Musings about different types of atheist!

by Seraphim23 304 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  latinthunder

  You admitted above that you thought 'the Talmud' was the 'Hebrew scriptures'. Which only begs the question: so what in the World did you think 'the Torah' was, then?

  The Torah is a standalone document which is why it has a name. I mistakingly switched the Talmud with the Hebrew Scriptures minus the Torah. What is the Hebrew Scriptures minus the Torah called? My point was that the documents have been proven to work in "training in righteousness." That point still stands despite your attempt at distraction.

  How could ANY advice you have to offer be taken seriously, if you don't even know the NAMES of the books you claim to find helpful? You seem to be just another dude willing to make up crapola, just to act like you know stuff that you really don't?

  This shows a flaw in your method of determining credibility. I never claimed to be a scholar of Hebrew Scripture, I will make amature mistakes, but nonetheless my approach to Scripture is uniquely valuable. You seem to be very quick to discredit entire bodies of work with simplistic reasoning. It shows an agenda hidden behind your front. You are not here to validate, but to invalidate. But I thank you for exposing the flaw in my understanding, at least I know where I was wrong and can pick up the peices and move forward. Unfortunately, you want to use it to kill my entire ideology. Again, this says much more about YOU than it does my body of ideas.
• 

  adamah

  LT said-

  I mistakingly switched the Talmud with the Hebrew Scriptures minus the Torah. What is the Hebrew Scriptures minus the Torah called?

  Wha'? You tell me, since you said this, in the other thread:

  The Torah and the Talmud still hold lasting value even for people today. They have stood the test of time and should rightly be considered God-breathed. You can confirm this yourself if you choose to put in the work.

  How can I choose to confirm it for myself, if you can't even NAME the books you claim to put into work?

  Here ya' go:

  Torah: the first five books of the Christian Old Testament (Genesis to Deuteronomy).

  Tanakh: roughly the Christian Old Testament (the Torah, plus Nevi-im ('prophets') and Ketuvim ('writings'))

  (I'll leave it to you to look up what the Talmud is....).

  This shows a flaw in your method of determining credibility. I never claimed to be a scholar of Hebrew Scripture, I will make amature mistakes, but nonetheless my approach to Scripture is uniquely valuable.

  You claimed to have read Talmudic texts, and you obviously hadn't seen (much less read) them. That's not an amateur mistake, it's just ignant (sic), esp after getting on your high-horse to offer your high-and-mighty opinion on sacred Hebrew texts, without having ANY of your basic facts straight.

  You seem to be very quick to discredit entire bodies of work with simplistic reasoning. It shows an agenda hidden behind your front.

  You have to be able to cite the names of book(s) before we can discuss their relevence.

  You are not here to validate, but to invalidate.

  If it's invalidating ignorance, then yes, guilty as charged!

  But I thank you for exposing the flaw in my understanding, at least I know where I was wrong and can pick up the peices and move forward. Unfortunately, you want to use it to kill my entire ideology. Again, this says much more about YOU than it does my body of ideas.

  Hey, don't blame me: you exposed yourself as a nebbish, a putz.

  Adam
• 

  snare&racket

  Adam, leave them to it, they have sn agenda not a real interest.
• 

  latinthunder

  Hey, don't blame me: you exposed yourself as a nebbish, a putz.

  Lets check out the definition of the word: "putz":

  a stupid or worthless person.

  Now, lets check out the definition of the "ad hominem" fallacy.

  An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an argument made personally against an opponent instead of against their argument.Ad hominem reasoning is normally described as an informal fallacy, more precisely an irrelevance.

  I was going to address your last post back in the thread you were talking about, because your position is seriously errant, but it's clear to me that you lack the ability to keep your arguments from going personal. Effectively rendering any communication we have as entirely pointless.

  I'll leave you with this rhetorical question: How much information can you gather about someone without knowing their name?

  Adam, leave them to it, they have sn agenda not a real interest.

  Yeah, my agenda is to have a good time, but people like you seem to always get so serious. My suggestion is to get over yourself.
• 

  Seraphim23

  Thinking about the methodology of science and the fact that the definition of science is the methodology, as opposed to a more regular way words are defined, something occurred to me as regards the limits of science.

  One of the stages of this process is the hypothesis. This is an idea that attempts to explain the problem being studied. The hypothesis is a general statement of how one thinks the scientific phenomenon in question works. The prediction lets one get specific -- how will one demonstrate that the hypothesis is true? The experiment that is then designed is done to test the prediction and experiment is of course the next stage of the scientific method after hypothesis.

  There is more to the scientific method this, but part of what science is defined as entails a prediction, which hopefully is correct and helps a hypothesis get to the stage of being an excepted theory. A theory is never a proof but the highest stage of truth that science can reach, which is an important caveat in my view as regards the limits of science but that is not the point I want to make here.

  The point I want to make is that prediction is part of the definition of science; otherwise it would not constitute what is called useful knowledge in the strict sense of the word useful. However there are many ideas that go by the label theory, that are accepted as science that deal not in prediction, but in the limits of prediction. Chaos theory is one of these as it states that some deterministic systems in nature does not make them predictable. Scientists generally accept now days that the Newtonian dream of a clockwork universe that could, in theory, be completely predictable if all the parts were known, is false. So in effect, science is telling us that according to its own definition of itself, it cannot answer all questions because it admits to inherent non predictability in the universe.

  Another theory that also seems to breach the definition of science is quantum theory. The physicist Richard Feynman (1988) stated that quantum theory can be used to explain our entire physical world except gravity. It has been proved over and over to be a successful theory. However, when it comes to understanding what quantum theory says about our world, he acknowledged that “my physics students don’t understand it ... I don’t understand it. No-body does.”

  This is interesting because part of the definition of science is the hypothesis, which again is a general statement of how the scientist THINKS the scientific phenomenon in question works. But scientists don’t understand quantum mechanics so how do they THINK it works? It works to predict small scale phenomena but breaks down at a certain point in scale. Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, thought up by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, applied to everyday objects at large scale, resulting in a contradiction with common sense. So there are also theories that work in practice but no one knows how they work because they create contradictions with common sense. Is that really `understanding` given that understanding is supposed to be part of what defines science according to its own definition?

  It seems to me that science is either limited in what it can tell us, or the definition of science is wrong, but considering that understanding is part of that definition it is hard to think that the problem is not with science itself in that it cannot provide answers for everything. There must be answers there, but it seems to be not that of science, if indeed this universe is not completely deterministic and predictable as scientists tell us.
• 

  rawe

  Hi Seraphim23,

  "But scientists don’t understand quantum mechanics so how do they THINK it works? It works to predict small scale phenomena but breaks down at a certain point in scale."

  Recently I've been reading two books Quatum Physics for Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catholicism. I've been enjoying both. Up to this point most of my reading about Quantum Physics has been in science magazines such as Scientific American. A difference has struck me between a book-size discussion of QP vs what one reads in SA. The difference is the book starts out by laying out the actual equations used in QP. The actual details of the wave function and these constructs called 'bras' and 'kets'. SA articles tend to focus on the more "fun" implications of the theory.

  I wish I could tell you that the material was presented in a simple enough matter that I actually understand the equations -- alas, they're still over my head! :( But it has made me think about just how "loose" this subject is -- and my conclusion for the moment is "not very." Even though QP is truly about probabilities, the equations that work are the ones that do, not just anything. E = mc^2 just can't be E = mc^1.87, likewise the calculus used in QP is one way and not the other.

  The book on Catholicism is good for what it is -- but you get this sense of philosophy is constrained only by historical precedence and the whim of the powers that be. For example the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was not what I thought it was (I thought wrongly that it was: virgin birth of Jesus) -- but what it was, was... well... in reality, just something that has been made up and now forms part of the doctrine of the faith.

  Cheers,

  -Randy
• 

  paranoia agent

  Seraphim23 wrote : paranoia agent I base the assumption on the view that Genesis as a book has obviously large sections that are not literally true. Man evolved and didn’t come from Eden according to the evidence from DNA and other sources. The archaeological history of the Jews is at odds with biblical record in some instances and so on. On top of this the picture of God himself is not consistent on many levels when these things are taken as literal. Plus there are other sources of spiritual insight about God that happen today that contradict the traditional picture of God of old times. Even Paul says we see through a glass darkly. Where light does shine, as with strong scientific evidence, I tend to go with it, because if truth does exist, then it doesn’t contradict itself!

  There is so much here explained abstractly so allow me to discuss one section at a time.

  I base the assumption on the view that Genesis as a book has obviously large sections that are not literally true.

  I either understand it or I don't or I have reasons to believe in it or I don't. This is not to mean that I don't make mistakes and that I don't assume, we all do to a certain degree like I assume that the doctor knows what he is doing and I assume that the police is actually a police officer, however I do not believe in apriori assumptions, explained below.

  http://youtu.be/14JavH4Rk7k

  The problem I see in believing in biogenesis and evolution is:

  a) This refutes the doctrine of original sin thus Jesus did not die for us

  b) Many past Christians believed in false doctrine, even preached from the NT by Paul and others.

  c) Biblical doctrine could be subjected to even more changes in the future possibly making your views redundant

  The archaeological history of the Jews is at odds with biblical record in some instances and so on. On top of this the picture of God himself is not consistent on many levels when these things are taken as literal.

  I take it that you are not ignorant of the biblical clashes going on. A Muslim apologist said to that the Koran is true, its just that current scientific (we were discussing science) discoveries has not caught up to it. You could had taken this presuppositional stance but you decided not to. You could had taken the side of Marcionites or the Ebionites. You seem to use current findings to interpret your current view of what the bible is so let me ask you.

