Prove Evolution: Win $250,000!

Yeah, I was casting about for some sort of properly respectful shorthand. Un-v-rs- is good, but typing it is sort of unnatural. Hmmm, Univ*. Or is the size of the typeface part of it also? Univ*. I like it. It's rather large and imposing, like the thing itself, but sufficiently respectful.

But it is important to permit the assembled multitudes to show the proper respect for Univ* also, so gather close everyone, and I will reveal the deep mystery of the HTML that permits one to show the proper amount of respect. Univ*, in that size font, shall be an acceptable form of shorthand, but for proper indications of the thing in question, one may deploy the following code:

Univ*...Univ*.

An alternate code method is the following:

Of course, Univ* doesn't really care about any of this - it's just my opinion. Univ* is pretty laid back about such things, so call it whatever you like. I have a friend who calls it "Bob", and Univ* is cool with that, too, so it's all good.

"Laissez les bon temps rouler!" to you all, or whatever your personal meaning might be.

Of course, Univ* doesn't really care about any of this - it's just my opinion. Univ* is pretty laid back about such things, so call it whatever you like. I have a friend who calls it "Bob", and Univ* is cool with that, too, so it's all good.

Indeed, Univ* doesn't care very much what we call it. We are free even to insult Univ* if we are so inclined. The properly respectful notation is important, however, so that we can signal to one another that we have the correct attitude in such matters. So when I write Univ*, I am letting you know that I totally accept Univ* in all of its multitudinous manifestations.

Of course you are correct. By doing this, we may communicate the fact that we are right-thinkers to other right-thinkers. Univ* doesn't really care, but for our own convenience, typing Univ* allows us to identify each other.

I IM'ed my friend who speaks of Univ* as "Bob", inquiring as to his thoughts about the meaning of "Bob", or as we know it, Univ*. He tells me that he is quite confident that the meaning of life and of Univ* can be captured by the following statements (lemme make sure I get this right):

"Hey, whatever works. 2 for $1 drink specials on Thursdays."

Whether you agree or not, here's a definition for soul. The soul is consciousness of self (whereas the spirit is consciousness of God).

This is a bad definition. Self-awareness and "consciousness" is not a property that needs a definition like "soul" to define it, as it exists as a well-described mathematical concept. A lot of really important core work in mathematics has been done on the nature of "intelligence", "self-awareness", and similar concepts having to do with higher forms of sentience in the last ten years that have really nailed down these concepts in a rational mathematical framework (some rapid advances in machine intelligence have recently been made as a result, though those advances haven't leaked into the mainstream consciousness). Therefore, "soul" as you are using it is an intrinsic property of certain types of systems and does not need to be given a name or metaphysical connotations. It doesn't even exist as a separate construct in mathematics, but as a specific instantiation of other general mathematics.

I'm sure other people have different definitions of "soul" but this one can be discarded as mostly useless.

"Hey, whatever works. 2 for $1 drink specials on Thursdays."

Your friend seems a bit too casual about Univ* for my taste. I would not want to be his auto insurance carrier. We must always remember that Univ* makes the rules, and we break them at our peril. For me, I have adopted as my mantra: "Always assume the gun is loaded." In other words: "Wait a bit before dumping the ashtray into the wastebasket."

I agree. But he does appear to have a great deal of fun. Keep in mind his general risk analysis - so far as we know, you only get one ride on the merry-go-round we call Univ*.

But I have to ask you about the "breaking" of the rules of Univ*. Consider my earlier thinking about the rule F = ma. If we were to explore the workings of this rule by driving a car into a building at high speed, would it really be accurate to describe that as "breaking" the rules of Univ*? I tend to think not. It seems more accurate to say that the rules embody their own consequences of application.

Unlike other metaphysical concepts I could name, it seems to me that one cannot break the rules set forth by Univ*. This is good, because the rules are generally simple and quantifiable. One might be tempted think of the rules as being restricting, but we must remember that the operation of those same rules is what has brought us the multitudinous glory that is...Univ*.

So is sentience an illusion as well? If it isn't, can it be modeled mathematically? And if it isn't an illusion, yet can't be modeled mathematically, would free will perhaps fall into the same category?

Sentience is an illusion insofar as it is can essentially be defined as an emergent property of specific instantiations of general mathematical forms. So it can be modelled mathematically, but when an instantiation reaches an arbitrary order of complexity it is deemed "sentient"; it is really a smooth gradient and the cutoff point for when something is "sentient" is completely arbitrary. Humans being humans, we like to place the cutoff point just below our own capabilities but this isn't meaningful in a definitional sense.

