Or perhaps after the first billion years of mindless tedium it just lost interest and fell asleep..lol. I know I would've.

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(November 11, 2012 at 6:30 pm)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: Whatever survives, survives. For whatever reason.

Amen.

Another fun scenario to mull over. The quiet winner. Two species engage in fierce competition with each other for a limited resource. A third species, not interested in this competition (or incapable of competing with the other two at all), merely inherits the bounty left by the previous two that have successfully annihilated each other (or have left each other so depleted that they cannot resist the third).

Since time is meaningless and non-existent for such a god, the notion that there was a "time" when it's creative act was either merely potential or dormant seems nonsensical. To speak of a god of creation as not in the act of creating, seems, to me, a profound confusion about the nature of time and existence.


I appear to be late to the party. I think much of the current evidence seems to be trending toward the notion that our particular, large brains were selected for to allow for the expansion and development of complex social behaviors which, while enormously adaptive, require enormous and sophisticated computational abilities (examples, group sociality, jealousy and honesty, gossip, theory of mind, language itself, and so on). The apes and monkeys prior to the hominids can already be seen to exploit this niche in less impressive ways: there is a group of 7-8 monkey species who cohabitate, and understand each other's vocalizations alerting them to danger; there is another species which can range in groups up to nearly a thousand individuals; the mechanics of social behavior in the latter species are not overly complex or sophisticated, yet they still have to be functional for such large groups, even, perhaps, in spite of such large numbers.

One nuance that is frequently lost in discussion of hominid intelligence is that the accepted measure of animal intelligence relates the ratio of brain volume to body mass, or some combination of logarithms. While absolute brain mass was certainly increasing as hominids evolved, they were also becoming larger, so a reasonable estimate of their increase in terms of animal intelligence has to plot the course of this ratio, not merely absolute brain volume. (Ignoring questions of function and topography outright.)

Finally, since I want to get to other things tonight, briefly, I think to speak of anything beyond functional truths is nonsensical. We think "in models" — of the environment, of physical reality, of ourselves and our projects, of other minds, of the nature of our social behaviors, not to mention the whole Platonic realm, which I have ideas about, but which would be a digression. The truth of a model is its utility from a functional standpoint, and its use to drive the feedback loop of environment -> perception -> model -> prediction -> behavior -> environment.

ta ta, for now. interesting discussion. Who is "MI" ?

Military Intel Apo..lol.

(November 11, 2012 at 4:08 pm)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: Yeah, and maybe he chose to give it up?

Maybe for ironic reasons or something along those lines.

Maybe he was going power mad and being all loving acknowledged that and so gave up his power?

He did in Jesus, the Son chose to give up His power, see what you missed by not reading the Bible. Oh yeah, He also keep it, something else you would have known if you had only read the Bible.

See, I told you DvF, god can be in two directly contradictory positions simultaneously..hehehehe. He can give shit up while keeping it. Booyah! Can we stop subjecting god to this pale ass "logic and reason" bullshit and get back to invoking real magic now?

"It's a floor wax, and a dessert topping!"

(November 12, 2012 at 4:07 am)Godschild Wrote: He did in Jesus, the Son chose to give up His power, see what you missed by not reading the Bible. Oh yeah, He also keep it, something else you would have known if you had only read the Bible.

It doesn't seem like I'm missing much. I don't need to read the whole thing to ask questions about it. When I go into a shop I don't buy everything there... I might even say something like "I'd just like to browse, thanks".

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(November 12, 2012 at 9:58 am)Rhythm Wrote: See, I told you DvF, god can be in two directly contradictory positions simultaneously..hehehehe. He can give shit up while keeping it. Booyah! Can we stop subjecting god to this pale ass "logic and reason" bullshit and get back to invoking real magic now?

Well this seems to just suggest that he's not permanently omnipotent and that part of him ("The Son") can be not omnipotent while another part of him ("The father") can be.

And I said that some theists believe that God can't contradict logic, while some believe that he can.

In fact, if you check Wikipedia out there are multiple definitions of omnipotence, apparently.

(November 12, 2012 at 4:07 am)Godschild Wrote: He did in Jesus, the Son chose to give up His power, see what you missed by not reading the Bible.

So...walking on water, multiplying bread and fishes, ressurecting the dead, ressurecting himself...yeah he sure was powerless. Maybe he just chose not to exert his power all of the time as the son. Jesus's personality is so different from Yahweh's...how again are they both the same being?

Maybe because Jesus isn't powerless he just isn't omnipotent. And maybe his personality is different because God has an infinite personality or something.

(November 12, 2012 at 4:03 pm)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: Maybe because Jesus isn't powerless he just isn't omnipotent. And maybe his personality is different because God has an infinite personality or something.

Which includes pure evil? Then that would make god morally neutral; infinite everything would lead to a lot of traits cancelling each other out, unless we mean only positive things (read: heat, not cold because cold is only the lack of heat). But even then, infinite malice vs. infinite altruism? Neither is simply the lack of the other so...