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Messages - Turkey
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7081
« on: February 05, 2015, 04:11:07 PM »
Hey Meta, have you read anything by Douglas Hofstadter, and if not, why?
7082
« on: February 05, 2015, 02:52:54 PM »
U.S. officials should present "the information-craving" Putin with "meaty policy research and white papers," Connors recommended. There's a dick joke in here somewhere.
7083
« on: February 05, 2015, 12:57:33 PM »
I'm arguing against the concepts of metaphysics and ontology and epistemology which seek to show the existence of literal objects which simply lack spatiotemporal extension. Mm. I agree, I guess. Here's a question: do we exist, as people? Is our personality anything more than the reaction of electrical signals on an incredibly complex grid of receptors, which themselves are just relatively complex configurations of carbon, water, and some other elements, which are themselves just moderately complex combinations of subatomic particles, which are themselves basically complex blocks of hadrons, which are actually just very basic groups of elementary particles? Because I'm feeling pretty abstract right now.
7084
« on: February 05, 2015, 12:40:02 PM »
Oh, I misread your title. I'm not sure what relevance this has with apologetics. The very fact that you can make up this example shows that numbers do exist as abstract objects, at least to some degree. Formality of mathematics doesn't imply independence from an agent; the very fact that something is contingent on being defined by an agent makes it abstract. I can give you a proof of a theorem, completely brand new, and even though I just made it up it and gave it definition it will still be true when I am dead, and it was still true before I existed. Was your example correct before you existed, and will it be correct after you die? P.S., you should read some Douglas Hofstadter. For this subject in particular, this book.
7085
« on: February 05, 2015, 12:22:02 PM »
The idea that numbers really, actually exist as abstract objects is often a staple of things like Christian apologetics and more Platonic/Schopenhauerian philosophies. Where in apologetics or Plato's metaphysical ramblings do either say that numbers are real objects? Plato definitely says numbers exist, but not in any plane of spacetime.
7086
« on: February 05, 2015, 09:00:14 AM »
Absence of proof isn't proof of absence, though.
Evidence, mang, evidence. Let's not throw the word proof around >.>
It's important to clarify, though. Evidence isn't proof.
7087
« on: February 05, 2015, 12:14:59 AM »
Goji, you da real MVP for that correct notation.
7088
« on: February 04, 2015, 07:03:27 PM »
AND MAYBE TURKEY Bruh, my major was basically probability on crack, I understood you just fine. What you did is a well established Bayesian principle already, and I agree with it. Absence of proof isn't proof of absence, though.
7089
« on: February 04, 2015, 05:46:44 PM »
It's especially ironic for people with a PhD -- Doctors of Philosophy -- to hold philosophy in low regard over science.
7090
« on: February 04, 2015, 05:42:35 PM »
I can't help but see a slightly darker side in the fact that we are picking and choosing parts of people that we want, going against the most basic and natural thing for any animal-breeding.
We do this with plants and animals, and evolution does it at a slower rate. If anything, being able to selectively breed beneficial traits is a milestone in evolution.
And the tactic has rendered many species of plants unused, shunned.
What?
Many species of plant just are not grown any more because selective breeding has made them undesirable, such as purple and white carrots having been replaced by orange carrots via selective breeding. What I was saying is that if the concept were to be applied to humans it would be a little dark
We're talking about the ability to prevent cognitive disorders and congenital diseases, to anticipate and stop birth defects, not to mention the possibility of eradicating allergies and select for higher disease immunity.
Yes, I know. Do you even understand why they selectively breed plants and the consequences of it?
Yes, for the plant-equivalent of what I said above. You make it sound like kids without genetically-chosen traits like lack of allergies or disease resistance will be shunned by society, which is ridiculous. Just because that shit happens in Gattaca doesn't mean it reflects reality. People with Down's Syndrome or other defects are already societal outcasts; shouldn't minimizing the prominence of those traits be a venerable cause?
7091
« on: February 04, 2015, 05:39:41 PM »
20% for good service, 10% for below average, and $1 per drink at bars. If the service is so bad that I would consider not tipping, I'd probably just leave the restaurant.
7092
« on: February 04, 2015, 12:25:37 PM »
So why doesn't he just show up and prove it?
I actually don't have problem with that.
The question is why God allowed so poor a formulation of his nature in scripture, when it is vital--if not essential--for salvation.
It seems pretty explicitly formulated to me. When I said take it with a grain of salt, I'm advocating against the position of inerrancy, and to study and view them from the cultural perspective they were written in. N.T. Wright talks about it quite a bit, and here's a short passage from a much larger essay on the subject: Spoiler A regular response to these problems is to say that the Bible is a repository of timeless truth. There are some senses in which that is true. But the sense in which it is normally meant is certainly not true. The whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation is culturally conditioned. It is all written in the language of particular times, and evokes the cultures in which it came to birth. It seems, when we get close up to it, as though, if we grant for a moment that in some sense or other God has indeed inspired this book, he has not wanted to give us an abstract set of truths unrelated to space and time. He has wanted to give us something rather different, which is not (in our post-enlightenment world) nearly so easy to handle as such a set of truths might seem to be. The problem of the gospels is one particular instance of this question. And at this point in the argument evangelicals often lurch towards Romans as a sort of safe place where they can find a basic systematic theology in the light of which one can read everything else. I have often been assured by evangelical colleagues in theological disciplines other than my own that my perception is indeed true: namely, that the Protestant and evangelical tradition has not been half so good on the gospels as it has been on the epistles. We don’t quite know what to do with them. Because, I think, we have come to them as we have come to the whole Bible, looking for particular answers to particular questions. And we have thereby made the Bible into something which it basically is not.
http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Bible_Authoritative.htm
7093
« on: February 04, 2015, 12:08:32 PM »
when they do far less than them.
Please tell me more about your substantial experience in working as a chief executive of a large company.
Sure not everybody knows how to run a business but should they still be making much much more than what the regulars workers are making when they do more and work harder? Sure those people are what's running the company business but your workers are the ones who are doing things to make you money and they are the ones who are the reason why you have a company.
Scenario 1: One worker mines 100 pounds of gravel every day. Another worker mines 100 pounds of diamonds every day. Who should get paid more? Scenario 2: One worker is responsible for ten clients worth about $10,000 each, and works 8 hour days. Another worker is responsible for thousands of workers responsible for ten clients worth about $10,000 each, and works 8 hour days. Who should get paid more?
7094
« on: February 04, 2015, 11:30:01 AM »
Well, scripture never describes God as specifically omnipotent; I think it would be hard for people back then to think in those terms. He's described as all-powerful, almighty, and having power over all things, but is simultaneously said to be unable/unwilling to do certain things. So, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
If people's conceptions of omnipotence in such times are subject to criticism and revision now, I see no justification for taking anything else without a grain of salt--up to and including the existence of a creator deity.
That isn't to say you specifically don't behave sceptically, you do, but I find it hard to believe that God couldn't communicate his omnipotence in sucj a way as to make sense in the very literature which is supposed to have the highly significant property of illuminating the path of 'salvation'.
As far as the writers of scriptures go, I think you definitely need to be critical, though I disagree with the notion that they've been affected by revision (I can qualify that if you'd like but it's not particularly relevant to the discussion at hand). Read the scriptures skeptically; I don't think they ever tell us to blindly believe them, and the whole point of much of it is to convey something so supremely difficult to believe. So why doesn't he just show up and prove it? Well, scripture does say he will, and following that people will in fact be given opportunities to change, but here's a decent essay about that question, and rather than trying to paraphrase it myself I'll just give you the whole thing: http://www.noblindfaith.com/writings/WhyDoesntGodShowHimself.pdf
7095
« on: February 04, 2015, 10:09:43 AM »
Well, scripture never describes God as specifically omnipotent; I think it would be hard for people back then to think in those terms. He's described as all-powerful, almighty, and having power over all things, but is simultaneously said to be unable/unwilling to do certain things. So, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
7096
« on: February 04, 2015, 10:06:43 AM »
The part they omit: In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market.
Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap, just as much as the choice of a job with flexible hours and pleasant working conditions.
The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages. Since husband and wife generally pool their incomes into a single economic unit, what really matters is the combined family income, not the pay gap between them.
In two segments of our population, the pay gap has virtually ceased to exist. In the African-American community and in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 32), women earn about the same as men, if not more.
It just so happens that those are the two segments of our population in which the rate of marriage has fallen the most. Fifty years ago, about 80 percent of Americans were married by age 30; today, less than 50 percent are. And then she goes on to say how women's income has risen while men's has remained the same, so by increasing the pay gap she's proposing that men's income increases as women's has. Though I largely reject the existence of a pay gap and disagree with the idea that an actual pay gap would be helpful to anyone, I think her conclusion about parity between a husband and wife's income and divorce rate is interesting.
7097
« on: February 04, 2015, 09:18:03 AM »
ITT: Semantics wars
Semantics aren't necessarily pointless. There's a lot of value in determining the actual position other people take in a discussion, and topics of logic are by definition topics of semantics.
7098
« on: February 03, 2015, 08:33:15 PM »
I can't help but see a slightly darker side in the fact that we are picking and choosing parts of people that we want, going against the most basic and natural thing for any animal-breeding.
We do this with plants and animals, and evolution does it at a slower rate. If anything, being able to selectively breed beneficial traits is a milestone in evolution.
And the tactic has rendered many species of plants unused, shunned.
What?
Many species of plant just are not grown any more because selective breeding has made them undesirable, such as purple and white carrots having been replaced by orange carrots via selective breeding. What I was saying is that if the concept were to be applied to humans it would be a little dark
We're talking about the ability to prevent cognitive disorders and congenital diseases, to anticipate and stop birth defects, not to mention the possibility of eradicating allergies and select for higher disease immunity.
7099
« on: February 03, 2015, 07:32:04 PM »
God's nature is divine, and his omnipotence is characterized by that nature. Assume that there was a second omnipotent being (for all I know, there could be) -- I don't think it's inconsistent to say that God's omnipotence is defined by his divinity, or holiness, or whatever you want to say, but also say that another omnipotent being's power could be defined by something else, which we'd need some basis to describe. I don't really want to go down that rabbit hole, but all I [think] I'm saying is that omnipotence doesn't necessitate divinity, and neither does divinity necessitate omnipotence, so it's not tautological.
7100
« on: February 03, 2015, 07:21:47 PM »
. . .
Would it be fair to say, therefore, that your conception of God's omnipotence is God doing whatever is logically possible within his nature? God cannot do any action which is a logical possibility because is leads to contradictions, but you remedy this by saying God cannot lie (despite this being a logical possibility) because it isn't within God's nature to lie. Therefore, the nature of A makes it logically inconsistent for it to perform B?
So, God can't create an immovable object, because it isn't within his nature to do so?
Yeah, I have so far avoided using the phrase "in his nature" because that typically results in eye rolls and dismissing the argument. I see it as valid, but it also feels like a lazy way out of a discussion of logic. But yeah, I think Aquinas would also have used that phrasing. He does say that God's omnipotence is derived from and characterized by his nature. And that's where you get arguments that try to frame those contradictions and possible-impossibilities such as God lying or sinning as illogical.
7101
« on: February 03, 2015, 07:16:30 PM »
Some of you guys need to minimize.
-Galaxy S4
-Wallet (6 cards, no cash)
-Key fob
-One ring on each finger (wedding and grad rings)
-Seiko dive watch
7102
« on: February 03, 2015, 07:11:11 PM »
Aquinas actually states that God's agency is the source of his omnipotence, and that imposes a restriction on the mutual exclusivity of certain actions. God can create an infinitely massive rock (presumably), and God will always be able to enact change on that rock; God cannot make a rock he can't lift because of the exclusivity of the previous statements.
It's a bit of a catch-all argument of his to say that God is omnipotent and can do whatever he wants, and things that are contradictory or otherwise paradoxical are not things that he would want to do. I haven't studied Summa Theologica or Metaphysics (a work by Aristotle, but what Aquinas uses to ground his logical arguments) in years, and I'm not sure how well I'm representing him.
Aquinas is by no means a perfect source of information. His arguments are exhaustive, but many of his long-winded proofs are made irrelevant by simpler, common-sense arguments in modern theology.
7103
« on: February 03, 2015, 06:36:15 PM »
This isn't my, or really any theologian's definition
So why did you say:
I agree with your general idea of omnipotence: it's the unlimited power to enact change within the limits of the laws of logic and physics.
It's the definition of theologians from Aquinas to Swinburne.
Aquinas says omnipotence covers anything that is not contradictory; no theologian will argue that omnipotence includes the ability to do anything, unqualified. Some will claim that since logic is derived from God, that sin is illogical and therefore not a contradiction. Some will take it further and say that anything that is not divine is inconsistent with logic. The definition I used isn't yours. Again, omnipotence is about power over everything, not the ability to do anything you can put into words. Asking, "Can God turn blue into green" isn't a question of omnipotence, it's just a flawed question.
7104
« on: February 03, 2015, 06:26:11 PM »
The investigators tested 24 products claiming to be seven different types of herb — echinacea, garlic, gingko biloba, ginseng, saw palmetto, St. John’s wort and valerian root. Do amateur bodybuilders actually take this stuff, though? Most just stick to basics like protein, creatine, BCAA's, and a multivitamin. Also, 'valerian root'? Is this some Game of Thrones shit?
