The Glade 4.0

It's not a question of whether a divine-type being exists. The logical view accepts the possibility of a Creator-being while ignoring that possibility due to an utter lack of ability to support that position. Despite this, as Aizle says, "God was manufactured by man." Aizle is not referring to the possibility of the real consciousness that may have formed the cosmos, but rather the God that the religions of this earth have invented and evolved to suit their needs at manipulating and controlling the people. From the very first time the aspiring tribal leader/shaman wove stories about their creator spirits, people have been "manufacturing God." The story of the martyred Messiah was told in various forms, each slightly different from the previous, thousands of times before Jesus of Nazareth was ever born, and thousands of times since his death; the Great Prophet who shall be the last messenger of the heavens to mankind was hardly new to Muhammed; the vengeful Father who shepherds his chosen people with an iron rod existed long before יהוה; the distant and noninterfering creator that merely watches was not unique to Brahma; paths to great enlightenment were around long before they were conceived of by Buddha or Confucious. In a very real way, man manufactured God--whatever he needed God to be is the image that he was created in. There remains no empirical evidence that any of the many human divine creations is in any way linked to a real being that may have willed all reality as we know it into existence. With the millions of incarnations of God, hundreds of sects with vastly different divine concepts in every major religion, there can be no doubt, even on the off chance that one was accurate, that for every billion humans that have ever walked this earth, all but a tiny handful have worshipped a divinity manufactured by Man. And with a lack of any evidence to the contrary, probably all of them.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Have you permeated the soft tissues of the more dense of sciences, Elmo? Reached it's chewy nougat core? Why have you not tasted it's divine candy store? I always knew that mathematicians were godless sons of whores.



You might want to reconsider this sentence, because it makes no sense. I don't think there is a philosophical difference between how and why.

_________________
"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It's only a matter of time before science discovers the why and the how, assuming we survive long enough for it to happen.

_________________


It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Not necessarily. If the universe is governed by absolute mechanical laws, then the outcome of those laws and the initial state of the universe will itself determine all of our actions and their consequences. This outcome may or may not include our discovery of those ultimate, absolute laws. There is no particular reason to believe that the universe "cares" whether or not we discover those laws. Or as Hawkings put it (paraphrasing), if there is a Theory of Everything, it may well be that the consequences of this theory forbid us from ever discovering it!

If the universe is not governed by absolute mechanical laws, then ultimately there is no particular how or why to discover.

But to elaborate on what (I think) Elmo was saying, what we think of as the laws of physics explain how things happen, but they cannot explain themselves. For example, the strength of the gravitational force between two bodies is directly proportion to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. Okay. But why? We may be able to come up with some deeper explanation in which those relationships are explained in terms of the exchange of virtual gravitons or the curvature of spacetime, but these are really just deeper, more involved "hows". They only raise more questions -- why does gravity curve spacetime? Why do massive objects exchange virtual gravitons?

There are really only two possibilities. One is that these questions will infinitely recurse, like a set of Russian dolls. There may be no essential granularity to the universe -- an "atomic" level in the philosophical sense of the word beyond which reality stops. In this case, science can never even really fully answer the "how".

The other possibility is that the complexity of the universe does eventually bottom out. Nothing we seen so far suggests that it does, but I suppose it could. Infinities make us nervous, after all. If so, we can finally arrive at a finite set of laws which govern the universe. But even so, a very obvious question remains: why are the laws of the universe as they are? Why are they not something else altogether? This is a question which simply cannot be answered by science. Science can only observe that the laws are as they are. It cannot really say why the laws are what they are, or why there should even be laws in the first place. At best, they can invoke some form of the anthropic principle, an idea that makes even the strictest of atheists a bit uncomfortable.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

We have this odd compulsion to find the "why" in things. It's a strange one, and gives me pause at times. However, logically, there is no such thing as "why." It's an irrelevant question. Things simply are. "Why" simply doesn't enter into it.

How they came to be? That's a different question. But the problem of First Cause is no less perplexing if one accepts the existence of a creator. It is less perplexing when you start to look at time the way it seems to truly exist, however. The concept of "First" is ultimately another mistake of our limited linear perceptions.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I believe that there are supernatural events that are currently undefined by humans (once defined, they become natural...). I don't see how I can not exist, then exist, and then not exist just like that. There needs to be some higher reasoning. Maybe it's just aliens playing around. But it's something. If I have a soul, then dying doesn't matter. If I don't have a soul, then my life doesn't matter... I am just a living piece of artwork. Maybe I'm just the ripe fruit of humanity, waiting to be severed from the tree in a brilliant act of glory.

_________________
"The map is not the territory."

Science has made no more progress to explaining things like free will or other ancient "sophomoric" questions than anything else. If you honestly believe that, you haven't studied very deeply. The only answers it has are ones of rigid determination that breaks down at the quantum level. Not an explaination at all. Whereas religion may provide baseless answers, Science provides substantiated nothings.

There is no such thing as an agnostic-atheist. Those cocepts are diametrically opposed, just as religion and atheism and agnosticism and religiousness.

_________________
"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

No. Unequivocably, no!

_________________
"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Yeah they are all similar though in that the physicists find a way to make it possible. First it was that anything, given enough time, is possible. Then we determined (or believe we determined) that the universe is only 13 or 14 billion years old and that's not nearly enough time. So now we need another factor to account for the set of conditions that we have now not being some statistically insignificant chance. One way to do that is a multiverse, that gives you way more chances obviously, and another is many worlds.

_________________
“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Forget that. The MWI actually allows Quantum Superstates to make sense--which in and of itself is remarkable.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

This would be hard to judge since we are comparing apples to oranges, however science does offer an explanation for free will and why it exists.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Does it?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

How it exists.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The answer to why would be so we could question the how... duh~

As stated, "Why" is a meaningless question. There is no "why." Our need to ascribe purpose to things is silly; ultimately there is none. "Why" can be asked recursively in any situation until it can no longer be answered, with or without a God.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

God is usually an easier answer. Of course there's always "Just because" but then people think you're an ***.

However it is an insinctual need to ask this in humans.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yes but not an instinctive need to seek a higher being. As Talya said, why does not have to be linked with a God.

Take buddhaism for eg. it teaches about self enlightenment for the whys. Or in generation china where they banned religion, the question why in terms of faith was non-exsistent.

We're only asking why because those around us are seeking it, and it's human nature to copy our parents.

In the same vein as the original video, I found this to be pretty interesting. Particularily, the part that begins at 6:13.

[youtube]Vg4AjD1fUaw[/youtube]

No, we don't actually know that. We do not know that "why" is an illogical question or that there isn't one.

In fact, without an answer to why, the answer is "because" or "the universe just happened" which is no better.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The answer, DE, doesn't have to be ""because" or "the universe just happened". It can be "we don't yet know".

_________________


It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Montegue:

Except, you dismiss the very real possibility that it might be that we will never know and cannot know because we are perceptually incapable of knowing.

_________________

No, that can't be the answer. Even if we never find out the answer, that's still never what it actually is. "we don't know" just means "we don't know"; it isn't an answer to the question except to acknowledge that it is unknown.

In any case, stating positively that there is no "why" or that it positively is some human idiosyncracy to look for a why where there is one is a convoluted way of saying "just because".

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And if we don't yet know, then the answer might be "because there's a God that made it that way."

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Why did God make it that way?
Why does God exist?
Why...


Why is indeed an illogical question, as it always goes recursively back to "first cause," which does not exist--there can be no first cause, whether with or without a God. Whether through science or religion, the question can never be truly answered. With or without a god, there is no ultimate reason why things are the way they are--they simply are.

So empower yourself. Make your own reasons. The only meaning you'll find in existence is what you choose to make for yourself, whether through your religion or your values or your goals. The root of our instinctual search for meaning in everything may just be that we haven't yet learned how to make our own yet.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █