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So yeah. I've just reached a whole new level of confusion, and need to let it out. Sorry for taking an intellectual dump here, but I have no other place where it's likely someone with a positive IQ will read it.
A small disclaimer: This is gonna be a long rant about philosophy, science, religion, and various other boring stuff. You have been warned. Proceed with caution.
I've stumpled upon this genius webcomic, and from there, found this video (part 2). It's about 90 minutes total, and you don't need to be a physics student to understand it, it's made for the average Joe. Nonetheless, it got me thinking. The following will make much more sense if you watch the movie, but feel free to not waste your time on it, it's your loss.
So it starts out with Cantor, a German mathematician who revolutionized set theory. Every physics/math student knows him. His continuum hypothesis later proved to be unprovable, being the first example of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
The implications of Gödel's theorem cannot be stressed enough. There's questions that cannot be answered. At least, in any given system of axioms. Any system that would be able to prove or disprove any assumption would be self-contradictory. (Famous example for such a question is Russell's paradox)
I'll let that settle for a second.
What impressed me the most was the second half of the second part of the movie. Gödel tried to "save" his idea of the human mind that he invented "intuition" as a means for the mind to exalt every logical system, thus making otherwise unprovable problems solvable.
So...
Is there a God?
I think we have established by now that this question cannot be objectively answered. In a way, there is a God, and there isn't. It basically boils down to whether you think of your "intuition" as God's gift or just a chemical/neurological property of brain evolution.
The sheer force of the paradox boggles the mind. It's awesome and frightening at the same time. I am sure what I have experienced during that movie would be described by a spiritual journey by most religious people. Gödel and Cantor used logic to disprove logic. The quantified the limits of mathematics itself, with mathematics. Much like Heisenberg did with his uncertainty principle, they disassembled their own field of science.
Another important aspect which I skipped was the part about Boltzmann. If I should name one person whose work describes my view on how the universe works, it's Boltzmann. The man that introduced randomness into physics. Modern physics would not have happened without him, period. Quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical physics, field theory, forget it, not gonna happen. Boltzmann's work implicates the lack of a superior power. In my eyes, Boltzmann disproved God more that Nietzsche, or anyone else. Of course, you can still wriggle your way out of it and claim that God created everything, set the rules, and let the program run for 15 billion years without caring about it, but hey, we already discussed that.
So why all this ranting, you might ask.
I don't really know. And that's the thing. I am desperately trying to find some orientation these days, and I don't know where to look. According to Boltzmann, everything's random. According to Gödel and Cantor, there is no absolute logic, no absolute truth if you want. Everything we view as "normal" is man-made, artificial.
I don't know what to do with my life, and it's slowly driving me mad. Everything I do, everything I think seems inherently faulty. Nothing makes sense. Nothing has purpose or value.
Wow, this ended up way more emo than I had planned, but well, doesn't matter. Because nothing matters. Bluh.
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Braavos36362 Posts
what made you quit TL and why did you come back?
not bashing just curious
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You and you.
j/k. Quit to focus on my studies, which are going awesome since I stopped watching OSL instead of attending lectures, came back out of boredom because my studies are going so well I am actually unchallenged. A vicious cycle, really.
edit: Also, and this is gonna sound ridiculous, but TL is one of the most diverse and mature communities on the net. No, I'm not looking at you, inc.
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I don't usually link to xkcd, but this is the first thing that came into my head:
Nothing matters, its true. But that's no reason not to enjoy yourself. Do anything, do nothing... Just do whatever makes you happy.
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On May 03 2009 06:43 seppolevne wrote:I don't usually link to xkcd, but this is the first thing that came into my head: Nothing matters, its true. But that's no reason not to enjoy yourself. Do anything, do nothing... Just do whatever makes you happy.
cut off your dick, and then try to tell me nothing matters
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Sup Mr I-am-never-online-in-Steam
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just enjoy your life. your overthinking it
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On May 03 2009 08:17 daz wrote: just enjoy your life. your overthinking it
I think the problem is rather that 99% of the people underthink it. And don't bother telling me underthink is not a word, because it totally should be.
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Trying to prove or disprove any kind of god (be it Christian or otherwise) on any kind of empirical grounds is futile. Whichever side you bat for, you're going to run into a whole mess of circular arguments that you can't escape out of.
And anyway...personally, I think that the core of the universe being understood only from a psychologistic view is scary. I would rather that we observe the universe through numbers and theories and whatnot, not that we apply them to it and hope that it works. That's why I really liked Frege and Russell's works...or at least what they tried to accomplish (as they failed in the end). Modern set theory is also, at its core, considered psychologistic...and that kind of makes the basis for modern logic and mathematics kind of shaky.
