Phi for All

If you decide to come back, you'll be welcome. When you're depressed, it all seems like things are caving in on you, and you can tend to take things too personally. Some folks deal with it by doing nothing, some like to get even more emotional. And some people try to find something to trust, something they can count on to be consistent, that doesn't lie, that doesn't stretch the truth, that isn't open to interpretation from every person you meet. This is a place for reason and science. We care about how you feel but it really shouldn't matter to the subjects we discuss. We attack ideas to make them stronger. People aren't their ideas, people HAVE ideas. And most, the vast majority, are wrong. That's just the way it is, and we think science is the most effective and trustworthy way to explain the universe. And it sort of requires us to leave our egos at home, and deal with these topics as objectively as we can.

You asked for mistakes, I gave you an example, but instead of replying to it, you choose to post this?! This seems like a deflection, or a Red Herring. I don't really care, until someone claims the Bible is inerrant. Then it's rather easy to show some very basic mistakes, like historical accounts that directly contradict each other (Aaron died in two different geographical places; in 2 Samuel, Saul dies in two ways that are different from the way he died in 1 Samuel, and a fourth way is described in 1 Chronicles).

I usually find popular science stops short of making assertive claims, preferring to speculate without a firm basis about imaginative possibilities that many find intriguing enough that profit is generated for the work. It's more wishful thinking than science in many cases, but it sells.

To me, this is like the "What's beyond the universe?" question. We make all these observations and experiments that show us the observable universe seems infinite, and performs within the parameters of our best explanations regarding its development, and every bit of evidence shows us that this universe is all there is. Yet people keep wanting to invent beings that can break the laws of physics, ignore time and the spatial dimensions, and basically do anything we can dream up because they know everything and can do anything they want. All the really obviously pertinent questions are answered with a blanket wave of the magic wand; God can do anything, even design physical laws that he himself gets to break when he feels like it. Question any of this and you obviously don't understand the mind of god. His Ways work mysteriously when they need to, they only become clearer to believers (who never get a reasoned explanation), and they always encourage you to stop questioning things you should take on faith. "Outside of time" there would be no movement, so we have to invoke the omnipotence clause so god isn't controlled by what we understand.

Genesis 1:11 claims God made plants on the third day of creation, before he made man. Genesis 2:5 claims before he made man, God hadn't even made it rain yet, and there were no plants.

I think it was put together purposefully to be muddied waters that only the clergy could help common man see his way through. Constantine and the Council of Nicea weren't stupid, and that was a chance to compromise and become the most powerful religion ever. If any of it had a coherent meaning that people could follow themselves, they wouldn't need the clergy.

I don't think you understand what a dimension is. And if the universe "contains all possible space", there is no "outside the perspective of our universe", by definition.

Really? That's NOT how it seems.

The rational stance is "We don't know". So the importance is on treating evidence skeptically, verifying it or falsifying it before deciding to trust it or not. There's no evidence either way about god(s) existing, so natural explanations are more reasonable than supernatural ones. It's OK to trust science while still honestly saying "We don't know" about the existence of god(s). In the end, it doesn't make a difference whether god(s) exist or not, what matters is not weakening the foundations of your knowledge with Iron Age irrationalities and wishful thinking.

Actually, the argument isn't that you should not believe in God. The argument is that there's no evidence for God, so the default position is, "We don't know". The benefit is that your perspective on the rest of the universe isn't based on unstable foundations. You can start forming your knowledge based on observable reality, and grow from there. It's more like a lack of belief rather than active disbelief. Does that make sense? Or rather a lack of using faith to believe, preferring trust instead. Do you make a distinction between faith and "blind" faith? Blind faith would be believing something that has absolutely nothing to support it at all, nothing to trust. Many people make this distinction, so I think having faith requires some sort of justification in most people's minds, even if it's just the fact that lots of others believe too, or that there's been so much written on the subject. Personally, I think all faith is blind, since there isn't any evidence for any of the claims made to support such faith. Many early religions believed in many gods. Then came those, including the Abrahamic religions, that believed in just one god. I think it was inevitable that it would dawn on people that there might be even fewer gods than that.

