Computer Scientists Prove God Exists

[WEB slicer]

according to dank we are from god and therefore we are all a part of god

[1714002504]

1714002504

[BitChick]

1) Except you can logically prove that reality cannot only be objective, and so your assumption is wrong.

I'm still looking for such proof.

In the Bible, Paul the Apostle hated Christians and was so sure he was right about what he believed that he even killed them.  God, out of His mercy, caused him to be blinded for a short time and asked him "Why do you persecute me."  Paul did not realize that he was doing the wrong thing.  He was quite sure he was doing the right thing.  God was merciful to Paul in revealing Himself to him because his heart was in the place of trying to be zealous for good, but he was just misguided.  

All of that said, be careful in your search for proof.  God has a way of showing us proof in ways that might not be terribly comfortable if we fight Him too much.  (Like Paul, Johah, etc . . ) But God does "discipline those He loves" so even if it is uncomfortable at times I still appreciate the times He has "knocked me off my horse" so to speak and shown me the error of my ways.  It is not that I enjoy it, but I know that it out of love for me that He does that.

Ain't dat the truth.

So Dank,  you agree with me on so many things which I find interesting.  The one thing we disagree on, which is a huge issue I believe, is that you have a belief that we can somehow become God?  The first commandment says that we are to have no other God but Him.  Wouldn't claiming that we are "god" or could somehow become "god" be breaking the very first commandment? 

[dank]

We will never be able to prove god....

We will never be able to prove unicorns....

If unicorns don't exist, how did you think of it?

[dank]

1) Except you can logically prove that reality cannot only be objective, and so your assumption is wrong.

I'm still looking for such proof.

In the Bible, Paul the Apostle hated Christians and was so sure he was right about what he believed that he even killed them.  God, out of His mercy, caused him to be blinded for a short time and asked him "Why do you persecute me."  Paul did not realize that he was doing the wrong thing.  He was quite sure he was doing the right thing.  God was merciful to Paul in revealing Himself to him because his heart was in the place of trying to be zealous for good, but he was just misguided.  

All of that said, be careful in your search for proof.  God has a way of showing us proof in ways that might not be terribly comfortable if we fight Him too much.  (Like Paul, Johah, etc . . ) But God does "discipline those He loves" so even if it is uncomfortable at times I still appreciate the times He has "knocked me off my horse" so to speak and shown me the error of my ways.  It is not that I enjoy it, but I know that it out of love for me that He does that.

Ain't dat the truth.

So Dank,  you agree with me on so many things which I find interesting.  The one thing we disagree on, which is a huge issue I believe, is that you have a belief that we can somehow become God?  The first commandment says that we are to have no other God but Him.  Wouldn't claiming that we are "god" or could somehow become "god" be breaking the very first commandment? 

I don't think we are gods separate from him, I think we are gods of him.  Like there's one god, one soul, which is everything, the light, and infinite sons of gods, or spirits, which in turn are still a piece of god.  If that makes sense.

[BitChick]

1) Except you can logically prove that reality cannot only be objective, and so your assumption is wrong.

I'm still looking for such proof.

In the Bible, Paul the Apostle hated Christians and was so sure he was right about what he believed that he even killed them.  God, out of His mercy, caused him to be blinded for a short time and asked him "Why do you persecute me."  Paul did not realize that he was doing the wrong thing.  He was quite sure he was doing the right thing.  God was merciful to Paul in revealing Himself to him because his heart was in the place of trying to be zealous for good, but he was just misguided.  

All of that said, be careful in your search for proof.  God has a way of showing us proof in ways that might not be terribly comfortable if we fight Him too much.  (Like Paul, Johah, etc . . ) But God does "discipline those He loves" so even if it is uncomfortable at times I still appreciate the times He has "knocked me off my horse" so to speak and shown me the error of my ways.  It is not that I enjoy it, but I know that it out of love for me that He does that.

Ain't dat the truth.

So Dank,  you agree with me on so many things which I find interesting.  The one thing we disagree on, which is a huge issue I believe, is that you have a belief that we can somehow become God?  The first commandment says that we are to have no other God but Him.  Wouldn't claiming that we are "god" or could somehow become "god" be breaking the very first commandment? 

I don't think we are gods separate from him, I think we are gods of him.  Like there's one god, one soul, which is everything, the light, and infinite sons of gods, or spirits, which in turn are still a piece of god.  If that makes sense.

We are created in God's image for sure.  But I would be cautious about saying I am a part of god.  That I would think would be prideful.  God always was and is but I am just a humble created being.  The Fear of God is the beginning of true wisdom.  To think we can become one with Him does not seem fearful but prideful that we can somehow attain the same state as He is.

