Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Siquo]

And if sentience involves having an ego, which is more than likely, your point is entirely moot, creaca, as anything we do or believe is to "assuage our egos". So no, having a Creator says nothing about the ego of man.

[Creaca]

I am always astounded by how poor some people's ability to use logic is.

Being Human and being Sentient is not the same thing.

This does not mean that a Human is not Sentient.

You can be Sentient but not Human.

Sentience and human are the same thing in the same way Egg Layer and Chicken are the same thing.

Something can be an egg layer and not be a chicken, but despite that fact, I don't see how you would fault someone for using the two as synonyms.

Also, I can't help but notice how you said 'You can be Sentient, but not human.' In the context of discussing sentient gods, it's very interesting you would word it that way.

And if sentience involves having an ego, which is more than likely, your point is entirely moot, creaca, as anything we do or believe is to "assuage our egos". So no, having a Creator says nothing about the ego of man.

You misunderstand me Siquo, I don't debate that we're not trying to reinforce our Ego with anything we do or believe. Rather that because of that fact, we are led to believe that some greater version of ourselves was our creator.

[Siquo]

I certainly don't believe that, but I do think that the personification, or anthropomorphism, of God(s) is a natural human trait. We also do it with animals and inanimate objects. Nothing ego-centric about it, it's just a lack of being able to empathise.

Oh, wait, that is exactly egocentrism. Well, you may be right after all

[Starver]

B: "It was created out of absolutely NOTHING", you do not believe in true science since laws of Conservation of Mass do not allow matter and energy to be created from nothing.

Picking and choosing where to appear in this conversation, because I know I'm going to the mass-ninjaed anyway (ten pages in, this isn't even going to be the current argument, any more), but...

What if the universe is a zero-sum construct?  Mass+Energy+Dark Mass+Dark Energy (if you believe in either/both the latter two) == 0, by all practical measurements.

Similar to how the (hypothetical) particle pairs can appear and disappear in the 'quantum foam', spontaneously, the universe could pop into existence in the 'Metaverse' foam, do its thing for umpteen billion years (by our measure... that is) and then dissipate/recollapse/annihilate with our anti-universe twin...  So many different ways of looking at it.  Loads of explanations.  One might say a pantheon of choices if one wanted to make such a metaphor.[1]

Personally I go for a different POV, though.  The Universe is a static bubble in a timeless meta-void, the flow of time being represented by the 'latitude' as you slice through the multi-dimensional bubble in various ways.  IOW: the universe just is, and time is an illusion, much the same as consciousness is.

Again, an answer without proof.  Unless we can make the same equivalent journey as a visitor from Flatland might to us.  And we know that Mr Albert Square or Miss Victoria Line are lacking in the wherewithal to make the journey outside of their own dimension without external help, and even once they are disassociated they can only partly appreciate the extra-dimensionality, so should we gain the ability to angle/translate our view beyond our own normal dimensions (and there are various reasons to assume we can not) it's still reasonable to assume that we could not definitively define the metaverse that we are then peeking into.

[1] Which one could stretch by saying that this would be something that we may never have the ability to experimentally check, so it remains inaccessibly high up the cosmic Mount Olympus and might as well be a group of gods and goddesses doing what they do, and having done what they have done, beyond the wit of mortal man...  And some people will believe in their own answer, while others may just tend towards one of the solutions, and others will get on with tilling the scientific fields (of which they do have direct experience, and can exert control over) of the plains below and Let Gods Be Gods and leave them largely unconsidered while trusting in their ploughs not to spontaneously turn into serpents because there's no reason to consider that they might.  But that's getting to be an increasingly complex analogy that probably satisfies no-one (including me).

[Grakelin]

Also, I can't help but notice how you said 'You can be Sentient, but not human.' In the context of discussing sentient gods, it's very interesting you would word it that way.

Keep trolling, it's a fun past time.

[Creaca]

Also, I can't help but notice how you said 'You can be Sentient, but not human.' In the context of discussing sentient gods, it's very interesting you would word it that way.

Keep trolling, it's a fun past time.

And thus the discussion devolves into throwing the word Troll around.

[Grakelin]

It's a step up from trying to twist the other individual's sentences because it could mean this.

[Starver]

That's more Lamarckian genetics, which has been disproven though, unless someone is going around killing people that get wisdom teeth and big pinkies.

OTOH, nothing is disadvantaging those 'unfortunates' who have smaller pinkies and no wisdom teeth.  Something which may have been an important choice in times past and thus encouraged the sustained possession of longer little toes and the appropriate dental layouts.

Lamarckism is more "stretch your neck, your child has a longer neck" than "have no overall disadvantage to having a longer neck, compared with its advantage, and your propensity to have a child (which will tend to have your longer neck) increases".  Similarly it's not a lack of use of a little toe for grasping that conveys itself, but the fact that your littler little toe doesn't disadvantage you (and may work better for you because of better walking stance, or a minute but factorable decrease in food needed to maintain the toe) and you thus get to have children you might not have had in more arboreal times.

It's called a "random walk" process.  It might easily have been a change in tibia:fibula length ratio or some such.  Maybe a change in skull shape[1].  Indeed, it's probably all of these, and more, but at a speed of change where any given generation of human is but a blink of an eye.

Some point at (say) look at photos of women from the first half of last century, where there's often something 'different' about their faces, but that could be make-up and fashions in hair style, and cultural representations.  Although if there's a consistent cultural bias towards bigger/smaller women with less/more pointier noses and wider/narrower eyes over enough generations, then that trait would engender itself into the population.  In the fast-paced world that we're in, of course, trends change (and even reverse) year-by-year, so that easily smears out any instantaneous tendencies.  Still, there'll be something (that we probably can't predict) that the ethnologists and historical anthropologists of years to come may be able to identify...  (e.g. the availability of IVF in rich cultures means certain traits towards impotence/infertility could become more widespread.)


