If Timeless Flying Spaghetti Monster exists then I would personally class him as God. — Devans99

I would classify it as dinner.

Timeless Flying Spaghetti Monster. — Devans99

Does it come with meatballs? I'll take one of them. :ok:

There is that aspect for sure.

it seems that many elderly that I have known would agree. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

That's interesting. But death wishes aren't only held by the elderly. I wanted to die since I was eleven years old. (I'm not saying this to make anyone feel about about me.)

What would a machine with an IQ of a million make of a human? — Devans99

I don't think that mere intelligence would decide human worth. It's a value proposition to determine human worth, and that's partly emotional.

I once told religious kids that I'm an atheist. They looked at me with bewilderment and said, "You're really stupid. It's pretty obvious that there is a God."

On the other hand, there is the idea of divine hiddenness.

I'm wondering how it can be simultaneously obvious that God exists, and that God is hidden.

Are you happy to know you will die? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Yes. Death is the best painkiller there is.

Probably not the best story I could write, but then again I didn't sleep for the last two days.

These stories aren't putting me to sleep. :sad:

The year is 2119, and the world is a very different place. Sea levels rose and consumed most of the land. There are only a few patches of heavily crowded land remaining. Conservatives who denied global warming for the most part of the last century and a half, were wrong. Planet earth did get warmer and with it the sea levels rose. After millions of people, most in third world countries, died as a result of loss shelter due to global warming, as a result conservationism declined deeply in popularity.

With the decline of conservatism came the rise of the liberals and their dreams of a more equal society. The new liberal countries invested heavily on science, technology, education, and the environment. The result were more educated people who took up new high tech jobs. Social mobility rose, and the top one percent of the richest people controlled less than two percent of wealth. Inequality has been less than it ever was. Everything seemed to be under control, until they came.

Aliens. Thousands of spacecraft from an unknown planet landed on the oceans where they floated without problem, as if they were on land. When the aliens got out of their spacecraft they had on them gear that allowed them to fly freely. They looked like miniature iron men. Their whole body was covered by a layer of armor which concealed their face. They swarmed towards the few patches of land.

Since the countries of the world were lead by die hard liberals, and they lacked hawkish military leaders, the consensus was not to engage fire with the aliens. And luckily they did not because the aliens tended to friendly kind humanoids, and came in peace. Their technology was vastly superior to humans and were willing to share it. They had special equipment that allowed translation from alien language to human language, and back.

When the aliens communicated with the world leaders, it turns out that they were hiding out on Mars When asked why didn't they choose to visit earth sooner. The answer was that they were at peace on Mars and felt no need to visit earth. Asked why they are here now, and they replied, "They are coming. We are here to protect Earth from a hostile race of aliens coming to invade the planet and strip it of its natural resources." The liberal leaders groaned and one of them says, "I thought we never had to deal with conservatives again".

Solipsism is the belief that there are no other minds. Epistemological nihilism is the view that we can't know anything.

My intention wasn't to kill anyone's buzz. It's just that I had that quote in mind during our whole back and fourth. I felt guilty about what we were doing. The last thing you want to do is annoy the owner of this site.

I'm going to quote jamalrob here. (I hope he doesn't mind.)

Stop it. You want to behave like kids, go somewhere else. — jamalrob

"Horseradish — S

Ugh, don't remind me of that. We had enough of that on our Passover Seder.

You realise we're in public, right? — S

And full of witnesses, the way I like it.

I think it might have something to with the fact that I'm British. Or the fact that I'm a serial killer. — S

And I'm American. We already won our independence from you. Now leave us alone.

Sheesh. I'm glad you have a sense of humour about these things instead of taking it personally. — S

I really admire your sense of humor. I really do. Not everyone can talk about bashing people in the head with a case, and laugh about it. You really have a skill there.

I see I'm fighting a losing battle. You're really good at being nasty to other people. I'm not.

Nonsense. You can't even simultaneously hold a case and walk with it.

As it happens, I have a degree (Zoology)...And with regard to your earlier complaints about me correcting your language, I have a degree in that too and have taught at universities up to Master's level in the field. -- Baden

I rest my case.

Only really smart people can do it.

(I can't do it.)

So I will allow a (generous) 1% chance — Devans99

So I will assign a 1% chance — Devans99

Seems far fetched to me. 1% chance — Devans99

Reality doesn't need to reflect your subjective judgments.

It's not immoral to drugs per, say. However, it is immoral to do certain acts that you don't normally do when your not high. Unless harming yourself is immoral, is it? :chin: I'm not sure.

How is progress made? When something happens for the better.

How to measure it? You need a specific example and an operand definition of progress.

I think we have to agree to disagree here.

I notice it doesn't mention anything about "starts".

Why do you say a line segment has no start or end? — Devans99

Because it's impossible to know where it actually starts. You can say that it starts at the left side, or you can say at the right side. Of course you can choose an arbitrary point and call it "start", but so what? You can arbitrarily call a dog a "cat".

I don't think any of them have a "start", not the line segment, nor the circle. Shapes don't have starts, only directions have starts.

All you are doing is measuring the angle of a circle at arbitrary points and then tracing the angle around so it reaches the same points on the circumference. Whose to say that the point where the angle hits the circumference at those points you've chosen are really the beginnings? Why do you call it "the beginning"? I call it, "an arbitrary point on the circle".

If you arbitrary choose a point as the beginning of a circle, you can also arbitrarily choose another point as the beginning. I'm trying to understand how you can have more than one beginning.

You are obviously using the world "spotlight" as a metaphor. Can you please tell me what you mean by the "spotlight"?

A circle has no beginning. There is no t=0 if time is circular. What you are describing is more like a spiral than a full circle.

think it is a poor choice of words. How about, what are the chances for a conscious existence after physical death? — Vince

You still need continuity of the self in order to become unconscious and regain consciousness again. Where is the self when your body dies?

I think perhaps you can differentiate before from after because the cause always precedes the effect. — Vince

That poses a problem for circular time. Where does the cause begin in the whole circle?

It happens 'after life' so it technically counts as an afterlife. — Devans99

But technically speaking it wouldn't be your death. You would just be unconscious until time circles, and then regain consciousness when time reaches your birth. Also if time is a full circle, how can we make sense of before and after?

So think Einstein's 4D space time. — Devans99

You already lost me here. I don't have a firm grasp on Einstein's theory of 4D space. I pretty sure it was 3D space and one dimension of time though.

What I am talking is a circular time dimension. — Devans99

I don't really understand what a circular time dimension is. But then again, I never took a physics class.

So you are born, you die, time comes around again (after billions of years) and then you are born again, you die, etc... So death is indeed the end of your life, its just your life is lived over and over again. — Devans99

But that wouldn't be living after you die. It's just you reliving your life. (If that's even possible).

Below is a brief probability analysis of the chances of life after death — Devans99

I think the whole idea of life after death is incoherent. Death is the end of your life, so there can't be life after death. There's no beyond the end. Maybe you mean you can survive the death of your body? You'd first have to convince us all that there is a you above and beyond the body, aka a soul.

There once was a girl that loved to write. She never had a blank moment on her mind where she couldn't think of anything. So she wrote, and she wrote beautifully. She even found a philosophy forum where she could write her philosophical views. The moderators soon got very frustrated because, although she wrote beautifully, she started a discussion every single day.

One day, one of the moderators but his foot down and wrote to her in a private message, "Please slow down your thread creation. We love what you write, but it's a bit too much. Why don't you give yourself a break and post less frequently?" The girl was a reasonable person and agreed to write less.

At first, she was fine writing less, but as the days went on she couldn't restrain herself from her desire to write. So she decided to leave the site and join a forum solely about debating the existence of God. The girl loved the site because she was an atheist and had a lot to say about the existence of God (or lack thereof). The site had very lax moderators and didn't mind how much she wrote.

She argued, and argued, with the theists at the forum until the theists got upset with her because they couldn't keep up with her writing pace. For example, while the theist would provide three arguments for the existence of God, the girl posted twenty counter arguments. The theists stopped arguing with her and started attacking and trolling her. But the girl was a pleasant girl and thought that it was best to leave the site because she didn't like how the discussions degraded into ad hominem attacks on her.

The girl got really frustrated because she couldn't find a forum that suited her. Every forum she joined ran into similar problems. Eventually she gives up forum writing and starts emailing her friends and colleagues. But alas, her friends and colleagues couldn't keep up with her. She asks herself, "Is there nowhere where I can write and spread my ideas?" And she thinks to herself, "Well of course there is! I can write books!". So, she starts writing book, after book, and they were excellent books.

She continued writing books until she got very rich doing so and decided to make an online forum. This forum was like the Amazon of forums, it contained every category you could imagine. The forum was so successful that everyone was using it, and it even caused most of the forums on the internet to close down due to lack of activity. She searched online for those forums that had a problem with her and she found out they were now dead domains. Finally she is contented, and says to herself, "Justice!"

There once was a philosopher who doubted everything. He even doubted that he existed. Descartes famous argument that you can't doubt that you exist didn't phase him because he not only he doubted the logic, he doubted that he ever heard the argument. When he expressed his doubt to other philosophers, the philosophers pointed out that you can't doubt that your doubting. But he doubted it anyways.

The philosopher's wife was very frustrated with him because it is very hard to talk to a man who doubts everything you say. Even when his wife would say, "I want to have sex with you", he would reply, "I doubt it". His wife eventually gave up on him because she knew she couldn't convince him to give up his doubts, and she left him. The philosopher didn't feel sad because he doubted he ever had a wife.

Time goes by and the philosopher still doesn't believe in anything, he only does things out of habit. He loses his job, his money, and friends. The philosopher didn't care, he doubted he had any of those things. Letters come in the mail, but he didn't bother to look. He soon runs out of food, the lights turn off, no water comes out of the tap. And yet still, the philosopher does nothing.

Eventually the philosopher starves to death inside his house. His soul escapes his body to heaven where he gets judged by God. God asks him questions, but the philosopher refuses to answer because he doubted that God was talking to him. So God sends him down to hell for disrespecting him.

Hell turns out to be a terrible place full of fire, the smell feces, and annoying sounds. The devil asks the philosopher, "do you know where you are". And for once the philosopher snapped out of his doubt and replies miserably, "I'm in hell".

I was just speculating on which is more natural. — Devans99

Fair enough.

I don't want to start a whole debate about religion, but you brought it up.

'Who made this place?' is a natural question for a raw human to ask. — Devans99

It was also natural to believe that the earth was flat, and that things in motion want to rest.

'No-one' is not such an obvious answer to that question — Devans99

It's important to realize that often times the "obvious" answer is not always correct.

I agree with @Devans99 that religion is natural. I also agree with @SethRy that a person can live a fulfilling life without religion. Humans are the epitome of versatile in that we can get used to anything. This includes being non-religious. Just because religion is natural doesn't mean irreligion is unnatural. And even if irreligion is unnatural, so what? So are shoes, dentists, and vaccines. Unnatural doesn't equal bad. The fact that we can go beyond what is natural is a very human thing to do.

God gave religion the second he created us, so there was never a time where we were without religion.

I'm just kidding, I don't believe any of that.

You just turned my whole question around: Is it natural to live with religion? :wink: