Apocalypse NAO: College Studies the Theological Ramifications of Robotics 176
malachiorion writes "Have you heard the one about the Christian college in North Carolina that bought a humanoid robot, to figure out whether or not bots are going to charm us into damnation (dimming or cutting our spiritual connection to God)? The robot itself is pretty boring, but the reasoning behind its purchase—a religious twist on the standard robo-phobia—is fascinating. From the article: '“When the time comes for including or incorporating humanoid robots into society, the prospect of a knee-jerk kind of reaction from the religious community is fairly likely, unless there’s some dialogue that starts happening, and we start examining the issue more closely,” says Kevin Staley, an associate professor of theology at SES. Staley pushed for the purchase of the bot, and plans to use it for courses at the college, as well as in presentations around the country. The specific reaction Staley is worried about is a more extreme version of the standard, secular creep factor associated with many robots. “From a religious perspective, it could be more along the lines of seeing human beings as made in God’s image,” says Staley. “And now that we’re relating to a humanoid robot, possibly perceiving it as evil, because of its attempt to mimic something that ought not to be mimicked.”'"
"theological" - irrational, stupid, arbitrary (Score:3, Insightful)
This is non-news for nerds, stuff that does not matter, at all.
Religious people say and do irrational, stupid, arbitrary stuff all the time. Discussing robots "theologically" is just another boring instance of this.
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Yeah. And what a silly question, when any-one who has seen Terminator 2 knows that robots can be both good and evil.
The robots aren't the point (Score:3)
I know you're joking, but who said anything about studying the robots?
Sounds to me like they want to study how humans react to the robots. And it seems to me the field is wide open for research. For example what are the moral and ethical implications of humanoid slaves completely lacking in free will? We have some clues as to the moral damage owning other people can do to someone, if those risks are also exposed by owning a machine-slave onto which we project personhood it behooves us as a society to exp
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Theology is not a science. Science involves experiments, and not of the 'thought' variety: empirically testable hypotheses.
Also, while there are indeed non-religious people who believe irrational and arbitrary things, religious people are grouped together on the basis of their irrational and arbitrary beliefs. It's the difference between a sack of 'things that were at one point in time attached to something made of iron' and a sack of magnets; having been attached to iron doesn't really tell you anything el
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There's a lot to gripe at here, but I'll stick with the most relevant to the point. People seem to keep forgetting that the modern scientifiic method was (at least in part) pioneered and established by religious monks who used it for various purposes. From researching astronomy and biology, to yes, theology. Robert Grosseteste was a Bishop! Roger Bacon was a Franciscan monk! Very early Christian theologians argued that science was a means of more accurately understanding the Bible. And they urged people to
Re:"theological" - irrational, stupid, arbitrary (Score:4, Insightful)
It does. Multiverse theories have been around for a long while, and until they are framed in terms of testable hypotheses (some of them never will be because as posited they prohibit causal interaction between universes) they won't be part of a scientific theory.
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If a theory is not accompanied by descriptions of tests that can be used to verify or falsify the theory, or to value its correctness relative to existing or competing theories, then it is indeed not science.
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I see that you don't understand, well, anything at all about philosophy. I can safely assume, then, that you also have no understanding of basic science.
Go ahead and work on that. Don't bother posting when you figure it out -- there's no need to humiliate yourself further.
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It does indeed imply that math is not a science, but I don't see that as a problem, because despite not being a science mathematics can still make claims that are justifiably true. Mathematics has a system built in to accurately distinguish true from false, and it's not comparison of hypotheses to reality (...depending on what kind of philosophy of mathematics you subscribe to, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms), but formal logic. That's what it derives its justification from: it's all deduction*. Sci
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You can do predicate calculus with any set of predicates, but if your predicates are flat out wrong, as in theology, then it won't actually achieve any substantive logical deductions.
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The deductions (provided they follow the rules of predicate logic) will be valid, but not sound.
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Indeed.
