Phi for All

It's not a matter of taking it. Evidence needs to be reviewed, compared in context. You can't refuse to offer support for your statements because you don't think someone will accept your evidence. You just need to present it. With this many people involved, nobody is going to be able to reject it out of hand if it doesn't deserve to be.

I think the objection is an emotional one, based on the seeming injustice of letting scientists decide what constitutes the evidence they base their conclusions on. Or it could be a healthy misunderstanding of what's meant by "the scientific community" and how standards of evidence are treated among so many.

The bakery told this couple immediately that they wouldn't make them a cake because it was for a same-sex marriage. Nothing about the actual cake was discussed, it might have been as simple as putting two grooms on top of an everyday wedding cake, so this was a decision to NOT do business with a couple because they're gay. About the same time, another bakery in the area was asked by a customer to make a bible-shaped cake with anti-gay slogans and hateful sentiments written on it. The bakery offered to make the cake, but declined to write the hate messages. They offered to provide the frosting tubes so the client could write it themselves, but the client refused and took the case to the Civil Rights Commission, claiming discrimination because of faith. The board ruled in favor of the bakery. Interestingly, the guy who wanted the bible cake continues to claim he was discriminated against, and now claims he only wanted bible verses written on it, but none of what he wanted appears in the bible at all, not even close. I would hate to be seen picking on religion, but how do you justify proving a point about discrimination and religion by using hate speech and lying about it?

I think there's a parallel to be drawn between the idea of religion being picked on, and some of the crackpots we get who take a specific bit of criticism ("Your idea fails at the start because your definition of 'dimension' is incorrect") and translate that to mean, "You're telling me I'm wrong because I don't agree with what you were taught". If a scientist keeps showing the crackpot where his idea is flawed because the crackpot keeps ignoring the response, is the crackpot being picked on?

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Anecdotally, I know someone who had this same experience. After a long time of feeling guilty about not believing what he was raised to believe, he realized that when he was being ridiculed, it hurt more because he suspected his antagonists were right. He couldn't defend religion ultimately, but that wasn't his fault. He wanted to, and it hurt that he couldn't. Eventually, he saw that it wasn't mistreatment. He wanted facts and his opponents had them all. They became the bad guys, but all they really did was use their knowledge.

Like you, he probably did and couldn't find any links to specific atheist/theist discrimination, and unlike you, refrained from giving irrelevant examples. Most of those stories are about government, which is obligated to be separate from the church in the US, imposing the same restrictions on religious groups as they do everyone else. I fail to see even where these are examples of being picked on. I'm here at the heart of the "cake wars", and find it hard in this day and age to understand how anyone can think they can open a public business but exclude certain members of the public based on sexual orientation. I must have missed the part in the Bible where wedding cakes were sacrosanct.

Faith healing wasn't part of the original doctrine, afaik, but has been introduced in some sects. Regardless, I was trying to give an example of the kind of event science could measure that might provide actual supportive evidence.

I think the worth of a reading a thread is influenced greatly by your own participation in it. If I hadn't posted anything in this thread, but decided to read it to see if it had worth, I'd be too mad for pants right now.

I suppose it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The current chairman of the House Science Committee is a Tea Party Christian Scientist, and a climate change skeptic. In the US, science, politics, and ignorance go hand in hand in hand. How will the Republicans find representation when they have to make neurosurgeons AND Christian Scientists happy? Some perspectives really are mutually exclusive. At least they have misunderstanding and misrepresenting science as a common ground.

Because of the way the statement was written, I took it to mean, "This whole thread isn't worth reading, just the bits I wrote". I realize now I was probably wrong. John Cuthber said the whole thread was silly, but that's not the same thing as not-worth-reading. I'm not sure by what criteria MonDie can judge the value of a discussion before it happens, or participate in it but then claim in hindsight that it lacked worth. I am sure he will re-evaluate his sentiment and re-join us for an explanation, adding to the reading worth of the thread immensely.

This is wrong. Science does a lot to minimize anything wishful in the process.

No, that's not the question.

Your process is flawed, in that you have failed to provide the support you speak of when asked. We insist you use our process, as defined in our rules, most especially since it is our site, and also because the process has historically produced better results than yours.

Excellent point. And since you mention governments, I can't help draw a parallel between this image of fragile, sacred, underdog religion being picked on by rabidly rational unbelievers, and the far-right US politicians like Rick Santorum, who whinged on about how the media was picking on him by focusing on his most extreme views. Peel away the crazy, find the good, ignore the crazy, and all will be well, right? Religion isn't being picked on. Isn't that a bit like claiming those who build a house of cards are being picked on by heavy breathers?

Only if by "theory" you mean assumption, guessing, wild speculation, that sort of thing. If you mean scientific theory, then no, nothing like that has been observed or measured. Dimensions aren't what you think they are, they aren't places. "Planes of existence" are also not a scientific concept. Again, no evidence to support them, other than wishful thinking. The afterlife and reincarnation are also not supported scientifically. These are concepts that science considers supernatural, while science focuses on the natural, trying to explain reality based on what we can observe, measure, and test. I would focus on this part, if I were you. We actually know quite a bit about ourselves. The big problem is, most of the data available on the internet has been presented in a fairly popular manner, and the science is often less rigorous than it needs to be, so lots of people get an unclear education once they leave their formal schooling. And because you lack enough formal schooling, you can only cherry-pick the bits that make sense, right? But that leaves you with a bunch of important knowledge that you don't understand, and can't integrate into your ideas. I would advise you to go back and learn some science basics. LOTS of people weren't interested while they were in school, only to develop an interest later in life. You're smart, you just need more accurate data so your information is foundationally correct.

