All-Purpose Religion Thread

[CrackpotForeigner]

I've just read the (very well-referenced) Wikipedia page on Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism).

Words cannot express how inane and delusional the basis of the religion is.

Most religions rely on the odd dubious premise for their existence, but Mormonism is like a catalogue of fantasy so laughable that words really fail me.

Can people really be so collectively mad? Unfortunately the answer seems to be yes, given that there are 14 MILLION-odd believers.

You might think that the existence of Mormonism would show other followers of religions how easily people can be lead to live their lives based on pure fantasy.

It really would be very very funny if it wasn't so serious.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

What troubles me is how such obvious shams like Mormonism/Scientology can become so powerful in a developed country. It makes you question whether or not education on its own will get rid of religion, or if they (like Europe) need to see the worst of it before they turn their backs on it.

[mjmooney]

The parents of a seven-year-old boy have appeared at Cardiff Crown Court in connection with his death.

His mother, Sara Ege, 33, denies beating Yaseen Ali Ege to death at their home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, in July 2010 and setting fire to his body.

The boy's father, Yousuf Ege, 38, denies a charge of causing the boy's death by failing to protect him.

The pair wept silently as Ian Murphy QC, prosecuting, explained the circumstances. The trial continues.

The jury was shown a piece of wood which the prosecution claims was used by Mrs Ege to hit her son "like a dog".

Mrs Ege covered her ears as jurors heard the 999 call she made saying that there was a fire in the home and that her son was still upstairs.

The court heard firefighters found Yaseen on the landing and he was taken to the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff where he was pronounced dead.

It was first thought that the boy had died in the fire and that his death was a tragic accident, the jury heard.

But a post mortem examination revealed he had died several hours before the blaze, of multiple injuries caused by being hit by a blunt instrument.

Sare Ege admitted she been hitting Yassen with a stick, in her own words, "like a dog," for three months before the fire, the court heard.

The prosecution claims that she beat him so severely on the day of the fire that he died.

It was also found that the fire was started deliberately, the court heard.

Mrs Ege admitted pouring lighter fuel over her son's body, the jury was told, saying "I know he was gone but I was just trying to protect myself".

The trial continues.

The article doesn't mention that the reason she was beating him with a stick was his failure to adequately memorise tracts from the Koran.

[Bazdavies79]

The article doesn't mention that the reason she was beating him with a stick was his failure to adequately memorise tracts from the Koran.

I wonder whether that was the reason.

[Ads]

Karma cannot exist because everything is predetermined.

[Voinjama]

Karma cannot exist because everything is predetermined.

How do you know? So it has already been decided what year I will die?

[TheDon]

How do you know? So it has already been decided what year I will die?

Determinism.

I wouldn't say "predetermined" as that implies there's a plan, but everything that happens is the only thing that, given the circumstances, could have happened. Ergo we ultimately have no control over anything.

Think of the act of rolling a die, when you roll a die the number it lands on is determined by the point and force of release. Two identical rolls (completely identical down to every molecule of air) will always result in exactly the same outcome. It's simple physics. In a closed system (and the universe is in essence a closed system, just a huge one) and with perfect information, you can predict with 100% certainty the outcome of an individual roll, because things interact in entirely predictable ways. We just don't have the current ability to gain that perfect level of knowledge, or to model each individual reaction.

Now, the extension to that is that seeing as our actions, thoughts, feelings, everything about us is just the result of complex chemical reactions they are entirely predictable, and whilst you have an illusion of choice, in reality every choice you make is the only choice you ever could have made due to the conditions at the time. Your thoughts are merely synapses firing in response to stimuli, they are governed by the same laws of physics as everything else. If we could perfectly map and model a brain we'd be able to tell exactly how you'd react to a specific situation.

This leads us to the situation where nothing is left to chance, there's simply no such thing. Everything that happens was always going to happen, and the events that led to every choice you made started at the very beginning of the universe. Since that moment in time, there has only ever been one possible outcome. Everything since then has led us to here, and will lead us down one very specific path, based on reactions that are entirely governed by the laws of physics.

[mjmooney]

"We must believe in free will - we have no choice" (Isaac Bashevis Singer)

[Voinjama]

Very interesting post The Don. It has certainly got me thinking. But I believe you can control the future destiny of your life.

[Bazdavies79]

If we could perfectly map and model a brain we'd be able to tell exactly how you'd react to a specific situation.

What if you came up with two statistically identical possible outcomes.

[Chindie]

What if you came up with two statistically identical possible outcomes.

You wouldn't. If you take what TheDon posted to be an accurate scenario, the only way 2 outcomes would prove to be statistically identical would be if the outcomes where identical. If there were 2 different outcomes, they would be statistically different and you could predict which would chosen. When you get to the kind of degree of accuracy TheDon is talking about (which is basically perfect accuracy, a perfect representation of the everything to the smallest degree in a closed system) statistically identical is identical.

I'm not sure how much I would completely agree with the idea (I think there is a degree of chaos in everything that would prevent a perfectly predictable model of everything ever existing, should such a thing be considered even vaguely possible) but if you assume it is, you can't have different statistically identical outcomes in that situation.

[limpid]

Very interesting post The Don. It has certainly got me thinking. But I believe you can control the future destiny of your life.

As TheDon posted, this is pretty basic chemistry and physics. On what do you base your belief? Can you suggest a hypothesis to contradict the established science? Then we can try testing your hypothesis.

[Bazdavies79]

You wouldn't. If you take what TheDon posted to be an accurate scenario, the only way 2 outcomes would prove to be statistically identical would be if the outcomes where identical. If there were 2 different outcomes, they would be statistically different and you could predict which would chosen. When you get to the kind of degree of accuracy TheDon is talking about (which is basically perfect accuracy, a perfect representation of the everything to the smallest degree in a closed system) statistically identical is identical.

I'm not sure how much I would completely agree with the idea (I think there is a degree of chaos in everything that would prevent a perfectly predictable model of everything ever existing, should such a thing be considered even vaguely possible) but if you assume it is, you can't have different statistically identical outcomes in that situation.

I don't think it's possible to not have a 50/50 scenario, unless the universe doesn't play by it's own rules.

[Chindie]

I don't think it's possible to not have a 50/50 scenario, unless the universe doesn't play by it's own rules.

If you could do what TheDon is saying (and believe it to be accurate), there wouldn't be any 50/50 about it - you would know with absolute certainty what would happen. There would not be any chance about anything. You would know the outcome of any scenario because things would act in a manner that doesn't change.

The only chance you would talk about in any situation would be 100%.

[TheDon]

You wouldn't. If you take what TheDon posted to be an accurate scenario, the only way 2 outcomes would prove to be statistically identical would be if the outcomes where identical. If there were 2 different outcomes, they would be statistically different and you could predict which would chosen. When you get to the kind of degree of accuracy TheDon is talking about (which is basically perfect accuracy, a perfect representation of the everything to the smallest degree in a closed system) statistically identical is identical.

I'm not sure how much I would completely agree with the idea (I think there is a degree of chaos in everything that would prevent a perfectly predictable model of everything ever existing, should such a thing be considered even vaguely possible) but if you assume it is, you can't have different statistically identical outcomes in that situation.

Kinda, statistics don't really come into it though. Statistics are for when you know unknowns, if you have no unknowns, there's no such thing as a statistical likely outcome, there is only the outcome. Statistics exists for when you don't have all the information.

I also don't think it's ever going to be possible to attain anywhere near the level of knowledge that would make such a thing possible, especially considering the act of modeling the universe changes the model, so you'd have to have a model that was capable of modeling the effects of itself!

For anything we do chaos certainly plays a massive part, we simply cannot know enough to get any sort of accurate model, and this is where the statistical side of it comes into play, we're dealing with unknowns.

[TheDon]

I don't think it's possible to not have a 50/50 scenario, unless the universe doesn't play by it's own rules.

I don't think you understand what's being said here.

There are no 50/50's, how are there? What is a 50/50 scenario? It's one where you say "It could be this or this" if you flip a coin, you'll say it's a 50/50, is it? No, it's a 100/0, because which side it lands on is directly related to how hard you flip it, at what point of the coin the force is applied, how far until it lands, and a metric fuckton of other things. That you don't know which side it's going to land on doesn't mean it's actually a 50/50, it just means you don't know, so you assume it's a 50/50 because well, it could land on heads or tails. The fact is that it's only going to land on one of them, and if you had perfect information about the scenario, you'd be able to say which it was before it was even flipped.

[Chindie]

Kinda, statistics don't really come into it though. Statistics are for when you know unknowns, if you have no unknowns, there's no such thing as a statistical likely outcome, there is only the outcome. Statistics exists for when you don't have all the information.

I also don't think it's ever going to be possible to attain anywhere near the level of knowledge that would make such a thing possible, especially considering the act of modeling the universe changes the model, so you'd have to have a model that was capable of modeling the effects of itself!

For anything we do chaos certainly plays a massive part, we simply cannot know enough to get any sort of accurate model, and this is where the statistical side of it comes into play, we're dealing with unknowns.

Aye I understand what you're getting at, I was only talking in degrees of statistics as thats what Bazdavies had chosen to frame the question in. As I said above, you're not talking about odds, chances, where you to have such a model to work off, you're talking in certainties.

On the chaos thing, for what it's worth I believe that such a model couldn't exist (even if it were feasibly possible to do) purely because I think when you got right down to it, right at the root of all that made the universe what it is, it wouldn't be possible to accurately model because of chaos in the system at such a low level. I think you'd start to see an extension of what we already see when you get down to quantum level (things acting in manners we would not expect when we first started to be able to contemplate that level of reality), going from things acting... strangely, counter intuitively, whatever... to things acting entirely randomly, which would make a perfect model impossible even if it where feasible to do anyway. But of course, I could be entirely wrong on that front.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Ergo we ultimately have no control over anything.

.

Then how can one be responsible for ones actions? I believe in a sort of middle ground. Our brain controls a great deal but through knowledge and understanding we develop a means to filter the process.

In other words, it works like so

We find ourselves in a situation, brain scans said situation, brain produces various choices, we choose an outcome according to what we know, we perform said outcome.

So rather than having pure determinism, we use our understanding to seperate ourselves from animals who are not in control.

[Brumerican]

Our brains control everything we do . There is no seperate entity inside us which filters the brain or controls the brain. Everything we do is the result of a biological process in the brain .

The brain controls "you" in fact there is not really a "you" at all . We are all biological machines and act in accordance with our genetic make up and environmental surroundings .

"You" have no control over anything .

[Bazdavies79]

I don't think you understand what's being said here.

There are no 50/50's, how are there? What is a 50/50 scenario? It's one where you say "It could be this or this" if you flip a coin, you'll say it's a 50/50, is it? No, it's a 100/0, because which side it lands on is directly related to how hard you flip it, at what point of the coin the force is applied, how far until it lands, and a metric fuckton of other things. That you don't know which side it's going to land on doesn't mean it's actually a 50/50, it just means you don't know, so you assume it's a 50/50 because well, it could land on heads or tails. The fact is that it's only going to land on one of them, and if you had perfect information about the scenario, you'd be able to say which it was before it was even flipped.

If you believe every action can only have a single possible reaction, the theory works.