Bullshit. You shouldn't take a Yugo and a M1 but a car with crumple zones and a car without crumple zones, each weighing the same.
More mass means more kinetic energy when moving. This kinetic energy is transferred during a collision, and this is what kills the passengers of the Yugo, but it doesn't protect the passengers of the M1 much. If it were two M1s colliding, probably noone would survive.
I think you missed the point. Conventional theory holds the plates are floating freely and convection makes them move by pushing them apart at the oceanic ridges. When two plates collide head on one slides over the other, pushing the bottom plate down into the subduction zone. Now it's thought that the cooler oceanic slabs of the plates sink into the subduction zone by their own weight, even without another plate pushing them down. This subduction by own weight contributes more to plate tectonics than convection effects.
Until the 1990s, prevailing explanations about what drives plate tectonics have emphasized mantle convection, and most earth scientists believed that seafloor spreading was the primary mechanism. Cold, denser material convects downward and hotter, lighter material rises because of gravity; this movement of material is an essential part of convection. In addition to the convective forces, some geologists argue that the intrusion of magma into the spreading ridge provides an additional force (called "ridge push") to propel and maintain plate movement. Thus, subduction processes are considered to be secondary, a logical but largely passive consequence of seafloor spreading. In recent years however, the tide has turned. Most scientists now favor the notion that forces associated with subduction are more important than seafloor spreading. Professor Seiya Uyeda (Tokai University, Japan), a world-renowned expert in plate tectonics, concluded in his keynote address at a major scientific conference on subduction processes in June 1994 that "subduction . . . plays a more fundamental role than seafloor spreading in shaping the earth's surface features" and "running the plate tectonic machinery." The gravity-controlled sinking of a cold, denser oceanic slab into the subduction zone (called "slab pull") -- dragging the rest of the plate along with it -- is now considered to be the driving force of plate tectonics.
You can't compare the Hubble constant (the speed of expansion) to the speed of light.
The universe expands by growing empty space everywhere, not just at its edges. This is why you measure the Hubble constant as speed per distance, (ie. kilometers per second per Megaparsec). If you want to compare c (speed of light) to H0 (Hubble constant) you'll have to agree on over which distance you're going to compare them. If you make the distance (the Megaparsecs) big enough; H0 will always win.
I'm actually NOT advocating putting cameras on every corner. But there are a lot of cameras around... What I am advocating is that everyone should have access to those cameras that are pointed at public spaces.
I think this is a very bad idea for different reasons. a) If these images become public domain, victims of rape, assault, etc. might find they have become some pervert's all time favorite moviestar. b) It might be very useful for criminal activity also. c) If you're worried about companies tracking your activities, realize you've just locked the kid in the candystore.
Yes, he's serious about mysticism, explicitly about neo- (techno) gnosticism. So alchemy fits PKD quite well; alchemy is a mixture of a mystic/gnostic (religious) philosophy called Hermeticism and "hacking reality".
PS: alchemism is not about making gold. To a Hermetic alchemist, the transmutation of lesser elements to gold was only an indicator of his own spiritual (mystical) transmutation. Attemping to make gold without attempting the spiritual transmutation would only produce "fools gold".
Alchemy (and Hermeticism in general) are actually quite interresting and refreshing when put against other religious philosophies (no commandments, intellectual work is godly) and practices (rituals should not only have psychological effects, but physical effects also).
Wtf? So the All-Seeing Eye is not a fitting logo for an organisation named after God? Besides, in freemasonry the symbolism depends on your level of initiation, the same symbols can have very different meanings.
The Eye of Horus and the magic pyramid symbols only reveal their true meaning in the 32nd of the Scottish rite and the 19th of the York rite. Read up before you claim things you don't know about.
We were all wondering why they'd use such an obviously Illuminati inspired logo
And they did it even more so for the cognoscenti. IAO is the secret name of God in (fringe) freemasonry, so a logo depicting the pyramid and the all-seeing eye is appropriate.
I trust everyone with my example.com addresses. Hell, the more stupid they are, the more I trust them to do the right thing.
Every registration system which requires an email address but lets the user chose his password without first sending an initial password to that address is stupid and asking for invalid addresses.
I just give them what they're asking for (sometimes even root@localhost works).
But when the code is open sourced and owned by the community, then the developer is at best a squatter. They are working land owned by the state.
Bad analogy. They would be working land owned by the kibbutz (or any other form of commune which honors material rights), not by the state. If their work was public domain it would be like working land owned by the state.
You missed my point. Not a single scientist has verified those claims I made.
The fact that you don't understand how they did it, doesn't mean they didn't do it. Please accept that when scientists produce theories that get accepted by other scientists after torrough investigation, thoste theories are scientifically valid.
By shouting form the rooftops they aren't you only demonstrate your failure to understand; you're not contributing to constructive scientific discussion in any way.You can only contibute by proposing a theory that's better then the one you reject. (And no, creationism is not a better theory scientifically speaking.)
All we've seen is inheritence of already existing traits, or the modification of existing data.
This is the nonsensical claim of all creationsts. What you're all saying is analogous to stating if you mix the letters of the alphabet randomly you can never create new words, only words that already exist or gibberish. Fortunately, language evolves (just like life).
Regarding the supernatural. I believe the supernatural realm has power over the physical/natural world. It was Christians who began science, believing, perhaps a priori, that the world is rational and can be explained by rational means. Having been created by an intelligent being, it must make sense.
In the western world, it was the alchemists who started what we today call science. Most alchemists where not Christians but Hermeticists, and were persecuted by Christians for their beliefs. What where those beliefs? Almost exactly what you write above, except their God was Hermes Trismegistus, not Yahwe. Also, in the medieval times it was a heracy to claim man is capable of discovering the meaning behind Gods actions. Please don't propagandize historical lies.
PS: this is getting ugly, you may now have the last word.
You think people will come up with solutions - I'll tell you what those alternatives will be. They will range from polytheism to monotheism, and weirder spiritual ideas - but they will all involve some sort of god/gods.
You don't get what I'm saying, or do you? Natural science will *never* come up with a solution that involves the supernatural. Never. Science like that would be called "supernatural science" or theology. Natural science has a methodology that prohibits one from introducing unquantifyable effects, and anything supernatural is by definition unquantifiable. To use God in a scientific theory, one would have to reduce God to something natural/physical.
Creation being proven true would eliminate the already minority view of atheism.
In Germany there is a saying that goes something like this: "If a hundred thousand flies eat shit, that still doesn't mean shit tastes sweet."; you can't claim the majority is always right. By the way: I'm not an atheist, I just can't understand fundamentalists.
If evolution is proven false, then creation is the only alternative. Propose something else if you like, but until then, the consequences of evolution being proven false (proving creation true also disproves evolution, obviously) is that one must accept creation.
Again, read my previous posts carefully. Yes, if creation is true then obviously evolution isn't true, I don't deny that. All I'm saying is this wouldn't automatically prove God did the creating.
Hahaha:) How many scientists do you know that have checked whether the decay rate of K/Ar is constant over millions of years? How many scientists do you know have checked to make sure that the Archaeopteryx really was the ancestor of birds?
Believe me, lots of them did. A scientist doesn't have to check every other theory for himself, that's what the peer review process is for. Theories that have been reviewed lots of times in the past have a high probability of predicting stuff accurately. The point is a scientist *could* review every scientific theory out there, it's just more productive to check new theories then to check theories that have already reached the state of "scientific law".
I extend the challenge to you that evolutionists are so quick to give to creationists - what is the scientific theory of evolution by which we may test the theory? (Note: Do not quote the talkorigins.org statement, creationists do not dispute with that, nor does that definition encompass the evolution of simple celled life->today's life). Then we can test it and see if it's true.
Sigh. Ok, you agree we can observe microevolution, and you probably also agree nobody witnessed God in the process of creation. So on a rational basis, what is more probable?
a) A process we can actually observe making little changes to living creatures would account for big changes to those creatures over long periods of time.
b) None of what you observe on a smaller timescale has consequences on a larger timescale. The only entity powerful enough to make history is God, but God in his mysterious ways never leaves any observable clues to his involvement. So consequentially, we have no physical proof or even an indication of truth to what we're claiming, you'll just have to believe the Bible and disregard anything that tells you otherwise.
You hold a lot of faith in naturalism. Take the time and look around.
The only faith-based part of my beliefs is my rejection of solipsism. I accept naturalism on a *rational* basis; I think it's logically correct to state everything we can observe in nature is natural and therefor has natural origins.
Since, in this case, the supernatural explanation is far simpler and has far greater explanatory power than the (nonexistent) physical alternative?
The supernatural explanation isn't any good, because it may explain *why* something happened, it doesn't explain *how* it happened physically. In
Simple, because you still haven't proved God created Adam & Eve and all the other initial couples. Even if we dug up all of their petrified remains, we still couldn't prove God created them.
That's what I tried to explain, if you could prove all of biblic history to be true, that still doesn't imply God had anything to do with it, that would just be one possible explanation. It matters little there would be no other feasible explanation, scientists would come up with different explanations once they got over the shock.
