Still gemli's gems: still the best reason to read a blog

[Lem]

I am re-booting this topic, since it is meant to be a thread for posting and discussing "gemli's gems." I will start with the last of gemli that I quoted, and, hoping he doesn't mind, I will also copy over Gadiantion's response:

gemli DanielPeterson a day ago

If I lecture you at all (and I haven't received the check, by the way) it's to say the answer will never be a deity or any other "being," any more than water boils because the devil is taking a bath.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5190851138

[Lem]

it's to say the answer will never be a deity or any other "being," any more than water boils because the devil is taking a bath.

Lol! The devil taking a bath. I'm dying!

But seriously, there is some real truth here. Imagine Kiwi, DCP, and LM on a camping trip in the mountains. They are famished, and get a pot on the stove to boil. Kiwi being the more numerically capable of the lot calculates the water will boil in 7 minutes given the altitude, the volume of water and the BTU rating of the stove. But lo, it boils in 4.5 minutes. Kiwi checks his number and can get it down to 6.5 minutes at best. DCP and LM both check the calculations and are convinced no mistake could possibly have been made, and so how to account for the difference?

How many similar stories has DCP told where something can't be explained, therefore God? Everything from biological structures, to Early Modern English, to accounting ledgers of poor people who paid their tithing. As much as Gemli gets despised at SeN for caricaturing religion, to the extent that religion is something other than god-of-the-gaps, it has never been properly grounded as such at SeN. Gemli is precisely describing Mormonism as it is believed by the apologists on SeN.

Good point. Maybe the water was stirred with a dowsing rod.....

[Lem]

Holiday gemli:

gemli > DanielPeterson

I suppose you're going to tell me that Santa Claus isn't real. But I know he's real because I was naughty and I didn't get any presents. What more proof does one need?

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5190852533

[Physics Guy]

... the answer will never be a deity or any other "being," any more than water boils because the devil is taking a bath.

This sounds cute from gemli but actually he has walked right into a standard theistic argument.

When I ask, "Why is this water boiling?", I often find it to be a good answer that my wife is making tea. If gemli were to berate me for ignoring the thermodynamics of water and instead using a story about the purposeful acts of an intelligent being to explain the boiled water, it would be obvious that gemli was playing a silly word game of wilfully misunderstanding what I meant by saying my wife had made tea. Yet in objecting on principle to all explanations in terms of intelligent agents, gemli is committing that sophistry.

The fact that there is clear evidence for my wife's tea-making, and not so much for the devil's bath-taking, is beside this point. The issue of evidence for the particular agents in question is another issue which gemli can certainly raise. To pretend that there is anything fundamentally wrong with explanations in terms of intelligent agents is just dumb, though. I'm wondering now how much serious thought gemli has really put into this stuff.

[Lem]

... the answer will never be a deity or any other "being," any more than water boils because the devil is taking a bath.

This sounds cute from gemli but actually he has walked right into a standard theistic argument.

When I ask, "Why is this water boiling?", I often find it to be a good answer that my wife is making tea. If gemli were to berate me for ignoring the thermodynamics of water and instead using a story about the purposeful acts of an intelligent being to explain the boiled water, it would be obvious that gemli was playing a silly word game of wilfully misunderstanding what I meant by saying my wife had made tea. Yet in objecting on principle to all explanations in terms of intelligent agents, gemli is committing that sophistry.

The fact that there is clear evidence for my wife's tea-making, and not so much for the devil's bath-taking, is beside this point. The issue of evidence for the particular agents in question is another issue which gemli can certainly raise. To pretend that there is anything fundamentally wrong with explanations in terms of intelligent agents is just dumb, though. I'm wondering now how much serious thought gemli has really put into this stuff.

I read it as gemli simply saying that defaulting to a supernatural being to explain a natural event is unnecessary. There's no sophistry in that. (unless your wife is Samantha Stevens, in which case I apologize and retract. )

[Lem]

This one got lost in the middle of the previous thread derail, but in light of gemli's devil-taking-a-bath comment, it is worth repeating:

gemli Ian Law

You'd first have to define and demonstrate the existence of the supernatural. How would you do that?

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5190863783

[mentalgymnast]

I read it as gemli simply saying that defaulting to a supernatural being to explain a natural event is unnecessary. There's no sophistry in that.

The problem may be in his usage of the word “never”.

Regards,
MG

[Lem]

gemli taking the comical approach to Lou's lecturing:

gemli Louis Midgley
Gemli appreciates Dr. Midgley's interest in improving his mind, but sadly it is already full of useful knowledge, and there are alarmingly large bumps on his cranium due to information overload. Gemli will have to forget some things before new knowledge can be added.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5189619393

[Lem]

Apropos of the ongoing discussion in this thread, gemli clarifies:

gemli DanielPeterson

I know that it doesn't rain because angels are crying, and I know that black cats don't bring bad luck. I also know that all the supernatural beings that people have claimed to control their luck, lives, sicknesses and healings and everything else aren't real. They were invented to explain what was inexplicable at the time. Currently, the big mysteries are the origin of the Universe, life and death. It's not a surprise that deities would be invoked.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5193324347

[Gadianton]

I'm being totally honest here. I woke up in the middle of the night laughing about Gemli's bath comment.