Democracy
- Thread starter Changleen
- Start date
I heard somewhere that if you had 1000 monkeys jumping around on typewriters, eventually one of them would write the bible.
Watch what you say....Changleen said:Yeah, that actually has already happened, about 2000 years ago.
oh, really? please explain in your own words why you take issue with Changleen's statement. i could have a strong belief that cats were the secret ruling class of the world, and half the world might agree with me. the number of people on "my side" wouldn't make my personal cat-gospel any more true, so please come up with something more original than "there are lots of people with similar beliefs."dwaugh said:Watch what you say....
Oh Please. God does not exist. The Bible, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and every other religion are simply tools to control the herds of those people who are too stupid to see them for the obvious lies and tools of power and control that they are. Ever noticed how all religious leaders just happen to be rich and powerful? Ever notice how that from all the religions in the world, none of them have anything close to hint of proof of their thesis? Ever notice how people find comfort in having decisions made for them?dwaugh said:Watch what you say....
On a seperate issue, ever notice how US Politics is tending towards Religion - requiring you to put your 'faith' in your candidate and his actions? 'Things are going well in Iraq'. How many times have we heard that? If you say it enough times people start to believe you. Fair and Balanced, innit?
The inner sole? Fish or shoe???Changleen said:
Isn't that just a long way of saying we end up getting the leaders we deserve?
Well, I went to Catholic School up until 8th grade. I just think that a lot of the morals that bible gives are good ones.
how does indoctrination feel? fwiw, i went through the catholic school system for some years (jesuit high school), and think that the jesuits have done much good over the years. this does not mean that religion gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from me. i hope that you examine your personal basis for faith at some point in your life, whether this makes you more devout or more full of doubt.dwaugh said:
Hey, for the most part they are - 'Thou shalt not kill' is obviously highly sensible, as are many of the others. I find it sad though, that a lot of people (I'm not saying you - I don't know you) need to have these pointed out to them. Are they not self evident? If you want to live in a stable, productive society, it is logical that killing other members of this society is counterproductive to this goal.dwaugh said:
I find it even sadder what organised religion has become these days. In most (not all) cases it is nothing more than a shallow excuse for a business, founded on control, fear and prejudice - it's practitioners nothing more than hypocritical sheep whose conditioned responses to the modern world are one of the most damaging forces in the world today. I hate that certain sections of various churches (not just Christian) actively block human progress and development. What is particularly scary is that for the first time in modern history, a supposedly first world country is undergoing an increase in the kind of aggresive religiousity that would actively deny the teaching of science, suppress the rights of it's populace, and seek, in general, to polarize and simplify people's views of our highly complex world in order to further their own ends.
You are a jackass. Honsetly. All religious leaders are not rich and powerful, nor is it necessarily their desire to be so. If you knew anything about church and religious history, you might reconsider your statements. People who go to church and believe are not mindless sheep that cannot think for themselves. The fact that religious traditions lack proof of their belief is not necessarily true. Take off your tinfoil hat, learn some facts and be a reasonable human being.Changleen said:Oh Please. God does not exist. The Bible, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and every other religion are simply tools to control the herds of those people who are too stupid to see them for the obvious lies and tools of power and control that they are. Ever noticed how all religious leaders just happen to be rich and powerful? Ever notice how that from all the religions in the world, none of them have anything close to hint of proof of their thesis? Ever notice how people find comfort in having decisions made for them?
On a seperate issue, ever notice how US Politics is tending towards Religion - requiring you to put your 'faith' in your candidate and his actions? 'Things are going well in Iraq'. How many times have we heard that? If you say it enough times people start to believe you. Fair and Balanced, innit?
Why is it that people who deride religions think that they are instantly superior in all intellectual abilities to people who believe? Stuff like this makes me angry because it shows more misunderstanding than it does enlightenment.
Because they don't believe in fairy tales? And they don't want others to believe in the same fairy tale?JRogers said:
Oooooohhh!JRogers said:
Examples of some poor and non-powerful religious leaders please.
Actually, I know quite a bit about both, thanks. Please don't presume to know my background.
Show me the proof then.
They are not necassarily, (where did I say they were?) but disbelief does normally lead to a cetain amount of personal rational thought about morals, the flawed concepts of good and evil, and science. In a large number of cases religious people are closed to such thoughts as these matters are, to a large extent defined for them, precluding the need for, and discouraging individual rational thought. That is 'wrong' if anything is.
