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Do you believe in God?

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Do you believe God exists?
1) God is a being, that one can have a personal relationship. A person God. 30%  30%  [ 55 ]
2) God is an impersonal force that guides reality as it is. He decrees our laws of physics, but does not intervene to break them. 12%  12%  [ 22 ]
3) God does not exist. Reality can be explained by scientific inquiry and the scientific method in by itself. 33%  33%  [ 61 ]
4) I am not sure. There is the possibility that God does exist, or does not. We must follow the preponderance of evidence when drawing our conclusion. 25%  25%  [ 47 ]
Total votes : 185

AspE
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14 Mar 2016, 4:31 pm

NoahYates wrote:

At this point I think its safe to assume you are a troll... so I will ignore you.

I'm with you on having transcendent experiences that reveal the ego and other boundaries to be false. How do you get from there to a God? Just because it has minds in it, doesn't mean that the universe is a mind. Taoism is saying just what I said, that God doesn't assemble things out of parts that would require intelligence. Creativity in nature is passive. Lots of tiny parts with simple rules interact and nature is the result, no plan, no intelligence. It's a superior kind of thing. And we know such a scheme works, because I can simulate natural processes with simple rules in a computer.

"Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier."
Tao Te Ching, Vs. 19



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14 Mar 2016, 4:43 pm

AspE wrote:
marcb0t wrote:
AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
AspE do you understand Godel's incompleteness theorem?

No, and neither do you.

This statement is fallacious. How can you claim that someone doesn't understand something if you don't understand it yourself?

It's a rather strict mathematical theorem, and he's applying it to Taoism. This is why I respect fundamentalism more than new age pseudoscience, at least they don't mix everything up into a meaningless pile of woo.
You know, I wasn't exactly "feeling the chi" on that new age take myself either.

I felt compelled to ask.


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marcb0t
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14 Mar 2016, 4:46 pm

AspE wrote:
"Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier."
Tao Te Ching, Vs. 19

Yeah that definitely is not compatible with basic Judeo Christian Scripture.

My experience has been opposite of this tenet of Taoism in practice.


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14 Mar 2016, 4:47 pm

AspE wrote:
marcb0t wrote:
By the way, welcome back AspE and Noah! :heart:

I do take the weekends off.


Same for the most part.
Everyone's gotta get their rest.


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14 Mar 2016, 5:54 pm


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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14 Mar 2016, 7:28 pm

AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
AspE do you understand Godel's incompleteness theorem?

No, and neither do you.


As I have mentioned, a solid theistic and atheistic outlook hang in in balance. If the multiverse turns out to be real, the cosmological argument and anthropic principle will fail, and there will no longer be any scientific meaning to holding a belief in God.

However... If string theory is determined to be untestable, and eternal inflation is no longer plausible (so far, evidence points against the idea eternal inflation, as it is IN fact finite), then the cosmological argument and anthropic principle will hold up and give theism a solid ground, as far as cosmology is concerned.

To put it bluntly, it is a winner takes all scenario.


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14 Mar 2016, 7:58 pm

AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
AspE do you understand Godel's incompleteness theorem?

No, and neither do you.



For some reason, I find the statement to be somewhat tactless. Nonetheless, Noah is not using the theorem in its proper context.


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14 Mar 2016, 8:14 pm

Cosmologist and eminent astronomer George Ellis has introduced a very interesting point. In the same manner that the laws of mathematics are equivalent in age with our universe, for instance calculus and integration has aged at the same time with our universe. Likewise because of its own hereditary reality, things like morality too, began with the formation of the universe. Because they are observable in nature, they too, can be seen and determined in objective reality.


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14 Mar 2016, 10:07 pm

I don't care if no one understands my concept of God. :cry:


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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15 Mar 2016, 7:34 am


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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15 Mar 2016, 1:45 pm

NoahYates wrote:
I don't care if no one understands my concept of God. :cry:


?


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15 Mar 2016, 2:31 pm


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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15 Mar 2016, 6:20 pm


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16 Mar 2016, 8:16 am

I am about to listen to this talk, but I think its extremely interesting that while I was researching Asperger's syndrome a few days ago (my new passion) I came upon a video where this man was discussing his experience with discovering he was an undiagnosed case of AS as an adult. Since then I have seen him referenced 2 times! Oh how the world is connected by the internet. I anticipate this will be a nice talk, because he seems to be a very nice and intelligent person.


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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16 Mar 2016, 8:51 am

Indeed, that was a most excellent talk.


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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16 Mar 2016, 1:16 pm

Just at a glance this looks very interesting...


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts