"I see logic and faith as two totally opposite concepts."
you know what's totally opposite? your thumb and your middle finger. equal and opposing forces can be intoxicatingly useful (not to mention elegant). see also: us constitution
so he wants to know how the universe created the world? and he wants to know the universe's thoughts?
SIR. if you can say for certain, decades after the fact, what einstein meant better than einstein himself could, you are certainly wasting your intellect on slashdot.
albert einstein was a theologically educated Jew and a scientifically educated genius. i think when einstein said "God" he meant God. i think when einstein said "the universe" he meant the universe. i think when einstein said "nature" he meant nature. i think einstein's mind and vocabulary were large enough to encompass and distinguish all three. and i frankly don't give a shit if you agree with me or not. to be charitable, you are really reaching.
NOW. if you mean to imply that einstein rejected the anthropomorphization of God, i would agree. one of the interesting concurrencies in my dual baptist/unitarian upbringing is that the doctrines of both churches soundly rejected, and were careful to warn against, any anthropomorphization of God. it's human nature to try and identify with anything unusual we encounter (see alien encounter stories featuring binocular, bipedal humanoids). God has been anthropomorphized for as long as there have been anthropos. and it is only ever fallacy.
speaking strictly from personal experience, it seems to me that the only things humans and God have in common is love.
the rice survey included social scientists as well as natural scientists, although even among natural scientists over 60% reported personal belief in God. the U of C study was given only to doctors. the 1914 leuba survey was limited to natural scientists only; presumably the 1997 reiteration followed suit.
it is unclear whether either the rice or U of C surveys used the phrase "personal God" (it seems a trifling distinction to me... given the disparity in results perhaps it is not). the rice survey asked 36 questions, which appears to have explored some variety of nuances of belief. the citation you have provided me regarding the original 1914 leuba survey and it's 1997 reiteration seems to give little detail into the content of the survey questions. if i read it correctly, the 1914 leuba survey and it's 1997 reiteration seem to have had only two. the 1914 leuba survey was sent only to those mentioned in a particular publication, while the 1997 reiteration was sent only to members of the NAS. might the publication and the NAS have similar axes to grind? might rice university and the university of chicago? who knows. the surveys were different and the results were different.
here's what's most interesting to me - the letter you cite makes mention of a booklet issued by the NAS encouraging the teaching of evolution in public schools. this booklet states, "Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral."
this has been my point all along.
"I would be happy if religion was kept out of science, out of science lessons, out of politics, and anywhere else that concerned the physical world and dealing with facts."
then we are in solid agreement. God is God and science is science and never the twain shall meet. until it's too late to make much difference. but to conflate science and faith weakens both.
okay. personally? my faith has value to me because when one suicide attempt failed, as i was planning another, God communicated to me that even though i didn't believe in him, he believed in me. which nobody had ever told me before that day. my faith in God is important to me because, when nobody else did, God had faith in me. and i'm alive today because of it.
talk about illogical.
i've never experienced that degree of personal involvement before or since. but then, it's never been as important as it was that day. and remember what he told bender: use a light touch. when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
on a broader scale? faith has value because sometimes it's all that can keep a person going. not strictly religious faith, it could be faith in the sunrise tomorrow, faith in one's self, faith in karma, faith in true love, faith in all kinds of elusive, unprovable things. faith has value because, when held deeply, it is the most indestructible thing ever. faith has value because it helps people survive war, disease, and all kinds of other worldly atrocities. faith has value because it is a key component of trust, and without trust there could be no society. i could go on for hours.
the point is, as mission-critical as science is - and it is - faith is the opposable thumb.
i should have been clearer that the two points were unrelated.
where did he say God created the universe?
"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."
there.
but that really was a secondary point. the thing that i'm trying to get across to people is that faith and science do not apply to each other. faith exists outside reason and logic. that's why they call it faith.
this thread keeps digressing. i'm not here to convert anybody and i don't wish to discuss the rightness or wrongness of religion (mostly because it always begs the question, "right for WHO?").
here's my points.
1) great historical scientists who believed in God were a statistical majority. current scientists who believe in God are a statistical majority. maybe they're onto something.
2) science and faith are utterly and equally non-applicable to each other. science deal with the natural world and provable facts. faith deals with the supernatural world and non-provable mysteries. believe in either, or both, or neither. but don't try to apply them to each other. you will fail.
"Wait - you happily what "godandscience.org" says, but you refer to a direct quotation from Einstein as "atheist spin" because it's on Dawkins's site?"
the quote that i cited, while published on godandscience.com, was attributed to encyclopedia britanica. which i mentioned.
"When I say I don't believe in God and refer to myself as an atheist, I am doing so in the context of "God" as defined by the usage of billions of people."
which billions? Christians? Hindus? Bhuddists? Muslims? Pagans?
"My stance is not invalidated"
well of course not. neither is it validated. the existence or inexistence of God are both equally and utterly non-provable. this is my whole point in this thread. religion and science do not apply to each other. science deals with the natural world, with provable fact. faith deals with the supernatural, with things that are not testable. both are valuble tools. and, like all other tools, can be abused as weapons.
repeating what you already said in boldface... what exactly is this supposed to achieve?
are you familiar with the context of the quote you cited? the "lie that is being repeated"?
anyway, here's the only one that matters to me in this discussion (although there are many more:
Does there truly exist an insuperable contradiction between religion and science? Can religion be superseded by science? The answers to these questions have, for centuries, given rise to considerable dispute and, indeed, bitter fighting. Yet, in my own mind there can be no doubt that in both cases a dispassionate consideration can only lead to a negative answer. What complicates the solution, however, is the fact that while most people readily agree on what is meant by "science," they are likely to differ on the meaning of "religion."
"The ultimate goal of thinking rationally is to abandon all irrational beliefs, clearly."
uh, whose ultimate goal would that be? not mine. my goal in thinking rationally is to solve immediate problems and prevent future ones.
as far as irrational beliefs go, i have many beliefs that may be irrational. there is no empirical evidence that causing others harm is morally wrong, but that doesn't stop me from believing it. there's no proof that a plane won't fall on my house overnight, but i believe that it won't. and, like somebody else in this thread already commented, i don't even have proof that the universe exists or that i have free will. but i believe that it does and that i do. none of those beliefs are provable - but they help me sleep at night.
as for my faith, it's a very personal thing that was brought about by things that actually happened to me. things that couldn't be explained rationally to anybody who hadn't experienced them. that's pretty much the definition of faith - that which transcends logic and reason.
"The people you listed had indeed managed a great deal of rational thought but their childhood programming and social context had left them without the ability to judge (or even question, in most cases) the irrational, trivial, and nonsensical whafflings of badly written jewish folklore correctly."
first of all, i don't think you give them enough credit. from what i've read of him, isaac newton was not a man easily brainwashed, browbeaten, or bamboozled. i find it difficult to believe that he was incapable of asking deep theological questions.
second of all, even assuming that the best pre-20th century thinkers were utterly incapable of the kind of hard questions about the existance of God that people have been asking for at least 3,000 years (the first records of atheism are from the fifth century BCE), that still doesn't explain why two thirds of modern scientists surveyed believe in God.
anyway, this is all icing on the cake. my only point in delurking in this thread at all was to make the case that science and religion have about as much to do with each other as a bulldozer and a daydream. science deals with the natural world and provable, testable things. faith deals with the supernatural world and unprovable, untestable things. apples and oranges. neither is applicable to the other. and a great many better thinkers than you or i have been coming to this conclusion for centuries.
wow, athiest spin from dawkins. you can do better than that.
"I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." -a.e. as quoted in brittanica (teensy bit less biased methinks)
from what i've gleaned over the course of the morning, einstein denied belief in God's interest in mankind's day to day affairs ("a personal God"), but maintained that the universe was created by a deity. call him ambivalent or agnostic, but to call him an atheist is nothing more or less than redefining the word.
your original point was that to engage in rational thought one must suspend belief in God. i pointed out several people who both believed in God and engaged in a great deal of rational thought. you admitted that many of those people did indeed believe in God and also engaged in rational thought. anything further to add?
"I mean a lot of the statements made by religious people"
faith has nothing to do with people. i'm sure i could go back through history and find plenty of stupid statements made by great scientists (like "i think maybe the whole world will need maybe five computers.")
but to me, that doesn't invalidate science. likewise, i don't find that stupid statements made by people of faith invalidate faith itself.
if you listen too much to what other people say you'll never figure anything out for yourself, in science or in spirituality.
i've heard from a few people that MD was a moderate success in europe and japan. trust me when i say that it was the modern equivalent of 8 track in the states.
and the audio quality of ATRAC is atrocious. my creative zen has much better quality than an ipod too, because creative's been making semi-pro audio interfaces for over a decade and has the ADDA converters to deliver that quality. i suppose it's possible that they've improved ATRAC since the days i listened to it, but back then it was a joke.
but again, my point was about format wars. anybody remember AM stereo?
no, there were plenty of nails in minidisc's coffin. mp3 was just the last one, at least in america.
i knew the minute i heard one that they were crap. perceptual encoding back in the early 90's was just not up to snuff at all. ever heard an early minidisc of a classical recording? ugly, ugly artifacts in the reverb trails.
but my point was about the format wars. while minidisc and dcc were busy slugging it out, the same technology used to produce them in a slickly-marketed form was incubating into the early mp3 codecs. minidisc and dcc both lost (at least in america), and it will be no different for bluray and hddvd.
no, digital compact cassette. came out same time as MD. and while MD enjoyed about as much market acceptance as 8-track, DCC enjoyed even less.
my point is that the public will always shun a format war based on flawed technology (ATRAC in the case of MD, DRM in the case of bluray/hddvd) and opt for an open alternative (mp3 in the case of MD... the open alternative for high def video remains to be seen, but when it arrives the market will be HUGE)
"and that's even more of a reason for him to ask permission first... surely no-one would turn him down, he'd have a legit license to use the recording"
sounds good in theory, but if you even consider this remotely possible, then i feel safe making the assumption that you have never been involved in any business in hip-hop or rap. by the time the paperwork was done all those tracks would be half a year old. these mixtapes are made within weeks of the original 12" being released, or sometimes even before the track is officially released (see also "dub plates"), and on the street within weeks of the compilation being made. and it's STILL a struggle to stay fresher than the next guy. business being business, corners get cut, and nobody gets hurt.
this guy is nothing more or less than a kingmaker. who you see on MTV in the next year will be determined in no small part by this man's business and artistic decisions. but our tax dollars are feeding him in jail.
this is, to say the least, a counterproductive punishment for a victimless crime.
Slashdot Mirror
"I see logic and faith as two totally opposite concepts."
you know what's totally opposite? your thumb and your middle finger. equal and opposing forces can be intoxicatingly useful (not to mention elegant). see also: us constitution
so he wants to know how the universe created the world? and he wants to know the universe's thoughts?
SIR. if you can say for certain, decades after the fact, what einstein meant better than einstein himself could, you are certainly wasting your intellect on slashdot.
albert einstein was a theologically educated Jew and a scientifically educated genius. i think when einstein said "God" he meant God. i think when einstein said "the universe" he meant the universe. i think when einstein said "nature" he meant nature. i think einstein's mind and vocabulary were large enough to encompass and distinguish all three. and i frankly don't give a shit if you agree with me or not. to be charitable, you are really reaching.
NOW. if you mean to imply that einstein rejected the anthropomorphization of God, i would agree. one of the interesting concurrencies in my dual baptist/unitarian upbringing is that the doctrines of both churches soundly rejected, and were careful to warn against, any anthropomorphization of God. it's human nature to try and identify with anything unusual we encounter (see alien encounter stories featuring binocular, bipedal humanoids). God has been anthropomorphized for as long as there have been anthropos. and it is only ever fallacy.
speaking strictly from personal experience, it seems to me that the only things humans and God have in common is love.
but i could always be wrong.
could you?
rice university and, independentaly and simultaneously, the university of chicago.
the rice survey included social scientists as well as natural scientists, although even among natural scientists over 60% reported personal belief in God. the U of C study was given only to doctors. the 1914 leuba survey was limited to natural scientists only; presumably the 1997 reiteration followed suit.
it is unclear whether either the rice or U of C surveys used the phrase "personal God" (it seems a trifling distinction to me... given the disparity in results perhaps it is not). the rice survey asked 36 questions, which appears to have explored some variety of nuances of belief. the citation you have provided me regarding the original 1914 leuba survey and it's 1997 reiteration seems to give little detail into the content of the survey questions. if i read it correctly, the 1914 leuba survey and it's 1997 reiteration seem to have had only two. the 1914 leuba survey was sent only to those mentioned in a particular publication, while the 1997 reiteration was sent only to members of the NAS. might the publication and the NAS have similar axes to grind? might rice university and the university of chicago? who knows. the surveys were different and the results were different.
here's what's most interesting to me - the letter you cite makes mention of a booklet issued by the NAS encouraging the teaching of evolution in public schools. this booklet states, "Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral."
this has been my point all along.