Many of our "illusions" are known to be illusions precisely because they can be mathematically modelled. Our brains do not have the resources to see through the illusions no matter how hard we try (per the mathematics as applied to general computing hardware), but we can be aware of the fact that what we are perceiving is illusion. The nice thing about mathematics is that we can model our inadequacies in addition to being able to model our competencies at the same time. We can actually place the human brain along the computing engine gradient between zero and infinity (intelligence systems being more a measure of memory than processing capacity) by modelling the general limits of human capabilities.

As I stated previously, "free will" is essentially an illusion that is a specific mathematical consequence of having insufficient mental capacity (a memory limitation in this case). You can even see this behavior in software (optimal universal predictors modeling a finite state process as "random" because they have insufficient encoding memory to see it as anything else even though a human can see that it is finite state). We see simple systems as being finite state machinery with predictable and deterministic results that have nothing to do with "free will"; these systems fall within the model capacity of the human mind. Other processes look like "free will" which an objective observer with more memory (like a computer) may analyze to be otherwise. One could say that we can mathematically model the point where "finite state machinery" starts to look like "free will" to another finite state machine.

Sentience is a little different, in that it isn't an illusion per se, but an arbitrary designation of complexity. It could be argued to be a meaningless term, as all constructs that meet certain mathematical criteria could claim to define "sentience". A computer that was properly programmed to be vastly smarter than humans could very well determine that it was the base level that defines "sentience", and that humans were just animals that are more clever than most.

Let me make my question more specific, then. Is there a way of mathematically describing the color green? I'm not referring to the description of the light wave associated with it; I'm talking about the actual perception that I and (presumably) you have - the actual color that we see. Is there a way to describe that objectively?

Unlike other metaphysical concepts I could name, it seems to me that one cannot break the rules set forth by Univ*.

True, O enlightened one. I was thinking about human-made rules for getting along with Univ*, such as: "Never forget that F = G (m1 * m2)/d^2." What follows the phrase "Never forget that ..." is a rule of Univ*, which cannot be broken. But if you forget that rule while climbing a ladder, Univ* will, with inexorable justice, remind you of your error.

Let me make my question more specific, then. Is there a way of mathematically describing the color green? I'm not referring to the description of the light wave associated with it; I'm talking about the actual perception that I and (presumably) you have - the actual color that we see. Is there a way to describe that objectively?

I've had many lengthy arguments about this very question. For all intents and purposes, no, there is no mathematical description of "greenness". Greenness is necessarily subjective and you have no way of proving that your impression of "greenness" looks anything like mine, therefore rendering it meaningless beyond the mapping of wavelength to impression (being an ungrounded concept by nature). "Greenness" is completely free of information in a very real sense beyond the wavelength of light that causes that subjective impression. Having literally zero information content, qualia is not mathematically meaningful on its own, although it is the word we use to describe the arbitrary coding identifier for an external piece of information (like a photon of a particular wavelength). In fact, qualia only exists relative to the structure it emerges from due to its arbitrariness, and most sensor systems exhibit something that maps to the concept of qualia.

The direct analogy would be digital cameras, which map wavelength information into bytes. A pattern of bytes tells many things about the greenness of something to the computer that records it, and in fact "greenness" is intrinsically encoded in those bytes. Obviously, those bytes are not greenness, they are only the computer's impression of greenness and there is no way of guaranteeing that another computer would view those bytes as greenness even if that computer was capable of detecting the wavelength that we call green. Still, for that computer, there is only one byte structure that it uniquely associates with greenness and which puts it in a unique state that only happens when a green wavelength of light hits its detector. This is the same things that happens with the human brain.

One flawed counter-argument that is sometimes made is that a byte pattern isn't "greenness". The problem with this argument is that brains and computers are very different types of computing hardware and encode things very differently (though equivalently); computers "see" everything as bytes, just like the brain "sees" everything as neurons firing in a part of the network. The neuron activity that happens in response to a green wavelength that causes the experience of green is no more intrinsically "greenness" than a byte pattern is, except to that person perhaps, just like for the computer. Furthermore, we can artificially trigger these perceptions by stimulating neurons in the relevant coding areas when no external stimuli is present, which demonstrates the localization of qualia in the brain.

So yes, greenness can be described objectively as a function of wavelength; qualia are literally information free and have no intrinsic meaning or value, and therefore neither ask nor answer any questions. For a particularly encoding framework (e.g. any universal predictor such as the brain), there is an encoding for greenness that objectively maps to it, but which is only relative to that encoding framework. The subjective experience is very much derived from the other relations the encoding has within the encoding framework (e.g. the color red triggers secondary physiological and psychological responses in humans that are not intrinsic properties of "redness", but which affect the generic perception of it). In the case of animals, we have many hardwired evolutionary biases that impact our impressions and tie perception into the parts of the brain responsible for emotions, creating complex perceptions that are beyond the objective.

Posterity marker.

Really nice post, general_re.

Okay. I don't think I've advanced an opinion of my own as to why God is inaccessible to logic — you seem to be saying something similar to the one possibility that I did present. I suggested that if there were a God, He might very well want it that way….

Yes, I caught your speculation on that in the earlier post. That paradoxically, the seemingly total absence of “objective” proof actually points to a “hidden god” who “wants” man to come to Him by faith alone. At any rate, “the absence of proof is not proof of absence.”

As Man has sought to insulate God from the progress of science and discovery, and to prevent God from being falsifiable by such, Man has necessarily been forced to redefine God in terms that increasingly place Him outside the realm of logic. The side-effect of rendering God unfalsifiable is that God is also unprovable. You say God is "supra-logical" — oddly, I agree with you. I just think that it was Man that put Him there.

Here’s where you lose me, general_re. It seems you buy into Feuerbach’s and Marx’s “projection theory” — that all God is, is merely the sum total of human aspiration and desire “reified” as a fictional being who, when you come right down to it, looks suspiciously like man himself “idealized.”

On the other hand, in these statements, you seem to be in the grip of the intentionalist fallacy. You have taken God, isolated certain attributes which you impute to Him, and created an “idea” or “symbol” of God out of them, which you employ as a notional substitute for Him in your arguments.

When we say “intentionalist,” we don’t mean that the person in the grip of the fallacy is a person of bad will or anything like that. All “intentionalist” means is that the human mind is so constituted that, in order for it to process information, it must “intend” an object in order to think about it. It must hold the “object” in consciousness in order to perform mental operations with it.

In short, we intend the objects we think about and in the process convert them into language symbols that are meaningful for us. Instantly, we are at a “first remove” from Reality itself; we have entered the world of abstraction. An abstraction may be further burdened by the natural propensity of the human mind to be strongly conditioned by the pull of “thingly” reality. Even though not all objects of thought are “things.”

God is not a “thing,” as in an existence in thing-reality. Yet in order for man to think about God at all, he has to “reduce” Him to a cognitive symbol that he can understand; and what man most understands is thing-reality. And thus we begin to “lose God” in the translation.

Just had to get that off my chest. We need to revisit this: “ Man has sought to insulate God from the progress of science and discovery, and to prevent God from being falsifiable by such, Man has necessarily been forced to redefine God in terms that increasingly place Him outside the realm of logic.”

General_re, this is the total “inversion” of the way I see it. Man has to defend God from the progress of science??? Good grief, I’d always thought that science itself is an indispensable bearer of God’s continuing revelation. Why would God need to be defended against the revelation of His own Truth?

The fact is, no finding of science has ever, to date, refuted any “proposition” articulated in the Bible. If you doubt this, then go find me one.

You're not seriously telling me that God could not, if He wanted, reveal Himself and provide irrefutable proof of His own existence, are you?

Heaven forfend that I, a mere mortal, should ever “tell God what to do.” Fact is, I don’t know what sense it makes to speak of “what God wants.” But if I had to, I’d say that, whatever it is, He can do whatever He wants. I.e., He is omnipotent.

But why would He do a thing like that? What purpose would it serve? God has already given man everything he needs. Man just needs to use his mind and open his soul to God. The rest takes care of itself.

…let me take a moment to tell you about the advantages of dropping this God concept, and instead taking the universe (or, as I've come to think of it lately, Un-v-rs-) to be eternal and uncaused, and existing of its own accord.

yikes! Okay. This is you, [I’m in brackets]:

Advantage number 1. It's not abstract, and doesn't avoid providing proof of its own existence…. [God reveals; he leaves the matter of proof to us. Some say it is to be found in a doctrine; others, in conscious experience of the world; still others, in some combination of the two.]

Look around you -- the existence of Un-v-rs- is obvious. It's everywhere you look. [Yes, God’s creation is truly breathtaking! As the ancient story goes, He created the world, and found it to be “Good.” Then He put man into it – man “made in His image” – that is, in possession of reason and free will. God made the world into an intelligible order that the human mind could understand. Or was it the other way around?]

Advantage number 2. Un-v-rs- is not personifiable. It doesn't have desires or wishes or goals or anything silly like that. This means that Un-v-rs- doesn't require anyone to do things like worship it, or evangelize its existence, or stuff like that. This frees up a great deal of time…. [No, Un-v-rs- doesn’t have desires or wishes; what it seems to have is an ingrained and highly dynamic ORDER. Or at least that would be a fair description of “universe” IMHO. Where did this ORDER come from? Good grief, not just the theologians, but scientists know that ORDER is there; indeed, it is the entire job of science to explore and articulate it.]

