I don't see why it would need to "assume a hypothesis that there is an external world".
Reading comprehension fail; abort, retry ignore?
Please try reading what I wrote again more carefully:
marzojr wrote:
[the solipsistic assumption] must assume at least as much as the hypothesis that there is an external world [...], so it is not simpler
I did not say it "needs to assume an external world", I said it must assume at least as much as the assumption about an external world. The portion in italics is crucial.
Man, this site was down the entire day yesterday. I hope it wasn't my giant post on the previous page that caused the server to overload with everyone trying to respond to it.
Anyway, I shut down my mind and I'm back from nothing with full power to generate universes. Warp earlier said that the world is consistent, which makes it different from dreams for example. But dreams are often indistinguishable from "reality", until we wake up. So this reality could seem unreal too when we wake up in an even more real world of spirituality when we die. The consistency in the world is a mere illusion. Everything constantly changes in the universe and nothing is consistent, because every being, every particle, are on their eternal journey back to the equilibrium of nothingness where they come from.
Science has shown us that especially at the very small level of atomic and subatomic particles, the world is very chaotic, like the ancient myths say. It's interesting how similar the creation story of Big Bang is to ancient myths. Scientists have these dualities of matter and antimatter, just like we had yin and yang thousands of years ago. Some scientists say that there was maybe a small imbalance of matter and antimatter, and that's why the universe exists. That's what the ancient egyptian Ogdoad says too. Non-existence can't exist because otherwise it wouldn't be non-existence. But it's still the basis of reality because it doesn't need any conditions in order to exist. So nothing externalizes from its infinity and creates a separation that creates consciousness. This way, by creating an illusion of everything, reality can be logical because nothingness can at least appear to be what it is (non-existent). Unity needs dualism to be logical. This way we get the holy trinity.
Dreams are the beginning stages of the universe, before the actual universe is loaded on the morning. Our universe is destroyed every day we go to sleep, then on the morning it is created from nothing again, because only nothing can stay in nothing forever.
marzojr wrote:
I said it must assume at least as much as the assumption about an external world.
Playing with your nonsense is futile, but I'm feeling bored, so I'll comment a bit.
nfq wrote:
But dreams are often indistinguishable from "reality", until we wake up. So this reality could seem unreal too when we wake up in an even more real world of spirituality when we die. The consistency in the world is a mere illusion.
You are basically saying that because during a dream it's not possible to distinguish it from reality (which isn't true, btw), that means the consistency of reality is an illusion. Beautiful backwards logic you have there.
That's like saying that since a fake rolex and a real rolex may be indistinguishable from each other (at least to the layman), the real rolex does not work. What a non-sequitur.
Everything constantly changes in the universe and nothing is consistent, because every being, every particle, are on their eternal journey back to the equilibrium of nothingness where they come from.
Even if I tried to make sense of this, even if I tried to play along and try to understand what is it that you are trying to say, I can't. You could just as well take a dictionary and randomly pick up words from it and put them into a sentence. The result is complete gibberish.
I have noticed in this thread that your nonsense has increased exponentially. In the past you have only argued for things like ufos, cryptozoology, psychic powers of the human mind, the supernatural (in the most popular sense) and so on. Although the subject matter itself has always been quite nonsensical, at least you were mostly coherent in your writing. In this thread, however, you have been extraordinarily incoherent and nonsensical, so much so that nobody can understand what you are even trying to say (or at least I can't).
Either you have taken the next step in your poe'ness, or if you are being serious, things have gotten noticeably worse.
It's interesting how similar the creation story of Big Bang is to ancient myths.
Write anything sufficiently vague, and it can be made to resemble anything else, when sufficiently interpreted in the proper direction.
Ancient myths would be much more credible and interesting if they went to more accurate detail about things like the geometry of spacetime and its expansion from a singularity. Even ancient languages were expressive enough to describe these things even without current terminology and knowledge, so it's not an excuse. (A good example of this is ancient Greek. Surviving texts of ancient Greek mathematicians are quite specific enough for us to know where things like the Pythagorean theorem or the Archimedes principle came from. There's no reason why ancient languages could not have been used to describe things like the geometry of spacetime, gravity as a consequence of it, and the expansion of the universe.)
There are some youtube videos out there that seem to distort [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY]Leonard Susskind's interpretation[/URL] of the [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle]holographic principle[/URL] ad absurdum, similar to what movies suchs as [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know]What the Bleep Do We Know[/URL] have done for quantum theory. Here are two possible candidates of what he could have watched: [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_VSRH5_KJ4&feature=fvsr]1[/URL], [URL=www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_VSRH5_KJ4]2[/URL]. The first two parts of these are identical. The 5 part one replaces what seems to be the original third part with three other conspiracy themed ones (consipiracy theorists might disagree). Maybe he hasn't watched either of them and read some obscure blog posts instead, I don't know.
