Can you be thrown out of heaven and into hell (and vice versa)

R.P.L said:
That's a bizarre opinion. You need to ask questions to which you don't know the answer to discover anything.
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Re-read what was posted and think about it.

Take your first post above. In science you were taught the hypothesis and null hypothesis. These are small steps, simple questions that can be answered true of false. Science is the search for what is false; you are left with the truth.

Asking what came before the universe can't be answered - it is not a good question. It may be nothing, emptiness. Yours guess is as good as the next person because it can't be answered.

It is like your girlfriend accusing you of looking at another girls boobs. How do you prove you were not. It is un-falsifiable.

Does that explain what I mean better?
 
jpod said:
Read as science has not progressed questions which cannot be answered very much. If questions cannot be answered then they are bad questions and there is no point asking them. Because science cannot answer them does not mean religion is better or right.

Atheism, no god or gods is the default for man. Most religions have a creation story, virgin birth, dust and blood, giant turtle, joining religion and theism therefore seem to be joined with or without scientists/atheists who do not need to invoke a supernatural being or beings. What is your point?

I would argue that it is the religious who have attempted to appropriate science's discoveries to further their cause. None of those discoveries were known about when religions started (current religions) which illustrates their man-made origin.

If we are living in a simulation it makes no difference - it can be set aside - there is nothing to do.

If you are Christian there is no free will in any case because you accept the original sin.

Happy to point out the bad in the name of religion all day long. Lets not loose sight of the fact that we would not have been able to have this discussion when the religious were in the height of their power.
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You almost come across as Nihilistic - asking questions, being inquisitive is good - we can't know for sure that there is nothing to do and no answer to find.

Things generally aren't that black and white either - we can often ascertain a degree of possibility sure it could mean nothing but more often than not there are valid circumstances that are more and less likely.
 
Rroff said:
You almost come across as Nihilistic - asking questions, being inquisitive is good - we can't know for sure that there is nothing to do and no answer to find.

Things generally aren't that black and white either - we can often ascertain a degree of possibility sure it could mean nothing but more often than not there are valid circumstances that are more and less likely.
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Asserting I am nihilistic is simply jumping to conclusions. Best of luck with that approach to thinking.

Of course I agree being inquisitive is good. Whilst we exercise our inquisitiveness focusing on questions which have a prospect of being answered makes perfect sense. This is not just my opinion; it is a commonly held view within science.

What you have said about 'possibility' and 'more often than not' is interesting. But in the context of a question which cannot be answered or perhaps a statement which is unfalsifiable like what came before the universe and there is a god or there is a heaven and hell - how does that approach work for you?

Hume said we cannot conclude anything about the cause by observing the outcome. We cannot know what came before the universe by simply looking at it.

We cannot know if there is a god or if there is a heaven and hell because there is no evidence, they are faith positions, they are unfalsifiable claims.
 
jpod said:
Asserting I am nihilistic is simply jumping to conclusions. Best of luck with that approach to thinking.
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I neither assumed or asserted - I said you almost come across as Nihilistic. Your take on many aspects of the last 2-3 posts has a decided slant towards one side of Nihilism.

jpod said:
What you have said about 'possibility' and 'more often than not' is interesting. But in the context of a question which cannot be answered or perhaps a statement which is unfalsifiable like what came before the universe and there is a god or there is a heaven and hell - how does that approach work for you?
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We simply don't know enough to know if we ever can answer what came before the universe or not - any absolute takes on that are arrogant at best.

jpod said:
We cannot know what came before the universe by simply looking at it.
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We have absolutely no way of knowing whether there is enough information contained within the universe by simply looking at it to figure out what is behind it or not - if anything the more we look at the universe the more we realise the less we actually understand about it than we think.

Taking your thinking people would have given up before we ever discovered microbes, etc.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
I'll just cut that bit.
Back in 1974 I was 16 and a 'Born Again' and one day the Vicar asked us what we expected would happen when we got to Heaven.
One of my mates started giggling and said that because we had followed God on Earth we could do anything we wanted up there including endless sex.
The Vicar asked him why he thought there would be endless sex when sex is used mainly for making babies and no babies would be born up there.
"So what would we be doing?" he asked - the Vicar said "An eternity of praying to our Lord and to serve him".
It was another couple of years before I became atheist.
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That made me chuckle!

I remember the look of horror and the beads of sweat on the face of the guy running the Sunday school class I went to (just the once) when I asked why dinosaurs weren't mentioned in the Bible. He thought I was being deliberately disruptive but I was young and really liked dinosaurs!!

ttaskmaster said:
How can politicians be trusted? How is this any different, aside from God actually having the power to deliver his promises, even if he decides otherwise?
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I don't trust politicians due to their track record of making false promises. However, in their defence at least they actually exist and could (in theory anyway!) deliver something tangible.
 
Rroff said:
I neither assumed or asserted - I said you almost come across as Nihilistic. Your take on many aspects of the last 2-3 posts has a decided slant towards one side of Nihilism.



We simply don't know enough to know if we ever can answer what came before the universe or not - any absolute takes on that are arrogant at best.



We have absolutely no way of knowing whether there is enough information contained within the universe by simply looking at it to figure out what is behind it or not - if anything the more we look at the universe the more we realise the less we actually understand about it than we think.

Taking your thinking people would have given up before we ever discovered microbes, etc.
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This is piffle Rroff.

You are jumping to conclusions. Proving my point - we need to ask the right questions. Then finishing with a strawman argument.
 
jpod said:
This is piffle Rroff.

You are jumping to conclusions. Proving my point - we need to ask the right questions. Then finishing with a strawman argument.
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No piffle at all - you seem to have a very black and white view of a world that really isn't absolute to that degree. The fact you are reading conclusions in my post is itself an example of your flawed perspective as there aren't conclusions of the kind you are implying in my post at all.

Before they got to the science when it came to things like microbes they had to break through a wall of doubt due to the kind of thinking you are espousing here.

EDIT: I mean what if we were to discover, with a more and more advanced understanding of our reality, some pattern or functionality of our existence that wasn't consistent in behaviour to everything else we'd come to expect which could with experimentation be exploited like say a buffer overrun in a computer program to manipulate the behaviour of a completely unconnected part of our reality? and maybe with further understanding exploit it to discover information outside of the supposed limits of our reality?

Would make an interesting discourse actually... is anything, if it exists at all, outside our universe susceptible to side-channel like attacks from within our universe?
 
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jpod said:
Re-read what was posted and think about it.

Take your first post above. In science you were taught the hypothesis and null hypothesis. These are small steps, simple questions that can be answered true of false. Science is the search for what is false; you are left with the truth.

Asking what came before the universe can't be answered - it is not a good question. It may be nothing, emptiness. Yours guess is as good as the next person because it can't be answered.

It is like your girlfriend accusing you of looking at another girls boobs. How do you prove you were not. It is un-falsifiable.

Does that explain what I mean better?
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I think it explains the limitations of science, which was my original point. Saying that people shouldn't believe in the possibilty of something because it's impossible to disprove is as logical as saying that we shouldn't ask questions that we don't yet know how to answer.

To clarify my position, I'm not religious. I do take exception to people saying that science has ruled out the existence of god though, because as you say it's not falsifiable. From a scientific perspective that's as good as saying that there's no god, but as I said, that demonstrates the limit of what science can do. It proves what we can prove, and that's it. If that's good enough for you then great, you can believe what you want beyond what we can prove. I feel the same about theists.
 
@Rroff

Re. your cosmology universe 'side-attack' question...have you considered the potential time and space programming possibilities offered by the Brane concept of String theory?

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-12-universe-extra-dimension.html

If such a theory turns out to be true and the Brane is a force field, then from an engineering point of view it can of course be programmed in the same way as any field using suitable physical forces.

On the psychology point about expanding our personal or shared (intersubjective) reality by discovering new information and a significantly different practical perspective - say a new dimensional paradigm or scheme / model update and replacement - if that's what you mean - that's normal scientific activity, if you haven't forgotten. It's also the modus operandi of a brainstorm activity.

For the more vanilla aim of an IQ upgrade, the field of metacognition (the hows, why's, when, etc dynamics and structure, or logic) of thinking about thinking is your best goto for a deep understanding / gain. However, that's a long road by the traditional route, and not recommended if you are socially or logically squeamish (like medical surgery training). Plus, some of the trickier problems are best understood and solved quicker using physics, and formal logic (sometimes called "pure math" or "metamaths") but these are usually taught in separate degrees.
 
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Rroff said:
No piffle at all - you seem to have a very black and white view of a world that really isn't absolute to that degree. The fact you are reading conclusions in my post is itself an example of your flawed perspective as there aren't conclusions of the kind you are implying in my post at all.

Before they got to the science when it came to things like microbes they had to break through a wall of doubt due to the kind of thinking you are espousing here.
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The piffle is strong in your posts now with lashings of cosmology. Cosmology is the equivalent of English literature - pick a theory you like to read about or vaguely understand. Interesting nevertheless.

Re microbes - exactly my point - asking questions about what caused disease, why people got sick, why food and pooh need to be separate, hand washing, inoculation were great questions to ask in science because they could be studied, experimented on and the truth found. They were good questions to ask and focus on for scientific endeavour.

If you think that means 'never ask questions about things we cannot investigate' I can only apologise.

But to say science can't answer if there is a god or gods or what came before the universe (bad questions in science); or to assert that religion can; or religion and science are the same; is nonsense.
 
R.P.L said:
I think it explains the limitations of science, which was my original point. Saying that people shouldn't believe in the possibilty of something because it's impossible to disprove is as logical as saying that we shouldn't ask questions that we don't yet know how to answer.

To clarify my position, I'm not religious. I do take exception to people saying that science has ruled out the existence of god though, because as you say it's not falsifiable. From a scientific perspective that's as good as saying that there's no god, but as I said, that demonstrates the limit of what science can do. It proves what we can prove, and that's it. If that's good enough for you then great, you can believe what you want beyond what we can prove. I feel the same about theists.
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You said
The flipside of that is that science has only kicked the can down the road regarding the fundamental questions around existence and god. What happened before the big bang? What's outside of the observable universe? Are we living in a simulation (simulation theory is, in some senses, modern theism anyway)?

Science has made a fair fist of explaining existence and ambiogenesis. Evolution by natural selection springs to mind too. There is theoretical work on the Big Bang and what is outside the observable universe. As I said if we are operating in a simulation you can set it aside - you cannot overcome that.

Here you say 'believe'. You can believe in anything - the celestial teapot springs to mind. That is not scientific endeavour.

Science has not ruled the existence of god or gods out. How could they? My understanding is that the scientific position would be that I cannot disprove the existence of god or gods. However, there is no evidence for gods so it is unlikely there is any.
 
RxR said:
@Rroff

Re. your cosmology universe 'side-attack' question...have you considered the potential time and space programming possibilities offered by the Brane concept of String theory?

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-12-universe-extra-dimension.html

If such a theory turns out to be true and the Brane is a force field, then from an engineering point of view it can of course be programmed in the same way as any field using suitable physical forces.

On the psychology point about expanding our personal or shared (intersubjective) reality by discovering new information and a significantly different practical perspective - say a new dimensional paradigm or scheme / model update and replacement - if that's what you mean - that's normal scientific activity, if you haven't forgotten. It's also the modus operandi of a brainstorm activity.

For the more vanilla aim of an IQ upgrade, the field of metacognition (the hows, why's, when, etc dynamics and structure, or logic) of thinking about thinking is your best goto for a deep understanding / gain. However, that's a long road by the traditional route, and not recommended if you are socially or logically squeamish (like medical surgery training). Plus, some of the trickier problems are best understood and solved quicker using physics, and formal logic (sometimes called "pure math" or "metamaths") but these are usually taught in separate degrees.
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Hi, I read this with interest. I don't understand String theory or Brane! I will have a read, thank you. I get you point of normal scientific endeavour and thinking about thinking.

RxR I would like to read your take the OP?
 
jpod said:
The piffle is strong in your posts now with lashings of cosmology. Cosmology is the equivalent of English literature - pick a theory you like to read about or vaguely understand. Interesting nevertheless.

Re microbes - exactly my point - asking questions about what caused disease, why people got sick, why food and pooh need to be separate, hand washing, inoculation were great questions to ask in science because they could be studied, experimented on and the truth found. They were good questions to ask and focus on for scientific endeavour.

If you think that means 'never ask questions about things we cannot investigate' I can only apologise.

But to say science can't answer if there is a god or gods or what came before the universe (bad questions in science); or to assert that religion can; or religion and science are the same; is nonsense.
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Easier to dismiss something you don't understand with ridicule rather than try and find the meaning in it.

Look up the history of the discovery of things like microbes - initially there was a barrier to the science of similar attitudes to the style of your posting albeit motivated by a different perspective.

Not sure what the last bit of your post is about I've not brought religion into this context.

RxR said:
@Rroff

Re. your cosmology universe 'side-attack' question...have you considered the potential time and space programming possibilities offered by the Brane concept of String theory?

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-12-universe-extra-dimension.html

If such a theory turns out to be true and the Brane is a force field, then from an engineering point of view it can of course be programmed in the same way as any field using suitable physical forces.

On the psychology point about expanding our personal or shared (intersubjective) reality by discovering new information and a significantly different practical perspective - say a new dimensional paradigm or scheme / model update and replacement - if that's what you mean - that's normal scientific activity, if you haven't forgotten. It's also the modus operandi of a brainstorm activity.

For the more vanilla aim of an IQ upgrade, the field of metacognition (the hows, why's, when, etc dynamics and structure, or logic) of thinking about thinking is your best goto for a deep understanding / gain. However, that's a long road by the traditional route, and not recommended if you are socially or logically squeamish (like medical surgery training). Plus, some of the trickier problems are best understood and solved quicker using physics, and formal logic (sometimes called "pure math" or "metamaths") but these are usually taught in separate degrees.
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Still a lot of unknown factors with the Brane concept but for instance mavity in that concept could have potential to be used in the style of a side channel attack to infer information outside of the observable universe - the understanding is a long way off though never mind the scale of engineering likely required.
 
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God is personal to you.

I don't care how you think about an abrihamic god. I don't belive in him either.

When you are screaming your last, you will find god then.
 
Aiden92 said:
God is personal to you.

I don't care how you think about an abrihamic god. I don't belive in him either.

When you are screaming your last, you will find god then.
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Very true, the last 3 friends of mine who all died of cancer were atheists but you then find out they were all consulting with God's henchmen before they died.
 
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