Power Corrupts
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
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written Saturday, April 22 2006 20:46
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You've managed to string together four effectively useless propositions into a single post without hazarding a single original thought. Congratulations: you lose. Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00 |
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Councilor
Member # 6600
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written Saturday, April 22 2006 21:17
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Skimming through posts while extremely tired doesn't work. I read this quote:as this quote:Fortunately, at that point, Dikiyoba realized that something was wrong, stopped reading, and went back and reread the sentence correctly. It was absurdly and bewilderingly funny for a moment, though. Posts: 4346 | Registered: Friday, December 23 2005 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, April 22 2006 22:51
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But you still have to account for the other universes, Starturtles, or Slartuckers who create our universe. —Alorael, who can only resolve this with time travel. Universes A and B collide and form C and D, which then collide backwards in time to create A and B. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 4506
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written Saturday, April 22 2006 23:01
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quote:Wasn't it? :P Posts: 1370 | Registered: Thursday, June 10 2004 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6403
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 05:21
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quote:I'm surprised how people always manage to misinterpret the explination for this phenomenon. It reminds me of the "if Hitler did God's will, is he in hell?" question. Yes. That is not to say that what he did wasn't God's will. Whatever anyone does falls along the lines of God's will. But God did not will that Hitler and only Hitler was the one to kill 11 million people. That was done of Hitler's free will. If not him, then someone else would have done it. And that person would be the one suffering his existence away. What the brothers did is the same case, albeit on a much smaller scale. Joseph was going to end up in Egypt no matter what. The brothers, however, were not the ones who were required to make it so. That was their own decision. Jacob's favoritism of Joseph came out of his own free will, although it did pave the way for his brothers' jealosy. In fact, if it weren't for his uncle Laban's trickery there would not be any favoritism. That stemmed from Jacob's love of Rachel more than Leah. Of course, if it weren't for Laban's trickery there would be only two tribes, four maximum. Just another case of everything falling in under God's will. -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 6785
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 05:28
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quote:There are almost no original thoughts in this forum. They consist of people posting their views and philosophies. Lord llama post about heaven for violent people where they fight all the time is the Norse myth of Vahalla where the chosen fighters who died in battle spend their days fighting and are raised to spend their nights feasting. The flip side of punishing violent people is given by humorist that propose that Islamic suicide bombers find that their 40 promised virgins are their baby victims and that they will spend eternity with them. There various posts about where everything comes from have been debated for ages. That is the basis for almost every religion's origin story. Terry Pratchett's Strata deals with humans terrafroming planets to make them seem that life evolved naturally on each world by planting false geological evidence. So they inhabitants planted on the world will later find fossils that make them think they evolved there. Then they find an earth that has Earth's history and continents on a flat Earth that has "magic" and a computer to control the place to keep it running. This was to show that things weren't always as people believed, but until they find blatant evidence they continue in their original views, Posts: 4643 | Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 22
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 06:37
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quote:You found someone who still believes in the Ontological Argument? And you....lost? Off the top of my head - Kant's objection - Existence does not tell us what the object is like, and so adds nothing to the concept. Also, you can't have a analytical existential proposition - to ascertain whether something exists or not, you have to go outside your mind and prove it with empirical proof. The only thing that the Ontological Argument proves is that if God exists, then he exists. My favourite objection to the Ontological Argument is Russell's. If we say that, say, "cows exist" yet "unicorns don't exist", we are talking about concepts of cows and unicorns rather than actual cows and unicorns, and all we are saying is that one has an instance and one does not. The Ontological argument is an intellectual sleight of hand - it goes from this concept of God to an actuality of God, hoping that we won't notice the jump in logic. Hume also has multiple problems with the concept of necessary existence, but that's a whole other (cosmological) argument. [ Sunday, April 23, 2006 06:38: Message edited by: Morgan ] Posts: 2862 | Registered: Tuesday, October 2 2001 07:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 6670
