pioneer

Mar 21, 2006 20:35

if it can be broke then it can be fixed, if it can be fused then it can be split
it's all under control
if it can be lost then it can be won, if it can be touched then it can be turned
all you need is time

we promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?a sense of purpose and a sense of skill, a sense of function but a disregard ( Read more... )

bloc party

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actionjaxon March 23 2006, 21:14:47 UTC
you say you don't have the answer to a lot of these questions, but, does that not mean something to you?

part of why i consider myself agnostic now is because i always had these questions and the answer was always "i don't know why" or "you just have to keep faith".
for something as big as God and life and death, i could never settle on "i don't know".

that's when monolithic religion stoppped making sense to me. there were too many holes. i don't believe that i was ever given free will. it's something that i have had since i was born, and you too, simply by existing. why does some god-head deity get the credit for my own freedom of choice? he gave it to me because he "loves" me? what does that even mean, and how can i be sure of that, since clearly there is only one choice for me to make?
seriously, why create me [out of love] to see me suffer in the end. that does not sound like good parenting skills to me. in fact, i consider it worse than parenting, since parents don't know the outcome of their offsprings' lives, yet God surely does, right?

and i would LOVE to hear a remix of a bloc party song, and to read that paper. thank you. :)

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rearchetyped March 25 2006, 14:23:01 UTC
for something as big as God and life and death, i could never settle on "i don't know".

Welcome to my position from 2002-2005, which is to say I understand. I don't really blame anyone for being that way. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm obssessive regarding details; I'll spend quite a long time arguing the semantics of a word or phrase that I or someone else just used for the sake of clarity. So how can I tolerate "I don't knows" and gaps in understanding regarding something that shapes my view of reality?

Let me put it this way. I use basic arithmetic on a daily basis. So does you and pretty much everyone on the planet. All the evidence and our own experiences indicates that it works. It makes sense to us. However, did you know that no one has ever written a complete, successful proof for basic arithmetic? Godel came closest, but even he admitted that the proof wasn't very solid. Here's something that forms the backbone of our understanding of the hows and whys of the universe-- and we don't have an official proof for it. However, the lack of an official proof isn't going to stop me from balancing my checkbook this morning. Why? Evidence and experience are enough for me to bridge that rather large gap with faith. I suppose it's the same way with my religious views.

How about an example that involves a lot more gaps in understanding and less tangible things, though? Have you ever read much about quantum physics? Fascinating the stuff. The relevant thing about it is that it seems to seriously contradict atomic theory, among other things. Electrons don't orbit nuclei in fixed patterns; they actually exist in every possible location, all at once, in a cloud of probability. Photons have similar weirdness going on with them. The implication is that not only is there no "solid" structure to physical reality, but also at a certain level unrealized probabilities have a tangible existence. Where did the decades of experiments supporting our standard understanding of physics go? They're still there, and they still produce the same results. Yet we can also demonstrate the validity of quantum principles through experiments. So what do we do? We continue using the standard laws of physics, as the evidence and experience supporting them is good enough to place faith in it, and we investigate the unknown of quantum physics.

As a side note, I really would suggest reading about quantum physics sometime. Here's a decent layman's primer, which is frankly the only thing I can grasp about it. Scientists recently built a quantum "computer" that, given a problem and an algorithm with which to solve it, produces an answer-- before you even give it the problem. I mean, what the hell?!? Essentially, you give the thing the algorithm, you come up with a problem and the intent to enter it into the computer, and... bam. Answer. We have no idea how it works.

I'ma try loading that BP remix to a spare gmail account I keep for such a purpose, since yousendit has been pretty useless over dialup. That paper is here. :)

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bountycollected March 28 2006, 10:56:49 UTC
Your trying to explain apples with oranges.

You're talking about two different "faiths." Mathematicians and Physicists don't have faith in their experiments and equations like you have faith in your religious views. They, like you said, use evidence and experiments to attempt to prove something. If they get the same answer enough times without error, they then have faith that that answer will always be true. If something is found to be incorrect with their work then that faith is lost, and a new answer is searched for.

Your mythology is completely void of any and all evidence besides the fact that it exists. You don't have experiments and evidence- you just have faith, and that essentially proves nothing.

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actionjaxon March 30 2006, 01:38:17 UTC
yes, i love the subject of quantum physics, and the theories of particles existing in all places at once. it's a subject i became more familiar with after seeing 'what the bleep do we know' about 2 months ago. i agree, it's extremely fascinating.

about math, i think i've stated the same things before. it's nothing but numbers. but, what the hell are numbers? and complex numbers. like i. it doesn't even exist! but we use it.

we humans are very imaginative creatures. and we feel like we have to know the answers. thus, mathematics.

thus, religion.

i'll take a look at that paper. muchas gracias.

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