Advantage number 3. Because Un-v-rs- is not personifiable, it's not hung up on imposing its own meaning on itself, or on you…. [As I take it, general_re, Un-v-rs- for you is the “god substitute.” You posit its nature as impersonal. Fine. But frankly, I don’t know what to do with an “abstraction of an abstraction” like this. But if we could speak of God instead, then it seems to me that He is not trying to “impose” on us; He doesn’t need to, by logic. He has already given man everything man needs to thrive in life, importantly including the ability to ascertain for himself the truth of his own existence. And since God created Reality, I can’t imagine that God would disapprove of man’s quest of the truth of Reality, the exploration of which He expressly fitted man for, and which – far from being a divine imposition -- God seemingly has left an “open question” for man.]

Advantage number 4. The "rules". Unlike some more abstract metaphysical concepts I could name, the "rules" that apply to our everyday lives are generally simple and easily quantifiable…. [Well, sure, general_re. But you still ditch the question: From whence do “rules” derive? And by rules, I mean both the laws of nature and the moral laws. Diamond queried you on your moral defense against an Eichmann. You had no good answer for him, really. Point is, speaking logically, law can have only one source, not many. If there were more than one, “law” wouldn’t be law; it would be one among different competing answers to the question: What is law?]

"Old habits are hard to break?" Well, maybe that's a good thing.

Better stop for now, general_re – don’t want to be a “bandwidth hog” (Ooooppps! Too late!) Thank you truly for your last. All my best, bb.

What follows the phrase "Never forget that ..." is a rule of Univ*, which cannot be broken. But if you forget that rule while climbing a ladder, Univ* will, with inexorable justice, remind you of your error.

Indeed it is so. The rules that operate on our everyday level may not be broken or bent, or even folded, spindled, or mutilated, so far as we know. Of course, we now know that in specific other situations, entirely new sets of rules come into play, such as the situation of when someone or something is very, very, very small, or when someone or something is moving very, very, very quickly. There, Univ* has different sets of rules entirely, which may not correspond to the rules as we know them on our ordinary scale. In those situations, it may appear that the rules we are bound by in our everyday lives do not apply, but the new sets of rules are as ironclad and unbreakable as our ordinary everyday rules are.

And not only is the reminder of the consequences of the rules inexorable, it is swift - Univ* practices quick justice for those who test the rules. We are not simply told "Thou shalt not do something-or-other, or else something really bad will happen to you...in a few decades, after you die." No, if one should forget the rules dictating the acceleration due to gravity, and the rules governing the collisions of relatively inelastic bodies, while on top of that ladder, the reminder of those rules from Univ* will be immediate, severe, and inevitable. Forget the rules at your own peril...

Verily, all who are born are automatically members of the congregation of Univ* and are bound by the rules. You don't have to do anything extra to join, there are no dues to pay, no candles to ignite, no incantations to memorize. Univ* has no scripture, no priesthood, no rituals, no heretics, and no competion. There are only the rules, which apply to everyone, whether rich or poor, weak or powerful. Even death obeys the rules of Univ*. It's humbling to contemplate.

Thanks for the ping, betty....but boy do I hate being pinged to a thread that already has 634 responses. I don't have the time to read through all of them, and I'm always afraid that I'm going to say something that's already been said (or, worse yet, something that's already been successfully refuted). So, I'll simply respond to your post, and the one to which you were responding. (Whew! I've already written a whole paragraph and said nothing....a bad sign.... :)

Man has to defend God from the progress of science??? Good grief, I’d always thought that science itself is an indispensable bearer of God’s continuing revelation. Why would God need to be defended against the revelation of His own Truth?....betty boop

Yes!

So many reputable scientists (not those of the Carl Sagan/Paul Ehrlich bent, mind you)...even those initially embracing atheism....the closer they become to 'understanding' that part of the universe in which they study, the more they seem to accept (or at least acknowledge the possibility of) the concept of a Supreme Being. I have read countless accounts of such 'conversions'. The intelligent, timeless, often mind-boggling deliberate design of the universe cannot help but lend itself to the notion that it was created (by a Master Scientist/Mathematician), rather than simply just happening.

I defy anyone to come up with something of any universal significance that doesn't have an innate sense of order/design. The assertion that the universe is eternal, yet uncaused amazes me. That anything in this universe (life, in particular) evolved through blind forces of nature (or whatever else you might choose to call the supposedly random happenings involved) literally defies logic.

