Quote from proletaria
Quote from Umpa
Who said Big Foot doesn't exist? I dono if I believe in Big Foot but I do believe in the Lock Ness monster. Why? There's evidence. However, evidence to me might not be evidence to you.
Belief has nothing to do with evidence, you're mincing terms again. Furthermore, you've got a diffirent definition of evidence than the rest of us. I have seen articles about loch ness being dredged, sonar'd, and drag netted for decades. If all we have to show for that are blurry (and some fake) photos and eye-witness accounts, I don't feel that qualifies as evidence. It is hear-say.
Quote from Umpa
Personally I like to think more like Dae here. It simply seems more likely that all of this was designed rather than randomly poofing into existence.
I've insisted several times now that "poofing," is not required, but if that's all you can come up with... I suppose I understand why you're making that decision.
Quote from Umpa
Let me pose a question to you:
You walk into a kitchen and see a cake has splattered all across the floor. Upon further analysis, you realize there are words spelled out from splattered cake, on the floor reading "I fell for you".
What is more likely; the cake fell with the perfect conditions to splatter in such a way that it spelled out those words? Or that someone came along, knocked over the cake, and proceeded to run their fingers through the cake on the floor, to spell out those words.
How is this analogous to the universe? What is it that you are claiming as evidence for a deliberate design insted of an evolved natrual explanation in the case of the universe. I would agree, in the case of the cake, you are describing human interaction with the cake, but I disagree that this is in any way analogous to the universe as we understand it today.
Quote from Umpa
What are the odds that my existence on this earth is completely by chance? Randomly, everything in the universe worked out so well that, by chance, I simply exist?
We don't know those odds. What we do know; however, is that nothing in the universe would exist as it does without the laws of physics being what they are. This is a zero-sum approach. We're either here or we are not. Evidently we are here and thus we know the universe is such that we can be here. We don't know how "well," it works because we have no point of comparison. There are no other universes we can see to tell us wether or not ours is fine-tuned for life or not.
Quote from Umpa
Out of all the billions of species on this planet, why is it that only humans were able to evolve to a point of removing ourselves from nature and effectively removing ourselves from anywhere but the top of the foodchain? Why is it just us?
Why is it just us? Because our brains evolved where other animals had not. You can study genetics and neurology to get a better grasp on what made the mammals and the apes diffirent. This isn't indicative of design, it is simply an expression of how evolution has turned out.
Quote from Umpa
Just got done reading about several near death experiences by blind people who are able to see during the period of death and recall details no blind person would ever know(There's a reasonable explanation, I know, I know!). The nde's are interesting. Dmt could be involved. But the recollection of detail is what gets me.
I'd love to read these, any chance at a link?
Backing up Proletaria:
Quote 1: There is no such evidence proving the existence of big foot or the lockness monster. Eye witness accounts and fake photographs do not count as evidence as these sources are not entirely accurate and divulge much information that affiliates with the term proof. First off - eye witness accounts differ, thus their is no reliability with them. Photographs are few in number resulting in loss of validity. Thus you have you 3 terms of what is evidence: accuracy, reliability and validity.
(BTW what does this have to do with the topic?)
Quote 2: If you research into quantum mechanics, specifically the applications of quantum chemistry and physics you will understand that atoms share certain forms of "attraction" with other specific atoms when certain amounts of energy accommodate for fusion between different elements, when subjugated between the weak and strong nuclear forces of differing nucleons. My point being that, our sun (stars being the producers of elements of the periodic table, heavier elements requiring higher temperatures), over the 4 billion years that the Earth has been around for, has provided its limited amount of energy to "excite" atoms in a way to produce the structure of our Earth and everything inside it, along with the exact specific amount of elements available from other stars within the universe. This means that this universe was not in fact randomly designed, but created with a set structure resulting from the laws of physics in reference to the Big Bang and the positioning of our solar system. It wasn't random, its known as a fond word scientists like to use called: coincidence.
Quote 3: WTF?
Quote 4: Refer to quote 2, also your existence in this universe is extremely likely due to the massive scale of the universe and what was said in quote 2.
1
Honestly, D3 feels a little aimless to me when I'm farming... I just wander around hoping to run into a random monster, and then I hope that monster drops a random yellow that rolls random stats that are better than the vastly more rare legendary items. Having a few fixed places to get decent drops, maybe not the best drops, but something decent, would at least give me a goal as I farm. I feel very "meh" about D3 right now.
1
Many kudos to you for approaching the topic in kind! I'm quite pleased to find both the level of discourse and the character of the participants to be mature, respectful, and open. D3 fans rock!
Here I was ready to jump on you for the assumption that being chosen to believe led your your choosing to believe, and then - lo and behold - you presented what I think is probably the most profound sentence of your entire post. That everyone is chosen to believe, but not everyone choses to do so.
However, I'm going to throw out two arguments (which are at odds with one another, but in the interest purely of exploring the choice of choosing, I present them both)
1) The old testament clearly states that the Hebrew tribe was chosen by God to be his people. The new testament will later say that this was God choosing to use them as the primary source for spreading His Good Word, and was not a choice that limited forever The Chosen to only be Jews and their descendants, but even in that case it means that no one else is truly chosen to believe until they have been told the Good Word. This would mean that, in fact, not all people are chosen to believe, because not all people have been told the Good Word of God.
