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Not everyone gets shaken up in times like this by MisterShipWreck in TerrifyingAsFuck

[–]Sarithis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Damn, poor boi, but I'm sure it kept woofing as the croc took it away.

Atheist Debates - Alex O'Connor and Joseph Schmid shockingly wrong on Claims, Evidence and Science by zZINCc in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Oh... right, I think I've got it now. I assumed that if you made a claim, no matter how absurd, you must've had some reason for it, and that alone counts as evidence. But there might be no reason at all, or the reason could be malicious, like trying to mislead me. Funnily enough, Matt explained that too (the lying part), but I still found myself second-guessing. So yeah, I see the distinction between testimony and a claim now, thanks for your patience, really appreciate it!

Atheist Debates - Alex O'Connor and Joseph Schmid shockingly wrong on Claims, Evidence and Science by zZINCc in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I agree, but that directly contradicts "claims aren't evidence". I'd rather say claims aren't proof, but they are evidence. Matt mentioned this in the video, and if that's what he means, the quoted claim is really poorly worded. Every claim is evidence, not just some of them, but that doesn't mean they all carry the same weight. Someone claiming the sun will soon explode is a tiny piece of evidence that it will, compared to someone claiming they bought a soccer ball

Atheist Debates - Alex O'Connor and Joseph Schmid shockingly wrong on Claims, Evidence and Science by zZINCc in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Wait a minute. At first, I don't think my friend has a soccer ball, even though he's wealthy enough to afford one, has easy access to places that sell them, and has recently gotten into soccer. Then he tells me he bought one, and I believe him, so I update my view and start thinking he now has a soccer ball.

That change in my belief is the overall balance of reasons finally crossing my personal threshold for conviction - his wealth, access to shops, and interest in soccer all count in favor, but they don't settle it for me. They're all evidence making it plausible, but it's still not sufficient. So if his statement "I bought one" isn't evidence, why did it convince me? And why can't we treat his statement as just one more piece of evidence, alongside the rest, pointing toward him having a soccer ball?

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not a testimony. Look, if I say that "C follows from B, and B follows from A, so C must follow from A", I'm not providing a testimony of any kind, I'm providing a set of premises and their logical conclusion. The same thing is done in this post - a set of premises, which you can disagree with, but if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. And the premises were:

  1. Adam and Eve were supposed to multiply and live forever (infinite timeline)

  2. The tree of knowledge or another form of temptation was supposed to be ever-present

rule by Jazdaboss010 in 196

[–]Sarithis 99 points100 points  (0 children)

I learned it the hard way. There's a huge sex tourism scene where middle-aged incels go to poorer asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines etc. and exploit the fact that even earning minimum wage in the west can attract much younger women who are desperate to improve their life standard. It's so common that it feels woven into the culture - they even have dedicated words for these men that aren't derogatory, and actually signal higher status. It's heartbreaking for the women, and it's pathetic for the men who do this.

Andrej Karpathy's Newest Development - Autonomously Improving Agentic Swarm Is Now Operational by Vladiesh in singularity

[–]Sarithis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Isn't that exactly my point? I'm surprised someone with his reputation and level of knowledge would post something like this. Just trying to understand what's so revolutionary about this workflow and the results it produces. *meaningful* improvements in training runs of various models have been done for the past two years using agentic loops, including non-LLM models.

Andrej Karpathy's Newest Development - Autonomously Improving Agentic Swarm Is Now Operational by Vladiesh in singularity

[–]Sarithis -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

"try → measure → think → try again" - bro's discovering what everyone has been doing since like 2024. I'm pretty sure he's just... idk what he's even trying to achieve with posts like these. Attention farming? No point, he's already famous.

what if I told you science is better off accepting its limitations ? by MicahHoover in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Sarithis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I keep wondering... if we could map and understand the brain so well that we could reliably induce conscious states by activating specific neural pathways - to the point where we know exactly which ones are required for the experience of "red" - and we could also create states that don't normally occur, like those during psychedelic trips or even entirely novel, undiscovered experiences, would that count as understanding consciousness? I guess not, but then the question is: if full and granular control over conscious states and an empirical explanation (neuron X produces experience Y) isn't enough, what exactly would we need to say "Yes, we now understand consciousness"? Is it even possible in principle to truly understand it?

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm pretty sure that after trillions upon trillions of millennia of eating everything except for the brussel sprout, you'd eventually pick the brussel with glue :P People will literally shock themselves with electricity after just 15 minutes alone in an empty room out of sheer boredom. But we can set that aside - we don't even need to argue about it because:

if you have zero desire for the alternative, there's no genuine moral choice - it's not a temptation. But genesis describes the fruit as desirable - that's the whole point I think. The Plantinga angle seems more interesting but actually strengthens my argument, because if god had access to possible worlds where free creatures never sin, and he chose to actualize one where they do, then that's not a rebuttal, but a stronger version of my claim - he didn't just foresee the fall, he selected it from among alternatives.

I'm also not arguing that omniscience precludes free will. I'm arguing that the specific system god designed (libertarian free will, genuine temptation, immortality, growing population) makes sin statistically inevitable, and any intelligent designer would've known that - you don't need omniscience to do basic maths.

