[Rancid]

I don't dispute that. What I dispute is the idea, which some people seem to have got into their heads, that scientific knowledge is certain and is more than just (very sophisticated) guesswork.

I agree, Science is just a way to make guesses and refine them as more information is made available. Here's my question to you Mr. Potemkin.

Do you think Science can eventually arrive to actual and absolute truths? Or do you think we are just asymptotically approaching the truth (about anything), but never actually get to it.

All scientific knowledge rests on a few basic assumptions, but I wouldn't call it guesswork.

I think you're just missing the point that Potemkin is being a little poetic/flowery with his use of words.

[One Degree]

I agree, Science is just a way to make guesses and refine them as more information is made available. Here's my question to you Mr. Potemkin.

Do you think Science can eventually arrive to actual and absolute truths? Or do you think we are just asymptotically approaching the truth (about anything), but never actually get to it.



I think you're just missing the point that Potemkin is being a little poetic/flowery with his use of words.

While we wait for Pote’s response, what do you think? It would appear our accumulation of knowledge would eventually get us there. However, I don’t see our wisdom increasing with our knowledge so we will probably destroy ourselves first. If not, I believe we would refuse to accept it and keep looking.

[Rancid]

While we wait for Pote’s response, what do you think? It would appear our accumulation of knowledge would eventually get us there. However, I don’t see our wisdom increasing with our knowledge so we will probably destroy ourselves first. If not, I believe we would refuse to accept it and keep looking.

I'm thinking, even if we manage to survive until the end of the universe, we will never totally understand the universe. I think it will be an asymptotic approach to knowing it all. Unless our brains evolve further... or some shit like that.

Ultimately, I'm just throwing that out there.

[Potemkin]

I agree, Science is just a way to make guesses and refine them as more information is made available. Here's my question to you Mr. Potemkin.

Do you think Science can eventually arrive to actual and absolute truths? Or do you think we are just asymptotically approaching the truth (about anything), but never actually get to it.

Even if science does manage to achieve the actual and absolute truth about the world, we could never know it had done so. Inductive reasoning can never lead to certainty. And even if it seems to asymptotically approach the truth, even this could be a false lead. After all, classical physics in the 1890s seemed to be in precisely such a stage of merely crossing the 't's and dotting the 'i's of the scientific description of reality. Until Planck came along and blew the whole thing up (much to his own chagrin, be it noted). Quantum theory turned everything on its head. No, there's just no way science can ever achieve certainty or ever be any kind of 'absolute truth'.

I think you're just missing the point that Potemkin is being a little poetic/flowery with his use of words.

Forsooth, the prestidigitations of science are but a simulacrum of our idolon of reality.

[One Degree]

Inductive reasoning can never lead to certainty.

@Potemkin
You state that with a lot of certainty.

[Rancid]

Forsooth, the prestidigitations of science are but a simulacrum of our idolon of reality.

[Verv]

I think that Potemkin is right: science cannot reach total certainty about everything.

But I think presuppositionalism and the notion of correct, absolute and immutable truths coming from an order from God is also right. There just isn't a way where you can look at numbers and view them as useless & incapable of describing the universe, and we all know that 2 + 2 = 4 in every single circumstnace, and there i sno circumstance which can exist in which this is not a logical truth. And still, it is not a frivolous tautology.

There is an immutable reality that exists within a beautifully packaged order. If anything about our order was remotely different, nothing would exist.

I am not sure how much I can go past that point because the bottom totally falls out when we make assumptions about infinite universes, infinite collections of matter operating in infinite different realities...

But yeah man, I totally believe God designed the universe and the Order that animates it, and while I know I operate with an imperfect brain and neurologically speaking I am not above tricks and hallucinations... I have felt God's presence in my life, and I believe that you are an ikon of God. I have faith in these things. It is just faith, though, and I can't prove it.

I think it'd be good if we respected one another's positions on it because I do not want to engage in bloody debates about it. I'm no longer a teenager.

[Albert]

Quantum theory.

[One Degree]

The universe is controlled by our butterfly wings. It is in chaos until we grow into common agreement, and then it will react to our will. I have no idea what we should have it do.

[Pants-of-dog]

I find it comforting that we cannot know anything with certainty. It is as if god has built freedom into the very fabric of the universe, so that we are the masters of our lives, and not moving forward locked onto a certain path.

But that may be simply because I have read the Dune novels so often.

[Besoeker]

Probability, no matter how overwhelmingly likely, is still not certainty, Rich.

Nobody with a modicum of knowledge about science is claiming certainty. For example, if you care to read any of the IPCC reports they describe how ho statements are assigned probabilities. There is no classification for certainty.
I keep making this point.....

[Zamuel]

Inductive reasoning can never lead to certainty.

A proposition: You've inverted reality, got it backwards ... Certainty is the basis for Inductive reasoning. Observation (of certainty) is what inspires inductive reasoning.

The universe is a vast, unfathomable, pattern of cause and effect, directed (and redirected) energy. Within the primary pattern, others exist, following their unalterable paths, colliding and intersecting with predictable regularity ... We ourselves are just tiny patterns interacting as determined by certainty.

