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God's Debris
I like reading books that make me think, but not in the same way that I think when I'm at work or doing homework. When reading for pleasure, I want something that at first glance is so strange it's absurd, but at closer examination makes a tremendous amount of sense. That depth is the essence of Scott Adams' God's Debris, A Thought Experiment.
Adams is not known for writing super-intelligent commentaries on life, at least ones without a punchline or visual gag. Creator of Dilbert, his writing to this point has focused upon the world of cubicles and shifting organizational charts where engineers and management ('induhviduals' as he often calls them) square off in battles where the engineers are right and management is wrong. Very straightforward, enjoyable reading, but nothing compared to his latest work.
God's Debris was first published in May of 1999 as an e-book. It is sold by Digital Owl and can be purchased as bits for $4.95 or in hardcover wherever books are sold. The story focuses on both the physical laws of nature (relativity, gravity, the origin of the universe) and the psychology behind religion. The story is told by a fairly educated narrator talking to an unseen second character who seems to hold a deep understanding of the universe. As I read more, I found my own questions being raised by the narrator, and addressed by the other character. This arrangement makes for a very strange read, but the unusual format enhances the overall reading experience.
This book second guesses everything one learns in school, and comes close to succeeding. I cannot think of a single statement in the book that can be proven incorrect. To a college-educated reader like me, some of the assertions may seem totally ridiculous -- the problem is that they make just as much sense as Einstein's relativistic physics. In the introduction to the book, Adams observes the fact that ' ... the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be.'
The protagonist makes some very peculiar assertions throughout; My favorite is a statement he makes about the true nature of gravity, specifically that it is fueled by probability. The idea his advances is that all matter is constantly switching in and out of existence, and that is how objects move. The reason that matter appears to be attracted to other matter is that, according to the rules of probability, each piece of matter will inherently appear closer to massive objects the next time it comes back into existence. If you didn't understand that, and you'd like to, then you should read the book.
If you are a religious person, I can assure that this book will be disturbing. Although not told from an atheist point of view, the protagonist rejects the traditional view of religion. There are references to religious beliefs as 'delusions' only intended to allow the less-enlightened to live in relative peace in a world which has little. Taken as a whole, the views expressed can best be summarized ala Jesse Ventura, that 'organized religion is a crutch for the weak-minded.'
I'm purposely avoiding going into detail about the contents of the book. This is not only because a small piece doesn't make sense by itself, but also because most of the fun is in the discovery. Reading this book, you feel as if you are the first and only person to truly understand the world. I wouldn't want to spoil that for you. It's only 132 pages, broken up into very short chapters, and it can be read on your lunch break. I highly recommend it.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. Do you want to see your book review on Slashdot? Please take a look at the book review guidelines first.
Jesse Ventura rephrased that from Karl Marx, who said that "religion is the opiate of the people".
Grab.
It would be hard to take any book by him that does not contain comic strips, seriously. I would also find it hard to take seriously a book on philosophy by Charles Schultz, Stan Lee, O.J. Simpson, or Tonya Harding. There's just too much extra baggage tied up with what I think I know of the author. Plus I still haven't forgiven him for that damn Dilbert T.V. show.
And loved it. There's something in every chapter to make you think, and the source of the title, "God's Debris", left me stunned. I highly recommend this book if you're looking for a complete "mind-job", and it contains a lot of new ways of looking at just about every aspect of life - from religious to physical to social.
READ IT.
That is all.
Last post!
I haven't read this book. However, Adams exposed his "serious writer" persona in the last section of "Dilbert Future", in which he talked about his personal observations on science and humanity. I found this section the weakest of the book -- it was poorly thought out and scarcely researched. Furthermore, Adams' smug writing style needs to be offset by humor in order to avoid seeming arrogant. Many of his claims about physics in "Dilbert Future" are easily disproven by anyone who can think critically. I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy this one.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
It's hard to make any sort of statements on a book I haven't read... But that Gravity quote seemed sort of silly. It doesn't actually explain why matter inherently comes back into existence closer to large objects. Of course, there might be a lot more to the argument-- I wish more of it had been posted.
One might as well say that at an extraordinarily small scale, matter and energy actually consist of swarms of tiny carrier pigeons whose mating instincts are responsible for what we see as the peculiar behavior of the universe. Since nobody can really determine whether this is true or not, and the net result is that the explanation is as good as any other... Well, we should keep it in mind, I suppose, in case we ever find some way to prove or disprove it. But isn't there some old quote about a stampede of Zebras?
