disarray

Endy0816: You say that "You are making it their business if you want them to pay part of your insurance. No longer a private decision(using this word very loosely here in respect to the difficulty involved with change)." That's quite a glib generalization. If an employee wants to take advantage of some optional insurance health plan that the company has by agreeing to certain conditions such as going to a gym twice a week, he has the freedom to do so. Often times, employers automatically cover their employees health insurance. Suppose every company did this. Such a benefit does not give the right to tell employees what to do on their own time...seriously. That sounds a little like Big Brother....Will a neighbor that looks over the fence and sees him smoking report him to the company so that he looses his health insurance and possibly his job?? "How employers tracking your health can cross the line and become Big Brother: "In this era of wearable technology, employers conceivably could monitor everything from our blood pressure and pulse, to how many steps we take throughout the day. Your Jawbone could monitor how much you sweat, your body temperature and your activity level – and prod you to exercise more if you’re not doing a good enough job, via a remote coach. Even if programs remain optional, opting out is likely to be greeted with wariness, much like a suspect’s refusal to provide DNA or fingerprints might be after he has insisted he isn’t guilty of whatever crime has been committed." http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/us-money-blog/2015/may/01/employers-tracking-health-fitbit-apple-watch-big-brother Also, you say, "Was talking about standard enlistment contract. Far more restrictive than anything else out there." But wasn't your point that such a contract be seen as the norm? Now you are acknowledging that it is far more restrictive than anything out there. And besides, just because something is practiced in the military hardly makes it right, or even a good idea. I see that the Enlistment/ReEnlistment form for the Armed Forces states that one must "Obey all lawful orders, and perform all assigned duties" but that sounds pretty general to me. What section of the form are you referring to? As for the article that you link to in order to show that there are limits to freedom, I am not sure just what the entire article is supposed to tell me about some point you are apparently trying to make. In many states there is no protection for those who are fired....you can be fired just because the boss doesn't like the color of your ties or your mustache or whatever, he/she does not have to give a reason. So to say that such an employer can fire you because you said you didn't like his hairdo really says nothing at all. Indeed, your article states that, "What employers can’t do is issue broad policies that prohibit employees from saying bad things about the company or the people in it- because that violates the NLRA. It’s the broad policy that’s the problem, rather than the specific statement." In any case, this is not a black and white issue. We know that one has free speech within limits, i.e., endangering others: Calling out fire in a crowded theatre" comes to mind. But there are not many. Actually, we can pretty much say anything we want in public as long as it doesn't constitute, for example, "hate speech" depending upon the laws of the state or community, I suppose. Thus, one can watch a late night host show in which the host does a stand up comedy introduction that contains direct jibes at the President on national television (e.g., recall Lewinski scandal). Of course the military is an exception...heck, they can make you have your hair cut. So I think that the military is not a model on which to base civilian rights. We lose our basic rights in many ways when it comes to military situations, e.g., in times of a terrorist attack, national emergency, or what not. The concept is similar to forcing people to stop striking if it is an emergency situation that is adjudicated to be an endangering community health, e.g., New York garbage collection strike. My main point is that corporations should not be an exception. Sure, if one walks around the office muttering complaints all the time, you may be seen as interfering with the morale and efficiency of workers in the workplace. But again, the gist of the constitution is that your home, for example, is your castle....hence the need for a warrant, and regulations against tapping phones, etc. In general, your article seems to support my viewpoint as far as I can tell, wouldn't you say: "Employers Generally Can’t Control What Employees Say Away From Work With social media, employers are often concerned about employees posting something negative about the company, its clients or employees. So lots of social media policies try to discourage, or just outright forbid, saying bad things online. This is where the policies get in trouble with the NLRB. Some states, like California, also have laws that protect employees from being disciplined for the things they do or say off the clock. There are narrow exceptions if the conduct directly affects the company; but it has to be a pretty big deal that causes actual damage to the company. So if someone tweets that the boss is a douche bag, they generally can’t be fired if it was on their personal account while off-duty." That was my point exactly!

Perhaps you are putting your own 'spin' on his motives. His ex-wife says that he "was religious, but she saw no signs of radicalism," and that he he was "mentally unstable and mentally ill," and that he was gay. An article notes that "no direct links with Islamic State have been discovered," and his father claims that the attack “has nothing to do with religion” and that he hated the sight of two men kissing. though He is said "to have used a gay dating app" and there may be some connection between him and the fact that "the British born Islamic preacher, Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, gave a speech just outside Orlando in March in which he called for the death of all homosexuals." Then there is the recent news that a Puerto Rican man "claims he was Orlando shooter's gay lover and says the Pulse nightclub attack was 'revenge' after Omar Mateen discovered one of the men he'd had a threesome with was HIV positive." Looks to me that there are quite a few likely contributing factors, so I am not sure why you are discounting the fact that he may have been agitated by the disparaging attitude towards gays in general (be it by some Republicans, or some Muslims, by some Democrats, by the media, by those who knew him, or whatever) as there seems to be substantive evidence to support that factor. .................. As for your example about this "one guy," I find it curious that you use your own hashtag as the name of the person in your example. In any case, you are painting a picture that is so extreme that I don't find it very convincing. We don't actually live in a society of gullible, love struck, hippy Pollyannas. Perhaps you are reminiscing about the Hippy Movement. And no one is tolerating criminals on the rampage. Perhaps your question is theoretical....Often times, for example, people ask whether we should take Jesus's alleged advice to turn a cheek to enemies and give them our coats, or perhaps you are thinking of Ghandi's passive resistance attitude towards the British. That is a reasonable question in itself, but I don't see any society today that takes that sort of passive attitude towards violence, as you may be suggesting that there is. But even if you are just putting forth a hypothetical question, I don't think that many people would recommend that the world take a totally passive attitude towards criminal behavior, if that is what you are getting at.

This could get to be a pretty confusing world if people are just going to make up their own definitions, simply to have the last word: Typical definition: "Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience)." Of course, one can always look into the derivation of this word to see that it just does not mean using logical reasoning to overcome instinct. Indeed, in philsophical/religious contexts, the word often refers to the ability to consciously experience, to feel, to have sensations, and the like. The fact that there is a pecking order in the animal kingdom in terms of estimated IQ, so that dogs sometimes don't seem too bright too "us humans," contributes, I think to the validity of evolutionary models of brain development in particular and evolution theory in particular.

