Do you believe in God? Why lol You have no proof he exists

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>>9370348

this thread was posted by an /x/ christian, DO NOT reply to it

>>9370351
ad hominem

I don't believe, but I wish I did. It seems like it would be so comforting to have the whole "meaning" thing worked out.

>"Open your heart to God and you will know" is not evidence of God

Yes it is. We can only verify truth through our senses. If you do not allow yourself to sense God you will not verify his existence. If you are blind you cannot verify light. If you are deaf you cannot verify sound.

>>9370359
>God is a tangible sensory object

Prove this.

>>9370362
Open your heart.

>>9370362
Just open your heart bro

>>9370387
this is sincere
>>9370391
this is ironic

kill yourself #1

>>9370396
see
>>9370351

>>9370396
Is that your to do list ?

>>9370396
Fuck off Reddit

>>9370402
What, see an ad hominem?

>>9370352
>>9370352
>>9370352
>>9370352
>>9370352

Revelation. Christ revealed Himself and His truth to me in August 2012, when I was 24 years old.

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." - Matthew 7:7

>>9370422
h-ck off OP

>>9370422
Anecdotal spurious tales are not evidence of God.

>>9370428
>LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

>>9370435
Are you quoting yourself?

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>>9370348
seek truth, learn about the false god who imprisoned your soul within a realm of flesh and torture

>>9370437
What makes you believe that?

>>9370348

Are you an etheist?

Why lol

You have no proof God doesn't exist.

Atheism is not evidence of absence of higher beings.

Give me on (1) piece of demonstrable evidence that God doesn't exist and I will change my mind.

ONE. That's all I ask.

>>9370450
The evidence he doesnt exist is there is no evidence he does

>>9370450
h-ck off OP

>>9370453
No evidence for tying someone to a murder doesn't mean the murder wasn't committed by that person necessarily

>>9370442
false equivalence fallacy

>>9370457
false equivalence fallacy

sorry the murder took place as there is evidence for that, god didnt

>>9370348
The scary thing about scientific materialism is falsification. Every scientific fact must have a test that could prove it false, otherwise you have no means of determining truth/falsehood.

But when something can't be falsified, when there is no test you could put to it, it is a mistake to assume that thing is false. It is simply undeterminable, neither true nor false.

Even more frightening, that many things were believed to be scientific fact, but were later disproven or altered radically (Newton to Einstien, Spontaneous Generation to the Conservation of Matter/Energy).

Believing in Scientism is admit that, in all likelihood, you currently believe things to be true that in the future will be disproven and rendered false.

None of this is an argument for God. I don't believe in him. But your certainty in Science should disturb you, not give you solace.

>>9370460
>>9370465
nice supposition fallacy

>>9370465
Maybe the body is missing, could be dead, could be alive, but it is indeterminable

>>9370476
both posts were suppositions anyway you dense fuck

>>9370481
>There's no evidence of God

Haha

>evidence is good
>proof is good
*tips reddit gold*
>>9370473
Fuck off with your meme >muh fallibility

>>9370477
You implied that one knew of a murder that had happened. You are now changing the facts. This isn't crim law 101, if the factfinders didn't find the guy guilty then the prosecutor needs to do a better job.

>>9370488
The murder in this case is the beginnings of life and the universe. Who is responsible?

>>9370486
>Fuck off with your meme >muh fallibility

It's an important distinction. Take two different kings, one Christian and one a Scientist.

The Christian King decrees a policy, using the best knowledge he holds to be true, and it leads to famine. In the end, it was his own arrogance and faith in his (false) divine authority that led him to the disasterous outcome for his people.

Take the Scientist King, who similarly decrees a police, using the best knowledge he believes to be true, and the result is famine.

The Christian King couldn't concieve that he might be wrong, and pushes ahead leading to a famine.

The Scientist King knows he could be wrong, but pushes ahead with the policy, because its the best policy his limited knowledge leads him to.

Who is more evil? The Christian King with his absurd belief in his infallibility? Or the Scientist King, who knowing he is fallible, acts anyway.

One is ignorant of his own ignorance. The other knows he must be ignorant, but can't be certain to what extent.

Again, I don't believe in any deities, but Science isn't something I could stand behind either.

This is by far the worst thread on this board right now

>>9370507
>le christian is bad
>le science man is good
Fuck off.

>>9370000

>>9370517
Maybe I'm getting baited, but I don't think you understood my argument.

They're both bad.

Neither can save you.

>>9370521
No, you depicted one as le smartie good guy and the other as le evil stupid chrisden whitey devil

Save you from what? Why does that matter?

>all the reddit spacing in this thread
atheists confirmed redditors

>>9370549
Seriously it's embarrassing

>>9370530
Well my intention was to show that both positions are insane. One is ignorant overconfidence, the other arrogant acceptance of "well this is the best I can do, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"


>Save you from what? Why does that matter?
Save us from suffering and ignorance and pain. This is literally the only thing that should ever matter and there is no hope.

>Hehehe ! I have a peeeeeeeeeeeeNIS! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! IM A BIG WILLY THUNDER BOY! :333333333
>i willies willies willies FLOP FLOP FLOP
>penis hahaha
this

>>9370566
Wow your so enlightened le smarty genius man middle ground face
>vice:
Never finishing you're shit
>vice:
Finishing your shit weeks in advance and giving lots of time to revise and correct
>virtue:
Finishing your shit the night before or paying somebody to finish it for you
ARISTOTLE WAS SO SMART OMG!
>Save us from suffering and ignorance and pain. This is literally the only thing that should ever matter and there is no hope.
t. Letzter Mensch

>>9370576
Here is a LOGICAL demonstration of how AMAZING AND PERFECT agnosticism is:
>vice
Not paying off your debts
>vice
Paying off your debts in whole
>virtue
Paying off your debts just enough to prevent repossession, slavery, or being forced to sell your little sister into prostitution, and spending the rest on heroin
AH... THE GENIUS OF THE ANCIENTS...! BEFORE MODERN SUPERSTITION!...

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>>9370348
Is there really any point to trying to cut someone down if they do or do not believe in a higher power? It's ultimately impossible to prove, as it's likely that even if there is a higher power, we're unlikely to understand him/her/it/xer/thonthon. Provided it isn't completely outrageous, what's the harm in practicing theism on an individual level?

>>9370348
hi guys I'm OP!
no christian has ever tried to think rationally about religion because religious people are fucking stupid haha scientific thought began when the natural philosopher Richard Dawkins wrote the manifesto "The God Delusion" against the catholic church who tortured atheist women in middle ages, please read this masterpiece and educate yourself
also look at this pícture of the galaxies and shit like it's so deep

>>9370685
>no evidence provided

ad hominem

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>>9370727
It wasn't an ad hominem if I didn't even bother to argue with you, silly anon.

>>9370348

I have faith I never said I have proof you fucking retard

Lol god aint real

>>9370473
Not the other Anon, but science only aims to create an accurate predictive model of reality. The only reason our current view of the world is considered true is because it is currently provides the most accurate predictions if the universe.

Sure, what I believe right now could be proven false entirely, but it's far more likely that we just come up with a better way to describe it. Let's say I wanted to guess a number that you're thinking of.

By standard procedure I'll try to disprove any guesses I have. First I try to prove that it's a not a real number, if that is false I know it's real. If it succeeds, I try to prove that it's real, if that test is false then I know the number is non-real. After this process my current model of your number says it's real.

Then I try to prove it's zero, when fails I know that it's not zero. Continue the same process for whether it's rational or not, positive or negative, if its absolute value is greater than or less than one, etc. Eventually I get to the point where I know your number is 5, there's nothing more to know about it.

At no point do any of my previous theories become false, I just find new ones that are more accurate and potentially more useful.

Sure, Newtonian Physics was dropped in favor of Relativity, but that doesn't mean that it's explicitly false, only that we now have better theories to describe the same observations. At human scales and levels of accuracy, Newtonian Physics is more useful than Relativity which is why we still use it.

So Scientism suits me just fine. Every new, better theory just means greater accuracy to the objective truth. In the unlikely event that something is disproven entirely, then sure you're right in the short term, but as long as objective reality exists Scientism remains the most accurate path to describing it.

>>9372712
>the objective truth
If you haven't caught on yet, I wonder if you ever will. Use your model of the human brain to even attempt to explain the objective reality. How can it possibly have any grasp on things? If anything, the only way our limited selves could possibly attain truth would be by being in the image of the eternal God.

>>9372736
>How can it possibly have any grasp on things?
Math, ultimately everything comes down to numbers. If the human brain can't model something in the universe then we design something else that can.

If you want to say that using technology to build minds that understand the world in ways we never could bears resemblance to some vague concepts of theism that's up to you, but an incredibly smart slave is still a slave. Eventually this might lead to all humans becoming that smart by combining their minds with these hypothetical minds, in which case you could maybe make the argument that humans who perfectly understand physically laws are kind of like gods, but it's still completely outside any religious context.

>>9370473
This is part of why the lesswrong crowd is a fan of bayesian reasoning.

>>9370517
How can you be this butthurt over a clearly impartial post?

>>9370359
The thing is, god can't be verified by any means by any sense, dumbass

>>9370407
Underrated

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>>9370348
"God" came from a Semitic cult. The Jews were quite literally the craziest of their time, a cult, and the two other religions that came as offspring off theirs were considered even crazier than the "original": cults off of an original cult. It's all so incredibly ridiculous when you know even the most basic history of it, so if someone genuinely believes in these books then the only conclusion you can draw is that they are stupid beyond comprehension. There's no point in having a "discussion" with religious people because the only thing that can convince them is themselves. They deluded themselves into genuinely believing in fantasies just as ridiculous as the old European mythologies, and the only way for them to get out of it is by doing it themselves. The sad part is that most religious people are only religious because their parents were, because of their upbringing, so coming to terms with this and to even think against it is ultimately, on a deep level, going against themselves, and nobody likes facing and going against themselves.

t. went from not being religious as a child, being somewhat religious as a teen because of parents becoming religious, and then finally as an adult not being religious after reading and actually thinking

>>9370396
No, the first one is concealed irony and the second is concealed sincerity

I'm not as well-read as most of you guys on here, but I'd like to test this thought I've been working with.

This idea that God must be proven or there's no reason to believe in him seems epistomologically naive to me. Isn't one of the first things you learn in a philosophy 101 class that nothing can be proven? isn't that also one of the first things you learn in highschool science classes?

If we can't prove anything, then the concept of a an omnipotent, omniscient god revealing itself to mankind through a holy text like the bible seems reasonable to me. then, it seems like the only thing left to test is the bible, which, after studying pretty consistently every day the doctrines of, i haven't found anything that makes me feel uneasy of. in fact, every time i'm unsure about something and look more deeply into it with a mindset of finding truth, i find myself becoming more assured of it's absolute validity.

I do also think there's something to a childish approach to a reading of the bible. obviously this is an easy idea to mock, but i think it's a good thing to keep in mind for someone looking to find truth in the bible. Jesus said we should have faith like children. he also said that he who seeks the truth will find it. all of this makes sense to me with the concept of a loving god who wrote himself into his creation.

would love for someone to test these ideas.

Reddit is leaking again.

>>9374350
>he thinks people on /lit/ are well read
you fucked up

space exploration is the dumbest shit we collectively waste our time on

and people who waste their time thinking about it usually waste their time talking about atheism as well

the reason there's such a crossover of these types is because they choose to retreat into the actual fantastic nonsense of trying to objectively understand reality to a point that we transcend our pain and suffering

their blind faith in an unreachable something that will solve all of reality's ills is just that, faith, only they deceive themselves into thinking it's fact, simply because they record and calculate what IS (or what technology currently permits them to perceive as such)

the whole thought process hinges on the concept that one day, no matter what, we WILL know

well guess what, a faith that is completely dependent upon your 'impending knowing', rather than the confidence in letting go of that which IS UNKNOWABLE, is so much weaker and speaks volumes about the person

>>9370450
>etheist
Is that someone who worships electronics?

