God Idea

[bhodi]

by the way

DOc!!!! I am so sick of logging in so i can post!! ARGGGGHHH.

God must be testing me???

Why can't I just log in once and then post however long I want and then log out?

The way it is I wind up having to copy what i write and then repost it because it always tells me that i am not logged in and then I lose my post!!!!!

Please help. I must log in nine times each time I visit the site and want to post something.

[bhodi]

first post

Shaolin Ninja, Where did you get that first post from anyway???



So here is a little god argument from Borges:

Argumentum Ornithologicum

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second or perhaps less; I don't know how many birds I saw. Were they a definite or an indefinite number? This problem involves the question of the existence of God. If God exists the number is definite, because how many birds I saw is known to God. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because nobody was able to take count. In this case, I saw fewer than ten birds (let's say) and more than one; but I did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, but not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That number, as a whole number, is inconceivable; ergo, God exists.

[Lipster]

Jesse, I haven't forgotten, I'll get back to what you wrote soon. I'm a bit busy right now and I gotta be clear on it before I respond...

Peace

[Lipster]

No, but what I am saying, is that, given the complexity of life on this planet, and all the various and sundry and complicated interactions not only in the human body but in the world in general, my point is, the whole concept of one being thinking all of this stuff up, and making it work, is a little stretched.

But Doc, we're dealing with an infinite being here. The most mind boggling complexities are nothing to an infinite being.

It's easier to accept some sort of evolutionary process, for one simple reason: we have proof of it, just in our own lifetime.

Okay so now we come to evolution. To answer this I guess I'd have to disprove evolution in relation to this topic. If you're interested I could go into a whole long post about it but I won't until you say so since it would probably be looong. Meanwhile, just bear in mind that Darwin himself said that his theory is flawed.

But if you bothered to study the actual figures themselves I think you'd find that it would be easier to accept the other way round. The probabilities are just too astronomical.

Which is why your argument is basically flawed, and from a rhetorical standpoint, you should have never started it, because you have no way of winning it. Hey, it's not a reflection on your intelligence or anything; it's purely a reflection upon the stance that you took. (Don't choose an untenable position, unless you're doing it just for argument's sake).

Well I am just doing this for argument's sake, with the intention of learning some shit I didn't know before. But give me time...

Suffice it to say all this would be a hell of alot clearer if I was talking face to face.


Jess, heh good stuff. I'll respond to that soon, it'll take a wee bit of deliberation.

Peace

[pazman]

ha, i'm at work now so i have plenty of time to post messages!

okay, lipster, i can see where our two views could be resolved in the karma thread (well, sort of, in a weird way), but i really can't find any push behind your arguements on this one.

first, to start off with, the watch in the desert story.....yes, the watch has a creator, in a sense that it was "created" to get there. and yes, for the purpose of wandering around a desert and saying "hey, cool watch" then it would be safe to assume that the watch came from a watch factory at some point. but there's several misuses of this story to show that the universe was "created," especially by an "intelligent creator." you gave one of two options....that the watch was manufactured and then left in the desert...or, wind had miraculously blown things into the form of a watch. either way, there was a cause and effect to get this thing that at least looks like a watch on the ground. in essence, either way, it is "created." now, i know this isnt what you meant (or if it is, please tell me!). next, your talk on "knowing" something....a lot of people complain about the Cartesian standard in, what i think, very wrong ways. yes, ordinary, everday logic dictates that it is perfectly reasonable to say that watch actually came from somewhere other than the sand blowing around. it is a sort of faith based on experience....i've seen watches before, and none of those were made of wind-blown sand. perfectly safe in everyday life, and this is what you're doing. however, when dealing events outside our experience, we are talking about an objective perspective. modern science teaches us that a perfectly objective perspective is not attainable, at least now. and since it is within the realm of possibilities that indeed the watch is sand, we really cannot "know." in this aspect, we're not interested in the realm of possibilities, we're talking about models that attempt to explain to our feeble brains how the universe works. my arguement is simply that it is easier and more rational to explain the universe without a Creator God. also, if you wanted to take this story further, you can take the causes and actions in order to get the watch there all the way back to the "beginning" of the universe, in which case we'd be right back where we started in this arguement.

