Out of curiosity, have you studied any scientific theories relating to our existence? There are a lot of promising theories that lend credence to a creator.
Go on...
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
I’m not religious or a believer in any religion whatsoever, but I have over time absolutely opened up to the idea of a God/creator. This is largely due to the idea that unless humanity as we know it is wiped out in the next few centuries, we ourselves will be capable of playing “God”. Simulation theory, and all that.
We’re approaching a point where our own technology should be able to produce a reality that is, for all of those within it, indistinguishable from the one we’re living in right now.
Yeah, I have to remember where I heard it and the specifics. But isn't the idea that if we're in a simulation basically - If we believe that we can eventually create a simulated world/universe than we should also believe that we are in one rather than the first to eventually create one?
Out of curiosity, have you studied any scientific theories relating to our existence? There are a lot of promising theories that lend credence to a creator.
Well I'm interested in hearing these theories and who put them forward.
Well I'm interested in hearing these theories and who put them forward.
Look up simulation theory for starters. I'd say the best mediums and people to hear it from are Nick Bostrom and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Bostrom was on Joe Rogan which is the best way to take it al in.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson was actually pretty dismissive of it back in the day but has since started accepting that it could be more credible than we first thought.
One thing to note on this podcast was that although Joe Rogan is usually a decent host for this type of thing, he inexplicably took a poor adversarial role in the second half of this episode, not understanding what Nick was saying at all and came off really silly. But this is still a good place to start.
There's so many great podcasts on multiverse and simulation theory, I'll post some in this thread as I remember them. There is absolutely no reason to buy in to or fully believe any of this by the way, but as the years go by there's also no good reason to adamantly believe that there is no possibility of this world/universe not being created or at least a much different reality than we currently believe.
I'll say it again, I believe being an atheist will look simpler and simpler as the decades go by. It had it's place as a counter culture to religion dominating too much of the world we know, but that time is starting to pass. No reason to pigeonhole yourself into that line of thinking when there's so many amazing theories out there right now, completely independent of religious stories.
Agnostic makes the most sense for the world we live in now. Atheist is as silly and close minded as religious, imo. No reason for it.
Last edited by jayswin; 12-02-2019 at 07:30 PM.
The Following User Says Thank You to jayswin For This Useful Post:
Simulation theory could suggest a creator, for one.
I guess I owe GGG an apology. When I talked about this earlier I suggested that no one outside of the occasional kook took this seriously as anything other than an interesting, fun and mildly mind-bending thought experiment. I still think that's what Bostrom actually intends it to be, but apparently some people actually think this is a reasonable basis for understanding the universe.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to CorsiHockeyLeague For This Useful Post:
Out of curiosity, have you studied any scientific theories relating to our existence? There are a lot of promising theories that lend credence to a creator.
No and highly doubt that.
Give me the cliffs notes of the simulation theory
__________________
Pass the bacon.
The Following User Says Thank You to DuffMan For This Useful Post:
Premise 1: Intelligence is just a matter of information processing. Premise 2: Consciousness is an emergent property of intelligence. Premise 3: Technology will always advance to a point where sentient beings like ourselves will create simulated worlds populated with intelligent AIs. Premise 4: If so, those sentient beings will create multiple simulated worlds, not just one, and probably many.
Conclusion: If all of the above is true, you must agree that it is possible that we are living in a simulation, and that we are merely conscious AIs who are programmed to carry out the simulation. Further, because the foregoing requires that there must be many, many more simulated worlds than real worlds, it is actually more likely that we are conscious AIs living in a simulation than that we are real people living in a non-simulated universe. It is therefore rational to believe that we are living in a simulated universe.
That's the argument. Premise 1 is pretty reasonable. Premise 3 is contentious. Premise 2 is a total and complete guess, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe that it's true, which is why this whole scenario is still just "what if" nonsense that's fun to think about. If you listen to Bostrom's lead-in to his explanation here, he explicitly says that its purpose is a logical exercise, not an actual theory about the universe:
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to CorsiHockeyLeague For This Useful Post:
Does anyone believe God impregnated a virgin, from space, with himself?
Speaking as a former Christian I don’t think this is something that any Christian has ever believed. Yeah, Christians like to broadcast their staunch monotheism and pontificate about the unfathomable mysteries of the trinity, but at the heart of it, it’s basically polytheism in denial.
God the Father.
God the Son.
God the Holy Spirit.
Three gods. The math works!
__________________
Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
The entire "proof" for simulation theory is basically a case study in reductio ad absurdum.
I think of it as a fun thought experiment. But there is something that just pulls too hard against the instincts of self I have, so it would just require extraordinary evidence for it to begin shaping any of my thinking.
The fundamental thing any of us can be certain of is our own consciousness because the very process of pondering our own consciousness confirms its existence. Simulation theory requires that something is able to simulate consciousness. The simulator presumably would need to be a higher consciousness, all that achieves is moving the goal post on the ultimate existence of a "real" consciousness without any hope of an explanation. This is basically a re-expression of the final standing religious argument, expressing the need for a first mover, the proficiency with which science has taken down all of the other religious arguments gives me great faith that we will some day have an answer for this one too.
All I get out of proponents of simulations theory is "If there's and if a simulation can create a simulation, then there must be so many simulations it's a mathematical probability that we are in a simulation." 3 big problems in bold, and no explanation of why they think such an expansive simulation would exist in the first place.
**I am explicitly referencing Descartes here, even if he used the same first principal to jump to a bunch of bad conclusions.**
Last edited by #-3; 12-02-2019 at 11:21 PM.
The Following User Says Thank You to #-3 For This Useful Post:
Out of curiosity, have you studied any scientific theories relating to our existence? There are a lot of promising theories that lend credence to a creator.
Could you please post those theories? Sorry but I seriously doubt any could possibly be promising if it's related to a creator of the human species itself.
Unless you mean a creator flew into earths airspace and sprinkled cyanobacteria in it oceans 3.8 billion years ago I doubt it very much, but I suspect this isn't what you meant.
Speaking as a former Christian I don’t think this is something that any Christian has ever believed. Yeah, Christians like to broadcast their staunch monotheism and pontificate about the unfathomable mysteries of the trinity, but at the heart of it, it’s basically polytheism in denial.
Ok, then, who would they think Jesus’s biological father was? Or is this something they just skip over thinking about too much.
Ok, then, who would they think Jesus’s biological father was? Or is this something they just skip over thinking about too much.
No. It’s universally accepted by all Christians that God impregnated Mary, and Jesus was his son. Very much in the same fashion that Hercules was the son of Zeus, and similar to how the Nephilim were the offspring of women and gods.
It just so happens that huge numbers of people have for thousands of years and continue to believe in supernatural beings who interacted with the natural world. It’s not a matter of intelligence nor maturity—it’s a conviction about how the world works, and unless you have been immersed in this worldview I would imagine it is difficult to grasp. But it doesn’t really enhance your own view to cast aspersions on the beliefs of others, or to manufacture straw-men out of their beliefs. It is sufficient to reject Christianity on it’s actual merits without resorting to ridicule.
__________________
Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
