Then why are scientists at the LHC looking for the "God particle"? Could it be because it is something that they "believe" to be there but have no proof of?:hmm:

It's a codename for a mysterious and important hypothetical particle. It doesn't have anything to do with God. It's just a name...:-? The discovery of this particle, which is basically a component of everything that has mass, would allow us to understand and unravel the mysteries of the universe in ways you could not possibly imagine.

I know what it is (or might be) and why they are looking for it. You missed the point.


If as they "believe", it exists. Again, you missed the point. I don't need a lecture on what they hope to unravel, just trying to point out that science and religion aren't as different as you might believe.

you have created a point that isn't there

You throw a lot of things together into one box here. There are certainly stupid scientiists, or arrogant one with a huge ego, but I have already quoted two of the greatest names in physics of the löast cetnury, Heisenberg and Bohr, to show that science, responisbly conducted, knows damn well that subject and object cannot be kept clinically separate and that the the conclusions of scien ce are therefore everchnaging, and temporary - that is what makes them theori9es - instead of the penultimate truth. But there is certainly those types who want to drive home "their" findings with religion-like missionizing, and they are a great a zealot then as religious fanatics. Nevertheless, this is not the essence of science, it is an abuse of science.

Atheism a religion? there are two forms of atheisml the one form says it does not know and does not care wether or not deities exist. the other denies actively that deities exist, therefore some speak of atheism and anti-theism as two things. but one thing it is not: a religion like any of the three desert religions, or a cult with a dogma that is to be belived in in order to make you a member of it.

I think you refer to the fanatism to be seen in relgions at times, see fanatism in science and atheism as well - and then conclude that since all are fanatic at times, all three miust be forms of religion. But that is a deductive fallacy.

Let's löeave politics out of here, and the drives pro and contra global wamring have a lot to do with poltiical ideologies from both directions. Again I refer to the last paragraph above. If all things being conducted with varying forms of fanatism shall be religions because of that, then even me eating chocolate at times qualifies for a religion.

Agreed, there is no commonly accepted strict scientific definition of what religion means, but it is widely accepted to usuzally reserve the term for the meaning of relgious wordviews, and not for just anything being done with missionary enthusiasm. If we cannot agree on some basic understanding of terms, than we will use the same names but mean different things, and by that, nobody understands noone anymore and nobody knows what the other means. confussion, that is.

They conduct usual scientific working method: they formed a hypothesis, and now testing it.

It is not the first time they try to find the finall, the ultimate, the all-dioscussions-ending value, variable, formula. hawking'S world formula: he meanwhile has given up on that. Descartes world machine, meaning a world where evertyhing is moving inside predefined paths. We also have seen the end of history by Fukojama. the idea of the final, world-explaining wave formula. The linear time arrow poijnting from the past to the future, having defined once and forever how the universe is ticking. Now they are trying to find the ultimate final particle. Well, I am sure they will find something. but it will stay final and ultimate only as long as they haven't found something new some time later.

A relgion here would insist on that its dogma Is the ultimnate truth, and that it cannot chnage since it is devine, and thus must not be examined and checked for correctness and altermnatives. where science thinks is theories and hypothesis, relgion deals in absolutes. It it turns hostile when one is touching them, for it's powerbasis is depending on its claims remaining unchecked, and people being held in a blindly submissive, obedient state. science is as much a relgion as scientology is psychology. Like scientology fights psychology so bitterly because it knows that no other disicipline can expose the real face of scientology's "revelations" with so much competence, so do religions usually not like science, for they know that they do not have the adequate tools to counter reason, logic, and empiry.

They do not "believe" it exists. Mathematics shows it does exist. They are now trying to observe it.

This is nice, from Aldous Huxley's "Island": the Raja's Notes on What's What. It is culture-free, so no matter your worldview and religion, you should be able to read it without feeling offended. :lol:

http://island.org/huxley/whatswhat.html

Whatever.:D

IT'S TIME TO SAY SOMETHING GOOD ABOUT THE INTERNET! (That was me raising my voice to be heard above the din.:rotfl: )

Sometimes we are compelled to point out that we've been misunderstood, and that speech is easier to express that writing. I'd like to point out the opposite. If this was taking place in a room or at a convention we'd all be having our private arguments and no one would know what the others were talking about. There are now at least two, and maybe three different conversations going on at the same time in this thread, and I'm having no trouble keeping them separate or following all the lines of argument.

And they have for the most part been civil and reasoned. This is my idea of fun!:sunny:

I'm familiar with Kant's critic of that reasoning, who interestingly renounced to provide a reasoning for his belief in God and instead started from there. Hence he went into history for his method, not for his conclusions.

For me Dechartes is one point in the whole reasoning, my main argument is in the doctrine of deism as a philosophy. See below.

The brief version of deism:

If you are walking through a forest and see a wooden house, what does the logic tell you?

a) Oh, look, pieces of wood falling randomly from the trees have out of pure luck done this construction.

b) Look, someone built a house there (Matter organized intelligently with a purpose).

The whole universe and its order as opposed to random chaos is a good evidence of an intelligent will that organizes matter according to laws and principles that can be infered from empiric observation. Pretending the self-organization of matter into intelligent associations and purposes (As atheists do) is pure and simply ilogical.

