Sagan time

I'm excited that we're about to embark on another voyage with Carl Sagan, via the Gifford Lectures (delivered five years after the original airing of Cosmos) that became Varieties of Scientific Experience. The inevitable prelude: the first and last episodes, and (of course) the Pale Blue Dot.

“The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”

Hitler and Christianity

I listened to this, and it sounded pretty similar to the Hitler discussion yesterday.

Hitler's Hatred for Christianity

Daily Quiz

March 27

1. In what way does R agree with critics of the London bus ads?

2. What's the Dawkins delusion, acc'ing to R?

3. What's R's Rx for Welschmertz?

4. What's R's anti-libertarian consequence of denying free will?

5. Do the humanities create knowledge, according to R?

6. Why isn't scientism a form of fatalism (rather than determinism)?

7. Who is R's ancient Greek "nice nihilist" hero?

8. Good Book-?

==
1. "probably"-275. 2. substitute-278. 3. prozac etc.-282. 4. 294-5. 5. Nope-299. 6. 308. 7. Epicurus-313.

8. This one's easy, here at the end of "Histories": "Anyone can discourse for ever... But instead of listening to discourses only, let us day by day fix our eyes on the good... And then we will have helped fulfil the promise that lay in the victory of the Greeks over the Persians: To be free in honour, and wise in freedom." (114.49-52)

ALSO OF NOTE:
"There is no really compelling story in the beauty of science..."-282. Do you find a compelling story there? Why would any self-avowed advocate of scientism not find one? Is R's authorial voice not compelled? Did he strike the keys randomly?

Isn't R kind of a self-loathing humanist (i.e., student/teacher of Humanities)?

Why doesn't R like the last 3 chapters of Dennett's Darwin book? 319

Debate, Sagan, Muslim Persecution, and Other Stuff

First off, and everything isn't in place yet, I'm pleased to sneak-peak announce that everyones favorite pragmatist, our beloved Oliver will be participating in a debate, nay, discussion with the honorable, and popular, Rabbi Rami, on the topic "Is God Possible in a Dying Environment." Tickets go on sale never, as the event is free, and the event will be right after this class on a tuesday, April 22nd. Bring your wife, kids, unicorns, and gods because it should be a barn burner (or in the least, an insightful and joyous delve into the wisdom of some of our most intelligent contemporaries' views on a poignant and important topic.)

We are also taking up donations for the "buy William a couple new synths" fund. Donations not required and unrrelated.

That said, I've switched over to the Sagan book, and am somewhat enjoying myself, but perhaps 'interesting' myself is a better way to say that. I'll post some questions in advance for such.


FQ: Sagan compare's intelligent design to watchmaking? True. pg. 41
DQ:There lay a quote within the book of Tolstoy's, "without knowing what I am, and why I am here, life is impossible?" Do you believe this is true?

I'd just like to say in chapter 8, Sagan is questioned about the end of days, and the current myths revolving around the reformation of Israel in 1948, and he makes one of the funniest jokes about airplanes I've ever heard. You'll have to read for yourself, but to me the whole book was worth the time just off of that. Its around 249-251


This is still happening BTW.

I get it partially of course, allah is the biggest threat to southern white men since jungle fever, and its in their best interests to kill the muslims. What I don't get is why no cemetery? It'd be ungentlemanly not to bury the wives, children, and fathers you've massacred respectfully. That's just rude.

Also, this exists:

I'd have never thought that the guy I watched as a child, the man who made me fall in love with lab coats and chemistry sets was actually an intelligent scientist! WHO KNEW?!

Despite the turks bias, and the general fuckery of the video, the connection of religion to politics is understated, and thats why atheist arguments tend to do poorly with the general population. To state God is real and the bible is divine is to state a variety of subset propositions. Its to also say that Western European history has followed a linear progressive path, its to say that America is right in all of its puppet governments, its to say that the fundamental way of the majority of western life is permissible and righteous because its foundations lay in the divine.

To state that there is no god is to hurl life into contingency, its to garner the weight of history as a responsibility, its to having to take the wheel of a car out of control in the void and steer it to nowhere.

And thats not nice, nor does it sell gas station t-shirts, Coca-Cola, or War.
It might be true though, and if it is, that Big Mac and Coke should taste an awful lot like slave labor, and it is 100% you and your family's fault for supporting it, and there are no excuses.

But if there is a god, its all good, he's got their back, and they might go to heaven, if they reject their cultural upbringing, or get conquered soon. And thats comforting, that's progress, by god, that's American.
I

[insert your god here]'s Not Dead

God's Not Dead is the number one Christian movie, according to its Website.  Here's the synopsis.

Present-day college freshman and devout Christian, Josh Wheaton, finds his faith challenged on his first day of Philosophy class by the dogmatic and argumentative Professor Radisson. Radisson begins class by informing students that they will need to disavow, in writing, the existence of God onthat first day, or face a failing grade. As other students in the class begin scribbling the words "God Is Dead" on pieces of paper as instructed, Josh find himself at a crossroads, having to choose between his faith and his future. Josh offers a nervous refusal, provoking an irate reaction from his smug professor. Radisson assigns him a daunting task: if Josh will not admit that "God Is Dead," he must prove God's existence by presenting well-researched, intellectual arguments and evidence over the course of the semester, and engage Radisson in a head-to-head debate in front of the class. If Josh fails to convince his classmates of God's existence, he will fail the course and hinder his lofty academic goals. With almost no one in his corner, Josh wonders if he can really fight for what he believes. Can he actually prove the existence of God?

I seriously doubt one could find a gainfully employed college philosophy professor in the U.S. that would force students sign a pledge that God is dead. But what's more interesting is I sense a bit of Christian projection here, which is usually the case. Look no further than Dayton, Tennessee, home of the Scopes Trial and Christian university Brian College. Here's an excerpt from the timesfreepress.com (full article with video here).  Further comments from Jerry Coyne here.

 DAYTON, Tenn. — Bryan College was founded on the back of the country’s most famous debate over creation and evolution. And the biblical literalists, the stalwarts, the six-day creationists flocked here even when society began tipping toward a more scientific understanding of human origins, when Darwin, not Genesis, became the more convincing explanation for many. But over the years, more diverse views on Genesis 1 and 2 crept in. Some professors, staff and students didn’t just identify as young-Earth creationists. Their views became more nuanced. They called themselves progressive evolutionists and theistic evolutionists and old-Earth creationists; they found ways to reconcile faith and science. Now the administration is making a statement against these aberrations. The board of trustees is requiring professors and staff to sign a statement saying that they believe Adam and Eve were created in an instant by God and that humans shared no ancestry with other life forms. If they don’t sign, they fear that jobs could be on the line.

Forcing someone to sign a pledge to insulate their beliefs from evidence is the exact opposite of doing philosophy.  At least the Duckman's Old Testament Beard helps in keeping up appearances.

Rosenberg Test Questions

Rosenberg Test Questions 

Here's the full 31.  If you see a question that's worded strange or an answer that's wrong, post it in the comment section and I'll fix it. Same goes for page numbers. 

 1. Alex Rosenberg says answers to scientific questions don’t come packaged in what form?
 a. Stories (p. 8)

2. What are the two basic kinds of things composing everything in the universe?
a. Fermions and bosons (p. 21)

3. Rosenberg's scientistic position on the purpose of the universe is that there is none.
a. True (p. 43)

4. What’s the name of the billionaire from Winchester, TN, that started an eponymous foundation dedicated to "affirming life's spiritual dimension" and reconciling religion & faith with science & reason.
a. John Templeton (p. 45)

5. Along with nature’s passivity, what's the essence of natural selection lacking?
a. Foresight (p. 56)

6. Name one of biological evolution's three distinctive features.
a. Quick & dirty, emergent complexity/diversity, cooperation & competition (p. 68)

7. To illustrate the extreme wastefulness of natural selection, how many male sperm out of every million make their mark?
a. One (p. 74)

8. What are the two components of questions theists find troubling with atheism?
a. Morality and purpose (p. 94)

9. What’s the good news/bad news component missing from nihilism?
a. Morality (p. 94)

10. What is scientism’s version of the Euthyphro Dilemma?
a. Nihilism (p. 101)

11. What must we nice people tolerate, though not forever?
a. Sociopaths (p. 143)

12. What must be wrong if science contradicts the “immediate experience” of free will, mind, soul, and personhood?
 a. Introspection (p. 147)

13. What phenomenon does Rosenberg describe as seeing without conscious visual experience?
 a. Blindsight (p. 149)

14. Does Rosenberg deny that we think?
a. No (p. 170)

15. What does scientism supposedly show about the first-person POV?
a. Illusion (p.194)

16. (T/F) Rosenberg says there are no purposes or designs in nature, thanks to Newton and Darwin.
a. True (p. 206)

17. (T/F) Rosenberg says Mother Nature made us love stories and we see conspiracies everywhere.
a. True (p. 211)

18. (T/F) Rosenberg likes to read, watch, and listen to stories.
a. True (p. 214)

19. (T/F) Rosenberg calls the attempt to reconcile natural science and common sense "naturalism."
 a. True (p. 216)

20. (T/F) Rosenberg argues that history has no meaning, purpose, or point.
 a. True (pp. 242-243)

21. (T/F) Rosenberg said, “Those who do not learn the lessons of history are suffered to repeat them.”
 a. False (p. 246)

22. Rosenberg maintains that most inventing (e.g., discoveries by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison) is simply ___________.
 a. Trial and error (p. 252)

23. (T/F) Rosenberg is impressed by human cultural evolution (memetics) as a successor to natural selection as the primary engine of evolution.
 a. False (p. 264)

24. Who wrote the ancient historical text History of the Peloponnesian War that many social scientists and policy wonks recommend reading, to shed light on the future?
 a. Thucydides (p. 267)

25. (T/F) Rosenberg denies that anyone can predict or control the human future.
a. True (p. 271)

26. What word is a point of contention with Rosenberg and the critics of this London bus ad? "There's probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life"
 a. "probably"(p. 275)

27. What's the Dawkins delusion, according to Rosenberg?
 a. Substitution (p. 278)

28. What's Rosenberg Rx for Welschmertz?
 a: prozac et al. (p. 282) 

29. What's at stake with Rosenberg's anti-libertarian consequence of denying free will?
 a. meritocracy (pp. 294-295)

30. Do the humanities create knowledge, according to Rosenberg?
 a. No (p. 299)

31. Who is Rosenberg's ancient Greek "nice nihilist" hero?
a. Epicurus (p. 313)

Tennessee Keeps the Religion Flowing

Religious conservatives are at it again. Tennessee governor Bill Haslam just received and will likely sign a bill that not only allows but actually helps organize anti-gay bullying in the name of “religious freedom.”

The Tennessee “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act” allows students to use religion in any manner they choose, and mandates that their use of religion be protected.

Check the link below:

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/1-tennessee-passes-bill-allowing-lgbt-students-to-be-bullied-in-the-name-of-religious-freedom/news/2014/03/25/84801

Daily Quiz

March 25

1. For Rosenberg, does history have a meaning, purpose, or point? 

2. Rosenberg says, “Those who learn the lessons of history are in danger of ____________." 

3. Rosenberg maintains that most inventing (e.g., discoveries by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison) is simply  ___________. 

4. What minimal optimism is supported by our resistance to plague? Does R call this "progress"? [But what would Rorty or Pinker say?]

5. Is R impressed by human cultural evolution (memetics etc.) as a successor to natural selection as the primary engine of evolution?

6. What classic historical text do many social scientists and policy wonks recommend reading, to shed light on the future, OR what contemporary cognitive psychologist(s) contradict its alleged lessons?

7. Does R think anyone can predict or control the human future?

8. Good Book? [Surely on the day when I've extolled the virtues of history and tried to debunk the claim that history's bunk, we can come up with a passage or two from "Histories"?!*]

==

1. A: no (pp. 242-243). 2. A: following them (p. 246. 3.  A: trial and error (p. 252). 4. [local adaptation suggests some of our descendants will survive almost any challenge; not really-258]. 5. No, it's just fashion-264.  6. Thucydides Pelop. War-267; Kahneman & Tversky-268. 7. no-271.  8. [93.14-better red than dead?]

ALSO OF NOTE:

*Now soliciting your thematic and textual suggestions for the next rendition of A&P. I'm leaning to the history (past-present-future) of godlessness, and the new tome from Peter Watson, Age of Atheists.

