Can God Think?

[clinkernace]

As your initial statement set limits I will limit my reply.

Historic attributes of GOD (the Judeo-Christian one) are:

Omniscience (all knowing)

Omnipotence (all powerful)

Omnipresence (everywhere [and btw everyWHEN])

 

As omniscience is one of the defining attributes I would have to pick it before thinking.

 

But you limited thinking to having a novel thought, not that process by which we continue our existence and interaction with our surroundings.

 

If GOD is omniscient there is no new thought left to 'think'.

 

Before reading this, it might be helpful to note that none of my arguments on this or any other thread are intended to disprove the existence of a Creator. My goal is to demonstrate a Creator-concept that is logical, and perfectly consistent with physics and other hard sciences, while making perfect sense of human existence.

 

I regard innovative thought as essential to all aspects of human civilization. Many people can survive without a whit of imagination, mainly thanks to the efforts of others. The structure in which you dwell and the technology that facilitates our conversation are good examples of the importance of imagination to human civilization. Does your home have plumbing? Do you drive a car, have a TV, or fillings in some teeth? I've made my living on innovative ideas and alternative solutions to hard problems, and am but one of millions who think creatively to earn their beer and bean money.

 

I appreciate your willingness to abide by the standards of logic. Not a common characteristic.

 

Your choice of alternative-- omniscience over imaginative thought, has implications. The most obvious is that God cannot do something which for intelligent humans is commonplace. If God is thus limited by omniscience, He cannot be omnipotent.

[Eclogite]

If God is thus limited by omniscience, He cannot be omnipotent.

You continue to constrain this God with linear time as experienced within this universe. That is simply wrong.

[Deepwater6]

Perhaps the hypothetical God discussed here can see the future, knows the outcome of everything to come, but chooses not to reveal it to himself. An existence without anticipation would be a hopeless way to go through time.

[clinkernace]

Perhaps the hypothetical God discussed here can see the future, knows the outcome of everything to come, but chooses not to reveal it to himself. An existence without anticipation would be a hopeless way to go through time.

 

The depths of confusion that people will invent to avoid the obvious never ceases to amaze me. The concepts of omnipotence and omnipotence are both invented concepts. Why invent more stuff so as to keep on believing other inventions? The simple and logical choice would be to recognize that omnipotence and omniscience were illogical from the outset.

[Deepwater6]

Never cease to amaze you?... well I never meant to do that. Yes from the outset many things would not add up with omnipotence and omniscience in the world of Physics, but then this is a hypothetical conversation is it not?

 

Obviously from your previous replies, mine included, you have a much greater universal understanding than the rest of us. So please explain further your thoughts on the subject and enlighten us. Do me a favor though, keep it simple and type very slow so I can keep up, I'm a little damp and your knowledge leaves me in awe. :o

[kowalskil]

For the purpose of this conversation...

 

By God, I mean the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of traditional Western religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their derivatives;

 

By "Think," I mean, have a creative thought, that is, have an idea not previously known to the thinker.

 

Imagine that at the instant you finish this sentence, God comes up with a new idea, something He'd not previously considered, such as a DNA modification to peanuts that makes all human beings who eat a peanut become thoughtful and highly intelligent. Five minutes ago, God did not have that particular idea.

 

Therefore, five minutes ago God did not know everything.

 

If God did not know everything five minutes ago, back then He could not have been omniscient.

 

Having had that idea, does God now know everything? If so, then He can never have another new idea, and therefore can no longer think.

 

Clearly, either God can think, or God is omniscient. Pick one.

 

For what it's worth, long ago I opted in favor of thought, and found that the option has interesting consequences.

 

God is a spiritual entity. Thinking of spiritual entities is also spiritual. By spiritual I mean not material, not somthing we can investigate in our laboratories. Some people say that "if it is not material then it does not exist."

[Eclogite]

I do not see how the time parameter is implied in my definition of thinking.

You have a sequence. God knows everything. He attempts to have a new thought. He cannot do so because he already knows everything. A sequence inherently is a time line.

 

 

In fact, to the best of my knowledge, of all the different kinds of information processing casually referred to a "thought," creative thought is the only one that seems to be time-independent.

 

Like most of us on this site, I make my living with my mind, and have done my best to distinguish its various modes of operation, as have serious researchers whose careers are dedicated to the subject. The brain has short-term, mid-term, and long-term memories, all of which seem to me to be clearly time dependent. Deductive problem analysis always takes time, often years-- for me at least. But inductive "reasoning" is another thing entirely.

 

I'd not even call this kind of thought "reasoning," and do not believe that it is a property of the brain. I and everyone with whom I've discussed this (and I'll bet a buck that this applies to you as well) agrees that creative thought appears in an instant, fully formed within the mind, and completely independent of language.

We've discussed this already. You are mistaken. Thoughts develop subconsciously, so they are certainly not time independent. Hence the oft used phrase 'let me sleep on it'. That is, let me have some time to think about this.

 

 

My opinion is that true thought, the generation of new ideas, is what you might call a "soul-level" operation, and is entirely non-temporal.

It is an opinion that flies in the face of well established neurological investigations, therefore I reject it as a faulty opinion.

 

God can observe the surface of the sun directly at the surface, or from the perspective of an earth-based observer. God can also observe the solar surface from any point in between. Because he is observing e/m radiation restricted by the speed of light, each of the infinite positions he might take between earth and sun will produce a different image. Since the classic God can, or does, exist everywhere in space-time, he would be observing all these images simultaneously. This would produce a blur of information, rather than distinct images.

 

The effect would be analogous to you or I watching a movie displayed by a faulty projector, one that ran the film between lamp and lens, but without a functional shutter or film-stop mechanism. Instead of a rapid series of discrete images, we would see a blur of light.

 

Put more succinctly, allowing an entity to make an observation from any point in time as well as space produces a horrid problem in 4-dimensional resolution.

Only if you think of trying to encompass this gestalt with the limited sensory and neurological apparatus of a human. If we are considering a God I think it only reasonable to grant her god-like powers. These would include no sense of discomfort at perceiving all things at all times at once.

 

Obviously, every believer will resolve this argument in the traditional manner, by declaring that an omnipotent God can do anything. That is one reason why I do not believe in such a God, preferring the concept of creators limited by the rules of logic and two laws of thermodynamics.

I''m not a believer and see nothing illogical in resolving it in the same way. What makes you think that the rules of logic and the laws of thermodynamics which apply to this universe must apply to all universes, or to the creators of such universes?

 

Consider this final illogical, subjective point. Any God capable of simultaneously resolving all possible observations from all possible space-time points would know the entire history of the universe in an instant. Every event will be a rerun.

 

I enjoy watching Green Bay Packer games. The enjoyment comes from the process of the game, the interactions between players, coaches, fans, and often the weather. The 1967 Ice Bowl was the best game ever, for me, because I froze my *** off in a -35 degree wind chill watching the ups and downs, feeling certainty of outcome turn to despair, sitting on frozen pins and needles up to the final score.

 

Could I have observed that game in an instant by hooking myself up to a machine that compressed the entire space-time experience, I'd not have bothered with it. Therefore I have adopted the notion that God, whatever he or they might be, is also entitled to enjoy the processes, if not the outcomes. Clearly, God could not have been a Dallas Cowboy fan.

So you reject God on the basis that she must be made in your image. Cute, but no banana.

[cal]

I only quote people whose works I've actually read, lest I mistakenly appear to agree with the wrong person. I incorrectly assumed that you'd read Ayn Rand. My I recommend Atlas Shrugged? I was your age and idealistic when "the universe" invited me to read it. She told a good story and expressed her ideas effectively in the process. If you prefer non-fiction, she condenses her ideas in The Virtue of Selfishness.

Atlas Shrugged is a horribly overrated book, the entire last third of it is just the same stuff over and over. Also, the topic in your fourth sentence is the universe, and then in the next sentence, without re-appropriating a new topic, you say, "She," as if the universe is gender specific.

 

Your replies suggest that either I did a piss poor job of expressing myself, or that you only read my post once and filtered it through some preconceptions.

Both.

 

I am neither a theist nor a deist. I'm a physicist at heart, not by trade, and my focus is upon the nature and origin of human consciousness.

>I'm a physicist

>focus is upon the nature and origin of human consciousness.

Wot. Human consciousness is a matter of bio-physiology or philosophy, not physics. In fact there's only like one or two direct ties with physics and consciousness, like the concept of free-will. I've seen it argued that because quantum states are predetermined, the matter moving through them is moving in a predetermined path, but only on the quantum level. So we would have this slight illusion of no free will etc. But aside from free-will stuff, I haven't seen anything physics related that directly argues an entire branch of philosophy like consciousness. It's in no way a fair statement to say you can focus on one field of academia and force it to be related to an entirely separate field of academia.

 

You are IMO correct to disbelieve in God, as are other atheists. However, you disbelieve in the wrong god. I do not believe in the incompetently defined God of Abrahamic religions, nor do I care for the undefined, unmotivated gods of deistic thinkers. I propose that there is a creator-- actually, a consortium of creators that humans refer to as if they were a single entity because humans are pretty ignorant, a convention that I follow to make communications simpler-- who are limited by the laws of thermodynamics.

It doesn't matter how you word this; as long as it's in the context that it is something that created us that was outside of the properties of the universe itself, you are describing a belief system, ergo, a religion. And even though you said you aren't theistic, this idea has been proposed by many theists before you and many theists to come, because it is a theistic idea. Don't say it isn't.

 

God is subject to the First and Third laws of Thermodynamics, but not the Second Law. IOW, God is the quintessential Maxwellian Daemon.

 

Those are the only important primary properties of God. Given your understanding of physics, surely I do not need to elaborate and explain his physical relationship to the universe with more detail.

Given your self-description that you understand physics, you should know that you can't simply alter one of the first three laws of thermodynamics (1-3, not including 0) or make it transparent to an entity and not also have to alter or make transparent the other two laws. You see these laws are what they are because they are ALL true, not just two of them. In fact, if you argue that there's a point in the universe where the second law doesn't apply, then energy can't be constant in any given system, because entropy doesn't constantly occur in that system to which you ascribe God to. And then since entropy doesn't constantly increase, then the third law is irrelevant because any compound could achieve absolute zero within a short time span. So if your God is above the second law, he/it/they are also above pretty much all the rest of them (or at least the ones that matter, lol puns). So it's simply not possible for one to just not apply, either they all do or they all don't. This doesn't mean you can't alter all of them to be different for your God, but by the time you have something workable that re-does all the main laws of thermodynamics, you have something so drastically different that it would no longer be applicable to our universe.

 

If you want details, perhaps you should read my book.

...

Why am I so fond of creative thought? Figured you'd never ask. I live amid a planet full of mindless, unimaginative dolts. The occasional bit of love I can feel comes from encounters with individuals who think for themselves, whether I agree with them or not. The most dreadfully boring of people are those who speak from their bibles and textbooks.

The most dreadfully insulting of people are those who mock others' creativity and then try to push their ******* book about theism in the most unimaginative way to a forum full of non-theists.

Congrats on having the ignorance to even allow yourself to try that though.

 

The most important component of these ideas is that this extended God is not responsible for human consciousness. Put simply, your body is created-- well, engineered, at his behest, but the component of yourself that is conscious had an entirely different origin.

I want to clarify that "not being from god" = ungodly.

So it's no wonder he hates us so ******* much that he dooms us to the most painful suffering possible for all of time if we don't mentally ******* our whole lives (like the dude can't go 80 years without blind acceptance of very skeptical topics?). I mean obviously right, because we're ungodly. Or maybe you don't take that approach, no I'm sure your book talks about how heaven and hell don't exist, but it seems like you only went half-way on that thought. Heaven and hell don't exist because there isn't a God to send us there. None of it exists you tool.

 

Please realize that these ideas do not fit either theistic or deistic concepts. Not a Bible thumper, I accept the physical universe as the only bible that is absolutely certain to have been written by any creator, and mathematics its universal language. If you were looking for arguments with a religious nut, you picked the wrong antagonist. I'm a physics nut, and if you are genuinely interested in understanding the natural laws and the the reason for your personal existence, I am your protagonist.

False, you are the untruths and misinformation and logical fallacies unto itself a thousand times over that causes the problems in the first place. To prove this, let's go step by step through your quote, shall we? I'll number my responses in relation to your sentences so you can follow along!

1. A belief system that describes creation of the universe or reasoning for logics within the universe is by core definition what theism entails. Furthermore, the types of creators you describe are mirror copies of many deistic gods that have already been proposed and dismissed, much like I am doing with your beliefs via this refutation.

2. You obvious don't truly accept those things since you think it is possible to half-*** thermodynamics and perverse the mathematical properties of thermodynamics in such fundamentally impossible ways.

3. You antagonize the very notion of being reasonable with your circular and dismissive arguments.

4. The only thing you seem to support in a protagoic way is your non-empirical beliefs in magic. This would actually be acceptable if you used any a priori axioms to show logic that could self-actuate your beliefs (which then I don't think you could define purely as belief), but you don't, so there's no legitimacy behind your claims.

