jfoldbar

this also then means that 1+1 doesnt always equal 2. in the whole universe there may be a place where, if you had 2 apples and i gave you 1 apple you dont absolutely have 3 apples (excluding things like you lost it or ate it), because, i have had this discussion with a friend, and he " suggest that mayby "facts" are just what the majority of people can agree on." we can say its a fact that if i dont eat for 3 weeks i will be hungry, but is it really a fact, or is it something that 99.9% of us can agree on so we deem it a fact. then, what agreement percentage is required for something to change from a belief to a fact? i suspect, though, that there is no actual line between the 2. so in the grey fuzzy area where they meet, this then could mean the definition of what is "true/fact" can and will be different for some people. some peoples fact may not be another persons fact. btw, my answer to my friend when he said that was, "99% of children believe in santa, so since they mostly agree, by your definition of fact he must be true". so, im thinking the definition of fact must be a bit different to what he thinks.

are you saying then that we dont actually know we will get hurt, but we calculate the chances of getting hurt based on past experience?

thanks for replies guys.

i hear you guys. but if knowing is 'having high confidence' then that means the religious person 'knows' that god exists, and children 'know' that santa is real. religious peoples confidence is so high that they can often die for what they 'know'. i argue to them that i 'know' that if i jump off a cliff im gunna hurt myself. but do i actually 'know' this or do i 'believe' it based on the idea that if everyone on earth decided to jump off that cliff almost every single one of them would get hurt, and the ons(s) that didnt were lucky. those one(s) could argue that i didnt actually know it but believed it with great confidence is there a definitive line between knowing and believing or is it just a scale certainty based on our previous experiences. but, the believers of this world will argue that our belief in a testable scientific theory is still just that, a belief. i accept that 1+1=2. but there are people who would argue that is a belief, and that we dont really know for 100% sure, only 99.9% so, back to the cliff analogy, if i use the averages of people getting hurt to calculate my chances of getting hurt, i can know with high confidence that i will get hurt. similarly, the believer can use the averages of the people who have a high level of confidence in their beliefs, to support their beliefs as being true. ie, can 10+ billion people all be wrong?

thans for the reply prometheus. but i realised from your response that i didnt explain my question too good. i get what you mean about the psychology of the guy trying to break the combination, totally makes sense. but i was asking in a purely mathematical point of view. but i guess from this you think that a brain dead unthinking person, or a random machine,s chance are the same regardless of how the lock is arranged

i have a question for any maths wizz here. something from my real life. i have a toolbox with a padlock that opens via a 4-digit sequence. so, for example 8734. and the padlock opens. so when i lock the toolbox sometimes im a bit lazy and i just move the 4 slot around a bit, without touching the 873. one of the other guys reckons its easier for someone to work out the code to open the lock if i have only moved 1, instead of all 4 of them. is he right? or does the law of averages mean there are still the same chances someone will guess it regardless of how many or few i move.

so i am a guy of zeros and ones. i like logic, maths and science. i am not religious at all and have no beliefs at all. , or so i think. the concept of "believing" something annoys me. i either know it or dont know it. and if i dont know it i either want to know it or will stay undecided until i do know it. so in my discussions with religious people i always ask them, "why do you believe something, why not just accept the concept of either knowing or not knowing"? but is there really such a thing? can we really "know" something or is everything just a level of belief?

we are nothing but chemistry. i have spent a fair amount of time reading about nde's over the years. ive watched many of sam parnias videos, and some guy in england though have forgotten his name. these 2 are fairly regarded as doing the 2 largest studies into nde's. as they are both trauma doctors, "cardio resuscitation", they can get first hand experience of people that are near death. im sure they have probably had experience with people that are actually dead as well. i.e., they go from the trauma ward to the morgue. however, while im sure they have great knowledge in their own field, there is more going on then just what their field teaches them. sam, in one of his videos expressed that once the heart has stopped they are for all intents and purposes dead. however the brain can function for 6 minutes (mayby more) after the heart stops beating. he considers this irrelevant. he chooses to ignore the concept that the brain is still doing 'something' for those 6 minutes. the brain can do many wonderfull and crazy stuff while we're asleep, who knows what other stuff it can come up with when its sent into 'emergency stress mode'. as far as nde's being able to see or know things they couldnt possibly see/know, well people that are asleep can do that too. its called , the brain putting together pieces that we are not consciously aware of. nothing spooky, just the brain working behind the scenes. people "seeing" something in those 6 minutes while the heart has stopped but the brain is still functioning doesnt prove anything apart from HES NOT DEAD YET.

