Cosmological argument vs. LDS infinite regress

[mfbukowski]

Well it is good to be back, I am enjoying this thread immensely!

Honorentheos,

I think you are right on the points you made and I think it is clear that I did not give Smolin the attention he deserves, I need to read more carefully. I want to get the book you recommended and then maybe I can discuss him more intelligently. But do you agree he presumes causality, and misses that it cannot be shown to be logically necessary?

For example, ask yourself why your analogy focused on the myopia of the skeptic but not on the counter example of those who prefer the religious experience as truth-verifying over reason? I think this is because we have to do so - we have to feel that our view of the world is accurate, but since there are those around us acting like they have virtual goggles on shooting at things we can't see or driving in cars in invisible races we simply assume they are missing reality since their actions do not fit our view of things.

I don't see it as "preferring" religious experience at all, but simply admitting it as an equal partner in experiential inputs WITH reason. And I think you make an excellent point about those who act as if they have "virtual goggles", because clearly this can be taken from either side. Most discussions on this forum are about asserting the superiority of MY goggles over YOUR goggles. But the fact is, we all have them! I would be willing to simply have it accepted that religious experience is a "valid" input. To me, the reality is that one person's "reason" is just as "valid" or "invalid" as anyone else's experience because as we show daily here, there are a few things that honorable, reasonable people may disagree about. So unless we are talking about mathematics and a priori statements which are really not very interesting, as far as I am concerned "reason" has no weighting, or should not have any weighting, over religious experience. My kids will tell you I am a very very skeptical person, but, or because, I think it is clear that "reason" has its limits.

I think the reality is that none of us are truly blindfolded anymore than anyone else, but certainly do not have clear access to some sort of "objectivity" lens that allows us to use all available senses. We all see the glass, darkly though our glasses were fitted to us at birth based on our internal make-up, experience, and the continuous background of life. And it isn't just when one really looks at it I think.

Agreed.

I think these things allow us to make sense of Plato's shadows on the cave wall, but that the shadows are our reality from birth to death. And there is a more certain clarity of understanding this. Kind of like looking at clouds on a summer's day, one can guess the shapes they make but we are closest to the truth when we see them as clouds. But does it help us to see them as particles of "a visible mass of droplets or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body..."

When using meteorology, this is too simple. When enjoying an afternoon with one's daughter this may be too complex. So I agree with you on the whole, just offering the caveat that we are all yelling out "Marco!" and using this to figure things out. Or, to use the other famous analogy - none of us know what an elephant looks like, IMO. So we are all wrong in what we are holding and lack the ability to understand it even if we could create an accurate picture of this thing called "elephant" (or God). I've always found that analogy so apt yet always assuming someone, usually the teller, knows what the elephant is. And beyond this, wouldn't the blind men be best off if they could listen to one another, even trade places to "see" what the other "sees"?

Yet, for us, this is almost impossible to do. We find it hard to see what the believer in a certain religion sees in them (not excluding critics towards the LDS faith) yet finding it equally hard to see the value in the opposite view of the believer in rational agnosticism (how I would define myself since I have decided to reject the label critic. )

I agree, and this is beautifully said!

Regarding amnesia, you said:

While we will disagree on this, I think it is the most common thing in the world. It happens to everyone when they die.

Can you be sure it happens to everyone?

Speaking about the internal feeling of "divinity" I said:

But what IS that feeling that of assurance that it is divine?

To which you replied:

Don't know. But it is certainly part of the human experience.

Again, of course, agreed.

It seems to me that this is the area to explore. To me, that experience carries its own evidence of divinity in the same way that when one experiences a "red car" one cannot separate the "redness" parts from the "car" parts of the experience. It is one "red-car-driving-down-Ventura Boulevard-in-front-of-the-Bank-of-America" (and many other simultaneous details) experience from which we abstract parts.

It is a "feeling-and-a-divineness-confirmation-feeling", from which we abstract parts. Just as we might not be too sure about the wheel covers or the type of radio antenna the car had, we might doubt parts of any experience, but that does not deny that we DO have experiences of "divinity" I would argue as a quale like "red" in the other experience.

So how does this fit in with the goggles we are discussing? In discussing something so ineffable and ephemeral, perhaps we are just all too willing to let those goggles get fogged and give what we think is "reason" an undeserved upper hand, and we deny that elephants really can be "seen" as a rope sometimes after all, if we need to.

"We really don't know clouds at all"- wasn't that Joanie Mitchell?

But what if the experience is NOT ephemeral. Suppose you lived your whole life as a reasonably skeptical human being who functioned well in society, never showed any signs whatsoever of being "crazy" and one day saw an angel who told you a message which changed your life?

What does that do to the "goggles"?

[mfbukowski]

I would add quickly that his use of the term "evolution" regarding a theory on the propagation of universes is an attempt to use something that is familiar to explain something that is not.

For example - the theory of evolution by the process of natural selection can also explain the success and failure of economic institutions. Businesses taking the place of organisms, one can see that fitness, niche habitation, adaption for better fitness in a changing market or environment , etc., etc., all model why some businesses succeed and others fail. I personally also think it shows why some behaviors may lead to success but are like viruses - and equally undesirable because they kill the host- but that is another topic.

I think that between us, we are pretty much on the same page, and it sounds as if that is pretty much in line with Smolin as well. I think my apparant disagreement with him is based on my not reading him, which I would like to rectify.

I understand your point about "evolution" completely and agree that "selection" is an essential part of everything we do, including deciding which arguments we agree with and disagree with. But the world evolution is so loaded now in a religious context that it may be useful to use other terminology when one is not discussing random Godless evolution. After all, causation becomes unprovable, so we can't know if the "first cause" exists, was God, or was not God.

It is all metaphysics, including "random" evolution because no one knows or can possibly know if it is/was random or not.

And really as I think Popper and others have argued, "natural selection" as a concept really begs the question and includes the conclusion in the premises.

"What survives survives" is really all that is being said, just as "what works, works" is true in science, economics, art, building outhouses, and every other human endeavor, humble and otherwise.

I was once taught by a 12 year old illiterate boy in Mexico that home made lye soap can be used with cloth to patch a gas tank, and that it is about as good as fiberglass for that purpose. You work the sticky, pliable soap into strips of cloth so they are fully impregnated, then criss-cross them over the hole, then put some more soap over the top of it like putty. The patch held for thousands of miles of travel before it was fixed "properly" but probably no more effectively. Everybody in his community knows how to do this, and he looked at me as an idiot for not knowing how to do it myself. Stupid gringo!

Scientists "discover" species of fish in fish markets in the orient, which have been fished for years by the locals, knowing which parts are good to eat and which parts are not, how to cook them and where to find them, but these species are called "unknown" because they are not classified by science.

So what works works, and that things change from one thing to another and some work and some don't is the central concept to me, and sometimes the words just get in the way. I sometimes use "transformation" because it has a bit of magic to it, because I think mystery really does have its place as a counter-balance to "reason".

You know, yin and yang and all that!