Do you have any evidence that scientists are misled by such things? Perhaps the word "misled" is a little strong...my point is that they may too adamantly maintain or have an excessive amount of confidence in conclusions that are philosophical in nature. The most pertinent example with regards to this thread might arguably be Einstein, with regards to his debates with Bohr, in that scientists generally consider that Bohr was more right than Einstein, who apparently could not accept the idea, as i understand it, that causality was different (e.g., nonexistent or a matter of statistics) in certain areas of Quantum Theory. Also, he did not like the idea of superposition, as I understand it, and said something in general with regards to this that (I paraphrase) he could refused to believe that the moon ceased to exist when no one was looking at it. I read at least one passage in which a scientist claims that some scientists misinterpret the philosophical intent behind Schrodinger's Cat dilemma. Then there is R. Penrose's claim that quantum theory demonstrates the idea of free will and explains the nature of consciousness (controversial if not dubious claims) There are also experiments done to show that lab subjects make choices subconsciously before they consciously make the same choices, with the two main people conducting the tests concluding that this proves that there is not free will. Of course, going back in history a little, I could make quite a long list, e.g., the long held assumption that germs arise spontaneously (pre Leeuwenhoek). Of course, there is the refusal of Church to accept Galileo's heliocentrism. Also, I recall that Aristotle had a lot of theories that nowadays are considered something of a hoot.

So is there any reasonably instructive visual model of relativity somewhere that illustrates the principles of Relativity, e.g., an applet. From what little I know, it seems that time can be illustrated in a 3D graph by treating it as the 4th dimension of space, and depicting it as the growth of a graph in motion as it expands around a central point, which represents the big bang. (Perhaps asking for the applet to also shows spacetime bending back on itself is a bit much to ask). I am particularly interested in whether such a graph could (like the trampoline illustration of spacetime with different sized spheres of mass rolling around on it) could show where a particular cube, located at x,y,z, might be distorted because of the presence of mass (e.g., the cube shrinks a bit, as well as, perhaps surrounding cubes). And are not the spheres or cubes of mass in such illustrations just bits of compressed energy, so to speak? Excuse my ignorance, just trying to make some sense of the theory.

Pellet gun? Why not make your point by saying "slingshot." But the other extreme is just as valid....do citizens have a right to walk into a store and buy grenades, as long as they aren't certified as insane or serial killers. I think the traditional standard has been that citizens, at least in the U.S., be allowed to have guns for hunting. The gun lobby argument that they need all sorts of high power guns to protect themselves from a tyrannical government, invading armies, or highly armed criminals are not, from what I have read, very credible. In short, common sense. Too much testosterone in the world that translates into a loss of temper. We don't need to go back to the wild west days where people were walking around with weapons....That's why bouncers check for them at the front door of clubs....Bit of alcohol and guys start wounding or killing each other over nothing. No, we can't stop crime by implementing a little gun control, but, like seat belts, a little effort goes a long way. (By the way, there was also a public outcry in America by those claiming their personal freedoms were being taken away.

I am not sure that one should avoid philosphy when discussing the relationship between models and modeled (aka "reality") So we can have sets of numbers that we can use to create a topographical map with wavy concentric-like lines (as well as numbers next to them) that have some vague visual correlation with a pictorial map, which in turn has some vague visual correlation with the images that our brain recreates from the light waves that come to it from the retina, that presumably has an even better visual correlation with the world as it supposedly really is. Seems like we're putting a heck of a lot of emphasis on the visualization factor in all of this. (Indeed, we are getting into Truth theories dealing with correlation an representation). Note that we are using "visual" correlation (e.g., much like we might compare a hand drawn picture of a horse on a transparent sheet of plastic by placing it over the picture of a horse, or over the horse itself). But again, visual correlation is just one way to value the verisimilitude of the model. I would make the point that if one could see things from a hypothetical God's eye view, as to how they "really" are, one would see something like the old-fashioned tv screens after broadcasting stopped...just a hodge podge of static, not mountains and rivers, which are the images that our brain puts together (best guess and analogy I could come up with). Science of course is fundamentally meant to do things and thus has traditionally not spent too much time talking about why, but rather about "how." However, since science seems to have reached something of an impasse when it comes to such things as finding common ground between Relativity and Quantum theories, I think that there is nothing wrong with a little armchair philosophizing about such things as the Copenhagen theory... Indeed, a bit of philosophical clarification might be of use not only to scientists in that they are less likely to go down cul de sacs of reasoning (or to be mislead by their own use of everyday language), but also to avoid the sort of haphazard popularization of things such as quantum theory in the hands of the general public, e.g., the idea that quantum theory proves that free will exists, or that quantum theory proves that your dreams can come true because you just need to visualize something and it will come true, because our minds can turn light into particles or waves depending upon what we expect to see, etc. In a simplistic nutshell, there is something of a difference between the science of making a mechanical clock, and the science behind the issue of Schrodinger's cat. For one thing, the accessibility of direct sensory information is a crucial factor.

Memammal: You state that "It is called evolution and sorry to tell you that even though we are indeed more advanced, scientifically speaking we are still animals." Yes, we are getting down to brass tacks in terms of getting into an old-fashioned controversy between religion and scientists, e.g., between Creationists and Evolutionists. Perhaps some scientists like to point out the fallacies in, for example, Creationism, Biblical literalism, belief in miracles, etc., but with all due respect for people's Faith, in a science forum, it seems not only irrelevant to have such debates, but also to distract from the thrust of the topic (not to mention that rarely is anything ever resolved). Indeed, the thrust of this post was not to conduct a verbal conflict between those taking a religious pov and those taking a scientific one, but to determine just why "religious people keep trying to invent a conflict between belief and Science." Indeed, it seems to me that you are reluctant to engage in such a dialogue as to whether, for example, people are superior to animals. So rather than disputing the beliefs of those whose ideas are quite out of sync with modern science, perhaps one might ask why some religious people so adamantly refuse to accept the generally overwhelming evidence that underpins a scientific worldview. I am not sure how one goes about this exactly, as my own observation is that religious people have a worldview that is consistent enough to resist any logic that scientists can throw at it, e.g., the logic and evidence for the theory of evolution. Indeed, one obvious answer to the question of this thread is that religious people find that the general world view of scientists, esp. evolutionism, to be a threat to their beliefs and efforts to evangelize these beliefs. In terms of religion, ones worldview is literally a matter of life and death (i.e., salvation or damnation), not to mention the religious values that many think keep society from devolving into anarchy and evil. Scientists, on the other hand, do not have, comparatively speaking, such an emotional investment in the conflicts between religion and science, except, perhaps, when it comes to impeding what they think is scientific progress (e.g., the banning of evolution in the school system), and perhaps issues such as banning stem cell research on religious grounds. I think that comparing the motives of those who cling to creationism, literalism, divine intervention, etc. with the motives of scientists is a good approach to the topic question of this discussion. But alas, this too is often a dead end effort, since many religious people have it in their heads for one reason or another, that scientists have their own nefarious agenda, e.g. to spread atheism and materialism and to eradicate religious values.