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 10:17
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By Randomizer: quote:Basically, the Intelligent Design argument is that finding two creature with similar anatomies does not prove evolution. For instance, the fact that a whale had two bones in its 'forearm' does not prove that the whale has descended from land animals. It's just that having more than one bone is the only way to make a 'forearm' flexible. I agree; the Creationist argument that an incredibly complicated universe proves Intelligent Design is invalid. The Canadian Tax form is incredibly complicated, yet it definitely isn't the result of intelligent design. A better argument would be an appeal to statistics. Take a protein composed of the correct sequence of one hundred amino acids, say, twenty different types. The chances of forming one protein through one sequence of random collisions (not through folding) is 1 : 1 * 10^130. Basically, evolutionists have already set up a god for themselves. They bow down every day to the great god Probabiliy, who has mercifully shined his face on the world and let it come into existence. EDIT: Sorry about the confusion. The derivation of this result took a simplified protein molecule (usually over one hundred acids, and there are more than twenty different types of aminos). I don't remember exactly, but I think each collision was defined as a random permutation of acids. Granted, it didn't take into account the frequency of the collisions. On the other hand, it didn't take into account the fact that useless proteins could be formed, wasting acids. -------------------- IF I EVER BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD: Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size. [ Sunday, April 23, 2006 17:44: Message edited by: Dintiradan ] Posts: 1509 | Registered: Tuesday, January 10 2006 08:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 10:24
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quote:Well, it's hard to argue with someone like that. But you know, this is really a tricky topic to argue. For instance: quote:You're just asserting this, when obviously the ontological proof is claiming otherwise. So this is no rebuttal; this is just saying, "No." quote:It was about this stage that I thought I would have had my guy, because I had got him to advance a rule of inference whereby "The concept of an X is the concept of a Y" would imply "X is a Y". A rule of inference like that is ridiculous since, as Kant showed long ago, it would allow me to get rich by postulating definitions of currency. But I never quite bagged the guy, because the argument was being conducted on an e-mail list, and at that point it had gone on for rather a long time. Since everyone was bored with it by then, it just faded out without any declared victor. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Post Navel Trauma ^_^
Member # 67
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 11:22
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quote:That would be a fairly convincing proof, if evolution relied on the random formation of a specific 100-unit protein from its component amino acids. -------------------- Barcoorah: I even did it to a big dorset ram. desperance.net - Don't follow this link Posts: 1798 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 11:24
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quote:But is there sufficient evidence to responsibly assert that God does not exist? I don't mean to put words in Alec's mouth either way, but this is all the excuse I need to post some remarks on Ockham's Razor. A common atheistic assumption is that the burden of proof is somehow on theism, but this assumption seems to me to beg the question just as much as any theistic assumption ever does. The predator for which there was no evidence when you pitched your tent can still eat you in the middle of the night, and it's not as though William of Ockham will give his angels charge over you, because you were faithful in not multiplying entities unnecessarily. He's just a dead guy, and however appealing it may be as an aesthetic principle, his Razor can simply be wrong. Moreover it is not easy to avoid adding entities in the big picture. There are many questions to which a theist will answer, "God", but to which many atheists answer, "Chance". Go all formal and rigorous at this point, and you find that the role played by "chance" in atheistic metaphysics is so much like that of "God" in the theistic structure, that it is hard to say why the Razor should only trim God. So, appealing to Ockham's Razor is in my opinion a cop-out, firstly because it is itself an arbitrary premise, and secondly because when it is applied with true rigor it cuts both ways. Finally, Alec's quark analogy is an interesting one to me, because I think my belief in God is probably fairly similar in nature to my belief in quarks. I find the evidence for quarks compelling, but it is evidence that is hard to find and almost as hard to understand. Deep inelastic scattering of protons can't be done in the rec room, and demonstrating quark confinement is still an open problem in the theory of quantum chromodynamics. Quarks were undreamt of fifty years ago; no evidence for them had ever been imagined then, let alone found. Yet practically all the matter we see is (and was) made up of quarks (and virtual gluons, alas — there's the rub). The moral I draw is that finding evidence for real things can be very difficult. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 6652
