawn to self-organization theory as regards these 'life' questions: the work of Stanley Kauffman, Haken and Eigen, to take a couple.


=======================

Pure,

Just wondered if you made one of those strange typos. You say: Stanley Kauffman. Did you mean to write: Stuart Kauffman?