There aren't many future societal changes that I'd bet on, but the acceptance of Brave-New-World-style artificial uterine environments is one of them. Even for a healthy woman at an optimal age, the process of pregnancy is incredibly physically strenuous, yet our culture continues to encourage motherhood at a later age and fails to effectively support those who do make the choice to have children. A technological solution would be an easy out here, and if it were available then people would very likely take it, for better or worse.
> the process of pregnancy is incredibly physically strenuous
Friend just gave birth. I honestly don’t understand how anyone who has been proximate to childbirth can believe in intelligent design.
Everything about human birthing is a hack. The placenta. The rotation and cord and length of the process. The ridiculous frequency of stupid fuck-ups which often result in the death of a baby or the mother or both. Pregnancy strikes me as one of those processes proximate technology could absolutely do better than nature in 9/10 cases.
Apparently, the anomaly was also noted back in ancient Israel. The story of Adam and Eve is expressly presented as an explanation for why childbirth seems more like a punishment.
From Genesis 3:16, “To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children.’”
For such a forgiving God, he certainly seems to hold a grudge.
> For such a forgiving God, he certainly seems to hold a grudge.
Someone only read the first part of the book.
I was raised by a Catholic deacon, I've read the Bible front to back and maintained top marks in my religious education classes. I have a firm understanding of what kind of deity Christians worship.
By someone do you mean the women enduring childbirth still? Did we forget to tell them all was forgiven and the punishment was withdrawn?
Forgiveness didn't involve the punishment of painful childbirth, apparently.
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On the other side, I honestly dont understand how anyone who believes in the accidental theory of evolution would persist in their opinion after witnessing a live birth. The emotions that flood the mind are not “evolutionary”. seeing the struggle a mother puts in to give birth is incredible. And part of the reason why civilizations have had goddesses in their mythology.
The number of things that can go wrong are significant. And yet despite all that, a birth happens. That is a miracle in itself. It goes against probability.
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We can put a man in the moon yet technology has been unable to create even a single baby. Something that even two of the dumbest high schoolers you can find can easily do.
We can send James Cameron to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and yet technology has been unable to create even a single star. Something that even 10^55 of the dumbest hydrogen atoms you can find can easily do.
> yet technology has been unable to create even a single star.
Except we can perform nuclear fusion which is the essence of a star, it's just without gravity giving us a hand it takes too much electricity right now to do it at a large scale.
"We can X yet technology has been unable to even Y" is one of the most famously repeatedly defeated positions in history. People have had to run marathons to keep those goal posts out of reach.
This sounds wrong to me. Cloning exists, IVF is a routine medical operation and now this headline. IVF is basically the science version of two teenagers going at it.
You still need the teenagers. IVF simply replaces the mechanical act of fertilization.
Taking that logic to its conclusion will mean you think technology can do nothing until we can make new universes. To quote Carl Sagan: "To make an apple pie you must first invent the universe". At what point do you agree that science can make babies? I think IVF counts, you don't. What is the treshold for you?
I’m not making a metaphysical point here. IVF still relies on the human reproductive machinery to produce the gametes and gestate the baby. You’re still using human reproductive machinery to do 99% of the work.
By contrast, science can make synthetic insulin for example.
I'm also not trying to make a metaphysical point. I'm trying to get at why you think it doesn't count. I was poking at your argument to try and get at what you really think, because I think the argument you made was too shallow to be the real deal.
> By contrast, science can make synthetic insulin for example.
Can it? Afaik all insulin is completely organic in nature. We still fully rely on existing life to create insulin. Not to dissimilar from IVF actually.
> IVF still relies on the human reproductive machinery to produce the gametes and gestate the baby. You’re still using human reproductive machinery to do 99% of the work.
Right and with insulin the bacterium performs 99.9% of the work. Yet, there you don't have a problem of calling it technology. So that's why I asked the very clear question. What is the threshold for you?
It’s a matter of time. Gametogenesis will come in time. We’re close enough.
If you’ve written software, you know that bug-compatible replications can take longer than the original for sufficiently complex original.
They gotta take the fun out of everything, don't they?
In the Vorkosigan Saga, the "uterine replicator" appears as a minor but persistent future-technology, where the main selling point is Not Dying To Your Stupid Biology, followed by convenience.
> "[The] debate that will fundamentally alter Barrayar's future is being carried on right now among their wives and daughters. To use it, or not to use it? Too late to keep it out, it's already here. The middle classes are picking it up in droves. Every mother who loves her daughter is pressing for it, to spare her the physical dangers of biological childbearing. They're fighting not the old men, who haven't got a clue, but an old guard of their sisters who say to their daughters, in effect, We had to suffer, so must you! Look around tonight, Mark. You're witnessing the last generation of men and women on Barrayar who will dance this dance in the old way."
-- Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
Bujold also made an explicit point on several occasions in this book cycle that without this kind of tech, there's no true gender equality, because the burden of childbearing is just too much of a penalty.
> without this kind of tech, there's no true gender equality
Right, and partly to forestall any appeal-to-nature responses, I'll borrow from another top-favorite author, with emphasis added:
> The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
> The two wizards exchanged a glance. Vetinari was staring into the depths of his beer mug and they were glad that they did not know what he saw in there.
-- Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
It's both a curse and a blessing. Women have a degree of control over reproduction that men can never have.
Hail science, but I find the idea that intelligent design = someone thought it out to be a naive misunderstanding.
I think a lot about proton pumps. I know it has to have evolved naturally, but it looks so engineered. I am certain there's a lot more to the process of evolution than we currently know.
To be fair most versions of intelligent design arguments I know are also quite naive.
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Interesting because it seems like a miracle to me
> it seems like a miracle to me
Conception, yes. Hell, many animal childbirths (and egg emergences), also yes.
Human childbirth? Obviously subject to personal taste, but I'm not seeing it. To approach its messiness we must look to some of the most inbred animals we've engineered, e.g. French bulldogs [1].
[1] https://www.frenchbulldogbreed.net/blog/can-french-bulldogs-...
> I honestly don’t understand how anyone who has been proximate to childbirth can believe in intelligent design.
One way to believe in intelligent design despite how awful human childbirth is compared to those for other animals -- is found in Genesis:
Humans decided they knew better than God about what is best for themselves so they didn't listen to His one and only (at the time) command. So He imposed some consequences, including "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children." Genesis 3:16.
That doesn’t seem fair, does men also get some "consequences"? Or did Eve listen less than Adam at that time? (I didn’t read the Genesis)
edit: found it. Adams gets to eat plants from the soils (instead of form the trees?) and will work hard to produce those plants.
Just before, the Serpens deceive the women by telling her eating the fruits not in the middle of the garden is ok. She was suspicious but the Serpens was very convincing (by lying) However when Eve told Adam to eat the fruit, he didn’t ask anything and did it. IMHO the man is more in fault here because he didn’t even try to understand why he should eat Eve fruits while god said no.
> To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203&ver...
The serpent didn’t lie. It just told Eve the truth, that she could eat from the tree and not die.
No Eve alive today claims to be the original. Eve ate from the tree and surely (eventually) died.
Edit: the supposition in Genesis is if they hadn't ever eaten, they'd be alive today.
I think that is debatable and semantic. The tree didn’t kill them or cause them to die. It wasn’t the tree of life, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says if you eat from the tree of knowledge, you will die. In the King James Version, it is even “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”. This indicates that eating from the tree will kill you, possibly even killing you the very day you do it. But the tree of knowledge does not kill you, it just gives you knowledge. God chose to kick them out of the garden (preventing them from eating from the tree of life and being immortal).
If someone tells me “You can have any drinks in the fridge but don’t drink that bottle under the sink, or you will die” means the bottle under the sink is poison, not that they plan on murdering you if you drink it. They can choose not to murder you, that is on them, not on the sink bottle. But when you are the all power supreme being, I guess you can say or do anything you want.
Physically, I see your point.
Spiritually, they died that very day and were dead in sin unless God helped them.
And back to physically, just imagining the sight of the tree of life and the experience of getting banished - that's going to feel like a death.
"It may be here said, We have instances wherein God hath not fulfilled his threatenings; as his threatening to Adam, and in him to mankind, that they should surely die, if they should eat the forbidden fruit. I answer, it is not true that God did not fulfil that threatening: he fulfilled it, and will fulfil it in every jot and tittle. When God said, 74 “Thou shalt surely die,” if we respect spiritual death, it was fulfilled in Adam’s person in the day that he ate. For immediately his image, his holy spirit, and original righteousness, which was the highest and best life of our first parents, were lost; and they were immediately in a doleful state of spiritual death.
If we respect temporal death, that was also fulfilled: he brought death upon himself and all his posterity, and he ... suffered [the beginning of] that death on that very day on which he ate. His body was brought into a corruptible, mortal, and dying condition, and so it continued till it was dissolved. If we look at all that death which was comprehended in the threatening, it was, properly speaking, fulfilled in Christ. When God said to Adam, If thou eatest, thou shalt die, he spake not only to him, and of him personally; but the words respected mankind, Adam and his race, and doubtless were so understood by him. His offspring were to be looked upon as sinning in him, and so should die with him. The words do as justly allow of an imputation of death as of sin; they are as well consistent with dying in a surety, as with sinning in one. Therefore, the threatening is fulfilled in the death of Christ, the surety.
Punishing people thousands of generations removed who have no responsibility seems sadistic and cruel. If that's how God operates then why not do slave reparations? Why not do a huge series of land swaps to give land back to descendants of original owners even if the taking happened 2000 years ago? Who cares how much it hurts people who weren't even born yet; apparently God thinks that is just fine. The sins of the father fall on the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson forever.
Human childbirth is terrible because we walk upright and the four-limb vertebrae with pelvis+spine design is built for quadrupedal movement. The changes necessary to make bipedal movement work (combined with larger complex brains) make childbirth difficult. A case of competing requirements that can't be improved without redesigning the entire skeletal structure from scratch - something a God could trivially do but evolution has trouble with over such a short time span.
The nutritional requirements for a large brain plus quirks of our evolutionary path are also responsible for menses/monthly cycles. That is literally a mechanism to flush out fertilized embryos that may not be well-formed. It is extremely uncommon in animals. Most animals that have some need to pause or terminate fetal development do it cooperatively; the mother's chemical signals will command the fetus to slow, stop, or even kill itself and the fetus obeys. Humans are among the extreme few where mother-fetus interactions are adversarial.
Miscarriages are relatively common for the same reason: a human baby is expensive and hard on the mother. Any hint it might be developing incorrectly and better to dump it so we can start over.
Let's not even get to the fragile disaster that is the human back.
> combined with larger complex brains
The fact that our large complex brains make childbirth painful has a kind of irony: the original mistake in the garden was that they supposed they knew better than God, and so they ate of that one forbidden tree.
They had big heads, so to speak.
I mentioned this to a buddy and he wondered if there are any other animals with big heads who also, with __complete knowledge__, do things to their own harm like smoke cigarettes, etc. No animal knows more and is yet more prone.
> Punishing people thousands of generations removed who have no responsibility seems sadistic and cruel
If you want to be theist but also not close your mind to reality then maltheism is the only feasible way to go.
That's not the only feasible way to go. The other way is
- God offers a choice
- Offenses against God (however few in number and short in duration) yet have an infinite dimension of being against Him
- God mercifully offers infinite forgiveness for a limited time, and consequences to get our attention and signify something is wrong.
- God executes perfect justice on the finally-unrepentant, which will take forever being in exact proportion to the offenses.
The disagreements here all boil down to one thing: not holding God in high enough esteem (even merely in supposition just for the duration of this conversation -- unlike podcaster Joe Rogan who did maintain the supposition for one of his podcasts)
It is like trying to discuss black holes with someone who refuses to suppose that space can curve, and who immediately tries to poke the first hole he sees based on the assumption that space cannot curve.
The thing to suppose for this conversation -- the reason why offenses against God are infinite -- is that God is infinitely worthy, that He currently holds all things in existence including our next moments, and there is no end to our obligation to Him and no end to what can be enjoyed of Him.
If a stranger insults you with complete sincerity, it's easy to brush it off. If the love of your life gives you the same insult with the exact same sincerity, that is a different matter. It is obvious that there is a difference and no one would deny it.
But then considering an offense against God, suddenly we demote Him and deny we owe Him infinitely more. We don't want to owe Him anything becase we believe we know better about how to spend our lives than He does.
As long as one refuses to suppose these things, one will of course disagree.
But once one maintains the supposition, one can see how it makes sense instead of saying the only feasible way is malthesim.
We do not naturally want to suppose these things nor reckon with their consequences. So we try to object immediately instead of taking the time to suppose it all and see.
Why do babies die of cancer? Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God. Be thorough, try to preemptively address possible counterarguments to your answer.
I can make an effort to. Meanwhile, you can explain the empty tomb of Jesus similarly.
Pleas do. I never seen anyone make serious attempt that didn't make him seen like amoral monster.
Correct explanation for empty tomb is that people either were lying or misremembering. People are known to do that all the time.
Ok, I'll put the amoral monster response as a direct reply and keep this branch about the tomb.
The location of the tomb was well known to three different groups.
One -- Jesus' followers: It was Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. Joseph and Nicodemus prepared his body for burial. In addition to moving the body, they had forty pounds of spices. (The amount of physical effort involved probably made their destination more memorable) And some women saw him placed in the tomb (Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee). That women are listed as witnesses is notable because in that culture, the testimony of women was not acceptable. This was messy reality, not a clean fiction.
Two -- The Jewish religious leaders did not want Jesus' followers to stage his resurrection. So they asked the Romans to guard the tomb. "The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate, [63] and said, “Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I am to rise again.’ [64] Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come and steal Him away and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.” [65] Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how.” [66] And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone."
Three -- The Romans knew where the tomb was because they guarded it. Roman guards knew any security failure could be penalized by death ordered by their superior officer. The Romans were also the ones approached by Joseph of Arimathea so there's a second reason they'd know where Jesus' body was. They set a seal on the stone as well, and the penalty for violating the seal was death.
The Jews and the Romans were motivated to keep the status quo. But Christianity and copies of his followers' writings sprang up like wildfire within the lifetime of eyewitness. The Romans could not squash the new movement. One thing would have helped: if they could just produce the rotting corpse from the correct tomb. But they couldn't. Neither could the Jews ask the Romans to do so (it being forbidden in Jewish custom to touch a corpse). Because the tomb's location and emptiness was well-known.
Besides, his eleven remaining disciples and other close followers said they interacted with the risen Jesus for a period of 40 days (including being served fish by his hands, touching him, his appearing to over 500 people, and many other convincing proofs). And these eyewitness refused to recant on pain of torture and horrible death (or exile in the case of John).
This is very unlike their former manner, which was cowardly. (Another hallmark of a reliable record -- it didn't protect the disciples from appearing as stupid as they were, fighting over who'd be the greatest or misunderstanding Jesus at times)
Such a change in courage is consistent with seeing that their leader really was God the Son come back to life, in the flesh.
It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives.
> It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives.
It's perfectly consistent with misremembering or lying or making stuff up for dramatic purpose or creating hoaxes. And we even have many modern examples of this. Thousands of people "independently" provide at least as accurate and at least as consistent descriptions of UFO encounters. You can only imagine how bad it was in a world where stuff got written down only after decades or centuries after it supposedly happened. And written down by very limited number of people because almost no one could read or write. You could have made up pretty much anything in that environments if you had an advantage of being able to write. And people did.
There are two kinds of conversations we could be having.
(A) Where one person tries to change the other person's mind
(B) Where one person explains how a rational person can hold a position ... This is different from showing how the position is the only one a rational person can hold
Let's agree not to attempt (A)
Are you willing to try (B)?
The root of this thread was someone else saying "I honestly don’t understand how anyone who has been proximate to childbirth can believe in intelligent design"
I explained how: It's one Consequence imposed by the Governor. He would have been completely justified if he imposed the Punishment immediately instead. The root question didn't ask about goodness or mercy, only intelligent design.
The question (yours) now is: can a rational person reconcile the claim that God is good with the reality that a baby could die of cancer.
And on this particular branch of the discussion we're comparing explanations for Jesus' empty tomb.
It's entirely rational to consult Simon Greenleaf who was one of the foremost experts in judicial evaluation of evidence (he wrote a classic textbook on it used in many law schools).
There are rules about judging documents as evidence in the court of law: where were the documents found, in what manner, in what condition, how do they compare with other known examples.
There are guidelines for comparing copies, tracing and evaluating differences, and dating documents.
And there is Jewish and Roman history.
It is rational to accept the evidence as indicating that things were as I described in GP. Which is that Jesus' disciples maintained they interacted with the risen Christ _to their deaths_ and this happened _during_ the eyewitness generation. And the written documents are very numerous (thousands) and many are legitimately dated within the same generation.
It is rational to think this explanation is more credible than a hoax or deliberate deception. We're free to weigh things differently, but I'm just showing it is quite a rational option. The hoax approach is opposed by the evidence.
I'm sure some will object that it's irrational to believe in miracles. But:
One-- that is not in the spirit of the supposition "Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God." (I chatted with a co-worker once who simply could not suppose for the sake of conversation even though he was a software engineer and should have easily been able to pretend Jesus had what we computer folks call write permissions or root privileges. Actually I don't think his difficulty was intellectual so much as emotional.)
Two-- I have personal experience: a complete stranger performed a miracle on my leg. Before he did, I was shown a bone defect on an X-ray by someone else. Then, without knowing this, the stranger told me about the defect, and then he fixed me. I was sitting on the floor straight legged and actually felt my leg moving against the floor as the fix took place. Then I got another X-ray from Kaiser Permanente and it showed the defect was gone, even though I specifically told them what to look for (meaning they took exactly the correct X-ray to show it).
I'm doing (B) from the start because it takes me about a second to recognize a believer and I know that there's zero chance of convincing a believer of something that contradicts their belief.
> The question (yours) now is: can a rational person reconcile the claim that God is good with the reality that a baby could die of cancer.
Not 'could', they do die of cancer and no human intervention can prevent it at our current tech level.
That's the only reason I'm still in this thread. Because I have a slim hope of seeing attempt at an answer. So far all I got is attempts at misdirection, which is super common.
> Before he did, I was shown a bone defect on an X-ray by someone else.
And you are sure this was real because X-rays never contain any artifacts that could be mistaken for a defect and radiologists are always 100% accurate.
> I was sitting on the floor straight legged and actually felt my leg moving against the floor as the fix took place.
Are you familiar with dowsing rods? Brain is perfectly capable of creating sensations of motions that are not real. Especially when it's put in impressionable state by yourself or a skillfull fraud or both.
> Then I got another X-ray from Kaiser Permanente and it showed the defect was gone, even though I specifically told them what to look for (meaning they took exactly the correct X-ray to show it).
If you weren't "fixed" the result of the second test would be exactly the same as it was. It was just a simple case of more precise and targetted measurement revealing the error in the initial one. Yet you chose to remember it as firsthand evidence of existence of miracles.
There's really no reason for me to to reiterate what atheists said online for last two decades. Just go online and look what they have to say about miracles, faith healers and such.
So this has happened twice now:
But that second step isn't reasonable. You're free to take it of course. But doing so precludes this from being a type (B) conversation. It's yet another kind of conversation (C) demonstrating the ease of maintaining objections by maintaining distance from the actual evidence and objecting to an imagined version of the evidence.- I refer to the evidence of something in the past (Jesus' empty tomb, the change in my leg) - Instead of stepping closer to learn more about the evidence, you keep as far away from it as you already are and imagine things about the evidence - From that distance, you think your evaluation is reasonable and mine isn't.What you say about my X-rays arises not from any familiarity with them whatsoever, but starting from your conclusion and stepping backwards to what must be the cause.
If instead you learned more about my X-rays, you'd hear from me how the chiropractor showed the sideways bending of my spine (how many degrees to the left here, and back to the right there) by adding lines between corresponding vertebrae points and showing the angle deviation from vertical.
And then he showed me the cause which was the top of one femur was higher than the other, because one leg was longer than the other, the X-ray being captured in the standing position, barefoot with heels firmly planted etc. On the X-ray, he drew a line across the top of the femurs and showed the angle that deviated from horizontal.
And then he said it's like I've been stepping in a pothole my entire life and my spine has compensated by bending sideways. The difference is big enough to affect my spine but small enough that other people never noticed. And since it happened gradually as I grew, I never noticed either. But you'd also hear from me he wasn't hedging like there was any doubt about the X-ray's interpretation.
(The chiropractor lost my business because I could just put a little shim in one shoe and my spine wouldn't have to compensate anymore, and in fact this was his suggestion. No, he didn't try to sell me a shim. Yes, if a different interpretation of the X-ray were possible that'd allow him to keep my business, he would have said so.)
But the stranger noticed entirely independently and weeks later. I wonder if you suppose this was at some big tent revival where someone advertised a healer was in town.
No, if you had asked, if you had stepped closer to the evidence instead of keeping your distance and reasoning backwards from your chosen conclusion after imagining whatever you did, you would learn this was an ordinary boring Sunday at a boring church where I never saw or expected anything like this to happen, and he (truly a random dude that no one announced) singled me out, did his unexpected deed, and left. No one knew him, no one paid him, he didn't gain anything from it. He approached me unbidden, I didn't seek him out for a healing nor did I expect to ever see one much less experience one.
What is the reasonable explanation how this happened in separate places instead of the chiropractor and this stranger knowing each other and trying to gain from this?
You mentioned susceptibility. I wonder if you suppose I might be the gullible type who goes to big tent revivals. But if you stepped closer and asked, you'd learn I have two degrees from MIT and have spent more than two decades dealing with computers where the only thing that counts are facts. My friends from MIT who are believers are not susceptible either. Given a choice between one church that is known for good Bible studies vs another that has people speaking in tongues etc we would all prefer to go to the former.
I opened my eyes during the experience so I not only felt it, I saw it. The follow-up X-ray was the exact same setup body position. It's what the doctor ordered after I described the chiropractor's conclusion about my legs. Perhaps you are reasoning from an anti supernatural presupposition -- that anything supernatural is immediately dismissed. But as I said before, it's easy and reasonable to accept that IF God exists, then he can resurrect just as easily as you dragging a file back out of your trash.
The same goes for Jesus' tomb. If you would step closer and look at the evidence, you would see that the hoax theory is weak. My goal is not to convince you to change your mind because that's a type (A) conversation. My goal is to show you that resurrection is a reasonable explanation. Or rather, my challenge to you was to come up with a reasonable explanation of the empty tomb given the evidence. But now I realize it'd only feel like a difficult challenge if you're familiar with the evidence, which you are not. You could be, if you came closer to it and looked.
One fellow who looked at the evidence was a member of President Nixon's Watergate scandal. He experienced from the inside how hard it was to keep a conspiracy going. He saw what it's like to crack under the pressure. There's no way he could believe Jesus' disciples could carry to their painful deaths the supposed secret of a staged resurrection. This person was Chuck Colson.
Another is Lee Strobel who wanted to disprove Christianity. But the key is he came closer to the evidence with his skills as a professional investigative journalist to really attempt a direct undeniable smack down on it. He wanted to know it in exacting detail to totally refute it in a hit piece. But the evidence is so strong that he became a believer.
If you or anyone else is interested, here are some resources
Evidence That Demands a Verdict vols 1&2, Josh McDowell
Included in volume 1:
Included in volume 2:- think the Bible is no different from any other book? See chapters 1 and 4 - how can you trust the Bible when it wasn't officially accepted by the church until 350 years after the crucifixion? See chapter 3 - how do we know what we have today from the Bible authors was not changed from the originals? See chapter 4 - how can you believe in Jesus when all we know about him comes from biased Christian writers? See chapter 5 - *how can Christians say Jesus rose bodily from the grave? There are lots of possible explanations ... see chapter 10*
The Testimony of the Evangelists, Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice -- Simon Greenleaf- are the gospels a reliable record? See chapters 16 through 27Case for Christ, Lee Strobel
If you are willing to step closer to the evidence and take an honest look, these are available.
If you remain unwilling, then this branch of the conversation dies here. The record will show you maintaining the hoax/misremembering explanation as reasonable _only_ from a position of unawareness of the evidence. And I would then move to the other branch that you're waiting for. This wasn't a delay tactic. Perhaps I don't have as much free time as you, or my posts take longer to compose than yours -- they contain more as you can all see.
> From that distance, you think your evaluation is reasonable and mine isn't.
If somebody describes a convoluted closed physical system and concludes that energy is not conserved I don't really need to delve into details to know they made some mistake somewhere.
> What you say about my X-rays arises not from any familiarity with them whatsoever, but starting from your conclusion and stepping backwards to what must be the cause.
What I say arises from my familiarity what X-Ray (and even a medical test in general) is. It's perfectly sufficient to explain your particular experience.
Again, no need to delve into details especially since bottom line is "faith healing exists".
> The difference is big enough to affect my spine but small enough that other people never noticed
This is quite common. Not many people are perfectly symmetrical.
> But you'd also hear from me he wasn't hedging like there was any doubt about the X-ray's interpretation.
People can say what they think very confidentiality regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Being wrong feels exactly the same as being right. At least until you find out you were wrong.
> But the stranger noticed entirely independently and weeks later
Having one slightly shorter leg is unnoticeable for people who don't look for it. But if somebody looks it's not invisible. You can see one shoulder a little bit lower, or pelvis tilted or maybe you can see it in the way person moves. I imagine it's easily spotted by a manipulator that already looks at you like a piece of exploitable meat rather than a person and has extensive experience with people complainig abou health issues.
> he (truly a random dude that no one announced) singled me out, did his unexpected deed, and left. No one knew him, no one paid him, he didn't gain anything from it.
I know this kind of people. Met some. They imagine they can be helpful and they try to help according to their beliefs without intent to exploit. What they earn this way is feeling of utility and being special. Usually they do very little harm. Never any good.
> You mentioned susceptibility. I wonder if you suppose I might be the gullible type who goes to big tent revivals.
You voluntarily went to a church for the purpose other than sightseeing. Not all tents are made of cloth.
> But if you stepped closer and asked, you'd learn I have two degrees from MIT and have spent more than two decades dealing with computers where the only thing that counts are facts.
I absolutely believe you. I have no doubt you have a special brain. Away from the median. This is a hint. Special brains are usually special in many ways at the same time. For example mine is firmly in top 1 pecentile of IQ but also schizoid, ADHD and HSP and possibly away from the median in some other subtle way that may not even have names yet. Your's are high iq and highly able to sustain focus, but also gullible towards mystique. I've already met an intelligent person similar to you. She was capable of doing fairly advanced computer stuff but couldn't reject obviously fake ideas like some woman being true reincarnation of Anne Frank. It's as if she had high intelligence but totally broken bullshit filter that even in average people enables them to reject irrational things quickly. High intelligence might make this process harder because you tend to overthink and decide you can't reject something until you find a specific, well motivated reason for rejection. To sum up, great sequential thinkinig while nearly completely lacking heuristics that can save you from wasting your effort on thinking about useless and fake stuff. If you want to delve into something I'd highly recommend topics of neurodivergence to better understand yourself, better employ your strengths and better mitigate your weaknesses.
> My friends from MIT who are believers are not susceptible either.
Birds of feather flock together. But somehow I feel like you are the strongest believer among them and some of them don't really agree with you about the reality of some things you sincerely believe in.
> Given a choice between one church that is known for good Bible studies vs another that has people speaking in tongues etc we would all prefer to go to the former.
That's commendable.
> I opened my eyes during the experience so I not only felt it, I saw it.
You do have muscles. Muscles do sometimes twitch. And even if they didn't, vision isn't 100% accurate, sometimes you think you've seen motion, esp in your periferial view, but there wasn't any. Noticing motion is primal survival skill. Those systems are evolutionary tuned to be a bit overactive rather than miss important signal.
> It's what the doctor ordered after I described the chiropractor's conclusion about my legs.
And the doctors conclusion was that chiropractor was full of it. Which is often the case because chiropractors are not doctors. They have bo actual medical knowledge. US is very particular place that awards them any credibility. In most other first world countries chiropractors are on the level of something like acupuncture and homeopathy, slightly higher than energy healing, because they actually do some action on your body.
> But now I realize it'd only feel like a difficult challenge if you're familiar with the evidence, which you are not. You could be, if you came closer to it and looked.
I think you can abandon the thread of the tomb because evidence for and against it lies far outside of anything I might concievably be interested in the short decades I have left on this rock. The only thing that's even remotely interesting to me is your intense interest in it. The psychological effect it has on you. And why you'd rather seek evidence to confirm it rather than disprove it. After all that's the rational way, when you have an amazing idea you should seek why it might be false, not why it might be true. Instead you try to offload this job to other people who sought to disprove it but failed. Why don't you seek people who sought to disprove it and believe they succeeded? Read what ateists have to say about the tomb. Many of them, especially from US, had religious upbringing, sometimes even had some religious functions and were intensly interested in their religion but that interest and effort lead them ultimately to accidentally disproving it beyond their reasonable doubt despite the pain and struggle they felt as believers in this process. They talked about it openly on the internet.
> And I would then move to the other branch that you're waiting for.
Thank you.
> This wasn't a delay tactic.
I believe you didn't apply any conscious tactics. Your mind just gravitates toward this subject.
> Perhaps I don't have as much free time as you, or my posts take longer to compose than yours -- they contain more as you can all see.
That's very likely. Don't worry. I won't miss your answer whenever it comes. Thank you for this conversation.
This weekend I spoke with someone who (together with two others) prayed for a woman whose right arm was visibly shorter than her left (around 5 inches) -- so much so that she always had to roll up her right sleeve because otherwise it'd be too long.
The right arm was shorter because she broke it as a child and it healed in a way that interfered with proper growth.
After the prayer the arms were the same length. So no need for x-ray arguments or any concern about any single person being susceptible or gullible since this was a group of 4 individuals.
They knew the "patient" beforehand, and they continued to interact over the next several weeks. She was from Taiwan. Her chosen English nickname was Diane. And this occurred in London.
The anti supernatural supposition is not a moving of the goalposts. It is actually the removal of goalposts. You can't score a field goal if the goalposts are denied entirely.
> You can't score a field goal if the goalposts are denied entirely.
I'm sorry, but reality doesn't owe you a win in a game you made up.
> The anti supernatural supposition is not a moving of the goalposts. It is actually the removal of goalposts.
I'm sorry, but I'm not in this business. But if you can find a person that can demonstrate a miracle you can take them to James Randi foundation, demonstrate a miracle, recieve 1 mln dollars and split it between yourselves. Maybe it's not a lot of money but providing humanity with the first actual evidence of supernatural in history is reward in itself. You can try score your goals there.
> After the prayer the arms were the same length. So no need for x-ray arguments or any concern about any single person being susceptible or gullible since this was a group of 4 individuals.
I am sorry, but you haven't spoken to 4 people, you spoke to 1 who could (and probably did) make up the other 3 as well as the event itself.
Sometimes you meet honest person that participated in the event staged by dishonest, but I don't suspect it's the case this time since the person you spoken to claims he knew the woman beforehand, unless it was just for a short period that was part of the setup.
You have to pay more attention to your input channels.
You have the same symptoms as the person I knew. Tendency to seriously underestimate propensity of people to lie, cheat and believe in lies. It's as if you can't imagine why a person would lie or cheat you assume that what they say is accurate description of their accurate perceptions.
If you are really about truth seeking there's a ton of materials about how the faith healers do what they do. Maybe you'll see some examples of what you experienced or heard about, for example here:
https://youtu.be/vxR5-2LginE?si=ZF4mbFlfWVsDpaRZ
Please watch the whole thing and read top comments under the video. I know it's gonna be hard but please do try.
I watched the video. My experience didn't match any of the 4 methods shown. Not sure why he didn't include the 5th "and possibly 6th" ways that he thought of in the video.
Again, I felt my leg moving against my pants while seated _fully_ on the ground and the guy only had his hands lightly touching my shins. I felt the legs moving against the pants against the floor where he couldn't have affected it.
The video's 4 methods show you have to hold both feet/ankles in order to pull off the trick.
Are you an athiest - and believe that existence is limited only to energy and matter?
I haven't even watched the video, that's how little I'm interested in faith healing. None of the methods shown fitted your experience perfectly, but you can see it's a very common trick, performed under various conditions with willing or unwilling participants for myriad of reasons, some of which might be as plain as just showing off. You can recognize some elements of the trick like sitting on the floor and touching legs. You were extremely receptive to the process and your brain filled a lot of gaps in what was happening with perceptions favorable to the performer. So you have two options how to explain your expeirience. Either you experienced common trick, done in a bit unusual way (there are at least 6 flavors, why not 7?) or an actual real world miracle was performed, on you, by a random human, out of 8 billion who all are as plain as dirt. What's more likely?
Do you watch a lot of magic shows? It can give you perspective of how easy brain is to fool.
> Are you an athiest - and believe that existence is limited only to energy and matter?
I'm as atheistic as they come. I don't believe anything that scientific consensus built on settled peer reviewed research doesn't force me to believe. Personal anecdotes, even my own, have almost no influence on my working model of the world because I know, both from research and repeated experience how terrible human memeory and perception is, how easy it is to make a mistake, to misinterpret something, to fool yourself, to be wrong, to be fooled. I also hate philosophers, including religious ones of course, because I believe they asking useless, hopeless questions and then think up some fragile reasoning about it which is usually a mixture of obvious and wrong. Nature of existence is one of such useless questions.
> I haven't even watched the video
_Every_ trick in the video relied on the mark sitting in a chair with the illusionist holding their legs _off_ the ground for manipulation.
I was seated completely on the ground, wearing jeans. The only person touching me was the guy and only on my right shin and only with fingers held straight.
Imagine this happened to you, and please explain how he would be able to trick you into feeling your leg move against the jeans which are held in place against the ground, for several seconds, while you are examining the sensation carefully and watching your leg grow longer.
I don't think you can come up with a trick recipe for that.
Anyways my faith existed before this and would exist if it never happened.
Is that because science cannot answer such questions?> Nature of existence is one of such useless questions.Or because it doesn't matter to you what existence really is?
I want to know whether you think matter and energy cover all of existence. Or is there anything outside that Venn diagram.
Ok, so you acknowledge that thousands of people perform this trick on thousands of people all the time and it's all trick, but yours was somehow uniquely real because it was the similar thing just done on the floor?
It's as if somebody knew no Nigerian princes are sending emails to shower you with money, but your experience is real because the message arrived on WhatsApp and was uncannily personal and honest.
> Imagine this happened to you, and please explain how he would be able to trick you into feeling your leg move against the jeans which are held in place against the ground, for several seconds, while you are examining the sensation carefully and watching your leg grow longer.
My brain is perfectly capable of tricking me into feeling that an insect crawls on my skin, especially in the area that is abundant with insects, like on a forest walk. But when I reach to check there's no insect there. How's that not a miracle of vanishing insects?
You were in context where your brain expected faith healing, miracles and elation. So that's what your brain delivered. The lead role in every scam is played by the victim.
How can you trust your own perceptions so much? Doesn't even your own religion warn you about this? Why instead of trusting your God and only your God you trust some random dude? Just because he self-appointedly associates himself with your God?
> I don't think you can come up with a trick recipe for that.
I can't because I never was a proper "magic" nerd. Maybe visit some tents. You'll see that creativity of people when it comes to tricks is not far from endless.
Alternatively contact people who debunk that kind of stuff. They might offer some ideas.
> Anyways my faith existed before this and would exist if it never happened.
I absolutely believe that because I think deepness of your faith comes from peculiarities of your brain's anatomy and biology. Regardless of when and where you'd been born your brain would adopt local supernatural narrative because it wouldn't be able to reject it. What's more I think it's physically impossible for you to become atheist. There's simply too little time of your life left (unless somehow medicine makes a great progress when it comes to senescence) to try to develop that part of your brain if that's even possible. Similarly I probably wouldn't be able to train myself out of ADHD or schizoid personality, or lower my intelligence, or lower my atheism (without damaging my brain wholesale of course).
> > Nature of existence is one of such useless questions. > Is that because science cannot answer such questions?
Can't answer then yet. Mostly because of that. Also because any imaginable answer has no utility because our tech level is that low. It's as if caveman trying to rub two sticks together somehow got answer to Fermat's last theorem.
There were many questions in the past that science couldn't answer that the religion or philosophy provided "answers" for. Then our tech level rose and science firmly settled them. Every question that we ever managed to properly answer turned out to be technical.
Science is hinting at the nature of existence. So far it duly notes that there's no indication that our existence is anything else than just being, with no particular reason, intent or purpose. It's not an answer, just a hint for now, but based on the only mechanism for acquiring actual knowledge that human race found out so far.
> I want to know whether you think matter and energy cover all of existence.
Obviously. Especially if we narrow down our interests to the part of existence that's conceivably accessible to us in any way in, let's say, next billion years.
> Or is there anything outside that Venn diagram.
Fun fact, the part outside is also the part of Venn diagram. It just contains no objects of interest.
The charge is Stranger tricked me. The Prosecutor (you) repeatedly rely on an unproven universal negative claim that miracles never happen, a claim that would require watching all of history and show every event has a natural physical explanation.
Defense submitted evidence which the prosecution refuses to consider closely because of the universal negative (unproven) claim.
Prosecution submitted evidence (youtube video) which the defense examined (demonstrating better involvement in the case than the prosecution) and found to be irrelevant: _all_ tricks required holding the mark's ankles/feet off the ground and required dexterity. Stranger's fingers were straight and I was on the ground.
It's as if Stranger was charged with murder using a blade and Prosecution submitted examples involving only firearms! What!
Prosecution refers to the prevalence of many other tricksters. But the defense points out simply the guilt of others implies nothing about the guilt or innocence of the Stranger.
Prosecution argues the mind can trick itself into feeling sensations that are easily checked and verified as imagined. But I ___did___ check by sight and touch over several seconds (not to mention X-ray).
So prosecution's argument contradicts itself --giving himself the benefit of the doubt when dispelling the sensation of an imaginary bug on his skin, but ___denying___ the same benefit to the defense without reason. This argument is tossed out of court with prejudice.
Prosecution refuses to put in the work of building a theory of the case: ___what___ is the recipe for tricking someone who is wearing jeans, seated fully on the ground, using only your fingers fully extended (no pinching of fabric, moving the mark's body in any way disallowed) ... Followed by an X-ray that shows the result (and proceeded by an X-ray that shows the contrary)?
Prosecution has high IQ but wants the defense to do his job. What? Try to figure out a recipe. Or __you__ go do the prosecution's research and see if they can explain it. You said watching the video would be hard but I did it. Now it's your turn.
By the way, if nothing exists outside matter and energy then you are deeply at odds with reality: your reactions to any violation of human dignity are all just chemicals bouncing around. There's no such real thing as human dignity either. Squashing a tomato or a human -- it's just a rearrangement of matter and energy.
Also found out a friend tore a ligament in her knee while skiing, got an MRI showing the tear, prayed, got another MRI showing the tear gone. Doc can't explain, and this has nothing to do with her susceptibility.
The purpose of this post is to describe how a reasonable person can reconcile these two:
The Excellency of Christ https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons.excellency.html- a good, compassionate, merciful, omnipotent, and omniscient God - the reality that innocent babies suffer and die The purpose is not to convince anyone to become a believer. I maintain that anyone who remains an objector to the actual thesis (that these two realities can be reconciled) is really merely refusing to suppose for the sake of conversation and to hold the all thoughts described below _simultaneously_ and with enough weight for each If you find any tenet irrelevant or begs for your immediate objection, you are misreading this post, and on the verge of discounting a piece, and objecting to some other worldview, not the one I'm espousing I didn't spend any time making this palatable so don't foist this on a grieving parent as-is Also one might read this post and feel that God is severe or unappealing. But there are plenty of positives to delight about God, and some of them are described in the links belowThe Peace Which Christ Gives His True Followers https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xiii.html
Safety, Fulness, and Sweet Refreshment in Christ https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons/files/safety.html
God has always existed, eternally in three persons
Nothing and no one existed before God nor is above God. He is the sole true sovereign
The rest of existence came into being from nothing because he created it and holds it in existence. He "upholds all things by the word of His power." Heb. 1:3 as if the strong and weak nuclear forces came from him continually and intentionally
Let the rest of existence be howsoever vast, it is as the light dust of the balance and as perfectly nothing in comparison to the Creator
It is correct to value God over all else. The godly person prefers God over everything he has had, over everything he currently has, over anything he has the prospect of having in this world and in the next, real or imagined https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.v.html
God was free to create whatever kind of universe he wanted, and also was completely free to have decided instead not to create at all, ever
He knows all things, including all things to come. It's like how you can know everything that happens in a novel that you've _already_ finished
Not only is he complete in knowledge, he is also perfect and unsurpassed in wisdom, moral beauty, love, and every virtue
Some virtues like love only make sense in the context of a relationship. God has existed from all eternity past in relationship within the trinity
Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever
But he decided to create the kind of universe where sentient beings such as angels and humans can decide to prefer God's wisdom or their own. Humans can, ... in our limited knowledge, .... moving only forward in time from one line of the novel to the next, ... only seeing what's next to us in the tall grass like a mouse, ... without knowing all that has taken place or all that will take place, ... with our few meager mortal brain cells that need regular sleep, ... continuing in our existence only by his say-so, yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God. It is the height of hubris, yet we all without exception do so naturally. We prefer the light dust of the balance, pegged at the top of the scale's range of motion, over the stupendous gold brick that is God Only Wise, Ancient of Days.
We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.
A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.
The exact same insult levied against two different individuals can carry different weight, if there is an aggravating factor such as the identity, worth, majesty of one of the offended
God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite
But this means our sin ("we know better than God") is infinite (however finite in number and duration yet having an infinite aggravation) and therefore justly deserves an infinite penalty. Since we have nothing to pay with that doesn't already belong to God such a penalty would never be paid in full by us https://ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/justice.html
God was completely free to set the rules of his creation however he wanted.
Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals.
With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety. Either to represent all of us negatively as Adam did, or represent some of us (door open to all) positively as Jesus did.
Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter. Such penalty already explained as consistent with justice, so also the fallen world being a lesser consequence is thus also consistent with justice.
Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court
If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering. This might have been a way for us to end up in a universe where babies never suffered nor died. But Adam and Eve succumbed to FOMO vs trust in the love and wisdom of God.
But if God had picked any other mere human to be the surety, that person would fail as well. We each prove this is true when we prefer our own wisdom or anything over God
We each earn an infinite penalty without help from Adam. And Adam's consequences are also present everywhere and unavoidable
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8) as our second surety. Fully human, and simultaneously fully and eternally the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus lived the righteous life for us and paid the infinite penalty in finite time
You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.
The alternative is to acknowledge this guilt and accept Jesus to pay for us
One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand
How was Jesus able to pay for more than one person in finite time? Because he has the full infinite worth of God the Son.
Jesus' death does more to repair God's honor than if all humanity were to burn in hell for eternity.
God did not have to provide this surety. He was completely free and justified to judge Adam and Eve immediately in hell. That would have been another way to have a universe void of suffering and dying infants.
So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died. And to imagine how much harder it would be to continue worshiping some other god who never tasted death personally.
And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter 2 Samuel 12:23
Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry. We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.
And if he shows the mercy of healing an infant and protecting his life to adulthood, that healed person still eventually and surely earns an infinite penalty like everyone else and still needs God's mercy.
Can the wrath of God be reconciled with the mercy of God? See https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xii.html
The existence of the dying baby, the continued existence of the questioner, and the existence of the question itself contain within them the very answer to the charge. If God were malevolent, none of them would exist here in this world. This alone is sufficient to defeat the charge. But God goes beyond that by experiencing the death penalty we deserved. He didn't have to, but he did, and is thus the only deity you could come to who would understand your pain from firsthand experience. And not only that, he did this to make a way (to pay) for a reunion between a grieving parent and a lost infant. Adam was involved but we can't blame him because we too would have (and already have) failed, because men naturally are God's enemies: https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.vi.i.html
In this worldview, any continued objection really boils down to the same original error (Adam's) of thinking one knows better than God, and so one does not want to answer to a sovereign God, and so one suppresses the truth with objections and excuses even though it is plainly evident from what has been made that God is to be thanked and honored. Romans 1:18-23
> If God were malevolent, none of them would exist here in this world.
That's your whole point? That a malevolent entity wouldn't conjure a sentient being to torture them because creating them is too good and would offset any evil he might commit against them?
Man has a female dog, he ensures it has puppies because he wants to torture and kill the puppies.
Oh, what marvelously moral man! Godlike! He gifted the puppies with existance! That's surely infinite good and by comparison any torture and killing he does is only finite and means nothing compared to his infinite goodness.
Malevolence almost requires creation. There's only so much evil you can do before needing to create something new. And if nothing exists, just yourself, literally the first step is to create something you can be evil towards.
I don't even need to mention clearly amoral assumption that good and evil are somehow additive and you may offset evil with good. It represents a stage of development of morality that humanity surpassed on average few hundred years ago at least. Average person in the West today knows that a TV host creating magical childhood for thousands of kids doesn't offset him sexually assaulting even one kid.
The bulk of your writing is trying to argue that God is special, so setting up the world in which babies die of cancer, while having perfectly free choice to set it up so they don't, is good actually, not evil. Would be evil only if someone other than God did it. This is a line of reasoning straight from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger
Sorry, but that argumentation makes you seem like amoral monster so I clasify this attempt as failed.
Out of sheer curiosity about your person ... What are the domains of your MIT degrees?
Sorry about two answers. This is the second one. My eyes initially glazed over because of wall of text. So at later time I decided to give it a second read and I'm glad that I did because you provide so many good examples of God's malevolence. Nothing that I haven't heard before but it's nice to see so many in one place and misinterpreted so confidently.
> Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever
Damn... That's next level evil. It's like getting a dog and keeping it inside so you can express your mercy by occasionally not beating it up when it pisses on the floors. Even though you could skip that. You could skip having a dog, or give it access to the garden, or even just not beat it to show your mercy every time. And all that just because ... you want to.
> yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God.
I'm very glad we did over last two millennia so now we don't need to sit and wait for his mercy in more and more cases.
> We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.
> A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.
What are you getting at? What crimes an infant with a brain that barely starts to develop (and will never develop further) already committed against God so that death is a fitting punishment? What ideas, plans and standards of living did the baby already have so that it deserves to die?
> God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite
Wait, so God created sentient beings in a way that thay are worth nothing compared to him so that he can torture them freely for any offence and it makes every act of torture an act of mercy because they deserve infinite punishment for any infraction? And he did this because he wanted to? That's peak evil.
> Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals. > With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety.
Oh. There it is. So the babies themselves didn't offend God in any exceptional way, however God decided they still deserve fo die for the offences of others.
Punishing individuals for something someone else did is universally recognized as evil. Humanity outgrew group punishment. Why perfect God haven't?
> Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter.
And you don't see any problem with the fact that he was created by God to behave exactly like that? If I intentionally design a system that can fail then when the system fails is the failure my fault or system's fault? Setting up someone to fail in a way that deserves infinite punishment is another peak evil.
> If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering.
But that couldn't happen because the God made them specifically in this way that they were capable of making this offence and given their infinite lifespan they were sure to make this offence eventually. God designed it in the exact way so that it happens. Again it's like getting a dog and keeping it in a house so that it eventually pisses on the floor so you can then beat it senseless as a punishment. How can you be so blind to plain evilness of everything you describe?
> You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.
How convenient that Jesus spared himself the experience of rotting in hell forever. Was he really fully human as you postulate if he was spared this experience because he could, unlike us, pay infinite price in finite time? Instead of true human experience he spent a blink of an eye here and went back to status quo of his infinite blissful existence. Doesn't sound very ... benevolent. It reminds me of rich people doing kind of hobo-tourism for some time, when they don't use their wealth for a week or two and live like a poor person then come back to their mansion happy about themselves fondly thinking about their experience and lives of others they touch through their excursion.
> One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand
A child never earns a spanking. It's evil to beat a child. And doing it through your hand is just mental. It shows disturbed, conflicted mind in which evil and good fight constantly and I'd say evil is winning.
> So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died.
Yeah but he didn't stay dead. And permanence of death is kinda big thing about it. So did he really taste death if he can come again whenever he pleases?
> Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court
But it was a bit more nuanced wasn't it? They were explicitly mislead about the consequences by the lawgiver. Adam and Eve were told they are going to die not that they are going to be expelled to toil and spawn billions of people like them who are all gonna suffer and die and the potentially rot in hell for all eternity. How is setting up a law and lying about consequences of violating it not evil?
> And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter
That's no help at all. Their baby was robbed the experience of life on Earth. How exactly that reunion should look like? Is it still infant with undeveloped mind? Is it adult that somehow grew without experiencing life? Without having a childhood or any interaction with its parents? It doesn't make any sense. What's the best case scenario for heavenly reunion with dead infant?
> Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry.
Isn't God everywhere all the time? How is life on Earth worth less than any life in heaven if life on Earth is spent with God as well? Arent both infinitely valuable?
And if life on Earth is so much less valuable why don't we just murder all infants so they can spend more time with God? Wouldn't it be a superbly moral act according to this logic? Selfless even because the murderer would destin themselves to eternity in hell so that the infants could spend more time with God.
> We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.
Yeah. It could have been tortured by the world that God intentionally created so maybe it's mercy that it dies. Why then once we finally manage to treat previously mortal illness and extend lives we often see that those saved lives arent particularly bad? No worse than others really. It would be quite a coincidence if all children dying before invention of for example insulin would have terrible lives if they were spared, but somehow the children after invention of insulin that were saved by it seem to be leading perfectly average lives. Coincidence or truly wicked design.
> because men naturally are God's enemies
If I were to believe in God I would tend to agree. I just have the complete opposite opinion on who's more evil in this conflict for the reasons you so clearly displayed in your comment and many more.
Your response to a problem I posed looks like throwing stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks. None did of course and I can't blame you because no one (supposedly) can know true mind of God. Thanks for giving it your best shot.
Pretend to be a believer for just a second and think about these two questions:
What makes idolatry wrong?
How is God not an idolater?
Sure thing. I had to look up the definitiy of the word.
"Idolatry is the worship of an idol as though it were a deity. In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the Abrahamic God as if it were God."
If I was a believer in Abrahamic God, I'd believe idolatry is wrong because, I'd believe there's only one God and no other thing is God, so people worshipping anything else but the God I believe in would be wrong and possibly dangerous because they might mislead others from worshipping the only correct God.
God is not an idolater because he doesn't worship anything (I assume) just demands worshipping himself from his every sentient creation.
I'm curious why are you interested in answers to those questions. What do my answers tell you?
I asked because I realized there's something we probably already agree on, as long as one twist is accounted for.
But to get to the twist we should unpack this word Worship because it's a little nebulous. It could mean lots of things but I want to reduce it to its basic essence.
Let's imagine a dirty barefoot ignorant heathen Bob who carves an idol out of wood. It's a small figurine that he names as his brand new god Steve. Bob _claims_ to worship Steve, Bob bows down to Steve at regular intervals and burns incense to Steve, etc etc.
But over time Bob gets into a hobby like golf. And Bob spends all his free time playing golf, practicing golf, reading about golf, visualizing his next golf skill improvements, dreaming about golf.
Dust gathers on Steve's head and shoulders. If Steve were to suddenly animate, would Steve agree that Bob is a true Steve worshiper? No. I think if we simmer this nebulous word worship, we might get a more revealing word like "prioritize".
And maybe if we were to use more words, we might expand that to "hold (in thoughts, feelings, and resulting behavior) as most valuable"
And from Bob's behavior, we can see Bob cares more about golf than he cares about Steve.
Similarly, there are some people who claim to be Christians, but we see from their behavior that some of these people care more about, say, having a reputation as a miracle working faith healer -- or maybe they care more about the money they can rake in while faking miracles, than they care about God.
Even while we may disagree whether God exists, we can agree that such fake faith healers are criminals when money gets involved, right?
Then suppose for a second that God does exist, wouldn't you agree that a God who is supposedly perfect in justice should signify for anyone watching that these people are indeed criminals? Like, something has to be _SAID_ at least.
So in this supposed existence which has a supreme being, I think you can agree everyone's Priority Number One Arrow should point at God. When someone's arrow isn't pointed at God, that's idolatry.
If this makes sense, let me know and I can get to the twist. Or maybe you can figure out the twist before I say it.
> I asked because I realized there's something we probably already agree on, as long as one twist is accounted for.
I'm sure we'd agree on many matters, at least those that belong squarely to the material realm. That's the good thing about material realm that as people think more and figure out more they gravitate towards unitary understanding of reality. Conversely when people ponder religious subjects they tend to very quickly split into myriad of denominations, each with their own mutually contradictory perfect revealed truths plain to understand, at least according to them.
> Even while we may disagree whether God exists, we can agree that such fake faith healers are criminals when money gets involved, right?
Even on moral matters we might largely agree, as long as we stick to humanistic morality, as distilled in Western culture with roots in biology of being members of a very social species. It's only when a person gets close to religion their morality gets twisted and evil starts to look like good and some good starts to look like evil.
I can fully agree that exploiting guillibility of others (esp vulnerable ones) for your own benefit (whatever it might be, monetary or not) and at their detriment, stealing their money, wasting their time and messing up their model of the world so it's less aligned with reality, is in fact a very evil. And any moral being should easily recognize evilness of it.
> I think you can agree everyone's Priority Number One Arrow should point at God. When someone's arrow isn't pointed at God, that's idolatry.
If in your religion giving someone your top priority is how you properly worship a God and only God deserves this kind of priority than yes, giving top priority to anything else (a hobby, a scam, but also your child, elderly parent or a beloved spouse) might be seen as idolatry from the point of view of your religion. It fits the definition of idolatry I cited. I hope it's not lost on you how evil it is, at least to anyone for anyone who's morality was not twisted by religion, to demand you don't give your loved one a top priority, because of how much harm to individuals and society that demand does bring.
> If this makes sense, let me know and I can get to the twist. Or maybe you can figure out the twist before I say it.
Please do continue. I'm curious where do your thoughts lead. Unfortunately I can't offer any guess.
If you __sincerely__ want to understand the answer to your question about babies dying, you should try steelmanning. It’s the opposite of strawmanning.
Steelmanning would not take the evil committed by humans and hang that around God's neck and blame him. Steelmanning would accept that free will means people can do things that God wouldn't himself choose, and when they do evil, they don't represent him.
Steelmanning would accept that if a Supreme Being exists, then that being is indeed supreme -- even though babies are precious, the supreme being has even more worth because he is supreme.
You and I have the same emotional reaction to something that violates our top priorities (humankind esp loved ones for you, God and then humankind esp loved ones for me)
Everyone's got a top priority. If there is a supreme being, the right top priority arrow should point at that being. Including the supreme being's own top priority arrow!
Otherwise God would be an idolater.
Many will find this repugnant. I know. Probably because we are accustomed to thinking on the level of fellow humans, we're all each worth exactly one human, no more no less.
But if you honestly want to know how this other math works, this is it. We're in the middle of a symphony and parts might sound like they need some resolution. And in the end there will be resolution and the whole symphony will show his supremacy in the _end_ because only in the end are all accounts truly settled. Before the end, things will appear incorrect.
Actually the easiest way to reconcile this in your mind is to imagine you're, say, a Van Halen fan at one of their concerts at the height of their popularity. You want them to go absolutely nuts on stage showing off, because they're the best band ever. When they magnify themselves on stage, it's what you paid to see.
Either you honestly want to understand and you'll steelman or you really just wanted to be a critic and you won't. Btw, I replied on the other branch as well
It's possible the mechanisms of the consequence are the biomechanics you described. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
This comment (and another cousin comment elsewhere) uses the word Punishment.
But I used the word Consequence.
As for Punishment, I found this quote to be helpful in understanding:
"It is just with God eternally to cast off and destroy sinners."- For this is the punishment which the law condemns to- The truth of this doctrine may appear by the joint consideration of two things, viz. Man's sinfulness, and God's sovereignty.
I. It appears from the consideration of man's sinfulness. And that whether we consider the infinitely evil nature of all sin, or how much sin men are guilty of.
1. If we consider the infinite evil and heinousness of sin in general, it is not unjust in God to inflict what punishment is deserved; because the very notion of deserving any punishment is, that it may be justly inflicted. A deserved punishment and a just punishment are the same thing. To say that one deserves such a punishment, and yet to say that he does not justly deserve it, is a contradiction; and if he justly deserves it, then it may be justly inflicted.
Every crime or fault deserves a greater or less punishment, in proportion as the crime itself is greater or less. If any fault deserves punishment, then so much the greater the fault, so much the greater is the punishment deserved. The faulty nature of any thing is the formal ground and reason of its desert of punishment; and therefore the more any thing hath of this nature, the more punishment it deserves. And therefore the terribleness of the degree of punishment, let it be never be so terrible, is no argument against the justice of it, if the proportion does but hold between the heinousness of the crime and the dreadfulness of the punishment; so that if there be any such thing as a fault infinitely heinous, it will follow that it is just to inflict a punishment for it that is infinitely dreadful.
A crime is more or less heinous, according as we are under greater or less obligations to the contrary. This is self-evident; because it is herein that the criminalness or faultiness of any thing consists, that it is contrary to what we are obliged or bound to, or what ought to be in us. So the faultiness of one being hating another, is in proportion to his obligation to love him. The crime of one being despising and casting contempt on another, is proportionably more or less heinous, as he was under greater or less obligations to honour him. The fault of disobeying another, is greater or less, as any one is under greater or less obligations to obey him. And therefore if there be any being that we are under infinite obligations to love, and honour, and obey, the contrary towards him must be infinitely faulty.
Our obligation to love, honour, and obey any being, is in proportion to his loveliness, honourableness, and authority; for that is the very meaning of the words. When we say any one is very lovely, it is the same as to say, that he is one very much to be loved. Or if we say such a one is more honourable than another, the meaning of the words is, that he is one that we are more obliged to honour. If we say any one has great authority over us, it is the same as to say, that he has great right to our subjection and obedience.
But God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite excellency and beauty. To have infinite excellency and beauty, is the same thing as to have infinite loveliness. He is a being of infinite greatness, majesty, and glory; and therefore he is infinitely honourable. He is infinitely exalted above the greatest potentates of the earth, and highest angels in heaven; and therefore he is infinitely more honourable than they. His authority over us is infinite; and the ground of his right to our obedience is infinitely strong; for he is infinitely worthy to be obeyed himself, and we have an absolute, universal, and infinite dependence upon him.
So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.- Nothing is more agreeable to the common sense of mankind, than that sins committed against any one, must be proportionably heinous to the dignity of the being offended and abused; as it is also agreeable to the word of God, I Samuel 2:25. "If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him;" (i.e. shall judge him, and inflict a finite punishment, such as finite judges can inflict;) "but if a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him?" This was the aggravation of sin that made Joseph afraid of it. Genesis 39:9. "How shall I commit this great wickedness, and sin against God?" This was the aggravation of David's sin, in comparison of which he esteemed all others as nothing, because they were infinitely exceeded by it. Psalm 51:4. "Against thee, thee only have I sinned."-The eternity of the punishment of ungodly men renders it infinite: and it renders it no more than infinite; and therefore renders no more than proportionable to the heinousness of what they are guilty of.
If there be any evil or faultiness in sin against God, there is certainly infinite evil: for if it be any fault at all, it has an infinite aggravation, viz. that it is against an infinite object. If it be ever so small upon other accounts, yet if it be any thing, it has one infinite dimension; and so is an infinite evil. Which may be illustrated by this: if we suppose a thing to have infinite length, but no breadth and thickness, (a mere mathematical line,) it is nothing: but if it have any breadth and thickness, though never so small, and infinite length, the quantity of it is infinite; it exceeds the quantity of any thing, however broad, thick, and long, wherein these dimensions are all finite.
So that the objections made against the infinite punishment of sin, from the necessity, or rather previous certainty, of the futurition of sin, arising from the unavoidable original corruption of nature, if they argue any thing, argue against any faultiness at all: for if this necessity or certainty leaves any evil at all in sin, that fault must be infinite by reason of the infinite object.
But every such objector as would argue from hence, that there is no fault at all in sin, confutes himself, and shows his own insincerity in his objection. For at the same time that he objects, that men's acts are necessary, and that this kind of necessity is inconsistent with faultiness in the act, his own practice shows that he does not believe what he objects to be true: otherwise why does he at all blame men? Or why are such persons at all displeased with men, for abusive, injurious, and ungrateful acts towards them? Whatever they pretend, by this they show that indeed they do believe that there is no necessity in men's acts that is inconsistent with blame. And if their objection be this, that this previous certainty is by God's own ordering, and that where God orders an antecedent certainty of acts, he transfers all the fault from the actor on himself; their practice shows, that at the same time they do not believe this, but fully believe the contrary: for when they are abused by men, they are displeased with men, and not with God only.
The light of nature teaches all mankind, that when an injury is voluntary, it is faulty, without any consideration of what there might be previously to determine the futurition of that evil act of the will. And it really teaches this as much to those that object and cavil most as to others; as their universal practice shows. By which it appears, that such objections are insincere and perverse. Men will mention others' corrupt nature when they are injured, as a thing that aggravates their crime, and that wherein their faultiness partly consists. How common is it for persons, when they look on themselves greatly injured by another, to inveigh against him, and aggravate his baseness, by saying, "He is a man of a most perverse spirit: he is naturally of a selfish, niggardly, or proud and haughty temper: he is one of a base and vile disposition." And yet men's natural and corrupt dispositions are mentioned as an excuse for them, with respect to their sins against God, as if they rendered them blameless.
2. That it is just with God eternally to cast off wicked men, may more abundantly appear, if we consider how much sin they are guilty of...
I know, I grew up with this stuff. There's never a true scotsman and the goalposts are always moving. Play semantic games. Or just recast everything as God being unable to make choices and never responsible for anything. None of it matters as long as you can convince an unbeliever.
It doesn't make any sense because it isn't rational to begin with.
Yes, it is nonsensical and irrational as long as God is viewed as _just another x_.
But it makes sense if one does two things:
1. hold all the rest of existence to be as the light dust of the balance in worth compared to God
2. see what other parts of the Bible say about the troublesome passage in question.
> ... people thousands of generations removed who have no responsibility ...
If you grew up with this stuff, then you already know:
- even without Adam's representation, each of us has already committed the same error of thinking we know better than God, or holding something else as worth more to us than God
- rejecting the idea that someone could represent you before God would include rejecting the offer that Jesus could represent you and take your sentence and allow God to see you with Jesus' record.
> Jesus could represent you and take your sentence
From what sentence? Hell isn't part of the old testament and was borrowed from other religions or later inventions after the torah, it was Sheol.
Old Testament, Isaiah 66:22 “As the __new heavens and the new earth__ that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord, “so will your name and descendants endure. 23 From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. 24 “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; __the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched__, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
The sentence of having a worm that never dies and being in a fire that is never quenched, in a time period where there is a new heavens and a new earth as it says in the Old Testament, Isaiah's last chapter.
Apparently one can be a corpse and still sense this, for we are not merely flesh and there is no point to such worm or fire if they cannot be sensed.
Godlike compassion, morality and consistency.- Let me in so I can save you. - From what? - From what I'm gonna do to you if you don't let me in.
That's actually very clever. The person writing that passage was responding to an obvious criticism. How could an all-knowing all powerful being mess up the design of procreation so badly? Conveniently, we will write that up as a deliberate punishment.
There is what you might call cleverness in this passage as well. Do you see it?
Romans 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images...
That's so sadistic, that wasn't Satan?
In this worldview, Satan is not merely sadistic. He wishes to detract from God. So if one is walking away from God or apart from God, Satan would want that person to feel justified (comfortable, rewarded) in their opinion that they know better than God about what's best for themselves.
Parents allow or impose consequences to signal to children when their choices could be wiser.
> Parents allow or impose consequences to signal to children when their choices could be wiser.
Torture is generally off limits. And then God didn't think through the invention of epidurals for his punishment which didn't say it would expire once they were invented, or only wanted to keep punishing the poorest most downtrodden without access to hospitals?
It's a consequence and not the only one, and put together the consequences aren't really avoidable.
But they are consequences, not punishment. For punishment, see a sibling comment elsewhere on this page that has a massive quote.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
QED.
God is both able and willing but there are additional considerations. Therefore not QED.
I suspect you're right. But I've just last night finished Brave New World and what strikes me is production of children in that book almost entirely for the purpose of labour.
So, I'm curious what the driver for reproduction will be in the future once robots are capable of doing all the work and humans live for a very long time. I don't have children nor intend to - so likely this is a very cold take that doesn't apply to most - but the cynic in me says we've so far focussed on reproduction as individuals and at a country level to maintain productivity and extend the health and wealth of their elders. Without that pressure, would people choose to have fewer children on a scale we've never seen before?
I don't think much of the other proposed societal changes in BNW. They're a backdrop which Huxley uses to illustrate some aspects of human nature and to tell the rest of his story, but that's about it. We've had plenty of opportunity to move to the transient sexual model he outlines, for instance, and yet long-term relationships are still overwhelmingly the most popular choice.
I also don't believe people generally have children to fulfil a wider societal responsibility. As a parent myself, we had children mostly because we thought it would be nice to have children around. It has been much more than "nice," in a way that I could never really put into words. However, I can honestly say that the maintenance of my own health and wealth into old age has never been remotely a concern; if anything, I spend my time trying to find ways to insulate them from the consequences of an ageing society. I don't see those aspects of parenthood changing.
Societal pressures/responsibilities don't need to be consciously acknowledged by an individual for them to have an effect on that individuals' decision-making.
There are also societal pressures the other way. A lot of people do not have children because of the cost.
In the UK there has also been a cultural shift to regarding children as a lot of work - parents are under more pressure to do more and be perfect. That also deters people from having children.
Then there are those who argue that there are too many children so people should not have children.
There are pressures to have kids, of course, but its not clear to me that there is a net societal pressure towards having kids.
I had kids because I like having kids. Its fulfilling in a way nothing else is in most parents lives.
True. My anecdata is that I don't see even the echoes of these pressures/responsibilities in my own historical choices, and as a result I doubt their effect on others.
In my experience, social pressure to have children is such a ubiquitous experience that it's difficult for me to think it doesn't have an effect. I wonder how this might vary between men & women
I suspect it's enormously different between men and women, and of course inter-culturally. As a straight man living in Ireland, despite having extremely traditional catholic parents, I've faced literally zero pressure from family to have kids. My siblings (male and female) have both chosen to have kids (very closely together in time), and I enjoy being an uncle a great deal. But I don't have any interest whatsoever in parenting. I have some friends with kids - although they tend to fall off the radar if I'm honest, but haven't felt any pressure from them either.
Do you have kids? I find that my desire for children, and the ways in which I enjoy mine, are very “primitive” pleasures in the same way as my desires to eat or sleep are.
Maybe we eat because of social pressure, but obviously there is something deeper too.
You have to keep in mind the millions of years of evolution that surely managed to leave some instinct-level mechanisms to encourage having children.
>social pressure to have children is such a ubiquitous experience
One aspect of growing older that I eagerly can't wait for (unlike most others) is getting old enough that people will stop fucking pestering me about marriage and kids.
All those people can sincerely fuck off into their own bedrooms, pun intended.
Just about 20 years more of this noise...
[dead]
Yes and it can be quite absurd and right on the nose.
While Putin feeds humans to the dogs of war, he will at the same time chide his countryfolk that they are not having enough children.
There is a softer version in the west where elders and the wealthy are 'concerned about birthrates' while at the same time squeezing their young on living costs(shelter+food).
Once society has accepted robot labour without rights and children without parents, the question quickly becomes is flesh or steel cheaper.
>I'm curious what the driver for reproduction will be in the future
Leaving behind and continuing your legacy and heritage.
Personally I have no interest in pushing my blood, interests, and achievements and their endurement upon my hypothetical children, among many other reasons I have no interest in having children, but if someone wants to be that person then more power to them since it's none of my business.
It's already happened to a degree. People used to need to birth their own personal/family workforce (to work their land, for example). That was the main purpose of children. The idea that children are for some kind of top-of-the-pyramid self-actualization experience is really, really recent.
> I'm curious what the driver for reproduction will be in the future once robots are capable of doing all the work
If robots are doing all the work, my bet is humans won’t be dominating for too long
Then if robots take over, and they spare us, the driver for human reproduction (for them to reproduce us) might just be to have pets
yes, and we’ll love it.
People still make a lot of clothes even though huge percentage of the ends up in landfills after barely any use.
Future purpose of childbirth is fashion.
>what the driver for reproduction will be
the people without such driver are naturally weeded out, so due to such weeding out the majority of the population always naturally consist of the people who have such a driver, it may be some crazy one in any given particular case, yet it is there.
>in the future once robots are capable of doing all the work and humans live for a very long time.
and with artificial uterine it would mean that some people, the wealthy ones, would be able to have a hundred, or a thousand of children. Just look at for example Elon Musk and imagine if there were no need for physical pregnancy which i think is the major limiting factor here.
>would people choose to have fewer children on a scale we've never seen before?
the people who wouldn't be able to afford it as having children would be less beneficial for society as you correctly noted and it will be more like a personal luxury/indulgence and thus would be treated accordingly - taxed, no child support help from government, etc
> Just look at for example Elon Musk and imagine if there were no need for physical pregnancy which i think is the major limiting factor here.
Time could be the great equalizer here. Spending time with your children is pretty universally accepted as beneficial, so we could make it mandatory for extrauterine births over some threshold. It could be structured such that the more extrauterine children you have, the more of your 24 hours per day must be spent with them. I’m intentionally hand-waving over specifics of what that would look like and enforcement, but I’m sure you can come up with ideas. The goal is: if you want to artificially have hundreds of extrauterine children, society will take from you all the time you could have spent building rockets and running companies.
We are limiting sperm donors. I don't see why wouldn't we limit future parents for the same reasons.
Time isn’t a sufficient measure to serve as a proxy for quality parenting.
But it is a way to limit people to a fixed maximum number of children.
Say it's a requirement for an hour per day per child — no matter how many drugs Musk takes to stay awake, he can't have more than 24 kids.
But, lots of people have many kids thst they don't take care of. Genghis Khan is one such example, apocryphally having so many kids as to constitute 2% of the current Asian population having had him as an ancestor. So I don't quite get your point, there is no maximum.
The suggestion is to change the rules, so what people currently do is irrelevant.
Genghis Khan set the rules, which is why actually changing them would be very difficult.
The suggestion falls apart under any scrutiny, you can't force anyone to take care of their kids, if they want to, they will, and if they don't, they won't. Genghis Khan is more closer to our current ruleset than anyone currently is to this suggested rule set, he didn't set any rules, he was following the same rules as people currently do, as I mentioned in the previous sentence.
> The suggestion falls apart under any scrutiny, you can't force anyone to take care of their kids, if they want to, they will, and if they don't, they won't.
I can easily imagine a punishment of forced sterilisation for non-compliance. It wouldn't be the first time human society had that as a punishment.
I mean, if we're talking about totalitarian rather than democratic regimes, then sure, you can sterilize people who don't comply.
> democratic regimes
UK, 2015, due to the mother not being capable of looking after her kids: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-31128969
Also, one of the main things that made it stop wasn't specifically democracy, but that eugenics became unacceptable, otherwise you'd have to explain why you think the US wasn't democratic until 1942: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_v._Oklahoma
Once you start getting into forced sterilization, that is when you will start losing many people on so called reforms, it is simply untenable, regardless of whether the government is truly democratic or not (and by democratic earlier I meant non-totalitarian, I should've been more accurate). That ruling by the UK is also not something I'd support, even if the courts ruled so.
You recon that forced sterilization for being unable to look after all your kids would be unpopular? Even for a maximum limit that's significantly higher than the number that most people would be capable of?
You have a higher regard for pubic opinion than me, if you think public opinion would prevent it — in the UK it's fairly easy to run into support for this as a penalty for various things that were already crimes, along with various other things that the speaker thought ought to be.
This was even (jokingly) suggested as a thing to be done to former prime minister Boris Johnson, due to his frequent affairs and unknown number of children.
I don't know about the UK but people would definitely be against it in the US, as it encroaches on what people perceive to be able to have as many kids as possible, regardless of whether they can support them or not. That's part of the big deal with the abortion debate as well.
>people would definitely be against it in the US
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilizat...
"More recently, California prisons are said to have authorized sterilizations of nearly 150 female inmates between 2006 and 2010. The Center for Investigative Reporting reveals how the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform tubal ligations that former inmates say were done under coercion."
To the response below: if something happens in the open and systematically, and nobody punished for it that means people are supporting it. They may clutch their pearls and turn their noses away for show, yet they support it nevertheless.
Your link does not support the claim that people would not be against it, prisons do unethical things all the time that others may strongly oppose.
Ah come on: she wasn't sterilised for being unable to take care of her children, she was sterilised because both (a) pregnancy would endanger her health and (b) she lacked the capacity to rationally understand that (the article references her belief that she became pregnant because she ate a health food supplement). That's not the same thing at all.
I think a lot of people living at that time would constitute 2% of the current Asian population having had him (or her) as an ancestor.
> Just look at for example Elon Musk and imagine if there were no need for physical pregnancy which i think is the major limiting factor here.
I agree that is a very likely outcome. We've seen that behaviour before in history, e.g. the Ottoman Imperial Harem contained a minimum of several hundred women at its peak. We would almost certainly see it again. Remember, though, that those children still need to be cared for after birth, and that requires humans.
The main driver for that sort of thing was a system where production of heirs was seen as socially essential; this is now largely obsolete.
(Even then, the really extreme examples of polygamy were more about social status than practical concerns around succession; again, this is now largely obsolete in most societies.)
OT, and maybe, my words ain't effective, but talking to a young woman, i thought i'd talked to "supermom". She told me what she'd "left and quit just to be a good mommy for her daughter." I looked at her, "wearing glasses -too big, to 'be modern'", a warm pullover - knitted, masking upper arms and (her) middle. But than i saw her grabbing a cell-phone (daughter call incomming...), she became 'supermom'.
So if any, could remember that there were 'telephone boxes' ...changing clothes...
[Reports:Humor]
HINT: Action Comics #1 (published April 18, 1938).[1] Superman has been adapted to several other media...
(-;
[1] quoting: wikipedia
>Remember, though, that those children still need to be cared for after birth, and that requires humans.
I think AI and robots would make human involvement minimally necessary, be it basic physical care or education.
- [deleted]
On the one hand, based on FSD, Musk would be one of the first people to attempt this, well before the AI was capable enough to do a good job.
On the other, super-rich people can already afford a lot of humans to assist with raising their kids. AI isn't strictly necessary for this, as seen with e.g. Genghis Khan.
But yeah, if the G and the I in AGI is good enough and general enough, then robots directed by it could do a good job of raising kids — but at some point, you have to ask what life is even for, why you're having kids at all if you don't want to be involved in raising them.
> a lot of humans to assist with raising their kids. AI isn't strictly necessary for this, as seen with e.g. Genghis Khan.
it willn't be just kids. It will be "designer babies". Cleaned-up DNA with imports from Mozart and Einstein DNAs, and countless other improvements and enhancements for higher IQ, stronger muscles, faster reaction, better health, etc and cyber-enhanced with Neuralink style connection from may be even before being born, etc. There would be not many humans who would be able even to just keep up, less serve as teachers and trainers to such kids.
> to be involved in raising them.
engineering them is also involvement.
> engineering them is also involvement.
Have you ever played video games with cheats enabled? Some of them are still fun, others feel pointless. If you want to treat your offspring as a machine to be engineered rather than raised, why bother with flesh in the first place, why not regard the AI itself as the offspring?
If a child were engineered as thoroughly as you suggest, the distance between them and their parents would necessarily be as severe as the distance between them and their potential human teachers.
But also there is a practical issue:
Musk specifically may well test such things on his own kids before the tech is actually ready, but any sensible person would want these interventions to have passed a full clinical trial before reaching their offspring. Such trials would necessarily lead to there being many humans with any one of those enhancements before all of them, making any gap much smaller in practice than you anticipate.
>to treat your offspring as a machine to be engineered rather than raised
raising is engineering, just very slow and with very limited results just because of the very limited toolset currently available. Look how parents using hormones and blockers, etc. - that is about max engineering available today and they do it because it benefits their children (i'm making pure engineering-wise point, and i'm not qualified nor have any intention to discuss whether it is really beneficial or not)
>why bother with flesh in the first place, why not regard the AI itself as the offspring?
The people replacing flesh children with AI would naturally be weeding their DNA out thus leading to the significant share of the population still preferring flesh ones.
>he distance between them and their parents would necessarily be as severe
parents want their kids to succeed, to do better than the parents. It is a biological imperative (as otherwise your DNA is weeded out by the one's who do get their children to do better, and thus those have been and will be the majority of the population). The first-gen immigrant parents working as say janitors and their college kids - huge difference and the parents are happy for it.
And don't forget that the parents here are themselves would already be the N-th generation of improvement, much ahead of the rest of the population.
>with any one of those enhancements before all of them
with any one, yet not all. Being a test subject for one feature is very different than having a package of those features.
>making any gap much smaller in practice than you anticipate.
in addition the test subjects may be prevented from propagating their DNA. (Cetaganda from the Vorkosigan saga :)
> Just look at for example Elon Musk and imagine if there were no need for physical pregnancy which i think is the major limiting factor here.
Something is stopping Elon from founding fertility clinic and sperm bank with just his sperm.
If you think humanity is a good thing, and you want it to continue indefinitely into the future, then reproduction is essential. If you do not think this, then you want Earth to be a dull rock, with no civilization and no intelligent species. It really is just that binary.
>Without that pressure, would people choose to have fewer children on a scale we've never seen before?
They already made that choice, decades ago, and there's no evidence anyone is rethinking it. Fertility levels are sub-replacement.
Such practices is why the Brave New World is a dystopia
Not the universal usage of a euphoria-inducing, pacifying drug covering large-scale psychological manipulation and inudstrialist domination of society? Brave New World is a dystopia because it shows a fully satiated and socially occupied doesn't care that it is being manipulated and repressed. You don't care about your caste,or the atrocities committed to others, or learning to better yourself because you take another hit of Soma and join an orgy.
Did we read the same book?
>Did we read the same book?
Yes, and the engineered factory humans is part of the dystopian point it makes. The dehumanization begins at that, it's not just the soma.
Which is also why the normally born people (in the wildling "reservation"), the regular aging, the regular pregancy, are also in the book as a antithesis to the dystopian society (but one which they can not belong as outsiders, like we can't be "natives", only LARP it).
I don't think we have to take a nearly century-old work of fiction's viewpoints seriously unless we want to. The book can argue that IVF or artificial gestation is horrific and we can in turn argue "well, I don't think that's true."
>I don't think we have to take a nearly century-old work of fiction's viewpoints seriously unless we want to.
I want to. And the book's age has nothing to do with whether it's points are valid or not.
Literature doesn't have an expiration date. And some ideas about what it means to be human aren't meant to be transient - though their adoption might be.
I mean, I think its age is a valid consideration in the sense that IVF was literally not possible 100 years ago. Whereas it is now, and... it turns out IVF babies are normal humans too.
But I was also trying to convey that "this piece of literature argues X, therefore X is true" can't possibly hold up for every given work of literature. You can find an author for any viewpoint! They can't all be true at once!
Generally speaking, when it comes to _Brave New World_, the answer is no - people did not read the same book: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/crispr.2019.0046
Well it's definitely possible to have different takeaways from the same book. I can't remember what I took away as a high school student, but when I read it again in my late 30s (I think) it blew my mind a little bit because I had adopted a sort of libertarian view that anything that doesn't directly impede the happiness of someone else should be legal. Coming down to the idea that personal happiness is ultimately what I want (not just for myself; for everybody). Brave New World (which is almost 100 years old at this point) says, "OK, here is a world where everyone can be happy all the time. What do you think?" And as a reader, of course I'm on the side of John Savage. The Soma holiday and ignorance (bliss) is not what I'm after. And of course, without contrast against strife and unhappiness, how can there be happiness at all?
> You don't care about your caste,or the atrocities committed to others
Totally not our society!
But yeah this invention is a good thing
People were similarly apprehensive about IVF. Some contemporary takes about "test tube babies" were positively hysterical.
Fear of the unknown is strong in us, especially when it comes to our bodies. See also, anti-vaxxerism.
I think humans will eventually self-improve with genetic engineering -- e.g. shifting the median IQ up by 30 points, life extension, disease resistance, eliminating heritable conditions -- but the ethical and societal issues will take much longer to address than the technology. We could already do some of this.
I think some of the concern is reasonable and some isn't.
>People were similarly apprehensive about IVF
And rightly so. It's used as a patch for many social issues (like declining fertility and careerism).
Isn't the entire civilization about "patching issues"?
Outside rural Sahel or Afghanistan, the world has moved on to an industrial or post-industrial society, where it is no longer desirable to keep women illiterate and start having babies at 17, when the natural fertility is at its peak, then immediately employing small kids as goatherds.
IVF is a partial patch for increasing educational levels of the general population. I am fine with a more educated population.
>Isn't the entire civilization about "patching issues"?
Too general a statement to answer - if anything and everything can be considered a "patch".
The course of civilization solves some problems and creates others. Some of the issues it solves are huge wins. Other times, the problems can be way worse than what there was.
For example, if we accept, for argument's sake, that the AI doomers are right, and AI kills or enslaves us all, that would be an example of a civilization's patch being worse than the issue patched.
>IVF is a partial patch for increasing educational levels of the general population. I am fine with a more educated population.
If the alternative is decline and death, I'd chose life. Goat-herder sure beats office drones and depressed doom-scrollers, which is what we increasingly produce.
"Goat-herder sure beats office drones and depressed doom-scrollers, which is what we increasingly produce."
Do you speak from experience?
Goat-herding in a state of constant food-, water- and physical insecurity, with zero amenities or healthcare, might be enjoyable for some (though maybe less so at the age of five), but "sure beats" sounds like a hot take from the social media.
It is still possible to move to South Sudan or Niger and start a goatherding career there, but few office drones have walked the walk. Quite to the contrary, there is a significant outflow of economic migrants away from such conditions, into the richer parts of the world.
Have you ever had kids?
If you are not a birthing person, have you ever been with a birthing person for the duration of their pregnancy?
As in "it can be difficult"?
That's more "Brave New World" style shortcuts to hapiness and convenience...
It can be lethal
Brutal...
> There aren't many future societal changes that I'd bet on, but the acceptance of Brave-New-World-style artificial uterine environments is one of them.
It will be a huuuge time until extrauterine reproduction is viable even for mammals as small as mice. We barely understand pregnancy and its effects in humans as it is - IMHO it's barely ethical to research around pregnancy on mice, even less on "higher" levels of intelligence such as great apes. It's only a relatively recent discovery for example that fetal cells transfer via the placenta into the mother's organism [1], but it's only extremely recent that further discoveries into the mother-fetus interactions were studied [2].
Hell we're not yet sure if cloning humans actually works - it took a great deal of effort for sheep, and to this date we haven't even managed to work out the ethics for humans in gene-editing, just look at the controversy around He Jiankui [3].
Not saying it isn't worth the effort to hold a debate around human germ line research... but I think the time is premature, we should have it once we have proven it possible and safe in primates.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2633676/
[2] https://scienceblog.cincinnatichildrens.org/moms-ability-to-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_genome_editing_inci...
I will be amazed if a technology solution in biology can compete with 100 million years of evolution. Even children born via C-section are put at a measurable disadvantage due to micro biome stuff.
But that's possibly outweighed by the advantages implied by their mothers having the resources (personal or societal) to get their babies out safely for both themselves and said babies at later ages (mother and/or father have more advanced careers and financial stability) and despite their physical condition.
My kid (born when I, his mother, was 40) is a second generation C-section baby who, had my own mother (who had me at 35) been born in the 60s instead of the 40s, likely would have been a 3rd generation C-section baby. My mother was 10.5 lbs at birth and left my grandmother unable to have another child in her early 20s. Perhaps I can't eat crustaceans and have a stuffed nose for several weeks in the spring because I didn't get my mother's microbiome. I'll take that trade; my mother was then able and willing to go on to have my little brother.
I'll also wager that as a Western middle-class middle-aged professional who had my kid about a decade after I "should have" (can't plan everything!), my child's material circumstances and opportunities would be the envy 90-95% of his agemates worldwide. I'm definitely providing a better education than a semi-literate 17-year-old Afghani woman who could only have hers "the old fashioned way".
It’s fascinating that there are now babies that require c-sections for reasons you allude to.
It’s definitely possible to facilitate this type of genetic line in the context of wealth and abundances, but if it became the more than the norm, any war or famine would be devastating.
Sure, just trivialize the constraints of systemic barriers, political instability, and gender-based oppression that limit educational and reproductive choices for many Afghan women.
I agree that what's happened to Afghan women is a horror, and one I do what I can to prevent being implemented in any measure by the "but falling birthrates! Why won't young women have more baaaaabies?! Why do they wait so long?" crowd - including reminding folks why Caesarean sections aren't horrible, even ones like the one I didn't have to have, strictly speaking, but had a good chance of sparing me an injury I would have had a very hard time dealing with while caring for a newborn. I'm thankful that I live in a well-resourced country with near gender-equality in which I've always had a lot of choices, including the one that saved my life about a decade before I had my child - a choice that is being eroded in my home state.
(I've read about what life in urban Afghanistan was like for women in the 1960s and 1970s, so I'm well aware of how far we can fall, given the right religious nutjobs in charge. Franco's Spain freaks me out, too.)
I think you are confusing "trivializing" with "highlighting".
> children born via C-section are put at a measurable disadvantage due to micro biome stuff.
[citation needed]
You may be amazed, but that doesn't make it implausible.
We already did beat evolution first with wheels, later with steam, then with jet engines, nuclear reactors, heart transplants, vaccines, exogenous steroids, etc.
Evolution hit a constraint with us, our increased brain size making childbirth unusually difficult for humans compared to other species; all of us are born premature by the standard of our nearest wild relatives, and have to be premature just so the mother doesn't die all the time, merely unusually often.
After ex-utero pregnancy is achieved, the next step would be some form of recombinant human analogue breast milk synthesis. Beyond that, breast milk tailored to mom-babe pairs.
Yes, formula exists and has created billions of healthy children. However, breastfeeding is a signifiant commitment of blood, sweat and tears for many moms that want to do best by their babes.
At that point we can produce dairy milk for human consumption too.
I've been thinkingg about this for a while, that the way we're approaching growing artificial meat from stem cells is the wrong way to use this kind of technology.
Is anyone using this technology to grow chicken eggs and dairy milk in the lab for human consumption?
It will remain tricky to get subtle things like colour, taste, and the texture profile right for lab grown meat but will that hold the same for the output of a rtificially grown tissue like milk or eggs?
The company Perfect Day has a bio-reactor service that produces whey protein without the need for dairy cows. They've partnered with a couple of different companies to bring different vegan milk/ice cream products to market. It doesn't use stem cells though, I believe they bio-engineered fungal microbiota to create the process.
> ..yet our culture continues to encourage motherhood at a later age and fails to effectively support those who do make the choice to have children.
Just so it is said, not all cultures on the planet are as equally bad at supporting parents.
That way madness lies.
Growing children in a vat, to be bought and sold. That's what you're talking about. As a kid or young adult I never fully understood the Butlerian Jihad plot point of the DUNE universe, but as an adult and a father I certainly do now.
Growing children in a vat, and the personhood of those children, are two separate things. It's been entirely possible in recent history for naturally born children to be born to be bought and sold; whereas things like IVF have no effect on the personhood of the children so concieved.
Loosening the biological connection to parents and replacing it with a mechanical process means there isn't a first line defense against the buying and selling. In fact, the buying and selling is the first step since the activity is reduced to a monetary transaction. It's just slavery, with a veneer of charity around it for people who struggle to conceive naturally. OP argued that supporting this concept would become mainstream, and my point is that it won't, because you'd have to put people like me in prison for that to happen.
The surrogacy industry exists with the added bonus of exploiting women to be those vats.
After spending >$200k on surrogacy, I say: please bring on the baby vats.
I would guess that the negative consequences of widespread adoption of full gestation out of the womb would be much worse than the consequences of epidurals and C-sections. There's evidence that epidurals are actually worse for maternal mortality, since the epidural disrupts the natural birthing process, leading moms to need C-sections, which increase mortality. The moms I know have had better, less traumatic and painful, birthing experiences by working with coaches that help them understand and listen to their body through the process.
Being around those moms, especially my wife, it's fascinating to learn about how pregnancy is the foundation of mother-child bonding. So it's easy to see how artificial wombs would be much worse. I guess that's the point of Brave New World, how destructive the loss of that and other bonds is.
There is no longitudinal effect on "bonding". You are speaking like a religious zealot.
> There's evidence that epidurals are actually worse for maternal mortality, since the epidural disrupts the natural birthing process..
That is a bold claim, so please back it up with references to published peer reviewed research.
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Imagine a world where anybody can gestate a baby in a tank. It would be a boon to older couples, same sex couples, and many others.
What happens to the inevitable baby who's parent's die before they can be decanted? They will stack up over time since who wants someone else's baby when you can get your own so easily.
This will also be abused by some jacka## like Musk who wants to build a labor force for something distasteful. Imagine a Mars colonization effort with exclusively young people who were raised in a sealed environment and don't know anything that was not fed to them.
> What happens to the inevitable baby who's parent's die before they can be decanted?
This is already a problem for children of single mothers who die during childbirth. I’m not saying we have a solution to that problem (we are far from one), but it’s at least not a new problem.
> Imagine a world where anybody can gestate a baby in a tank.
Heinlein also explored that possibility a bit in one of his juveniles — in the novel, the tank farms were called "creches."
>Imagine a world where anybody can gestate a baby in a tank. It would be a boon to older couples, same sex couples, and many others.
It would be a world where the Ghadafis and the Putins could breed armies of 100,000, a million, all raised in barracks and surveilled from birth. The critics would have no say, none of these children are theirs. The political enemies would become allies, just so they might have influence in where those armies are pointed. Entire crops of insect-people, superficially human, but psychologically tortured into compliance, outnumbering anyone who might want to put a stop to it. And don't get me wrong, I think the United States would do it too, even if it might need to hide it for awhile.
>Imagine a Mars colonization effort with
Imagine a Californian colonization effort with hundreds of thousands of psychopath soldiers exactly 15 yrs old, hopped up on roids, raised by a few hundred drill sargeants since they could hold their heads up, slowly marching through and getting rid of anyone who wasn't flagged as an elite.
The reason you don't have stormtroopers doing this now is because there are only a few hundred of them who would be willing to do that at any given point at time. But when you can literally multiple humans with machines, then their numbers could grow quickly and to absurd degree.
> Imagine a Californian colonization effort with hundreds of thousands of psychopath soldiers exactly 15 yrs old, hopped up on roids, raised by a few hundred drill sargeants since they could hold their heads up, slowly marching through and getting rid of anyone who wasn't flagged as an elite.
California is already colonized. What you're describing sounds more like some of the horrors of the DRC wars, which have seen the use of child soldiers. Moral horror is perfectly possible for those who wish to build it, without requiring any kind of artificial birth.
There's a reason that these things happen in Africa... there are just more children to induct into an army, and fewer mature institutions to stand in the way.
The US doesn't really have the former, and does have the latter. But artificial gestation would give it the former (to a degree not really seen in the modern world), even as the latter crumble.
> a world where the Ghadafis and the Putins could breed armies of 100,000, a million, all raised in barracks and surveilled from birth. The critics would have no say, none of these children are theirs
You're describing peasant armies since time immemorial.
> reason you don't have stormtroopers doing this now is because there are only a few hundred of them who would be willing to do that at any given point at time
The reason is it's expensive to train and equip them. Human beings, particularly the ones used for cannon fodder, have historically been cheap.
I mean, raising the child after is actually the hard part, and women get shafted there around 99% for societal reasons.
I don't believe healthy, social children can be born in this way within our lifetime. Babies start learning their mother tongue in the stomach while being out and about with their mother. There may also be hundreds of other things happening in the stomach that we don't know about, which are needed for healthy children
hopefully, the babies are not in the stomach :)
There are already prototypes of artificial wombs imitating natural womb environment (which might potentially be in the mother's home)
Source? I’ve never heard of babies learning English or French or whatever in utero. Or do you mean they get used to their mother’s voice?
> Source?
https://pressbooks.pub/psycholinguisticsfall2017section2/cha...
> I’ve never heard of babies learning English or French or whatever in utero.
Don’t expect a baby jumping out and saying “a lovely day to all. What are your further plans for the rest of the evening Mother?”
It is more like that structures in the baby’s brain get subtly influenced to better pay attention to certain sounds while paying less attention to others. This is the theory at least. There is some experimental evidence mentioned in the link, but i haven’t reviewed all of it.
Yes, but is it necessary? Does it make any difference? This isn’t an interactive learning process anyway, just put an audiobook player next to your BabyVat9000 for an equivalent result.
I think we just don't know.
well, I guess time will tell.
Thanks! That's more "learning" that I had realized. Neat stuff.
As I recall there’s some evidence they begin learning to recognize the phonemes commonly used in the mother’s language.
Putting a speaker in the incubation room is probably the easiest tweak in all this.
The voice actors from that loop will be quite effective in subsequent advertisements!
Baby's first words will be "This is Audible".
I'm fairly certain some baby's first words have already been "don't forget to like and subscribe!"
The headline inspires SCiFi stories of creating humans outside of the woman. But that is not at all what this story is about: eggs were brought to maturity level outside of the woman.
Currently eggs would be matured inside the mother with artificial hormones.
Now they can be removed before maturing and inflated after in a dish. Then fertilized. Then be injected back into the mother. Hormones are still used in the next step.
The article claims an 80% reduction in injections, but they must only be counting the injections prior to egg retrieval. After the 2 weeks of injections before the egg retrieval, there's another 8-10 weeks of intramuscular injections after the embryo transfer.
Still, this is a great development to lessen the entire ordeal for women undergoing IVF.
'With nearly half of the women in the US never reaching their maternity goals, there is an urgent need for innovation' - did they just describe having children like a KPI?
It is! If ~50% of the population feels unfulfilled because they haven’t been able to have the children they wanted, we should fix that. But clearly it would be better to look at the root cause than to rely on this specious invention.
If you look at the other "personal goals" comment in this subthread, which lists "buy house and get married" before children, I think you can see what the real barrier is.
Subjective well-being is a fascinating metric to chase because it always changes.
I agree. I think happiness and “well-being” are not actual realities. There is only the pursuit of happiness. And that pursuit can be manipulated for financial gain. I think the very best you can achieve is being a child or failing that contentedness and absence of suffering. Otherwise loss and grief will strip away any possibility of happiness. The only fleeting happiness/joy I often see in myself or other adults is in nostalgia - and that’s pure manipulation.
Might this just be you and the people you know, rather than some law of reality?
It certainly could be. There’s the old Greek myth of Pandora’s box - the last entity to emerge is ‘hope’. Is that the worst monster or greatest gift to humanity? I feel like I fall in the former camp. But that’s OK - I still move forward in life and engage in the pursuit of happiness.
When you talk to people who are successful in their personal lives, that's how they treat life goals. Sounds over-formal but that's life.
1. Get married
2. Buy house (by 30)
3. Have kid 1 by 32, to allow 2 year birth spacing for X children
etc.
People like to be wishy-washy and romantic about finding partners, settling down, having kids... but the people who end up where they want to be are usually far more intentional about it.
Many of our "heroes" speaking about having children the same way. Steve Jobs said having children was far more important than the work he did at Apple. While he's going in a different direction with it, Elon Musk has focused on a lot on declining birthrates and what that means.
I first read that very very differently with a word which is almost an anagram of Fertilo, which begins with 'fe' and ends with 'o'. I was very confused how what has been euphemistically described as "swallowing kids" would produce viable eggs.
It's okay, you can say "fellatio", we're adults here
> Gameto is rapidly expanding the availability of Fertilo […] in key markets such as Australia, Japan, Argentina, Paraguay, Mexico, and Peru.
so, are those the key markets for expensive fertility treatments?
Or markets with lower burdens of entry (ie, regulations or religion-political opposition)
> In the U.S., the company is preparing for Phase 3 trials.
That's that country where, if you do anything such that these eggs don't make it, you're an abortionist.
Hah just locate in Alabama, where your frozen embryos are "pre-born children" and then use them as tax deductions.
Oh boy we invented Axlotl tanks!
Not if you have read the fifth book. Spoilers for approximate 50 year old book but IIRC Axlotl tanks just women forced into coma to gestate/bear children remarkably like the Handmaids Tale, published at about the same time.
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