Mathematician Who Claimed 'P Is Not Equal To NP' Says His Proof Is Wrong (arxiv.org)

Earlier this month, Norbert Blum, a German mathematician, had published a research paper in which he implied that P is not equal to NP. The abstract of the post read: Berg and Ulfberg and Amano and Maruoka have used CNF-DNF-approximators to prove exponential lower bounds for the monotone network complexity of the clique function and of Andreev's function. We show that these approximators can be used to prove the same lower bound for their non-monotone network complexity. This implies P not equal NP. Since the publication of that paper, several mathematicians have raised concerns with Blum's methodology, with some saying that there are flaws in it. Blum has now updated the research paper to add: The proof is wrong. I shall elaborate precisely what the mistake is. For doing this, I need some time.

Comments

P = NP

[LordHighExecutioner]

Only if N = 1

Re:P = NP

[negrace]

wrong. Keep thinking.

Re:P = NP

[Anonymous Coward]

"Only"?

Re:P = NP

[Sique]

Also if P = 0.

Re: P = NP

[Anonymous Coward]

Or P= 0

That's what's good about critical thinkers

[MBGMorden]

It's refreshing to see people who will readily admit when they're wrong, since they're looking for the truth, not to prove a point.

That's always what I fall back two when people compare science to a religion: religion relies on faith - sticking to your beliefs no matter the evidence presented. Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[31415926535897]

I was about to mod you up after reading your first sentence, but then the second came. Look, we all know of people who hop on the bandwagon of science and are as stubborn as anyone. There are also plenty of religious folk who use their brains (in the voice of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word faith. I do not think it means what you think it means").

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[geekmux]

I was about to mod you up after reading your first sentence, but then the second came. Look, we all know of people who hop on the bandwagon of science and are as stubborn as anyone. There are also plenty of religious folk who use their brains (in the voice of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word faith. I do not think it means what you think it means").

Since you accept only half of the parents feedback, care to elaborate, Inigo?

(Yes, as a matter of fact I have seen The Princess Bride many times.)

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Captain Splendid]

Look, we all know of people who hop on the bandwagon of science and are as stubborn as anyone.

That's like judging the artistic merit of a band by focusing on their groupies. When the faithful criticize scientists, they're not using those arguments anyway.

There are also plenty of religious folk who use their brains

Unfortunately, they're in the minority and not anywhere near as loud-mouthed as their fundie brethren.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples and oranges in a sense though.

Religion concern itself with "why".
Science concerns itself with "how".

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[sacrilicious]

Sure, there are exceptions. But the GP's point is solid: the fundamental process in science is working from facts to supporting models, and the fundamental process in faith is working from models to supporting facts. They are indeed opposites, and various degrees of exceptions to them does not change their stated missions nor their overarching patterns of practice.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Sique]

Actually, he was trying to prove a point, namely that P <> NP.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Or so you think. Actually the proof is correct and he just wants the knowledge for himself. Just you wait. When the dust has settled, someone is going to make it big with something that looks infeasible. But is it actually infeasible? We'll never know, but he does.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

If the "why" is irrelevant or meaningless, then a human being has as much value as a rock, and both will be nothing more than different Lego structures.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Strider-]

That's always what I fall back two when people compare science to a religion: religion relies on faith - sticking to your beliefs no matter the evidence presented. Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

That's a pretty narrow definition of religion. For a significant, but less vocal part of religious folk, faith and science are more or less orthogonal. Scientific exploration and explanation doesn't eliminate faith, and religion doesn't deny science.

For me, the main intersection between Faith and Science is in the realm of ethics. It's not whether a certain piece of research is good or bad, but whether does it help to achieve what we're commanded to do... Help the poor, feed the hungry, be good stewards of creation.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to mod you up after reading your first sentence, but then the second came. Look, we all know of people who hop on the bandwagon of science and are as stubborn as anyone.
That's why MBGMorden used "science" and "religion" not "scientists", and "religious people". People can be stubborn and non-corrective, but science as a whole corrects itself. In the same vein, Religion (western at least) sticks to ideas like nothing else. How many hundreds of years did it take for the Catholic church to admit that maybe it shouldn't have punished Galileo?

Look no further than the books of each craft. Science books change all the time. Go find some Geology books from the 1940s, and you'll see crazy explanations we now know are wrong about what causes Earthquakes. Those ideas died out after Plate Tectonics took over in the 1950s or so.

By contrast, the Bible was canonized long, long ago and can't change. Religion changes very, very, very slowly. Much of the change is do to splinter groups forming and going off and doing their own thing. That's the perfect example of inflexibility. Splinter factions don't really happen much in science, and when they do, it's temporary until there's more data available, and consensus forms. Try that in religion!

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

P is simultaneously less and greater than NP?

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[alvinrod]

Science is still practiced by people who can be pig-headed and stick to their guns long after it has become apparent there is no basis for them or will be reluctant to accept some new information that seems to turn the field on its head. It's something of human nature to cling to an initial belief despite good evidence to the contrary.

The important part is that mathematics and science give us the means to verify our beliefs (or at least in the case of science to test and reject other possible explanations) as the universe is under no obligation to conform to a mistaken belief. Religion has no such methods.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[drew_kime]

The fundamental process in science is working from facts to supporting models, and the fundamental process in faith is working from models to supporting facts.

That's the most concise description I've ever seen of that distinction. Stealing that. Thanks.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are modded insightful for a comment saying that another comment that correctly defined religion and science is wrong? Who the heck is modding these days? Religion and science were correctly defined by GP.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[dcollins]

Math is notably better on this score than the other sciences. I can think of other mathematicians who did a 180 and had to say "I was wrong", within a few days of a major publication, due to to critical objections. I can't think of any like that for natural sciences.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[gweihir]

Which makes religion subject to evolution (if the belief is stupid enough, its follower eventually die out) and science highly adaptive. Of course, you do only get concrete absolute truth in religion, (in Mathematics, you get absolute truth too, but it will be abstract and applicability to reality will never be absolute), and many people are looking for that, probably because they cannot deal with uncertainty. So the other thing about religion is that it uses its "truths" merely as mechanism to acquire and control its followers, truth is completely irrelevant (apart from the evolution angle).

Will be interesting to see whether Blum or somebody else can fix the proof. May take a while though.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[gweihir]

Not really. Religion is dumb. Literally. However there are quite a few people that use Science as a surrogate for religion and that corrupts science and makes it religion. For science you need an open mind. A main aim of religion is to close minds so that they do not go run off to the competition.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Objectively, that is true. Human beings and rocks are basically the same thing, from a universal context.

To he human beings themselves, though, it's clearly not true.

But we, the ones having this conversation, are human beings. Thus, human beings matter a great deal more than rocks in the only context that matters, our own. That importance is not hinged on any sort of "why" we exist. In fact, any hypothetical "why" that involves god(s) actually would reduce our importance. See Christians whose whole world view is based on how awful and useless we are as creatures.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

is sometimes (rarely now, fortunately) used to mean "not equal to".

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

In theory. In practice, I've met scientists that were as dogmatic as any Southern preacher. Being scientific doesn't necessarily mean someone will always admit when they're wrong.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

but the original poster was talking about the properties of a particular groupie, and some how extrapolated this properties
to the band that said groupie was following,

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[pots]

You could just point out that most religions don't care about faith. That's mostly limited to Christians, Muslims, and Mormons.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[grasshoppa]

It's refreshing to see people who will readily admit when they're wrong, since they're looking for the truth, not to prove a point.

That's always what I fall back two when people compare science to a religion: religion relies on faith - sticking to your beliefs no matter the evidence presented. Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

While accurate, the problem today is that many "scientists" aren't actually "scientists" in the sense that they can accept fault. They are, in essence, treating science like a religion, complete with the dogma.

To a certain extent this has always been a problem in science. Those "famous" scientific feuds are proof of that ( static universe vs big bag springs to mind ). However, lately this seems to have ramped up to insane levels. I attribute this to the internet, actually; instant communication enables idiots to feel like experts, amplifying the underlying problems to record levels.

And before anyone says it; yes, politics have always, unfortunately, meddled in science. Big tobacco and oil are prominent examples, but do any of us really trust "scientific" studies financed by the food industry?

So while your statement is factually true, people have muddied the water quite a bit ( as they always do ).

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jason777]

The problem with science is that it cannot get outside itself. For example, if the universe had a beginning, science cannot get outside that point. So if God created the universe (something had to), then science can never prove that. Hence faith. Science also presupposes other things in order for the scientific method to work. For example, logic.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[tapia]

That's always what I fall back two when people compare science to a religion: religion relies on faith - sticking to your beliefs no matter the evidence presented. Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

That's a pretty narrow definition of religion. For a significant, but less vocal part of religious folk, faith and science are more or less orthogonal. Scientific exploration and explanation doesn't eliminate faith, and religion doesn't deny science.

For me, the main intersection between Faith and Science is in the realm of ethics. ...

Religion has nothing a priori to do with ethics. Religion is like a virus that associates itself with the evolved ethical faculties in neurotypical humans in order to get reproduced. FWIW, the atheists and agnostics that I know tend to be at least as ethically advanced (in my opinion) than the typical god believer and often much more so.

We are (almost?) all atheists with respect to the vast majority of gods that have ever been worshipped by humans.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

That's the most concise description I've ever seen of the popular notion that science and faith are on a spectrum together. Stealing the act of stealing that. Thanks.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say "plenty" of religious folks use their brains. Yes, there are a lot who believe in religion who do in fact use their brains and are capable of critical thinking, but they are a minuscule number when you compare them to the rest of the brainless sheep who believe in religion. Which very unfortunately is the vast majority of the world. There is a shift happening, but it's going to take centuries before religious followers are the minority of the population.

I'm not trying to disrespect people's belief in some deity. A god or gods of some sort may exist, we have explored such a tiny fraction of the universe it's not even measurable by any means we have at our disposal. But the entire culture of religion is just wrong. Believe in what you want to believe in, just don't believe in the preachings of some made up bullshit being spewed out by some fucking moron. Bill Baker, Jesse Jackson, Joel Olsteen, your local pastor or what ever the fuck you call them, etc only want your money that they don't pay taxes on, they don't give a rats ass if you actually believe in their bullshit so long as you give them the green they so absolutely do not deserve. The bible is a great fictional piece of work. There maybe some actual historical events described in the bible, but it's mostly pure fiction completely made up by people. Sorry sheeple, Jesus Christ did not ever come back to life after he was killed. That is complete bullshit. The story about Adam and Eve, also 100% complete bullshit.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Archangel Michael]

Not Inigo, so answering for myself (not him/her)

Science vs Religion is framed this (GP Post) way for ego. There is no scientific reason why the two should be compared on the same plane, since they deal with totally different realms.

Lets take a well known example. The Bible says that God Created the earth, and mankind. IT doesn't say when (except "the beginning" horrible translation btw). There are people that have extrapolated out lineages and calculated the "age of the earth" at 6000 years (give or take), but I want to remind you, that the Bible itself doesn't say it is 6000 years old anywhere.

Science on the other hand is pretty much convinced it is millions of years old. I can't say "proven" because that is not something that is provable, but from a statistical point of view, it is not likely that it is only 6000 years old. ;)

My faith (biblically based) doesn't require the earth to be only 6000 years old, or millions of years old. What it has done, is proven that science cannot account for the sins of man. The story of the man and woman in the garden is instructive, because with all the knowledge we've gained over the years (6000 or a Millennia ) has itself proven true, we are technologically better off, but morally bankrupt in the process. Instead of being able to pick up a rock and kill our brother, we now have arms that can kill millions without ever seeing the destruction we inflict.

Or, to put it a different way

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should

For every technological achievement we have that is used for good, it is matched equally with the ability to harm to a larger and larger number of people. This lesson is buried in the beginning pages of the the book so many people have opinions of, but have never actually read.

Please read this, not as a slam against science, but rather as a defense against strawman arguments used to discredit a book, that is philosophical/moral and not scientific. Most books of faith are the same, btw, they don't usually deal with Science, but rather the moral character of man. They aren't even in the same playing space. BTW, I have the same critique of my bible thumping comrades who mix religion with science too. ;)

Science without morals is how we get Josef Mengele. Morals without truth (science) is how we get to burning witches. There is a place, side by side, for Religion and Science to co-exist.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

The main aim to whom? There are a LOT of religius people and not all of them practice the religion in the same way.
Being religious doesn't preclude you from being open minded.

You can update your knowledge of the word relying on science, and find spiritual comfort and anwsers that
are outside of the realm of the science.

I get that a great majority of the religious people (specially the most vocal ones) have a rather close mind. But religion is
just a excuse. The great majority of the people also hold erroneous belief over non religious fact. And good luck trying to convice
them otherwise.

A very normal trait in human behavior, holding particular incorrect belief as indisputable truth, is blamed entirely on religion.

Maybe I'm exagerating, but I think that everyone has some belief that won't change not matter how much evidence on the contrary there is.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Solandri]

They are not opposites, unless you're working from an incomplete (incorrect) model of logic.

People who think like you do assume logic breaks down into two possibilities - true or false. That is incorrect. Logic actually resolves into three possibilities - true, false, and unknown/cannot be determined.

The scientific method involves choosing a falsifiable hypothesis as the null hypothesis. You then do experiments which attempt to falsify the null hypothesis. If one succeeds, then you can move the hypothesis into the "false" category (or conversely the positive experimental result into the "true" category).

But until such a result is obtained, the null hypothesis remains in the unknown/cannot be determined category, not the true category. The absence of experimental evidence disproving the null hypothesis does not mean the null hypothesis is "true." Short of trying every possible experiment, it cannot be proven true. So it remains in the unknown/cannot be determined category. e.g. The laws of Thermodynamics have never been proven, but have also never been disproven. So we assume (take it on faith) that they are correct. But when push comes to shove we openly acknowledge that we don't actually have proof that the laws of Thermodynamics are in fact immutable laws. Simply that we believe them to be. And that we have faith that any processes and technologies we design will obey them.

Basically, every scientist advocating a properly constructed null hypothesis is exhibiting faith that that hypothesis is correct. String theory is a great example. So far it's completely unprovable, but tens if not hundreds of thousands of research physicists are convinced it's correct. If we were emotionless, completely bias-free automatons, then this wouldn't need to be the case. But human nature means that scientists who have faith in a pet theory are likely to put more effort into coming up with and performing experiments which advance and defend the theory, and thus they contribute more to science.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[guruevi]

I know your religion tells you the things you say but they are empirically proven wrong.

Science is without morals because morals cloud your judgment and for every Mengele or Hitler who strung their countries along purely on orthodox Christian (or at least prevailing) morals you have many more Curies, Teslas and Einsteins.

The world is becoming a better place and places and communities where education and science are above religion and dogma are getting measurably better, easily correlated with the importance that is placed on education and science.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Science without morals is how we get Josef Mengele. Morals without truth (science) is how we get to burning witches

You imply that the only source of morals is religion. I vehemently dispute that. We can develop a moral code based on humanist principles from scratch, without the need to resort to sky fairies.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's always what I fall back two when people compare science to a religion: religion relies on faith - sticking to your beliefs no matter the evidence presented.

odd. considering the gigantic history of literature in religious debate spanning millenia.

> Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

uh huh. keep telling yourself that while I write my p=0.05 paper throwing doubt on your idiocy.

most importantly, its not science, jackass. its math. if you can't understand the fundamental difference, you don't deserve to be commenting on either.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ken Ham, is that you?

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Science doesn't prove anything. Science provides (increaseingly better) models of observable reality which can make predictions and more vaguely, "explain observations". If there is no effect in observable reality (I know, that's poorly defined) such as something "before the Universe" then Science doesn't apply, but then how can you claim to say anything meaningful at all about something about which nothing can be observed -- it's all fantasy by then. Faith -- can't be proven, can't be falsified, so does it have any meaning at all? At best faith can be a working assumption, as in, "faith in the Scientific Method", but that's all with any sort of rigor in thinking.
Even "before the Universe" is starting to have a scientific meaning if we postulate that the Universe arose as a quantum fluctuation in an eternal Multiverse -- now I'm wandering off to fantasy.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

"The world is becoming a better place and places and communities where education and science are above religion and dogma are getting measurably better, easily correlated with the importance that is placed on education and science."
What world do you live on where any of this is true? Our information "super highway" is being used to tear the world apart. People are being indoctrinated not educated. Religion and dogma is supplanting science and education. The tiny minorities have hijacked rational and considered thought on every topic. People are urged to take sides and do anything necessary to make sure their "side" wins. Winning arguments has become more important than solving the actual issues people are arguing over. Assigning blame for a problem has also become the endgame in attempted problem solving. It's easy to complain and protest but rationality, compromise, due diligence, and sacrifice are lost concepts.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to LegoLand!

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[MBGMorden]

So if God created the universe (something had to)

No, something didn't have to. Even in our own universe random chance exists. In a universe that hosts random chance, it's not out of line to suppose that it could have been born out of such.

Besides, that line of thinking leads to an infinite loop anyways. If because the universe exists "something had to create" it, then whatever created it also exists and in turn also must have had creator. And that creator, ALSO needs a creator, and so forth and so forth. It just doesn't hold weight. Eventually there has to point where we get to a level where something just *IS* and has no creator. It's no less logical to assume that that is the universe than it is to assume it's God.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[s.petry]

BS. If what you said is true then China, the USSR, etc.. would not have happened or been put in check by the same moral code you claim can be adopted from nothing. Yet without a decent set of taught Religious morality, we simply don't see that happen. Not one time in history has a society simply become utopian. Though a whole shitload have been wiped out by delusional views of utopians inside of them.

Scientific facts: Not everyone is moral, not everyone has the same values, and not everyone has the desire or capacity to learn.

See Socrates' Noble Lie.

You vehemently dispute science AC, then make a completely false claim. Pretty funny that you attempt to belittle others for believing in fairies, when you believe in a tale of them.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[PPH]

religious debate spanning millenia.

My God can beat up your God.

Or we believe in the same God. But different prophets. And for that, one of us must die.

It boils down to political power. Who can rally the most constituents in his ministry to sell their votes to politicians. We've had a few church arsons over the years. And more often than not, when they burn a Baptist church, its the Baptists from the church two miles down the road that did it. They aren't gong to burn down the Jewish Temple, because nobody would convert.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is, there is no contradiction.

Without faith, how can science ever progress by leaps and bounds?
Is science simply a brute-force search of finer and finer details leading into quantum leaps, or is it intuition / experience / pattern-based (subjective)?

Please stop confusing faith with belief. They're entirely different concepts, or should be.
There's no proof any step into the unknown will bear positive fruits.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Strider-]

Religion has nothing a priori to do with ethics. Religion is like a virus that associates itself with the evolved ethical faculties in neurotypical humans in order to get reproduced. FWIW, the atheists and agnostics that I know tend to be at least as ethically advanced (in my opinion) than the typical god believer and often much more so.

I guess I wasn't clear enough in what I said. I wasn't trying to imply that ethics flow or derive from religion, or that religion is required to be an ethical person. Rather that for me personally, it's where the two realms intersect. My faith has no bearing, for example, on whether I accept veracity of the big bang theory, or evolution, or any other of these truths that we as a species have discovered. But it does affect what I choose to pursue with my talents and skills.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

'unknown/cannot be determined' is one of the states of knowledge about the value of a proposition - it is not one of the states of the value of a proposition itself.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with China and USSR?

Sure, there's some issues, but by and large, the citizenry are pretty much the same anywhere else.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[nitehawk214]

Where did he say morals would spontaneously spring up in the absence of religion?

I think the past has proven quite conclusively that morals can succeed or fail with or without religion.

Please point to us a religious society that became utopian. Hell, I would settle for one that at least moral. In the United States the secular parts of the constitution protects us from people like you.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly nationalistic paranoia and xenophobic sentiments should probably fall more under "religion" than "science"

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[msauve]

"Religion is dumb. Literally."

If that were true, there would be no preachers.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, String theory isn't proven. However, it current encapsulates may other things. Evidence that supports it, and nobody has found evidence otherwise. More importantly, as this guy posts, it's in development: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2532/what-evidence-exists-for-string-theory-viability

Using String Theory as if it were true in further observations / experiments and getting expected results just simply re-enforces that it's true. For example:
Theory: 1+1=3
Usage: Someone else uses (1+1)=3 in the equation (1+1)*(1+1) and gets 9. Another person manually calculates (without the theory) and gets 4. Therefore that casts doubt on 1+1=3.

However if hundreds of people use 1+1 = 2 and get the correct numbers elsewhere, that lends more evidence to proving 1+1=2.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[sjames]

You're confusing literalist fundies for religion. It should be no surprise that religious texts don't change much, they're concerned primarily with the eternal. Being an asshole to everyone was bad 2000 years ago and it's still bad today. The same moral pitfalls 2000 years ago are still in play now.

There are those people who cling to every word of every parable as if they were ever meant to be taken as literally the whole truth about reality, but that was never the intent. They are little different than the fringe new-agers who latch on to a few cool sounding scientific terms like "quantum" and insist that their ideas are therefor scientific.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Religion concern itself with "perpetuating tribal beliefs, no matter how stupid they may be".

Science concerns itself with "how".

FTFY.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with China and USSR?

Sure, there's some issues, but by and large, the citizenry are pretty much the same anywhere else.

Other than a conservative estimate of the execution of at least 65 million human beings for political purposes in the 20th century, absolutely nothing. So what's the big deal, by and large all governments do that to their citzenry right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#People.27s_Republic_of_China

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just apologetic bullshit.

Religion is all about sublime mystery and "God works in mysterious ways".

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

By contrast, the Bible was canonized long, long ago and can't change. Religion changes very, very, very slowly. Much of the change is do to splinter groups forming and going off and doing their own thing. That's the perfect example of inflexibility. Splinter factions don't really happen much in science, and when they do, it's temporary until there's more data available, and consensus forms. Try that in religion!

Euclid's Elements series has remained unchanged for two millennia. Today, it still forms the basis of geometry that most people learn in high school.
It took about 2000 years for mathematicians to agree that Euclid's 5th proposition must be a postulate. Explore Riemannian geometry and Lobachevskian geometry for alternatives to using that as a postulate.

It turns out that even math has a problem with change. That history sounds much more like your description of religion.

Today, the Big Bang Theory is one of the best known theories on the origin of the universe. A Catholic priest made scientific observations to come up with that theory. There are many other theories out there, but none have garnered the same level of consensus among scientists to date.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[naubol]

What world do you live on where any of this is true? Our information "super highway" is being used to tear the world apart. People are being indoctrinated not educated.

Citation please. It's being used for a lot of things and it's definitely disruptive. In the aggregate, over the long haul, is it a force for good or evil? Hard to say. It's also hard to point to the mess of interactions and blame destabilizing political events on it.

We can make some solid claims: science is making it cheaper to produce consumer goods, to produce life saving drugs, and to increase the carrying capacity of the planet. Poverty is decreasing globally and literacy is increasing globally and this is likely due to the aforementioned reasons.

Moreover, it does not seem to me that we can even make a claim that the world is being torn apart. Brexit is the most peaceful secession in history, it seems. For a long time, the great powers of the world have not been in active war with each other. ISIS gets much more ink than it deserves, its terrorism is a rounding error in deaths caused and it's almost certainly not a threat to the existence or prosperity of western civilization. Quality of life and political stability seem to be increasing in a general sense in the third world.

Where is your proof that things are being torn apart? Is it because your cousin voted for someone you dislike and has the gall to post irritating memes about it on Facebook?

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[AmericaRunsOnDunkin]

Thus, human beings matter a great deal more than rocks in the only context that matters, our own.

Typical arrogant thinking from squishy water bags. You have neither the strength and constancy of granite, nor the adaptable and accommodating nature of limestone. Puny carbon sludge.

Rock Lives Matter!

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[swillden]

Religion is dumb.

Religion is wise.

Let's ignore any question about the existence or non-existence of a god or god and assume a pure atheistic standpoint. From that perspective, what religion is is the distillation of millenia of human experience, retaining what works well for people and discarding what doesn't. Of course, social institutions change, so some of what has been learned over all that time and codified in religious teachings is no longer true. But human nature doesn't change (on less than evolutionary timescales, barring genetic engineering), so some of what has been learned and codified is and will remain true for a very, very long time. And many of these truths are non-obvious and not easily reconstructed from purely rational analysis.

Note that it's perfectly possible, for both people and institutions, to be both wise and dumb. Intelligence is (roughly) the ability to reason through complex issues and arrive at logical conclusions. Wisdom is often just knowing the correct conclusion from experience... even if it's not the logical one. When intelligence and wisdom arrive at different conclusions it's not because the logic is bad, but because it applies the wrong weight to different tradeoffs, or ignores subtle but important issues entirely.

I know I'm going to get some response of the form "But religion is bad because people murder each other in the name of religion, and that can't be wise!". I have several responses to that, but perhaps the strongest one is to point out that non-religious ideologies are the real mass murders, far, far outstripping religion.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[s.petry]

Some issues ? Really? The USSR does not exist any longer, but you can still pack up and move to Russia. Go live in China today. You have no rights under either system, and are subject to a corrupt bureaucracy who decides what you get and when. You pack up and move, and after a generation you can try to tell us how great it is. I'd suggest that you start immediately voicing complaints about the Government on /. once you have residency.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Krishnoid]

In his defense, he was vaccinated as a child and as such his mental facilities were damaged. It's totally true, there's a paper on it and everything.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[s.petry]

Your first claim is false, so I won't bother. Go back and read my statement again.

Your second statement is false. Read a History book, look at China who banned religion. Look at countries with no Religion, or Religions which lack moral principles.

Your last claim is another false assertion, followed by utter bullocks. I never stated that Religion created Utopias. I stated that societies with a strong religion containing high moral codes are better. The Law in the US (including the Constitution) is based on Natural Law which aligns very well with Christianity.

Yeah yeah, the Westboro Baptists are the "normal" for Christians. I know the propaganda routine.

What will your next set of false statements be I wonder...

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Religion doesn't give a rats ass about "why". What they dictate, they dictate as fact. They have no interest in finding out the why, just believe what they tell you. That would be science that wants to know the why and the how. Religion just simply doesn't care. Just send them your money. Religion is simply a business, nothing more.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[swillden]

Human beings and rocks are basically the same thing, from a universal context.

Completely wrong. Humans (or, more generally "people", by which I mean creatures capable of the open-ended creation of knowledge through abstract reasoning and the conjecture and criticism of explanations) are the most significant objects in the universe, and I say that from a rational and literal perspective, not a parochial anthropocentric one.

Think about it: People are capable of changing the universe about them in any and every way not completely denied by the laws of physics, because people are capable of discovering and exploiting the laws of physics to order their universe in the way they like.

Consider the fact that physicists have created machines that cool small regions of space to 0.006 Kelvin. This is far below the cosmic microwave background temperature, which is almost certainly the lowest temperature reachable by any object in the universe -- in the absence of careful and clever manipulation by people who understand physics.

Consider SETI. Whether or not SETI ever hears anything, the fact is that it's perfectly conceivable that we could see and identify intelligent life at a distance of hundreds of light years, because people can produce patterns of electromagnetic radiation that cannot without people. Very few sub-stellar objects can be detected at that range, but people (potentially) can.

Given enough time, humanity may become capable demolishing solar systems to construct Dyson spheres to capture the entire energy output of suns and turn it to whatever purpose we like. Physics gives no reason that we may not ultimately be able to order galaxies according to our will. The only constraints are the laws of physics and the duration of the universe. Well, and perhaps human intellect... but we can augment and probably increase that by application of physics to ourselves and/or our tools as well.

Human beings -- and other sorts of people -- are about the furthest thing possible from rocks, from a universal context.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[ChrisMaple]

Religious moral codes are completely arbitrary. They are based on the pronouncements of one person or a small group of people, but they have no causal relation to what actually promotes human lives. Most religious moralities conspicuously ignore the needs of human beings and proclaim that the purpose of man is to glorify God: if stupidity and hatred of mankind could be solidified into one sentence, that is it: "The purpose of man is to glorify God."

A proper morality starts by identifying the nature of human beings, and from that organizes a set of principles of behavior which will result in an objectively observable high quality of life for people. Science plays a role in helping to identify what humans are and what's good for them. Fictional creatures play no such role, and people who claim that fictional creatures play such a role often make life worse.

Attributing to lack of religion the mess that was 20th century Russia and China reveals a superficial and biased reading of history.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[edtice1559]

Which is one of the reasons that we are seeing more resistance to "controversial" speakers at places like college campuses. If somebody who disagrees with you is genuinely seeking the truth, you should engage them. You may both learn something. If they are going to pretend to engage in debate but just push an agenda even after it is disproven, it's irresponsible to give them a platform. We should judge the validity of somebody's statements not on what they say but on whether the genuinely seek the truth

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[ChrisMaple]

Faith is belief without evidence.

Engineers use thermodynamics to design machines that they have confidence will work because there are billions of examples of the laws of thermodynamics holding true. Those examples are evidence; their belief that their machines will work is based on evidence, not faith.

Having a pet theory is like having a favorite baseball team. You hope your theory/team wins, you can put some effort into defending your theory/team because it gives you pleasure if it is show to be superior, but to have faith in a theory - or a baseball team - is foolishness.

FWIW, in this context hypothesis is a better word than theory.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

I give 5 states:

1) true
2) false
3) independent (same as your unknown)
4) paradox (!paradox = paradox)
5) syntax error

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's why I have faith in science.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably helps that maths boils down to a set of statements that are objectively either true, false or undecidable based on the set of axioms selected. If the proof isn't watertight at every stage you simply must accept that it is incomplete and proves nothing. In the other sciences it can get fuzzier: "proof" (or more correctly supporting evidence) is the result of a sequence of difficult experiments where you have to deal with issues of precision, interpretation, and confounding factors.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

If something is "outside" (whatever that means) and has no physical influence then it's (non)-existence is both outside of science and utterly meaningless.
If something does have a physical influence then it is by definition "inside" and subject to scientific exploration and explanation.
So either god is a meaningless and irrelevant concept or god is a physical entity/force/law and hence subject to scientific study.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Mr D from 63]

BS. If what you said is true then China, the USSR, etc.. would not have happened or been put in check by the same moral code you claim can be adopted from nothing. Yet without a decent set of taught Religious morality, we simply don't see that happen. Not one time in history has a society simply become utopian. Though a whole shitload have been wiped out by delusional views of utopians inside of them.

Scientific facts: Not everyone is moral, not everyone has the same values, and not everyone has the desire or capacity to learn.

See Socrates' Noble Lie.

You vehemently dispute science AC, then make a completely false claim. Pretty funny that you attempt to belittle others for believing in fairies, when you believe in a tale of them.

Well said. I find it quite strange to see those that profess to having a scientific outlook on things, don't take a scientific outlook on religion in our society and the reasons people become 'religious'. What one might find is that religion and science have some common roots, in the human desire to explain things they don't understand, the need for meaning, and a societal need for commonality. Maybe we have grown beyond those needs, or are in the process, but to show hatred or belittlement for those that are religious is completely illogical and unscientific.

I"m not religious. I don't look down upon those that are because I understand elements of human psychology that apply to every one of us, that we each have the capability to deny something even if the evidence against it is clearly right in front of us because we can adjust our perceptions. If anyone thinks they are not susceptible to that, they are ignoring what science has told us.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[bongey]

Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

Except when it has to do with race or gender, then suddenly science is thrown out the window.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

"and from that organizes a set of principles of behavior which will result in an objectively observable high quality of life for people."

And therein lies the rub. Who gets to pick? Don't you see that the commandments are what you are seeking?

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

We're stealing it back.

Bono

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Creedo]

From that perspective, what religion is is the distillation of millenia of human experience, retaining what works well for people and discarding what doesn't.

When you ignore the entire history of religion, I suppose this could look true. In the real world, where people are still persecuted and killed for "crimes" like blasphemy and "sins" like unapproved sexual behavior, your argument falls flat.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Creedo]

BS. If what you said is true then China, the USSR, etc.. would not have happened or been put in check by the same moral code you claim can be adopted from nothing.

Non sequitur. Atheism != Humanism. And there is no reason to assume that atheistic, non-humanist regimes will develop humanistic moral codes.

Scientific facts: Not everyone is moral, not everyone has the same values, and not everyone has the desire or capacity to learn.

Not having the same values != not being moral. Again, the question of whether humanist morals can be derived from materialistic principles, true or false, has nothing to do with your statements.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[s.petry]

Religious moral codes are completely arbitrary. They are based on the pronouncements of one person or a small group of people, but they have no causal relation to what actually promotes human lives.

Really? Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bang thy neighbors wife have no benefit to human lives? Are you high, or delusional?

Most religious moralities conspicuously ignore the needs of human beings and proclaim that the purpose of man is to glorify God: if stupidity and hatred of mankind could be solidified into one sentence, that is it: "The purpose of man is to glorify God."

Basic psychology, did you fail or skip the course? If you honor and respect the rule makers, you tend to respect the rules. If you honor and respect the "one" rule maker and see him as infallible, you don't tend to question the rules. Contrarily, if you disrespect the rule makers the rule of law collapses (see History).

A proper morality starts by identifying the nature of human beings, and from that organizes a set of principles of behavior which will result in an objectively observable high quality of life for people. Science plays a role in helping to identify what humans are and what's good for them. Fictional creatures play no such role, and people who claim that fictional creatures play such a role often make life worse.

Yeah yeah, good luck convincing the people with low IQs of your science. I guess you skipped Intro to Philosophy too and have no frigging clue what the "Noble Lie" is. (Hearing a phrase does not mean you have any wisdom of the meaning.) Also note that you ignore the premise I gave regarding the Religion as a starting point. *yawn*

Attributing to lack of religion the mess that was 20th century Russia and China reveals a superficial and biased reading of history.

China is still an atheistic mess, and Russia has actually been improving since allowing some level of Christianity. Ignoring that squashing religions is a basic tenet of Communism is blatant bias to promote an ideology despite history showing how damaging that ideology is. (Not past tense, check the world map).

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Pseudonym]

religion relies on faith - sticking to your beliefs no matter the evidence presented.

No, that's not what "faith" is.

"Faith" means "trust" and "loyalty". This is what it has always meant. This is how we still use the term today all the time: "semper fidelis", "keeping the faith", "assume good faith", "acting in good faith", "faithful boyfriend"... I could go on.

In a religious context it has an additional shade of meaning, something along the lines of "being true to what you believe". It still amounts to the same thing.

About a hundred years ago, some fundamentalists decided that "faith" should mean something like "believing without evidence" or even "believing contrary to evidence". This is yet one more thing that fundamentalists are wrong about.

I consider my marriage "faithful". I do not mean that I believe it in the absence of evidence, nor do I mean that I would stick to this no matter what evidence is presented. Neither do you.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[gweihir]

Well, people will deceive themselves about the nature of a thing they believe in. You just gave an excellent example of that. I like in particular "truths are non-obvious and not easily reconstructed from purely rational analysis", which nicely explains one of the lying-techniques used by religion: "You do not understand what we are doing, but we have truth!" used without proof. Anybody willing to fall for a lie this transparent is very easy to manipulate. Just strengthens my point.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jason777]

Let me address a couple things in your post. First, you imply that the universe could be created by chance, since we see chance in the already existing universe. The problem is you are saying that we could get something from nothing. But that cannot possibly happen. In order for the universe to come into existence by chance, then something would have to already exist outside the universe for that to be possible (cause and effect).

The other point you make is about this leading to a causal loop. For this, let me refer to the philosophical argument called the Cosmological Argument. This states that: Whatever BEGINS to exist has a cause. The Universe began to exist. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

So God could create the universe, but God Himself does not need to have a cause, since God is eternal.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't done the experiment yet, it's ''unknown''. If it's beyond the wit of man to devise such an experiment, it's ''cannot be known''. GP is a twerp.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Hognoxious]

It's refreshing to see people who will readily admit when they're wrong

Yes, it's a pity that more boche bastards don't follow suit.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[swillden]

Just strengthens my point.

Or demonstrates that you deceive yourself about the nature of the thing you believe in, namely your own ability to rationally work out the best way to live.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[swillden]

From that perspective, what religion is is the distillation of millenia of human experience, retaining what works well for people and discarding what doesn't.

When you ignore the entire history of religion, I suppose this could look true. In the real world, where people are still persecuted and killed for "crimes" like blasphemy and "sins" like unapproved sexual behavior, your argument falls flat.

I never claimed that *all* of what's in religion is correct. In fact I specifically said it wasn't.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Capsaicin]

The Argument from First Cause has always struck me ultimately as unsatisfying, it feels like argument by definition (since a god is being defined as the Cause without origin).

If, accepting the postulate of the necessity of cause ("[w]hatever BEGINS to exist has a cause"), one admits the possibility of a First Cause, then something other than the Hebrew deity Elohim (trans. 'God'), or any other self-reflectively conscious god, might just as easily function as that First Cause. And if there is a god that has always existed than bare (non-conscious) existence must itself be without beginning. The Big Bang may be our event horizon, but it might simply be an event that took place in an inherently eternal cosmos.

That the First Cause postulated by human thought so neatly resembles a thinking human is suspicious.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where is your proof that things are being torn apart?"
You must not be paying attention. Endless wars are raging unchecked across the ME. NK is one button push away from setting off a possible nuclear exchange. Russia is working on collecting it's wayward client states in Eastern Europe. Well funded and well organized groups of US citizens are working overtime to achieve a political coup.

"Brexit is the most peaceful secession in history"
Brexit is not a secession they are just opting out of a treaty. Northern Ireland trying to secede from Britain is a secession.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jason777]

Yes, so God would be the un-caused first cause since He is eternal. However, I agree with you, this would not assume the God of the Hebrew bible, but rather A God in general; a deity. The Cosmological argument does not go further than to prove philosophically that a deity had to have created the universe. We could show that the Hebrew God is the true God with other arguments, but it is not necessary here, as we are discussing the creation of the universe.

Now, to address your assertion that the big bang was an eternal event, well that does not make sense. Scientifically, we can show that the universe had a beginning, and that it is expanding, and with entropy. There are even mathematical proofs to show there had to be a beginning. The only other possible argument you might have, is that the universe is eternally expanding and contracting. Eternal big bangs, if you will. That is your only way out of the requirement of an eternal, un-caused, first cause. And that notion doesn't really impress me.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[ag0ny]

Lets take a well known example. The Bible says that God Created the earth, and mankind.

And The Silmarillion clearly states in the Ainulindalë that Eru Ilúvatar created the Ainur, who in turn created Arda through their music.

You can't quote a book to justify your belief in an imaginary friend in the sky.

In one thing you're right: science and faith are in completely different realms. Science works with the real world and what can be demonstrated. Faith is just wishful thinking based on a delusion. It's perfectly fine to mock religion into oblivion until we finally get rid of this nonsense.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[ag0ny]

Religious moral codes are completely arbitrary. They are based on the pronouncements of one person or a small group of people, but they have no causal relation to what actually promotes human lives.

Really? Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bang thy neighbors wife have no benefit to human lives? Are you high, or delusional?

You're cherrypicking. Do you realize that your list of commandments is full of stupid, ridiculous stuff that you're chosing to ignore?

Just to name a few:

132. The rapist must marry his victim if she is unwed

187. Not to eat creatures that live in water other than (kosher) fish

240. Not to reap that corner (WHUT?)

283. Not to gather grapes which grow wild that year in the normal way

436. A woman who had a running (vaginal) issue must bring an offering (in the Temple) after she goes to the Mikveh

474. Not to rob openly (but skeakily is ok?)

504. Purchase a Hebrew slave in accordance with the prescribed laws (so slavery is ok then)

And these are just a few pulled at random from your list of 613 commandments. It's nothing more than a set of rules for a Bronze Age civilization, that barely apply today.

The fact that you chose to follow the parts that you like and ignore the rest tells me that you're not too serious about your beliefs.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's philosophy which concern itself with "why", not religion.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

<>

is sometimes (rarely now, fortunately) used to mean "not equal to".

rarely = in BASIC and on web fora that don't allow Unicode, so pretty rarely

Also, the empty string is sometimes used to mean a string consisting of angle brackets.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Capsaicin]

Yes, so God would be the un-caused first cause since He [sic] is eternal. However, I agree with you, this would not assume the God [sic] of the Hebrew bible, but rather A God [sic] in general; a deity.

I was confused by your capitalisation, which in English usually denotes a proper noun. I carry the general rule even to the gods. Thus 'God' would usually refer to the Hebrew god (esp. where the original Hebrew text has some cognate of El, most commonly Elohim). Your usage apparently varies ... no matter.

Scientifically, we can show that the universe had a beginning, and that it is expanding, and with entropy. There are even mathematical proofs to show there had to be a beginning.

The other view perhaps is that so-called Big Bang is, as I wrote an event horizon, the mere inaccessibility to us of earlier events, being no guarantee of their non-existence. Indeed, my understanding is that there is now even an attempt to point the mathematics at what happened before the Big Bang.

However, accepting your contention that "we can show that the universe had a beginning," and bearing in mind that we cannot therefor find a physical cause that brought it into being: this contention itself is not un-problematic to the Cosmological proof. Instead of the statement "[w]hatever BEGINS to exist has a cause" being true, it may be that "most things which begin have a cause," and however small the set of objects having a beginning but no cause might be, we would have empirical evidence for at least one.

The only other possible argument you might have, is that the universe is eternally expanding and contracting. Eternal big bangs ...

Whether or not that is the only other possible argument, it is, I gather, more or less what is being proposed above. Not that I should pretend to understand far less to endorse this view, I do not need to for because ...

All of this is tangential the to point I was making. You haven't addressed my actual objection to the Argument from First Cause: Namely, that positing a god, God if you like, as the First Cause, involves illegitimately injecting all its the other attributes (including, as you would have it, God's gender for example) of that god into the role of First Cause. There is no necessary connection between having the attribute of being 'eternal' (as bare existence might be), and having, for example, a gender resembling that of XY humanoids [and on the Ontological Argument shouldn't we expect the complete XX ;) ], nor indeed any of the other attributes humans traditionally ascribe to their various gods, most especially being a self-reflective consciousness. As I wrote, that the "First Cause postulated by human thought so neatly resembles a thinking human" really is suspicious.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[skovnymfe]

And then we turn to the stories of people who were prosecuted religiously by the scientific community for presenting evidence of a theory being wrong. It's not uncommon for scientific evidence to go into the "Book Of Theories From Mentally Challenged People", where they're forgotten until 50 or 100 years later someone revisits the evidence and proves it was correct all along.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[The Evil Atheist]

Telling people what to eat and not eat (as one example among many) is hardly being concerned with the eternal.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

40-50 years ago the two greatest powers on Earth were a pushbutton away from global destruction, leftist terrorists kidnapped and killed people, plane hijackings happened almost yearly, the ozone hole was growing and cars spewed lead fumes into our air.
Our current issues are still serious issues, but things have calmed down quite a bit.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not killing and lying and raping are morals that spring naturally from innate human empathy and need for emotional connection. God has nothing to do with it.

Humans with suppressed or defective empathy are capable of, and sometimed motivated to, abuse empathy and destroy emotional connections. We call them evil (or at least assholes). Again, the source is human psychology and pathology, not the devil or an external force of "evil".

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Concretely, in science models are changeable and facts are not, while in faith models are not changeable, thus facts must be.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jandersen]

...we all know of people who hop on the bandwagon of science and are as stubborn as anyone. There are also plenty of religious folk who use their brains (in the voice of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word faith. I do not think it means what you think it means").

That does not contradict what the GP said, IMO. The fact that there are people who work in science and treat it as a kind of religion doesn't mean that science is not about seeking truth and being willing to change your opinion, if the data prove you wrong; it just means that there are poor scientists as well as good ones. And just because there are religious people (perhaps even many) who think like a (real) scientist, doesn't mean religion is somehow validated by them. The difference between science and religion is fundamental: in science, you start with observable data (the closest thing we have to 'facts'), and we try to approach the truth by winnowing out the falsehoods from our theories; we know our theories are not true in an absolute sense, but we think they aren't too far off. In religion, you start at the other end: you decide what the truth must be, then you filter out the observations that don't support your conclusion; that was how the Bible was constructed, just as one example. Of course, it is logically conceivable (if not very likely) that one might stumble on the truth simply by chance, but even if you did, the method precludes understanding and stops you from accepting new insights. The religious people, who use their brains, as you say, are the ones who are brave enough to deviate from the foundation of their religion; they are not true to their faith.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[evilbessie]

You know where the age comes from? Some monks added up the ages of people listed in the Torah and worked it out (they made some mistakes which is why Jesus is born in 4 or 6 BC. So yes the 6000 year old earth does indeed come from the bible itself.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[thegarbz]

There are also plenty of religious folk who use their brains

This! Religious folk even have names for those people. They call them "heathens" and then cast them out.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[thegarbz]

Religion concern itself with "why".
Science concerns itself with "how".

You can't understand the why without explicitly knowing the how. Science is as much concerned with why as religion, it just chooses not to skip the critical step that is required for something to make sense.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[thegarbz]

For a significant, but less vocal part of religious folk

Yeah if I denied the fundamental parts of my faith for fear of being outcast, I too wouldn't be very vocal about it.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's refreshing to see people who will readily admit when they're wrong, since they're looking for the truth, not to prove a point.

That's always what I fall back two when people compare science to a religion: religion relies on faith - sticking to your beliefs no matter the evidence presented. Science will readily toss out everything they know and start over if something is proven to be wrong.

Thats why scientology is the best of both worlds... if YOU prove THEM wrong, then they toss out YOU! :-)

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jeremyp]

There is no scientific reason why the two should be compared on the same plane, since they deal with totally different realms.

True. Science deals with the realm of reality and religion deals with the realm of fiction.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jeremyp]

The first claim is:

I think the past has proven quite conclusively that morals can succeed or fail with or without religion.

The sentence before that was a question which you failed to answer. Anyway, history shows that secular societies can have good moral frameworks e.g. Scandinavia, large parts of Western Europe and North America. History shows that atheist societies often have bad moral frameworks e.g. Stalin's USSR. Note that atheist and secular are not the same thing. Stalin went out of his way to stamp out religion. History shows that theistic societies, as a general rule have bad moral frameworks e.g. Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iran, Saudi Arabia, England in the 16th and 17th centuries. I'm unable to think of any theistic society with a good moral framework, but that does not mean there aren't any.

So I think it is clear that the first claim is true.

The last bit of the post was a request to you to point out a religious society that became a utopia. You failed to answer the request but instead called it castrated male oxen. But you are telling the truth when you state " I never stated that Religion created Utopias". Unfortunately, your criteria for a successful secular morality include that it creates utopias. You should not be surprised when people call you out for not applying the same criterion to religious morality.

I stated that societies with a strong religion containing high moral codes are better.

Can you name such a society? Saudi Arabia has a strong religion with a high moral code and yet I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to live there.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jeremyp]

Really? Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bang thy neighbors wife have no benefit to human lives? Are you high, or delusional?

Thou shalt have no other god before me.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Kill the homosexuals

Kill adulterers, especially the women.

Kill people who work on Saturdays.

You can only beat your slaves if they survive at least a week.

Russia has actually been improving since allowing some level of Christianity.

I think you need to talk to some gay people from Russia before you start claiming it is getting better.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring that squashing religions is a basic tenet of Communism is blatant bias to promote an ideology despite history showing how damaging that ideology is.

Other way around. Focusing on how Communism squashes your sacred cow (pun intended) of religion and not the other things Communism squashes as a basic tenet (people who want to own guns and people who want to speak freely and critically of the regime are two big ones) is blatant bias on your part to your own ideology.

Amusingly, the ideology you're pushing has strong similarities to Communism. I mean...

Yeah yeah, good luck convincing the people with low IQs of your science. I guess you skipped Intro to Philosophy too and have no frigging clue what the "Noble Lie" is

In other words, people are too stupid for their own good, and you need to save them from themselves with your "noble lies"

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Archangel Michael]

The implication you make is that Science is amoral, science is neither amoral, moral or even immoral. Science is a tool to understand the world around us. Humans are flawed creatures, and science has even proven this (Piltdown man, your post) where ego gets in the middle of everything.

Your post is tragically flawed, in that you strongly implied science itself has a higher moral authority, while arguing that it is amoral. The fact is, science cannot be both, and is in fact, neither.

Science is a process, and processes have no bearing on morals.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jason777]

You're right about the little g in god, I'm just used to typing a capital.
Next, your event horizon argument to me is equivalent to the notion that god exists outside the universe, which he created, and we exist in the universe never getting outside. You still have the problem of how did that creation happen. I understand what you're saying about we could have this eternal event horizon situation, so I suppose I'll grant you that possibility.

If you claim things can happen without a cause, then that could be shown with a scientific experiment. The law of cause and effect would disagree. The Cosmological argument is airtight because we know the universe had a beginning, and therefore must have a cause. That cause must be not a physical cause, but something outside the universe itself.

Finally, for your objection about the first cause positing a god. I'm not really sure why this is an objection. If something has caused the universe to come into being, then it would logically follow that this being would have the attributes of [a] god. From here we could delve into other arguments for god, that would suggest an all-loving creator (Moral Argument). But if we are just talking creation, then we could leave it at a divine being in general.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Archangel Michael]

What is the source for your morals? Where is is codified? Almost Every Single Person I know that says they have Moral standard, are hypocritical at some level and do not care. What do you do when you're in a position where your morals conflict with your actions? I have yet to meet any human that was perfect to their own moral code.

Or to sum up: 'And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. '

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Archangel Michael]

All selective interpretations, and not exactly what the text says. I noticed that you did not provide reference points. And lastly, that code is for people who are part of the community, they are free to leave the community whenever they like, and go live pagan lands where they can rape women without recourse, eat whatsoever they want, lie, cheat, steal, and offer human sacrifices to whatever god of self desire they create.

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Leading to chaos and destruction.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Archangel Michael]

Nobody ever killed in a fit of rage. Got it. Nobody lied to save their skin ("I did not have sexual relations, with that woman, Ms Lewinsky" ) (also an alleged serial rapist given a pass because he was "charming") ( and "I feel your pain" )

For every platitude, I have an example of where it was complete and utter bullshit in practice ;)

Again, the source is human psychology and pathology, not the devil or an external force of "evil".

Actually, that is in the bible, from the beginning...

If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Archangel Michael]

I do know where it comes from, it comes from a calculation assuming there are no informational gaps. I know full well where it comes from. My personal view is that it may or may not be accurate, and my faith doesn't require it to be accurate.

Do you assume no gaps in information in the bible?

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Immerman]

It's not that math has a problem with change so much as that unlike every other field it can in fact be perfect. Unlike Science, which is a field dedicated to developing successively more accurate approximations to a provably unknowable reality, Math is a purely logical construct disconnected from the physical world except insofar as the postulates are chosen to describe aspects of it. A postulate, by definition, cannot be wrong because it *creates* the rules, rather than trying to describe something outside itself. If something takes a long time to change, it's because there's disagreement on some subtle point of logic that takes a long time to formulate as a rigorous proof one way or the other - e.g. uncertainty as to whether Euclid's 5th is actually implied by the postulates of it's framework, or it introduces a fundamentally new assumption.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Nikkos]

All social structures are based on some level of faith and/or assumptions in mankind or of an ideological ideal. Religion (god), government (the state), the academic system (tenure, ontologies)

You can be a twat about religion, but your adherence to a social contract of any sort, or utilizing any social system of any type, means you're partaking in essentially the same thing.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[evilbessie]

I believe that it was all written to control people. I do not view it as an accurate historical record, no. But still that does not change it having said history, as with all sources one has to put them in context. I mean to accept the dates you have to accept that various people were hundreds of years old, so there are issues. But the date is based on information available in the book.

It's not even good at setting moral standards in today's world for all the teaching about everyone being equal there are still slaves and women have no power. So it's just certain men are equal to a few other men, everyone else is not even a person.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not everyone is moral, not everyone has the same values, and not everyone has the desire or capacity to learn."

You just described most of the Trump base.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
Tim Minchin - Storm

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Archangel Michael]

I believe that it was all written to control people.

How the hell did I become Libertarian (borderline Anarchist) then?

My G-D has a 10% suggested tax rate, condemned to hell if you don't give, but no other compulsion.
Current Diety has upto 50% tax rate, under penalty of incarceration if you don't pay.

And you think the Bible was written to control people? It was written for people to control themselves. It all depends on one's perspective. ;)
 

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Pikoro]

ABORT, RETRY, FAIL

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[evilbessie]

It is 'culture' which is at it's heart an IFF (Identify Friend/Foe) system. But rather than just being about which hand you hold the fork in it has more rules about behaviour and 'morality'. I mean look at when the Christians banned slavery or polygamy.

I'd argue that communism is the only governmental system which fits with Christian belief. Most of the others are 'everyone is equal' too, also much about sharing the wealth (or against the concept of wealth entirely). Libertarian is basically against the who point of the Judaeo-Christian religion. But you know what's missing the point of scripture if you get to get what you want.

I am at least consistent, atheism, I think they are all lies used to enrich a few and control the many. I'd much rather have a morality system which doesn't need to exclude people because it deems them not people.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[apoc.famine]

It's wise to believe in something that's not demonstrably true? To wrap the one, very short life you have in a cloak of lies, which both terrify you and give you hope?
 
No, that's not wise. That would be called a mental illness if we didn't have a cultural history spanning millennia of doing that behind us. There are tons of things that humans have done culturally that are neither wise nor good for them, but which have persisted due to cultural inertia. (See lutefisk, e.g.) It is for this very reason that north of 90% of people who are religious believe what their family believes and why religions cluster geographically.
 
Even if just about all religions didn't have a long, storied history of being truly awful to various groups of people, often their own members, I'd still have a serious objection to people basing their lives on lies and mythology. The resources that are wasted on these lies and this mythology are staggering. Religion is great at keeping the poor poor, and using their meager wealth to prop up an inefficient enterprise which uses fear of the unknown to keep them donating.
 
If you need a fairy-tale to give you hope and entertain you, go to the library. It won't cost 10% of your income, and the stories are better. If you need counseling, go find a certified expert who actually specializes in the help you need, not someone who may have no training and is preaching to the masses. If you need a social group, throw a block party and get to know your neighbors. Find a hobby. Play a sport. Go to the bar.
 
Do you know what's wise? Spending the time and money you would have spent on lies and mythology on real things, with real, tangible benefits, instead of on religion which sells the cure to the poison it administers.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[michael_wojcik]

Will be interesting to see whether Blum or somebody else can fix the proof.

Totally not my area, but my guess is no. The problem with Tardos's function looks pretty fatal. AIUI (from Aaronson's blog and some other sources), Blum was trying to extend superpolynomial lower bounds proofs on monotone Boolean functions to general Boolean functions, and Tardos showed (back in the '80s) that there's at least one such function that meets all the superpoly tests when implemented with a monotone circuit, but has a poly general circuit. So it's a counterexample to what Blum was trying to prove.

Of course I may be hilariously wrong about all of that.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[apoc.famine]

I think politics have had less influence on science than our funding model has, to be honest. And the arguments now stem directly from it.
 
Part of the reason that scientists can't accept fault is that funding is tied to research publications. Undermine your research, and you're less likely to get funding. Publish or perish really is how science works, and an additional complicating factor is that null results don't make for interesting reading, nor do retractions, and thus they don't get published very often. If you undermine your research you'd better have an even better paper explaining why, to make up for the publication you just ruined. Destroy someone else's work? That's fine. Because you then have a better chance competing for their funding.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

Both Nazi Germany and militarist Japan outpaced China and the Soviet Union in murders. The difference in totals is because we stopped Japan and Germany. Any shortage of megamurders by Japan and Germany wasn't for lack of trying.

Militarist Japan was also religious.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

Look, read Leviticus. It's full of moral strictures that have no relation to reality.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[apoc.famine]

The problem is you are saying that we could get something from nothing. But that cannot possibly happen.

May I point you to quantum fluctuations? Out of nothing quantum fluctuations consolidate energy, that creates two opposing particles which then recombine and release that energy. Back to nothing.
 
The problem with clinging to god is that you're clinging to the imagination of bronze aged peasants. Back here in reality things are really, really interesting, in ways those peasants could never fathom.
 
You know enough theology and philosophy to know about the Cosmological Argument, which means you probably also know about the God of the Gaps fallacy. Throwing around "you can't get something from nothing" as an argument puts you on the wrong side of that fallacy. Just like the earth being the center of the universe, the creation story in Genesis, Noah's flood, evolution, and a whole host of other places where god existed until science closed that gap. At what point do you give up, and admit that you've got no god, and rejoin reality?

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

There's a difference between faith in a system you're supposed to accept on faith, and faith in a system you can verify and/or affect.

A social system can be debated and changed. There are things society accepts that society didn't when I was young. Religion changes more slowly, if at all.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[guruevi]

You must've misread. I never said science has any moral authority. My point is that people are much better off WITHOUT any moral authority, especially that of the church and that people that aren't controlled by a group of witch hunters, are much better off because they make better moral choices.

It's much better to make up your own morals based on the information science has provided than to base them on the information a book written several millennia ago provides.

Science says that there is nothing to believe in, to question everything, assuming everything you know is incorrect and that everyone is born equal. Religion says that everyone that doesn't belong to a particular group will die and you're supposed to bring everyone into the group, if necessary by force.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

Euclid's Elements is not generally used nowadays. It's hard to read and not really rigorous. (Book 1, Proposition 1 cannot be proven from the definitions, axioms, and postulates.) Much of what Euclid worked on is still valid.

Mathematics is different than science because things can be mathematically proven in a way that scientific things can't be. It's an exercise, not a faith. The main difference between mathematics and religion is that things can be proven in mathematics, but have to be taken on faith in religion. If I prove a result in mathematics, it's proven and accepted. If I disagree with a religion, there's no reliable way to convince anyone else.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

Religions are, through natural selection, optimized to create belief. They are excellent at embedding themselves in people's minds. That doesn't mean they're helpful or good for anything. A virus might be excellent at embedding itself in my body, but that doesn't mean it's good for me.

What's the difference between someone trying to convert me to a religion and someone trying to sell me something? Both are acting on what they perceive as their best interest, and both can be trying to help me.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

The fact that there are people who work in science and treat it as a kind of religion

Does this really happen? There are people who are interested in science and treat it as a kind of religion, but actual scientists?

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

Humans (or, more generally "people", by which I mean creatures capable of the open-ended creation of knowledge through abstract reasoning and the conjecture and criticism of explanations) are the most significant objects in the universe, and I say that from a rational and literal perspective, not a parochial anthropocentric one.

You wouldn't think that if you were a rock or a kangaroo. Reasonably intelligent animals consider their species to be the most significant thing in the world (they look longer at pictures of members of their species) and most of them aren't capable of that creation of knowledge.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

The law of cause and effect would disagree.

There is no law of cause and effect. On the quantum level, things just happen. All we can do is predict probabilities. If a photon is polarized up-down, the chance that the photon, on being polarized left-right, will be left is 50%, and we know that there are no features of the photon that make it go left.

Moreover, barring an infinite regress, and assuming causality holds, there has to be a first cause, and we establish nothing by giving it a special name. If I ask "How did the Universe come to be?" and you reply "God did it.", I can ask "How did God come to be?" and we're at the same exact logical place. If you have independent reasons to believe in God, then saying "God created the Universe." is reasonable, but if not you're just playing with words.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[swillden]

I don't think you read beyond the first sentence of my post. It was definitely not an anthropocentric view.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[swillden]

It's wise to believe in something that's not demonstrably true?

You didn't read the post you replied to.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell did I become Libertarian (borderline Anarchist) then?

The same way you can be a Libertarian even when your government (and like no government on Earth now or ever) isn't.

Just because they attempt to control people doesn't mean they'll get every single individual with equal effectiveness.

And you think the Bible was written to control people?

Why not? Don't just look at the tax rate. Look at the severity of the punishment

I know prison isn't a good place, and I don't know how long your government imprisons people for not paying taxes, but I imagine hell and eternity are a lot worse.

It was written for people to control themselves. It all depends on one's perspective

The evidence does not match what you're saying. Almost all followers of the Book form hierarchies with governing bodies that decide the "proper" way to practice their faith, and the people basically listen and obey for the most part.

On the odd occasion you get schisms in a religion (with big ones like the Protestant Reformation being super rare), but the end result is just two or more new churches forming, with new governing bodies exerting control on their respective congregations.

Now, I'm sure some people don't ever interact with those governing bodies and just follow their Bible as according to their own individual perspective, but those people are not relevant, as we're concerned with the religion that does interact with the people and society at large.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Brockmire]

Because he fucked up with "two"?

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Brockmire]

The Bible is taken literally until it's proven false, then it's just a metaphor. Earth is approx 4.5 billion years old, not thousands or millions. We know what stages it formed in. At no fucking time did a woman get created from a rib and talk to snakes. The whole fucking thing is fabricated from stories that were around for generations. Believed by gullible, illiterate people.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Brockmire]

Wtf? Religion asks why, the answer is "I don't fucking know, here's some bullshit to pacify you".

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[s.petry]

Cherry pick and ignore reality much? There are very small sects of Religions that hold those beliefs among Christians, and even in the Jewish religion those are held by mostly Orthodox Jews.

Back in the day those were parts of reality. A huge number of the populace was hungry and didn't know you had to cook stuff, leading to massive amounts of disease and illness. Most Religions have updated beliefs accordingly.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[s.petry]

Don't accuse others of your own crime. You are cherry picking pieces of a Religion I did not mention, as well as cherry picking bits of a Religion (Judaism) which are not followed even by Orthodox Jews. Go back to my original premise and your flawed logic is very clear. Not only do you fail at basic Philosophy, you fail at basic logic. Grats on being a double moron I guess.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to be fair, if you read through history or current events it is rather clear humans are awful creatures.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Science advances one funeral at a time.
-Max Planck

It is an unfortunate failing of humanity. The recent series on Einstein, Genius, touched on this a bit. Basically Einstein had to deal with stuffy older physicists rejecting his ideas when he was young, but he was the stuffy older physicist doing the same when it came to quantum mechanics. That is particularly ironic considering he really is one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics with his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jason777]

Lol, do you realize that the quantum vacuum is still "something"? You can never get something from nothing. Thinking otherwise is illogical.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jason777]

You say "How did God come to be?" But an eternal being has no beginning, and therefore a cause is not needed. At some point, something needs to cause the universe to exist. It cannot happen by chance. To think otherwise is to have greater faith, because that is not scientific either. But the theory of God has many other arguments that we can get into. And again, the quantum vacuum is "something"! You're not getting something from nothing. Something had to create the quantum vacuum.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[ag0ny]

You are cherry picking pieces of a Religion I did not mention, as well as cherry picking bits of a Religion (Judaism) which are not followed even by Orthodox Jews.

Bullshit. According to your own mythology, all those commandments still apply. But still, even if was wrong about these, you guys haven't provided any evidence yet on why we should care about what your fantasy book says, and you've had more than 2000 years to do so.

So no, until you guys give us a reason to believe in your religion (or any other) I'll keep seeing you as lunatics.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[ag0ny]

All social structures are based on some level of faith and/or assumptions in mankind or of an ideological ideal. Religion (god), government (the state), the academic system (tenure, ontologies)

Nonsense. I don't have any faith in the government or academic system existing, because I have evidence that they do: I can go to the city hall and see the politicians or go to a university and see the teachers and alumni, I can see the laws they pass and their effects. I can see that people who have attended a university have a higher education level and generally more successful lives than those who don't. All these facts together lead me to conclude that yes, the government and educational system exist, and they're doing their job (to a varying level of success, but that's a different conversation).

Faith is believing in something when there's no evidence supporting that belief. That's the difference.

You don't have evidence that a god exists. All you have is your childhood indoctrination and an old book you point to when we challenge your beliefs.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[nitehawk214]

Ah yes, just assert what I am saying is false instead of coming up with actual arguments. And asserting that somehow religious societies are moral, much less better than secular ones.

As for the basis of the United States Constitution and the beliefs of the founding fathers... you may want to read up on a thing called The Enlightenment.

Note that you are the one bringing up Westboro and propaganda.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

The "why" is not irrelevant or useless, it's just personal /individual and not universal, and that's why it's good that you and I and everyone else gets to have their own "why", or at least in the more enlightened places.

aRTee

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Capsaicin]

If you claim things can happen without a cause, then that could be shown with a scientific experiment. The law of cause and effect would disagree.

I was only a observing that your claim that "we can show that the universe had a beginning," coupled with the notion that there is no physical cause for that beginning could just as well evidence an object-with-beginning-but-without-cause as it might your postulated undetectable non-physical cause (God). But as I said, it's parenthetical to my actual objection ... after all I began by conceding, for the sake of this discussion, "the postulate of the necessity of cause."

If something has caused the universe to come into being, then it would logically follow that this being would have the attributes of [a] god.

I'm sorry, but this is where I simply cannot agree. It is, imo, the crux of the problem with this 'proof.'

A First Cause, in a world where cause was necessary to beginning, would have the attribute of not having a beginning (it would not need to be eternal, of course, as it might cease once having performed its task of causing), and it would need to have the attribute of being a cause, but everything apart from that is incidental. As you referred to God (i.e. the god known as God) as "He," I pointed out that the attribute of being gendered male is just one example of something that cannot reasonably be attributed to a First Cause qua First Cause (which is not to say the First Cause could not resemble a male human of course, there is simply no logical necessity that it does.) And since, apart from these attempts at logical proof, we know in fact (or would were we Hindu ;) that the Cosmos is caused by (or is a manifestation of) Shakti clearly masculinity is not a necessary attribute either of a First Cause nor of a god(dess).

More seriously the attribute of being reflexively conscious (ie. self-aware) is an attribute that any god, I think, must possess, but which would not follow necessarily from the status of being a First Cause. In other words, the argument from first cause, (accepting the premises on which it is based), strikes me as not being an argument for the existence of any god, but for the existence of a First Cause. It is the imposition of the other divine attributes that strikes me as argument by definition. Alternatively we could see some circularity in the thinking here.

The circular form of this argument might run. 1) Everything non-eternal has a beginning. 2) All things that have a beginning must have a cause. 3) This chain of causation must itself have a beginning. 4) Since God is eternal, He has no beginning and requires no cause. Thus God is the only thing capable of being the beginning of the chain of causation. Now while this might function as an explanation of how a Universe of objects came into being, it cannot obviously function as Proof of God. Without wanting to be rude, I suspect a subtle form of this thinking may possibly be able to influence those, who already possessed of a strong Faith in God, come to the Argument from First Cause, thus making it easy to see all those other attributes of God as being predicated unproblematically to the First Cause.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jandersen]

Does this really happen? There are people who are interested in science and treat it as a kind of religion, but actual scientists?

I was being polemical, but I think there is some justification in that there are actual scientists, who get awfully dogmatic about what they feel must be the truth; that is not to say that they go to some sort of 'Church of Science' to worship. One has to bear in mind that 'Scientist' is like a job title: you work with science - you're a scientist, and scientists are just people. They aren't all strict followers of a pure form of scientific philosophy throughout all aspects of their lives, even if they mostly subscribe to a strong version of the scientific method within their field of research. Scientists can be just as opinionated as anybody else and have a hard time accepting that they are wrong.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[jason777]

So, if I am to boil down what you said, I think we agree that:
1) The universe had a beginning
2) Anything with a beginning must have a cause
3) Anything without a beginning does not necessarily need to have a cause

Where we disagree:
1) The first cause is not necessarily "god"
2) The first cause could come into being and cease being (and come into being again); Does not need to be eternal

First, the first cause must be god. While the cosmological argument may not be enough for you, look into the ontological and moral arguments for god. Though, it stands to reason the first cause would need to be greater than the thing being created. Think about it, if the universe was created, then it would follow that a highly intelligent and powerful creator is required.

Second, it does not follow that the First Cause could come into and out of existence. That is illogical because you come back to the something out of nothing problem. If this were the cause, you would need an even higher being to cause this being to exist/not exist.

Third, to address your discussion of the He pronoun. God himself takes on that pronoun, but being a spiritual being does not have a physical gender. I don't think this gets in the way of the argument at hand anyways.

Fourth, I would argue that the First Cause would need to be self-aware. Otherwise, you have random chance causing everything to exist. but any material for existence (including the quantum vacuum) would need to first exist for "random chance" to happen. Otherwise you get something from nothing; an illogical proposition. Now, I will grant you that the cosmological argument does not prove the God of the Bible, but rather the existence of a god of creation. That's not to say we cannot prove the God of the Bible, but not via this argument.

Finally, to address your last point about attributing the cosmological argument to a god because of influence of my faith. Well, you commit the genetic fallacy here. You neglect the argument at hand because of the source, instead of the merit of the argument.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

Perhaps the Universe is eternal, and spawns off new Universes every so often, for all I know. I know about when the Big Bang was, but not what happened before it (if there was a before). Perhaps there is no God.

We're looking at two possibilities here, that God came from nothing and created the Universe, or that the Universe came from nothing. Each possibility has something coming from nothing, but one has an extra hypothesis that adds nothing to the analysis. God may be eternal, and so may a larger Universe that spawned this one. There may be nothing eternal. This is not evidence of a God.

With the possible exception of the Anthropic Principle, there are no valid indications of God in the physical Universe.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

I read it. It was a pretty good argument by a human how humans are special, but it wouldn't convince an octopus.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

There's lots of reasons besides the religious to not wanting to admit you're wrong. There's got to be a few out there, but I'm really doubtful that there's a significant number.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

You seem happy to pick Commandments while ignoring Leviticus. What happened is that there was some good stuff, some not-so-good stuff, and some crap in the Old Testament, and people have cherry-picked the good stuff and relatively little of the crap since. What we're left with is not a religious moral code so much as religion blended with outside reality.

Re: That's what's good about critical thinkers

[swillden]

I read it. It was a pretty good argument by a human how humans are special, but it wouldn't convince an octopus.

The argument wasn't about humans at all. It's about how people (meaning entities capable of generating and applying explanatory theories about the universe, regardless of whether those entities are humans) are special, not because they're special to themselves but because they are uniquely capable of changing the universe.

What an octopus might be able to understand is that people are ultimately capable of creating an octopus, or any other life form that the laws of physics allow to exist.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[Capsaicin]

To address your points in reverse order ...

[5] ... you commit the genetic fallacy here. You neglect the argument at hand because of the source

That's not quite fair. I merely observed "a circular form" of the argument could be put --which would be an "explanation of how a Universe of objects came into being," but could not function as a proof of existence --and that there exists the possibility that prior acceptance of a deity "may possibly" make the other divine attributes appear as naturally predicated to any First Cause.

And in your last reply I find you writing, in defence of the proposition that the first cause must be a god: "look into the ontological and moral arguments for god." The more pertinent part of that defence I shall address below.

Fourth, I would argue that the First Cause would need to be self-aware. Otherwise, you have random chance causing everything to exist. but any material for existence ... would need to first exist for "random chance" to happen. Otherwise you get something from nothing

The concept 'random chance' introduces a whole new level of complexity into a discussion of causation. Be that as it may, it is far from clear how self-awareness is a necessary precondition for "any material," even unto the ultimate development of consciousness itself from such material.

Third, to address your discussion of the He pronoun ...

This was just an example, given as an aside, of an obviously contingent attribute being ascribed to the first cause. More to the point is reflexive consciousness (since that, unlike male gender, is inevitably an attribute of any god).

Second, it does not follow that the First Cause could come into and out of existence.

Here you have simply misread me. I wrote that the First Cause "would [necessarily] have the attribute of not having a beginning," indeed, it is axiomatic to this discussion that it cannot "come into" existence. I was just pointing out that this does not mean it cannot "go out of existence." I.e The First Cause would need to be without beginning, but not necessarily eternal.

First, the first cause must be god. ... first cause would need to be greater than the thing being created

Of the many causes that produce effects are those causes necessarily "greater" than their effects? What might 'greater' even mean here?

You and I shall probably never be able to agree on the answer to what I regard as the central problem here: Might not something fairly innocuous be able to function as the first of all causes? And tempted as I am to open up the ontological argument in the context of the creator being "greater" than creation, we've probably been at this for long enough now, no?

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[s.petry]

Leviticus isn't a commandment you ignorant fool! Do some actual research instead of repeating propaganda and bullshit!

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[gweihir]

Not at all. Your obvious lie is obvious.

Re:That's what's good about critical thinkers

[david_thornley]

Of course Leviticus isn't a Commandment. What it is is part of the Bible, and I sometimes see it quoted as if it still means something. People pull out the anti-gay verse while wearing blended fabrics, possibly disrespecting their parents, and not checking which animal sacrifices are due.

Who the fuck cares?

[ArchieBunker]

Seriously. This debate always comes up. Does it have a practical purpose? Once the debate is solved will anything change?

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Myrdos]

Once the debate is solved will anything change?

Only if the solution shows that P = NP.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

P != NP also would, because it's an assumption right now. The confidence in various encryption algorithms would increase for example.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[geekmux]

Seriously. This debate always comes up. Does it have a practical purpose? Once the debate is solved will anything change?

Some analysis looks to open doors and our minds to new paths. Some looks to validate whether or not we should close doors and move on.

I am but a layman, but my understanding of P vs. NP targets the latter, not the former. Being efficient in our thinking always has value. Thinking you're traveling down a a dead end road vs. knowing you are, tends to steer efficiency.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Junta]

Maybe in a very academic sense, but practically speaking P != NP is overwhelmingly assumed to be the case, even if not proven. A valid proof of that being the case would be some buzz in the academics of math, but the rest of the world would shrug and move on.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Khashishi]

Well, if we find a O(n^400) algorithm for a formerly NP complete problem, I don't think matters much.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually wouldn't make much of a difference because factoring and discrete log haven't been proven NP

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[ArchieBunker]

What is the importance of this path? Can it lead to anything besides a paragraph in a textbook?

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

A solution to ANY NP problem (solvable in P time) will apply to ALL NP problems, allowing them likewise to be solved in P time

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[gweihir]

It does matter, because of unexpected side-results. The question itself does not matter much, but other things implied by it may well matter a lot. In particular, it could show directions for further research. Of course, this being hardcore fundamental mathematical research, anything practical will at least be two steps removed. But without a few millennia of mathematical research, we would not have most of the advanced algorithms in use today.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[gweihir]

Yes, but that is not a practical result. If it is P with, say, exponent > 20, then it has no practical consequences. P vs. NP is not about run-times for real-world cases.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Says somebody who clearly doesn't understand the difference between P and NP. Do yourself a favor and look just how quickly factorials blow up. Remember that the 3-SAT problem isn't O(x^n), it's O(n!). Yes, for adequately large exponent values it makes no practical difference, but it's going to have to be a pretty big exponent to make up for just how bad factorial is. And even then, adequately large exponent values only hold assuming computing power doesn't increase beyond that. n! will far outpace n^x every time given an adequately large n no matter what x is.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? Maths nerds like myself.
Does it matter? Cryptography to a large extent relies of P != NP. Prove that P!=NP and people will be happy. Prove that P=NP and we have a problem.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[gweihir]

And fail. High-exponent polynomials blow up similarly fast in practice, i.e. things become infeasible at very small sizes for worst-case scenarios. Incidentally, I know pretty much what I am talking about, including, for example, in crypto. The one-way function definition, for example, that stipulates P in one direction and NP for the reversal is simply broken and comes from theoreticians that have no insight into practice. It can be fixed (sort of), but you can do perfectly secure one-way functions using P only. Hence while you may have understood some of the math, you have failed to grasp what it means in reality.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[godrik]

Yes, whether P is equal to NP or not does matter a lot.

First of all, if P is equal to NP. Then lots of computations are going to get much faster. This is likely to rock many industries, for instance logistics companies that need to schedule and order the way they work.

If P is not equal to NP, then the proof will still be interesting because it is a problem we have not been able to solve in a long time. This means that there is an aspect of complexity theory we do not understand.
In the past, understanding complexity theory better gave us approximation algorithms, randomized algorithms, sat solvers, ...
Also a proof of P!=NP could give us a better understanding of which types of instances are hard which could lead to better algorithm for the types of instances that are not hard.

So, while a proof will give us nothing immediately, it could be big in the long run.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[swillden]

Maybe in a very academic sense, but practically speaking P != NP is overwhelmingly assumed to be the case, even if not proven. A valid proof of that being the case would be some buzz in the academics of math, but the rest of the world would shrug and move on.

A proof of P=NP, however, would be earthshaking well outside of academia. A constructive proof of P=NP, meaning a proof that contains a recipe for converting an NP problem into a P problem, could well be the single most important mathematical proof of all time, in terms of what it would enable people to do.

Actually, it's the very momentous impact of such a proof that makes everyone assume that P != NP. It's an intuition that the universe just isn't that nice, that there just have to be plenty of incredibly hard problems. Of course, there are problems that are harder than anything in NP, the NEXPTIME problems and, of course, the undecidable problems, so even if N = NP we'll still know we can't solve everything.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[z3alot]

The solution to *any* problem that has resisted solution for as long as this has will likely contain essentially new ideas. These new methods of analysis likely have a much broader application than strictly the original problem. Many minds following the threads through and having their own insights will result in an improvement in the state of the art which you would find in even the most practically minded engineers textbook.

Personally, I think knowing the why to the answer to the question "can a problem whose solution is easily checked actually be hard?", whatever it is, is interesting enough in its own right.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

A proof of P=NP, however, would be earthshaking well outside of academia. A constructive proof of P=NP, meaning a proof that contains a recipe for converting an NP problem into a P problem, could well be the single most important mathematical proof of all time, in terms of what it would enable people to do.

I'm not so sure that it would be all that earth shattering.

If a someone figures out a method to convert an NP problem into a P problem then it is likely that method only works on that particular type of NP problems and not all of them.
The result will be that that NP problem will be reclassified as a P problem since it isn't really the problem that is NP but the method for solving it.

In the same manner every P problem could probably be solved with an NP method, but that doesn't make them NP, it just means that the method sucks. (In some cases. The P method might have more overhead and be slower in certain circumstances.)

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

A problem in P can hypothetically be solved in n^100 time. Even if P=NP were true, it wouldn't make NP-Complete problems 'easy'.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[michael_wojcik]

In the same manner every P problem could probably be solved with an NP method

No "probably" about it; NP includes P, so every P-time solution is an NP-time solution. Or to put it another way, a nondeterministic Turing machine can behave deterministically; it just doesn't have to.

If a someone figures out a method to convert an NP problem into a P problem then it is likely that method only works on that particular type of NP problems and not all of them.

The "P vs NP" problem, technically, is whether all of NP is in P. That means a proof has to apply to NP-Complete problems, and any problem in NP can be transformed into an NP-Complete one in poly-time. So if you prove any NP-Complete problem can be solved in poly-time, your proof applies to all of NP. A valid constructive proof would give you a poly-time method for solving all NP problems.

However, as other posters have noted, poly-time doesn't mean "feasible". I remember Matt Skala once wrote about a P-time algorithm he'd invented/discovered[1] that he'd shown had a lower bound with some ridiculous exponent - over 100, anyway. And it was actually useful in theory, just not in practice for any input of significant size. Even a smallish exponent can put P-time solutions out of reach for interesting problems.

[1] Take your pick. I'm not interested in fighting with mathematical realists.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[david_thornley]

then it is likely that method only works on that particular type of NP problems and not all of them.

Nope. All NP-complete problems are equivalent, in the sense that a solution to one of them in polynomial time leads to solutions for all of them in polynomial time. An NP-complete problem is a problem in NP that, if solved in polynomial time, means that P=NP.

Re:Who the fuck cares?

[david_thornley]

Correction: it may not be a practical result. If P=NP, it's possible that NP problems become tractable. I don't know what the solution would be if it existed, but since it's evaded us all this time it will be unexpected.

Re:Prove the proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

correction prove read

Only for NP-complete problems.

[oldmacdonald]

Only for NP-complete problems.

not quite right

[oldmacdonald]

They haven't been proven to be NP-complete. There are certainly in NP.

Re:not quite right

[oldmacdonald]

s/There/They

I also have a proof his solution is incorrect

[dmatos]

Unfortunately, my proof cannot fit in the margins of this post.

Re:I also have a proof his solution is incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a good excuse. Open up the developer tool in your browser, and add some margin to the post. It's just one CSS rule. Then proceed to write down your proof.

We shall be waiting.

Re:could there have been some editing on this titl

[Joce640k]

seriously, I expect better.

You must be new here.

Dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit dammit dammit damn it ....
DAMN IT!!!!!

And I was really looking forward to getting layed.

By a GIRL!

dammit.

Einstein / Hobbit / Spokane scablands

[epine]

Science is still practiced by people who can be pig-headed and stick to their guns long after it has become apparent ...

Einstein was criticized for sticking to his crackpot "general" theories in later life and not jumping onto the quantum bandwagon he himself had originally piloted out of the shuttle bay. But ask yourself this: did the world actually need Einstein working on quantum physics, or were all the other brilliant people involved more than sufficient?

If the stubborn Einstein had not persisted down his stubborn path, would we now be collectively guessing what might have been in the one and only Einstein had not nestled himself in the cockpit of the alien wormhole shuttle to unimagined physics?

Instead of yammering on about this old arrogance morality tale (oh, tiresome prose!) how about bringing some actual cost/benefit to the table?
____

You know, in that horrible movie, The Hobbit, I wasn't going to believe they couldn't open that stone door until there was 14 skeletons lying beneath it. If you're going to rattle the handle to the dragon's lair, the least you can do is stick to your guns (and your magic moon map).
_____

For anyone interested the sociology of science, or the immensity of planet earth itself, or just in it for some mind-blowing pictures, I can't recommend the following article strongly enough:

Formed by Megafloods, This Place Fooled Scientists for Decades — 9 March 2017

"Bretz was making arguments, and no one was going into the field to see anything," Baker said. "They were just countering his arguments with theory." And because scientists are first and foremost human beings, they're loathe to change their theories or their minds because of mere data.

Baker told me a story as we looked out at Palouse Falls, another dramatic cataract at the head of a massive canyon, with a stream running through it that seems comically out of scale, like a toddler wearing a grown man's boots. Sometime in the late 1950s or early '60s, a geologist named Aaron Waters brought one of Bretz's most vocal critics—James Gilluly, the one who'd called his ideas "preposterous" and "incompetent"—to the scablands for a first-hand look. As they took in the sight of the falls and the canyon, Gilluly was dumbfounded by their scale. "Gilluly was just quiet the whole time," Baker said, "and as they were leaving, he broke out into this immense laugh and said, 'How could anybody be so wrong?'" After resisting Bretz's theory for decades, simply seeing the landscape with his own eyes had changed his mind.

I often visited Drumheller and the surrounding badlands in my childhood. Amazing place. Never been to Spokane, but it's not that far away.
____

Grow up. Stubbornness is a virtue every damn time stubbornness works.

The exceptions are so rare, Herzog made a movie about it, with the entire cast in character the whole wretched time.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Re:Einstein / Hobbit / Spokane scablands

[david_thornley]

Einstein did make contributions to quantum mechanics (after his work on Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect). He thought it wrong, and came up with very good reasons to justify what he was saying. (He was an Einstein, after all.) In doing so, he forced physicists to come up with solid reasons why Einstein was wrong.

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a seriously respectable thing for him to say. Kudos!

Advanced math is hard. People make mistakes. Owning them is something many people would not do, and shows a profound level of maturity.

Pretty much wrong

[s.petry]

The fundamental process in science is TRUTH.

Using facts and models are tools used in searching for truth. I can point to thousands of people claiming to be "Scientists" who do exactly what you claim Faith holders are doing. In fact, models which ignore facts are extremely common.

Re:Pretty much wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The fundamental process in science is TRUTH

The fundamental process in science is attempting to disprove theories. The longer a theory cannot be disproved, the more reason there is to believe the theory is correct. Scientists love nothing more than new evidence that upends the current orthodoxy. The exact opposite is true of what you call "faith holders".

Re:Pretty much wrong

[s.petry]

Which _IS_ seeking Truth. Read the history of the Scientific Method, which came from Socrates. Socrates stated that Philosophy is the love of wisdom and truth. Not "disproving Sophists". Disproving Sophists was necessary, but not the goal.

Re:Pretty much wrong

[david_thornley]

The practice of science contains a few basic principles. Learn things. Build theories. Try to falsify theories by all sorts of means. It's like constructing something and having everyone else try to break it. If it's still there, you can reasonably assume it's mostly valid/unbreakable.

Kudos to him

[rraylion]

retracting his proof this quickly and acknowledging error takes fortitude and a type of perseverance not often seen.

Bravo in the attempt

Re:Hulk says

[Anonymous Coward]

Negative one? Really?

HULK SMASH!

Comprehension fail

[Anonymous Coward]

You vehemently dispute science AC

No, try reading again. I vehemently dispute the notion that religion is the sole source of morals. And I stand by that.

"Who's a pretty boy? Squark!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just parroting things you've heard without critical thinking I see. Religious people beg the question by assuming there is a "why". People not trying to rationalise their silly beliefs find that "why" is "causation" and is therefore adds nothing on top of the "how" which science provides.

I'm going to proove NP = P

[sirv]

... it is about time ... polynomial vs nonpolynomial ... but time is the same ... and u can have all the time in universe ... u can divide it infinitely ... so u c a n spend as much time u need ... u got it ?

Re:I'm going to proove NP = P

[david_thornley]

NP isn't non-polynomial. It's nondeterministic polynomial. That means that, if we could essentially duplicate the computer at every decision point, we could find the solution in polynomial time. It's more intuitive to say that an NP-complete problem is one where we can verify a proposed solution in polynomial time.

"all the time in the Universe" isn't infinite (well, "all the time in the Universe until it reaches the Big Crunch/Big Rip/heat death/proton decay" is finite), and "u can divide it infinitely" is false, according to quantum mechanics. Every computation needs a certain minimum amount of energy, and the amount of extractible energy in the Universe is finite.

Personally, I take "can't be brute-forced with an ideal quantum computer by a Kardashev Type II civilization" as adequate security for ciphers, which means I consider AES-256 impossible to brute-force. (Kardashev types: I - uses energy equivalent to all the solar radiation that hits the planet; II- uses energy equivalent to the output of its star; III - uses total energy of a galaxy.)

Re: I'm going to proove NP = P

[sirv]

soon end of the world is coming ... ciphers do not matter anymore ... end is here

Re: I'm going to proove NP = P

[david_thornley]

That's the Singularity, not the end of the world.

Re: I'm going to proove NP = P

[sirv]

end is near . we are living in the golden epoch of civilisation. the next generations will have it very difficult.

Re: could there have been some editing on this tit

[Anonymous Coward]

Community moderation is never not a clusterfuck. Exhibit A.

Not equal?

[DulcetTone]

I'm ready to accept they are not equal, but why hasn't anyone the guts to suggest which is greater than the other?

Mistakes make science go forward ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... too bad the vast majority of academic publications actively discourages that.

I have *never* read in any academic paper in my field "welp, we tried that hypothesis and after careful consideration it is utterly bollocks so move on guys and try something else". Academic journals prefer (in my field geophysics/geology) publish bland "case study" papers on overstudied areas, bringing little added value to people, than methodological papers stating that some methodologies simply don't work - far more useful for people who can then search elsewhere and find the good key.

Sometimes I wonder if I should launch alone an online open source "Journal of Academic Mistakes" or "Botched Hypothesis Review Letter".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Science = Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Science and religion have exactly the same source: humans' desire to understand the world around them. Science simply systematized it into a system that was less a matter of opinion.

The thrust of religion into morality is a much later development in religion.