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asparisi comments on In Defense of Tone Arguments - Less Wrong Discussion

24 Post author: OrphanWilde 19 July 2012 07:48PM

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Comment author: asparisi 25 July 2012 06:02:02PM 0 points [-]

As opposed to Gods that can be described in only a few bits. I am not sure what the lower limit on information complexity on a God is, but if it is going to do the sorts of things people generally claim a God does, it is going to be a complex proposition.

Saying that "the universe is God" is disprovable without disproving duck eggs and wombats. If the Universe is God, then there must be some classification "God" that is at least epistemically different from "Universe" or else the statement is meaningless. Saying that the universe does not fit into the class "God" is not saying that the universe doesn't exist.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 25 July 2012 06:14:29PM 0 points [-]

Which people, and which claims? Complexity is not necessary to beget complexity; evolution, for example, is a remarkably simple process.

One deist's position was that the universe as god had a particular goal in mind, cohesion. His particular god was impersonal and disprovable (as he claimed the contraction of the universe to a single point was the purpose of that god, if that were not the case, it would be a contradiction), and had a particular theistic ramification; the dead joined the universal consciousness, which was, as far as I could tell from conversation with him, a strictly experiential existence, devoid of thought and possessing only purpose - the aforementioned cohesion.

Comment author: Desrtopa 25 July 2012 09:52:31PM 0 points [-]

One deist's position was that the universe as god had a particular goal in mind, cohesion. His particular god was impersonal and disprovable (as he claimed the contraction of the universe to a single point was the purpose of that god, if that were not the case, it would be a contradiction)

Have you ever questioned him on whether the discovery that the rate of universal expansion is accelerating, suggesting that the universe is unlikely to end in a Big Crunch, affects his beliefs?