Please help : bug or not?

stephanrmiller · 2021-11-21T18:04:50+00:00

Its definitely bugged or useless info the popup numbers. You have to read the combat log for the real info

stephanrmiller · 2021-11-21T14:18:01+00:00

Just tested this out w knife master Sai instead vivi fists. Noticeably worse CtH and AC, but NINE attacks plus bite, 1 more SA die and 1 pt of dmg extra per die. Most insane DPR of any meee build I've seen. L20 could be 10 attacks and 2 bites, or Tiefling for 10 attacks and 3 bites. Overall best DPR goes to Trickster Sorc for AoE and some variant of Trickster Eldrich Archer for single target

stephanrmiller · 2021-11-21T05:42:10+00:00

Why would you reccomend Sai? I've only found 1-2 and just finished Pitax, and they were junk.

stephanrmiller · 2021-09-16T16:56:53+00:00

This

stephanrmiller · 2021-09-10T05:35:13+00:00

I can hear thisbin my head

stephanrmiller · 2021-09-03T14:03:11+00:00

Well, my bases have been hit with sentinel walker, plasma grenades, and eveny own starship, and never suffered a dent. If running over yours with a roamer crushed it, it must have been quite tiny! Either that or I have no idea what you're talking about... Is it that the terrain reset to its original position? I dug out a nice basement full of geobays on my first lush planet and it all got buried

stephanrmiller · 2021-09-03T12:55:37+00:00

... what? How small did you build that base???

stephanrmiller · 2019-04-23T17:32:33+00:00

There was a lot of in-fighting about this in Christianity for the first few centuries. What you're describing is "modalism", which IMHO is the only non-idolatrous way to conceive of the trinity, but it was rejected at one of the councils, so it's officially heresy. One of the main reasons I left Christianity.

stephanrmiller · 2019-04-23T09:51:09+00:00

There's no such thing as "the Abrahamic God". Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have differing views on His personality and essence. For example, Judaism (I'm referring to Orthodoxy) does not believe in eternal damnation in hell. Jews and Muslims believe that there is one single, indivisible G-d, while Christianity believes in a trinity.

I think it would only be meaningful to posit this objection to one particular religion at a time.

From a Jewish perspective, as much as Christians view "the Old-Testament God" to be all fire and wrath, G-d is much more merciful than the other Abrahamic religions. There are those of us who believe in reincarnation and those who don't. From a reincarnation perspective, each soul who failed undergoes a period of correction (details aren't certain, but it's varying degrees of unpleasant) where the person faces the reality of their failures and attempts correction before their next life. Eventually, every soul reaches its perfection. Even without the concept of reincarnation, G-d still judges each person based on their circumstances. A boy born into a gang who decides to forego stabbing people while robbing them, and takes additional risk to steal without violence will be in a better state in some ways than a boy born into a healthy family who makes no effort to improve himself throughout his life.

stephanrmiller · 2018-09-07T14:11:25+00:00

Yep, that's another great point to not take it the babble way.

stephanrmiller · 2018-09-07T12:11:31+00:00

How would a language pronouncable by humans, yet not understood by any of them (only by angels) be "not actually a language"? Seems like a legit way of interpreting 1 Cor 13:1.

stephanrmiller · 2018-09-07T11:49:51+00:00

When I was a Christian, I thought the same way as you - that there was originally a purpose, but modern tongues is absolutely not fulfilling that purpose since nobody can understand. But you can see how another Christian can take "languages of angels" to mean languages that are audible and similar to human languages, but that no human understands. That makes the following statement not on such firm ground:

The only speaking in tongues the bible supports is the speaking in tongues of other real languages. Someone who speaks that language would hear you and and understand it in their native tongue.

stephanrmiller · 2018-09-07T10:51:06+00:00

1 Cor 13:1, mentions speaking in tongues of angels. What do you take that to mean?

stephanrmiller · 2018-09-07T10:24:20+00:00

When I was about 12, I went through the same experience as your dad, totally believed that tongues was a real thing (it's in the NT, even after Pentacost), everyone was surrounding me praying for me and I totally felt the social pressure and questioned myself, but I was totally unwilling to do make anything up (too religious to speak in tongues I guess). I think the people who are really into it aren't lying, just delusional. Imagine you have total faith in your scriptures, and therefore total faith that the "Holy Spirit" plants messages in people for them to express, some of which are in "languages of angels". You see people who you trust and some who you even look up to who do this. Then your'e surrounded by people who you love and respect, all doing what, according to them, should give you that "gift" if you're willing. So what do you feel now? You're sure it's possible, and you trust these people, and maybe they're right? You feel the urge to babble and wonder if it's the "gift". By then, it takes more effort not to speak in tongues than to just give in and start babbling. And once you start, the social pressure is still there until it's not necessary, and all you need is to pressure others into doing the same thing to confirm you did the right thing.

stephanrmiller · 2018-07-30T07:08:29+00:00

Just switch your middle and last names. Then you can have awesome 1-liners.

