Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
They do, but while the 'kid in his garage running the simulation' may have no purpose, I guess the article author is suggesting that in a simulation our 'purpose' is to let the experiment play out and entertain this transcendental 'kid'.
So in the end, what does it mean if the garage-kid created us to entertain him? Am I bound by that purpose? Does it somehow give my life more meaning?
A lot of interesting discussion centers on how to reconcile the generalized principle of mediocrity with the apparently low probability of a life-supporting universe existing (in terms of how fine-tuned basic constants have to be for it to happen). Some people try to end-run around this with anthropic arguments (which better writers than myself have pointed out are fallacious when applied this way); others try to build on QM and a many-worlds approach to posit that a universe like ours is possible and thus must exist (and in fact a large number of them, similar but each slightly different, must exist). And some turn not to the Judeo-Christian literal-biblical-reading everything-created-in-six-days idea of "God", but to the general idea that our universe might be the product of intelligence.
And a lot of that work focuses on simulation arguments, which solve the seemingly-improbable "tuning" of our universe's physical constants by saying that they were in fact tuned by some intelligence for a particular purpose. That purpose need not be to produce us, or anything resembling us (perhaps we are simply a side effect of a set of constants that produce some other result that's actually of interest to the simulators), and might be as banal as "to see what happens when you plug in these values for the constants", but the purpose would nonetheless exist.
There's also a line of reasoning which comes out of that and says that once such a capability exists, suddenly our own universe does not appear so unlikely. All it takes is one universe, somewhere, with constants providing the ability to simulate other universes (which is more general and thus more likely than constants providing the specific configuration of our own universe), and you get to add not just simulations running in that universe, but simulations running in simulations running in simulations... and so on all the way down. At which point the number of universes which exist and support intelligent life grows dramatically, possibly even rivaling the number of universes which exist and do not support intelligent life.
Though on a completely different tack there are people who've run with the idea that singularities fire off big bangs of their own, producing new universes not visible from ours, and posited a kind of natural selection principle based on that: universes which give rise to singularities will have more "offspring", so universes which give rise to singularities should be more common than universes which don't. And since one easy way to get singularities is through organized clumping of matter which can then undergo gravitational collapse, and that same thing is what allows us to exist, it's not so unlikely to see our universe.
The Many-worlds interpretation of QM does not mean that different universes have different fundamental constants. If that were the case, the fundamental constants could change in value each time a quantum measurement took place.
The universe might be infinite in extent (e.g. Einstein-de Sitter) even though at any time you can only see a finite part of it, so even though the probability of life in any galaxy might be vanishingly small, as long as it's finite you can expect life to emerge somewhere.
Supposing our universe is a simulation, possibly running inside another simulation, etc. At some level there still must be a ground reality in which the first simulation was made. So, there needs to be at least one level, which appeared out of nowhere, or always existed, in which computers can be built to run the simulation.
I'd rather not have to repeat the same points I made in an argument I had here previously, as no one seems to change their mind about these things, but I can't see any way that NPCs in a virtual reality/simulated universe can be conscious - even though they might appear to be - so I think that if we're in a simulation, consciousness must be based in the universe which is not a simulation.
It might be possible for the fundamental constants (and, indeed, the laws of physics) to be fine-tuned, but only in a simulation, by its programmers.
The idea of a creator God (of any non-simulated universe) has no explanatory power. All it does is hide complexity inside something supernatural. How would this god appear out of nothing?
It's more generally accepted now that the values of the constants were contingent on conditions in the very early universe. This doesn't mean that a fork off of, say, our world right now would get different constants, but that in the early-universe time period there would be forks getting different values, which then evolved completely differently. In this view we exist in one which happened to get the "right" constants.
The universe might be infinite in extent (e.g. Einstein-de Sitter) even though at any time you can only see a finite part of it, so even though the probability of life in any galaxy might be vanishingly small, as long as it's finite you can expect life to emerge somewhere.
We don't have evidence of the universe being infinite in extent, though.
So, there needs to be at least one level, which appeared out of nowhere, or always existed, in which computers can be built to run the simulation.
Again, the claim in the simulation argument is not "uncreated universes are impossible". It's that "an uncreated universe capable of giving rise to simulations is a less specific requirement and therefore more likely to occur".
The idea of a creator God
Which I explicitly said I wasn't talking about. For someone who's tired of repeating himself you sure seem fine with making me do it.
Cite? I'm unaware of any such consensus.
> We don't have evidence of the universe being infinite in extent, though.
The universe's density seems to be very close to the critical density:
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/Critical+Density
But at any rate you seem not to be a particularly pleasant interlocutor, and like you I'm tired of repeating myself.
Paul Dirac, and a few others argued that the relative strengths of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces between elementary particles (e.g. within the hydrogen atom) is directly related to the age of the universe, i.e. that gravity is still becoming weaker, rather than acquiring its current strength close to the big bang.
I'm interested in this subject - in particular the proposed mechanism and dimensionless constants involved, but can't find any papers arguing the conditions in the early universe determine their values.
If in the future we have even faster computers, and ability to scan all the molecules in your brain (at good enough resolution, but not beyond Heisenberg). Then we simulate the chemistry going on. Do we now have consciousness in a computer?
It is hard to see how billions of neurons together create consciousness. Just like how it hard to see how computer can be conscious. But claiming "impossible" is quite a strong claim. How do you support it?
If our universe is a simulation, it is one of atoms or quantum fields/gravity or something that gives rise to those. Anything else we see is build from those things. Therefor consciousness seems like an effect grounded in this universe.
At this point I have nothing further to add.
At least not in the way you might imagine. Consider where your consciousness goes when you fall asleep and aren't dreaming. Or when you're put under for surgery. I don't know if you've been put under, but for me one moment they were putting the mask over my face, and the next moment I awoke and the surgery was finished. I didn't experience any passage of time. You could say I wasn't here or didn't exist during that period.
It seems like certain things have to be occurring in the brain to say that you are awake, conscious and here. So this consciousness has certain dependencies, now what are they? Can we deactivate certain parts of your brain and you still feel here? I think so, but if we take away enough, you're no longer here. And I think if we add them back, your experience becomes more vivid and here, like slowly coming to in the morning, or when a deaf person has a hearing implant added so they can hear again.
So having the feeling of being here is a higher order thought, depending on the hardware faculties to be functioning. And that hardware can be substituted for non-biological equipment and you can be conscious of the readings of the sensor. It also comes in degrees, meaning we can be more or less here.
Which is to say, maybe the NPC doesn't have to be biological. It just needs to have the same dependencies to exist that exist now for you. You couldn't be reading this in your sleep, you read it when all the dependencies exist to say, "hmmm, that's interesting but my left frontal lobe says..."
PS. I hear you have nothing further to add, but my own left frontal lobe was compelled to chat. Apologies if it disturbed you, have a good one.
My position can be summarized thus: if someone made a Sonic the Hedgehog toy which could interact meaningfully with its environment I would entertain the possibility it had some rudimentary consciousness. But unlike the character in the computer game, that wouldn't be a simulation. Could the character you see on the screen in the computer game be conscious? I don't think so.
You can replace Many-Worlds with Eternal Inflation and you get an infinity of bubble universes, and my understanding is those universes would span every possible set of constants:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation
> In 1983, inflation was shown to be eternal leading a multiverse in which space is broken up into bubbles or patches whose properties differ from patch to patch spanning all physical possibilities.
My interest in the subject predates this - when actively researching the subject I developed a scalar-tensor theory consistent with Dirac's Large Number Hypothesis, and preferred the idea that there's only one possible set of physical laws. I was never happy with the Anthropic Principle.
Both general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to suggest that time is not perfectly linear (GR) and not perfectly crisp or perfectly clearly delineated (QM). Of course, there is a long way from these suggestions to time travel - but the thing is, you don't need time travel in the pop-sci sense. All you need is a "leak" of some interactions, however tenuous, from the distant future into the present. You only need to manipulate the states of a tiny number of particles in the brains and/or chromosomes of various creatures, affecting the wave functions of a few atoms and then allowing the effects to play out from there.
To be sure, this is very highly speculative, and I'm not suggesting this is what is actually happening. I'm just saying - if this, then that. Or, to put it in clearer terms, the conditions are:
1. Time is ever so slightly "leaky".
2. A vast, extraordinarily powerful superintelligence will emerge in the future, or humanity will in effect be that for all practical purposes.
It would be essentially the equivalent of God leaving biologic evolution and human progress mostly to their own devices, but once in a while putting his thumb on those respective scales. In this scenario, evolution would be a bipolar process: powered by the usual push of genetics, natural selection, etc at the bottom, but also informed by the pull of a future ideal at the top.
Going much further, kickstarting life, or even triggering the beginning of this Universe could also be targets of interest for manipulation.
Neither QM nor GR admit retrocausality. Even interactions that look time-inverted still don't let you send information back in time.
I'm also not sure I agree with the idea that QM says anything is not "clearly delineated". Uncertainty relations in QM are less interesting statements than most people seem to think. It's not a matter of nature being inexact or something, it's just the fact that most physical operators don't share the same eigenstates. E.g. You wouldn't say a standing wave is "moving at x m/s" (because it's standing still), while on the other hand you wouldn't say "the wavelength of this point is k" (because points don't have wavelengths). But standing waves have wavelengths and point particles have velocities. Nothing in this description suggests to me that nature itself is inexact. It might be, but vanilla QM doesn't require it to be.
Wrestling with these top shelf Maslow's questions like "why am I/we here?", "what is the meaning of life" and other big life questions are common among all of us. So why the willingness to conjecture that (we live in a simulation | aliens may have seeded life on earth | evolution has a purpose) yet outright reject any religious discussion?
If you say: "God created us all", that's fair, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go from there. I can either agree with you or disagree, but I can't really discuss it.
The simulation hypothesis, to me, is not terribly surprising or interesting. Why wouldn't someone be able to create a simulation like ours at some point? I am not following why Musk's belief is stupid? Yeah, obviously there's another layer above, and this doesn't explain that much, but I don't understand the stupid part.
God is something else. For one, not all gods in religions are the same. The Christian God is not a mere simulator. He's everything that ever was (i.e., final level), he's super powerful, and, most importantly, as far as Christianity is concerned everything that God does is right.
Simulation could be said to be probable. I recall reading a piece of math done on the subject and it seemed a lot more probable than the alternative. Contrary to the God idea, where the probability seems impossible to measure.
This seems like the wrong place to use "stupid", and terms like that mostly exist as a shaming tool rather than for truth exploration, so I tend to be suspicious of anyone using them, especially if they claim to be informed enough to know better than to use them.
Well, it might not be interesting in terms of answering what I consider to be the truly fundamental questions (the answers for which I'd also argue are outside the realm of thought), but it definitely is interesting in terms of what can be accomplished or understood within the realm of thought, just as many other things are.
When I was a new Christian back in 1990 I was a bit baffled by the anti-intellectualism I witness among my friends at a local Pentecostal church. I found a sufficient answer in the book "Fit Bodies Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't Think and What to Do About It".
