Dear BeigeBandicoot,
I just realised that I did not yet answer your question what I think about different strategies to solidify claims by some proof-like arguments.
I think that what I am doing when analyzing certain claims, I simply look for inconsistencies. With that I am surely not able to at the same time proving the existence of something (for example God, or a timeless realm beyond spacetime) instead of the original something that I found to be inconsistent with logics.
I am aware that with logics alone I cannot prove any empirical reality to be ontologically true – or even plausible – since I am not in the position to dictate how the external world should be. The plausibility and the evidence therefore must come from experiments, and surely also from the analysis of the data obtained.
I am not in the position to answer what is the best proof. Not only because this depends on whether one wants to prove something within the discipline of maths, or within a physical model, but because I am not an expert in mathematics and also not an expert for all the details of all the physical models about reality that exist up today. In my opinion, when it comes to proving a physical model for its evidence to be the right guess by experiments, predictions play a crucial role.
But as with Newtonian mechanics, even predictions that then fit the experimental data, are not sufficient to really “prove” the theory to hold in all cases. There may be always exceptions, black swans and the like. I cannot dictate how nature is. I not even can dictate that nature should always behave logically. I only assume that it does, in the same whay I assume that Zermelo-Fraenkel-Arithmetics is consistent. This assumption is based purely on logics, since otherwise I could stop inferencing.
Surely, in my heart I am totally convinced that nature is behaving logically, with the one caveat that I have no explanation for why there exists logics with its properties to be consistent or inconsistent other than attributing it to a higher intelligence. So in my opinion, such a higher intelligence may even be able to intervene in nature in a way one would say is illogical – namely by wonders – since the latter introduce a black swan, an exception from the rule. But these are personal beliefs and are much harder – if at all – provable to be possible in principle.
I admit that the big bang theory is merely a theory, not a proven fact. Nature could behave differently than postulated by the big bang theory. When thinking what this could mean for what the bible says about the creation of the world, I have to options if the big bang theory should be false.
Either I consider the creation story in the bible as false, or I say that I simply do not understand what is written there. There are many things that I do not understand that are written in the bible, since there are also many things that I understand. For me that is no obstacle, in the same way as for physics and mathematics it is no obstacle that they do not yet understand certain things, but well do understand many other things.
Even if the universe would be eternal in time, that would be no obstacle for me. I not even could grasp what it should mean that colliding particles, colliding stars and all the stuff are eternally doing what they are doing, not to speak about an infinitely large space where statistically our earth with its current configuration should be found somewhere within that infinity infinitely many times.
My take on all this is that if a God exists, he must exist beyond space and time. That is also the traditional way of looking at God. Otherwise certain prophecies in the bible couldn't come true (independent of whether one believes in these or not). Surely, per an assumed infinity of space and time, there would be always worlds where these prophecies then come true. But the point is that we would only live in one of these worlds, causally disconnected from these other worlds.
In conclusion, since I also am not in the position to grasp what it would mean to exist beyond space and time, I think that I am not in the position to evaluate what it means for a higher intelligence (existing beyond space and time) that something – the universe – had existed forever, is eternal in time (and maybe also in space). Whenever infinity is invoked, I personally am cautious, since infinity escapes my mental abilities. Moreover, what would eternity mean for the nature of time as well as for the nature of logics?
When thinking about Cantor and others, they up to date managed to construct various classes of infinities, without ever constructing them algorithmically by infinitely counting. Surely, this is the realm of pure mathematics, not the realm of a physical universe. But the assumption that the universe may be infinite in time is surely possible by the very same shortcuts the mathematicians use to construct their infinities, thus it is possible by virtue of logics being what it is: you can always set something on top of something else or underneath it. Logically, this is like an infinite regress, as surely also is what Nietzsche had in mind.
Nietzsche presumably did not believe in God, but in absurdity, and I think partly because he took logics as something that cannot be transcended and therefore cannot establish a link to any purpose of existence.
I honestly think that Nietzsche, as well as Boltzmann and Cantor, took the prevailing paradigm of a mechanistic universe too seriously. Scientific theories can only ever be provisional, claiming the opposite would in my opinion be equal to claiming that one is all-knowing. If I look at the plethora of different theories out there about the world, I am forced to conclude that most of them must be incorrect models of the external world. So I do not take any of them too seriously, but seriously enough to say that we indeed can make progress in finding things out with the help of the scientific method. Therefore I also appreciate any attempt to examine the phenomenon of consciousness further. I fully agree with you. Even every attempt that fails is worth doing it, since it eliminates the range of possibilities. That is what I like – amongst others – about your attempt to handle different theories!
At the essay page of “The brain in a plat....” →
I tried to give an argument against an exclusively information processing world view. I would be happy if you would give me some feedback about how convincing my lines of reasoning are that I facilitated at that page.
Hopefully what I wrote there will be inspiring your thoughts, but anyways, I would be delighted about some feedback from you!
Best wishes
AquamarineTapir