Phi for All

I think it would negate the spin that normal rifling imparts, which could cause the bullet to tumble or otherwise lose accuracy. I'm not sure that would also mean slowing it down dramatically.

Science understands this concept that you can't truly prove a theory, only support it with evidence. How does a religion I decide to pick up prove reality? Is it just magic?

I think you're mixing concepts here. No one is saying science currently has an explanation for everything. And nobody is saying anything about a single person filling up the attic of their brain (or mouth*); we're talking about knowledge we've accumulated as a species. What I'm saying is that, historically, science has been able to overturn many claims made by religion (at least those of the goddidit variety), supporting the idea that we don't need religion to explain the natural universe. Science either has an explanation, or it says, "We don't know yet". When enough evidence supports the explanation, then we change that to, "We have a natural explanation now". The supernatural needn't be considered if it causes more questions than it answers, and lacks a method of trustworthy information generation. Also, I don't see how you can say that "science can explain A LOT", then imply it fails at explaining the rest, and furthermore that we are all able to successfully and subjectively pick a religion to make up for that ignorance. Does this really seem reasonable to you, or did I misread you? And truly, there aren't a plethora of reasons why we can't know everything, there's just one. We can't be everywhere in the universe, doing everything possible to be done. We can't be omniscient without being omnipresent and omnipotent as well. So this is why science doesn't work with proof. It works with theory, because we can't run every experiment possible, in every place in the universe. We can only start with an hypothesis, test it against reality, make some predictions to test against the model and give us more evidence to support or refute, and if it continues to pass the trustworthiness tests, we can give it science's highest award and start calling it a theory. * Reminded me of Dimitri Martin's joke: I burned the roof of my mouth the other day, and I thought, "Wait a minute, that's not the roof of my mouth, that's the ceiling of my mouth. The top of my head is the roof of my mouth. Someone wasn't using the attic of their mouth when they named it the roof."

I don't think an idea becomes a "crackpot" idea until crackpot behavior forces that perspective. An idea can just be wrong. If, however, someone starts insisting they can "prove" it but offers no real supportive evidence, starts ignoring evidence that refutes the idea while doubling down on their assertions, and becomes more convinced they're right the more people tell them they're wrong, then they're acting like a crackpot, and the idea gets treated accordingly. This makes it really hard to deal with true crackpots here at SFN, because we try to focus on ideas rather than those who have them. This is the outlook and behavior of a student, not a crackpot. It will be harder for you, since you have to actually learn what our best current science says about the behavior of reality. You won't get to ditch the books and make up your own stitched-together, pop-sci irradiated, mumbo-jumbo while insisting you must be right. But once you've been through school and learned not only the facts but the methodology as well, you'll have that ability to look at a problem and have all the basics "taken into account right off the bat". Congratulations, btw, for recognizing that as a fundamental problem.

It seems to boil down to the choice between removing guns to keep the majority of children safe, or allowing people to keep their guns so they can keep their own children safe. Many aren't willing to take the chance, some don't think any but their own are worthy of such protection. I have to say it seems that the former has more historic success than the latter in terms of modern first world societies. And it's hard not to correlate US gun laws with our high murder rate, our disproportionate prison population, excessive force used by police, and other crime-industry related aberrations.

No. Absolutely no. Evolution, that it's happening right now, is a fact. The theory of evolution (which is different from the observable fact that species evolve), that which describes its mechanisms and models its behavior, supported with mountains of evidence from many fields of endeavor, is our best current explanation for the observable fact of evolution. It's not a proof, that's not what science looks for, it's a theory and represents the collaborative efforts of thousands of people who've actually studied these things, instead of people like you who've only been taught old ignorance from people who have religious reasons to confuse and lie to inquisitive people. We don't discuss creationism here (because it's all the same old lies, repeated and refuted over and over ad nauseam), and that's not my intent at all. Evolution is a perfect example of science explaining reality is such a way that god(s) are squeezed completely out of the ignorance gaps in our knowledge. But there is little to be done for those who think their flawed bible is inerrant and can be used to calculate the age of the Earth. These are people who, for some reason, are willing to add orders of magnitude more layers of confusion and irrational arguments in order to claim inerrancy. I think one needs to see a reason why supernatural explanations aren't necessary before one can discern why trust might be better than faith.

This is, in essence, what the OP is suggesting as well. Henry seems to be saying that man can "invent" a religion if he doesn't like any of the current choices. His reasoning seems to be based on what each individual deems worthy of their god, that a form of worship that makes the most subjective sense is going to be the one most likely to appeal to Her/Him/It. You and Henry are both selecting "none of the above", but Henry is selecting a different religion and you're selecting science. I'm always fascinated by Henry's type of argument. None of the religions make sense, too much violence for a loving god, too many contradictions in the doctrine, doesn't match with reality... but there MUST be a god, so the religion MUST be the problem. Why don't more people question the god part? Remove that and the rest fails on merit.

If this world had 4-5 times more glaciers than Earth...

If you understood that evolution and life are constant, ongoing processes, you'd realize that this link you're unable to find doesn't exist. There's no need to link a single, ongoing event that's never been completely disrupted in hundreds of millions of years. You creationists are always looking for "transitional fossils" without realizing that every fossil is transitional, just as every living thing is in transition. Evolution is a gradual change in allele frequency within a population over time, yet you demand science produce some kind of missing link. Are you familiar with the concept of emergence? Some things aren't physical, they're more like events. Fire is an emergent event rather than a thing. Fire always happens when the conditions for it are right, enough heat, oxygen and fuel will always result in a fire event. Same thing with lightning, same thing with life. These are complicated events that emerge when a bunch of much less complex requirements are met. They weren't designed that way, they work because it emerged that way. You haven't bothered to understand evolution to the point where you could figure out what you're asking for completely misses the mark. It makes sense to you, but that's because you're ignorant of the mechanisms you're criticizing. I mean no offense, ignorance is curable with knowledge and reason. This is not a good place to apply your supernatural belief system. Science explains life to a much greater depth than religion ever could.

Much of it comes down to efficiency within a system. Life is the most efficient way to use available energy, so it's actually a lot more probable than you might think. You're looking at the total marvelous end result and thinking, "Whoa, no way that could have happened without a designer", and ignoring the part where all these numerous systems started out much fewer and simpler, and got more complex over time. It doesn't always work that way with evolution, but in this case it did. These systems function in harmony, not because they were designed that way, but because each system had to be built on available resources, and improvements tended to be passed along to offspring. Eyes started out as little light-sensitive patches that gave an advantage. Millions of years of refinement gives us the eyes we humans think are a marvel, and they are, but if you think they're some god-like design, you should study how flawed our eyes are. The photocells point backwards, away from the light (and the wires connecting them point forwards, and have to be fed back, and how the blood vessels that feed receptors sit on top of the retina, blocking light. That's the source for retinopathy, something that affects half the people over 40. Evolution can be considered a trial and error process. Think of it in terms of the evolution of iron in human technology. No human started out saying, "I'm going to design the perfect metal for making things that need to be hard and maybe sharp". Early humans forged iron, and used it for many things before they tried scraping the slag off the top to remove impurities. Further trial and error led them to allowing some carbon to remain in the iron, and thus steel was created. Not designed, but discovered, over a long time, through experiment and testing.

False Dilemma, logical fallacy. A creator is NOT the only solution. Life is more efficient at using available energy from sunlight. It's completely rational that systems would tend towards it. There is no need for god(s) to explain how things got to be the way they are. In fact, you open up a whole big batch of bad reasoning when you try, since you have to also explain who created the creator. Humanism is my favorite religion.

! Moderator Note Arguments from Incredulity and Ridicule are a poor substitute for learning what mainstream science holds to be our best current explanations. Perhaps assuming all those people are wrong isn't as effective as it sounds. If you're having trouble with gravity, you need to go back to the basics and keep moving forward. This is not the time to plant your staff on the bridge and scream, "None shall pass!" You have some fundamental misunderstandings that need education, not discussion. No offense, but discussions like this should come after you know your subject better. Thread closed.

When we use various techniques to backtrack the BB expansion, we can go back to just a fraction of a second after it began. Before that, the universe was so small, so hot, so dense, our current maths just resolve to infinity. We don't understand what happens to physics at such incredible energies. The four forces seem to be unified at t=0, but at 10-43 seconds after expansion starts, the forces separate. This is where our math starts giving us meaningful numbers. It's an expansion OF space because that's all there was, there was nothing else to expand into. It's hard to visualize, since we want anything that expands to do so INTO another area. When the thing that's expanding is... well, EVERYTHING THERE IS, our perceptions still visualize that as displacing one thing for another. It helps me to think of the universe as an ocean with no boundaries, and more water (space) is constantly being added, making the matter in the ocean grow farther apart from each other. I don't think about edges or boundaries at all, and that helps. For what it's worth, I have no problem with someone attributing all this to their god(s). I actually think it's far more awesome that the universe developed like this rather than just being willed into existence as-is a few thousand years ago. Power is one thing, but that kind of patience is inspiring.

