Christians - who convinced you of the truth of god/jesus?

[bilby]

A solid lump of baryonic matter has inertia, and this can be quantified as mass.

It won't change its motion unless acted upon by a force, which can be quantified as mass multiplied by acceleration.

It has kinetic energy proportional to mass and the square of its velocity, and the constant of proportionality is 0.5.

All the various dimensions and derived combinations thereof are rigidly related to each other; The conversion constants are arbitrary, and define your choice of metrology, of which an infinitude are available.

But all are interchangeable - the laws of physics are identical whether you measure mass in kg, or in oz; And whether you measure speed in mph or m/s; And whether you measure energy in Joules or foot-pounds or BTUs. And all lead to the same physical laws - which are ultimately just descriptions of how mass and energy behaves.

The only cognitive architectures that would not give rise to these descriptions are those that lack sufficient intelligence (eg most life on Earth, and presumably most alien life too); Or sufficient intelligences that cannot (or will not) reason logically (I can think of several who have frequented these very boards).

Doubtless there are bloody idiots in at least some intelligent alien species. Probably there are dogmatic believers. But the probability that any sufficient intelligence has correctly described the universe, but in ways that cannot be directly translated into our physical laws (themselves just an example of such a description) seems to me to be zero.

Science seems to be one area of collaboration that successfully crosses human cultural and linguistic boundaries. Using mathematics as a lingua franca, we should be able to discuss physics (and by extension, chemistry, and thence biology) with aliens, even if we can mutually comprehend little else.

Shit, I am from planet Earth, and from the same species as all of the eligible voters, and am still unable to comprehend how Americans not just once, but twice elected Trump as their President.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

To be clear, I am unpersuaded that alien intelligences would describe the universe with the same maths or physics that we do, or even that their maths were match ours.

You think that their circles will have a ratiio of circumference to diameter that differs from pi? That their particles sould have energies not equal to their mass times the square of the speed of light?

That seems not just implausible, but impossible.

Sure, there will be differences in technique. Leibniz and Newton used very different notation and approached limits and infinitesimal values in different ways, but both variants of calculus are fundamentally similar. It would be hard to understand alien mathematics, but then, it's also hard to understand human mathematics, so...

The fundamentals must be the same, for aliens made of baryonic matter, living in our universe. Dimensionality, conservation laws, and the masses, spins, and charges of particles would remain the same, surely? How could it be otherwise?

Local rules tend to be discarded in favour of general ones; An alien race might never fall into the trap of thinking that "Nature abhors a vacuum", for example. But it remains true that a vacuum is difficult to sustain in a dense atmosphere at the bottom of a gravity well.

This is entirely speculative, but here goes: I do not think there any “laws” of physics. I think there are descriptions of the way things seem to be that comport with our particular cognitive architecture. I suspect (but certainly do not know) that different cognitive architectures might come to very different conclusions about descriptions of how things are. More about this later, if so in a different thread.

Physicists would agree that the laws of physics are simply descriptions.

"OH SO WE CAN JUST CHANGE HOW GRAVITY WORKS BY CHANGING THE DESCRIPTION I GUESS" - some dishonest person probably.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

No. I will not stop yelling.

 

[DLH]

I feel like there’s a kind of gap in the faith discussions, or proselytizing, of Christians. It feels like there’s a double standard? Or maybe I misunderstand. So I’d like to ask.

Who convinced you that your god exists and that your bible is true?

That's a sort of weird question. isn't it? It would be like someone asking who convinced you that the earth revolved around the sun. As I've said here many times, a god doesn't have to literally exist to be a god. Not to mention, or actually to mention, faith isn't science. I think people who foolishly pit the ideologies of science and religion against each other fail to appreciate the differences. For example, I have faith Jehovah God exists in a literal sense, to be specific.

Maybe your question should be who introduced me to the concept, or possibility of one specific God. In which case my answer would be the JWs.

Also, "my" Bible isn't true. Like scientific evidence it is fallible. Also, they are similar in that our understanding of them are both dependent upon our interpretation or general consensus.

Was it god/jesus himself, speaking directly to you?

No. It doesn't work like that. At least not with sane people such as myself.

Or was it men? Your parents, your neighbors, your church people. Humans.

My parents were atheist. Well my dad was, my mother was irreligious until I was much older. Like I said, the JWs.

