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General Random thoughts and ideas. "General" does not mean random drivel, nonsense or inane silliness. |
View Poll Results: Why do you accept the proposition that a deity exists? | |||
I know God through reason, science, etc. | 3 | 7.89% | |
I accept God through belief or personal revelation | 11 | 28.95% | |
Other | 12 | 31.58% | |
I am an atheist but want to vote in this poll because polls are dope | 12 | 31.58% | |
Voters: 38. You may not vote on this poll |
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#73
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Infinities Break Reality
I have some fun thoughts about this rabbit hole and they're related to infinities. I'll make sure to chime in later.
~Dysole, with lots of speculation My Twitch Channel where I play Scape and other things My YouTube Channel where the games get uploaded later Dysole's Draft Rankings Map Thread (Not responsible for psychic damage) Customs Battle Reports This sentence is seven words long. This sentence is not seven words long. |
#74
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities
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Say God exists and they, while not all powerful or all knowing, will hear the prayers that you direct at them and might use that knowledge to influence your life in a positive manner. Even if not totally omniscient and omnipotent, God could still be very wise and very powerful. Would you pray to that God? Does the answer to that question change depending on whether or not you must also follow a religious doctrine, and how strict that doctrine is (for instance, is it a no strings attatched arrangement, or does God only help those who go to church every Sunday, ect.)? |
#75
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities
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It all depends on how you define prayer. Is prayer worship? Or merely communication between the divine and the mortals? If it is the latter, then yes, and I'd expect to help him/her as best I could in return. That said, if this god, who is not all powerful, nor all knowing, nor even all loving were to insist I do something immoral, then all bets are off. And make no mistake, I would not abide by doctrine unless he/she met all three of the aforementioned omnes. I would seek more of a friendship with this powerful being; not servitude. ~JS, who is liking the line of hypothetical questioning |
#76
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities
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For my part, I agree an equitable relationship makes more sense to me than some manner of servitute that seems to be connotated with worship. This, though, is highly dependent on an all-loving God, which in my mind fundamentally could not refuse to help someone for any reason if helping them would in some way serve to promote the happiness of all humanity. Naturally, I don’t believe that an all-loving God would make someone happy by hurting another. |
#77
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities
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I actually pretty much agree with nearly the entire write up of your post. Now I think the question is though, in regards to your last point, what if the only way to help someone was by hurting them? Suppose for instance that an all-loving, all-knowing god is the celestial mailman of what is good and bad. Suppose he knows which actions are good for humanity and which are not. And suppose still further that he knows that to achieve ultimate good, decrees such as stoning adulterers are necessary. Would you argue this is simply not the qualities of an all loving god? Or could an all loving god dish out some "tough love"? ~JS, turning tables |
#78
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities
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If you meant that their decree would lead to an ultimate good here on Earth, then the question becomes trickier. It’s hard (read: impossible) to argue with omniscience, but as someone who doesn’t believe in sacrificing the well-being of the few for the sake of the many it would dishearten me to discover that there is no possible alternative—after all, an omniscient all-loving God would have already considered it if it existed. I’m inclined to believe that good should never be brought on the backs of others’ suffering, even on such a scale as this, so if there was any doubt at all I would argue that this is evidence of a God that is not all-loving. This, of course, gets into measuring levels of happiness and weighing whose is more or less valuable (I know you just meant it as an example, but the history of punishing adultery by stoning as a historically sexist policy kind of gets at this). Even if there is somehow a “net gain” of happiness through the suffering of some, I would argue it is still worse than a world where a lower state of happiness is attained without that suffering. Last edited by All Your Pie; May 23rd, 2018 at 12:18 AM. Reason: Clarified wording. |
#79
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Infinite Plane
Interesting hypothetical. Is a fifth dimensional being omniscient in our four dimensional space? What about a sixth dimensional being? If spiders existed in a higher dimension, what would their interactions look like if they tried to eat sleeping humans? (SCP reference FYI)
We can't really visualize what another dimension of being would look like. You'd be talking something on a whole other level from trying to visualize what it would be like if we could see the entire spectrum of light (and that's still hard to visualize, literally). The concept of omniscience and omnipotence are derived from the Bible but they are not absolutes. We are told God is love in pretty unequivocable terms. We are not told God is knowledge or power. We are told God is so knowledgeable that the smartest human beings look like the dumbest people on the planet in comparison. We are told God is so powerful that the most power we can envision is like a puff of air in comparison. Now this may be somewhat metaphorical, but the basic ideas that we can definitively derive from the Christian understanding of God as observed in the Bible. God is very powerful. There are verses that imply omnipotence (with God all things are possible), but I would argue that even those verses imply some kind of limit (Is a square circle even possible? A pink scream? Is something that is linguistically nonsense part of "all possible things" or is it an expression?) God is very knowledgeable. There are verse that imply omniscience (God's understanding has no limit), and that verse I pulled directly from a Psalm which is poetry so I'm not so sure I'm inclined to believe that it's a strict "knows everything possible". I also think the omniscience could be related to my extradimensional being hypothetical above. God is love. That we are told pretty unequivocably. This is different from all loving. This is God is Love on a level that's probably better to think of like an FMA homunculus. You can't parse the two apart. God is literally what Love is; God loves in the way we breathe in that it's essentially just part of the package deal. Which actually makes some interesting arguments for omnipotence. If God is Love, it would be impossible for God to act in an unloving manner (we're also given an example of God being incapable of lying, but that's a tangential point) which would counter against omnipotence. (And I've also heard some argue that God deliberately limits Themselves and/or it is impossible for God to do something against Their nature). Now then, is it possible that omnipotence and omniscience are simply just knowledge and power without a bound that we can conceptualize? I see this as possible as well. Omnipresence is actually fairly easy to limit. Unless the place doesn't exist, you exist there so I'm going to leave that one and it's actually fairly easy to argue a being on a much higher dimension would be capable of being omnipresent in a lower dimension. Okay, so are you still following my rambling? We have yet to observe an infinity in real life (black holes are argued by some but even that's a hard sell). Because infinities BREAK real life. Just take the Hilbert Hotel. (Long story short. Infinite hotel with infinite rooms. All rooms are filled. Can make room for any number of guests including an infinite number) This doesn't work in the reality we understand. It only work in theoretical math which is how we can have more numbers between 1 and 2 than all the integers (and I will prove this if someone doubts this it true). Infinity breaks reality and I'm not sure an infinite being is even possible. So a limited God but still so immensely above and beyond us as to be alien in a way we could hardly conceive of exists. (for an interesting example, Moses asks to see God and God tells him he will see God's back, but the Hebrew phrase actually means essentially "where God just was" and that manages to do a number on Moses physically) We'll take that as an assumed thing. If such a God, on such a greater understanding of existence reaches into our world because They care about us in such a deep manner because they are literally love, I think that's a beautiful concept. We can certainly argue the efficiency of it and most arguments come back to free will. I think there's some argumentation here (and part of me thinks there's a decent chance portions of the Old Testament are people claiming God is behind them while do horrible things) and there is certainly some question as to whether or not perfectly safe robots who never harm each other is better than a world of people who can choose whether to love or not. We wouldn't really be able to see it on the same level. Is such a being worthy of worship? Well what does worship actually mean? As I understand it, it means you give your existence over to something so in some essence, everyone "worships" something be it sports, work, their family or friends, their deity, themselves, etc. Is something "worth" giving your existence over to? Is anything? I don't know. But worship is always a choice. You've determined this is the thing I devote myself to, whether consciously or subconsciously. Now of course, I don't want to argue something like "atheism is a religion", but more that we do choose to devote our lives to "something" (or die, which is arguably devoting your life to the cessation of existence) and in that sense we all choose something worthy of our worship. I think the story of God given in the Bible describes a being worthy of worship. I won't pretend to understand the particulars of what makes God "God", but that's because to me the Bible is primarily the story of God and humanity and less a textbook. Now I'm sure Aldin or someone else could actually argue for an infinite being Scripturally or what have you, but I don't think it's inherently wrong to argue that God need not be omniscient/omnipotent in the commonly thought of sense. We were really bad at predicting the Messiah. I wouldn't be surprised if our conceptions of God are all off as well. I'm sure there's more I could elaborate on from my already very rambly state. ~Dysole, who can really go down a rabbit trail when you let her My Twitch Channel where I play Scape and other things My YouTube Channel where the games get uploaded later Dysole's Draft Rankings Map Thread (Not responsible for psychic damage) Customs Battle Reports This sentence is seven words long. This sentence is not seven words long. |
#80
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Re: Infinite Plane
Multiple lengthy posts with lots of meaty stuff, so I'm going to pick out a tangential side-comment to disagree with.
The infinite in math is (arguably) weird but can be worked with in the same way as other abstract objects (numbers, circles,...). Do you think that numbers and circles break reality too, or is the infinite special in some way? [Vested interest declaration: I'm a mathematician.] |
#81
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Re: Infinite Plane
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It's a point worth noting as we drive past it in the thread, Ollie. Thank you for pointing it out. |
#82
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Sorta
A circle created in reality is still made up of finite atoms. A true circle doesn't really exist in reality but what we end up working with is basically close enough for our practical purposes. Infinity is at its core a concept of boundlessness. While we can still stratify infinities, they lack the tangibility of numbers or circles. I view that as more akin to imaginary numbers which have an insane number of engineering uses but I can't show you what 3i lightbulbs looks like. That's what I'm getting at with breaking reality; not really tangible in a meaningful way and attempts come across very nonsensical. My language could've been more precise but this isn't a dissertation. ~_^
~Dysole, with a math degree but not sure if that makes her a mathematician My Twitch Channel where I play Scape and other things My YouTube Channel where the games get uploaded later Dysole's Draft Rankings Map Thread (Not responsible for psychic damage) Customs Battle Reports This sentence is seven words long. This sentence is not seven words long. |
#83
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities
I don't buy that "tangibility" method of distinguishing between mathematical objects.
Just because imaginary numbers aren't a tool for counting lightbulbs doesn't make them less real (in the English sense) than regular numbers. Like you say, perfect circles can't exist, but you don't seem to think that they break reality. In the other direction, if infinite stuff is so inherently weird/unreal, how many counting numbers are there? I'd argue that their unboundedness is much more tangible/intuitive/real than the idea that there's a largest one. I can actually go either way on the "realness" of these things, depending on what we think that "realness" is. But I go the same way on all of them: numbers, circles, infinities, imaginary numbers, etc. are as real as each other. |
#84
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Comprehension of Ideas
We're probably disagreeing on how we define reality more than anything. There's plenty in reality that isn't exactly tangible. Even if we argue with my admittedly charged for effect word choice, the basic point I'm trying to make is that based on our understanding we can't have an infinite physical object and can only really talk about infinites in the language of sets and at this point we're arguing the semantics because I felt like being dramatic rather than hyper accurate. ~_^
As an aside, I'd also argue omniscience and omnipotence don't imply infinite knowledge or power since the set of "all things" or "all actions" should be finite. Anyways, I'll cop to inaccurate wording for dramatic effect. I felt my meaning was clear enough. ~Dysole, who does love talking about weird mathematical things My Twitch Channel where I play Scape and other things My YouTube Channel where the games get uploaded later Dysole's Draft Rankings Map Thread (Not responsible for psychic damage) Customs Battle Reports This sentence is seven words long. This sentence is not seven words long. |
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