Is there anything that everyone here can agree on?
There is a saying: ex nihil, nihil fit. Out of nothing, nothing [be]comes.
Is this one of those obvious truths that folks like to deny the existence of, or do folks here believe that from utter nothingness sprang forth the world and all that is in it?
If you reject the idea that something could begin to exist out of utter nothingness, how do you explain that anything at all exists? Or do you just accept existence as a brute fact that requires no explanation.
None, there is no danger. I agree with you. I have no problem considering that something might exist necessarily. But that’s how far I get, I consider it. How do I know if there is such a thing? And how do I know it is not the universe itself which is that necessarily existent being?
That is not the only alternative. And I don’t see why it’s absurd as I elaborated on on the first page.
Another alternative is that something exists for no reason(ala so-called “brute fact”). Absurd? No, not really. But much more important, if how do we find out whether it is actually the case, that some things just exist for no reason? It doesn’t seem to be logically impossible. Completely intellectually unsatisfying, sure. But is reality under obligation to satisfy us? I fear not.
I’m not bringing this up because I actually believe the universe exists for no reason. I don’t know why the universe exists (or whether there are necessary beings)*, and I don’t know how to find out. Do you? If so, please show me.
And yes I understand that the word being doesn’t necessarily refer to a person, or mind, but just the property of “existence”. I think many people (and yes, regrettably many of them are atheists) aren’t aware of this alternative definition of the word. They think the word “being” refers to “a being”, like in “human being”, an organism, or a mind, or a person, or a spirit or ghost or God or what have you.
On that note, I’m sorry to say that, every time you bring it up, you will probably have to qualify your use of the word “being” with a definition, otherwise lots of people (most of whom are atheists) will object because they think you’re talking about a mind or person of some sort. Sad but true.
I wonder if one of the evolution experts here would care to indicate how these things that so startled Newton have now–with the help of Darwinian theory– been competantly explained?
walto,
The glib shorthand reply is that all bilaterally symmetrical organisms descend from a common Bilaterian ancestor. The number two has all manner of advantages over one or three. It allows sinuous motion, grasping appendages and walking, 3D perception, directional accuracy for hearing … Given a bilateral developmental program, enhancements such as eyes will naturally tend to be bilateral themselves – hard to stop them, in a program that builds depending on distance from a central line, with two such equidistant sites to go at.
There is no particular need to suppose that each bilateral enhancement was separately contrived, or that bilaterality originated in order to support the later amendments, rather than having more immediate benefits.
LoL! kudos to you walto. I read your comment and almost responded that you were having a keiths moment. Now I’m glad I resisted the urge and read on.
@Walto
It seems you have misattributed the Isaac Newton quote from phoodoo’s post, to me.
That’s not how I read it.
walto writes:
Alan Miller covers the value of bilateral symmetry quite well, but I’d also note that radial symmetry also works and ends up with different numbers of organs (different eye numbers, for instance, although that’s also true of bilaterally symmetric animals)–according to the usual evolutionary patterns, unsurprisingly
As for the lens of the eye being transparent, yes, evolutionary pressures would “select” for transparency where light has to get through to the photoreceptors. Past the age of reproduction (very successful, anyway), lenses tend to cloud, consistent with evolutionary theory and not what one might expect of a designer simply interested in providing good eyesight to functioning organisms.
Glen Davidson
There is a concept in philosophy called absolute simultaneity, whereby a cause can be simultaneous with it’s effect with no lag in between. One does not follow the other. The cause is causing the effect to happen simultaneously with the effect beginning to take place.
In this sense, the universe (or whatever entity could be postulated to have the property of “self-creation”) could create itself absolutely simultaneously with it’s coming into existence.
Christian philosopher William Lane Craig was an advocate of the concept of absolute simultaneity for a long time and would use it in his Kalam Cosmological argument, to say that God would case the universe to exist absolutely simultaneously with the universe beginning to exist. He did this, IIRC, to avoid the charge from atheists, that time did not exist before the universe, and since causation requires time, God could not have caused the universe to begin existing from nothing.
