Religion

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Are You Religious?

Yes
24
29%
No
47
57%
No, but I'm spiritual
10
12%
Other (leave in comments, please)
2
2%
 
Total votes: 83

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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Religion

Post by Goodspeed »

A random event is by definition indescribable. You have the first state and the second, but nothing was added so when you go to describe the change you end up with a situation where both systems are exactly equal. I illustrated what that would look like earlier. A + 0 = B. You can describe what changed, but you can't describe the event that made the change.
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

I must add another (ignored) post!
Have no fear! As you gets older, none of the above will have any significance on your life.

Tell your parents not to worry too much.
[Sith] - Baphomet
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Religion

Post by Dolan »

@Goodspeed
It's not indescribable, it's unpredictable. It's describable using probabilistic math equations. But it has an uncertain outcome from the point of view of a previous frame of reference.

@Snuden
I disagree. It's similar to studying neuroscience to better understand how your mind works. The more insight you get into your own mental states the more you can change your own mental states. It's something unique about humans, that their minds can be both subject to physics and to one own's will.
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

I mean, I also smoked pot in my youth and looked for all kinds of irrelevant answers to things that nobody else seemed to care about. With the exception of those whom I got high with.

20 years later I couldn't care less, as I'm much smarter now.
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

Yea, I guess so. Just don't waste so much time on irrelevant things that you forget how to be happy and (in some cases) accept things as they are.

With all respect, I doubt anybody here is intelligent enough to fully understand whatever it is y'all is talking about.
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

@Dolan & @Goodspeed seems mighty interested in finding answers to things that cant be answered.
I hope that they at the same time try to focus on important things! Me? I will pour another rum n coke.
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No Flag deleted_user
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Re: Religion

Post by deleted_user »

<insert elicited reaction here>
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India rsy
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Re: Religion

Post by rsy »

Jack and sprite > any rum and coke
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No Flag zosgan
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Re: Religion

Post by zosgan »

لا
قحاب ويييييييييييييي نتوما قحاب فلبرلمان دلقحاب
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

deleted_user wrote:<insert elicited reaction here>

What? They didnt teach you that in college?

Demand a refund!
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

deleted_user wrote:<insert elicited reaction here>

Or at least tell them that a "good" college basically is designed to steal ts.money from ignorant parents.

(I lol)
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No Flag deleted_user
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Re: Religion

Post by deleted_user »

I don't know which is the bigger train wreck right now: your drunken comments or preseason football.
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

Let me check which "effect" I can file it under.
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Spain Snuden
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Re: Religion

Post by Snuden »

Btw... I am a satanist.
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Turkey HUMMAN
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Re: Religion

Post by HUMMAN »

@Goodspeed i am a determinist also, your opinion is not wrong but i want to show a different perspective. When islam was in golden age, translating greek, Latin etc. Discovering and contributing to science. Then a dude called Gazali came and created Theology. He was a genius and as far as i know his claim is still not falsable today. Lets say we burn the cotton with fire, Gazali questions if the reason of burning is fire or not; and gives another example. In a farm a man rides donkey after an hour another man rides a donkey; everyday for years. So is first donkey reason why second leave? Because there is no explaniton of reasoning, he claims only trurth can be god. Around that time nobody could give a proper answer. However the answer is rather simply: Reasoning is not truth but it is a hypothesis works! Our primitive instics seek for a truth but there is none. Also think a procaryotic cell incabaple of Reasoning. Possibly another living creature may have create a different system than reasoning, there is no way one can say no. So there may be different explanitons of universe we are uncabaple of just like primitive cells.
Image
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Netherland Antilles Laurence Drake
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Re: Religion

Post by Laurence Drake »

Snuden wrote:Yea, I guess so. Just don't waste so much time on irrelevant things that you forget how to be happy and (in some cases) accept things as they are.

With all respect, I doubt anybody here is intelligent enough to fully understand whatever it is y'all is talking about.

ironic post of the year
Top quality poster.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Religion

Post by Goodspeed »

Snuden wrote:I mean, I also smoked pot in my youth and looked for all kinds of irrelevant answers to things that nobody else seemed to care about. With the exception of those whom I got high with.