second.....intelligence.....complexity....anthropo morphic.....etc. yeah, these words are getting thrown around. my explanation back on the karma thread was indeed anthopocentric....it wasn't correct, but served the needs of arguement. now, i dare suggest that you yourself are being anthropocentric! teehee. and while i know you are trying not to be, your use of the term intelligence at least implies it a little. indeed, i'm curious to know your definition of intelligence. i think we can say something is intelligent because we are ourselves are intelligent (or at least we fool ourselves into thinking that, heh). so in a way we are saying something is intelligent because it is like us or appeals to our senses in some way. and because we're using ourselves as the meter-stick of intelligence, this concept is very anthropocentric. for example, language is something we judge by how we as humans use it....its something that really can't be separated from the human experience. not that that's bad, but it's still anthopocentric. so, in these sorts of discussions, i prefer to leave intelligence out and explain it in terms of complexity. we have so-called laws of physics that dictate the movement of particles. if we are trying to predict the movement of one particle, just by itself, very very easy. if undisturbed, it will mantain the same vector. now, throw in a few more particles and some sort of boundaries to bounce off....they'll collide with themselves and the boundaries. now you have to break out the calculator and some high school trig to predict what's gonna go on. now, there's the universe. tada! complexity! humans (or anything else that looks like it may have had an intelligent design) are not exceptions to the rule. they are not special, just extremely complex interactions. try to predict where a human will be tomarrow, the next day, the next year, you can't. now, there's things such as choice vs. determinism which are a whole mess to get into, things that are resolvable, in my mind, but we'll leave those for another time. but let's look at "simpler" complex system, like geology or weather prediction. weather could be predictable if 1) we were somehow magically able to model all the interactions of particles involved (requires objective perspective) and 2) a computer big enough to handle the modeling (don't hold your breath). granted, for our daily purposes, weather prediction is pretty darn good for tomorrow, this week, and maybe a little further than that, but the further away our prediction point is, the less reliable it is. that's what they call a chaotic system. of course, nobody ever applies the idea of intelligence to chaotic systems. they appear random and chaotic because we don't have the means to predict it, not because some very smart jerk god wants to confuse us. of course, humans have a sense of aethetics that they apply to nearly everything they perceive. if a cloud in the sky looks way too much like Aberham Lincoln, that's our aethetics, not the inherent quality of the cloud. that's not intelligence, no matter how intricate and beautiful this cloud was. just because something blows our mind doesn't in any way demand that something more intelligent than us had to conjure it up.

so, going back to "knowing" no, we can't know for sure, we are dealing with many alternatives. but its a black box function, we may not know what goes on inside, but we can experience the input and output of our lives. in addition to this, its hard to think of one possibility being greater than the other with regards to this topic. i'm simply saying that my explanation for this particular black box function has no place for a creator god for the sake of simplicity, because with your possibility, you have start coming up with all sorts of things like intelligence, being, creation, perfection, etc. etc. things that really require people to bend their minds around a lot of contradictory and unuseful concepts.

and that's the thing, there's many religions that demand a restricted viewpoint, whatever was chosen as the best possibility. but then there's buddhism, jainism, sankya-yoga, etc that demand no hard and fast viewpoint need be taken, only models to be studied. a model without a Creator God is just simpler, explains much of what we experience, and even opens up a greater amount of possibilities to be studied. i guess in western philosophy you'd call that Occam's Razor? God and gods can still exist, in all conceivable ways. thus we can talk about intelligence and purpose in ways that are indeed anthopomorphic but doesn't at all interfere with the basic model.

okay, i'm done for now, though i could go on. explain yourself some more lipster...why do you use the term intelligence in describing the absolute? is there a need? and....oh god....here's the can of worms...does intelligence imply purpose?

cheers

[doc]

Just thought of something.

What's going to happen when Lipster reaches god status? Only 150 more posts to go....

[dave]

didnt know that arhat thanks

dave

[arhat]

bed time...

...but before I go...whoever wrote this original piece never read the catholic catechism:

"God-religions offer no salvation without God. Thus a man might conceivably have climbed to the highest pinnacle of virtue, and he might have led a righteous way of life, and he might even have climbed to the highest level of holiness, yet he is to be condemned to eternal hell just because he did not believe in the existence of God. On the other hand, a man might have sinned deeply and yet, having made a late repentance, he can be forgiven and therefore 'saved'. From the Buddhist point of view, there is no justification in this kind of doctrine."

