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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 562542 times)

Rolepgeek

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4380 on: January 01, 2016, 04:39:49 pm »

I believe they meant fake jesus in the sense of 'false fulfilling of prophecies'.

Additionally, it's so old, and if you managed to convince people you were the Son of God (regardless of whether you yourself believed), and the human conscious mind essentially developed to rationalize events and justify itself to others, then you'd probably look at the old prophecies, find the parts you fit, say "look, see!", and for the parts you didn't fit, either discredit the author/find reasons why his stuff was actually heresy, or interpret it in more creative ways until you did fit, then have them revise the text to be more clear about what the prophecy was actually about.

This doesn't even look like scamming, from the inside. You don't realize you're doing it. You're obviously the Son of God, that guy just happened to wrong, might not have been his fault, he didn't realize it was actually the Devil deceiving him into believing that he'd been given a prophecy. You can't blame him for having been false. I mean, sure, you can't use his work since it's still heresy, but his predictions obviously didn't come to light when you were born...

For other authors, maybe they were just really unclear about what their prophecy meant,or were being metaphorical but it's not immediately obvious. I mean, if you look at it from the real perspective you should look at it from, then it makes sense and is both supported by the evidence that you fulfilled that interpretation, and supports the fact that you are the Son of God.

If I thought I was the Prophet come to Lead the People to the Promised Land? I would totally do that. It wouldn't be on purpose; to me, this would just be the self-evidently correct way.

Oracles, prophecies, and predictions are tricky things. There's a reason they tend to be as vague as possible; the people who don't like you/your method will just think you got lucky or that it happened for a different reason than you said it would (obviously invalidating/not providing any evidence for your ability to see the future/predict the market/speak with god) anyway, the people who support you will be disappointed if your wrong, you'll be disappointed if you're wrong, but if you can justify it to yourself that you sorta kinda predicted it if you look at this way, you won't feel as bad, your supporters won't feel betrayed, the opposition will just grumble about you being vague and this being kinda dumb, and so on.

The more vague the prediction, the more likely it is to be able to be interpreted as accurate. If it can be interpreted as accurate, it's more likely to survive the test of time. If someone makes a lot of vague predictions that are wrong on the surface but can be interpreted as correct, their legacy will live. If someone makes a lot of precise predictions that are right sometimes and wrong sometimes, they're obviously unreliable and the predictions they made are just noise, not signal. Even someone who's really good at prediction screws up sometimes, simply because humans are fallible, and don't always have all the information. But their opponents will leap on that every chance they get to tear them apart. If they're vague, instead, then while it doesn't give much useful information, it's much easier to justify after the fact, whatever happens.

Similarly, trying to act on precise prophecies and oracles screws up the whole process that predicts them. It either becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, or maybe it's in a field where making predictions actively reduces the predictability (markets is the example of this I read of), or it causes the prediction to be false where it would have been true if you'd never known. "You're about to walk off an invisible cliff." You stop walking. The prediction is now false, because it was expressed. Trying to say "I knew all along!" to avoid this carries it's own problems that should be immediately obvious.

The real tale of Oedipus is that using predictions to make decisions can have dire consequences if you don't take those decisions into account for the prediction. At least, in this context. Perhaps if it was interpreted differently, you could find something else that's true....
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origamiscienceguy

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4381 on: January 01, 2016, 04:49:41 pm »

I get the feeling were talking about completely different things.
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Orange Wizard

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4382 on: January 01, 2016, 04:58:13 pm »

The prophecies re: Jesus are numerous and quite specific. Whether or not things actually happened like that is another matter, but taking the account at face-value makes it seem reasonably clear-cut.

I think Rolep's point is that we can't know if (a) the prophecies were doctored at some point, and (b) if the accounts about Jesus were fabricated to match. Unless we're an antitheist because then they definitely were because religion is bad mmkay.
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Rolepgeek

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4383 on: January 01, 2016, 05:08:10 pm »

I'm not even saying they were fabricated purposefully; that was my whole point. This happens with science too, and it happens with other religions as far as I know, it's just that no one realizes they're doing it. That's the whole issue. You're not trying to be deceiving, you're trying to help clarify the matter for later generations. The mind is essentially a machine built to believe it's own lies so it can tell them better, based on what I know. You can come up with a justification for anything. That's part of the reason we like fiction and stories; art is the skill of manipulating these biases in a clever way so as to provoke the reactions you desire. It's just that when we know that's the point, and allow it (suspension of disbelief), we don't think of it as malicious, especially if the author told us so by putting it in the 'fiction' section, or having magic in it.

Ironically, of course, this whole spiel 'proves' the bit about the path to hell being paved with good intentions, if you look at it right.

Also that they're old enough that errors would sneak in, by this method added onto others, if nothing else; someone copies/says the wrong word because they were reminded of a discussion they had about theology/favorite verse/story/anything, and don't realize it, it happens to fit the passage in the view of the next person who doesn't realize that's not the original...and so on.
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MonkeyHead

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4384 on: January 01, 2016, 06:45:34 pm »

... also, do not ignore the fact that prophecies are made and known in advance. As such, it would be literally trivial to present ones self as if you were fulfilling them thanks to knowing what it is you need to fulfil. In the case of Jesus, a well read bronze age Rabbi (or several of them, perhaps) would have the knowledge needed to pull off the pretence of fulfilling them. If one did or not... well, that's not going to be the sort of thing anyone will ever unravel, thanks to the depths of time involved.

Oh, that and people tend to have a knack of making sure prophecies come true, acting in such a way to make sure they come to pass in a self fulfilling nature. *shrug*
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origamiscienceguy

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4385 on: January 01, 2016, 08:02:24 pm »

... also, do not ignore the fact that prophecies are made and known in advance. As such, it would be literally trivial to present ones self as if you were fulfilling them thanks to knowing what it is you need to fulfil. In the case of Jesus, a well read bronze age Rabbi (or several of them, perhaps) would have the knowledge needed to pull off the pretence of fulfilling them. If one did or not... well, that's not going to be the sort of thing anyone will ever unravel, thanks to the depths of time involved.

Oh, that and people tend to have a knack of making sure prophecies come true, acting in such a way to make sure they come to pass in a self fulfilling nature. *shrug*

Oh. You're just gonna have to hope that your parents are on good enough terms with King Herod to get him to slaughter an entire city's baby population.
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Graknorke

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4386 on: January 01, 2016, 08:10:05 pm »

Oh. You're just gonna have to hope that your parents are on good enough terms with King Herod to get him to slaughter an entire city's baby population.
Didn't happen m8. It was first recorded in the gospel and no other source mentions it alongside any of the other heinous shit he did. And killing a bunch of babies is usually a noteworthy event just saying.

But is saying that stuff didn't happen cheating in the religion thread? I mean up until now I've more-or-less had a policy of taking the truth of whatever's being discussed at face value and talking with that supposition.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2016, 08:14:28 pm by Graknorke »
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Rolepgeek

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4387 on: January 01, 2016, 08:22:20 pm »

When you start talking about evidence, it's fine to dispute it, I think.

It's when you're talking metaphysics that you usually want to argue from a position of weakness.
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Frumple

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4388 on: January 01, 2016, 08:29:37 pm »

One of these days I'm going to actually get off my hindquarters and look up whatever that early christian tradition was that held that most/all of biblical events happened in a different plane of existence. Credit where it's due, the proposition sidesteps a whole heap of problems regarding historicity, plausibility, effectiveness of prayer, and... well, quite a bit, really. Weirdly effective bit of metaphysical judo, honestly kinda' odd, thinking on it, you don't see that tack taken more often.
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Egan_BW

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4389 on: January 01, 2016, 08:36:11 pm »

Does that mean that christians are actually extradimensional aliens trying to convert earthlings to a faith that originates in bizarro-earth?
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Rolepgeek

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4390 on: January 01, 2016, 08:54:00 pm »

I thought it was cuz' it stops being relevant if it's on an entirely different plane of existence? Or at least even more implausible?
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Frumple

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4391 on: January 01, 2016, 09:03:30 pm »

Of course not? Great heaps of christian metaphysics happily wrap themselves up in mumbles about different planes of existence, with not the least hint of an effect on relevance or plausibility. The acts of Christ and all the mess that happened before happening in something like purgatory or heaven make them no less significant than if they occurred on earth, and are still just as valuable from a salvation/truth/etc. standpoint. Plus the stories being transmitted from something like heaven isn't exactly any less plausible than the texts being divinely inspired truth (however fuzzy it is on realism). It not being relevant because it happens on a different plane of existence is a usually rather non-christian viewpoint, heh, and plausibility never really comes through the door to begin with.

And nah, eg, just meant that all the fancy stuff happened edgewise to actual reality. If anything, it just further emphasizes the spiritual (in the sense of a soul and whatnot) aspect of the faith, which can be pretty substantial (or completely nonexistent) depending on how you interpret the text.
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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4392 on: January 01, 2016, 09:51:44 pm »

Does that mean that christians are actually extradimensional aliens trying to convert earthlings to a faith that originates in bizarro-earth?
Damn illegal aliens! They are stealing our souls!
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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4393 on: January 02, 2016, 12:24:11 pm »

Yea! They're stealing our women, and fornicating with them like devils!
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Orange Wizard

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Re: Religion and Spirituality Discussion: I am Enlightened by my Euphoria
« Reply #4394 on: January 02, 2016, 11:08:44 pm »

lazy bastards are stealing our jobs and leeching off welfare support
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