Religion II

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

Clarks Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

So what sort of revelation would be proof of God's existence? What sort of manifestation could not be explained as an advanced technology of an alien race?

Google "Cargo Cult."

You tell me. After all, Since nothing is sure, then everything possible.
There is no escape from the logical implications to your beloved Uncertainty Principle. I know you dearly want to have your cake while eating it but, alas, you cannot.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

You tell me.

You are the one making the claim so the burden is yours.

Did you google "cargo cult" yet?

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

You are the one making the claim so the burden is yours.

Did you google "cargo cult" yet?

No! I'm not making any claim. Your beloved Uncertainty Principle logically IMPLIES that everything is possible, which certainly would have to include what I wrote yesterday.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

You never heard of Dawkins?

Yes, I've heard of him. I've stood in the same room with him. He signed my copy of his book.

Originally Posted by boxcar

I signaled him out, specifically, yesterday.

Yes, you singled him out, thus implying that, whatever shortcomings he has (if any), all atheists share those shortcomings. Was that not your intended meaning? And you did not enumerate his shortcomings, whatever you perceive those to be.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

No! I'm not making any claim.

In #4902 you wrote:

Originally Posted by boxcar

Since nothing is certain, then everything is possible -- including the existence of God which he would manifest by revealing himself.

Emphasis mine.

That certainly sounds like a claim to me.

Originally Posted by boxcar

Your beloved Uncertainty Principle logically IMPLIES that everything is possible, which certainly would have to include what I wrote yesterday.

There is a great difference between "possible" and "probable" which you seem to constantly miss or ignore. If God "manifests" himself in a trillion, trillion, trillion years what difference would that make to us here today?

Why doesn't he manifest himself now? We have world wide mass communication so the word would get around quickly? Why reveal himself to a relatively small group of primitive, desert dwelling, goat herders and keep the rest of humanity ignorant?

And if he did manifest himself how would we be able to tell he is not just an alien Captain Kirk with a really fancy space ship?

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

In #4902 you wrote:
Emphasis mine.

That certainly sounds like a claim to me.
There is a great difference between "possible" and "probable" which you seem to constantly miss or ignore. If God "manifests" himself in a trillion, trillion, trillion years what difference would that make to us here today?

Why doesn't he manifest himself now? We have world wide mass communication so the word would get around quickly? Why reveal himself to a relatively small group of primitive, desert dwelling, goat herders and keep the rest of humanity ignorant?

And if he did manifest himself how would we be able to tell he is not just an alien Captain Kirk with a really fancy space ship?

Oh, it is a claim based on the logical inference to the Uncertainty Principle.

And you certainly weren't all that concerned about probabilities when I presented the underwater shark cage problem. You still claimed that your death by drowning would NOT be certain.

So, yes, "possible" covers a much broader range but so what, since nothing is certain, then everything is possible, remember? Even if it stands one chance in a gazillion. Recall what you also said earlier: Give something enough time and a large enough sample "even the most improbable event will likely occur". YOUR words, Mr. Actor. So before you go preaching to me about the difference between "possible" and "probable", try to remember what you wrote.

And I already answered your very much anticipated objection of, "Why doesn't he manifest himself now?". First of all, he has. But you and all other unbelievers are so self-deceived and spiritually blinded to that revelation you cannot see it. He has revealed himself through creation, has revealed himself in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, and last but not least has revealed himself through his revelation to his prophets and apostles as recorded in holy writ. And there is no way under this sun that you can be certain He hasn't done all these things. Since nothing is sure, everything is possible, including your own spiritual blindness, your ongoing state of spiritual death and self-deception.

You own this utterly absurd and stupid philosophy/theory lock, stock and barrel, so grow some gonads and live with it, already! Don't run from it; but be a man and embrace it and own it.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

And you certainly weren't all that concerned about probabilities when I presented the underwater shark cage problem. You still claimed that your death by drowning would NOT be certain.

Right. There's a one in a gazillion (your word) chance that I would survive.

Originally Posted by boxcar

Recall what you also said earlier: Give something enough time and a large enough sample "even the most improbable event will likely occur".

Right. So how much is a gazillion? 1E50 perhaps?

