http://mashable.com/2016/06/02/elon-musk-simulated-reality/#sdLXHm2_jsqB
2,657 thoughts on “Elon Musk Thinks Evolution is Bullshit.”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
There is no knowledge that one member of the Godhead has that is not shared by all. God is a Trinity. Three persons one God.
At the same time there are things that the Son (taken in isolation) knows that the Father does not know for example what it feels like to be beaten.
Because the members of the Godhead are in communion (entangled if you will) The Father does know what it feels like to be beaten as a result of his connection with the Son.
peace
With what we now know about the terms in the Drake equation, we know intelligent aliens almost certainly have existed at some time.
No, we do not know that.
that one makes me laugh
From God’s perspective A se there is no time that Christ’s brain does not exist. There is no time at all.
From the peoples perspective they are interacting with a God who already knows everything that will ever happen from the beginning till the end of time. At the same time this God knows what it feels like to be a part of the action because he is.
I don’t do a lot of apologetic work. I don’t need to everyone already knows that God exists.
From time to time I do try and explain what Christians believe but I often find that debunkers aren’t suited for understanding simple things when it comes to God.
peace
Ive just started the paper that walto linked and I’m already screaming at the computer screen.
The author simply assumes that we do not know God exists and that the Cartesian Circle is a valid paradox. No matter what his eventual conclusion is it will be biased and incorrect because he assumes that Christianity is false a priori.
I never cease to be amazed at presuppositions.
peace
More or less the staple of Ancient Aliens and other “ooh, the universe is so big and old that aliens have to exist” bits of sci-fi.
Rather hard to falsify it, but might be easily enough confirmed by aliens appearing. So it’s pretty useless until we find aliens, but then it’d be useless because at that time we’d already have evidence of aliens.
Glen Davidson
I have evidence (though it’s admittedly limited) and I believe it. So if it’s true (and the evidence I have is sufficient–I admit that may be controversial, but I’m not convinced that it’s not), I know it.
Anyhow, I had no idea that YOU took the position that people should only post things they KNOW here. That’s kind of weird given your view that you don’t actually know anything (except some long disjunctive props you can only summarize) alongside the fact that you post a LOT.
Huh? You say you can only know some infinitely long disjunctive propositions none of which has any disjunct which is such that you know it. That’s your whack view, I’m just stating it.
OMG, what a load of bullshit. Your position is the classical cartesian theater model. You think you need an infinite regress to be in a Cartesian theater? That’s funny.
BTW, I was thinking this morning that your position is actually MORE Cartesian than we’ve actually talked about. You said yesterday that you do know (undisjunctive) mathematical propositions. As your knowledge of those can’t stem from their necessary truth any more than from their truth (i.e. justification issues can’t be fixed in that manner), it must be that you think you have some sort of “clear and distinct” apprehension of those propositions. But it seems to me that whatever demon or simulator might be befouling your perceptual apparatus could also be messing with what mathematical propositions seem to “glisten” for you. But you say you know those things, full stop. The only way is something akin to what Descartes called “clearness and distinctness.”
You should have your friends start calling you Rene! And when you start to buy his ontological argument for God too, you might think about growing a mustache and wearing a gown as well–i.e., if you’re not already wearing a gown: as we’ve discussed, you really don’t know, one way or the other.
Even more important, IMHO, is that you should have put the apostrophe in.
Believing that we either know that God exists or are assuming Christianity is false is actually a function of your own presuppositions. And your set of presuppositions happens to be one that is held by almost nobody else in the world besides you.
Most people would say that you have yourself either presupposed or learned that Christianity is true (assuming it IS true); and note also that it is only your quite heterodox version of Christianity that involves the theory that everybody knows that God exists.
So stop yelling at your computer and try to think straight instead! It’ll do you both good.
ETA: BTW, I think keiths ought to read that paper too. IIRC, there’s some stuff on clearness and distinctness in there that would be helpful to him.
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Good links.
The Drake equation has often been used to justify SETI. However, when I look at it, I see that the earth has been emanating possibly detectable intelligent signals (i.e. radio) for around 100 years. And current trends suggest that in after another 100 years we will be using only low powered radio (cell phones), with fiber for the other communications.
