Jason wrote:ApostateltsopA,
I'd like to apologize for cutting into your leisure time, but hopefully you're gaining some measure of entertainment out of this discussion. Perhaps not on par with gaming, but still.
No worries, I enjoy this sort of thing too, however I've got a major time comittment elsewhere for the next 4 weeks or so and will be rare here until I can get that squared away.
Jason wrote:
I'd like to comment on the issue of meaning and magic. You asked if I need to believe in magic (or even eternal qualities) in order to derive meaning. The answer is no. Even within Christian doctrine, my wife will not be my wife forever. So I'm inclined to cherish her while our partnership is contained to this life. Whatever lay beyond the horizon is somewhat unknown (Jesus was intentionally scant on details) but I can still cherish the temporal reality we inhabit.
However, I do not consider this to be comparable to the meaning one conjures within atheism. As a Christian, I take it on authority that life has value and meaning. So in that respect, my own inclination to find meaning is given objective confirmation. The eternal weight of that value bears little consequence to my way of thinking. If God had not offered us eternal life, I'd still be persuaded to treat life as precious because an authority greater than my own delusion has confirmed it. But a happy delusion is still a delusion, no matter how well you can articulate your love for your daughter. Now you said something a little disturbing, and I hope I'm simply misunderstanding you. You said that if your daughter had a brain injury, she would be somehow less than who she currently is. This idea perfectly illustrates the difference between our views. Do you find mentally retarded individuals to be less than human? Or do you just mean they have less cognitive function? The latter seems hardly worthy of mention.
There are three things in these two paragraphs I'm picking up on. In the first paragraph it seems you are capable of finding meaning and value in temporary things. The second is your use of the word delusion. Why did you choose that word? The final one is that I understand our personalities and personas to be a function of our bodies, particularly our brains and the hormones produced elsewhere. So if someone's brain is damaged they are diminished in capacity in the same way that someone who loses an arm can't lift weights or type in the same capacity. I don't devalue them as a person. I just recognize our selves as disturbingly frail.
Jason wrote:
While it's certainly true that our brains influence our thoughts and emotions, the reverse is also (bizarrely) true. I can decide, on a whim, to think about something rather horrible and my brain responds to my conjured-up image in order to produce stress hormones. Who is the one who decided to produce a horrific thought? Isn't it, in fact, the neuroscientists who tell us to be suspicious of anyone claiming they understand these functions of the brain? At best, we can postulate that the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are engaged in some kind of complex interplay. Which is science-speak for, "Yeah, it's magic."
I don't agree with your assessment of magic, but I'm more interested in your description of how you can think of something and then your brain does something. Where do you think you are thinking from? I read that as my brain thinks something and then my brain releases chemicals.
Jason wrote:
Now, on the subject of design I think you have misunderstood my argument from physicality. I'm making the point that you cannot merely appeal to a complex system as an argument for its existence. Of course we can infer design from complex systems since we have countless analogs. And your argument against my examples seems to be, "We know how those systems work, so no designer needed." That's why I'm pointing out that appeal to the system itself is not an argument against design, but an appeal to arranged complexity is a valid argument for design.
I disagree that "arranged complexity" is an indicator of design. In your examples when you want to argue for the use of arranged complexity you contrast something designed by a human with a less complex item found naturally. What I tried to explain is that we recognize human design, not from the complexity, but from our knowledge of humanity, and human design. Remember the hallmark of good design is simplicity, not complexity. As an example, a crescent wrench is a very simple design but a highly useful one. A crowbar is similarly simple, but tremendously handy.
However, the argument from design has a greater flaw. If you posit a designer, than the word designed becomes synonymous with the word exists. Everything that exists would be a product of the universe designer. So everything shows the hallmarks of design, which is to say nothing is at all identifiable as designed because there is nothing to contrast it with.
Jason wrote:
For example, we know that something cannot be derived from nothing. Matter does not come from non-matter and life does not come from non-life. That's what my silly Starbucks parable was meant to illustrate. We know this observationally and logically. So to claim that even a single molecule, much less a complex arrangement of molecules, came into existence all on its own strikes me as the magical claim here. Appeal to a designer, no matter how unlikely the sound of it, makes better sense of the data.
I see this claim often, but it is not something we know. We don't have an example of nothing. To have nothing we need to not just have no matter, but also no energy, and no space, and no time. What we know is that items do not seem to spontaneously generate in space and time when surrounded by matter, energy or in a vacuum. That isn't at all the same thing.
If you really want to see some brain bending on the concept of 'nothing' there is a You Tube video where several quantum physicists talk about what nothing is and what that may mean for the universe. It's interesting but not really needed here. All I need here is to point out that we don't have any nothing to observe, and observation of it would have to be done with mathmatics, since we can't go to a place without time, space, energy and matter.
Jason wrote:
I do want to sincerely apologize for lumping you into the Dawkins camp and assuming you came here to evangelize atheism. When atheists arrive at a forum like this, the unfortunate assumption is that they are not here to play nice. You're an exception to the rule and I'm glad to see you're not of that ilk.
Thank you, I'm really interested in conversation. I'm trying to engage in that without being offensive. I am aware that in a lot of ways challenging some of these ideas feels like a personal attack, and I'm trying hard to keep it clear that it is the ideas, not the people I'm challenging.