Email Address:
Password:
Forgot Password?
Advanced Search
Active Players on Sylestia
Category Total Yesterday
Players 2,541 413
Sylestia Pet Data
Category Total Yesterday
Pets 8,205,120 843
Generated 653,649 74
Captured 1,186,817 93
Bred 6,364,562 676
Statistics updated daily at midnight
Forum Index > Off-Topic Discussion > a topic i'm not afraid of
Page 3 1, 2, 3 Go to Page:
Author Thread Post
Kessaria
Level 63
Benevolent Brewer
Joined: 2/19/2016
Threads: 2
Posts: 23
Posted: 2/15/2017 at 5:29 PM Post #21
"It is simply impossible for an animal, human , or other being to become better by mutation."

Actually, that's not true. Antibiotic resistance is a mutation that allows bacteria to thrive in environments that would otherwise kill them. Mutations can grant immunity or resistance to certain diseases; for example, people who carry the sickle-cell trait are less likely to suffer from malaria, because the microorganism can't infect affected blood cells.

Other mutations are harmless; for example, blonde hair and blue eyes is the result of a genetic mutation, but no one is hurt by it. Having extra fingers and toes is another example of a harmless mutation.

Mutations can be bad, but not all are. Their existence is not really an argument for or against either side.
Edited By Kessaria on 2/15/2017 at 5:34 PM.
Amarok
Level 75
The Hallowed
Joined: 4/17/2015
Threads: 104
Posts: 2,877
Posted: 2/15/2017 at 6:31 PM Post #22
So let me get this straight.
You look out the window, and, obviously I don't know whether you see a neighborhood or woods or a lake or more buildings or who knows what. But--just see...
You look at the world, and you think, "Wow. This place is total and complete chaos. It couldn't possibly been created by an intelligent being! Look at all the horror and disorder!"

Earth is disorder??


I don't remember ever telling you what my view was... So please don't assume. I was merely trying to explain the perception of someone who sees the universe as disorderly, yet can recognize things that are obviously man-made.

We live in a world that was, clearly, very very good

And I never equated chaos with horror or a disorderly world with 'bad'. A world can still be perfect for life/a wonderful place and still be disordered/purposeless.

By entropy, I mean something that just exists and unfolds of its own accord without there being a special reason for it.
Edited By Amarok on 2/15/2017 at 6:32 PM.
Amarok
Level 75
The Hallowed
Joined: 4/17/2015
Threads: 104
Posts: 2,877
Posted: 2/15/2017 at 7:19 PM Post #23
For the second part of your post:

What I'm saying is, some things, like a stone pillar or tent, those are obviously human. Created by an intelligent life form. But some man-made things are much, much, much less obvious.

I understand there are some man-made things that do not look obviously man mad. And it also works the other way. In-fact, when I think about the circle of stones, I think about the mushroom circles that can be found in nature. They look purposeful (like fairy rings), but in actual fact are naturally occurring formations. Same with crystal formations in caves.

When it comes to ambiguous things: "Is that metal gear naturally occurring?" or "Is that mushroom circle a Faery Ring?" - then it opens up for all manner of interpretation.

I don't like the watch-maker argument: "This watch is designed, so therefore the universe is designed.". That is not a sound assumption to make, because you cannot just extrapolate. While you can definitively say that the watch was designed (you can snoop in on a human making the thing), you can't say with certainty about the universe.

Now your second statement is super interesting

And, of course, I must remind you that if there is a divine being, they must certainly be VERY intelligent, and therefore, i believe, could cover their tracks--down to the tiniest molecule. But I don't actually believe that a god-like figure would leave without leaving a mark, no matter how unnoticable...and I don't think they did. I believe that we, the detectives, are the very clues we are looking for.
A little ironic, isn't it?

This is another potential reason why a Divine Being cannot be falsified. Because if He or She does exist, then It would be so far beyond our reach, that if It wanted to be hidden, then It could do so very easily.

Science is about nature (the physical universe that can be seen and touched). It doesn't deal with metaphysics.

If I want to search for God, that will necessarily take me away from the realm of science. If I find physical evidence of God, then it becomes scientific. If God does exist, then He is likely so far Beyond the concept of physical reality, that physical evidence would be impossible to verify.

Now for your interesting thought: The human being is evidence that God exists.

how does one verify that? How can you disprove it? We know that natural science doesn't deal with the metaphysical. If we break down that statement we find it's a little bit incompatible.

The human being (physical entity) is evidence (presumably observable evidence) that God (non-physical entity) exists. If you want this to be compatible, you have to change something. Either God is a physical entity or the human being (and hence the world) is a non-physical entity.

You can physically verify something physical

you can metaphysically verify something metaphysical

It is impossible to physically verify something metaphysical.
Edited By Amarok on 2/15/2017 at 7:22 PM.
Eots
Level 61
Fright Master
Joined: 6/9/2015
Threads: 10
Posts: 503
Posted: 2/16/2017 at 3:55 PM Post #24
Excuse me for barging in on this discussion and unnecessarily speaking for other people without permission again, but I'd just like to make a brief little statement.

In the God scenario, God may be a metaphysical being, but it is believed that he created the physical world. In this way, physical evidence may exist that shows not the presence of God directly but instead the proof that nothing other than a metaphysical-or-otherwise being could have been the origin of the physical world. I don't quite know a specific way that this can be done.
With regards the the human variable of the equation, there is a theoretical way of determining definitively that humans were designed, at least to some extent. Over ninety percent of the human genome is noncoding, and it hasn't been definitively proven exactly what purpose it serves. If some message were to be found within the genes with reasonable methods, then we would start having to wonder where that message came from. However, this is all theoretical, and the "junk DNA" could also be used as evidence for evolution as long as we find no veritable purpose to it (or if the purpose we find for it corroborates evolution).

I'll point out, too, that Magyak101 never did precisely say that the human being is proof of a god, just that we are evidence of it. This could mean the same thing as it does when I say that a dislodged piece of soil is evidence of a long-gone anthill but there is no way that that provided the information in the first place. In other words, we would be a trace or an aftereffect of God.
Kessaria
Level 63
Benevolent Brewer
Joined: 2/19/2016
Threads: 2
Posts: 23
Posted: 2/16/2017 at 5:14 PM Post #25
@ Amarok

Very true (and well-articulated!).

The other problem with the watch-maker argument is that it seems to assume people only know things like buildings and tents are man-made because of their deliberate design. That's not actually true. People know these things are man-made without needing evidence because they've already been exposed to the evidence just by life experiences.

For example, a person would know a building is man-made, without needing to watch it being built, simply because of all the information available to them. There's stuff online about how to build things. They learn math techniques in school that architects use to build buildings. They may have seen other buildings being built. Even without all that exposure, they can simply observe that trees to not spontaneously assemble themselves into log cabins, and know from observation that buildings don't grow from the seeds of local plants and that the local wildlife doesn't build them.

No one has experienced both a designed and an undesigned universe. There's no data you can refer to that says "here are the characteristics of each type", which means you can't definitively demonstrate that this universe was deliberately designed. You can imagine what an undesigned universe would be like, but imagination is not proof of anything.
Amarok
Level 75
The Hallowed
Joined: 4/17/2015
Threads: 104
Posts: 2,877
Posted: 2/17/2017 at 2:56 AM Post #26
@ Eots, Magyak Ah, yes. My apologies :s

When I said 'evidence' I didn't mean 'proof'. Generally you need lots of evidence to attain proof. Then again, Magyak said 'clue' and ...well... clue is not evidence either :s. Bad word choice I used.

But it's still a super interesting thought, and I often think similar things. What if humans came into the world by a higher purpose? (Note that this higher purpose doesn't have to be a monotheistic, but a lot of people in the west like monotheism.)

I have come across pantheists that do believe our purpose is for God/Universe to discover Itself, or to know itself through us. Technically, to a pantheist, We are God. However, If we are talking about this from a monotheistic perspective, then our designated purpose is to discover (or rediscover) God, except in this case We are not God.

Junk DNA is interesting and also ambiguous/open to interpretation. It would be very exciting to discover hidden messages in our DNA. And, yeah. Science ain't perfect.

That's partly why I say that 'if you want to find the Divine, you have to take a detour away from Science.' I am not condemning the divine or showing preference to science; I am mainly saying that physical science is limited when it comes to certain things.

Now, the occult is interesting (especially when you start looking at Alchemy). It tried to systematize religion into a metaphysical science, but because it is all metaphysical, it can be very difficult to determine its success.

I might think that ESP or telepathy experiments could serve as evidence, but those sorts of experiments can't verify a supernatural being either. All they verify is that there is something really cool going on. Same with praying/mantra/devotions etc. Their success could indicate God or they could indicate something awesome that we can do.

@Kessaria

True. I had trouble articulating that. Interestingly enough, some physicists were trying to discover whether our universe was a hologram. They had a very interesting reasoning behind it, and I recall they even had a set of 'guide-lines' or 'clues' that would determine whether our universe was holographic or not. I wish I could remember the articles.

As an aside, just recently, I read some reasoning about virtual reality that suggests if we can make virtual reality, then it's likely that our universe is virtual. Some even postulate that our reality might be 'turned off' if we reach a certain level of technological advancement. Scary.
Eots
Level 61
Fright Master
Joined: 6/9/2015
Threads: 10
Posts: 503
Posted: 2/17/2017 at 4:16 PM Post #27
There's an interesting expression that Ancient Aliens, with all of its flaws, has been driving at that's actually quite ingenious. We as humans have come to be something that would have been considered godlike in earlier cultures. As time goes by, we become more and more like the gods that came as an instinctive idea to the beginnings of mankind. What Ancient Aliens was trying to tell us was that it is possible to have a designed world without the presence of a deity, which is valid in itself, but I think even theists could take a message out of that observation. If there is some kind of a god or gods, then we would have to acknowledge that everything here has been laid out in a way that would allow us in time to become just as powerful.
The occult is a fascinating aspect of this. What before we attributed to the powers of a god, and attempted to recreate in regards to that, we may one day be able to generate using science. We create a model of the metaphysical with physical pieces. The iron angel, I believe it's been termed. ESP and clairvoyance and all that is something different indeed.

I guess I read too far in your post, but that holographic universe part really caught my attention. Sometimes I'd stand outside and wonder if that wasn't the case, but it never became any more serious than an idea. Fascinating to find that others have tried to prove it. I wonder why it's suspected that the world by disappear if we advance to a point, though.
Amarok
Level 75
The Hallowed
Joined: 4/17/2015
Threads: 104
Posts: 2,877
Posted: 2/17/2017 at 7:16 PM Post #28
The reality switch off logic goes hypothetically something like this:

An advanced technological society creates our universe with the purposes of studying life and its development on a massive scale. If we reach a certain level of tchnological development, we could potentially use it to hack their universe and really screw things up for them. Therefore, shutting down the system before we do that prevents that from happening.

Also, if we are a big experiment, well...it needs to end sometime.
Eots
Level 61
Fright Master
Joined: 6/9/2015
Threads: 10
Posts: 503
Posted: 2/17/2017 at 7:28 PM Post #29
Hm, I see what you mean. Let's hope they're not a heartless people who created us, then, in that scenario.
Dragonnadder
Level 71
Nature Walker
Joined: 3/17/2016
Threads: 32
Posts: 1,810
Posted: 3/6/2017 at 8:35 PM Post #30
-going to bump and start tracking this thread.-
Go to Page:
1, 2, 3
This Page loaded in 0.011 seconds.
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | Credits | Job Opportunities
© Copyright 2011-2024 Sylestia Games LLC.
All names and logos associated with Sylestia are Trademarks of Sylestia Games LLC.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
For questions, comments, or concerns please email at Support@Sylestia.com.