Tertullian can best be explained as believing what he does "because this story is so crazy that for it to have survived this long, it must be true". This is, of course, a logical fallacy.

Many throughout time have seen the concept of a crucified deliverer as absurd, and it would be absurd if one applies logic to the situation.

All of this points to the idea that our universe is extremely logically laid out, and it is. Anyone with intelligence can see its order and wonder from whence it came. If one says that the order in the universe happened by a series of unlikely chances, then that person needs to answer how such remarkable order arose from disorder. A couple of months ago I referenced a list of 322 items that had to go right just to have an Earth capable of sustaining life, let alone producing life. That is just too many coincidences for me to accept. This same audience is quick to correctly point out even one "coincidence" when it comes to the Obama administration.

None of that, however, does not prove or disprove that there is a deity who looks at humanity very ironically and chooses whether he/she is to be revealed or not revealed. Would it not be poetic justice if those here in the Gulch and people of faith were to be confronted by someone like Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation as a quirky omniscient, omnipotent deity? My point is that we have no idea what will transpire after this life and should go on living our lives honorably. If we do that, then we will have nothing to apologize for if there is an afterlife to which we must provide an accounting.

I will see the universe as a child like Einstein did. I can see its order and wonder about who could create such an order. And if you call me foolish or illogical, I want you to consider how foolish you sound in mocking someone who tries to see the universe as Einstein does.

I will politely disagree with most here in the Gulch. AR's use of Occam's Razor (The simplest explanation is the best explanation.) has been proven incorrect way too many times for me to accept it as "proof" of existence or nonexistence of a deity. Simply because a concept is not essential to logical metaphysics is not reason enough to dismiss any subject. Just because something is irrelevant to you or anyone else is not proof or non-proof of anything. The logic associated with mathematics and science dictates that one forms a testable hypothesis. A deity's existence or non-existence is not a testable hypothesis unless the deity decides to reveal iteself. The logical shortcut known as Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation is the best explanation. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. Occam's razor is at best only a temporary answer to any scientific question and the basis for the next testable hypothesis.

Einstein said, ""I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God." (G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930), quoted by D. Brian, Einstein: A Life , p. 186.)

If one chooses not to address the subject of a deity or no deity, then one can do that and acknowledge that some things are not knowable in this life. One can do that and be non-contradictory. You are correct, khalling, the existence or non-existence of a deity does not have to be addressed, but if you choose to not address it, then you cannot simultaneously claim an answer other than agnosticism on the issue.

Your statement is nonsensical. First, her philosophy is based on reason and logic not belief. Objectivism is not a "belief system." Second, a concept of a diety is not essential to logical metaphysics. Not needed. Therefore, why does it "need" to be addressed? What "shortcut?" In Science, this is done all the time. One need not address false premises in order to make their proof.

The ability to understand abstracts is an important function of the cognitive process. I’m sorry if you had to have the proverb or phrase explained to you the first time around; I didn’t. I think most people who have well-functioning brains have the ability to process this type of abstract once they have been exposed to at least one or two patterns of examples. Is that what you meant? Also, I clearly wrote resourceful brain, not superior mind.
I think most people are capable of being like foxes; not too terribly bright but very, very clever. But if your brain is not operating properly the function of abstracts and the resourcefulness of cleverness are moot points.

Numerology is not science. It is a branch of mathematics, which is the language of much of science.

And before I hear AR's Occam's Razor argument that a god is unnecessary to her belief system, let me be on record that this was the one point that AR took a logical shortcut of questionable validity. Had she been self-consistent, she should have admitted that she could not know the answer to the theism/atheism question convincingly and consequently not answered it.

I don't do speculative "mind exercises", but Einstein did. He called them Gedanken experiments. In such a way he constructed the foundation for both special relativity and general relativity. Einstein was a deist. As intelligent as many of those here in the Gulch are, I would be excited to see any of you disparage Einstein as lacking in reason or having existed prior to a proper understanding of the universe or any of the other reasons that people use to explain away theism. I would also be interested to see anyone claim to be more intelligent or knowledgeable than Einstein either. As sure as many people are that there is no god, many of the great scientists grappled with this topic. A non-dismissable number wound up on the theistic, the atheistic, and the agnostic sides of this issue. I think it is time that we acknowledge that there are some things that will not know with absolute certainty in this life. No one is going to be able to prove or disprove the existence of a god in this, or in any, forum with sufficient evidence to make all those here in Atlantis come to an agreement on this topic.

Numerology is not science.

No, it is not. Whether or not people have survived threatening conditions through temporary false beliefs to give them hope, believing falsehoods does not make them true and does not justify faith as a means of knowledge.

The meaning of the metaphor about throwing rocks isn't perceived. It must be explaine, at least the first time it is used. One of the common ways the human mind employs abstractions is in selective focus on different characteristics which are then mentally recombined into entities that are imagined but which do not or cannot exist in physical reality. This is done routinely in characterization in fiction, and more obviously in cartoons -- but rabbits and ducks do not hold conversations in reality, and there is no entity as a referent to a supernatural god, which is cartooning with floating abstractions on a grand scale. It is not a sign of a superior mind.

More than a little of Newton's time was spent trying to find out when the world would end by examining Biblical prophecies. During that search, he found a very interesting mathematical order to a number of different things.

You made strained, meaningless analogies with Ayn Rand's principle of omitted measurements in concept formation to try rationalize your faith in the name of "abstraction". Calling it "gleanings" and "subtraction" of logical inferences, and now imagining some other "well developed mind" are all excuses and do not justify either your supernaturalism or specify any method you claim to be using. In leaping to a floating abstraction of the supernatural you are in fact "subtracting reality".

Ari Armstrong reported that InfORMS told him he might have published it somewhere else, implying that they don't forbid it.

I have no idea why it has not been made available. I have only been trying to find out first hand what he thinks about Ayn Rand's philosophy.

Newton spent most of his time there on theology, which is what he wanted to do, not physics or mathematics. If he had not been deeply into religion he would not have been allowed there. He was not given an exemption from that and didn't ask for it, regardless of quarrels over more specific requirements within the orthodoxy. No one said he had to be an "ordained minister". Much of his theological musing were tangled attempts to resolve contradictions in the doctrine of the trinity. The history is in Newton's biographies, not "rewriting history". None of this has anything to do with ARI -- only LorinIrvine's obssessive hatred for ARI posing as scholarship exploited as a strawman.

I have written that religion has no part in the science, meaning the content of scientific understanding and its methods, and that Newton and others were able to pursue science despite belief in religion by keeping it out of their scientific investigations. If what you wrote above is all that the religionist detractors meant they would have nothing to object to.

When someone responds by belligerently trashing what he calls "to propagandize on behalf of their idea of a religion-free rationality" and claims that "Newton's religious speculations completely underpinned his scientific investigations, and it's impossible to understand his approach to science without taking that into account" he is not just arguing that they were able to pursue science without it being compromised by religion. He wants religion in it and wants to believe it was necessary.

He's advocating a notion of rationality somehow including religion, and that religion is essential to Newton's science. That is the usual false apologetics for religion: They are trying to make religious belief essential to the science and to steal the prestige of science for religion by exploiting the name of famous scientists who also held non-scientific beliefs, but who in fact did not let it compromise their work. Sometimes it's even cruder, as in "Maxwell believed it so you should, too."

It isn't religion that makes it possible for someone to want to learn about the universe, no matter how he mixes it in his own mind. Newton, for periods of working in genuine science, wanted to understand something in rational terms (i.e., not religious) and pursued it by rational ("religion-free rationality") means.

For whatever reason, _he_ wanted to do it and he knew what rational understanding meant. The religion, whatever he thought of it, was cognitively irrelevant. It didn't make him do it, it didn't make it possible for him to want to understand, it did not help regardless of what he thought of it, and the science has been understood ever since without reference to it. If he had permanently confused religious notions of understanding in his desire to understand subjects like dynamics and optics, he would not have been able to succeed. The early conceptual confusions in Newton's dynamics that required further work are more important in the history of science than his religion.

Likewise for the claim that religion provided an ordered universe designed by a god so that scientific understanding of regularity is possible. The universe _is_ regular, with everything doing what it does because of what it is in accordance with its identity. Everything is what it is and acts accordingly. All knowledge, including science, depends on that. Otherwise there would be nothing to know and we wouldn't be here discussing it.

Positing a god pulling strings who made it that way might have done it differently is irrelevant and potentially harmful to a proper understanding because under that view you never know when a fickle god, whatever it is supposed to mean, may change everything so there is no law of identity: "A is A except when god wants otherwise".

Belief in a religion and a supernatural realm have nothing to do with either the possibility of science or the methods by which it is done, but have done much to obstruct it. When a scientist recognizes that the universe is orderly and natural laws can be formulated to explain and describe it, it doesn't make any difference to either that awareness or his scientific methods if he also holds some religious belief about a deity creating it -- unless he tries to mix them in which case the attempt fails to the extent religious dogma and faith are allowed to intervene. Newton and Maxwell succeeded because they didn't mix them.

As I have said in the Gulch before, this translation to English of Tertullian is incorrect. I'll explain tomorrow, but I have a 5 PM deadline to meet.

I agree. What if there were giant undetectable beasts in the sky which controlled the fates of everything? Using this “mind exercise” as some factual foundation one could infer absolutely anything. Some do.

Yet, there is something to what he is saying about the mind’s abilities. One of the most profound symptom seen in serious mental defects is the inability to understand abstractions. The trick is that you have to begin with a mind of order. You have to be able to look at abstractions and process the order. An order mind perceives that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks” has nothing to do with rocks and glass. That is a simple abstraction. If you can look at abstractions and see the arguable value that is a sign of truly resourceful brain.

You have to be able to form abstract concepts with a VERY well-developed mind.
If you can picture that your mind is an abstraction of a VERY great mind, you will see my point.
If not, I'm certain that you will still have good thoughts and premises because you can get to where Ayn was ... and a more brilliant mind has rarely existed.

And I'm selling land, but soon it will be too late. I only have one lot for sale now. http://goinggaltinargentina.blogspot.com...