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The Testable Deistic God


cal

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A non-deistic "perfect" god creates all sorts of logical fallacies but most importantly the fallacy of holding belief in something that you cannot "prove or disprove" or will ever be able to "prove or disprove". So we're not talking about non-deistic gods, we're only talking about the ones we can test for.

 

As most of you probably know, there are several groups of scientists working right now to find certain forms of radiating that would only be present if our universe was being simulated by an "outside" source. If this ends up being true, then it'd be similar to The Matrix where reality is software running on an advanced computing system.

 

Let's assume this is true, that we are a false universe rendering in real-time on top of this deistic god's outdated laptop. Let's say we definitively prove or gain substantial evidence to know that this is what's really happening and all the theists of the world, deistic or not, elate with cries of, "told you so," and, "there's your proof!" Even then, is the ******* with the software actually God? I'm left to assume that if our universe is being simulated, that whatever is responsible for the simulation is not a unique entity, and that there are probably dozens of others just like it in it's first-grade Intro. to Universe OS class.

 

I guess what I'm really looking for is a reason to label anything as god, no matter how powerful or how much more unimaginably intelligent it is. I do not think I know of any reason. Discuss.

Edited by Snax
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there is quite a bit about science i don't understand. for example let's say its true that the planets formed of out star dust. why didnt saturns rings form into moons?

 

heres a few more. let's say for the sake of argument the moon causes the oceans tides. clearly there is some relationship there, but the amount of force the moon exibits i've heard is equavalent to a pea held 10 meters above our head. but let's say for the sake of argument its true. moon causes oceans tides. here's my riddle for you, why

doesnt the moon pull orbiting sattilites out of orbit?

 

and a couple more just for fun.

let's say the thoery of realtivity is true. light takes the same amount of time to travel in all frames of referance.

then that means that, from the perspective of a light beam all objects must be traveling the same speed, wether your going 1%, 60% or 90% the speed of light doesnt matter from light itselfs perspective.

only if light traveled instantaneously, which it doesn't, would this be conceivably possible.

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there is quite a bit about science i don't understand.

Welcome to America, you'll fit right in!

 

for example let's say its true that the planets formed of out star dust. why didnt saturns rings form into moons?

Not enough material is left and the material left over isn't heavy enough for the current rings to form a new moon.

 

here's my riddle for you, why doesnt the moon pull orbiting sattilites out of orbit?

It does. This is accounted for when launching satellites and putting them into geostationary orbit.

 

let's say the thoery of realtivity is true. light takes the same amount of time to travel in all frames of referance.

The theory of relativity does not say this. It says light takes the same amount of time to travel in all frames of reference in a vacuum.

 

from the perspective of a light beam all objects must be traveling the same speed, wether your going 1%, 60% or 90% the speed of light doesnt matter from light itselfs perspective.

only if light traveled instantaneously, which it doesn't, would this be conceivably possible.

SO MUCH NOPE. From a light particle's perspective, another light particle going the opposite direction would measure to be going double light-speed (if both are in a vacuum and the measurement is taken assuming the first particle's perspective). There is no credible science that says everything is traveling the same speed from light's perspective.

 

Let's keep this about the original topic though, shall we?

Edited by Snax
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Snax: There is no scientific test for a non-scientific proposition.

 

...

heres a few more. let's say for the sake of argument the moon causes the oceans tides. clearly there is some relationship there, but the amount of force the moon exibits i've heard is equavalent to a pea held 10 meters above our head. but let's say for the sake of argument its true. ...

 

Godd grief Phillip! Given you math ability I am stunned by such a comment. Exactly how do you think the tide tables used by mariners and fisherman the world over are calculated so accurately if the Moon's influence is just for the sake of argument? Gimme a break. :doh:

 

:askgoogle:

 

Tides @ Wikipedia

...Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was the first person to explain tides as the product of the gravitational attraction of astronomical masses. His explanation of the tides (and many other phenomena) was published in the Principia (1687)[18][19] and used his theory of universal gravitation to explain the lunar and solar attractions as the origin of the tide-generating forces.[20] Newton and others before Pierre-Simon Laplace worked the problem from the perspective of a static system (equilibrium theory), that provided an approximation that described the tides that would occur in a non-inertial ocean evenly covering the whole Earth.[18] The tide-generating force (or its corresponding potential) is still relevant to tidal theory, but as an intermediate quantity (forcing function) rather than as a final result; theory must also consider the Earth's accumulated dynamic tidal response to the applied forces, which response is influenced by bathymetry, Earth's rotation, and other factors.[21]

 

In 1740, the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris offered a prize for the best theoretical essay on tides. Daniel Bernoulli, Leonhard Euler, Colin Maclaurin and Antoine Cavalleri shared the prize.

 

Maclaurin used Newton's theory to show that a smooth sphere covered by a sufficiently deep ocean under the tidal force of a single deforming body is a prolate spheroid (essentially a three dimensional oval) with major axis directed toward the deforming body. Maclaurin was the first to write about the Earth's rotational effects on motion. Euler realized that the tidal force's horizontal component (more than the vertical) drives the tide. In 1744 Jean le Rond d'Alembert studied tidal equations for the atmosphere which did not include rotation.

 

Pierre-Simon Laplace formulated a system of partial differential equations relating the ocean's horizontal flow to its surface height, the first major dynamic theory for water tides. The Laplace tidal equations are still in use today. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, rewrote Laplace's equations in terms of vorticity which allowed for solutions describing tidally driven coastally trapped waves, known as Kelvin waves.[22][23][24]

 

Others including Kelvin and Henri Poincaré further developed Laplace's theory. Based on these developments and the lunar theory of E W Brown describing the motions of the Moon, Arthur Thomas Doodson developed and published in 1921[25] the first modern development of the tide-generating potential in harmonic form: Doodson distinguished 388 tidal frequencies.[26] Some of his methods remain in use.[27]...

Read more on Forces ....

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alright turtle, thank you for correcting my ignorance.

i do love math, but i must confess i never really understood physics.

especially the theory of relativity.

i've tried again and again to wrap my head around it, but just can't.

 

If you really want to test God, my suggestion would be to read the bible, and try to understand it's wisdom.

I've devoted myself to reading 5-10 verses a day, and try to apply them.

I know I'm far from understanding the wisdom it has to offer, but i hope one day to obtain such steadfast faith.

 

i know science has a low view of faith, but faith can sustain you through almost anything, in my honest opinion, if you truly seek it.

 

don't get me wrong, I'm not rejecting science. or perhaps my scientific understanding is less prevalent, i don't know.

 

but i do believe that there is a higher calling for all of us.

 

snyway I'll leave it here. the rest is up to you.

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alright turtle, thank you for correcting my ignorance.

i do love math, but i must confess i never really understood physics.

especially the theory of relativity.

i've tried again and again to wrap my head around it, but just can't.

 

If you really want to test God, my suggestion would be to read the bible, and try to understand it's wisdom.

I've devoted myself to reading 5-10 verses a day, and try to apply them.

I know I'm far from understanding the wisdom it has to offer, but i hope one day to obtain such steadfast faith.

 

i know science has a low view of faith, but faith can sustain you through almost anything, in my honest opinion, if you truly seek it.

 

don't get me wrong, I'm not rejecting science. or perhaps my scientific understanding is less prevalent, i don't know.

 

but i do believe that there is a higher calling for all of us.

 

snyway I'll leave it here. the rest is up to you.

 

You're welcome. I still find it disconcerting that you didn't put more effort into learning about tides before posting. As to understanding relativity you needn't beat yourself up; take some comfort that some few people understand it well enough.

 

As to the Bible I have to ask which one? King James? Catholic Bible? New Standard? That's rhetorical of course, but I think it makes my point. Whatever non-scientific pursuits bring you comfort is all well and good, but render under Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. In my experience, religious/spiritual discussions here never come to any good end. :angel:

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hehe i understand that there are many religious views.

but i would also like to point out there are many scientific views as well.

theres newton's view of gravity, eistien, there's quantum physics view of gravity, the multiverse interaction theory, there's the expanding matter hypothesis, and probably others. so yeah. hard for me to know what to follow and believe. for the moment i'll stick to math and the new international standard.

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alright turtle, thank you for correcting my ignorance.

i do love math, but i must confess i never really understood physics.

especially the theory of relativity.

i've tried again and again to wrap my head around it, but just can't.

 

It can be explained in a limited way with out math...

 

If you really want to test God, my suggestion would be to read the bible, and try to understand it's wisdom.

I've devoted myself to reading 5-10 verses a day, and try to apply them.

I know I'm far from understanding the wisdom it has to offer, but i hope one day to obtain such steadfast faith.

 

I've read the entire bible, several times in fact and that is why i know the god of the bible is not real...

 

 

i know science has a low view of faith, but faith can sustain you through almost anything, in my honest opinion, if you truly seek it.

 

Proselytizing is forbidden on this forum, show us or admit you cannot and you just believe it...

 

don't get me wrong, I'm not rejecting science. or perhaps my scientific understanding is less prevalent, i don't know.

 

but i do believe that there is a higher calling for all of us.

 

snyway I'll leave it here. the rest is up to you.

 

meaningless unless you can show the evidence...

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i feel like God or whatever is controling the universe has proven himself to me in a big way. I'm afraid i only have personal anecdote, which doesn't count as proof but if you saw half the stuff i did you would believe too.

 

I doubt it very seriously, if you can't show it you don't know it...

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hehe i understand that there are many religious views.

but i would also like to point out there are many scientific views as well.

theres newton's view of gravity, eistien, there's quantum physics view of gravity, the multiverse interaction theory, there's the expanding matter hypothesis, and probably others. so yeah. hard for me to know what to follow and believe. for the moment i'll stick to math and the new international standard.

 

 

There are self contradicting views in science, care to share a few?

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hehe i understand that there are many religious views.

but i would also like to point out there are many scientific views as well.

theres newton's view of gravity, eistien, there's quantum physics view of gravity, the multiverse interaction theory, there's the expanding matter hypothesis, and probably others. so yeah. hard for me to know what to follow and believe. for the moment i'll stick to math and the new international standard.

 

Different religious views are not equivalent to improvements in tide prediction, orbital mechanics, or any other mathematical refinements over time.

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I see everybody here have lost sight of the little red fox.

 

So, back to the topic at hand...

 

Imagine, if you will, that you're running a laptop with a copy of The Sims on it. A future copy, to be sure - call it The Sims 42, the 42nd installment of the game where the New! Improved! version actually simulates consciousness in your tiny little sims. Let's say you've been running this particular game now for a few months, and your sims have progressed to the point where they begin asking all sorts of awkward philosophical questions about their origins. What, in what you're doing from the outside, will have any detectable influence on the world your tiny sims see inside the game? Sure - you might press a button to send one of your sims off to the bathroom, but will the sim experience anything other than a sudden urge to go pee? If your sims decide to build a sort of a detector, what signals will they pick up from outside the laptop, that might prove their strange hypothesis that they are no more and no less than mere simulations?

 

I don't think anything at all. Because they don't exist in the same universe as you do. They are merely patterns in an electronic circuit, consisting out of nothing more than electrons flying all over the computer. And any electrons or whatever you, as the resident hypothetical 'god' in the equation might radiate into their world will only have a detectable effect on them if it creates a coherent change in the patterns that constitutes your sims. Which I think is wishful thinking at best. I do not know of the scientific efforts currently underway to detecting evidence towards such speculations that you mention in the OP, but it is interesting, nonetheless. And, of course, it holds logically true. Us being simulated playthings for a bored youngster somewhere on a laptop is much more believable and internally consistent than a big, bearded man in the sky, in any case. I just cannot conceive of any experiment that can test for it.

 

But, that being the case - if there's a young alien playing a game of uber-sim on his laptop that makes up what you, as an individual, experience as the world around you, is he the god in the equation, or the company that built the laptop? Or the company that wrote the game code? Can there be only one god? Or is a multitude required? Is the REAL GOD in this discussion not maybe the hired help who sees the computer running and pulls the cable out the wall so she can vacuum the room, thereby destroying seven billion humans in one fell swoop?

