What would change?

I think this answers it pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkCuc34hvD4

Gishin said:

I think this answers it pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkCuc34hvD4

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Haha, I love Edward Current. That guy is hilarious.

Nathan45 said:

And you're doing it wrong...

look, nothing in the universe has changed in this hypothetical situation other than your perception of it.

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Quite the contrary. If the strong force is an objective reality, matter as we know it can't exist without it.

As for the nuclear force, scientific theories do change occasionally if they found out that part of it is bunk

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I'm not talking about a change in perception, but about a change in reality; because that is exactly what your OP hypothesizes.

The Nihilist said:

Really? Because STDs are THE reason I don't hump everything that moves. Why wouldn't you take better care of yourself?

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If there's no afterlife then there is no point in moderation. One can afford to be charitible if they believe that their reward after death will be a gold palace in heaven where angels give them mint juleps. I personally think Mother Theresa is probably living in something now that makes Buckingham look like a tar paper shack.


However, if this is all that there is, then you need to get as much as you can fast as you can, basically, if your hypothetical is ever proved true, all you will do is create a lot Neros and Caligulas, the murder rate would go up and at some point societal advance would just break down because we would all too busy hording what we could, plotting against each other, killing each other and having relations with each other.


It's just the nature of man.

yguy said:

Quite the contrary. If the strong force is an objective reality,

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let me stop you right there. In this hypothetical situation, the strong force isn't objective reality. Somebody finds out it's bunk, but reality still exists, somehow. I mean, can you just not handle hypotheticals?

matter as we know it can't exist without it.I'm not talking about a change in perception, but about a change in reality; because that is exactly what your OP hypothesizes.

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No, the OP does not hypothesize a change in reality, all he hypothesizes is a change in your perception of it.

The Nihilist said:

Perhaps you should consider getting reading glasses.

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Hey, it's not my fault that your hypothesis is so absurd that it can be reasonably paralleled by something almost as absurd.

yguy said:

Hey, it's not my fault that your hypothesis is so absurd that it can be reasonably paralleled by something almost as absurd.

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You watch that video I linked?

Nathan45 said:

let me stop you right there. In this hypothetical situation, the strong force isn't objective reality.

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Excuse me. It's my hypothetical, and that assumes the strong force is an objective reality.

The Nihilist said:

Christians, hypothetically, what would change if you suddenly discovered irrefutably that there was no God?

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I actually thought about this when I was still a Christian. Is it okay if I give the answer I would've given before I went apostate?

Gishin said:

You watch that video I linked?

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No, but it's not likely to have said anything I haven't heard a million times.

It's only three minutes. Give it a whirl.

The Nihilist said:

Well, if you kill someone, you'll get arrested. That's why atheists don't go killing people all willy nilly. And if you go around sleeping with everyone, your winky will turn blue and fall off. There are really good reasons for not doing all this stuff, and biggest one being that I don't want my winky to turn blue and fall off.

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Murder was illegal in Rome too and it didn't change the fact that the political history of the country was nothing but assassinations, coups and plots, not even the introduction of Christianity changed that, Constantine waited till his deathbed to formally convert because he took the Christian message seriously and couldn't reconcile being baptized with having to rule like a tyrant who boiled people alive.


Notice that most democratic societies have formally had a policy of lacite while also having a public that held to some kind of religious ethic. I don't think that you can make pure atheism last long term and keep a democratic society because most people aren't that noble, and at some point, democracy boils down.


I do think that an all atheist world would politically represent something like Herod the Great's kingdom, where the one who held the most power would be the one who killed off the most people. Historically speaking, murder has had two forms, murder as we think of it, and murder for political reasons. In general, an official of the state did not kill you unless you did something to be killed.


If you made the United States atheist tommorow but kept everything else, it wouldn't be long before you saw the breakdown of the system and basically a political freeforall because we are uniquely designed to want and hold power. In all honesty, if one knew there was no afterlife in which one could get punished or rewarded, and if one was in a system where democratic ideals were zilch,the proper course of action would definitely be rule like a tyrant and eliminate every threat before they eliminated you.


The worst decision they ever made in Ancient Rome was to deify Julius Caesar because Romans believed that if you were a god that you could not be subject to punishment at all, that no matter what bad a god did they were alllowed to do it, but mortals weren't. When they deified Caesar, they then put the idea into the heads of the emperors that they would be simply deified and so all would be forgiven and I think this may have helped their conduct, because they actually did act with more restraint before they started deifying people. Once both Caesar and Augustus were deified, I think it may have set a bad example.


And while on the subject of Rome, Constantine is interesting because Constantine hedged his bets. I believe he did have the vision of the cross in that field, but even having said that, Constantine I think did believe in Christianity, but he did have his bets hedged because in his mind, if he was wrong and Roman civil religion was right, he'd simply be deified after death, also assuring him the avoidance of hell, and he was right on that too, several Christian emperors were in fact deified after their deaths.

Gishin said:

You watch that video I linked?

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that video was 5 star gold, LOL, although it only got 4 1/2 due to all of the idiots downrating it because it went over their heads.

Joachim said:

...

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Joe (can i call you that? lol), there are plenty of northern European countries that are 80-90% atheist and none of what you predict has panned out. Morality is pretty deeply ingrained and it's fundamentally based on social cohesion and game theory.

Nathan45 said:

Joe (can i call you that? lol), there are plenty of northern European countries that are 80-90% atheist and none of what you predict has panned out. Morality is pretty deeply ingrained and it's fundamentally based on social cohesion and game theory.

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Name them, as in, actual statistics where they actually have 80-90% of people saying they believe there is no life force, there is no God, etc, and yes I am aware that no statistic will be entirely accurate unless is of a governmental census variety, but here is something interesting.

In the Czech Republic, 59% of the population is either atheist, agnostic, a non-believer or a non-organized believer. Just assuming that atheist and non-believer are functionally the same thing, the problem is, two of the things mentioned in those say either that they do believe, or that they simply don't know. The Eurobarometer for the same country has 70% believing in some form of the supernatural, and only 30% wholly holisitically and totally atheist, and the Czech Republic is one of these "known for their atheism countries"

Nathan45 said:

I'd continue breathing, and try to wrap my brain around how air is actually an illusion, but otherwise i don't think i'd change anything.

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In so far as that's an adequate answer my response to the OP, so far as I can give one, is equivalent.

I know God exists at approximately the same level that I know air exists, and I find responding to God as necessary as breathing.