TheLight said:
Cerebralbore101 said:
You can't know that day or the hour, but you can still know the general timeframe. Let's suppose I say that there will be thunderstorm in your city on thursday, but nobody know the exact time it will happen. But then thursday comes and goes and there isn't a thunderstorm at all. I'm still a false prophet, regardless of me saying that nobody knows the exact time it will happen.
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But the probem is is that is your interpretation there is no real point in me arguing with you about it because you already made up your mind and are looking for reasons to justify your belief. All people all like including me that It is a waste of time, so lets talk about something more interesting. Here is a comment I posted before if you can actualy give some meaningful answers you might be worth talking to.
Scientifically speaking we are just a configuration of atoms and atoms don't care what configuration they are in so scientifically morality doesn't matter and it only matters to yourself. Since we could easily imagine a different configuration of atoms that had a completely different morality technically morality is completely arbitrary. You can't even appeal to evolution and Biology because atoms existed before DNA and atom didn't care before whether they would be arranged in a DNA and that the pattern would extended and they won't care after when DNA ceases to exist.
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Interpretation has nothing to do with it. I know full well that Jesus said "nobody knows the day or the hour". I'm just saying that that doesn't necessarily get him off the hook for being a false prophet. Just like if somebody was found at the scene of a murder, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are guilty. The first thing somebody does when they can't refute another person is accuse them of Sophistry. Can we just focus on argumetnts here, and not on accusations of people's minds being already made up?
As far as your other argument goes, Yes I would love to talk about all of that!
Scientifically speaking we are just a configuration of atoms and atoms don't care what configuration they are in so scientifically morality doesn't matter and it only matters to yourself.
This view disregards emergence. Scientifically speaking water is just a configuration of H2O atoms, and individually H2O atoms are not wet. Therefore wetness doesn't exist. The problem here, though is that the property of being wet emerges from the sheer number of H2O atoms involved. In other words a drop of water is more than the sum of it's parts. For all we know morality could be just like wetness in this sense. It could be something like conciousness or wetness that emerges from a collection of simpler building blocks.
Since we could easily imagine a different configuration of atoms that had a completely different morality technically morality is completely arbitrary.
But what we can easily imagine, and what is reality are two different things. I could easily imagine living inside a black hole, but in reality that's impossible.
Only people care and people are their own unique configurations of atoms so if your an atheist it is pointless to wonder whether God existence is important or to even ask for proof of Gods existence because you can't even proof that you exist.
Rene Decartes might have had something to say about that. His argument "I think, therefore I am." shows that anybody can easily prove their own existance in a single sentence. What is harder to prove, is whether or not *other* people exist. You have to make the assumption that what your eyes and ears are relaying to you is indeed reality. What if I'm just a computer simulation, and you're the only real human being in it? How do you know that any of the world is real besides yourself? In Decartes' day some people said that you might as well give up and assume that only you exist. But if only you exist, then why argue with others in the first place? After all they are just simulations right? Someone else argued a long time ago, that since we argue with others we accept that they and the world around us exist. After all all arguments need evidene, and if the evidence isn't real, then the argument is pointless. If the person you are presenting the evidence to isn't real, then the argument is doubly pointless!
Say you were cut in half vertically and almost instantaneously through extremely advanced technology each half was fixed to regenerate their missing halves. Now which one is you? Using this one example it becomes clear that there is no logical or scientific construction that can prove your existence apart from the configuration of your atoms. So there could be a million copies of you all exactly the same and there would be no way for you to tell the difference.
Oooh, now we're getting somewhere! This is an excellent question. I think the answer to this question is that *both* are you. They are just different versions of you. For example: Let's say you bought the Witcher 3 off of GoG, and then made a copy of it to give to a friend. Which game is The Witcher 3, and which game is just a copy of The Witcher 3? Well the correct answer is that *both* the copy and the original are equally The Witcher 3. They are just different versions or copies of the same game.
Also, I don't think this cut in half thought experiment proves that you can't prove your existance. Instead if proves that you can't prove your uniqueness. After being cut in half and regenerated do you exist? Yes. Are you unique? No! There's another version of you!
One atom isn't any more important than any other. So as long as you who are mere configurations of atoms, which aren't any important then each individual atoms, continue to exist; don't fool yourself that you know anything. If you did know anything it would just be an accident based on the random motion of atoms based on the pointless unpredictable reality of quantum mechanics, so you can't actually prove anything because there is no fundamental reality that can distinguished between configurations of atoms that can know truth and those that don't. Because after all what reason is there that everything that you know could have been different, the whole universe could have been different.
But who says that knowledge needs to be justified in order to qualify as knowledge? Let's say that Dan is a murderer. John believes that Dan is a murderer because he saw Dan murder Sue. Joe believes that Dan is a murderer because he hates Dan's guts, and just wants to believe it. Does John *know* that Dan is a murderer? Does Joe *know* that Dan is a murderer? I would argue that they *both* know. Knowledge is just a belief that happens to be right. Just because John has real evidence, and Joe does not, doesn't change that fact.
To apply that to your question about whether or not a random collection of atoms (us) knows something... Knowledge, whether on purpose or by accident is still knowledge. Also, who says that quantum mechanics are purely random? Who says that atoms are purely random? For all we know Quantum mechanics is deterministic just like regular physics. But if the world were proven to be deterministic, you'd be questioning whether or not we can know anything at all, since our beliefs are determined by the rules of physics. The answer to both scenarios is that knowledge isn't anything special. You can't say that Joe's knowledge doesn't *count*, and you can't say that the knowledge of a random or determined group of atoms doesn't *count*.
Of course that is unless you reject the fundamental premise that there is nothing but atoms and energy. But then what would that be. If you are still reading this and are an atheist ask yourself why would you reply? Why does anything matter. Why would one configuration of atoms that has no control of its own configuration's past and consequently its future, attempt to try and change the configuration of another set of atoms when you can't prove that one configuration is more important than another?
This is an important question. I dont' know the answer, but I know a few philosophers that have attempted an answer in the past. Daniel Dennett is one of them. I'm going to read his book called Elbow Room, and I suggest you do too.
But I'm also going to turn the question around on you. If you are a religious person, how does the existance of a diety solve any of this? If we are really just souls (immaterial minds) trapped inside bodies, then how exactly do these immaterial minds have free will? What if we aren't just a collection of atoms, but there is no God anyway? What if our freewill emerges from the collection of our random atoms, in the same way that wetness emerges from the collection of water molecules? What if our very consioucness emerges as well? Who says that Atheism is strictly materialistic, and deterministic?
