Did God already create a perpetual energy machine?

[C1ay]

I have said, only if we consider God is the stuff of the universe, is God anything but an abstract idea, and only then can we use science to study God. There is absolutely no superstition in what I have said, none.

 

You are proselytizing Pantheism. If you are a Pantheist then that's fine but you do not need to go on and on and on and on and on and on here trying to make a Pantheist of everyone else. No proselytizing period. If you want to convert people to your belief you need to find your converts elsewhere.

[freeztar]

I don't think there should be a theology forum if what I am saying is not allowed. I think it is wrong to set people up with questions and then penalize them for answering them.

 

Allow me to quote you from a post made yesterday:

 

to have a sincere theology thread, there must be acceptence of God. Those in power over this forum will not accept the existence of God, no matter how you express a belief in God. This makes the forum nothing bet a mouse trap for the cats who like to play with mice. If they can not win the arguments, the next step will be to penalize you for preaching, and if that doesn't silence you, you can be banned.

 

Have you read the Theology forum rules?

 

This is not a forum for preaching the word of God (regardless of which one you may subscribe to).

 

Theology Forum Rules

 

"Preaching the word of god" in this context means that you can not assert that "to have a sincere theology thread, there must be acceptence of God.".

 

Furthermore, as stated before, some people here have faith in god, but they do not espouse the idea with a 'must accept' attitude. It has already been pointed out how this is offensive to both non-theists and theists of different beliefs as well. Does this make sense?

 

I do think Did God already create a perpetual energy machine? Is an absolutely excellent question to ask, and I wish that is what everyone were discussing here.

 

I think the thread might have been a bit more productive if it was phrased more like this: "If god created the universe, is it perpetual?"

 

It actually has some scientific merit if one considers the theory of big bang cosmology in terms of less than critical mass in the universe, in which case the universe will collapse into a big crunch...only to possibly bang again. Yet, there's no proof for that either...

 

Anyhow, you are not going to (necessarily) get banned nutron. You may still receive infractions, but that's all up to you.

[CraigD]

do you believe in a personal, interceding God?

No, I think that should be perfectly clear by now, and I am totally confused about why my position on that is not clear.

Thank you, nutronjon, for making it clear.

Only that we should study nature to know God, not the so called holy books.

From this and other of your posts, I’m inclined to categorize you simply as a pantheist. This view – pantheism is usually not considered a religious belief system – is one of the most common among scientists. Statements such as Einstein’s famous

“I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”

is considered by most scholars, and by me, to be an affirmation of pantheism.

 

Many people who describe themselves as atheists might, under certain circumstances, acquiesce to be termed pantheists. I fall into this group. The main reasons I prefer the label atheist to pantheist are simplicity, avoiding confusion, and, to some extent, as a courtesy to theists. Atheism simply discards the troublesome concept of God as unreal, while pantheism keeps it in a form that few if any traditional religionist would agree should bear the Name. “I don’t believe God exits” is, IMHO, a more courteous position to offer theists than “I believe in God, but not what you mean by God, because your definition is childish and wrong”. I’ve also had some experience with people confusing pantheism with “belief in a religion with a pantheon of gods”.

 

I consider it critical to recognize the term panentheism, and understand that it is entirely unlike pantheism.

 

To quote Einstein again,

“From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being.”

(All Einstein quotes from the skeptically.org webpage Einstein the agnostic)

Your thoughtfulness in asking those questions, and concern for how I feel about answering the questions is like water following a draught.

Thank you for these words. I’ve long felt the essence of hypography, an key difference between it an many similar, excellent science forums, is its sense of friendliness, and the feeling that all of us members fundamentally like one another. I fear we too often lose touch with this quality, to all of our detriment. :doh: (hugs all around)

[ryan2006]

I am glad I had time to leave this site for awile, I had to cool down. During that time I talked with Ben, a theologist student, who mentioned the "Prime-Mover argruement". God is the prime mover in this arguement saying that he puts everything in motion. Although I believe God is the Prime Mover he said some theologists just like to argue that God doesn't move the universe or multiuniverses. What I was saying with the title of this thread is that the universe is 100% efficient which wouldn't you then argue that it is the perfect perpetual energy machine?

[Moontanman]

I am glad I had time to leave this site for awile, I had to cool down. During that time I talked with Ben, a theologist student, who mentioned the "Prime-Mover argruement". God is the prime mover in this arguement saying that he puts everything in motion. Although I believe God is the Prime Mover he said some theologists just like to argue that God doesn't move the universe or multiuniverses. What I was saying with the title of this thread is that the universe is 100% efficient which wouldn't you then argue that it is the perfect perpetual energy machine?

 

Even from that point of view you would have to make a lot of assumptions. Belief in God is a very personal thing but trying to tie God and science together is very difficult. While I subscribe to the theory of the mulitverse I see no reason to tie God into it. I am the opinion that very soon we will see an upset of cosmology every bit as revolutionary as relativity was to the Newtonian version of the universe. But I honestly do not see God as being a part of the new cosmology any more than God is a part of current cosmological theory. This of course doesn't prove or disprove God. Is there any reason you can give to back up your statement that God is the prime mover or is this just belief?

[modest]

What I was saying with the title of this thread is that the universe is 100% efficient which wouldn't you then argue that it is the perfect perpetual energy machine?

 

I've noticed a lot of the trouble you've had in your threads stems from this description. What you are saying here appears no different at all from the first law of thermodynamics. Basically that energy is not lost - it is not destroyed. The total energy of the universe remains the same. If you were to rephrase your argument in this way; saying "first law of thermodynamics" or "conservation of energy" rather than "perpetual energy machine" then I believe you would be better understood and have less trouble getting your ideas across.

 

~modest

[ryan2006]

You have consciousness right? Then there must be a higher consciousness right? You can anwser no I do not to the first if you don't understand what consciouness is and yes or no to the second if you answer yes to both of these questions the you except an intelligence one that knows something and one that knows everything. Yes to the first indicates that you accept yourself. Yes to the second accepts God. If you say no to the second than you are saying that you can not create nor destroy energy which would then mean that the universe was endless, but not accepting an eternal afterlife in religions points of view. I have answered yes to both questions, but believe the eternal worlds are combined so that an eternal cosmos exists and eternal life according to most doctrine of religious thought in the western hemisphere. If I say an eternal cosmos exists I am saying that life after death does not exist since you can not create nor destroy energy thereby defeating the premise I started out with but still accepting God in a cosmological sense just not adhering to religious doctrine

[Buffy]

You have consciousness right? Then there must be a higher consciousness right?... If you say no to the second than you are saying that you can not create nor destroy energy which would then mean that the universe was endless...

Why?

 

The Laws of Thermodynamics--which have no contrary datapoints whatsoever--say very explicitly that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but this is not in the least bit inconsistent with the notion of a finite Universe.

 

Do you have an argument to the contrary?

...but not accepting an eternal afterlife in religions points of view.

And what does this have to do with "an afterlife?"

 

Ryan, you can go two ways with this thread: you can tie these arguments to how actual elements of cosmology might justify your statements, or you can talk about how religious doctrines support this world view and contrast them with other religious beliefs.

 

If you are simply going to say what your personal beliefs are, we're happy for you, but its not really very interesting to most folks and you'll get them starting to believe that your only goal is to try to get them to agree with your religious beliefs, which is not a goal of this forum.

 

Happy to talk about Theology here, but "Theology" is not just telling people what your personal opinions are.

 

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day, :)

Buffy

[CraigD]

You have consciousness right?

This single question is (or, at least in recent memory, was) huge, and the answer not at all considered an a priori truth based on even a superficial glimpse of the literature.

 

The 1980s especially was host to a proliferation of popular and technical focus on theis questions prerequisite – “what is consciousness?” (it is, of course, semantically meaningless to ask “do you have X?” without defining what X is), with popular anthologies such as “The Mind’s I” being de rigueur reading among people who spend much time in discussion of the question. Like many AI students of this decade, I considered this not just a, but the question.

 

One of the more promising answers to come out of this and earlier cultures of inquiry into the question is the idea that “what is consciousness” has no proper answer, because it presupposes that that the term is not a reference to an “empty referent” (“colorless sleeping green ideas” are a more well known example of one of these, sometimes called “semantic nulls”). Many people, myself included, have concluded that “consciousness” is such a term – I’ve discussed this a few times in these forums, such as in this post. Though I generally credit my concept of consciousness as an empty reference to Minsky, I’m unaware of a good online source of him precisely stating it - This 1998 Edge interview is about the best I’ve been able to find.

[modest]

One of the more promising answers to come out of this and earlier cultures of inquiry into the question is the idea that “what is consciousness” has no proper answer, because it presupposes that that the term is not a reference to an “empty referent” (“colorless sleeping green ideas” are a more well known example of one of these, sometimes called “semantic nulls”). Many people, myself included, have concluded that “consciousness” is such a term

 

I was probably in grade school when first seeing the episode of Star Trek TNG where the ship’s computer became conscious. Consciousness being something that happened when intelligence reached a certain threshold - like a light flipping on. At the time that seemed incredibly unlikely. Even to the little grade-school version of myself, it seemed a very simplistic view.

 

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t say consciousness is an empty referent. It’s a useful simplification is all. The mechanics in the human mind responsible for consciousness are obviously very complicated - yet probably a useful property of the brain, and as far as a property - it appears real.

 

I’m very good a spotting if another human is conscious or not. Be it someone sleeping, in a coma, or the recipient of a rear naked choke at the hand of BJ Penn. If such a binary state exists then it must not refer to nothing.

 

I’m no doubt unqualified to translate that to computer science. Until we can build HAL or the enterprise computer maybe we're all reaching a bit in the dark.

 

~modest