BANNED USER: "FUCK YOU" to another poster
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georgioz
No bio...
User ID: 493
Banned by: @Amadan
Our observable universe contains about 10 to the power of 24 stars, and from what we can tell intelligent life is not very common....
I do not know how this is any different from any other argument such as that God created vast oceans, deserts and sky that are uninhabitable by humans.
if I assume that God has created the universe with any one particular solar system in mind, the odds are 1:1e24 against us being the reason for it.
What is the basis of your assumption. In this hypothetical you assume captial G "God" who is literally in a completely different realm. Were you not supposed to do at least a little bit of steelmanning? If so, then just for a moment accept existence of Christian God and what it means. What makes you think that you should judge God and his reasons in this specific scenario?
Then biggest argument against God being a Christian God is from the theodicy problem in particular.
This is the very same problem as described before. Theodicy was explained by God in Old Testament when he answered laments of Job in a very simple terms in Job [38:4]
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"
This is similar to the previous argument: if you want to really steelman the Christian position, then this answer makes sense. The God is the yardstick of what is good and bad. Simple as that.
Moreover, I thhink that theodicy is much more devastating to other positions such as secular materialism: we are all just bunch of atoms or fluctuations of universal wavefunction which has teleological endpoint in heat death of the universe. Nothing has any meaning - there is no good or evil, all is just motion. Genocide, torture of children or any other moral considerations are meaningless movements of matter not dissimilar to how cosmid dust is consumed in eternal coldness of black holes in this monadic impersonal "god" of the atheistics materialistic universe.
It is no "explanation", it is literally a horrific nightmare. And not even the worst ones compared to various simulation theorems, rationalist AI basilisks or quantum immortality where untold Googleplex's of people are literally trapped in some hellish alternative universes. To me it is all just an edgy rebellion, showing of how cool and indifferent you are.
Moreover the whole theodicy is pure argument of incredulity - just because you as a finite person cannot fathom of something, it does not man it does not exist. Second moreover, this is exactly described in Christian paradigm as the ultimate sin of pride, where you as a finite human feel justified judging the god and deciding that a literal hell reality is somehow a better solution and grounding to your existence. What a farce.
Yet that same loving God could not be bothered to mess with plant biology a bit to ensure that genes for oxaloacetase would not spread, thereby preventing most kidney stones?
Again, this is insufficient steelman or outright strawman of the Christian cosmology. God created things as good, the things like diseases, kidney stones, parasites or even death itself are result of The Fall. There is a concept in Catholicism called pecatorum mundi, where rebellion against God and his laws has direct consequences for the whole world. On day-to-day level let's say an alcoholic mother damages her child with Alcoholic Fetal Syndrome, through pride causes wars to environmental catastrophes. Adam's sin had similar effect on whole creation.
Again - think what you will about it, but if you steelman Christian cosmology it makes sense, the suffering and death exists as a result of the fall, but rejoice the God's plan is to abolish all that. As opposed to secular atheist humanist message that all that suffering is actually according to natural cruel nature of the cold monadic materialist universe which is completely indifferent toward suffering and anything does not have any meaning anyways, as it all ends up in some hellish eschaton of Heat Death or alternatively some cosmic quantum fluctuation apocalypse or whatnot. Secular materialistic atheist ranting about injustice is literal old man shaking fists against clouds of indifferent Atheistic Monad who does not give a single fuck about any of that and crushes pulverizes him to elemental fields no matter what. In a sense Camus got the endpoint of this secular "theodicy" correct in saying that There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide - a statement that he came to understand after he realized that even rebellion about the cosmos is useless and farcical. What an amazing paradigm to live by.
And again, the point is that you as a human are not the judge, you are not a minigod who puts God on trial for his sins. That is complete misunderstanding of Christianity, where you put God inside the universe as some Star Trek Q being or whatnot. Absolutely botched theology.
georgioz
23hr ago
No, I didn't. Go back and check the username you grabbed the quote from.
It does not matter in this case. The point was usage of universal claims without justification. Which you claimed right here in this discussion bellow.
2+2=4 is a useful, coherent model for counting discrete entities. I "know" it is true insofar as it consistently works.
And? Telling stories about unicorns to my daughter also works consistently, the same about stories about all kind of made up things. But that is also besides the meta-point I am making - why is "consistently works" any form of justification? What does it even mean and how did you came up with it?
