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A beautiful argument for naturalism from Michael Shermer

Lifegazer,

This thread was started to discuss Shermer book, not your stupid fantasies. If you wish to discuss them, start your own [rule 8]ing thread.

You sir, are one of the MAIN reason (yes you in particular) that I quit reading the forums from time to time. You come in and inject the same tired crap into threads on every topic under the sun.

Cut it out. I've had enough of it.

We want to talk about Shermer book, that is why the rest of us are in this thread. Stop ruining every decent conversation on this forum with your drivel. Again, you are free to drivel all you want, just put it in appropriate threads (hopefully of your own creation).
 
scotth said:
Lifegazer,

This thread was started to discuss Shermer book, not your stupid fantasies. If you wish to discuss them, start your own [rule 8]ing thread.

You sir, are one of the MAIN reason (yes you in particular) that I quit reading the forums from time to time. You come in and inject the same tired crap into threads on every topic under the sun.

Cut it out. I've had enough of it.

We want to talk about Shermer book, that is why the rest of us are in this thread. Stop ruining every decent conversation on this forum with your drivel. Again, you are free to drivel all you want, just put it in appropriate threads (hopefully of your own creation).
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I think this is why I spend most of my time in the humor and Community threads.
 
elaine said:
I think this is why I spend most of my time in the humor and Community threads.
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I gets so frustrating, he brings the same 'pony' to the cat show, the dog show, the electronics show, any show he can find. Then tries to tell everyone that their show should really be a pony show.

And before anyone says, hey just put him on ignore.... that just doesn't cut it. I will still see everyone else get detoured by him, and watch the whole thread get wrecked time after time.
 
It makes me wonder about his daily life, outside of the forum, if he has one. He's trying (unsuccessfully) to overcompensate for something.
 
elaine said:
It makes me wonder about his daily life, outside of the forum, if he has one. He's trying (unsuccessfully) to overcompensate for something.
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I wondered the exact same thing earlier today:

LG, are you like this IRL too? What's that like? Can you give an example of how you can turn an average trip to the drugstore into an epic, bewildering philosophic show that makes other customers leave their groceries behind wandering into the woods and gives the pimple-ridden teenager at the cash register the final push over the edge of suicide.

Because that's how I imagine it...
 
MrFrankZito said:
I just finished reading Michael Shermer's wonderful book "Why Darwin Matters," which I strongly recommend to everybody. It's a concise, elegant defense of evolution and a blistering attack against ID creationism. Although the book boasts myriad quotable passages, I feel compelled to share one of them. It's one of the most convincing arguments for naturalism I've ever read.

"What science tells us is that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of three and a half billion years on one tiny planet among many orbiting an ordinary star, itself one of possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars, itself located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from millions of other galaxy clusters, themselves whirling away from one another in an expanding cosmic bubble universe that very possibly is only one among a near infinite number of bubble universes. Is it really possible that this entire cosmological multiverse was designed and exists for one tiny subgroup of a single species on one planet in a lone galaxy in that solitary bubble universe? It seems unlikely." (In the hardcover edition, pages 160-161.)

Never has insignificance been so exhilarating.
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I don't see why you regard it as a good argument, it seems to be an "argument from incredulity" fallacy - at least implicitly.
 
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lifegazer said:
This thread isn't about me proving that. It's about a scientist duping the masses into believing a theory that has no logical basis, to such an extent that some of those masses are describing that scientist as their "hero".
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Assuming that you are talking about Darwin and the theory of evolution by natural selection here, in what way does it have "no logical basis"? As originally proposed by Darwin, it was a theory based on Darwin's interpretation of, and deductions from, his observations. Whether they were real observations of a real objective universe or merely Darwin's subjective experiences of an illusory universe makes no difference to the logic on which the theory is based.
 
lifegazer said:
Absolutely basic philosophy and science takes zero notice.
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Ok, fine, we* assume+ the** existence++ of*** reality+++.
Now can you stop bringing it up every time someone has the gall to remark on a simple observation****?

* a convenient shorthand for lifegazer’s a posteriori assumption of the existence of others, which, however convincing an illusion, is nevertheless grounded only in lifegazer’s experience.
+ By “assume” it is stressed that we have absolutely no proof of the existence of reality except lifegazer’s experience.
** mutatis mutandis
++ that quality, as judged by lifegazer’s subjective experience
*** We do not mean to imply that existence proceeds from reality, rather, it may be that reality is simply a consequence of its existence.
+++ in the sense of “that which supervenes on lifegazer’s mental state”.
**** An act whose very essence is the involvement of an observer.
 
Dog Boots said:
I wondered the exact same thing earlier today:

LG, are you like this IRL too? What's that like? Can you give an example of how you can turn an average trip to the drugstore into an epic, bewildering philosophic show that makes other customers leave their groceries behind wandering into the woods and gives the pimple-ridden teenager at the cash register the final push over the edge of suicide.

Because that's how I imagine it...
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Dog Boots, I know nothing about you, I've never seen (or perhaps never paid attention to) any other posts you've made, heck, I don't even know what gender you are.







I think I love you!
 
LG is a perfect example of why philosophy has fallen so far behind science. In fact, it got so far behind that scientists had to step up and become the philosophers. Scientists are now not only the ones asking the important questions regarding ethics and morality in science, they are the ones finding well reasoned answers to those questions for modern society.

LG and the ilk (isn't that a great word?) are still sitting in the park, smoking dope and contemplating their navel.
 
Seems like Shermer was drawing on Sagan.

Sagan, from Pale Blue Dot:
We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.
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Shermer:
"What science tells us is that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of three and a half billion years on one tiny planet among many orbiting an ordinary star, itself one of possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars, itself located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from millions of other galaxy clusters, themselves whirling away from one another in an expanding cosmic bubble universe that very possibly is only one among a near infinite number of bubble universes. Is it really possible that this entire cosmological multiverse was designed and exists for one tiny subgroup of a single species on one planet in a lone galaxy in that solitary bubble universe? It seems unlikely."
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I'm not sayin'...I'm just sayin'. :p

Seriously, they're both excellent writers whom I admire greatly. I tend to think that Shermer was inspired by the Sagan passage, rather than trying to get away with stealing his idea.
 
sphenisc said:
I don't see why you regard it as a good argument, it seems to be an "argument from incredulity" fallacy - at least implicitly.
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I don't think that not believing an extraordinary claim should count as incredulity, which seems to me to be the point. He just illustrates the extraordinary implications of such a claim.
 
Maybe he doesn't exist. Maybe he's part of the non-existent external world (or non-provable, or non-provably-existent-though-still-affecting-internal-perception, or.....oh never mind). Yes, that may be it. And probably most of us are the same - non-existent. Someone is real, though, right? An experiencER? Otherwise we wouldn't exist - even as internal perceptions, right?

Okay, which one of you is the real one?
 
BTW, didn't Lewis Carroll go over this territory with much more elegance and wit in the Alice books? Something about one of the Queens (red or white, I can't recall which) dreaming of Alice, rather than the other way round: "And if she left off dreaming of you..." (Can't recall the exact line right now; probably I'm misquoting somewhat.)

Also, there's that great exchange in one of Woody Allen's early plays, where one character says to the other (paraphrase), we don't exist. We're characters imagined by an author. Maybe nothing exists. It's highly metaphysical, isn't it?

(other character): Not only is it metaphysical, it's stupid.

:)
 
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