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The "Religion" category is correct for this Idea.
One of the claims made by various religious enthusiasts is that a human soul begins to exist when conception (fertilization of egg with sperm) occurs.
There is a logical problem with that claim, related to another claim, that the soul is immortal.
See, it is a simple fact that egg-fertilization is a purely physical process, and it is an equally simple fact that ANYTHING that comes into existence by purely physical means can also be destroyed by purely physical means.
How, then, could an immortal soul begin to exist as a result of egg-fertilization? The most logical/reasonable answer seems to be that, since God knows everything and can do anything, God creates a soul whenever egg-fertilization occurs.
OK, well, somewhere in the Bible is a claim that God will not be beholden to any man. Therefore this Idea....
Arrogance:
"I will have sex and, when egg-fertilization occurs, thereby force God to create souls, just so I can have offspring."
R-i-i-i-i-ght.... If God will not be beholden to any man, then no egg-fertiliztions will occur, and thus Birth Control Via Arrogance will have succeeded!
Of course, the preceding is based on the fundamental claim that souls become associated with human life at conception. If the claim is faulty, then this Idea can't work....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guf
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 07 2011]
About Georg Cantor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Jul 08 2011]
That whole free will debate.
http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Predestination
[jutta, Jul 08 2011]
Weight change at death implies souls may exist.
http://www.scientif...jse_23_1_ishida.pdf
More experiments are needed, of course! [Vernon, Jul 09 2011]
Regarding some dead people whose bodies didn't decay.
http://www.lifeinit.../incorruptibles.asp
I sometimes wonder if there aren't about (a Biblical number) 144,000 such bodies in graves around the world.... [Vernon, Jul 09 2011]
Different religions have differing opinions about souls
http://en.wikipedia...ve_of_Reincarnation
This is another reason why this Idea might not work if tried. [Vernon, Jul 31 2011]
[link]
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I dunno. Sounds like a lot of guf to me. [link] |
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Impotence can be tested-for. Note that it usually prevents sexual intercourse from happening; it does not usually mean a man does not produce sperm. Logically, by either definition, an impotent man has no need of this birth-control technique. |
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That "guf" thing appears to involve a different religious precept than the one described in the main text here. So, see last paragraph of the main text. |
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[Vernon], your ideas' contraceptive-loophole here seems
faulted and may cause more pregnancies than avoid
them. |
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Any divinities capable of associating eternal souls with
the earthly at the moment of conception could also read
between the arrogant lines; "I will have sex and, when
egg-fertilization occurs, thereby force God to create
souls, just so I can have offspring." and know the near-
blasphemous statements' beholden intention is Birth
Control Via Arrogance. |
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[Sir Misspeller], you have a point. However, I'm sure there are people out there who are arrogant enough to think they deserve offspring, AND also actually want offspring. Even if they aren't actively trying to make God beholden to them. So, does that group have offspring at the same rate as others who don't practice other types of birth control? That's the data we need to see if this Idea has anything "to" it. |
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Personally, I think the "fundamental claim" is faulty, upon which the Idea is based. I've posted this mostly because it implies some sort of experimentation might be possible, to prove it. |
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bad theology. there are no un-solved problems in faith, only inadequacies in the faithful. it is not an error or illogical, it is simply that you do not believe absolutely. stop thinking; start faithing. |
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[WcW], I have extreme faith that the religious enthusiasts THINK all their problems are solved, whether they actually are or not. Try this on for size.... |
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Have you encountered Georg Cantor's mathematical work on "transfinity"? (link) Note he lived in the late 1800s, well after most major religions had declared the equivalent of "all our problems are solved". Cantor worked with the idea that there is more than one type of "infinity". Mathematicians already knew it, but Cantor basically organized it. |
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The type of infinity associated with the points on a "line" is greater than the ordinary counting variety of infinity. The type of infinity associated with the number of curved lines that can be drawn in a "plane" is greater than the number of points in a line. And so on. |
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Ordinary counting infinity, when multiplied by itself an infinite number of times, becomes equal to the points-on-a-line infinity. And when THAT type of infinity is multiplied by itself that-type-of-infinity quantity of times, it then equals the curved-lines-in-a-plane infinity. |
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Cantor borrowed the letter "aleph" from the Hebrew alphabet, and used it to describe his series of infinities. Aleph-zero is the ordinary counting infinity, Aleph-zero to the power of aleph-zero equal aleph-one. Aleph-one to the power of Aleph-one equals aleph-two. And so on; this "transfinity" thing is, of course, an infinite series. |
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So, the religionists claim that God is "infinitely" powerful. Which degree of infinity are they talking about? And what evidence do they have to support whatever answer they come up with? |
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I've read that the number of 3-dimensional shapes that can be constructed in a "volume" MAY (not yet proved) be equal to aleph-three. And the number of 4-dimensional shapes that could be drawn in a "hypervolume" might be equal to aleph-four. IF there is a link between Geometry as described, and the series of transfinities, then the type of Universe described by String Theory, with ten or eleven dimensions, might be associated with aleph-ten or aleph-eleven. Is that the best that God could Create??? What a wimp, when compared to, say, the level of infinite power associated with aleph-one-billion! |
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(Not to mention, of course, that all the available evidence about the Universe we live in indicates it is actually a large FINITE thing. So God doesn't actually even need aleph-zero-level of infinite power, to be more powerful than this Universe....) |
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Oh, yes, the religionists CLAIM they have answers. But that doesn't mean they actually know what they are talking about! |
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//The type of infinity associated with the points on a "line" is greater than the ordinary counting variety of infinity.// Correct. |
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//The type of infinity associated with the number of curved lines that can be drawn in a "plane" is greater than the number of points in a line.// Correct? Is there a mathematician in the house? |
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//One of the claims made by various religious
enthusiasts is that a human soul begins to exist
when conception (fertilization of egg with sperm)
occurs.// - I thought the claim was that that was
when the soul *entered* the body, which would
rather collapse your slightly shaky logic. |
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The words 'pissing' and 'wind' would appear appropriate. |
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This is another attempt to pit logic against faith. |
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Faith requires no logic, so trying to argue logic vs. faith is like trying to keep flies out of your castle by digging a moat. |
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1) Moat harbours dragonflies and frogs, which eat flies. |
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2) Privy empties into moat, so shit feeds fish instead of flies. |
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//Faith requires no logic// |
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Without logic, was there any need for faith to begin
with? |
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Why make logical arguments, or any arguments against religious people? Maybe it helps you stay sane and grounded in the real world. That's a worthy reason, and there are probably others, but the fact that someone is religious means there is no reasoning with them. Jewish and Christian biblical stories are nonsense, just like every other one of the worldly religions that their adherents adhere. Most people intuitively know that when we die we're dead, and perhaps hope that our existence is part of a stable pattern of events, or even structural, and that we will emerge again. Although that is unlikely as each consciousness is probably a unique occurrence. Apparently this basically stupid rock we're on generates life, and humans unfortunately happen to be well aware of it to a discomforting extent. Some of those humans need to abort their fetuses before they too can be discomforted by awareness. Just like many of the clusters of cells in the human body, like the layer of skin that's peeling off my back from sunburn, fetuses have no consciousness. |
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You're pointing out a contradiction in religious
claims, but I don't really see what about that is a
halfbakery invention. Maybe I'm missing something.
I think those contradictions are a dime-a-dozen.
("Can god create an object so heavy he can't lift it?
Ha!") |
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// Without logic, was there any need for faith to begin with? // |
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Logic is a function of "reason" which is based on demonstrable cause and effect, and that hypotheses are provable and repeatable*. |
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Philosophy and metaphysics can address religious concepts, but do not have faith as a prerequisite. |
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Faith, like "magic", operates outside demonstrable cause and effect. |
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*Except for (currently) some aspects of Unified Field Theory, where they're clearly just making stuff up to get another year's grant money. |
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Avoid and eschew superfluous redundant tautological pleonasms that are unneeded. |
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[hippo], there are different religious enthusiasts spouting different things, as I'm sure you know. The thing I wrote is indeed claimed by some of them, so I specified "various" not "all". |
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[Twizz], the main point about "faith" is that it is also about Truth --and Truth is always, ALWAYS, associated with logic. As a simple example, consider faith regarding the existence of "Free Will" --the thing either exists or it doesn't, which should be a verifiable or falsifiable thing. Well, logically, Free Will and "causality" are at opposite ends of a spectrum. For Free Will to exist, there must be a way for some event to happen that is NOT some sort of consequence of a prior event; it is a "cause" that is not itself an "effect". And, as it happens, the Physics of Quantum Mechanics and "virtual particles in the vacuum" STRONGLY indicates (that is, it is supported by lots of experimental evidence) that the basement/foundation of the Universe is full of total and complete Randomness. I find it laugable that various religious enthusiasts don't like that idea (Einstein claimed "God does not play dice with the Universe"), even though it means that Free Will is thoroughly possible. |
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[jutta], the halfbakery invention is the Idea that an appropriately arrogant person is not going to be able to reproduce, and therefore doesn't need any ordinary form of birth control. It was pointed out (and I agree) that such people can't actually expect their arrogance to be a kind of birth control; they need to be wanting offspring. |
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a giant flowery waste of intellectual effort. |
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Going out on a limb here... Yes again.
