Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Must a God be available to us?

Hi DA, you are at it again:

jjw said:
"The Biblical characters appear to have believed strongly in THEIR god because he was there with them, talking, guiding and murdering them."
If THAT "god" was around would we believe?

That is Hypo which expects you to accept the "fact" that the Biblical characters appear to have believed in "their" god, and by implication they feared their god.

You say the thought is valueless because you want me to identify the author(s) and all the people allegedly involved and that is not in any way relevant to the issue.

I think that if you were a member of Moses team you would have been on your knees as fast as the rest of them- But that is of no matter either.
jjw

jjw004 ... using your criterion a good read of Harry Potter would lead one to have empirical proof of the existence of a school of sorcery.

The only difference is that I know the author's name, I know in what language it was written, and I know I am reading a faithful copy of the original.

All hail our lord god Harry Potter. Magician to the universe. Now get down on your knees, pray for foregiveness, maybe Harry and the Invisible Purple Rhino will foregive you.

If I were on Moses' team here's precisely what I would have done. I would have told Moses there was zero proof that anything happened other than that he carved up some stuff when no one was looking
(he had adequate time and if any god had existed the tablets could have been handed to them i npublic), thht we'd been wandering in the stinkin' desert for a long long time due to the fact that his so-called god didn't give a damn about us. That many innocent children had died for no reason due to diseases, all so he could cajole a bunch of people into honoring a mass murderer.

Yes mass murderer. I know religious people have conveniently short memories but some of us would remember that innocent children were murdered in Egypt.

But no doubt you would have been as big a sycophant then as you are now. Toadying up to the inventor of smallpox and giving thanks for his goodness and love. You see some of us have a moral compass that still points to magnetic north.

Maybe God, if there ever was one, is "deceased
".. no longer etc..thereby negating ever satisfying his/her/its existence.

p.s. DA Morgan, I truly enjoy your invisible purple rhinoceros analogy; quit a hoot.

Sincerely,

Thank you DA:
Your comment "But no doubt you would have been as big a sycophant then as you are now. Toadying up to the inventor of smallpox and giving thanks for his goodness and love. You see some of us have a moral compass that still points to magnetic north.", assumes I am one of your hated Bible thumpers and that is not correct. The closest I come to belief in anything would probably make me an Adiest. But that is also not relevant.

This time I thought your humor outweighed your antaganisim, well done.
jjw

Mung ... I thank you and IPR thanks you too.

jjw004 ... we thank you too.

And the reason I take you as a bible thumper is that you write things such as:

"The Biblical characters appear to have believed strongly in THEIR god because he was there with them, talking, guiding and murdering them."

Your words.

This statement is no different than writing:

"In the latest Harry Potter book characters appear to believe strongly in ...."

Both statements are equal.

I'm planning to seek IPR's advice and write a book too. In it he will give brain-dead advice such as "love your neighbor as yourself" (most people don't like themselves very much), don't eat your children, and if you are going to kill yourself please don't make a big mess for someone else to clean up. I will then apply for tax exempt status and hopefully make as much money as all of the other professional con men and liars.

Is this a forum for discussion, or a forum for conformity?

I would think that people as intelligent as you all claim to be, would take this opportunity to educate, not humiliate.

There are many different ways to convey an idea. One can do so by being a good example. One can do so by lecturing or referencing a textbook. One can also do so with cynicism and sarcasm. Each one may be effective in some situations and ineffective in others.

If you think you have a different approach to offer than please do so. Criticizing the approach taken by others is not going to teach anyone anthing.

You sound like me

Hi Mung:
I think you implode way too easily.

My purpose for continuing on this Forum, even though I am using time that could be spent with better purpose elsewhere, is because I can be objective in the face of vocalized nonsense. Some of you are not sufficiently exposed to tolerate that kind of fungus. I am a retired administrative law trial lawyer so I have had a lot of exposure to many, if not all, of the types that seek to get you off balance by projecting themselves as your superiors. Not with me.

The easiest way to start this program is to demean whatever it is you have to say. If they are not far enough advanced in your subject the next step is to demand you provide proof, in their journals, of what you contend. Lawyers deal with precedents. That means we look to the past for determinations of the same question to guide us in our understanding of the current question and to help us gain a better understanding of our issue. Science pretends, and the advocates that are nasty and overbearing pretend, to consider new issues but it is a sham. The systems are so far apart when it comes to logic and the search for the truth that I am at times ashamed to make a comparison. I enjoyed having an opponent that thought he was the utmost or the new anti Christ because I could take advantage of that by comparative presentation of what the issues really meant. Since when do NEW theories appear in the old tired journals?

Way too much talk.
jjw

jjw004 wrote:
"I am a retired administrative law trial lawyer"

Someone acquainted with the concept of swearing affidavits with respect to authenticity of materials. And yes the theory, in western law, that one searches for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth by trying to evaluate who is the most convincing liar.

I would think someone with more than a passing familiarity with notarizing documents, swearing oaths, and the legal statues around perjury could do better than state: "the next step is to demand you provide proof."

Hypocrisy among the religion zealots has no bounds, no shame, no limits. I guess your god never ordered "Thou shalt not be a flaming hypocrite."

Let's cool it with the threats or I will be forced to delete posts.

Moderator.

Perhaps another way to explore the question may be to imagine ourselves as gods.

Forgetting the roadblock in AI/consciousness for a moment, it?s possible some enterprising geek in the future will design a worm/virus that will install itself on PCs (think SETI shared computation) and turn each connected PC/Internet device into a ?neuron?. This creates a self aware entity.

So would it be aware of the ?real world? and us? Could it understand the real world? Would we want to make it aware of us? Wouldn?t it be fun just to watch it and see what it did?

'This creates a self aware entity.'

I think that belief in self awareness as an emergent property is problematic.

And as Uncle Al has pointed out, the connection speed between PC's would be a minute fraction of that between real neurons. If it was aware it would likely be a slow pondering moron with a single thought taking days.

Assuming it had access to the net, after a couple of centuries of slothful examination of its contents it would probably come to the conclusion that we are mostly defined by a desire to see each other naked and watching each other engaging in sex - and it couldn't fail to notice our history of war and violence.

It would probably be puzzled that there are people dying of starvation whilst 25% of the English are now classed as obese.

I think that based upon the contents of the net and the media in general it would form its own picture and would pay no heed to any one individual pleading in our defence.It would not arrive at a high view of humanity.

If it had access to defence mainframes and nukes then I don't think it would be that prudent or fun to just watch what it did.

'After considering the evidence I decided that the earth was best left to the ants and cockroaches - however, I'm a little lonely now.'

Blacknad.

Hmm. It seems the topic was Artificial Intelligence and the use of a world-wide net of computers to achieve consciousness. You are totally off topic again.

Interesting points Blacknad. But you posit that the data on the Internet would be ?understandable? by the entity as ?information?. This may not be the case. The data, computers and connections that would make up the entities universe may instead be viewed by the entity as the ?real world?.

Geography, natural resources, transportation routes = data files, processing cycles, networks.

So, if that is its universe (governed by its own laws that it could derive by observing network functions (file deletion = act of god!)), how then could it comprehend us or our real world?

It appears that any advanced civilization would likely have a view of the entire universe as information.

Physics is currently strongly favoring an interpretation that there is nothing but information in a very real physical sense.

For example the total amount of information in a black hole is defined by its surface area at the event horizon which is thus directly related to mass and thus to gravity. When all is said and done ... there is likely nothing other than ones and zeros. What you are comprehending is not the pixels but rather the picture.

KATE: "But you posit that the data on the Internet would be ?understandable? by the entity as ?information?. This may not be the case. The data, computers and connections that would make up the entities universe may instead be viewed by the entity as the ?real world?."

- You may well be right. I wonder though whether there is enough references to 'the internet and it's relationship to the real world' on the net for the entity to realise that there is something 'out there'.

But it is entirely possible that the only way it would realise us (and sorry for drawing religious comparisons) was if we addressed it directly and started a communication (revelation) and backed this up by adding or deleting sections of data (miracles) and even possibly entering cyberspace virtually and engaging directly (incarnation)

Regards,

Blacknad.

If it doesn't violate the laws of physics ... is it a miracle?

If it violates the laws of physics ... is it possible?

Thanks Blacknad,

You're still assuming the entity "sees" data as we see data. Data in its universe would instead be more closely analagous to matter in our universe. In our universe, we don't see anything but matter when we look at matter.

The "natural laws" governing the behaviour of matter in the entity's universe would likely be some kind of ad hoc bastardization of TCP/IP.

Indeed.

This is a very entertaining Forum at times.

I just read the last few postings and I see we are confronting the prospect if AI is aware, if computers are likely to take charge, etc.

The post was "Must a God be available to us?".

I am beginning to think that some members see computers as potential Gods. OK!
jjw