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 11:38
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I consider there to be evidence of why God does not exist. It is not cold, hard, physical evidence that is studied in a laboratory, but it is logical evidence. If God exists, why does he not come out and tell us? If God wants us to have free will, why is the Bible full of laws and horrible curses that come on you if you disobey those laws? Why does God permit suffering in the world if he is all-powerful and benign? The general answers to these questions are convoluted and defy quite a bit of logic. You pointed out in your post that there is hardly any evidence either way. You then asserted later that God is like a quark. There is evidence for quarks, however, and you said yourself that there is no such evidence for God. -------------------- But I don't want to ride the elevator. Posts: 420 | Registered: Sunday, January 8 2006 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 11:41
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quote:That argument doesn't work. Everyone could choose not to enact God's will if everyone has free will. Therefore eventually God has to step in and make people do what he wants or some people aren't people and don't have free will. I don't like the idea of God having meat puppets very much. I like the idea of God deciding that ten million innocent people must die by one hand or another even less. —Alorael, who may have to create a new sect. Jews for Meat Puppets of God is kind of catchy, isn't it? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 11:41
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quote:This particular statistic is one of those third type of lies. In general there are never any reliable ways to compute probabilities this small, because the chances of one the assumptions in the computation being drastically wrong are far higher than the claimed result. And for protein formation in particular, the many-body quantum mechanics of protein formation will remain far beyond the total computational power of humanity for the foreseeable future, so this number can only have been pulled out of somebody's armpit. Finally, the statement is meaningless as presented (and I have seen it presented before in exactly the same way) because it doesn't specify how many random collisions are involved, or of what kinds. (It's like saying the chance of my having a car accident is one in 10,000. In my lifetime? Per year? Per opportunity?) -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 4614
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 12:05
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Maybe God created evolution and directed it into creating the diversity of life we see. -------------------- -ben4808 Posts: 3360 | Registered: Friday, June 25 2004 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 5437
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 12:05
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quote:So, if a child never meets his father that means his father doesn't exist? [quote]If God wants us to have free will, why is the Bible full of laws and horrible curses that come on you if you disobey those laws?[/quote]This just goes back to the questions "do we really have free will" and "was the bible actually written by God". Just because the bible contradicts itself doesn't mean there is no God. There are other faiths, and other holy texts in the world. [quote]Why does God permit suffering in the world if he is all-powerful and benign?.[/quote]Karma. [ Sunday, April 23, 2006 12:07: Message edited by: Dolphin. ] Posts: 2032 | Registered: Wednesday, January 26 2005 08:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 12:09
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quote:We're not talking about Superman, who could prove he was super by leaping a tall building. No event that humans could take in -- not speaking with a booming voice from the sky, stopping the rotation of the Earth, or changing the color of the Sun -- would be beyond the power of an advanced alien race as portrayed on Star Trek. Yet even an entity capable of manipulating galaxies would be nothing compared to the editor of reality, at whose whim every atom and all of space persists from instant to instant. So how could God declare to us God's existence in any convincing way? Your other questions are not about God's existence, but about specific religious doctrines concerning God's nature. quote:If you re-read my post carefully I think you'll find I said none of these things. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 73
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 12:15
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quote:The answer to your questions could be something as simple as "because he doesn't feel like it", "because he likes to confuse us", and "because he's lazy". There goes your so-called "logical evidence". Or it could be much more complicated. Maybe he has reasons not to tell us. Maybe we would instantly go insane if he told us he existed, either due to incomprehensibility to the puny human mind, or due to trying and failing to figure out how it's possible. Maybe the Bible is there to test us, to see if we can figure out that it's a horrible lie. Maybe there's some law of the universe that limits this god's power to interfere with the human mind. There's infinite possibilities. As they say, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Neither is absence of human knowledge of the true reason behind it. At any rate, I've moved beyond the "The god that my mommy says is there doesn't seem to love me, so I'm going to pretend it's not there, while unbeknownst to others I still want to believe" attitude that your questions are characteristic of (not saying that's your attitude, but most people with that attitude ask those questions), into the "I don't know now, I may not know until I'm dead, and even then I might not know, so there's no point worrying about it now" attitude. I'm quite happy here. Not saying it's perfect for everyone, but I love making up my own religions for fun. When I die, I'm going to be a gingerbread man in Christmastown part time, and the rest of the time I'll be a minotaur in a dank, dark cavern! -------------------- My Myspace, with some of my audial and visual art The Lyceum - The Headquarters of the Blades designing community The Louvre - The Blades of Avernum graphics database Alexandria - The Blades of Exile Scenario database BoE Webring - Self explanatory Polaris - Free porn here Odd Todd - Fun for the unemployed (and everyone else too) They Might Be Giants - Four websites for one of the greatest bands in existance -------------------- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Posts: 2957 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 6652
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 14:47
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My brief euphoria at not having my arguments dissected and pounded on with a sledgehammer has vanished. Ah well. quote:Even if direct communication would not necessarily prove God's existence, it would convince many people. People tend to believe what they see and hear, especially if the said and heard things causes a huge earthquake or somesuch. Also apologies for putting words in your mouth, but it looked like it at first glance. quote:This just goes back to the questions "do we really have free will" and "was the bible actually written by God". Just because the bible contradicts itself doesn't mean there is no God. There are other faiths, and other holy texts in the world.[/quote]I challenge you to show me a religion or religious text that believes in God, but has no moral code and does not believe God is benign. quote:Karma.[/quote]What? Please explain. As for ADS's post, I admire your position but question that logic. By simply creating a complicated explanation for every logic flaw, I can prove that the CIA is controlled by aliens and that the entire eastern hemisphere does not exist. EDIT: Anyone pleasantly surprised that Jeff hasn't closed this topic yet? [ Sunday, April 23, 2006 14:56: Message edited by: I Would Have Been Your Daddy ] -------------------- But I don't want to ride the elevator. Posts: 420 | Registered: Sunday, January 8 2006 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 16:18
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While reading a basic relativity textbook, I once encountered a few paragraphs describing tachyons. The term "tachyon" describes a faster-than-light particle, and many theories over the years have included them. Each theory had a different explanation of what they were and how they came into existence. Then physicists went to the lab and tried to produce them, and they never managed to. No one has ever proven that tachyons don't exist, and it may not be possible to do so, but physicists have demonstrated that they are not created in many situations in which one might predict that they would be. Basically, we can't say that they don't exist, but we can put ever-increasingly strict limits on their existence until they're hardly significant anymore. I feel more or less the same way about a potential god. We can't say that no gods exist, but we can put increasingly strict limits on their existence — "I don't observe a god when I do [x], [y], or [z]" — until they're no longer significant to our lives, except in figurative ways. I should add that such "figurative" ways are non-trivial, and I don't mean to disparage them. I just mean that there's a difference between a god who writes down his instructions on tablets of stone and what we observe in our daily lives. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 5437
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 16:19
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quote:Okay, I'll use Hinduism and an example. Siva is a God all loving and worshiped, but will not send you to hell or smite you for your misdeeds. Yama is the God of death, and the judge of your fate, but you are not judged for your faith but rather your actions. Almost all faiths and cultures have a symbol of death/carrier to the thereafter, and is often thought of as a God. So some God's are all forgiving and all merciful, and others do the smiting. Your statement was referring to the nature of "the God" and how it pertains to the bible. Your challenge would hold more ground if you asked me to present a faith that follows a single God. quote:This concept begins to get a little difficult to explain without getting into the concept of reincarnation, so I'll avoid that. Following the notion that we actually have freewill it should be fairly apparent how human might use that to cause themselves and others suffering. You could say that babies are born with afflictions, what could they have done to deserve that? Well, those cases are often due to the parents' life choices, as well as genetics. I suppose God could save you from every pit and falling rock, but for that to happen God would have to more or less prevent you from doing everything. My eyes are tired from being on the computer all day; should God stop me from reading anymore posts to protect me from further discomfort? Posts: 2032 | Registered: Wednesday, January 26 2005 08:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6193