So I think it's fair to say many people have had the experience of talking to people of faith who know what they believe, but they don't know why they believe it. I'll give you that.
But consider this: Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Princeton are all Universities that started off as Christian seminaries. Their roots are founded in the idea that academics and reasoning are inherently noble pursuits.
The key here is that they started off as Christian seminaries. Are they any longer? Perhaps this same reasoning led them to stop being Christian seminaries in the first place.
Did you even bother to search their websites?
Given that, it's not too surprising that religion can affect things without being true. The moral parts of religion are a lot more interesting and influential than the creationist parts, but the creationist parts make it sound true.
But what are the arguments for the creationist parts? The Bible simply says, in the beginning there was this and that. Most arguments after that are more about the fact that Jesus existed and made miracles, and therefore he had unusual powers, and if he had unusual powers, perhaps what he said was true.
I've never seen any from the ground up evidence about creation itself. Intelligent design to me is a counterargument more than an argument, and, apart from that, I haven't heard much at all.
Have a look at thebibleproject.com, and the "Read Scripture" app on iPhone/Android. The Bible has a record that is truly worth a read: first printed book ever to be published (Gutenberg), the most translated book on the planet, the most printed book in all human history, more archaeological artifacts and manuscript evidence than any other book.
With a pedigree like that, doesn't it warrant an honest investigation into its central message?
So, for religious discussions, what can we possibly discuss? Take any religious claim, and when we ask 'What observation could you make that would demonstrate to you that the claim is false?', the answer is almost always nothing. At that point, what is the use of discussion?
That's just not true. The whole area of Christian Apologetics attempts to answer many of the questions that are raised.
With respect, either you misunderstand the point you are responding to, or you misunderstand apologetics, as actually practiced and taught in evangelical institutions.
Apologetics, in the evangelical sense (like all terms, it has had varied practical forms), is the rational defence of pre-existing doctrine. It deals with epistemology, natural philosophy, hermeneutics, and other areas only when they can be used to support the doctrine. It is pretty much the opposite of rational inquiry, because it explicitly begins with the conclusion and seeks arguments to justify it. It is, in practice, an example of the parent comment: what falsification of the doctrine would an apologist accept? There would always be another argument, another apologia to bolster the claim.
[Source: theological degrees and was an evangelical apologist for 20 years. Books such as Louis Markos, Apologetics for the Twenty-First Century, Crossway, 2010; Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, IVP, 1994; and much of the rest of IVP's output.]
I'm also not convinced that falsification is the be-all, end-all to deriving meaning. I think it's a very useful tool, but it has its flaws.
Looks like we will have to agree to disagree that Christian Apologetics is merely about defending Christian doctrine. It does that, but it does so by encompassing historical, reasoned, and evidential bases. Is it proof? No. Is it a body of evidence that people can examine and decide for themselves if the message is plausible? Most certainly yes.
I have the same open door, if anyone can give me a rational basis that supports their truth claims (without opening the door to claims they reject), then I'll change my view. I have, once. I was an evangelical, I'm not now.
> we will have to agree to disagree ... it does so by
Why is that disagreeing? I've argued from the outset that it uses tools of rationality in its defence of doctrine. My point has been that it begins with the certainty of the truth of its claims. And you haven't said what else apologetics does other than defend doctrine, just said we disagree on that point. You've not been forthcoming on examples, so far, here's another example. To be clear, it isn't a problem for me that defence (apologia, 1 Pet 3:15) is the point, just that you seem to think I'm missing something, but haven't given an example.
The bible predicts the earth is set on pillars (Job). But it is not.
The bible says man was made in gods image, etc. So it is really surprising we can find fossil records from monkeys to humans, and find lots of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Jesus never heals any mentally handicapped people, as a matter of fact, they seem to be left out of the bible. But he does drive out demons. Is that god misdiagnosing people?
The bible shows us two places where the religion changes: 2 Kings when Jeshua finds an "old scroll" and Jesus bringing a new message. Actually when you look deeper there are at least 5 different god views in the bible, I challenge you to find them.
Imagine the god is like Kim Jong il (North Korea), could it be the bible is propaganda? It is more a bend then truth? How would you know the difference? (Go watch some German, or North Korean propaganda, then you know how that feels.) I can safely say, you are a better person than god, since you have certainly killed fewer innocent people. So all that love, that perfectness and goodness, propaganda ... I bet god never has to take a shit either.
There are great answers to your questions above and more, but in my experience those questions are usually not asked in earnest because once I've given an answer more questions are thrown at me.
Let me pick out the last question I asked in earnest before becoming a Christian. There were many before it, but this was the last one I had:
http://bibviz.com/how-did-judas-die-sab.html
This is what's called a paradox. It appears to be a contradiction. A reasonable explanation that resolves the paradox is Judas hung himself and died. The body decomposed, fell on the rocks and his bowels gushed out. This is reasonable because in the following verse it explains why the property is called "The field of Blood".
So what do you think? Is that reasonable? If I fork that website, I would turn the red line indicating a contradiction to blue, meaning that there is a reasonable explanation.
Virtually every argument I've even been thrown I've been able to find an answer, but most people don't even know the questions little alone the answers.
Broadly speaking, I think people can be somewhere on the following line:
1. The bible is the perfect word of the creator
2. The bible is inspired by a god
3. The bible is bronze/iron age people writing down their myths and beliefs.
But let me know how you think, I would guess you are somewhere between 1 or 2, but perhaps you would want to word it differently?
