How Did God Create The World?

[Grandpa Harley]

Upon this comment

 

[...]apart from the role played by monasteries in preserving knowledge during the dark ages by copying and distributing books,[...]

 

I cry bullshit. The RCC own records do not support the view that they did anything other than copy the Vulgate and apologetic, 'correct' Dogma texts... the primary extra canon sources either come from Islamic libraries, over sights or heretical writing collectors working within the church without sanction, or from caches of documents found in Modern times... the works of the philosophers of Classical antiquity that we had in the post dark age period are wholly down to Islamic scholars... The church acted as a sump, rather than a deliberate agent of preservation... if they'd know what they had, they'd have burned it... they were just swamped with more 'paper' than they could read...

 

you're entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own version of history.

[Stephen_Richard_Webb]

I have to agree with grandpa on this one - did I hear someone say the words "distributing books?" - Real books? That just can't be, we all know that the bible is corrupt beyond reason not to mention that much of the "literature" that was appropriated by the RCC that was of any real use contradicted what was in the bible and on top of that many peoples were ignorant and couldn't read their own names! So who might I ask, were they distributing books too? Look at poor ole' Galileo...you know, the guy that tried to tell them that we AREN'T at the center of the solar system, and that the earth does in fact move?

[Stephen_Richard_Webb]

...and Solo again...

"How can science be used in a religion where logic is condemned? You can see from my arguments that logic is not part of religion and Christianity, but rather the opposite. It is contradictory. It's absurd. It denies and approves things on a whim and emotions and not reason."

I think you are taking evangelical Christianity and mistakenly tarring all of Christianity with it. Evangelicals do put emotion over reason, and in fact a lot of denominations hold reason as dangerous and untrustworthy since Luther's doctrine that faith and reason are opposed to each other.

 

So, are you saing that evangelical christianity is mistaken? The very same evangelicals that adhere to the bible in some of the strictest manners of any christian group? The same evangelicals whose interpretations are so literal as to be laughable? I guarentee you that if you believe that they are mistaken, and consider yourself a christian as well, and if witch/heritic trials were legal, you would be either hanged or burnt at the stake.

[Legion]

You are absolutely right that we must not assume, but rather reason from what we know. Then the conclusions we reach will be truly valuable.

Hey Gaunilon. I see that you are reasonable person. I want to talk to you and no other.

 

I agree completely that we should start from what we know. Yet this is an arduous endeavor in my estimation. What can we know with absolute certainty? I have recently been speaking with some good people about this very thing. I have maintained that for natural science the proper foundation must start from a position of extreme, profound, and unflinching skepticism (not the same as cynicism). I believe Descartes took this to its most extreme when he said, “Cogito ergo sumâ€. For it could be that all our perceptions are illusion. Yet we cannot that deny that we think and that this gives evidence that we are. Known truth ---> We are. Next I propose that upon examination of ourselves we see that language is a part of us. Known truth ---> Language is part of us. I will stop there and wait to see if we agree.

 

...parry the statements from some on the board (as is all too frequent on this site, unfortunately) of unfounded prejudice regarding Christianity and free thought.

I will not deny that some here are biased against Christianity. But for many of us this is may not be prejudice, but rather a repulsion born of experience. We have been Christians. And for a time it harbored us and informed our actions, yet in the end it failed us in various ways. This is our experience.

 

Thank you Gaunilon. If you should choose to continue with me I would enjoy that.

[Antlerman]

Antlerman:

If you are saying that the laws of the universe, as we know them, may not be valid concerning the beginning of the universe then I agree. However, I would like to point out that given the only laws we know (cause and effect as one example), the notion of a primary cause prior to the Big Bang follows.

That’s a huge assumption to make. Again. I should’ve have added earlier this caveat. Cause and effect may in fact occur outside this universe, or it may in fact not. We can’t know. Therefore for you to ask to go down a line of reasoning that we have no frame of reference to confirm whether that line of reasoning is even valid, is a foul. That line of reasoning hardly lends itself to a serious discussion about God. It's a discussion of fantasy only.

 

I’ve said this many times now. How is my contention it's not valid to bring it up as an argument for God invalid?

 

Therefore in order to deny that primary cause, you need to be positing that some new physical laws (for which we have zero evidence) would apply.

No I don’t. I’m saying in that realm all bets are off. How can we possibly postulate what the laws of physics are in something we have no access whatsoever to? That we can’t offer those laws, by no means whatsoever suggests it’s valid to continue applying these laws here! How can you justify doing that? Since we don’t know what it is, let’s assume it what we know here and build a whole model of reality off that?? You don’t see an inherent problem with that?

 

This is a very contorted way to avoid the notion of a first cause....in general in human inquiry we apply what we know and try to reason back to what we don't know, rather than throwing out what we know on the supposition that it just doesn't apply to anything else.

Contorted is hardly the word to use, nor is suggesting it’s being used as a way to avoid the notion. It’s just looking to see whether or not it’s really valid to be applying that notion, taking into account variables that seem to negate any intelligent discussion on those lines. You call it contorted; I call it being reasonably cautious about not following down a path based on unsupportable assumptions.

 

We can certainly debate causes, but again it would be more an exercise in fantasy talk since we can hardly extrapolate the likelihood of it. It could be anywhere from 100% likely, all the way down to 0% likely. Again, if you’re going to argue causes you have to confine the discussion to inside this universe. How is that invalid?

 

As to the issue with there being an uncaused cause (what philosophers through the ages have called "the prime mover"), this is not a contradiction provided we acknowledge certain key features of such a thing. First, it can't be changeable. Why? Because anything changeable would have already gone through all possible permutations in the infinite time in which it has existed. Time symmetry, again. If not changeable, then it can't be material. Why? Because matter is potency: it is always defined by the form it is cast into and therefore is changeable per se. I could go on, but this is beyond the scope of this thread. This at least, however, is sufficient to show that from everything we know from our surroundings, there must be a prime mover that is inherently unchanging (unlike the causes we see around us) and not composed of matter. Other conclusions also follow. Some of them are not pleasant.

So God is found in logic arguments. The problem with logic arguments is that the premises are usually flawed, as in your premise of extrapolating things in this universe to things outside it.

 

To share someone else's thoughts on logic here:

 

Formal logic was invented in Classical Greece and integrated into a `system' of thought by Aristotle. It was, for him, a tool for finding truth, but it didn't keep him from making the most profound errors of thought. Nearly every argument and conclusion he made about physical science was wrong and misguided. Any tool can be misused, and in these pre-scientific days logic was misused repeatedly.

 

So what went wrong? Aristotle understood that logic can be used to deduce true consequences from true premises. His error was his failure to realize that we have no absolutely true premises, except ones we define to be true (such as 2+2=4). Aristotle thought that the mind contains (from birth) some innate and absolutely true knowledge that can be used as premises for logical arguments. Medieval scholastics, who brought Aristotelian modes of thought to a height of absurdity, thought that absolutely true premises could be found in revelations from God, as recorded in the Bible.

 

Another error was to assume that the conclusions from a logical argument represent new truths

. In fact, the deduced conclusions are just restatements and repackaging of the content contained in the premises. The conclusions may look new to us, because we hadn't thought through the logic, but they contain no more than the information contained in the premises. They are just cast in new form, a form that may seem to give us new insight and suggest new applications, but in fact no new information or truths are generated. This is especially noticeable in mathematics, for without considerable instruction in mathematics, the deductions from even a small set of premises are not at all obvious, and may take years to develop and understand.

 

The bottom line is that logic alone can tell us nothing new about the real world. Ditto for mathematics, as Albert Einstein observed: "Insofar as mathematics is exact, it does not apply to reality; and insofar as mathematics applies to reality, it is not exact."

 

<snip>

 

In this context, logic and mathematics are reliable and essential tools. Outside of this context they are instruments of error and self-delusion. Whenever you hear a politician, theologian or evangelist casting verbal arguments in the trappings of logic, you can be pretty sure that person is talking moonshine. The quotes that open this essay reflect caution in accepting such misuses of logic.

 

The concern of this essay is with use and misuse of logic in science, and in discussions of the 'real world' of our experience. In the processes of science, mathematics holds a special place. While mathematics, being a subset of logic (or vice versa, you may argue), says nothing about the real world, it is the modeling tool we use for our knowledge of nature, providing the logical connection between our models and our measurements and observations. Without logic/mathematics, science as we know it is inconceivable. We would have no alternative way to integrate real-world knowledge into a unified and useful system.

 

Misuse of logic is rampant in all fields, even academic ones. It is often used as a crutch to justify prejudices and as a club to smite those who hold opposing views. There are people who are thoroughly Aristotelian in their thinking, and do, indeed, believe in the profundity of empty logical arguments. Others, such as politicians and evangelists use logic cynically as an instrument for persuasion of those who don't realize that "

There's a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons, and reasons that sound good.

" (Burton Hillis).

 

Just what is an 'empty' argument about the 'real world' of our experience?

 

•

One kind is the argument that may have faultless logic but is based on premises that have not, or cannot, be experimentally verified. Another kind is based on premises that are not part of any well-established and accepted scientific theory.

 

• Some arguments are empty of content because they use words with no clear and unambiguous meaning, or words that cannot be related to anything real (experimentally unverifiable).

 

• The most seductive empty arguments build upon premises that are so emotionally appealing that we don't ask for verification, or which have appealing conclusions that blind us to the emptiness of the premises.

 

 

 

I love that quote, “There's a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons, and reasons that sound good."

 

BTW, didn't the argument for a prime mover originate back in Aristotle's day; that period of time where logic arguments reigned; that time that is talked about in the essay above?

 

Again, you need to establish your premise that speaking of cause and effect outside this universe is a valid road to go down. So far, you’ve not done that. If you can establish your premise, then you can offer up your logic arguments based upon it. If not, is it being honest to continue to do so?