So there has been life on earth for almost 5 billion years, and perhaps there will continue to be life for another 5 billion years. But it was detectable by SETI methods for 200 years. The probability of detection seems quite small. The universe might be teeming with life, but it could be mostly invisible to us.
Or, to put it differently, it might not be possible to distinguish between “the universe is teeming with life” and “the universe is almost devoid of life”.
We could see which works best.
In truth, the flat earth theory works pretty well for driving around the Chicago area, though it does not help with the potholes. But then the spherical earth theory doesn’t help with the potholes either.
Both “flat earth” and “spherical earth” are idealizations. Neither is strictly true. Which idealization works best is going to depend on the purposes for why we idealize.
For some people, an important purpose is the preservation of traditional ideas. And it is hard to see why philosophers would disagree with that as a purpose.
no,
Knowing God exists happens to be a function of God’s revelation to me (and everyone else).
It’s not about me or my presuppositions at all
why is that relevant? Is popularity a reliable hallmark of truth?
Most people would be wrong. This is according to God’s very own revelation.
The opinions of the crowd are notoriously unreliable
I think it’s you and the author of the paper who are not thinking strait.
It’s impossible to think strait when you start from such a crooked assumption.
I will finish the paper but so far it boils down to
“we must trust our unreliable perceptions because the alternative (Christianity) is too bitter a pill to swallow”
that is sort of what I expected it to say 😉
peace
Still incorrect, still rude, and still a violation of the site rules.
Is there any possible evidence supporting the statement that atheists exist that you would find convincing, even in principle? Someone you trust personally? Lie detector? Waterboarding?
My paraphrase: “If my belief that X is real works for my current goals, then X is real. [Possibly need to add]: for me, now.”
Holding such a view would seem to put one in the same linguistic sub-community as WJM.
Yes
If you could provide a cogent argument against God’s existence that did not utilize logic or appeal to truth that might do it
peace
I’d put it this way: I don’t think there’s any epistemic barrier between a dung beetle’s brain and the features of the environment that it needs to be able to reliably detect in order to achieve the goals that are necessary for the continuation of the dung beetle’s characteristic way of life. That’s not to say that it can reliably detect a foot that is about to squash it.
Here’s another example: consider a moth that is helplessly circling a light-bulb. In their natural environment, millions of years before the invention of electric lighting, moths evolved a navigational system that uses starlight. Starlight is at optical parallax — the photons strike the retina at effectively parallel lines, so there is a 90 degree angle between the trajectory of the light and the retinal surface. In their natural environment the moth’s navigational system works perfectly well. But because the light from a bulb radiates outward in all directions, it hits the moth’s retina at many different angles, and the result is that the moth spirals in towards the bulb (or, if it is unlucky, the candle).
In this case, the retina-brain-flight system has been fixed by natural selection; it reliably detects features of the world that are there anyway (photon trajectories) but it has only one motor response to those trajectories. When the light is coming from stars, the motor responses are adaptive; when the light is coming from a candle or light-bulb, they are not.
Certainly something important happens when the animal has the ability to correct its representations based on sensory information at odds with intended actions and form new action-guiding representations based on novel situations. That’s just what learning is. Moths can’t learn (so far as I know), nor can they infer. But many animals can. Octopi, for example, are an excellent example of learning and inference even in the absence of a centralized nervous system on the vertebrate plan.
The more we learn about animal intelligence, the more widespread inference seems to be among many animals — at least among many birds and mammals. Great apes can not only infer across many different social and physical domains, but they can even know when other apes are inferring and use those inferences about the inferences of others in making their own. (I think that’s relevant because we evolved from apes and not from moths or dung beetles.)
What’s interesting about human cognition is that we have the ability to share and correct each other’s inferences, which gives us a degree of objective grip on the world that no other animal has. The key here involves language and those cognitive abilities on which it relies and those which it also makes possible. (The cognitive differences between native apes and enlanguaged apes are worth noting here.)
Obviously we don’t have a complete theory of how language evolved, but we have a pretty good idea about the cognitive differences that language makes. In empirical science, we figured out how to construct feedback loops between culturally accumulated cognitive maps and causally efficacious technologies in order to exploit our affordances so as to catch glimpses of the hidden causal order that underpins the features of the environment that co-constitute those affordances.
(My apologies if any of this requires reading at a college level.)
