SD on 18/1/2007 at 19:46

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Ah, the "God of the Gaps".

Many theologians have a big problem with the filling of gaps in scientific knowledge with God, because as time passes, the gaps become steadily removed. Once all the gaps are filled by science, the placeholder God has nowhere to hide. So even though I don't agree with shoehorning God into holes in human understanding, I'm perfectly happy for faith-minded people to think along those lines ;)


I confidently predict that this century will be the one when we finally synthesise "life" from base chemicals. And then hopefully the God question will be well and truly put to bed.

steo on 18/1/2007 at 21:04

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After just trudging through fourteen pages of discussion it has become clear to me just how completely wrong all of you are. It is, in fact, completely irrelevant whether or not god or any other supernatural entity exists and I can prove simply and with mathematical proof.

To begin I will bring your attention to another supernatural entity known as (http://www.cthulhu.org/cthulhu/index.html) Cthulhu. For those of you who don't know, Cthulhu is the most powerful of the great old ones and currently waits dreaming in his house at R'lyeh, deep beneath the ocean.

Based on Pascal's Wager, Cthulhu's Wager measures the benefits/punishments of belief/non-belief in Cthulhu.

It follows logic thusly:

1. Cthulhu, if he exists, exists somewhere inaccessible to human beings, so we cannot be certain of his existence or nonexistence.
2. If Cthulhu exists, he will give a quick and less painful death to those who have worshipped him and expressed their belief through self-flagellation and ritual sacrifice.
3. If Cthulhu exists, he will condemn those who have not worshipped him to eternal torture and unimaginable pain.

* You may worship Cthulhu, and Cthulhu exists, in which case you suffer only finite pain and a quick death.
* You may worship Cthulhu, and Cthulhu doesn't exist, in which case you gain nothing.
* You may not worship Cthulhu, and Cthulhu doesn't exist, in which you gain nothing.
* You may not worship Cthulhu, and Cthulhu exists, in which case you suffer infinite pain and eternal torture.

The following table shows the values assigned to each possible outcome:

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/4595/cthulhutableco7.jpg


Now you must wager: do you choose to worship him or not?

So we can describe our calculus of pain, holding (p) as the probability that Cthulhu exists, and (1 - P) that he does not exist.

If you worship him, we assign X1 as the pain if he does exist, and X2 as the pain if he does not exist. X2 is less than X1 because in both instances you go through the pain associated with worshipping Cthulhu, but in X1, you also get eaten, which is more painful.

If you worship him your expected pain (EP1) is some finite constant:

(EP1) = p(X1) + (1 - p)(X2)

For the case where you do not worship him, we assign Y1 as the pain if he does exist, and Y2 as the pain if he does not exist. Y2 will be zero or negative, because you actually get pleasure if you don't worship him and he does not exist.

If you do not worship him, your expected pain is:

(EP2) = p(Y1) + (1 - p)(Y2)

However, (Y1), the pain if he does exist and you don't worship him, is infinite. Therefore, expected pain is infinite if you do not worship him, no matter what the associated probability (p).

As infinite pain is always greater than any finite pain, (EP2) is always greater than (EP1).

Therefore, in order to minimize your pain, the only rational thing for you to do is to pick (EP1), and worship Cthulhu through self-flagellation and ritual sacrifice.

SD on 18/1/2007 at 21:20

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I submit that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene) The Selfish Gene, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker) The Blind Watchmaker and (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_%28book%29) Cosmos ought to be considered as books worth reading.


Also, I would like to submit for testing the hypothesis that any TTLG thread that exists for a sufficient length of time will inevitably get fagged up by H.P. Lovecraft fans

fett on 18/1/2007 at 22:15

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Steo wins the thread.

Para?noid on 18/1/2007 at 23:22

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Steo does not win the thread because his axioms are not solid enough.

"Cthulhu, if he exists, exists somewhere inaccessible to human beings, so we cannot be certain of his existence or nonexistence."

Cthulhu lives buried in the depths of the ocean and is accessible. If we applied this logic to God, it would be possible through God's omnipotence to access him anyway. It's his choice.

What's more this thread is fucking retarded and I suggest you all stop arguing with STD because he's just a bitter, lonely nerd who wants to argue for the sake of it and blind everyone with his dazzling ignorance. I don't even know why he's here, he's some fucking hanger-on that no one will take in so he clings desperately to our shirts like some translucent, sweaty fog of self-righteous bollocks. Wanker.