Pharyngula Myers quoted this from the SMBC comic.
Consciousness arises from physically undetectable, yet also indestructible, mind-stuff, which wasn’t present until humanity reached its current evolutionary phenotype, and which, despite not interacting with the body, both determines and is affected by its actions and is also perpetually localized to each individual person until they die at which point it goes to a non-localized location that also can’t be detected.
It’s about as useful as Mo’s statement. Or to those who believe no answers or neccessary and to believers no answer is possible.
A doctor went to see a patient in a hospital he had never visited before. After parking his car he saw that the hospital was surrounded by an enormous wisteria vine that was fashioned an elaborate maze. He saw a nurse emerge from the maze and asked where he could find the geriatric ward. She said, “The ward lurks in wisteria’s maze.”
When I started my second year A-levels in Physics, Chemistry, Maths and pure maths my estranged Mother became a born-again christian. She always countered my arguments that god clearly was nan made…by nobody can understand the ways of god, he moves in mysterious ways….No mother, I’d say, matter moves in mysterious WAVES…
It always made sense to me. I mean, if we start with the proposition that there’s an omnipotent entity shaping the universe, I can see that there’s a lot I’m not going to understand in its methods and motivations.
Or have any conception of it that’s at all accurate, to the point where it actually makes no difference whether I believe in this proposed entity, or not. Since I understand nothing of it, what’s the difference, if deity exists, or doesn’t exist?
What both Jesus and Mo’s arguments amount to are a denial of the human ability to observe and analyze the behavior of the world around us. As has been stated by multiple observers, reality behaves as though there is no god of ANY sort, and that reality is indifferent to Homo sapiens.
Not at all! Reality is heavily weighted towards Homo sapiens. We’re here, right? When so many other species aren’t, like all those dinosaurs, and not just here, we’re here in remarkable abundance.
You observe the workings of the universe, and derive various rules that seem to be followed, um, religiously. Does that prove that the universe is not guided by some divine hand? It just means that at our limited moment in time, God reckoned that his creation was on course, at least locally.
What I’m really saying here, is that we can’t rationally comprehend the difference between a hypothetical God-managed universe, vs. unmanaged. One is our universe T, and the other is T · X, where X can’t be understood.
This has nothing really to do with religion. The God described above would be little use to any religion.
@Donn Cave “Reality is heavily weighted towards Homo sapiens. We’re here, right?”
Let’s say I showed you a person who had tossed a coin 20 times with it coming up heads each time. Would you say that “reality is heavily weighted towards that person throwing heads”?
What if I then showed you how I found this marvellous person? I’d started with 1048576 people, each of them tossing a coin. Those who threw tails were “losers” and dropped out of the competition, leaving me with 524288 people who had thrown heads (assuming 50/50). The “winners” throw again – now I’ve 262144 people who’ve thrown heads twice. Those “winners” throw again – leaving 131072 people who’ve thrown 3 heads. Repeat until there’s one person left – who has thrown 20 heads in a row.
A miracle! Reality really must want this person to throw heads!
Now what are the chances that s/he throws heads again? It’s 1 in 2 – because prior “wins” have no effect on future events. To believe otherwise is known as the Gambler’s Fallacy.
Homo sapiens have thrown “heads” in the survival game… so far.
And as Stephen Jay Gould put it, if we could somehow “rewind the tape of life” and let it play again, the resulting evolutionary paths would likely be very different. Homo sapiens are not a deterministic outcome of evolution: we are a contingent outcome.
You have discloesd God’s mysterious ways right there! (I’d say, in a nutshell, but you kind of overflowed the nutshell.)
You and I might think, if we were omnipotent, why, we’d pull out the miracles and go at it, but that just shows how little we know about omnipotence. God can work random chance – it does play dice with the universe, but of course it cheats with loaded dice. It doesn’t experience the universe the way we do, the past and future are all there in its hands, and perhaps it fools around with it as a kind of hobby.
Whether God will choose to keep its universe stocked with billions of humans in the future, or not, clearly at this moment we’re a hit.
Regarding the gambler’s fallacy, is there a name for the axiom, or fallacy if you prefer, that the laws of physics we have experienced in the past, will continue to hold true, eternally?
OTOH, let’s say someone flips a coin in front of you and it comes up heads 20 times in a row. So what are the chances that it will come up heads the next time? It theory it is 50%. In reality though, what you have learned from the previous 20 tosses is that there is something funny going on, and all bets are off.
jb, as long as I’m winning it’s perfectly a matter of chance. If, on the other hand I’m losing, after 5 flips the coin is definitely false, or at least suspect. 😀
@Donn Cave
Gosh. Where to start? I’m not sure if you’re taking the mick.
If we were to run my coin-tossing experiment twice with the same starting set of people, it would be incredibly unlikely that the same person “won” both times. But if they did, then maybe we’d be onto something – maybe reality does “want” that person to win the coin-tossing game.
