This actually hurts my brain a little bit.

[gaypalmsprings]

[thefunkylama]

All this talk about Christians and faith and how it is misguided really irritates me. One, Socrates was the original monotheist, not Aristotle; it was one of the charges for which he was put to death.

- Socrates was put to death for being an atheist and "corrupting the minds of the youth," not for being a monotheist. And, of course, that charge was false, because his whole deal was believing in another plane of existence, that being the world of spirits, or souls, what have you. By very nature he couldn't have been an atheist, since he believed that he was chosen by the Gods as emissary of that message. They just needed an excuse to kill him.

- There's discussion in the Science thread about some of the rest of what you were saying, but overall you're ridiculous.

The rest of this thread is also ridiculous. It's a thread about a pretty picture that moves. Woo.

[Young blood]

Did you see how small jesus was?

[thefunkylama]

tiny little baby jesus.

[Young blood]

I cant say it without using a southern accent.

[mountmccabe]

I sort of feel bad that I missed out on this discussion.

The main thing I would say (sparked by taking of philosophers, not the lot of you) is that even people of a great and subtle intelligence can be wrong some times.

So (not to bring this up again but) I am not saying that Descartes is a moron when I say that I don't buy his proof of the existence of god, I am merely saying that I don't buy it.

The first step is conceiving of beings that are not the humans that walk the earth but still exist and have abilities. That comes from knowledge of death and guesses about what happens afterwards. And from unexplained natural phenomenon like lightening. There's a reason that many of the deities that are/were taken as the supreme god - such as Zeus, Jehovah and Indra - started out as thunder gods. It's an upwardly mobile position.

At any rate so now we have the idea of the existence of supernatural beings. We look at our tribe/clan/family and see one powerful warlord/king/father/ruler and bam, we have the idea of a supreme god ruling over the other supernatural beings.

Adding anything else is easy. This supreme god created everything on their own? OK. This supreme god is the only one? Sure, why not. This supreme god is ominpotent, omnipresent, omniscient and ambidextrous? Fine, we know what power is so we can conceive of something being all-powerful.

Seriously, this proof seems to me like blind watchmaker material.

[mountmccabe]

Now I wanna listen to Excuse 17.

YAY

[Stefinitely Maybe]

Nothing existed before the big bang. Time nor space has a beginning or end.

This is where my brain starts to hurt.

DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.

[mountmccabe]

Time is a meaningless concept without space. Space is a meaningless concept without time.

I have not heard of any theistic argument that changes anything on this point, for what it's worth. You get much the same response to the question "What existed before god?"

This is the lone point where I will acknowledge that theism (of some sort) has an advantage over a wholly naturalistic universe: for whatever reason it makes more sense to me for an uncaused cause to be sentient. Yes, that is adding complexity to an already unexplainable situation but, well, that's what makes sense to me.

There's a whole lot of ground that needs to be covered before that advantage is turned into anything worth acknowledging.

[Stefinitely Maybe]

Time is a meaningless concept without space. Space is a meaningless concept without time.

I can grasp that concept, but not the concept of 'nothing'. What is nothing? If the universe is still expanding, what is it expanding INTO? What was in that space before the universe expanded into it? And what is beyond that?

I have a similar problem with infinity.

CAN. NOT. COMPREHEND.

[kreutz2112]

The way I think of it is this: All time has already occurred and goes to infinity. The 3 dimensional universe is expanding, at an accelerating rate nonetheless, into time.

[Stefinitely Maybe]

The way I think of it is this: All time has already occurred and goes to infinity. The 3 dimensional universe is expanding, at an accelerating rate nonetheless, into time.

If you believe that all time has already occurred, do you believe there is no such thing as free will?

[mountmccabe]

I can grasp that concept, but not the concept of 'nothing'. What is nothing? If the universe is still expanding, what is it expanding INTO? What was in that space before the universe expanded into it? And what is beyond that?

I have a similar problem with infinity.

CAN. NOT. COMPREHEND.

[emphasis added]

The creation (for want of a better word) of the universe initiated the concepts of time and space. The ideas "outside the universe" and "before the universe" are nonsensical.

Basically I blame the popularity of "Seinfeld." Or, at least the popular idea that it was about nothing. "Seinfeld" wasn't about nothing, it just wasn't about anything in particular. Beckett actually wrote about nothing.

So, in conclusion, I have no answer. (Ha?)

[kreutz2112]

If you believe that all time has already occurred, do you believe there is no such thing as free will?

Absolutely. Why not? I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive.

[Stefinitely Maybe]

Absolutely. Why not? I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive.

Surely it's pretty obvious: if everything has already happened (including me sitting here and typing these words and contemplating this), then it must already be decided, and I have no power to change it.

[kreutz2112]

No. Only time has happened, nothing else. Think of time as a 1 dimensional vector. Say your at time A and you want to get to time B. Time B is already there you just have to wait to arrive at it. In between times A and B you have the free will to do whatever you want.

A....................B
______________>

[evilmushroompie]

Fuck, this thread went from somethin cool and interesting too complete bullshit. Out.

[thelastgreatman]

It's much easier to conceive of the Big Bang if you think of it in conjunction with the Big Crush. It's a constant oscillation, like many natural forces. It doesn't grow into anything because there are no other reference points. Some might say it actually doesn't grow at all, just vibrates slowly out to a maximum, then back down to a minimum.

Also, I used to be quite sure that time moving forward was nothing more than a construct our brain forces upon us because we cannot perceive all things occuring simultaneously.

[thelastgreatman]

And recent study of the brain actually is kinda proving that free will IS an illusion, if that isn't scary as shit.

[kreutz2112]

you mean string theory.

[kreutz2112]

And recent study of the brain actually is kinda proving that free will IS an illusion, if that isn't scary as shit.

source.

[thelastgreatman]

If you're presented with a choice between an apple and an orange, neuroscientists claim that the parts of our brain that choose either "apple" or "orange" fire before the parts of our brain that are responsible for reason and logic and decision making. Their contention is that either time is truly not moving strictly forward (which gets freaky too when you get into the double slit experiment), or more likely that our choices are based entirely on instinctual response and the sensation of reasoning our way to the choice we've already made is just a trick we're playing on ourselves. Given how much I see cognitive dissonance play out in everyone I know, I don't find it hard to believe.

[thelastgreatman]

Gimme a minute to find it.

[Mr.Nipples]

this pisses me off...

[thelastgreatman]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/81bc32e4-d...nclick_check=1

I think therefore I am, I think
By Stephen Cave

Published: March 22 2007 19:50 | Last updated: March 22 2007 19:50

If I had free will, I would choose to be funnier. I would choose always to have the right witty riposte ready to disarm adversaries and delight friends. But sadly, it is not so. My lot is for the same lame old gags to hobble out whether I will them to or not, like embarrassing aunts at a wedding.

Indeed if we had free will, we might all choose to have the punning powers of the Two Ronnies, combined with the benevolence of Bob Geldof. But we do not. And that is a fact, laboratory proven.

But of course we have free will, you might be thinking. You could prove it by, for example, choosing to raise your arm at some point in the next five seconds. Go on then. Done it? There, that was easy. Of your own volition, at the time of your choice, you moved your arm: QED.

But the American neuroscientist Benjamin Libet has shown that before every such movement, there is a distinctive build-up of electrical activity in the brain. And this build-up happens about half a second before your conscious ”decision” to move your arm. So by the time you think, ”OK, I’ll move my arm,” your body is halfway there. Which means your conscious experience of making a decision - the experience associated with free will - is just a kind of add-on, an after-thought that only happens once the brain has already set about its business. In other words, your brain is doing the real work, making your hands turn the pages of this magazine or reach over for your cup of tea, and all the time your conscious mind is tagging along behind.

It is as if, after years of driving around in your car, you discover that the steering-wheel is not attached to anything, and the car has been steering by itself.

