Deeply flawed hasn’t much to do with it. It’s the Problem of Induction that drives that sentiment, and which plagues science’s validity, as well.
I gathered from the general impression of the dream that hot fusion had been achieved but was not economical or otherwise viable, this was a set of experiments to try different methods of producing fusion using the newly invented super gauss SC to produce fusion at a MUCH lower temperatures albiet much higer pressure.
The experiments were not designed to produce energy, only to test the difficulty of producing the fusion, the whole reactor was under ground, I assume from your comments that most of the energy produced was just heating the earth and concrete around the building. The steam cooling was required to keep the vessel from melting.
I have been living with this stuff in my head for 13 years now and I am still uncertain if it has anything to do with reality, I went down another path, “I” in the dream knew a unifying theory for the universe and I have spent a lot of time trying to validate or debunk it, without much success one way or another. The theory gave me lots of insight into space time and relativity and derives many basic equations such as F=MA, the universal law of gravitation, the Lorenze contraction and predicts the Michelson Morley outcome with an either but it has definite holes in it that I am unable to patch.
As a skeptic, I experience awe and wonder all the time. I understand how light emmiting diodes work. I understand that they are made in factories that turn out millions a day. But as I watch electrons flow, fall to a lower energy state, and emit visible light, I know awe and wonder. I find the fact that they are completely explainable and can be made for fractions of a cent more wondrous. But, LED’s don’t represent anything for me other than the achievements necessary to produce them.
I believe in God. I believe I have had personal experience of God. But, I recognize that my experiences do not qualify as evidence in either the scientific or legal sense. I would never use them as proof that God exists. I admit the possibility that there is no God and my experiences were due to events in my temporal lobe or other neurological event. I am quite skeptical when I hear anybody claim a miracle. Whenever a falsifiable claim is made, it should be tested.
Well, whether or not God exists, there’s nothing in the Judeochristian tradition that suggests he’s a character worthy of my reverence or worship, what with all the smiting of infants and other unsavoury behaviour.
Hear! Hear!
It seems to me that such action can be explained. The God of the Old Testament is not an Impartial Judge but is a partisan God who protects at all costs his chosen people from the gods of the surrounding tribes. In return all he asks is that they follow his rules to the letter. If they don’t do that then He visits upon them some suitable reminder to get back in line.
The Roman Catholic Church, in an apparent effort to avoid the embarassmnet of another Galileo fiasco, has recognized that the Universe and the human experience of life can be examined in two ways; through Science or through Religion.
The Scientific Method is capable of describing the physical world we inhabit, its biology, physics, chemistry etc. It has enjoyed great success in producing technological and medical marvels, and in explaining much about the tangible world around us.
Religion and secular philosophy, on the other hand, deal with experiences and phenomena which transcend those which can be quantified. Why do we make art and music? What is the meaning of life? What is our place in the Universe? What is right and wrong? Is there a God?
While I am firmly in the group consensually upon agreed to be skeptics, I do recognize the compelling nature of these questions. But having the personality and intellect of a skeptic I am content to appreciate all forms of art and music as simply part of being human, bonuses of natural selection. Visual memory and sense of rhythym probably had survival value, possibly in more than one way. Melodic sounds may have been related to our developing communication and social skills. Life may have no “greater meaning”, but the fact that it is a gift to be enjoyed seems intutitively (not arrived at empirically) apparent to me. Our “place” in the universe is being unveiled in an ongoing manner as scientists learn more…I do not feel compelled to lend any added significance other than I like being alive. As far as right and wrong go, most of us share a sense of fairness…again a byprduct of our evolution as sentient beings. Applying these mostly shared feelings to everyday law and to particular situations must then become a matter of compromise. For instance most sane people believe it is wrong to kill another person except in self-defense. Many of us disagree as to when a fetus becomes another person, and so laws must be created in venues in which different voices are heard (legislatures and courts).
I think the largest difference between skeptics and mystics lies in mystics’ ironic need of specific answers, to questions which do not have specific answers. The more empirically minded skeptics will recognize that such answers are inaccessible through careful observation. So the big question…“Is there a God?”…is decidedly a question not amenable to the Scientific Method. It then becomes a matter of faith; i.e. it cannot be proved or disproved. One simply decides whether to believe. That is the true definition of faith. Feelings may be compelling, but they are not evidence.
If I understand your story correctly, it was a person that did all those horrible things to people, not God.
In my entire life I have never seen God smite anyone, or harm anyone.
So I have to label your story as fiction.
Wish that was my story, but it was penned by a writer who was just a tad, a smidge, better than your humble Finn.
We’ve been over the problem of an omnipotent God before. If such a being exists, any suffering She does not prevent is Her fault, as is any suffering She causes.
Ya don’t say? So Satan didn’t really write letters from the earth? Hmmm… My cosmology is shaken.
