PeterJ

Seems to me that Justin is entitled to be an agnostic. One cannot be agnostic and also dismiss the possibility of a creator (or a causeless beginning, or no beginning, etc). Of course, a creator would not solve the causal problem, just push it back a step, but it doesn't make the problem any worse.

For Buddhists et al there would be no noumenon. Do you not know this? You are not talking about mysticism but your own worldview. Mysticism's 'doctrine of the mean' is not called this for nothing. Quite so. I would never ever assert that the world is anything. I would state that according to logical analysis a metaphysics of unity is the only view that cannot be reduced to absurdity. This is a demonstrable and testable claim, not an appeal to personal experience, and you cannot falsify it. I'm afraid I rarely do. It seem to me you regularly state things that contradict each other, and your mysticism is heterodox as your point about noumenon illustrates. I have never come across your particular combination of views and do not know how to discuss them with you since all you do is appeal to private knowledge. It's an approach that I did not expect to come across on this site and it seems to leave no room for discussion or even the slightest possibility of error. I have no objections to your view but please do not call them mysticism or gnosticism. You are still in the world of duality, this is clear, in fact you state it, and the result is a misrepresentation. It is not a question of whether your view is correct or not, just that you're flying under a false flag. It makes the issues confused and imho does the opposite of lending credibility to the Jesus of the NT and the NH library. This is a science site and I think we should respect that, and not push our views on the basis that our revelations are deeper than those of other people. This approach may be fine elsewhere but it is going to be massively counterproductive here. At any rate it prevents me from engaging in any real discussion. All I can do is keep pointing out that your view is idiosyncratic, just in case anyone thinks you're right about mysticism and writes it off as a result. But I'll try to bite my tongue more often. I'll bite it in this thread anyway.

What objective base? It's all smoke and mirrors. You seem to argue for and against the same view, which is confusing. Yes. But these are not the words of an objective God. I think you might like to check the meaning of 'anthropomorphic.' He cannot be real and anthropomorphic, or real and a quale. You wouldn't need to know what going on out there. A unity cannot be said to exist. The situation would be more subtle. Well no. As you don't go by logic you wouldn't. I go by strict logic and revelation, and see no need for the idea that revelations contradict logic. They might contradict ordinary logic or our presupositions of what is 'logical', but the idea that the universe is 'illogical' is not necessary if it reduces to a unity, since no contradictions would be possible. Anyway, as I value logic, (having created God He then gave me a brain) and you don't, so we're going nowhere with this. Still, clarified a few issues.

This goes against much of what you've said previously so now I'm confused. I thought you were a theist. Now you say God is a creation of the Holy Spirit and therefore not a ctreator God but a created phenomenon. I agree, but now can't understand what you have against Gnosticism, Kabbalism, Buddhism etc, which merely propose the same idea. Maybe. But you won't find Jesus telling us that God is an objective phenomenon, and not many theists would agree that their God is an anthopomorphic fantasy. If God is anthropomorphic then everyone will anthropomorphise Him in a different way. I would agree with you that He is just such a fantasy but when I suggested this you disagreed. So I'm a bit confused. How can one believe in a fantasy? Or are you suggesting that He is real and also anthropomorphic? This would seem to be a contradiction.

Strange. I thought this was the view you opposed. Seems like we agree after all that God is a psychological phenomenon. Yes. But he does not say God is objective or anthropomorphic. Perhaps you just meant that this was how most theists see Him.

Immortal I presume you are voicing your opinions here, and simply forgot to qualify your pronouncements. What do you mean here by 'You'? If God creates you and you create God, then presumably you don't mean the same thing by 'you' in each half of this statement, for then then idea would be absurd. Are you equating one of these 'you's with Holy Ghost? That would make some sense. But how can I believe in a God that I create? If your God is anthropomorhic and objective that's fine. But where does Jesus ask us to believe in any such God? He did not, as Astrocat5 points out. You are not describing the God of Jesus, and probably for the reason Jesus gave as quoted above. .