[yogi]

I don't think we are gods separate from him, I think we are gods of him.  Like there's one god, one soul, which is everything, the light, and infinite sons of gods, or spirits, which in turn are still a piece of god.  If that makes sense.

The religion that most fits your beliefs is Hinduism.

[dank]

1) Except you can logically prove that reality cannot only be objective, and so your assumption is wrong.

I'm still looking for such proof.

In the Bible, Paul the Apostle hated Christians and was so sure he was right about what he believed that he even killed them.  God, out of His mercy, caused him to be blinded for a short time and asked him "Why do you persecute me."  Paul did not realize that he was doing the wrong thing.  He was quite sure he was doing the right thing.  God was merciful to Paul in revealing Himself to him because his heart was in the place of trying to be zealous for good, but he was just misguided.  

All of that said, be careful in your search for proof.  God has a way of showing us proof in ways that might not be terribly comfortable if we fight Him too much.  (Like Paul, Johah, etc . . ) But God does "discipline those He loves" so even if it is uncomfortable at times I still appreciate the times He has "knocked me off my horse" so to speak and shown me the error of my ways.  It is not that I enjoy it, but I know that it out of love for me that He does that.

Ain't dat the truth.

So Dank,  you agree with me on so many things which I find interesting.  The one thing we disagree on, which is a huge issue I believe, is that you have a belief that we can somehow become God?  The first commandment says that we are to have no other God but Him.  Wouldn't claiming that we are "god" or could somehow become "god" be breaking the very first commandment? 

I don't think we are gods separate from him, I think we are gods of him.  Like there's one god, one soul, which is everything, the light, and infinite sons of gods, or spirits, which in turn are still a piece of god.  If that makes sense.

We are created in God's image for sure.  But I would be cautious about saying I am a part of god.  That I would think would be prideful.  God always was and is but I am just a humble created being.  The Fear of God is the beginning of true wisdom.  To think we can become one with Him does not seem fearful but prideful that we can somehow attain the same state as He is.

That's the one thing I don't get, the fear of god.  Why not love god and feel his infinitely powerful love back?

I don't think we are gods separate from him, I think we are gods of him.  Like there's one god, one soul, which is everything, the light, and infinite sons of gods, or spirits, which in turn are still a piece of god.  If that makes sense.

The religion that most fits your beliefs is Hinduism.

I was thinking that and Buddhism before.  But I have since found understanding of some of the Mormon philosophy that intertwines with my understanding of Christianity and spiritual beliefs.

I think all religions got it down for the most part, though I believe some have been purposefully manipulated to gain control over the people.  The basis of all religions is true and it's those underlying philosophies that make a religion what it is.

[BitChick]

That's the one thing I don't get, the fear of god.  Why not love god and feel his infinitely powerful love back?

The Fear of the Lord is respecting God and His word.  Sure we need to understand and accept His love for us but so many people like to make up their own idea of who God is and what they want God to be but that is just idolatry.  True Fear of God is reading His word, understanding it and then choosing to obey Him fully and wholeheartedly.

The passage in the Bible that comes to mind is in Matthew 7: 21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

We need to really know God and to know Him is to fear and respect and obey Him not just make up whatever we want to believe about Him. 

[dank]

The way I look at it, I just see fear as our human instinct and love as our inner god, ego vs soul.  I feel that if we remove all fear of god, and anything, we would be left closer to god.

[the joint]

We will never be able to prove god....

We will never be able to prove unicorns....

If unicorns don't exist, how did you think of it?

This is actually a very interesting idea...that concepts in and of themselves exist without a real-life counterpart (or, they are their own real "counterpart").

Whenever we have a concept or idea about anything, even something existing only within our imaginations, that thought must abide by logical properties in order to be formed.  In other words, every thought or idea is logical to the extent that it adheres to a logical structure, and thus it represents the logical possibility of an empirical counterpart (i.e something existing outside of the imagination and which is observable to many).  Surely we can imagine unicorns existing on some other planet as some kind of flying horse with a horn on its head.  What we can't imagine is a creature that could not exist logically in any context, even a hypothetical one.

To this extent, to say that unicorns exist in real life is a plausible conclusion.  Also, to say God exists is plausible just based upon the assertion alone -- that is, because you can imagine God as omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., it is plausible that this is real.