The concept of an infinite multiverse allows for both free will and causality. It's all wave function.
Everything that can happen and has happened has already been written, (so to speak), in these multiple realities but along infinite branches determined by the choices made by each consciousness contained within them.
So the statement,
//there must be a way for some event to happen that is NOT some sort of consequence of a prior event//,
becomes entirely plausible if a consciousness is able to bounce between them. |
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//various religious enthusiasts don't like that idea (Einstein claimed "God does not play dice with the Universe")// At least according to Richard Dawkins, Einstein was not a religious enthusiast; that quote is often misused to suggest that he was. Hence the proof of the existence of God - "Einstein believed in God. Do you really think you are smarter than Einstein?" |
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Arrogance is an identity thing. Identity in humans needs conciousness which needs a brainstem. The need to reproduce is apparent in all organisms, so when does it become arrogance? We're back to identity. Regarding Cantor's stuff just do the square root of two, then imagine the sets of numbers in this and it become infinite providing the infinite with infinite (which is cool).
If you want to engage God and his works in this, think of quantum entanglement and a particle affected here is matched/mirrored/twinned by a particle there and you've (after some muttering) explained the virgin birth.
What a curious planet we live on! |
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[rcarty], since most religions each claim to be the One True Religion, it logically follows that all but one must be wrong (and all of them might be wrong). Therefore, POTENTIALLY, a lot of religious conversions are possible (and some do occasionally occur, even without such overt threatenings as occurred during, say, the Thirty Years' War). |
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What Science and Reason can do is find ways to prove that at least some religious tenets are either true or false. A classic example occurred during the time of Galileo, when the telescope made it possible to prove that the Earth was not the center of everything in the Universe. And the more evidence that is gathered in favor of Evolution, the more the fundamentalist/Creationists look like brainwashed idiots than people whose claims are worthy of faith/belief. One step at a time, all the utter nonsense in Religion can gradually get weeded out. |
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Suppose someday we invent a Faster-Than-Light drive? What you do then is travel out about 7000 light-years and unfold a HUGE telescope and point it at the Solar System. You can watch major events on Earth such as the Flood --because light from 7000 years ago will just then be reaching the telescope. If you can see the Earth at all, then you have proved it wasn't Created in 4004BC. |
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And, either the Flood happened (and was or was not exaggerated) or it didn't (and obviously you can look back at Earth from many different distances; all you need is FTL and a big-enough telescope), and another religious tenet will either be supported or must-get-abandoned. |
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Some things will take longer to explain than others, and may actually support some religious tenets. I've added a couple links. In such cases, the thing to BEWARE is nonsense such as, "OK, you proved God exists. That means everything else about my religion is true, too!" In actual fact, of course, all religions could still have many details wildly wrong. |
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[2 fries], we don't yet have any evidence that there is more to the Universe than the hyperbubble that we currently inhabit. Of course, a LABEL such as "bubble" implies it exists inside something else, but Reality need not match our conventional viewpoint; there might literally be Nothingness beyond. |
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Next, it is known that some biological structures are fine enough to interact more in a Quantum-Mechanical way than in a Classical Mechanical way. In brains of evolving life-forms, it could be beneficial to tap into the Foundational Randomness of the Universe, so that that predator on your tail won't be able to predict which way you are going to jump. Evolution, of course, can later extend that source of Randomness such that Free Will could begin to exist. |
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Suppose someone walks up to you and punches you without warning. How do you respond? IF you first take a moment to say to yourself, "I have Free Will and can choose any response I want!" --then you might decide to sing a song, or do jumping-jacks ... --and it is possible that the weirder your choice, the more weirded-out your assailant will become, leaving you as the psychological victor, heh! |
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[spidermother], I did not mean to imply that just because Einstein believed in God, he had to be a religious enthusiast. Nevertheless, his statement requires a certain religious perspective on his part, in order to have been stated. |
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- even more arrogant : leave out conception, and
another culture takes over your lands,, |
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One milliards samples, 10 milliseconds reaction
scheme, : What are the odds of comming :-) into the
same matrix of Result : Ta Da' : A Baby !!. |
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I take it this idea is for Catholics, who cannot use actual contraception without sinning. |
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You might also be interested in averting the end of the world by predicting the end of the world every single day. |
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//a giant flowery waste of intellectual effort// |
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[Vernon] - There is a fundamental flaw in your
logic, and that is the buried premise that a baby
will not be born if it is not attached to a soul at
conception. VAPs can produce offspring, it is just
that God does not bestow their offspring with a
soul. |
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The arrogance does not have to be so directed as
you describe. If God senses that a human feels
godlike in his ability to procreate, then he does
not give the person a soul. This prevents
challenges to his authority down the road when
people die. |
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If you've ever met anyone who was truly arrogant,
you probably sensed that there was something
just not right about them. That something is a
lack of a soul. God sends soulless people like Dick
Cheney into the world to grab up all of the wealth
to punish the rest of us for our lack of humility.
He couldn't do his job right if he had a soul. |
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This also explains why complete shitheadedness
tends to run in families. |
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[nomocrow], that's an interesting hypothesis, but I think most Religions would disagree with it on the grounds that such people deserve to be punished, and therefore they have to have souls that can be punished. |
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God punishes people who are judgmental, even if
their judgment regards the actions of the soulless.
The soulless are merely tools to winnow out people
who are truly humble. God is sneaky that way. |
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[normocrow] Careful! You are approaching the
heresy of Trichotomy. |
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pre-destination sucks in ways that cannot be changed. the rhetorical notion of the soul serves only to overcome the obvious fact that, once dead, we rotteth, no part remaining to suffer or enjoy the "afterlife". As we see in the case of dementia or brain injury, the part of humanity that might enjoy the fruits of an afterlife, or likewise suffer the punishment of the pit, can depart long before the end of life. If grandma watches down from heaven, does she do so as she died, in a muttering Alzheimers coma? No her Soul which contains everything about her that YOU liked persists. Same logic for the sinner, their criminal mind might well have been bleached away by the lethal injection, but the hateful aspects that we want to see punished can go into eternal torment. The whole thing is childish and neurotic and humorous / the obvious horror of being mortal and self aware . |
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I pity the Elephants. They seem to know that they will die but have no language or culture to provide comfort about the matter. They seem to grieve their dead with an authentic sense of loss and finality. |
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It's a good point.
A very logical point. |
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{takes a one and a half gainer bellyflop into the deep-end} |
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I'm pretty sure that this is how I would look at too if it weren't for a lifetime of deja vu and premonitions.
How is it possible to be remembering something, which hasn't happened yet, as it is happening or even slightly ahead of its happening. |
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When you suddenly know what total strangers are about to say instants before they speak over and over again it makes you seriously wonder how many times you've done this before, and whether it is changable or set in stone. |
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It does not seem to be set in stone. Choices determine the branchings and the possibilities are infinite which leads me in a circle right back to the multiple realities theory. |
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What were you before you were born?
If the possibilities are infinite then, I've been you.
You've been me.
We all have to take a turn being that dog we kicked... |
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because kicking dogs is wrong? |
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before i was, i was not. ashes to ashes. |
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I think so about the dogs, and you might be right about the ashes though my gut tells me otherwise.
<shrugs>
It seems to know stuff better'n I do. |
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My gut's going with my gut on this one. |
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[WcW], for your entertainment, I added another link regarding souls. |
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On the matter of "pre-destination", I would say that this has been disproved by Quantum Mechanics. The fundamental randomness at the foundation of Physical Existence means that it can be impossible to exactly determine all outcomes of some Event. You may be aware that in Science, "chaos" is defined in such a way as to be related to imprecision in measurements? And since QM guarantees that all measurements will have some Uncertainty in them, Chaos is inevitable in the long run. But that ALSO means that Free Will can truly exist! |
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//They seem to grieve their dead with an authentic sense// |
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I think you mean "mourn their dead", [WcW]. They could only grieve their dead if there were an afterlife. |
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Oh, you can't get to Heaven
on roller skates.
'Cause you'll roll right by
those pearly gates. |
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Let's ask Heisenberg about elephants before we go calling
blind men fools, or, for that matter, deciding just who is
blind. |
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A brief thesis on the religious implications of elephant identification. |
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The blind men have touched the elephant. (observation of observation). they have no reason to lie. |
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The observational powers of the blind men cannot be assumed to be lesser than the sighted guru. He has sight but he is also working from an assumption: my sight is a better tool for determining truth than their touch. |
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The guru assumes that we believe him about the existence of the elephant, possibly he is putting one over on us. We should give it at least a quick look. |
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The blind men are actually touching the elephant. Is it possible that the elephant is made of non elephant objects; objects that would be easy to tell from a real elephant by touch but impossible to discern by sight? The guru may be overlooking a wealth of tools and pottery in his belief that they are in-fact and elephant. I am personally inclined to believe that blind man can tell the difference between an animal part and a tool, and if their observation contradicts my own assumptions and those of a guru, I might need to go down there and rub the beast myself. |
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The followers of the guru are fools. The guru has no more power of observation than the blind men ("that looks like an elephant") and yet he play it off like he knows something more useful about the nature of the elephant. A blind man near an elephant knows it is an elephant better than a sighted man at a distance given they are sane and both of a sound mind. Bind men can be just as aware as sighted men. |
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The story illustrates the hubris of the guru and the foolishness of followers. The blind men may need to get closer to the elephant to examine it, they may need to touch it in more than one place; the blind men may need to say "i don't know enough to assume what we have here", but they have the balls to say "what I felt (observed was a clay pot" and given that we can assume that the blind men have touched clay pots and may well be telling us that this elephant is in fact made of clay pots (a fake elephant). Maybe the guru is using a fake elephant to convince his followers that he is superior. A lying fool leading fools. Maybe the guru wrong and the elephant is made of non-elephant materials. Maybe the blind men didn't care to figure out the true nature of the elephant any more than the guru does. |
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I'm going to get down there, with the bind people and start touching the elephant maybe we can get something useful out of it or ride it or something. |
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If there were a god, I suspect it likes humbling
people, so its likely it would operate counter to
your expectations, simply because they were your
expectations. |
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In other words, we cannot observe the elephant itself; we
may only observe the elephant as exposed to our method
of observation. |
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Now everybody stand back. [8th of 7] is about to attack
me. |
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we needn't make any observation, the guru is telling us that it would be a waste of time. look at how he shows us that observation will only make us into fools. Only followers of the guru can know the truth about the elephant. Also blind people are ignorant and make false assumptions and if you question the judgment of the guru you must be blind and think yourself better than all men. |
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Well, my basic point was "F%€k the Guru, I'll find my own
damn elephant," but if I had my druthers, I'd rather have a
rhinocerous. |
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follow the elephant ditch the guru. |
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i though that we had that covered. are you suggesting that Sinter Klous and Little People are supernatural phenomena rather than simple theistic constructions? Do we need to disprove Krampus now too? |
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If you wish to study the Christian religion, and you avoid the Southern Baptist churches, and their pecularly unbiblical bible-only theology, you will learn that God knew the soul of both Job, and Jesus from before the creation of the earth. |
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One can extrapolate from this that "life" if defined as the formation of a soul, neither begins at conception, nor ends at death. |
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Indeed, Job clearly describes the biblical view on the creation of a human being... and a man's ejaculation has almost nothing to do with the process. |
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Furthermore, the birth of Jesus can be used as proof that a man's ejaculation is not necessary for the creation of a human soul. |
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[ye_river_xiv], this Idea is simply a logical consequence of assuming that various claims made, by certain relgious enthusiasts, are true. I didn't say I agreed with those claims (and in fact I indicated in at least one anno that I didn't think the claims could be true). You are simply offering a particular reason to disagree with those claims. |
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//egg-fertilization is a purely physical process//
That's a very sad view of the world, Vernon. I think you'll find that there's rather more to it than that. You've started half way through the process. Normally, it starts with a look and a thought. |
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[DrBob], I stand by what I wrote: "Egg-fertilization is a purely physical process." Because it is known to be able to happen regardless of other events, however lyrical those other events might be (or might not be). For example, it can happen in a Petri dish, entirely dissociated from any human emotions. |
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Basically, I made a factual statement that stands on its own. Just because other things tend to be associated with egg-fertilization (or the steps leading up to it), that doesn't detract from the bare fact, at all, that the fertilization event by-itself is indeed a purely physical process. |
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//entirely dissociated from any human emotions//
Even using the petri dish technique, you can't completely disassociate human emotion from the process. Any process that involves humans, involves human emotions, no matter how much you try and deny it. |
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[DrBob], purely physical processes don't care whether or not humans have emotions about those processes --and the processes also don't care what type of emotions humans might have, either. For example, a working light switch controlling a functional light bulb and an operational power source is going to turn that light either on or off, regardless of how or what anyone feels about it. |
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And that's why it is possible to discuss any other purely physical process separately from human emotions. Which is all I was doing, when I made the statement you are complaining about. I don't deny that emotions might exist or even probably exist regarding human reproduction; I'm simply saying that molecular biochemistry doesn't care about such things, that those emotions are irrelevant to how a purely physical process occurs. |
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Emotions might be totally relevant to WHEN a reproduction-event occurs, but that's an entirely different thing from the "how", the bio-mechanics of sperm-joins-egg. |
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//a functional light bulb and an operational power source is going to turn that light either on or off, regardless of how or what anyone feels about it//
No it isn't. It still requires a human in the process to flip the switch and, if that person just doesn't feel like flipping the switch today it ain't going to happen. |
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[DrBob], now you are just being silly. The ability of a light switch to function has NOTHING to do with what some human (or other capable entity, such as a chimpanzee) feels about it. And ditto for egg-fertilization. I'm reminded of various automated gadgets, such as cameras at traffic intersections, that catch cars going through red lights. They are designed to work ESPECIALLY disregarding what the people in those cars think about it! |
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//now you are just being silly//
Not at all. The observer effect is standard physics. |
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//The observer effect is standard physics.// Now that really is silly. Are you seriously suggesting a state of quantum entanglement encompassing a conception event and somebody's mind? That sort of nonsense is just what Schrödinger's thought experiment involving a cat was supposed to dispel. |
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Unfortunately, even most people who understand the Cat
don't have a grasp of the larger issues it addresses (I'll
exclude present company, count yourselves in or out of this
statement as appropriate). Most have never read the EPR
Article or Schröedinger's rebuttal in Natural Sciences (in
which he illustrated the Cat thought experiment); I myself
have read only the most widely available excerpts of these
texts. Most laypersons interested in quantum
theory/mechanics seem (IMO) to take the Copenhagen
Interpretation far more literally than its progenitors
intended. Before we go willy-nilly applying these concepts
to anything that seems applicable, let's stop and remember
that the founding fathers of modern physics spoke mostly
in allegory, because they knew that the things they were
discussing A) could not be directly described via
contemporary terms/methods and B) could not be
physically or virtually modeled using
the technology of their era. |
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I'm sorry. This is something of a pet peeve of mine. |
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Rant concluded, for the moment. Thank you for your time. |
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The only problem being that this is based on the assumption that humans have free will which I find unbelievable. If the God line is what you believe, then God made man with reproduction based impulses. So, really, it's "I am God. I will force you to force me to make a soul." I think it may happen that if you could curb any bodily attraction to reproducing and then reproduced nonetheless, than you could get a child without a soul. Also, it is note-able that there would not be a legal issue with aborting this child. |
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[Alizayi], by definition, if Free Will exists, then it is independent of ALL mere bodily impulses. So, even if God made the bodies and the impulses that come with them, Free Wills have the power to ignore them. And just because most people don't bother to try doesn't mean they can't refuse-to-submit to those impulses if they wanted to. |
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[21 Quest], what [Alizayi] wrote about abortion was simple logic, that if the unborn don't have souls, then abortion shouldn't be an issue (how can they qualify as "people murdered by abortion" if they don't have souls?). |
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However, [Alizayi] seems to be forgetting that in many places in the world abortions are not a legal issue because, as mentioned in a prior anno here, it is Religious Doctrine in those places that the unborn don't have souls. Those places are most certainly NOT making the primary claim described in the main text of this Idea, that egg-fertilization is tied to soul-creation. |
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