Darwinbots Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: Greven on May 09, 2005, 08:22:12 AM
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Just to check if we got any spies :D
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Btw, I dont want to offend anyone! Okay? :unsure:
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How about the in-between option where God created life and then left it to evolve with possibly occasional tweaking.
That way both could be true.
That is also the official line for many leading religions including Catholics.
Personally I live by the rules of evidence and I don't see any evidence whatsoever for the existence of a God. But then that is just me.
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Possible! But still either you believe in Intelligent Design or you dont, and that is my question!
Sorry if it is not clear enough!
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If it is specifically ID that you are refering to (irreducible complexity and all that stuff) then I gues that would preclude my extra option since it would invalidate all but the most limited form of evolution if it were true.
[fact]Evolution happens[/fact]
There is simply too much evidence out there for it.
[fact2]ID has about as much supporting evidence as does the cult of the great Pink Unicorn[/fact2]
How about that as an extra option? :D
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Anyway, ID, per se, has absolutely nothing to do with God.
The fact that it is a thinly veiled attempt to introduce religion into our science classes is neither here nor there.
It is quite possible that the actual designer was in fact the afore-mentioned Pink Unicorn.
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Well I'm a creatonist I suppose, but not really hard-core or anything. It's just that I'm no evolutionist :)
I do believe in God, but I also believe in micro-evolultion (not much of a believe, more factual), and that God made the creation adaptable, because the rest of the universe is too...
Would be a shame if Adam and Eve died shortly after their creation... all that hard work... ;)
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How do you differentiate micro-evolution from macro-evolution though since macro is just a whole bunch of micros end to end? :unsure:
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How do you differentiate micro-evolution from macro-evolution though since macro is just a whole bunch of micros end to end? :unsure:
If something tries to evolve beyond what God thinks it should, he SMITETH IT MIGHTILY, with VENGENCE!
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[fact2]ID has about as much supporting evidence as does the cult of the great Pink Unicorn[/fact2]
Infidel! The might Unihorned One will ride down from His enchanted castle in the sky, on a chariot of rainbows, to bathe the world in the blood of the unbelieving!
Personally, I believe that God is evolution, that that's how God works. His modus operendi. If schvarz makes a cool bot on his computer running a simulation for ~9 Billion cycles, we'd all still probably say it belonged to schvarz, since schvarz created the rules and tweaked it along the way, getting rid of poor divergent paths allong the way.
Same thing with God. He created us because he was the master hand guiding our evolution.
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Believing evolution and believing in God arnt mutually exclusive. Like PY said, obviously evolution happens, FACT. The only people who deny it are the kind of people who think the Earth is only 5,000 years old and cant accept that God might work in ways not described in the good book.
Whos to say God didnt drop his sandwich on Earth, forget about it for 4 billion years and come back to find it evolved into curious monkeys.
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I still think that we are all just 3 dimensional graphical images in a gigantinormous pan-super-fantasmico mega computer running the mother of all evolution sims.
The end is nigh!
Beware the time of the great hard drive crash
God's bed time comes a close second. He has to turn off the PC sooner or later. I just hope he has a really good save file hierarchy worked out.
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persinal I dont belive in a god, its simply not possible for a god to exist by the laws of nature we have today.
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Ah, yes, God can[I/] exist by the laws of nature today.
Some could say that God is a Big Brother type alien society, who monitors Earth constantly and works tirelessly to manipulate humanity to a common goal (moral awareness, which would be imperitive for any species that would interact on the galactic stage. A species with technological ability but no morality could destroy a galactic patchwork civilization(s) based on mutual trust and open trade).
Or God could be a team of entertainment proffessionals who tape us for their candid camera tv show/website/magical into-your-brain machine, and who give us crazy commandments that go against our very nature because "it makes good TV."
Or God could be a higher dimensional being, able to watch all of 3D space simoltaneously without being seen.
Or God could be a super parallel processor computer, able to perform many actions simoltaneously, and able to monitor Earth through sophisticated bugging techniques.
Or He could even be what he says he is, a God, an immortal being of immense personal power and strong morality who also is able to multitask and observe all of everything simoltaneously, and who is, even today, still a bit beyond our comprehension.
Point is there isn't a single rule that exists that eliminates all possibilities of a God. Neither is there a rule that demands the existance of a God. The Laws of Nature are decidedly agnostic, which I believe is the only truly safe conclusion.
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Wow, I just wanted to make a bit of fun, and you all start to discuss it! :wacko:
But God could be anything, but with no proof, either direct nor indirect, it would be wrong to conclude God exist, there is no direct proof of evolution says the creationist, but with all AL software to prove them wrong.
AL is not life, but the software often optimizes to the egde of the rules in the simulation or co-evolve with the other creatures. Or has God a finger in this tooo?
Dont you think our mighty (evil?) (All-forgiving?) has other things to do, oh I did forget The Lord is Almighty, and can do/make etc. everything in the split of a nano-second.
I have no problem with people believing in God, I am actully not sure what I do, but I am a evolutionist troughout, but we need to understand that innovation and progress aint created by one-eyed people, like the medieval Europe and the now fundamentalist regimes of the Muslim society and Bush' religious supportes, "My idol is Jesus" or what ever he did say... (Hope you understand)!
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I admired the catolic church and religion in general, thats why my avatar looks like it does, but I am not very religious.
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The problem is that there is not one shred of evidence that any kind of God exists.
Since I don't personally feel the need to believe in something without proof, this causes me no discomfort whatsoever.
Conversely, there is also not one shred of proof that there is no God. To me it is just a concept that isn't even worth my time to pursue. I don't need him and the universe doesn't need him.
But then again, he might want it that way.
Our DarwinBots have no idea that we exist either. I wonder if they ever develop little religions during a sim? Who knows what really goes on between the visual basic commands that we can see. maybe they are self aware in there.
I sometimes find myself wondering if a new super tough species of bot worships its creator as it carves its way up the F1 league. Just imagine members of "The One" tribe paying homage to "The Great and powerful Shen" each time they cream a competitor. :D
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LOL PY you have the best humour I have ever experinced! :D
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but we need to understand that innovation and progress aint created by one-eyed people, like the medieval Europe and the now fundamentalist regimes of the Muslim society and Bush' religious supportes.
True, unfortunately... :(
A real shame, because I believe one of our 'goals' on earth is to explore it, and everything around it.
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It's all your own fault. Y'all open this door. I'm just sticking both left feet in.
Something I wrote for another board.
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The scientific problem with theology is its history. Not the religious stories and writings but the independent historical records and artifacts that give a clear and reasoned history of religion in our species.
Primitive man used the spirits of the animals, plants and rivers upon which his very existence depended as the focus of his psychological need to explain what this "life" thing was all about. We're talking Homo erectus of 300,000+- years ago not the australopithecines of way back. Homo, it is believed, had the capacity to so wonder as evidenced by his stone trinkets of ornamental value rather than as tools. Some obvious "mother earth" and “pregnant deer” statuary and the like.
In Homo sapiens this focus slowly shifted to the great powers that seemed to control all the elements of the environment. Sun, moon, sea, wind, volcanoes, thunder and like that. With the advent of agriculture and stable local populations the local god had local appeal and was structured for the close relationships of the tribe. During this period the priests arose, self proclaimed, to read the signs and interpret the actions and angers of the gods. Since humans are as humans are the neighboring tribes were of course a lesser people with lesser gods and thus it was kosher to kill their men, enslave their women and eat their children most often at the behest if not the direct commandment of the local gods as interpreted by the priests.
Joseph Campbell wrote an excellent series of books on the power of myth as religious symbology and tracing the history of religious development. He writes about the strong rulers in Mesopotamia, like Sargon Of Akkade, born of a virgin so it is proclaimed, son of the (then) greatest Mesopotamian god Enlil. Sargon went on to conquer everything he could see, declared himself the true embodiment of Enlil and had the remaining priests in his conquered cities so declare this truth after beheading the local kings and ruling high priests. He installed his daughter as High Priestess of the Temple of the goddess Nanna at Ur and in all just helped himself to all the goodies by usurping the social powers (along with the gold, granaries, and gals) that were the purview of the local priests which had accumulated their powers and riches by taking credit for good harvests and fine weather as signs of their intercession with the great gods of the past millennia and the present great god Enlil and blaming catastrophe on those unbelievers, especially tribal outsiders and their lesser gods, who brought the wrath of Enlil down upon an innocent people except now Enlil was Sargon or vice versa and it gets confusing from there. One of the first known instances of man claiming divinity.
In the history of human theology, I suppose as differentiated from Canine or Equine Theology, monotheism is the new kid on the block. Still, the first major mono-theologies, in Egypt and the Indus river valley, were tribal in origin, of, for, and by the tribe with rules, laws and sacraments; a complete cultural morality that did not apply to outsiders. The same then were adopted by and applied to the three great modern mono-theologies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Some may argue that these are all one theology owing to their common theological godhead - the god of Abraham. Bull. But that’s another tome for another time.
There is nothing in any present religious philosophy on this planet, no tenet, no myth, no story, no attribute, no miracle that does not have precedence in some other tribal religion millennia past complete with virgin births, attaining nirvana, water walking, parting seas, lotus blossoms, halting suns, miracles of healing, plagues of disease and the infinite love of the great god for the tribe and his ordered/inspired conquests and murders of “others” in city-states and territories of those not of the tribe. Like plants and animals, religions evolved from older forms taking the myths, stories and miracles of the past and adapting them to the new sets of gods.
The crux is this.
We know this history. We know where, when and why things happened. In all that history there is nothing to indicate, to suggest or reasonably speculate that some magical being with special powers has or had any effect upon any natural, non-natural, fattening or non-fattening phenomenon, action or inaction dealing with any living or dead, non-living or non-dead, person, place or thing of any kind at any time whatsoever anywhere ever. Everything we see and have seen, everything we experience and have experienced, everything we know (incomplete as that knowledge may be) about our species and our history, and through our intellect everything we know about any and all other species and their histories since the dawn of life on this planet and still further back than that, has reasonable natural explanations without having to resort to “poof – magic happened!”
There is no reason for any type of god to exist. There has been no phenomenon anywhere at any time that can reasonably be attributed only to the magic of a supernatural sorcerer. There has been no phenomenon anywhere at any time that cannot be more reasonably attributed to natural forces than to the magic of a supernatural sorcerer. Science cannot address and has no need to address any type of god since there is nothing anywhere in nature, the earth, the heavens nor beyond that reasonably indicates any gods would, could or should exist.
If we are going to leave open as scientifically viable the wild speculation of the maybe existence of gods then we must also leave open the wild speculation that there may exist a planet in the M67 galaxy accreted wholly from Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese (the real thing; not some generic store brand) with Chives. Science cannot say there is or is not some flavor of god because science has no reason to presume that such a thing, with or without chives, would, could or should exist. Gods are a scientific non-issue.
Theology started as a psychological salve to help explain this “why” question some newly sentient beings seemed to have asked when they came down from the trees. Then it acquired the tribal pack mentality with restrictive rules, rites and sacraments. Finally, there is its usurpation by the political establishment where it seems to have gotten stuck for the past three millennia.
And since we know the history of religion, its origins, its limits, its evolution, its very reason for being, then by the same token gods should be a human intellectual non-issue as well. A reasonable dispassionate reading of the history of Human Theology must conclude the same as the scientific treatment. There is no reason for any type of god to exist. There is no evidence such a thing would, could or should exist in our lives. There is no need.
So why do religious memes persist? I’m glad you asked.
Religious memes propagate by acculturation like knowledge of how long after eating you have to wait before swimming and how many times you need to say “I love you,” before you can screw the girl. The political/social reinforcement of this acculturation continues since it seems to serve a useful purpose in morally stabilizing and mollifying the sizable populations (hundred of millions) that now exist as “the tribe.”
No, I’m not saying a sinister government is perpetrating a religious hoax upon the populous. Our society, our culture, sees the propagation of religious memes as a good and necessary adjunct to the secular constraints on our actions by modern governance. In other words our society sees religion as helping secular governance keep us from eating each other.