2) God presents Himself as fact. No where in the bible does God every ask, tell, or command people to believe in Him. In fact, He is wholly presented as an entity the existence of which cannot be denied. Belief, then, is distilled down to merely knowledge of the existence of God. If you show someone an apple, and then ask if they believe in apples, would be a pretty silly thing to do. Likewise, once someone has been shown God, they can no more chose not to believe in Him than they can chose not to believe in apples. In this argument, it is impossible to choose not to believe once you have been chosen to do so (the assumption being that, in order to know you have been chosen to believe, God has presented himself to you such that you would understand the nature of your choosing).
While these two arguments are at odds with one another to some degree, the both lead to a similar conclusion: Some people are chosen to believe, but not everyone is. This leaves then, in God's plan, space for nonbelievers through no conscious act of the non-believing party. A very simple way to say this would be: It's okay with God if you don't believe in God. Corollary to this, I think most non-believers are perfectly fine with the existence of believers.
Thus, whether or not God exists, everyone should be perfectly happy and secure that God isn't going to get upset with either party, either because He does exist, but is okay with non-believers, or He doesn't exist, and isn't around to care either way.
I'm with you to a degree, but is there any reason you can think of why God would "move through" those boundaries rather than simultaneously existing in all places and times with no need to move at all? I've always imagined that - should a supernatural being of unlimited power exist - God would always be everywhere (and everywhen).
My understanding of the Garden of Eden would be that - prior to eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, all acts were performed in innocence and ignorance - neither good nor evil, and that - even after eating of the fruit, any act performed in innocence or ignorance would remain neither good nor evil. What changed in people was the knowledge of intent. We can - since eating the fruit - be good, or be evil. It was a blessing and a curse. The ability to act with moral intent is what we gained from that Tree. Similarly, one could view the punishment of being tossed out of the Garden as an interpretation of the result of knowing that moral acts existed: Adam and Eve simply could not abide a place where all acts were acts of naiveté, nor could such a place abide them.
I don't believe that the Paradise was a place of pure good. Clearly, there was a snake there whose actions were not "good." Rather, I believe that the Paradise was a place where creatures were unable to act with any desire to harm or benefit. It was a place of pure curiosity. I believe that the snake was curious as to what would happen if someone ate from the tree, but I do not believe that a snake such as that would be allowed in the Garden at all if the Garden was a place of pure Good.
Amen brother.
1
There's a fundamental philosophical exercise for proving that anything exists. The litmus test, if you will, is to turn the "Prove X exists" around on the person asking the initial question.
The classic example is "Prove that this chair exists." It's ostensibly a test of perceived reality vs. actual reality. The response that proves the existence of the chair, in the most simple and obvious fashion, is to ask "What chair?" The person who challenged with the initial proof is now stuck. They either have to say "That one" and admit that they truly believe that the chair exists within their perceived reality, even when the it is fully possible that the person whom they asked does not believe that any chair exists, OR the person who posed the initial question has to admit that they issued a proof challenge for something that they literally cannot perceive in any way.
The postulate offered by the OP, then, is explicitly "Prove to me that God exists."
So here's the philosophical challenge: "What God?"
I ask that, in the vein of the current discussion (which I really enjoy, by the way), please seriously consider your answer and try to specify what you're talking about before jumping to any statement of "I don't know what God is." There's more to this whole train of thought, but I need to know what you're really describing as the God you want us to prove before we move forward with the discussion from this philosophical direction.
5
Having worked for Activision some years ago, and being familiar with both that company and the standard practices of several others, I can say that this assessment is almost certainly true. In fact, to maximize sales in December, the game would have to be on shelves by the 20th (and probably by the 15th) of December. To do that, the game would need at *least* 30 days of physical production (that is, the gold master would have to lock on November 15th). To actually deliver a locked gold master on the 15th, the game would have to be in release candidacy for a minimum of 2 weeks prior (which is no time at all and only terrible, awful games give themselves that little time) - which would be Nov 1st. Realistically, the game would want to be in release candidacy for 6 weeks (with a planned delivery date of the gold master on Nov 1st with a two week buffer in case of major issues), so the actually RC1 date would likely be Sept 15. Which we can quite confidently say that we missed.
I think the hope was to have the closed beta start on Sept 1 and for there to be zero issues aside from network-stress related ones. However, it's quite clear by reading the official bug report forum (why isn't there an interactive in-engine database for bugs? Or at least a web-based one? Seriously - forums are the second worst way to report bugs next to snail mail. But I digress) that major gameplay design choices are still going on, never mind actual bugs with the game in a non-net-stress situation.
In light of the overwhelming publicly available evidence, the game has to be pushed. I can only imagine how bad things are behind closed doors. Re-tooling fundamental game play design at this point in the process is a terrible idea. They really couldn't tell that weapon-based spells vs. flat damage spells was going to be an obvious consideration? They couldn't have figured out prior to the closed beta that the DH could run out of both resources? No one in their internal QA bothered to mention the questionable artwork of the monk resource?
I give blizzard a lot more credit than that, and I think December was - given the state of the beta - a pipe dream all along. January still might be. My money right now is evenly split between a botched January release combined with 2 GB of patches on day 1, or a clean March release.
1
A close #2 is that I rolled a perfect Insight in an Eth CV. Almost 900 damage for my merc, with the level 17 aura. Mmmmm. People I show it to usually say "oh yeah, Insight is goo- woah. That's absurd." /grin