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But you are presupposing that the predicates are wrong. A rational approach would be to take each directly untestable predicate (God exists being the obvious one, but probably not useful isolated from other untestable predicates) and see if that predicate (or its negative) can be combined with other tested-true predicates to reach a testably false conclusion, thus disproving (or proving, if based on the negative) the original predicate.
A rational person who chooses to believe in God (and the idea is only s
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Oh, and what is your good reason for disbelieving in God? Occam's razor is a useful rule of thumb, but it's not any kind of evidence. Personally, I would assume that a benign creator that honored free will would do it's best to leave no solid evidence of its existence until such time as its creations had advanced enough prepared to openly disagree with whatever it might have to say. And yes, I'm aware that that flies directly in the face of the whole Christian "Lucifer cast out of Heaven" mythology. But
Re:"theological" - irrational, stupid, arbitrary (Score:5, Insightful)
"Properly done, theology is a science "
are you stupid? That's not science, that's not how science work.
Science is a method for teasing out how thing in the world work. Every time science has been pointed at religion, religion does not stand up.
“What do you think science is? There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?” Steven Novella
""religion = irrational" nonsense I see so often."
irrational : not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical: irrational arguments.
Believing in something that has no evidence is irrational behavior.
" but I've heard plenty of the same from anti-religion people as well."
Which doesn't mean your point of view of god is correct.
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Insightful? Amazing. You'd think that even the thickest mod would know that theology is not religion!
I'd have never believed it would work. You are truly the karma whore master.
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"Properly done, theology is a science "
are you stupid? That's not science, that's not how science work.
Ironically, science initially grew out of a desire to understand God better, the reasoning being that since God created everything and gave us the ability to reason, studying His creation would bring us closer to Him. And in fact, it doesn't seem unreasonable either, so I would say that understanding science is as close to understanding God as one can be.
I think all this anti-science from the Christian and other religious communities is no more than a sort of turf-war. They feel that science is taking somet
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Very well put.
This whole thread has been illustrative of the confusion over terminology. I even provided a definition so people wouldn't make the mistake of conflating "a science" with "the physical sciences." Here's one of the definitions [reference.com] of science: "knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study." This is clearly the meaning to which I was referring.
Most troubling (and what I was trying to address) is the adamant assertion that there is "no reason" to believe in a god and r
Robots are incapable of evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they have no free will nor do they suffer from original sin.
Alternate response: robots don't dim or sever our connection to god because we have no connection to god because god doesn't exist.
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If mimicking humans is evil all mimes will burn in hell.
Making a Tool (Score:3)
Is the act of making the robot evil is the question
You might as well ask whether the act of making a hammer is evil. Robots are tools and, like any tool, whether they act for good or evil depends on the intent of their user. Making a tool look like a human does not make a difference. Nobody classifies doll manufacturers as evil because they make toys that look like humans.
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Also I should think: does the act of owning a "slave" risk compromising a person's moral integrity? As robots reach the point of acting as household servants they will no doubt incorporate research designed to get humans to project personhood onto them. Regardless of what you intellectually know, if you emotionally feel that this robot is a person then I would be surprised if acclimating to treating it as a slave doesn't have at least some impact. If we were to discover serious negative implications then
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People project personhood on lots of things already. Apart from the obvious - search the net for what people think about their roombas - even stuff like cars are designed to evoke it. And it's not as if there's been a dearth of research on these issues already.
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And you think it's safe to assume that a robot designed to interact with you as though it were human won't change things just a bit?
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Making the robot evil is not the question. Making the robot evil is the answer. "How do I take over the world?" is the question.
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>robots don't dim or sever our connection to god because we have no connection to god because god doesn't exist.
Robots dim and sever our ethernet cables because their batteries run out.
we don't have free will either (Score:2)
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If you really want to get technical about it, having free will is not a requirement to do evil: being able to be responsible and being able to be held responsible are. But as responsibility is even more ill-defined than free will, a proper response would require an exegesis that this slashdot comment is too small to contain.
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Alternate response: robots don't dim or sever our connection to god because we have no connection to god because god doesn't exist.
So, replace "our connection with god" with "our moral integrity". For practical purposes the two phrases are largely interchangeable. Are you so certain that owning a humanoid slave specifically designed to get you to emotionally recognize it as a person *won't* carry a risk of negatively altering your regard for other humans?
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First, 'moral integrity' is not interchangeable with 'connection with god', 'for practical purposes' or otherwise. They have wildly different metaphysical entailments, and there are sources of ethics ('moral integrity') other than religion.
Second, could you load up that question a little more, I think you could probably fit in about five more unwarranted presuppositions. So let's take it apart:
1. Robots are not 'humanoid slaves'
2. Robots are not necessarily 'specifically designed to get you to emotionally r
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1) A genreal-purpose robot will almost certainly be humanoid so that it can use human tools. It will also be a "slave" in the sense that it does what it's told.
2) Not necessarily, but probably. If you're buying a house-droid which will be more appealing - the metal-masked Cyberman with cold dead eyes? The puppy-cute thing with big friendly eyes and doglike mannerisms. The buxom elf with "recreational upgrades"? They're all the same machine under the hood, only the voice, skin and mannerisms change. Ye
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I absolutely agree, if we cannot definitively state that another being does not possess personhood, then the only ethical course of action is to assume that it does. However, that is not at all what I'm discussing. I assume you've seen Kismet and some of the later non-verbal communication research robots? One of the findings is that it doesn't take much in the way of AI to make humans inclined to feel they are interacting with an actual being. Throw in some nice chatty "Simglish" dialog and it shouldn't b
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Exactly like angels. Lucifer only fell because he became afflicted with free will.
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Exactly like angels. Lucifer only fell because he became afflicted with free will.
I thought it was less because he was "afflicted with free will," and more "he used his free will to lead an insurrection against God."
Of course, it's been a minute since I actually read that part of the Christian tome, so I could very well be mistaken.
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IT's ok, most Christians have no clue about that part of the Bible either, nor do the know what antichrist means, and they think the the devil tempts men and walks among us even though the bible says otherwise.
It's surprising how little believer know about their own theology. I suspect this is intention because of they actually read the entire bible, they would stop believing.
So reciting the same set of verse over and over again and ignoring the rest keeps the cash flowing.
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Most "Christians" I've met have never actually read the Bible - rather, they listened to some man tell them what he believes the Bible says, and what he believes those words mean, and follow him rather than the person after whom their religion is named.
Which is a grand shame, IMO - If you take all the hocus-pocus out of the parables of Jesus Christ, it goes from being just another stupid religion based on untestable nonsense to an excellent set of moral guidelines all of humanity would profit from, if we fo
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Don't be a stupid douche - the answer you seek is in the Christian Bible.
Now, whether or not you see that answer as a fairy tale, fable, parable, or factual account is up to you to decide for yourself.
Oh, and PS - "insurrection" is not a condition exclusive to democracies.
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So other than the self-contradictory nature of your post, and other than the fact that I am not shilling for religion, there is also the fact that there is a long tradition of ascribing free will to Lucifer, going back to Origen of Alexandria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
Please, think before you post, and then think again, and then don't post next time.
Becoming God or the Buddha (Score:2)
Highly recommended to anyone interested in this general area...
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/... [rottentomatoes.com]
It's a well made film with good writing about a robot who achieves enlightenment and how humans react (both positively and negatively) to the fact that a robot has done so.
If a robot can think sufficiently finely, it will be possible for it to think it has a soul and is saved or will be reincarnated or it meets the criteria for whatever other religions out there exist that do not explicitly prohibit members who d
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Based on what I have seen in labs? it would say 25 years off, at most. In software. Maybe not in a humanoid shaped robot.
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Bicentennial Man would have been a better reference, at least in regards to the question of enlightened humanoid robots and social reaction to the same.
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Good point... and I agree on Bicentennial man.
To be honest- I didn't even remember (and still don't) the other stores in that movie.
But the robot was so well done, it stuck with me. I can still see it in my mind's eye- and I have a *terrible* memory.
Robots (Score:2)
For many centuries, Christianity was OK with real slavery, as long as the slaves were a different race.
The word robot means slave in Czech (I think)
Anyway only a very small number of robots look as humanoid as C3PO, the "can't tell robots from humans" world as described by Asimov, Dick and others is a long way off, if ever
Re:Robots (Score:5, Informative)
> The word robot means slave in Czech
Not quite. It's derived from the word "robota", which means labor due to a feudal lord, and is colloquially used to describe unpleasant work you do unhappily.
A closer match than slave would be serf. The word 'rob' is slave in many Slavic languages, but not in Czech. Funnily enough, in every other Slavic language I know, robota/rabota mean just work, with no negative connotations.
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For many centuries, Christianity was OK with real slavery, as long as the slaves were a different race.
The same applies to many other faiths, as well as many other secular societies.
That sentence would be more accurately written, "For many centuries, humanity was OK with real slavery..."
What about the lack of work part? (Score:2)
Will we need an basic income?
An OT cap so you stop settings where jack is working 60-80+ hour weeks (doing the job of 2-3 people) and bob is not working at all?
Setting full time to 20-32 hours a week?
An Robotic tax?
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Write legislation forcing robots to declare a religious affiliation and tithe 10% of their income.
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I ahve been thinking about that for 30+ years.
We(society) has 2 choices Make a plan where peope are fed and housed and free to think and build and create art. Or create a system where a tiny % make all the money and everyone else lives in squaler.
People will need ot get past their socialism = evil BS, and they will need to get a grip and deal with the fact that some people may do very little.
It means the money will no longer be used as the ultimate was to judge value.
It changeds everything.
Some idea for the
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Thus artificially limiting production and everyone's quality of life. Not good. Just give everyone guaranteed food, shelter, Internet access and hours - and all the resources needed to use them - at a makerbot.
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There's lots of solutions available - we've had the technology to create a socio-economic utopia where nobody has to work more than a couple hours a day for the better part of a century at least,. That we haven't done so is due to a cultural obsession with productivity and consumerism.
Eh, quit your whining... (Score:5, Funny)
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marred by the heritable-by-some-mechanism-never-fully-elucidated sin that you humans are worried about.
Sorry but you are wrong there - the mechanism to acquire a sin is clearly documented here [servicecanada.gc.ca]. They even keep a SIN record - which is why Canadians are always so nice to everyone. ;-)
Which God? (Score:3)
And why is yours better than another's?
One thing I'd like to figure in the evaluation (Score:2)
Evil robots are everywhere (Score:2)
...and they eat people's bibles for fuel. Luckily, there's Old Glory Insurance. [yahoo.com]
(WARNING: those denying the existence of evil robots may be evil robots themselves)
Old Glory Insurance. For when the soulless metal ones come for YOU.
So evangelists have made it to the iconoclasts (Score:2)
Not the right question (Score:2)
Let's face it, wrong question. While one religious guy is wondering about humanoid robots and our link with god, at least half the species is going to be pondering, "Yeah, but can I f!@# it?"
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That was done. It was in a series of book know as 'the robot series' by Isaac Asimov
You should read them. Or not.
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Better yet, a comparison of Asimov's 3 Laws and Christ's two greatest commandments (is rule 3 really necessary? Given recent developments in Switzerland [dailymail.co.uk] and Belgium [cnn.com], perhaps it is).
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I'm saying perhaps humans need a 3rd law, since our instinct for self preservation seems to have gone haywire.
slave to student loans (Score:2)
slave to student loans and one of the few ways out is to get into a good prison and keep going back in after your time is up.
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Especially if "in the image of God" has more to do with spirituality/place in the universe than say, the actual visual photons?
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I don't get it. Why should robots have any more theological ramifications than any other tool? And if you are created in God's image, wouldn't you also want to create beings in your own image? I mean, if he's any kind of artist at all...
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>God created humans in His image AND SET THEM FREE
FFS, there is no God. You are spouting pure bullshit. Stop it and grow up.
Says you. But since there's not enough evidence to make a conclusive assertion either way, coupled with the fact that here in America people are free to believe whatever they want (regardless of how ridiculous YOU might find it)...
Stop it and grow up, indeed.
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That's not how it works. Sorry. You seem to have an assertions the God Exists. Show the evidence.
You do know that you can't prove a negative? It's on YOU to prove it.
The logical default position is there is no God.
Now, if you have actual evidences, I would be interested in reading it.
Sadly yes, People in America are free to believe and shove their belief down other peoples throat without evidence,counter to evidence, and without actual information. which would be fine except they use the ignorance and stupi
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You do know that you can't prove a negative?
Yes.
I know that no matter how much someone else bellyaches, a person is going to believe what they choose to believe. I also know that being a dickhead to that person about their beliefs doesn't do anything except make them believe in X even harder, if for no reason other than to piss the aforementioned dickhead off.
Which is why the whole "is there a God" debate is pure idiocy, in my mind. His existence cannot be proven or disproven, so why waste energy arguing about it? Just believe what you want* and get
Re:robotic slave worshippers (Score:4, Interesting)
Assuming you strive to be a wise man, and if you are indeed intellectually honest, why do you stack fallacy upon fallacy in your post? Just at a glance I spot several non sequiturs, undistributed thirds, an ad hominem, false equivocation, and implicit acceptance of appeals to authority. And that's just skimming. Do you understand how hard you make it for yourself to be taken seriously? If you want to tell people about what is true and what is false, you have to follow the rules that allow you to determine what is true and false. Even God has to obey the laws of logic, so you should probably follow his example.
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Isn't it funny how people who makes lists of "logical fallacies" never take the time to point them out?
I don't blame them. They'd look very foolish if they tried! See, it turns out that those folks usually have no formal training in logic and are just repeating nonsense they read on a blog.
To quote ... er ... you: "Do you understand how hard you make it for yourself to be taken seriously? If you want to tell people about what is true and what is false, you have to follow the rules that allow you to deter
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Non sequitur: "Why should I prove anything to you? I have no more obligation to prove God exists than you have to prove he doesn't. Burden of proof is an artificial convention." None of this follows, and if each line is to be taken as a conclusion they further premises to back them up.
Appeal to majority: " A billion people would say the same thing about God,"
False equivalency: "Or is this the best you can lamely say: "I've seen it and felt it." A billion people would say the same thing about God, but for so
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See how ridiculous you look? From top to bottom: 1) Not a non sequitur. 2) Not in context. 3) Not even wrong. (This post would get very long if I tried to explain why just the second half of that is wrong, let alone all of it.) 4) Not a non sequitur. 5) Not a logical fallacy. 6) Not an ad hominem. (Really. Look it up.) 7) Not a non sequitur (Do you even know what that term means?) 8) Not an ad hominem (Hint: it doesn't mean "insult") 9) Not in context.
Please don't bother responding to this post.
Yeah, someone might discover how laughably incompete
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It's not a 'either way' thing. Your construction of God is extremely unlikely.
Amazing! You can read minds? That must be the case, as I never actually mentioned what "my construction of God" was. I was merely pointing out that other people are welcome to hold opinions and beliefs you disagree with, and that to call them "bullshit" even though you have absolutely zero evidence to back your assertion (real scientific of you, BTW) is childish and an example of incorrect reasoning.
That the universe is as we see it is far more likely.
Yea, that must be why physicists always agree on everything, and never update their models, huh? Yup, the ent
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I never actually mentioned what "my construction of God" was
I didn't mention what my construction of Santa Claus was. Do you still believe in that?
You missed my point. Why?
My guess is, too busy being pissed that someone would have the gall to "defend" an institution you personally have chosen to "be against."
For clarification, I have no problem with people choosing to follow atheism or theism - what I take issue with is the claims of absolute certainty that a lot of people, atheist and theist alike, seem to have in regards to topics in which there can be no absolute certainty, such as the existence of an "overbeing," so to speak.
When someone like Tech
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Did TechyImmigrant really read your mind?
Well, if TechyImmigrant is claiming to know something that I never actually said, that's one of only two possibilities; the other being that TechyImmigrant is full of shit.
I'll leave that determination for the reader to decide.
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Just what IS his construction of God? Your universe is far from seen yet, far from explained and far from being exempted from explanation by creationists.( No , not some Okie with a Schofield Reference Bible, or some drivelist who owns a museum, how about a Scientist? http://www.geraldschroeder.com... [geraldschroeder.com] , check his articles link for more in-depth explanations.)
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I think he needs to explain that. I'm not in his head.
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So, you could not judge his construction of God or determine likelyhood....
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I went with the standard Western Monotheistic model, since he said God, not gods or the godhead.
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Still too tricky to pin down since that covers everything from Catholics to Messianic Christians, Jehovahs witnesses to Mormons. There really is no standard model as exemplified by the numerous sects. In fact, there are those outside sects with their own ideas as exemplified by the link I left you.
I think the standard model is a construct of the spiritually insecure and television to present commercial messages to the Agnostic.
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But they're all unsupported by evidence. So it doesn't matter.
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The inverse is also unsupported by evidence as well.
Science doesnt have enough answers to make any definitive claims.
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Why do you demand definitive claims rather than the evidentiary claims that science does make?
That's like criticizing a launderette for failing to perform medicine.
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Because of incompleteness, lack of investigational criteria, the fluxing state of what physicists and archaeologists know from month to month, and obviously bias that will forever prevent THE METHOD from being more than a pipe dream or hollow claim.
Aspirin dispensers in launderettes may be a profitable idea. Been to one lately?
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>"as we see it" may just be a local maximum reversal of entropy that is entirely overwhelmed by the chaos elsewhere in the universe.
But that's exactly what we see.
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And thus, if you believe there is no God, there is absolutely no reason to do *science* as such, because there's no guarantee that what you observe today will occur tomorrow. There is no way to make any sense out of the chaos, might as well just sit under your Bodhi tree and contemplate your navel for all the good your science based on chaos can do.
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Science is pretty darned useful actually. Guarantees are few, but the overwhelming evidence of serial correlation in the world about us suggests that there's an objective reality outside our heads and it's worth looking at to see how it works.
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Science is useful- yes. Because of predictability. And that predictability, comes from an ordered and ordained universe, at least on the macro level.
Science is actually full of guarantees about an objective reality, and how that reality works- and the ability to have an objective reality.
Atheism, on the other hand, especially of the modern varieties based on unproven, untestable, and unobservable quantum mechanics, is not science. Chaos and randomness have no predictive capability.
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While a 2d6 roll MIGHT be a "12" or a "2", it would be unwise to bet better than 1:6 odds against a "7".
Randomness has great predictive ability. Many aspects of your life (traffic, life insurance, food safety, politics) are better understood and used in a "random" context.
And while the chair I'm sitting on may vaporize in two seconds- the VERY great probability is that it will remain intact. So I'm going to risk sitting on it.
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New Atheism requires a non-deterministic universe. Go read "The God Delusion", it's a primary proof against God.
As for the Greeks- they killed atheists. That's why Socrates had to drink hemlock.
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Yeah, but that's not science. It isn't prediction based on past observation. It's little better than guessing.
Especially when you have insufficient data for the other side of the dice- which may be a 7, but might be C.
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Been there. Done that. The book is on my shelf.
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I read that too. I wouldn't honor it with a place on my shelf. It's ... not that great. It's a mix of bad philosophy and simple-minded theology written by a guy who, quite clearly, has little to no understanding of either.
The only purpose that collection of mad scribblings serves, as far as I can see, is to extract money from poorly educated atheists of below-average intelligence.
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There is no good theology. We already established that.
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You're welcome to believe what you want; so is everyone else. Just as they have no right to shove their beliefs down your throat, you have no right to do the same to them. And, if something cannot be scientifically proven one way or the other, why bother debating it at all? Just believe what you want and move on with your life, rather than waste energy being a dick to people who might not share your beliefs. Because by taking that route, you end up being no different than the people you're really bitching a
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He should have spent some time trimming the fat out of Lord of the Rings. It was too long.
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Yes, I'm sure it's too long for a generation that can't stop to think while it reads.
Here, maybe this is more suitable to your 'intellect':http://goo.gl/LDHf
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