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ThinkingSapien
Guest
Looks that there’s a wiki on the various methods of hardware random noise generation used in various processors (ex: intel Core i7 4820 uses Johnson-Nyquist thermal noise).
see more here.
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see more here.
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Darryl_B
Guest
I’m under the impression this post is about computers rather than “belief … or lack thereof”. The question is “God” and as much as I love discussion on computers as a side, my friends, we are way off topic. Discuss what is comfortable, to talk around that which is uncomfortable.
God.
God.
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benhur
Guest
What doesn’t make sense to me then is why then would we have ‘religion’ from the beginning, when it seems we would need to be the most efficient, rational, and least in need of "delusions’. Seems like according to natural selection religion would be a luxury, and there is nothing luxurious in natural selection. I have been told she is stingy, and economical. One would have to show how a delusion helps in our replication, and is it found elsewhere ?. Not sure why something would be “faulty” if indeed it aided survival of the fittest, and that from the very beginning of our species.
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benhur
Guest
Every thesis has an anti thesis, I think. Of course once all the facts are in and something is provable, even replicable, the thesis/ antithesis ends. How can it not still be presumptuous to say there is not a supreme being, creator, or spiritual life, even life in/from another dimension, or life after death ? At least the agnostic avoids that presumption/delusion (that the thesis has ended). Because one can now fathom the billion to one odds of our existence due to evolution and naturalism we ‘rationally’ reject the higher odds, a trillion to one, of a Creator? Understand. Don’t get me wrong, to go with better odds is admirable, even desirable That still, never, never eliminates that one chance in a trillion. Wiser to keep the thesis alive.So I’m an atheist, yippee!
What does that mean?
The dictionary typically provides two possibilities, one of them does apply quite nicely: a person who disbelieves Some will call this simply “agnostic”, “agnostic atheist” or “weak atheist”… I don’t care… For me, I’m just atheist.
I’ve been in a few threads on this forum and some of them have veered a bit off-topic (can’t take all the blame for it, but some is certainly on me) so those threads ended up closed.
I’d like this thread to be one where we can discuss any detail concerning how this disbelief of mine affects any particular aspect of life, of how I view the world, of how I envision that which is, as far as I am aware, unknown… and even that which is unknowable…
There are also some people in this forum who seem to operate under a few misconceptions about atheists, so I’d like to address them… Here’s one:
So, provided no God is available, why do people believe in them? How did that happen?
- All-mighty Lady-Chance-did-it: If no God creator of the Cosmos made all this and provided that mighty initial spark for life, then chance must have done it - no purpose, no intent, no reason… Or something like this, right?
Well, I prefer not to be so bleak, but ultimately, yes… Under the assumption that no God exists, there seems to have been no consciousness that somehow started the Universe. Mind you, we, human race, don’t know how the Universe came into being. We can trace it back to the big bang… well, almost to the Big Bang and then our known physics becomes unsuitable, so the real answer is “I don’t know”, actually, no one knows. If anyone claims to know, they’re making it up. Any claim of divine revelation is also seen as making it up.
Sadly, written history starts at a time when religions already exist, so we don’t have any way of knowing the answer to this question.
We can try to reason it out, using the few pieces left behind for archaeologists to find, mingling them with known psychological traits shared by most humans (and likely shared with those humans who started the belief in spiritual entities).
Bah… we can never know the particulars, but my general guess is that, at some point, the frustration of not knowing many answers to questions that were burning their early curiosity-ridden minds led them to speculation… from wild speculation told over a campfire to a story which feels like it’s conveying the reality of things would go but a few generations, if any at all.
And then… just build upon it. The evolution of religions… it seems there are books written on that subject… (no, I didn’t read that… I arrived at that conclusion independently). It does make some sense, seeing as Christianity itself is clearly an evolution of the Judaic model.
With this, my mind is satisfied as it allows for everything that we see and experience to be caused by natural means.
Feel free to pick my atheism apart… I welcome you!
Real Blessings
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benhur
Guest
my response from: forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13567889&postcount=222TheAtheist said:From: Re: Do you have questions about Catholic beliefs & Practices thread
Pardon I don’t mean to trivialize any of this…but I’m kind of like Pavlov’s Dog at this point whenever I do have occassion to be in LA or NYC (mostly during conference season).
I see one of those setups with your saint and the brass band playing and 2 thoughts come to mind…
http://www.bu.edu/today/files/2015/07/h_butoday_wtd-0731-stagrip.jpg
Either…
http://f.tqn.com/y/gonyc/1/5/d/X/sausage_peppers.jpg
Or…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Tortas_Oaxaquenas.jpg
"Hi A,
Glad to see you here. Where is PRMerger ( a regular CAF poster) when you need her? She could match you photo for photo, and some of them even ‘move’.
Yes the rational guilt by association. Does every thesis have an anti thesis, or every good thing a countering bad thing ? I mean when one is hungry one does not assume that because he sees some spoiling apples that the whole bushel is bad. How dangerously irrational would that be ? Of course when one is factually certain, and a thesis is no longer a thesis, one is no longer hungry, at least not for any apple, good or bad.
Factual Non- Delusionary Blessings to you
How about this :maybe as food can be fun and yummy for the body, so is religious activity fun and yummy for the spirit ? No ? I did not think that would be your Pavlovian experience.
Anyways, thanks for the fun posting."
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pocaracas
Guest
Welcome aboard, benhur!
Do we have “religion from the beginning”? Or was it acquired when our societies became large enough? What exactly is “large enough”? I don’t know… complex enough city-states where it became easy to disseminate an idea which, while appealing, had little grounding on reality? This would have happened not more than 50 thousand years ago… not a lot in evolutionary terms, but still quite a bit.
Once the idea catches on, those who oppose the idea get cast out and are less likely to have children. Thus skepticism is bred out… luckily, there’s still enough around, nowadays! Perhaps because the societies were complex enough to accommodate some of them…?
The “faulty” detail is in our brains… good enough to survive and breed, but not as good as could be. Think Alzheimer’s - usually, it only shows symptoms after old age has settled in… breeding is a thing of the past for the individual with Alzheimer’s… why would it be selected out?
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As I’ve been told, agnostic pertains to the certainty a person has on the knowledge of something - gnostic: knows; agnostic doesn’t know.
Atheism pertains to belief in the existence of gods - theist: believes that a god or gods exist; atheist: doesn’t believe that such gods exist.
Each person can be gnostic or agnostic and theist or atheist.
I am an agnostic atheist. I don’t presume to know for certain that a god does not exist… but I also don’t believe in the stories told since the days of those first believers, and refined throughout the ages. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe in those tales. Nor do I feel the apologists are making solid cases. There are holes in there - mainly from our own lack of knowledge… hence “agnostic” is to be kept.
Anyone claiming to know anything about the gods (gnostic) is, as far as I can tell, not providing a truthful account - if is it a blatant lie, or an unwitting one, I don’t know… but the followers of such untruths should take care.
Natural selection can be described as a tinkerer. change this bit here and see if it sticks. And, to make matters worse, what sticks in a particular environment, may not stick at all in another… and these two environments can be found in the same place, but on different times.
Do we have “religion from the beginning”? Or was it acquired when our societies became large enough? What exactly is “large enough”? I don’t know… complex enough city-states where it became easy to disseminate an idea which, while appealing, had little grounding on reality? This would have happened not more than 50 thousand years ago… not a lot in evolutionary terms, but still quite a bit.
Once the idea catches on, those who oppose the idea get cast out and are less likely to have children. Thus skepticism is bred out… luckily, there’s still enough around, nowadays!
Perhaps because the societies were complex enough to accommodate some of them…?The “faulty” detail is in our brains… good enough to survive and breed, but not as good as could be. Think Alzheimer’s - usually, it only shows symptoms after old age has settled in… breeding is a thing of the past for the individual with Alzheimer’s… why would it be selected out?
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I know reading back the whole thread would be a chore, but that has been said by me on a number of occasions.
As I’ve been told, agnostic pertains to the certainty a person has on the knowledge of something - gnostic: knows; agnostic doesn’t know.
Atheism pertains to belief in the existence of gods - theist: believes that a god or gods exist; atheist: doesn’t believe that such gods exist.
Each person can be gnostic or agnostic and theist or atheist.
I am an agnostic atheist. I don’t presume to know for certain that a god does not exist… but I also don’t believe in the stories told since the days of those first believers, and refined throughout the ages. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe in those tales. Nor do I feel the apologists are making solid cases. There are holes in there - mainly from our own lack of knowledge… hence “agnostic” is to be kept.
Anyone claiming to know anything about the gods (gnostic) is, as far as I can tell, not providing a truthful account - if is it a blatant lie, or an unwitting one, I don’t know… but the followers of such untruths should take care.
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PRmerger
Guest
Well, one has an answer to a very, very trenchant and important question: how did we get here when we know, without a doubt, that something has never ever before come from nothing.
Fair enough.
So when we talk about Jesus resurrecting from the dead, what are your thoughts on this?
Do you think it was a giant lie? Or a mass hallucination?
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PRmerger
Guest
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pocaracas
Guest
How do we know such a thing, PR?
Has anyone ever seen or been to “nothing”? Where is “nothing” in the visible Universe?
Can you say for certain that there has ever been “nothing” and only “nothing”? (provided the non-existence of any God)
I’d go with exaggeration… but this question is not for me, so let’s wait for TS.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
Couldn’t tell you how we got here. Most of the explanations of which I know describe how the world/earth/universe was formed from pre-existing substances. In some stories that substance is other gods, in some it’s gluons, and in some it’s something else. And there are sometimes stories for how that substance came to be arranged as it was but keep cycling back and eventually one reaches the limits of their abilities to generate explanations and have possibly already gone further than their actual knowledge. I guess we can’t know everything.
If you are asking me if the discussion is accurate I could not tell you. There are ways for it to be inaccurate beyond hallucinations and lies. There’s misunderstandings, the possibility the story isn’t literal, and more. For me it’s another story that is a part of a culture. I look at it similarly to how I look of the story involving riding off on the winged horse Barack, the cursing of Shiva’s manhood, or the virgin Chimalman conceiving Quetzalcoatl after swallowing an emerald.
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PRmerger
Guest
Yes. What a shame.
And yet we need an answer for where these pre-existing substances came from.
Odder and odder it gets.
Of course it’s true we can’t know everything. But then again I don’t think anyone here, esp Believers, has ever posited such a thing.
But I find it oh-so-peculiar to hear a person who is an advocate of science say such a thing, with such nonchalance: “I guess we can’t know everything”.
What scientist ever ends the relationship with knowledge with that statement…except for, curiously, when it comes to the origins of life, when it comes to religious questions, when it comes to the numinous.
It’s like Michael Shermer, whose raison d’etre, is to find answers to questions…curiously decides, when it is the most personal and probing and startlingly experiential experience, “I guess we can’t know everything.”
One has to wonder why this is…
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PRmerger
Guest
So tell us how you think this looks like, this development of the Christian story.
Start with the death of Christ…which, I presume, you don’t dispute?
(There is nary a mentally sound academic, atheist or believer, who denies that there was a man named Jesus who walked the earth who was crucified by the Romans).
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
I disagree, but will note this is how you feel about it.
I’m going to interpret that as meaning that these explanations do not describe the state of things at T=0. The thought of the progression of time without substance , whether that substance be matter, some form of energy, or something else is something I’ve found odd. I’m not sure that time has any applicability in the absence of substance. And it seems our universe is so populated with “substance” it may be a concept that is hard to explore.
I don’t think you genuinely find it peculiar to read that I that I think there are limits to the knowledge that we can acquire either as individual people or collectively as a society. Especially since you’ve acknowledge the limitation a couple of sentences earlier.
I thought about playing along as though you do find it peculiar, but I can’t. You don’t seem to be of the opinion of “We can know everything.” The only positions of which I know that are outside of thinking that we can know everything are either having no opinion on the potential limits of our knowledge or the position of thinking that we can’t know everything.
Now if you do feel that “We can know everything” do let me know. I genuinely would find that disposition to be peculiar and would be interested in exploring it. Until then I don’t see that we’ve got incompatible feelings on whether or not there are limits to the potential of our knowledge.
Before I seem to have agreement with something that I don’t let me say that I’m not of the opinion that the figure invoked above was “anointed” (as denoted by the title “Christ”). Anywhere you use the word “Christ” I’ll interpret to mean “Jesus” but am not necessarily including attributes of divinity. I’ll try to reply back to this question later tonight when I’ve got more time to respond.
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PRmerger
Guest
Really?
A person of science who is ok with ending the question with “I don’t know”.
Surely you see the cognitive dissonance this rings for us, yes?
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PRmerger
Guest
Right. But I already explicitly stated such.
Please read my statement again. I don’t find it peculiar, at all, that you assert we can’t know everything.
I am amused and bemused by a scientist being ok with ending the discussion with, “I don’t know”.
It’s like Will Shortz saying, “I don’t care about words”.
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PRmerger
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benhur
Guest
Yeah baby, that’s what I’m talking about…your "moving’’ photos!
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benhur
Guest
Hi p,
Was not ready for that . Have to think about that but off hand seems not right. I can see that per your definitions I am a theist gnostic. I would say: I know, there is a God. But can you say’ there is no God, but I don’t know’ or 'I don’t know but there is no God" ? isn’t that a conundrum in itself ? I know there is an English word describing your linguistic oddity but it escapes my mind.
That is what most folks would say is ‘agnostic’ .You are neither theist or atheist. You don’t know for sure yet, as I understand the terms
Well, an atheist would not say we lie, that indeed we are true to our experiences, just that we are delusional perhaps. We have not been set free with the absolute truth of naturalist answers to everything, including our misfiring need for religion.If we give accounting it is also with the understanding that the accounting will be validated, rejected, refined in another 'dimension". I mean if there is this dimension it lends to the probability that there is another ?
Yes lying is punished (unuseful-not good for all) even in Darwinian terms and so also in most religious settings. Retribution for lying is also left to hopefully good courts, for all to believe , and ultimately to God for others (to believe). But for now all the varied pied pipers are vying for their place in the hearts and minds of our species per your Darwinism/naturalism and or my God’s patient plan.
Blessings
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pocaracas
Guest
Hi benhur
But, as someone who’s come across an agnostic theist, I think it’s better to stick with all those categories.
Who can tell that person A is lying when she says “The almighty creator of the Earth and the Heavens is watching - be good and you will not incur in His wrath!”?
How about this: I can’t tell if there is or isn’t a god out there, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it so I’m going to spend my life as if it doesn’t and think that there’s something odd with the people who claim that there is.
That’s one way of putting it.
But, as someone who’s come across an agnostic theist, I think it’s better to stick with all those categories.
If there is another, how would someone know about it to spread the word? How would people believe in that person?
But what if you can get away with the lie and make some profit?..
Who can tell that person A is lying when she says “The almighty creator of the Earth and the Heavens is watching - be good and you will not incur in His wrath!”?
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benhur
Guest
Ok, sounds honest to me, and for sure we are a peculiar people (Judeo/Christian folk).
Ok ,I would say you are what you say you are withstanding any labeling, or by any other name.
Good question. I suppose one would have to hear from someone who is from the other side. The Christian faith would say that is Jesus Christ Himself, who claims to created everything , and walked and talked with the first man and woman, and then even incarnated as a man to fix things up. He also instituted that His message or that the word should get out by ‘preaching’ one man to another. Belief then comes about first by hearing what that ‘preacher’ says and that faith made possible by God Himself. So no one is born believing , or being peculiar. It takes God’s infusion for the whole thing to click, and only afterward do we see that we were pre built needing that infusion.
All sorts of pied pipers might be disingenuous , and out for a profit.
Your question could mean is he disingenuous and saying things he knows are not true , or that he believes it, and now we must ask ourselves is it true or not. As to the former, we certainly are to beware, and sometimes we can tell, sometimes not when one lies. The latter, if you are not God infused you can not be expected to know His truth from a lie. But for sure God would like all, and is ready to infuse all, who truly desires to know Him.
Blessings
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