Phi for All

Thanks very much! Now what's all this about us leaving the EU?!

! Moderator Note Ignoring the members who showed it's not is called soapboxing, and it's against the rules, and you've done it a number of times. And now you're starting to re-write history and insult the members who take the time to respond. You've had long enough to support your arguments, and frankly you've failed. You're obviously smart, but you aren't discussing science, you're just trying to make the above sentence seem true. No more preaching, and this thread is closed. Don't open any more threads on this topic, you've gone quite toxic about it.

I think you try to get inside his mind too much and pretend you know how he thinks or what his cognitive processes are. There's absolutely no need. You don't need guesses when there's plenty of facts to suggest he's a complete incompetent propped up by rage, bluster, and money. I don't think you need to look any deeper for signs of rot, and I'm more than a little worried the crazy is going to get you if try to make sense of his irrational behavior.

! Moderator Note If you can support any of your assertions, please do. Otherwise, don't make them. Is there evidence that your god is real and other people's gods are false? NO, there is NOT, so refrain from basing arguments on things you can't support. And don't respond to these notes, taking the topic further off. If you don't know what evidence on a science discussion forum means, please refer to other threads or send a private message.

I interpreted it differently. To me, it came off more as "You're going to get a terrible president because the Democrats hate my hard work." Not an accident, just spoken in his standard "They disapprove of my greatness, and that's OK, I guess" passive-aggressive voice. Not an admission either. It was a threat. It was a dog whistle for his base to make sure this doesn't happen. Of your last two paragraphs, this is the only sentence you don't need to support. The rest of it is mostly assumptions and guesswork.

! Moderator Note Stay on topic, and stop preaching. You don't get to make unsupported claims like these, even in the Religion section. This is a science discussion forum.

I could see mounting a competing emotional appeal to divert these folks from the emotional stance they've taken on 5G. If they're so worried about radiation, but don't listen to reason about scientific areas like telecommunications and climate change, maybe we can emphasize how much more radiation they'll be exposed to if we don't do something to stop the planet heating up. An appeal to fear may work where an appeal to reason isn't understood.

Part of the problem is that science uses very specific definitions for most things. You've found it easier to make up some of your own, to describe what's in your head, because what you were reading didn't make immediate sense to you. It's a bad habit, that's all, like using too much slang that others don't know. Instead of making stuff up, you should be learning the definitions science uses, so you can better communicate what you're thinking. As Strange said, you should stick around and get involved in other discussions. It's a great way to learn.

Didn't you invent a clear aluminum coating? We could hide it in some cheap hairspray cans. That way, folks are protected from catching the 5G, but the FBI can't tell.

There's a literal silver lining in this if you're heavily invested in Reynolds Wrap.

For starters, I think we should agree on what money shouldn't be able to buy, and that may help us decide to live without it. Academic placement, political favor, and professional privilege (access to your doctor's private line, etc) are some of the areas where money does nothing but corrupt the system. After that, we have science to help us determine how to best use our resources. And we need to have a talk about what a basic life in a modern society should look like. We certainly shouldn't be paying all these taxes and then letting excessively wealthy people decide what to do with the money that's supposed to help all of us.

If we could remove the extremes at either end, our current system could lead to less of a focus on acquiring more wealth than is necessary. If we want to curb extreme greed and poverty, regulation is our best friend. I know this because of how much the obscenely wealthy hate it, and how much the devastatingly poor need it.

Science investments can help in unintended ways with these areas as well. If my state had spent a US$1B on fixing roads during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the repairs would have been a better investment since fewer cars would ruin the curing asphalt. We could have been relatively pothole-free for a decade. I've always felt that being smart about growing an economy is more important than the economy itself. We pay more for our horrible roads because our private system employs more people than a smartly run public one that's focused just on building and maintaining excellent roads. I think science and critical thinking is the only way we have a hope of changing this. We can have a robust economy that's focused on being smart as opposed to one that simply employs lots of folks and makes a few of them inordinately wealthy.

Indeed, and we're seeing the importance of funding scientific research at all levels, especially when there's no immediate monetary incentive to do so. A great deal of future employment relies on fairly inexpensive, unremarkable research that provides the basis for later invention and innovation.

Just about every major pursuit is going to provide employment, but few investments give the kind of global returns that space exploration and other scientific endeavors do. The amount of new knowledge produced is fairly staggering, every time we take the risks to expand our knowledge and banish our ignorance.

dana_turner is being banned for wasting all of their first five posts on misinformation, rule-breaking, and blatantly incorrect assertions. We're going to take a page out of table tennis rules and call that a "skunk".

If you have scientific evidence for a non-mainstream topic, and you think you can defend it reasonably, put it in Speculations. If it pertains to a field of personality studies you can defend using science, post in Psychiatry/Psychology. If it's something you feel might pertain to a specific philosophy or ethical approach, post in Philosophy. If it's just New Age mysticism that works because you say so and wave your hands a LOT, please don't post anything at all.

That seems like a semantics argument. I'm talking about actual contradictions. In Genesis 1, animals are created before man, and in Genesis 2, man is created before animals. In the Quran, I know there are multiple references to the first Muslim. Was it Muhammad, or Joseph, or Moses, or Abraham? All are named as chosen by Allah, but Muhammad can't be first if those earlier men are considered worshipers of Islam. Being "first" is fairly unambiguous, so this seems like another actual contradiction.

Perhaps that's all the contradiction one should need. It's the creation story, the first book of both the Bible and the Torah. It describes the six days of creation, but in two versions that sometimes conflict with each other.

You're right, one should be enough. Unfortunately, you're confusing logic with critical thought. Logic doesn't mean "this makes sense to me". Formal logic is for philosophy and maths. Science uses reasoned, critical thinking in order to avoid the subjectiveness of personal intuition. Quranic stories tend towards more morality and less detail than Biblical ones, which makes it tough to judge. All the Abrahamic religions mention the Flood, which is an automatic science contradiction (it would require way more water than the Earth has, and floods leave evidence which we don't find). The Quran introduces a fourth son of Noah who didn't believe, went to a mountaintop instead of the ark, and drowned. Neither the Bible or the Torah mention him, and you'd think they'd both jump at the chance to show what happens when you cross God. Christians often say the same thing about the Bible, and when I mention that Genesis 1 says God created animals on a different day than Genesis 2 does, I'm told it's simply not a contradiction. Anything open to interpretation is going to be difficult to pin down.

I'm trying to say that this isn't good supportive evidence for arguing that Muslim prayers have a better effect on health than a similar amount of exercise without prayer. A little doubt is called skepticism, and I think it's a good thing. It keeps us always questioning our current explanations to make sure they're as accurate as they can be. Those books are full of contradictions. If that's your criteria for judging their worth, how many contradictions are you looking for? If you find 3, will you continue until you find 10 (or 20, 20 is a good number)? If you find the right number of contradictions, will you assume that religion is false, or not worthy of your support? Have you determined how you'll judge what a contradiction is? Can it be little things, like claiming in one passage that Prophet X stayed in the city four days and nights, while another passage says he stayed a week? Or are you only looking for the big stuff, like the errors in the days of creation between Genesis 1 & 2?

Popularity seems like the best measure of a religion. None of their gods are testable scientifically, so I'm not sure what kind of evidence you're talking about. You won't find a religion that has evidence that their god is real. The Abrahamic god (2 of the 5 most popular religions) can't be observed, chooses to remain hidden, and therefore is considered super-natural with regard to scientific inquiry, which is focused on observing the natural world. The same seems to be true of Hinduism, and Buddhism doesn't have a god. You would have nothing trustworthy to base conclusions on. How can you overcome those contradictions with more religion?

Looking for truth among religions (tens of thousands of differing sects) can be enlightening, I suppose. They all seem to have beliefs that are shrinking as we learn more about the natural world, and rely less on supernatural descriptions. Science is more interested in our best current explanations for various phenomena. No truth, no proof, just mounds of evidence supporting theories based on precise and trustworthy methodology. This is the kind of explanation that drives out the ignorance we have about the world, and replaces it with knowledge that can be tested, so you don't have to rely on faith or hope.

I tend to consider all of it "beliefs", which makes me focus on the trustworthiness. There are things we believe in (beliefs) that don't have much to support them but we hope are true, and other things we're asked to believe with no evidence at all. And then there are things we believe that are based on mounds of evidence and observation and prediction. The key is how much you can trust what you believe.

It sounds like yoga. I predict the moves would be beneficial for anyone looking to tighten core muscles. There is some evidence that a focus on positive thinking can benefit certain activities, but I've never heard of prayer (from any religion) being any better than other forms of positive reinforcement. Again, in order to test the hypothesis that Muslim prayer results in better overall health, you would need at least two other groups to test, one doing the moves without the prayer, and a control group who does none of it, to act as benchmark for the (move + prayer) and the (move - prayer) groups.