You are correct -- most people get it wrong, including you. For a proper name, you add "'s" as in "Scott Adams's God's Debris".
I'm too lazy to find a link to prove it to you.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
If you honestly consider Scott Adams a geek icon, you have some serious problems.
(now if you're talking about the Scott Adams that helped define the interactive fiction genre, that's something different, but scratching out badly drawn cartoons for 10 years until they're about as funny as Garfield doesn't qualify one for cultural icon status).
Does this still have the insanely weird "gravity is just everything expanding" model? He advocated this in a previous book, and refuses to budge, even though it's easy to show it's wrong. (Hint: Three objects of different masses not in a straight line.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
To form the possessive of a noun that ends in "s," add "apostrophe s" like this:
Scott Adams's God's Debris
See here for a quick reference.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
As for the science vs. religion, I never understood the hypocricy of people who get angry about the past of religion's stupidity towards scientific discovery and the scientific method, yet then turn around and pull the same crap. It is true that many use religion, philosphy, money, relationships, sex, and other 'things' (including drugs, porn, video games, food, excercise, etc) in order to not have to deal and cope with life, but that no more makes them automatically 'wrong' than justification make it right.
I get rather frustrated at people who while claim to be faithful Christians, they get very angry if you question them. (note that here I mean question, as in seeking to learn and analyze... NOT when you are obviously picking a fight (e.g. "How does this work?" as opposed to "Why would anyone use that?!")) The bible teaches us to question our own reality and our beliefs, otherwise we will never really have faith. a sword is tempered and folded under intense heat and pressure, over time and with blood, sweat and tears... if you just poured in the alloy in a mold you would merely have a very heavy and fragile (relatively) stick.
I personally have never seen any dichotomy between science and religion... any religion that I am familiar with. However it is hypocritical zealots (Sept 11, anyone?) that are the problem. Ghandi once said that the Christian Bible was the best manual for how to live. While he personally did not accept Jesus, he understood the logic of what the Bible taught (thats the theology part).
oops, this is way too long. Whether it is religion, politics, or your choice of shoes... always try to take a logical and rational outlook instead of an emotionally reaction.
This is my opinion, and it can be taken for thought, or discared... but it is still my opinion. I at least still have that right.
Several months ago I paid for and downloaded the DigitalOwl TitleVision ebook version of "God's Debris". I paid $5 for it.
I also downloaded the reader, installed it, and read the book, which was good. However, I didn't like the reader at all. So, using a screen capture utility, I took screen shots of all 90 pages of the book, saving them as .PGMs. Then I booted into Linux (I'd had to be in Windows to run the reader) and used gOCR and a shell script to do initial OCR conversion of all the images. Finally I spent a while with grep and a spell checker cleaning everything up. Overall, this took me about five hours.
Now I've got a 143KB ASCII text file with the same content as my 195KB encrypted .OWL file. I don't ever plan to give anyone a copy of my plain text version; I like Scott Adams and want him to get paid for his work.
If I assume that a professional "image -> OCR text -> corrected text" conversion specialist gets paid $10/hour, then the five hours it took me incurred about $50 in labor cost, bringing the total price to around $55. Not as cheap as the dead-tree version (<$15), but easier to grab quotes from. And of course I now have some valuable skills which I could use to help out Project Gutenberg.
I'm sure what I did would be considered illegal by Digital Owl (though probably not by Scott Adams). I'm just glad I won't have to try to hunt down a copy of the TitleVision viewer fifteen years from now just to read the book again.
And I'm glad that there's now a paper version so that most other people can obtain a less legally-encumbered version without having to do the grunt work I did.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
Without having read the book, it sounds like the whole point is that these wacko theories, while strange, are just as good as any other theory to explain phenomena we don't understand.
I suppose you could say that God reaches out and pushes massive bodies together. Or that invisible chewing gum binds things together. It may well be that the "truth" (if we ever discover it) will be just as strange. Certainly quantum theory is bizarre and, if people I respect didn't keep telling me it was true, I wouldn't beleive it.
It doesn't sound like Adams is a an anti-religious zealot at all, but rather somebody who's very aware of the limits of scientific knowledge.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
It's easy to make up 'theories' to explain phenomena... before Descartes and the Scientific Method theories were accepted based upon how good a story they were and how they appealed to various people -- reinforce existing beliefs and your theory is accepted. Descarte realized that hypotheses must be testable in order to decide if they're true or false.
...hmm and this idea has an implied conception of time that must be defined as well.
