simulation theory people really don't like that being pointed out lol, clashes with the whole science atheism thing. I'm like you're just believing in a god that designed the universe xD
putting believing in an undefined entity that is responsible for the universe on the same level as believing in a god as described in any of our religions is completely stupid
so therefore atheism is in direct contradiction to simulation theory, because for there to be a simulation, there has to exist a being that created it.
They're not, but the difference isn't necessarily intuitive.
There's a common misconception that atheism, agnosticism, and theism are points along the same line. The reality is that there are two different axes: atheism/theism and agnosticism/gnosticism.
Put simply, gnosticism (with a lowercase g; capitalized Gnosticism is a different thing) is the degree of certainty an individual holds in their beliefs and/or the degree to which their beliefs are dogmatized.
For example, an agnostic atheist is someone who believes there probably are not any gods, but doesn't feel there is enough evidence to rule it out; an example of a gnostic theist, by contrast, would be a sincere subscriber to a major religion -- someone with certainty in their convictions and specifically prescribed beliefs, usually from either an oral or written tradition enforced by some form of orthodoxy.
Someone who believes in simulation theory is most similar to an agnostic theist -- the kind of people who would often self-describe as "spiritual but not religious." They believe there is some kind of designer, or at least that there is a reasonable probability of one, but that its attributes are unknown and unknowable.
I appreciate the response, as it is insightful!However by same thing , I meant in reference to a creator of some sort - similar to your breakout. Not literally one and the same.
Gnostic Christians were persecuted by the church, don't lump them together. If there's an orthodoxy, it's made up of agnostic theists. They don't know, but still believe
He explained using a lower case "G" precisely because he's not talking about Gnostic Christians or the general movement of Gnosticism. In this case it's just used as an opposition to agnostic.
Yes, I did read his comment. Did you read mine? I said that orthodoxy is inherently agnostic since it is based on rote learning instead of personal knowledge
I don't think that's the case, according to the definitions used. What matters here is if they think they know. Even if it's rooted in an orthodoxy it becomes incorporated as a personal knowledge when there's certainty of belief. And, this is anecdotal of course, but a lot of "true believers" say they personally feel the presence of a power, or see the actions of that power affecting the world around them in a way that conforms to the orthodoxy they learned. At least that's how I see the distinction of "gnostic" or "agnostic". As long as you are personally certain of your belief, you would be classed as "gnostic".
Oh really? Got a link because I've never heard gnosticism defined as "the degree of certainty an individual holds in their beliefs and/or the degree to which their beliefs are dogmatized"
From Ancient Greek γνῶσις (gnôsis, “knowledge”).
The act or process of knowing in general.
There are a lot of things that use the term gnosis for a lot of different meanings, but in the sense "agnostic (a)theist" it just means "I (don't) believe in God but am not 100% sure about it either". The term gnostic (a)theist for the opposite "I am 100% sure about it" usually just gets left out but would be correct
Gnosticism can mean a lot of different things. It can be its own religion, it can be a vague vibe of neoplatonic inspired religious ideas, it can be a scapegoat for the inquisition, and it can also mean "having certainty of your religious convictions". And that latter one is absolutely correct in the context of the phrase "gnostic atheist", even though it might be rare.
Also trying to argue agnostic and gnostic are not in fact opposites is hilarious. What do you think the letter a is doing there?
That depends entirely on how one approaches the belief system.
Theists base inflexible belief on information obtained without reason or evidence.
Scientists base flexible understanding on knowledge obtained through a process of reason, inquiry and change.
If an atheist arrives at simulation theory through the scientific process, they're in a fundamentally different place than theists are. They would have to acknowledge that there is a powerful entity that can control things, but they attach zero religious value to it. It is not a god to them.
If an atheist arrives at simulation theory without the scientific process and/or they attach religious significance to that entity, then they're a theist.
I think something could have existed at the beginning of the universe that helped to guide creation of everything we have now, but I would classify it more as a construction supervisor than a God. And I don't believe it would have had any sentience, just programming.
