OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by spirokeat:

quote:

---

Arryn the agnostic and skeptic

Surely as a skeptic you would be first in the house to put forward possibilities of how something could be outside the boundries of a prescribed theory ?

And as for the 'spike' thing, bah. If i accept the theory that your all just ideas generated by my mind and when I stop thinking about you then you cease to exist till i start again, without god to be thinking about you constantly then 'ole whitebeard' doesnt seem like a bad concept.

Spiro.

---

This scenario is highly unlikely, but just in case... KEEP THINKING!!

Or perhaps you are the Moth, sleeping in the flower, who is dreaming that he is Spirokeat, and dreaming this whole world and its inhabitants who exist only as part of that dream....


As for the omnipotence - there is a cenuries-old paradox coming all the way from the Dark Ages IIRC, about God and the stone. Translating it in the modern Version that I, as software engineer, like more: If the God exist and omnipotent, than can He write chess program AI, which would be so good that it could beat even its creator?

(Obviosly the paradox part is that if He can't, than he is not omnopotenet, and if He can, than he is not omnipotent as well )


Now I am really off to bed.

[ July 29, 2004, 11:55: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[spirokeat]

As for the omnipotence - there is a cenuries-old paradox coming all the way from the Dark Ages IIRC, about God and the stone. Translating it in the modern Version that I, as software engineer, like more: If the God exist and omnipotent, than can He write chess program AI, which would be so good that it could beat even its creator?

(Obviosly the paradox part is that if He can't, than he is not omnopotenet, and if He can, than he is not omnipotent as well )

Cackle, I like that. Im going to attempt to beat my tutor round the head with it.

And sleep tight you guys on the twilight side of the globe, been fun debating stuff all morning.

Spirokeat.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
As for the omnipotence - there is a cenuries-old paradox coming all the way from the Dark Ages IIRC, about God and the stone.

"Could God create a stone so heavy that He could not lift it." is the original paradox.

I have never heard a satisfactory resolution of this paradox by Christian theologians. It's one of those "inconvenient" things they like to sweep under the rug and hope people won't notice.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
You are realy dumb norf. No insult, just frank observation. How about puting your camera 20 feet away? Or 30 feet? That would be enough distance for the standard camera to show you, and several of your very own T34 tanks on top of each other.

Are you really that desperate for fantasy fodder? I mean, now you have an obsession with having a picture of Norfleet for some perverted reason.

After all - a photo does, and proves, nothing. Unless you already know what Norfleet looks like (hint - he probably doesn't look like his avatar), in which case you're more obsessed than even I thought, given that you've managed to hunt down photos of him.

Even with that - photographs are easily doctored. Any idiot (and probably even you) can find a photo of an old tank in a book, the library, or (gasp) the internet, and digitally alter it to put in a acne-covered teenager - oops, that'd be you, I mean, a bearded old coot.

Heck - no need to alter it unless you do have Norfleet's picture on the ceiling above your bed, because he could find a picture of _some_ oldish coot beside an old tank and provide it, and you'd never know the difference.

Flooding perverted idiot.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Arryn:
No, it is a position derived from cold hard logic. The sort of thing you'd get if you fed the facts into an appropriate (and hopefully bug-free) computer program (or a Vulcan from Star Trek) and asked the program for an evaluation and conclusion. There is no credible evidence that thoughts (and thus existence) are independent of the physical human body. Mildly put, it's wishful thinking to believe otherwise. Bluntly put, it's delusional to believe otherwise.

The same program, fed the facts about conservation of energy and entropy, would also conclude that the existance of the universe as observed is either a fundamental impossiblity or of probability 0 in light of those facts. And yet, there is no credible evidence of any of: "conservation of energy is avoidable", "entropy can decrease in a closed system", or "the universe doesn't exist". Pardon me if I don't trust your logic.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Arryn:
If they were suffering from mass delusion, then logically so are all believers today. And if today's believers aren't delusional, then by corollary, neither were the ancient Greeks, and thus modern Judeo-Christian-Islam is wrong and there are many gods.

Could you expound on the specifics of the "logically" you are using? To the best of my knoweledge, two Groups believing opposing things about a single thing necessitates neither both being equally right nor both being equally wrong.

[Soapyfrog]

I snuck into the backwoods of Montana and onto the Norfleet estate, decoying the free roaming attack dogs with pork chops swathed in peanut butter, and, after a long arduous stealthy approach, managed to snap a picture of Norfleet's T34:



Nice ride!!

[ July 29, 2004, 14:12: Message edited by: Soapyfrog ]

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
The same program, fed the facts about conservation of energy and entropy, would also conclude that the existance of the universe as observed is either a fundamental impossiblity or of probability 0 in light of those facts.

You have an unastounding degree of ignorance about physics and cosmology. Get some education before you attempt to argue the topic.

-- Arryn, who majored in astrophysics

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Arryn:
You have an unastounding degree of ignorance about physics and cosmology. Get some education before you attempt to argue the topic.

-- Arryn, who majored in astrophysics

Rather than just giving an insult, could you instead answer a simple question: which resaonably proven theory is it that either permits energy to come from nowhere or permits order in energy to be reclaimed without dumping disorder into other energy?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
which resaonably proven theory is it that either permits energy to come from nowhere or permits order in energy to be reclaimed without dumping disorder into other energy?

Perhaps if you explain what you mean by "energy coming from nowhere", I might understand whether you understand the topic.