2,657 thoughts on “Elon Musk Thinks Evolution is Bullshit.

  1. fifthmonarchyman: God is a personal God. humans are made in his image so yes we indirectly compare our perceptions or theories with those of God by comparing them with other people

    LOL…this is rather obviously internally inconsistent. If this god of yours was actually a personal god (particularly an omnipotent one) as you claim, why would he, she, or it ever use simulacrums?

  2. fifthmonarchyman:

    Basically you are confirming that you intend to disrupt every thread in this forum with your proselytizing, regardless of the topic.

    You are a very rude guest.

    I’m sorry you find me rude. I assure you that it is not my intention to be discourteous or impolite

    And yet you persist in disrupting every thread in which you participate, dragging the topic to your unsupported god claims.

    1) This forum is made up largely of folks who were banned from UD for doing what you accuse me of doing. So my alleged rudeness could be construed as poetic justice.

    That is so at odds with reality as to be libelous. I defy you to find a single person here who was banned from UD for repeatedly dragging threads off topic. Most were banned because Barry Arrington is an arrogant coward who can’t support his claims and doesn’t like seeing his fellow travelers repeatedly humiliated.

    Take Elizabeth for an example. Look up why she was banned and tell me I’m wrong.

    2) Since I have repeatedly said that I’m not proselytizing doesn’t your accusation violate the rules?

    “pros·e·lyt·ize
    ˈpräs(ə)ləˌtīz/
    verb
    . . .
    advocate or promote (a belief or course of action).”

    You are constantly advocating your beliefs. You just never support them with logic or evidence.

    3) It would truly be a sad thing if you were unable to have a simple discussion without making unwarranted assumptions and without mocking God.

    You are ignoring the fact that it is you who are unable to distinguish between “not explicitly affirming the existence of a god” and “affirming the non-existence of a god.” You get triggered by anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs and derail those conversations.

    No one here is mocking your god. Some are pointing out that your claims are unsupported. It makes no sense to mock something in which one has no belief.

    Try following the rules and parking your priors at the door. Not every thread has to be about your beliefs.

  3. Robin: Seriously, after living in any form of modern government, who in his or her right mind would ever willingly embrace totalitarianistic monarchy?

    A Fifth Monarchist would, if it were the right theocracy. The dream of perfect totalist oppression.

    And there’s nothing to discuss. It’s all about them, uh, the God they serve, you know. Yeah, it’s God, not their own authoritarian tendencies, being displayed for all to see.

    Well anyway, when it becomes a sin to disagree with FMM God hisself, the excuse/reason that FMM has never ever entered into a proper discussion comes into focus.

    Glen Davidson

  4. keiths:
    KN,

    According to that hypothesis, the angle is relative to the moth, not to the retina.Remember, the moth has compound eyes, so the angle won’t be the same for each individual ommatidium.

    Also, the hypothesis isn’t that they maintain a 90 degree angle, just that they maintain a constant angle. A moth that maintained a 90 degree angle (where 0 degrees is straight ahead) would circle the light clockwise at whatever distance it first “noticed” the light, with no tendency to get closer or further away.Ditto, but counterclockwise, for a 270 degree angle.

    Angles toward the front of the moth (i.e. between 0 and 90 degrees or between 270 and 0 degrees) would cause it to spiral in.Angles toward the back would cause it to spiral out.

    In any case, the hypothesis isn’t generally accepted by entomologists.

    Thank you for the correction! I appreciate it! (And here I was thinking that the explanation of moth navigation was the only useful thing I learned from Dawkins’s The God Delusion!)

    I do agree with the larger point you’re making to phoodoo, however. Senses haven’t evolved to be perfectly accurate, and perceptual mechanisms that functioned well in an ancestral environment may mislead in newer environments.

    Well, yes and no.

    Firstly, there is the question as to how plastic the nervous system is, and whether the animal can learn and thereby adapt to novel situations. Moths and other insects (e.g. the Sphex wasp) are good examples of fixed systems. It’s arguable that they do not have “representations” in the strict sense because they exhibit no variability or plasticity in their behavioral responses to the information available to them.

    Secondly, I was intending my point to support a roughly Gibsonian view of direct realism: an animal does perceive those features of its environment that comprise its ecological niche, and does so by means of perceptual systems that are functionally integrated into its characteristic way of life as continuous interactions with that niche. An animal could not exploit the resources available to it if its cognitive states did not in some way or other map onto the features of its environment.