So, unsurprisingly, you hold that belief not for rational reasons. It’s good to be clear about why your claims can be summarily dismissed.
Once again it’s not an argument it is the means by which we evaluate arguments
God’s existence can only be denied if you wish to forswear logic and truth. It’s good to be clear that you have no problem doing so to maintain your petty little rebellion
peace
Requires some effort but the effort is repaid. All good points! I sense a book in the offing
?
Prove it.
I don’t recognize that as a paraphrase.
I have been known to say:
theories are neither true nor false;
theories are not descriptions;
Maybe I need to add:
theories are not beliefs.
That’s harsh. Neil’s pragmatism doesn’t approach WJM’s open-to-woo gullibility.
I just did 😉
peace
That’s where you’re confused, FMM. Atheism doesn’t require an argument of any kind–cogent or not. It involves either (on Patrick’s view) lack of belief, or a simple claim. It doesn’t need to be warranted, never mind proven. Once you get that, there won’t be as much talking past each other here.
First of all, Patrick, you’ve claimed repeatedly that atheism doesn’t require a denial, remember? You’ve said it’s just a failure to believe something.
Secondly, this argument doesn’t require “proof” from either party, anyhow: the entire dispute is over how to use a couple of words. You two are talking past each other.
Amazing how long one can argue about such matters if one is confused what one is arguing about.
FMM, it’s remarks like these that make me suspicious of gung-ho theists. I’m an apatheist and support your right to think differently from me about the existence of gods. When you start talking about rebellions I worry. That’s invasion of personal space.
Phooey. I was taking that as a congratulatory dot. Now there might be a clarification. 🙁
Yes, Neil’s internal realism is a form of (epistemic) idealism–and that’s where WJM resides too.
Lack of belief and claims both presuppose truth. Therefore they assume God’s existence.
I don’t disagree.
It does however need to be true and it is not true that God’s existence is not known….
God’s existence is known by everyone ……….so that they are with out excuse
peace
Those are just personal preferences, though. I think Bruce is right that the basic epistemologies are on a par. WJM’s nonsense constitutes a reductio of the position.
Again, you don’t use “God” the same way as anybody else here. So, when you say that I believe in God you’re just using your own ubby-dubby.
If one presupposes that God is necessary for logic (or is logic, whatever that could mean), then of course there cannot be an argument against the existence of God. Likewise, if one presupposes that God is necessary for logic, then one cannot argue for the existence of God
But if one does not presuppose that God is necessary for logic, then one can argue for (or against) the existence of God, whether on a priori or a posteriori grounds.
Except that Neil and WJM differ on the scope of the pragmatic criteria — paralleling the debate between Peirce and James. Neil thinks that the question is, “which theory works best for us, given our needs and interests?” and WJM thinks that the question is, “which theory works best for me, given my needs and interests?”
The upshot is that while Neil’s internal realism is based on epistemic relativism, WJM’s metaphysical realism is based on epistemic subjectivism. In that regard he hasn’t changed at all since he was an atheist — he’s just decided that theism advances his needs and interests better than atheism does.
Principally, I think, his need to be “rescued from despair”, as Rorty once put it. Of course, if one is in a state of despair or depression due to being an atheist, then one is better off not being an atheist. What has always irritated me about WJM, Gregory, Kairosfocus, Barry Arrington, and other Internet apologists is their hysterical insistence that despair and depression are a logical consequence of atheism.
Again it’s not me who describes your behavior as rebellion it’s God. Far be it from me to censor his words in the interest of political correctness
If it’s any consolation we are all born rebels that includes me.
It was a valuable thing for me to finally understand that my rebellion against God was not some sort of neutral passive lack of belief but an active suppression of the truth.
peace
Not with out utilizing logic (ie God).
It’s like a small child who climbs on her father’s lap in order to slap his face.
peace
Again you can define God so that he is not nessary and then claim that God is not necessary but that does not accomplish anything of value.
Words have meanings and God has the right to define himself.
peace
That makes no sense to me at all–except for the “words have meanings” part. As I said, you use them in a completely idiosyncratic fashion when you insist there are no atheists. Frankly, I don’t care if you call this your own definition or God’s definition. It’s not mine or anybody else’s here except yours (and, if you insist, God’s take on his own name). That’s all irrelevant to my assertion.