I have a degree in mathematics, but I teach music. I am blessed to enjoy 'the best of both worlds.' Yet, in reality, they are one. The same concept of order/deliberate design permeates both (and, to my mind, every other 'study' that exists). Pythagoras was attracted to the study of musical harmony because it exhibited common numerical relationships that could be found elsewhere....in innumerable elsewheres....in the universe. His discovery of the arithmetical ratios between harmonic intervals persuaded him that there must be a concrete and all-pervasive link between music and mathematics -- two seemingly unrelated fields, but two fields which are really inextricably intertwined. And the intertwining does not end with harmonic intervals. Music (both the hearing and appreciating of it, and the composing of it) is simply (but beautifully) an aesthetic branch of mathematics.

Other Greek philosophers agreed. In his book 'The Artful Universe', John Barrow says:

In Plato's mind, what we hear of musical harmony is a pale reflection of a deeper perfection in the world of numbers....We appreciate it only because the rhythms of our body and our soul are pre-formed to resonate with the harmony in the celestial realm. It was this transcendental philosophy of music that Plato reinforced by his wider belief that the world of appearances is a shadow of another perfect world filled with the ideal forms of the things around us.

Louis Agassiz (acknowledged even by current researchers as the greatest natural scientist of his day -- the late nineteenth century) stated:

In our study of natural objects we are approaching the thoughts of the Creator, reading his conceptions, interpreting a system that is His and not ours.....facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach us little or nothing till we place them in their true relations, and recognize the thought that binds them together.

There is an interesting substantiating trend that has been occurring for many decades: the number of inventions based on copying 'nature' (Some would define the 'nature' that is being copied as millions of years of mindless, random evolution, rather than God's handiwork. So be it.)

Janine Benys, in 'Biomimicry', observes:

We realize that all our inventions have already appeared in nature in a more elegant form and at a lot less cost to the planet. Our most clever architectural struts and beams are already featured in lily pads and bamboo stems. Our central heating and air conditioning are bested by the termite tower's steady 86 degrees F. Our most stealthy radar is hard of hearing compared to the bat's multifrequency transmission. And our new 'smart materials' can't hold a candle to the dolphin's skin or to the butterfly's proboscis. Even the wheel, which we always took to be a uniquely human creation has been found in the tiny rotary motor that propels the flagellum of the world's most ancient bacteria. How do dragonflies outmaneuver our best helicopters? How do hummingbirds cross the Gulf of Mexico on less than one tenth of an ounce of fuel? How do ants carry the equivalent of hundreds of pounds in a dead heat through the jungle? These individual achievements pale, however, when we consider the intricate interliving that characterizes whole systems, communities like tidal marshes or saguaro forests. In ensemble, living things maintain a dynamic stability, like dancers in an arabesque, continually juggling resources without waste.... Studying these poems day in and day out, biomimics develop a high degree of awe, bordering on reverence.

One of the most incredible books I have ever read is 'The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics', by Roger Penrose. The following excerpt pertains here:

How 'real' are the objects of the mathematician's world? From one point of view, it seems that there can be nothing real about them at all. Mathematical objects are just concepts; they are the mental idealizations that mathematicians make, often stimulated by the appearance and seeming order of aspects of the world about us, but mental idealizations nonetheless. Can they be other than mere arbitrary constructions of the human mind? At the same time, there often does appear to be some profound reality about these mathematical concepts, going quite beyond the mental deliberations of any particular mathematician. It is as though human thought is, instead, being guided toward some external truth -- a truth which has a reality of its own, and which is revealed only partially to any one of us.

Is mathematics invention or discovery? When mathematicians come upon their results, are they just producing elaborate mental constructions which have no actual reality, but whose power and elegance is sufficient simply to lull even their inventors into believing that these mere mental constructions are 'real'? Or are mathematicians really uncovering truths which are, in fact, already 'there'? -- truths whose existence is quite independent of the mathematicians' activities?

I have always understood, appreciated, and respected the mindset of those who do not acknowledge the existence of God on a personal level. Yet, if one refuses to acknowledge God in the world around us, then, at the very least, I would hope that one would acknowledge (omnipresent, in all fields of study, discovery, invention and observation) amazingly apparent order and deliberate design that cannot possibly be attributed to random chance, even a randomness that spans an eternity of time.

Universal, natural 'truths' have their own mysterious independence and timelessness. The physical world and the Platonic world of pure mathematics are (forgive the use of an overused word) awesome. The distinguished number theorist, Paul Erdos, talks of 'God's book, in which all the best proofs are recorded.' Even the best human scientists and mathematicians are occasionally only allowed to glimpse part of a page. But what a privilege.

