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[Starver]

Precisely. It's why, for example, a lot of agnostics hate getting called atheists. They are, but they're so used to atheism being associated with the strong atheist subset that they assume that's what is being implied.

Personally, I have the reaction that I'm so fed up of people assuming that it's purely the 'strong' or 'explicit' atheist viewpoint that counts that I tell them repeatedly that they're wrong!  I'm sure it gets boring.

Now ask me my opinion about the common usage of the word "decimate".

[Starver]

I'm ok with categorizing people in smaller boxes, but only if the borders between those boxes are clear cut. An agnostic is not a 'weak atheist', they're people who stand on the fence, actually avoiding leaning one way or another.

Again wrong.  (See above.)  ((If not already covered in the interim.  If it has been again, please ignore me while I'm being boring about it.))

[Owlbread]

(Assuming this hasn't been covered already.)

A creator of the universe/deity/whatever could exist. He could also not exist. Why then would I automatically assume that he does exist, and not only that, he is the god of the bible or qu'ran or torah or guru granth sahib? Why not something else entirely?

The classic counter-argument is that the universe exits, that everything that exists had a cause, so there must be a cause and (in the opinion of one subscribing to this POV) that cause is a divine creator (who might be assumed, when the positor of this concept is asked, to be through His/Her/Its divinity not in themselves requiring a cause).  And thus why then would one automatically assume that he does not exist?

Yes, I am familiar with that god awful kalam argument. I have yet to see any reasonable proposition for why there has to be an original cause and that original "cause" is a god.

[Frumple]

Basic concept of sufficient causation, OB, regarding the original cause thing. Nothing comes from nothing, there has to be sufficient reason for a thing to happen/exist. "God" is propositioned because it's generally held that you can't get more out of something than you put in (something something conservation of energy before conservation of energy was formalized), so the sufficient cause of the universe must therefore be greater than the universe. Humans like to anthropomorphize that thing, whatever it would be, as a divine entity, usually with various humanlike aspects. I.e. a god.

And of course, the immediate response is if the divine spontaneously generated or whatev' (actually, the divine's generally considered to be atemporal or something, and thus always existent; the details vary by argument), why couldn't the universe? Then you tend to roll toward either the watch argument or something rooted in psychology; better a god than nothing, because that makes us special or summat like that.

[Cthulhu]

Making God atemporal doesn't really help.  He's still considered a divine person with actions causally preceding others.  God, being a person, intends to create the universe and then he does so.  Even if they're temporally simultaneous they're not causally simultaneous.  So the problem still applies.  Either God had a thought unpreceded by any other, and thus began to exist (And thus he needs the explanation he was intended to provide) or he didn't, and is thus infinite, and a core unstated assumption of Kalam is that an actual infinity is impossible.

I had a duuuude moment last night.  What if the universe is God's brain?  As in, everything in the universe is the equivalent of neurons, the movements and actions of the objects making up the universe correspond at the highest level to God's thoughts.  Is that Spinozism?

[Starver]

That's very much like NextTuesdayism.

(Like LastTuesdayism[1], but we are all the fake old-earth detail being put into the young-earth's apparent 'history', in preparation for everything actually being created in that mould Next Tuesday...)



[1] For some it's LastThursdayism, or something else along those lines, but they're HERETICS!  BURN THEM!! BUUUUURN THEMMMMM!!!

[Owlbread]

Does anyone else get a bit irritated with all the philosophical jargon like "NextTuesdayism" and "True Scotsman" and all that stuff? A lack of clarity of terminology and dryness of sentence is making the philosophical discussion quite impenetrable.

[Cthulhu]

Plus, it is nothing at all like that.

[Frumple]

I had a duuuude moment last night.  What if the universe is God's brain?  As in, everything in the universe is the equivalent of neurons, the movements and actions of the objects making up the universe correspond at the highest level to God's thoughts.  Is that Spinozism?

Nah... kinda' close to it, but not quite. With the caveat that it's kinda' muddled in my head and I may be conflating or confusing 'im with someone else, what I remember of Spinoza is that God == Nature, plus a bit. Existence is kinda' like the flesh and body of God, and then there's some bits outside existence (and blazes if I remember the specifics of what th'dude said on that bit) that comprises the rest of the divine entity. The bits outside are arguably the higher aspect of the divine, but physical reality is still entirely intrinsic to the makeup of Spinoza's God.

The God == Reality, full stop, thing, is actually a bit more prevalent a message (If hilariously confuddled by violent language abuse) from some of the bigger name medieval theologians (though shoot me down to name any of the buggers. I've got a medieval philosophy book buried somewhere about the size of my head that's got the names and some representative texts in it). Basic message there was that God == Most Fundamental Good == Brute Existence (which prefaces all good things, and is most fundamental to them.) (== Fundamental Particles, natch.). They were actually hardcore materialists, which is something of a tremendously amusing thing, from a certain point of view.

Does anyone else get a bit irritated with all the philosophical jargon like "NextTuesdayism" and "True Scotsman" and all that stuff? A lack of clarity of terminology and dryness of sentence is making the philosophical discussion quite impenetrable.