This is just how science works, a scientist is a professional sceptic that only accepts explanations (theories) that are as simple as possible but still explain as much as possible, and perhaps more important, only accepts explanations he can check for himself.
This is why including God produces questionable science, one can always find an explanation that doesn't involve the supernatural. The best of these physical explanations would have to be very, very unlikely to make explanations involving the supernatural more likely.
sn't it also possible that our view of natural science is too narrow for the world it tries to describe? Not to knock you one bit, but that argument sounds like, "We have this really neat hypothesis, unfortunately we have to throw it out the window because it's not the type of hypothesis we're looking for."
Our view of natural science is as broad as it can be. It holds that we can only model things we're able to observe directly or indirectly. If we model things we can't measure it's no longer physics, we've made a nice hyphotesis that neither can be proved nor falsified.
a)GR doesn't apply to whatever magic stuff we're talking about. It sounds like a copout, but how unreasonable is it that something which is different than any other object we've observed, and we havn't studied very much(relative to normal, classical mechanics) doesn't obey previous laws we created?
The nice thing about QM is it doesn't violate classical physics. If you apply QM to things that are above the quantum scale, you get predictions equivalent to those of classical models. If a theory predicts something on the quantum scale that can't be transposed to the larger scale of classical physics, that's a sign something might be wrong with the theory.
b)Once again, my naivity comes into play but, isn't it possible for information to be transferred at faster than the speed of light
No it can't, not according to GR. I'm not enough of a physicist to quarrel with Einstein:)
I think that God is truly unknowable(on a physical level). To me, it seems like fallacy to try to try to describe the underlying physics of God when we can't even begin to describe the things he does.
An unkowable God (on the philosophical level) is interresting, because every statement you make about such a God is undecidable. It resembles what some ancient mystics did when they chose the "Via Negativa" and started summarising all the things that God is not, but couldn't stop summarising because of their concept that God was true and would never decieve or confuse mankind.
That said, I don't think that one would have to modify physics to allow any god existense.
Agreed, but this goes both ways. If you want a God that is intellectually acceptable, you can't be a fundamentalist. You have to agree that your holy texts are allegories and rules for social interaction, not accurate descriptions of physical processes. If you use a concept of God that explains physical processes, you'll be on retreat as science advances. If you use a concept of God that validates a system of morals, you have to worry about competing religions with conflicting morals, but there will be no more arguments with scientists.
Note what I'm saying - we've simply proven that the events recorded in the Bible did occur. If that happened, would God's existence be verified?
No it wouldn't. It would just verify the corectness of the Bible as a *historical* record, it wouldn't verify any claims the Bible makes to the cause of history. (Implication isn't equivalence, so you can't reverse implications. If A implies B, you can't claim A is true just because B is true. This is the bad logics I referred to in another post.)
Couldn't one argue that the non-determinism of quantum physics is the 'portal' if you will, which allows whatever 'God' there is to control the physical world from the metaphysical realm?
This is an exellent question. Quantum physics is a descriptive theory, it doesn't try to explain the phenomena it describes, it just tries to predict their outcome as good as possible. This creates the possibility for various interpretations of QM.
The standard "Copenhagen" interpretation claims there is no deeper reality then the quantum level. Other interpretations like the "Bohme" interpertation claim there is a deeper, unknowable reality that controls the randomness on the quantum level. These "hidden variable" interpretations have big problems:
They claim there is a part of physics that can't be studied, measured, etc (the hidden variables). This violates the very definition of natural science.
They are non-local, they allow distant particals to interact simultaniously. This violates relativity, there is information exchange faster then the speed of light.
This leaves you with two choices: either God is true randomness, so there is no meaning, predictability or intelligence to his actions; or God is truly unknowable and screws up fundamental physics, so you can't really think or talk about him, but you have to rethink important parts of physics instead. (The first option is more widely accepted, since it represents the Copenhagen interpretation.)
And what was the "cosmic scale" at the very beginning of the universe? It seems to me that at the beginning of the universe, everything may have come from a single point.
At the beginning of time, the *visible* universe was compressed to a single point. Remember the universe might be a whole lot bigger then the part we can observe.
You can't *prove* anything of this nature, especially when all you have are scientific laws based on our observations of the physical laws around us.
I intended to lead the argument towards a similar point. In science there is no absolute proof, only competing theories/models. Even worse, we don't *observe* physical laws, we *make* them to describe our observations of nature as good as possible (or better, we make theories that become so widely accepted over time we start calling them "laws").
