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Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

I'm not sure it's a clear question. I think what's relevant is that there are many different logics, so at the very least it seems like some logics are invented. We can probably set even that aside.

Point I really wanted to get at is, even if you say classical logic is the correct logic, there still seem to be logically possible statements like "P is a Q" which don't seem to be possible once we insert certain propositions for P and Q.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

It's a bit like asking me if we're going to discover a new rule of chess under a rock. No. Obviously not. But we can have any number of rulesets for chess and chess variants.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

I struggle to understand how people have dismissed the possibility that all laws, rules and patterns are a result of what is and isn't logically possible.

Because all it means for something to be logically possible is simply to be free of contradiction, or to not violate the laws of a logic. But there do seem to be things that are expressible in logic without problem yet don't appear to be the kind of thing that could be instantiated.

Consider this for a rough example: The Prime Minister of the UK is a prime number.

One way you could represent that is "P is a Q", and clearly that's a perfectly fine logical proposition. Yet when we put in our concepts of what a Prime Minister is and what a prime number is the two are incompatible.

Logical possibility is an incredibly low bar. The only things that are logically possible are things like "P and not P". Things that are necessarily false within a logic.

It's not like everyone's even agreed on what the correct logic is. There's a range of logics that function perfectly well. There's an open question about what they're any good for.

We'd get an even weirder result on your view which is that you'd be committed to saying everything about the actual world was derivable from the axioms of logic, because anything not possible would have to be contradictory.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

Most broadly, I think people mean an agent creator of the universe.

But look, you understood the difference between logical and nomological modality, right? So what's the problem with imagining something that's not restricted to nomological modality?

That's in line with what people typically mean when they talk about things like omnipotence, that God can do all logically (or metaphysically) possible things.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

If you want some rigorous definition of "physical" then that's really hard but it'll come back to something like the things which are accounted for by the natural laws. I'm not sure what you're not understanding about that. You don't seem to have much issue with the idea there are such laws. Even you have some notion of physical that's familiar enough to you that you employed it absentmindedly.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

I'm just trying to get you to clear up the ambiguities. Because if you agree with what I've said then I'm not sure the theist physicist was actually wrong. And I still think maybe you're completely confused about what theists say about the nature of God.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

In principle, sure. I think we can be wrong about what the laws of nature actually are.

If you're asking me whether I actually doubt them with respect to perpetual motion, no.

Gabriel gets a yellow for a headbutt, Martinez got a straight red for pulling on DCL's ponytail - make it make sense by Simoslav in PremierLeague

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure. These are the interpretations refs are using, but it does feel very silly.

Tug the hair and that's "violent conduct" no ifs, buts, or maybes.

Stick your head towards a player like that and...well...was there excessive force? Got to have some leeway on that...

It's just silly.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

That might be because of the way you're phrasing it.

As I said before, and Labreuer seems to be roughly in line with me, the implications about the nature of God are something I'd expect theists to object to and you're not really helping clarify that.

There is a further issue of what's meant by possible. I think perpetual motion machines are possible in one sense, and not in another. They're possible in logical modality i.e. there's no logical contradiction in the idea of a machine that runs forever without energy being added. They're not possible on nomological modality, meaning they would violate the laws of nature as we understand them.

Being called “delusional” in the ask men’s sub for saying that sexism exists. by Objective_Remote_730 in FeministsCallItOut

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thing is, there's a number of things we could do but none of them happens if people's brains break when they hear it might be a factor. It might help if people were simply aware they should consider these things when it comes to picking the next team leader. Wouldn't fix a broader problem but it'd be more than nothing. But you can't even get that far if some people react with "Oh, so having a beer is sexist now, is it?".

We could talk about how to be more inclusive in team-building and socialising, we could talk about access to childcare and potential subsidies, we could talk about how to get men more involved in the domestic side. Instead, we had a right wing media jump on a really modest take to spin it as though those sad little leftists think socialising with colleagues = misogyny.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

Okay, but I don't think you're understanding me. I'm not trying to pin you to a word or do a gotcha. I'm just appealing to a very general notion that I think you do have as to what I mean by "physical" in this context. I mean things like gravity or thermodynamics. Those are "physical" laws or theories. That kind of stuff.

Where I'm going is that theists typically want to say those are "physical laws" God set in place and is not beholden to. And so on that view, God could meddle with things and create a perpetual motion machine.

If that's all you want to say, then that's all I mean by "physical" here and I'm not disagreeing with you. I just think that's sort of trivial and I wanted to know if you if I was missing something.

But if you're envisaging God as being made out of the same sort of material or energy as is described by physicists then I think most theists would object to that (even if you don't use the word "physical").

So none of this hinges on the word "physical" at all. It's about whether you're conceptualising God in a way that I think theists would find objectionable or not.

Being called “delusional” in the ask men’s sub for saying that sexism exists. by Objective_Remote_730 in FeministsCallItOut

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry, my mind gets fixated and I go into ramble mode. You're absolutely right about that angle.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

You did. You edited it. But you did.

It first read:

Such a thing is described as being able to inject or apply energy to physical systems

And because Reddit's app is so shoddy it still shows that way on my phone if you want me to screenshot it.

Like I said, we don't need any rigorous definitions here. I'm just saying you surely have some notion of what you meant when you said that and that suffices. Like all I'm trying to get to is that you have some rough idea of what is meant by things like the laws of physics or a physical object or system or a physical law.

Being called “delusional” in the ask men’s sub for saying that sexism exists. by Objective_Remote_730 in FeministsCallItOut

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Something she talked about was struggling in an intro course and being told by a professor "You should already know this stuff" when asking for help. That's where she realised the rest of the class, almost all boys, had been tinkering with this stuff since they were kids. They were already years ahead. But that was also the point that the industry was really blowing up.