It's not sound to conclude unicorns exist unless you can also prove that concepts have at least some real component(s).  This is debatable, and while I would tend to believe concepts do have some empirical component (perhaps even mass), I don't believe they are purely empirical, and either have non-empirical components or they lose their empirical nature depending upon the context in which they are described.

I think the reason why this is a particularly interesting topic to me is the following:  If concepts are purely and only non-empirical, then how do we explain their origin, and how do we explain this origin is real?  In contrast, if concepts are purely and only empirical, how do we explain metacognition, self-reference, and the phenomenon of 'feelings'?

Here's one for you, @Rassah, since you assume an absolute separation between objective and subjective reality, or what you consider 'real' and 'unreal' respectively.  If we acknowledge the phenomenon of cognition in general as a "real" event that can lead to the formation of entirely "unreal" concepts, don't we have a huge problem on our hands?  How can something real produce something totally and utterly unreal?  It's these kinds of questions that have led me to believe that concepts have real components, and so it is true to state unicorns exist at least in the context of a real imagination obeying real logical properties.  You could say that an imagination is like a Universe in that the content of one's imagination obeys certain rules and laws; one of these rules is that imaginative content is binary, and accordingly we can not imagine simultaneous yes/no states (try imagining a shirt that is both red and not red).  

Actually, I tend to believe the Universe is also like an imagination in that it acts like a mind (which would make sense since minds interpret and define the Universe!).  @Rassah, when you talk about some objective reality that can exist totally independent of any subjectivity or observation, you make a logical fallacy (actually two) by imposing an assumption that happens to be false upon a hypothetical scenario that has never been observed, and in fact could never be observed.  Your assumption is actually your conclusion; you assume that objectivity and subjectivity are mutually exclusive.  But, how could you possibly observe a Universe that is totally absent of observation?  This is an inherent contradiction and it could never possibly happen.  I find it really interesting that you're forming conclusions about a totally hypothetical and non-empirical event when you're such a stark advocate of empirical study and the scientific method.

[dank]

You could say that an imagination is like a Universe in that the content of one's imagination obeys certain rules and laws; one of these rules is that imaginative content is binary, and accordingly we can not imagine simultaneous yes/no states (try imagining a shirt that is both red and not red). 

I don't know how relevant this is, but this reminds me of a childhood dream or vision I had.  Can't say it was a dream because I was quite aware and conscious of it, but it could have been.  I just remember seeing this spherical blob, it was everything at the same time.  It was horrifyingly rough and smooth at the same time.  It was quite a trip that had me panicking in circles around my room until someone came in, granted, I was quite young at the time.  If I recall, I saw this a few times, but I'm not 100 on that.

Now I just look at it as the dualistic nature of humans and god.

[pedrog]

That's the one thing I don't get, the fear of god.  Why not love god and feel his infinitely powerful love back?

The Fear of the Lord is respecting God and His word.  Sure we need to understand and accept His love for us but so many people like to make up their own idea of who God is and what they want God to be but that is just idolatry.  True Fear of God is reading His word, understanding it and then choosing to obey Him fully and wholeheartedly.

The passage in the Bible that comes to mind is in Matthew 7: 21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

We need to really know God and to know Him is to fear and respect and obey Him not just make up whatever we want to believe about Him. 

This is the original FUD, hehe.

[Rassah]

People would say I'm lucky.  But when other people in the audience start flying too, I'm pretty sure I'll have everyone believing.

Lucky would be winning once. Extremely lucky would be winning twice. Impossible would be winning three times, in a row. And it should be very simple for you. If you fly, other people won't fly too, they'll just start questioning how you did it (magicians in La Vegas "fly" all the time). If you win the lottery three times, no one will question your power.

Lucky would be the Earth forming by chance.  Extremely lucky would be the Sun being in the perfect distance from earth to cause the right temperature for life.  Impossible would be for man and woman to be formed by random chance of all of the molecules coming together in such a way to make life from nothing.

I know I am way off the topic here, but this came to my mind.

That's like saying Lucky would be someone wnning the lottery in September, extremely lucky would be someone winning another lottery in October, and impossible would be someone winning yet another lottery in November. There are tons of "lottery tickets" out there in the forms of billions of planets orbiting billions of stars. We just happened to have been the ones who got the winning lottery ticket.
Also, the span for where earth can be to sustain life is actually quite a lot wider than creationists tend to believe. (Like, from near Venus, which is only hot because of greenhouse gasses, almost up to Mars, which is only slightly colder than Antarctic, and we know life exists there too. In Antarctic, not Mars (though it may have existed on Mars as well).

Incidentally, what would you believe if we found conclusive proof of life on Mars, or one of Jupiter's moons?