-R doesn't mention this, but Aristotle famously counseled against attempts to impose greater precision and rigor on a discipline than its subject matter allows. Asimovian "psychohistory" might be an example of this. DQ: How much predictive power" does the study of history need to yield, in order to make history worth studying?

-"Human history is a thoroughly Darwinian process," but Darwin said that process yields "endless forms, beautiful and wonderful"... and that "the vigorous, healthy, and happy survive and multiply." Darwin's expositor Dennett says we are the product of 10,000 years of conscious planning by our parents and theirs. This does not strike me as eliminative of human purpose, consciousness, forethought, intentionality, etc. But R says planning and intentional creation are illusions. You agree?

"Calculatus eliminatus" -Dr. Seuss. 

If everything's an unconscious and unmindful adaptation, doesn't that sound indeed like Pangloss? (251)

"We don't know enough about how thinking works..." (252) - do we really know even enough to say our "thoughts about things" are irrelevant or non-adaptive?

Does the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice? (257) What would Steven Pinker say? 

"No one can predict or control the human future" (271) - he makes this sound like a bad thing. It's good, isn't it?

With his repeated references to Mother Nature forever "looking for new variations" etc., is he not falling back on storytelling as the perennial human vehicle carrying our quest for meaning?

Maher, Oswalt, Buress, Stanhope and Rogan

Just a collection of some comedians talking about religion/atheism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrHgAxz0Whg

Group 1: What's History Got To Do With It

Factual Questions

For Rosenberg, does history have a meaning, purpose, or point? 

A: no (pp. 242-243)

Rosenberg says, “Those who learn the lessons of history are in danger of ____________." A: following them (p. 246)

Rosenberg maintains that most inventing (e.g., discoveries by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison) is simply ___________________.  A: trial and error (p. 252). 

The SCOTUS is hearing oral arguments today on the Hobby Lobby case.  Here's a well-written piece about why corporations don't have religious liberty, race, or gender, and why that differs from speech.  

This is the video I was talking about the other week where Dr. Tyson confronts Dr. Dawkins about the latter's rather confrontational/condescending methods of communication:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2xGIwQfik

Agnostic, not Atheist

Here's a video where Dr. Tyson talks about the false claims of him being an "atheist":

Dr. Tyson

"Spreading the Word on the Power of Atheism"

Eccentric omnivores of the world, unite!

"One of the strange, wonderful facts about many atheists is their eccentricity and intellectual omnivorousness. Christopher Hitchens, author of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” (2007), was a literary critic, a journalist in several war zones and a biographer of George Orwell. Sam Harris, who wrote “The End of Faith” (2004), also writes about free will and about lying; his next book promises to expand on his case for psychedelic drugs. Several professional magicians, like James Randi and the illusionists Penn and Teller, work to promote atheism on the side."

This is from a story about a lesser-known eccentric named S.T. Joshi:

“My father insisted that I and my sisters not be indoctrinated into any religion at any age,” Mr. Joshi said, as his three cats padded quietly about. “We were allowed to investigate the matter for ourselves if we felt like it. My mother to this day is a devout Hindu — believes in reincarnation, the whole bit — but has never forced that down anybody’s throat. You might say I was a passive atheist through my teenage years.”

Continues:
Spreading the Word on the Power of Atheism - NYTimes.com

==
A Recent tweet of interest:

3/21/14, 2:41 PM

"I Took Astronomy From Carl Sagan" - @TheScienceGuy tells @secretlifer how class was like @COSMOSonTV: bit.ly/NAii8v#Saganpalooza

From preacher to atheist

The radio segment I referenced in class today (from your backyard, Jon):

"Jerry DeWitt represents a new direction for the atheist movement in the U.S. A  preacher for 25 years before realising he no longer believed in God. After being "outed" as an atheist, he was fired from his job as a building inspector, and lost his house, and his wife. He now speaks across the U.S. about atheism, offering a more understanding approach than angrier atheists like Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris. He tells his story in a new book called Hope After Faith."

From preacher to atheist | Q with Jian Ghomeshi | CBC Radio

Daily Quiz

March 20

1. What does scientism supposedly show about the first-person POV?

2.  What does "conversation" have in common with the flicking of a frog's tongue?

(T/F)

3. R says there are no purposes or designs in nature, thanks to Newton and Darwin.

4. R says Mother Nature made us love stories and see conspiracies everywhere.

5. R likes to read, watch, and listen to stories.

6. R calls the attempt to reconcile natural science and common sense "naturalism."

7. R's point about Freaky Friday is that it presupposes a physical self.

8. A favorite Good Book passage?
==






1. illusion-194. 2. Both are adaptive behaviors stored in neural circuitry-197. 3. T-206. 4. T-211. 5. T-214. 6. T-218. 7. F-221. 8. [76.26-29, contending for "honour"]

ALSO OF NOTE:

Elephants, dogs, primates, sharing & collaboration...198-9

Why does R denigrate matter as "just clumps..."? 204

Plans, purposes, designs, & the future-205

Meaning="snake oil"-207

Sentences & thoughts=crude indicators of brain states-208-210

On the mystification and frustration of the humanities-212

Either/or, re: neuroscience and introspection-213

Common sense and conscious planning-217

Nagel, bats-229f.

Heidegger, subjectivity-231

Fantastic Voyage, Leibniz-234-5

Quantum indeterminism-237-8

Purposes & designs popping up, God-239

Factual Questions

1.) According to Rosenberg, philosophers' quest to reconcile science with the aboutness of thoughts and the feeling of purposefulness that fill up our lives has come to be known as                ?
(naturalism, pg. 218)

2.) Rosenberg explains scientism as telling us that all this non-spatial, nonphysical self, person, soul is just so much                             .
(wishful thinking, pg. 223)

Bill Maher Trashes the Bible Noah story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld_tg4W7Hf8

Thought this was worth checking out.

Group 1: Purpose and the Self

Q: What’s in our brain that manages the beautifully coordinated and smoothly appropriate behavior of our body? A: neural circuits (p. 194)

Q: How did the brain’s neural circuits attain the ability to store our much-needed information for function and survival? A: natural selection (p. 196)

In the latest poll, the U.S. is the last of the developed countries to abandon the belief that morality is grounded in religious mythology and superstition.

This week, Pew Research Center published the results of a survey conducted among 40,080 people in 40 countries between 2011 and 2013. The survey asked a simple question: Is belief in God essential to morality? While clear majorities say it is necessary, the U.S. continues to be an outlier. 

In 22 of the 40 countries surveyed, the majority says it is necessary to believe in God in order to be a moral person. “This position is highly prevalent, if not universal, in Africa and the Middle East,” says the report. No surprise there, but Asian and Latin countries such as Indonesia (99 percent), Malaysia (89 percent), the Philippines (99 percent), El Salvador (93 percent), and Brazil (86 percent) all fell in the highest percentile of respondents believing belief in a god (small G) is central to having good values. 

Interestingly, clear majorities in all highly developed countries do not think belief in god to be necessary for morality, with one exception only: the USA.

The full article in Salon via AlterNet is here.

Daily Quiz

March 18

1. Why must introspection be "wrong"?

2. What's "blindsight"?

3. Why can't conscious decisions cause actions?

4. Does R think foresight is possible?

5. Why do visual illusions trick us?

6. What's the relation between science and common sense, according to R?

7. Does R deny that we think?

8. Your favorite Good Book chapter-&-verse today?
==







==
1. R says science has already contradicted the "immediate experience" of free will, mind, soul, self, personhood etc.-147. 2. Seeing without conscious visual experience-149. 3. They come too late-152. 4. Nope, it's really hindsight and "just another Darwinian process"-155. [Did you see Cosmos ep.2 on sight? Hardly so ho-hum!]. 5. They're hard-wired adaptations from our evolutionary past that we can't escape-161. 6. Science is common sense continually improving itself-167. 7. No-170.
8. Mine: "success attends those who act boldly, not those who weigh everything." (Histories 60.27) 

ALSO OF NOTE:
If nonconcscious brain events are the real "deciders," what are some implications (for politics and public life, for example)? [GWB? BQ!].

Are you impressed with R's explanation of why we should read a book that, like everything else anyone ever thinks, is "not about anything"?-193

Group 3: Gravity, Mortality, Quantum Mechanics

I'm jumping only slightly ahead to Mortality, just because I thought these were argument-sparking questions for discussion.
DQ: Embryos, humans or not? People or not? Sentient or not?
FQ: Do Francis and the author share the same view about the creation of 'nonsentient cell clumps'? pg. 35

I always liked Wilson, he was my introduction into Quantum Mechanics and that whole schtick.
Also, interesting news about gravity and the Big Bang, needs a few more tests, but fingers crossed.

'What's more, researchers discovered direct evidence for the first time of what Albert Einstein predicted in his general theory of relativity: Gravitational waves.
These are essentially ripples in space-time, which have been thought of as the "first tremors of the Big Bang," according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.'

I'd also like to say that Blogger capitalizes the Big Bang automatically, but does not autocap god. Blasphemy.

trying to do better..

I am trying to do better about posting and since we just came back from spring break i figured now is the time to get it together.

 According to Rosenberg how did the brain gain the ability for its neural circuits to have the ability to store information?
A. natural selection

DQ. what separates humans from primates (besides obvious reasons)?
is the reasoning phylogenetic or ontogenetic?

The Brain: Are You Talkin' to Me?

What aspect of consciousness does Rosenberg argue we shouldn’t take seriously?  A: introspection

The phenomenon of seeing things when you don’t have a conscious visual experience of them is known as what?  A: blindsight

If you haven't explored Sam Harris's Website, there's no better time like the present.  I think it was posted before, but Sam discusses free will in an exchange with Dan Dennett.  The debate is in the blog section of his site: www.samharris.org/blog. 

The discussion is useful in addition to Rosenberg's latest chapters.  

The God of Genesis

The God of Genesis

An Analysis and Refutation of a Particular Conception of God

By William Phillips

ABSTRACT: The folly of many atheist polemics is that they attempt to approach the problem of theism on too ambitious a scale. Not only do they attempt to address all religious deities, or even the deity of one entire religion, but they also tend to commit to imprecise generalizations about the culture and societal impact of those respective religions separate from the divine. While not an impossible task, it is quite improbable that one, within any reasonable amount of other things to do, could accomplish such. Here lies the foundation of our work here today. I seek to talk about, not all gods, but Abraham’s god. Furthermore, I do not claim to know everyone’s conception of Abraham’s god, but simply one professed to me by a friend we’ll call John. And, while I’m sure everything contained in this view will sound quite common with regards to many popular beliefs of god, I do not profess to lay claim to a refutation of anyone’s ideology besides John’s. It is this way that we avoid the generalizations, circumvent the folly “well not all Christians think that,” and enter into conclusive particular refutation, one by one. And if at the end, there are any outliers, still clinging to their positions, we will consider them irrefutable, or idiotic, as almost always is the case.

John’s Argument

1.      God (g) Exists.
Ǝ(g)

2.      There is one and only one God (g).
Ǝ₌₁(g)

3.      God (g) is beyond the realm of Logic (L).
~L≡g

4.      God (g) created the universe and all therein (U).
g→U

5.      The universe and all therein (U) is governed by the rules of Logic (L) created by God (g).
U↔L←g

Or…
[(Ǝ₌₁(g) • ~L≡g) → (g→U → U↔L←g)]

And so this is John’s argument, relayed in proposition form, with supplementary symbolic representation. However, to properly understand some of the entailment, we need to aid John’s argument by providing supplementary implicative propositions. So, to John’s benefit, which as we see later will be inconsequential to our refutation, we will provide a modified argument.

The Modified Argument

1.      God (g) Exists.
Ǝ(g)

2.      There is one and only one God (g).
Ǝ₌₁(g)

3.      God (g) is beyond the realm of Logic (L).
~L≡g

a.       Time and space (TS) are Logical (L) principles.
L→(TS)

b.      God is beyond the realm of time and space.
(~TS)≡g

4.      God (g) created the universe and all therein (U).
g→U

5.      The universe and all therein (U) is governed by the rules of Logic (L) created by God (g).
U↔L←g

a.       The universe (U) is governed by Time and Space (TS).

(TS)≡U

Or…
{[(Ǝ₌₁(g) • ~L≡g)→(L→TS)→(~TS≡g)]•[(~TS≡g→g→U)→(U↔L←g)]}

Our Critique

Our critique is composed of three simple points, of which, as all good critiques, deals little with the subject matter of the molecular propositions expressed, but more with the form of its logical atoms and constituents. However, our last and final point will deal with some of the implications of the logic therein.

1.      Our first point regards definition. The term g, which represents god, is undefined within our calculation. This means that if all other constituent variables and propositions asserted were defined and correct, which we are not affirming that they are, because we cannot define g, since g, by proposition 3, is beyond our understanding, which is asserted by proposition 5, then our equation would not render a true or false value, but the value of undefined. To give a programming analogy, if you’ve ever been to a webpage that had a jumble of code instead of a functional work page, that is what we get when we attempt to analyze our molecular proposition without defining g. Thus, the molecular proposition, while not true or false, can be affirmed to be nonsense for all human practical measure.

2.      Our second point concerns implication. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, whatever can be asserted, can be asserted clearly, and thus, if one cannot clearly assert their view, they must be silent, for what they speak of is beyond the realm of their grasp. Therefore, if one cannot clearly define the implicative relationship between propositions 1 and 2, that is, how they get from God exists, to, there is one and only one god, or, how they incur that because a being is outside the realm of logic, they must have created the universe, then they’d best to not explicate the view at all, as what they are talking about is nonsense. That is to say, that even  if we took the the equation prima facie, the implicative statements would not hold without an explication of motive, or a mechanistic sub-equation describing how god, by his mere existence, necessarily had tocreate the universe. Of course, one could not give any account of such, as the being of god, as per proposition 3, states that Gods qualities, attributes, and so forth, would be out of our grasp, as per proposition 5. One often might try to use the theoretical implication principle, for example, that because steel is attracted to another object with at an observable level of consistency, that we name that magnetism, and from that, we imply that there is a magnetic field, despite the fact that we can’t observe it plainly. Or, that because of certain laws of physics, and the quite obvious physical condition of gravity, that gravitons must exist, as they are implied by certain theoretical principles. However, I’ll offer my infinite slavery to the one person who can supply a ~Logical proposition, or theory, of which implies God in the Logical world. Such a sentence, as the one I just uttered, is a function of rhetoric, but the point can be no clearer.

3.      Our last point is two-part, mainly because of an error of my own. I originally believed, via a so-called “Case of the Divine Logician,” that if one assert that God lay outside the realm of logic, and that any being g, that lay outside the realm of logic be god, that anyone claiming to have knowledge of such also were claiming to have, at least mentally, properties that lay outside the realm of logic, and thus elevated themselves to a state of divinity, proving gods existence, if, they could exhibit such a beings super-logical powers to create ex nihilo. Of course, the flaw in this thinking I found later, was that God was defined by his extralogical qualities, not confined by them. Thus, if the being did exist, they would be able to operate in both realms, thusly knowledge of such could be possible. However, by gods supposed own principles, the universe is composed of solely logical things, thus, any communication god made with the universe would be logical, and thus gods communication with the universe would be indiscernible from the natural logical principles of the universe, and therefore, to assert such a thing, would be merely to agree that logic existed, that a=a, not to say that g→U. If one is to take up the position that because god has the extralogical faculties, that he would not have to follow his own logical rules in the world, that too would be nonsensical, as then god would be communicating illogically to logical beings. If one is to say that they are not, and have ever been a being composed of and dictated by ~Logical beings, then god does not contradict himself, but they contradict themselves within their own assertions via props 3 and 5, and thus, for all logical purposes, they are not just speaking nonsense, but speaking falsely, as the contradictions arise from their own assertions. Likewise, in such a case, the Case of the Divine Logician would apply.

In conclusion, if you believe in these propositions, you’re full of shit, period, point blank. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not claim that you can reconcile science, of which by definition only deals with the natural laws of our universe, with the a being from another fucking dimension, do not claim that science can’t explain everything, as by your own assertions, the only thing you can truthfully assert are logical principles. Thusly, if you have something to say about anything other than those, don’t. Philosophy is not a conversation, there are analytical truths values that follow from logical forms. Shut up.