How does religion inform math? — Tom Storm

If gods made love and hate particles which had to behave in a very precise mathematical way, to make both and collections of them function properly, religion might inform us.

Nice. I wonder why people think we have answers to the question, why is there a universe?

Isn't inserting god/s into that hole what you do when you don't have an answer? It's using a mystery to explain a mystery?

I'm gonna brush my teeth lll!

How could the universe have existed without gods? How can dead particles, conforming to physical laws, have brought themselves into existence? Aren't they to dumb for that?

I wonder why people think we have answers to the question, why is there a universe? — Tom Storm

Because there is an answer! And you inspired my answer.

Dont you laugh!

Isn't inserting god/s into that hole what you do when you don't have an answer? It's using a mystery to explain a mystery? — Tom Storm

No. That's not what you do if you don't have an answer. Though I have to admit, eternal gods are a mystery. But at least they explain the universe, and how people managed to fuck it up locally. Maybe they did better elsewhere in the universe, but I doubt it.

Child: Why is there a universe?

Atheist Father: For no reason. The universe just showed up. Now go to sleep. Your brain’s neurotransmitters need to slow down for a time.

Theist Mother: The universe was created for you, darling, by God who loves you. It is his wonderful place for you to live and play. Go to sleep, now. You’ve had such a busy day. I love you.

P

Isn't inserting god/s into that hole what you do when you don't have an answer? — Tom Storm

Sorry Tom, I'm sticking different things in that hole when I don't have an answer...

Watch the responses to this:

Question: Would the recent scientific discovery of dark energy, which is the mysterious force behind our universe expanding outward from a single point at an ever-increasing speed, be more logically an energy originating from an omnipotent power or from a finite power?

Sorry Tom, I'm sticking different things in that hole when I don't have an answer... — EugeneW

Is this a euphemism?

Child: Why is there a universe?

Theist Father: The universe was created for you. Now go to sleep. Your brain’s neurotransmitters need to slow down for a time.

Atheist Mother: The universe just showed up for you, darling. It is a wonderful place for you to live and play. Go to sleep, now. You’ve had such a busy day. I love you.

Is this a euphemism? — Tom Storm

Taking your temperature is the euphemism... What if the hole is closed? Can I still put the thermometer in? Don't ever trust a priest asking you this!

Question: Would the recent scientific discovery of dark energy, which is the mysterious force behind our universe expanding outward from a single point at an ever-increasing speed, be more logically an energy originating from an omnipotent power or from a finite power? — Joe Mello

It is an energy proving we are expanding in a higher dimensional infinite space, created by eternal gods to gìve room for the eternally re-inflating universes from the source, the central singularity. It is proof of their being fed up with playing the eternal game of love and hate. They started a research program to create and develop love and hate particles situated in a very special unique space. The universe is that unique result. Now they just watch us. The virus god, the squirrel god, tree god and whale god. Human gods contributed too, but fucked up a bit.

Isn't inserting god/s into that hole what you do when you don't have an answer? — Tom Storm

If the hole, the gap, is closed, what else can you conclude? That it's just there for us? How can it be there just for us? Somehow it's more reasonable that intelligences created the universe, even when they are an eternal mystery just the same.

be more logically an energy originating from an omnipotent power or from a finite power? — Joe Mello

From co-working finite powers, with creation ability.

How can dead particles, conforming to physical laws, have brought themselves into existence? — EugeneW

My theory is that we'll always be left with some unexplained 'it' in our grand narratives. It seems to me that you are willing to take certain eternal gods for granted, untroubled by the issue of where they came from.

I don't see what can ever stop us from asking a 'why' that functions like a torch for unveiling contingency or brute fact. Some fellow somewhere said that we humans are a 'nothingness' because of this, a hole in the whole, incapable of plugging that very hole. Or we are like a mouth trying to swallow itself (the mortal of the sorry is oral, along with the moral of the starry). "Tell me tell me tell me the chew numb of got. " It's the and of the word as renew it.

Sometimes Internet trolls are legitimately mentally ill.

Do not give Eugene any personal information.

Nice. I wonder why people think we have answers to the question, why is there a universe? — Tom Storm

To me that's a rich issue. What is an explanation? There are various theories, but in this context I think it boils down to some kind of animism or anthropomorphism. The explanation has to be a personality, a divine intelligence (maybe also with a benevolent will.)

Isn't inserting god/s into that hole what you do when you don't have an answer? It's using a mystery to explain a mystery? — Tom Storm

I totally agree. I think the special sauce of this kind of explanation is the linking of the strange to the familiar. If the gods are basically just humans without bodies, then that's comforting. Things happen for reasons that humans can understand, since the gods involved are (implicitly) essentially human. (Feuerbach writes of sublimated monotheisms ending up with the quality of human 'reason.' Thought has no limitations, no body, no location. It's the chew or true holy ghost. )

My theory is that we'll always be left with some unexplained 'it' in our grand narratives. It seems to me that you are willing to take certain eternal gods for granted, untroubled by the issue of where they came from. — lll

Yes. I take them for granted. But there is something very different between taking an eternal universe for granted (and I do take that for granted, as it's there, complete with all matter and creatures, all developing according to their own laws) and eternal gods whose intelligences created this. Only an eternal universe, without eternal gods having created it, seems meaningless. Despite all meaning we can internally assign.

Only an eternal universe, without eternal gods having created it, seems meaningless. Despite all meaning we can internally assign. — EugeneW

I take it that the meanings or meaning that humans assign isn't intense or decisive enough for you?Some thinkers have argued that a god-strength meaning would actually humiliate us. One might even argue that only a no-meaning-include universe allows us to play god. Others suggest that the universe evolves its own eyes with which to look at and understand itself, and that we are those eyes. What if our god-universe evolves like a fetus in the womb? And we 'are' that process as we debate this very issue? What if theology itself is the god it articulates? That'd be a self-creating god right there, a god that works from within the mortal meat of a divine dog, write in the broken hurt of his creator-creation.

I don't think we are the heads of some universal hydrabeast, using us to masturbate in its attempt to spawn new universes as it can't find a female companion. Or us being part of a universe retroactively collapsing the wavefunction and bringing itself in existence. Mind you, this would be even more outrageous than gods or dead particles only.

The meanings we assign are enough but not without that divine underlayer.

I don't think we are the heads of some universal hydrabeast, using us to masturbate in its attempt to spawn new universes as it can't find a female companion. Or us being part of a universe retroactively collapsing the wavefunction and bringing itself in existence. Mind you, this would be even more outrageous than gods or dead particles only. — EugeneW

Personally I don't feel attached to a myth, though the idea that we are stains on the diapers of drooling giants makes the most scents so far.

The meanings we assign are enough but not without that divine underlayer. — EugeneW

Curious. Is this more of an intellectual or an emotional dissatisfaction? Is it your mind that demands a metaphysics or your heart that demands divine empathy?

They started a research program to create and develop love and hate particles situated in a very special unique space. The universe is that unique result. Now they just watch us. The virus god, the squirrel god, tree god and whale god. Human gods contributed too, but fucked up a bit. — EugeneW

That's a fun theology.

Curious. Is this more of an intellectual or an emotional dissatisfaction? Is it your mind that demands a metaphysics or your heart that demands divine empathy? — lll

That's a good question! I think both. Something mysterious is missing from them. Something unexplainable. The universe is explainable. Be it by physics or Dawkins. But the mystery of eternal gods, being tired of eternally making love and war, creating together these elementary love particles, massless preons with the right basic charges, basic love and hate, evolving into a world resembling their own, except the human gods having fucked up in that creation, lets the wonder return. That's more or less what the short story is about. Gods being tired and bored of making love and hate eternally, longing to lay back in heavenly jungles to watch us play out the story they played so long themselves.

lets the wonder return. — EugeneW

Ah, OK. So perhaps the vision of the universe as a vast, dead machine that disappoints you. If you don't cling to life after death and aren't that interested in divine commandments, then it seems to be the disenchantment of the world that you object to. I do think we've been tamed. Our imaginations are clubbed into submission. Today's sane man is modeling what Vico's early/divine men would have experienced as a straitjacket.

That's more or less what the short story is about. Gods being tired and bored of making love and hate eternally, longing to lay back in heavenly jungles to watch us play out the story they played so long themselves. — EugeneW

That's truly a beautiful plot.

You can check out The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to discover that Christianity was originally an offensive heresy that refused to tolerate the other religions already in place, like an only child who just would not share its toys — lll

Just as a point of interest, have you read Caesar's Messiah by Joeseph Atwill, or Creating Christ by J Valliant and W Fahey. Both these books posit that Christianity was invented by the Romans as was Jesus etc.
Another road is those who don't agree with the posit that the Romans created Christianity but still posit that Jesus Christ was a made-up character, such as the works of Dr Richard Carrier. Professor Robert Price is also another interesting road or Professor Bart D Ehrman. Most of these individuals have spent most on their lives in the study of theology and religion. Most were believers and some even held religious ministerial posts. Now they are amongst the strongest voices against organised religion.
These people are experts in theology as they now reject it.

Just as a point of interest, have you read Caesar's Messiah by Joeseph Atwill, or Creating Christ by J Valliant and W Fahey. Both these books posit that Christianity was invented by the Romans as was Jesus etc. — universeness

Haven't read those guys, no, but I'm open to the hypothesis that there was no Jesus, or no particular Jesus (maybe a type of prophet/rebel who was conglomerated and/or decorated or outright fabricated.)
To me the main thing is the way the story lives on. Hamlet is 'fake' and Socrates is 'real,' but they both exist for me as talking 'ghosts' in books, just like Jesus...who almost certainly had words put in his avatar's mouth, if there was an original in the first place.

I've been an atheist for about 20 years, so I feel pretty neutral on this issue. Maybe there was such a guy. Maybe not. Some of the words in the book are nice. Others not. I consider myself influenced by some Christian ideas, but I guess many of us must be.

These people are experts in theology as they now reject it. — universeness

Bruno Bauer is one of the people like this that interests me. He was a left Hegelian, and he was part of the attempt to transform Christianity into something modern and rational. David Strauss has some great passages too.

Question: Would the recent scientific discovery of dark energy, which is the mysterious force behind our universe expanding outward from a single point at an ever-increasing speed, be more logically an energy originating from an omnipotent power or from a finite power? — Joe Mello

Dark energy is posited as a reason for why the expansion is accelerating not as a reason for the initial singularity starting to inflate and then expand. Dark energy may or may not exist. You don't need a god as the origin of the singularity. The singularity may be the result of interacting branes creating a multiverse or it may be a result of a Universe bounce between time epochs. These are just scientific posits but for me, any of them are more likely than your god posit. A god who only chatted to you when you were in one of its monasteries and cut you off afterward. You choose to accept that as reality? and you dismiss all the posits of Cosmologists as they muse about possible alternatives to the god posit and you are convinced that you occupy the intellectual high ground? Really?

No, referencing something that my adversaries have constructed is not at odds with my non-belief.
— Gregory A
— universeness

Yeah, even though based on the logic that you employ, you should not be doing so.
You have no belief in the spaghetti monster so you cant reference it. It would be illogical for you to do so based on your own application of logic.

I'd used the FSM to make a point. But it is not the same point its creators were making. There are non-believers in a god/s and there are atheists, those that challenge theists.

No, you are not going to corner me in with words. And I've never believed anything other than the Warren Commision's finding based on the evidence available. All else unsuported by facts. I'm a non-believer in a conspiracy, consequently I have nothing to say about it. Still don't get it yet?
— Gregory A

Well, yes, I do see the massive flaws in how you form your belief system, I do get that.
If you lived in Russia right now and you listened to your beloved state TV channel, you would no doubt be singing Putin's praises. The words 'I've never believed anything other than the Warren commission's findings show that. So, you accept the 'magic bullet' theory then?

Vlad Putin is a monster, his opponent, the Left, an even bigger monster. And I do accept the magic bullet theory. I do respect those that can doubt these things though, an ability I admittedly don't have..

No problem. I'm embarrassed by your stupidity
— Gregory A

Well I'm glad I have the power to embarrass you, even if its inspired by your delusional thinking.

Your stupidity is (an effect) brought on by a zealous nature intellectual arrogance allows.

There is no escape for atheism. The 'this is what we've been waiting for' thing that they will try and lay on us if science suggests God is a possibility, will not work. That escape is covered. Naturailsm is not a non-belief in God, but is a 'belief' in Nature, a naturally occurring universe. Atheism, as the term suggests, says nothing about Nature. Miracles? You must be talking about religion? What does that have to do with theism really?
— Gregory A

Yeah, keep tubthumping on your tin bath, see if the echo's progress your proposals?

In all fairness what would we do with these 3 Dawkins books : The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene & The God Delusion if evidence of a god were shown. How does he get away with 'The Magic of Reality' anyhow.

Sometimes Internet trolls are legitimately mentally ill.

Do not give Eugene any personal information — Joe Mello

I don't think you are mentally ill Joe, just a little confused about 'what it's all about.'
Spend a couple of weeks back with the monks. Your God might re-establish a commlink with you and help calm you. I think you over-estimate @EugeneW's personal interest in you or anyone else on TPF. I am sure REAL internet trolls can pick much more interesting targets than you Joe. They tend to go for people who are currently in the public eye.