>>9370473
>Believing in Scientism is admit that, in all likelihood, you currently believe things to be true that in the future will be disproven and rendered false.
That's not really the scariest thing in the world.

>>9374350
burden of proof m8

>>9372942
Isn't it possible that reality isn't structured on math and that the applicability of mathematics to the natural world only extends to a certain point?

>>9373060
Only on /lit/ would someone call the majority of intellectual giants of the past 2000 years "stupid beyond comprehension."

t. a lukewarm christian by birth and family who became a hardcore atheist as a teenager and finally a devout christian as an adult after reading and actually thinking

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>it's another "theism vs. atheism" thread

>>9370359
Many atheists have honestly opened themselves up to contact with the divine and felt nothing. You can tell yourself these people were all impaired, but the truth is it's not about "allowing" yourself to sense God, it's about wanting to. You are like the people in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ2grvGgnUQ
They expect to see snakes, they WANT to see snakes (so they can avoid them) and so their mind creates snakes where there are none.

>>9370348
What if the people who believe in God just don't care about any of that?

>>9370348
my nihilism is to strong to care whether or not there is a god.

>>9374563
>after reading and actually thinking

And you came up with no evidence for your blind faith

lmfao

>>9374894
The deification of "evidence" and the scientific method is a poor substitute for God.

>>9372942
>model
So you admit that we can understand nothing by your premises.

What are the numbers of mercy?

>>9374903
It is not a substitute for God. God does not exist because there is no evidence.

>>9372942
>ultimately everything comes down to numbers
Why not 'up to' numbers? Is it because you reduce things from what they are to a model that isn't?

What kind of number is i? [square root of -1 is i]

>>9374954
>What are the numbers of mercy?
What does that even mean

>>9374546
Everything that will ever happen could be worked out mathematically if you could stop everything in its place and determine the rules that define the universe and every interaction within it. There is no freewill, everything is predetermined, and there is no God

>>9374993
>What does that even mean
It means that our little fedorabot had a syntax error, because realityfeed did not match with its programs and models it uses.

>>9370351
lmao

Demonstrable evidence cannot even tell us anything about the external world.

>>9374993
>There is no freewill
You admit the bondage of slavery, with joy.
>everything is predetermined
You are almost a hundred years too late for that. Quantum mechanics prove that there is no determinism, or it is outside of the models - so far that Occam's razor cuts it out.
>and there is no God
You should be 24 before posting here.

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>>9370348
There is no absolute demonstrable proof of anything, let alone god. All knowledge is axiom based.

A belief in god is no more fantastical than the expectation that when you flip your light switch, the light will turn on. Both are based on observed precedent. That there is anything at all suggests god's existence in much the same way seeing the light turn on as per the switch suggests the two are connected.

>>9370675
>what's the harm in practicing theism on an individual level?
That it NEVER ends there

>>9375022
Atheism can't stand on its own feet.

>>9375027
Tf is that supposed to mean and what relevance does it have to my post

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Relevant.

>>9375032
Atheism is the rejection of the foundations of knowledge, culture and civilization, within them. It's like cancer, it can never exist by itself. If it could, it would be just another organism.

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>science vs religion vs science vs religion vs science vs religion
the two have nothing to do with each other

>>9375036
You're assuming and implying a whole lot that I don't necessarily agree with

>>9375040
>religion should stay out of my life
Cancer cell expanding. If it wins, organism dies.

>>9375034
>belief is a dick measuring contest
fuck off with that nonsense

>>9375043
We have this saying here in Finland. The dog that was struck will be the one to whine.

>>9375041
That pompous dickhead prose of yours sure does a good job at obscuring your point

>>9375034
What an arrogant man

>>9375049
Alright. I'll expand on it.

Beliefs function like computer programs do. Information processing with statements, values and processing.

We have these religious claims (but there are many others, too), like
>Love yourself like you love God
Now, you may not immediately pinpoint the general attitude against free will to atheism based on this statement, but it is so.
>There is no God
>There is no free will (consciousness is an illusion, a falsehood akin to God)
You did nothing to the program, you changed the values. You pushed the self destruct button.

>>9375054
A-are you trying to argue something? Having a little something to drink tonight? The picture of what you are trying to say is clearing up, but I still can't see your thesis

>>9375021
>hat there is anything at all suggests god's existence in much the same way seeing the light turn on as per the switch suggests the two are connected.
what a ridiculous thing to say

>>9375060
Atheism is not about having a new belief system. It is about having new values within that system. It can never offer a program by itself. It doesn't have anything to offer. Marxism is judaism for goyim, which is why it was a more complete detachment from the Christian model and why you can't imagine yourself behaving like marxists.

That is why there are no atheistic civilizations.

>>9375072
It is a very sane thing to say if you are conscious and do not view yourself as the source of everything.

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Can someone send a short story with a "beginning, exposition initiating incident, a middle, rising action, climax, plot twist, an end, falling action and a conclusion"? It has to be between 315-800 words and no more. Preferably send your own or one online that is not easy to search up.

>>9370356
You just need to learn to accept the "absurdity" of existence takes a while but eventually you'll just wake up and wonder why it matters if the world has any meaning or not.

>>9375102
>need to
Am I supposed to find it amusing that you speak of such things, absurdist?

>>9375021
>That there is anything at all suggests god's existence
What's the name of this fallacy again?

>>9375118
God is not a yeti.

Not for the benefit of the OP, because he is clearly a lost cause and doesn't even care about the issue at hand, but
>"Open your heart to God and you will know" is not evidence of God
is blatantly wrong, isn't it? Let's say hypothetically the smartest person ever was convinced by a Bible that God exists. Shouldn't it count as evidence to some degree? The smartest person conceivable even. If it really is that potent of a book, and rings true to such infallible degrees that nothing said in it could ever be calculated by one of us, then isn't that proof enough?

I know what I believe in, and it isn't Santa Clause, who appraises you and gives gifts to one if they are nice. Rather like a ruthless, calculating demon he swoops in and gives reality a great calamity, because it's fun. I believe in tall tales, in that they are so succulent that one drinks them in with no regard to power and its consequences.

>>9370354
>le falacy xD
you really are from reddit

>>9375192
Wtf lol

>>9375232
Your thirst for attention is twisted. Are you an ugly woman?

>>9375232
It means that God is mean, that's it.

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>read Acts of the Apostles
>most of it isn't actually about the apostles

>>9370348
I shall go ahead and just take the bait

>Do you believe in God?
I do wonder at times, but overall yes

>Why lol
My belief is that the Holy Spirit has worked faith in me through the Word

>You have no proof he exists
Correct, but it's not a matter of proving anything

>Faith is not evidence of God
I agree, but it's not about evidence

>Speculation of where we came from is not evidence of God
True

>Church is not evidence of God
Correct, but none of this is relevant

>Leap of faith is not evidence of God
Of course not

>"Open your heart to God and you will know" is not evidence of God
That's not how faith works, and again the whole evidence discussion is beside the point

>A book written by sandniggers is not evidence of God
A book written by any human, whatever slur you use, isn't evidence* (see above again), but my belief is that the Bible is God's Word inspired by the Holy Spirit

>Give me one (1) piece of demonstrable evidence and I will change my mind.
>ONE. That's all I ask
It's just not a matter of evidence, and certainly not evidence some person such as I could provide
I will also say that I definitely do understand disbelief in God. I was away from the faith for several years, in fact. And I will mention that looking at scientific evidence, while it's maybe not going to incline someone toward faith, nonetheless doesn't provide proof of God's nonexistence either

>>9370348
Ive lived a life of questions. I love science and its my passion. Throughout my life i was satisfied when i thought i proved christianity was flawed.

>Why is there sin why cant we be all good
>Why did God make the forbidden fruit
>What about babies and 'good men's that go to hell

Truth is, we aren't as smart as we think. I never thought i would say this and scoffed at people who said this but these questions became irrelevant for me.

>>9375678
Those questions are very easily answered by elementary theology though.

>>9374974
>God does not exist because there is no evidence
Yes very good well argued my friend. Very empirical. I give this 4/4 upvotes, continue fighting the good fight.