You don't know what you're missing. This Wednesday, we won't be meeting to discuss the non-worship of Zoroaster. Dues will not be collected at this time. You shouldn't come.

I don't think it's fair to poll until the engineered ignorance is filtered out. How many of those 35% that don't accept evolution have been told it would mean their god isn't real? The ultra-conservative candidates all seem to imply that they believe in God, not evolution, like it's mutually exclusive. It does no good to point to the Catholic's acceptance of the theory, because in many cases uber US right-wingers don't consider Catholics to be true Christians. Must be part of the campaign to be the exact opposite of the Democrats, and eschew intellectualism, rational thought, long-range planning, sustainability, and knowledge, and replace it with fear and knee-jerk reactions.

Be very careful with statements like this. The problem with research used like this is that you don't know what you don't know. You're going to make mistakes because the extent of your knowledge doesn't cover enough to understand relevance at the necessary levels. You'll be cherry-picking things you think you understand, and ignoring what you don't. You're going to make mistakes like this: Your definition of "dimension" seems off. Picture the first dimension as a line, length. Now move orthogonally (90 degrees, right angle) from every point on that line until you have a square. That's two dimensions, length and width. Now move 90 degrees away from every point in the square, until you have a cube. That adds the third dimension, height. To add a fourth spatial dimension, you would need to move at 90 degrees away from every point on the cube! Hard to imagine. Everything to do with perspective, nothing to do with time travel. And pavelcherapan's XYZT example is correct. Give someone your position in three dimensions, plus the time you'll be there, and you can plot any event in spacetime. Outside the known universe?! Are you redefining "universe" so it has an outside of it? How much "outside of the known universe" is there? Is it bigger than the known universe or smaller? Is there something outside the outside the known universe?

OK, imagine we observe that Christians are able to pray for five hours over someone who has suffered an amputation, and the limb grows back. We set up experiments to monitor and measure more limbs as they're regrown, to make sure there is nothing other than prayer going on. We see that the limbs do indeed regenerate fully and consistently in a matter of five hours using prayer alone. Further, we test other religions and find out that Christians are the only ones who can do this. We test people who used to belong to another religion, see that they fail to heal the amputee, then test them again after they convert to Christianity. We observe that now they can heal amputations like other Christians. We'd have repeatable tests from which we could make further predictions. Once we isolated this ability and could find no other natural causes for such behavior, we could put together a hypothesis that uses the Christian religion as a natural explanation for this amputation healing phenomenon. There's just nothing like that out there. You're right, Moon, it's wishful thinking.

I apologize if I gave that impression. I'm trying to point out that many of your objections come from your perceived ability to spot inconsistencies in very complex subjects, something normally seen in someone who has studied a loooooong time. You also tend to... I'm not sure if "pounce" is the right word or not, but a lot of your posts seem like you're trying to "accuse", or "expose", or otherwise attempt to put science in its place because it did something inconsistent, something that confused you. Your perception of science and scientists seems based on victimhood. Nobody is telling you not to question authority, that you're not worthy of discussion, that you don't know enough. But you have to admit, for someone who says they don't know much science, you're extremely ADAMANT in your outspokenness. You claim to be "baffled" and "searching for an answer", but you sure sound like you know science is WRONG. I would just caution you not to shout so loudly it impairs your ability to hear anything.

"I only know enough about science to understand when something is inconsistent. I find it usually means some scientist is out of touch with reality, separated from the facts, so I look for ways to point this type of thing out." I changed this around to show you how the argument looks to me (trying NOT to put extra words in your mouth). I can't tell you how many times I've heard this same sentiment, like you could possibly have some kind of unlearned sense of when science is wrong or inconsistent. Do you have this ability with anything else you know very little about? Can you watch a ballet, or walk onto the trading floor of the stock market, or suit up for surgery, and somehow recognize inconsistencies in data and process, and shortcomings in the professional people involved? How do you do that?

This still sounds wrong. I certainly didn't give up anything. My belief system developed to a point where god(s) were an irrational option that was ineffective at explaining reality. I didn't decide one day to be an atheist; I realized at some point I squeezed the last bit of supernatural ignorance out of the gaps in my knowledge. I'm also at a loss as to why you think atheists should be singled out for these standards you'd like people to follow. Aren't the standards, the non-religious standards we operate under as citizens in our various societies, enough to cover these "dangerous" ideologies you're worried about? Which particular ideologies do you think we're vulnerable to when atheists have them? This seems like you're persecuting atheists for something anyone might do, and something our society probably already has a defense against.

Let's say deniers get their way and delay substantive efforts at mitigation, everything goes just the way you personally would have hoped. We don't spend the money, waitforufo is happy. What would your response be if it then becomes worse than predicted, and consensus says we've past the point of no return, permanently altered our world's climate and oceans for the worse, and put all life as we know it at risk? Would you just say, "There was nothing to be done, we couldn't possibly have foreseen this, and no way we could have justified spending any money on it because it seemed like a bad bet"?