Two neuroscientists working in Australia have taken Libet’s discovery one step further. They found that, when asking people to choose to move either their left or right hands, it was possible to influence their choice by electronically stimulating certain parts of their brains. So, for example, the scientists could force the subjects always to choose to move their left hands. But despite their choice being electronically directed, these patients continued to report that they were freely choosing which hand to move.

So not only is your steering wheel not attached to anything, but if your car was being steered by someone else by remote control, you would not even notice. Every time it turns left, you just move your toy steering wheel and think, ”Ah yes, I want to turn left.”

Thanks to modern neuro-imaging technology, we now know that our minds - our conscious, mental life - are a product of activity in the brain. What Libet’s and subsequent experiments show is that even when we have the conscious experience of deciding, our brains have really already taken the decision for us. Free will is an illusion.

It's a long article, goes into a big discussion about the effect that disallowing free will would have on society, blah blah blah. But that's the study I'm referencing.

I know these things because Scott Adams's blog is fantastic. Yes, the guy who writes Dilbert. He also has a free blog that's poses more interesting questions than anyone I know, has a perfect grasp of logic, and is still kinda funny.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com

[Yablonowitz]

That's not entirely accurate. He got into circular reasoning further on in the section of Meditations where he proved that the idea of God must be true on some level, but then his logic devolved as he segued into Christian bullshit. The basic precepts of his argument for God's existence being self-evident because man conceived of God and man cannot conceive of anything which he does not have prior knowledge, though, is solid.

I just imagined a woman with seven breasts and three vaginas. I didn't have prior knowledge of her, so she must exist?

[thelastgreatman]

You just imagined a woman with multiple layers of a perception you already have.

[thelastgreatman]

Should I see Liars tonight? I'd have to leave soon. Somebody give me a Descartes-esque reason why yes or no.

[Mr.Nipples]

Yes, and Im not giving you a fucking reason...

[thelastgreatman]

I sort of feel bad that I missed out on this discussion.

The main thing I would say (sparked by taking of philosophers, not the lot of you) is that even people of a great and subtle intelligence can be wrong some times.

So (not to bring this up again but) I am not saying that Descartes is a moron when I say that I don't buy his proof of the existence of god, I am merely saying that I don't buy it.

The first step is conceiving of beings that are not the humans that walk the earth but still exist and have abilities. That comes from knowledge of death and guesses about what happens afterwards. And from unexplained natural phenomenon like lightening. There's a reason that many of the deities that are/were taken as the supreme god - such as Zeus, Jehovah and Indra - started out as thunder gods. It's an upwardly mobile position.

At any rate so now we have the idea of the existence of supernatural beings. We look at our tribe/clan/family and see one powerful warlord/king/father/ruler and bam, we have the idea of a supreme god ruling over the other supernatural beings.

Adding anything else is easy. This supreme god created everything on their own? OK. This supreme god is the only one? Sure, why not. This supreme god is ominpotent, omnipresent, omniscient and ambidextrous? Fine, we know what power is so we can conceive of something being all-powerful.

Seriously, this proof seems to me like blind watchmaker material.

The earliest forms of spirituality (according to theology texts)--shamanism in Asia way back before Sumeria even formed I believe--worshipped a variety of things. I don't recall a mention of a lightning god. But the fact that man has used the concept of a deity to explain many things they don't understand doesn't necessarily mean that's what it originates from. I don't know that Zeus was the first god they came up with, I don't think any of us do either. But apparently before a true civilization had even formed, man was perceiving that there was a force larger than himself that was affecting him and all things.

That force is a reality--at least it is to me because I've felt it, to an extent that further description would get me ridiculed. If you try not to think of God as the supernatural being that created the universe and instead think of it as an ever-present vibration that came into existence with the universe... that God is what would happen if you could step outside of everything in this universe and perceive it all as energy... a totality of life, basically, not something separate from our lives.

At least, that's the only way it made sense to me.