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Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#321

Post by nxmnxm99 »

beecafe wrote: post #307
nxmnxm99 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are the only creature we know of that's capable of reasoning about our own existence and understanding our potential creation. That is a scientific fact of which there is no counterevidence. To deny that in an effort to refute the potential existence of God is to cut off your nose to spite your face.

This statement can also be taken as one as a limitation of our understanding of the internal lives of other creatures. And there's nothing scientific about it.

The problem is, if you're going to make that case, the same argument can be applied to a limitation of our understanding of our origin.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#322

Post by EMM_386 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #280
burkaman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard this before but I think it's reasonable. Imagine if you were simulating the universe in a computer and a creature within your simulation achieved consciousness. I think it would be fair to say your simulation had achieved consciousness, even if 99.999...% of the processing power was spent simulating the rest of the universe "unrelated" to the conscious part.

The interesting thing is everything is required as it happened for the universe to become conscious in the form of humans. E.g. supernova that generated the right heavy metals to stabilize the protein complexes that let our brain function.

> The interesting thing is everything is required as it happened for the universe to become conscious in the form of humans.

Not necessarily. Anthropic Principle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#323

Post by EMM_386 »

aetherspawn wrote: post #72
seiferteric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine a block universe with time as just an axis. Then our universe can be just an object sitting on god’s table. But ultimately this still does not provide any answers.

To get more answers (not necessarily 'any' though - I think you may have overgeneralized there), we would need to understand this mode of existence. I am thinking like this: what does existence look like without time? For example, a table is of no use to someone who has no timescale to do anything at that table. The word "created", is even more curious, as it has no meaning. Like a painting, in a plane like this, eve…

> Like a painting, in a plane like this, everything "just is". Immutable. Confusing to me. I'll admit, I'll never understand the full meaning of something that exists outside time.

Correct, that's my initial comment said things are this way because it "has to be".

Our minds can not grasp the concept of what being "outside time" even means.

Again it fundamentally boils down to "why something rather than nothing". Clearly, it is because it "has to be". Because we have something, and that by definition can't come from nothing.

Pondering about these thoughts of the whole concept of "has to be" admittedly has kept me up some nights.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#324

Post by mensetmanusman »

tomrod wrote: post #173
HenryKissinger wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Universe has always existed. It does not have a beginning, and it won't have an end. I'm not talking about the 13.4B old Universe we live in. I'm talking about the Universe that came before it. The Universe is cyclical.

A poetic, yet unproven, conjecture

Unproven (and unprovable)

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#325

Post by mensetmanusman »

EMM_386 wrote: post #322
mensetmanusman wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is everything is required as it happened for the universe to become conscious in the form of humans. E.g. supernova that generated the right heavy metals to stabilize the protein complexes that let our brain function.

> The interesting thing is everything is required as it happened for the universe to become conscious in the form of humans. Not necessarily. Anthropic Principle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Would love it if we could test other universes with different alpha constants to observe their conscious creatures. Maybe they would be human’ and human’’ etc :)

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#326

Post by mensetmanusman »

anthk wrote: post #294
dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to science that empirically demonstrates something coming from absolutely nothing?

Quantum mechanics, fields/particles raising and fading on vacuum.

This is actually an interesting point. Because ‘space time’ is something.

We have no idea what it even means to be outside of our expanding spacetime into that ‘nothingness’ because time doesn’t even exist there, so we couldn’t compute a thought if we travelled there anyway to attempt to grok what the hell was going on.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#327

Post by mensetmanusman »

jychang wrote: post #271
BreakfastB0b wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godel has nothing to do with it. Godel’s Incompleteness is just the math version of the Halting Problem, which is just a fancy version of the classic paradox “This statement is false”. Godel showed that even if you outlaw self referential definitions e.g. “ This statement is false”, math is rich enough in complexity to simulate itself and thus end up with self referential paradoxes anyway. It’s not this mystical thin…

Undecidability is not tied to only self referential definitions, though.

Excellent insight.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#328

Post by mensetmanusman »

jl6 wrote: post #231
KMag wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godel's incompleteness theorem

Which is a mathematical model and doesn’t necessarily reflect the physical universe, similar to how a perfect sphere doesn’t necessarily reflect the shape of the Earth.

You allude to a physical universe which has some properties though (laws).

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#330

Post by Claude_Shannon »

libertine wrote: post #317
Claude_Shannon wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defence, that is not the idea of God many people would grow up with. I'm a Pole, even during "religion" classes or in church during preparation to baptism, the idea of God they would try to show us WAS the "man in the clouds" one, not philosophical one.

You're baptized while you're a child, and the use of tales and short stories is pretty common for plenty of subjects when ever you want to teach children. The main idea is to pass down moral values. I can't speak for others but I find it very hard for people to hold on to the literal content of the bible with today's education. Some might believe in the man in the sky, others might stand by just doing what they think…

Sorry, I've made an error - I meant to say confirmation, not baptism, confused these words. :/
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