John Cuthber

Damn! it looks like I will still be stuck with the churchgoers after I die.

Way to miss the point there! OK, without apples, apple trees wouldn't exist so apple trees are not real. "Does a star have morals?" No, but then nobody said it did so it's not clear why you introduced it. Stars don't have religion so, according to your "logic" religion doesn't exist. So, re "To suggest that morals are something that can exist without social creatures manifesting it shows an absolutely abysmal grasp on philosophy. " The fact that I never said that they could suggests that you have "an absolutely abysmal grasp on" what you are talking about. I actually explained where the science of morality comes from- repeated prisoners' dilemma problems and such. That fairly clearly implies the existence of players who would, also clearly, be social animals. Now, can you explain how you got from "morality can be shown to be an outcome of intelligent social interaction between animals" to "To suggest that morals are something that can exist without social creatures manifesting it shows an absolutely abysmal grasp on philosophy. " Did you just forget to think or what? And, once again, we have a display of the increased cognitive load carried by someone who is trying to maintain the "double think" of religion and science. To do so you have said that slavery was a good thing (you might want to ask a slave about that) That right and wrong depend on when you asked the question (if slavery was "right" 2000 years ago, how did it become wrong? What changed and how?) And you have also turned what I said completely on its head while bizarrely introducing the morality of stars. That's quite a lot of cognitive effort there.

So, gravity, which wouldn't exist without mass, isn't real. The thing is that morals do exist- not just in humans. And I'm amused by "f you think this in any way proves morals are separate, ontic entities, you're insane. " said the person who worships his invisible friend. Whether it's "ontic" or not depends on the exact definition you chose for that word, so introducing it doesn't help a lot. Nobody, for example, has said you can go to the market and buy a bucket of morals.

Do you realise that you just said that the Bible is wrong? There is, of course, all the difference in the world between what we actually do and what we know we should do. We, as a species, are not perfect- we goof off at work and we screw around. Our societies don't do a lot better than we do. But, just because we don't actually follow the "law" that you should "Do unto others..." doesn't mean it's a bad rule; it just means we are bad at following it.

Do you mean the bit where I said "So, what he "believes", i.e. that the road is stationary is, in fact true, because of his choice of reference frame."? and where I clarified that, since (as we both agree) there is no absolute reference frame, it must refer to a particular one chosen by the speaker, and implicit in the discussion. Do you see how missing out some words from a quote totally changes its meaning in much the same way as adding words does (like you did before)? For example "By the way, I already know what you're going to say so let me head that off to keep this less "boring!" My original scenario (the thing that I introduced) involves one person saying that the street is stationary and the other person saying that it is only relatively stationary. Any piddling explanation meant to equivocate or ignore is just a strawman. You can introduce contradictions to imaginary things elsewhere. I'll be dealing with the scenario I gave." leaves "By the way, I know you're going to say boring. My thing is stationary and piddling" and I'm sure you agree that it no longer means the same thing. So, if you stop misrepresenting what I said, it may help progress the thread. I'm not a moderator here so that's an odd comment to throw in. ​However I think what the mods have seen, but you have missed, is my explanation of what I meant by the word stationary and why. ​In précis "nothing is truly stationary in an absolute sense" "the road is static in the frame of reference he's referring to (probably the planet earth's surface) " "My frame of reference is different from his.so, what we accurately say about the street differs" "to a good approximation, I can ignore the relativistic corrections to Newtonian physics. It is, as I said before, a good enough approximation to get the job done." "I'm not labouring under the false belief that I'm stationary. I'm just well aware that I'm near enough stationary to ignore the tiny corrections. I'm not, therefore, deluding myself about some absolute frame or reference." Do you understand what I have said there? Incidentally, I'm also wilfully ignoring the uncertainty principle. But it's not the same as saying that it's not real- just that it's not big enough to matter.

As far as I can tell, the tendency to make snap judgements about people is universal. It's not great but I can't help wondering where it came from. It's either part of God's plan or it's been brought about by evolution. So, if you really want to get rid of it you need to demonstrate that you are wiser than God and/ or a zillion years of natural selection. Also, you need to find a mechanism to overcome what I think is probably an innate human trait. Good luck.

Who is mud slinging? Not really, Dividing in has a different meaning from dividing by. Standing in has a different meaning from standing by. Screwing up isn't the opposite of screwing down. It's pretty common for a word's meaning to change depending on context. Confusing them in maths is no different from confusing them in English. It's not clear to me that an operator like integration can be divided meaningfully. How do you stop half way through measuring the area under a curve? On the other hand, dividing the outcomes of integrals is easy enough- it's just arithmetic. I missed the one about pies, probably because they weren't mentioned in the thread before. Pie charts were, but that's another thing altogether.

Any "theory" which implies that you can't separate methanol from ethanol using a still also implies that you can't separate ethanol from water using a still. Doesn't look sensible to me. It's also noteworthy that a still can't add methanol to the product, but it can take it away. If the material that you distil doesn't contain enough methanol to be toxic then using a still to remove the involatile material (leftover sugars, yeast, and some of the water) won't change that as long as all the ethanol is distilled out. It's good practice to throw away the early running stuff from a still because it removes acetaldehyde (which doesn't taste nice) and also any methanol. But a good fermentation will never have made much methanol in the first place. On the other hand, don't forget that a lot more people are killed by ethanol than by methanol.

The conversation will not get anywhere until you stop ignoring the science. As I said, "the "Scientific" variation on that theme is that your behaviour should be an evolutionarily stable strategy in things like a repeated prisoner's dilemma test." And the outcome- the so called "Golden rule"- isn't very controversial. So, according to either set of reasoning, the keeping of slaves was just as wrong then as it is now. And yet you have sought to support it. I contend that your behaviour shows exactly the sort of double think that the thread is about.

Can we change the tread title to "God Proven to Exist According to Mainstream pseudoscientific Physics"

Q) How many times can you take half an orange from a box containing 6 oranges. A) 12 Divide in half isn't the same as divide by half. Confusing those is just sloppy English.

"I have noticed I tend to be prejudice against atheist and other religions." It may help if you learn the difference. "I've noticed some atheist tend to be prejudice against religious people as well." How can you be sure this is prejudice isn't it just a judgement based on information? If I was biassed against someone who believed in Father Christmas or the tooth fairy would you consider that a bad thing? Equivalently, would you trust such a person to make important decisions- would you be happy to have them as your doctor for example? "We both need to work on this and not judge until we get to know the person." How much do you need to know about a person before you form an opinion? There are two issues there. The first is that forming opinions almost instantly is instinctive and, therefore unavoidable. The other issue is that it's not unreasonable to make a snap judgement in some cases. BTW, you might want to remember what else the Bible says about travellers and strangers. That's the group from whom you should select your slaves. Am I "allowed" to be prejudiced against a group whose religion tells them who they should enslave?

Are you happy? That's nice but it's got nothing to do with your writing style. You aren't " an action, expression, manner, etc" so 2 is out too. 2b is a matter of opinion. Care to set up a poll? Oh, BTW, I'm putting in a pre-emptive strike about the "mantle of Galileo".

I suppose I should point out that making statements of the form "if so and so is true then whatever" is a logical minefield* but I really don't see that as the big problem in this thread. * they get messy when you try to prove them false. So, for example if 1 = 2 then I'm Elvis. Just as soon as you can come up wit circumstances where 1=2 then I will need to prove that I'm the King- until then you can't prove that the assertion is false. On the other hand, this silly idea of yours has been on the web for a while. If it were true then it would have been picked up by the mainstream media and I would already have heard of it. I haven't, so it isn't.

It's not a non sequiteur. I'm not saying that it follows from anything else written here.There's no implied or stated causal relation. I'm simply saying it's true. Incidentally http://bit.ly/151fUsC By whom were you chosen and/ or who do you please?

Unhelpfully, the theoretical answer is that you never rinse out all the acetone. It gets more and more dilute, but there's always some left. It's probably better to air dry the condenser first or even to rinse it with some of the alcohol before you distil it (then throw away the mixture).

If the assertion in the title of this thread was true I wouldn't have read about it in a badly written post on a discussion forum.

Does this count as ESP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy

Your example was a man walking down the street which he considers to be static. But it is clearly moving (WRT) him. GR shows that nothing is truly stationary in an absolute sense because there's no absolute reference frame. So, either the road is static in the frame of reference he's referring to (probably the planet earth's surface) or his assertion that it (seems) static is totally without meaning. My guess would be that 1) he can distinguish these two points of view and 2) he means the former. So, what he "believes", i.e. that the road is stationary is, in fact true, because of his choice of reference frame. The road is not moving WRT the nearby fields and houses. My frame of reference is different from his.so, what we accurately say about the street differs. It remains the case that, in order to seek to prove your point, you altered what I said. That's not a valid way of making progress. OK, now lets have a look at your "proof" "With general relativity, using Lemaitre coordinates, neither you nor the street are static right now. You are far from it. It wouldn't be a good enough approximation to get the job done." The job I'm doing is sitting on a chair. I'm getting that job done. Any and all approximations which I'm currently employing are, therefore "a good enough approximation to get the job done." If Lemaitre coordinates say otherwise, then they are either wrong or being misapplied. My money is on misapplication. You may not have noticed, but, for most people, GR is a bit obscure. I'm not moving WRT my chair at a significant fraction of the speed of light, nor am I in spitting distance of a black hole. So, to a good approximation, I can ignore the relativistic corrections to Newtonian physics. It is, as I said before, a good enough approximation to get the job done. That's the point you miss. I'm not labouring under the false belief that I'm stationary. I'm just well aware that I'm near enough stationary to ignore the tiny corrections. I'm not, therefore, deluding myself about some absolute frame or reference. so, could you please explain why you think that voluntary, deliberate self delusion is part of the human condition.

Is this the first time you have noticed a government being stupid? Also, most of the things you have cited there are nothing to do with ESP.

" It wasn't wrong, then, according to their beliefs." You seem not to be prepared to accept that the slavery was wrong then and their belief that it was right was also wrong. They were mislead- not least by Holy scripture like the Bible. There are absolute moral truths and the Bible sums them up as "do unto others as you would have others do unto you". Unless you think everyone would be happy to be a slave, the Bible contradicts itself (nothing new there). In case you are interested, the "Scientific" variation on that theme is that your behaviour should be an evolutionarily stable strategy in things like a repeated prisoner's dilemma test. " It doesn't change the FACT that slavery was an accepted social mores at the time." The FACT that it was accepted was never in dispute, so putting it in CAPITALS is a bit silly. However, the point remains; they accepted something which is wrong.

Windevoid, What you said here " They threw it out before peer review. " isn't true. The editor, who is one of the peers threw it out because it was dross. Not least among the problems was that you have no idea what you are talking about hence "Although it now seems the capacitor may have been a thermistor. " At best, you are just making a fool of yourself here. You are certainly not adding to the thread.

This is going to work a whole lot better if you actually tell us what you have done. If, for whatever reason, you can't tell us then this thread isn't going to achieve much.

Re the people who did things: you have mistaken the Church (which is deeply conservative) for some individuals within it (who made discoveries). The Catholic church is still in the business of making profoundly anti-scientific statements. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIMsPyFNxGg

Division is subtraction. Q) How many times can you take away 2 oranges from a box initially containing ten oranges? A) five times 10/2 =5