unreality

instead, how about we reveal the subjectiveness and ambiguity behind the childish concepts of good and evil

I was raised semi-religious, loosely. I was baptized at a young age, probably at the request of my grandparents through my mom. My dad is more of an independent freethinker and isn't very religious. So my upbringing wasn't very extreme either way. From an earlier age, though, I realized that I thought most of religion was bullsh*t. I didn't know why I thought that, I just had a lingering sensation that everything we were told in church was a bunch of BS. My dad dressed up and went to church too of course but it wasn't until much more recently that I figured he must've had an impact early in my life allowing me to think rationally, which in due time led me to casting off religion's net over every aspect of our lives. In the past 3-4ish years or so (I am 16, nearly 17), my own knowledge about the world and philosophy in general has increased exponentially, and for me, one of the biggest aspects in my realization that the majority of religion is bull, is in comparison with other religions. This is embodied in a few distinct points: (1) sociogeographical location - where you are born and what family you are born into (not suggesting that "you" exists externally to that, since "you" is the person born to that family no matter what, but you know what I mean) determines your religion. If you were born in Indonesia, chances are you'd be a Muslim, and "know" that this is correct. More weighty, if you were born in Greece a few thousand years ago, you would sacrifice a sheep every year for Zeus (2) difference in religions - what are the actual differences in religions? The answer is, not much. Why is a specific religion better than any other? Most of it is unfounded myths, metaphorical morals, and other stories, questionable ethics, dated lessons, fear-inducing passages and memetic engineering - stuff that you can only take on faith AFTER you're already indoctrinated to the religion. If you haven't been persuaded into the religion by other means yet, the stories are quite clearly BS. And they're all the same, all religions, at the core. So which one is correct? Combined with (1), this is a staggering point... sure you were born into one religion maybe, but what makes it externally better than the others? Do you feel strongly about it?.... just like you would feel strongly about that "other" religion you might have been alternately born into! The truth of the matter is, you don't join a religion because of the stories in its holy book, or any other similar reason. You join because you were indoctrinated as a young child or in your search of meaning you hastily concluded religion, and probably went for the nearest or most popular one. So, again, how can one religion be better than another? (3) temporal difference - in Humanities, our class has a good time laughing at Greek mythology. Hahaha, all the funny stories and ridiculous myths! The kinds of things that they believed in back then!!! Hahahaa!!! I'm laughing most of all, but for a different reason... they'll be laughing at Christianity a few thousand years from now, assuming we're still around by then ;D So the above may have sounded confrontational to the religious reader, but these 3 combined were my main, original reason for discarding religion once and for all. Sure, since then I have found other reasons (many reasons, actually) to continue along the path of freethinking, rationality and openness (not necessarily always leading to atheism, I am a floater in mind, and recently a sort of "agnosticism" has been more of my thoughts) and denounce the truth value of religion. So, again, this is no argument against "You", rather the "you" in the above 3 was me, since this is just a recounting of a personal journey, a personal story about why I am no longer dragged down by the chains of religious indoctrination (not that they were ever very strong in the first place... I think my dad is to thank for that but I'm not sure, I was young). I am not encouraging anyone to follow the above line of thinking, but rather I'm presenting my own personal viewpoint on some issues. Hopefully someone will learn from it. The questions are more or less rhetorical, but feel free to get all defensive and answer them explaining why your religion is better. I don't care and I won't check this topic anymore probably - my intent is not to debate. Oh I've done lots of debating, and after recent careful deliberation about the act of debate itself, I've included that the path to truth, openmindedness, etc... the path to conversion and rethinking of thoughts... is not through debate. Unfortunately the route is slower and more winded... silly of us to think that something so simple as heated debate would do the trick Anyway, this IS leading somewhere. I just want to say: no matter how you were raised, question your own philosophical beliefs. It's not a bad thing, it's not a weakness... it's surprising to see how little an overall philosophical standpoint affects your actual day-to-day life (until certain large decision points and things, involving churches, colleges, whatever), so it's not a bad thing to change your mindset a little and cast off previously held assumptions. I do it all the time and learn something from it every time, it's very refreshing. Try to think of the REAL reasons why you think the way you do, not just bs arguments you're coming up with. Go to the source

I like octopuppy's idea of absorption of pagan festivals as previously successful religions have done. I say we incorporate Oktoberfest as Octoberfest, patron holiday of Lord Oct. We could also invent a few good religious holidays to attract followers. For example, Free Pizza Day, as decreed by the Cobbler Pizzaro in 1127 BB (Before Barak)

can you have two half-gifts? What kind of denominations do these gifts come in?

yeah I was just saying that I think the "you" does exist, as a sort of organic computer, built upon deterministic/probabilitistic atoms, but also obviously order out of the chaos. The term "free will" is a bit misleading, I believe we are all part of the universe, but as I explained in another thread we're sort of built on the lower levels and have become a complex "you" that does make decisions in its own context, regardless of the base rules of physics. Anyway this is off topic, let's get back hehe, yes! And I won't have to incite a holy war I agree. For my Philosophy (there seems to be two separate ideas running parallel), I think the basic idea should be the same, and not multiple denominations, but rather multiple sects of government that are vying for control. The overall Philosophy is how I originally outlined & edited it, but only the factions of government "evolve" memetically... ie, each sect controls a bit of the government, and "survival" is determined by voting or subscription or something... idk Yeah for sure - it's an interesting idea though edit: hahahaha Nice. A firsthand account of the Great Memetic Obama Prophecy ;D

octopuppy, I think there may be a slight flaw in your line of thinking regarding free will, choice and responsibility. You still seem to be thinking out-of-the-system from a "soulistic" point of view, in which case your conclusions are correct. But again that's from a "soulistic" point of view. If you think about it on the naturalistic side (the side you and I vouch as correct), in which NOTHING is out of the system, then you realize that your brain does indeed make choices and decisions. From a soulistic POV, you say "oh but that's your BRAIN... that's not YOU"... but (naturalistically speaking) your brain IS you. Your brain - you - is making those decisions. Based on input, yes of course. Every decision is made based on input. It goes on, whiiiiirrr, comes back out. Your brain is making choices - and you are your brain, so you are making choices. Maybe even subconsciously most of the time, which is pretty cool. But on a soulistic POV, you say "well so what, there's nothing FREE about it" but a naturalistic POV would say "sure if you look at it from out of the system, as a soulistic POV does". Inside the system - inside the natural universe - it is free. The brain (you) is(are) making those decisions that's the best way I can think of explaining it, I'm having trouble putting this into words. About responsibility, I think what happened in the past doesn't matter as much as what happens in the future, but the past can help us predict the future, and therefore the past is important. Should a proven serial killer go to jail? Yes because we know s/he's likely to kill again. Again I think you are thinking "soulistically" about the responsibility issue... sure you may not have "out-of-system freedom" regarding your choices, but your brain-computing-organic-machine made those decisions and thus IS responsible for them, from an in-the-system view. Idk I can't really put this in/out of the system thing into words lol edit: also this is kind of unrelated but I think some interesting/unexplainable/etc stuff happens when something refers to itself "within the system", maybe that's "the way out", who knows

I think the point of his replies to my ideas were that they weren't delusional enough, ie, they were too realistic. And that's what I was going for... a beneficial religion. Some of my previous post was about how the niche of massive religion can be filled (which is what we're trying to do) with a grand Philosophy that's not as hokey pokey as religion that one, though justified with the last one. The last one is just a metalevel example of the bolded blue one, if you think about it, though the big blue one is the key core of our karma philosophy pretty much... the universe's tendency to disorder (entropy) while at the same time maintaining perfect balance I agree with that idea if you're going with a more delusional religion (as octopuppy was outlining)... except where did the absolute tyranny come from lol? Why monitor the meditators? wow! Your side note opened up a huge deal... WHAT IF the ideas of Christianity were logical enough to our current knowledge at the time. Spirits and stuff didn't really interfere much with scientific knowledge because there wasn't any scientific knowledge, at least not in that part of the world at that time, and all of it that there was (except for some Greek stuff) was more practical. What I'm going for is, what if, in our design of a religion today that "doesn't conflict", what if, while it's being followed a couple thousand years from now (saying it lasts that long), and science has discovered new things, and our religion/metaphilosopy is now in the way of science/progress/etc? Dun dun dun! Making the religion evolvable seems more important now. It needs to be able to flow and change with other philosophies and science, so that in all times it's optimal you're right... for the Philosophy i hadn't yet made anything (we'll call the collection of my ideas - entwined "paths", no afterlife, etc - the Philosophy, and octopuppy's the Uberfaith to be official ;D) involving the leadership, but you're right that's an important question. The government would have to: * adapt and change "the rules" (like the website octopuppy mentioned... building on this I think there should NOT be a "bible" or "master book" of any sort, but maybe pamphlets and websites and instructors explaining and spreading the concepts, but never a central object of dogma that cannot change as much) * manage the funds to keep the Philosophy going and to support various venues (such as research institutions, schools, whatever) * work on converting more people from their religions into the Philosophy * keep the original spirit of us, the original creators, which involves: ** no religious fighting ** no silly or harmful delusions ** no major invasion in people's schedules ** adaptable ** fill the religious niche with something benign and helpful ** support science, the arts and education there's probably more, so we should add to the list before deciding on how such a government should work [edit - typo]

i'm saying that a "social philosophy" as you called it, or "collective philosophy" or whatever (as I was putting forth in previous posts) is IMO sufficient to replace religion and fill the religious niche in society. I think any grand philosophy will do, with religions being a subset of grand philosophies (maybe called religion if there's delusion involved) yes - I think with enough time for the Philosophy to spread, that's enough and no afterlife needed. Of course if we DO need an afterlife it better be like the Pastafarian one with a beer volcano and stripper factory ;D I think everyone has a different religious drive, but they probably are parts of these: * brought up that way * purpose * redemption, payback, attempt at justice, atonement for bad things they've done, etc * probably some more... anyway a big thing is the justice... people want to feel like there's a Big Brother looking out for them, punishing bad people, etc. We'll have a karma-like concept that addresses this with no need for superhuman entities/judges, nor a need for a "split afterlife" (should have no afterlife at all, as I've said and stick by). The Karma path, of course, focuses mostly on this karma-like aspect of the Philosophy yes, when a mind evolves to a certain point, it develops a sort of higher-symbol-level connection to the Essence and we can channel the power of our will lol

Yeah I was thinking, for the paths, something like "Nature" (connecting with nature, the universe, the Earth, etc), "Science" (discovering truth and furthering our knowledge of the world around us), "Karma" (doing good to others and investing into the cycle of life and deed), "Mind and Machine" (cognitive and computer sciences, and philosophy), "Humanism" (advancing humanity, its balance with the rest of life, its balance with the rest of the universe, its discover of external intelligence, and its general progress toward a better future humanity), etc Clearly your own path in this would be something like the Science and Humanism paths, but NONE of the paths would be esteemed as "greater" than the others. For the ultimate experience of the Religion and its Philosophy, each person follows their own worldview along an entwined braide of the paths. Obviously for you, you hold the Science in highest regard but someone else may be really into the Karma path with a little bit of Mind+Machine, etc. It's kind of a personal journey relating to your personality, genetics, interests, influences, ideas, etc. I disagree here. If you see my 'About Me', this is the afterlife, in a way. and the beforelife, and the middle life, and every other life. This is Life. There is no life after Life, it's here in our universe. If something else exists on some other plane, it's certainly not Life like we have it here in our universe. This is one of those things that starts to disagree scientifically, ie, with studies on the way the brain functions and stuff. I for one are content with death and its role in Life, and heaven just sounds like an easy copout that isn't much better than death anyway. Though you and octopuppy have a point that an afterlife is a good way to bring people in and keep them, but that's what the Atlantis-like stuff is for ;D If we are going to create an afterlife lie to hold people we might as well just be built on lies. We want to be the seekers of Truth to what octopuppy said about the special enlightenment path, that's a pretty good idea. Not sure how it'd be incorporated into the more truthful Philosophy that i was building up but maybe it could be worked in It's fun designing the ultimate Religion lol

awesome posts plasmid - first of all, I agree that religion is a necessary ingredient in a good society. I'll assume we're taking the reasons for that for granted in this topic so I won't diverge on that but instead on the point of the topic... your idea to replace modern religions would be a massive undertaking, but I had actually thought about how it would be done a few weeks ago for a tossed-around story idea. Basically it involved prophecying the return of Atlantis, a holy central city to the quasiscientific religion (named after something like 'the Deity', a universal essence or something)... then secretly building said Atlantis under the waves. When it's finally done, some clever mechanism will be triggered to rise it to the surface in its glorious return to the world... such a 'Miracle' may be enough to convince some, but "Atlantean" doctrine will have been spreading for the 30+ years it takes to build Atlantis and then raise it, so it will be a peaceful takeover. It would probably take a century or more to become even semidominant but I think with the proper foreplanning and careful execution, it's actually possible. An immense amount of money, time, leadership, "marketing" and persuasion is necessary of course. Like I said, it'd be a huge undertaking for a religion to be benign, it would have to be provide comfort to the masses - but not baseless or confusing comfort like many modern religious. Philosophical ideas would be thought about by many philosophers and freethinkers, young and old, and incorporated into several encompassed worldviews (perhaps around 5) that when threaded together in different ratios form the aspects of the master Religion. Thus there's a lot of spiritual freedom, if you will, and a lot of different "theological paths" one can take in their experience, from ones focusing more on Nature to ones centered around Physics to those based on the concept of Mind and Machine, etc. So anyway, the Religion would be a big proponent of discovering Truth and would donate a lot to science, colleges, etc. One of its ideals would be to NOT mess with politics and NOT mess too much with the lives of its advocates or become too big of a part of their lives. It would be a background thing supporting them, etc, but unless you devote your life to it as a Philosopher or Councillor (or whatever TRANSPARENT system of ruling it has) or whatever, it won't intrude too much or request you to do certain things that aren't beneficial to you or society in general

on the meaning of the word "quantum", doesn't it mean a whole number, that is, a quantified amount of something (a quanta of light bursts, etc) since that was the foundation of quantum physics? (QP has evolved into much more of course, but I've been reading this thread with some curiosity and was just wondering on that point)

http://xkcd.com/87/ http://xkcd.com/135/ http://xkcd.com/155/ Today, my fellow velociraptor survivors, is Velociraptor Awareness Day. They're moving swiftly and they can smell fear... watch yourselves To the velociraptors reading this: we will run, and hide, and hopefully prolong our inevitable bloody deaths as long as possible!

dath: are you implying that modern religions and modern religious organizations lack the greed and corruption they used to have?

actually as hot air rises, it expands because of the lower pressure, thus doing work on its surroundings and cooling itself. By the time it gets up pretty high (I think it loses 10K every kilometer or something), it's cooled down a lot. So by "hot air" you can't mean a specific patch of air that starts out hot, it has to refer to hot air in general (but it's still possible to force hot air downward if you have it trapped, for example in a car engine piston)

isn't this exactly the same as this?

