The Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Darth SS]

No, not a statistically significant probability; any chance would do. In a purely deductive, logical system, "very likely" isn't good enough.

Yes it is. What do you think the entire premise of Statistics is? It's not a bunch of Austrians sitting around a table saying "Well...shit man. We got nine hundred ninety nine people out of a thousand that said they think that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. That must mean it's true." It's much more a group of people (predominantly Austrian) saying "If we asked another million people, I bet you this 999:1 ratio would hold true. In fact, if we ask one more people, I will be very surprised if they disagree. No matter what we do, within these parameters conspiracy theorists will be the minority."


Also my views on information gathering:

Our senses probably aren't wrong. If they were wrong as much as ZAK seems to imply they are, predators would have killed us all before we became intelligent enough to debate this very point.

Through evolution, we are far from perfect. Humans are clunky, fragile, and inefficient beings.

Our senses aren't wrong, they are just woefully incomplete. A magician does a card trick, our senses show us that he's somehow extracted four aces in a row. They don't show us how he did it, which is something that exists. If I smell lemon, then there are the chemicals in the air that make up the lemon smell. Just because I can't find the lemon doesn't mean that my senses are wrong, (hence every single cleaning product ever claims "You can smell lemons" not "lemons appear to make the room smell nice") just that my senses do not hand me the information that is the lemon location.


Or, you're brain damaged. That's really the trump card here.

[ZAKtheGeek]

Yes it is. What do you think the entire premise of Statistics is? It's not a bunch of Austrians sitting around a table saying "Well...shit man. We got nine hundred ninety nine people out of a thousand that said they think that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. That must mean it's true." It's much more a group of people (predominantly Austrian) saying "If we asked another million people, I bet you this 999:1 ratio would hold true. In fact, if we ask one more people, I will be very surprised if they disagree. No matter what we do, within these parameters conspiracy theorists will be the minority."

This totally supports what I'm saying. You can't take the idea that our senses give us true information as a given just because it's unlikely that they don't; that would be just like saying that EVERYONE thinks Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy just because a lot of people think so. Or even all people that you asked think so, given that you didn't ask everyone.

I just realized a different interpretation of this argument, though, so I'll address it. It occurs to me that what you might have been arguing is that we don't need to assume our senses are good, because it's so likely anyway. I don't think that's any good. If all humans have their senses flawed in the exact same way, then it makes sense that our observations would all be consistent with each other, yet still all be imperfect representations of reality.

Our senses probably aren't wrong. If they were wrong as much as ZAK seems to imply they are, predators would have killed us all before we became intelligent enough to debate this very point.

I AM NOT ARGUING THAT OUR SENSES ARE FLAWED. I am arguing that they could be, but in order to apply logic to the world around us, we assume they're not. This is not a weakness. This is not a problem. This is how logic works.

I need a better example, something people maybe won't harp on so much...

[Sithdarth]

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

No, not a statistically significant probability; any chance would do. In a purely deductive, logical system, "very likely" isn't good enough.

Please read that second very crazy run on sentence in that quote of mine. It addresses that somewhat.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

That doesn't matter. Is there any logical reason it can't all be a coincidence? No, it's just super unlikely.

It does in fact matter because this is what I asked for:

Originally Posted by me

Present me with a viable provable theory as to why every person's senses would lie in the exact same way. Then extend it to explain how our instruments, whose observations are disconnected from us, happen to be effected in precisely the same way.

I asked for this because the theory that our sense aren't capable of feeding us false information is supported by the mountain of independently verifiable observations humans have made and recorded since they could record things. That is observations of the world.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

Okay, now this just doesn't make sense. If all our senses are flawed, it doesn't matter who else corroborates your story; no one really is able to sense reality consistently.

The problem is that there is no logically consistent method by which all humans could be wrong in the same way.

Sidetrack: What we sense is not what we perceive. What he sense is the information sent to the brain. What we perceive is how the brain interprets that information. The information collected by our senses is never flawed it is only limited. The interpretations are what become flawed.

That being said machines can't interpret data. You expose a machine able to read the wavelength of a photon a photon with a wavelength of 475 nm it reports a wavelength of 475 nm. You show that readout to a person it is still 475nm. That fact never changes. However, if you show the person the photon you could get any number of answers as to what shade of blue it is. Machines remove the flaws of perception leaving only the perfection of sensory information. Which is why it is impossible that machines could be wrong in the same way as humans.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

Here's a confusion of terms. Up until this point, "external reality" meant reality as we sense it, not actual reality (the one we're trying to sense). This statement is false, as the hypothetically flawed "external reality" is unable to accurately reflect actual reality, so changes in it will not necessarily echo physical changes in actual reality. Unless the actual reality to which I'm referring is what you meant by "external reality," in which case the flaw appears much earlier:

It means precisely the same thing in both instances. What I was doing was drawing a distinction between the personal reality of self and the external objective reality. Personal reality, aka perception, has an impact on the person experiencing it without impacting external objective reality. IE, hallucinating spiders does not cause the wall to actually be covered in spiders. In many instances personal reality can be just as real as external objective reality for the person experiencing it. However, it never impacts anything outside the person experiencing it. Events occurring in external objective reality always have effects spanning many people and mechanical observations. Otherwise they can not be verified as objective or external.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

This contradicts the very premise you started with; that our senses produce false information. It follows, then, that not all the information we gather from them is of the external reality; some of it is simply falsehoods. This statement as a whole is basically what you've been trying to assert all this time. I assure you that assuming it does nothing to help you prove it. Not logically, anyway.

See the statments:

Originally Posted by me

All of the information we gather through our senses is external reality
[and later]
Everything is effected by external reality in a real physical way

Are statements of definition and have no link whatsoever with my original premise. They are how external objective reality are defined and are as immutable 2 can be represented as II.

I would also like to spend some time pointing out that two absolutely true premises can lead you to a false conclusion. This is not however a failure in logic nor has it anything to do with being able to interpret the premises as false is on so desired. This particular case only occurs when you improperly phrase your logic argument. That is to say when you logic argument is in a form not consistent with logic thereby it must then be illogical.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

I'm starting to understand why Swordchucks left...

I wouldn't go down that road because I have a mirror and you aren't going to like what it'll show you.

[ZAKtheGeek]

Present me with a viable provable theory as to why every person's senses would lie in the exact same way.

Impossible. Without such an assumption, all reasoning falls apart (or at least 99% of it). Any explanation I could possibly give you would rely on observations, which can't be trusted without assuming precisely that which I'm trying to show that you must assume. This is a highly abstract issue.

The problem is that there is no logically consistent method by which all humans could be wrong in the same way.

Why not? It could be an inherent flaw in all humans.

Sidetrack: What we sense is not what we perceive. What he sense is the information sent to the brain. What we perceive is how the brain interprets that information. The information collected by our senses is never flawed it is only limited. The interpretations are what become flawed.

I don't know about that... To use your EM observation example, what if, for some reason, we observed a set of wavelengths in between yellow and orange as blue instead of as what we would expect would lie there, thus making us mistakenly oblivious to a color? To extend that to machines, we could also have a flaw which causes us to view the results any machine shows us about this set of wavelengths as also being within the blue range of wavelengths. Or maybe we've made the machines in a way that shows us that, because of another flaw which makes us observe something involved in the construction of the machines wrong, creating a malfunction we can never know about.

I'll take this opportunity to point out that I'm well aware that these things are massively ridiculous bullshit. But at the same time, we can't discount them under a deductive system.

All of the information we gather through our senses is external reality
[and later]
Everything is effected by external reality in a real physical way
Are statements of definition and have no link whatsoever with my original premise. They are how external objective reality are defined and are as immutable 2 can be represented as II.