Yes, the data can be a sort of Rorschach test, and indeed, I think that we can apply more criteria to a model than just saying that, in a pragmatic sense. it works. And again, sometimes we can "see" the difference between the model and the modelled (the sign and the signified). We can see that a topographical map, especially a very realistic one, visually matches up with the terrain that it describes. Indeed, in that case we start with what is modeled, the terrain, and then make the map. Not so with quantum reality, where what is modeled (philosophically referred to as the noumena) is inaccessible, so that we can't start with the modeled and make the phenomena (e.g. we can't see atoms and then make our models from that). Physical maps provide a special case that I don't think that one can automatically apply to all models that might be said to be scientific to one extent or another. Indeed, when it comes to economic, political, sociological, and political models, there seems to be an even greater range of interpretations that might be made of a person, a group of people, the interactions between a group of people, etc. Indeed, we can find interpretations that are in many respects diametrically opposed to each other, particularly when the models are meant to be prescriptive as well as descriptive, as, for example, the economic models of capitalism and socialism (and indeed we can have various mixtures or hybrids of these two models). An example of such opposition in the field of psychology (which some say can be classified as a science and some say it can't) could be said to be found in the contrast between, say, existential psychology and Skinnerian behavioral psychology (e.g., in that the former emphasizes free will and the latter denies it). I think that this is a good example in that a patient could be seeing both types of psychologists and getting diametrically opposed advice and treatment. Just as their are criteria for determining the 'validity' of a given cause-effect relationship, so too should there be criteria for at least attempting to determine the 'validity' of any given model. Such criteria might include popular belief, predictive value, reliability, ease of manipulating what is modeled, heuristic value, utilitarian value, theoretical consistency, etc.

So do you think the average citizen needs to have an AR-15 or not? If so, should we have AR-15s to fight criminals who have these weapons, or are we to leave it to police, etc., as you claim. Where do we draw the line....should citizens have machine guns, perhaps a rocket-propelled grenade gun? Indeed, a growing problem seems to be that even police have more powerful military-type weapons that they use in dealing with the public (e.g., at riots) which only further escalates violence.

Swansont: Your example being that you can't grab a handful of it, therefore it can't be real? Um, I can't grab a handful of gravity....would you say that gravity is not real? I suppose that I could say that one cannot grab air, but that only serves to illustrate that your example can't be taken all that literally. I am not suggesting that space-time is all that exists, but rather, perhaps that space-time somehow has a hand in creating matter...perhaps some perturbation, as they say, in the Higgs-Boson field, which is, I gather, getting pretty close to saying what spacetime "really" is. I don't agree that the opposite of "real" is just fakery and illusions. Indeed, quantum physicists will be the first ones to tell you that mathematical models are all they have...that is, they are all "illusory," or that indeed, we don't know what reality is "real-ly" like, or what reality really is, so we have no way of saying that something is or is not "real" when talking about such things as the reality of spacetime. For the moment, we don't know whether time is a fundamental property of the universe or not, or that, like 'temperature' which used to be thought of as a fundamental "thing," we now think of as just an increase in the rate of movement of molecules. In this regard, I think that the 'real' issue is that of the relation between space and time. A representative article states that: "While 4D spacetime is usually considered to consist of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, the researchers’ view suggests that it’s more correct to imagine spacetime as four dimensions of space. In other words, as they say, the Universe is “timeless.” http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/04/weekend-feature-space-is-4d-theory-claims-that-time-is-not-the-4th-dimension.html

Zapatos: You state "No, you didn't. You paraphrased him, and did it incorrectly." I don't agree. I first quoted him and then I addressed his claim with respect to Higgs. Strange's remark in full was that, "There is no scientific theory that describes the creation of the universe. There is speculation from the likes of Hawking, but I am not convinced that is any better (in terms of scientific support) than "goddidit". As I had mentioned Higgs, along with Hawking, it is logical that he was also talking about research done on the Higgs Boson. So, I responded to his quote by noting that the Higgs Boson, though not 100% complete or successful, is an attempt to 'describe the creation of the universe', or rather to explain how it created itself. If Strange meant that there was no scientific theory to support the religious beliefs about the creation/origins of the universe, then I have misunderstood him. But this is unlikely, since I mentioned Hawking and other scientists, and there was no reference on my part in this regard to religious writers or to religion whatsoever. I presume that you are not suggesting that I deliberately misconstrued his remark. In any case, if I did misinterpret what he meant, I think that he would be the one to clarify it, as he is the one that might have been offended. As a third party, your assumption that I misconstrued what someone else supposedly meant only serves to further confuse things. If you disagree with something, why not just state your point directly. All I have heard so far, in this regard, is the word "huh." I clearly listed several reasons that the discovery of the Higgs Boson contributes to an understanding of the possible manner in which the universe may have originated on its own, so again, you might try to address these points directly. In any case, here are some specific points that you might actually address: “That being said, the release of evidence for the existence of these mighty specs {Higgs-Boson], and the wealth of new discoveries that will surely be made as a result, could have a radical impact on views of how the universe was formed.” http://bigthink.com/think-tank/evidence-of-the-existacne-of-the-higgs-boson-whats-the-significance The Higgs-Boson field theory, unlike Creationist or ID accounts, fits in with Big Bang theory. “Some are claiming that this discovery is a blow to Christianity. The Higgs boson is “another nail in the coffin of religion,” said one Cambridge University professor… inflation could be viewed as a cause of the Big Bang, and this is likely why Kaku suggested that a Higgs-like particle (or more precisely, a Higgs-like scalar field) was the “spark” for the Big Bang.” http://www.icr.org/article/higgs-boson-big-bang/ (Note: This is a Christian web site that tries to tell Christians not to worry so about the Higgs Boson replacing God, but it does point out that the ramifications of the Higgs Boson to one degree or another, be it directly or indirectly, do just that.) “New research by UCLA physicists, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, offers a possible solution to the mystery of the origin of matter in the universe.” http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-physicists-offer-a-solution-to-the-puzzle-of-the-origin-of-matter-in-the-universe Thus, the Higgs-Boson is related to an explanation of the origins of the universe in that it helps provide a credible explanation for the origins of matter (e.g., particles with mass). Not only that, but it may help explain why inflation occurred in the first place according to a CERN bulletin as explained in the following web page: https://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2013/12/News%20Articles/1525938 Again, I never claimed that the Higgs-Boson theory provided a complete and final explanation for the origins of the universe… I just said that it was a step in that direction and provided key pieces in the puzzle. It should be obvious by now that there is far more evidence for the Higgs-Boson theory (especially since it dovetails so well into Big Bang theory about the development of the universe) in terms of explaining the origins or "creation" of the universe (even if we see such a creation as ex nihilo) than any nonscientific "goddidit" explanation.

Tar....I was disputing the use of the word absolute with regards to your claim that there is an absolute "now" that is the same everywhere in the universe. From what I can tell, modern physics tends not support this claim. The only example I could find where this might have some validity is if there were observers who were not affected by time dilation who could view the universe from outside of it at virtually an infinite distance...but this is so hypothetical as to be meaningless. Again, I am not a physicist, so am just trying to make sense of things, not state some sort of "gospel" truth. There is such thing as a preferred or privileged time frame, but that, it seems from my recent reading, is something of a tool that physicists use, rather than an actual place or reality. It is difficult to find information about this topic. Often, I just read bits and pieces from other science forums. The following seems to be a reasonable assessment from one of them: In our standard model of the universe, there happens to be one frame of reference which is at rest with respect to the CMB [cosmic microwave background]. In principle, no matter where you are in the universe, you can determine if you are at rest with respect to the CMB and thus with this particular frame (if you are, you are called a comoving observer). It is to simplify calculations that we use the comoving time as the measure of the age of the universe. It is also useful because the Earth is approximately comoving. Being able to agree on what order events happen in the comoving frame does not mean that the comoving frame define an absolute time, it just means that you know how fast you have been moving with respect to the comoving frame, and that you know how to calculate. This suggests to me that even the estimate of 13.7 billion years is made from the pov of earth. 'Age of universe' calculations between galaxies will still be around that mark, with variations, say, of a few 1,000 years between some of them. In any case, the fact that the expansion rate of the universe may have varied as it expanded also throws a monkey wrench into calculations about the age of the universe. I take your point about the greatest inflation happening immediately after the big bang. Yes, of course, the renowned inflation took place within second(s) of the "Big Bang." You are right that I used the word "inflation" when I should have said "expansion." I do not recall where I got the information about an expansion phase occurring half way through the age of the universe that accounted to variances in the calculation of the universe's age by minute amounts. Will keep looking. But I think the gist of it was that galaxies were well-formed at the point when the universe was half as old as it is now, and that the distances between them were expanding in such a way as to explain time variances between the galaxies. Perhaps there is something of a metaphysical "universal now," but nowadays I think that such a metaphysical now would be dismissed as an abstraction that has no objective correlative in nature. Personally, I don't like the concept of time dilation, and think that somehow matter just moves more slowly under certain conditions. The standard model in science seems to be that, as Einstein claims, there is no absolute time frame. However, you certainly have a case, and I think that your concept of a "universal now" is well-set out by H Lewis at http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/FieldTheory/FieldTheoryUniversalRelativity.htm

Can someone please tell me how to copy and paste part of a previous post using the process that includes the two-toned gray headings? Thanks. Swansont: You state: Is spacetime a real thing, or is it a conceptual construct? I go with the latter. You can't grab a bit of spacetime and hand it to me. So saying spacetime is curves is another way of saying the natural geometry that describes what's going on is curved. Does it not depend upon what ones expectations are when one asks if it is a "thing." Of course, we cannot grab it like we can a wrench and hand it to someone. And no, I am not davigating off into the dubious realm of arguing that abstract things such as space, time, beauty and honesty are "things" pertinent to the study of physics. Arguably, spacetime is all that exists anyway, or rather, that "things," (as defined as objects having mass) are really just symptomatic of warps, of whatever kind, in spacetime anyway. But yes, if one looks at 3D representations of the geometry of spacetime (e.g., the trampoline with spheres rolling around on it), one then sees what we commonly refer to as curves. But we don't actually "see" the supposedly curved or curving of space that apparently causes light to bend or curve as it passes the sun. No doubt, physicists often grab the most useful verbal (as opposed to mathematical) term to describe the effects that they are describing with the mathematics. Indeed, given that spacetime may ultimately be found to be just an abstract concept that works, and there may be other reasons that better explain the effects found in relativity, e.g., time dilation. For example, the time dilation effects reported by clocks (e.g., atomic ones) can arguably be explained in terms of the slowing down of the mass of things within the clock, and not slowing down of time. Then there is the argument that spacetime is "immaterial" so how can it affect nonmaterial things or even photons via gravity, an alleged product of the curving of spacetime? As to possible alternative or variant explanations, I refer you to "Gravitation", by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, e.g., p. 1005 "Space,Time, and Spacetime by L. Sklar e.g., comments about the inconclusiveness of Einstein's non-Euclidean view of the universe "The Living Universe" by James Carter

dimreepr and Zapatos: You say "When did 'Strange' suggest there was? You've read them all, right, 'disarray', understand Nietzsche, much?" Um, I just quoted from what Strange said on page 2 of this thread at 12:08 a.m. I have no idea what your allusion to Nietzsche is supposed to mean. But since you asked, I've read all of Nietzsche's works as well as books about the meaning of his work...so what is your point? And no, I am not referring to any Nietzschean Eternal Return, if that is what you might be suggesting? Zapatos: Of course the Big Bang theory does not explain the origins of the universe. I acknowledged that before. What it does do is lay the blueprint for explaining how the universe may have originated. The discovery of the Higgs Boson created a huge celebration among scientists...this particle helps explain how all other matter has mass...a huge issue. Higgs-Boson research just takes us a little bit closer to an understanding of how the universe either originated or continually recycles. For example, the Higg's Boson helps explain how other particles, e.g., the elements may have then developed as well as helping to explain why the universe developed the way it did (e.g., size and inflation): The Universe, which today extends over billions of light-years, was incredibly minuscule at its birth. To simulataneously explain this dichotomy of scale and the fact that matter is seemingly distributed in a homogeneous fashion throughout the Universe, physicists have had to resort to a theoretical trick: they added an inflationary phase to the Big Bang, an initial phenomenal expansion in which the Universe grew by a factor of 10^26 in a very short time. Physicists have a hard time, though, accounting for this rapid growth. In its first moments, the Universe was unimaginably dense. Under these conditions, why wouldn’t gravity have slowed down its initial expansion? Here’s where the Higgs boson enters the game – it can explain the speed and magnitude of the expansion, says Mikhail Shaposhnikov and his team from EPFL’s Laboratory of Particla Physics and Cosmology. In this infant Universe, the Higgs, in a condensate phase, would have behaved in a very special way – and in so doing changed the laws of physics. The force of gravity would have been reduced. In this way, physicists can explain how the Universe expanded at such an incredible rate. http://phys.org/news/2011-09-higgs-boson-size-universe.html I am well aware that the term "God Particle" with reference to the Higgs-Boson is something of a misnomer. Nevertheless, the point is that we are making headway in the effort to explain how the universe might be self-sufficient, both in terms of how it originates (or appears to originate) as well as how it runs, without resorting to a God to provide explanations or fill in the gaps of what we don't know. I think that what we do know with a fair degree of confidence about what happened over 14 billions years ago is pretty amazing accomplishment on the part of scientists. I have not claimed that scientists have provided a complete theory that proves how the universe originated....merely that scientists are, by the thousands, putting together a pretty consistent, coherent, and cogent explanation without relying on an completely unscientific God explanation.

