Please tell me what you think
Posted on: May 27, 2009 - 8:15pm
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Please tell me what you think
Hi, I'm an atheist. I haven't been really active on this form for a long time so probable not many of you remember me now if you ever did in the first place. I plan to try and be more active again so I’m writing this about something interesting I found. It's a journal by me from when I used to be a Christian. I'm going to right down some of the entries. Please tell me what you think of them in the same manner as you would to any theist rant.
RatDog in 1998 wrote:
Time is a river, and nothing can stop the rivers flowing except God, but I don't know when or if he will. God is for more constant than any river, God is infinity in its purest form. The one who has lived threw infinity, who is everything, who is "I am" the all loving all caring and all just God.
If you find this interesting Ill write more of them.
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Hi.
Um, I'll try.
It's really interesting, but there's not much to respond to. If theists wrote this, I would probably just ask how they know this, since it's all vague, naked assertions.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Hey there RatDog.
It reads a bit like the Cappadocians (early Greek Orthodox writers heavily influenced by Origen a little before the "Origenist controversy" caused most of his books to be burned by order of Justinian). Other than that there's not too much to be said about it. It's kinda standard stuff.
I can't understand what I was thinking. I'm trying to figure out my own reasoning. I think I may have had some kind of weird theory that went something like this.
Assumption: Time is both linear and infinite.
Premise: Any point in an infinite linear sequence has an infinite amount of time before it
Premise: We exist at a certain point in an infinite sequence of time.
Conclusion: There is an infinite period of time before this point in time.
Premise: Anything that can possibly happen has some probability of happening.
Premise: The more chances something has to happen the more likely it is to happen.
Premise: The more time that passes the more chances something has to actually happening.
Conclusion: Given an infinite amount of time anything witch has any possibility of happening will happen.
Assumption: Things that happen will last for a set period of time defined by this equation. Infinitely small time ≤ Set period of time ≤ infinitely large time.
Assumption: Some property of what happens determines how long it will lasts.
Conclusion based of assumptions: Certain properties allow things to last for and infinitely large time.
Really really big assumption: The properties that allow something to last an infinitely large time equate to God as defined by the bible.
I think I've herd this argument before some were. Either way its still really lame.
RatDog,
I';ve only been here a few days, and have no objection to kicking someone's ass when
it amuses me. But Atheist ranss are not my bag. And picking on Theists here, just for the hell of it, doesn't interest me either, even if you're not one at this time.
Soz, but Theist bashing in all cases is not my thing, nor is "joining in" for not even an amusing reason.
How's that for an Atheist rant?
Welcome back, Ratdog.
I suppose one could take aim at the "all"s...
(I used to carry a lot of magical thinking, and every once in a while, something reminds me of some superstition/hypothesis I used to have. It can be a little embarrassing, you know?)
Do you remember writing these? Does it seem like you have some stranger's journal?
-Triften
I know that I wrote this, and at the time I remember that I thought what I was writing was obvious, but now that I read it more then a decade latter it just seems stupid. How could my thinking have changed so much in one decade’s time? I was just like most of the theists who come to this site to rant about their own stupid theories. I guess I’m glad really. If I can escape from my own delusions then maybe the theists who come here to rand can escape from their delusions as well
So it's all right to bash people who aren't Theists?
That's what I find scary about it. It almost feels like it was written by a completely different person.
I wonder what those properties would be.
God isn't defined very well in the Bible.
But, if we roughly assume the mainstream Christian concept of God, by this logic, the properties that allow something to last an infinitely long time would include: being supernatural, omnibenevolence, etc. I think it's begging the question. I'm not completely sure though because I can't quite wrap my brain around it.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Well, it was, really. To paraphrase Heraclitus, it's impossible to step into the same stream twice. Our atoms are recycled, our thoughts mix mingle and twist around, and sometimes we find ourselves drastically different than what we thought we were. You were in that mode- and a different person. I've read some of my journals from 1998-2000, and I know that's a different person than who I am now. This is no different. It may have been then-'you' trying to convince future 'you' about what's right. Obviously things changed, and that's no big deal at all.
RatDog, you sound like you're being poetic in that journal entry. It's not even an argument, just a bunch of claims.
What about a circle. What if time isn't a linear line at all, but a circle? It would then, have no beginning, and no end. It would be relative. It would be infinite in either direction, but limited. It would be predefined, but defining all possibilities. Then the conclusion, that infinite time = all possible things happening would be incorrect.
I'm not saying that this is what time is, but I think people jump to too many conclusions as to what time is, when it began, how it will end, what is possible and not possible in or with time. We simply don't know enough about it.
*edited for spelling
RatDog, I journal sometimes too and occasionally I write things that sound stupid the next day. The point in writing is to record how you feel at a specific point in time, and at the time you wrote that you truly believed all those things.
I believed them too, because I was raised to believe in the Bible and Jesus and never really came in contact with anyone who didn't believe until my late teens. My journal entries about God were honest and heartfelt, even if they don't make any sense to me now.
I kept a diary last few years of boarding school and first years of uni and what a pile of wankerish crap that turned out to be. None of the photos of me at the time show dribble running down my chin but they should do. They say the past is another country and if that country is populated by complete strangers - well - maybe that's the way it's meant to be.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Circler time is really interesting. I used to read a series of books by Robert Jordan were time constantly traveled around in a circles. I think they called it The Wheel of Time. If you like fantasy books you should give it a try.
In regards to what I wrote, I think the problem with this kind of argument is that it is based on nothing but assumptions. It assumes that time is linear, it assumes that time is infinite, it assumes that there is some probability that something in this space time can last forever. In the end it is nothing but assumptions. Yet, if someone really wants to believe something they will find a way. It’s like looking at clouds and seeing pictures in them. The human mind is very good at creating patters were none exist, and once those pictures are formed the shapes up in the clouds really do seems to be obvious.
This isn’t really related to the topic, but I've notices with cosmological arguments that there are hidden lines of reasoning left unsaid. They make claims like; the concept of causation must always be applied. This claim seems to be based on the reasoning that in this reality we always observe causality to take place; that we cannot assume something we do not observe therefore we must assume that causality always takes place. The reason that some of the reasoning is left unsaid is because it conflicts will the conclusion. We do not observe god therefore we cannot assume god. If we are to make assumptions about thing that are outside of this universe based on what is inside this universe then those assumptions must be consistent. If everything in the universe has a cause then god also must have a cause. Theists try to get around this by saying that everything that begins must have a cause; god does not have a beginning therefore god does not need a cause. Everything that we observe has a beginning, and everything we observe has a cause; it isn’t logical for them to apply causality to things outside the universe but not beginnings. If they can say that everything must have a cause because everything we observe has a cause then by the same reasoning they must say that everything has a beginning because everything we observe has a beginning.
Well enough ranting. I must say that in regards to quantum physics I am not sure if everything we observe has a cause, but I don’t really know that much about the subject.
You right, it was nothing but naked assertions.
It seems to me that time mind set of someone who believes strongly in some kind of religion, and the mind set of someone who is skeptical of god and religion are completely different. Both these groups of people us the same words, but all the meanings are different. It's difficult for there to be any kind of real communication because we are almost speaking separate languages. No where does this seem more apparent to me then when reading my old writings. The old me and the new me can no longer really communicate. That’s ok though, I like the me I am now much better.