Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Generates a 'Mini-Big Bang'

buildslave writes "The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a 'mini-Big Bang' by smashing together lead ions instead of protons. The scientists working at the enormous machine on the Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November. The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the center of the Sun."

Comments

Science Journalism

[Sonny Yatsen]

So, is a mini-big bang just a bang, then?

I hate this constant need for science journalists to oversell and over-hype an outstanding achievement with misleading hyperbole. They didn't create mini big bangs. They smashed lead ions to try to recreate the conditions that existed shortly after the big bang. It's already an impressive enough achievement without cheapening it with sensationalist BS.

Re:Science Journalism

[Senior Frac]

I'm not so sure the scientists intended that, but the reporters felt a need to glam the article up to sell copy.

The issue here is that now we are going to have trouble with a union of the set of anti-science loons and the set of religious fundamentalists. Let us not be satisfied with unnecessarily pissing off just one group, when we can do two!

Re:Science Journalism

[Sonny Yatsen]

I thought religious fundamentalists are merely a subset of anti-science loons.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I only usually read the articles, but after I saw your comment, I just said, "YES!" Very good... And a mini-big bang? is that like Jumbo Shrimp?

Re:Science Journalism

[groslyunderpaid]

Not necessarily. I am a religious fundamentalist, and science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".
 
Really though, not trying to troll. Just saying those two groups are not necessarily mutually inclusive, though sometimes that is the case.

Re:Science Journalism

[Senior Frac]

I'm sure it's true the two sets are not mutually exclusive. It would be amazing if it were.

Re:Science Journalism

[X0563511]

Frankly I don't give a shit who gets pissed off. The objective is scientific understanding, not pissing people off or not.

Re:Science Journalism

[Kjella]

Your mission, if you choose to accept it. You are dealing with people that mostly wouldn't remember what an "ion" is. When you say "smashing iron", they think of banging two iron bars together. And how exactly is iron atoms related to the creation of the universe, really? Answer: It isn't, but they will have skipped to some other headline long before you got to explain it to them.

Do you think think this is related to science journalism in particular? There's so many wildly misleading titles all over the places. Like right now in the sports section is one "The coach didn't like their celebration" as if there was a conflict between the coach and the team. If you read the article he just think there's too many flashy gimmicks, spraying of champagne etc. and it's just not his style. Everything is fluff like that there days.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. I am a religious fundamentalist, and science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

Whereas the former seeks the better philosophy of "we've been unable to prove anything so far, but here's a story pulled out of the collective asses of village elders 3000 years ago; let's go on and pretend it's true, and let's ignore all of the horrible acts that have resulted from pretending that fiction is fact."

Oy.

Re:Science Journalism

[Dr.Boje]

You are dealing with people that mostly wouldn't remember what an "ion" is. When you say "smashing iron", they think of banging two iron bars together.

Those are the kind of people we don't want coming to Slashdot anymore.

Re:Science Journalism

[spidercoz]

word.

Re:Science Journalism

[BubbaDave]

Someone once used a car to kill someone.

I'm sure because of that you do not drive or ride in a car.

Dave

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

They never like my story; only those "old guys". Mine is like this: In the beginning there was God. He created a big firecracker for fun. Unfortunately his big bang killed him and he got a Darwin award. Fortunately for us, his big bang created the universe.

Re:Science Journalism

[querist]

But it wasn't that great, apparently. Eccentrica Gallumbits said that Zaphod Beeblebrox was "the best bang since the big one."

Re:Science Journalism

[ArmchairGeneral]

But many people might not understand and/or be interested in the headline of 'scientists smash lead ions together'. I don't think it's anyone's fault really, just our society of people who are understanding of science and those who just don't care.

Re:Science Journalism

[Kjella]

Those are the kind of people we don't want coming to Slashdot anymore

Do you think BBC News target the slashdot demographic? If so, you may leave your card at the door...

Re:Science Journalism

[Zeek40]

Just out of curiosity, at what point do you draw the line? Because I only know one person who describes herself as a 'christian fundamentalist' and she refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old. When I explained to her that simply refusing that fact throws out almost our entire understanding of the universe around us, from the distance of the stars to why the atom's we're composed of don't just fall apart, her response was akin to sticking one's fingers in their ears and screaming "i can't hear you" over and over again.

She didn't think that she was anti-science, she just thought that she could cherry pick facts from the bible and set up special cases in which the physical laws of nature no longer apply.

Re:Science Journalism

[blair1q]

They created a small version of the conditions that obtained in the event known to nearly everyone as "The Big Bang".

It's not merely a bang. It's a set of physical phenomena that heretofore have not been seen except at the inception of this universe.

The headline is just about as accurate as it can be, and isn't hyperbolic in the slightest.

Re:Science Journalism

[wastedlife]

Being a religious fundamentalism means that you strictly adhere to the words of your religious doctrines. Many discoveries and accepted theories in science clash with the text as it is written. Sure, lots of religious people feel that it does not affect the spirit of their religion, just the exact phrasing, and accept both science and their own religion. However, a fundamentalist would not, and would assume that science is incorrect in any clashing areas and may harbor ill feelings against science in general. I would argue that you are not a fundamentalist, or at least not using the commonly accepted definition. Either that, or you are implying that you harbor no hatred toward science, but assume it is wrong in areas where things clash with your doctrines.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you have that reversed. I've met plenty of religious fundamentalists who weren't anti-science loons... Can't say I've met / heard of any anti-science loons who are not religious fundamentalists.

Re:Science Journalism

[MysteriousPreacher]

The majority of fundamentalists are accepting of science until they feel it contradicts their scripture and/or beliefs. Religious fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with science in the same sense that one could not simultaneously be a both a humanist and a racist. There's no reason though why a racist couldn't be an absolute angel to white people, or why someone with fervent religious beliefs can't excel in a field of science that can be reconciled with their beliefs. Depends on the amount of proof required. Creationists are well known for demanding unrealistic levels of proof for evolution or big bang cosmology. In their case it's comparable to finding a corpse with a back full of bullets and refusing to accept that it's likely a case of murder - since no-one was there to witness it.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

the car, or manufacturer for that matter, doesn't proclaim itself the savior for all mankind either.

Re:Science Journalism

[Dcnjoe60]

So, is a mini-big bang just a bang, then?

I hate this constant need for science journalists to oversell and over-hype an outstanding achievement with misleading hyperbole. They didn't create mini big bangs. They smashed lead ions to try to recreate the conditions that existed shortly after the big bang. It's already an impressive enough achievement without cheapening it with sensationalist BS.

I agree 100%. Now, if their efforts caused a new ever expanding universe to come into existence, then the title would be correct. But since it didn't, they they didn't create a mini-big bang, unless they are trying to say that the big bang didn't create the universe. Even if they succeeded to create a mini-universe that collapsed in on itself, they still wouldn't have created a mini-big bang, because The universe (with a capital T) created by the big bang didn't collapse in on itself.

Either you recreated the big bang or you didn't. There is no such thing as a mini big bang. It's like asking what is 1/2 of infinity? That's not to say they didn't do something pretty darn impressive. But if they truly did create the equivalent of the big bang, then we wouldn't be here reading about it since it would have already expanded well beyond our region of space.

Re:Science Journalism

[TheCycoONE]

As far as the age of the universe, that's an easy one. God made the universe 6000 years ago as if it were made much longer ago. You really have no way of proving the universe wasn't made yesterday and you were created with the memory of having existed before then.

Occam's razor suggests that we're best off sticking to the idea that the universe was actually created a lot longer ago than to postulate both that it wasn't but instead created by a deity much more recently, and come up with some reason for the deity to want us to believe the universe is older than it is. If you have a belief system that causes the former to be unacceptable then I guess it's reasonable to pursue the latter.

Re:Science Journalism

[daid303]

Frankly I don't give a shit who gets pissed off. The objective is scientific understanding, not pissing people off or not.

It's just a very nice side-effect.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could assume that science is partially done, and while it may be accurate for our purposes and our understanding doesn't mean it is complete or true. As it may not be complete or true, its fine to accept the science of the day and use it, but still believe that in the end we will reach an understanding that resolves the conflict. Duh.

Re:Science Journalism

[drcheap]

a mini-big bang? is that like Jumbo Shrimp?

If the jumbo shrimp are microscopic and served super-hot, yes. But if you eat them, you simultaneously get lead poisoning and vaporize.

Re:Science Journalism

[nedlohs]

From the point of view of science those two options are identical.

If the 6000 years ago bit is true, we can just continue working on the old universe idea and since God made it look like it old experiment will keep matching theory. God can just giggle at us as his brilliantly faked universe tricks us into eternal damnation as we follow the evidence. We on the other hand keep doing good science - it's what the universe looks like, so the results and discoveries and technological innovations will all end up the same anyway.

Re:Science Journalism

[Skadet]

In their case it's comparable to finding a corpse with a back full of bullets and refusing to accept that it's likely a case of murder - since no-one was there to witness it.

What's "likely" isn't really important, and is what leads to confirmation bias on both sides. Perhaps your fictitious corpse was a politician in the middle of a scandal who committed suicide, but their party thought a murder would be more sympathetic.

The anti-religious have an uncanny ability to accept things on faith when they agree with their worldview.

Re:Science Journalism

[Tranzistors]

Religious fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with science in the same sense that one could not simultaneously be a both a humanist and a racist. There's no reason though why a racist couldn't be an absolute angel to white people, or why someone with fervent religious beliefs can't excel in a field of science that can be reconciled with their beliefs.

Then what does "incompatible" practically mean? Should these scientists be banned form research? If scientists can do their job well and be religious, they can be "incompatible" to the bone for all I care. Or are you just throwing fancy words?

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

One thumbs up.

Re:Science Journalism

[Muros]

I agree, but the article is from the BBC, which isn't intended for scientists or nerds.

On that note, does anyone know of a good news site that covers stuff like this in an informed and reasonably detailed and lengthy way but for people who aren't theoretical physicists? You know, something more than the BBC's usual "Scientists did something cool I don't understand! YAY!"

Re:Science Journalism

[Logic and Reason]

God made the universe 6000 years ago as if it were made much longer ago.

That contradicts the idea that God does not deceive, which most Christians believe.

Re:Science Journalism

[shoehornjob]

Frankly I don't give a shit who gets pissed off. The objective is scientific understanding, not pissing people off or not.

If god created the universe then why can't people of all faiths see science as a way to get closer to god by unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Buncha fundamentalist kooks.

Re:Science Journalism

[jgagnon]

You've never heard of a Prius? :p

Re:Science Journalism

[hazah]

Curious to know, at what point someone like you would say we have a "complete" understanding? In a way you're implying that what can be discovered is finite, though there is no real evidence that that is the case.

Re:Science Journalism

[GameboyRMH]

Exactly. Pissing people off is just a bonus.

Re:Science Journalism

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Deception or just *great* sense of humor. You decide!

Re:Science Journalism

[SETIGuy]

It's not merely a bang. It's a set of physical phenomena that heretofore have not been seen except at the inception of this universe.

Except, of course, that your statement is not true. Collisions of similar or much higher magnitude happen quite frequently, even here on earth (or at least in the atmosphere). This would be better described as a recreation of a high energy cosmic ray collision rather than as a mini big bang.

The headline is just about as accurate as it can be, and isn't hyperbolic in the slightest.

Except that it's total hyperbole.

Re:Science Journalism

[joeyblades]

So your premise is that religion causes people to commit horrible acts? Is it not just possible that humans commit horrible acts all on their own and some merely use religion to justify their actions?

Most religious people have never commited a horrible act... I think this alone refutes your premise.

However, as further contra-evidence, I can think of many seriously horrible acts that were not done in the name of religion... the Holocaust, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Rwanda, 9/11/2001, (in)human medical experimentation through the ages... the list goes on.

Let's face it. Humans have always and will continue to commit horrible acts and they will try to rationalize some justification for it, be it religion, or politics, or scientific advancement... If you believe that religion causes people to do bad things, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

Re:Science Journalism

[DukeLinux]

There is no conflict between true finished science and religion. Zealots on both sides are too narrow minded to see truth when it smacks them in the face anyway. I am a fundamentalist and to date I have never seen "finished" science conflict with the Bible. Go to the bottom of the Red Sea and look at the line of Egyptian fragments of chariots and armor. Just what were they doing marching across the bottom of the Red Sea, anyway? And what caused them to fall in their path suddenly? The tumbling of the walls of Jericho; simple harmonics and resonance. The European Renaissance is a good example of science, religion and art working together.....to bring them out of the dark ages. The conflict lies on both sides...and is man-made.

Re:Science Journalism

[JustABlitheringIdiot]

So, is a mini-big bang just a bang, then?

I hate this constant need for science journalists to oversell and over-hype an outstanding achievement with misleading hyperbole. They didn't create mini big bangs. They smashed lead ions to try to recreate the conditions that existed shortly after the big bang. It's already an impressive enough achievement without cheapening it with sensationalist BS.

Absolutely right no need to over hype it and create big headlines. Just give them credit for the bang-up job.

Re:Science Journalism

[tom17]

Well the big bang is one thing, but do you know... do you know how the Universe actually began for a kick off?
Imagine this. Right.
You get this bath. Right. A large round bath. And it's made of ebony.
You get this bath, see? Imagine you've got this bath. And it's ebony. And it's conical.
It's conical. So what you do is, you see, you fill it with fine white sand, alright? Or sugar. Fine white sand, and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn't matter. Sugar's fine. And when it's full, you pull the plug out...
You pull the plug out, and it all just twirls away, twirls away you see, out of the plughole.
I haven't got to the clever bit yet. You want to hear the clever bit?
I'll tell you the clever bit.
The clever bit, is this. You film it happening.
That's not the clever bit. This is the clever bit, I remember now that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then thread the film in the projector... backwards!
Yes. Threading it backwards is definitely the clever bit. So then, you just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to spiral upwards out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?

Re:Science Journalism

[MBC1977]

While I see your point of view, one has to consider which would sell more articles: "The LHC produced its first bang." or "The LHC produced a "Mini Big-Bang".

Sensible reasoning aside the latter is not directed at you (per se), but to those who do look for articles with "cool" headlines.

Re:Science Journalism

[blair1q]

Wait. Collisions of lead ions moving at nearly the speed of light (relative to each other) happen "quite frequently" here on Earth?

Or in this solar system?

No.

Not even close. Not likely even in the center of the sun. Maybe in the interface between two exploded supernovae, but there aren't many of those around.

Try again.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Religious fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with science in the same sense that one could not simultaneously be a both a humanist and a racist

To love cats, does one have to believe they are as intelligent as a human?

Re:Science Journalism

[Bob-taro]

Not necessarily. I am a religious fundamentalist, and science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

Whereas the former seeks the better philosophy of "we've been unable to prove anything so far, but here's a story pulled out of the collective asses of village elders 3000 years ago; let's go on and pretend it's true, and let's ignore all of the horrible acts that have resulted from pretending that fiction is fact."

Oy.

Science is amoral. Science doesn't tell us not to kill people to harvest organs, not to experiment on prisoners of war, not to kill off the unproductive members of society or undesirable societies. On the contrary, science could arguably supply logical reasons to do all those things. It's people's morals - often based on or at least supported by what you blithely dismiss as "fiction" - that stop us from doing those sorts of things.

Re:Science Journalism

[ThatsNotPudding]

When you say "smashing iron", they think of banging two iron bars together

Well, how else can I get out all my shirt wrinkles, you insensitive clod?

Re:Science Journalism

[Alyred]

So according to the fundamentalists, when we observe something that doesn't conform to what we expected to see, or we have to rewrite a substantial section of our understanding of physics, that's just God, retconning his pre-observed backhistory!

We need a better red-shirt guy at Astrophysicscon.

Re:Science Journalism

[Bigjeff5]

In their case it's comparable to finding a corpse with a back full of bullets and refusing to accept that it's likely a case of murder - since no-one was there to witness it.

From Mystery Men:

The police said he fell down an elevator shaft. Onto some bullets.

Clearly it was an accident!

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority of fundamentalists are accepting of science until they feel it contradicts their scripture and/or beliefs

This also applies to political fundamentalism e.g. communism (psychology, biology), libertarianism (ecology, atmospheric science), etc.

Re:Science Journalism

[mangu]

Is it not just possible that humans commit horrible acts all on their own and some merely use religion to justify their actions?

Let's see how that works:

-"Hey, I have a great idea, let's hijack a couple of jet planes with 200 passengers each and crash them into a skyscraper!"
-"Great idea! But, wait, what excuse shall we use for it?"
-"Hmmm, I'm not quite sure... How about religion?"
-"Well, maybe. OK, unless someone gets a better idea, we will justify it through religion"

No, I think religion is the *prime* motive for a lot of shit people does, not a "mere justification".

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

Re:Science Journalism

[ArcherB]

I thought religious fundamentalists are merely a subset of anti-science loons.

You do realize that the one who originally theorized the Big Bang was a Catholic Priest, right?

You could even call him the "Father" of the Big Bang.

Re:Science Journalism

[rwa2]

Hmm, actually, anyone in the know care to enlighten us with some explanation of how the LHC decided to jump straight from protons (atomic #1) to Iron (atomic #26, atomic weight 55) ? And will Lead or Uranium be forthcoming? ^_^

Re:Science Journalism

[ultranova]

They didn't create mini big bangs. They smashed lead ions to try to recreate the conditions that existed shortly after the big bang.

I'm not so sure that there is a difference. From what I've understood, the "Big Bang" really refers to the period of inflation due to Higgs field being stuck on a supercooled state, and these conditions could potentially be re-created by rising energy density high enough to re-create the correct symmetries and then letting it fall very fast again.

Dunno what the word "mini" is doing there, though; any Big Bang will either fizzle out or become the full-sized version.

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

No, I think religion is the *prime* motive for a lot of shit people does, not a "mere justification".

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

It wouldn't follow, though, to attack the Twin Towers. What sort of religious icon were they? To say that 9/11 was a religious attack, rather than a political one, you'd need to demonstrate how that religion sought to further it's ends through the attack. Has the falling of the towers made Islam stronger, or weaker, or was there no change?

Please do explain how this works, because from where I sit it seems entirely political in nature, with a religious wrapping - which is just what the Parent is suggesting.

Re:Science Journalism

[Red Flayer]

On that note, does anyone know of a good news site that covers stuff like this in an informed and reasonably detailed and lengthy way but for people who aren't theoretical physicists?

Sure, that would be slashdot.

{snort} {chortle} {snarf}

Sorry, couldn't really even write that with a straight face.

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

God can just giggle at us as his brilliantly faked universe tricks us into eternal damnation as we follow the evidence.

This, this right here is key to understanding the essential gap between atheist fundamentalists and normal people. Observe how the very meaning of life is illustrated in two points:

A) God is amused by our suffering (or at least by our bewilderment.)
and
B) The point of science is to tempt us into damnation.

Neither of these concepts are presented anywhere within the Christian dogma, so where did they come from?

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

High-Z cosmic ray impinging on the surface of a neutron star would probably do it...

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

Creationists are well known for demanding unrealistic levels of proof for evolution or big bang cosmology. In their case it's comparable to finding a corpse with a back full of bullets and refusing to accept that it's likely a case of murder - since no-one was there to witness it.

Pinning this particular doubt on creationists alone is intellectually dishonest. You'll find all sorts of similar contention in every single area of 'observation science'. You'll also find various levels of retcon-ing what the 'truth' is if you follow any of these fields long enough. Here are some samples:

A) What killed the dinosaurs?

B) What causes global warming?

C) When did humans first use language?

D) Which species is the 'missing link'?

For all or any of these, repose the same question in the frame of mind of a person from our past or future. What was the answer 100 years ago? 50? 10? What about 50 into the future?

It isn't so much a matter of 'back full of bullets' as a back that may or may not have had some holes in it at some point. Now it definitely did. No wait, now it didn't. Now we're reasonable certain that it did. No wait, now it didn't again. Ad nauseum.

As a final point, I'd offer that any true scientist ought to love, love, love the uncertainty of it all, because once you've solved it you're done. It's only the dogmatic and zealous that use these tenuous, fleeting moments of our understanding as a club of 'truth' to force others to fall into one world view or another. Those types would make genuinely horrible scientists, as they'd already know all the 'answers' before running any experiments at all.

Re:Science Journalism

[osu-neko]

If the 6000 years ago bit is true, we can just continue working on the old universe idea and since God made it look like it old experiment will keep matching theory. God can just giggle at us as his brilliantly faked universe tricks us into eternal damnation as we follow the evidence.

Thus casting God in the role of Descartes evil demon. Oh, the fun you can have with that idea...

Interestingly enough, there was a branch of early Christianity which insisted that the Creator was in fact evil, and Jesus was here to save us from him.

Re:Science Journalism

[osu-neko]

I believe you have that reversed. I've met plenty of religious fundamentalists who weren't anti-science loons... Can't say I've met / heard of any anti-science loons who are not religious fundamentalists.

Really? I've known a couple good ones, and met quite a few more. You just don't hang out with the right lunatics. ;)

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

If god created the universe then why can't people of all faiths see science as a way to get closer to god by unlocking the mysteries of the universe.

Indeed it is.

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

I have always believed that this passage is a parable describing what separates us from the other animals on the planet. We started off as they are, amoral and ignorant. God offered us a path towards being as he is, and dared us not to take it.

Re:Science Journalism

[ShavedOrangutan]

I'm not so sure the scientists intended that, but the reporters felt a need to glam the article up to sell copy.

I can just see the headline. Front page, New York Times...

"Scientists push button on big machine and look at data on a computer monitor."

They probably do need to dramatize a bit to grab attention from the unwashed masses.

Re:Science Journalism

[MaWeiTao]

I'm really curious about where Slashdotters live that they keep encountering all these fundamentalists who refuse to accept the scientific explanations for how the universe works.

I've got a fairly broad range of friends, a couple who are fairly religious and have always been so. And I know a few others who are born-agains and frequent the kind of church you'd expect to be a problem. But they all accept the concept of evolution, the big bang, and everything else that's been proposed by science. I don't know a single person, religious or otherwise who doesn't generally accept any of this.

And the big irony here is that these fundamentalists would embrace all this. A universe billions of years old, where life evolved, is far and away more impressive than a 6,000 year universe where everything was created as it exists now.

I mean, how awesome are dinosaurs, or the life cycles of stars, or quantum mechanics? If you want to believe in a creator it takes a staggering one to have come up with all that. Not the feeble, unimaginative one fundamentalists adhere to.

Re:Science Journalism

[evocarti]

Hear, Hear.

I've been espousing this point of view for a while. There is nothing inherent in science or religious fundamentalism that make them mutually exclusive. For that, we can blame overly zealous representatives of either camp.

Live, and let live.

Re:Science Journalism

[osu-neko]

It's like asking what is 1/2 of infinity?

Eh, actually it's pretty much nothing like that. Unless you're kookie enough to think that the amount of energy involved in the Big Bang was infinite. If it was a finite amount, then talking about something being a fraction of that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and the answer is far, far short of infinity, no matter how big it is.

Re:Science Journalism

[Belial6]

The rational was that America was evil. A work of the devil, and thus anything American that can be attacked is attacking evil. The higher profile the better. It would be naive to think that there wasn't any politics behind it, but to deny that religion was not a prime influence is absurd.

Re:Science Journalism

[InsertCleverUsername]

What's "likely" isn't really important, and is what leads to confirmation bias on both sides. Perhaps your fictitious corpse was a politician in the middle of a scandal who committed suicide, but their party thought a murder would be more sympathetic.

The anti-religious have an uncanny ability to accept things on faith when they agree with their worldview.

Really? You really think science is faith-based? You really think people believe in science without question and then take pride in blindly accepting it? I think you forget that science can actually test hypotheses with repeated experimentation. And at the end of the day, science can not only explain, but predict phenomena. It's actually really useful, pragmatic stuff.

