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Hey theists, convince me into believing in God.
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2021-04-19 at 8:17 PM UTC"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-19 at 8:32 PM UTC
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2021-04-19 at 8:34 PM UTCThe simulation hypothesis holds that in a universe where ancestor simulations can happen as a result of intentional actions, the overwhelming likelihood is that they will happen at least once somewhere, and that in a universe where it happens at least once, the amount of simulated conscious observers in a particular reference class will vastly outnumber the number of unsimulated observers to the point where the relative chance of any given observer being unsimulated will be virtually zero.
According to the most modern state of neuroscience, human consciousness seems to be the result of physical processes involving our brain and thus seems to be simulatable within our own universe.
Thus the chances that any particular observer in our reference class (including you and I) are simulated are overwhelming. Thus the chances are that we exist within one of a massive number of ancestor simulations.
These simulations, being the results of intentional actions, would be controlled by some entity that is capable of conscious comprehension. This entity would have total control and perfect information of every aspect of our reality.
They could move stars around your sky at will to form pictures. They could return the save file of your dead loved ones and remove their cancerous organ with the save file of a healthy organ. They could give you superpowers or perform miracles. They could make reality retrospectively change to reflect and "rationalize" all their actions, including our memories, so it always seems to be consistent with natural phenomena.
Such a person would be fit to be called god and as demonstrated above, is likely to be existent relative to our reality.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-19 at 10:22 PM UTCI'm like just a simulation?
Bro. -
2021-04-20 at 1:24 AM UTCI don't understand what you mean by "just" a simulation. You feel. You love. You hurt. You laugh. You're the real mccoy. Who gives a fuck what the hardware is?The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-20 at 2:01 AM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-20 at 2:05 AM UTCIf I was §m£ÂgØL I wouldn't believe in God eitherThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-20 at 12:56 PM UTC
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2021-04-20 at 3:02 PM UTCIf we created a simulation with creatures with as robust an intelligent consciousness as we do, wouldn't we think they were morally considerable? Maybe. But you would probably exterminate whole digital worlds to save but one life of flesh and blood in the context of your reality.
My opinion is this: if you are a powerful galactic civilisation and get strong enough computer hardware to do whatever you want with whatever level of granularity you want (for example if you manage to achieve high levels of nanotechnology that you could release a nanobot swarm to devour entire asteroids and turn them into computing clusters), you would easily have the resources to run a simulation of your civilisation for sure.
The reason is that you would have excellent present-state information about it your civ and universe in whatever aspects you deem relevant at that point and could simulate them materially, even down to individually simulating our brains at the neuronal level to create conscious "ai", just like your own species, in a universe just like your own, but one you can watch play out millions of times faster because it is running on a computer.
You could watch the technological and scientific progress the beings within your simulation make in situations similar to your own, with experimental outcomes similar to your own, and test their advancements against your own universe's physics to make genuine scientific progress, and even feed this data back into your simulation to present the discrepancies to the simulated civ in their experiments, and make the simulation itself more accurate and progressively more advanced.
The simulated agents would create technology, even products relevant to them in situations extremely similar to the operators' world and help to model their marketing strategies and figure out novel technological pathways... After all they can get 1000000 years of brainstorming by an entire simulated civilisation of simulated agents.
To simulate every single brain on Earth, it would "only" (for an advanced civ) take about the mass of a planet turned into microchips at a modern fabrication scale (let alone the fabrication technologies available to an advanced civilisation.
Our purpose in such an existence, would be to persist, survive, innovate, solve problems to improve society and generally live our best lives because our self progress is directly aligned with the goals of the operators.
https://nickbostrom.com/superintelligence.html -
2021-04-20 at 3:05 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-20 at 7:37 PM UTC
Originally posted by Obbe There is also an abundance of life, a vast cornucopia of species intertwined with each other and their environments, a very beautiful yinyang sort of thing going on. Believing it is nothing special, just rocks and water, is still "just feelings". There is nothing wrong with expressing your feelings like Xlite was in the post you quoted, but if you're going to dismiss someones insights as if they were worthless nonsense without having a real conversation about it what is even the point of talking to you?
And we observe the rocks and species and their intertwining and we want to act in terms of this world as it really is. Our ability to act in those terms is what we call rationality and the expression of our relationship with the physical world around us is what we call "Science."