Sure.
Hmmmmm...back to basics...This might be an easy one to you guys since I'm not a religious person whatsoever.
Q) If there is a 'God', why is there a useless war going on again???...or starvation, or other terrible things???
A) 'God' works in mysterious ways.
It's a mystery to me that thousands of people have to die in order for mankind to 'learn' important lessons...the problem is, we're not learning!!!! Or the people who do know what's going on aren't at the wheel of this speeding train wreck waiting to happen. I guess we're supposed to have..."faith"???
Q) If there is a 'God', why is there a useless war going on again???...or starvation, or other terrible things???
A) 'God' works in mysterious ways.
It's a mystery to me that thousands of people have to die in order for mankind to 'learn' important lessons...the problem is, we're not learning!!!! Or the people who do know what's going on aren't at the wheel of this speeding train wreck waiting to happen. I guess we're supposed to have..."faith"???
You might like this - From ancient Greece by a guy named Epicurus:ChrisRobin said:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Sure.BuddhaRoadkill said:Prove it.neaky:
God is supposed to all seeing and all knowing right? And according to the Bible, or the Koran, he has at some point interacted with people in various forms - spoken to them, burning bush, etc.
Now look at the Heisenberg Principle of uncertainty. This is a (to date) accepted concept of Quantum mechanics that states you can never know both the exact momentum and position of any given particle. The more tightly you pin down it's position, the greater uncertainty you have about it's momentum, and vice-versa. The closer you try to pin down these two factors, the more energy you require. It would require an infinite amount of energy to accuratly determine both of these factors for just one particle. As an 'infinite' amount of energy does not exist in our universe, you cannot never know the exact state of even one particle, let alone the universe, and therefore more importantly, never predict or know the future with any degree of accuracy.
Therefore if God exists within our universe, he cannot be 'Omniscient' and is therefore not God. If 'God' somehow exists external to our universe, and somehow looks in, (a possibility that I would not preclude) then again, he is not the God that is described by any of the major religions, and therefore not 'God'.
I am quite willing to accept that it is a possibility that our universe was created by an intelligence obviously way in advance of ours. It is however blatently obvious that that intelligence doesn't give a **** about us anymore than the x trillion billion other planets and no doubt intelligences in the universe. Anyway, I'm getting off the point - the upshot is that 'God', as defined by any major religion, is BS.
um, Changleen, you're getting into shaky ground with that pseudoscience of yours. just as it's invalid for parapsychologists and cults (see "holon" thread in the lounge, search if you missed it), it's invalid for your "proof" of the nonexistence of god.
why is it invalid?
one of the coolest things about physics is that there are two worlds, classical and quantum. if you look really closely you see the quantum world, a world of probabilities and uncertainty, where particles such as electrons and photos can be said and actually do take every single possible path, only "choosing" one when you measure them. however, and this is the key here, quantum effects become nearly negligible when you move up in scale. this is why classical mechanics is valid on human-scale problems. this is also why the existence of the uncertainty principle does not preclude an omniscient being -- you don't need to know the nitty gritty probabilistic details of a particle to predict its (classical) behavior. rephrased, you don't need to consider quantum effects when calculating the trajectory of a baseball.
you might have more of a case, as it may be, by using godel's proof rather than heisenberg's principle, but you're still not going to convince anyone.
why is it invalid?
one of the coolest things about physics is that there are two worlds, classical and quantum. if you look really closely you see the quantum world, a world of probabilities and uncertainty, where particles such as electrons and photos can be said and actually do take every single possible path, only "choosing" one when you measure them. however, and this is the key here, quantum effects become nearly negligible when you move up in scale. this is why classical mechanics is valid on human-scale problems. this is also why the existence of the uncertainty principle does not preclude an omniscient being -- you don't need to know the nitty gritty probabilistic details of a particle to predict its (classical) behavior. rephrased, you don't need to consider quantum effects when calculating the trajectory of a baseball.
you might have more of a case, as it may be, by using godel's proof rather than heisenberg's principle, but you're still not going to convince anyone.
But Toshi, isn't the Hand of God the only that's holding the baseball together in the first place?
Are you calling that nice man in the wheel chair a c*nt?Toshi said:
Except actually there arn't - there is one universe, we just don't have a proper unified theory yet, although M-Theory is coming close.
Agreed, sort of - that's a good way to explain it in simple terms.
That's where you missed the point. We have a good grasp, with classical physics, of the motion of the planets, bouncing balls, car crashes and so forth, but we cannot predict weather patterns, people's thoughts, the motion of the tide, brownian motion and so on (anything considered 'chaotic') to more than a fairly weak probability with classical physics. To do this we'd need to describe the actual state of the system rather than using a simplified model and rules based on observations as we do now.
Omniscience implies a knowledge of all - past, present and future. To know the future (assuming you cannot in some way look down on the 4th dimension as a plane of some sort - which current theory would say you can't) you DO need to know the exact quantum state of the universe as a starting point. Heisenberg precludes this therefore there is no traditional God.
I prefer Epicurus actually - It's 'morally' logical, short and to the point. And yep, clearly I'm not going to convince everyone, but hey, I like arguing.you might have more of a case, as it may be, by using godel's proof rather than heisenberg's principle, but you're still not going to convince anyone.
hmm, this is where i must disagree. it is all one universe, but things really do look different depending on how closely you look. this will not change once we have a unified theory. it still won't change the fact that we can safely ignore quantum effects when dealing with the world on our scale.Changleen said:
actually, i think it is you who have missed the point here. i don't see anyone claiming that we need to model weather on a quantum scale. our models currently (i'm guessing) are MANY orders of magnitude cruder than that, and, as i said, quantum effects are negligible even at the level of molecules, unless you are a physicist concerned with precision to the fourth decimal place.Changleen said:
who is to say that some "god" can't make a measurement without disturbing the system? you can't win an argument if you assign omnipotence to your deity of choice... if this god was swift enough to come up with the universe (say, packed into a singularity at the point of the big bang, the endpoint of time) then circumventing the uncertainty principle should not be a showstopper.Changleen said:
But, as I said, you cannot accuratly predict the future of chaotic systems with classical physics, so you can't predict the future.Toshi said:
We're not talking about the weather. We're talking about predicting everything. People's future mind states, the colour of the sunset looking out from the golden gate bridge on Nov 27th 2057. You'd need to utterly comprehend the current state of universe at a quantum level to begin to be able to do this.
According to our best and latest theories, you are either a part of the universe, or you are not. I'm sure you know this. There is no evidence, or even signs that the universe is in anyway permeable, even with wormholes. Remember my initial conjecture here, that 'God' as described by traditional religion is an occupant of the universe in that he has spoken to people, affected the physical world and so on. I'm NOT arguing against the possibility of a creator intelligence. That is entirely different. For the traditional God of the Bible and Koran etc. to exist requires him to be a) omniscient and b) a habitant of the universe. These things are mutually exclusive. I do not believe that any God somehow has a veto over the fundamental laws of physics. I don't believe Jeebus walked on water, and I don't believe Moses parted the red sea. These things are 'impossible'.
I'm not sure I completely understand what you're getting at here. Please expand.
please explain how this is possible, modeling the universe on a computer that by definition is part of said universe. how do you model every particle in the universe on a TINY subset of all of the particles? and lay off of reading kurzweil, he's a nutChangleen said:
, if that's where you got on this kick from heh. furthermore, please explain why, in greater detail than "current science can't explain chaotic systems", we have to model down to the quantum level. as i have written three times now, we can largely ignore quantum effects at the human scale. uncertainty won't make a ball a strike, unless the margin between the two is nearly incomprehensibly small. similarly, i am of the belief that modeling weather, brownian motion, all of those examples, is not limited by uncertainty. it is limited by computing power, sophistication of models, granularity of these models, all things that do not hinge on quantum mechanics.
you can never completely rule out the possibility of an omniscient being. take the Q continuum on star trek: the next generation, sheesh.Changleen said:
i see that with your caveat that this god must be part of this universe you sidestep my questions above. well, let's just say that Q isn't part of this universe, and it's mechanisms for doing what it does are just as mysterious as Q's powers were to picard. (note to readers: i am not insane. i don't think Q exists, or a God for that matter. i am simply using Q as an example, since i'm a st:tng fan and it's relevant.)
I believe Jesus walked on water.
