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What Do You Believe Even If You Can't Prove It?
An anonymous reader writes "That's what online magazine The Edge - the World Question Center asked over 120 scientists, futurists, and other interesting minds. Their answers are sometimes short and to the point (Bruce Sterling: 'We're in for climatic mayhem'), often long and involved; they cover everything from the existence of God to the nature of black holes. What do you believe, even though you can't prove it?"
That some day, somehow, I will get the elusive First Post.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The female orgasm.
G.W. Bush
The question should be simply "What do you believe?" Because if something can be proven, the issue of belief does not arise. And only idiots believe what what is proven as false.
I believe that if you are nice to others, even in small ways, that the world gets better.
I believe that if you are mean to others, even in small ways, that the world gets worse.
I believe that I want the world to be a better place, and I live each day according to that.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
So do I, but there seems to be darned little of it in the software that I see.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Simply put. As children, we grow up with "all knowing parental figures." With that as precident, when we grow up, we look for that figure. Therefore it is understandable and expected that humanity seek some type of all knowing figure to explain all they don not know and give them comfort when they are grown.
We as humans look for a god, even though based upon complex systems and greater scarcity of complex working systems as the systems become more complex, it is unlikely that one exists.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I believe in Christ Jesus and the "End of this Earth" as we know it today. I also believe that many of us will go to hell (the lake of fire) believe it or not.
Please note: I.D. is billed as an "alternative" to evolution in which god exists.
The solidified and well-accepted portions of evolutionary models make no requirement, however, that you cease to believe in any gods.
Intelligent Design, therefore, while perhaps a good example of things to believe in without proof, has nothing to do with science and god. It has much more, however, to do with politically empowered people who don't understand science, and the people they seem to think are somehow disproving god.
Your ending statment, therefore, appears to have little to do with the rest of your post when it is put into the context of the post you replied to.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
You bet! Someday people will realize that the Bible is a book of THEOLOGY and not a book of SCIENCE.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Of course, if it were genetics, according to Darwin, it would be a trait that should have been wiped out long ago since homosexuals cant reproduce.
Nonsense. Homosexuals, physically, are fully capable of reproducing - it's just that the sexual acts which are appealing to them don't result in reproduction. Regardless, I know no lack of people with gay biological parents who reproduced because they felt social pressure to enter into heterosexual relationships.
Additionally, recessive genes can carry for many generations, and if homosexuality is genetic, it's obviously controlled by a sequence of genes that are recessive.
Personally, I'm gay and I don't think homosexuality is genetic. I suspect that there are biological causes (e.g. hormone levels in the mother, etc.), but I'm capable of admitting that we don't know at this stage and it is possible that homosexuality is a choice. This is irrelevant to me, though, because even if it *is* a choice, it's my choice to make, and it's no one's business what the outcome of that decision is.
No offense, but I feel sorry for any woman you date.
Hmm...very hard to observe signs such as these with the lights down low, and your behind her doggy style her head is either buried in the pillow, or bouncing off the headboard.
At that point in time....I'm probably NOT going to roll her over and shine a flashlight in her face to check out her flush or pupils...
Besides...she might start talking, and I'd miss something on tv...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
>The vaginal contractions at 0.8s intervals would be very difficult to fake also.
Spoken like a true nerd.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
"Just because science CAN explain something doesn't mean that it WASN'T God".
That's what Occam's Razor is for. As in the simplest explanation that fits the evidence is usually best (paraphrase). God, being unprovable, will rarely (if ever) fit these criteria.
Sure, God wanted us to be intelligent, but took 3 billion years of fucking around to get to it.
....
Right
ID is an escape hatch for those who cannot deny the obviousness of evolution but don't want to give up their need to belief in God and, ergo, an afterlife.
What has striken me most the last few years, is the arrogance ... that Science will Have All The Answers. Eventually we will comprehend everything
... have faith that there is a God (paraphrase).
Here's the thing: no other method comes anywhere close to the scientific one for generating real knowledge about the observable universe. Science keeps on generating better understanding, so either the universe is infinitely complex, in which case we'll never stop generting better science; or we'll eventually run out of steam due to our admittedly tiny minds - I doubt this one since we already so most of our science using mind-tools like oh, books, computers, etc to help us understand it; or we will eventually know it all. In a loose sense of "know". Much of the world doesn't know the venerable physics of Einstein and Heisenberg very well; and even more sadly, many deny the even more venerable biology of Darwin.
You often hear people come with arguments like 'but God can't exist' or 'we don't need God to explain the universe'. Sure, if you think that man can eventually comprehend everything there is to know about the universe, then you can make those claims.
So either we can know all, or we need God to explain it? false dichotomy.
Religion/faith is all about the step after that.
A totally meaningless sentence.
I personally do
What testable predictions about the observable universe result from this assumption? If there are none, you must entertain the posiblity that your statement has no meaning.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
QUOTE
The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is an approach to quantum mechanics according to which, in addition to the world we are aware of directly, there are many other similar worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics.
UNQUOTE
This gives new meaning to the concept of re-incarnation.
You're citing Michael Crichton for your evidence against global warming? That's like citing Pauly Shore as an authority on Non-Euclidean Geometry. Newsflash: Crichton is not a scientist. He makes up the science to suit the story. He writes some good books, but he's hardly someone to be taken seriously on something outside his area of expertise (which is telling a good story).
Note that a vast majority of *real* scientists concur that global warming is happening, though there are myriad theories of WHY it is happening.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
You are reaching with that conclusion. *No* physical evidence. How about the Big Bang?
How about it? Is this just another appeal for "God in the Gaps"?
Bias is on both sides.
How so? You have irrefutable evidence of god's existence? Something testable and falsifiable?
I have an open mind. Fill it with something other than speculation and you will be able to convince me.
"Atheists want nothing more than to live their lives without God so they can live a life without any ultimate consequences."
Atheists (and I can only speak for the ones I know) want nothing more than to be left alone by religious people. They don't belive in god, so the threat of any "ultimate consequences" is moot.
We chose to be moral and good because it suits us, not because we fear for our fate after we die.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"