posted
Tres, along a similar vein: that was brought up in Carl Sagan's Contact (book), where somewhere not too deep in pi (in base 11, IIRC), there is a perfect circle of 1s in a square of zeros.
If this were true, that a perfect circle is to be found deep in this constant, that would be a pretty convincing chunk of evidence for an omnipotent being that could even alter the rules of mathematics.
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quote:Does omnipotence include the ability to decide what is logically possible and what isn't?
Doesn't matter, unless you think "best outcome" is definitionally "an outcome obtained through the experience of pain."
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by sinflower: Nobody said God was nice.
really?
God being nice and loving was a Christian invention.
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If I thought it might go anywhere, I might have pointed out that the idea that this is the world we'd live in (or 'very much like it') if God were actively evil and omnipotent is pretty silly, because there are tons of people - even those living in 3rd world countries - who do enjoy lots of their lives and consider their lives to be something precious, meaningful, and overall good.
I might also point out that talking at length about how awful some people in the world have it isn't actually a way to empathize with them. I might go still further in saying that perhaps if one has time to get angry on the Internet, the world maybe isn't quite similar to what it would be given an evil, omnipotent creator.
I might have said those things if you were, say, Mucus or White Whale just as two examples. But you're MightyCow, given lately to frequent malicious misinterpretations and pretty nasty posts. So you got the Hyperbole Train joke.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: If I thought it might go anywhere, I might have pointed out ...
You might, but you're Rakeesh, and would rather make a cheap one-liner than a substantive contribution to discussion - OW! Right back at you
Schoolyard insults aside, you'll notice that I didn't say anything about this God being perfectly evil, or trying to make the world the most painful and vile existence possible.
Let's say a somewhat evil, somewhat ambivalent, childish, petty God. A God like that might make things OK overall, but sprinkle in some seriously messed up stuff like serial killers, natural disasters, racial strife, warring religions, child molesters, plagues, starvation, and so forth.
A God like that could make part of the world have so much wealth, health, and freedom that they waste their time arguing over silly points of theology over a magical electronic community, while making other parts of the world so poor and neglected that their standard of living is so low that most of the first group can't even imagine it.
A God who doesn't mind suffering, can't be bothered to care if His creation get along, and intentionally makes His presence and desires nebulous and contentious fits perfectly with the observed world.
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quote:You might, but you're Rakeesh, and would rather make a cheap one-liner than a substantive contribution to discussion - OW! Right back at you [Wink]
With you? Yes. You're a pretty hostile poster lately.
quote: Let's say a somewhat evil, somewhat ambivalent, childish, petty God. A God like that might make things OK overall, but sprinkle in some seriously messed up stuff like serial killers, natural disasters, racial strife, warring religions, child molesters, plagues, starvation, and so forth.
It's surprising that when you add in four new words to describe this God you're discussing, your meaning radically changes!
quote: A God like that could make part of the world have so much wealth, health, and freedom that they waste their time arguing over silly points of theology over a magical electronic community, while making other parts of the world so poor and neglected that their standard of living is so low that most of the first group can't even imagine it.
Pointing out that we can't imagine it doesn't earn you any credibility. Lecturing about how awful it is and how much we take for granted doesn't actually mean you empathize with the people. In fact, the way you're discussing it simply reeks of someone up on their pedestal, and unwilling to get down. You're right about one thing, though. Such a grossly imperfect God might very well create a being that would not only waste their time arguing over silly points of theology, but repeatedly and maliciously misinterpret the words of those who disagree with him.
quote:A God who doesn't mind suffering, can't be bothered to care if His creation get along, and intentionally makes His presence and desires nebulous and contentious fits perfectly with the observed world.
You'd need to add in incredibly incompetent to your list of adjectives describing this God for this to fit. Would you like to change your meaning again? Because the simple fact is, the world now is a much better place now than it was even a century ago-much less tens of millenia ago! So God must be somewhat evil, somewhat ambivalent, childish, petty, and grossly incompetent if he wants to create an evil world...that is steadily improving down through the march of years.
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posted
Blayne, I don't really see how the concept of demiurge matches with anything I know about D&D cosmology.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Blayne, I don't really see how the concept of demiurge matches with anything I know about D&D cosmology.
quote:Doesn't matter, unless you think "best outcome" is definitionally "an outcome obtained through the experience of pain."
Yes, that is what I'm asking about. If there is an objective concept of good and if pain is definitionally entailed by that concept, would an omnipotent being still be bound by that limitation?
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Such a grossly imperfect God might very well create a being that would not only waste their time arguing over silly points of theology, but repeatedly and maliciously misinterpret the words of those who disagree with him.
And yet, I forgive you for doing so.
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quote:If there is an objective concept of good and if pain is definitionally entailed by that concept, would an omnipotent being still be bound by that limitation?
An omnipotent being would be able to define the objective concept of good. You forget that I don't believe in qualia. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by The White Whale: Tres, along a similar vein: that was brought up in Carl Sagan's Contact (book), where somewhere not too deep in pi (in base 11, IIRC), there is a perfect circle of 1s in a square of zeros.
If this were true, that a perfect circle is to be found deep in this constant, that would be a pretty convincing chunk of evidence for an omnipotent being that could even alter the rules of mathematics.
I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly. You think the detection of 2 dimensional patterns in a string of digits of pi would be significant?
Using the Contact example I'd have to point out that along with choosing base 11 - rather an arbitrary choice, isn't it? - you'd also need to make an arbitrary choice about where to break the lines. Since pi is irrational, its base 11 representation can be as long as your computer can run...and when you generate really, really long strings of numbers, you're going to have some chance patterns in the results.
I don't want to mangle Sagan's meaning by trying to condense it - I recommend reading the last 3 pages of Contact for anyone who wants to; it's easy to do with Google Books - but I'm convinced he didn't mean to imply that a Creator arbitrarily embedded a circle pattern into pi just for kicks. OK, I'm gonna mangle, I guess: he's pointing out that you can find some pretty wonderful things out about reality, just as wonderful as if they were intentionally designed that way, even though they weren't.
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Just so I don't misunderstand your point, are you saying you think the aliens are dumb for forming a religion around that, or Sagan dumb for coming up with the very idea?
Also: wondering if you agree that Sagan did not mean to indicate the sequence must have been somehow designed.
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quote:Funny how it's always well-to-do 1st world people who love to toss out, "God won't give you anything you can't handle."
In other words, "God doesn't give people anything that they can't at the very least commit suicide over."
By that reasoning, we should encourage torture, violence, and general mayhem, because it's just God's way of teaching us all sorts of good things. I'm going to go rob a store to teach the clerk that money isn't everything [Big Grin]
Ah! So it's other people's suffering that is necessary, while our own suffering is to be avoided.
I guess God wants us to be sadists.
That's just in this thread. Now, of course you'll argue that these weren't actually malicious misinterpretations, but rather penetrating analyses of real meaning.
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quote:are you saying you think the aliens are dumb for forming a religion around that
That's all the information I recall being given on the idea; I remember thinking that it wasn't much of a religion at all.
Maybe if I understood it better...
quote:or Sagan dumb for coming up with the very idea?
Throughout the book, I thought Sagan did a really poor job expressing the religious viewpoint.
I got the distinct feeling he was writing about things he did not understand, and could not be troubled to try and understand.
quote: Also: wondering if you agree that Sagan did not mean to indicate the sequence must have been somehow designed.
The alien (again-- IIRC) seemed to think that the numbers indicated some form of God. I don't remember there being talk of a mathematical-law-altering miracle, though.
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quote:Throughout the book, I thought Sagan did a really poor job expressing the religious viewpoint.
I got the distinct feeling he was writing about things he did not understand, and could not be troubled to try and understand.
I hope this doesn't sound snarky - I'm not feeling snarky, anyway - but is it even possible for you to be satisfied with any representation of the religious viewpoint not offered by a believer? (Asked in another way: do you think someone can understand the viewpoint without converting?)
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quote:is it even possible for you to be satisfied with any representation of the religious viewpoint not offered by a believer?
Yes. Jay Lake does a good job, and so does Shawn Stewart (if you haven't read Mainspring or Resurrection Man, SHAME!).
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posted
I don't know that it is possible to entirely understand one's own religious beliefs much less someone else's. Language is necessarily an inadequate tool for such a task. However, I do think that non-believers (or "different-believers") can make an effort to refrain from arguing against the most obviously low-hanging fruit kinds of religious belief (ron). I, at least, would find that more interesting.
For example, Tom, I think, does this.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I don't want to mangle Sagan's meaning by trying to condense it - I recommend reading the last 3 pages of Contact for anyone who wants to; it's easy to do with Google Books - but I'm convinced he didn't mean to imply that a Creator arbitrarily embedded a circle pattern into pi just for kicks. OK, I'm gonna mangle, I guess: he's pointing out that you can find some pretty wonderful things out about reality, just as wonderful as if they were intentionally designed that way, even though they weren't.
This was quite explicitly the message he was trying to convey- that even the Aliens with their superior understanding of mathematics, reality, time, space, physics, everything- still deified and revered beings they had never seen before because they simply couldn't accept that the things they saw around them had not sprung from any greater force than their own ability to perceive them.
quote: If this were true, that a perfect circle is to be found deep in this constant, that would be a pretty convincing chunk of evidence for an omnipotent being that could even alter the rules of mathematics.
Yeah, no. The point was that since π is transcendental, all conceivable numerical patterns can be discerned within it, depending on how you look at the numbers, and what you're looking for. A further point Sagan was making was that there was absolutely no way for even an omnipotent being to make its existence clear to a being not able to imagine it- thus even if the message in pi *is* a message from God or the Architects, it doesn't matter, because it is embedded in a medium that carries no relief- basically it's like trying to paint on the surface of a pond- what you get is not *nothing* but it is not distinguishable.
posted
I thought the implication was that the circle was a message because it was located so near the beginning of pi, in a relatively low base, and that it could be easily discovered by a species at a certain point.
I'll have to reread that part, because it's been awhile.
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quote:Sagan explicitly has the alien adherent note that their religion is formed around the appearance of those numerals, IIRC.
I thought it was the dumbest religious device ever.
Specifically, it's not just about the numerals; according to the aliens, God has coded messages to His creation in these patterns. The "easy" ones -- like the one in Pi -- apparently work as pointers to the ones of greater sophistication. So finding a "message" in Pi in Base 11, as she was told to do, is merely a "confirmation" that she's on the right track and should continue looking for similar (but more detailed) messages in other numbers (and in other locations in Pi).
As far as I'm concerned, that's actually a pretty good metaphor for religious belief, with the exception that it's reproducible but still inconclusive.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't know that it is possible to entirely understand one's own religious beliefs much less someone else's.
I'm curious how one can hold a belief that one does not understand. If you don't understand it, what exactly are you believing?
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quote:An omnipotent being would be able to define the objective concept of good. You forget that I don't believe in qualia.
Not believing in qualia doesn't mean you can't believe in existence of objectively defined concepts.
Do you think an omnipotent being can change the definition of the concept of "odd" so that 4 is odd? And I'm not talking about changing the meaning of the word. I mean the concept of odd.
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quote:I'm curious how one can hold a belief that one does not understand. If you don't understand it, what exactly are you believing?
When I read Ender's Game, I believed it to be one of the best books I've read. However, if you asked me to explain precisely what made it one of the best books I've read, I might be able to give you a general idea but I would not be able to explain it fully. I don't think I understand exactly what makes it so good in my mind.
In this way, it is possible to hold a belief that you don't fully understand. I'm not exactly sure HOW it happens that we can have such unclear beliefs, but it is most definitely possible.
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posted
While I think I might agree with you anyway, I think there's a fundamental difference between liking Ender's Game and believing in God. When someone asks you why you think Ender's Game is such a great book, even if you cannot provide a systematic argument for why it is excellent literature, you can say "Well, I just really really enjoyed it to an extent greater than any other book." And that's all the facts you NEED in this particular case to justify it to yourself, since the only thing you needed to prove (even to yourself) was what your own psychological response to the book was.
With regards to faith based evidence for God, "I have a really strong feeling about this" is not good enough, because you are talking about a phenomenon that extends beyond your own psyche.
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quote:I'm curious how one can hold a belief that one does not understand. If you don't understand it, what exactly are you believing?
When I read Ender's Game, I believed it to be one of the best books I've read. However, if you asked me to explain precisely what made it one of the best books I've read, I might be able to give you a general idea but I would not be able to explain it fully.
There is a difference between not being able to justify a claim, and not being able to articulate it at all. You are equivocating between the two.
quote:I don't think I understand exactly what makes it so good in my mind.
But you could learn. You could learn literary techniques, and psychology, and understand how you and the book interact. Lots of other people can explain why they like books.
quote:In this way, it is possible to hold a belief that you don't fully understand.
If I say "I deeply believe that floobefloob is true", what do you think this means?
quote:I'm not exactly sure HOW it happens that we can have such unclear beliefs
Actually, it doesn't surprise me one bit...people can't point out that your beliefs are unevidenced and unreasonable if you refuse to state what they are. People in the past died because they were willing to say striaghtforwardly and honestly "I believe Christ had two natures, one human, one divine", or "I believe the bread and wine is literally the body and blood of Christ". But on this board, almost no one is willing to claim anything concrete, because they don't want their beliefs to be criticized.
Everytime I challange Ron to present some evidene of his claims, I run a (slight) risk of having egg on my face should he ever present it. But I challange him anyway, because making my claims concrete is the only way we fallible humans know of catching errors. If I say "Oh, I know some things about biology, but I just can't articulate them", what good would that stance be? How would I catch my misunderstandings of biology if I didn't know what I understood in the first place?
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posted
Well of course people don't want to be criticized. Especially not in a hostile, belittling way. And especially not when the subject is something personal and sensitive. Is that supposed to be surprising? Everyone has deeply seated, illogical beliefs. For example, the illogical belief in the intrinsic value of a human life. Or the illogical belief that hurting innocents is wrong. Or that everyone should have equal opportunities. Not everything fits nicely into the realm of logic. ^.^
posted
The belief that human life has value or that hurting innocents is wrong don't have to be illogical. It's perfectly within the realm of logic for someone to develop a coherent, succinct explanation for those beliefs. It's simply easier to say, "Well, I just believe them because I do."
Sometimes that's fine. It isn't really material why I enjoy hamburgers at one restaurant better than at another, until a situation comes up where it might be important to me to know what cooking method or ingredients make one burger better.
It does seem to me though, that if one is going to base one's life on a set of beliefs, to the point where they are going to make major life choices differently, it would behoove them to spend a little time thinking the beliefs through.
It would certainly be uncomfortable to examine a belief closely and find that one didn't actually believe it after all, or that it didn't make sense, but I would say that it would be much worse to find that out only at the end of ones life, after making all sorts of terrible choices based on bad information.
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quote:Do you think an omnipotent being can change the definition of the concept of "odd" so that 4 is odd? And I'm not talking about changing the meaning of the word. I mean the concept of odd.
It depends on how you're defining "odd." If you mean "not evenly divisible by two," then yeah, I don't see why an omnipotent being wouldn't be able to change the laws of mathematics.
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quote:For example, the illogical belief in the intrinsic value of a human life. Or the illogical belief that hurting innocents is wrong.
Why are these "illogical?" You can derive them from first principles.
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posted
I don't think it's particularly useful to argue what KIND of omnipotence God has. Plenty of people define omnipotence as "within the realm of logic and/or ethics." Telling them their God isn't omnipotent enough is pretty silly.
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posted
Being omnipotent "within the realm of ethics" is a pretty serious limitation. It amounts to saying that God does not in fact get to decide what constitutes goodness.
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posted
It doesn't really solve any problems either. I am good "within the realm of ethics", and I've never murdered a generation of children to prove a point.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Being omnipotent "within the realm of ethics" is a pretty serious limitation. It amounts to saying that God does not in fact get to decide what constitutes goodness.
Something Socrates demonstrated logically a long time ago.
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quote:Why are these "illogical?" You can derive them from first principles.