Choice and freewill are prideful human illusions. Whatever will be, will be, and through long term observation (science) is predictable. Being human, our predictions may be fallible ... that's our fault, not the universe's. Experimentation is really just another tool of observation and again is subject to human fallibility.

Now, call the primary pattern, and all it contains, "God" and credit it with self awareness. Consider it to be "the word" Spoken of in the bible and referred to in similar context by many other religions.

John 1-5 ... KJV

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2. The same was in the beginning with God.

3. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Just a thought

Zam

[Verv]

I find it comforting that we cannot know anything with certainty. It is as if god has built freedom into the very fabric of the universe, so that we are the masters of our lives, and not moving forward locked onto a certain path.

But that may be simply because I have read the Dune novels so often.

Freedom versus determination is a massive mystery.

I think that the Orthodox treat it very well because they talk about God as knowing the fate before it comes into being but that this does not, in any way, curb our free will. Leibniz agreed with this assessment in Theodicy and, oddly enough, attributed credit to this theory to a Spanish monk.

Bishop Theophan the Recluse has a good answer to all of this:

Answer: The fact that the Kingdom of God is "taken by force" presupposes personal effort. When the Apostle Paul says, "it is not of him that willeth," this means that one's efforts do not produce what is sought. It is necessary to combine them: to strive and to expect all things from grace. It is not one's own efforts that will lead to the goal, because without grace, efforts produce little; nor does grace without effort bring what is sought, because grace acts in us and for us through our efforts. Both combine in a person to bring progress and carry him to the goal. (God's) foreknowledge is unfathomable. It is enough for us with our whole heart to believe that it never opposes God's grace and truth, and that it does not infringe man's freedom. Usually this resolves as follows: God foresees how a man will freely act and makes dispositions accordingly. Divine determination depends on the life of a man, and not his life upon the determination

[Pants-of-dog]

Freedom versus determination is a massive mystery.

I think that the Orthodox treat it very well because they talk about God as knowing the fate before it comes into being but that this does not, in any way, curb our free will. Leibniz agreed with this assessment in Theodicy and, oddly enough, attributed credit to this theory to a Spanish monk.

Bishop Theophan the Recluse has a good answer to all of this:

Yeah, I don’t buy it.

If god knows exactly what I will do in the future and there is no possibility that god is wrong, then my future is pre-ordained, free will is an illusion, and a whole bunch of quantum physics is wrong.

[One Degree]

Yeah, I don’t buy it.

If god knows exactly what I will do in the future and there is no possibility that god is wrong, then my future is pre-ordained, free will is an illusion, and a whole bunch of quantum physics is wrong.

I think you may have misunderstood. I took from this, God knows what is going to happen, but we still determine what will happen. A clairvoyant God, not a controlling God.

[Pants-of-dog]

I think you may have misunderstood. I took from this, God knows what is going to happen, but we still determine what will happen. A clairvoyant God, not a controlling God.

No. I understood. I just also understood that it is logicaly necessary for me to have no free will if god can 100% predict my actions every time.

[Besoeker]

No. I understood. I just also understood that it is logicaly necessary for me to have no free will if god can 100% predict my actions every time.

And has always know if he exists and transcends time.
It never fails to surprise me how people can see that as free will if it was known before you even existed to make a decision about your future actions.

[annatar1914]

No. I understood. I just also understood that it is logicaly necessary for me to have no free will if god can 100% predict my actions every time.

How do you define ''Free Will'', as the ancients did, a 'mere' freedom from external compulsion, or libertarian freedom, total freedom including apparently from any necessity that comes from within? The latter is the freedom which God possesses, not those things including us which He created.

I know it's all the rage these modern days to vainly strive for freedom from any constraint including biology, morality, or even sanity it seems, but the facts remain what they are. The 'Free Will' you are looking for doesn't exist, never did, never will. As a Christian and as Material Monist separately, I believe in a Compatibilist determinism. You are moved to will what you will, but you want freely what is willed and do not go against your own will. Grace of the lack thereof of God's presence within you, modifies what is willed.

The very striving for liberation from any constraint, is actually a sign that one is being pulled into an irrational love of mere things and moments.

[Besoeker]

How do you define ''Free Will''

I suppose freedom to make choices like should I go for a haircut today or wait until tomorrow. Now god, if he exists and is omniscient and omnipresent, would have known before I even existed. So when or how did it become my free choice? How can that reasonably be considered to be my free will?

There is a very simple answer that resolves this apparent contradiction a a stroke.

[Zamuel]

A clairvoyant God, not a controlling God.

That's getting close ... but it sounds like there's a separation between two entities ... The Pattern includes everything we are each a part of it. We are the "I and I" the Rasta's recognize. We control ourselves and our will, but dance the pattern of cause and effect to whatever tune certainty plays. Choices are illusion, are predetermined to follow certainty and lead to a predictable conclusion. You can defiantly resist, refuse, regret, only because redundant futility is part of certainty. Likewise the pattern itself has no control. Everything it does or that happens within it was determined during the moment of inception. (BANG).

"Wow that was a big one!"

Zam