Debate religion? Yes, please!

[Sally]

Beginning to wonder if some other ideas might be relevant. Imagine, for instance, that I had access to an artifact of amazing (presumably alien) technology which allowed me to observe Sally's behavior, say, six months in the future. I report to BadKarma that I saw her driving a car of a certain make & color & describe the cats she's riding with. BadKarma later goes to Seattle on the date in question & verifies my account. Bearing in mind that this" time telescope" does not make me a deity, would such events prove anything about free will?

It would prove that free will doesn't exist. That, or the "time telescope" doesn't work and just happened to guess right.

The Many-Worlds hypothesis might complicate things. In theory every single choice we make might lead to a different universe. Hypothetical omniscience conceivably would involve knowledge of every conceivable result--& perhaps they're all "true." Yikes--I just opened up a cosmic can o'worms. This is getting scary.

Well, basically, if many-worlds hypothesis is correct, free will doesn't exist. It's as simple as that.

First, I don't drive with cats. I have one cat and she abhors car rides.

But should anyone somehow look ahead and see me choosing to drive somewhere (wherever that might be) in my car (whatever that car might be) six months in the future, they would see me exercising my free will to do so. What they saw me doing -- their ability to look into the future -- would in no way eliminate my ability to choose what I did. You're all conflating some being knowing what I chose with the assumption that I couldn't choose it because my choice was known by that being.

Most parents experience those two situations: we know our children well and based on that knowledge often know what they're going to do when presented with certain circumstances, but the children themselves still choose.

[Guest]

Beginning to wonder if some other ideas might be relevant. Imagine, for instance, that I had access to an artifact of amazing (presumably alien) technology which allowed me to observe Sally's behavior, say, six months in the future. I report to BadKarma that I saw her driving a car of a certain make & color & describe the cats she's riding with. BadKarma later goes to Seattle on the date in question & verifies my account. Bearing in mind that this" time telescope" does not make me a deity, would such events prove anything about free will?

It would prove that free will doesn't exist. That, or the "time telescope" doesn't work and just happened to guess right.

The Many-Worlds hypothesis might complicate things. In theory every single choice we make might lead to a different universe. Hypothetical omniscience conceivably would involve knowledge of every conceivable result--& perhaps they're all "true." Yikes--I just opened up a cosmic can o'worms. This is getting scary.

Well, basically, if many-worlds hypothesis is correct, free will doesn't exist. It's as simple as that.

First, I don't drive with cats. I have one cat and she abhors car rides.

But should anyone somehow look ahead and see me choosing to drive somewhere (wherever that might be) in my car (whatever that car might be) six months in the future, they would see me exercising my free will to do so. What they saw me doing -- their ability to look into the future -- would in no way eliminate my ability to choose what I did. You're all conflating some being knowing what I chose with the assumption that I couldn't choose it because my choice was known by that being.

Most parents experience those two situations: we know our children well and based on that knowledge often know what they're going to do when presented with certain circumstances, but the children themselves still choose.

True. The many worlds paradigm actually fixes the free will problem, it doesn't create it. It allows for each and every world to exist for each and every choice every person might make. Therefore, an omniscient being would know everything, because each option is already known to him.

The many worlds paradigm does re-up the problem of evil, however. One of those worlds that exists MUST be all evil.

[Human]

Beginning to wonder if some other ideas might be relevant. Imagine, for instance, that I had access to an artifact of amazing (presumably alien) technology which allowed me to observe Sally's behavior, say, six months in the future. I report to BadKarma that I saw her driving a car of a certain make & color & describe the cats she's riding with. BadKarma later goes to Seattle on the date in question & verifies my account. Bearing in mind that this" time telescope" does not make me a deity, would such events prove anything about free will?

It would prove that free will doesn't exist. That, or the "time telescope" doesn't work and just happened to guess right.

The Many-Worlds hypothesis might complicate things. In theory every single choice we make might lead to a different universe. Hypothetical omniscience conceivably would involve knowledge of every conceivable result--& perhaps they're all "true." Yikes--I just opened up a cosmic can o'worms. This is getting scary.

Well, basically, if many-worlds hypothesis is correct, free will doesn't exist. It's as simple as that.

First, I don't drive with cats. I have one cat and she abhors car rides.

But should anyone somehow look ahead and see me choosing to drive somewhere (wherever that might be) in my car (whatever that car might be) six months in the future, they would see me exercising my free will to do so. What they saw me doing -- their ability to look into the future -- would in no way eliminate my ability to choose what I did. You're all conflating some being knowing what I chose with the assumption that I couldn't choose it because my choice was known by that being.

Most parents experience those two situations: we know our children well and based on that knowledge often know what they're going to do when presented with certain circumstances, but the children themselves still choose.

Parents deal with propabilities: They can be very accurate, but the child can still behave unpredictably.

On the other hand, if an omniscient being knows what you're going to do you have no ability to alter your choice. You couldn't change the direction to which you're driving. It's exactly similar to time traveler that can't alter the past: In that scenario, free will doesn't exist. Everything happens as it happens and nobody can change it.

[The Chaos Heart]

On the other hand, if an omniscient being knows what you're going to do you have no ability to alter your choice. You couldn't change the direction to which you're driving. It's exactly similar to time traveler that can't alter the past: In that scenario, free will doesn't exist. Everything happens as it happens and nobody can change it.

How you keep making this connection baffles me. You have not lost your ability to alter your choice. when presented with the option, you have every ability to choose the other option.

It's just that, you won't.

That is not a lack of free will. That is simply knowing what you are going to do with your free will.

[Guest]

On the other hand, if an omniscient being knows what you're going to do you have no ability to alter your choice. You couldn't change the direction to which you're driving. It's exactly similar to time traveler that can't alter the past: In that scenario, free will doesn't exist. Everything happens as it happens and nobody can change it.

How you keep making this connection baffles me. You have not lost your ability to alter your choice. when presented with the option, you have every ability to choose the other option.

It's just that, you won't.

That is not a lack of free will. That is simply knowing what you are going to do with your free will.

I'm inclined to agree. No one is saying that you can't change your mind, just that the omniscient person knows that you're going to change your mind. I actually think that what we have here is less a problem with the term "free will" and more a problem with multiple conceptions of "omniscience". I personally don't see how omniscience and control are in any way related, and in order to violate free will, I'd think the element of control would have to be present.

[Human]

On the other hand, if an omniscient being knows what you're going to do you have no ability to alter your choice. You couldn't change the direction to which you're driving. It's exactly similar to time traveler that can't alter the past: In that scenario, free will doesn't exist. Everything happens as it happens and nobody can change it.

How you keep making this connection baffles me. You have not lost your ability to alter your choice. when presented with the option, you have every ability to choose the other option.

It's just that, you won't.

That is not a lack of free will. That is simply knowing what you are going to do with your free will.

I'm inclined to agree. No one is saying that you can't change your mind, just that the omniscient person knows that you're going to change your mind. I actually think that what we have here is less a problem with the term "free will" and more a problem with multiple conceptions of "omniscience". I personally don't see how omniscience and control are in any way related, and in order to violate free will, I'd think the element of control would have to be present.

Actually it's about not being able to change your mind. Because if there exists an omniscient being that sees the future, you can't. Everything you do is part of your fate, which you can't alter. It doesn't matter if it feels like a free choice to the person in question: He's still unable to change his mind. Everything goes excactly as was predicted, regardless of the opinion of those involved. And this actually denies that the omniscient being has any control: Even it can't alter what's going to happen.

EDIT: Just thought of a great example. Let's say the omniscient being is an otherwise normal human. He knows that his wife is going to be murdered by his brother. He loves his wife, so obviously he wants to stop this. But he can't, because he knows that his wife is going to be murdered by his brother. WHatever he tries to do to prevent this will fail, and because he knows the future, he knows what he's going to do and how it will fail. Obviously free will doesn't exist in this situation, it's just that the only one aware of this lack of freedom is the omniscient being.

[The Chaos Heart]

On the other hand, if an omniscient being knows what you're going to do you have no ability to alter your choice. You couldn't change the direction to which you're driving. It's exactly similar to time traveler that can't alter the past: In that scenario, free will doesn't exist. Everything happens as it happens and nobody can change it.

How you keep making this connection baffles me. You have not lost your ability to alter your choice. when presented with the option, you have every ability to choose the other option.

It's just that, you won't.

That is not a lack of free will. That is simply knowing what you are going to do with your free will.

I'm inclined to agree. No one is saying that you can't change your mind, just that the omniscient person knows that you're going to change your mind. I actually think that what we have here is less a problem with the term "free will" and more a problem with multiple conceptions of "omniscience". I personally don't see how omniscience and control are in any way related, and in order to violate free will, I'd think the element of control would have to be present.

Actually it's about not being able to change your mind. Because if there exists an omniscient being that sees the future, you can't.

Actually, no, you can. Nothing about seeing the future prevents you from being able to change your mind, or make free decisions. All seeing the future means is you know what the end results of those decisions will be. You are really stretching things to try and equate that to a lack of ability to alter one's choice.

[Guest]

Actually it's about not being able to change your mind. Because if there exists an omniscient being that sees the future, you can't. Everything you do is part of your fate, which you can't alter. It doesn't matter if it feels like a free choice to the person in question: He's still unable to change his mind. Everything goes excactly as was predicted, regardless of the opinion of those involved. And this actually denies that the omniscient being has any control: Even it can't alter what's going to happen.

EDIT: Just thought of a great example. Let's say the omniscient being is an otherwise normal human. He knows that his wife is going to be murdered by his brother. He loves his wife, so obviously he wants to stop this. But he can't, because he knows that his wife is going to be murdered by his brother. WHatever he tries to do to prevent this will fail, and because he knows the future, he knows what he's going to do and how it will fail. Obviously free will doesn't exist in this situation, it's just that the only one aware of this lack of freedom is the omniscient being.

That's a horrible example! Why? Because you decided to throw in "He loves his wife, so obviously he wants to stop this. But he can't, because he knows that his wife is going to be murdered by his brother. WHatever he tries to do to prevent this will fail, and because he knows the future, he knows what he's going to do and how it will fail."

How about if you write an example where power/control has nothing to do with it? Obviously if I write into the example the single parameter that I'm trying to prove, that's not actually proof. In other words, if what you're trying to prove is that the brother has no free will, you can't write, as part of the premise, that he has no free will. You see that, right?

How about this:

God is omniscient. He sees every option of every choice of every single person and thing. You are out walking your dog. You can turn down Stuart Ave or Main street. There is a world that exists in which you go down stuart, and there is a world in which you go down main. Free will and omniscience. Bang.

[Sally]

In the first place, I don't consider God to be omniscient in the sense of knowing exactly what I'm going to do in every second of my life, or anyone else in their lives, or being interested in what anyone is doing. That's not my concept of God . The idea of a "personal" God who's intimately involved in human lives (and thus can be asked for things) is basically a Christian concept.

But if omniscience were part of my God view, as others have explained it wouldn't necessarily hamper my or their free will. The omniscience lies in knowing how they will exercise it. Knowledge isn't control.

[BadKarma]

Let me clarify this thing, since I figure we're arguing for two separate ideas. And this is mostly directed at Asterion (but also at Skullery).

The Many Worlds hypothesis is actually one of the first things I personally tried to accept when considering if pure omniscience could exist with free will some three years ago.

However, it still doesn't work. Here's why.

You guys are talking about divine foreknowledge. You give the example that in the future, someone sees you driving a car, but that doesn't remove ALL free will. I agree with this, to a point. The libertarian free will at some point becomes violated because physical determinism has set in, but the future telescope DIDN'T see what choices would be made to get there, or whether all of those choices were made by you.

If only divine foreknowledge exists, the compatibilist free will can exist. I don't like the definition of that particular sort of free will, but I admit that it can exist. Physical determinism is still a part of the universe with divine foreknowledge, but not all choices leading to an event will HAVE to be made by you, nor are the choices known by anyone.

However, foreknowledge is only ONE part of pure omniscience. Let me define omniscience so that we're clear on this: knowledge of EVERYTHING. Every. Single. Thing. A being with omniscience knows exactly where anything will be at any point doing whatever thing. It knows whether you'll "choose" to order Chinese or Italian food next Wednesday at 11:02:34:09. It knows exactly how certain an electron's position is in quantum uncertainty.

This omniscience--the most true-to-form version of it--also denotes infallibility. A being that knows everything about everything including itself can never be wrong. Likewise, a being that is never wrong probably knows everything (or it is the most improbably amazing guesser in the universe).

This becomes even more of a problem with classical omnipresence, which indicates that the being with it exists at all points in time, as it is everywhere at all times and essentially outside of the time stream. It's looking upon the whole of creation simultaneously. It is at the same time experiencing a past, present, and future of every instance ever. An omnipresent being wouldn't necessarily need to be omniscient, nor an omniscient one omnipresent, but with the Abrahamic God both of these qualities are heavily implied and asserted by legions of followers throughout the ages.

A purely omniscient being isn't just looking into peoples' futures. It's looking into every metaphysical millisecond of all of existence, and it's always right. It knows how your brain is about to come up with a thought, and then it knows if that thought will come to form in the conscious, and then it knows if that thought will be followed through. It knows the exact location of each firing neuron. A "choice" as simple as either sitting down in a chair or not sitting down in a chair is no longer a choice to this being. This being sees it as a decision--a predetermined one, as it saw both present and past at once and knew that at all points this would happen. Even if we THINK we had the choice to keep standing after we had sat down, such a future could have never occurred, because this being has already seen the future in the past, and that future never involved a person still standing.

Again, choice implies variety. If you are forced, even in some predestined divine way, to always go with A instead of B, then you didn't choose to do A. You simply DID A, because you always would, and there was never variety because you never actually had the option of B. You only thought you did. This is the essence of a purely omniscient being--a being that knows EVERY single thing that was and is and will be and knows EXACTLY. Free will, even of the compatibilist sort, cannot exist if there's a being that knows in the past every single thing that will ever occur in a predetermined format.

In short, libertarian free will cannot exist with either foreknowledge OR omniscience over thoughts. Compatibilist free will (again, a definition I personally don't think is valid, but that's up to debate) could exist with foreknowledge, but it also could not exist with pure omniscience. Foreknowledge only requires physical determinism. Pure omniscience requires metaphysical, timeless objective determinism.

Now... The Many Worlds hypothesis. This is something I enjoy. In a sense, it almost fixes the problem of free will and omniscience, almost (I even use the "tree of time" concept in my one book series). A God being knows all POSSIBLE universes, which exponentially increase as time flows along, and it knows all POSSIBLE choices that will be made. You think that this allows for both free will and omniscience. However, such a God does not know WHAT future will happen. This is a problem, because ignorance of such a thing indicates a hole in its knowledge base.

You say "But there are many separate universes! ALL futures are happening!" This would be fine, if God were part of that universe. But it's an objective observer looking in. In order for God to continue to have omniscience, it TOO would have to keep breaking off into all of these parallel universes, and each universe's iteration of God would never be the same God as the other Gods. They'd all be ignorant of each others' omniscience, and they'd all be subjectively tied to the realities they inhabit.

If these trillions of separate dimensional Gods could exist, they would necessarily be Gods that moved through the future as it happened instead of already existing there, so the Many Worlds Gods could not be omnipresent ones. This, while not directly contradictory with omniscience, is contradictory with the full understanding of the monotheistic God. Further, these Gods could not apply prophecies in the past, because in only some futures would those prophecies come into being, and any time those prophecies didn't come into being would be times that those particular Gods were fallible (and thus also not omniscient).

Even then, they still seem capable of allowing for free will and all knowledge, which an objective, transcendent God could not do in a Many Worlds hypothesis.

But do even the Many Worlds Gods conflict with omniscience and/or free will? This is more difficult to answer (and I'm going to get even MORE confusing right now), but here is my opinion on that:

1. Many Worlds Gods could not have objective frames of reference. They could never exist in anything but the metaphysical present and their own particular pasts. Each one of them would also only have accurate foreknowledge of the universe they broke off into (instead of the foreknowledge of worlds that would have had changed futures because of different past decisions). While those Gods would have seen all possible causal implications of all events, each one, as it broke off into a new metaphysical present, would also have knowledge of things that DID NOT come to pass because in their universe, all choices other than those that were made would lead to dead futures. This suggests a problem with pure knowledge, as each of those Many Worlds Gods was obviously wrong about whatever choice was actually made in their universe. So, while the very first incarnation of God was omniscient in some sense, each further iteration of that God would seemingly become more and more "wrong" about how the future came to pass.

2. Many Worlds Gods would still be dictating the realities that they inhabit. If a choice is made, no matter which choice it was, the Gods of each parallel universe each knew that each choice would happen. They all still knew the possible choices of the past, and as soon as a choice was "made", it would have become destined to be made in that universe with that God. While I don't particularly know if this absolutely says something about free will, it is definitely a bit of an origin paradox. If each God in each universe is infallible and omniscient, and each one breaks off with each mortal choice and action, was it the mortal choice that brought about the God split, or did God split at the point of each mortal choice in order to be right about it at all points?

3. Many Worlds Gods are simply not omniscient. In accordance with 1, they do not know which choices are going to be made; they only know all possible choices in the future and all past choices in their particular timeline. This, again, is potential divine foreknowledge (and very interesting foreknowledge at that), but it is NOT true omniscience. The one bit of knowledge left out of such Gods is the knowledge of which future must happen before it happens, and which choice will be chosen before its chosen. These Gods may know a seriously huge amount (in fact, an omniscient God in a Many Worlds hypothesis would have MORE potential knowledge at the beginning of time than an omniscient God with a deterministic timeline), but one part of knowledge they'd lack is what will actually happen.

4. Many Worlds Gods may exist in universes without modern humans. Certain choices that could have been made in our recent past (or events that might have happened in those worlds) would have brought us to extinction, which means that in some universes God never has a special creation. It never actually MADE that creation either if you accept known science, and it couldn't have steered us to make choices in mates and living places that would have allowed for survival, or else it violates free will directly. Unless it only decided to bestow free will on us a few thousand years ago, which seems a bit, I dunno, cruel?

5. Heaven. In a Many Worlds Hypothesis, there still exists a Heaven supposedly outside of the universe where God brings souls. If Heaven exists outside of the universe, it is not bound to the rules of causality in play, which means all Gods are trapped outside of Heaven as soon as they start branching off, unless they use their omnipotence to force their way back in and then create issues where multiple separate Gods exist in the same place, despite only one being able to be the Supreme Being.

Does Heaven also exist in the universe and thus split apart into many hundreds of trillion trillion trillions of iterations where each separate set of souls comes to? If so, Heaven should be able to be detected with science, since it's part of the universe and subject to its laws. If Heaven doesn't exist in the universe, is God still making it change with each new metaphysical instance either by its personal decision or because each version of Heaven is intrinsically tied with its own God? Are there different levels of souls in different Heavens? Will those Heavens and Gods remain forever separated, lest they merge and introduce infinite versions of infinite people to their slightly similar counterparts? If Heaven DOESN'T change like the universe, then is God sending matching parallel souls to the same place until it finally arrives back there with a googolplex of its own self?

If the first is the case, why haven't we found Heaven, despite it still being a tangible part of our universe? If the second is the case, does each Heaven also break into MORE infinite heavens with each decision that each infinite soul makes, and how does God split with two separately snaking time trees? If the third is the case, does free will no longer exist in Heaven?

Point 1 means that they're not omnipresent, because none of them can ever exist in each others' timeline (a God that did, even with the omnipotence to do so, would no longer be an omniscient being in that other universe). It also means that God becomes fallible with each breaking timeline, or God is not omniscient because it doesn't know which universe is the ultimately right one.

Point 2 means that free will still seems to be impossible, as the person who chose to sit is no longer the person who chose to stand, and therefore the sitting one was always predestined to sit in accordance with their God and the standing one was always predestined to stand in accordance with theirs. If the free will element is what's causing the God breaks, then that means we actually have some sort of will over it, which, while not being directly tied to this conversation, imposes other theological problems.

Point 3 means, quite obviously, that a gap in God's knowledge exists in regards to which choices will be made until they're made, which means its actually learning as time passes (and if it can gain more knowledge, then it was never omniscient to begin with). Open theistic interpretations that God is neither multi-world OR existent in the future--and that it is currently surfing on the wave of the present at all points--means that such a God doesn't have knowledge of any future (and is also therefore still learning) AND that it's not omnipresent.

Point 4 has nothing directly to do with omniscience, per se, but it defeats the idea that God created humans at all. If God had a hand in our creation, then in accordance with how we know biology to work, it had to see a future where humans were going to develop and then had to guide the process of evolution. This God at some point has to directly violate free will to save us from our near-extinction event as well as solidifying the presence of modern humans. If God allowed the process to happen without its influence (and thus preserve free will and not determine specific futures), then we are not its special creation in a variety of potential universes. General theological issue there.

Point 5 is... Well, that's just postulation, but I think it's an interesting thought.

In essence, Many Worlds Gods are not purely omniscient (even if they have more potential knowledge than a deterministic omniscient God). Also, such Gods must split apart constantly until they numbered over 1.0x 10^(100)^(100)^(100)^(100)(something I don't think many theists would like to consider as true), they wouldn't be omnipresent (as they don't exist in each others' universes or in the future), and in at least some of their universes, humans never came into being in the first place because to make humans do so would be to violate the free will of humans.

I do think the Many Worlds hypothesis is quite a ways better than "God doesn't remove free will even if it knows in advance everything you'll ever do or think", but there are problems with it when you really consider its implications.

I may have missed something, since I'm hurrying to type this before I go to watch a movie. Hopefully I didn't miss anything (or write something incorrectly in my haste), but if I did... Alas.

Edit: No, one God couldn't exist through multiple universes (since I only briefly commented on that). If choice A was made in universe A and choice B was made in universe B, but the same God existed in the same capacity in both, then in each universe it would have been wrong about the choice not made there, and God can't be wrong. God necessarily has to split along with the universes, or else it's fallible.

Also, what Sally said is a God I don't have a logical problem with (well, I mean, I have a LOT of problems with even that God, but at least I don't have to argue about the paradoxical nature of pure omniscience+free will). If God knows the future but doesn't know the choices and thoughts made at every point in that universe, then it's not omniscient (because it doesn't know those thoughts), but it's also not violating free will either. As I said before, being ALMOST omniscient solves any of these paradoxes. God could be ALMOST omniscient regarding the universe and we wouldn't be having this discussion, just as God could be ALMOST omnipotent without causing an omnipotence paradox.

Second Edit: I just saw your other post, Skull, regarding theodicy in the Many Worlds Hypothesis. I don't actually agree with this, because you're assuming that Many Worlds has anything to do with infinite possibilities. It only has to do with branching universes caused by finite possibilities. There could most certainly be a parallel universe where more evil existed than was "standard" (whatever that standard would be), but in order for there to be a potentially all-evil world, then every choice made in every situation by every person would always have to have an evil counterpart to it. As there are many situations in our lives where we can quickly demonstrate this as false (many times a choice will be between two good things, or a good thing and a neutral thing, or four neutral things and three good things), absolute evil in a single universe wouldn't be an issue. If even one choice ever comes about in one instance where evil isn't an option (and there are oodles of such instances), then the prospect of an ultimately evil universe becomes impossible, as the "evil choice" wasn't there to select.

But yes, I do agree that it would cause problems because there would be a universe with an inordinately high amount of "evil". I question at that point if humanity would continue existing in such a universe, though, because if most people were chaotic and destructive in that universe there would be a good chance that we'd annihilate ourselves there. Humans continue to survive in this actual universe because we're a mostly benign social species with only a few bad apples to hinder us.

Third Edit: Yes, I know I forgot stuff. I told you that was gonna happen because I was rushing.

Anyway, I've remembered the example I had to demonstrate how "free will" and physical determinism may still exist. That example is The Minority Report. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is shown by the precog a future where he kills a man. The precogs are NEVER wrong.

He gets to the point where the situation leading up to this murder is unfolding. When he bursts into the room, he notices a bunch of pictures that paint his soon-to-be victim as a heartless pedophile who stole his son. This enrages John, who now realizes that he never COULD choose to not kill the man.

However, when the man bursts in, John is able to stop himself. He is able to choose not to pull the trigger, because even though physical determinism exists, that alone doesn't directly provide insight into choice. Nevertheless, the man he's supposed to kill becomes angry because "they told me they'd help my wife and kids if I did this!" That man chooses to lunge at John, who in the scuffle accidentally pulls the trigger. The precogs are NEVER wrong, and John DID kill the man even if he chose not to, because in that world, physical determinism still existed.

However, that's not pure omniscience. The precogs had what we could equate to divine foreknowledge, but they didn't have divine introspection or divine understanding. They could see the future, but they didn't know WHY the future was happening that way. If the precogs were never wrong AND they could see more than just the future, John would have never had a choice. If the precogs could see into his mind and determine at that future moment that he wouldn't pull the trigger, and they are never wrong, then he could never pull that trigger. He could never have had the "choice" to actually shoot the man of his own volition, because the precogs are never wrong and he would ALWAYS not pull that trigger.

That does not mean that the mere knowledge of his future thoughts is what caused him to not be able to change those thoughts. In fact, what that would directly imply is a fully deterministic universe where some people were simply predestined to be able to have the ability to see the deterministic future. In the sense of God, too, its pure omniscience would not be what was FORCING you to always make a certain decision even if you thought you could choose something else. What would be forcing you would be a deterministic universe--where all of the future was written permanently in some sort of metaphorical cosmic book--and God would simply be the being that could flip ahead to page 73,596,134,499,183,423 and read the sentence where you woke up and ate an orange for breakfast. It wouldn't be forcing you to not have free will--the universe would, and it would just be the third person narrator. But nevertheless, the fact that it'd HAVE that omniscience would also be a result of that deterministic universe. If the universe were not deterministic, then it wouldn't have omniscience and you would have free will. If the universe WERE deterministic, it would potentially have omniscience and you certainly would not have free will.

What I'm saying is that God's intimate knowledge of everything is not the cause of not having free will. Something ELSE would be the cause (in this case, the universe), and its ABILITY to have knowledge of all of it would simply be because of its objective, eternal PoV.

Now for math proof time, to sum this up:

Determinism is (D). Indeterminism is (I). Omniscience is (K). Free Will is (F). The Universe is (U).

If U=D, then F=0

If U=D, then K≥0

If U=I, then F≥1

If U=I, then K=0

That is, in all deterministic universes, free will CAN'T exist and omniscience MIGHT exist (because even a deterministic universe doesn't need a deity). In all indeterministic universes, free will DOES exist and omniscience CAN'T exist, not even in a Multiple Worlds hypothesis.

[Guest]

3. Many Worlds Gods are simply not omniscient. In accordance with 1, they do not know which choices are going to be made; they only know all possible choices in the future and all past choices in their particular timeline. This, again, is potential divine foreknowledge (and very interesting foreknowledge at that), but it is NOT true omniscience. The one bit of knowledge left out of such Gods is the knowledge of which future must happen before it happens, and which choice will be chosen before its chosen. These Gods may know a seriously huge amount (in fact, an omniscient God in a Many Worlds hypothesis would have MORE potential knowledge at the beginning of time than an omniscient God with a deterministic timeline), but one part of knowledge they'd lack is what will actually happen.

4. Many Worlds Gods may exist in universes without modern humans. Certain choices that could have been made in our recent past (or events that might have happened in those worlds) would have brought us to extinction, which means that in some universes God never has a special creation. He never actually MADE that creation either if you accept known science, and he couldn't have steered us to make choices in mates and living places that would have allowed for survival, or else he violates free will directly. Unless he only decided to bestow free will on us a few thousand years ago, which seems a bit, I dunno, cruel?

5. Heaven. In a Many Worlds Hypothesis, there still exists a Heaven supposedly outside of the universe where God brings souls. If Heaven exists outside of the universe, it is not bound to the rules of causality in play, which means all Gods are trapped outside of Heaven as soon as they start branching off, unless they use their omnipotence to force their way back in and then create issues where multiple separate Gods exist in the same place, despite only one being able to be the Supreme Being.

I agree with all this. I too love the many worlds hypotheses and had an entire grad level course on it. Great stuff! (I remember very little, unfortunately)

[BadKarma]

I agree with all this. I too love the many worlds hypotheses and had an entire grad level course on it. Great stuff! (I remember very little, unfortunately)

Ah, so you're agreeing with me that even Multiple Worlds Gods are only mostly omniscient? That's the first time someone's outright conceded a point to me (that I can remember, anyway) in this entire thread!

Yay.

I like my math proof at the bottom of that post that I just added. And I hope it illustrates that I'm not saying omniscience is what causes a lack of free will; rather, both free will and potential omniscience are contingent upon the nature of the observed universe.

[Andrew Barnes]

BK.

I have remained a passive reader of this thread for a few days.

I wanted to see if at any point I could asceertain from your lengthy writings why you maintain i) that you are an anim-naturalist or whatever it is you call yourself and ii) you area Zen Buddhist.

I have yet to see any PROOF that you have the faintest idea what Buddhism is all about and what the whole philosophy is based on and aims to achieve.

People of all and no traditions can meditate and contemplate. That in itself is not Buddhism.

Now, before you head straight for you hiding place behind long words and specialist vocabularly, please do try to speak in a conversational style and say simply why you call yourself Buddhist.

Whilst you are figuring that out, please also consider keeping mind certain aspects of the dhamma concerning humbleness and the the fact that ALL we can perceive is simply relative truth and nothing to do with true reality. If you recall out previous brief conversation, you rejected the need the need to find the 'ultimate' truth. I ask again, why are you calling yourself, and parading as, a Buddhist?

Why have you REALLY started this thread? If 'no-one has ever proved anything supernatural since the dawn of time' (I paraphrase). then what is your REAL purpose and what are you looking for both here and in Buddhism,.

with some experience of psycho-spiritual counselling, I will hazard a suggestion that perhaps there is, behind all the scientific logic barrier you have so mastered, a sense that there is something missing that you, however obsurely, sense lies in religion/spirituality. The reason you go by the tag 'Buddhist' is because, of all main 'religions' it is the non-theist alternative that most closely resembles your scientific outlook.

Why not go that last step and admit to yourself that there is something that cannot be fully explained (in whatever language or methodology) that can offer succur and comfort. Can even provide some challenge and 'reason' or 'wherefore'.

The awe of a majestic building, the beauty of a fine painting and the reveree of a beautiful peice of music. These are not logic, have no purpose and defy explanation. Yet they are the beauty and staff of life. Open yourself to the joy of the unknown. When you experience the effect. Simply experience it. don't analyse it. Through the experience, you know it's truth, without ever knowing why. you don't need to. you simply know it's truth. This is belief. It is not logical. It just is.

metta.

[Guest]

I agree with all this. I too love the many worlds hypotheses and had an entire grad level course on it. Great stuff! (I remember very little, unfortunately)

Ah, so you're agreeing with me that even Multiple Worlds Gods are only mostly omniscient? That's the first time someone's outright conceded a point to me (that I can remember, anyway) in this entire thread!

Yay.

I like my math proof at the bottom of that post that I just added. And I hope it illustrates that I'm not saying omniscience is what causes a lack of free will; rather, both free will and potential omniscience are contingent upon the nature of the observed universe.

Im an atheist so its no big concession for me. :)

[dezdimona]

OK, this is now really interesting. Don't mind jumping in because I do believe in God but not religion or necessarily an interpretation from a human perspective as to attempt to define something emense from a small perspective. I base my conclusion on

1. Religion can be big business, this is why it attempts to do this

2. Religion has attempted to control the populous, many examples over many centuries.

3. Religion is man made and was meant to support a belief system not dictate to it but as it becomes popular, in itself becomes powerful and people can't handle power as a result it becomes corrupt and looses it's stronghold eventually because it's focus shifts from support to dication. I believe in order to be truly connected with God, one must divorce religion and embrace what one finds is eternal.

My belief in God is from personal experience, experiences in life have come together in such a way that to me is in and of itself the truth that I find. Even life itself, its intense intracatcies in every small thing and intracate balances within having a time and place, in nature and even our chances of being born at an astronomical 1 to many billion.

It is important to put fire to religion so that it does the job of not dicating but supporting people who want to deepen their connection with God.

We are very comical creatures and imagine being God, having all these angels sucking up to you... ya if that were me I would make people too...

