The Explanatory Impotence of Goddidit

[remez]

Your Whittle analogy shows you don't get it.



What phenomenon are you explaining by identifying the inventor of the turbojet engine?

I agree.
I don't get your reasoning here. So please help me understand.

I genuinely want to understand what you are asking. Because all I see is you again asking the same question you asked in post 104 to which my response would be the same as 106. And around we go again.

Now are you some how trying to show that I'm reasoning in a circle?
or
Something else altogether?

Really I want to understand.

 

[Kharakov]

Christians generally like to connect themselves to a God that set them up in their position in society, and ignore the work of the many people who create the goods that they consume. Basically, God is a way of ignoring the help, and the plight of the help. I've an aunt and uncle who invoke God for their ill gotten gains... instead of simply position in a pecking order that favors them.

Of course, they also fought to get where they are, and ignore those they prevented from rising so that they could live their lives of comfort at the end. God belief should be illegal among the rich. Speaking of God should be illegal among the wealthy. They should not have that comfort.

Wouldn't it be more helpful if speaking of god were illegal among the poor so they wouldn't suffer under false hopes?

I don't see how that's sequitur. I was talking about workers receiving rightful credit for what they do.

I suppose if the poor credit God for EBT, welfare, and their sub-par wages, which give them access to food they picked on farms, the houses they've built, they're a problem too. I mean, they can be used by the rich for political gain, so the rich can rip off the poor more.

Now, before you lie about "rich can't rip stuff off from someone who has nothing" acknowledge the absolute truth- someone who takes 100 man hours of labor for 1 is ripping someone off. That's just a fact. Even if the person who takes 100 is using societal structure to strong arm the 100 laborers. So that person should be tortured and killed (the rip off guy- call them conservative to be accurate).

Even if you can find an O'Really factor bullshit exception, generally speaking, the guy who has more than one home and has 10 cars deserves to be tortured and killed by the poor...

 

[bigfield]

Your Whittle analogy shows you don't get it.



What phenomenon are you explaining by identifying the inventor of the turbojet engine?

I agree.
I don't get your reasoning here. So please help me understand.

I genuinely want to understand what you are asking. Because all I see is you again asking the same question you asked in post 104 to which my response would be the same as 106. And around we go again.

Now are you some how trying to show that I'm reasoning in a circle?
or
Something else altogether?

Really I want to understand.

Things happen. Things fall to the ground; life emerges; turbojet engines emerge.

We seek to explain these phenomena. We don't explain why things fall to the ground or why life emerges simply by naming those phenomena: Gravity makes things fall to the ground, but simply knowing the name gravity doesn't actually explain explain anything. Abiogenesis might be the origin of life on Earth, but without a proven theory behind it, it's just an empty label. Frank Whittle invented the turbojet engine, but if our explanation is as shallow as his name then we've really explained nothing at all.

The problem with the Frank Whittle example is that we actually know a lot more about the invention than the mere name of the inventor. We have a historical narrative and we also know a lot about how humans work. Just like Gravity, Frank Whittle is only as explanatory as the detail behind that label.

And when you break it down, human beings are mechanistic like the force of gravity. Your "levels" of explanation are meaningless.

Homicide investigations have also been mentioned. Detectives and prosecutors don't merely name the suspect/defendant; they construct a narrative explaining motive and means; they provide evidence and explain to the jury how those things implicate the defendant. From the juror's point of view, the mere name of the defendant has no explanatory power whatsoever.

In Maps of Time, David Christian argues that by pulling matter into stars and planets, gravity imposed order on the universe and caused the existence of all complex systems, including human civilisation. But Gravitydidit is a poor explanation for the emergence of life and turbojet engines, because it is too imprecise; it lacks detail and doesn't help us understand those phenomena. Goddidit is even worse.

Some Goddidit claims are fleshed out with arbitrary detail. The Book of Genesis has the same explanatory impotence whether God speaks creation into existence or whether he writes the commands on his Heavenly whiteboard, and it makes no difference whether he magicks plants into existence before light or vice versa. When the explanation can be changed at random, it explains nothing.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Thinking on Goddidit, did this happen to anyone else growing up?

You're a kid, curious about the world, and your dad, mom, grandparent, aunt, uncle... SOMEONE knew everything and enjoyed explaining it all to you.

And devious little shit that you were, you took horrible advantage of that attention by asking 'Why?'

Unendingly.

Why is it cold?
Because it's winter.
Why?
Because Earth is in that part of its orbit.
Why?
Because we go around...
Why? Why? Why?

Until the game ended.
And the game ALWAYS ended the same way.
Their voice goes up in volume, down in vocabulary, they (may) turn to face you (but maybe not), and they say, 'BECAUSE GOD MADE IT THAT WAY!'

This was not the final answer in a chain of inquisitive exchanges.

This was a signal.

The actual informational content of this transmission was 'shut the fuck up, i am thru putting work into answering questions you're not even really asking, just why-ning, now go bother someone else. Or play in traffic, that'll be fun.'

It essentially is Goddidit, and it literally meant they had no more real answers for you.

 

[bigfield]

Until the game ended.
And the game ALWAYS ended the same way.
Their voice goes up in volume, down in vocabulary, they (may) turn to face you (but maybe not), and they say, 'BECAUSE GOD MADE IT THAT WAY!'

I used to get the secular version: "BECAUSE I SAID SO".

 

[remez]

Things happen. Things fall to the ground; life emerges; turbojet engines emerge.

My curiosities are so much more than that. Things fall to the ground……gravity emerges? Gravity began to exist? Life began to exist? Turbo jet engine began to exist? Began to exist?.......how, why, what, where, when, who?

Frank Whittleinvented the turbojet engine, but if our explanation is as shallow as his name then we've really explained nothing at all.

I’m not suggesting that Whittle is the FULL explanation. He is only PART of the explanation.

Note how you are using the word “explanation” there. You reject my who because it is not the full explanation. You’re simply playing a meaningless game of guess my equivocation.
Here............
I’ll prove it to you…..What is your explanation for the turbo jet engine?

 

[bigfield]

Things happen. Things fall to the ground; life emerges; turbojet engines emerge.

My curiosities are so much more than that. Things fall to the ground……gravity emerges? Gravity began to exist? Life began to exist? Turbo jet engine began to exist? Began to exist?.......how, why, what, where, when, who?

Frank Whittleinvented the turbojet engine, but if our explanation is as shallow as his name then we've really explained nothing at all.

I’m not suggesting that Whittle is the FULL explanation. He is only PART of the explanation.

Note how you are using the word “explanation” there. You reject my who because it is not the full explanation. You’re simply playing a meaningless game of guess my equivocation.
Here............
I’ll prove it to you…..What is your explanation for the turbo jet engine?

You still don't get it, and I think you're trying very hard to not get it, because your responses are idiotic.

This is a thread about explanatory power, yet you are waffling on about "full" and "part", as if an explanation can somehow be complete.

 

[Rhea]

Until the game ended.
And the game ALWAYS ended the same way.
Their voice goes up in volume, down in vocabulary, they (may) turn to face you (but maybe not), and they say, 'BECAUSE GOD MADE IT THAT WAY!'

I used to get the secular version: "BECAUSE I SAID SO".

I always hated that as an excuse, so I decided to not use it with my kids whenever possible. It turned out to be easy for me and they were satisfied with, "eeep, you have reached the limit of my brain to explore this subject at this speed at this time. There are more answers but trying to provide them rapid fire is giving me the shakes. So write them down and we will answer them over cocoa later. Right now I need to drive/read/think/sign this form, and I can't do both at once." Or, "eeep, you have reached that part of the story that I don't know the answers by heart and will have to look things up. We can do that together, later."

The truth works.

 

[Rhea]

I’ll prove it to you…..What is your explanation for the turbo jet engine?

The turbojet engine is a fascinating journey of observation, testing and application of known principals to combine previously used and observed phenomena into a configuration far more powerful than previous incarnations. It depended heavily on the construction of hypotheses that were testable and repeatable. It depends utterly on being repeatable by anyone. An interesting side note is that a large part of today's jet engines are disaster mitigation systems such that aniticipated failure modes are not fatal; such as redundancy and shrapnel containment.

In an interesting contrast to godditit stories, the jet engine industry thinks in advance, "what could possibly go wrong?" and designs safeguards against damage from it.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Until the game ended.
And the game ALWAYS ended the same way.
Their voice goes up in volume, down in vocabulary, they (may) turn to face you (but maybe not), and they say, 'BECAUSE GOD MADE IT THAT WAY!'

I used to get the secular version: "BECAUSE I SAID SO".

I always hated that as an excuse, so I decided to not use it with my kids whenever possible. It turned out to be easy for me and they were satisfied with, "eeep, you have reached the limit of my brain to explore this subject at this speed at this time. There are more answers but trying to provide them rapid fire is giving me the shakes. So write them down and we will answer them over cocoa later. Right now I need to drive/read/think/sign this form, and I can't do both at once." Or, "eeep, you have reached that part of the story that I don't know the answers by heart and will have to look things up. We can do that together, later."

The truth works.

When that happened to me as a child I knew that - in hindsight - the intellectual session of the exchange was over and that emotions were back in control.

My curiosities are so much more than that. Things fall to the ground……gravity emerges? Gravity began to exist? Life began to exist? Turbo jet engine began to exist? Began to exist?.......how, why, what, where, when, who?

What's the purpose of "began to exist?" Every particle and quantum in the cosmos, including those constituting remez, have been around forever. Proof of same is that they cannot be made to vanish. They can change constituency, same as yourself, but to the best of all scientific observation they are all without beginning.

One is always free, however, to believe otherwise. In a creationist way that possibly means everything is a piece of the creator. But such an assertion adds nothing to our body of knowledge.

 

[remez]

Happy New Year

I’ll prove it to you…..What is your explanation for the turbo jet engine?

The turbojet engine is a fascinating journey of observation, testing and application of known principals to combine previously used and observed phenomena into a configuration far more powerful than previous incarnations. It depended heavily on the construction of hypotheses that were testable and repeatable. It depends utterly on being repeatable by anyone. An interesting side note is that a large part of today's jet engines are disaster mitigation systems such that aniticipated failure modes are not fatal; such as redundancy and shrapnel containment.

In an interesting contrast to godditit stories, the jet engine industry thinks in advance, "what could possibly go wrong?" and designs safeguards against damage from it.

I completely agree with you. Science is great. The goddidit explanation is a fallacy.

But my question was regarding bigfields game of equivocation.

 

[Kharakov]

Why the fuck would God make a watch before there were Germans? It makes no sense.