Mea Culpa

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Originally Posted by g0zen

Do I have metaphysical certitude? No, obviously not. But you're being a douche in that you're thumbing your nose against established science and proposing a wild supposition.

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It doesn't really matter to my point either way, but I'm not arrogant enough to think with certainty we've explained physics as far as we can and we will never know any more. Maybe we have, maybe we haven't.

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No, you're trying to put a pseudo-spiritual label on something that is anything put. The God proposition is wrong, clearly, but you debase and degrade the interplaying forces in he universe by saying 'well let's just call that God'.

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I said no such thing. I said many of the same things that could be said of God could be said of the fundamental law or laws of existence. I didn't say that they were God. If calling them that makes you feel better, than fine, but I certainly don't think of them as God.

I do think of them as ordered an systematic, though, which is why I call them intelligent, but I'm not using the word in the traditional sense and that use seems to bother you, so forget that. A decision is intelligent if it's ordered, systematic, and based in logic and evidence, as opposed to one which is chaotic or not based on due processes. This is all I mean by intelligence. I'm not implying conciousness or mind or whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

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Originally Posted by dave is ok

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

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not even gonna make the joke.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

A decision is intelligent if it's ordered, systematic, and based in logic and evidence, as opposed to one which is chaotic or not based on due processes. This is all I mean by intelligence. I'm not implying conciousness or mind or whatever.

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A 'decision' is made by a entity capable of decision-making, and so something like gravity or matter doesn't apply. None of these things 'decide' to be arranged in the order they are, they are that way because of how they interact with other forces. Just stop saying intelligence (because it really doesn't even apply here under any circumstances and is just a bad use of language) and stop trying to gussy up the natural forces of the universe into a 'God' just so the mouth-breathers out there can hold onto their superstitions.

If there is a God, he would ban g0zen.

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Originally Posted by g0zen

A 'decision' is made by a entity capable of decision-making, and so something like gravity or matter doesn't apply.

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Lol if you believe that logical decision making is anything other than deterministic. I think you're just making the notion of intelligence into something more magical and special than it is. The notion of decision in the sense of something that happens for a reason but could either happen or not happen is not only a myth, but a logical contradiction.

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Originally Posted by g0zen

Just stop saying intelligence (because it really doesn't even apply here under any circumstances and is just a bad use of language) and stop trying to gussy up the natural forces of the universe into a 'God' just so the mouth-breathers out there can hold onto their superstitions.

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Mouth breathers like string theorist Brian Greene, right? Most scientists working in the field feel that there is something special to the way this universe works, and that it is an elegant design of sorts.

And I'm not arguing in favor of some classic notion of God at all, but just against a nihilistic view of the universe.

Somewhere along the line this thread got really bonged-out.

God is not a clearly defined term. It eludes definition and is inherently worthless until a definition can be agreed upon.

Quick insertion:
God:
Are you serious? I was created by Myself.
Me:
I know this already.
God:
Perhaps. How do you know? This is " I was created by Myself. ".
Me:
You told me.
God:
Sorry I forget what I say sometimes.
Me:
Are there parts of the Bible that you forget?
God:
Yes I think there are.

Even God forgets.

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Originally Posted by Stibbons

If there is a God, he would ban g0zen.

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It is not by God's hands that I be banned, but the folly of man.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Lol if you believe that logical decision making is anything other than deterministic. I think you're just making the notion of intelligence into something more magical and special than it is. The notion of decision in the sense of something that happens for a reason but could either happen or not happen is not only a myth, but a logical contradiction.

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Me using magical thinking? Wrong. You're the one trying to imbue very basic naturalistic forces with spiritualist garbage. Look, saying that the way things are is the only way they are and can't be any other way because of some mumbo-jumbo para-natural design is just silly. The way things are is just because they are, and if the variables were changed the outcome would be different, simple as that. Take your math example from earlier; 2 + 2 = 4 but if I switch out variables and make it 2 + 3 it isn't going to stay 4 because it's ironclad prime mover bullshit. It changes.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Mouth breathers like string theorist Brian Greene, right? Most scientists working in the field feel that there is something special to the way this universe works, and that it is an elegant design of sorts.

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Most scientists? Wrong again. Stephen Hawking, for example, believes in a completely naturalistic and undesigned universe.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

And I'm not arguing in favor of some classic notion of God at all, but just against a nihilistic view of the universe.

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There's nothing nihilistic about eliminating the lie of a grand design when there is neither a need for it or evidence to support it.