This is something that is important to understand.
The only person with the authority to define is God.
Since you deny that God exists you are forced to assume that definitions are subjective fluid squishy things.
If this position was taken to it’s logical conclusion all communication would be impossible and we would just be making noises that would be meaningless to everyone else.
Since God exists communication is possible and our use of words is correct to the extent that it corresponds with God’s understanding.
peace
I meant prove this claim of yours:
not that you hold irrational beliefs that you are both unable to support and unable to refrain from interjecting into nearly every thread on this forum.
You derail nearly every discussion here with your baseless claims. Do you get brownie points in church for testifying to the heathens?
Since it’s clear that you will never be able to support your claims and that you think they are somehow relevant to every topic, I suggest that you write an OP describing them. All related conversation can then take place there. If you simply can’t stop yourself from disrupting another thread, at least you can limit the intrusion to a single link back to your OP.
Obviously there is no rule to require this. I offer it as an option that allows you to continue with your proselytizing while giving other threads a chance to remain on topic.
I absolutely deny that-as well as all the other unsupported claims in that post (viz., all of them). FWIW, I take that post as nothing more than an additional display of “robot speak” on your part.
You deny that God has the authority to define. Ok
That is the textbook definition of rebellion. You deny the sovereigns rightful authority and instead set yourself up as the authority instead.
That is certainly not just some passive lack of belief. It’s a blatant act of defiance.
peace
PS your refusing to submit to God’s authority does not in anyway remove your obligations to that authority.
We were getting along just fine till you got here with your “prove it” nonsense.
The only reason I even mentioned God was because the conclusion of the paper that walto linked was based on the unwarranted assumption that God does not exist.
If you don’t want me to mention God don’t ask me to read a paper that begins with the faulty assumption that belief is God requires trust in our unreliable perceptions.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Haha. I’m a rebel, baby!
The difficulty here is that the only reason we have for believing that some of our perceptions are unreliable is by contrasting then with other perceptions that are reliable.
If none of our perceptions were ever reliable at all we would not be able to distinguish between reliable ones and unreliable ones, which means that we could not understand the meaning of “our perceptions are unreliable”.
It is only because some of perceptions are reliable that we can understand that some of them are not.
I was trying to stay focused in the question I asked about what comparing the merits of different communities views on what is real:
——————————
BruceS: Consider the sub-community of those who believe in the reality that the earth is round versus the sub-community of those who deny that reality.
Is there no way to compare the merits of each sub-communities claims about reality?
Neil: We could see which works best.
———————————————-
I understood that along with the rest of your post as saying the pragmatic goals of a community determine what is real for that community and the way to assess that reality is to assess how well they meet their pragmatic goals by that belief in reality.
I understand that you are what I would call an instrumentalist about the truth of scientific theories and the existence of unobservables but I don’t see how that affects what you say in answer to my question.
ETA: In my original, I’m asking about the flatness versus roundess of the earth as a planet, not eg about whether assuming local flatness works well enough for driving a short distance.
I purposely paraphrased since I suspected that I did not understand what Neil meant, as always. My point was about that paraphrase.
But I don’t see how Neil’s latest reply addresses where my paraphrase is inaccurate.
KN,
No, because we have no way of knowing that any of our perceptions are reliable.
What we actually do is something like this:
1. We notice that some of our perceptions are inconsistent with others.
2. That means that they can’t all be right.
3. We want to separate the veridical perceptions from the non-veridical ones.
4. We note that most of our perceptions are consistent with each other (which does not, by itself, mean that they are veridical).
5. Crucially, we assume that our senses are generally reliable and that non-veridical perceptions are the exception, rather than the rule.
6. Combining #4 and #5, we infer that the outliers — the relatively few perceptions that are inconsistent with the majority — are non-veridical, and that the others are veridical.
If you eliminate the unjustified assumption in #5, then the inferential chain is broken. We can’t say which perceptions are veridical and which are not.
However, we can still say that some of our perceptions are non-veridical. The inconsistencies are enough to warrant that. We don’t need to know which are veridical and which aren’t in order to detect inconsistencies among them.
Funny how I’ve never heard of any gods telling me what to do, it’s always people like you pushing your obnoxious dogmas as if they were talking in the name of some higher power. Nice try but no dice.
P.S. Go find a good shrink