Here we go again. Now Roger Penrose is an idiot. I think I see what the question is getting at. If you take away all qualia, is there anything left over? I would say yes, immortal would say no, and I would expect Penrose to agree with immortal. I would add more but don't want to start an argument.

Hello Ankush04 I ended up in some trouble here so left the thread to fade away, but I do want to understand this better so will keep going. Let's come back to the twin primes issue. Is what follows correct? The nontrivial zeros of Z correlate with correction-terms or maybe 'harmonics' that can modify Euler's dice-based prediction for the density of primes so as to make it more accurate. This would allow us to predict the density to infinity, if only we could prove that all the nontrivial zeros of Z are on the R's line, where the real part of the input is 1/2. Is that about it?

Okay, immortal. I tried.

There would be no secret knowledge according to the view I'm defending. There would be just the knowledge we have and the knowledge we do not. 'The Unknown is not the Unknowable' would be the orthodox Upanishadic view. As a view of our ability as human beings to acquire true and certain knowledge concerning the nature of the cosmos, the nature of Nature, as it were, it is an astonishingly optimistic view. It would be impossible to keep this knowledge secret. This is the whole doctrine right there, that the knowledge is there if we look for it, or stumble on it. It would not even be necessary to read or write, as we see from the earliest written texts that recorded the earlier oral traditions. For the view you object to, the knowledge would not be secret, just incommunicable. Many of the Brahman's objected to the later view of the vedas, and the advaita view is seen as a heresy in some quarters. The view you attack is not mine. If you believe that there is secret knowledge then how can you speak with authority about what it is? The doctrine of mysticism, the view to which you so strongly object, states on every page that we do not 'get knowledge from people'. People may help or hinder our search for it, but as Zen master Honghzi, one of the patriarchs of Zen, puts it, 'We cannot borrow knowledge'. Not the sort of knowledge we're talking about here. This sort of knowledge , as you rightly say, would depend on what we might call 'revelations'. That is, we would gain knowledge by empirical enquiry. We might call the results revelations, and even physicists do this sometimes for their experiments, but this would suggest that we must wait around for a bolt from the blue to know anything. These goatherders and carpenters and atomic physicists we've been discussing here propose that we do not have to wait around for revelations but can regularly practice having them. This is basically the whole message, that if you want to know the truth then you can. Nobody else can do it for you. It is true that very often knowledge was kept secret within certain traditions and sects, since at certain times and places in history it would have been very dangerous to let the knowledge out, leading to persecution and even death for the members, and perhaps sometimes for a teacher it might be a matter of taking one thing at a time, but no knowledge would be innacessible to anyone. Indeed, some schools say that in the end omniscience is unavoidable, that we inevitably end up where we began. I don't object to you arguing for your view, immortal, everybody's entitiled to do that, but, rather, to your knowledge claims. You claim to know a lot, and yet do not even seem to know that the builders of the great civilisations of the Indus valley were more than goatherders. It doesn't add up. Since I'm here, I feel I should demonstrate that not all proponents of religion share your view. It pains me when on a science forum someone claims religion has no implications for physics, that it must be approached through revelations, that there is a secret knowledge of the Brahmins and so on, since all this is bound to make the whole thing seem utterly implausible. Do you not see that a claim to secret knowledge is a claim to ignorance? Or is it your own secret knowledge of which you speak? Oh yes. Very good question. If you look at your posts from the perspective of a sceptical scientist, then they reduce to your interpretations of a certain small group of scriptures and your personal revelations. This does not mean they can dismiss your view, but it makes it uninteresting, untestable, professionally irrelevant, scientifically useless. On a religion forum I would not be arguing with you but asking you about your practice and your revelations. Here this would be completely innapropriate and annoy just about everybody. My approach is the opposite of this. I do not expect anybody here to take the slightest notice of claims to knowledge, mine or anyone else's, and can explain and defend my view without having to mention the word religion, simply in terms of metaphysics and physics, logic and mathematics. This does not mean my view is correct, but it means that at a stretch it can be called scientific, as well as religious. This makes it fair for me to promote it here, since I am providing a target that can be hit from within the sciences. I should not have used the word waffle. What you say is not waffle. Of course not. I was pointing out that it is waffle in the context of this forum, which is not very important in the long run. Please don't think my view would eliminate the Father of Christ. This is not the case. It is just that we have very different ideas about the meaning of these words. My feeling is that you interpret the view I propose as being inimicable with your beliefs, but that this is mostly due to a misinterpretation of that view (and that of Schroedinger et al). A different interpretation would see most differences as either quite minor, or on issues about which neither of us can speak with any confidence.