There are lots of neat ideas out there to explain various physical phenomena, but its hard to come up for tests for many of these... How would you test to see if matter is popping in and out of existence? What do you mean by existence anyway? What exactly does the word matter mean?
My point is, scientific facts must be tested and verified by experiment. Sure there are lots of other ideas that can't be tested.... but these fall in the same realm as religion and require faith. The so called Copenhagen interpretation is a prime example of this.
The Copenhagen interpretation claims that wave functions in Quantum mechanics collapse because they are effected by being observed by an intelligent observer. Supposedly you can see this by taking a large number of observations of photons or electrons or whatever and seeing the 'spike' from the wave function collapse. But wait, statistic's Law of Large Numbers says that if you take a large number of observations with random error you'll get this spike no matter what just because of the math - not because of some interaction between the particle and the observer.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I'm not too lazy. In fact I'm redundent. So sue me.
h tm l
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.
ule 4. To show singular possession with proper nouns ending in s or an s sound, you have the option of dropping the s that would normally follow the apostrophe.
Example of singular possession Ms. Jones' office OR Ms. Jones's office
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
He should stick to cartoons about management, he's certainly good at that.
That same problem applies to all of our physical theories about the universe, at some level. Newton's theory of gravity did not explain why massive objects attract each other - they just do. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity does not explain why spacetime warps in the presence of mass - it just does.
All we can really do with our theories is describe what we observe, and develop predictive models. Physics doesn't provide an ultimate answer to the question of "why" - it only ever provides local answers, pushing back the "why" to a different level.
Scott Adams' theory of gravity does this too, and is actually quite comparable to Newton's theory. In fact, I'm sure it would be possible to develop an Adamsian theory that's the equal of Newton's theory in all predictive respects - but you would ultimately find that you could dispense with the winking in and out of existence stuff, just as Einstein was able to dispense with the ether as a medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves. As you pointed out with the carrier pigeon example, if something can't be detected, and doesn't add predictive value to a theory, to all intents and purposes it doesn't exist.
One thing Adams seems to be unable to realize is that any explanation of gravity must account for all effects of it. This includes the orbits of planets. His theory in Dilbert future claimed that gravity is just the effect of everything growing in size. While that _may_ explain why things fall straight to the ground, it does not explain why the Earth orbits the sun in circular motion or why light bends around massive objects.
Although I haven't read God's Debris, claiming it all to be a matter of probability is less founded than the previous theory... as it doesn't even explain simple attraction well. "It happens just because... IT HAPPENS!" Then he goes off to claim religion is off base? At least religion has the benefit of involving non-testable topics. His pseudoscience has no such excuse.
This book looks to be particularly dreadful, as it ignores the relative functional form of science. For instance, the review states that Adams believes that gravity is fueled by probability. It really doesn't matter whether he just made that up or it is the result of methodical analysis. Until Adams shows us how this 'new physics' can better send a rocket to Mars it is largely useless. Take a look at it this way. We have all sorts of alternative theories of gravity, most in an effort to reach a theory of Quantum Gravity. It each case, the authors try to find something that can be tested in a lab. For instance, we may generate black holes in the next generation of accelerators, and that will be interesting.
Some may invoke Thomas Kuhn and say I am being obstructionist. This is not the case. I am merely saying that it not so hard to write 128 of compelling fiction, and the fact that it is anti-establishment does not say anything about ir's correctness. It is true that many great discoveries were hard to believe. It is also true that most of these corrected severe defects in contemporary theory. We could not begin to simply explain the planets without Galileo. We could not explain black box radiation with Planck. We could not fully explain the planets without Einstein. Again, I want to see Adams tell us how to get to Mars faster.
I do have great respect for Adams. He is honest and straightforward about what he does and why he does it, much like Heinlein. He also has an ego bigger than Shatners, and it may be getting the best of him.
True, there is no "pronunciation impediment", but using "Adam's" as the possissive form of "Adams" is as incorrect as using "James's" as the possissive form of "Mary".
The name is "Adams" and not "Adam". One must start from the correct "root" to get a correct possessive.
now this may not be a sophisticated as a physicist, or your college certified philosopher, but it can be useful. Not everything will be spot on, that depending entirely on the insights of the author.
I for one, do not know what he would make of the guy who has offered a million dollar reward for evidence conclusively proving there is no afterlife.
But that is part of the fun of talking about things like this.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The former is a system of beliefs which one comes to based on one's own experiences and understanding.
The latter is an external system, often forced on individuals, without any thought on their own part.
I happen to be a very "religious" person myself, but I'll be the first to admit that a huge percentage of people filling our churches, synagogues, mosques or whatever are there simply to be led around by the nose without having to really wrestle with the deeper questions of life and their existence.
In that sense, yes - "Organized Religion" is certainly an Opiate.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
When Scott Adams first published God's Debris as an e-book, I refused to buy it because of the platform-biased and fair use-restricted nature of his chosen distribution technology. And I told him so. The conversation turned into a fairly in-depth conversation on the nature of e-publishing and software piracy. The results are on my web site as an e-mail exchange between us that he gave permission for me to post.
At least one person who has written me about the exchange felt that I gave up. I didn't really give up-- in fact I hadn't intended it to become a drawn out argument in the first place. But by the end I felt I had reached the point of diminishing returns-- it was clear that Scott didn't want to be convinced. I decided that the real argument would be won in the court of public opinion-- which was why I felt it important to end on a (superficially) conciliatory note and get him to give me permission to publish the discussion. If I had taken the last word, I think it unlikely he would have let me post our exchange.
To be fair, Scott made two points that bear further consideration:
1) E-books are not identical to executable software.
2) If free file sharing is ubiquitous, people will steal when it's easier than buying.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but briefly I would respond to both points by saying that non-executable media such as books, movies, photographs, and music need to have a new distribution infrastructure put in place where buying is actually easier than stealing, and quite cheap for the end user. I believe the future of electronic distribution will lie not in increasingly Draconian legal and technical barriers that fight against the paying customer, but in the ubiquitous availability of micropayments that make enjoying creative content painless and subject to the Free Market. I believe Scott would point out that that system isn't here yet.
In another unpublished conversation, Scott credits e-publishing in this matter with enabling him to land his print-based book deal. He's happy with the outcome.
And Thomas Jefferson didn't by any means "believe in God" in the conventional sense. He was a Deist, a believer in the idea that some god created the universe in toto, then abandoned it, and has no influence, no power, and no care for its affairs. It's a feeling more closely related to Aristotle's philosophy of the unmoved mover than anything from the Bible.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
You're splitting angel hairs here. Marx was an athiest. But we can still have a little fun:
Karl Marx dies and shows up at the gates of heaven to be met by Saint Peter.
"Name?" asks Peter.
"Marx, Karl Marx." replies the famous author.
"Hmm," says Peter to himself, "why do I know that name?"
"I am Marx," Marx said, beaming with pride, "founder of socialism and the driving force behind the communist ideal called Marxism."
"I see," Peter said. "I'll have to check with God."
So Peter rushes off to confer with God. God hears the name Marx and immediately a look of disgust infects His face. "Marx?" God says, "He's nothing but a trouble maker. Send him down to hell."
So Peter happily signs the appropriate forms and deports Karl Marx to Satan's fiery hell.
Some time later, a free trade agreement is forged between Heaven and Hell. The deal is hailed by all to be a great economic leap forward that would revitalize both struggling economies. But soon after the treaty, God realizes that Heaven is no longer receiving any products
from Hell. So he sends Saint Peter down to investigate.
"Well?" asks Peter of Satan, "What's the hold up? We have an agreement!"
Satan shrugs his shoulders, exasperated. "It's that Marx fellow," Satan
replied. "Ever since he got down here, all we've had are strikes and labour demands. Productivity has dropped to zero!"
"So?" Peter asks, "What would you have us do?"
"Take him back. Take Marx back to Heaven, and I guarantee productivity will sky rocket!"
So Peter agreed, on God's behalf, to accept Karl Marx back to Heaven.
Some time later Satan realizes that Hell has not received any orders for product from Heaven. In fact, very little communication at all has leaked from Up Above. So, concerned for the economic welfare of Hell, he makes a trip to Heaven.
"Peter! Peter, are you there?" Satan demands.
"Yes, what is it?" Peter answers.
"What's the hold up? What about the flow of trade?"
"Oh I'm sorry," Peter said, "We have decided to adopt a Marxist isolationist stance. We are an intrinsic self-governed body that is now based on the needs of the prolitariate. It is our opinion that this free trade agreement only benefits the bourgeois."
"What?!" Satan was furious. "I demand to speak to God!"
Peter's eyebrow is raised in confusion. "Who?"
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
What if science were a crutch for the weak-minded?
And what if the world sat spinning on a stack of turtles? It's a cute theory, but you'd have to prove it. And there's the difference between faith and science. There's a large amount of evidence supporting quantum mechanics and little supporting the existence of God. Science isn't a crutch for anything. It's just a formal method for finding out how the world works. You hold yourself to strict rules of evidence, and bit by bit, fact by fact, crawl toward a greater understanding of physical phenomena. You make alot of mistakes along the way. You interpret things incorrectly, make false assumptions, etc. But by jerks & starts you make progress and we learn more.
To paraphrase from Richard Feynman re: quantum electrodynamics: "It probably doesn't make sense to you, but that's not important. It doesn't have to make sense, because regardless of our reason and logic that is how it is."
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
It's bad, but bad enough to be funny, I guess. Or maybe not.
Many more quotes on Einstein's religious views are available here, with many citations.
The various scientific theories/models currently being used for gravity, chemistry, nuclear theory, etc. have been created and continue to be used because they are usefull - they allow people to make accurate predictions about system's behaviours and design and build useful devices.
Our understanding of gravity via the general theory of relativity allow our GPS systems and satellites to have the high level of accuracy that they currently have. If Adams' gravity theory doesn't allow such system designs, it is less useful. If his model has different results than what we measure in reality, then either the measurements are wrong, or the model's value is much less than a model that does agree with measurements.
There is much value in thinking about things in new and interesting ways, but it is important to realize that just because there are neat ways to think about things does not mean that such manners of thinking have as much utility as more well established models.
Er... Pascal was a Jansenist (Counter-reformation extremist movement that considered science sinful). The majority of his scientific work came in his youth before he threw himself into religion. Read Zero by Charles Seife -- it tells the story.
/Brian
Gandhi never said the Christian bible was any sort of manual for how to live. He did, however, esteem Jesus over any other historical/mythical/whatever person. I quote:
A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
He saw the passion of Jesus as the ultimate act, and considered it the moment at which Jesus truly became human in sacrifice to God.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Richard Feynman was a physicist that had some interesting ideas on life.
Albert Einstein was a physicist that had some interesting ideas on life.
Douglas Adams had some interesting ideas on life, the universe, and everything.
Scott Adams is a cartoonist, with some really depressing and unfounded ideas about life.
Nuff said.
science freely admits that it doesn't know what caused the big bang explosion and probably never will.
Not knowing is no reason to pick up the closest fairy tale at hand and go parading it around. If the choice is between the confortable security of myth or an uneasy yet honest lack of knowledge give me that latter.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
No discussion about apostrophes is complete without this.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
The other thing is that several of the individuals you listed are either deists (essentially agnostics; believing in a deity, but not necessarily the christian one), or atheists. Here's a few quotes for you:
Thomas Jefferson:
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
You don't even need ghostscript for windows. I just installed that so I could view what I printed (to make sure it turned out ok). I just installed the HP PaintJet XL300 drivers that come with windows, and had it print to file. My output is 1.83 megs (bigger than the original), but its a perfect copy.
I know this is off topic and I will lose karma, etc.. but I need to get this off my chest.
Just because I need and use a crutch does not mean the crutch doesn't exist.
If I had a son that was totally dependent on me and "needed" me as a "crutch", does that prove that I do not exist?
Why couldn't a God create beings that need him?
I think Scott Adams and others will find that no matter how "strong" minded someone becomes, the intelligence does not eliminate the need for religion. There are blue collar who do not believe in God, and there are scientists who do not believe in God, just as there are blue collar who do believe in God and scientists who do believe in God. Strong or weak mindedness has nothing to do with it.
From http://www.celebatheists.com/
This is totally pointless of course...
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. - ast
a wonderful book by Alan Lightman. Strongly recommended for those interested in physics, space-time, and the like. I don't think there is a slashdot book review - maybe I'll write one.
sulli
RTFJ.
I think Scott actually ended up making a good argument against his first point - he said he didn't want to release a non-encrypted version because he "didn't want to compete against a free copy of his own book".
Then in two seperate instances, he went on to note that a chapter of his own book had been OCR'ed and mailed to him and another author had a whole book OCR'ed and distributed online. So, in all probability he's competing against a free copy of his own book anyway, only it's a version probably not giving proper credit to the author!! At least with a PDF or text file released, he could make sure his name was plastered all over.
On top of that, as you said he credits ePublishing with helping him get a book deal. So couldn't you say that even if you didn't end up making any money on ePublishing it could stil be valuable to you from after-effects like landing book deals. Sometimes people are too focused on direct costs and don't think about long-term benefits.
The sad part is, I would have bought an open eBook too but now I'll have neither.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Plato used the format of a somewhat-enlightened person vs. very enlightened person conversation in The Republic, which formed at least part of the basis of the Heglian dialect (thesis-antithesis-synthesis).
Scott's doing nothing new format-wise, but I'd be interested in what he has to say. Much of it sounds like the stuff he wrote towards the end of The Dilbert Principle
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
Excuse me, but Marx said that television is the opiate of the people. Yes, he was ahead of his time.
And John Lennon said that lsd should be the religion of the people.
Then Postman said television is the religion of the people.
Then Burroughs said lsd is better than television
Ventura just was trying to start a new thread.
Actually I prefer "consumerism is the religion of the people" .
Working to buy a bigger car than your neighbor sure makes life meaningful.
Sarcastic? Who, me?
"The Elements of Style" is a good book, no doubt; but it lacks the panache of Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrope, You Idiots
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
And there's the difference between faith and science. There's a large amount of evidence supporting quantum mechanics and little supporting the existence of God. Science isn't a crutch for anything.
There is a great deal of faith that goes into Science. Faith in Parsimony. Faith in the workings of others. Faith that there isn't a great big cosmic being trying to hide things from you.
There is a big "if" in front of this statement, as the scientific method is logically sound. But we have as much evidence that God was made up as that he exists and is just hiding. What an athiest might see as an exchange of myths, a religous person sees as different views of the same Truth.
You hold yourself to strict rules of evidence, and bit by bit, fact by fact, crawl toward a greater understanding of physical phenomena.
The problem with science is that the bit-by-bit part takes so long, that you have to have faith in what has come before. Plus, it's applied too liberally, and all too often illogical conclusions are reached.
For example, take evolution. It's a scientific fact that life evolves from its present state into a state most ideal for its environment. No one can dispute this; just look at Dog breeding.
Now, it's popular in the "scientific" community to equate evolution with the backwards extension of evolution. This is what modern day creationists have a problem with--the intelligent ones, anyway.
The simple fact is that science has no sound evidence that the world was not created two hundred years ago and we're all just believing what we were told. It probably wasn't, and there's no real idea that it was created two hundred years ago--but it's a very common religious idea that the world _was_ created, by a great and powerful being in prehistoric times.
Evolution as breeding = irrefutable science.
Evoltuion as history = a misapplication of the above science.
Anyway... "Science" is a crutch for the weak mind.
So is religion. But they're also both very powerful tools towards finding Truth. ANyone who tells you otherwise is a bigot. (Even to an atheist, religion is an embodiment of man's moral code, and thus the Truth about man.)
As others have already pointed out, Einstein most certainly did not believe in God (particularly, not in a personal god that concerns itself with the day-to-day operation of the universe and the inhabitants thereof.) I wonder .. decades after you die, would it please you to know that people were going around intentionally spreading lies about you? If not, how do you justify doing this to Mr. Einstein? Einstein's refutation of these statements about his religious views is well known; one can only assume that those who continue to spread these falsehoods are doing so purposefully and with malicious intent.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
After the 3rd or 4th book his style became like "Family Circus" and "Peanuts" to me. Predictible and common. I don't think I'll invest in his book (even though the government has asked us to keep the economy going). I think I'll buy a multi-pack of snickers instead....
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Well, do you mean you applied tests to the statements and they were not disproved? Or do you mean there would be no possible way to disprove them? The latter case is called "nondisprovable" or "untestable". A theory that can't be tested is useless.
While this particular point may be in contention, I would side with such works as The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and others would seem to agree with me.
If I had to choose between a web site grammar reference and one of the seminal works on the topic for over forty years (and longer for students of William Strunk Jr. back to the beginning of the 20th century), I'll choose the little book.
Just in case anyone is wondering, the notes on apostrophes appear on page one.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Einstein's famous rejection of the entire concept of quantum mechanics was simply stated as "God does not play dice." And he was proven wrong. It's very revealing that he found it necessary to invoke God in order to attack a theory which he found asthetically displeasing.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
By your logic then, anthropology, cosmology, paleontology - heck, even astronomy - are a total waste of time, since "It might not be what it looks like." In fact, for that matter, the whole world might've been invented two minutes ago with all our memories intact - why bother with science at all? I'd rather just go fishing.
The reason science is not "a crutch for the weak mind" is because a fundamental question of good science is "what is the least amount of explaining I have to do to explain this phenomenon?" There are an infinite number of nondisprovable, evidenceless theories to explain any phenomenon - the creation of the world; the creation of species; even who makes the coffee in the office coffeepot.
All other, non-scientific belief systems are based upon some premise ("God created the heavens and the earth 6,000 years ago") and any evidence to the contrary is discarded, or the theory is made more ornamental to explain them ("Well, maybe God created the heavens and the earth 6,000 years ago and then made it look like it was 14 billion just to test our faith!")
Evolution as history is not a misapplication of science. As I've said, you can come up with an infinite number of nondisprovable theories about the creation of species, none of which have a whit of evidence. As a scientist, until I see some evidence for one of these theories, the only logical thing to do is assume things are as they appear: Life evolved slowly over billions of years.
To do otherwise would be weak-minded.
It always comes down to the same handful of logical fallacies.
"There exists some true theories that are hard to believe" -/-> "All theories that are hard to believe are true."
"To a college educated reader like myself"
I guess proof reading isn't one of the skills taught in college.
As you can no doubt imagine, I meant "possessive" rather than possissive".
In science, all the premises are supposed to be of the form "Someone I trust went out and looked. Here's what they say they saw, and you can go out yourself and look if you don't believe me."
In religion, the premises seem to be of the form "Someone I trust talked to a Supreme Being, and they say this is what they were told." Some religions extend this with "And you can talk to the Supreme Being yourself if you don't believe me."
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
And fuck the mod that just did that.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Yup. I tested gravity in school. Used a paper tape and a clapper. Every time I ran the experiment it produced the same result. Everyone else in the class had the same results.
And you concluded by this that gravity never changes? Because that's not what the experiment tells you. Your experiment tells you "gravity does not change in one afternooon in a classoom within the range of human perception."
That fact is a good precdent to lend to the hypothesis "gravity just doesn't change", but that's all it is.
Science can be tested and verified. Religion cannot. In Religion, you must take everything on faith.
If you cannot see the difference, then your are deluding yourself.
Harsh words, and bad grammar, too. (It's "you're deluding yourself," btw)
The whole point that was made by the parent was "what if..." I agreed with it--every scientst and person seeking Truth, religious or otherwise, should consider the "what if" question. This is the proper mindset for the seeking of truth, be it spiritual (religion) or physical (science.)
Spirituality refuses to be reproduceable, because of the inevitable memory of the previous event which clouds any and all attempts to reproduce it.
I never said that there was no difference between science and religion. Science is definite, but simplistic and often wrong (due to parimony). Religion gives answers that cannot be independantly verified.
Both of these disciplines need to be able to ask "what if this is all wrong?" The answer should be "so what? It doesn't matter" or you've got something wrong with the discipline.
Science is a study of A causes B. Religion attempts to answer why A.
Besides, haven't we learned by incompleteness and chaitin's randomness that there are enough random things that science or math can't explain? (I.e. they are Just "A", they can't be reduced any further.
So religion can still explain "A"
Science is NOT philosophy. And Darwin mixed Science and Philosophy, cause he attempted (or people have interpreted) to say how "A" happened from observing other A->B. But in some respect, that isn't science, its a belief.
No true scientist would say he has a theorem (A->B) that is absolutely true. He can say its true based on the observance of the 5 senses and is currently repeatable.
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
Whereas in religion, you can't test anything, and, in Christianity at least, are told not to test God.
Where? The same place you're told to drink the blood of the dead?
God said "I give you doubt to test your faith." There are easy ways to test this, and the answers are there for the finding if one cares to look.
Of course, there are ways to test the faith, and ways not to. Just like there are ways to test the lethallity of a bullet aside from pointing it at someone and firing.
Just don't forget that God wants to hide proof of his existance; if you go looking for aboslute scientific proof of His existance, you'll come up blank.
Christian theologians talk about the wine and the wineskins. The wine is the good message that Christians have to share with others. The wine is vitally important - it is what has real value. The wineskins are the structures that facilitate the growth of the message. The value of the winkeskins is directly related to their effectiveness in delivering the wine to the people. They have no value apart from the wine.
The problem of most Christian organizations is that they have forgotten the importance of the wine. They have allowed the wineskins to be seen as valuable in and of themselves. The structures of the church - the buildings, the meeting formats, the hymns (Oh the hymns!!), even the chairs - have remained the same for hundreds of years because they have been valued for their tradition. But they should not be valued if they do not effectively communicate the wine, and judging by the number of people bored out of their minds on Sundays, they are definitely not serving this purpose. They were once effective, but they are not any longer.
Organized religion is good when it provides an effective means of distributing special revelation to the populace. Every part of a Christian organization should be geared towards distributing the wine. Organized religion is bad when it is not willing to prune away the dead branches. If members are not willing to do so, if they value any part of the structure more than the wine, their organization is destined for trouble.
I have bought and read each of Adams' books as they have come out, starting with The Dilbert Principle. I enjoyed TDP immensely, but have grown more and more disillusioned with each book.
Whilst his jokes about "padding his material" were funny in the first book, the humor has faded as the joke is repeated in later books. Possibly because I've also had the realization that this joke is not the only thing being repeated. To be honest, the whole "philosophy" is simply repeated.
After thinking about this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that Scott Adams is simply a lucky guy who stumbled upon the idea that depicting the inanities everpresent in Corporate America in a comic strip would touch a certain angst-ridden nerve in a fair amount of the population and be fairly popular.
And it was. And so he set about exploiting it to make more money.
All of which is well and good. But it doesn't make him an intelligent person or some whose theories should be given extra credence because of who he is. He's just a guy with the right idea at the right time.
Let's not turn him into Feynman or Socrates, OK?
If everyone were to say this, we would never have had Nazis
I'm sorry, this debate is over. You lose.
I read the internet for the articles.
And there's the difference between faith and science. There's a large amount of evidence supporting quantum mechanics and little supporting the existence of God. Science isn't a crutch for anything. It's just a formal method for finding out how the world works. You hold yourself to strict rules of evidence, and bit by bit, fact by fact, crawl toward a greater understanding of physical phenomena.
It's nowhere near that simple. Scientific observation is inherently flawed because we're viewing the system from within and the mere act of viewing not only limits our view, but instantaneously changes the system. Sure, science can build better and better models, but it will never explain the true nature of the universe or the meaning of our existance. And yet people try to make science do that everyday with unprovable theories of how the universe/life was formed or how free will and consciousness could be described through the collapse of quantum states in superposition. This sort of theorizing is in fact using science as a crutch--a crutch for trying to fulfill the need for certainty and meaning in life. When you really get down to it, science requires just as much 'faith' as faith in the belief in God. There is just as much evidence for the existance of God, both philosophically and through human experience. As for scientific evidence, you cannot prove a theory simply by giving examples of it working. You would either have to test every possible condition--which being infinite is impossible--or prove that the contrapositive is always false--equally impossible. One counterexample and you're back to the drawing board, thus limiting science to building crude models that work most of the time, not perfectly, but good enough to have practical application.
"Science is not powerful because it is true; it is true because it is powerful."
Read Candide by Voltaire if you want to see what true satire is. Try to find a version with a foreword to explain the time it was written in and what Voltaire was mocking. Adams is just a very funny humorist, though the "very funny" is IMHO only.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Many readers of God's Debris apparently seem to think that Scott Adams actually believes all the stuff he put in the book. Ok, so maybe he has a big ego, but even he is not that uneducated.
He did ask people not to blame him for the words that a fictional character said in his prologue, but some readers chose not to take that bit seriously, even though they then proceeded to take the rest of the book seriously, and find holes in it.
Of course there are holes in, but that wasn't the point. The point was to make you think. And in that the book certainly succeeds. In parts he does sound like he is lecturing like a professor, but most of the book is just a ploy to get the grey matter going.
So take it all with a grain of salt, pick out the bits you think are good, and don't let the other bits upset you.
Check out Theseus and the Minotaur
This book sounds to me like a whole bunch of amusing psedoscience. Sure, perhaps it's meant to be taken seriously, or to make you question science, or something like that, and if that's true, well, then, to hell with it (I'm a proud scientist, thank you very much!). But it looks amusing. I'm interested. It sounds funny.
And to all the people lamenting Scott Adams' apparent lack of originality or creativity, this is sure gosh-darned creative.
I plan to give it a read, just because it sounds like a nice distraction.
Peace.
I looked at the web page for the book, and while it says text is not selectable, it says it IS PRINTABLE. So, why not just print to the "FILE:" port with some postscript driver? You could then convert it to text or PDF with almost no effort. IS there something that prevents you from doing this? Anyone care to provied a copy to prove it ;-) ?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Assume h is units of happiness. Would it be OK to take 100h from person A if it would give person B 101h? How about if you took 50h each from 2 people to give a third 101h? I don't think it's that easy, even conceptually.
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?