What you have missed is that cosmologists and other experts (and only in the UK one could find a comedian that had a degree in quantum mechanics, that is Ben Miller explaining why there is also no such thing as nothing in physics) are concluding that there is no such thing as nothing.
So no, faith is not the only logical choice. As mentioned before I’m agnostic, and for the remaining faith I have I recognize that it does not depend on logic or science, anyone that is aware on how the constant progression of how science has explained or controlled many of the old time religion claims that “would be always impossible” (even a kid can read all of the book of Job’s dares of God and have an answer) should not rely on concrete evidence to support positions of faith.
Yes, it does come off as a meaningless concept. That does not tell the whole story though. Through the lens of evolution, we probably are line in step with where we should be. Real animals do not have morals or logic and so they lead a short, brutal life. But from the smallest animal to us, the humans, life tends to objectifiably get better. I’m sure there are species far beyond us. The point is that we are asking these questions for a reason. If I believe in a soul, why shouldn’t it follow the laws of evolution?
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Evolution is not goal or purpose driven. There is no law of evolution that requires anything to get “better,” whether objectively or otherwise.
Now, if there are species far beyond us, and souls also evolve, then we get to one point I have mentioned before, what makes then many that think in the traditional god that we are the kings of creation to be correct? When the evidence points to the possibility that we are only a step towards what god was really intending all along?
About as good as yours. Besides, my faith tells me differently.
I’m sure the Higgs Boson will be an amazing discovery. But why would it change things? No matter what we find the question is always going to be “where did that come from?”
Knowing this, I cannot go against my gut instinct that tells me I am different from the objective planet that I live on. I cannot even fathom what I experience in my own life. But, I know it’s real. All I can do is look around at everything and tell whether it’s living or not. The couch that I am sitting on surely has no soul. We’re still made up of the same fundamental particles. How does that work?
Again, I can’t claim to know the mind of an animal. I guess all we can do is test the physical function of the animal. Even if it’s my own theory, I don’t have all the answers. Reincarnation is a far reaching, vague topic which has no basis in anything. As a human being, I think it’s dependent on my actions in this life. Whether they’re good or bad has meaning. I really can’t say much else about it.
So what this thread boils down to is that because you and so many other people believe in a soul and some kind of live after death and some kind of supreme being, your beliefs make it true, or more likely to be true, even though it’s all based on “gut feelings”.
And of course I wanted to see if there was some interest in there, there is agreement that the Higgs Boson was indeed discovered, and for now it confirms that indeed it is not correct to claim that thee is no such thing as “nothing”
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken
Point being that what I have seen is that the answers to questions like that are complex but they do exist, going for the easy gut instinct ones is comforting, but my experience has showed me that the easy answers leads to others controlling your decisions and usually the result is to prevent progress.
Well, no. People are free think how they want and even if everybody were to believe in the “soul,” it would not provide sufficient evidence to establish the fact. However, this discredits consensus in no way and we should not forget the importance of it.
Consensus? Do you even know what that means? Way to move goalposts. WTF was the point of your OP question, then?
Consensus has no credit. It’s value consists of humans agreeing with certain concepts or actions. It has no meaning outside of those involved in the consent.
I’m waiting to hear what’s so difficult about infinity. I don’t see anything particularly hard about it. With a little study, I’m quite confident I could explain cogently the difference between alef-null and alef-one and why the slope of a vertical line is undefined rather than infinity. If you haven’t studied those things, then it’s obvious you haven’t even tried to understand infinity, so you have no idea whether you could if you tried or not.
I suspect what you mean when you say that you can’t understand infinity is actually nothing more than that you can’t imagine infinity, that is to say, that you can’t imagine an infinite number of something. That’s not important, though. I can’t imagine thirty of something. I doubt you can either. I can imagine a cluster of about thirty pebbles or hyenas or such, but I can’t image precisely thirty distinct individual pebbles. I have, of course, seen thirty of many different objects, but I might very well never have seen exactly 82,326,997,966 of anything, a number which I am also completely incapable of visualizing as a collection of objects, but feel quite certain exists and is within my understanding. Compared the that number, infinity is much more easy to imagine in fact, especially since I can easily conceive of a line made up of infinitely many discrete points.
Like I said, I’m not a mathematician. Not by a long shot. I haven’t the vaguest idea what the boundaries of our mathematical knowledge are or what is being accomplished in expanding them. I have only the vaguest of ideas about the boundaries of our physical knowledge are or about how close we are to a so-called “theory of everything.” I do know enough to avoid speculating on what such a theory would actually compass or what may lie beyond our grasp. You pretty clearly have studied these things even less than I have, but you apparently feel comfortable asserting absolute limits on such things.
The OP seems to have no trouble imagining and having faith in an infinite god. So it’s not infinity that the OP is having trouble defining. It’s the nature of that infinity. An infinite god is okay, as are infinite souls. But an infinite universe (whatever that may mean) is beyond comprehension.
Also, claiming that faith is the only logical conclusion in the face of a complex and possibly infinite universe is just a Hail Mary pass. Faith is the opposite of a logical conclusion but it gives the OP a sense of comfort and a way of dealing with questions to which the answer is, “We don’t know (yet)”, or worse, “After death is entropy”.
The OP doesn’t need a lesson in mathematics, or physics, or critical thinking. What the OP needs is to stop defining faith as the “logical” conclusion to the unknown (or even the unknowable). I understand the temptation to express one’s beliefs as being justified by some formal, well thought out process that can be laid out in logical terms. But that’s simply not how people come to that conclusion, despite the countless attempts to do so.
There have been many good answers here, but I think something Isaac Asimov once wrote is apt.
When a “true believer” asked him how and why he could accept what a certain famed researcher said about the atom, but reject out of hand his convictions about the supernatural (ghosts, in particular, IIRC) Asimov unhesitating pointed out that the researcher had “nothing to gain” from the particular results his research showed him, but everything to gain from a belief in the supernatural (which included the implication of spiritual immortality).
No one really cares about a particular guess at the number of items in a transparent container (as opposed to happening to be exactly right, or closest to it, and thus winning, if there is a prize). I can easily see an individual picking a number and then adjusting it upward or downward upon reconsideration. The numbers are all emotionally neutral to the participants. So there is where the comparison breaks down.
I agree with this. I guess it makes no difference if you use god or souls because any supernatural claim is just going to confuse the issue. The universe exists with or without these beliefs.
It can’t exist. It is a mathematical abstract, and has no reality of its own.
In the cosmos we really live in, God cannot have “infinite power.” What would that even mean? The energy of 10^900 supernovae? That isn’t infinite. The power of 10^googleplex supernovae? Still not infinite. Once you exceed the total energy of the entire known cosmos by a large (infinite!) factor, you’ve really stopped saying anything meaningful in any possible way.
(This, by the way, doesn’t matter a whole lot, as a mere pittance of a number – like 10^200 – is pretty much sufficient for any given real-world purpose. There are finite numbers which are practically indistinguishable from “infinite” numbers. If somebody shoots you with two .38 rounds, that’s worse than one, but if someone shoots you with a billion and one .38 rounds, is that really any worse than a mere billion?)
The absurd claim of “infinite” qualities for God was a childish attempt to one-up the Pythagoreans. Why not take the next step and say that God is “transfinite” or “metafinite” or some other theological mumblety-meme?
