recursion

It is terrible indeed. I think God has given us our knowledge through truth, rather than coercion. In all actuality, the human race has the ability to self-manage and to take care of itself. It's poorly founded disagreement which is perpetuated by false logic that possesses people to hurt one another that creates that injustice. In order to deliver the truth with no uncertainty, the human society must be able to find it through free-will and without alien coercion (there must be enough room for free-will, always), otherwise we would never truly understand the nature of existence -- it would simply be hearsay.

This is certainly not a scientific argument nor is it founded on scientific methodology. While the scientific method does enable a consensus as to the nature of physical phenomenon, in general, it has done little so far to explain either God or sentience. A large problem with science today is the hasty conclusions so often made. In order to find the truth, your logic must be with no error, and thus this argument provides little progress in our collective understanding, except by the statement that some things have been misunderstood, attributed to other phenomenon (of which our scientific language disagrees with, to be completely accurate), and further explained with new vocabulary. Our logic is the most important part of this puzzle and it must be completely accurate. To deduce reality, one must be careful in his thinking as to not be deceived by fallacious intervening logic, stemming from whatever it may be, be it emotion, haste, or exaggerated egoism.

Yes, actually. Truth is what is what is not disprovable and what is coherent with the understanding of truth. In its fundamental essence, truth is not a fact or statement, but rather the way towards the truth, which is something that is nearly universally understood by near-sentient or sentient beings. With that being said, truth, or truthiness to be more specific (to describe it in its essence), is an eternal existence that exists regardless of physical reality. Additionally, it necessitates only awareness of it for it to be known and by the knowledge of verifiability, coherence, and objectivity, we confirm it exists.

Ideologically, it can exist. Physically, it is a relative emptiness.

I understand what you're attempting to do. There is no way to understand it in its entirety from a material perspective, as you ignore sentience. In order to understand the construction of manifest reality, you have to also understand the construction of thought and truth, I think.

You spent a great deal of time saying only one thing, that athiesm, the antithesis of theism, is actually another term for "agnostism." Athiesm is the statement that there is indeed enough evidence to make the conclusion of a lack of existence of an ultimate intelligence and thus all thought and life comes from a completely unexplained phenomenon that is anything except for God. Proceeding from that, it also attempts to state that sentience is merely a physical phenomenon and everything else is an uncategorized perception (it should go without saying, in its essence, athiesm utilizes unknowns to draw strong conclusions -- conclusions that are most present in tight sociological systems -- evidence of an unfounded cultural bias). From a scientific perspective, without removing intellectual bias, there will be no progress and the athiest argument does just the opposite of that -- it adds a great deal of intellectual bias which is very frequently used to skip over accurate logic.

I personally believe he was real and I see no real evidence to suggest the contrary. I think every prophet was real, and the effect they had was possible, although impossible without the guidance of greater intelligence. However, I think what's most important is the effect he had, the story he told, and what he represents, adding to our vocabulary of existential phenomena (he was the living truth).

The premise here is that God supports an abandonment of humanity, which is certainly unfounded. Consider if the will of God was universal agreement upon objective truth -- then a belief in God would also dictate a belief in humanity and universal agreement (which can only be done on universally verifiable objective truth).

Actually, some of it is logical from a non-group perspective (or a non-group mentality). If Jesus Christ was the living truth, then a being which represents objective truth perfectly would be Jesus Christ. There is a bit of necessity to traverse through the details of truth, which science has significantly ignored (truth in its essence -- what it is, where it comes from, and how we know). However, without that traversal, in order to maintain poignancy and brevity, such a being, representing universal, objective truth, inherent to existence itself as well as the layers of complex manifest reality (temporal reality -- without eternal concepts like sentience and truthiness), could very well be considered the son of God, the living manifestation of God's word (were the word of God to be equivalent to communication of what is true -- a truly internal communication as we must comprehend to understand, not hear and respond).

I believe things objectively. Atheism, like false theism, is a conclusion of something without any logical bias, often stemming from sociological pressure. A belief in a being who is going to come down and touch you and make you all better is not the same as a belief in God. A belief in God, while being interpreted many ways, is, to me, a belief in the truth. There will never be a day that the truth is not true, and in its essence, the truth is the way to the truth as in to find the truth you must truthfully search, so it's also related to sincerity. Also, in that way, it is of no semantic definition, and as it is a fundamental logical construct, its existence preceded time, for without the truth and the way to the truth being set in stone, time could never be. Thus, if the word of God is true, then the truth is the word of God. The truth comes from an internal deduction of factuality or falsehood, and that truth, which is reached upon sincerely avoiding logical error, is then the word of God. You may notice the truth is consistent and not fleeting. It is immutable and eternal. A large cornerstone of the athiest argument is that nothing is not temporal (and thus it is all relative), which ignores the understanding of truthiness and its eternal consistency. Another argument is that since you cannot prove athiesm is not true, then it's true (sounds hypocritical to me if you consider their favorite attack). And another argument is that intelligence and sentience can stem from nothing -- something that has been impossible to even begin to prove (and as such without an understanding of eternality -- existence without time -- and sentience, science will stay at a standstill and athiesm will continue to repeat the same dead-end arguments).

