patrick.net

gracer says

I am talking about the spiritual realm, not in a judicial sense.

No, your talking in the fantasy, made up nonsense sense.

Peter P says

So you rather have overpopulation?

Let's say I'm god. So then I'm omnipotent. The stupid humans are breeding faster than their food supply. I snap my fingers and make food no longer necessary. Humans now can extract all the energy they need from false vacuum energy. They can get all the materials they need from the air. They can convert the nitrogen, etc. into other elements as necessary in little bio-fusion chambers I've added. Fuck, I'm god, so this is easy shit.

As a result, the humans can breed all they want and no babies will starve. Problem solved.

Alternative solution, I dial down the fertility of females or make female fertility an inverse function of the number of offspring she bares. Again, problem solved. Worked for the Salarians when the Krogans got out of control.

While I'm at it, let's get rid of predation. Totally unnecessary in a universe created by an omnipotent god, and obviously predation is a great source of evil as any omniscient god would know.

This is exactly why I should be god instead of that dumbass slacker Yahweh/Jesus. Both of them are smelly hippies.

gracer says

Mankind is already forgiven by God, except for unbelief. Jesus' cross cancelled the law of sin and death. Now the only requirement is to be born again of the Spirit because we are all born spiritually dead. Without Christ's cross which forgave sins, we would still be under the exacting requirements of the old covenant law to please God, but Christ set us free from that. Now we just place our faith in Christ to please God, and not worry about the forgiveness issue.

I am talking about the spiritual realm, not in a judicial sense.

So all we need do then is embrace the notion of human sacrifice and also that it is good justice to punish the innocent instead of the guilty.

IOW, we have to sell our souls to the devil to get to heaven.

You have sure come up with a good theology. Not.

Check your morals. Do you really thing God will let you into heaven with such a compromised morality?

Regards
DL

only delusional people would believe in such a stupid thing as a "God."

And only irrational people will deny the existence of God. See Pascal's Wager.

Peter P says

And only irrational people will deny the existence of God. See Pascal's Wager.

He was a christian so by definition he was irrational therefore his wager is irrational.
See, it's easy being a philosopher!

Peter P says

And only irrational people will deny the existence of God. See Pascal's Wager.

We disproved that conjecture on this site several times already. See the old threads.

Oh, and if Pascal's Wager were correct, then your god would be evil.

You did not disprove the conjecture. You simply invalidated parts of one proof of the conjecture.

Peter P says

You did not disprove the conjecture. You simply invalidated parts of one proof of the conjecture.

You cannot disprove or prove conjecture.

Hence invalid.

Peter P says

Hence invalid.

Yes, God is invalid.
thank you.

Greatest I am says

We cannot help but to do so.

you grasp excuses, and shun personal accountability, in one sentence.

Dan8267 says

While I'm at it, let's get rid of predation. Totally unnecessary in a
universe created by an omnipotent god, and obviously predation is a great source
of evil as any omniscient god would know.

see there, humor, right when we need it.

Moderate Infidel says

You cannot disprove or prove conjecture.

Sure you can. Example...

Conjecture: There are no even prime numbers.
Disproof: Two is even and a prime.

Peter P says

You did not disprove the conjecture.

Pascal's Wager is based on the assumption that there is zero cost to belief in god, something that the Middle East has repeatedly demonstrated is not true. Hell, this assumption is even explicitly stated in the wager.

Given the enormous toll on life inflicted by belief in god throughout history, it is perfectly rational to disbelieve in the entity.

Dan8267 says

Moderate Infidel says

You cannot disprove or prove conjecture.

Sure you can. Example...

Conjecture: There are no even prime numbers.

Disproof: Two is even and a prime.

Prove "two".

According to wikipedia...

A conjecture is a proposition that is unproven.

But I guess it is not necessarily unprovable. (See Gödel's incompleteness theorems.)

Moderate Infidel says

Prove "two".

Read Principia Mathematica.

What do you guys think of the the axiom of choice?

It is a bizarre truth with counter-intuitive consequences.

Peter P says

Moderate Infidel says

Prove "two".

Read Principia Mathematica.

No. I won't.

Moderate Infidel says

Dan8267 says

Moderate Infidel says

You cannot disprove or prove conjecture.

Sure you can. Example...

Conjecture: There are no even prime numbers.

