Posted on 03/03/2003 8:27:25 AM PST by general_re
I thought a new thread was a good idea, and here seems to be a good place to put it, so as not to clutter up "News". The only topic available was "heated discussion", though. ;)
If any clarification about the pictures is needed, just say so, and I will try to at least highlight the part that I am interested in for you. Remember that I'm interested in the objects or structures or artifacts being represented, so don't be thrown off if the illustrations seem abstract.
Excellent point, cornelis. Godel's incompleteness principle shows that the logical and the existential can and do diverge; and when they do, it is the existential on which we have to rely to get to the truth of the matter at hand.
general_re wrote: "If the design inference consistently passes or consistently fails such tests, we may then inductively reason our way to a conclusion about the worth of it." But it seems that the only objects to which we can apply such tests are the things around us in the here and now -- like basketballs (which are probably better described as artifacts than designs), ice crystals, or whatever the subjects of the pictures that general-re hasn't posted yet.
Would we then suppose that from such "logical tests" we are therefore in a position to "inductively" reason our way to the validation or falsification of an Intelligent Designer which is not bound to our finite timescale?
It seems to me we might learn a good deal about how and why human beings design things in the "game" general_re has proposed; perhaps we'll decide the creative act is a product of conscious will, and perhaps that would be a true generalization. But if my suspicion is correct that the Intelligent Designer is an infinite mind, unconstrained by the conditions applicable to finite human designing -- which conditions the Intelligent Designer has laid down as the laws and principles of the universal design, including humans.
We're "in the stream" of four-dimensional, finite existence; we cannot see either the beginning or the end, either of ourselves or of the universe as a whole. Building up a proof (or lack thereof) of a universal conscious designer on the basis of currently-available empirical evidence subject to falsification tests hardly strikes me as being adequate to the problem of deciding whether the universe is intelligently designed or not. All it can tell us about is ourselves -- or so it seems to me.
Rather than the experimental approach to accreting "proof" incrementally, it may be more fruitful to take the Aristotelian approach, and simply assume a Prime Mover or First Cause of everything that is, and then see if there's anything we come across that disconfirms or refutes our universal premise.
But this would be the very approach that is most strenuously avoided these days as thoroughly "unscientific." I gather that's because "phenomena that would not fit materialistic concepts have been made anathema and estranged," as Walker writes. "Science's investment in materialism has itself turned into a creed, with its own high priests ready to torment the unorthodox. Many phenomena have been ignored in the name of this materialism."
Thanks for the ping, cornelis -- and your provocative post.
Another one of those inferences of the 2nd Law of T., I'm sure.
Aye, what's heaven for one may be hell for an other and vice versa.
However, the ultimate hell for me is if one is doomed to exist forever and it doesn't matter whether this eternal existence takes place in an environment like traditional heaven or hell. Or just like H. L. Mencken said: No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever...
Oh, and in my previous post make that "Gulag" = "hell". Just had too much Stalin today :(
Gee, let us all know when you turn 13.
In the meantime, I'm still trying my damnedest to figure out just what the hell general_re has foisted upon this thread.
Perhaps the way out of this conundrum would be to suggest that we do not exist forever; but our being is eternal.
Existence is conditioned by the finitude and contingency of life as we mortal humans experience it. Frequently, the configration -- of which we are all parts, participants, and observers -- is grating on us, if not positively painful.
Being is the larger context in which we live and move and have, not only our being, as the Scriptures tell us, but also our very earthly existence. Being is larger than our earthly existence, encompassing it. Being is Truth, existence its "shadow."
When I earlier said that human existence moves in a certain range, "in the stream," but that we cannot know either our beginning or our end in this stream, what I'd hoped to suggest was a corollary to this observation: Reality -- Being -- was here before we got into the stream of existence, and it will still be here after we've left the stream.
So how does this qualify us to say we know what the stream is? Or can even find out -- using the techniques of the scientific method, which says this problem does not exist in the first place?
Arguably, what we are does not find its root in existence. What we are is ultimately rooted in being -- in potentialites of which we are yet unaware. Perhaps existence is merely the reflection of being captured within a particular time reference....
Life, BMCDA, is such a wondrous blessing. How do you justify your "ultimate hell?"
Or, perhaps we just turn into worm food over and over again.
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