 

You mentioned, "A perfect being cannot have a physical form..." and I would agree with you if not for the feeling that you are making a mistake common to non-physicists, that of treating the words "physical" and "material" as if they were synonyms. Were you to substitute "material" in place of "physical," I would agree completely.

 

Physical means, as you well know, those components of the universe that are capable of interacting with matter, or with one another. Dark Energy is obviously physical, as is Dark Matter. Who are we to say that there cannot be a perfect energy being, or a perfect dark matter being?

I have a feeling that you are making a mistake common to non-physicists, that of treating the words "physical" and "material" as if they weren't synonyms. In fact, they are shown as equally related words on most major word-definition sources like THIS ONE RIGHT HERE.

See: "of or pertaining to that which is material: the physical universe; the physical sciences."

Matter is material, and so is energy by definition, because they both physically exist within space... and time for that matter (lol more puns). Dark Energy is a material that can interact with other materials like Dark Matter and normal Matter. I don't see what the confusion is here.

Here's some of those darned axioms I mentioned earlier that prove a point. I'm making these for you so you can understand why you're delusional.

Postulate 1: Matter is material, and matter is energy, so by transitive property, energy is material.

Theorem 1: Since matter and energy are materials, and they exist within our plane of perception, they also physically exist.

Postulate 2: Any object claimed to physically exist does so with the property of either observable collision with other similar objects, or with a concluding existence of it's own observable disassociation.

Theorem 2: Any object class assigned with the property of "matter" holds collision with other matter-classed objects, & any time collision occurs between two materials' fields or surfaces, pieces of energy are observably dissociated from said matter during such interactions.

 

I don't think I need to include triangle dots for this post. It'd be incredibly hard to define any objects objectively within our universe if they weren't materials that physically existed. ALL THAT BEING SAID, a perfect being still cannot have a physical form, because dark matter and dark energy are essentially forms of normal matter and normal energy (at least in relation to the axiom I presented above). You cannot have a perfect being that is limited to one or multiple types of matter or energies, the definition of perfect requires that which lacks nothing. A perfect being would have to either contain all possible forms of matter and in every state they can possibly exist, or nothing at all. I hope this requires no further explanation because nothing more fundamental exists. If you deny what I have presented here, you are simply denying the core concept and any semantically definably concept for what we are discussing (at least for this quote's refutation).

 

While I love physics, I've come to know a diverse number of physicists and other doctorate holders during the course of my career, and found most of them to be dreadfully unimaginative. Among that crowd are the turkeys who are pursuing the absurd notion that the universe is a computer simulation, without first bothering to determine the nature of the computer, the properties of its designers, or their motivations.

I don't want to bother simply quoting other sources, because that's what google is for, so I will instead tell you that you must not be up to date on the literature regarding this subject. All kinds of hypothesis's have been proposed for what the nature of the computer would be, the properties of its designers, and their motivations are. Along with that, the experiments being designed and performed around the hypothesis's (in tandem with the scientific method) will be able to provide evidence supporting or denouncing said hypothesis's, leading to a much more accurate theory of what the actual mechanics behind it are. Nuff said.

 

You are young, and you will become appropriately cynical in time, I hope. At your age, coming from a spirit of promise and idealism, I too trusted the authority figures. Now, with experience and a broader knowledge of science history, I distrust the lot of them.

I hope by providing my own self-formulated axiom, using nothing but basic logic, you can see my reasoning does not spawn only from sources of authority, but sources of intuitive reasoning, formulated without the aid of outside influence. And on top of that, as if I need to prove myself to you of all persons, this entire post should also show a fair amount of cynicism. Now, with experience and a broader knowledge of scientific literacy, I can say you have no idea what you're on about.

 

Good that you might get to study under Krauss, so that you will have a first hand opportunity to learn how to to bullshit effectively. We'll be almost neighbors. If you come to visit, I can explain Greylorn's Third Law: The relationship between a scientist's appearances on TV and his/hers contributions to science, are inverse.

If I were looking to study the finer details of flinging my own ****, neighbors we be not, but indeed the study of which under you, would suit me best.

 

Re: you comment, "I'd read back into wolfram's methods and goal before you dismiss the methods he uses to achieve that goal."

