Does God have feelings?

[SteveA]

Thanks for your comments, Austin and I agree that there's not any obvious evidence of some God that comes and goes and has isolated influences in specific events, though it does seem there might be something more pervasively influencial and it could look a bit more like this:



It's interesting to consider that if we used the "Many Worlds" interpretation of QM, then it could be impossible to prove such to anyone else as we'd each be making our own choices and not dragging anything else along with us. So in a sense, we could also prove that some things could be unprovable except to oneself.

[melanie]

Stephen Fry: explaining things exactly how they need to be explained.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR5hWbfZsYs

[SteveA]

Stephen Fry: explaining things exactly how they need to be explained.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR5hWbfZsYs

It can be simple, complex or pretty much anything in between as well as an imagined incomprehensibility. Those are all things that have the capability of being created.

Should the parasitic worm be killed, or should the worm and sheep be left as they are in his example? Different perspectives see different things. It could be that the problems arise when the view is limited.

The most important thing seems to be resolving possible conflicts in ones own understanding as it can be hard to judge the state of something else if one doesn't even know their own state. Problems can be created, even with good intentions, if an ignorance of the influences of ones actions is present.

[labelwench]

Whether one ascribes to a god(s) or not, the level of emotion they will bring to such ponder would likely depend on how many levels of connection and interaction that person has with the life force, in any of it's manifestations.

People in good health, with companionship and activities that give them some sense of actualization are going to experience a sense of 'caring', while those in compromised circumstances may be isolated in person and emotionally, and the concept of 'caring' may seem remote or even foreign to them.

As independent as many of us are, it is these connections that give existence meaningful value. One's purpose or accomplishments ring hollow without others to share them with and learn from, IMO.

Nature, I believe, is quite indifferent to our 'feelings' and will recycle us in due course. What we make of the journey is up to us, and the more reason to share the load and the pleasures granted by the experiencing of 'life.'

[r.p.bibra]

[QUOTE=austintorn@aol.com;124914][SIZE=3]Victor Stenger

Physicist; Author of the forthcoming book 'The Fallacy of Fine Tuning: How the Universe is Not Designed for Us'
Posted: August 14, 2010 09:07 AM
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Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of AbsencI

The man who has not, as yet, found a cure for a common cold, is searching for God! Isn't kinda funny?

[r.p.bibra]

[QUOTE=austintorn@aol.com;124914][SIZE=3]Victor Stenger

Physicist; Author of the forthcoming book 'The Fallacy of Fine Tuning: How the Universe is Not Designed for Us'
Posted: August 14, 2010 09:07 AM
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Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of AbsencI

The man who has not, as yet, found a cure for a common cold, is searching for God! Isn't kinda funny? love&regards.ls
PS. revered sir, it is too early to negate Him!

[SteveA]

[SIZE=3]Victor Stenger

Physicist; Author of the forthcoming book 'The Fallacy of Fine Tuning: How the Universe is Not Designed for Us'
Posted: August 14, 2010 09:07 AM
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Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence

The man who has not, as yet, found a cure for a common cold, is searching for God! Isn't kinda funny? love&regards.ls
PS. revered sir, it is too early to negate Him!

Yes, there's more than one way to look at the "fine tuning" issue. It seems practically a given that things must possess some order simply that things don't just fall apart into some random jumble of nothingness (I think the odds of randomness doing something as trivial as 'jumbled' are pretty slim, much less maintain a universe running with at least sextillions (definitely an understatement) of subatomic particles all managing to do their thing for more than an attosecond seems practically beyond impossible ... can you imagine the number of "fails" that would have had to happen to get this lucky? ).

Of course the discussion then moves to rules instead ... why does the universe by a specific set versus some other potential sets? There's still another issue involved though - why, out of all possible locations and times etc. that we could have existed in the universe, do we happen to be in such an accomodating corner of things? Likely 99.9999%+ of the universe is simply empty space and of the potential material environments, likely another 90%+ of those would be uninhabitable.

So we could then try to use evolution to describe (a rather "clever"? ) process by which larger collective interactions on different scales can arise in synergistic manners from simpler processes (though I'm skeptical that this is the way it actually works - it seems more likely we began with everything and whittled it down to specifics. Something has to connect it all in the first place, otherwise nothing could come together and interact).

There appear to be many questions still. I assume things could have been wildly different and not knowing anything else to compare it with, we'd likely still see things as "normal" and so there could be a very large number of ways that the equivalent of life exists in the universe and we don't immediately recognize it, and it could even be that life or consciousness imposes specific conditions on its environment and is simply incompatible with some forms of space or material properties, but even given all that leeway beyond the conventional view, there's still the question of why does everything fit together and interact so perfectly according to various physical laws?

What's the probability that randomness creates order ... and what is randomness and "untuned" etc.? For there to be some probability that the universe could have been different, there must have existed some structure that allowed for a "random" selection to be made ... what's the structure that contains all these possible universes and how is it capable of creating and connecting together as a whole, such a diverse set of systems?

If there was anything close to an intelligent design(er) around, it's difficult to imagine what else it could possibly be. If that wouldn't require some intelligence or organization and order, I have no idea what would.

Thanks for your comment ... yes, my views have swung around quite a bit recently. Nothing fit together until I tied them to a common unit and then ... wow, everything appears to unfold from that (until then it's just "random" fluff without structure that does nothing specific).

I don't think it's specifically a "Him" that holds it together and maybe there's really nothing specific to say about this structure except that it would appear to be similar to a purely creative intelligence.

On the other hand, maybe the physics community is entirely wrong and there is no order to the universe ... maybe it really is random and physical laws etc. are just an illusion ... apples fall due to luck?! LMAO (Actually, I think it's partly true!)

There are still other possibilities though ... it's definitely a complex picture. I'm personally not ruling much of anything out.

[labelwench]

Ah, yes.

Is the universe the result of 'optimum fortune' or 'good management'?

Is there anything that we may examine in isolation that is not in some way connected to everything else?

The ultimate symbiotic arrangement, and it is only humankind that somehow feels estranged.

What is this curiosity that is both our gift and our detriment?

The need to know is woven into our DNA and perhaps we are the only species that also asks 'why' in addition to 'how'......

[Meem]

I really like it, when really smart people say things like,

The key question is whether evidence should exist but does not. Elephants have never been seen roaming Yellowstone National Park. If they were, they would not have escaped notice. No matter how secretive, the presence of such huge animals would have been marked by ample physical signs -- droppings, crushed vegetation, bones of dead elephants. So we can safely conclude from the absence of evidence that elephants are absent from the park.

Why aren't they pink, with blue tails? Why not mention the easter bunny, santa, and the tooth fairy having not been seen there too. Although, I suspect at some point or another, there have been sightings of the first two there. Perhaps it was best to leave them out. A bear at an unkempt campsite could also be interupted as a speghetti monster ... well, I'd imagine. Is this really a suitable comparisson? Evidence of God, is comparable to seeing elephants in YNP? Man, I have some catching up to do. No, (pink) elephants haven't been seen in YNP, but they have been plenty of other places. The example is a failure.

To me, the logic illustrated in this example would seem to say, since an ant does not recognize a human as a vastly superior form of being (leave the feel-osophy out for a moment), then we don't exist? Do ants recognize footprints in the sand, broken tree trunks, large piles of dung? I mean, these are the kinds of thing "god" does? Really?

Ok, just the one god ... in specific he goes on to say, God, that one. Just like him, alot of them men that did things "in God's name" had it all wrong.


Anyway, I'm going to go somewhere and not exist, because the ant in my house doesn't seem to be able to recognize me as a more complex ... higher form of being. Would he notice the difference if I left the house or not, long as I was just observing him from a distance?

Aliens don't exist either, because there is no evidence for those. Especially the little green ones in particular. I just have something against green ones, all the others are just fine ...