↪Sam26 The teleological argument for God is by far the best of the core 3, but it suffers from a crippling counter point.
Essentially, you are saying people and the world are too complex to simply have formed. But have you applied that same criticism to a God? Once you do, the argument falls apart. God is at least as complex as a human being, so therefore the same argument would apply to a God. Something would have to create a God. But then, something would have to create that as well! The only logical conclusion is that the origin point of causality must have existed without prior cause. That origin could be a God, but it could also be a universe without a God. I have post on it here if you want to look into it.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12098/a-first-cause-is-logically-necessary/p1 — Philosophim
I'm not quite saying that the "world is simply too complex to simply have formed," i.e., it's logically possible for the world to have simply come about by chance or some first cause (naturalistic first cause). — Sam26
I don't have to apply your criticism to an intelligence behind the universe (not necessarily God, any intelligence). It's perfectly reasonable to pick what you think the first cause might be based on the evidence and use that as your starting point. — Sam26
Also, why would you think that consciousness (I prefer to use consciousness or mind) is complex, it might be simple, we don't have enough information to say one way or another, — Sam26
I'm trying to point out that a mind behind the universe is the best explanation based on all the data, especially specified information, which I haven't got to yet. — Sam26
Since it's your posit, Sam, again I ask you:It depends on what you're looking for and what your questions are. — Sam26
:chin:What exactly is explained by "a mind behind the universe"? — 180 Proof
Apparently, this "we" excludes p-naturalists (i.e. immanentists, pandeists), strong atheists, freethinkers, absurdists et al. For us, evidently and parsimoniously, "the source" is the universe ‐ natura naturans – itself; we don't bark at shadows (pace Plato). :fire:the source of what we are experiencing — Sam26
My mind is made up about what? You've no idea what my mind is or is not made up about so stuff the ad hominems & strawmen and stick to the questions raised by your muddled dogma.Your mind is made up, why bother? — Sam26
An unknown – unknowable – mystery (re: "intelligence behind the universe") doesn't explain anything because answering with a mystery only begs the question of the how/why of anything. And so my straight forward question remains, Sam, and it appears you can't answer non-fallaciously or suported by sound reasoning:What is explained?
:chin:What exactly is explained by "a mind behind the universe"? — 180 Proof
An unknown – unknowable – mystery (re: "intelligence behind the universe") doesn't explain anything because answering with a mystery only begs the question of how/why of anything. — 180 Proof
In respect of the question of identity, Buddhists will respond, if you ask them, ‘are you the same person you were as a child?’ ‘No’. ‘Then are you a different person?’ Also, ‘no’. There is a continuity, but also change. I don’t think Buddhism has a difficulty with that. Overall, I find the Buddhist attitude congenial in these matters.
So I’m not really seeing your philosophical objection at this point. — Wayfarer
In the case of the no-soul rebirth paradox, if concepts related to personhood aren't part of one's fundamental ontology, for example because one considers concepts of personhood to be unreal because one considers persons to be semantically reducible to impersonal forces of nature, then rebirth follows as a tautological conclusions, since the personhood concepts of life and death are both eliminated in the final analysis of of reality. In which case empirical evidence for rebirth is meaningless. — sime
So the idea of persons as real and local spatial-temporal objects with objective physical boundaries is fundamentally incompatible with the idea that persons can be reincarnated. — sime
What needs to be examined is a) the assumption that there must be an agent, whether personal or impersonal, and b) the illusion that having posited an agent that we have done more than simply assert this assumption as if it were an explanation. Rather than provide an explanation it forecloses the search for explanations, as if a mystery behind the mystery does more than multiply mysteries. — Fooloso4
Throughout history, time after time, claims of the supernatural as the only viable "explanation" for a wide variety of phenomena have given way to natural, rational, demonstrable, transmissible scientific knowledge. — Fooloso4
The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to the laws of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space. This denuded substratum of all reality could only be arrived at through a progressive expurgation of vital features from the physical record and through strict abstention from projecting into its image our own felt aliveness. In the process the ban on anthropomorphism was extended to zoomorphism in general. What remained is the residue of the reduction toward the properties of mere extension which submit to measurement and hence to mathematics. These properties alone satisfy the requirements of what is now called exact knowledge: and representing the only knowable aspect of nature they, by a tempting substitution, came to be regarded as its essential aspect too: and if this, then as the only real in reality.
This means that the lifeless has become the knowable par excellence and is for that reason also considered the true and only foundation of reality. It is the "natural" as well as the original state of things. Not only in terms of relative quantity but also in terms of ontological genuineness, non-life is the rule, life the puzzling exception in physical existence.
Accordingly, it is the existence of life within a mechanical universe which now calls for an explanation, and explanation has to be in terms of the lifeless. Left over as a borderline case in the homogeneous physical world-view, life has to be accounted for by the terms of that view. — Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology
the assumption of naturalism, that life arises from the self-assembly of chemical constituents — Wayfarer
The Phenomenon of Life, Hans Jonas. — Wayfarer
So the idea of persons as real and local spatial-temporal objects with objective physical boundaries is fundamentally incompatible with the idea that persons can be reincarnated. — sime
Beings are not only objects, they are also subjects of experience, and the nature of subjective experience is not necessarily describable in those terms. — Wayfarer
Also consider the discovery of tulkus in Tibetan Buddhism. They are sought out by various means and subjected to examination and are said to be clearly discerned as incarnations of previously-existing figures. As already mentioned, Buddhist culture assumes the reality of rebirth as a matter of course, even despite the tension with the no-self principle. — Wayfarer
If I remember correctly, I agree with the idea that we should not lose sight of the human dimension of scientific inquiry. The question of the meaning of life need not and should not be forbidden from scientific inquiry, but, in my opinion, this does not mean that the supernatural has thereby earned a place at the table of what is fundamentally an investigation of nature. — Fooloso4
Are subjects of experience observable and identifiable or not? — sime
(if) one considers persons to be semantically reducible to impersonal forces of nature — sime
:sweat:There is what amounts to a phobia (↪180 Proof ) around admitting anything which suggests the supernatural, — Wayfarer
But the problem is, the 'human dimension' was explicitly eliminated from the scientific image of man in the early modern period. — Wayfarer
Hans Jonas anticipates many of the ideas of autopoesis and systems science — Wayfarer
Jonas sees metabolism as the building and perpetuation of a self-distinct unity. — Wayfarer
But the problem is, the 'human dimension' was explicitly eliminated from the scientific image of man in the early modern period.
— Wayfarer
Science does not operate according to unchanging truths and immutable doctrines. — Fooloso4
Given the large amount of disagreement on what life after death looks like, I concluded that NDE are subjectively experienced phenomena of a dying brain, rather than of an objective reality. — Brendan Golledge
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.