(I'm from Canada though, so I always figured that he did it in the winter...)
Even if you postulate the existence of an omniscient being, you still have to ask the question where he came from in the first place.
(I'm from Canada though, so I always figured that he did it in the winter...)
Even if you postulate the existence of an omniscient being, you still have to ask the question where he came from in the first place.
I'm with Toshi on this one.
Changleen, you're arguing from a point of personal incredulity. Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean that it can't happen.
(The astounding lack of evidence...that's a different story, but I don't think any of us are concerned with that point )
Changleen, you're arguing from a point of personal incredulity. Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean that it can't happen.
(The astounding lack of evidence...that's a different story, but I don't think any of us are concerned with that point
)No idea who Kurzweil is - but that was my point - it IS impossible hence god or anyone else cannot do it - hence the description of god in the bible is BS.Toshi said:please explain how this is possible, modeling the universe on a computer that by definition is part of said universe. how do you model every particle in the universe on a TINY subset of all of the particles? and lay off of reading kurzweil, he's a nut
The key phrase there was 'granularity'. These systems behaviour is governed by the inter-relation of atoms and electrons. As I (think) we now agree on, you require the same amount of atoms (probably a lot more) to accuratly model a given number of atoms. God being omniscient requires a model of the entire universe. Not possible within this universe. QED. You could get a cup of tea, put it in as close to a genuine vacuum as possible and model the brownian motion, and run a computer simulation of the same thing and get very very stonkingly close result, but it wouldn't be exactly the same down to the last spin state of the last electron because of the background noise of the universe. OK, maybe you could get it spot on if you performed the whole experiment a whole load of times, but still. We're talking about modelling the future of humanity - who's going to say what to who in what context far into the future. Again, you need a 100% acurate model of the entire universe to achieve this with 100% certainty so as we said above this cannot be done. Hence omniscience and therefore the traditional god is a flawed concept.
Actually Q said that although he was theoreticaly capable of being omniscient, he didn't pay attention to everything all the time didn't he?you can never completely rule out the possibility of an omniscient being. take the Q continuum on star trek: the next generation, sheesh.
This is not true Omniscience. Anyway...
Yeah, but Toshi's pointing out that if you postulate God in the first place, you can get him to do anything. Even if it doesn't make sense or is impossible...
That's a brilliant post because it highlights exactly the issues I have with a traditional god. 'If you postulate god in the first place, you can get him to do anything' - that's the difference. I can apply that idea to anything without also applying logic. Islamic 'terrorism', evil, the stock market... The point is I don't believe that a rational being can postulate such concepts as self sustained entities without evidence of their cause and effects. To me it's like being told a story of a situation without knowing what leads up to it and what becomes of it. You cannot judge it value or it's validity without knowing its context. By postulating a 'traditonal God', you assume to a large extent a purpose for humanity over all other earthbound species and over all other possible intelligent life in the universe. This is BS.Silver said:
I'm tired of religous people actually getting angry and thinking people find themselves superior when in fact standard Christianity has reigned over the United States since the beginning. In order to be a Christian as far as matters of the spirit are concerned you have to inherently believe your doctrine of faith must supersede any other belief. Same goes for just about any religion out there. i marvel at the victim stance followers take when in most circumstances they have no concept at how their actions effect the world around them. Ahh guess it's the way it's always been i suppose.JRogers said:
Too much power to any religion in any government system is bad news. Maybe i should move to Salt Lake City to reaffirm my suspicions.
What level of power do you mean? International?Changleen said:
Now this is scary...I actually agree with you on something!Changleen said:Oh Please. God does not exist. The Bible, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and every other religion are simply tools to control the herds of those people who are too stupid to see them for the obvious lies and tools of power and control that they are. Ever noticed how all religious leaders just happen to be rich and powerful? Ever notice how that from all the religions in the world, none of them have anything close to hint of proof of their thesis? Ever notice how people find comfort in having decisions made for them?
On a seperate issue, ever notice how US Politics is tending towards Religion - requiring you to put your 'faith' in your candidate and his actions? 'Things are going well in Iraq'. How many times have we heard that? If you say it enough times people start to believe you. Fair and Balanced, innit?
Keep it real bro!
this is an old thread (prompted by reading toshi's sticky in the NE forum!), and i just had to laugh at this one.Silver said: