Why do people think we can apply math to things that are purely metaphysical?

[PassatAmnesiac]

Most western and some eastern thought percieves God to be one, many, divided into parts, everything, or in everything. But how then do we make the assumption that something that would seem to be purely metaphysical can have human concepts like numbers applied to it. If the universe or multiverse was "created" and the reality we percieve truly exists, then to me because of its low entropy (which I understand is incredibly improbable statistically) it would seem that something that would be capable of "creating" something as flabbergasting as the cosmos then surely to me it would be like a single celled organism trying to understand humans.

[Graybeard]

Given enough time, single celled organisms become humans. There is a good thought experiment at the following link.

They outline a method of loading your consciousness into a software program. I know many people won't agree with this. But the experiment is interesting to contemplate.

http://www.discover.com/issues/jun-0...rtments/jaron/

greg

[baudrunner]

Religion offers a comfort zone. People were never comfortable with the reality of things the way that they had been for the many thousands of years that they struggled to maintain their existence, and a difficult struggle it has been for the vast majority of human beings throughout history. Life for them was hard work against all odds, and without hard work life could not have survived.

The positive influence of religious belief is in the application of effort toward a wholesome existence. That there is effort toward this goal points to the true nature of life, that this is an apparent contradiction of it. The untenable notion that a God created all the Universe provides an illusion devoid of reality, where dreams dominate, where wishes are imagined, and where the illusion comes as close to manifestation as possibilities permit. That is why that which humankind believes is real, and that which constitutes reality, are two different things. And that is also why life is so good today. You owe a lot to God. You now owe it to yourselves to maintain a grip on your perception of what actually does constitute reality. A reality where science proves theory, where your vision of what is agrees with the results of your efforts to prove it. Then you may someday settle comfortably into the understanding and acceptance of it, after you have evicted from yourselves this culture of greed that corrupts the process.

[PassatAmnesiac]

I think we are on two different wavelengths. I'm not sure you quite addressed my question but I will try and respond to several of your statements that I find interesting. Why is the notion that intelligent higher entity that we are not truly capable of understanding created the cosmos so absurd? I'm not sure what you think this higher entity is/was responsible for. I will admit that that I do believe in the existence of it. I am not atheist nor am I agnostic anymore. I have come to my own conclusion through my own thought and research into physics and philosophy that a higher being does exist. I have to say I hate using the word god because it has to much religious conotation to it. Honestly I don't need the comfort of a religion and I am not a gambling man.

[mkirkpatrick]

Maybe PA,man needs the comfort of putting all things in neat little boxs,and then numbering them!how indeed could a single celled creature understand the concept of say
politics,or how to pilot a jumbo-jet!

For me all is ubiquitous and there is only thing,no plurals,no things,all just IS,and we ARe!
We are one,and one is we,hope that is not mathamatical,prehaps it IS?

regards michael.

[Graybeard]

Why is the notion that (an) intelligent higher entity that we are not truly capable of understanding created the cosmos so absurd?

I don't think the idea is absurd. I just think it is wrong.

There are many theories that put forward your ideas. Intelligent design, anthropic principle... These receive widespread support by many well known scientists. Time magazine recently held a debate on this.

Natural Selection is a random process ... this is the process I favor.

Why?

Math can be applied to it.
It is just as good at explaining phenomena as the 'intelligent higher entity'.
It is observable.
The fossil record supports it here on earth.

Intelligent Design has as its foundation-support the incredibly high odds of the universe forming the way it did. The fact that these odds came up does not suddenly provide for a Creator.

Nevertheless the Universe is here. And Science has no answer at the moment.... lots of theories just like yours... but no proof.

Science has often been in a similar situation. We will have to wait. To me it seems just too convenient that everytime science is temporarily stonewalled, Religion, or Spiritual forces or Intelligent design spring into being as credible. For this to have credibility proof should be supplied ... but it never is.

Therefore I prefer the Devil I know to the Devil I don't know.

The other part of your question states, and I hope I got it right, that
Why should we expect to understand something that created us. Can the Hammer fully know the Carpenter... Can the Bread fully understand the Baker.

Why do you think not? The fact that this is our experience on earth should not limit us .. Quantum mechanics and Relativity are 2 things totally outside our experience ...

Greg.

[PassatAmnesiac]

It's not that I think it's impossible to know a cosmic creator I just think it is extremely improbable just based on the enormous contrast between us and what it would have to be to create existence of matter/energy and organize it on an incomprehendable scale. I am talking quantum mechanics and relativity. It almost seems that the universe itself is metaphysical. I know it's easy just to throw a divine reason at something not understood but this isn't trying to explain the moon or the change of seasons like people of ancient times did. Although these things are encompassed by existence in general. I have to think that there are things that go beyond our comprehension that even mathematics cannot be applied to and I am not going to choose a belief system just because I can apply it. To me thats just as easy as subscribing to this fill in the blank holy scripture. Where the structure of belief is already provided for you. I could be wrong. One of these earthbound religions could be right. Or maybe even you are right. I guess I still have the stench of an agnostic :P.

[Mr. Nobody]

As the word creation entered our vocabulary, as our finite mind framed the world within its limited existence, as we attempted to interpret reality within finite discreetness, questions like yours arose. Inflation, big bangs, expansions, cosmic cooling, all of that seem to point to phases of one everlasting thing: Matter/ energy. The first law of thermodynamics is the TOE: Energy cannot be created nor destroyed but only transformed between states.
The reason we prescribe a beginning and an end is due to an emergence of a highly organized consciousness that has the awareness of birth and death within its biological vessel. This consciousness evolved as a response to increasing entropy within the current epoch of our cosmos.
The notion of separatism, an intelligent creator that willfully has control over and acts on behalf of, needs to be abandoned when all evidence points to an existence without reason nor intent, subject to the cold grind of evolution only. Once you understand the true meaning of infinity, time without a beginning nor end, then the notion of a creator becomes meaningless.

[PassatAmnesiac]

I think you are really helping support my point in a sense when you say that the notion of creation entered our vocabulary and westerners especially have a habit of thinking in these terms. Even creation may not be something that can be applicable to the fact that the universe exists. That the fact that the cosmos exist could be truly out of our realm of understanding. Maybe we were not meant to understand. Only up to a certain point. I think people have trouble with the notion or don't think about the notion that there are things that we are not truly capable of understanding. That it is just our ego of being the most intellegent living things we know of and have evidence of existing that causes us to think the way we do. To me it seems just as likely if not more likely than many scientific theories.

[Guille]

But how then do we make the assumption that something that would seem to be purely metaphysical can have human concepts like numbers applied to it.

What you say there is a complete absurdity. If what is metaphysical, as you say, is not measurable, and escapes from human experience in the physical realm, then it only has a conceptual existence. It is a sensation, a feeling, an idea, an instinct... Always belongs to the mind. And to anything that belongs to the mind, we can apply any other thing that belongs to the mind (for they all belong to the mind). Therefor,e to the concept of 'love', the the metaphysical existence of love, we can apply the concept of number, for number is also a concept that belongs to the mind and no the world.