Phi for All

WRT a deity who actually requests belief without support, like the Abrahamic god, I think it IS disrespectful to look for evidence to support your faith. It was considered a breach of faith to require the son of god to prove himself by showing his disciples the face of his father. Religious/mystical/supernatural beliefs are unique in that they don't require any trustworthy outside verification to match them with what we observe in nature, and that's why I insist on a separate definition for that type of belief, that's why we call it faith. The same is applicable to any unobservable higher power people choose to believe in. If there's no evidence to support its existence, you're using faith to believe in it. It's power is to unite people strongly, hopefully for good reasons. Faith in the basic goodness of humanity is not a bad thing. That's partly why I think using faith is dangerous for a single human developing their belief system. It's like going into the jungle for the first time by parachuting alone into the middle with nothing but your faith, absolutely 100% assured you know the best route out.

This isn't the first time you've shifted your stance in the face of reasoned arguments. I appreciate your use of critical thought in discussion with science-minded folks. I want you to know I realize how hard you're trying to express your ideas, but I also appreciate that you aren't as intractable as you were in the beginning of this discussion. But by starting inward, you don't have knowledge from outward that you may need. Are you trying to figure out where the pieces fit without stepping back to look at the whole first? Again, I think that's a mistake. It doesn't matter what you have faith in, explaining anything by starting on the inside of it is going to seriously mess with your conclusions. Answers tend to be subjective in nature. Answers, when we think we've found them, tend to end our curiosity about the subject, and we then tend to keep confirming our biases about those "answers". They become dogma because we've stopped looking for anything better. Science looks for the best supported explanations, always. Ideas aren't "right" or "correct", they're either falsified or unfalsified, and the unfalsified ideas are constantly being attacked to see if they hold up under harsh scrutiny. These ideas MUST match what we observe in nature, as free from our human cognitive biases as possible. I think you make a mistake focusing inward before you understand what's going on outward. I think you make a mistake looking for "answers"; the search for knowledge is ongoing and works best when you're methodical in taking it on board. Faith as a form of belief, to me, is leaping to conclusions. It's belief that doesn't bother to measure how far the leap is, or feel for how much wind is blowing, or even check to see if the landing is safe. That's why I don't trust it, but I understand why it's easier for some folks.

So you've chosen to focus inward to the exclusion of knowledge of the natural world. I think that's a mistake. It seems like trying to fix the notes of a song without playing/singing it through first. Or like trying to guess all the infinite possibilities of what might be inside a package without first trying to look at it from the outside, and at least measure the box (with all your senses) so you have a better idea of what it could hold. Or like deciding that you don't need to walk carefully across the lake of thin ice if you focus on leaping only to the bits that look safe.

Quantum321 has been banned for abusing the PM system. Folks, the rules are really clear, and no matter how passionate you are about your ideas, please remember we're all here voluntarily, and we've chosen civility as our #1 rule. Nobody gets threatened here. We attack ideas, not people.

I said science doesn't look for truth, or to prove anything, but it's extremely good at disproving things that aren't true. Nobody is saying faith doesn't exist, or even that it needs disproving. It's what you believe using faith that can be shown false if you claim it's true. Does that make sense to you? You can have faith in your higher power and science shrugs, but when you claim His image is burned into your bathroom towel, we can't take that on faith, and we must examine the evidence. Faith is a form of belief that persists without support from nature. It's a form of belief that is completely opposite from trust, which requires a lot of evidence.

No belief is "true" in science. We look for the best supported explanations for natural phenomena, that's what a theory is. It's not truth, or Truth, or even proof.

Do you understand why science isn't interested in subjective personal level experiences? It's mostly because without objectivity, people make up anything that sounds pleasing to them, sort of like... well, you.

No, you're failing to use reason to do so.

You're failing. It's like you're trying to use a compass to figure out which way happiness is when you have no idea which direction it's in.

Out of all the gods and higher powers ever dreamed of, none have been observable to science. There is no reasoning that can get around that. Why do you need an argument for faith? Faith abides, it remains unshakeable in the face of evidence to the contrary, it gives emotional support where intellectual support isn't being used. Taking something as true on faith means you don't need a reason other than you want to. What you keep trying to describe isn't faith. You repeat that it is, and we EXPLAIN why it's not. Many, many pages.

I read FOX News along with HuffPost to get my right and left. It's probably a different experience than watching cable news (I think they assume their viewers can't read well, so they don't put much effort into the print). I'm with Ten oz, I read my news. I don't like all the visuals designed to mess with my emotions. I want to be informed, not entertained. In my experience, it's not so much outright lies that other outlets could nail FOX on. It's crap like showing a picture of a better-attended conservative rally while reporting on a different conservative rally. They parrot conservative talking points that are extremely misleading, like how badly a social program is doing without mentioning it was conservatives who wrote the laws that caused the poor performance (Bush II removing the ability of Medicare to negotiate better drug prices is a great example). It's all heavily slanted, and that's dishonest all by itself. FOX News was only made possible back in 1996 when they removed the requirement that the news had to inform the public. Now it's barely better than a game show. Comedians like Colbert, Stewart, Noah, and Oliver are doing a better job with real news stories, but FOX News still the biggest joke.

Yet you can't show reasoning for a higher power that doesn't rely on wishful thinking, or unshakeable but faith based solely on your own hopes. You have no evidence that stands up to scrutiny. You keep trying to claim attributes for faith that equate it with other forms of belief. You don't seem to grasp that doing that makes any distinctions between forms of belief useless.You've even told us most of your ideas are based on pre-acceptance of your higher power. There is NOTHING reasoned about that. Do you think all belief is the same, that the things you believe through your faith are just as valid as what we believe because it's been observed, tested to death, and used to predict other beliefs we have more reason to trust? Forgive me, lone human, but you're facing accumulated human knowledge with your immature and ignorant concepts. They aren't persuasive to people who've learned to sift critically through the garbage to find pearls.

This is what I was afraid of. "Mixed economy" = "Let's have more private profit using public funds!" "Competition" = "Enact laws to make it harder for the NHS to compete." It makes as much sense to me as planting bamboo along with the vegetables. It's practically impossible to successfully regulate the different growth rates.

But this is exactly what the BB explains, so it's clear you don't understand it, therefore you think it's wrong, which leads you to argue from incredulousness, which is a big logical fallacy. You're basically saying, "It doesn't seem to me that this could be true, therefore it isn't. I'm not buying it." You aren't the first person to claim skepticism about something they don't understand.

I used the quote feature to highlight where you said the BB didn't explain some things so we were back where we started. That's ridiculous. All theories are in the process of improvement. The LCDM model the BB theory is base on is sound. There's no reason to think we have to go back to where we started.

QFT.

I see the mistake in your thinking now. You think because we don't know everything, we have to throw away what we do know and go "back where we started". That isn't how science works. But if you did, I think your incredulousness would be less intense.

"Cheap" is the part I'm unsure of, based on my experience in other sectors. Is there a product that isn't more expensive in the long run when the original high-quality unit is made disposable after a single use? But as you pointed out, there may be other factors (such as time mismanagement that causes a doctor to be kept waiting while his tools cool) that play a part in the decision. I hope it's those factors, and not simply an overshadowing profit motive from medical equipment manufacturers (who have many of the same motivations as big pharma). If May were POTUS, I'd suspect she was doing this to profit some private vendors while making it look like she was helping healthcare. We also get lots of conservatives these days who used to want a balanced budget, until it was their turn at the helm. Now they all sound like the US economist quoted in the OP.

! Moderator Note Please, no more of that. This is NOT a conspiracy site. If you have evidence, we have time to discuss it in another thread. But we will not allow unsubstantiated assertions in mainstream sections, and conspiracy isn't welcome anywhere on SFN.

Probably. It seems perfect for some situations. But it's also a profit-maximization strategy I dislike and distrust in other sectors. When you care more about the convenience of using the product than what it's actually supposed to do for you, and ignore how much trash you're generating for the landfills, you end up with Keurig coffee.

That's quite an assumption. Perhaps they simply had an epiphany before you did.

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All the folks claiming that will be so disappointed.

Very well said. I don't use faith as a form of belief, but I understand why some do. My objections are when people of faith insist they're using trust and reason, the very things that separate faith from hope from trust in my mind. To me, it looks like they do it to make their faith seem less blind. I grew up hearing religious folks talk about how their faith is unshakeable. I've seen evidence here that many people of faith can't be persuaded from their views. I trust in explanations derived using the scientific method, because I know they're constantly being updated to be the best current explanations for natural phenomena. My trust will also be updated and changed, and that's something else that makes adaptable trust stronger than unshakeable faith. Faith never figures out when its wrong.

! Moderator Note And now the thread is no longer asking questions about mainstream science, but is instead speculating outside it. Moved to Speculations, please read the special rules concerning this section, and support your ideas with evidence and critical thought.