What is your philosophy's kryptonite?

I'm not a philosopher, but yours is probably the most intriguing question in my life. What intrigues me is that when you drill down from the vastness of the universe to the billions of people on the planet who have lived and died, the brain has produced MY consciousness. Why am I me and not someone else, when a minute change in 'something' and I am not me? Why does "me" exist at all? Why is mine a stand-alone consciousness? Is mine really a stand-alone consciousness? All too big for me, by golly, even if science can show that the brain produces consciousness.

 

The cosmological constant. It's a set a numbers that make up the physics of the universe, and they needed to be exact for life to form. That makes it seem purposeful and non-coincidental. Of course, there is no proof that the constants were set by someone. It's merely speculation, one way or the other. And no religion in the world predicted they'd exist, so it's fair to say that none of them are right.

 

What evidence would you accept?

 

On the problem of consciousness, I think the formulation of what exactly consciousness itself entails makes it a bit of a straw-man. It rests on the assumption that not simply experiences, but qualia exist, which materialists simply reject (seeing as they posit immaterial components of experience).

 

I'll know it when I see it.

 

rather vague, what is your criteria then? Even if say jesus came down in a cloud with light all around would you not think your crazy, what would constitute evidence?

 

I think you are asking to blend science and religion.

Science has a notion of evidence, but science has nothing to address the existence or nonexistence of some supernatural being. And, religion has very different rules of evidence.

The idea of using one to say something about the other (such as searching for scientific evidence of God) hits me as a mistaken course of action.

People talk about qualia, etc., but they often don't even agree on definition, let alone do they have anything that science would consider outside the possibility of natural processes.

The best direction for heading off conflict on this issue seems to me to be one of recognizing that the two are separate realms (as stated by the current and previous Pope). They have different fundamental assumptions, different logic, different rules of evidence, and they aren't even focused on answering the same kind of question (how vs. why). So, our imperfect workers in these two realms aren't likely to propose the same answers.


We need to recognize that there are situations where it is important to recognize the value of science, as science isn't perfect, but it gives us far better understanding of how our physical world works.

And, there are other cases, such as desire for everlasting life and hell avoidance where appeal to science just isn't going to be satisfactory.

 

As an agnostic deist, I feel that my position is pretty bulletproof ("I do not know" is fairly unassailable, and if there is a god, a Deistic one does not conflict with our scientific understanding, and is unscathed by the Problem of Evil). But, to echo an earlier poster, there is a real lack of doctrine and direction there. Like, it all makes perfect sense intellectually, but what am I supposed to DO with it? Perhaps nothing, and a lack of "meaning" and "purpose" may just be something that one has to learn to accept.

 

I think there are secular philosophers through history who have given good direction - direction that is adequately challenging to consume our possible efforts regardless of whether there is a god. In fact, a lot of the new testament message of love and support for our fellow man is inspiring. We should do more of that! I don't have to believe that a god inspired that in order to recognize the logic and value of the advice.

Some say religion answers "why", but the answers religion gives to that seem no better than the answers from science.

Why would a god wait for the infinite time before our universe, create creatures running around in torment, declare some winners for preservation, and then blow it all away only to face the following eternity with those creations that were preserved? I realize that's a disrespectful way of putting it, but there are real "why" questions in there. And, religion's answer often amounts to simply stating that "God works in mysterious ways" - which seems to me to be a full surrender to the central "why" question religion has been created to address, reducing it to "who" did it.

And it seems like a cop out (or worse) to say that I won't know the answer until I'm dead!!

I know the scientific answer - there were stupendous numbers of planets, abiogenesis happened on at least one of them, evolution happened. Then, one of the billions of results (of a process that we can witness creating stuff) is brains in a very few species (so far) that are strong enough to ponder "why". I can believe that answer, because I can see actual evidence.

Yes, that answer didn't explain "why", either. But, I'm not convinced there is a "why" - or a "who".

Agnostic - absolutely. There can't be any kind of proof that a supernatural "who" doesn't exist. We would need to be supernatural to do that.

 

So you are in fact stating that no event, no evidence can change your mind as to the nature of our universe. Yet you accept supernaturaleque things like dark matter and dark energy (We know its there because of the unexplained influence it has on things we can see....and the universe expanding intowho knows what..... but a higher being is out of the picture because you only can imagine this God as depicted by a certain religion.

 

We could start with an introduction, for one. A conversation might be enough, or it might not. A display of actual godly powers would be great. If I am part of a crowd that witnesses that display, that would be even better. How about if I am given a small and harmless amount of those powers, solely for the sake of reference and knowing that such power is a real thing? There should be a tremendous number of things I can't even conceive of that would convince me, so my original answer sticks, whether it satisfies you or not: I'll know it when I see it.

 

No, I certainly didn't say that!!

I don't agree that dark matter and dark energy are supernatural in the sense that a spirit world is supernatural. We have physical evidence for the former that fully qualifies as being scientific. Physics has always depended on indirect detection techniques, as some things are too huge or two small or have some other property that makes "seeing" them directly an impossibility. And, yes, there are a LOT of questions that science hasn't answered - which is also not an indication of there being a supernatural intelligence involved.

What is our universe "epanding into"? There is evidence that the universe is expanding. Pretty much everything related to "outside our universe" or "before our universe" is not science - even thought there are people working on figuring out how to detect such things. It becomes science as (or if) we find ways of gathering evidence.

There is no scientific evidence for there being a god. ID tries to form an argument based on odds of particular outcomes - like "the odds of X happening are just too long unless there is a god"). But, they are trying to assign odds to outcomes when we don't understand the process. That's too weak. Plus, we're only beginning to understand the amount of time available for events (such as abiogenesis) to occur.

For an example of assigning odds when we don't know the process, consider early religions which believed that the sun traveling across the sky was clear evidence of god. After all, what are the odds that the sun would do that without there being a god?? In fact, many thought the sun IS god. Today, we know the process - including that it is the earth that is doing the moving, not the sun. So, the odds that this could happen without a god doing the moving are not nearly so "astronomical" as they thought.

 

the biggest kryptonite for any religion or philosphy is ignorance. Unfortunately we all are in one form or another.

I am also an agnostic atheist pragmatist.
I agree that sometimes a superficial assessment or distorted picture of "appearances" can be consequentially misleading and damaging. But then that is also a rather universal human trait, isn't it?

 

Nice to know there is another one around. Sorry that post was so weak, I guess I was trying to come up with something people would understand and ended up just writing something pointless.

Which may point to a real weakness in pragmatism, in that it’s out of touch with the current popular philosophy, which is existentialism. This makes it hard for us to communicate with most people. We value function they value self-expression.

Existentialism assumes that everyone’s motivation is self-expression. This makes every persons actions suspect. If a persons ideals are false or if they lack passion of conviction everything they do, think or say can be dismissed. While existentialists don’t completely ignore how well an idea works, they ascribe to a “Fruit of the poisonous tree” idea when valuing them. No matter how well something may seem to work if it comes from a suspect source it is usually rejected.

Us pragmatist end up scratching our heads and talking to the wall, (or screaming at it), if we don’t constantly remember this.

 

No The main problem is that religious indoctrination begins before the individual is capable of critical thinking. Athiesm/ Agnsticism has to play catchup and rely on logic to counter deeply imbedded programming.

 

I agree but your point is also part of my point, religion is set up to indoctrinate.