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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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  #37  
Old May 17th, 2018, 05:52 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

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Originally Posted by ollie View Post
Imagine two universes, identical except that in one somehow time got paused for an hour so that we could play a game of Heroscape. This game has no effect on how we act or feel after the hour is up. Which universe is better? (I now realise that this is actually a trickier choice than I intended because, obviously, I will crush you in the game. )

If you do think that one is better than the other, then whatever you leant on to make the call also gives you your foundation for mattering.
Okay, okay, you've convinced me.

That said, if memory serves me correctly, the last time we played a game of Scape was some 10 years ago, in which, admittedly, I was trounced. Of course, I am dying for a rematch, and if you'd stop avoiding the tournaments I go to (), maybe we could put your claim to the test.

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Originally Posted by Tornado View Post
I suppose 'meaning' is much like beauty and lies in the eye of the beholder.

A painting can be an incredible work of art to one and pointless paint blobs to another.

Each person must find their own path to a meaningful existence.
I think setting the bar at having to make an impact that resonates throughout eternity may be a little high to achieve. I believe you could do it, JS. You just have to believe in yourself.


and ollie

now if we could just get DS in the mix, we may have the best thread ever.
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@Dr.Goomonkey

Quote:
...and also I can logically back up that there must be something that happens with our consciousnesses because if matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed, why would consciousness be able to pop into existence and then poof out of existence.
I won't claim to have an answer to this, as you've pointed out, no one knows why consciousness just fades. But I don't think that to jump straight to god (capital or lower case G) right away is a reasonable course of action.

If consciousness were demonstrated to be immaterial in nature (and keep in mind, we aren't sure it is yet), I don't see how a god existing naturally follows. Dr. Eric Dietrich, a professor of philosophy, has written a book entitled Excellent Beauty, and while I find myself in disagreement with many claims in the book, Dr Dietrich, a professed atheist, believes immaterial consciousness to exist and to do so without a god. So it's an iffy topic.

That said, watch as I bring a fist into existence by configuring my fingers and palm in a certain fashion, and then immediately remove it from existence by disassembling them . The matter is still there, but where did the fist go? Why can't consciousness possibly work like this? Without the need for a god?

I admit, the existence of a god seems much more enticing should consciousness prove to be immaterial, but I just don't think we're able to know that just yet. And until we are, I think it is premature to use that as evidence for a deity. It would be akin to saying that, because primitive man did not know how disease could come and go, that it accurately demonstrates the existence of witches.

On another note, I don't think you and I have ever had an exchange of ideas! So look at us go!

~JS, counsciously

Last edited by Joseph Sweeney; May 17th, 2018 at 06:05 PM. Reason: Very much Ninja'd by ollie
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  #38  
Old May 17th, 2018, 07:23 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

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Originally Posted by Joseph Sweeney View Post
That said, if memory serves me correctly, the last time we played a game of Scape was some 10 years ago, in which, admittedly, I was trounced. Of course, I am dying for a rematch, and if you'd stop avoiding the tournaments I go to (), maybe we could put your claim to the test.
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  #39  
Old May 17th, 2018, 08:01 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

I can't stop time for an hour, but I can stop space for a mile.

Interesting topic drift here.

The nature of human consciousness is a shaky foundation for any argument (either for or against whatever religious/metaphysical concept you care to name), because there's still a lot we don't quite have figured out about human consciousness.
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  #40  
Old May 17th, 2018, 08:52 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

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  #41  
Old May 17th, 2018, 09:12 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

This is one heck if a thread.

I think I’ll just give this thought and continue reading:
I’ve no desire to live forever, be it in heaven, hell, or purgatory (and whatever else). As humans, we have to live by the divine rules regardless of who set them. One can accept/reject/whatever Deity XYZ, but you are still a powerless puppet should Deity XYZ exist in any sense.

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  #42  
Old May 18th, 2018, 12:48 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

Here's a link to the post Aldin made about free will and determinism coexisting in a sort of book.

Also, to clarify, my free will argument there is just arguing for there being something more to life (and death) than mindless atoms and consciousness that goes poof when we die. It in no way is defending the idea of a deity. And the idea that consciousness could be an emergent property of atoms is one that kinda pokes a whole in that argument, but is also an idea that I suspect is true (when I start talking this deep of philosophy I realize how contradictory my views seem, but then retroactively patch them together). This does not, in my mind, answer the deeper question of where that consciousness really started, or why it's real consciousness and not just what appears to be consciousness. What is that part of my being that can recognize when I recognize that I'm having a thought or a feeling? Even if our individual consciousnesses to "pop into existence" when our brains put atoms in the right order to do so, that only goes to support (for me) the idea of some universal (multiversal) pool of consciousness that we draw from (or are always inside).

Also, yes @ollie , I do believe humans experience different levels of consciousness throughout our lives (with or without the use of these "interesting drugs" you mentioned). The hypnagogic and hypnopompic phases as we fall asleep and wake up, the different phases within sleep, the unique state when we realize we are sleeping while sleeping (lucid dreaming), the different states meditation can put us in, the super deep meditative state sensory deprivation chambers can let us achieve, the fugue-like state people report going into when driving home, the state of playing HeroScape (arguably the best one), and countless more (I think I covered the main ones, though). Most of these are measurably different states, or "levels of consciousness," that for me have not led me to (or away) from a deity, more to a Douglas Adams style interconnectedness of all things (admittedly, I'm not super devoted to any of these mindfulness practices, but I do stay aware pretty deep into the hypnagogic phase most nights).

If God is good, I'm pretty confident He would be okay with people not believing him. When Christian friends of mine admit that they think the Dalai Lama is going to burn in hell for all of eternity it blows my mind (this also very seldom happens).

Another fun idea on consciousness/realities that I like to toy around with is the concept of everything being conscious, or even consciousness being one of the most fundamental building blocks of reality. HeroScape takes on a whole new perspective. Maybe, and hear me out now, maybe HeroScape is Valhalla! All the Norse warriors souls have been literally implemented into HeroScape figures so whenever you play you are rejuvenating them once again and letting them continue their endless battle. Or maybe our rolls determine what actually happens in another universe's Valhalla, which practically would be the same thing as the previous idea.

In all reality, though, I think that starfish story is a really good practical philosophy. And sure, if you boil down philosophy to an extent you can make the argument that we're all puppet boys, too small to make a difference, and it doesn't matter if you make a difference anyway, but I know for me my core can't accept that. You can make the argument that earth isn't significant because it's so small and the universe is so big and we only think life is neat because we are life so we're biased, but that just doesn't feel right.

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  #43  
Old May 18th, 2018, 03:22 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

Heh, thanks. I was thinking about it later and figured I had already commented on that thread and I did.
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  #44  
Old May 18th, 2018, 03:31 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

*sheesh*

You leave for a day and everyone starts getting in on the fun!

Awesome to see so much friendly discussion. Since very little of it is specifically addressed towards me, I think I'll stick mostly to responding to JS.

On the subject of "forced belief" I've got to think it is semantics tripping us up here. Either that, or our perspectives are simply so different that we literally mean different things even while saying the same things. So I think I will respond by way of making a statement, hoping that the statement expresses the response.

God exists and has provided sufficient evidence of His existence in order for anyone who chooses to do so to rationally to believe in His existence.

In support I offer the following two pieces of evidence. The genesis of the universe, and the genesis of life. The universe in its present form had a beginning and life in its present form also had a beginning. These things happened and are denied by few, if any, rational people.

We also do not have proven explanations for how either of those happened. And so each person chooses what to believe about how the current form of the universe came to be, chooses what to believe about how life in its present form came to be. The important thing here is that whatever is chosen here should be able to rationally account for the existence of the universe and the existence of life.

