Darwinbots Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: Testlund on February 06, 2008, 01:34:42 PM
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1. Something can't appear out of nothing.
(I wanted to post a link to a video I saw about this but can't manage to find it again. Why is the thing you wants to find the most the most difficult thing to find? It's like you need something in your apartment, but nomatter where you look you can't find it, just everything else that you DON'T need. When you go to a store to buy something you often find it has everything else you DON'T want but not the thing you were looking for!)
2. The complexity of DNA and the machinery of the cell, explained in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUwitJXHjaQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUwitJXHjaQ)
I find that after watching these two videos, trying to argue against it feels like refusing facts and just being stubborn. Unless a better explanation about the origin of life comes from the Darwinists I think we should now assume a creator is responsible, but at the same time be open to that other possibilities might be discovered in the future.
The next would be trying to solve what the creator IS. Personally I don't believe in the man with the white beard and the bible as I've already mensioned before is written by humans and sensored by humans through the ages, plus the texts have been missinterpreted by every religious society, so it ends up being little more than a fairytale, although some sections about how a human should behave makes sense wether you're religious or not.
So the concept of God must be a totally new one. It may not be an intelligent being or even self aware, but it may be a law of energy about attraction between forces and matter, that must have some kind of will to progress into complex structures. So what happens if every protein in the DNA was taken appart and just thrown together in a mixer. Would it assemble itself again? Probably not because it needs a machinery to be assembled, by machines that were assembled by machines and so on. Where's the force that started it? I'm talking about cells necessary for complex DNA structures explained in the second video (watch all 10 clips).
Also these machines need to be working together from the beginning otherwise none of them will work, which can't just appear at random.
On the other hand, once the foundation of life is there it will work by itself without any involvement from a higher being.
When I run my evosims I feel reluctant to even click on a bot that could accidently move it away, because I don't want to interfere. I want it to find it's own way. I want them to have the freedom to chose. To mess around in the sim to try and favor one bot over another would feel like a violation. The progress of the sim will find the best way by itself, otherwise it will cease to exist. There is no need for me to affect it. I just made the foundation of life with the best settings that I've managed to figure out. If it doesn't work, I will start over with something else, which could be compared with mass extinctions on the earth from time to time.
So maybe that's what God is, a founder that watch and wait, until we enters his realm by our own progress. If the suffering of humanity and destruction of the environment is not a good thing it will cease by itself.
What do you think?
And now I'm going to try starting a new zerobot sim from scratch with Eric's latest drop to see if sexual reproduction has it's place in this environment. Maybe it will take a year before it even shows up!
Another thing that's interesting is the time it takes for things to appear. Why would God wait billions of years just watching single cellular organisms before suddenly decide to create the rest of the species that exists? That makes me think God waits and let it appear by itself, like I do when I patiently run my evosims.
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1. Something can appear out of nothing. It always does. It may not be something that YOU want, but it's something nevertheless.
2. That movie is way too long to waste my time on it. Can you post the gist of the argument? I'm betting it's going to have something to do with irreducible complexity, that old horse of creationists, that is actually so old that it's been dead for almost a century.
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I would't really say the upper hand, but it are the two main arguments of creationists against evolution.
1. Something can appear out of nothing, hmm well, I gues if you take a buch of luck, some quantum physics, some random energy. And you could have air changing in gold, and so raindrups of gold.
2. It hasn't started complicated(I think) Live has probably started pretty simple, and it has probably taken enourmous time to get a complicated system like it is now. We can't see how the organisms have looked like, if you even could call them organisms, the begining was probably simple.
It is mainly a mix between the two points. There can't appear a complicated system out of nothing. True, it couln't be that suddenly out of nothing an 'trio-quad-nano-parallelism computer' comes appearing. But as we have computers now and they keep getting better and better, there is a change it will come someday,(maybe something already exists, I just threw some computer terms within eachother ) computers have started pretty simple, and I gues live has too.
On the other side, it could also imagine that live on earth came from an astroide or something simular. Anywhere where the possibility to begin live is bigger then on the gamma-rayed earth as it was in the begining.
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I'm betting it's going to have something to do with irreducible complexity...
Yes, they mension this but when you look at the animations showing how it works inside a cell, the complex structure of the flagellum, and that one part at a time wouldn't continue to assemble itself with new parts over time until suddenly it starts to work. It's clearly a goal towards a working flagellum, and there is no advantage by dragging that lifeless tail behind if it isn't working. The thought that evolution caused it is based on the probability that one piece at a time would have been usefull. But they have proven the flagellum is useless if it is not complete. No advantage with a few useless parts assembled, not to mension the investment the cell must do to create it. Better to save that energy for things that work imedeately.
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It's funny that they used a flagellum, because that's one of the things that actually has a pretty clear path of reducible complexity with intermediate forms alive today. I'll try to find the link to the explanation, but the point is that it did not appear as a flagellum right away but performed different functions at different levels of complexity.
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Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Contrasting with the symbiotic models, these models argue that cilia developed from pre-existing components of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton (which has tubulin, dynein, and nexin—also used for other functions) as an extension of the mitotic spindle apparatus. The connection can still be seen, first in the various early-branching single-celled eukaryotes that have a microtubule basal body, where microtubules on one end form a spindle-like cone around the nucleus, while microtubules on the other end point away from the cell and form the cilium. A further connection is that the centriole, involved in the formation of the mitotic spindle in many (but not all) eukaryotes, is homologous to the cilium, and in many cases is the basal body from which the cilium grows.
An apparent intermediate stage between spindle and cilium would be a non-swimming appendage made of microtubules with a selectable function like increasing surface area, helping the protozoan to remain suspended in water, increasing the chances of bumping into bacteria to eat, or serving as a stalk attaching the cell to a solid substrate.
Regarding the origin of the individual protein components, an interesting paper on the evolution of dyneins[1][2] shows that the more complex protein family of ciliary dynein has an apparent ancestor in a simpler cytoplasmic dynein (which itself has evolved from the AAA protein family that occurs widely in all archea, bacteria and eukaryotes). Long-standing suspicions that tubulin was homologous to FtsZ (based on very weak sequence similarity and some behavioral similarities) were confirmed in 1998 by the independent resolution of the 3-dimensional structures of the two proteins.
Evolution of Flagella Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella)
Pretty conclusive, if a bit technical.
What's more interesting is that it's convergently evolved in bacteria, eukaryotes and, archaebacterium. Seems to be a better example of evolution in action to me.
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Here is a spunky video explaining (in easy and visual form) a lot of the research on flagellum evolution:
Link to youtube, as the board does not allow video insertion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdwTwNPyR9w)
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Ok, that's something worth pondering. Found some other interesting videos through that link.
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If you're looking for crazy youtube videos about bogus science, try finding one about the expanding earth theory. The idea is that plate tectonics is untrue, and rather than continents floating around, the earth is expanding and the ocean is where the expansion came from. At the beginning of the earth, the theory goes, the earth was much smaller and all the continents touched each other. Over time the earth grew in size and the continents ripped apart.
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If you're looking for crazy youtube videos about bogus science, try finding one about the expanding earth theory. The idea is that plate tectonics is untrue, and rather than continents floating around, the earth is expanding and the ocean is where the expansion came from. At the beginning of the earth, the theory goes, the earth was much smaller and all the continents touched each other. Over time the earth grew in size and the continents ripped apart.
You mean that's not really the case? Stupid US public schools. Next you'll be telling me the earth actaully goes around the sun or something else equally as silly...
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Ok, thanks once again Shvarz for that link. Found some other videos like 'Evolution made easy', which explains the step by step from the evolving of the first molecules to the living cell. Makes some sense though I can't grasp it completely in my mind. Fascinating stuff.
Sorry, Endy, but that link was too overwelming. I prefer pictures.
I spent the whole night watching videos from both sides and came to the conclusion that the creationists are a dangerous bunch. Some of them are more crazy than others.
Still, there might be some divine force somewhere in all this, but nobody has a clue what that is.
I still believe that in a complete nothingness there can't appear something, unless nothingness in itself is a force...umm...which it can't be. So something strange is going on behind the universe and I think it's equally wrong to say 'there is no God' as saying 'there is a God'.
So I'm probably going to stand in the middle looking for answers as I always have.
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I still believe that in a complete nothingness there can't appear something, unless nothingness in itself is a force...umm...which it can't be. So something strange is going on behind the universe and I think it's equally wrong to say 'there is no God' as saying 'there is a God'.
No offense Testlund, but this is exactly what I find so amazing. Why do otherwise smart people such as yourself make such wild and flawed leaps in logic when it comes to weighing the probability of supernaturalism? That there are mysteries in the universe, things we don't understand completely yet, that is no reason to give such high credence to the probabliity there is something supernatural behind them, much less one of the millions of specific tales of supernaturalism some organized religion purports is the answer. To do so when there is incredibly compelling evidence to the contrary is a complete dismissal of rationality. It's like saying you don't know what keeps airplanes in the air, so that somehow makes it equally probable that it may be the Bernoulli effect or it may be legions of invisible pink fairies that hold it up. There is no evidence that pink fairies exist and mountains of evidence that they do not, so only the irrational would claim the probability of either is somehow on par. Same with the rest of supernaturalism.
Why is it that people who seek to understand the origin of the universe or life or whatever rarely try looking for the actual answers? Why don't they explore astrophysics or partical phsycis or string theory or Dark Matter? My guess is that they just don't want to work that hard, which makes them suckers for the easy answers.
Whether something can appear out of nothing, that is a scientific question. It can be answerred scientifically. If that's what keeps you up at night, by all means seek the answer. But to look for it in supernaturalism, well, you might as well just say the pink fairies did it. A more rational answer you won't find down that road.
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Well, as I've mensioned before I have been a non-believer most of my life, agnostic even, because of the overwhelming amount of evidence. But I'm just not sure about that anymore, because there are some things that are too much to be a random coincidence. For instance a medium that tells too much truth about people that have lived before, which he couldn't possibly guess. People can guess some things, and I've seen some fake mediums doing the guessing game, giving blurry answears that can be interpreted whatever you want to believe and how they've been exposed. But when a medium tells the truth about everything.
I have a couple of links here to some things that are quite remarkable. The first is a link to a medium that has published a book which has been written by spirits using his hand:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbi...0Spirit%20World (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?tmode=start&title=Light%20From%20the%20Spirit%20World)
Here's a link to another PDF about a laboratory experiment where they managed to heal mice with sceptical trainees.
www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/acm.2007.7032
Now before you puke on it already, give it a try. It's too much to read for one evening though.