I don't know much about the implications it would have towards math or physics, but for philosophy (I'm studying philo at uni), it would kind of threaten the entire field of modern analytic philosophy, which is like 80% of the field as it is now. Nearly all of modern philosophy is qualified against modern logic, and older stuff gets dated and made irrelevant based on it as well. It works, but if it ultimately can't be shown to be a metaphysical truth or system or whatever, it can only be taken with a rather large grain of salt.
So...I am hoping that the neo-Fregeans of today make a breakthrough eventually.
EDIT To reply to your more personal questions...
You're not gonna get anywhere if you try to make sense of your existence from the perspective of all these theories and whatnot. You're going to lose sight of the "smaller" things relative to them. Live your life separately. No matter how hard you try, you can't apply any of this kind of thing to you going to work, meeting with friends, going to the grocery store, paying your rent, etc. They are separate matters.
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Maybe you're right. Maybe I am looking for a "grand unified truth" that just isn't there. Still, on some subjects I find it incredibly hard to come to a decision which I can be happy with. I'd go as far as calling it a disability to make a call and then live with the consequences.
Apart from that, I really like how philosophy intersects with science here. The methods are not that different either, from what I gather. I am a big fan of Russell as well, but I haven't really read that much about his work or that of the others.
What baffled me most about all this is how conservatively the scientific world reacted to the implications of Gödel's and Boltzmann's propositions. I was strongly reminded of how the church reacted towards Galilei, and I would never have thought that scientists could be so stubborn. Come to think of it, I think I remember hearing Einstein heavily opposed Quantum theory until his death. Oh well, nothing is black-and-white I guess.
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I think it is generally accepted that there is no conceivable way to *prove* the existence of a so called anthropomorphic being called "God," but as far as faith/belief system goes: Go with your intuition, and whatever you feel. If you stick with an existentialist view, then whatever makes you happy. If you feel compelled to find religion, or nirvana, or whatever you want, then do so. You shouldn't find too much trouble, except in a few situations, in terms of what you believe. Whatever you feel compelled to believe is what you should pursue. Life has no rules, as a general rule; it is just that some things will get you arrested .
What I'm suggesting is keep an open mind: What I mean I'll attempt to explain with a hypothetical situation: You are an atheist, and someone attempts to compel you to follow any given sect of Christianity. What I am saying not to do is: Blow him/her off, call them an idiot for wasting their life and just walk away. I'm suggesting you to listen (not necessarily the whole way, because sometimes it just isn't worth it) and maybe ask questions until you are satisfied with your knowledge (not experience) of what they are talking about.
Not only will this give you an open mind, it will give you a broader idea as to what you feel is the right thing to follow, and will probably give your life a greater sense of fulfillment, not "the right way."
Take this advice, or don't. tl;dr: Listen to what people have to say, and pick your own beliefs, and don't be ignorant to other people, to a point within reason.
EDIT: I kinda went all over the place here. Hopefully you can follow it.
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On May 03 2009 05:59 Cpt Obvious wrote:
So...
Is there a God?
I think we have established by now that this question cannot be objectively answered. In a way, there is a God, and there isn't. It basically boils down to whether you think of your "intuition" as God's gift or just a chemical/neurological property of brain evolution.
The sheer force of the paradox boggles the mind. It's awesome and frightening at the same time. I am sure what I have experienced during that movie would be described by a spiritual journey by most religious people. Gödel and Cantor used logic to disprove logic. The quantified the limits of mathematics itself, with mathematics. Much like Heisenberg did with his uncertainty principle, they disassembled their own field of science.
Another important aspect which I skipped was the part about Boltzmann. If I should name one person whose work describes my view on how the universe works, it's Boltzmann. The man that introduced randomness into physics. Modern physics would not have happened without him, period. Quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical physics, field theory, forget it, not gonna happen. Boltzmann's work implicates the lack of a superior power. In my eyes, Boltzmann disproved God more that Nietzsche, or anyone else. Of course, you can still wriggle your way out of it and claim that God created everything, set the rules, and let the program run for 15 billion years without caring about it, but hey, we already discussed that.
So why all this ranting, you might ask.
I don't really know. And that's the thing. I am desperately trying to find some orientation these days, and I don't know where to look. According to Boltzmann, everything's random. According to Gödel and Cantor, there is no absolute logic, no absolute truth if you want. Everything we view as "normal" is man-made, artificial.
I don't know what to do with my life, and it's slowly driving me mad. Everything I do, everything I think seems inherently faulty. Nothing makes sense. Nothing has purpose or value.
Wow, this ended up way more emo than I had planned, but well, doesn't matter. Because nothing matters. Bluh.
i have the same problem dunno what to do dont want to talk about it i cant fall asleep at night
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The reason what we do matters is simply because it impacts our progress as a species.
it is our goal to survive, and our hope to prosper.
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Very interesting stuff and a great challange to your mind. I can certainly see what your problems derive from and it really is something that the human mind is (up to this point at least) incapable of grasping. Personally I don't think this has anything to do with a god or anything of the sort, but more with the fundamental flaws in human thinking and how incomplete our understanding of our existence is. We are capable of some truly amazing feats of abstract thinking, but obviously there are limits. Inifinity, uncertainty and mathematical paradoxes are some of these concepts which are basically unfathomable to the human mind yet conceivable in their unsolved form.
I think the problem is rather mundane. A mechanical fallibility in our ability to comprehend existance and all the laws, logics and paradoxes that comes with it. A neurological impairity. Impurity if you will. Just think about some of the things these mathematicians and physicists claimed, that there are problems that are unsolvable and that you actually cannot know which problems are. Is it even possible for an entity that we can hypothesize about to solve these unsolvable problems and find structure where we believe to have proven that no structure is to be found?
It's a great topic of discussion, 5/5.
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life matters as much as you want it to
im way too tired to make a real post but you've got a nice ass
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On May 03 2009 09:31 Cpt Obvious wrote:I think the problem is rather that 99% of the people underthink it. And don't bother telling me underthink is not a word, because it totally should be. Exactly what I think too.
Alot of people just begin to think about these things(god/meaning of life etc) and then make their idea as fast as possible and are stuck in that way of thinking for the rest of their life. IMO, people should think about those things and create their own ideas all their life, but the problems we humans have is that we NEED an answer and unfortunately like you said: there is no clear answer to fundamental questions. So instead of constently re-think about it and change their minds, people in general just choose an already made answer (religions) for all those questions.
I mean, it's so much easier to have someone telling you what to think and what to do in every circumstances. "Does god really exists?" "What should I do if he do(not) exist?". You could wake up every morning for all your life asking yourself those questions, you would never have a clear answer. Or you could make your mind in 2-3 days and act accordingly for the rest of your life trying to hide away from different ideas so your beliefs are not challenged.
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I watched this documentary around half a year ago, and I liked it quite a bit actually, particularly fascinated about the part with Godel's theorem and Cantor's principles of infinity. I understand where you are coming from, but like Arhaic said proving and disproving God is quite impossible with our current empirical evidence. However I like the deep philosophical implications of the Uncertainty principle, Quantum Theory, and the incompleteness theorem. If the nature of this universe is chaotic in itself, as shown by the current physics theories, where did the order come from? Where did order arise from? The fine tuning principle is also a scary one, but I don't really take into the principle of multiple parallel universes. You cannot disprove or prove god simply by this, however things are certain such as the inherent order arising from pure chaos which is quite a startling thought, and the complexity of things that we can never understand and probably never will. I think Godel's incompleteness theorem is a fascinating idea that reminds us of the inherent loop of complexity within the system, things that we cannot solve. Unfortunately the problem of God is probably one of the problems that are unsolvable by science unless he reveals himself to us then it is proved, however it remains unprovable.
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On May 03 2009 05:59 Cpt Obvious wrote:So yeah. I've just reached a whole new level of confusion, and need to let it out. Sorry for taking an intellectual dump here, but I have no other place where it's likely someone with a positive IQ will read it. A small disclaimer: This is gonna be a long rant about philosophy, science, religion, and various other boring stuff. You have been warned. Proceed with caution. I've stumpled upon this genius webcomic, and from there, found this video ( part 2). It's about 90 minutes total, and you don't need to be a physics student to understand it, it's made for the average Joe. Nonetheless, it got me thinking. The following will make much more sense if you watch the movie, but feel free to not waste your time on it, it's your loss. So it starts out with Cantor, a German mathematician who revolutionized set theory. Every physics/math student knows him. His continuum hypothesis later proved to be unprovable, being the first example of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. The implications of Gödel's theorem cannot be stressed enough. There's questions that cannot be answered. At least, in any given system of axioms. Any system that would be able to prove or disprove any assumption would be self-contradictory. (Famous example for such a question is Russell's paradox) I'll let that settle for a second. What impressed me the most was the second half of the second part of the movie. Gödel tried to "save" his idea of the human mind that he invented "intuition" as a means for the mind to exalt every logical system, thus making otherwise unprovable problems solvable. So...Is there a God? I think we have established by now that this question cannot be objectively answered. In a way, there is a God, and there isn't. It basically boils down to whether you think of your "intuition" as God's gift or just a chemical/neurological property of brain evolution. The sheer force of the paradox boggles the mind. It's awesome and frightening at the same time. I am sure what I have experienced during that movie would be described by a spiritual journey by most religious people. Gödel and Cantor used logic to disprove logic. The quantified the limits of mathematics itself, with mathematics. Much like Heisenberg did with his uncertainty principle, they disassembled their own field of science. Another important aspect which I skipped was the part about Boltzmann. If I should name one person whose work describes my view on how the universe works, it's Boltzmann. The man that introduced randomness into physics. Modern physics would not have happened without him, period. Quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical physics, field theory, forget it, not gonna happen. Boltzmann's work implicates the lack of a superior power. In my eyes, Boltzmann disproved God more that Nietzsche, or anyone else. Of course, you can still wriggle your way out of it and claim that God created everything, set the rules, and let the program run for 15 billion years without caring about it, but hey, we already discussed that. So why all this ranting, you might ask. I don't really know. And that's the thing. I am desperately trying to find some orientation these days, and I don't know where to look. According to Boltzmann, everything's random. According to Gödel and Cantor, there is no absolute logic, no absolute truth if you want. Everything we view as "normal" is man-made, artificial. I don't know what to do with my life, and it's slowly driving me mad. Everything I do, everything I think seems inherently faulty. Nothing makes sense. Nothing has purpose or value. Wow, this ended up way more emo than I had planned, but well, doesn't matter. Because nothing matters. Bluh.
Didn't you quit because you owed some one from TL some money? >_>
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
interesting I randomly read this blog and found I was mentioned, neat.
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i had a similar discussion with my brother about 7 months ago, and my first answer was the gist of the conclusion we came too, it was of course accompanied by a few lines of reasoning, but ultimately it was something similar with a small part that i omitted. that part is basically that we are forced into a logical corner where we ,as insecure people, felt the need to rationalize our existence in the afore mentioned way and a few variants ( I.E god), as bleak as it sounds.
he believes in god, to an extent, and not the church per say, just a higher being, and that jesus christ sacrif..etc. any who, i confronted him once again, believing he is just copping out of rationally mulling existence over. the way i went about it was somewhat convoluted (details will be omitted ) in generally i goated him into it by stating something similar to what you ( cpt.obvious) but of course much more dramatic and with out the links and references, since it was a live discussion. he of course tried to console me and knowing that trying to convince me god existed would utterly fail, he tried by putting his mind to work searching out a common meaning to life.
he failed because he was thinking simply on a personal basis.
Initially as a child (8-12) i wanted to become a zoologist, mostly on the assumption that "animals" were the purest form of life in our world and i found that beautiful. that assumption was based on the premise that all animals act out of instinct. this is relevant because i applied this logic to humanity and tried then to rationalize the question through view.
an "animal's" goal in life is simple, survival.
can't our meaning for living be that simple, with the slight modifications that we strive to prosper, and our goal for survival is not limited only to ourselves?
of course i accept that we are limited beings and not all of us have the capacity to unravel these mysteries. I am willing to live my life out simply waiting for another Copernicus/Kepler/Newton/Einstein to reveal himself and shake the very foundations of our paradigm on the subject.
also I accept that death is the end for me as potential (nothing i was or did will then after have the possibility of becoming reality). i hope of course that my accomplishments and my thoughts live on after me through others, but that is only hope.
PS: for the record the reason i engaged my brother is that he is far more intelligent and educated than i am and i wanted him to give me an answer.
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Gratz on the engagement, but isn't that kind of illegal, even in Canada?
Anyway, thanks for the responses so far. I am very pleased that so many actually understood what I was trying to say, and, in my eyes, failed to make as clear as it could have been. Especially the guy telling me to have an open mind, I will do my best to do that.
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On May 03 2009 18:21 {88}iNcontroL wrote: interesting I randomly read this blog and found I was mentioned, neat.
bullshit u searched for yourself
+ Show Spoiler + im not serious. but i could still be right!