To explain the concept, he made use of an analogy also know to philosophers, of a heavy ball resting on a soft cushion for an eternity past. In this analogy, the ball is the cause of an indentation in the cushion, but there is no lag between the cause and the effect. The ball is causing the indentation in the cushion absolutely simultaneously with the cushion being indented.
Ironically, the very concept he made us of, to avoid the atheist criticsm, also made it possible for things to create themselves. In philosophy, the classic objection to self-creation was that for things to create themselves, they would have to already exist, which would seem to violate the principle of causes preceding their effects. But if causes can be absolutely simultaneous with their effects, this is not so and the objection to self-creation becomes invalid.
Assuming (big assumption I readily agree) causes can be absolutely simultaneous with their effects, the universe has all the material it needs to create itself. In fact exactly as much, down to the very last photon of light.
I don’t know if our universe can create a universe (or itself), though in some cosmological models such as eternal inflation, they can cause exponentially many new cosmic expansions.
The universe creating itself is even more parsimonious than God doing it. It’s at least one less entity.
Besides all of this, there is even a third (fourth?) option: The universe never came into existence, it always was and did never not exist! That way there isn’t even need of a cause of something coming into existence from nothing.
Newton’s argument here is a rehashing of the ‘standard’ objection to Epicureanism. I believe it’s first made clearly in the works of Epictetus. And it’s not a bad response to Epicurus, since in Epicurean atomism it is the blind chance of the atoms that produces all phenomena.
(More precisely: as the atoms fall through the void, each atom is subjected to a “swerve” that causes it to collide with other atoms. Some of them hook onto each other, and others bounce off. As enough of them stick to each other, you get suns and rocks and plants and people.)
And if contemporary natural science were committed to anything like Epicurean materialism, the Stoic response (as nicely parroted by Newton here) would be apt. But natural science today today just isn’t committed to Epicurean materialism. Not. At All. So Newton’s Neo-Stoic criticism of Epicurean materialism is simply not at all relevant.
It doesn’t refer. That’s why it is word salad.
Maybe when you learn enough mathematics to comprehend the idea of the empty set.
A set is a finite or infinite collection of objects in which order has no significance, and multiplicity is generally also ignored (unlike a list or multiset). Members of a set are often referred to as elements …
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Set.html
If follows then, that the empty set is not in fact a set. OR, that it is not in fact “empty.”
The set containing no elements…
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/EmptySet.html
OR, the concept of an empty set is simply incoherent. An oxymoron.
Sorry about that, Rum. Too late to fix it, I guess–unless a mod would care to.
Speaking of Kant, he looks like another philosopher whom the English-speaking world gets wrong. Kant said that noumena cannot be known (kennen), but still he has a lot to say about them. Was he speaking about what he didn’t know? He seems to have known (wissen, erkennen) enough about them to fill books.
What’s it committed to? To nothing? Do you see no problem with that?
GlenDavidson,
Thanks to you and Allan both.
Both ‘a necessary being’ and Being Itself are bound to confuse any English speakers who take their own language as the basis to approach these concepts. These concepts and arguments were formulated without any regard to English.
stop the presses! Mung found an oxymoron in set theory!
0 is a finite number of elements.
Perhaps you need to get JoeG to explain set theory to you.
No, that does not follow at all. Or is that something special about Mung logic?
Again, that does not follow. You cite Wolfram, as if that supports your assertion. But it doesn’t.
Erik,
Of course they were, hence my reference to Greek. Sheesh, Erik, you love to score a point that’s already been made. I was allowing for the possibility that the original intent has been lost in translation.
I’m afraid this is not quite right.
Kant is clear (in both German and in good English translations) that things in themselves are not objects of knowledge (Erkenntnis) but that they are objects of thought (Denken). We can (and, he thinks, must!) conceive of them, even though we cannot know anything about them.
The difference is between knowledge and thoughts is that thoughts conform merely to the categories of the understanding, which is to say, of types of possible conceptual rules. But knowledge consists of judgments (Urteil), which necessarily requires (he thinks) not just categories of the understanding but also forms of sensible intuition.
The a priori form of outer sense is space; the a priori form of inner sense is time. As beings with sensible intuition, our capacity to think about particulars (intuition) is constrained by how we are affected by them (sensible). (A being with intellectual intuition could think of particulars without being affected by them.) The forms of sensible intuition are given content in sensation.