    The lesson here is that the question of the veridicality of the senses is quite complicated.

    If the question is, “do an animal’s sensorimotor systems allow it to reliably detect, track, and classify those real features of the environment that comprise its ecological niche, as constrained by the functional integration of those sensorimotor systems with its characteristic way of life?” then the answer is “yes”.

    If the question is, “do an animal’s sensorimotor systems allow it to perfectly and completely detect, track, and classify the hidden causal and modal structure of the world in itself?”, then the answer is “no”

    And I think that the second “no” is as true of us as it is of all the other animals.

    Our cognitive grip on the hidden causal and modal structure of the world in itself is a fallible work-in-progress, assuredly never to be completed in any finite time-span, and at best an “asymptotic” approximation over the history of inquiry. It is made possible only insofar as we have devised ways of experimentation, measurement, hypothesis-testing, statistical analyses, and above all critically evaluating our own techniques of inquiry based on their successes and failures.

    There is, however, a somewhat deeper question that has been haunting this discussion: is the logical possibility of X itself a reason for believing that ~X? I do not think so. if X is logically possible, then ~X cannot be necessary. That much is perfectly clear. But it does not follow, from ~X is not necessarily true, that we have no reason to believe that ~X. For it could be the case that ~X is actually true — true in this world — even if it is not true in all possible worlds.

    But here’s the rub: empirical inquiry is the only means we have for determining what is the case in the actual world. If we are concerned with what is actual, and not with what is possible and/or necessary, we simply have no choice but to use the sensorimotor systems we have inherited from millions of years of evolution, as augmented and supplemented by various fallible but corrigible techniques of inquiry (including, of course, inquiry into the sensorimotor systems themselves).

  5. Neil Rickert: 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”.

    I seriously doubt that radio and other signals will cease to be sent to satellites and vice versa in 100 years or so. Radar will probably continue to be used for any foreseeable future, for weather alone. And if we continue to explore space, perhaps make some outposts and what-not, the odds that we’ll continue to have interplanetary radio (and other wavelength) transmissions are probably quite high.

    I seriously doubt that the ability to “see” (radar and the like) and communicate without fixed lines will become superfluous any time soon. How tight the beams might become over time could play a role in detectability (narrow beams like lasers don’t dissipate so quickly, but wouldn’t show up in many places), but I suspect that at least some detectable signals will continue to be produced in the foreseeable future.

    Glen Davidson

    ETA: Airplanes and ships, too, will presumably continue to use radio or other electromagnetic signals for communications, with significant power. Not as much power as interplanetary signals, though, I don’t suppose.

  6. Kantian Naturalist,

    When a bee stings a little baby sitting in its baby carriage trying to swat the bee out of its face, and the bee subsequently dies because of this sting-did both the baby and the bee perceive their world accurately?

    (Note to KN: The question is the actual question).

  7. phoodoo:
    Kantian Naturalist,

    What if the question is what the question is, and not your attempts to constantly rewrite people’s questions for them?

    If I believe that a question is badly confused and needs to unpacked carefully so that ambiguities can be resolved, what else I am supposed to do besides exactly that? This isn’t a court of law where the witness is compelled to answer the lawyer’s questions precisely as stated. These are complicated issues that require careful explication.

    phoodoo: When a bee stings a little baby sitting in its baby carriage trying to swat the bee out of its face, and the bee subsequently dies because of this sting-did both the baby and the bee perceive their world accurately?

    If you refuse to permit me to resolve an ambiguity and dissolve confusion, then the only answer I could give is “yes and no”.

  8. Kantian Naturalist: This isn’t a court of law where the witness is compelled to answer the lawyer’s questions precisely as stated.

    I think this is evidence that you don’t perceive your world correctly. No one suggested it is a court of law.

  9. Kantian Naturalist: If you refuse to permit me to resolve an ambiguity and dissolve confusion

    I think this is absolute proof that you don’t perceive the world correctly.

  10. phoodoo: Kantian Naturalist: This isn’t a court of law where the witness is compelled to answer the lawyer’s questions precisely as stated.

    I think this is evidence that you don’t perceive your world correctly.

    Are you seriously saying that complicated philosophical discussions should be carried out like cross-examination in a courtroom that determine guilt or innocence?

    If that’s not what you’re saying (and I find it difficult to believe that it is), then what are you saying?

  11. phoodoo: I think this is absolute proof that you don’t perceive the world correctly.

    This exchange is becoming quite bizarre.