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On May 03 2009 09:54 Cpt Obvious wrote: Maybe you're right. Maybe I am looking for a "grand unified truth" that just isn't there. Still, on some subjects I find it incredibly hard to come to a decision which I can be happy with. I'd go as far as calling it a disability to make a call and then live with the consequences.
Apart from that, I really like how philosophy intersects with science here. The methods are not that different either, from what I gather. I am a big fan of Russell as well, but I haven't really read that much about his work or that of the others.
What baffled me most about all this is how conservatively the scientific world reacted to the implications of Gödel's and Boltzmann's propositions. I was strongly reminded of how the church reacted towards Galilei, and I would never have thought that scientists could be so stubborn. Come to think of it, I think I remember hearing Einstein heavily opposed Quantum theory until his death. Oh well, nothing is black-and-white I guess. Haha, I know exactly how you feel. I will tell you what many people have probably told you (and me) already: "You think too much".
There's really no way around it...the best way to get past this is to just submit to the fact that it's something we'll probably never satisfactorily figure out. ):
On May 03 2009 12:46 Makhno wrote: Very interesting stuff and a great challange to your mind. I can certainly see what your problems derive from and it really is something that the human mind is (up to this point at least) incapable of grasping. Personally I don't think this has anything to do with a god or anything of the sort, but more with the fundamental flaws in human thinking and how incomplete our understanding of our existence is. We are capable of some truly amazing feats of abstract thinking, but obviously there are limits. Inifinity, uncertainty and mathematical paradoxes are some of these concepts which are basically unfathomable to the human mind yet conceivable in their unsolved form.
I think the problem is rather mundane. A mechanical fallibility in our ability to comprehend existance and all the laws, logics and paradoxes that comes with it. A neurological impairity. Impurity if you will. Just think about some of the things these mathematicians and physicists claimed, that there are problems that are unsolvable and that you actually cannot know which problems are. Is it even possible for an entity that we can hypothesize about to solve these unsolvable problems and find structure where we believe to have proven that no structure is to be found?
It's a great topic of discussion, 5/5.
I disagree with this statement. All the fields of the sciences and philosophy, in the end, work to do the same one thing: Make explicit what we already implicitly know or can plainly observe. That's as far as any empirical discipline can go.
With that in mind, we have actually come very far with what you seem to be implying are "neurological impairities". In addition, what you're saying implies that there is an underlying order, a pure logic and rationality to the universe.
First off, I think that our own existence is really something we know and understand very well. People become frustrated and dissatisfied with it when they can't explicate it; hence why philosophy has been obsessed with it for ages. Reading some of Heidegger (whether you agree with him or not) really lets this sink in...our existence is quite simple, really (I know this is kind of a short and gay answer, but I can't really think of a way to condense it to a sentence or two right now).
Second, as I wrote about in my previous post in this blog, as things are looking now, mathematics and logic do not hold up against the universe free of psychologicism...that is to say some kind of human/intuitive input. Set theory, which modern mathematics and even philosophical logic are based on, is still questioned under those regards. There is no reason to think that the universe is bound by any real kind of order, or if we're just observing purely coincidental phenomenon in its function and our inference. I don't like this idea either, but sadly, that's how it is.
The physics and metaphysics of the universe may very well be unsolvable, but I sincerely hope that is not the case.
On May 03 2009 17:10 Xela wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2009 09:31 Cpt Obvious wrote:On May 03 2009 08:17 daz wrote: just enjoy your life. your overthinking it I think the problem is rather that 99% of the people underthink it. And don't bother telling me underthink is not a word, because it totally should be. Exactly what I think too. Alot of people just begin to think about these things(god/meaning of life etc) and then make their idea as fast as possible and are stuck in that way of thinking for the rest of their life. IMO, people should think about those things and create their own ideas all their life, but the problems we humans have is that we NEED an answer and unfortunately like you said: there is no clear answer to fundamental questions. So instead of constently re-think about it and change their minds, people in general just choose an already made answer (religions) for all those questions. I mean, it's so much easier to have someone telling you what to think and what to do in every circumstances. "Does god really exists?" "What should I do if he do(not) exist?". You could wake up every morning for all your life asking yourself those questions, you would never have a clear answer. Or you could make your mind in 2-3 days and act accordingly for the rest of your life trying to hide away from different ideas so your beliefs are not challenged. You're assuming that any person who ascribes to any kind of religion or system of beliefs they didn't come up with themselves is an inauthentic coward who chooses not to think for themselves at all.
I think you're being unfair, and are, to put it simply and bluntly, arrogant and wrong.
On May 03 2009 18:50 Etherone wrote:
i had a similar discussion with my brother about 7 months ago, and my first answer was the gist of the conclusion we came too, it was of course accompanied by a few lines of reasoning, but ultimately it was something similar with a small part that i omitted. that part is basically that we are forced into a logical corner where we ,as insecure people, felt the need to rationalize our existence in the afore mentioned way and a few variants ( I.E god), as bleak as it sounds.
he believes in god, to an extent, and not the church per say, just a higher being, and that jesus christ sacrif..etc. any who, i confronted him once again, believing he is just copping out of rationally mulling existence over. the way i went about it was somewhat convoluted (details will be omitted ) in generally i goated him into it by stating something similar to what you ( cpt.obvious) but of course much more dramatic and with out the links and references, since it was a live discussion. he of course tried to console me and knowing that trying to convince me god existed would utterly fail, he tried by putting his mind to work searching out a common meaning to life.
he failed because he was thinking simply on a personal basis.
Initially as a child (8-12) i wanted to become a zoologist, mostly on the assumption that "animals" were the purest form of life in our world and i found that beautiful. that assumption was based on the premise that all animals act out of instinct. this is relevant because i applied this logic to humanity and tried then to rationalize the question through view.
an "animal's" goal in life is simple, survival.
can't our meaning for living be that simple, with the slight modifications that we strive to prosper, and our goal for survival is not limited only to ourselves?
of course i accept that we are limited beings and not all of us have the capacity to unravel these mysteries. I am willing to live my life out simply waiting for another Copernicus/Kepler/Newton/Einstein to reveal himself and shake the very foundations of our paradigm on the subject.
also I accept that death is the end for me as potential (nothing i was or did will then after have the possibility of becoming reality). i hope of course that my accomplishments and my thoughts live on after me through others, but that is only hope.
PS: for the record the reason i engaged my brother is that he is far more intelligent and educated than i am and i wanted him to give me an answer.
What I don't understand is why believing in a higher power (some kind of "god-entity") always seems to cause this "cop-out" reaction. It is a horrible thing to say that all religious/spiritualist/whatever people are such cowards or non-thinkers on such a basis.
You kind of contradict yourself, however. You criticized your brother because he left much of the implications of his existence up to a higher power, yet you are doing effectively the same thing. You said you would wait for "another Copernicus/Kepler/Newton/Einstein to...shake the very foundations of our paradigm on the subject". You are doing effectively the same thing as your brother, but it is perhaps even shakier at its foundations. Instead of looking to a being perceived to be superior in whatever way, you're looking to another human being whom you will perceive to be superior in whatever way.
Also, this is just my personal opinion, but I think that there is a HUGE difference between living for survival and living for prosperity...especially when trying to apply the word "prosperity" to man as they be today.
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You can't prove or disprove God. Its futile to even try. All we can do is try to learn and understand more about our universe. As for the continuum theory...Cantor was looking at infinite in a very odd way...you can't quantify something that has no beginning and no end.That's what infinite is, it has no bounds..its no wonder why he went mad...and everyone else who tried to solve it as well.
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On May 04 2009 12:21 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2009 17:10 Xela wrote:On May 03 2009 09:31 Cpt Obvious wrote:On May 03 2009 08:17 daz wrote: just enjoy your life. your overthinking it I think the problem is rather that 99% of the people underthink it. And don't bother telling me underthink is not a word, because it totally should be. Exactly what I think too. Alot of people just begin to think about these things(god/meaning of life etc) and then make their idea as fast as possible and are stuck in that way of thinking for the rest of their life. IMO, people should think about those things and create their own ideas all their life, but the problems we humans have is that we NEED an answer and unfortunately like you said: there is no clear answer to fundamental questions. So instead of constently re-think about it and change their minds, people in general just choose an already made answer (religions) for all those questions. I mean, it's so much easier to have someone telling you what to think and what to do in every circumstances. "Does god really exists?" "What should I do if he do(not) exist?". You could wake up every morning for all your life asking yourself those questions, you would never have a clear answer. Or you could make your mind in 2-3 days and act accordingly for the rest of your life trying to hide away from different ideas so your beliefs are not challenged. You're assuming that any person who ascribes to any kind of religion or system of beliefs they didn't come up with themselves is an inauthentic coward who chooses not to think for themselves at all. I think you're being unfair, and are, to put it simply and bluntly, arrogant and wrong. I agree it was a bit arrogant, maybe I should say "most" and not "every" peope following a religion is someone who can't think for himself. I mean, I know alot of people who are constantly asking questions about religion, god, they don't accept everything their religion says 100% of the time and they still follow this system of beliefs. However, you gotta agree that those people are a minority and that at least 90% of others are just sheeps beliveing what they're told to believe, doing what they're told to do.
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On May 04 2009 13:26 Xela wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2009 12:21 PH wrote:On May 03 2009 17:10 Xela wrote:On May 03 2009 09:31 Cpt Obvious wrote:On May 03 2009 08:17 daz wrote: just enjoy your life. your overthinking it I think the problem is rather that 99% of the people underthink it. And don't bother telling me underthink is not a word, because it totally should be. Exactly what I think too. Alot of people just begin to think about these things(god/meaning of life etc) and then make their idea as fast as possible and are stuck in that way of thinking for the rest of their life. IMO, people should think about those things and create their own ideas all their life, but the problems we humans have is that we NEED an answer and unfortunately like you said: there is no clear answer to fundamental questions. So instead of constently re-think about it and change their minds, people in general just choose an already made answer (religions) for all those questions. I mean, it's so much easier to have someone telling you what to think and what to do in every circumstances. "Does god really exists?" "What should I do if he do(not) exist?". You could wake up every morning for all your life asking yourself those questions, you would never have a clear answer. Or you could make your mind in 2-3 days and act accordingly for the rest of your life trying to hide away from different ideas so your beliefs are not challenged. You're assuming that any person who ascribes to any kind of religion or system of beliefs they didn't come up with themselves is an inauthentic coward who chooses not to think for themselves at all. I think you're being unfair, and are, to put it simply and bluntly, arrogant and wrong. I agree it was a bit arrogant, maybe I should say "most" and not "every" peope following a religion is someone who can't think for himself. I mean, I know alot of people who are constantly asking questions about religion, god, they don't accept everything their religion says 100% of the time and they still follow this system of beliefs. However, you gotta agree that those people are a minority and that at least 90% of others are just sheeps beliveing what they're told to believe, doing what they're told to do. I don't know about 90%, or even a majority (at least I'd like to think it's not a majority). Even then, it depends on how much one needs to question in order to not be a "sheep". You don't have to and shouldn't have to doubt and question constantly, and in fact, you can't, in order to be a Christian, or whatever. I don't think it's a bad thing to not doubt or question either. I don't like it when people aren't open-minded about whatever their beliefs may be, but that's really not asking for that much. You can't expect someone who considers themselves a part of whatever belief system (be it religious, agnostic, atheist, or whatever) to be actively doubtful of it. That's just ridiculous. When you ask a devout Christian to doubt the existence of God, that's like asking an atheist to doubt the non-existence of one.
Personally, I don't really have a problem with the majority of religious people out there. In fact, they tend to be the more mature and happier people, from my experience. I can even take people who have never even thought twice about it. If it makes them happy, then what separates them from us, who seek fulfillment/happiness through questioning?
I have a problem with the evangelists who won't leave me alone, the ones who go out of their way to tell me to fix my ways/that I'm doomed to hell/etc. The ones who take it personally that I don't ascribe to the same their same beliefs and who make it a mission to change my ways, or the ones who take offense at it somehow, are the problem ones.
The majority of Christians are not like that. They are a vast minority, in fact. It only seems like they're all like that because the annoying ones are the only ones who stop you on the street.
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All answers lie in two areas of thought. force and form. The unifying factors are force and form. All religions are force and form. All parts of Starcraft are force and form. Everything that goes on inside our head are force and form. Black holes are force and form. God is a force and a form that we can not see with our forces and forms. Matter is force and form. Light is force and form. Radiation and electricity is force and form. Emotions are force and form. Force creates form. God is force. God is all knowing and all powerful. God is force and connection. Connection is two forces interacting with one another. Some forces and forms are disconnected with each other and change independently, and then this force becomes different from that force and then they begin running into each other. You are struggling with answers because some forces and forms in your head are disconnected with other forces and forms in your head. Force and form is the unifying factors to all answers. Anything without force and form is leaving something to be grasped at, something to be missed What is numbers, two forces and forms separated. Infinity is force. We live in a stable and separated version of force and form which provides great difficulties to our mind and our person. An artist creates forms with their pencils wave this way wave that way this straight line to a right angle to another straight line and then a curve and another curve. Force creates form. Separation of forms by force provide the definition of all numbers and quantities. We live in a separated world. That's what makes and creates difficulties. In a connected world everything becomes one, wholeness, divine, all the religious mumble jumble you want to hear. It's sacred ! I know i am being repetitious, and i mean to be because the more i repeat the basic fundamentals with the more complicated, the more you see it all connect. It provides emphasis to those thoughts most important.
