Whoa again! I think I exist. I think you exist. I even think photons exist. But that doesn't mean that I think existence is an "absolute truth". And you can tell I believe in the world because I make plans. If I didn't believe in the world, why make plans? It's just the "absolute" thing that I won't accept. I don't have to believe that something is absolutely true to act on my belief that it is true.

Agreed! But then again, why not believe it? Put another way, is there any reason not to? Is there any harm/disadvantage in doing so? Is there any advantage to not doing so? Finally, if all of the objective and subjective evidence points in the direction that ‘existence is a fact!’ then, why not accept (absolutely!) the fact of existence? Why go against the unilateral evidence in even a small way?

The reason not to believe anything absolutely is that such beliefs blind one to alternative possibilities.

Alternative possibilities are irrelevant when one holds Truth. These ‘alternative possibilities’ are still there, they continue to be accessible, they do not vanish… but, aside from this, they are irrelevant distractions.

Your first sentence above is a perfect confirmation of what I was saying. When you believe you know the absolute truth alternative possibilities seem irrelevant.

The harm and disadvantage of believing absolutely in anything is that it makes you closed minded. It shuts off investigation.

Says who? I believe absolutely in the God of Scripture and I would not categorize myself as close- minded. I investigate anything and everything that I desire and I do so open-mindedly. Yes, I have the worldview that my belief in God demands but so do you have the worldview that your belief in materialism demands. Tit-for-tat, Bob… there is no difference… my ‘religion’; your ‘religion’.

It doesn’t matter at all who says it. What matters is whether it is true. And history is just brim full of examples. Who opposed the dissection of cadavers to learn about anatomy? The church. Who put Galileo on house arrest because they were closed minded? The church. Who tries to block stem cell research? The church. Who is opposed to genetic engineering? The church. Religious fundamentalism is the prime example of closed mindedness.

And I vigorously disagree with your statement that I have a "belief in materialism" that is just like religion. In the first place, I am not a materialist. In the second place, all my beliefs are up for reexamination and I am not absolutely dedicated to any belief.

The entire enterprise of science is based on looking at things in a different way. That is why science makes progress. An absolute belief may shut down investigation and deceive people into thinking they know when they really don’t know.

Tit-for-tat – my absolute system, your absolute system. The only difference between us is that I acknowledge my metaphysical system while you do not wish to acknowledge yours.

But my system is not absolute. I am quite comfortable acknowledging my metaphysical ideas. I have not adopted a "metaphysical system". I have no absolute system. I know I don’t know. I am willing and able to entertain all kinds of different hypotheses.

The idea of absolute knowledge leads to stagnation and stasis.

I cannot agree. Yours is a proclamation of relativism, a direct derivative of positivistic materialism.

I don’t know what you mean by this. If by "relativism" you mean "relativity", I think relativity actually came before logical positivism. I am not a logical positivist. I am not a materialist. What in the world are you talking about? :-)

If you want progress it is very important and highly desirable to train yourself to be skeptical and to doubt everything in sight!

God Himself says, "Come, let us reason together." No one is saying that the use of reason be shut off. There is constructive skepticism and then there’s the opposite. God allows questions!

But I wasn’t talking about reason. Of course reason is very helpful in science. It isn’t the whole hog because no matter how reasonable an assertion may seem to be negative experimental results will always defeat it in the end. You aren’t saying that reason should be shut off. But you do seem to be saying that where certain propositions are concerned that doubt should be shut off. I disagree with this and think that everything should be subject to doubt. Constructive skepticism is skepticism that leads to new truth, new ability to predict. Some skepticism doesn’t lead to new truth. Sometimes it strengthens evidence in favor of an old truth. Sometimes it just turns out to be pretty irrelevant.

An important ability of a scientific thinker is the ability to suppose. Absolute belief tends to inhibit supposition and the adoption of perhaps temporary assumptions to explore their consequences. I think the idea of absolute knowledge is a great evil.

Do you think that ‘absolutely’? :-)

No, but it is a working hypothesis that has produced amazing results.

Trying to anticipate some of your arguments, you will probably think that my argument applies quite well to things such as the relationship between the electromagnetic force and gravitation (to pick a problem at random), but that the question of existence is somehow different.

Good anticipation! In certain areas we can all afford to be relativistic since the bottom line is of no consequence. But when we are in critical areas – areas that define our stance and relationship to Truth and Reality – now we are in a ‘danger zone’. It is no longer a free-for-all.

This is most strange. What are these "certain areas" in which we can afford to be relativistic (whatever you mean by that word)? I’m not at all clear what you’re saying here. How can a "bottom line" be "of no consequence"?

You might even be thinking that Newton, after all, evidently believed in God (absolutely?) but that that belief did not prevent him from making magnificent contributions to science. It may not have prevented, but it most certainly played no role whatever in his thinking.

Really? It might interest you to know that Newton wrote far more on theology/metaphysics than he ever did on science/math. "To know the mind of God" was the driving force for Newton’s scientific investigation. Granted, when one is inventing the calculus one is not doing metaphysics but that is not the point (as I hope you see).

Yes. Really. Newton’s laws of motion differed from the popular beliefs of his day in that they specifically did not postulate the intervention of God or angels or some other kind of elan vital. And since you mention the quantity of his writings, I think that the fact that he wrote far more of a theological nature than of a scientific nature is a clear demonstration of the superiority of science. (Incidentally, I am not making a serious argument that science is in all ways superior to religion because I’m not sure what that would really mean, but I couldn’t resist inserting this way of looking at the situation!) Just a few pages of scientific writing is far more valuable than a whole shelf full of books on theology! :-)

And let’s not forget that he lived in the 16^th century. A whole lot has changed since then!

Oh yeah… a lot has changed! Technology has come a long way. We can now destroy ourselves much more efficiently than in the 16^th century. Our medicine is far better than in the 16^th century but tell that to the 90+ percent of the world that cannot afford it. We now have many mathematical theories describing space-time and gravity but not a single one of them has gotten us any closer to answering what gravity is than in Newton’s time. I’d say that while a lot has changed, most has in essence remained the same.

We really seem to disagree here. I think that a lot has changed. The major changes I see are changes in mathematics, science, and philosophy. We are a lot smarter now than we were then. Technology is certainly much changed. I don’t know why you emphasize the negative side of technological advances, but I suspect that you drive an air conditioned car, live in an air conditioned house, use a computer, watch television, send and receive email, cook with a microwave oven, fly in jet planes, and on and on. And Einstein’s idea of gravity as a natural consequence of the curvature of spacetime is a definite advance over Newton’s. This is no criticism of Newton. He actually discovered gravity. Einstein only explained it. :-) *************************************************************************************************** *********************************

You use the phrase "...the underlying assumption of existence...". Please be assured that I operate with this underlying assumption.

Of course you do – everyone does.

I just don't operate on the assumption that I absolutely know anything.

It’s not an assumption. Give me one instance in your life or anyone else’s that puts into question the fact of existence. There are none, right? Thus, it is illogical and unscientific to not state in absolute terms – "I and the cosmos exist!"

Well, I am free to entertain the philosophy of solipsism.

We are all free to do whatever – right or wrong.

Well! Maybe there’s hope for you after all! :-)

I had a friend in high school who used to say whimsically, "When I close my eyes, everything goes away!"

Uh huh… and when we fall asleep, the world disappears. Let’s be real… excursions into fantasyland are okay as long as we don’t lose sight of the fact that we are in fantasyland – with all due respect to your friend.

This was a joke. My friend meant it as a joke. You didn’t take it seriously did you?

Descartes certainly questioned the fact of existence.

Only with the objective of demonstrating that the ‘fact of existence’ is undeniable even in theory. Cogito ergo sum sums up an empirical-logical certainty. It’s sort of like the phrase "I am not here". Say it as often as you wish, each time you say it you are affirming the opposite of its meaning (i.e., you are there, you must be there, if you are making the statement!).

He was trying to construct an unassailable hypothetico- deductive system resembling that of Euclid but in a broader context. He was trying to come up with axioms that could be accepted as true without debate. Bertrand Russell wanted to do the same thing, on a much more sophisticated plane, and almost burned out his uncus in the attempt. Gödel helped us a lot by showing that such efforts were doomed to failure. Incidentally, Aquinas was trying to do the same thing. I’ll bet St. Tom had a lotta balls! :-)

He came up with what appeared to him to be a kind of absolute proof of his existence, but it has since been found to be flawed. It is perfectly logical and scientific to say, "I and the cosmos exist."

Flawed? How so? "I exist", just as "I am here", are statements that being pronounced certify the statement – they constitute the ‘proof’. Nothingness cannot say "I am here" because, by definition, nothingness is nothing and nothing cannot say or do anything (such as stating that "I am here"). Something must be there to proclaim "I am here" and that something is what Descartes called the cogito. I see no flaw.

