On Storms

I'm late to the game on this one, but this poem and video are absofuckinglutely amazing and funny in describing the human skeptical condition.

Favorited and cherished forever.

On Dropping Oranges

Another lovely reply in an ongoing religious debate. I think it's got some good stuff in it.

The more we know, the more we know we don't know.

There are areas of science, especially in advanced theoretical physics, where we are reaching the edges of what human minds can comprehend. The universe wasn't made to cater to us, after all. We're just working with what natural selection has provided over millions of generations.

It's entirely possible that the very foundation by which all laws of nature are founded, basic logical components, are mutable. 1+1=3 or True=False might not be outside the realm of possibility! You're right.

But when you're willing to disregard the absolute most basic aspects of existence, you're opening the floodgates to all sorts of ideas. Solipsism, for example, says that nothing can be known but that you exist. This is the most extreme case of trying to wean off assumptions. There are two issues I have with tackling these problems:

1. It's pointless. It solves nothing to assume nothing. You are left questioning every conclusion as invalid. If you think we could have everything wrong, where do you start anew? Where do you have the justification to cling to anything?

2. It's unwarranted. No evidence has surfaced to suggest that a reconsideration of basic logic should be under way. The LHC is causing people to rethink physics (again), but True=True without dispute.

This is not to say that they're interesting thoughts; they're just dead-ends. So, the intellectually productive chooses to assume these cases, while possible, are wasted energy. The intellectually honest doesn't bring up this kind of argument, because it only serves to derail into the severely basic and mundane.

But what does this have to do with a god existing? Well, you're trying to create a space for your god to exist in that is outside the realm of both science and logic. You're calling into question everything that we know for the sake of a supernatural being (that must really suck at making rules for the universe if he can't abide by them himself).

You have no evidence to support this claim, no more than a "what if" postulation that might let something supernatural creep in. I could just as easily say that I have a pet neon dragon at my house. She's allowed to violate all knowns laws of nature, which is why she can weigh nothing, occupy the space of a house, and be invisible. She can also make False into True for kicks.

Hey, this is kinda fun!

Anyway, on to free will. How a person thinks about anything affects his or her actions. What I'm really saying in all this free will conversation is not that you should be "acting" or "faking" anything. You're going to weigh the pros and cons of every decision like you always have.

My point is that just because there exists only one outcome doesn't mean that it will just land in your lap. The universe isn't going to choose between New York and California for your move; you're going to go through a complicated analysis of what's better for you, just like the universe expects. If you sit on your ass and don't choose, you don't consider your options and take action... then, well, that was your choice, obviously. It's not "acting" like we can change it; it's operating within the constraints of the universe like we've always done.

Free will is testable. With a proper definition, it can be considered, verified, or refuted. Say it's the ability to choose from among a set of possibilities. Since the Big Bang, we have understood all particles to be moving along a path that could be predicted (based on our basic laws of the universe that have yet to be disproven). This means all the way to today that the chemical reactions and the firing neurons in your brain were inevitably going to read this sentence and understand it. There are also ideas of universes splitting off with each decision made, of course, but they are without evidence. No truly "random" aspect of the universe has been discovered, to my knowledge, that can allow for such decision space. If you want to say it has to do with a god, you'll have to prove the god first.

You try to make a distinction between arguments of evidence and arguments of persuasion. All arguments of persuasion are based on some sort of likelihood or preponderance of evidence one way or another.

If you want to talk about secular moral systems or the (lack of) limits of science or the value of life without a supernatural deity, I'd be happy to, but only if we can close another one of these arguments.