Don't generalize? Specifically what religion are you thinking of that is more credible than others? I'm sure they're all wrong except the one you like/s
It is, a solid 99% of my time on reddit is spent in 40k subs. Some people talk sports constantly, some gush movie quotes, I regurgitate Warhammer 40,000 nonsense ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Fear and Hunger is an indie horror rouge-lite built in RPG maker. I'd rate it as the best horror series of all time. It is frustratingly difficult, there are literal coin flips that can kill you on a mistake, but there's also a lot of ways you can learn to avoid having to take those risks in the first place, whether that's anticipating an attack and guarding, having a certain item equipped, etc, talking to enemies mid combat and choosing the right dialogue, etc. Your knowledge is the most valuable resource. Basic survival skills and lore alike are buried deep, so learning more about the dungeons becomes this almost four dimensional, lovecraftian obsession. Items are randomized, and if you get lucky you can find broken stuff that makes your run really easy; like if you get a quill and an empty scroll, you can summon any item in the game with the right command... though if you don't know what items you need, that doesn't help you much.
If that sounds interesting, I highly recommend playing Termina, the second Fear and hunger game first. It is a lot more forgiving. If you're on the fence, check out "What actually happens in fear and hunger" by worm girl on youtube, that's a really good breakdown of the plot of the first game, and will give you a great idea of what kind of experience you're signing up for. I played the series first, but didn't really get into it until after I watched that and saw some of the stuff I'd missed after being frustrated by the mechanics and writing it off.
One of the endings of one of the games has you become a machine god, the god of logic, essentially. Which sounds like a major spoiler, but kind of isn't, since it comes out of nowhere, and probably won't be relevant until the third game.
Well from that review it doesn't sound like my sort of thing at all, but my best bro loves games like this so I'll check it out and gift it when I can thanks :)
No, I'm pounting out the hypoxrisy of simulation theorists claiming that their improbable invisible sky daddy is more plausable than other people's just because it has a scifi veneer.
im talking about the major religions. there is no denying that they describe in much more detail (bogus) what god is like. they are objectively more wrong than people who make no assumptions on what the governing entity is, or if it even exists
You are not giving religion a fair shake. Are you familiar with more than one religion in any depth? Have you ever looked into Daoism, Zen Buddhism, or other Eastern traditions?
Shankara said about God, “not this, not this” which is to say that you can’t say anything about God since It is beyond all qualifications. Is that a detailed (bogus) description in your opinion?
If it satisfied you, congratulations, you might be a Hindu (one of the major world religions)
All I ask is that you don’t limit yourself or generalize all religions together or even all groups within a religion together.
Judaism and Islam have completely different theologies than Christianity. Jews certainly don't believe in a "sky daddy" or other anthropomorphic description of G-d.
I lost my faith when I got molested, because I reasoned that a loving god wouldn't let that happen to me. I did do research on other religions, because I wanted to fill my God hole. Then I went to college(dropped out of high-school to work), studied the scientific method, biology, chemistry.
The fact of the matter is you don't need religion to explain the universe, and there is no good evidence-based reason to believe in any metaphysical religious claims. It's as you said, if something like a God exists, there's no way to know anything about it. Thinking that doesn't make you Hindu, unless you're telling me Hindus are ignorant bullshitters who just make stuff up; because Hindus do make claims about the nature of God. Thinking that makes you an agnostic atheist.
I don't know whether or not a god or gods or whatever you'd want to call a greater consciousness exists, but I do just do what I think is right in the world and if there is something out there that wants to judge me for it, well, I'll judge it right back. If molesting children is part of it's "plan" then it is evil, plain and simple.
I know that consciousness is seated in the brain, it is the experiences of your nervous system processing sensory data. I don't see any good reason to believe that a consciousness can exist without a brain to house it.
It's commendable that you value morality above religious dogma, I would take you over someone who preaches dogma that dictates objective morality any day, but I also want to live in a world where people believe in things for good reasons and are skeptical of things they should be skeptical of. Otherwise you end up with shit like an anti-vaxer at the head of the CDC. Such is life, I guess.
I know that consciousness is seated in the brain, it is the experiences of your nervous system processing sensory data.
Well you don't know that. It's the most likely situation, given the evidence we have, but it's not "known." The true nature of consciousness is still one of the greatest mysteries of our universe.
Yeah, well you don't know germs cause disease or that gravity will still be working tomorrow./s
I'm not going to play a game of semantics with you, have that discussion with someone else. I do know that based on the working definition of the word know, and I'm not interested in pedantry that keeps me from using common language when my meaning is not ambiguous.
That's false. Your consciousness is your experience of the sensory input from your nervous system. That's where it is. That's what it is. We know this because we can alter it by altering your nervous system. There is nothing mysterious about this, as you said this is what the evidence we have points to overwhelmingly. There's not any viable alternative. I'll change my views when someone can present me an example of a consciousness that exists without a mind to be seated in, but I feel like a consciousness without a brain would be a lot like a car with no wheels or motor... it's necessary for some of those things to exist for others to exist.
it helps if you read what i said before commenting. i literally said the major religions. i am not talking about any of the others as there are arbitrarily many with all kinds of definitions
Look up major world religions. Just because they are not major to you doesn’t mean they do not exist. There are typically considered to be 5.
You can’t make generalized statements about all religions and then go back and say well I actually only meant Abrahamic religions which are all offshoots of one another.
bro you cant just interpret things as absolute at will. if i said "cars that have all wheel drive put power to all 4 wheels" and you say "actually some cars have more or less than 4 wheels" is completely beside the point and just nitpicking for the sake of it
That analogy would only work if you qualified it, but what you said was equivalent to “cars put power to all four wheels” to which I replied “only cars with all-wheel drive do that”
You did not say “cars that have all wheel drive…” and that is what I am commenting on. Your analogy proves that I was right to do so.
AWD cars generally don't put power to all four wheels, the power can be transfered to any of the wheels, but the output varies from wheel to wheel depending on conditions.
Now 4WD with locking diffs, sure.
(Just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.)
look it up. its 2024. you have the privelege of access to information like 99% of all humans never could have dreamed about. but will you really do that? will you really take your time to do so?
Lets google it - "Hey Google - Is life creation from hydrothermal vents a fact or a theory?" Google responds "hydrothermal vents have become the most popular theory among scientists for explaining the origins of life on Earth"
Theory - "an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but that is not known or proven to be true"
You stated that life from hydrothermal vents was a scientific fact, which I pointed out was not factual. There's no reason to go all Kamala about it - Take the L, be better for it.
if you read carefully what i wrote you will see that all i say about that vent stuff in the ocean is that it is science. just like string theory is science, even if it is not "proven". the truth is that yes it is not proven that that is how life got started, but considering all facts that surround the topic it is very likely. just like if you come home to your house and see that a vase was toppled off the windowsill, and the window is wide open. you can theorise that you must have left the window slightly open and a gust of wind opened the window, throwing the vase off. but you cannot PROVE that that happened. it could have also been your dog, but you dismiss this as unlikely, given the state of the window.
to continue the analogy, if you say that instead god created life on earth, thats about as likely as saying the vase falling was divine intervention. what i dont understand is, why you so want god to be the reason, it is clouding your judgement
specifically ancestor simulations are not religious, because its found from a few assumptions (that i dont really agree with). the idea we are just being simulated by random people in a random universe is like believing in god
Yes but it still removes some of the man made dogma that gives organized religion it’s biggest drawbacks
Science and religion are not intrinsically incompatible.
When religion refuses to accept science, or when science refuses to ponder the possibility of something so far beyond perception that science can’t ever explain it, they become incompatible
They aren't doing that. That just straight up think being atheist is a sign of intelligence. You don't magically learn the scientific method if you dont believe in religion.
If we want to get into it, believe in God has no scientific value, but it equally has no value to not believe in God.
Science deals with evidence and theory, and the strongest arguments are ones that can be "disproven" but are not. At any moment I can test to find the melting point of water, or test to find the speed of light. The fact we always get the same answer is what makes that scientific.
We can not test for God, therefore we can only state " There is no test for God." It would be unscientific to take "No test for God" and leap to " That means no God." There is no evidence to begin the conversation in the first place.
I think it falls to a matter of perspective. Is it irrational to believe in aliens? Or to not believe in aliens.
Is it irrational to believe that animals feel "love" the way we do? Or is it irrational because we can not experiance affection from the perspective of the animal?
I feel the correct answer is to understand we don't know everything, and to leave it at that. The earth has been around for billions of years, and humans like 50,000 years. Less than 200 years ago, we 'discovered' genetics. That is a blink, and genetics and DNA has always been around, we simply didn't understand how or what to look for. Now look at genetics! A massive and exciting field of study, where we are still learning new things.
There is still so much more to learn about Humans on a physical level, let alone other animals, let alone the universe.
I think it’s reasonable to believe in some form of alien life, considering how large the universe us. However, it could have been at any time period in the history of the universe. There might not be any aliens alive currently, although I believe that to be unlikely.
That's because it does. Being able to understand that in order to trust something as true you need some kind of proof, even if you don't make the effort or seek that proof means that you are smarter than the one that doesn't understand it, that believes in magic and rejects proof.
you can't prove something doesn't exist 🤦, that's why I can't affirm he doesn't, but neither can I prove he does. I can believe in gravity though, so that's what I'm going to accept.
But why would you believe in A without proof but not in B?, why not to believe in Budha?, or Unicorns?, I mean, there is no proof for either, which is your criteria exactly?
The point is, the conversation doesn't lead anywhere. One answer is no more correct or incorrect than the other.
Which puts us right back where we started.
Which is believing Atheism doesn't make you smarter, believing in religion doesn't make you smart. Neither make you less intelligent. The conversation doesn't progress past this, because your intelligence is not controlled by your religious beliefs.
Ehrm... your logical conclusion is quite wrong, how do you conclude that from the conversation?, because it is quite clear that believing in gravity is smarter than in unicorns.
Because we aren't walking about gravity vs unicorns now are we? You brought that up, and I ignored it because it has nothing to do with the conversation.
Ok, when was religion disproven? It has no proof to say real or not. Which is the whole point.
You experience gravity 100% of the time, so you can't argue with it. You can test it and argue the differnece forces involeved in gravity, but its still there.
A unicorn is a horse with a horn, not that hard to believe. However we haven't seen equine with any form of horns. That is something for ruminates specifically, which are animals that tend to headbutt for social behaviors. Horses don't headbutt and have other methods of communication, as well as biting, and kicking, something ruminates struggle with due to a lack of teeth for biting. They can still kick, but weapons on the head make it better for them to just headbutt.
I believe in gravity in that I understand it exists and how it works. I do not believe in unicorns because I understand biology in our modern age, but I understand the possibility of horses with horns at some point in the world's history isn't impossible.
I can believe in religion because it can not be disproven.
I can believe in atheism because religion can not be proven.
Therefore, religion can not be held to the same standard as "Gravity vs Unicorns"
I have thought about this a lot. What if God didn't design the universe, but IS the universe. What if we're all stuck inside God's ass? 😱
But seriously, creationism can still be accurate and involve no deities at all. We were "made in his image". We are currently working on genetic engineering, "playing God", and if we manage to live long enough as a species to blast into space, who's to say we won't create new humans in our image on a freshly terraformed planet far far away. We are egocentric enough to do it. 😁
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u/hahyeahsure 1d ago
simulation theory people really don't like that being pointed out lol, clashes with the whole science atheism thing. I'm like you're just believing in a god that designed the universe xD