The problem is “in the Judeochristian tradition,” not in God. All through the history of mankind we have people defining God. They write their definitions in books and call them sacred. But how can we really know what God is like? Perhaps you have some answers.
Has there been a discussion of this omnipotent God giving man freewill. If we have no freewill then life is inevitable, with every action planned for us. In this case, yes, it would be God’s fault. But if we do have freewill we can act on our own and we have personal responsibility for our actions.
Which is it?
“Freewill” is a concept originated in one of those sacred books you just bashed.
lekatt
Can you admit you’ve never seen “him” do good either?
You might conclude just that, if you were born 200 years ago and not exposed to modern science. It is quite possible that we’re the result of quantal and sub-quantal forces, and governed by the underlying information matrix which informs Reality with the state vector collapsing into various eigen states, or all possible eigen states… But that’s not even necessary to postulate.
Even with complete free will, it should be possible to influence human behavior. After all, if God were the source of everything, then She could just as easily cause your newspaper to ‘happen’ to flip open to the article you needed to see, just as She could send a tsunami, or whatever.
A neat dodge, but I’m afraid I can’t let you get away with it. The Bible is full of stories where God affects change without changing the mind of a person. (And even one where, specificaly, he eliminates the free will of a person, hardening Pharoh’s heart and all…)
Why couldn’t God keep a supply of miracles on hand and just poof you into another place if you were about to get eaten by a bear? How about diseases? Obviously they would only exist, under such a paradigm, if God willed them into being. Where does free will come into the geometry of plague?
False dichotomy.
Might be a case of selection bias.
“Whatever is happy and fuzzy, God did it, because I like God. But if it’s bad, I’ll argue it away.”
You miss the point entirely. The man in the story was imitating the God of the Bible.
Not sure if you grok the concept of satire?
Well, I use Judeochristianity as an example most of the forum readers are likely familiar with. If you want to label it ‘fiction’, you get no argument from me. I’m just pointing out the internal inconsistancy between a caring God and one who kills children or demands they be killed, as happens numerous times throughout the old testament.
In any case, I can assume that thunder is the supersonic movement of air after a massive discharge of static electricity or God striking at those who oppose Him (1 Samuel 2:10) or Thor playing with Mjolinor or any number of things, but to engage in ritual worship? Why would I bother with that? On the assumption that God(s) exists, is him/her/it/they a force of nature, like electricity and gravity? I don’t worship electricity or gravity (though they are useful), so let the god(s) take care of themselves.
My answer is that if it’s important for humans to know the nature of God and that we can’t get reliable information through science or prophesy, the onus is on God to make his/her/its nature known. If he/she/it can’t or won’t, his/her/its existence is of no importance.
I agree with this as with the point you make in the next post. I can’t deny others a belief in mysticism, just because I’ve never witnessed it myself.
The problem is that there is a huge area of life that can’t be considered mysticism but can’t really be broken down into simple rules either. I learned about this on this board about a year ago and it’s been bugging me ever since. Go to the following link 20Q test server and play a few games against the computer.
My experience is that the thing can often guess what I’m thinking (and then argue with me about it) but by taking a totally insane route to get there. I tried cannonball. It’s first guess was on question 20 and it guessed cannonball. But it never asked me a question that seemed half relevant! Is it round, is it iron, are cannons involved, and a bunch of other questions were all not asked.
Anyway what is this? It’s not simple. It’s not mystical. It’s not logical, not as we normally use the term. We know the rules. (OK we don’t, but somebody does) and there is a huge database that we can print out. Everything about it is traceable, but can we really understand what is going on? The easiest way would be to load up a computer and run a simulation, but that’s where we started.
And the non-predictablity of things is troubling, and it’s not quantum uncertainty I’m talking about either. I don’t know exactly how fast I can go round a curve before my tires start sliding. I have a sense, (I don’t go that fast anyway) and I could get a range by trial and error, but an exact answer doesn’t exist, there are too many variables. My point is the simple rules are useless in that circumstance because I can’t apply them. We try to predict the weather and we get it generally right, but never exactly. Storms are very difficult and are generally predicted in percentages over large areas.
As I say, I’ve never seen anything mystical, but I know that some things are just unknowable. I’m willing to accept that the mystical might lie somewhere in that.
Interesting link. My object was “porch rocker”:
Q20. I am guessing that it is a car?
Right, Wrong, Close
- Can you play with it? Maybe.
- Would you find it on a farm? Probably.
- Can it cheer you up? Yes.
- Is it native to South America? No.
- Is it smooth? Partly.
- Do most people use this daily? Maybe.
- Is it round? No.
- Can you sit on it? Yes.
- Do you use it in public? Irrelevant.
- Does it make something move? Partly.
- Is it smaller than a loaf of bread? No.
- Is it alive? No.
- Is it outside? Yes.
- Is it tasty? No.
- Does it get wet? Sometimes.
- Do you use it in cooking? No.
- Does it have anything to do with salad? No.
- Is it green? No.
- It is classified as Vegetable.