Re:Science Journalism

[evocarti]

Perhaps Christian religion, like science, is an evolving philosophy that gets ever closer to approximating the truth.

Pointing out a flawed part of a religion is akin to giggling about Newton's theories not being the 'final truth' on gravity.

Re:Science Journalism

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's people's morals - often based on or at least supported by what you blithely dismiss as "fiction" - that stop us from doing those sorts of things.

Those of us that aren't sociopaths don't need religion to keep us from inflicting pain and suffering upon others. Those who are sociopaths use religion as an excuse as often as it prevents them from harming others.

Re:Science Journalism

[joeyblades]

You are confused. The members of Al-Qaeda are motivated by their devotion to Osama Bin Laden, not to Islam. In fact, their actions are in direct contradiction to Islamic beliefs.

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion...

One man's terrorist is another man's war hero. More people commit "suicide" for political beliefs than do for religious ones. Duty is a powerful motivator.

People are predominantly motivated by greed and power. Making something a religious cause is, more often than not, just a way to get buy-in from the masses... an afterthought, not the primary motivation.

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

The rational was that America was evil. A work of the devil, and thus anything American that can be attacked is attacking evil.

So when Osama was on our CIA payroll, attacking the Soviets, were we more or less evil than we are now? Were they more or less evil than we were? Vis-a-vis is/are?

Re:Science Journalism

[c6gunner]

If religion were a car, it would be a Pinto.

And no, I wouldn't drive it.

Re:Science Journalism

[cforciea]

The problem is that in the culture of a fundamentalist suicide bomber, politics and religion are inextricably linked. They targeted the towers to hurt our country, but we're the great devils of the west, and they are going to be rewarded in the afterlife for doing damage to us, which ultimately brings it back full circle to a religious motive. Not to say I want to jump on the bandwagon of saying that religion in all forms is wrong or evil (though I am a strong agnostic). It is just that when you put people in the position to say authoritatively what is going to happen to a follower for all of eternity in an afterlife, you give them incredible and terrible power. Even the most psychotic dictator doesn't have that kind of pull. And you know what they say about the correlation between power and corruption. Or in other words, I would say that religion does not cause people to do terrible things, but leaders in organized religions do.

Re:Science Journalism

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Not necessarily. I am a religious fundamentalist, and science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

You seem to have failed at grasping what science is. Science "proves" nothing. Science is a formal, logical methodology for determining what is most likely true. Recognizing how successful science has been, many irrational people fear to challenge it and instead claim that they "agree with science" or something; right up until the scientific method results in a most supported theory they don't like. Then they rationalize.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Occam's razor always points to "Because God wanted it that way". That is always the simplest answer to any question. I hate to hear people pull Occam's razor out because it is bumper sticker philosophy. Sometimes the more complex answer IS the answer.

Re:Science Journalism

[Doomdark]

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

For this to be true, you have to define religion quite loosely, however. Nationalism is another common and powerful mental model that produces terrorists of all types. In general, one just needs zealous all-consuming conviction. So while religion definitely can do this, it is not the sole source; unless you consider all zealous conviction to be kinds of religions (which is one possible angle, just not a common interpretation).

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without Islam, then you really don't understand people... or Islam.

FTFY

Re:Science Journalism

[ShavedOrangutan]

Because I only know one person who describes herself as a 'christian fundamentalist' and she refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old.

That's really more of a subset of fundamentalism, where one believes in a strict literal interpretation of the Bible. Those people don't seem to realize that God didn't write the Bible, never mind all the translations and revisions through its history.

Personally, I think the whole Genesis "Let there be light" thing sounds a lot like a singularity, and the Hebrew word for "day" and "epoch" are pretty similar (so I've been told). It helps that both the ministers at my church have engineering degrees.

Re:Science Journalism

[TheBilgeRat]

I would guess that most of that line of thought came out of the Council of Trent, or in response to it at least.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

no, you have just discounted religion's conjoined twin: politics.

Re:Science Journalism

[kurzweilfreak]

Morality does not come from religion, we only find it reflected in religion.

Also, science need not be as amoral as most people believe.

Re:Science Journalism

[blair1q]

Wait. I think I...no...I thought I had one in my coat pocket but it's just a bag of Jelly Babies.

Would you like one?

Re:Science Journalism

[LordLimecat]

If you think getting rid of religion will neatly solve humanity's violent and oppressive tendencies, you are badly mistaken.
Hint: just look at Communist [fill in the blank]

Re:Science Journalism

[kurzweilfreak]

They need not be explicitly stated within Christian dogma, as they are the logical implications thereof. Just because "a = 2, b = 3" doesn't explicitly state that "a+b=5" doesn't mean that it isn't true.

Also, if you don't see how the concept of knowledge = evil fits into Christian dogma, you might want to check out Genesis again.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I was raised in a Christian school, and even there they taught "about" the 6000-year theory, but gave plenty of evidence that the person that came up with the figure (one of past Popes, I think) was totally misreading the Bible, and that there is no evidence (scientific or Biblical) which supports the theory. So I have yet to run into someone who actually believes the 6000-year-old theory.

Re:Science Journalism

[Doomdark]

While there can be moderate and reasonable religious fundamentalists (as opposed to firebrand zealots), I think common definition of fundamentalism does make it unlikely that one could have views compatible with scientific worldview. As has been pointed out, at some point literal reading of the holy book does contradict commonly accepted scientific theories and observations. Fundamentalism then mandates taking claims of bible (or whatever holy book or dogma that religion has) as literal truth, instead of being allegory (which is what non-fundamentalist believes could accept); and scientific approach of theories having to be compatible with observations is thrown away.

So I think what you are talking about are not fundamentalists, but rather devoted believers, but ones that can accept that even religious texts can be either wrong, or use inexact metaphors and allegories to explain bigger concepts. It is completely possible to have non-fundamentalist religious views that are compatible with even rigorous scientific approach; many leading scientist are and have been believers.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion.
A few things are required:
Lack of desire for survival.
Anger at a large group.
The ability to research explosives.

Re:Science Journalism

[networkconsultant]

Human stupidity is the only infanate resource on this planet. As Einstein stated, between that and the size of the universe he'd bet on stupidity.
Now if we could just turn it into electricity.

Re:Science Journalism

[Archangel Michael]

To be a terrorist doesn't require religion at all.

Plenty of terrorism is done for plenty of other reasons besides "religion". Just as Jews and Gypsies in Europe, and all those persecuted in Soviet Union and in China for wanting nothing except to be free. Going to an airport and having my bits inspected by some TSA moron (either way) is an assault (and battery) in any other jurisdiction, and is terrorism even if I choose NOT to use airports.

Face the problem, people are evil. They just find excuses for doing evil, whether it be religious, or governance, the result is the same. It is repugnant no matter who does it for whatever their reason is.

By limiting your definition to that of "religion" exposes your bias against all religions at the expense of truth. I'm not excusing religion mind you, just pointing out that terrorism isn't the sole bastion of religion, not by a long shot.

Re:Science Journalism

[networkconsultant]

Smashing Irons is what occurs when two WOW players forget to remove their belts of chastity.

Re:Science Journalism

[li0nh34r7]

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

are you suggesting that people are incapable of committing suicide and killing others at the same time without religion?

Re:Science Journalism

[kurzweilfreak]

The religious have an uncanny ability to either redefine words or even entire concepts to suit their purpose, as evident in your post above.

Re:Science Journalism

[cforciea]

That's funny. I'm not religious in the least and I haven't killed a single person or experimented on a single prisoner of war.

In fact, if you do the research, I think you will find that a-religious people are way under-represented in our country's prison system. There isn't a single solid metric that you can come up with to demonstrate that religion and what most people would consider moral behavior are even positively correlated much less causally so.

Re:Science Journalism

[chrb]

I am a religious fundamentalist

Are you really a fundamentalist, or just someone who says he is? Do you really interpret every word in the sacred texts as literal truth? If so, which holy book is it that you believe and follow unquestioningly?

And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

Science doesn't "prove" anything - we just create models that best explain the observable data. If you are willing to accept that these models better explain the world than some of the stories in your holy book, then you aren't a fundamentalist.

Re:Science Journalism

[armyofone]

"One man's terrorist is another man's war hero."

Exactly. From the viewpoint of The Empire, Luke Skywalker was a terrorist.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it not just possible that humans commit horrible acts all on their own and some merely use religion to justify their actions?

Let's see how that works:

-"Hey, I have a great idea, let's hijack a couple of jet planes with 200 passengers each and crash them into a skyscraper!"
-"Great idea! But, wait, what excuse shall we use for it?"
-"Hmmm, I'm not quite sure... How about religion?"
-"Well, maybe. OK, unless someone gets a better idea, we will justify it through religion"

No, I think religion is the *prime* motive for a lot of shit people does, not a "mere justification".

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

Because, of course, Iosef and Adolf were such religious zealots...

Re:Science Journalism

[nedlohs]

They don't come from Christian dogma. They come from "God created the universe to look like it was old", which isn't part of any Christian dogma I know of, but is the topic I was replying to.

Re:Science Journalism

[kurzweilfreak]

Go to the bottom of the Red Sea and look at the line of Egyptian fragments of chariots and armor.

Citation, please?

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many factors, other than religion, that can push one to give her life for a "greater good".

Re:Science Journalism

[cforciea]

I wish Christians would stop telling me the that their belief are the Absolute Truth (tm) if they aren't sure and their beliefs are evolving over time.

Re:Science Journalism

[danieltdp]

"(mini-big) bang" is different than "mini-(big bang)". "Mini-big bang" works if and only if the operator ' ' has precedence over '-'

Re:Science Journalism

[c6gunner]

When you say "smashing iron", they think of banging two iron bars together

Well, yeah. What are they supposed to think? And what does smashing iron have to do with an experiment in which they smashed lead ions?

Re:Science Journalism

[thesandtiger]

I've met quite a few - political conservatives who are opposed to scientific findings based on how those findings may interfere with their political aims; environmentalists who flat-out do not understand science and base their beliefs on what "feels" right vs. what has been (as far as we know) empirically proven; anti-intellectuals who profess no particular religious beliefs etc. I've met plenty of atheists who are also anti-science, in that they certainly don't understand the scientific method nor seek to apply it in any way, and attempt to use science in the same way that fundamentalists might try to use the bible to bolster their arguments. Then there are a bunch of "spiritual" people who get into crystals and pyramid power and all kind of pseud-scientific bullshit, and who will militantly oppose scientific findings showing them wrong, to that's also anti-science, and I'd say loony.

Maybe I'm painting with too broad a brush, but that's my take.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Tamil Tigers were the first to use a policy of suicide bombing, and their motivation was ethnic and secular, not religious.

Re:Science Journalism

[martas]

out of curiosity, if science is all well and good in your book, then what exactly is the subset of your beliefs that match the definition of a religious fundamentalist? (i'm not suggesting anything, i just want to know... if you feel like sharing.)

Re:Science Journalism

[HeronBlademaster]

The fact that you claim those ideas are logical implications of Christian teachings suggests you aren't actually familiar with Christian teachings.

Furthermore, nothing in the Bible makes the claim "knowledge is evil". This also suggests you aren't actually familiar with the story in Genesis to which you're referring (Adam and Eve getting cast out of Eden).

Re:Science Journalism

[Archangel Michael]

Science is good at explaining the world we live in. Science sucks at explaining why we're alive. Evolution may explain how we see things in this world, but it cannot explain spontaneous life, from inorganic to organic, to proteins that are folded that require RNA sequences to replicate the proteins that are needed to build RNA sequences (etc).

Science cannot explain WHY we are here, and that is the question Religion tries answers (often imperfectly). This is why there is disdain for religion by much of the world of "science" because science doesn't want to, and cannot know the answers to such questions. But that is the heart of what it is to be human (IMHO); to question one's existence.

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

Re:Science Journalism

[martas]

sounds interesting - would you happen to know a name under which that branch is known today, so I can look up more information?

Re:Science Journalism

[HeronBlademaster]

And the big irony here is that these fundamentalists would embrace all this.

I don't think it's ironic at all. Christianity is fully compatible with science. For example, the Bible does not claim the earth is 6,000 years old; it merely claims Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden approximately 6,000 years ago. It is unspecific about the length of time of the Creation. (The use of "day" in our English translations is unfortunate and misleading; the Hebrew word used there merely means "period of time".)

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

That's NOT Occam's Razor. In Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is the one that doesn't require new laws of nature. Using "God did it" is not the simplest answer. The Big Bang is simpler according to Occam's Razor. Complexity has nothing to do with it. You need a few classes in philosophical logic.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by the articles, I think they are running this place.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

Ouch, that's going to be hardly anything. Science hasn't even proven the existence of light, gravity, mass, or energy yet. Only mathematicians have proofs of things.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I know some, depending on your definition of anti-science loons. One co-worker believes microwaves and chemicals do all kinds of horrible, unscientific things and has "white papers" to "prove" it. Then you've got the anti-immunization crowd, which I personally would put in the loons camp, even though that's just one subset of science rather than anti-science all together.

Re:Science Journalism

[Msdose]

There's no such thing as religion; it's just a political party with a unique way of hoodwinking it's victims.

Re:Science Journalism

[i_ate_god]

I'm really curious about where Slashdotters live that they keep encountering all these fundamentalists who refuse to accept the scientific explanations for how the universe works.

I've got a fairly broad range of friends, a couple who are fairly religious and have always been so. And I know a few others who are born-agains and frequent the kind of church you'd expect to be a problem. But they all accept the concept of evolution, the big bang, and everything else that's been proposed by science. I don't know a single person, religious or otherwise who doesn't generally accept any of this.

And the big irony here is that these fundamentalists would embrace all this. A universe billions of years old, where life evolved, is far and away more impressive than a 6,000 year universe where everything was created as it exists now.

I mean, how awesome are dinosaurs, or the life cycles of stars, or quantum mechanics? If you want to believe in a creator it takes a staggering one to have come up with all that. Not the feeble, unimaginative one fundamentalists adhere to.

They aren't running into them. they just think that they are the majority. It seems to me that the more extreme you are, the louder you are and the more people will hear you. Do you think american politics are completely dominated by right wing nut jobs? Do you think that British politics are dominated by xenophobes? Do you think Islam is completely dominated by suicide bombers?

Like I said, you're going to get heard more if your viewpoint is extreme, but that doesn't mean the vast majority of people are going to think like you.

Re:Science Journalism

[HeronBlademaster]

Really? You really think science is faith-based?

One's entire life is faith-based. We have faith that the people who wrote our science textbooks didn't make any nontrivial mistakes, for example. We have faith that the engineers who designed our cars didn't screw up. We have faith in the objectivity or integrity of journalists. We have faith that the doctor doing our kidney transplants isn't really a serial killer pretending to be a doctor.

This is especially obvious when we're young; when our parents tell us something is dangerous, we generally have faith that they're not just messing with us, even if we don't understand the reasons ourselves.

We accept a great deal of information on faith. Life would be difficult indeed if we refused to do so. This applies to scientists as much as anyone else (even if not in their field of expertise).

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bit short-sighted. Evil acts came first; religion came after, partly as a justification for such evil.

Why can't someone just be plain evil and stupid enough to blow themselves up? How much faith do you really have in humanity?

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You might think you should read the comment above in a normal accent, but if you read the whole comment to the end you would find out you should read it in a Southern accent. I had to read it all over again.

Re:Science Journalism

[chrb]

Please do explain how this works, because from where I sit it seems entirely political in nature, with a religious wrapping - which is just what the Parent is suggesting.

You are both right. The majority of people in the world are taught from birth to believe in a God, and that it is right to follow the teachings of the Holy men, including going to war. Some of the Holy men are religious fundamentalists, and they will demand war against those who follow a different religion. They will justify the war with reference to the Holy scriptures, and this will provide a self-reinforcing story that the people will follow (self-reinforcing because, as a result of the violence. they can refer to new acts of savagery that their opponent has carried out). However, the religious leaders are also rational, and will not usually carry out actions that will weaken their own power base or result in their own destruction. For example, the Iranian religious leaders will not directly attack the U.S. or Israel, as this would ensure their destruction. The violence is geo-political in nature, but in order to justify and motivate the population it is necessary to create a religious narrative that they can follow.

It wouldn't follow, though, to attack the Twin Towers. What sort of religious icon were they?

The goals of the leadership of Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are geo-political: resistance against the House of Saud and it's U.S. backed dictatorship being the most obvious. There is a great amount of social injustice in Saudi Arabia, resulting from a huge inequality in the distribution of wealth - millions of ordinary people live in abject poverty, whilst a few thousand people in the royal family control trillions of dollars in personal wealth. This leads to a society in which corruption is the norm, and where the wealthy can literally "get away with murder". It is not difficult to see why ordinary people might want to replace the existing system with something that seems a little fairer. The Islamists offer them a future governance based on what they perceive to be a better system, where the rules are supposed to be applied equally regardless of wealth or position in society. Throw into this the fact that the U.S. is a major ally of the House of Saud, supplies a huge amount of military and intelligence hardware, and at one point had 10,000 troops stationed there, and it is not difficult to see how the resentment shifts from the House of Saud and onto the U.S.

The average citizen of these countries is poorly educated, and often illiterate. Justifying and motivating them towards acts of violence through geo-politics is hard - how do you convince a man to commit suicide, or otherwise take enormous personal risks, in order to destabilise the governing regime? A rational man will usually believe that his own death is not justified except in exceptional circumstances, and overthrowing his government is not usually one of those. The concept of "life after death with big rewards" is essential to the narrative that enables self-sacrifice towards the attainment of geo-political goals.

So, people attack targets like the Twin Towers because they observe massive social injustice in their home land. Their religious leaders tell them that this injustice is the fault of people outside of their social group, and that God wants them to make the world a better place, and that when they die they will receive the reward of an eternal life. They are personally motivated by religion, and by a sense that the world that they are fighting against is unjust. However, the Twin Towers is chosen as a target because it is a symbol of the injustice; this is not about "glorifying" a religion, it is about striking back against an "evil empire" that is seen as being intimately linked with the social problems of the population as a whole.

Re:Science Journalism

[Dishevel]

I think it is more like ...

Hey. My life sucks! But how do I get out of it.
I know. I have a religion that says if I kill shitloads of infidels and die that my afterlife will rule.
Lets do it then.

Re:Science Journalism

[SleazyRidr]

Power is the prime motive for most of it. Religion is the tool used to acquire power. Follow the trail all the way to the end.

Re:Science Journalism

[thesandtiger]

Er, follow-up: I meant to say "political ideologues" not "political conservatives" - I've met PUH-lenty on the left who are similarly willing to disregard hard evidence when it suits them, and was not intending to be partisan.

Re:Science Journalism

[pnewhook]

So, is a mini-big bang just a bang, then?

No, the 'big' as in 'big bang' is not an adjective. 'Big Bang' is in it's entirety a noun. Therefore it is perfectly acceptable to put a modifier in front of it to say mini big bang. p.Whether that is what they did or not is another matter.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You have yet to meet my boss then. He is one of those people. Some days, when I go into his office (I get a little frightened at this point, and try to leave quickly) it is like talking to a crazy person. I just smile and nod until I can escape. He believes that evolution was debunked and is not at all true. His words. He believes that creationism or intelligent design explains it all. "Looks pretty intelligently designed to me." And that is all the proof he needs. I don't want to contradict him, I need my job....

Re:Science Journalism

[Merpy]

What I find particularly interesting is that people are often willing to concede a god, but then somehow think creating the universe quickly would be a problem....

Re:Science Journalism

[Dcnjoe60]

I wasn't specifically referring to the energy created by the big bang, but more the child hood notion of twice of infinity being greater infinity or 1/2 of infinity being less than infinity.

Since 1/2 of infinity is still infinity, my point I was trying to unsuccessfully make was that 1/2 of a big bang is still a big bang and therefore there is no such thing as a mini-big bang.

Anything else is absurd. Otherwise, a head on collision between two motor vehicles is also a big bang (in the cosmological sense). It just produced less energy than the LHC or the actual big bang.

Yet no reasonable person or physicist would assert that a head on collision recreated the big bang, so why is the head on collision of two sub-atomic particles any different?

From what we know, at the moment of the big bang, the universe, time, matter, etc. came into existence. Did the experiment at the LHC create new matter or energy? Did it create a new dimension of time? No, none of these things occurred and thus it is not a "big bang."

Or put differently, if the big bang is likened to infinity, there is no such thing as a fraction of infinity. Either they created a big bang or they did not.

I'd opt for not.

Re:Science Journalism

[brizzadizza]

If your conclusion to the above thought experiment was "most likely" murder, than you are accepting conclusions based on faith in your ability to intuit causes. If you haven't vetted that ability through rigorous experimentation, than yes, you are operating under a faith based belief system. There is a large gulf between an internet skeptic and a scientist. An interesting recent illustration was posted on the makezine blog wrt to DDWFTTW (Dead Down Wind faster than the Wind) vehicles just today. Internet skeptic after skeptic railing about what an obvious hoax they are, how against the basic rules of physics they are, etc etc. But in the end, the proof was in both videos and mathematics. The point is this, science may not be faith based, but those who apply the results of science outside of the specific instances the scientific results are describing are basing that application on various levels of faith.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wonder what would happen if you would ask someone like that how the laws of physics are not the laws of god.

Re:Science Journalism

[Taibhsear]

I believe that was the Gnostics, although there were several different sects of them. Simon Magus was one of the more interesting ones in my opinion.

Re:Science Journalism

[Merpy]

I feel that Christianity provides a better framework for research than does big bang theory, if only from the standpoint that Christianity posits a Creator and thereby a structure to be understood. Big Bang relies on randomness (time+chance) to such a degree, it seems as though having fixed "laws" of physics would be difficult to come by.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad I am not the only one. This is exactly what I have always thought.

Re:Science Journalism

[frank_adrian314159]

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

I'm not religious myself, but I can see some scenarios where I might be willing to sacrifice myself for totally non-religious reasons. Here's one... My city is attacked by a hoard of ravenous zombies. By drawing them out into an uninhabited region with a plate full of brains and detonating a nuclear device, killing myself in the process, I can save my people from the zombie hoard, be remembered as the savior of humanity for the next thousand-plus years, and die knowing that I've done A Good Thing (TM). No religion is involved here and most people would do it to "save the world".

The general point is that, in some cases, people will give their lives to save others, religion notwithstanding. Now, this usually happens for political reasons - people are often willing to sacrifice to throw off a (perceived) oppressor. In reality, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and beyond have very little to do with religion - they are simply the continuation of politics by other means (my apologies to von Clausewitz) - and they would occur even if there was no religion because the people who foment these actions simply see this as war. The religion thing just makes it easier to recruit volunteers. But don't assume you couldn't do the same thing by appealing to someone's sense of justice or patriotism instead.

Re:Science Journalism

[Jason Levine]

No, considering that the Big Bang is also called the Horrendous Space Kablooie (named by Dr. Calvin), this "mini-big bang" would be a "Pretty Bad Space Kablooie." If they get down to a micro-big bang, we'll be talking about a "Relatively Uncomfortable Space Kablooie."

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

HeronBlademaster's got you there. It isn't that the knowledge is evil, but that with the knowledge we're no longer animals. It is a harder existence, but if God hadn't wanted us to eventually select it for ourselves, there would have been no apple.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

What's deceptive about it? He wrote a whole book to tell you what age the universe is!

Re:Science Journalism

[teshuvah]

Not necessarily. I am a religious fundamentalist, and science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

Really though, not trying to troll. Just saying those two groups are not necessarily mutually inclusive, though sometimes that is the case.

Wow, just wow. You say that science is all well and good, as long as it is within the realms of "this is what we've been able to prove thus far." Whereas I can understand the logic behind that reasoning, it runs completely contradictory to you being a religious fundamentalist. You're willing to blindly believe in the stories from some old tribal book, but you only believe in science if it is concretely proven?

Hypocrite much?