>I disagree with this statement. All the fields of the sciences and philosophy, in the end, work to >do the same one thing: Make explicit what we already implicitly know or can plainly observe. >That's as far as any empirical discipline can go. These are some of the wisest words i have come across in a long time. Any communication that i impart to you will include many simple parts that you have all observed in the past that may make up a whole that may be different than any of the simpler parts alone. All simple parts that i impart to you will be force and form. Any complex forms that i impart to you may be cats, dogs, bananas, the unified theory of simplicity, the uncertainty principle, the watever principle some famous philosopher stewed up in his head after years of toil and trouble that includes all this jargon and eccentric thought that make simple ideas more complicated than they should be to grasp. An example of this is in the video you presented. The first guy attempted to quantify infinity, but infinity is just that, infinite, and completely obscure without the concepts of force, form, separation, connection. Yet we always try to quantify what we have around us, but we can not quantify infinity in any way because it has no bounds. Infinity is the product of energy continuing or ending, both making up an infinity, constant expansion and contraction, separation and connection. All the verbs in the English language are the mental thoughts that define things that can be infinite. And at the same time the specifics of these verbs can be very finite, like a feeling or a lifting of a foot of a single person. But if you take all these thoughts and generalize them to every person and every thing that experiences them it becomes repetitious and infinite. It happens everywhere. So it could be the general and the connected is infinite. But the separated is finite. I have no idea if i make any sense at all to other people. I want to make sense to other people because i want to grant the same peace of mind to others that clairty has brought me. Please provide feedback.
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On May 04 2009 15:09 PH wrote (amongst a LOT of other things): I don't know about 90%, or even a majority (at least I'd like to think it's not a majority). Even then, it depends on how much one needs to question in order to not be a "sheep". You don't have to and shouldn't have to doubt and question constantly, and in fact, you can't, in order to be a Christian, or whatever. I don't think it's a bad thing to not doubt or question either. I don't like it when people aren't open-minded about whatever their beliefs may be, but that's really not asking for that much. You can't expect someone who considers themselves a part of whatever belief system (be it religious, agnostic, atheist, or whatever) to be actively doubtful of it. That's just ridiculous. When you ask a devout Christian to doubt the existence of God, that's like asking an atheist to doubt the non-existence of one.
Good point, but I disagree. As an agnostic, I feel compelled to question my belief every time a new argument is presented that suggests the existence of a higher being / a meaning to life / whatever. However, those are quite scarce As a scientist, it is my hobby to doubt every set of new data, every new theory, everything. Even the ones that were believed to be true. Science works that way. There's a saying: "When theory and reality don't match, you have to alter either the theory or reality. The first is called science, the latter is called religion". It's religious' people incapability to EVER question their beliefs what gets me. I'm going to re-quote House AGAIN: If you could reason with religious people, there'd be no religious people.
Personally, I don't really have a problem with the majority of religious people out there. In fact, they tend to be the more mature and happier people, from my experience. I can even take people who have never even thought twice about it. If it makes them happy, then what separates them from us, who seek fulfillment/happiness through questioning?
Same here. I've even met Jehova's witnesses that didn't quite force their beliefs on me, and I had one hell of a conversation with them (pun fully intended). I have no problem with people believing whatever the feck they want, as long as they don't get offended when I go on one of my agnostic rants about how there's no God and no Heaven.
I have a problem with the evangelists who won't leave me alone, the ones who go out of their way to tell me to fix my ways/that I'm doomed to hell/etc. The ones who take it personally that I don't ascribe to the same their same beliefs and who make it a mission to change my ways, or the ones who take offense at it somehow, are the problem ones.
The majority of Christians are not like that. They are a vast minority, in fact. It only seems like they're all like that because the annoying ones are the only ones who stop you on the street.
I agree. However, they still exist. How many fanatic atheists/agnostics do you know? Furthermore, how many atheist organizations do you know of that TAKE YOUR MONEY because you don't believe in God. After all, that makes about as much sense as the other way, doesn't it?
I'm gonna stop here before I atheist-rage again, I find this topic utterly disturbing in a positive way and I get carried away sometimes
Thanks for all the responses guys, stay tuned for the next update, which is scheduled for 2011, statistically speaking.
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