The Fate of Aborted Fetuses

[Ben Kenobi]

The gap between the inquisition and not the inquisition is a bit larger than the gap between two people who believe Christ died for the sins of humanity but go to churches with slightly different ways of taking the sacrament and slightly different views of who's going to suffer/benefit and how much after they're dead.

Still doesn't change my point. Mormonism is on the other side of the modernism divide between modern Catholicism and medieval Catholicism. If there's a root and two different branches, it's impossible for the branches to get closer to each other than each branch to the root. Replace Mormonism with Quakerism and your point gets made quite easily, even though I would disagree that Quakerism is closer.

Mormons themselves argue that theirs is a 'purer understanding of Christianity', and have made their own scriptures, (book of Mormon), have their own magisterium, etc. They are affirming elements of Medieval Catholicism and incorporating it into their own forms. Why do they do this? Because they are attempting to build from the ground up - from modernism down, not growing from modernist principles into something else entirely, as say Quakerism.

[Kidlicious]

Why does being a self require supernatural magic?

Is a computer a self? Either you just constructed the concept of yourself or yourself actually exists. If you actually exist it must be supernatural.

[Ban Kenobi]

Is a computer a self? Either you just constructed the concept of yourself or yourself actually exists. If you actually exist it must be supernatural.

I don't see any reason why a sufficiently advanced computer, such as a computer that is capable of fully modelling a human brain, couldn't be a self. I would define a self as a sentient entity, and see no reason to assume sentience is caused by magic.

[Aeson]

If there's a root and two different branches, it's impossible for the branches to get closer to each other than each branch to the root.

No.

[Kidlicious]

I don't see any reason why a sufficiently advanced computer, such as a computer that is capable of fully modelling a human brain, couldn't be a self. I would define a self as a sentient entity, and see no reason to assume sentience is caused by magic.

A computer can never have free will. It believes what it is programmed to believe. If you want to call sentience being a self fine but it ts not.

[Ben Kenobi]

No.

Stunning rebuttal. I am slain!

[kentonio]

A computer can never have free will. It believes what it is programmed to believe. If you want to call sentience being a self fine but it ts not.

How do you know? Your brain is just a complex chemical computer.

[Kidlicious]

How do you know? Your brain is just a complex chemical computer.

The brain is one thing, the mind is another. There's no evidence that sentient animals think like humans. It's incredible actually that you think a sentient computer would think like us. Do you think it's going to judge itself good and therefore value self-preservation? Why would it do that? What is special about a computer? Nothing. It is just a machine. Self-aware, so what. That has no importance compared to actual free will.

[kentonio]

The brain is one thing, the mind is another. There's no evidence that sentient animals think like humans. It's incredible actually that you think a sentient computer would think like us. Do you think it's going to judge itself good and therefore vakue self-preservation? Why would it do that? What is spevial about a computer? Nothing. It is just a machine. Self-aware, so what. That has no importance compared to actual free will.

Concepts like self preservation are perfectly logical. You could code those into a computer now without any issues. Our brains have just evolved those functions over time, rather than needing them manually added by an external creator.

[Kidlicious]

Concepts like self preservation are perfectly logical. You could code those into a computer now without any issues. Our brains have just evolved those functions over time, rather than needing them manually added by an external creator.

The difference is humans choose to survive or not. You program a computer either to survive or not. It has no free will.

[kentonio]

The difference is humans choose to survive or not. You program a computer either to survive or not. It has no free will.

What makes you think you choose to survive rather than just obey the complex mechanics of your brain? People tend to react in ways formed by their experiences, their programming if you will. You don't really have free will, because everything about you is shaped by your upbringing, cultural surroundings and sometimes just chemical/biological changes in your brain. It just makes us feel better to think in terms of free will and choice.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So something like a 10 percent matchup with Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Conservative Protestants. Unsurprised. I'm not quite sure why we would consider people who only have 10 percent overlap in their religious beliefs as members of the same faith.

Actually they emailed me the results, and OF COURSE, you are wrong .

Liberal Quakerism (100%)
Liberal Christian Protestantism(98%)
Orthodox Quakerism(98%)
Conservative Christian Protestant(88%)
Unitarian Universalism(88%)
Roman Catholicism(82%)
Seventh-day Adventists(79%)
Reformed Judaism(74%)
Eastern Orthodox Christianity(71%)
New Thought(57%)
Bahá'í Faith(53%)
Neo-Paganism(51%)
Sikhism(51%)
Hinduism(50%)
Orthodox Judaism(47%)
Secular Humanism(44%)
Church of Christ, Scientist(43%)
New Age(43%)
Taoism(42%)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints(39%)
Theravada Buddhism(39%)
Islam(37%)
Mahayana Buddhism(36%)
Scientology(35%)
Jainism(28%)
Jehovah's Witnesses(26%)
Atheism(24%)

[Ban Kenobi]

A computer can never have free will. It believes what it is programmed to believe. If you want to call sentience being a self fine but it ts not.

What evidence is there that human actions aren't a product of the chemical reactions happening in their brains? It explains the evidence we observe just as well and requires fewer assumptions.

The brain is one thing, the mind is another. There's no evidence that sentient animals think like humans. It's incredible actually that you think a sentient computer would think like us. Do you think it's going to judge itself good and therefore value self-preservation? Why would it do that? What is special about a computer? Nothing. It is just a machine. Self-aware, so what. That has no importance compared to actual free will.

Humans value self-preservation because natural selection favors organisms that try to survive. No woo is necessary to explain that.

[Kidlicious]

What makes you think you choose to survive rather than just obey the complex mechanics of your brain? People tend to react in ways formed by their experiences, their programming if you will. You don't really have free will, because everything about you is shaped by your upbringing, cultural surroundings and sometimes just chemical/biological changes in your brain. It just makes us feel better to think in terms of free will and choice.

Science is good at predicting human behavior more often than not but not always. Human behavior is unpredictable. If we do have sentient computers one day their behavior will be 100% predictable. That's why.

[Ban Kenobi]

Any extremely complex machine is going to do things that are unpredictable. Computers, even though they're not nearly as complex as the human brain, already do unpredictable things like suddenly crashing. No one can predict precisely when their computer is going to stop working, yet no one literally believes their computer has a will of its own that transcends the laws of physics. The weather is hard to predict, does it have free will? When we flip a coin we can't predict which side it will land on, do coins have free will?