sounds a bit like if i have a few kids, just so i can flog them every day until they either die or acknowledge that i am their dad that loves them and ive shown this love by being cruel to them their whole lives. and i want everyone in my street to see that cause i flog my kids daily, im not someone to mess with and i should be respected. cause everyone knows that the way to get respect is to be super cruel and bossy.

my parents gave me life. that depends on the definition of 'true happiness' your definition would be different to others

is it really a free creature, if it has an anchor tied around its neck and is punished for being free?

yes, sad for us because we are the ones that are suffering. but god created adam and eve, knowing they would stuff it for everyone, he created the entity known as the devil, knowing what he would do, and yet some how the whole justification for that "evil" act is "but he loves us" who is more evil, the one who done the evil act, or the one that allowed it to happen?

so if it is caused by these "angels", then didnt god create them? so he therefore created them evil, or capable of evil. if evil is the consequence of free will, then by creating us with free will he has created us evil. so he created us evil, and then decided we should be punished for being the way he created us. and yet some call this act "all loving"?

so this cheap crappy tool from china was a piece of s*&t. so i jokingly said under my breath "god should kill the guy that made this" i later saw somewhere that 20000 people die in china each day. how can i live with the guilt knowing according to the rules of prayer that is all my fault?

massman. religion cant 'explain' anything unless you already believe it, and then it can suddenly 'explain' everything. regardless if that explanation is even possible or not. for an explanation to be considered universally acceptable, it would have be understood, accepted and demonstrable by all. i.e. the explanation of me having 5 apples, getting 2 more apples from you, means i now have 7 apples. this explanation of why i now have 7 apples is universally accepted by all. however this same idea for a christian is different. for example, all of the animals went into an ark, and then went out and went everywhere in the world. basic maths says this cant possibly happen. so, this explanation may be accepted by a christian because he is ok with the maths being impossible because the "god works in mysterious ways" covers all inconsistencies. however for the man who will accept that for something to be true it must be mathematically possible, he will not accept this explanation. so, while the bible may explain things for the people who believe it, it does not explain anything for the people who acknowledge that the inconsistencies in it demonstrate that it is a book that should be taken with a big pinch of salt. these people dont need any 'god' to guide their way. their conscience is their way. i reckon 99% of people would agree that there is a lot of evil in our world. this is not evidence of anything except that there is evil. and the only escape, is when we die. one could argue, that an all knowing god, knew that he was creating evil even before he made the world. the bible says that he knows all, so he therefore knew long before he made us that he was putting into place the recipe for evil, and then allowed it. wouldnt that then make him the evil one? why are we the evil ones for being exactly as he made us? and, if things like natural disasters are evil, to what extant? for example, the 2004 tsunami. if this is an evil thing, what it the evil part? is it the wave, the size of the wave, the fact that people lived there. because it was water? is water evil if it is in wave form? what is the height of a wave for it to be considered evil? are surfers evil for messing with them? if a guy falls off a bridge and drowns, was it the water that was evil, or the rusty handrail, or the gravity? because god made all of these? bad things happen, doesnt mean the explanation is evil, or the devil.

wanted to put my 2 bobs worth in and see what others thought. having grown up on a mid scale vegetable farm in rural australia i have a bit of first hand knowledge on land use for veges vs meat. in regards to our country anyway. now i know what we do here in oz is much different to other parts and doesnt mean much in total population. here, most meat animals eat grass. roaming around the paddocks, living their life until they end up on our dinner plate. i think this is a better option than grain fed meat, because as moontanman said, most of the land they are on is not much good for anything else. a lot of the beef farms here are virtually desert where the cattle are rounded up using helicopters. what we waste a huge amount of good land on though, is dairy , wine and sugar. 3 things that are much less necessary than meat to our diets. a lot of the vegans here try to jump on their high horse about the meat department, but then they are all good about their wines and lattes that took much more of the best land then the meat. and they are almost all city dwellers that have never been to the country and probably wouldnt even know the different between a vegetable farm and a beef farm. sure, on average humans could eat less meat. but theres a ton of other stuff we could also do that people seem to not worry about cause its "hip"

could you provide an example of a belief having more basis on the natural world than others? some people are mentally incapable of rational reasoning, critical though and scientific method. so if this inability leaves a void, they may turn beliefs.

my opinion. i dont think there is any rational reason for any "belief". whether its god, aliens, ghosts or bigfoot. why should one "belief" have a higher status than another, after all they are all just "beliefs". but hey, w'ere all human and all have our little things. im sure i have a small belief in something even though i tell myself that beliefs have no purpose. and as humans if it takes a belief in something to do the right thing, or feel content or all gooey inside, then its not really a bad thing if we dont hurt others along the way. i know christians who accept that the facts contradict their belief, but they continue to believe it just because they need a torch/light to follow. and its the only light they know, even though its not based on anything but a belief. so i guess, for them, there is a rational reason for religion simply because they would be a blubbering mental mess if there was no religion as they would feel to have no purpose. so, rational depends on your state of mind and its ability to deal with life.

the brown spots came from the tree. like water or sap. they are also the exact same spots that are rusty. a few have said the mirror coating. however on a mirror, the coating is behind the glass. it is the actual glass that has been penetrated with rust. it looks the same as the sparks that come from grinder steel cutting, that melt the glass when the sparks hit. however it came from the tree.

so heres a weird one that happened to me the other day wondering if theres any ideas why? driving along in my (brand new) truck the other day, and the mirror clipped a few tree leaves hanging slightly on the road. very small so didnt think anything of it. there was a few (what looked like dirty water spots) on the mirror and passenger window, but so small i didnt care. when i got home i had a closer look at the brown spots on the mirror, and it was actually rust spots that have penetrated the glass in the mirror, meaning it cant clean off. the same brown spots on the passenger window, and a few on the paint, rubbed strait off. any idea what could have been in the tree to make the glass in the mirror rust immediately? next time im there im gunna check which kind of tree it is.

i spilt some water in the kitchen a few days ago. so grabbed the dish cloth from the sink, and it was bone dry. so i wet it under the tap first , then wiped up the water. and this made me think. what is the reason why a dry cloth wont wipe up water, it needs to be wet first?

im a layman so please feel free to correct me here, but simply. but i am under the impression that the 'missing piece' in the theory of evolution is a transition from simple amino acids, to dna. is that right? so we have the miller-urey experiment in 1952 showing where amino acids came from. then once the first life sprang up, we can show it evolving. but it seems to me we cant show where dna came from. we can only hypothesise. so i wonder, are there scientists now frantically trying to show how dna could have come about? are there "miller-urey" experiments going on, but for dna? and i dont mean computer modelling, i mean actual real experiments. if not, why not. and if there are, then after more than 50 years why cant they come up with anything yet.

sorry. im a laymen. i dont understand what you mean. but i think you mean that the lab experiment is set up to try to minimise evolution by keeping interference to a minimum. which is opposite to nature. but if this is the case, wouldnt an experiment thats trying to study evolution work better if evolution can happen?

we have seen speciation in a few hundred generations of bird etc, so why not more speciation in 60,000 generations

and we know there are perfectly logical explanations for the things that people claim are proof of god. that doesnt stop people ignoring those and still choosing the god. just like i can ignore that the most likely explanation for getting easter eggs was my parents when i wasnt looking, and choose to believe that it was a mythical easter bunny. cause that makes me feel good. as drp just said. a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart doesnt constitute proof that what you believe happened, actually did happen. and you are lying to yourself if you try to make it so.