Re:Science Journalism

[frank_adrian314159]

That contradicts the idea that God does not deceive, which most Christians believe.

I'd say that Job would probably disagree with you. In the Old Testament, God often deceives in the short term to "test faith" (See also Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac), something which, if for which you want to give Him/Her/It a pass because it wasn't a long-term thing, seems to make Him/Her/It a dick (not to mention really, really insecure about everyone believing in/loving Him/Her/It, too). If I had to believe in a god, I'd rather have it be one that wasn't a dick.

Re:Science Journalism

[Jason Levine]

That might make an interesting short film (or series of short films). A view of the events of ANH, ESB and ROTJ through the Empire's media channel. "...and that's one Jawa that will think twice before trying to steal from an injured Trooper. In other news, a strike was made against a stronghold of the terrorist group, The Rebellion, on the ice planet Hoth. Unfortunately, many of the terrorists were able to escape capture. A statement released by Lord Vader's press agent, Darth Spinious, stated 'These Rebel scum can run but we will track them. Their former base is being analyzed for clues to other strongholds and the captured terrorists will be interrogated as well. Rest assured that these terrorists' days are numbered. They will not be a threat to the fine citizens of The Empire for much longer."

Re:Science Journalism

[operagost]

Reductio ad absurdum doesn't really work here.

Re:Science Journalism

[BranMan]

Idiot! We have ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia!

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

They created a quark-gluon plasma. No inflation or Higs:iness going on here.

Re:Science Journalism

[Jason Levine]

Bah! I believe that the Universe was created 30 seconds ago with the appearance of being billions of years old and with us having memories as if we had lived for decades already. Just try to prove me wrong! (Oh and if you're reading this 31 seconds or more after it's posted, then it's clear that God just posted this under my user account while setting up his fake universe theory.)

The best part of this view? I'm not responsible for anything done 30 seconds or more ago. "I'm sorry, but that thing you said I did a day ago wasn't really me. That was put there by God to fool the idiots who can't see the truth. Obviously, you're smart enough to see through the ruse, right?"

Re:Science Journalism

[kurzweilfreak]

Depending on your translation of the Bible, the tree of knowledge of good and evil can be interpreted as of good and of evil, or (according to Wikipedia) as a merism, to be interpreted as "all knowledge". The same wikipedia page states that Jewish traditions (the people who wrote the Old Testament!) consider the tree itself to be evil as well as the serpent. Either way you look at it, Adam and Eve were cast out for acquiring knowledge against the wishes of God, hence original sin. It isn't a very difficult logical leap to make the allusion that knowledge = bad from the story.

Also, this God guy certainly is a huge prick for creating creatures able to succumb to temptation that don't know right from wrong and then punish them for doing something he could have simply prevented in the first place. Screw that guy!

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

Also, this God guy certainly is a huge prick for creating creatures able to succumb to temptation that don't know right from wrong and then punish them for doing something he could have simply prevented in the first place. Screw that guy!

You're describing the very essence of free will. Should I smoke cigars? They make me feel good, but not as good later. Decisions, decisions.

You're advocating a world where we're all still animals, amoral and ignorant. You're labeling the one who freed us from that as a 'prick'. That's just odd.

Re:Science Journalism

[largesnike]

I don't know why you guys keep doing this. It's not religion, its ideology. Ideology is the prime mover. Religion is just its handmaiden. Just compare the terms islam and islamism. The former is the religion, the latter is the ideology. Ideology doesn't need religion, by the way, Pol Pot and Stalin, killed millions without religion's help, but they sure needed ideology.

Re:Science Journalism

[lennier]

-"Hey, I have a great idea, let's hijack a couple of jet planes with 200 passengers each and crash them into a skyscraper!"
-"Great idea! But, wait, what excuse shall we use for it?"
-"Hmmm, I'm not quite sure... How about religion?"
-"Well, maybe. OK, unless someone gets a better idea, we will justify it through religion"

I don't understand why a lot of people in the West keep assuming that suicide attacks require religion, or are somehow illogical, or both.

Warfighters are always aware that they are putting themselves in harm's way to achieve wider objectives for a social group they care about. There is always a chance of death even on the safest mission; some conventional missions have such slim odds that they may as well be suicide runs. And yet we don't endlessly hand-wring about what strange psychopathic deviance causes a person to enlist in infantry or become a Marine. Instead, whenever one of our armed services dies, we give them full honours and use words like 'sacrifice' and 'gave their life for their country'.

And of course our war fiction is full of examples of last-ditch suicide attacks by conventional soldiers who are out-gunned, dying, have one last grenade, etc. It's not like we're not aware of the concept and at a visceral level, agree.

And let's not talk about MAD, because that was a planetary-scale suicide pact. (Which relied on both sides *not* being suicidal, but nevertheless, required a similar amount of determination to cause harm to oneself just to make a political/military point.)

Suicide attacking merely takes this up a notch. It's a perfectly valid, cold-bloodedly logical, tactic for assymetrical warfare if you are trying to maximise gains for your group in a situation where all other hope has failed and you are otherwise utterly out-maneuvered and yet continue to fight.

It only requires that you have a cause other than yourself that you are willing to sacrifice everything for. That doesn't have to be religion - it could be family, country, ideology.

tl;dr: suicide attacks have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with military tactics in extreme situations.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnily enough, I just watched Sir David Attenborough explaining some scientific theories into just those things. There are some pretty logical things.

And why do you think there's actually an answer for why we're alive? Could it actually just be that conditions were right to allow single cells to form, thus starting the thing we call life? It's really not that much of a stretch.

Re:Science Journalism

[jmottram08]

I dont think that many Christians would call that deception. God didn't abandon Job, and Job didn't think that he was abandoned.

Is it deception when a teacher wont answer questions students have during a test?

Despite your religious views, there is a difference between a test and deception, and nothing in the book of Job really points to deception, except the actions of Satan.

Re:Science Journalism

[kenwd0elq]

I once read a science fiction story in which God created the world in 4004 BC. But the Devil went back and added all the fossils and evidence of an older Earth.

Alternatively, God created the evidence of an old Earth - as a test of faith.

Both were good stories. But if you want to believe in a deity, I don't suppose that it makes a whole lot of difference whether you believe in the Jehovah of the bible, in Allah, or in Ceiling Cat.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Fundamentalists will answer you that it is the devil who created the "proofs" of an older Earth... Sorry.

Re:Science Journalism

[index0]

Interesting. Then this is also true of the situation where people make the argument about dinosaur bones and God testing their faith. If God were testing their faith in that way, he would be deceitful.

Re:Science Journalism

[Vasil16]

There's no reason though why a racist couldn't be an absolute angel to people from their own race.

Fixed that one for you.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

We have faith that the people who wrote our science textbooks didn't make any nontrivial mistakes, for example.

We have faith in the scientific community that peer reviews the science long before those authors wrote it up and gave it to their editors to check.

We have faith that the engineers who designed our cars didn't screw up.

Not entirely. We have faith the the engineers did a good enough job to pass rigorous safety test procedures. And then we get insurance for when the car fails.

We have faith in the objectivity or integrity of journalists.

No, we really don't.

We have faith that the doctor doing our kidney transplants isn't really a serial killer pretending to be a doctor.

We have faith that there are enough people involved in our care to minimise those types of people getting far in the profession. That doesn't always work (See: Harold Shipman). However, since we're probably more likely to have a serial killer break into the house and do their dirty work, it's not worth worrying about when it comes to Drs.

This is especially obvious when we're young; when our parents tell us something is dangerous, we generally have faith that they're not just messing with us, even if we don't understand the reasons ourselves.

We accept a great deal of information on faith. Life would be difficult indeed if we refused to do so. This applies to scientists as much as anyone else (even if not in their field of expertise).

Life is indeed hard work if you take nothing on some level of faith. However, you're over simplifying it. We actually put faith in others better positioned to say something is safe than we do in the actual things. We know that the chances of us getting hurt or getting bad information is small in cases of science and engineering. Their respective communities try to maintain a state in which we can trust them. In essence, they do the hard work for us.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

God was less than amused and banished humanity from paradise, guarded the doors against future entry with angels wielding flaming swords, etc. He didn't want us pursuing that path.

It's always seemed to me to be just a retelling/parallel telling of the myth of Prometheus.

Where's that Higgs-Boson?!

Re:Science Journalism

[MysteriousPreacher]

If incompatible is a fancy word then it'd do you no harm to pick-up a dictionary.

It's incompatible because it's not practical to attempt objectively research something when the scientist in question holds an unshakable belief that no amount of facts would change. There are plenty of things for which there is enough evidence for us to reasonably consider them to be scientific fact, but that's hardly equivalent to discarding modern and well evidenced scientific knowledge in favour of mythology.

Take Behe. He's a smart guy and certainly not in the same league as Gish. Behe's beliefs though clearly colour his interpretation of evidence. If he and others can produce verifiable results then there's no problem. Ken Miller is an example of a religious scientist with a bit more credibility.

Personally I'd be reluctant to fund a guy, asked to develop a cure for flu, who claims that viruses don't exist and that nothing will ever change his mind. It'd be like hiring a blind photographer. Religious scientists are fine, but fundamentalists have a crippled ability to get the job done.

Re:Science Journalism

[SETIGuy]

The point is not the composition of the particles (which has nothing to do with the results of the collision), but the total energy impact. Impacts of similar energy with smaller nuclei happen in the atmosphere frequently. Lead was used in this case to increase the energy of the collision by increasing the mass of the colliding particles.

The only significant difference between this and a high energy cosmic ray collision is that it occurs in a large detector that is in the frame of the center of mass of the collision.

Re:Science Journalism

[Barrinmw]

The big bang was an explosion of space in addition to everything else so unless they created a micro-universe in there, I don't think its comparable.

Re:Science Journalism

[SETIGuy]

The religious like to throw this one out hoping it will stick. Most communist leaders have not been atheists. They just demand that the populace be atheist. Such demands place no constraints on the leaders.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably ought to believe that God lies, since it happens so much in the Bible.

Re:Science Journalism

[Zeek40]

I don't think anyone who believes in god thinks it would be difficult for him to create the universe quickly, it's just that all of the evidence suggests that the universe is much much older than the 6000 year timetable that some people claim is described in the bible.

Re:Science Journalism

[poopdeville]

What you're describing is heretical. Contrary to the Christian tradition of billions of people. "Perhaps" you are right. No "real" Christian would agree, and they are the ones who have a say in the matter.

Re:Science Journalism

[HeronBlademaster]

I simplified it on purpose. You clearly agree with me that having faith in things we can't or won't or don't personally prove is an integral part of life. That's all I was saying.

I'm not sure why you're quibbling about what exactly we have faith in, since that's largely beside the point.

Re:Science Journalism

[MysteriousPreacher]

Pinning this particular doubt on creationists alone is intellectually dishonest. You'll find all sorts of similar contention in every single area of 'observation science'. You'll also find various levels of retcon-ing what the 'truth' is if you follow any of these fields long enough.

I mentioned creationists because they do tend towards the fundamentalist side of religion. It's also fitting the context of this thread, and I figured it'd be a bit time consuming to add a full list of the groups who favour dogma over genuine inquiry.

Definitely! Anyone being honest has to accept that certainty is pretty hard to come by, and the areas you mentioned are open to interpretation. The missing link is a red herring. It's a misused term, and definitely not one I'd ever take seriously. You'll find contention, which is a healthy thing, but to varying degrees. No-one seriously disputes the reality of common descent, but there's certainly debate as to how it occurs. Creationists tend to be among the more vocal opponents of science, but they are certainly not the only ones.

It could be intellectual dishonesty to try to parlay disagreement in some very contentious areas in to a general notion that scientific knowledge is a collection of information that gets chucked out every 50 years when something more popular or cool comes along. It gets refined, and sometimes there are major shifts, but there are solid principles that date back in to antiquity. It comes down to evidence and probability. It's unlikely that it'll ever be proven that gravity does not exist as a phenomena, but certainly its source and effects could be subject to revision.

Re:Science Journalism

[cowscows]

People will die (and kill) for many reasons, at the end of the day it usually boils down to some sort of tribalism, or more simply "us versus them". Humans naturally tend towards segregating themselves into groups, and then those groups compete for resources/power/influence/money/etc. Religion is but one way that people can identify themselves as belonging to a particular group, but the list is endless. Christian vs. Muslim, Black vs. White, American vs. Chinese, North vs. South, Rich vs. Poor, Urban vs. Rural, etc...

Then there are a number of different undertones that can take effect at a more personal level, to help convince people that their side is worth dying for. We're the underdog, you'll be a hero/martyr, it's the only way to save your family, you can make a real difference, etc...

Religion can be one of the easier ways to manipulate people, because you can claim to be speaking with the authority of God, but eliminating religion wouldn't make it impossible for people to convince other people to do terrible things. It would, at best, make it only slightly harder, but the sort of people interested in manipulating others wouldn't have much trouble finding other ways to do so.

Re:Science Journalism

[Fluffeh]

I have always believed that this passage is a parable describing what separates us from the other animals on the planet. We started off as they are, amoral and ignorant. God offered us a path towards being as he is, and dared us not to take it.

What an interesting take you have there. I never looked at it this way. You sir, just made my day. Thank you for that.

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

Certainly the missing link isn't completely congruent, but the Victorian-era debate over that topic was immense. Ironically, it will never be decided. On those grounds, I opted to leave it in the list...

My point, though, was that not even the scientists agree. If you find someone standing on solid ground, beating others about the head and shoulders with it, look beneath and check for dogma. A true scientist would love to see your experiments disproving gravity.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

"Scientists Recreate Conditions of Early Universe - "It's hot!""

Re:Science Journalism

[amirulbahr]

STOP. Don't bother reading the comments, 90% of them are about whether or not the headline is hyperbole and the other 10% is something to do with religion vs science, whatever the fuck that has to do with anything. Moderators are not doing their job either, all this crap is getting modded up.

If you're looking for some insightful and informative posts about what this may mean for our understanding of the universe then better look elsewhere.

Re:Science Journalism

[MysteriousPreacher]

Christianity will need to get in line with the other creation myths. The big bang model is pretty well evidenced and accepted. My understanding is that the main problem now is in trying to understand what preceded it - since the concept of time as we know it could well have only come to existence with the universe.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

An ancient proverb, well-appreciated and much used in my country, goes something like "make friends even with the devil if it helps you cross that bridge". Srsly. Osama is perfectly consistent, at least in his own mind, in that he chose to deal with the greater evil first (the USians, though infidel, weren't really oppressing Muslims at that particular time - the Russkies were).

Re:Science Journalism

[logiboy123]

As a caveat I feel I need to explain that I define the term “theory of evolution” is an extremely loose phrase used by ignorant people and the media to interchangeably describe several extremely different and distinct theories regarding the nature of the universe. It vexes me greatly when this term is used as it is now so completely diluted by ignorance as to be ineffective for serious discussion.

It isn't about accepting or not accepting science. It is about trying to reconcile two ideas, theories or principles that both seem true but at the same time contradict one another.

Let me elaborate from my own experience:
I came to my belief system in my late teens. I believed I had found “truth” in the bible. However I also knew that science is a reliable source of facts. As a side note it is important to point out that facts and truth don’t always align.

So what do I do? When someone talks to me about Evolution I didn’t have at that time the knowledge to debate the issue. However at the same time I felt what was written in the bible was also true. So the easiest thing to do was to avoid the subject. I know both are true, so I have a contradiction, but I don’t have the answer.

After some time I realised this situation wasn’t satisfactory, in fact it was never satisfactory but I didn’t have the time or energy to solve the problem. But then I started studying. Reading science journals, articles, absorbing information, theories, facts, philosophy, cosmology, physics etc. What I discovered was that there are in fact massive gaping holes in all of the theories of evolution as well as the theories that religious people have.

No theory is perfect and so what is important is to give weight to the theory that seems most reasonable based on the amount of evidence produced.

Personally I like the theory of the big bang. There isn’t anything in the bible that contradicts this theory for me, in fact it points to the concept of a creator for many reasons. As an example one of the arguments around this is;
1) Causality
a. That which has a beginning has a cause.
b. The universe has a beginning.
c. Ergo the universe was caused.

Just because someone doesn’t believe the theory or facts that you present, doesn’t mean they are stupid.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

We freed ourselves, at the suggestion of a serpent, in direct opposition to his wishes, and were punished for eternity for it.

This whole discussion is rather silly, though. Some people will grasp at any straw to derail a perfectly mundane comments section toward stupid and tedious. I really hope that the discussions of particle physics occur further down the page.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

God made the universe 6000 years ago as if it were made much longer ago.

That contradicts the idea that God does not deceive, which most Christians believe.

No, not at all... if God created trees, would he have created them all as a newly sprouting acorn?

Re:Science Journalism

[MysteriousPreacher]

I never said that it was definitely murder, nor that the detectives would nick off for a cup of tea without poking around a bit. Murder is a reasonable hypotheses, and that would of course need to be tested. We go where the evidence leads us, and if turns out that the unfortunate guy with a back full of bullets was part of an elaborate suicide then so be it.

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

Some people will grasp at any straw to derail a perfectly mundane comments section toward stupid and tedious.

You appear to be one of them. You scrolled down this far, why not just keep scrolling?

Re:Science Journalism

[Kjella]

Smashing Irons is what occurs when two WOW players forget to remove their belts of chastity.

I'd ask how you reached that association, but I'm afraid the answer would be too much information. Besides, isn't that rather redundant?

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that's not true. They did it because of a deep-seated fear of American imperialism and the witnessing of American "memes" replacing Islamic ones (wear a burka, don't drink, etc.). People have done much worse in the name of their way of life.

I dislike religion as much as the next guy but I think you'll find many people whose job it is to know about this stuff would agree with this.

Re:Science Journalism

[MysteriousPreacher]

Yep, dogma is the enemy of progress. I'll mention you in my Nobel Prize acceptance speech if I ever get around to proving that Twinkies are the true source of gravity.

Re:Science Journalism

[Fluffeh]

Hmm, actually, anyone in the know care to enlighten us with some explanation of how the LHC decided to jump straight from protons (atomic #1) to Iron (atomic #26, atomic weight 55) ? And will Lead or Uranium be forthcoming? ^_^

I always assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that when they were smashing protons, it wasn't singular protons, but protons as part of a nucleus. While I may be a ways off in my thinking, even getting a bunch of singular protons sans electrons would be difficult as they would repel one another and likely make for a larger target needed to impact a larger amount of them.

This is speaking totally off the cuff, I haven't read deeply into the mechanics of this thing at all.

Re:Science Journalism

[Delarth799]

Did you just say the HOLOCAUST had no religious justification?!?!?! You really know nothing about Hitler or the holocaust at all do you? Hitler was very religious and used the bible and Christianity as a justification for going through with the massacre of the Jewish people.

Just a couple quotes:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, 12 April 1922

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” –Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)

Re:Science Journalism

[Aphoxema]

Is it not just possible that humans commit horrible acts all on their own and some merely use religion to justify their actions?

Let's see how that works:

-"Hey, I have a great idea, let's hijack a couple of jet planes with 200 passengers each and crash them into a skyscraper!"
-"Great idea! But, wait, what excuse shall we use for it?"
-"Hmmm, I'm not quite sure... How about religion?"
-"Well, maybe. OK, unless someone gets a better idea, we will justify it through religion"

No, I think religion is the *prime* motive for a lot of shit people does, not a "mere justification".

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

I think it was a little closer to "Those fucking Americans have been supporting Israel in destroying our culture and taking from us our rightful home, let's do as our God would have us and attack their social and economic social structure. Even if it costs us our own lives, it is the will of God so we shall be rewarded eternally, and even if it is not so it is still for the betterment of our people! Okay, who wants to fly the planes? Anyone?"

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... they smashed lead ions

Re:Science Journalism

[Noughmad]

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without Islam, then you really don't understand people... or Islam.

So all those Japanese pilots were secretly Islamic?

Re:Science Journalism

[Magada]

You missed the racist/specieist angle. The ruling class of the Empire seems to be all-human in those three movies, while the rebellion includes aliens in positions of authority.

Re:Science Journalism

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

Those against religion like to throw this argument, hoping it'll dispel the fact of the matter. Religion doesn't kill people. People[usually with weapons] kill people.

Bring on the -1 This Comment Makes Me Angry.

Re:Science Journalism

[Tharsman]

Not necessarily. I am a religious fundamentalist, and science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

Whereas the former seeks the better philosophy of "we've been unable to prove anything so far, but here's a story pulled out of the collective asses of village elders 3000 years ago; let's go on and pretend it's true, and let's ignore all of the horrible acts that have resulted from pretending that fiction is fact."

Oy.

Not a religious nut here, but trying to dismiss religion based on the bad things it has done, would be as idiotic as trying to dismiss science due to things like Hiroshima or Chernobyl. You can't have double standards, if you dismiss one due to the atrocities it inspired, you have to do the same for the other.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

But George was...

Re:Science Journalism

[joeyblades]

No. I said the Holocaust was not caused by religious ideals. Hitler was motivated by power, racism, and economic envy. He used religion and fear as tools to help motivate others to his cause.

Do you think most Germans wanted to oppress, torture, and murder Jews because of religious differences? No, they hated the Jews because the Jews had a lot of financial power and control in pre-Nazi Germany.

Re:Science Journalism

[Noughmad]

Not necessarily. I am a religious fundamentalist, and science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

Whereas the former seeks the better philosophy of "we've been unable to prove anything so far, but here's a story pulled out of the collective asses of village elders 3000 years ago; let's go on and pretend it's true, and let's ignore all of the horrible acts that have resulted from pretending that fiction is fact."

Oy.

Science is amoral. Science doesn't tell us not to kill people to harvest organs, not to experiment on prisoners of war, not to kill off the unproductive members of society or undesirable societies. On the contrary, science could arguably supply logical reasons to do all those things. It's people's morals - often based on or at least supported by what you blithely dismiss as "fiction" - that stop us from doing those sorts of things.

Never let you sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Statements like these are basically derived from science and logic. Religion, on the other hand, has often contradicted both of these.

Re:Science Journalism

[Tharsman]

No, I think religion is the *prime* motive for a lot of shit people does, not a "mere justification".

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

The prime motif for a lot of shit people credit religion for, is actually just the results of power hungry men. I'm sure it's not religion motivating Osama Bin-Laden to plan these terrorist acts.

The blind faith in religion has been used for millennia by rulers to manipulate people into doing all sorts of things, from murder to suffer hunger instead of consuming plague-bringin pig meat.

That being told, for many, their belief in science borders in religion, as they just "believe" in it's factual nature without attempting to understand it, even when the answers are there. After all, not only can a blind religious fanatic be seduced to become a mad bomber, but a blind environmentalist may be convinced that starting forest fires is a good for their cause.

The true issue is ignorant passion, and it can be for anything, religion, science, enviroment, or even video games.

Re:Science Journalism

[blair1q]

Well, not really, or ALICE would be a redundant experiement.

The number of nucleons is significant to creating the plasma. It doesn't show up when you smash a proton into another proton because there isn't enough stuff to constitute a plasma in such a collision, no matter the energy.

There are cosmic rays with many orders of magnitude more energy (PeV) than even LHC can produce, but their histogram is primarily protons with a few of the lighter elemental nuclei off on the long tail.

Hot lead-on-lead action is not something you encounter frequently just walking about the universe.

Re:Science Journalism

[miserere nobis]

Isn't a big leap, but it also isn't a very exegetically informed one.

As an aside, "Jewish traditions" don't mean much more than Christian traditions, given that we're talking about text that is thousands of years old, and talking about traditions as they have been formed and reformed over all those thousands of years. There is a common myth that Jewish interpretation is closer to the original than Christian interpretation, because Jews wrote the (Hebrew) Bible. Problem is that it wasn't the same Jews, it was others who lived a long, long time ago, starting a tradition of scriptural interpretation and theology that carried on for some time, then split into multiple lines, which wound up in the modern day. There isn't any particular reason to favor one of those branches over the other just based on ethnicity. In fact, Jewish thought had already split into multiple pieces (even just in Palestine) by the time Christianity got started, and only one branch (the one stemming from the Pharisees) has survived in any dominant form to the present day.

