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swansont

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Everything posted by swansont

  1. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    Remember that you came here, i.e. nobody sought you out, and if any hints of this have popped up it’s because you instigated it. I think we’re waiting for the first confirmed & supported example of this. Nobody here can control what has been said elsewhere, nor do we have to answer for anyone’s else’s individual opinion or arguments.
  2. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    The different order is the sticking point. You can’t e.g. have plants created before man, and after man. My experience is on the USENET group talk origins in the 1990s Don’t call them atheists. People, maybe?
  3. Been there, done that. It’s kinda boring at this point. The basic creationism argument is an exercise in intellectual dishonesty, and the “debate” is rarely in good faith, and that wears thin.
  4. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    So which is - you can’t understand, or that it’s obvious? My experience has been that creationists spend a lot more time attacking straw-man arguments about evolution, and the topic of Genesis is pointing out that there are two accounts and they are inconsistent. But saying that these are necessarily atheists making the points is flawed; creationism is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, and there are religious scientists who don’t subscribe to that particular way of thinking.
  5. That happens to me on occasion (Safari on ipad/iOS) but I suspect it’s a browser issue. Also with editing - I sometimes can’t save when I’m finished. Reloading the page often fixes the issues.
  6. There’s more to the doctrine of creationism than creation.
  7. Not everyone considers it a problem, nor, I suspect, is the problem with all of physics. Beta, your variable of choice, is not an invariant. I think you proved mine. Replacing the measurable variables x and t is the abstraction, and would be a pedagogical nightmare in trying to teach introductory physics, or teach relativity as an introductory topic, before Newtonian mechanics. This is backwards, though. Scientific proposals are tested by falsification, not by looking at trivial cases where the idea works.
  8. A reminder that what happens on other sites stays on other sites, or at least out of here. Discussion should be about what’s posted here.
  9. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    Moderator NoteA reminder that discussion of anything that happened on another site is off-topic here. Leave the sniping and the baggage at the door.
  10. Short tutorial on the quote function. Please read
  11. Moderator NoteA word document has been deleted from a recent post. These are not allowed.
  12. Sorry, what? Where is this previous mention? What does a religious belief have to do with the placebo effect?
  13. swansont replied to mar-mar's topic in The Lounge
    Nope
  14. We prefer actual text rather than images of it, so that quoting is possible. Angular momentum and centripetal force (in this case, gravity) already adequately explain basic orbital mechanics, and have done so for some time. The tail rotor on a helicopter counters the tendency of the body to rotate as it applies a torque to the main rotor. I don’t see how such an action manifests itself in orbital systems. The earth e.g. doesn’t cause the moon (or any satellite) to rotate by exerting a torque on it as with a helicopter. So it’s not clear how this is a useful analogy
  15. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    Science has a good track record as far as scientism goes. Religion, not so much. You can only speak for yourself. And that applies to science…how? Science is provisional; at any moment it’s the best explanation based on the data we have available. It’s not doctrinal, though scientists aren’t prone to wasting time with objections to something that has mounds of evidence to support it based on thin objections, often from people who lack understanding of it. Repeating this does not make it true. Equating science with knowledge is a flag that suggests not understanding what science is. This seems to suggest that your objection is to the atheist stance, and “science-minded” is just along for the pejorative ride. In which case the atheistic view is irrelevant, so why bring it up? If it was only spiritual then science is not a part of the equation. But the religious-minded have a habit of making claims that spill over into the physical (age of the earth, creation, etc.) and any physical claims should be testable. Religion co-opted the notion of the soul from philosophy. I don’t see that you’ve made any case for science having a hand in this transmogrification.
  16. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    I was responding to your challenge to me. We were talking about evidence and I said “results of an experiment are available for all to see” and you asked for evidence of this. You claimed science has determined the soul’s nonexistence. You spoke for science but provided no source for the claim. And you did it again, right here. Which “science-minded atheists” claim this, and are these claims of science, or atheism? But this doesn’t address the other issue: you said you had evidence that the soul exists, but keep jumping between descriptions. Seems like this is just an exercise in equivocation.
  17. If they are mathematically equivalent, then why does it matter? Seems like this is just personal preference. The utility in equations doesn’t rest on the “purity” of the expression; the ease of use and how it’s learned/taught matter as well. Other factors are what we measure in experiments and what we do to solve problems. Personally, I always disliked “compact” equations that had to be deciphered to put them in physical terms. Offering something up as “better” or “easier” is flawed. Much like relativity shows with various quantities, these are not absolutes. One has to say for whom it’s better or easier. You also cherry-picked an example that has unitless terms, related to your pet project, but not all physics is like that, unless you make the expressions more complicated. As far as adopting this goes: Hard pass
  18. One point would be when faith causes one to deny empirical truths, i.e. when an article of faith about the physical world is asserted as a fact that contradicts objective evidence.
  19. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    Words have meanings, and when you use non-standard definitions it tends to muddle things, in my experience. Do I have evidence that you can read reports of experiments? Sure. They’re called journals. There are ones for just about every discipline and sub-discipline of science. You made a claim where did actually speak for others and are expected to provide quotes/citations to back up claims. Quotes and citations are providing others’ words, so you show you aren’t saying things on their behalf or misspeaking. If you don’t, or can’t, then it leaves open the suspicion that there’s some kind of deception afoot. So soul is blood, and you think science claims that it doesn’t exist? Or did you misstate the claim?
  20. frenchcitizen has been banned as a sockpuppet of CPU29000 COU29000 has been banned for their nasty bout of slurs, on top of the advertising and sockpuppetry
  21. Moderator NoteThis is a rather severe violation of rule 2.1, specifically “Slurs or prejudice against any group of people (or person) are prohibited.” You’ve earned any and all scorn heaped on you in the replies. In addition, advertising is prohibited, as is sockpuppetry The nonsense about attacks from the spiritual plane is merely pathetically amusing, seeing as this is a science site.
  22. AI certainly has use in robotics, but I suspect that’s much more machine learning than LLMs. Anyway, this is a discussion forum, not a blog. Was there something you wanted to discuss? P.S. I hope you get feedback before you spend too much time going down what might be an unproductive path
  23. swansont replied to Pathway Machine's topic in Religion
    No, not so much. Opinions are subjective. That which is objective is not opinion. No, the e.g. results of an experiment are available for all to see, and (in principle) recreate. Even as far as religious discussions go, it would be in the form of documents everyone could read. Science asks for credible objective evidence and thus far nobody has been able to provide any. Well, then, let’s see it. Just claiming you have it means nothing. It starts with defining what the soul is.

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