Quote from: Fuserleer on September 28, 2013, 09:04:41 PM

So if there is no consciousness or intelligence in the universe anywhere, circles don't exist? or the properties of them are different?

That's very similar to the "if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?" Circles exist regardless of our intelligence or if there is an observer, its just a label and description that we have given them to quantify them to some degree.

The proof of a circle still exists regardless, thus, no intelligence was needed to design it.

Quote from: blablahblah on September 25, 2013, 04:05:40 PM

Quote from: Fuserleer on September 25, 2013, 01:31:07 AM

If you draw a perfect circle, then measure its diameter, measure its circumference, divide circumference by diameter, you get PI, always.

There's no intelligent design there, it just IS, it's fact, it's math, a circle is defined as an 2d object where the diameter is the same measured from any edge to another passing through the center, no intelligence, no magic, just math.

Just as 1+1 = 2, no intelligence, it just is.

If these facts are true, and there are other facts that ring true regardless of circumstance, then you have solid building blocks for a complex system without design.

Whoa, slow down people!

We take "1+1=2" for granted, but it's easy to forget the learning process that every child (or civilisation) goes through, that they start off in a world without numbers. It takes intelligence to imagine that there exists a "1" of something, and if that 1 exists "again", we can create the idea of "2" to represent "1 and 1", and so on. If nature somehow worked differently, presumably the maths deduced from it would also be different.

So when you say "it just is" you skip the point that "1+1=2" is true because we made it that way.

To me it seems that what we normally think of as maths, is deduced from whatever nature provides us with. Things are divisible? OK, so we have numbers. Things can be arranged in space? OK, so we have dimensions. Trouble is, that would make maths a subset of nature, and therefore it cannot fully describe everything about its superset.

Hence the whole god / intelligent design / whatever she-bang. It could be said that our "inner being" that witnesses 1000s of different smells and sensations that simply can't be explained in terms of "microscopic Lego particles configured into Von Neumann machines", is the living embodiment of mathematical axioms: the things that are set to 'true' but can't be proven.

Yap, that falls into solipsism, and that is the only thing I reject on faith.