Nature = God's Existence???

[capo ultra]

As someone who's in danger of experiencing an aneurysm every time he's confronted by God-worshippers, Dawkins really shouldn't be associated in any way with the message on that ad.

i think its tongue-in-cheek??

it is, doesn't change the fact that a self-confessed militant atheist is supporting an agnostic message

[noam]

yea if the sign was serious i think it'd be worth reading into

since its clearly a bit of fun i think we can let tricky dicky off cant we

[SCope13]

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

[kingGhost]

this thread...

[noam]

Pretty much all of what is in Bringer's last post has helped me form my own personal view of existence.
Also

Anyway, why can't ideas be right and wrong at the same time, depending on the context? Newtonian mechanics seems to work most of the time, but it doesn't really explain everything and in some respects is wrong. Quantum mechanics appears to explain a lot of things, but again it doesn't cover every eventuality. We all generally believe that when we partially submerge a stick into water and we see it bend, the stick doesn't actually bend but instead the apparent bending is due to the difference in the speed of light in water compared to in air. However, I'm sure we could also invent a set of mathematical expressions and laws which would allow us to consider the possibility that the stick truly does bend. It would likely result in a slightly weird worldview but it could also represent a different way of looking at things.

That's pretty much what i'm saying. To set anything in stone is to limit ourselves. If the consideration remains, however remote the possibility, then I believe we are better off for it.

To claim to be truly conscious, we should always be examining everything to the best of our abilities, and incorporating any new and relevant information that presents itself. Old information sets should be referenced, and updated where necessary. No information is useless, regardless of how wrong it may seem at a given moment in time. Otherwise, we would simply lose perspective and the open-mindedness to receive any new information that could change the worldview.

Yes. This is how I live my life. as i've said before, if I can be shown the truth (truth, truth type truth) then i'm truly happy to have been proved wrong.

basically, i was saying before, that i just dont believe in the world in our heads being true to the world as it is outside our headsm 100% of the time

i think its an important distinction to make due to the world in other peoples heads being different to ours, almost always... forever

that is in infact if you believe in other people and the outside world to begin with, an assumption that you may want to reject. If you reject it you have to consider the consequences of that. If you accept it, you need to scrap solipsism.

you'd be hard pressed to find many philosopher, physicist... well.. anyone... who wants to argue FOR solipsism, in fact it'd be quite absurd to be forced into a position to argue for Solipsism since you'd effectively be defending your own position against... yourself.

there's loads of reason's solipsism doesn't work, but at bottom i dont WANT it to work, i like the external world, and reality, and other people and their minds and world views.

if we're gona talk about the mind bending the spoon, well yeh - but that doesn't mean that there isn't an external world beyond you in which the spoon exists independently of what your mind does to it, scientifically like Kay said there are certain factors which cause the refraction of the light from the spoon - this doesn't mean the spoon bends, it means your mind interprets light waves n fucks you up NAH'M SAYNNNN

the quantum type argument is well interesting tho, but then you get into all sorts of modal possibilities for reality - and yeh i actually ascribe to them in principle (necessarily, if something can exist then it does exist/multiple, infinite realities/parallel universes/necessary existence of things etc.), but for the purposes of a simple argument, and day-to-day functioning its best to ignore it in any capacity to which i'd change my life for it... cos actually, the 1 in a trillion trillion trillion chance that i walk through a wall completely randomly or levitate my ball sack with my mind isn't worth it for me personally

anyway i thought this discussion went quite well tbf

a lot better than most other discussions of this kind on here anyway

[kingGhost]

faith is a great topic for discussion because it doesn't require anyone to know shit about what they are talking about. you can be a high school dropout and still have a legitimate discussion about faith. or non-faith, as it will.

[jugo]

the quantum type argument is well interesting tho, but then you get into all sorts of modal possibilities for reality - and yeh i actually ascribe to them in principle (necessarily, if something can exist then it does exist/multiple, infinite realities/parallel universes/necessary existence of things etc.), but for the purposes of a simple argument, and day-to-day functioning its best to ignore it in any capacity to which i'd change my life for it... cos actually, the 1 in a trillion trillion trillion chance that i walk through a wall completely randomly or levitate my ball sack with my mind isn't worth it for me personally

yeah, the quantum argument only works if you're an electron - it doesn't apply to our scale of existence.

[noam]

faith is a great topic for discussion because it doesn't require anyone to know shit about what they are talking about. you can be a high school dropout and still have a legitimate discussion about faith. or non-faith, as it will.

yeah man i mean everyone has an opinion on religion,its something so pervasive in our lives

its something that i've really as much as possible tried to get rid of from my life, i find it for the most part distasteful and divisive, but my personal experience with it isn't anywhere near what your regular Religionista will have had, a Jewish mother/Islamic father isn't too common after all...

@Jugo: exactly. they are getting there though... scientists have teleported entangled information from trillions of Cesium atoms (whole atoms, lots of them) as a gas, around 50cm i think using laser pulses: no, i dont understand either but they're doing it and thats great. its really, really great.

[jugo]

@Jugo: exactly. they are getting there though... scientists have teleported entangled information from trillions of Cesium atoms (whole atoms, lots of them) as a gas, around 50cm i think using laser pulses: no, i dont understand either but they're doing it and thats great. its really, really great.

i didn't know about that - cheers. *goes off to search*

[hifi]

faith is a great topic for discussion because it doesn't require anyone to know shit about what they are talking about. you can be a high school dropout and still have a legitimate discussion about faith. or non-faith, as it will.

yeah man i mean everyone has an opinion on religion,its something so pervasive in our lives

its something that i've really as much as possible tried to get rid of from my life, i find it for the most part distasteful and divisive, but my personal experience with it isn't anywhere near what your regular Religionista will have had, a Jewish mother/Islamic father isn't too common after all...

@Jugo: exactly. they are getting there though... scientists have teleported entangled information from trillions of Cesium atoms (whole atoms, lots of them) as a gas, around 50cm i think using laser pulses: no, i dont understand either but they're doing it and thats great. its really, really great.

[hifi]

scientists have teleported entangled information from trillions of Cesium atoms (whole atoms, lots of them) as a gas, around 50cm i think using laser pulses: no, i dont understand either but they're doing it and thats great. its really, really great.

[borrowed]

scientists have teleported entangled information from trillions of Cesium atoms (whole atoms, lots of them) as a gas, around 50cm i think using laser pulses: no, i dont understand either but they're doing it and thats great. its really, really great.

wut

[hifi]

scientists have teleported entangled information from trillions of Cesium atoms (whole atoms, lots of them) as a gas, around 50cm i think using laser pulses: no, i dont understand either but they're doing it and thats great. its really, really great.

wut

why hello there

[noam]

scientists have teleported entangled information from trillions of Cesium atoms (whole atoms, lots of them) as a gas, around 50cm i think using laser pulses: no, i dont understand either but they're doing it and thats great. its really, really great.

wut

its basically a process which switches the information from one atom to another atom via a third

imagine copying a file on your computer, but instead of creating an entirely new file like this:

File A ---> File A and File A.i

you have three atoms, A, B and C. You want to teleport information from A to C. You introduce a third atom B, which is coherent with C

now C and B are entangled, thus they share information (to do with atomic spins etc. determining properties of atom??), you bring A into contact with B, A becomes entangled with B, passes information to B which due to its previous entanglement with C, causes C to take on the information from A.

thus information is teleported from A to C via B using entanglement

remember spins of Quantum particles?? well take an electron, if you have an electron with a down spin, you must have somewhere one with an up-spin also, if you change the spin of one the other will change in accordance... if you split them up they are still 'entangled' and the information change in one passes to another

this experiment is basically a more complex version of that

the Cesium atom one entangled a beam of light, photons (a laser) with the information from trillions of Cesium atoms, and teleported the information to a next group of Cesium atoms over half a yard away - physically teleporting the information of whole atoms via laser pulses.