20 years later I couldn't care less, as I'm much smarter now.
It's a fun subject to discuss I find
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Religion

Post by Goodspeed »

Dolan wrote:@Goodspeed
It's not indescribable, it's unpredictable. It's describable using probabilistic math equations. But it has an uncertain outcome from the point of view of a previous frame of reference.
They're the same thing. If it's describable by math equations then it's not truly random, because if you can describe the event that means there was a reason it went the way it did. And that makes it not relevant to the discussion.
Netherlands blackwidow
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Re: Religion

Post by blackwidow »

https://youtu.be/P5ZOwNK6n9U?t=222 timestamped for an argument I liked.
No Flag lejend
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Re: Religion

Post by lejend »

gamevideo113 wrote:After reading what lejend wrote and quoted i feel like one of the most important questions that should be answered is whether "God" has consciousness and self-awareness or not.


Yes because if it were unconscious it wouldn't be able to cause itself to do something; it'd need to be acted upon by another force, which means it isn't the first cause at all.

I have never read theological essays or stuff like that, but i have read some phylosophical ones and the quote that lejend brought does have some traits in common with philosophy, despite mainly concerning God. God here is meant to be a metaphisical being if i am not mistakenly interpreting the quote, so another question that comes to my mind is, where does the line between metaphysical phylosophy and theology lie? The two disciplines seem to have a lot of things in common, but i don't know, maybe i'm just confused.


I think these terms have different definitions depending on who you ask.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy dealing with general understanding of reality. Everyone has a metaphysics. Someone who denies metaphysics, is just someone with bad metaphysics.

Goodspeed wrote:As a determinist I believe the start of our universe was caused by something. It's as simple as that. I don't think that means I believe in god.

No I don't believe the event that started our universe is immaterial. How can something immaterial cause a material event? I don't believe it's uncreated. It, too, was caused by something. And no, I don't think it's supernatural. In fact, earlier I said I believed the supernatural doesn't exist by definition (if it exists, it must be natural). I believe that the start of our universe was a natural and deterministic event, and whatever caused it is equally natural and deterministic. I know I run into an issue when it comes to origins of existence, but I don't think that's relevant here. Every conceivable hypothesis runs into an issue at origins.


Well yes, you do run into an issue with that reasoning. If you believe only material things exist, and all material things have an external cause, you run into the problem of an infinite regress, which is logically incoherent. As you said earlier, there has to be an end to the causal chain. There has to be an uncaused First Cause.

Image

This "being", is what's called God. Irreligious philosophers can logically deduce the existence of this being, but religions, Christianity especially, have a more fleshed-out theology and beliefs regarding its nature and interactions with its creation.

And indeed I don't think this force interacts with our universe. Perhaps it does, but it seems unlikely. This is unlike every religion which places a lot of importance on god's interaction with us. Not even our universe, which almost certainly contains much more intelligent life, but us specifically. They think we can even communicate with him, are judged by him. The fact that god is even referred to as a "him" shows how very different the common definition of "god" is to my hypothesis.
If you want to think I believe in god, be my guest, but I don't think this quite fits the definition.


That's a whole nother topic. Maybe we can discuss that later.

Whether you believe God's ever interacted with the world or not, I think the reasonable thing is to at least recognize that he exists. Atheism just seems incoherent to me. The philosophical conflict is between religion and deists. Even Enlightenment thinkers understood this. It's why John Locke, for instance, who advocated religious tolerance, specifically excluded atheism. It's considered an irrational and dangerous belief since it rejects the bases of logic, morality, and truth.

"Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the Church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated." -A Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689


But as I said, there are not a lot of atheists. They believe in God and divinity. They just don't do so consciously.

Dolan wrote:It's incredible the lengths you are going to ignore that there actually is a physical theory on the beginnings of this universe. It was made originally by Edward Tryon, an USA physicist, and further developed by other physicists after him.

The popularised form we see today on youtube is the one by Lawrence Krauss, but bear in mind it's "popularised" physics, like Feynman or Hawking.

Here's an article which goes into more detail about this idea that the beginning of our universe was caused by quantum fluctuations in a vacuum.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-rey ... 71504.html

Remember that the universe's total energy is 0, so stop thinking in terms of "something being caused by something" because our brains can't process the idea of negative energy. We can only infer its effects from the small % of matter we have in the universe.


Energy in a quantum vacuum isn't nothingness though.

phpBB [video]


blackwidow wrote:https://youtu.be/P5ZOwNK6n9U?t=222 timestamped for an argument I liked.


It's a poor argument, to be honest. It is really based on a misunderstanding of what science is. These "I fucking love science!" people tend to be the least scientific people.

Science is just a method of epistemology that makes predictive models for the natural world, using empiricism. It's certainly not fool-proof. These models, or theories, are constantly changed and contradicted, since scientists are fallible; they can conduct studies incorrectly, often intentionally, or just lack information. Science is also fundamentally based on the human senses, which are ironically considered unreliable in the atheist worldview.