 

First off, I pioneered his methods, and have no interest in playing that game again. Have you actually performed algorithmic modeling? Perhaps you are the one who needs to employ, rather than merely read, Wolfram's methods. And since we are supposedly discussing science, not politics or grant-garnering, goals are irrelevant. In fact, as you may get the opportunity to learn, goals are the bane of honest science. There are more phony scientific theses that were designed to promote a dubious theory than there are molecules in tomorrow's first turd.

OOOOOHHHHHHH HO HOKAY. So tell me more about all these methods YOU pioneered, and all the ***** books YOU have pushed about these ideas that the rest of intelligencia disagrees with because THEY'RE the ones that are so primitive. I mean this is all about you ultimately, right? That's what we were talking about lol... How could I be so selfish to not talk about how all these great minds are stealing your content?

 

Pretentiousness aside, goal-setting is amazingly relevant to science since there's a huge part of science that is directly and proportionately controlled by it- the human factor. If humans don't have science related goals, like iunno, the goal to advance science itself, then science wouldn't be a fraction as developed as it currently is. I see your point that it is the goal of some to falsely promote an idea simply because it benefits themselves, but that is not what the crux of science rests upon, and the majority of great science is done outside that greed-pit.

 

I propose that as an honest doctoral thesis you consider trying to prove a relationship between modeling and real physics. You will learn much and may transform what is fast becoming just another pseudo-science.

I will not. Not because I disagree with you, but because that's simply not what I'm planning on doing for a doctoral thesis (but why have that goal, right?).

However, this point here (the one quoted) I'll give you because I simply don't know enough about the quoted topic (and I realized google would quickly edify me on it, but it is 2 in the morning and I'm trying to rap this up), so I grant you the argument that I would indeed probably learn more about a topic in which I know very little of if I were to do a doctoral thesis on it. Congrats, that's your one. Be happy with it, because I'm not giving you any more lol.

 

It is interesting that you seem to have adopted TV personalities, Tyson and Krauss, as your mentors. You can do so much better, and I believe that you will. Go your way. Remember that much of our life experiences are about learning what does not work, and who we do not want in our lives. Study some science history, and some original papers from Planck and Einstein, just like an honest student of American History would first study the Federalist Papers.

I don't think I ever said they were any sort of mentor, but again it's 2 and I can't be ******* to re-read the entire thread, so since I'm pretty sure I never said that, we can also conclude that you're making a straw-man argument. Them being mentors has nothing to do with what I've said (as my memory reports) and thus has nothing to do with your argument => straw-man.

I said I learned of QM from them (and I should rephrase to that being- I learned the initial layman's explanations of what QM is from them) and that people like them (with them included) are the reason I'm majoring in physics, and it's true, but they have not mentored me for anything.

I have read books by Einsteing, and Hawkings, and Kaku, and the likes, as well as the Federalist Papers if you care, but I don't see how reading someone else's work is critical in your counter-argument unless that's what the specific topic of debate was about. And it's not, so again you're misdirecting what's important for this discussion => strawberry-man.

 

I always keep my mind open to the occasional glimpses of intelligence that appear, and if Krauss comes up with an intelligent comment I will be delighted and surprised. I invite you to keep your mind open to my claim that he parrots conventional physics BS. That way, you leave your own mind open to imaginative thinking.

I produced audible laughter while reading this part. Can you not see how contradictory you sound? I don't know if you're doing it or purpose or if you even realize it, but it's there.

>I always keep my mind open to the occasional glimpses of intelligence that appear

This statement holds validity if intelligence were only occasional. Could it not also be possible, and I know this grinds against your very being, but could it be possible that maybe intelligence only seems occasional to you because your mind is only occasionally open?

I KNOW! You just said, "Horry shiet, my life is a lie!" out loud, and it's understandable because you live in a ******* box, but it's okay, mind blowing **** like that happens all the time when you listen to reason!

 

Here is another comment from you that I will deal with: "I'd prefer no god, otherwise we're not accountable for ****. What I mean by that- since we'd be his creations,..."

Who says that we would be his creations? Not me. Please do not parrot conventional religious dogma and attribute it to me. That is unfair.

I suppose in other circumstances it would be wrong or unfair to associate similar arguments with the ones the opposing side was presenting, but I feel I was just in doing so here, and let me explain why. I'm guessing you'd like if I also didn't associate the idea that god created the universe, no? If we aren't god's creations, omnipotent or not, and he didn't create our universe, then we have no good reason to tie him down as our god, or to label such a being (or groups of beings) as godly except maybe in the fact that they are powerful beyond our understanding, but this should not imply they are god. And even if you say they are somehow our god without being tied to our creation or to our lives, then I have to question how practical believing in such a being would really be. And since I didn't initially assume you were being this unreasonable, and that your description of a random, well-powered entity in our universe wasn't being labelled God without God-pertinent attributes, It's fair that those be brought into the conversation.

 

Also, you said that we would be his creations. AND I QUOTH, "Put simply, your body is created-- well, engineered, at his behest," so yes you did say that.

 

And last I learned about the measurement of power, P = E/t. There are no limits in this simple equation. Have you a better formulation?

Make t equal to zero and tell me there are no limits.

I don't think a better formulation of this is needed, at least not for this argument, but rather a better formulation of your understanding of what's being implied when you tell a scientist, or a mathematician for that matter, that an equation like that has no limits.

 

Finally, Matthew, given that you are clearly intelligent, articulate, well-spoken, and no more confused than others who have bought into conventional belief systems, what's with the "Watchu thank bout dat?" Are you practicing dialect for a small movie role in which you wear shoe polish?

I don't think it's all that clear, but reasonably so, because I'm not all that intelligent, articulate, or well-spoken. If I were these things, people would have a much better reason to listen to me, if at all.

Also, it's not reasonable to say I have bought into any belief system, and I think you may be addressing atheism here, which I think needs to be addressed, so I will elaborate. If you're going for what I think you're going for, atheism is technically still a religion (atheism translates into "one belief system"), and I only used the word atheist because it's the generally accepted term (and falsely so) for a "non-theist". I guess it's my fault for not saying this earlier, but it would probably be better if we called my personal orientation a non-theistic one. I'd also like to clarify the depth of not having a belief system in case you try applying it to other fields. I'm non-theistic about everything, not only religious matters. I don't hold myself to any belief because I am aware it is just that- a belief. This isn't about me though, so it's not really important (lol, wouldn't be horribly important even if it was about me).

Also, I was going for word-play, because you wanted to know what I thought about it, so I wanted to know what you thought about what I thought about it. Also, either I'm missing it or you did when you wrote it, but I'm not catching your shoe polish reference. Wouldn't the person that applies the polish be the one using Ebonics, not the one wearing the shoes?

Edited January 31, 2013 by Eclogite
Remove expletives

[Eclogite]

Moderator Comment: Matthew I understand the reason for your frustration and the passion that was present as you wrote your response, but please avoid the use of foul language. I would also ask that you avoid ad hominems. By all means attack arguments in a robust and vigorous manner, but try not to let this spill over to personal attack. Thank you.

[cal]

Moderator Comment: Matthew I understand the reason for your frustration and the passion that was present as you wrote your response, but please avoid the use of foul language. I would also ask that you avoid ad hominems. By all means attack arguments in a robust and vigorous manner, but try not to let this spill over to personal attack. Thank you.

No. I am not frustrated, nor do I have a passion for writing responses, these are lies. I will not avoid using language that adequately describes the information that needs to be presented, and the fact that you are censoring me (on a forum with no word-filters) is not only unreasonable, but seemingly personally motivated. You yourself have used words before on this forum that most would deem similar if not the same to the words I have used here, and they were not censored. Given our history I am left to assume that you are doing this to spite me. So I have to question what length you are willing to go to censor something you simply don't like. Also, I don't know if you were counting (I was), but I'm on par with his ad hominems, which means that if you are to reprimand someone, you should do it fairly, to all those who the type of reprimand applies.

 

I have attacked the validity of his arguments, and what you seem to fail to understand is that not only do someone's arguments have to be validated, but they themselves have to be validated. Who is he to say these things, what credentials does he have for saying them, and why do his words matter? Let's say someone told you that your favorite comedian wasn't funny, and they gave specific jokes they didn't like (by said comedian), but it was later reveled to you that they are most fixated on scatological humor. It doesn't matter how solid their argument is (you can call me the pun master), they are invalid as an opinion-giver unless you also are a fan of scatological humor. It's ad hominem if I simply attack his person for things that are unrelated to the topic at hand, but since none of my attacks were, you cannot label them as ad hominem.