Strange: you write that “There is no scientific theory that describes the creation of the universe. There is speculation from the likes of Hawking, but I am not convinced that is any better (in terms of scientific support) than "goddidit".’ My point about Hawking was that he popularized the concept that the universe did not have a beginning, and either suggested that it was cyclic or that the question as to what existed before the universe began was meaningless. I think scientists such as Higgs would strongly disagree that there explanations about the origins of the universe are no better than “goddidit.” Research done on the Higgs Boson is more than just idle speculation. Apart from the amount of money spent on such research (about $13.25 billion according to Forbes) , The head of the world's biggest atom smasher says they have discovered a new particle that is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson known popularly as the "God particle," which is believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape. This research is supported by two teams of scientists, one of 2,100 and the second of 3000. Research on the Higgs Boson is steadily providing more pieces to support the overall standard model accepted most widely today about the theory of the beginning of the universe: “The discovery of a Higgs boson is only the beginning. Attention will immediately shift to studying the particle in detail… The data from Cern is quite consistent with the plain vanilla Higgs particle predicted in the simplest model but there are already hints that things may not be so straightforward and that really whets the appetite for the future.” To say that scientific evidence for the Higgs Boson is no better than “goddidit” suggests to me that you have not been actually reading about the research. Keep in mind that all I have to do is to demonstrate that there is some scientific evidence to support the Higgs-Boson field theory (e.g., data that is consistent with the already organized and systematic evidence backing the Big Bang theory) as opposed to the "goddidit" claim which has zero! scientific evidence of any sort whatsoever to support it. And yes, it seems that you agree with my point that the U.S. is full of anti-science fundamentalists, as opposed to Zapatos’s (who lives in the U.S.) claim that “religious people are not what I would call anti-science.” You also state that, “As for vaccinations I have never heard of any connection between that and religion.” Again, it only takes a couple of minutes to read a little about the research to find such a connection: “Religious objections to vaccines are based generally on (1) the ethical dilemmas associated with using human tissue cells to create vaccines, and (2) beliefs that the body is sacred, should not receive certain chemicals or blood or tissues from animals, and should be healed by God or natural means. For example, in Philadelphia in 1990, a major measles outbreak occurred among unvaccinated school children who were members of two fundamentalist churches that relied on prayer for healing, and opposed vaccines. In 1994, a measles outbreak occurred in a Christian Science community that objected to vaccination. Religious and political objections by Muslim fundamentalists have driven suspicions about the polio vaccine in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. For example, the local Taliban in Southern Afghanistan have called polio vaccination an American ploy to sterilize Muslim populations and an attempt to avert Allah’s will. Resistance to vaccination has even resulted in violent beatings and kidnappings. Similar objections halted polio vaccination campaigns in Nigeria.” http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/cultural-perspectives-vaccination I’m willing to bet I could find dozens of other specific examples in a half hour. The above research on the Higgs took me about 4 minutes to find, copy, and paste, and the info on vaccinations only took me three minutes to find, copy and paste information that, with a little effort you could have found yourself.

Robbity: You said that "As I read it Abraham didn't care which of his children got land." I guess that your statement does not contradict my point, which is that it would be nice if people from the various monotheism did not make such a big deal as to whom their particular scriptures and/or Abraham thought the land in question should go. But to clarify the point, I don't think that Abraham had much say in the manner if God supposedly was telling him which son was to have descendants that would inherit the land, or bring a savior. Certainly, it would not be uncharacteristically disloyal of him to disregard God's emphasis upon the importance of the matter. Indeed, some Christians are quick to point out that God considered Isaac the "only" son of Abraham: "‘He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you’." (Genesis 22:1-2, R.S.V.)." "Muslims on the other hand feel that Ishmael was the one offered up by Abraham. They believe that the Holy Bible supports this by its declaration that Abraham offered his only son" http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/sacrifice.htm (Note: I deliberately chose a Christian-based site) Similarly, when Sarah turns against Hagar, God, according to the Christian Bible (Genesis, 21, 12), says to Abraham, "Do not be upset over the boy and your servant. Do whatever Sarah tells you, for Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted." So perhaps you might elaborate upon your claim that Abraham really didn't care that much who got what. ..................................... You also state that, "Will we ever get to understand how the Universe started off in a highly ordered state? If there ever became just the one unanswered question, will this be the ultimate monotheism? No more need for tree gods, sun gods, rain gods, Moon gods, Mother goddesses etc but just one god that answers the final question." I would note that it has been a long time since the majority of people on the surface of the earth believed in pantheism. I have a bit of an issue with the use of the word "God" in that posts regarding religious topics rather consistently use the word God (and not Goddess), thereby apparently assuming, as do the major monotheistic religions today, that the Supreme Being is a male. Even if we defend the practice of using words such as "he" and "him" when speaking of God as just being metaphorical (he is a leader, he is powerful, he is a disciplinarian, or whatever), I would suggest that the practice is unfortunately archaic, in that it tends to emphasize the strong patriarchal nature of the major monotheistic religions even in today's world. I'm guessing that you are suggesting that even if scientists discover (with a reasonable degree of 'confidence') why the universe started out the way that it did without resorting to use of the word God, then you still think that such a "force" or whatever would be metaphorically the equivalent of the word "God," so that we could legitimately describe such a scientific theory as really, some sort of monotheism. I think that most scientists would be unlikely to do this unless they thought that the public knew that they were obviously being metaphorical in their use of the word "God," as apparently Einstein did. Typically scientists avoid explaining things by resorting to the concept of 'God', and indeed, sometimes somewhat derogatorily refer to such a 'filler' explanation as the 'god of the gaps'. Bottom line is that calling a scientific explanation about the origin of the universe a form of monotheism is totally misleading, and unnecessarily confusing.