Originally Posted by boxcar

And I already answered your very much anticipated objection of, "Why doesn't he manifest himself now?". First of all, he has. ... He has revealed himself through creation, ...

Nope.

Originally Posted by boxcar

... has revealed himself in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, ...

Who probably never existed. There's a one in a gazillion chance that he did.

Originally Posted by boxcar

... and last but not least has revealed himself through his revelation to his prophets and apostles as recorded in holy writ.

Scripture proves nothing.. Oh, wait. There's a one in a gazillion chance it does.

Originally Posted by boxcar

And there is no way under this sun that you can be certain He hasn't done all these things.

Yeah. There's a one in a gazillion chance he did at least one of them.

Originally Posted by boxcar

You own this utterly absurd and stupid philosophy/theory lock, stock and barrel, so grow some gonads and live with it, already! Don't run from it; but be a man and embrace it ...

Oh, but I do embrace it. Whatever would make you think I don't.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

Right. There's a one in a gazillion (your word) chance that I would survive.

Right! You would have to die a gazillion deaths to get one shark cage event to fail and prove you could survive underwater indefinitely and, thereby, prove the validity of the Uncertainty Principle. Makes sense. As long as that sample is large enough and of course...you don't run out of time...or air.

But I do have one question about all those deaths you would have to suffer: Each time you come back to life, would that be due to reincarnation or resurrection?

Who probably never existed. There's a one in a gazillion chance that he did.

Now you're catching on. And this makes his existence not only possible but "very likely". (See below.)

Scripture proves nothing.. Oh, wait. There's a one in a gazillion chance it does.[/quote]

See...you're forgetting your words again:

Correct. It's an instance of the statistical principle that, given a large enough sample and enough time, even the most improbable event will eventually occur.

Yeah. There's a one in a gazillion chance he did at least one of them.

Oh, but I do embrace it. Whatever would make you think I don't.

Because you keep forgetting just how likely even the most improbable event will eventually occur. (See the above quote.)

What part of "most improbable" and "will eventually occur", don't you get?

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

But I do have one question about all those deaths you would have to suffer: Each time you come back to life, would that be due to reincarnation or resurrection?
...

What part of "most improbable" and "will eventually occur", don't you get?

It's what is known as a thought experiment. Have you heard of thought experiment. I bet your hero Dr. Hugh Ross has. The "Chinese Room" is a thought experiment.

Your "Shark Tank Experiment" is a thought experiment. It has to be because there is no practical way to physically perform the experiment more than once.

By the way the Uncertainty Principe has been tested in the lab, confirmed, and has passed peer review.

Before moving on I must ask you two questions. The first is:

Is it possible for one thing, say a particle, to be in two different places at the same time and in the same sense?

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

What part of "most improbable" and "will eventually occur", don't you get?

What part of "large enough sample" don't you get?

Oh, and there's also "enough time". Didn't you say there's no such thing as eternity, implying that time is finite?

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

It's what is known as a thought experiment. Have you heard of thought experiment. I bet your hero Dr. Hugh Ross has. The "Chinese Room" is a thought experiment.

Your "Shark Tank Experiment" is a thought experiment. It has to be because there is no practical way to physically perform the experiment more than once.

By the way the Uncertainty Principe has been tested in the lab, confirmed, and has passed peer review.

Before moving on I must ask you two questions. The first is:

Is it possible for one thing, say a particle, to be in two different places at the same time and in the same sense?

What do you mean by "sense"?

Yes, my "Shark Tank Experiment" can only be performed once phsycially, and after your untimely demise (since you would run out of time and air), it would falsify the Uncertainty Principle because your death would have always been a foregone conclusion, i.e. it was always certain. (Ditto for dumping you out of a high flying airplane over rugged terrain.) Therefore, the Uncertainty Principle, at the very least, does not and cannot apply to all life. This is a classic mistake scientists of your ilk constantly make. You take something that is in the science category and try to apply it to philosophical, religious or metaphysical realities. In essence you're trying to measure all things in life with one instrument -- a tablespoon, let's say. One size always fits everything in your world because you think the one and only reality there is is physical. This is the ultimate, unmitigated arrogance of many in the world of science; for they think that Science is the fount of all knowledge and will eventually have all the answers. Ironically, of this they are quite certain. Just look how often you have appealed to the gaps of the high priests of scientism when something is currently not known.

Now, that I have falsified the Uncertainty Principle, as you have represented it, my challenge to you is to falsify the Law of Noncontradiction.

Good luck with that.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

What do you mean by "sense"?

Seems to me that I recently asked you the same question.

I only included "in the same sense" because I anticipated that you would equivocate if I left it out. So delete "and in the same sense" from the question and answer it, hopefully without equivocating.

The rest of your post looks like fun but I'll wait for an answer to my question.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

Seems to me that I recently asked you the same question.

I only included "in the same sense" because I anticipated that you would equivocate if I left it out. So delete "and in the same sense" from the question and answer it, hopefully without equivocating.

The rest of your post looks like fun but I'll wait for an answer to my question.

Oh...I "equivocated" the same way you did when you asked me a couple of weeks ago to define what I meant by the phrase "in the same sense"?

And I already answered your question because I implied in my last post that your question was a non sequitur, having nothing to do with high and daring jumps out of an airplane or being locked in a shark cage underwater. You were trying to apply a science category to other disciplines in life. In other words, your science question doesn't apply to these "thought" experiments, and was only asked to distract and deflect from the unenviable position in which you have put yourself.

But since you brought up "equivocation", it appears Bohr and Heisenberg played cutsie with their definition of their principle since they refused to decide on a single terminology or any definite set of terminologies, for that matter. This kind of wiggle room is spacious enough for an armada of equivocation to float through when necessary. And many scientists excel at this "art" when they call "something" "nothing", for example.

The notion of “uncertainty” occurs in several different meanings in the physical literature. It may refer to a lack of knowledge of a quantity by an observer, or to the experimental inaccuracy with which a quantity is measured, or to some ambiguity in the definition of a quantity, or to a statistical spread in an ensemble of similarly prepared systems. Also, several different names are used for such uncertainties: inaccuracy, spread, imprecision, indefiniteness, indeterminateness, indeterminacy, latitude, etc. As we shall see, even Heisenberg and Bohr did not decide on a single terminology for quantum mechanical uncertainties. Forestalling a discussion about which name is the most appropriate one in quantum mechanics, we use the name “uncertainty principle” simply because it is the most common one in the literature.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/

By the way, would you say that evolution is a good example of the Uncertainty Principle?

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Oh...I "equivocated" the same way you did when you asked me a couple of weeks ago to define what I meant by the phrase "in the same sense"?

And I already answered your question because I implied in my last post that your question was a non sequitur, having nothing to do with high and daring jumps out of an airplane or being locked in a shark cage underwater. You were trying to apply a science category to other disciplines in life. In other words, your science question doesn't apply to these "thought" experiments, and was only asked to distract and deflect from the unenviable position in which you have put yourself.

But since you brought up "equivocation", it appears Bohr and Heisenberg played cutsie with their definition of their principle since they refused to decide on a single terminology or any definite set of terminologies, for that matter. This kind of wiggle room is spacious enough for an armada of equivocation to float through when necessary. And many scientists excel at this "art" when they call "something" "nothing", for example.

The notion of “uncertainty” occurs in several different meanings in the physical literature. It may refer to a lack of knowledge of a quantity by an observer, or to the experimental inaccuracy with which a quantity is measured, or to some ambiguity in the definition of a quantity, or to a statistical spread in an ensemble of similarly prepared systems. Also, several different names are used for such uncertainties: inaccuracy, spread, imprecision, indefiniteness, indeterminateness, indeterminacy, latitude, etc. As we shall see, even Heisenberg and Bohr did not decide on a single terminology for quantum mechanical uncertainties. Forestalling a discussion about which name is the most appropriate one in quantum mechanics, we use the name “uncertainty principle” simply because it is the most common one in the literature.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/

By the way, would you say that evolution is a good example of the Uncertainty Principle?

Is it possible for one thing, say a particle, to be in two different places at the same time?

[Actor]

Proof of the uncertainty principle.