Announcement

Collapse

Apologetics 301 Guidelines

If you think this is the area where you tell everyone you are sorry for eating their lunch out of the fridge, it probably isn't the place for you


This forum is open discussion between atheists and all theists to defend and debate their views on religion or non-religion. Please respect that this is a Christian-owned forum and refrain from gratuitous blasphemy. VERY wide leeway is given in range of expression and allowable behavior as compared to other areas of the forum, and moderation is not overly involved unless necessary. Please keep this in mind. Atheists who wish to interact with theists in a way that does not seek to undermine theistic faith may participate in the World Religions Department. Non-debate question and answers and mild and less confrontational discussions can take place in General Theistics.


Forum Rules: Here
See more
See less

A question for atheists . . .

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #16
    Originally posted by 37818 View Post
    Yes, and complexity has fundamental components.
    Most dictionaries define complexity as a particular kind of state or quality. What components are states or qualities made of?

    Comment


    • #17
      Originally posted by Doug Shaver View Post
      Most dictionaries define complexity as a particular kind of state or quality. What components are states or qualities made of?
      The conponents of what ever said complexity of state or quality of what ever it may consist. An order of some kind always is, if there are things. There cannot be complexity or even chaos without a subset of some kind of order. If intelligence comes from non-intelligence then inelligence is a result of what ever order precedes it.
      Last edited by 37818; 01-25-2017, 07:56 AM.
      . . . the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; . . . -- Romans 1:16 KJV

      . . . that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: . . . -- 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 KJV

      Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: . . . -- 1 John 5:1 KJV

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by Boxing Pythagoras View Post
        I agree that what we perceive as intelligence has its origins. I'm wondering how the Cosmological Contingency Argument is at all relevant to the question of intelligence.
        If there is an infinite past, There is no good reason, that I can think of, for there not to be a pre-existent intelligence.
        . . . the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; . . . -- Romans 1:16 KJV

        . . . that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: . . . -- 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 KJV

        Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: . . . -- 1 John 5:1 KJV

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by 37818 View Post
          If there is an infinite past, There is no good reason, that I can think of, for there not to be a pre-existent intelligence.
          That's all well and good, but there's no good reason that I can think of for there to be a pre-existent intelligence, regardless of whether or not there is an infinite past.

          On the contrary, the phrase "pre-existent" isn't even cogent in reference to the cosmos, which seems to me to be a very good reason for rejecting claims that some "pre-existent intelligence" exists.
          "[Mathematics] is the revealer of every genuine truth, for it knows every hidden secret, and bears the key to every subtlety of letters; whoever, then, has the effrontery to pursue physics while neglecting mathematics should know from the start he will never make his entry through the portals of wisdom."
          --Thomas Bradwardine, De Continuo (c. 1325)

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by 37818 View Post
            So given infinite time, there really being no one first beginning, there is very likey, and effectively an evolved intelligence that from our point in time to us has no beginning.
            By "uncaused" I mean not caused, created by anything at all. What is uncaused has no God.
            Is English not your first language, or do you just enjoy butchering sentences into incomprehensibility? I have zero clue what you are even trying to say.
            "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
            "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
            "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

            Comment


            • #21
              Originally posted by Starlight View Post
              Is English not your first language, or do you just enjoy butchering sentences into incomprehensibility? I have zero clue what you are even trying to say.
              So given infinite time,
              No beginning for an ultimate intelligence to have evolved.
              there really being no one first beginning,
              lnfinite beginnings where there would be no first beginning.
              there is very likey, and effectively an evolved intelligence
              Given infinite time.
              that from our point in time to us has no beginning.
              To us that ultimate intelligence has no beginning. An infinite past.
              . . . the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; . . . -- Romans 1:16 KJV

              . . . that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: . . . -- 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 KJV

              Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: . . . -- 1 John 5:1 KJV

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                Evolution explains easily how something intelligent could be generated from something not intelligent:
                Actually what gave is an explanation for how intelligence could flourish and be selected for, not how it originated.

                We know from computer science theory that a universe Turing machine (i.e. a computer capable of achieving any computational task whatsoever) can actually be incredibly simple (2 states, 3 colours). So 5 parts and you've reached generalized intelligence, that can respond to its environment not simply with the pre-programmed survival responses but with adaptive reasoning.
                It sounds like you've never actually built or programmed Turing Machines for real. Also, the simplest Turing Machine isn't 2 states and 3 colours, at least not if it's to be a Universal Turing machine. The (2,3) machine required an infinitely non-repeating specific input on the data tape and had no halting state, so it's not a true Turin Machine in the classical sense. And it's definitely not 'five-parts'.

                But without programming, that is, without a compiler (far more complex than the Turing Machine itself) that translates instructions into what they do. All they produce is garbage. Fill up a tape with randomness and let a Turing Machine run on it. Nothing will come out except garbage. Eventually, it'll probably halt if it is a TM capable of doing so.

                Simple building a Turing Machine doesn't give you anything. Without the compiler that would turn a program, into instructions for the Turing Machine, all you have is an idiosyncratic switch-flipper. You can think of all Turing Machines as simple computers that eventually stop, terminating with a simple binary answer. In principle, it is possible to string these TM's together to perform any computation conceivable. But that's way different from biology somehow spawning a Turing Machine, and presto, a recipe for intelligence.

                But you have a further problem. Brains aren't Turing Machines. In fact, I don't think computers are a very good analogy for what goes on in the brain. At least not in the traditional sense. Conformal maps and recurrent networks are much more interesting in capturing features of the brain since that's what they're based on. However, they need not be digital and have been built in analog circuits. It's truer to say that Turing Machines can approximate the events that happen in nervous systems, rather than emulate them.

                I think a real answer is found in the development of nervous systems. And such an explanation would be far more complex than anything dreamed up in physics.

                Comment


                • #23
                  That being said I agree that 37818 can be a little off the walls.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                    Actually what gave is an explanation for how intelligence could flourish and be selected for, not how it originated.
                    I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Evolutionary theory - mutation and natural selection etc - explains how it is that the various non-intelligent physical laws acting as they do can give rise to life that is intelligence. It's not overly complicated conceptually and I highly recommend people read Dawkins' books The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, and The Blind Watchmaker to appreciate how extremely simple physical laws inevitably give rise to complex beings.

                    All that is needed is an imperfectly replicating entity (to begin with, a simple chemical that copies itself). That entity making many imperfect copies of itself, will interact with the environment, and the slightly altered copies that fare a tiny bit worse in the environment will die probabilistically more often before they make copies of themselves, while the slightly altered copies that happen to be a tiny bit better-suited to the environment will probabilistically survive more often to make copies of themselves and thus gradually come to dominate the population. Responses to the environment like "move toward the light" will be increasingly coded into the replicator by chance and survival over subsequent generations. More and more rules will be added like "but not if the light is too bright" over the generations, and the replicators will have built up hundreds of thousands of rules for how to respond to the environment around them to survive the longest that will have developed by chance and survival. They will have accrued many, many layers of "if statements" they routinely use to respond to their environment in 'intelligent' ways. They will find that the ability to give dynamic weightings to these if statements has great survival value, and that neural networks allow for effective adaptive environmental responses. They will find over time that bigger and bigger neural networks allow for better and better responses, and the copies that have slightly bigger networks will probabilistically survive more often and thus come to dominate the population.

                    And over evolutionary history this is exactly what we see happening - animals evolve from having extremely basic algae-like responsiveness to the environment through to a minimal ability to navigate up/down/left/right etc to being responsive to light sources, to having instinctual responses to basic environmental stimulae, to having very very very limited intelligence and ability to dynamically respond to the environment, to getting larger and larger and larger brains over time - from fish, to great apes, to humans. We see the entire spectrum of intelligence existing in the world.

