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What's your opinion on free will?

I am religious and believe in free will
- 70 (27.6%)
I am religious and do not believe in free will
- 10 (3.9%)
I am not religious and believe in free will
- 113 (44.5%)
I am not religious and do not believe in free will
- 61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249


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Author Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion  (Read 578215 times)

origamiscienceguy

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I have a question:

How many people here arguing for Christianity are believers, and how many are playing Devils advocate?
I am a believer.
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Dwarf4Explosives

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EDIT:
Here's something I just wrote for a Yahoo Answers question challenging people to disprove the Christian god.
There's nothing quite as boring as arguments for/against God's existence.
Especially ones that have been presented a million times before and rejected by a noticeable proportion of the vocal Christians in the thread.

Could someone please post a link to one of the counterarguments that have been presented? I've heard that argument brought up quite often, but I've not seen a reasonable counterargument yet.

Hoo boy D4E, you have just committed one of the biggest possible errors regarding thinking about infinity and probability. There's infinite real numbers between 1 and 10 but none of them are 11.
What? My logic was pretty much infinity * random small number = infinity, albeit a smaller one than the first one.
You're assuming there is a chance of it at all. For all you know it could be literally impossible. It could also be entirely inevitable. Depending on the types of universes that can exist (since we're already assuming there's every possible one, which might also not be a thing) and how you define 'god-like' (Since AFAIK there's no dictionary limit besides being worshipped).
Eh, I'd define it as simply a being of a power level of the kind associated with Greco-Roman type gods. Like being able to spontaneously generate lightning, having the ability to tell when people are talking about you, arbitrarily long lifespan and maybe nigh-invulnerability. Definitely possible, although not particularly likely to naturally occur.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2015, 03:49:56 pm by Dwarf4Explosives »
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And yet another bit of proof that RNG is toying with us. We do 1984, it does animal farm
...why do your hydras have two more heads than mine? 
Does that mean male hydras... oh god dammit.

TD1

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But why does that make them a God? Hook a human up to the right stuff and he could do all that, hypothetically. Why not simply call them another species? It's what Darwin would do if gods had walked among us. A demigod? Just a hybrid of two different species.

As far as I can see, the only thing that makes a god a god is their ability to make life, and their ability to supply an afterlife. Given enough time we could do that. We could make a sentient robot, for example, and when its component parts are falling apart upload them somewhere nice.

What is the line between divinity and humanity? Given enough time, humans could become the divine.
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Frumple

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I have a question:

How many people here arguing for Christianity are believers, and how many are playing Devils advocate?
Most of the people that've been arguing in its general favor have been... well, if not believers (We've got a catholic agnostic/atheist in here, iirc), then at least professed christians. Not been many devil's advocates, heh.
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sprinkled chariot

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Catholic agnostics/ atheists, excuse me, what?
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Sheb

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Catholic agnostics/ atheists, excuse me, what?

Hi!
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Rolepgeek

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You know what's a lot more difficult than 'hurrhurr Christians are dumb' or 'Some christians think this way, therefore all Christians are terrible people'?
Where did you get that from?

That Wolf for the first part. Second part just seemed to be kinda the general sentiment about religion by some of the people here.

Ah, and DwArfy1? I would posit that what separates divinity from humanity is humanity's inability to become divine.

Though I also really like the idea that a god is defined as something capable of existing in two places at the same time, which comes from a book series. If you try and dissect the words or whatever, then it becomes meaningless, but that's what happens when you try to pull language out of context and dissect it.

Also possibly existing on a different level of dimensions than we do, which is so far beyond the way our brains have been made to understand the world it is difficult to physically conceive of in a meaningful way.
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Graknorke

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That Wolf is bad at shitposting. Don't let it get to you.
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TD1

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You know what's a lot more difficult than 'hurrhurr Christians are dumb' or 'Some christians think this way, therefore all Christians are terrible people'?
Where did you get that from?

That Wolf for the first part. Second part just seemed to be kinda the general sentiment about religion by some of the people here.

Ah, and DwArfy1? I would posit that what separates divinity from humanity is humanity's inability to become divine.

Though I also really like the idea that a god is defined as something capable of existing in two places at the same time, which comes from a book series. If you try and dissect the words or whatever, then it becomes meaningless, but that's what happens when you try to pull language out of context and dissect it.

Also possibly existing on a different level of dimensions than we do, which is so far beyond the way our brains have been made to understand the world it is difficult to physically conceive of in a meaningful way.

So anything that makes a clone of itself or transcends into a different dimension you would call a god? What is there about being able to go somewhere others can't that makes you divine? My nephew can fit into smaller places than me, doesn't mean I worship him. Although I do give him offerings of Haribos now and then...hmmm...:P
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Adragis

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In the near future, there shall be a new communion: that of the fizzy cola bottle and the gummy bear.
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Rolepgeek

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No; duplication is not the same as a single object or being existing in two places simultaneously.