By that I suppose you mean a philsopher of whom immortal approves. That will limit the field somewhat. Yes. well, I suppose it's a bit much to expect a simple carpenter to have any wisdom to offer, and perhaps goatherders have the same limitations. Or perhaps not. Do you really think that people just read the books and accept what is said. Ridiculous. I see you have not understood the doctrine. Again, I would recommend Professor Radhakrishnan's book for clear view. It's a garbled version of them, yes. As stated, however, this view is daft. Does anyone do this? I hope not. Mind you, it would depend on what you mean by 'irrational'. Perhaps you mean that it uses a non-ordinary logical structure, which would be true, or that some things cannot be known by logic, which would also be true. Doesn't mean we should switch off out brains when thinking about these things. Well yes. If these are distinct phenomena then obviously they are not unified. I await the proof. I find it astonishing, your pnchenat for sidismissing all scholars and seekers who disagree with you as ignorant fools. Wher I come from this is called arrogance, a neceesary pre-requisite for dogmatism. Oh, he lacked revelations did he? I didn't know that. Perhaps you could provide the evidence. No? Well there's a surprise. It makes me laugh like a drain that you want to substitute your muddled view for which you have provided no argument or evidence for that of a truly great thinker. What sort of reaction do you expect to this sort of approach? It is demonstrable in metaphysics that the universe is a unity. Now, that does not mean it is one, it just means that this is the best explanation for metaphysical problems. Thus when I claim that Schroedinger is right I do it with some argument and evidence behind me. If all I had were personal experiences than I would not waste everybody's time by arguing for them here. Why on earth should anybody take what you say seriously when on a thread asking for evidence for your view you insist that there isn't any, or none that can be pointed to? Evidence evidence evidence. There's enough waffle. I think there are also agnostics who just admit they don't know the answer. After all, it would be a giant leap in the dark to believe that we cannot know either way, almost a big a leap as the atheist or theist have to take.

Yes. I thought this was how you formed your views. By dismissing everyone else's as not as well informed as yours before reading what they have to say. I have no time for this sort of approach. Read him or stop misleading people about him. You have not made an objection to his view yet, just said that you don't agree with him for reasons not given, other than some self-avowedly uninformed speculations about his knowledge. Your insistence that we must believe you about all this when you provide no argunment or evidence makes these discussions nearly impossible. if I were a religious sceptic your posts would make my view even more entrenched. I'd be asking for the thread to be closed. You oppose other views by assuming that other people have no real understanding, but just recite passages from books they've read. Unless, that is, they happen to agree with you. Maybe Schroedinger actually understood the issues better than you. I think so. Forty years Schoedinger studied these issues and you arrogantly write him off as a fool without reading him. Enough said.

Good grief. We're talking about a scientific genius here, not a blithering idiot. I suppose someone who hasn't read him might believe this about him. Anyone else would have to conclude that the writer of this statement is an idiot with an axe to grind. READ HIM, for goodness sake, and you'll find that he was not a fool. I posted some reasoned argument from him a while back and there's plenty more. I don't understand why so many scientists believe Schroedinger was an idiot, and can only guess it is a defensive reaction. His essays 'What is Life' and 'What is Mind' are streets ahead of most scientific thinkers. Anyway, this is second-hand tittle-tattle. If you have an objection to his view why don't you make it? This one is demonstrably so far wide of the mark it's not worth discussing. To me this seems a much better objection than simply insisting He does not exist. If He does exist then what follows? If He does not exist then what follows? Even if He exists it may still be true that Christian doctrine is incorrect. Maybe the Incas got it right. After all, if Christian doctrine as taught by the Roman Church is true then most of religion is utter nonsense.

