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Comment Re:This is probably a very silly question ... but (Score 1) 429

It is pretty easy to show no scientific evidence of god is possible (you cannot distinguish a powerful enough entity residing in your reality from god), in fact the simulation example shows one case of a universe having a supernatural dimension and no way to get to it from the inside. So I know God is not a scientific concept.
But if it's not about god, or the supernatural dimension hypothesis, why would you consider determining if the universe can be formed from nothing? It is really one in a a zillion other equally arbitrary initial configurations if there is no god, and really one in a a zillion other equally arbitrary initial configurations if there is a god, but some folks mistake cosmetic differences for substantial ones.

Comment Re:This is probably a very silly question ... but (Score 1) 429

That is an intermediate question.The final question is: once you proved, not theoretically modeled but proved, that the universe comes from nothing, can you deny god? Or you have simply declared that a hypothetical god started from an empty universe? Implementation details....

I can hear the hypothetical god laughing and saying: "Yes, I do like zero indexed arrays, you have a problem with that?"

Take a simulation you run, whose self conscious creatures reverse engineered the rules and the initial conditions and all of its evolution over time. Have they proved you inscrutable? Yes, you are. Have they proved you not existing? Impossible because you exist. And you are NOT a god of the simulation, because you are not controlling every aspect of it.

TLDR, derive the "why" or the "who" from the "how" and you have made an assumption. Every time.

Comment Re:In spite of this and other similar phenomena... (Score 2) 140

Does a game of chess come from a number of things on a board? nope it comes from the understanding of its meaning.
Consciousness is in the brain, and possibly in the brain only, like a game is in a PC circuitry, but a game is not electrons traveling through circuits, it is an abstraction, electrons traveling are the implementation of the game. If all people forget about the rules of a game, the game does not exist anymore, even if it is running.

Why am I stating these obvious things? because it is pointless to link implementation details to religion, which is the possibility that reality is not the engine of all other abstractions but an abstraction itself for something else.

In other words, consciousness is obviously a thing in the domain of meaning, so consciousness, emergent or not, links the supposed creatures with the supposed observer. Understanding of the meaning is what links the two together. According to John's gospel you could say that consciousness is a magic that comes only from God, but you could also say that consciousness is sharing the meaning the same way the creator does, and only some do that (sons of god).

Incidentally this is why, when John 1 mentions The Word, and people think it's the scriptures, I rather get back to the greek word Logos, which describes the meaning rather than the utterance. Not an impersonal meaning, a personified one.

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