When the bible talks about a soul, heaven, hell, judgement, angels, demons. How can we know that that is reliable? The only parts of the bible we can test for reliability is when it talks about things in our reality. But where it does, it shows a very naive view of reality. How then can we conclude its view of the spiritual world is any better?
The question "how can we know that the Bible is reliable?" is an excellent question. As for Christianity, the Bible itself explains how to kill it: 1 Corinthians 15:14 "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."
So all you have to do is explain away the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many have accepted the challenge and failed. I failed. I couldn't do it.
> archaeological & prophetic evidences
Nothing that somehow moves away from 3: humans writing down their myths and beliefs. The bible talks about an exodus of 1 million jews from Egypt, zero evidence. The bible prophesied the destruction of Damascus, still here. The drying up of the Nile, didn't happen. The biblical reason for why Nineveh was destroyed is different from the archaeological reason.
The one prophecy (Ezechiel) might be argued is Israel becoming a nation again in 1948. But it requires quite a bit of handwaving. The chance of something happening to Israel that fits some prophecy is high, by the amount and vagueness of those.
> with over 6 billion copies
So by your measure, the quran also has answers, it is number 2 book by far.
> explain away the resurrection of Jesus Christ
Humans writing down myths, a very simple explanation. I would suggest you read how one of the first martyr explains it to the Sanhedrin (Acts 7). But it is not about explanations. It is about knowledge. Many things might be true, but we will never be able to know those things.
No body no crime. But also the positive version, no receipt no reimbursement. Nobody can disproof the resurrection. But nobody can proof it either. Therefor we cannot know.
I respect a person's right to believe whatever they want. All I ask is they respect my right to believe whatever I want. I used to believe the Bible was a collection of myths as well. If you want to believe that, that's certainly your right.
But I don't buy it. Not after reading the entire narrative, which IMHO currently is best done through the Read Scripture app for iPhone/Android (http://readscripture.org/). Not after I made an honest attempt to explain away the resurrection.
So just to be clear, do you think Jesus Christ was a myth, or that His death and resurrection was a myth?
People are free to belief what they want. But people behave according to their beliefs. And sometimes when people think they know the truth, they feel justified in limiting other people their freedoms. More so if they think the creator of the universe agrees, and others are sinners.
So I look for that "liberal" spark in believers. You clearly have it, and that number is growing, but many christians do not. Many others who belief in unknowable and invisible things are even worse. (Non religious people can also lack it.)
As for what I believe:
Was Jesus a real person existed, likely. Did he rise from the dead, no. Was his message misunderstood, yes. Part of Jesus his message was, it is not about what you do, but why you do it. It is about your heart. An eternity in heaven or hell are exactly the wrong motivation.
I think Jesus meant humanity can go much further if we all follow the golden rule, and are less biased towards foreigners and outcasts. More grace more forgiveness, less judgement. When two or more people cooperate in that way, they can do more. That is the holy spirit, not some supernatural force. And that will bring the "kingdom of heaven" here on earth.
It might not feel like it, but we are getting closer to that. How many lepers did god heal? 50 total? Science has healed 5 million.
Only after our thinkers had the "liberal" spark, and were less bound by the dogma of religion, did we finally start to make strides into removing human suffering.
People forget, but in the time of Jesus, over 50% of children died before they were 15. In the rich areas of this world, it is less then 0.2%, in our poorest countries, it is less then 10%.
Here's a summary of the evidence I'm talking about. Tell me what you think: http://www.josh.org/wp-content/uploads/Evidence-For-The-Resu...
And that is our disagreement, my bar for evidence is a lot higher. Literally the doc itself says: "the resurrection of Jesus Christ is either one of the most wicked [..] hoaxes [..] or it is the most remarkable fact of history." If we had proof, it could be only one thing, not two things.
And we can rule out one of the two, because we have no evidence of anything supernatural and no indication that people can come back from the dead. (If you can proof either, you can collect a million dollars at the JREF.)
So we would need to go with option number one. And how unlikely is that option? I mean people have died for Marxism. Clearly Jesus his teachings were a good message that people thought was important, even at high personal cost. And willing to bend the truth for and exaggerate quite a bit. All very normal human behaviour.
Back to Stephen. He did not even try to convince the Sanhedrin. He could have made is story legitimate with proof: remember when Jesus died and the temple veil was torn in half? Remember the sudden darkness? Remember the dead walking in the city? Remember that despite the Roman guards, the grave was empty? See how we can heal the sick and so could Jesus. But he doesn't, because it wouldn't convince the Sanhedrin, because it did not happen.
When it comes to the supernatural, we have no grounding, we cannot evaluate the difference between people writing down myths, vs a god spreading misleading propaganda, vs a loving god that you wish to belief in.
If belief gives you comfort and perspective in life, good, go for it. But in Saudi Arabia, people kill each other for not wearing headscarfs. And their proof for their beliefs is as good as yours. Namely ungrounded and still at 3: all explained by iron age people writing down their myths and beliefs.
And even if there is a supernatural, the biblical descriptions of it are as accurate as when it describes the earth resting on pillars.
Thanks you for the discussion. If you have any questions or think I was inaccurate, please let me know. If you have proof, please show me by winning the JREF price. Barring proof, I would suggest you read the bible but cut out anything supernatural. It is still a nice message.
Plus just ceasing to exist when you die after having tried to live well is not so bad. Probably preferable to an eternity with a god who, by his own admission, has committed genocide and has no respect for human rights or humane treatment of prisoners.
At this point, you seem to be saying "coming back from the dead is impossible, therefore it didn't happen". I think that's the wrong mindset. I think it's more correct to say, "coming back from the dead is impossible, but did it happen?"