Yes, I caught your speculation on that in the earlier post. That paradoxically, the seemingly total absence of ?objective? proof actually points to a ?hidden god? who ?wants? man to come to Him by faith alone. At any rate, ?the absence of proof is not proof of absence.?

Of course. I merely present it as a possibility that a person of faith could reasonably attach themselves to in order to explain why no logical proof is possible.

Here?s where you lose me, general_re. It seems you buy into Feuerbach?s and Marx?s ?projection theory? ? that all God is, is merely the sum total of human aspiration and desire ?reified? as a fictional being who, when you come right down to it, looks suspiciously like man himself ?idealized.?

That argument might carry more water if I didn't suspect that this is exactly how you regard everyone else's god(s). I'm not particularly interested in what sorts of things people ascribe to God, or how they explain this fiction that they see. Your motives are your motives, and do not change the truth or falsity of what you see or do not see. As is true for me, of course.

On the other hand, in these statements, you seem to be in the grip of the intentionalist fallacy. You have taken God, isolated certain attributes which you impute to Him, and created an ?idea? or ?symbol? of God out of them, which you employ as a notional substitute for Him in your arguments.

When we say ?intentionalist,? we don?t mean that the person in the grip of the fallacy is a person of bad will or anything like that. All ?intentionalist? means is that the human mind is so constituted that, in order for it to process information, it must ?intend? an object in order to think about it. It must hold the ?object? in consciousness in order to perform mental operations with it.

Isn't that clever? It must "hold the object in consciousness in order to perform mental operations with it". Doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it?

This is precisely why the intentionalist fallacy is a big steaming load of excrement. In one fell swoop, you've invalidated all abstract thought whatsoever. I'm sure you don't think so, but you have.

So, basically, unless I can fully grasp the (posited) nature of God, any mental calculus I employ is invalid, because I cannot fully imagine all the implications and ramifications of God. I cannot fully and deeply comprehend the essence of God, so any thoughts I have are invalid.

Of course, I don't think you fully grasp the essence of the Eiffel Tower I mentioned earlier. You can't possibly understand every strut and stair, every nut and bolt, every single atom of the thing. You've just abstracted it away from "reality" with your thought-symbols, haven't you? In fact, I bet you do that with every single thing you've ever talked about in your entire life - you've reduced it away from its essential reality into some abstract representation, and thus lost its essence in the process. You are now unqualified to discuss anything at all, because you can't capture the reality of the thing you wish to discuss with your "words" and "thoughts" and "symbols".

Is it really any wonder that this sort of thing is really nothing more than a modern revision of the Sophists' arguments? Congratulations - you've discovered that the representation of a thing is not the thing itself. This occurs to most thoughtful people independently, usually in about middle school or so, but most people manage to let go of it in favor of a world where we can talk about things and think about things that exist. When you're ready to rejoin the world where words have meaning, even though they are not the things themselves, we'll be waiting.

But, if not, the MLA's annual convention is in New York this year, in December. It's not too late to submit a paper - they eat this stuff up over there, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that you can certainly make a fat pile of money with this sort of thing these days.

General_re, this is the total ?inversion? of the way I see it. Man has to defend God from the progress of science??? Good grief, I?d always thought that science itself is an indispensable bearer of God?s continuing revelation. Why would God need to be defended against the revelation of His own Truth?

The fact is, no finding of science has ever, to date, refuted any ?proposition? articulated in the Bible. If you doubt this, then go find me one.

None of them at all? The Bible-as-literal-truth and as the literal Word of God still works for you, does it? Catastrophism, creation-in-six-literal-days, all that stuff still works for you? I'm tempted to dig up Physicist's example of the value of pi in the Bible, but I'll defer to others. Anyone who wishes to jump in at this point, please do so, and help BB find some passages that, when interpreted literally, might be troublesome.

I would have thought you'd be champing at the bit to suggest that God might occasionally speak in metaphor or allegory, but have it your way.

Heaven forfend that I, a mere mortal, should ever ?tell God what to do.? Fact is, I don?t know what sense it makes to speak of ?what God wants.? But if I had to, I?d say that, whatever it is, He can do whatever He wants. I.e., He is omnipotent.

Well, there you go. If God is omnipotent, then he must be able to reveal Himself in such a way as to convince everyone of his reality and his divinity - if He couldn't, he'd be something less than omnipotent. Why doesn't he do so? I don't know. It's your metaphysical concept, not mine - I'll leave it to you to figure out.

Your brackets, again:

Advantage number 1. It's not abstract, and doesn't avoid providing proof of its own existence?. [God reveals; he leaves the matter of proof to us. Some say it is to be found in a doctrine; others, in conscious experience of the world; still others, in some combination of the two.]

Just as an aside, we've moved away from Un-v-rs-, and have now settled on Univ* as being more suitable. The HTML to properly represent Univ* can be found in post #621. If you're not comfortable with that, you can continue to refer to it as "the universe", or whatever. Univ* is not hung up on nomenclature, nor does Univ* have any hangups about "blasphemy" or "heresy".

Anyway. People say a lot of things about God, don't they? Maybe proof is doctrinal, maybe it's experiential, maybe it's not there at all. Whatever floats your boat. With Univ*, there's no such confusion and argumentation - here it is, all around you. Point to Univ* - 15-Love.

Look around you -- the existence of Un-v-rs- is obvious. It's everywhere you look. [Yes, God?s creation is truly breathtaking! As the ancient story goes, He created the world, and found it to be ?Good.? Then He put man into it ? man ?made in His image? ? that is, in possession of reason and free will. God made the world into an intelligible order that the human mind could understand. Or was it the other way around?]

I don't know - which way was it? With Univ*, there's no such confusion, again. Univ* is, Univ* always was. The human mind that came about later was just a side-effect of the application of the rules. Point to Univ* - 30-Love.

Advantage number 2. Un-v-rs- is not personifiable. It doesn't have desires or wishes or goals or anything silly like that. This means that Un-v-rs- doesn't require anyone to do things like worship it, or evangelize its existence, or stuff like that. This frees up a great deal of time?. [No, Un-v-rs- doesn?t have desires or wishes; what it seems to have is an ingrained and highly dynamic ORDER. Or at least that would be a fair description of ?universe? IMHO. Where did this ORDER come from? Good grief, not just the theologians, but scientists know that ORDER is there; indeed, it is the entire job of science to explore and articulate it.]

Any apparent order is a result of the operation of the rules of Univ*. The fact that we can make sense of it is an accident as well - the rules produced brains capable of abstract thought and reason, and so we can make some sense of what we see. At least, those of us who accept Univ* and are not postmodernists can. Point to Univ* - 40-Love.

Advantage number 3. Because Un-v-rs- is not personifiable, it's not hung up on imposing its own meaning on itself, or on you?. [As I take it, general_re, Un-v-rs- for you is the ?god substitute.? You posit its nature as impersonal. Fine. But frankly, I don?t know what to do with an ?abstraction of an abstraction? like this.

You can't do anything with it, since you've admitted you can't do anything with representations, remember. Be that as it may, we're fresh out of God substitutes. My wife keeps some packets of sugar substitute for guests who prefer such things, but no God substitutes - we have no need of them, but if we find we do, I'll keep an eye out for it. I imagine the packaging will tip me off - "All the power and glory of God, with half the guilt! Less fattening! Fewer calories!"

But if we could speak of God instead, then it seems to me that He is not trying to ?impose? on us; He doesn?t need to, by logic. He has already given man everything man needs to thrive in life, importantly including the ability to ascertain for himself the truth of his own existence.

That "Bible" thing was just a joke then, eh? Spilling the beans in advance like that... ;)

Advantage number 4. The "rules". Unlike some more abstract metaphysical concepts I could name, the "rules" that apply to our everyday lives are generally simple and easily quantifiable?. [Well, sure, general_re. But you still ditch the question: From whence do ?rules? derive? And by rules, I mean both the laws of nature and the moral laws. Diamond queried you on your moral defense against an Eichmann. You had no good answer for him, really.

The natural laws came with Univ* - it's a package deal. As for "moral" laws, as you noted, I pointed out to Diamond that we could bootstrap them for ourselves. Whether you find that answer good or persuasive is up to you - persuasion is ultimately in your hands, and I have no control over it. I must note, however, that regardless of how good or persuasive it is perceived to be, it remains as yet unrefuted.

Point is, speaking logically, law can have only one source, not many. If there were more than one, ?law? wouldn?t be law; it would be one among different competing answers to the question: What is law?

But we already have multiple sources for the law. Unless you are going to tell me that the Constitution is also the literal word of God, then you have little choice but to accept yourself that law may come from God or it may come from Man. And within the Constitution itself is enshrined the notion of federalism, where there are two possible sources for the laws that govern me - Congress and the legislature of my state. And in reality, I have to obey laws from four sources - the laws of my town, my county, my state, and my country. And I won't even get into how the law differs from nation to nation and society to society. If there is only one source of law, how come we can't seem to agree on what the law is?

No, I think we abandoned the notion that law can only flow from one source at about the same time we abandoned the notion of the divine right of kings. Point to Univ* - it explains law better than God does. Game, set, match to Univ*.

One flawed counter-argument that is sometimes made is that a byte pattern isn't "greenness". The problem with this argument is that brains and computers are very different types of computing hardware and encode things very differently (though equivalently); computers "see" everything as bytes, just like the brain "sees" everything as neurons firing in a part of the network. The neuron activity that happens in response to a green wavelength that causes the experience of green is no more intrinsically "greenness" than a byte pattern is, except to that person perhaps, just like for the computer.

If I might point out a flaw in your counter-counter-argument, though, I think you're making a leap of assumption by saying that our experience of greenness is purely a result of a neuronal pattern within our brain. That'd be like saying that our experience of greenness is purely a result of the interaction of photons with the cones in our retinas. In other words, it ignores the possibility that there may be a further step in the process. You acknowledged at the beginning of your post that you have no way of objectively modeling our experience of color, so it seems somewhat contradictory for you to suggest that it is all summed up by a neuronal pattern. So you're perhaps right in saying, "The neuron activity that happens in response to a green wavelength that causes the experience of green is no more intrinsically 'greenness' than a byte pattern is," but that still leaves you with absolutely no basis for finishing that sentence by saying, "except to that person perhaps, just like for the computer."

My point is, we're experiencing something that can't be objectively described, and that is only one rather neutral example of the wide range of experiences that can't be objectively described. And sentience, and free will, and the soul all seem to fall into that same category. Indeed, logic would all but demand it.

There's one other thing you mentioned that I need to address. You said, "In the case of animals, we have many hardwired evolutionary biases that impact our impressions and tie perception into the parts of the brain responsible for emotions, creating complex perceptions that are beyond the objective." This cuts to the central point of my arguments. There's nothing about "complexity" that places anything beyond the objective, though it may place it beyond the capabilities of certain objective modeling systems - a point which you seem to know well from your own research. Therefore, if something is intrinsically incapable of being modeled objectively, one would have to conclude that it's not by virtue of its complexity, but by virtue of its inaccessibility for reasons unknown.

Let's all give a big ol' bump for Univ*, which has never let us down.

I have always understood, appreciated, and respected the mindset of those who do not acknowledge the existence of God on a personal level. Yet, if one refuses to acknowledge God in the world around us, then, at the very least, I would hope that one would acknowledge (omnipresent, in all fields of study, discovery, invention and observation) amazingly apparent order and deliberate design that cannot possibly be attributed to random chance, even a randomness that spans an eternity of time.

Very interesting and thoughtful post. Just a few comments.

I think the key in the passage I've quoted above is the word "apparent". Apparent order. Surely, as someone degreed in mathematics, you must realize that this argument is somewhat akin to the argument that says "Hey - my phone number is 555-1776! 1776 - what are the odds of that?" The answer is, of course, the same as the odds of getting any other particular phone number, but it is meaningful to us because we assign meaning to it. Does it have any "objective meaning"? I'm inclined to doubt it - it seems unlikely that the ghosts of the founding fathers are influencing Ma Bell in some particular way in order to remind us of their contributions.

"Order" is as much a matter of perception as anything else. We are, to borrow a phrase from Carl Sagan, "significance junkies." Our brains are structured to find patterns, it's what they're good at. Is it any wonder that we find them in all aspects of life?

As for finding the idea of the universe as eternal and uncaused to be amazing, I can only reiterate what I have been saying all along - it is no more amazing or unbelievable than the idea of an eternal, uncaused God. Both are equally rational positions to take. Choosing one over the other is a matter of faith, not one of reason. One may take the incredible diversity of life and the universe as evidence of a designer, or one may take it as a testament to the incredible power of enormous time combined with a few simple rules. I am again tempted to drag out examples of chaos theory, but as a degreed mathematician, I'll just leave you with a picture of Barnsley's fern, and an appreciation of how simple the mathematics to generate it really is - this particular picture is of a fern that has never existed anywhere on earth, outside a computer. God, or simple math? You decide:

Let's all give a big ol' bump for Univ*, which has never let us down.

Indeed, Univ* is always there. I look around, and I see it. And unlike some other metaphysical concepts I could name, Univ* doesn't make promises it won't keep. For example, like some other metaphysical concepts I could name, prayers to Univ* are answered pretty randomly. Of course, unlike some other metaphysical concepts I could name, Univ* never made any promises about answering prayers in the first place.

Naturally Univ* doesn't make promises at all, except perhaps for an implicit promise that the rules are fixed, but that serves very well to insure that Univ* never breaks a promise, unlike...well, you know ;)