Endy0816: You say that "Within limits, it is not illegal to fire or to refuse to hire." Again, there are all sorts of reasons that one is not allowed to fire or refuse to hire people, e.g., Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. Nothing too wishy washy about that, there is no "within limits" for refusing to hire a person because you don't like the color of his/her skin. I just think that, as I mentioned, firing or refusing to hire people who have criticized the company or who don't sign a contract promising that they won't is also not really all that vague. So I fail to see why you would even mention the concept of "limits." Of course, companies will pay more on average on health insurance for those who don't exercise on a regular basis, but how does that negate my claim that insisting that employees attend gym or not smoke (on their own time) is, in my opinion an invasion of people's private lives. Also, you ask where am I seeing that people are not hired on the basis that they do not adequately give information about their racial, marital, sexual, or religious status. Here is an example of what I mean: "Under federal law, it is not illegal per se to inquire about an applicant’s marital status. The EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] says that federal law does, however, prohibit covered employers from basing hiring decisions on the basis of sex. Accordingly, employers may not refuse [for example] to hire married women or women with children if it hires married men or men with children. In addition, many states have broader discrimination laws making that type of question flatly illegal." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-headhunter-really-illegal-employers-ask-youre-married/ I think that there is a fine line between "refusing to hire because of" and "basing hiring decisions on" such things as whether or not potential employees are married. If a person refuses to answer that the question on a form, and the information is important to the company that asks it (which it evidently is), then it is likely that the refusal to answer would affect the companies decision to hire them. I guess it is obvious that I meant that companies sometimes terminate the employment of an employee when they find out that they have falsified something on their original job application form, or if some factor has changed, e.g., with regards to sex, marital status, or religious status. I am sure, for example, that employees have been fired when it was discovered that they were, for example, homosexual, despite their claim of being in a heterosexual marital relationship, either in on their application form/contract or in discussions with others on the work site. I don't think that you are being fair to conflate military contracts with corporate ones. Obviously, there are some military secrets that should be kept secret for the sake of national security. One can hardly equate that with, say, a company that objects to an employee stating at a dinner speech that he likes everything about his company except that it doesn't pay men and women equal wages for the same work, or that the cafeteria is unsanitary and a health hazard, or whatever. Again, I am not exaggerating...It may be true that the boss doesn't fire such an employee the next day, but it is common practice for both government and private companies to fire people (on whatever pretense) who are in the habit of openly saying what they really think about the company, whether they say it on or off the work site, or both. I agree that there are certain bits of information that affect national security and should not appear on Twitter, for example. But again, that is not a black and white issue. The governments of many nations will be quick to say that a whistle blower is threatening national security when really, they are just embarrassed and afraid of criticism, or afraid they won't get voted back into office, or some administrator might lose his/her job. Bottom line, when it comes to such controversial things as the Iran-Contra affair, the Panama papers, or Guantanamo Bay, one has to evaluate the overall impact that it had on a case by case basis, not make vague generalizations about the ubiquitous need for people to just shut up and stick to the contract. Nor is it a matter of just matter of either voiding a contract or sticking to it. Corporations, in the final analysis, are not people...and certainly have no right to claim that they have privileges (when it comes to such things as controlling other people's private behavior, restricting their freedom of speech, torturing them, evading the payment of tax, bugging their offices in order to gain an advantage during an election, hiding the misappropriation of public funds, etc.) that an average citizen does not have. Many corporations are out of hand in this country, as elsewhere, in terms of their power to skew laws in their favor by, among other things, lobbying legislators. Squashing whistle blowers, even if it is a matter of getting them to sign a contract that forbids them to criticize the company, is, in many cases, unconstitutional and gives them more power to behave in a corrupt manner, while reducing employee's freedoms at the same time.

Zapatos, you said that, "Science has something to say about how the universe evolved, not about how it came to be" I don't see how you can make such a claim given the work done by scientists to either do just that, or alternatively, to show that the universe, in effect, had no begging, e.g., Higgs and Hawking, respectively. Perhaps you meant to say that the Theory of Evolution has something to say about how living creatures evolved, but not about the origin of life. But it would be no surprise if the origins of life one day is explained by scientists in terms of the evolution of bits of crystal or RNa or whatever that led (perhaps rather smoothly) to the beginning of life forms. Indeed, the line between non-organic and organic is somewhat gray. Another point I would dispute is your claim that "religious people are not what I would call anti-science. They are not against it. They still get their kids vaccinated..." Perhaps in your experience you have read or heard Creationists and Fundamentalists, in particular, rail against 'atheistic, materialistic, God-hating, scientists' as I have. Indeed, such examples are so prevalent in our society that I am surprised that you are, apparently, unaware of it. Then there is the claim made by some religious people that scientists can't criticize religion because, after all, science is a religion itself. Perhaps you might listen to the more conservative sermons that one hears on the radio. And no, there are plenty of religious people who are against vaccination on religious grounds, not to mention birth control, and indeed, some religious people refuse to let doctors operate on their children. In any case, I am surprised that you would not be aware of this. As for airplanes and the like, the Amish come to mind in that the simplicity they strive for is in keeping with their religious vision of life. And even your observation that those who oppose science still use things made by science ignores the fact that even neo-Luddites use technologies despite viewing them as the enemy...Indeed, unless one has the luxury of having land on which they can support themselves, most people are forced to use machines simply by virtue of living in a town or city, (e.g., no horses around, and if one is to feed oneself one must get a job, which is often too far away to walk to). All in all, I think that it is a false generalization that religious people don't actively attack science and/or scientists.