[1] I wasn't going to go into detail, but the co-evolution of the flatter face and the more prominent maternal breast could be cited as an actual example.

As always, a citation from a work of science is preferable.

Just to acknowledged this, though in this reply I'm not giving a fact that needs citation. (Oops, maybe footnote [1] above does.  I'll check around for that, if it still looks like an issue when I've finally caught up to this post of mine.)

[RAM]

RAM, can we just all agree that there is a God that created the universe for a purpose, and get on with it?

Well of course we can, personally I love the idea of an all-powerful entity that will ensure justice for everyone. We just need a sensible reason that doesn't involve conscious ignorance.

However, accepting that existence 'just is' is backed up by what seems to me to be a sound reasoned argument, which I stated just the other page...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

at this point it seems like natural selection is becoming a designer all its own. The things attributed to it make it seem almost conscious. I thought, by definition, it was pure chance mixed with some advantaged weighing the dice, per se.

This is why evolution is such a threat to religion. Religion is supported, to a significant extent, buy unfounded proof. People would support religion by stating that the complexity of the world requires intelligence. Evolution does not oppose religion in any way, it doesn't have to, evolution threatens religion simply by proving that complex and well-adapted constructs can occur without an intelligent design to them.
 Evolution does not entirely require life, the same processes of irregular entities combined with refinement occur in inanimate objects. If you break a piece of rock from a wall, it will have sharp edges, yet all the stones in a stream will have rounded surfaces. This isn't a deity filing them down to a nice surface, it is just a simple process of stone structures deteriorating in irregular fashions and individual stones becoming similar due to being subject to the same forces. Life really isn't too great a leap, and once you have life, nothing else in our world is unexpected...

I think that all is this argument on the existence of God is a moot point.  If such a being, that is capable of creating matter in all it's infinite complexities and combinations, existed it would be beyond our capablities to even fathom.  The Christian God, and others that I know of(not all of them), are really just anthropomorphisms of nature.  Attributing and projecting our ideas about things unto them so that they can be understood(or rather understood to be understood, meaning simply believed to be) in human terms.  Something that conceived our entire reality, if it indeed it is an entity, is beyond it and therefore entirely alien and not conceptually available to our thoughts.  To see God or believe that you know it is a rationalization and, ultimately, self-deception.

I feel that there is a great deal of overlap between what can be a creator and what can be understood, of course, the ones that can be understood can also be disproven, so that point also is also moot.




The simple fact is that there is, by definition, a single all-encompassing scenario. If there is just the universe we see, than that is it. If there is a multiverse, than that is it. If there is a deity that has separated itself into different projects, than that is it. If there is a diversity of spaces with which we have contact, and others with no contact to our space, no influence at all, no way we could ever know anything about them, in short, places that do not exist from our perspective, but do exist from their own, then they are part of the same all-encompassing scenario. The simple fact is that there absolutely needs to be precisely one, there is no other possibility, and whatever it is it needs no other justification. Time is not a factor, being outside of time does not address anything. The origin of everything, including any gods, is self-evident.
 In short, everything 'just is', gods(or a lack there of) are completely irrelevant to creation.

Hmmm, maybe not justified quite enough, something about there having to be one, and nothing else being able to influence it. *sighs* It is still firmly in the ream of self-evident, I can try to tease it out a bit more but I would rather not bother unless someone can suggest that there might possibly be some sort of flaw in it.

How so? It would say a lot about ego of man if the universe's creation had to be the act of a human being, but a sentient being can equate to any number of things.

I wouldn't be particularly narcissistic if I believed a dog created the universe, for instance.

It's more narcissistic to believe that sentience and human are the same thing.

Ummmm, okay, first off, I didn't think anyone else mentioned narcissism, though I could be mistaken. Anyway, if you believe that you are sentient then it is indeed egotistical to believe that sentience is required for the universe to exist. Just as it is egotistical to believe that opposable thumbs are required to use tools or that your gender is necessary to appropriately prioritise. If you don't believe that you are sentient, then no, it wouldn't be egotistical, but there are a few different ways to think that you are sentient, and some of them are sneaky, so just thinking that you don't believe that you are sentient is not necessarily sufficient for the purpose...

[Creaca]

It's a step up from trying to twist the other individual's sentences because it could mean this.

I just thought the word choice was relevant enough to note. I wasn't trying to twist your sentence, just pointing out that there may have been subtext in it.

[Siquo]

To backup starver, our ancestors used to be able to make their own vitamin C, but we lost that ability because it was no longer necessary, as primates eat enough fruit to get it themselves. Useless abilities may just disappear by themselves over time, if they're no longer necessary for survival.

[Andir]

I've said it a few pages back, but believing in a god that created this universe for us is egotistical.

For all we know, this god could have created the universe in finite detail down to the atomic level to study the effects of a massive explosion in space... yet we pray to the same god to give us guidance and favor.  The ego here being that somehow we are the center of "God's attention" and this Earth was created as a home for our egotistical minds and that we are not a side effect of this experiment.

[Siquo]

Solved with omni:

How can you not be at the center of a limitless attention? Any point is the center in infinity. Thinking that you are more important (to God, or in general) than any other human, that's egotistical, and hardly limited to theists

[Andir]

Solved with omni:

How can you not be at the center of a limitless attention? Any point is the center in infinity. Thinking that you are more important (to God, or in general) than any other human, that's egotistical, and hardly limited to theists

But thinking you are more important than a rock is also as egotistical, if you want to be technical (re: omni.)

[Siquo]

Correct. Every particle and arrangement of particles is equally important.