Edit: @Warp below: I thought you might just be bored enough to watch parts of it anyway. ;)
It is interesting that the description box of that field is plagiarized from the Wikipedia article on the holographic principle -- a straight copy/paste from the first 3 paragraphs as they were on the date the video was posted (see here). But yeah, the initial blurb of text is enough to trigger all alarm bells. The title screen set of all the rest.
Btw, I don't really understand why so many scientists promote string theory so seriously. Stephen Hawking himself, who's no slouch when it comes to understanding astrophysics, promotes it heavily.
String theory (well, theories) is a misnomer. It's not a scientific theory. String hypothesis would be a more accurate name. For a hypothesis to become a theory it has to be backed up by ample amount of evidence, observations and testing, corroborated and verified by the scientific community at large. String "theory" isn't. Also, a theory should have predictive power and practical applications. String "theory" doesn't.
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This post might be somewhat offensive.
I know I should stay out of this topic but I can no longer resist the urge.
I like the Bible. I follow the ten commandments. Except, those ain't your regular commandments.
1. Exodus 22:20: He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.
2. Leviticus 24:16: And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death.
3. Exodus 31:15: Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
4. Exodus 21:15: He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
5. Exodus 21:17: He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
6. Exodus 22:19: Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.
7. Leviticus 20:13: If a man lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.
8. Leviticus 20:10: And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.
9. Mark 16:16: He that believeth not, shall be damned.
10. Malachi 2:1-4: And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, ... behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.
Yeah. That's a loving god. Obey or be killed. Reminds me of the race any given dictator was/is running. Just saying. I'm not trying to be offensive. I'm trying to bring out a chuckle in non-believers and ask believers why this isn't being taught in Bible School. Source
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
The sad thing is that no matter how many times or how it's explained, believers are unable (or outright refuse) to understand the logical fallacy inherent in that type of argument.
The argument that "life is too complex and perfect to have formed on its own, clearly it has been created" is completely useless, and making any deductions from it is just an argument from ignorance. If you ask "ok, let's assume for a moment that you are absolutely correct in that assertion, what does it prove?" you will get different answers from different people. Some will say that the God of the Bible created life, others will say that the God of the Koran did it, others will say that Vishnu did it, and so on. Then it becomes an argument on which religion is right, if any.
In the end, the original argument is completely inconsequential. The argument of which religion is right is not dependent on it in any way, nor does the original argument support any particular religion over the others. Even if the original argument were correct and accurate, it would still tell us nothing.
So why make the argument at all? It doesn't prove (or even is any kind of compelling evidence) that your particular religion is true. Yet people keep making the argument over and over like a scratched record. The only people who keep buying it are the ones who already believe in that particular religion they are selling. Hence they are just preaching to the choir.
[URL=http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=313289#313289]Find the hardly related paragraphs that have lead into this ones in another thread[/URL]
As we can see, Nature is very wise by our standards. Though I feel the need to point out that this isn't evidence for intelligent design. I'd rather say that the fact that we can look at the result of possibly random processes coupled with natural selection (only what reproduces best will reproduce, so bad design will automatically disappear over time), and come to the conclusion that life must have been intelligently designed by an Intelligent Designer, is very good evidence for the fact that we can't be intelligent by any meaningful, universally objective standard, and should thus be disqualified from objectively judging what counts as being the result of intelligence and what doesn't.
Of course we might turn out to be intelligently designed anyway in the end, which would refute all of this. It doesn't seem we can presently find the answer to that question. "But Occam's Razor! Evolution and Natural selection are enough to explain every facet of life on this planet (though I can't prove that anyway, but let's ignore that critical flaw in my argument for the time being), this makes it highly unlikely that we have been intelligently designed." Nope, this is a failure of basic reasoning. First of all, you should make yourself aware of the fact that in this case you are trying to deduce causes from their effects. This cannot be as reliably done as the opposite. You may have heard of encryption algorithms? Here's something resembling a thought experiment:
"There's a dog paw print in the snow, so it must have been a dog that stepped on that part of the snow! By Occam's Razor we can deduce that no other animal has stepped onto that part of the snow because everything can already be explained by only assuming the dog as the cause. Hm, or at least it's very unlikely that other animals have stepped onto that part of the snow!" Nope, this is bad reasoning. Let's say there had only been one dog and a million birds in the relatively small area where the footprint had been made before the onset of the story, of which we know nothing about. Now we'd know it's not too unlikely that another animal had stepped onto that part of the snow before. But Occam's Razor says it's unlikely that a million birds had been in the area. By which evidence? By the evidence that there's a footprint of a dog in the area. But that's completely unrelated by the laws of cause and effect to a million birds having been in the area. It cannot be deduced from the footprint of a dog that a million birds had not been in the area and thus it also cannot be deduced from that footprint that it's unlikely that another animal had stepped onto that part of the snow before by Occam's Razor. It can only be deduced by common sense, which is a largely a product of experience. Common sense dictates that it's unlikely that a million birds had been in the area, cause that's just unusual, but it cannot be deduced by Occam's Razor. But let's say those birds are actually invisible. In this case common sense and Occam's Razor will both come to the wrong conclusion (that it's unlikely for another animal to have stepped into that part of the snow before). They both aren't reliable and you can't logically deduce from any of them.