Science also only deals with the question of what is, not what should be. It is completely useless at answering arguably the most important questions: What is the meaning of life? Why do we exist? How should we behave?

Science should be thought of as simply one weapon in your arsenal. You would be unwise to use it on the wrong target.

What is a man?
I asked the rabbi
“The image of the living God”

What is a man?
I asked the scientist
“Brother to the worm in the sod.”
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Religion

Post by Goodspeed »

lejend wrote:Well yes, you do run into an issue with that reasoning. If you believe only material things exist, and all material things have an external cause, you run into the problem of an infinite regress, which is logically incoherent. As you said earlier, there has to be an end to the causal chain. There has to be an uncaused First Cause.
You run into that problem either way. That's why I said I don't think it's relevant. Every conceivable theory runs into this issue, except (as far as I can see) the "existence is timeless and infinite" one which for the sake of argument I will adopt for now.

[image]
Well that was an interesting ELI5 way of arguing everything needs a cause. Obviously I agree with all but the last couple of slides. There I disagree on a number of things though. The tendency to humanize this "being" is apparent. Existence isn't conscious, although there is that nice little quote "consciousness is the universe becoming aware of itself". Existence doesn't "do" anything. It doesn't "know" anything. It just is. I would prefer to look at it as pure information. Infinite information that would, if you would put it into words, describe every possible way reality could be. Interestingly one could say that because it is infinite, it is at the same time nothing. This because in order to describe every possible state of reality you wouldn't actually need any information at all.

Anyway, you run into the same issue as every other theory that tries to explain origins and it's funny because it's spelled out so plainly there.
A non-physical being wouldn't be able to create anything physical let alone interact with it. If it can, then at least part of it is physical. And if part of it is physical, it wouldn't be purely "actual". So there we go again with infinite regress. The existence of a non-physical being doesn't explain physical existence. This invalidates the whole thing, because all it does is add a layer and bring up more questions.
On top of that I would argue that nothing non-physical can possibly exist. I would say existence is by definition physical.

This "being", is what's called God. Irreligious philosophers can logically deduce the existence of this being, but religions, Christianity especially, have a more fleshed-out theology and beliefs regarding its nature and interactions with its creation.
You mean interactions with itself? And why does it act this way and not another? Could it be... realizing potential?

Whether you believe God's ever interacted with the world or not, I think the reasonable thing is to at least recognize that he exists. Atheism just seems incoherent to me. The philosophical conflict is between religion and deists. Even Enlightenment thinkers understood this. It's why John Locke, for instance, who advocated religious tolerance, specifically excluded atheism. It's considered an irrational and dangerous belief since it rejects the bases of logic, morality, and truth.
Well it depends on your definition of god. Atheism is literally the lack of theism, and most commonly used as a way to identify oneself as being an opponent of (organized) religion. I don't think it and deism are necessarily mutually exclusive. Anyway if you like to put labels on things go ahead. It doesn't matter, really.

But as I said, there are not a lot of atheists. They believe in God and divinity. They just don't do so consciously.
What do you base this on? This whole time we have both been assuming determinism, which is fair enough, but what about people who believe true randomness exists? They can believe whatever they want and when asked why they can say "things randomly ended up this way for no particular reason". You can't go around telling people what they believe. Only they know, and some don't mind or ignore logical incoherence.
No Flag Cyprus Viking
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Re: Religion

Post by Cyprus Viking »

Snuden wrote:Yea, I guess so. Just don't waste so much time on irrelevant things that you forget how to be happy and (in some cases) accept things as they are.

With all respect, I doubt anybody here is intelligent enough to fully understand whatever it is y'all is talking about.

Totally agree with my buddy Snuden.
Great Britain WickedCossack
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Re: Religion

Post by WickedCossack »

But as I said, there are not a lot of atheists. They believe in God and divinity.


What about the results of the poll?

We seem to have a larger number of people here who don't believe in god/spirituality than do.

What do you think are the reasons behind the poll results for this particular demographic? (Aoe3 ESOC forum members)
No Flag Cyprus Viking
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Re: Religion

Post by Cyprus Viking »

Heh... More than 20 people are religious, that's a disturbingly high % of total voters. It would be interesting to see a Geographical breakdown of those 21.
No Flag deleted_user
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Re: Religion

Post by deleted_user »

Cyprus Viking wrote:Heh... More than 20 people are religious, that's a disturbingly high % of total voters. It would be interesting to see a Geographical breakdown of those 21.

disturbingly high %%%%%%%%%%%% fuuuuuu :hehe: :uglylol:

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