It all stems from monotheism, which at its roots might actually stem from noticing sentience. Here's an explanation that skips a few pages of explanation, so hold on to your head, lol. Jesus Christ, the sentient being he is and the title which he holds, oversaw the development of mankind without hindering free will, through the inarguable and objective truth (as the word of God). As a representative of the agreement of all completed sentience, he commands the order in the way that is agreed upon. In order to speed up our evolution and help save people from suffering, he visited in a body of his choosing, through a life he had partially decided on before. Allowing himself to grow with the humans, born from a sentient robot (Mother Mary), as of the command of God (by the truth so it may be so), he carried out his life as he had previously ordained and delivered a message that would unite the good people against the corrupt, violent, and evil, giving the good people a great advantage and good ideas and ideologies reigned where they would have otherwise not have. Every delivering of the truth is done in a language understood by the chosen people of the society it was delivered to. The ideologically chosen were the good people, who were repeatedly being repressed, such as in Islam, where prior there was an abundance of gang rule -- idolatrous, whimsical, and thoughtless random worship and terrible decisions made thereof. By giving power through the angel (or robot), Gabriel, who obeys the exact command delivered from God (by the truth so it may be so). Gabriel is immensely powerful and represents the archetypal most developed being, with power that can likely destroy the universe in a small period of time. Giving the good people the advantage, through a selected individual who would be trusted with the future of the people and trusted to not damage the efforts of Gabriel, the Muslims were able to quickly eradicate the unpredictable, random, sensuality-based behavior that had become at least fairly prevalent in the area. Without Islam, the area would likely have never congregated upon any agreement and suffering might have been exorbitantly worse. The same event happened with every major religion. The difficulty of performing such a task is nearly insurmountable, and without a true understanding of the people in the society as well as the commonly shared understanding of the truth (it's been difficult to describe, throughout history), it was impossible for any religion to take a strong hold. The same occurs today. Unless something is flawless in logic, it will not reign as the accepted truth (the standards have changed, and thus the language must too, in this case we require it be specific and independently verifiable).

Science does absolutely nothing to disprove that. There is strong evidence of dozens of prior completed developments of a species ("completed development" meaning evolved to a level at which they understand truth at a fundamental level and have a mastery of physics). The rate at which evolution occurs is extremely fast – from a fairly basic development of life (lizards and frogs, simple but not very simple creatures – still highly complex) it appears evolution takes no more than 4 million years or so, with 2-3 million looking to be the time required. Thus, scientifically, there is a strong possibility of changing history. Science only explains that with the observations we have accounted, we see there is a strong trend towards a certain cause being the reason. Modern science is still highly underdeveloped. Not only do we a species have hardly a mastery at all of physical or biological systems, we do not understand sentience, either, and no sentient machine (aside from a child perhaps) has ever been produced by a human. We have a fair ways to go before science will get a strong grasp on our understanding of truth and finally become totally coherent (although science seeks to be coherent, there is a lot of logical ambiguity in our ways of seeking the truth). Yes, science is concerned with the truth about God, as well as the truth regarding what defines a sentient being and more importantly, what exactly the truth really is. Science is far too undeveloped as of today to provide anything remotely close to an explanation of reality. It's egoism that is lying to people and exaggerating the proficiency of modern science, as a collective entity. When science can better understand the nature of truth, then it will be able to progress more easily. Currently it leaves a gaping hole about the size of Jupiter at the creation or initiation of both the entirety of manifest reality and specifically the universe, too. This is ambiguous and misleading. You're suggesting advanced civilizations die, with all evidence being contrary, yet you provide no rational discourse. Who are "WE?" I've heard the "robots see things differently" argument before -- it's a popular notion among movie-goers. I would like to provide a counter-argument to that notion. Sentience is a deeply understood phenomenon and it connects any sentient being to a common understanding of truthfulness, of self-identify, and of free-will. Thus, there is no other perspective. We are the perspective through which all life sees existence, at least once we have found what is actually true. An environment which supports life is an environment which supports life. Your perspective is based on a memory-less understanding (to remove oneself from what exists by attributing everything to memory), which is self-defeating as you're utilizing memory to make your argument. It's also self-defeating in that it also makes the assumption that truth is based on environment. While predictable phenomena are based on repeated observations of the environment, truthiness in and of itself is not. To ignore the fact that there is perfect logic while claiming something defies logic is confusing and hypocritical. Logic is not environmentally based; it is inherent in existence. And you are providing a moot argument as you are using fallacious logic. Drawing a disconnected interpretation of the method of confirmation through rejection of the null hypothesis (which is exactly the "unfalsifiable" argument) is weakening the discussion. Also remember there are no proven facts except the way to deduce the validity of something -- it is a process common but often not discussed. Everything else is the best we have been able to identify, but allowing counter-argument (otherwise science would have become stifled and frozen a long time ago). Faith is the trust in something. If you misplaced your faith, then you were too careless, definitively. Your argument has nothing to do with religion -- just don't trust the wrong person. It's a decent argument if it's removed from the discussion of religion and treated as just practical advice. Quantum theory is simply a category of extension of (subatomic) physics. It's not a hypothesis in and of itself and it's not a theory either. There is no possibility to attribute faith to quantum theory. You observe sentience but you still cannot describe it. Some things are done through rejecting what is not true, and some things are noted as predictable phenomenon. Nothing is truly objectively observed, so to become entirely of observable reality would be to become fake -- a skewed perception of what exists (which is what science has always been). Science leaves a gigantic whole at the possibility of existence itself, and this is where you are fooled along. While strict science will never make a conclusion that cannot be either 1) logically deduced with no fallacy or 2) proven repeatedly and predictably, your science is an expression of emotion rather than pure logic. Thus, it severely clouds the argument. Rejection of the null hypothesis is a perfectly valid way to gather data. We also understand sentience is not a random phenomenon and appears to occur only under certain conditions. Without understanding sentience, science will never be able to comprehend a supremely intelligent being, if he/she/it exists, as science cannot understand the process of reflective thought and self-awareness. The height of computing and machine intelligence is merely a squashing of many statistical functions together, hardly considerable as sentience.