>>9375849
Not him, but I'd say all of which are dependent on some form of circular reasoning

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>>9370387
>Open your heart.
Thats the "Just Bee Yourself" of Literature.
-_-

>>9375868
The only axioms needed are God is good and freedom is good. Not really any circular reasoning.

>>9375867
The universe is not evidence for god.
Your personal revelations are not evidence for god.
Archeology in no way shows evidence for god, but at the very least only shows that some things in the Bible were historically accurate to a degree, which was a surprise for everyone.
The self-proclaiming Bible itself is not evidence for god.
And finally, if eye witnesses are evidence for god, then praise Allah because Muhammad seen some shit!

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>>9375021
>causality is a meme
wew
>>9375022
>all religions are evangelistic
wew
>>9375052
>arrogant = wrong
WEW
>>9375604
>actually reading the Bible
FUCKING WEW
>>9375678
>Ive lived a life of questions. I love science and its my passion.
LAD

CALM DOWN LAD

LAD WEW LAD

OI YA FUCKIN MADMAN

ABSOLUTELY


WEW

>>9370348
Why are you wasting your time asking this on here? /lit/ Christianity is a contrarian reaction to reddit atheism, coupled with a desire to seem more learned by associating yourself with a historical literary tradition, the feeling of a lack of meaning in life, and resentment of social liberalism.

>>9375894
hahhahahhashasgdashjjhashjhahdah. good post

>>9375888
What does that have to do with the logical failure I found in your post?
>God does not exist
>because there is no evidence
You really see nothing wrong with this statement regardless of the validity of the axiom?
I'm fully willing to pretend there's no evidence for God because that still won't make your statements any more valid.
You're a mediocre rhetorician but you're an abysmal critical thinker. If you defeat your own statements you leave your opponent with nothing left to do but shitpost.

>>9375903
I feel bad for people like you who reflexively project base motivations onto everything. You should open yourself to the possibility that there's more to life than reaction.

>>9375038
this tbqh

>>9375880
>God is good and freedom is good.

God is not good. Now what? Freedom sucks. So there. Your logic is circular. I'm not a logician but I did attempt to write some of it, and did a decent job of it I think, and what I learned is that its all hackery. None of it makes much sense, logically speaking, because it all depends on itself to explain its meaning. It doesn't, for instance, translate anything but a strange and powerful thought process. 1 + 1 = 2, but not if you don't have the processing power to understand the statement, and that's all logic is.

>>9375931
>the only axioms needed are X, Y and Z
>I reject X, Y, and/or Z. HOLY SHIT YOUR ARGUMENT FELL APART BTFO CIRCULAR REASONING
>I'm not a logician
Don't worry, there was never any doubt

>>9375931
That's not what circular reasoning is. If you reject any possible axiom we fall into infinite regress and logic fails and we can't prove anything. Which is perfectly fine, of course, but that doesn't mean arguments for God are less valid than arguments for anything else.

>>9375951
That's what that means. Proof is retarded. You can always have more evidence, and the less of it you need the less retarded you must be, because clearly the people who clamor for it do so at their own detriment.

>>9375075
It's almost as if widespread atheism is relatively recent development or something

>>9375949
You can reject the logic at any point because it's weird or whatever, and there's no way to prove it then, just like with the most banal, commonplace statement, proving that logic is largely pointless and silly.

>>9375963
I am not sure I understand. Are you against logic in general or just the use of logic in arguments for God? Science, which you said is your passion, rests on assumption very similar to those of Christian apologetics, the only difference being that the former is kind of but not really verifiable by the senses and the latter is purely philosophical.

>>9375993
I'm someone else. I just chimed in because I wanted to speak on the topic of logic in general. I don't like it really.

>>9376001
Ah, well, you're right, but all human existence is based on logic. Of course everything we know is probably wrong but we try hard and it's working out okay so far.

>>9376007
I realize that, but I mean as a discipline where they say in rigid form, that B must follow A or something like this, when you could say the same thing a hundred different ways and it wouldn't be any less valid only because you masked it in this form that "must be true" or whatever. I like logic in all its forms, but I'm more against the way this particular form is treated. It's merely silly, is all I'm saying.

