Moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the museum’s Hayden Planetarium, put the odds at 50-50 that our entire existence is a program on someone else’s hard drive. “I think the likelihood may be very high,” he said…Somewhere out there could be a being whose intelligence is that much greater than our own. “We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence,” he said. “If that’s the case, it is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment.”
…http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/
Tyson’s comment “it is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment” compares well with a comment I made here:
Life is deadly serious to us and living things because it’s our life, but if God made them, they might not be much more to him than the toys characters in our video games or what Rube Goldberg machines are to us.
comment 113673 in Philosophy and Complexity of Rube Goldberg Machines
and newton’s response
Human suffering is just entertainment for this God of yours,Sal? Nice.
comment 113676 in Philosophy and Complexity of Rube Goldberg Machines
So, what Tyson says is comparable to what I’ve said about this universe being something that God constructs and destroys for his amusement and delight, not ours. The main difference is Tyson’s view of the “creator” is anti-Christian. Even though he might characterize the “creators” as a non-deity, they have an equivalent skill set as far as we are concerned.
Also from the same Scientific American article:
But some were more contemplative, saying the possibility raises some weighty spiritual questions. “If the simulation hypothesis is valid then we open the door to eternal life and resurrection and things that formally have been discussed in the realm of religion,” Gates suggested.
This is the ID theory akin to Hoyle and Tipler and Barrow.
Tipler outlined these same ideas decades ago in the book, Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology and the Resurrection of the Dead.
Tipler became an ID proponent of sorts as a consequence of his research.
Just understanding.
For some, that’s enough.
Glen Davidson
Stockholm Syndrome is a bitch.
Their Scientology folk songs weren’t as good.
Glen Davidson
Thanks. I think I get your position. But I have to say it would be considered insane if there weren’t so many others who join you. Your god is an incoherent god. Also, it seems an even more bleak worldview than the old Norse one; that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, but it sure must be sad to be you.
This seems more like blaming the victim than anything else. How could Adam sell the souls of all his descendants? And if God merely imposes an arbitrary condition as the price of getting that soul back, that’s just evil. Who am I to judge? Hey, somebody has to. If ordinary moral standards don’t apply to God, what good are they?
That’s some twisted reasoning. What God does would be considered evil if you did it, and the reason you don’t do evil is to symbolize how God isn’t evil to you, personally?
So if I pull out a gun and shoot you in the leg, it’s merciful because I could have shot you in the belly instead? Or does this reasoning only apply to God? Anyway, isn’t that cancerous child still going to hell as soon as the cancer is done with him? How is that merciful? It appears that I’m going to shoot you in the belly in another 10 minutes anyway.
Great for you, but why do you only care about yourself and not the multitudes who aren’t spared? I’m sure Eva Braun worshipped Hitler too, but it would seem to require some serious moral blindness to do so.
By “his enemies”, you mean all those children with cancer? And how can anyone possibly deserve eternal retribution? This is the most egregious case of the punishment failing to fit the crime that ever was. Anyone who admires that sort of evil has a big problem.
Again, why the complete lack of concern for those who don’t trust in Jesus Christ? “I’m all right, Jack” is a morally bankrupt philosophy.
Just lick the boot. I promise I’ll let you go then.
The apocalypse already took place. You even mentioned that fact in this post.
Not unexpected, coming from someone who aspired to make a living by gambling.
That is, taking advantage of the intellectually deficient and addicted.
Hmmm…well, if this is my new boss, it could be worse…
Change the subject to ID, and it still fits.
Glen Davidson
By the way, I have good news for you.
LOL – Touché! A hit, a very palpable hit.
Goodness gracious! I have to say that you sir, are indeed on a roll today!
Yeah, that conversion was disturbing. Chick Corea too, right? Based on the stuff he’s done the last couple of decades, I think Robin Williamson dropped that nonsense, but I don’t know for sure. His last couple of recordings on ECM are good.
I have a bunch of albums, but the only one I listen to is Hangman’s.
Yeah, but it didn’t seem to affect his music in a bad way. Return to Forever songs are full of Scientology references if you know how to find them, but Light as a Feather is still a classic.
I had never heard of them, so Googled a bit, and found the Scientology conversion interesting (to get off of drugs, I think). Just going off of some site’s list, Williamson and the rest were “out” of Scientology, except for “Licorice,” who disappeared, and “Sue” somebody who was probably still in it.
Sometimes one needs to get over the dependency used to counter drug dependency. Many don’t.
Glen Davidson
If your Christian god is as malevolent and cruel as you expect, why would you even believe it’s promises about heaven and hell? It would be perfectly in line with an evil trickster such as that God you worship to have one spend a lifetime of devotion and obedience to it, only to be thrown into the pit of fire at the end as the butt of the ultimate cruel joke.
What you seem to be involved in is not worship, merely masochism.
A truly cruel god would send atheists to heaven.
How about reality? Enjoy your life, be the best person you can be, and when it’s over, say “it’s over”.
to spend eternity with Ken ham and Sal.
Twilight Zone did something like that.
Considering the expectations of heaven I’ve seen from some of you folk, I would actually agree with you here.
Talking Heads, “Heaven.”
Who knows, maybe nothing could be wonderful.
There, we might be presuppositionalists each and all, marveling at its exquisite circularity.
Glen Davidson
Interesting, thanks. I don’t remember a Sue, but Licorice was an inessential back-up vocalist/tamborine shaker/muse type. The “band” was basically Williamson and Heron (who were both all kinds of awesome both at composition and at playing a ton of instruments). A friend of mine used to plagiarize their lyrics in a Yale poetry class very successfully (back when that sort of thing was harder to detect.)
Their cult was kind of amazing. Very flower childy, barefoot and robes, extremely long hair, orgies, psychedelia, folklore, exotic brogues, etc. Kind of like Alice in Wonderland meets Vedanta. Scientology seemed pretty incongruous–though equally fantastic.
My personal favorite, along with The Minotaur.
petrushka,
Back when I occasionally played at coffee houses, I used to do one with the opening line “I hear the Emperor of China used to wear iron shoes with ease”. I think it was called “The New Moon is Rising” or something like that.
Somebody – petrushka? – already mentioned A Very Cellular Song, which ends with Heron’s famous
But more appropriate for this thread is the middle of that same song:
Evolution by drift in action, at least as seen through tripping hippy eyes.
Not as appropriate for a wedding, however.
I think it’s remarkable that someone could sit down and write an Irish blessing that sounds like it’s thousands of years old.
The sentiment sounds more Quaker than Scientological.
🙂 🙂
Bwahaha — Evolutionnews echoes my point, but I beat them to it by 3 days.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/04/neil_degrasse_t_1102801.html
I have a couple of their albums in vinyl, although have never listened to them. They belonged to my wife’s sister, and were originals from the late ’60s/early ’70s. Probably not in very good condition.
Unfortunately Darwin’s concept remains untestable and untestable concepts do not add anything to our understanding.
You should listen to them, RB, especially if one of them is called ‘5000 Spirits or the Laryers of the Onion.’
*Layers. [No edit button]
walto,
Side 1 of the album is in good condition here, youtube link and Side 2 is also available.
Not my favorite, but happy to help.
Mung,
Instead of torturing them for eternity for taking a particular position on a proposition? What a bastard.
It does put an interesting spin on ‘discussion’ when one realises one’s interlocutor thinks that if they accept your position they stand a good chance of being tortured for all eternity. No wonder it’s hard to get through!
I don’t think it’s fear of hell so much as fear of dying. It’s all in DeLillo’s White Noise . And I mean, that IS scary.
walto,
Well, I’m with ’em on that. But at least some cute little kid gets my place.