But we don’t have the option to “rewind the tape of life”. So a claim that a “god” somehow influenced all the contingent events that lead to homo-sapiens is a hollow claim. We’ve no way of testing it. It is indistinguishable from a natural (random) process. We do not need that proposition to explain our existence – it adds nothing, so by Occam’s principle, we should do away with it. To all intents and purposes, we are here by accident.
Gosh, arbeyu, I think I’ve already said the same, at least twice in this series. “God works in mysterious ways” is what you call a hollow claim. The phenomenon has no explanatory value for anything.
But that’s what you get, for trying to make God into a part of the natural world. Obviously, it isn’t. In order to use Occam’s Razor, though, you need two competing explanatory hypotheses, where one has more going on than the other. This case isn’t really that, because the question inherently involves both elements.
Why does God inflict suffering? We could certainly say the question is invalid because there isn’t any God, but that’s using a unverifiable assumption to dismiss the question. Of course, “works in mysterious ways” is just another way to dismiss the question, but no less valid.
If “god” isn’t part of the natural world, then it seems sensible to exclude any thought of it from any considerations.
Occam’s principle can be stated as “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”. In other words: Don’t add unnecessary propositions to your theory.
Theory 1: Telephones work by converting sounds to electrical signals which are transmitted over a carrier such as copper wire, and decoded at the other end back into sound.
Theory 2: Telephones work by telephone pixies living in phones who exactly and undetectably perform the processes described in Theory 1 in such a way that it appears to be a naturalistic phenomena, and you could in fact do the whole thing without pixies. If they let you. But it’s really pixies.
Theory 1: Homo-sapiens evolved by natural processes and are the result of uncountable contingent events.
Theory 2: Homo-sapiens evolved by the actions of a god who exactly and undetectably performed the processes described in Theory 1 in such a way that it appears to be a naturalistic phenomena, and you could in fact do the whole thing without it. But it’s really god.
The difference is one of purpose. Is it all just random shit that goes on until heat death? We have no really rational reason care – same shit either way – but what does this have to do with rationality?
And it really is the same – that’s the only quibble I’d have with your scenario. It doesn’t just “appear to be naturalistic phenomena”, it really is perfectly natural, either way, by any reasonable standard.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
October 4, 2006
Pharyngula Myers quoted this from the SMBC comic.
Consciousness arises from physically undetectable, yet also indestructible, mind-stuff, which wasn’t present until humanity reached its current evolutionary phenotype, and which, despite not interacting with the body, both determines and is affected by its actions and is also perpetually localized to each individual person until they die at which point it goes to a non-localized location that also can’t be detected.
It’s about as useful as Mo’s statement. Or to those who believe no answers or neccessary and to believers no answer is possible.
Sorry, the second ‘believers’ should be ‘unbelievers’
A doctor went to see a patient in a hospital he had never visited before. After parking his car he saw that the hospital was surrounded by an enormous wisteria vine that was fashioned an elaborate maze. He saw a nurse emerge from the maze and asked where he could find the geriatric ward. She said, “The ward lurks in wisteria’s maze.”
When I started my second year A-levels in Physics, Chemistry, Maths and pure maths my estranged Mother became a born-again christian. She always countered my arguments that god clearly was nan made…by nobody can understand the ways of god, he moves in mysterious ways….No mother, I’d say, matter moves in mysterious WAVES…
“god clearly was nan made” — what a strange thing for a mother to say!
Intented humerous typo…
It always made sense to me. I mean, if we start with the proposition that there’s an omnipotent entity shaping the universe, I can see that there’s a lot I’m not going to understand in its methods and motivations.
Or have any conception of it that’s at all accurate, to the point where it actually makes no difference whether I believe in this proposed entity, or not. Since I understand nothing of it, what’s the difference, if deity exists, or doesn’t exist?
What both Jesus and Mo’s arguments amount to are a denial of the human ability to observe and analyze the behavior of the world around us. As has been stated by multiple observers, reality behaves as though there is no god of ANY sort, and that reality is indifferent to Homo sapiens.
Not at all! Reality is heavily weighted towards Homo sapiens. We’re here, right? When so many other species aren’t, like all those dinosaurs, and not just here, we’re here in remarkable abundance.
You observe the workings of the universe, and derive various rules that seem to be followed, um, religiously. Does that prove that the universe is not guided by some divine hand? It just means that at our limited moment in time, God reckoned that his creation was on course, at least locally.
What I’m really saying here, is that we can’t rationally comprehend the difference between a hypothetical God-managed universe, vs. unmanaged. One is our universe T, and the other is T · X, where X can’t be understood.
This has nothing really to do with religion. The God described above would be little use to any religion.
@Donn Cave “Reality is heavily weighted towards Homo sapiens. We’re here, right?”
Let’s say I showed you a person who had tossed a coin 20 times with it coming up heads each time. Would you say that “reality is heavily weighted towards that person throwing heads”?
What if I then showed you how I found this marvellous person? I’d started with 1048576 people, each of them tossing a coin. Those who threw tails were “losers” and dropped out of the competition, leaving me with 524288 people who had thrown heads (assuming 50/50). The “winners” throw again – now I’ve 262144 people who’ve thrown heads twice. Those “winners” throw again – leaving 131072 people who’ve thrown 3 heads. Repeat until there’s one person left – who has thrown 20 heads in a row.
A miracle! Reality really must want this person to throw heads!
Now what are the chances that s/he throws heads again? It’s 1 in 2 – because prior “wins” have no effect on future events. To believe otherwise is known as the Gambler’s Fallacy.
Homo sapiens have thrown “heads” in the survival game… so far.
And as Stephen Jay Gould put it, if we could somehow “rewind the tape of life” and let it play again, the resulting evolutionary paths would likely be very different. Homo sapiens are not a deterministic outcome of evolution: we are a contingent outcome.
You have discloesd God’s mysterious ways right there! (I’d say, in a nutshell, but you kind of overflowed the nutshell.)
You and I might think, if we were omnipotent, why, we’d pull out the miracles and go at it, but that just shows how little we know about omnipotence. God can work random chance – it does play dice with the universe, but of course it cheats with loaded dice. It doesn’t experience the universe the way we do, the past and future are all there in its hands, and perhaps it fools around with it as a kind of hobby.
Whether God will choose to keep its universe stocked with billions of humans in the future, or not, clearly at this moment we’re a hit.
Regarding the gambler’s fallacy, is there a name for the axiom, or fallacy if you prefer, that the laws of physics we have experienced in the past, will continue to hold true, eternally?
Donn, it’s the ‘argumentum ad antiquitatem fallacy or appeal to tradition.
OTOH, let’s say someone flips a coin in front of you and it comes up heads 20 times in a row. So what are the chances that it will come up heads the next time? It theory it is 50%. In reality though, what you have learned from the previous 20 tosses is that there is something funny going on, and all bets are off.
jb, as long as I’m winning it’s perfectly a matter of chance. If, on the other hand I’m losing, after 5 flips the coin is definitely false, or at least suspect. 😀
@Donn Cave
Gosh. Where to start? I’m not sure if you’re taking the mick.
If we were to run my coin-tossing experiment twice with the same starting set of people, it would be incredibly unlikely that the same person “won” both times. But if they did, then maybe we’d be onto something – maybe reality does “want” that person to win the coin-tossing game.
But we don’t have the option to “rewind the tape of life”. So a claim that a “god” somehow influenced all the contingent events that lead to homo-sapiens is a hollow claim. We’ve no way of testing it. It is indistinguishable from a natural (random) process. We do not need that proposition to explain our existence – it adds nothing, so by Occam’s principle, we should do away with it. To all intents and purposes, we are here by accident.
Gosh, arbeyu, I think I’ve already said the same, at least twice in this series. “God works in mysterious ways” is what you call a hollow claim. The phenomenon has no explanatory value for anything.
But that’s what you get, for trying to make God into a part of the natural world. Obviously, it isn’t. In order to use Occam’s Razor, though, you need two competing explanatory hypotheses, where one has more going on than the other. This case isn’t really that, because the question inherently involves both elements.
Why does God inflict suffering? We could certainly say the question is invalid because there isn’t any God, but that’s using a unverifiable assumption to dismiss the question. Of course, “works in mysterious ways” is just another way to dismiss the question, but no less valid.
@Donn Cave
If “god” isn’t part of the natural world, then it seems sensible to exclude any thought of it from any considerations.
Occam’s principle can be stated as “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”. In other words: Don’t add unnecessary propositions to your theory.
Theory 1: Telephones work by converting sounds to electrical signals which are transmitted over a carrier such as copper wire, and decoded at the other end back into sound.
Theory 2: Telephones work by telephone pixies living in phones who exactly and undetectably perform the processes described in Theory 1 in such a way that it appears to be a naturalistic phenomena, and you could in fact do the whole thing without pixies. If they let you. But it’s really pixies.
Theory 1: Homo-sapiens evolved by natural processes and are the result of uncountable contingent events.
Theory 2: Homo-sapiens evolved by the actions of a god who exactly and undetectably performed the processes described in Theory 1 in such a way that it appears to be a naturalistic phenomena, and you could in fact do the whole thing without it. But it’s really god.
Aye, right. As we say in Scotland.
The difference is one of purpose. Is it all just random shit that goes on until heat death? We have no really rational reason care – same shit either way – but what does this have to do with rationality?
And it really is the same – that’s the only quibble I’d have with your scenario. It doesn’t just “appear to be naturalistic phenomena”, it really is perfectly natural, either way, by any reasonable standard.
Donn is a Deist! Obviously anybody trying to separate Paranornal phenomena from the hard sciences is a knob-cheese of the third kind…