    Now the suggestion seems to be that I don’t perceive the world correctly because I think that philosophy is difficult and requires careful explication of ambiguous concepts and complicated problems.

    Is that really what you are intending to suggest here? That if one perceived the world correctly there would no need for thought, reflection, analysis, inquiry, and discussion?

  12. phoodoo: I think this is evidence that you don’t perceive your world correctly. No one suggested it is a court of law.

    The court of law was an analogy. My point was simply that in philosophical discussions, discussants have the right to point out that a question is badly confused (if they think it is) and propose better questions to ask. You don’t want me to do that and I don’t understand why.

  13. Kantian Naturalist,

    No, what I am saying is that, when normal, rational, clear thinking people ask someone a question during a discussion which both voluntarily agree to make public, and one asks a question to get a clearer picture of the position, if the person who is being asked the question says, “the better question is…” , than the latter individual either (A) clearly doesn’t understand the concept of a question.

    Or (B) the other possibility is the person being asked the question clearly knows that giving a proper answer would show just how foolish their position is, so they do all they can to obfuscate and avoid.

    I suspect you understand the purpose of the question, so that leaves us with (B).

  14. Kantian Naturalist,

    Perhaps its just easier if I answer the question for you.

    Neither the baby nor the bee are perceiving their worlds accurately (If we are to believe we are perceiving the world accurately that is) .

  15. Kantian Naturalist: Are you seriously saying that complicated philosophical discussions should be carried out like cross-examination in a courtroom that determine guilt or innocence?

    Is a form of internet trolling specifically directed at philosophers? If so, I suppose one could have both blatant examples and subtle examples.

    IMHO, there are several candidates for blatant examples in the thread.

    Now I don’t know Neil’s intentions when he posted the following, but perhaps, speaking hypothetically, someone could post the following as a good-natured form of subtle philosophical trolling:

    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.

  16. phoodoo:
    Kantian Naturalist,

    Neither the baby nor the bee are perceiving their worlds accurately (If we are to believe we are perceiving the world accurately that is) .

    I don’t understand this statement Phoodoo. Bees do not have a self-centric perspective; their behavior is almost entirely based on the pheromonal instructions by the hive queen or perceived threats thereto. As such, a bee that stings a baby (and subsequently dies) is completely perceiving her world and acting in accordance with said perception. It’s death is irrelevant compared to the strength and protection of the hive and queen. Anything that threatens a drone is worth warning – at the cost of the drone’s life – that said threat will garner a consequence. In most cases, such behavior is sufficient to drive off such threats.

    As for the baby, it seems to be perceiving his or her world as well. If said baby is not perceiving the bee and doesn’t have some perception of the proximity of said bee to said baby’s face, why else would said baby swat at said bee?

    On a complete tangent to this, I actually got some decent pics of a Rusty-patched bumble bee (an endangered species) in my backyard. Fortunately, I did not swat at it (though I did try to push it’s wing away from its abdomen so I could see the “rusty patch”) and it did not sting me.

  17. BruceS,

    For Neil (and petrushka often too), “philosophy” is simply short for “philosophical positions I disagree with.” At least I don’t THINK they’re criticizing their own philosophical assertions.

  18. Robin: On a complete tangent to this, I actually got some decent pics of a Rusty-patched bumble bee (an endangered species) in my backyard. Fortunately, I did not swat at it (though I did try to push it’s wing away from its abdomen so I could see the “rusty patch”) and it did not sting me.

    No wonder they’re endanged now: they’ve gotten to be such sissies!

  19. Kantian Naturalist:
    phoodoo,

    What does “perceiving the world accurately” mean in this context?

    Have you completely forgotten that it is you that claimed

    that there is a causal link between successful action and accurate representation of their world do you?

    ??

    What accurate representation of the world did YOU mean??

    Forgive me if it wasn’t clear to me that you meant the world according to a bee, or the world according to a baby.

    If that is what you meant, than OF COURSE everything sees an accurate interpretation of the world, since presumably all you now are saying is the world that you perceive is the world that is real.

    GEEZ!

  20. Robin,

    Right Robin, except it was not ME who claimed that there is a casual link between successful action and an accurate representation of the world. It was KN.

    If by accurate representation of the world, all that is meant is the world that that organism perceives, well, gee no kidding.

    In that case, there can never be such a thing as an inaccurate perception of the world.

  21. Robin: Bees do not have a self-centric perspective;

    Bees function as cells in the body of the hive. They have the same kind of interest in the survival of the hive as a skin cell in your body, which can die protecting the body.

