Discussing metaphysical philosophy with SuperShuki

Rather than digress too much further in "the SpaceX Dragon to the ISS" thread i thought i would split into the spaceflight cafe area for a more general conversation in a more appropriate area.



In an attempt to gain your respect and maybe that of some other readers i think some of your assumptions are wrong relatively speaking. There are people of faith and people without faith the only common tool between them to prove what is right and wrong is logic as it is logical that those without faith would not accept a set of values imposed on them by a faith they don't believe. But if you have faith in some greater being and that you have been given free will then logic is a tool subject to that free will.

I have sat down a thought about the big questions on my good days and as i don't have the faith module using logic feed by experience i have come to the following conclusions.

Via Logic and Occam's razor i doubt that there is any major league deity as it would make the universe at least twice as complicated as it is observed to be. And i have not observed any indications that would indicated the presence of a deity.

Despite a lot of thinking on the subject and many years of gathering info about it. I have yet to come across a logically consistent model of the universe that proves logically that free will exists. I think it is a possibility but it could be that you and i are just programmed that way by the universe rolling lots of dice and we only have a kind of pseudo free will.

Prove to me using logic that free will really exists without reference to some form of faith that is by definition beyond logic and i will thank you. Truly i really will despite my later snarky comments this is a problem that has been bugging me for years.



One of the reasons why those adept with the logic tool resort to relativism is that human perception is provably so poor in all our senses and lacking in lots more of senses that without considerable augmentation both genetic and technological we will never get a reasonable level of perception and understanding of the bit of objective reality that everyone agrees probably exists without even going onto the areas of the metaphysical that not all agree exists.




It is an interesting place to hang out with interesting people i have learned quite a few things hanging out here maybe you can learn the value of relativism


And on the quote:-

Maybe i am a bit thicker skinned than my fellow Brit as i don't find the quote that offensive but it being a Jubilee year the patriotism gene has been activated so i think maybe i should give him some armament him being a fellow countryman and all that.



Us Brits are quite good at assimilating those of different cultures and enjoy the the wit of verbal sparing that's why Benji made it to PM. With quite a bit of history we learnt that a secular relativistic culture enabled us to stop taking turns BBQing each other for heresy and get on with our lives starting the industrial revolution and sharing it with the rest of the world via trade and or conquest whichever was more appropriate at the time.

Benji's comment may have been witty at the time with his limited knowledge but we have continued to have a fair bit more history and improved our archaeology since then. So we now know that those "Brutal savages" were quite happily trading tin bronze etc thru Europe and later folding steel. The Romans only successfully invaded us after the time they nailed one of your guys who later made good to a tree. And the reason we were thought to be brutal savages was we could remember stuff with out taking notes so we did not have to write graffiti on pyramid walls whilst being slaves to help assimilate the history and creation myths of even earlier cultures.

You cannot discover reality using logic - you must discover it through experience. That is why any scientific theory is a hypothesis, until it is proven through experiment. Any accepted scientific theory is only accepted for that which is proven through experiment - it simply does not apply to things that have not been proven. That leaves the possibility for additions to the theory, based on new information.

The laws of Newton were only accepted because they accurately described the phenomenon of reality to the degree that he could perceive it at the time. That is why no one condemns Newton as a bad scientist (or even as being wrong) because his laws don't explain the phenomenon of electromagnetism. No one tried to discover the phenomenon of electromagnetism using Newton's laws - they discovered that through experience, through experiment, and then tried to explain that experience logically, not vice versa.

If we want to discover if free will (or G-d) exists, we must do it through experience, not through logic.

I cannot go further without referring to Judaism and G-d. Sigurd has told me he will kick me from the forum for discussing these topics, however, as they have a tendency to annoy people and disrupt conversation - at least when I'm discussing them . As this thread is set aside for the discussion of these topics, perhaps Sigurd will allow me to discuss them here. I'll send him an IM.

Well I personally don't mind such discussions. I enjoy reading about different worldviews and belief systems.

I don't want to interrupt, but have you guys actually agreed on a definition for free will to begin with?

I think it is really hard to discuss any topic without some sort of common ground to start from, or where you can get back to when things aren't working out.

Rather than putting further temptation in you way i will await Sigurd's decision tho my opinion is that the under the terms of the forum the spaceflight cafe is the area for general discussions that don't fit elsewhere and to me as well as outerspace innerspace is worthy of exploration its not quite so expensive to achieve and usually does not involve quite so many loud bangs tho i can understand stronger moderation in specific sub fora as even tho i might buy Elon a pint for his services to space but talking about deity's or deification in a spacex thread might be going a bit far

Sigurd has told me that the suggested topic creates endless discussions, so he doesn't want me to do it. If anybody want's to discuss the topic, they are welcome to IM me.

Thanks.