Cheers

PS at Christmas though I will make it to the church on time ;)

[Henny]

3. Religion is man made and was meant to support a belief system not dictate to it but as it becomes popular, in itself becomes powerful and people can't handle power as a result it becomes corrupt and looses it's stronghold eventually because it's focus shifts from support to dication. I believe in order to be truly connected with God, one must divorce religion and embrace what one finds is eternal.

Pointing out that it's man-made seems a bit odd to me. Don't you as a theist find that really ironical? After all, the concept of god, even in its broadest sense, is an inherently anthropocentric (or sapiencentric, or whatever you want to call it) in its conception of a mighty force in the universe being a sapient being, in some portrayals even having a personal relationship with humans.

I hope you're not intending by "man-made" that religion is some sort of intentional conspiracy designed to enslave humanity.

[BadKarma]

Okay. Gonna go watch a movie soon, and I'll try to make this short so you don't think I'm "hiding behind my words" (I really just type a lot). If you met me in person, you'd see this isn't just the way I type. It's the way I talk, too. I've tried before to be what most people consider "conversational", and I find it very difficult on even simple topics. So I apologize for giving the impression that I'm just trying to trick people into saying the wrong thing, and I apologize for what I figure is STILL going to be a huge rant. I'm really not doing it on purpose.

The eightfold path:

1. Viewing reality objectively: I strive to do this by finding the most objective method of truth. The most objective method of truth, in a world polluted by subjective realities, is to look for independently verified understandings that can be attained regardless of cultural boundaries or personal understandings. The most objective way to understand essence is to know what is not essence and to deal in non-contradicting absolutes. Thus, I embrace science as a self-correcting, mostly objective methodology of understanding the universe, and I adhere as best I can to strict logical deduction in order to avoid personal pleas for something else.

2. The intention of freedom and harmlessness: Despite being a practiced martial artist, I do not lay a hand on people unless at the uttermost end of need (which is to say never, because I've never been in a situation that required viciously harming someone). I avoid verbal attacks on character and emotional ploys to sway people. I embrace libertarian politics and libertarian philosophy regarding will. This, I believe, is the best way for me to be free and harmless and to make sure that I do not inflict harm or subjugation on others either.

3. Truthful speaking: This is something you may think I don't do, but I don't view it that way. I speak with cold logic and yet without vindictiveness, and I make an effort to cushion people if I think that speaking a necessary thought will offend them. Fallacy is, to me, one of the worst things one can allow in their worldview if they are to find truth in things, which is why I am so outspoken against pointing it out and trying to avoid it myself (even though I still fail some times).

4. Non-harmful action: What is true should not be viewed as hurtful to anything except an opposed belief. What is not known should not be asserted as truth or belief. I speak against the second in an attempt to see not only to see if it might actually be known, but to see if some people may embrace ignorance when ignorance is due. But I never force someone into it, and I try despite any emotions that may rise not to incite people against me.

5. Non-harmful livelihood: I do not hunt. I have no intention of being in a business that may take advantage of others (politics or economics or the like). I went to school for music performance, and I make a meager existence giving voice lessons, working at a local store, and writing books in my spare time.

6. Efforts toward improvement: This is one of them. In these few days, I've already reconciled a previous bias I had against conflating different Jewish groups and studying more various topics regarding free will. I look for things that challenge me intellectually and physically, and debates like this are truly intellectually stimulating for me. They may provide constant reinforcement of my current beliefs or lack thereof or I may happen upon something that refutes me and makes me challenge my whole worldview.

7. Awareness to see things as they clearly are and not what I wish them to be, being aware of myself, and doing both without lust or fear: This should be evident. I've adopted a natural materialist worldview after a time as a theist because I did not see any evidence for what I wanted to see. As for me being aware, I do this myself through constant reflection (I haven't even been able to sleep for the past two nights because of the thoughts I've considered regarding just this thread) and attempts to illicit what other people see me as, lest I otherwise fall to confirmation bias. I do both of these things without avidly wishing to validate them or hiding from them in discussion (as many other atheists are wont to do).

8. Meditation: This is something I've fallen behind on, since I've been preoccupied with many things adjusting to a post-collegiate life. Nevertheless, I've spent hours before meditating for a variety of reasons (i.e. to consider weighty philosophy, to remove stress, to slow an admittedly hyperactive brain, to dissolve unwarranted anger toward someone, etc.)

In regards to the noble truths, this is something I've somehow been able to do at a very early age. I have almost no connection to money (to the degree that it actually almost causes problems in my life), and I've arisen beyond notions of heartbreak or hunger or most lesser forms of pain. Suffering still exists for me from a Humanistic standpoint; that is, I find personal suffering in the knowledge that there are many millions of people who are so far worse off than me and the melancholy that arises when I admit that I cannot do anything to help them at this current point in my life.

I admit that I do not fully adhere to the teaching of compromise/the Middle Way, as there is enough knowledge in this universe to realize that some things almost absolutely do exist and some things almost absolutely don't--I still accept the tiny possibility that I am the figment of someone else's solipsism, but such pondering is an unfalsifiable and unfruitful pursuit. Nevertheless, I avoid and abhor extremist philosophies (and I denounce even the extremists of my own antitheistic philosophy). I realize that nothing in this universe is likely permanent, that I am not even myself and that the atoms I call me are not the atoms I once called me, and that pain is not something to either fear or ignore.

I do not believe in a spiritual understanding of Nirvana. I do not believe in bodhisattvas or higher planes of existence or reincarnation cycles. I do not believe the Buddha was a magical man, even if he was a particularly thoughtful fellow. As I said before, the spiritual aspects of Buddhism are not held by me because they are things which I cannot experience except by my own desire to feel them inside me, and I am a logician before I am a Buddhist. Occam's Razor applies there and informs me that any notions I might have regarding spiritual experiences are more likely neurological phenomena.

Now, that being said, it's quite evident why a building seems majestic or a painting fine or a piece of music beautiful. Humans are patten seekers, and they are impressed unduly by patterns that they can sense without inherently being able to explain. A majestic building has within it architectural constructs that are mathematically flawless, and yet most people cannot verbalize exactly why they know such a thing. They know only that it fits so perfectly within their head, and a sweeping euphoria comes over them. Likewise, a good painting has a perfect balance of color and intrigue, and a particularly well-written song is a mathematical, harmonic masterpiece. The brain realizes this, but we aren't yet evolved enough for any but the most trained of specialists to explain it. I could quite easily explain to you why certain emotions are invoked in music and what constructs you are listening to at any point within it, but I would be just as awed by the building or the painting as anyone else, even though I know WHY I'm awed.

I do not need to always acknowledge the mathematical reason behind these things to enjoy them. I can let my emotions speak for me when they have a responsibility to. But the human sense of euphoria over the "beautiful" is pretty easily explained with modern knowledge of the mind and maths.

Figuring out if someone has good proof of God is not the ultimate truth. But it is a particularly good question, and so much (both good and bad) is done in the name of so many Gods that seem to not exist that validation of their existence would usher a new paradigm of human thought. Also, the God question (and the supernatural question in general) is something that both forces me to confront that which I have once turned away from, and it either reinforces my understanding of logic and rationality or, at some point in the future, may provide me with good knowledge against what I currently hold as a worldview.

Regarding why I made this thread, the most succinct answer is that I have a tendency to derail other threads, this is a particularly interesting topic to me, and it's not a particularly welcome topic to others. By making this thread here, I can avoid bringing rainclouds into the "what is your religion?" threads, I can have some good discussion on some very elusive concepts, and those who do not wish to see what I write (or be involved in the conversation at all) can have the ability to ignore this thread instead of clicking on some other one and getting broadsided by theological diatribes.

The best GOAL of this thread would be for me to find a proof that noone's ever found before. Maybe someone here has it, and maybe they'd only bring it up if given the motivation and platform to speak. I say it's the best goal because I'm not here to force people out of their religion (if I somehow actually do that, it's incidental), nor am I here to parade my thoughts around and be arrogant or something. But the purpose of making it was a self-inflicted cage, that I may protect other AVENites from myself.

I hope this is sufficient enough to explain why I think I am, at least to some degree, "Buddhist" (and I know that I'm not remotely as "devout" as someone who also accepts all the spiritual aspects of it) and to explain my initial intention behind making this thread. I hope you have a good night, and I also hope this post wasn't too long-winded. I assure you that I'm not trying to pull an argument from verbosity fallacy; I'm just severely hypergraphic and loquacious. ;)

Side note: I revel in the unknown. If someone cannot prove anything supernatural to me (and I am quite skeptical that such a thing is possible even if I allow the window of opportunity for it), that's fine. If I die not knowing why I was here, I will die knowing that at least I didn't make something up about it. If there is one thing I'm absolutely certain about, it's that I have no fear of the unknown or personal ignorance, even though I'm engaged in educating myself about everything I can. I do not learn because I am afraid of not knowing. I learn because there's so very much to learn, and because it's so very fun to learn. Knowledge is one of the greatest reasons for existence that I find for myself. But even then, I'm fully cognizant that I will pass from this world having known only a fraction of what there was, and that's... Well, I wish I could live long enough to learn everything, but it's alright that such wishful thinking will likely never come to pass.

Unless they invent a perfectly functioning robotic brain and come up with a transhumanist brain surgery that allows me to transfer my perceived self from a human body to a robotic one. But yeah... Wishful thinking.

Ciao!

[BadKarma]

OK, this is now really interesting. Don't mind jumping in because I do believe in God but not religion or necessarily an interpretation from a human perspective as to attempt to define something emense from a small perspective. I base my conclusion on

1. Religion can be big business, this is why it attempts to do this

2. Religion has attempted to control the populous, many examples over many centuries.

3. Religion is man made and was meant to support a belief system not dictate to it but as it becomes popular, in itself becomes powerful and people can't handle power as a result it becomes corrupt and looses it's stronghold eventually because it's focus shifts from support to dication. I believe in order to be truly connected with God, one must divorce religion and embrace what one finds is eternal.

My belief in God is from personal experience, experiences in life have come together in such a way that to me is in and of itself the truth that I find. Even life itself, its intense intracatcies in every small thing and intracate balances within having a time and place, in nature and even our chances of being born at an astronomical 1 to many billion.

It is important to put fire to religion so that it does the job of not dicating but supporting people who want to deepen their connection with God.

We are very comical creatures and imagine being God, having all these angels sucking up to you... ya if that were me I would make people too...

Cheers

PS at Christmas though I will make it to the church on time ;)

Well... Uh...

Like I say to my siblings and mother, I find their beliefs to be nonsensical, but I at least know that those beliefs are benign. If you avoid organized religion and base your belief in God on personal experience, all the power to you. I probably have better explanations for your encounters, but I do not know what those encounters are. Likewise, your message implies that your proof is for you and you alone and that you are likely uninterested in convincing me. Ergo, I permit you to post in this thread without me assailing you.

