Do you think there is a God? If so, why?

[mikkel_the_dane]

I did, and it's described as rather unlikely hypothesis. It doesn't have a lot of support in science. My knowledge of science is rather limited given the depth of knowledge out there, so I defer to what the consensus of experts say.

Hey, maybe the Matrix is real. Why would I give it any consideration just because it is a story?

Yeah? I didn't see any evidence of that. There is a lot of criticism for the idea by people who know more than either of us.

Honest about what?

We (humans) still have agency and as you experience in your time in this forum, there are many other humans who reject the category of supernatural ideas called god. Atheists get along quite well, and without the mental drama of having to maintain the belief in some idea that lacks evidence to our sensory awareness.

Yeah, did you actual read at least one of the article that explains that the probability rests on which assumptions you make. The problem is that we can't objectively decide which assumptions should be used to calculate the correct probability.
So yes, you could be in a Boltzmann Brain universe and you can't know if you are that or not.
But here is the core problem. Imagine you are in a Boltzmann Brain universe for the variation of a simulation, then you can't know if your assumptions are correct if they tell you are not in a Boltzmann Brain universe, because you are in a simulation and what you experience as real laws is a production of the simulation.
So what you get is this: I declare that this universe is real and therefore based on my experiences being real, the results are real and thus I am in a real universe. Can you recognize what that is? Can you say begging the question?

That is not even new, this problem. It is as old as the problem of what knowledge is. So that is how you get methodological naturalism. Use the following unprovable axiomatic assumption or in short beliefs without evidence: The universe is fair, real, orderly and knowable.

Here it is by one you know:
"
A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt. ... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.

— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, (Routledge, 2002), pp. 52–53, ISBN 0-415-27844-9."

So the problem is that the world is natural is a convention, a norm or to some dogma.
You can attack me, but I can't challenge you, because you only want to doubt me and not yourself. That is a double standard.

I know what this game is about. You don't in effect want to be challenged for your culture, because your culture is the correct one. Nothing else makes sense to you as based on your culture. So what is it that the dogmatic believers in culture do? They don't want their culture challenged.

 

[ratiocinator]

So the problem is that the world is natural is a convention, a norm or to some dogma.
You can attack me, but I can't challenge you, because you only want to doubt me and not yourself. That is a double standard.

I know what this game is about. You don't in effect want to be challenged for your culture, because your culture is the correct one. Nothing else makes sense to you as based on your culture. So what is it that the dogmatic believers in culture do? They don't want their culture challenged.

*sigh*

Off you go on your pointless off-topic obsessions again.

It's actually the only practical working assumption. All this drivelling on about possible simulations and what we think is reality might not be real, is all pointless, dead-end daydreaming. So what? If it's not really real (whatever that means) it might as well be. We are still stuck with it and have no hope of finding out what's behind it, so who the hell cares? It works they way it does anyway, so we can study it and learn useful things.

You seem to think it's really profound but it's just silly - the sort of thing most people grow out of. Sorry.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

*sigh*

Off you go on your pointless off-topic obsessions again.

It's actually the only practical working assumption. All this drivelling on about possible simulations and what we think is reality might not be real, is all pointless, dead-end daydreaming. So what? If it's not really real (whatever that means) it might as well be. We are still stuck with it and have no hope of finding out what's behind it, so who the hell cares? It works they way it does anyway, so we can study it and learn useful things.

You seem to think it's really profound but it's just silly - the sort of thing most people grow out of. Sorry.

Yeah, it is all okay until here: "... we can study it and learn useful things." You are not a we of the human race and neither am I. You don't decide that and neither do I, but you really want to be that we for all humans. Grow up and realize you are not that we. I know I am not that we. Do you know that too?
Pay attention. I am a <beep> skeptic. I can spot when you go subjective and are not objective and with evidence.
So please show your objective authorization for being that we for useful or learn, that you are not that we and neither am I. You are in effect as dangerous for that social we as all the rest of humans, who do that social we and confuses it with humanity.
Learn to spot when you are subjective.

 

[ratiocinator]

You are not a we of the human race and neither am I.

Show me a human who can do anything but accept what appears to be the real world as real, except as a totally pointless basis for silly arguments that go nowhere. We are all stuck with it, like it or not.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Show me a human who can do anything but accept what appears to be the real world as real, except as a totally pointless basis for silly arguments that go nowhere. We are all stuck with it, like it or not.

Yeah, that is a feeling. you deal with it differently than me, but we are both subjective. That is the point. So from one silly feeling to another.

Let me tell you something I noticed long ago and which you just have confirmed once again. It is about what matters to a given human and that is subjective. Yes, there is an objective reality and we argue over that because it subjectively matters. You and I are like all other humans capable of that doing that. Stating what matters. Go figure, but as far as I can tell that is a (side-)effect of biology.

 

[osgart]

Yeah, that is a feeling. you deal with it differently than me, but we are both subjective. That is the point. So from one silly feeling to another.

Let me tell you something I noticed long ago and which you just have confirmed once again. It is about what matters to a given human and that is subjective. Yes, there is an objective reality and we argue over that because it subjectively matters. You and I are like all other humans capable of that doing that. Stating what matters. Go figure, but as far as I can tell that is a (side-)effect of biology.

Are you ever saying that people mistake their own subjectivity for objective facts with words like natural, or physical?

