Radical Orthodoxy: A Manifesto

[Nofear]

12 hours ago, Peacefully said:

I’m not sure I understand the purpose of signing something like this.

Virtue signaling, of course.  😜

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Words are not reality. Words only describe reality, and sometimes pretty darn poorly. Of course, words have their own beauty when communicating thoughts. But words, again, are not reality. And a blind man will not see blue, whether demonstrated or described in words.

I see this as very confused.  

"Words are not reality"  Yep I agree they are not reality.   In fact our perceptions of what we call "reality" automatically are not "really" reality because all we can KNOW ABOUT ARE OUR PERCEPTIONS.   We are wearing permanent sunglasses which have evolved to allow us to survive- we don't get to see the color of many wavelengths of light because we don't need to see them to grab fruit off a tree.

We don't even know if words "describe" reality or we would have had a Theory of Everything a thousand years ago.

All we have are our perceptions of the results of experiments- as published or communicated in language in some manner, usually in scientific journals.  All we know are human perceptions as communicated to other humans.

But those perceptions that we experience and that others communicate are all that we can know.   We can only know human experience of "reality" whatever that means, not reality itself.

So how can you get an accurate representation of reality if you can never see beyond our perceptions of reality to check "reality" against the perception?

That's all in the Nagel quote- did you even read it?

If you can refute Nagel you better publish it quick!   You will revolutionize philosophy!

Or maybe quote another guy you think refutes Nagel.   Honestly, philosophy is not two old guys talking on the porch

Edited December 3, 2020 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Nofear said:

Virtue signaling, of course.  😜

the only problem is that we HAVE no virtue.... 

 

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, Stargazer said:

This is why I love you, Mark. You can spin the most lovely of verbal cloth, but I still can't quite follow what you're saying. Well, a little.

So Nagel didn't work for you huh?

Here's the deal-  Let's take it backwards and start with the goal of showing secular folks that "God is real"

How could it be true that God is real?   We cannot see him or experience him objectively- that experience of "knowing" the gospel is true is a feeling in your heart.

It is like the RICHNESS of the color blue, the stirring in us in hearing beautiful music, the disgust of disgusting things, the reality of an itchy mosquito bite even though we can describe the phyical reactions happening all day.

Where is the joy in helping someone find the gospel?  Yes there is ONE perspective in which that joy of religious experience can be linked to brain chemicals- but do brain chemicals and their third person perspective describe the REALITY of religious experience?

Suppose someone with an electrode in your brain stimulates the area which causes you the subjective experience of hearing Beethoven's 5th- is it not "really" Beethoven's Fifth?   

Is the description of how a digital recording works a description of how the music makes you feel?

Where is that subjective element in any experience?

How can you know that God is "real" because you "feel it in your heart"??   If the answer is "no" the LDS position is trash.

If the first vision was just chemicals shooting off in Joseph's brain- omitting his subjective experience, the there IS no LDS position to even disappear.   It never existed, and was illusion from the start!!

So subjective experience is either important in our lives or it is not.  Knowing what is right or wrong is subjective experience.  Spiritual experience is subjective experience.  Seeing the "blue" in those wavelengths is subjective experience.   Hearing and being moved by Beethoven is subjective experience.   Seeing God is subjective experience.

If someone was doing a brain scan of Joseph during the first vision - would the person doing the scan see God or possibly only a portion of Joseph's brain lighting up?

No, he would only see the brain lighting up and would not see the subjective content.  

So descriptions of brain activity do not include descriptions of the subjective experience

So if all we have of the world is objective descriptions, God doesn't exist.

Yet here we have a famous philosopher saying that subjective experiences are REAL- and yet he is an atheist!!

He has "faith" that God does not exist, but can see that God actually MIGHT exist, and he has no argument to support his own atheism!!

So you see that perhaps that would be an important argument against atheists and a powerful argument for the reality , value and importance of spiritual experience?

I hope so because that is why I am here. 

Subjective experience is the cornerstone of all religion and especially LDS religion.

If the subjective part of experience is not valuable or important we have nothing.    If there is no BLUE in blue, it's all over, or if that BLUE is not "real" it's all over.  

But there it is, right before your eyes!

And so is morality, music, art, love, or purpose to life.  No patriotism, no emotions period, no good and no bad.

But there is if you see it or not.     And I know you do too!

 

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by mfbukowski

[Ahab]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

the only problem is that we HAVE no virtue.... 

 

Speak for yourself, please, which I suppose you just did.  Maybe  you should work on that a bit more, as I still do.

And for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

6And to knowledge self control; and to self control patience; and to patience godliness;

7And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness love.

8For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

https://biblehub.com/kj2000/2_peter/1.htm

[Stargazer]

29 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

So Nagel didn't work for you huh?

Here's the deal-  Let's take it backwards and start with the goal of showing secular folks that "God is real"

How could it be true that God is real?   We cannot see him or experience him objectively- that experience of "knowing" the gospel is true is a feeling in your heart.

It is like the RICHNESS of the color blue, the stirring in us in hearing beautiful music, the disgust of disgusting things, the reality of an itchy mosquito bite even though we can describe the phyical reactions happening all day.

Where is the joy in helping someone find the gospel?  Yes there is ONE perspective in which that joy of religious experience can be linked to brain chemicals- but do brain chemicals and their third person perspective describe the REALITY of religious experience?

Suppose someone with an electrode in your brain stimulates the area which causes you the subjective experience of hearing Beethoven's 5th- is it not "really" Beethoven's Fifth?   

Is the description of how a digital recording works a description of how the music makes you feel?

Where is that subjective element in any experience?

How can you know that God is "real" because you "feel it in your heart"??   If the answer is "no" the LDS position is trash.

If the first vision was just chemicals shooting off in Joseph's brain- omitting his subjective experience, the there IS no LDS position to even disappear.   It never existed, and was illusion from the start!!

So subjective experience is either important in our lives or it is not.  Knowing what is right or wrong is subjective experience.  Spiritual experience is subjective experience.  Seeing the "blue" in those wavelengths is subjective experience.   Hearing and being moved by Beethoven is subjective experience.   Seeing God is subjective experience.

If someone was doing a brain scan of Joseph during the first vision - would the person doing the scan see God or possibly only a portion of Joseph's brain lighting up?

No, he would only see the brain lighting up and would not see the subjective content.  

So descriptions of brain activity do not include descriptions of the subjective experience

So if all we have of the world is objective descriptions, God doesn't exist.

Yet here we have a famous philosopher saying that subjective experiences are REAL- and yet he is an atheist!!

He has "faith" that God does not exist, but can see that God actually MIGHT exist, and he has no argument to support his own atheism!!

So you see that perhaps that would be an important argument against atheists and a powerful argument for the reality , value and importance of spiritual experience?

I hope so because that is why I am here. 

Subjective experience is the cornerstone of all religion and especially LDS religion.

If the subjective part of experience is not valuable or important we have nothing.    If there is no BLUE in blue, it's all over, or if that BLUE is not "real" it's all over.  

But there it is, right before your eyes!

And so is morality, music, art, love, or purpose to life.  No patriotism, no emotions period, no good and no bad.

But there is if you see it or not.     And I know you do too!

 

 

All I was trying to do was to tell you what caused your cones to sense and your brain to interpret what they sensed as blue. No, Nagel didn't nail it for me. I hope you speak German or you won't "get" that. 🙂 

As for God, I've heard His voice a number of times. He's very real to me; and as subjective as those experiences have been, they are very real to me.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Stargazer

[MiserereNobis]

33 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

If someone was doing a brain scan of Joseph during the first vision - would the person doing the scan see God or possibly only a portion of Joseph's brain lighting up?

No, he would only see the brain lighting up and would not see the subjective content.  

My intro to philosophy professor (who was so good that I decided to double-major in philosophy because of his class) put it this way: if someone is eating chocolate and you lick their brain, are you going to taste chocolate? 😂

[mfbukowski]

15 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

All I was trying to do was to tell you what caused your cones to sense and your brain to interpret what they sensed as blue.

Thanks, I have some familiarity with that.

My minor for my bachelors was psychology, concentrating on physiological psych.    And most of my present "fun reading" is about cognitive science and how it relates to all this.

Sorry about Nagel.

 

[mfbukowski]

14 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

My intro to philosophy professor (who was so good that I decided to double-major in philosophy because of his class) put it this way: if someone is eating chocolate and you lick their brain, are you going to taste chocolate? 😂

Hey that's a great one and I will definitely have to steal it!

Here is another guy who is very talented at explaining these issues, Frank Jackson:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument#Refutation_of_physicalism

 

[Ahab]

55 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

My intro to philosophy professor (who was so good that I decided to double-major in philosophy because of his class) put it this way: if someone is eating chocolate and you lick their brain, are you going to taste chocolate? 😂

I would have enjoyed being in that class if the professor was open to having debates/discussions with me. 

I would have answered that question by saying you would need to lick that person's mouth or what was in his or her mouth, but that still wouldn't mean you would agree with that person about what chocolate tastes like.

People who have the same experiences can still disagree with each other.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Ahab

[mfbukowski]

41 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

All I was trying to do was to tell you what caused your cones to sense and your brain to interpret what they sensed as blue. No, Nagel didn't nail it for me. I hope you speak German or you won't "get" that. 🙂 

As for God, I've heard His voice a number of times. He's very real to me; and as subjective as those experiences have been, they are very real to me.

Well Nagel is definitely arguing from a sure place.   Yeah I had to take German to not get the Masters that I never finished because I found all the answers without it. 

Wittgenstein saw himself as a doctor whose mission was to heal all disease and thus put himself out of business- and for me, he did just that!!

I knew that God is very real to you, and that is why I was so persistent to make the point that physicalism is both faulty in logic as well as the generally approved - yet illogical- main argument atheists use against believers.

I mean Dawkins' "The God Delusion" tells it all in those three words.   If you cannot define God objectively, he does not exist and is therefore a "delusion".   That's the whole thing right there

Deconstructing Mormonism by Riskas is just the same argument over and over

The CES letter is largely based on the same idea.  All arguments that try to destroy the church because of its history or the geography problems in the BOM are essentially the same argument:  "There's no objective evidence!"

There is NOTHING to any of those atheist arguments because spiritual experience has nothing to do with anything "objective" precisely because testimony IS subjective.

Its evidence is in our hearts and minds in the same way that blue is in our hearts and minds- or Beethoven's music is in our subjective hearts and minds, all morality is also real only subjectively and on and on it goes.

So here are YOU using THEIR argument- and I flip out!!

And so to actually return to the OP- Christ - seen subjectively as we believers see Him IS truth in the way that BLUE is truth and morality is truth and all good is truth.

But speaking that way philosophically doesn't work! 

 

 

[Ahab]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Well Nagel is definitely arguing from a sure place.   Yeah I had to take German to not get the Masters that I never finished because I found all the answers without it. 

Wittgenstein saw himself as a doctor whose mission was to heal all disease and thus put himself out of business- and for me, he did just that!!

I knew that God is very real to you, and that is why I was so persistent to make the point that physicalism is both faulty in logic as well as the generally approved - yet illogical- main argument atheists use against believers.

I mean Dawkins' "The God Delusion" tells it all in those three words.   If you cannot define God objectively, he does not exist and is therefore a "delusion".   That's the whole thing right there

Deconstructing Mormonism by Riskas is just the same argument over and over

The CES letter is largely based on the same idea.  All arguments that try to destroy the church because of its history or the geography problems in the BOM are essentially the same argument:  "There's no objective evidence!"

There is NOTHING to any of those atheist arguments because spiritual experience has nothing to do with anything "objective" precisely because testimony IS subjective.

I think we agree that everything is subjectively experienced.  What I think we disagree on is that some things are not true\real even though some people subjectively believe they are true/real.  Reality is not what some people believe it is.

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Its evidence is in our hearts and minds in the same way that blue is in our hearts and minds- or Beethoven's music is in our subjective hearts and minds, all morality is also real only subjectively and on and on it goes.

Okay, so how does that principle apply to people who believe something is true/real when in reality it really is not true/real?

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

So here are YOU using THEIR argument- and I flip out!!

Me thinks thou doest flip out too much.