That prevailing view is bogus. Religious memes really aren’t necessary and detract and separate more than they add and meld. Secular governance does quite well on its own. In fact it does better the freer and farther it spreads. Again, another tome for another time.
But we are going to have one hell of a time getting rid of religious memes. Some memes, like that really stinky advertising ditty that you absolutely hate, just keep pounding the inside of your head no matter what you do to get rid of them. Religion is a societal meme that is pounding within the collective heads of the broader global tribes and just won’t go away. Pity.
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AZ Paul what happens when you die then(if there is nothing above humans) :) .
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I almost agree with you Paul, but I think you have the priorities of religion backwards.
Religions were not created to explain why, but to provide the basic cement which hold complex socities together.
All religions probably formed from the basic tenents of communalism. For instance, what would we hold as the perfect example of a christian/jewish/muslim/eastern religion man?
A man who works his entire life for the betterment of others wins the prize. Someone who has sacrificed personal comfort to help others. Society is based on mutual trust and basic rules that, so long as all members follow, all members prosper through.
Even atheistic socities posses this basic theology. Our selfless man also is the pinical of both capitalist and communist societies. All civilizations throughout time have strived for its members to work towards this ideal.
The 'why', the gods and pantheons, occurs later, and is really a precursor to science.
That it is tied into the religion doesn't mean it's inextricably linked. As society became successful enough that some members could devote their life to 'thinking' instead of farming and animal husbandry and other basic labor, then religion and science part ways (ancient greece and rome for example) because men are allowed to specialize even further.
Primitive socities can only support one basic caste that doesn't 'contribute' through food cultivation and construction. More successful societies can allow that caste to be subdivided into more specific castes.
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AZ Paul what happens when you die then(if there is nothing above humans) :) .
Death is cessession. There is nothing beyond that.
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I'm reminded of a line from Ray Bradbury. (I'm paraphrasing of course).
"I believe in what was."
Even if you don't necessarily believe in life after death- that you existed, that you occupied a segment of space time, that you affected friends, family, and loved ones, that you were a part of something larger than yourself, then you have achieved a kind of immortality.
I too believe in what was.
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Alien society can I accept.
the tv team seems to be kinda extreme and stupid if you ask me.
higher dimensional bieng doesnt obay our laws (of course it could be a thing but its still not a part of our universe)
a computer capable to calculate all the stuff that happen in our universe isnt possible, it need to calculate hundread of calculation for each body, each atom, each sub atomic particle. its to much for any computer.
the thing after I dont understand.
but when I hear god whit nothing around it I think about somekinda overnatural super power thing that can go against the laws of nature, then it aint possible. but if the god isnt that I can accept it, but then its not a god, then its something else
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Well, if you know your bible (yeah, if you're going to criticise something you have to be prepared to discuss it) most of the miracles ascribed to God are within realms we poorly understand anyway, or are not going against the laws of nature.
For instance, raising the dead and healing the sick. There is a very well established and understood placebo effect. Jesus told these guys that their faith healed them, that they believed he could heal them so he was able to. That represents a fairly complex understanding of human psychology.
Raising the dead. Two prongs here. First, We don't understand death. I doubt you'll find a single scientist that can tell you that they have any idea what happens when you die. We can postulate, but it's impossible to determine for sure one way or another.
So if some guy can raise the dead, he isn't breaking a law of nature because we don't have a law that specifies exactly what can and can't be done after death. Modern medicine has been able to revive men that have been dead for a minute or two. We just don't understand the brain well enough to know exactly if a man can be resusitated 3 days after its dead or not.
Second, comas were not well understood in ancient times (okay, at all understood) so it may be that these 'resurrections' were just sophisticated psychological medicine that we don't understand (comas are not well understood either).
Point is that there isn't any miracle ascribed to Jesus or ancient miracles that can't be ascribed through scientific laws. That doesn't in some way detract from what God is. It is still a miracle for a man to have knowledge far in advance of his time.
The plagues of Egypt for example. Most (like 9 of 10) can be explained by an incredibly high nile flood. But Moses still managed to guess when the nile was going to flood high. That's more than the egyptians, who spent their entire lives around the nile, could figure out. To them it was all but random (they believed that Pharoah controlled it indirectly by pleasing the gods).
I think ultimately, as we learn more about the world, we'll be increasingly able to figure out the mechanism through which most miracles were accomplished. But if I flip on the lights with a light switch, and at first it seems magic to you but you later figure it out, it doesn't change the fact that I knew the light switch was there before you did.
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dead is defiened when you dont react to things neurological, the heart dont beat and your not breathing, if all this is fullfilled then your official dead.
raising dead can simply have been a brain dead person who came back or something like that, there is no law breaking there. but ive heard such thing as cerating matter out of nothing and stuff like that, then its breaking the laws of physic.
ps: I havent read the bible, I can never get through the first page whit out laughing (not to be disrespective)
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but ive heard such thing as cerating matter out of nothing and stuff like that, then its breaking the laws of physic.
ps: I havent read the bible, I can never get through the first page whit out laughing (not to be disrespective)
There isn't a part in the bible where something is magically created from nothing. I'd ask you to prove me wrong, but you can't really do that when you aren't even familiar with the very book you're arguing against.
You probably heard it from a 'Christian' who themselves had poor knowledge of the bible. I don't know why it is that most christians only seem to read the first 3 pages of Genesis, Mathew, Eclesiastes, Proverbs, and Revelations. You'd be amazed at how biblically illiterate most Christians are (including myself, but I'm working on it).
Think I'm wrong? If you're a christian, how often have you read the creation story in Genesis 1? Alot, huh. You probably know it by heart. Then name what God did on all 7 days of the creation. I haven't found one who can do it yet.
Most (like probably 70% of) miracles in the bible fall into the realm of:
1. Destroying an enemy of the Israelites, usually through no supernatural means at all but sharp wit and quick thinking. (The idea is that God opens the mind to inspiration in times of need to those who are worthy. Notice it's the prophets who know how to do what the warlords don't.)
2. Foreknowledge. That is, telling of future events or knowledge of the present that is unlikely to be got by conventional means. For instance, if you ascribe the plagues of Egypt to a natural and explainable event, with no supernaturalism at all, then you still have to admit it's something of a coincidence that Moses guessed right.
3. Healings, like when Moses lifted the serpent on the cross to heal all who would look at it, or when Jesus healed the blind man by spitting in the dirt and rubbing the mud in the guy's eyes.
4. Spiritual, like casting out demons and Jesus paying for the sins of humanity. (If you don't believe in spirituality, then this is a moot point, isn't it?)
Seriosuly though, you should at least become familiar with the Bible stories and general Jedeo-Christian mythologies, considering that probably 90% of western literature makes allusions to it.
Personally, I don't think the bible was meant to be read cover to cover. It wasn't even put into its present book form until relatively recently (like before 500 AD and after 0 AD), long after the sections were written. Before that it was just a jumble of a bunch of different books. Eearly Genesis is how a very primitive people (mis)interpreted various events that were probably way beyond their comprehension anyway (if I were God, I'd dumb down creation too.), so if you don't like it, skip it, and go straight to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. (Roughly chapter 12). That's all history, and while I'm sure the Jews stilted it in the telling (what society doesn't color their history books their own colors?) it's all more or less factual.
The bible is one of the oldest surviving written records of an early people. You can learn alot about how ancient people lived, and you can understand the Jewish position on why they have a right to 'colonize' and generally piss off the muslims in the Middle East.
Or start with the histories if you like politics and warfare, and some really great gruesome stuff. There's some very dark stuff in there that's very Grim Brothers Fairytale-esque. For instance, here's a summary of Judges chapter 19.
"A Levite concubine and her husband lodge overnight in Gibeah (a Benjamite tribe town)-- The men of Gibeah rape the concubine and she dies. The husband cuts her into twelve pieces and sends them to the tribes of Israel."
I mean, that's some great stuff. They sure were a different breed of Man back then. Now adays you cut up your dead concubine and you're the criminal. Crazy.
Or start with the prophets if you like poetry and symbolism. The Jews still consider Isaiah one of their greatest poets. Revelations is likewise very poetic in its telling. No one reads any prophets. Ever. Impress your friends, be the first on your block.
