How can a good God allow suffering

You don't need such clutches to think. Your contributions to these discussions would be more interesting and creative if you'd try to think by yourself.

Let's imagine a human being who has never learnt any human language. For instance a "wild child" like Mowgli. That individual would probably not be smart, but he would still be able to see, smell, taste, hear, and think, to a degree. Language can help manage info, but it's not a sine qua non.

If you had written philosophical papers (as I regularly do) you would know that any 'creativity' resides in the act of selection of the available literature to support one's pov. The 'thinking for yourself' game, is a fine for concept for laymen and geniuses, but since I consider myself to be neither of these, and my papers are subject to eventual live criticism by a philosophically well read peer group, I tend to follow mandatory referencing procedures so that the group can prepare appropriate comments in advance..

Let me know if you read the reference.

BTW As I remember, the few known studies of 'feral children' show they are severely handicapped if deprived of early human langage exposure. There seems to be a 'critical period' for language acquisition which if passed has severe cognitive repercussions. Interestingly, some twin studies in which'private language systems' can predominate, also suggest that impaired cognitive development is a result.

I am not interested in Maturana, and nothing that you ever said about him piked my interest. So no, I didn't read the material. I looked at it though, and it was rather long and slow paced. Let me know if there's any section that you consider important to focus on.

I too have written philosophy papers with references; and I know for a fact that a true philosopher can go beyond his references, and criticize even his most beloved author. So try and criticize Maturana, if you can. Popper is my favorite philosopher but I can see where he was wrong.

Ultimately, this is a message board, not an academic circle, and you should feel free to express your own ideas in a non-academic format.

That's fine. We have nothing further to discuss.

Think about it, will you? I would welcome a freer, less corseted and defensive approach.

Interesting confession.
In a theological thread, no less.

A pity you won't read Maturana, then, who argues against the corsets of Popper et al involved in the so-called 'scientific method'.

Where better than on a theological thread ?

You might find this more digestible than Maturana himself.
http://www.oikos.org/vonobserv.htm

I can't even understan the problem they are trying to solve.

Blame it on brianjakub.

The problems are
(1) what is the definition of 'life' ? ...the answer being given in terms of 'systems theory' ...specifically 'an autopoietic system'.
(2)How does a 'languaging system' engage with its environment? ...the answer being given in terms of 'structural coupling'.
(3)What is the nature of the languaging behavior we call 'science' ? i.e. How can we 'observe observation' ?...(aka 'second order cybernetics')...the answer being to deconstruct the concept of 'the standard observer' tacitly assumed in the usual view of 'objective science, and to examine the structural coupling of 'scientists' rather than focussing on the ontology of their 'subject matter'. This refocussing parallels such ideas as 'reality is a social construction' and 'science proceeds by the adoption of successive functional paradigms (aka 'conseneual domains')

For making fresco's job so easy? Maybe.

What do you mean by that?

I mean that you try to support your viewpoint with things you (and no one else) understands well enough. Quantum mechanics for example.

That makes it easy to criticize your POV. It's as weak as the atheist argument that life is explained by such murky concepts as 'emergence' and 'DKS' (dynamic kinetic stability).
Trying to prove or disprove God by such little understood (or completely made up) concepts is just hand waving and is easily dismissed.

MY goodness, youve almot parroted my eact point that Id been trying to get you to understand!!!. Congrtulations. HAve you abandoned your
"I have done the math"?? to evidence BJ world??

Takes one to know one !

....and what could be a 'murkier' or more 'made up concept' but 'God'

I'm fine with 1; don't understand what "structural coupling mean (2); and would like to point out that scientists do not focus on the "ontology of their 'subject matter". Science deals with replicable phenomena so I don't think 3 is anything new; it's been with us since Kant.

I understand 'structural coupling' to refer to the co-extension/co-definition of aspects of a living structure with that of its medium. It involves 'goodness of fit' or 'establishment and maintenance of a niche'. But the concept of 'environment' can be extennded to 'social environment' in which 'languaging' could be the extension tool which couples two (human) structures.

As far as (3) is concerned, despite Kant's rejection of access to noumena,
there is still a prevailing attitude of many scientists that they are 'discovering aspects of an independent reality' rather than exploiting the consensual functionality of their concepts. If you read Von Glasersfeld's article you will see how Maturana's system adds weight to this distinction.

What do you mean by 'medium' in your first sentence?

For 3, I believe most scientists know better than that. Let's take a certain biologist as an example: when Maturana states that "life is an autopoietic system", he is not really making an ontological statement, IMO. He is just saying that living organisms behave a certain way: they self-replicate and repair themselves.

Likewise when another biologist (me) says: "life is information bossing matter around", he is not really saying anything about the essence of life, just that living organisms maintain their structure by organizing a complex 'flux' of matter: eating, digesting, replacing broken components by new ones, and excreting the waste.

It's only when they need to explain these things to lay people (or to themselves when they are lazy) that scientists use ontological statements using the verb "is". Replace "is" by "behaves like", to get a better sense of the real epistemology at work.

At least, that's the case for scientists who adhere to the Kant-Popper-Kuhn epistemology, whom i would think form a large majority by now.