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

And so to actually return to the OP- Christ - seen subjectively as we believers see Him IS truth in the way that BLUE is truth and morality is truth and all good is truth.

But speaking that way philosophically doesn't work! 

 

 

And why do YOU suppose that argument doesn't work philosophically?

[Stargazer]

45 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Well Nagel is definitely arguing from a sure place.   Yeah I had to take German to not get the Masters that I never finished because I found all the answers without it. 

I figured as much. 

45 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Wittgenstein saw himself as a doctor whose mission was to heal all disease and thus put himself out of business- and for me, he did just that!!

I knew that God is very real to you, and that is why I was so persistent to make the point that physicalism is both faulty in logic as well as the generally approved - yet illogical- main argument atheists use against believers.

I am technically not a scientist (i.e. no academic degree), but the Universe to me is a real place, and it stands on its own as the strongest evidence for God that can be found outside of a still, small, voice. Hawkings' last attempt to convince people that God isn't real or possible, namely the first chapter of his last book, was so full of pseudoscience that I marveled he could be so obtuse. He said the universe came into being out of nothing, and had no cause. And then had the gall to say it was by the "laws of science." No chance to ask him "which law is that, exactly?" In the end, to argue against God he had to resort to the very last place he probably wanted to go: Faith. Because that's all he had left.

The most resoundingly stupid thing he said in that entire chapter, and it was an epiphany to me, was this (I hope I haven't regaled you with this already, I've been shouting it to anyone who would listen for a few months now):

"As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

First, I marveled at causality being tossed negligently out the window (there's something that doesn't have a cause?), but then the time thing landed. Oh, my heck. Of course there was no time for a creator to have existed in, because he couldn't have been inside the "infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole". Because for him to be there, he basically would have had to create Himself. An absurdity beyond stupidity, for a massive intellect like Hawking's. It was just as cringeworthy as that Soviet cosmonaut who came back from space to tell the world that he didn't see God while he was up there, so that proves there is no God.

45 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I mean Dawkins' "The God Delusion" tells it all in those three words.   If you cannot define God objectively, he does not exist and is therefore a "delusion".   That's the whole thing right there

I don't think Dawkins can define himself objectively. For all he knows, he is the only intelligent being in existence, and everything he sees around him is a figment of his own imagination. So, I'd be tempted to say he doesn't exist.  Sort that one out, Richie baby.

45 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Deconstructing Mormonism by Riskas is just the same argument over and over

The CES letter is largely based on the same idea.  All arguments that try to destroy the church because of its history or the geography problems in the BOM are essentially the same argument:  "There's no objective evidence!"

There is NOTHING to any of those atheist arguments because spiritual experience has nothing to do with anything "objective" precisely because testimony IS subjective.

Its evidence is in our hearts and minds in the same way that blue is in our hearts and minds- or Beethoven's music is in our subjective hearts and minds, all morality is also real only subjectively and on and on it goes.

So here are YOU using THEIR argument- and I flip out!!

Sorry, Mark. Didn't notice that. I know that there is no objective evidence. There is only subjective, and we just agree sometimes on what we see and hear, and call it good enough for getting on with. 

All I have to do to scare the heck out of myself is to try to imagine the Infinite. Does it every time.

45 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

And so to actually return to the OP- Christ - seen subjectively as we believers see Him IS truth in the way that BLUE is truth and morality is truth and all good is truth.

But speaking that way philosophically doesn't work! 

What did Hamlet say to Horatio about his philosophy? Oh, yes:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[Ahab]

4 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

All I have to do to scare the heck out of myself is to try to imagine the Infinite. Does it every time.

Oh, come on now.  Thinking of infinity is very relaxing, probably the most relaxing thing there is for me to think of.  Just more and more and more...of all that exists with no end to any of it. 

No end and no beginning.  No big "bang" to start any of it because it did not start and it never will end.

[Stargazer]

9 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Oh, come on now.  Thinking of infinity is very relaxing, probably the most relaxing thing there is for me to think of.  Just more and more and more...of all that exists with no end to any of it. 

Then you haven't properly imagined it.

9 minutes ago, Ahab said:

No end and no beginning.  No big "bang" to start any of it because it did not start and it never will end.