There are many flaws. They can be unraveled by careful logical analysis of the statement. One finds assumptions about "I" and "think" that may or may not be true. How does he "know" that he is thinking? How does he know, first, that HE is the one doing the thinking, and second how does he know that it is THINKING that he is doing? (Just what IS "thinking"?) And there is the problem of existence. One is likely to assume that one knows what existence and not- existence mean, but a casual glance at modern philosophy will disabuse any honest student of such a notion.

It is perfectly logical and scientific to say, "I had a tuna salad sandwich for lunch yesterday." It is perfectly ridiculous to say, "I absolutely know that I and the cosmos exist."

The logic here eludes me.

The point is in the word "absolutely".

I believe that I and it do exist. It is an assumption of mine, whatever you may say about it. I simply assume it. I have an "as if" attitude toward it. It is a working hypothesis. It’s the same when I say, "Lord willing," when I’m undertaking something difficult or chancy. Maybe it will turn out that in some way the cosmos doesn’t really exist at all. Maybe I am only an idea in the mind of an alien being. Fine.

Hmmm… next time you are about to cross a busy intersection, don’t bother to look both ways, those speeding cars aren’t really there you know (maybe?). :-)

But I always look because I believe that it is highly probable that those cars are there and that they are very real and could run over me!

I’ll give up my working hypothesis and substitute something else when and if the time comes. Now we see as through a glass darkly; then shall we see face to face. (Need I give a reference?) :-)

No reference needed – I know the source quite well.

But St. Paul was a bit more optimistic than I am. He seemed to believe in absolute knowledge with his phrase "face to face". Well, maybe he was right! But I just don’t think so.

We can drop this line but just as a final word from me you should know that I fully understand that your belief in this is a consequence of positivistic materialism and, within that domain, you are correct. The flaw is that you are not in the Real domain but rather in a temporary subset that we commonly refer to as ‘reality’.

I am not a positivist. I am not a materialist. Every morning when you get up, look at yourself in the mirror and say ten times, "Bob is neither a positivist nor a materialist!" :-)

And the bit about if there has never been an instance in my life or anyone else’s that "puts into question the fact of existence", then it’s "illogical and unscientific to not state in absolute terms." In the first place, it is certainly unscientific to state anything in absolute terms. And the question whether there has been an "instance in my life or anyone else’s" is really irrelevant. There has never been an instance in my life where the existence of neutrinos was called into question, but that doesn’t keep it from being an important scientific question. The importance of a scientific question has simply nothing at all to do with instances in anyone’s life. But, there were in fact instances in my life which are relevant here. When I was thirteen years old and reading Spinoza I most certainly did question the meaning of the word "existence" and the meaning of the word "I" and the meaning of the word "cosmos". Let’s not forget the semiotic lesson. (I’m using a somewhat vague term here. What I’m referring to is the convergence of Korzybski and positivism.) So far we’ve been talking as if there is a real state of affairs for which the word "existence" stands. The classical philosophers would think it appropriate to ask, "Just what is existence?" Positivist thinkers have discovered the folly of expecting to find an answer to such a question. "Exist" is, after all, just a word. It is susceptible to many different meanings and any absolute statement about it is a house built on sand. Subatomic particles seem to go in and out of "existence" under certain conditions.

Mostly agreed.

Could existence be questioned on a purely theoretical level? Of course it can. Only a self- contradicting definition cannot be imagined (e.g., a square circle is beyond imagination).

A square circle is not beyond my imagination. Project it on a surface with the proper curvature and it will be as square as you like.

You’re kidding, right?

In case you are not, a square/circle projected on a curved surface is just that. Definitions are arbitrary but once made then intellectual integrity demands strict adherence.

Look, I’ll define the following as a ‘square circle’. That is an arbitrary name that does not correspond to the generally accepted definitions of either square or circle. A square circle cannot exist because its definition is self-refuting. I hope you were just kidding.

That square circle is actually an island in the Seychelles. Check it out! J

But on a purely theoretical level I may also assume four-headed, purple people eaters from the planet Zenon, 762.85 LY away. So why is this not taken seriously? Two words : no evidence! Your own existence has presented you with an entire life of evidence. You and the cosmos exist – absolutely! By the way, as you may suspect there is a powerful reason why certain issues must be removed from the ‘relativistic’ and ‘uncertain’ bin and placed into the ‘absolute’ bin.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I think there may well be horses with feathers on the planet Mungo. I don’t take these feathered horses or 4-headed purple people eaters very seriously, but it’s not because there’s no evidence. I don’t take these notions seriously because the planets Zenon and Mungo are so far away! J Purple people eaters may be slightly less probable than feathered horses because they live on purple people. So we have to satisfy two rather unlikely requirements for them to exist. Science does not depend on "evidence" nearly as slavishly as is popularly believed. Someone asked Einstein once what he would have thought if the observers of a total eclipse of the sun had failed to find evidence of the bending of starlight predicted by the relativity theory involving the space-time continuum. He answered, "I would think that they were mistaken." I perfectly understand why he answered this way. His theory was so thoroughly consistent with everything else in physics that it was well-nigh unthinkable that observations of star light would not show that the rays were bent something like twice as much as Newtonian physics would have predicted. To contradict and paraphrase your last sentence above I would say, "as you may suspect there are many powerful reasons why all issues must be removed from the ‘absolute’ and placed firmly into the ‘relativistic’ and ‘uncertain’ bins." (Actually, relativistic and uncertain are two quite different ideas, so I have taken the liberty of making it "bins" instead of "bin".)

Relativism… uncertainty – two (feathered) horses of the same breed.

This is not hurtful. In fact, it's a sort of insurance policy against getting hurt and against hurting others. It's more comfortable and probably smarter too to start out with an admission that you may be wrong about a thing.

Oddly, and maybe seeming out of context or seeming to extend meanings too far, I can recount experiences in which it was a real advantage to have this attitude. [Not claiming to know anything absolutely] I remember a psychiatrist who came to join our staff. She had a very different approach to therapy than we were using. She came in and said, "Well, I don't claim to have the last word about therapy, but I have a kind of therapy that I've been doing and I'd be glad to try it out here if you'd like." Or words to that effect. She ended up revolutionizing our therapy program! And one time I read a paper at a meeting that ran later than expected. Everyone was tired and wanted to leave the meeting. I got up and said, in essence, "I don't know about the rest of you but I'm so tired I'm not even interested in [the subject of my paper]." Polite laughter. I continued, "But I used to be interested in it and if you'll give me a minute I'll see if I can remember what I thought was interesting about it, and if I can remember I'll tell you." This brought the house down and energized everyone and we had a very interesting symposium.

I agree wholeheartedly – in most matters a realization of ignorance is very wise. This is a major personal tenet of mine. I will openly admit that most knowledge is non-knowledge (remember the essay that I’ve been writing : The Illusion of Knowledge).

And, not to worry! I'm not "testing" you. That would be pretty arrogant now, wouldn't it?

It could be but not necessarily – ‘testing’ is a way to discover information. Isn’t that what scientific experimentation is all about? Sometimes the subject cannot know that he/she is being tested (this taints the results – see Hawthorne Effect).

Let me quote one of your paragraphs:

Consider person X - 98 years old. Person X believes as you do. One day person X dies. But you and I remain in precisely the same universe that X left behind (X was a meticulous observer and kept records of all observations). We compare our observations to X's and, behold, they match in every measurable detail. If our existence is 'fictitious' then why do all individual existences correlate (possibly excluding the mentally ill). Why is science possible? Why is there any agreement at all?

What made you think that I believe existence to be fictitious? And why does it matter that X "believes as (I) do"? What do I believe that would make any difference here? I could quibble that I frequently compare my own observations with those of others, both living and dead, and that I almost never find that the observations "match in every measurable detail". Maybe I'm missing the point. But it looks like you're bringing coals to Newcastle. It looks like you're trying to prove to me that things exist. But I already believe that things exist!

Now your question, "Why is science possible?", is very deep.

Immensely deep! Seemingly digressing let me repeat the oft-used phrase that "there are many paths to God." I believe this wholeheartedly. However, I do not believe it as most people do. Most people believe that they can go off and do their own thing, worship their own god, and arrive at God. Wrong! The ‘many paths’ means that a person can be a scientist, a homemaker, a pianist… address one question (such as ‘why is science possible?’) or another… be rich or poor… etc… and by any of these paths arrive at God. ‘Nuff said – this is a complex and often paradoxical subject.

I'll start by saying that I don't really claim to know exactly why science is possible. But I don't know nothing about the question!

Let me presume : you know that science is possible for more than one reason, right? You know that science would not be possible if there were no order in the universe, right? You know that we have the capacity to discern this order and then to quantify, model and ‘project’ this order. In short, there is much that you do know – to the degree that this knowledge is useful (not necessarily understood).

