Belief

[socalpoker_j 1]

Everyone believes in something for one reason or another, maybe it was what you learned at home, absorbed from your peers, a science teacher, a priest, a pastor, or a close friend.... regardless of where you developed your belief system you indeed have oneMy question to you is what/who do you believe in? and Why?Yes, I am a Christian and no I'm not trying to start a thread where I can tell you how wrong you are or how condemned to hell you may be, I'm just interested to see what others believe. Thanks.

[FullMontyM1 0]

I am a Christian. I believe that God sent his only son Jesus down to Earth to die for our sins.But I also believe that there are many paths to heaven and that we can't possibly know the intent of God in these sorts of things, so I leave judging other's people's paths out of it.I believe Hinduism, Buddhism and, yes, even Islam are all valid paths to Go/the Creator.I believe that agnostics and atheists go to heaven I believe that the pursuit of science and other "secular" disciples are ways to glorify God, or the creator, or, if people want to put it in these terms, the first cause.I probably would've been fed to lions by the Romans and denounced as a gnostic/heretic by the early church. Glad times have changed ;PMonty

[Golden 2]

I am Agnostic.I was brought up Catholic - baptism, communion and confirmation.As I entered my 20's, I found myself unwilling to accept the inconsistencies of Christian belief and began to find no logic within the writings of the Bible.That has led me to form my own beliefs regarding the existence (or lack of existence) of a higher power.Thus, I don't believe in a higher power. I believe that Jesus lived, and believe that he was a very compelling, thought-provoking figure - but I do not believe he was the son of god.I do not believe in heaven or hell. I believe that, like all creatures on this earth, when we die, we die, and we are given back to the earth from which we came.

[copernicus 0]

To make sure we get equal representation:Atheist.I was raised by non-practicing but theist parents, and received religious education in Ethical Culture Sunday Schools. (Essentially comparative religion courses with some preaching of the golden rule).I am a mathematician and 60s hippy. The combination of the two led 100s of hours of discussion and/or introspection, leading to my belief that ulitmately nature, including the origins of the universe and life, are discoverable.I see no need for nor evidence of any outside agency, and I have never seen a logical argument why postulating one would close any current gaps in knowledge or theory or enhance any existing theories in any way.

[BuffDan 0]

Copernicus, you're a mathematician? Cool, I am on my way towards that, as I am in grad school now as we speak studying the thrill-a-minute world that is combinatorics.I believe that i have a lot of confusion in what I believe. I was raised Catholic, in a household where you go to church every single sunday, and that is that. I also have had very good experiences with the church, including a retreat as a college student that got me feeling closer to God then I ever felt before.That said, I currently would clasify myself as atheist. At times, belief in God, and especially the Christian God seems ludicrous. Now, I may still be a product of my environment, as I am constantly around other math/science students and the religious are definately in the minority.What I do know that I believe in is logic and proof, at least when it applies to mathematics. That is why I think I like math so much, because we can prove things, even if they are often abstract and irrelevant to the outside world. Even science has trouble sometimes, as it is dependent on both logical thought and observation, but math is really only dependent on logical thought (and hey, if locial thought is severly flawed, than anyone trying to explain anything to anyone isn't going to work and we are screwed anyways). So I believe there are an infinite number of primes, that the square root of 2 is irrational, etc, certianly more than I believe any statement about God becoming human, at least for the time being.

[MDXS 0]

I may expand later, but for right now I'll just say that I'm another athiest mathematician.

[copernicus 0]

Copernicus, you're a mathematician? Cool, I am on my way towards that, as I am in grad school now as we speak studying the thrill-a-minute world that is combinatorics.I believe that i have a lot of confusion in what I believe. I was raised Catholic, in a household where you go to church every single sunday, and that is that. I also have had very good experiences with the church, including a retreat as a college student that got me feeling closer to God then I ever felt before.That said, I currently would clasify myself as atheist. At times, belief in God, and especially the Christian God seems ludicrous. Now, I may still be a product of my environment, as I am constantly around other math/science students and the religious are definately in the minority.What I do know that I believe in is logic and proof, at least when it applies to mathematics. That is why I think I like math so much, because we can prove things, even if they are often abstract and irrelevant to the outside world. Even science has trouble sometimes, as it is dependent on both logical thought and observation, but math is really only dependent on logical thought (and hey, if locial thought is severly flawed, than anyone trying to explain anything to anyone isn't going to work and we are screwed anyways). So I believe there are an infinite number of primes, that the square root of 2 is irrational, etc, certianly more than I believe any statement about God becoming human, at least for the time being.

I should qualifiy...I'm an applied mathematician (actuary) but with a decent grounding in higher math. Now link me to a proof of the Axiom of Infinity, please? lol

[LongLiveYorke 38]

I’m an Atheist (or agnostic or whatever) physicist in training. I agree with everything Buffdan said above.

[BuffDan 0]

I should qualifiy...I'm an applied mathematician (actuary) but with a decent grounding in higher math. Now link me to a proof of the Axiom of Infinity, please? lol

I think the dictionary definition of actuary is something like "a mathematician who also gets to make decent amounts of money" :)Btw, an interesting link I found that does talk about the neccesity of a separate axiom for the existence of infinite sets is as follows (not quite answering your question, but what the heck, I did some googoling so I wouldn't want it to go to waste)http://www.mathreference.com/set-zf,allfin.html

[copernicus 0]

I think the dictionary definition of actuary is something like "a mathematician who also gets to make decent amounts of money" :)Btw, an interesting link I found that does talk about the neccesity of a separate axiom for the existence of infinite sets is as follows (not quite answering your question, but what the heck, I did some googoling so I wouldn't want it to go to waste)http://www.mathreference.com/set-zf,allfin.html

Excellent, thanks. The one step I am not following and seems problematic :"If the power set of a "smallest" set is infinite, remove one element and the power set becomes finite. Bring in the last element and the new power set is essentially the union of two copies of the previous power set, one with the new element and one without. This is induction on the size of s. "First, it seems the language should read "The power set of the smallest infinite set is infinite" ?which is intuitively obvious. (If the set is infinite, the power set of a set is always larger than the set itself, so the power set must also be infinite).This step seems to suffer from being circular to the hypothesis, though, since it assumes the existence of a smallest infinite set, and we are trying to prove infinties.

[BuffDan 0]

Excellent, thanks. The one step I am not following and seems problematic :"If the power set of a "smallest" set is infinite, remove one element and the power set becomes finite. Bring in the last element and the new power set is essentially the union of two copies of the previous power set, one with the new element and one without. This is induction on the size of s. "First, it seems the language should read "The power set of the smallest infinite set is infinite" ?which is intuitively obvious. (If the set is infinite, the power set of a set is always larger than the set itself, so the power set must also be infinite).This step seems to suffer from being circular to the hypothesis, though, since it assumes the existence of a smallest infinite set, and we are trying to prove infinties.

Ugh.. the wording on that page does not seem to be the greatest. All I think it is trying to do is find a way to show that the power set of a finite set is finite, which can probably be shown with out too much work (which is shorthand for I don't know how to do it off the top of my head right now). Anyways, even though on further inspection this site may not be the best with explanation, I think the point is that one could have only finite sets and still be consistent with the other axioms of set theory, ie the axiom of infinity is needed to force infinite sets. Now back to your regulary scheduled programing...

[hotbacon 0]

I was raised Catholic.Went to Catholic school for 7 years, church twice a week, etc.Now I'm atheistSoft atheist, to be exact.I just kinda examined the arguments for both sides and concluded that right now there isn't enough proof.

[gobears 0]

I was raised protestant, then stopped going to church during my middle school/high school years. In college, I became curious about religion again and after some deep introspection was baptized a few years after I graduated.My wife was brought up in the catholic faith and I converted about ten years ago mainly to make her family happy.I've always believed in God and I believe that he is sentient just from what I observe around me. For me, it takes much more faith to believe in the story of Jesus as written in the Gospels.I'll always have doubts unless someone invents a time machine allowing me to traverse back to that period of time and witness his acts in person (not likely). I don't believe that the Bible is literal or infallible as the books of the Bible were written by different Men and the books that were finally chosen to be in the Bible were decided by groups of Men. In terms of the folks that have written in this thread - I'm probably closest to Monty's point of view and beliefs.

[Petoria 0]

I believe in numbers.I'm with BuffDan and Copernicus. More so BuffDan, bc I'm an undergrad math major, and will be persuing graduate school in mathematics, proly combinatorics as well. Maybe some other area in discrete math, not sure yet.