h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bouncy, as a matter of terminology it's normal to refer to figures like loops or the surface of a sphere as unbounded rather than infinite, and the idea that spacetime is finite but unbounded has certainly been mooted on a number of occassions as a counter to the kalam. Bar the terminology I'm with you on that one.

But this?

<...irrelevant aand untestable...philosophy in fact >

Noggin

My physics knowledge doesn't go beyond A-level and whatever else my teacher adds into the syllabus - normally anecdotes about Newton being a nobby no-friends, how to build a particle accelerator or t-shirts saying "let there be light" with Maxwell's Equations. Hence the nonsense terminology

I love philosophy really.

Noggin

>142. It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and premises give one another *mutual* support.

In itself, this is not an arguable point, as it makes no assumptions relevant to my beliefs.

>166. The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing.

Now this /is/ arguable. You see, for /you/, to say you believe /would/ be groundless. For me, it is not. The problem is yours - I have no problem I know I have grounds for /my/ belief. But unless you have experienced what I have experienced, or have experienced similar things, then /you/ would have no cause to believe, and for /you/ belief would be an irrational thing and cause for genuine concern.

Unlike a member of a salvaionist religion, whether or not you believe is not my concern, unless you bring your unbelief and use it to discriminate against me in some way, or unless you bring experiences to me and ask my advice. If you did the latter, I would help you to interpret them as best I could, based on what you experienced, but, clearly, through heathen eyes. I would be unlikely to encourage you to accept anything without good cause, and in fact, since I belong to a religion which accepts that deities and other wights sometimes act through humans or other beings to communicate with us for various purposes, and which recognises the dangers of blind accceptance of experience, I would endeavour to check your experiences either by trying to repeat them, or by finding someone else, within the community, whose ability to communicate is rather better than mine, to ask about what has happened.

Contrary to popular belief, the pagans I know are not more credulous than others, but - in my experience - tend to check things very, very, carefully, requiring independent confirmation of individual UPG (unsubstantiated personal gnosis) from others within their community. I have maybe four people who I would ask to confirm anything I was unsure of, and I would give them a brief outline, and ask them to ask the gods in their own way, and see what happened. And others might well ask me to do the same for them, as I am a card-reader, when the situation requires. It has been my experience that if something is important to you and them, then the gods or the wights concerned make sure that their message gets through.


A long reply, but honest, as far as I can share what I feel and know. And yes, I will use the word 'know'. Once, I might have used the word 'believe', and there are still many things I have to just 'believe'. But the existence of the gods, and the fact that they take an interest in my life and in the lives of others, that I know.

So. That's where I come from, Noggin. As mad as Math, and at least as certain of my gods. And happy with that even when they take me down paths that are uncomfortable, which, be assured, they do.

Jez - heathen and witch, and mad mathematician...

Well, I could argue that science becomes untestable beyond the solar system. I could also argue that philosophy is the discipline of choice in the more distant physical and conceptual areas, precisely because it doesn't need to be testable. I absolutely repudiate the idea that it's irrelevant! What is the argument for that?



The whole point of the kalam argument is to argue that the universe isn't the kind of thing that can be eternal or uncaused. It had a beginning. On the other hand, God isn't the kind of thing that has a cause and a beginning. God is eternal (meaning independent of time - not just 'everlasting').



A loop has a size, just as a circle has a circumference. This is not infinite by any means. You might as well choose a square or a jumbled up string with the ends tied together. In either case you can trace them round forever. That doesn't make them infinite. It's just that you've set yourself a task that is potentially infinite. I don't have a problem with potential infinites!

Noggin. Sure the universe is finite but unbounded. That's precisely what the kalam suggests. Finite because you can't have an actual infinite; unbounded because it has (perhaps) an infinite potential for growth. The potential infinite is no problem. So I don't quite see why you say: <... and the idea that spacetime is finite but unbounded has certainly been mooted on a number of occassions as a counter to the kalam.> Don't see a 'counter' there myself.

toxx

Take the number '1'. Divide it by 2. Take the resulting number. Divide it by 2. Repeat until you can go no further. Now, tell me - - - when is that? Thanks for the link, anyways - - - it was entertaining.

Now, instead of all this bushwah, tell your personal god to perform a mass miracle, like . . . I dunno, feed the masses, stamp out AIDS, have no more floods, etc. But NO!! Your god won't do these things because your god can't do these things because your god hasn't ever existed. It's cool that some believe in a personal god until they blow themselves up to, in some bizarre way, service this god - - - then their cherry-picking of their own 'holy' book gets in my way, and I won't have that. Instead of showing the 'unbelievers' how powerful & righteous & blah-blah-blah their god is by constructing huge irrigated tracts of farmland to feed the people, they go around destroying people's minds and lives. Some god.

