Says you. But you've already demonstrated that you can't fathom that a reductionist can honestly and consistently believe in the value of life. So it is no wonder that you think what you think.Metacrock wrote:before you read this answer I want you to remember in this post you said something like "why can only you think about God, why can't I think about God too." I have given a flip answer below, but I shouldn't. In thinking twice I should give a serious answer.
Of course you can think about God all you want and you have as much probability of getting it right as I do. But I know form the experinces I have had of God, what I think of "mystical" that God is not reducible to any physical qualia or any physical aspects of the universe.
trying to reduce God to that level is a huge mistake.
do you mean because I say "mind of God?" Obviously that's just a metaphor.[/quote]NooooOOOOo, because God is not merely a conscious object. Consciousness is not like you think, a thing in each individual that is only shared by that eon individual individually one at a time. It's one thing, like a substance, and all individuals part take of it, like being itself. Thus God is that one thing, that consciousness, not an individual, one of many, but the whole the thing, the the basis of it, and all individuals who are conscious share in that one thing.God is conscious and has/is a mind, correct? Then He is (or can be thought of) as an object.
god is not an object because he's the basis of all that is. He's not just another thing among many things, but the original basic thing that makes all others be. Understand now?
Only objects can have heads. I'll just keep right on going, and if you disagree with that then you yourself ought to refrain from speaking of God as an object.
Well, why don't you read what I'm saying as a metaphor, then? If you say, metaphorically, God is conscious, God has a mind, and existence is in God's head, then God can metaphorically be considered an object with some properties. And these properties are what we're talking about. Happy?
And Being itself is conscious and loving and soforth. I don't literally mean a Big Man On Throne any more than you do when you talk about God. I'm simply talking about a few things that God supposedly does and/or has. Not my fault that turns into a view that is not consistent with the universe. Remember, I don't believe in a conscious God with a mind in the first place, I'm just exploring the consequences of theism.your view is not consist with the universe. Your reduces God to something less than God. it makes God into an other thing in his own creation along side ostriches and swizzle sticks.If it's sooo far removed, then why are you so adamantly against this other perspective? Is it a bad thing to have a concept of God that is at least somewhat consistent with our universe?
It is not consistent with the universe to posit a big man on a throne up in the could with great imaginary powers. It is consistent with the universe to talk about Being itself.
Fine, God created the nature of information, and God does not in any way contain information. Great! But I don't get what we could possibly say about God in this case.you are and all atheists make some starlingly absurd arguments. It's like you somehow believe ni a secret God but you just admit that it's a god. But it controls everything, nothing can defy it, it defines all that is; laws of nature. But then when someone ways "where are these laws of nature kept? where do they come from? [snip]If God can be characterized as "something more than information" (proof that God can be characterized as that: certainly God is not less than some mere information, is He? QED), then we can say some very definite things about God, namely that He needs to be at least a 1-dimensional bitstring. This isn't just a rule that God made up, it's a property of information. If God breaks that rule, then He is not in fact "something more than information".
why would you ever think that God doesn't invent ideas like laws of nature and information? you say "God has no control it's the nature of nature of information. It's the nature of information in a world where God created the nature of information.
As for "where is this mysterious "information" to be found? do you find it up in the sky? Is it written ot the bottoms of quarks? How can there be "information" without a mind to contain it?" . It seems bizarre to me that a mind would be the only thing that can contain information. Information is contained in the relationships between beings. If a pile of particles have nothing in common, they contain a maximum of information. This is stored with the particles themselves. Here, I use "particles" as a stand-in for literally anything, be they electrons, post-it notes, or ant colonies.
That's not quite fair. This is the Socratic Method. We explore the space of ideas by asking pointed questions. That is reasoning them out. Don't blame me that your ideas are so crooked that I can't figure them out on my own, hey?because you don't reason them out, you say them tailored to fall prey to your arguments. It makes no kind of sense at all to say God is subject to physical law.You may say that God is neither "something more than information" nor "NOT something more than information", because information is a word that does not apply outside our universe. In which case, I simply want to know how come you're allowed to say things about God and I apparently am not. So I hope this will not be in your response...
First, we need a definition. Let's say that information is the state of a system. This is both intuitive, simple, and general, given that a system is well understood and its state is well-defined. The proof supplies itself when you pick a system. Let's use the planet Earth, and the strength of gravity you feel right now is information about the number of hadrons that makes up the Earth (the Earth's state). Good enough?but show me there this strange substance called "information" is found? show me the empirical proof that it exists and where it's foudn an how you know?
Sure, I can't prove that the Forms aren't real, but I can show that the philosophy of Forms is inferior in many respects at describing, explaining, and predicting aspects of our experience. I'm not directly familiar with the Augustinian take on Plato.you have no proof what so ever that the froms aren't real. The atomists were pre Socratic. so he did know about the atomists. Those are different systems but they could both exist at the same time. Besides. I'm not a pure Platonist, I'm an Augustinian. He put the froms in the mind of God. That's what I'm saying: God is analogous to the Platonic forms. They did not have an objective physical existence, they existed in a higher reality. This world is just like a reflection in a puddle of water to that true reality of the forms.I did read Plato. I can appreciate the Forms as a metaphor for language, and I can appreciate the Forms as a philosophy that overcomes the problem of Becoming, and I can appreciate the Forms as a philosophy of mathematics. But Plato thought his Forms were "really real". And they're not. He didn't know about atoms and molecules, about properties like momentum and wavelength, about mathematics beyond geometry and simple fractions. While I appreciate Plato's thoughts, I accept that they fall flat as a model of reality.
No, I wouldn't even try to talk the Dalai Lama into giving up Tibetan Buddhism. I would try to inform him about some mathematics, is all. Gelug Buddhists see people who achieve Buddhahood as people for whom there is no limit to helping others. Nirvana is about reaching the true self and giving up the cycle of rebirth and suffering. It is not a zero-dimensional place you "go to", so I don't see why the Dalai Lama would have any issue with the notion that existence requires some space. Moreover, the Dalai Lama constantly makes overtures to modernization and regularly has talks with scientists about the implications of their respective fields.aghahaha that so laughable. ahaha how absurd. you think you are going to talk this guy into giving up this tradition that's like 5000 years old (Tabitan goes back before Buddhism it's based upon Ban). that's so absurd and arrogant. totally arrogant. Don't Europeans know anything bout imperialism these days?Which Buddhists? Pretty sure I could talk the Dalai Lama into a more-than-zero dimensional Nirvana if I had the chance (if he doesn't believe it already). He's open to new ideas and respects science and mathematics as valid perspectives on the world. If I told him that it is mathematically impossible for a zero-dimensional point to contain reality, then he might accept it and ponder the consequences.do you ask Buddhists "in Nirvana when everything is one and its' all just this one montlyic reality where is it stored?"
There's no need to be a dick, dick.
Can't you read? I did not say that Brahmin is in your head, I said that Vedanta, the understanding of reality is in your head. Brahmin is contained in the reality around you (and about 2 pounds in your head, of course). If it is analogous to thought in the mind of God, then it's everywhere and definitely not nowhere.Vedanta says atom = Braman and everything is Bramin but that doesn't mean its' in your head. its' not like that's where they keep it.I understood Vedanta as the understanding of the true nature of reality, and Brahmin is reality. So the answer is that Brahmin is all around us, partially stored in the very chair I sit on, and Vedanta is stored in the brains of enlightened ones. Of course, in a religion like Hinduism, this is probably just one of many interpretations...
Well if everything is analogs to thought in the mind of God then obviously it's everywhere and nowhere.
Being itself is in the beings. The beings are themselves.that's wrong physical aspects of the universe are "the beings." They are not being itself, being itself is everywhere and no where.I suspect "being itself" is stored in the fabric of space-time in the form of various fields that vary across space and time. You know, physics.
This was just for entertainment purposes. My statement above still stands, the beings exist on their own.you are just trying to reduce God to something you can control. But what you are describing is part of the beings it is not being itself.I further suspect that there is a manifold in which the apparent wave-like motion of quantized elements in these fields in space through time reduces to a much simpler motion of particles on some sort of graph. And this motion can be expressed as a cellular automaton on that graph. What that cellular automaton is, and what sort of "hardware" it "runs on", I haven't a clue, but this is as far as my physical and computational intuition (plus a liberal reading of some interesting papers on arxiv) goes.
I need a right or authority to say stuff? Who the hell are you? Who gives out authority?that's ludicrous. you have no right or authority to say that. show me some information? show me where it is and prove it's there.In any case, Being Itself doesn't contain any information and doesn't do anything.
The notion that consciousness is a fundamental property of nature is intriguing. I've thought about that quite a bit, actually. Unfortunately, the thought didn't lead anywhere except entertaining imaginations about conscious rocks and suns and whatnot. This wasn't interesting becauseIt's a theoretical construct it' s really there there. But moreover, a lot of physicists have use the theory of information to try and argue that this is proves that consciousness is a basic property of nature and that information is art of god's mind. This is the basic link between God's imagination and the physical reality. A guy named Toma in j of c studies.
A) It is one "thing" explaining one observable phenomenon (human consciousness), which is not a very general explanation at all. Occam frowns and starts sharpening his razor, you know?
B) It doesn't help us characterize consciousness at all. I just don't see what this hypothesis teaches us, except that computers really can become conscious and perhaps there are consciousnesses that we haven't found yet. But I already suspected both of those are true.
C) No proof, no falsifiability, at least not AFAIK.
Huh? First of all, who is disproving God? Second of all, which ooky spooky term? All I'm doing is putting the Ground of Being with the beings that are instead of (as you suggest) in some separate category with ultraspecial importance.don't do an HRG. that's what you are doing. Here's a ooky spooky term you are willing to bet I don't know about, it' makes you feel like you are on your turf. so you will use in a very invalid way playing little smoke and mirror games to make me think and to convene yourself that you said something that disproves God.It doesn't (to me) even hint at any independent existence, so the question of where it is stored is completely arbitrary. Might as well stick it with that which is, then no?
but you can't show any kind of link to God from information without demonstrating the existence of God.[/quote]