See, if God exists, if He's really there, how would we know? Well, a historical instance of the impossible happening might be pretty good evidence that He's actually there. And the resurrection of Jesus is the big, flashing neon sign that says "Look over here. God actually did something."
So the question is, how good is the evidence for the resurrection? Well, there's an account of him appearing in a roomful of his followers (who at that time didn't believe in his resurrection), telling one of them "Look, here's the holes from the nails from when they crucified me. You can stick your finger in them. It's really me." This was written down for us by a guy who was in the room when it happened. That's... pretty good evidence.
To not believe it, you have to believe that it wasn't written by who it says it was, or that he lied about what happened, or that he was mistaken.
If you think the evidence indicates that one of those options is true, fine. But I suspect it's more likely that your position is really going to boil down to "God doesn't exist, therefore the resurrection didn't happen, therefore the story has to be mistaken." That is, your presupposition is determining how you view the evidence. I think it's more rational to give the evidence an honest look, even if the conclusions destroy your presupposition.
"This was written down for us by a guy who was in the room when it happened." It is extremely unlikely the author was in the room that day.
Again, why did Stephen not even attempt to convince the Sanhedrin? "flashing neon sign" ... apparently it was not back in those days, let alone today. Imagine if early christians had such good evidence, how much faster and more broadly would it have spread if the Sanhedrin would adopt Jesus his views. Muhammad would have been devout christian.
"[..] That is, your presupposition is determining how you view the evidence."
That is true. But it is called the null hypothesis. Innocent until proven guilty. It is the number one "invention" that launched humanity into modernity. But that should not be misunderstood as not giving alternative hypothesis an honest look.
But the claim of something supernatural is quite a strong one, it should come with an equally strong signal before it becomes credible. As things stand today, the conclusion is, god is unlikely and unprovable. Moreover, belief in invisible unknowable things does not do the world any favors.
For the bible or christianity to exist, we do not need a supernatural explanation, it falls well within normal human behaviour.
But people choose different lines of argument for different reasons. Stephen clearly touched a nerve with the Sanhedrin; it's hard to say that his approach was ineffective (unless you define "effective" as "they agreed" instead of "it hit them where they lived").
"It is extremely unlikely the author was in the room that day."
A bare negation is a pretty weak argument. Do you have evidence, or just a presumption?
Even if the bible is the most coherent book ever, makes sense at ever line and grand plot. And says to be an eye witness account of supernatural things. Still that would not count as proof of the supernatural. If it made testable predictions, or has information truly unknowable to those who wrote it, that would warrant further investigation.
So no, I do not talk about proof. However if "roman soldiers at the grave got scared" is the "evidence", then this is a nice contrast. If you cherry pick, put everything in the best possible light, and ignore other important things and contexts, then maybe it can come out looking this way.
Biased people writing a biased account of things long ago is a very likely explanation. As an exercise, write down why there were roman soldiers guarding the grave in the first place? Write it down twice, once in the best possible light from the christian perspective, and once in the best possible light from the other perspective.
The bible does make testable predictions, I wrote a few at the start of this thread, but may I suggest we put Mark 16:17-18 to the test. Are you volunteering? ("And these signs will accompany those who believe:[..] and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all [..]")
Ozy, if you're interested I'd be willing to keep corresponding with you. Drop me an email at immortal@coderpath.com
I'll leave you with an old apocryphal story that I hope drives the point home that matter how much we achieve as human beings, it will never be enough:
--------
A scientist approaches God, and says to Him, "Look, God, we don't need you anymore. Nowadays, we can do all sorts of things that used to be considered miraculous. We can transplant organs, giving new life to a dying man, we can cure almost any disease, and we can even clone animals. It won't be long, and we'll be able to clone humans, too. So, I'm sorry, but you are just outdated".
God listens patiently to the scientist and says, "I can see that you believe you don't need me, and I understand. However, I love you, and I don't want to see you make a big mistake, so why don't we make sure? I say we should have a man-making contest, just to be sure."
The scientist replies, "I'll take that challenge".
So, God says, "Ok, let's do it the way I did it in the old days, with Adam and Eve". The scientists says, "No problem", and reaches down to scoop up a handful of dirt.
"Whoa, hold on there a minute", God says. "You get your OWN dirt".
-----
:)
I have shown you why I think there is basically no reason to move the needle from 3: people writing down myths. You seem to disagree, but have not commented on Stephens defense. Or for instance what makes you think god is loving and good, seeing how he admits to genocide and cruel and unusual (eternal) punishment. I am really interested in your thoughts here. Why do you think the needle moves up?
In the other comment you said "you probably don't believe me, but it's because He lives I can face tomorrow". And I know many people fall back to nihilism if they contemplate the thought god does not exist. I think though in day to day it does not work that way, people cope just fine. But for me, when I think about the christian god, I just replace it with the best of humanity, and the best society has to offer, that we can all try to strife for.
You've made some points that I need to chew on for a bit, which means I don't have a response for you just yet. I'm not fully understanding your points about Stephen, so I need to flesh it out a bit more until I at least get the gist of what you're saying. I prefer an inductive form of learning and reasoning, which takes time and effort. Hacker News is a great way to start conversations, but it's terrible for continuing them (this thread will eventually lock and not permit further comments).
Hope to hear from you (and anyone else who is reading this and would like to chat about the top of Maslow's hierarchy (which, by the way, he later criticized his own views and added a 6th's peak. Of course, we being sensible beings, we added a seventh at the very bottom: Wifi :D )) email me immortal@coderpath.com
Was Jesus a real person existed, likely.