  Could you be wrong about god of the OT and NT and why not?

  Plus there are other sources of spiritual insight about God that happen today that contradict the traditional picture of God of old times.

  How do you know that there is only one deity? And these insights that you know, was it God?

  Even Paul says we see through a glass darkly.

  Then what is the point in believing in such an incoherent book. Now don't give me its not just the bible, without it there wouldn't be Christianity.

  Where light does shine, as with strong scientific evidence, I tend to go with it, because if truth does exist, then it doesn’t contradict itself!

  But you are not interested in truth as you have already made an apriori assumption about god. Science has disproven god along time ago by Galileo but you seem to want to keep re writing history, philosophy has disproven Yahweh even longer. What about Enoch2 from the Dead Sea scrolls that speaks of a flat earth? What about all the contradictions in the NT, and all the gore, rape, cannibalism, genocide in the OT?

  By you picking and choosing what to believe in you are also contradicting the bible, speaking where it is silent, part of the sin that all religions make.
• 

  Seraphim23

  That was an excellent comment rawe if you don’t mind me saying so. I don’t know if you would be surprised or not but I agree with you completely that the subject of quantum mechanics is not loose at all. I’m not ofay with the equations either I have to say, but I agree with you that they work. Roger Penrose, a mathematician who I greatly respect has said that quantum mechanical equations are complexly computable and give any desired degree of precision to describe how the quantum state changes over time.

  That said I am forced to clarify what I meant when I said that scientists don’t understand how quantum mechanics works. They understand how to use equations to get the desired results in predicting quantum systems, which are accurate, but it is to do with probabilities and where probabilities exist complete understating is lacking. Probabilities would not have to be taken into account if it was known exactly what was going on. On top of this issue is the issue that the equations used to work out how a quantum system will change over time, assume that all the things that might happen in terms of probabilities actually happen together, existing is some strange superposition which is a view that runs directly counter to common sense. On the other hand classical physics, which deals with relatively large scale phenomena, which includes the level that we can directly perceive, argues that although there is the possibility of many things happening; only one thing actually happens. This view ties in with common sense and common experience as well as cognition itself.

  In other words there is a gap in understanding between the two theories that currently explains how the universe works, as they contradict each other both logically and in common sense. Although the equations in quantum theory work, they do so at a great price, because if applied to everyday objects it would mean that one object could be in two or more places at the same time. A snooker ball when hit would go into all the pockets on the board. On the quantum level the equations work because they assume this really does happen at that level but this is view that common sense tells us is impossible.

  As you probably already know there is more to it than this, because the concepts of waves and particles come into this area. However this doesn’t help solve the issues in a way that makes any more sense because the idea of waves and particles are incompatible with each other in this area. So this is what I mean when I say that scientists don’t understand, in the sense of true cognition, what really is going on with quantum theory, unless things really do work in a way tradition says is literally impossible. It is amazing that the equations work considering this is how they work. Does this mean the imposable is possible? Who knows, but the philosophical ramifications are many as regards science and how it is thought to work. For one, traditionally it is thought that accurate results equate to correct or more accurate understanding of something, but in this case the opposite seems to be true, unless the impossible is possible of course, which is a possibility one can be open minded to. Anyway thanks for an intelligent post rawe.

  I also found your comment on Catholicism interesting as well. Constrained philosophy from Catholicism doesn’t surprise me. Organised religion tends to be a bit disingenuous with it. Also the JWs not giving an accurate picture about Catholicism and other faiths is not much of a surprise, but interesting none the less.
• 

  bohm

  Serephim:

  On the other hand classical physics, which deals with relatively large scale phenomena, which includes the level that we can directly perceive, argues that although there is the possibility of many things happening; only one thing actually happens. This view ties in with common sense and common experience as well as cognition itself.

  In other words there is a gap in understanding between the two theories that currently explains how the universe works, as they contradict each other both logically and in common sense. Although the equations in quantum theory work, they do so at a great price, because if applied to everyday objects it would mean that one object could be in two or more places at the same time. A snooker ball when hit would go into all the pockets on the board. On the quantum level the equations work because they assume this really does happen at that level but this is view that common sense tells us is impossible.

  You miss the important point. Yes, there is a contradiction with classical physics; but thats because classical physics turns out to be wrong. Particles are wavefunctions, they are probabilities. fullstop. it is your common sence, common experience and what you call "cognition" that is wrong.

  To draw an analogy, it is the same as comparing a heliocentric and geocentric cosmology. "common exeprience" prefer the former, but it is in fact the later that is correct, not just some equations that work.
• 

  bohm

  Rawe: You are correct, QM is as exact a science as classical physics, it just contain some other equations and operate on a different type of object (in the case of classical physics, coordinates in euclidian space. In the case of QM, vectors in a Hilbert space).