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i just wanted to briefly touch on the topics addressed.

i whole heartily believe the math of physics is sound.

i just have a hard time understanding some of its principles.

for example, as far as i'm aware, there are no testable hypothesis for string theory.

yet there are many scientists who seem to whole heartily believe in it.

and exactly how many diamentions is in string theory? I've heard numbers ranging form 7 to 34.

scientists seem to recently settled on 11, or did last time i checked.

anyway back to the topic at hand.

the sims game is the kind of God that's plausible.

there are other types as well.

imagine that the internet was sentient. how would we prove or disprove this notion?

we are giving our computers all the knowledge about our selves. so perhaps this global internet network is also controling us without our being aware. for example, i remember one time seeing on the internet that it would be physically impossible for every prime up to 10^300 to be listed, there woudl not be enough spacial iformation. then i visited a prime site and saw such a list. the site is gone now. so yeah i think the internet might be sentient.

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I see everybody here have lost sight of the little red fox.

 

So, back to the topic at hand...

 

Imagine, if you will, that you're running a laptop with a copy of The Sims on it. A future copy, to be sure - call it The Sims 42, the 42nd installment of the game where the New! Improved! version actually simulates consciousness in your tiny little sims. Let's say you've been running this particular game now for a few months, and your sims have progressed to the point where they begin asking all sorts of awkward philosophical questions about their origins. What, in what you're doing from the outside, will have any detectable influence on the world your tiny sims see inside the game? Sure - you might press a button to send one of your sims off to the bathroom, but will the sim experience anything other than a sudden urge to go pee? If your sims decide to build a sort of a detector, what signals will they pick up from outside the laptop, that might prove their strange hypothesis that they are no more and no less than mere simulations?

 

I don't think anything at all. Because they don't exist in the same universe as you do. They are merely patterns in an electronic circuit, consisting out of nothing more than electrons flying all over the computer. And any electrons or whatever you, as the resident hypothetical 'god' in the equation might radiate into their world will only have a detectable effect on them if it creates a coherent change in the patterns that constitutes your sims. Which I think is wishful thinking at best. I do not know of the scientific efforts currently underway to detecting evidence towards such speculations that you mention in the OP, but it is interesting, nonetheless. And, of course, it holds logically true. Us being simulated playthings for a bored youngster somewhere on a laptop is much more believable and internally consistent than a big, bearded man in the sky, in any case. I just cannot conceive of any experiment that can test for it.

 

But, that being the case - if there's a young alien playing a game of uber-sim on his laptop that makes up what you, as an individual, experience as the world around you, is he the god in the equation, or the company that built the laptop? Or the company that wrote the game code? Can there be only one god? Or is a multitude required? Is the REAL GOD in this discussion not maybe the hired help who sees the computer running and pulls the cable out the wall so she can vacuum the room, thereby destroying seven billion humans in one fell swoop?

 

 

If you were in control of the program why couldn't you write "I AM THAT I AM" across the sky in stars?

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If you were in control of the program why couldn't you write "I AM THAT I AM" across the sky in stars?

I suppose there's nothing stopping you from doing just that. But, maybe a thousand of our years passes for every minute on the 'outside', and our resident 'god', the kid playing uberSims on his dad's laptop went for a pee break a few minutes ago - two thousand years, our time. And now the laptop is just running along, with the simulated world inside it going to hell in a handbasket. The thing is, I don't see any way of proving or disproving it, even though it is logically consistent.

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I suppose there's nothing stopping you from doing just that. But, maybe a thousand of our years passes for every minute on the 'outside', and our resident 'god', the kid playing uberSims on his dad's laptop went for a pee break a few minutes ago - two thousand years, our time. And now the laptop is just running along, with the simulated world inside it going to hell in a handbasket. The thing is, I don't see any way of proving or disproving it, even though it is logically consistent.

 

Which is my point in the matter. Might as well do this, :banghead: for it will get you the same result.

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