Is abiogenesis still going on, grandma asked

Luminon
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Is abiogenesis still going on, grandma asked

I had a talk with my grandma. She recommends faith and prayer whenever she can, but provides no details. So this time I got some details out of her, I wasn't even sure if she has any opinions on the origin of Earth and life at all. When I asked local young believers about such questions, they didn't know or gave different answers each. So I expected my grandma to do the same.

It turned out, that she is a young earth creationist. Earth was created about 6000 years ago. Humans can not be older race than that, because they would be still animals, a few thousand years earlier. 

Science with all its geology and archeology is wrong and ignorant, because it is evil and dangerous, because look at what Chernobyl and Fukushima power-plants did. (besides providing light, electricity and warmth to millions of people) 

Evolution does not work because it couldn't all happen by chance. I pointed out that evolution does not work only by chance, but that it saves favorable results for later and builds upon them. So grandma retreated to abiogenesis. I said that there are many theories of abiogenesis, like in shallow lagoons or undersea volcanic vents. And that abiogenesis is a separate problem to evolution. And that scientists succeeded in simulated spontaneous appearing of basic building blocks of life.

I chose to not start explaining the amino-acids, self-replicating molecules, RNA and DNA. So grandma asked me, if abiogenesis is still going on regardless of life that is already here. If abiogenesis is real and not the magical god fairy, why don't we discover freshly abiogenerated bacteria in the sea?

Well, I don't know about that one. What do you guys think?

Of course, I was careful to preserve my grandma's faith, I didn't attack it. She really needs her faith for comfort in old age and I will not take it away from her.

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Ah, Blake talked a little

Ah, Blake talked a little about this.

For one thing, "freshly" "abiogenerated" complex, multicellular organisms are never going to appear within a few thousand years. Based on the evidence that we have, it seems that it took well over a billion years just for eukaryotes to evolve. So, IF we discovered something that was unambiguously new life, it should be at least many millions of years old. It just takes too long; we're not going to be able to observe the process in real time just like we're not going to observe a lizard change into a bird in real time. Plus, it would be an extremely small, local population, so we'd have to get pretty lucky for scientists to just happen to sample that little group of newly "abiogenerated" organisms.

Ultimately, it's doubtful that this would happen since once life has already filled this planet, it becomes quite a tough neighborhood. Anything new that tries to evolve will almost certainly get gobbled up before it makes much progress.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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Also add to what Butter said

Also add to what Butter said the facts that our atmosphere is entirely different from what is was at the beginning of life and that nowadays there is life to eat the almost-life, so it won't be detectable, since it will be eaten immediately.


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Thunderios wrote:Also add to

Thunderios wrote:

Also add to what Butter said the facts that our atmosphere is entirely different from what is was at the beginning of life and that nowadays there is life to eat the almost-life, so it won't be detectable, since it will be eaten immediately.

Thank you both for the answers. I'll remember that, these are very sound arguments. Now I just need a theist who feels like arguing... 

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Luminon wrote:If abiogenesis

Luminon wrote:

If abiogenesis is real and not the magical god fairy, why don't we discover freshly abiogenerated bacteria in the sea?

1- Does she think there is none to be found?

2- Not all life forms needed to be 'split' from the 1st batch (sic)

3- The natural conditions here on earth are possibly limiting factors in how many permutations of biological life there could possibly be here, that may allow for different variations on other planets in other solar systems.

4- There could be potentials here on earth that exist, but in such low numbers, that just haven't naturally had the opportunity to crystalize into complex chemical structures yet.

 

Scientists and chemists are doing things with polymers today, that were not thought possible just 5 yrs ago. Some developments emerge by 'accident' (unplanned).

Nanotechnologies is a fairly new discipline that should further develop and possibly revolutionize many of the current science and technologies.

Most average people are not exposed to the cutting edge discoveries and developments, because the literature and periodicals are simply not distributed to the masses, or through public channels, but to specific industries, that your Grandma doesn't even know exist.

Luminon wrote:
Well, I don't know about that one. What do you guys think?

I think you're more than intelligent enough to be able to build models in your mind, with a little imagination, and access to some more information.

The internet has enough places to find that information, that would make you drunk with ideas and possibilities to fantasize about.

 

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks

" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris


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redneF wrote: I think

redneF wrote:
 I think you're more than intelligent enough to be able to build models in your mind, with a little imagination, and access to some more information.

The internet has enough places to find that information, that would make you drunk with ideas and possibilities to fantasize about.

You don't have to tell me, esotericism shows possibilities that would open you vistas of meaning never thought of before... Smiling But the diffcult thing is to give some ready and extremely simple answer face to face with a believer. Believers probably explain every hesitation as ignorance. When I think where to start with explaining their mistake, in geology or biology, they surely think I don't know shit and make up the answer. When it's about a family member, that answer must be very diplomatic on top of that. That's quite unnerving. I don't know if I can afford to say "you don't know shit about science."

Would you believe, today my grandma told me about a trial on court in Strassbourg that believers won. It was about allowing to put a cross into classrooms. I had no idea why. Apparently, it is necessary to let God know that we take all knowledge from him, by nailing the cross on every wall in the school. WTF? That let me speechless, I found out a suitable answer only much later. 
Well, that's where I am, exploring my grandma's unbelievable belief system. My estimate is, that by disclosing me her cherished details of religious belief is an act of trust and I must be careful to not show much of doubt. It's obvious she'd take it personally. 

The goal is to invent some mutually interesting topic of chitchat, because I'm really bad at talking about cooking and old (sometimes dying) neighbours whom I don't really know. Religious beliefs are much better, it's a risky and deep topic, but I'd welcome the challenge. In case of eventual total success I could assert my position without attacking her position, that would be great. 

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Luminon wrote: When it's

Luminon wrote:

 When it's about a family member, that answer must be very diplomatic on top of that. That's quite unnerving. I don't know if I can afford to say "you don't know shit about science."

.... In case of eventual total success I could assert my position without attacking her position, that would be great. 

I gave you 4 points that do not 'attack' her ignorance.

She merely has to contemplate them.

If she arbitrarily dismisses them, then she is certifiably illogical and irrational.

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks

" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris


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 Luminon wrote:The goal is

 

Luminon wrote:
The goal is to invent some mutually interesting topic of chitchat, because I'm really bad at talking about cooking and old (sometimes dying) neighbours whom I don't really know. Religious beliefs are much better, it's a risky and deep topic, but I'd welcome the challenge. In case of eventual total success I could assert my position without attacking her position, that would be great.

 

So the goal is really to open up some way of relating to her. That is great. In fact, that should come well ahead of trying to introducing here to the wild world of atheism. In fact, I almost see no point in trying to rip the preconceptions out from under an old woman.

 

She is your gramma and in no small part, your connection to the past from which you came. I would make a case that it is primally important to get the conversation going and see what comes of that. I would not want to worry about getting into religion so much as finding out what it means to be the person whom you are (as relates to whom your forebears have been).

 

As an example, my grandmother was hugely into classical music. As a your teen, I remember that she felt that “my music” was all about men with women's hair saying “yeah, yeah yeah” over and over. However, growing up with classical music as I did, once I started to become more sophisticated in my tastes, I was able to show her many examples of rock music which were inspired by classical music. That really helped me to get a feeling for who she was and I think that it hepled her to understand that I was not “just into bad music” so much as into music that came from the music that she liked.

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Theist with whom to argue...

 

Belief in evolution and even the possibility of abiogenesis does not demand their acceptance as a substitute for God. Only a narrow, fundamentalist, anthropomorphic idea of “god” is incompatible with evolutionary science. We can view the rejection of this fundamentalist “god” by atheistic scientists as valid, while refusing to grant validity to an outright rejection of a Supreme and Conscious Intelligence operating at the cosmically comprehensive level Whom some of us deem to call God.

Such a rejection merely because God is not accessible to local, special-case sensory perception and conception, simply because those who reject  have never caught “god” hiding behind a tree, is just the secular equivalent of their religious counterparts who expect to literally “walk with God” someday in a thus far undisclosed location somewhere in space called Heaven. The following points elaborate this perspective:

1.       Scientific method attempts to optimize the reliability of our communications with natural structure, ideally in the service of understanding its function and engineering life-supporting technology and a consequently more efficient and comfortable existence.

2.       Scientific method is structured as rational inference from empirical evidence using a social noise reduction system that employs noise filtering (experimental design) and replicability (communications redundancy) in its attempts to optimize reliability.

3.       Empirical epistemology historically respects replicable sensory experience and its technological extensions as the ultimate arbiters of reliability along with rational inference and advanced mathematical tools to evolve practical, applicable intellectual models of natural structure.

4.       The most fundamental premises undergirding any model of natural structure are empirically derived and constitute the axioms of the rational system that defines the model.

5.       Earlier, classical models have turned out to be local, special-case versions of evermore comprehensive, general-case models (e.g., Newtonian mechanics vs. Einstein’s General Relativity).

6.       The more comprehensive, general-case models ironically contain within them the previous, locally applicable models as special cases while finding their roots in axioms that contradict those of the special-case models.

7.       This clearly implies that premises based on local sensory experience can be locally serviceable while comprehensively untenable.

8.       Our modern, increasingly comprehensive and general-case models have shown themselves to have enormously practical technological power while simultaneously becoming increasingly counterintuitive to our local, special-case sensory perception and conception that form the roots of classical models.

9.       The obvious implication is that sensory experience is intrinsically local and special-case and so is not comprehensively valid in terms of its utility in assessing the fundamental nature of existence.

10.  The ultimate character of natural structure is therefore unavailable via local, special-case sensory perception and conception, especially when we consider that these senses evolved in different and relatively arbitrary ways in different living species.

11.   Axioms are in principle unprovable while remaining the basis, the essential roots, of the rational systems they imply.

12.   Since scientific method places replicable empirical experience at the axiomatic root of its theoretical models and uses reason as the means to assess the practical implications regarding relationships among the elements of natural structure and their conceptual unification, in science the conscious experience we call observation is primary and reason, vital but secondary, a tool evolved for dealing more appropriately and practically with experience.

13.   Truly ultimate questions are by definition axiomatic and so unprovable.

14.   Empirical epistemology, rather than implying that the impossibility of proof for axioms somehow means they are inaccessible to experience, clearly implies quite the opposite, so an absence in principle of proof is no implication that ultimate questions are inaccessible to experience.

15.   Lawfulness in natural structure is both easily confirmed by experience, is rationally an assumption based on that experience, and forms the axiomatic basis of all scientific endeavor.

16.   Information theory rightly fails to make any distinction between lawfulness and intelligence, since such a distinction is an arbitrary, meta-scientific assumption and Occam’s razor demands elimination as theoretically uneconomical any conceptual appendage we cannot in principle demonstrate to have any explanatory value.

17.   An intelligence/lawfulness dualism is merely an apparently secular corollary of the Cartesian spirit/matter dualism, never mind what criteria we might employ to categorize either as secular or not.

18.   A subjective/objective dualism is simply another corollary of Cartesian dualism, since we cannot in principle acquire any knowledge that is somehow other than conscious experience and since objectivity is simply a label with which we certify some aspects of conscious experience as consistent and reliable.

19.   The evolution of theoretical modeling in physics has moved toward an increasingly disappearing distinction between natural law and what it governs, a distinction that has indeed already virtually disappeared, so our understanding of natural law is apparently evolving toward a limit-case, lawful abstraction that interacts comprehensively, exclusively, and recursively with itself.

20.   Even in less abstract, classical terms, the recursive nature of evolution at the cosmic level is self-evident, since natural structure uniquely determines the flow of energy throughout itself, which in turn modifies its structure.

21.   More briefly, at the level of cosmically comprehensive, limit-case generality, abstract natural law interacts exclusively and recursively with itself to generate all locally perceptible phenomena.

22.   If we use Occam’s razor to slice away the dualistic intelligence/lawfulness corollary, intelligence interacts self-referentially to generate all local, special-case phenomena and their resulting appearance with regard to our locally specific modes of perception and conception.

23.   The limit-case abstraction of recursively interacting natural law at the cosmic level viewed as self-referent intelligence is a compelling definition for a Cosmic Antecedent to our own, locally reflected self-awareness; we become small, local points within a holographic universe who consequently reflect the essential nature of the whole.

24.   Together with our current knowledge of cosmic evolution, this implies that nature is so structured that it produces evolutionary pressure everywhere to evolve locally subsystems within itself that increasingly reflect its comprehensively essential, axiomatic nature until it evolves creatures that experience this locally as self-awareness, a consciousness that intuitively looks back and wonders about its source...another wondrously specific example of the recursive nature of cosmic evolution.

25.   This is the scientific equivalent of the scriptural statement that we are made in the image of God.

26.   The profound inner silence cultivated by multiple cultures at vastly different times and its resulting practical implications have been called the perennial philosophy, which represents an individual social noise reduction system in contrast with that represented in the collective character of scientific method, and so reflects the enduring nature of the most truly ultimate and intimate empirical experience of abstract individual consciousness, inaccessible to sensory perceptions while axiomatically essential to them…a local reflection of its Cosmic Antecedent, Whose existence is no less provable in experiential, empirical terms than our own awareness.

27.   This has been metaphorically stated by the most highly positive cognitive outliers throughout the ages: in the eastern world  as “many ponds, one moon”, in the Zen Bhuddist world as “knowledge by Being”, in the Abrahamic religions as “Be still and know that I am God”, and in the Vedic tradition of India as “Curving back on myself, I create again and again.”

 


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Small but important correction:

 In point 26, "...individual social noise reduction system in contrast with..." should be corrected to read "...individual noise reduction system in contrast with..." So the full point should read as follows:

26. The profound inner silence cultivated by multiple cultures at vastly different times and its resulting practical implications have been called the perennial philosophy, which represents an individual noise reduction system in contrast with that represented in the collective character of scientific method, and so reflects the enduring nature of the most truly ultimate and intimate empirical experience of abstract individual consciousness, inaccessible to sensory perceptions while axiomatically essential to them…a local reflection of its Cosmic Antecedent, Whose existence is no less provable in experiential, empirical terms than our own awareness.


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A lot of words, but not much

A lot of words, but not much was said...

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robert_13: You basically

robert_13: You basically repeated what I already know, only in hell of an unreadable language. I am already a student of the perennial wisdom, as some people call it. However, much of the knowledge thereby imparted is of no practical consequence, it serves mainly to provide training for the mind and intuition and for general insight. What really pushes us forward is the practical application of knowledge and translation of ancient philosophy into modern discoveries. When properly equipped with intuition, a student of ancient wisdom does not need to explore tediously every blind alley, but quickly take the shortest way to facts. 

But nonetheless, you summed up the nature of limitations of science pretty neatly. That's it, the scientific method is basically eliminating the "noise" to get repeatable phenomena under control. This makes us think of reality as repeatable and predictable, often solid and visible. Which may not be the case at all, with the majority of it.

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Good Question

I don't see any reason why the process of abiogenesis couldn't be ongoing, however, any new organism would enter an environment already full of organisms that have evolved to fill the niche. I think we'd have to call them 'fast food'...

 

LC >;-}>

 

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As I've said elsewhere, I've

As I've said elsewhere, I've no doubt abiogenesis is constantly occuring anywhere it can. It's even been recently discovered that the Earth wasn't all that different when life began than it is now.
But where do you draw the line between a chemical reaction and life?
Also, being food is potentially only one barrier to new life on Earth. Another would be a lack of niche for new life to fill.

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Empirical data from

Empirical data from observation and experiment is NOT limited by how accurately our senses convey reality to us, since now that data, especially where more detail and accuracy is required as our investigations proceed, is mostly gathered by instruments, so our raw senses only need to be acute enough to read dial positions and words and numbers in digital displays. The same skills required to read holy books. so any argument based on the limitations of our senses is void.

Whereas anything based on purely mental experiences is limited by our very fallible minds, so could only ever be subjective, still requiring verification by empirical observation and testing.

Since the God Hypothesis has no empirical evidence going for it, at least nothing pointing specifically to attributes only identifiable with a 'God', AND there is no fundamental mystery that can only be 'explained' by such a hypothesis, "God" has no standing in the serious pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

 

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Vastet wrote:As I've said

Vastet wrote:
As I've said elsewhere, I've no doubt abiogenesis is constantly occuring anywhere it can. It's even been recently discovered that the Earth wasn't all that different when life began than it is now. But where do you draw the line between a chemical reaction and life? Also, being food is potentially only one barrier to new life on Earth. Another would be a lack of niche for new life to fill.
I think Richard Dawkins thought of basic life as a self-replicating molecule, a mould that produces moulds from raw elements around. Alternatively, a mould type A which produces only moulds type B, which in return produce only moulds type A. Plus, there must be enough complexity to cause errors in the copies. Looks like the difference between chemical reaction and life is the ability of mistakes. For example, hemoglobin is an extremely complex molecule, but all the hemoglobins in the world are the same. Hemoglobin is a stable molecule, which has also no means to replicate on its own. So a "living" molecule might be actually a simplier one, if it only could do what necessary.

From that point of view, a virus is not alive at all, it only comes alive through parasiting on a cell. But it will never evolve into an independent life form. 

But yeah, probably everything that can come out of abiogenesis today will be quickly devoured by hungry bacteria long before it can even evolve a cell membrane.

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French poetry...

If you don't understand French, French poetry sounds like a lot of meaningless words. If you lack any basis in experience for understanding the science behind my words OR your own POTENTIAL for inner silence, then my words will naturally fall on deaf ears. Do you even know what special-case and general-case means? Do you understand that a model can be a special case of a more general-case model while the  premises at the roots of both rational systems contradict each other? That's a very significant point in itself, with extremely global and powerful implications.

If you don't get that, you don't get much. What I find in most "scientific" atheists is they have only a technical knowledge of science without any genuine depth and a very fragmented view of existence with little understanding if any of conceptual unification. That's why their scientific understanding, no matter how sophisticated, is so shallow and their thinking so fundamentally fragmented. They plug up a logical hole in their conceptual dike here and fail to realize they just pulled the other thumb out of its hole. They consequently cannot think comprehensively enough to understand that the whole field of modern theoretical (non-classical) physics with its enormously productive conceptual output in terms of enabling practical, technological advancement is predicated on the premise that nature is literally and fundamentally unified. Merological reductionism assumes the opposite: that the universe is fundamentally fragmented at the quantum level. I suppose the exquisitely coordinated microcosmic probabilities that result in statistically coherent macroscopic phenomena is the result of some kind of magical thinking on their part, which they then project onto others.


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Too bad the language seems so obscure...

 I used scientific and philosophical language that are trivial in their fields and considered to be accessible to scientifically literate laypeople. Sorry if you find it difficult to understand.


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False assumptions...
I used scientific and philosophical language that are trivial in their 
fields and considered to be accessible to scientifically literate 
laypeople. Sorry if you find it difficult to understand.

Allow me to use language any lay person can understand, when you pop onto a thread, and insult the people on it even though none of them have responded to you... you sir, are a douche.

 

LC >;-}>

 

Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.


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No practical implications...?

 "I am already a student of the perennial wisdom, as some people call it. However, much of the knowledge thereby imparted is of no practical consequence, it serves mainly to provide training for the mind and intuition and for general insight." - Luminon

The knowledge imparted by the genuine perennial wisdom to which I refer is not intellectual in nature. It is the most ultimately and intimately empirical experience it is in principle possible to have. It is the only experience that is fully global, abstract, non-specific and that is NOT therefore merely a local, special-case perceptual construct. It is consequently intrinsically self-validating.

It only requires that the mind, cultured by natural, simple, spontaneously self-directing means, remain utterly silent while fully alert so that consciousness is left alone, in a pure state absent any conceptual or perceptual content. It is the simplest possible state of awareness and represents completely noise-free mental function that correlates with cerebral coherence. It is a coherence phenomenon. Only under this condition can locally reflected consciousness in a human being recognize its fundamental unity with its Source, with its Cosmically Comprehensive Counterpart.

The ancient Zen masters admonished not to seek it outside ourselves, since this would be like a fish looking for water. Some of the fish here don't even know about the existence of consciousness as anything independent of the objects of their awareness, so naturally they're not  looking for it either inside or outside themselves. They mistake the general-case screen for the specific, special-case movies projected on it. They dedicate themselves with religious fervor to a belief system that has as a fundamental tenet that the screen doesn't exist.  

They therefore impute the apparent nature of local, special-case experience of objects to the nature of the screen. This has tremendously impractical implications for everyone as we can witness every day all around us. This includes religious fundamentalists of course, most of whom have no better depth of understanding than anyone else and often worse. They raise people, things, and events to the status of fundamentals while they ignore true fundamentals like the Golden Rule and kill each other over disagreements about their fake fundamentals. (But don't blame this on a belief in God, since they're nowhere close to any genuine understanding of God and politicians use the differences in belief systems to enlist the ignorant suckers into their power struggles).

It is, on the other hand, of utmost practicality to function from the deep level of noise-free awareness that true understanding cultivates and eventually embeds permanently in our practical lives so that we don't lose this marvelous signal-to-noise ratio in cognitive function even while engaged in dynamic, practical activity. It is important to note that the analysis in my first post is not the point of departure for my perspective. All the analysis has arisen on the basis of the clarity of consciousness and resulting spontaneous insights in a technically oriented mind. The intellectual insights are products of experience and not the reverse. 


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Perhaps a bit insensitive...

 ...but not intended to insult anyone. I do not consider any language I used to be so arcane as to be unintelligible to scientifically and mathematically literate laypeople. I therefore wonder why you do not consider it an insult of roughly the same order to have called my language so difficult. I also wonder why you assume no one has responded when the very "insult" you impute to me was a response to someone who responded that my language was very difficult.


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Perhaps you missed something?

 "Empirical data from observation and experiment is NOT limited by how accurately our senses convey reality to us, since now that data, especially where more detail and accuracy is required as our investigations proceed, is mostly gathered by instruments, so our raw senses only need to be acute enough to read dial positions and words and numbers in digital displays." - BobSpence

 

Did you fail to notice that the mention of the special-case limitations of sensory perception and conception included their technological extensions? General-case models neither have their origin in any specific special-case sense perceptions NOR their technological extensions, since their generality is fully dependent on comprehensive conceptual unification of widely diverse observations of every kind, technological extensions included, and all of which are in some way local and special-case without theoretical models to unify them. An exclusive reductionism ignores the contextual matrix in consciousness that relates data points to form hypotheses, test them, and then construct models on the basis of the winners. It also violates conservation law at at an extremely fundamental level, since it assumes the appearance of locally obvious conscious intelligence without any antecedent anywhere within natural structure as well as an arbitrary and rationally indefensible distinction between intelligence and lawfulness. Please note that I'm NOT saying that either implies the other, but rather that they are two names for a single reality.

It also arbitrarily pretends that the vast hierarchy from cosmic unity to a single quantum event manifests conscious intelligence exclusively at its most easily observable range for humans at their own scale. It irrationally assumes that reality is strictly physical while consciousness is somehow distinct yet explainable in physical terms in some future. Again, it assumes that before evolution was sufficient to manifest it locally, it had no more global antecedent.

Merological reductionism assumes consciousness is an emergent property, but emergent properties are an illusion. The concept of emergent properties can be locally meanignful but is invalid as a global absolute. If nature is indeed fundamentally unified, as the whole process of theoretical modeling has rightfully and very successfully assumed from the outset, apparent emergent properties arise from ceasing to ignore functional contexts that were previously ignored in more local assessments. Worse, while typically assuming that consciousness is an emergent property, this brand of reductionism violates the requirement that assumptions that are not fundamental to a rational system and therefore have no status as axioms are disallowed in any valid system.

Such belief systems create insoluble difficulties with this kind of dualism. I assume no dualism, but that consciousness is merely an axiomatic property of existence at the most fundamental level and consequently transcendental to it as any axiom is to any rational system while remaining empirically accessible as our own local reflection of it in consciousness. This strips away the insoluble problems arising from any assumption of dualism and avoids the need for patchwork assumptions that should rightfully bloody Occam's razor. It is vastly more rational, elegant, and theoretically economical than the contrary assumption. It doesn't assume anything supernatural.

It demands no separation of God from the cosmos. It does not assume there is a god who created anything in some distant past moment. Instead, it assumes a God Who transcends space and time and space-time. The most general-case theoretical models that currently exist point strongly in this direction except in the minds of of many of those responsible for these theories while remaining blinded to their implications by their secular fundamentalism. Most physicists do not believe time, space, or space-time are fundamental. Experimental evidence involving relativistic manipulation of space-time with entangled particles indicates that entanglement is a phenomenon that originates at a level deeper than space-time. So maybe its just coincidence this and the moves toward a "theory of everything" are converging on ideas that transcend space-time...ideas such as omnipresent, eternal (translate that timeless), omnipotent, and omniscient.

I would appreciate it if those who respond to my original post here and its addenda in subsequent posts would read all of it and seriously attempt to understand my position, which is not to require any agreement whatsoever. I also request that any responses not pick at any specific points without considering their context within all the other points. The mindset of fundamentalists, whether religious or their secular counterparts in atheists who don't believe in "god" because they've never caught him hiding behind a tree, tends toward a fragmented view. These pick apart trees and ignore the forest. I'm requesting that you respond in terms of a comprehensive consideration of all the points. They are mutually interlocked in terms of their full significance. The pinpoint, context-free responses I've seen here so far are useless. I've participated in threads on the current theme and others that were full of people who can't spell, punctuate or think their way out of a bear's restroom. I'm hoping for something better here. That means, please don't just restate your own position. If you disagree with mine, point out specific flaws in my reasoning with responses that don't ignore the context of the point to which you're responding. Thank you!


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And an idiot if you think

And an idiot if you think you said anything intelligent. More like a plethora of fallacy featuring strawmen, ad hominem, and a few others.

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Louis_Cypher wrote:I don't

Louis_Cypher wrote:

I don't see any reason why the process of abiogenesis couldn't be ongoing, however, any new organism would enter an environment already full of organisms that have evolved to fill the niche. I think we'd have to call them 'fast food'...

That or "nutrients".

Remember that the earliest life forms were simply self-replicating strings of molecules.  And those molecules, as the precursors to life, would be used as the precursors to very basic life forms.

We do the same thing today with "nutritional supplements".

Life evolved, other than because G-d rigged the game so life =would= evolve (you knew I had to sneak G-d in there somewhere!) because there was nothing =higher= than whatever was the most evolved life form.  Whatever string of molecules was able to suck up some more basic string of molecules became the "apex predator" of its era or region.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."


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Vastet wrote:And an idiot if

Vastet wrote:
And an idiot if you think you said anything intelligent. More like a plethora of fallacy featuring strawmen, ad hominem, and a few others.

Uh, actually not.

There is more to the Universe than "science".  There are things which cannot be proven through Science.  There are things which cannot even be =known= through Science.

Consider this -- you can't even prove anything outside your head exists.  "I think therefore I am" is NOT a proof of your existence, it isn't even (contrary to Descartes) proof that you think.  It is a fallacy -- you think you think.  You could just as easily be a part of someones imagination, imagining you and your thought processes.

This is the danger of worshiping Science as a religion -- you are led through the process of examining the physical Universe into the fallacy of thinking that you are actually =examining= the =physical= universe.  Your senses are not the things they sense.  Your senses are electrical signals, at best.  At worst, they are the imagination of someone else =thinking= about your senses.

The ultimate irony is that not only can Science not prove G-d exists, Science can't prove you exist.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."


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No. That there is more to

No.
That there is more to the universe than science is self evident. Science is merely a tool we use to understand the universe.
But assuming reality is not as it appears requires evidence, otherwise you're just writing fiction. I may not be able to prove with 100% certainty that I or even anything exists, but assuming I don't is a one way ticket to a self fulfilling prophecy, accomplishes nothing, provides no new information, and is an example of the highest order of philosophical irrelevancy. Whether you agree with Descartes or not.

I will also have infinitely more success proving I exist than anyone would in proving I don't.

Science still works when you don't believe in it. Religion doesn't. That alone invalidates every religion to ever exist, and gives science the backing of accuracy that no other method of discovery has ever achieved.

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Welcome to the forum,

Welcome to the forum, robert_13.

Concerning the difficulty in understanding your posts, I don't think it is your generous usage of scientific and philosophical terms as much as your style and amount of writing itself. People on the Internet do not have that much patience. Many individuals, if they sense that you disagree with them and used three compound words where one imprecise word was probably sufficient, will reject your position automatically. Their lack of understanding does not even faze them; actually, that becomes an argument in their favor e.g. 'your position is flawed, so you must use flowery language profusely to hide every fallacy from being spotted.' 

I'm not saying you are 'in the wrong' or that every respondent did not understand though. 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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Vastet wrote:No. That there

Vastet wrote:
No. That there is more to the universe than science is self evident. Science is merely a tool we use to understand the universe. But assuming reality is not as it appears requires evidence, otherwise you're just writing fiction.  

 

I don't have to assume the universe is not as it appears. I only stated that sense perception and its technological extensions (telescopes of every kind, microscopes, particle accelerators, spectral tools, digital signal processing, etc.) are intrinsically local and special-case and therefore do not represent the fundamental nature of existence. The latest experiments involving relativistic manipulation of entangled particles are indicating that their correlation has its source at a level deeper than space-time, yet we don't even understand the nature of space or time yet. Einstein's theories have revealed they are intimately related and vector into each other in 4-dimensional space-time. So we now understand something about HOW they're related, but nothing about why, not to mention what they are. It is universally recognized that neither has any absolute scale, since they are only measurable in terms of themselves, which is, to put it somewhat crudely, that if we could somehow shrink or enlarge them, it would have no physical consequences, would make no difference in now the universe works. So in a sense, we have dimensionless dimensions.

Time is something that never exists except as a single point along what we nevertheless ironically conceive as a continuum, which seems to be a starkly apparent contradiction. So you believe in time? You must be kidding! Oh, but you EXPERIENCE IT, and our assumptions about it work consistently, at least locally, but not in any comprehensive model, like relativity. The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the speed of light c is not additive, but requires the Lorentz transformation at any relative velocities between observer and observed that are more than an insignificantly small fraction of c. The experimental result was a great mystery as a special-case observation because it was completely removed from our "common-sense" Newtonian world moving at speeds that are insignificant fractions of c. It took Einstein to tie the two worlds together in a unified model. 

I don't think you get that I am not spouting personal viewpoints when I cite things like this. The implications of these things I develop logically from them, but the underlying premises are not mine nor are they assumptions. They are widely recognized principles of physics and mathematics. You apparently have no understanding of this kind of science. I don't know what your field is, but biologists typically don't. They work in a word that is still Newtonian and remain without a clue about the counterintuitive nature of either quantum physics of general relativity. They are stuck in a classical perspective that became obsolete over a century ago.

 

 

 


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Thank you...

 I appreciate your kind comments. If indeed I'm using flowering language or excess verbiage, that is certainly not my intention. Most people have the opposite reaction: that my language is too densely packed and therefore difficult to follow. I get the feeling here that people don't want to understand my position, since most responses so far simply make broad slams at what I've said without any specificity whatsoever or just say it's all meaningless, which to anyone both intelligent and scientifically informed is an unmitigated crock. With a notable exception or two, this remains true despite my request for the contrary. I've clearly asked that critics point out what they feel to be specific fallacies. This is not a simple declaration that something is a fallacy merely because the critic disagrees, but a clear demonstration of the nature of the fallacy and what makes it so.

This requires some genuine understanding of the points made, which I feel some here just don't want to bother with. A simple cop out is to say it's all a bunch of meaningless gibberish, which it may indeed be to some people incapable of any kind of abstraction. (I once talked to a PhD in cognitive psychology who showed me research that 60% of PhDs in the USA are incapable of very simple abstract reasoning. I don't have any trouble believing that, since I've witnessed it countless times in the academic world.)


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Silliness...

butterbattle wrote:

People on the Internet do not have that much patience. 

I was hoping for more than the typical Internet mentality here. People who wish to discuss any theme as comprehensive and relatively abstract as cosmological issues must be able to think comprehensively and that requires both depth, patience and something beyond snapping at anyone you disagree with, saying what they write is meaningless and devoid of intelligence without backing that up with anything whatsoever, or just effectively calling them names and yelling yaya-yaya-yaaa-yaaa, etc.

 


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Very convincing to just restate...

 your opinions and throw insulting epithets, eh? Wow! Really useful debate style there! However, I have some suggestions to improve even further your stellar skills at Platonic dialectic:

1. Back up your broad statements regarding alleged fallacies with some kind of cogent and specific statements as to what makes them so. Your broad attacks essentially translate to "I'm right and you're wrong, nya-ya-ya!"

2. Refrain from silly epithets despite the tasteless color they add to the thread.

3. Research my points before you arbitrarily decide whether they're matters of opinion or scientifically well-founded statements of long-established principles.

4. Since I'm not aware of any original ideas or "assumptions" made in that list other than the elimination of the Cartesian spirit/matter dualism and their logical equivalents or corollaries, the intelligence/lawfulness and subjective/objective dualisms, please prove me wrong by finding anything in my initial numbered list of step-by-step arguments that is NOT a well-established scientific principle or fact, excluding my elimination of rationally useless and counterproductive dualism.

I would also like to know whether you have any clue that science beyond classical physics undermines the premises underlying the latter, which as a comprehensive theoretical model has been obsolete for about a century. Your statements and that of others that attempt to refute that sensory observation and all its technological extensions are intrinsically local and special-case indicate that you're stuck in an obsolete classical perspective, since nothing in biology, for example, would make that matter. It sure would in either quantum theory or relativity!

So if anyone here can give me a simple instance of a special-case situation for which Euclidean geometrical principles work, but which then fail in a more comprehensive context, I will at least know whether there is anyone here who has a serious grasp of cosmological issues. Is there no one here who can grasp this well-accepted principle of theoretical modeling? Does no one here know that there exist physics principles that are very serviceable locally, but completely break down comprehensively? The irony is that the more general-case theory contains within it as a special case the one that is apparently valid locally, yet the premises underlying each completely contradict those of the other. This is a trivial and utterly incontrovertible principle for anyone familiar with non-classical physics even at a lay level. My reasoning completely hinges on this understanding. To call that an assumption by anyone, let alone mine, demonstrates utter ignorance of long-established and critically important cosmological principles, not to mention a very basic understanding of modern theoretical models.

If people here are as impatient as one response has indicated, then while they have a right to their opinions, that in no way contributes to their value. People who want to make bold statements concerning fundamental cosmological ideas should be willing to think deeply and beyond their own narrow disciplines and seriously consider arguments to the contrary. Otherwise, this is a wasteland of opinions acquired only for the purpose of satisfying their owners' emotional and psychological preferences, something that atheists are fond of projecting onto theists. I have to admit that most of the time, they're right about that, but living on the opposite side of the same sandbox just leaves them in the same sandbox. 

 


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Welcome

 Welcome Robert_13. Your comments are pending approval each time because you haven't registered. I have approved a number of your comments but it is hours after you wrote them and some replies from others were out of order due to the manual delay.

Is there any reason you won't register so your comments get published immediately?

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Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

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Quote:I don't have to assume

Quote:
I don't have to assume the universe is not as it appears. I only stated that sense perception and its technological extensions (telescopes of every kind, microscopes, particle accelerators, spectral tools, digital signal processing, etc.) are intrinsically local and special-case and therefore do not represent the fundamental nature of existence.

Evidence?

Quote:
The latest experiments involving relativistic manipulation of entangled particles are indicating that their correlation has its source at a level deeper than space-time

1: Evidence?
2: Define: "a level deeper than space-time". Because on the face of it, it's as broken and meaningless as spiritual and supernatural. ie: Completely.

Quote:
Time is something that never exists except as a single point along what we nevertheless ironically conceive as a continuum, which seems to be a starkly apparent contradiction.

Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the

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intervals between them, and

intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects.
Kant was a fool in many regards. This is one of them.

Quote:
the underlying premises are not mine nor are they assumptions.

Really?

"Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars."

Guess not. No matter what you say, noone has yet defined time without controversy, which means the definition you use is contested in multiple circles, which reduces your argument to an assertion.

I don't know what your field is, but since you're unaware of simple facts I must assume you don't know as much as you think.

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Circular definition...

 Vastet, I agree that Kant's "definition" is in the same category as that of the first grader who defined potatoes as a food that's so everybody can have enough. However, you also seem to accuse me of having defined time. I have not. No one has ever defined time, as you clearly point out, but don't forget that includes both you and me.

What you seem to think is my attempt to define time is merely a statement of the commonly conceived, special-case but self-contradictory character of time as only existing as a single point, since it would seem on the surface that the past no longer exists and the future doesn't exist yet. Yet we represent it mathematically in scientific charts of every kind as a linear progression and a continuum. These representations and mathematical treatments are not mine. I'm simply recounting the evidently commonplace conception of time with no attempt to define it myself.

You do not address the universal understanding among theoretical physicists that neither time nor space can be measured except in reference to themselves. A rod that serves to standardize length in space does not represent any kind of absolute, since it simply allows the comparing of lengths in space. Time is in principle not measurable except by comparing an interval with some other temporal phenomenon such as some electromagnetic frequency. It is meaningless to talk about time as having any absolute dimension, since even if we could conceive of anything other than itself to measure it against, its relationship to that would have no physically detectable effect. Time and space would maintain precisely the same relationships they already have despite how large or small any absolute against which we could compare them might be, if such thing existed in the first place. Einstein had to recognize this in order to conceive of relativity. To impute such ideas to me is absurdly naive.

So you seem to be fond of demonstrating how many simple facts you're utterly unaware of while accusing me of the same. All praise be to classical Jungian projection, to which we apparently owe the really silly elements of this discussion. Your conceptual reach is extremely lacking in any significant scope beyond large numbers of alleged, poorly integrated factoids you're apparently fond of spouting, many of which are intellectually myopic in the extreme. You don't address anything I suggest, such as the universal recognition among theoretical physicists that more general-case models of reality contain within them locally accurate special-case models while their underlying premises contradict.

The Supreme and Conscious Intelligence at the axiomatic root of existence I am proposing exists beyond space-time. I don't pretend to understand what space and time truly are. I'm certainly not capable of defining what a level of existence deeper than space-time is except as the empirical experience of my own pure consciousness alone with itself without any object of perception, including thoughts, images, sounds, or memories of any kind. That is an experience that in the view I'm presenting here is rationally unprovable because consciousness is an axiomatic property of natural structure and therefore extra-rational just as any axiom is by definition. Do you even understand the simple principle that axioms are by definition extra-rational, logically transcending the rational systems for which they form the root? I don't get that you do, but it's a basic principle in mathematical thought. You never even touch ideas like that with your critiques. You just stay right up on the surface with your assessments of sensory appearances as ultimate reality. No one who knows anything about modern physics holds that view, barring some freak crackpots somewhere of whom I'm unaware. Yet you seem to think I'm just expressing personal opinions. Wow! Do a little research. 

You attack my statement about correlated particles being related via a level deeper than space-time. Why me? Why don't you attack the probably atheistic physicists who are hypothesizing that on the basis of relatively recent experiments at the LHC in Europe, if you even know what that is? In case you're so incapable of understanding anything I've said to realize it, I'm not a creationist in any sense in which that word is currently used. I don't believe in a "god" who created the universe at some specific time in the past. I avidly follow evolutionary theory and am perfectly comfortable with having descended from a common ancestor to us and apes. I have no problem with abiogenesis, and strongly hope I live to see it demonstrated in our labs.

Are you aware that the Neanderthal genome has been fully sequenced? Do you know that everyone who is not of pure African descent has DNA that is from one to four percent Neanderthal? I like the irony of that. Whites or mixed race people are the only ones who have Neanderthal in their DNA. No homo sapiens genes are found in Neanderthal DNA and there is only male Neanderthal contribution to homo sapiens DNA. This has been interpreted as meaning that only male Neanderthals impregnated homo sapiens females and the latter raised the offspring in a homo sapiens environment or there would otherwise be homo sapiens DNA in the Neanderthal genome. Hmmm....sounds like rape has been around for awhile. That, my friend, is evidence. The easy demonstration of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and of Bell's Inequalities are evidence. The lack of any effect of relativistic manipulation of space-time on the quantum relationships in correlated particles is EVIDENCE, SILLY! It points to a level of reality deeper than space-time, and yes, no one has yet defined that, but it's interesting that research is pointing there just as the Michelson-Morley experiment with the speed of light violated Newtonian mechanics and got Einstein thinking about how we could reconcile this special-case evidence with our opposite special-case experience at insignificantly small fractions of the speed of light and still have Newtonian mechanics fall out as a special case when we restrict the parameters to local conditions at low velocities.

So go do some darn research on something other than classical views of microbial and molecular behavior. If you don't know it, dig up some information about how the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe is necessitating the hypotheses of dark energy and dark matter if we hold on to our current view of things. The only other alternative is to assume our theoretical models are in need of a fundamental, Einstein-like leap forward and that the new understanding will not require these assumptions. If dark matter and energy do indeed exist, then they constitute 96% of the universe, they are completely invisible to us, and we have no clue as to what they are. 

I've proposed a perspective that eliminates what I consider to be unnecessary dualism and used reason from there. My reasoning is based on well-established scientific principles that have proved to have immense practical value in terms of technological advancement. I consider that evidence...evidence of which you're apparently utterly ignorant and fond of demonstrating that to boot. Nevertheless, every physicist worth the name knows that current theory is incomplete. There is hard evidence that the Standard Model (quantum physics) is incomplete. Einstein's theory of general relativity has been confirmed accurate by all kinds of evidence and in spades, yet we have so far been unable to reconcile quantum theory with general relativity and the latter fails to shed any light on the hypotheses of dark matter and dark energy or explain the acceleration of cosmic expansion. 

So considering the current state of our cosmological ignorance, I would suggest we be a bit humbler about our assertions. I'm merely suggesting that there is good reason to consider the possibility that my experience is in common with many throughout history and has a basis in reality, the reality of our own noise-free awareness as a self-evident reflection of a Cosmic Counterpart. I suggest that dualism is not merely unnecessary, contributing zero explanatory power. It destroys theoretical economy, necessitates all kind of inelegant assumptions and internal contradictions, and so invites Occam's razor to the party.

I will leave it to any intelligent, scientifically informed readers who happen by, readers with the ability to distinguish valid logic from thoughtless rhetoric, to judge the intelligence or lack of it in my posts. Your assessments are blatantly specious and very small-minded in scope, not to mention rude.

 

Robert


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Quote:You do not address the

Quote:
You do not address the universal understanding
~
Einstein had to recognize this in order to conceive of relativity. To impute such ideas to me is absurdly naive.

*Waiting to hear what I'm not addressing*

Quote:
The Supreme and Conscious Intelligence at the axiomatic root of existence

Assertion without evidence.

Quote:
So you seem to be fond of demonstrating how many simple facts you're utterly unaware of while accusing me of the same.

Oh how cute. An idiot tries to project his projection onto me. In concert with a bunch of ad homs and assumptions, typical theist behaviour.
So the gloves come off eh asshole?

I read the rest of it, but most is either irrelevant to the topic or just further demonstration of your stupidity, and I don't feel like writing 7 posts worth of responses to your bullshit right now. Maybe another time.

Oh, I never did find out what you're suggesting I haven't done. Guess you're too stupid to think to mention it in all those paragraphs.

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*Waiting to hear what I'm not addressing*

 ... that neither time nor space can be measured except in reference to themselves and so are not absolute, but relative. Guess you can't read, goofball! Your reading comprehension is less than zero. I scored post-graduate level reading comprehension when I was in the seventh grade. There is no desire on your part to address anything I've said. Anything that even mentions something specific I've said demonstrates zero comprehension of what it actually means. You don't know anything about current theoretical models that have anything to do with cosmological issues. Why don't you actually say something intelligent sometime instead of just demonstrating zero comprehension of anything? 

For intelligent readers who happen by, my posts do indeed included hypotheses based on my own experience attested to by others throughout the ages. I have taken the trouble to support this with arguments based on scientific principles that are not mine, nor are they merely hypotheses, but time-tested, practical, widely accepted principles. This ignoramus simply yells out repeatedly his own ideas or calls you a fool for repeating standard scientific principles and reasoning based on them and the elimination of any kind of dualism between consciousness and local, special-case perception of matter and energy.

I think we all know we experience all three: consciousness, matter, and energy. My reasoning connects them on the basis of my own and others'experience and scientific principles and cutting away any dualism with Occam's razor. Quoting standard names for logical fallacies without applying them to anything specific is useless blabber. Vastet calls hypotheses assertions without evidence while he ignores everything leading to the hypotheses. When I point out that he hasn't addressed an issue, he pretends there was nothing to address and is still waiting for it because he apparently can't read. He refuses to accept well-established scientific principles and pretends they're my unsupported assumptions. All you have to do is read to confirm what I'm saying, a skill that Vastest apparently doesn't have.

If readers who happen by are NOT simply already so stuck in Vastet's camp philosophically and so biased they can't be at all objective, then they will NOT just think what they already want to think. Any intelligent, informed, and objective readers will have great difficulty in finding any cogent arguments regarding my posts coming from Vastet, since they don't exist. He does not ever answer with any line of reasoning my retorts to his claims about my allegedly unsupported assumptions. He calls my hypotheses unsupported assumptions, when in fact hypotheses are by definition assumptions, but I have supported them with all kinds of well-supported, widely accepted evidence and a line of reasoning allegedly full of fallacies he never specifies. He ignores my invitations to do so, probably because of his well-demonstrated inability to do so. A list of formal names of logical fallacies does not address any specific, alleged fallacy in my reasoning. 

So I've just registered for this site, but I'm on the verge of forgetting about it, since I just get crap slung at me by some fool who lives by the following old proverb:

"A man convinced against his will

is of the same opinion still."

Of course, this one is not ever convinced of anything he doesn't already think in the first place, so this proverb is being far to generous. If this is just a back-slapping society of like-minded people who don't wish any challenge to their positions and are uninterested in dealing seriously, responsibly, coherently and respectfully to opposing ideas. I'm not interested

Robert


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 that neither time nor

Quote:
 that neither time nor space can be measured except in reference to themselves and so are not absolute, but relative. Guess you can't read, goofball!

Oh I can read just fine, fool. The problem is I never missed that, claimed otherwise, or saw any relevance between it and the topic.

So in other words you have nothing, and like to write paragraphs based on strawmen and your stupidity. Got it.

PS, I scored post university reading comprehension in the fourth grade. Guess you're a bit slow. But that explains a few things.

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Sure...

 Yeah, right. Anything you say. Kudos to your obvious genius. You're really smart for a fourth grader. I bet you're about nine now?

 

P.S. Oh, and by the way, it's P.S. followed by a space, no comma. Fourth-grade English. 

Robert


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Concession accepted. PS,

Concession accepted.

PS, grammar nazi's are the definition of stupid, never realising the language they are attempting to stifle will evolve despite their idiocy. 10th grade Social Studies/History. Guess you never made it that far.

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Grammar nazi's [sic]

Incoherent thinkers think anything coherent and intelligent is rigid. By the way, Nazi is not possessive, so you don't need the stupid apostrophe and it's a proper noun, so it's capitalized. Inability to distinguish linguistic function extends to reading, understanding, thinking. I'm really starting to seriously wonder whether you're a grade school kid masquerading as an adult. Ciao.

Robert


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Projection. PS, grammar

Projection.

PS, grammar nazi's are the definition of stupid, never realising the language they are attempting to stifle will evolve despite their idiocy. 10th grade Social Studies/History. Guess you never made it that far.

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robert_13
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Mutations...

Vastet wrote:
Projection. PS, grammar nazi's are the definition of stupid, never realising the language they are attempting to stifle will evolve despite their idiocy. 10th grade Social Studies/History. Guess you never made it that far.

Some mutations stink. Evolution is not synonymous with a bunch of stupid, dysfunctional mutations.

Robert


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Actually, it is. Unless you

Actually, it is. Unless you can come up with a logical and intelligent reason for the nerve that goes all the way up a giraffe's neck and down again despite its destination being less than a tenth the distance. And the reason that the waste disposal system in all or most vertebrates is directly tied to the reproductive system. Just to name two of millions of "stupid, dysfunctional mutations".

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Sigh... 

Sigh...

 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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Yeah...

butterbattle wrote:

Sigh...

 

 

Yes, butterbattle, Vastet denies that they're not synonymous ("Actually, it is," he says), so he has to think including means synonymous; that a subset is the whole story. Anybody need any additional examples typical of this guy's disjointed "logic"? Worse, he fails to realize he makes my point more powerfully than I did, since he claims these examples are useless, stupid mutations that somehow evolution has failed to select against...exactly my point concerning his illiteracy.

Robert


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Further proof of your

Further proof of your stupidity, as if any were required.

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Why...

By the way, everybody, I thought this was a moderated list. This guy starts everything off by calling anyone he disagrees with an idiot, fool, etc. He's clearly a rote learner with lots of factoids, but totally irrational, incapable of intelligent discourse, semi-literate, and a silly name-caller who merely repeats his own position while deriding any opposing view. This does not comply with the agreement we are required to make when registering as I understood it. So why is this tolerated if this is a moderated list? If this is how it's going to be here, a mutual backslapping society of atheists whose highest intellectual achievement is derision and endless, vapid insults for anyone who challenges their position, I'm out of here.

Robert


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Hypocrisy now. The theist

Hypocrisy now. The theist has no limits to how low he will sink.

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robert_13 wrote:So if anyone

robert_13 wrote:

So if anyone here can give me a simple instance of a special-case situation for which Euclidean geometrical principles work, but which then fail in a more comprehensive context, I will at least know whether there is anyone here who has a serious grasp of cosmological issues. Is there no one here who can grasp this well-accepted principle of theoretical modeling? Does no one here know that there exist physics principles that are very serviceable locally, but completely break down comprehensively? The irony is that the more general-case theory contains within it as a special case the one that is apparently valid locally, yet the premises underlying each completely contradict those of the other. This is a trivial and utterly incontrovertible principle for anyone familiar with non-classical physics even at a lay level. My reasoning completely hinges on this understanding. To call that an assumption by anyone, let alone mine, demonstrates utter ignorance of long-established and critically important cosmological principles, not to mention a very basic understanding of modern theoretical models.

Since no one has bothered to accept this elementary little challenge, I'll provide an answer that is actually a very good two-dimensional analogy of the difference between the Euclidean space-time that Newtonian mechanics assumes and the Riemannian space-time of General Relativity:

If you have an ant on a smooth sphere so large that, for the ant, everything looks flat locally, the ant can make fairly large triangles without violating the Euclidean principle that the sum of the angles of any triangle is 180 degrees. However, as the ant becomes more adventurous and expands his domain to make very large triangles, the sum starts to obviously exceed 180 degrees. In fact, if our ant does the equivalent of going 90 degrees from the equator of its sphere toward the north pole, makes a  90 degree turn there and returns to the equator where it then proceeds back to its original point of departure, it will have apparently constructed a triangle of three straight lines that has a sum of 270 degrees.

So Euclidean rules work for a domain that, although large for the ant, is very small in relation to the sphere. The ant moves in apparently straight lines and has a hard time understanding why the rules it knows to work within its local domain are violated in sufficiently large domains. It takes a long time for this genius ant to figure out that its local perception of reality is actually a special-case approximation of reality that is very accurate locally while the underlying assumptions it seems to imply empirically are utterly invalid in a larger context and are therefore not "true" in any absolute sense. This is the exact nature of the difference between "flat", Euclidean, four-dimensional space-time, which actually exists nowhere, and the Riemannian space-time that actually exists everywhere. Euclidean rules actually don't apply literally anywhere, but only appear to do so because the size of the domain is small enough that space-time appears locally "flat", that is to say, Euclidean. However, we went to the moon on calculations based on Newtonian mechanics. At the same time, our GPS system would not work if we didn't factor in Einstein's theories. The orbiting satellites move at too great a fraction of the speed of light and the distance between us at the surface and satellite altitude represents another kind of shift in inertial frames that defines gravity in General Relativity that is too great to ignore.

Some of us need to get that biology, microbiology, biochemistry, and genetics require no understanding of relativity, and that biochemistry and genetics are the only ones of these that even tangentially involve quantum mechanics. So people who work exclusively in those fields do not necessarily get any exposure to the cosmological implications of our most advanced, comprehensive theoretical models. They are naturally unaware that the nature of reality is vastly different in its true, comprehensive, general-case nature than it appears locally to our senses in its apparently discrete and special-case Euclidean nature. They may even be unaware of how often physicists remark at how counterintuitve the way nature actually works is in terms of our "common sense" conceptions, that is, our sensory perceptions and the resulting conceptual constructs.

However, there can be no genuine understanding of cosmological issues without some exposure to this aspect of science. We cannot claim to be scientifically literate if we don't even have a layperson's understanding of this aspect of science. Such understanding is available in dozens of good books on non-classical physics and modern, scientific cosmology written for educated laypeople.

Robert