I am open to the possibility of wild pygmy tribes of semi-humans and stuff. Plus there's tons of stuff on the bottom of the ocean... the "kraken" that turned out to be the giant squid. The "sea serpent" that turned out to be the oarfish. Only x% of the ocean bottom has been scanned or studied or even seen (I forget what 'x' is but it's SMALL, less than 10% I think)

no not Nessie (see below). But I had this theory about yetis, and how they were sighted all over the world with different names (yetis, sasquatches, yowees, mapinguaras, etc, lots of other names for "big shaggy furry apemen")... probably BS, though it might not be the Loch Ness Monster: ""London, Dec. 18 (Reuters) - A Scottish member of Parliament has discovered an anagram for Nessiteras rhombopteryx... Nicholas Fairbairn, the MP, announced the anagram in a letter to The Times: 'Monster hoax by Sir Peter S.' ("Loch Ness Monster Shown a Hoax by Another Name." New York Times 19 December 1975. p. 78.)" the "scientific name" can be moved around to form 'Monster hoax...(etc)'. That could've been done later though. The wikipedia article on it is pretty complete actually, though I'm sure there are better sources. It's most likely BS

quite a lot * jellyfish * electric eels * some other types of worms (I think?) etc * humans

actually it makes perfect sense. 1 is the focal multiplicative identity just like 0 is the focal additive identity (edit - but they are supported with lower-level axioms too)

Hmm, that's food for thought, thanks Thinking about it, you're right about Newton's laws being just as static. That being said, for the most part of that paragraph except for the first sentence, I was talking about science vs. religion not Newton vs. Bible. But very interesting on Newton's laws being static... the difference is of course that new data is collected every day and every second and continues to support the original laws. That's not true for the bible... or maybe it is in a religious sense. The fact that it's still around means it's a damn good religion. But just like Newton's Laws don't apply in a warped spacetime hyperspace brane or whatever (you know what I mean), the bible's religious support does NOT cross over into other realms of thought such as science. I hope you get the analogy, I made that kind of quickly I'll say it again... Newton's Laws continually gain scientific support just like the Bible continually gains religious support. But they are only relevant when applied within their respective fields. You can't take Bible passages and try to impede on things like science... in other words, things like "Adam and Eve" have to be taken as metaphors and religious messages, not anecdotes of realism

actually, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle applies to ALL objects, small and large, or so my chem teacher tells me. The effect gets astronomically smaller as the object increases in size. So you cannot know where YOU are and YOUR velocity at any given moment (within very small degrees though) in fact there's quite a lot of connected "uncertainty principles", including the one you mentioned. But this is not a limitation on science. Science discovered these principles - they limit small-scale knowledge of particle locations and such but this doesn't impede on science in any way and are actually rather useful... science discovered those limits, they aren't limits to science itself. It's like science discovering that there's a limit to how much ice cream I can eat. Oh boy! Science is doomed! yes - science has shown that. Pretty cool stuff that science has shown us, huh? What's your point? That science reveals interesting and deeply philosophical ideas that we would have never thought of on our own? Because I agree. Who knew that we were all waves deep down! But saying the waves propagate in a mysterious nether-realm of spiritualism is going a bit too far. The waves are right here in our universe, in fact right where you are. They oscillate so tightly that they don't travel much at all. Hence the illusion of solidity [edit - typo]

yeah I hear that more advanced bots nowadays also search for "* at * dot com" because of its frequent use

all of the above, and also, a null multiplication is assumed to be 1. I forget the exact term let me look it up: aha! It's Empty Product maybe not an exact answer but it has to do with 0! = 1 and x^0 = 1 (x != 0 of course, 0^0 is effed up)

I think this is a very sensible position to be in. Good philosophizing! Not everyone is as open-minded and thoughtful as you edit: I also agree that our god(s) today will be deemed as ludicrous ten thousand years from now... maybe there will be a different religion then edit2seeksit: I tried replacing "newton's laws" with "bible" and it didn't hold up. The reason is because, as you said, science allows itself to be proved wrong and admits that it's constantly changing with new data and theories in our expanding knowledge of the universe. If the bible likewise adapted, correcting (biblically) false statements (or metaphors) and reinforcing its teachings with new observed faiths and things then there wouldn't be as much of a problem. But the problem is that the bible is held as absolute truth in some mystical, unchangeable way, and this is what leads to its intellectual stagnantism

lol @ whatever incident brought about that warning