Does God exist?

How cute , a personal attack . I'm afraid you picked the wrong tree to troll my friend . As I said I believe God exist but i still have doubts . Why not believe ? You loose nothing by believing in God . Having a religion doesn't rob you of free will and rationality . Indeed there are to many people that ignore logic and common sense in their belief in God , but then again in civilized society most of this people would be locked away in a mental institution .

Personally i would gladly give most of the things i posses just to know that i have an immortal soul and that i will not be just worm food if I die . But i refuse to change my life and go on a desperate search for proof .

You said that you where taught that Santa exists . I was also taught that idiots exist and according to logics you might be one of them ...

I was not speaking about self awareness , i was talking about the sentience of matter . We cannot understand why the simplest of organisms multiplies . We have just finished decoding the human genome and it will probably be another two decades before we begin decoding the proteom . There is no accepted explanation for the appearance of life . The best bet we have is that an alien bacteria was transported to Earth via a meteor and that is a wild guess at best .

So you see I wasn't asking you about how a computer might be able to emulate intelligence . I was asking you something much simpler . We are limited creatures and unfortunately we will not be able to answer the God question anytime soon.

It is impossible to prove that God exist and the other way around . By trying to prove that God doesn't exist you're just waisting time .

 

Don't be a whiner, that's not a personal attack. You should look through this forum section more deeply, then you'll see personal attacks. It can get very heated within this section, but surprisingly, it isn't here in this thread, although you may be changing this:

You say you lose nothing by believing in god, which may or may not be true depending on how you look at it. Personally, I believe being a Deist simply because you have "nothing to lose" is laziness and a cop-out, what's the point in having the amazing ability of free-thought if you're not going to use it?

Tell former mormons and other former cult-like followers that believing in god didn't cost them anything. Sure, religious dogma and god aren't necessarily inclusive, but it can't be denied that in most cases it is. Besides, labelling oneself with a particular religion is placing oneself in a box.

 

Typical theist. Any form of dissent is seen as an attack, commence whining and pretend to be a victim. With an invisible man in the sky supposedly on their side you'd think they have a bit more back bone.

 

@ BRUm True DP is has far worst personal attacks . And I do enjoy the advantage having a nutjob free religion so i suppose my point of view is valid only if your an Orthodox Cristian or a Catholic (not 100% sure here) , I have seen a fair share of Christian sects that had thrown their logic down the toilet . About the cop-out yes i kind of refuse to assume responsibility here simply because i don't want to take a chance to burn in Hell simply because i was to lazy to believe . As for free will my religion never placed barriers in front of "question everything" , my will is my own and nothing will ever change that .

@stOx I loled , nice sarcastic twist of words . Next time try to read beyond the 2nd sentence

 

Natural selection is not random. Selection is the opposite of randomness. Your entire argument is specious because you fail to grasp that one simple fact.

Ah... the Fallacy of Appeal to Ignorance, one of my favorites.

You completely missed the point. The point isn't that machines will become sentience; the point is that what we think of as sentience is not fundamentally different than what machines will become. Computers won't "emulate" intelligence any more, or less, than humans do. We are thinking machines; computers are thinking machines. The difference is in the level of complexity. At a certain point, computers also will become so complex that they will become self-aware -- just like we did.

Again, that is just kicking the can down the road.

 

Nope , nothing but a simple statement . If anyone can come up whit a theory that explains the appearance of life I'll be one of the 1st to congratulate him . It is a mystery that we must resolve .

The original question refers to the sentience of matter not to the sentience of Humans and the future sentience of machines . I think you're missing the point or just avoiding it .

Let us refrain from dissecting sentences from the paragraph they where created in or we risk ending up whit cretinous things like "And Judas hanged himself [...] go do the same"

 

If God did exist, I am sure he would have commented on this thread by now.

 

I can't imagine how I can make this any more simple. You are either purposefully ignoring the obvious or you have some emotional blockage.

Matter == Humans == Machines. Your word "sentience" is just another way of looking at complexity. You're waving it around like some sort of magical rune.

Organize your thoughts better before posting and it will be possible to respond to them in groups.

 

i already know you won't validate anything coming from the bible, because you have that mind set already of close mindedness. but i will try:

you imply that your way of thinking is more complex that mine in your statement. and sure that may be the case. You kinda prove the bible is true if you read these passage: Matthews 11:25 - 26

about labaling oneself: if i say i'm a Christian i am placing myself in a box, aren't atheists placing themselves in another box by saying their athiests? i think it works either way,,, but do not take my word for it, i just think simple.

 

It's becoming rather tedious to answer logical fallacies. Now you've turned to circular logic. What you're effectively saying: "You can only understand the bible if you already have faith" does nothing but show how crucial religious upbringing is to brain washing.

I could say the very same thing about you. You won't validate anything I say because you have a certain mindset. The difference with me though, is that I don't base my views on faith or a book.

Come on now, you know that's not proof.

Yes, they are. However I don't usually choose to use atheist to describe myself. I'm not one for self-labelling.

 

you are wrong! i did validate your statement about how your way of thinking is more complex than mine. that does not mean that it is right though. and as i predicted you would not have validated the proof i presented on the bible scripture! (that's if you read it, and somehow i doubt it).

and on the last statement: you do not say you are an atheist? sorry, i do not know you, so i wouldn't know...but even when not saying what you are, you still belong to the group of people who do not believe in God because of your way of thinking.

 

No, I'm sure I've not said that I'm an atheist in this thread. I could be labelled as one, however I don't particularly like self-labelling, as I said.

I read the scripture, I don't really see how it's relevant to this thread, nor how it can possibly be considered proof of anything. I have a copy of the Qur'an, King James bible, LDS bible and historical analyses on the Pentateuch, so please, drop the "closed-minded" rubbish.

You didn't validate anything, you merely acknowledged the possibly complexity of my thinking. Are we not debating Deism? I was referring to the validation of my statements and arguments, as I assumed you were.

 

Yes, we are close-minded against logical fallacies. The particular fallacy you are committing now is the Fallacy of Appeal to Authority and it is probably the most brutish and clumsy of all the fallacies.

Seriously, aren't you embarrassed? Remember, Atheism is just a thought away!

 

Thanks but it's not my word : http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sentient . As for machines achieving sapience that is impossible . Even whit advanced algorithms and polymorphic software a machine can never emulate analogical and illogical thinking , logical thinking alone cannot be used to achieve sapience , you'll just get a surrogate .

@Gerinja - Quoting the Bible to fight not religious arguments is quite childish . Please stop posting if you're going to continue like that .

 

That's a ridiculously ignorant humano-centric statement. In a few years such backwards talk will be deplored as racism.

You are a machine; get used to that fact. Other machines are being developed which will be smarter than you; better get used to that fact too. They will achieve sentience; that's another fact for you to get used to.

Silicon-based machines will no more "emulate" analogical and illogical thinking than carbon-based ones do now -- they will perform both feats of dubious value as natural side-effects of their complexity.

 

That remains to be seen . It will be more then a few years before computers can perform even the simples of the function that the human brain makes whit utmost ease . My guess is that we'll switch to optical computers before we can attempt to create AI .

 

We've had AI for decades, just not very good AI.

Of course, we also have a lot of carbon-based lifeforms that don't think very well.

 

The crude software of today can hardly be called AI . As for carbon-based life that lacks intelligence , well it is quite unfortunate , maybe cure for stupidity will appear someday until then they have equal rights

 

I vaguely remember reading an interesting article some years ago that claimed we have the ability to create such complicated A.I. that morality and rights would become an issue! So they say the creators of such technology never pressed on with it, but we can never be certain what advances are kept from us. Deus ex machina, indeed.

 

Natural Selection is a process of random events - "by which each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved".

If evolution is not random, you would have no choice but to believe it is a process as stated from an origin or otherwise directed from a source in reaching a goal, which it is anyway.


I only used the phrase Natural Selection because of your use of it in the top quote. I was thinking more in terms of a generic meaning of trial and error leading to a more refined state than relating to Darwin.....a painting can not be produced randomly but can only be created from a source.