As for Genesis, "all knowledge" is an unlikely interpretation, especially when you are thinking of intellectual knowledge. "To know" in the Hebrew scriptures often or even usually has a sense of experiential knowledge, not just thought knowledge. (Recall how the patriarchs "knew" their wives and thus begot their offspring.) To know good and evil in this sense is to in some sense adopt or take them on, absorb them, live them, or perhaps to simply experience both.

Your summary about God punishing them for not knowing right from wrong-- interpreting "knowledge of good and evil" as having moral knowledge-- is contradicted by the story itself. When Eve is tempted, she clearly knows she should not succumb. She is aware of a "should" that applies to her. And so is Adam. Their ability to succumb to temptation is simply their ability to choose anything at all. If you think making free-thinking beings capable of making their own moral choices is being a huge prick, I'm sorry, but I disagree.

Re:Science Journalism

[Mr. Flibble]

A) God is amused by our suffering (or at least by our bewilderment.)

Actually, if you sit down and read the Old Testament you will find that this actually is the case as God slaughters tribe after tribe of non-Israelites, and the Israelites themselves.

I have no desire to crack open my copy of the KJV and prove this with quotes, but a simple google search will suffice to prove this matter. Look for each of God's explicit killings in the bible, there are times that he is indeed amused by suffering.

Re:Science Journalism

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I am a religious fundamentalist

Are you really a fundamentalist, or just someone who says he is? Do you really interpret every word in the sacred texts as literal truth? If so, which holy book is it that you believe and follow unquestioningly?

I think you're confusing literalism with fundamentalism. While fundamentalism and literalism have a lot of overlap both in concept and adherents, fundamentalism is usually considered the protestant movement that literally interprets certain core beliefs from the bible, usually: creation, the virgin birth, physical resurrection, the sacrificial death of Christ, and the Second Coming. That's not to say the previous poster isn't a strict literalist, just that you can't infer that from the term "fundamentalism".

I'd also note, I've never met anyone who upon 15 minutes of discussion did not foreswear strict literalism, usually about the time you ask them if they think the earth is literally supported upon four pillars or if there is room for a figurative or metaphorical interpretation in parts of the bible.

Re:Science Journalism

[BobMcD]

Finding this incongruent with Christ's teachings, I've basically rejected it as being true.

In my opinion, not having been there, I feel pretty confident that the Israelites made it out of whole cloth. I just cannot fathom Christ telling you to con your enemies into circumcision so they'll be easier to slaughter, for example. Nor do I find it likely that the sun literally stood in a single place for days on end. And so on.

I see Christ as a reboot of the Jewish dogma back to the original teachings.

But that's not a largely-popular view, I know, and I had no expectation of you predicting that.

Re:Science Journalism

[Kittenman]

Zaphod ... he's just this guy, you know?

Re:Science Journalism

[miserere nobis]

Marcionism, named after Marcion, who lived in the Second Century and believed that the God described by the Hebrew Bible was mostly evil, and the newly revealed, forgiving God seen in Jesus was the true, highest God. It was regarded as heretical from very early on, so it had long since been cast out of the main body of the church and mostly died out before even the First Council at Nicea in 325. It was written against strongly by Tertullian around AD 200, so it must have still had some followers then. It is indeed kind of an interesting bit of Christian history.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard this was the Biggest Bang since the Trippe Breasted Whore of Eroticon-6. !!!!

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, Eve and Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were innocent before eating it, and then they learned about good, evil, and their responsibilities. They lost their child-like innocence. Make no mistake: it was the knowledge that caused our fall from grace. On the other hand, humans were caught in a catch-22. Eve was expected to know that it is good to do what God says and evil to do otherwise... Before she knew about good and bad.

Re:Science Journalism

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

Plus the unknown amount of time between Genesis1:1 and 1:2, which was likely massive.

Re:Science Journalism

[Archangel Michael]

That doesn't explain why YOU exist ;) It explains why the world exists as it is today.

And if you just are an accident of fate, then you serve no purpose, and if you serve no purpose, then you're expendable, and if you're expendable, then ...

You see the problem yet?

Re:Science Journalism

[HeronBlademaster]

It was not the knowledge itself that was evil, it was the choices they made that got them thrown out of Eden. You know, the same standard we're held to - we're accountable for our own choices.

You're mixing up consequences with culpability. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; they were then forced to live with the consequences (i.e. mortality and everything that goes with it). I do not believe the act of eating the fruit of the tree was itself a sin, though the act of disobeying God probably was.

Knowledge itself is not a sin - neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament tell us we should not pursue secular knowledge. Indeed, the scriptures are pretty clear that it is what we do with our knowledge that can lead to sin.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, +10 Funny for fuck's sake

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

Science cannot explain WHY we are here

Sorry to pick on you for just one statement - but I see this often and it is wrong. If through science we discover we have been created as part of an experiment by an alien race then we would have discovered WHY we are here (i.e. to be part of an alien experiment). If the truth is that we came by accident then science has discovered WHY we are here (i.e. no reason).

Re:Science Journalism

[Mr. Flibble]

Except it is not inconsistent with Jesus's teachings. It is only inconsistent with the view that the modern church wishes to convey. See: Luke 16:17 Where Jesus specifically mentions the old testament, (At the time of Jesus, the new testament did not exist!)

See Genesis 19:24-26, which is explictly mentioned by Jesus in Luke 17:32.

Jesus also approves of the beatings of slaves as found in Deut and Lev as shown in Luke: 12:47-48

The letters also agree with this view as seen in Timothy 3:16 and Peter 1:20-21.

Furthermore, Jesus is to return and kill everyone on earth with the exception of 144,000 virgin male jews. (See all of Revelations, and Rev 7:4)

I highly recommend you pursue a sort of "self seminary" sort of study on the bible, because you need to understand more of it and how it was written. You must understand that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew. Much of what is taught in church is inconsistent with the bible itself. However, most people don't acually take the time to do either seminary or "self seminary".

Re:Science Journalism

[jwhitener]

Unfortunately, then your religion just becomes a God of the Gaps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

As science explains more, God appears to have done less and less. It is much less problematic, from a logical standpoint, to attribute things to God that are not part of the observable universe (your soul/heaven/hell/morality, etc..).

Re:Science Journalism

[jwhitener]

I don't think that most people would consider catholics "religious fundamentalists".

Re:Science Journalism

[LordLimecat]

The word "most" gives the lie to your argument. Good luck convincing anyone that there has ever been a society with none of the issues commonly attributed to religion (or in finding a national leader who doesnt believe SOMETHING).

Re:Science Journalism

[Mr. Flibble]

Apparently, somehow, I replied to myself instead of you...

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on your translation of the Bible, the tree of knowledge of good and evil can be interpreted as of good and of evil, or (according to Wikipedia) as a merism, to be interpreted as "all knowledge". The same wikipedia page states that Jewish traditions (the people who wrote the Old Testament!) consider the tree itself to be evil as well as the serpent. Either way you look at it, Adam and Eve were cast out for acquiring knowledge against the wishes of God, hence original sin. It isn't a very difficult logical leap to make the allusion that knowledge = bad from the story.

Also, this God guy certainly is a huge prick for creating creatures able to succumb to temptation that don't know right from wrong and then punish them for doing something he could have simply prevented in the first place. Screw that guy!

Faulty logic. God not only created the apple ("knowledge of good and evil" - the possibility of choosing to turn away from God), he also provided Jesus (himself) as rescue from that choice. Atheists often like to shout the rhetoric of "how horrible it was to create the apple" forgetting about the salvation side. The apple and Jesus is logically the way we get to have free will but still come back into relationship with God.

You've also made a false leap in concluding that "knowledge is bad". There is a deliberate double meaning and self-fulfilling prophecy in the imagery -- this is quite common in the Old Testament. The apple is not actually described as evil, but the choice to eat it is the choice to turn away from God, and so "if you eat it you will surely die" is fulfilled. A very simple illustration that for humans, having the knowledge of good and evil means that we will inevitably at some stage make a choice to turn from God. Which itself implies the need for salvation, which thankfully God also provided.

You'd rather the apple was locked up so it couldn't be eaten and we couldn't fall. We got to eat the apple and still be rescued from the fall.

Re:Science Journalism

[sdiz]

It is driven by the hate of American, not primly religion.

Most of the Muslim never *think* about carry out a terrorist attack.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Most religious people have never committed a horrible act...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Crusades

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus also approves of the beatings of slaves as found in Deut and Lev as shown in Luke: 12:47-48

It seems you don't know what the word "like" means

"Be dressed for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master..." Luke 12:35, just before your out-of-context quotation

Despite it being explicitly stated that it's an analogy ("like ...") you want to treat it as if it is just encouraging human masters to beat human servants, because that's what is rhetorically useful to you.

However, most people don't actually take the time to do either seminary or "self seminary"

No, indeed it seems you didn't.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Tamil Tigers and the Shining Path would like to have a word with you.

Re:Science Journalism

[Archangel Michael]

You realize that you just made a religious statement of faith? ;)

Science has accepted as proven (Evolution), that it was by accident. They are just back filling the details. ;)

Any other theory is, fantasy and the realm of philosophy and religion and fiction. At least that is what Scientists keep telling me.

Re:Science Journalism

[Draek]

Ahh, yes, good old "anyone whose morals disagree with mine is a sociopath" fallacy, one of the most common forms of Ad Hominem in current use.

Always remember that your "inflict pain and suffering upon others" is another person's "overreacting over trivialities" and viceversa.

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

You realize that you just made a religious statement of faith? ;)

No - I suspect I don't realise it because I didn't. However I would appreciate it if you could explain your point of view.

Science has accepted as proven (Evolution), that it was by accident. They are just back filling the details. ;)

Science has accepted evolution as proven because it has been proven. They are filling in the details, yes, but in the same way as we know that gravity is true, despite the occasional revision of the details.

As for it being an accident there are a few aspects that are yet unresolved. First one is that the origin of life itself remains murky, second is that the question of the inevitability of higher consciousness emerging - both of which will impact that conclusion.

Any other theory is, fantasy and the realm of philosophy and religion and fiction. At least that is what Scientists keep telling me

A bunch of no good commies, I know - the only reason we keep them around is because they keep coming up with breakthroughs that save and improve our lives. It was a lot better before they got so uppity.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You built a straw-man there. Kamikaze bombers disprove your theory somewhat. I don't think anyone is honestly suggesting people want to commit an atrocious act & then proceed to create a list of excuses & pick one. Religion is only 1 mechanism (albeit very well understood) to program humans to do horrible acts. It's interesting that it enables a similar level of control as forcing children to rape & murder does (refer to the numerous child militias, esp Sierra Leone).

That being said, religion is a very powerful tool because such a large percentage of children are indoctrinated with it, thus leaders can leverage it far more efficiently & cost effectively than other methods (both from a PR perspective & in terms of how long & how effective the programming is). As such, it allows a very large level of control (although I believe in the west this power has been eroding, albeit more slowly in the USA).

For example, do you honestly believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about religion & would suddenly cease if everyone agreed that the religious claims are BS? No. It's a territorial conflict & religion is simply one way they motivate their base. How the nature of the conflict would change if religion was taken out of the question would be interesting to think about, but I doubt suicide bombers would stop. Remember - suicide attacks aren't a religious invention.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

Funnily enough, I just watched Sir David Attenborough explaining some scientific theories into just those things. There are some pretty logical things.

And why do you think there's actually an answer for why we're alive? Could it actually just be that conditions were right to allow single cells to form, thus starting the thing we call life? It's really not that much of a stretch.

What conditions? Here's the mathematical empty set: { }. Are the conditions right for a universe to appear within it yet? Presumably not, since it doesn't contain a rule for time or any conditions. Scientifically, we can extrapolate causality backwards to find out how the universe grew, but as the empty set contains no rules to cause anything, we can only empirically examine a non-empty set -- we can never extrapolate back to the empty set. Accordingly, it is impossible scientifically to answer the question "why is there a universe at all -- why isn't the set empty", and the question of why we exist remains a philosophical one and not a scientific one.

Re:Science Journalism

[TapeCutter]

Excellent post!

"Their religious leaders tell them that this injustice is the fault of people outside of their social group"

Take away the religious window dressing and it all boils down to the tribal instinct found in all humans. I would go as far as saying that now we have come to dominate our environment our tribal instincts have become the main evolutionary pressure on our species. Best we can hope for is that the common man learns to recognise when these instincts are being manipulated by priest and politicians but that is much easier said than done.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

Science cannot explain WHY we are here

Sorry to pick on you for just one statement - but I see this often and it is wrong. If through science we discover we have been created as part of an experiment by an alien race then we would have discovered WHY we are here (i.e. to be part of an alien experiment). If the truth is that we came by accident then science has discovered WHY we are here (i.e. no reason).

You are mis-interpreting the "we" in his question as being a narrow set of people. To illustrate the point, I'll narrow the "we" even further. In terms of you and I, we can already explain WHY we are here: because our mummies and our daddies liked each other very much ...

I usually suggest phrasing the question differently to make it a little more precise. Here is the mathematical empty set { }. It is perfectly self-consistent and is a steady-state declaration (it cannot change). However, clearly we are in a non-empty set. Why does any non-empty set (a universe) exist at all for us to be able to say "even if I am mistaken, I am" within it? Why is this non-empty set more than just an abstract mathematical concept but has the unique quality of actually existing (as continuously empirically proven by your own first-hand observation of existing within it).

Re:Science Journalism

[TapeCutter]

To be fair the OP specified "suicide" terroist, and it would seem to me a belief in the after life is pretty much a prerequisite for that level of sacrafice to a cause. Before anyone brings up kamakazi pilots remeber that the emporer WAS a god in the eyes of his subjects.

Re:Science Journalism

[Draek]

Ahh, yes. I wonder, then, which religion drove these guys to conduct such a suicidal and strategically-meaningless attack? Particularly telling is that if you replace "Japanese" with "Americans" in Doolittle's justification for the raid you'd get almost a word-for-word match with Osama's stated reasoning for the Sept. 11 attack.

Far more people have died trying to make their comrades' deaths be "worth something" (in spite of them being, y'know, dead already and so beyond caring) than those trying to get their own personal harem in the afterlife. Problem is, most of us know we'd be susceptible to such an ideology given the right conditions, so we're not as ready to accept its idiocy and meaninglessness as we are with dumb, "evil" religion. After all, "they are idiots" is a lot easier to say than "we are idiots".

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

God was less than amused and banished humanity from paradise, guarded the doors against future entry with angels wielding flaming swords, etc

...and came himself to ensure that we did re-enter paradise after pursuing that path.

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

You are mis-interpreting the "we" in his question as being a narrow set of people.

Given his reply I would suggest that my interpretation has been vindicated. In any case you are asking for an actual answer as opposed to the GP who was debating the impossibility of a WHY answer from science - things that are quite different.

I usually suggest phrasing the question differently to make it a little more precise. Here is the mathematical empty set { }. It is perfectly self-consistent .... [eh lets cut down on the verbosity]

Since you are a fan of philosophy and logic - why should there be nothing as opposed to something? Why is nothing the default state? Why is nothing a stable state? I would say these are major assumptions that are built into our thinking based on our experience on earth - but are they applicable elsewhere?

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

So according to the fundamentalists, when we observe something that doesn't conform to what we expected to see, or we have to rewrite a substantial section of our understanding of physics, that's just God, retconning his pre-observed backhistory!

We need a better red-shirt guy at Astrophysicscon.

"In the movie Avatar, clearly the oldest person is in her 50s, so therefore Avatar is at least 50 years old. And if you claim that someone called James Cameron only wrote it a few years ago, clearly you are a creationist moron. The empirical evidence in the movie is that it is at least 50 years old..." As soon as there is an external creator, the assumption that the actual age (age to the creator) and apparent age (age to the created) must line up becomes unnecessary.

Re:Science Journalism

[complete loony]

... refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old

All proofs of such a nature depend on a number of assumptions, which in turn are based on the results of other experiments. For example a "proof" like say "this rock is X million years old" might depend on some of the following; "the ratio of carbon 12 to 14 in the atmosphere has always been Y%", "carbon 14 has always decayed at rate Z". Do we have enough data to be certain about all those assumptions? Do we even understand what all of those assumptions are?

All we really know about in detail are the environments we've been able to reproduce here on earth, or guesses based on the recent history of observations of distant objects.

A student of scientific history will tell you that we have repeatedly barked up the wrong tree. Our history is littered with research based on incorrect assumptions that we have discarded when further information has come to hand, sometimes only when the previous generation retired.

I guess I'm still rather pessimistic that we know enough to say we can really prove that a rock is X million years old, that the universe is Y billion light years across. Is there really any dark matter? Or are our assumptions in deriving solutions to general relativity inaccurate?

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

[eh lets cut down on the verbosity]

Unfortunately in doing so, you cut the relevant rephrasing of the GGP's original (rhetorical) question:

Why does any non-empty set (a universe) exist at all for us to be able to say "even if I am mistaken, I am" within it? Why is this non-empty set more than just an abstract mathematical concept but has the unique quality of actually existing (as continuously empirically proven by your own first-hand observation of existing within it).

But to answer the other parts:

{ } is a stable state because it is a static declaration. It contains no rules that can change it, nor any axis for it to change on.

{ } is the "default" (comparison) state because we are considering why any universe exists; { } is no universe existing.

Re:Science Journalism

[wierd_w]

You guys are discounting "Suicide war heros."

EG, the guy who "Gives his all"-- the much celebrated epitome of wartime valor. (You know, the guy who walks up to the bomb he placed under the enemy bridge, and manually detonates it to halt enemy advance, after the remote detonator fails.)

"belief in an afterlife" is simply a subset of the actual requirement-- Belief that the sacrifice will result in a better tomorrow. The war hero blowing up the bridge might feel that his life is inconsequential compared to the ones he will save through halting enemy advance, etc.

It is quite possible that many of the "Islamic terrorists" are in no way "religiously" motivated; Many might honestly believe that the US's continued activities on the world stage threatens lives, and will lead to a darker future; as such, they kill themselves to buy a better tomorrow, for purely secular reasons, even if they themselves will not profit from the exchange.

"religious faith in an afterlife" is simply a cheap, and effective means of evoking this "quality" in a fighting force. That quality can be instilled any number of other ways.

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

Unfortunately in doing so, you cut the relevant rephrasing of the GGP's original (rhetorical) question:

I cut out the mathematical nonsense as it doesn't really belong in this discussion. In this case the empty set would represent a universe that exists but is otherwise empty, i.e. something, not nothing. Its mathematical qualities are curiosities that dont necessarily relate to any real world issues (is the product of nothing 1?) and as such it only serves to confuse an already confusing topic.

{ } is a stable state because it is a static declaration. It contains no rules that can change it, nor any axis for it to change on.

What is this even supposed to mean? That you cannot perform any mathematical operations on an empty set? Nonsense.

{ } is the "default" (comparison) state because we are considering why any universe exists; { } is no universe existing.

All you have done is restated the point: "Its the default because we are considering why any universe exists". Well to repeat - as a interesting exercise, consider why nothing should exist instead. If you cannot think of any good reasons then why would you expect one but not the other?

Re:Science Journalism

[TapeCutter]

War hero's are in a entirely different situation where they have a choice of dying, or dying and perhaps saving some of their mates. It's a spur of the moment choice when all looks lost. Suicide bombers and kamakaizi pilots make a concious choice to die before they get anywhere near a "battlefield".

""religious faith in an afterlife" is simply a cheap, and effective means of evoking this "quality" in a fighting force. That quality can be instilled any number of other ways."

Agreed but it's difficult to come up with any concrete examples.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, the main problem is grouping extremist people. Stereotyping is pretty standard until you make part of the bunch. When an American does something, he's not a citizen from the US alone, he must be cataloged on a religious group, or a political belief, etc. It's so easy for you to come up with these conclusions, perhaps because you're just an average person that cannot be cataloged into a particular group.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Most religious people have never commited a horrible act... I think this alone refutes your premise.

You were obviously never an altar boy.

Re:Science Journalism

[Stihdjia]

In Louisiana we have billboards denying evolution.

Re:Science Journalism

[lonecrow]

Agreed religious people are no more violent then any other flavor of Utopians. Utopians are most often involved in mass violence. It doesn't matter if the Utopian is religious, nationalistic, Ethnic or Corporatist. Anyone who believes in some sort of final perfect state of affairs in the future will commit horrendous acts in the present with a rock solid belief in their promised land as a perfect justification.

The fact that many (but not all) religions involve some sort of kingdom of heaven, means that they are thick with Utopians and the ensuing violence.

I train my kids to spot Utopians and also how to recognize dehumanizing language. Dehumanizing language is tricky, it can be very stealthy sometimes.

Re:Science Journalism

[uninformedLuddite]

If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

So how does the above comment get modded +5 Insightful? Just the snippet above should have had it modded to the bit bucket as typical anti-religious bullshit. The Tamil Tigers pioneered the suicide vest in a nationalist struggle. A lot of nationalist suicide attacks are painted as religious extremism as western opinion is easily manipulated this way.
And No I do not have a belief in any particular deity/deities at all.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

Sorry to hear you are confused. I'm disappointed though that you take the false logic of "if I am confused it must be wrong or does not belong in this discussion". I'll try rephrasing it for you one last time.

If your question is "why X" then you are implying "why X rather than !X". Now remember, we are creating a more precise version of the original question, not answering it yet. The question we're looking at, often asked by many people, was "why a universe exists" -- implying "why a universe rather than no universe". ie, "why a universe, rather than {}".

Just saying "yeah, but why {}" is not an answer to the question, but merely a claim that you shouldn't ask that question. But your assertion was that the question could be answered, not just that you can rationalise not asking it.

Re:Science Journalism

[wierd_w]

Your interpretation conveniently overlooks some more subtle aspects of the fiction;

1) From the main thesis of the narrative, "God is all knowing, and all powerful"

Thus, your interpretation boils down to "God is a prick, because he created beings knowing full well that they would succumb, and that he would have to punish them."

However, that same narrative could be seen not as punishment, but as natural consequences:

God created faulty beings, so that they could become more perfect beings, which is an unavoidably painful process; The consequence of knowledge is accountability.

Thus, God created man, and the garden-- Yes. He also created the tree, AND the serpent, FOR man.

Mankind's current suffering is the necessary process to transform man into an accountable being, who is able to properly use his knowledge. The knowledge is not explicitly evil; It allows evil to exist, and forces mankind to deal with the consequences of that evil. Put bluntly, it forces mankind to recognize that doing evil things is not in anyone's best ineterst, and forces him to recognize what is and is not evil.

It is the same kind of lesson that a parent gives a teenager when they go to college-- They give them money, and allow them to spend it; then suffer the consequences when/if that money is misused-- Only taken to a crazy cosmic extreme;

The reason for this extreme lesson plan, is because the ultimate plan for mankind is to "become like God" ("We shall know him, for we shall be like him", et al)-- It would be horrifically irresponsible for God to NOT take the extreme, harsh, and brutally honest tact with mankind.

Which do you find better-- A god that brutally instructs "pre-gods" about the consequences of evil, to instill in them a natural aversion to it-- or one that simply swoops in like a hellicopter parent when their rotten progeny abuses it's power for its own amusement?

God does not find mankind's suffering even the slightest bit "amusing"-- The bible is quite explicit in numberous locations that God greatly lament's mankind's plight; But having perfect knowlege and foresight, has no choice but to accept that such suffering is what is needed to ensure the very best outcome for his "children."

When you analyze the narrative and remove the rhetorical spin added by religious officials, you realize that the bible never once describes the dogmatic "hell". Instead, you find that the punishment for "complete failure to accept the consequences of your actions, and change accordingly" (aka, willful sin) is "being unmade"/"Eternal death"-- Not eternal suffering.

The bible alludes to this process in many allegorical ways, the most prominent of which is the smelting of silver from dirty ore, in the raging fires of the oven, and as the often abused proverb "spare the rod, spoil the child", which stems from an old testiment assertion that God punishes mankind because he loves it, (and wants it to learn not to do evil things), and that likewise parents should apply stern punishment to their children, to ensure that they grow up to live good, just, and profitable lives.

When taken all together, it is not so much "God is a prick for setting us up to fail", so much as it is "God is a super-genius for setting us up to fall, so that we can learn to fly."

The assertion that "God kicked us out of paradise", is like a baby eaglet saying its mother is a heartless bitch for kicking it out of the safe warm nest, and doubly so for having raised it in that nest, knowing full well it would have to kick it out-- It totally discounts that being kicked out of the nest is necessary for it to grow into a mighty eagle itself; and that ultimately the chick will either learn to fly on the way down, or will die when it hits the bottom as a natural consequence. "Sadistic cruelty" never once enters the equasion, Same with God, and the "wages of Sin."

At least, that is what the Biblical Narrative says, if you actually read it.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

An aside -- I can use your post to illustrate the teleological argument, which a lot of theists allude to:

What is this even supposed to mean? That you cannot perform any mathematical operations on an empty set? Nonsense.

So, in your post we have three pertinent nouns: the empty set {}, "you", and mathematical operations. Let's pose this question: are the "you" and "mathematical operations" nouns within the universe? If so, your starting point for your prototypical universe is not { }, but at least

{ you, mathematical operations }

and you have not found ultimate cause -- the universe has something in it already that we cannot just back-trace through cause and effect -- some minimal set of operations is required to have already been there to bootstrap the process. If not, and your hypothesis is

{ } , you, mathematical operations

then you have just subscribed to mysticism and we might as well write

{ }, God, divine creation

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

Sorry to hear you are confused. I'm disappointed though that you take the false logic of "if I am confused it must be wrong or does not belong in this discussion". I'll try rephrasing it for you one last time.

And I'm disappointed that you let your ego get the best of you, in addition to not actually addressing my point.

If your question is "why X" then you are implying "why X rather than !X" ... "why a universe exists" -- implying "why a universe rather than no universe". ie, "why a universe, rather than {}"

This is what I am talking about. Your explanation using logic only serves to confuse the issue. In that example if X is the universe then !X is not "no universe" - but all possible universes except that configuration. And as I already explained the empty set {} would be an empty universe not no universe. Either use these symbols properly, or just use normal English.

Just saying "yeah, but why {}" is not an answer to the question, but merely a claim that you shouldn't ask that question.

The point was to suggest that there may very well be nothing special about nothingness for it to be expected. Showing that a question is meaningless is an answer to the question (not that I am suggesting I have conclusively done so - in this case the point was that both are at this time equally enigmatic).

But your assertion was that the question could be answered, not just that you can rationalise not asking it.

My assertion was that discovering the causation of the event (i.e. how it occurs) - the "scientific" part gives us the why - the "philosophical/metaphysical" part. That is that we can extract the why from the how. None of this nonsense you have written up to now has even addressed this point.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiosity, at what point do you draw the line? Because I only know one person who describes herself as a 'christian fundamentalist' and she refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old. When I explained to her that simply refusing that fact throws out almost our entire understanding of the universe around us, from the distance of the stars to why the atom's we're composed of don't just fall apart, her response was akin to sticking one's fingers in their ears and screaming "i can't hear you" over and over again.

She didn't think that she was anti-science, she just thought that she could cherry pick facts from the bible and set up special cases in which the physical laws of nature no longer apply.

I think they believe fossils were put here by god to test their faith.

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

Let's pose this question: are the "you" and "mathematical operations" nouns within the universe?

These are massive assumptions that you make here - I dont think you can really justify them. Why should "you" (by which I take you mean agency given your later conversion to god) be required for anything. As for mathematical operations - we use them as a self-consistent way of observing/describing the world. The universe is no more using mathematical operations then you are using addition when you put two apples together.

then you have just subscribed to mysticism and we might as well write: { }, God, divine creation

Or we could not, and as a bonus, keep our rigour.

Re:Science Journalism

[ooshna]

You don't seem to understand that the people in charge may know that the horrible acts (wars, crusades, suicide bombings, witch trials) are for power or political purposes that's not what their followers believe. They make big campaigns using propaganda against their own people twisting their faith. The followers, the people that actually committed the acts do it out of faith believing it would bring them and their cause closer to their god.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he may have meant that humans without a kind of involuntary empathy are dangerous. When your brain inflicts on you pain you see in others, it discourages intra-social violence. This is an adaptation which allowed us to develop large productive social groups. It is a favorable trait.

What he meant by "sociopath" is a human with some broken wiring, one who is incapable of understanding pain in others.

You may think that soldiers would be a counter-example, but it's not one that stands up to scrutiny. Killing is traumatic even to them.

Humans without empathy, "sociopaths", are rare but ruinous to a group.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

as opposed to a regular hyperbole?

Re:Science Journalism

[Alsee]

science is all well and good in my book, to a point. And by to a point, I mean "this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

You haven't stated your position on anything specific, however in my experience what you said is the standard line of fundamentalist science-denialists. Of course no one ever considers themselves to be anti-science. The way it always works is that any science which does not fit with the fundamentalism gets mentally redefined as "not real science" and "not proven" and a dogmatic presumption that valid evidence *can't* exist.

Accepted mainstream science doesn't become accepted mainstream science unless overwhelming evidence *does* exist to establish it beyond any reasonable doubt.

Threads of support and confirmation run back and forth tying each field of science to countless other fields. When they are faced with threads of supporting evidence that come in from chemistry and physics and pretty much every other field of science, the fundamentalist gets dragged into denialism of each field. Attempting to reject some unwanted part of science very quickly drags them into a war against all of science.

If you were talking about things like string theory you wouldn't have needed to bother commenting about "up to a point" and "what we've been able to prove thus far".

If you were talking about something like the age of the earth or evolution then at best you are simply unfamiliar with the evidence that *does* exist and you'll change your mind upon seeing it, or else you'll get dragged down the total anti-science road trying to reject all of that evidence.

-

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

So your premise is that religion causes people to commit horrible acts? Is it not just possible that humans commit horrible acts all on their own and some merely use religion to justify their actions?

Of course they do. But a number of organized religions include the following precepts

• You must believe the "truth" of the religious principles without proof (and even when evidence seems to counter those principles)
• Other beliefs/variations are wrong and their adherents must be converted (by good works or proselytizing if you're lucky, by the sword if not)
• A hierarchical structure interprets and disseminates the core of the religion
• The hierarchy is absolute and cannot be questioned

When that hierarchy is taken over by self-interested con men, those combinations make it pretty easy to manipulate the religion and its followers into committing atrocities. Even if you ignore the old maxim that power corrupts, just the authoritarian hierarchical structure will make it a target for infiltration and manipulation by self-interested ruthless people.

Let's face it. Humans have always and will continue to commit horrible acts and they will try to rationalize some justification for it, be it religion, or politics, or scientific advancement... If you believe that religion causes people to do bad things, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

Guns also don't kill people, but they do make it a lot easier to kill someone than if you just have bare hands. So the question is do the upsides of religion (for instance the lessening of stress from awareness of one's mortality, or encouragement of altruistic behaviour) outweigh the downsides of a manipulable absolute hierarchy? A few thousand years ago when mankind was struggling to get past the inherent limits of tribal systems, the answer to that question was certainly yes. At that time, the absolute hierarchy was actually an advantage in terms of scaling of organizational structure over the alternative (the individual personal relationships in a tribe) and the efficiencies gained from that hierarchy more than made up the occasional losses required to overthrow it when it became corrupt. Nowadays though, we've evolved alternate secular institutions capable of providing most of the same benefits, but the destructive capabilities of individual humans have gone up a quite a few orders of magnitude (making the damage possible by a corrupted hierarchy, and the damage required to overthrow such a corrupted hierarchy, prohibitive), the answer seems to be a pretty definite no.

This is of course why those who head up fundamentalist religions tend to be pretty strongly against secular institutions like socialized medicine, since it weakens one of their major proselytizing options.

Re:Science Journalism

[IICV]

If they believe that they're idiots, I mean one of the first things God said to Adam and Eve was "if you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge you will surely die".

They didn't die, he's a liar. Christians try to wiggle out of this one by claiming some sort of spiritual "death" happened, but that's bullshit - if you can have kids and become the progenitors of the entire goddamn (literally! hah!) human race, you're just not fucking dead.

(Also they didn't exist in the first place, which makes the whole question of original sin kinda nonsensical - I mean, did Jesus die for a metaphor? - but that's entirely besides the point)

Re:Science Journalism

[pacinpm]

God made the universe 6000 years ago as if it were made much longer ago.

That contradicts the idea that God does not deceive, which most Christians believe.

He tricked a guy to (almost) kill his son, isn't he?

Re:Science Journalism

[Paradise Pete]

God made the universe 6000 years ago as if it were made much longer ago.

If you accept that then you also accept that it is logically impossible to contradict any aspect of any omnipotence-based religion.

Re:Science Journalism

[Alsee]

Has the falling of the towers made Islam stronger, or weaker, or was there no change?

The final outcome is not completely clear, but that's irrelevant. Intent is the defining characteristic. Trying and failing at a religious agenda does not remove the religious nature.

To say that 9/11 was a religious attack, rather than a political one, you'd need to demonstrate how that religion sought to further it's ends through the attack.

I believe that "know thy enemy" is extremely important. Understanding the enemy's motivation and reasoning is invaluable in predicting and defeating the enemy. Unfortunately the media has presented very on the subject.

The ultimate purpose of 9/11 was indeed religious.

Bin Laden's ultimate goal was to unite the Arab world under a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. There is a very political aspect to that, but that political aspect is strictly in service to religion.

You are probably wondering how the heck 9/11 is supposed to relate to that ultimate goal. Fundamentalists had been attempting to overthrow the various Arab governments and always failing. Like all good theocratic-wannabees they reason that God is on their side and therefore they cannot lose. When their attempts at revolution always fail they of course conclude that Satan or some embodiment of Evil Itself at war against God thwarted their Righteous Mission. The US had been giving aid to many of those governments, and they concluded that the US was the only reason their quest for revolution always failed. The US was the "Great Satan" thwarting God's holy Islamic Kingdom.

Now we come to strategy. Bin Laden wanted to rally up the Arabic population to overthrow all Arabic governments. Bin Laden had been looking at the Palestinian situation. The strategy he saw was attacks on Israel for the explicit purpose of PROVOKING a larger Israeli counter attack, specifically so that the counter attack will enrage moderate Palestinians into joining the radical movement.

The purpose of the 9/11 attack was specifically to provoke the US into an over reaction stomping around in the Arabic world like a bull in a china shop. The intent was to provoke the general Arab population into action, to provoke them to take up arms and join the fight. Bin Laden's experience was that the Afghani population *could* and *did* drive out the Russian Army and follow through to impose the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's expectation was that the Arab population would rise up, unite, drive out the US invaders, and then follow through by overthrowing all Arab nations and uniting the entire Arab world under a single Taliban-type theocracy.

9/11 was so appalling that moderate Muslims generally had a neutral or even positive opinion when the US went into Afghanistan. The US had the role of the "good guys" and the terrorists were cast as the villains. People weren't buying the line that the US was "waging a war on Islam" or "waging a war on Arabs". The US only went into Afghanistan, and people knew what our target was. Al-Queda was on the verge of being obliterated because moderate Muslims had turned against them. Local police across the globe were hunting Al-Queda, even the Muslim general public were turning them in, and they were not getting many new recruits. Al-Queda was TOAST. The War On Terror was all-but-over. Terrorism would have been globally discredited.

And then we went into Iraq. We did exactly what Bin Laden wanted us to do. Iraq revived Bin Laden's plan. The US was invading multiple Arab nations, and this time we weren't attacked. Claims that the US was "waging a war on Islam" or "waging a war on Arabs" gained widespread acceptance. Al-Queda was FLOODED with new recruits. The Muslim population became far more sympathetic to harboring them, and many police forces contained sympathizers largely neutralizing policing efforts.

Bin Laden didn't get his united Arab uprising, but Iraq did make Al-Queda far bigger and far more powerful than it had been before 9/11.

Oh, and back to the original point the ultimate intent was a Unified Holy Islamic Empire. To the extent that is political it is politics in service of religion.

-

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

Your explanation using logic only serves to confuse the issue. In that example if X is the universe then !X is not "no universe" - but all possible universes except that configuration.

No, "if X is a universe". The opposite of "I am" is "I am not", not "I am very slightly different than I happen to be".

My assertion was that discovering the causation of the event (i.e. how it occurs) - the "scientific" part gives us the why - the "philosophical/metaphysical" part.

See the other post -- there is a theoretical limit to back-tracing causality. Hence why it answers small why "why do I have two arms and legs" but not big why "why does anything exist at all".

Re:Science Journalism

[g253]

Religion makes it a virtue to believe without proof. That greatly facilitates evil, imho.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

These are massive assumptions that you make here - I dont think you can really justify them. Why should "you" (by which I take you mean agency given your later conversion to god) be required for anything.

Read it again. What do I mean by "you"? It was your word "you". I am illustrating a point you just don't seem to grasp by showing it in your very own sentences and argument. (Relabelling your own "you" as god was a bit of rhetorical ramming the problem home to you.)

As for mathematical operations - we use them as a self-consistent way of observing/describing the world. The universe is no more using mathematical operations then you are using addition when you put two apples together.

The mathematical operations are part of the mathematical description of the universe. Whether the universe "really" is "using" them is neither here nor there -- as scientists we only have mathematical descriptions of observations to work with and the philosophical question of whether it's "really" using those operations is out of scope -- we only care that the maths fits the observations. The mathematical description is the scientific universe (whether or not it is the "real" universe). Which brings us back to the point that the mathematical description provably cannot describe a universe that self-boots from the empty set of "no data and no operations", which is a bit of a pain if we wish to assert (as you did) that we can eventually describe all the "whys" of the universe using science (and hence mathematical descriptions) alone, with no initial conditions (to ask an unanswerable why about) and no external operations (that would be mysticism).

Re:Science Journalism

[vertinox]

Someone once used a car to kill someone.

I don't think anyone has used a car to kill just about everything that moves in a city.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that being a catholic priest does not necessarily equal also being a religious fundamentalist, right?

No, of course you don't realize that. If you did, you wouldn't have written what you wrote, now would you?

Meh.

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

Read it again. What do I mean by "you"? It was your word "you". I am illustrating a point you just don't seem to grasp by showing it in your very own sentences and argument. (Relabelling your own "you" as god was a bit of rhetorical ramming the problem home to you.)

If it isn't agency then indeed I haven't. Perhaps you could explain it.

as scientists we only have mathematical descriptions of observations to work with

No we have observations which we sometimes choose to quantify / theories that we use maths to power(for instance the theory of evolution is typically expressed without mathematics)... we also do qualitative measurement too... not to mention that should there be a more fitting way of observing and recording the universe then we would use that.

Which brings us back to the point that the mathematical description provably cannot describe a universe that self-boots from the empty set of "no data and no operations"

It would also prove that either our universe doesn't start that way or that there exists another way of describing the universe which would in turn open up said start to science and allow us to get at the why.

Re:Science Journalism

[Evtim]

Have you ever read the interpretation of the Fall by Daniel Quinn, the author of "Ishmael"?

I find his idea the most reasonable and plausible one I have ever heard.

His speculation is that the story of the Fall was not created by "civilized" people, but by their hunter-gatherer neighbors (later it was incorporated into our mythology) in an attempt to explain the seemingly illogical behavior that the civilized exhibited, namely – “Our way is the right way to live! Everything that eats our food must die! Everything that eats the food of our food must die! Everyone who is not like us must be converted or die!”

I hope the above statements do not need elaboration – the process of conversion and/or extermination is now finally coming to a closure – all indigenous people are either “civilized” or dead! I am not counting a few thousand “savages” scattered around – now we try to preserve them (at least up to the point when we find resources on their land – check the mass suicides of “savages” in Brazil in the 90-ies).

Those gatherers saw the benefits of our system – growth and power.
They also saw some of the drawbacks – lots of work (relative to their lifestyle), just to stay alive.
They also reasoned about our motives and decided that those strange people have acquired a special knowledge – the knowledge of who lives and who dies (good and evil). This knowledge is for the gods only because what is good for one is evil for another, thus only the gods have sufficient wisdom to decide.

Thus, Adam (meaning “man”, not “male”), seduced by Eve (meaning “life”, i.e. growth) ate the fruit and acquired the knowledge of good and evil (who lives and who dies). For that he was banished and punished to sweat all his life (manufacture food with lots of work, rather than just take the food that grows around) and he was cursed to suffer and eventually, die (basic stuff – everything that grows without limit, dies).

Quinn claims that if the legend of the Fall was created by civilized people, the knowledge of good and evil would be a gift from god, not a curse! Because, after all, it is because of this knowledge that we were able to build the whole civilization and that is praiseworthy, no? This knowledge is our greatest power; it is not a curse, it's a blessing! Of course man's destiny is to be civilization builder, right?

Re:Science Journalism

[Tim C]

if God hadn't wanted us to eventually select it for ourselves, there would have been no apple

That's addressed in Paradise Lost. The gist of the idea is that God wanted us to love and obey Him because we wanted to, not because He made us that way - thus, we had to have free will, including the will to disobey.

Re:Science Journalism

[Mr. Flibble]

Try reading it in the greek, you will find the translation is substantially different than your interpretation.

Re:Science Journalism

[BubbaDave]

So?

Dave

Re:Science Journalism

[damien_kane]

You've never heard of a Prius? :p

GP's statement still stands;
Neither the car nor the manufacturer claim themselves the savior of mankind.

In the case of the prius, each and every smug self-indulgent owner refers to themselves as the saviors of mankind, raising themselves above the owners of all other cars.
Just watch the southpark episode; it'll spell it out for you quite clearly.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue the obvious LHC jokes...

Yeah...Guys who call themselves something akin to "Large Hardon Collider" really don't amount to much with ladies.

Re:Science Journalism

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Ahh, yes, good old "anyone whose morals disagree with mine is a sociopath" fallacy, one of the most common forms of Ad Hominem in current use.

First, that's not an ad hominem attack. Please people, if you're going to try to use classical rhetorical references, read a book first.

Second, If you decide to experiment on prisoners and murder people who have never harmed you, you are fitting into the textbook definition of "sociopath". Most people feel empathy for fellow human beings, picture themselves in the place of others, recognize the emotions of pain and fear and have a built in aversion to them. If your only reason for not murdering people is religion, you have a mental illness and should seek help.

Always remember that your "inflict pain and suffering upon others" is another person's "overreacting over trivialities" and viceversa.

"Vice versa" is two words and your comment doesn't make any sense. Who thinks experimenting on prisoners is "overreacting over trivialities" and what makes you think that person is not mentally ill?

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

When you read all this you see how looney religious people are. Obviously that the low probability of that doesn't matter just because you are afraid to die.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I simplified it on purpose. You clearly agree with me that having faith in things we can't or won't or don't personally prove is an integral part of life. That's all I was saying.

I'm not sure why you're quibbling about what exactly we have faith in, since that's largely beside the point.

There's a rather large difference in accepting something that has been tested repeatedly and shown to be sound, even if we didn't do the testing personally, and something that can't be tested.

Re:Science Journalism

[Danse]

I am a fundamentalist and to date I have never seen "finished" science conflict with the Bible.

There's a term I'm not familiar with. Could you define "finished science" for us please?

Re:Science Journalism

[steelfood]

When someone's used to cherry picking their "knowledge" anyway, they tend to do it for everything.

I'm not implying that science is some kind of religion, but the last mile of all knowledge, including that which is created or discovered by empiricism is for the individual to believe, trust, or accept the conclusions that the empirical results imply. That last mile between sensory input and brain is where the cherry picking happens, and is also where people who are already used to cherry picking which ideas to acknowledge and which to discard fail.

I am implying that religious practitioners, fundamentalists or otherwise, cherry pick from their source material what they decide to believe and follow. While most other people pick and choose their knowledge, they don't pick information based on convenience in the way that religious practitioners do.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew someone like this once. I pointed out to him that there are trees on this planet that are over 9000 years old. Still alive trees. You can count the rings, I told him. He still didn't believe me.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't attacking religion, they were attacking because of their religion - which is the point.

Re:Science Journalism

[riverat1]

... Can't say I've met / heard of any anti-science loons who are not religious fundamentalists.

Until the subject is anthropogenic climate change where you have lots of economic fundamentalists denying the science.

Re:Science Journalism

[JAlexoi]

Yeah... Humour! I am still laughing about the great "joke" the top financial institution CEO's played, that led to the financial crisis... They weren't deceiving, but merely have a *great* sense of humour....
Most of us are still laughing....

Re:Science Journalism

[oliverthered]

"this is what we've been able to prove thus far".

What that's it's all just theories?

Re:Science Journalism

[steelfood]

Copernicus was a priest (or close to one).

Most of the major renaissance and post-renaissance western thinkers were theologists. Descartes came up with "cogito ergo sum" trying to prove the existence of God. Only in modern times did thinking become the providence of the secular.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

If it isn't agency then indeed I haven't. Perhaps you could explain it.

That post, as I mentioned, was an aside illustrating a very old and well known argument. (Though rather stupidly I typed the wrong name in -- it's the cosmological argument not the teleological argument.) We were discussing how an empty set could become non-empty, and you said (paraphrased) "of course you can apply operations on the empty set". To illustrate this old argument, I pointed out that in that sentence you've used nouns that aren't in the set: in this sentence the two nouns "you" and "operations". Leaving aside agency (another debate), it's an illustration that even in the way you speak about the problem, there is still an ultimate cause for the set becoming non-empty, just sometimes you place it outside the set. The cosmological argument is that if you keep back-tracing causes, and the chain is not infinite, then eventually you reach something that has no cause -- in which case you can't answer "why" on it. Either it's turtles all the way down, or there's some initial uncaused condition. (Traditionally, in the cosmological argument, you then label the initial uncaused condition "god" but that brings up a separate debate about agency -- whether that "ultimate cause" had deliberate intent.)

No we have observations which we sometimes choose to quantify / theories that we use maths to power(for instance the theory of evolution is typically expressed without mathematics)... we also do qualitative measurement too... not to mention that should there be a more fitting way of observing and recording the universe then we would use that.

I understand what you're tying to say, but I think you are wrong. Science really is about proposing and testing theory, rather than just observation for its own sake. Observations are a contribution to science because they give us more data to propose and test theories on. Similarly, mathematics is rather wider than you suggest -- qualitative measurements are still mathematical, even if not written down in a formal notation. Although the theory of evolution is usually described in words rather than mathematical notation, it still relies on underlying mathematical premises, and would be considered unscientific if it were mathematically proven false. For example, consider natural selection (that in a sufficiently large population over a sufficient length of time, the population of a gene will almost certainly increase if its presence improves the probability of the individual it resides within reproducing). That might be expressed in words, but fundamentally it is a claim on probability and statistics. If the laws of probability proved it false (they don't!) then it would have been thrown out.

Re:Science Journalism

[Draek]

First, that's not an ad hominem attack. Please people, if you're going to try to use classical rhetorical references, read a book first.

Ahh, yes, because nobody would ever think being called a "sociopath" would be an insult.

Second, If you decide to experiment on prisoners and murder people who have never harmed you, you are fitting into the textbook definition of "sociopath". Most people feel empathy for fellow human beings, picture themselves in the place of others, recognize the emotions of pain and fear and have a built in aversion to them. If your only reason for not murdering people is religion, you have a mental illness and should seek help.

Murder is simply far too extreme a case. Try something milder, then: would you call a guy who hits his best friend for sleeping with his girlfriend a sociopath? he is, after all, intentionally causing pain and suffering onto somebody else, yet I believe most people would consider it an understandable action even if they wouldn't do it themselves.

"Vice versa" is two words and your comment doesn't make any sense. Who thinks experimenting on prisoners is "overreacting over trivialities" and what makes you think that person is not mentally ill?

Again with the borderline cases. But hey, anything as long as it keeps the religion hate going, right?

Morality is inherently subjective, and the GGP's point on religion providing a 'baseline standard' of sorts for many people is spot-on, even if the examples he picked weren't the best. Stop making wild generalizations just because you love to hate on religion, you give the rest of us atheists a bad name.

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

The cosmological argument is that if you keep back-tracing causes, and the chain is not infinite, then eventually you reach something that has no cause -- in which case you can't answer "why" on it

Wouldn't the why then be that it has no cause and hence its without a point? Imagine this actually being the case. Say that we have discovered that X pops into existance without prior cause. We observe / deduce that it has no prior cause and hence the why is "without a reason".

However logically we wouldn't expect this to be the case - as if X pops into existance without a cause - then one would expect X to pop into existance at an infinite rate (as without a cause would also imply that there is nothing stopping it). And if the presence of X prevents further X's from appearing then the cause of X's appearance can be stated as the absence of X.

Similarly, mathematics is rather wider than you suggest -- qualitative measurements are still mathematical, even if not written down in a formal notation...

Doesn't the incompleteness theorem contradict the notion of mathematics as a fundamental part of the universe and suggest that it is indeed just a self-consistent system for categorising and understanding the world? (and I admit here that its pushing my understanding of the issues involved)

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

Wouldn't the why then be that it has no cause and hence its without a point?

I do believe you just said the equivalent of "It just is, stop asking irritating questions"... If an ultimate first cause were identified and proven as such, then I think that would be seen as loaded with meaning rather than meaningless, and the start of a lot of "why that" and "why not nothing" questions, not just a shrug and assumption that it should not be asked about. (Though in practice, science would never accept that it had found the ultimate first cause and would keep looking for a cause of that cause indefinitely.)

"without a point" is different -- that is asking about purpose, rather than necessity. ("Apples fall because of gravity" is different to "the point of gravity is to pull apples to the ground".)

However logically we wouldn't expect this to be the case - as if X pops into existance without a cause

... then the question would be "how does the rule 'X pops into existance without a cause' come about"? Why not no rule? Why not a rule 'Y pops into existance without cause' instead? ...

And if the presence of X prevents further X's from appearing then the cause of X's appearance can be stated as the absence of X.

Unscientific as it cannot be falsified. Substitute almost anything for X and this becomes obvious. For fun substitute "the universe as it is now" for X, and you have the theory that the universe is brand new and sprang instantaneously into existance right now (including all our memories), caused by the absense of a universe. Perfectly self-consistent, but unscientific.

Doesn't the incompleteness theorem contradict the notion of mathematics as a fundamental part of the universe and suggest that it is indeed just a self-consistent system for categorising and understanding the world? (and I admit here that its pushing my understanding of the issues involved)

What notion of "mathematics as a fundamental part of the universe"? Science relies on the idea that the universe can (theoretically eventually) be completely described by mathematical formulae and laws, but again the philosophical question of whether the universe "really" uses maths is out of scope. If "really" a Wizard of Oz is hiding behind the curtain pulling the strings, that makes no difference to science. I'm not convinced that Godel is relevant in this case -- it just states that in any consistent logic, you can make a mathematical statement that happens to be true but can't be proven to be true. It does highlight that we cannot know everything, no matter how much we might want to, though. Which does put a dent in the hopes of ever finding a scientific theory of everything, or ultimate cause.

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

I do believe you just said the equivalent of "It just is, stop asking irritating questions"...

I don't get why you think this. If things have no cause then they have no "why". Its not a call to stop asking irritating questions, but a statement of fact.

If an ultimate first cause were identified and proven as such, then I think that would be seen as loaded with meaning rather than meaningless

On the contrary, unless there really was god at the bottom, it would be the nail in the coffin of the notion that the universe had some greater meaning.

... then the question would be "how does the rule 'X pops into existance without a cause' come about"? Why not no rule? Why not a rule 'Y pops into existance without cause' instead? ... Unscientific as it cannot be falsified. Substitute almost anything for X and this becomes obvious. For fun substitute "the universe as it is now" for X, and you have the theory that the universe is brand new and sprang instantaneously into existance right now (including all our memories), caused by the absense of a universe. Perfectly self-consistent, but unscientific.

I think you have misunderstood this - I was giving an example of a causeless start and how as a result it has no why, as well as why one might consider such a thing truly possible.

Science relies on the idea that the universe can (theoretically eventually) be completely described by mathematical formulae and laws

You need to justify this statement - I've already stated that I disagree with this as science only needs observations to function not any specific way of describing the universe. Perhaps I misunderstood you, but I though that you stated earlier that mathematics is an inherent part of the universe.

Re:Science Journalism

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

First, that's not an ad hominem attack. Please people, if you're going to try to use classical rhetorical references, read a book first.

Ahh, yes, because nobody would ever think being called a "sociopath" would be an insult.

First not all insults are ad hominem attacks if they relate directly to the issue being discussed. An ad hominem attack is an attack on the person as a way of discrediting their view. The only people that fit into the category originally described are people with one of several severe mental illnesses.

Second, If you decide to experiment on prisoners and murder people who have never harmed you, you are fitting into the textbook definition of "sociopath". Most people feel empathy for fellow human beings, picture themselves in the place of others, recognize the emotions of pain and fear and have a built in aversion to them. If your only reason for not murdering people is religion, you have a mental illness and should seek help.

Murder is simply far too extreme a case. Try something milder...

You're trying to move the goalposts. The original comment was talking about religion being a motivation to not, "...kill people to harvest organs, not to experiment on prisoners of war, not to kill off the unproductive members of society or undesirable societies...".

Maybe you missed that, very important part of this discussion?

Again with the borderline cases.

It's not a borderline case, it's exactly the case we were discussing. Please stay on topic.

But hey, anything as long as it keeps the religion hate going, right?

When did I express any hate, love, or other strong emotion with regard to religion? You're simply being misleading by making this statement. What I said and implied was, religion is not needed or useful for the purpose of stopping us from murdering and torturing one another, since normal people without mental illnesses have an inbuild sense of empathy that takes care of that and mentally ill people use religion as an excuse to kill people.

Morality is inherently subjective, and the GGP's point on religion providing a 'baseline standard' of sorts for many people is spot-on, even if the examples he picked weren't the best.

I'd agree that religion trains people with baseline beliefs formed from irrationality. I'm not convinced those beliefs to more good than harm to society.

Stop making wild generalizations just because you love to hate on religion, you give the rest of us atheists a bad name.

Stop slandering me and don't presume I'm an atheist (I'm actually an agnostic) or that I care if people prejudge you based upon their interpretations of my statements. You may be an atheist but that doesn't make you a rational person or a person able to read and comprehend objectively.

Re:Science Journalism

[metrix007]

Why? 1:2 just describes what is mentioned in 1:1

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

God made the universe 6000 years ago as if it were made much longer ago.

Then I say we humor Him and play along, if He went to all that trouble.

Re:Science Journalism

[Bob-taro]

Science is amoral. Science doesn't tell us not to kill people to harvest organs, not to experiment on prisoners of war, not to kill off the unproductive members of society or undesirable societies. On the contrary, science could arguably supply logical reasons to do all those things. It's people's morals - often based on or at least supported by what you blithely dismiss as "fiction" - that stop us from doing those sorts of things.

Never let you sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Statements like these are basically derived from science and logic. Religion, on the other hand, has often contradicted both of these.

I think both of those statements are from science *fiction*. The first one I don't understand (I haven't read the book). Why would doing what is right go AGAINST your morals? Sounds more like some kind of "ends justifies the means" thing to me. The second comment I disagree with, too. I don't believe numbers factor into morality much. So yeah, if those are your morals, I guess my belief system does make me less moral in your eyes.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

I don't get why you think this. If things have no cause then they have no "why". Its not a call to stop asking irritating questions, but a statement of fact.

It is our job as thinkers and scientists to continue asking questions including "why". And "it has no cause" is not a statement of fact but always an unfalsifiable (and hence unscientific) claim. How do you show that it has no cause except by embarking on a never-ending quest to find one (which is why science would never actually accept it had found it.) For instance, following your line of logic, physicists would have stopped dead when they came across the idea of the big bang -- but they haven't. You are welcome to take the personal philosophy of "it has no cause" if you like, but do not imagine it has any greater significance or weight than your own personal philosophical choice.

On the contrary, unless there really was god at the bottom, it would be the nail in the coffin of the notion that the universe had some greater meaning.

This claim is wrong in two ways. First, it wouldn't be a nail in the coffin of greater meaning scientifically (the question "why is that at the bottom" would be deeply meaningful -- see the various holy grail quests for a fundamental theory of everything). And it wouldn't be a nail in the coffin philosophically either -- remember again that there is no requirement for the scientific model of the universe to be "really what happened", only that it should fit observations. For instance, philosophically "so God it looks like defined the world that way" and "or God created it at a later date with a larger set of initial conditions" remain valid philosophical choices. How can I make this clearer to you, as you seem to be married to some wrong assumptions about science? For instance you seem to think that science is a personal belief system, when it is a practice based around particular rules, unrelated to the practitioners' personal beliefs (science does not depend on the identity of the scientist). Perhaps a little thought experiment to highlight the difference. If God turned up tomorrow and performed a miracle for a roomful of scientists in such a way that it was blindingly obvious that God exists -- it still would not be scientific to talk about God (you still can't conduct an independent repeatable objective experiment in the future). If there "really is God at the bottom", science could not prove it. God did it is not a repeatable process, so it is not a conclusion that science can make. Conclusions about God necessarily come from other branches of philosophy. But that doesn't mean they are wrong. Science is a human invention, not a natural invention. If it turns out that the universe "really" works differently to how science can ever describe, then quite clearly is science not the universe that would be "wrong". If there's a Wizard of Oz behind the curtains, he wouldn't disappear just because we can't describe him. (Even if he is stepped in front of the curtain, waved to us and wrote us notes, then we still couldn't describe him scientifically.)

I think you have misunderstood this - I was giving an example of a causeless start and how as a result it has no why, as well as why one might consider such a thing truly possible.

Bad example then, as it looks like something that wasn't causeless and we'd run lots of experiments and come up with lots of theories to try to work out why.

Science relies on the idea that the universe can (theoretically eventually) be completely described by mathematical formulae and laws

You need to justify this statement - I've already stated that I disagree with this as science only needs observations to function

Wrong. The mere observation that Joe's mum is tall, Joe's dad is tall, and that Joe is tall is not science. The hypothesis that there is are genes for tallness that are passed on hereditarily, teste

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

(Many apologies that a poorly formatted tag in the above has mixed up what is a quotation and what is a reply)

Re:Science Journalism

[Cassius Corodes]

It is our job as thinkers and scientists to continue asking questions including "why". And "it has no cause" is not a statement of fact but always an unfalsifiable

Of-course its falsifiable - you would falsify it by finding a cause. I can postulate that the light in my room switches on without a cause, then someone can perform an experiment and show that in fact it does have a cause. If an event truly has no cause then it is a statement of fact to say so. What is impossible is to prove it that something has no cause.

But follow this though experiment: How would you show that an event has no cause? Well you could do it by showing the infinite amounts of it that have occurred at any given instant, under any given conditions, which is what one would logically expect from something that occurs without a cause, but not from one that occurs with one.

How do you show that it has no cause except by embarking on a never-ending quest to find one (which is why science would never actually accept it had found it.)

But this isn't the way science works in practice, there are a lot of theories floating around that have not been proven in a strict sense, but conform to so many experiments that they have been accepted until such a time as either a full proof or counter-evidence emerges. So while it might be that on some strict level the above though experiment of what a event without a cause might look like would not be accepted as proven to be a non-caused event - it would be practically accepted as its based on numerous repeatable experiments under a wide variety of conditions. Importantly applications would be built based on this knowledge, other theories abandoned etc.

... God did it is not a repeatable process, so it is not a conclusion that science can make.

But "god" as in the first uncaused event is by definition repeatable, infinitely so. For it not to be repeatable it needs to be caused.

Re:Science Journalism

[williamhb]

Of-course its falsifiable - you would falsify it by finding a cause.

A pity you snipped the following sentence that pointed out the flaw: that quest is never-ending, so your experiment never returns a result. (Roughly speaking, it is the quest of science, and no it ain't ever going to end.)

But follow this though experiment: How would you show that an event has no cause? Well you could do it by showing the infinite amounts of it that have occurred at any given instant, under any given conditions, which is what one would logically expect from something that occurs without a cause, but not from one that occurs with one.

Nope, that would merely suggest a ubiquitous cause. To use a potentially muddy example, zero-point energy is not deemed "causeless" even though we have never yet found an absence of it. To use another, the Casimir effect, though spontaneous, has a cause: the quantisation of fields. The quantisation of fields is also ubiquitous but yup science would very much like to know why on that one too...

So while it might be that on some strict level the above though experiment of what a event without a cause might look like would not be accepted as proven to be a non-caused event - it would be practically accepted as its based on numerous repeatable experiments under a wide variety of conditions.

Empirically false. There has never been accepted any event that is deemed "non-caused", even when we haven't found the cause for it. Again, science does not stop looking for causes at any point whatsoever, ever.

But "god" as in the first uncaused event is by definition repeatable, infinitely so. For it not to be repeatable it needs to be caused.

Logically false. "Repeatable" means caused more than once.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not your Christian dogma, but look up some Gnostic literature. Also, your point B is rampant in the USA even if it is not "formal" dogma.

Re:Science Journalism

[Can't we get along]

I've never understood why science and fundamentalism can't get together. When you try to understand how the bible and scientific fact can exist in the same universe, you would be surprised how easily they get along. For example, how are we to understand how G-d measures a day? How did go create life on earth? Can't the big bang and evolution be G-ds tools? Science is too busy looking at the how the universe works to see the big picture. Religion is to busy looking at G-d to see how He made such a miraculous thing happen.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. The point of using heavy ions is to maximize the scattering cross-section of the quarks in the quark-gluon plasma that is each atomic nucleus. This is good if the goal is to study quark-quark interactions, but since nucleons are (probably) not discrete in atomic nuclei, it's not so useful for understanding p-p collisions, and the dynamics are expected to be very different compared to UHECRs where the individual quarks have greater kinetic energy.

That is, there are stronger q-q interactions that are mainly p-p interactions between OMG cosmic rays and terrestrial matter.

Ultrarelativistic lead ions are extremely rare in this part of the cosmos.

"a large detector that is in the frame of the center of mass of the collision"

Not quite. We make predictions about interactions in a carefully chosen centre of momentum (COM) inertial frame and construct maps beteween that and the inertial frames of the detectors. The detectors "see" a very different set of Lorentz contractions than the particles do. The COM is a synthetic "view" of the total kinetic energy of the particles at exactly zero at the time of the collision; all of the relative motion is transformed into particle energy despite the detectors "seeing" transverse motion and the qgps "seeing" oncoming freight train in their own natural frames in which they are not "feeling" acceleration (i.e., in which they are moving inertially).

COM frames also have the virtue of being the points of view which would report the lowest total energy of the system under study.

Each qgp is a statistical object that has a centre of mass with "limbs". Predictions with respect to the collision of quark-gluon plasmas are made using the centres of mass, since that is easier to track. (cf dressed particles in field theory)

Re:Science Journalism

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

Hey, sorry for the late reply.

1:1 says(according to the NIV) "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.". Then, 1:2 - "Now the earth became1 formless and empty2, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God brooded over the waters". It became formless and void, so something must have happened, whether time ground away at it, or something else(it was something else - Job 32 has the details).

1A lot of Bibles used to say "was" in place of "became". Its different now because some bright bulb pointed out that the same Hebrew word was later in Genesis(and all the other books of the Old Testament) translated as became. That translation is backed by more scripture in Job(I forgot the chapter, you'll have to find it on your own) saying "God did not created the earth formless and empty".
2Formless and empty, formless and void, dark and empty, a lot of different translations on that bit. They all amount to the same thing. The planet was a wasteland.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that all the ''evidence'' is a few snapshots of coral encrusted doodads... just lying right on top of the sand for over 3000 years...sure. I can go rent a boat on the red sea and drop a few wheels like any other guy. Show me carbon dating or something at least. Show me these artifacts in a reputable museum after having been analyzed be an Egyptoligist. You seem like a decent guy, but really, don't believe everything you hear.

Oh yea, and prove that the Jews where ever even slaves in Egypt.

Re:Science Journalism

[bhiestand]

It's people's morals - often based on or at least supported by what you blithely dismiss as "fiction" - that stop us from doing those sorts of things.

Those of us that aren't sociopaths don't need religion to keep us from inflicting pain and suffering upon others. Those who are sociopaths use religion as an excuse as often as it prevents them from harming others.

Indeed, but religion can allow (and even drive) an otherwise normal and mentally healthy person to commit terrible atrocities.

I'd argue that religion is one of the only systems in the history of the world that has so consistently made many of its practitioners indistinguishable from sociopaths.

Re:Science Journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither of these concepts are presented anywhere within the Christian dogma, so where did they come from?

Well, I'd guess they were just made up... just like Christian dogma.

Re:Science Journalism

[jrade]

On the contrary, science could arguably supply logical reasons to do all those things.

That would not be science with "logical reasons", that would be economics telling people to use science to do those things. Science is simply knowledge, nothing else.

a mini big bang theory

[obergfellja]

BAZINGA!

Re:a mini big bang theory

[SQLGuru]

bazinga.

That was a mini big bang.....FTFY.

Mini - Big ?

[TechyImmigrant]

Wouldn't a mini big bang just be a moderate bang?

Re:Mini - Big ?

[RevWaldo]

Actually the official sizes are Short Bang, Tall Bang, Grande Bang, and Vente Bang.

.

Re:Mini - Big ?

[AltairDusk]

It's actually not Bang but Venti Explosivato. Bang is such a crude expression. (Disclaimer: I speak no Italian and if that actually means something it's not on purpose.)

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I mini big bang would be just like a regular big bang in every detail...but only one eighth the size.

Re:Mini - Big ?

[aardwolf64]

What I really want to know is, did it make a tiny solar system? Maybe we should wait a few trillion years to see... :-P

Re:Mini - Big ?

[istartedi]

What kind of coffee shops are you attending?

Re:Mini - Big ?

[bpsbr_ernie]

Wouldn't a mini big bang just be a moderate bang?

or a ping, a ding or a dink... but not a bang... :)

Re:Mini - Big ?

[coolmoose25]

Actually the official sizes are Short Bang, Tall Bang, Grande Bang, and Vente Bang.

Did anybody else misread "Grande" as "Gang"?

Re:Mini - Big ?

[tool462]

I suggest borrowing from the radio spectrum naming convention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_spectrum#Bands)

sub-bang: typical daily life
Extremely low bang (ELB): smashing your thumb with a hammer
Super low bang (SLB): combustion cycle of a gasoline engine
Ultra low bang (ULB): what your wife suffers through after a Taco Bell dinner.
Very low bang (VLB): nuclear reactor core
Low bang (LB): the center of the sun
Medium bang (MB): A typical night with your mom
High bang (HB): This experiment
Very high bang (VHB): Spinal Tap amplifier setting
Ultra high bang (UHB): Super Nova
Super high bang (SHB): Poor translation of Japanese video game subtitles
Extremely high bang (EHB): The actual big bang
Terabang (TB): Costs you $39.99/mo, automatic renewal

Re:Mini - Big ?

[TubeSteak]

What kind of coffee shops are you attending?

The kind that are pretentious enough to think they create a universe in every cup?

Re:Mini - Big ?

[naranek]

The headline just wouldn't have the same impact if it was "Large Hadron Collider made a moderate bang."

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Muros]

I heard there was an entire gang of scientists involved...

Re:Mini - Big ?

[SETIGuy]

It's time axis is perpendicular to ours. From our point of view the new universe existed for an infinitesimal time. I don't think there's any way to tell how long it existed from its point of view.

Please don't mod this insightful, I'm trying to be funny.

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blog.micmcg.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/1c7e6_idiocracy-starbucks-exotic-coffee-for-men.jpg

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it wasn't a Cillit Bang.

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of coffee shops are you attending?

The kind that are pretentious enough to think they create a universe in every cup?

Is that why they cost so much?

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two Baristas, one cup

Re:Mini - Big ?

[xenoglossy]

I'm waiting for the green version.

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not science. 'Eis got two coco.... elementary particles, banging them together !

Re:Mini - Big ?

[brizzadizza]

Way to totally miss and hit mind-blowing.

Re:Mini - Big ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, we may already be being sucked into a giant black hole as I type. We just haven't noticed yet.

Sooo.....

[erareno]

This may be a dumb question, but.... How did the lab not completely melt on them?

Re:Sooo.....

[Monkeedude1212]

Freeon. Delicious Freeon.

Re:Sooo.....

[omnichad]

The output energy probably wouldn't have exceeded the input energy. No chain reaction or anything.

I'd imagine a mass the size of two lead ions at a trillion degrees could only maybe bring a gallon of room temperature water up a degree or two. They are quite small.

Re:Sooo.....

[Critical Facilities]

Freeon. Delicious Freeon.

Actually, that's spelled Freon. But no, in this case it's helium and magnets.

Re:Sooo.....

[masmullin]

Magnets, delicious magnets.

Re:Sooo.....

[NotBornYesterday]

Freeon is the open source version of Freon, and is more properly called GNU/Freeon.

Re:Sooo.....

[TubeSteak]

I'd imagine a mass the size of two lead ions at a trillion degrees could only maybe bring a gallon of room temperature water up a degree or two. They are quite small.

Just to keep things in context, they actually shot a rather large number of lead ions at each other in the hopes of getting two to collide.
There's a huge amount of energy zipping around, it's just that the odds of it all releasing at once approaches zero.

Re:Sooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically, the energy zipping around is on the order of a ton of TNT, IIRC. Would make an effing big bang if released accidentally (due to loss of beam), I assure you.

Re:Sooo.....

[XSpud]

You are quite a long way off with your estimate, though you're right that the effect would be small.

One mole of lead is 207 grams so the energy you are talking about would cause a 1 K rise in only (207 * 2 * 10^12) / (6.02 * 10^23) or 6.9 * 10^-10 grams of lead.

That's less than the mass of a human ovum. Orders of magnitude (mass)

And the heat capacity (by mass) of water is about 32 times that of lead so you could heat up even less than that - just over 2 * 10^-11 grams of water.

Re:Sooo.....

[An ominous Cow art]

That's what the Free Mesons want you to believe.

Re:Sooo.....

[GameboyRMH]

Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?

Re:Sooo.....

[TRS80NT]

I thought it was LibreFreeon, but maybe I'm thinking of something else.

Re:Sooo.....

[Soul-Burn666]

I think you have misspelled Freeman. Gordon Freeman.

Re:Sooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

As your older sibling mentioned, however, there are a LOT of lead atoms flying around in the LHC beam. In particle accelerators, the beam is periodically drained away, and it can cause macroscopic damage. Theoretically, these could be used as weapons. They are just way too expensive (even for the military). They would also disperse a lot in air (but in space...).

Re:Sooo.....

[wienerschnizzel]

The output energy probably wouldn't have exceeded the input energy.

The 'input energy' may be more than you bargained for though. For instance, in a nuclear bomb you release the energy that was put in the nuclei inside a star when they were formed (fused).

Re:Sooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid you are considering rest mass.

Next step...

[durrr]

Now show us a real big-bang so the creationists are silenced

Re:Next step...

[imamac]

Last I checked they weren't mutually exclusive.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now show us a real big-bang so the creationists are silenced

Yes, humans creating a real big bang will definitely silence those who believe in Intelligent Design. Brilliant!

Re:Next step...

[Monkeedude1212]

Depends on your definition. You're probably thinking "Creationism as in God created it" which is general enough that they aren't mutually exclusive.

Other people say that Creationism is more about using the Genesis section of the Bible to explain how life came to be as opposed to other biological answers like evolution.

I assume the parent wants to disprove the later.

Re:Next step...

[nebaz]

I think if they created a real big bang we may all be silenced.

Re:Next step...

[durrr]

Oh they certainly are, if you think otherwise you need the parent post again.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on your definition. You're probably thinking "Creationism as in God created it" which is general enough that they aren't mutually exclusive.

Other people say that Creationism is more about using the Genesis section of the Bible to explain how life came to be as opposed to other biological answers like evolution.

I assume the parent wants to disprove the later.

Creationism and Evolution are not mutually exclusive either.

Re:Next step...

[bittles]

to understand recursion you must understand recursion

Re:Next step...

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Well ther are not mutually exclusive after what is it Bishop Usher calculated 4006 BC. Before that the theories diverge.

Re:Next step...

[Pojut]

Indeed. A roommate of mine, who was a religious micro-biologist, insisted that evolution, more-so than anything, is indicative of Intelligent Design/Creationism. In his own words, "What's smarter than designing something that can adapt to its environment entirely on its own?"

Re:Next step...

[immakiku]

To be fair, most recursive algorithms have a base case. So:

To understand recursion you must first understand recursion, unless you already understand recursion.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT?!?

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: Attaining that adaptability without attributing it to a designer.

Re:Next step...

[NotBornYesterday]

s/recursion/tautology/g

Re:Next step...

[Rob Kaper]

Last I checked most scientists in the field no longer even accept the big bang as likely. They consider it the same "something from nothing" unanswer as religions offer, looking for a cyclic model instead. :D

Re:Next step...

[MalikyeMoon]

This is exactly why I think it is negligible that no one outside of a very select group of scientists is consulted as to the safety of this type of experiment. I live very near the accelerator in Illinois, and I dread the day they are scheduled to ramp up this new one to its full potential. What if they do make the whole Earth go boom? What if there is a God, and he isn't happy about us playing with creation? Did anyone ask the rest of us before they tried? With all the problems that occurred during the various stages of building and testing the new Collider, theory that perhaps it was the universe defensively preventing its unmaking doesn’t sound that far-fetched any longer :)

Re:Next step...

[imamac]

I tried to respond earlier but it said "Unable to cast that while silenced."

Re:Next step...

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

What if there is a God, and he isn't happy about us playing with creation?

Then He/She/It/They shouldn't have created us with a brain that was capable of designing and a body capable of executing those experiments, or He/She/It/They should have kept an eye on us and smacked our hand if we tried. IMO deadbeat deities shouldn't get to wander back into our lives after a long absence without any clear communication with us and immediately get to dictate what we can and cannot do.

Re:Next step...

[Gunnut1124]

The point is that the ability to adapt without outside assistance precludes the need for the original creation event. If an organism can adapt and roll with the changes, who needs God to help? The Creationists seem to forget that point when attempting to hybridize the two points of view. Either it happened with your God, or it didn't. If there is a possibility it didn't, then the God hypothesis is overly complex.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some creationists reject the big bang because it contradicts their beliefs. Others take it as proof that their beliefs are right.

You can't silence people of that sort.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they do make the whole Earth go boom, then it'll happen so fast you won't realize what happened. Arguably it'll be the most pleasant way to go out, and with a bang to boost. I'm perfectly OK with the Earth "going boom" as a possible effect of LHC experiments. I also know it won't ever happen, but just in case -- I'm OK if we go boom that way.

Re:Next step...

[afabbro]

Last I checked most scientists in the field no longer even accept the big bang as likely. They consider it the same "something from nothing" unanswer as religions offer, looking for a cyclic model instead. :D

...which, of course, is still something from nothing.

Re:Next step...

[DrgnDancer]

This is precisely why they aren't asking you. Look, asking the average person for their opinion on the function, safety, or usefulness of a particle collider is like walking down the street and asking a random person for algorithm advice on your latest programming project. The chances that s/he will have even the vaguest idea what you're talking about are slim. The chances that s/he will understand your question well enough to answer you are slimmer still. The chance that they will be able to offer a helpful and correct answer answer is probably one in a million. Now consider that there are probably 100 knowledgeable programmers for every knowledgeable particle physicist.

Now personally, I know very little about particle physics. I also know very little about brakes. When I take my car to the mechanic and he tell me my brakes are fine, I take his work for it. The chance exists that he's wrong and I'll go careening off a mountain, but that's the nature of a specialist society. When a whole community of particle physicists tells me that particle colliders are safe, I take their word for it too.

Re:Next step...

[Tenek]

Was there any evidence you could have provided that would have provoked the response "Oh. I guess it's not true after all"?

Re:Next step...

[Pojut]

I completely agree with you, I was just merely putting his opinion out there, since it's a fairly logical one compared to what you usually hear about creationism.

Re:Next step...

[Brafil]

And God said, Let there be a big bang. Genesis 1:3

Re:Next step...

[GameboyRMH]

Well that'll definitely silence the creationists...along with everyone else...and any aliens in any nearby galaxies, for starters...

Re:Next step...

[BobMcD]

If there is a possibility it didn't, then the God hypothesis is overly complex.

Well, that's rather the POINT of religion, is it not?

I have prayed, on more than one occasion, to be so blessed as to win the lottery. (I have a plan for how I'd disperse it and everything.)

Needless to say, it hasn't happened yet.

Complex hypothesis, indeed. But we'll never rule His sentience. Wherein God knows better than we do, and does as He pleases, there's not going to be a lot of room for measurement.

Before we decide that this is too great a loophole, I'd challenge you to apply this sort of measurement to any female of the human species. You'll find their decision making processes equally as elusive, I assure you.

Re:Next step...

[GameboyRMH]

I always thought it was funny that creationists insist that their deity, with infinite knowledge and power, made static creatures that can't adapt to their environment. So he'd have to constantly monitor and adjust the environment to keep it compatible with all those poorly designed creatures?

Creationist god is a Windows sysadmin?

Re:Next step...

[BobMcD]

A) You've got daddy issues, or something. I've tried to rephrase this about six or seven times, and I can't think of a better way to say it. Find someone to talk to, for your own health, please.

B) I've attributed things in my own life to miraculous intervention. I hope that one day you'll be able to feel what that feels like as well. But sitting where I do, there's genuinely no doubt of presence vs absence. Can't say as I have all the answers, but 'deadbeat' is ruled out pretty readily.

C) The entire POINT of putting the proverbial apple in the garden was to lead us down this path. He/She/It/They designed us this way, and would likely have been rather disappointed to note that Eve obeyed without question.

Re:Next step...

[fl_litig8r]

"What's smarter than designing something that can adapt to its environment entirely on its own?" Uh, designing perfect organisms and a perfect environment, so that adaptation is unnecessary?

Re:Next step...

[osu-neko]

Now show us a real big-bang so the creationists are silenced

Oh, that's easy. Look around you...

Re:Next step...

[Pojut]

I actually brought that very point up to him in response, and he replied by saying "Yeah, but then it wouldn't be fun. Look a platypus...god likes to be amused."

Re:Next step...

[pclminion]

If you're interested in getting a better handle on this bizarre way of thinking, I suggest the book "The Biotic Message" by Walter Remine. Indeed, your roommate may have constructed his own opinions directly on Remine's foundations. You might ask him if he's read it.

Re:Next step...

[ZaphDingbat]

Except that that leaves the deity with nothing to do but supply this process with entropy.

Re:Next step...

[Stevecrox]

I don't know if a creator/god exists but the idea that it would give us higher reasoning skills and then punish us for using them scares the hell out of me.

Most parenting books would argue such behaviour is damaging for a child. Why is it suddenly ok for a creator\god?

Re:Next step...

[Gunnut1124]

But we'll never rule His sentience. Wherein God knows better than we do, and does as He pleases, there's not going to be a lot of room for measurement.

What does that even mean? That sounds like you are saying the God you believe in has no measurable influence on the world we live in. If that's the case, how is your god more than imaginary? If god is more than imaginary and has some influence on our world, then said influence MUST be measurable (as defined by the word 'influence'). If we can measure something, then we can generally predict it (According to the determinists).

Your less-than-subtle attempt to insult women and draw a parallel of unpredictability fails on so many levels I don't know where to start.

I also take exception to your claim that your god knows better than we do. That sounds a lot like Thomas Aquinas's plea to the definition of god... That "logic" was even dropped by the Church last century.

Re:Next step...

[Mab_Mass]

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,/ Looking before and after, gave us not/ That capability and godlike reason/ To fust in us unused.

From Hamlet, quoted in a different context than intended, but still a great line.

Re:Next step...

[BobMcD]

Indeed, I believe that the plan was for someone to take the apple from the very beginning. I think the parable as presented has been twisted by the culture that was retelling it. I do not see things like 'painful childbirth' as 'punishment' but rather as 'consequence'.

Re:Next step...

[BobMcD]

Use a little logic. How would you, personally, behave if you thought you were being measured in this way? Wouldn't you want to preserve the notion of faith, to keep up the pretense of free will, at any costs?

Have you never heard the story of the man in the flood?

If you genuinely believe that I'm attempting to 'insult women' by labeling them as reserving the right to change their minds on a whim, call your mother and apologize for your lack of respect. I'd google and link to you the plentiful references to this notion in western culture, but I suspect you're just trolling because you don't like God. And while that's your right, I'm not necessarily required to entertain your loose logic while you get your ya-yas.

God is defined as omnipotent. You can elect to not believe it, but there's simply no room for you, personally, to take any exception whatsoever. This definition predates you by millenia, and the notion that someone invented it to deliberately antagonize Gunnut1124 on a slashdot post is rather absurd.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. A roommate of mine, who was a religious micro-biologist, insisted that evolution, more-so than anything, is indicative of Intelligent Design/Creationism. In his own words, "What's smarter than designing something that can adapt to its environment entirely on its own?"

True, that would be the smartest thing to do; sadly, that's not what evolution is.
Rather, evolution is a process where certain flaws in the genetic makeup of any creature may or may not result in a mutation that is slightly beneficial to it's survival and/or attractiveness to others of it's kind. These mutations aren't always improvements, usually they're either damaging or completely ineffectual towards the chances of survival of the mutated entity.
Since not only survival but attractiveness also plays a role in survival (ensuring that a certain mutation gets a chance to further develop), sometimes this leads to traits that aren't beneficial to the species in question, sometimes even worsening it's chances for survival. If that creature also lives in an environment where it goes largely unchallenged, these detrimental mutations (apart from aesthetic value) will develop to very noticable levels, creating a creature that is anything but optimally designed.

Evolution is not adaptation per sé, it's mutation that is sometimes beneficial, sometimes detrimental, sometimes ineffectual and is selected for by manner of the competition that exists between creatures in the pursuit of energy and procreation.

Re:Next step...

[not-my-real-name]

The Bible actually teaches evolution. If you read the bit just after Adam and Eve get kicked out of Eden, God explains to them that things are going to be different, in particular there will be thorns and thistles. This is an adaption to environmental changes, just described as a curse.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a novel approach for religion, except that there are some "Adam & Eve" bullshit we have to get rid of...

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

In addition, your 'God' would have created us in a way to create the LHC, so who are you, a mere human, to question your gods wisdom on that choice?

Re:Next step...

[BobMcD]

You're actually a bit incorrect about me, there, Mr Coward. I believe that everyone hears the voice of God in their heart, but ascribes it to different things. I absolutely do not dismiss the other possible gods, but in fact I understand that the potential to misunderstand in this way is implicitly reflected even in the Ten Commandments (check near the beginning.)

It is a witty phrase, present in any good atheist's dogma, but simply isn't true in my own case.

Re:Next step...

[shermo]

I think you mean negligent.

Re:Next step...

[HeckRuler]

Good thing you remembered to cherry-pick the parts of the bible you agree with while finding rationalizations and excuses for the parts you don't, otherwise you'd have a internal inconsistency.

Re:Next step...

[BobMcD]

If you take the whole thing at it's literal word you'd have one too. Congratulations on locating your first logical loop. The Bible is a big thing, modified over time by many cultures. Don't take it too literally, or you risk not understanding the contents, which is rather the point of writing it down.

Or are we to believe the entire thing is just a social experiment to see how well it survives after being handed from culture to culture?

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

And THATS exactly what is wrong with mainstream religion: the model is that of a god who emotionally abandons his creation and sits in judgement while giving no clear guidance, only occasional disasters with clear message attached. Its modeled after the most common family structure in such societies, the controlling, violent, emotionally distant father who owns his wife and children. when we can uproot patriarchy, we will have uprooted religion. Now, how DO you get that bell around that cats neck?

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO deadbeat deities shouldn't get to wander back into our lives after a long absence without any clear communication with us and immediately get to dictate what we can and cannot do.

Please, tell me you realize the futility of any resistance to a omnipotent being.

Re:Next step...

[complete loony]

Before Darwin, in the christian dominated sciences of the time, adaptation was considered normal. Darwin's idea, and since then the further study of evolution, was saying that this adaptation is sufficient to describe the complete history of all life. Without that idea, we would still be studying micro-biology, and discovering how life can adapt to changes in the current environment.

Re:Next step...

[DarthVain]

The first rule of recursion club is the first rule of recursion club!

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the voice of god, that's just indigestion.

Easy mistake - don't feel bad.

Re:Next step...

[BobMcD]

You're implying not only that you've heard both, but that you've done so often enough to discern the difference.

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a rather good point really. I'll probably get modded to oblivion but I've been saying for years that's what I'd do if I was god. The tricky bit about proving the existance of an omnipotent being is that if it doesn't want you to prove its existance how are you going to prevent it from stopping you?

Re:Next step...

[Anonymous Coward]

A) So your failure to make your position sound even remotely sane means everybody in the world rational and intelligent enough to point out the glaring holes and blatant idiocy of your position has daddy issues and needs help? Right. You're the one demanding a daddy figure must be insane evil and delusional. Seems like your the one who needs a lot of help.

B) OK, so you can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Hot tip, we know the part of your brain that produces those *delusions* that you are experiencing. Your insistence that what we know to be your brain acting in a flawed manner be treated as good and promoted to others is just your cowardice and refusal to deal with reality. Please grow up and grow out of that idiotic childish evil.

C) So you worship the whiny little petulant child prankster god? What a loser you are. Seriously. Grow up and act like an adult for once in your life. You'd be an embarrassment to yourself if you were 5 years old let alone how fucking patheticly cowardly and delusional you look as an adult spouting that idiotic nonsense.

We're still here

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the mini big bang didn't cascade into a big big bang like some folks worried.

Re:We're still here

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. The resultant plasma would have ultimately coalesced into porn stars.

Re:We're still here

[DigiShaman]

Or maybe the new "big bang" forked into an alternate dimension. If so, does that make us Gods? Ponder that!

Re:We're still here

[VShael]

If we are gods, we can only hope our creations are morally superior to us.

Hey, suddenly Jehovah the blood thirsty desert god makes a lot more sense.

Re:We're still here

[ColdWetDog]

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

R. A. Heinlein

Re:We're still here

[brian1078]

I guess the mini big bang didn't cascade into a big big bang like some folks worried.

or hoped.

Re:We're still here

[masmullin]

We’re just a million little gods causing rain storms, turning every good thing to rust. I guess we'll just have to adjust.

Re:We're still here

[spidercoz]

that's a good one. was that from one of his books?

Re:We're still here

[Rambone.ftw]

I believe you are referring to a mix of Jenova and Ruby Weapon when describing the blood thirsty desert god.

Re:We're still here

[ColdWetDog]

According to my notes Time Enough For Love - one of his later / crazier (ie. Batshit insane) books.

Re:We're still here

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It was the character Lazarus Long speaking, I think in "Time Enough for Love".

'alternative' summary

[TuxCoder]

So some scientists did some banging at the large hardon collider over the weekend and said it was really hott.

Re:'alternative' summary

[sconeu]

Is that what they call "sexing-up" the story?

Re:'alternative' summary

[Anonymous Coward]

large hardon collider

 
Isn't that a gay porno?

Re:'alternative' summary

[E IS mC(Square)]

Good one. A Terry Pratchett fan?

Re:'alternative' summary

[IICV]

No, that would be "sexing-up the science". It's only "sexing-up the story" if the reporter gets in on it :)

Re:'alternative' summary

[shaitand]

Ahhhh the broom closet theory. I'm rather fond of that one myself even if it is a creationist theory. It gets especially interesting in the experimentation phase.

how long do i have?

[Anonymous Coward]

until the black hole engulfs my home?

Just you wait...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Now, if we can just wait a few billion years, a suitably intelligent species should evolve inside the newly created universe and build a Very Very Very Small Hadron Collider(VVVSHC) in order to investigate the conditions of their early universe....

Re:Just you wait...

[VShael]

There's no reason to assume that their time dimension runs parallel to our own. Any universe created in the lab might easily branch off in some other non-euclidian direction. In which case, it would all be over before it starts, so to speak.

Re:Just you wait...

[omnichad]

Horton, is that you?

Re:Just you wait...

[Monkeedude1212]

Or it could had its own relatavistic principles, where our mini Big Bang might have lasted mere seconds or fractions thereof - if it did in fact recreate the universe properly down to scale, then life and intelligence could have evolved, and died out in those mere seconds.

Re:Just you wait...

[Darfeld]

They probably already discovered FTL travel of some sort, conquered the entire universe and disappear into an other dimension or went extinct in the attempt.

Re:Just you wait...

[Nemyst]

Too bad you can't really make life out of a handful of atoms, eh? Matter isn't continuous, it would be impossible to create something ever smaller, since at one point you'd be trying to break down something which cannot be broken down.

On the other hand, WE may be the creation of very very very large aliens with their Very Very Very Large Hadron Collider...

Re:Just you wait...

[NoSig]

That smaller universe may have its own scale that is much smaller than our scale, so that energy could be broken down into smaller bits than in our universe.

Re:Just you wait...

[angelbar]

You make me sad... Then God cant notice us? That its just sad.....

Re:Just you wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Atoms are restricted in size by the spatial dimensions of our universe and the strength of forces that are also parameters in our universe. Theirs may not have the same spatial restrictions or the same values for forces.

Remember, matter is another form of energy, and unlike matter, energy is not restricted to size.

Re:Just you wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

And who cares? It's just a joke, loser.

Re:Just you wait...

[tom17]

Maybe the entire universe was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Re:Just you wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind = blown.

Re:Just you wait...

[Monkeedude1212]

You know, there was a time when they didn't think there was anything smaller than a material's composition. Then they came up with Molecules. Then they came up with the elements. Then they came up with atoms. And then they came up with the quarks and qbits and all the quantum stuff that goes into atoms.

Are you saying there is nothing smaller than an Atom? Because there is.

The basis of your thesis "it would be impossible to create something ever smaller, since at one point you'd be trying to break down something which cannot be broken down." - this has not held true every time we've placed that restriction on something. Sure - at one point there might be something that can't be broken down.

Does that mean an actual universe can't be simulated by our mini-big bangs? We haven't discovered the limit where we can't break down anymore, so its easy to say that the simulation can be broken down at least as much as we've broken down our realm.

Re:Just you wait...

[Monkeedude1212]

Not exactly. Suppose we develop sufficient technology (and understand the theory enough) to adjust and alter the effects of the system. Would we not then be like Gods of that universe?

Re:Just you wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Horrifying isn't it.

Re:Just you wait...

[Taibhsear]

Who?

Re:Just you wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

today an anonymous coward realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration

Re:Just you wait...

[goose-incarnated]

Who?

Calling All Dan Brown Fans...

[Samantha Wright]

The window in which you can make stupid comments about playing god and recursing (no tired xkcd links allowed, about either pebbles or carving dice) is now closing. Please get in your cheesy gloom-and-doom scenarios ASAP, and make wild, uneducated suppositions about micro black holes while you're at it.

Re:Calling All Dan Brown Fans...

[Nemyst]

Micro black holes will swallow Dan Brown! OH GOD.

Re:Calling All Dan Brown Fans...

[Shillo]

Nonono, you got this all wrong. Somebody assassinated him with an antimatter marble.

Re:Calling All Dan Brown Fans...

[Bigjeff5]

Micro black holes will swallow Dan Brown! OH GOD.

I thought that was a bonus, myself.

Uh, that's what "mini big bang" means

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, that's what "mini big bang" means. OK, so you don't like it, but who cares.

It isn't cheap sensational BS, it's expensive evocative BS at worst.

Re:Uh, that's what "mini big bang" means

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Uh, that's what "mini big bang" means. OK, so you don't like it, but who cares.

It isn't cheap sensational BS, it's expensive evocative BS at worst.

100% agreement. Its ridiculous for the OP to get a bug up his ass over that headline. Headlines need to be short and sweet (aka maximally informative to the intended audience) - the BBC's headline is both, the OP's version is far too long to use as a headline. Might fine for the title of a scientific paper, but not a general news website.

Re:Uh, that's what "mini big bang" means

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if short and sweet is the objective, with no concern for how truthful it is, then "Man becomes God" is the one and only headline they have to come up with. See the problem with short and sweet?

Re:Uh, that's what "mini big bang" means

[DrgnDancer]

It's also worth pointing out that "Mini Big Bang" is in quotes. Almost as if they wanted to indicate "This isn't exactly right, but it's evocative and saves headline space". Even after all these years the level of pedantry on this site still amazes me sometimes.

Re:Uh, that's what "mini big bang" means

[Anonymous Coward]

with no concern for how truthful

What part of "maximally informative" do you fail to comprehend?

ALICE? ALICE?

[demonbug]

Who the fuck is ALICE?

One of the accelerator's experiments, ALICE, has been specifically designed to smash together lead ions...

Well, I guess that answers that.

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[snspdaarf]

Doesn't she own a restaurant?

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Samantha Wright]

ALICE: "Accelerating Lead Ions Constitutes Experiment". As someone with a low UID who must therefore be a FORTRAN veteran, shouldn't you know acronyms instinctively?

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[zlogic]

I thought it was "A Large Ion Collider Experiment"

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Samantha Wright]

Discovery: the acronym is even lamer than my made-up one. "A Large Ion Collider Experiment". Ouch.

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you really can get anything you want. Even lead ions and mini-bangs.

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Faatal]

Who the fuck is ALICE?

Project Alice of course. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alice

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[MalikyeMoon]

They were attempting to travel down the rabbit hole...

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Anonymous Coward]

she bangs.

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[BrettJB]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Large_Ion_Collider_Experiment

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Bobfrankly1]

Doesn't she own a restaurant?

No, but these comments are going down a rabbit hole...

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[gringer]

The LHCb sees where the antimatter's gone
ALICE looks at collisions, of lead ions

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Anonymous Coward]

LHCb sees where the antimatter's gone. ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions.

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Overzeetop]

No, that's the wrong Alice.

(sorry, just watched Burton's version over the weekend)

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[OlRickDawson]

One day.. One Day... To the Moon Alice!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honeymooners

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[kimvette]

No gang bangs though?

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[not-my-real-name]

Who the fuck is ALICE?

I don't know, but she's been exchanging a lot of encrypted messages with BOB and I find that *very* suspicious.

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but where is she...?

Re:ALICE? ALICE?

[NiteShaed]

As someone with a low UID who must therefore be a FORTRAN veteran, shouldn't you know acronyms instinctively?