"I would be happy if religion was kept out of science, out of science lessons, out of politics, and anywhere else that concerned the physical world and dealing with facts."
then we are in solid agreement. God is God and science is science and never the twain shall meet. until it's too late to make much difference. but to conflate science and faith weakens both.
"What value does it have as a tool?"
okay. personally? my faith has value to me because when one suicide attempt failed, as i was planning another, God communicated to me that even though i didn't believe in him, he believed in me. which nobody had ever told me before that day. my faith in God is important to me because, when nobody else did, God had faith in me. and i'm alive today because of it.
talk about illogical.
i've never experienced that degree of personal involvement before or since. but then, it's never been as important as it was that day. and remember what he told bender: use a light touch. when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
on a broader scale? faith has value because sometimes it's all that can keep a person going. not strictly religious faith, it could be faith in the sunrise tomorrow, faith in one's self, faith in karma, faith in true love, faith in all kinds of elusive, unprovable things. faith has value because, when held deeply, it is the most indestructible thing ever. faith has value because it helps people survive war, disease, and all kinds of other worldly atrocities. faith has value because it is a key component of trust, and without trust there could be no society. i could go on for hours.
the point is, as mission-critical as science is - and it is - faith is the opposable thumb.
i should have been clearer that the two points were unrelated.
where did he say God created the universe?
"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."
there.
but that really was a secondary point. the thing that i'm trying to get across to people is that faith and science do not apply to each other. faith exists outside reason and logic. that's why they call it faith.
2/3 of eminent modern scientists surveyed believe in God
this thread keeps digressing. i'm not here to convert anybody and i don't wish to discuss the rightness or wrongness of religion (mostly because it always begs the question, "right for WHO?").
here's my points.
1) great historical scientists who believed in God were a statistical majority. current scientists who believe in God are a statistical majority. maybe they're onto something.
2) science and faith are utterly and equally non-applicable to each other. science deal with the natural world and provable facts. faith deals with the supernatural world and non-provable mysteries. believe in either, or both, or neither. but don't try to apply them to each other. you will fail.
"Wait - you happily what "godandscience.org" says, but you refer to a direct quotation from Einstein as "atheist spin" because it's on Dawkins's site?"
the quote that i cited, while published on godandscience.com, was attributed to encyclopedia britanica. which i mentioned.
"When I say I don't believe in God and refer to myself as an atheist, I am doing so in the context of "God" as defined by the usage of billions of people."
which billions? Christians? Hindus? Bhuddists? Muslims? Pagans?
"My stance is not invalidated"
well of course not. neither is it validated. the existence or inexistence of God are both equally and utterly non-provable. this is my whole point in this thread. religion and science do not apply to each other. science deals with the natural world, with provable fact. faith deals with the supernatural, with things that are not testable. both are valuble tools. and, like all other tools, can be abused as weapons.
are you familiar with the context of the quote you cited? the "lie that is being repeated"?
anyway, here's the only one that matters to me in this discussion (although there are many more:
"The ultimate goal of thinking rationally is to abandon all irrational beliefs, clearly."
uh, whose ultimate goal would that be? not mine. my goal in thinking rationally is to solve immediate problems and prevent future ones.
as far as irrational beliefs go, i have many beliefs that may be irrational. there is no empirical evidence that causing others harm is morally wrong, but that doesn't stop me from believing it. there's no proof that a plane won't fall on my house overnight, but i believe that it won't. and, like somebody else in this thread already commented, i don't even have proof that the universe exists or that i have free will. but i believe that it does and that i do. none of those beliefs are provable - but they help me sleep at night.
as for my faith, it's a very personal thing that was brought about by things that actually happened to me. things that couldn't be explained rationally to anybody who hadn't experienced them. that's pretty much the definition of faith - that which transcends logic and reason.
