explosions
Member
lol i thing my brane terned tew soop.
In all seriousness, wouldn't you have had to make a decision to accept that idea?
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Outrageous Religious Beliefs
- Thread starter amrcidiot
- Start date
lol i thing my brane terned tew soop.
In all seriousness, wouldn't you have had to make a decision to accept that idea?
LocutusEstBorg
Active Member
It wouldn't be different from any other decision. And accepting this would be more like realizing a fact because its logically correct. (Realizing your in the Matrix ??) You don't need to decide whether 2+2=4 is true.
explosions
Member
So you're saying these 'variables' are predetermined separately for everyone?
Math was made from logic and reasoning.
LocutusEstBorg
Active Member
The variables are every external influence that acts on your body. They are things you've seen, heard, places you've been, even the current temperature and pressure. All of these are predeterminable as they follow the basic laws of nature.
There are also internal variables like the results of every decision you made before. But the first decision obviously had only external variables, so hence your full life is predetermined.
explosions
Member
Can you prove that?
LocutusEstBorg
Active Member
Whats there to prove? The basic laws of nature are already proved. There are also many other laws that are not yet discovered/studied in detail which also modify the environment.
The outcome of any natural law is easily calculated. Hence any consequence of the result of a combination of these laws is also easily calculated. Your existence is a result of these laws. Hence proved.
Like I said before... Unless your brain has some supernatural magical ability that we can't detect, it's just protons, neutrons, and electrons, following the laws of physics. The particles making up our brains are no more capable of affecting the outcome of various natural process than the particles making up stars and planets.
We can feel like we're making decisions, thinking up new ideas, etc., and on the grander scale we are... or at least we seem to be. But at the basic, particle level, we're just particles doing what particles do. There's no magic here. Particles iz particles.
Unless you want to believe in magic. Really, that's all "supernatural" means - magic.
We can feel like we're making decisions, thinking up new ideas, etc., and on the grander scale we are... or at least we seem to be. But at the basic, particle level, we're just particles doing what particles do. There's no magic here. Particles iz particles.
Unless you want to believe in magic. Really, that's all "supernatural" means - magic.
explosions
Member
All I see are your words. I see no proof. I believe what you are telling me is an Outrageous Religious Belief.
LocutusEstBorg
Active Member
It's ok. Everyone's understanding ability is capped at some level.
explosions
Member
lol oh. Well that makes much more sense than what I thought Torch was trying to say.
It's not a religious belief; it's simply the logical conclusion to the idea that the natural laws are all that apply - that supernatural causes aren't real. It is no more a religion to think that nature is all that exists than it is a religious belief that 2+2=4. What we observe is what manifests in reality; if anything is real beyond what manifests in reality, we have no way of knowing that it is real.
I actually got into an argument earlier with someone who said that it took just as much faith to believe with absolute certainty that 2+2=4 as it does to believe with total certainty that god exists.
I actually got into an argument earlier with someone who said that it took just as much faith to believe with absolute certainty that 2+2=4 as it does to believe with total certainty that god exists.
explosions
Member
I see what you're saying now. I just wasn't quite catching on.
LocutusEstBorg
Active Member
Damn, how do you explain things so easily?!?
When someone's wrong on the internet, the discussion must go on!
explosions
Member
If that's so, what allows us to think and create?
EDIT: lol, I'm interested in what you smart people think.
Our brains.
That's what I mean about the "grander scale."
At the scale of the universe that we've adapted to understand, it seems like we're making free choices. We exist in a middle world of space, velocity, time, etc.; we don't see our particles doing what our particles do.
Our brains allow us to think and create, and it seems like it's something that couldn't "just happen", but ... again, unless we're allowing the supernatural to be part of the explanation, it's still just protons, neutrons, and electrons. And radiation and such. The 'newness' that we perceive is only novel at our scale; at the scale of the things that compose our bodies, our thoughts, ideas, concepts, inventions, etc. are just electrical firings among clusters of particles. It seems like things we've made decisions about, and we have decided (in a way), but our decisions (again) don't affect things at the particle level - only at the level we've adapted to observe.
Look at it this way: Our bodies are composed largely of empty space. The molecules that make up our cells are made of atoms that are a tiny little neutron surrounded by electrons at a relatively large distance from the middle. There's a whole lot of 'nothing' there.
And yet we perceive ourselves as solid, single, solitary beings. At a basic level, our particles are just part of the ebb and flow of the material making up everything in the universe, but we have evolved to perceive ourselves as units separate from each other and everything else.
We're mostly empty space, but we can't walk through walls (through the gaps in the particles making up the walls). We're particles surrounded by nothing, but at a larger scale, emergent properties like "solidity" and "non-colocation" appear.
In the same way, we're just particles doing what particles do, but at a larger scale, emergent properties appear - thoughts, invention, 'choice', etc.
That's what I mean about the "grander scale."
At the scale of the universe that we've adapted to understand, it seems like we're making free choices. We exist in a middle world of space, velocity, time, etc.; we don't see our particles doing what our particles do.
Our brains allow us to think and create, and it seems like it's something that couldn't "just happen", but ... again, unless we're allowing the supernatural to be part of the explanation, it's still just protons, neutrons, and electrons. And radiation and such. The 'newness' that we perceive is only novel at our scale; at the scale of the things that compose our bodies, our thoughts, ideas, concepts, inventions, etc. are just electrical firings among clusters of particles. It seems like things we've made decisions about, and we have decided (in a way), but our decisions (again) don't affect things at the particle level - only at the level we've adapted to observe.
Look at it this way: Our bodies are composed largely of empty space. The molecules that make up our cells are made of atoms that are a tiny little neutron surrounded by electrons at a relatively large distance from the middle. There's a whole lot of 'nothing' there.
And yet we perceive ourselves as solid, single, solitary beings. At a basic level, our particles are just part of the ebb and flow of the material making up everything in the universe, but we have evolved to perceive ourselves as units separate from each other and everything else.
We're mostly empty space, but we can't walk through walls (through the gaps in the particles making up the walls). We're particles surrounded by nothing, but at a larger scale, emergent properties like "solidity" and "non-colocation" appear.
In the same way, we're just particles doing what particles do, but at a larger scale, emergent properties appear - thoughts, invention, 'choice', etc.
LocutusEstBorg
Active Member
The brain IS a real time dynamic intelligent machine from a relative point of view. The concept of "inventing" itself only holds true from an isolated relative point of view. Read up on how our intelligence works. (In reality everything thats invented is also predetermined to be thought of by the inventor because of the external variables.)
Take a look at this to see the sort of thing I'm talking about when I talk about the 'middle world' we've adapted to:
Richard Dawkins on our universe | Video on TED.com
Richard Dawkins on our universe | Video on TED.com
explosions
Member
homosexuals?
LocutusEstBorg
Active Member
This is why I've realized that trying to enlighten people (philosophically or technologically or about anything in general) is like throwing pearls before swines.