But as we observe and contemplate all these objects--the rocks, and so on--we come across one type of object that is uniquely different. When I contemplate this object, it contemplates me back. It's another human, and it presents a problem. My senses, the middlemen for all the knowledge I have, have been telling me a lie since I was in the womb: I am in the center of the universe. I mean, look around. Obviously, I'm in the center. But when I am the one observed, the observer is in my spot at the center of the universe. We can't both be in the same spot and still be acting in terms of the world as it really is--and this is the birth of consciousness , self-awareness , because we both need to suspend our belief in our senses and grant each other mutual centrality. We call this "maturity." We are acting rationally in terms of the world as it really is. We have discovered humanity, of which we are a part, and we call this expression of our relationship with other humans "Art." -
2021-04-20 at 7:50 PM UTCIf your only explanation for a designer is another designer then by extension you must use the same explanation for the next designer in the sequence. So your god is just the lowest level god in a chain of gods and there's no real explanation possible. This is what the Mormons believe and introduces infinite entities.
But what you WANT to say is the next designer needed no designer. That there is some original designer that came about without needing another one to make him.
And that's precisely what we are trying to explain, how that works. That was Darwin's great inversion of reasoning: how can design emerge from uncomprehending processes? It is the metaphysical junction where chemistry turns into biology.
We are the intelligent designers who came by uncomprehending processes. There is great physical evidence to this effect. But it is also the most parsimonious assertion because we arrive at the same end result (trying to explain how an intelligent designer can come to be) but minus one unnecessary additional entity. -
2021-04-21 at 9:45 PM UTCThere was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can't have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn't be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.
In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn't, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It comes and it goes. Now you see it; now you don't. So because it doesn't get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It's like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It's also like the game of hide-and-seek, because it's always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn't always hide in the same place.
God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.
Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it—just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self—the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever. Of course, you must remember that God isn't shaped like a person.
People have skins and there is always something outside our skins. If there weren't, we wouldn't know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn't any outside to him. The inside and the outside of God are the same. And though I have been talking about God as 'he' and not 'she,' God isn't a man or a woman. I didn't say 'it' because we usually say 'it' for things that aren't alive.
God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.
You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It's the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world. -
2021-04-21 at 9:56 PM UTC
Originally posted by FreeAssange and we call this expression of our relationship with other humans "Art."
An artist is the most desperate creature. For while the act of creating is solitary, it requires the validation of another. The artist creates in the physical world a reflection of his emotional experience of it. If other humans recognize his creation as saying something true about the human condition, he has created art. He cannot self-validate. It falls to the artist to create the way we see the world, and that gives him great power. But his power is completely dependent on the validation of others. The work of the genius commands validation. -
2021-04-21 at 10:04 PM UTC
Originally posted by Chairman Takeshi Kaga We are the intelligent designers who came by uncomprehending processes. There is great physical evidence to this effect. But it is also the most parsimonious assertion because we arrive at the same end result (trying to explain how an intelligent designer can come to be) but minus one unnecessary additional entity.
How do we know "creator" is an attribute of God's? -
2021-04-21 at 10:35 PM UTC
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2021-04-21 at 10:41 PM UTCThis is like ants talking about the human experience.
The beings "out there" mocks our limited perception in unimaginable ways. Things such as intelligence or even concepts in general are crumbling away in their presence. We don't have language for whatever is going on, its unavailable to us like internet porn once was.
Human language simply cannot convey the majesty of reality supreme.
What might be the pinnacle of human achievement is really nothing but a turd in the cosmic litter box which is standing in some cosmic toilet in some abandoned and forgotten cosmic basement.
I don't disagree too much with the argument that this could be a simulation but based on personal experience i find it less likely.
There's more spectacular things going on than that. -
2021-04-21 at 10:58 PM UTC
Originally posted by Xlite This is like ants talking about the human experience.
The beings "out there" mocks our limited perception in unimaginable ways. Things such as intelligence or even concepts in general are crumbling away in their presence. We don't have language for whatever is going on, its unavailable to us like internet porn once was.
Human language simply cannot convey the majesty of reality supreme.
What might be the pinnacle of human achievement is really nothing but a turd in the cosmic litter box which is standing in some cosmic toilet in some abandoned and forgotten cosmic basement.
I don't disagree too much with the argument that this could be a simulation but based on personal experience i find it less likely.
There's more spectacular things going on than that.
Shut up idiot. You are essentially arguing epistemic nihilism, which is philosophy for insects. -
2021-04-21 at 11:18 PM UTC
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2021-04-21 at 11:23 PM UTC