Disproof: Two is even and a prime.

Prove "two".

What the fuck does that even mean?

Peter P says

According to wikipedia...

Plato was taught by Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

Dan8267 says

What the fuck does that even mean?

He wants to know what the fuck "even" means.

Dan8267 says

Plato was taught by Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

I love you, you love me...

Anyone remembers Microsoft Barney?

Peter P says

What do you guys think of the the axiom of choice?

It's late and I'm a bit tired, but I did look up Axiom of Choice. You didn't have a specific question, but here are my initial thoughts on the subject.

From Vanderbilt Univeristy Math Department

Axiom of Choice. Let C be a collection of nonempty sets. Then we can choose a member from each set in that collection. In other words, there exists a function f defined on C with the property that, for each set S in the collection, f(S) is a member of S.

From Wolfram MathWorld: Collection and Wolfram MathWorld: Multiset, a collection is just an entity like a set but that can contain repeated elements.

The problem is how to "find" or determine the existence of a function, f, that satisfies the Axiom of Choice when C is the collection of all nonempty subsets of the real number line.

So here are my initial thoughts...

Who cares if C is a collection, i.e. multiset, instead of a set? If a function, f, satisfies the Axiom of Choice for a collection C than it would for the equivalent set C' with the repeats removed since the f would pick the same value for each instance of element X in C.

So, let's simplify and make C be a set of nonempty sets instead of a collection of nonempty sets.

Second thought. I take it that we are presuming that randomness cannot be defined as a function. I.e., you cannot let f mean, "pick a random element of the set". If we allowed that, than the random function would be sufficient.

Third thought. OK, C is the set of all nonempty subsets of the real numbers. Let X be any element of C, a particular nonempty subset of the real numbers. X can be partitioned into a set, P, of individual real numbers and non-overlapping opened and closed intervals of real numbers. There can be no element in X that isn't either a real number in P or a real number within an interval in P.

OK, so sort the elements of P like this:
1. The zero or one interval containing negative infinity as the lower end.
2. The individual real number or the individual real number at the lower end of an interval not containing negative infinity.
3. The zero or one interval containing positive infinity as the upper end if it was not already included in #1.

There are four cases.

1. X is the entire set of real numbers and P contains only one element, X. Pick zero.
2. P contains an interval N with negative infinity but not positive infinity, so the upper end has either a closed or opened end at a real number. Pick the integer i that is the maximum integer less than the upper end point of N. This integer must be in N and therefore a member of X.

3. P does not contain an interval with negative infinity but does contain an interval N with positive infinity. In this case, the lower end has either a closed or open end at a real number. Pick the integer i that is the minimum integer greater than the lower end point of N. This integer must be in N and therefore a member of X.

4. P does not contain any intervals with either negative or positive infinity. P may still contain an infinite number of intervals, but those intervals and the individual real numbers in P are still sorted and thus only countably infinite. This means they can be placed in one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, ...). We could do that, but we only need to map the first (zeroth) element.

Let H be the set of all real numbers that serve as the upper end of an interval in X. (Remember, X contains no intervals with negative or positive infinity, so all intervals in X are closed or opened at a finite real number). Let L be the set of all real numbers that serve as the lower end of an interval in X. Let R be the set of real numbers in X that are not contained in an interval in P, i.e., the individual real numbers isolated from intervals. Finally, let Q be the intersection of sets H, L, and R. Q is basically any real number that is contained in P or any interval endpoint of P, and thus Q is composed of all of the boundaries and isolated elements of X.

Let n be the absolute value of the element of Q with the smallest absolute value. There is one and only one possible value of n, and it is positive.

If R contains n then f(X) returns n, else if R contains -n then f(X) returns -n, else X contains a closed or opened interval with n and/or -n as one of the two endpoints. (Actually, it must be opened at n or -n since neither n nor -n are members of X, but that's not really important to us). If X contains an interval with n as one of the two endpoints, then pick the average value of that interval, as the average value will be within the interval and thus a member of X. If X does not contain an interval with n as one of the two endpoints, then it must contain an interval with -n as one of the two endpoints. Pick the average value of the two endpoints for that interval. Of course, X could contain two intervals, one with n as and endpoint and one with -n as an endpoint, but our function can simply favor the endpoint with +n. Of course, X could contain an interval with both n and -n, but that doesn't matter either as we just need to pick a value and can do so using any interval.

