Just because
Another discussion going on, this one at Camels with Hammers. I just like to record my blatherings because sometimes I surreptitiously say something I never expressed before’
<div><cite>mikmik</cite> <span>says:</span> </div>
<div><a href=”http://freethoughtblogs.com/camelswithhammers/2012/02/21/examining-some-alleged-divine-attributes/#comment-253162″>
February 22, 2012 at 11:02 am</a> </div><p>What, in our environment, in all our understanding of local reality +/- several orders of magnitude, isn’t rational?</p>
<p>My point above is that anything that exists does so according to the local parameters, ie laws of physics/nature, from which it arises, and therefore, whatever the circumstances in that reality/universe, it makes sense. Existence/stability over time, or the analogue, operates according to that reality, therefore:that reality makes sense to inhabitants of that reality = rationality.</p>
<p>Because we exist and interact successfully (survive, and thrive), anything we understand as reality that allows us to more deeply interact successfully(increased understanding) is therefore the very meaning of the word ‘rational.’</p>
<p>We don’t have to estimate how much of the universe we understand, everything that we can possibly understand follows the cause/effect relationship, because of the local reality of unidirectional time.<br>
It is only at extreme levels;energy,size,time intervals, and complexity, that we begin to encounter events that we don’t understand.<br>
Even here, the methods of science, based on the consistent properties of space/time that constrain ALL AND EVERY event and interaction imaginable, are expected to ultimately lead to a coherent understanding of these most extreme circumstances. </p>
<p>Your “Maybe our universe is only 1% comprehensible! (A notion which may lead to paradoxes… which is precisely the sort of thing I’m talking about.)” is obtuse in the extreme, for our universe very, very, very well understood – to the point of successfully modelling and predicting events, with great precision, molecular and sub-atomic, and gravitational and cosmological, energies.<br>
Our understanding of the ‘laws’ of reality are 100% for almost 100% of time of existence of matter.</p>
<p>That is rationality. That is what we mean when we say that because we are part of reality, we understand and operate and exist according to conditions that dictate what reality is. </p>
<p>By existing and thriving and deeply understanding our place in, and interactions with, reality, we conclude that we are rational.</p>
<p>Whatever the conditions of some other part of the multiverse, whatever exists inside them does so by ‘making sense’ of those conditions. We cannot possibly guess anything about what is outside of our reality, because our reality – the laws of our universe’s physics, break down. Our reality, and therefore what ‘makes sense to us’ no longer applies ‘out there.’ Before ‘here’, our universe.</p>
<p><b>Therefore, it is principally meaningless to try and postulate possible scenarios and properties for some god or first cause, because those scenarios are meaningless outside of our universe in the first place.</b></p>
<p>Our morality comes from personal understandings of reality that allow us to thrive as individuals, and through empathy, understanding that others have the same values as us and applying those personal understandings(values) universally.</p>
windaelicker 