Unity+

I am sure no body hates you, but they may not like your philosophy. But that is life...

People may not agree with each others political views, but we can't let that get in the way of scientific discovery.

Once people are done reading, just bring up anything that needs to be discussed with the concept.

Sure, but I think we have to accept that God is clearly a manmade concept and without any evidence.

 

Anyway I think you have made your position clear and others have diagreed with you. Time to move on before this turns ugly.

 

With regaurds to the opening post, historically many scientists and mathematicans thought that they were uncovering Gods handywork in nature. I assume some religious scientists still do today.

That was what I was stating before, that we can agree to disagree. That is what I was trying to say. I never intended any hate to build up.

How closed minded, lol.

 

I doub't anyone will try to change your mind unless you are open to the possibility of changing your stance.

 

This does remind me of many cranks positions on science!

 

But anyway, science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, however doesn't the whole idea sound manmade?

My point was that science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God.

A-theist --> anti theist --> non believer. Ergo an atheist does not believe. Don't make it sound like an atheist does.

 

Kindly try to refrain from engaging into scientific discussion where you claim something to exist without providing tangible proof.

I am not saying that they do believe. In fact, what the heck are you talking about?

And yet you choose to conclude god exists absence this lack of evidence and proof. Why? Would you do this when deciding on the existence of Harry Potter or on the existence of Thor?

Well if you are going to try to change my belief in God it ain't going to happen. I respect your beliefs and I hope you turn out to respect mine.

That's the problem. You don't understand why a belief in the Sky Fairy should not be given the same respect as science.

Where, on the scale of "respect" do you think that Zeus should be, or Ra or the FSM?

Do you consider them all equal?

I think most atheists do so, when it comes to a lack of respect, at least I'm consistent.

I respect evidence.

 

Incidentally, there was a discussion earlier about arrogance and atheism.

Well, I'm an atheist and I'm arrogant.

But I'm not arrogant enough to think that the entire Universe was created for the benefit of me and my species.

Let me reword my statement. I never intended my stance to be more respected than the other stance. Religion and science are to be separated into two categories.

Right, but the question was why you take this different approach.

Because proving the existence of God through science is pseudoscience because science cannot prove or disprove God.

 

Not quite, I can show you how to start a religion, which, like all, is based on utter made-up nonsense and also provide ways for schisms to evolve.

Well why don't you take this to the religion section then, if you so believe that you must?

 

And this is part of the problem, evidenced right here. You and other theists like you expect your religious stance to be offered some sort of respect and treated seriously, yet you are completely unable to address reasonable criticisms or rationally address valid questions.

Well, you don't have to go on about it. I ended my part of the debate, whether we agree on something or not. We agree to disagree.

 

 

You and other theists like you expect your religious stance to be offered some sort of respect and treated seriously

I am not asking for any stance to be respected more than the other. In fact, I intend that both stances are respected equally, whether there is an agreement or not.

 

This has always bothered me. It seems to imply that if I don't understand the concept of evil, I'm immune from it. If I don't understand evil, isn't there a chance I might do something God would claim as evil?

 

Adam: "Hey God!"

God: "Hi Adam. Where's Eve?"

Adam: "She's resting after our latest talk."

God: "Adam, is that Eve on the ground with her skull caved in?"

Adam: "Yeah. We were talking about that apple tree you told us to stay away from, and she wanted to eat one. I needed to stop her and I remembered I once hit my head on a rock and slept for a while. So I found a smaller rock and made it hit her head so she'd sleep. Smart, huh?"

God: "You killed her, Adam. That's pretty evil."

Adam: "I'm sorry, pretty what?!"

Well, in order for that argument to withstand the word "killing" would have to be switched with "murder".

Epigenetics follows the idea that the experiences of an ancestor of an offspring can affect that offspring genetically. For the sake of argument, since freewill exists within humanity as God created us to be, when we ate the tree of knowledge of good and evil that spread genetically. Though this is baseless as speculation, it is a point.

EDIT: iNow, I know your going to attack this argument so if you do I am not going to be able to support any of these claims because of my lack of knowledge within epigenetics, so save the post.

