Ye Religion Thread

[DaHanG]

i guess you don't believe in the holy spirit, to each his own.

and you do? i thought you were a theist, but not a christian???

or do you like this idea that man created as well???

i believe in a personal god of mankind.  one that can read your mind, and destroy/alter/create the "universe".  and by believe, i mean i think it's likely such a god exists.  i do not believe in the holy spirit, i haven't been to church in ten years; the bread sucks, the wine sucks, only eighty year old women - why go?

although the bible is not the word of god (nor inspired by him) in my opinion, church is still a good thing for feeling good and having a sense of community. maybe that's why you'd go :>.

[DaHanG]

"how can we have free will, if God knows what is going to happen to us?"

My having knowledge that my son would end up in jail if he continued to behave in a certain way in no way infringed on his "free will" to continue the behavior that ended up with him spending 2 1/2 years in a federal pen in Texarkana. He had the "free will" to behave however he wanted, regardless of my knowing what was going to happen to him.

but if you truly "knew" he was going to jail, then he could not avoid it. with your son not being able to avoid it (no matter how hard he tried to), he does not have the freedom to change his future. if he did change his future, then you didn't "know" he would go to jail. free will implies an unseen future, so an all knowing god and free will are mutually exclusive.

[quadz]

do you think i misquoted stephen hawking when he says that this universe is extremely improbable(paraphrased).

[reaper]

Hmm, sorry.  Missed this somehow.  I've just searched "all posts by reaper" for the word "hawking" back to January 16th and I still missed it.  Can you give me a link to the post, or tell me chapter/page/book again?  Thx.

sure: a brief history of time, chapter 8 (stephen hawking)

"the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.  For example, if the electric charge of the electron had been only slighty different, stars either would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would not have exploded.
"

i don't think he would like to rephrase his ideas like this:
IF there is a god
THEN we can't say if what happens before the big bang relates to what is happening after

But that's the goofy Flying Spaghetti Monster territory again.  That's the "you can't prove the Universe wasn't created three seconds ago" territory again.  It completely ignores the fact that the Universe appears to operate according to fundamental laws, and does not appear to deviate from these laws.  So it doesn't matter if the Flying Spaghetti Monster "could have" magically made something that happened before the Big Bang relate to something after.  All evidence points to: No.  Ignoring all the evidence is like betting against the sun coming up tomorrow.  Sure, it's possible it MIGHT not come up.  But that's not the way to bet.

for a programmer i guess your not good at reading IF statements.  if there is a god, how could you possible imagine we know how he operates, and what he can and can't do.  it's beyond comprehension, so it's silly to say he has to operate according to what we say are laws. 

watch science prove there should only be one big bang,  that would be some funny shit.  of course you guys would use some principle, and say something should just be there, and god is to complex - god is not likely.  but me, i would say that's ridiculous, i've always believed in god (like so many others), and you can believe in chance all you want!

just a thought 

[DaHanG]

one wonders if "chance" can't be applied to this incredibly statistically improbable being.

[quadz]

Hmm, sorry.

[QuakeDuke]

"how can we have free will, if God knows what is going to happen to us?"

My having knowledge that my son would end up in jail if he continued to behave in a certain way in no way infringed on his "free will" to continue the behavior that ended up with him spending 2 1/2 years in a federal pen in Texarkana. He had the "free will" to behave however he wanted, regardless of my knowing what was going to happen to him.

but if you truly "knew" he was going to jail, then he could not avoid it. with your son not being able to avoid it (no matter how hard he tried to), he does not have the freedom to change his future. if he did change his future, then you didn't "know" he would go to jail. free will implies an unseen future, so an all knowing god and free will are mutually exclusive.

Do you truly not understand what I said?  I would think simple logic would explain the concept. Knowledge of the end result of someones action does not mean that person cannot change the end result. What the heck do you think free will consists of? Free will does not imply an unseen (assuming by unseen you mean unknowable)  future. Free will implies making choices, and to make "good" choices you're going to have to "know" the results of actions good or bad. You are free to choose your behavior which will change your future positively or negatively depending on what the behavior consisted of, such as breaking the law (a bad example since these days no one is held accountable for their actions anyway).

Perhaps this might help. We can "know" if a person in school doesn't do the work, study, attend class (provided the school isn't one of the gutless wonders (many schools these days)  that pass everyone so no one will feel "slighted" in some way even though they really didn't make an effort)  you aren't going to get a degree. One of the problems with society today is the attitude of no accountability for actions - I deserve what I want regardless of whether or not I do one dang thing to achieve it or not - YOU owe it to me. Sheesh.

An all knowing god and free will would only be mutually exclusive if god did not allow a person to make their own choices and reap the consequences for said behavior because he knows the end result of the behavior. The concept you are talking about is  predestination and is a whole different subject altogether. Predestination and free will are mutually exclusive.

QD

[reaper]

I did notice that you seemed to have appeared to "stop" at a couple points in the chapter (such as the above), when Hawking continued on with reasoning about why you didn't necessarily need to stop there.

i recall what was said in the chapter, i don't see how it changes the relevance of what i've been saying.

One possible answer is to say that God chose the initial configuration of the universe for reasons that we cannot hope to understand. [[reaper: WHY ARE YOU STUCK HERE!!! ]]  This would certainly have been within the power of an omnipotent being, but if he had started it off in such an incomprehensible way, why did he choose to let it evolve according to laws that we could understantd?  The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events to not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.  It would only be natural to suppose that this order should apply not only to the laws, but also to the conditions at the boundary of space-time that specify the initial state of the unvierse.  There may be a large number of models of the universe with different initial conditions that all obey the laws.  There ought to be some principle that picks out one intial state, and hence one model, to represent our universe.

you can contemplate all you want about god, in the context above i think it's stupid to do so.
"There ought to be some principle that picks out one intial state, and hence one model, to represent our universe." - where is it?

[DaHanG]

"how can we have free will, if God knows what is going to happen to us?"

My having knowledge that my son would end up in jail if he continued to behave in a certain way in no way infringed on his "free will" to continue the behavior that ended up with him spending 2 1/2 years in a federal pen in Texarkana. He had the "free will" to behave however he wanted, regardless of my knowing what was going to happen to him.

but if you truly "knew" he was going to jail, then he could not avoid it. with your son not being able to avoid it (no matter how hard he tried to), he does not have the freedom to change his future. if he did change his future, then you didn't "know" he would go to jail. free will implies an unseen future, so an all knowing god and free will are mutually exclusive.

Do you truly not understand what I said?  I would think simple logic would explain the concept. Knowledge of the end result of someones action does not mean that person cannot change the end result. What the heck do you think free will consists of? Free will does not imply an unseen (assuming by unseen you mean unknowable)  future. Free will implies making choices, and to make "good" choices you're going to have to "know" the results of actions good or bad. You are free to choose your behavior which will change your future positively or negatively depending on what the behavior consisted of, such as breaking the law (a bad example since these days no one is held accountable for their actions anyway).

Perhaps this might help. We can "know" if a person in school doesn't do the work, study, attend class (provided the school isn't one of the gutless wonders (many schools these days)  that pass everyone so no one will feel "slighted" in some way even though they really didn't make an effort)  you aren't going to get a degree. One of the problems with society today is the attitude of no accountability for actions - I deserve what I want regardless of whether or not I do one dang thing to achieve it or not - YOU owe it to me. Sheesh.

An all knowing god and free will would only be mutually exclusive if god did not allow a person to make their own choices and reap the consequences for said behavior because he knows the end result of the behavior. The concept you are talking about is  predestination and is a whole different subject altogether. Predestination and free will are mutually exclusive.

QD

free will - by definition - to me means the ability of making a choice completely independent of everything and everyone (which includes god's omniscience). your choice, and your choice only - and it cannot be predicted. we apparently have different opinions on free will.

edit*
i understand that it's not god's omniscience that somehow restricts people from making their own choices. i have no problem with this. it's that free will, by the way i view it, implies a certain "unknowability" about what the future may bring. i start with free will, and go from there. you start from god, and go from there. hence the difference in perspective.

it appears to be -
QD: compatible
free will ----------> free to make choices
god ----------> does not interfere, simply knows.

DHG: incompatible
free will ----------> all outcomes are possible (unpredictable)
god ----------> only certain outcomes are possible (since everything is already known)

[quadz]

"There ought to be some principle that picks out one intial state, and hence one model, to represent our universe." - where is it?

Where is it???

[reaper]

Where is it???

[quadz]

when stephen hawking starts making shit up about how god does things

There's a catch, though.

[reaper]

can't say i agree

You are somehow able to determine what God can or can't do better than someone else?

that's close to the point i was making. 

Do you still believe that god _needs_ to form each lightning bolt?

i have no idea

[quadz]

You are somehow able to determine what God can or can't do better than someone else?

that's close to the point i was making.

[DaHanG]

reaper is a buddhist :>. brahman is all, and all is brahman!