Job is great if you're feeling depressed. It follows a highly stylized structure, which if you aren't familiar with will seem to flow like molasses in January, but at least you can say 'Hey, I'm not that guy."
If you're in a feminist mood, Esther is one of the few books (like 2) that focus on a woman in Jewish history.
I mean, how can you enjoy Paradise Lost or Dante's Inferno without understanding the mythos that inspired them? How can you even enjoy a showing of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or The DaVinci Code?
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Genrally I agree with you on pretty much the whole post Num, except for this line.
it's all more or less factual.
I would contend that there is no way to substantiate most of the bible and a good bit of it can be more or less proven to be out of chronological order or just plain wrong as far as time scales go.
Don't have time for more detail now. Gotta go and do some work.
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just the future telling is impossible, nothing is more unpredicteble as the future is.
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a good bit of it can be more or less proven to be out of chronological order or just plain wrong as far as time scales go.
That's what I'm talking about with more or less factual. Ancient people told stories in funny ways.
They'd jump around in the telling as they remembered things. Chronological order wasn't their primary concern (I doubt it was a concern at all), but all the events that are described very probably occurred in one form or another (some could be allegorical or just plain made up during the times of Jewish scattering).
just the future telling is impossible, nothing is more unpredicteble as the future is.
Think about Dune and the Foundation series. Trying to figure out a single person's future is hard. Trying to figure out the future course of history is easy. Sci Fi authors do it all the time, and some have managed to be fairly right.
In fact, I'm going to predict that there'll be a war in the Middle East between Israel and a coallition of its neighbor muslim nations. At this point in history, that's probably an incredibly safe bet. And remember, as long as you say 'in the future', you have until the end of time for it to come true. And if you speak symbolically, then you have even more lee way.
So it's possible. That the prophets were pretty good at being right is probably why it's called a 'miracle'.
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it aint possible, you make guesses and if your lucky you get it right, even futorologs have hard pridicting the future, the jockers is tehre and playing whit them.
if you say "in the future" then you will allways have right if mankind will always exist, it will then at sometime happen. but a true future teller tells the exakt date, time for everything. thats true future telling
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I think my Mom must be a prophet then.
Here is a little (true) tale to get you thinking.
It was about 1979 and my Dad and I were just settling down to watch the semi final of the world snooker championship on TV. The match was between Cliff Thorburn and Ray Reordan I think, and was 100% LIVE, not recorded! we had been waiting for the match to start all day.
About half way through the first frame, my Mom came into the room and said.
"Why are you watching this match again?"
She insisted that she had seen it before even though it was LIVE.
My Dad and I thought she must be going mad or something and told her as much.
She then proceeded to describe the entire match shot for shot. (She has an amazing, if a little bizarre, memory to this day)
She was absolutely correct about every single detail of the match. Each shot went exactly as she said it would. She didn't miss out on a single thing.
This wasn't the only time this happened either. My Mom used to do this kind of thing on a more or less regular basis.
Every Saturday we used to play "pick the horse" for the Saturday afternoon horse races. For 15 years she picked the winning horse in EVERY race. I always hit and missed on what I considered a pretty good rate but my Mom got it right 100% of the time
What really pisses me off is that she has always been morally opposed to gambling so we we never got a penny out of it. <_<
I have seen way too many weird things happen to write supposedly supernatural stuff off as impossible. I am more of the opinion that science just hasn't found a way to measure any of it yet.
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by just using the word supernatuaral ur saying that its not natuaral and ifits not natuaral then it cant happen
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[facetious]
No, it's super natural.
Like superman. He's just a man that's raised to the 100th power.
So supernatural is just a natural event that's raised to the 100th power. Like a hurricane that can jump tall buildings in a single bound. That's a 'supernatural' event.
[/facetious]
Supernatural just describes events we can't describe with convential science. Ball lightning was supernatural for a long time, and it's still not well understood. That's the perfect example. It's hard to isolate the phenomenon, so it's hard to observe and reproduce, so it's hard for science to figure it out.
If I told you that I saw something spherical that entered buildings through windows and doors, you'd say that I was a liar or call it a supernatural event. But it's not, it's ball lightning. Read about it here (http://www.tbns.net/mediapoet/tech19b.htm). We have a hard time explaining them with regular science, that doesn't mean they don't exist.
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AZ Paul what happens when you die then(if there is nothing above humans) .
Well, mrmound, I don't know. I've never been in the mood to find out. And I don't know of anyone who has ever survived the ordeal of death long enough to give any kind of report.
I can only surmise that when you die you return to that from which you came before you were born...the void.
Since I am the center of my universe I can only say that there was nothing but void prior to me and I suppose there will be nothing but void after me.
I know it is difficult to comprehend. I AM here. I AM feeling. I AM.
This life is real. I can feel it. These thoughts, these feelings, this ME that I know is. How can it ever be said to end? There must be continuance. There must be something after.
And there is. But not continuance of something so fleeting and ephemeral as life.
With limited knowledge we can only suppose that what comes after is the same that came before. The infinity that was and the infinity that will be. The void.
There might be something more. It doesn't look likely given what came before but we do not know. Until we have the experience we cannot ever know. At this point I'm in no hurry to find out. That will happen soon enough.
-P
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I think my Mom must be a prophet then. ... my Mom got it right 100% of the time.
This seems supernatural, but it is not. Statistical this is unlikely, but it is not impossible.
Supernatural just describes events we can't describe with convential science.
This is true, but it is a limitation of our curret knowledge to call things supernatural, but still our societies is so 'Enlighted' that we should be very cautios about saying things are supernatural.
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To me, supernatural is simply something which our present day science has yet to explain.
Some supposed scientists have told me that these events could not have happened because such things are impossible
This is the kind of person who, when faced with a personal experience that defies explanation with conventional science, would prefer to beleive that they themselves are mad rather than to adjust their world view to include the new experience.
This is just closed mindedness and not sctrict adherence to science.
Science doesn't prohibit anything
Our present understanding of science might do so but that is simply because it is incomplete.
If it doesn't fit into current your worldview, don't deny it! Investigate it! Otherwise you are living with faith in an infalable doctrine (religion).
Faith that Ghosts aren't real. Faith that Precognition is impossible! etc.
Science doesn't work that way! Everything is possible (within reason). We just don't know how yet.
Actually I take back the "within reason" qualifier.
Everything is possible, if you know how to do it!
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a true supernatuaral thing can never be explained. btw some thing is impossible, I want to see anyone of you to grab a mans hair on the ehad when he have nbo hair there
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I want to see anyone of you to grab a mans hair on the ehad when he have nbo hair there
Take the following steps to do this.
1) First you have to make one grow so research a cure for baldness.
2) apply the cure to the man in question.
3) Grab a hair.
If that doesn't satisfy you and you come back with a comment like "but you have to do it right now" then add these steps to the solution
1) First you have to make one grow so research a cure for baldness.
1a) Research, discover and implement time travel.
1b) Travel back in time to a couple of weeks before you were challenged to grab the bald man's hair
2) apply the cure to the man in question. (in the past)
3) Grab a hair. (in the present)
This kind of solution can be applied to any ridiculous situation that you can come up with.
I can't do any of these things due to my lack of knowledge of the specific area of science but that is completely irrelevent. Who is to say that I can' dedicate the rest of my life to discovering these things then come back and perform them right now?
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Amen! :D
If you are unable to consider a viewpoint that's not your own as possible then you're being closed minded. That doesn't mean you have to accept other viewpoints as reality, or even very likely, but you can't just dismiss them because they don't fit within your framework.
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Also there is no such thing as a true supernatural event.
Everything that ever happens can be defined as....
1) Stuff we do understand.
2) Stuff we don't understand.
Supernatural is just a convenient label to fit to option 2, sometimes through ignorance but mostly because we can't be bothered to waste our time finding a better name for it.
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PY, if you give the guy hair he have hair and then its possible, your supposed to do it while he have no hair. btw PY, when its about your mom, my dad can predict event years before they happen, not exacly but very close, how does he dop that? its called life experience. he have alot of it and can by that predict how things ends
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Things that depend so much on chance -like horse racing- are not easily predicted with just 'life experience'. And certainately not before the race starts, and not as many times.
