[QUOTE=jasong]Holy mackeral, we agree on something not math related.:surprised

One of the definitions of faith is "hope in the unseen." I chose Christianity because I felt it was the only religion that I would want to spend an eternity in. I don't consider a life that lasts less than 1,000 years to be worthwhile so I behave in a way that I feel Jesus, if he's real, would want me to.

I may have pointed this out already, but if there is no God, then EVERYBODY loses sooner or later.

It's better to have hope.[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes:
May Blessed Jesus bless you for taking a stand with 'doubting Thomas's.'
"Blessed are those who have seen and believed, Thrice Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe " N.T.
Mally :coffee:

[QUOTE=jasong]I don't consider a life that lasts less than 1,000 years to be worthwhile[/quote]That strikes me as very sad - that someone wouldn't find a normal human lifetime (the only one we know with absolute certainty we'll ever have) as "worthwhile". Or maybe you're just *really* slow paying your monthly rent, in which case I hope your landlord operates on similar generously long time scales.

[quote]I may have pointed this out already, but if there is no God, then EVERYBODY loses sooner or later.[/quote]That depends on your definition of "lose." If you consider a normal human life lived well and fully but then coming to its inevitable end as a losing proposition, then I really feel sorry for you. Even if there really is a God and a hereafter (and I don't claim to know either way - only that this life is the only one I have any actual evidence for), do you think God would want you to fail to appreciate your life on earth because you spent it obsessing about what may or may not come after?

[QUOTE]It's better to have hope.[/QUOTE]Hope for what, and based on what, exactly? How can you possibly hope to live this life to the fullest and to value real human kindness and justice in the here and now if you're completely focused on some abstract, unknown and unproven "hereafter?" That sounds like a recipe for either despair, anarchy or tyranny. By way of a contemporaneous example, it seems to me that much of the death cult known as "radical Islam" is a direct result of that kind of thinking. "Oh, I can blow up as many people as I like in the present, because if it turns out that - whoopsie! - there were some righteous folks among them, they'll get their reward in heaven, and I'll be forgiven because I was doing it for the greater good." (And Islam is certainly not the only religion that has engaged in that kind of sick stuff - any faith that causes its followers to believe themselves "better" than the non-believers and that denigrates the present in favor of some "life beyond" is prone to doing so.) What is this, the dark ages (that was mostly the Christians there, BTW), where people desperately needed to believe in something beyond the grave in order to help them cope with their day-to-day misery? I say that's some really twisted thinking there - why would you expect some kind of heavenly reward in the hereafter if you didn't strive for justice, self-betterment and to maybe leave the world (or at least your small corner of it) a little better place when you had the chance to do so in the here and now? To use the common Christian imagery, when you're standing outside the pearly gates and St. Peter asks you, "so, what did you do in your earthly life to make you worthy of admission here?", what are you going to tell him - that your earthly life was simply too short and impermanent to be worth bothering much about?

ewmayer,

[QUOTE]That strikes me as very sad - that someone wouldn't find a normal human lifetime (the only one we know with absolute certainty we'll ever have) as "worthwhile".[/QUOTE]Would you consider an existence of a mere week as worthwhile? If so, we will be at an impass. If not, you might explain the major difference you see in an existence of a week versus an existence for a century.

To me, it is merely a matter of one finite cardinal versus another.

In other words, what makes this existence worthwhile to you? Please explain. I'd sincerely like to know.

To a fruit-fly, a week might seem like an eternity.
On the human scale, a week is a very short "life"time.
If you "equate" all time periods, then you're doing exactly
what ewm, rightly and better than I could, says will
fail to make your life worthwhile -- ignoring your humanity
for the sake of some questionable concept of immortality.

[QUOTE=davar55]To a fruit-fly, a week might seem like an eternity.
On the human scale, a week is a very short "life"time.
If you "equate" all time periods, then you're doing exactly
what ewm, rightly and better than I could, says will
fail to make your life worthwhile -- ignoring your humanity
for the sake of some questionable concept of immortality.[/QUOTE]But some humans only live a week. Are their lives worthwhile, or aren't they? I'd like to know ewmayer's criteria for "worthwhileness" so I can begin to understand his arguments.

Also, I'm not equating all time periods. I'm pointing out that certain time periods (in this case, finite intervals) all possess a similarity (in this case, they are all finite). So, whatever ewmayer's criterion for "worthwhileness" is, I'm wondering if it is independent of whatever finite cardinal people have for their lifetime.

TTn,

You might want to rethink some of your logic (especially your application of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). As another example, when you say "If all things are equal, the easiest answer tends to be the right one." you are making a counter-factual statement. All things are not equal. So what does this have to do with anything? Further, even if all things were equal (i.e. if your use of this phrase is meaningless), the easiest answer doesn't tend to be the right one. Further, what does "easiest" mean? "The sky is blue because a majority of people have blue eyes." I'd say that is an easy answer (but wrong).

Not to dissuade you from your belief in God. But if you are going to debate it, debate it well.

Cheers,
Zeta-Flux

I have a problem with objectivist beliefs.[QUOTE]One cannot change reality by simply wishing it were different.[/QUOTE]

I disagree, because of the quantam butterfly effect.
Brain waves created by wishing or especially intense prayers(for hours), "can" cause distruptions in weather patterns, and many other things in the historical timeline called reality.

In a small number of these cases, wishes become true, because of the intention of the wisher. There may be no pure advantage, because any number of negative/positive events may also occur, for all we know.

You could also use this "argumentation" for every undecidable problem and hence "solve" it.
But scientific reasoning doesn't work this way.

It seems to be practically impossible to prove the absence of a god - even more due to varying definitions of what a god is.
But it should be nearly impossible as well to prove the presence of "godly creatures", assuming he/she/they don't want to reveal his-/herself/themselves.

It seems to come down to personal beliefs (and beliefs imposed by society, of course).

Just to make sure my statement can be understand correctly:

Thinking that there is no god is some sort of belief as well. Personally, I would be really surprised if a god existed, but I wouldn't rule it out neither.

[quote]for perhaps some advanced stealthy reason.[/quote]

It doesn't have to be that advanced. What do you think would happen if a godly creature showed itself (assuming there is one)?

Here is the proof that God exists. You can chat with Him in here:

[url]http://www.titane.ca/concordia/dfar251/igod/main.html[/url]

Carlos