In the previous posts you wrote about God as being able to conceive of the universe, essentially a being whose map is the territory. But in the third paragraph of the last post you describe a god that is the conception of the universe (or all possible universes). Or perhaps better, a god that is the range of all possible states in the state-space of the universe. The second version of God is just a mental construct and is pretty far afield from any Christian theology, since Christians at least postulate a god that exists. To label such an idea "God" and call the study of it theology makes no more sense than to label Obama "God" and call the study of American politics theology.
OTOH, your first description of God... what conclusion can you draw from such an idea of God that advances knowledge in any way? How can it improve the quality of our maps? It's good to poke holes in other people's ideas, but that's just wielding logic. A theologian must do more than apply logic. He must build his own beliefs upon a theory of God, or else he is merely a philosopher. There are not many lessons from history that bear out 100%, but no advancement in the understanding of the universe has rested on a theory of God. Most often people have to step away from theology in order to get anywhere.
Numbers are also just mental constructs. So why is theology a waste of time when mathematics isn't? Mathematicians are zealous about identifying their assumptions and eliminating unneeded assumptions. A Mathematician would never want to shoehorn in an assumption for cultural reasons. This commitment and the associated rigor that goes with it are essential to the value of Mathematics, which is that complicated intellectual structures can be safely constructed, their use can be properly defined, and their correctness can be easily communicated. But shoehorning in assumptions and multiplying assumptions are a theologian’s bread and butter.
That's exactly what I mean by Platonic ideas not being adequate to our level of understanding. We're finding that genetic information exists beyond what's coded in DNA. The map is not the territory. It's our concepts of the world that are pale shadows of reality, not the other way around.
More than just discrete sequences, but any system at all may have been imagined "in the beginning" by God. This adds nothing to help our understanding of the system. It also does nothing to help our understanding of God since theologians have no way of finding out whether God really did imagine such things.
The I've been misinformed. I thought Many Worlds was still a legitimate view. Of course there are infinite universes where you die off, but this doesn't matter as long as there're some universes where you don't. And yeah, entropy will probably make all universes unlivable at some point.
Ok, I'm taking a liberty by assuming infinitely branching universes.
In such a system, you will find yourself at every point in time in a universe such that you're still alive. You're more likely to find yourself in worlds where you had the highest probability of survival.
If you played Russian Roulette 100 times, you would survive. I do not recommend this, since you'd probably survive with some horrible freak injury rather than by never being shot in the head.
Think of it as survivors' bias except with the tail wagging the dog.
And I'm not quite right to say you will never die. You will only live as long as there is some possible future universe where you could live. If it becomes absolutely physically impossible for you to survive, then you'll die.
BTW, your probability of survival goes up if you consider this post nonsense, so you will most likely find yourself in a universe where you hold that opinion.
I'm confused. Do you think the evidence doesn't exist just because you don't know about it?
Anyway, there's lots of info about the origin of humanity out there just waiting for you to study it. I don't think you need me to help you find it, however I will recommend going to the nearest university and ask around there.
"Meaning" is something minds give to events. God either doesn't exist or is not yet knowable, so there's no knowable purpose to anything except what we can give. There's no such thing as a soul.
These are not just my opinions, they are the current state of knowledge. These questions used to be big in the same way that "If the Earth is moving, how come the speed of light is the same in every direction?" is a big question. That is, until you stop looking at the problem all wrong.
Anybody studying theology, I mean, seriously trying to understand the world from a religious perspective, is wasting their time. Christian philosophy, like any philosophy that adheres to Platonic notion of ideas, is totally incapable of dealing with what we're finding out these days.
There aren't firm natural explanations for existence, though there are speculative ones. But the evidence is that humans came about by chance, whether or not the universe as a whole was purposeful.
Why is that wrong? Copying is a free speech issue, for instance. While I don't necessarily agree, the argument could be made that the right to copy is more important than the right to control one's own work.
My own way of thinking is that an author should not be able to control the copying of their work except the initial decision to publish, but should be guaranteed part of any profits made from it. This is for artistic works. I don't think this applies very well to applications.
GPL was created to achieve particular goals within the current system. We should not avoid reforming the system just to keep the GPL effective.
You can see the reason in what we did after the fall of the Soviet Union. We kept our bases all over the world. Only two countries really won World War 2, but for the US that was one too many.
We've reached the point where the true believers are actually in power, not just pandered to by the cynical types. Luckily that hasn't happened at the presidential level yet, but it sure has in Congress and the state legislatures.
Slashdot Mirror
And you'll never look for yourself.
I'm pretty sure IWar had a top speed for your ship.
In the previous posts you wrote about God as being able to conceive of the universe, essentially a being whose map is the territory. But in the third paragraph of the last post you describe a god that is the conception of the universe (or all possible universes). Or perhaps better, a god that is the range of all possible states in the state-space of the universe. The second version of God is just a mental construct and is pretty far afield from any Christian theology, since Christians at least postulate a god that exists. To label such an idea "God" and call the study of it theology makes no more sense than to label Obama "God" and call the study of American politics theology.