You said you make scientific conclusions based on scientific observations. Are you saying that you make religious conclusions based on scientific observations? If not, then my question stands. Why do you suspend that approach of basing conclusions on scientific observations when it comes to your religion?

Let me make the difference between basing a conclusion in science on scientific evidence and making a conclusion of belief philosophically.

Based on all the scientific theories we have, the "fine-tuned" universe and design of the Universe, I make my own conclusion that there is an intelligent being behind it. This type of thinking makes sense to me, unless you consider it irrational.

So, you concede the argument and acknowledge that you're unable to offer any valid or reasonable rebuttals to my criticisms or answers to my questions?

Well, as I stated I am ending my part of the argument, so yes.

So, you have a double standard then. Why do you suspend that approach when it comes to your religion?

When have I ever suspended that approach?

Well as opposed to the christian god; let me introduce you to Fred the furret who constructed the entire universe 20 milliseconds ago.

This is just getting ridiculous...

Nice try, but that's irrelevant to the point. There are unicorns in the bible. That was the assertion made. You asked where, and you were answered. Here's more (since the version seems to matter to you): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn#Biblical

 

Yes, we agree. That's sort of the issue I've been trying to point out to you. You believe these extraordinary claims despite the complete absence of evidence in their favor. Offer some evidence, you and your position might gain some credibility. Refuse, and you will receive no unearned or undue deference for your worldview. You are claiming that in this reality there is a god or gods. If you cannot support that with evidence, then you could equally be asserting the existence of any other fictional creature or product of human imagination. You would not ask that we take seriously claims that santa claus is real, so why are you asking for us to apply a different set of standards for your personally preferred fiction?

 

Again, irrelevant to my point. Maths does that as an axiom. They say, "given X, then Y." If we have no evidence in favor of X, however, it can be dismissed as speculative nonsense (much like I'm doing with theist claims). Likewise, with your example of Hawking radiation, people acknowledge readily that it is an unproven conjecture. The analogy fails since it's not treated as some absolute truth in the way theists do with their personally preferred flavor of deity or god(s). They're not saying that gods might exist. They're saying that gods do exist. This is an important difference, and a huge reason why I and others feel so comfortable calling them broken.

 

I'm sorry, but if this is truly your position then you are no longer approaching this discussion in good faith. It's self-evidently true that god supports violence in the bible, in many ways and in many forms, and to suggest otherwise means you're engaging in the very hand waving, logical fallacies, and cherry picking about which I warned in my previous post.

 

And here's one of those contradictions I mentioned. Are you sure you've actually read the bible you continue to cite? As you might recall:

 

http://www.examiner.com/article/why-believe-the-bible-viii-jesus-supported-writings-of-old-testament-prophets

Jesus absolutely supported the laws and scriptures of the old testament, only his current followers pretend he did not.

(Why did I even become a part of this debate).

I am just going to end it here because I came to discuss science, not religion. Why am I even debating?

Unity, this is why you have to be very careful with your terminology. I don't think I had ever heard anyone call the total number of elements in a matrix the 'area' before. It is especially confusing since there are matrix operations that can calculate areas, e.g. usually via a determinant.

 

And, yes, if there are no restrictions on the ordering of the elements (i.e. no symmetry requirements or similar), then it would be the factorial of the product of rows x columns

I apologize for this. I guess terminology for me is a bit confusing sometimes.

Genuine belief based on feelings, which some call faith, can make people seem a bit like trolls because they offer nothing but wishful thinking and supernatural explanations.

Can you at least have some respect to theists who have a scientific mind?

I may be a Christian/Catholic, but I base scientific conclusions on scientific observations. Have some leniency here.

Moderator note (swansont)

I have split this off from the science's purpose is to explain God's creations thread as it ended up being a pretty sharp break from the other discussion, but was not clear exactly where the best split point was. Further, this is moved to Religion, since the basis of the discussion is not a claim consistent with Speculations

So long as they recall it's just a fiction, then no. Reading or being inspired by fiction is not broken. We agree. However, that's hardly the case when the topic is religion and god(s). These people not only think it's real, but absolute truth. That's a rather important distinction that you ought to incorporate into your thinking on this topic.

 

That is a big difference. It's the difference between watching a movie about teenage mutant ninja turtles to distract yourself for 2 hours versus thinking the movie is a documentary representative of reality and that there are really giant martial arts practicing shelled organisms in the sewers.

 

---

 

There are unicorns in the bible in at least five different books... They can be found in Numbers, Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, and Isaiah. http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/unicorn/ .

 

Requests for evidence are still implicitly scientific requests, regardless of the section or subforum. You should review the rules to which you agreed when creating your account if you remain confused or uncertain about this point. This isn't a "make up any damned thing you want" forum. It's a science forum.

 

Just to be clear, I do not "hate" religion nor the religious. I do, however, hate ignorance, especially the willful variety. There just seems to be a tremendous overlap between religion and ignorance, despite the ability of people to cite exceptions to that generalization (there are a great many very intelligent and brilliant theists, but their beliefs and worldview are still rooted in a specious set of assumptions and wish thinking).

 

IMO, ignorance should be eradicated in all its forms through education, rationality, reason, and critical thinking whenever possible. All of those things are anathema to religion, religious belief, and religious practice, each of which require that obvious falsehoods and contradictions be ignored and that central claims and foundational premises and assertions be accepted as true based on faith alone. Faith is perhaps one of the single worst possible reasons to accept something as true. It's little more than pretending to know something you cannot know.

 

I know you stated above that it irritates you when people make claims without having read the bible, and you shared how you have read "almost the whole thing" yourself, but perhaps you should read it fully. It seems you're now the one making misguided claims. There are MANY religions that teach violence, including yours. See below for a brief sampling.

 

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/inj/long.html

 

Ignoring these facts, or hand waving them away through rationalizations and logical fallacies and contradictory positions, does not magically make them disappear. You made a claim that "religion doesn't even teach violence at all," which is self-evidently untrue, even within your own personally preferred flavor of religion, not to mention the countless others out there.

For one thing, that is a St. James translation, which gives different translations of meaning. The "strength of a unicorn" is simply referred to as a measure of strength. At the time at which that particular Bible was written they decided to reference such as a measure of strength.

 

 

Requests for evidence are still implicitly scientific requests, regardless of the section or subforum. You should review the rules to which you agreed when creating your account if you remain confused or uncertain about this point. This isn't a "make up any damned thing you want" forum. It's a science forum.

I have not presented any evidence and I haven't made any up either.

 

 

there are a great many very intelligent and brilliant theists, but their beliefs and worldview are still rooted in a specious set of assumptions and wish thinking

I can respect such opinions.

 

 

Just to be clear, I do not "hate" religion nor the religious.

I never implied such, and if it translated in such a way I did not do this intentionally.

 

 

Faith is perhaps one of the single worst possible reasons to accept something as true. It's little more than pretending to know something you cannot know.

Though not scientific, mathematics sometimes makes some "faith" based assumptions, such as many hypotheses that rely on the Riemann Hypothesis to be true. Also, there is no evidence behind Hawking radiation, yet we accept it as fact(though there are the few who are skeptical towards the idea. It is an interesting idea, but unproven at this moment in time(Unless I am unaware of a recent discovery).

 

 

It seems you're now the one making misguided claims. There are MANY religions that teach violence, including yours. See below for a brief sampling.

Now, here is my counter-argument to that claim.

There is no promotion to the violence if one were to develop an analysis of the statements made in the Bible based on the connections between readings. Let us become "unscientific" about this and let us make an analysis of the Bible.

In no way had God promoted violence within the Bible. If you remember, in the beginning of the Creation story within the Bible there is the Fall of man. This ultimately begins to Spiral of Violence, with the killing of Abel by Cain. This violence continues on with humanity and will last centuries. Did humanity promote violence? Yes. Did God within the Bible? Not that I am aware of.

EDIT: And to include on from the New Testament, Jesus Christ(and historically Jesus did exist, you can make a counter-argument if you want, but it is whether you see him as just a person or whatever is to be made a conclusion by you) did not promote violence at all. He was totally against it.

