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Dear George,

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You wrote :

« Definition of nothing … : not any thing : no thing … Again, no mention of objects »

That’s correct, George. It mentions “thing”. Would you kindly indicate your definition of “thing” ?
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« So Leibniz does not seem to have seen God as sunk in the gaps of scientific understanding of the material world »

No, not on that occasion.
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« This is not the same as doing “research on the existence or not” of God. Like neuroscientists can study the brain of a mathematician … »

Agreed. All it could do is provide a possible explanation of why some people believe in the existence of God.
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You quoted me :

"It was their faith that helped them survive, not God. It was a team of trained and experienced rescue operators, not religion, …”

And you commented :

« Compare this with a similar situation where even you will agree that the "driver" is more deserving your gratitude than the "vehicle": It is the TAXI-driver (and engineers who built the cab) whom you should pay and thank for bringing you to your destiny, AND NOT the TAXI-cab or the machinery that manufactured it »

Yes, I always pay and thank the taxi-driver. In doing so, no doubt, built into the amount I pay him/her, a part goes to paying the cost of the taxi-cab and the machinery that manufactured it. By the same token, a part of my expression of gratitude may be considered as including the people who built the cab and the machinery that manufactured it.

But that’s not all. As I indicated in my post to Not_Now.Soon (to which your comments refer) : “It was invariably their [the victims’] loved ones, family and friends, who never lost hope and never gave up the search, long after the rescue operations were officially abandoned”. It was principally due to their tenacity and untiring efforts that the miracles operated.

In such dramatic events, it’s faith and love that work miracles, not God or religion.

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Dear Banjo,

«In my opinion, any “God” who expects anybody to worship him is not a God.»

I agree.

«And anybody who worships a God who does not expect to be worshiped is, in my opinion, a hypocritical sycophant or a meek, despicable worm.»

I do, for one.

I wonder what you think about someone who loves another for no rational reason, where they have nothing to gain for it - they must be total idiots, right?

Everyone worships something - this is human nature, it could be money or power or beauty, youth, celebrities and much more. Worshipping material things sinks you deeper into the mire of this world, while worshipping God purifies your heart and helps you out of it. Even if you deny the spiritual, nothing is more therapeutic than worshipping God because it distracts you from and breaks your habit of worshipping the things of the world.

God does not care, but as Archimedes observed, to lift the earth you need a fulcrum outside it.

«Probability is not certainty.»

You missed the point: If you consider X to exist and Y to "probably not exist", then you acknowledge that X and Y are different. That hypotheses ("God exists") clearly exists and you think that "God probably does not exist", hence you do not seriously believe that God is an hypotheses.

«By describing myself as an “ordinary person” I am indicating an essential feature of my identity»

Exactly. Because you identify yourself as a person, you are inclined to describe yourself with the attributes of the person that you identify with. However, you are not a person, you only for the time being identify with one.

Dear Banjo,

Sorry, I overlooked the space in “any thing”. For the MW definition of thing, see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thing . Whether with space or without, “it is nearly always better to use anything” (http://www.learnersdictionary.com/qa/what-is-the-difference-between-anything-and-any-thing).

If you wish to investigate the meaning of NOTHING in philosophy, you can read the 1537 documents listed here: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=nothing. (Sorry, I could not resist the temptation (:-).

>> In such dramatic events, it’s faith and love that work miracles, not God or religion.<<

We are coming full circle. My reference to the taxi driver (or, if you prefer, “it is not the hammer that nailed in the nail but the craftsman”) was to indicate that for NNS God (who drives his faith) is as real as for you, and everybody, the taxi driver (or the craftsman). If you mean that science cannot see (establish) this transcendental Driver then, of course, you are right.

By the way, the above linked to Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy contains also 901 articles dealing with the concept of God.

//However, the fact that Earth has life on it at all and any study on how complex life is (either as a study on an individual anatomy, or a study on an ecosystem), then that alone is a big counter to the idea that the longer the timespan the greater the entropy. We should not have had the chance to be born if that was the case. With this in mind some of scientific philosophy and understanding can just be wrong//

Yep; in this case, it's your scientific understanding that's just wrong. The 2nd Law applies to CLOSED SYSTEMS. Which Earth is not, because it has a constant input of energy from the Sun. That energy supply allows an decrease in entropy.

Consider the case of an air conditioned room within a house. The house will be in a much higher state of entropy when the room and the rest of the house have achieved thermal equilibrium than when they are at different temperatures. Without the the air-conditioner switched on, the 2nd Law dictates that the whole system will move towards that higher entropy state, and the room and the house will end up at the same temperature, a sort of 'heat-death' for the limited case we're considering.

But when you switch the air-con on and start adding energy from an external source, you can reverse the normal flow of heat from hot to cold: the air-con removes heat from the colder part of the house and adds it to the warmer part - an obvious decrease in entropy, but fully consistent with the 2nd Law because the air-con adds energy to the system. And that is exactly what the Sun does for the Earth. Just think of it as big entropy decreasing machine, like an over-sized air-conditioner, if that helps.

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Dear Not_Now.Soon,

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The fact that science still has a lot to learn goes without saying – but, at least it continues to progress, generation after generation.

Whereas the bible, indisputably a literary and cultural treasure, has remained static – ever since it was written two thousand years ago – and become ossified.

Its value today is more of an historic than of an authoritative nature. Its essence has long been integrated into our laws and lore and continues to irrigate them.

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Dear Yuyutsu,

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Love and worship are totally different. As Bertrand Russell might say : love is wise; worship is foolish.

If, as you declare, “everyone worships something” then everybody would be foolish – but, happily, that is not the case. Some people are foolish, but I think most are wise.
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« That hypothesis ("God exists") clearly exists and you think that "God probably does not exist", hence you do not seriously believe that God is an hypothesis »

God is a hypothesis that some people believe to be true. I don’t.
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« … you are not a person, you only for the time being identify with one »

Like everybody else on earth, I live every day of my life in the present. I can never live in the past, nor in the future. I remain a prisoner of the present as long as I live.

From the cradle to the grave, I shall be an ordinary person. At my death I shall become an ordinary person of the past – for the rest of eternity.

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Dear George,

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It’s nice to see that with ample explanation we seem to agree on just about everything – each respecting the other’s irreconcilable beliefs and disbeliefs.

I find that very satisfying.

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Dear Banjo,

«love is wise; worship is foolish.»

Worship is an expression of love, consisting of the worshipper focusing their attention, through both their senses and their organs of action on their beloved.

When you love, you only want to see your beloved, to hear your beloved's voice, to smell them, to feel them, to touch them, to serve them and to always think of them alone - and even if you cannot actually serve them, you imagine your best that you are.

If you cannot see that love and worship are the same, then perhaps you were never truly in love.

And yes, some consider it foolish, but the lover doesn't care!



«God is a hypothesis that some people believe to be true. I don’t.»

You still don't get it!

That hypothesis (which some people believe to be true), which you claim is God, DOES EXIST, regardless whether its content is true or otherwise. Suffice that even one person on earth truly asserts that God exists, to make that hypothesis exist, so it would be very unusual for anyone to deny that fact, implying that all those people (including here in this forum) who hypothesise about God are simply lying and do not truly make any such assertions. It is fair to say that God does not exist (I say so too), but it is a fact that all hypotheses about God do exist, hence God is not an hypothesis.



«From the cradle to the grave, I shall be an ordinary person.»

You are who you are and there is no way you or anyone or anything can change that so you become someone else: that includes the death of the person whom you currently adopt.