Reductionism has a fighting chance of shutting naysayers up if they can demonstrate biology to be a special case of chemistry, à la how Werner Heisenberg showed how the macrocosm is a special case of the microcosm. :cool:

That's fine. My mind is 100% independent of god. — introbert

:up: On a more serious note, solipsism seems connected to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness.

There is no may be.

Il est facile de voir que ... if Richard Dawkins is correct, evolution is impossible.

Food for thought: An atheist has to be a solipsist

Why?

The existence of god, being as rational as possible, is in the hands of the skeptic downgraded to may exist. Yet, atheists immediately take the extreme step to god doesn't exist.

Likewise, we've been able to demote other non-self things to may exist (per solipsism) and il est de voir que ... the other does not exist. Solipsism is then just being an atheist with regard to non-self. :cool:

Why do you say all this about Siddhy? :smile: — Alkis Piskas

:lol:

Hi-tech can be defeated/confused by low-tech. If I whip out a knife at a guy pointing a gun at me, he'll let his guard down, hopefully long enough to allow me to sever his jugular! :lol:

:grin: He was proud without being proud. Sometimes facts can seem condescending/haughty/belittling.

Il est facile de voir que ... arche is of great importance; of course some disagree, like Siddhartha Gautama for example. Gautama "disliked" speculation and it's obvious he tried (his best) to keep imagination out of his weltanschauung. Hats off to the Buddha for his decidedly anti-metaphysical stance.

he would have won — ssu

Muchas gracias for making me a winner in some hypothetical universe. :smile:

Agnostics are confused / uncertain about g/G-belief, not particularly "honest". As you know I'm a disbeliever. — 180 Proof

Sorry for the double reply. You added the above later so I suppose it won't come as a surprise.

Agnostics are essentially skeptics. Are skeptics confused or rational?

Pascal (deliberately) leaves out e.g. 'one does not believe and yet one goes to heaven' ... 'one believes and yet one goes to hell' ... etc. — 180 Proof

That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. — Romans 10 :: NIV

"Pascal's Wager" is a false dilemma — 180 Proof

Expand and elaborate ... please.

Are you pushing for honesty (agnosticism)?

If I were God ( :grin: ), to minimize me workload, I would definitely use fractals in me work, one of which would be the universe.

Pascal's wager is very clear on what one has to do vis-à-vis theism-atheism in a Christian context. I don't see where the confusion lies mon ami. It involves some basic probability math and the conclusion is inescapable - we should believe in the Christian God. Sophia (wisdom) is not limited to facts alone, mon ami.

A fresh perspective. Congratulations OP.

Well, if there's gotta be a starting point then why can't the universe be that? The argument for a designer is predicated on the need for a designer. If the designer of x doesn't require a designer, then why should x have to have one? [x = the universe]

Helio Gracie! :up:

:grin:

@Gnomon, did you know, your Enformationism bears an uncanny resemblance to String Theory - everything is but different frequencies of vibration of a/the fundamental stuff of the universe - (mathematical) strings. In the case of Enformationism, everything is different ? of information. What concept would replace the ? in the previous sentence? :chin:

@universeness, atheism is a non-starter for me.

Metaphysicians would know ... :up:

:chin:

Polytheism is more plausible than Duotheism is more plausible than monotheism

I can only say that @Gnomon simply can't be a sophist.

Are you certain that you're a Pyrrhomist ? — RussellA

Yes.

Either Gnomon can't see the Enformer = God identity or we can't see the Enformer $\neq$ God distinction. :cool:

It would be amazing to view it from a mathematical perspective. What would the math of planetary epicycles look like? How would we modify Newton's equations of motions to Aristotle's the natural state of objects is rest? And so on.



If it looks like a spider, it is a spider. :death: :flower:

:lol: Nec caput nec pedes.

I lied, I didn't choose. :blush:

That's a very un-Pyrrhonist thing to say, you sound very certain about it — RussellA

I'm not certain and hence I'm a Pyrrhonist.

