However, I think we already lost the Cartesian approach to breaking problems into smaller tasks. If you give them a rather simple but big problem, very few students are able the break it down and solve each part. Most will just try a global solution for a few minutes, then try the internet for a global solution, and finally get bored and say it's too complicated.
Has top-down thinking ever come naturally to most people? I'm not sure, but I suspect that it's a learned skill.
The lawyer and the "interrogator" will agree on questions prior to the "interrogation", and no deviation from that would be allowed. Anything offered by the subject voluntarily would not be submissable.
If you stray off topic while under a "truth serum", is that "voluntarily offering" the information?
You can't seem to look into any infamous crazy serial killer without comments from shocked neighbors and friends who talk about how normal he seemed.
I always wonder whether the culprit in some infamous deed was also shocked. Could it be that any of us "normal" types could find ourselves committing an outrage, even though we think we really are the nice quiet boy everyone thinks we are? Or do cold-blooded killers know they are such, and just keep it hidden for years?
Might also mention that the axiom refutes the existence of free will, or, if you prefer the incompatible conclusion to the axiom, only the uncaused cause can have will. Neither conclusion is likely to be popular among the people who think this is a good argument for the existence of their god(s).
Religionists really ought to kick this one to the curb and find a better argument to justify their belief in God. The problem is, these arguments are defense mechanisms for rationalizing dearly held beliefs, so the people who offer them have negative motivation to think critically about them.
Note, in your quote, that he refers to a "Personal God".
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
Please read "Extraordinary Knowing" by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. Amazon link is:http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553382233/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363131413&sr=1-1&keywords=Extraordinary+Knowing. Before she died, Elizabeth Mayer was a Doctor of Psychology at Berkeley whose unexpected encounter with the supernatural in locating her daughter's harp led her to do some very rigorous testing and studies on paranormal phenomena contained within human beings. But then again, I don't expect someone of your rigid insistence on being a pedantic ass to read it in the first place.
Or "Ghost Hunters" by Deborah Blum. Amazon link is: http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Hunters-William-Search-Scientific/dp/0143038958 [amazon.com]. She happens to be a Science Journalist, who wrote a book intending to debunk William James and the SPR, but came away convinced that there is something more. Oh, and there's a very large bibliography full of eyewitness accounts and experiments that meet scientific rigor.
I assume that you've read and understood those books, or else you wouldn't be so foolish as to invoke them in support of your argument.
That being the cause, to which we can add the auxiliary assumption that you're not foolish, I conclude that you can easily state the most convincing argument or observation from each book that supports your claims. That way we can get down to business without waiting for everyone who wants to participate in this discussion to go out and read the books.[*]
[*] Which I unabashedly predict will prove to be not-worth-reading. You can, of course, refute my prediction by posting the astounding arguments/observations you found in them.
The big bang theory is nothing more than the best model we have that best fits observations.
So is "god", at least the technical one deduced in Aristotelian physics: everything is caused by something else; you cannot have an infinite chain of previous causes as it'd take infinite time for any effect to happen, including your own existence; therefore, there is necessarily a first cause that is cause of everything but at the same time isn't caused by anything else (nor, by extension, affected). Let's name this first cause "god" since it fulfills the technical requirements for something to be considered one (immortality and indestructibility -- ancient Greek theology wasn't very subtle) and... proceed to study something else, as this part is done and there's nothing to add to it.
Admittedly such a "mechanical god" has no or almost no similarity with what we picture when we hear the term. Modernly you could even rename it to something else, let's say, "the stuff", and that'd be fine. In any case, its a "god" that comes directly from modelling observed causation. Nothing unscientific about it.
I happen to question the assumption that everything is caused by something else.
Sure, that's how things work around us, and it's hard to imagine anything else. However, general relativity and quantum mechanics should have dispelled the idea that the universe works in general like things work in our everyday experience, or that its workings conform to our intuitions about how it does or should work.
And of course, the outline you offer concludes the existence of an "uncaused cause", which directly violates the axiom that the argument started with. To paraphrase the popular creationist offering of the same argument:
Everything has to have a cause. God doesn't have to have a cause.
If you accept the axiom and arguments, you end up with a paradox, not an existence proof.
No, "gods" is the first scientific hypothesis that you test.
If so, you should be able to give *lots* of examples of people testing the "gods" hypothesis.