Did he rise from the dead, no.
Was his message misunderstood, yes.
Part of Jesus his message was, it is not about what you do, but why you do it. It is about your heart.
An eternity in heaven or hell are exactly the wrong motivation.
I think Jesus meant humanity can go much further if we all follow the golden rule,
and are less biased towards foreigners and outcasts. More grace more forgiveness,
less judgement. When two or more people cooperate in that way, they can do more.
That is the holy spirit, not some supernatural force.
And that will bring the "kingdom of heaven" here on earth.
It might not feel like it, but we are getting closer to that.
How many lepers did god heal? 50 total? Science has healed 5 million.
Just keep asking yourself that question "then what". You are born. Then what? You go to school. Then what? You get a job Then what? You (get married | stay single | become successful | etc) Then what? You get old. Then what? You die. Then what?
Then what? No, seriously, then what? My atheist friends say "nothing, you just cease to exist". Okay, so why bother? Before I am born I am insignificant, and after I die I am insignificant, but somehow between life and death I have significance?! The Bible talks about our lives as being a vapour (James 4:14). When you made your tea/coffee this morning, and a vapour 'birthed' from the surface, rose up then disappeared, was that event significant? Without meaning and significance life is a cruel joke! It is absurd! You may have superficial meaning between birth and death, but _ultimate_ meaning? No. Been there, done that. Just keep asking yourself those two words "then what" and you'll reach the end of yourself and your reasoning in complete despair.
But there is hope. To know Jesus, personally! I do! I know you probably don't believe me, but it's because He lives I can face tomorrow. Because He lives all fear is gone. And I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives.
If Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, then my hope dies too. The great mathematician Blaise Pascal condensed it into a simple wager: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager
It would. But maybe he is crying for humanity as we slowly start yet another religion, costing us yet another two centuries to recover from. Why would a god even need a sacrifice? A very human notion I think.
"although this is generally covered in the Old Testament as well"
Jesus said pretty much the same thing, he says the golden rule is what the law of moses comes down to. But you don't have to look far to see that that is a bit too generous. I mean, stoning a woman if she is not a virgin at her wedding night? Stoning homosexuals? Allowing slaves? There is some horrible bronze age thinking codified in the old testament. Not to speak of the genocide and promise of more genocide in the future when Israel will rule and drink the blood of its enemies.
"The Holy Spirit is a person"
I would like to meet that person. Or watch him/her give a presentation on youtube. But I suppose you mean he is not flesh and blood, so not an actual person. Around 1900 there were many claiming to have an (heavier than air) airplane. You proof that by inviting the media and flying one. Not by handwaving or reasoning.
"Jesus died for our sins, and He gives us power to live new lives in freedom."
How? I mean that literally. How does he deliver you from sin? You mean here on earth? Or only in heaven? If it has an impact here on earth, then isn't that just an idea that delivers you from sin? The idea that you can be forgiven, and that others will forgive you? Just because we sin sometimes, doesn't make us sinners. If that were true, than doing good sometimes would make us all saints. It is a mix of both at the same time. And we can be forgiven, by others and by ourselves. Start over, learn, try to do better.
"Without meaning and significance life is a cruel joke!"
I understand the sentiment. But it is not about the destination, it is about the journey, it is about who you meet, what you learn, what you teach. We are connected to so many people, and in our connectedness, we are more then the sum of our individuality.
Some people are born in poverty, suffer for lack of food and health, and maybe abusive people around them. Their lives are short and brutal, like so many lives in the past. Will there be some cosmic justice? It is a nice idea but it is unlikely. The only faint flicker of hope is that they have ceased to exist, that their suffering is now over.
We should take their lives to heart, make sure it happens the least amount of times possible. By living the way Jesus told us, not because something supernatural exists, not because then you go to heaven, but because that ends cruel joke of life, and turns it into something worth living.
As to Pascals wager, he was a mathematician, and the chance is good he is spending eternity in hell. Around 2 against 1. Just not the christian hell, but the hell of any of the other religions.
Or maybe he is now in heaven, but it is hell to him, because by believing he signed his life away in the service of god and his army. And god is indeed this cruel dictator, the North Korea of the heavenly realms. An ending that fits the old testament much better ... a cruel joke indeed.
And that brings us full circle. How can you know the difference between bronze age thinking, dictatorial propaganda, or a loving god?
That doesn't stop HN from endlessly discussing string theory, simulation-ism, and singularity. None of them are falsifiable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis#Testing_...
This is true for finding proof of God: A spectacular miracle is pretty good evidence, but lack of a miracle can't ever disprove the theory.
This assumes a particular brand of empiricism. Which is not falsifiable.
Not saying that discounts everything founded on empiricism. Just that the claim you're making doesn't live up to its own standard, and thus isn't necessarily a good way of dismissing other approaches, such as religion.
Is that claim falsifiable?
I'm not atheist but I won't force my atheist friends to admit that there is a God as a prerequisite for discussion.
I think it's possible to have fruitful discussions while holding respect for other belief systems.
People who are not willing to entertain the possibility that they're wrong (a reasonable definition of having faith, IMHO) will either exclude themselves from the discussion or turn it into a sermon.
Christian creationism is stated as "god revealed it in bible and hence true" and it is not a result of curious human beings questioning themselves and trying to answer those questions and coming up with theories (Like in Buddhism or Hinduism). The problem with this is that you can't really evolve those ideas further refining them and eventually most of us simply find them shallow.
