120Thanks
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Something I have been writing on this very topic it's just something I keep revising, on the logical view on deity. I'd like to go back through my library to show how science came about and why the belief in a creator is indispensable for its creation. Nihilism could never spawn scientific thought as it is anti thought and knowledge.......... Anyway my unicorn paradigm thus far:
One of the biggest philosophical problems I run into today is people's ideas about impossible vs improbable. I still remember having a discussion with my dad as a kid and I said something was "impossible". He stopped abruptly and looked at me and said "NOTHING is impossible, just improbable." It sort of amazed me for him to say this, as he was the most intensely logical thinking person I knew, a Mechanical Engineer who keeps even his "messes" in perfect 90 degree orientations, and stacks of papers or books based on most stable structure.......surely he had to understand there were things that couldn't be! The moon wasn't made of cheese, the sun could not revolve around the earth, yes there are things that are impossible! I do not remember what I even said was impossible, but I do think I used the moon made of cheese example, and he asked me if I had been to the moon.....now he was just messing with me, I was sure of it...I don't recall how the discussion ended really....but it stuck in my head. Now I have no philosophy degrees, and I am not as well read as many, but I have read quite a bit, and pardon me if I am plagiarizing a few philosophers ideas, but I have read from many, and forgot to footnote everything.... but this basic principle in my head...we'll just call it the Unicorn Paradigm on possibility. (I'm sure there's a better mathematical name for it)
*
It goes like this. If I asked most people if real living breathing unicorns existed...they would say "no" if being serious. Few people would disagree, but can we say it's impossible for there to be unicorns? Given that I have never seen one, nor known anyone to claim to have seen one, or seen a stuffed one in a museum, other than in the gift shop, or even a photograph that looked real...I feel safe to say their existence is quite in doubt and very improbable....but NOT impossible. Why? Because it's completely possible. It's not even that farfetched, it's just a horse with a horn on its head after all. Horses exist, and animals with horns on their heads exist, I have experienced seeing both first hand...I don't need someone to intellectually prove to me a horse exists I have seen one.. So have Unicorns existed? I find that improbable, there's never been any bones dug up or other evidence I am aware of, we don't find them in historical writings, mainly in myths and legends.....but if tomorrow someone dug up a fossilized unicorn all that could change. (Likely it would be covered up, and the person finding it would be laughed at and possibly lose their grant...but it wouldn't change the reality of the find.) It's not likely but it's only improbable, not impossible. Today we move further to very possible with advances to DNA and genetic engineering, a unicorn might exist, someone after all could engineer the thing. Maybe that would be great, a entire new industry for pet unicorns. Or maybe it would be an angry thing, raging, mean. and bent on impaling its horn in anyone it sees. It's*hard to say. Either way, it is possible, it may be improbable but not impossible. To early man flight seemed impossible, yet here we are flying everywhere so much we get frequent impossible flight miles. In that early skeptics defense based on his experiences, and the tools and information at hand he was completely logical to think the idea of man flying*would not happen....but the wise early man would have recognized the difference between impossible and improbable.
*
Yet today many people who claim to be logical, and "scientific" rail about what is possible and what is not, and seem to turn up their nose at anyone who give credence to possibility to anything they consider to be "outside" of "Science". What is science though? I mean what do we know about anything? No matter how smart you may be or educated, or specialized, or well rounded, most every day you take much on faith.....who has seen an atom? outside of Tesla I doubt many truly even "grok" electricity. We eventually always take other people's observations on some amount of faith, the "experts" in their fields, but experts almost always refuse to acknowledge new discoveries that don't fit in their mold. The more published the expert the more rigid their mold. You didn't experience their research unless you reproduce everything they did, and you are going on faith they did. In all history great thinkers and inventors have found the accepted men of "knowledge" their greatest advisories. But these men were not true men of knowledge neither then, nor now, because if they were, they'd be the ones making impossible things new realities. Not giving false claims to impossibilities. "Impossible" is the talk of pseudo scientists, philosophers, and thinkers. The actual men and women who change our world only accept improbabilities, because they often have in mind changing those odds.
*
*
Now...what is all this about.... well where I see this most abused, but not limited to is in the realm of discussion on atheism, religion, and intelligent design. Something like 80% of the world believes in a creator. Many millions of people claim to have had a "religious" experience. Which I would define as that experience for which all other experiences are less real, non reproducible, but that direct experience with the transcendent. For the true mystic who has such an experience, no faith is ever required, because that experience is more real than the screen or paper before you. If you experience a thing directly it is no act of faith to believe, for me it is like that. I have had two such events in my life, they are the only 100% real experiences I can say because comparatively everything else is...less. I cannot give someone else that experience, and I have no way of proving to them it is beyond delusion, however for me, it is beyond all doubt, as real as the great Wall of China because I climbed and stood on that thing. Someone claiming to me it's a myth won't change my view that the Great Wall exists. However, even if a person has not had such a religious experience, they cannot logically say having faith in such a thing is illogical. If I had not seen a Unicorn but 80% of the people I ran into said one lived in the local woods, and another10-20% said they had seen it first hand...I would be the one who was illogical in stating it was not possible for this Unicorn to exist.
Saying God doesn't exist, i.e. that God is "impossible" is ultimately a faith in its own right. You can't prove a Creator does not exist, and there are many believers, and witnesses, and there's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence. MANY say they have experienced God or the transcendent, and every breakthrough in microbiology, to astronomy shows the universe from the largest to the smallest is a very ordered thing, the closer you look the more incredible the math, and odds for systems to exist without a mind behind them, the most simple of cells is a vast city of intricacy, and mechanics that depend on each other for survival Yet it's "impossible" for an ordered mind to be behind ordered things? If you have no religious experience, and you have no faith, and you are a logical person than I can understand a person saying that they are agnostic or think a creator is "improbable". I'd like them to look a bit closer at what we now know about life, and its most basic building blocks which is much more complex then the proverbial Swiss watch found on the forest path, but I could still see them as being logical. However to claim one is an atheist, that God is an impossibility, I just find no logic in that, it seems and usually always end up being an emotional response based on some injury felt from organized religion. But we're not discussing nor defending any theological system here, just the possibility. It is illogical, because it seems to misunderstand what "impossible" means vs. improbable, and it is precisely a way of thinking that is unscientific, because a true scientist, philosopher, thinker cannot operate as such, discovery, innovation, the very search for truth that is the basis of man's progress has always required we delve into the perceived "impossible", and show what was simply improbable, may just be possible.
*
I have experienced the transcendent. I see the order in every basic block of all that is "life". I see the order in the events of my life and others, even when I have not always liked it.....there is no logical argument that could sway me from that which I know is from direct experience. I may not ever be able to know fully my creator as I am a limited being gazing at the infinite...or perhaps I will if I end up being more then what this life appears. As such, I try and keep my ears and eyes open, and recognize any notions or ideals I have as to their nature or intent may or may not prove to be true. My mind is a gift, I won't handicap it with "impossible" nor will I give intellectual credence to*arguments hiding behind logic, while not using any.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Robert Cunningham 
Bookmarks