OTOH, your first description of God ... what conclusion can you draw from such an idea of God that advances knowledge in any way? How can it improve the quality of our maps? It's good to poke holes in other people's ideas, but that's just wielding logic. A theologian must do more than apply logic. He must build his own beliefs upon a theory of God, or else he is merely a philosopher. There are not many lessons from history that bear out 100%, but no advancement in the understanding of the universe has rested on a theory of God. Most often people have to step away from theology in order to get anywhere.
Numbers are also just mental constructs. So why is theology a waste of time when mathematics isn't? Mathematicians are zealous about identifying their assumptions and eliminating unneeded assumptions. A Mathematician would never want to shoehorn in an assumption for cultural reasons. This commitment and the associated rigor that goes with it are essential to the value of Mathematics, which is that complicated intellectual structures can be safely constructed, their use can be properly defined, and their correctness can be easily communicated. But shoehorning in assumptions and multiplying assumptions are a theologian’s bread and butter.
That's exactly what I mean by Platonic ideas not being adequate to our level of understanding. We're finding that genetic information exists beyond what's coded in DNA. The map is not the territory. It's our concepts of the world that are pale shadows of reality, not the other way around.
More than just discrete sequences, but any system at all may have been imagined "in the beginning" by God. This adds nothing to help our understanding of the system. It also does nothing to help our understanding of God since theologians have no way of finding out whether God really did imagine such things.
The I've been misinformed. I thought Many Worlds was still a legitimate view. Of course there are infinite universes where you die off, but this doesn't matter as long as there're some universes where you don't. And yeah, entropy will probably make all universes unlivable at some point.
Ok, I'm taking a liberty by assuming infinitely branching universes.
In such a system, you will find yourself at every point in time in a universe such that you're still alive. You're more likely to find yourself in worlds where you had the highest probability of survival.
If you played Russian Roulette 100 times, you would survive. I do not recommend this, since you'd probably survive with some horrible freak injury rather than by never being shot in the head.
Think of it as survivors' bias except with the tail wagging the dog.
And I'm not quite right to say you will never die. You will only live as long as there is some possible future universe where you could live. If it becomes absolutely physically impossible for you to survive, then you'll die.
BTW, your probability of survival goes up if you consider this post nonsense, so you will most likely find yourself in a universe where you hold that opinion.
I'm confused. Do you think the evidence doesn't exist just because you don't know about it?
Anyway, there's lots of info about the origin of humanity out there just waiting for you to study it. I don't think you need me to help you find it, however I will recommend going to the nearest university and ask around there.
"Meaning" is something minds give to events. God either doesn't exist or is not yet knowable, so there's no knowable purpose to anything except what we can give. There's no such thing as a soul.
These are not just my opinions, they are the current state of knowledge. These questions used to be big in the same way that "If the Earth is moving, how come the speed of light is the same in every direction?" is a big question. That is, until you stop looking at the problem all wrong.
Anybody studying theology, I mean, seriously trying to understand the world from a religious perspective, is wasting their time. Christian philosophy, like any philosophy that adheres to Platonic notion of ideas, is totally incapable of dealing with what we're finding out these days.
The only things my hands can't touch is themselves.
One implication of this is that you will never die.
Or perhaps all possible universes exist so we were bound to exist in one of them.
And it's conceivable that the universe is not caused by anything and therefore doesn't have a reason.
To my untrained brain, we aren't able to explain the reason for even the smallest events. It could be that such reasons are not to be found.
Discovered ... or applied?
I am sad to hear that the youths of today wasting their lives.
There aren't firm natural explanations for existence, though there are speculative ones. But the evidence is that humans came about by chance, whether or not the universe as a whole was purposeful.
This will probably make their cyber defense efforts easier to infiltrate.
He was already thinking presidency. It's inevitable that the first black president would be clean as a whistle.
Why is that wrong? Copying is a free speech issue, for instance. While I don't necessarily agree, the argument could be made that the right to copy is more important than the right to control one's own work.
My own way of thinking is that an author should not be able to control the copying of their work except the initial decision to publish, but should be guaranteed part of any profits made from it. This is for artistic works. I don't think this applies very well to applications.
GPL was created to achieve particular goals within the current system. We should not avoid reforming the system just to keep the GPL effective.
But in the real world the civilizations don't all start on the same year, so this is a bonus.
I think it's safe to say that the risk of meltdown at Fukushima was pretty low without the tsunami, but it was still incompetently run.
Exactly. They didn't lose as badly as they could have, but they didn't really win, nor did France.
"Yeah, for definitions of "common" of perhaps one in a thousand." Where did you pull that number from?
You can see the reason in what we did after the fall of the Soviet Union. We kept our bases all over the world. Only two countries really won World War 2, but for the US that was one too many.
We've reached the point where the true believers are actually in power, not just pandered to by the cynical types. Luckily that hasn't happened at the presidential level yet, but it sure has in Congress and the state legislatures.
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/288/643/6c6.jpg
Isn't that a reason to buy futures?