Because I feel like the answer I expect to hear is that you feel like God/Jesus himself convinced you —BUT— you expect me to be convinced by men; specifically you.

Did I mention Science? Maybe, to be fair, men convinced you there wasn't a god. Maybe lots of people would say that. But then again, lots of religious nuts would say God or Jesus told them. You see?

And so it leaves me surprised that

1. You needed more convincing than by the words of mere men,
   yet simultaneously
2. You think I should adopt something so mind-bending on simply the explanation typed by an anonymous internet account (you)

Weird, right?

So help me understand. Who convinced you to be a believer?

I obviously don't expect anyone here to be convinced of anything by me or I would conduct myself more seriously. And while we're at it, as I've also said here (I think), I don't want you to.

No one, man or god, convinced me to be a believer.

The same ones, I'm assuming, that didn't convince you not to be one.

 

[steve_bank]

To be clear, I am unpersuaded that alien intelligences would describe the universe with the same maths or physics that we do, or even that their maths were match ours.

You think that their circles will have a ratiio of circumference to diameter that differs from pi? That their particles sould have energies not equal to their mass times the square of the speed of light?

That seems not just implausible, but impossible.

Sure, there will be differences in technique. Leibniz and Newton used very different notation and approached limits and infinitesimal values in different ways, but both variants of calculus are fundamentally similar. It would be hard to understand alien mathematics, but then, it's also hard to understand human mathematics, so...

The fundamentals must be the same, for aliens made of baryonic matter, living in our universe. Dimensionality, conservation laws, and the masses, spins, and charges of particles would remain the same, surely? How could it be otherwise?

Local rules tend to be discarded in favour of general ones; An alien race might never fall into the trap of thinking that "Nature abhors a vacuum", for example. But it remains true that a vacuum is difficult to sustain in a dense atmosphere at the bottom of a gravity well.

This is entirely speculative, but here goes: I do not think there any “laws” of physics. I think there are descriptions of the way things seem to be that comport with our particular cognitive architecture. I suspect (but certainly do not know) that different cognitive architectures might come to very different conclusions about descriptions of how things are. More about this later, if so in a different thread.

I agree. Laws are a kind of misnomer.

For centuries there was Newton's Laws and Newtonian mechanicss. Along came quantum mechanics and relativity.

I like the term model over laws or theories.

In electric circuits there is Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's Laws. But they don't work at the quantum scale.

A model has goesintas sand goesoutas. A good model can predict an outcome. As a model Newtonian mechanics works just fine within bounds. It can get a probe to Mars.

Reality does not obey the laws of science. The questiojn is how well our significant picturer of reality actually matches realty. Don't think there is any way to know. We would need an absolute re reference point which we do not have.



Don;t know that all physicists would agree.

 

[steve_bank]

On a religion show a rabbi was asked if god exists. He said it did not matter.

How do people come to believe in religion? Probably many reasons Some probably intellectualize it and afterr pondering decides to believe For others it may be pure emotion and feelings.

An Evangelical I knew said he was sitting in a college library. Somebody sat down and started talkng about Jesus, and he felt something He said his conversion was not instantaneous, it developed from that over time.

Beyond this it is probably psychology I do not know.

 

[southernhybrid]

@bilby
Shit, I am from planet Earth, and from the same species as all of the eligible voters, and am still unable to comprehend how Americans not just once, but twice elected Trump as their President.

Most Americans feel the same way. Almost everyday I wake up and wonder how this grifting, narcissist, with psychopathic tendencies was elected as president and why did so many people sit out what was probably the most important election in our lifetimes? I get stupidity, but I don't get why some people won't vote because the alternative candidate isn't the one they wanted or isn't perfect etc.

But, I also don't really understand why humans created gods and why so many humans continue to need a god in their lives. Go figure.

 

[steve_bank]

Nazism was coerced in a political science class.

Hitler knew how to push the German cultural buttons, as we might say today. The Nazis pat from was a 'return to traditional German values', sound familiar?

Religious and business leaders jumped on board to gain influence and profit.

Trump knows how to push buttons. A comic likened Trump to a comic. A comic tries material and watches responses. Over time and trial and error a comic learns what a demographic wants to hear.

 

[unapologetic]

I don't think I was ever convinced. Christianity was presented to me as background info, how the world works. And I just accepted it. But by high school I was a closet atheist.
I went so far as to be baptized to please my mother, just before leaving town forever.

Math and physics are universal.

Are they?

Good question. We do math in base 10. We built machines that do math in base 2, or 16. I don't know how Rome could even do math.

Shit, I am from planet Earth, and from the same species as all of the eligible voters, and am still unable to comprehend how Americans not just once, but twice elected Trump as their President.

ME TOO.

why did so many people sit out what was probably the most important election in our lifetimes?

I will be apolagizing for that for a long time.
I stayed home in 2016 because I was confadent nobody was stupid enough to believe him and vote for that stupid piece of shit.

 

[bilby]

Good question. We do math in base 10. We built machines that do math in base 2, or 16.

All number bases are base 10

 

[bilby]

I don't know how Rome could even do math.

Well, it's certainly easier to do basic arithmetic with a position based notation that includes 0 to indicate base multiples. But it can be done; VIII divided by IV always equals II, even if that's not easy to work out using pencil and paper. On an abacus, it's quite easy to get the correct result.

The point being that even a radically different way of denoting number values still gives the same correct results for mathematical operations, because the fundamental building blocks are universal.

Differing systems might change the order in which discoveries are made, and/or the importance assigned to those discoveries; But the discoveries themselves are fundamental, and independent of notation systems.

 

[Tigers!]

Shit, I am from planet Earth, and from the same species as all of the eligible voters, and am still unable to comprehend how Americans not just once, but twice elected Trump as their President.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde

To elect Trump once, America, may be regarded as a misfortune; to do it twice looks like carelessness (or mailce)

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't know how Rome could even do math.

Well, it's certainly easier to do basic arithmetic with a position based notation that includes 0 to indicate base multiples. But it can be done; VIII divided by IV always equals II, even if that's not easy to work out using pencil and paper. On an abacus, it's quite easy to get the correct result.

The point being that even a radically different way of denoting number values still gives the same correct results for mathematical operations, because the fundamental building blocks are universal.

Differing systems might change the order in which discoveries are made, and/or the importance assigned to those discoveries; But the discoveries themselves are fundamental, and independent of notation systems.

Different humans formed different axioms to define math on different ways, and yet the same statements can be formed "formally" from those systems of axioms.

Earlier, I saw a delightful Reddit post, for example, producing a Godel Number, a number with a property such that it uniquely identifies "sentences" a composite integer numbers.

What a Godel Number is is not important so much as the way he did it: by using a set of axioms that handled geometry well.

The thing is, humans don't just use one set of axioms, but rather a large variety of sets of axioms.

The paper is available here: https://derangedmathematician.substack.com/p/the-godel-number-of-a-non-trivial

In this paper, most notably, the author explains the construction of certain foundational concepts for discussing mathematical concepts from first principles, notably geometric concepts.

I think most notably, we can express to even an alien intelligence some concept of math using axioms, because while the system of axioms is alien to me, the facts of them are not: definitions arise from simple geometric figures and concepts merely of equality, between-ness and congruence in the paper.

The only real question is whether they freely communicate the axioms which their ideas are based on, and whether the axioms they communicate are really the axioms that allow those ideas to be understood (I would maintain that a civilization could 'teach us their language wrong, "as a joke",' or perhaps 'as a component to strategic attack'; 'to serve man' and all that).

This all said, I return to my earlier declaration that God is nonsense due to the very Incompleteness that Godel proved.

God is literally "impossible" or "non-existent".

That said, I would think that if we want to readily identify if aliens are trying to fuck with us, I think that probing whether they attempt to communicate axioms which imply "pre-destination" or unconstrained comprehension in some way, especially if they leverage this idea for the sake of claiming some manner of "bald necessity", as this would almost certainly be prelude to an attempt to make is "compliant" and sap our resolve to accomplish our own goals.

 

[robnisch]

Reset: I was born into the RCC. I had no choice. I did 11 years of Catholic schools.
Point is most people are born into a certain culture, so that is what they believe.
The who in the OP is your parents and their parents......

 

[No Robots]

My parents were atheists and raised me as one. I was always curious about the Bible. At a certain point, life wasn't going well for me. I decided to try to find some direction through a programme of self-directed bibliotherapy. One thing I investigated was the question of Christ. Eventually, I found Constantin Brunner's book, Our Christ (an early assessment is here). I spent many years studying Brunner's work and that of others who wrote with a similar outlook. This all reinforced my conviction that the Bible holds unique significance for mankind. A number of years ago, I found the work Harry Waton. Waton cemented me in my position. Now, I am principally concerned with assisting in the establishment of a new basis for civilization that is at once rational and religious.

 

[bilby]

My parents were atheists and raised me as one. I was always curious about the Bible.

How did you become curious about the Bible, specifically, and not about some other sacred book?

My parents were atheists and raised me as one, and I was never particularly curious about any specific sacred text; To me the Bible was as much (or as little) of a curiosity as the Quran, or the Guru Granth Sahib, or the IChing. So what led you to the Bible?

 

[No Robots]

^My curiosity about the Bible was stimulated by a visit to our family doctor. In the waiting room was a child's illustrated Bible. I was an avid reader from a young age, and I was immediately captivated by the vivid images: Moses, Samson, David, Jesus. That first impression never really left me, but it was filed away. I enrolled at a French Catholic college for my first years at university (the Canadian government was offering a good bursary to promote bilingualism). I was interested in philosophy and enrolled in a couple of courses. One of them was philosophy of religion taught by a liberal priest. That really got me going. He said I was the first atheist he had ever taught. I wrote a paper entitled "The Eschatology of Christianity and Socialism" where I argued that they both sought the same end, but the former was in another world and the latter was on this Earth. I did look at other thought systems in my general history of philosophy course, and this convinced me that all religions share a common basis in mystic insight. I became convinced that the revitalization of socialism required a connection to some spiritual foundation. I guess I ultimately concluded that I personally required the same. I tried to make the search as focussed as possible. One day, I typed a search into our university library catalogue: "Christ AND philosophy". I was hoping to see if anyone had given a good presentation of the phenomenon of Christ from a philosophic view. That's how I found Brunner's book.

 

[southernhybrid]

My parents were atheists and raised me as one. I was always curious about the Bible. At a certain point, life wasn't going well for me. I decided to try to find some direction through a programme of self-directed bibliotherapy. One thing I investigated was the question of Christ. Eventually, I found Constantin Brunner's book, Our Christ (an early assessment is here). I spent many years studying Brunner's work and that of others who wrote with a similar outlook. This all reinforced my conviction that the Bible holds unique significance for mankind. A number of years ago, I found the work Harry Waton. Waton cemented me in my position. Now, I am principally concerned with assisting in the establishment of a new basis for civilization that is at once rational and religious.

I think the philosophy of Humanism is far better. In fact, I met a Christian last week who told me he had read a book on Secular Humanism and was amazed at how wonderful and beneficial the beliefs were to humanity. He's still a Christian but seemed to have a lot of respect for my being an atheist who valued the principles of Humanism. Have you ever read the book, "The Philosophy of Humanism" by Corliss Lamont. I read it many years ago and enjoyed it. It's far better compared to the ancient mythology presented in the Bible, imo. The OT is full of horrible stories of a vengeful god and the NT has some nice parts to it, but it still talks about an eternal torture in a hell where nonbelievers will be sent. It reminds me of many other type of mythology, but in some ways, it's more disgusting.

 

[No Robots]

I think the philosophy of Humanism is far better. In fact, I met a Christian last week who told me he had read a book on Secular Humanism and was amazed at how wonderful and beneficial the beliefs were to humanity. He's still a Christian but seemed to have a lot of respect for my being an atheist who valued the principles of Humanism. Have you ever read the book, "The Philosophy of Humanism" by Corliss Lamont. I read it many years ago and enjoyed it. It's far better compared to the ancient mythology presented in the Bible, imo. The OT is full of horrible stories of a vengeful god and the NT has some nice parts to it, but it still talks about an eternal torture in a hell where nonbelievers will be sent. It reminds me of many other type of mythology, but in some ways, it's more disgusting.

Thanks for the reference to Lamont's book. I have had a quick look and will devote some time to it. Humanism is the place where more and more people start their intellectual life. But ultimately, humanism must come to terms with the Bible. The writers that I have mentioned have done exactly that, presented the Bible from a humanist perspective.

 

[TomC]

But ultimately, humanism must come to terms with the Bible.

I see it as the exact opposite.
Theists, of whatever version, must come to terms with secular humanist morals and ethics. Simply because they are designed to be better at providing a good life.
Scripture is designed to empower the elite.
Tom