In that sense I would like to disagree with SamLowry slightly. Mathematics is about absolute truths. It's just that the absolute truths in mathematics are ultimately of the form "If ... then ...", when you really drill down and formalize them, e.g. "If we work in that system of axioms, then such and such is true". Even more important, mathematics is not about the real, physical world we live in, whereas any claims of the existence of a God ultimately are about the world we live in, and therefore different rules apply to them.

Saying Mathematics is about absolute truths is a bit misleading. Like you said, formalization always leads to those "truths" being relative to some system of axioms that itself can only be proven with a different set of axioms, and so on. This isn't to say that there is no such thing as objective truth, it just is unreachable or unprovable from a single set of axioms (i.e. Gödel's incompleteness theorems). Deductive proofs are an idealized subset of a much more interesting class of questions where uncertainty is given first-class status. Bayesian analysis is an excellent framework in which to express formal model comparison in the face of uncertainty, though we are forced to make our assumptions explicit (a good thing, in my opinion).

I also disagree that Mathematics is not about the "real, physical world we live in". Even something as detached and abstract as a Turing machine embeds serious physical assumptions, such as a tape cell only containing a single symbol or blank at any given time (this assumption is broken in quantum computing models). Solomonoff, Kolmogorov, and Chaitin have produced an extensive body of work demonstrating that Mathematics itself is an empirical science, requiring the same inferential tools we apply to the "real, physical world" (see Algorithmic Information Theory).

This rather assumes that people have spiritual needs, which... I disagree with.

Right. I like chocolate too. Do you disagree with that? Please do tell.

Wtf.

No, I do not presume how you define it, hence I did not elaborate. I certainly don't want to take pot shots at something you don't believe in. I was hoping for a more even keeled response where you perhaps spelled that out for me so that we could have a discussion on points. [edit: after mikeman's edit, it certainly is even keeled.]

From what in the thread that I've seen, your main basis is the need for answering 'why is the universe like it is?'. I don't perceive this as being anything spiritual at all.

But that's rather an ill-informed guess at your beliefs based on a forum of all things.


My main argument is that there is no such thing as an innate spiritual need in humans. That would presume a spirit.

People might need to feel comfort that some guiding force is there. They might need to know the answer to why are we here. They might need comfort in knowing that there's an afterlife. They might need to know why we have sentience. None of these are particularly spiritual in nature. Philosophical, psychological? Certainly.

About the clashing with family and friends, I would say that if a Christian gets through life without doing some serious clashing, to quote lolcats: YOUR DOIN IT WRONG. Which can be said of a lot of us lukewarm American Christians.

Yeah, I probably phrased it wrong. But it doesn't mean one has to be cutoff from the people they love. Which is what would probably happen if I announced my family I was to become a Muslim, or a Muslim announced to their family that they're going to be Christian.

The parts of the Koran I've read aren't opposing Christianity as such, as far as I can tell. I could be wrong. But they(or similar texts, like Rumi's beautiful poems) even have helped me look at some of the OT with new light. I don't want to pretend I'm one of those 'open to any religion' type of folks. I'm not. But of course the worldview is different, because people are different. My view of Christianity is probably very much different from many other's. There's no real problem with that, the way I'm thinking it. Everyone's got his own 'language' when thinking to himself and about his life and general. The fact that we still want and achieve, some times, to communicate in a common language is kind of amazing, if you think about it.

People might need to feel comfort that some guiding force is there. They might need to know the answer to why are we here. They might need comfort in knowing that there&#39;s an afterlife. They might need to know why we have sentience. None of these are particularly spiritual in nature. Philosophical, psychological? Certainly. <br /> <br /> <br /> I don&#39;t disagree with anything you said above, actually. That&#39;s what I meant. I don&#39;t mean &#39;spirit&#39; as an invisible ghostie thingy that occupies space. I&#39;m not into metaphysics much, anyway. Not my cup of tea. Not even in movies, even(I think I have discussed here my beef with BattleStar Galactica <img src='http://public.gamedev.net/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':P' />). I mean it as a combination of questions about our nature,intelligence,courage,kindness,forgiveness and such things. <br />

Ah, makes sense. I was thinking you were one of those people who believes truth is not absolute. I agree with you in principle, but I don't see how you can reconcile Christianity and Islam. I recognize there are concepts in Christianity which have been twisted by us humans through the years and are probably incorrect, but the Muslim worldview seems to be fundamentally different.
Actually, Islam is very very close to Christianity. Both religions believe in the same "one and only" god (yhwh/allah) and the differences lie mostly in the details (Jesus is a prophet rather than the son of god, the greatest prophet is Muhammad, etc).

Muslims commonly refer to Christians and Jews as "People of the Book" (Ahle-kitaab), people who follow the same general teachings in relation to the worship of the One God (Tawhid) as known by Abraham.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official doctrine document released by the Roman Catholic Church, has this to say regarding Muslims: "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

Yes, those evil Muslims are actually Christianity's best pals. Your choice if you wish to eat into media propaganda.

Proof? Turn on Animal Planet and see animals getting torn apart soon as they are born, see animals getting eaten alive...just a cycle of violence because dead flesh feeds living flesh.

Then turn on the 6 o'clock news and see humans doing worse to each other when we don't even need to. There's proof.


<----- Philosophic prophet

Yes, those evil Muslims are actually Christianity's best pals. Your choice if you wish to eat into media propaganda.

Without even counting the history of these two religions *cough*crusades*cough*, I'd say Christianity and Islam are about as far apart as you can get. Compare the U.S., which like it or not is basically Christian, to the only nation where Islam is fully implemented.

'Fiddler' said:

Yes, those evil Muslims are actually Christianity's best pals. Your choice if you wish to eat into media propaganda.

Without even counting the history of these two religions *cough*crusades*cough*, I'd say Christianity and Islam are about as far apart as you can get. Compare the U.S., which like it or not is basically Christian, to the only nation where Islam is fully implemented.

The actual tenets, outside of the sharia are decidedly similar. Even within Christianity, wars have been fought over relatively small details of faith.

And let's be honest here: the US still has the largest prison population per capita, segregation and womens rights have only (partially) existed for under a century, homosexuals are second class citizens, hispanics are persecuted many places, muslims are persecuted, and that's ignoring pretty much everything done in the name of the War on Terror. I'm not saying Saudi Arabia has a better human rights record than the US; or even close. But it's closer than many Americans care to believe. And the country has only industrialized recently. Give both countries a few decades and I suspect the score will be a lot closer (barring a fundamentalist revolution in either location).

'Fiddler' said:

Yes, those evil Muslims are actually Christianity's best pals. Your choice if you wish to eat into media propaganda.

Without even counting the history of these two religions *cough*crusades*cough*, I'd say Christianity and Islam are about as far apart as you can get. Compare the U.S., which like it or not is basically Christian, to the only nation where Islam is fully implemented.

rofl... Islam and Christianity are as far apart as one can get? Their histories are practically interconnected as-well as the huge intertwining of the stories in each. Muslims believe many things Christians do except for certain parts. Ex: Jesus was a prophet not the son of God.

And let's be honest here: the US still has the largest prison population per capita, segregation and womens rights have only (partially) existed for under a century, homosexuals are second class citizens, hispanics are persecuted many places, muslims are persecuted, and that's ignoring pretty much everything done in the name of the War on Terror. I'm not saying Saudi Arabia has a better human rights record than the US; or even close. But it's closer than many Americans care to believe. And the country has only industrialized recently. Give both countries a few decades and I suspect the score will be a lot closer (barring a fundamentalist revolution in either location).

I have no facts to back this, but I would say America's problems are due to human failings (including failings of the earthly church), whereas many of Saudi Arabia's issues are encouraged by their text.

My link there had a little too much "Christianity > Islam" in it. I don't mean to bash Muslims; I know they're generally great people. I just wanted to point out examples of when both religions are allowed to run their course.

rofl... Islam and Christianity are as far apart as one can get? Their histories are practically interconnected as-well as the huge intertwining of the stories in each. Muslims believe many things Christians do except for certain parts. Ex: Jesus was a prophet not the son of God.

Sure, they're both Abrahamic and they share the same stories. The similarities pretty much stop at the New Testament though.

I apologize, this is a HUGE thread hi-jacking. Carry on with the mathematical proofs.