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[Vester]

foresight is an absolutely ridiculous idea and violates causality.

Actually, foresight is possible because of causality. We can 'predict' what will happen when we do something. For example, I have the foresight to know that throwing a glass will cause it to break, because of cause and effect.

However foresight becomes more and more difficult the further into the future you try to predict things, without even taking into consideration other variables.

Foresight is possible depending on the degree. 

[Cthulhu]

When you zoom in far enough, you realize that all subatomic particles look like middle fingers.  They're flipping the bird to you and everything you know about reality.

[Psyco Jelly]

When you zoom in far enough, you realize that all subatomic particles look like middle fingers.  They're flipping the bird to you and everything you know about reality.

Sigged.

[Jackrabbit]

I'm going to step on quite a few toes here.

I have a hard time accepting the christian ideas of god.

He's an invisible being that knows all and can do all. Because of his incredible perspective, he's going to always make the right choice, even if it doesn't seem like it to us (Book of Job, "God works in mysterious ways").

Despite that, he wants us to worship him (or believe, whatever the case may be). So much that he would condemn someone to an eternity of torture for not being able to pick up those subtle hints of his existence.


I'm sure most of the problems stem from people's interpretation of "God's will" and such, and not actually God itself. That said, people do very irrational and weird things for religion.

That said, the same goes for science. Scientists do all kind of weird things in the name of science.

Absolutely true. Christianity is strange, I should know.

What I believe, is that we've misinterpreted God (if in fact he exists). I think we've attributed so much to him, so much that, over the last couple billion years, has not happened. I don't think he either can or wants to do everything we want him to do.

That said, I wouldn't mind death being a sleep that passes instantly, before your next stage of life. The concept of sleeping forever scares, and I'll be blunt about this, the shit out of me. Even though I won't care if I'm dead, it still fills me fear. It's like whenever I consider infinity, I get vertigo.

I guess I'm just one of those sheeple who believes that we need to do good in the world, and gets scared at the concept of nothing, forever, after I die.

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

Same here. Maybe god stopped doing things, gave up and left after a certain point, but that asks the question of exactly when this would be.

[RAM]

If the gods abandoned us, can we still go to heaven?

What if you died with a chilly underdraft and had nightmares for the rest of eternity?

I find that being sick or injured provokes nightmares too...

I'm considering the belief in an afterlife to be an instinct instead of indoctrination, because it arose in so many isolated countries independently.

They make sense separately, but together they leave me stumped.

Parallel evolution is another plausible explanation. Lots of places don't have Bison, but large herbivores appear pretty much everywhere. You can get many different religions because religion is a great way for a society to get individuals willing to die for it, societies with religions can be more brutal and overwhelm societies that like to think once in a while. It is all about focusing power...

Spoiler: beware, waking the dead (click to show/hide)

I read through the first 8 pages, skipped to page 19, and read to here. But anyway, back on topic.

I'm a Christian, I believe in the whole heaven/hell thing.
Basically, I believe there has to be some kind of greater intelligence somewhere, because I don't think stuff just happens. The Big Bang Theory. Well, once, there was nothing. Except maybe a little tiny ball of condensed universe. Then it all exploded. Wa-la, we have a universe! I know that's exaggerating (not that much, though) but I just don't think that theory could be possible. Why, is the outstanding question, of course.

I am not sure there is a God, of course, no one can be. And if there was, I don't know if it would be the God in the Bible, or if it would be many gods, or anything. You could say that there is some race of aliens in a separate dimension or universe, and we are just their experiments. Or that there's a flying spaghetti monster floating around somewhere. Anyway I look at it, I just think that something made us for some reason.

The Earth is positioned so perfectly for life. I just think that everything would be really ironic if it was just a random occurrence.

Reply here.

foresight is an absolutely ridiculous idea and violates causality.

Actually, foresight is possible because of causality. We can 'predict' what will happen when we do something. For example, I have the foresight to know that throwing a glass will cause it to break, because of cause and effect.

However foresight becomes more and more difficult the further into the future you try to predict things, without even taking into consideration other variables.

Foresight is possible depending on the degree. 

Unless you accept pre-determination. Then a temporal object is static and we just perceive changes in state as we browse through its progress. Causality could be important to time as structure is to a three dimensional object, just because you are only interested in the top floor doesn't mean you can support it on a single stack of toothpicks 80 storeys tall...

[Jackrabbit]

I don't think God abandoned us, I just don't think he's able/willing to do things we expect him to do.

Like, we want him to make the world peaceful. He either can't or won't, and I think that expecting him to do so is folly. I think he'd rather we strive for it ourselves but either way it's pretty obvious he can't/won't do it himself.

[Killas[SiN]]

I don't think God abandoned us, I just don't think [God is] able/willing to do things we expect him to do.

If 'God' cannot do the things we expect him to do, then he is not omnipotent.
If he is not omnipotent, then he is not god.

Ah PWN J00 FALLACY iN YuR LoGiC

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

Not everyone believes in an omnipotent god.

[Jackrabbit]

I certainly don't.

JACKRABBIT BELIEVES IN A NON-OMNIPOTENT GOD, YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.

Better than Nicholas Cage's hair any day.

Edit: Okay, not totally true. In fact, totally untrue. I believe that God does not want to help, not that he can't. But wouldn't that make him Malevolent? We're still here, right? We've survived thus far without divine intervention. And if he does not want to help, then I believe in my heart that he has his reasons, especially considering he'd (being omnipotent) know if humanity was or was not going to destroy itself. The fact that people die each day, that atrocities are committed, these are bad things (really bad, in case that wasn't blindingly obvious) but I don't think we need divine intervention to stop them. I think we (and he knows this) can solve these problems ourselves. I hate the image of humanity only being able to survive because of being mollycoddled by a divine being.

[Armok]

foresight is an absolutely ridiculous idea and violates causality.

Actually, foresight is possible because of causality. We can 'predict' what will happen when we do something. For example, I have the foresight to know that throwing a glass will cause it to break, because of cause and effect.

However foresight becomes more and more difficult the further into the future you try to predict things, without even taking into consideration other variables.

Foresight is possible depending on the degree. 

I'm not a native English speaker, I thought "forsight" meant the crystalball or psionic kind, which dosn't exist, and that prediction had nothing to do with it. I'm probably marginally better at predicting stuff then the average person, but prediction is completely relevant to 4d visualization and such, it can be used to produce the dataset for it but that's a completely different part of the pipeline.

Unless you accept pre-determination. Then a temporal object is static and we just perceive changes in state as we browse through its progress. Causality could be important to time as structure is to a three dimensional object, just because you are only interested in the top floor doesn't mean you can support it on a single stack of toothpicks 80 storeys tall...

Well, time is really just another dimension, the thing that sets it apart from the others are the increase of entropy, caused by an extremely low entropy state at the big bang and then simply going towards it natural state as one looks further and further away from that. I also peroanly suport the multile worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and that it's temporaly symetric, meaning that not only does evry posible future exist, but ALSO every possible past that could have lead up to this exact present. Spatial dimentions work the same, and regions that from which the light has not yet had time to reach us also have all the posible states of them being equally applicable. Basically, the universe can be described as a giant n-dimensional raster, with n being the square all the variables of it's quantum state (which is many many times larger than the number of particles), and each point has a value that denotes the probability of each state leading to the other state. The actual universe itself would be the horrendously complex function that describes the n dimensional (possibly fractal) pattern the values follow. Stuff like time paradoxes and similar are simply given 0 probability, meaning that while there is nothing that absolutely prevents time travel, the invention of it is most likely the easiest probability bottleneck to prevent: it is more probable that timetravel is never invented despite being possible, than that it is invented but nobody ever in it's entire history try to use it to cause a paradox.
But this is just my version of the theory, which is unproven, I find it elegant but if science says otherwise I will abandon my pet.

[Jackrabbit]

foresight is an absolutely ridiculous idea and violates causality.

Actually, foresight is possible because of causality. We can 'predict' what will happen when we do something. For example, I have the foresight to know that throwing a glass will cause it to break, because of cause and effect.

However foresight becomes more and more difficult the further into the future you try to predict things, without even taking into consideration other variables.

Foresight is possible depending on the degree. 

I'm not a native English speaker, I thought "forsight" meant the crystalball or psionic kind, which dosn't exist, and that prediction had nothing to do with it. I'm probably marginally better at predicting stuff then the average person, but prediction is completely relevant to 4d visualization and such, it can be used to produce the dataset for it but that's a completely different part of the pipeline.

Armok, I really don't get that. What exactly makes you think that you're better at predicting things than the average person? What proof do you have to support that? I could say I'm marginally better at understanding God than the average person, but it wouldn't be true.

Edit: Just to be totally clear, this is not meant as an attack on you in any way.

[RAM]

If someone has a clear and comprehensive definition of god then they probably have a better understanding than me, if they haven't noticed that they lack such a definition then they probably have a worse understanding...

To extend that argument onto the appropriate topic, what is our definition of afterlife, would immortality qualify? What about a ghost that couldn't interact physically but had some ability to communicate, lets say via dreams and psychics(most of whom are probably con artists regardless of whether psychic abilities exist) and briefly visible manifestations...

[Armok]

Armok, I really don't get that. What exactly makes you think that you're better at predicting things than the average person? What proof do you have to support that? I could say I'm marginally better at understanding God than the average person, but it wouldn't be true.

Edit: Just to be totally clear, this is not meant as an attack on you in any way.

I said average person, not even average bay12er. Just as most bay12ers probably are better at predicting stuff than the average person, or the average person is better at predicting stuff than the average idiot, and the average idiot is better at predicting stuff than the average housefly, etc.
Predicting something is basically about taking your knowledge of science, your previous experience, and simple logic etc., and use it to extrapolate what is probable to happen next. I am good at logic and science, and how to apply it, and therefore my predictions are likely to be more acurate than somone who dosnt know all that.

[RAM]

If bay12ers are unusually good at predicting things, how do you explain Boatmurdered?