                    It sounds like you've never actually built or programmed Turing Machines for real.
                    It was ~15 years ago, and I did notice after writing it that my own post was very carelessly written.
                    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Doug Shaver
                      Most dictionaries define complexity as a particular kind of state or quality. What components are states or qualities made of?
                      Originally posted by 37818 View Post
                      The conponents of what ever said complexity of state or quality of what ever it may consist. An order of some kind always is, if there are things. There cannot be complexity or even chaos without a subset of some kind of order. If intelligence comes from non-intelligence then inelligence is a result of what ever order precedes it.
                      To be the result of something is not to be that something. You seem to be suggesting that complexity is comprised of computer parts if we're talking about a complex computer.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by 37818 View Post
                        Do you actually believe intelligence comes from non-intelligence?
                        If what we call intelligence is an emergent property of matter, which I think all agree to, then it makes no sense to ask where it comes from, its an emergent property of matter. If matter was created, the question would be the same, i.e. how did the non-intelligent created matter combine to bring about intelligent matter. The question has to do with the subject, i.e. matter, not with its cause.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by JimL View Post
                          If what we call intelligence is an emergent property of matter, which I think all agree to, then it makes no sense to ask where it comes from, its an emergent property of matter. If matter was created, the question would be the same, i.e. how did the non-intelligent created matter combine to bring about intelligent matter. The question has to do with the subject, i.e. matter, not with its cause.
                          Matter is not the [direct] subject of this thread. Now if intelligence comes from non-intelligence, the matter would be part of the reason.

                          If intelligence pre-exists caused intelligence then that uncaused inelligence would be the reason for all caused things.

                          __________________ . . .
                          If -
                          Evolution explains easily how something intelligent could be generated from something not intelligent: . . .
                          then given an infinite past a god like intelligence could easily now be a cause for our caused matter and the caused intelligence we have. And why not?
                          . . . the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; . . . -- Romans 1:16 KJV

                          . . . that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: . . . -- 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 KJV

                          Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: . . . -- 1 John 5:1 KJV

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by 37818 View Post
                            If intelligence pre-exists caused intelligence then that uncaused inelligence would be the reason for all caused things.
                            That doesn't follow, at all. Even if there does exist some uncaused intelligence which existed prior to all caused intelligence, that does not imply that the former is therefore the cause of the latter. It is entirely possible for the two to have no causal relation to one another, whatsoever-- to say nothing at all about "all caused things," in general!
                            "[Mathematics] is the revealer of every genuine truth, for it knows every hidden secret, and bears the key to every subtlety of letters; whoever, then, has the effrontery to pursue physics while neglecting mathematics should know from the start he will never make his entry through the portals of wisdom."
                            --Thomas Bradwardine, De Continuo (c. 1325)

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by 37818 View Post
                              Matter is not the [direct] subject of this thread. Now if intelligence comes from non-intelligence, the matter would be part of the reason.
                              I know, a functioning nervous system, and how it emerges from non-intelligent matter, seems to be the direct topic. Now, your assumption is that if a functioning nervous system emerges from non-intelligent matter then it must be the case that non-intelligent matter has been intelligently designed with that end in mind. Of course that could be the case, but it could just as well be the case that intelligent matter, the emergence of a functioning nervous system, like the emergence of life itself, is simply the result of natural causes. In fact your question is similar to the question regarding the emergence of living matter, from non-living matter. In the latter case, living matter itself need not exist prior to its emergence from non-living matter, and so too, in the former, intelligence need not exist prior to its emergence from non-intelligence.
                              If intelligence pre-exists caused intelligence then that uncaused inelligence would be the reason for all caused things.
                              Could be the case, but for your assertion that it is the case, you have no evidence of fact, or of its necessity.
                              Last edited by JimL; 01-28-2017, 05:22 PM.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Leonhard
                                Actually what gave is an explanation for how intelligence could flourish and be selected for, not how it originated.
                                As far as how intelligence originated it evolved with the evolution of the nervous system and the brain.
                                Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                                Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                                But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                                go with the flow the river knows . . .

                                Frank

                                I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                                Comment

                                Related Threads

                                Collapse

                                Topics Statistics Last Post
                                Started by whag, 03-17-2024, 04:55 PM
                                1 response
                                24 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post whag
                                by whag
                                 
                                Started by whag, 03-14-2024, 06:04 PM
                                60 responses
                                289 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post tabibito  
                                Started by whag, 03-13-2024, 12:06 PM
                                45 responses
                                299 views
                                1 like
                                Last Post Hypatia_Alexandria  
                                Started by shunyadragon, 02-15-2024, 11:52 AM
                                74 responses
                                319 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post whag
                                by whag
                                 
                                Started by whag, 02-06-2024, 12:46 PM
                                60 responses
                                337 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post whag
                                by whag
                                 
                                Working...
                                X