In reality, most religions are designed (or evolved) to be untestable. Granny recovers from cancer? It's a miracle! Granny dies a miserable death from cancer? It's God's will.
The basic thing to understand about all this "science and religion" talk is that religion is perfectly compatible with science[*] so long as it avoids making any testable claims. Under that circumstance, the topic is hardly worth bothering to discuss.
It only gets interesting when a religion does make a falsifiable claim, and the claim does get falsified, and most of the religionists want to stick to the claim despite the falsification. We should discuss *that* aspect of "science and religion".
[*] Though perhaps not reason, but that's another discussion.
Yeah. Yeah, that's really depressing to know that someone can have a doctorate from Yale and Harvard and cling to this idea that science owes its existence to religion. It's even more disgusting that you restrict your examples specifically to Christianity and not Hindi or Muslim contributions.
Actually, it does. You see, the first religions were attempts at explaining phenomena in nature, such as lightning. The very earliest religions *were* attempts at science (granted, not very good ones by today's standards, but nevertheless they followed the idea of observing natural phenomenon and attempted to produce explanations for them). "Gods do it" was one of the earliest proposed explanations for magnetics (not a popular one even then, and it may not satisfy the modern idea of a proper explanation, but it's still an explanation of a sort for natural phenomenon, i.e. a prototypical science)
You're conflating two very different thought processes: science tries to explain things on the basis of evidence, whereas religion tries to explain things on the basis of whatever "explanation" occurs to someone, or, more commonly, on the basis of a tradition based on whatever "explanation" occurred to someone at some time in the past.
So is Cardiff University just a diploma mill with an all-hack staff, or are they a credible uni that happens to tolerate eccentrics like Wickramashinge?
The latter, although they fired Wickramashinge a few years ago. He's still working in Cardiff, but not for Cardiff University.
LoL. The link quotes him as saying that he is the Astrobiology Editor for the Journal of Cosmology, where this article was published.
If this was for real it would be appearing in Nature.
Of course God for this universe, by definition (mine) is omnipotent and omniscient for this universe, and so not really subject to the laws of physics in this universe....
Which, if indeed true, has the interesting consequence that supernatural mechanisms exist that can make an end run around the laws of nature.
If you want to invent a warp drive, get a research position at a seminary.
I don't think anyone is saying "there could never be biological organisms on a meteorite". Rather, they're saying that this specific claim is bad science.
NASA made essentially the same claim a while back. The difference is that the debunking wasn't quite as trivial.
Universities usually worry whether they'll give tenure to someone who will spend the rest of their career loafing. Perhaps they should be more worried that they'll give tenure to someone who will spend the rest of their career embarrassing them.
and heaven knows what's beyond our observability horizon.
BTW, if physicists are right even God doesn't know, because the information can't be transferred. Or, if God is everywhere, the part of him that's "here" doesn't know what the part of him that is "there" knows, due to to the whole speed of light thingy.
Perhaps I'm not being anthropocentric enough, but does anyone really think that life began on Earth? Perhaps there's no evidence yet to prove otherwise, but just on an intellectual level, it seems roughly similar to claiming that the universe revolves around us
There's a difference between thinking that life began on earth vs. thinking that life could *only* begin on earth.
The observable universe contains something like 100,000,000,000 galaxies with an average(?) of 100,000,000,000 stars each, and heaven knows what's beyond our observability horizon. I would be utterly astonished if we somehow proved that life has never existed in any of those systems. Yet I suspect that life really did begin here on earth, independent of any of the others.
Besides, if you claim that it originated somewhere else and got transferred to earth, you're just relocating the question of how it began. That hypothetical somewhere else isn't the center and purpose of the universe any more than earth is.
Slashdot Mirror
2300 years ago Plato was complaining that the invention of writing had affected memory and attention span.
The complaint that things aren't as good as they used to be, and the young don't have the wisdom of the old, is not a new phenomenon.
IIRC we find that sentiment stated on clay tablets from long before Plato.
However, I think we already lost the Cartesian approach to breaking problems into smaller tasks. If you give them a rather simple but big problem, very few students are able the break it down and solve each part. Most will just try a global solution for a few minutes, then try the internet for a global solution, and finally get bored and say it's too complicated.
Has top-down thinking ever come naturally to most people? I'm not sure, but I suspect that it's a learned skill.
And realize that only a small fraction of the population is going to get interested in it, no matter how you try to sell it.
You do understand that this entire conceit of rhythm people and melodic people is absolute horseshit, right?
Back in the day it was innie vs. outie (navel) and waddie vs. rollie (toilet paper).
It's hard to sell traditional symphonic material to younger crowds
Must not be too hard in general, since the people who like now it were once the younger crowd.
The lawyer and the "interrogator" will agree on questions prior to the "interrogation", and no deviation from that would be allowed. Anything offered by the subject voluntarily would not be submissable.
If you stray off topic while under a "truth serum", is that "voluntarily offering" the information?
The only testimony they want is to determine if he's genuinely insane or just pretending.
Just ask him whether he loves his mother. Either answer proves he's insane.
it sounds like you intend to pull his fingers off .... gasp ... torturer
Please, don't pull his finger.
You can't seem to look into any infamous crazy serial killer without comments from shocked neighbors and friends who talk about how normal he seemed.
I always wonder whether the culprit in some infamous deed was also shocked. Could it be that any of us "normal" types could find ourselves committing an outrage, even though we think we really are the nice quiet boy everyone thinks we are? Or do cold-blooded killers know they are such, and just keep it hidden for years?
Might also mention that the axiom refutes the existence of free will, or, if you prefer the incompatible conclusion to the axiom, only the uncaused cause can have will. Neither conclusion is likely to be popular among the people who think this is a good argument for the existence of their god(s).
Religionists really ought to kick this one to the curb and find a better argument to justify their belief in God. The problem is, these arguments are defense mechanisms for rationalizing dearly held beliefs, so the people who offer them have negative motivation to think critically about them.
Note, in your quote, that he refers to a "Personal God".
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
Have you ever read up on Spinoza's "god"?
Please read "Extraordinary Knowing" by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. Amazon link is:http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553382233/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363131413&sr=1-1&keywords=Extraordinary+Knowing. Before she died, Elizabeth Mayer was a Doctor of Psychology at Berkeley whose unexpected encounter with the supernatural in locating her daughter's harp led her to do some very rigorous testing and studies on paranormal phenomena contained within human beings. But then again, I don't expect someone of your rigid insistence on being a pedantic ass to read it in the first place.
Or "Ghost Hunters" by Deborah Blum. Amazon link is: http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Hunters-William-Search-Scientific/dp/0143038958 [amazon.com]. She happens to be a Science Journalist, who wrote a book intending to debunk William James and the SPR, but came away convinced that there is something more. Oh, and there's a very large bibliography full of eyewitness accounts and experiments that meet scientific rigor.
I assume that you've read and understood those books, or else you wouldn't be so foolish as to invoke them in support of your argument.
That being the cause, to which we can add the auxiliary assumption that you're not foolish, I conclude that you can easily state the most convincing argument or observation from each book that supports your claims. That way we can get down to business without waiting for everyone who wants to participate in this discussion to go out and read the books.[*]
[*] Which I unabashedly predict will prove to be not-worth-reading. You can, of course, refute my prediction by posting the astounding arguments/observations you found in them.
The big bang theory is nothing more than the best model we have that best fits observations.
So is "god", at least the technical one deduced in Aristotelian physics: everything is caused by something else; you cannot have an infinite chain of previous causes as it'd take infinite time for any effect to happen, including your own existence; therefore, there is necessarily a first cause that is cause of everything but at the same time isn't caused by anything else (nor, by extension, affected). Let's name this first cause "god" since it fulfills the technical requirements for something to be considered one (immortality and indestructibility -- ancient Greek theology wasn't very subtle) and... proceed to study something else, as this part is done and there's nothing to add to it.
Admittedly such a "mechanical god" has no or almost no similarity with what we picture when we hear the term. Modernly you could even rename it to something else, let's say, "the stuff", and that'd be fine. In any case, its a "god" that comes directly from modelling observed causation. Nothing unscientific about it.
I happen to question the assumption that everything is caused by something else.
Sure, that's how things work around us, and it's hard to imagine anything else. However, general relativity and quantum mechanics should have dispelled the idea that the universe works in general like things work in our everyday experience, or that its workings conform to our intuitions about how it does or should work.
And of course, the outline you offer concludes the existence of an "uncaused cause", which directly violates the axiom that the argument started with. To paraphrase the popular creationist offering of the same argument:
Everything has to have a cause. God doesn't have to have a cause.
If you accept the axiom and arguments, you end up with a paradox, not an existence proof.
No, "gods" is the first scientific hypothesis that you test.
