01-01-2006, 10:09 PM
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#16
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Guest
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Quote:
psyadam wrote
I am a professional programmer who happens to specialize in ai. I am currently writing the simplist form of a neural network that will learn how to recognize letters. It's somewhat interesting. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
edit: as a response to the rest of your post about free will I am not quite sure what point you were trying to make. Perhaps you could clear that up for me?
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Sure. Think about it. When we make an action, it appears to be free will. However, If you were to know what you were going to do in the future, then you could decide to fulfill the future or wage against it. If you know the future, then act against it, then you have free will, because you go against what time meant to happen. Anyway, how goes the work? It is possible to set up a neural interface on a program? Awesome, hopefully we will get somewhere in the future with that type of technology.
Also, Shadow wolf,
Since god knows the future and what we will do, we cannot will against it. Therefore, we have no free will. If we did have free will, we could go against what god wills us to do.
In other words, let me use simple knowledge statements to clarify:
If god knows what we will do in the future, and we cannot defy that future, then GOD has established our will, NOT US.
If god does not know what we will do in the future, then he is not omniscient.
Obviously, since god establishes our will, then he is the one who makes us defy him. Therefore, he is not all-good as he makes us to defy him.
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01-01-2006, 10:36 PM
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#17
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Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 835
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Quote:
brad89 wrote
Anyway, how goes the work? It is possible to set up a neural interface on a program?
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Yep, it's not as complex as you might think. You just start out with random weights and you feed the network "training data" and it adjusts the weights and in this way it "learns".
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01-01-2006, 11:24 PM
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#18
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Guest
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That is awesome! Maybe that can clear up my questions about cell intelligence and evolution!
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01-02-2006, 07:18 AM
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#19
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Guest
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Quote:
ShadowWolf1
ArchyDeluxe, God is like an adopted parent to those that accept Him, to those that don't accept Him He is not their Father. How is nonexistence blissful? How can you be put back into nonexistence, is it a place? If it were a place then it would exist. And why wouldn't anyone want to love the Lord anyways?
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Are you trying to say that you would much rather burn for eternity than not exist at all? That's why I say nonexistence is blissful. And secondly, why do you ask "How can you be put back into nonexistence, is it a place?" Don't you think that god can do ANYTHING? Surely eliminating someone from existence shouldn't be a problem for him - especially since he was able to get them from nonexistence in the first place. So why do you ask "how"? If god was real, shouldn't he be able to do ANYTHING?
And lastly, why is he even creating souls that he knows will burn? He knows EVERYTHING including where you'll go even before you're born but for some strange reason god still lets hellbound people enter into life. Why? It's not like he's giving them a chance. What chance do they have when he ALREADY knows that they're not going to make it into heaven?
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01-02-2006, 09:49 AM
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#20
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Obsessed Member
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Inklandia
Posts: 3,389
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Quote:
Oz wrote
The act of eating a fruit, by itself, does not make the entire world turn to crap.
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It can give you the runs, though.
Maybe this was an especially runny piece of fruit Adam and Eve ate.
If religion were based on facts, it would be called science, and no one would believe it. -- Stephen Colbert
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01-02-2006, 10:48 AM
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#21
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Guest
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Hello sirs.
Oz, I have had a discussion about Adam, Eve, and the fruit before and I think I can answer all of your questions. It must have been in God's plan for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit. It seems to be the only reasonable answer I can think of right now. Whether this makes God good or evil isn't possible for us to know, because the implications of it is th entire history of man.
"God has no rational reason to respect our free will", love?
What problem do you have with Jesus? He leaves the ninty and nine to find the one that is lost because the lost one needs Him more than the ninty and nine.
He told them not to eat of the fruit or they would die, they ate from it and they died. Was God suppose to lie and keep them alive anyways?
ArchyDeluxe, read Romans 9.
Good day sirs.
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01-02-2006, 12:40 PM
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#22
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Guest
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Quote:
ShadowWolf1 wrote
Hello sirs.
Oz, I have had a discussion about Adam, Eve, and the fruit before and I think I can answer all of your questions. It must have been in God's plan for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit. It seems to be the only reasonable answer I can think of right now. Whether this makes God good or evil isn't possible for us to know, because the implications of it is th entire history of man.
"God has no rational reason to respect our free will", love?
What problem do you have with Jesus? He leaves the ninty and nine to find the one that is lost because the lost one needs Him more than the ninty and nine.
He told them not to eat of the fruit or they would die, they ate from it and they died. Was God suppose to lie and keep them alive anyways?
ArchyDeluxe, read Romans 9.
Good day sirs.
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A few points:
1. If it was part of God's plan to begin with, how could God call it sin? It would also mean that God's plan was for us to die. This strikes me as somewhat inefficient. Why not make it that way in the first place? Also, they didn't die when they ate from it. They lived for another nine hundred years (at least!) after.
2. My point about Jesus is that he's clearly failing as a good shepherd. Christianity is a minority worldwide. He doesn't have to abandon the ninety-nine to save the one; he has to be abandoning the thirty or forty to save the sixty or seventy! Have you ever seen the Far Side cartoon where God is on a quiz show? In the scene, God has answered every question right and is beating his opponent 900 to nothing. God should be able to bat a thousand with us. He has a virtually infinite selection of ways to save us, not least of which is to not condemn (note: this does not mean nobody deserves punishment!) anyone after death. However, he doesn't even seem to be able to save all of his professed followers. Just ask Jack Chick what he thinks about Catholics. Observe that Catholics pray for their wayward brothers in other sects. Ask a Jehovah's Witness how many people will be saved. Ask a Calvinist if we even have any say in the matter. An omnipotent savior should be able to set everyone on the right path.
3. Is it love to let someone hurt himself without knowing what he is doing? Would you let your mentally ill friend kill himself in order to respect his free will? According to Christian doctrine, we are all born inherently depraved, tainted with Original Sin. Most say this means we cannot help but sin. At the very least, we are dangerous to ourselves. It could be argued that people like us are dangerous to Christians, at least spiritually (assuming you're right). If some of the sheep in your flock started eating other sheep, wouldn't you have to do something? We aren't expected to respect the free will of criminals, why do we accept that God does?
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01-02-2006, 04:52 PM
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#23
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Guest
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Oz:
"If it was part of God's plan to begin with, how could God call it sin?"
ee: One of my main points in one line, thanks.
Oz:
“An omnipotent savior should be able to set everyone on the right path.”
ee: Second.
ee
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01-02-2006, 05:05 PM
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#24
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Guest
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Did you even hear me, Shadow? I said we don't have a free will, therefore GOD SETS OUR DESTINY AND WE CANNOT DEFY IT!!! He is the one who makes us burn in hell, not us, because, as I have said, we do not have a free will, it only seems like we do. If we had a free will, then god cannot be omniscient, because if we can choose what we do, god cannot know what we will choose. TIME IS WRITTEN IN STONE, THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
Clear enough?
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01-02-2006, 05:15 PM
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#25
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Guest
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Quote:
evident_enigma wrote
Oz:
"If it was part of God's plan to begin with, how could God call it sin?"
ee: One of my main points in one line, thanks.
Oz:
“An omnipotent savior should be able to set everyone on the right path.”
ee: Second.
ee
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My pleasure.
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01-02-2006, 07:20 PM
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#26
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Guest
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Quote:
brad89 wrote
Did you even hear me, Shadow? I said we don't have a free will, therefore GOD SETS OUR DESTINY AND WE CANNOT DEFY IT!!! He is the one who makes us burn in hell, not us, because, as I have said, we do not have a free will, it only seems like we do. If we had a free will, then god cannot be omniscient, because if we can choose what we do, god cannot know what we will choose. TIME IS WRITTEN IN STONE, THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
Clear enough?
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ShadowWolf1 is lost in christian psychosis. I bet if he was born in the middle east, he would be arguing that Allah is the true god. He has no idea that he believes what he does because society molded his mind for it. All he'll ever do is quote the bible instead of think for himself because that's what it takes to get to heaven. I mean... why would god want him to actually think?
All though, it's kind of funny because he wastes more thought trying to make sense of the bible than he would by just accepting the truth - there is no god. Simple and direct.
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01-03-2006, 04:41 AM
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#27
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Guest
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Happy New Year Oz. Hope you don't mind me joining the thread late.
Quote:
Oz wrote
Christians commonly say that the reason God does not make his existence more clear is that doing so would override our free will. Never mind the fact that the Bible itself speaks of times when God revealed himself directly to humans so often that it was an everyday experience. "God told me to do this" would have been met with "Oh, well, better do it, then," rather than "Of course he did, dear, now hold still for the nice men in white." So this really doesn't make much sense.