Accepting for a moment that there exists an orderly universe for whatever reason, it just may turn out that evolution explains science.

Okay, we can make that assumption solely for discussion purposes but a lengthy analysis of the matter casts great shadows on this hypothesis.

The brain evolved.

Yes, this is true in most matters. So, do you think that you may be wrong about the Earth revolving around the sun?

Yes.

Woooooa!

Yes, you do, but you do not (unless I’ve misunderstood) believe this in an absolute sense. Pardon my saying but that is a common pillar among atheists, agnostics, naturalists, anti- Christians, etc. : ‘relativism and non- absolutes’. This is a major obstacle to not [typo!!!] understanding spiritual things (I get into this subject later on – hope you can handle it!).

Do you think that I have a poor "understanding of spiritual things"? Maybe we could talk about that fruitfully. What is a "spiritual thing" and how do we know who "understands" it and who does not? Incidentally I think you meant to say, "This is a major obstacle to understanding...." and not what you actually said which was, "This is a major obstacle to not understanding...." [yup… see typo above] If an understanding of spiritual things will persuade me to burn witches or blow up buildings I think it’s a very good thing that I have some "obstacle" that prevents me from that understanding.

I will concede right now that there is much ignorance and/or personal agendas that give those that do have an ‘understanding’ of spiritual things a bad rap. What allows me to boldly state that people like you do not have this understanding, Bob, is that "Spiritual things are foolishness to the natural mind." I know this to be true ‘cause I was once there myself.

People like me? What am I like? And how many people like me do you know?

The brain evolved.

If by evolved you mean ‘changed’ then yes, it has and is ‘evolving’.

No, I don’t just mean "changed". I mean "evolved".

Oh, oh… is this one of those "here’s what evolution really means"? At most, from archeology and other indirect sources we may be able to determine that cranial volume has changed (I don’t believe it has but that’s beside the point). There is no evidence that I know of that unequivocally informs us that the brain today has ‘evolved’ (your definition) from the human brain of, say, 5,000 years ago. Now, if you already believe in evolution then but of course you believe that it has evolved. But that is begging the question.

Well, one line of evidence is surely the absence of such things as writing, agriculture, the wheel, etc. This is not begging any question. It’s just what we observe to have happened. (Or in this case what we observe to have not happened.) And you may not "believe" that cranial volume of hominid skulls increased over time, but the evidence is quite clear.

As someone far more versed in ‘the brain’ than I am you know that brain size, weight, ratio-to- organism size/weight, etc. serves as a measure of intelligence when man is compared to the animals. When man is compared to man the same correlation analysis yields variances that are useless (r-squared leaves the matter unresolved).

Brain size in individuals does maintain a small but significant relationship to intelligence.

R² is significant? Pardon me but I don’t believe so. But even if it was significant, correlation and causation are not the same.

I think there is a significant correlation between brain size and IQ. It isn’t very large, but it is significant. Go here:

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/DASL/Stories/BrainSizeandIntelligence.html

and also

here.

as just two examples. I have spent many years reading the literature and it has been my impression that there is a stubborn small highly reliable relationship here. These two studies were simply found from a Google search with the search string "Brain size and IQ". This is a very small sample of a truly massive literature on the subject. I notice that at some point in your statistical education you have learned the distinction between r² and r. But if r is significant, r² is significant, and vice versa.

Complexity of axonal and dendritic branching shows a considerably higher correlation.

Again, correlation ≠ causation.

Well, of course. But you can’t have causation without correlation, so it’s a good start. And there are so many other reasons for thinking that a larger brain is a smarter brain that there’s little room for doubt. (Not NO room, of course! :-) )

It did so in the context of prodigiously reproducing organisms for whom modeling reality was adaptive.

What ‘reality’? The perceived one, I presume.

No. Perception has nothing to do with it. Modeling reality is only adaptive if the model corresponds to events which actually occur in an adaptive way. Reality is what happens.

"Reality is what happens"? Superficially, yes.

In my lexicon, the word "reality" means "what happens". I don’t think there’s anything superficial about this. Seems like a good sound way of doing business. Do you want to include in "reality" things that don’t happen?

Postulation of a reality in which it is impossible to verify what happens or doesn’t happen is immoral because it is intellectually dishonest.

Yes, if in fact it is ‘impossible’ to verify. What if it is verified?

Well, if it is verified I’ll tentatively believe it.

But I don’t think it’s a mortal sin (at least in most cases) because it is done without intent. It may be an actus reus, but not a mens rea. The perpetrator doesn’t mean to do any harm and may actually believe that he is doing great good. Something like an Islamic terrorist.

Hmm… do you think that the Islamic terrorist has an absolute notion that killing ‘innocent’ people is wrong? [Of course, to him there are no ‘innocent’.]

The Islamic terrorist has an absolute belief that Allah wants him to kill infidels and will reward him for doing so.

From whence came this ability to model reality?

The hypothesis under consideration is that it evolved. I find that hypothesis quite believable. At the moment our efforts to create consciousness artificially along with intelligence are in a primitive state of development.

Prediction : it’ll never happen! I was once involved in such efforts (1977-1979, RADC, New York, with the Air Force). I remember back then that the feeling was one of optimism – the solution was "right around the corner". As we learned about what consciousness and thought truly involved the optimism faded.

By the way, I’m not saying that something closely mimicking consciousness or intelligence won’t be achieved – it already has been achieved and it will undoubtedly be improved upon. But producing a ‘Remi’ or a ‘Jorge’ – no way. Only God can do that. Why? Because there is a spiritual aspect to it that cannot be materially produced.

Prediction: People who go around saying "It’ll never happen" will most likely be proven wrong some day. History is literally cluttered with forecasts of impossibility which suffered dismal defeat. However, Roger Penfield agrees with you in a way. In his book "The Emperor’s New Mind" he expresses the opinion that computers as we currently conceive of them can never become "conscious". I think Dement agrees with him. He doesn’t rule out the possibility, however, that a novel type of computer not yet in existence which will use quantum principles as he suspects the brain does (in the microtubules inside neurons) may achieve it. It is a brave and bold effort on his part. I admire Roger! (He’s a good friend of Stephen Hawking, by the way.)

Already, though, the structures of our intelligent machines are beginning to show the signs of regularity to be observed in biology. Biologically speaking, I refer here to the occurrence of such structures as mitochondria in a very wide variety of living organisms. Cybernetically speaking, what I refer to is the fact that in computer science all operating systems contain similar structures or "objects" to use the latest term. The same objects seem to come up again and again. The evolution of neural nets can easily have involved the spontaneous occurrence of these (and other) structures which were adaptive from the start and led to more advanced structures. It may not be obvious that I am referring here to event structures and not molecular structures. The event structures which operate inside neural nets are only now beginning to be studied. They depend, of course, on processes within and between the cells.

I retain my position: undoubtedly we will advance to great heights of mimicry but never to genuine consciousness or original thought.

The people at the top of the AI game are not into mimicry at all. They’re seriously trying for the real thing. It wouldn’t surprise me if we wake up one morning to find they have succeeded!

Did you ever think that if evolution has in fact been occurring then every species today has been on an evolutionary path just as long as we have (i.e., every species today must be able to trace back to the ‘original ancestor’ from whence all diversity originated including us)? Our adaptive modeling capability being so advantageous, why have no other organisms been ‘blessed’ by natural selection with it?

Do you doubt that every leaf on a tree grew from the original seed?

Of course not.

So why is it that some of the leaves are higher than others? This is one of the familiar arguments against evolution which is very easy to refute. Every organism has an evolutionary history. Every evolutionary history is different from every other one. The marvelous diversity of life is the result. Feathers are adaptive for birds. We have been evolving just as long as the birds. So why don’t we have feathers? It only takes a few moments of honest imagining to see very clearly that birds with feathers for flying and humans with brains for debating on the Internet could evolve on different branches of the great tree of life.

"It only takes a few moments of honest imagining…"

The operative word here, of course, is ‘imagining’… :-)

So I win that one. By the word "imagining" I was referring to the "thought experiment".

Going back to the initial assumption of an orderly universe, a deeper question is, "Why is the universe orderly?" You want me to say that God made it that way.

I do not want you to say anything, Bob.

Oh yes you do! :-)

Honestly, I would not want you to say anything that you didn’t truly believe.

No, but you do want me to truly believe it.

This is simply a very viable hypothesis that finds its major detractors based on metaphysical grounds – not scientific ones.

The idea in question (existence of God) is based on metaphysical grounds; not scientific ones.

If by ‘scientific’ we also include logical deduction and legal proof (i.e., preponderance of the evidence) then your statement above is not true. The case for the existence of God is overwhelming on logical and circumstantial evidence.

I personally prefer the angle from information theory (being that I am partial to math).

I don’t think the idea of "legal proof" is a scientific idea. It seems as if you are saying that if John Q. Truth were on trial that the jury would find for God’s existence on the basis of the "preponderance of the evidence", a legal concept used to decide guilt or innocence in civil cases. That’s an interesting scenario! I think the jury might indeed so find if there was a good lawyer arguing God’s side. But a lot would also depend on the opposing lawyer. And a lot would depend on who was on the jury! I don’t think that scientific questions are or should be decided by juries. (That’s why I deplore the method used by the American Psychiatric Association to establish diagnostic categories.) Some have alleged that scientific ideas sometimes are believed because it is politically correct to believe them. The jury in this case is the scientific community as a whole. Kuhn has pointed out that this does indeed happen. I think he’s probably right about that, but not right about everything in his book. (Incidentally I taught a graduate course in the philosophy of science in which we used Kuhn as one of the texts. That was a lot of fun!) I reject using this approach to scientific truth. Let me insert here an important caveat which I think I need to keep repeating lest it be temporarily forgotten. What is under discussion in this paragraph is not the existence versus the non-existence of God but rather the scientific methodology for trying to answer the question. I make no case for or against the proposition itself. Next is the question of overwhelming logical and circumstantial evidence. I don’t find any of the logical or circumstantial evidence particularly convincing one way or the other. That is why I am agnostic regarding the existence of God.

If I were really a "detractor" (this would be someone who purposed to prove that God does not exist) then I, too, would, as you point out, be basing my contention on metaphysical grounds, I suppose. I am not a "detractor". I am not trying to prove the non-existence of God, whatever that might mean.

Okay…

Ah, but order is not the key, Bob – ordered complexity is the key! I can tell you right now that the universe cannot help but being orderly – it’s called physical laws. Electrons cannot assume just any orbit around a nucleus – they are constrained to certain particular ones. We know that this is due to energy potentials and stability as this is related to probability distributions, etc… All of this implies order but a special kind of order – an order that allows for change but only under the right conditions (otherwise chaos would reign). This is fascinating stuff!

Have you read Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man? I very very strongly recommend it! And when I say "order" I also mean "complexity", so I fail to see any distinction.

The distinction makes all the difference in the world. Look:

abababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababab

There is much order here in these 68 characters but there is very little specified complexity. On the other hand, consider the following 68 characters:

The relationship between energy and mass is illustrated by: e = mc².

Same number of characters… definitely order is present in both cases… far, far more specified complexity (content) in the second than in the first. Natural events can produce repeating sequences quite easily simply by the functioning of mindless physical laws. But pseudo-random sequences that have real information content – no known physical process can do such a thing (certainly no known through today).

As I said, the distinction makes all the difference in the world.

What distinction? The distinction between order and complexity? I use the terms interchangeably for the most part. The more order, the more complexity. Your use of "specified complexity" reminds me of Dembski’s ideas in his book, "Intelligent Design". (Was it Behe instead who used that expression?) I believe he uses that same phrase. Your two examples display two different degrees of complexity, or order. Your second example is simple in itself but refers to a much more complex configuration of ideas. Looking at the symbols on the page is at the wrong level of analysis to make any comparison between your two examples. How about...

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw.

She was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Aborah.

You invited me to imagine non-existence (for what reason I don't know since I had already said I thought it was unimaginable) so perhaps I can ask you to imagine a disorderly universe. Hope you don't sprain your brain! :-)

Can’t be done – my brain remains intact! It can’t be done for the simple reason that I had stated earlier – it is impossible to even imagine something that contradicts its own definition. Whether we employ the Kantian ‘categories’ or whatever we wish to call it, we impose our subjectivity on the objective reality that is perceived. This subjective cognitive apparatus is preprogrammed into the human mind and changes from birth until the time of our natural death. This subjectivity is, nonetheless, always ordered and it is this order that allows my perceptions to correlate with your perceptions – in short, this is what allows for science to be possible. We cannot perceive or even imagine anything outside of this cognitive apparatus. Hmmm… was that a test?

Well, I think that just about everything that we imagine is "outside this cognitive apparatus". Your paragraph seems to suggest, contrary to your earlier position of naïve realism, that we have no actual knowledge of the world but only know what our "cognitive apparatus" enables us to conceive of. (I believe we can neglect Kant without losing anything of real value.) I think we have the ability to rise above our subjectivity. Actually, science is largely taken up with clever ways to avoid subjectivity. And they work. I don’t doubt that there are a lot of structural and functional mechanisms in the brain that became hard wired in the course of development. Feynman had a good brain, but he learned mathematics and physics after the "preprogrammed" cognitive apparatus of his brain was already well developed. So the brain doesn’t behave like "Tic Toc" (from the Oz stories of L. Frank Baum). Tic Toc was a clockwork man who always did "exactly what he was wound up to do". But I certainly agree that there may indeed be "things" that we cannot imagine. Not just yet, maybe. Perhaps an example would be how the earth could NOT be in orbit around the sun!

:-)

(Our cat has crawled up on the shelf under the computer table and is reaching up behind the keyboard and trying to make improvements in my impeccable prose!)

Cats… so they’re also literary critics?

I am convinced that cats are a lot smarter than most people suspect!

Agreed except that I wouldn’t reserve that observation for cats only.

Me neither.

Imagining a perfect vacuum is perhaps easier than visualizing the current cosmological model. It's probably really impossible to visualize since vision is three-dimensional and the model is ten-dimensional (in one popular version).

Ah, multi-dimensions… Have you ever tried reading C.H. Hinton? In one book of his he actually proposes a method for training to ‘see’ in the fourth dimension.

Haven’t read Hinton. I assume you refer to his book, An Episode of Flatland: or How a Plane Folk Discovered the Third Dimension. The analogy is very familiar. In Steinmetz’s book, Relativity and Space, he inserted a three-dimensional stereographic image hoping to help his readers understand how the galaxies were space-time lumps in a four-dimensional universe. Not of much use, I thought when I was fourteen. Feynman’s two little books are a must read for anyone interested in physics who doesn’t have the mathematical background to follow the college texts. For my money he does the best of anyone in helping to visualize or at least to understand the concept of curved space and curved space-time. Here are the links:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0201408252/thetruthtreeA/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0201328429/thetruthtreeA/

(Incidentally, why are we using "Word"? I can’t get those links to work with the text running inside the "Word" process. Maybe they will work when you are reading the .doc file. Anyway, you can find the books on the Tree in the library.)

I was referring to C.H. Hinton’s A New Era of Thought and The Fourth Dimension – recommended reading.

Can’t find "A New Era of Thought" but I have found and ordered "The Fourth Dimension". Strangely that book was published in 1904, the year before Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. I’m looking forward to reading it.

My fault for using Microsoft Word – feel free to switch back.

We’re going to have to switch to something because we’re running out of colors! And this ever expanding text is getting a bit cumbersome.

Anyway, I could easily lose myself in this but I won’t. Mathematically the 4^th, 5^th, and nth, dimensions are a ‘fact’ – but can this ‘fact’ be assigned to the material world just as ‘F = ma’ has been?

Of course! (I don’t really like the word "fact" here, but I won’t quibble.)

This may be a little deeper than you suspect. It’s one thing to be able to describe and even "solve" in other dimensions, it’s quite another thing to be able to point at objects here and identify them directly with these descriptions/solutions.

Take complex numbers as an example: formulating electromagnetic phenomena isn’t possible without imaginary (complex) numbers and solutions are obtained via complex math. But the "translation"/"interpretation" must occur from the complex domain to the real (number) domain in order to see the application.

Deeper than I suspect? Not likely. A complex number has two parts, the real part and the "imaginary" part. We can understand complex numbers by plotting them on the "complex plain". When we plot the imaginary part we treat the number it contains as if it were a real number in making the graph, but we must remember that when we square it its sign reverses. Is this what you mean? But that is fairly elementary. Some of the equations of quantum physics aren’t that easily simplified. The Feynman diagram suggests itself as an analogy.

When you try to imagine the big bang there is likely to be some kind of mental image which includes a very small object expanding with a great deal of energy. But that image includes "space" outside the object into which it's expanding. The model does not have any such thing as this space. It's not only empty; it's not even space!

Yes, I alluded to this earlier – we can only ‘see’ in terms of our cognitive apparatus.

Your use of "cognitive" here is, I think, inexact. We see with our perceptual apparatus; not our cognitive.

Minor technicality – cognitive is often used interchangeably with perceptual. Nonetheless, I yield to the authority of your background…

Bad plan. Yielding to me is risky enough but yielding to authority? BORZHEMOI! J

Your attempt to prove the ontological position known as "naïve realism" is familiar. It is my impression that philosophers nowadays think that that position can't be successfully held against some very compelling logical arguments, to say nothing of experimental results. I do tend to look at things that way, i.e., the naïve realism way, but I don't think that it is "absolute truth". Like the concept of God it's probably at least a useful heuristic most of the time. It doesn't work all that well in quantum physics, as I think you pointed out.