Matter organized intelligently and purposedly = Intelligence with power to materialize his will

Nothing to do with faith or religion, but with logics.

Ah yes, Zen is superior :roll:

The milenarian european tradition of philosophy from the Greeks to nowadays is just a waste of time when opposed to the milenarian culture of Zen. Philosophy does not add or help your life, it only serves to fill volumens of paper. (Yes I know you talked about theology, but I did talk about philosophy, it's not my fault if you switched concepts when replying)

Zen helps you appreciate the value of being here, breathing and understanding the present moment. Philosophy tries to explain it, which is something quite different and can't be compared.

In terms of benefit for you as human, both have their roles. An intelligent human will never pretend to live without questioning where he comes from, where he goes and wether there is a purpose in all of this.

You could, you did. And by having done so, you steered away from the path of logic, which was exactly the way to provide the evidence you were asking for. Your critic is now worth zero, as you first requested evidence (logical) and now you refuse to accept logic as way to provide the evidence.

Random <> Voluntary

No intermediate concepts or grey areas :nope:

If the whole universe and existance is not random, then it is intentional.

You are then accepting the existence of an intelligence with power to act, i.e. a will. And then, who else does have that intentionality if it's not a God?

Nonsens. right in that situation, it is an act of witnessing or percpetion, and most peopel automazically will judge over what they see.Until here, logic has nothing to do with.

Neither equals Atheism your extremely shortreaching definition here, nor, is their an argument in what you say. To see structure and order in n ature and nthe universe means nothing than that we have attributed this structure and order into our percpetions, or better the objects of perception that we witness. It is US adding meaning to the observation, and the maning we add to it decides on the attitude in which we meet the world in the future, and by that we already decide on out future percpetions - and those we miss.

However, you need to familiaruze yourself with the work of Maturana and Varela, also Prigogine. All of them are about self-emerging order and matter showing an inherent tendency to organise itself at levels of higher and higher complexity.

the metaphor that you used, if you want to interpret it like you indicated, also would allow another interpretation. It must not be a hint for a foreign deity having created the order that you assume you see and what you see must not be like you see it, it is just inside your head, you know. A bat for example sees something totally different than you, and for the snail slowly moving along both you and the woods and the house and your interpretation are totaly unimportant alltogether. Instead you can conclude that the way in which the treelines were planted and the house was build - you see your own systemtic effort of bringong your own idea of order into the place. In other words: you are the god having created it, the divine quality is youself. Since you are the one judging the objects of your percpetion, and by that reacting to that, you decide on their meaning. In other words: YOU are the ordering principle that you believe to perceive in the place and situation.

Self-realisation as well as insight into the world, and freedom is only to have at the cost of forgetting yourself, overlooking yourself, or in one word: self-transcendence. the more you keep object and subject, monitoring witness and the object of percpetion, separate (the dualistic view of thr world), the more you must conclude that you are separate from the event of you perceiving something, and the more you must conclude that there is another prjnciple, subject, whatever, adding meaning to what you see and that you believe you just discovered. but the more you forget this dualistic separating, and disappear in the process of perception, you must not udge and react anymore, and must not draw lines between subject and object. both fall into one, and the only thing remaining is the process of perception itself. and then YOU have turned out to be the god of the place and time . And that is what is meant by "mystical experience".

you think you see a god in the situation you described? I tell you this: what you see is an idea or a suspicion of what orginally always has been yours, but what you had lost, and keep yourself away from. seen that way, it is a hint, an invitation to win back what already is yours anyway.

Oh no, not at all.

Theological debates like this one just cause knots in your mind, and keep you away from direct experience. You win nothing by doing so, and it makes you insisting on conclusions that are direct result of dualistic thinking. You take that decision, you defend your philosophical chains of pearls - and voila, your mind is occupied by being entangled right in the middle of a fight. You do not see the world around you, then, but you judge what you see, evalaute wether it nis pro on contra your position, and you react in full auto-mode like a trained dog runsa fter the ball. The more you know about these things, the more a clergy you may become, but the less direct experience you have had, or will ever have. It keeps you away from direct experience. Mind is filled by shining light, so leave begind the shadows of your terms and conceptions. Free yourself from everything. thnat Zen is superior, no matter if meant irnically or real, is just a judgement. your judgement. I would recommend to stop judging alltogether. I also think this is the deeper meaning of Jesus' words "don't judge about others, so that you shall not be judged." Also:


Hairsplitting, since in the context of this duscussion philosophy and theology very mjuch is oine and the same to me. I know the difference in terms, but read again: "in the context of this dicussion", they are not different.

Zen does not help in what you said, breathing, and nunderstanding. Zen is just three letters, a Z and an E and an N - and nothing more. If you want philosophical explanation on it, which already is against it's very essence, then just see this: doing one thing at a time, not two, and be with oyur mind at it, and not have your mind somewhere else while you are still here. I smaile tiem and again when people start wondering and disucssing why meditating people or monks may sit long time on a cushion, and they want to understand it, and what it does. actually, they just sit, and don't do a second thing at the same time. That's all. they could as well do the dish-washing, and if they think that is two different things, than they have not understood correctly what they are doing. An easy phrase i could also use is this: put your heart where your mind is.