Well, the first one can be a definition, but not the second. The second is clearly a statement, unless you're defining what "everything" is. Which you aren't.

Getting tired? I sure am. Maybe a different example would be better, because this sort of thing could be debated for ages. You might be aware how long and hard people tried to prove that every line had a unique parallel through any given point before realizing it had to be postulated...

[Sithdarth]

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

Impossible. Without such an assumption, all reasoning falls apart (or at least 99% of it). Any explanation I could possibly give you would rely on observations, which can't be trusted without assuming precisely that which I'm trying to show that you must assume. This is a highly abstract issue.

No this is the logical inconsistency I have been driving at. A system of reasoning based on an inconsistency can not be consistent.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

Why not? It could be an inherent flaw in all humans.

Except for the fact no two humans are exactly alike. Even identical twins and clones are slightly different than each other. Not to mention this flaw would be one of perception not one of sensing and would thus be immediately exposed by mechanical measurements.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

I don't know about that... To use your EM observation example, what if, for some reason, we observed a set of wavelengths in between yellow and orange as blue instead of as what we would expect would lie there, thus making us mistakenly oblivious to a color? To extend that to machines, we could also have a flaw which causes us to view the results any machine shows us about this set of wavelengths as also being within the blue range of wavelengths. Or maybe we've made the machines in a way that shows us that, because of another flaw which makes us observe something involved in the construction of the machines wrong, creating a malfunction we can never know about.

You must be careful not to confuse the arbitrary with the objective. A meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/(299 792 458) of a second. A second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transistion between the two hyperline levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. These are definitions and they are constant and independent of any perceptions of man.

Now, we defined blue as a photon with a wavelength 475nm. We could call it red, green, or ford. It doesn't change the fact that it is 475nm. We can directly measure its wavelength and compare that with our definition of meter and it will always give us 475nm. This is why 475nm is an objective measurement and blue is subjective. Further, we know if the machines are flawed because we can compare the measurement they make of say a known length(we known the length cause we held it next to the standard) to what the known length actually is. Thereby we can fix the error in any number of ways.

Now don't try telling me our definition of what a meter is and what a second is are wrong. They can't be wrong because they are the definitions of a meter and a second.

Edit:

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

Well, the first one can be a definition, but not the second. The second is clearly a statement, unless you're defining what "everything" is. Which you aren't.

It just needs to be reworded into something like:
The effects of external objective reality extend into all aspects of existence.
and then the statement right after that would read:
Some effects of external objective reality do not extend into all aspects of existence

[ZAKtheGeek]

No this is the logical inconsistency I have been driving at. A system of reasoning based on an inconsistency can not be consistent.

I'm not sure I follow. What inconsistency is there in the system of reasoning? Inconsistent observations? No; before deciding whether or not our perceptions are trustworthy, the system would not include any observations (as they would be hazy, unproven ideas) and would thus suffer no inconsistency there. Sure, it would be a very abstract system, and you probably couldn't get much out of it (a subjective matter, but for Zeus' sake, spare me), but it would still be consistent.

Except for the fact no two humans are exactly alike. Even identical twins and clones are slightly different than each other.

Uuh, so? Surely you're not going to claim that the variations among humans overshadow their similarities. Is it a preposterous claim to say that humans are unable to visually perceive infrared radiation? Anyway, the issue wouldn't even have to be inherent; it could be coincidental. Again, implausibility is not falsehood.

Not to mention this flaw would be one of perception not one of sensing and would thus be immediately exposed by mechanical measurements.

Unless we were also to misperceive our own instruments, as explained previously. And still unaddressed.

You must be careful not to confuse the arbitrary with the objective. A meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/(299 792 458) of a second. A second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transistion between the two hyperline levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. These are definitions and they are constant and independent of any perceptions of man.