‘Useful heuristics’ is what most knowledge collapses into. God… now there’s another matter…

Well, you say so anyway. I really think that it is up to you to defend this proposal.

Do you mean the proposal that ‘useful heuristics…’? If so, you are correct – I would need to defend this and I intend to in The Illusion of Knowledge.

I look forward to reading that!

Of course it isn’t ready to be defended in its present form which only says that God is "another matter". What kind of "other matter"?

I would never even think of discussing God in the same sense as I would discuss quantum mechanics or any other such trivial subject.

Next time you need an MRI, just try to remember what a trivial subject it was that made it possible.

You ask whether our theories about things can alter objective reality. One interpretation of the famous experiments based on Bell's theorem in quantum mechanics is that what we expect to see somehow influences what happens. I don't like this interpretation.

Careful… we could go off in this direction for the next 3 months! Bell’s Theorem arose in connection with local hidden variable theories. The upshot of all this is that choosing between quantum theory and local hidden variable theories isn’t a matter of choice, it’s a matter of ‘correctness’. All of this is connected to local realities, communication between local realities (action at a distance?), collapsing wave functions, and explaining experimental results that seem to imply the inconceivable – that reality is determined by our perception of that reality (a seeming paradox).

All of this is, in turn, connected to the strong possibility that QM is an incomplete and/or an inconsistent theory (not good!) in light of the fact that it is the strongest predictor of micro-phenomena that we have. This may even be related to K. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem (I believe it is related).

If QM is incomplete and/or inconsistent, why is this "not good"?

‘Not good’ in the sense that it is incomplete or inconsistent.

But arithmetic is not complete and consistent. Is it "not good"?

I think it’s fascinating! It invites us to contemplate ways to make the theory better.

In this domain (natural) it is always possible to make any theory better.

Remember that when you are talking to me the "natural" domain includes everything; even God.

And as for Gödel, I find his proof to be much more comformable with my avoidance of absolutism than with your espousal of it.

I am not as shallow as you may think. Gödel’s proof came at a very interesting time in human history – a time when we thought we were about to conquer all. [I have studied certain aspects of the time from 1850 through 1950 with a great deal of interest].

God, in His Infinite Wisdom, allowed people to make two dramatic discoveries during this time: Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem was one of them and the other was Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The first demonstrated forever more that Truth can never be achieved via analytic a priori efforts – not today and not in the year 802,701. The second demonstrated that Truth can never be achieved via synthetic a posteriori efforts – not today and not ever. That pretty much sums it up!

The idea that truth can be found by analytic a priori efforts had been rejected long before Gödel, at least as far as science was concerned. Some mathematicians were still searching for proofs of completeness and consistency in mathematical systems. But the idea that truth cannot be found "not today and not ever" because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is just ludicrous. But maybe I’m forgetting that when you say "truth" you mean "absolute truth". We can find truckloads of truth in spite of Gödel and Heisenberg, but it just won’t be absolute. And that’s just fine with me!

But why should the universe care about what I like or don't like? Einstein didn't like it either.

Can you blame him? Yet there’s this little thing called experimental results that keep getting in the way.

By the way, I’ll stop this right here since I haven’t the time to get into it. Here’s my conclusion after years at it : QM and the paradoxical results that we are getting are a manifestation of one (there are several) of the fundamental epistemological limits that God has placed in His material universe. There is a reason for this.

You are being grandiose.

Not my style.

Maybe not, but you were certainly being grandiose in this particular case. You were departing from your usual style perhaps.

You are telling me what God has done about epistemological limits in the universe. Not only that, but you are telling me that you know why God set those limits. You imply that you know, but you aren’t saying what you know or how you know it.

See above regarding Heisenberg… etc… it should be self- explanatory.

Religious people often assert that agnostics are arrogant. I find the situation to be just the opposite with religious people winning the prize for arrogance hands down against the agnostics. I think it is the height of arrogance to arrogate to oneself knowledge about God.

There’s a saying… "It ain’t bragging if it’s true."

And this is why truth is so important.

Bob, there is ‘knowledge’ that God imparts on the believer that He does NOT impart to the unbeliever – it really is that simple.

This divides people into two categories: believers and unbelievers. Do you think I’m an "unbeliever"? Are you a "believer"? How can we unambiguously decide when considering a person which category he fits into? Then, having decided, can we in some way go looking for ‘knowledge’ in both groups with the hope of finding some difference between them? If it is really "that simple" then my questions can perhaps be answered with simple answers.

For instance, as an unbeliever I could not reconcile myself to the Omnipresence attribute of God. Can you?

I don’t understand what you mean by "reconcile myself". I have no trouble imagining the omnipresence of God. (Reminds me of the physical theory of the omnipresence of the luminiferous ether.)

Today it is ‘obviously clear’ to me and the answer was ‘revealed’ to me in a way that I could understand it.

How can I tell the difference between you and the paranoid schizophrenic who tells me that it has been revealed to him that if he only finds the right position for his head and maybe his arms that God will talk to him directly? He is absolutely sure of this. (I actually had a colleague who had a psychotic episode during which he told me in all seriousness that if he could only align his body correctly, like a TV antenna, that he would hear the voice of God.)

I think he (Einstein) was a very famous naïve realist who wasn't noted for being all that naïve! I'm not the only one who gets indigestion thinking about it, and several alternatives have been proposed. Niels Bohr had a famous interpretation.

Are you referring to the Copenhagen interpretation? If you are, you know that there is a great deal of controversy surrounding this… Nuff said.

Yep. I have a friend who is a physicist. Ph.D. from Oxford and all and all. He actually knew Heisenberg! Took a course once with Dirac. His wife is Danish. There are some credentials for you! Well, I’ve read a bit about the different interpretations. My friend doesn’t come out very strongly for any one above any other. It’s a sticky wicket!

Sticky wicket indeed! My personal opinion is that we have arrived at THE wall. I was an early grad student in physics and decided to abandon physics in part because I saw this ‘wall’ (this was in 1975). I have not regretted my decision.

Are you telling me that physics has made no progress since 1975 because it ran into a "wall"?

Anyway, when I was a teenager I was an ardent Christian Scientist and I believed that what is called physical reality was actually created by the sum total of all the thoughts of "mortal mind". One day I tried to express this idea to my father with the metaphor, "The universe is an ocean of thought." He actually thought that maybe I should see a psychiatrist!

So instead of seeing one you became one? :-)

Wow! Never thought of that! (Actually I’m a psychologist.)

Close enough! :-)

About knowing who you are, you said:

With all respect, I like the way God says it - "no man knows what is in his own heart, only God knows the inner heart of a man."

With all respect toward whom? God? Me? I notice that you assume that what's in the Bible was "said" by God. I just flatly reject that idea. I'm reminded of a bumper sticker that says, stupidly, "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!"

Punch lines often sound stupid, even in jokes. But knowing how the punch line was arrived at makes all the difference, wouldn’t you agree?

I don’t think so. And punch lines often sound clever; not stupid. It is their cleverness that makes them punch lines. So when you see a really stupid one, it really stands out!

You seem well read… I presume that you’ve arrived at your conclusion from an exhaustive study of Scripture and history, including the writings of Bible scholars such as Cornelius Van Till, Gleason Archer, Francis Schaeffer, and many others.

Well, Van Til said, "Dieu l'a dit, je le crois", but he had the good sense not to put it on a bumper sticker. And Schaeffer I have heard of also. I strongly disagree with his position. He’s one of those people who fly in jet planes and enjoy air conditioning while bad mouthing the technology that gave him those undeniable advantages. Gleason Archer I can’t identify right off.

When I say "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!" believe you me, I could spend the next 5 years "proving" my case (not that I would). I wouldn’t because, ‘to he that understands, a word will suffice; to he that does not understand, all the words in all the books of the world will be insufficient."

Of course I had assumed that you "flatly reject" the Bible as God’s Word. So did I - long, long ago…

About time for a change, n’est-il pas? :-)

Heaven forbid!

I recall you mentioned Pascal's wager. I have a refutation if you're interested. (I'm getting a bit tired here.)

REFUTATION OF PASCAL’S WAGER

"God can't be proved. But if God exists, the believer gains everything (heaven) and the unbeliever loses everything (hell). If God doesn't exist, the believer loses nothing and the unbeliever gains nothing. There is therefore everything to gain and nothing to lose by believing in God."

The above is Pascal’s wager in its bare outline.

Your bare outline is okay but the details are important to reflect upon.

There is much wrong with it. I could go into great detail and construct the 2 H 2 contingency table with positive and negative consequences in each box. It is a cost/benefit analysis, but a very misleading one. A very telling objection to it is that it can be used to justify any superstitious belief.

True but let’s not toss out the baby with the bath water. Just about all of your "superstitious beliefs" can be dismissed long before Pascal’s Wager is required. The God of the Bible continues, to this day, to be argued because in spite of the best efforts of plenty of brainy horsepower, He continues to be as Real today as He ever was.

Try this : don’t you think it peculiar that you will find hundreds if not thousands of web sites devoted to anti-Christianity. Surf the web and tell me how many exclusively anti-Hindu or anti-Buddhist sites there are by non- Christians. In other words, atheists/agnostics will say a few nasty things about Hindus but not very much... but bring in Christ and those same people devote entire lives against Him. Why is that?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a web site devoted to anti- Christianity. Maybe you can give me some links? Certainly there are web sites that don’t mention Christianity. Are they "anti-Christian"? Certainly there are web sites that state somewhere an opposition to some part of Christianity or to some particular version of Christianity, but are they "anti- Christian"? Are all web sites that mention Christianity but oppose some idea of yours regarding Christianity anti-Christian? I see nothing at all remarkable about the probable fact that among web sites that mention a religion there are more where Christianity is mentioned than mention other religions. After all, Christianity is the dominant religion in the Western technologically advanced societies. Likewise, I have never known anyone who devoted his entire life "against Jesus". In fact I’ve never known anyone who devoted any of his life "against Jesus". Someone did a mathematical analysis (I think it was Gutman) of the "golden rule" and showed that in his mathematical model there were problems of run-away processes in the system. He suggested a small modification to prevent these unstable outcomes. Was he devoting his life "against Jesus"? Well, I think he was Jewish. But I don’t think he was criticizing Jesus. He seemed to be making a constructive suggestion to improve one of Jesus’s ideas. So I just disagree completely with your premise, unless possibly I misunderstood it. It seems that if a person doesn’t subscribe to your particular beliefs about Jesus you classify him as anti-Christian. Maybe this isn’t so, but it looks like being so. How do you classify The Truth Tree? Is it "anti-Christian"? How often is Christianity even mentioned there? Not very often. The Truth Tree is about many different topics and ideas. In all there are 27 pages that present position statements on various issues. Of these only 7 have any mention whatever of Christianity. As might be expected, the page on Religion has 9 references. The Politics page has 3. The Gay Issues page has 2. And only one reference each for Capital Punishment, Censorship, Life after Death, and Pornography. In all, that is 18 references. Of these only 3 or 4 are negative toward Christianity. These occur in the context of the dangers of fundamentalist extremism, responsibility for the darkness of the "dark ages", and critical remarks about the Christian Coalition.

Consider the belief that if a black cat crosses your path you must go home and start out again to avoid bad luck. Are we going to adhere to every one of the thousands of superstitious beliefs just because we win freedom from bad luck if they are observed and true, and lose nothing if they are observed and false?

Of course not but you are losing the spirit of the wager. Yes, Pascal’s wager may be applied to just about any object, including black cats. But a black cat does not claim to have eternal consequences for me – God does!

The idea that the believer loses nothing if the hypothesis is false is certainly not the case.

Details… details… remember?

This is not an unimportant detail. It is a main point in the argument.

Pascal elaborated on what was "lost" : "The pleasures of the world… wealth, power, sex, good times… etc…" Pascal observed, as do I, that these things are not only lost anyway, but are an illusion to begin with. They are an illusion because they are tied to the temporal dimension [I assume you know that that which is temporal is not actually ‘real’ (?)]. Thus Pascal concluded, as do I, that "nothing is lost".

You and I part company here. I don’t think that good times or wealth or power or sex are illusions. I have had some real, good times and some real, good sex, etc. There are other pleasures which are indeed much higher, such as the bliss of one-ness, but that doesn’t make the ordinary pleasures illusions. Perhaps we could agree that the idea that the ordinary pleasures are the highest good attainable by humans is an illusion. There are higher pleasures.

And surely you don’t expect me to agree with "They are an illusion because they are tied to the temporal dimension". You assume that I know that "...that which is temporal is not actually ‘real’". I certainly do not know this. Not only do I not know it; I hotly deny it!

Depending on the rigor of the religion that the believer espouses he may have to donate a large portion of his wealth to the church, engage in rituals which eat into his valuable time, observe many pointless holidays, suffer needless feelings of guilt and worthlessness, engage in frantic efforts to seek forgiveness of sins, engage in warfare to "defend the faith", and on and on.

See above…

I see nothing "above" that answers this.

And at the very outset there is an illusion that the truth of the propositions (e.g., if you believe then you will go to heaven) need not be questioned.

How many times shall a man question God’s purpose? In so doing, is this not an indication of faithlessness? Finally, what does God say about faithlessness?

You and I may know what the Bible says about faithlessness. (Incidentally, the word "faithlessness" doesn’t occur anywhere in the King James version of the Bible.) But you believe that whatever the Bible may say is what God says, and I don’t. So there’s little point in asking me that question. My answer is that I don’t know what God says about faithlessness and neither do you.

The novelty of the logic is distracting to a relatively non-critical reader at first sight. If either one of the major premises is false the argument is completely pointless. And the major premises are absurd to begin with.

Absurd? Says who?

Well, a proposition which contains undefined and/or undefinable terms is absurd. Perhaps "useless" would have been a happier word. And it doesn’t matter the slightest bit who says it.

Their terms ("belief" and "God") are so vague and ill-defined that there is simply no hope of achieving any kind of clarity.

Write to me, please, how you would explain the color "red" to a person blind since birth. What you find "ill-defined" may be somewhat improved upon through study and revelation (from God) but the answer is not to be found in this life.

The fact that we can’t see X-rays doesn’t prevent us from knowing a great deal about them and using them in many different ways. But we could never have gotten any use out of them if our reasoning and language and behavior associated with X-rays were modeled on theology. I don’t have trouble teaching students about X-rays even though neither I nor the students have ever seen any.

I can imagine a religion in which in order to reach enlightenment or go to heaven, or whatever the promise offered by the religion may be, that the adherent must grozzle. Let us say that books have been written on the meaning of "grozzle" and that there are many schools of thought which differ in their beliefs about what it is to grozzle truly with many warnings about ineffective ways go grozzle and so on. And anyone who would try to maintain that the idea of "God" is clear would have to be a person who has not read the history of religion. And it should perhaps be mentioned that the idea that the unbeliever gains nothing is also false.

Imagine all you like… you are not alone. Consider the Hare Krishnas… the Mitas… the Snake God Worshippers… you’ve got plenty of company.

You have completely side-stepped the meaning of my paragraph about grozzling. And please remember that I am not interested in how much "company" I have anyway. Truth is never decided by how many people believe it.

Not believing dogma is very freeing and life enhancing.

Hmm… interesting. I have always felt sorry for the unbelievers in that I see them as trapped in a prison of their own making and yet Christ tells me that I shall know Him and through Him I shall know Truth and that this Truth shall set me free indeed. Note the complete opposite to your statement.

I note it indeed. We most certainly disagree. You seem to feel sorry for people who are out of jail because they are trapped in the wide world. It is the dogmatists who are really trapped.

Behold : you are partly correct – believing the wrong dogma would be life- depleting and imprisonment but believing the Truth is complete freedom. "He that Christ has freed is free indeed."

There is no right dogma. If it’s dogmatic, it’s wrong.

Finally, do you believe that YOU are free from all dogma? What about all that you’ve been professing through this text?

I believe that I am imperfect. I believe that I am human and I have noticed that humans sometimes speak dogmatically. What I do claim is that I have reduced the dogmatic nature of my beliefs as much as I can and will still strive to remove dogmatic assertions wherever they are found.

With commercialism in sito, it may as well be a pagan holiday!

Should be "in situ".

TYPO! break break break

At this point your Word document included earlier material most of which has already been covered above. So I have deleted it here.

I would like to bring up an important matter, though, that if I don’t bring it up might get lost in the shuffle. You said,

Ah, it begins… You can bet your bottom dollar that there is another category of events – the spiritual category. Bob, the natural man doesn’t and cannot understand about the spiritual realm – this is what prevents him from ‘seeing’ God.

This is the dualism that I reject. To me the word "natural" simply means "what is". Everything is natural. Nothing else exists under this definition. All the experiences such as "understanding the spiritual realm" and "seeing" God are perfectly natural.

That’s easy to fix since it is mostly a point of semantics. However, the dualism stands regardless of what you wish to call it. Since you reject the Creator and a creation, it is understandable that you would reject dualism since the Biblical Creator implies a dualistic existence.

Dualism does not stand, no matter what you call it. And I do not "reject the Creator and a creation". First I reject dualism. There is nothing impossible about having a Creator who (or which) is a natural part of the one reality. The problems of making an intelligible scenario for this Creator are not really any different under a monistic metaphysic than they are under a dualistic one.

Furthermore, I vigorously disagree that the "natural man" (whoever you think he is) is in some kind of sub-human state forever unable to understand spirituality (whatever you think that is).