The question's not CAN they happen?
but
DID they happen?
Most socalled 'supernatural' events were just made up. (like most UFO 'sightings')
Henk
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Most socalled 'supernatural' events were just made up. (like most UFO 'sightings')
I actually saw a UFO once.
It was a bloody great long cigar shaped thing with rows of lights along the sides that hovered about 100 feet off the ground for about 5 minutes before shooting off faster than a supercharged lightning bolt. (pretty damn fast)
It was about the size of a 747 but had no wings and was completely silent. I was directly underneath it for quite a while with 3 friends who all saw it too.
I have no idea what it was (that's why it is called a UFO)
It could have had little green/purple/grey men in it or it could have had American Military personel in it. I have no way of knowing. That is why it is Unidentified.
I just saw the thing. I don't claim to know what it was. It did peak my interest in UFOs and other supposedly supernatural occurences though.
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your supposed to do it while he have no hair
OK Zelos, I will grant you that it is impossible to do certain things while keeping within the conditions laid down by the proposer.
Another example of this would be something I heard on TV last night.
One guy said to the other "Now I've seen everything"
The other guy replied. "I bet you have never seen a man eat his own head"
It is obviously impossible to do something with something that isn't there and it is simply ridiculous to suggest such a thing as a refutation of a statement that nothing is impossible.
My obvious meaning is that nothing is scientifically impossible. This obviously doesn't preclude something being impossible under certain circumstances like climbing a ladder that doesn't exist.
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my dad can predict event years before they happen, not exacly but very close, how does he dop that? its called life experience. he have alot of it and can by that predict how things ends
It is pretty easy to predict generalizations about what will happen years in advance, based on life experiences but to get every tiniest detail absolutely perfect requires a little more than just an educated estimate.
A lot of fortune tellers rely on life experiences and reading the client's body language and such like, in order to make their generalized predictions. They often get it right too but more than likely they are just smart scam artists who tell people what they want to hear.
But imagine that someone tells you that a specific event will happen at a specific time, couple of days into the future, then gives exact details including what is going to be said and done by every person involved in the event.
On top of this, written transcript of the future event is prepared.
Two days later and the event happens exactly as predicted down the the last tiny detail.
The only conclusion for this has to be that the person making the prediction had...
1) Prior knowledge of the event from some form of precognition.
2) The ability to shape the event such that the false prediction is fulfilled.
Given that my Mom had no way to directly influence the outcome of a Snooker match being played in another country (Ireland I believe), I am left with option 1.
If you can think of a third option then please let me know because the concept of true precognition has some pretty strong ramifications in the field of causality and freewill.
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Given that my Mom had no way to directly influence the outcome of a Snooker match being played in another country (Ireland I believe), I am left with option 1.
First, Mom's abilities were miss-directed toward gambling. Shame, shame, shame. I am proud of her for refusing your enticements. She should be given a subscription to The Wall Street Journal. Equities trading is an old and honorable pursuit and with her abilities she could make a killing!... er...tidy respectable profit from her labors.
Second, can you impose upon the lady to predict when an update of DBII might be available? How about a bot memory dump capability? .sexrepro?
And send her my love.:wub:
-P
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Second, can you impose upon the lady to predict when an update of DBII might be available? How about a bot memory dump capability? .sexrepro?
And send her my love.wub.gif
:laugh:
Will do. She is coming over to the US for a visit at the end of next week.
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"I'm afraid I can't comment on the name 'Rain God' at the present time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-Causal Meteorological Phenomenon."
"Can you tell us what that means?"
"I'm not altogther sure. Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like ot call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that.
"No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not what you say it is, but something we say it is.
"And if it turns out that you're right, you'll still be wrong, because we will simply call him a... er, 'Supernormal'- not paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those mean now, no, a 'Spuernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer.' We'll probably want to shove a Quasi in there somewhere to protect ourselves. Rain God! Huh, never heard such nonsense in my life. Admitedly, you wouldn't catch me going on holiday with him. Thanks, that'll be all for now..."