dimreepr

I don't really want to go into my workings out, incase somebody copies my theory, sorry.

 

But this is the highest number

How then do you hope to gain credability?

I think I may have found the biggest number available.

 

Here are my workings out. Please let me know how to submet this to a journal

 

why not your number plus 1?

Could depend on what makes you happy. Some might derive pleasure from other people's suffering. That sort of happiness wouldn't gain someone admittance to heaven I wouldn't think.

Happiness and pleasure are two different states of mind. You can't associate a pleasurable experience to happiness, as happiness is, in effect an absence of pleasure it's the default state of all animals. Pleasure is meant by nature to be a fleeting experience any attempt to associate this to happiness results in addiction.

But it complicates your pursuit of what to believe and what you can question. Here you are asking us. You situation may be similar to the situation for pastor's kids. They can find it difficult to openly question their faith within their church because they're the pastor's kids. They feel pressured to conform. Wow, if any kids in a church "get it", it must be the pastor's kids. What do you mean the pastor's kids are a rambunctious and unbelieving lot? What's going on here, what kind of pastor is he anyway that his own kids don't believe?

 

If you want to live a Christian life, which you seem to want to do, I think there's a church/denomination out there for you. You mention "happiness", so, offhand, I'm thinking Congregationalist. They're not strong on doctrine, but are more people-oriented. They typically have great kid/teen/young adult programs. To me, they're at the very liberal end of churches — country clubs with crosses on top. And then there's lots of denominations in between.

 

I suggest that you do some "church shopping", make contact with another local church, explain your situation, and begin talking with someone there. If they are Christian, they will respect you (and not go over your head to your father). I have seen time and time again, that each generation's faith is generational. In the 1980s, Oldsmobile attempted to freshen its image by advertising that "This is not your father's Oldsmobile." The same is often true with Christianity — different perspective on the basic Christian theme. More emphasis on some parts, less emphasis on others. Shop around.

 

I think the Bible version a church uses can indicate their Christian perspective. I wonder if your father uses the KJV, used by many conservative/fundamentalist/fire-and-brimstone Christians. If you're coming to us instead of your father, he seems unapproachable on such topics. Such Christians tend to focus on God's punishments instead of His love. It's a Christian perspective that's not popular among young Christians (or even middle-aged Christians), and it seems to be going out of style (unless you live in the Bible Belt).

I have no compulsion to conform in any way to the doctrine of the church, or any religion. My reference to happiness is an observation that if people are happy then religion becomes obsolete.

I didn't say you were attacking the church.

 

You questioned why you wouldn't be allowed into heaven even though you've led a good life. Perhaps just living a good life is not enough to get into heaven, not the right "dues" to pay for this particular country club. Maybe they want something you're not willing to give, like faith and worship. If that's what's required for entrance, why are you surprised they won't let you in?

Your analogy is now clear and is good but I still question the ultimate aim of the church, surely Jesus would have preferred a good moral to an acceptance of fate?

If you're not paying your dues for the country club membership, why do you think your good behavior entitles you to golf there?

Not a very good analogy, I’m not attacking the church here (my father’s a lay reader and a very prominent member of the local church and of course I respect him) I’m trying to find out what the aim of the church is, for me a good and decent society depends not on believe but rather on a happy populous.

Heaven. The reason, as I pointed out in another thread, is that built into your knowledge of what is good is the intrinsic belief in God's Word written on your heart. As such, God doesn't play semantics.

So God is petulant? Isn’t a good life worth rewarding? What if I have dedicated my life to bringing happiness to as many as I can? Compared to the man that has sinned his entire life but accepts God into his heart on his death bed?

Neither, there is no proof for an afterlife. This is the only life you have. Use it well.

Thanks I'll try but this isn't really a question for an atheist.

As an atheist I have a question, if I lead a “perfect” life according to the bible but refuse to believe in God would I go to heaven or hell?

I've never before heard anyone claim they know a 'fact' about extraterrestrial life. I don't at all see how we must accept it.

Technically you're correct my statement is missing a word that being complex life.

Yes, somehow I didn't ask the question properly. But, is it Gods fault or natures; that we have to eat each other to exist? Someone please respond to this question!!

The question seems moot to me. The, fact, is food chains exist as part of the reality of life and as such we need to simply allow that it’s a constant and will be true where ever life exists.

i was giving my opinion based on the topic why can't people get along, in which i think they can't get along because they are very closed minded and believe thing to be 100% real, i was stating that i can accept people as they are because i don't necessarily believe in anything 100%.

You assert that people don’t get along, what informs this assertion? My experience is that people do generally get along it’s cultures that don’t seem to be able to do so.

If the reality is that you are dreaming then the reality is not that your house burned down. But that's at odds with the original assertion. You have just solved the wrong problem.

 

Reality is still real. Our uncertainty about it is our problem, not reality's problem.

Quite right, having read the thread properly, I can only agree. My post was a reaction to a deviation of the original premise. oops sorry Tres.

Reallity is reallity.

 

If your house burns down you don't get to decide that it didn't

Of course you would react to the stimuli of your house burning down, but as Descartes points out, our senses are fallible and so can’t be relied upon. The reality might therefore be that you’re dreaming...

No, you don't get to decide what's real at all

I'm sorry tres I have to say I'm a little disapointed in this reply as would descartes. Solipcism is the cornerstone of his philosophy.

Go through both doors in superposition. Collapse the wavefunction of whichever reality is nicer.

I personally believe that we all have a survival instinct that overides what we know as good and evil. War is a good example of that.

but I also believe that Guilt is something we are taught either by disciplinary actions or by observation either way, I believe it is in every person who is in a social society be it here in the USA or in the jungle of the amazon. It is the knowledge of existance!

 

It is inside every person to know what is good and what is evil. Guilt is what seperates them.

 

 

 

I don't believe this is true, fairness is an inbuilt mechanism common to all mammalian social creatures. As such is the instinct that drives what we perceive to be good and evil.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97944783

I can think of only one way to even come close to achieving this, in the near future, and that is to go with Arthur C. Clark and build the city in space using a space elevator. The only reasons to build it is either overpopulation or natural disaster.

If it was me I'd go for the most challenging project, it is more likely to give you a higher grade and you will learn more...

A study into what makes a willow go into the weeping phase, it's a question I've often pondered.

You can flip the switch the other way too.

If you understand something you can't suddenly choose to not have understanding. You do need to remind yourself that you do understand but thats not because you've gone from the understanding state to an ignorant one.

i think you are supposed to work from the bottom, so the top two, in your case, could be interpreted, although currently fulfilled, as not on solid foundations and may be transitory and subject to the vagaries of your life as represented by the stuff further down the hierarchy or pyramid. I'm happy to be shot down on this though if I'm wrong!

 

IIRC this model was used for my CBT when I was coming off drugs ten years ago. You have to fulfill the basic physical needs (lower hierarchical elements) before you can tackle the mental/emotional ones.

No your not wrong, if you think of it in the same way as a pyramid of knowledge you need to read the books at the base in order to understand the books at the top.

How do you explain this mysterious phenomenon?

 

An Indian yogi says that he survived 70 years without eating.

 

http://bodyodd.msnbc...i-says-its-true

 

http://www.telegraph...r-70-years.html

 

This phenomenon cannot be natural or can it?

This man is an example of piety he thinks that if everyone thinks he's seen the light then he must be important.

(edit) He can't understand that nobody really cares, so not important unless he can share his insight.

But how do you know? What is the evidence, and is that evidence based on indirect measurements?

 

 

Wait a minute, I think I've got off the track I meant to be on.

My intention was to discuss whether something that hasn't been measured by any observer can meaningfully be said to exist.

I'm not talking about whether something exist that hasn't been measured by a particular observer (the question of whether existence is universal, or whether what exists for one differs from what exists for another -- and related topics like parallel universes and all that -- would be something for another thread).

 

So I think we could treat objects that "we know [are] out there we just haven't seen it yet" that would have been observed by others (for example by any matter that interacts with the diamond planet, including gravitationally) as measured.

 

 

 

My argument is basically,

1) If it has some property that can be measured, such that there are at least two different values that the measurement can take, then the measurement must have some effect on reality. Otherwise, if there is only one possible value or if there is no difference between a reality where it was measured and the same reality except that it wasn't measured, then nothing has been measured. That is, if no information is acquired, nothing has been observed.

2) If it hasn't been observed/measured, then no information about it has been acquired, so there is no discernible difference to reality that could be caused by it. Otherwise, the discernible difference would constitute a measurement. The bare minimum of measurable properties might be the property of whether or not it exists[edit] whether or not it has anything measurable at all.

 

What I'm wondering is, is there anything for which this doesn't apply?

An equivalent question might be, is there anything that we can know about, without it making any difference to reality?

 

 

If we can say "There must be a diamond planet" or "There must be a Higgs boson", is that because its existence leaves some mark or signature on reality, that wouldn't be there if the thing didn't exist? Or is it possible to purely theoretically deduce the existence of something, when there would be no measurable difference to reality or our experience of reality whether or not it even exists?

 

 

 

 

 

Or if I haven't quite got around to being comprehendable yet, let me try putting it a different way.

Say there is something that may or may not exist.

Further suppose that reality is experienced exactly the same whether it exists or not.

Then one cannot determine from experience alone whether that thing exists.

The question is: Is there any way besides experience, that something can be proven to exist?

 

If so, it could not be experimentally confirmed, because the results of the experiment would be the same whether it exists or not.

 

 

So what could we possibly know about anything that exists independent of its observation?

If we suppose that there is something that exists independent of its effects on reality, what's stopping us from supposing that the universe is completely filled with all kinds of things that exist with no effect on reality?

 

 

Edit:

I'm wondering if there is any example of a thing whose existence is both proven, and has no measurable consequence.

I conjecture that there is no such thing.

A problem for me is that I suspect that it is impossible to prove that there can be no such thing, because...

 

 

One could always suppose that NOTHING exists, and everything is the product of imagination or hallucination or whatever, and then all measurements would also be imaginary... and yet there might be STILL no difference in the experiencing of this imaginary universe relative to an actual universe with real existence. Therefore it would be impossible to prove from experience alone that anything physically exists. Therefore any definition of physical existence that can separate "true physical reality" from a possible illusion of reality, must be independent of experience. No completely reliable experiential evidence of such a reality would be possible, unless there is some kind of observation that could not be unreal (imaginary, illusory, faked, computer simulated, or whatever).

 

 

 

 

Quantum mechanics predict it's existance so it is possible and given the unimaginable size of the unvirse probability dictates that it must exist it's not a guess.

Can anyone please tell me if it is possible to create an electric arc in the air between two gloves at a distance of about 6" if you had a large enough battery as a portable power supply? Or are there certain voltage requirements to get an arc to form, and/or what are the risks of electrocuting yourself...?

A car battery through a transformer to step up the voltage high enough to produce the spark but be carefull you don't open your hands to far or you'll be getting the spark.

The way philosophy is relevant to science is that philosophy set the parameters for science. Now they are two sides of the same coin, but they both have completely different knowledge sets. So when you toss the coin you just get an argument that the other side simply can’t understand and so can’t have, from your perspective, a logical response and so the coin keeps spinning.