Reverend Never and Me: God

[Roo]

K-scar- putting in spaces would go a long way toward people actually reading this.
Like so:

Reverend Never: Do you believe in God?

Me: I'm not too sure if I do.

Never: Why's that?

Me: The idea that an intangible being created everything just seems to much like a copout. Instead of actually trying to find an answer, some people just seem content to just place all under the 'God' file.

Never: Well, you could just be making thing more complicated then things are. It could be just that simple.

Me: It could be, yes, yet science makes new discoveries every day. They're constantly figuring things out.

Never: Sure, they figured out that it's gravity that's keeping people from floating out into space, but they have yet to where or why gravity works.

Me: You're going to dredge up that old argument?

Never: Well, it's not only that. What about atoms? We know they make us, but what makes the things that make the atoms?

Me: Some scientists have noted that the electrons or whatever they are called come in and out of existence.

Never: First, so? Why do they come in and out of existence, and how does random electrons doing as they please form us and the universe? Second, why only some scientists?

Me: Well, some scientists are just as dogmatic as religious folk; sometimes even more so because they are supported by facts. They would hate to think that their law 'matter cannot be either made or destroyed' could be false.

Never: Before you answer my first half of my question, do you believe electrons come in and out of existence?

Me: Well, yeah. I mean, I can't be made of the same number of atoms I was made of when I was smaller. Or, take a tree. The idea that the same number of atoms that make up a seed make the tree. Where does all the extra atoms come from? If the 'matter cannot' law is true, wouldn't the universe be shrinking rather then expanding?

Never: So then you would agree with me that science can't explain everything?

Me: I never said it did. I just said I'd rather know an answer then assume one. I just said so in a rather roundabout way.

Never: So then why wouldn't the idea of a God satisfy your unknowns? If you don't want to assume an answer, then how do you explain things that you don't know?

Me: You mean like the way I explained why I didn't like the God Theory?

Never: Yes. You just can't explain everything away.

Me: I suppose it's how I view things. I see God as a logic puzzle of philosophy. Others view God as a fact. 'You cannot leave the observer out of the observation,' or however the quote goes.

Never: That raises another question. Is God a facet of spirituality or of science?

Me: Both. Spirituality is something humans feel and humans can be, just to cut the explanation a little short, experimented on.

Never: You mean, answers found to?

Me: Yeah.

Never: Spirituality is an emotion that people can feel. Emotions do exist, be they are chemicals of the brain or not. Using your train of logic, God exists.

Me: No, spirituality, the feeling that something greater, is real. If that thing actually exists is a different question. The being called 'God' is outside the emotion and isn't part of spirituality. If anything, God is more of a question of science. Still, it works for both. Of course, we could be asking the wrong questions.

Never: Huh?

Me: We keep asking if God exists. It's only part of the question. See, we humans and our universe live in finite space, and God, if the rumors are true, is a being of infinity. Our question should be, 'Does God exist in a finite environment?' The answer there would be no.

Never: How so?

Me: Infinity can't fit inside boundaries.

Never: But our universe doesn't have a wall surrounding it, does it?

Me: Depends on what scientist you ask.

Never: Of course, the Multiple Universes theory. But what then is in-between the universes?

Me: Well, this is where things get tricky. If you take a thing of finite space, say like a planet, that means there is less infinity then there was before because that infinity is being taken up. I mean, where does the infinity go when you put something in it? Can infinity be displaced? If so, where does it get displaced to?

Never: Well, I...uh...

Me: Infinity can't be displaced; it has nowhere to go. So, there is no such thing as 'infinity' and would mean that God is logically impossible. Unless you can believe in less infinity then before...

Never: Err, logically, then, perhaps. But, God can do whatever. All-powerful, isn't--

Me: All the terminology we put to God is human. God, if in existence, isn't human and not subject to human thought or words.

Never: So, what are you saying?

Me: God could exist, but if It does, probably not in the way humans think.

Never: So, you're agnostic about the whole thing?

Me: Didn't I mean when I said I wasn't too sure.

Never: I suppose so.

[AFK]

We need to enroll him in the LHX Institute of Carriage Returns. 

[LMNO]

See, we humans and our universe live in finite space

We do?









[citation needed]

[Reginald Ret]

this could be good for showing peeps stuck in such arguments that such arguments are pointless.


wait our universe lives?

oh and i thought about making an argument for us living in a finite space but that would require i define infinite as all encompassing and that would be a bit of a stretch so i won't (think wittgenstein)

aw hell i will:
wittgenstein said something like a true description of something can't be self referential to itself. 'The area we live in' is a true statement(though a flexible one) about our habitat. Infinity includes everything including the statement 'the area we live in' so the actual area has to be smaller then infinity, the only things smaller then infinity are finite so our universe is finite.

[Requia ☣]

Wittgenstein can't count then, infinity can be greater than, less than, or equal to infinity*.   There are an infinite number of numbers, there are an infinite number of whole numbers, yes the set of whole numbers is smaller than the set of all numbers.  There are in fact, an infinity of numbers just between.


*This is theorem and not proof.

[Triple Zero]

yeah, what requiem said. infinity classes for the win

and once you figured that out you can explain to me whether the universe is an open, closed, bounded or unbounded set.

and

> "wittgenstein said something like a true description of something can't be self referential to itself."

sounds interesting. Wittgenstein lived before Godel didn't he? can you find the exact quote? cause there are a few tricks regarding self-referentiality..

[Takato26]

Mind if I put this on another website?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Mind if I put this on another website?

Might help if you say WHICH website, and whether or not you intend to credit the author.

[Iason Ouabache]

Never: Before you answer my first half of my question, do you believe electrons come in and out of existence?

Me: Well, yeah. I mean, I can't be made of the same number of atoms I was made of when I was smaller. Or, take a tree. The idea that the same number of atoms that make up a seed make the tree. Where does all the extra atoms come from? If the 'matter cannot' law is true, wouldn't the universe be shrinking rather then expanding?

Got a bit of a nit-pick with this part. The atoms in us don't just appear out of nowhere.  We get bigger and fatter thanks to all of the food we eat.  Our body transforms the atoms in the food into stuff like bones, hair, skin, fat rolls, etc.

There are some experiments showing quantum particles appearing out of nowhere however.

[Triple Zero]

only in pairs with their negative counterparts, it's kind of like digging a hole, the heap of sand will appear out of nowhere?

[Payne]

only in pairs with their negative counterparts, it's kind of like digging a hole, the heap of sand will appear out of nowhere?

I may be completely wrong about this, but I think I heard this described as "Borrowing energy from the future, as long as it is immediately paid back", IE; particle and antiparticle spontaneously appear, but immediately annihilate each other, leading a physicist to remark that vacuum is empty, on average. And also that sometimes when this happens on the edge of a singularities event horizon, one particle may be sucked in while another is thrown out.

I was going to use this image for a "shrapnel/paths" thing, but decided I really didn't know enough about it (especially the "There is nothing in vacuum on average" idea, which I was going to use for some kind of BIP exterior metaphor).

[A.N. Other]

Hey, hey! None of this is based off fact, only opinion! If you want facts, read a book, not a PD post, especially from me.

Roo, I know, but then it was late and I didn't really want to bother with it.

Triple Zero, of course it is. I felt great after writing this.

All in all, this is nothing more then my logic arguing with my logic over whose logic is better.

Oh, and Takato26? You want to post this piece of crap on another website, be my guest.

[Payne]

Actually, if you look closely, my bit wasn't based on fact either. Thats the problem with quantum physics. People try making it apply to the real world, and it doesn't work.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Actually, if you look closely, my bit wasn't based on fact either. Thats the problem with quantum physics. People try making it apply to the real world, and it doesn't work.

That's actually one of the things that I think is funniest about quantum physics.

[Payne]

Actually, if you look closely, my bit wasn't based on fact either. Thats the problem with quantum physics. People try making it apply to the real world, and it doesn't work.

That's actually one of the things that I think is funniest about quantum physics.

the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a
prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of
unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition.

Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like 'Hurrah, I've discovered Boyle's Third Law.'
And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting,
especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people
stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started
getting interested in the chaos itself - partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but
mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt.

And instead of getting on with proper science* scientists suddenly went around saying how impossible
it was to know anything, and that there wasn't really anything you could call reality to know anything
about, and how all this was tremendously exciting, and incidentally did you know there were possibly all these little universes all over the place but no-one can see them because they are all curved in on themselves? Incidentally, don't you think this is a rather good t-shirt?

* Like finding that bloody butterfly whose flapping wings cause all these storms we've been having
lately and getting it to stop.

From "Witches Abroad"