Tres Juicy

You have to accept a lot of bad with your good in most things, and when it comes to speculative ideas, there are always going to be more bad than good. Do you know how many television and movie scripts are written as opposed to those that actually get shot and shown to the public? Science is the same way, with more failures than successes. Many human endeavors have more failures than successes.

 

I don't see how we can promote learning and the exchange of ideas if every Speculations thread gets shot down in the first few posts. As others have said, even the worst ideas proposed here are a learning experience for someone. I agree that crackpots are everywhere, but you have to treat each instance separately. For those who might just learn something by having their idea scrutinized by the membership, nothing is worse than being shut down in an offhand manner.

 

I think the real problem we're taking about here is when an idea is wrong based on lack of education but the poster is convinced they can bypass the study because their idea just "feels" right. Then we come up against the "you're too hidebound", "you reject everything that isn't mainstream", "you refuse to think outside the box" retorts, and they're not wrong in principle, though they usually are in fact.

 

Perhaps we need a more reciprocal relationship with posters in Speculations. Whenever we sense someone trying to do an "educational bypass", we should be able to explain that we're taking the time to read the hypothesis and review it, and we must insist that the poster reciprocate by taking some time to read relevant material to help explain the review. To me, this is the distinction between the person who thinks they have a great idea and the crackpot: the crackpot has already rejected certain studies (usually maths) and refuses to go back and learn the material.

I completely agree.

I have posted some highly speculative material (perpetual motion, gravity as a fictitious force, time as a superposed wave...) just to air out ideas and things that I would like to hear other (more qualified) people's opinion on.

These have lead to some interesting discussions and (I would hope) not made me look like a crackpot because I do not try to deny observable evidence or suggest that there is no gravity or some other rubbish...

I mean, what would be the point of asking for an opinion if you're not going to listen to it?

No, I believe it's a matter of semantics. Pressure is pressure and vacuum is vacuum regardless of where the experiment is taking place. Atmospheric or barometric pressure is calculated to give you the varying degrees of vacuum or pressure we live in here on earth or in atmospheric flight. Outside that zone nothing changes, other than the scale used to calculate such change. I ask, would a container pressurized to 1 ccm here on earth, show the same reading when arriving on the moon?

Even without virtual particles, space itself is physical. A vacuum pump powerful enough to evacuate all space from within a chamber will collapse the chamber.

What I'm saying here is that the effect you see collapsing the the chamber is not the removal of space but the difference in pressure between the inside and outside.

The chamber is crushed by the weight of pressure outside it, not from the "removal of space" within

How can you remove space?

Nope, no hangovers for me, i learned how to avoid them a long time ago, used to make my buddies so mad I could get up after a night of hard drinking and just take off like nothing had happened...

Well, now we all hate you...

Even without virtual particles, space itself is physical. A vacuum pump powerful enough to evacuate all space from within a chamber will collapse the chamber. Same as for a paper bag or an entire universe. If a singularity was arguably responsible for the unfurling of this universe, there must have been a tremendous vacuum capable of drawing it all down to a size less than an atom??

You're confusing space with atmospheric pressure

This is a good argument. However, there are two flaws. First if it were possible to create a universe where you could choose to do evil freely, but that evil never gets visited on other people, then this argument would not be valid.

 

As an example of this idea, I'll use a computer game (an MMO as there are other real people in that game).

 

Now, with this game, the computer detects if you are going to harm another player, and then creates a new zone where everything is identical to just before the harm takes place. The only difference is that anything that occurs in this new "instance" of the world does not occur in the main world.

 

Now, as the "Griefer" (the player wishing to do harm) is then moved into this duplicate instance and removed from the main instance. The griefer is then allowed to perform their action and then once the action is completed, they are moved back into the main world. This way the griefer has free will to choose to cause harm, but no harm is ever visited on another player.

 

This is a universe which allows free will but prevents people from harming others.

I see this as a violation of free will.

If I use my free will to chose to smash your face in with a hammer and then find that no harm has been done to you in reality, my free will got me nowhere.

What I'm saying is that the choice has been removed: I chose to harm you but I cannot - That's not free will - it's an illusion

If god is good, surely he has to give you the choice?

The second flaw in that argument is that not all suffering is caused by people. There is suffering caused by natural events (think of a tsunami washing people out to sea and drowning). These events are not created by the will of people, and yet they cause suffering. This means that even in a universe with free will, and people choosing to never cause harm, then there is still harm and suffering being caused.

 

As God has supposedly created the universe this way, then we can conclude, that without regard to the existence or non existence of free will, suffering is still being caused.

 

All this means that the argument of free will is an invalid argument.

The point was about necessary suffering, natural events, however destructive, are necessary

But God being all powerful does not have to do it this way. In other words He deliberately chose to make a universe that has suffering, but had the ability to make a universe without it. Thus any suffering is unnecessary, and a God that creates a universe deliberately where people have to suffer must be evil.

Hardship builds character, some suffering is necessary - you learn from your mistakes even more so if they are painful ones.

If god has a plan, then maybe it involves people learning these lessons on their own and using their free will to chose the right path, as it were.

Sure, god could make the choice for you, but it defeats the object.

But he also know that it is an imperfect way for us to learn that lesson and that some people will never learn (and it could be argued that God created them not to learn that way). This means that if there is any alternative way of learning without violating free will, then this argument is invalid too.

 

In the bible, it says that God places knowledge into the minds of people. As this does not seem to violate the "prime directive" of not interfering in free will, then this means it is ok for God to place knowledge into our minds.

 

Here then is an alternative to the hit or miss learning the hard way, God could just impart this knowledge directly. Of course, it would be up to us to choose to follow that knowledge or not, so free will is not violated.

 

And there is your alternative, meaning that this line of argument does not actually work.

Again, this defeats the object of free will. If god wants people to make their own choices and learn for themselves then zapping knowledge into them is cheating

A parent is neither all powerful or all knowing (or all good, or perfect either). Thus this argument fails.

 

If, as a parent, I could impart my knowledge directly into my child's mind wihtout them haivng to suffer to learn it. I would. Why, as someone who loved someone, would I wish them to suffer if I could avoid it in any way?

True, but could that be detrimental in the long run?

For example, how did you learn to ride a bike? I would wager it involed a bit of help and advice but mostly a lot of falling off the thing.

You learned from that experience and came out the other side with a great amount of satisfaction at having acheived something difficult.

Would you rob your children of that?

If the ability to ride a bike were "given" to you magically it would reduce its value

As I said, this is not proof against religion or gods in general, only that it is proof against gods that have specific claims as to their properties (specifically, all powerful, all knowing and good).

 

Even specific claims cannot be disproved (logic does not apply to religion).

Example:

Claim A: "god made the universe yesterday"

Evidence goes against this claim, but if claim A then goes on to say:

"Being a discreet sort of chap and not wanting to spoil the ambiance of the univerese he made it look much older and removed all evidence of himself by use of his magical powers"

It then becomes impossible to refute claim A

If you look at the doctrine of religions, they actively discourage thinking in rational ways.

 

If you have it drilled into you that to question God (or more specifically what an authority figure tells you about god - eg: the inquisition ), or to even think of questioning god would mean that you spend an eternity in hell, then of course you are not going to have thoughts like this. It is only because at this time I have the freedom to think, that I don't believe in any god(s) and that there have been other people who are in the same situation and I have read books on their thoughts that I could come up with this.

I agree with you here. Religion it seems does not like independant thought and values followers over thinkers.

Again, I'm not making a case for god because I do not believe in any of it.

I am only trying to show the impossibility of disproving religion/god.

Surely logic dictates that if a being has unlimited knowledge and power it's methods and reasons for doing certain things could be beyond understanding by human beings.

Again, you've made good points and argued them well, but anything backed by infinite knowledge + magical powers is going to be impossible to disprove

Edit: I can't believe I've switched sides on this

I see your first post occurred at 3.56 a.m. UK time. So the best I can do is wish a youngster a happy hangover!

With tighter restrictions on the speculations forum you would see more speculative threads appearing in the mainstream forums.

Plus it's a good place to air your crazy ideas in the wider community - all the "what if..." questions and interesting ideas that don't fit anywhere else.

It's important for science to speculate

DrRocket is quite correctly referring to Maxwell because of his equations of electromagnetism. In fact, this has already been discussed.

I know, I just found it funny

Because Maxwell said so.

If Maxwell said to jump under a bus....

Our most powerful tool is science. Yes it is a product of our collective brains but it is also a comprehensive technique of investigation that allows us to over come the partiality and bias of our individual and collective brains.

Yes, but only as far as we can recognise that bias.

If we don't see it, we cannot account for it

ok, now I'm really confused!!! What was all the excitement about, if it was not confirmed that particles can indeed travel faster than c?

 

http://www.guardian....icles-neutrinos

It's something that they are looking into, but it's not been confirmed.

There are a few different explanations going around

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/21/faster-than-light-neutrinos-doubts

How so? God is thought of as an infinite, not a finite, being. There was no "before God"

Oh I see... Magic

The rest frame of a photon doesn't make sense. This is being discussed in another active thread, http://www.sciencefo...speed-of-light/ (post 18 and on).

 

You are assuming velocities add as 1+1=2. Suppose you're driving along at 60 miles per hour and a motorcycle zooms past you, going 20 mph faster than you. How fast is the motorcycle going? Simple: 60+20=80. That isn't how velocities add in relativity. Suppose you are in a spaceship going at 3/4 the speed of light relative to some observer. Another spaceship going in the same direction zooms past you at 3/4 of the speed of light relative to your spaceship. Naively adding these velocities suggests that observer who sees you moving at 3/4 c will see that other spaceship as moving at 1.5 times the speed of light. That's not how it works. That observer will see that other spaceship as moving at 24/25 c.

Doesn't that make the speed of light breakable just by changing the reference frame?

1)The video has been posted before it was confirmed that particles can indeed travel faster than the speed of light, so obviously they didn't have that information at the time.

Unless the machine worked and they posted the video in the past

Seriously though, it hasn't been confirmed that anything can travel faster than c

If god could have made the universe without suffering, then no suffering is necessary as god could have achieve the same ends without it.

 

This is the inherent contradiction between an all powerful and good god and that evil exists. This can't be explained away by magic because the dilemma has nothing to do with how it was done, only that the existence of an all powerful god that claims to be good and the fact that suffering exists.

 

They are mutually exclusive, and because we know that suffering exists, then the conclusion is that the other can not.

 

It is like something can't be completely white and completely black at the same time. Magic couldn't make it both at the same time, it might be able to change it from one to the other, but it can not violate existence.

You make a good point, but again this can be argued against with free will.

If god gives us free will he also gives us the capacity for evil. If god then removes evil he also removes free will (at least to some extent - Why can't I choose to be evil?).

One could argue that god has made the choice to allow us to learn our own lessons, having given us everything we need to eliminate evil ourselves (with the bible and whatnot).

Of course being all knowing he knows things will work out fine as soon as we learn our lesson.

In the same way that a parent will allow a child to make mistakes in order to learn valuable life lessons.

I am certainly not trying to make a case for god, I am merely pointing out that with so much room for interpretation there is nothing that can be regarded as proof against religion.

This is something that has been pondered since the first notion of god by some of the greatest thinkers of all time.

If it (religion/god) were falsifiable it would have fallen apart a long time ago...

A photon is not in an inertial frame. We can't describe what is happening from a photon's point of view.

 

In any event, photons don't emit photons. The two ideas here may or may not be related.

Sorry, the emition of another photon was just to describe the scenario.

Let me phrase it differently: If I was driving at the speed of light with my headlights on, from my point of veiw the light travels away from me at c but in reallity in order for that to happen it must travel at 2c

Hi all,

Just contemplating the speed of light...

If a photon travels in direction A and is forced to emit another photon also in direction A.

Then from the point of veiw of the first photon, the second photon would accelerate away from it at c.

Does that mean the second photon is now travelling at 2c?

Space is not matter. It is something else.

Space is where you put your matter.

Without space there'd be nowhere to put anything...

Seriously, learn to use quotes, it's so hard to reply to you

Do you think that there would have been 6.5 million land animals back then over 100 thousand years ago.. more? less? And i would like to find this out myself. It might take me a couple of days to acquire. Though i firmly believe that this can be logically calculated. I do know however that animals do have a sense about weather .. it does say that God brought these animals to Noah. Anything is possible.

100 thousand years? That doesn't sound like the bible...

And yes, I don't think there would be a huge difference in diversity even that far back

....Anything is possible.

