Religion

[andrewducker]

Religion Definition
are you mono or polytheistic?	I'm not atheistic at all.  I'm agnostic
do you subscribe to a major religion?	Nope.  Nor any minor one.  Nor any of their opposites
how do you feel about Jesus?	Not at all convinced he existed at all.
what holy book do you feel is most accurate (Bible, Koran, etc)	The Principia Discordia
do you believe in reincarnation?	No
do you believe in the traditional heaven and hell?	No
do you believe in ANY heaven and/or hell?	No
do you think the god(s) are vengeful or nice?	Or not.
do you believe in angels?	No.
do you believe in miracles?	No.
do you believe in predestination?	Yes.
do you believe in original sin?	No.
do you believe in freedom of will?	No.
do you believe in souls?	No.
what do you think will happen to you when you die?	Rotting, largely.
do you think there will be an armageddon?	Not in the original meaning of the word, no.
why do you think we exist?	Sometimes these things happen.
do you believe in life on other planets?	I'm very open to the possibility.
do you believe in evolution?	Reproduction.  Variation.  Selection.  Can't see any way to argue with any of those short of total philosophical scepticism.
do you think religion and science will always oppose the other?	No.  Eventually the universe will end.
what would you say to God if you met him/her/them today?	If there was one he'd know without being asked
anything else we should know?	Question Authority.
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Comments

[cruft.livejournal.com]

That was refreshing.

[andrewducker]

Glad to be of service.

[darkoshi]

"Sometimes these things happen" ???

Ergh. If I was talking to a god who gave that as the excuse for existence, I'd be very tempted to hit her/him/it. If said god was in corporeal form.

[andrewducker]

But that's because God's are supposed to have answers. They're the primal movers from whom all meaning flows.

When you acknowledge the universe is without intrinsic meaning and that all searches for a prime cause are essentially infinite in regression then you have to eventually accept that, while everything beneath that level may well be entirely causal, the initial event must be acausal. And thus 'one of those things that just happens.'

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Its funny that despite mechanistic arguments for pre-destination and lack of free will being the most scarey (or at least, I don't want to think of me being nothing more than an extremely complex biochemical robot), I've always found the arguments for this line of reasoning the most compelling... *shiver*

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Colour me confused, but the bits on free will and predestination seem to belong with a more, um, theist outlook than you express in the rest of the quiz?

[andrewducker]

Free will would imply a non-deterministic universe in which our movements weren't theoretically calculable from the initial state of the universe and the underlying rules governing the interaction of particles.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

How very Newtonian.... Seriously, I think you're somewhat neglecting quantum and chaos, as it were.

[andrewducker]

Chaos makes this complex and hard to calculate. But not impossible. Complexity Theory doesn't make the calculation too complex to perform, just says their results may be surprising.

And quantum mechanics makes things probabilistic. But it doesn't give you a choice.

You're wrong, but....

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I sort of see where you're coming from. However, historically belief in Predestination has been a Bad Thing as people used it to excuse doing all sorts of stuff - moderated only slightly by the concomitant belief in a Deity of some sort. Predestinarian atheists would be Really Scary.

From what I've done with molecular dynamics on comparatively small systems, simply modelled, I'd say that there are some things we simply can't calculate if only because the energy state difference between two or more intermediate stages is less than the uncertainty in the background - and by the time you scale up from the molecular to the macro level, any form of predestination is right out the window.

Re: You're wrong, but....

[andrewducker]

The fact that a theory has been used to excuse terrible acts doesn't really put me off - pretty much every theory has been so used at some point in time and using one in such a way is pretty much irrelevant to its truthfulness.

The uncertainty argument is interesting, certainly. It may well be that predictability is impossible. Free Will, on the other hand, still seems to me to be a meaningless statement when applied at a high level.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Question Authority.

Nice.

[douglasbryant.livejournal.com]

I liked the bit about rotting largely. That was a good one.
I have Doom3 to now, I have developed a tendance of staying in the light areas where possible...