Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Physicist
Evolution"--by which you mean materialism--refers to the universe's lack of values. Nihilism refers to a person's lack of values.

How are we more than the sum of the parts? What was added and when? That is my question. You admit that the [material] universe has no values, claim we are solely a product of the [material] universe and then state you have values that are real and meaningful. But you can't get blood from a stone. Even emergent properties don't add something that wasn't there before.

492 posted on 12/13/2005 6:32:05 AM PST by Pete
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 239 | View Replies ]


To: Pete
How are we more than the sum of the parts? What was added and when? That is my question. You admit that the [material] universe has no values, claim we are solely a product of the [material] universe and then state you have values that are real and meaningful. But you can't get blood from a stone. Even emergent properties don't add something that wasn't there before.

But you can raise the same objection to a song, or to this post, or to the shape of a snowflake. Where did the chemical properties of an atom "come from", as it was being built of protons, neutrons and electrons? The constituent particles didn't have these properties beforehand, and the properties are certainly real and meaningful, but nevertheless we know exactly how they come about, without invoking anything mystical, and without even insisting that the properties were there since the universe began.

As for how the human brain comes to have values--preferences--we don't yet know, but we've only just begun to measure how the brain works.

Values are human--likely pre-human--inventions, albeit ones that constitute a prerequisite for any sort of meaningful society, even a family. Likewise, letters are human inventions. The ability to distinguish good from bad is as artificial as the ability to distinguish A from B. Are "A" and "B" "real and meaningful"? Were they there since the universe began?

505 posted on 12/13/2005 7:05:34 AM PST by Physicist
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 492 | View Replies ]

To: Pete
How are we more than the sum of the parts? [...] Even emergent properties don't add something that wasn't there before.

Oh, yeah, they certainly do. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms don't possess the properties of water. Water certainly is more that the sum of its parts. "What was added and when" that made this particular molecular combination of hydrogen and oxygen a nearly universal solvent (even in their molecular forms H and O don't have this property) that gave water the unique ability to expand rather contract on freezing, and etc?

507 posted on 12/13/2005 7:12:34 AM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 492 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson