Re: The Awesomesauce with Religion
Reply #296 –
The 'quote' do-hickey is not working for me today and I tried everything, so to quote Ersi from months ago "Big things are not easy to understand." Your repeated implications that you are in some sort of special category of people who are capable of understanding "big things" that others cannot, is very small of you. I was hoping that one day you would lose this pomposity of yours, but apparently you have an ego that needs constant feeding.
"Then again, 'nothing' is conceptually there among the metaphysical categories - in the category of non-existence. Existence is another metaphysical category that includes everything that exists."
Are you purposely trying to baffle people with your bullshit? Metaphysical is an austere sounding adult word for the child's term 'make-believe'. The M-word is just like saying 'what if?'. Nobody has been there, so no one knows that it even exists and yet many people describe it quite precisely, including who lives there, its purpose and what it is like. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the M-realm are so varied that it can really be whatever you want it to be or need it to be (just start fantasizing). You, Eric, use the M-realm as a crutch to get you through this life, which is perfectly fine--some people actually need religion. However, you speak of it to us as fact and the very last thing the M-realm is, is a fact. Btw, this existence/reality can only be in the M-realm if you put it there in your own mind. I'm sad to say that I doubt you would know reality if it slapped you in the face.
"The physicist, if he is non-philosophical and careless in logic, may easily equate existence with detection and, conversely, non-detection with non-existence."
You don't know what science is or how it works. Science is the pursuit of the laws and facts of nature pertinent only to this reality/environment. Show science another realm or reality and how to get there and they will relentlessly pursue the facts there as well. Talk gibberish about spirits, ghosts and Gods in an untouchable realm (which (conveniently), is only untouchable so one can't disprove it), and a scientist is really not interested, unless you find one that is a bit wishy-washy (philosophical). Good science NEVER equates non-detection with non-existence!! Believers in God made this false deduction of science themselves because they fear science and have some pressing need to demean it. If science wants to say something doesn't exist, it has to stand up to the same rigors of every other scientific fact and be proven for a fact that it doesn't exist (where do you get all this slanted nonsense?). The Large Hadron Collider, was 40 years and $10 billion in the making just to prove or disprove that a fundamental but theoretical quantum particle (the Higgs boson), existed. Theoretical physics said it had to exist or else much of quantum physics would have to be rewritten--as of 2013 it was proven to exist to the satisfaction of the global scientific community. Science is not a butterfly collection type of hobby, Ersi--it is the most important, serious and exacting pursuit on this planet and leaves your religion and philosophy in the dust of their own insignificance (well....perhaps I exaggerate just a tad, but only a tad).
"So, there are modes of existence. Objective existence is not the entire existence. There are ways to explore the non-objective mode of existence, but this is out of reach of physics. As I observed in the beginning, the philosopher discerns a clear distinction between non-existence and undetectable existence. This distinction is indiscernible for the physicist, if he is not a careful enough thinker, but I suppose I have shown clearly enough how this distinction itself is important. "
This is such slapdash hogwash I am loath to even comment on it. (Sigh...), so in a few very short and full-of-holes paragraphs you have absolutely proven that, without a doubt, there ARE other modes of existence? At best, you may have irrationally convinced yourself of this, but don't throw out these broad sweeping statements at us like you were some sort of know-it-all. The great thing about your make-believe existences, for you at least, is that no one (I don't know why you constantly only choose physicists), can disprove them. So now, you are making the mistakes that you wrongly accuse science of, by asserting that disprovability equals existence, which is simply illogical and absurd. Science doesn't play these meaningless games simply because there is no point or purpose to them. In my opinion, science did religion a big favor by stating that a God need not have been invoked to create this universe, it would have created itself anyway. Science doesn't say that God didn't do it, just that he wasn't necessary (but after all, science wasn't there).
"These kinds of distinctions are arrived at by means of logical and conceptual philosophical analysis. The metaphysical categories is an example of such analysis. It's a way to "detect the undetectable"."
(God, give me the strength...) I've read the convoluted logic of philosophical analysis as it relates to the M-realm and one would have to be quite desperate and want it to be true very badly in order to swallow it. Despite all that our sciences have done to inform us of realities unknown to sense perception or naïve common sense, no one (philosophers admit), is able, using the normal touchstones of truth, to argue convincingly for the character of some 'Ultimate Reality' or for 'Beings' that exist in a supersensible or supernatural world. What gives you alone, this extraordinary ability Ersi?
James J