Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: GotSteel
This is why I consider faith to be so fucking scary.
Funny, the underlying argument flies both ways.
Let's do the science bit here. Determinism holds at scales relevant to humans. Know the input, run the numbers, get the output. Once you're past the microscale events in the early history of the universe, the rest is essentially governed by deterministic things. Meaning, the story is written, and it plays out as written. It just happens to be written in a different way from what the dorks at WBC think. In the modern era, some RNGs are nondeterministic, so we're not able to see macroscale pertubations from that script, but that idea in turn relies on the entirely uncertain assumption that quantum level noise is actually nondeterministic. There really isn't anything to dictate that it needs to be. So, the only thing on firm grounds is that there's a pretty damn good chance the vast majority of our reality will follow a predetermined trajectory, for any and all human purposes. If we stick to the science, that is.
Which is where the whole thing factors itself out. If you believe in predestination, and are rational, then you must also believe that anything you think regarding predestination is just part of what you're predestined to think, as are the conclusions and actions that follow from this, and so forth. Hence, there is no reason to be concerned with it. Because it only matters if you're not governed by predestination, in which case the right thing is obviously to not be concerned with it, since it is in that case counterfactual. You end up with both possibilities being redundant information with no bearing on your life, and so you should make the assumption you're in charge of your own destiny, and act accordingly. If you're wrong, then however you think and act is already decided, so the act of making that assumption and being wrong about it was predestined and you didn't make a choice for yourself in the first place. It again becomes irrelevant to the outcome. You can waste time thinking about predestination in a non-deterministic universe, or you can run through whatever you're scripted to in a deterministic one (which may or may not include being scripted to waste time), or you can act freely in a non-deterministic universe without giving a shit about predestination. If it's your choice to make, there's just one choice that's rational: leave predestination out of the equation.
What one believes doesn't change this one iota.
Being an irrational moron is compatible with any faith, or lack thereof. I'm not scared by people who take the spaghetti monster too literally; I'm "scared" by people who are irrational and moronic (and it doesn't much matter to me what their preferred flavor of pasta is if they're bork'd to begin with).
If the WBC are right about being characters in a story, I think they're a pretty fucked up subplot that needs to go.
IWYW,
- Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: "The Face of Hate": Westboro Baptist - 
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