I understand French a bit, but Google translate helped me out and seemed to do fairly well. Thanks for the explanation, it's more clear what you were trying to say.

what Hell actually is

Earth?

Quote from: epic7 on May 23, 2013, 04:34:25 pm

There no evidence that flying spaghetti monsters exist. But they probably don't.

Quote from: Justin Pope

"there's no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe"

A joke response I've seen to this one is, "Then why are all the planets spherical and meatball-shaped?"

there are people who still believes that the Earth is flat. There's even a community website of people who think like that.

There are people who still believes that the Earth is flat. There's even a community website of people who think like that.

I saw that site, I remember being a thread about it somewhere

Here's my thoughts on religion:

When I was younger I believed in god, santa, and other fictional characters (maybe even the easter bunny). I thought wrestling was real along with the characters from scary movies. As I grew older I realized that they were made up. I could see the reasons that people invented them and argued with others about their authenticity (mainly wrestling and god, and not with children of course ha ha!). I put a lot of thought into space and time itself. I would like to think that if I was alive back in the day and everyone else was telling me that the world was flat, I could look in the sky witnessing the sun and the moon and ask them to take another guess. Now I can look at animals and see how they evolved in my mind. I can see how every small thing plays its part (the reason for reproducing, lifespans...). I know people that are purposely evolving bacteria to create permanent cures for diseases by binding them with specific proteins (I hope to join them in the future maybe get my own lab someday). Evolution is not a perfect science, the proteins don't always take hold but you discard the ones that don't and keep evolving the ones that do. I can't pinpoint how the first organism developed but I can look at a crystals self replicating structure and make the jump over to a replicating dna strand. I think that a lot of people don't really understand the concept of time, zero, infinity, or a god itself. When someone asks me what happens to us when we die, I always reply just think about what it was like before you were born. A few months ago my boss made the comment about how he wishes he could go back in time to when he was 9 even if he forgot everything he knew. I sat silent, but my reply should have been you already have (he wouldn't have known if I was telling the truth or not). I think time moves irregularly, including in reverse, but because everything only exists in a specific frame we always perceive it as going forward. Humans like to be judged though and are so egotistical they tend to think they are above everything else. Creating a god fulfills their emotions, reduces their fear of the unknown, and gives them a reason to be ignorant (...Skinners pigeons...). I get that ignorance is bliss, if I could walk around without any cares, I would definitely enjoy it. Minding the foxhole subject, if there was a god/heaven/hell people would be better off killing themselves. In reality, humans are such a small part of the universe, looking in, you wouldn't even pay them no mind. But hey, god created the universe for us right? We are part of the universe though, so we should join together and take pride in that.

Here is the reason I hate the notion of a god that exists over us:
When I program, I consider myself to be a god. I make my own little digital universe with its own little physics and characters that *must* follow the physics I create (if they didn't I would crap my pants where I stood!). If I had a super computer that was so fast my digital universe would evolve faster then the actual universe and the ai would allow my characters to become so smart they became self aware and even question my existence, think about what I would be able to do. They would run around and sometimes get hit by cars and 'die' or form families and live in big houses. As a true god I could modify the physics and perform 'miracles'. Yes, being a god I can control physics and time with ease. Being a kind and caring god, I wouldn't let anything bad happen to them. If they died, I could perform a 'real' miracle and bring them back to life. If they hoped and prayed, I would give them what they wanted. Never in my life would I let my characters starve to death, get mistreated, feel sorry or scared, start wars with each other, get raped or murdered, because that's what a 'real' god does.

Now back to real life where no god exists. When people see things they can't explain or coincidences occur (again Skinners pigeons) they just throw it into the god bucket. My favorite is when I hear someone say something like 'the guy came in shooting and killing everybody, thank god I made it out alive' .... Wow, really, you thank god for that???

There isn't a way for anyone to explain to me how a god that exists would allow people to be murdered around the world. Quoting stuff from the bible doesn't address it, 'just because god wants it to be that way' doesn't address it, there is *no* way to justify that. I don't understand how that can be acceptable by anyone.

But then, how do you know that this we are in is real life, maybe there is some greater AssemblyBandit messing with us and we are just a computer simulation.

@AssemblyBandit:
I feel that if you ran such a super computer simulation, you would need to slow it down to keep up with all of the 'problems' that need fixing. It would be like running Conway's Game of life and trying to preserve every pixel. As well, you would have to ask if you would even recognise intelligence emerging from your construction, and you would have to recognise when something bad happens or when something good happens. You could not expect human forms to come from your simulation or recognisable forms of communication. If you could recognise each instance of pain that needs remedying and prayers that need answers, and life that needs saving, would you not then automate the process through algorithms? Or modify your universe to be 'perfect' by including code to right the wrongs or preempt them? And you have a finite life. When you die, if you have not made an automated 'God' then your universe will suddenly lose its repairman. And if the universe evolved at a faster rate than ours, what would happen if a being in your created universe created their own universe? If you decided not to preserve their life, then would you be the 'God' responsible for the universe created inside your universe?

This is actually pretty cool to think about

Streetwalker: I just don't like the way people will try to explain everything off using a god, there's a lot more going on than that (and its more interesting).

adriweb: I like the links! I love the 'nested' simulations where the simulations create simulations themselves! In the video he mentioned how people would claim they've seen glitches like the pixels in the mirror

Sorunome: That could be possible! Maybe one day we'll create a game so advanced that it would be like playing the (voluntary) Matrix!

Xeda: You're the reason I actually found this thread, I needed a divide by 40 routine and you weren't online, so I looked through your previous posts hoping you had posted something similar. But then I got a little sidetracked  Later I found the DivHLByC routine on WikiTI  But yeah, because my little universe would have to evolve so rapidly, their civilizations would become infinitely more intelligent then me, and I would have to pull the plug before they found a way out of the simulation and took over our universe! Reverse simulation assimilation??? If there is a god, hes one lazy programmer!

ElementCoder: If we were created on purpose, then everything would be going pretty good. When you create something, you generally take care of it. When you buy a pet, you don't just let the thing sit there and starve to death or let it go out into the street! If this is the way god takes care of his children, I want to move out now!

Hm, I might post a whole rant on religion here. Here we go.

I have a pretty good theory about religion, I believe early civilisations made that up to answer unanswered questions. Science weren't there yet, and people couldn't really imagine something else than some guy creating everything, so better worship him. But, by nature, some people hated change, so when someone came up with science, people had difficulty accepting it... It got better in the recent history though. But nevertheless, I think religion is still part of everyday's life, like place names or funerals. The afterlife is not quite understood, what happens after death? Nothing? Pretty sure many would prefer believing there's something, that the soul of your loved one is at a better place, even if you know there's nothing. The memory of the dead lives as long as someone remembers them, after all.

Reminds me, almost two years ago, I got hospitalized for lung problems, I stayed there for 167 hours. Yeah, that was boring, but I had visits. And one of them was a priest. The hospital has a service where once a week, a priest would visit all the patients. He discussed with me, that was kinda cool. I realized, even though we are in a lay state here, they would still hire a priest, because people would find a priest very reconforting, especially when you're approaching death. Actually, it's pretty nice the hospital would send someone to visit you just for talking about stuff. They're there just for you.

Today, I would say I believe in God as much as I would believe in Princess Celestia or Madoka Kaname, all of them can teach you valuable life lessons you can follow. (Yes I'm comparing religion with fictional shows lol. If they weren't characters of TV shows I think they would make pretty good gods of some religion.) Just be careful in what you believe. It's up to you to decide what is right or wrong. Yes, the Bible may be full of contradictions, but it actually laid out the basis of modern civilisation and what we collectively assume as right or wrong, like killing people and stuff like that. We all agree killing people is bad, right? Or else maybe everyone would have guns and would liberally kill everyone else? I dunno, the impact religion had might be deeper than we thought.

And this is why, my friends, I still consider myself Catholic. I grew up Catholic and I understood what it meant to me.