Ryan Scollard

Christian, husband, father, explorer of ideas and lands.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Manx421 @DivinelyDesined Not true under a Christian framework, our brains do think. We should expect them to be generally truth-aimed.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@donalddhoffman But what about reason itself? If we can’t trust evolution to tell us anything "true" about reality, then why can we trust it to have shaped our cognitive faculties to be generally truth aimed? And if we cant trust that, then we cant trust the very thing that give us this theory.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@FischerKing64 But, we've almost won...

[Auron MacIntyre @AuronMacintyre]

As systems solidify their hold the number of viable choices outside of them dwindles rapidly

The system then begins to optimize for those that operate most successfully inside it

When things are new and uncertain, great and terrible changes can occur but as it solidifies the number of optimal moves narrows, the great innovations were achieved early on in a state of flux, now there are only minor adjustments to make and it all comes down to who can most perfectly execute the strategy that has been proven superior

The game state has been solved, Nash equilibrium has been achieved

Systems in this state almost always favor those who have played the longest, who built positions back when the system was in flux and uncertainty allowed for more risks and larger wins

Your society has ossified, but this is a state of affairs that cannot stand

People, but very specifically young men, must act upon the world, they must exercise dominion, control space, they must become

If they can make something of themselves, realize their ambition inside a system that still has room for them, they will operate inside of it, they will defend it with their lives

But if the system has become so narrow, so optimized for others that there is little left to achieve inside of it, young men will chafe under the weight of those restrictions

Even worse, if they follow the narrow road laid out for them, the one that they are told is the only path forward, and then they are rug pulled, told that they should never have expected success after following the only available path, something far more dangerous starts to occur

Many will simply give up, check out, and die off--but others will begin to tear the system apart

Yes, they know that breaking the system is dangerous but the only thing more dangerous is dying a slow death in lowly obscurity having never made your mark on the world

Generations must turn over, the elite must circulate, the society must breath and grow, space must be made for what comes next, one paradigm must give way to the next

If the system tries too hard to hold on to what it was, it will lose everything it ever has been, all traditions must be living traditions, all systems must breath and grow

If they don't the young will rip it to pieces in the desperate attempt to escape the inevitable suffocation inside those rigid walls

It may result in chaos, terrible and bloody

But at least for some, chaos will not be a pit, it will be a ladder

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@AleMartnezR1 Finally, Christianity is self-validating. It explains the world we actually live in: moral guilt, human dignity, beauty, suffering, our longing for meaning, and our inability to save ourselves.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@AleMartnezR1 Islam is historically downstream. It accepts Jesus, Mary, prophecy, revelation, judgment, creation, angels, etc., but then asks us to reject the earliest and best-attested Christian claims about Jesus in favor of a revelation 600 years later.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 That's my point and Wolfram's! Why? Why isn't it chaos?
I know you really want to argue about the Christian God but we're still determining whether we think a mind is a better explanation or a brute fact. Empirical arguments come later.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 We have the same problems elsewhere that matter could be random but its predictable and repeatable despite not having any reason why. E.g. the problem of induction

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 But its not just a label, as Wolfram said fuller quote: “There’s no particular reason that the roughly 10^80 particles couldn’t each be following their own rules… and yet they don’t; they’re all following the same simple rules.”

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 You have a way of talking around the subject. We both appeal to a priori explanations - brute fact v. mind - to explain our basic assumptions. In one, we expect logic, order, and life, the other chaos, Boltzmann brains - at best -and no trust in our cognitive faculties.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 Then deal with the content.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 Precisely why thats a difficult source for you.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 It doesn’t rely on any a priori assumptions, we're asking which worldview best explains those basic assumptions.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 Yes, it is very satisfying and has far more explanatory power than the alternative. One cannot even justify reason in Naturalism.
Re laws:
“There’s no reason that the 10^80 particles couldn’t each be following their own rules… and yet they don’t” - Stephen Wolfram

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 Knowing that, we must ask, "what worldview best explains our observations?" Is it one large brute fact that doesnt produce any others, and which, unexpectedly has laws and obeys rules and unexplainably produced abiogenesis, or a world created by a mind?

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 You cannot prove your brain exists anymore than you can prove I exist, or that there is an external world. You certainly cannot use logic to prove reason exists (circular) etc. These are basic operative assumptions we all must accept before we can even begin doing science.

[Ryan Scollard @Bostonscollard]

@Midgard_Walker @AleMartnezR1 Right, like your brain. Or reason, these are things we must assume.