sbsquarepants wrote: » I take it so, that you've never heard of the flying spaghetti monster (sauce be upon Him)
monara wrote: » ok. We could get together on this. I rather like the idea of creating a god in my own image.:)
Peregrinus wrote: » Prayers are answered all the time. It's just that often the answer is "no".
monara wrote: » I can't imagine nothingness. I have been oblivious and sleep soundly every night but I can't imagine nothingness; or infinity or eternity for that matter. Even a simple statement like "nothing comes from nothing" leaves me perplexed.:)
monara wrote: » Or just F**k off.:pac:
smacl wrote: » The nothingness in this context is no more than the permanent loss of our own subjective consciousness. Others live on after we're gone and the world will keep turning just fine without us so no different to any other form of personal oblivion other than it is permanent. Easy to imagine but possibly harder to contemplate and become reconciled with. Fear of death is natural so too are the many stories and legends of cheating death common to most cultures. Personally, I see no reason to believe one of these stories over the other, or to believe any of them for that matter.
monara wrote: » ok but I still can't imagine nothingness. I was trying to think of it apart from my own loss of consciousness which of itself would be of no interest to anyone but myself.
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: » Only if you assume the "nothingness" is the default and the "somethingness" therefore needs to be explained or puzzled out. I do not share that assumption. I see no reason to assume either. It is equally likely to me that "somethingness" is the default and it would be "nothingness" that would be weird or puzzling. That one is difficult to imagine and the other not difficult to imagine says precisely nothing about the question however. It is irrelevant entirely. What our brains are good at, or bad at, conceiving places no constraints on reality.
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: » Your post was an unreadable mess I am afraid. Between your formatting and your decision to ignore things as being off topic (not your call) there is not much left to reply to. Perhaps you can contact a moderator or someone for instruction on how to use the QUOTE function correctly? I will pick out what I can from the rubble: I gave you examples of how this can happen. You decided to declare them off topic and not acknowledge them. But to repeat what you ignored: We tend to ignore the majority of data that does not fit a pattern and notice only what we imagine does fit the pattern. And hence see a pattern that is not there. This is how people can think prayer works, that taxi drivers are bad, or that they are psychic. It is called confirmation bias. We see data that fits our pre-conceived notion of a pattern and simple "miss" the data that does not. Our brain is actually evolved to do this. We can imagine a pattern from a small amount of data. We do not need to see the entire leopard behind a tree to discern there is a lepord there. We see a bit of fur and a few spots and our brain fills in the blanks. And, for the same reason as "agency detection" our brain has evolved towards false positives rather than false negatives too, given that a false negative gets you killed when a false positive usually would not. Then you have only half understood science it would seem. One great field to use as an example here is epidemiology. Or medical trials on drugs. This is an example of good science. Here we might think a medicine or treatment works because we think we have seen patterns that suggest it to be so. But when we do actual trials and science on it, we often find it does nothing or.... in some cases.... is actually making things worse! Thinking there are patterns there which are not, and confirmation bias, are two things the methodology of science is designed to negate. That is your conclusions. Nothing I have said however suggests that, or suggests I think that. You have made this bit up entirely on your own without anything from me. Much flora and fauna are so suited to their "task" or environment or life process that people like creationists use it as evidence they must have been designed for purpose. I do not see the world as they do but I have enough empathy and sympathy for their way of thinking that I can understand it without declaring they are fit for a mental institution. When some life cycle, or some process, or some behaviour in the animal or floral kingdoms seems so incredibly contrived.... then the impression that it was intentionally designed that way does not suggest mental illness on the part of an observer like for example William Paley. At best it simply suggests mental laziness. It was you who brought Darwin up though, not me. So strange for you to tell me you do not understand my reference to him when it was not me who made one. For it to be a "Rub" you would need to establish we do have some kind of "spirit part" in the first place. The issue is when people wonder where it "goes" no one has established it was "there" in the first place anyway. It is like wondering where the "Light part" of a candle "goes" when the candle stops burning. The light does not "go" anywhere. Rather it was an emergent attribute of the burning process and is simply not being produced any more. So this thing you call "spirit" could be similar. It might not actually be "there" in any meaningful sense but is rather just something emergent and produced by the human processes and simply stops being produced when those processes stop.
saabsaab wrote: » I don't agree. That something exists at all like this universe is amazing.
saabsaab wrote: » Even if you believe that there was a 'big bang' 13 billion years ago you have to ask where or how did this happen form noithing.
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: » To you. That's the point I was making. It is an entirely personal subjective response to the reality you perceive. But it says nothing ABOUT that reality OTHER than your response to it. But you being amazed there is "something" does not mean "nothing" is the default and there being "something" is actually remarkable. It seems that way to you is all. Perhaps there being "something" is the default and is not at all remarkable. And there being "Nothing" would be truly weird and unusual and remarkable or even impossible. Who knows? The awe we might feel at reality around us should pretty much NEVER be used as a basis for assuming anything factual about that reality. But we do not know it "happened from nothing", thats the problem. The Big bang was the sudden expansion of a singularity of infinite density and mass. That is not "nothing". It is as much the opposite of nothing as I am able to imagine. To my knowledge we have no evidence that suggests there ever was "nothing". We simply do not know whether there ever was, or not. It is an open question. And until someone answers that question, I will neither assume there ever was nothing, nor will I assume there always was something. I remain neutral and open on the question. We do have a resident poster who claims to be a Theoretical Physicist, or a secondary school teacher, or both. He usually drops in when this conversation comes up. Maybe he will drop in and say more on this than I have. But to my knowledge, as I said, we do not know there ever was "nothing".
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: » We tend to ignore the majority of data that does not fit a pattern and notice only what we imagine does fit the pattern. And hence see a pattern that is not there. This is how people can think prayer works, that taxi drivers are bad, or that they are psychic. It is called confirmation bias. We see data that fits our pre-conceived notion of a pattern and simple "miss" the data that does not. Our brain is actually evolved to do this. We can imagine a pattern from a small amount of data. We do not need to see the entire leopard behind a tree to discern there is a lepord there. We see a bit of fur and a few spots and our brain fills in the blanks.
saabsaab wrote: » Anyway, the most unbiased tool we have, I believe, is mathematics and what is seems to tell us about the universe. Some of what it seems to be saying is amazing to most people.
smacl wrote: » I disagree. Mathematics is simply a very concise descriptive language. It can be, and often is, used to describe things that are purely abstract that don't correspond anything physical. We learn more about the universe through speculative theory followed by searching for observations that support or undermine that theory. Sometimes the observations come first. Mathematics is a tool that can help us both develop the theory and understand the observations but it is just a tool.
saabsaab wrote: » Can be but sometimes predictions are made by mathematical formula that are then proved by experiment or later observation as with Einstein's theorys.
Death might be meaningless if time is an illusion.
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: » To you. That's the point I was making. It is an entirely personal subjective response to the reality you perceive. But it says nothing ABOUT that reality OTHER than your response to it. But you being amazed there is "something" does not mean "nothing" is the default and there being "something" is actually remarkable. It seems that way to you is all. Perhaps there being "something" is the default and is not at all remarkable. And there being "Nothing" would be truly weird and unusual and remarkable or even impossible. Who knows? The awe we might feel at reality around us should pretty much NEVER be used as a basis for assuming anything factual about that reality.
Peregrinus wrote: » And, by definition, of no interest to yourself either.
sbsquarepants wrote: » This is a very valid point. Just because something amazes us, does not mean it is in and of itself amazing. Take something really spectacular like Niagara or Angel falls or even something like a supernova or a black hole devouring a whole solar system - to me those things are amazing, but in reality they are mundane, they are in fact the only thing which could possibly result from the preceding circumstances over millions, billions of years. They are in "reality" anything but amazing, they are mere default situations. You think of the most unlikely thing that's ever happened, and the fact that it did happen means the actually probability of it happening was 1. You may not have been able to predict it before hand but that says more about the limits of your ability to accurately compute probability than anything else.
saabsaab wrote: » What is the probability of a supreme being? In an infinity of time in a multiverse?
Your post was an unreadable mess I am afraid. Between your formatting and your decision to ignore things as being off topic (not your call) there is not much left to reply to.
We see data that fits our pre-conceived notion of a pattern and simple "miss" the data that does not. Our brain is actually evolved to do this.
our brain has evolved towards false positives rather than false negatives
Thinking there are patterns there which are not, and confirmation bias, are two things the methodology of science is designed to negate.
I can understand it without declaring they are fit for a mental institution.
Nothing I have said however suggests that, or suggests I think that. You have made this bit up entirely on your own without anything from me.
smacl wrote: » Omnipresent kind of negates any added value for infinite time and a multiverse. Pretty sure the people who invented God weren't really thinking this far ahead
saabsaab wrote: » Nobody can be fully objective as as you say we are bound by the limits of our minds. However, i can't see how 'somethingness' is the default.
There are lots of things, especially in Quantum Theory, that I can not see because it is so off and strange and weird. It does not stop it being true however.