Typically, those who report seeing God see the God that is representative of their culture, e.g., St. Bernadette seeing the Virgin Mary, and not Allah. With a little research I think I could list a few dozen such examples, but you get the point. This suggests that those having the visions were given the material for such hallucinations by their particular culture, much like one might have a nightmare about the Joker if one watched enough shows about him. On the other hand, one might take the religious view that God reveals himself to individuals in a manner that is consistent with their culture so that they can better understand him. Given what we know about paranormal events, the former explanation seems more credible. And again, note the inbuilt assumption that God is either a singular or plural deity depending upon the culture. A few egregious examples come to mind: At various times in history, women who were told stories about the dangers of the devil visiting them in the night, lo and behold, these same women often made claims that this actually happened to them, complete with all the weird details. Now, I don't think that God, who, presumably, is a benevolent Being, would bother visiting damsels in the night in the first place. A related example is that of Zeus, who, of course, visited earthly maidens in order to create half-human/half god beings, e.g., Danae, Europa, Hercules, etc.. As with the story of Abraham, etc. the idea that there is a male figure (deity or prophet) that is prolific and propagates someone great or has a lot of great descendants is a common (and I would suggest, rather patriarchal) theme that runs through many religions....This leads me to wonder if far more men than women had a hand throughout history in writing holy stories and scriptures, but this is, I think, a rather rhetorical question. So, if one were take an approach that was at all scientific (e.g., sociological, mythological, anthropological, psychological), one will interpret such visions, I would suggest, as if they were a product of the human imagination....as opposed to the religious claim that humans were from the start the product of God's imagination. Besides, the sheer enormity, for lack of a better word, of a power so great (be it a personal or impersonal god) that it could create and maintain the universe would be overwhelmingly incomprehensible to us mere mortals. Even the Aztecs couldn't look their god, the Sun, directly for fear of being blinded. (And indeed, there were Hindu ascetics who directly looked at the sun until they did go blind as an exercise in spiritual development). And in Christianity we get this: "But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." Exodus 35:20 "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father's side, has made Him known." John 1:18 "He alone is immortal and dwells in unapproachable light. No one has ever seen Him, nor can anyone see Him." Timothy 6:16 So "evidence" about the existence of God based upon personal testimony (e.g., visions, voices, etc.), even if based on the experiences of living people as opposed to those who supposedly lived two or three thousand years ago, is not really what one would call substantial evidence, if it can be called evidence at all.

Endy0816. You say, "They cannot make you, but you can freely choose." If you are referring to my post in which I say that some employers make their employees sign a contract saying that they will not criticize the company, I would suggest that you are being a little pedantic. Of course, they are not going to grab hold of your hand and force you to sign the contract. By "make you," I obviously meant that you will most likely not get a job or loose the job you already have. Perhaps I should have said that they "coerce" employees to sign the contract, but I think that you are splitting hairs here. It is all a matter of what companies can legally ask and tell employees. Indeed, there are related issues, such as the following in this regard, e.g., employers who may Refuse to hire or continue to employ someone who smokes in his/her own home, even though they do not smoke in or near the workplace. Refuse to hire or continue to employ or to cover the health insurance of someone who does not provide evidence for looking after their own health, e.g., via gym attendance. Refuse to hire or continue to employ someone who does not reveal their racial, marital, sexual, or religious status (even though some individuals might object on the basis that the company has no need to know such personal things). It's all a matter of deciding how much power corporations should have. As I mentioned, companies don't put it into their contracts that one cannot report illegal activities that they find that the company is conducting. However, by putting in the clause that one cannot criticize the company, they are effectively doing just that, as people are afraid to lose their jobs and just turn a blind eye. To my mind, this all sounds a little Orwellian, and again, I find it hard to believe that companies are allowed to insist (if you like) that employees agree to just say nice things. No doubt, for example, employers who agree to such a contract will be more reluctant to answer questions about questionable company activities put to them by, say a district attorney, a police investigator, or a prosecuting lawyer. In short, it seems that this is a case where corporate rights trump individual rights (e.g. privacy, discrimination, and speech rights) in the eyes of the law.

As above, I agree that the wording of the question assumes that there is one God/Creator. The problem with justifying the exclusion of other explanations as to how the world might have been created (e.g., by several Gods, as is the case with Hinduism...a major religion that is ignored by the question) is something that, I suggest, those trying to examine this question scientifically would not do, as one is immediately manipulating the possible findings (e.g., the finding that several Gods created the universe). A technical issue is that many if not most Muslims describe Christianity as being polytheistic. Whether this is a reasonable description is another question. But the point is, that one cannot assume that all the major monotheistic religions are indeed monotheistic, or that they have the same God, or rather, think that they have the same God. Also, what is one to make of the phrase in the opening post that the God is "in nature." Does that suggest that one is looking for some natural religion? If so, I would note that the major monotheistic religions do not see God as equatable with Nature (as if exactly the same thing), or even as just immanent in the world (e.g.., omnipresent), but as both immanent and transcendent. In other words, God is, in terms of the major religions today, described as some Being who is supernatural...not natural. It does seem logical to ask whether science might study a natural God, as if God was, for example, a natural higher power that prompts the universe into existence, and/or makes sure that it runs as such a God thinks it should. However, if that is ones approach, I would hardly suggest that such a natural God is compatible with the supernatural/transcendental God found in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity as espoused by the vast majority of worshipers. Another issue that comes to mind is whether there is some assumption that if science did find some Godlike power that brought the universe into existence, would scientists or the general public assume from such a discovery that the rest of the teachings of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are correct. And if so, which of the teachings would be deemed the best, given that the teaching of these three major monotheistic religions contradict each other on several main points, among which are such things as what are the attributes, plans, and moral tenets of God. Finally, I would note that, among your list of possible things that might support the existence of a Creator God, you list analysis and logic. If one is referring to alleged proofs for and against the existence of God, for example, I would suggest that that argument has been going on for centuries (at least from Aquinas to Bertrand Russell) without any significant outcome.

I think a rather pernicious form of anti-whistle blowing on the part of corporations, etc., is the stipulation, typically built into contracts that employees sign, that they will not speak negatively about the company. This is typically meant to apply to comments that one might make outside of work, and is meant, in particular, to discourage employees from making comments about the company publicly, e.g., in a newspaper interview or letter to the editor, in a public speech, and the like. However, in theory, and perhaps occasionally in practice, I gather, people have been fired because they made negative comments in a small gathering of people, e.g., at a small dinner gathering in their home. Typically, it doesn't matter whether what you say it true or not...one is just supposed to be loyal and supportive of the company and so keep it positive. What is amazing is that the people who make these contracts apparently don't realize that forcing people to promise not to say things negative is an invasion of privacy, slapdash justice (as they decide what is negative or not), suppressing potentially dangerous information (e.g., a car defect), and a breach of ones freedom of speech. This stipulation is, in 99.9% of the cases, I would suggest, not a matter of protecting company secrets such as the latest technological advancement. Indeed, I don't understand at all why companies can legally make their employees sign such a contract.

