Roundearth

Thanks for your comment. I'm sure many people reading the OP had the same problem, and I'm glad someone brought it up.Now, your comment does not rebut my argument for the senses being an axiom. This is a problem because now we have one argument for and one argument against, which leaves us without any specific conclusion. So I'd be interested in your rebuttal to the argument I made for the senses being an axiom in the OP. To your argument. You argue that there have been various proofs that the senses are not reliable. What proofs, specifically? Obviously, I don't grant that any such proofs exist. And what would it even mean for the senses to be "unreliable"? A thing is unreliable if it is consistently inaccurate. But the senses cannot be accurate or inaccurate. Only an interpretation of sensory data can be accurate or inaccurate. So I don't think this argument succeeds.

And that assumption is obviously true. If my conclusion is logically equivalent to it, then my conclusion is also obviously true.

I do feel that way sometimes.

Hi. Hmm. Well, so you say. I think I improved my original argument and added a new, qualitatively different argument. I don't think you understand my argument. Let me point out that my argument concludes that God has no identity. God is not God, if I'm right. I'm not saying "here's nature, and that's what I'm going to call existence." I'm saying, "here's everything that exists, notice that it all has identity, and now notice that to have identity is to be natural." "There are no contradictions" is a demonstrable universal negative.

Okay, we need definitions. arrogance - The act or habit of arrogating, or making undue claims in an overbearing manner ~wiktionary Looking at the definition of hubris, a related term, is also helpful here. Hubris (also hybris) means extreme haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of touch with reality and overestimating one's own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power. ~wikipedia The crucial part of the former definition is "making undue claims." For example, Darwin was arrogant if he asserted the theory of evolution based on insufficient investigation. He famously kept a journal of every fact that seemed to contradict his theory. An arrogant person would have ignored them. The point is that biologists are authorities on whether or not evolution is true on not. So I'm not making an argument from numbers, I'm making an argument from legitimate authority. They can't be arrogant. You'd get shot down for publishing an article that made undue claims.

You too. Yeah, it looks that way. My point in the post you responded to was just that I can make a new argument which says effectively: "Okay, bosons are immaterial matter that doesn't displace normal matter. But we still don't have anything that could plausbly make up the soul because [insert arguments I made against bosons composing the soul]." But I should have explicitly conceded that my original argument was not tenable.

My best interpretation of those verses is: There is an experiment. When you try the experiment, a seed may or may not be planted. If the seed is planted, you should water it. To water the seed is (I think?) to study the scriptures. If you water the seed, you will receive the fruit of the tree, which is presumbly either worldly happiness or heaven.

Traveler may want to correct me here, but my understanding is that dark matter annihilates when it comes into contact with "normal" matter. That's true. However, absence of evidence is evidence of absence when we would expect to find evidence of some thing, were it real. Absence of evidence is also reason not to believe in the thing that there is an absence of evidence for. You made claims like this before, and I asked for citations so I could check out the evidence for myself. Well, holy-ghost-like feelings are felt by people who are not experiencing the holy ghost, and you can cause yourself to feel a holy-ghost-like emotion that's not in fact caused by anything external, as this link explains: Warm Fuzzies or the Holy Ghost? The whole "burning bosom" warm feeling is not uncommon in daily life for people of any and all religious backgrounds. We felt it when Superman saves someone that fell off a building, when Darth Vader turns on the emperor to save his son Luke, when Lassie finally came home and when the Grinch returned all the toys to Whoville. Some people get goosebumps, some get a lump in their throat, some get teary-eyed from watching these emotionally-charged fictional movies. Likewise, even atheists feel that "tingling, warm sensation" in many activities. You take a nature lover who climbs to the top of a mountain and looks out over the valley with a setting sun and - wham - the tingles start. The patriotic person who listens to a rousing rendition of the National Anthem or the Battle Hymn of the Republic gets the shivers. All of these experiences can cause the "burning bosom" regardless of religion. That is because they are "emotion-based." Whether something is meaningful to us is the result of our past experiences and belief system. While an American would feel the tingles during the National Anthem, a visiting Frenchman may not feel anything at all. Why? Because the American Anthem has no meaning for him. How to purchase that feeling. The feelings are certainly not unique to the LDS Church. Bonneville Productions, the media firm owned by the Church, claims to produce that special feeling that many of us and investigators associate with the Holy Spirit. In fact, Bonneville has trademarked this term and calls it "Heartsell". "Their unique strength is the ability to touch the hearts and minds of audiences, evoking first feeling, then thought and, finally, action. They call this uniquely powerful brand of creative HeartSell® - strategic emotional advertising that stimulates response." If you own a business you can also employ "Heartsell" by hiring Bonneville to consult for you. At first, we couldn't believe that they would blatantly admit that they can manufacture such feelings but they do. Mormon Testimony & Spiritual Witnesses I myself have had feelings at various times: sometimes when thinking about the greatness of man, and sometimes when watching certain movies. I would conclude that testimonies based on the emotions one felt at a certain time do not prove the truth of Mormonism.

The theory of evolution is not an arrogant theory. Darwin arrived at that conclusion after humbly examining all of the evidence and finding that a massive amount of it had amassed behind evolution. Today, evolution is supported by something like 99% of biologists. Biologists are not arrogant people. They are trained to be scrupulously critical of all claims pertinent to their field, and if evolution was a false theory based on arrogance it would have been run out of town a long time ago.

This is a good case for the claim that other dimensions and universes can interact with this one to make "weird stuff" happen. However, Traveler's claim was specifically that other universes interact with ours to cause invisible matter to appear, and my question was specifically directed at that.

So your hypothesis is that the soul is composed of bosons. Interesting. If bosons are a form of matter that can occupy the same space as other matter, then we resolve a bushel of problems associated with the soul: what it's composed of (I mean, all photons are made of bosons, so there's plenty of material), and how it doesn't displace the rest of the matter in our bodies. We even resolve the old problem of how the soul interacts with the body: it's just bosons switching from an immaterial to a material form. Maybe they go into an immaterial form to "think," and a material form to act and receive information.But we still have some problems. First of all, presumably the soul-bosons have to have a certain conformation to serve as a soul. But there are lots of non-soul-bosons in our bodies, since bosons are responsible for light and the weak and strong forces. Why isn't this conformation of soul-bosons disrupted by the non-soul-bosons that are in our bodies? And of course there's absolutely no evidence that bosons ever arrange themselves as they would have to to form a soul, and no mechanism for how they would do that. P.S. Could you give a source for your claim that bosons can occupy the same place as other matter? Sorry about taking so long. It's awesome to be able to talk with a scientist about this stuff. Thanks for the conversation.

Excellent point. To meet it, I need to elaborate on the argument I gave in my OP. The law of identity says that a thing is what it is. A thing's nature is the part of its identity that governs how it acts, or doesn't act. A tree's nature is the part of its identity that makes it grow from a seed and bloom flowers or whatever. Likewise, it is the part of its identity that makes it not bloom theologians or sprout wings and fly away into the horizon. So a thing's nature is just part of its identity. Nature, then, is just existence viewed from a specific perspective, as a system of entities interacting according to their natures. Supernaturalism is the belief that some thing does not have a nature, i.e., that it does not act or not act, that it is just in some undefined and indeterminate state between the two, i.e., that it has no identity. So naturalism is a corollary of the law of identity.I can also meet your point by finding an authoritative definition of nature, then arguing from that definition to the nonexistence of the supernatural. Perhaps the most authoritative source possible is Aristotle's philosophical lexicon in the Metaphysics. After an examination of six different uses of the term "nature," Aristotle concludes that "From what has been said, then, it is plain that nature in the primary and strict sense is the essence of things that have in themselves, as such, a source of movement; for the matter is called the nature because it is qualified to receive this, and processes of becoming and growing are called nature because they are movements qualified to receive this. And nature in this sense is the source of the movement of natural objects, being present in them somehow, either potentially or in complete reality" (Metaphysics, 1015a 13-20, emphasis added). So a nature is what makes a thing that acts the kind of thing that it is - namely, a thing that acts. A supernatural thing would be a thing that acts without a nature, which is a clear contradiction. Now, I can see someone arguing that a supernatural thing is a thing that doesn't act at all. This fits with our conception of a supernatural thing as thing in another dimension, since everything in this dimension acts in some way. And it explains the "super" in supernatural, since we can now think of supernatural things as things above vulgar action. However, there are two problems with that definition. First, it means that the things we typically think of as supernatural are not supernatural - the soul, God, and the rest of the things we think of as supernatural all act. Mormons should actually join me in my naturalism, because everything in Mormonism is natural on this definition. Second, it means we can't actually know that there is a supernatural, since a thing that does not act cannot be detected in any way. For example, does it reflect rays of light? Then it has the nature of a light reflecting thing. So this concept of the supernatural has no referents, and a concept with no referents is useless and invalid. I could accept Aristotle's definition of nature. Aristotle's definition could include supernatural entites in the sense that I noted above. However, by that definition, no supernatural entities actually exist, even on Mormonism.

Careful. Saying that "psychology" backs a position like that would require more support than simply Maslow (and as we'll see below, I don't even think Maslow supports you). Maslow represents the humanistic school of thought, which is just one of at least half a dozen prominent schools of thought on human behavior. Psychology is a very fragmented field at present.Does Maslow put self esteem on the lowest levels of his hierarchy of needs? Here is a primary source: Classics in the History of Psychology -- A. H. Maslow (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow puts self-esteem in the fifth, i.e. second highest, level of his hierarchy, "esteem needs". Clearly, your claim that Maslow puts self self esteem in the lower levels of the hierarchy is false. Does Maslow describe self actualization as when "a person arrives at a point where he can go beyond himself"? Here is the same primary source on that issue: Clearly, your claim that self actualization involves going beyond oneself is false. Self actualization is, roughly, reaching one's highest potential in one's chosen field. Now, there may be other primary sources where Maslow develops his concept of self actualization, and I will concede the point if you can present those. However, for the moment, I think that you are entirely wrong in your interpretation of Maslow. Moving on to your argument against my conception of self esteem. Joining the military or the fire department can be an expression of self-love. It can be an expression of the unwillingness of the individual to live in a society that is unsafe (from enemies, or fire, or whatever). As Ayn Rand argued in a famous speech at West Point: "You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you are dedicated to selfless service--it is not a virtue in my morality. In my morality, the defense of one's country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue. Some of you may not be consciously aware of it. I want to help you realize it."

BoM is available for 50 cents plus shipping on Amazon. I'll read wikipedia or something from the library until that shows up. I don't know if we'll follow through on the reading group thing, but you have just persuaded an atheist to read the Book of Mormon. Congrats.(edit) Fair enough.

Oh, cool! We should start with The Psychology of Self Esteem, if we're going to have a reading group.(edit) Wait, I misread that, haha. Point taken. I added some quotes from the books to my last post so you have something to address. I do plan to read those at some point.