Do you believe in God?

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but you still did not tell me what they mean, so now you have lost your chance to tell me since i am no longer interested. all is well in the world otherwise.

OK

Meaning OK

good.

I believe in God. I believe that we are all created in God's image. I also believe that there's a heaven and a hell.

I have been offline for a while, busy searching information on the internet about eastern religions (because of those Alan Watts posts earlier on this thread). But still have some issues with eastern religion. Finally came on the wikipedia site about "emanation" and thought: it doesn't feel right.
Usually when I read a make a few remarks, I've come to this:

"The theology of Eastern civilizations is best demonstrated by the belief that God put us under hypnosis. They talk about everything like it is a thing of the mind, that we are deluded, and desire for regaining consciousness. This is not true. In reality, we find an individual refusing to God's will and he will be physically persuaded, challenged, shocked, etcetera, to make God's command effective."

You can believe it or not, but at least in Christianity everything is supposed to be real and not fake. According to Christianity, the suffering of Christ was real, not "just" a bad dream. I tend more for this western approach, must say, suffering is all too real, just as feelings of bliss.

Quote from above:
I also believe that there's a heaven and a hell.


Remarks I once wrote about belief in heaven or hell:

"Our feelings are sometimes put to the max (by Christianity). At some point they make you belief that we humans are so filled with injustice, that you will lose all hope of being redeemed, but rather should expect severe punishment. At another point they can make you belief that God's grace is open to everyone. So that, in the end, you have no idea what to belief: can I accept grace, or am I unworthy and shall not (for if I do, I would be merely stealing it, because I do not deserve it).
It is interesting to see what is the consequence of all this. These are two extremes: heaven and hell. And an individual has only a limited ability to tolerate extremes. When a person is too much or too long standing between two extremes, this leads to a mental imbalance. A simple example of this is the alternation of too low with too high pressures in a chamber. The rapidly varied pressure brings about a chaos wherein the individual will cannot act and where another will then can assume control.
This could lead to the conclusion that when you're long time between such extremes as heaven and hell, this leads further and further away from your own will and closer and closer to doing "God's will". And the final step: a state where you will find yourself immobilized, and fully and entirely in the hands of God."


dependant to whether you're a believer: the hands of God or the hands of priests/retorics

But it's not the religion that's fake, it's you and me. A personality is a false construction, it's illusory. Just like heaven and hell are illusory.

No. This is Deepak Chopra level nonsense. Quantum physics can and will function with or without observers.

Last edited by Deltaville on 01 Jun 2016, 6:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

When physicists like me refer to the notion of falsifiability, we refer to the paradigm of putting mathematical models and predictions into the realm of test and being able to determine if they correlate with the said mathematical predictions. Either a theory can be put to the test or not. You cannot 'falsify' a theory in 'principle.' Either it reflects the laws of nature, or simply put, it does not. There is only one kind of falsification. Period. The most basic and elementary compartment of the scientific axiom, is Popperian falsification. Period. Case closed. End of story.

Although I am a theistic and observant Catholic, God 'fails' falsifiability because he can neither be proven nor disproved. Likewise, the multiverse is unfalsifiable, because we cannot 'detect' or 'observe' any other universes than our own. Ask Jono on this forum, he is a Ph.D candidate in physics too, although I specialize in cosmology. If you do not believe in me, ask him.

Last edited by Deltaville on 01 Jun 2016, 7:00 am, edited 6 times in total.

There is no such thing as theoretical 'falsifiability'. Either you can falsify a theory or you cannot.

The closest testable multiverse hypothesis is Hugh Everett's Quantum many world interpretation or eternal inflation. The former will not refute the anthropic principle as the laws of physics remain the same, and it is only a speculative approach to the collapse of the wave function. Without a solid theory of quantum gravity, these theories, at least right now, are utterly useless.

If it make you happy, it is possible we could get a glimpse of string landscape theory with current particle accelerators by detecting something called supersymmetry. Essentially, there every particle has a virtual 'twin.'

But I work on quantum loop cosmology, not string theory. I think Jono may know more about string theory, and can answer your questions.

Not true.

Hilarious. Know anyone else who can backup your laughable claim?

Karl Popper. Since he invented the concept.

You could be right.
The purpose of my post was to describe heaven and hell from psychological point of view, not philosophical. I'm afraid I made the post quite long, cause I'm alergic to the word "hell", you cannot possible believe that anyone should burn forever.
Don't believe that anyone lives forever either so that solves the problem.

But I still believe in God and something divine in reality, how small it can be
And if there's no heaven or hell in modern times, also this new situation can bring about in an individual an implicit obedience to God's will.
Even in modern times you have a certain dichotomy. Perhaps not heaven versus hell. But another one, maybe even more radical. Hell in a modern sense is that we're confronted to bare physical existence, where nothing has meaning. And heaven is the meaning we are still looking for.
On the one hand this dichotomy can create a want and a search for "meaning", "Man does not live by bread alone",
while on the other hand our current world view can present the world as a place that will resist all efforts, so that you can go around and around without finding any meaning.
This can again, perhaps even more rapidly than in traditional religion, bring about a mental imbalance, wherein the individual cannot find a solution, cannot act, could develop a sense to redirect all his decisions to another will. No secular man would probably in this respect pronounce the name of God. But as long as God is the only final authority to turn to, his word will be the final word.

Final remark: if you're a believer in science: an element of incomprehension is still part of us humans and perhaps always will be. People can be committed to science, to multiverses etc.
But the world is inexplicably complex, and even though science proceeds forward, and it will, I believe the basis reality of this world will remain out of view of human understanding. So that even when humans can, in all of their literature and books, tests and experiments, get a lot of knowledge, they cannot free themselves from the "human condition", our state of dependance.

now I really quit. Sorry long post again

Last post reminds me of going from Romans 7 to Romans 8.
Can't be as eloquent as others so I'm not going to describe the feeling.

Sh'ma WP, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, WP, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

I changed the original Yisra'eil to WP.
I'm only sharing what I do. For instance if I was in NY I would change it to New York. Or at home to my family name etc.

Shalom
Zvi

I do not think you understand what scientists mean when we refer to Popperian falsifiability, and at this point, I seriously doubt that you ever will. Popper invented falsifiability in order to segregate untestable scientific hypothesis from testable hypothesis. There is no such thing as 'theoretical' falsifiability, there is only one falsifiability, driven by the fact that you can either test the hypothesis modeled by mathematical predictions or you cannot. It is that simple.