"considering you’ve been getting your ass handed to you on a plate all day by a “newb”
I forgive such hubris, young Padawan, and admire it in a way.
Come on now, Gary, are we really going to argue about the meanings of commonly used (perhaps, slang) phrases?
Okay, let me reword it for you…
What does your “intuition” or your allotment of “common sense” suggest to you about whether or not it is reasonable to assume that the unfathomable order of the universe is a product of the blind and mindless meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics (i.e., “chance”)?
Try this analogy, then, N. The universe is to time what the ship of theseus is to change. Things in the universe (its properties) move about and change, thus producing time… but the ship doesn’t change, and the universe doesn’t change. It, itself, isn’t changing and passing through time… only its parts do. This would be the Parmenidean model, btw.
Should my intuition tell me something about the beginnings of the universe? And if so, how do I know my intuition isn’t just deluded, like thinking I’m going to jinx myself by stepping on a crack on the sidewalk or letting a black cat cross my path? Or should I believe every superstition I come across because it’s my intuition imparting supernatural wisdom on me?
Beat me to it, Gary.
"What does your “intuition” or your allotment of “common sense”
If i may, ‘intuition’ and ‘common sense’ is precisely what we don’t want to rely on when examining these questions, for they can be very deceiving. That being the case, the rational opinion would be formed from the available data… and the available data says it isn’t inconceivable that what appears as intelligent design may very well be undesigned.
Producing time? Does entropy produce time as well? The ship is fleeting, time is eternal.
As for Parmenides, you can run away and hide behind your larger friends all you want. I’ll push them out of the way one by one to get to you, especially if their logic is debatable or can be challenged. I really am that arrogant.
“there’s no need for me to answer why something exists instead of nothing.”
In fact, you can’t answer, and there’s no need to. Rather, you should be asking him to explain how there could be nothing instead of something. Somethingness is the de facto state, and the only thing seeds can know. The burden would be on him to show how there could be nothing instead. Nothing is the theoretical construct here, not Something.
“I really am that arrogant”
And the pre-socratics would love that. Especially Parmenides and Democritus. You would give them quite a chuckle. Especially D. All that fucker did was laugh.
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Diogenes. If I had to choose one..
I mean, obviously. If we’re gonna romanticize the philosophers like good spoiled moderns who fantasize about being rugged and profound, then we pick Diogenes. He’s like the Elvis of philosophers and doesn’t count.
I’m torn between Protagoras and Gorgias. I want them both or neither one.
Right, just give a bunch of disparate and chaotically dispersed (post-Bang) quantum particles enough time,…
(which, allegedly, according to certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, aren’t even “particles” until they interact with consciousness in some way)
…and without the slightest comprehension of what they (the “particles”) are creating, they will nevertheless (accidently) form themselves into a clockwork setting that is equipped with every possible ingredient necessary to awaken and sustain untold trillions of life forms.
I’m afraid that you (like most of the rest of us) are the metaphorical equivalent of an amoeba who is simply not conscious enough to visualize the higher level of consciousness that exists above you and who is responsible for the creation of the carefully crafted petri dish you are swimming around in.
I’m partial to the Skeptics that inherited the Academy some time after Plato myself. Interesting bunch.
Sheesh!!!
Okay, let me narrow this down for you a little further…
“What does your allotment of “common sense” suggest to you about whether or not it is reasonable to assume that the unfathomable order of the universe is a product of the blind and mindless meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics (i.e., “chance”)?
Wait, wait,…that’s no good either.
Let me try a different approach.
And please, Gary, just try to give a truthful answer minus all of the “shucking and jiving.”
Regardless of what the truth may actually be, in your highly educated (but humble) opinion, which of the following makes more sense…
- The unfathomable order of the universe is a product of chance. …or…
- The unfathomable order of the universe is the product of intelligence.
…???
Yeah but there’s a reason he’s Elvis. He practiced what he preached..
I meant as far as celebrity is concerned but no further. Elvis, unlike Diogenes, was full of shit when he died. Both metaphorically and literally.