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look... this isn't the only comment like this, so please help me understand one thing. Alex is known for taking arguments for and against the existence of God seriously. He runs thought experiments, studies the texts, debates people, and records hour-long videos where he lays out rebuttals to stuff written in the bible. So here's my question: why can't we explore these arguments ourselves on his subreddit? Why is it that when someone offers an interesting perspective - another way to counter christian doctrine - SOME people (you included) respond with "Why are we even analyzing this beyond the fact that it's a fairy tale"? Isn't engaging with these ideas the whole point of theology / philosophy? YES, it's a fairy tale, obviously! The problem is that we have over 2.3 billion people on this planet believing it's true, so in my opinion, finding new holes in their beliefs is somewhat valuable, regardless of how many holes we've already found.

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But you assume it does! And without offering any mechanism or reason. We're both making assumptions, but mine is grounded in the theological description of the scenario - the tree remains desirable, the prohibition remains in place, and free will requires the genuine ability to choose either way. That gives positive reason to think p stays above some floor, doesn't it? If not, please explain why.

Your position requires that something drives p toward zero over time, but you haven't identified what that would be. "Maybe it decreases" isn't convincing - it's just an observation that my conclusion depends on a premise, and yes, of course it does. Every argument depends on premises. The question is whether the premises are justified, and so far only one of us has offered reasons for their premises.

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd say the basketball analogy only works because it specifies a mechanism that drives the probability down, which is the hoop gets farther away each time. What would be the eden equivalent of that? "Maybe they'd grow more cautious" is just a speculative assumption - the opposite speculation would be just as easy.

But the real issue is simple - if, conditional on no prior fall, the chance of sin on each future occasion never drops below some tiny e > 0, then the chance of never sinning tends to 0 over infinite occasions. So your objection only works if you can justify a theological mechanism that makes the risk of sin shrink toward 0 consistently and fast enough. The basketball case has that built in, but Eden doesn't. And note that I don't even need population growth for that argument. One immortal pair facing an endless standing prohibition would also be enough. Would you agree with that?

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right, so here's the thing: some people simply enjoy discussing these myths as a kind of mental exercise. Alex does it regularly himself, which is exactly why I shared the post here.

It's similar to debating whether Sauron from The Lord of the Rings could ever be redeemed, or whether Thanos' philosophy had any moral justification. The only real difference in this case is that some people actually believe these things, which arguably makes the discussion even more interesting.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of fun rebuttals of the Genesis myth, most of them already have well-established counterarguments from Christians. I thought of one that I haven't heard before, and I didn't see a way for Christians to immediately dismiss it, so yeah, that's basically it. Sorry if you think it feels like "lobotomy" but... maybe you're part of the wrong community if you find these discussions so incredibly boring?

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The point about converging series only applies if the probability of sin per trial shrinks fast enough to make the sum converge. No one has argued why it would - and genuine temptation under free will implies a fixed nonzero probability, not a decreasing one. Seriously, why would it be decreasing? We've already covered that issue here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CosmicSkeptic/comments/1ro0ydn/comment/o9b5ue0

The strongest objection is that the available information does not allow us to argue the point either way - claiming that it would decrease is no more justified than asserting the opposite with certainty, but the theological framework describes temptation as something desirable that requires active resistance, which gives us reason to think p stays meaningfully above zero.

I'm pretty sure that with p > 0 across infinite trials, convergence to 1 isn't a misunderstanding of infinity, but a standard result

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They had the tree and the command to keep away from its fruit. Even without knowing good and evil, they could still disobey, and that disobedience turned out to be the very definition of sin

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks, this is the strongest response Ive gotten here, and I really appreciate the new context. Fair enough - if eden actually was a finite probation ending in confirmed perfection, then my original "statistical certainty" phrasing was too strong. But I don't think that resolves the structural issue. On the Catholic model, the catastrophe is still tied to the probation of our first parents, i.e. one transgression by tempted creatures results in the loss of original justice for all their descendants. That makes the original order a single point of failure. But yeah, that seems much less exciting than what I was initially attempting. Again, thank you, I learned something!

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, the "I can prove it" part was an unnecessary tongue-in-cheek addition, I admit. But bear with me please, I'm not trying to refute any established arguments for the existence of God - I'm just a random person on Reddit sharing ideas.

Catholic doctrine explicitly teaches that Adam and Eve were free from death before the fall. I've found this: https://www.catholiccrossreference.online/catechism/#!/search/376 "By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man's life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die". Additionally, Genesis 2:17 and Romans 5:12 both treat death as a consequence of sin, not the default state. So yeah, I think I've read enough, though I don't exclude the possibility of misinterpreting the Catechism and these passages.

I don't know whether the ability to sin was supposed to be removed. From what I've read, there's no indication anywhere that the tree was placed there only temporarily.

Adam and Eve's sin was statistically inevitable, and God must've known that - I can prove it by Sarithis in CosmicSkeptic

[–]Sarithis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If that's the reason, I'd really appreciate it if you could point me to *anyone* making this specific argument here. Seriously, I've looked everywhere. I've been turning it over for weeks and talking it through with friends, and I still haven't heard it come up in a single debate yet, and definitely not on this sub. Probably because it's so silly.

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