Yeah, us 300k-range users are even old enough to remember those with 5, 4 and even 3 digit UIDs. Of course all of those have died and we now use the oil left behind by their passing to power our cars. Sometimes though, late at night, if you listen closely, you can still hear the ghostly whispers left behind by these distant anscestors.....

Fusion?

[Quantus347]

So if its a million times hotter than the sun, does that get to the necessary temp/pressure for controlled Fusion?

Re:Fusion?

[tempest69]

Yup, it does, but we can do fusion. If we just cared about fusing atoms together, that was doable by ZETA (primitive tokamak) in the 1950's. But making a reactor that can generate net energy gain is a trick.

Re:Fusion?

[Rich0]

Oh, that is FAR above the temperatures needed for controlled fusion.

We don't have any trouble creating the necessary temperature for controlled fusion. The part we aren't able to do is the "controlled" bit - in a way that allows a net positive energy return.

I'm guessing this collision released maybe a few kcal of energy (which is HUGE for two atom-sized masses, but otherwise on-par with a candle), but it probably consumed the resources from half of a power plant in the process.

The LHC isn't about energy generation - it is about generating huge concentrations of energy in an extremely small volume of space.

Re:Fusion?

[blueg3]

The temperature and pressure of the Sun is necessarily higher than the temperature and pressure needed for fusion.

Re:Fusion?

[SharpFang]

To add, we had quite a few successful experiments at creating controlled fusion. Some room-temperature, some only technically so (few atoms big pin blade superheated). Look it up in past stories on Slashdot. We came quite close to break-even point of energy - but best results are hard to sustain over longer time (like that pin evaporating eventually), and fusion sustained over longer time is far from producing as much energy as it uses. It will be quite a while until we get a working thermonuclear power plant.

Re:Fusion?

[Shillo]

It's actually 0.1mJ (or 1138TeV) per collision (half that per ion). They have ways to go before hitting 1 cal. However, within the volume of a nucleus, that's still a crazy concentration of energy.

Also, a beam has a *lot* of ions (they're starting with 2e10/beam but I believe their goal is 100x that before the end of the month). That's 10MJ/beam before the end of the month, which is already a fairly serious amount of energy to have in a particle beam.

Re:Fusion?

[Rich0]

I take it that this is the total energy in the beam, and not in the collisions? I'm not a particle physicist, but I'm guessing that if you aim two beams of 2e10 particles each at each other probably almost all of them miss their counterparts and sail right by.

Am I dead?

[masmullin]

Am I dead?

Is time stretching out as we all are hurtling towards the centre of singularity?

Re:Am I dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's just monday...

Re:Am I dead?

[PalmKiller]

yes, you are dead, now be grateful

Re:Am I dead?

[ColdWetDog]

Am I dead?

Look around you. See any fjords?

Is time stretching out as we all are hurtling towards the centre of singularity?

No, you're just stoned. Relax, things will settle down in a bit.

Re:Am I dead?

[Zan Lynx]

Look around you. See any fjords?

If there were fjords to see, he wouldn't be pining for them, would he? Cause he'd have them, right there.

New Energy Source

[Anonymous Coward]

I want my big-bang powered eco-friendly car NOW!

Re:New Energy Source

[GameboyRMH]

No problem, just swap in a bike engine:

http://hellforleathermagazine.com/2008/09/2009-yamaha-r1-revealed-with-big-bang-engine/

Not a mini big bang...

[dtjohnson]

The title is misleading. The LHC did not create a mini 'big bang' but created a miniature of the conditions that might have existed shortly AFTER the big bang. The 'big bang' was the event that created all mass, space, and time in the entire universe in a single instant approximately 13.7 billion years ago. The LHC collision of lead ions did not create any mass, space, or time but did create a "hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma" that might have existed after the 'big bang' event.

Re:Not a mini big bang...

[DShard]

[blockquote]The 'big bang [wikipedia.org]' was the event that created all mass, space, and time in the entire universe in a single instant approximately 13.7 billion years ago.[/blockquote]

The big bang doesn't talk about the creation event. It discusses the expansion following soon after that event, and only somewhat reliably at the planck epoch. The big bang did not create matter, energy or time either. These were all firmly in place by during the period this theory takes place. While their may be theories floating around about the actual creation event, none are more than idle speculation.

Re:Not a mini big bang...

[dtjohnson]

The big bang doesn't talk about the creation event. It discusses the expansion following soon after that event...

The 'big bang' theory is that the universe began as the appearance of a 'singularity' approximately 13.7 billion years ago that then rapidly expanded into the universe that we see today. According to the theory, neither 'mass' nor 'space' nor 'time' existed prior to the singularity.

Steven W. Hawking, Roger Penrose, "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, 314 (1970) pp. 529-548.

Re:Not a mini big bang...

[BeardedChimp]

The LHC collision of lead ions did not create any mass, space, or time but did create a "hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma" that might have existed after the 'big bang' event.

You can be damn sure it did create a whole lot of mass. When you reach even a tiny fraction of the energy involved here you start creating exotic particles left right and centre. The quarks in the soup will not be limited to up and down quarks found in lead ions, much heavier quarks will have been created though they can be very short lived.

Re:Not a mini big bang...

[John Hasler]

According to the theory, neither 'mass' nor 'space' nor 'time' existed prior to the singularity.

And therefor the phrase "prior to the singularity" is devoid of meaning.

Re:Not a mini big bang...

[painandgreed]

The title is misleading. The LHC did not create a mini 'big bang' but created a miniature of the conditions that might have existed shortly AFTER the big bang. The 'big bang [wikipedia.org]' was the event that created all mass, space, and time in the entire universe in a single instant approximately 13.7 billion years ago. The LHC collision of lead ions did not create any mass, space, or time but did create a "hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma" that might have existed after the 'big bang' event.

Yes, you are correct. The seven word title does not convey the actual details of the entire article, and is abeiviated to the point that somebody who is not already familiar with what is going on may find confusing. However, the actual meaning of the title was well understood by people who have been following the discussions on the LHC as these conditions have been long awaited. As for the people who were confused, they haven't read any of the previous articles on what the LHC is doing, so why should the writers be expect them to read this one?

Re:Not a mini big bang...

[Ardipithecus]

in other words, "the ultimate free lunch"

Usher is a Bishop now?

[denzacar]

What's next? 50 Cent becoming the Pope?

Pah!

[Cloud K]

The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun

NVidia achieved that years ago.

Re:Pah!

[Atriqus]

Hey, credit where credit's due: They never would have achieved those temps without Crytek. :D

Re:Pah!

[gstrickler]

NVidia achieved that years ago.

Yes, but AMD and the Intel P4 beat them to it.

Re:Pah!

[alex-tokar]

You're confusing NVidia with Adobe Flash.

If we do it all together?

[bradley13]

And if we do it all together, is it a gang bang?

Re:If we do it all together?

[jitterman]

Who says science can't be fun?

Re:If we do it all together?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I get the address of your coffee shop?

Re:If we do it all together?

[Wingfield]

Someone mod this man up!

Re:If we do it all together?

[db10]

and if we give them all guns it would it be bang! bang!?

Can we patent this?

[Mike Zahalan]

This is all fine, until Oracle buys the LHC and offers an Enterprise Level "Bang" and a free-bang.

Re:Can we patent this?

[blair1q]

And then sues Chuck Lorre.

Re:Can we patent this?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no. The only reason Oracle would buy the LHC would be so they can attempt to create a Temporal Shift so they can fling themselves to before the creation of the Greek Empire, sue them into oblivion for the creation of the Oracle of Delphi, and stop that shitty objective Pascal from ever being created in the first place!

Re:Can we patent this?

[Mike Zahalan]

Bazinga!

*yawn*

[chrylis]

Aaand once again, nothing particularly interesting here. RHIC has been producing QGP for years now, so not only is this a surprising result, it's not even "unique".

Re:frist

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun."

They cloned JLo's arse?

Resident Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who thought of Resident Evil, when shown this image and hearing about ALICE?

Re:frist

[Pojut]

They cloned JLo's arse?

"You know J-Lo doesn't speak spanish, right?"
"She may not, but her ass sure as hell does."

I shall call it...

[LaminatorX]

Mini-Universe.

OMG did the world end?

[Draconis183]

That article made me have to check the website. http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ whew....

Re:OMG did the world end?

[Tar-Alcarin]

You gotta love the page source comment for that site :)

Re:frist

[nospam007]

Go back to your mini big bong then.

What about ...

[doob]

The Horrendous Space Kablooie?

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Generates a 'Mi...

[HTH NE1]

I love how this headline was constructed. It has a six-character sequence during which truncation (say, in an RSS reader) may make the reader think it generated a 'Mini-Black Hole'.

Obligatory Star Wars reference

[Anonymous Coward]

It was as if a million voices cried out and were suddenly silenced...

Re:frist

[Pojut]

Mini AND big??? Whoa, man...

Uh, no god, remember? This is science.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no god, remember? This is science.

I bet you and the OP are GREAT fun at parties.

Temperature Measurement

[787style]

How do they measure the temperature of such a small area? And my (limited) understand of heat is that it is measured by energy transference between molecules. When those molecules are melting, how it is measured?

Re:Temperature Measurement

[Shillo]

It's between particles, regardless of their kind. At room temperature, atoms within molecules also participate in heat exchange; this is why for adiabatic compression of ideal gas you need to know if it has monoatomic, biatomic or bigger molecules - this affects the vibrational modes within the molecule. Again at room temperature, quantum physics prevents this exchange to continue inside the atoms - in non-metals, the atom-atom collisions happen below the energy that can knock electrons out of them, let alone affect their nuclei.

But here we're talking about many orders of magnitude above room temperature, and what used to happens to molecules and atoms inside them happens to quarks and gluons. The important thing is that in proton collisions, the particles don't stay together long enough to achieve thermal equilibrium, so it makes no sense to talk about thermodynamics. But with lead ions, if quark-gluon plasma formation in fact happens (gathering data needed to prove or disprove this is part of the experiment), the particles interact enough times that we can talk about temperatures, pressures and so on.

Re:Temperature Measurement

[majortom1981]

IF you live in the NYC area in the summer brookhaven national labs gives tours of the rhic (its down in the summer because power is more expensive in the summer) . they show you the magnets and the detectors and tell you how the rhic and lhc work (bnl is a partner on the lhc and is the main hosts for the US and distributes the lhc data to the other universities in the US). You can actually talk to the scientists who work on the rhic and who have worked on the lhc. its pretty cool and free.

Lead ... just plain stupid

[jbeaupre]

Soon as OSHA or the EPA hears they are splattering walls with lead, they'll have to shut down. Then guys in bunny suits will have to spray some sort of goo to stabilize the lead before they scrape the walls clean before sending the waste to some special landfill. Haven't these physicists ever see and episode of This Old House?

Bismuth or tungsten, that's the way to go.

Re:Lead ... just plain stupid

[jittles]

That's all fine and dandy but they are in Europe, not the US. So they don't have to worry about OSHA or the EPA. But having said that, one can now question whether the LHC is ROHS compliant! :oP

Re:Lead ... just plain stupid

[jbeaupre]

Crap, got my accelerators mixed up. Comment still stands since the EPA and OSHA are probably even worse with maps than they are at physics.

I'm sure this makes Sheldon very happy!!!

[mkaylor]

I'm sure this makes Sheldon very happy!!!

Re:I'm sure this makes Sheldon very happy!!!

[mkaylor]

Bazinga

Simulation inside a simulation?

[Paspanique]

Could it be that we are , ourselves, just an experiment. That relative time makes those few seconds that last the explosion for the people in the environment creating it, seem like 15 Billions years to those existing inside it? So, an entire universe lived and died in that experiment... or something like that

Re:Does this mean we are all fucked now?

[Culture20]

Wrong interpretation of big bang.

How hot?

[rokstar]

Given the reported temperatures involved how does something that hot not melt parts of the experiment equipment? Do they quickly dissipate to the point of it not causing problems? Is the area radiating these temperatures too small to matter? Or is there some type of shielding (magnetic?) that prevents the heat from interacting with the inner walls? Do magnetic fields even work that way? Just curious if anyone knows.

Re:How hot?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hot, but it has the size of a couple of atoms. The total released energy is anticlimactic. Think about getting a glass of room-temperature water hot, but not boiling.

Micro-Bang

[Anonymous Coward]

So they have only observed a Micro-Bang... still no evidence for a Macro-Bang.

Fail

[mosb1000]

...simply refusing that fact throws out almost our entire understanding of...why the atom's we're composed of don't just fall apart

You just posted this on an article about scientists who are spending billions of dollars trying to figure out why the atom's we're composed of don't just fall apart.

Re:Fail

[Bigjeff5]

By replicating the conditions of the universe almost 14 billion years ago.

I.e. if the universe isn't more than 6,000 years old, we have no basis for trying to understand the strong nuclear force.

Re:Fail

[mosb1000]

I don't think big bang theory plays into this scientific investigation at all (it's more of an astronomical theory). The language used in the article is designed so that they lay person may understand why it is relevant.

But my point is that they don't know a lot about the nuclear strong force, that's why these experiments are necessary.

Re:Fail

[Zeek40]

I'm talking about radioactive decay, a pretty well understood phenomenon. When you start adjusting variables to compensate for the crazy belief that the entire universe is 6000 years old, you're left with a situation where you can't explain why certain elements decay at the predictable rate we observe and why others don't.

Re:Fail

[mosb1000]

It is well measured, not well understood.

And all together now!

[EWAdams]

"LHCb sees where the antimatter's gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They're looking for whatever
New particles they can find."

Crap I was not paying attention!

[Laoping]

Did the world end, or are we good?

My only question is...

[sudden.zero]

If this experiment created "...temperatures so hot that even protons and neutrons melt..." what the hell did they use to contain the experiment? LOL! ;)

Re:My only question is...

[omnichad]

Magnets? That's how everything else is being held and moved, anyway.

Re:frist

[afabbro]

You misread. It said "hotter" not "flabbier".

Re:ALICE? ALICE? -- Next door Alice

[uzd4ce]

for everyone NOT getting this reference, imagine sitting in a pub in Europe, and some nondescript '70's folk/rock song comes on the air, and you don't really notice anything until at one point everyone in the bar is shouting "Who the fuck is Alice". Quite an amusing chain of events if you'd like to check out the story and I recommend 'tubing various versions so you can get the full effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Next_Door_to_Alice#Gompie_version

Meanwhile, in the mini-universe that was created

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Several billions of civilizations evolved and died until that universe dissipated. Many of them had some "god" theory. Only a few of these, however, involved a bearded fellow in sneakers eating a chicken burrito for lunch during the process of creation. These civilizations tended to self-destruct over time from excessive gallows humor and binge drinking.

Re:frist

[aristotle-dude]

Mini AND big??? Whoa, man...

Yeah, it's like the Tardis. Mini on the outside and big on the inside.

Re:frist

[Pojut]

"Where we're going, we won't need a time machine..." -Doc Brown leaning on a bong

Re:Meanwhile, in the mini-universe that was create

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for pushging your religion on us for no reason other than to make a spectical of yourself.

Big Mash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shucks. For a second I mis-read protons as potatoes. Now *that* would be something.

What properties of the strong force?

[grimJester]

Ok, even on Slashdot everyone (except the editors) knows they collide lead ions to create quark-gluon plasma. What I've not seen explained anywhere is what details of the strong force they're trying to measure. Is it simply more accurate measurements on how the coupling constant changes with higher energy or are there other features of QCD that aren't understood?

Mini black holes? Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

They thought that mini black holes are not enough and decided that mini universe full of that shit would be cooler and started with a mini big bang.

Isn't a million a billion in Britspeak?

[Anonymous Coward]

So since this is a BBC article, was the temperature actually 1 billion x the center of the Sun?

Ouch!

[hesaigo999ca]

>The scientists working at the enormous machine on the Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November
They came out with extra appendages, and even had one scientist with a whole new extra working head,
we still do not know who the second personality is supposed to be as it seems a bit dazed and confused.

so long

[Anonymous Coward]

And and entire universe was created and died in a fraction of a second...

Description of Scientific method

[Roger W Moore]

we've been unable to prove anything so far, but here's a story pulled out of the collective asses of village elders 3000 years ago...

Actually, if you replace "village elders" with "theorists" and 3,000 years with "several" this is almost exactly like science: we come up with a theory which we have not yet proved and then act on it as if it were true to see what the implications are and then test those implications. The slight, but very important, difference being that if someone manages to prove the "story" wrong we'll listen to them, give them a nobel prize and rewrite the story whereas religion has a bad track record of burning them at the stake (although even science's record is not blemish free).

Re:Description of Scientific method

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

this is almost exactly like science: we come up with a theory which we have not yet proved and then act on it as if it were true to see what the implications are and then test those implications.

That's not the scientific method I was taught. You come up with a hypothesis, then you test the hypothesis and resulting theories by experimentation designed to disprove said hypothesis or theory. It's not just about listening when people prove it wrong. It's about intentionally trying to prove it wrong yourself as a way of providing evidence it is correct and then acting as though the theory that has withstood the most rigorous testing is correct.

Re:Description of Scientific method

[index0]

What prediction or answer does religion give that can be tested? How do you know if you do ____, then you will go to heaven? How can you test things like this from religion?

Re:Description of Scientific method

[TapeCutter]

Science doesn't claim to prove anything, it claims to have the best available explaination and does a good job of living up to that claim by continously updating it's explainations as contra-evience appears. Religion claims truth and since it's devinely ordained truth, contra-evidence cannot change it.

In other words science seeks truth, religion claims to have found it.

Re:Description of Scientific method

[Roger W Moore]

You come up with a hypothesis, then you test the hypothesis and resulting theories by experimentation designed to disprove said hypothesis or theory.

i.e. you come up with a story about how things work, figure out the implications assuming it is true and then act on them and see if those implications hold. As scientists we rarely, if ever, set out to prove ourselves wrong but to prove ourselves right (and probably someone else wrong!).

Re:Description of Scientific method

[Roger W Moore]

Religion claims truth and since it's devinely ordained truth, contra-evidence cannot change it.

While that might be some people's view of religion it is not borne out by the available evidence. You only have to look at Christianity 6-700 years ago vs. today to see that religions do change and adapt to contra-evidence. Certainly not at the speed of science and perhaps not as much as some would like but it does slowly happen.

It's true that there are some fundamentalist nutters who eschew any sort of sensible science but that is not a fair picture of religion any more than the radical environmentalist's view that all scientists are scheming to destroy the planet is a fair picture of us.

Re:Description of Scientific method

[Roger W Moore]

Not being able to test a hypothesis one way or the other does not make it wrong, it just makes it uninteresting to a scientist. You only have to look at string theory to see that there are such things in science as well. In both cases we might be capable of testing such hypotheses in the future, although I think we'll be experimentally testing string theory well before life-after-death!

Re:Description of Scientific method

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You come up with a hypothesis, then you test the hypothesis and resulting theories by experimentation designed to disprove said hypothesis or theory.

i.e. you come up with a story about how things work, figure out the implications assuming it is true and then act on them and see if those implications hold.

I think the sticking point is your phrases "act on them" and "assuming it is true". It isn't part of the scientific method to assume it is true, even for the sake of experimentation. Rather, you determine if it is likely to be true via experimentation. I might have a hypothesis that grape jelly will make an excellent fuel source for conventional combustion engines, but the scientific method is not to assume that is the case and fill my truck's gas tank with it. Rather, I design experiments that would falsify it. For example, that hypothesis could be falsified simply by testing it's vaporization or rate of combustion.

As scientists we rarely, if ever, set out to prove ourselves wrong but to prove ourselves right (and probably someone else wrong!).

This may well be true, but we show that our theories have merit by setting out to prove them wrong, not by designing intentionally weak and inefficient experiments and we don't assume our hypothesis and theories are correct until after we test them. I might have the idea about grape jelly, might even want it to be true, but I don't believe it or present it to others as science until I've tested it as strongly as I can within my means. So after I get it to burn and vaporize I'm still going to actually try running it through an engine and testing the output relative to other fuels BEFORE I form my own beliefs or present it as science.

Science is a formalized, logical methodology for determining what is correct. If you're assuming things are a certain way, then trying to design experiments that won't fail to support that assumption, then you're working under the assumption that the theory is actually wrong or you'd be testing it in a more convincing manner. Assumptions in either direction are not science, regardless of what you call it.

Re:Description of Scientific method

[TapeCutter]

Religous changes in the distant past were brought about by force. I'm not saying all religious people shun science I'm saying all religions are based on blind faith and dogma.

Conflicts betwen religion and science...

[Merpy]

I think these guys would disagree: Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627) Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Robert Boyle (1791-1867) Michael Faraday (1791-1867) Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907) Max Planck (1858-1947)

Who is the Observer in the 6 day creation account?

[Vesuvias]

...she refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old. When I explained to her that simply refusing that fact throws out almost our entire understanding of the universe around us...

Be careful absolute language, we still don't know everything. Perhaps you both are right? There exists, at least theoretically, an observer state where relativistically speaking the earth/universe would have taken only 6 days to create, correct? What took 13 Billion years for us could have only taken 6 days for the observer.

We would then have to account for how that account got written in a book that clearly exists in a relativistic state where the universe takes ~13 billion years to create. Bible says the account was supposedly given to man (moses) directly by God. It's probably more interesting to try and account for how God who must be moving at damn near the speed of light was able to even communicate with a man in any discernible way.

why is this news

[majortom1981]

Is this just to remind people the lhc exists? The rhic does this all the time. Yes the lhc does it at higher energies but does it with less dense materials. They are pretty much trying to reproduce what the rhic has done to verify its findings. All the scientific articles i have seen actually are more about how the rhic and the lhc work together on heavy ion collisions then replace each other . Does anybody know what replacing the gold ions in the rhic with uranium ions will do in the rhic that it could not before?

Obligatory

[benjamindees]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFmWhwyA0NU

metal comparison

[emeraldcity]

I would be curious how "smashing" lead would compare to smashing americum (for example based on the simple fact that americum has both a higher atomic mass and melting point).

lol ...

[Anonymous Coward]

looking at the picture over at BBC it looks
like somebody just discovered a box full of colored pencils
and a piece of paper ...
serious, isn't it just a "mess"?

Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Human stupidity is the only *infinite resource on this planet...

Fixed that for you. your statement is true, though!

I always wondered

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wondered what it would be like to live inside of a black hole. Now we know.

Yet the world did not end?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny.

Insane Scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

I am afraid that the scientists are going to be the end of us all. What the Fuck are they doing attempting to create a mini big bang? Why do they keep messing with this stuff? Scientists annoy the hell out of me.
While a wise man is pointing somewhere saying "look there for understanding", scientists will instead study the pointing finger.

Oblig. Calvin & Hobbes

[Kittenman]

Not a big bang - but a horrendous space kablooie!

An explaination to DST?

[Rex Stone]

Now I get why today feels as if I've lived through a couple light years. Can't we just section off every 15 degrees of longitude and call it a day?

I for one...

[Torodung]

I, for one, welcome our mini-overlords from the mini-universe created by this mini-big bang. I regret that they will only lead us for a microsecond.

Why is religion here?

[__aarvde6843]

I read a small article about it this morning while coming to work.

Instantly I thought about /. and the educated comments that I would read about it... Instead I see that almost 2/3 of this topic is flooded by those theists/atheists comments that everybody already knows. The science guy asking why a/some god(s) allow people to kill and make others suffer in its name(s), the biblical passages of how Adam and Eve populated the earth without incest, the Noe's arc, the age of the earth, the universe and everything, bla, bla...

I was hopping for more great scientific minds that contribute to /. to make us (the mortals - not theoretical physicists:) understand why this hot plasma is important for our understanding of the universe and what preliminary case scenarios we can take from it.

I would love to have you commenting this great subject (despite the idiotic title) with scientific explanations/consequences/ideas/educated speculations - and forget about that fanboy religious/non-religious wars. (I almost compare that to nVidia vs ATI or Win vs OS/X).