 

So when you encourage me to attack his arguments in a "robust and vigorous manner," I am doing so in the most encompassing ways I know how. And if you ask me, the fact that you read my wall of text and felt a need to censor it makes me think I am doing a good job at it. But why would you ask me, right? Also, even though you are a moderator here and have the power to edit other people's posts, I retain the power to edit my own posts as well. I must pose the question of what rule would I be violating if I edited my post back to the way it was before your soft head decided the words I used to compose the post were too much for you to handle?

Edited January 31, 2013 by Matthew Garon

[clinkernace]

Never cease to amaze you?... well I never meant to do that. Yes from the outset many things would not add up with omnipotence and omniscience in the world of Physics, but then this is a hypothetical conversation is it not?

 

Obviously from your previous replies, mine included, you have a much greater universal understanding than the rest of us. So please explain further your thoughts on the subject and enlighten us. Do me a favor though, keep it simple and type very slow so I can keep up, I'm a little damp and your knowledge leaves me in awe. :o

 

I actually thought that this was a real conversation, and am sorry to be mistaken. However, a conversation can be no more real than its participants. You have excluded yourself from future conversations with me. Please forgive my incompetence, but I fear that I cannot go slowly enough to enlighten you.

[clinkernace]

God is a spiritual entity. Thinking of spiritual entities is also spiritual. By spiritual I mean not material, not somthing we can investigate in our laboratories. Some people say that "if it is not material then it does not exist."

 

The notion that God is a "spiritual" entity is an antiquated religious notion, that you have adopted as your version of God. That's okay. But I must ask if you even understand what the term "spiritual entity" means?

 

I do not say that if something is not material it does not exist. Only idiots make such narrow, indefensible statements.

 

I do say that if something is not physical, then it cannot interact with the physical universe, we cannot determine whether it exists or not, and since it cannot interact with us, the question of its existence is not relevant.

 

You do know that the terms "physical" and "material" are not synonymous, yes?

 

If an entity created our universe, or any aspect thereof, as I hypothesize, it must, by definition, be physical.

[clinkernace]

You continue to constrain this God with linear time as experienced within this universe. That is simply wrong.

 

Time is a concept that I use when solving problems that involve spatial displacement, because it is a convenient (and newly invented, by the way) notion that is generally agreed upon for practical purposes.

 

However, I do not believe that time is a real dimension, or that it has any inherent existence in and of itself.

 

Events occur in sequence, not in time. Record Sunday's Superbowl on a DVD, then try playing it back at super-slow speeds, then at very high speeds. The "time" required to watch the game is a function of the chosen playback speed.

 

Now, unless you have a very expensive recorder, high-speed playbacks will show intermittent frames, rather that successive frames at a higher frame rate. That is because humans cannot resolve information presented at high speeds or frame rates. But you might imagine that God could easily watch a game presented at 100,000 frames per second rather than the usual 24.

 

However, a football game is not a single action. A game consists of a sequence of events. Without the sequence, there is no game. The sequence must begin with a coin flip and call, then a kickoff, then a series of plays, sometimes interrupted by penalty calls, time-outs, and challenges--- but always interrupted by stupid commercials. Without the sequence, there is no game.

 

It is only a sequence of events that makes life interesting. Time is irrelevant. The time increment that we perceive as one second includes billions of cellular changes within our body that we cannot perceive. At the atomic level, the electrons within out body orbit their nuclei more times in a second, altogether, then there are protons in the universe. If God can resolve these orbits (and their transitions), to make sense of them he must be able to resolve their sequences. The time in which these occur is not relevant, but the sequence is essential, and the sequence must be resolved.

 

Perhaps the unit of Planck time defines the limit of God's ability to resolve atomic events.

[clinkernace]

Atlas Shrugged is a horribly overrated book, the entire last third of it is just the same stuff over and over. Also, the topic in your fourth sentence is the universe, and then in the next sentence, without re-appropriating a new topic, you say, "She," as if the universe is gender specific.

 

"She" refers to Ayn Rand. Why would anyone with a competent mind attach a gender to the universe?

 

I agree that the book is overrated by many of her followers. It taught me things that I did not know, so I found it valuable.

 

Both

 

From both your comments and attitude, I conclude that you are an inept reader. Here you claim that you read my post only once, and from the comments you provided in this lengthy, incoherent, and generally insulting reply, I conclude that you understood nothing of what I wrote.

 

I could go through your comments and reply, clarify, or defend, but what would be the point of it? Your mind is in a box labeled atheism, which is fine with me. Atheists are no more or no less ignorant of reality than religionists. But you seem to me to be of an especially dogmatic sort. You cannot even see that my ideas are not the ideas that you rejected, and you do not want to see. No quantity of words from me will ever dissuade you from that opinion.