It's technical language (well, those in particular aren't, but similar things, yes.) that saves a tremendous amount of time once you're familiar with it. One of the problems with asking for clarity of terminology when you're dealing with philosophy is that if you're not referring to something like "Next Tuesdayism", it takes multiple paragraphs of text to describe what's essentially a basic stock argument in the field. Jargon -- technical language and short-hand stuff like the common fallacy names et al -- saves a lot of paper space when you're dealing with folks that are already aware of what it's referring to. Mind you, it's not exactly the most appropriate thing for conversation with those less familiar with the lingo, but that's what wikipedia links are for

E:It's worth noting that the problem is arguably even worse for theology, because its established language has a somewhat nasty habit of co-opting common use terms to mean something utterly unconnected from said common use. There's some interesting written pieces on how religious language does its thing, actually. Philosophers tend to brain each other when they try to pull shit like that

[Owlbread]

Does anyone else get a bit irritated with all the philosophical jargon like "NextTuesdayism" and "True Scotsman" and all that stuff? A lack of clarity of terminology and dryness of sentence is making the philosophical discussion quite impenetrable.

It's technical language (well, those in particular aren't, but similar things, yes.) that saves a tremendous amount of time once you're familiar with it. One of the problems with asking for clarity of terminology when you're dealing with philosophy is that if you're not referring to something like "Next Tuesdayism", it takes multiple paragraphs of text to describe what's essentially a basic stock argument in the field. Jargon -- technical language and short-hand stuff like the common fallacy names et al -- saves a lot of paper space when you're dealing with folks that are already aware of what it's referring to. Mind you, it's not exactly the most appropriate thing for conversation with those less familiar with the lingo, but that's what wikipedia links are for

E:It's worth noting that the problem is arguably even worse for theology, because its established language has a somewhat nasty habit of co-opting common use terms to mean something utterly unconnected from said common use. There's some interesting written pieces on how religious language does its thing, actually. Philosophers tend to brain each other when they try to pull shit like that

I think several paragraphs is a bit of an exaggeration. When people use that dreadful expression "ad hominem" for an attack on someone in an argument, rather than saying "Stop using ad homs" say "Stop attacking him and attack his argument". It's longer, but you make yourself clearer and more expressive. You think more deeply. Don't be lazy, because then the understanding of a particular field is limited to those with knowledge of its jargon, rendering it quite inaccessible. Furthermore, people who use jargon can often get mixed up between meanings, and time can be wasted when people start disputing whether your argument is, for example, a particular fallacy or if you have used the wrong term - what matters is the argument is fallacious. You may want to see why it is fallacious in which case that matters, but you could easily just look at the argument plainly without jargon and see where the person has gone wrong, and state clearly where they've gone wrong, don't just name the "type" of mistake they've made.

Jargon does save time, but some people become overly-enthusiastic about it and it can make your writing really dry and inexpressive. It becomes a chore to read. Eventually too, you may begin to think in jargon phrases, or as George Orwell put it, they will think for you. He made a simple rule you can follow:

"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

[Eagle_eye]

Here's an example of why that doesn't work. The universe is made up of really really really really small balls, except they're not balls, they're waves. But they're not waves either, they're inbetween. And they can be in multiple locations at once, or might be in a bunch of different places that you can't tell but are really only in one place. How is that better than wave-particle duality?

[Grek]

Eagle_eye: That is not an equivalent to an explanation of atomic theory. That is a muddled mess of intentional self-contradictions. I don't think you even tried. The following is an equivalent statement in everyday english:

The universe is made of atoms. Atoms are particles so small that their diameters are between 60 and 600 trillionths of a meter, depending on the specific atom. Atoms made up of even smaller parts which do not behave like everyday sized solid objects do. Instead of only being at one place at a single time, these atom parts are spread out like a fog across multiple locations inside the atom. This lets them behave as if they were a wave in some cases, but as if they were solid in other cases. In truth, they are neither a wave nor a solid object. They follow their own rules which take a lot of math to describe and only ever approximate a wave or a solid. Despite this fact, atoms are so tiny and similiar enough to solids that we can treat them as if they were just solids when dealing with things on an everyday scale.

[Eagle_eye]

trillionths can be simplified. particles can be simplified. diameters can be simplified. approximate can be simplified. And yours isn't an accurate description of physics either. It's a simplification. That's the point.

[GlyphGryph]

I would like a religious person to tell me why they believe in their chosen god.

Gods, technically. The evidence doesn't support the existence of a single divinity (depending on how you define that divinity, of course).

And I believe, because the evidence leads me to believe. It is not guaranteed - I only work with the knowledge I have - so an agnostic theist, I suppose? I'll run through it again, though I've done so on the board before.

My beliefs are a bit weird, but the basic logic is as follows: We know universes are capable of creating additional less complex universes through the intentional actions of sapient species. We know that the universe we know about that has created sub-universes has created many.

It stands to reason, then, that most Universes are artificial, and thus have deities - a race with a member or members responsible for the universes creation.

Hypothetically, it is possible to create far more advanced universes than we have so far. It is theoretically possible for us to create universes with inhabitants that can create their own universes, given time and resources.

Thus, it stands to reason that many universes would be capable of having more complex universes above them and more simple universes below them.

By the odds, we know we do not dwell at the bottom. The next most common location would seem to place is in the middle - as a constructed universe with one or more creators, of sufficient complexity to create our own sub-universes.

As such, I believe in the existence of gods, because it seems like the most likely outcome. It is by no means guaranteed, though, and I'm obviously working off limited information, but it may be the best we can do.

[Grek]

trillionths can be simplified. particles can be simplified. diameters can be simplified. approximate can be simplified. And yours isn't an accurate description of physics either. It's a simplification. That's the point.

It's as accurate as you're going to get from a person who isn't a particle physicist in under an hour with no research. And while those things can be simplified, they don't need to be. The point is to get the most accuracy you can get without using undefined jargon that your readers probably don't understand.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I really think that GlyphGryph would get a kick out of this story:
The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover.