"There is no battle between God and science"
One hears this a lot nowadays, especially in the context of unifying the poles of the culture war as you say, but it's quite simply not true. As another poster pointed out, the scientific method doesn't prove or disprove anything, but rather gives indications about what theories are the most useful. An absolutely essential component of the scientific method, and of the way each of us manages our lives, is Occam's Razor. We could all go on crazy spending sprees because of the unjustified (but not logically inconsistent) belief that a million dollars will be deposited into our accounts right after we finish shopping -- but we don't, because a lack of evidence should be considered evidence for a lack. Carl Sagan pointed out that we don't believe in the invisible, immaterial dragon in the garage, because the commonsense and correct belief is only in what is demanded by the evidence, rather than what is simply consistent with the evidence. If we follow this commonsense reasoning, which lies at the very heart of the scientific approach, any rational or scientifically-minded person must conclude that there is probably no god. So ignoring the cultural reasons for the battle between god and science, logically there is a very solid reason for philosophical head-butting.
It's also very in vogue to take the culturally meta approach and dismiss squabbling parties as forming due to self-interest and mutual back-patting, thus implying that "us vs. them" group mentality is always the reason for the partitioning of society, and deeper philosophical reasons are but an excuse for this behavior. And it's certainly true that this mutual back-patting is an inevitable component of how any group forms (including the group of people who like to make this point), but that hardly serves to dismiss the stated reasons for squabbling, and any logical claims that may go along with those reasons. Often the philosophy really is the reason for the discord, and the mutual back-patting is just a desirable but non-causal aspect of the group structure.
Whoever posted this is an idiot, unless they posted jokingly, in which case I'm the idiot.
1) Mathematically, dt/dt does have meaning; it's equal to 1.
2) Saying that dt/dt is the only way to calculate "movement through time" presupposes that there is no time travel. In fact, one of the equations of Einstein's special relativity is
T(P) = T / sqrt(1 + v^2 / c^2)
Where T indicates the time it takes for an event to occur when measured in the same reference frame, v is the velocity of the observer, c is the speed of light, and T(P) is how long the event takes to occur from the point of view of a hypothetical observer moving with velocity v. You can compute dT(P) / dT. You can also compute dT(P)/dt, where t is a time index used to define v = distance / t. There are a lot of reasonable and mathematically well-defined ways to define travel through time.
Lastly, "space doesn't exist"? WTF? Trying to justify that length doesn't matter?
That's like saying "Good Night, Moon" is amateurish and boring. Maybe if you read Ender's Game when you're 18 it'll come across like that, but it's a kids book, and it's phenomenal for that. The characters are also fairly accurate for what you might expect from VERY YOUNG KIDS who may be smart but haven't had time to develop much of a complex personality, either experientially or neurologically. The plot is very predictable, but that's not particularly relevant. The "badass" factor in Ender's Game, and more so in Ender's Shadow, is something that can be very appealing, and is done quite well.
Holy crap, that's the most pretentious sounding post I've ever read on/. Good job on cramming "Shakespeare", "classic writers", "refined", and "caviar" into a posting about Sci Fi.
The basic concept for Sliders was around before George R. R. Martin. And while it's true that Sliders failed in some basic ways, the unfortunate fact is that most SF shows fail in at least one basic way, a way that leaves most of us thinking on some level that we could have done better. Sliders has its stagnation, DS9 has an overly soap-opera bent to its episodes (and has Sisko doing a faint Captain Kirk impression for every 2 out of 5 episodes). Although it wasn't the audio-visual equivalent of Dune or Ender's Game / Shadow or Song of Ice and Fire, as far as SF TV goes, especially for its day, Sliders was awesome.
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"There is no battle between God and science" One hears this a lot nowadays, especially in the context of unifying the poles of the culture war as you say, but it's quite simply not true. As another poster pointed out, the scientific method doesn't prove or disprove anything, but rather gives indications about what theories are the most useful. An absolutely essential component of the scientific method, and of the way each of us manages our lives, is Occam's Razor. We could all go on crazy spending sprees because of the unjustified (but not logically inconsistent) belief that a million dollars will be deposited into our accounts right after we finish shopping -- but we don't, because a lack of evidence should be considered evidence for a lack. Carl Sagan pointed out that we don't believe in the invisible, immaterial dragon in the garage, because the commonsense and correct belief is only in what is demanded by the evidence, rather than what is simply consistent with the evidence. If we follow this commonsense reasoning, which lies at the very heart of the scientific approach, any rational or scientifically-minded person must conclude that there is probably no god. So ignoring the cultural reasons for the battle between god and science, logically there is a very solid reason for philosophical head-butting.
It's also very in vogue to take the culturally meta approach and dismiss squabbling parties as forming due to self-interest and mutual back-patting, thus implying that "us vs. them" group mentality is always the reason for the partitioning of society, and deeper philosophical reasons are but an excuse for this behavior. And it's certainly true that this mutual back-patting is an inevitable component of how any group forms (including the group of people who like to make this point), but that hardly serves to dismiss the stated reasons for squabbling, and any logical claims that may go along with those reasons. Often the philosophy really is the reason for the discord, and the mutual back-patting is just a desirable but non-causal aspect of the group structure.
Whoever posted this is an idiot, unless they posted jokingly, in which case I'm the idiot. 1) Mathematically, dt/dt does have meaning; it's equal to 1. 2) Saying that dt/dt is the only way to calculate "movement through time" presupposes that there is no time travel. In fact, one of the equations of Einstein's special relativity is T(P) = T / sqrt(1 + v^2 / c^2) Where T indicates the time it takes for an event to occur when measured in the same reference frame, v is the velocity of the observer, c is the speed of light, and T(P) is how long the event takes to occur from the point of view of a hypothetical observer moving with velocity v. You can compute dT(P) / dT. You can also compute dT(P)/dt, where t is a time index used to define v = distance / t. There are a lot of reasonable and mathematically well-defined ways to define travel through time. Lastly, "space doesn't exist"? WTF? Trying to justify that length doesn't matter?
That's like saying "Good Night, Moon" is amateurish and boring. Maybe if you read Ender's Game when you're 18 it'll come across like that, but it's a kids book, and it's phenomenal for that. The characters are also fairly accurate for what you might expect from VERY YOUNG KIDS who may be smart but haven't had time to develop much of a complex personality, either experientially or neurologically. The plot is very predictable, but that's not particularly relevant. The "badass" factor in Ender's Game, and more so in Ender's Shadow, is something that can be very appealing, and is done quite well.
Holy crap, that's the most pretentious sounding post I've ever read on /. Good job on cramming "Shakespeare", "classic writers", "refined", and "caviar" into a posting about Sci Fi.
The basic concept for Sliders was around before George R. R. Martin. And while it's true that Sliders failed in some basic ways, the unfortunate fact is that most SF shows fail in at least one basic way, a way that leaves most of us thinking on some level that we could have done better. Sliders has its stagnation, DS9 has an overly soap-opera bent to its episodes (and has Sisko doing a faint Captain Kirk impression for every 2 out of 5 episodes). Although it wasn't the audio-visual equivalent of Dune or Ender's Game / Shadow or Song of Ice and Fire, as far as SF TV goes, especially for its day, Sliders was awesome.