It was probably much quicker to list those crimes of which he was innocent, and the name stuck. "Pope Guilty" wouldn't have gotten passed the introductions. I have his rookie cardinal card, btw. Mint condition.

! Moderator Note Let's move past the mixup between gluons and gravitons, and get back on track please.

Delusion runs strong on Black and White World.

How is that like sight or smell? Does your sight come to you whenever IT chooses to, or do YOU control it? Same with smell, if there are things to smell, does your olfactory sense sometimes choose not to inform you of the fact? That's not how senses work, none of them. As for the rest, most of it sounds like classical cognitive bias. You want this to be true, so your mind selects only those instances that support it, and forgets all the times you got this "sense" but nothing happened. It's not uncommon, whereas actual confirmed precognition is non-existent. And it's been tested, tested thoroughly because lots of people want it to be true. The bit about saving your bacon crossing the street or driving? All the rest of your senses are more than capable of giving you warnings about environmental anomalies. It's not an extra sense, it's your marvelous brain putting together input from sights and sounds and pressures and smells and balances to give you this out-of-the-blue warning to "Ease up on the gas, be careful", just as a motorcycle speeds past you, cutting into your lane. You might have glimpsed him briefly behind you, unconsciously gauged his speed, possibly later heard his engine, sensed the bass vibrations of his accelerating engine, sensed the time that had passed and again unconsciously realized that big bike was going to be coming up on your right really fast. You have a lot more than five senses, and together they're almost an emergent power all by themselves, no need for supernatural explanations.

This is an 'absurdity' joke, pretending it makes a difference to invert something like a period. Questions can be very strong parts of a speech when you know they're coming, but when you have to do that tone change at the end they almost always sound weak. I think that's the natural evolution of the talent. Speak from scripts a LOT and you can skip ahead enough to warn yourself about inflections ahead.

But doesn't "timeless" also mean "motionless"? I sure don't want to bring any more religious perspective into a science thread, but this doesn't seem right. I'm not sure why it's meaningful to imagine a realm that has no space or time. What is the relevance? What does this realm offer creatures based in realm with a geometry that has three spatial and one temporal dimension?

! Moderator Note Welcome to internet forums! Discussions take place in pockets of mutual attraction and opportunity. All those you accuse of following you around are simply replying to the latest topics for discussion, which you yourself are doing. We try not to make things personal here. Nobody is following you, they're following the discussion you're following. Of course, that's just what I would say if I were following you around....

It's not people who should support your argument, it's evidence. Adding more people to your arguments won't help. A key principle in science is falsifiability (or, "Is it even possible to show this is false?"). If we did an experiment with fruit flies in wildly different environments for several generations and didn't see any signs of changes in allele frequency, it might show that evolution is false. Evolution is therefore falsifiable (it's not wrong, but there is a demonstrable way to show it could be). God(s) however, have unobservability. If we can't detect something, we can't measure it, we can't know anything about it, so we can't do science with it. This also means you can't falsify them, you can't show that they don't exist. And I think that's also why they've lasted so long, because people believe with their emotions, and think with their brains.

Well yeah, but getting called immature?! That's like getting carded at the liquor store for guys our age. More compliment than affront. Repulsive, that's a judgement call. Some folks think Basset Hounds are ugly. We know better, Moon.

Oh, aye.

I don't think the Bass paper is talking about shared consciousness, or a single mind, when he talks about the plurality of the conscious mind.

Oh, I agree! I used to mark scripts in English like that when I had to speak in public. Have you ever noticed they can change your facial expression in a speech, when you know you're about to ask a question? Your eyebrows might go up, your head might tilt. I think it helps convey more meaning, or at least aid in understanding when you give/get prompts like that.

3x5 cards aren't as smooth as teleprompters.

Can you link to what you read? It sounds like popular science that was taken out of context, then misinterpreted, and finally misquoted for good measure.

He's always been just one lab accident away....