A conversation on HN about this topic can be stretched in million directions many of which can be falsified and people might have an open mind as to pick which idea they want. In case of Christian faithfuls they are supposed to pick what the bible has already stated.
Off topic:
"Buddhist cosmological ideas" .. said the speaker with a short pause. "a disgrace". "They must be thrown out".
Speaker was Dalai Lama speaking in Ashoka Hotel - New Delhi.
I think when the Christianity accepts that sort of openness it will be possible to value Christian notions of cosmology and creationism much better.
Possible worlds that are built on novel premises or inferred from unrecognized patterns are likely to interest anyone who has an imagination. That's true even for nutty worlds like simulacra and multiverses.
But possible worlds that must conform to dogma, especially when it's structured and inviolable (religion) or where imagination and doubt are forbidden (faith)... These seems a lot less interesting, to a nonbeliever like me anyway.
Philosophy without a fixed reference is just endlessly chasing your tail. If you are satisfied with that experience, then have at 'er :)
And sorry, but faith doesn't mean imagination is forbidden. Ever heard of C.S. Lewis?
But even in fantasy, Lewis felt obliged to invent a Christ figure (Aslan). So even in his dreams he was bound by the surly bonds of his faith. His dogma was truly inescapable.
But "obliged to invent a Christ figure"? I've never heard that before. Can you cite any examples?
> When an argument for higher purpose is put this way — that is, when it doesn’t involve the phrase “higher purpose” and, further, is cast more as a technological scenario than a metaphysical one — it is considered intellectually respectable. I don’t mean there aren’t plenty of people who dismiss it. I’m talking about how people dismiss it. [...]
> If you walked up to the same people who gave Bostrom a respectful hearing and told them there is a transcendent God, many would dismiss the idea out of hand.
So here you have it, people like the message better when it's told through a story they already know.
I don't see how that follows. "Religion" doesn't just make the claim that there is a creator and leaves it at that. In fact I'd have more respect for religion if it did.
Take a look at the kind of criticism the ID movement has been getting. Their whole argument is that "something" must have designed the universe. They do not explicitly argue for a God, and some proponents even accept the simulation argument! Nonetheless, Darwinisim wouldn't touch ID with a 60-foot stick.
It is not a simulation of humans.
We have zero indication there are rules at a higher level than the quantum or gravity. Like rules on what you ought to do in the bedroom.
Also earth nor humans were created by intelligence, just like how mineral crystals or fjords are not created by intelligence.
Hence we must conclude that bronze/iron age religions and maybe living in a simulator are not the same thing.
For the rest of this question of a creator, we cannot know, anybody claiming to know anything beyond "perhaps" or "maybe" is a fool, or will win a nobel price. By lack of the latter the rest of us will assume the first.
There is no difference.
Especially when such ideas are grounded in bronze age thinking.
"There is no difference." Indeed, if god exists or not, there is no difference ...
But what if it turns out this is a simulation by some extremist party, who want to see how to stack people against each other using religion? In that case we would owe it to the people there in the real world that we don't ...
Plus you can rest assured that that the sim master himself lives in a simulated universe, somebody else will hold his big button. Buttons all the way down.
From the pit of unknowable things, people can dredge up any coherent story. They might believe it themselves or convince others. Fine when it offers some kind of solace or perspective on life. Not fine when it costs people their freedom or their live.
If you find yourself alive, likely you live where there is the most compute power, therefor, base reality.
Especially since we have zero indicators that any part of our reality is "fake".
Think about a character in the Sims, it would never be able to understand the mechanism by which its arm moves, if it understood its world completely. Because those movements are part of the simulator, not part of the simulated world. Arm movement is not an emergent effect.
Our reality however is based on atoms. Or quantum fields if you want to go deeper. And maybe some kind of cellular automata behind that.
If evolution had a purpose, we can detect an upwards line in complexity, and we must conclude it is unlikely we humans are the end station. Probably we will create self replicating intelligent machines that can colonize space. Emotional meat bags are not very suitable ...
It is interesting to think that an outside universe could be so different it does not hold going up to base reality. But that implies that logic, math, and computability, are different there. That is not very likely, though ultimately unknowable to us.
Literally "a mere shadow of what others think of as reality" implies that that universe has a lot more compute. Therefor with much higher probability you would have evolved directly in their universe, on some tiny pinhead, or in a corner of their universe, not in a simulation they create, no matter how many they create.
Yes I realize that comment seems "trite"
What is it that the genome is doing. Look around and see how it is expressing itself.
I'm not a huge fan of Dawkins recently after he went a bit nuts on the whole atheism thing. Not because of the atheism thing but because it distracted him from what he was really about.
The genome is expressing itself, and it is way more than selfish. That thing is regression analysis to a large power. Constantly calculating minimal cost to self preservation and better versions of itself. We can learn a lot.
Personally I think its whole purpose is to build its own God. And the next God and the next... and it is doing it.
(I am a "classical" atheist)
Down votes or up votes, please explain.
There's a lot of odd downvoting in this thread...
I think with regard to humans it is well on its way to manifesting itself with that purpose... It's called" The sum total of the Internet".
Not sure I agree with its choices, but compared to an individual there is quite a large organism at large there, for better or worse, and that thing is just as potent and self protective as DNA. Go try attack it. Good luck.
Evolution just got evolved. The Genome is building new infrastructure as we speak.
And those genomes that want to make a better version of themselves seem to just follow what evolution wants them to do to this day. Without evolution, and the precursor to it (Big Bang if you will) the genomes wouldn't exist to begin with. It is not from their own cause that they came to exist.
Looking back at Dinosaurs and thinking how clever we are is pretty egotistical.
I agree.
Edited:
That doesn't sound very articulate, hence doubtful. Your interpretation is just that, recognizing already known patterns. Does that relate to the evolutionary "purpose" from the title? The implicit idea of order ("better") is largely based on the temporal succession of what, as far as I can tell, is indistinguishable from randomness, because it relies on random mutation and other genetic variation moduli. What existential property this really optimizes for is open.
The crux is, existence itself is hardly a logical property. I mean, "exist to exist" really is not a new revelation. It's philosophically akin to "I think therefore I am", but trivially speaking, that's just the pattern recognition at work.
Reduce Entropy. Period
Reducing entropy by growing more complex seems counterintuitive. I don't see rationality in the chaos. I don't even see what your "It" is. Attribution of rational reason to an "it" seems like a short cut leading to a domain error.
Ultimately this leads to discussion about free will and what not, for which a short-lived discussion does indeed not seem to be the right format.
It's not clear to me where is a better choice.
Could go for phys.org or stackoverflow I guess, but equally inane.
Nobody likes to talk about metaphysics, which is what this is really about I guess. For good reason I suppose.
Then again, before Darwin and Einstein, everything was very clear.
Right now very rational people are looking into string theory, pilot wave theory, simulated universes and a heck of a lot more.
Meanwhile, we are attempting to build self driving cars, automated systems that tempt us to buy crap we don't need and reduce the planet to a winner takes all philosophy. Nothing about that seems "Human"
Entertain me on why the universe isn't trying to build its own god. Happy to take the discussion elsewhere.
I'll give you that "exist to exist", or an autonym god, for lack of a better word, seems to be a logical fix-point, which is notable given the name Y Combinator. At that point I want to quote wikipedia, which would mean I am out of my waters and shouldn't be baiting for someone to correct my ad-hoc interpretation.
All that to say, this argument is trite indeed.
I'm certainly not saying that.
The point of existence is to create something more coherent.
Fields form particles, particles form atoms, atoms form molecules, molecules form cells, cells form beings, beings form collectives, collectives form unions.
Look to history on that one.
Like you said, it is nothing new, just a fact.
Currently it seems the Genome has rather large ambitions than "meat". It needs a transitional jump to future existence.
To me it looks like it is doing that pretty damn well.
Wouldn't you like to teach the younger generation something so that they can survive better in the current world?
Where the heck does that come from?
The Genome
Unfortunately, whether it's just physics, a simulation, or aliens, it's bad news in every case, and I don't see myself relating to the view that evolution is beautiful or has any interest whatsoever in moral progress anytime soon.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/17/the-goddess-of-everythi...
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/robert-w...
That's why genomes have features in place which, for individuals, can suck -- senescence and cancer being the top 2.
See also conatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus, a philosophical property whereby a thing tends to improve.
It's systems/species that are organized to improve which will tend to survive.
The first is the the idea of telos. Telos in the philosophical sense refers to that toward which something is ordered. It is frequently misunderstood as something identical with conscious intent, but it has nothing to do with such intent per se, only with what may be called the causal structure of a thing. For example, when I say that a heart is ordered toward pumping blood through the circulatory system, I am not speaking of conscious purposes. I am speaking of the way in which the heart is structured and the way it functions and to what end it functions. Indeed, without telos, we could not explain efficient causality. We could not explain why hearts tend to pump blood instead of, say, materializing elephants or playing the Dies Irae of Mozart's requiem. Even biologists who strive to suppress talk of telos inevitably resort to teleological language like "function". Sometimes such terminology is dismissed as only metaphorical, but such dismissals are flippant and do not pass closer examination. After all, if a term is metaphorical, then you have to ask what the metaphor stands for. Deny teleological language and biology ceases to make sense.
The reason teleology has been a difficult thing to digest has largely to do with the mechanistic turn in philosophy that has seeped deeply into ideas about science. Notice how popular debates between atheistic, materialist proponents and theistic, dualist opponents of evolution typically center on the probability of something as complex as life arising without a mind to have caused it. Paley's ghost haunts the discussion. The reason is that both the opponents and proponents of evolution in these debates hold to a mechanistic, Cartesian metaphysics where teleology is conceived of as extrinsically imposed by a divine intellect and now something intrinsic to things in themselves. Of course, the proponent will deny the divine intellect, just as he will deny the immaterial Cartesian mind, but he will not have not escaped the metaphysics altogether. This metaphysics has causes a proliferation of problems in philosophy that admit no solutions.
However, it is a mistake to think that this metaphysics is the old contender. There is a small but vibrant revival of Aristotelean metaphysics under way and with it comes a "revival" of teleology.
"The first is the idea of telos."
"conceived of as extrinsically imposed by a divine intellect and not something intrinsic to things"
"he will not have escaped"
"This metaphysics has caused a proliferation"
"this metaphysics is the only contender"
The bias is present because the genomes that did not exhibit it died out in competition with the ones that did.
The fact that we as humans feel it so profoundly is a testament to the complexity that can emerge from a simple process given enough time.
This is a disguised theological idea. I guess some weak version, where god is not in charge of moving each atom, god only makes some initial setup and give a purpose to everything. Replacing god with aliens doesn't make it scientific or more sensible.
This is the power of the Ockham's razor. Just assume no god and no aliens and not whatever. How far can you get with this? Is there an experiment where the no god/alien/whaterver hypothesis fails?
If anything, gods were likely created to make various observed processes more understandable by giving them agency without going through a bunch of philosophical hoops. I would say that's very reasonable. A lot more reasonable than pretending that the process does nothing and poises no danger.