Euler's Identity

I LOVE chess lol. I was outright addicted for a while a few months back but haven't played since then. I was just about to start playing in some tourneys and receive a USCF rating but that's when a nasty gaming thing kicked in and I haven't played much at all since . I'm JUST NOW getting back into the game as of yesterday, I imagine my rating will be horrible again and I'll have to go back to square 1 lol.

No, no.

 

"Falsifiable" doesn't mean that you've proven something falsified. It means that something is capable (in principle) of being shown false. You don't (in principle) have to search the whole universe over to show "apple does not exist " is false. If you're eating one then you've already done a good job of that.

 

That's kind of a myth. And, maybe what I'm about to say will address Phi's question more precisely. The judeo-christian god is easily within the realm of testing as a google search for "elijah's altar" will show... which is to say, first kings 18 will tell you how to do it.

 

edit:

 

added "does not" to "exist"

Yeah that's what I meant (falsifiable meaning). Yeah, I have come to realize that in terms of the biblical god if taken literally you can show evidence (though short of scientific of course) to be false, or if not the actual biblical god themselves, the claims that the bible makes about this god. What you CANNOT do is show evidence that this actual god or any god doesn't exist at all.

I mean, in principle, "X exists" is not falsifiable (you'd have to search the whole universe over to show it wrong, as I think you previously pointed out to me). "X does not exist" is falsifiable. A verified observation shows it wrong.

 

So, how is God X... well... that's up to whoever is making the claim. Like iNow said, there are many definitions for god. But, in general, whatever the definition it should fit the profile I just laid out

Wouldn't you have to search the whole universe to disprove that X does not exist as well? When we discuss the most popular religions, this is even more difficult because God X is outside of the reach of the universe and laws of the universe. Therefore you could never say for sure that God X doesn't exist.

 

 

Dude, you went too far, that's all. Own it.

 

And using terms like "common sense" is not only insulting, it's vague and subjective. Faith is already defined as belief despite a lack of evidence. I said that waaaaay back when you first brought this up, and you've been trying to assert that this makes theists wrong or stupid ever since (how else are we to interpret a lack of "common sense"?).

 

Please don't keep using "common sense" as some kind of objective measurement. It used to be common sense to throw spilled salt over your shoulder to ward off the devil.

Actually, YOU have been interpreting my posts that way every since, NEVER did I say that theist are "stupid" or "wrong". Maybe you should check back with my posts in the past. As we both seemed to agree many theists do not base their faith on nothing, but in my personal experience as I also stated many do, but this has been used against me to say that I believe that theists are "stupid" or "have no common sense".

pears:

How am I shifting the goalposts here? We're still talking about blind faith with nothing to support it and I asked you a question to get your opinion, perhaps I did get the wrong impression on you're beliefs, I was already getting charged up anyways. I should probably take a good break from the thread for a while because we don't appear to be getting anywhere anyways.

So you're saying that blind faith is not common sense?

 

It's fine to make such a statement as an opinion. But terms such as "common sense" and "clearly misguided" ARE ambiguous. Appeals to common sense are generally fallacious. It's an appeal to popular opinion. So while your statement is a valid opinion, it's not a valid assertion.

So it wouldn't be your strong opinion that I shouldn't take my child to the hospital with a serious illness because I believe that my lord "dog shit" is going to come down and cure her illness based on nothing but 100% blind faith? Should I tell her that if you do not worship my pile of dog feces she will burn in fire for eternity after she dies? Would you not be strongly opinionated that me believing in this dog feces as a deity based on nothing but blind faith is incorrect? The scientific method isn't necessary here, my pile of feces CLEARLY isn't a deity (dodge and say its a matter opinion all you want) and I shouldn't be teaching my children to believe this either. You can say subjective, subjective, subjective and throw that at everything, and yes that is valid within the realm of science, but we're not discussing science. We are discussing the "rationale behind religion" I believe the forum description says something similar to that.

I think you need to clarify this sentence

 

 

Are you saying that your stance is that blind faith makes no sense i.e. that blind faith is not common sense. Or do you mean that your stance is common sense? Or something else? Either way "common sense" is a fairly woolly term. What is the standard for this "common sense"?

Hmm I thought despite that it isn't perfectly defined it was quite unambiguous (common sense that is), what I mean is that baseless blind faith with no explanation for why you really believe it is clearly misguided. I don't see why this is so difficult to swallow, if I wanted to believe that a "pile of shit" was going to come down and save me in my time of need with NOTHING guiding me to believe so, I think we could all agree that I am completely misguided. (In this hypothetical that is )

 

So, "a huge majority of peoples faith is baseless" is now a fact? So much that it's considered "common sense"?

 

Citation needed, please.