Anyway practicing what you preach is inferior to preaching what you practice. It matters not if we are hypocrites; who would dare say that I should do what I think you should do? All that matters is that great men are made intelligible to the rest, and for that a great man must become a preacher of his practices.
“Interesting bunch”
Can you even imagine the pressure to explain shit when you don’t even have microscopes or telescopes. When you have no idea what the moon or sun is or those little dots of light all over the night sky. When you have no EEG technology or don’t know how conception happens or wtf a lightning bolt is.
How the fuck do you answer folk’s big questions? One couldn’t help but become a Plato if one was an educator back then. Man, i hate it for em. The burden of being a wiseman.
There isn’t a lot of “random chance” in the universe. Laws or determined actions and reactions dictate most interactions when matter meets. To assume that nature is incapable of order doesn’t necessarily follow from the observation that there is order in nature. We don’t see a God, we see natural order and assume that nature is incapable of it on its own. But it does not follow.
The truth of the matter, Seeds, is we begin with our assumptions about the unknown and not with sound knowledge. You are assuming something and running with it before you’ve asked yourself what you know about universes and what universes must or must not be. Is that so difficult for you to grasp? You really can’t see that? You’re oblivious to your own assumptions about what is beyond the limits of human knowledge? Seriously???
So a magical agency…rather than a biological source…which you cannot comprehend ans so dismiss, because you so desperately prefer the magical external agency hypothesis.
So, rather than saying I do not know, you say…I do know….but I cannot justify what I pretend to know, right?
Isn’t that what man has been doing from the dawn of time?
Given existence only appears and demonstrates itself in the form of consciousness (subjective experience and that which is experienced), the biological source really has no physical, non-conscious matter and energy to ground its existence, as only consciousness exists.
And it is not a matter of magic, but consciousness in various “just so happened to exist” forms, like, for instance, God and the absurdity (referring to Camus’ Absurdism or the observation that things exist for no reason at all) of God’s will, desires, and intentions toward human beings and the future state of the universe.
Science is easy. It espouses a mystical substance (physical, noumenal matter and energy) that does not exist and that is in the same boat as God as it requires faith that it even exists. Existence, meanwhile, only demonstrates itself in the form of persons and that which persons experience, so any viable or meaningful definition and philosophy of reality should and must be Berkeleian in nature.
PG
Consciousness of what?
What is existence become consciuos of?
It lacks awareness of itself, right?
Rather, a portion of existence is awakening to itself.
All is energy.
Only life requires reasons…existence is.
Life cares because its primary care is its own consciousness, because existence is not friendly….nor balanced……
Only life seeks balance in tiself, because wihtout it it perishes….so existence is a threatening environment.
The irony of flux making life possible and also threatening it…because it is a product of order and chaos.
If existence had a “reason” then free-will would be unnecessary…as would consciousness.
Free-will, to whatever degree life has options, is only advantageous BECAUSE existence is not entirely order and indifferent to life.
This agrees with natural selection.
Existence precedes life and will continue on without life……life is not its telos…..life only emerges in this iteration, in this apt of the cosmso, because here the necessary conditions emerged…..but will not continue indefinitely.
Existence cares not about your subjective understanding of it…..because your errors are paid by YOU.
“must be Berkeleian in nature.”
That might work if you had an infinite regress of gods, which you would need so each god could exist (as he needs to be observed by some consciousness, another god, in order to exist).
But there can’t be many gods if by ‘god’ we mean a necessary substance that is self-caused and conceived through itself. If there were more than one of these, you would have two or more fundamental substances, which is absurd.
That being the case, there can only be one ‘god’. And that being the case, being observed is not necessary to exist (as nothing observes god but god exists).
Now i know you aren’t following any of this and wouldn’t expect you to fold decades of comic book writing even if you did understand. I wouldn’t either. I’d suck it up and keep writin’. Fuckin A, what else is there to do? Can you publish any of it and make some money?