I have no illusions about changing your mind. But then I was once able to convince myself to believe in illusory things “up there” somewhere. They consoled and comforted me too.
But then – by chance! – I was drafted into the military; and in the Army [of all places] I met other draftees considerably less inclined toward illusions of this sort.
The rest is history. Perhaps your own someday.
And I don’t spit on a Creator. I ask only that His existence be demonstrated more…empirically? The OP is [to me] mostly a bunch of words telling me that a bunch of other words are true based on the internal logic of what the words are said to mean.
As for theodicy, believers don’t come close to explaining things like “natural disasters”. Or even miscarrages. If there is any “evil” here it comes from the Creator. The only question then is what is said to be the rationale behind it. And the only thing the true believers seem to proffer here is this: the Creator works in mysterious ways.
But then this just assumes that the Creator must exist in order to work that way.
Nothing really exists definitionally: god, chance, intention, even existence, or nothingness.
But: in the beginning-
Was
The word
Before that, the before even wasn’t ascribed to
Therefore before the begin, or begin the begin as the song goes, there was no beginning,
Or end. And it is the same way now, as before.
There is no beginning or end,
The process which is of the word, is an eternal immenance. No ones comes in by chance, goes out,
That is why descartes made such a splash with cogito, the word. But is the cogito an indoubtable proof of itself?
No, the only thing which can be said absolutely is
That I think, therefore I think.
The word is an absolute proof of it’s own being.
But here is where the uncertainty creeps in: I am not absolutely certain who is doing the thinking, and what thinking is, and therefore who am I ? You?
What if the laws of nature are such that we can’t make the predictions and we just think we can because we still don’t quite have the laws of nature nailed?
The general theory of organic evolution is the theory that all living things have arisen by a materialistic, naturalistic process from a single source which itself arose from a similar process from a dead, inanimate world. Conversely, the law of biogenesis is a law of life that living things come only from living things, and like produces like. Then the bible goes on to say … ‘For every house there is a builder, but He who built all things is God.’
Well, maybe I’m misreading you but you do come across as quite patronising ,like with calling me Chet. You can call me Chet though, I don’t give a fuck.
You are wrong.There are those that believe the world just came into being without intention (ie, by chance) and there are those that believe the equilibrium (as proven by its predictive nature) we witness is maintained by chance…they may put it more simplistically as, “It just is” because they believe that that is the equivalence of the idea that God just is. They miss the fact that God’s intentionality is an explanation because we experience the abilities of intention all the time.
You do realize those are two very different things, right? The former treats chance as an agency, as if “chance” is just God without intent. Who do you know that believes in chance like that?
“Chance” is used as an explanation all the time.If the world doesn’t exist due to intention then it does so due to chance.There are no in-betweens.
The strongest case for someone like you is that the world exists necessarily exactly as it is.Obviously that requires a strong element of faith because we can imagine slightly differing versions of it (the world), so it would appear that chance or intention decides which particular necessary path the world starts from and/or follows.
Intention is required for the invention of all complex ,balanced systems that man adds to the world, which is itself a complex ,balanced system, therefore it is reasonable to assume that intention is required for the existence and maintenance of such systems.
As I’ve just said to Volchok, people can believe the world is necessarily just as it is, but that does not escape from intention/chance because of the reason stated.
So no, they are not two very different things, “just is” with regards to the world is a cop out (because it is still within intention/chance , it does not escape it), the world is necessarily as it is is not comparable to God being necessarily as He is.
I expect we have a lot more to learn about the laws of nature…they are probably not ever going to be fully known to us. I doubt if we will ever create a real mind equivalent to a human mind for instance (other than by butchering bits of pre-existing brain into a different brain …if you see what I mean…)
What do you mean it doesn’t escape? To say something is created by chance doesn’t necessarily mean chance literally created it. It means it was created by some unknown event or process that occurred by happenstance. This isn’t an attempt to “escape” as you claim; it just employs a much different and far more practical definition of “chance”.
And you didn’t answer my question: Who believes in chance as you’re using it? Who are you even arguing against?
What is that even supposed to mean? To say something “just is” is another way of saying we don’t know how or why it came about or behaves like it does.
Also, the big bang does not imply chance. You’re making assumptions based on your misinterpretation of theories you do not understand.
Someone like me ? Lol.
That makes literally no sense. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Anyone with a basic understanding of philosophy can see that you’re going for the argument from design here, also known as “watchmaker argument”. Unfortunately for you, that argument is incredibly flawed. For starters we know that it’s possible for complex organisms to exist without having been designed. That is what evolution is all about. And the fact that those organisms have not been design does not mean that their complexity happened by “chance”. It happened trough the process of natural selection which couldn’t be farther from chance. Secondly, If anything sufficiently complicated must have a creator (or an intention as you put it) then who created God? It is that simple. And before you argue that god is an exception to that rule, I’ll have you know that special pleading is a logical fallacy.
