B. John Jones

The basis of learning everything mathematical and scientific being the number one, always learned by trusting someone (faith), the next being the number two, learned again by faith, at what point should a person discard faith?

 

The best answer, that I think I can fairly project, is that a source should be discarded, as far as being trustworthy, when it fails "to work." I would ask then, are there ever any instances (and I think this can be fairly tested either by informal, or by formal observations) of Biblical faith, specifically, being both practical, and enriching in ways similar to or exceeding music, for example, for a person or for a group of persons?

 

If there is ever an instance (and moreover, many instances) of Biblical faith, specifically, "working" for people, why should Biblical faith be dismissed as evidence (vs. proof), in science; as for example when a former adherent to so-called "speciation," becomes an opponent due to their considering all evidence, including evidence based on Biblical faith? In every case, no unbeliever can substantiate or negate his or her claims, ever. So, why not count his claims as evidence? Please note the distinction between "proof" and "evidence." I am not saying that a believer's notions about facts are solid (proven) just because faith works for him or her. I am saying his notions should be counted as evidence (not usually as proof, not conclusive).

The common claim goes that by faith we can see God. In your experience has anyone you've known, who became Christian, specifically, claimed that they could or could not clearly see God, while still holding to the Christian faith? Has science tested this? This is the fairest test that I can imagine at the moment. The results, though not proof, of or against the existence of a Creator God, it would certainly be evidence.

This really isn't a fair category to start a thread about the plausibility in nature of a Creator God so I selected it somewhat randomly:

 

1) Does science permit that a Creator God is indeed:

1. conceivable (possible)?
2. plausible (reasonable or believable)?

2) If science does permit that a Creator God is indeed reasonable, how must science reason (determine God's substance) concerning a Creator God?

a. disregard due to uncertainty.
b. consider available evidence including:

• science (granted)
• nature (allow/reject)
• historical/archeological evidence (allow/reject)
• contemporary facts (allow/reject)
• contemporary information (allow/reject)
• human testimony (oral and written) (allow/reject)
• restricted human thought (analysis/logic) (allow/reject)
• comprehensive human thought (analysis/logic, judgment and intuition) (allow/reject)
• other forms of evidence (as discovered)
  

As I have always asserted, science is one very useful way of viewing and calculating components of nature. Nature, I would add, is the general environment and its members, animate and inanimate. Introduce aliens, for example, to a scientific discussion, people here are mostly fun-loving. Introduce a Creator God, to the equation, however, people question, resist and become defensive, which is fair. What's not fair, is when such opposition is answered of necessity, and at every turn the answer is charged with "preaching." A fair statement involving God, especially Christ, gets a fair charge of offense, but a fair and necessary diplomatic answer always gets a higher charge of "preaching," on the mere basis of being Biblical. How is this objective? It is completely subjective. Science here is objective at most to the extent that Christ is offered as evidence, at which point science subjects all such evidence exclusively to science.

 

 

This is not very meaningful. (Putting it very politely.)

 

We can (and do) predict the motions of the planets and so we know where the sun will be in 24 hours.

 

As there is no evidence that the universe will end in the next 24 hours, that suggestion has nothing to do with science.

 

Your address of everything I've mentioned except the universe closing up is very artful, or perhaps tactful, or at least smart.

The sun rising? - It has done so up to now, so why would we think any different?

 

Also, just because an old book says something and people, out of fear or whatever other spurious reason, believe it, what makes you believe it when there is so much evidence to show that the book is clearly wrong in so many places? It is clearly a work of fiction or just a plain and simple lie.

 

Also, I have an 'ancient' coin, from an ancient civilization - it is nearly 2.5k years old. Were do you get your definitions from? Try a dictionary maybe?

 

Your ancient coin and ancient civilization are in terms of history. We're discussing science, which excludes history (in my experience in these forums). Since science doesn't define "ancient," it would have to be in terms of the age of human beings, at the least. So if human beings have been around millions of years then my point is clearly correct--Plumbing is very modern.

This is not very meaningful. (Putting it very politely.)

 

By the way, thank you. You are always very polite.

 

Plumbing is a very ancient technology, so it doesn't seem relevant as a counter example.

 

Some herbal remedies work (to some extent) and most don't. Some are positively dangerous. The way we know which ones work and which don't is, as you say through "objective long-term studies and observation", in other words: science.

 

As someone said, "you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine".

 

"Ancient," by modern scientific standards is at least millions of years though. I doubt that plumbing is "ancient."

 

I'll at least credit your fallacy charges as being somewhat eloquent and entertaining.

 

Herbal remedies rarely work independently of a generally good approach to foods in general, including herbs (seasonings, teas, etc.).

 

Medicine works as effectively as casts and crutches--as supports while nature performs her superior works. "Medicine" never cures disease. Medicine is very good for treating disease and injury. Only extra-human intelligence cures disease.

 

You are not discussing in scientific terms when you admit that the thing you are discussing cannot be proved or disproved.

 

Okay, prove to me, within the hour, that the sun will shine approximately where it is now shining 24-hours from now, and that the universe will not be closed up by that time. Or else prove to me that the sun has tended to shine approximately where it has from day to day, without the universe closing up. You could do the latter, or attempt to do the former, both in scientific terms, and still admit that the former cannot be proven.

 

That is rather obvious.

 

 

That is quite plainly wrong. All modern technology, from the computer you are using, to cures for cancer, to your favourite display technology, arise from rigorous application of the scientific process, not from intuition.

 

People have been using intuition for millennia to treat disease, for example. And they were largely unsuccessful. It is only with the advent of the scientific method that great leaps were made in healthcare, agriculture and every other aspect of life.

 

You are right. Plumbing, for example, a very modern technology, arose from a rigorous application of the scientific process (the margin of your error being in your exclusion of intuition from that process).

 

The quack doctors weren't using intuition. That was sheer animal instinct. Intuition tempers fact with insight and spontaneous judgment. It's not guesswork. Herbal remedies and nutritional expertise are quite scientific and intuitive at once--largely established on objective long-term studies and observation, seldom endorsed by science, except usually with extreme, cost-ineffective monetary commitments.

It really isn't. Free-form, that is. Looking at Saturn through a telescope is a neat experience IMO, and a doorway to science, but it isn't science all by itself.

 

 

Because this is a science site, and preaching is against the rules you agreed to follow when you joined.

 

Do you have I url for that rule? I wasn't able to locate it and I need your definition of preaching. My own definition of preaching is proclaiming something to masses of people, as did Jesus, or Stephen. From my perspective I'm discussing nature, in material terms, which include spiritual, with reference to scientific terms.

 

Science relies on more than "free form" observations. It require objective measurements and analysis of data. Something you are skipping over.

 

 

So, no censored then. Please don't lie.

 

And if it can't be proven, then it has no place on a science forum.

 

Science tries to measure natural phenomena precisely but there are always, for the most part, margins of error. Art is built-in to nature. Rigid, strict, approaches to learning and discovery are always inferior to intuitive approaches to learning and discovery--with all the same tools and analytical devices as we would with a "strictly strict" approach.

 

 

"governance of bullshit"

 

Why do assertions about nature, offered peacefully, but boldly, make you more bitter?

 

When have you been censored?

 

Crap is not a scientific term but, as you refuse to be scientific in your approach, it is a reasonable description of your baseless assertions.

 

Science was, and ought still to be, very free-form observations of nature, using tools, like lenses, with reference sometimes, or often, to "scientific terms."

 

Threads I start tend to be locked, and I tend to be "warned," simply for my opinion that nature is far greater than science, and that there is a Creator of the natural world, who cannot be proven anymore than I can prove my identity to you, or you to me.

 

 

And your expectation is wrong, as I've shown. If you are going to continue to insist that you're right, you have to demonstrate it.

 

I'm not insisting that I'm right. You are insisting that I'm wrong.

 

What factors are you talking about? You were very clear in the OP: position of earth and moon. That's it.

 

 

This is a science discussion. Kindly leave this crap out of it, unless you are willing to rigorously define "governs"

 

If "rigorously" entails exclusive maths and sciences, I don't qualify to use the term "governance" in a scientific forum.

 

Cancer is much longer term than one organism. The cure is much longer term. There's no treatment of one organism that will cure cancer in the same organism. It's generational, and the cure is more perfect nutrition.

 

What evidence do you have for this?

 

 

People have been eating fermented and cultured foods for millennia. Cancer is still around.

 

 

So no evidence, then.

 

The point I was making is that health in general is best served through good food choices. But to answer your question about cancer being multi-generational and the cure likewise, the evidence is seen if the fact that 1) medicine has been "attacking" cancerous disease since antiquity and has never found "cures." 2) All long-term human health and wellness concerns are concentrated in the blood. Nutrients in the blood determine the health of the human body. Food is the primary source for those nutrients. I shouldn't have to prove that. And it's pretty sad if science demands evidence for something as night and day.

 

Varieties (not quantities) of foods (nor food groups) is my personal charge for good nutrition and wellness.

I love it when people get anecdote and evidence confused.

 

Wait, no I don't.

 

Re light intensity.

 

If reflected light is supposedly less harmful than projected light, then why does it make me cry to look at light reflected on the surface of a lake, but I'm fine when I watch my TV? I'll answer my own question (with apologies to the original Clinton campaign), "It's the intensity, stupid."

 

Your eye is really just a fancy camera lens. It honestly doesn't care where the light is coming from - light is light, as someone so astutely posted earlier.

 

Of course, since convention accepts, to date, that "light is light," as you've attested, I guess then the majority has it! No need for measurements.

 

Please show, using data, that this is the case.

 

I'm speculating now that this is in speculations. Anyway, I'm hardly a scientist or mathematician. I do study these things and draw, yes, intuitive conclusions. I'm offering a premise here, and an expectation.

@ swansont:

Defense being the sole cause for rain clouds finding their way to the rain forests is not the case I'm making. Other factors given, even preceding the one you single out, are primarily preserving (defensively for example) and comforting an ecology--defense being an example. And by "industry" I'm including the first "primitive" communities who began building villages and towns.

 

As far as such irregularities in cloud and precipitation patterns, such as in disasters, are concerned, I think that the rain clouds would be at least as prone to error as human beings are--if you must assume that willful judgment/decision by rain clouds is my intent here (any more than willful decisions by the cell membranes would be).

 

 

You lose.

 

The rotation of the earth is governed by angular momentum, meaning that a change in the mass distribution on the earth, or a change in rotational systems on the earth (e.g. a hurricane/typhoon) will change the rotation rate. If it was only the sun and the moon positions, one would expect an annual variation and an almost monthly variation (coinciding with the moon's position). But what we observe is more complicated.

 

This is a plot of the (excess) length of day, i.e. how much longer a day is than 86400 seconds. (You can see that sometimes this has been a negative number)

http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/amsci.png

 

There are small variations at intervals other than you'd expect, as well as a change on longer time scales.

 

As explained here

http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/earthor/EOP.html

the rotation also depends on precession and nutation, as well as "the variable components due to atmospheric, oceanic, and earth internal processes."

 

All these changes/variations/differences you have mentioned will be offset with the otherwise negligible differences of the factors I've named for the earth and the moon, relative to the sun. That is, the moon governs not merely the rotation of the earth, but the underbelly of the night; and the sun governs the day.

(I have the feeling this might be moved into "speculations")

I would be willing to bet, that the rotation of the earth is governed strictly by the positions of the moon and the sun, relative to the earth, which could be effectively measured and determined by 2 factors: 1) the distance between the earth and the moon; and 2) the correlation of the points of the cones of darkness, above the domes of darkness, of the earth and the moon.

How would you test your hypothesis that clouds have intelligence, and what evidence can you present that it's true? What is the mechanism by which water vapor condensed on dust can process information?

 

If I were going to test it, I would observe the motions of clouds to see if they tend to move in patterns that promote cooling in regions where such cooling and moisture are required to preserve or to comfort an ecology. Evidence is seen in that natural rain forests, which tend to require defense (due to industry for example), take lots of rain. The mechanism by which water collecting on dust processes information is that mechanism, by which H20 binds to and finds transport with dust particles, which, when concentrated, tend to move towards regions requiring precipitation for such things as defense, comfort, propagation, or the like, if such suggested motions hold true. The voices of creatures might be considered communication with those chemical substances involved in this mechanism.

This was edited so to add moisture to cooling as an effect, and to add transport to binding on dust particles. Fewer than 2 minutes ago.

Logical partitions in modern science quite often sadden me, by reason of the following example:

 

The dynamics of the earth's system/subsystems of evaporation, condensation and precipitation, seem very equitable, or comparable at the very least, to the dynamics of the transport system/subsystems into and out of cells from a biological view. Clouds in the local atmosphere serve 2 vital regulating purposes from a view considerate of the earth's climate: 1) they reflect heat energy from the sun. 2) they help to retain heat energy radiated from the earth (esp. at night). http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclecondensation.htmlThese clouds seem to demonstrate a layer of a model of intelligence comparable to layers of the intelligence intrinsic in cell membranes.

