This is gibberish.
Rather closed minded of you, wouldn’t you say? Have you considered how you should live your life if this is truly it?
“[F]rom here that looks like a bucket of water,” he said, pointing to a bucket of water; “but from an ant’s point of view it’s a vast ocean, from an elephant’s just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it’s home. So, you see, the way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.” -The Phantom Tollbooth.
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
- Paul Gauguin
Again, argument from ignorance. You’re saying that you don’t understand these things, so you don’t think other people can either, so obviously they can’t be understood. And that’s wrong. What’s not to understand about infinity? Mathematicians deal with infinity all the time. Yes we have the Big Bang Theory, and we don’t know what came before that, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never know. You’re unhappy with not knowing everything, and so you substitute ‘faith’ or whatever in place of knowledge. And it doesn’t go there.
Then why believe in it? If you can’t even justify the belief to yourself, why bother with it at all?
This doesn’t make a lot of sense, lemmie try and parse it. ‘Faith’ isn’t true or false, it depends on what is taken on faith, and why. If you were to use the scientific method on ‘faith’, I would assume you would be testing the assertions that are made in faith, ie: ‘god exists’. This is a pretty easy one, as we have no objective evidence of his existence, it should be obvious that the conclusion would be ‘god doesnt exist’.
Sorry, here it is in more detail. You have a jar of M&Ms (we used jelly beans) and distribute cards to have people write their guesses on. Half of them say
- Is there more than 10 jelly beans in the jar? Y N
- Guess the number of jelly beans
and the other half say
- Are there fewer than 10,000 jelly beans in the jar
- Guess the number of jelly beans
What you find is that the people who get the first card estimate much lower than the people who get the second card. What happens is that your mind “anchors” to the first number, and that affects your guess.
The anchoring number doesn’t even have to be related to the guess - this has been done asking people if the average temperature in Chicago is more or less than 700 degrees F.
So if you want to ask your boss for a raise, start the conversation with something about the number of stars in the galaxy, so you can anchor him to a big number.
My point is that the estimates people do can be easily manipulated.
Were you aware that in some cases placebos work even better if you charge people a lot for them? The brain and body are connected - nothing supernatural about that - and it is hardly surprising that you can influence the brain and thus the body.
I was once hooked up to a heart monitor before a procedure, and while waiting for them to come back into the room was able to lower my heart rate just by concentrating. I have no meditation experience. No faith required in placebos - you can test them.
How does that imply nothing? The universe was here before there was anyone to understand it. Atoms were here before anyone understood them either.
Why do I need to prove it? I can provisionally accept that you exist in part because I’m aware of no AIs which can write as well as you do yet, and because there would be no reason for them to come here. That’s not faith at all since I can be easily proven wrong.
Now if you latch on to a Notre Dame footballer and suddenly die on the other hand …
Well, I guess.
If anything, I think reincarnation is the most likely possibility. I think that my soul carries on two different ways. I think that every single impression I make is carried on by those who are effected. So, in this exchange, a piece of your soul is carried by me and you carry a piece of mine.
Also, I think that every being has its own soul. The physical body acts much like a vessel and the soul is it’s animating force.
So in a way we are all connected, but seperate at the same time.
All things considered, I don’t see how my beliefs affect my conduct in this life.
He shoots, he scores! Nailed it!
And what evidence leads you to believe this?
Why? What leads you to believe any of this is true beyond a very generic “Well, it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?” feeling?
Exactly. This claim makes no sense whatsoever.
I will grant that there are things that exist where the numbers of faithful DO matter, to us humans, though not to the universe. For instance, Hitler. If only 10 people had faith in what he said, he’d probably have ended up with them in an asylum. Another example is Jesus (assuming he was an actual human being). Since millions of people have followed his teachings for thousands of years, the world, in terms of culture and society, is different from what it otherwise would have been. But that says absolutely nothing about whether Jesus was indeed a god. All it can be said to legitimately mean is that a lot of people think Jesus had good ideas worth following.
This is what I do not understand. Why would you say that statement is true? What makes you believe it? I just don’t see any connection between the two.
Why should a lack of total understanding of all aspects of the universe imply faith? What does that even mean? The wording seems a little odd:
ignorance = faith ? (to oversimplify it a bit)
Faith in what? The existence of ignorance? I have a deep faith that ignorance definitely exists. I would lose that faith however, if it could be shown by evidence that ignorance does not exist.
And when you say that you think every being has a soul, does that include the animals?
What sort of life does a black widow spider have to lead to get reincarnated to a higher species?
Well, like I’ve said there is no hard evidence. All we can do is logically come to a conclusion. For example, Descartes used “I think, therefore I am.” I think that’s standing on pretty solid ground.
In my view, the question “where did everything come from?” never ends. It seems to make no sense, because it implies that the universe was always here. But, how was it always here? Something doesn’t come from nothing. I don’t see how anyone can say we’re ever going to figure this out.
Furthermore, you would think that “nothingness” would be the default option. No matter, space, or time to speak of. This doesn’t beg the question of where did this “nothingness” come from in the first place? Nothing doesn’t come from something. Nothing just is.
So, if I am to assume that the universe will forever remain an irrational mystery, faith is the only logical choice. Where you place your faith is up to you.
Well, thats just ridiculous! Black widow spiders do not understand morality. And I’m not a black widow spider so how am I supposed to be able to tell you that?
Irrational?? If you define rationality as predictable and following a particular set of rules, the universe is FAR more rational than than, say, human thought processes and judgement. It’s just that we don’t understand all the rules.
No, it doesn’t.
That may not be the case.
It seems like you’re abandoning the god thing, then. The problem with this line of thinking is that gods don’t address the mystery. They just kick the can down the road one step. If you assume no gods, the question is ‘why is there anything?’ And if you answer ‘a god did it,’ the question becomes ‘why is there a god, then?’ And there’s no answer to that unless you try to rely on some dictionary game-playing like ‘nothing can come from nothing except a god, which can do those things because it’s god.’ It’s no more satisfying.