Agent Smith

Indeed, it's possible that the reasons for my belief in god may be more psychological than evidential, but I'm a reluctant believer.

I believe you have it backwards. Skepticism is about not making & checking (unfounded) assumptions.

No problemo! It's interesting how chronos is the X factor.

Makes a mental note of that. :up: Not so mon ami. Solipsism is skepticism's piéce de résistance, but skeptics can do a lot better if you catch me drif...

Design is an empirical-type of knowledge and is therefore flawed in the same way as any scientific-type knowledge.

Pascal's wager is a protrepsis cum paranaesis tool. It works for proselytizing as well as to prevent apostasy. If you don't believe (in Christianity),...

Pascal's wager is an analysis of a carrot-stick deal. If you don't believe, hell and if you do, heaven. If you don't believe in hell/heaven and the re...

Richard Dawkins made a mistake and it's in mistakes we see where our loyalties are, so to speak.

So you wouldn't believe in someone who told you to believe him/her if you don't wanna end up in a bad place? :chin:

I'm gonna say that I'm approaching this from a very common standpoint - that there's gotta be an origin.

Reductionism has a fighting chance of shutting naysayers up if they can demonstrate biology to be a special case of chemistry, à la how Werner Heisenb...

:up: On a more serious note, solipsism seems connected to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness.

There is no may be.

Il est facile de voir que ... if Richard Dawkins is correct, evolution is impossible.

Food for thought: An atheist has to be a solipsist Why? The existence of god, being as rational as possible, is in the hands of the skeptic downgraded...

:lol:

Hi-tech can be defeated/confused by low-tech. If I whip out a knife at a guy pointing a gun at me, he'll let his guard down, hopefully long enough to ...

:grin: He was proud without being proud. Sometimes facts can seem condescending/haughty/belittling.

Il est facile de voir que ... arche is of great importance; of course some disagree, like Siddhartha Gautama for example. Gautama "disliked" speculati...

Muchas gracias for making me a winner in some hypothetical universe. :smile:

Sorry for the double reply. You added the above later so I suppose it won't come as a surprise. Agnostics are essentially skeptics. Are skeptics confu...

Expand and elaborate ... please. Are you pushing for honesty (agnosticism)?

If I were God ( :grin: ), to minimize me workload, I would definitely use fractals in me work, one of which would be the universe.

Pascal's wager is very clear on what one has to do vis-à-vis theism-atheism in a Christian context. I don't see where the confusion lies mon ami. It i...

A fresh perspective. Congratulations OP. Well, if there's gotta be a starting point then why can't the universe be that? The argument for a designer i...

:grin: @"Gnomon", did you know, your Enformationism bears an uncanny resemblance to String Theory - everything is but different frequencies of vibrati...

Metaphysicians would know ... :up:

:chin: Polytheism is more plausible than Duotheism is more plausible than monotheism

I can only say that @"Gnomon" simply can't be a sophist.

Yes.

Either Gnomon can't see the Enformer = God identity or we can't see the Enformer \neq God distinction. :cool:

It would be amazing to view it from a mathematical perspective. What would the math of planetary epicycles look like? How would we modify Newton's equ...

:lol: Nec caput nec pedes. I lied, I didn't choose. :blush:

I'm not certain and hence I'm a Pyrrhonist.

I intelligo ... Il est facile de voir que ... @"Gnomon"'s Enformer is not God as traditionally thought of in religions. The Enformer, from what I've g...

When the extra danger money we have to cough up burns giant holes in our pockets, we'll find out who the real winners are! :grimace: Not much of a cho...

@"Banno"'s too smart to fall for that mon ami. Me, stupido! I have chosen (a number), for the first time in me life. :grimace:

I'm a Pyrrhonist. :smile:

It's dark, oui? It's an intriguing paradox that the further we advance into the future, the further back into the past we can see. Hubble \to James We...

Do you mean to imply math-based scientific descriptions (maps) are (necessarily) incomplete? Shouldn't we then do something nonscientific? You know, t...

Il le facile de voir que ... the tactic is irrational (something is better than nothing).

Newton's law F = G\frac{m_1m_2}{r^2} Coulomb's law F = k_e\frac{q_1q_2}{r^2} :cool:

Har de har har! Very funny! :smirk: Mathematics isn't just grammar, is it? :chin: The math models seem to correspond one-to-one with the physical worl...

:up:

:lol: David Albert's just jealous that Lawrence Krauss thought of the idea first. Happens to all of us. :smile:

:smile: Physics does reduce to math and that explains the existence of theoretical physicists (the guys who search the mathematical universe for objec...

:lol: Well, he's the only scientist I know who thinks philosophy is a legitimate field/discipline. Too bad you have a dim view of him. Have you seen L...

??? (Bereshit logos) :chin:

:up: Resonates with what I said. In English, in the beginning the question "what was in the beginning (logos)?" In more abstract terms this :point: ? ...