If so, you should be able to give *lots* of examples of people testing the "gods" hypothesis.
In reality, most religions are designed (or evolved) to be untestable. Granny recovers from cancer? It's a miracle! Granny dies a miserable death from cancer? It's God's will.
The basic thing to understand about all this "science and religion" talk is that religion is perfectly compatible with science[*] so long as it avoids making any testable claims. Under that circumstance, the topic is hardly worth bothering to discuss.
It only gets interesting when a religion does make a falsifiable claim, and the claim does get falsified, and most of the religionists want to stick to the claim despite the falsification. We should discuss *that* aspect of "science and religion".
[*] Though perhaps not reason, but that's another discussion.
You seem to be suggesting that science is really religion
That is in fact a very popular claim among people who want to deny some scientific discovery that conflicts with their personal religious beliefs.
Yeah. Yeah, that's really depressing to know that someone can have a doctorate from Yale and Harvard and cling to this idea that science owes its existence to religion. It's even more disgusting that you restrict your examples specifically to Christianity and not Hindi or Muslim contributions.
Actually, it does. You see, the first religions were attempts at explaining phenomena in nature, such as lightning. The very earliest religions *were* attempts at science (granted, not very good ones by today's standards, but nevertheless they followed the idea of observing natural phenomenon and attempted to produce explanations for them). "Gods do it" was one of the earliest proposed explanations for magnetics (not a popular one even then, and it may not satisfy the modern idea of a proper explanation, but it's still an explanation of a sort for natural phenomenon, i.e. a prototypical science)
You're conflating two very different thought processes: science tries to explain things on the basis of evidence, whereas religion tries to explain things on the basis of whatever "explanation" occurs to someone, or, more commonly, on the basis of a tradition based on whatever "explanation" occurred to someone at some time in the past.
So is Cardiff University just a diploma mill with an all-hack staff, or are they a credible uni that happens to tolerate eccentrics like Wickramashinge?
The latter, although they fired Wickramashinge a few years ago. He's still working in Cardiff, but not for Cardiff University.
LoL. The link quotes him as saying that he is the Astrobiology Editor for the Journal of Cosmology, where this article was published.
If this was for real it would be appearing in Nature.
I'll pick a Batman server over a Superman server every time.
Of course God for this universe, by definition (mine) is omnipotent and omniscient for this universe, and so not really subject to the laws of physics in this universe....
Which, if indeed true, has the interesting consequence that supernatural mechanisms exist that can make an end run around the laws of nature.
If you want to invent a warp drive, get a research position at a seminary.
I don't think anyone is saying "there could never be biological organisms on a meteorite". Rather, they're saying that this specific claim is bad science.
NASA made essentially the same claim a while back. The difference is that the debunking wasn't quite as trivial.
I would guess that it's a tenure thing.
Universities usually worry whether they'll give tenure to someone who will spend the rest of their career loafing. Perhaps they should be more worried that they'll give tenure to someone who will spend the rest of their career embarrassing them.
But despite that, he is still probably right. What is the chance of micro-organisms NOT getting into space?
There's a rather large gap between "there are some microorganisms in space" and "he is probably right".
He's claiming to have found something specific, and he is wrong. Again.
Bad Astronomer has done a good hatchet job on this story
If by "hatchet" you mean bardiche or one of the other candidates in our recent poll.
and heaven knows what's beyond our observability horizon.
BTW, if physicists are right even God doesn't know, because the information can't be transferred. Or, if God is everywhere, the part of him that's "here" doesn't know what the part of him that is "there" knows, due to to the whole speed of light thingy.
Pardon the mental/theological masturbation...
Perhaps I'm not being anthropocentric enough, but does anyone really think that life began on Earth? Perhaps there's no evidence yet to prove otherwise, but just on an intellectual level, it seems roughly similar to claiming that the universe revolves around us
There's a difference between thinking that life began on earth vs. thinking that life could *only* begin on earth.
The observable universe contains something like 100,000,000,000 galaxies with an average(?) of 100,000,000,000 stars each, and heaven knows what's beyond our observability horizon. I would be utterly astonished if we somehow proved that life has never existed in any of those systems. Yet I suspect that life really did begin here on earth, independent of any of the others.
Besides, if you claim that it originated somewhere else and got transferred to earth, you're just relocating the question of how it began. That hypothetical somewhere else isn't the center and purpose of the universe any more than earth is.