7105
« on: February 03, 2015, 06:16:58 PM »
Empire at War has aged pretty badly.
7106
« on: February 03, 2015, 06:15:20 PM »
So you can argue all day that god can't do all that is logically possible, and I'd agree.
So he is, in fact, not omnipotent and my argument is logically sound?
Great.
I don't think your argument is sound, and I disagree with your definition of omnipotence. At that point it's just semantics; "god isn't omnipotent but can basically do anything he wants with some minor restrictions", I'm not sure what that accomplishes.
I'm using exactly the same definition you are. The fact that God says to himself "Oh, I won't do this" doesn't at all negate the contradiction in having the capacity to do obviously contradictory things.
Omnipotence is the power to do all things logically possible. This isn't my, or really any theologian's definition. I can list logically possible things that God cannot do. Omnipotence describes a power to exert change over things, not an ability to do anything (which is rife with contradiction).
7107
« on: February 03, 2015, 05:57:29 PM »
So you can argue all day that god can't do all that is logically possible, and I'd agree.
So he is, in fact, not omnipotent and my argument is logically sound?
Great.
I don't think your argument is sound, and I disagree with your definition of omnipotence. At that point it's just semantics; "god isn't omnipotent but can basically do anything he wants with some minor restrictions", I'm not sure what that accomplishes.
7108
« on: February 03, 2015, 05:53:27 PM »
But it's not truthful for a single being to state it is two separate things
I didn't claim that, nor am I using the absolutist definition of being able to do anything. There is no logical inconsistency in either proposition that it's possible to truthfully state one thing, which necessarily negates its counterfactual. Therefore, omnipotence as conceived as being able to do all that is logically possible is, in face, incoherent.
It's a contradiction. "Can God truthfully claim to be something he is and something he is not" is self-refuting. It's just an ad nauseam restating of the heavy rock paradox, and it's not consistent with the understanding of god that I'm coming from. There are plenty of logically possible things that God cannot due due to self-imposed limitations. Those don't violate omnipotence because they're intrinsic rather than extrinsic. God cannot sin, lie, etc. So you can argue all day that god can't do all that is logically possible, and I'd agree. But you are religious and believe in god. And this thread is about god, which you as a religious person, are defending. So, what? I'm just not sure what you're trying to say. Why is it a shame that I'm smart (your words) and also religious?
7109
« on: February 03, 2015, 05:39:20 PM »
I agree with your general idea of omnipotence: it's the unlimited power to enact change within the limits of the laws of logic and physics.
Then we needn't use the rocks; it still runs into the same problem which, generally, is Russell's Paradox. You need only list of all the logically possible actions to find that such a list would also be inconsistent. It is logically possible to both truthfully state your name is Yahweh and truthfully state your name is not Yahweh, and yet doing one clearly negates a capacity to do the other.
But it's not truthful for a single being to state it is two separate things (let's set aside the ensuing Trinity discussion). Omnipotence isn't the ability to do all things, and if it is, then God is not omnipotent by that definition. You don't see this definition of omnipotence used anywhere except in this paradox. There are many things God can't do, according to the source material. It's a shame Turkey and Gojira are religious. They're such smart dudes.
This thread actually has very little to do with religion.
7110
« on: February 03, 2015, 05:22:18 PM »
P4: It is logically possible to create a finite mass of rock that cannot be lifted by its own maker (from P3).
This
Also, you're going to want to show why that's logically impossible if you want to defend the principle of omnipotence. Omnipotence necessarily relies on unrestricted comprehension, which is nonsensical. The list of what God can do can either by complete (assuming a capacity to perform all logical possibilities) or consistent--never both.
I think Newton's 3rd Law contradicts it nicely. I'm already not a huge fan of the terminology of 'rocks' and 'makers', but I get what you're saying. However, in order to [construct some object of mass], the maker(s) must have been able to exert as much force as necessary to do so. It's logically unsound to say that you can make an object heavier than you can lift. Just throw out ideas: a skyscraper? Clearly we have the means to put it in place, and unless you're asserting that that skyscraper could only be put by its makers in that specific spot, then it's logically possible to move that skyscraper somewhere else. Piece by piece, of course, but again we're running into an issue of the language of our proof. I agree with your general idea of omnipotence: it's the unlimited power to enact change within the limits of the laws of logic and physics.
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