[TrisB]

Thankyou Alamo-girl, I do appreciate your time and attention on the matter, just a couple final things would plague me if I didn't say them.

I feel you have partitioned your epistemology rather unnecessarily. All the things you have listed are still just sensory information. I challenge you on this. Even if god did speak to you, would you not have to hear him in some way? You don't need to be told that hearing is sensory information, even if not done by your ears in the conventional manor.

Its just that you have deliberately separated out different aspects of sensory information so that you don't have to apply the same objective probabilistic analysis to all of them. If you have spiritual understanding in your memory, then accessing that memory is tantamount to sensory stimulation, is it not? We, by definition, perceive absolutely nothing other than what our senses tell us - any supernatural qualia we perceive is still perceived by our "divine radio antenna", and is thus still just a sense. Why would you be willing to question your senses on a matter of a crucial piece of scientific data, but not on a divine radio broadcast? If religion is so important to you, shouldn't you be even MORE willing to question the authenticity of this sensory information, given its significance? You have shut up shop and refused to question the beliefs you stand to benefit from.

We differ in opinion on whether God is logically necessary to explain creation, and I don't think either of us will budge. I would you say the "proof" you stand by is foggy at best. A universally accepted theory of, say, gravity is something I hope you'd accept, but genuine contrary evidence could sway your view despite its ubiquity. Why do you make such an unfaltering stand by the creator-god theory when it clearly doesn't stand on such firm turf? (It has no measured evidence, and stands only from greatly debated logical musings) You grant "theological knowledge" exemption from critical probabilistic analysis through fear of loosing the benefits it brings you (which I don't doubt). I have great respect for theists who don't do this.

Aside: Before you say that x-billion people believe in god therefor probabilty is on your side, I would point that despite the efforts of x-billion people (all sharing more or less the same phsycological flaws) not one has any substantiable evidence. Hmm, x-billion negative results.

Anyway, I thankyou for your time and effort, and you have raised my awareness of the religious justification for a creator-god. In turn, I hope my words have had at least some resonance with you. It's a shame we cant meet eye to eye on some of these issues, but maybe the price of mental-freedom is eternal vigilance. Regards, Tris

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your parting reply!

I had hoped to be gone from this sidebar by now, but evidently my points were not clearly made, so I will try one last time to explain why we cannot communicate.

My previous reply to you was carefully worded to be as gentle as possible. But I can see it missed its mark altogether, because you replied as follows:

Its just that you have deliberately separated out different aspects of sensory information so that you don't have to apply the same objective probabilistic analysis to all of them.

Therefore I will be frank.

When I said that you are speaking “words without knowledge” I was hoping you would understand that to mean “you are speaking of things you know nothing about.” The above is a case in point for you have attributed motives to me that you could not possibly know. You cannot read my mind.

And concerning the characterization of knowledge per se even the term “objective probabilistic analysis” is oxymoronic because probability theory itself has an underlying bias whether the mathematician chooses Combinatorics or a Frequentist or Bayesian approach. The sampling choices affect the distributions in Order Statistics – therefore, the inferences drawn for the continuous based on the distribution of the discrete cannot rise to "objectivity."

We differ in opinion on whether God is logically necessary to explain creation, and I don't think either of us will budge. I would you say the "proof" you stand by is foggy at best.

Not at all, Tris. The second point which I tried to make as gently as possible in the previous post is that your reading comprehension “needs improvement.”

The points about causality and beginnings which I raised with you are not at all "foggy." They have been tested in many a debate on this very forum with some of the most heavily credentialed Freepers imaginable in a variety of disciplines – from Physics to Philosophy.

The bottom line, applying causality to physical cosmology, is that "existence exists" regardless of how one understands that existence – but this point has escaped you and I cannot help you to obtain it.

Now, before I go, I do wish to engage a few issues raised in your last:

I feel you have partitioned your epistemology rather unnecessarily.

I am not surprised at your assessment because you have declared yourself an atheist. Therefore, for you, all that exists is matter in all its motions and the mind is what the brain does. Thus in your last, you have subordinated spiritual hearing and memory (and perhaps all other types of knowledge) to sub-types of sensory perception. Matter in all its motions is reality to you, i.e. it is all that you have.

If religion is so important to you, shouldn't you be even MORE willing to question the authenticity of this sensory information, given its significance?

It might help you to spend some time meditating on the “observer problem.” You might start with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and move on to wave particle duality, Schrödinger’s cat (quantum superposition) and non-locality v local realism.

If you do this then perhaps you will appreciate that – in questions such as “what is reality” - the observer is part of that which he seeks to observe and thus his determinations can never rise to “objective truth.”

Another example is the limitation of our vision and minds to a four dimensional construct – three of space and one of time. If you were able to see from a higher dimensional aspect, your arm might be here, your torso might be there. IOW, that your arms and torso are connected from a four dimensional worldview – does not mean this is “objective truth.”

Likewise you cannot declare something is random in the system when you don’t know what the system “is.”

And likewise you cannot declare that God does not exist when you have no knowledge whatsoever beyond sensory perception of matter in all its motions.