[Rassah]

EDITED TO FIX QUOTES

1) Except you can logically prove that reality cannot only be objective, and so your assumption is wrong.

I'm still looking for such proof.

1)  How much do you need?  What kind of proof/evidence supports 1 + 1 = 2 aside from self-contained mathematical examples?  The fact that 1+1 = 2 is pretty obvious isn't it?

Yep, from the examples we have, and the concepts we have formed based on those examples...

Well, it's equally obvious that mental and physical reality are fundamentally inseparable.

Only in one direction, that physical reality is interpreted by mental "reality," i.e. that pemtan "reality" is a subjective interpretation of our objective physical reality. We may be talking about the same thing, but the way I see is it that the flow is one way, your objective physical reality influences your mental one, while Dank claims that his mental one can also influence the physical one, such as that if he imagines that gravity doesn't exist, the physical reality just follows his command.

It's obvious because we already have established logical properties that directly state that it's impossible to assert an absolute separation between any two things without committing a logical fallacy, just like we have established mathematical rules of operation.

Take out the "we" and replace it with "you." You have tried to establish it. I am still not convinced. Mainly because I still have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe some examples would help? For instance, if you have two apples, and I say they are two different separate apples, how am I committing a logical falacy?

Basically, failing to acknowledge that mental and physical reality are fundamentally related is like disagreeing that 1 + 1 = 2 under any possible interpretation.  As soon as you assert an absolute difference between two things you immediately commit a logical fallacy.  

Yeah, see, this is a statement, that makes no sense to me, not actual proof or explanation. The thing that has been bugging me a bit is that most of what you have been saying were statements, made from the point of view of someone to whom this is already obvious, while I don't grasb the basics of what you are claiming.

4)  If you were a microbe on an elephant's butt, would you know that the ground you're walking on is an elephant?

Nope. but I wouldn't throw out random subjective coonclusions about what ground I'm walking on, either. I would only use conclusions I can observe and come to, and get closer to the correct answer by process of elimination (I should be able to tell it's not dirt, sand, or a furry fox butt). I wouldn't subjectively make up some story that sounds great, and claim that it's just as valid a conclusion as everything else (as the "God did it" folks do)

2)  The point is I don't know why you would select an empirical model of learning out of all the available methods to attempt to explain reality at such a high level of generality.  The scientific method is ill-equipped for the task.  If you're trying to formulate conclusions about something beyond the scope of the empirical model, then why not just pick a better model?  You're just self-handicapping by using the empirical model.  In this regard, you're like a bible banger for empiricism, and no matter how much I try to tell you that there's a whole world of knowledge that is totally (by definition) inaccessible through empiricism, for some reason you have a really hard time processing that.

When I look up "Empirical Model," I mostly find stuff about computer programming and observation from 1980's. So I don't know what you actually mean. Do you mean that you don't know why I would select a model of learning based on actual observable universe, and the rules and mathematics derived from those observations and theories? If yes, my answer is simply because a world that can not be empirically studied by observation and mathematical derivation based on rules established from that observation is, by definition, a world we can not observe or experience in any way, and thus is not relevant to our existence. Why study how many unicorns can fit into a stable, or what body weight a troll must consume to survive?

[Rassah]

If you are talking about Cantor's diagonalization, where the real number(R) p differs by a decimal digit from every real rational number(Q) n, and thus has no real number partner, the my answer is that p can not exist(in Q), or is an imaginary number. The reason is that since there is an countable infinite number of real rational number n's, you will never come to a conclusion on what p must be in Q. In other words, it will take an uncountable infinite amount of n numbers(which does not exist, as Q is only countable) for p to be created, or put another way, it will take an uncountable infinite amount of time, calculations, attempts, or whatever, in order to create p. So you will always get closer to creating p without actually creating it. But yet it can be constructed by other means.

Do your believe that for every set A there exists a set, called the power set of A, P(A), that contains every subset of the set A? (The axiom of power sets)?

No, I don't. There can be two sets that are not mathematically related in any way. We can still count them subjectively, as if by yanking two unrelated numbers out of a barrel of infinite numbers, and saying "This number here, for this number there" and perform this excersise infinitely.

[Rassah]

We need to really know God and to know Him is to fear and respect and obey Him not just make up whatever we want to believe about Him. 

And yet, Christians have been guilty of this since 400AD, when they put together the bible from parts they liked, and threw away parts they didn't.

[Rassah]

The way I look at it, I just see fear as our human instinct and love as our inner god, ego vs soul.  I feel that if we remove all fear of god, and anything, we would be left closer to god.

Only in the sense that you will be ignoring your fear telling you to stop doing stupid/dangerous things, will keep making stupid/dangerous things, and get your ass killed faster. Though I think you will just end up closer to dirt.

[dank]

The way I look at it, I just see fear as our human instinct and love as our inner god, ego vs soul.  I feel that if we remove all fear of god, and anything, we would be left closer to god.

Only in the sense that you will be ignoring your fear telling you to stop doing stupid/dangerous things, will keep making stupid/dangerous things, and get your ass killed faster. Though I think you will just end up closer to dirt.

What?  If you're going to reply to everybody at least have a rational debate so people can reply back.

Less ego = less fear = more happiness, more peace, more understanding, all of which indicate being close to god.

Psychedelics decrease your ego to the point you can see god, they are quite effective at giving you a more positive, understanding outlook on life.  I would reckon you try it, Rassah, so you're not talking out of inexperience and ignorance.

[Rassah]

Here's one for you, @Rassah, since you assume an absolute separation between objective and subjective reality, or what you consider 'real' and 'unreal' respectively.  If we acknowledge the phenomenon of cognition in general as a "real" event that can lead to the formation of entirely "unreal" concepts, don't we have a huge problem on our hands?  How can something real produce something totally and utterly unreal?

What is actually being produced? If I project an image of a house on a white screen, am I producing a house? Or just a concept that looks like/represents a house?

You could say that an imagination is like a Universe in that the content of one's imagination obeys certain rules and laws; one of these rules is that imaginative content is binary, and accordingly we can not imagine simultaneous yes/no states (try imagining a shirt that is both red and not red).  

I think imagination isn't following rules and laws, so much as it is following whatever we are capable of imagining based on our limited experience. Ever notice that all aliens in all our fiction are either humanoid, or resemble some other creature found on out planet? Creating something completely new and never before imagines is a difficult skill (we give out PhD's for such a task).
Ironically, while we can't imagine a shirt that is both red and not red, or an element that is there and is not there at the same time, that is, in fact, how the universe works on a quantum level. So, technically, our imagination is even too limited to imagine how the universe actually exists in our objective, observable reality. The funny thing is that people are claiming that our universe is only limited by our imagination, when the trust is that the our imagination is limiting our understanding of the universe.

@Rassah, when you talk about some objective reality that can exist totally independent of any subjectivity or observation, you make a logical fallacy (actually two) by imposing an assumption that happens to be false upon a hypothetical scenario that has never been observed, and in fact could never be observed.

Think of it this way. I can observe what is in my room right now. You can't. Just because you can't observe what is here, does not mean that this room doesn't exist. Someone else can, and is, observing it. Extending that to the rest of the universe, just because we are not observing it right now, doesn't mean someone else isn't. And, to me, anyway, its easy to come to the conclusion that just because I am not observing something else in the universe, that it doesn't exist. To think otherwise would be to believe that the unviverse doesn't exist where people are not seeing it, and is constantly being spontaneously created and destroyed as we walk through places, or even pan our vision across a landscape. Actually, that is something that humans do believe when they go through child spychological developlent. If you hide a ball away from a 1 year old, he will believe that it simply no longer exists. Object permanence is the term for the thing we learn when we grow up.

Your assumption is actually your conclusion; you assume that objectivity and subjectivity are mutually exclusive.

Aren't they by definition? Otherwise I would have to rethink my political view as an objectivist.

But, how could you possibly observe a Universe that is totally absent of observation?  This is an inherent contradiction and it could never possibly happen.  I find it really interesting that you're forming conclusions about a totally hypothetical and non-empirical event when you're such a stark advocate of empirical study and the scientific method.

Actually, I propose the exact opposite. Somewhat. What you describe there is EXACTLY my complaint about subjective universes, imagines realities, gods, and unicorns. As you say, "how could you possibly observe a Universe that is totally absent of observation?" By this universe I mean one in which a god, or some other imagines creature, exists. If you can't, then it has no relevance on us. Such a god would just angrily wave his arms at me, and have them pass through me without ever having an effect on my life. As for the parts of the universe we can't observe, the only assumption I make is that the rest of the universe follows the laws of physics that I have observed the universe following around me (around me includes things we see out in space with our telescopes). I think it's pretty logical to assume that the universe is consistent with the laws of physics, regardless of whether I am paying attention to them. Isn't it?

[dank]

Laws are not natural, the universe has none.  Our collective reality is only subject to 'laws of physics' and limitation because we believe it to be so.