I already have proof that God exists and the Bible is true. Unfortunately this proof was given only to me. I can tell you my testimony but it is up to you if you believe me or not.

You are Joseph Smith!

EDIT:
By the way, "God exists" and "the Bible is true" are two entirely unrelated things. The Bible is provably not "The One Truth", but proving whether or not God exists remains a hard problem.

The only thing that is 100% certain is that what you find in your Bible has been
a) taken from a selection of abrahamic texts, reworded slightly different
b) stolen from pagan stories and beliefs
c) censored
d) rewritten

Seeing as Christmas is nigh, it's worth to mention that both Christmas and Easter are stolen from the pagans, too.

Insofar, what's in the Bible has very little, if anything, to do with what God said or what God wants (if God exists).

Except that definitively deciding there is no god is making the same logical fallacy and equally arrogant.

But arrogance does not condemn me to hell. That logic only works on religious people. I am already fully aware of what happens in death, since I already experienced it before I was born. Do you not also remember that millenia of nothingness? It lasted over 10 billion times longer than you have been alive, so why would you forget?

Honestly, existence before life and after life are both exactly the same. Death is no mystery. We have all already been there. Why is this so hard for people to understand and accept?

It doesn't really make sense to argue faith on logic anyway. If faith based beliefs were backed by universally provable logic, it would be a fact based belief not a faith based one. The nature of it being faith indicates that it would not be provable universally.

But it can be demonstrated to be majorly psychological, since my step-sister’s faith can be proved as such. I know for a fact that her religious beliefs came entirely from myself and that I know everything I taught her was bullshit.

In other words you can explain down to the tiniest detail why, psychologically, people tend to buy into religion, and experiments prove those explanations to be entirely plausible. Since my sister and I were both part of the same experiment, if you have any belief in higher powers, then you must first explain why she is still deathly afraid of peacock feathers even though they can’t harm humans.
I know her fear. I shared it as a small child. I can’t explain what was happening in my mind but I “just knew” that that peacock feather was extremely painful, and any threats my mother made to beat me with it worked absolutely. And yet it never really caused me any pain. I literally remember her hitting me with it and screaming out loud at how terrible it was, yet looking back there was nothing by psychological pain. She simply convinced me that it would hurt from a very young age.

I was simply terrified of it and the pain was all in my head. I even remember when I was starting to become aware of that and my baby sitter told my mother, “The peacock feather isn’t working anymore.” Hello? I may be only 3 years old but I am in the same room as you and I do speak English!

I also remember that some of the other children she baby-sat were starting to become afraid of the peacock feather just based on my own fear of it.


Looking back, none of it was grounded. I was afraid of it because I was afraid of it. I even remember my mother finally giving in when I was 5 and laughing at how afraid I was of it.
Yet my sister never got over it. She is still terrified of peacock feathers. This is the nature of religion and is proved by countless psychological experiments.

On the other hand, when my mother stopped using the peacock she started using sticks and belts. Those actually hurt. I overcame the psychological attack only to be rewarded with actual physical pain. This seems to also be why religious people are religious. The alternative is too painful for them.


L. Spiro

If this experiment bears out, won't it stand as proof of intelligent design? If we are in a simulation, someone designed that simulation. Maybe that's what God is: the designer of the simulation we run in. It certainly won't provide any kind of death blow to religion, as some people seem to think. If anything else, proving that there is a power greater than us capable of designing such a simulation will do quite the opposite.

It's a fascinating experiment, though I must admit, I don't really understand the science at work here and I'm not sure how a matching energy signature inside a model of our own proves anything but that we're pretty good at making models that simulate reality. But then outside of a small handful of people, who really does understand this kind of science? Still, it seems to me like we have a long time before we'll see any results from this, since according to TFA current models are able to simulate a model only slightly larger than the nucleus of a single atom; that's pretty far removed from a simulation of an entire universe, it seems.

A reminder.

This thread is about "the Matrix". NOT about whether there's a God or if religion sucks. I rather there not be an unnecessary religion war.

If this experiment bears out, won't it stand as proof of intelligent design?

True, but it's intelligent design of a completely different sort. Most likely one that renders most if not all holy texts irrelevant. Plus this intelligent design would be more Spore than Sims.

[quote name='BMO' timestamp='1355497165' post='5010622']
Except that definitively deciding there is no god is making the same logical fallacy and equally arrogant.

But arrogance does not condemn me to hell. That logic only works on religious people. I am already fully aware of what happens in death, since I already experienced it before I was born. Do you not also remember that millenia of nothingness? It lasted over 10 billion times longer than you have been alive, so why would you forget?

Honestly, existence before life and after life are both exactly the same. Death is no mystery. We have all already been there. Why is this so hard for people to understand and accept?

L. Spiro
[/quote]

I'm not condemning you to hell. I'm saying that declaring you know something with 100% certainty when its impossible to know for 100%, is arrogant. Whether that is for or against religion is irrelevant. You cannot prove something that is improvable, and all faith based religions are improvable. That's what makes it a faith based religion. You can't prove OR disprove it. Why is that so hard for you to figure out? You are continually making the same logical errors religious folks make, saying you know things for certain which are impossible to know and then declaring it as fact.

2 sides of the same coin.

I never said anyone was assigned to anything. I think they are wasting their time on something that is irrelevant. The worlds problems needs multi-disciplinary solutions (global warming for example needs physicists and biologists ect. ect. ad nauseum). Just because they chose to work on that project doesn't change the fact that it's a project that isn't worth the time.
[/quote]
It's not a "waste of time", they're theoretical physicists, it's their job to ask such questions and investigate such things. Your argument is essentially "I think it's a waste of time when they could be solving bigger problems" which I have already explained is a false dichotomy. It is not an either/or scenario no matter how many times you repeat this fallacy.

These are some of the worlds most brilliant minds working on something as important as figuring out the best way to win at tic tac toe. They may be passionate, but it's still a waste of human potential.[/quote]

Do you have a source for this or are you making a rather large (and baseless) assumption here? I wouldn't put tic tac toe on the same footing as answering fundamental questions about the nature of the universe.

True, but it's intelligent design of a completely different sort. Most likely one that renders most if not all holy texts irrelevant. Plus this intelligent design would be more Spore than Sims.

How do you mean "different sort"? Are you trying to categorize Intelligent Design now, for the sole purpose of clinging to the idea that you are right in your beliefs, and those damned crazy religious folks are still wrong? If I wrote a computer program capable of simulating the universe, and intelligent life arose therein, wouldn't I have the stature of God in their eyes? Wouldn't I have dominion over their existence? Wouldn't I have caused them to be, and couldn't I cause them to be not with a casual flick of a switch? Wouldn't I have created the earth and the heavens and the waters, wouldn't I have created the animals and the plants and the men and women upon the earth? The stars in the sky? I mean, after all I created the whole universe. That's pretty much spot-on with the basic nature of just about any theological deity right there, so I really fail to understand how there could possibly be any kind of distinction between the Intelligent Design these guys are trying to prove, and the Intelligent Design that us religious folk have been talking about for thousands of years.

Holy texts are simply the things that people stuck in the simulation have been writing based on their vastly limited perspective. Of course they wouldn't get it right, any more than these guys can get it right with their currently limited model that is not much bigger than the nucleus of an atom. Humans have been working on limited information since the beginning of our species. Science itself operates on what you might call a set of faulty holy texts, many of which would also be made irrelevant by this experiment's success. A whole lot of human thought would be made irrelevant.

I never said anyone was assigned to anything. I think they are wasting their time on something that is irrelevant. The worlds problems needs multi-disciplinary solutions (global warming for example needs physicists and biologists ect. ect. ad nauseum). Just because they chose to work on that project doesn't change the fact that it's a project that isn't worth the time.

It's not a "waste of time", they're theoretical physicists, it's their job to ask such questions and investigate such things. Your argument is essentially "I think it's a waste of time when they could be solving bigger problems" which I have already explained is a false dichotomy. It is not an either/or scenario no matter how many times you repeat this fallacy.

These are some of the worlds most brilliant minds working on something as important as figuring out the best way to win at tic tac toe. They may be passionate, but it's still a waste of human potential.[/quote]

Do you have a source for this or are you making a rather large (and baseless) assumption here? I wouldn't put tic tac toe on the same footing as answering fundamental questions about the nature of the universe.
[/quote]

Thats not essentially my argument, thats exactly my argument. It's not a false dichotomy because I'm not saying there are ONLY two options. They could work on stuff that would answer questions AND save lives, but they aren't. I feel that it's a waste of time because it will help zero people. And I feel that the worlds smartest people should work on making the world a better place. I don't think they will ever answer anything and they are just running to nowhere on their hamster wheels in the name of science. Thats an opinion, not a fact.

What good will it do the world to know we are in a simulation when we are all dead? I think saving lives is far more important than answering questions that won't have any real effect. I personally feel that people that are as smart as they are have a moral obligation to help the society that educated them and I don't think this helps anyone. That's just like, my opinion, man.

Thats not essentially my argument, thats exactly my argument. It's not a false dichotomy because I'm not saying there are ONLY two options.

"Why are they wasting their potential when they could be curing cancer?" is a false dichotomy. It's the choice between a) understanding the universe or b) curing cancer (or whatever example you choose). Cancer research is not being harmed because of this research whereas if the scientists involved were attempting to cure cancer instead then this research would not be conducted at all. That is an either/or scenario. Clearly people are researching both, ergo your argument, by definition, is a false dichotomy.

What about authors? Artists? Poets? All of these brilliant minds wasting their potential when they could be curing cancer. Who would want to live for longer in a world with no desire to understand and appreciate the beauty of life and the universe? Certainly not me.

They could work on stuff that would answer questions AND save lives, but they aren't. I feel that it's a waste of time because it will help zero people. And I feel that the worlds smartest people should work on making the world a better place. I don't think they will ever answer anything and they are just running to nowhere on their hamster wheels in the name of science. Thats an opinion, not a fact.

What good will it do the world to know we are in a simulation when we are all dead? I think saving lives is far more important than answering questions that won't have any real effect. I personally feel that people that are as smart as they are have a moral obligation to help the society that educated them and I don't think this helps anyone. That's just like, my opinion, man.
[/quote]
And how do you know that any answers this research gives us will be of no practical use?If everyone had your attitude then we wouldn't have the modern and advanced society (essential, ironically, to extending and increasing the quality of life). Electricity had no immediate use so we wouldn't have electrical appliances and equipment today. Quantum mechanics had no immediate use so we wouldn't have transistors (which are key to computing) today. Understanding the atom had no immediate use yet without it we wouldn't have chemistry as we know it today (including all of those drugs and treatments vital to extending life). None of the examples I gave were researched with the aim of saving lives and ironically these examples have been absolutely critical for saving lives on a massive scale yet no one foresaw this at the time.