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The fact that they were allowed to make The Undiscovered Country after the sheer dreck that was The Final Frontier is a divine miracle and proof that there is some sort of God. The same applies to the first and second series of TNG.
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 11:45 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 07:27 |
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JohnsonsJohnson posted:I just cant buy any particular religious conception if God other than there being some powerful, good consciousness of the universe. Id like to think my faith is a form of intuition but it may just because I'm terrified of me and my loved ones not existing after death and I want to believe we are all part of some cosmic narrative. So you're a deist, because you're afraid of death? You don't have a reason to believe other than "I really really want it to be true"? You see how that's problematic, don't you?
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 18:37 |
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bobtheconqueror posted:Here's my point. You can't really derive knowledge from emotion alone. You can't answer factual questions with feelings. At least not effectively. I'm not certain this is accurate. I expect that you and I both agree metaphysical solipsism is false; the external world exists independently of our perceptions of it. But I don't have evidence of this, and I'm not sure how I'd even attempt to gather any. Is this not an example of accurate intuitive knowledge?
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 20:15 |
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Amarkov posted:I'm not certain this is accurate. I expect that you and I both agree metaphysical solipsism is false; the external world exists independently of our perceptions of it. But I don't have evidence of this, and I'm not sure how I'd even attempt to gather any. Is this not an example of accurate intuitive knowledge? Sorry, that's true. Very basic as hell stuff you have to make an assumption on. That comes down to Occam's razor though, and I don't know if there's much more to accept there other than perception itself. Basically everything else follows from that one given. Also, I'd disagree on knowing whether or not solipsism is false. That's unknowable, precisely because of the inability to acquire evidence. Within the context of reality, the physical stuff I perceive, others exist, but outside of it, in a metaphysical context? I simply don't know, in the same sense that I don't know the nature of the self outside of perception. How about this. You can't derive effective knowledge about reality from emotion alone. That provides some context I was assuming previously. If we're talking about things outside of the context of reality, then what's the point? Sky daddy beyond the real doesn't mean poo poo or do poo poo, and claiming any knowledge about such a thing, like goodness, or consciousness, is absurd, as is letting your belief in something beyond knowing decide your actions in a reality it can't touch by definition.
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 20:37 |
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JohnsonsJohnson posted:I just cant buy any particular religious conception if God other than there being some powerful, good consciousness of the universe. Id like to think my faith is a form of intuition but it may just because I'm terrified of me and my loved ones not existing after death and I want to believe we are all part of some cosmic narrative. you and I are not even a footnote in the cosmic narrative friend
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 21:44 |
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JawKnee posted:you and I are not even a footnote in the cosmic narrative friend Pretty much this. Human lives and humans and gently caress the entire Earth itself is barely even a spec in the Universe's vastness and history. The idea that the universe even gives a whimpy fart about any of us would be the equivalent of Humanity putting on a full year of mourning complete with Operatic musicals and holding hands across the world for the life and times of a single bacterium on some spec of soil that lived for less than an hour in the middle of a swamp in Bumfuck, Nowhere.
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 22:00 |
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Zeitgueist posted:Nah, because leftism is awesome. I'm a Christian leftist.
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# ? Dec 22, 2014 05:07 |
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Amarkov posted:I'm not certain this is accurate. I expect that you and I both agree metaphysical solipsism is false; the external world exists independently of our perceptions of it. But I don't have evidence of this, and I'm not sure how I'd even attempt to gather any. Is this not an example of accurate intuitive knowledge? Please do not equate idealism with solipsism, and you'll have to make a better argument than "I know this but I don't know how I learned it so it must obviously be a priori knowledge" if you want to prove it exists.
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# ? Dec 22, 2014 19:40 |
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Lets try this one. Reality without choice is meaningless. Choice is magic If reality has meaning there is magic So.. X is all there is. X = reality. We assume that reality is driven bay a set of laws that cannot be deviated from. We assume that a single causal event started reality. This event started a cascade of events driven by laws that can't be deviated from. Trying to explain, or interpret reality would be like deriving an overly complex equation that resolves to 11. (4+7, 5+2+4, 5*2+1...) The answer is just 11, reality is just X. Choice is a variable. If choice exists in reality, then the laws that define it become important. Reality is no longer just X, it is a complex equation with variables of choice. Even if these choices are very small and do not effect the value of X in any significant way. For a very precise (or exact) calculation they must be included. For example the letter I choose to type on the next line. R This has very little effect, but reality must account for it, for very very precise values of reality. Choices seem to come from outside reality, if they were derived from some causal effect inside reality they wouldn't be choices. Therefore they have a supernatural or magical quality. Reality without magic is meaningless.
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# ? Dec 22, 2014 23:35 |
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That'd be great if choice was actually magic, or if it came from outside reality. It isn't and doesn't, so you're kind of screwed there. Also worth asking, what is the proposed meaning of reality? What consequence or deprivation of value would a meaningless reality entail? bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Dec 23, 2014 |
# ? Dec 23, 2014 07:45 |
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bobtheconqueror posted:What consequence or deprivation of value would a meaningless reality entail? If P then Q. Q scares me, so I prefer not-Q. Therefore, not-P.
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 17:54 |
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:So you're a deist, because you're afraid of death? That is one of the cornerstones of why religion exists. Ignore the lovely title of this, it's the Trucker's Chapel scene from Religulous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Oei7qM_tA
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# ? Jan 2, 2015 16:01 |
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JawKnee posted:you and I are not even a footnote in the cosmic narrative friend http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/my-dad-and-the-cosmos.html quote:My father, the astronomer Carl Sagan, taught space sciences and critical thinking at Cornell. By that time, he had become well known and frequently appeared on television, where he inspired millions with his contagious curiosity about the universe. But inside the Sphinx Head Tomb, he and my mother, Ann Druyan, wrote books, essays, and screenplays together, working to popularize a philosophy of the scientific method in place of the superstition, mysticism, and blind faith that they felt was threatening to dominate the culture. They were deeply in love — and now, as an adult, I can see that their professional collaborations were another expression of their union, another kind of lovemaking. One such project was the 13-part PBS series Cosmos, which my parents co-wrote and my dad hosted in 1980 — a new incarnation of which my mother has just reintroduced on Sunday nights on Fox. Carl Sagan continues to be an inspiration.
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# ? Jan 2, 2015 17:15 |
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Crowsbeak posted:I'm a Christian leftist. You're cool in my book, then.
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# ? Jan 2, 2015 22:51 |
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CommieGIR posted:http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/my-dad-and-the-cosmos.html
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 07:31 |
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Dahn posted:Lets try this one. Friendship is a kind of magic (1). Friendship exists (2). QED motherfucker. We don't need your god. 1). Conservapedia article on magic, author conservative. 2). Fact
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 07:45 |
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LookingGodIntheEye posted:I find it interesting that Sagan still ties our existence into some larger narrative, and one of the main reasons why he inspires people is because he provides an alternate world narrative to religion that nonetheless in many ways still provides the emotional uplift many of us humans seem to desire to ward off the primal fear of our complete self-negation. Sagan to me seems as much a spiritual figure as a scientific one (note: I'm not trying to say "durr science is religion too"). No, I agree entirely. Things like The Sagan Series and The Feynman Series are proof spirituality can be found in science and humanity.
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# ? Jan 3, 2015 16:36 |
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Shbobdb posted:Friendship is a kind of magic (1). Friendship exists (2). QED motherfucker. We don't need your god. Is this the Brony argument? Magic = something outside reality = possibility for god that you don't need.
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 15:58 |
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CommieGIR posted:No, I agree entirely. Things like The Sagan Series and The Feynman Series are proof spirituality can be found in science and humanity.
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 17:16 |
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Spirituality and wonder are different things.
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 17:36 |
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rudatron posted:I'm not sure it's accurate to call it 'spirituality', it's a specific emotional response in the same way anger, guilt or fear is. I think it's the satisfaction of 'need to belong' through the placement of the individual into narrative or community context, but I'm not too sure. Whatever it is, it'ss a desire of people that they act to satisfy, but calling it spirituality has some hidden implications about an inherent belief system behind it, which isn't necessary. Well, I mean't spirituality as in the feelings you'd get from a religious experience, minus the mysticism. quote:"In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind. SedanChair posted:Spirituality and wonder are different things. Yes, but Wonder can elicit the same emotional responses.
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 17:43 |
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For me "spirituality" has a connotation of playing fast and loose with the truth. At a certain point you wave your hands and say "the ineffable mystery!" Science fetishists will do that, they're the sort who think that technology is going to sort everything out. There's no reason to believe everything will be sorted out; that's faith, and could be a kind of spirituality. If you say "I really like learning things it makes my brain feel neat," it would be cheapening the language to call that spirituality.
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 17:46 |
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SedanChair posted:For me "spirituality" has a connotation of playing fast and loose with the truth. At a certain point you wave your hands and say "the ineffable mystery!" Fair enough, and yes, a lot of people get caught up in the excitement of science and leave behind the skepticism necessary to understand and remain humble in the face of reality, especially with world altering issues such as Global Warming and Climate Change.
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 17:48 |
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I think calling it spirituality is a way to equate it to what the religious people experience. That is, it is suggesting that the two feelings are really the same, and come from the same place: there is no God in reality, but when you feel a connectedness with it, you feel the same emotion as one who feels a connectedness to the cosmos without the religious element. "We are made of star stuff" and "we are God's children" produce the same feelings, so if we call the latter "spirituality" it can make sense to call the former that too.
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 18:56 |
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JawKnee posted:There is a finite amount of matter in the universe matter can certainly be created/destroyed
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 22:28 |
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The Belgian posted:matter can certainly be created/destroyed When have we demonstrated this?
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# ? Jan 5, 2015 22:46 |
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The Belgian posted:matter can certainly be created/destroyed Citation needed. Because if you demonstrate that, you will be up for a Nobel prize for disproving Conservation of Mass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Jan 5, 2015 |
# ? Jan 5, 2015 23:17 |
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CommieGIR posted:Citation needed. Because if you demonstrate that, you will be up for a Nobel prize for disproving Conservation of Mass. from you wikipedia link: quote:Exceptions or caveats to mass/matter conservation
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:12 |
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The Belgian posted:from you wikipedia link: Yes, true, but the nitpicky word being PERFECTLY conserved. Its still conserved, and even in nuclear reactions the mass is reflected in the loss of sub atomic particles. Conservation of mass has caveats, but matter is still conserved, just sometimes the balancing of the books occurs at a lower level than the atomic level.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:16 |
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CommieGIR posted:Conservation of mass has caveats, but matter is still conserved, just sometimes the balancing of the books occurs at a lower level than the atomic level. What? In for example electron / positron pair anihilations I have a mass of 2 m_e going in and a bunch of photons with 0 mass going out. It's not conserved.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:19 |
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thread is 9 pages have we figured out if god exists yet y/n?
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:20 |
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^^^I am god^^^The Belgian posted:What? In for example electron / positron pair anihilations I have a mass of 2 m_e going in and a bunch of photons with 0 mass going out. It's not conserved. do you not consider a change to energy as a change in form?
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:23 |
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The Belgian posted:What? In for example electron / positron pair anihilations I have a mass of 2 m_e going in and a bunch of photons with 0 mass going out. It's not conserved. The Gamma rays given off match the mass -> energy conversion.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:30 |
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The Belgian posted:What? In for example electron / positron pair anihilations I have a mass of 2 m_e going in and a bunch of photons with 0 mass going out. It's not conserved. Did you know that when things move faster, their mass increases? Einstein's discovery disproves science, QUED statists SedanChair posted:Spirituality and wonder are different things. The common elements are euphoria and soul-nourishment. When I think (or Carl Sagan thinks) about the incredible unlikelihood of my existence, the wonder that fills me is just the same as I felt about God when I believed that he was a thing. Although, I agree that this scientific wonder doesn't have the same ethical implications as religious wonder / spirituality.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:36 |
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this last page is basically why physicists have stopped using the phrase "conservation of mass" rather than "conservation of energy" or "conservation of mass-energy". Because mass isn't really conserved but given mass-energy equivalence it isn't really destroyed either. so basically popular discourse of physics is 110 years behind the knowledge of physics, which is frankly pretty drat good compared to how far behind it is for other scientific fields.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:37 |
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Fried Chicken posted:this last page is basically why physicists have stopped using the phrase "conservation of mass" rather than "conservation of energy" or "conservation of mass-energy". Because mass isn't conserved but given mass-energy equivalence it isn't really destroyed either. Well people tend to forget that mass can be transformed into energy, and that Conservation of Mass tends to be before the discovery of such principles. Still applies, just not updated for new discoveries.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:39 |
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The Belgian posted:What? In for example electron / positron pair anihilations I have a mass of 2 m_e going in and a bunch of photons with 0 mass going out. It's not conserved. Traditionally I believe that matter and energy are considered interchangeable for the purposes of conservation of mass.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:45 |
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OwlFancier posted:Traditionally I believe that matter and energy are considered interchangeable for the purposes of conservation of mass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence Yup.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 00:49 |
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The first problem with the question of the existence lack of existence of god is a lack of a consistent definition. What I've found is that the definitions people offer are either so specific that they can be falsified or they are so vague as to be meaningless. If you define god as some long haired dude hanging out on the top of a mountain it's pretty easy to go to that mountain and see whether he does infact exist or not, however "god is the Universe", Spinoza Deist type definitions are either so uselessly abstract or irrelevant. Personally I just go with Occam's Razor, Two scenario's one is that some super powerful eternal being got bored one day and willed the universe into existence, The other is that through some unknown process all of existence simply started. Occam's Razor states that when two competing theories both explain the situation then the odds are that the simpler is more likely to be true. Since a mindless universe spawning out of nothingness is by definition a simpler explanation than an all super-powerful and intelligent being spawning out of nothingness and then creating said universe the existence of such a creator being can be dismissed baring the availability of some new information. Yeah yeah I know watch-maker blah blah blah, but the simple fact is that we don't have another universe to reference in order to determine the differences that might exist between a created one and a spontaneous one. A creator god comes up against the same problem that any magical concept does when examining from a rational perspective. You have to be able to test it, There has to be some circumstance that one can imagine that would demonstrate that the assertion is false. Religion and the religious have expended tremendous energies defining their god(s) in a way that defies falsification. The reason is that every single testable version that has been asserted has in fact been falsified, this leaves the believers in a position where the only way to protect their belief is to describe it in a way that can not be falsified. So rather than being vengeful and sending angel's down or floods to wipe out entire continents when displeased god "works in mysterious ways" rather than healing every faithful that prays those who pray and aren't helped well it was just their time or god wanted to what ever. I always liked this quote from Marcus in Babylon 5. Marcus Cole: "I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life *were* fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. " A godless universe makes sense, it provides and explanation for the problem of "evil" is explains why a 10 year old girl will die of cancer before she even gets to live but utter monsters like Dick Cheney achieve success and long life. Because the alternative is that God is a viscous hateful creature that lives off hate fear and suffering. Funny thought I had when watching Supernatural one time. What if all the spiritualists got it backwards, that evil doesn't exist so that we may better appreciate the good but that good only exists so that our suffering will be so much more bitter. Would definitely explain why most of existence is dull or miserable and why joy and happiness are so rare.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 02:03 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 07:27 |
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We/he/she/I/it watch you. Andy will ban you soon for low content posting.
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# ? Jan 6, 2015 02:49 |