This is not true. Catholics (and I'd bet money most don't know this) believe in salvation primarily through charity- good works. Faith alone (in God or Jesus as Son of God) does not grant you salvation.

[doc]

Woah baby. What sort of logic is that? So just because the capabilities of this Supreme Being is way above anything you could ever comprehend, that means that there can't be one?

No, but what I am saying, is that, given the complexity of life on this planet, and all the various and sundry and complicated interactions not only in the human body but in the world in general, my point is, the whole concept of one being thinking all of this stuff up, and making it work, is a little stretched. It's easier to accept some sort of evolutionary process, for one simple reason: we have proof of it, just in our own lifetime. If you look back on human health for instance, life expectancies have increased, in fact, they've increased greatly over the past two hundred years. Resistance to various diseases has increased. Deaths from various diseases have decreased. We're not only getting stronger, but we're getting smarter (just look at our technological advances over the past one hundred years). Face it, we as a race are evolving. Granted, my honeys at church have a ways to go, but, overall, we are evolving in a positive fashion.

In my mind, this is at least, proof of some sort of evolution, however limited in nature it is. Do you have similar proof of a supreme being? I'd love to see it.

So, from a scientific standpoint, my argument has more strength than yours. Now, just for information's sake, I have not discounted the whole idea of a supreme being. But, I'm playing devil's advocate here. I'm playing with the only facts that we know. Which is why your argument is basically flawed, and from a rhetorical standpoint, you should have never started it, because you have no way of winning it. Hey, it's not a reflection on your intelligence or anything; it's purely a reflection upon the stance that you took. (Don't choose an untenable position, unless you're doing it just for argument's sake).

'Well, I'm not gonna act upon it since there are a number of other possibilities that could occur.' 2 + 2 = 4. This is what we assume. It's possible that there is a mathematical hypothesis that can disprove this

I have another way of looking at this. We can't disprove it, nor do we just "assume it", because we have defined it this way. It is what it is, because we made it that way. Unless, you're Bill Clinton. Then it is whatever you want it to be.

Now, every decision we practically make is done through high probability

I agree with this, but you have to understand, and you probably do, that there is a huge scale of what we call high probability. As I've said before, in some sciences, the level of "high probability" is close to, or is, exact (by definition of that individual science). In other areas, what we'd accept as "high probability" can be on the verge of hocus pocus hooey beliefs. There is a huge range of what we individually find acceptable; I don't think it is "either / or" as you seem to portray it.

Interesting discussion. I'm waiting to see how Pazman pounces on this (oh, Paz, I'll get to that email. Don't worry about your questions, no big deal)

doc

[doc]

but it helps them make descisions, they say that "God" helps them through the day, and wheather it may be God or not, It works for them, and I think that if it makes them happy and works for them, then they should stick to it.

But is that healthy?

Lipster, I'm not done with you, lol....

[ShaolinNinja]

Trust me your not the only one , I'm right their with ya.
There are alot of people that seem more than addicted to their religon, like for instince, their are these Christians I know(Not saying anything bad about Christianity) And their whole life revolves around their religon, but it helps them make descisions, they say that "God" helps them through the day, and wheather it may be God or not, It works for them, and I think that if it makes them happy and works for them, then they should stick to it.

[dave]

wow this is a good thread - real interesting posts! Walking with cavemen is a really amazing show, the book is cool too! They really put a lot of work in to it. The evolutionary thing and how old the planet is etc. is something very complicated when dealing with religion too... like Lipster said u gotta cut thru all the brainwashing and get to the source - which is something i am still trying to do

Lipster - great post!

dave

[Lipster]

I don't accept it; too many holes. Darwin himself admitted that it was flawed. Can't get worse then that if you ask me...

[ShaolinNinja]

Since this topic seems so interesting to people that can comprehend it, let me ask you another question.
Last night I saw a documentary on the discovery Channel, "Walking with Cave Men" It is about Darawins Theory and all the evolutionary Changes that finnaly came to us. How do you all feel about Darawin's Theory.

I would think it makes more sense, Darawins theory then we were created from Mud, or China's first religon,one man carved out the universe with a chizel and hammer

[Lipster]

Btw, the drilling you speak of [like in the Middle East] is simply brainwashing. Religion is simply a convenient [and popular] channel through which to brainwash and achieve the goals of those who instigate the corruption. If it wasn't through organized religion it would manifest itself through something else. It's not really relevant to genuine religious ideology.