Journeying into the unknown...(Split from Universe Thread)

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Phryxus

Guest
I was looking at the THN forums today and found this thread: Humans close to discovering origin of Universe. Now i'm not going to mention too much about it in this thread, because it's already got one, but when I posted my comment I realised that as well as making it quite interesting for the future, there was a more important question that needed to be asked (the same one from the thread, sorry!).

This question of mine is, if the conclusive answer was found to the original question, the one of "Does God really exist?", would you actually want to know?

If it was proved that there really is no God, as well as creating a severely interesting situation in the hands of fanatic believers, would that mean that there is definitely no 'after-life'? That what we experience now is all it is ever going to be?

I know this is a very difficult topic and that religion based discussions can normally fall down spectacularly, but what i'm talking about isn't whether religion is good or bad, what i'm asking is whether the complete knowledge of our own mortality (more so than now, as we're generally ignorant) is something that will be good for society. The final realisation that we are alone, are independent and fully responsible could be the catalyst for anarchy, yet also for stability, it depends how and if the news is ever taken.

With this in mind, what are your thoughts? If you could know, would you?
 
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Fi$hy

Guest
Definitive proof that we have no purpose in life, could never be good for motivation :p

Yet at the same time, perhaps a more democratic, spread of power would result.

The simple answer, who knows!
 

Wraith

Active Member
You raise some very good points there Phryxus. The short answer is probably "no, I wouldn't want to know of proof about God - either proving he exists or that he doesn't". It would create too many problems.

First, belief is powerful. There is a good chance that many people who believe strongly in God will either lose their focus and decide they have to make a serious re-evaluation of their life (which could be either good or bad for them), or become fanatical about their belief. One thing I've noticed before now is that faith does not always agree with logic or proof, and some people will "choose" faith over proof.

Second, the proof either way about God's existence will be likely to cause conflicts, from small scale arguments down the pub, to potentially Global Conflicts that could endanger all life on this planet.

Moving on to the question about the afterlife. While it's true that the standard view of the afterlife is (almost) as an accessory to a deity, I don't think they are necessarily that interdependant. If we consider caterpillars and butterflys as an analogy. A caterpillar lives it's life solely on leaves. It can be considered that the leaf and the plant it's on are it's entire world. It then goes off, forms a cocoon and "dies". After a short while, it emerges as a butterfly. The butterfly now realises that the "world" he knew is not all that is out there, and he is now a creature on a higher plane of existence to the caterpillar. It could be that human existence is a similar situation. We humans would be analogous to the caterpillar, and our "afterlife" is analogous to the butterfly.

As far as the knowledge goes, the best way I can sum it up is "ignorance is bliss".

Wraith
 

Pestcontrol

In Cryo Sleep
Faith, by definition, cannot be proven. As such it is impossible to prove that God does not exist, but it may be possible to prove that the universe was created entirely by natural processes. That's what is meant by finding (=understanding) the origin of the universe. The big bang theory will have been fully developed and simulations will fully match observations.

Should there at one point be convincing proof that there is a "God", i certainly would like to know. I think scientifically in these matters, the more i know the better i will be able to grasp what the universe actually is.

As for an afterlife, again something that cannot really be disproven. Personally i believe that your person is the result of the chemical and electrical activity in your brain, and when this ceases, so do you. Still, there may be an afterlife but no God, it could be a natural process.

Suppose that at some point AI progresses to the point where it has the same capabilities as a human, it can use language, reason, display creativity and emotions, etc etc. But it would still be a computer, it's state and thus it's very essence stored in it's memory circuits. If i would turn it off, and erase the memory, the AI being would be dead, because all that it was is gone.

If it's a mind like a human's, and a lifeform deserving the same respect and treatment, would there be an afterlife for AI? Why, or why not?

Proof that we have no purpose in life is a moot point. On a galatic scale we may not (but what's a life on a galatic scale anyway?), but i at least feel that i do have a purpose, to achieve, as long as there are other people on this earth besides me. My motivation is that i am not alone. I also don't think people will be worried by any understanding of the origin of the galaxy in their daily lives, you don't need it for the satisfaction and happyness that motivates us. It really doesn't change much, because the universe is not what you live for.
 

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
I think that it's important to widen the horizons on this discussion, but to do that I'm going to need to poke a few holes in what's already been said. Bear with me, please. :)

Phyrxus said:
the original question, the one of "Does God really exist?"

I think that's a higher-order question than we need. Surely we can take that even further back to basics, somethings perhaps our most distant ancestors could sympathise with. "Why am I here?" Is there any question relating to our existence that could be more fundamental and yet lack any predisposition to faith, creators or answers?

Phryxus said:
as well as creating a severely interesting situation in the hands of fanatic believers

Faith requires no proof and, ultimately, no proof can be presented that will dispose of the need for faith.

In fact, if you care to look at this from an epistemology angle, there are no positive proofs only negative ones. It is the nature of science to state a hypothesis and then do everything that can be considered in order to find fault in that hypothesis. Highly regarded theories are merely hypotheses that have not yet been unravelled but science has, time and again, been through revolutions where huge portions of accepted wisdom were trampled in the realisation that the world appears to work differently to the way we thought.

Our latest scientific endeavour, engaging some exceptional intellects the world over, is the search for some sort of "Grand Unified Theory of Everything". If I remember correctly, Hawking himself has been close to this before but had some serious flaws in his theory pointed out that he and his team could not address. I'm pleased he's lining up for a second round but I doubt that any such understanding is going to tell us anything of "why"... at best, if we get there, we may be told "what" or "how"... "why", I believe, is going to be up to us.

Wraith said:
While it's true that the standard view of the afterlife is (almost) as an accessory to a deity

"Standard view"? Buddhism probably wouldn't agree, for example (link to Wikipedia). Buddhism, in simple terms, believes in a karmic cycle of life, being reborn again and again and again, where the goal is enlightenment not afterlife, per se. While enlightenment also entails being freed from the karmic cycle, it also seems to imply movement away from our egocentric selves, perhaps to join with a wider pool of energy -- I'm not clear on that point -- and simply terming that "afterlife" feels, to me, to obscure that point.

However, whatever way you look at it, their faith requires no deity, per se. In fact, Buddhism is as much a philosophy as it is a religion and faith is not so much in a god or gods but in the path you choose and the goal of enlightenment.

And that's just one religion that, I feel, doesn't conform to a "standard view of the afterlife".

One true god is very much the province of Christianity, Judiasm and Islam. I once spoke to a Muslim priest who told me that he believes that the God of these three religions is the same God, just that the different groups choose to worship Him in different ways. Around the same time, a Hindu expressed to me that they wondered if their many gods could possibly be different aspects of that one God.

I wonder if, at its core, the search for the origin of the universe is actually completely separate for the search for God or gods. I believe that they answer different questions, as indicated above. In the origins, I believe we will find "what" and "how". The search for God or gods, I believe, is much more about "why" or even answering a completely different question... "Who am I?"

Will science answer these questions for us? If I answer "yes" or "no" to that then I probably imply that there is, somewhere, some absolute truth, be that in some God or gods, or just in the nature of the universe, in the "science of everything". Thing is that I'm not sure there is an absolute truth, or if there is it is changing all the time and will change with our inspection of it. Thus we change "the truth" beyond being able to actually grasp it.

This is probably why I'm an agnostic. I just don't know, but y'know just maybe there's something to be found... :)
 
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