>>9375988
I don't think your refusal to engage with logic proves anything, especially considering "proof" is a logical concept.
If you don't want to argue within the framework of logic no one can stop you, but neither can you say anything of substance.

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To not only believing in God but to in everything relying on His grace and mercy is the true and original rebellion. Everybody do understand that there is more to everything than what the sciences can translate into numbers and facts and OPs old trickery is only boring and old. There is nothing new under the sun and no internet-ricky-lake-goth-kid who can come up with a question that has not been answered time and time again for the last 2000 years. Everybody have a blessed easter. Pray for everybody. And don't forget to tune in to https://digre.bandcamp.com/
Lord have Mercy upon us.

>>9376055
What I heard is, the man Wittgenstein you guys apparently love so much even said that all proof is expressing a tautology. This is the basis of my understanding. Hence even your best logician basically decries proof, lol. 'nuff said?

Though to repeat, I don't have a disdain for proof per se, only in the way certain forms of it are elevated above others, hence, for instance, the God thing makes perfect sense to me and is even proved in abundance, everywhere and as far as the eye can see. But to see it you must be prone to seeing it. Does that make it less true? Not so much, if you ask me.

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The miraculous works of god

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And the sinful works of man

I posted this in another thread but its probably better suited for this one:

Im non-religious and confused about life, I would like to begin exploring spirituality and philosophy. Are there any books that discuss spirituality in a non-dogmatic sense?

>>9374546
No. Math is an organized language of description, so as long as humans are capable of understanding something, we will be capable of using math to describe it.

The incredibly interesting thing about math though is that because every word/operation is dependant on patterns, it's more than possible for us to look at things that apparently have no order to them, find other things that follow the same or very similar patterns, and thus discover new words/operations.

>>9374954
Not at all. A sufficiently accurate model is equivalent to the"real" thing.

I don't personally know, but if I had to take a guess, mercy can be defined by some portion of a being's utility function.

>>9374977
Does saying that the works of Shakespeare just boil down to words reduce the depth and eloquence of the stories they represent? The idea you're getting at is absurd, nothing can be 'up to' words or numbers because they aren't conscious.

Like I said earlier, a sufficiently accurate model of reality is equivalent to reality.

i is a non-real or imaginary number, this class of numbers is referred to as such because of the initial reaction that mathematicians had to the idea of their existence. Even after the naysayers were proven wrong when the use of non-real numbers simplified some existing analysis and made entirely new forms of analysis possible, the name stuck because of historical connotations and the fact that it was an easy point of reference that most people understood.

We could call them Euler-Gauss numbers, but that wouldn't be as useful as a description because those two advanced the study of math so much in so many ways that it's not a specific enough term to be easy to understand exactly what someone is taking about when they use it. Nice try at the semantic argument though.

>>9376155
The one true God
>>>/samharris/waking_up.jpeg

>>9376155
Lewis's Mere Christianity is a great starting point and completely free of dogma.

Also I know this is a meme but if you haven't started with the Greeks you probably should. The pagan foundation is invaluable for any sort of spiritual growth.

>>9376174
>as long as humans are capable of understanding something, we will be capable of using math to describe it.
But surely if something exceeds our grasp math is useless? Or are you saying there is no possibility of a chasm between reason and the absolute?

>>9376180
I was reccommended sophie's world in the other thread so im gonna read that for starters.

>>9376184
There could be a chasm between human reason and the absolute, but that doesn't mean we can't build other minds that can bridge the divide. The possibility space that describes all possible minds is just too vast for it to be otherwise.

>>9370348
Read Clifford, and then literally any response to him. Your doxastic principles are ridiculous.

>>9376225
It might be helpful for me to mention that the existence of a mathematically ordered universe does not preclude the existence of a god or pantheon of gods. The classic analogy is like a watchmaker or something iirc.

Personally I don't currently believe that's the case, but if a god or gods exist, then I want to believe they exist. If they do not exist, I want to believe they do not exist. Nothing right now passes my standards of evidence so I do not believe.