That was Fred Hoyle's assertion, so at least you err in good company.

[Ahab]

4 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Then you haven't properly imagined it.

That was Fred Hoyle's assertion, so at least you err in good company.

Heh heh. That's funny.  I'll go on thinking of infinity as I think of it and will be on the alert for anything new.

[carbon dioxide]

On 12/1/2020 at 12:15 PM, bluebell said:

I read that last week and really liked it.  I hate the progressivism that says that there is no need for a member to have any loyalty to the church or it's leaders as long as they are loyal to Christ.

It is impossible to be loyal to Christ and not be loyal to his Church.  The whole logic that one can divorce one from the other is absurd. 

[Ahab]

12 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

It is impossible to be loyal to Christ and not be loyal to his Church.  The whole logic that one can divorce one from the other is absurd. 

Well, hmm, not necessarily. Christ is not his church and all people should be aware of that distinction.  As members of Christ's church we should be loyal to Christ which isn't necessarily the same thing as being loyal to other members of Christ's church.

[MiserereNobis]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

The CES letter is largely based on the same idea.  All arguments that try to destroy the church because of its history or the geography problems in the BOM are essentially the same argument:  "There's no objective evidence!"

Perhaps the problem is that LDS make claims of objective evidence. If I recall, doesn't the intro to the Book of Mormon claim it is a history of the Native Americans?  If LDS dropped claims of objective evidence, then counter-claims would also drop. But you can't really have it both ways, can you?

[MiserereNobis]

3 hours ago, Ahab said:

I would have enjoyed being in that class if the professor was open to having debates/discussions with me. 

I would have answered that question by saying you would need to lick that person's mouth or what was in his or her mouth, but that still wouldn't mean you would agree with that person about what chocolate tastes like.

People who have the same experiences can still disagree with each other.

I'm afraid the professor would have pointed out that you missed the whole point.

[Ahab]

1 minute ago, MiserereNobis said:

I'm afraid the professor would have pointed out that you missed the whole point.

Yeah I get that a lot from philosophers, especially professors of philosophy.  As if me not agreeing with them or them not seeing my point means that I am not getting their point.  I think I do and just do not agree with them.

[MiserereNobis]

9 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Yeah I get that a lot from philosophers, especially professors of philosophy.  As if me not agreeing with them or them not seeing my point means that I am not getting their point.  I think I do and just do not agree with them.

Ok, I'll take a stroll down Ahab lane again

Without agreeing or disagreeing, please tell me what the professor was trying to show by saying you can't taste chocolate if you lick someone's brain who is eating chocolate. Straight up summary. What's the professor's point?

Edited December 4, 2020 by MiserereNobis

[Ahab]

4 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

Ok, I'll take a stroll down Ahab lane again

Without agreeing or disagreeing, please tell me what the professor was trying to show by saying you can't taste chocolate if you lick someone's brain who is eating chocolate. Straight up summary. What's the professor's point?

That you can't taste chocolate by licking someone else's brain even if the person whose brain you are licking is eating chocolate and tasting it at the exact same moment you are licking that person's brain.  That thoughts and experiences of one person do not transfer to another person that way.  The tongue does not do that trick, and the brain doesn't either.  

As scientists often say, if only...

[MiserereNobis]

5 minutes ago, Ahab said:

That you can't taste chocolate by licking someone else's brain even if the person whose brain you are licking is eating chocolate and tasting it at the exact same moment you are licking that person's brain.  That thoughts and experiences of one person do not transfer to another person that way.  The tongue does not do that trick, and the brain doesn't either.  

As scientists often say, if only...

The point was that what is going on physically in the brain is separate from what goes subjectively in the mind. Any and all studies of the brain are not going to show you what the person is subjectively experiencing. Usually philosophers point out that brain scans only show you what part of the brain is working when people have different experiences. The brain scan does not reveal what the person is actually experiencing. This professor was adding humor to that example.

Edited December 4, 2020 by MiserereNobis

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, carbon dioxide said:

It is impossible to be loyal to Christ and not be loyal to his Church.  The whole logic that one can divorce one from the other is absurd. 

I agree, but there are many members who do not.