2+2=4 is not universally physically true. If I add 2 clouds to 2 clouds, I don't (necessarily) get 4 clouds, because clouds are not a discrete entity that's appropriate for modelling via addition.
Excellent. We discovered a difference of counting by identity vs division. However the realm of numbers is realm of counting by identity, so this analogy does not wok. 2+2=4 is either true or false, there is nothing like "kind of". We are talking about a concrete thing - abstract concept of standard numbers and not clouds or persons inside Trinity. Which is by the way a good argument against OP's Gnosticism.
But within mathematics, within the rules of the game of addition, 2+2=4. If you think that's not "justified", then i reject your concept of justification as being useful.
And here we are. A universal metaphysical game. Either you believe 2+2=4 or you are out. You reject the concept of justification of anything outside of 2+2=4, because presumably it goes against your presupposition. Anything other than 2+2=4 such as 2+2=5 or 2+2=6 up to 2+2=Googleplex is not part of this presupposition and thus an incoherent paradigm not to be taken seriously. If somebody believes in his drug induced schizoid mania that all + operations are 42, you would discard it as incoherent and not worth any serious discussion.
This is exactly my position but on meta-level higher. There are paradigms with no justification for 2+2=4, they have no grounding and even worse, they positively reject the only entity - GOD - that could provide such grounding. As you named it, they break rule of "math" and metaphysics and thus they speak gibberish. Now you may have some inkling of my presuppositional argument.
This is a parody, right? I literally flagged up "modal collapse" as the primary example of nonsense phrases you're using. You're not using simple words in this explanation.
You yourself said that You can assume that I'm familiar with Godel's ontological proof, mathematically capable, etc.. I don't want to waste more time on this. Do you want to explain the analogy or not? It is not crucial for my point. If you do not grasp it, that is still okay.
You've already lost me. There is nothing about this that is a meta-level higher.
Ok, I will use simple language. You used this argument:
In particular my favorite argument is the argument from causation. There must be an uncaused cause; this can be identified with God.
This is universal statement that there has to be an uncaused cause. How do you know that to be true? How do you justify this statement - did you personally examine all effects and traced them to their causes - or did you just use your imagination to just assert it to be the case? In that sense it is your presupposition. But in fact I do not even have to go that far. For instance what is a "cause" if number 2? How does it exist, how is it caused? First cause is accepting physicalist presuppositions, it is playing inside that narrow box. The meta-level argument goes beyond that.
That is what I am talking about meta-level. Also just to be sure, I am not classical theist and I do not think that natural theology is truly a coherent system to explain God. A system similar to Neoplatonist Gnostics, who presuppose the existence of THE ONE and just handwave any justification for that idea including One and the Many problem via some system of tiers and whatnot.
no, it isn't. You need to stop saying "paradigmatic" and "meta" if you want to actually communicate anything. 2+2=4 isn't based on anything meta. And this entire avenue of who has the "right" to make philosophical claims isn't useful.
Of course 2+2=4 is reliant on various presuppositions such as that math and laws of logic exist and so forth. How do you know that 2+2=4 as opposed to 5 and again in a justified manner that excludes "all" other possibilities? It is basic question of presupposed epistemology and metaphysics. You boldly claim that you are beyond presuppositions, on what grounds?
Just because you can't see a way to do it doesn't mean there's no way to do it.
"Just because you can't see a way to do it doesn't mean there's no way to do it.". Exactly. This applies 100% to you and your stupid First Cause argument. Thank you for pointing that out so eloquently.
"god in Gödel's ontological proof serves as an anchor that provides for a modal collapse that smooths away existence of unprovable truths"
Okay, analogy in simple words. Gödel's god solves the problem of unprovable truths, it provides for modal collapse that all truths are necessary and excludes unprovable truths. If there is somebody who denies existence of Gödel's god and AS WELL say that there are no unprovable truths, that is a problem. He cannot have access to modal collapse without presupposing Gödel's god entity. That was the point for the analogy.
If you think I'm wrong, you should be able to explain what you mean in simple words.
Simple words, okay. You say "Presuppositions wrong. It presupposes stuff. Haha. I know that there is uncaused cause! I know it because it is what it is. Everybody agrees. Justification not necessary. This presupposition correct, I know it bro. Checkmate presuppositionalists. I can say "everything can be explained without presupposition, pretend I do not have presuppositional grounding for universals like "everything" or "explain" and I can say you are bad presuppositionless - just because"
georgioz
1d ago
The word justification is a very powerful word, because in the end it proves that all the subjectivist have is assertions. And I agree - discussion is over because often times they do not even have coherent paradigm to explain why to have discussion at all.
Mit « Gödel » (mir shaudert!) ist es immer so.
Oh, I am done, what a powerful argument. Also you absolutely did not understand what I am talking about, Gödel's ontological proof is not Gödel's incompleteness theorem which you probably moronically misunderstood it for.
georgioz
1d ago
... but that has no bearing on whether a god exists.
Again, this goes meta-level higher. It allows for God to exist. The other paradigms outright reject this idea. It is about web of beliefs AKA paraigms. Beliefs do not exist in isolation, they have implications. And there are some fundamental and mutually incopmatible beliefs that lead to completely different paths and that shut down forever the other path. Are you a monist like idealist or materialist who says "only matter exists", or are you pluralist and you believe in multiple realms. Do you believe in objective or subjective morality etc. These are fundamental paradigmatic pressupositions that you need to be aware of.
What gives you the "right" to declare such a being exists? How you could you, a being who is not omnipresent or all-powerful, possibly verify its existence? You're stacking the deck by allowing one side to assume the existence of an arbitrarily complex entity that will fit into whatever shape hole they need; that's a far bigger issue than materialists trying to comment on matter.
Because it grounds everything else. Again an analogy - what gives you a "right" to say that 2+2=4 as opposed to 2+2=24546534? A coherent explanation of the rest of the math. Especially if the person endorsing 2+2=24546534 then just says that 1+1+1+1 = 4 as if it is not in contradiction at all with previous statement. It is a paradigmatic level, a meta level argument. You cannot say just say that there is no reality except of subjective experience. FUCK YOU. That is a universal statement that CANNOT be proven by subjective ground-up justification. It is an invalid move exactly as saying that "married bacheolrs exist" while at the same time saying that you are a proponent of logic.
This is gibberish.
It is called an analogy. What exactly did you not understand from this?
georgioz
1d ago
I broadly agree with this, but not how you might think. I think that logically, it is probable that God does exist, so I am not an atheist. In particular my favorite argument is the argument from causation. There must be an uncaused cause; this can be identified with God.
I do not think this is the best argument for existence of God as it is still defensive as it just follows some form of natural theology. You can always claim somethin like that a Big Bang is uncaused cause or something similar.
On the other hand I do believe that presuppositional apologetics is extremely strong as it shows huge blind spots of many secular and humanist ideologies. It also shows how shallow the overall paradigm of these ideologies is. In short, the argument is that everybody including let's say secular materialist works on some sort of presupposition where they just assert access to certain metaphysical claims. And this is incredibly hard from any humanist paradigm that starts from human or human mind in Cartesian sense.
The point being, that none of these paradigms have any "right" to use any universal claim. E.g. if an atheistic materialist claims that nothing else exists except of matter - what is his grounding for this claim? He as a finite being was not everywhere, every time and thus he has no grounds to utter such a claim. The do not have access to any stable metaphysics. The theist paradigm actually solves this issue. There is exists an omnipresent and all-powerful being and all universals are anchored in this divine mind. By allowing for such an entity to exist, one does have justified grounds to use these universals.
I used an analogy before in form of how god in Gödel's ontological proof serves as an anchor that provides for a modal collapse that smooths away existence of unprovable truths. That is the point of my presupposition. In this analogy materialist is denying existence of Gödel's god, but he at the same time also denies existence of unprovable truths and claiming that they have access to modal collapse without any grounding.
They want to eat the cake and have it too, they often either do not understand how these meta-level arguments such as Transcendental Argument for God work or they just ignore them and still pretend as if they can use the very language for which they do not have any proper justification.
georgioz
1d ago
"Now let's see if Democrats learn the lesson of "we do well if we focus on the economy, we avoid turbo-woke stuff, and we take advantage of the other side's unforced errors".
Interestingly I had the very same discussion with my family lately, who also said that "it is all economy, stupid". Yeah, it may have been so in the past. But today it does not matter if any party wants to increase or decrease income tax or build more or less highways. Why should I care if we build more or less highways which will be used by migrants in 40 years.
In a sense Democrats with their Banana republic identity politics are ahead of the game. They can promise everything to everyone: old age pensions for seniors, UBI for working age population, free university education for teenagers, free preschool and subsidies for children as well as government largesse to everybody who votes for them in winner takes all mathematics.
The USA as well as EU countries like France or Germany are now locked into this style of political kabuki defined by political powers running outright grift as in Minnesota and yet being able to vote in the very same person into political power because of it. Welcome to the third world politics.
georgioz
3d ago
No Western country (no, certainly not even Denmark) has ever reversed mass immigration in modernity.
USA did it. The way I think about it is as a nonlinear system that decides if the country can absorb immigration. Here are the variables:
- Immigration as measured by % of foreign born population
- Total fertility rate of native population, which is a proxy of how many native vs foreign born children are at schools
- Assimilation capacity: this is the natural attraction of the nation to nudge foreign born population to assimilate: adopt local customs, language and political ideology
In USA in the past, the peak foreign born population happened in 1890ies where it climbed toward 15%. However back then the TFR was very strong running close to 4 children per woman. Just simple arithmetic women age 20-40 are are third female of native population or (100%-15%)/6 = 14% of the population and they produced 4 children thus reproducing rapidly. Moreover schools inside all the nations during early 20th century leveraged state power, propaganda of Radio, Television and huge government push toward local assimilation - be it Germanization, Magyarization, Francization or of course Americanization
Americanization came after Civil War and it coincided with lucky historical events: reconstruction after civil war, fulfillment of Manifest Destiny, jingoism and imperialism during FDR and of course winning the WW1 and birth of American exceptionalism and legitimacy of the system based on all available metrics: military power, industrial power, growth of GDP and everything. Nevertheless USA adopted very harsh anti-immigration stance even during this period ranging from Chinese exclusion act of 1882 to Immigration act of 1924. There were additional factors. After WW1 a lot of people remigrated from USA - especially people who heeded national call of rebuilding from nations like Poland, Czechoslovakia etc. Moreover USA was not a welfare state and the great depression led to more voluntary remigration during the Great Depression, where outflow exceeded inflow especially from Mexico but also European countries.
As a result of all of that, the foreign born population dropped to around 4% in 1964 at the time where TFR also dropped to around 2.5 per woman. Since then the immigration took off along with huge drop of TFR to current levels of 16% of foreign born population paired with 1.5 TFR. This is unsustainable level bordering on replacement, especially paired with national shame, refusal to proceed with any meaningful assimilation programs or curbing of immigration paired with welfare state that prevents remigration. But this is historically a new situation.
One has to see it in light of development in 18th and 19th century and especially the birth of nationalism stemming from secular humanism. This was a movement where it was claimed by Hegel and his predecessors especially in French revolution, that there is such a thing as a nation. An entity that encompasses people who share culture, language, history. In his seminal work, Lectures on the Philosophy of History Hegel popularized Herders concept of the entity of as Volksgeist. A spirit that animates the population and that gives rise to the nation based on shared culture, language, history and political structure. With advent of Darwinism after Hegel's death this idea was appropriated and added blood/race into the structure.
This also gave rise to a new form of antisemitism that was distinct from the old religious forms. Jews were no longer just outsiders with different religious beliefs, they were people who were not part of the German Volksgeist, the historical force that was moving the German/Aryan Volk toward supremacy. They had their own Jewish Volkgeist that was in dialectical opposition to Germanic race. Also this theory was not exclusive to Jews, Hitler defined other races such as Slavs that also were disruptive elements opposing Germans. By the way, denigrating Slavs but also Africans and Native Americans was there back in Hegel, who defined them as Naturzustand nations - people in natural state, Engels who was a rabid racist later marked all these nations as geschichtslose Völker - nations without History. Where The History™ is this religious mystical force that drives progress as opposed to just "history" in form of having some monuments and the past. This is where the concept of Blut o blood was added to some nationalist projects alongside of language, culture, geography and The History.
It is all rooted in the eugenic/social darwinist ethos of of late 19th and early 20th century progressives, who saw evolution not only on the level of some bacteria or dinosaurs, but also as a struggle between different tribes and nations toward supremacy. The survival of the fittest had spiritual angle, the ability to dominate for millenium was attestation of right to rule. That the global arrangement is constant struggle between various Darwinian entities, these Volkgeists and that ability to dominate by force is at the same time proof of right to rule as well as the supremacy of given race embodied in superorganism of the state. That is why the totalitarian fascist state was so obsessed with power, as Mussolini defined it Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato or Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. And by everything, they meant everything: political power, culture, religion even family relations had to serve The State as this divine entity engaged in constant struggle over power. It is no accident that the Hitlers propagandist director Riefenstahl made a movie named Triumph of the Will. The Will here is in line of German continental philosophers like Shoppenhauer and Nietczhe - the Will to Power. The will is not just an individual grit, it is also not Augustinian Christian free will. It is specifically the secular will to dominate and enforce one's ideas upon the society - but not from an individual standpoint, this will is subject to the teleological mystical power of The History™ - they are just Great Men who embody the Ziegeist and move the society toward Progress.
It is no surprise that this idea stemmed from secular humanism or socialism, who also see collective as the ultimate God, the Marx's The New Socialist Man.
Also Hitler as many other totalitarians was concerned with purity. He did not care that Japanese Volk had their own interest in far east, or that there may have been some Yemeni Jews with their own schemes inside Middle-East. He wanted to create a 1000 year Reich, which would have "pure" Germanic foundation and fight with Arabs or Japanese was something to be hashed out in Darwianian sense after this internal purity was established.
The idea behind fascism is that the whole state is one superorganism and that individuals are serving the state in this Darwinian struggle. In fact Hitler himself despaired after crushing defeats in the east - how come that hordes of barbarian Slavs were able to defeat his nation? It could only be because of saboteurs and clandestine actions, because otherwise he would have to accept that the Slavic nations are superior to German nations which was a tough pill to swallow. Also that is why he was so suicidal, he saw defeat of Germany as defeat of these almost religious concepts.
Now this may have seen as some historical/philosophical tangent, but the very same ideas now animate current ideological battles and Culture War. Progressives are still worshiping power, they endlessly analyze systems of oppression and how power flows based on blood or culture not unlike progressive "humanists" from the past. It is the same underlying ethos and theology but in a new dress.
You are using presentist definition of race according to modern US Culture war. This was not so in the past. Hitler himself defined Jews as a race, it was a "terminus technicus" inside the Third Reich - the so called Judenrasse. In fact this whole issue was behind the whole Holocaust was not about race controversy by Whoopi Goldberg - because she is correct. From modern US race relation system point of view, the Jewish Holocaust is just white-on-white violence, similar to let's say Yugoslav wars or black-on-black genocide in Rwanda - which were also not technically "racist" in modern parlance.
This of course only reveals the inherent racism of the modern system especially related to affirmative action and similar race laws. There are numerous jokes running in the same vein, pointing to the inherent progressive contradiction - they at the same time have racial based affirmative action, but also deny race as a scientific concept, but also deny race as a self-identification identity/category similar to let's say trans. As in all dialectical leftist schizoid conspiracy theories, they just declare belief in the power of Progress to resolve/abolish this nasty Hegelian contradiction, which by itself is a proof of a need to do more more research grift into their Theory™ bankrupt religious theology. In the end, they leave it as temporarily unresolved candidate to abolish in further revolution, but also heavily punish anybody who looks into the topic too deeply, and in a way that makes them sound ridiculous.
In the end they do implicitly endorse something like Nazi or Spanish colonial definition of "visible minority". So that Megan Markle - a wife of Prince Henry is considered as a minority, but it would be tougher to say so about her son Archie, who is technically a quadroon under Spanish colonial nomenclature.
Just read what I said. I critiqued access to unjustified universal categories. That is the point.
Usually if people use these words like "useful" or "works" they are concept from philosophical pragmaticism. So please do not leave me in a suspense and tell me what do you mean by "works" and "useful".
Do you know how to read? I specified it in the very same sentence: saying that "abstract concept of standard numbers and not clouds". The abstract entity of "2" is not identical to two clouds or two bananas. But I am willing to go there if you wish as this is exactly touching the metaphysics: what are numbers, how are they existing, where are they existing?
I do not have to explain words to you. You yourself said that you are knowledgeable about Godel's ontological proof. Google it with conjuction with "modal collapse" in "plain English". I do not know what you want at this point - should I define the word definition in plain English?
What are you talking about. There is literal wiki article about Godels ontological proof. Modal collaps is literally a subcategory with its own wiki page. If you are too simple or lazy to grasp it, then that is okay. And it is not even necessary, it was just part of the analogy But do not blame me on using the terms.
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