Well, if his name is "cupid dave" and he's posted in a forum, 9 times out of 5 what he has said or claimed can be proven untrue.
Uh, no. I suspect you are equivocating on the word "belief". If you're using it in the sense of "I believe it's raining outside", science is your proper tool. If you're using it in the sense of "I believe someday people will colonize the moon" science can't help you, because you are talking about the shape of political will in the future.
Right, but cupid dave doesn't have a scientific basis for his beliefs. So I'm wondering how he knows truth from lies, and how we are supposed to know that what he says is truth rather than lies.
However if she said that " I believe it is likely that one day people will colonize the moon" then you do have a statement worth investigating . - - - Updated - - - Its no doubt something about his personal relationship with God or somesuch.
But how about "I believe there are aspects to our universe which will remain forever beyond our ability to detect, even indirectly, and we'll never even suspect them"?
So, Jesus is no longer the "The Truth"? That's not one word. Here is the Bible in short: The Bible is the fables told on behalf of Jewish Nomads. Much like Greco-Roman Paganism, stories were told, and believed, in order to explain the existence of things in life. Unlike Greco-Roman Paganism, the Jews decided to give their god all the powers. This god was the creator of the universe, and created it in 6 days. In order to explain why the human race exists, why we wear clothes, and the origins of morality, Adam and Eve were created. Adam was a piece of dirt that the Jewish god, Yahweh breathed on to turn into life. Yahweh, then ripped out Adam's rib to make a woman. Yahweh made a beautiful garden full of fruit, but there was only one tree that couldn't be eaten, and that was the tree that would have given them the cognitive ability to determine whether or not they could eat from the fruit. Meanwhile, Lucifer, an archangel, rebelled against Yahweh by wishing he were god. God, being the super jealous being that he is, exiled Lucifer from heaven, never allowing him to go in again. Lucifer was sent to the planet Earth where Adam and Eve live. Lucifer told Eve that if she ate from the tree that gave her knowledge, she'd be like Yahweh. Eve liked that, so she ate the apple. She was so pleased that she gave it to significant other, Adam. They had both eaten the apple. After eating the apple, they learnt that eating the apple was bad because beforehand, they had no way of determining whether an action was good or bad. Because they ate the fruit, Yahweh cursed the entire human race, and that is why we aren't perfect. Many years after this, Yahweh tells a man from the desert, named Noah, that there will be a huge flood, and he needs to build a really large ship to stay in for 40 days. He builds this ship. Yahweh sends 2 of every animal on the Earth, which probably includes dinosaurs, and 7 of every bird, and has his wife, his sons, and their wives. After the forty days, all the water magically disappears. Yahweh promises never to flood the earth again, so he established a new law regarding electromagnetic waves. They can now spread across the sky. Some time later, Abraham, a 100 year old man, decides that he wants to have children. Sadly, his wife is too old to have children. After a long time passes, he has a child because Yahweh gave the child to them. Years later, Yahweh tells Abraham to kill his son. So, he tells his son that they're going to sacrifice an animal. Abraham doesn't tell his son that he is the sacrifice. As Abraham goes to stab his son, who is totally fine with being killed by is father, Yahweh tells him to stop because he is obedient, and because of all his obedience, his children will outnumber the stars. A long time later, a guy named Moses was sent into the water as a baby and was taken and raised in Pharoah's Court. He murdered a man, ran away, then talked to a plant that was on fire and talking to him. This was Yahweh talking to Moses through a burning bush. Yahweh tells him that he has a special plan to free the captives in Egypt, so he tells Pharoah to release those of his ethnicity. Because they were good slave labour, Pharoah denies the request of releasing them. Yahweh wanted Pharoah to release the people, so he kills tons of first born children via the Angel of Death. As well, he sends in many plagues. Pharoah is upset and releases them. While they leave, they are given gold and other precious items. Yahweh declares that he will live in a golden box that they will make and carry around with them. The catch is that it can't be touched. So, this super special golden box is made, and Yahweh lives inside the golden box with them. Eventually, Moses is asked by Yahweh to hold some rocks to write on to tell people what he wants. This is the Ten Commandments. Yahweh uses his first three to talk about himself. The other ones were things that have been followed for many generations, but didn't count because it wasn't written on a tablet on top of a mountain. Moses and his entourage travel through the desert and get lost for forty years because they can't enter the promise land that they were promised. Moses eventually dies. A long long long time later, this guy named Emmanuel is born of a virgin. Emmanuel was the perfect child. He was only perfect because his father was Yahweh. Unlike the imperfect Adam, Emmanuel had amnesty from original sin that Adam placed upon the entire human race for eating an apple. Anyway, Emmanuel was missing for many years, and nobody really knows where he went, but when he came back, he visited his cousin, who eats grasshoppers, in order to be filled from the spirit that is transmitted into him via lake water. When his cousin dunks his head under the water, Yahweh explains that Emmanuel is his son. Some time later, Emmanuel forms a posse to express his philosophical beliefs and expand on the rules written in stone by Moses. The religious leaders didn't like him all that much, so they decided to crucify him. They killed him, and put him in a tomb. 3 days later, the tomb was opened and Emmanuel came back because people who never do anything wrong respawn in three days. Emmanuel hangs out with his posse for a while, then decided to leave. He ascended to go be with his father, Yahweh. Later, this bounty hunter named Saul gets blinded by Yahweh's face. He changes his life, and decides to write a lot of letters on how he think the followers of Emmanuel should act. [/espoiler] This is the Bible in short.
Have you looked into the astrological connections? Ancient religions were very astrological in nature, way back before astrology lost its prominence and respect. Modern faiths believe in astrological allegories like Christ, who represents the sun in its course through the Zodiac, including its "death" and "resurrection" at Winter Solstice, but modern Christians have lost sight of that and simply believe in the allegory as some kind of literal truth. www.usbible.com <- great site for learning about this.
But the point is that I stated a belief which cannot be investigated. I didn't claim there was anything remotely supernatural. I posited that there may be natural aspects to the universe which we will never have any cause to suspect exist. Perhaps massless particles which cannot interact with baryonic matter, or some such. Perhaps processes going on inside black holes forever within the event horizon. But most likely things I can't put into words, which haven't been invented to describe what isn't known. Your request for a reason reminds me of a manager I once had who complained that projects always take longer than scheduled for reasons that always come as a surprise, and demanded a list of all the unknown delays his project would face, and how long a delay each would cause! The best I could do was to suggest that we insert a bunch of slack in the time budget just in case. Nobody ever complains if you deliver early.
Your request for a reason reminds me of a manager I once had who complained that projects always take longer than scheduled for reasons that always come as a surprise, and demanded a list of all the unknown delays his project would face, and how long a delay each would cause! The best I could do was to suggest that we insert a bunch of slack in the time budget just in case. Nobody ever complains if you deliver early. Yes, that seems to be a standard practice.
Do you think that there is a 1 in a googol (10^100) chance that some sort of creature exists in our universe who could bend certain aspects of reality? If not 1 in 10^100, how about 1 in 10^1000? or 1 in 10^10000?
What do you mean by "bend"? We change reality with everything we do. Do you mean find ways around what we regard as natural laws? We've also done that quite regularly.
What is that -"turn a pen into a leopard by waving one of its apendages?" That sounds like a charge for Houdini, not God. I don't believe in God. But I most certainly do not believe in any of the anthropomorphic gods designed by those without imagination who want a human look alike, behave alike, sin alike, be unfeeling alike, versions that exist in most of what I have read here. May we be spared the spook of the bible, the koran, and the - well- frankly holy books of all descriptions.
Good point. Most gods are envisioned essentially as normal people saddled with normal helpings of greed, insecurity, etc. but who happen to have technololgy so superior to ours it might as well be magic. So using that technology, they can raise the dead, control the weather, turn water into wine, etc. And to get them to perform these tricks we use the same techniques we use on one another - bribery, flattery, threats. Sometimes it works.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by bend aspects of reality. If you mean exhibit powers that by our standards appear to be magic then sure but ultimately there will be an explanation for it. There is a possible scenario where a race of intelligent people have reached the knowledge singularity and have actually created this universe (assuming multiverse theory) and (for whatever reason ,possible as an experiment) tinker with it from time to time. Such beings would be for all intents and purposes Gods. There would be a perfectly rational explanation for it, though. All reducable to Physics.