Very nice, now let's apply this to Intelligent Design. How likely is it that we have been intelligently designed? Occam's Razor this, common sense that, they both aren't able to provide an answer. To get an answer we would have to know if there are millions of invisible birds in our multi-verse, things that intelligently design. How to find out? How do we know? Common sense... Occam's Razor... both don't help, so we can't help but to admit that we don't know. We cannot say how likely it is because we can only observe effects and know little about their true causes. "We don't see effects, so it's highly unlikely that there are causes that don't produce any clearly detectable effects" is bad reasoning. If we have been intelligently designed by invisible birds leaving hardly any detectable prints in the snow, and then Evolution and Natural selection took over, leaving big dog paw prints, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we don't need the birds/God/whatever to explain all presently detectable effects. Likelihood this, likelihood that, you cannot reverse deduce the likelihood of things by applying common sense in areas where it doesn't make sense to apply. We''d have to know more about causes, and make our deductions starting from them,to find a valid answer. So what has caused everything to come into being? We don't know a thing about it. We are disqualified from judging the likelihood of invisible dragons all across the universe.
And who knows if the dog would have stepped into the snow if some invisible birds haven't guided him? Should we assume invisble birds? No, there's no evidence, and it's unfalsifiable, we can't just assume such things. Should we assume they're highly unlikely to exist? Nope, that would be very ignorant and bad reasoning. Here's an analogy. It's highly unlikely for you to win the lottery tomorrow, but it's very probable for anybody at all to win it somewhen. So there might not be insible birds, but there might be something at all! Oh yes, there might be more to things than meets the eye. What a surprise! Turns out we'll never know just how little we really know about the universe!
Why is Occam's Razor still helpful? It helps us focus on what we can indeed find out. We observe some effects and can deduce some causes, but we can never know if all causes have been identified or there might still be hidden ones. However, as long as we are unable to detect the hidden ones anyway, we shouldn't even try, be satisfied with what we have and focus our attention on something else instead. Don't waste your time trying to fit a custom puzzle piece to fill in the gaps (God? Unfalsifiable theories based on anecdotal evidence?). Occam's Razor helps us to avoid that. It cannot be used to make logical deductions about reality though.
I think I drank too much coffee.
"There's a dog paw print in the snow, so it must have been a dog that stepped on that part of the snow! By Occam's Razor we can deduce that no other animal has stepped onto that part of the snow because everything can already be explained by only assuming the dog as the cause.
No, that's not what Occam's Razor is about. Applying Occam's razor in this case would be assuming it was a dog (or an animal with a very similar paw shape) unless valid evidence is presented of the contrary, especially if the alternative hypotheses presented are extraordinary and require significantly more assumptions to be made.
Suppose that two hypotheses are presented:
1) It was a dog (or another animal with a very similar paw shape).
2) It was a bird that created the footprint using its beak in order to fool us.
Until actual valid evidence of hypothesis #2 is presented, Occam's Razor chooses #1 because it makes the least amount of extra assumptions.
You must admit that there is what can be rather reasonably classified as hypocrisy and double standards among some Christians, in the subject of the Bible vs. the Quran.
These Christians will point to the violent parts of the Quran, where its followers committed atrocities against (what they consider) infidels, and condemn it as barbaric, inhumane and unjustified. But then when someone points to the Bible, eg. to the passages were God orders the extermination of entire infidel nations by his chosen people, sometimes even so egregiously that God orders them to exterminate all men, but leave the young women as spoils of war, these Christians will defend those passages and consider them justified, and even good.
You ought to see how from an external point of view there isn't really all much difference between the two things. Both religions are defending their own holy book.
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Hi, everyone. I just wanted to state that, along with Bisqwit, I am also a Christian who believes in the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. I also understand that people have many questions concerning the Bible (and other religions, in general), and possibly many strong criticisms. That's fair, and even expected.
This is Bisqwit's thread, and I'm not trying to steal his thunder. But if anyone has any questions about the Bible, maybe I could assist and help add some clarity?
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
I'd like to illustrate what everyone else is driving at, can you take this quiz and tell me what score you get?
http://bibleorqurangame.blogspot.com/
OmnipotentEntity, I get where this quiz is getting at, but you've also got to admit that it's taking passages out of context (both Bible and Quran). Some of those quoted passages in particular I immediately recognize from the book of Judges -- which requires considerable context in order to understand its complete meaning (Judges, in particular, is like studying law).
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
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ars4326 wrote:
I am also a Christian who believes in the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Why?
ars4326 wrote:
But if anyone has any questions about the Bible, maybe I could assist and help add some clarity?
Apparently, there are only 188 named women characters in the Bible, but a whopping 1181 named male characters. Why?
Bonus question: What would the Bible look like, if it was written by common patriarchal men at a time when male chauvinism was prevalent in the society?
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Aqfaq wrote:
Apparently, there are only 188 named women characters in the Bible, but a whopping 1181 named male characters. Why?
The characters of the Bible are there as part of a historical setting.
In every society that we know of in history, and including today, women are not the major leaders or dominating characters if represented in leadership at all. It's true there are women in politics, but they're an overwhelming minority, and this is true everywhere.
Given that, I'm surprised by your figure that women make up over 10% of characters in the Bible (is the figure even accurate?).
As much as the Bible tries to convey a utopian lifestyle, such has never occurred anywhere for any considerable amount of time, and to present any message otherwise would be utter fantasy. If you find any book which contains a significant amount of history with women in leading roles throughout (aside from a women's biography), you can throw the book in the utterly-fictitious-contains-no-kernel-of-realistic-history bin.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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Warp wrote:
But then when someone points to the Bible, eg. to the passages were God orders the extermination of entire infidel nations by his chosen people, sometimes even so egregiously that God orders them to exterminate all men, but leave the young women as spoils of war, these Christians will defend those passages and consider them justified, and even good.
You ought to see how from an external point of view there isn't really all much difference between the two things. Both religions are defending their own holy book.
To counter your above point, did you ever notice how the first few books of the Bible (the most significant part of the old testament) limit those extermination laws to the land of Canaan and its surroundings?
Consider these verses:
Deut 4:19: and be careful lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, thou be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath allotted to all the nations under the whole heaven.
and 32:8-9: When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of men, He set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the divine beings. For the portion of the LORD is His people, Jacob the lot of His inheritance.
A careful reading shows the books are saying to only kill people and enforce a single religion in a single country. It says to smash idols - in a single country. The punishment listed for not keeping the laws? Exile from the country.
Nowhere does it say to go out to other countries and convert them or smash their idols, or declare war on them. On the contrary, the other nations can have their own divine beings and have the stars and host of heaven to worship.
Consider Kings II 17 24-28:
And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof. And so it was, at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD; therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which killed some of them. Wherefore they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying: 'The nations which thou hast carried away, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land; therefore He hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.' Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying: 'Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.' So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught them how they should fear the LORD.
Be that as it may that the Bible could be read in a negative fashion for condoning genocide and disallowing freedom of religion, it limits this viewpoint to one location. According to the Bible (early parts), it's fine for people to have whatever free-for-all they want elsewhere. In the above jurisdiction however, they will be killed be it by the people, or by the animals. These early books do not condone world domination or proselyting the whole world.
If the Qur'an says somewhere that it limits its applicable scope to one area, say Saudi Arabia, then I'd agree with you that they're very similar. However, to the best of my knowledge, the Qur'an does not limit its scope to one location and one set of people, and does convey a message leading towards world domination.
The Bible seems to say "if you don't like these laws, feel free to leave, but if you stay, obey them". I don't think the Qur'an ultimately gives you that option.
Edit:
To conclude, I don't see the Bible sending out a message "go forth and kill the infidels". I see "I'm wiping out country so and so due to their evil behavior towards each other" (Noah, Jonah, Jeremiah) or "Go forth and decimate your enemies who attacked you, leave no man standing to further attack you".
In the one exception being Canaan and its surroundings, the Bible records messages sent by Moses asking if they can pass through the land to their destination peacefully, or mentions that the current inhabitants have the option to leave if they want to. And still, even in the case of Canaan itself, the Bible records that the people had evil behavior, such as the Sodomites, the town that raped Dinah, or Leviticus 18:3,21 they make human sacrifices of their own children, among other things. It doesn't say to kill them for not "believing" or some such.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Bonus question: What would the Bible look like, if it was written by common patriarchal men at a time when male chauvinism was prevalent in the society?
Ohhh, I think I know that one! The correct answer is, it would look the same!
:)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Nach wrote:
In every society that we know of in history, and including today, women are not the major leaders or dominating characters if represented in leadership at all.
Correct. Why do you think that is? Can you name a few historical ideas that may have contributed to the fact that only very recently the societies around the world have become to understand the importance of gender equality? Oh, here's one:
1 Timothy 2:12 --> "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet."
The Bible was undeniably written by uncivilized men who had no concept of gender equality.
