No supernatural, no gods.

[Jarhyn]

It's pointless and useless to speculate about the existence of things that cannot by definition be detected in any way, nor have any effect on anything real.

I disagree. By understanding how and why each of these wrappers generally exists in observable systemic hierarchies, it informs the user of use cases that can be investigated to probe for them, and what, if we find them, their existence implies about further decoding the structure of reality into useful information and principles.

Hypervisors HAVE hypercalls and a memory translation between system memory addressing and subsystem address space.

Interestingly enough, all this discussion about systemic hierarchy is exactly the sort of thought that gets us hypervisors and operating systems.

It in fact provides a great model for understanding actual, immediate systems, not from asking "is there a god" but "in this complicated system what element is acting as 'god'"?

Understand the concept well enough and you can, when debugging through a process, see that the thing you are watching happen is a "hypercall".

Don't do that "useless speculation" and you won't be ready to see it when it is staring you in the face.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Alas, wouldn't a natural phenomena generally be expected to be repeatable?

If God is eternal,...

Yeah, nothing like the fake hypothetical from a theist. Well, if God was eternal... then that solves all of the arbitrary issues I created regarding our existence.

God always existing could be seen as 'ultimately' natural.

But if it were natural, that would imply some set of rules exist in which the god is bound to.

'Always existing' would mean, to always be 'expected to be repeatable", in a manner of speaking.

At no point in time, has the universe not existed. At no point in time will the universe stop existing.

Creation, the physical universe only came about when there was the intention by the designer, like that of humans... a reflection, when they created machines.

Creation or transition? There is no evidence the universe was ever created. It is believed there was a transition of its state, but there is no creation of the universe. If you have evidence for that, a Nobel is awaiting you.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Machines helping design machines. This is wonderfully natural, if that's the language we go by. But the 'first cause' to these machines was an 'intention', a creation 'purposely' designed by human 'intellect'.

Except the largest machines in the universe are stars. They produce atoms (and molecules?) and then distribute them across the galaxy.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Machines helping design machines. This is wonderfully natural, if that's the language we go by. But the 'first cause' to these machines was an 'intention', a creation 'purposely' designed by human 'intellect'.

We started out as bacteria, which thanks to evolution, create hominids who later evolved big brains enough to design CPUs and AI. Eventually AI wil design and creates CPUS etc. The Universe was created to be home to intelligent machines. We are mere intermediates steps to that end.

That's classic etiological mythicism.

Whatever we have now was all along the goal in the past. No it wasn't.

Humans have a bad habit of making patterns out of noise.

There's no steps. It's just lots of shit that happens for no reason. Humans are meaning creating. We don't like doing stuff for no reason. We want to do it for a reason. We want to be on a project that builds toward something. We somehow need to figure out how to motivate ourselves despite the unrelenting steady march toward mortality. So we invent a story to make it worth our while to get out of bed in the morning. We invent a grand narrative for the entire universe, where we play a tiny part.

These grand narrative stories are nice. They feel good. But be careful not to buy into your own bullshit. This is how religions are started.

Religion is basically someone going to the movies watching Star Wars, then exiting the cinema thinking Darth Vader really exists. Don't get your metaphors confused with reality.

I like religion for the same reason I like Star Wars

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Iintelligent machines will eventually replace humans. That cannot be stopped. Surrender gracefully.

 

[steve_bank]

Many "sophisticated" theologians argue that metaphysical naturalism must be false. The theological literature about naturalism's falseness is immense. Often the argument is not to demonstrate supernaturalism is true, but that naturalism is false. Thus leaving a gap where God can exist. One theological approach here is presuppositionalism. God is responsible for everything including logic, truth, and other metaphysical necessities. Lots of shifting of the burdens of evidence.

Interestingly, do people here see naturalism as materialism? Logic as humans fathom, through human experience, doesn't explain everything. The argument or proposition could be made (for or against), within our means of comprehension, if we are looking at materialism. Is the existence of all things all physicalness etc.?

For me naturalism means that by definition anything that exists is natural. There can be no 'super' natural.

If I see a ghost and it is real even if I do not know the causal physical connection bteween the ghost and my brain perceiving it, it is natural.

Who says our squishy human brains can explan everything?

 

[steve_bank]

Machines helping design machines. This is wonderfully natural, if that's the language we go by. But the 'first cause' to these machines was an 'intention', a creation 'purposely' designed by human 'intellect'.

The old watchmaker argument. You have never seen a watch. You find one in the woods and assume it is not natural, somebody must have made it.

So...you look at the universe and conclude somebody or something must have created it.

Reasonable reasoning for ancient superstitious Zog without science and tens of thousands of years of the evolution of human thought.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Many "sophisticated" theologians argue that metaphysical naturalism must be false. The theological literature about naturalism's falseness is immense. Often the argument is not to demonstrate supernaturalism is true, but that naturalism is false. Thus leaving a gap where God can exist. One theological approach here is presuppositionalism. God is responsible for everything including logic, truth, and other metaphysical necessities. Lots of shifting of the burdens of evidence.

Interestingly, do people here see naturalism as materialism? Logic as humans fathom, through human experience, doesn't explain everything. The argument or proposition could be made (for or against), within our means of comprehension, if we are looking at materialism. Is the existence of all things all physicalness etc.?

For me naturalism means that by definition anything that exists is natural. There can be no 'super' natural.

If I see a ghost and it is real even if I do not know the causal physical connection bteween the ghost and my brain perceiving it, it is natural.

Who says our squishy human brains can explan everything?

Interesting turn on its head for a designer argument.

Something can only exist if it is natural to do so.

I don't think that holds a lot of intellectual sway, but it pokes a hole in the "everything has a cause" argument.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

At no point in time, has the universe not existed. At no point in time will the universe stop existing.

This is certainly a thing that people who believe in magic will never understand, and I think it's because they lack the cognitive capacity to self-correct. If they were able to self-correct they would recognize that in the same thought they are concluding that everything has a beginning and that not everything has a beginning. Then there would be an aha moment.

My take after witnessing the behavior in different individuals is that they simply like to believe in magic, and believing in magic is much easier than gaining actual knowledge. If I believe in magic I can have it any way that makes me feel good, regardless whether it survives logical and scientific scrutiny.

 

[steve_bank]

It comes down to that there is no meed for a first cause, aka god.

 

[bilby]

If God is eternal, this would be an interesting perspective...

God always existing could be seen as 'ultimately' natural.

Why bother with a God?

If the universe is eternal, no creator is necessary.

If nothing can be eternal, then God is just as much in need of a creator as the universe is. More so, given that we can see how life, and subsequently intelligence, can arise from a very simple starting point, given billions of years.

 

[bilby]

It's pointless and useless to speculate about the existence of things that cannot by definition be detected in any way, nor have any effect on anything real.

I disagree. By understanding how and why each of these wrappers generally exists in observable systemic hierarchies, it informs the user of use cases that can be investigated to probe for them, and what, if we find them, their existence implies about further decoding the structure of reality into useful information and principles.

Hypervisors HAVE hypercalls and a memory translation between system memory addressing and subsystem address space.

Interestingly enough, all this discussion about systemic hierarchy is exactly the sort of thought that gets us hypervisors and operating systems.

It in fact provides a great model for understanding actual, immediate systems, not from asking "is there a god" but "in this complicated system what element is acting as 'god'"?

Understand the concept well enough and you can, when debugging through a process, see that the thing you are watching happen is a "hypercall".

Don't do that "useless speculation" and you won't be ready to see it when it is staring you in the face.

It can't stare into the face of an entity entirely contained within the subsystem. That entity doesn't have access to the supersystem, and by definition if it does, the supersystem is just more of the subsystem.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Iintelligent machines will eventually replace humans. That cannot be stopped. Surrender gracefully.

Just because robots are smarter than us, doesn't mean they will replace us. They don't have a drive to dominate. I worry more about the grey goo issue

 

[bilby]

I worry more about the grey goo issue

Don't worry, it already happened, a long time ago.

It turns out that the goo isn't grey, or gooey - it's brown and crumbly. We call it 'soil', and the self-replicating nanomachines are more commonly called 'bacteria'.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

If God is eternal, this would be an interesting perspective...

God always existing could be seen as 'ultimately' natural.

Why bother with a God?

If the universe is eternal, no creator is necessary.

If nothing can be eternal, then God is just as much in need of a creator as the universe is. More so, given that we can see how life, and subsequently intelligence, can arise from a very simple starting point, given billions of years.

The sophisticated theologian answer is essentially that only God can be eternal, not the Material Universe. Special pleading. Of course we are also told by these same sophisticated theologians that God is outside of time. For God all is an eternal now. For God, the past, present, and future are all one thing. So God's creation of the material Universe is eternally happening from God's perspective. So the Universe is eternal. And has no real begining. Pointing this out to sophisticated theists who tells us a material Universe is impossible is quite jolly fun.


Aristotle thought that the Universe was infinite. But also taught that there cannot be infinite things in this Universe. Or there would be no place to put infinite things. Aristotle did not understand the concept of infinity. But for some theologians, that is why infinite regression of material things must be impossible. And so the Universe must be created by an intelligent, Unmoved Prime Mover. Above nature as it were. Supernaturalism, though Aristotle did not use that term. Yes, it makes no sense. But for sophisticated Catholic theists, it is hard to make them reason.

 

[Learner]

Many "sophisticated" theologians argue that metaphysical naturalism must be false. The theological literature about naturalism's falseness is immense. Often the argument is not to demonstrate supernaturalism is true, but that naturalism is false. Thus leaving a gap where God can exist. One theological approach here is presuppositionalism. God is responsible for everything including logic, truth, and other metaphysical necessities. Lots of shifting of the burdens of evidence.

Interestingly, do people here see naturalism as materialism? Logic as humans fathom, through human experience, doesn't explain everything. The argument or proposition could be made (for or against), within our means of comprehension, if we are looking at materialism. Is the existence of all things all physicalness etc.?

For me naturalism means that by definition anything that exists is natural. There can be no 'super' natural.

If I see a ghost and it is real even if I do not know the causal physical connection bteween the ghost and my brain perceiving it, it is natural.

Who says our squishy human brains can explan everything?

Interesting turn on its head for a designer argument.

Arguments will evolve "naturally"; for example we have had discussions on many threads that asks questions about reality.

Besides .. Christians today are current and modern individuals, who observe and understand the same things in the world as atheists do,

Something can only exist if it is natural to do so.

Well yes. Define the 'terms of use' of the word 'natural', per hypothetical ... then I can either agree or disagree.

I don't think that holds a lot of intellectual sway, but it pokes a hole in the "everything has a cause" argument.

There are beginnings. Intelligent beings do this all the time, they create and make things.

 

[steve_bank]

Yes Learner humans naturally create things like machines. They also invent fiction, mythology, and gods.

Yes Learner, arguments evolve. Philosophical, social, political, and scientificthinking is not what it was thousands of years ago.

Christian arguments have not changed much at all in 2,000 years.

1. The New Testament is true because it is true.
2. Jesus lived because it is in the NT, which is true.
3. Jesus rose from the dead is true because it is in the NT, which is true.
4. God exists because god us in the bible,which is true.
5. God exists because I know god exists.

Most other arguments are variations and elaborations on the above. All based in an a-priori assumption that god exists.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I worry more about the grey goo issue

Don't worry, it already happened, a long time ago.

It turns out that the goo isn't grey, or gooey - it's brown and crumbly. We call it 'soil', and the self-replicating nanomachines are more commonly called 'bacteria'.

Oh, no. We're DOOMED

 

[bilby]

I worry more about the grey goo issue

Don't worry, it already happened, a long time ago.

It turns out that the goo isn't grey, or gooey - it's brown and crumbly. We call it 'soil', and the self-replicating nanomachines are more commonly called 'bacteria'.

Oh, no. We're DOOMED

The bacteria will win in the end.

The bacteria always win in the end.

 

[Learner]

Alas, wouldn't a natural phenomena generally be expected to be repeatable?

If God is eternal,...

Yeah, nothing like the fake hypothetical from a theist. Well, if God was eternal... then that solves all of the arbitrary issues I created regarding our existence.

No surprise to get that response from an atheist. One moment the atheist talks in hypothetical mode discussing what would "natural" mean, relating to god's or God but then... the atheist slips out of the mode, and the dialogue morphs into a different angle of conversation. " Yeah god's would follow the same laws if natural .... Yeah God isn't real".

God always existing could be seen as 'ultimately' natural.

But if it were natural, that would imply some set of rules exist in which the god is bound to.

As you're in hypothetical mode here..
... It does seem a little limiting compared to the God of the bible, "being bound to.." describes instead the lesser god entities... Sure we can include miracles, like healing diseases, raising the dead, or walking on water, under natural phenomena, which requires at least.. paradoxically, not being bound to rules so much.

(The use of 'natural' in the current context, 'wasn't' my hypothetical BTW... it originated from other peoples posts, I am just engaging in it )

'Always existing' would mean, to always be 'expected to be repeatable", in a manner of speaking.

At no point in time, has the universe not existed. At no point in time will the universe stop existing.

Like many conversations. You say universe, we say God.

Creation, the physical universe only came about when there was the intention by the designer, like that of humans... a reflection, when they created machines.

Creation or transition? There is no evidence the universe was ever created. It is believed there was a transition of its state, but there is no creation of the universe. If you have evidence for that, a Nobel is awaiting you.

Creation or transition. As you indicated " it is believed there was a transition of its state". There are two beliefs.