Are you also saying that people overly ambitiously declare their own correctness as true without ever being able to demonstrate that it is correct for all people regardless?

Perhaps you are saying that often times people think they are being objective when in fact it's subjectivity again.

 

[Zwing]

I have interacted with god.

???

 

[YoursTrue]

Yes, there are Gods.

In what manner do you say or believe there are Gods (plural)? Do they each have names?

 

[YoursTrue]

Do you know the abrahamic? EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE.

Ok. Just wondering.

 

[YoursTrue]

Yes I think there is a God.
Why: Because I'm an irrational person.
How i envision God:
As something which does not interact with the material realm, only with the spirit realm.
In my opinion

Ok I don't quite understand. But I think maybe another time I'll try to ask more about that. Thanks for your answer even though I don't understand it. But thank you anyway.

 

[an anarchist]

???

Well I'm not gonna say how.

But there is no better reason for believing, yes?

 

[The Hammer]

In what manner do you say or believe there are Gods (plural)? Do they each have names?

In what manner? Uhm, in the same manner All Gods exist I suppose.

Names... Yes and No. Some people choose to name them, others prefer to experience them.

 

[Willamena]

So that is the question. Do you think there is a God? Please describe how you envision this God. Thank you.

I think there is a god. I envision god as a tap on my right shoulder by a nebulous arm reaching from behind a curtain.

 

[YoursTrue]

In what manner? Uhm, in the same manner All Gods exist I suppose.

Names... Yes and No. Some people choose to name them, others prefer to experience them.

So if I understand you correctly, you may not know their names or don't know them, and I wonder then if you pray to any of them.

 

[The Hammer]

So if I understand you correctly, you may not know their names or don't know them, and I wonder then if you pray to any of them.

Yes and no.

Some I don't give names to. Most are named.

And pray. Yes and no.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Are you ever saying that people mistake their own subjectivity for objective facts with words like natural, or physical?

Are you also saying that people overly ambitiously declare their own correctness as true without ever being able to demonstrate that it is correct for all people regardless?

Perhaps you are saying that often times people think they are being objective when in fact it's subjectivity again.

Yes. I am subjective in how I choose to explain the world. The joke is that other people subjectively think that they are objective.
This is without evidence, but that is the point. I can do something without evidence, because it is subjective.
If you accept some form of truth it also have cases where it doesn't work. For evidence that is the subjective.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

*sigh*

Off you go on your pointless off-topic obsessions again.

It's actually the only practical working assumption. All this drivelling on about possible simulations and what we think is reality might not be real, is all pointless, dead-end daydreaming. So what? If it's not really real (whatever that means) it might as well be. We are still stuck with it and have no hope of finding out what's behind it, so who the hell cares? It works they way it does anyway, so we can study it and learn useful things.

You seem to think it's really profound but it's just silly - the sort of thing most people grow out of. Sorry.

Well, correct. It is pragmatism. But that is not evidence, truth or proof. So we agree. It makes first person sense to treat the world as real, but it is without evidence.
BTW Evidence for the bold ones. All these feelings. You really ought to learn to analyze your own text and not just everybody else's. And yes, that is a feeling, because I can analyze my own writing.
BTW It is useful for me to have faith in God and no, I don't claim evidence as it is faith. Go figure, I can even use your idea of useful. We should do what we find useful.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Show me a human who can do anything but accept what appears to be the real world as real, except as a totally pointless basis for silly arguments that go nowhere. We are all stuck with it, like it or not.

I can't remember if I answered before, but that is an appeal to emotion. Again, learn to analyze your own claims. You are not special and I am not special. And you are not the we for humanity and neither am I, but I don't claim that. You do!!!

 

[osgart]

Yes. I am subjective in how I choose to explain the world. The joke is that other people subjectively think that they are objective.
This is without evidence, but that is the point. I can do something without evidence, because it is subjective.
If you accept some form of truth it also have cases where it doesn't work. For evidence that is the subjective.

Gravity is an objective fact. How is this statement subjective?

To me subjectivity is an objective fact. Objectivity is not always the truth. Subjectivity has objective facts about it. For love, joy, and peace as well as human flourishing there is a truth to that; it takes morality. A truth that many people could be incapable of and therefore never recognize, and even if they did, they'd never care one iota, and dismiss it objectively.

Just because someone is dispassionate and holds no bias only makes them ambivalent. Objectivity has limits, and it also has power in survival and prosperity.

Some people set their own objectivity up as the official, correct standard and authority in places where it's only intuition. There is subjective evidences; things evident to self. There is objective evidence; things that must not be ignored as being actual and real.

Everything has limits to its scope and effectiveness.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Gravity is an objective fact. How is this statement subjective?

To me subjectivity is an objective fact. Objectivity is not always the truth. Subjectivity has objective facts about it. For love, joy, and peace as well as human flourishing there is a truth to that; it takes morality. A truth that many people could be incapable of and therefore never recognize, and even if they did, they'd never care one iota, and dismiss it objectively.

Just because someone is dispassionate and holds no bias only makes them ambivalent. Objectivity has limits, and it also has power in survival and prosperity.

Some people set their own objectivity up as the official, correct standard and authority in places where it's only intuition. There is subjective evidences; things evident to self. There is objective evidence; things that must not be ignored as being actual and real.

Everything has limits to its scope and effectiveness.

It is the subjective core assumption that reality is fair, real, orderly and knowable. We are doing philosophy. The rest is a good post.