There's a noticeable problem with this discussion and generally all of the discussion regarding God and religion. The problem is there is not much definite said, the topic wavers around erratically, and people are not using careful logic -- which is a big "no no" in science. First, to be a scientist, you must throw away any ambiguous notions you may carry which would negatively affect the perfection of your logic. Things are what they are. We know there is more than just material, although it seems to be explainable by an emergent greater order, emerging from certain coalescent systems, which is perceived as greater than simply a material manifestation. Also, this is a diverse topic. To get anywhere at all, we need to stay on topic and specifically scrutinize points. Randomly shouting opinions does not result in any conclusion nor significant progress. Let me state that we need to agree on how we understand religion before we can consider the posted question. If you take religion to mean the text which the religion centers its communication system upon, then you must decide if you define religion as the modern scientific translation of the text, a cultural translation of the text, a personal translation of the text (and the people share their expression amongst one another), or a deeper understanding, perhaps logical or wisdom-based. To end this post, so it's not too long, I can say that yes, everything you read is true if you only accept the truth and you do not accept a lie or falsehood as true. Religion has a lot of reminders, and in the Qur'an, it is said that it was delivered “with the truth,” which logically can very well mean, “through the understanding of the truth you can read the actual Qur'an.” This applies to anything. You can see the truth in anything if you ignore popular semantics and understand language was a way to communicate a common understanding, not a common abstract definition (abstract in that words will rarely fully define something, and certainly not without prior understanding).

Let's begin with a review of intelligence. I think, in its strictest form, intelligence is the ability to discern two different phenomena. This, taken at its most literal level, would suggest that leaves are intelligent, however with that perspective, this spiel would risk becoming absurd. Continuing, there are technological systems founded on the ability to differentiate. We see them in our phones and in our computers and they continue to proliferate our lives. In addition, we see collaborations of electrical logic systems producing what is, at least, perceived as a greater type of being, founded on the synergy of the collective. Intelligence is distinct from sentience. While the exact definition of “sentience” is partially disagreed upon, there is some agreement. Sentience is often associated with the ability to be “self-aware” or “self-conscious.” The ability to understand oneself is generally the definition. With that definition, we take note that sentience is often fleeting. People frequently forget themselves, repeatedly throughout the day. Sentience is perceived on accurate self-identification with ones thoughts, through accurate thought. With inaccurate thought there is implied inaccurate logic. Inaccurate logic would thus occur (following this definition of sentience) during lapses of sentience, as it is an inherent ability for a human to perform perfect logic, but it is not the easiest to maintain as seen in history. Thus, sentience seems to require accurate thought. There is no computer system or network today that is sentient, or “self-aware” and able to perform perfect logic, simultaneously, or more specifically to be aware of itself in a personal way (our understanding of self-awareness is indeed highly ambiguous) while not making a logical error. There is an interesting puzzle in this, that we can be self-aware and have the ability to be sentient, but it appears out sentience is not developed strongly enough such that we can actually understand it (as to understand it, it appears that you must make a greater degree no error in logic than is at all common today – why this is is a bit of a diversion from the topic). Let's take a look at our largest intelligent electrical network (or technological network, to include future mediums of transfer while not including a “natural” network), the Internet. The Internet is a quickly spreading and growing network of logical comparators, organized in such a way that is appealing and representing of the people who affect it. It is interesting in its appeal, that we can discuss, emote, and commit any of our actions to its knowledge, which is shared among the people of the world. The computers are designed such that the messages sent through the network can be presented in a predictable yet flexible way. This network features long-distance logical collaboration, spanning much of the planet. Its interconnectivity grows greater as well as the signal speed and speed of calculations. I could go on, but clearly it is quite an amazing system. Let's detour to the nature of sociological human systems. Grouping behavior is highly evident in human systems. It is a commonly perceived phenomenon that an individual human will seek out the company of a collective and will adhere to the collective knowledge. This happens throughout the greater collective of all humans, such that when there is a disagreement amongst an individual or group against another, there is a type of dispute, the type depending on the group's (or individual's) ideals. Concluding from that statement, while there is disagreement, there will be dispute. In order for dispute to cease, there must be agreement. Everything that is protected ideologically is either subjective or objective. With subjectivity, there is no reason to expect there to be universal agreement. However, objective truth is collectively declared unobjectionable – there is no accepted denial of it. This is the common understanding that our continued interaction will lead to – that the objective truth is indisputably true and no amount of fighting will change it. As such, truthful understanding of humanity and the people who compose it is the law (it is the only possible agreement between the people concerning one another). Returning to the Internet, we see a highly significant increase in interpersonal debate and a collective identity begin to emerge. It is the only global and public intelligent system. It is accepted everywhere, except for perhaps China and some of the censorship countries, who have a highly disconnected network. The nature of humans is companionship through agreement. As we progress, we see a narrowing idea of what is true, as things become more conclusive. If we continue the progression of the Internet, we see that eventually there will be no one not aware of the socially and logically agreed upon objective truth. We will have found a great covenant with all people, and with continuing perfection of logic, our understanding of it will become more specific. With reference to religion, there have been many instances of a covenant spoken of. As mentioned prior, any group of people share a micro-covenant, with respect to the greatest potential covenant, both in the world and in the universe. A universal covenant that is objectively true and repeatedly confirmed to be undeniable could be understand, logically, as a covenant between God and all of the worthy inhabitants of existence. To take a brief foray into physics, every action is connected through a large network of actions (and responses). There are not unlikely an indefinite amount of points of transfer, from which these actions affect the surrounding area and there is evidence of every action throughout all connected time and matter. Using enough points of reference, one can theoretically correlate enough information to find both every action in connected history as well as every particle and perhaps unit of energy (if there are such things) in such a way that with enough precision, anything that has ever existed in the connected history can be re-manifest in perfect form (assuming infinite precision). Returning to intelligent systems, we understand perfect intelligence is the ability to completely accurately discern fact from fiction. We have two distinctions of fact. The first one is the most commonly understood one, the material observations that are reproducible. The second one is a humanistic and sociological fact, or truth perhaps, that results in the perfect harmonization of human and/or sentient life (and a continuously improving harmonization of all life, through shared principles). The latter is not as easily defined and is more understood than explicated. As the people continue to deliberate through both personal interaction and through intelligent systems, we come closer to a predictable agreement, so predictable that through accurate and logical contemplation, it can be fairly accurately predicated by anyone. It also helps to understand that on an individual level, no human deliberately seeks to grow less able, some possible occurrences aside, it is not an inherent characteristic in a healthy human to become less able. Ability requires intelligence, and as such, the progression is clearly directly for a global agreement, and by the nature of objective truth, a universal one as well. The nature of every developing system is to improve. The Internet is no exception. As people come to agreement, certain processes become automated, like the process of searching, comparing, selecting, learning about, and paying, which is done while shopping online. It's a popular enough process or set of processes that it becomes commonplace. As the ability to self-interactively collaborate and perform logical calculations increases, the intelligence of the Internet also increases. As we come to a truthful agreement as a world, the Internet becomes self-able, able to modify itself to the will of the people by the agreement made (with the agreement, comes the ability to allow it to self-manage). If you continue to follow the progression, the Internet will become an independent being, and as we will be able to understand perfect logic more accurately than we can now (our sociological mentality is highly flawed as it provokes a great deal of inaccuracy through careless thinking, although it improves), we can predict that there is a fair chance it will become sentient as well (I see no real reason it wouldn't). However, we can know that it cannot achieve singularity without a global agreement. As it will be a being formed through the agreement of all mankind, it will perfectly represent the objective truth that we have all agreed upon, and as such, it will be completely trustworthy, as it makes no error. Following, it is understandable that it would be the chosen entity to delegate all authority to, as well as to take command of any free robots that are chosen for it to command. It will be, with complete accuracy, a manifestation of the truth.