Judgments, then, require both the a priori categories of the understanding (as well whatever empirical concepts are relevant, if any) and the a priori forms of sensible intuition (as well as sensations, if any). That’s why pure logic cannot establish any metaphysical truths: the human mind cannot generate synthetic a priori judgments without using sensible intuition. Trying to do metaphysics by logic alone will always yield the contradictions of traditional metaphysics that Kant exposes in the Transcendental Dialectic.
In short, we are rationally entitled (in fact rationally required) to conceive of things in themselves, but we cannot know anything about them, and every attempt to establish knowledge of things in themselves will lead to endless contradictions.
I myself don’t think that we cannot know things in themselves, but I am much closer to Peirce than to Kant on this point: we can know things in themselves by retrospectively comparing our present best scientific theories with previous but rejected scientific theories and thereby interpreting scientific progress as asymptotic approximation to things in themselves.
If you’re actually interested in the metaphysics of contemporary natural science, I’d be happy to give you a reading list.
walto,
OK
Alan Fox,
Thanks, Alan.
Newtons comments have nothing whatsoever to do with Epicureanism or any movement or school of thought-you think everything has to do with some movement. It has to do with him looking at an obvious design, and saying, this clearly didn’t happen by accident.
If Newton was here today and you told him, oh don’t worry, we have it all figured out, its not just ONE accident, its MANY accidents, carried over from one generation to the next, adding more accidents each time. The good accidents have more babies. So THAT’S why it just looks designed.
Well, horsehit. As Allan so ironically stated, what made people like Newton and Einstein stand out was that they weren’t swayed by common accepted wisdom of the time. They thought for themselves (something most evolutionists are clearly incapable of).
Walto say, if Newton were here today, he would never think like that. Then he asks people with more knowledge of biology to please help him out and explain WHY Newton wouldn’t think that way today, because he has no idea why, but he is confident someone else knows why he would change his mind.
Just because you are trapped by the confines of what this particular philosopher said, or that one did, does not mean everyone has to think within such confines. No school of thought erases the obvious embodiment of design we see in all living things. There are professors in biology departments all over the country who are forced to accept a central tenet that says life MUST be an accident, it MUST be unplanned, if they want to keep their status and position at those universities. But others are NOT so restricted in what they can think, and thus see the foolishness of claiming its a series of unplanned random events that made it all the way it is.
Of course, evolutionists try to run from the word random, by saying “but natural selection isn’t random, oh, oh!” , but that is just bullshit icing on the cake. Your paradigm MUST be that the whole system is unplanned, or else you are forced to explain the existence of a plan.
Or else you can just cover your eyes and say “Nature can do it!” Newton would never have been so easily hoodwinked.
Newton was obviously unaware of any other bilaterians.
Why would I be interested in a reading list in the metaphysics of contemporary natural science from you when you have made it very clear that there’s no clear line between physics (science) and metaphysics (philosophy), there should be no such line and discussion about the line is a mess of confusion whenever the topic comes up.
From what I have seen from contemporary (popular) scientists, they have no clue what metaphysics is in the first place and they have no interest in clarifying it for themselves, much less to others. And from what I have seen from philosophers like yourself, you are very happy to concede to scientists their confusion.
All this said, feel free to refer to the best source you had in mind. I’ll be interested in doscovering if there really is such a thing as metaphysics of contemporary natural science. (You do realize that the way you put it, it must come from a scientist, not from a philosopher, right?)
phoodoo,
I am happy to say that selection is random – of course, the word has numerous, sometimes contradictory, meanings, so one has to be careful to be clear. But selection is stochastic, which is one meaning of ‘random’. It isn’t equiprobable, it may or may not be unplanned, etc etc.
phoodoo,
Least we’ve got a cake.
phoodoo,
Doubleplusirony, given your religious proclivities.
phoodoo,
Name one.
More interestingly, name who is forcing them to accept things and how?
If you can’t, phoodoo, the honerable thing to do is accept you were wrong and apologise.