In our objective observations, a theist God (a God that constantly interferes with nature) plays no part. The laws/theories we derive from those observations to the best of our abilities function better without a deist God (a God that creates the universe, but that's about all he does).
These are very strong arguments for the absence of a physical God, and since God plays no active part in our observations, and we can describe those observations coherently without introducing God (but we have difficulties if we do introduce him), the burden lays with the party that claims there is such a God anyway.
Note that we need a God that is at least partly physical to be able to create and/or manipulate nature. The philosophical argument here is the same as the "Cartesian Theater" argument that shows the (hypothetical) spirit has to be physical to control the brain (this casts a grim shadow over dualism).
This leaves us with a purely metaphysical God, confined to the world of abstractions; an idea, a meme (an egregore;).
Not at all, you can't confuse an empty mind. Eris teaches us to learn and laugh, even though the latter is a bit painful after the bombing and occupation of Eridu, which is of course the real reason for the war against Iraq. Saddam has WMD, hahaha hell no! Zan Zu has the Sacred Chao!
Damn, the Council of Five always said I was paranoid when I told them the CIA was after me and my cabal, but now we're occupied and all, nothing but an eerie silence comes from them. Hmmm...
Planck time (5.4 × 10e-44 seconds) is the smallest possible unit of time for which general relativity holds. Everything that happens within a Planck time unit is defined by (probablistic) quantum physics and can't be described by (causal/deterministic) classical physics.
So, it's not an assumption really, it's just quantum physics; there is no real causality in quantum physics, because in quantum physics determinism is lost.
Ok, you may have proved it is impossible on a cosmic scale. That still doesn't eliminate a first cause. All you've done is shown our weakness in determining the precise order of events.
No I didn't, I tried to show the "precise order of events" is subjective/relative. In cosmology, we don't start with a universe aged 0, we start with a universe that is already 1 Planck-time old when it comes into existence. Within this Planck-time, there is no causality, no cause and effect.
Now your treatment of the scientific community confuses me. Explain more fully why creationism being demonstrated as true would not prove God's existence?
Because you can't prove creationism without proving Gods existence, Gods existence is a precondition to creationism being true. To prove creationism, you *first* have to prove Gods existence. If you try to do it the other way around, you end up in cyclic argumentation and bad logics.
What do you mean by not being able to prove God by reasoning about Him exclusively? What does that mean? Why wouldn't I want God proven scientifically? What are you saying?
If you prove something by reasoning alone, it's called philosophy, theology or logics. If you want to prove something scientifically, you have to build a mathematical model. To build a mathematical model, you have to quantitize (measure) what you are modelling, you need numbers to do your math with. Other scientists will check both the measurements and the model to see if they correspond with reality.
So to prove God scientifically, you would first have to measure Gods physical properties. Assuming this (physical) God exists, wouldn't it be a sacrilege to go and probe him physically?
Your example of the gunshots merely proves that we have difficulty determining what events occurred first, not that both occured simultaneously first and last. The first guy *did* fire first, whether you stand 2 miles from him or 1 mile. The differences is in your perception of who fired first.
I didn't prove it is difficult to determine the correct sequence of events, I proved it is *impossible* on a cosmic scale. The only means man has to measure and quantitize his surroundings is careful study of his own perceptions. (In our example, if you don't know which guy fired first by other means then observation, there is no way of telling who did.)
You need to explain in more detail why proving creationism true proves that God is physical and therefore not infinite?
If God interacts with the physical realm, there must be a point of connection between the physical and the metaphysical realms. Because manipulation of the physical realm is possible only by physical means, God must (at least in part) be physical. As you stated yourself, nothing physical is infinite (and thus not omnipresent).
It seems to be a common claim of atheists that you cannot prove the existence of God. However, they base that claim (as I suspect you do) solely on the assumption that evolution is true
Nope, it's much simpler than that. If you want to prove the existence of God scientifically, you can't do so by reasoning about him exclusively; you've got to have measurements, physical data, to build a mathematical model of "God". This model can be discussed and checked by the scientific community by repeating the measurements/experiments. Do you see now why you don't want Gods existence proven scientifically?
As such, there will never be a point where two different events occur in a different sequence. In other words, I don't understand what you are saying.
Assume there are two guys with a gun standing one mile apart from eachother, both firing the gun. Depending on where you stand the sound of one gunshot will reach your ears earlier then the sound of the other gun. Now assume the second guy fires the gun when he hears the first guys gunshot, but you are standing 2 miles away from the first guy and 1 mile away from the second guy. You can't do better (from your standpoint) then saying both guys fired their guns simultaniously.
If you think about this scenario on a cosmic scale (and with light instead of sound), you can never tell what event happened first, it completely depends on where *you* are in the cosmos.
If creationism is demonstrated true, then God's existence is proven. Or do you say that creationism being proven would not necessarily prove the existence of God?
If you prove God by proving creationism, you also prove God is *not* metaphysical. If God is physical, he can't be infinite, omnipresent, allmighty etc. So if you prove Gods existence this way, you've proven the existence of a God different from then the one you (and the Bible) are talking about.
God is the first cause, the creator, the origin. Atheistic evolution has no answer for first cause, while there must be one.
Incorrect. Since time is relative (this is scientific fact), there cannot be a first cause. Events that appear to be happening in a particular sequence when viewed from a certain location, can appear to happen in a different sequence when viewed from different location. Who is going to decide what sequence of events is correct (hint: they both are)?
In 2000 years, I fully expect evolution to be recorded in history as a time when people beleived that absurd idea that all life evolved over billions of years. They'll laugh at us as much as we laugh at those who believed in a flat earth.
Perhaps we'll have an even better theory describing the origins of life by then, but let me assure you that theory will *not* be creationism.
In your first paragraph you indicate (correctly) God is a metaphysical concept and one cannot confine this concept to the physical realm. If you agree on a metaphysical God, you'll never be able to prove (or disprove) his/her existance scientifically, so (scientifically/physically speaking) you can't attribute any actions to him/her. This is why creationism will *never* fly.
Some sort of gravitational point source near the front of the craft may also solve the acceleration problem. If the source is variable, then it is possible for the crew to not experience any acceleration forces at all.
Yeah, but if we'ld have variable gravitation, we could use that as propulsion too: build two identical spaceships with such a gravity source. Starting with the two ships orbiting eachother, when one ship goes in the direction you want to travel, make it heavier (and the other ship lighter) so the lighter ship accelerates in the right direction. Now repeat the process with the ships roles reversed, ad infinitum.
(Also assuming we ever get this magical gravitational point source;-)
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More mass means more kinetic energy when moving. This kinetic energy is transferred during a collision, and this is what kills the passengers of the Yugo, but it doesn't protect the passengers of the M1 much. If it were two M1s colliding, probably noone would survive.
I think you missed the point. Conventional theory holds the plates are floating freely and convection makes them move by pushing them apart at the oceanic ridges. When two plates collide head on one slides over the other, pushing the bottom plate down into the subduction zone. Now it's thought that the cooler oceanic slabs of the plates sink into the subduction zone by their own weight, even without another plate pushing them down. This subduction by own weight contributes more to plate tectonics than convection effects.
quote:
The universe expands by growing empty space everywhere, not just at its edges. This is why you measure the Hubble constant as speed per distance, (ie. kilometers per second per Megaparsec). If you want to compare c (speed of light) to H0 (Hubble constant) you'll have to agree on over which distance you're going to compare them. If you make the distance (the Megaparsecs) big enough; H0 will always win.
I think this is a very bad idea for different reasons. a) If these images become public domain, victims of rape, assault, etc. might find they have become some pervert's all time favorite moviestar. b) It might be very useful for criminal activity also. c) If you're worried about companies tracking your activities, realize you've just locked the kid in the candystore.
Just because AOL has no more use for Mozilla doesn't mean the project is a failure, the developers were lazy, or anything else the post claims.
It only implies AOLs business strategy doesn't always make sense (either now or in the past).
PS: alchemism is not about making gold. To a Hermetic alchemist, the transmutation of lesser elements to gold was only an indicator of his own spiritual (mystical) transmutation. Attemping to make gold without attempting the spiritual transmutation would only produce "fools gold".
Alchemy (and Hermeticism in general) are actually quite interresting and refreshing when put against other religious philosophies (no commandments, intellectual work is godly) and practices (rituals should not only have psychological effects, but physical effects also).
Wtf? So the All-Seeing Eye is not a fitting logo for an organisation named after God? Besides, in freemasonry the symbolism depends on your level of initiation, the same symbols can have very different meanings.
The Eye of Horus and the magic pyramid symbols only reveal their true meaning in the 32nd of the Scottish rite and the 19th of the York rite. Read up before you claim things you don't know about.
And they did it even more so for the cognoscenti. IAO is the secret name of God in (fringe) freemasonry, so a logo depicting the pyramid and the all-seeing eye is appropriate.
Every registration system which requires an email address but lets the user chose his password without first sending an initial password to that address is stupid and asking for invalid addresses.
I just give them what they're asking for (sometimes even root@localhost works).
Bad analogy. They would be working land owned by the kibbutz (or any other form of commune which honors material rights), not by the state. If their work was public domain it would be like working land owned by the state.
The fact that you don't understand how they did it, doesn't mean they didn't do it. Please accept that when scientists produce theories that get accepted by other scientists after torrough investigation, thoste theories are scientifically valid.
By shouting form the rooftops they aren't you only demonstrate your failure to understand; you're not contributing to constructive scientific discussion in any way.You can only contibute by proposing a theory that's better then the one you reject. (And no, creationism is not a better theory scientifically speaking.)
All we've seen is inheritence of already existing traits, or the modification of existing data.
This is the nonsensical claim of all creationsts. What you're all saying is analogous to stating if you mix the letters of the alphabet randomly you can never create new words, only words that already exist or gibberish. Fortunately, language evolves (just like life).
Regarding the supernatural. I believe the supernatural realm has power over the physical/natural world. It was Christians who began science, believing, perhaps a priori, that the world is rational and can be explained by rational means. Having been created by an intelligent being, it must make sense.
In the western world, it was the alchemists who started what we today call science. Most alchemists where not Christians but Hermeticists, and were persecuted by Christians for their beliefs. What where those beliefs? Almost exactly what you write above, except their God was Hermes Trismegistus, not Yahwe. Also, in the medieval times it was a heracy to claim man is capable of discovering the meaning behind Gods actions. Please don't propagandize historical lies.
PS: this is getting ugly, you may now have the last word.
You don't get what I'm saying, or do you? Natural science will *never* come up with a solution that involves the supernatural. Never. Science like that would be called "supernatural science" or theology. Natural science has a methodology that prohibits one from introducing unquantifyable effects, and anything supernatural is by definition unquantifiable. To use God in a scientific theory, one would have to reduce God to something natural/physical.
Creation being proven true would eliminate the already minority view of atheism.
In Germany there is a saying that goes something like this: "If a hundred thousand flies eat shit, that still doesn't mean shit tastes sweet."; you can't claim the majority is always right. By the way: I'm not an atheist, I just can't understand fundamentalists.
If evolution is proven false, then creation is the only alternative. Propose something else if you like, but until then, the consequences of evolution being proven false (proving creation true also disproves evolution, obviously) is that one must accept creation.
Again, read my previous posts carefully. Yes, if creation is true then obviously evolution isn't true, I don't deny that. All I'm saying is this wouldn't automatically prove God did the creating.
Hahaha :) How many scientists do you know that have checked whether the decay rate of K/Ar is constant over millions of years? How many scientists do you know have checked to make sure that the Archaeopteryx really was the ancestor of birds?
Believe me, lots of them did. A scientist doesn't have to check every other theory for himself, that's what the peer review process is for. Theories that have been reviewed lots of times in the past have a high probability of predicting stuff accurately. The point is a scientist *could* review every scientific theory out there, it's just more productive to check new theories then to check theories that have already reached the state of "scientific law".
I extend the challenge to you that evolutionists are so quick to give to creationists - what is the scientific theory of evolution by which we may test the theory? (Note: Do not quote the talkorigins.org statement, creationists do not dispute with that, nor does that definition encompass the evolution of simple celled life->today's life). Then we can test it and see if it's true.
Sigh. Ok, you agree we can observe microevolution, and you probably also agree nobody witnessed God in the process of creation. So on a rational basis, what is more probable?
a) A process we can actually observe making little changes to living creatures would account for big changes to those creatures over long periods of time.
b) None of what you observe on a smaller timescale has consequences on a larger timescale. The only entity powerful enough to make history is God, but God in his mysterious ways never leaves any observable clues to his involvement. So consequentially, we have no physical proof or even an indication of truth to what we're claiming, you'll just have to believe the Bible and disregard anything that tells you otherwise.
You hold a lot of faith in naturalism. Take the time and look around.
The only faith-based part of my beliefs is my rejection of solipsism. I accept naturalism on a *rational* basis; I think it's logically correct to state everything we can observe in nature is natural and therefor has natural origins.
Since, in this case, the supernatural explanation is far simpler and has far greater explanatory power than the (nonexistent) physical alternative?
The supernatural explanation isn't any good, because it may explain *why* something happened, it doesn't explain *how* it happened physically. In
That's what I tried to explain, if you could prove all of biblic history to be true, that still doesn't imply God had anything to do with it, that would just be one possible explanation. It matters little there would be no other feasible explanation, scientists would come up with different explanations once they got over the shock.
This is just how science works, a scientist is a professional sceptic that only accepts explanations (theories) that are as simple as possible but still explain as much as possible, and perhaps more important, only accepts explanations he can check for himself.
This is why including God produces questionable science, one can always find an explanation that doesn't involve the supernatural. The best of these physical explanations would have to be very, very unlikely to make explanations involving the supernatural more likely.
Our view of natural science is as broad as it can be. It holds that we can only model things we're able to observe directly or indirectly. If we model things we can't measure it's no longer physics, we've made a nice hyphotesis that neither can be proved nor falsified.
a)GR doesn't apply to whatever magic stuff we're talking about. It sounds like a copout, but how unreasonable is it that something which is different than any other object we've observed, and we havn't studied very much(relative to normal, classical mechanics) doesn't obey previous laws we created?
The nice thing about QM is it doesn't violate classical physics. If you apply QM to things that are above the quantum scale, you get predictions equivalent to those of classical models. If a theory predicts something on the quantum scale that can't be transposed to the larger scale of classical physics, that's a sign something might be wrong with the theory.
b)Once again, my naivity comes into play but, isn't it possible for information to be transferred at faster than the speed of light
No it can't, not according to GR. I'm not enough of a physicist to quarrel with Einstein :)
I think that God is truly unknowable(on a physical level). To me, it seems like fallacy to try to try to describe the underlying physics of God when we can't even begin to describe the things he does.
An unkowable God (on the philosophical level) is interresting, because every statement you make about such a God is undecidable. It resembles what some ancient mystics did when they chose the "Via Negativa" and started summarising all the things that God is not, but couldn't stop summarising because of their concept that God was true and would never decieve or confuse mankind.
That said, I don't think that one would have to modify physics to allow any god existense.
Agreed, but this goes both ways. If you want a God that is intellectually acceptable, you can't be a fundamentalist. You have to agree that your holy texts are allegories and rules for social interaction, not accurate descriptions of physical processes. If you use a concept of God that explains physical processes, you'll be on retreat as science advances. If you use a concept of God that validates a system of morals, you have to worry about competing religions with conflicting morals, but there will be no more arguments with scientists.
No it wouldn't. It would just verify the corectness of the Bible as a *historical* record, it wouldn't verify any claims the Bible makes to the cause of history. (Implication isn't equivalence, so you can't reverse implications. If A implies B, you can't claim A is true just because B is true. This is the bad logics I referred to in another post.)
This is an exellent question. Quantum physics is a descriptive theory, it doesn't try to explain the phenomena it describes, it just tries to predict their outcome as good as possible. This creates the possibility for various interpretations of QM.
The standard "Copenhagen" interpretation claims there is no deeper reality then the quantum level. Other interpretations like the "Bohme" interpertation claim there is a deeper, unknowable reality that controls the randomness on the quantum level. These "hidden variable" interpretations have big problems:
They claim there is a part of physics that can't be studied, measured, etc (the hidden variables). This violates the very definition of natural science.
They are non-local, they allow distant particals to interact simultaniously. This violates relativity, there is information exchange faster then the speed of light.
This leaves you with two choices: either God is true randomness, so there is no meaning, predictability or intelligence to his actions; or God is truly unknowable and screws up fundamental physics, so you can't really think or talk about him, but you have to rethink important parts of physics instead. (The first option is more widely accepted, since it represents the Copenhagen interpretation.)
At the beginning of time, the *visible* universe was compressed to a single point. Remember the universe might be a whole lot bigger then the part we can observe.
You can't *prove* anything of this nature, especially when all you have are scientific laws based on our observations of the physical laws around us.
I intended to lead the argument towards a similar point. In science there is no absolute proof, only competing theories/models. Even worse, we don't *observe* physical laws, we *make* them to describe our observations of nature as good as possible (or better, we make theories that become so widely accepted over time we start calling them "laws").
In our objective observations, a theist God (a God that constantly interferes with nature) plays no part. The laws/theories we derive from those observations to the best of our abilities function better without a deist God (a God that creates the universe, but that's about all he does).
These are very strong arguments for the absence of a physical God, and since God plays no active part in our observations, and we can describe those observations coherently without introducing God (but we have difficulties if we do introduce him), the burden lays with the party that claims there is such a God anyway.
Note that we need a God that is at least partly physical to be able to create and/or manipulate nature. The philosophical argument here is the same as the "Cartesian Theater" argument that shows the (hypothetical) spirit has to be physical to control the brain (this casts a grim shadow over dualism).
This leaves us with a purely metaphysical God, confined to the world of abstractions; an idea, a meme (an egregore ;).