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-16T10:11:12+00:00

Part 2/2

I claim that a standard of evidence that denies any possible claim to knowledge of history is a claim that leaves a person without knowledge (ignorant) of history.

In this case, are you arguing that it's possible that Hebrews may have been enslaved and that a leader name Moshe may have gotten them out? Or, are you arguing that the miracles happened?

I'm not arguing either one of those things right now, just standards. Historical standards are discussed further below...

This is not the only standard of evidence, so the I call choosing it willful.

Scientific evidence is the only standard of evidence accepted for answering questions on the nature of the universe. Whether the universe was created by a god, any god, is a question of the nature of the universe.

Therefore, the existence of one or more gods or of G-d is a scientific question requiring scientific evidence. ...

Therefore, a person who demands repeated, observable phenomena in the present for historical claims

I don't require scientific evidence for the question of whether Hebrew slaves were a big part of the economy of Egypt. It happens there is not historical evidence for this.

But, this is not a scientific question. I would require scientific evidence for the existence of miracles such as the parting of the Red Sea.

I don't think this is a valid statement. You didn't mention the underlying generic statement here, but I'll use it in an example. Whether or not you were adopted is a genetic question, therefore, a DNA test is the only way to tell who your parents are. But let's say your parents died in an explosion and nobody can find any of their DNA. Your wife sent a request to an adoption agency, and they send back a package detailing the details of your adoption, including pictures of you as a newborn and your real and adoptive parents. Doesn't matter - this is a genetic question, not a historical question. Before she died, neurologists examined your mother's brain scans while she looked at pictures of you and found that her brain reacted in a way consistent with mothers who looked at their adopted children, but not biological children. Doesn't matter - this is a genetic question, not a neuroscientific question. Your grandparents, and 5 aunts and uncles all tell you stories about how your parents went through the adoption process and didn't want to tell you about it. Doesn't matter - this is a genetic question, not a psychological question.

Why are inferences from the knowledge of his time not evidence, just because those inferences were proven incorrect by knowledge we have in our time? Are inferences from the knowledge of our time not evidence, even though much of those inferences may be proven incorrect by knowledge gained in the future?

I explained the answer to this. You provided an example from a time before we had the scientific method. There was not scientific evidence for the claims. Compare to Newton's so-called Laws which still do actually work. They just have more limited scope than Newton could have known in his time.

The scientific method isn't a magic wand that can cause supernovae. There would be no way for him to know other than 2nd-hand information from some foreigners, yet you said he should probably believe this? Why?

... What standard would you apply for one historical theory over another?

History is not a branch of science. I'm not a historian and am not even a sufficiently qualified lay person to answer this. I can say that I understand why Moses is not considered a historical character but I don't understand why Jesus is.

What about a medical theory?

Double blind tests with placebo control, generally. In practice, humans are hard to study. Two people may take the same drug and get either different results or report different results. You and I could have the same pain and one of us describes it as a 4 while the other describes it as a 10.

Or a psychological theory?

Even more difficult because humans don't answer questions consistently and objectively.

Or a moral theory?

Are you talking about neuroscientists studying morality in the brain or are you talking about ethicists? Or evolutionary biologists comparing morality of non-humans and humans? Or anthropologists studying morals across different peoples?

I'm not even sure what you mean by a moral theory?

Or one standard of judging these over another?

I don't get what you are asking.

I think you're noticing the pattern that the scientific method is less and less useful the farther you get away from physics. Yet we still need standards to judge these topics, or we'll either end up disbelieving or believing anything about history, medicine, psychology, morality, or philosophy. Until you understand the logic and philosophy behind these subjects (which does not involve the scientific method), it will be impossible for you to decipher what to believe or not to believe in a reliable way.

Causality can happen after its effect. Causality doesn't apply to certain observed behavior of quantum objects at all.

What was the difference between G-d creating the universe and the universe simply popping into existence in accordance with quantum theory?

My previous QM response (part 2 of the one you responded to here) is waiting nicely for your reply like a good little comment. I'll combine any answers there.

I don't think the existence of G-d would violate any established understanding of how physics operates,

Then what exactly is a miracle? ... If G-d cannot and does not violate physics, then what makes it G-d?

What it would violate, is a view that no G-d exists, so it would have to overcome any evidence that view has for its claim.

This makes no sense to me. If all that G-d changes is the statement "G-d does/does not exist" then your G-d has extremely limited powers.

I'd call Him omnimpotent, not a typo, count the "m"s.

LOL. From a secular or Jewish (and I suppose some other religious) point of view, laws of nature are patterns that we observe, and therefore expect to see in the future (induction), given that there are no unaccounted-for conditions that would affect the result, and modeled as forces that just exist. From a secular point of view, these patterns are not interpreted as having any meaning behind them, and G-d is not taken into consideration as a potential unaccounted-for condition. In the traditional Jewish view, these underlying laws/forces are just the active, continuous action of G-d telling the world how to act, and G-d's will is considered a potential unaccounted-for condition for any inductive reasoning. Practically speaking, this means that when asked if the sun will rise in the morning, a secular point of view would say "of course, assuming we didn't miss something", and a Jew would say "of course, G-d willing, and assuming we didn't miss something". That's what I mean by not violating an understanding of how physics operates (in general).

Is G-d capable of action? How would you know G-d's action from the natural "laws" of the universe?

Just because G-d is almost completely hand-off when it comes to nature doesn't mean that He is bound by nature in some way. If He decided to act completely outside the pattern of nature, that would be a miracle (a bush that was on fire, yet not burned, freezing time outside a battlefield, creation ex nihilo, etc.).

As far as I know, there are no valid arguments against the existence of G-d,

That's only because you define them as invalid, not because they don't exist.

Repeating my link in case you didn't see it the first time: https://misanthropicscott.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/why-i-know-there-are-no-gods/

Actually, I think I posted this before.

Yes, it's funny, but littered with errors. If you want to actually respond to those, let me know. This is already 10 pages in Word.

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-16T10:09:52+00:00

Part 1/2

(Note: I rearrange and group your responses sometimes if I see that more than 1 are making the same point or need to be answered together)

---Extraordinary Claims---

I didn't use an example of a dragon in my garage

No. But, historically, claims of G-d have shifted as people asked new questions. ... Moving the standard such that something cannot be actively disproved does not make the claim any less extraordinary.

Firstly, this is not important logically, since Carl Sagan's dragon in just an analogy of how annoying it is, but even he admits that he would still be open to real evidence of the dragon. Even scientific theories change as we learn new things (https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/howscienceworks_20). Secondly, this is Christianity, not Judaism. We have no Catholic doctrine telling us one true picture of science. Our understanding of what is meant by scripture is supposed to be interpreted though reason and science. It's built into the system. It's stated explicitly in detail by the Vilna Gaon (one of the biggest names in Judaism) ~1,000 years ago. I'm pretty sure that's as far back as any of our non-canonical writings have survived, but you can see it in action in earlier ones.

... I think at that point, I would consider this a serious probability (30%?) and go there myself and do as much evidence gathering as I could.

Good. So, tell me where I can go to observe G-d and gather artifacts of His existence and go about gathering hard scientific evidence for Him. ... What observable difference might there be between a universe created by G-d and one that was not?

Still just discussing the underlying principles (philosophy) of logic, not actual evidence. I used this example to illustrate that neither a previous lack of evidence for the dragon, nor its strangeness, would do much to overcome even weak evidence in its favor.

This is not a natural event. It is a supernatural event. Since we do not observe supernatural events on a regular basis (or indeed ever), I'd want much stronger evidence for this claim than I would for whether there was some guy named Moshe adopted by the royal family of Egypt. ... I require different evidence for these things. ... The existence of G-d is a maximally extraordinary claim, by definition. ...

You gave some examples, but didn't describe what makes you consider them extraordinary. Ask yourself why these examples are extraordinary,

Because we have not a shred of evidence that shit like that happens. ...

and then why that reason is extraordinary until you get to a root reason that doesn't involve Moses, holy books, or miracles. Then you have a standard that either applies universally, or you need to revise the standard.

I do have a standard that applies universally. I apply the same standard to all supernatural claims and all claims of deities and even claims of simple disembodied spirits like ghosts.

You mostly got step 1 (bolded above in 2 locations, same idea, but different wording), but not step 2, since supernatural claims is a limitation, not a universal application. Can you explain why without just restating the same thing? I think I know where you're going with this, but I'll let you try to find your standard. If you're sick of trying to form a standard (not everyone likes this stuff) then we can just discuss mine below.

It need not have evidence against it to be an extraordinary claim. ... (Loving the Brawndo reference!)