    All the bees in a hive have the same genome, just as the cells in your body have the same genome. The survival or death of the hive genome is not in any way dependent on the survival of any particular bee.

  22. phoodoo: What accurate representation of the world did YOU mean??

    Code 3! Phoodoo was a telepathy failure. Normal service will resume when he disagrees and then tells you what you’re *really* thinking/

  23. petrushka: All the bees in a hive have the same genome, just as the cells in your body have the same genome.

    Well it’s not quite like that. The workers are all sisters (not clones, like body cells are), but are still the result of sexual reproduction, and have differing genetic contributions from the queen and the drone with whom she mated.

    Between relatedness and the need for cooperation (and the queen suppressing reproduction in her daughter workers), the bee in the bee hive hive and the cell in the body are not at all unlike each other in operation, but it’s certainly not the same sort of relationships of bees in the beehive as of cells in the body.

    Glen Davidson

  24. phoodoo:
    Robin,

    Right Robin, except it was not ME who claimed that there is a casual link between successful action and an accurate representation of the world.It was KN.

    Ok, but I can’t find any problems with KN’s assessment. There IS actually a measurable causal link between successful action and accurate representation of the world.

    If the baby didn’t have an accurate representation of the world, how could it swat at, never mind interfere with, a bee? Conversely, if the bee didn’t have an accurate representation of the world, how could it recognize that the swatting action was a threat and react accordingly? Further, how could it assess the actual object of the threat and sting the baby? Why didn’t it, hypothetically, sting the baby carriage or a tree nearby?

    If by accurate representation of the world, all that is meant is the world that that organism perceives, well, gee no kidding.

    That’s not what it means though. Accurate representation would be, “perception that most closely corresponds to actual reality.” In other words, successful actions – any goaled behavior wherein the goal is attained – implies an awareness of the conditions creating that event and the correspondence of those conditions to actual reality.

    How could it be otherwise?

    In that case, there can never be such a thing as an inaccurate perception of the world.

    Of course there can. Illusions demonstrate this quite well. Any situation that allows someone to perceive two competing and contradictory assessments will force the brain to filter one or create a gestalt of the situation. When that occurs, the brain tends to ‘invent’ characteristics that didn’t actually occur. Watch David Copperfield make a 747 disappear in front of thousands of people – that’s a pretty good example of that very phenomenon.

  25. Robin,

    Oh my goodness, that is such a naive point of view. What does the baby think the bee is, a bee? What does the bee think the baby is, it thinks it a baby? If it thought it was a baby, why wouldn’t it just fly away and go find a flower?

    If you can’t get past the obvious, why go further.

    The two are the very epitome of reaction without accurate perception.

  26. GlenDavidson: Well it’s not quite like that.The workers are all sisters (not clones, like body cells are), but are still the result of sexual reproduction, and have differing genetic contributions from the queen and the drone with whom she mated.

    Between relatedness and the need for cooperation (and the queen suppressing reproduction in her daughter workers), the bee in the bee hive hive and the cell in the body are not at all unlike each other in operation, but it’s certainly not the same sort of relationships of bees in the beehive as cells in the body.

    Glen Davidson

    We’ll have to split the difference. Worker bees share 75% of their alleles. They are halfway between identical twins and fraternal twins.

  27. phoodoo:
    Robin,

    Oh my goodness, that is such a naive point of view.

    Oh boy…

    What does the baby think the bee is, a bee?

    I don’t see that as being relevant to the point. “Bee” is a human-invented term. Knowing that the object making a noise, tickling his face, or simply being a distraction is called a “bee” has very little, if anything, to do with whether the baby is perceiving his world accurately. In other words, human labels (and by association, human syntax of those labels, and any characteristics associated with the definiton of those labels) have very little to do with reality. They are simply useful tools for conveying the experiences concerning supposed reality to other humans.

    What does the bee think the baby is, it thinks it a baby?

    See above. Bees don’t label things with human terminology. The bee could hardly care what the baby is in any kind of human terms. For the bee, there’s a significantly limited set of categories that are key to an accurate representation of her world: what constitutes food, what constitutes non-food, what constitutes threats, and what constitutes non-threats. It may not even be that complex.

    But more to the point, a bee’s accurate assessment of the world doesn’t require any concept of human babies or even humans in general. For the most part, other animals are just part of the “background noise” to bees, ants, dragonflies, butterflies, beetles, and pretty much all other insects. Even things like mosquitoes, that directly rely on other animals don’t actually recognize them as “other animals”; they simply fall into the category of “drink”, and only then for the females.