I can replicate, even duplicate, a chair, and have it be identical down to the atomic level, to the subatomic level. It is still two chairs, not a single chair.

Although if you want to talk about what makes you worthy of being worshipped, that's another matter, and a more utilitarian one; a supremely powerful being exists that rewards those who pay homage to it, and punishes those who do not. Which is the more logical of the two actions, speaking from a standpoint of self-interest?

Divinity just happens to mean that such a being rewards or punishes infinitely, and thus no suffering or reward that is physical can compare to or dissuade your action of paying homage to it.
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origamiscienceguy

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No; duplication is not the same as a single object or being existing in two places simultaneously.

I can replicate, even duplicate, a chair, and have it be identical down to the atomic level, to the subatomic level. It is still two chairs, not a single chair.

Although if you want to talk about what makes you worthy of being worshipped, that's another matter, and a more utilitarian one; a supremely powerful being exists that rewards those who pay homage to it, and punishes those who do not. Which is the more logical of the two actions, speaking from a standpoint of self-interest?

Divinity just happens to mean that such a being rewards or punishes infinitely, and thus no suffering or reward that is physical can compare to or dissuade your action of paying homage to it.
This sounds like the Banach-tarski paradox
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TD1

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For the duplication part, you're correct. But it's a thin line to walk.
Divinity just happens to mean that such a being rewards or punishes infinitely, and thus no suffering or reward that is physical can compare to or dissuade your action of paying homage to it.

As I said, humans could do this with robots. We could upload them to a program that infinitely punishes or rewards. Being a judge, being able to do powerful things or go strange and exciting places does not make you divine. It maybe makes you the highest step on the ladder, but that's not saying much. So was Julius Caesar, and various other emperors who made their subjects worship them.
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Dwarf4Explosives

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I've tried to understand the in two places at once argument, and I can come up with four interpretations of the phrase "in two places at once":
1: The kind caused naturally by quantum physics or general relativity.
2: Distributed consciousness a la ants nests.
3: Two brain-like systems running in parallel.
4: A single brain, but with multiple bodies.
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And yet another bit of proof that RNG is toying with us. We do 1984, it does animal farm
...why do your hydras have two more heads than mine? 
Does that mean male hydras... oh god dammit.

Rolan7

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You know what's a lot more difficult than 'hurrhurr Christians are dumb' or 'Some christians think this way, therefore all Christians are terrible people'?
Where did you get that from?

That Wolf for the first part. Second part just seemed to be kinda the general sentiment about religion by some of the people here.
Wow, no.  Nobody is saying that Christians are bad people.  We're criticizing ideas, which is utterly different.
If you have a problem with that "general sentiment", keep in mind that one of the underlying ideas in Christianity is that *all* people are terrible.  Most atheists disagree with that, claiming that humans are generally moral without requiring divine intervention.

Which means, *technically*, Christians are saying that we're terrible and we're saying that they aren't.  Which is a silly way of putting it, but technically true.

But seriously, I think you're mistaking arguments over beliefs for personal attacks.

Keep in mind that I don't understand what That Wolf is saying 90% of the time.  I think there's a language barrier?  He might be insulting people for all I know.


Ah, and DwArfy1? I would posit that what separates divinity from humanity is humanity's inability to become divine.

Though I also really like the idea that a god is defined as something capable of existing in two places at the same time, which comes from a book series. If you try and dissect the words or whatever, then it becomes meaningless, but that's what happens when you try to pull language out of context and dissect it.

Also possibly existing on a different level of dimensions than we do, which is so far beyond the way our brains have been made to understand the world it is difficult to physically conceive of in a meaningful way.
That would explain a lot.  I think we've had long arguments about what it means to really be "outside" the universe...  If something can reach into our observable universe, there's no reason to think we couldn't someday reach out.  Even if it's just communication.  And, like probing a black box, we could gain understanding of this outside entity by observing its interactions with us and our universe.

Only problem is, we can't observe those interactions because we don't have any solid data on them.  As if they don't exist, or are actively hiding from verification.  Otherwise we'd have a whole field of study for "Extradimensional Psychology".

I'm not mocking - I kinda believe in the latter.  That there are bizarre entities which avoid scientific scrutiny for mysterious reasons.  I call them "fairies" or "little people", though, not gods.

One difference is that gods, according to ancient people, appeared often and performed great miracles so that they *would* be seen and believed.  Including Jehovah.  Fairies have always been secretive, often even allergic to science.  Which is a convenient excuse for why we can't find them, but also consistent.  Modern religions claim that the gods gradually stopped performing miracles, and rarely explain why.

An exception might be Norse mythology.  I don't know much about modern day practice, but one could explain the silence of the gods by saying they were killed in Ragnarok.  Like fairies, consistent with the lore.
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