Also, a response to the Skeptic's Notated Bible:

 

 

"Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it."

Why not? What's wrong with knowing right from wrong?

If man had not had the knowledge of evil, then there would be no need to know right from wrong. In order to know wrong, there must be knowledge of evil.

even a 64 bit computer would top out at 2^37. Note I am not saying that GMP cannot handle numbers bigger than 2^32 - it can handle numbers with 2^32 digits!! But your number has close to that - and its factorial will have far more than that.

 

If you look back at my initial response you will notice that I gave you how long it took for the largest mersenne prime to be checked on a GPU. It took 3 and a bit days.

 

Your number is almost exactly 2^200,000,000 times bigger than that number. How long do you think it is gonna take to run that check?

 

 

BTW Fermat Pseudoprimes satisfy the fermat little and yet are composite.

 

BTW 2 Lucas - Lehmer is a probabilistic test - and not deterministic. The deterministic are much much longer

Well...I don't know then. I guess that ends my search. I don't really have the resources to do anything of this magnitude at this moment.

But is the troll label appropriate if they are sincere and genuinely think that way? I suspect not.

Well, he is online so we can never know, and even if he says he is serious the chances we can trust this user is about the approximation of none.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/77794-why-the-god-particle-answered/?p=758123

 

and also,

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/77794-why-the-god-particle-answered/?p=758127

I think the user is just trolling about this. Responding with rationality won't do much.

He's hardly an exception. He is, in fact, quite representative of the online apologist population.

I have seen many who are actually trolls, but most I know that are Christian aren't like that(both in real life and online).

hmm... are you sure that you are maintaining precision. For a start Mathematica relies on GMP which maxes out at 2^32 - and your number has (let alone its factorial) has more digits than that. How long is it taking mathematica to crunch an answer?

Mathematica's memory for amount of digits depends on the memory of the computer and Mathematica doesn't calculate the value in one try, but relies on an algorithm to calculate all the values(I can tell you that it takes a long time for an output to come out). I know this because I have programmed specific mathematical algorithms involving(which have existed before) to carry out the product larger than the 2^32 limit(though, I have a 64 bit computer, so it would max out at 2^64).

Well, for the actual proving of the prime number as it would be confirmed Daedalus is using some program using the NVidia GPU, which will still take some time in order for it to confirm the prime number. I simply used Fermat's Little theorem(which is still not enough to prove it, but states that it most likely is prime).

I did recheck Wilson's theorem document and realized there was something wrong. Mathematica did stop it's calculation there(unfortunately). Right now, I am waiting for Daedalus to report whether CUDALucas has determined it to be a prime or not. It will take some time. I am keeping my fingers crossed. I will give him credit if it is prime.

Since I am calculating this with Mathematica 9, there is much precision within the process. Though you could argue that computers do make rounding mistakes, which may be relevant to calculation in this circumstance, I don't see any evidence as to this conclusion.

Hi everybody,

 

I have been doing research on "analogy of fluid mediums and sub-atomic particles" for a long time. In this context, I examined the behavior of super fluid mediums and vortex, and I compared the behavior of subatomic particles. As a result of my research, I saw an immense analogy between them.

 

Besides, Einstein was thinking, fields could intensify at a certain point, through a kind of knotting. and knot can behave like a particle. Briefly, the particles can be obtained from fields. This knots are called as soliton.

 

I supposed the fields of Einstein as super fluid medium. And knotted field as vortex. I got very interesting results. I noticed that fluid mediums has analogy with gravitational, electrical and magnetic fields, molecular orbital theory, black holes .. etc.

 

The research results are collected in an article and video. I want to share my research with you and get your opinions, comments.

 

I would be very pleased, if you write your comments.

 

youtube video :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eawL3WxzkUk

 

PDF Article :

www.superfluiduniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/superfluiduniverse.pdf

This is actually pretty interesting, especially with how there are similar principles with energy and the flow of electrons. For example, you describe certain concepts with pressure. That same concept is found if energy, especially with Tesla coils and how the pressure intensifies the strength of the result(maybe obvious, yet still interesting).

