Itoero

Edit: Is it safe to say that you use an aproach where there is equal lack of evidence on existence of god, aliens and unicorns?

Yes. The absence of evidence does not make a fact.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Yes it is. Just because you are delusional and you can't see that is not my problem.

 

The fact is that Christians are delusional and will believe everything without evidence.

If you call the nonexistence of god or gods a fact then you must have evidence. Can you show some?

There is zero evidence for any God/Gods so unless someone can show me otherwise I stand by the fact that there is no God.

It's not a fact.

Eating alone is only a problem if you don't like to be alone, I don't mind being by myself, i am damn good company...

I am also damn good company.

 

I've travelled alone so I ate alone...

"and so it turned out only a life similar to the life of those around jus,merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness"

~ Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

 

Is happiness only real when shared?

We are social creatures.

By living in a group you used to increase the chance to survive and create offspring.

Something Brad Pitt said in 'Troy' explains my idea.

"The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again"

Why would anyone want to live forever? (in Heaven or Hell)

When I die, I just want to die and go back to the state of 'non-existing'.

Forever is a long time.

And?

Richard Dawkins said this....I thought it would be cool to say this.

If Jesus existed now, he would would probably be an atheist.

The polyglutamine diseases are a group of neurodegenerative disorders caused by expanded cytosine-adenine-guanine repeats encoding a long polyglutamine tract in the respective proteins. So in this case, extra amino-acids (glutamine) alters the conformation/composition of a protein and causes harmful/toxic effects.

Do you feel sick when you drink water after a meal?

When you drink water (or other liquids) your stomach quickly increases in volume...which can cause the throwing up.

Making the water lukewarm and drinking slowly might help.

I showed a cause, but to be deterministic the cause must always lead to the result.

In this case it did not so there was a cause, but it was not deterministic as I said.

When a cause does not lead to a result then it's not the cause that determines that effect. Then there is another cause that leads to the result.

Having or buying whisky is not the cause for drinking whisky, it enables you to drink whisky.

If you need to get up early the next day then that can be the cause for not drinking whisky.

If you can't digest alcohol, then that's the cause why you will never drink whisky.

If you have a whisky glass then that probably determines in which glass you will drink whisky.

If you have ice cubes in your freezer the that determines if you put ice in your whisky.

The ice cube tray you have determines the size and shape of the ice cubes you use.

But knowing a reason for a general behavior does not make individual expressions of that behavior deterministic. You can't know which way any individual photon will go ahead of time no matter how much information you have, and that is including all possible hypothetical sources of information, not just a result of us not being able to do it technically.

 

On the quantum level, there are non-deterministic processes that involve an element of probabilistic randomness. And there are mathematical proofs demonstrating that it isn't just a technical limitation that we haven't figured out yet.

 

We don't live in a clockwork universe and events are not perfectly deterministic.

Isn't it possible that we will one day be able to predict the behavior of a single photon?

In my post#2 I asked specifically for the prior cause for three events.

 

The first one five plus three making eight has no cause, it just is.

But it is deterministic because of this

 

 

Five plus three always was and always will be and is eight.

 

The second specific instance concerned radioactive decay.

This just happens.

Moreover it demonstrates a particular aspect of causes in general.

 

If an occurrence has a cause, then in theory you can prevent the occurrence by removing the cause.

 

But it is not possible to prevent radioactive decay, so I suggest this occurrence has no cause.

Nor is it possible to determine when the decay will happen.

 

My final example worked the other way round.

 

I wanted a glass of whisky (cause) and I possessed the means so I had one, but this was not deterministic since I might have ended up not drinking the whisky.

 

So I offered instances of determinism but no cause, neither cause nor determinism, and of cause but no determinism.

 

You have (rightly in my opinion) posted this as a philosophy discussion and I am simply exploring the logical implications of your simplification.

 

It is a good subject to debate.

I'm sorry I only gave one cause:)

"Then surely you should state them, (but one would do)."

 

* Five plus three makes eight because that's what math tells us. Math and science evolved out of language. Without language, math and science don't exist.

 

"The origins of mathematical thought lie in the concepts of number, magnitude, and form. Modern studies of animal cognition have shown that these concepts are not unique to humans. Such concepts would have been part of everyday life in hunter-gatherer societies. The idea of the "number" concept evolving gradually over time is supported by the existence of languages which preserve the distinction between "one", "two", and "many", but not of numbers larger than two."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics#Prehistoric_mathematics

 

The Piraha language has probably not even a word for 'one' or 'two'. It seems they use relative terms like 'few' and 'fewer'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_language#Numerals_and_grammatical_number

 

Math (and science) is how we interpret and study things...just like we use language to communicate and use fingers to play the piano. Properties of humans could not be present before humans developed.

 

*Not knowing the cause for radioactive decay does not mean there isn't one.

 

*If you end up not drinking whisky then there is a cause why you are not drinking whisky. There can be many reasons.

Maybe you want ice in your whisky and you don't have any ice in your freezer.

Suppose so you have polarization filter in your hand.

And you have laser pointer in second hand.

Laser is sending beam of photons.

But they have random polarization. Or circular polarization.

 

Photons hitting polarization filter are reflected, or passing through.

One photon pass through,

other photon is reflected,

yet another pass through,

yet another is reflected.

50% from billions of photons per second is passing through,

50% from billions of photons per second is reflected.

 

You have one photon initially: will it be reflected? will it pass through?

Are you rather a determinist or indeterminist?

 

Polarization Filter.png

(it looks better underwater, as each separate beam is visible)

Doesn't this show the wave behavior of light? The waves oscillate in different directions, the polarization filter filters out waves depending on its properties.

If you want to know what a photon is going to do, you have to measure it but then you collapse the wave.

You can only measure the footprint of a wave.

It's like in Young's double slit experiment. If you want to know through which slit a photon goes, you need to place a detector but the detector (measurement) collapses the interference pattern.

 

The wave-particle duality is the cause for the odd behavior of photons.

Just noticed your reply itoero, I missed it earlier.

 

 

Then surely you should state them, (but one would do).

 

Otherwise it becomes a belief system, not deductive science.

People developed math as a way to study our environment and to communicate with each other.

That forms the basic cause for five plus three making eight.

 

"Prehistoric artifacts discovered in Africa, dated 20,000 years old or more suggest early attempts to quantify time. The Ishango bone, found near the headwaters of the Nile river (northeastern Congo), may be more than 20,000 years old and consists of a series of tally marks carved in three columns running the length of the bone."

"The idea of the "number" concept evolving gradually over time is supported by the existence of languages which preserve the distinction between "one", "two", and "many", but not of numbers larger than two."

"The earliest evidence of written mathematics dates back to the ancient Sumerians, who built the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia. They developed a complex system of metrology from 3000 BC. From around 2500 BC onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics#Prehistoric_mathematics

Surely this definition is far too simplistic?

Yes, but all definitions come down to that.

 

I thought determinism requires prediction, given the answer to any question you might like to ask (ie sufficient prior information)

 

I drank a glass of whisky tonight.

 

To do this I must have some whisky.

 

But having some does not determine that I will drink any tonight or any other night or ever.

There are many factors that determine when and which amount you drink. Those factors I acknowledge to be the cause.

 

Does everything have a prior cause?

 

What is the prior cause of five plus three making eight?

 

What is the prior cause of the actual time that a radium atom decays? (not the decay itself, but the time when it occurs)

There can be many possible causes. Not knowing the cause does not mean it's indeterministic.

The cause is not yet determined.

There was a time in which the cause for lightning was not determined...

Are you rather a determinist or indeterminist?

 

I am a determinist. I consider everything as cause and effect. An indeterministic effect has a cause, which makes the process deterministic.

 

Determinism is the belief that events are caused by things that happened prior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

 

Indeterminism is the belief that events are not caused by things that happened prior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism

I think the opposite of loving a person is not being aware of that person's existence.

I tried several ways to burn nitrocellulose.

Burning it in a glass jar is pretty nice.

I would like to burn it in a graduated cilinder.

But will the glass of the cilinder be strong enough?

It creates a lot of pressure...

 

Made 2 videos about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceT0HTj9c2Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBJEtYQQQXs

I believe God just is. He is life he surrounds us he is the air we breathe he is the water we drink because he is everything.

That's pantheism.

Is it possible that KHSO4 forms a solid when there isn't enough H2SO4?

Tomorrow I'm going to do this experiment with 3 times as much moles H2SO4 as KNO3...I'm pretty sure this will cause the nitrating solution to stay liquid.

Gods in general cannot be disproved, but a God specifically can be, for instance it is pretty obvious that the god of the holy bible as described in the Bible is false..

It depends what in the bible you consider to be true or false.

Einstein has been proven right about so many things it is uncanny.

What happens when God and Nature are equated.

[This is the Religion subforum so using that word is not taboo.]

 

The argument around the laws of physics is an interesting one. Did they originate at the big bang? When did they originate?

Einstein was also wrong in his idea's of Quantum theory.

He tried to debunk Heisenberg's uncertainty and was not a fan of quantum entanglement.

 

What do our physical laws say about black holes?

It's not clear what the big bang was, so I suppose I was wrong to make assumptions about physical laws.

Creation stories are only one aspect of religion. The plethora of gods arose because many natural phenomena were ascribed to the activities of Gods. That is one of the reasons religion arose - as a means, initially of explaining such phenomena, then as a means of seeking to influence them.

Religion also provided a means of excising control over increasingly complex societies and of creating a sense of social coherence. These aspects of the origin of religion are, I believe, accepted as standard, though the details and the emphasis may vary from researcher to researcher.

That's true.

So it's science in general that causes the belief in the supernatural to decline/evolve.

 

I think you have answered your own question.

But isn't 'religion' a wrong term?

Einstein was supposed to be a deeply religious non-believer.

If you look to his beliefs then he wasn't religious at all.

Einstein uses the word 'religion' as it was 'philosophy'.

If you replace 'religion' with 'philosophy' then it imo makes more sense:

 

Philosophy without science is blind. Science without philosophy is lame.

Darwin had nothing to say in his published work about the creation of life.

I meant that before Darwin the creation of humanity had no explanation.

 

I think you'll find that most students of religion have several other factors that were responsible for its emergence.

What other factors can there be for all those creation stories and the massive amount of gods?

 

I recommend you investigate a little more deeply what Einstein meant by that remark and of how he conceived the role of religion. You may then revise your opinion.

Then what did Einstein mean with 'religion' ?

He was an agnost and admired Spinoza's work.

I think the Miller Urey points to the 'fact' that the origin of life does not demand anything supernatural.
Inorganic matter can create organic matter without the help of a pink unicorn.
I did read a couple times that the inorganic molecules in the Miller Urey did not correspond with what was present on the early earth.