Science cannot solve the final mystery

Polymath257 said:

Nope. Everybody knows that reality extends well beyond what can be observed through our limited senses. For example, radio waves and ultrasound. What you have failed to do is make a case for your creator deity that is even close to being as strong as the case for, say, dark matter.

And, let's be clear, those subjects where logic is most used are exactly those subjects dominated by people on the spectrum (math, physics, etc). Those subjects least likely to be dominated by logic are also those that have the fewest people on the spectrum. Coincidence?



Yes, everyone has seen the CA and most of us know the many flaws in that argument. Why is it that those inclined to belief in deities don't see the obvious flaws?

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And research shows that 'high functioning autism is an extreme cognitive processing style that predisposes towards Atheism and Agnosticism.'

As such, there is absolutely nothing anyone can ever do to establish for you the reality of God's necessary existence as an inescapable fact.

Maximilian said:

And “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” -Maslow


Stated more explicitly, your Scientism or just Radical Positivism is a terribly parochial philosophy of knowledge. On this opinion, there is certainly absolutely nothing good or evil, right or wrong, exquisite or hideous. Even so, can it be tenable to believe that experimental truth is the one and only truth that exists? That simply no aesthetic, moral, metaphysical or otherwise putative facts obtain?

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And why would you think I am a logical postivist? Moral truths are those that promote human well-being. That is the only reasonable criterion for morality. Aesthetics is a subject that I am inclined to see as having lots of opinions, but few truths. And metaphysics is mostly bunk.

Abiding by this view, for starters, the Atheist who rapes a little kid to death ( or engages in this: Abortistas atacan a católicos que defendían la Catedral de San Juan ) is doing absolutely nothing wrong. Exactly why ought we agree to such a conclusion resulting merely from an epistemological limit? Isn’t this an indication that you ought to unlock the ambit of your beliefs and incorporate all the other different types of truth that abound?

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Morality isn't a scientific question. The existence of a creator for the universe would be. You have created a straw man and not listened to the actual views of those who disagree with you. Why is that?

In answer to your question, the rape of children certainly does NOT promote human well being. In fact, it severely damages it. So it is immoral. Now, why do you think a deity is required for that to be the case?

Withal, the core principles of Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem altogether gainsays Radical Positivism’s initial assumption. In fact, Science is suffused with assumptions that can never be verified scientifically. The epistemology of radical positivism, as a result, abrogates science itself.

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A lack of understanding of Godel's results and a straw man of positivism don't make your argument very useful.

Take, for instance, the concept of induction. It just cannot be scientifically defended. Attempting to render a conclusive inductive line of reasoning for radical positivism is ridiculous as this begs the question by presupposing the legitimacy of inductive reasoning, to begin with!

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Again, I am not a positivist. But the problem of induction doens't lead to the conclusion that there is a deity. It is quite possible to do a Bayesian analysis that supports the conduct of science while avoiding the circularity you describe.

All the more devastating to your beliefs is the fact that radical positivism is self-refuting. At its heart, this pernicious conviction demands that we not accept any belief that cannot be scientifically verified. But what of that very supposition? It cannot per se be scientifically tested out much less corroborated. As a result, we ought not to believe it. Your Radical Positivism, as a result, asphyxiates itself.

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One reason I am not a postivist.

Alternatively, as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem makes evident, ‘Whatsoever may be bounded cannot explicate itself without referring to that which is without itself - some postulate whose certainty is unobtainable.’

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Not at all what the Godel results say. Perhaps you need to take a logic class?

This is just what famed Physicist and Mathematician James Clerk Maxwell alluded to when he came to the conclusion, “Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent, it must have been created.”

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And when Maxwell was writing, he was correct. But that was over 150 years ago. Things have changed a bit in our understanding ()partially due to Maxwell's help).

Maximilian said:

And research shows that 'high functioning autism is an extreme cognitive processing style that predisposes towards Atheism and Agnosticism.'

As such, there is absolutely nothing anyone can ever do to establish for you the reality of God's necessary existence as an inescapable fact.

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Because it *isn't* an inescapable fact. It is a dream some people have that isn't accepted by those who maintain a logical attitude.

Maximilian said:

It appears you're not willing to afford me the courtesy of furnishing a straight-forward response to my straight-forward question

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I gave you a straightforward response to your attempted diversionary question.

Maximilian said:

and yet insist that I satisfy yours.

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I asked my question first, and since I've had to ask it three times already with nothing but evasion from you, plainly you're turning this into a game. Please stop jerking around.

Maximilian said:

How am I supposed to do that?

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You could at least attempt an honest reply, but your gameplaying indicates that being a jerk is closer to your heart.

Polymath257 said:

Because it *isn't* an inescapable fact. It is a dream some people have that isn't accepted by those who maintain a logical attitude.

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This was already been addressed at great length earlier.

blü 2 said:

I gave you a straightforward response to your attempted diversionary question.

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Where? Link?

Polymath257 said:

And why would you think I am a logical postivist?

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Because you have ASD.

Polymath257 said:

And when Maxwell was writing, he was correct. But that was over 150 years ago. Things have changed a bit in our understanding ()partially due to Maxwell's help).

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Actually his case as only gotten stronger since the Borde-Vilenkin-Guth Theorem proves that any universe, that has, on average, a rate of expansion greater than one absolutely must have have a finite beginning.

In fact, Vilenkin had this to say regarding the beginning of the universe, “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176)

Emphatically, then, this feeling that the universe is infinitely old, beginningless, or eternal has no basis in any respected mainstream scientific theories of the universe.

This creates the necessity for a first uncaused-cause. After all, something cannot come from nothing as you already correctly believe. As previously established as well, this first uncaused efficient cause must, perforce, be transcendent, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, unchanging, omnipotent, personal and good, i.e., God.

Maximilian said:

Because you have ASD.

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Knew it was coming.

Polymath257 said:

To be fair (bend over backwards fair), I have seen atheists argue that theists have a sort of mental illness. The argument doens't work well either direction.

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Why do you let someone stay on these forums when they're either clearly trolling or so intolerant that they cannot hold a conversation without calling the person they're talking to autistic?

Maximilian said:

Where? Link?

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Still playing games?

I'll leave you to it.

I thought the thread has been spinning out of tangents from the OP...well, I am sorry for my part for going off topic, but we now have someone who accuse anyone who disagree with him as suffering from autism, based you taking advantage on link of some half-assed psychology research paper.

That's low, @Maximilian.

You are generalising, you are making false equivalence, and you are being offensively insulting, Maximilian.

People who do suffer from autism, have to be diagnosed by some specialists on "individual cases", and they don't diagnose someone as having autism based on survey results of questionnaire in the paper, and a paper that don't have much traction even among those in the fields of psychology.

You certainly cannot a whole specific group or population of people as suffering from ASD, without examining each individuals' physical capabilities and their mental and emotional behaviour based on a single research paper. That's now clinical psychology work.

You are just making excuses, by flinging ASD around on anyone who disagree with you.

charlie sc is right, you are just troll, but you are also JW troll.

It is a wonder why no one take any JW members here, seriously.

As to the existence of God, that's all based on belief and faith. Fact required evidences that everyone can examine and view. Faith and belief are nothing more than personal opinions, not on evidence-based fact.

You don't understand what fact is or what evidence is, has become very apparent as you keep dodging anyone who ask for your evidences of this "inescapable fact" you have claimed to exist. What you cannot present and demonstrate is merely you expressing your personal opinions, not fact.

You are not just a troll, but you are dishonest one, because you keep evading any request to present your fact - where are your evidences?

If it is "inescapable" or so you've claimed, then present it, demonstrate it.

QuestioningMind said:

And non-theistic Buddhism is a life philosophy, not a religion.

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If you got room full of religious scholars and ask them for a definition of religion, you would probably get a dozen different answers.
If you have a single definition you want all poster to abide by, you need to post it up front. Otherwise, you will just have to accept that there is more than one definition.

Polymath257 said:

Actually, that is part of the thing here: there are no such formal axioms for physics. Only math and logic (so far) have formal axiom structures. And the fact that there are (informal) mechanisms for changing our views of physical laws makes them NOT an axiomatic system at all.

Furthermore, it is clear that many physical laws are based in second order logical (properties of properties) and are thereby not subject to the Godel results.

So we have two aspects that avoid the Godelian issues: lack of a formal axiom system (especially one that is recurrently defined) and second order logic as opposed to first order logic.

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Bigger than QM is Atanu. Just wait.

Maximilian said:

I'm so very sorry to hear that. No one deserves to be treated with cruelty.

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I don't need your fake sympathy. Your kind was a major contribution to this cruelty I had to endure.

Maximilian said:

And research shows that 'high functioning autism is an extreme cognitive processing style that predisposes towards Atheism and Agnosticism.'

Sadly, then, there is absolutely nothing that can establish the reality of God's necessary existence as an inescapable fact for these. It's akin to a person born blind attempting to enjoy the majesty of an exquisite painting or one whose never heard sounds their entire life trying to be moved by a sublime aria.

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In your opinion.

Maximilian said:

Objective morals are never derived from scientific research because science, by its very nature, is morally nihilistic.

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There are no objective or absolute morals.

Maximilian said:

Actually his case as only gotten stronger since the Borde-Vilenkin-Guth Theorem proves that any universe, that has, on average, a rate of expansion greater than one absolutely must have have a finite beginning.

In fact, Vilenkin had this to say regarding the beginning of the universe, “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176)

Emphatically, then, this feeling that the universe is infinitely old, beginningless, or eternal has no basis in any respected mainstream scientific theories of the universe.

This creates the necessity for a first uncaused-cause. After all, something cannot come from nothing as you already correctly believe. As previously established as well, this first uncaused efficient cause must, perforce, be transcendent, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, unchanging, omnipotent, personal and good, i.e., God.

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You miss the fact that these studies did not take into account quantum mechanics. They are based solely on General Relativity. So, while an interesting mathematical result, it does NOT directly support your claims simply because we *know* that QM has to be taken into account at some point.

And, when QM *is* taken into account, the singularities that show up in GR often disappear.

So, it is far from clear that a *full* description including both QM and GR will necessitate a finite time from a 'beginning'.

Second, the mere existence of an uncaused cause does not prove the existence of a deity. We *know* of events that are uncaused in any classical sense. In fact, MOST quantum level events are uncaused by any classical definition of the term 'cause'.

This means there wasn't just *one* uncaused-cause, but there are many and all the time. So your claim that an uncaused cause must be transcendent (as well as the other properties) is negated also.

So, unless you want to claim a decaying nucleus is God, your argument fails miserably.

Skreeper said:

There are no objective or absolute morals.

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Where do you think morals come from?
-are they taught?
-are they learned?
-are they found?
-are they programmened in our DNA?
-are they just something some stumble upon?
-are they god given?
-not god given?
-does everyone have them?
-how does one get morals?
-etc.

Maximilian said:

Because you have ASD.

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I have never been diagnosed with that condition. It is possible I am on the near-end of the spectrum, but that is common among mathematicians.

Now, are *you* a qualified psychologist to make that diagnosis on an internet forum?

And, since your conclusion (that I am a positivist) is false, are you willing to get away from the amateur psychology and back to the real arguments?

E: I'd also point out that the only paper your reference says nothing about a link between autism and positivism.

Maximilian said:

And research shows that 'high functioning autism is an extreme cognitive processing style that predisposes towards Atheism and Agnosticism.'

As such, there is absolutely nothing anyone can ever do to establish for you the reality of God's necessary existence as an inescapable fact.

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At most your paper, if independently verified, shows that those with *extreme* autism have less of a belief in deities. That does NOT support your contention that they are unable to understand the position of theists. It merely shows that they see through the illogic that the theists use for their position.