Maybe the guy wroting that book was high on something. Maybe the laboratory experiment is just a hoax. Maybe the guys that explains how moleculs evolve into living cells didn't actually confirm that in their laboratory. Just made it up to get research money, like some other scientists done about other stuff. We can't be sure if we haven't been there and watched the experiments. So take it for what it's worth.
So what I believe at the moment is evolution doesn't need the hand of God. But there MIGHT be a spirit world and there MIGHT be a God.
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Why do otherwise smart people such as yourself make such wild and flawed leaps in logic when it comes to weighing the probability of supernaturalism?
I had a post on this on my LJ, but it's in russian, so I'll translate here:
I think it's a general feature of human brain - it sucks at weighing probabilities and estimating trends. I think it has been evolutionary selected and I'm not kidding. A large part of being human is being able to find patterns and trends in the surrounding world. Early on (and probably later) humans that could find patterns and trends in the world were more successful - they could plan for the future, they could faster establish cause-and-effect relationships and so on. Evolutionarily it is better to find a non-existing cause than to miss a real one. As a result our brain is hard-wired into finding causes everywhere, even where none exist. That's why scientists came up with statistics - to make sure that their brains were not tricking them into finding patterns where none exist.
In the case of supernatural our brain feels a huge emptiness in the way world is organized. World exists, therefore there HAD to be a cause for its existence. The fact that modern science is so complicated makes it almost impossible for people to judge its quality. Their logic is similar to this blond joke:
"- What are the chances that today on your way to work you'll be eaten by a dinosaur?
- It's 50/50 - either you will or you won't."
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I think it's a general feature of human brain - it sucks at weighing probabilities and estimating trends. I think it has been evolutionary selected and I'm not kidding.
I agree with you. So does Daniel Dennett. He terms the assignment of identity and intentions to such things as the weather as assigning "Intentional Stance". It's easy to imagine that evolution would favor the ability to outguess non-human entities such as lions and gazzelles. It's hardly far-fetched to imagine that adaptation overexecuting and extending that to things without intentions - the wind, the rain, a forest fire, having your mate fall out of a tree. I can totally see how evolution would favor brains whcih overassigned identity and intentions. As you say, it beats the hell out of underassigning.
It's not just humans by the way. BF Skinner did a famous experiment with piegons in the 50's. He had a feeding machine deliver food at random times. Very quickly, the piegons starting doing amazingly elaborate dances, replicating whatever they happened to be doing the last time the machine deliverred food in an attempt to induce it to feed them. Like us, their brains are wired to see cause and effect everywhere, even where none exists.
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1. Something can't appear out of nothing.
(I wanted to post a link to a video I saw about this but can't manage to find it again. Why is the thing you wants to find the most the most difficult thing to find? It's like you need something in your apartment, but nomatter where you look you can't find it, just everything else that you DON'T need. When you go to a store to buy something you often find it has everything else you DON'T want but not the thing you were looking for!)
2. The complexity of DNA and the machinery of the cell, explained in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUwitJXHjaQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUwitJXHjaQ)
I find that after watching these two videos, trying to argue against it feels like refusing facts and just being stubborn. Unless a better explanation about the origin of life comes from the Darwinists I think we should now assume a creator is responsible, but at the same time be open to that other possibilities might be discovered in the future.
The next would be trying to solve what the creator IS. Personally I don't believe in the man with the white beard and the bible as I've already mensioned before is written by humans and sensored by humans through the ages, plus the texts have been missinterpreted by every religious society, so it ends up being little more than a fairytale, although some sections about how a human should behave makes sense wether you're religious or not.
So the concept of God must be a totally new one. It may not be an intelligent being or even self aware, but it may be a law of energy about attraction between forces and matter, that must have some kind of will to progress into complex structures. So what happens if every protein in the DNA was taken appart and just thrown together in a mixer. Would it assemble itself again? Probably not because it needs a machinery to be assembled, by machines that were assembled by machines and so on. Where's the force that started it? I'm talking about cells necessary for complex DNA structures explained in the second video (watch all 10 clips).
Also these machines need to be working together from the beginning otherwise none of them will work, which can't just appear at random.
On the other hand, once the foundation of life is there it will work by itself without any involvement from a higher being.
When I run my evosims I feel reluctant to even click on a bot that could accidently move it away, because I don't want to interfere. I want it to find it's own way. I want them to have the freedom to chose. To mess around in the sim to try and favor one bot over another would feel like a violation. The progress of the sim will find the best way by itself, otherwise it will cease to exist. There is no need for me to affect it. I just made the foundation of life with the best settings that I've managed to figure out. If it doesn't work, I will start over with something else, which could be compared with mass extinctions on the earth from time to time.
So maybe that's what God is, a founder that watch and wait, until we enters his realm by our own progress. If the suffering of humanity and destruction of the environment is not a good thing it will cease by itself.
What do you think?
And now I'm going to try starting a new zerobot sim from scratch with Eric's latest drop to see if sexual reproduction has it's place in this environment. Maybe it will take a year before it even shows up!
Another thing that's interesting is the time it takes for things to appear. Why would God wait billions of years just watching single cellular organisms before suddenly decide to create the rest of the species that exists? That makes me think God waits and let it appear by itself, like I do when I patiently run my evosims.
You have obviously never heard of dark matter or dark energy. There is no stability in the universe, only a constant change.
It is said that God does want proof of his existance, because with proof their is no need for belief. Yet he claims to have spoken the words of the bible to its writers. Therefore God has shown proof of his existance. Therefore God does not exist. QED
No you can begin to see the problem with human rationale, vs spiritual belief. If God exists, he does not. But if God doesn't exist, then something else was responsible for the Universe. And our existance is only a mere blink at its current historic value, so how can we possibly explain something we can't comprehend. Surely it can't be as simple as someone conjuring up everything. And as Einstein said, God does not toss die. Secondly, we're not a computer. We can't break the rules of time and space (at the moment), and there is no end or begining. Because in science, even nothingness has a force. Therefore god cannot exist. Evolution is not about the hand of some being, its about the environment from the largest mountain to the tinyest quark. Mutations and the combination of fatty acids occur in the same fashion as the Sun's fusion, on attom exchanges electrons with another and bonds are formed to make more complex compounds.
Also, you should look into the String Theory.
And lastly, look at Douglas Adams' proof why God does not exist.
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...Yet he claims to have spoken the words of the bible to its writers...
Wrong on three counts. First, the bible is not God's words personally. It's the words of various saints and prophets (and some horny kings. Song of Solomon reads like porn ). Second, He hasn't ever said or made any claims to humanity at large except through the saints and prophets, meaning that it's the saints and prophets that say that the bible is the Word of God, that God exists, that He's a good guy and should be trusted, etc. Not God himself (unless you've had some miraculous visitations yourself). Third, I don't think it's ever been clamed as proper doctrine that God does not want proof of his existance. It's just sort of been assumed that way by people who misunderstand the whole premise of God: that there's a benevolent dictator subtley directing the course of human development and the world at large in order to cause humanity as a whole to grow and progress, and individuals specifically to grow and progress.
All taken together: believing the bible is the word of God requires faith, and does not cause the logic of God's existence to unravel at all. It just adds an extra level of complexity.
Also, you should look into the String Theory.
Load of hogwash that demonstrates the dangers of pure speculation without empirical backing. "Oh yeah, the whole universe makes sense if you just presuppose that there are a dozen or some dimensions we can't detect at all." Pfft, that's like me saying "oh yeah, my homework is done, and it's all correct, but you can't see that because it's in a special language I made up." Talk about a case of the emporer's new clothes.
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I agree with Nums here about the string theory and such. I've been watching movies about string theory, dark matter, membranes, dimensions, black holes, you name it.
The only theory that makes sense to me of all these is the black holes. The rest I can't get how the hell they came to those conclusions. They admit that the law of physics break down and doesn't make sense before the big bang but still a lot of sientists believes in the string theory and multiverse.
Somehow it feels that most of these scientists think too linear. The time concept, travel faster than light makes you go back in time, big bang pushed it's matter from a single point in one expanding direction etc.
I want a believable model that shows how it's done and why!
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The string theorie 'a load of hogwash'. I wouldn't really think about it like that.
Most scientific theories are just theories and very often they are proven wrong later on, meaning that for any theorie there isn't any complete proof.
String theorie, works practically desame as the other theories, with subtle little chances, like that it doesn't allow time-traveling, it is blocked by the 7th or 8th dimension, well atleast one, or was it a combination.
It isn't proven, but it isn't disproven eather. It is complicated, that's true.
Most physics laws mostly really tend to break down in the time after the big bang, therefore exists the expansion theorie.
But there isn't any real ending proof in science, there isn't real final evidence.
You could just say the big bang theorie is wrong or that the phycics laws are wrong. And as well can you say that the string theorie is wrong. There isn't proof for it, the final question is, is there proof against it. Many theories of Einstein are broken down later in time. The theories where pretty close to truth and explained much, but in the end, wrong.
I think the string theorie is a nice concept, the idea to have everything in one theorie is good. It isn't disproven for as far I know. If it is correct it has nice stuff like the explaination of wave–particle duality of light.
The bible isn't disproven eather, as well as most science. If one was proven the other would be automaticly wrong.
Status quo. What could a scientist say. Einstein believed in god.
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The problem with string theory is that it's all so purely speculative it's hard to even set up an experiment to disprove it. General relativity, for comparison, is strongly supported by a great number of experiments. Meaning that it's falsifiable, but strongly supported. Sure it's a little complex to understand, but it at least makes predictions we can check. I refuse to call something science if it's impossible to construct an experiment to test it.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/...70124175443.htm (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070124175443.htm)
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Shvarz has the links we need!
Ok, so they think they will be able to prove if string theory is wrong, but not if it is right.
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...Yet he claims to have spoken the words of the bible to its writers...
Wrong on three counts. First, the bible is not God's words personally. It's the words of various saints and prophets (and some horny kings. Song of Solomon reads like porn ). Second, He hasn't ever said or made any claims to humanity at large except through the saints and prophets, meaning that it's the saints and prophets that say that the bible is the Word of God, that God exists, that He's a good guy and should be trusted, etc. Not God himself (unless you've had some miraculous visitations yourself). Third, I don't think it's ever been clamed as proper doctrine that God does not want proof of his existance. It's just sort of been assumed that way by people who misunderstand the whole premise of God: that there's a benevolent dictator subtley directing the course of human development and the world at large in order to cause humanity as a whole to grow and progress, and individuals specifically to grow and progress.
All taken together: believing the bible is the word of God requires faith, and does not cause the logic of God's existence to unravel at all. It just adds an extra level of complexity.
Also, you should look into the String Theory.
Load of hogwash that demonstrates the dangers of pure speculation without empirical backing. "Oh yeah, the whole universe makes sense if you just presuppose that there are a dozen or some dimensions we can't detect at all." Pfft, that's like me saying "oh yeah, my homework is done, and it's all correct, but you can't see that because it's in a special language I made up." Talk about a case of the emporer's new clothes.
Ah, but the logic it is derived from is very basic, and does not rely on deranged lunatics hearing voices. Every thing has mass. All mass is energy (Einstein's theory of relativity). All energy is movement, with all Newtonian laws applied one can see how this aplies to say, light or magnetism. So all mass has a frequency. All particles have a frequency. Therefore it is most likely that we are all just made of vibrations, or strings if you will. There isn't much speculation involved, not like the speculation that some God exists. Furthermore, it does not matter who wrote the bible, the basis was that God had to prove he existed to the prophet or the saint by speaking to him. If God exsisted, he wouldn't have to talk to the prophets. Beyond that, Mark Twain makes many good remarks on why its so obsurd to even believe in a God (or at least one that pays any attention to the Universe). Finally, if God doesn't exist and the saints say he does, then God cannot exist by virtue of their writing (Yet if God does exist, then why is he not runnign the Universe? Better yet, why is he not creating more universes and dimensions). Because under saint prestense, god is all-knowing and all-powerful, so it would only make sense that a simple planet would be a waste of his effort (he would already know the outcome of anything he did, and he would know that before humans can do anything to help it, the Universe will hyper-expand). So this idea of a God in the bible sense has many logical errors, making it ilogical and irrational. But the idea of a God who somehow built something seems abit odd too. Why build something that you'll outlive if you're so smart? Seems like a big waste of time if I was god. Sort of like doing this
Also, its odd that a believer of God would deny that there aren't more dimensions that cannot be percieved with limited 3 dimensional sensors. After all, is that not what religion is abou? Some higher place out of sight, even when using the Hubble Space Sattellite. Also, your analogy does not seem to fit. You're comparing some language that cannot be interpreted (but can be percieved) to something which cannot be percieved yet can be interpreted.
(BTW, time is the 4th dimension. Can you see time? Einstein's proof is 100% accepted and solid. And many things are beginning to show that this fact is the case).
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Ok, so they think they will be able to prove if string theory is wrong, but not if it is right.
This is the way science works. The only disiplines where you can prove something in the affirmative are a few braches of pure, unapplied mathematics. Everything else, there are no "proofs". You formulate a therory then look for ways to falsify it. If you can, you then refine the therory. Most laymen don't get this - that science is not about proving things, but rather about formulating competing theories and then eliminating the ones you can by falsifying them through evidence, observation and experimentation. Scientists receive tremendous alcolades and kudos from their peers for disproving their own theories - it's one of the greatest things a scientist can acheive - formulate a therory and then disprove (I.e. refine) it. Unlike the common usage of the term 'therory' where it means "speculative and unproven", a 'therory' in science is one of the strongest statements there is. It means "a consistant, generally accepted framework for something that has withstood scrutiny and has yet to be disproven".
Only religon claims to have all the answers and proof in the positive. Ask your religious leader "what experiment could I perform where if the results came out a certain way would falsify your claims?" If they answer "none", run away quickly. They are either deluded or want your money. Any scientist worth their salt should be able to rattle off a dozen experiments that if performed with a specific outcome would invalidate their favorite theory. Darwin himself indicated several such (I remember irreducable complexity was cheif amoung them) that if shown to be the case, would cause him to repute his theories. Of course, no credible evidence of these has ever been presented.
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I'd say that Eric a bit romanticizes the relationship between scientists and their theories - most scientists hold to their favorite theories a bit more tightly than you may imagine from his description. Even when someone shows their theory wrong, they tend not to believe the result until they see it for themselves (or until it is reproduced in multiple studies). But the general idea is quite correct - you cannot prove that a theory is always right, because that would require experiments under all possible conditions everywhere and every time and that is impossible to do. But finding a single inconsistency in a theory breaks the theory down and necessitates a new theory. All science is done that way.
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Ah, but the logic it is derived from is very basic, and does not rely on deranged lunatics hearing voices. Every thing has mass. All mass is energy (Einstein's theory of relativity). All energy is movement, with all Newtonian laws applied one can see how this aplies to say, light or magnetism. So all mass has a frequency. All particles have a frequency. Therefore it is most likely that we are all just made of vibrations, or strings if you will. There isn't much speculation involved, not like the speculation that some God exists.
Reread what you just said: if that doesn't sound like the deranged rantings of a lunatic, I don't know what does It's no more absurd than the animistic viewpoint that all matter has a spirit self. String theory at best is a sort of mathematically based metaphysics.
Furthermore, it does not matter who wrote the bible, the basis was that God had to prove he existed to the prophet or the saint by speaking to him. If God exsisted, he wouldn't have to talk to the prophets. Beyond that, Mark Twain makes many good remarks on why its so obsurd to even believe in a God (or at least one that pays any attention to the Universe). Finally, if God doesn't exist and the saints say he does, then God cannot exist by virtue of their writing (Yet if God does exist, then why is he not runnign the Universe? Better yet, why is he not creating more universes and dimensions). Because under saint prestense, god is all-knowing and all-powerful, so it would only make sense that a simple planet would be a waste of his effort (he would already know the outcome of anything he did, and he would know that before humans can do anything to help it, the Universe will hyper-expand). So this idea of a God in the bible sense has many logical errors, making it ilogical and irrational. But the idea of a God who somehow built something seems abit odd too. Why build something that you'll outlive if you're so smart? Seems like a big waste of time if I was god. Sort of like doing this
Not at all. It should be amply clear that the Judeo-Christian monotheistic God has a very straightforward goal in mind: growing a larval stage of His progeny on Earth: namely mankind. That is, raising his literal children. Why do you think the imagery of "Father-Child" is used? It's the same way that teaching a kid to ride a bike isn't a waste of time. Sure, you could ride the bike yourself, in a fraction of the effort, but the act of teaching is infinitely more meaningful. That God isn't directly visible gives us a hint of the level of growth mortal life represents: mankind is something like a toddler going to preschool for the first time. Sure it seems to us like our Parent has abandoned us, but in reality it's just the first step of growing up and becoming independant.
And who says that Earth is the only planet God is working on? I'm pretty sure I've heard phrases like "worlds without end" at various times in different services. The whole idea of the Judeo-Christian God is that He's quite literally the God of the whole universe. Or at least our observable neck of the woods. Other sentient life is presumably also under God's charge.
Also, its odd that a believer of God would deny that there aren't more dimensions that cannot be percieved with limited 3 dimensional sensors. After all, is that not what religion is abou? Some higher place out of sight, even when using the Hubble Space Sattellite.
I make a careful distinction between belief and science. If you came to me and said that you're religion claims that there are an extra 8 unobservable dimensions, and that all of everything is built from vibrating strings, that's fine, that's what you believe. However, when you claim it's good science, I require supporting evidence before I accept it.
Also, your analogy does not seem to fit. You're comparing some language that cannot be interpreted (but can be percieved) to something which cannot be percieved yet can be interpreted.
Perhaps something such as this (http://xkcd.com/171/) would make more sense?
(BTW, time is the 4th dimension. Can you see time? Einstein's proof is 100% accepted and solid. And many things are beginning to show that this fact is the case).
Time is observable. We can percieve time. Time was understood (in our rather constant inertial frame) long before Einstein. That's what makes general relativity work: it makes predictions about things we know about. Einstein didn't have to invent anything new, he just reformulated what we already understood. When you start talking about compacted dimensions, I must scoff.
Only religon claims to have all the answers and proof in the positive. Ask your religious leader "what experiment could I perform where if the results came out a certain way would falsify your claims?"
Here's what I almost guarentee a Christian priest would answer:
"Let Christ in to your heart and life, allow him to be your personal savior, and I guarentee you that you will receive a testament of the truth of these things".
The problem is that you as a science minded individual want to measure with a ruler and stopwatch, whereas a priest wants to measure in warm fuzzies. They're really orthogonal to each other; you might as well be speaking different languages. Almost everything religion is about (morality, our place in the universe, our relationship with our ancestors, our future destiny, etc.) are things that science has no business even asking. How do you measure morality? How do you develop a theory about the meaning of existence? It just doesn't work.
Really the whole idea that science and religion are in direct competition with each other is extremely stupid. There is a tiny portion of Judeo mythology that modern science conflicts with: namely Genesis and the creation story. And only like the first 10 chapters at that. And even then the only reason it's a big deal is that most Christians don't seem able to read more than the first 40 pages of their Bible. They worked hard on reading that first chapter. It's all they have. I mean, once you get into later Genesis you start having all sorts of boring geneologies, and the Mosaic law, and who in their right mind wants to read that? If the bible started with something like Isaiah, I think people would have a better idea about the whole point of all this.
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In the last right-wing governement here in italy (berlusconi) we had a minister of public education who wanted to abolish the darwin theory teaching in schools and restore the teaching of creationism. These are very dangerous people, Darwin died 150 years ago and some stupid catholics still don't belive him... italy is truly the third world.
EDIT: BTW the proof that bible is completely wrong, is that earth goes around the sun (in the bible it is written the opposite) and that jews are the most unlucky people in the world, and they should be the chosens. Of course I'm not a nazist, just look at history: they where fucked by all governments, and they have been slaves since the age of pharaons by the hitler's government. Another thing, we italians killed Jesus (if he existed) and god haven't punished we yet.
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Here's what I almost guarentee a Christian priest would answer:
"Let Christ in to your heart and life, allow him to be your personal savior, and I guarentee you that you will receive a testament of the truth of these things".
Why not budda? Or Allah? Or Gaia? Or Apollo? Or Elvis? Every religion is a minority. If Christians claim only they are right, then they must think most of the world is deluded and they must therefor accept that it must be relativly easy to be deluded regarding religon. BUt on the other hand, if they allow that beleif in any god can produce the same inner, untestable statement of truth, then they must acknowledge that perhaps it's not so much the god that matters but rather the belief itself....
The problem is that you as a science minded individual want to measure with a ruler and stopwatch, whereas a priest wants to measure in warm fuzzies. They're really orthogonal to each other; you might as well be speaking different languages. Almost everything religion is about (morality, our place in the universe, our relationship with our ancestors, our future destiny, etc.) are things that science has no business even asking. How do you measure morality? How do you develop a theory about the meaning of existence? It just doesn't work.
Well I strongly disagree here as you might imagine. All religions make scientific claims: virgin births, turning wine into blood, physical miricles, the power of prayer and so on. All of these things are testable and measurable. Morality is easily measurable for example. A well designed questionaire or experiment is all it takes. There have been many studies measuring morality and you might expect, they all find no relationship between religious beleif and morality. There are moral religious people and immoral religious people, same with athiests and any other large demographic group.
