Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?
Posts
Jeroen_Sol
Nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays. A game of betrayal, where the most suspicious person is brutally murdered? How savage.
3885
Jeroen_Sol
View playlists
Closeauthor=kentona
"Gods of the gaps" grow increasingly impotent as the gaps are filled or narrowed.
That's true. Though some gaps simply cannot be filled, by our own limitations. For instance, a theist could argue that our 3-dimensional universe is simply a subspace of a much bigger 4-dimensional or even higher dimensional universe. They could then say that a god is a higher dimensional being. By our limitation of living in a 3 dimensional world, no tests we could come up with could ever prove or disprove the existance of more dimensions than our own 3. It would actually make a lot of sense to call such a being a god too, as a higher dimensional being would to us 3-dimensional beings very quickly seem omnipotent if it ever influenced anything within our 3-dimensional universe. It would be able to causally link events that in our timespace do not lie in each other's causal future or past. Such a thing could be called a miracle.
Of course allowing more dimensions would bring its own plethora of problems that atheists can point out as well, but my point is theists will never run out of gaps to define their gods inside.
And then the question becomes: Who is more ignorant? The person who poses a hypothesis that science cannot disprove, or the person who tries to use science to disprove that hypothesis?
author=Jeroen_Solauthor=kentonaThat's true. Though some gaps simply cannot be filled, by our own limitations. For instance, a theist could argue that our 3-dimensional universe is simply a subspace of a much bigger 4-dimensional or even higher dimensional universe. They could then say that a god is a higher dimensional being. By our limitation of living in a 3 dimensional world, no tests we could come up with could ever prove or disprove the existance of more dimensions than our own 3. It would actually make a lot of sense to call such a being a god too, as a higher dimensional being would to us 3-dimensional beings very quickly seem omnipotent if it ever influenced anything within our 3-dimensional universe. It would be able to causally link events that in our timespace do not lie in each other's causal future or past. Such a thing could be called a miracle.
"Gods of the gaps" grow increasingly impotent as the gaps are filled or narrowed.
Of course allowing more dimensions would bring its own plethora of problems that atheists can point out as well, but my point is theists will never run out of gaps to define their gods inside.
And then the question becomes: Who is more ignorant? The person who poses a hypothesis that science cannot disprove, or the person who tries to use science to disprove that hypothesis?
The person who poses the hypothesis.
They are trying to draft a hypothesis to their desired outcome.
kentonaauthor=Jeroen_SolThe person who poses the hypothesis.
And then the question becomes: Who is more ignorant? The person who poses a hypothesis that science cannot disprove, or the person who tries to use science to disprove that hypothesis?
They are trying to draft a hypothesis to their desired outcome.
And exactly the same thing can be said about the person who tries to use to disprove the hypothesis. Science is a religion, too. We are itty-bitty beings on an itty-bitty planet in a really big universe. To claim we know anything concrete about it is frankly arrogant. Right now, science is doing amazing things. NASA has recently developed an engine that doesn't obey the laws of physics, which itself should be a hint that those laws may not be so strict.
I get a kick out of all of these explanations of science and physics that I'm seeing. None of the rules and laws being cited are unbreakable, and scientists have never suggested they are. But people are turning to science as a religion and are canonizing tenants that were never meant to canonized. "This is the law, and what is can be no other way" is not science. It's not respectable science. It's not realistic science. It's not good science. It's not even usable science. In science, we can't apply this way of thinking to even the most basic principles, so it's actually pretty absurd to try and apply it to larger philosophical musings about aspects of reality that are too big and complex for us to see. Damn, we can't even explain the behavior of water. It's silly to think we can explain the beginning and end of all things.
I prefer to think we won't know until we know. It's fine to believe in something, but closing our minds to possibilities disables our ability to learn. Limits on possibility are limits on discovery.
"Everything's impossible until it's not." --Captain Jean-Luc Picard; my all-time favorite Star Trek quote.
I am more partial to 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', and I do reject the posit of "welp aint got an answer better go with the default answer of 'lol its a god'" because, yeah, I agree, appealing to the supernatural is closing our minds to possibilities.
author=kentona
I am more partial to 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', and I do reject the posit of "welp aint got an answer better go with the default answer of 'lol its a god'" because, yeah, I agree, appealing to the supernatural is closing our minds to possibilities.
Well, that absolutely isn't what I was saying at all. I was simply saying not to dismiss the possibility of something beyond our ability to perceive. I was not saying to blame the unknown on a supernatural entity (which more than anything else, is intellectually lazy). After all, there is the concept of a god that specifically doesn't influence reality in any way, shape, or form.
imgur staff wanted suggestions and to be told why they suck
i posted a reply about how i went from being a paying and very active member (like, hitting the front page 5+ times and reaching far beyond the highest awards of imgur points active) to loathing the site and rethinking using it even for image hosting services (which is all i do with it now). i have a lot of greivances.
too bad imgur was down and i couldn't post my reply
fuck imgur
i posted a reply about how i went from being a paying and very active member (like, hitting the front page 5+ times and reaching far beyond the highest awards of imgur points active) to loathing the site and rethinking using it even for image hosting services (which is all i do with it now). i have a lot of greivances.
too bad imgur was down and i couldn't post my reply
fuck imgur
Jeroen_Sol
Nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays. A game of betrayal, where the most suspicious person is brutally murdered? How savage.
3885
author=Sated
Thankfully, what we can observe and measure is that the Earth isn't as young as the bible says it is, that humanity didn't come about as recently as the bible says it did, and that the universe wasn't created the way the bible says it was, and so we can postulate that the whole thing is predicated on a lie.
Many things in the bible are indeed falsifiable, and have been falsified. But to then postulate that the entire thing must be predicated on a lie is a huge leap of logic that can't be ratified, especially considering the fact that no theist who isn't completely dishonest claims that everything stated in the bible is to be taken literally. Yes, lots of theists are dishonest, and do claim that, but trying to argue with them would be moot anyway, so you might as well not even bother, and focus on the ones who accept that the things that science has disproved did not happen.
it worked again
note that i'm already downvoted
fuck imgur
edit: why is welp getting used for this topic guys
author=Sated
"Not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon" doesn't mean the same as "breaks the laws of physics". It means that they don't know what is causing the effect they've observed.
Fair enough. It still doesn't mean the laws of physics are immutable (again, that's the same as saying that we understand the secrets of universe, which no honest man can actually claim).
Equally, no one is claiming that we know everything about the universe, as all we can do is try to assign reason to what we're able to observe and measure. Thankfully, what we can observe and measure is that the Earth isn't as young as the bible says it is, that humanity didn't come about as recently as the bible says it did, and that the universe wasn't created the way the bible says it was, and so we can postulate that the whole thing is predicated on a lie.
Can I facepalm here? This is a completely different discussion. Frankly, Creationists have pretty clearly proven that if you take the Bible seriously, you're going to have a VERY bad day.
SatedCan I facepalm here? This is a completely different discussion.
You quoted Jeroen_Sol and kentona's conversation about religion/atheism/gods in the post you made, so I was making a connection between what I think of your post and what I think of their conversation.
Right, but that's religion/Atheism/gods; an esoteric, philosophical discussion about what's knowable and concepts of being. The theory that the Bible is tripe is far easier to quantify and probably belongs in its own category. Christianity isn't the only religion in the world.
One very powerful thing about science is that it looks to prove itself wrong. When something scientific is found to be false, that means we now have a better understanding of it.
That science replaces faulty and proven incorrect theories with new and more sound ones is not a sign of weakness or of being flawed. Quite the opposite. It shows where a flaw once once, and now is no more.
That science replaces faulty and proven incorrect theories with new and more sound ones is not a sign of weakness or of being flawed. Quite the opposite. It shows where a flaw once once, and now is no more.
author=FlyingJester
One very powerful thing about science is that it looks to prove itself wrong. When something scientific is found to be false, that means we now have a better understanding of it.
That science replaces faulty and proven incorrect theories with new and more sound ones is not a sign of weakness or of being flawed. Quite the opposite. It shows where a flaw once once, and now is no more.
Yes! YES! THIS! EXACTLY THIS!
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
Also the 6 days of Creation, in the original Hebrew text, were eons of time and not literal 24 hour days (we get that calculation/mix-up from the Greek), so it's not entirely false to say that the Bible attests the theory of how the universe came about, the Earth becoming inhabitable and sprouting flora and fauna, eventually leading to the "creation" of humankind. It's just not written as "science" but "force beyond time and matter". People back then weren't dumb, they just had too much time on their hands and not enough technology to back it up.