Really, you are funny - and you are too clever. no wonder that you stray off into all your philosophical implications, then! Instead of getting more stuff into your head, you should get rid of the things that alreayd crowd that place! ;) See, you may become a well-versed scholar when doing in your way. If there is no hunger in you for more, than offering additional food necessarily will be rejected by you, and maybe you even live a happy life. So why offering it at all? However, if you are hungry, you will start searching for food all by yourself. In both cases I must not do anything, and must not start trying to press your buttons. I just keep on living my life, and when you meet me I say Hello, and when you leave I say Good-bye, and when you mimic what I do, then that is your thing, and if you get motivated for trying your own thing, that is fine, and if you do nothing and just leave, iwell, then have a good voyage. I just do my own thing, and that'S it. wether it serves as an example for others or not, is not important for me. And that is why I usually reply when I get entangled in a discussion like this, and give an answer when I am getting asked, but in principal I neither am interested in such a debate, nor do I consider it to be helpful for me or the other. I have given away almost all books I ever had about buddhism and chan when I was young. ;)

Hardly. To be honest, I did not think of "evidence" in the understanding of philospphy, where "evidence" is used as a label for conclusions of logic. that maning of course is possible, but i did not thought abiut that in the first. I just meant evidence in the commonly used practical every-day-understanding of the term. however, of course my demand can also be widened to a logical conlcuions that is convincing as well. It's just that I cannot see your logic to be so logical at all, nor convincing.

You could as well say that while I drank the glass of water and while you imagined to do it yourself, my sensation of the water pouring down my throat and the thirst dissapearing is just an illusion for I do not need to confirm or falsify your imagination of what it feels like, and say that your image of what it should feel like, and my sensation of what it actually feels in reality are not the same.

March on, tin soldier. You must not know about inherently embedded order, dissipative structures, and chaos. Just keep on marching.

Intelligence must note necessarily express itself in a will. nor is a state of order intelligence. like at several occasions, you take too many preassumptions as solid facts.

If it is not god, then only the cosmos itself is left, eh? ;) that includes you and me, btw.

Seen that way, I greet you as a divine colleague- spoken from Buddhy to Buddhy, so to say. ;)

Oh, I already said that this was the brief version, only for the purpose of this cyberforum discussion. It is obvioulsy not my intention to try to write a whole essay via message boards :doh:

A tendency by matter to organise itself must be explained, and not just observed. Organization is by definition a way of logically ordering anything, impossible to happen without an intelligence guiding the process.

What a ridiculous simplification of what was just a metaphor. Obviously a bat will not recognize a house as such, but not because of his different perception level, but instead because of his lack of enough intelligence to recognize the work. The example also works inversely: A human can recognize a bird's nest or a bat's nest because he can identify the intelligent work with matter for a purpose.

Nope, you are just recognizing according to your intelligence level the results of the work of an intelligence that is in a different level. You can get a part of it, and another will go unnoticed, but you are not necessarily constructing anything. Instead, you are confrontating an observation with what previous observations and your intelligence have constructed as a logical system in your mind. Come on, I have also readed Schopenhauer :roll:

Here is where the bit of Dechartes comes in: "I have not created myself, therefore someone else has", remember?
The very same fact that you exist -which is undisputable- and keep existing is because you are kept together by something external. Otherwise you would lack the ability to do so. You not only can't create yourself, but you also can't keep yourself existing.

I did not make preconceived decission in order to later search the way to defend them. That's basically what Kant did, but I have tried to find answers differently, hence my adherence to deism as philosophy. I meditated and considered facts, then I recognized those who had reached similar conclusions and agreeded with them. Auto-mode? Ridiculous. This discussion started when I pointed out that not all forms of religion must imply dogma, and here we are many posts later after you reacted as usual with a wall of text and your caustic and condescendent superiority against us poor unillustrated inferior beings :lol: It is enough to make a simplification of any statement to see you inmediately jump and bite hard like a well trained Pit-Bull, not letting the prey go. Even if you stated some messages ago that this discussion lead nowhere. You are so predictable that accusing others to jump in auto-mode on anything is truly ironical.

Nope, I don't think I'm clever. I just think that I use my intelligence as much as I can to draw my own conclussions and learn in any opportunity I have. From all this discussions I have had with you I have learned many things, and I am now richer in experiences and knowledge. What have you learned from me? Probably nothing. But is it because there is nothing in me that could interest you or because you think your are so superior and far ahead that you see me as inferior?

Me too, but I would hope that if we ever meet in reality we could have some beers and a pleasent time. After all, I have always appreciated you and your huge culture and knowledge, even if disagreeing in many points. :up: My mind is open to learn from you or from anyone else. Is yours also?

Cheers to Hitman and Sky for maintaning a civil and fairly organized dialogue. :up:

They like to shy away from the greatest scientist named Einstein who because of the mathmatical complexities of the universe also arrived at the conclusion that this is no accident...To explain this to the athesistic mind is like the Model A trying to explain Henry Ford.