this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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And you know what, that might just very well be true if we’re talking about some supernatural force that is indifferent to its creations, not out of malice, but because it simply is truly neutral.

But as evidence for the religious capital ‘G’ God, the one who communicates and plans every little detail because he loves us so much? What is the point of these “subtle” proofs that took thousands of years to be studied and recorded when he has shown that he can just pop up anywhere or perform miracles and whatever the fuck.

It is no coincidence that the vast majority, possibly 99%, of devout religious people do not give a shit about using math to explain god because it’s all proven in their holy books. It is no coincidence that the “empirical” evidence is, in reality, just pointing at the existence of features and concepts of math and science rather than utilizing said features and concepts to prove the existence of god. And no, philosophical musings about morality using the language of mathematical proofs does not count as utilizing math and science (literally, all the axioms in these types of "proofs" are subjective shit like "bad" and "good" and not, say, the difference between 1 and 0).

And I didn’t even want to make a post dunking on religion, but I’m irritated because YouTube recommended some dumbass video by a channel called “Reformed Zoomer” and one of the arguments is “there is an infinite range of numbers between two numbers, and if we turn those numbers into letters, then every book possible has already been written. Checkmate atheoids”. https://youtu.be/z0hxb5UVaNE?si=RpjF6S0fHiF71iH-

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[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You cannot argue someone out of faith, they didn't argue themselves into it. It's an axiom, it's immuteable fact to these people. Sure the axiom is, by our understanding, very fucking bad, but you're not gonna change that by reasoning from your axiom. They don't agree.

[–] Hohsia@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does that mean ideology is an axiom?

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

No, but in the end, they all come back down to some sort of axiom. Gotta start somewhere.

[–] GhostSpider@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

If god is real then why isn't the heart shaped like a heart?

[–] duderium@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Hegel argues that god exists because everything has a cause. The natural question then is, what created god?

The unmoved mover is from Aristotle.

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

Virgin deist "everything has a cause" vs chad Taoist "the Tao is self-generative"

[–] jack@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think it is logical that there must be a supernatural cause of some sort. And I mean supernatural in the most literal sense - something above or outside of the rules and bounds of the physical universe as we are able to observe it. If everything must have a cause, then at some point you need to posit something that did not have a cause to get the whole thing started. That thing is, therefore, not bound by the rules that everything real and observable to us is bound by.

But to posit anything in particular about that supernatural cause - that it any way resembles any religion's conception of God or divinity, or higher dimensional aliens, or a computer simulation, or a conscious process at all, or whatever you wanna come up - is itself contradictory, because the only thing we can say is that cause doesn't (or didn't) operate by the rules of the world we are capable of understanding. Maybe the cause is just that it was never possible for nothing to exist, so instead something does.

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'd convinced myself of this argument a few years ago, but it's not really set in stone. The universe didn't necessarily "start." We know that at some point there was a big bang and we think the universe started with it, but there is no proof that there was nothing before it. It's just as possible that something had always existed within nature, without a cause.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I don't really assume that the Big Bang was the start of reality. But even if you take the stance that reality itself is without cause, then that's essentially supernatural - our understanding is that all things must have a cause. So there's some component of existence which doesn't comport to the rules we can observe. Same deal.

[–] Aquilae@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

Lmao I got recommended that too.

Made me mad watching it. What point was bro trying to make 💀

[–] Wheaties@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

Christians using maths to argue for the existence of God :solidarity: Atheists using the exact same argument to reconstruct tenants of Christianity, only this time God is a computer programme.

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] chickentendrils@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I've certainly never seen evidence of a god, if anything like it exists it's outside of our reality and set it in motion. Like anything else, eg rocks and trees, humans have defined ability and range of motion caused by our actual physical forms. We seem to just be pattern seeking biological machines created by cause and effect over a long enough period. I don't even have evidence that our thoughts are our own rather than the fault of matter and energy constituting our bodies being in certain positions. If the position of everything (particles, subatomic units, energy) is just cause and effect since when everything started, or since any point in time after everything existed regardless of how it came about, then there's obviously no free will. Unfortunately I don't think we can prove or disprove from within reality whether or not it is all deterministic.

[–] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

If the position of everything (particles, subatomic units, energy) is just cause and effect since when everything started, or since any point in time after everything existed regardless of how it came about, then there's obviously no free will.

Hard pills to swallow: atoms don't stop following the laws of physics when they're in the shape of a human brain. behavior and subjectivity are direct results of the matter in your head.

I've seen arguments from scientifically minded folks for why they believe in "free will" and they always involve misunderstanding physics, neuroscience, or free will itself.

It always comes off as cope.

Unfortunately I don't think we can prove or disprove from within reality whether or not it is all deterministic.

It's common for an argument to hinge on the randomness of quantum mechanics (whether quantum randomness is even relevant in brain function is an open question, but it probably isn't), but that confuses free will with unpredicatbility. Do you have "free will" if your behaviors are the result of dice rolls, the outcome of which you cannot control?

[–] Hohsia@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Exploring the “why” behind religion is super fun and this post proves it

Reddit atheism is just as much of an ideology as anything else

[–] a_blanqui_slate@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ironism is the only ideology that isn't an ideology because it recognizes that it is itself just an ideology.

[–] blight@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

THAT MAKES IT THE MOST IDEOLOGICAL OF THEM ALL zizek-theory

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As a teenager, I had a conversation while stargazing with one of the oldtimers at the local astronomy club. We talked about science and the limits of human knowledge, and I learned that he was Catholic. I was still newly atheist at the time so I wasn't ready to discuss it publicly, but I listened with interest to his scientific arguments for the existence of God.

One of the memorable arguments was that the second law of thermodynamics proves that life is a divine creation, since entropy tends to increase, while a complex organism is an extremely low entropic state.

I didn't know what to say at the time, sounded credible because I was 14 or whatever and this was an adult with real science credentials. Of course during college I had a moment where I realized how absurd that argument is.

[–] Orannis62@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Years ago, my high school paper ran an opinion piece about atheism written by a student. Our super catholic chemistry teacher, a real winner, got pissed and wrote a response opinion piece the next month which included that argument.

I happened to be in physics class when that paper got delivered and got to hear the physics teacher roast him with the most open contempt I ever saw from him

[–] Hohsia@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

So this tells me “entropy proves divine creation” is like an actual argument floating around