/sci/ - Science & Math

Religion is taught to children by their parents. Children trust their parents and are a bit credulous. When they grow up, they still have an emotional attachment to the religion and/or a fear of death to cope with. And you can't actually prove it wrong, just that it all sounds made-up.

>>4690839
It is not quite so simple as that, and Science does not solve everything.
Why are we here? Why am I specifically here at this time, specifically as a human? And not at any other time? Coincidence?
People fear death, and people need hope, they need something to look forward to.
They have a psychological need to feel that they are not alone, that a powerful friend is looking out for them. They need to feel a sense of belonging as part of a larger group, to feel that they have support and love. Humans are a very social species.
A religion is not so different to your football teams. Both fulfil the same sense for a need to belong as part of a group.

To think that all this life is just meaningless and for nothing, and when we die we are completely none existent, it all seems such a waste.
Surely there must be something more, even if we do not know what it is?
The majority of religions are certainly wrong, that much is a given. Perhaps they are all wrong. But we do not yet understand everything, and you do not know for certain that no religion is correct.

>>4690860
Was it really necessary to reply to this blatant rule violation and spam thread?

>>4690863
I suppose not.
Just my 2 cents.

Low average intelligence. The world average being only something like 90. The white average being only 100.

>majority of human race
>intelligent

There's your problem OP.

>>4690860
>It is not quite so simple as that, and Science does not solve everything.
Sure, but it's the only thing that solves anything.

>>4690860

>To think that all this life is just meaningless and for nothing, and when we die we are completely none existent, it all seems such a waste.

I really didn't want to reply to this thread, but, are you so fucking weak that you cannot grasp that there is an end to life? What the fuck do you think happens to a fish when it dies, or to a geranium, or an ant? Why do you have a desperate need to feel validated in your existence? "It's a waste" of what exactly?

The only waste is that there are people that WASTE their lives on fairy tales because they are so afraid of death that they refuse to really live in the first place.

>>4690860
>Coincidence?
Accident.

I wouldn't say that set theory is "obviously a farce." It's largely an intuitive extension of what we know from finite sets.

>>4690879
There are no infinite sets.

>>4690875
Don't bother. She's a fucking retard.

>>4690881
depends what you mean by "are"

axiomatically there are

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_infinity

>>4690884
>believing in unfalsifiable axioms

Show me one infinite set that isn't made up fairy tale bullshit. I motrherfucking dare you. Grow up and stop believing in magic.

>>4690875
Then why do anything?
If this life is all there really is, and all of humanitys accomplishments will crumble into dust and be forgotten by the rest of the universe, and if we really do have only one life, then why even live?
I will die eventually, and if this is all there is, nothing I do up until that time really matters.

And nothing you do matters either.

>>4690885
what do you mean by "show me"

obviously i can offer up the naturals, but i expect this is an ontological argument.

>>4690888
>If this life is all there really is, and all of humanitys accomplishments will crumble into dust and be forgotten by the rest of the universe, and if we really do have only one life, then why even live?
To live. Now.

>>4690888
>forgotten by the rest of the universe

Implying there is life out there. There's no fucking evidence. Your alien magic fairy tale /x/ crap is killed by occam's razor. Deal with it.

>>4690885
If an axiom is falsifiable, it isn't an axiom, it's a theory.

Maths isn't a science, it doesn't have to be falsifiable.

>>4690889
Show me the evidence. Without evidence your natural numbers don't exist and you must be fucking retarded to believe in them. Grow up, kid. Or go to >>>/x/ where this crap belongs.

>>4690893
Math is religious bullshit. That's what it is. No hard evidence and only belief in supernatural shit like numbers. Only a retard would believe in such fairy tales.

>>4690898
Is there any fucking evidence for infinite sets? NO.
Can science explain everything without them? YES.
See? Your fairy tale shit is disproved by SCIENCE.

>>4690881
Disbelief in infinite sets is just as much of a religion as believing the ZFC axioms.

>>4690894
3/10

>>4690888
>I will die eventually, and if this is all there is, nothing I do up until that time really matters.

>And nothing you do matters either.
Do you have a point? "If X implies nothing matters, then X is wrong." doesn't seem like much of an argument to me.

