Hacking Suicide

You want to commit suicide, but it’s a mortal sin: your soul goes straight to hell, forever. So what you do is murder someone. That will get you executed, but if you confess your sins to a priest beforehand you avoid hell. Problem solved.

This was actually a problem in the 17th and 18th centuries in Northern Europe, particularly Denmark. And it remained a problem until capital punishment was abolished for murder.

It’s a clever hack. I didn’t learn about it in time to put it in my book, A Hacker’s Mind, but I have several other good hacks of religious rules.

Tags: Denmark, hacking, laws

Posted on April 14, 2023 at 3:06 PM • 41 Comments

Comments

Zick • April 14, 2023 3:24 PM

This is the most stupid hack – trying to trick someone who is all knowing, by your own belief.
But, this is somewhat common I guess. I’ve once been told the story aboutthe origin of german type of dumplings – “maultaschen”, the idea was to “conceal” the meat from god inside the pasta (to eat during the fasting)

&ers • April 14, 2023 3:36 PM

Actually here involves one related catch.

Let’s say you are old, broke, don’t find a job,
this is dead end for you, you will lose everything
and end up on the street. Probably you don’t survive
there.

But you want to live. So you kill someone
and government takes care of you until you die of natural causes.
No more problems finding food, shelter, money to pay
taxes etc. Government takes care of you as an award for
killing someone.

Isn’t this a very sick world?

modem phonemes • April 14, 2023 3:47 PM

Amusing, but it’s a pointless hack. Unless there is actual repentance the confession is invalid. And that same repentance could happen even in the smallest remaining time after a self lethal act. As it says in scripture, “Reality hacks its hackers.”

Clive Robinson • April 14, 2023 4:28 PM

@ Bruce,

“I have several other good hacks of religious rules.”

That shouldn’t be too difficult to do…

Remember,

“Man made gods in his likeness”

So if you can con or hack a human, hacking a human designed system of oppression through fear and non existant reward, should almost be childs play…

$cheese • April 14, 2023 4:37 PM

Wait, people still believe in god?

Dave • April 14, 2023 4:55 PM

I think Zick’s comment is insightful. I had a grandmother who was convinced God couldn’t see through roofs, by the way.

It seems like the selling of pardons, mentioned in the book, could have covered that. You just pay in advance, get a certificate and off yourself. Perhaps the priests refused to issue those.

Peter • April 14, 2023 5:33 PM

@Dave, it’s a common sentiment among socially religious people (i.e. hypocrites) that transcends any particular religion. I remember a Saudi said something similar to me once in a bar in Sharm Al Sheik “Allah can’t see across the sea”. A Kuwaiti chick in the bathroom of the Irish pub in the Dubai transfer terminal the same.

JonKnowsNothing • April 14, 2023 6:28 PM

@All

iirc(badly) There was a very funny episode of Black Adder (Rowan Atkinson) where the King made him a high ranked clergy and told him that if any wealthy people die and do not leave their estates to the Crown, rather than the common bequest to the Church, that he will follow them into the afterlife.

The following scenes there is a comical exchange about What’s in Heaven and What’s in Hell with our un-hero explaining that Heaven is very boring and that The Good Times Roll in Hell.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

===

The Black Adder
Rowan Atkinson

Laissez les bons temps rouler
Cajun French

kiwano • April 14, 2023 6:40 PM

@Zick the idea that exploiting a loophole in religious rules is not a good idea because you can’t fool an omniscient omnipotent God, kinda overlooks the fact that an omniscient omnipotent God is necessarily clever enough and powerful enough to avoid unintentionally allowing loopholes into religious rules. God could have arranged things so that the rules wouldn’t have loopholes, but God didn’t, so clearly the loopholes are there for people to use.

Instead, when thinking about God’s loopholes, a more interesting direction to take one’s thoughts would be “what else might this loophole accomplish?” E.g. it’s not uncommon in for gentiles to be offered the opportunity to rent out a jewish friend’s pantry for the duration of passover, and purchase all the contents of said pantry, for a very low price. Once a friend of mine was offered the opportunity to lease a pantry and buy all its contents, and he asked a rabbi if this sort of arrangement was legitimate; the rabbi’s response was roughly “Yes, and I’d really love just once, to see someone keep all the food they bought.” (In spite of this encouragement, my friend gave back all the pantry contents at the end of passover, when his lease on the pantry was up, and perhaps that behaviour might provide some insight into why God would create a loophole like that.)

modem phonemes • April 14, 2023 6:53 PM

@ Clive Robinson

human designed system of oppression

Regardless of the bad example given by human individuals of abuse and hypocrisy, one is not off the hook. The rational question remains whether there is a god, and if so what are the attributes thereof. Aquinas provides arguments in favor of existence.

Paraphrasing from [1],

The demonstration of Aquinas proceeds from the existence of sensible things. The pattern is clearcut. Existence is not contained within the natures of sensible things, it comes to them from an already existing efficient cause, and ultimately from subsistent existence, that is, something whose nature is to exist. This is God. The nerve of the argument is that potentiality is actualized only by something already in actuality.

Owens, Joseph. St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected Papers of Joseph Owens. 1980 State University of New York

Clark Gaylord • April 14, 2023 8:44 PM

Suicide by cop still works….

Clive Robinson • April 15, 2023 4:56 AM

@ kiwano, modem phonemes, ALL,

Re : Common logic bites…

“[K]inda overlooks the fact that an omniscient omnipotent God is necessarily clever enough and powerful enough to avoid unintentionally allowing loopholes into religious rules”

Opps…

A long time ago now @Wael and I were discussing rules on this blog with regards to how they should be fundementaly defined and used.

I pointed out that in “human” systems of rules like legal codes, an accepted principle was there should be an allowable defence. That is,

“All rules should have exceptions”

Which while it appears logical and sound to most, it is actually paradoxically problematic.

Because “ALL” includes the rule it’s self thus negating it’s intent, thus creating a paradox.

It is of the form that puts it in the ancient class of “insolubilia” of which the most famous is “Epimenides paradox” or more simply the “liar paradox”.

So by implication of “your statment” you are casting “your God” as a “liar”. Which is heresy, the punishment for which is still codefied in many religions as an unplesent “Death”[1][2] (expect “a bolt from the blue” any time now 😉

Which although it appears to solve the suicide problem does not, it just shifts it along the chain of logic, and as the forceful old lady put it “It’s turtles all the way down” (a phrase you will find poping up on this blog from time to time 😉

So I could say,

“If you see anything in a set of rules that is –when you boil it down– a ‘Might is right’ rule, then it is one you should avoid.”

That just raises another issue… Because when you look there is such an imolicit paradox in society, social groups, employment contracts, etc…

Thus “what is good” is also “what is bad” which we try to resolve with making it subjective to a point of view. Hence “secundum quid et simpliciter” of deceivers, because the paradox is just shifted, the deceiver hopes out of sight.

Which some have said,

“That makes every thing a nonsense”

Whilst others a little wiser or more world weary just smile and say “Turtle Soup”.

Oh and nearly a century ago, in the early 1930’s Kurt Gödel realised that the problem was the problem…

[1] Things like “heresy”, “Will of the Gods”, “God heads”, etc are just some of the reasons why I view religions with such rules “oppressive” or “tyranical” and actually makes them a form of “long con” and a predecessor of modern political systems and guard labour, some of which we call “Police States”.

[2] Thus heresy shows many religions are in fact based on what is oft regarded these days as a primitive “blood sacrifice”. But when analysed a little further is actually there to feed “the beast” –of public opinion– behind vigilanteism or “action by proxie” of those deceivers of rebel rousers or those practiced in rhetoric who deliberately “poke the beast to rouse it”. Which gives rise to the good old,

“Justice demands the beast be fed”

Of “show trials”, kangaroo courts, and burning at the stake etc, as the,

“Justice has to be seen to be done”

Nonsense behind politicians and newspaper editors, “tough on crime” and “think of the children” mantras.

Winter • April 15, 2023 6:42 AM

You want to commit suicide, but it’s a mortal sin: your soul goes straight to hell, forever. So what you do is murder someone. That will get you executed, but if you confess your sins to a priest beforehand you avoid hell. Problem solved.

That official interpretation is the one favored by the Church and its backers.

There is another interpretation.

Most people do not fear the wrath of God [1] as much as the retribution of society.

Suicide was punished not only on the victim itself in the shape of not being buried in the official cemetery. The whole family was punished and ostracized.

I can understand that a person planning suicide might want to choose a way out that left their family less bad off. People thought differently about murder in the past. Caravaggio was both a famous painter and a violent man who killed two people and got sentenced to death for it (but escaped execution). That was all much more honorable than suicide.

[1] Atheism, partially or totally, has always been widespread, even in the middle ages. It comes mostly in the guise of heretics of some sort. People are not singing about their faith all the time because it is so strong, but because it is very weak and they try to convince everyone, including themselves, they have the faith.
‘https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/disbelieve-it-or-not-ancient-history-suggests-that-atheism-is-as-natural-to-humans-as-religion

‘https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/atheist-medieval-europe#:~:text=There%20was%20no%20intellectually%20sophisticated,as%20outright%20denial%20of%20God.

Winter • April 15, 2023 7:40 AM

@modem

Aquinas provides arguments in favor of existence.

You are quoting a man who is very much part, if not a main source, of the problem. As Thomas Aquinas wrote:

It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself… Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself… Life is God’s gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God… for it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life.

Winter • April 15, 2023 7:55 AM

@kiwano

because you can’t fool an omniscient omnipotent God, kinda overlooks the fact that an omniscient omnipotent God is necessarily clever enough and powerful enough to avoid unintentionally allowing loopholes into religious rules.

God cannot create a stone he (sic) cannot lift. A rule without a loophole looks to me as a logical impossibility. If you disagree, try to find a logical proof such a rule must exist.

Hence, God cannot write rules without loopholes.

But, the better, or real, question is whether God is in the business of rule making and enforcement?

Churches are fond of rules and punishment. But why should God use them? As far as I understand, religion is about morality and being a good person. I know for sure that being a good moral person and following rules to the letter always leads to conflicts.

Wiley • April 15, 2023 12:11 PM

The idea of defining suicide and murder as mortal sins is a necessary hack, too, once people have been convinced of the existence of heaven, gods, etc. Any religion that manages to truly convince people that they will, after death, enter a perfect world—full of happiness and devoid of all problems—will quickly go extinct as its members commit mass suicide. It’s happened a bunch of times. And wouldn’t mass murder then be the greatest good, too? Why shouldn’t we want to send all humans to heaven as quickly as possible?

So, now you don’t get into heaven if you kill yourself. Still, any person who claims to be a believer but doesn’t welcome death by other means, including murder, has gotta be faking their belief to some degree. And don’t forget: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

B. D. Johnson • April 15, 2023 12:37 PM

Another way to circumvent the letter of the rule would be to do something definitively, but not instantly, fatal and confess in the interval. You’d likely even be genuinely repentant during that time since most people who survive lethal suicide attempts regret the attempt. Stands to reason that’d be somewhat common among those waiting for death after the suicidal act.

Because, the rules they made up say you got to Hell for suicide not it’s a mortal sin, but because you die with an unrepented mortal sin.

Of course, you could also just change the rule and say God doesn’t care about suicide. I guarantee God will never contradict you.

Winter • April 15, 2023 12:54 PM

@Wiley

The idea of defining suicide and murder as mortal sins is a necessary hack, too, once people have been convinced of the existence of heaven, gods, etc.

Not all religions condemn suicide. It was certainly accepted in classical Roman and Greek times.

And those religions that do certainly do not do so effectively. In certain parts of the world, eg, classical China, married women would commit suicide to put a curse on their in-laws. And, eg, nobility from Europe to Japan, would considered suicide a honorable alternative to disgrace.

In short, religious laws are mostly hypocritical. They are followed in speech, but not in behavior.

Winter • April 15, 2023 1:04 PM

@believer

then I challenge you to read even one of: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and find the many occasions where Jesus was challenged by Pharisees, Saducees, and determine the extent to which Jesus was stumped when they (satan once, too) referenced the law intending to ensnare Him. Jesus was the fulfillment of the law.

I challenge you to find a place where Jesus called for the death of anyone or expressed the opinion or wish for those commiting suicide to be withheld the kingdom of heaven. Or even a place where Jesus tells us that breaking the religious laws will keep you out of heaven.

Jesus did say that rich people could enter heaven only with difficultly or not at all. However, those with limited or weak minds were the first to enter. Which is contrary to church teachings in all religions.

Wiley • April 15, 2023 8:28 PM

@ B. D. Johnson, Believer in The Unhackable,

The combination of your messages brings to mind another possible hack: do stuff that carries a high risk of death. Call yourself a thrill-seeker, not suicidal. Riding a motorcycle quickly on dusty, winding mountain roads; free solo climbing; trying to outrun trains à la Greg Plitt; maybe even Russian roulette. Can something with only a 1 in 6 chance of death truly count as suicide? (If so, what’s the cutoff? Certainly we could engineer an activity where death falls just barely on the “accident” side of that line.)

Interestingly, I don’t think any of the above examples were known two centuries ago, and I’m having trouble thinking of any appropriate to that period. I guess military service could’ve worked.

@ Winter,

“A rule without a loophole looks to me as a logical impossibility.”

Is it common for religious groups to have any kind of “general anti-avoidance rule”, by which “abuse” of a “loophole” could be punished? Were I an all-powerful all-knowing rule-making entity, I might have given that more prominence than “Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s animals”. Certainly if loopholes were impossible to avoid, I’d have known that, right? So either I’d be intentionally leaving the possibility open, or I’d have banned their use (leaving religious scholars to argue for millennia about how to interpret words like “loophole”—not very different from our own history, then).

Winter • April 16, 2023 3:13 AM

@Wiley

Is it common for religious groups to have any kind of “general anti-avoidance rule”, by which “abuse” of a “loophole” could be punished?

It is called the golden rule, “Treat others as you would like others to treat you” in one of its forms.

However, authoritarians want letters to follow literally. And those with power want loopholes to feed corruption.

Therefore, religions favor
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor[1]
over something fishy like wishing your neighbor wealth and happiness and, God forbid, having to help your neighbor to become wealthy and happy.

[1] Note the “wife” as one of the possessions. Also it does not forbid women to covet their neighbors husband.

VaRu • April 16, 2023 7:30 AM

It doesn’t work because the initial intention survives the confession, and even invalidates the confession (he cannot really be completely honest in such a confession), so he actually gets both sins on his tab.

Also, on account of loopholes in religious rules, the matter is actually a problem of theory of transmission of information.

We have a transmission channel with limitless symbols, where the Transmitter uses all the symbols, but the receiver knows a limited set of symbols. Inevitably the received message is incomplete because the receiver does not understand all the symbols in the channel, and discards part of the message as “noise”.

Then the story of the suicide by murder is judged by the perpetrator using the received set of rules which may have loopholes due to “noise”, but at the real judgement he will be judged using the initially transmitted set of rules, which are flawless.

Clive Robinson • April 16, 2023 7:49 AM

@ Winter, ALL,

Re : Discriminatory sayings of old.

“Also it does not forbid women to covet their neighbors husband.”

Ahh “permission by omission”.

One of my favourit sayings in this vein is when people have to go out in quite inclement weather and mutter,

“Tis not the weather for man nor beast”

To which I jokingly reply “So send the wife”…

There is actually a heart warming real world example of this from some years back when a husband and wife had a very late Christmass dinner.

They were an older couple living in the far north of the UK. The wife had gone out in weather that was too bad for her husband, and whilst she was away the weather worsened and she could not get back, nor could he get out.

I can not remember the exact details, but apparently he hung the fresh Turkey up and it froze solid, so when the inclement weather finally subsided sufficiently and his wife could return it was some considerable time later. So they thawed it out and cooked it and had their much postponed celabrations.

Winter • April 16, 2023 9:06 AM

@VaRu

Also, on account of loopholes in religious rules, the matter is actually a problem of theory of transmission of information.

People have been burned at the stake for suggesting the received knowledge might be corrupted. The whole point of Sacred Texts is that they are literally the words of the deity. Questioning the infallibility of these text is questioning the deity self.

Islam approached this problem by designating the original language as the only one allowed. Which is a language no one speaks anymore.

Some churches have declared the King James to be inspired by god himself to get away from these punt people questioning the interpretations of the translators. Also, it obviates the need to learn a few dead languages.

It is not new. Around 400 AD, the Canon of the bible was decided. Henceforth, these books were the true words of God and the rest was not. In most senses, the choice was rather arbitrary. There were many books going around and the notion of authorship was weak and means to investigate authorship were rudimentary. For instance, it is pretty clear many of the letters from Paul were not written by him. About the evangelists, little is known. But it is clear the 4 books of the evangelists were based on now lost texts.

Petre Peter • April 16, 2023 10:37 AM

The ability to kill yourself at any time, should be enough to stop you from doing it.

Clive Robinson • April 16, 2023 11:06 AM

@ Petre Peter, ALL,

“The ability to kill yourself at any time, should be enough to stop you from doing it.”

It is also the only true form of “self determination”.

Because no matter what people may or may not believe about themselves, their entire lives are in some way in subservience to others. As social creatures we actially live to serve one or more others even if we think we don’t. We even live to serve the memory of those who have gone before.

In certain cultures, there is a belief that even after death you exist in the memory of others, thus what they remember of you shapes in part how they see and respond to the world.

Thus it can be seen how theology can realy mess with peoples heads.

It’s also why I don’t believe in deities, as with a little thought you can see how we invented them ourselves for the good of our society.

So I instead chose to believe in inate ability of humans, to make better of themselves, by forming communities, that share and support in ways that multiply the effectivness of the individual, as part of the society of their community.

Wiley • April 16, 2023 12:03 PM

@ Winter,

It is called the golden rule, “Treat others as you would like others to treat you” in one of its forms.

I fail to see how that could be considered any kind of anti-loophole rule. Unless you mean that if I don’t want people finding “loopholes” in my rules, I shouldn’t be finding loopholes in the rules of others. But that’s a stretch. I certainly don’t mind people obeying rules as written. I believe clear and unambiguous language is important, and get some amusement from the “hack value” of loopholes (for which I may be a weirdo, but can’t be the only such weirdo reading this blog). As noted, there’s significant disagreement on whether a “perfect” being is capable of unintentionally leaving loopholes anyway.

Also, the “golden rule” is generally applied only to human-to-human interactions—for example, few people avoid eating animals specifically because they wouldn’t want to be eaten by those animals—so why should I apply the principle to rules that “came from God”?

As I hinted above, that exact rule could easily justify mass murder. Heaven’s great, therefore everyone should want to get there as soon as possible, therefore I should wish to be murdered and should treat others the same way. Good thing there’s a specific rule against it. But given the religious glorification of self-sacrifice, why do we not see people becoming priests, killing as many people as possible right after forgiving their sins, and accepting the likely sacrifice of their own “souls”? It seems obvious to me that it’s because people do not really believe everything they profess to believe.

Scully • April 16, 2023 7:46 PM

@Wiley

Any religion that manages to truly convince people that they will, after death, enter a perfect world—full of happiness and devoid of all problems—will quickly go extinct as its members commit mass suicide. It’s happened a bunch of times.

But don’t we have like Mormons and JWs who believe exactly something like that, without having committed mass suicide?

JonQ • April 16, 2023 8:03 PM

@Zick

This is the most stupid hack – trying to trick someone who is all knowing, by your own belief.

They probably believe their God always follows specific rules. And serves punishments like an automaton.

Funny thing is, the rules and the punishments don’t even have to do much with the Bible since over a thousand years ago when those rules (hellfire, etc) were formulated, reading of the book by common people (or claiming that it said something else than what The Church said) was typically banned.

Generally, for most of Western history, the reading of the Bible was left to the priests and such.

Wiley • April 16, 2023 10:52 PM

@ Scully,

But don’t we have like Mormons and JWs who believe exactly something like that, without having committed mass suicide?

“In his book The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, President [of the Mormon Church] Kimball notes, ‘To [die by] suicide is a sin if one is normal in his thinking’.” And Wikipedia says about Jehovah’s Witnesses: “Suicide is considered to be ‘self-murder’ and a sin against God.”

The biggest flaw in your statement, though, is confusing what religious doctrine says with what people actually believe. People may claim to believe in eternal happiness after death, or to be part of a religion that teaches it. But if they fear death or take unusual efforts to avoid it, I can’t consider them 100% committed to that belief.

Y.D. • April 17, 2023 12:07 AM

Another similar hack would be that of the mafioso who goes to a confession at a local diocese once per week, really sad and pious. And next week commits the same crimes again.

Winter • April 17, 2023 4:38 AM

@Y.D.

Another similar hack would be that of the mafioso who goes to a confession at a local diocese once per week, really sad and pious.

We can write this down as hypocrisy, but there is absolutely no evidence the mobster is not “religious” or that he is a “non-believer”. I dare say that most criminals are just as religious as their non-criminal neighbors and relatives, if not more so.

Also, religious rules for every religion are inhuman in that they are impossible to follow all for any human. Every religious person is a sinner just as every American breaks the law. It is not possible to live and not sin nor to live and not break some American law. If you have to sin anyway, why not add some extra to help you out where it is needed?

The links between the Sicilian Mafia and the Catholic church run very, very deep.
Sicilian Mafia, Patron Saints, and Religious Processions:The Consistent Face of an Ever-Changing Criminal Organization
‘https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sz659dn

For Christ’s sake, Organized crime and religion
‘http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/35373/1/19.pdf.pdf#page=161

The same for the Ndrangheta (Calabria, South Italy)
Italy’s Most Powerful Mafia Mingles With Devoted Christians at the Sanctuary of Polsi in Calabria
‘https://www.occrp.org/en/ndrangheta/italys-most-powerful-mafia-mingles-with-devoted-christians-at-the-sanctuary-of-polsi-in-calabria#

Vatican fights to ‘free Virgin Mary from mafia’
‘https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/vatican-fights-to-free-virgin-mary-from-mafia

The same happens in South American Drug Cartels:

Drug Cartels Influenced By Faith?
‘https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128358255

noone • April 17, 2023 5:04 AM

But what if you take the poison, confess the sin of having taken it and then commit suicide?

Clive Robinson • April 17, 2023 7:23 AM

@ noone,

“But what if you take the poison, confess the sin of having taken it and then commit suicide?”

Then as long as the suicide fails you have the basis for a script for “Fawlty Towers”[1].

You just need to work in parts for a mild manered but lost in translation Spanish Waiter and an atractive chambermaid / waitress/ receptionist. Oh and don’t forget the all important domineering wife.

[1] See the episode “The Kipper and the Corpse”. According to John Cleese, they did not have an idea for an episode and in desperation they started phoning around to others they knew for an idea (actors can spend prolonged periods in small inexprnsive hotels that are incompetrnt in some way or another, which is what caused the denise of the most popular motering show ever “Top Gear”).

It turns out that one of the Pythons had worked at a hotel and Cleese asked him what was the biggest anyoance, to which the prompt reply was “the stiffs” and so the episode was born.

Anonymous • April 17, 2023 10:11 AM

To clarify ‘all boxes checked, yet falling flat’, I was going to break down 2 Samuel 11 in tl;dr terms, but it wasn’t worth the endless ‘held for moderation’ errors. He got a dead kid and lots of infighting between his other kids his whole life, sometimes with deadly consequences. OK, so the hack failed but David still went to heaven anyway, right? Most probably, since he wrote Psalms and Jesus descended from Solomon, he is on a short list of the greatest people in the Bible. But would his life and future generations have had less trouble, or at least different forms of it, without his failed hack? Most definitely.

It comes back to: I don’t like the odds of failure of trying to hack the Unhackable, because the idea of hacking the great I AM is the definition of absurd.

Encryption is awesome, especially when done offline air-gapped to avoid side-channels (@clive), and @bruce hardware root of trust issues are ever-present. I am so grateful to all you code analyzing, mitigation recommending, public interest heroes in the field of using encryption in computer-language mastery, in plain speak on this blog, for anyone interested to try to understand! But don’t you know YHWH doesn’t need any zero-day CVE or backdoor, knows all your shared secrets and the unshared ones before they are written cryptographically, even in salted hash form, and still doesn’t exploit these inherent flaws, or your own flaws? By masterfully creating the universe, only hoping some more of His creation love Him and want to join Him in eternity? It comes back to a quote from some guy named Stuart Chase (who is that?), roughly paraphrased from memory: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary; for those who do not believe, no proof is possible.” …that a living Unhackable wants nothing more than as many people to be grateful and living like Him and with Him.

modem phonemes • April 24, 2023 11:36 PM

In Italy, someone wanting to have available an out from a marriage, divorce not being permitted by the Church, would file away a postcard, “la cartolina”, declaring a statement contradicting the Catholic understanding of marriage. If things did not seem to be working out between the couple, the card could then be revealed as evidence of a defective intention on the part of one of them, and the marriage annulled. Question: were the couple ever actually married ?

Properly written laws don’t have loopholes or exceptions. They are legal means to convey and enforce a moral good. However, human laws cannot be written to cover by their letter all possible situations. Therefore law is incomplete unless it is accompanied by equity, which allows a legal decision to be made which conveys the moral intention of the law in situations where the letter of law would harm the moral good.

God is the grestest hacker. St. Augustine: “God judged it better to bring good out of evil, than to suffer no evil to exist.” We might also note God brought something out of nothing.

Wael • May 10, 2023 2:37 AM

@Clive Robinson,

It’s turtles all the way down

Until you present an alternate valid theory about how we came into existence, and how life came out of no life, how “blind nature” could create eyes, I still believe in a creator[1]

By the way, what did Kurt Gödel say about religion?

[1] Two pictures talking to one another:
The head of Leda: Hey, Mona Lisa! who drew you?
Mona Lisa: Leonardo da Vinci!
The head of Leda: Strange! Me too!
The two pictures: Umm, who drew Leonardo da Vinci?

JonKnowsNothing • May 10, 2023 10:06 AM

@Wael, @Clive, All

re: The Power of Belief

The Power of Belief is it requires no proofs. It doesn’t even require suppositions or guesses. Lots of beliefs surround religion, politics or personal outlooks; none require any tangible or mathematical proofs in the sense of displaying physical phenomena.

Beliefs are held based on Faith that the Belief is True (or False). The crux is that, for a good many Beliefs, the outcome of Faith is not known until death or the overwhelming evidence that the Faith was misplaced because the Belief was shown to be un-true. Even in the face of proof that a Belief is untrue, Faith takes over no matter how many proofs are provided.

We have lots of Beliefs and we back those up with Faith. These cross the entire spectrum of our lives, economically, physically, emotionally.

Beliefs are unassailable by argument because they are backed by Faith, like fiat money, passports and the US Constitution.

iirc(badly)

Joseph Campbell told a story about a conversation he had with a person from a religious organization.

The Religious Person:
* There doesn’t seem a way to convince you of the existence of a Supreme Deity.

JC responded:
* No there isn’t. But then, what would be the value of Faith?

===

htt ps://en.wikipedia.o rg/wiki/Joseph_Campbell

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell’s best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.

htt ps://en.wikipedia.o rg/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth

The Power of Myth is a book based on the 1988 PBS documentary Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. The documentary was originally broadcast as six one-hour conversations between mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) and journalist Bill Moyers. It remains one of the most popular series in the history of American public television.

htt ps://en.wikipedia.o rg/wiki/Full_Faith_and_Credit_Clause

Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, addresses the duty that states within the United States have to respect the “public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.”

(url fractured)

Clive Robinson • May 10, 2023 8:43 PM

@ Wael, JonKnowsNothing,

Takes me back to what light through yonder window breaks… and the notion that time flies like a bottle stoppered tight so not a drop would spill to mark it’s passage.

Be it fleas a biting, or turtles a balancing, the madness from infinities was discussed. But conclusion there was not.

After all if we are from the hand of a god, from who’s had did the god spring from, and so on? Tis easier to decide things are genuinely eternal but unprovable. After all was the bang an origin, or just an epoch of a new time period?

Wael • May 11, 2023 2:01 AM

but I have several other good hacks of religious rules.

No “good” hacks against an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent “adversary” that knows what’s on your mind and what you will plot before you were even created, let alone before you wrote your first book, chief!

Wael • May 11, 2023 2:04 AM

@JonKnowsNothing, @Clive Robinson,

My reply was held for moderation. Too bad, it was a formidable reply.

Hacking Suicide

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