    If it thought it was a baby, why wouldn’t it just fly away and go find a flower?

    Because it didn’t think it was a “baby”, having no categorical concept for such. It likely didn’t “think” (though even that’s debatable given the limited research on bees I’ve engaged in; assessed is a better word in this case) about the baby at all at first; likely didn’t even differentiate the baby from all the other background “noise”. But then the bee assessed something; maybe the baby had some baby food on his face, or some perfume, or likely some fruit residue and the bee investigated. At that point, all the bee “knew” (and again, this isn’t really a good term) was that there was a difference in chemical signatures between the background “noise” and something on the baby’s face. It still didn’t recognize “the baby”; bees have no concept of such things. Lastly, the bee assessed the movement of something (bees don’t know what arms are either) as a potential threat. And that’s the last thing it assessed.

    If you can’t get past the obvious, why go further.

    If by obvious, you mean human language describing “the world” as “we know it”, then I don’t think I’m the one demonstrating a “naive point of view”.

    The two are the very epitome of reaction without accurate perception.

    So only fully-focused adult human perception can be accurate in your view? Or is there no such thing as an accurate representative perception of the world? Honestly, I don’t know what you think accurate perception constitutes if you think it has to be human-centric and include the accurate understanding of human terminology and human categorization.

  28. walto:
    BruceS,

    For Neil (and petrushka often too), “philosophy” is simply short for “philosophical positions I disagree with.”At least I don’t THINK they’re criticizing their own philosophical assertions.

    Trolling philosophers (not philosophy) was what I had in mind.

  29. KN,

    There is, however, a somewhat deeper question that has been haunting this discussion: is the logical possibility of X itself a reason for believing that ~X? I do not think so.

    Who has been making that argument?

    If X is logically possible, then ~X cannot be necessary. That much is perfectly clear.

    Agreed.

    But it does not follow, from ~X is not necessarily true, that we have no reason to believe that ~X. For it could be the case that ~X is actually true — true in this world — even if it is not true in all possible worlds.

    Sure. ~X might be true even though it isn’t necessarily true. The question, as always, is whether a belief in ~X is justified. If we have no idea whether ~X is likely to be true, such a belief is not justified.

    But here’s the rub: empirical inquiry is the only means we have for determining what is the case in the actual world. If we are concerned with what is actual, and not with what is possible and/or necessary, we simply have no choice but to use the sensorimotor systems we have inherited from millions of years of evolution, as augmented and supplemented by various fallible but corrigible techniques of inquiry (including, of course, inquiry into the sensorimotor systems themselves).

    Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying. Sensory channels are our only source of information about the real world. There is no alternate source of information to fall back on, so we use what we have.

    That’s no reason to assume that what we have is veridical, however, and the Cartesian skeptic acknowledges that.

    (And note that your claim about “sensorimotor systems inherited from millions of years of evolution” is itself dependent on the veridicality of perception.)

  30. Patrick: You are ignoring the fact that it is you who are unable to distinguish between “not explicitly affirming the existence of a god” and “affirming the non-existence of a god.”

    It’s not that folks are affirming anything they are assuming the Christian God does not exist. There is quite a difference

    You can assume something with out affirming anything.

    You assume that the Christian God does not exist anytime you proceed as if he is not necessary. The better way to start is by beginning from an agnostic position on God’s necessity.

    Don’t you agree.

    Perhaps your entire difficulty is in the fact that you haven’t taken the time to examine your assumptions.

    I would ask you to do so.

    Patrick: No one here is mocking your god.

    It is a mocking to act as if God is not necessary. Folks here routinely do far worse than that. On this very thread more than once God was compared to an imaginary pink unicorn.

    Patrick: You are constantly advocating your beliefs. You just never support them with logic or evidence.

    Make up your mind.

    Which is it? Am I advocating or am I never supporting?

    peace

  31. Robin: Invisible pink unicorns that sing and go to 11 work fine too. So do simulation explanations. So do infinite universes. In fact, the odds of and particular god story being true is ridiculously low on that observation alone.

    Would you like to explore each of these one by one?

    1) Pink unicorns according to you are untrustworthy and fickle because they are not bound by their own nature

    2) anything can happen in infinite universes including BB and simulations. So we are back to square one

    If you have any other potential solutions to the problem of epistemology bring them forward I’d love to explore them with you

    I’m sure we all would

    peace

  32. OMagain: That in short is the entire flow.

    Just to be clear
    You have not done anything of this you just are suggesting a possible way to get it done. Is that correct?

    peace

  33. fifth,

    Still awaiting your response to this:

    Come on, fifth.

    Even you — no matter how addled your brain is by religion — understand that knowledge is not a mind. They’re separate concepts. A mind can contain knowledge, but it isn’t identical with knowledge. This is very basic stuff.

    You’ve said that Jesus had to enter into time in order to interact with people, because the Father and the Holy Spirit, being timeless, could not. You latched onto the BCP paper to support your notion, writing:

    I would note that the [Boddy, Carroll, and Pollack] paper appears to assume that it is necessary for a mind to be “in time” to be viable entity. This would refute your notion that a timeless deity could interact with a temporal universe.

    Your mistake was not to realize the implications of what you were saying. BCP think minds must be “in time” because minds depend on brains, and brains depend on the flow of time.

    The Father and the Holy Spirit do not have brains or bodies. They are timeless, and according to you, they cannot interact with the physical. Jesus’s brain is a physical object. Therefore, by your reasoning, the Father and the Holy Spirit cannot interact with it.

    If they don’t have brains, and they can’t interact with Jesus’s brain, then they don’t have minds — by your own logic.

    And even Jesus can’t catch a break in your screwed-up theology. He eventually gets a brain (and a butt), but not until Mary becomes pregnant. In the meantime he has to conduct all of his interactions with the people of the OT — including the mooning of Moses — with a brain and a butt that do not yet exist.

    And please, no more crap about how God is timeless. Your whole point was that Jesus had to incarnate in order to be within time, so that he could actually interact with people.

    So you’ve left Jesus in a position where he’s thinking, interacting with people, and mooning Moses, within time — all with a brain and butt that do not yet exist, within time.

    Please, please, find someone competent to replace you as the spokesperson for Christianity at TSZ. Someone who knows the Bible, understands theology, and can do elementary logic.

    Your daily faceplants are not bringing glory to God, fifth.

  34. walto: Fmm, I don’t think you realize just how derisive many of your own posts are.

    No I do realize that it seems that way to others. I think it’s because my worldview is in direct opposition to most everyone else here. The response I get is pretty much par for the course. Folks like me are used to getting that kind of response.

    quote:

    “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
    (Luk 6:22-23)

    end quote:

    walto: Almost every post of yours contains an implicit accusation that everyone who disagrees with you about anything has no idea what the hell they are talking about–only YOU do.

    I think you might be reading more into what I write than I intend. Many folks here are smarter and more well read than I am in many areas.

    However I think I do have knowledge in one particular area that most here lack. I have a personal relationship with God.

    I do think that I have a tendency to be arrogant and I’m sorry for that and I am working on it.

    That is a big reason why I try to keep my posts short and ask questions a lot.

    Do you have any other suggestions that might help? I’m open to anything as long as it does not involve disrespecting or disobeying God

    peace

  35. keiths: A mind can contain knowledge, but it isn’t identical with knowledge.

    I never said it was. Can you give me a definition of mind that you as a materialist might prefer?

    keiths: BCP think minds must be “in time” because minds depend on brains, and brains depend on the flow of time.

    Do you agree that minds depend on brains? Can you support that claim empirically somehow?

    keiths: Jesus’s brain is a physical object. Therefore, by your reasoning, the Father and the Holy Spirit cannot interact with it.

    When did I imply that the spiritual could not interact with the physical? What I said was the timeless could not interact with the temporal

    keiths: If they don’t have brains, and they can’t interact with Jesus’s brain, then they don’t have minds — by your own logic.

    That statement is a lot of things but it’s “not my own logic”

    keiths: So you’ve left Jesus in a position where he’s thinking, interacting with people, and mooning Moses, within time — all with a brain and butt that do not yet exist, within time.

    Ive often said that this will boil down to a question of other minds.

    I have no problem assuming that a brain is one portal by which a mind interacts with the world but it is not the only one AFAIK. I’m agnostic about how minds interact with the physical world. I’m even agnostic about whether or not minds depend on the physical at all.

    For instance I have no problem in principle affirming that the entire universe is a portal by which God interacts with us.

    What I’m not agnostic bout is the relationship between a timeless God and a temporal creation. I (tentatively) affirm that God must be in time to interact temporally.

    I hope that helps

    peace

  36. fifthmonarchyman: “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

    Seems like you do an awful lot of whining about it to me.

    You actually want my advice? OK. Stop trying to tell people what they believe. The Bible has believers and doubters in it no? Those who deserve the Kingdom of Heaven and those who don’t? If I or others here say they don’t, stop gainsaying us. You are not in a better position to tell me what I believe than I am and it’s just arrogance (and insult) on your part to think otherwise.

    I’m sure you can find some Bible quotes on arrogance. Heed those, instead of whatever ones you are currently heeding in their place.

  37. Robin,

    Except that a baby in a baby carriage is not a threat to a bee, when a bee has the ability to fly away. And thus the bee lost its life, because there was nothing accurate about its perception of the world. Unless of course you don’t accept that there is in fact an “accurate” perception of the world, and rather its all relative to the one perceiving and its own needs in that world.

    So which is it, is there an “accurate” version of the world, or is it all simply what we perceive? KN’s claim is that there is a causal link between successful action and accurate representation of their world. So what does this mean?

    So far KN hasn’t answered this. I guess he would prefer to change the question.

  38. walto: The Bible has believers and doubters in it no?

    The Bible has people who doubt lots of things like the Resurrection and that Jesus is the Christ. But you won’t find anyone doubting the existence of God.

    Everyone knows God exists.

    walto: You are not in a better position to tell me what I believe than I am

    I’m not but God is.

    Look, if you really did not believe that God exists why do even you care that I say that God says that you know he exists?

    If someone told me that Thor says that I know he exists I would be amused I would not be angry.

    If someone quoted some ancient Norse tale that said that Thor had revealed his presence to everyone so that they were without excuse I would not think they were arrogant I would think they were silly.

    A Muslim friend once told me that everyone is born a Muslim I snickered and we went on with our discussion.

    What is it about the Christian God that makes you so upset?

    I think I know

    walto: I’m sure you can find some Bible quotes on arrogance. Heed those, instead of whatever ones you are currently heeding in their place.

    I think I’ll start with this one 😉
    quote:

    “There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
    (1Sa 2:2-3)

    end quote:

    But then again that is exactly what Ive been saying all along here isn’t it 😉

    look if you don’t want to be reminded that you have no excuse before God just don’t go around proclaiming that you have an excuse before God.

    peace

  39. fifthmonarchyman: Look, if you really did not believe that God exists why do even you care that I say that God says that you know he exists?

    If someone told me that Thor says that I know he exists I would be amused I would not be angry.

    That’s an excellent analogy. If such a person repeated that tripe endlessly over and over again, very knowingly, on every subject imaginable, and couldn’t not be made to stop, I’d find it difficult to talk about anything with him, wouldn’t you? Maybe his cuckoo theory was amusing at first, but after a while, I’d start comparing him with a defective robot. I think pretty much everybody would.

    fifthmonarchyman: . Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
    (1Sa 2:2-3)

    end quote:

    But then again that is exactly what Ive been saying all along here isn’t it 😉

    Yes and no. If I met someone who bragged all the time, but when I called him on it he always said, “Oh, that’s not me, it’s just God talking,” once again, it would get old pretty fast.

  40. walto: If such a person repeated that tripe endlessly over and over again, very knowingly, on every subject imaginable, and couldn’t not be made to stop, I’d find it difficult to talk about anything with him, wouldn’t you?

    I expect I would grant for the sake of argument that I knew that Thor existed and move on.

    I might have some fun discussing the implications of Thor’s existence to the topic at hand. If none could be found I’d ask what exactly the relevance was. The more I think about it the more interesting such a discussion would be. I often find that I learn more when I look at things from a position that is radically different than my own.

    walto: If I met someone who bragged all the time, but when I called him on it he always said, “Oh, that’s not me, it’s just God talking,” once again, it would get old pretty fast.

    Again I just don’t think that is what is happening.

    I try to point out often that this is not about me but about God.

    Can you point me to an example of my bragging about myself so I can get an idea of what you are talking about?

    Thank you in advance
    peace

  41. fifthmonarchyman: Would you like to explore each of these one by one?

    1) Pink unicorns according to you are untrustworthy and fickle because they are not bound by their own nature

    An absurd assessment based on zero knowledge. A) You aren’t an invisible pink unicorn that goes to 11, so you have no notion about their own internal decision making factors and B) you have no clue what motivates anything that is not bound by it’s own nature, so your claim in that regard is just moot. You have no knowledge, let alone any authority, to make any sort of assessments regarding the nature of, let alone the trustworthiness of, invisible pink unicorns that go to 11 (and that sing…the singing is key.)

    So, that one’s dismissed…next!

    2) anything can happen in infinite universes including BB and simulations. So we are back to square one

    No we’re not. We’re back to anything can happen, including existing just fine without a particular silly god story. Two down!

    If you have any other potential solutions to the problem of epistemology bring them forward I’d love to explore them with you

    If the above constitutes “exploring” for you, it’s no wonder you’re stuck in anachronistic, inconsistent, philosophical dead-end. I prefer a little bit more thought and intelligence in my exploring, thank you.

    I’m sure we all would

    peace

    I’m guessing not. Otherwise you would have…you know…actually done some exploring.

  42. fifthmonarchyman: Can you point me to an example of my bragging about myself so I can get an idea of what you are talking about?

    Every time you claim the benefit of revelation for your undertanding of God’s views on various matters.

    And, BTW, that’s NOT how I’d expect you to handle the Thorist at all, based on your reaction to atheists. What it’s pretty clear you’d really do is (rudely, IMO) claim over and over again that he actually believes in your God

  43. phoodoo:
    Robin,

    Except that a baby in a baby carriage is not a threat to a bee, when a bee has the ability to fly away.

    Why would the bee fly away? There’s a potential food source for the hive. That’s significantly more important to the queen than then the drone’s life.

    So all the drone knows is that there’s a potential food source to investigate and than something threatening is swatting it away. Even if it knew what a “baby” was, likely the drone would continue until the baby killed it anyway. Because it’s not about the drone’s assessment of the situation, but the queen’s desire for food.

    And thus the bee lost its life, because there was nothing accurate about its perception of the world. Unless of course you don’t accept that there is in fact an “accurate” perception of the world, and rather its all relative to the one perceiving and its own needs in that world.

    Your mistake is in anthropomorphizing the drone. A drone’s priority is to the hive, not itself. queens can make millions upon millions of drones; their expendable. The hive’s health otoh is not. So, a drone that finds food is ‘programmed’ (at least from the queen’s instruction perspective) to seek food and fight for it if need be.

    So yeah, the bee had as much of an accurate perception of its world as it needed to carry out its prime directive. Resistance is futile.

    So which is it, is there an “accurate” version of the world, or is it all simply what we perceive?

    There are all sorts of accurate perceptions of the world; the world is not the same reality to all organisms. To put it another way, not all organisms perceive the world the same way. I would think this was obvious.

    KN’s claim is that there is a causal link between successful action and accurate representation of their world.So what does this mean?

    It means that in terms of successfully executing a given action, an organism needs to be able to accurately assess the conditions and characteristics of the environment in which the action is to be performed.

    So far KN hasn’t answered this.I guess he would prefer to change the question.

    Well, I think his description was pretty straight forward personally, but clearly your mileage may vary…

  44. fifthmonarchyman: walto: You are not in a better position to tell me what I believe than I am

    I’m not but God is.

    Odd then that you feel soooo compelled to give your opinion on the subject then. Clearly you don’t have much faith in your god to do so by itself. I mean…if you did…you’d just happily leave whatever will be up to it.

  45. Robin,

    So there is no ONE accurate representation of reality then? Is that your position?

    So the description of accurate is simply what the organism perceives? Or is there another definition of accurate?

  46. Robin: There are all sorts of accurate perceptions of the world; the world is not the same reality to all organisms. To put it another way, not all organisms perceive the world the same way. I would think this was obvious.

    Exactly. This is why it is important to be clear about what we do and don’t mean by “accurate representation”.

    As I was using that phrase, I meant only that any animal, for its actions to be successful in achieving its goals, must be able to detect and track real patterns and processes that are there anyway. It does not mean that all animals characterize and classify those patterns and processes in exactly the same ways, nor does it even that any animals characterize and classify those patterns and processes exactly as they are.

    (Though I do think that language and technology give sapient animals a degree of objective grip on reality that other animals lack, because we can correct and improve our characterizations and classifications of those patterns and processes.)

    It means that in terms of successfully executing a given action, an organism needs to be able to accurately assess the conditions and characteristics of the environment in which the action is to be performed.

    Right. Or least be responsive to features of the situation such that its actions mesh sufficiently well with the causal structure of its environment (and where “sufficiently well” is to be understood in a ‘satisficing’ rather than ‘optimizing’ sense).

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