No. Anything is not possible - sprout wings and fly around your house if you don't believe me...

This same ship that has been sighted by many.. (minus a few bumps and scratches) is near to the exact measurement the bible foretells. Check it out.

That was not the question. Again I refer you to my post above:

"Measure it and see if you could find a way to cram 13 million animals in there and bear in my that it had to float, so do it without stacking the animals 100 feet high"

Breeding one specie with another would create a different specie.. breed that one with another.. 7 .. how many different combinations are possible.

In such a short timescale it would not be possible for nature to do that on its own.

Are you suggesting that humans selectively bred birds (in secret) back to the current genetic diversity we see today?

I read your link .. These words are simple.. picked at random..sentences which hold a value of division, multiplication etc. Not divine authority.

And as such fits perfectly with theomatics, a blend of numerology and wishful thinking

So because science only goes so far.. does that mean you cannot extend your knowledge? Correct it has no predictive power.. but the chances of it being as prominent in the bible as it is with such clarification are a billion to 1. Just like existence, Infinity, Space, Time, The perfect balance of earth and nature etc.. HOW is a good question. Why, is also worthy of questioning.

That could be the case if the numbers were not arbitrarily assigned by someone with an agenda...

There are currently somewhere in the region of 5,000,000 species of animal alive today (conservative estimate), even if Noah had his entire life to collect them all he would fail.

Correct, well lets just say around 6.5 million on land. Well who said he did this all by himself .. and more so, if Noah only took on board pairs of "kinds" as the word is used in Genesis 1. God created these "kinds" with potential for rich genetic diversity. For instance, at the time of Christ there existed only two types of dogs. All the diversity we see in the modern breeds of dogs came from these two.

You yourself said Noah was "scoffed at", how much help do you think he could have realistically obtained?

Even if we use your figure of 6.5 million land animals and he manages to find 9 people to help him - each person then still needs to collect 13,000,00 animals.

Implausible even if god had given a rather flexible timescale for this mamoth undertaking - don't you think?

Some of these animals would have been hard to find, hard to control or simply huge and dangerous

- even with modern ship building techniques we could not get near the size needed to fit all those animals on board - Noah would have needed a fleet of ships

http://www.noahsark-...ges/oblique.jpg - Well there it is just for reference, discovered near Mount Ararat.. where the bible suggested.

This proves nothing - a vaguely ship-shaped mark on a mountain.

Just out of interest, measure it and see if you could find a way to cram 13 million animals in there and bear in my that it had to float, so do it without stacking the animals 100 feet high

Considering the terms, Clean and unclean, the offspring of that early period and the rest that scientists put together themselves.. All the scientific evidence shows that the ark could easily have contained all of the animals that were used to repopulate the earth after the flood.

Show me scientific evidence then. I have never seen anything like what you are suggesting here and I doubt I ever will.

I'm guessing you can't back this up

Not only that but whilst the animals were onboard, what would they eat? Alot of them would have had predator/prey relationships and Noah only has 2 of each. The herbivores are also screwed because god did not say "by the way Noah, better take 2 of each plant as well", as you know most plant species will not survive submerged in water for very long at all.

Noah was told to bring food onboard for himself and for the animals .Genesis 6:21

Ok, but what about plants?? And the logistical nightmare thats would arise keeping everything from eating everything else and yourself

Also the bible says that after the flood one of the first things Noah does is make a sacrifice to god.

Correct

Since he only has 2 of each animal, which species did he wipe out here?

Maybe one of the unlcean birds of which 7 different species that were brought on board. And im not sure 100% because it doesn't say. And what was sacrificed isn't important. Whats important is that, Noah acted out of faith .. Did what was suggested in order to preserve mankind, and did.. even though he was scoffed at.

Only seven species of birds survived? How would you then explain the current genetic diversity we see in modern birds?

Not only that, surely if god wanted them preserved he'd be furious that you just killed one the second you came off the ark?!

To summerize, the bible says a lot of crazy stuff which is trivially falsified

Maybe crazy to some.. Personally i don't think Noahs ark was carried through Turkey to rest at Mount Ararat just so they could write it in a book because the name of the mountain sounded cool.. ?

 

And you should have a look at Jerry Lucas and Del Washburn' 'Theomatics.' And 'Number In Scriptire' by E.W. Bullinger.

I refer you to the link I posted

"Finally, I would like to make note of another very important statement on this last page: "It is absolutely, completely, and totally impossible to mathematically disprove theomatics." This is a straight declaration that theomatics is not falsifiable, which by definition means it is not a science. Not only that, but it has no predictive power. You arbitrarily pick which numbers are important to you, then you crop out phrases that look good, but there's no way to tell ahead of time exactly what phrases you'll find. Therefore, theomatics is completely useless. "

You can't present phrenology or palm reading in a scientific debate because they are psuedoscience's and have no value, numerology falls into the category of psuedoscience as well I'm afraid...

Dude, learn to use the quote button, while I don't agree with Athena, this is her thread and she is getting her point across so I think we need a new thread for your ideas...

 

Is this better?

No, you need to use [/quote*] at the end (without *)

No it doesn't make sense, neither does Noah's ark... but it is what the bible says...

 

 

It doesnt make sense? Alright so, would you like to tell me how big in diametre and in cubic feet Noahs ark was.. And could you be as kind as to tell me how long Noah had to get these animals together? These are all things you will find in the bible!

 

There are currently somewhere in the region of 5,000,000 species of animal alive today (conservative estimate), even if Noah had his entire life to collect them all he would fail.

As for the size of the ark - even with modern ship building techniques we could not get near the size needed to fit all those animals on board - Noah would have needed a fleet of ships

Not only that but whilst the animals were onboard, what would they eat? Alot of them would have had predator/prey relationships and Noah only has 2 of each. The herbivores are also screwed because god did not say "by the way Noah, better take 2 of each plant as well", as you know most plant species will not survive submerged in water for very long at all.

Also the bible says that after the flood one of the first things Noah does is make a sacrifice to god.

Since he only has 2 of each animal, which species did he wipe out here?

To summerize, the bible says a lot of crazy stuff which is trivially falsified

As for theomatics - again triviallly falsified

http://www.apollowebworks.com/atheism/theomatics.html

If space has no physical attributes, why should it be there at all?

Imagine a sealed box with a ball inside, you pump out every bit of matter apart from the ball

So you have a vacuum chamber with a ball inside. If you were to shake the box around you would see that the ball is able to move freely around the space.

So the space is still there - How could you possibly remove the space??

Although, an "absolute" vacuum as you've described would be very hard to create and would also be unstable.

That's where you get virtual particles messing up your nice tidy vacuum

An absolute vacuum would be completely empty space, so not really a physicsl thing (more the total absence of physical things)

Did anyone get what I said about concrete thinking and abstract thinking? Anyone?

I think people here have proven themselves to be more than capable of abstract though.

I really don't think that's the issue

You all are insisting on a concrete definition of God and that just doesn't work. The worst problem our nation has at the moment is education for technology, which teachings everyone to think concrete, instead of abstractly. This causes morality to crash and jeapordizes liberty.

Don't you think we need to define what it is we're talking about here?

Again, you speak of "education for technology" - What is that??

I agree that you can not disprove that some god (or gods) might exist. But, it is possible to prove or disprove specific claims about a specific god, and if the existence of that god is dependent on those claims being true, then it becomes possible to disprove a god if you can disprove those claims.

 

For example: If the claim what that a god made the thunder and lightning by banging his hammer (think Thor) and this god could only exist if this is true. Then when we investigate how thunder and lightning are produced and find that it is not created by a hammer, then we disprove that, that particular god does not exist.

 

This however, does not preclude some other god making thunder in the way we see it being made.

 

Another example is a God that knows everything, can do anything and is completely good.

 

If a god is completely good, then they can not allow unnecessary suffering (although necessary suffering would be allowed). If they know everything, then they can conceive of a universe that does not require any suffering. If they can do anything, then they can create this universe without suffering.

The next question is: Do we live in a universe with any unnecessary suffering? To this, the answer is yes. Thus we can conclude that no god that claims to have those 3 attributes (All knowing, All Powerful and Good) can exist.

If god is all knowing/powerful then maybe the suffering you speak of is necessary.

Who are you to decide what counts as necessary?

My point is that whatever you present as proof can be falsified by religion because of its inherent ambiguity and the element of "magc" involved (eg: "god did it by magic")