Tar: I take your point that effects are negligible, and that the Andromeda example was an exaggeration that some writer used to make a point. Nevertheless, clocks have consistently been demonstrated to slow down, whether the reason be owing to distance to the earth, or owing to acceleration in the speed at which they are traveling (which gives the same effect....e.g., one feels the doubly heavy when going up in a fast elevator). A good article to look at is Einstein's Relativity Affects Aging on Earth (Slightly) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100922-science-space-time-einstein-relativity-aging-gravity-earth/ Atomic clocks (but not photon-based ones that don’t have mass!!) speed up or slow down with respect to distance from the earth…this is quite established. However, I tend to agree with those who think that the abstract illusion we call time does not actually itself slow down, per se, but rather the actual parts of even an atomic clock slow down: “there is no mystery or need for General Relativity to explain the gravitational changes of clock rates…. The higher escape velocity at the Dead Sea causes an increase in the mass of that clock’s internal mechanism and this slows the clock’s rate through the conservation of angular momentum.” http://www.circlon.com/living-universe/020-einstein-gravity-time-dilation.html That is, the pull of gravity makes things heavier and they move more slowly, even the parts of a clock since they have mass (aka, weight) that can vary. As an aside, they become heavier, I recently read, because mass increases when one puts energy into something, e.g. via gravity or acceleration. Similarly, with regards to the clock in the rocket: “Time dilatation simply means that, in a faster inertial system [i.e., the rocket], the velocity of change [of the parts of the clock as well as everything happening in the rocket] slows down and this is valid for all observers. GPS confirms that clocks in orbit stations have different rates from the clocks on the surface of the planet, and this difference is valid for observers that are on the orbit station and on the surface of the planet.” http://phys.org/news/2012-04-physicists-abolish-fourth-dimension-space.html That is, the accelerating rocket, much like the pull of gravity, causes the parts of a clock that has mass to be “heavier” and thus to move more slowly so that time seems to slow down. Presumably, if it could ever be demonstrated that a person who traveled some while near the speed of light would be younger than his twin who stayed on earth, we could just say that this was because everything on the rocket, including how fast his cells divided, would be slower. I take your point that one can talk about a universal now with respect to distant civilizations or burnt out stars, but this “now,” I gather, is a practical term, not an exact scientific fact. In reality, some galaxies have very slightly different times from others, so that one cannot really calculate the age of the universe down to an exact planck unit of time even in theory. I am not sure why there is this minute difference, but, again, it has something to do with differences in the rate at which the space between the galaxies inflated (an inflation phenomena that really “took off,” so to speak, when the universe was half the age it is now). I don’t think that there is much of a chance at all that we will communicate with alleged aliens, but yes, a discussion about time is relevant in terms of the theory that we might discuss that possibility…but, I think we both agree that this is idle speculation. We find relativity in nature (e.g., in physics, the idea that how fast things are going is relative to an observer and to ones speed), in conjunction with the idea that earth’s place in the universe is relative (and not the center of it), and the idea that human intelligence is relative to that of other creatures, and not absolutely different, and that human morality is relative to the societies that construct them, and not absolute (as many societies claim that there version of morality are). It is my contention that once people get over the existential crisis about the fading away of “absolutes” that has been happening at least since the days in which Matthew Arnold wrote about it (e.g., his poem “Dover Beach”), or perhaps since the days in which Galileo was forced to retract his claim that the earth was not the center of everything, people will eventually become less dogmatic, more tolerant, more open-minded with regards to other points of view and other cultures.

@Charon Y: ""Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law"." Even Sartre resorted to this maxim near the end of B & N where he fishes around for some way to find a solid basis for morality after writing hundreds of pages that tell us that God is dead and that every person is free to decide what is right and wrong without recourse to external moral frames of reference, e.g., tradition, religious creeds, etc. Indeed, Kant is just as much of a hypocrite in that he writes a book in which he tells us that we cannot know what reality is like outside our own filtered perceptions of it, but then does an 'about face' by saying that this does not apply to morality, which in some inexplicable way is innate (i.e., a priori). The problem with this maxim and the one about not treating people as a means to an end (i.e., don't be Machiavellian) do not really escape the limits of subjectivity. Suppose I say that that capital punishment is right and that I wish that it would become a universal law; well then, my neighbor thinks that it is wrong, and wishes to make it a universal law that capital punishment is never to be used...we can't both be morally right if we apply Kant's definition. Furthermore, there are practices that do not seem to be wrong (in the sense of causing harm or imminent harm to others) on a small scale, but that would be destructive on a large scale. An example of this is the hysteria surrounding homosexuality...there was a time when far more people in the U.S., I would suggest, felt that the main problem wrong with homosexuality was that it would spread like the common cold and eventually people (or a dangerously high percentage of people) would stop having babies.....voila, the end of the human race! But hysteria aside, the example of homosexuality illustrates that some things are such that they may have place within a society if practiced by a few, but not by the majority or by everyone; indeed, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists and psychologists point out that homosexuals have a positive role in many societies. Other examples might include abortion, euthanasia, use of certain drugs, lifelong unemployment, etc. As for using others as an end, this happens all the time. Storekeepers, for example, routinely pretend to like customers more than they do in an effort to achieve the end of making a sale. One might argue that the storekeepers also treat the customer as a human being, and sometimes even have customers who are friends. Well sure, but the thrust of the relationship is one of treating the customer as an end, and the more desperate the storekeeper is to make a sell in order to buy food to feed him or herself and family, the more the focus will be on making the sale. People are neither entirely selfish nor entirely altruistic (and indeed, the latter quality is more elusive than the first)...But my point is that, in practice, people treat each other as an ends to a means all the time, and that indeed, many societies would not function unless this were the case. Obviously some writers and philosophers will agree with this more than others. For example, Adam Smith clearly formulated this principle, but someone such as Ayn Rand could perhaps be said to take it to an extreme. One has to be careful to distinguish between absolute morals (can't possibly be any other way), and universal morals (are true only so long as you are referring to a (typically small) society in which all the members agree about something, and even when there is a consensus in a given society about something, that can always change. The more logical meaning of universal ethics or morals is that it refers to a society in which all agree, so that all one can do is list those that have a moral consensus and those that don't....case closed. So yes, there are examples of universal morals, but they are few and far between with respect to large groups. As for absolute morals (things supposedly wrong independent of individual opinion), these only exist if one brings in a nonhuman, viz. a god.