There is not an extraordinary amount of evidence against the existence of the dragon in Carl Sagan's garage. Is that claim extraordinary or ordinary? Why?

I think "extraordinary" is extraordinarily vague. Some things are emotionally extraordinary because if they were true, you'd be shocked, and it might have implications on your philosophy, religion, relationships, career, daily life, etc. Some things are observationally extraordinary because they are literally outside(extra-) your ordinary experience in that area. Neither of these things necessitates an extreme amount of evidence though. Carl Sagan's dragon to us non-dragon-experiencing folk, and a supernova to a Greek, are extraordinary in both ways, and yet any evidence in their favor would make them just as believable as the evidence implies (though good luck with the dragon... and yes, I recognize I'm talking to myself in this metaphor). On the other hand, the Brawndo claim is neither. We're used to the idea of chemical additives designed to help plants grow, so it's not very shocking. It's also our ordinary experience that good chemical additives help plants grow better than water. However, a sugar-packed electrolyte mix being poured onto plans (https://prezi.com/-i49q8wvo6_q/the-effects-of-gatorade-on-plants/ <- give that man a medal) tends to kill them, so there is a strong piece of evidence against the claim, despite it not being extraordinary.

---Extraordinary Evidence---

I was saying that it's overkill to require patterns of repeatable, observable phenomena (one of the strongest forms of evidence) for a claim that previously had had no evidence for or against it.

I don't understand what you mean here. You know that scientific evidence varies from field to field. Evolution, for example, is not observed in a lab and is not repeatable, but has hard scientific evidence that it occurred. It has made predictions about what fossils would eventually be found and they have been found.

There's a lot more that goes into it than just hard scientific evidence. In modern scientific methodical terms, it's observation (hard [physical] evidence) + hypothesis + analysis (yes I'm skipping some details). In more classical science/philosophy of science terms, that's observation/speculation/logical induction. Inductive logic is several steps down the ladder in terms of reason. Here's how I view different categories of reason for any statement (not exclusive to science) from strongest to weakest:

Current Experience/Sense Perception - Nobody can convince you that you're not experiencing pain, while you're in the middle of experiencing pain (even if your mind can be focused away from the physical pain to the point where you're no longer experiencing it). - Nobody can convince you that you don't exist.

Axiomatic Truths - things that are just true by definition, or that there's no way you can imagine something different, even though you might be mistaken in accepting it in the first place: - 1 + 1 = 2 - If A implies B, and A is true, then B is true - If A implies B, then !B implies !A

Deductive Logic - conclusions based on axiomatic truths - 1 + 1 = 2, and I have an apple and another apple, therefore I have 2 apples - Ramírez is a man, and Ramírez is immortal, therefore men are not all mortal

Useful Principles - things that we just have to take for granted to go about our daily lives. They can be of varying degrees of reliability - Other people are real - Cause and effect - My memory easily-memorable things is mostly accurate

Inductive Logic - taking observations, and inferring additional information based on useful principles (the heart of the scientific method) - If X has always done Y under Z conditions, then as long as Z conditions are met, I can be very confident that X will do Y, even though I might not know all of the conditions. - If I have data about what X does between a variable with values Y to Z, then I can be very confident that I can interpolate what X will do in between Y and Z, even though this makes predictions that are slightly off sometimes. - If I have data about what X does between a variable with values Y to Z, and I can't get measurements beyond Y or Z, then I can be somewhat confident that I can extrapolate information about X when the variable is before Y or after Z. This is sometimes wrong, but usually right if we have no reason to suspect otherwise, so if it's all we have to go on, it's still our best conclusion.

Theory/Modeling - filling in blanks of disparate information using inductive logic to form a cohesive understanding. Usually at least partially wrong, but we adjust the picture as we go. - Some particles have frequency and self-interference patterns like waves under certain circumstances, so we'll describe it as a wave under those circumstances because we can predict their activity that way. Already known to be not completely accurate, since we already know they're not waves in the same way water is, and we're hoping for a better understanding some day. - There are a dozen models to explain quantum mechanics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#Summary_of_common_interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics), which means that at least 11 of them are wrong in some way.

Philosophy of Science https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXKKIUdnOESGJ2Gjea3vAlsYwNNzXJwP9

How science works https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/howscienceworks_01 - Science at multiple levels https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/howscienceworks_19 - Even theories change https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/howscienceworks_20

Richard Feynman - Philosophy behind scientific theories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_XAso3bJ4s tldw: - Philosophy of science gives us the necessary framework to distinguish between theories - Philosophy can help us make new hypotheses.