That is not my opinion. God says so in Scripture and I, after many, many years of observing others and myself, I am convinced of the veracity of His Word. I have debated atheists/agnostics for decades and they invariably demonstrate the total lack of understanding of spiritual matters (to the point of being embarrassing).

One of these was a physicist and he tried to make me feel guilty (given my physics background) for accepting God’s attributes in light of physical laws. Now tell me, Bob, don’t you find such a statement ‘embarrassing’?

I say that you think the "natural man...is in some kind of sub-human state....(and) unable to understand spirituality." Then you say, "That is not my opinion". And then you say, "...they (the atheists/agnostics) invariably demonstrate a total lack of understanding of spiritual matters..." This looks like:

Bob: You said A.

Jorge: No. I said A.

I am not embarrassed in the least. Are you? I am puzzled.

If you were right, the many, many people I know who do not believe in traditional religious dualism would be appreciably less joyful, less fulfilled, emotionally blunted, lacking in appreciation for beauty, love, and mystery.

I wouldn’t have said that. It is always possible to substitute truth with a falsehood and yet to be fulfilled. It only has to last for a little while. The Nazis convinced themselves that they were the master race and enjoyed their moment of glory to the fullest – while it lasted.

I find exactly the opposite. Those who are to varying extents free of the fallacies of dualism tend to be more joyful, more fulfilled, emotionally richer, and to have stronger appreciation for love, beauty, and mystery. Richard Feynman was one such person. Albert Einstein was another. (I might add that they have a stronger sense of humor too.)

Brilliant men but they weren’t infallible, you know.

I didn’t say they were infallible. I said they were "more joyful, more fulfilled, emotionally richer, and (had) stronger appreciation for love, beauty, and mystery" than people who think dualistically.

"Looking at the big picture life lasts but an instant – as God says, it is like a vapor. The temporal length of life is but an illusion. A person may be very content, fulfilled and rich in every area of life – physical, material, emotional, intellectual – and yet be on their way to the gallows. Life is not about attaining a state of fulfillment in every area of our natural life but of finding and then submitting to the Truth that extends beyond our natural life into eternity. This is, in part, what it means to find God."

You certainly have a right to your opinion, but do you have any grounds for your beliefs? I notice that you have the above paragraph in quotes. Is it taken from the manuscript of your book by any chance? If we liken your belief system to the color red, then perhaps I am a person born blind. What can you do to explain to me what it is like to see the color red?

If I’ve gotten even a glimmer of what you believe, it seems that you are saying that our life on earth is trivial compared to our life in eternity and that there is no way to tell by examining a person’s earthly life whether he is enlightened or is on the path to salvation. That can only be known after his earthly life has evaporated. What this does is to remove any possible source of evidence either in support for or in refutation of your assertions. Your hypothesis is outspokenly untestable.

- Bob

Bob:

Still 50% gray…picking up where I left off.

BTW, statistics is a favorite area of mine. Worked on statistical pattern recognition and AI while in the Air Force – great stuff!

Oh, and, I’ve read your bio – I know of your familiarity with these topics.

Very good. So I’ll be pink this trip. I’m also going to insert "B:" for me and "J:" for you. I’m also inserting a string of asterisks between threads.

B:

Complexity of axonal and dendritic branching shows a considerably higher correlation.

J:

Again, correlation ≠ causation.

B:

Well, of course. But you can’t have causation without correlation, so it’s a good start. And there are so many other reasons for thinking that a larger brain is a smarter brain that there’s little room for doubt. (Not NO room, of course! J )

J:

You are, of course, correct. You also know that there is much here that is unknown … ‘nuff said.

B:

No. It is not enough to say that much is unknown. You will have to say a great deal more than that! What is unknown has an annoying habit (annoying for you) of becoming known.

B:

It did so in the context of prodigiously reproducing organisms for whom modeling reality was adaptive.

J:

What ‘reality’? The perceived one, I presume.

B:

No. Perception has nothing to do with it. Modeling reality is only adaptive if the model corresponds to events which actually occur in an adaptive way. Reality is what happens.

J:

"Reality is what happens"? Superficially, yes.

B:

In my lexicon, the word "reality" means "what happens". I don’t think there’s anything superficial about this. Seems like a good sound way of doing business. Do you want to include in "reality" things that don’t happen?

J:

No, that’s not where I am. Here: "what happens" (your definition) may be thought of as the "effect". I am just as interested in the "cause". In my lexicon, the cause is more "real" than the effect is… both are, of course, interrelated and one without the order erases the causal relationship… but now consider a Creator (God) and apply causality… tough/lengthy subject… I’ll leave it here.

B:

"What happens" includes both cause and effect. A cause happens; an effect happens. And we do know that the words "cause" and "effect" are imprecise terms in the context of "what happens". It is always impossible to discern purely causal happenings and purely caused happenings. The words, like so many words we use, are like bulls in a china shop. We use more refined words in some contexts when needed. And whenever the going gets tough you "leave it here". Is this a pattern?

*************************

B:

Postulation of a reality in which it is impossible to verify what happens or doesn’t happen is immoral because it is intellectually dishonest.

J:

Yes, if in fact it is ‘impossible’ to verify. What if it is verified?

B:

Well, if it is verified I’ll tentatively believe it.

J:

Ah, now all we need to do is get you to see that "verification" takes on many guises!

B:

Coals to Newcastle. Your choice of words is disturbing, too. A "guise" is a deceptive appearance. When seeking verification, with its variety of methods, the avoidance of deceptive appearances is the central goal. And there’s a philosophical mistake I made up there when I said I’d believe it if verified. The original idea was the postulation of a reality which can’t be verified. If it is verified then it’s no longer a reality which can’t be verified. So I stand by my original statement that the postulation of a reality which, by its very nature can’t be verified, is immoral. It’s like scaring a child with stories about the "boogey man".

****************************************

J:

From whence came this ability to model reality?

B:

The hypothesis under consideration is that it evolved. I find that hypothesis quite believable. At the moment our efforts to create consciousness artificially along with intelligence are in a primitive state of development.

J:

Prediction : it’ll never happen! I was once involved in such efforts (1977-1979, RADC, New York, with the Air Force). I remember back then that the feeling was one of optimism – the solution was "right around the corner". As we learned about what consciousness and thought truly involved the optimism faded.

By the way, I’m not saying that something closely mimicking consciousness or intelligence won’t be achieved – it already has been achieved and it will undoubtedly be improved upon.

B:

Mimicking consciousness is not the goal. The AI people are after the real thing.

J:

But producing a ‘Remi’ or a ‘Jorge’ – no way.

Only God can do that. Why? Because there is a spiritual aspect to it that cannot be materially produced.

B:

There’s that dualism again! What a great deal of mischief that idea has caused! As I have told you, my philosophical position since the age of about 13 or so has been monism. It was a "spiritual monism" when I was a devotee of Christian Science in my early teens and became something of a "materialistic monism" gradually after that. But it didn’t stop. My idea about it now is that it is a "total monism". When you refer to a "spiritual aspect", it is not the case that I deny that the phrase has any meaning. In the first place, I’m reasonably sure it has a great deal of meaning for you. And, although understanding another person is a perilous task fraught with many potential slips ‘twixt cup and lip, I think I understand what you mean when you say it. Your statement implies that in some way perhaps a Bob or a Jorge could be spiritually produced. I say that in some way it can perhaps be produced. I don’t make the distinction between "spiritually" and "materially" because everything that happens is part of my reality. I don’t yet know the technical details of how it may someday be produced. But I don’t think that it is impossible just because I don’t know how to do it. You, on the other hand, do have the concept of the spiritual world and the material world as two separate and distinct kinds of stuff. And you say above that it can never be done because you and I have a "spiritual aspect" that cannot be "materially produced". You are telling me about the rules of interaction between the two parts of your universe: the spiritual and the material. This should be a very big topic for scientists in your universe. In my universe since no arbitrary distinction is made, progress can be made much more easily. But in your universe, virtually no one seriously undertakes to develop an understanding of the interaction between the spiritual world and the material. You, yourself, seem to declare the spiritual world off limits for scientific research. You seem to postulate a reality (or a part of reality) which, by its nature, cannot be known except by some different kind of knowing which is more or less independent from the ordinary kind of knowing. This different kind of knowing you sometimes describe as "spiritual discernment". Now ways of knowing (epistemology) is an extremely important chapter in the philosophy of science, as I’m sure you agree. So why don’t you develop the idea of spiritual discernment? A little farther above I said, "Postulation of a reality in which it is impossible to verify what happens or doesn’t happen is immoral because it is intellectually dishonest." I don’t think of you as a dishonest person, Jorge, so please don’t take this pronouncement as accusatory in any strong sense.

B:

Prediction: People who go around saying "It’ll never happen" will most likely be proven wrong some day. History is literally cluttered with forecasts of impossibility which suffered dismal defeat.

J:

Agreed… my favorite is the famous scientist (whose name eludes me here) that suggested (in 1899 I believe) that the US Patent office be shut down since nothing more of substance would be invented. Talk about wrong!

BTW, I very seldom say "It’ll never happen" – when I do I am willing to stake a great deal on it. Will God ever sin? "It’ll never happen!!"

B:

Did a little research on that. Turns out it’s probably not a true story. Here:

Rumor has it...

that a Patent Office official resigned and recommended that the Patent Office be closed because he thought that everything that could possibly be invented had already been invented!

While that statement makes good fun of predictions that do not come to pass, it is none the less just a myth. Researchers have found no evidence that any official or employee of the U.S. Patent Office had ever resigned because there was nothing left to invent. A clue to the origin of the myth may be found in Patent Office Commissioner Henry Ellsworth’s 1843 report to Congress. In it he states, "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end." But Commissioner Ellsworth was simply using a bit of rhetorical flourish to emphasize the growing number of patents as presented in the rest of the report. He even outlined specific areas in which he expected patent activity to increase in the future.

Taken out of context, such remarks take on a life of their own and are perpetuated in publication after publication whose authors, rather than check facts, copy and quote each other. For example, recent publications have attributed the "everything that has been invented..." quote to a later commissioner, Charles H. Duell, who held that office in 1899. Unlike Ellsworth, who may have been merely misquoted, there is absolutely no basis to support Duell’s alleged statement. Just the opposite is true.

Duell’s 1899 report documents an increase of about 3,000 patents over the previous year, and nearly 60 times the number granted in 1837. Further, Duell quotes President McKinley’s annual message saying, "Our future progress and prosperity depend upon our ability to equal, if not surpass, other nations in the enlargement and advance of science, industry and commerce. To invention we must turn as one of the most powerful aids to the accomplishment of such a result." Duell adds, "May not our inventors hopefully look to the Fifty-sixth Congress for aid and effectual encouragement in improving the American patent system?" These are unlikely words of someone who thinks that everything has been invented.

References:

Jeffery, Dr. Eber. Journal of the Patent Office Society. July 1940

But taking your example of the question "Will God ever sin?", your answer is not based on any kind of verification at all. It is simply a part of your declared position about God which was reached by a secret method of spiritual discernment. Sadly, it has all the earmarks of the pronouncements of chalatans.

B:

The idea in question (existence of God) is based on metaphysical grounds; not scientific ones.

J:

If by ‘scientific’ we also include logical deduction and legal proof (i.e., preponderance of the evidence) then your statement above is not true. The case for the existence of God is overwhelming on logical and circumstantial evidence.

I personally prefer the angle from information theory (being that I am partial to math).

B:

I don’t think the idea of "legal proof" is a scientific idea. It seems as if you are saying that if John Q. Truth were on trial that the jury would find for God’s existence on the basis of the "preponderance of the evidence", a legal concept used to decide guilt or innocence in civil cases. That’s an interesting scenario!

J:

I believe that we all live our daily lives, making countless decisions, employing this process. Here is the idea in a nutshell: no one has all the facts and therefore we are all forced to decide with incomplete knowledge (I believe God made it this way – there’s a very good reason but that would be another topic).

B:

And I believe that we can do much better than to revert to the way "we all live our daily lives, making countless decisions employing this process." The great advantage science offers us comes crucially from a rejection of the ordinary day-to-day way of making decisions. The fact that "countless" decisions are made in an unscientific way is of no consequence.

J:

I think the jury might indeed so find if there was a good lawyer arguing God’s side. But a lot would also depend on the opposing lawyer. And a lot would depend on who was on the jury!

J:

Your points are indeed valid but I’ll raise you one (a big one!): in the final analysis the evidence / argumentation is irrelevant!

B:

I hope you aren’t serious. I hope you don’t instruct your children to disregard evidence and argumentation. If you do, you are asking them to go blindly into a world fraught with dangers. I’m sure they have better sense than to follow your suggestion!

B:

I don’t think that scientific questions are or should be decided by juries. (That’s why I deplore the method used by the American Psychiatric Association to establish diagnostic categories.)

J:

Hmmm… yet I presume that you believe in the peer review process (you certainly submitted yourself to it enough times!). Isn’t the peer committee a "jury" of sorts?

B:

No. To the extent that those who review articles in scientific journals are acting like jury members, to that extent they are failing. Those who do these reviews are not just citizens chosen at random. They are themselves scientists who have done original research in the area in question. They are chosen because they have demonstrated expertise in methodology and knowledge of the history of research in that area. And the system is not perfect. One can find examples in which articles of worth were rejected because of the particular biases of the reviewers. One can also find examples where flawed articles were accepted. One might say of the peer review method that is the worst method ever proposed but that it is better than all the others.

B:

Some have alleged that scientific ideas sometimes are believed because it is politically correct to believe them. The jury in this case is the scientific community as a whole. Kuhn has pointed out that this does indeed happen.

J:

It is unquestionably true.

B:

I think he’s probably right about that, but not right about everything in his book. (Incidentally I taught a graduate course in the philosophy of science in which we used Kuhn as one of the texts. That was a lot of fun!)

J:

I would imagine so. Kuhn’s The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research was an eye opener for me.

B:

I reject using this approach to scientific truth. Let me insert here an important caveat which I think I need to keep repeating lest it be temporarily forgotten. What is under discussion in this paragraph is not the existence versus the non-existence of God but rather the scientific methodology for trying to answer the question.

J:

Oh boy… this could get interesting! I referred earlier to the "fundamental problem of the naturalist" – this is what you are touching upon here.

B:

I make no case for or against the proposition itself. Next is the question of overwhelming logical and circumstantial evidence. I don’t find any of the logical or circumstantial evidence particularly convincing one way or the other. That is why I am agnostic regarding the existence of God.

J:

I respect that position but then you haven’t yet seen or heard it all, have you? :-)

B:

Perhaps you respect my position because it’s respectable. So, now what? Are you going to claim to have seen or heard it all? If so, I submit that that position is not respectable.

B:

(I’m not sure just what distinction is being referred to here. There seems to be a break in the continuity.)

J:

The distinction makes all the difference in the world. Look:

abababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababab

There is much order here in these 68 characters but there is very little specified complexity. On the other hand, consider the following 68 characters:

The relationship between energy and mass is illustrated by: e = mc².

Same number of characters… definitely order is present in both cases… far, far more specified complexity (content) in the second than in the first. Natural events can produce repeating sequences quite easily simply by the functioning of mindless physical laws. But pseudo-random sequences that have real information content – no known physical process can do such a thing (certainly no known through today).

As I said, the distinction makes all the difference in the world.

B:

What distinction? The distinction between order and complexity? I use the terms interchangeably for the most part.

J:

So do most people and, commonly speaking, there is nothing wrong with this. However, we are not ‘commonly speaking’ here. There is a technical difference between order and complexity – more specifically, between ‘just’ complexity and directed complexity. In order to understand intelligent design theory (ID) this distinction is important.

B:

The more order, the more complexity.

J:

Not necessarily… a tremendous amount of order may be present and yet it is a very simple system. In information theory we refer to it as a sort of ‘specification length’.

Think of a crystal such as salt (NaCl). A chunk of salt will contain trillions upon trillions of atoms - a very complex system. Yet to specify that system only a very short specification is necessary (it is a simple repeating pattern!).

B:

Your use of "specified complexity" reminds me of Dembski’s ideas in his book, "Intelligent Design". (Was it Behe instead who used that expression?)

J:

I have corresponded with Dembski who happens to be spearheading ID. Behe introduced the concept of irreducible complexity in his book Darwin’s Black Box. What Dembski has done is to generalize the concept into a design inference – a bona fide theory!

B:

Baloney!

B:

I believe he uses that same phrase. Your two examples display two different degrees of complexity, or order.

J:

No, Bob – the difference is qualitative, not quantitative.

B:

Your second example is simple in itself but refers to a much more complex configuration of ideas.

J:

Of course, there are always different ways to look at something. Your statement is true under certain perspectives. For instance, under the domain of syntactical formal languages you are correct. But bring in semantical considerations and no, we now have qualitative differences of complexity.

B:

I should warn you that I consider Dembski and Behe to be two prime examples of pseudoscientists. I think their books are worse than worthless. They are very poorly and naïvely written and are easily refuted, but they can be very misleading to readers who for whatever reason accept them uncritically. Complexity and order and information content are rather difficult ideas. You mention "information theory", but I believe I detect that you are not well qualified in that subject. My own background in it is also quite limited, but I think I understand it well enough to get on with. I'm not familiar with the concept of "specification length". This peculiar use of the word "specification" I associate with either Dembski or Behe, I don’t remember which.

B:

Looking at the symbols on the page is at the wrong level of analysis to make any comparison between your two examples. How about...

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw.

She was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Aborah.