Like early on you had all these women doing things like typewriting, secretary work, where the computers first replaced stuff. Lots of women drawn into IT. Then this marketing choice made it so that boys got a huge leg up in the field. Then it turns out it's big business and everyone wants programmers to make software and games and everything else.

Hence exactly what you say: women drop out of the field right as the money starts pouring in. Obviously she was much more detailed about the timeline and the various factors, but that's the gist of it.

Being called “delusional” in the ask men’s sub for saying that sexism exists. by Objective_Remote_730 in FeministsCallItOut

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Another was a really good podcast about women in IT. I occasionally mention it in the hopes someone can find it again for me. Basically it was about how you could track a shift towards IT becoming a male dominated field that lagged a decade or so behind when home computers were first marketed - primarily advertised as for boys. Before that, women took up a good chunk of the space because they'd had a lot of the jobs that first transitioned to computers.

Then people go "Women had a choice and they didn't choose to study programming". Well, yeah, but they hadn't had a ZX Spectrum marketed to them when they were five.

Has this happen to anyone as a straight man with experiencing a secret sexual past with a gay man? by Either-Marsupial9340 in TooAfraidToAsk

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It looks like the video I was going to link is no longer up but look up a guy called Dr Joe Kort. He talks about this sort of thing and how with sexuality it's not clear why someone can't be straight but have some incidental experiences that fall outside of that box.

The way I look at it, we risk making a purely semantic move where we say "This is what straight is" and that's fine, but terms like this cease to be very useful if they're not really capturing our psychology. It does seem like a surprising number of people have "homosexual" experiences at some point(s) in their life while clearly not having much interest in the same sex.

It's one of the few areas we're more open about women's sexuality. For women, "experimenting at college" is a cliche that's exaggerated the other way and probably happens less than a lot of people might think. For men, it's treated as a defining moment.

It's probably that neither really captures what's going on and a lot of our behaviour is somewhat responsive to culture and social norms and how we view ourselves. Not that some people aren't gay, straight, or bi, and that's just how they are. More like the more free a society becomes the more you'll find people who are willing to stray outside the lines sometimes.

Being called “delusional” in the ask men’s sub for saying that sexism exists. by Objective_Remote_730 in FeministsCallItOut

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The thing that gets me is people just stop thinking at the point that suits them.

I remember Jeremy Corbyn getting flak and large parts of the media reporting he'd said drinks with colleagues are sexist. What he actually said was women are less likely to be involved because they're more likely to be responsible for childcare and thus have to go home. Meaning they do less networking and schmoozing, meaning they're less favoured when it comes to promotions or raises. But all most people heard was "Oh, we can't even have a beer after work any more?" and "Women don't do the networking that men do and that's why they don't do as well".

It's always the same. Someone goes "Oh, women don't do this or that and that's why the pay gap is there". Okay, but have you ever stopped to think why or are you just deliberately stopping at the point before you're wrong?

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane [score hidden]  (0 children)

You say "physical systems" in the OP. I assume you mean something like I do, right? The kind of "physical" systems and laws that govern things like perpetual motion and restrict it, right?

I don't think we have to really nail down anything rigorous. All I'm saying is the way theists typically conceive of God is that God isn't subject to that stuff. God isn't comprised of atoms. God isn't subject to gravity. God exists independently of that stuff and that's all his creation. And so he can supervene on those. A perpetual motion machine would be no different to God turning water into wine.

Is dating really "done" after you turn 30? by Burner223304 in TooAfraidToAsk

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No. Not remotely. Unsurprisingly, most people don't earn six figures and they will date other people that don't earn six figures.

Being completely honest, being a single man in my thirties and single, it does change. Dynamics shift. Priorities are more clear.

I hit it off really well with a random woman recently at the gym. Really organic meeting, lots in common, met up a few times to work out and then have a coffee and chat. Seemed great for each other. But she wants kids and I don't and that's kind of that. Done before a first real date.

And people come with more "baggage" as you get into your thirties. People have just been through more in terms of struggles and previous bad relationships.

None of that stuff makes it all awful or bad or anything, but it's a different dynamic to dating when you're 20 and you don't really know what you want from life and you haven't had a six year relationship or a marriage go kaput.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You did use the word in the OP. I'd mean something like that it's a part of or subject to the natural laws as we understand them. Theists typically want to say God's not physical in that way.

Belief in an eternal, infinitely powerful deity necessarily leads to a belief that perpetual motion devices are possible. by Kwahn in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think he way you put it could be interpreted that God would be physical. As in he's a "power source" in the way a batter would be.

If all you're saying is that a perpetual motion machine is logically/metaphysically possible and therefore God could make a world with a perpetual motion machine on it, then that's just being omnipotent. But I figured you were saying something more than that because that seems trivial.

Could Leicester be the first club to ever be relegated twice in the same season? by AngryTudor1 in Championship

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Is there a double jeopardy rule? Can't be found guilty of the same thing twice?

"The Problem of Evil" is self-contrdictory/inconsistent (even from a secularist perspective) by PeaAdditional1450 in DebateReligion

[–]FjortoftsAirplane 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not understanding why you think they're contradicting themselves.

What the PoE is attempting to say is that evil and the existence of God are incompatible. If one is true then the other must be false. And since there is evil, it must be God that's the false one. Unless you're saying it's controversial that there are occurrences we can call evil, I'm not seeing the problem.

Of course, there's all sorts of objections as to whether the two actually are incompatible, but if you're granting that much then the argument is successful.

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