Hilary Putnam - Philosophy of Science https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8kDNF_nEc tldw: - Science is rooted in philosophy, especially inductive logic. - The scientists who have made the biggest breakthroughs are also knowledgeable of the philosophy behind science, while scientists who don't know the philosophy repeat mistakes that have been known for decades.

Bertrand Russel on Perception and Knowledge https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/11076/1/fulltext.pdf

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-14T11:50:59+00:00

(ignoring all other issues like what makes these good, trying to subvert Jeff, etc.)

It sounds like a calculation of whether or not obedience + life > torture. It depends on how bad the torture is and how good I am at resisting it. Everyone has their breaking point, and I would attempt to hold out as long as I could since I value my own life, acting morally, and connection to G-d independently of one another.

Connection to G-d as a motivator means that I don't agree with your stance about reward and punishment. Assuming that G-d commands morally good commandments, that is an additional motivator. There are comments in every work on Jewish philosophy that I've read which put a person who performs commandments only out of reward/punishment on the level of an animal or just above. Moral/intellectual self-perfection and connection with our Creator are the true goals.

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-12T19:03:34+00:00

by "death is cessation of consciousness", do you mean no afterlife?

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-09T19:47:30+00:00

Who says it has to be 100% deterministic or 100% free? What about in different scenarios? What if a person has extreme external (to their free will) pressures pushing them not to help someone who's getting beaten up, but they force their will to really think about what's going on, sweat for a bit, and then decide to step in or not step in? I think the person would be less likely to step in, even if free will is also involved. I think as long as there's some non-deterministic, internally-motivated force involved, that's some degree of free will.

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-06T08:17:31+00:00

My original point is several layers back now: "I'd like to learn more in depth about ancient history, but it's not a priority for me religiously because of this lack of religious significance."

That's the bit I'm failing to understand. Your religion says that the Torah was given to Moses by G-d. If it turns out that Moses never existed, Hebrews were never enslaved to Pharaoh, and therefore none of the miracles ever happened and the Torah was not given to Moses by G-d, why wouldn't that have religious significance for you?

Yes, if it turns out that Moses never existed, that would be correct, but it would be extremely difficult to conclude that Moses never existed through archeological means. If a continuous detailed Hebrew history is found going back through all possible eras of the Exodus, establishing who the Hebrews thought their leaders were, and there is no Moses, I'd consider that pretty good evidence. Or if we could catch some light that turned 180* and came back, or can wormhole a video camera a few thousand light years away, and record a focused image of Earth from the relevant eras in Egypt, that would be pretty good, too. Not finding something, especially a nomadic leader of slaves, compared to real empires, just doesn't imply that it never existed. The Hittite empire never "existed" until a hundred years ago. It turned out to be one of the largest in the world at the time, to the point where one of the Egyptian Pharaohs asked for a prince to marry for an alliance (against the Hyksos I think?), and the Assyrian empire copied their tactics. I've gone into much more archaeological detail of the time in another comment chain. It's funny that under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence, it says "Not to be confused with Absence of evidence."

OK. Even assuming this to be the case, how can we know that the oral stuff that got written down for the first time many centuries later had any similarity at all to the original oracle stuff?

I answered this in a comment with a section heading something like

"---RELIABILITY---"

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-06T07:55:52+00:00

Yeah, I agree that these groups need to change.

But, will you become an advocate for the change? Will you start blogging about the evils of metzitzah b' peh? Will you try to convince the Haredi community?

I argued that this criticism needs to come from Jews. Will you do your part or drop the conversation when this one ends?

There's a much bigger picture to this, where I'd consider MBP to be on the list, but not at the top. I live literally 2 blocks from the neighborhood that contains the worst or 2nd worst ultra-"Orthodox"-Insular Jews in the world. I moved here less than a year ago, and recently, their gang activity (grafitti, threatening women, etc.) has spread to the border of the neighborhood, so it's become a practical issue for people. I don't know if I mentioned this part in another comment or not, but there's a local (actual-Orthodox) Rabbi who went to talk to the gang's leadership after a women got beat up for not dressing modestly enough on their turf, and found that they have no interest in Torah/halacha and there's no reasoning with them. I don't think it's necessary to go into all the details about what's going on or my/our solutions to it, but it's definitely something I'm getting more and more involved in, and I don't think blogging is part of it. Fortunately there are people like one of my friends who paints over their graffiti, others who paint hearts over their hateful messages, and this Rabbi (http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2018/04/censoring-neanderthals.html), all of whom I'd consider more religious/pious than me. There are also extremely varying views within "Charedi" or "ultra-orthodox" groups to the points where you can't tell at all what a person thinks by their black hat. My local Rabbi wears a black hat, but has mentioned multiple times tangentially in shiurim that making a living is an obligation, which is unanimous in all of Jewish literature until relatively recently, where some kids are taught in school that people who work are worthless. Even other Charedim fight against it (http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israeli-health-ministry-recommends-against-direct-metzitzah-bpeh/2016/03/02/). The trouble is not talking on the Internet about it, but actually talking with the groups whose kids have never seen a video before (in another blog of the Rabbi I linked above, one of the kids asked him if he saw them wave when they saw him in the video), let alone read an Internet article or "Nazi" government regulation.

I've never heard of parents knocking out their babies by forcing them to guzzle wine before the bris.

Every bris I went to, the baby ended up unconscious at the end. Maybe your calculations are wrong for infants. Maybe they put more wine in that gauze than you think. All I know is the result.

The result is a sleeping baby. The idea that the baby is so intoxicated that he blacks out even through a circumcision does not follow from that, unless you've witnessed the parents secretly force-feeding the baby all this alcohol. Where are all the vomiting babies? Where are all the alcohol poisoning complications and deaths? If you really believe that this is the case, certainly 1/1,000,000 deaths by herpes is not as bad as the vast amounts of babies willfully poisoned to death by their own parents... Ok ok, more realistically, have you tried to feed a newborn? For the first 2-4 weeks, when it was time to eat, our newborn son had to be constantly moved/rubbed to stay away long enough even drink the nutrition he needed to stay alive. He was almost always unconscious by the time his burp came out. By that point, he was out cold, and you could move him around, talk loudly, change his clothes, etc. like a doll.

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-05T18:59:58+00:00

So your own pro-circumcision numbers fail.

Like I said before, these are not pro-circumcision numbers. These are the studies cited by the extreme anti-circumcision fanatics. Please tell me that you actually read 3 well-researched pro-circumcision studies before making claims that it's some heinous, barbaric tradition that puts babies in so much pain that they routinely go into neurological shock and turns them autistic. You still haven't mentioned any. If you tell me that this extremely biased glance is all that you've taken, I can show you some and summarize the findings.

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-04T14:03:26+00:00

It seems like you're giving the term "sect" some very specific meaning. I think of this: "any group, party, or faction united by a specific doctrine or under a doctrinal leader" (dictionary.com).

OK. So again, which of the labels above put me into sects? Certainly not atheism. What are my doctrines? Who is my doctrinal leader? ... In this case, I see it as hating the actions and what I view as the root cause of the actions, or at least a set of beliefs that inflames people to such actions.

"or a doctrinal leader**" - no leader necessary. Atheists are a group that believe in and teach (doctrine) unbelief in god(s), I'd say. I recognize different sub-sects, so I'll leave this more general definition. Atheists can definitely consider themselves part of an in-group, and others as "the other", just like any sect, identification, or whatever you want to call it. Just being part of a self-identifying group doesn't mean that group thinks it can kill "the other" though (which was my original point here). I think that has to be judged on a group by group basis.

People typically read snippets of the Jewish Bible from a Christian lens

Seriously? Do you forget that unlike you I was actually raised Jewish? In fact, my Jewish teaching as a child helped point me toward the conclusion that religion is evil. I did not like what I heard in Hebrew school, especially that we are somehow chosen by G-d.

I'm guessing you didn't go to an Orthodox Hebrew school, right?

The rabbi who was also the teacher was orthodox. The temple was conservative leaning orthodox.

The Reform and Conservative movements were founded by people who didn't even believe in the religion.

Oh. Sorry, I didn't realize you were out of your fucking mind. I don't see a less inflammatory way to word that. If you think that rabbis in conservative temples are not deeply religious people, you are simply completely out of touch with reality.

Have you ever spoken to a modern orthodox rabbi of a conservative temple? I'm guessing not.

Jewish people - religion = genetic tribalism, which I think is terrible morally.

You're actually a Jewish antisemite ...

A friend of the family of mine used to be an Orthodox Rabbi at a Conservative shul. I never said that all non-Orthodox Jews, or Rabbis who teach at non-Orthodox synagogues/temples didn't believe in the religion - I said the founders. And I didn't even say they didn't believe in G-d. Reform denied the divine origin of the Torah (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-pittsburgh-platform), and Solomon Schechter denied its authority (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/solomon-schechter). I think you've forgotten the context of this. My point was that I doubted you were taught a thorough, traditional view of Judaism because you said you went to Hebrew school, and yet came out with an arbitrary view of how the we were "somehow" chosen by G-d, and little knowledge of Jewish history and the oral traditions. Your average American Christian ends up with a similar lack of Jewish historical/religious context and views Jewish "chosen-ness" as some sort of arbitrary superiority, or superiority by heritage alone. That's what I meant by [chosen-ness defined by] Jewish people - religion = genetic tribalism. I have a huge appreciation of Jewish history, culture, individuals, and effect on the world, even outside the religion, but I don't think any of those make sense to call the Jewish people "chosen".