Now, we defined blue as a photon with a wavelength 475nm. We could call it red, green, or ford. It doesn't change the fact that it is 475nm. We can directly measure its wavelength and compare that with our definition of meter and it will always give us 475nm. This is why 475nm is an objective measurement and blue is subjective. Further, we know if the machines are flawed because we can compare the measurement they make of say a known length(we known the length cause we held it next to the standard) to what the known length actually is. Thereby we can fix the error in any number of ways.

Now don't try telling me our definition of what a meter is and what a second is are wrong. They can't be wrong because they are the definitions of a meter and a second.

Fine, you're right, my example was crappy. Although you haven't said a word about not sensing our own machines properly.

Let me put the example into less abstract terms. Let's say that, for a small set of wavelengths between yellow and orange (whatever specific lengths that range may represent), we perceive those wavelengths exactly as we do those that are around 475 nm. And like I said before, our perceptional error prevents us from using machines to realize this gap in our vision. That would represent an unidentifiable error in our observations, if it worked that way in all humans.

It just needs to be reworded into something like:
The effects of external objective reality extend into all aspects of existence.

That's still not a definition. What term are you defining? You're just saying something about the nature of the effects of an external reality; it's a statement.

[Darth SS]

I'm sorry ZAK, did you just say "Our senses might be wrong, but for all logic we have to assume that they are right. But all logic is wrong, because we can never be sure about anything!"

That's...I view that as cowardly at best. It's grasping an abstract concept with no real bearing on anything and somehow putting that forward as revolutionary and trying to establish it as something big and meaningful.

Let's go with your argument for a moment. Our senses might be consistently feeding us fallacies, and all logic is based on an assumption.

Isn't it just as likely that our senses could not be feeding us fallacies?

EDIT-

Again, implausibility is not falsehood.

Actually depending on how implausible something is...yes, it is actually.

[Azisien]

Ack...an interesting religious discussion. Screw it, I like tangents.

And one tangential comment before I dive in: this is to Swordchuck and Archbio. For the interest of not only yourselves (you both seemed to get a little agitated at each other, for no good reason), but for readers of this thread (me, and I presume others), perhaps it would be best if you went beyond "No, this is wrong" and other fanciful one-liners in your back and forths. I had to stop myself on several occasions and ask myself what the hell you guys were arguing about, because you managed to lose me (and perhaps yourselves). Perhaps instead of one-liners, you could say "This is wrong. Here is why it's wrong: *explanation*." If there's a misunderstanding, instead of saying "Read it again, jackass," explain it again, better.

Back to the current subject of the thread. Here is what comes to mind, for me, based on what Zak and his "opponents" are saying:

Zak seems to be talking about objective reality. I mean true, objective reality. The true nature of the universe, perhaps. This is at least how I've comprehended him.

His opponents have been, by and large, talking about human objective reality. Yes, we all (aside from mutants, or defect individuals) perceive blue when we process reflected 475nm light. I think there is truth to this, but it is human truth. Hue, however, is beyond human perception. We can, I think quite correctly, infer that colour is used very extensively and effectively by many organisms throughout the world (something that couldn't happen if other organisms weren't on some level perceiving hue as well).

We perceive our entire reality through a filter. It's the filter of our senses, and what makes it through the filter is processed by our brain to form our perception of reality. There are truths we can form about objective reality, for us. Although there are differences between individuals, we're far more similar than we are different. I think we can all probably agree the sky is blue during the day, unless something unusual is happening (apologies to the colour blind among us).

However, and this is only my interpretation, I think what Zak might be saying is that while this may be true for OUR objectivity, it may not be THE objectivity. If we were all extinct, would the sky be blue during the day? Is it ACTUALLY blue?

What we perceive is a subjective view of reality. We can come together and pool our experiences and with reason, come up with an objective, but still HUMAN, view of reality. That view of reality is a face of the true objective reality of the universe. It is probably not THE objective reality.

Can we get a grip on the true objectivity? I think so. Unfortunately, we have no other sentient, rational organisms we can work together with (or at least properly communicate with). Yet. I think some conclusions in science show us a truer, perhaps colder, nature of the universe. Our definition of a second, given to an alien species and properly translated, should be the same thing. What I mean is, given an alien species had a conception of time like we do, and could comprehend mathematics in a way similar to ours such that translation and communication is possible, the alien could measure the radioactive signals (or whatever god damn mumbo jumbo Sith was spurting) of a cesium atom and it would get the same rate we would. It would observe the same phenomenon. If this was possible, or even if we could communicate with other sentient, rational beings, I think we would transcend the meaning of "objective," as it is defined presently.

[Funka Genocide]

I just wanted to point out that this tangent is not only eating up ridiculous amounts of space with a pointless (at least in my opinion) argument, and that I haven't seen so much as one word referring to religion in a couple thousand.

Is it too much to ask that we get back on track?

[Sithdarth]

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

I'm not sure I follow. What inconsistency is there in the system of reasoning? Inconsistent observations? No; before deciding whether or not our perceptions are trustworthy, the system would not include any observations (as they would be hazy, unproven ideas) and would thus suffer no inconsistency there. Sure, it would be a very abstract system, and you probably couldn't get much out of it (a subjective matter, but for Zeus' sake, spare me), but it would still be consistent.

Its logically inconsistent because if our senses lied to us in anyway even a small one we would eventually end up with a argument that has no flaws and yet does not hold to be true.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

Unless we were also to misperceive our own instruments, as explained previously. And still unaddressed.

No it was addressed.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

Fine, you're right, my example was crappy. Although you haven't said a word about not sensing our own machines properly.

Let me put the example into less abstract terms. Let's say that, for a small set of wavelengths between yellow and orange (whatever specific lengths that range may represent), we perceive those wavelengths exactly as we do those that are around 475 nm. And like I said before, our perceptional error prevents us from using machines to realize this gap in our vision. That would represent an unidentifiable error in our observations, if it worked that way in all humans.

No it doesn't. If you used a machine to measure a wavelength of light that you perceived as blue and it spit out a wavelength between yellow and orange instead of 475nm you know something is wrong. You know something is wrong because 475nm is defined as blue.

So you get to testing. First you compare the standard for the meter with what ever your spectrometer is using. If these don't match then you found your problem. If they do match its time to go the hospital and have you brain scanned and/or visit your local shrink.

This would be how it is in fact not possible to misperceive our instruments in an undetectable way. This is because we have this standard unchanging well defined objective measurements.

Originally Posted by ZAKtheGeek

That's still not a definition. What term are you defining? You're just saying something about the nature of the effects of an external reality; it's a statement.

Now I see the misinterpretation.

Originally Posted by me

The effects of external objective reality extend into all aspects of existence.

Is not the actual definition of reality. However, the definition of reality contains within it the requirement that the effects of reality are real and extend into all aspects of what is real. Thus the statement.

Originally Posted by Azisien

Can we get a grip on the true objectivity? I think so. Unfortunately, we have no other sentient, rational organisms we can work together with (or at least properly communicate with). Yet. I think some conclusions in science show us a truer, perhaps colder, nature of the universe. Our definition of a second, given to an alien species and properly translated, should be the same thing. What I mean is, given an alien species had a conception of time like we do, and could comprehend mathematics in a way similar to ours such that translation and communication is possible, the alien could measure the radioactive signals (or whatever god damn mumbo jumbo Sith was spurting) of a cesium atom and it would get the same rate we would. It would observe the same phenomenon. If this was possible, or even if we could communicate with other sentient, rational beings, I think we would transcend the meaning of "objective," as it is defined presently.

We don't need aliens to give us an objective view point. All the mumbo jumbo I said is the objective view point. It just has an arbitrary human filter of names on top of it. We can get rid of that by just using universal units. Which are ironically what we'd expect to be the first means of communication between us and an alien species because they would be the same without having to explain to the aliens what a meter is.