Never make the mistake of thinking that because someone is atheist they don’t see, understand and appreciate grandeur. We just see things differently. “Fine tuning” can be applied to any mathematical description of a functioning system.
Regarding a “LibsOfTikTok” link, a commenter states “Darwinism has failed us.”
The escalation in RU vs UA is scary. Darwinism may yet deliver a lesson to those many in West who are not paying attention.
“So is this how WW3 starts? With incompetent people in charge after a stolen election, including multiple high-ranking unqualified affirmative action tokens”
Re: Never make the mistake of thinking that because someone is atheist they don’t see, understand and appreciate grandeur.
Sam Harris would agree with you. But I don’t agree with Sam Harris.
Far lower, [as the question “Is the Universe Religiously Ambiguous?” appears to me highly peculiar, doubtful, poorly formed, deficient in too many ways], is a more suitable question on the order of something like “are not human beings ambiguous concerning final causes?” or some such similar approach.
Inflation up and Stock Market Up. And your kids are not your kids but belong to the Teachers. And if you went to Yale or Harvard and have big loans Biden wants to forgive them. What a Wonderful World we live in.
“And your kids are not your kids but belong to the Teachers…”
Heh, I noticed that, too.
Looks like Raggedy Randi’s at it again…and Mr. Big is piling on…um, that should be, “putting all the prestige of his office behind her”…
These geniuses just do not give up….
And the message remains the same—
“Hey, PARENTS: Your kids are OURS. And you have NO power and NO right to prevent us from f***ing WITH AND f***ing UP YOUR kids. You DOMESTIC TERRORISTS think you can stop us? Just try it…and see where it gets you. But before you even think about it, KNOW that Merrick Garland is ready and waiting….WAITING for you to MAKE HIS DAY….ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…. so go right ahead…”
Sure is one heckuva How-To-Make-Friends-And-Influence-People message!!
With any luck those two will conjure up the same kind of incredible magic that Rascally Randi was able to work during the recent Virginia State elections!!
Telling the truth in any shape or form is now against the law…though it may take a bit of time to “plug” all the loopholes, iron out all the wrinkles, smooth over the kinks….
Yep, “Biden” hath spoken….
(And no doubt the frisson of excitement—and achievement!—can be felt all the way to Beijing…)
The new Ministry of Truth (or disinformation, or whatever they’re calling it) at Homeland Security is almost a Babylon Bee-worthy invention.
I guess when we die we find out for sure if there is a God or not.
Of course, by then it’s too late to have a “do over” of your life.
The French mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal (the guy who first formulated the mathematics of probability, among other things) reckoned you should live your life, a virtuous life, as if God exists.
If you are wrong, that is, God does not exist, all you will lose are certain pleasures, luxuries, excesses etc ., you could have experienced when you were alive.. Essentially, you have lost little when you were alive.
If you live your life assuming God does not exist, and you are wrong about that, you are destined upon death to burn in hell for eternity. The cost of your wrong decision about God’s existence is infinitely high.
This is sort of like buying lottery tickets; the math is pretty straightforward.
The odds of winning are very, very near zero.
So why do folks (like me) buy lottery tickets?
Because the cost of “losing” is very small, that’s why; just buy one less drink at Starbucks each week and you have made up the price of a (1? 2? 3?) lottery tickets.
And yea, if you do win, well, you will be proud of yourself for making such a smart move.
In life there are no solutions; just trade-offs.
What if……….??
After just returning from my usual 9 holes once per week, I’m taking solace in the notion that in the multiverse, my other self had a par on the first hole and not the 8 I actually took.
More seriously. I think the multiverse idea is a bunch of hooey as it not only tries to remove the need to explain the fine tuning, but also avoids explaining how to end the Von Neumann chain in quantum measurement. To me it’s the physicists who wish to stick their head in the sand to avoid thinking about such issues that are the major proponents. But then, like the fellow in the video, I tend more towards the non-materialistic side. I don’t see a Biblical God out there, but there’s more going on than just pure materialism.
And on a completely different topic: Today’s news of the Ministry of Truth and the ownership of children is very upsetting. Just when I think this administration can’t go further into left la-la land, they prove me wrong.
But do you believe in a black hole in one?
I’ve been making an assertion for close to two decades now, that Creationists are making not one but two mistakes:
First, they are attempting to answer a religious question by scientific means, which is abjectly wrong. Science and Religion are tools for two utterly different functional purposes. You are attempting to paint with a monkey wrench. The result is needfully sloppy, poorly constructed, and not actually science. Science is about the testable, the verifiable. God is none of these things. God’s methods are none of these things. Evolution in no regards denies God. It only offers an insight into the techniques God MAY have used to accomplish Creation, IF you presume He exists and was involved. Evolution not only does not deny God, it doesn’t even say it is Right — because clearly, if you consider God, He may have constructed the universe in a flash with all the evidence to support evolution intact — it would merely be a sign of his omnipotence and omniscience that He had done so.
Second, and more critically, to believe in Creationism, you must have a very poor Faith in Him. Yes, I assert that this is so — because, clearly, if He wanted us to KNOW he existed, then He would just open up the skies, stick a Godly hand down, and thwick us across the head, and say “I’m HERE, ya big dummy!”
He does not. Ergo, it is perfectly sensible to assume, then, that He has Bigger Reasons for making the universe as this video suggests: “Religiously Ambiguous”.
He wants us to have Faith In, not Knowledge Of, His existence.
What those reasons are, I have no clue, not even a suggestion, but then, I grasp that He operates on a much higher plane of consciousness than I do. I am less than my pet Dog to Me, to Him. The master runs in a certain direction, jumps off a cliff, well, I, the dog, jump off the cliff with him — the master knows why, I, the dog, have no fucking idea, I just have to have Faith that He does have good reason.
Now, all of this is based on an analysis of what He must be like from a rational perspective, I don’t know any of this, can’t even guess about why, but if follows once you grant him omniscience and omnipotence.
SO: having recognized that He does not want us to Know, to only Have Faith, it seems clearly obvious that He would create an alternative explanation for the universe to not require His existence to be here. That is, the Big Bang, Evolution, etc., may be the means He used to create this place, OR they may just be evidence of an alternative He placed here just to make it impossible to Prove He Exists by examining the universe. You have to assume He’s smart enough to know that WE would attempt to use Science to justify His existence. So He clearly would have foreseen this, and, not wanting us to Know would have inserted evidence to that end — a Reason For How Things Got Here — which did not require His presence to accomplish them.
So Creationists are essentially assuming He isn’t wise enough to manage to deliberately add these things, and they try and use a mental contortion (and yes, that’s what Creationism is, not meaning to insult) to try and prevent the obvious conclusion: This place does not need Him to create it, from the scientific evidence. This is a lack of Faith on their part. Because you are not meant to Know, so that fact of the universe — its “Religious Ambiguity” — is one of His Design Features, not a proof of His Lack of Existence.
And Yes, this can be asserted as mere sophistry, an attempt to retain Faith in the absence of Evidence.
And any such comment is inherently amusing, as Faith is not about Evidence in any regard. It’s an intuition about what one has observed and what what one deduces from that… evidence, in one sense of the word, but not “scientific” evidence by any means.
OBloodyHell,
Some good philosophy there. I think I’m onboard with most of it, but I don’t understand your insistence that God intentionally obfuscates His existence?
I know people who believe He makes Himself present to them often, nearly continuously. I also know people who believe He has made His presence known to them once, or maybe a handful of times in their lives. To those people your statement would make no sense. You may disagree with their perceptions or beliefs, but they would likely insist it is you who is not seeing what is in front of your eyes.
I’m not trying to prove you wrong, or them wrong, I’m just stating there are many people who do not look at the world and think God is concealed.
“… having recognized that He does not want us to Know… “
Many, many religious people believe He emphatically wants us to know and one has to be stubbornly, intentionally obtuse to miss all the signs and manners He employs to make Himself known to His creation.
}}} I guess when we die we find out for sure if there is a God or not.
Of course, by then it’s too late to have a “do over” of your life.
I have always had problems with this. It does not match up with an Omnibenevolent God. So I must assume that He has a bigger, longer plan, and that one life is only a part of His plan for us.
I would speculate, lacking evidence, that perhaps there are only a small number of souls in actual existence, and that each of our souls bounces back and forth between human lives, slowly learning what He wants us to learn.
I know that’s heretical, but it fits a reasonable idea of why He might have put us in this Universe, a place where Entropy and The Prisoner’s Dilemma hold sway, with few tools to use to defend ourselves from the world.
And perhaps it explains the kinship some of us feel towards one another, and towards life on this planet — our souls (though in differing degrees) perhaps are learning compassion and empathy over time, and that reflects in Who We Are, independently of what we’ve experienced.
I mean, some people are born in the lap of luxury, and yet are cruel and heartless.
Others have suffered much, yet still care about others.
How can this be?
Not only does it belie the Leftist notion that our environment excuses our bad behaviors, it also suggests that there is something deeper going on: Why do some people act as though they are the only ones in existence, while others act as though they have Already Been There, so have consideration and compassion?
Yes — utter and complete speculation. No argument. Offered as a possible viewpoint, not an Answer.
}}} The French mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal (the guy who first formulated the mathematics of probability, among other things) reckoned you should live your life, a virtuous life, as if God exists.
“Pascal’s Wager” is the term.
The problem with it is that it is based on a binary assumption where a multifaceted option is more aptly correct.
Suppose Buddha or Confucius was the one who was right? What then?
I still think that it’s an excellent idea, in itself, as it makes the world a better place for your having been here, but it’s not the only answer to life.
OBloodyHell,
To follow up, I found the “God as Santa Claus” perception of a God easier to discard once I became a father. I have a several decades head start on my kids. Watching them grow, in almost every difficulty they’ve faced, I’ve known what they should do. I’m not a genius. Like all parents I simply have a great deal more experience than them. Including making more mistakes.
And, a lot of times I did tell them what to do. Or tried to lead them down the appropriate path. But how to get them to actually do it?
When they were younger there were a few times a few of my kids asked me why I had not “pushed” them more in one area or another. They were convinced they could have achieved more than they currently were if only their father had been more forceful. When they got older I reminded them of those accusations (politely and jovially), and asked them if they still felt that way. They told me they now understand what I did (often by not doing) and that they had to personally develop themselves. Me pushing or forcing or shouting would not have born fruit.
I assure you I exist as a father. I also know there were times my children were certain I did not (or at least was not active enough in their lives). I also know I was intentionally not directing them at those times in order that they could develop and learn to be adults themselves.
If I picked out my kids boyfriends and girlfriends, did their homework for them, took their tests for them, kept them from skateboarding and skinning their knees, provided all their material needs all the time… They would physically grow. But mentally, spiritually… they’d remain undeveloped.
OBloodyHell,
I have come to a similar theory regarding reincarnation and souls as you, pretty much for the same reasons you outline. I also sometimes wonder if souls aren’t sort-of like butterflies. It takes a caterpillar to make a butterfly, but the caterpillar is nothing like the butterfly, nor is the butterfly’s existence anything like the caterpillar’s. Does the caterpillar even perceive the butterfly. The butterfly the caterpillar? They exist on different planes.
Maybe our life here on Earth is our larval or pupal stage? 🙂
P.S., another thing —
There is, I assert, an interesting “proof” of God’s existence, but it’s not really proof, just an interesting anomaly of coincidence, take from it what you may.
One of the darker aspects of this world lies in two things:
A — Entropy: The universe hates order, and seeks to constantly break it down. Chaos rules this place.
Life is order, not chaos. It runs directly contrary to the most fundamental aspect of the universe, generally by trading absolute order for localized order. Life on earth uses the slow death of the sun to create order on its surface, sacrificing the overall order of the energy state of its existing atoms to create higher degrees of order.
So, self-evidently: The Universe absolutely HATES YOU. Not in a conscious, inimical manner, a cold equation-only manner.
Why would a benevolent God create such a place, then stick us in it?
It makes little sense. Not that He needs to explain Himself to me. But it does challenge one’s Faith, no question.
B — The Prisoner’s Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
Basically, in many, if not most, then certainly the majority of individual, instantaneous cases, it pays to rat people out.
That’s a pretty bleak view of the universe.
And again, as with “A”, it’s challenging to one’s Faith. Why would He do such a thing to us?
And here comes the Faith twist, largely based on “B”:
The universe does not operate in an instantaneous manner — it repeats itself, over and over and over.
This gives rise to a more complex analysis of The Prisoner’s Dilemma:
That is, what you do this round affects the behavior of players in the next round. Either directly, if you play against the same people, or by reputation, if playing against new people you have not played against before.
Now, Game Theorists have made serious simulations of this game, using computers to run through hundreds of iterations with many many actors, and using different strategies to work.
First, the Ruthless Strategy — the one that works best in the base game — does not work at all well in the IPD. It is very suboptimal.
Second, the Pacifist Strategy — it’s even worse than the Ruthless Strategy. Any kind of Ruthless Strategy will eat Pacifists alive.
They’ve run many many many different computer simulations, with multiple actors in play, trying different strategies to maximize the “win”.
It seems that the most effective strategy is best described as “Tit for Tat, with occasional forgiveness”.
That is, treat others how they treated you (or others) in the past… but occasionally forgive this, to break endless chains of tit-for-tat from developing from a single error (i.e., something uncommon in the Middle East, where someone kills you because your great grandfather killed their great grandfather.)
So, let me restate this:
Tit-for-Tat: An eye for an eye.
With forgiveness: Turn the other cheek.
😀
Yes, we have only just now, in the last 75-odd years, discovered reasonable, scientific evidence, that a philosophy taught by two rabbis — one three thousand and one two thousand years ago — seems to be the best available philosophy for living in This Place.
That seems… indicative, does it not? At least, possibly…?
No, it’s not proof by any means of His Hand. But it is… interesting. I personally find that it certainly qualifies as “Things that make you go… Hmmmm…“.
And it offers a good reason for Faith in Him in the face of A and B.
And remember, He doesn’t want you to Know, only to have Faith. So that’s the best you are likely to get.
Barry, isn’t that blackhole-in-one the sort where the ball gets stuck so deep that even the score can’t get out?
Rufus: Yes Indeed — and this gets into another aspect of things, my own Take on religion.
I personally don’t believe in the notion of Original Sin.
I have always found it interesting that one of the other names for The Tree In The Garden of Eden was “The Tree of Knowledge of Good And Evil”
That’s another of those… “interesting” things.
Suppose:
The Garden of Eden was no idyllic utopia. It was a place exactly like Earth (in fact, WAS Earth)… and He actually told Adam and Eve that they should not eat from the tree, that “they would surely die”
I cannot believe that He would fail to know — even to expect — us to eat from that tree.
And in that instant, we chose — chose of our own volition — to eat from it, we gained what it said — Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve, and their descendants, would always bear the burden of looking around us and seeing what was a Wrongness — the violence and brutality of This Place.
It was there all along “in the Garden”, but we just did not SEE it, because we lacked that Knowledge.
And thus we were “cast out”, not because we had done anything truly wrong, but we made a choice that had consequences. And we were in the same place, but our perception of it had changed.
I believe He fully expected us to make that choice, and even wanted us to do so (for whatever His Reasons might be), but wasn’t going to force that choice onto us…
Thus, there was no “original sin”, there is only a Burden of Choice. We chose to understand Good and Evil, and thus we have an internal cry for Justice, which is often thwarted in this world. A desire for Good outcomes, when bad ones are easier (see “Entropy”)
Ergo, if there is a Hell, it’s only a way station between the Travails of Life.
It fits that way station, I think. Every time we leave it, we go back in to learn for another cycle.
=======
As a parent, it’s kind of like warning your kids about climbing trees. Yes, you could put a big fence around the trees, so they don’t climb them, but… that’s not really going to teach them anything, and it also limits both their capacity to learn from mistakes (by limiting their ability to make mistakes) and their capacity to learn how to do things they don’t know how to do but are capable of (such as climbing trees with a certain sort of caution that allows them to do it safely).
So you caution them, and do what you can to deal with those consequences.
As a parent, your goal should not be to eliminate or prevent your children from making mistakes. It should be to try and limit the consequences in a manner they are both able to deal with and also able to recover from.
When the child manages to step over a boundary you cannot do that with, your grief for them is compounded by your own sense of failure and your inability to fix things for them.
The child falls out of the tree and breaks their back, so that they are in a wheelchair for life. Falling out of the tree and breaking an arm is painful but educational, and they can learn from it, hopefully with no long term limitations applied to them. But being paralyzed for life is a burden that was never desired, but is always a possibility.
P.S., no, not a parent, unfortunately. But I think I have some feel for proper parenting, despite this. I may easily be wrong, mind you. There is knowing and grokking. I know but don’t grok.
Rufus:
We are all in the caterpillar stage. When that ends, we become butterflies, and stop running through the eternal cycles.
We have no conception of what it’s like to be butterflies.
And yes, that is, by assumption, His goal — to turn caterpillars to butterflies.
😛
}}} So why do folks (like me) buy lottery tickets?
Because the cost of “losing” is very small, that’s why; just buy one less drink at Starbucks each week and you have made up the price of a (1? 2? 3?) lottery tickets.
And yea, if you do win, well, you will be proud of yourself for making such a smart move.
Yes, John, but if you just took that 5 bucks a week and instead deposited it into a savings account (or other, better investments) and aimed to get 5-10% a year (not practical now, of course, but achievable over time as an average) then in 20-30y you WOULD be rich instead of “possibly but improbably” rich.
Therein lies the problem. You eschew the reliable and consistent magic of compound interest in favor of the magic of randomly found unicorn farts.
;-D
OBloody Hell,
I like your Entropy – Prisoner’s Dilemma discourse a lot. Very clever.
Regarding, “Why would a benevolent God create such a place, then stick us in it?”
At least one of my children has thrown the, “I didn’t ask to be born!” line at me when suffering some perceived indignation of human existence they were certain was beneath them.
I also tend towards your reasoning on Original Sin. I’ve held a newborn human in my arms. Sure seemed completely pure and innocent to me. Destined to err and sin? for certain, but at the point of birth? Pure.
}}} Rufus: Some good philosophy there. I think I’m onboard with most of it, but I don’t understand your insistence that God intentionally obfuscates His existence?
I know people who believe He makes Himself present to them often, nearly continuously.
There is Knowledge and there is Faith (ignoring the question: “Do we really know anything?). And there is the distinction I am addressing.
Science is Knowing. The best description I’ve seen for Science is:
A methodology and set of process for reliably assigning a “truth value” to an assertion.
E.g., “We’re pretty sure of ‘y’. We think it is correct that ‘x’, but are less certain. And we really really doubt ‘z’.”
Actual Science (unlike many things calling themselves ‘Science’) is never certain, but it does have a notion of how reliable many things are — and the test is clear: “How well does the magic actually work?” The TVs display pictures, the phones carry voices over thousands of miles, the planes fly, the bridges and buildings remain standing.
Religion is always about Faith — “I believe this, generally for personal reasons and from personal observations. YMMV.” There is no Knowing, in the scientific sense of the word.
Hence my distinction between Religion(Faith) and Science.
Yes, people who have religious Knowing do know, in a sense of the word (danger mainly erupts when they forget the ‘YMMV’ part), but not in the sense I mean it.
God does not want you to Know He Exists, in the sense of Science. He wants to you believe, to have Faith, instead. Arguments to support that already given. As well as reasons why he intentionally does not want us to Know (reasons for those reasons are a mystery, of course, requiring you to understand His Plans, which we are categorically incapable of, at least at this point)
I suppose another way to put it would be “Knowledge via the Senses” vs. “Knowledge via the Heart”, perhaps. The former is Science, the latter is Faith.
}}} More seriously. I think the multiverse idea is a bunch of hooey as it not only tries to remove the need to explain the fine tuning, but also avoids explaining how to end the Von Neumann chain in quantum measurement.
The real problem with this is that there IS direct evidence to support the variable quantum nature of the universe — that is the whole “double slit” experiment problem
(Note: Not recommending the rest of the film, but this part is quite interesting): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-BE8YkNzVg
It is pretty bizarre to find that the universe only “makes choices” when we decide to actually “look closely”. And that this is not only a hypothetical issue (“Schrodinger’s Cat”), but is something you yourself could nominally observe fairly easily.
The multiverse offers an explanation of the quantum realm — we “decide” which branch of the multiverse we are in by choosing what we examine.
Alternatively to the multiverse, there are arguments that this suggests that, instead, we are actually in a simulation — a simulation would behave in much the same way, it would not resolve down to a viewpoint level if no one was viewing… it saves computational time.
=====
Note, immediately above this one:
“…in the sense of Science. He wants to you believe, to have Faith, instead. Arguments to support that already given…”
Missed the end-italics there.
OBloody Hell @3:19,
I won’t argue with your definitions. Useful and well stated.
German has several verbs for “to know.” One is related to an English-is word the Scots still use, “kennen.” German “kennen” translates to English “know,” but it means something more like, “are you familiar with?”
In that sense of the verb, “to know,” I think many people “know” God and “know” He exists.
Put me down with the others who think the multiverse is a bunch of hooey.
Runs into a tyranny of numbers problem relatively quickly.
But it seems very useful as a deus ex machina for lazy screenwriters.
sdferr,
More like golfing at night, on or just before a new moon. (Sort of like night fishing but without any light at all.)
You tee off and the ball screams off your driver. Just tears off it. (Well known that golf balls, like sound, travel farther at night. Not sure of the physics of it, though. Probably has to do with less friction, along with more phlogiston, after dark.)
And you’re absolutely confident that with your heightened sense of awareness (and a day-glow yellow ball) you’ll find it, no matter where it is, no problem.
Except that you don’t.
After several hours of looking in all the traps, checking the woods and scanning the ponds you call it quits. You’re dead tired. And tomorrow is, after all, another day.
After a lousy, restless night–and terribly miffed about your famed sense of intuition (was your wife right after all?)—you get up and resume your search, finally finding it in the last place you expected. The cup.
– – – – – – –
“Religiously Ambiguous”
Didn’t you mean to say, “Religiously ambidextrous”?
As for God not wanting you to know, wouldn’t that depend on the specific religion (i.e., not God, per se, but the particular religion that attempts to understand God)?
After all, some religions DO insist on knowledge, on study, on knowing God’s attributes, on knowing God’s ways, so that they may be imitated, so that God may be truly loved.
To be sure, this might be all a great misunderstanding…and while God may not play dice with the universe, he may well have the last laugh…
It really does pay to drop in here, every day. Thank you, Rufus, thank you, OBloodyHell.
Heh, Barry. Or rather, in light of the gravity in this instance: tee-hee.
I’ve always thought that God doesn’t give us overwhelming proof of His existence in order to give some people an “out.” It’s like plausible deniability – you should have known better, but you didn’t, so we’ll evaluate you based on your lack of knowledge.
Just heard it the other day, in church. “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Barry Meislin
It’s definitely the phlogiston.
Kate,
Yup. The “doubting Thomas*” sermon.
My parish was fortunate to have a Priest from India for several years who taught that the Apostle Thomas had made it to India and he, the Priest, was from the region where he, the Apostle, taught and converted locals. I wasn’t aware there was an Indian Christian tradition over a thousand years old so I did some reading on it. There is some interesting evidence to support the history of Thomas preaching there.
*Of course, you may call him Didymus. 😉
Yes, Rufus T. Firefly, there is indeed a south Indian church dating itself back to apostolic times. I think the tradition of Thomas founding it, and being martyred there, is credible. So also is the traditional founding of the Egyptian church by Mark.
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Never make the mistake of thinking that because someone is atheist they don’t see, understand and appreciate grandeur. We just see things differently. “Fine tuning” can be applied to any mathematical description of a functioning system.
Regarding a “LibsOfTikTok” link, a commenter states “Darwinism has failed us.”
The escalation in RU vs UA is scary. Darwinism may yet deliver a lesson to those many in West who are not paying attention.
“So is this how WW3 starts? With incompetent people in charge after a stolen election, including multiple high-ranking unqualified affirmative action tokens”
Re: Never make the mistake of thinking that because someone is atheist they don’t see, understand and appreciate grandeur.
Sam Harris would agree with you. But I don’t agree with Sam Harris.
Far lower, [as the question “Is the Universe Religiously Ambiguous?” appears to me highly peculiar, doubtful, poorly formed, deficient in too many ways], is a more suitable question on the order of something like “are not human beings ambiguous concerning final causes?” or some such similar approach.
For my own part I think it may be better to begin with “Jerusalem and Athens” ( https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/jerusalem-and-athens-oct-25-and-nov-8-1950/ ) in order to see where we’ve been, thereupon, where that leaves us to begin again. But I dunno whether that approach will suit any majority.
Inflation up and Stock Market Up. And your kids are not your kids but belong to the Teachers. And if you went to Yale or Harvard and have big loans Biden wants to forgive them. What a Wonderful World we live in.
an illustrations of tim blair’s law,
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1519419236422197250
“And your kids are not your kids but belong to the Teachers…”
Heh, I noticed that, too.
Looks like Raggedy Randi’s at it again…and Mr. Big is piling on…um, that should be, “putting all the prestige of his office behind her”…
These geniuses just do not give up….
And the message remains the same—
“Hey, PARENTS: Your kids are OURS. And you have NO power and NO right to prevent us from f***ing WITH AND f***ing UP YOUR kids. You DOMESTIC TERRORISTS think you can stop us? Just try it…and see where it gets you. But before you even think about it, KNOW that Merrick Garland is ready and waiting….WAITING for you to MAKE HIS DAY….ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…. so go right ahead…”
Sure is one heckuva How-To-Make-Friends-And-Influence-People message!!
With any luck those two will conjure up the same kind of incredible magic that Rascally Randi was able to work during the recent Virginia State elections!!
And it’s OFFICIAL.
The Ministry of TRUTH has just been “signed into” existence:
“Biden admin inks worldwide deal to curb online ‘disinformation'”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/326592
Telling the truth in any shape or form is now against the law…though it may take a bit of time to “plug” all the loopholes, iron out all the wrinkles, smooth over the kinks….
Yep, “Biden” hath spoken….
(And no doubt the frisson of excitement—and achievement!—can be felt all the way to Beijing…)
The new Ministry of Truth (or disinformation, or whatever they’re calling it) at Homeland Security is almost a Babylon Bee-worthy invention.
Just a wee little reminder (from Lee Smith) regarding No-Malarkey Joe!
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1519707131188060163?cxt=HHwWhoC90bDlipcqAAAA
…with Hans Mahncke providing some colorful background…
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1519694543754518528?cxt=HHwWgICz-diIhZcqAAAA
– – – – – – –
I guess the big question will be whether John Durham can be accused of spreading “disinformation”…
I guess when we die we find out for sure if there is a God or not.
Of course, by then it’s too late to have a “do over” of your life.
The French mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal (the guy who first formulated the mathematics of probability, among other things) reckoned you should live your life, a virtuous life, as if God exists.
If you are wrong, that is, God does not exist, all you will lose are certain pleasures, luxuries, excesses etc ., you could have experienced when you were alive.. Essentially, you have lost little when you were alive.
If you live your life assuming God does not exist, and you are wrong about that, you are destined upon death to burn in hell for eternity. The cost of your wrong decision about God’s existence is infinitely high.
This is sort of like buying lottery tickets; the math is pretty straightforward.
The odds of winning are very, very near zero.
So why do folks (like me) buy lottery tickets?
Because the cost of “losing” is very small, that’s why; just buy one less drink at Starbucks each week and you have made up the price of a (1? 2? 3?) lottery tickets.
And yea, if you do win, well, you will be proud of yourself for making such a smart move.
In life there are no solutions; just trade-offs.
What if……….??
After just returning from my usual 9 holes once per week, I’m taking solace in the notion that in the multiverse, my other self had a par on the first hole and not the 8 I actually took.
More seriously. I think the multiverse idea is a bunch of hooey as it not only tries to remove the need to explain the fine tuning, but also avoids explaining how to end the Von Neumann chain in quantum measurement. To me it’s the physicists who wish to stick their head in the sand to avoid thinking about such issues that are the major proponents. But then, like the fellow in the video, I tend more towards the non-materialistic side. I don’t see a Biblical God out there, but there’s more going on than just pure materialism.
And on a completely different topic: Today’s news of the Ministry of Truth and the ownership of children is very upsetting. Just when I think this administration can’t go further into left la-la land, they prove me wrong.
But do you believe in a black hole in one?
I’ve been making an assertion for close to two decades now, that Creationists are making not one but two mistakes:
First, they are attempting to answer a religious question by scientific means, which is abjectly wrong. Science and Religion are tools for two utterly different functional purposes. You are attempting to paint with a monkey wrench. The result is needfully sloppy, poorly constructed, and not actually science. Science is about the testable, the verifiable. God is none of these things. God’s methods are none of these things. Evolution in no regards denies God. It only offers an insight into the techniques God MAY have used to accomplish Creation, IF you presume He exists and was involved. Evolution not only does not deny God, it doesn’t even say it is Right — because clearly, if you consider God, He may have constructed the universe in a flash with all the evidence to support evolution intact — it would merely be a sign of his omnipotence and omniscience that He had done so.
Second, and more critically, to believe in Creationism, you must have a very poor Faith in Him. Yes, I assert that this is so — because, clearly, if He wanted us to KNOW he existed, then He would just open up the skies, stick a Godly hand down, and thwick us across the head, and say “I’m HERE, ya big dummy!”
He does not. Ergo, it is perfectly sensible to assume, then, that He has Bigger Reasons for making the universe as this video suggests: “Religiously Ambiguous”.
He wants us to have Faith In, not Knowledge Of, His existence.
What those reasons are, I have no clue, not even a suggestion, but then, I grasp that He operates on a much higher plane of consciousness than I do. I am less than my pet Dog to Me, to Him. The master runs in a certain direction, jumps off a cliff, well, I, the dog, jump off the cliff with him — the master knows why, I, the dog, have no fucking idea, I just have to have Faith that He does have good reason.
Now, all of this is based on an analysis of what He must be like from a rational perspective, I don’t know any of this, can’t even guess about why, but if follows once you grant him omniscience and omnipotence.
SO: having recognized that He does not want us to Know, to only Have Faith, it seems clearly obvious that He would create an alternative explanation for the universe to not require His existence to be here. That is, the Big Bang, Evolution, etc., may be the means He used to create this place, OR they may just be evidence of an alternative He placed here just to make it impossible to Prove He Exists by examining the universe. You have to assume He’s smart enough to know that WE would attempt to use Science to justify His existence. So He clearly would have foreseen this, and, not wanting us to Know would have inserted evidence to that end — a Reason For How Things Got Here — which did not require His presence to accomplish them.
So Creationists are essentially assuming He isn’t wise enough to manage to deliberately add these things, and they try and use a mental contortion (and yes, that’s what Creationism is, not meaning to insult) to try and prevent the obvious conclusion: This place does not need Him to create it, from the scientific evidence. This is a lack of Faith on their part. Because you are not meant to Know, so that fact of the universe — its “Religious Ambiguity” — is one of His Design Features, not a proof of His Lack of Existence.
And Yes, this can be asserted as mere sophistry, an attempt to retain Faith in the absence of Evidence.
And any such comment is inherently amusing, as Faith is not about Evidence in any regard. It’s an intuition about what one has observed and what what one deduces from that… evidence, in one sense of the word, but not “scientific” evidence by any means.
OBloodyHell,
Some good philosophy there. I think I’m onboard with most of it, but I don’t understand your insistence that God intentionally obfuscates His existence?
I know people who believe He makes Himself present to them often, nearly continuously. I also know people who believe He has made His presence known to them once, or maybe a handful of times in their lives. To those people your statement would make no sense. You may disagree with their perceptions or beliefs, but they would likely insist it is you who is not seeing what is in front of your eyes.
I’m not trying to prove you wrong, or them wrong, I’m just stating there are many people who do not look at the world and think God is concealed.
Many, many religious people believe He emphatically wants us to know and one has to be stubbornly, intentionally obtuse to miss all the signs and manners He employs to make Himself known to His creation.
}}} I guess when we die we find out for sure if there is a God or not.
Of course, by then it’s too late to have a “do over” of your life.
I have always had problems with this. It does not match up with an Omnibenevolent God. So I must assume that He has a bigger, longer plan, and that one life is only a part of His plan for us.
I would speculate, lacking evidence, that perhaps there are only a small number of souls in actual existence, and that each of our souls bounces back and forth between human lives, slowly learning what He wants us to learn.
I know that’s heretical, but it fits a reasonable idea of why He might have put us in this Universe, a place where Entropy and The Prisoner’s Dilemma hold sway, with few tools to use to defend ourselves from the world.
And perhaps it explains the kinship some of us feel towards one another, and towards life on this planet — our souls (though in differing degrees) perhaps are learning compassion and empathy over time, and that reflects in Who We Are, independently of what we’ve experienced.
I mean, some people are born in the lap of luxury, and yet are cruel and heartless.
Others have suffered much, yet still care about others.
How can this be?
Not only does it belie the Leftist notion that our environment excuses our bad behaviors, it also suggests that there is something deeper going on: Why do some people act as though they are the only ones in existence, while others act as though they have Already Been There, so have consideration and compassion?
Yes — utter and complete speculation. No argument. Offered as a possible viewpoint, not an Answer.
}}} The French mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal (the guy who first formulated the mathematics of probability, among other things) reckoned you should live your life, a virtuous life, as if God exists.
“Pascal’s Wager” is the term.
The problem with it is that it is based on a binary assumption where a multifaceted option is more aptly correct.
Suppose Buddha or Confucius was the one who was right? What then?
I still think that it’s an excellent idea, in itself, as it makes the world a better place for your having been here, but it’s not the only answer to life.
OBloodyHell,
To follow up, I found the “God as Santa Claus” perception of a God easier to discard once I became a father. I have a several decades head start on my kids. Watching them grow, in almost every difficulty they’ve faced, I’ve known what they should do. I’m not a genius. Like all parents I simply have a great deal more experience than them. Including making more mistakes.
And, a lot of times I did tell them what to do. Or tried to lead them down the appropriate path. But how to get them to actually do it?
When they were younger there were a few times a few of my kids asked me why I had not “pushed” them more in one area or another. They were convinced they could have achieved more than they currently were if only their father had been more forceful. When they got older I reminded them of those accusations (politely and jovially), and asked them if they still felt that way. They told me they now understand what I did (often by not doing) and that they had to personally develop themselves. Me pushing or forcing or shouting would not have born fruit.
I assure you I exist as a father. I also know there were times my children were certain I did not (or at least was not active enough in their lives). I also know I was intentionally not directing them at those times in order that they could develop and learn to be adults themselves.
If I picked out my kids boyfriends and girlfriends, did their homework for them, took their tests for them, kept them from skateboarding and skinning their knees, provided all their material needs all the time… They would physically grow. But mentally, spiritually… they’d remain undeveloped.
OBloodyHell,
I have come to a similar theory regarding reincarnation and souls as you, pretty much for the same reasons you outline. I also sometimes wonder if souls aren’t sort-of like butterflies. It takes a caterpillar to make a butterfly, but the caterpillar is nothing like the butterfly, nor is the butterfly’s existence anything like the caterpillar’s. Does the caterpillar even perceive the butterfly. The butterfly the caterpillar? They exist on different planes.
Maybe our life here on Earth is our larval or pupal stage? 🙂
P.S., another thing —
There is, I assert, an interesting “proof” of God’s existence, but it’s not really proof, just an interesting anomaly of coincidence, take from it what you may.
One of the darker aspects of this world lies in two things:
A — Entropy: The universe hates order, and seeks to constantly break it down. Chaos rules this place.
Life is order, not chaos. It runs directly contrary to the most fundamental aspect of the universe, generally by trading absolute order for localized order. Life on earth uses the slow death of the sun to create order on its surface, sacrificing the overall order of the energy state of its existing atoms to create higher degrees of order.
So, self-evidently: The Universe absolutely HATES YOU. Not in a conscious, inimical manner, a cold equation-only manner.
Why would a benevolent God create such a place, then stick us in it?
It makes little sense. Not that He needs to explain Himself to me. But it does challenge one’s Faith, no question.
B — The Prisoner’s Dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
Basically, in many, if not most, then certainly the majority of individual, instantaneous cases, it pays to rat people out.
That’s a pretty bleak view of the universe.
And again, as with “A”, it’s challenging to one’s Faith. Why would He do such a thing to us?
And here comes the Faith twist, largely based on “B”:
The universe does not operate in an instantaneous manner — it repeats itself, over and over and over.
This gives rise to a more complex analysis of The Prisoner’s Dilemma:
The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/iterated-prisoners-dilemma.asp
That is, what you do this round affects the behavior of players in the next round. Either directly, if you play against the same people, or by reputation, if playing against new people you have not played against before.
Now, Game Theorists have made serious simulations of this game, using computers to run through hundreds of iterations with many many actors, and using different strategies to work.
First, the Ruthless Strategy — the one that works best in the base game — does not work at all well in the IPD. It is very suboptimal.
Second, the Pacifist Strategy — it’s even worse than the Ruthless Strategy. Any kind of Ruthless Strategy will eat Pacifists alive.
They’ve run many many many different computer simulations, with multiple actors in play, trying different strategies to maximize the “win”.
It seems that the most effective strategy is best described as “Tit for Tat, with occasional forgiveness”.
That is, treat others how they treated you (or others) in the past… but occasionally forgive this, to break endless chains of tit-for-tat from developing from a single error (i.e., something uncommon in the Middle East, where someone kills you because your great grandfather killed their great grandfather.)
So, let me restate this:
Tit-for-Tat: An eye for an eye.
With forgiveness: Turn the other cheek.
😀
Yes, we have only just now, in the last 75-odd years, discovered reasonable, scientific evidence, that a philosophy taught by two rabbis — one three thousand and one two thousand years ago — seems to be the best available philosophy for living in This Place.
That seems… indicative, does it not? At least, possibly…?
No, it’s not proof by any means of His Hand. But it is… interesting. I personally find that it certainly qualifies as “Things that make you go… Hmmmm…“.
And it offers a good reason for Faith in Him in the face of A and B.
And remember, He doesn’t want you to Know, only to have Faith. So that’s the best you are likely to get.
Barry, isn’t that blackhole-in-one the sort where the ball gets stuck so deep that even the score can’t get out?
Rufus: Yes Indeed — and this gets into another aspect of things, my own Take on religion.
I personally don’t believe in the notion of Original Sin.
I have always found it interesting that one of the other names for The Tree In The Garden of Eden was “The Tree of Knowledge of Good And Evil”
That’s another of those… “interesting” things.
Suppose:
The Garden of Eden was no idyllic utopia. It was a place exactly like Earth (in fact, WAS Earth)… and He actually told Adam and Eve that they should not eat from the tree, that “they would surely die”
I cannot believe that He would fail to know — even to expect — us to eat from that tree.
And in that instant, we chose — chose of our own volition — to eat from it, we gained what it said — Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve, and their descendants, would always bear the burden of looking around us and seeing what was a Wrongness — the violence and brutality of This Place.
It was there all along “in the Garden”, but we just did not SEE it, because we lacked that Knowledge.
And thus we were “cast out”, not because we had done anything truly wrong, but we made a choice that had consequences. And we were in the same place, but our perception of it had changed.
I believe He fully expected us to make that choice, and even wanted us to do so (for whatever His Reasons might be), but wasn’t going to force that choice onto us…
Thus, there was no “original sin”, there is only a Burden of Choice. We chose to understand Good and Evil, and thus we have an internal cry for Justice, which is often thwarted in this world. A desire for Good outcomes, when bad ones are easier (see “Entropy”)
Ergo, if there is a Hell, it’s only a way station between the Travails of Life.
I love The Great Divorce, by C.S.Lewis
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-great-divorce/summary
It fits that way station, I think. Every time we leave it, we go back in to learn for another cycle.
=======
As a parent, it’s kind of like warning your kids about climbing trees. Yes, you could put a big fence around the trees, so they don’t climb them, but… that’s not really going to teach them anything, and it also limits both their capacity to learn from mistakes (by limiting their ability to make mistakes) and their capacity to learn how to do things they don’t know how to do but are capable of (such as climbing trees with a certain sort of caution that allows them to do it safely).
So you caution them, and do what you can to deal with those consequences.
As a parent, your goal should not be to eliminate or prevent your children from making mistakes. It should be to try and limit the consequences in a manner they are both able to deal with and also able to recover from.
When the child manages to step over a boundary you cannot do that with, your grief for them is compounded by your own sense of failure and your inability to fix things for them.
The child falls out of the tree and breaks their back, so that they are in a wheelchair for life. Falling out of the tree and breaking an arm is painful but educational, and they can learn from it, hopefully with no long term limitations applied to them. But being paralyzed for life is a burden that was never desired, but is always a possibility.
P.S., no, not a parent, unfortunately. But I think I have some feel for proper parenting, despite this. I may easily be wrong, mind you. There is knowing and grokking. I know but don’t grok.
Rufus:
We are all in the caterpillar stage. When that ends, we become butterflies, and stop running through the eternal cycles.
We have no conception of what it’s like to be butterflies.
And yes, that is, by assumption, His goal — to turn caterpillars to butterflies.
😛
}}} So why do folks (like me) buy lottery tickets?
Because the cost of “losing” is very small, that’s why; just buy one less drink at Starbucks each week and you have made up the price of a (1? 2? 3?) lottery tickets.
And yea, if you do win, well, you will be proud of yourself for making such a smart move.
Yes, John, but if you just took that 5 bucks a week and instead deposited it into a savings account (or other, better investments) and aimed to get 5-10% a year (not practical now, of course, but achievable over time as an average) then in 20-30y you WOULD be rich instead of “possibly but improbably” rich.
Therein lies the problem. You eschew the reliable and consistent magic of compound interest in favor of the magic of randomly found unicorn farts.
;-D
OBloody Hell,
I like your Entropy – Prisoner’s Dilemma discourse a lot. Very clever.
Regarding, “Why would a benevolent God create such a place, then stick us in it?”
At least one of my children has thrown the, “I didn’t ask to be born!” line at me when suffering some perceived indignation of human existence they were certain was beneath them.
I also tend towards your reasoning on Original Sin. I’ve held a newborn human in my arms. Sure seemed completely pure and innocent to me. Destined to err and sin? for certain, but at the point of birth? Pure.
}}} Rufus: Some good philosophy there. I think I’m onboard with most of it, but I don’t understand your insistence that God intentionally obfuscates His existence?
I know people who believe He makes Himself present to them often, nearly continuously.
There is Knowledge and there is Faith (ignoring the question: “Do we really know anything?). And there is the distinction I am addressing.
Science is Knowing. The best description I’ve seen for Science is:
A methodology and set of process for reliably assigning a “truth value” to an assertion.
E.g., “We’re pretty sure of ‘y’. We think it is correct that ‘x’, but are less certain. And we really really doubt ‘z’.”
Actual Science (unlike many things calling themselves ‘Science’) is never certain, but it does have a notion of how reliable many things are — and the test is clear: “How well does the magic actually work?” The TVs display pictures, the phones carry voices over thousands of miles, the planes fly, the bridges and buildings remain standing.
Religion is always about Faith — “I believe this, generally for personal reasons and from personal observations. YMMV.” There is no Knowing, in the scientific sense of the word.
Hence my distinction between Religion(Faith) and Science.
Yes, people who have religious Knowing do know, in a sense of the word (danger mainly erupts when they forget the ‘YMMV’ part), but not in the sense I mean it.
God does not want you to Know He Exists, in the sense of Science. He wants to you believe, to have Faith, instead. Arguments to support that already given. As well as reasons why he intentionally does not want us to Know (reasons for those reasons are a mystery, of course, requiring you to understand His Plans, which we are categorically incapable of, at least at this point)
I suppose another way to put it would be “Knowledge via the Senses” vs. “Knowledge via the Heart”, perhaps. The former is Science, the latter is Faith.
}}} More seriously. I think the multiverse idea is a bunch of hooey as it not only tries to remove the need to explain the fine tuning, but also avoids explaining how to end the Von Neumann chain in quantum measurement.
The real problem with this is that there IS direct evidence to support the variable quantum nature of the universe — that is the whole “double slit” experiment problem
(Note: Not recommending the rest of the film, but this part is quite interesting):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-BE8YkNzVg
It is pretty bizarre to find that the universe only “makes choices” when we decide to actually “look closely”. And that this is not only a hypothetical issue (“Schrodinger’s Cat”), but is something you yourself could nominally observe fairly easily.
The multiverse offers an explanation of the quantum realm — we “decide” which branch of the multiverse we are in by choosing what we examine.
Alternatively to the multiverse, there are arguments that this suggests that, instead, we are actually in a simulation — a simulation would behave in much the same way, it would not resolve down to a viewpoint level if no one was viewing… it saves computational time.
=====
Note, immediately above this one:
“…in the sense of Science. He wants to you believe, to have Faith, instead. Arguments to support that already given…”
Missed the end-italics there.
OBloody Hell @3:19,
I won’t argue with your definitions. Useful and well stated.
German has several verbs for “to know.” One is related to an English-is word the Scots still use, “kennen.” German “kennen” translates to English “know,” but it means something more like, “are you familiar with?”
In that sense of the verb, “to know,” I think many people “know” God and “know” He exists.
Put me down with the others who think the multiverse is a bunch of hooey.
Runs into a tyranny of numbers problem relatively quickly.
But it seems very useful as a deus ex machina for lazy screenwriters.
sdferr,
More like golfing at night, on or just before a new moon. (Sort of like night fishing but without any light at all.)
You tee off and the ball screams off your driver. Just tears off it. (Well known that golf balls, like sound, travel farther at night. Not sure of the physics of it, though. Probably has to do with less friction, along with more phlogiston, after dark.)
And you’re absolutely confident that with your heightened sense of awareness (and a day-glow yellow ball) you’ll find it, no matter where it is, no problem.
Except that you don’t.
After several hours of looking in all the traps, checking the woods and scanning the ponds you call it quits. You’re dead tired. And tomorrow is, after all, another day.
After a lousy, restless night–and terribly miffed about your famed sense of intuition (was your wife right after all?)—you get up and resume your search, finally finding it in the last place you expected. The cup.
– – – – – – –
“Religiously Ambiguous”
Didn’t you mean to say, “Religiously ambidextrous”?
As for God not wanting you to know, wouldn’t that depend on the specific religion (i.e., not God, per se, but the particular religion that attempts to understand God)?
After all, some religions DO insist on knowledge, on study, on knowing God’s attributes, on knowing God’s ways, so that they may be imitated, so that God may be truly loved.
To be sure, this might be all a great misunderstanding…and while God may not play dice with the universe, he may well have the last laugh…
It really does pay to drop in here, every day. Thank you, Rufus, thank you, OBloodyHell.
Heh, Barry. Or rather, in light of the gravity in this instance: tee-hee.
In a huge blow to Democrats’ prospects in the House of Representatives, the highest court in New York State threw out the congressional redistricting map adopted by that state’s Legislature.
Hope lives.
I’ve always thought that God doesn’t give us overwhelming proof of His existence in order to give some people an “out.” It’s like plausible deniability – you should have known better, but you didn’t, so we’ll evaluate you based on your lack of knowledge.
Just heard it the other day, in church. “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Barry Meislin
It’s definitely the phlogiston.
Kate,
Yup. The “doubting Thomas*” sermon.
My parish was fortunate to have a Priest from India for several years who taught that the Apostle Thomas had made it to India and he, the Priest, was from the region where he, the Apostle, taught and converted locals. I wasn’t aware there was an Indian Christian tradition over a thousand years old so I did some reading on it. There is some interesting evidence to support the history of Thomas preaching there.
*Of course, you may call him Didymus. 😉
Yes, Rufus T. Firefly, there is indeed a south Indian church dating itself back to apostolic times. I think the tradition of Thomas founding it, and being martyred there, is credible. So also is the traditional founding of the Egyptian church by Mark.