Sisyphus

So you think theism is better than atheism because (supposedly) only theists can have morality. But then where does the preference for morality come from? Not theism, since that is the argument for theism. Hence, the fact of the argument disproves the premise. It doesn't even need to be logically disproven, though, as it is clearly empirically disproven. Most participants in this argument do not get their morality from some religious text, and yet we're not running around raping and pillaging, and in fact are rather nice people. The prediction that non-theists "would" be running crazy is contradictory to clear reality.

No, it does exist. Existence is one of the properties I conceive of it having. (Wouldn't be a very good translator if it wasn't real!) That doesn't work for different reasons, since presumably you're talking about qualitatively "best" (arbitrary) as opposed to quantitatively greatest. The "God" argument doesn't work for both reasons, as "greatest" there is being equivocated all sorts of ways.

In addition to the above objections, I would say that "that than which a greater cannot be conceived" is not itself something that can be conceived, any more than "an integer higher than any other integer" can be conceived. Just because valid terms are arranged in a grammatically correct sequence does not necessitate that the result means anything.

It's never elongated. In the rest frame of the train, the platform is compressed. In the rest frame of the platform, the train is compressed. (Your second picture is wrong.) You are correct that it does not matter which is considered to be moving. All the observations between them are symmetrical. I don't really understand what you're describing with the timers, but rest assured there is no way to rig them to make it work. Events which are simultaneous (at different locations) in one reference frame simply are not simultaneous in any other reference frame. It's not just a matter of perception.

Not if "after a while" is more than a few minutes. The thing about the human body, and especially about the brain, is that it needs to be constantly supplied with oxygen in order to keep from being destroyed. It's not like a car engine that you can turn off and on again. It's more like juggling eggs. Stop moving your hands, and the eggs fall and break. Stop supplying the brain with oxygen, and the damage starts almost immediately, and is irreversible. That's just how we define death. It makes sense, since without a functioning brain, you're basically just a bag of meat. The brain pretty much controls everything in your body. Sure. But fixing that kind of brain damage is way, way beyond anything we are capable of. If the heart is beating, there is a pulse.

The thing is, if you're more willing to convict based solely on iffy confessions, that's a big incentive for police to push for them more, inevitably raising the number of wrongful convictions. Another thing to consider is that those false confessions are probably very unevenly distributed - i.e. there have to be some cops getting much more than their share.* I have a very strong aversion to empowering dirty cops. The association with authoritarian regimes (you know everyone arrested in North Korea "confesses" sooner or later) doesn't help. *I have no direct evidence for that, just common sense and anecdotal experience.

If you travel across the surface of the Earth in a straight line, you will never reach an edge. Nevertheless, the surface of the Earth is not infinite. There are geometries that allow the universe to be finite despite being unbounded. I've never heard of this, and I can't seem to find what you're speaking of. What is it? It seems these two sentences are contradictory, no? Science deals with making testable predictions. Another universe, by definition, can have no measurable effect on us. Thus it is untestable and outside the realm of science. There are, however, interpretations of physical theories that posit other universes, but they are just that: speculative interpretations, that can never be shown true or false. But it's not like nobody talks about them. Prove it.

I think that's about as helpful as saying that the Taliban regime is what happens without the "drag" of liberalism.

So your suggestion is that the mass is constant, but the size, by some unspecified mechanism, is changing? You say you have a feeling it is shrinking. Why?

The mass currently being added to Earth from incoming debris is supposedly about 10^8 kg per day, which is basically totally insignificant. At that rate it would take 3 trillion years for the Earth's mass to increase by 1 percent. When the solar system was younger, this rate would be greater just by virtue of there being more debris. Though it does appear that the change has still been very slight since the Earth was very young, billions of years ago. Also, the depicted exaggerated picture is impossible. Structures that large would collapse under their own weight. The Earth's gravity prevents it from being anything other than as smooth as a cue ball.

But those "maladaptions" are still necessarily beneficial in the immediate environment. The deer with bigger antlers DO have more offspring, because the environment includes other deer, who are more likely to accept deer with impractical antlers as mates. Would they be better off in the long term if other deer favored more practical antlers? Yes. So? Certainly it shows "poor planning," but that's because it isn't planned. By definition, natural selection cannot favor anything but that which propagates genes more successfully. Things like sexual selection are the same, just focusing on that part of the environment consisting of other members of the same species. I don't disagree with any of this. Blind, yes. Stupid, yes. But the response is still towards better gene propagation. The avocado wouldn't have become dependent on ground sloths unless that (or rather, the adaptations that led to that) lent an advantage at the time. I am not giving evolution more credit than it's due, you're just reading more into what I've said than is there. That isn't "evolving to extinction," that's past evolutionary "choices" having detrimental effects in the present.

Evolution does not really drive towards more sophisticated or complex forms, except incidentally. The evolutionary pressure is entirely towards propagating one's genes in the most successful means possible in the present environment. Sometimes the efficiency of simplicity outweighs the advantages of complexity. Some of the simplest organisms are arguably the most "successful" of all. It's not really possible for a species to "evolve" into extinction, by definition. A species that goes extinct due to a changing environment has just failed to evolve quickly enough. Not "improve" or "become more sophisticated," but just adapted to propagate genes in the present environment. It is true that some species are adapted to more specific environments than others, and thus tend to be more vulnerable to environmental change.

Think of it this way. The odds of winning the lottery twice in a row are 5.4 trillion:1. However, by already having won the lottery once, you've made a big dent in those odds, as all you have to do is win again, at a mere 2.3 million:1.

The spring will have kinetic energy. An ideal spring, once you release it, will oscillate endlessly between compressed->expanding->stretched->contracting, while the total energy (elastic potential energy + kinetic energy) remains constant. That is, its moving fastest at the slack position, and stops completely at the most compressed and most expanded positions before reversing direction. A real spring, on the other hand, will lose energy to heat, to moving the air, etc., and will eventually come to rest in the slack position. And if it's not attached it would jump, yes. An expanding spring would exert a force on the wall.

What we're orbiting is the center of mass of the galaxy.

Why not think bigger than just adjusting constants? You could have universes with different fundamental laws entirely. You could probably come up with a set of rules that pretty much guaranteed that "life" - self-reproducing and evolving organizational units, perhaps even capable of some form of intelligence - would arise almost immediately and nearly everywhere. As opposed to in our universe, where it seems to be quite rare and require unlikely circumstances like we have on Earth.

Actually, I'm pretty sure Arizona's utilities would not be "happy" to stop selling LA a quarter of its electricity. But perhaps I just don't understand the business.

Coincidence is not at all far-fetched. There are probably a million events, from tiny to majorly significant, that happen to you every day. So you can expect a 1 in a million occurrence daily. You don't notice all the things that don't seem like big coincidences, so it seems like too many things are lining up too perfectly. As mooeypoo showed, there were 12 earthquakes just in Puerto Rico that day. What about all the other days when there were no such coincidences? What about all the other events that, if they matched up, would seem like big coincidences (death of a relative or famous person, meeting someone significant, anything)? What about all the earthquakes and billions, trillions of events in the rest of the world? What about other times this particular earthquake might have occurred that would have seemed significant in some way? Things that seem too unlikely to be coincidences are guaranteed to occur on a frequent basis, based on probability and our cognitive biases for noticing them. There is no other explanation necessary.

