From: nospam@example.net   
      
   On Sat, 8 Mar 2025, Richmond wrote:   
      
   >> God as a concept in poetry, or as a useful concept in psychology or   
   >> justified by pragmatic grounds I have no quarrel with. I only quarrel   
   >> with god as something that some people believe actually exists and is   
   >> proven. There I disagree.   
   >   
   > OK I think I mistook your position before as something like   
   > phenominalism.   
   >   
   > As for the proof, I think it would be better to use the word   
   > 'evidence'. You might ask me to provide evidence that some assertion is   
      
   This is the truth! Thank you for pointing that out. I blame me not being a   
   native english speaker. ;)   
      
   > true, but to ask me to prove it makes it rather difficult, in the same   
   > way it is difficult to prove that electrons exist, or do not exist. But   
   > there is evidence that cathode rays are negatively charged and have a   
   > mass much smaller than atoms.   
   >   
   > The fact that we are beings in the world and have to act as if it is as   
   > it appears to us, does not prove that it is as it appears to us,   
      
   It is strong evidence. And, as I mentioned before... no one has so far   
   falsified   
   reality. I think empiricism couple with some constructive empiri   
   ism/instrumenta   
   lism/anti-realism is on very solid ground here.   
      
   Not placing the burden of proof (or burden of evidence?) on the one who insist   
   that reality isn't real, or external, or what ever, leads to eternal doubt,   
   which, while consistent, is not the most productive of positions to have   
   conversations from.   
      
   > although it might prove that there is something there. But we don't know   
   > what it is. And what's really scary (to me at least) is that when we   
   > keep going down to smaller and smaller particles, we find that the   
   > building blocks can be 'points', i.e. things which have no mass. How can   
   > anything be made from such things?   
      
   Constructive empiricism for the win! You could also toy with the Natural   
   Ontological Attitude, and confine yourself to what we can see and prove (or get   
   evidence for) empirically. There is no need to commit to anything beyond that.   
      
   I present to you, one of my philsoophical concoctions... agnostic monism! I   
   think this is the philosophical sword that will cut the gordian knot!   
      
   > And as Donald Hoffman shows, our senses are more efficient if we do not   
   > see things as they truely are, but only as we need to see them for   
   > survival. It requires less processing power in the brain. This is like   
   > data compression with error correction. We only have three colour   
   > receptors in the eye, whereas there is a shrimp (whose name I forget,   
   > 'Shrimpy' perhaps) which has 12 colour receptors.   
      
   I'm certain there can be some interesting evolutionary explanations and   
   conclusions here.   
      
   > And then there is the holographic principle:   
   >   
   > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle   
      
   Nah... let's just shut up and calculate! =D I think trying to verbalize quantum   
   physics easily leads us astray, since we are conceptually not equipped to   
   understand what happens at that layer of reality. That is why you get nonsense   
   as the multiple world interpretation that a lot of people waste a lot of time   
   on.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)