I Know That God Does Not Exist

I have told you where to look. It is in the hearts of minds of human creatures. However, just as you can't see a thought you don't see God in the way that you describe. How about looking at how widespread is the belief in the "Golden Rule". There He is in the hearts and minds of all of us with that rule planted on our hearts whether we follow it or not.There God has been found.

So much of that is Greek philosophy. This isn't really about the chosen ones being the only one that escape hell. Jesus came to establish a kingdom and the chosen ones are the ones who have accepted that our lives should be based on living sacrificially through the love of God's creation and spreading that meme to the world by example. It is about vocation not salvation.

A bit of a simple answer, but discussion of religion would be rare where I live in the sense you mean here. Religion in Ireland mostly takes the form of a cultural Catholicism that's more about traditions and conduct in a certain sense than actually about God and Jesus as odd as that might sound. Even very strict Catholics I knew growing up rarely spoke about God or in fact never did. I was a bit vague on this since it can get technical. The agents of the form assumed in Quantum Theory are ones who reason classically and use classical concepts and logic. In the early universe there is nowhere classical anymore so such agents can't exist.That's not to say there aren't other kinds of agents. Even outside of religion I've known people to mention half-jokingly aliens who just grasp the quantum realm. However quantum theory theory concerns classical agents managing their expectations with probability theory.

Possibly. I think there is evidence that some animals use certain aspects of probability theory:
JSTOR: Access CheckThe problem is probability theory kind of just says "Imagine there is an agent..." or "Imagine somebody is betting...", but never really answers who can bet or who can be an agent. When the theory was first drawn up it sort of obviously referred to us. Since then it has been expanded.It's actually a point of discussion in the philosophy of probability. Very brief answer. When people try to apply Quantum Theory to the early universe some of the results don't really make any sense or it's hard to understand what they mean. Now very few people work in this area, but the usual understanding is that it just doesn't make sense since there can't be classical agents in the very early universe.You can use General Relativity since it describes things "as they are" independently of agents, but it becomes inaccurate past a certain point and ultimately breaks down. Most of the stuff you'd read about the early universe describes stages when General Relativity is a valid theory. So these accounts retain validity. There's currently no accounts of what was happening past a certain point. In certain readings of quantum theory (although it is the majority one) there can't be a mathematical account of what was happening back then.As I said above quantum theory seems to concern what happens when classical agents (whatever they are precisely as I mentioned) make measurements that involve the microscopic realm. However it doesn't tell you directly what the microscopic realm is actually like. It's a bit like the user manual that might come with a computer. It'll tell you "this is what happens when you click here" etc, but it doesn't tell you actually how a computer works (hardware details, operating system kernel).It seems the actual microscopic realm can't be mathematically described (See my longer post here: EvC Forum: The first Universal Law of the Universe). Quantum Theory can say what you as a macroscopic agent can expect from the microscopic when you "touch" it, but since it can't tell you what the microscopic is actually like and in the early universe there is only the microscopic you're sort of stuck.Some more philosophically minded physicists have referred to this as "The Chasm" (Robert Omns referring to the gap between what QM tells you and the actual microscopic world) or "Veiled Reality" (Bernard d'Espagnat). Jeffrey Bub says it nicely in one of his textbooks on quantum theory: Edited by Son Goku, : No reason given.

When I was in college in the early '80's I met a guy who was a submariner. He taught all of us BOHICA. It has been a regular saying for that group of friends ever since.

So your god admits to making a faulty decision? Why would an all knowing, all powerful entity need to change it's mind? It would have known what was happening so changing it's mind was preordained. Your argument is fallacious on its face if you believe in an all powerful, all knowing god.

Thanks for your explanation.Is it correct that a particle has a number of possibilities that only become our reality when a reasoning agent becomes involved and then the probabilities become one. Prior to that it is a wave-particle, and then becomes when measured or observed it becomes a point-particle? I'm not sure that those are the correct terms.If that is correct then, wouldn't it mean that prior to the existence of any reasoning agent the universe would be made up of nothing but wave-particles? I think from what you said that conclusion is wrong but I don't understand why.

And how would we even know if God changed His mi9nd or not? God would hypothetically live in the timeframe of infinity. For us, what He does is what He does...period. He came for the Jews than later added the Gentiles. At that time, it was seen by humanity as a changed message preached by humans. It was not perceived as a shift in Gods thinking...for to Him it was all preordained. So from His perspective, He never changes. From our perspective He does what He does. Thus...if God changed His mind we would never know.

You are the one that claimed this god guy changed his mind. So are you backtracking now?
more word salad.

Yes. Any time you set up an experiment to measure the microscopic realm there are usually several possible results, but you don't know which will occur in advance.However fully accurately "particle" is a classical concept only useful in describing the results of some experiments. The "stuff" down there isn't really particles. In various circumstances the microscopic realm will leave an impression in the macroscopic world. Quantum Theory then tells you what kind of impressions an agent should expect, how likely each kind of impression is in a given situation and how the agent should update their expectations of future impressions given the ones they've already seen.An example would be a silver oven with a glass screen next to it. Quantum Mechanics will predict the glass will develop point like marks and what the chance is for it to develop them in certain locations. Given the marks you see it can also tell you what the chance is that another glass screen behind the first will develop marks.Now note that even in the natural world similar "emitter/detector" combos can form. For example the gas in stellar core can be considered to be measuring whether atoms within it have fused. So there doesn't need to be an agent for these kind of micro/macro interactions to be present. However quantum theory describes how an agent might gamble on the outcome of these interactions, so the theory does assume an agent even though in nature no agent is required for these interactions.However quantum theory does say that the outcome of these micro/macro interactions isn't determined by any previous physical fact or event. It's a completely new fact that doesn't follow from anything previously. So yes something new does enter reality from the actions of conscious beings like ourselves when we preform measurements, but this a special case of elements of nature more generally being creative when they interact. Our experiments are just a special case of macro/micro interactions.If you prefer a more poetic description Chris Fuchs, a professor of Quantum Information at Waterloo and MIT, and the Nobel Laureate John Wheeler describe this as "creation being an ongoing process". The scientific name being "Participatory Realism". You'd see similar views from a more religious angle in the philosophical papers of Alfred North Whitehead. QM says that sometimes the impression in the macroscopic realm will be a point like mark, but it isn't talking about anything becoming a point particle.

"This" is about Phat wanting to have his cake and watch unbelievers roasting in Hell while he eats it. Your position is cute and cuddly and all but unless you're arguing that most will never believe, you're on a completely different page.

It does matter, for the ensuing reality of the situation at hand. Yes, and thats the way it stands now...for all intents and purposes. You can whine all you want about how God is autocratic, but He has given us the way out and you claim its too forceful and harsh. As if listening to someone besides your own mind would be such an imposition on your cherished free will. God is giving everyone the same opportunity. he adjusts His grace accordingly at His whim and based on how stubborn people are. it will get to the point, however, where you will have stubborn holdouts---like Theodoric---who say that if *My* God actually existed and was the status quo He--Theodoric--would tell Him to f*ck off! And you could have every single remaining candidate on earth joining in protest over the unfairness of it all--to no avail. Gods judgment is final and requires no consensus from some peanut gallery who can argue that He is a bumbling fool...learning on the job. The fact is that it is all of you--the peanut gallery---who need to learn a lesson in submission to authority. (as do I, I will freely admit) Actually "this" is about ringo thinking he can use the scripture of what he himself believes to be a made up storybook and successfully argue why the book itself supports his atheistic fable. I'll gladly take your place in Hell if God bores a hole through your thick heads! I know He will rescue me later. And not because I gave enough spare change out to the needy.I know darn well that I fall short of the standard. Whatever this cake is that you speak is a mystery to me.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

You like to imagine yourself as a preacher now don't you?All the bollox you're spouting these days and the way you kowtowed to that imbecile and fraudster ICANT - does it give you some sort of self importance? Is it your way out of your humdrum and troubled life? What is it?

My beliefs aren't what they are because they are cute and cuddly but because, after quite a lot of study, it is what I subjectively believe to be true. I understand it as I believe it would be understood by a first century Jew being spoken to by a first century Jew.

Thanks you for all of that Son Goku. I think you have taken me about as far as I can go. This is one of the major reasons I enjoy this site.