The above algorithm will not only choose a value for any set X in C, but it will always choose the same value for any set X in C, so even if we turned C back into a multiset, our function would still pick consistent values for each occurrence of X in C, not that doing so was a constraint on the problem.

Now since we can use this function for any possible set X in C, we can use it over C when C is the set of all nonempty subsets of the real number line.

Finally, disclaimer: these are just my initial thoughts on the subject and I haven't gotten anyone to check them. Also, no bitching over minor typos. I'm writing this at 1:50 a.m.

Dan8267 says

Moderate Infidel says

Dan8267 says

Moderate Infidel says

You cannot disprove or prove conjecture.

Sure you can. Example...

Conjecture: There are no even prime numbers.

Disproof: Two is even and a prime.

Prove "two".

What the fuck does that even mean?

Exactly!

Dan, I was referring to the Banach-Tarski Paradox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox

With that axiom, you can "cut" a sphere in the R3 space into a finite number of pieces and then reassemble them into TWO spheres that are identical to the first one.

Bap33 says

117 threads

I don't think so but that does not refute my statement.

An argument on how we can help but do so would be good.

I like to learn. Teach if you can.

Regards
DL

Peter P says

Dan8267 says

What the fuck does that even mean?

He wants to know what the fuck "even" means.

Your grammatical parsing skills are so 3leet..

Peter P says

With that axiom, you can "cut" a sphere in the R3 space into a finite number of pieces and then reassemble them into TWO spheres that are identical to the first one.

Topology is not one of my areas of expertise. No thoughts regarding it at this time.

What is a topologist?

Someone who cannot distinguish between a doughnut and a coffee cup.

(I know, it's a dumb joke, but I couldn't resist.)

Dan8267 says

Topology is not one of my areas of expertise. No thoughts regarding it at this time.

I think it is less about topology and more about "real" numbers.

Real numbers are really strange things and they do not represent real-life objects at the micro-level (Planck?).

Peter P says

No, they are not commanded by their God. Rather, a manmade religion.

Why should God care about human rights? It is a human concept.

Both religion and God are man made. How do you convey this message to people who breed like rabbits?
In some societies I would be instantly executed just for saying what I just said.

God is not manmade. The concept and understanding of God is.

I think the most basic definition of God is that He was self-caused.

God, or religion, is the social contract, the moral code of ethics. Because by nature we humans are not ethical beings.

You can make millions of laws and you'll never have enough of them to run a successful and peaceful society if society has no morals

But if you get most folks to follow the same moral code of ethics and doing no wrong, you ease the burden.

Humans are not fully capable of making ethical decisions precisely becaused we are not self-caused.

There is always the non-free environmental context.

Peter P says

I think the most basic definition of God is that He was self-caused.

By that definition, there is no reason to believe:
1. that god is a sentient being. The non-sentient universe would meet the definition of god.
2. that god is omniscient or in fact knows anything.
3. that god is omnipotent.
4. that god is good or moral or even has any concept of right or wrong.
5. that god is not pure fucking evil.
6. that god is even aware of the existence of human beings.
7. that god would care about human beings if he were aware of their existence.
8. that god would want human beings to behave a certain way.
9. that god has every communicated with a human being via burning bush, telepathy, or any other way.
10. that one should listen to god.
11. that god's opinions on matters, if it has any, is worth more than Honey Boo Boo's.
12. that the god of Abraham is in any way the god of your definition.
13. that Jesus is/was god and/or the son of god.
14. that praying to god in anyway communicates with it.
15. that there is only one god. After all, if one entity can be self-caused, then why can't an infinite number of entities be self-caused?
16. that there is even one god. Perhaps the set of gods by your definition is empty.

In any case, the god you described does not have nearly as many properties as the god worshiped by the Judea-Christian-Islamic world. Their god is a highly interventionist god.

And I think everyone should follow his own moral code.

Dan, you are quite right. But one can choose to believe in his own version of God.

Religion/God do not provide humans with morals, least of all the ones operating the religion.
Humans are born with "morals"- it's the dysfunctional adults that fuck them up.
Any organization becomes just like the humans that run them - their prime directive is self preservation. This corrupts all organizations.
If God is the head of a religion then he is corrupt.