Science is just a methodology for seeking the answers to questions through rational processes. As such, I would claim there is nothing that cannot be explored (and eventually addressed) using a scientific method. But one of the first steps to answerring questions scientifically is to make sure the question is well formed. Asking "what is the meaning of existance?" is not IMHO a well formed question, in the same way "what came before the big bang?" is not well formed. The term "meaning" is human centric and presumes aprori that there must be a meaning, that existance and everything else must mean something to humans. This is obviously not the case. Similarly, humans have brains evolved to deal with the macro world with it's 4 dimensions. It should not be surprising that humans have a hard time understanding additional dimensions or that that time itself started with the big bang and that asking "what came before the big bang" is not well formed.
Really the whole idea that science and religion are in direct competition with each other is extremely stupid.
I used to feel this way. I used to take a live and let live approach. I changed my mind the day a bunch of religious whack jobs flew airplanes into buildings. Religion and the irrational beliefs in an afterlife (not to mention unlocked cockpit doors) allowed that to happen.
The irrational beleifs of others effect me, effect the world I live in and the world my children are growing up in. I have no probelm with someone belonging to a social club they attend every Sunday (or Saturday or Tuesday) morning with their friends. I have no problems with people (willingly) following a personal code of conduct or subscribing to an organized code of conduct. I have no problem with tradition and culture. I was married in a catholic church and celebrate a secular christmas for example. But supernatural beleifs in direct contradiction to reality are dangerous. If you beleive in the irrational, you can believe in anything and that makes you dangerous. Someone may convince you strapping on an explosivie vest and detonating it in a shopping mall is the path to salvation or that electing leaders that believe in armragedon and putting them in charge of tens of thousands of nuclear missles is a good thing.
And let me just add that the whole "those guys weren't my religion" or "those guys were misguided extremists" or "my religion is a kind, gentle religion that would never condone such things" argument is total bullshit. By beleiving in the supernatural, by making belief in the supernatural not only socially acceptable but desirable, adherants of kinder, gentlier religious are giving aircover to extremists. Why is it that we would send someone who truly beleives Elvis is alive and talks to them in their head to see a phsycologist but we don't do that for the gods supportted by organized religion? We should. Ignorance is the enemy of rationality and beleif in the supernatural is ignorant.
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Here's what I almost guarentee a Christian priest would answer:
"Let Christ in to your heart and life, allow him to be your personal savior, and I guarentee you that you will receive a testament of the truth of these things".
Why not budda? Or Allah? Or Gaia? Or Apollo? Or Elvis? Every religion is a minority. If Christians claim only they are right, then they must think most of the world is deluded and they must therefor accept that it must be relativly easy to be deluded regarding religon. BUt on the other hand, if they allow that beleif in any god can produce the same inner, untestable statement of truth, then they must acknowledge that perhaps it's not so much the god that matters but rather the belief itself....
Which many might do. Christianity as a whole is a rather fragmented patch of related but distinct beliefs. Among these is the so called Christian Humanist. Another take might be that, like the blind men and the elephant, each religion has a correct, but limited, view of the Almighty. Yet another view might be that each present religion grew from the same seed of truth, and have long since strayed and erred. Religion is not cohesive like science. Religion is not based upon an independantly verified truth. If science is about removing the human component from our understanding of the universe (removing bias, superstition, etc.), religion is about understanding the universe through the human component.
Well I strongly disagree here as you might imagine. All religions make scientific claims: virgin births, turning wine into blood, physical miricles, the power of prayer and so on. All of these things are testable and measurable. Morality is easily measurable for example. A well designed questionaire or experiment is all it takes. There have been many studies measuring morality and you might expect, they all find no relationship between religious beleif and morality. There are moral religious people and immoral religious people, same with athiests and any other large demographic group.
What if I answer "I like to kill people" on your questionaire? Is that a moral or amoral act? How do you even begin to define "good" and "bad" in a purely scientific manner? Science is great at being impartial, but it does not deliver any value systems with which to judge the world. You could maybe develop a theory about the effect of murder on societies and trust, etc. but at some point someone is going to have to make a judgement call about what is desirable and what is not. That's the realm of religion, philosophy, etc. Things that are definately not scientific.
The term "meaning" is human centric and presumes aprori that there must be a meaning, that existance and everything else must mean something to humans. This is obviously not the case. Similarly, humans have brains evolved to deal with the macro world with it's 4 dimensions. It should not be surprising that humans have a hard time understanding additional dimensions or that that time itself started with the big bang and that asking "what came before the big bang" is not well formed.
I would say that the argument that "of course humans don't understand higher dimensions, because we don't have the capacity" is anti-human centric. Imagine for a moment the beginning of life on earth. The first thing that learned how to move can only move in a straight line. It's immediately out-competed by a creature that can swim in two dimensions. That creature is immediately out competed by a creature that can move in 3 dimensions. etc. etc. If we can only observe 3 physical dimensions and a strange one way dimension, that must mean that those are the only dimensions that have meaning in our existance. Higher dimensions may or may not exist in any real sense, but they do not effect our normal, everyday life.
Same way that relativity does not effect normal, everyday life. You want me to believe in relativity? I can use suspension of disbelief for a moment, but you'll need to provide empiracle evidence very soon after. Thankfully, it was just a handful of years after a single man created a new theory that it was confirmed by empiracle evidence. My assumption was justified.
I will take the existence of higher dimensions as an assumption in a scientific theory, in the same manner as I took relativity. String theory is like, what? 30 years old? With thousands of scientists working on it. And it's not even done. How many falsifiable experiments do we have? Talk about much to do about nothing. You're straining my powers of assumption. It's just like a software project. You need to test each individual function against specification. In science, you need to test every single assumption against evidence. String theory has put the horse before the carriage, and the result is a huge theoretical mess with no practical use. Relativity gave us nuclear plants and bombs within just a decade or so. String theory hasn't even been able to figure out how to test itself yet!
Really the whole idea that science and religion are in direct competition with each other is extremely stupid.
I used to feel this way. I used to take a live and let live approach. I changed my mind the day a bunch of religious whack jobs flew airplanes into buildings. Religion and the irrational beliefs in an afterlife (not to mention unlocked cockpit doors) allowed that to happen.
Sept. 11 was about as much about religion as the crusades were: meaning only a flimsy pretense. Think about it. If it was a Muslim war against Christianity, they would have attacked the Vatican. If it was a Muslim war against Jews, they would have attacked Israel. Instead it was an attack on trade. On capatalism. It's a political attack by a political organization that hides behind its religion for justification. They're upset with American support for the monarchy in Egypt, or something like that.
People hide their hate behind religion because they're ignorant and stupid. Don't blame religion. Islam certainly does not advocate military attacks on civilian targets. People don't need help being hateful.
But supernatural beleifs in direct contradiction to reality are dangerous.
Are dangerous to whom? To the people? Big deal. You're upset when they intrude on your life. And rightfully so. That violates the very founding principle of your country: libertarianism (which, by the way, is a philosphy and not a science. How would you scientifically define the idea of the right to be left alone?). But that isn't the fault of belief. That's the fault of people. And people will act stupid and hateful regardless of what religion, belief, or philosophy the believe in (or don't). If anything, religion, belief, and philosophy are what prevents Man from being stupid and hateful all the time. How easy would it be to fall in to a science-only world view, and adopt Social Darwinism as a guiding principle? How would that make you any better from someone who falls in to a religion-only world view and adopts I-don't-understand-that-it-must-be-magic guiding principle? Both views can cause so much harm.
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EDIT: BTW the proof that bible is completely wrong, is that earth goes around the sun (in the bible it is written the opposite)
Really? What verse? No, the bible never says anything about the sun and the earth, and which revolves around the other (and technically, with relativity and lorentz transformations, both are correct).
and that jews are the most unlucky people in the world, and they should be the chosens. Of course I'm not a nazist, just look at history: they where fucked by all governments, and they have been slaves since the age of pharaons by the hitler's government.
You don't understand what it means to be "chosen". It doesn't mean life's going to be great for you. It means God's given you a great deal (not always material goods.) and it's your job to live up to God's expectations. If anything, being chosen is a burden, requiring extra work and effort. I'm sure there's a parable about that Something with money and digging holes
Another thing, we italians killed Jesus (if he existed) and god haven't punished we yet.
...
In the last right-wing governement here in italy (berlusconi) we had a minister of public education who wanted to abolish the darwin theory teaching in schools and restore the teaching of creationism. These are very dangerous people, Darwin died 150 years ago and some stupid catholics still don't belive him... italy is truly the third world.
You just answered your own question Anyway, the Romans didn't kill Jesus. The Jews did. Or that's the story anyway. Pontius Pilate (or however it's spelled) tried to get Jesus exonerated, but the (Jewish) crowd wouldn't go for it. Personally I think the Romans killed Jesus, and the story was changed to make the Empire look better (so Christians wouldn't be killed as unpatriotic). But whatever.
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String theorie: it isn't disproved, so it could be right. Desame as all the other theories. All theories are based upon some formula, and pretty much theories are altered or proven not true. I am not even sure if there is a einstein-theorie that is completely intact. Many of his theories have been proven wrong later.
I find it strange that you can't see the evindence of the string theorie, the theorie has desame results as the four phycics theories. Four theories in one, meaning there are much, very much simple phycics where it could be proven wrong, it isn't proven wrong in any. It has four times more proof then any individual theorie, in the way I see it.
Ispettore: I could be wrong, I just looked up the minister that wanted to abolish the darwin-theorie. I could be wrong there, but it seems like the evolution-theorie missed from some kind of school-program. It doesn't really seemed like the minister intended it, maybe it was by mistake forgotten or anything. And if I am right now, it is back again.
Jezus was killed in jeruzalem, that is far away from italy, and far before the country Italy existed.
The clear link with Italy is that it was at the time owned by the romans. The romans of that time where other people then the Italians now, but it was done by an country that had it offspring in the land that now has the name of Italy, very true.
Jews are the chosen people, not the protected ones. You could see it if they have been tested in WW2.
Religion: We can agree, I think. On the fact that religion isn't fighting with science.
But the point is, is it rational, if I read right this seems to be Erics point. A rational human can be a christ or some other belief, but will it be a terrorist, I think not.
I don't think belief makes terrorists.
I think unfair treatment causes terrorists, and belief is just some cover for it.
For example the unfair treatment between jews and palatinas in Israel.
There are also much terrorist acts done by organisations or countrys, to (try to)wreck another countrys stability. The attack on the twin towers could be said as one of them. You can always find inrational people to help you, it doesn't have to be involved by belief.
You sound a little like someone that never heard of terrorism and suddenly with 9/11 the terrorism action in your country, you have heard of it and inmidiatly blame the beliefers, becouse it was someone who was a beliefer.
It is not like america is free of terrorism, they have done it themself too. See here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States) for example, there are many other cases.
And no, it wasn't the only terrorism act. Here you only see the Al Quada acts. From 1992 to 2007. Yes strangely also, a part of the time is when Bin Laden was protected by america. As a dear ally.
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:TerroristAttacksAlQaeda.png)
Edit:
Or it is my browser, or this board. I doesn't seem to load png images.
Oh, link (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:TerroristAttacksAlQaeda.png)
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Ah, but the logic it is derived from is very basic, and does not rely on deranged lunatics hearing voices. Every thing has mass. All mass is energy (Einstein's theory of relativity). All energy is movement, with all Newtonian laws applied one can see how this aplies to say, light or magnetism. So all mass has a frequency. All particles have a frequency. Therefore it is most likely that we are all just made of vibrations, or strings if you will. There isn't much speculation involved, not like the speculation that some God exists.
Reread what you just said: if that doesn't sound like the deranged rantings of a lunatic, I don't know what does It's no more absurd than the animistic viewpoint that all matter has a spirit self. String theory at best is a sort of mathematically based metaphysics.
Furthermore, it does not matter who wrote the bible, the basis was that God had to prove he existed to the prophet or the saint by speaking to him. If God exsisted, he wouldn't have to talk to the prophets. Beyond that, Mark Twain makes many good remarks on why its so obsurd to even believe in a God (or at least one that pays any attention to the Universe). Finally, if God doesn't exist and the saints say he does, then God cannot exist by virtue of their writing (Yet if God does exist, then why is he not runnign the Universe? Better yet, why is he not creating more universes and dimensions). Because under saint prestense, god is all-knowing and all-powerful, so it would only make sense that a simple planet would be a waste of his effort (he would already know the outcome of anything he did, and he would know that before humans can do anything to help it, the Universe will hyper-expand). So this idea of a God in the bible sense has many logical errors, making it ilogical and irrational. But the idea of a God who somehow built something seems abit odd too. Why build something that you'll outlive if you're so smart? Seems like a big waste of time if I was god. Sort of like doing this
Not at all. It should be amply clear that the Judeo-Christian monotheistic God has a very straightforward goal in mind: growing a larval stage of His progeny on Earth: namely mankind. That is, raising his literal children. Why do you think the imagery of "Father-Child" is used? It's the same way that teaching a kid to ride a bike isn't a waste of time. Sure, you could ride the bike yourself, in a fraction of the effort, but the act of teaching is infinitely more meaningful. That God isn't directly visible gives us a hint of the level of growth mortal life represents: mankind is something like a toddler going to preschool for the first time. Sure it seems to us like our Parent has abandoned us, but in reality it's just the first step of growing up and becoming independant.
And who says that Earth is the only planet God is working on? I'm pretty sure I've heard phrases like "worlds without end" at various times in different services. The whole idea of the Judeo-Christian God is that He's quite literally the God of the whole universe. Or at least our observable neck of the woods. Other sentient life is presumably also under God's charge.
Also, its odd that a believer of God would deny that there aren't more dimensions that cannot be percieved with limited 3 dimensional sensors. After all, is that not what religion is abou? Some higher place out of sight, even when using the Hubble Space Sattellite.
I make a careful distinction between belief and science. If you came to me and said that you're religion claims that there are an extra 8 unobservable dimensions, and that all of everything is built from vibrating strings, that's fine, that's what you believe. However, when you claim it's good science, I require supporting evidence before I accept it.
Also, your analogy does not seem to fit. You're comparing some language that cannot be interpreted (but can be percieved) to something which cannot be percieved yet can be interpreted.
Perhaps something such as this (http://xkcd.com/171/) would make more sense?
(BTW, time is the 4th dimension. Can you see time? Einstein's proof is 100% accepted and solid. And many things are beginning to show that this fact is the case).
Time is observable. We can percieve time. Time was understood (in our rather constant inertial frame) long before Einstein. That's what makes general relativity work: it makes predictions about things we know about. Einstein didn't have to invent anything new, he just reformulated what we already understood. When you start talking about compacted dimensions, I must scoff.
Only religon claims to have all the answers and proof in the positive. Ask your religious leader "what experiment could I perform where if the results came out a certain way would falsify your claims?"
Here's what I almost guarentee a Christian priest would answer:
"Let Christ in to your heart and life, allow him to be your personal savior, and I guarentee you that you will receive a testament of the truth of these things".
The problem is that you as a science minded individual want to measure with a ruler and stopwatch, whereas a priest wants to measure in warm fuzzies. They're really orthogonal to each other; you might as well be speaking different languages. Almost everything religion is about (morality, our place in the universe, our relationship with our ancestors, our future destiny, etc.) are things that science has no business even asking. How do you measure morality? How do you develop a theory about the meaning of existence? It just doesn't work.
Really the whole idea that science and religion are in direct competition with each other is extremely stupid. There is a tiny portion of Judeo mythology that modern science conflicts with: namely Genesis and the creation story. And only like the first 10 chapters at that. And even then the only reason it's a big deal is that most Christians don't seem able to read more than the first 40 pages of their Bible. They worked hard on reading that first chapter. It's all they have. I mean, once you get into later Genesis you start having all sorts of boring geneologies, and the Mosaic law, and who in their right mind wants to read that? If the bible started with something like Isaiah, I think people would have a better idea about the whole point of all this.
1st, its a matter of genetics. Every action we make is simply genetic. We can choose, put the choices we make are almost always genetic based. Think about the health choice we make, we choose to live longer even though life brings no extra benefits to the old. We chose to itch because we feel the itch, but even the act of itching has a gene. Science and religion have similair backgrounds and beginnings, but that is not because they are the same. Science is merely observation; we are naturally curious beings, our closets genetic relatives are curious beings (I don't mean monkeys, apes are way closer), almost 50% of all beings on Earth have some amount of curiosity. All behavior is genetic. So logic becomes a new gene; obviously those with stronger abilities in analytical thought would have a different gene from a person very good at creativity (not that they lack either, just different). The problem with creationists is they cannot answer the whole of the question, Where did we come from?
Douglas Adams made a very point about this in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; where a race builds a machine to answer the ultimate question (which they did not know), and all they got was 42. Its like saying a man did it. You're not even sure what the question is but your asking it, it always comes out with God in religion. As Mark Twain pointed out, if God controlled everything we would have to question the need for a God.
God's Major Laws (not the commandments):
1
Every living being is given an inherit trait, all the animals have their own strengths. The lion is loyal, territorial, lazy and self-concious; the cheetah is fast and fierce, while the eagle is majestic, nobel and proud. Humans were so-said to have been created with all of these traits inherited within their conciousness.
2
Every living being (including humans) can do no wrong under the laws of god, as they were inherit within their being and soul and cannot be denied.
So having judgement over humanity, as written many times in the bible, is completely against god's laws. So therefore the idea of God cannot live through such a system.
Yet humans continue again and again to lack in certain logic genes. Walmart, George Bush Sr, George Bush Jr, WW1, WW2, American Exspansionism, White Man's Burden (Manifest Destiny), Slavery, Genocide, Chemicaly infused tobacco products, The Atomic Bomb, The Combustion Engine (crude oil only limitations), AIDS, Money (yes, money is a form of greed which has lead to the knowing deaths of billions of harmless beings), etc... Show me intelligent design, and I will show you a man with a very poor idea of what is logical. The only thing which has seperated humans from the other animals, is our larger brains for more memories (prepairing us once we realize how to live longer) and the weight and degree that we feel the pain of others. It does not take the hand of intelligence to destroy everything regardless of your own survival.
So I assume you would call that freedom of choice, but that is not given to anyone, and cannot be taken away from any being. Therefore God not have given us this quality, we gave it to ourselves. That is how genetic selection works; random things happen to complex organisms running with way more variables than is capable in DB, so a wierd change can create continuous thought, or dilusional thoughts. If God were present in Humanity's life, then there would be more Einsteins, fewere wars and people would be enjoying themselves amongst people from everywhere. The idea of learning is a very primative idea (according to humans), because all animals teach their young, because the young are more receptive to memories, and obtain important behaivors from their first few memories; that is how people like George Bush Jr happen, or Ghandi, or even Buddha (although he drew from more memories). All religion has to offer is hope and love for the weak and hopeless and unloved; which is a very wonderful thing to have in a life filled with many problems and few rewards. It is genetic for humans to believe their will be something better than this moment, because that is how humanity has survived without a massive suicidal end; optimism is a very powerful genetic tendancy which cannot be learned, but is inherited.
So, religion false, bible false, idea of bible wonderful. So by silogism, God is wonderful, and false. Perhpas, in our minds which behave similar to holographic plates, the thought of good creates an illusion of god more powerful than reality, but reality will never go away, and the illusion is inherently a dillusional trait, so its almost a schizofrenic tendancy. That tendancy is very common in humans because we have such powerful thoughts and emotions compared to say a tree; we can see images not in existance, but in our thoughts, which are controlled by hormones and chemicals, which are in turn controlled by genetics.
(reference: Letters to the Universe, Mark Twain)
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This is quite a contentious topic, and there's been some good discussion here... I've enjoyed reading it and I feel like I know some of the DB forum posters a lot better now . To throw in my own two-cents-worth:
I consider myself a scientist, and it seems to me that the scientific method is the most productive and effective paradigm to use in interacting with the universe. I also think that the act of "believing", of maintaining a conviction despite the lack of any observations supporting it and despite the presence of observations that would tend to counter it, is highly dangerous. However, there can be great value in things that are outside of the realm of science, like myths, stories, and symbols. Science has many uses, but when you're trying to figure out what you need in your life to make you happy or what movie to see tonight, science has very little to offer. As such, when the bible has stories about virgin births or resurrections, it doesn't mean you should dismiss them as scientifically innaccurate and therefore false, but instead look at them as symbols that have helped to shape our culture and our identities, and can serve as common reference-points that allow us to relate to one another more effectively. In a way, our lives as we subjectively experience them can be reduced to stories, and so it makes sense that all kinds of stories help to shape our perceptions.
Take, for example EricL's post about the DarwinBots bar (which I love btw). It's difficult to quantify or measure the utility of this piece, and the characters of the bartender, the old sage, and the escaped mental patient are certainly symbolic rather than literal, but reading it has without a doubt enriched my experience here.
If only fewer people would try to take our myths so literally...
And of course, these views would be completely out of place in a scientific discussion .
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Reminds me of Orson Scott Card. He likes to talk about exactly that sort of thing: stories/myths, and how they interact and bind a community of people.
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perhaps it's not so much the god that matters but rather the belief itself....
Which many might do.
If someone acknowledges it is belief itself, in any god, that is important and not the god itself, that any god will do, that while there may be benefits to belief itself, gods don't really exist outsides one's head and don't really perform supernatural acts, then they are no longer religious in my book. I will be the first to admit that there may be benefits to beleiving in a god or gods - physcological, social benefits rooted in evolved brain and social behaviour - but belief in the power of belief is very different than actual belief in the supernatural. The placebo effect is very real. It is actual beleif in the supernatural I have a problem with.
Religions conflict with one another (and with science) because they proport different and conflicting frameworks for how the universe came to be and which god or gods are in charge, which should be worshiped and how, how to kill those who whorship the wrong gods and so on. If a monotheist acknowledges that another god is just as valid as their own, they have taken a huge step torwards secularism IMHO.
Your warm and fuzzy speculation that all religons may somehow be simply mutations of an original truth is interesting and there may be some value in it from a historical perpsective, but it does not add support for the existance of the supernatural. It mearly demonstrates the inventivness and creativity of humans. If you allow the possibility that all of the worlds religons have been modified and changed so dramatically from some root form through human invention, then why not acknowledge that religion itself may also be a product of the same inventivness?
If science is about removing the human component from our understanding of the universe (removing bias, superstition, etc.), religion is about understanding the universe through the human component.
I think that's crap. Religion is mythological hangover from the dark ages rooted in a time before we understood the way the universe actually works. It gets in the way of understanding the universe, it doesn't enhance it. People came up with religion as a way to explain and make sense of the world around them. Before Darwin, there was no competing theory for how life in it's many varied forms came to be. Before cosmology, there was no competing therory for the orgin of the universe or why the stars moved across the heavens. Religion was it. Until recently, religion was science.
Over the centuries, religon's domain has been erroded and largly supplanted from the outside by science. The world does not sit on a giant turtle or on Atlas's shoulders. The earth is 4.55 billiuon years old, not 6000. Humans evolved, they were not created in a garden. The modern interpretation of religion as simply a way to find personal meaning and understanding is a much diminished role, the last vestigages of a dying world framework. There is no need to believe in fairy tales to stand in awe of nature and the universe or to find personal meaning. Really, it's such a poor cousin to the truth.
What if I answer "I like to kill people" on your questionaire? Is that a moral or amoral act? How do you even begin to define "good" and "bad" in a purely scientific manner?
It's really easy actually. Morality is a function of social norms. Humans are social animals and the fact that we all share a set of general principles that one might term "morals" is because it's rooted in our genes. Killing others in your tribe for no reason generally resulted in your genes getting removed from the gene pool. Selection favorred certain behaviours and disfavorred others. You see the same thing in chimps, gorrillas, wolves and so on. There are norms of behaviour, often complex, often with cheaters, often with consequences for being caught cheating, often with a whole economy of behavioural practices. There is always genetic variablity, always the one guy that likes to kill people for no reason, but that person is a rare anomily. So, you use control groups, you use your questionaires to find a baseline across the population and then you test different demographic groups and look for corrolations. It's been done hundreds of times. This isn't hard. I'm surprised you find it so.
but at some point someone is going to have to make a judgement call about what is desirable and what is not. That's the realm of religion, philosophy, etc. Things that are definately not scientific..
I strongly disagree. As above, right and wrong, immoral and moral, these are social norms rooted in our genetics as highly complex social animals and as such as clearly within the domain of science.
Higher dimensions may or may not exist in any real sense, but they do not effect our normal, everyday life.
No argument here. If they did, we would have evolved intuition to better understand them.
Sept. 11 was about as much about religion as the crusades were: meaning only a flimsy pretense.
I did not say that Sept. 11 was about religion. I said that religon and specifically beleif in an afterlife allowed it to happen. Were there no belief in an afterlife, no promise of 70 virgins and so on, I claim it would have been harder to find intelligent, educated people (as the hijackers were) willing to willingly kill themsleves for whatever the cause. It would certainly not have been impossible. There are certainly many causes both religious and non-religious people would willingly die for, but religion tends to produce zelots in quanity like nothing else. Certainly suicide bombers capable of flying 767's might be harder to come by were there no beleif in an afterlife. (And yes I know many suicide bombers are misled and exploited).
People hide their hate behind religion because they're ignorant and stupid. Don't blame religion.
I don't. Religon has no monopoly on hate just as it has no monolpy on love or morality (all a function of brain chemsitry - a science BTW). There have certainly been atrocities perfromed in the name of religon and just as certainly there have been atrocities performed in the name of other agendas such as racism or facsism. The common thread is ignorance.
Islam certainly does not advocate military attacks on civilian targets.
There are those who would disagree with this. I'm no religious scholar, but from what I've read, the position that Islam is really a kind, gentle religion being misinterpreted by extremists may be wishful thinking. It really does say in the Koran that your duty as a muslim is to kill non-muslims.
people will act stupid and hateful regardless of what religion, belief, or philosophy the believe in (or don't).
Unfortuntly, I agree with this.
If anything, religion, belief, and philosophy are what prevents Man from being stupid and hateful all the time.
Surprisingly, I don't necessarily disagree with this. It could be true that belief in a god makes people better members of society on average but this lends no support to the actual existance of gods or the supernatural.
How easy would it be to fall in to a science-only world view, and adopt Social Darwinism as a guiding principle? How would that make you any better from someone who falls in to a religion-only world view and adopts I-don't-understand-that-it-must-be-magic guiding principle? Both views can cause so much harm.
I agree it does not take religion to do harm, but I'd rather live in a world where people use their brains and go through their life with the eyes open, beleiving what there is evidence to beleive and questioning beliefs in contradiction to evidence.
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This is quite a contentious topic, and there's been some good discussion here... I've enjoyed reading it and I feel like I know some of the DB forum posters a lot better now .
Ya think? We're nothing if not opinionated.
However, there can be great value in things that are outside of the realm of science, like myths, stories, and symbols.
I agree there is great value in these things but I disagree they are outside the realm of science. To say something is outside the realm of science is to say it is outside the realm of rational investigation. Why are myths good teaching tools? What makes a story worth retelling? Why do certain symbols have meaning to human brains and how did this evolve? These are scietific questions. I love a good story as much as the next guy, but I don't need mystisism to appreciate it.
Science has many uses, but when you're trying to figure out what you need in your life to make you happy or what movie to see tonight, science has very little to offer.
Perhaps. Why are you not happy in your life? Is it chemical of phsycological or behavioural? What are the biological roots of happieness and why do we seek happieness and why some movies contribute positivly and others negativly to that happieness? I'm being extreme to make a point and I agree with you that some things are perhaps too trivial to be worth scientific investigation but that does not mean their causes are not within the realm of science or incapable of being studied. There are companies that woudl pay big bucks for a better scientific understanding of what makes people happy or why certain movies are appealing at certain times and not others...
As such, when the bible has stories about virgin births or resurrections, it doesn't mean you should dismiss them as scientifically innaccurate and therefore false, but instead look at them as symbols that have helped to shape our culture and our identities, and can serve as common reference-points that allow us to relate to one another more effectively.
I can do both. I can both dismiss them as scientically inaccurate as well as look at them as symbols that have shaped our culture. I'll be the first to admit that stories and myths have value and that religious stories have played a huge role in our history and culture. Not to do so would be naive. The bible for example is a wonderful book, full of elegant liturature of both historical and literary value. I can enjoy the stories and learn from the parables without actually believing them. It's called fiction.
Take, for example EricL's post about the DarwinBots bar (which I love btw). It's difficult to quantify or measure the utility of this piece, and the characters of the bartender, the old sage, and the escaped mental patient are certainly symbolic rather than literal, but reading it has without a doubt enriched my experience here.
Thanks!
If only fewer people would try to take our myths so literally...
If only...
And of course, these views would be completely out of place in a scientific discussion .
Again, I disagree. Perhaps I'm using a broader definition of scientific discussion than others, but really, there is nothing in my opinion that is outside the realm of rational and reasonable discussion.
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This argument has gone long enough and showed enough results to deserve this picture:
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Oh, but we're having so much fun
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Indeed!
I have to catch a plane to Hawaii in a few hours anyway, so I'll see you all in a week plus!
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If someone acknowledges it is belief itself, in any god, that is important and not the god itself, that any god will do, that while there may be benefits to belief itself, gods don't really exist outsides one's head and don't really perform supernatural acts, then they are no longer religious in my book. I will be the first to admit that there may be benefits to beleiving in a god or gods - physcological, social benefits rooted in evolved brain and social behaviour - but belief in the power of belief is very different than actual belief in the supernatural. The placebo effect is very real. It is actual beleif in the supernatural I have a problem with.
Then you have a very narrow view of what is "religious". But I digress. As to wether or not there exists a God: no compelling "scientific" evidence either way. But I'm not arguing for the existence of God. I'm arguing for the belief in a God; that it's a Good Thing. Not to be universally scorned, but exalted as a wonderful, telling example of the human condition. It's like the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (ie: the Bladerunner book) by Philip K Dick. Could matter less if a religion is based on something that actually happened or not. Believing in something is healthy and good.
Religions conflict with one another (and with science) because they proport different and conflicting frameworks for how the universe came to be and which god or gods are in charge, which should be worshiped and how, how to kill those who whorship the wrong gods and so on. If a monotheist acknowledges that another god is just as valid as their own, they have taken a huge step torwards secularism IMHO.
Creation stories are only cursorally related to the religions they're from. If you view the Judeo-Christian belief and Genesis as the same thing, you've really missed the point.
Your warm and fuzzy speculation that all religons may somehow be simply mutations of an original truth is interesting and there may be some value in it from a historical perpsective, but it does not add support for the existance of the supernatural. It mearly demonstrates the inventivness and creativity of humans. If you allow the possibility that all of the worlds religons have been modified and changed so dramatically from some root form through human invention, then why not acknowledge that religion itself may also be a product of the same inventivness?
Religion is universal to all tribes, cultures, and identities. At the very least, that means there's something fundamental that religion fills, the same way that language is something fundamental. Assuming all present religions represent a mutation from an original, if you take the commonalities between all religions, you arrive at what it is about religion that works and makes it valuable. I would claim those qualities are community and spirituality. Maybe a couple others. All the back story you're so concerned with doesn't really matter except as a means of heightening those virtues. Like a laser light show at a rock concert.
I think that's crap. Religion is mythological hangover from the dark ages rooted in a time before we understood the way the universe actually works. It gets in the way of understanding the universe, it doesn't enhance it. People came up with religion as a way to explain and make sense of the world around them. Before Darwin, there was no competing theory for how life in it's many varied forms came to be. Before cosmology, there was no competing therory for the orgin of the universe or why the stars moved across the heavens. Religion was it. Until recently, religion was science.
Say my mother dies. Science can tell me exactly what's happening to my mother's body. How the body fluids will turn septic and my mother's flesh will turn rancid, and how little worms will crawl around in her eye cavities. Does my mother exist still, in some way? Well, there's no compelling evidence for that in science. That makes me upset, and will lengthen my mourning, decreasing my utility to society. If my mother is in heaven, I can get on with my life much sooner. I'll meet her later. Doesn't actually matter which is true, because I won't find out until I'm dead. And then I'll either embrace oblivion (and thus not care), or go to heaven with her (and thus be happy).
Religion is about that sort of thing. It's about finding a mental framework that places us in a universe and makes sense of all of it. Do not confuse early science (Atlas and such) with early religion. The two used to be very close only because specialized labor is a luxury not all societies can afford. If your priest is also your doctor, scientist, and psychologist, you're being conservative with your labor. No doubt in the future further specialization will come. But the core of religion fills a purpose that science can not, and that's been true and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future. Science is concerned with the universe and "truth", religion with people and emotion.
It's really easy actually. Morality is a function of social norms. Humans are social animals and the fact that we all share a set of general principles that one might term "morals" is because it's rooted in our genes. Killing others in your tribe for no reason generally resulted in your genes getting removed from the gene pool. Selection favorred certain behaviours and disfavorred others. You see the same thing in chimps, gorrillas, wolves and so on. There are norms of behaviour, often complex, often with cheaters, often with consequences for being caught cheating, often with a whole economy of behavioural practices. There is always genetic variablity, always the one guy that likes to kill people for no reason, but that person is a rare anomily. So, you use control groups, you use your questionaires to find a baseline across the population and then you test different demographic groups and look for corrolations. It's been done hundreds of times. This isn't hard. I'm surprised you find it so.
That's certainly a method for describing morality, but it fails to capture the idea of difficult to attain morality that many societies are based on. It's like beauty: if you take the average of everyone's features, you'll arrive at an attractive person. But there's still a higher beauty that you haven't captured. I guess you could ask what people consider moral instead of what it is they actually do, but that begs the question of "what is morality".
I strongly disagree. As above, right and wrong, immoral and moral, these are social norms rooted in our genetics as highly complex social animals and as such as clearly within the domain of science.
Have you ever played Star Control 2? Take the Ur-Quan race for an example. Their internal instincts made civilization very difficult for them, because they were deeply territorial. Clearly asocial creatures. Morality for them was defined as fighting their baser instincts in order to achieve civilization. Obviously this is a fictional example, but not all morality necessarily follows from our instincts. If it doesn't come from our instincts, it must come from our thought, from our higher brain functions. A realm that science is decidedly hesitant to scratch (so called black box psychology). Religion fills the gap from the other direction: positing morality based on the human condition, from that black box.
There are those who would disagree with this. I'm no religious scholar, but from what I've read, the position that Islam is really a kind, gentle religion being misinterpreted by extremists may be wishful thinking. It really does say in the Koran that your duty as a muslim is to kill non-muslims.
This is a complex issue, but basically you have to understand that when Islam was founded, it was surrounded by very pagan, very hostile cultures. Baby sacrifice was not uncommon. Slavery was quite common. Islam fought against these cultures for its very survival, and the liberation of enslaved nations. Any militant scriptures are from this conflict. Towards Christians (and Jews) the scriptures are very clear: brotherly love with a hint of condescension for them missing the whole point. Maybe a trace of pity.
Surprisingly, I don't necessarily disagree with this. It could be true that belief in a god makes people better members of society on average but this lends no support to the actual existance of gods or the supernatural.
Well good, I've made you a believer then Remember I did not argue for the existence of God (I argued against the non-existence of God, but that's not the same thing). Just that religion is "Good".
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It really does say in the Koran that your duty as a muslim is to kill non-muslims.
I haven't read the Koran so I don't know if this is what it says, but I know a lot of muslims wouldn't agree with this. If you've seen the movie about Mohammed then you know he too spoke against it. He said that the Christian religion should be respected because it is the same god, and men and women are equal and even animals should be treated with respect. I think that if religion is used right then anybody can follow it nomatter if you're a believer or not, because it just makes sense and would make anyone's life better. If something doesn't make you happy it's wrong. Most religions doesn't make peoples life happier, it mostly causes problems.
The book 'Light From The Spirit World' mension this. It speaks about unholy marriages done in churches, to take an example. Spirits divided are forced together which is against God. It mensions that when spirits have chosen each other and when they live in harmony and treat each other equal they can't be divided by death, but unequal spirits will do anything they can to get away from each other. There will be constant conflicts in the marriage. If they can't even chose their partner right and families will be created without any love in them, how can they possibly do anything else right? It's bound to be a society based on hate and conflicts.
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I haven't read the Koran so I don't know if this is what it says, but I know a lot of muslims wouldn't agree with this.
Muslims can agree with it or not I suppose, but it's what their book says. Like Christians, I suppose most really don't have a clue what their holy books actually say and would be surprised to learn the truth.
From the Koran:
[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
[5.33] The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,
[8.12] When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
There are many other similar passages. Really, this is not new news...
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Religion is universal to all tribes, cultures, and identities. At the very least, that means there's something fundamental that religion fills, the same way that language is something fundamental. Assuming all present religions represent a mutation from an original, if you take the commonalities between all religions, you arrive at what it is about religion that works and makes it valuable. I would claim those qualities are community and spirituality. Maybe a couple others. All the back story you're so concerned with doesn't really matter except as a means of heightening those virtues. Like a laser light show at a rock concert.
I agree with you, yet each culture defined religious figures in a way that was significant to their way of life. Take the Sioux for example, their gods never spoke I, because it was not in their language. Or the Japanese, their power was drawn from myths and channeled into swords for better combat, which was necessary for unifying their lands. Religion is a product of humanity; its the stoned monkey theorie. It doesn't matter what you think about 'getting high' every animal attempts it in some way or another; wether its bathing in the deserts, sex over and over again I.e. mice, or caring for a life, or consuming a mushroom just for the toxins, or injesting a chemical to feel good (more than 50% of Americans above age of 18 are on some anti-depresant). And the idea of better than now is a small form of this want. And many animals want something to happen so bad, they do not react to their instincts to make things better, this is how abusive-dominant relations are formed. Morrality is something humans thought up one day, lack of it would be considered almost inhuman in society, but its mere genetics.Sociopaths cannot understand what others feel in suffering, they lack certain genetic pieces. So morality is the same concept to many humans as is time (not saying time is not real to a scientist). Morality will happen, but no one is sure how or when it ends and begins.
Elaborte:
A poor man has no money, three kids and a wife, and no job. THere's a major depression with no jobs until the next country. Can't afford a visa or passport so he breaks the law to create an income. Is this immoral? Only from the view of the wronged. Therefore morality has to be weighed but cannot be weighed by a human, because we're imperfect in decision making.
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I haven't read the Koran so I don't know if this is what it says, but I know a lot of muslims wouldn't agree with this.
Muslims can agree with it or not I suppose, but it's what their book says. Like Christians, I suppose most really don't have a clue what their holy books actually say and would be surprised to learn the truth.
From the Koran:
[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
[5.33] The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,
[8.12] When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
There are many other similar passages. Really, this is not new news...
Again, those verses aren't directed towards Christians. They're directed against the rather wicked (even by modern standards) pagan cultures that surrounded the early muslims. Remember, Jews, Christians, and Muslims ostensibly believe in the same God, so to an (early) Muslim a Christian would in no way "wage war against Allah", etc. Crusades, etc. may have changed some groups' interpretations of those scriptures, but it's obvious that they are not the intention of the angel Gabriel, and thus represent a perversion.
In the Quran, Christians and Jews are jointly referred to as "those of the scriptures" or something like that.
I would also point out the strong parallels with the Old Testament. For instance, when the Israelites were conquering the land after their wanderings. God tells them to slaughter not only the men, but the women, children, and even livestock. The israelite soldiers end up keeping some of the jewelry and eat some of the meat, if I remember my story right, as their spoils of war, and God gets pissed. God really hates pagans. That should be the lesson to learn here. Anyway, these stories are part of our "peaceful" Christian mythology, and look how we turned out
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But you also have contradictions in the bible I think. For instance the 10 commandments like 'Thy shall not kill', and Jesus who tought new ways, which could mean that the bible writers were a bit confused and missinterpreted the will of God. That's why you have two testaments. The 10 commandments is an example that everyone can follow nomatter if you're a believer or not, because it makes sense and make things better for everybody. That should be the goal for all religions. Truth is very simple and can usually be said in just one sentence, but lies are complicated and confuses people. That's why politicians like to use a lot of fancy words and talk for hours, because they try to manipulate people and hide their real intent. Believe the ones that are easy to understand instead.
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The idea (for Christians) is that God gave the Israelites a simpler law, where everything was explicitly spelled out, after the disaster with the golden calf. Presumably God also realizes that people are stupid and hateful, and he has some "trainer" religions to guide a people's development until they're prepared for a harder, higher law.
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Wow, I 'accidently' stumble back upon this site and the first thread I stumble upon is this one...
I believe in science (it's different from believing in God) Religion has never had the upper hand over science in any path apart from that involving faith. May the great god Eric temper my posit's; I will make the time to fully consider the arguments posted in this thread (not having, in a sort of religous way, taken time to consider them yet).
I appologise, without even looking at the first post, I have assessed this argument as comparable to the 'Snopes trial' without proper research but I expect to return with time to challenge.
My regards to you all;
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I agree that this has been the case, that religion has lost it's influence over people because it's been based on hearsay and fairy tales in books, not to mension all the suffering and problems it has caused people, while science has given more thorough and believable explanations. But it seems the scientists have reached a dead end here, where it's starting to be more theories and beliefs than proven facts, like the 4th dimension is time, travelling faster than light makes you travel back in time, string theory, multiple universes, membranes clashing into each other created the universe. Now... How is this a better explanation than saying there is a creator that started it all?
I saw someone posted somewhere that if he could travel around the planet faster than light he would go back and see the earth from the past. I am sure that the only thing that would happen is that everything would get blurry because images are stretched out, or maybe he wouldn't see anything at all because the light would miss his retina. But when he stops he would still be here in the present.
As I've mensioned before I'm sure time is a human made up concept, because we have memory and the ability to think ahead.
The solar system just happens to have a regular movement pattern which is just cause and effect, which gives the illusion of time.
I'm not SAYING that there is a god that created the universe. I just say that it's a possibility. You have this problem with the comological constant for instance, which says the probability for the universe to function as it does is too astronomical small to be by pure chance. If there had just been a tiny error the universe would have colapsed or never begun. And the fact is that the scientists claims that the law of physics break down when trying to find out what made it all and where it began.
Here's a video that mensions that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfngxVQiiTI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfngxVQiiTI)
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I agree that this has been the case, that religion has lost it's influence over people because it's been based on hearsay and fairy tales in books, not to mension all the suffering and problems it has caused people, while science has given more thorough and believable explanations. But it seems the scientists have reached a dead end here, where it's starting to be more theories and beliefs than proven facts, like the 4th dimension is time, travelling faster than light makes you travel back in time, string theory, multiple universes, membranes clashing into each other created the universe. Now... How is this a better explanation than saying there is a creator that started it all?
I saw someone posted somewhere that if he could travel around the planet faster than light he would go back and see the earth from the past. I am sure that the only thing that would happen is that everything would get blurry because images are stretched out, or maybe he wouldn't see anything at all because the light would miss his retina. But when he stops he would still be here in the present.
As I've mensioned before I'm sure time is a human made up concept, because we have memory and the ability to think ahead.
The solar system just happens to have a regular movement pattern which is just cause and effect, which gives the illusion of time.
I'm not SAYING that there is a god that created the universe. I just say that it's a possibility. You have this problem with the comological constant for instance, which says the probability for the universe to function as it does is too astronomical small to be by pure chance. If there had just been a tiny error the universe would have colapsed or never begun. And the fact is that the scientists claims that the law of physics break down when trying to find out what made it all and where it began.
Here's a video that mensions that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfngxVQiiTI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfngxVQiiTI)
People seem to get confused with Einstein and light and the 4th dimension. It's quite simple, as the source of the light exists in time, it grows outward into infinity. As time changes, the distance seems to grow but they are exactly the same, only after time. He was playing on the idea that light had an ether, that is how he came up with his theory of relativity. The 4th dimension was proposed as the ether for time. To say one can travel back in time is both true and false. We can never travel back to a time on the earth, but the light from the past can be percieved in the present. So every star we see is most likely dead. Given the average life span of a star, the speed of light and the massive distance, we experience the night sky on an average time-lag of at least 1 billion years. The information shows it at that position as it was then, but now it has already changed. So to say that staring at an object far away and having a lapse between what happened on point a and when it was seen at point b ten million light-years away, and something just created it is the same; is like saying that a miracle and god are the same thing. A miracle is just the coincidence of very improbable events happening in an improbable time; its not to say they dont happen, but no simple explination or current scientific explination stands to understand how or why these thigns happen. But to understand the universe requires more thought than any person on this Forum.
So simply explaining the 4th dimension:
It is a dependent axis which colapses around every object, but ot only one object is it dependant. So we have a Star-A, and a Star-B. Star-A is brand new, the nebula formation light hasn't even reached Star-B. Star-B is particulairly small in mass and is beeining pushed away from Star-A by Dark-Matter (scientifically proven using gravitational imaging, still controverseal, yet Einstein's greatest blunder was predicting its exsistance). Star-A travels at one Light-year away from Star-B; because this happens Star-B is never seen by Star-A, but Star-B sees all of Star-A's forming, then nothing the colors shifted due to the dopler effect. Let's say the opposite were the case, and Star A and Star-B are moving towards eachother. Not only will both their birth's be witnessed by any viewer on any star, but their deaths will happen at the same time, and be whitnessed by any survivors x-years later, unless they colide, at which point their time references are close enough. So the 4th dimension is an expading dimension into infinity. Alternate Universes is just the belief that really far away, so far we haven't even seen its explosion, another Universe was created from nothing to; its not so far-fetched. But saying some being created it is hard to believe.
He illustrated this very same principle on a train with a clock. A man positioned 60 meteres from a clock on a train wants to know what time it is. Light travels extremely fast, so he sees the time on the clock with relative ease; the difference int he trains speed is insigificant, since time's vector is not velocity/force dependant, and seems to carry no true weight. But say we speed the train up to 1/2 the speed of light, now the clokc is 1/2 as accurate, about 1/2 second off by his standards. Still to small to notice. So we accelerate the train to the speed of light, the light from the clock would never reach the man until he slowed down, at which point all the light would catch up and the clock would seem to fast-forward. But because time and space are related in a very parciluar way, it is not possible for most living organisms to accelerate to such a speed in less than the average African lifespan. The fact of physics failing to explain it has to do with theories that had nothing disproving it. THe mroe advanced we become, the more advanced the scientific answer becomes. A static universe was thought to exist, but EInstein calculated that the Universe would have to colapse or expand, but could not be stationary.
Anti-Matter was thought to not exist, and now its more and mroe common knowledge as how things work. Dark Matter is now being used to explain the structure of space. But the one theory of Chaos and Disorder is constant and true throughout the Universe, the only reason their is life on Earth is because their is constant change; change is a frequency and an energy. These two must be present for life to exist, without it there is only a energy depleted universe. Which in a few billion years the Universe will so outspread that everything in it will be near absolute zero. Secondly, everything has to be pure chance because Ape=Descendants of a highly evolved brain with almost no real defenses against the outside world or themselves has inherited the Earth; all studies are by some chance a part of the Human Genome. Our intuitive desire to explore and learn is what makes us ponder. The chance of anything in the Universe happening is in constant change, as it changes constantly, since everything has an effect: chaos theory; Fractals.
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1. Something can't appear out of nothing.
then where do they think god came from?
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Well, there we have a dead end at the moment. God might have started out as something very simple. Like some instability of the endless void. Maybe God is dark matter, or maybe God is all the photons in the universe. I think the way to approach the problem is to try to define what God could be. What would be the most logical, and then trying to see how such a being could have formed. To just believe in the bible or saying there can't be a God is blocking ones mind from learning the truth. I haven't done much research on the cosmological constant (I'm afraid it's too much math for me) but if the creationists haven't missunderstood it completely, then they have the upper hand on that argument at least, that universe as we know it isn't possible without a creator because of the tiny chance for anything to exist and for physical laws to work.
So if God is outside of matter then he doesn't require a cosmological constant to exist, and might be something much simpler, with a mind. The mind and spirit may not be of matter either but an eternal force outside of it. Actually brain scientists haven't managed to find where the mind and awareness is located in the brain. It's just a bunch of cells sending electrical impulses. Maybe there's a soul in there holding it all together. :-)
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Testlund, your committing the classic error of assuming your conclusion. Your bascially saying "There is a god and I will grasp at straws and enguage in wild speculation no matter how non-senscial in order to weave a tortured path to justify it" instead of looking at the evidence and drawing your conclusions based on that.
So much of what you say above is not only inaccurate and flawed logically, but does not even make sense. What does it mean for something to be "outside of matter" or "all photons"? Your basically spouting psuedo-science techno babble that pretends to say something but in reality is content free.
If you can't dazzle them with brillance, baffle them with bullshit.
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Then give me a better explanation! We're at the limit of our understanding about the universe here. I base my ideas on both theories and facts. Where the facts ends I try to find theories that makes most sense, and then I'm hoping those theories will either be proven wrong or right in the future. I'm open for both! It's just that right now I think that the existence of some kind of god is plausible.
You're welcome to bring some brilliance about how everything came to be which scientists agrees defies the laws of physics, because there are no physical laws before the big bang. Something must have existed outside of physical laws and matter that triggered all this.
To say it's impossible for a god to cause the existence of universe is equal bullshit to me. There's nothing wrong with theories as long as you don't force people to believe in them. I'm just giving you my point of view because I find this interesting to discuss.
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Then give me a better explanation! We're at the limit of our understanding about the universe here. I base my ideas on both theories and facts. Where the facts ends I try to find theories that makes most sense, and then I'm hoping those theories will either be proven wrong or right in the future. I'm open for both!
I'm with you, but an explanation for what exactly? As I point out in the other thread, figuring out what questions to ask is much of the battle. Even determining whether a question is well formed can be really hard. A thousand years ago, asking what made the sun come up in the morning and go down every night was thought to be a well-formed question. Everyone assumed the sun went around the earth. Today that question (taken literally) does not make sense. It is not well formed. The sun does not come up and go down. The earth rotates. But people 1000 years ago did not know enough to ask the right question or to realize that the question they were asking was not well formed.
We are likely in a similar situation today with respect to the kinds of questions you seek answers to. Questions such as "what caused the Big Bang" or "why is PI 3.14159...?" may not be well formed questions.
It's just that right now I think that the existence of some kind of god is plausible.
Plausable? I'll conceed that. Probable? No. Supportted by evidence? No. Necessary to postulate in order to understand the universe? IMHO, No.
You're welcome to bring some brilliance about how everything came to be which scientists agrees defies the laws of physics, because there are no physical laws before the big bang. Something must have existed outside of physical laws and matter that triggered all this.
As above, asking "what happened before the big bang" is not a well formed question. Time itself appears to have began with the Big Bang. There was no before. To refer to a before is as incorrect as to say the sun goes around the earth. Like quantum mechanics, this is really hard for humans to grasp because we did not evolve in an environment where such understanding had any bearing on reproductive success. We have no intuition to deal with quantum mechanics or the beginning of time or to grasp that time could have had a beginning. The good news is that humans can learn, can shift their perspectives and learn to deal with the non-intuitive. It is still non-intuitive that the earth rotates, but only the uneducated or deluded would hold to the position that the sun goes aroudn the earth today. It is possible for us to overcome our intuitions through intellect and education.
To say it's impossible for a god to cause the existence of universe is equal bullshit to me.
Note that I have not said it is impossible. It is possible. It is also possible that Peter Pan really exists and you really can get to Neverland by sprinkling yourself with pixy dust and heading towards the second star to the right until morning. An infinity of incredibly unlikly things are possible, but they are so highly unlikly and so very unsuportted by evidence as to not be worthy of discussion. The only reason that people give a supernatural being more credability that Peter Pan is historical (and perhaps a function of evolved benifit to doing so). People they trusted likely told them there was a god when they were little and forming those core neural formations. In many cases society rewards and reinforces this belief and punishes those who work against it, reinfocing the meme. Most people are plugged into the Matrix and they don't want to be unplugged and would prefer not even knowing they could be.
There's nothing wrong with theories as long as you don't force people to believe in them.
I force no one to beleive in anything. But I do argue reasonably and with evidence for my position. If someone holds a position different from mine, I would expect no less from them. If their evidence and reasoning is superior, I will willing change my position. Holding a position isn't free. If your going to claim knowledge, then you must either defend it in the face of contradictory evidence or change your position. To not do so is irrational.
I'm just giving you my point of view because I find this interesting to discuss.
As am I. As do I.
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I think the best creationism theory is the Simulation Theory, that we're just a very complex Life game... DB3K
The rest that I know of are just too far out for me