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Devans99

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I wondered if the OP is still around, could he describe his perfect universe? I guess its inline with Pascal's Wager. God may exist so prayer is a wor...
December 16, 2018 at 13:10
The traditional notion of God is absurd. I wonder why we spend so long discussing the traditional notion of God as defined in ancient religious texts....
December 16, 2018 at 12:59
The expansion rate of the universe has slowed in the past (end of inflation), it could slow again and maybe reverse. I think the astronomers are not t...
December 16, 2018 at 12:40
But the Big Rip does not explain the Big Bang in a neat and tidy way like the Big Crunch does. Plus if you consider it from a metaphysical angle, each...
December 16, 2018 at 12:15
Would you have God sharing our time dimension or does he have his own time dimension? Or if you have God as timeless, how does he manage to change thi...
December 15, 2018 at 18:28
We know if we make small changes to the standard model and a number of other parameters that life is no longer possible. These are the alternative uni...
December 15, 2018 at 18:21
How can we escape this debate though? Our prime directive is survival and that directive extends beyond the grave and into the realm of a potential Go...
December 15, 2018 at 14:12
Maybe a slightly different analogy: Assume there are a billion possible pot designs, only one of which had no holes. Then we find the only pot that ex...
December 15, 2018 at 14:03
What I mean is I have no direct faith in God, I put my faith in scientific evidence and probability which lead me to believe that God may exist.
December 15, 2018 at 13:31
Good point. Surely the worst religious experience ever! Listen to Dawkins and Die. I'm amazed its so popular when there are scientific alternatives to...
December 15, 2018 at 13:19
I hope that is the case, but the existence of God should be inducible to a high degree and many people have trouble with the concept of faith and pref...
December 15, 2018 at 12:33
In pot terms: - It is not surprising that water is found in a pot with no hole - But it is still surprising that the pot has no hole (when most pots h...
December 15, 2018 at 12:13
Of course it surprising that we have a pot with no hole; most pots have holes. We still have to ask why does the pot have no hole? We know it must hav...
December 15, 2018 at 11:47
But if you were to pick a pot at random, you would likely get a pot with a hole. So you have to ask why you were so lucky to get the pot without a hol...
December 15, 2018 at 11:25
So I think that a computer could be designed so that it suffers when it's injured. Obviously it's a long way off in technology terms but give a comput...
December 15, 2018 at 11:17
1. If universes are generated via different mechanisms using different matter then they should come out different. So this applies when considering th...
December 15, 2018 at 10:55
Science has managed to synthesise DNA in the lab and replace the DNA of single celled animals with the synthetic DNA to produce a new type of single c...
December 15, 2018 at 10:42
I am trying to make two separate points here: 1. Hypothetical universes (generated by different mechanisms) that we can imagine in our mind nearly all...
December 15, 2018 at 10:18
Interesting answer, can you expand? I think God is needed to explain the state of the universe but I have difficulties fitting him into any viable mod...
December 15, 2018 at 10:12
I think it depends if you are a finitist or not. I am so I believe there cannot have been an infinite number of big bang/big crunch pairs in the past ...
December 15, 2018 at 09:33
If you think about hypothetical universes - all the possible universes we could of ended up with, nearly all universes would lack cohesion; IE atoms a...
December 15, 2018 at 09:07
The only realistic alternative is the panspermia hypotheses? And with that life still came from inanimate matter. Even if we were designed, we are sti...
December 15, 2018 at 08:40
OK I guess we just have to remain in disagreement on this one. Thanks for the discussion though.
December 15, 2018 at 00:30
Interesting to see how far we are away from achieving machine intelligence. It apparently takes 28 computers 10 hours to simulate a single cell divisi...
December 14, 2018 at 23:41
I agree that AI today is mostly faux intelligence but that's just because AI is at a very primitive stage of development. Nature has made intelligent ...
December 14, 2018 at 22:51
Well I read it but it sounds like another atheist pipe dream attempt to explain fine-tuning: Black holes typically have a mass of a few solar masses o...
December 14, 2018 at 21:16
No I am not. I am not saying the universe is definitely fine-tuned for live; I'm saying it appears fine-tuned for life and any scientific explanation ...
December 14, 2018 at 20:55
I don't see why an entropic entity cannot display intelligence? For example, a software neural net is trained and learns a specific task. Software pro...
December 14, 2018 at 20:41
The chances that a universe, picked at random, would be life supporting are very slim. So many things about our universe are 'just right' that it requ...
December 14, 2018 at 20:31
If time is circular, then travelling forward in time would eventually lead to retro-time travel. But circular time probably requires a big crunch to p...
December 14, 2018 at 15:51
The weak anthropic principle explains that the universe must be fined tuned for life; it does not explain why the universe is fined-tuned for life. Th...
December 14, 2018 at 15:23
The theories we have on the origin of the universe are more complex because they deliberately exclude the possibility of God. The fact that the univer...
December 14, 2018 at 14:59
What would you choose given two theories of equal predicability: - A complex theory with no God - A simple theory with God
December 14, 2018 at 14:36
Maybe we will need cybernetically enhanced brains just to understand and operate with future generations of computers; they should outperform biologic...
December 14, 2018 at 14:12
Humans don't grow new organs dynamically; all we do is maintain and grow the size of existing organs and bodily structures. A computer should be able ...
December 14, 2018 at 13:09
Both us and humans turn fuel (food for us, electricity for computers) into heat energy. I assume you mean the way animals assimilate part of what they...
December 14, 2018 at 01:09
But we are just machines. We have inputs and outputs, memory and a CPU. It's just we are so much more complex than current computers that we class our...
December 13, 2018 at 23:34
Science makes a rule: naturalistic solutions only allowed. No magic. Why do we make an exception to this rule for infinity? If I said I had a ruler lo...
December 13, 2018 at 21:32
Science allows only naturalistic explanations which excludes traditional definition of God (as supernatural). I see a problem though: what about a nat...
December 13, 2018 at 21:26
The question of whether there was a start of time or not may be unanswerable by observation. We are at least 14 billion years too late to observe any ...
December 13, 2018 at 20:37
I think it's a good axiom. The only logical alternatives to the 'material ordered collections have a first member' axiom are: 1. 'material ordered col...
December 12, 2018 at 17:29
All I'm saying is that if you agree with the axiom, then you agree there must have been a first motion. It argues against time extending back indefini...
December 12, 2018 at 16:50
The axiom 'material ordered collections have a first member' I made up. Combined with another axiom ‘motion exists’, this gives the first point in my ...
December 12, 2018 at 16:34
Time is not change; time governs change through the speed of light (speed=distance/time) law. Do you agree with the axiom 'material ordered collection...
December 12, 2018 at 16:18
I don't see how the universe can impose the speed of light speed (=time/distance) unless there is something real about time. Time having a start would...
December 12, 2018 at 16:07
The start of time could be coincidental withe the end of time, with the big bang triggered by the big crunch. The big crunch after all is the only pla...
December 12, 2018 at 12:53
But maths tries too do this. The set concept encompasses two different object types: - finite sets. Fully defined. Have cardinality - infinite sets. P...
November 29, 2018 at 15:13
Just because it exists in our minds does not mean it exists in reality. Talking trees existing my mind for example. Computer science may use set theor...
November 29, 2018 at 14:56
What operation with an indefinite result do you refer to? Just because there exists an 'infinite' number of something in our minds, does not imply an ...
November 29, 2018 at 12:46
Relations don't exist in the real world, quantities do. If infinity is a relation it is not part of the real world. That's a potential infinity. Anyth...
November 29, 2018 at 12:02