2021: Vatican Calls Homosexuality a "Sin"

[Fighting Banana Slug]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

How is the diagram in any way a straw man?

I don't think the graph is a strawman. It doesn't presuppose that 25% of the population is within each quadrant or anything like that. But I do think the gnostic/agnostic distinction is largely meaningless. I don't see many proclaiming they "know" with certainty that god does not exist. (In contrast to those who as a matter of faith "know" there is a god. There is no room for doubt.). So athiesm to me is having a fairly high degree of certainty that there is no god, because there is no credible evidence of god. Say 9/10 on the certainty scale. Agnostics on the other hand connotes more of a 50/50 split. I am not 100% certain of the absence of a god, but I am way over 50% confident. Does that make me agnostic or athiest? Doesn't really matter what label you use, so long as you understand my position (and I use athiest)

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Well, human beings were most definitely imagining powered flight much earlier than 1860.

But to the point, I think that is just it, though: there are physical limits that are simply impossible to overcome. In a sense, imagining travel even approaching light speed is not much different than imagining the supernatural.

What is this.

Actually, just fold a piece of paper in half. Now, jam a pencil through the middle. Remove pencil and unfold paper. That's your fastest way between two points. You just have to fold the space-time continuum.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Fighting Banana Slug

I don't think the graph is a strawman. It doesn't presuppose that 25% of the population is within each quadrant or anything like that. But I do think the gnostic/agnostic distinction is largely meaningless. I don't see many proclaiming they "know" with certainty that god does not exist. (In contrast to those who as a matter of faith "know" there is a god. There is no room for doubt.). So athiesm to me is having a fairly high degree of certainty that there is no god, because there is no credible evidence of god. Say 9/10 on the certainty scale. Agnostics on the other hand connotes more of a 50/50 split. I am not 100% certain of the absence of a god, but I am way over 50% confident. Does that make me agnostic or athiest? Doesn't really matter what label you use, so long as you understand my position (and I use athiest)

I think this is more the purpose of the diagram. This way of speaking has developed somewhat recently, and in large part to counter silly Christian apologetics which belabour the point of whether one should identify as agnostic or an atheist. There are Christians who insist there is no such thing as atheists—some by taking Ps14:1/53:1 and Rom 1:20–22 rigidly plain as to "prove" that everyone believes in God, but those who claim they do not are "suppressing the truth." Others think so on the premise that without perfect knowledge a rejection of god-belief is irrational, and thus every professing atheist is simply agnostic.

Besides, I think that the term "agnostic" is sloppy, and serves little more than to avoid the question. Everyone either believes or does not believe in the existence of god, and saying "I don't know" is fundamentally not any different than acknowledging that one is not convinced.

I personally find it helpful, as it provides more precision to our usage of language by distinguishing between the categories of "knowledge" and "belief." It actually works quite well to shut-down Christian philosophical types who relish in playing word-games.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Matata

I watched this video a decade ago and I've always wondered if it reveals the nature of "god" using ants as an analogy. No ant is an architect or an engineer, yet they've managed to build a complex structure with many functional areas each with temperature, humidity, ventilation, food and waste requirements. I wonder if the summation of the collective consciousness of the ants of the colony creates a new unique consciousness that guides the whole, like each ant has their own unique frequency of consciousness and the "ant god" is summation of all these frequencies into a new unique frequency. So "god" doesn't create us, but is rather a byproduct of our collective consciousness. Then again, ants are also the byproduct of hundreds of millions of years of evolution and I may just be trying to attach a larger value to what is simply a highly refined biological process.

Still, that is kinda fun to think about.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Actually, just fold a piece of paper in half. Now, jam a pencil through the middle. Remove pencil and unfold paper. That's your fastest way between two points. You just have to fold the space-time continuum.

It's just that easy.

[Fuzz]

If only the Universe was paper. I know the theory, but how do you fold space? Maybe one day. I don't think I'll live to see it.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

If only the Universe was paper. I know the theory, but how do you fold space? Maybe one day. I don't think I'll live to see it.

https://wiki.physics.udel.edu/AAP/Folding_space

Could the space of our universe fold over like that so that points that are far apart on the paper touch? One cannot rule that out. But even if such a thing could happen, there is the question of how to take the "short cut". It would require what is called a "Minkowski wormhole" (a kind of bridge in space) to connect the two points A and B. The laws of gravity, as written down by Einstein, allow Minkowski wormholes to exist, but ONLY if there exists some kind of matter whose energy and momentum is unlike that of any kind of matter ever seen and extremely unlikely to exist in the real world. For this reason, physicists think that travel great distances by "folding space" is highly unlikely to be possible.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Well, human beings were most definitely imagining powered flight much earlier than 1860.

But to the point, I think that is just it, though: there are physical limits that are simply impossible to overcome. In a sense, imagining travel even approaching light speed is not much different than imagining the supernatural.


What is this.

But their imagination of powered flight in 1500 was similar to our imagination of faster than light travel now. Look at Davinci's drawings for example. We can imagine faster than light travel just as they imagined powered flight.

Doing it was something altogether different, and physically it's kind of weird because the pressure differential formed by the wings isn't all that is at play.

I digress- I think travelling beyond the speed of light is unrealistic, but to say it's completely impossible is the same as someone in the last millennium believing that touching the moon was also impossible, which it very much was until a few world wars taught us how to get very good at shooting exploding things at each other very quickly and precisely.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by troutman

https://wiki.physics.udel.edu/AAP/Folding_space

Just based on my extremely shallow understanding of worm holes and physics (mainly what I learned from watching PBS Spacetime), we don't even know if worm holes exist. They can exist in theory, but it isn't a certainty. On top of that, even if they did exist, travelling through one, peering through one, or even sending a signal through one would be impossible in theory without keeping it open with "phantom energy", something that hasn't even been considered theoretically possible. It's something conceived by theoretical physicists basically in order to complete the "what if" thought experiments, but there are no grounds to believe it actually exists.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

How is the diagram in any way a straw man?

Basically you are comparing those confident that god doesn't exist with those who are confident that god does exist, which is a completely unfair framing. First you have to define what god is, for the confident theist they have a very specific god in mind and judging by every god that has ever been postulated they are categorically wrong. But for the atheist before you can even get to this frame you have to define what you mean by "god".

Do you mean some immortal or long living being, that enjoys tinkering with the lives of humans? Do you mean some all knowing entity that has a singular awareness of all of the events of the universe? Because I have no issue arguing how unrealistic either of these things are, I don't think there is some level of gnostic/privileged knowledge required to believe these things.

The other possibility is you mean some kind of creator or first mover, sans the first two abilities. For that I could imagine a lot of things, being the cause of moment of creation, but I reject the idea that any of these things could be anything like the singular entity people are trying to express when they say god. The spontaneous split of matter-antimatter pairs or bubbling off of alternate universes or many other things might have been the moment of creation, but whatever it was I am sure there is a plausible naturalistic explanation the real question is if that explanation is within reach for us.

Because everyone can agree it doesn't exist, the entire flying spaghetti monster statement exists to draw light to this fact, just because you confidently state you believe in some make believe thing, and I confidently state that you're belief is obviously make believe. It does not mean that we are making equivalent declarations, and that graph exists solely to draw an equivalence between the certainty of the two worldviews.

[GGG]

Are you willing to state with certainty that we don’t live in a simulation?

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by GGG

Are you willing to state with certainty that we don’t live in a simulation?

Don't do it. It's trick.

https://slate.com/technology/2014/07...-all-time.html

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

But their imagination of powered flight in 1500 was similar to our imagination of faster than light travel now. Look at Davinci's drawings for example. We can imagine faster than light travel just as they imagined powered flight.

Doing it was something altogether different, and physically it's kind of weird because the pressure differential formed by the wings isn't all that is at play.

I digress- I think travelling beyond the speed of light is unrealistic, but to say it's completely impossible is the same as someone in the last millennium believing that touching the moon was also impossible, which it very much was until a few world wars taught us how to get very good at shooting exploding things at each other very quickly and precisely.

Except powered flight and landing on the moon didn't break the laws of physics, and before anyone argues that the laws of physics are man made, they are not, science and observing the universe taught us these laws.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by #-3

It does not mean that we are making equivalent declarations, and that graph exists solely to draw an equivalence between the certainty of the two worldviews.

It was meant to be a simple way to explain what an agnostic atheist is, not a goddamned philosophy essay.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Don't do it. It's trick.

https://slate.com/technology/2014/07...-all-time.html

My thought experiment was a little different but it certainly ends up increasing my agnosticism.

You start with standard simulation theory. If there ever existed a civilization that evolved to the point of the singularity then they can create far more virtual universes then civilizations that reach that point. Think instances of mine craft or world of Warcraft servers. Each simulated universe also has a likelyhood of reaching the point of creating simulated universes creating infinite stack of turtles supporting the earth. So that means from a probabilistic standpoint that if any civilization reached this point you are much more likely to live in a simulation then in the real world.

So since from inside the simulation you would not be able to find any evidence of the simulation a non interventionist runner of the simulation would be a deist God. However given the fact it’s a simulation intervention would always be possible.

So given that our current pace of technological advancement eventually leads us to a place where a simulation will be possible to create ruling out the existence of an interventionist God is an act of faith therefore agnosticism is the only rational position and you have to allow for the Flying Spaghetti Monster or in this case a kid playing minecraft to exist.

[#-3]

/\
Is our current technology on pace to simulate an entire universe perfectly?
To perfectly resolve an entire universe, would require all of the energy in the universe, therefor you might be able to create incredibly convincing simulations, but we would really only resolve them to that point of things we are looking at, at any given time.

Originally Posted by GGG

Are you willing to state with certainty that we don’t live in a simulation?

I think the whole simulation argument is pretty week, but at this time it is an attempt at a naturalistic explanation at the cause of things. So I would say we can't dismiss it out of hand the way we can dismiss things like god, panpsychism or dualism...

If I were to say what we should think about simulation theory, the best argument they have for this theory relies on speculative technology that is basically science fiction at this point in time. The resolution level of the universe just doesn't seem to fit to well with the idea that well at all, you would expect the resolution of a simulation to be inconsistent from the point of view of those inside the program as we are not the intended viewer, and it would be resolved from the point of view of the user. I suspect this whole idea is a modern version of god that will become less and less plausible as we fill in the gaps in our knowledge until it reaches the point being a ridiculous idea, but for now I wouldn't call it a category error to compare the people who claim we know that we are not in a simulation with those who claim to know that we are, they are in the same realm.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Except powered flight and landing on the moon didn't break the laws of physics, and before anyone argues that the laws of physics are man made, they are not, science and observing the universe taught us these laws.

At the time our knowledge of physics was incomplete, and it certainly did break the laws of physics they knew about to believe that they could walk on the moon.

Right now, our knowledge of physics is incomplete, and it would certainly break the laws of physics we know about to believe that we could travel faster than the speed of light. Maybe we will come to a different understanding of physics that proves us wrong though. Or are you so assured that we understand everything?

[troutman]

The stars are projectors, yeah.
Projectin' our lives down to this
Planet earth.

[81MC]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

At the time our knowledge of physics was incomplete, and it certainly did break the laws of physics they knew about to believe that they could walk on the moon.

Right now, our knowledge of physics is incomplete, and it would certainly break the laws of physics we know about to believe that we could travel faster than the speed of light. Maybe we will come to a different understanding of physics that proves us wrong though. Or are you so assured that we understand everything?

I still find myself dumbfounded that we don’t actually know what 95% of the universe is.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by 81MC

I still find myself dumbfounded that we don’t actually know what 95% of the universe is.

Yeah, that's why its so crazy to proclaim what physics is when we are literally in the middle of coming to the realization that nothing we believe to be true may actually be what it is.