 

Therefore this is my last reply to you. I do not care to waste more time. Please do not try to read my book. It is for open-minded, curious individuals whose brains have not been fully programmed. You are incapable of understanding it, and trying to do so will simply annoy you the more. Follow your path, leave me be. Please.

[Eclogite]

No. I am not frustrated, nor do I have a passion for writing responses, these are lies. I will not avoid using language that adequately describes the information that needs to be presented, and the fact that you are censoring me (on a forum with no word-filters) is not only unreasonable, but seemingly personally motivated. You yourself have used words before on this forum that most would deem similar if not the same to the words I have used here, and they were not censored. Given our history I am left to assume that you are doing this to spite me. So I have to question what length you are willing to go to censor something you simply don't like. Also, I don't know if you were counting (I was), but I'm on par with his ad hominems, which means that if you are to reprimand someone, you should do it fairly, to all those who the type of reprimand applies.

1. You will cease the use of foul language or face suspension. this is not an option.

 

2. If you had written 'frigging' I would likely have overlooked it. I cannot say that other mods would have been so lenient. I have not deleted the ****ing in another thread where you use it only once. I probably should have.

 

3. If moderators were perfect there would be a perfect appliication of the rules. Moderators are not perfect. Live with it.

 

4. I have no personal motivation. I have no idea what 'history' we have. I generally respond to posts, not posters. i.e. I argue for or against a point of view, an assertion, whatever, with little or no regard for who is making it. I believe I had an exchange with you on another thread recently. Without finding that thread and the post I have no recollection of what our interaction was, or whether it was positive or negative. On this thread I think your arguments against greylorn's points are generally sound, so your suggestion of a personal agenda is just silly. I'm censoring your language because this site is visited by youngsters who do not need yet another adult environment sanctioning foul language. Which is why I refer you back to point 1.

 

5. I credit greylorn with enough sense to understand that an admonition against ad hominems applies to all members. And no, I was not counting. I was asking in a very reasonable way for you to a) moderate your language and B) avoid insulting people. I trust neither of these minor changes in behaviour is too much for you.

 

 

If you are unhappy with any of this please take this up with an admin.

 

Edit: I was puzzled as to what history you were referring to, so I looked through old posts. I see that you are the chap who had the silly idea that using big words, when small ones would suffice was a practice that made sense. I think we exchanged some pms as well. I must say that your posts in this thread are a vast improvement on what I challenged you on, and on underlying thesis we some much closer in regard to greylorn than on the 'strange' thread where we first interacted. I can only turn into advice the observation I made above. Deal with the arguments of other posters, not the poster themselves.

[Eclogite]

It is for open-minded, curious individuals whose brains have not been fully programmed. You are incapable of understanding it, and trying to do so will simply annoy you the more. Follow your path, leave me be. Please.

Moderator Comment: Greylorn, I've just told Matthew I thought you had enough sense to understand the admonition against ad hominems applied to everyone, then you come in with this. Now cut it out.

 

And don't respond to this modnote in the thread. If you have an issue with it either pm me, or another mod, or Report the Post.

[clinkernace]

Moderator Comment: Greylorn, I've just told Matthew I thought you had enough sense to understand the admonition against ad hominems applied to everyone, then you come in with this. Now cut it out.

 

And don't respond to this modnote in the thread. If you have an issue with it either pm me, or another mod, or Report the Post.

 

Eclogite,

 

I shall comply with all of your requests but one-- that I should not reply on this thread. The reason for that is simple:

 

I have no complaints whatsoever with you. You have replied to my posts with such a high level of competency and objectivity that, when I actually read your header information and found that you were a moderator, I was surprised. Your moderation work is exemplary and fair. I accept your chastisement without reservations or complaints. In a PM I will offer a few other non-negative but explanatory comments.

 

Some day, you moderators might want to get together and set a standard for ad hominems, and take some steps to get that Latin word into Hypography's spell checker. Or, you might want to do something else that is a lot more interesting.

 

I believe that the quality of any Forum is entirely a function of the quality of its moderators. I would not wish their job, your job, on anyone I liked. Hypography is a great forum for free-thinking minds because of you and your confederates. I am pretty much certain that if you boot me off, I'll have deserved the boot.

 

Thank you for good, tough work.