"That is something that would have to be argued?" Why? The contrary is simply asserted, on the grounds of there being no other possibility. The other possibility has nevertheless been raised, making the previous assertion retroactively arbitrary. That is what I'm arguing. Not that it is in fact "perfect" for the apple to be green at t1 and red at t2, but that declaring it to be perfect or not on those grounds is arbitrary, that "change" is not a valid criterion. Says who? I say that all things only affect themselves, that each thing is the best possible state that it can be at any point in time, because it is the best possible state. The cue ball rolls not because of the stick, but because it is appropriate. (This is in fact what some later philosophers will argue.) And what counts as "sufficient?" S is what it is, without reference to time. It is not self-contained in the sense that it has a recognizable relationship to other entities, but then, so would a Creator. To have an effect or to be affected in terms of causality are only different in the direction of time. Without reference to time, there is no difference. A being that creates is not self-sufficient - it has interaction. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged It is possible for stars to be made. It is not possible to conjure one up instantaneously. ("I" will be participating in the process eventually, though.) A being that could do that would be very powerful! I'm saying that "omnipotent" is such a word. Where does it come from if it's not meaningful? Well, it's easy to observe that some things are more powerful than others. It's not a big leap to "most powerful," and from there to "so powerful it is impossible to be more powerful," heading off claims of "but my concept can beat up your concept." What is really meant is "as powerful as we need it to be." What difference does it make if it's a word or a phrase? If you can say a meaningless phrase (and not realize it), you can make a meaningless word that "means" that phrase. It is not trivial that "omnipotent" is a compound word. Omni has meaning. Potent has meaning.

It is perfect for me to have the property of redness yesterday and the property of purpleness today. Problem solved. Or perhaps it's perfect of me to appear as a burning bush one day and become embodied as a human another. Why not?

I can do whatever it is possible to do. That's a tautology. As are Anselm's limitations. Why is weakness to be altered, to be physical, to burn oneself? They are defined as weakness because they are properties not ascribed to God. Then, in turn, that they are weakness is used to explain why they are not properties of God. It's all circular and arbitrary, like the Best of All Possible Worlds. The world is the way it is because that is the best possible state for it to be. We know this state is the best possible state, because it is the state that is. Etc. And yes, people say meaningless and/or self-contradictory statements all the time while not realizing they are meaningless and/or self-contradictory. I can come up with a whole vocabulary describing the rest frame of a photon, but that wouldn't make what I'm describing valid concepts. It would just mean that what I think I am conceiving of is not what I am actually conceiving of. So too with unstoppable forces and immovable objects. Upon reflection I can see that the question is meaningless, but that doesn't mean those words cannot be spoken non-rhetorically.

Sure it's an action. I can microwave a burrito so hot that I can't eat it. What you mean is that "so hot God can't eat it" is not a valid state of being, by the definition of omnipotence. But that still means He can't exceed Himself (in the way that I can!), and the "can't" invalidates the omnipotence. And since it's inherent to omnipotence, then "omnipotent" becomes self-contradictory and itself empty of meaning. Anselm argues, essentially, that the concept is real because it can be conceived of. I would argue that it cannot be conceived of. "What happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object?" It makes grammatical sense and the individual concepts seem to make sense - just taking ordinary concepts and "taking them to the limit," as with an equation with a variable approaching infinity. Yet the question is nonetheless meaningless, as "unstoppable force" negates the existence of "immovable object" and vice versa. "Omnipotence" implies both, and thus negates itself. The word is meaningless.

No, they wouldn't look at us, because we wouldn't exist. They would look at themselves, just like we do, and see that the universe is suited to their existence. Exactly! However, the puddle imagining the different shaped hole would think itself lucky, because it couldn't exist in any other shape hole. It's neither "atheistic" nor a "leap of faith." It's an educated guess, based on the sheer size of the universe compared to the likelihood of necessary conditions. It is necessarily speculative, but hardly unreasonable. Nobody. They said the universe is big. Even if there is only a 1/10000000000000000 chance of life emerging around any given star, that means there are still about 100000000 stars around which life emerged. Big! What do you mean by "failed life forms?" What evidence of them would you expect to find? What?

No. Think of it this way. If the refractive indices of the media are exactly the same, the quickest path is just a straight line, right? Now imagine one is slightly different. The quickest path is no longer a straight line, because you want to travel less distance in the slower medium. However, you also don't want to go way out of your way, because the difference in speed is not worth the extra distance. The closer the speeds are, the closer the quickest path will be to a straight line. The bigger the difference in speeds, the closer it will be to normal through the slower medium. However, it will never be exactly that unless the difference in speed is infinite (which it obviously can't be).

The passenger already has a speed of 100m/s relative to what? The ground outside? That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter any more than his velocity relative to Mars. The bullet always has the same velocity relative to the gun.