Damn, the Council of Five always said I was paranoid when I told them the CIA was after me and my cabal, but now we're occupied and all, nothing but an eerie silence comes from them. Hmmm...
Kallisti!
So, it's not an assumption really, it's just quantum physics; there is no real causality in quantum physics, because in quantum physics determinism is lost.
No I didn't, I tried to show the "precise order of events" is subjective/relative. In cosmology, we don't start with a universe aged 0, we start with a universe that is already 1 Planck-time old when it comes into existence. Within this Planck-time, there is no causality, no cause and effect.
Now your treatment of the scientific community confuses me. Explain more fully why creationism being demonstrated as true would not prove God's existence?
Because you can't prove creationism without proving Gods existence, Gods existence is a precondition to creationism being true. To prove creationism, you *first* have to prove Gods existence. If you try to do it the other way around, you end up in cyclic argumentation and bad logics.
What do you mean by not being able to prove God by reasoning about Him exclusively? What does that mean? Why wouldn't I want God proven scientifically? What are you saying?
If you prove something by reasoning alone, it's called philosophy, theology or logics. If you want to prove something scientifically, you have to build a mathematical model. To build a mathematical model, you have to quantitize (measure) what you are modelling, you need numbers to do your math with. Other scientists will check both the measurements and the model to see if they correspond with reality.
So to prove God scientifically, you would first have to measure Gods physical properties. Assuming this (physical) God exists, wouldn't it be a sacrilege to go and probe him physically?
I didn't prove it is difficult to determine the correct sequence of events, I proved it is *impossible* on a cosmic scale. The only means man has to measure and quantitize his surroundings is careful study of his own perceptions. (In our example, if you don't know which guy fired first by other means then observation, there is no way of telling who did.)
You need to explain in more detail why proving creationism true proves that God is physical and therefore not infinite?
If God interacts with the physical realm, there must be a point of connection between the physical and the metaphysical realms. Because manipulation of the physical realm is possible only by physical means, God must (at least in part) be physical. As you stated yourself, nothing physical is infinite (and thus not omnipresent).
It seems to be a common claim of atheists that you cannot prove the existence of God. However, they base that claim (as I suspect you do) solely on the assumption that evolution is true
Nope, it's much simpler than that. If you want to prove the existence of God scientifically, you can't do so by reasoning about him exclusively; you've got to have measurements, physical data, to build a mathematical model of "God". This model can be discussed and checked by the scientific community by repeating the measurements/experiments. Do you see now why you don't want Gods existence proven scientifically?
Assume there are two guys with a gun standing one mile apart from eachother, both firing the gun. Depending on where you stand the sound of one gunshot will reach your ears earlier then the sound of the other gun. Now assume the second guy fires the gun when he hears the first guys gunshot, but you are standing 2 miles away from the first guy and 1 mile away from the second guy. You can't do better (from your standpoint) then saying both guys fired their guns simultaniously.
If you think about this scenario on a cosmic scale (and with light instead of sound), you can never tell what event happened first, it completely depends on where *you* are in the cosmos.
If creationism is demonstrated true, then God's existence is proven. Or do you say that creationism being proven would not necessarily prove the existence of God?
If you prove God by proving creationism, you also prove God is *not* metaphysical. If God is physical, he can't be infinite, omnipresent, allmighty etc. So if you prove Gods existence this way, you've proven the existence of a God different from then the one you (and the Bible) are talking about.
Incorrect. Since time is relative (this is scientific fact), there cannot be a first cause. Events that appear to be happening in a particular sequence when viewed from a certain location, can appear to happen in a different sequence when viewed from different location. Who is going to decide what sequence of events is correct (hint: they both are)?
In 2000 years, I fully expect evolution to be recorded in history as a time when people beleived that absurd idea that all life evolved over billions of years. They'll laugh at us as much as we laugh at those who believed in a flat earth.
Perhaps we'll have an even better theory describing the origins of life by then, but let me assure you that theory will *not* be creationism.
In your first paragraph you indicate (correctly) God is a metaphysical concept and one cannot confine this concept to the physical realm. If you agree on a metaphysical God, you'll never be able to prove (or disprove) his/her existance scientifically, so (scientifically/physically speaking) you can't attribute any actions to him/her. This is why creationism will *never* fly.
Yeah, but if we'ld have variable gravitation, we could use that as propulsion too: build two identical spaceships with such a gravity source. Starting with the two ships orbiting eachother, when one ship goes in the direction you want to travel, make it heavier (and the other ship lighter) so the lighter ship accelerates in the right direction. Now repeat the process with the ships roles reversed, ad infinitum.
(Also assuming we ever get this magical gravitational point source ;-)