Is it just me who thinks that at the end when sheldon faints, Hawkins seems to smile?

Believe it or not, I can personally relate to how you feel about it. I used to feel mostly the same way as someone who was previously agnostic to the idea of whether there is a supreme being or not, a Creator of the Universe. I also know why you feel you have come to a very sound conclusion about the idea, which is that you see no evidence of God or spirit. If you believe matter is all there is, it makes the existence of a supernatural Creator rather far fetched doesn't it?

Now you talk about logic, but even if you don't believe in the supernatural, there is by default no logical reason why either scenerio is more likely than the other, if you go by the initial premise that everything is equally unlikely. Why should there be something rather than nothing? That is the great question on Stephan Hawkings mind, even though he believes he can get the entire Universe from quantum foam.

These were questions I wrestled with as an agnostic. For one, I knew the limitations of our subjective perceptions. The limitations of human knowledge. It's a big Universe out there and we haven't even left our solar system yet. There are many possibilities even within the traditional secular understanding. What if life emerged on another planet far, far earlier? What would an intelligence evolving over billions of years look like? Was there a power that ruled this entire Universe? Those were just wonderings. But I found the real struggle was to objectively define truth. Any foundational truth, really. What is beauty? What is altruism? What is truth itself? 7 billion subjective perspectives does not equal one objective one. There is no way to get outside the Universe and look into it, and there is no way to go back to before it was created. These are simply the differences between relative and absolute truth.

These questions are much bigger than atheism, which is why I was agnostic. I didn't see any way I could write God off and be objective, but at the time I didn't see much reason to believe in Him either. You apparently feel differently. I'm interested to hear your logical reasons for not believing in God. A revelation that I had when I was thinking about these things was that I had entangled the concept of God with all of the religions of the world. To truly be objective, you have to look past religion, and consider the problem on just a probability basis. What is the likelyhood of any of it? You can explain it away with this and this and this happened, there was this explosion and then rocks came together and then amoebas appeared and then apes and then me, tada. You have to put all of that aside, as well as the size of the Universe, and just consider Stephan Hawkins question. Why is there something rather than nothing?

In any case, you don't see any evidence for a spirit so you are dealing with an entirely different set of parameters. For there to be a spirit you would have to deal with the fact that everything you know is in some way, wrong. You just naturally are not going to look in that direction.

The thing about God is, He isn't going to push Himself into your life. You think it's just a matter of evidence, a matter of discovering something; the truth is that to know God is not a right, it is a priviledge. You could spend 10,000 lifetimes dedicated to searching for God and you would never find Him until that moment when He chose to reveal Himself to you.

Hebrews 11:6

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Sometimes He has mercy on atheists, like this man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4lgvZ5MCZ4

But biblically, He tells us to seek Him out. If you refuse to do that then you don't have any excuses. You've heard the truth and we are accountable to what we know. You don't feel a need for God right now but that's why we're here. God is patient, but we aren't guaranteed a single day on this planet. If you died today you would face judgement, but His mercy keeps you here that you will repent and turn from sin. So don't take your life for granted because that isn't anything we control. I say this out of love. God gives a lot of grace, and to know Jesus Christ is to know peace, and joy. It is to understand the meaning of truth, to have love, and to be free. It is to be made new. My prayer is that you, and others here, will come to know that for yourselves.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
@shinyblurry said: Fletch, you're even denial about the definition of atheism,which is the denial of any deity according to the dictionary.
Thats not how most atheists define atheism. Atheism is the LACK OF BELIEF in any theistic claim. There is a crucial difference. I dont "deny" any deity, that sentence doesnt even make sense to me as an atheist, any more than the sentence "The denial of any leprechaun".
You (@shinyblurry) believe in God
I dont.
Thats all there is to it.
"Not believing in god" wasnt really a conscious or deliberate decision on my part, its just "the way I am". But when i examine that position rationally and deliberately I find that it does also make more sense than believing there is a god. Can a beliver really, REALLY say the same, I wonder?

Your video, Charlie Parker laughing at Hawkins's attempt to do playback, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^Lethin:

last thing you heard before landing "retard"


The plane was programmed by Steven Hawkins , everyone is a retard in his eyes.

I agree, Hawkin and Einstein was actually Epic.

And come on, opening with "you shall not pass"? Leave that round2 bro.

<drummer name="Taylor Hawkins" isAwesome="yes" />

Another reason Dave Grohl is great:

Dave Grohl of "Glee" creator: "F*ck that guy"

>> ^spaceman:

Why I don't care:
1) You once believed in a god.
2) You are a guy.


@spaceman | The reason why the rest of us watch and listen to "just some guy; who believed in God":

The only reason you can type your sentence is from/due-to "other" men. Religion in all forms is from "other" men (unless you claim to hear voices or a physical divinity; but, please, not as an affront to you, make sure you're not psychotic or schizophrenic before telling us your interesting story as that is the case almost always; same with drug use; same with some other illnesses: narcolepsy, sleep walking, night terrors/sleep paralysis, and many other sleep related issues and all nervous system illnesses). Only a few things below talk more about what you said.
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A little more to add to the conversation. Hopefully, this gets it all out as it will be fairly long, but the video is hard to reply to in a short manner. I hope this covers a large extent of what I wish to say about this very well done video witness/testimony.


One set of values you can research and witness to it's validity on your own, as he has done. Science also allows for this methodology, using the well known precept of "The Scientific Method".

A quick example is that many people of faith, even Evid3nc3, talks of feeling "x" with their "hearts" and knowing "x" with their "soul". In science there is nothing more than a simple, yet complicated, physical processes. It's all a creation and manifestation in your brain; if you think you "feel" something with your heart you're causing minor self-hysteria to the extent of creating a minor hallucination.

The "soul" is called the(primarily in psychology, neuroscience, and neurology; there are many other terms that try to mean "you"; typically, in grossly inaccurate ways, such as: ghosts, "psychic" remote viewing, many religions use of the magical-energy-divine soul, etc...) psyche which is typically (starting from the outer-functions and moving into core-functions) sensory systems, language center, feelings, memory, and then the key-piece the neo-cortex. So it must be understood that your brain does a lot of things still baffling (mostly the mechanics or mechanisms of function and chemistry), but the overall picture is fairly clear.

But, the brain is not a floating energy source, nor is it an absolute definition at any given point or time. Depending on how and where you look at the brain the very concept of you is different. It more akin to superposition of an electron or a kaleidoscope; the definition of you is not concrete until measured and even then you are already not what was measured.

Even from what little we do know, belief plays a central role in how our neo-cortex makes decisions and operates (even with memory and other functions, which is why we do make many mistakes as it's due to how our brain physically commits to anything it must or will do; it's perhaps the single best reason to show why, "To err is human; to forgive, divine."; you don't understand the human condition if you cannot forgive...). Could this translate into a bigger picture; our connected neurons telling us to accept faith and belief, sometimes, because that is what it does at the small scale?

*Offtopic Look up articles, books, and videos (look at TED for Marvin Minsky, Jeff Hawkins, Craig Venter, Jonathan Haidt and others --some of which are here on the sift-- related topics on there like the Mind, AI, facial-pattern-contextual-semantics-divergent-cat vs. dog software based Recognition, and then other media pertaining to 'Artificial Intelligence') or if you want to know strictly about how the brain works and makes it's decisions, look for a type of setup called a "hierarchical structure"; also known as a pyramid or pyramid scheme. One cell makes a decision based off of the accumulations of "guesses" the other millions of cells connected to it made; these cells are fundamentally the foundation for that setup, but the neurons are more flexible than that as each can be a parent and also part of the "foundation" structure, making the brain a fantastic structure. With time this becomes accurate (this occurs in less than a few milliseconds), although our vision, for an example, is horrifically distorted and wrong, if you could look at one "frame" based on a few cells. Only a small fraction of the frame would be correct; literally it would be as though your senses got one pixel correct in a 1080p image. Yet, repeat this millions of times with different data sets each round (and this is done as said above, fast) you get an accurate picture; or at the least 20/20-to about one-arc minute (the resolution for the human eye, on average).

One set you can't test, we call that belief or faith. "What is the reasoning for taking the leap of faith?", this is what you have to defend at this point. If faith is your only defense, I will (like many others will) assume you haven't looked into your own faith enough yet or you even refuse to look out of fear of being wrong. If you do not understand the topic you must be willing to ask for help as he did or you'll be a slave to your willful decision of ignorance, to the extent that you feel compelled to defend them, but you never convince anyone except yourself--and for yourself it is only because of the rote-righteous indignation.

If it's true it should withstand all scrutiny. Unless truth isn't your ultimate goal. Then, for us and many others there is no reason to follow your faith. Usually, this type of merit and defense are directly related to age due to learning this all when you're a child and devoid of an intense ability to decipher, attribute values, connect, and draw in a belief (if with some facts and proof you could call it a hypothesis).

It's all from men... I'm wagering you're dismissing this flippantly due to religion; if not what exactly is your point, as I truly would like to know why and where this claim of non-relativistic knowledge comes from, without a woman or man?

Also, if it has to do with his belief in being mistaken for believing in God that's a moot point as we have all erred in life. I know of no person that has reliably been able to "claim divinity", other than Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, etc... But, we also know now that mental illness and other factors can account for any manic or psychotic leanings. We also know magicians (or magister, proper) have been around A LONG TIME.

Plus, as Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.". Which then one must ask another question, "Can divinity itself ever be established as being magic only?". This is then rounded up by a statement from Larry Niven (sometimes called Niven's Law(s)), "Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology.". These collide and distinctly form a conclusion about divinity and any of it's powers (descriptive magic or divinity and it's "how to use it" manual are indefensibly getting closer in each step to being more akin to physics; plus the Christian God hates magic, which begs the question, "Why do you need a God, if we can exact the same effects?"):

Divinity can only hope to use advanced knowledge and technology in a collusion to bring about one standpoint alone: "divinity" if described by God in any kind of ruleset (some of it is in the bible, already) stands on a rigorously tested and time shown: shaky ground.

Men would be gods whether God existed or not.

(P.S.: only the beginning and some bits here and there are for you, @spaceman. The rest is for our vestibule.)

Again I must add that this is a great find @dystopianfuturetoday.
You're doing yourself a great disservice not watching it (or all of it as the case may be).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

What part of "magic and revolutionary" don't you understand Blankfist?

Steve Jobs is by all accounts a real asshole. I still like the products. Not because it's cool, trendy or makes me feel superior. I like it because it works best for me. I agree with @kronosposeidon that HTML5 and other open technologies will eventually supplant the stopgap that is Flash.

Google is pushing it themselves with their recent in browser game project for Chrome. They give faint praise to Adobe and talk about Flash collaboration, but I don't think there is love in the heart of the Google hacker for proprietary Flash. I do realize that the compiled .SWF format is kind of open- but the .FLA most definitely is not - am I right? I know there are some 3rd party tools that can compile SWF like Swift3D, but Adobe has a stranglehold on a "complete" authoring tool for Flash- and intends to keep it. Open indeed.

And just because I'm feeling cantankerous - I'll let Trip Hawkins put some icing on this cake - in a post aimed at professional developers who would actually like to make some money off their creations.

@everyoneinthisthread

It's Hawking. Not Hawkins, Hawkings, etc. lol.

@SDGundamX, you seem to have a skewed view of the situation. You say doctors used the scientific method to predict how long it would take for Hawking to succumb to his disease, and that their failure to be correct somehow means science failed and didn't work.

You've got it backwards. The scientific method explicitly claims the opposite...that out of all the predictions we make, only a few are ever close to the real truth. Science basks in wrongness all the time. Being wrong in science is a boon, because being proven wrong means you're just a little closer to the truth.

It's the people who make predictions or observations about the world and never admit they can be wrong who are a problem.

EDIT: I just have to add...you're totally simplifying the doctor prediction example. You weren't there when the doctors gave their information to Hawking. Maybe they said, "It is likely you'll die by XX age, but we don't know for sure." Doctors are constantly asked to give people certainties when there are none to be had. Yet, people use this as "evidence", saying that if science doesn't know everything then it isn't worth using. Just because a doctor can't tell you exactly when you're going to die doesn't mean science "doesn't work". This logic illustrates a misunderstanding of what scientific methods of experiment and thought claim to accomplish.

@SDGundamX

Doctors didn't say Hawkins would be dead 43 years ago. They said 'based on available data, your life expectancy exhibits the following probability curve (with the most likely outcome being that you'll be dead [43 years ago]).'

Science always wins in the sense that it always creates the future, the same as it created the modern world. If we think science and technology will never progress past the current cutting edge of organ regeneration and iPhones, we're the same as the luddites that have characterized every other era in the history of science.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

I completely agree with Hawkins here and nearly everywhere. I guess that means AnimalsForCrackers will have to disagree with me (And thereby Hawkins.) After all, me (and it must mean Hawkins too,) I am an atheist apologist.
But I digress and hyperbole; what I mean is Hawkins rocks!


Why is that? Feeling persecuted or threatened because some random "asshat" on the Internet didn't take too kindly to your poorly thought out arguments?

I have no intention of bothering with your baiting comments any more, so please feel free to fuck off and stop mentioning me and mucking up someone else's Sift for your own personal reasons.

Maybe someone could clarify, but what exactly is being "won?"

I would give a qualified agreement to Hawkings... the scientific method works at expanding our knowledge about the objective world. But science itself does not always work. This interview is proof of that. Doctors used science to predict that Hawkins would be dead 43 years ago. They were wrong. People can use observation and reason and still come to the completely wrong conclusions. This does not make science useless, but Hawkings should have qualified his statement to say science usually works. Or rather, it works more reliably than other methods (revelation for instance) for discovering things about the objective world.

Also, I think the view that all religion is based on authority is a very narrow view of religion and more accurately describes fundamentalists and dogmatism. Furthermore, I'd disagree with him that somehow science is not based on authority. It absolutely is. It has to be. If it wasn't, any crackpot who did a study and got some result that disagreed with scientific consensus would get to have their results accepted immediately.

But there's a huge downside to that--new scientific ideas can take decades before they finally overturn prior "consensus." Adenoidectomies (getting your tonsils out) are one example. Scientific consensus in the early 1900s was that everybody should get their tonsils removed--and nearly everybody did. It took nearly 30 years for researchers to turn the tide and convince doctors that removing the tonsils could actually do more harm than good. Meanwhile, during those 30 years, based on their authority as doctors, surgeons unnecessarily removed the tonsils of millions of kids.

All this is to say simply that science is not some magic bullet. I guess I get a bit annoyed when people try to glorify science. Science isn't perfect, but it's the most reliable method we have for exploring the objective world. That's all you can say about it. And really, that's all that needs to be said.

I completely agree with Hawkins here and nearly everywhere. I guess that means AnimalsForCrackers will have to disagree with me (And thereby Hawkins.) After all, me (and it must mean Hawkins too,) I am an atheist apologist.

But I digress and hyperbole; what I mean is Hawkins rocks!

Your video, Jeff Hawkins on Artificial Intelligence, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Jeff Hawkins is a gawdamn hero.