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Yeah, I get it. We are arguing the nature of God.

You can't see that the most thorough and perfect way to create anything is to try all possible alternatives. Yet this is exactly what the Universe is doing every step of the way, including how the modern quantum computers work. No need for super intelligence or meaning, just blind branching into all the variants. This is God in a sense that it created and keeps evolving all that exist. All inanimate matter, plants, animals and humans are integral parts of this God. Because we all are engaged in the same energy optimization process.

Electrons solving for levels to occupy in molecules and corporations making decisions to optimize taxes are two examples of the same basic principle. People like myself structured and traded synthetic CDOs with a similar genetic algorithm, to squeeze every last bit of profit from the financial markets until they crashed. That's evolution too. We are all God, same as Jesus. That's what Alan Watts meant.

You think this view makes me alone and hopeless? Afraid to die? Just the opposite! I know I am more than this mind and this physical body, in fact, I accept that there is no "I", but only the eternal process. My current perspective is only "part I", with everyone else being the other parts. And I am happy for the opportunity to observe and *minimally* participate in this multiplayer process that will go on for millennia. I know this game won't end with my death, I'll just lose one perspective and sooner or later gain another.

FikaTimeBooks.com 6mo ago

I don't think we're arguing the nature of God. I think you're elevating the "Universe" and it's processes into the place that belongs to God, alone.

Obviously trying every possible solution is a way to iterate towards what works. But that is an inefficient method relative to the other methods that exist, whether in a systematic sense, or in the sense of agency. The highest method for determining the path forward is to see it, based on Light and Truth.

For instance, the physical constants weren't iterated. They're an immutable dimension of the fabric of the universe from it's inception that are the playing field upon which much of existence operates. They were created by the Light, and implemented. Trying all possible alternatives is a viable path if one doesn't have perfect information, but God has perfect information so iteration isn't necessary as a precondition of the existence of the universe. However, as a physical and computational process, iteration is used all the time, but that's because they don't have agency, that is, the light to see what's most real.

Iteration is the process used when people don't immediately see what works. I think you're conflating the process (iterating to find what works most efficiently) with first principles (that which works and those most fundamental general truths). They aren't the same.

I didn't say your process makes you alone and hopeless. I'm speaking to a general outcome that a worldview of materialism, absent a transcendent connection to the Creator of All Things leads to. Can people with only a materialistic worldview find companionship and hope? Sure, but subjectively and not in objective, eternal ways, only in temporary ways.

Bitcoin for instance is a powerful way to find hope for the future, but Bitcoin is temporary while God is eternal. The hope of Bitcoin may last for hundreds of thousands of years, but it's not eternal and there is no relationship with Bitcoin. It is a tool. While God is eternal, being also a person, and so people can build their lives on Jesus Christ, who is Hope, the only truly Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object.

I didn't say you were afraid to die, but now that you mention it, yes, anyone without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ would be afraid to die, because He is the only path to the Father, God the Father. But the fear of death in some sense is really masking a fear of hell. Jesus Christ gave His life, and was resurrected from the dead by the Holy Spirit, to save all people from hell through the free gift and offer of salvation and relationship with Him that leads to restoration of perfect rightness with God the Father.

2 Corinthians 5:21:

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Your meta physic reminds me of the buddhist meta physic, reincarnating over and over again, ad infinitum, which leads to hopelessness because it doesn't speak to the fundamental truth of God, which is that improvement in relationship with Jesus Christ is possible, even inevitable because through Him the Holy Spirit makes you a new creation, and brings you from glory to glory. A meta physic of "there is no "I", absolves you of ultimate and immediate responsibility for yourself and your choices. Fortunately, that is not the reality we actually exist within. You cannot say, "I know," while also saying, "there is no "I." This, my friend is a performative contradiction.

Thank you for engaging in this discussion/debate in good faith though! I really appreciate it!

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SwapMarket 6mo ago

I too appreciate the debate even though we are unlikely to ever agree. You preach monotheistic dogma, and your only arguments are capitalized words and quotes from supposed authorities. My method is scientific, so what I learned is the result of studying modern math, physics, biology and informatics, including real world experiments. Stephen Wolfram et al explain this much more thoroughly, but I can try my best.

I did not say "iterations", I said "branching". World's history simultaneously evolves along many parallel paths, and the observers (you and me) merge these paths into shared reality. This is what happens in dual slit experiments or when quantum state is measured. This is how quantum computers instantly find complex molecules where a normal, iterative, computer would spend years. Because this is how nature does it.

There were no pre-set ideal parameters for our Universe to exist. All such parameters happen at once, but we only sample a small corner of a much larger Universe ("Ruliad" in Wolfram's terminology) where they are just right for us to exist. There can be other corners where other intelligent beings appeared too, we don't know. So this is not about humans per se. We may be just a stepping stone to the next level of intelligence, what we call AI, that will go on conquering the galaxy. As Neanderthals were a stepping stone to Homo Sapiens. Who knows. So the cycle of reincarnations is not necessarily dull and hopeless.

Being only "part I" does not absolve us from responsibility for our choices. We constantly inherit the world from ourselves, so we do descend into Hell when we make it hotter with CO2 emissions etc. Or we can make it Heaven by solving hunger and other problems. This is my way of understanding Karma - it is collective!

What I know as a person, yes, will die with my body. But I hope some of my words and deeds will have an imprint on the collective "I" and carry on making a difference. I prefer this Hope to an imaginary one!

FikaTimeBooks.com 6mo ago

You're trying to set up a fools choice of God verses science, but you don't understand science is God's handwriting. Whether or not you believe it is your choice, I wash my hands of it.

"My method is scientific." Based on the number of performative contradictions and faulty assumptions in your logic, and notwithstanding your inability to grasp basic reality, like the existence of matter and energy and food, and your failure to acknowledge the evidence of the beginning of the universe, your method isn't scientific by any stretch of the imagination but pseudo science and something akin to scientism worship, to the core.

If you're going to worship science, at least worship real science, not a tenuous grasp of it, at best.

You don't break the law, the law breaks you. I wish you the best Swap Market.