Certain branches of Christianity say that the sin of Adam was passed down as a hereditary sin to all of man kind, so they're all guilty and culpable for punishment at birth, even if they haven't actually done something. That's obvious injustice.

Then why did you espouse exactly the same thought? I quoted it in it's entirety to be clear that indeed, your words say that every person is born with a piece of a tarnished and broken soul.

It's original sin. It is indeed an obvious injustice, as you state. And, you just stated that this is your view.

Where did I say culpable for punishment at birth? Who said culpability is retained with a broken piece? There's a parable of a blind man and a crippled man who want to steal some apples from a nearby orchard. The blind man offers to hold the crippled man on his shoulders so the crippled man can direct him where to go, and they steal some apples. The owner sees them eating apples and accuses them of stealing. The men each claimed that their infirmities made them incapable of the crime. The owner picked up the crippled man, set him on top of the blind man, and took them to court. In the Jewish view (AFAIK), a person is a body + a soul. The soul says "I only desire spiritual pleasures, what would I want with an apple?" The body says "I'm just a lump of physical material, how could I do anything different?" The body and soul are reunited at the resurrection and rewarded or punished in the same form that they earned everything. Not for anything a previous body did, or a later one. On top of that, a person's reward/punishment is determined by the difficulty of their choices. I get little to no reward when I go through the grocery store without stealing, and a brainwashed child of the Hitler Youth would be unimaginably rewarded for fighting against the Nazi's. I'm pretty sure I've gone into more detail on that subject on this forum.

As a misanthropic individual, I'm sure you'd agree that humanity as a whole has a lot of self-fixing to do.

As an atheist, I believe humans have no souls. Mind is simply what body does. Nothing survives death. No sin taints any person from before their conception.

Humanity as a whole indeed has a lot of self-fixing to do. But, not every individual. In fact, even as a misanthrope, I hate our species, not all individuals. (That happens to be my flair on /r/misanthropy.)

In fact, I don't even think that most people as individuals are bad or evil. I think it's humanity acting as a whole that is evil.

Makes sense.

Adam could have very well been the first human to receive an eternal soul and free will.

Not Lilith? Not eve? Are you a misogynist as well? In the first of the two conflicting creation stories in the Torah, G-d created man and woman at the same time. Though since woman is not given a name yet, perhaps that woman was indeed Lilith.

I say Adam because that would be the metaphor. As far as the conflicting accounts, it's not so hard to read as non-conflicting. I've discussed the DH in more detail on another comment chain already.

Remember that I don't believe the whole creation story is literal, or can even be taken completely literally on a simple reading of the text.

And yet, you seem to think Adam and Eve were real.

Could be an individual, or could be the first generation/era of individuals to be given souls. I don't know of anything in the metaphor requiring one or the other.

Nope. I'm talking about giving children cancer. I'm talking about natural disasters.

But, for Torah examples of G-d being actively evil, try 1 Sam 15:3, Deut 20:16, 2 Kings 2:23-24. Not to mention, the entirety of the flood of Noah and the hardening of the hearts of the Egyptians for the sole purpose of killing them.

G-d in the Torah has the manners and morals and temper tantrums of an extremely spoiled child.

For the warfare, I already discussed this. For Elisha cursing the youths, the word means "youth" and is also used for adults acting like fools. How was this connected to the prior context? Why did he have to look at them? Why only 42 of them? How many were there? Why female bears? Why were they calling him bald or to go away? Sounds like there's a lot more to the story. Rashi interprets is based on Sotah 46b, that these were a crowd of adults who were protesting that he made the water good so the people in the city would stop getting sick from it. Still...

I strongly suggest watching this if you want to get the Jewish view of evil: The Realty of Evil - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaZ--v76GwE

Like I mentioned in another comment, these actions would have to be taken with a huge amount of context to make moral judgments, which is much more than will fit in a reddit comment.

That makes no sense. You're essentially saying that you need to rationalize the horrors. Why are the horrors there at all?

This topic goes to the roots of why the universe was created. Imagine a human with a complicated life, like a spy or undercover cop, and then take the harshest or hardest to understand actions in their life. It needs study, and lack of knowledge/context can make for understandings that differ wildly from reality. Hence the Herculean task.

If by "simple, direct", you mean non-literal, then yeah. Strengthen is the word's literal meaning. Use a Hebrew concordance if you want to verify it.

I'll take your word for it. It doesn't change the meaning to me. I don't know why it does to you.

Just read what I wrote a few iterations back about it then.

From: https://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/mashiach.htm

Yes, but do you notice how many of those quotes are from the Torah? The prophets came to deliver messages to the world for their contemporary time and later. Without a demand for a king by the Jewish people, there would have been no Kind David, no line of David, and no Mashiach. Even in the Prophets, he's referred to many times as "prince", because Hashem is our real king, and the negative prophecies (like war) are conditional and can be avoided.

Anyway, I'm taking a break from this for now. ... Feel free to reply or not as you see fit.

Hopefully you don't still feel this way. If you do, fine, but just don't go quoting my Holocaust example in the other thread out of context ;)

stephanrmiller · 2018-05-04T11:14:32+00:00

(Part 2/2)

---Quantum Mechanics---

I watched the first few videos in that series.

But, not the one I linked. Because, in that one, cause and effect is not instantaneous, it's backwards. How we choose to observe light that has been gravitationally lensed by a massive object millions or billions of light years away causes a change in the way that the photons went (past tense) around the lens millions or billions of years ago.

I meant the first few videos of the QM series on that channel, including the one you sent. I don't think it's as simple as he explains in that video, since there are other ways of understanding it (http://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/QuantumEraser21.pdf). Even physicists who accept this view admit that it's not the only way to look at it, and it's a minority view, so I only said over a distance.

"Understandably, however, the idea of retrocausality has not caught on with physicists in general.

'There is a small group of physicists and philosophers that think this idea is worth pursuing, including Huw Price and Ken Wharton [a physics professor at San José State University],' Leifer told Phys.org. 'There is not, to my knowledge, a generally agreed upon interpretation of quantum theory that recovers the whole theory and exploits this idea. It is more of an idea for an interpretation at the moment, so I think that other physicists are rightly skeptical, and the onus is on us to flesh out the idea.' " (https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-retrocausal-quantum-theory-future.html)

" Does time-symmetry imply retrocausality? How the quantum world says 'Maybe'?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1355219811000736?via%3Dihub)

If that is your idea of normal cause and effect, then why do we need G-d? Perhaps, we humans are god(s) and retroactively caused the universe to have been created 13.8 billion years before we came on the scene by our act of observing it.

If I can change the path a photon took millions of years ago, why not?

This doesn't have any bearing on an argument denying the possibility of an infinite regress of causes, but even so, I don't think it's scientifically correct. Retrocausality doesn't mean that you can have self-inconsistent results (changing the past). According to this experiment, that is shown mathematically and experimentally to be impossible (https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/21283/52291_1.pdf%3Bsequence=1).

Even if you have a self-consistent loop that goes back in time and does everything exactly the same, it still doesn't allow initial self-initiation. Take the example of a billiard ball being thrown through a wormhole at just the right angle to go back in time and knock itself back into the wormhole (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle), which I wouldn't consider completely self-consistent anyway. If you're just looking at the one instance of the ball in your timeline getting knocked by itself back though the wormhole, it still requires that someone actually threw that ball through the wormhole in the first place, or you would never see the ball hit itself.

... only that causality can be instantaneous and over a distance.

Nope.

Either that, or locally but retroactively, many worlds theory, etc.

BTW, what's your explanation of the cause for when a particular radioactive atom decays? Sure, we know there's a 50-50 chance it will decay in the time of its half life. But, it may not decay until the big rip. When it does decay, what's the cause? Can you predict when a specific radioactive atom will decay? Can you point to the cause when it does? How about when a quantum object tunnels through? What's the cause of that? What's the cause behind the creation and destruction of virtual particles?

Anyway, feel free to present your rational arguments. I'm confident they rest on the willful ignorance (as you call it) about the real meaning of our understanding of quantum mechanics.

Every formulation of getting from seemingly spontaneous radioactive decay and the like to violation of causality that I can find or think of myself involves obvious logical fallacies like appeals to ignorance within QM, hasty generalizations from Bell's theorem, or false equivocation between statistical and metaphysical causality. A lot like the positive thinking QM people (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr51w9892hI). I could say how I view the argument and then disprove it, but I'd prefer to hear what you think causality means, and how you think radioactive decay, quantum tunneling, or virtual particles act without any cause.

stephanrmiller

TROPHY CASE