So, what evidence are we going to look for? Evidence that we cannot walk on water? Unless we take the trouble to interpret the scriptures, to separate the ultimate from the relative, the didactic from the literal, the mythological from the historical, the allegorical from the metaphysical, the outer from the inner, the smoke and mirrors from the essential teachings, and quite a few other things, then we will have no idea of what would count as evidence or counterevidence, and looking for it would be a waste of time. If we were applying for research grant we wouldn't stand a chance. We could do it your way if we were looking for counter-evidence for Chistianity, and this is the way we usually go about it. We try to falsify it, and chip away at its claims one by one. But to find evidence for Christianity would inevitably require that we define what Christianity is in the first place. This would require examining at least the two main interpretations of the New Testament teachings. They have very different ramifications, make very different claims and predictions, and are so different that many Christians have been killed by other Christians convinced that the other person's Christianty is the work of the Devil. So we must decide which one we going to seek evidence for. And then we must investigate its ramifications for the sciences, in order to tease out some testable predictions. And then we'll have some idea of what evidence we're looking for. Or so it seems to me.

It seems very obvious to me that we cannot look for evidence of a religious doctrine without knowing what that doctrine is. No? Without an interpretation we'd have no means of deciding what would be evidence and what would not. If we look for evidence of gravity, first we decide what gravity is and then we know what evidence we're looking for. It would certainly be useless looking for evidence for claims that religion does not make. Without an interpretation we'd have no idea even whether we're looking for evidence of immortal's Christianity or mine, and this is going to affect the result of our search. I don't know why immortal believes that Schroedinger's view is not based on any degree of real understanding, but I've heard worse said about him. Presumably, immortal, you've read Schroedinger. I find that most people dismiss him without bothering. Your comment suggests you've done the same. I am very sure that Schroedinger was a practitioner and not just a dilettante. His words make this clear. At any rate, we can disagree strongly about the relation between science and religion, since I think there is one. Indeed. if there is no relationship then it must be because religion says nothing of any substance about the universe we live in. In reality religion says a lot about it. I never understand the idea that religion can make all these bold claims about the world and then say that these would have nothing to do with science. Of course they would. They are claims about the same world that the sciences study. I feel that if one is sceptical then it is exactly the right approach to the Christian message, to look for evidence, and if one is a scientist then one is bound to start with the sciences. But the first job is to decide what that message actually is, more or less, otherwise the whole endeavour will be a waste of time. Once we have identified some clear claims then we can tease out some of their ramifications and test them.

Interpretation is not evidence. Interpretation is what you have to do before you look for evidence. True. But I make no apologies for them. 60%!! Good grief. I knew things were odd over there but 60% is frightening. I stand corrected. However, not all these religions you mention require that we serve gods or even pantheons of them. Btw, if you want to check out perhaps the most careful examination of the view I endorse that I've ever come across, then it's Radhakrishnan's 'Philosophy of the Upanishads'. I think if you read this you'll see that this discussion of gods, miracles and walking on water is rather beside the point in deciding what to make of religion. Many religious people find them implausible.

Armstrong and Pagels have all that you might require. Not so sure about Freke and Gandy. But this is four out thousands. Well, here's the thing. Whether there is any evidence will depend on what sort of interpretation we place on the scriptures. I'm happy to provide evidence for my interpretation. It would not be my interpretation if there were no evidence for it. But this would be an interpretation that brings Jesus into line with Lao tsu and the Buddha, Mohammed and the Upanishads. It is the interpretation that Schroedinger places on Christian teachings, and for which his publisher refused to publish one of his books on grounds of heresy. I don't get the water into wine thing either. Mary, or course, was never recorded as being a virgin in the sense you mean it. We've come to think of her as one, but 'virgin' is not a good translation. Making water into wine and people rise from the dead are conjuring tricks anyway. If they never happened it would make no difference to anything. I think you need to do religion a little more justice than this if you want to get to the bottom of it. I suppose, knowing human nature, that there are people who believe that Eve was quite literally created from Adam's rib, but it can't be many. Really? I should have known this already but it's news to me. Thanks for the link doG, I'll check it out later.

I mentioned Freke and Gandy's book, and Armstrong and Pagels. A good intro would Keith Ward, 'God: A Guide for the Perplexed', which contrasts the common modern notion of the Christian God its far more subtle original. Islam is not immediately relevant, I suppose, but I'll mention the essay I have here by one Islamic mystic arguing that 'Al-Lah' is not a god. It's online so I'll try to find a link. The small point I was making is that evidence for Christianity is not necessarily evidence for God.

I already cited some. And no, I'm not so daft as to try and have a full discussion of religion here. It's more fun to attack what whatever we happen to believe it is.

I'm not going to try here, it would be madness, but there's plenty of literature.

Normally the hypothesis is there to be tested, not to be believed or disbelieved. It needs to be testable, of course, but first we would have to define what it is we plan to test. I'm sure I'd have no evidence for what you would define as God, and would have to agree that there probably isn't any. There's some evidence for mine. A better argument to have, maybe, than whether evidence for God exists, is whether it is possible to define Him is a manner that would allow us to agree on what on earth we are talking about. I do understand it, even though I am not one of them. God is very difficult not to believe in, whether we like it or not. It takes as much courage to entertain the possibility of His existence as it does His non-existence. I'm sure you don't think the issues are that simple. Anyway, while there may be no evidence for a God there may still be some for Christianity, in its earliest form.

We have not defined God, so it would all depend. I'm not suggeting that there is evidence for any kind of God the Church usually talks about. But there is evidence that Christian doctrine is true when it is interpreted as Plotinus does, as being consistent with, or as being a major implementation of, the perennial philosophy. For this view check out 'The Jesus Mysteries' by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (they argue the Jesus is a mythological and not historical figure), or relevant work by Karen Armstrong and Elaine Pagels. In metaphysics the most obvious evidence would be the undecidability of metaphysical problems. In physics, well, I daren't go there. Perhaps nonlocality would be evidence. I've long thought that this is the phenomenon that brings physics most closely into contact with religion.

Logically, to be distinct two phenomena must share (at some level) an identity, while to share an identity they must (at some level) be distinct. If two things are distinct then they must share an identity that allows them to be distinguished. (E.g they would have to share an identity with all our other concepts). If two things are not distinct then they are not two things and cannot be identical. So two things cannot be entirely distinct in the sense that they have no category in common, and it would be logically impossible for them to be entirely identical. Or so it seems to me this morning.

The poll is unanswerable since it does not include compatibilism, which may be the most popular stance for philosophers. It's mine anyway. Here's a bit about Schroedinger's compatibilism. This would be the solution for the perennial philosophy. ('God' here is not what the Pope proposes.) "Schrödinger encapsulated the problem of consciousness in the form of two premisses: My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the laws of nature. Yet I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing its motions, of which I forsee the effects, that may be fateful and all-important, in which case I feel and take full responsibility for them. To avoid a contradiction here, he said, 'the only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt "I" am the person, if any, who controls the "motion of the atoms" according to the laws of nature.' … [t]his would lead you to say, Schrödinger provocatively suggested, 'Hence I am God almighty'." Editors' Introduction, The Volitional Brain Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will. Ed. Libet, Freeman, Sutherland

There is evidence for Christianity but not everyone would see it as such. This is because, as has been pointed out, there are many interpretations of the teachings. There is no evidence for most of these interpretations. Logically one would expect there to be evidence for only one of them at most. If it is interpreted as Gnosticism, and in line with Thomas, St, Anthony, Plotinus, Eckhart, the psudo-Dionysius etc., then there is evidence. The evidence is mostly logical, philosophical or metaphysical, but I think there is some in physics as well. But it cannot be simply stated since one would have to begin by agreeing what we mean by 'Christianity'. If it's what the Vatican says it is then no, there is no evidence.