. a statement that I didn't understand.
— Agent Smith
All I mean is that "religious apologists" posit a first cause and call it "god" though they, in every case I'm aware of, fail to show that it's the same deity referred to in the Bible or Quran or any "sacred scripture" which folk actually worshipped. At most, the cosmological apologetics of theists paradoxically gets them only as far as deism (or god-of-the-gaps like e.g. Gnomon's "enformer") — 180 Proof

I intelligo ...

Il est facile de voir que ... @Gnomon's Enformer is not God as traditionally thought of in religions. The Enformer, from what I've gathered from Gnomon's posts, isn't a being. Gnomon simply postulates a universal order-conferring, for lack of a better term, force which he calls Enformy. It's analogous to gravity, the force that makes the heavenly bodies revolve around the sun. No one would conflate gravity with God and no one should conflate the Enformer with God.

As is obvious, Gnomon is attempting to explicate the difference between religion and Enformationism and I would be grateful and it would be in good faith if Gnomon could inform us as to why his Enformationism isn't just religion in disguise. My impressions are in the preceding paragraph.

Because everyone who follows the rules is part of a cool, happy group who do fun stuff together. You wouldn't want to be left out of their gang would you?

All the doctors and nurses opposed to community masking and mandatory vaccines were boringly grumbling into their coffees in the break room. Losers. — Isaac

When the extra danger money we have to cough up burns giant holes in our pockets, we'll find out who the real winners are! :grimace: Not much of a choice there, eh? Poverty or Masks? Conservatives, are y'all listening? Keep at it and you'll be free alright, but also poor, very poor. :cool:

@Banno's too smart to fall for that mon ami. Me, stupido! I have chosen (a number), for the first time in me life. :grimace:

I'm a Pyrrhonist. :smile:

It's dark, oui? It's an intriguing paradox that the further we advance into the future, the further back into the past we can see. Hubble $\to$ James Webb $\to$ ?

Do you mean to imply math-based scientific descriptions (maps) are (necessarily) incomplete? Shouldn't we then do something nonscientific? You know, to get the whole picture?

Intriguingly, mathematical maps are more suited for inanimate stuff (like rocket and their payloads) than the living; not that I won't follow the laws of gravity when and if I jump off the 5th floor of my apartment complex, but we seem to be autonomous and that translates into a rebellious nature insofar as the laws that govern our world is concerned.

Il le facile de voir que ... the tactic is irrational (something is better than nothing).

Newton's law

$F = G\frac{m_1m_2}{r^2}$

Coulomb's law

$F = k_e\frac{q_1q_2}{r^2}$

:cool:

... math is one step ahead of physics and also that at all scales, mathematical objects abound
— Agent Smith
... physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ...
— Agent Smith

Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.
— 180 Proof
So Shakespeare's plays & sonnets can be "reduced to" Elizabethan-era grammar (which was "one step ahead" of the Bard)? :sweat: — 180 Proof

Har de har har! Very funny! :smirk:

Mathematics isn't just grammar, is it? :chin:

The math models seem to correspond one-to-one with the physical world. That's uncanny if you ask me.

:up:

:lol:

David Albert's just jealous that Lawrence Krauss thought of the idea first. Happens to all of us. :smile:

physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ...
— Agent Smith
Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.

Materialism reduced ... to im-materialism.
Embodied X "reduced ... to" dis-embodied Y. :roll: — 180 Proof

:smile: Physics does reduce to math and that explains the existence of theoretical physicists (the guys who search the mathematical universe for objects that could be used to model the physical world). What really got me stoked was how many elementary particles were predicted to exist years before they were actualy discovered by experimental physicists i.e. math is one step ahead of physics and also that at all scales, mathematical objects abound). What sayest thou?

I know I'm not qualified to judge, but I suspect Sean Carroll, nice guy that he might be, is basically pretty crap at philosophy. — Wayfarer

:lol: Well, he's the only scientist I know who thinks philosophy is a legitimate field/discipline. Too bad you have a dim view of him. Have you seen

The Big Bang is not so much the beginning of the universe as it is an end of our understanding. — Sean Carroll (physicist)

??? (Bereshit logos)

:chin:

:up: Resonates with what I said. In English, in the beginning the question "what was in the beginning (logos)?" In more abstract terms this :point: ? is the arche. The question mark (?) stands for our ignorance and our need for sense.