Once off planet, resources for continuing to thrive off planet increase. It's only inefficient if you have to keep going back home. This looks like the direction we'll be taking, using drones to mine asteroids for the resources to make more drones and infrastructure to support independence from Earth's resources. The key to extraplanetary resources is to leave them in space and use them out there instead of stripping the home world. It's hideously expensive to bring a ton of steel up from the surface of Earth to orbit; better to mine the iron from an asteroid and remove the impurities in space. Similarly, you could have an asteroid made out of gold, but leaving the planet and trying to bring it back to Earth would cost so much the gold would have little value. It's still just gold, but you paid ten times more (total guess) than what Earth gold costs to produce.

How about this? Imagine a line. That's one dimension, length. Now take every single point on that line, and move away from the line at 90 degrees, a right angle. Now you have a square, right? Two dimensions, length and width. Now take your square, and let's make it out of latex like the balloon, so we can later expand it. For now though, let's add the third dimension, height. Take every single point on your square, and move away at 90 degrees. Now you have a cube, in three dimensions. Every bit of that cube can expand like the surface of a latex balloon. Now let's expand the cube. If all the matter in the universe starts out fully condensed inside this cube, as we expand, we'll be creating space. The matter will become less dense and less hot as we expand, until it reaches a point where it's no longer condensed under pressure. Eventually, if we keep expanding, there will be space between the matter, space that will continue to expand while the matter cools and breaks up into smaller bits. The cube (the universe) continues to expand because the space between the matter is expanding. Again, this is analogy. It will break down if applied outside of the special circumstances for which it was invoked.

What about deciding your lack of belief is the best default until evidence supports something specific?

If they can go off world, why are they running out of resources?

Did you post this in the wrong thread? What does this have to do with atheism and closed-mindedness?

Remember that the balloon analogy is a 2D representation of what's happening in 3D. We're only using the surface of the balloon for expansion, not the air inside. Draw the stars and matter on the surface, then blow up the balloon. The drawings of the stars and matter get farther apart from each other during expansion because the space in between them is expanding.

False premise. Remember that the universe is all there is the entire time space is expanding. I hesitate to introduce the balloon analogy, but what the heck. Imagine the surface of a balloon (just the surface, not the empty inside space!). No mouthpiece, seamless latex, very tiny. As it expands (not explodes), the surface gets bigger, the way space did after the BB. If you draw some dots on the surface and then blow it up, the balloon represents space and the dots represent matter like planets and stars. Space is expanding in between the matter, everywhere at once. No center on the surface of a balloon, right?

I don't know where you got this, but it isn't true. There is no origin point for the BB. Actually, our forensics backtracked the Big Bang expansion back to a fraction of a second after it happened, and the universe at that time was no bigger than an atom. All the matter, outrageously hot and dense. I think your problem is you keep thinking space expanded into something. TheBB was an expansion OF space, not an expansion INTO space.

! Moderator Note Kramer, you make it so difficult to discuss science with you. You make claims you can't support, and when asked you fall back on the fact that you're not a scientist. Yet you continue to make your bold, anti-mainstream claims, asserting them in a way that demands evidence, which you don't provide. Discussions like this eventually circle back to the same crossroads; provide some supportive evidence, or start making assumptions and guesses that may not have a foundation in reality. And we don't go down that latter road here. It lacks all rigor. You continue to use the same process in your inquiries, so your speculative thread closures are on a par with others who challenge mainstream science without providing evidence to support their reasoning. I would hope you post here instead of some of the more loosely run forums where wild guesswork is allowed and even encouraged, because we ask you for a more rigorous approach. We challenge you to find that which will provide a reason for our membership to think your ideas reflect reality better than one of our current explanations. No more hand-waving, no more Arguments from Incredulity, and no more "I know I'm right but I don't have to show evidence because I'm a layman". Without supportive evidence, I have to close this speculation. Don't open this one again until you're prepared to be more rigorous.

Take your time, I'm not going to be able to get to it for awhile.

I'm surprised at your age you still think this is clever. Protip: it never was.

You need to look up what dimensions are. They aren't what you think. They aren't parallel universes. We have three spatial dimensions, and one temporal dimension. With those, we can plot any point in spacetime.