What are the first principles you're using to derive the conclusion that there's an intrinsic value to human life, or that hurting innocents is wrong? I'm curious. Are they self-evident/inarguable ones? If not, why are they different from anyone else using their personal beliefs as first principles for logical deductions?
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I find it sad that I'm a better parent than God.
MightyCow, God forbade Adam and Even only one thing. There is only one way in which they could come to harm in all the earth, and that was if they ate the fruit from one, single tree out of all the others. He had to provide them with a choice, so their free will could be real. But what more could He have done to protect them from coming to harm by accident or ignorance? He did warn them explicitly. There was no necessity for them to disobey Him.
The source of temptation came from a being who had invented the idea of sin, and used half-truths and deception and blatant contradiction of what God had said, to entice Eve into doubting God. But the serpent--and the fallen angelic being using it--was not permitted to coerce Eve into doing anything.
Then when Adam saw his wife had eaten the forbidden fruit and was offering some to him, he chose to doubt God without being deceived into it, and supposed that God would just let Eve die, unless Adam joined with her in disobedience, so God would have to forgive her too if He were going to forgive Adam. Of the two, Adam's sin was actually the worse. The human race as a whole did not fall until Adam, the first man, consciously and deliberately chose to act on his doubting of God's goodness. Note Genesis 3:7a: It was not until Adam ate, that "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked."
Everything else of woe and suffering and sadness and death that has followed in this world, are consequences that flow from that one choice. Adam was humanity.
But then God Himself, as Jesus, became humanity to save us.
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quote:What are the first principles you're using to derive the conclusion that there's an intrinsic value to human life, or that hurting innocents is wrong?
Start with "harm is bad." That's usually considered axiomatic, and that'll get you there.
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posted
Ron: Right. And punishing us for what they did, and requiring a massively complex series of events as an excuse to even partially undo punishing us for what they did, isn't completely insane.
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quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What are the first principles you're using to derive the conclusion that there's an intrinsic value to human life, or that hurting innocents is wrong? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Start with "harm is bad." That's usually considered axiomatic, and that'll get you there. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't see how that gets me to the idea that human lives are worth more than nonhuman ones. I can kind of see how that could lead to the idea that hurting "innocents" is worse than hurting normal people, but it's rather tenuous.
But even if you could force a logical connection, the reason that most people believe those particular things is because of emotional instincts, not logic. Afterwards they may try to rationalize it, but values, and the logical decisions that are based off of them, come from emotion.
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quote:the reason that most people believe those particular things is because of emotional instincts, not logic
But that's not what you were saying. You were saying, "everyone has illogical beliefs," not "everyone has logical beliefs which are to some extent informed by their emotional programming."
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quote:Being omnipotent "within the realm of ethics" is a pretty serious limitation. It amounts to saying that God does not in fact get to decide what constitutes goodness.
Either God gets to decide what constitutes goodness, or He doesn't. If He does get to decide what constitutes goodness then how could there be a problem of evil? Wouldn't that mean that if God decides suffering is necessary for the best possible world then it literally is so?
The problem with suffering only arises if there is some objective standard of goodness with which one could declare God's decisions wrong.
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quote:But that's not what you were saying. You were saying, "everyone has illogical beliefs," not "everyone has logical beliefs which are to some extent informed by their emotional programming."
Well, okay. I'll rephrase if you can explain to me how "harm is bad" logically leads to the examples of beliefs that I provided.
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posted
Or, for that matter, how any value of "badness" can be assigned on purely logical grounds to the physical experience of pain in the first place, despite how easy it is to axiomatically beg the question.
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Are you defining "harm" exclusively as the physical experience of pain, Zotto? I wasn't.
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quote:If He does get to decide what constitutes goodness then how could there be a problem of evil? Wouldn't that mean that if God decides suffering is necessary for the best possible world then it literally is so?
And, indeed, the classic resolution of the Problem of Evil for those who believe in an omnipotent God is that God has decided all this suffering is desirable for some reason, and that this is okay because God must have a good reason (which we simply don't know or understand). Of course, this argument has obvious flaws, but so does the idea of an omnipotent God.
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