Breakfast is served, croissants, and decaf , tea, toast, jam, honey and chocolate spread, and, as yesterday, cyanide capsules for the trolls...


Jez, off to w**k, damn it...

Chantel

OK, I'll be controversial, and reply as I actually feel about this.

>Now, instead of all this bushwah, tell your personal god to perform a mass miracle, like . . . I dunno, feed the masses

The gods, and the worlds we live in, does that already. It is perfectly possible to feed everyone, but we, as a species, have and are not using what there is in a sensible way. Financial profit is what stops us feeding the masses, as you put it. And out of 6 billion humans, and countless billions of other animals and plants, the masses are fed, daily, and well.

>, stamp out AIDS,

We could do that, as well. But is AIDS the biggest problem? No, corporate greed kills more each day through political and environmental actions. This species is capable of stopping AIDS in its tracks through a simple condom, but it doesn't. Don't blame the gods.

>have no more floods, etc.

And natural 'disasters are a part of the renewal of this earth, though the disastrous aspects of this are largely where people are forced, by financial constraints, to live in dangerous areas.

>But NO!! Your god won't do these things because your god can't do these things because your god hasn't ever existed. It's cool that some believe in a personal god until they blow themselves up to, in some bizarre way, service this god - - - then their cherry-picking of their own 'holy' book gets in my way, and I won't have that. Instead of showing the 'unbelievers' how powerful & righteous & blah-blah-blah their god is by constructing huge irrigated tracts of farmland to feed the people, they go around destroying people's minds and lives. Some god.

Rant over? OK - now read my answers and cool down - I'll be back tonight after the local community meeting about the plans for the local school, which, as a concerned resident, I shall be attending.

Think Globally, Act Locally

Jez

Oh come on, Chan. You're being obtuse, at best, in refusing to understand what is being said and then trotting out those tired old arguments.



You can go on forever. It is a potentially infinite process. Again - I have no problem with POTENTIAL infinites. OK, you've chosen an Aleph 1 example, I think (Jordan will correct me if I'm wrong, no doubt) - but that is only a potential infinite too.

<> Who said that? I don't agree. An ACTUAL infinite cannot exist. Got it now?

A potential infinite is finite but unbounded like some features of the universe.



I don't suppose that people have the kind of relationship with God that allows them to order Him about. Me - I'm a meta-agnostic. I just represent the force of the argument as I see it. Now be a good philosopher and attack the argument as stated rather than this straw man version you keep putting up and knocking down.

toxx

Cyanide for trolls ,thats not nice ,

No comment needed for last two posts,appart from yes i totaly agree,
think "globaly" universaly more my line "or outside the box".

Chantel Your god i take it ,got it all solved then,?
Infinite and finite i think the only way to check you have a ,Check
out your infinite no's answer is by checking in reverse subtracting
nos away from your sum in blocks of uniform blocks, of 1 units or 10 units ,then add them all up again in reverse order again.

If after doing this you have no spare nos thats a right finite no
If you still have one nos left its infinite

"potential infinite"?

It isn't potential because you are resticted to the time it takes to count. It is still there even if you don't count it. There is and infinite number of numbers. Just because we are incapable(which by defn we have to be)of counting them doesn't mean, and I'm reiterating this, that they don't exist.

"potential infinite"?

It isn't potential because you are resticted to the time it takes to count. It is still there even if you don't count it. There is an infinite number of numbers. Just because we are incapable(which by defn we have to be)of counting them doesn't mean, and I'm reiterating this, that they don't exist.

No problem Jon. Numbers don't count as 'actual', since they're just abstract concepts. Time and space are really there and cannot become infinite.

toxx

Hi Chantel .

Hmmmm...interesting. You are having this confusion thing again aren't you? Mistaking people like Jez, Heathen Sceptic and myself with the followers of Abrahamic religions.

You are also proposing in your, er-hem, 'challenge' that the gods to whom we refer have some special humano-centric focus. Sorry to burst your bubble but humanity is not the most important or numerous race on our little blue planet, just the most self-destructive. Trees, plankton and algae are all far more important.

What makes you think that the kind of gods and spirits that we work with are not alredy dealing with these issues, where they are important. For instance:

1. World Hunger. About 10,000 years ago agriculture appeared. And I mean 'appeared'. No archaeologist has yet come up with a theory that lasted ten minutes in front of his peers for how suddenly the hunter-gatherer society of early man just sat down and began farming arable crops and domestic animals. They have a similar problem with cities, which also just started appearing at the same time. What if man had some external inspiration or wisdom shared with them (and I don't mean from little grey men either)? No better theory has yet been advanced .

