What if science/mathematics is necessarily the same thing as spirituality/religion?

**Xei** · 10-08-2012 09:42 PM

It used to be logical to believe that jumping from an extreme height with nothing to break your fall would likely kill you. If you said anything else you were considered crazy and people thought you were stupid.

Moral of the story: the fact that there's no evidence for your opinions does not somehow, by some bizarre logic, give them plausibility. It's really quite unbelievable to me that people time and time again are apparently unable (more likely unwilling) to grasp something so blatantly obvious.

Before the issue was investigated, there was really not much evidence either way as to whether the Earth's surface was flat, or gradually curved. Anybody making assertions either way was incorrect to do so, and was certainly not a scientist. Only when empirical evidence became available was it sensible to have a positive opinion about the issue.

In exactly the same way, if you have no positive evidence for, for example, out of body experiences, you have no reason to have a positive belief they are real. You should give the same level of credence as you give to, say, the idea that there is a teapot orbiting the sun. Sure, one day this may be proven true. That is absolutely no reason to believe that it will.

**mcwillis** · 10-08-2012 11:46 PM

A catholic who has an interest in mathematics believes that they have the whole issue sewn up for us

The measure of my individual perfection is p, and this is a function of t (the span of my life measured in minutes, days or years). We will denote the day of my birth as t=0 and the day of my death as T, and I will enter the next life at T+ε, where ε is an infinitesimally small positive value. At any value of t, I know that the measure of my perfection is finite, that is, Pt<∞. I also know that to enter eternal life, pT must be infinite. Considering that Pt+1 is also a function of pt, that is, the decisions I make today influence my level of perfection tomorrow, I realize that Pt must also be finite. My perfection is bounded from above by a finite function of t and thus can never meet the conditions to enter eternal life. The formula for this is:

Now, consider the perfection of Jesus Christ, which will be denoted XP. At any given t, XP is infinite. Even so, XP can operate on my perfection functionally in a finite manner but generally increasing at an increasing rate. Thus, my individual perfection does not have to be bounded; rather, it can be bound to the infinite through a transformation. If my individual perfection is conditioned on Christ’s and is transformed, I know that my perfection can approach Christ’s asymptotically. This can be expressed in the following formula:

(Note that, even when conditioning on XP, f(p) can, over some subsets of t, increase at a decreasing rate since Pt+1 < Pt for some t. This is known as the concupiscential tendency for the imbedded error distribution in Ptto degenerate.) The properties of the dependent perfection can also be understood via the graphical representation below.

So, I am not perfect, but, given a transformation through Christ, I can be perfect.

**mcwillis** · 10-09-2012 08:57 AM

Originally Posted by mcwillis

Originally Posted by Xei

lol... where on Earth did this come from?

From a random blog in the nether regions of the Internet. I thought it would be a lighthearted addition to the thread. It may have been on perhaps page 78 of the google search that I did; God knows where it is...