 

Unity+, on 12 Aug 2013 - 8:54 PM, said:

 

While your idea of god may be against such, those things were once part of a religion that had just as much evidence as your religion does and was against your religion which won not because it had more compelling evidence but because anyone who wouldn't convert to christianity was killed, often quite painfully and gruesomely... . In fact the Bible states that unicorns are real, do you believe in unicorns?

 

Where does it say such a thing?

You would be well served to focus on the content of my points instead of their tone. It does no benefit to your argument to evade the core issues by commenting on my style or personality.

 

 

This is clearly not what you intended to type, but it is funny. Perhaps we should consider that it was a Freudian slip and a large part of you knows that both your argument here and your beliefs about human invented deities are without merit?

That ends my point on that statement.

 

 

I forgot no such thing. This is a science forum.

Yes, and this is the religion section.

I specifically avoided taking sides on whether a god exists or not, because neither side is proven. I should have more clearly separated "delusion" and "belief in something unknown", but I think what I wrote is true whether a god exists or not. Some degree of delusion is healthy (I argue it's "necessary"), other degrees are unhealthy, whether it's about religion or anything else.

I'm thinking along the lines of "obsessive mental preoccupation" or something, and I'm talking about people who can't stop facing reality. This is really only a guess, and I'm no expert of course, but I think that the normal, "non-broken" ability to quiet your thoughts (even just to allow for sleep) is a type of avoidance of all the pressing issues that could occupy your mind, and is SIMILAR to suppressing thought with religion. Moderate consumption of alcohol can be healthy, same with religion!

 

I specifically think there is no great difference between atheists and theists in this. Relaxing a racing mind is healthy, moderate use of external reality-suppressants can be healthy, and moderate use of religion can be healthy.

 

Here's an example which will hopefully make my point clear: Suppose someone likes to relax by reading fiction. Are they necessarily broken? They are avoiding reality! Suppose their behavior is partly inspired by a fictitious character. Are they broken then? I don't see the difference between that and letting religion shape one's reality, whether the religion is "true" or not, with the caveat that extreme escape of reality with any of these things can be unhealthy to the point of breaking someone. Conversely, refusing to "waste" time or potential, and only constantly and fully facing measurable reality, is not healthy.

 

A possible difference that comes from whether or not a person realizes they're avoiding reality, I think doesn't matter in small degree.

 

Addition: Looking back over the thread, if by "believing that the sky fairy will make it better isn't going to improve things nearly as well as actually doing something about it," you meant only in the case where belief prevents necessary action in life, then I agree (falls under "extremism" I think), but that's not what was being argued.

I apologize if it seemed I was attacking you. I was just trying to get a clearer understanding of the argument.

 

 

you meant only in the case where belief prevents necessary action in life, then I agree (falls under "extremism" I think), but that's not what was being argued.

I think that can be more in the broader sense of opinion rather than just religion. For example, believing in something in some government that is against the idea would be an example, though yes there are religions(especially some Christian sects) that believe medicine is bad and evil. I particularly find them ignorant because they clearly haven't read the Bible at all.

That is one thing I actually do dislike or find uncomfortable about certain religious people, which is the fact that they believe something without even reading what was behind the whole belief in the first place. If i remember correctly, there are only 40% of Christians who have read the Bible all the way through(I have read almost the whole Bible). Igorance is what led to the corruption of the Catholic church and government within England(correct me if I am wrong). They made it impossible or improbably for people to gain access to a readable Bible to actually see what the Bible had stated, which lead to false teachings.

I can see and understand where all the "hate" towards religion came from that aspect and yes many disasters in history, with religion and war, have been caused by ignorance and I think that is the main attack towards religion; the aspect of things that clearly if A happened, than B must be true. If millions of people were killed because of false teachings of a religion then clearly the religion must be hogwash, which is entirely false because the religion itself doesn't even teach violence at all.

Sorry to say, but it is you that makes the religious, like me, look bad. No wonder so many people think the religious are cranks. Please, stop trolling.