2. AIDs. As Jez said the problem here is political will and greed. Pharmaceutical companies never make a profit out of an outright cure, only from continuously supplying symptomatic relief medicines. A cure for AIDs already exists, and many religious and other groups are trying to implement it - but it relies on people being convinced to change their behaviour. Unlike a flu pandemic, AIDs is entirely preventable and could be stopped in a generation. There again if it wasn't AIDs the planet would have to find some other method of population control. The delicate balance of world population was destroyed by antibiotics, I think it will soon be redressed by MRSA-type infections .

It is obvious from your little tirade that the rest of your argument really focuses on the representatives of the abrahamic religions. I doubt you've seen many druids, witches or heathens carrying out atrocities in the names of their gods. We tend to stick to learning, educating, loving and healing.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Hi, Math. I entirely agree with your sentiments. Chan isn't addressing anything said or accepted by anyone here. The dumber arguments against the dumber religionists just won't work in this environment. What hacks me off is that people who take such argumentative lines tend to complain that the responses they've had have been irrelevant. Nah, what are irrelevant are their questions and arguments!

toxx

Jez.

(166) wasn't aimed at you (except in the very general sense of being aimed at *everyone*).

Our knowledge has its *immediate* grounding in the sort of system given in (142) - even science (which simply does well at ensuring that its elements do support, rather than undermining, each other - while IMO belief in a triple-O god leads to such mutual undermining)

What W is pointing out is that when we are required to show how the system as a whole is grounded, this turns out to be much harder than we normally imagine. Most people try to ground such a system in something like a "correspondence theory" of truth, but this is problemmatic because we can't actually demonstrate any such correspondence.

toxx


My problem here is that once one has admitted, or shown to be required, the existence of a kind of thing that doesn't have a cause or a beginning there seems to be no principled reason for declaring that the universe cannot itself be that kind of thing.

Noggin

Chantel, such bitterness is not helpful to you or to anyone else.

The biggest religions are based upon "if you don't think like me, don't share my world view, aren't part of my clique; you burn. Its my religious duty to tell you this over and over and over". That doesn't mean that everyone with faith believes this. It doesn't even mean everyone who is in those major religions believes this; they certainly don't phrase it how I just did.

Now I find the concept of gods to be completely irreconcilable with the world I live in. However, other people find the idea that this all exists with no conscious will to guide it just as ridiculous as I find their gods. I can tell you now that the resolution of this is not that one of us has to be stupid and weak.

Matholwich, in terms of how agriculture started, you should have a look at 'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond, or 'The Day Before Yesterday' by Colin Tudge. These books explain, very plausibly why agriculture appeared to start relatively suddenly around 10,000 years ago. The main reason for this was the end of the ice age, which meant it was economically preferable to plant crops etc, than merely to live off the land due to the population pressure. Agriculture, especially at the initial stage, is a much worse way to make a living than to live by hunting/gathering, so until the shrinkage in available land area caused by rising sea levels at the end of the ice age there was no impetus to take up farming on any great scale. Anyway, I have no idea if this theory has been ridiculed by other experts but it certainly sounds plausible to me. Best to read the books or find info online though, rather than ask me too many details.

Noggin. I think the very considerations that you've just been mentioning provide those 'principled reasons'. Coherence and consistency lead us to the view that the universe is a material object, unlike God who, in principle, *has* to be immaterial - except for one extreme of pantheism where God and the universe are more or less identified. Even there, I suspect that they are really more 'coterminous' with God as an indwelling spirit of material things.

I realise that, in view of your rejection of anything 'immaterial' as part of reality, such considerations won't come naturally, if at all, to you. The idea that something is infinitely old is just so mind-boggling that I cannot begin to countenance it. A billion lifetimes of the universe could be chopped off such a thought and it would remain the same infinite duration. Keep doing that once a second for any finite time period - same result. I find it to easier to envisage an immaterial person than that any material thing could be infinitely old.

I don't know how to go beyond intuition in order to argue these views. There are those such as Plantinga who go deep into modal logic to compare the relative rationality of believing such things. He's a well-known Christian apologist though, so more in line with my view. Most of those of your opinion (not you!) seem to think that their view is an obvious default position that doesn't need arguing. I think that the kalam does, at least, challenge that apparently comfortable view.

toxx

Okay, kids, when I say 'some proof, please,' I'm actually asking for some 'proof' - - - that is, something to lead me to where you are: So, (once again) bring your god before me and get it to do SOMETHING that separates it from some chance thingy (like 'evolution'). How easy it would be save THOUSANDS of lives, as the CREATOR of all life could do!!! But, no, it's 'not in the cards', etc. Therefore, your 'god' is another phantom, ephemeral, and non-existent.


Have fun,