Frankly, the idea that these things were created by a being existing outside of them is more rational than any of the other ideas explaining them. And I know folks will quibble with this, but imagine seeing a Lego Death Star and having someone try to convince you that it wasn't intentionally created by an intelligence but that they had just thrown bricks in a mixer billions and billions of times until they just happened... that one time... to create a Death Star model. Maybe you'd believe it, but you'd have to at least wonder if someone you never observed creating it wasn't a lot more likely.

So I question what greater level of evidence you might demand for God to satisfy. It doesn't get a lot more in your face than "everything". Whether or not someone chooses to accept that evidence as evidence of God is their choice.

I think I'll leave it at there for now, since without getting this piece of the foundation settled there's no real additional value in addressing the other stuff.

~Aldin, pretty sure that infinite monkeys with infinite keyboards will never create the works of Shakespeare

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  #45  
Old May 18th, 2018, 03:43 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

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now if we could just get @Dad_Scaper in the mix, we may have the best thread ever.
Paraphrasing Dad_Scaper's grandmother, "Religion is great if it's making you a better person."

I don't care how many angels your personal faith dictates can dance on the head of a pin. Be nice to the people around you, and by "nice" I mean (among other things) honor their own freedom to believe or not to believe. Do not bully them with your faith, or with your absence of faith.

The presence or absence of a deity makes no difference to whether it's acceptable to behave like a d***. That's my attitude about your religion, or lack thereof, collectively.

My thoughts on these matters don't have much to do with the presence or absence of a deity. I do not believe that one can be proven to exist, nor do I believe that one can be proven not to exist.

As for my own feelings on a divine reality, I am content to note that Mayim Bialik does an excellent job providing a scientist's explanation of her own religious orthodoxy, and here you can read about it (and watch a video) in an article written by a Catholic, who says that it works for her, too.

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  #46  
Old May 18th, 2018, 03:46 PM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

Thanks for chiming in.
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  #47  
Old May 20th, 2018, 11:27 AM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

@Aldin

Semantics seems to be hiccup for us way too often. Just once, I wish we would be on the same page.

So I think that depends how you define beginning; the universe as we know it in its present form began to exist, but that in no way implies that prior to the big bang, things did not exist. In fact, we don't quite know what exactly was going on prior to the Big Bang, and most are hesitant to classify it as the beginning of the all matter and energy.

Now, I am no physicist or cosmologist, but I believe my grasp on both to be comprehensive enough to tackle this specific issue, so allow me to try.

The issue with the Big Bang is that it was formulated using the Friedman Walker Robertson metric which is an application of the theory of General Relativity. Now, we know that General Relativity breaks down at quantum levels, and basically predicts a singularity according to the Borde-Vilken-Guth model, which says there must exist a point of infinite density in space and time.

Now that seems to imply a beginning of the universe, as Borde-Vilken-Gut model says that while we can have eternal, progressive inflation of the universe, inflation must begin in a singularity. But counter-intuitively it doesn't actually mean that there must be a beginning. Rather, it just means the usefulness of GR breaks down at this point because it doesn't deal with the very very small, and we need a new and improved theory, like quantum gravity.

Now, I won't go much further, but we don't actually know what goes on inside a singularity. But there are a number of theories out there that offer solutions that allow for an eternal universe with the use of a singularity, or even without. There is the Multiverse theory, the Carroll-Chen model, Aguirre and Gratton null boundary proposal (no singularity needed), and more.

These are all, as far as we can yet tell, feasible options, and none indicate a grand beginning to *everything.*

Now that we have gotten the initial business of beginning out of the way, let's discuss the proposition of chance, and God being the best and most rational option (granting for a moment that God is on par with the other theories).

I want to touch on a question you didn't bring up, just so we have a foundation. "Why is there something as opposed to nothing?" (an immaterial god could account for this*, but can a random universe do so?).

The issue with this questions is that it assumes nothingness is even a coherent concept, and as far as we can tell, it isn't. And it also assumes that nothingness is a more natural state of being than existence. We have no reason to assume nothingness is even a coherent concept, nor that if it were, it would be more natural than existence.

Of course, this all creates it's own unique problems for a God attempting to manufacture everything out of nothing, but lets pass that one by unless you would like me to touch on that.

Now, given the discussion of nothingness, it seems logical that existence is the natural state, as that is all we can observe and see no reason to reject that claim.

Why life?

I'd like the preface my discussion of the genesis of life with a quote from Carl Sagan, "Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

Well firstly, we know something had to exist. And there is no reason to assume that the configuration of our universe today is any less likely than any other configuration. So assume that our universe has the probability of existing of 0.00001%, the "other" universe has the same probability, as does the "next," and the "next" (assuming a different kind of universe is even possible, and assuming it is just as probable as our own universe).

So some universe had to exist no matter what, since existence appears to be the natural state of things, ours is just as likely as any other. And even if it weren't, there is no reason to assume other universes couldn't have been hospitable to life.

Now harkening back to the Carl Sagan quote -- we're in a small solar system, in a medium sized galaxy, among many different galaxies. There exist lots of galaxies, with exorbitant amount of stars, with many times that number of planets. And on one, infinitesimally small blue planet, in the galactic suburbs, it seems improbable that a group of insignificant life forms should arise?

And in addition, these life forms are riddle with innumerable errors, of which some are appendixes prone to rupturing, prostrate glands and urinary tracks that share the same plumbing, cells prone to mutation which cause cancer, and a number of other glaringly bad works of engineering that seem to imply a compilation of creatures derived purely by blind chance.

I would like to amend your analogy of the legos thrown into a mixer -- the existence of life on this tiny planet is like walking down a beach and seeing trillions of rocks. A handful of them are perfect for skipping, the rest are not, some close, some not even remotely resembling a skipping stone. I wouldn't assume a creator of those rocks.

~JS, who thinks an infinite amount of monkies eternally banging away at a keyboard will most certainly produce the works a Shakespeare (or any other author, and that is all that is needed)

*actually can't, and we can go into that if you like

Last edited by Joseph Sweeney; May 20th, 2018 at 07:47 PM.
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Old May 21st, 2018, 11:42 AM
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Re: Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

@joseph Sweeny

I'm... a lot confused by your response. Not the words, structure, and meaning so much as the question of how it is a response to what I said.

The universe in its present form had a beginning. Life in its present form had a beginning. Nothing you said challenges either of those assertions.

We don't know, empirically, how the universe in its present form came to exist. We don't know, empirically, how life in its present form came to exist. Nothing you said challenges either of these assertions.

Ergo, we must choose what we believe about those beginnings.

(side note - for some reason I've been using the word "ergo" a lot lately. Not sure why. I mean, it's a great word and all, but kinda weird in day-to-day conversation)

This is kinda where it seems your response kicks in, arguing as to why "God" is not a reasonable explanation. Well, kinda. You mostly seem to be arguing that there are competing reasonable explanations.

Your argument basically breaks down to, "yes, it is incredibly unlikely but it appears to have happened, therefore we are the super special snowflake of the/a universe." My argument basically breaks down to "look at all of these super complicated, interrelated and intricate structures of life and the universe - it would sure make a lot of sense if someone had designed all this stuff."

Whether or not you like my analogy (and I would argue that creating a lego death star from the correct number of pre-existing bricks and given a mixer to perform the randomization is many, many orders of magnitude less difficult and complex than to randomly create, say, a tree from star stuff), these are our positions stripped to the essentials.

And I say that is sufficient evidence for those who choose to believe in God to rationally do so. I don't need to prove it it the ONLY rational thing to do. You asked for God to provide evidence that He exists. I'm saying that it's right there and you are choosing to interpret it to mean something else.

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