 

How can you really assert that this huge majority of religious people never had any experiences they considered sufficient enough to make them believe? Does it have to be miraculous or just seem miraculous? I've never met anyone who really believed that didn't have a good reason for it, even if the reasoning wasn't up to scientific rigor

You've misread my post again, I didn't make the assertion as fact that most peoples faith is baseless based on common sense, I said that blind faith is baseless based on common sense.

 

OK. So, knowing that your stance requires guesswork, assumptions and estimates about people you don't know, are you at least willing to stop asserting that faith, blind or not, makes no sense at all? Perhaps the claim can be amended to "Faith makes no sense to me"?

Actually that's incorrect, my stance does not rely upon this assumption. The idea that a huge majority of peoples faith is baseless relies upon this assumption. My stance is that completely blind faith makes no sense, which relies upon common sense, rather than assumptions.

Actually, iNow is right, science doesn't deal in proof. Proof is really only available in math, because we can't test for everything, everywhere. For science, it's usually a preponderance of evidence, so we use theories instead. Proof signals the end of the search, and we really don't want that to happen. Proof makes us stop looking.

 

And this is another example of misunderstood definitions. We say, "Prove it!" but really mean, "Sway me with a preponderance of evidence!"

 

Who claimed their belief in God was without any experiences to make them believe? I don't recall anyone claiming that, unless you're talking about you. How would that even work?! This is probably where Iggy's strawman complaint comes from.

 

I'm still unsure whether calling it "blind" faith is moving the goalpost or not. I've used that term before in the context that faith often overlooks reality in favor of spirituality. But you seem to be using it to mean "believing in God without having a miraculous experience". How on earth are you supporting THAT?!

 

Wait, don't answer that. This thread isn't about whether believing in God is right or wrong.

I would be willing to estimate that at least 80% of those that believe in a god have never experienced anything miraculous to sway them in that direction, but I'm not those people and I wasn't there so I could never say that for sure of course. Blind faith is used in the context that you don't really know why you believe it and you don't question it, just believe it.

Me either

No one here but you is claiming that a personal belief in God is wrong or nonsensical for everyone. They're explaining why THEY don't believe in any gods. Ask them. You're falling into the same bad arguments you claim to be against. "It makes no sense" is an argument from incredulity, unless you can provide some evidence that God doesn't exist.

 

You can decide not to believe for yourself if you like; it's an opinion and everyone has one. And as long as the person who believes in God isn't trying to insist that there's scientific proof for him, or try to attribute to God something more easily explained by nature, their belief isn't wrong, not for them it isn't.

 

You can't prove God exists and you can't prove he doesn't using science. It's a concept outside nature and not for science to explain. And just like trying to prove God's existence is like trying to prove Orville Dragonbacher's^TM existence, you'll end up

I never claimed that science can disprove the existence of a god as you seem to believe I have, I claimed (multiple times) that without anything pointing you to the belief it makes no sense. Neither did I say that "Believing in god is wrong", i cannot prove that because the existence of a god IS possible. But as I have also stated in the past it makes no sense to believe this with absolutely nothing in the way of an experience to make you believe so. I've heard a million times that it is outside the realm of science and believe so, I don't need you to repeat that back to me as its obvious. Completely blind faith makes absolutely no sense at all, it has never shown any results to people that rely on it. Yep a god is possible, never claimed it wasn't, but again without anything that gives you the impression that one does exist, why would you worship and put your life in the hands of this possibly imaginary being?

Nope. Prof isn't just for the math. It's for you as well, and I don't think asking for it is unreasonable as well.

 

You said that god is the equivalent to corn dog shitting dragons, You aid... "I'm glad to show how they are equivalent". You said that. Ether do it or admit you can't! There is no other option!

I haven't been here the whole thread but I BELIEVE he is asking you to demonstrate how they are different.

 

Faith: strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

 

You're trying to argue that having faith in God is wrong, based on how irrational it is. Faith is NOT a rational belief to begin with. "Faith is wrong" is not an argument you can support in any way with regard to a personal belief or opinion.

 

I've tried to show, in other threads, that faith isn't as strong as most people think. I tried to show that it's actually the weakest form of belief. But I can't say it's wrong, not until it's used to support an assertion and then is subject to all the rigor reasoned thought can bring to bear.

 

Again, as long as faith isn't expressed as fact, it's a personal opinion. You don't get to tell me my logic is flawed because I think chocolate is the best flavor in the world, until I say "Chocolate IS the best flavor and I have evidence to prove it!" At least for our purposes of discussion here, trying to convince someone their faith is misplaced is every bit as much preaching as those who're trying to convert you to their faith.

Without something strong to influence you personally as I stated, blind faith based on nothing makes no sense whatsoever. You're belief that chocolate is the best flavor is not flawed logic, because its a matter of how you receive each flavor in particular and is a matter of opinion and PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, not to mention that your opinion that chocolate is best doesn't break multiple well established laws of nature. The existence of some deity which breaks all of the laws of nature and is the supposed creator of all things, on the other hand, is on a different scale. With NOTHING to support such a claim and it being based on blind faith alone, how does this belief make any sense? Matter of personal belief or not without something extraordinary it seems to make 0 sense.

This is what you DON'T get to do, question the rationality of faith. As long as it's a personal belief, you can offer your opinion to counter their opinion, but faith isn't supposed to be rational; you can't use reason to question it.

 

Unless, of course, that faith becomes an assertion of fact; then it goes under the microscope. Until then, it's all anecdotal and personal opinion. Capable of being brought into question, certainly, but not in a scientific or rational way.

 

I disagree, unless you have a personal experience which provokes you to believe something (really strong event) then blind faith can be questioned with reason. Its simple, unless you have experienced what I have stated above there is no reason to believe anything that doesn't make rational sense to the natural world without empirical evidence to support it. If you HAVE experienced something like that then I would suggest its no longer faith anyways, but as everyone seems to agree you shouldn't expect anyone else to take it as evidence.

Ei: ...then you missed a few books.... Or used a pretty horrible translation. Did you actually look into the original Greek and Hebrew to verify the passages as correctly translated? I agree, mainstream "Christianity" is messed up.... But has nothing to do with the bible. ...yet anti-biblical teachings seem to have given you a prejudice. For one, "hell" seems to be a primary point of concern for you... Yet is a blatant mistranslation... Likely invented by "a certain church" as a way to threaten people into making donations so that people can make monetary contributions to buy indulgences and avoid the punishment their church made up.

 

...gotta be careful about those things. As for Hovind.... I've watched his stuff.... And a majority is easily disproven and skimmed over.... There are a number of darn good points. Polystrate trees, the inaccuracies of carbon dating, etc. ... But a literal 6k year earth, giants, and what he talks about with seeds.... Not so much. Also, I'm pretty sure his claims about that woodpecker are completely unfounded.

Fair enough, which translation do you suggest is correct? I have abt 5 versions in my house here, in addition to whatever one I want on the internet where I can go cite that version. Yep, I agree, a lot of the NT stuff is pretty cool and warm, but that doesn't make it truth. As for your argument that we're just taking our logical beliefs on faith, I challenge you to put down all of the anatomical, genetic, and cellular evidence for common decent. Make sure that if you do not have a thorough understanding of evolution and its mechanisms you learn it. Here's some good resources for getting started:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgHd6HKtvE&list=PLB225304713046D4F

The book and theory that is most famous for starting it all as I'm sure you know:

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/darwin/originspecies.pdf

Also just in case you do not understand exactly how DNA & RNA work to make proteins you should find a book or playlist by a legitimate source, I do not have one because I rigorously learned genetics in the classroom, so I have not yet learned more about it though I'm sure the resources are out there. Afterwards I challenge you to counter all of the types of evidence I stated.

Deflect as much as you like. Whoever gave you the ideas you have was not qualified to teach you that subject and did a poor job.

 

Endy: and that's how it should be. However, there is an amount of pressure to conform to the popular faith of the community based on cheap social pressure instead of evidence (for example, this thread.)

 

There are a LOT of Christians out there.... That, by itself, does not make Christianity fact. There are also a lot of junk scientists spreading obviously ridiculous theories as supporting evidence for a baseless popular opinion. Yes, that tooth looks a bit different than a human.... That doesn't make it a missing link, it's from a modern pig. DNA tests debunked it, yet people still claim that this is among the "vast" evidence of spontaneous abiogenesis. Look at those vestigial legs in whales and snakes! Proof that each evolved from an animal with legs, and therefore interkingdom evolution and therefore abiogenesis.... (Or that's how those animals make babies). Look at this embyology chart!..... That was an admitted hoax a century ago.... Still in school books, presented as fact.

 

 

As much as people repeat that it's not a matter of faith... Ask for evidence.... Get poorly presented Wikipedia articles chalk full of circular reasoning. ... Even at this point, all the articles provided (unless I've missed one) are all ad populum claims about people who have supporting evidence for macroevolution.... None on the topic of abiogenesis... Which apparently is verified by extention when it's convenient.... Yet "isn't part of the theory" when inconvenient.

You sound like Kent Hovind, nobody mainstream claims definite proof of abiogenesis as you seem to believe, all at this point is speculation and educated looks into the past. As stated many times on this forum, just because something isn't currently thoroughly explained doesn't mean "godditit". As you seem to believe, I had no teacher other than the bible itself. Which according to its very own claims tells me that I can gain the necessary knowledge and be enlightened by reading it. I wasn't influenced by some "false teacher" as I stated in the past. Yeah, the whole Jesus idea is nice, but it is 100% unsupported and I have never one time been able to verify it for myself when I was Christian. Which also contributed to my departure from religion. You seem to believe that experts just see a fossil and immediately evaluate that this and that are related on first sight. Without the PROVEN, TESTED, HARD WORK of these same scientists you wouldn't be enjoying the luxury of this debate. But you seem you believe that you are somehow more qualified than the phds who spend years and years of their life to their particular field to discover what they have.

Who did that?

 

Who just gave me a -1? In what way does "you said it, you explain it, I'm not explaining it for you" deserve a -1? And, I was polite the whole time. What form of cowardice does this -1 shite take? You can't seem to hit "reply" and make an argument, so you just figure on doing that. Retarded.

 

If you can't find the courage to leave your cheerleading squad for just a minute and admit what you think here, then PM me. What did I just say that was so wrong? TELL ME! Your disapproval otherwise is nothing but whimpering cowardice.

 

None of you can find an argument against what I'm saying, but you've all gone so far as to -1, 2, 3, times every single one of my posts. This just figures about what I'm saying about this thread.

 

Let's all hear iNow say that God is equivalent to pixie farts again. He'll get a +3 for that. And, you call yourself a science site! HA!

Well we shall start out with what is your argument in the first place? (Sorry have not read all of the posts leading up because this thread is very long)

I'm not aware of a high number of sightings in the past which causes me to doubt the footage. But of course there is a possibility considering that was the USSR I would guess.

And you dont see any correlation there?

 

Give you a hint. Replace a bible with a book on physics. If a person attended no classes, had no instruction, didn't ask for any guidance... But studied a physics book by himself for years, and decided physics as a whole repulsed him and was wrong....

 

Still no problem with thats? Or is it a strawman when applied to your current faith, but perfectly logical when equally applied to a contrary faith?

Just because I didn't attend a church and read the bible solo means I had no communication with others of my religion? I dont think so. Besides, I can read through a simple physics book, test the assertions, and the physics book makes no assertions on how I should live my life. If for some stupid reason I do decide that my physics book is wrong, I won't be told I will go to hell as a result. In addition, a physics book doesn't tell you that if you pray and worship the god of physics he will give you understanding of the world.

I wasn't "pressured" or "manipulated" by anyone. I attended no Church for a lot of my life though I wanted to. I harshly studied the bible for myself as you seemed to ignore in your post and as I studied for myself I became more repelled from Christianity. Then later on when I reached a reasonable amount of maturity logic was the nail in the coffin.

In order for corndog defecating dragons to exist, we would have to live in a universe with a relatively low level of entropy. How would the dog get inside the cornbread? How would it be heated? Where would the wood for the stick come from? Do you know of any animal whose every feces looks identical?

Perhaps the dragon enjoys eating corndogs although he cannot digest them, invisibility could be on account that he is on a frequency that is not perceivable to us, but that goes far too off topic for this thread haha

Besides popularity, in what way(s) do you propose assertions that god(s) exist are functionally different from assertions that corndog defecating dragons exist?

I would suppose that corndog defecating dragons may be more likely according to the laws of nature.

Good stuff here, I clearly need linear algebra for any kind of mathematical completeness ha I'm just getting familiar with Differential Calculus

I think I'm asking more of the how than the why. I can accept that symmetry is favoured by natural selection etc and I can accept that external symmetry is favoured by attraction (though not symmetry of internal organs) but I just wondered how it happens, i.e. the mechanism that gives you two almost identical organs in symmetry. In my mind I can't help thinking of something splitting, either in the enbryo or in the DNA. I suspect the actual answer might be too technical for a simple post though?

Well in embryological terms, Everything starts as one general purpose cell (stem cell) and goes through mitosis consecutively to form two cells, as this continues the cells will become more specialized (e.g Internals, Externals, Intermediaries to specific systems) but the cells on each side from the original cell mitosis should be multiplying usually the same ways at about the same rate with the exception of some internals which aren't perfectly symmetrical, but again i'm no expert

If you think a requirement of theology is that it's accepted without question... You've never adequately researched religion. Some require that it is constantly questioned.

Can you describe which religion you are arguing for? I was a hard studying christian for 14 years spending many, many hours of my day to study and prayer. The more I actually studied the bible the more I was compelled to abandon Christianity. If you are indeed christian then we are talking about a religion which indeed does require you to take everything on faith... otherwise you will burn in hell for eternity.