>>4690900
who cares about science?

i do math, and don't care for "reality"

>>4690897
2/10

going down

>>4690890
For what?
As wonderful as life experiences can be, if there really is only one life, you lose them when your mind is destroyed; and therefore your memories are destroyed.

>forgotten by the rest of the universe
Our infrastructure will probably survive and that would be the remains of the civilisation called "Humanity"

>>4690908
In other words you're a religious shit head. Go die in a fire.

>>4690894
It is a very very big universe that has been a round for a very very long time.
So large and so ancient you can not fully grasp the scale of it; there are entire stars larger than our solar system.
You really think life has evolved only once in the universe throughout all of time?

I do not know, of course, but I think it likely that there is life elsewhere.

>>4690888
Pretty bad thinking there.

U can think of a book with a story as an analogy. A story in a book is not meaningless or does not matter becus it ends at some point. Things that happen to me matter to me (and to some other people). After i'm gone, some of the things i did will matter to some people, and at some future time, none of the things i did will matter to any person. Such is life.

Altho it is true that eventually there will be no one around to think anything. That's just how the world is, and obviously, for most people's sake, at some point in the future, no one will remember them or anything they did. The vast majority of humans leave no cultural 'footprint'.

>>4690911
Possibility doesn't constitute likelihood. Your aliens don't exist. Deal with it and stop believing in magic.

>>4690910
i don't claim math is anything more than a game i enjoy.

>>4690910

>>4690906
Not forever.
The Earth will not survive forever. Its life is bound to the Suns.
earth is destroyed when the Suns lifetime comes to a close.

When the Earth is destroyed all our infrastructure and history is lost along with it. Everything anyone has ever done at any time, is lost and destroyed and meaningless.

>>4690894
>>4690897
Now you're getting carried away. I can easily do things like put three stones in a pile. Of course, that doesn't prove that the naturals go on forever, or that 2+2 will always make 4, but numbers are at the very least a good heuristic model of reality in some circumstances. Basic arithmetic is good science.

>>4690903
>For what?
This is fruitless. You could keep asking this question infinitely, even if there were an afterlife, a definitive meaning to life, a concerned god or anything like that. The lack of an answer is not a problem that's specific to the theory of the purposelessness of existence.

>>4690917
I do not believe in magic. And we will watch and wait. I think that simple life will be found elsewhere in the universe, and science will discover this within our lifetime.
I look forward to it.
Simple life, probably. Something similar to bacteria. But I believe we will find it.

Ban all religion threads from /sci/ unless it's about actual academic research in the field

>>4690925
Keep your irrational and illogical beliefs to >>>/x/ you retard.

>>4690918
I'm not really sure what u even mean with "meaningless" in that post. Do u just mean that human accomplishments will matter to no one? If so, that is true, but i don't see any importance to that. It seems obvious that that is a fact that one will simply have to deal with as part of growing up. After giving up various fairy tales about life, that one has to go as well.

And none of that has anything to do with what matters to me while i live.

>>4690903

Why do you have a pressing need to have these experiences forever?

Yes, you won't exist after death. But you won't exist to know that you don't exist; thus, it's not a bad thing. You do things in life so that you can enjoy them whilst you're alive.

I don't think you get it. You experience things in life and for as long as you remain alive you will remember them. Once you're dead you won't know that you're dead to lament the loss. Remember life before you were born? Exactly.

Isn't that the whole point? It IS meaningless. Life is just a bacterial reaction, and in our case it has developed extraordinary far, maybe too far, even. The same bacterial reaction is probably out there on a billion other planets, and probably even as close as on Mars. To believe a god made it on this planet... No, any rational thinking person knows that religion is made up by ourselves, because of our fear and curiousity for the unknown. We made it up to clarify things of this unknown, and to have a reason to not be afraid anymore of it's frightening things anymore, like death. Because we would go to a paradise (heaven) anyways, where life would even be a billion times better than here on Earth.

As someone pointed out before, religion is what we grab on to, to cover our weaknesses. Well, most of us at least. And life indeed ends when you die. We are just that advanced that we can experience this reaction so consciously, but that doesn't mean it will abruptly end anyway, as it's supposed to. Just make sure you enjoy the chance and time here you've been lucky enough to get, and don't let yourself be limited by mental poison like religion, that is meant to LIMIT your experience, in the interest of 'important' people.

>>4690929
Belief that life might exists somewhere in the universe other than Earth is neither irrational nor illogical.
As improbable as the event may seem, there is so much time and so much space, that it is all but inevitable.

Have you heard of the Drake Equation?

>>4690936
You're a fucking retard for keeping up these idiotic beliefs against all evidence. We have no evidence for aliens so they don't exist. The absence of evidence is fucking evidence of absence.

Why even bother humoring this cunt? She believes in free will for fuck's sake.

>>4690937
>doesn't believe in free will
>thinks others can decide what they do

We were determined to reply to her, you fucking retard.

>>4690926
Depends on what religion you're talking about. Set theory is math related and is therefore allowed. Discussion of other religions like tulpas we don't need.

maybe if we applied the free market in religion... that could solve our problems...

>>4690938
>mixing this with the law of large numbers
Man, you fail so hard it must be physically painful.

>>4690931
I suppose, but to just end forever seems so unfulfilling and unsatisfactory.
Perhaps I will be born again and live as a new person in the future? Be born in the 2100's or something.
I will not remember this life, just as I remember nothing from before my birth.

>>4690942
That's what scientology does. Not a good idea.

>>4690940
Neither set theory, nor tulpas are religions. Do you know what the fucking word "religion" means?

>>4690944
Fuck you, you don't know what the law of large numbers means.

>>4690948
They are made up irrational magic fairy tales, i.e. religions.

>>4690942
>free market
>not itself a religion

>>4690943
Yeah, and by attempting to dissuade you from responding to her, I'm acting as a causal factor in the deterministic system of your life, you retarded fuck.

>>4690942
Free market is a religion. It's worship of the god Invisible Hand. Which also doesn't exist.

I believe in the law of the free market and everyone else is retarded.

>>4690951
No, irrational fairy tales and religions are two different things. The belief in Santa Claus is not a religion either.

>>4690945
>I suppose, but to just end forever seems so unfulfilling and unsatisfactory.

Perhaps, but wishing it were otherwise does not make it so. Wishful thinking.

>Perhaps I will be born again and live as a new person in the future? Be born in the 2100's or something.
>I will not remember this life, just as I remember nothing from before my birth.

No and no. There is no perhaps. It is beyond a reasonable doubt that u will not do any of that.

>>4690961
Set theory and Santa Claus both have well-developed mythologies. They're not just single fairy tales.

>>4690911
>there are entire stars larger than our solar system

If life is on other planets, it only proves that we are nothing special, life is nothing special and certainly no god is needed to create it.

>>4690984
VY Canis Majoris is so large that were it in our solar system, the photosphere would reach almost to the orbit of Saturn.

While that's not the WHOLE system, it's so far up there, that the comment can be seen as true if one is not asspie.

>>4690984
Neptune at Aphelion is just over 3 billion kilometres away from the sun.
VY Canis Majoris has a radius that is this large, and that is just the largest star we are aware of. There could be others far across the universe that are even larger.

>>4690992
Only saturn? Not Uranus and Neptune?
Are you sure.

Oh, my mistake. 3 Billion kilometres is the diameter not the radius.

Even so, it is very very large.

>>4690997

neptune's aphelion 4,553,946,490 km

>there are
>There could be
so, there is no actual evidence that some are bigger right?

>>4691012
There's nothing we've seen that is larger, but hypothetically there were the first, so-called relativistic stars in the young universe which may have collapsed to form the first black holes which then proceeded to form the supermassive black holes in galactic cores.

Also, see the second line in >>4690992

VY Canis Majoris as it would look like from Pluto in it's aphelion, 48 AUs out.

>say something is true
>turns out it's not true
>defend with "it may as well be true"

>>4691038
why is it knobbly?

>>4691047
Convection. Extremely large stars are unstable and the convection supercells cause it to attain such a form.

If you're interested in learning more, the wikipedia entry on Betelgeuse has a good portion on the phenomenon.

i still believe in god

Delusional retard. Good for you, no one cares.