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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

[Strongpoint]

Parts of the Bible read like God should be accused of war crimes.

Sending the angel of death against Egyptian children, for instance.

It is way funnier than that

1) God says "Hey Pharaoh, let Jews go or ELSE"
2) God mind-controls Pharaoh into not letting Jews go (BTW, hello, free will)
3) Just God starts severely punishing people for the actions of their mind-controlled ruler

Omnibelevolence at its finest

[Telgin]

I read once that that part of the Bible was altered to replace references to Ra or some other Egyptian god with the Hebrew God as a way of trying to emphasize he was the only god that existed, and that passage suffered a lot as a result.

I have no idea if it's true but I always found that passage troubling when I was a Christian.

And if that is true, it doesn't speak well for anyone who thinks the Bible is inerrant.

[Egan_BW]

Do you think you can make a metal spear if you were turned into a crow but maintained your same body?

I can't do that in my current body. But if I knew how, I could probably do it as a crow. Body plan might not be fully ideal for tool use, but it's very possible.

[Frumple]

I read once that that part of the Bible was altered to replace references to Ra or some other Egyptian god with the Hebrew God as a way of trying to emphasize he was the only god that existed, and that passage suffered a lot as a result.

I have no idea if it's true but I always found that passage troubling when I was a Christian.

And if that is true, it doesn't speak well for anyone who thinks the Bible is inerrant.

It's definitely a statement easy to find being made, and iirc there's a few other places in the bible that's supposed to have gotten the same or similar treatment (if I'm not misremembering there was something like a reference to Ba'al replaced with reference to demons or false gods or somethin' like that, in relation to a contest of magic or... something.* It's been a while since I cared enough to look at it, heh).

From what I recall the original passages referenced other gods but made sure to portray them as weaker ones, which still fits fine with major precepts of scripture but, obviously enough, doesn't exactly play well with the whole "monotheism" thing, heh.

*Which... might be thinking of 1 Kings 18, but I'unno. That passage is pretty fucked up for other reasons (extremely murderous religious violence, in which followers of YWHW murder several hundred rival priests after pulling off a party favor with "water" that caught fire when exposed to burnt offerings), but it looks like even the kjv retained reference to baal as a god/gods, just an absent one.

[Schmaven]

I thought monotheism reconciled the exiatence of other gods by claiming they are merely false gods - the deceptions of satan, and therefore, not actually gods at all.

[McTraveller]

Yes - other created supernatural beings, but not gods.

Satan (Lucifer) being an angel and all.

I still maintain that our system of mathematics is sufficient to describe all relevant phenomena - it is computationally complete (not the technical term, but close enough...) - that means it's provable to be able to describe anything describable*.  Just because you don't understand the qualia of existing as a 5-dimensional being, doesn't mean we can't describe it - and we can and do!  Turing completeness isn't based on observed physics! It's "pure" math.

If you say "oh but what if there is some new type of computation that we can't even experience, so can't understand it!" then I say, for all intents and purposes that it doesn't exist - because if it doesn't interact with our universe (including the space of concepts which exist purely as descriptions), then it effectively doesn't exist.  I mean we have predicate logic which is basically based on noncontradiction. We have fuzzy logic which is a non-discrete extension.  So basically I grant that maybe we can't describe truly** self-contradictory systems.

*Only thing mathematics can't do is prove if some things are true or false - go go Goedel! - which is kind of entertaining.

**We can describe and observe systems which appear to be inconsistent, but generally that's later proven to be due to an inadequate model. Even quantum mechanics examples - that isn't "it exists and doesn't exist at the same time" its "it exists and is in this state and this state at the same time" - there is no provision in QM for "doesn't exist".

[Criptfeind]

We are in the religion thread, I don't think something not existing should necessarily preclude us considering and even believing in it, no?

[Maximum Spin]

I still maintain that our system of mathematics is sufficient to describe all relevant phenomena - it is computationally complete (not the technical term, but close enough...) - that means it's provable to be able to describe anything describable*.  Just because you don't understand the qualia of existing as a 5-dimensional being, doesn't mean we can't describe it - and we can and do!  Turing completeness isn't based on observed physics! It's "pure" math.

Pure math is, indeed, based on observed physics. Pure math is a set of axioms chosen by humans (and the consequences of those axioms) based on human experience in a world where you can see one cow, and then another cow somewhere else, and herd them together to count two cows. In other words, there's nothing genuinely pure about it. There is absolutely no philosophical guarantee that math accurately represents the universe - only that it reflects human perception. If our perceptions are gravely skewed, then our axioms based on those perceptions are faulty, and math is wrong.

[McTraveller]

Math started out based on trying to describe what humans experience - but it outgrew that. There are math concepts that just follow from math, not observation.

People have literal religious experiences solving math problems because they transcend the physical.

What I mean by “pure” math is like: There is no physics “behind” counting - this gets back to labeling and pattern matching and pattern extension. Counting exists without physics. Sure we started by counting things, but then we had the miracle of realizing you could just count - there is something deeper that counting things.

This is not sleight-of word; Math has been called “the language of God” for good reason… it is eternal, it is not subjective, it exists the same way no matter what names you give the symbols…

Come join the religion of Math and you will know Truth and find Enlightenment!

 

[MaxTheFox]

Egan and lemon10 said what I wanted to say about crows. And McTraveller about math.

We are in the religion thread, I don't think something not existing should necessarily preclude us considering and even believing in it, no?

Yeah but my beliefs don't include "there's some odd kind of computation that is above TC" so I don't believe in it.

I still maintain that our system of mathematics is sufficient to describe all relevant phenomena - it is computationally complete (not the technical term, but close enough...) - that means it's provable to be able to describe anything describable*.  Just because you don't understand the qualia of existing as a 5-dimensional being, doesn't mean we can't describe it - and we can and do!  Turing completeness isn't based on observed physics! It's "pure" math.

Pure math is, indeed, based on observed physics. Pure math is a set of axioms chosen by humans (and the consequences of those axioms) based on human experience in a world where you can see one cow, and then another cow somewhere else, and herd them together to count two cows. In other words, there's nothing genuinely pure about it. There is absolutely no philosophical guarantee that math accurately represents the universe - only that it reflects human perception. If our perceptions are gravely skewed, then our axioms based on those perceptions are faulty, and math is wrong.

I'd consider this, if I saw any sort of evidence for such a kind of math.

[Frumple]

What I mean by “pure” math is like: There is no physics “behind” counting - this gets back to labeling and pattern matching and pattern extension. Counting exists without physics. Sure we started by counting things, but then we had the miracle of realizing you could just count - there is something deeper that counting things.

I mean, this isn't actually true; the "physics" behind counting is neurology, the functioning and structure of the human brain that's processing the concepts involved with counting (from the actual mechanical process to the aesthetic aspect in deciding it's worth doing) and (for it to be particularly relevant to anyone) communicating the process to others.

It's one of those side issues in regards to epistemology and mathematical theory in general, iirc, that largely inescapable doubt that the basic structure of our brains and how they function is somehow corrupting how we posit, interpret, and expand on mathematical axioms and what falls out from them.

... reasonable response to that is generally about what it is in regards to existentialism (i.e. shrug and find something better to do with your time than worry about it, work with the cards you're dealt, etc., etc.), but that doesn't make the problem go away, it just means you're ignoring it and hoping for the best :V

[MaxTheFox]

What I mean by “pure” math is like: There is no physics “behind” counting - this gets back to labeling and pattern matching and pattern extension. Counting exists without physics. Sure we started by counting things, but then we had the miracle of realizing you could just count - there is something deeper that counting things.

I mean, this isn't actually true; the "physics" behind counting is neurology, the functioning and structure of the human brain that's processing the concepts involved with counting (from the actual mechanical process to the aesthetic aspect in deciding it's worth doing) and (for it to be particularly relevant to anyone) communicating the process to others.

It's one of those side issues in regards to epistemology and mathematical theory in general, iirc, that largely inescapable doubt that the basic structure of our brains and how they function is somehow corrupting how we posit, interpret, and expand on mathematical axioms and what falls out from them.

... reasonable response to that is generally about what it is in regards to existentialism (i.e. shrug and find something better to do with your time than worry about it, work with the cards you're dealt, etc., etc.), but that doesn't make the problem go away, it just means you're ignoring it and hoping for the best :V

I think this kind of thing is a cop out. It's like in discussions about e.g future space travel, people bring up things like "what if we discover FTL" and so on. Generally such arguments should only be argued within physics and reality as we know it, otherwise it is playground logic where you can make up anything.

[Egan_BW]

You can't prove that you've found an underlying structure to truth which extends past the universe from inside the universe. You can be pretty sure that the systems of logic in your head (at your best, anyways. maybe with some help from a pencil and paper and some coffee) also work on silicon chips from observing that the output is as you expected, but ultimately that's still an observation filtered through a sometimes very delusional piece of warm meat stewed in drugs which is often just outright wrong for no particular reason.

[lemon10]

Do you think you can make a metal spear if you were turned into a crow but maintained your same body?

I can't do that in my current body. But if I knew how, I could probably do it as a crow. Body plan might not be fully ideal for tool use, but it's very possible.

Yes, if someone told you how to do it you could do it, but that isn't even problem solving, that's just remembering a set of instructions and doing what they say. A computer can do that.
---
And pretty much all big animals *are* capable of arbitrary problem solving. Not all to the same degree of course, but problem solving is not on-off switch.

Pretty much all the major abilities we have many other animals have as well if often quite weaker.
Language? Check. Maybe not verbal, but they communicate and teach each other new ways to do things.
Ability to share knowledge? Check. Even can do this. Crows share knowledge of people that are nice/mean to them for instance.
Ability to try solving problems in different ways? Check.
---
The big thing that separates us from the other highly intelligent animals is simply our civilizational knowledge, ability to communicate and bodies that made advanced tools possible. None of which seems like a reasonable way to define sapience.

[Egan_BW]

Might not truthfully take all that long for a different species to take our place after we're gone.