»Hmm...I'm so picky!«

Sorry I don't agree with you there. God, if he exists (which I think he does), is accesible through some religion (perhaps not all religion mind you).

What I meant with the maths thing is that mathematics is something different to the reality it is trying to describe and if there were no people there would be no mathematics. I think we are basically on the same page there.
Maths is different to religion, because maths can only explain uniformities and does so very well. Religion is the best way we have of explaining the mysteries of the universe which are very abstract in nature. The language which religions use (perhaps any use of language) does not always seem adequate for the description of the abstractions of God and the afterlife.

What I meant was that religious people have so many interpretations of the same thing that it will eventually get distorted and there will be variaus interpretations of the various interprestations, until religion becomes something seperate to what it set out to be. I dunno if one religion can ever be 'right', if people even have the capacity to understand what the universe was created by etc.

Are you saying that one of the existing religions got it right or that eventually a religion will get it right or something different? I dunno if we'll ever get it right, again, we mighn't have the intellectual capacity to understand it all. Especially if we keep fighting over it instead of banding together to try solve it(which I doubt will ever happen).

The maths thing I disagree with you, I think you misunderstood my original post, it mustn't have been as well written as you thought .

Humans are trying to understand maths through the use of numbers and symbols, 2+2 etc. The basic premise they're founded on won't change, it has always existed, just people never tried to understand it until whenever they first did, like physics, with is in alot of ways the same as maths. Newton's law of gravity was true before he came across it, it would exist without humans, without humans 2+2 will equal 4. Without humans, there would still be maths, in the sense that the equations will be the same, the numbers/words etc. might be different.

I agree with your last point, maths describes the physical world, religion the world outside of physics, unfortunately that world is so abstract and hard to explain that there's been the millions of interperatations of it and the vague/confusing language etc.

How can there be an equation without a person making it up? Pythagoras' Theorem cannot exist without Pythagoras (or someone like him).

well even if there was no Pythagoras or anyone like him... we would still eventually find out the Pythagoras' Theorem... its a simpel theory not too hard to understand

Yes but that isn't the point. What I am saying is:
Theories aren't floaty things that have existence in themselves.
Maths is made up of theories.
Therefore maths requires people to make up the theories.

Maths cannot exist without people.

lol everytime i reply to someones comment in a topic its usually
"Yes but thats not my point..."

Quote:

Especially if we keep fighting over it instead of banding together to try solve it(which I doubt will ever happen).

Yes. That's it exactly. And why is that? I mean, why are we still, after all this time fighting instead of banding together in the universal sense ... How embarassing that after all this time our generation, universally, still partakes of such an atavistic exercise - violence as a means to an end.


Let's face it, kicking butt feels great! Ripping our "enemy" to bits feels wonderful! No suck assess here! :evilredeyes

Not only do we love to be violent we all are violent. What a mess! As Chris Rock says in the movie Nurse Betty (and I'm paraphrasing) Killing somebody? It's the most natural thing in the world to do ( as an aside - check out what he says about bullets on the Bowling for Columbine video by M.Moore).


Well guess what? Neither violence or religion work. Violent behaviour is like the insane person who keeps repeating the same inane action over and over again waiting for the reaction to change - yet it never does. Why persist in a believing that understanding and unification can happen only through domination and that translates into attacking those who would attack us.

I guess, in our lifetime we have not yet learned to "turn the other cheek". or, in terms of the Matrix series - SUBMIT, LET GO, RELEASE -as Neo does in the end in order to have guess what.... peace ( a revolution). It is an alien concept at best. That is, best trashed, from our dominating position which sees the concept of "turn the other cheek" as a bullshit, are you out of your f*#@ing mind concept - I'm wanna make my day & your dead! BANG! BANG!

In our lifetime we will not see this unification. However, I guess we can thank the gods ( or God) for evolution. I like to think that human intelligence will evolve into our finding a solution for our violent tendencies because religion, which was an attempt at it has certainly failed for those who need it the most.

Perhaps where religion failed science can succeed.

d1 wrote:

Perhaps where religion failed science can succeed.

may be eclecticism will work. I believe that God is an abstract truth, a form of science. I hope that people in future will take the best out of all the religions and explain God through science. Thats why I'm "scientheist" ! (science + theism)

Someone once said

"Science is just the latest religion in that it refuses to explain it's self outside of it's own beleifs"

Religion: a way of explaining abstract things, often a guide for how to live one's life.

Anything can be religious.

Religion does not pertain ONLY to organized religion. I, personally, have come up with my own religion. Just my personal set of beliefs on how I should live my life, as well as a few ways to explain to myself those concepts that are too abstract or simply beyond my understanding.

Quote:

Damnit, Morpheus! Not everyone believes as you do.

Quote:

My beliefs do not require them to.

Never do...

Dweeb,

Does your belief system rule out violence? Or, does it include the GODLEN RULE ( an ages old maxim that doesn't work when it comes to violence and vengeance)?

Sorry I don't mean to single your out. It was an arbitrary choice but somewhat based on your response.

d1 wrote:

Perhaps where religion failed science can succeed.

hahaha...three words

huntingdon

life

sciences


look it up on the net and youll see that science has no chance of uniting mankind

The sites google is coming up with don't seem to work. Do you have a link that works? What is Huntingdon Life Sciences?

Huntingdon Life Sciences. Please warn me next time.

I know should be tougher about these things but they absolutely paralyze me with horror.

However, it leads to another interesting point I'd like to make about control.

Why is it that in the name of love, or advancement of the human species or a situation whereby we understand that we have reached a point where we have absolute power over a thing and their life, or emotion, finances, physical & mental health, our manifestation of the power is cruelty.

It happens all the time. Waiting for Godot by S.Beckett explores this phenomenon - I was going to say human phenomenon but Animatrix shows that AI did to us what we are doing to animals under the innocent auspices of advancing the human species.

I'm ashamed to be a human when I read about things like this. Very depressing.

Fatpie42 wrote:

How can there be an equation without a person making it up? Pythagoras' Theorem cannot exist without Pythagoras (or someone like him).

Yes, but his therom would still be true even if he never discovered it.


About violence, it's against human nature and psychology to be peaceful, when we feel threatened, we get violent, when we feel worthless, we try make someone else feel less than us. It is the way of things. I read an article in the paper today, it said, humans haven't changed since homo sapian or a bit beyond that, but now we are on the verge of genetic engineering, cloning, cyborgs, AI etc., it could be possible in a few decades to change the way we are, if that happened there may be peace. Hehe, yeah right, what human would choose to make us all more peaceful, he'd try to make us subordinate to him and someone else would try make that fella subordinate to him and the whole thing would be fucked up.

The various religions you say are all trying to 'work', no religion will work, nothing will ever work, humans aren't designed to 'work', we're designed to be contrary and difficult, nothing will ever change except the technology.

Here's the penultimate last thing I'm gonna say on this subject.

Maybe, our violent nature is nature's way of culling the species. How else are we going to stop growing in numbers? By appealing to our common sense? Seems the only really effective way is by perpetuating and refining the aggressive gene in us.

Yep, it appears to be working. Couple that with natural disaster & disease ( which we're getting pretty good at controlling), nature has HER ways.

fatpie...huntingdon life sciences is an animal testing laboratory here in Britain that has been the scene of extremely controvertial testing.this in turn has lead to the labs being raided by animal rights activist who have also killed one of the doctors who worked at the labs...

and for d1 a link

criminalprofiling.com...

this is a theory as to the continuance of violence in human behaviour...hope you like

That isn't the same one that was on the news recently that the government wanted to give support to is it?

Fatpie42 wrote:

That isn't the same one that was on the news recently that the government wanted to give support to is it?

no idea...i read this one after finding while doing research for my forensic psychobiology class...i thought it was very striking