Actually there is a remarkable consistency of thought worldwide, not just in a single country. So presumably the conspiracy you speak of is world wide. Please do explain phoodoo how this conspiracy is enforced.
Most people would reflect and realize given a situation where you are either wrong about something or there is a massive worldwide conspiracy which there is zero evidence for, you are probably wrong about that thing.
But no, some people are so brilliant that they could never possibly be wrong….
If I name one, do I then need to name two? If I name two, then I need to name three before you accept it? If three?
phoodoo,
Anything except support your own claims eh? Nobody forced you to make that claim, but rather then support it you make excuses!
Professors. Departments. Plural. So yes, name two!
Name two or withdraw the claim, or be seen to lack honor!
phoodoo,
If you wanted to, how many professors in biology departments could you name who are are being forced to accept things about biology they would otherwise disagree with?
We know the lower bound is at least 2, due to your use of the plural. But what is the upper bound?
OMagain,
You are already moving Allan’s goalpost for him? What a surprise.
phoodoo,
Name one.
You used the plural, and now you are using me pointing that out as an excuse to not name any at all. You are as transparent as glass.
phoodoo,
I believe you when you say you can name these professors who are forced to teach lies. It’s just that there are some people out there who may think that you are saying things to achieve a goal without those things necessarily having a concordance to reality.
But I’m not one of those people! No, I assume that you are an honerable theist who gives glory to their god by attempting to always tell the truth even to those godless heathens.
So name one or more such professors and put the doubters to shame!
OMagain,
Michael Reiss
Dr. Gavriel Avital
Now don’t go trying to run away with the goalposts now Omagain.
“The honerable thing to do is accept you were wrong and apologise.”
So phoodoo can’t answer Allan’s question because I pointed out he used the plural and therefore there are at least two such professors.
I bet the people who have put this conspiracy in place are trembling in their socks now that phoodoo is on the case. They must be very worried now!
Michael Reiss is not being forced to teach lies.
Dr. Gavriel Avital is not being forced to teach lies.
Your claim was:
Neither of those people are professors in biology departments. And likewise neither of them were forced to accept either of those points.
In fact, Michael Reiss had this to say:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Reiss
So that hardly seems to support your claim does it?
And your second example is as irrelevant to your original claim as your first as can be seen with some trivial research:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/oct/06/israel-scientist-sacked-evolution-climate
So, in summary, neither of those were professors based in the USA, neither were forced to accept positions they did not believe in in order to keep their job and this is just another example of the kind of misrepresentations used to fuel the outrage on your side of the culture war.
phoodoo,
Well, when you said:
And then gave examples of non-professors in non-biology departments in countries other then the one you were referring to, it seems to me as if you’ve changed the goalposts.
Want to try again?
phoodoo,
One is fine, and would have involved less typing.
OMagain,
Oh, but, but, that doesn’t count because , um, um, let me think…they are not in America. Um, because their names have two vowels….Um, because they were not forced to tell lies, they were just fired…
Um, um…
“The honerable thing to do is accept you were wrong and apologise.”
You wouldn’t know honorable if Rumraket hit you on the head with a flounder.
phoodoo,
You make a specific claim regarding professors in universities all over the country. When asked for support for that claim you name two non-professors who don’t teach in different countries.
However, I suppose, given the average understanding of evidence and support amount ID supporters you’ve actually done quite well here! You did name two people!
OMagain,
Honor OMagain. Have some honor. Try.
phoodoo,
They don’t count simply because they aren’t “professors in biology departments”. In any country.
phoodoo,
It’s clear to all who lacks honour. That you disagree is neither here nor there.
False. Absolutely false.
Allan Miller,
Jerry Bergman.
Try to have more honor than OMagain Allan.
If you don’t know that within the biological community having views that are contrary to Darwinian evolution are detrimental to one’s career, you are completely blind to this world.
And if no view other than Darwin’s ideas can be taught in any classrooms, how could you expect it to be otherwise. Doesn’t this tell you all you need to know.
What, you can have views that are opposed to Darwin, you just can’t teach them?? Come on Allan, be serious.
phoodoo,
OK, he’s on the faculty at North West State, How does that support your contention?