Are you religious?
11-03-2014, 01:23 AM
[This is a long post and I could probably write a small book on the subject. I don't discuss really any "evils" of religion, that's more to the story certainly. I'll deal with this on a purely mathematical level]
I have gone through many transformations in my thoughts and beliefs on religion, and have eventually come to certain clarity on one thing:
Religion is the final and biggest blue pill belief. I am saddened that some very smart people continue to believe in this stuff, or even behave as if it were consequential in any way.
The biggest reason religion works? FEAR.
As I have stated before, the correct belief [yes there is one, no matter how patronizing and ironic that sounds] is to be agnostic. We have no proof of the existence of God, and certainly all evidence points to the fact that God has never interfered in the Universe even if he does exist. I don't mean necessarily a Christian God or w/e here. I mean it in any sense of some "supernatural" being.
But what does "supernatural" mean? That which surpasses nature, that which contradicts it. What is Nature/natural? Nature is the set of laws that we have observed are ALWAYS, without any exception, followed in the Universe. It is better to not think of "things" and "objects" and "beings". These are all just different permutations, combinations, and interactions of certain elementary particles and fields. Nature is just allowable interactions of these particles and fields.
So if you are saying something is "supernatural", then it goes against the very basic laws of the universe. The laws, I repeat, that have NEVER failed. These laws in fact are immutable and inextricable from the very objects and events they describe. An event can not stand separate from the laws of the universe, because changing the law changes the event itself. Therefore a supernatural phenomenon can not actually exist! There is no such thing because anything that actually happens is a part of nature itself and thus the natural laws must be able to describe it with enough cleverness.
Now, we have come so far in our understanding of the Universe that we in fact have one single equation [a " Universal Lagrangian"] that can describes the entire Universe. An equation that fits on one line that can describe the universe at any point, at any time since a fraction of a second after the big bang. This one equation can be reduced to every single other equation of physics or chemistry you have ever heard of. One equation to rule them all.
What does that mean? That science and the scientific method are correct. If we can condense everything to one "equation of everything", then we know that we are consistently describing the Universe, and that it is indeed based on a consistent rule book. We know for certain that these rules are never interfered with.
Therefore any sort of prayer and religion has ZERO effect on the way the Universe will behave. Your religion will get you nowhere, and it is a bad use of your time.
So we know that no God interferes with the Universe - EVER. But can or does he exist?If we have a consistent equation for Universal behavior for all time, does that not prove that God in fact does not exist?
Well we do not know what happened for the first very tiny fraction after the big bang, right before inflation. Could the Big Bang have been the only active working of God? Since we do not know for sure, I will say it leaves a small unlikely window open for God's work. However we are coming ever closer to figuring out what happened here, and it is more of a problem of recreating high enough energy densities than anything. I wrote a paper on the proof needed to prove Inflation theory -> the SMOKING GUN FOR THE BIG BANG. Last March, that proof was collected by the Planck satellite. Every year we come closer to the truth.
So say God does exist. The where does he live? What is his body? The problem occurs that such a supernatural being would have to live in the Universe, and that would have to show up as data that violates the known laws of the universe. But God is not an observed entity. You might argue that just because you can not see him, that does not mean he does not exist. He works in mysterious ways. For starters, that is just a great rhetorical technique to keep unsure people in the dark. But even otherwise, the burden of proof is always on the person making the conjecture that something exists. The burden is not on the disprover. If you come to me with actual proof that god exists, and it baffles me how many people do not even know what real proof means, then I will believe you completely. I am just after the truth, I have no agenda.
To understand how you might think something Godly has happened, you must understand basic statistics. This is hard for people to fathom unless they have studied math, but I am wiling to elaborate if you request it.
The universe works on randomness. But WAIT! Didn't you just say it is all neat and explained by one law?
Yes. But the fundamental rules are governed by Quantum Mechanics, which is statistical in nature. The most basic law of the universe is not Gravity or Newton's second law. It is the 2nd law of Thermodynamics: Entropy must always increase.
Statistical and Thermal physics rules supreme. And this creates a lot of randomness. But even though Quantum mechanics is statistical in nature, it does not mean we are shooting arrows in the dark. It is in fact the most precise and exact science out there. This may seem paradoxical, but what it means is that our theories state that QM gives different "random" answers different times, but this randomness can be predicted over many trials. Any when we deal with our actions, that is trillions and trillions of Quantum interactions happening at once, so we need not worry about sample size. This gives you the FUNDAMENTAL RULE OF THE UNIVERSE:
RANDOMNESS IS AN INHERENT PART OF THE UNIVERSE!
This is the most difficult thing for people to understand. Randomness is built into the laws of nature. If you think about it, that should at first be terrifying to you. This is why people refuse to let go of religion. They are also afraid that if there is a God, small chance that it is, he is going to punish them for behaving badly. Now I'd rather have my kicks on a 99.9% bet than live like a weasel for a .1% chance. That is some pussy shit if I ever saw any.
The true red pill state is to embrace this randomness. "The future's uncertain and the end is always near" so "I don't know what's gonna happen man but I want to have my kicks before this whole shithouse goes up in flames"
Realize that all that is there in life is what is here and now and live accordingly. Or take that .1% chance, but realize that you still don;t know which religion is right, or even that the God who exists gives a DAMN about what you do. OR maybe God is real, but the afterlife, and souls, and reincarnation, a karma are not. Well then you're truly fucked.
You don't get there till you get there