ping
Greetings to you traviskicks!
I'm looking forward to reading your Theory via your website. I frequently read Kurzweilai's (Kurzweilai.net) work and therefore have the feeling there will be parallels.
Take care!
many things have vague or unagreed upon definitions. Try to give a concise definiton of what existence is, or what time is, or even what love is. No easy task. Yet we all know when something exists, we all understand the passage of time, and we all recognize the power of love. We can't define these things, but they are indispensible to our whole conception of reality. I don't see why God is any different.
This concept is a human abstract thinking tool to deal with the unknown or unknowable, but truly random forces don't actually exist, and therefore neither does free will. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle refers to our inability to observe a subatomic particle without disturbing it. If we *could* observe without disturbing then we could understand and calculate everything that happens using math. The true definition of random is what is currently unknown, and possibly unknowable to humans.
There never will be. They make their own choice, despite all the evidence, both internal and external. Much of their search is simple rationalization to making and affirming their own idols.
This article comprises a lot of highfalutin arguments strung together here, assuming "nobody" has the truth but only a piece of it and therefore we can somehow search it out through our own intellect and understanding. We can't.
But, in a sense, you're right. Man cannot fully understand God, His purposes or his methods. However, the Bible (not the Koran, not other religious scriptures) does reveal what we need to know and we can therefore act by faith on that knowledge - both historical and spiritual. God has already revealed Himself to us in full measure through His Word and by His Son. God has already done all the work for us and doesn't require us to discover Him by our intellectual or moral efforts.
Most religions try to "find" God. So do rationalists, if they choose to attempt the effort rather than simply being cynical. Those on either avenues are wasting their time. God has done the work for us. He doesn't require us to do it. All this exercise is fuss and feathers. Interesting, maybe, but unnecessary to know all about God - or that part of Him we can understand and need to know. In fact, our vain minds probably throw us off His revealed Truth and onto false rabbit trails wherein we think we can intuit and somehow "discover" Him by our own efforts and reasoning. We needn't bother. The work has been done. By Him. It is freely available to the most simple or the most cerebral. It need not be "discovered" through our further efforts.
Nice try, but no cigar!
Have any of you clicked on the link and looked over the entire article? Look at all that gibberish! Whoever wrote this is is need of a long vacation. His brain is scrambled from excessive intellectualism.
- The notion of "free will" is well-defined to the satisfaction of just about every rigorous theorist. We can prove mathematically that every algorithmically finite system will perceive itself to have something exactly analogous to "free will", it is a simple consequence of mathematics. The internal uncertainty is mathematically required in any context, but a context always exists in which there is no uncertainty for the same system.
- The human mind is algorithmically finite by every mathematical test for such things. These tests work on "black box" systems; their efficacy does not rely on having any knowledge of the system internals. There is no test for the opposite -- the best one can assert is that the nature of a system is inconclusive -- but this inconclusivity does not seem to be a necessary assertion in this case.
- The brain is computationally inferior to modern silicon in every aspect except one: memory reference rates, which the human brain outstrips silicon by about three orders of magnitude for conventional hardware. The mathematical definitions of general intelligence (see Hutter et al) that have been proven in the last few years and are generally accepted proscribe an implementation that is bound by effective reference rates. We can reengineer silicon to address this, but until very recently not much effort has gone toward this outside of narrow supercomputing domains; a lot of this is the result of basic architectural differences between the human brain and silicon process technologies.
- Among rigorous theorists (i.e. not philosophers playing semantic games and waxing eloquent), consciousness is generally agreed to be a necessary emergent property of all large-scale systems capable of algorithmic induction (the generally proven architectural model of intelligence in mathematics). This is not the "big question" that it used to be, but you dismiss it out of hand and assert that it is something extra and mysterious. Since the architecture of the human brain is a very good match for algorithmic induction (its structures and behaviors map very well into what is expected in that model), it should not be surprising then that the human brain expresses consciousness. Note that quantum mechanics is orthogonal to intelligence and therefore consciousness; QM is purely time-domain, intelligence is purely space-domain, and you cannot translate time-complexity into space-complexity (though you can go the other direction).
Those are my off-the-cuff technical remarks without having read the entire article yet. We now have a fundamental understanding of intelligence and intelligent systems in mathematics that we have never had even five or six years ago. What is interesting is that our understanding now makes it patently obvious why everything we came up with previously was incorrect. The truth is far more elegant and slightly stranger mathematically than what has long been imagined. It surprises most people to discover that we never had a general mathematical basis for intelligence in the 20th century to work from.
You will be hearing a lot more about this in the next three years or so. It still has not filtered out of the hardcore research circles, though it IS moving into development phases.
Well, an issue here
is that rationality
is a tool that helps
us exist, it's not
the bounds of our existence.
We are not our tools.
But references that God can be seen are prevalent (Gen 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 26:4, 32:30, 35:1, 35:7, 35:9, 48:3, Ex 3:16, 4:5, 6:3, 24:9-11, 33:11, 33:23, Num 14:14, Dt 5:4, 34:10, Jg 13:22, 1Kg 22:19, Job 42:5, Ps 63:2, Is 6:1, 6:5, Ezek 20:35, Am 7:7, 9:1, and Hab 3:3-5).
But that's irrelevant. We don't see gravity; we don't see radio waves. God is not "natural" so naturally He cannot be seen or detected naturally. Our concepts of justice, mercy and love do not stem from physics or the stone-cold universe we live in. Besides, Christianity can visualize God through the icon of Jesus. It is the only religion that has a personal connection with God on a human level, so his claim that all religions worship something unknown is only partially true.
Theology is a little more complicated than basic Philosophy 101 this individual spouts. We will never know the essence of God (how can a tool know its maker?), but we recognize God through His energies (manifestations). Traviskicks simply doesn't even measure up to the subject.
As for atheists and agnostics, who cares! If they think this world just happened to come into existence by itself -- and I mean not just the tiny little earth but all of the Universe -- let them. It's not their intellect that stops them but their pride and a western love-affair with humanity that has been elevated to deity.
But references that God can be seen are prevalent (Gen 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 26:4, 32:30, 35:1, 35:7, 35:9, 48:3, Ex 3:16, 4:5, 6:3, 24:9-11, 33:11, 33:23, Num 14:14, Dt 5:4, 34:10, Jg 13:22, 1Kg 22:19, Job 42:5, Ps 63:2, Is 6:1, 6:5, Ezek 20:35, Am 7:7, 9:1, and Hab 3:3-5).
But that's irrelevant. We don't see gravity; we don't see radio waves. God is not "natural" so naturally He cannot be seen or detected naturally. Our concepts of justice, mercy and love do not stem from physics or the stone-cold universe we live in. Besides, Christianity can visualize God through the icon of Jesus. It is the only religion that has a personal connection with God on a human level, so his claim that all religions worship something unknown is only partially true.
Theology is a little more complicated than basic Philosophy 101 this individual spouts. We will never know the essence of God (how can a tool know its maker?), but we recognize God through His energies (manifestations). That author simply doesn't even measure up to the subject.
As for atheists and agnostics, who cares! If they think this world just happened to come into existence by itself -- and I mean not just the tiny little earth but all of the Universe -- let them. It's not their intellect that stops them but their pride and a western love-affair with humanity that has been elevated to deity.
Intellectuals will never understand that if you could define God to the satisfaction of rational man ...then it would not be God. Any god you can put into a box is not God. He who does not accept Jesus Christ as Savior is already condemned.
there has never been a logical argument strong enough to force all the atheists and agnostics of the world to believe.
Any number of reasons (good and otherwise) for not believing that God exists, and only one for believing....
All the writer has to do is be in Washington tomorrow among the throngs.
| Looks to me like the author failed to mention this verse from the bible: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" Romans 1:20 |
Thanks for the ping! Personally I believe in God despite the fact that one can not prove the existance to a non-believer. The other fact is that no one can disprove God either. God is beyond our comprehension. The Bible explains to us what God wants us to know at this time, and God constantly reveals more to us individually if we seek. Free will can exist only if fate is limited. Therefore, I don't believe that time exist in a linear fashion, and can not be travelled in at any rate or direction other than what we are already travelling in it. If freewill exist than the future is unwritten, and therefore does not exist until we create it. Fate still exist in the aspect of cause and effect. For example, you can't change where a road leads, but you can change the road you are on. Every action has a reaction. So God knows the future because he knows the consequences of our choices, yet he gives us the power to alter that future. In His image, we are creators too. I don't believe we travel to past either. Time is a creation of man to measure the distance between cause and effect. The only time that truely exist is NOW. Its always now.
"If I knew Him I'd be Him."
Didn't Jesus reply to one of his disiples who ask Jesus to show us the Father. And Jesus reply that he and the Father are one. If you see me you have seen the Father. The point is that by faith we who are christians have seen God our Father, thru the living Word of God, which is Jesus Christ himself. But I see that you do not have the faith to see, and that you are blind.