Stephen Fry on confronting god after death

timetogo wrote: »

Also with the infinite amount of universes theory there could be an infinite amount of universes out there or before this one that did have the variables different so life couldn't evolve. We're not lucky to have this universe with the laws of physics we know, the laws of physics in this universe were just right for life to emerge.

Yeah. Once upon a time a Human's entire world was his tribe, then it became a country, then it became a continent, then it became a planet.

For thousands of years we didn't know there were other planets. Then we discovered other galaxies.....

Humanity always presumed that the universe couldn't be as big as it is because we were central to everything and it would be an awful waste to have so much empty space.

Now we're faced with the possibility that even our entire universe is just a single bubble in a foaming ocean of universes we now call the multiverse.

Given this possibility it is utterly ludicrous to think that we're unique and specially created by a god

David Quinn completely missed the point.

Free will does not require a god. The fact that god knows what we will do next implies that the theological universe is much more determanistic than the natural one.

Quinn is fundamentally dishonest. He says that god gave us 'free will' but the 'free will' given to us by god is subject to exactly the same limitations that a so called 'determanistic naturalist' allows for.

Our choices are all determined by the present state we find ourselves in.

Right now, I'm sitting at a computer near a window. I do not have the 'freedom' to fly in a rocketship to the moon, because I don't have access to those resources. I do have the 'freedom' to go and make myself a cup of coffee. A naturalistic explanation of how I make the decision to get a cup of coffee depends on the 'state' i am currently in.
Am I thirsty
Do I have other tasks that I need to do that are more urgent than coffee
Am I awake
Is the Kettle working
Is there coffee in the jar
Is it a long walk to the kitchen
Do I like coffee
Does my body crave caffeine
Are there other people who will make me a cup of coffee and bring it to me....

There are millions of factors that decide what we do,, when we do them, what choices are available to us, why we choose one thing and not another. Our brains evaluate the options available to us and make a decision based on these. Most of the decision making process is sub conscious and relies on heuristics. The fact that there are so many millions of paramaters means our ability to evaluate which ones to do next is functionally equivalent to free will. The fact that so many decisions we make are roughly equivalent but have long term butterfly effects, means it is impossible to predict the future and the future is more or less unpredictable, which means it is not 'pre-determined' what will happen in a naturalistic universe without a god.

The natural framework allows for human decisions to affect what happens in the future. The theological framework states that the future is known, and humans are just playing out our roles and everything we do is part of the bigger plan that god has for the universe.

Also, there is no good and evil.

There are things that we like, and things that we don't like. We call the things that we like good, and the things that we don't like evil

We like living successful happy lives, so this is good, we don't like being murdered by axe wielding maniacs, so we call this evil.

We like chocolate biscuits, so we call them good

We don't like having our entire community wiped out by a tsunami so we call that evil (natural evil, whatever that is)

Theology is the art of taking the world and systematically misunderstanding how it works by putting it through a filter of 'what does god intend by this'

There is no natural evil, it's a ridiculous concept. The very earth we live on was formed by massive geological upheaval. It sucks to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get caught up in a natural disaster, but rather than 'accepting that it's god's plan' we should be investing in science and understanding so that we can better protect against these in the future (early warning systems, better building designs, evacuation procedures etc etc

captbarnacles wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/david-quinn/why-i-just-cant-believe-in-stephen-frys-illconsidered-atheist-outburst-30968948.html

Uh oh. David Quinn is sad.

Sad? He always looks completely sour.

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Theories are like computer programs, if you put **** into them, **** comes out the other end.
I have never once heard a physicist claim the universe "came from nothing".

Lawrence Krauss wrote a book called 'A universe from nothing'
But the crux is in what the definition of 'nothing' actually is. Quantum particles pop in and out of existance 'from nothing'

If I have 100 euros and I owe you 100 euros, in accounting terms, I have zero assets 'nothing', but I still have a hundred euros in my pocket.... until I pay you back and then I have nothing again, but I can always borrow more tomorrow...

The universe has 'positive' (eg light) and 'negative' energy (eg gravity). when we add up all the positive and negative energy in the universe, the total energy content of our entire universe could be zero.

Universes could be created from nothing just like money can be created from nothing by doing things 'on credit'

It's a headwrecker, but at least its an honest attempt to understand reality. Theologans are dishonest and say 'Everything has to have a cause...... Except god'

dancingchicken wrote: »

I thought the same thing too but now I'm thinking what if time is just a perception. I mean what if our brains are just perceiving time as a past present and future and maybe it doesn't even exist. Scientists have proven that tiny insects like flies perceive time at a different rate to us.

A little bit of analogy with how computers work really helps to understand these concepts better. If you have a computer program running, you can set the 'tick rate' to be a higher or lower value. The faster the tick rate, the faster the program runs, the slower the tick rate, the slower it runs. A faster tickrate can perform more operations in the same length of time than a slow one. It's like asking a video to show 60 frames a second instead of 30 frames a second. The video will look like it's in fast forward from the perspective of the person watching it, but from the perspective of the people acting in the film, it's happening at 'normal speed'

Brains also have a 'tick rate' which can speed up or slow down. If we are in a stressful situation, your brain automatically ramps up it's attention so that time appears to slow down. If our brain usually notices 10 things a second, but then starts to notice 20 things a second, then time will appear to run at half speed (this explains why people in car accidents often describe it as happening in slow motion)

An insect like a fly needs to notice things very fast, because the things it eats, and the things that eat it can also notice things very fast, so for an insect, the tick rate is much higher than a human and time appears to move at a slower speed. But despite the experience of rates of time being different, time is never experienced backwards, there is a definite arrow of time and this is related to entropy.

So if all organisms perceive time differently then how do we know there is a correct time? Unless our brains are just making up the existence of time.

The concept of 'correct time' is itself a difficult one. 'Time' itself doesn't change, but relative time does. Two clocks of identical precision will both tick at the same rate according to their own perspective, but if viewed from different places in one clock have ticked 10 times, while the other has ticked 11 times and this is due to the warping of space/time due to gravity. It's a terrifically confusing concept and common sense breaks down completely here. We have to go with the evidence from experimental observations and trust in science when the predictions are accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

I think theres a lot of things we will never understand because we are programmed to see the world in such a limited and specific way. For example the way bats would perceive the world would be drastically different to the way we perceive it. Then some other creatures have different types of sensors, even plants have senses that allow them to react to stimuli.

You're partially right on this, we can never intuitively understand all of nature. We can only experience the world through our own senses, but we can measure nature through science and using instruments, that can detect things we can not percieve ourselves, and though these tools (including cognitive tools like logic and mathematics), we can 'understand' the universe in ways that are beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors (the ones who thought lightning was because of an angry man in the sky)