"The people you listed had indeed managed a great deal of rational thought but their childhood programming and social context had left them without the ability to judge (or even question, in most cases) the irrational, trivial, and nonsensical whafflings of badly written jewish folklore correctly."
first of all, i don't think you give them enough credit. from what i've read of him, isaac newton was not a man easily brainwashed, browbeaten, or bamboozled. i find it difficult to believe that he was incapable of asking deep theological questions.
second of all, even assuming that the best pre-20th century thinkers were utterly incapable of the kind of hard questions about the existance of God that people have been asking for at least 3,000 years (the first records of atheism are from the fifth century BCE), that still doesn't explain why
two thirds of modern scientists surveyed believe in God.
anyway, this is all icing on the cake. my only point in delurking in this thread at all was to make the case that science and religion have about as much to do with each other as a bulldozer and a daydream. science deals with the natural world and provable, testable things. faith deals with the supernatural world and unprovable, untestable things. apples and oranges. neither is applicable to the other. and a great many better thinkers than you or i have been coming to this conclusion for centuries.
wow, athiest spin from dawkins. you can do better than that.
"I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." -a.e. as quoted in brittanica (teensy bit less biased methinks)
from what i've gleaned over the course of the morning, einstein denied belief in God's interest in mankind's day to day affairs ("a personal God"), but maintained that the universe was created by a deity. call him ambivalent or agnostic, but to call him an atheist is nothing more or less than redefining the word.
your original point was that to engage in rational thought one must suspend belief in God. i pointed out several people who both believed in God and engaged in a great deal of rational thought. you admitted that many of those people did indeed believe in God and also engaged in rational thought. anything further to add?
wow. ok. so einstein, planck, kelvin, mendel, faraday, boyle, newton, descartes, galileo, kepler, bacon and copernicus were all wrong, and you are right.
got it.
"I mean a lot of the statements made by religious people"
faith has nothing to do with people. i'm sure i could go back through history and find plenty of stupid statements made by great scientists (like "i think maybe the whole world will need maybe five computers.")
but to me, that doesn't invalidate science. likewise, i don't find that stupid statements made by people of faith invalidate faith itself.
if you listen too much to what other people say you'll never figure anything out for yourself, in science or in spirituality.
karma to burn, so here goes.
the God basket is not empty if the science basket is inside it...
"I don't see an EULA stuck on the front of the case,"
PLEASE don't give them any more bright ideas...
"no such exploit for Joost is known to exist" ...yet.
the whole point is to defy review, to create the perception that global warming is "controversial"
i've heard from a few people that MD was a moderate success in europe and japan. trust me when i say that it was the modern equivalent of 8 track in the states.
and the audio quality of ATRAC is atrocious. my creative zen has much better quality than an ipod too, because creative's been making semi-pro audio interfaces for over a decade and has the ADDA converters to deliver that quality. i suppose it's possible that they've improved ATRAC since the days i listened to it, but back then it was a joke.
but again, my point was about format wars. anybody remember AM stereo?
no, there were plenty of nails in minidisc's coffin. mp3 was just the last one, at least in america.
i knew the minute i heard one that they were crap. perceptual encoding back in the early 90's was just not up to snuff at all. ever heard an early minidisc of a classical recording? ugly, ugly artifacts in the reverb trails.
but my point was about the format wars. while minidisc and dcc were busy slugging it out, the same technology used to produce them in a slickly-marketed form was incubating into the early mp3 codecs. minidisc and dcc both lost (at least in america), and it will be no different for bluray and hddvd.
no, digital compact cassette. came out same time as MD. and while MD enjoyed about as much market acceptance as 8-track, DCC enjoyed even less.
my point is that the public will always shun a format war based on flawed technology (ATRAC in the case of MD, DRM in the case of bluray/hddvd) and opt for an open alternative (mp3 in the case of MD... the open alternative for high def video remains to be seen, but when it arrives the market will be HUGE)
that all this is is minidisk versus digital compact cassette all over again. how many minidisk or DCC players do you own
"and that's even more of a reason for him to ask permission first... surely no-one would turn him down, he'd have a legit license to use the recording"
sounds good in theory, but if you even consider this remotely possible, then i feel safe making the assumption that you have never been involved in any business in hip-hop or rap. by the time the paperwork was done all those tracks would be half a year old. these mixtapes are made within weeks of the original 12" being released, or sometimes even before the track is officially released (see also "dub plates"), and on the street within weeks of the compilation being made. and it's STILL a struggle to stay fresher than the next guy. business being business, corners get cut, and nobody gets hurt.
this guy is nothing more or less than a kingmaker. who you see on MTV in the next year will be determined in no small part by this man's business and artistic decisions. but our tax dollars are feeding him in jail.
this is, to say the least, a counterproductive punishment for a victimless crime.
interlinks don't use IR, they use RF.
it also has a wire, einstein. try again.