I will say only one thing. We do not know what the probability is for this universe's existence or for the formation of life. Those things may well be near-100% mathematical certainties. Life may be teeming on every other life-bearing planet in the universe. It's so ludicrously big that your notion of probability is nothing to it. If we were to write out the number of all the atoms in the universe, we would have needed to start writing a thousand zeros every second at the dawn of the Big Bang some fourteen billion years ago, and we still wouldn't be close. It's a very, VERY big place. So life may well be stupidly common by our notions.

However, if you meant that we as particular humans with particular genomes were born when others were not, I entirely agree with you. THAT is an astounding improbability. There is a certainty that SOMEONE will be born during a birth, but the probability that it was any one of us is about the closest to a "miracle" that I think the universe has to offer for anyone.

I gotta appreciate the hilarity of such a famous militant atheist having his speech set to a religious hymnal from Gabriel Fauré. But yeah... Beautiful video.

Pointing out that it's man-made seems a bit odd to me. Don't you as a theist find that really ironical? After all, the concept of god, even in its broadest sense, is an inherently anthropocentric (or sapiencentric, or whatever you want to call it) in its conception of a mighty force in the universe being a sapient being, in some portrayals even having a personal relationship with humans.

I hope you're not intending by "man-made" that religion is some sort of intentional conspiracy designed to enslave humanity.

Eh. A theist is only someone who believes in a personal God. They don't necessarily need to be religious (my whole family is comprised of non-religious theists--possibly because I've been poisoning their minds with my Satanic bile), even if many are. Nor, I think, is she saying that religion is an intentional conspiracy. I think she's saying that a religion (and I suppose in this case that she particularly means the sects of Christianity) is more like a once-honest expression of a belief that became too big, lost itself in its own self-importance, and many times forgot entirely what it was supposed to actually be doing.

While I have different reasons behind my understanding of it (and likely a far less sympathetic behavior toward it), I think we have about the same basic conclusion regarding dogmatic, organized monotheism. I can appreciate a theist who at least recognizes the ludicrous hypocrisy of their church machines (they're a lot better in my book than those who try to justify it).

[Henny]

Pointing out that it's man-made seems a bit odd to me. Don't you as a theist find that really ironical? After all, the concept of god, even in its broadest sense, is an inherently anthropocentric (or sapiencentric, or whatever you want to call it) in its conception of a mighty force in the universe being a sapient being, in some portrayals even having a personal relationship with humans.

I hope you're not intending by "man-made" that religion is some sort of intentional conspiracy designed to enslave humanity.

Eh. A theist is only someone who believes in a personal God. They don't necessarily need to be religious (my whole family is comprised of non-religious theists--possibly because I've been poisoning their minds with my Satanic bile), even if many are. Nor, I think, is she saying that religion is an intentional conspiracy. I think she's saying that a religion (and I suppose in this case that she particularly means the sects of Christianity) is more like a once-honest expression of a belief that became too big, lost itself in its own self-importance, and many times forgot entirely what it was supposed to actually be doing.

While I have different reasons behind my understanding of it (and likely a far less sympathetic behavior toward it), I think we have about the same basic conclusion regarding dogmatic, organized monotheism. I can appreciate a theist who at least recognizes the ludicrous hypocrisy of their church machines (they're a lot better in my book than those who try to justify it).

I'm sorry if I was too unclear, I should probably have phrased it better. What I meant was "Pointing out that [religion is] man-made seems a bit odd to me. Don't you as a theist [who believes in god, although not religious] find that really ironical?"

[Henny]

And before I forget about it, I found this particular part about the Book of Job really interesting:

This problematic of the act confronts us with the necessity to risk a materialist appropriation of the religious tradition. When, in Being and Time, Heidegger insists that death is the only event which cannot be taken over by another subject for me—another cannot die for me, at my place—the obvious counterexample is Christ himself: did he not, in the ultimate gesture of interpassivity, take over for us the ultimate passive experience of dying? Christ dies so that we are given a chance of living forever... The problem here is not only that, obviously, we DON'T live forever (the answer to this is that it is the Holy Spirit, the community of believers, which lives forever), but the subjective status of Christ: when he was dying on the cross, did he KNOW about his Resurrection-to-come? If yes, then it was all a game, the supreme divine comedy, since Christ knew his suffering was just a spectacle with a guaranteed good outcome—in short, Christ was FAKING despair in his "Father, why did you forsake me?" If no, then in what precise sense was Christ (also) divine? Did God the Father limit the scope of knowledge of Christ's mind to that of a common human consciousness, so that Christ effectively thought he was dying abandoned by his father? Was he effectively occupying the position of the son from a supreme Jewish joke, in which a Rabbi turns in despair to God, asking him what he should do with his bad son who deeply disappointed him; God calmly answered: "Do the same as I did: write a new testament!"

The key to Christ is provided by the figure of Job, whose suffering prefigures that of Christ. The almost unbearable impact of the "Book of Job" resides not so much in its narrative frame (the Devil appears in it as a conversational partner of God, and the two engage in a rather cruel experiment in order to test Job's faith), but in its final outcome. Far from providing some kind of satisfactory account of Job's undeserved suffering, God's appearance at the end ultimately amounts to pure boasting, a horror show with elements of farcical spectacle—a pure argument of authority grounded in breathtaking display of power: "You see all what I can do? Can you do this? Who are you then to complain?" So what we get is neither the good God letting Job know that his suffering is just an ordeal destined to test his faith, nor a dark God beyond Law, the God of pure caprice, but rather a God who acts as someone caught in the moment of impotence, weakness at least, and tries to escape his predicament by empty boasting. What we get at the end is a kind of cheap Hollywood horror show with lots of special effects—no wonder that many commentators tend to dismiss Job's story as a remainder of the previous pagan mythology which should have been excluded from the Bible.

Against this temptation, one should precisely locate the true greatness of Job: contrary to the usual notion of Job, he is NOT a patient sufferer, enduring his ordeal with the firm faith in God—on the contrary, he complains all the time, rejecting his fate (like Oedipus at Colonus, who is also usually misperceived as a patient victim resigned to his fate). When the three theologians-friends visit him, their line of argumentation is the standard ideological sophistry (if you suffer, it is by definition that you MUST HAVE done something wrong, since God is just). However, their argumentation is not limited to the claim that Job must be somehow guilty: what is at stake at a more radical level is the meaning(lessness) of Job's suffering. Like Oedipus at Colonus, Job insists on the utter MEANINGLESSNESS of his suffering—as the title of Job 27 says: "Job Maintains His Integrity." As such, the Book of Job provides what is perhaps the first exemplary case of the critique of ideology in the human history, laying bare the basic discursive strategies of legitimizing suffering: Job's properly ethical dignity resides in the way he persistently detects the notion that his suffering can have any meaning, either punishment for his past sins or the trial of his faith, against the three theologians who bombard him with possible meanings—and, surprisingly, God takes his side at the end, claiming that every word that Job spoke was true, while every word of the three theologians was false.

And it is with regard to this assertion of the meaninglessness of Job's suffering that one should insist on the parallel between Job and Christ, on Job's suffering announcing the Way of the Cross: Christ's suffering is ALSO meaningless, not an act of meaningful exchange. The difference, of course, is that, in the case of Christ, the gap that separates the suffering desperate man (Job) from God is transposed into God himself, as His own radical splitting or, rather, self-abandonment. 2 What this means is that one should risk a much more radical than usual reading of Christ's "Father, why did you forsake me?" than the usual one: since we are dealing here not with the gap between man and God, but with the split in God himself, the solution cannot be for the God to (re)appear in all his majesty, revealing to Christ the deeper meaning of his suffering (that he was the Innocent sacrificed to redeem humanity). Christ's "Father, why did you forsake me?" is not the complaint to the OMNIPOTENT capricious God-Father whose ways are indecipherable to us, mortal humans, but the complaint which hints at the IMPOTENT God: it is rather like the child who, after believing in his father's powerfulness, with horror discovers that his father cannot help him. (To evoke an example from recent history: at the moment of Christ's crucifixion, God-the-Father is in a position somewhat similar to that of the Bosnian father, made to witness the gang rape of his own daughter, and to endure the ultimate trauma of her compassionate-reproaching gaze: "Father, why did you forsake me"...) In short, with this "Father, why did you forsake me?" it is God-the-Father who effectively dies, revealing his utter impotence, and thereupon rises from the dead in the guise of the Holy Ghost.

Since the function of the obscene superego supplement of the (divine) Law is to mask this impotence of the big Other, and since Christianity REVEALS this impotence, it is, quite consequently, the first (and only) religion to radically leave behind the split between the official/public text and its obscene initiatic supplement: in it, there is no hidden untold story. In this precise sense, Christianity is the religion of Revelation: everything is revealed in it, no obscene superego supplement is accompanying its public message. In old Greek and Roman religions, the public text was always supplemented by secret initiatic rituals and orgies; on the other hand, all attempts to treat Christianity in the same way (to uncover Christ's "secret teaching" somehow encoded in the New Testament or found in apocryphal Gospels) amounts to its heretic reinscription into the pagan Gnostic tradition.

Apropos Christianity as "revealed religion," one should thus ask the inevitable stupid question: what is effectively revealed in it? That is to say, is it not that ALL religions reveal some mystery through the prophets to carry the divine message to humans; even those who insist on the impenetrability of the dieu obscur imply that there is some secret which resist in revelation, and in the Gnostic versions, this mystery which IS revealed to the selected few in some initiatic ceremony. Significantly, Gnostic reinscriptions of Christianity insist precisely on the presence of such a hidden message to be deciphered in the official Christian text. So what is revealed in Christianity is not just the entire content, but, more specifically, that THERE IS NOTHING - NO SECRET - TO BE REVEALED BEHIND IT. To paraphrase Hegel's famous formula from his Phenomenology, behind the curtain of the public text, there is only what we put there. Or, to formulate it even more pointedly, in more pathetic terms, what God reveals is not his hidden power, but only his impotence as such.

[Andrew Barnes]

The eightfold path:

1. Viewing reality objectively: I strive to do this by finding the most objective method of truth. The most objective method of truth, in a world polluted by subjective realities, is to look for independently verified understandings that can be attained regardless of cultural boundaries or personal understandings. The most objective way to understand essence is to know what is not essence and to deal in non-contradicting absolutes. Thus, I embrace science as a self-correcting, mostly objective methodology of understanding the universe, and I adhere as best I can to strict logical deduction in order to avoid personal pleas for something else.

2. The intention of freedom and harmlessness: Despite being a practiced martial artist, I do not lay a hand on people unless at the uttermost end of need (which is to say never, because I've never been in a situation that required viciously harming someone). I avoid verbal attacks on character and emotional ploys to sway people. I embrace libertarian politics and libertarian philosophy regarding will. This, I believe, is the best way for me to be free and harmless and to make sure that I do not inflict harm or subjugation on others either.

3. Truthful speaking: This is something you may think I don't do, but I don't view it that way. I speak with cold logic and yet without vindictiveness, and I make an effort to cushion people if I think that speaking a necessary thought will offend them. Fallacy is, to me, one of the worst things one can allow in their worldview if they are to find truth in things, which is why I am so outspoken against pointing it out and trying to avoid it myself (even though I still fail some times).

4. Non-harmful action: What is true should not be viewed as hurtful to anything except an opposed belief. What is not known should not be asserted as truth or belief. I speak against the second in an attempt to see not only to see if it might actually be known, but to see if some people may embrace ignorance when ignorance is due. But I never force someone into it, and I try despite any emotions that may rise not to incite people against me.

5. Non-harmful livelihood: I do not hunt. I have no intention of being in a business that may take advantage of others (politics or economics or the like). I went to school for music performance, and I make a meager existence giving voice lessons, working at a local store, and writing books in my spare time.

6. Efforts toward improvement: This is one of them. In these few days, I've already reconciled a previous bias I had against conflating different Jewish groups and studying more various topics regarding free will. I look for things that challenge me intellectually and physically, and debates like this are truly intellectually stimulating for me. They may provide constant reinforcement of my current beliefs or lack thereof or I may happen upon something that refutes me and makes me challenge my whole worldview.

7. Awareness to see things as they clearly are and not what I wish them to be, being aware of myself, and doing both without lust or fear: This should be evident. I've adopted a natural materialist worldview after a time as a theist because I did not see any evidence for what I wanted to see. As for me being aware, I do this myself through constant reflection (I haven't even been able to sleep for the past two nights because of the thoughts I've considered regarding just this thread) and attempts to illicit what other people see me as, lest I otherwise fall to confirmation bias. I do both of these things without avidly wishing to validate them or hiding from them in discussion (as many other atheists are wont to do).

8. Meditation: This is something I've fallen behind on, since I've been preoccupied with many things adjusting to a post-collegiate life. Nevertheless, I've spent hours before meditating for a variety of reasons (i.e. to consider weighty philosophy, to remove stress, to slow an admittedly hyperactive brain, to dissolve unwarranted anger toward someone, etc.)

In regards to the noble truths, this is something I've somehow been able to do at a very early age. I have almost no connection to money (to the degree that it actually almost causes problems in my life), and I've arisen beyond notions of heartbreak or hunger or most lesser forms of pain. Suffering still exists for me from a Humanistic standpoint; that is, I find personal suffering in the knowledge that there are many millions of people who are so far worse off than me and the melancholy that arises when I admit that I cannot do anything to help them at this current point in my life.

I admit that I do not fully adhere to the teaching of compromise/the Middle Way, as there is enough knowledge in this universe to realize that some things almost absolutely do exist and some things almost absolutely don't--I still accept the tiny possibility that I am the figment of someone else's solipsism, but such pondering is an unfalsifiable and unfruitful pursuit. Nevertheless, I avoid and abhor extremist philosophies (and I denounce even the extremists of my own antitheistic philosophy). I realize that nothing in this universe is likely permanent, that I am not even myself and that the atoms I call me are not the atoms I once called me, and that pain is not something to either fear or ignore.

I do not believe in a spiritual understanding of Nirvana. I do not believe in bodhisattvas or higher planes of existence or reincarnation cycles. I do not believe the Buddha was a magical man, even if he was a particularly thoughtful fellow. As I said before, the spiritual aspects of Buddhism are not held by me because they are things which I cannot experience except by my own desire to feel them inside me, and I am a logician before I am a Buddhist. Occam's Razor applies there and informs me that any notions I might have regarding spiritual experiences are more likely neurological phenomena.

Now, that being said, it's quite evident why a building seems majestic or a painting fine or a piece of music beautiful. Humans are patten seekers, and they are impressed unduly by patterns that they can sense without inherently being able to explain. A majestic building has within it architectural constructs that are mathematically flawless, and yet most people cannot verbalize exactly why they know such a thing. They know only that it fits so perfectly within their head, and a sweeping euphoria comes over them. Likewise, a good painting has a perfect balance of color and intrigue, and a particularly well-written song is a mathematical, harmonic masterpiece. The brain realizes this, but we aren't yet evolved enough for any but the most trained of specialists to explain it. I could quite easily explain to you why certain emotions are invoked in music and what constructs you are listening to at any point within it, but I would be just as awed by the building or the painting as anyone else, even though I know WHY I'm awed.

I do not need to always acknowledge the mathematical reason behind these things to enjoy them. I can let my emotions speak for me when they have a responsibility to. But the human sense of euphoria over the "beautiful" is pretty easily explained with modern knowledge of the mind and maths.

Figuring out if someone has good proof of God is not the ultimate truth. But it is a particularly good question, and so much (both good and bad) is done in the name of so many Gods that seem to not exist that validation of their existence would usher a new paradigm of human thought. Also, the God question (and the supernatural question in general) is something that both forces me to confront that which I have once turned away from, and it either reinforces my understanding of logic and rationality or, at some point in the future, may provide me with good knowledge against what I currently hold as a worldview.

Regarding why I made this thread, the most succinct answer is that I have a tendency to derail other threads, this is a particularly interesting topic to me, and it's not a particularly welcome topic to others. By making this thread here, I can avoid bringing rainclouds into the "what is your religion?" threads, I can have some good discussion on some very elusive concepts, and those who do not wish to see what I write (or be involved in the conversation at all) can have the ability to ignore this thread instead of clicking on some other one and getting broadsided by theological diatribes.

The best GOAL of this thread would be for me to find a proof that noone's ever found before. Maybe someone here has it, and maybe they'd only bring it up if given the motivation and platform to speak. I say it's the best goal because I'm not here to force people out of their religion (if I somehow actually do that, it's incidental), nor am I here to parade my thoughts around and be arrogant or something. But the purpose of making it was a self-inflicted cage, that I may protect other AVENites from myself.

I hope this is sufficient enough to explain why I think I am, at least to some degree, "Buddhist" (and I know that I'm not remotely as "devout" as someone who also accepts all the spiritual aspects of it) and to explain my initial intention behind making this thread. I hope you have a good night, and I also hope this post wasn't too long-winded. I assure you that I'm not trying to pull an argument from verbosity fallacy; I'm just severely hypergraphic and loquacious. ;)

Side note: I revel in the unknown. If someone cannot prove anything supernatural to me (and I am quite skeptical that such a thing is possible even if I allow the window of opportunity for it), that's fine. If I die not knowing why I was here, I will die knowing that at least I didn't make something up about it. If there is one thing I'm absolutely certain about, it's that I have no fear of the unknown or personal ignorance, even though I'm engaged in educating myself about everything I can. I do not learn because I am afraid of not knowing. I learn because there's so very much to learn, and because it's so very fun to learn. Knowledge is one of the greatest reasons for existence that I find for myself. But even then, I'm fully cognizant that I will pass from this world having known only a fraction of what there was, and that's... Well, I wish I could live long enough to learn everything, but it's alright that such wishful thinking will likely never come to pass.

Unless they invent a perfectly functioning robotic brain and come up with a transhumanist brain surgery that allows me to transfer my perceived self from a human body to a robotic one. But yeah... Wishful thinking.

Ciao!

To explain/justify/acknowledge that you use vocabulary here by way saying that you do the same 'face-to-face' simply confirms that you do what you do. It doesn't address the suggestions I made as to why you are doing it.

Eightfold Path. - all you have done here is reiterate, in your own, dubious interpretation, the path. you have no where answered my question as to why you are trying to follow the path. I know the eightfold path. I too try to follow it as best I can. But i know why i am doing so - to eventually escape samsara. WHY ARE YOU? simply stating that you follow the path does not answer the question.

Your lack of any insight into what the path is for is disappointing. All reasonable people follow most of these. They aren't neccessarily Buddhist. Most follow most of the 10 commandments. They aren't neccessarily Christian.

1. right belief or right understanding - This doesn't refers to the understanding that therre is much that we do not know, and cannot know. It refers to the relative/ultimate question. It refers to knowledge of samsara, that you would reject since it involves things you cannot measure.

2. right aspiration or right thoughts - you cite not physically or verbally attacking people. These belong below under right action and right speech. Right thoughts refer to learning discipline of the mind as it effects you. It means not thinking in illusion. It means consistently being aware of the impermenance of all things. It means being vigilent in curtailing those thoughts that contribute to your karma and hence keep you locked in samsara.

3. right speech - pretty much self explanatory but also includes speaking the truth where it would harm. not to lie, but not to speak. Also this includes speaking behind someone's back.

4. right conduct or right actions - again you talk about what you say. speech. what? This is not only concerned with not doing anything harmful to self or others, but also deals with not acting in any kind of way that adds to your karma.

I don't think I need to go on. My point I think is made already. It is impossible to consider simply the attempt to follow the eightfold PATH as enough to qualify yourself as Buddhist. you must be following the path TO SOMEWHERE. That somewhere doesn't fit in to your midset so you avoid the question posed - WHY DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A BUDDHIST. The question remains un-answered.

an aside. Under 'right actions' you say 'What is not known should not be asserted as truth or belief'. This is plain dismissive arrogance. If someone holds a belief, it is in no way required to be 'known'. By you or anybody else. If someone holds a belief, they are perfectly entitled to 'assert' that belief.

I think you have just demonstrated how you have entirely given over any understanding of the eightfold path to you wrong (in the Buddhist sense) thinking.

Firstly, i don't care for the westernized flim-flam re-wording that is sadly too common among those who try to bend the ancient wisdoms to their modern lives, rather than the other way around. Have the coutesy, when referring to the philosophy, of using the words with which it was expressed.

Next you really do excel yourself in your inability to grasp even the basics of the philosophy.

The Four Noble Truths.

you say - 'In regards to the noble truths, this is something I've somehow been able to do at a very early age'

no-one 'does' the noble truths. They are statement of (believed) truth. further, they refer to metaphysical, transcendent nature of samsara and the way out of samsara.

Suffering is universal

The origin of suffering is attachment

The cessation of suffering is attainable

Path to the cessation of suffering is detachment

Suffering is not simply the specific gross suffering you refer to in your attempt to position yourself in this process.

Just as an example, you are very attached to your position that for anything to be 'true' it must be logically demonstrable. This is itself an attachment. You don't loose that attachment by using the very attitude to which you are attached.

Hal earlier tried to show you how you will never find a place where you can converse with those of belief whilst refusing to let go of your starting point. I fully concur. you will never find anything if you are not willing to look with eyes that will see. There is a reason why Science and the Arts are taught seperately even to the point of different degree accredation. They speak a different language, as Hal has stated.

Buddhism speaks in a language that you refuse to even concede exists. You have, to a degree, shown that you follow the rules and mechanics set out in Buddhism but have no understanding at all about what it is all about. Why you are doing it.

This is not a problem. I think it is wonderful that you do try to follow the precepts of the eightfold path. Just as I am sure you try to follow most of the 10 commandments and the 'rules of living' of any other religion as they are all good for all. That's why they are there.

But please don't have the arrogance and plain disrespect to all Buddhists to claim that you are therefore Buddhist.

The joy of architecture, music and art is NOT about the way it happens. It is in the fact that it does happen. It cannot be reduced to mathematical or physiological or psychological formula.

A building that is NOT mathematically flawless, the piece of music that is not harmonious and the painting that is a mass of conflicting hue are all beautiful to someone.

you say that you are willing to concede a point if it is proven to you. The trouble is, the points being made by most of your detractors here are concerning the very criteria by which you demand something be proven. your criteria are the wrong criteria when trying to understand the religious and spiritual.

I don't believe in God and I don't believe there ever was a creation (biblical or scientific) as I don't believe there ever was a beginning but it is a waste of time trying to argue these points as an agreed conclusion will never be reached. This is the point. It is great to enjoy a platform on which one can proclaim a belief or viewpoint on such grand matters, but to have these viewpoints continually torn apart by someone who at just 22 thinks he is somehow privy to the 'real' truth and that ergo, everyone else's truth is wrong is rude, disrespectful and to not actually be aware of this shows a worrying lack of human understanding.

I am exactly twice your age BK and you can trust me when I tell you that you have much to come that will completely turn your life and what you think you know upside down.

Get off your high horse and start listening to others with some respect and a willingness tolearn.

You say you began this thread to learn, yet those of us with more experience of dealing with others can tell very clearly that, despite your protestations, you are only really here to pontificate and try to show off your impressive knowledge of an eclectic mix of facts. Facts are all well and good, but you have to knowe what to do with them. Grow up you petulent little boy.

[Sally]

[i think we have about the same basic conclusion regarding dogmatic, organized monotheism. I can appreciate a theist who at least recognizes the ludicrous hypocrisy of their church machines (they're a lot better in my book than those who try to justify it).

If you're speaking of Christianity (and you usually are, as are others when they talk about "religion"), it is not a monotheistic religion. To my mind, the reason it had to develop in such a dogmatic, organized fashion is because the central story of its gods is so convoluted and illogical, it's hard to grasp without a very determined bunch of proselytizers.

[BadKarma]

Warning: parts of this post are in spoilers. People who are spiritually sensitive would do well to NOT click on them, because I'm actually speaking my mind for once instead of biting my tongue. Further quotes regarding the spoilered sections of this post will be summarily ignored if found filled with spite for what I say. If you wish to have me respond to your opinion regarding these spoilers, it would behoove you to be more restrained and courteous than I'm about to not be. You have been duly noted.

Why do I follow the path? I think it's a nice set of ideals.

And no, most people don't follow the Ten Commandments. Four of them are entirely useless, two are nonsensical and go against basic human impulse, and the only unique one (false witness) gets thrown out the window when someone wants something. Most people in the world don't even know the Ten Commandments (including a large number of Christians).

Now. Responses to your responses.

1. Actually, no disagreement there.

2. Yeah. That's what I do. I don't think in illusions, I discipline my mind to avoid its more emotional effects upon my perception, and I realize that everything we know is the title of a Kansas song. Now I throw the question to you for a moment. Do you realize that not a single atom in your body is as it was when you were born? You literally are not the same being any more, and the memories you have are only held there by neurons that passed the information along before dying off. Every single cell has been replaced, and every single atom has shifted away. My hand today was not my hand a year ago. If that's not a realization of truth in the universe and impermanence in everything, I don't know what is.

3. Harm is subjective. I posit in my worldview that cumulative, tested knowledge always trumps a perceived violation to belief structure, and that speaking words that would offend an ego are important than not speaking if it does more harm for that ego to live in a shadow.

4. I don't actually know what you were saying with that first part...

But the second? I consider myself VAGUELY Buddhist because I like some of the philosophy of Buddhism (which I said before; I never said I was anywhere close to devout). I have a dharmacakra as my avatar because it soothes me to watch it and fits with my name. The name itself is actually not remotely related to Buddhism; it comes from a memetic story I had in high school, and I always enjoyed utilizing it as a chat handle. I don't primarily identify as a Buddhist, and when people ask my worldview, I first and foremost say that I am a skeptic material naturalist Humanist atheist, because those are more adequate identifiers of myself than Buddhism. I think it's somewhat applicable to me, because I feel I'm following that path, and the point I hope to get to is a point where I have more knowledge of the world around me than I did before.

Regarding dismissive arrogance and truth/belief? You say you follow the path. You also say you do it to escape the cycle of rebirth (samsara quickly defined for anyone else here), and that it's important to not think in illusion or hold ideas of permanence. This is not just "dismissive" on my part when I say this:

I firmly assert that anyone who holds a belief contrary to actual evidence is thinking in illusion and holding ideas of permanence. Anyone who comes to a firm conclusion about the world or part of it without actually studying or properly understanding it is avidly harming themselves, the worldview they could have, and their capacity for knowledge. ANYONE. This holds true for religious and non-religious beliefs. If someone comes to a conclusion regarding a particular political stance, in spite of first studying it properly, they are holding fast to what they consider a permanent idea. Confirmation bias sets in, and their brain does its best to subconsciously weed out anything that does not already adhere to their beliefs.

This is why I do not come to a conclusion (or at least try not to) regarding any claim until it can be demonstrated as evident. I will respond more at the bottom of the page.

Just as an example, you are very attached to your position that for anything to be 'true' it must be logically demonstrable. This is itself an attachment. You don't loose that attachment by using the very attitude to which you are attached.

Then I am not a Buddhist by your standards. And you are not sane by mine. You believe it entirely wrong of me to have read wrongly what it means to be Buddhist. I apologize for not knowing Sanskrit and having to read of it and look at it in English.

And you know what I say to you?

You are attached to a ludicrous concept that people are reincarnated through some mystical vibration of sorts until they can attain moksha and break from the cycle. I find more sanity listening to Sean Hannity. And that's saying something.

you say that you are willing to concede a point if it is proven to you. The trouble is, the points being made by most of your detractors here are concerning the very criteria by which you demand something be proven. your criteria are the wrong criteria when trying to understand the religious and spiritual.

Your criteria are vapid and wasteful and apparently devoid of even the slightest ability to achieve consensus on the most basic aspects of real reality. I reject the criteria because faith is not a virtue. If the supernatural cannot be shown by testing or independent verification, and if the simplest notions of each supernatural claim are necessarily false due to what we actually know about the universe, then it should be treated as false. Simple as that.

I don't believe in God and I don't believe there ever was a creation (biblical or scientific) as I don't believe there ever was a beginning but it is a waste of time trying to argue these points as an agreed conclusion will never be reached. This is the point. It is great to enjoy a platform on which one can proclaim a belief or viewpoint on such grand matters, but to have these viewpoints continually torn apart by someone who at just 22 thinks he is somehow privy to the 'real' truth and that ergo, everyone else's truth is wrong is rude, disrespectful and to not actually be aware of this shows a worrying lack of human understanding.

I am exactly twice your age BK and you can trust me when I tell you that you have much to come that will completely turn your life and what you think you know upside down.

Get off your high horse and start listening to others with some respect and a willingness tolearn.

You say you began this thread to learn, yet those of us with more experience of dealing with others can tell very clearly that, despite your protestations, you are only really here to pontificate and try to show off your impressive knowledge of an eclectic mix of facts. Facts are all well and good, but you have to knowe what to do with them. Grow up you petulent little boy.

No. I am privy to how the real truth is learned. I am not privy to the real truth itself, nor is anyone else, because we haven't found that out yet.

I am exactly half your age (which should mean nothing to a man who believes in reincarnation anyway, should it?) and you should do well to trust me when I explain that the self dies when the brain dies, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that there is a vibration of the self, and that the only "reincarnation" we can really understand is one where the atoms that once made a body are now in another body. Further, you should also trust me when I say that the universe as we know it most certainly had a beginning (even if that beginning is part of a cosmic expansion/contraction cycle). Lastly, you should ponder for a moment why you don't believe in God but do believe in any form of reincarnation. You're skeptical about the one, but that skepticism seems to have fallen to the wayside when considering whether you'll be reincarnated or not. Of course, I doubt you'll ever actually do that, so I'll just continue.

I've given respect, and I've so far been granted nonsense. You've called me petulant for asking for some proof, because I can no longer trust the "firmly held beliefs" of a spiritual person than I can the "firmly held beliefs" of a man in the sanitarium who thinks we're all robots. I am not going to show respect any more in this post, but I will at least give people the option to not look at it if they don't want (as it may well burn many bridges here for those who do; again, do not click on this final spoiler if you can't handle some particularly snide criticism):

People who hold beliefs, especially religious faiths, are, in my particularly skeptical and well-learned view, obviously delusional. People who have faiths have either been brought up since childhood, or pulled in later, to any of a variety of systems for which absolutely no evidence anywhere EVER has surfaced. They have come to accept as revealed truths what an outsider considers poppycock or magic. They have been told to believe for the sake of believing; told to accept the notion, in some religions at least, that faith is a virtue. It is not a virtue. It is a shield--a blinder placed upon a person from reality, either by themselves or their commander--that deflects understandings of the world as it is for aspirations of the world as it never was or will be. It corrupts minds and poisons them against modern knowledge of a vast universe, that they may hold on to their tiny gods in their tiny worlds and think themselves tall instead of realizing that they are dust motes atop a larger dust mote floating in a beam of sun. These brains of these people will grow and wither and die, having never grasped the concept that not only is their belief structure not grand, but that it has held them away from a truly grand spectacle of a vast and ancient universe far larger than all imagining. These faiths espoused by their shamans and their preachers and their gurus can and do lead hundreds of millions of people into a chaotic network of contradictory religious systems that all call themselves the truth. They take our precious if unlikely evolutionary gift--our abstract brain--and misapply its amazing and potentially universally unique potential toward fabricating false deities and flaunting fallacies. Instead of teaching children to wonder about the marvel of a quark or the fury of a quasar, they instill in such beautiful minds any of a variety of insidious, memetic social viruses an idea that this world is parochial and the scope of its existence just as narrow.

Religious beliefs are a remnant of a bygone age of magic and mysticism, held on throughout most cultures because of an all-too-arrogant, all-too-human fear of death. This world does not need such things if such things are not true, and no-one has ever shown the slightest shred of reason that any should be believed. Belief is a blindfold. Faith is a mind killer. They are not, nor have they ever been, nor were any of the multitudes of them anywhere close to being, pathways to the knowledge of our universe. I do not respect faith. I think it abhorrent. I respect the people who have it as I respect all people, for even those with bad choices deserve goodwill. But this is not dismissive arrogance. This is calculated. This is purposeful, and this is unapologetic. Belief without evidence, in a world populated by massive libraries of evidence, is deplorable. It is perhaps one of the greatest behavioral follies of mankind.

If someone is to change my mind regarding their concept of the supernatural, I demand a freaking REASON. I dismiss the notion that my worldview is narrow. My worldview is so vast and so open as to allow for all of the real reality and to absorb whatever parts of it are found by the best of my species simply for the sake of knowing it. The narrow worldview lies not in the man who admits himself a pile of flowing atoms, brought together however fortunately for him by the mechanistic process by which all life on his planet spreads. The narrow worldview lies not in the man who finds himself catatonic for hours, trying to imagine with all his essence just how inconceivably large his universe is, how inconceivably small he seems within it, and how inconceivably special it makes him feel to know that he had a time, however brief of a cosmic nanosecond it was, to marvel in the incomprehensibility of the staggering and ever-expanding reality around him.

No. It lies, I say, in the woman who thinks her ancestor was made 6000 years ago by a deranged nepotistic psychopath. It lies in the man who thinks he will ascend to a magical paradise for the small price of martyring himself and killing innocents. It lies in the child who thinks there is a trio of eight-armed superhumans who watch over existence. It lies in the old matron who talks to the spirits of the departed, or the man who thinks his eternal essence can be moved into a new body on the basis of his actions in previous lives. It lies in the solipsist and the conspiracy theorist and the anti-intellectual who never managed to consider that there's actually more to life than what is made up in fairy tales. It lies in anyone who forsakes truth for comfort and study for insanity. It lies in their shared refusal to inquire about the world and explore it without preconceptions.

These people are, indeed, perfectly capable of asserting their beliefs. I would defend them against anyone who moved to take that right away. But that does not mean I should think it wise of them to do so, or respect any of their notions any more than what is absolutely required for me not to laugh. I think it small. I think you small. I think you're wasting your entire life believing in complete, pants-shittingly-loony nonsense. You want to dismiss the scientific community and the knowledge gathered by millions of highly educated geniuses across the centuries in favor of the magical ramblings of a single three-thousand-year-old philosopher who thought peoples' everlasting supersouls could psychically merge with a supreme being. That's fine. Be my guest. You wish to call me petulant? Go ahead (although I find it quite ironic). You wish to have me think that you're not crazy? Nope. As I have apparently demonstrated a lack of proper understanding regarding the specific teachings of Buddhism, you have demonstrated a lack of understanding in basic physics, chemistry, neurology, biology, cosmology, logic, tact, and I would dare say sanity.

I started this thread so that I could keep myself away from people in other threads out of courtesy to them. I've done so because never has a scientific illiterate been able to disprove a single notion of modern science, and constantly have spiritual illiterates been able to walk circles around the supernatural. Never has science failed to provide evidence for its claims, and always has the spiritual remained entirely out of reach to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the onus. Never has a scientifically-minded person had to make up loony crap and insult their opponent just to get an edge up in the reality department, and always have the spiritually-minded people been forced to spread bald lies and indoctrinate youths and attack the world champion of Awesome-Shit-We-All-Get-To-Use-And-Know. Age is irrelevant when discussing sanity, and you are a forty-four-year-old man who believes in a fairy tale about eternal souls that cycle through the animal kingdom. Don't tell me to grow up if you haven't done so yourself, read a damned neurology textbook some time, and go somewhere else if you get so offended at a man for critiquing the truth claims of magic.

[BadKarma]

If you're speaking of Christianity (and you usually are, as are others when they talk about "religion"), it is not a monotheistic religion. To my mind, the reason it had to develop in such a dogmatic, organized fashion is because the central story of its gods is so convoluted and illogical, it's hard to grasp without a very determined bunch of proselytizers.

Obviously you're talking about the Three-in-one stuff. Nevertheless, they claim it's all the same dude, and they're certainly not true polytheists. And I was actually talking about Christianity AND Islam. Judaism isn't as implied there because it's a non-proselytizing faith and there are so few Jews compared to the Christians and Muslims (who kinda dominate the religious market), and Ba'hai... Well, I don't know WHAT is going on with Ba'hai. Don't think I've ever actually met a practitioner.

That being said, most religions, however convoluted and illogical (and from my stance, they're all both to some degree, even if a few may be positive social forces), are very easy to grasp when they're fed habitually to small children under the age of eight. People who don't buy Christianity--or renounce it at a later age--are definitely not doing it because the Triune God makes no sense. There are FAR more egregious problems than that.

I'm sorry if I was too unclear, I should probably have phrased it better. What I meant was "Pointing out that [religion is] man-made seems a bit odd to me. Don't you as a theist [who believes in god, although not religious] find that really ironical?"

I posit, dear Henny, that it's all ironic. People are skeptics about every single supernatural belief on the planet except the one they were indoctrinated or proselytized into. A theist who thinks that the religions which perpetuate their vague belief system are in some way flawed is simply a theist who ignores the opinions of all those in the organized religion.

I find that no more ironic than the fact that they dismiss out of hand the other one hundred BILLION (or more) people who have lived and died and had completely different deities with the exact same level of belief, evidence, and expectation as those who live today.

Although I could still be missing what you actually regard as ironic... Sorry if I did that.

Also, regarding your second post? Great read.

[Human]

The awe of a majestic building, the beauty of a fine painting and the reveree of a beautiful peice of music. These are not logic, have no purpose and defy explanation. Yet they are the beauty and staff of life.

They do not defy explanation. When our brains experience something that we, for some reason or other, find pleasant, it emits chemicals that create the feeling you get when you admire a beautiful painting or listen to a great piece of music. It's simply chemistry, nothing more, nothing less.

(EDIT: Yes, i know this is oversimplification. I'm not a neurologist.)

Open yourself to the joy of the unknown. When you experience the effect. Simply experience it. don't analyse it. Through the experience, you know it's truth, without ever knowing why. you don't need to. you simply know it's truth. This is belief. It is not logical. It just is.

metta.

Belief is not logical, therefore it tells us nothing about reality (or "truth"). Not nessecarily harmful, but essentially useless in explaining anything.

The way i see it the "joy of the unknown" is in finding out what that unknown is. To not just admire the faraway stars on the night sky but to also study them.

[Asterion Orestes]

BadKarma:

the material and the natural can both be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt

I find myself increasingly skeptical of the material's absolute reality--but that's another story.

Among the shadows & doubts is a notion aired in the recent PBS series The Fabric Of the Cosmos. Not sure who came up with this hypothesis, but it holds that our universe is a holographic projection based on information on its two-dimensional boundary--in some kind of analogy with a black hole. Make of that what you will--& a positivist would presumably label it unverifiable & hence meaningless.

Human:

To not just admire the faraway stars on the night sky but to also study them.

And to experience a little frustration because you can't get there from here!

[Andrew Barnes]

BK

My final post in this disappointing thread where such potential for the sharing of thoughts and ideas has, from start, been dominated by one person's world view and your determination to set it against all others.

I simply wish to point out one last instance of where you fail to appreciate anythng of the other peoples position, as I see it.

In your last spoiler you posit that all belief in the religious or spiritual therefore means that then hold of such views and/or beliefs is choosing such a view against science and logic. This is simply not the case and simply shows how, for you, the two are in opposition.

to assume that I need to read a book on neurology (I have read plenty) or that I reject the science of the material world because I ALSO hold beliefs concerning mattersd BEYOND science is indicative of you inability to consider more than the either/or of the matter. This is where you deny yourself of so much.

I am have never disputed accepted facts of the material world and I am very happy to see such facts fit seemlessly with my beliefs of the non-material.

to suggest that one is neccessarily exclusive of the other, as I say, does nothing other than demonstrate your inability to see beyond your narrow view. To see more does not require denying the already known.

[Human]

I am have never disputed accepted facts of the material world and I am very happy to see such facts fit seemlessly with my beliefs of the non-material.

So you're a deist?

[BadKarma]

I find myself increasingly skeptical of the material's absolute reality--but that's another story.

Among the shadows & doubts is a notion aired in the recent PBS series The Fabric Of the Cosmos. Not sure who came up with this hypothesis, but it holds that our universe is a holographic projection based on information on its two-dimensional boundary--in some kind of analogy with a black hole. Make of that what you will--& a positivist would presumably label it unverifiable & hence meaningless.

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt" is not the same as absolute, Asterion. It means that we are as sure that the stuff actually exists as we're plausibly capable of being, not that we're 100% sure. There's always the hypothesis of Last Thursdayism, when God made the entire universe as it appeared Last Thursday, and we're all only a week old. It's an unfalsifiable claim and one that seems patently absurd, but it is nevertheless "potentially right", given the parameters of a God's supposed power.

And that other stuff you said is String Theory, to some degree. I think the mathematical evidence can point to the notion that such a thing is POSSIBLY correct (more of a possibility than some things) even if we don't have a way of directly observing it. I reserve judgement on my acceptance of such a notion because it frankly does need more study, but yeah... We may all be pop-out cards! :)

To not just admire the faraway stars on the night sky but to also study them.

And to experience a little frustration because you can't get there from here!

Yup.

BK

My final post in this disappointing thread where such potential for the sharing of thoughts and ideas has, from start, been dominated by one person's world view and your determination to set it against all others.

I simply wish to point out one last instance of where you fail to appreciate anythng of the other peoples position, as I see it.

In your last spoiler you posit that all belief in the religious or spiritual therefore means that then hold of such views and/or beliefs is choosing such a view against science and logic. This is simply not the case and simply shows how, for you, the two are in opposition.

to assume that I need to read a book on neurology (I have read plenty) or that I reject the science of the material world because I ALSO hold beliefs concerning mattersd BEYOND science is indicative of you inability to consider more than the either/or of the matter. This is where you deny yourself of so much.

I am have never disputed accepted facts of the material world and I am very happy to see such facts fit seemlessly with my beliefs of the non-material.

to suggest that one is neccessarily exclusive of the other, as I say, does nothing other than demonstrate your inability to see beyond your narrow view. To see more does not require denying the already known.

Well, if you won't respond to this, then I still wish you a good time doing stuff.

And no. I didn't hold such a view. I said relatively clearly that supernatural beliefs are unverified and apparently unverifiable, and that many people who have them are led to oppose science. There are obviously many people who can compartmentalize.

As for the rest of your post, it's a huge argument from ignorance, and all I deny myself at the moment is unfounded assertions about things that don't seem to be there.

In regards to disputing accepted facts of the material world, let me remind you of your hypothesis regarding how light only exists because we can see it, your notion that life vibrations transfer from body to body, your statement that the universe as we know it didn't have a beginning, and your comments regarding how intelligent design could "fill the holes in the evolution theory". None of that is scientific, three of those things are just false, and the fourth (or rather, the second) is both false and nonsensical.

Nevertheless, have fun with other things. If you ever come up with a reason for me to actually think your reincarnation stuff actually exists, I'll still be glad to hear it.

So you're a deist?

He said he didn't believe in a God (or a finite universe, either). So no, I doubt it...

[Human]

So you're a deist?

He said he didn't believe in a God (or a finite universe, either). So no, I doubt it...

He also said:

I am have never disputed accepted facts of the material world and I am very happy to see such facts fit seemlessly with my beliefs of the non-material.

And the only religious belief system (If deism can be called that) i've heard of which accepts facts of the material world and doesn't make claims that contradict these facts is deism. If you know some other religious belief system that does that, please enlighten me.

EDIT: I just realised that back when i still identified as christian my belief system had more in common with deism than christianity.