 

I'm forced into "Speculations" due to the fractured nature of modern science (biology being segregated from geology, etc.), whereas there is no discipline of the "integrated sciences" class.

 

 

Ok, I lost you here. What's your problem?

 

I'm simply somewhat dismayed that scientists are not drawing logical comparisons between, for example, processes of cell membranes (biology) and processes including evaporation, condensation and precipitation (climatology); or comparisons between the world of molecular substances and their motions (chemistry, physics, biology, etc.) and the substances and motions of what I tend to call satellites (astronomy). All of this is very similar and we can learn more richly (in my view) when comparing the classes of science one with the other (comparing a biological cell, for example, to an ecosystem including its atmospheres).

Logical partitions in modern science quite often sadden me, by reason of the following example:

 

The dynamics of the earth's system/subsystems of evaporation, condensation and precipitation, seem very equitable, or comparable at the very least, to the dynamics of the transport system/subsystems into and out of cells from a biological view. Clouds in the local atmosphere serve 2 vital regulating purposes from a view considerate of the earth's climate: 1) they reflect heat energy from the sun. 2) they help to retain heat energy radiated from the earth (esp. at night). http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclecondensation.htmlThese clouds seem to demonstrate a layer of a model of intelligence comparable to layers of the intelligence intrinsic in cell membranes.

 

I'm forced into "Speculations" due to the fractured nature of modern science (biology being segregated from geology, etc.), whereas there is no discipline of the "integrated sciences" class.

In other words, scientists are practicing a dangerous art, which is a nice way of saying they are incompetent. To remedy the situation they should follow your advice, and you have a few people who believe like you.

 

Fewer than 1/3 of humanity are Christian. You said Catholics weren't Christian; thus, your beliefs are consistent with some part of protestants, less than 1/10 of humanity. There are about 6 million scientists in the US, and 2 million of them are Christian, which suggests that your beliefs are shared by considerably less than 1/10 of humanity.

 

During the middle ages, people with your religious fervor terrorized the people of Europe by torturing and burning people for little or no reason. You, sir, and people like you are the dangerous ones.

 

Actually I said the pope isn't Christian. The high leadership of the Catholic church are not Christian, in my view. There are plenty of people among that church who are Christian, in my view. John F Kennedy was a remarkable Christian, as are 2 of my primary friends.

 

If 1% of the population are devout Christian this would be consistent with my view. Christ himself said that few people find this narrow path. Believing the Bible doesn't yet even mean your feet are established on this course. You haven't yet walked with God.

 

And it wasn't people who believed the

Bible who slaughtered their subjects, but high leadership whose God was the pope.

 

Indeed, the pope forbade that people read the Bible.

 

 

What evidence do you have for this?

 

I've had people who wouldn't look at my driver's license, and those who when they looked, wouldn't believe that I was past the age of 27 years. I'm pushing 41. People hardly ever guess that I'm past the age of 27. I feel 27. I study molecular modeling, I study biological processes, I study foods, I emphasize wider varieties of foods and nutrients, rather than a particular mode of diet, or quantities of foods, and my overall health keeps improving. For 12 years I had a diagnosis of spasmodic dysphonia, a localized neurological disease in the voice box. I've studied neurological processes, leading to breathing techniques, and nutrients in foods that also assist processes such as hormonal transmissions and balances and their effects in this condition. My voice was so impaired it bore heavily on every aspect of my life. Through diet, and physical, material faith, my voice has been completely repaired. Moreover, I'm quite an entertainer from the kitchen.

Okay, to what end? Nevermind, I think I know. Yep. The almighty dollar. 99.999% of our investment in technology is to one end. Meanwhile we invest a fraction of a percent to improving the optical-health component of computing and video technologies, because, it doesn't look good on the books. Something's gotta give folks.

 

 

How does this respond to what I posted?

 

Okay, after this, to bed.

 

You had mentioned that much, apparently more significant work, had been done towards improvements in mass-storage capacities in computing. I'm suggesting that a slice of that time could have, and should have been devoted to more optimal display technologies, but was neglected, probably because storage seemed far more "profitable."