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 16:51
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quote:If you believe the bible, then he did come out and tell us. People largely disregarded what he said, and sin etc. was just as widespread as before. Maybe God just got tired of trying and figured we could figure it out for ourselves. If the only way you are going to believe in God is if the skys open up and he starts talking to you, then you probably are never going to believe. I think it is pretty much established that this isn't how it works; pointing out that it doesn't happen really doesn't add anything to an arguement. -------------------- Guaranteed to blow your mind. Frostbite: Get It While It's...... Hot? Posts: 900 | Registered: Monday, August 8 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 16:55
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God could spontaneously cause us to believe that he exists, and to believe that we had always believed that he exists. He doesn't. There's really no explaining without trying to understand the mind and limitations of God, which is impossible by our working definition of God. I think Alec's point still stands. There is no faith that does not believe in a benign greater power. It may not be the only power or the greatest power, but it's always there. Ben, that defense of ID can be true but still doesn't mean anything. Evolution is not directed except on a moment to moment basis by selective pressures, which are the result of circumstances, which are dictated by everything in the area. God may fudge with the probability numbers, but he doesn't do so do in any detectable way, so he might as well not be fudging. He could have set up the universe to result in life as it exists now, but that's both a possible violation of free will and definitely back to the problem that the existence of our universe is no more or less explicable than the existence of a god who coudl create it. Positing the existence and power of God does not resolve any questions. He may have created the universe so that evolution would be directed to what we have now, or he may not exist at all, and the two cases are utterly indistinguishable. The existence of evolution, independent of God's existence, is verifiable (and to a large extent verified) and useful. —Alorael, who has no problem with intelligent design as a theological question. It doesn't conflict with measurable reality, unlike young Earth creationism. It just doesn't add anything to scientific knowledge, so it's not a scientific question. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 4445
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 17:20
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quote:From this I am inferring that you believe in God, am I right? You find the evidence for quarks compelling, and your belief in God is like unto your belief in God. Care to expand on what compelling evidence you find for God's existence? (I mean this not in an adversarial way, I'm genuinely curious about your views on the subject, being a physicist and all.) Also, quote:All Anselm has proven is that the greatest of all possible beings exists. He has shown only that there exists in the universe something which fits a given definition of great better than anything else in the universe. In an infinite universe in which every possibility exists, that object's characteristics are necessarily the highest possible conformity to the established definition of great. What it does not prove is that the object conforms completely to the definition - only that it does so to the highest degree possible. (Probably not too original, and you'll have a ready answer, but this is the first time I've seen that.) quote:The Aztecs may have been different, what with needing x number of sacrifices to keep the sun in the sky, but I won't pretend my knowledge goes any further than that. In the general case I'll say that a lot of primitive religions seem to have fickle higher powers who are not so much benign as able to be appeased (again, just a surface-level impression not taken from any specific knowledge). The point stands, I guess, with regard to modern religion, probably due in large part to free-market forces acting on religions - who's going to join a religion in which the higher power actively has it in for humanity. [ Sunday, April 23, 2006 17:35: Message edited by: PoD person ] Posts: 293 | Registered: Saturday, May 29 2004 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Sunday, April 23 2006 17:28
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The greatest of all possible things must possess the greatest of all possible characteristics. It must thus be omnipotent and omniscient. From those two, you really have all the characteristics necessary for a Judeo-Christian God. —Alorael, who has trouble with the leap from the conceptual to the existing. He can't articulate why this is logically false, but the proof seems as though it should only prove the existence of a conceptual God. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |