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The Federal Republic of Aigania
4 years 207 days ago
[Bold statement for a Monotheistic apologist using the Prime Mover argument]
You seek the conclusion that physical, instrumental causes are the sole causes of effects--to the exclusion of a Prime Mover , yet you argue as your first premise that all effects are the products of one of such instrumental causes.
[Nope, not even close. You see you suffer from epistemological closure. You are seeking an equivalent to a monotheistic cause of all of a God in a secular worldview. Did you really expect that I will answer something like the Big Bang as the origin of the Universe and hence the equivalent?
No. You see, you have a limited worldview. Simplifying there are several meta frames of reference.
Monotheistic: an only God (or cause) responsible for all things. Religious or Secular versions.Polytheistic: different agents with different agendas, in competition or cooperation. Both versions.Philosophical: a set of impersonal rules (no agent) that govern existence.
You are assuming that I am following a secular version of a monotheistic/mono causal worldview, a mirrored version of yourself. Alas it is not.
You have proven nothing, but only reiterated the conclusion that you fancy.
[No. Science is descriptive. I only describe the ultimate (as our present understanding) of the ultimate elements that form the existence.
You must answer this question: what part of the interaction between space-time and quantum fields, etc, precludes the possibility that these causes are not contingent upon a cause that is still prior to it?
[Because we have not proof? We haven't found anything more fundamental or that be a cause before. It we find something like that (branes, strings or something like that it will be incorporated). We are not epistemological closed].
2) I suppose that your scribe has erred in recording your dictation onto this manuscript, and that you meant to say "There cannot be a first cause alone to predetermine everything at the end."
[Probably. I am usually in a hurry and not writing in my native language]
Your argument is yet again inadequate. [Which one? As far as I recall I was describing]
The Philosopher has stated in the first of the Metaphysics that the most intelligible thing in itself is the least intelligible to the human mind.
[And? it is a complicated way of describing how the thought process that we deemed easy are being quite complex to implement in a computing system, but those deemed complex are relativity easy to implement.
You have merely pointed out that the workings of cosmological determinacy cannot be grasped by the human mind, and not that it cannot exist.
[No. They are fundamental limits for a cognitive system. Of course cognitive systems can be improved. In fact AIs systems currently are reaching conclusions based on unknown basis. There have been able to train an AI system to determine if a picture of a retina is from a man or a woman. But the researchers don't know how the system reached that conclusion.
On the other hand, some lifeforms sans nerve system are capable of feats of computing. For example after decades of planning by hundreds of engineers the Tokyo railway system to be optimal, the resulting grid was simulated as optimal using the growth of a fungus with the stations as a food that the organism has to reach to eat]
3)Please clarify this statement. [¿?]
4) You have spoken well in arguing that we cannot assign simplistic moral values to order and chaos while considering the effects that flow from each.
[thank you for your honesty]
God instrumentalizes the latter to achieve an order that is inscrutable in the present situation.
[That's ascribe intentionally and agency as the working of the world ... and assume only a monotheistic god. Why no a pantheon (Greek, Egyptian?), or a principle (Tao, Karma, ...) if we are in the supernatural mindset?
Your example of life is a prime example, the apparent chaos described thence is only desirable insofar as it is a part of an the ordered equilibrium that is the living being.
[It is not desired, it is given. It seems that life may be a consequence of entropy]https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/(links for articles, but paywalls. The abstracts are available)
I challenge you to name one instance in which chaos is desired for its own sake--you cannot.
[I am afraid that chaos is currently use in engineering.]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050912000129
Besides, if you have to use some statistical tools you need random numbers. In fact one time pad, a very secure encryption system relies on the use of random numbers.
Or combinatorial chemistry. Or the Monte Carlo method for computer algorithms. Chaos and randomness are quite needed.
If you suppose that adherence to science and rationality is moral
[No. Science is a form to discover knowledge and rationality is a tool used for it. Science don't require adherence, it doesn't work like that. Science is a form of view the world, a form to inquire and get answers. Of course it needs a set of values (moral) to work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mertonian_norms#Four_Mertonian_norms
What rationality and science can do is using the best available information at a time suggest what to do. Given a input of what it is the desired outcome.
At most it can be said that the intrinsic values needed to do or understand science bent people towards utilitarian ethical outlooks, but it is independent of science itself.
and that belief in witchcraft and superstition is immoral,
[that's the question. Science can not answer if it is moral or not. What it can say it is that they are simply incorrect]
you are assigning intrinsic moral value to the order
[I think I may have cleared that]
-the adaequatio rei et intellectus that undergirds the former, and spurning the pagan intuition of a abysmally melancholic world ruled by conflicting, unseen, and fundamentally chaotic forces.
[I am disregarding because we don't have proofs]
Why not a pantheon? Why not another supreme God? Because the Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to me the truth with regard to this matter with an assurance more certain than my intuition that the external world exists.
[There are billions of believers that will be assured the contrary. Even between Christians. We demand proofs.]
By the same token you ask me to discard my certainty in the existence and nature of God, I can ask you to discard that nebulous feeling of certainty that holds you back from solipsism.
[No. Even more it is not evident that God exist otherwise there wouldn't be all the scholarly theological work trying to proof it existence like Thomas Aquinas that you quoted.
Neither nebulous; the main and egotistical argument pro science it simply that it works. Certainty? Yes because we have tested, but, we are not closed. We don't have a faith, we have theories, descriptive frameworks and we actively try to smash them, test them to destruction. We don't hold them in a throne. We put them to test after test, to perfect them, and if they are mistaken, we discard and look for others. The solipsism accusation is comically wrong. Yes, because science needs:a) Constant interaction with realityb) It is a communal exercisec) "Information wants to be free" is the antithesis of secrets. It needs the flow of information between different agents. So it is contrary to solipsism.]
Also, there have been millions of words written in support of other lines of argument, and there is not enough room to review all of them here.
[For any matter, it is true]
I see that you are quite novice to the field of biblical exegesis.
[I am afraid is a field a bit far from my interests currently]
That verse can be read in an infinite amount of ways
[As every text. Particularly religious ones]
, but the tradition of orthodoxy--St. Augustine, Pope St. Gregory IX, Pope Boniface VIII--
[The opinion of the Roman Catholic Church only]
has revealed to us the correct interpretation--and it is certainly contrary to yours.
[Surely. I was going for a polite and quick way of presenting the separation of religious and secular worlds, by citing the Bible. It was neater that going full 2 magisteria by Gould or going full Dawkins. Or simply reviewing the last two millenia of back and forth between secular and religious authorities. Do you really want to go back to the Guelphs and Ghibellines?
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