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You're right that Christians commonly do say that God is sort of hiding to make the test a little harder, but I'm not sure it's a good representation of Christian theology. After all the bible says that there is adequate evidence of God for all people so that none have an excuse in His eyes for not recognising His existence (paraphrase of Romans).
I don't accept that in Bible times that God revealing himself directly was an everyday experience. After all the Bible is a collection of stories over three thousand years, so the actual rate of appearance is pretty low, and then only to a selected few. In fact, the old testament talks about how only the priests could witness God, and then only one of them, once a year. The NT describes how Jesus left the gift of the Spirit for all people, thus making the rate of direct experience of God increase in modern times, not decrease, according to Christians.
Quote:
Oz wrote
Free will is also cited to explain the existence of suffering and evil in the world. While this certainly explains the man-made sort (murder, robbery, etc), it says nothing about lightning strikes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, etc. In fact, some apologists have gone so far as to say that such natural disasters are the way God shows his love for us; he provides them as ways for us to improve somehow.
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Is life on earth possible without a dynamic planet ? I read that without a moving crust that the earth would be eroded away and covered in water, and that the nutrients that rise from the crust are essential to agriculture, and that the heat of the core provided essential heat to start life. Perhaps that dynamic planet that we live on, with it's capacity for harming humans, is essential for an environment in which we can live. That is, that the planet is the "most good" planet that can exist and support us.
As well as this the effect of human moral choices does also create natural disasters or amplify them. After all, everybody who lives in California knows that they live on a fault line but make a decision that to live there with the risk of death by earthquake is preferable to living elsewhere. And are you sure that the effects of human industrialisation isn't increasing the rate of hurricanes to hit the southern coast of the US ?
Quote:
Oz wrote
One analogy I read is that we're like animals caught in traps. A passerby (God) takes pity on us and tries to help, but we (being stupid animals) don't understand and lash out at God out of fear. The bottom line is that we're like children that will never grow up; God can't reason with us because we can't understand real reason. (Curiously, this seems to be another thing God can't do.)
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I don't like this analogy much. I do think that human reason is limited. This seems obvious even if you don't believe that God exists. It is highly probable that there are concepts that the human brain can never grasp due to the structure of the brain.
Quote:
Oz wrote
So, we're children. Our guardian, when he interacts with us at all, beats us and makes us take foul-tasting medicine without ever telling us why. When he's not around, he leaves sharp knives and loaded guns within reach for us to play with, then blames us when we hurt ourselves (sin). In fact, he watches us hurt ourselves and doesn't interfere, even though we don't know what's happening. But it's worse than that. God supposedly left the world to Satan, so it's like he hired a child molester to babysit us. Then when we've had enough, we go to Hell.
A rational adult doesn't respect the free will of a child because the child doesn't know any better. We don't let children play with loaded guns because they are likely to hurt themselves or others. So why does God respect our free will? The answer is that he's not a good guardian. A better answer is that he doesn't exist as described.
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Now you're starting to lose me. I don't accept your initial premises, as I wrote above, but even if I did I don't see how this follows from your original points. Why don't we start with seeing if we can agree on your premises and then come back to your conclusions ?
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01-03-2006, 07:26 AM
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#28
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Guest
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Let me ask again: why are you debating presumed truths in a work of fiction?
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01-03-2006, 07:32 AM
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#29
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Guest
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Quote:
CSense wrote
Let me ask again: why are you debating presumed truths in a work of fiction?
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Well, I think Oz is making an argument aimed at showing that the Christian beliefs, even if true, are incoherent. I'm responding to that by trying to help refine his/her understanding of what the Christian beliefs are, to show that they are at least coherent.
Even if they are coherent, they are not necessarily true, as you so kindly point out. But that seems to be a different topic. I assume that by a "work of fiction" you mean the Bible. Are you claiming that everything in the Bible is a work of fiction ?
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01-03-2006, 07:34 AM
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#30
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Guest
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Quote:
thomas wrote
Is life on earth possible without a dynamic planet ? I read that without a moving crust that the earth would be eroded away and covered in water, and that the nutrients that rise from the crust are essential to agriculture, and that the heat of the core provided essential heat to start life. Perhaps that dynamic planet that we live on, with it's capacity for harming humans, is essential for an environment in which we can live. That is, that the planet is the "most good" planet that can exist and support us.
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So god could not have created a non-dynamic planet with humans on it? What created such a limitation on god?
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