>>9376271
But why is the universe mathematically ordered, and does that order hold beyond and outside the universe?

>>9376289
Like I said earlier, math is an orderly language. Your question might as well be "why can English be used to describe the universe?" It's because that's just what languages do, they describe ideas/people/things/etc. If they didn't do that, they wouldn't be languages. Do all languages describe the universe in the same way? No, some are more efficient than others and can cram the same meaning into a single word that another language would have to devote whole sentences to. Some concepts don't exist in some languages until they are translated from another language. A good example being languages that feature absolute direction, depending on how you stand you have a north foot and a south foot or an easy and west foot, Tom Scott has a video about more ideas like this that aren't in English.

Math specifically can be defined as "a language that seeks to describe the universe as accurately as possible". That's not to say that languages in general and math specifically can't or won't change to fit it's usage, just look at legal english and compare it to what we're using, or compare the math used in computer science to the math used in physics.

I'm getting further and further from my own realm of expertise so my analogies are probably getting worse, but the point I'm trying to make is that math is just as capable of describing things as any other language. For something to be out of the descriptive capabilities of all language, it would have to be outside the perceptual capabilities of all possible minds, which is something I think is almost certainly impossible.

As for whether math holds coherence outside the universe, probably. If language holds, then so does math. The only question is how different the math of other universes is from ours.

>>9376382
Thank you for the detailed response. That the process of creating increasingly better minds would change mathematics itself is what I hadn't considered. I think I do understand your point.

The only possible contention I can see (and I might be completely wrong, as I think this is much further from my area of expertise than it is from yours) is that there would be some sort of barrier, either in the initial creation of a mind superior to ours or at some generation along the way, that would stop this sort of positive feedback loop. I realize I'm introducing an assumption though.

>>9375201
you are like last level before 'smug anime faces' on that 'brain meme pics' :D

>>9376450
That's just an engineering problem that can be solved with an optimization technique called simulated annealing. I don't really have the time to explain it right now, but this is a decent 2 minute intro and you can find more details elsewhere.

https://youtu.be/SC5CX8drAtU

God is Nature

I'd say mother nature is the true god

>>9370348
nobody's going for the obvious angle here
>Faith is not evidence of God
how do you know? what is your evidence that faith is not evidence of God?
same question for all the other claims

besides, "what constitutes evidence for what" is tricky
if what dreaming really is is your consciousness being temporarily transported to other universes by an undetectable quantum beam that interdimensional aliens are using to fuck with us, then dreams are evidence of those aliens (literally manifestations of their existence in our lives), but we could probably never find that out since it would be such a far-fetched hypothesis

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>>9370348
God has nothing to do with empirical evidence. The authenticity of religious texts is irrelevant. God is of the spirit and he's purely subjective. This life is all there is, and if the idea of God, in whatever form or name you give him helps you go through it, that's all that matter.

That's the conclusion I came to, anyway.

>>9376691
>God is purely subjective
what does this mean?
that whether God exists is relative to each person?

>>9376874
Not that anon, but just look at all the religions in the world. The vast majority of them are mutually exclusive. How can anyone claim to know the absolute 100% real divine truth if there are really hundreds of divine truths, very few of which agree with eachother, all of which are at least slightly different, and whose followers all say that their religion is the real one?

It's like being presented with a thousand closed boxes, only one of which will bring you eternal happiness, and you only get to choose one AND you only have a limited time to choose. There's no obvious choice, so the religion that you choose usually ends up being the one that you were raised with or the one that aligns most with your personal values, neither of which is anywhere near an objective marker of "truth".

You can make the argument that God is really like none of these organized religions, but that only adds to the difficulty of deciding how and why to worship, if you even worship at all.

>>9374512
i laughed

>>9375034
i hear his voice

>>9370354
When the hominem is this stupid, it's the only argument that matters, m8.

>>9377790
>The vast majority of them are mutually exclusive
Let me just stop you right there.
Find the similarities - you might be surprised....

>>9370428
They actually are, just not reliable evidence.