Phi for All

To clarify: We're a free, all-volunteer science discussion site. We have a broad range of members, from professionals to amateurs. Everybody here is generous with their time and knowledge, and I don't think you've been here long enough to talk about "most of these members". You seemed to take offense where none was offered, and then you made rude comments. This made it seem like you had a chip on your shoulder, that you joined up mad and wanted to vent on somebody. If that's not the case, again, I urge you to stop digging this hole and start discussing science. It might make a big difference.

*sigh* I said it was a lot of non-science. Just the opposite. So, you admit you never enjoyed science, which would have given you a methodology you could use to check on anything you were unsure of, and instead have decided somehow that it's all wrong, and that you'd rather believe Bulla the Rainbow Man. Now, you're here telling us about physics. I enjoy your joke as well. Very amusing.

Um, that thread was talking about how to be a better forum poster. It had been answered well and didn't need the obfuscation you were so generously offering. If anything, locking it prevented you from breaking any rules. But you seem so determined... Almost like you have an agenda... I keep waiting for a funny punch line. This forum sucks... beer with a straw? Your reaction to what happened is so out of proportion that I suspect you're doing this on a dare, or for initiation into a creationist club, or at the urging of your parole officer or something. If you're serious, just take a deep breath, stop posting in these support areas, and start talking some science here. That's what everybody wants you to do, trust me. That's why we're all here, for the science. You should discuss science. Really.

Who has had to be corrected several times already, showing that some of your foundational premises are flawed. It's oddly obvious to me that you should shore that up before building on it any more. Your house fell down with the first huff.

That is a lot of non-science to wade through. No offense, but you are extremely verbose. It makes your explanations seem propped up by hot air to me. This might fly on Bulla the Rainbow Man's crackpot blog, where the theme seems to be rampant wordiness to bedazzle the ignorant, but this is a science discussion site. Conciseness helps everyone. In my first readthrough, I have to say I was a bit appalled that you quoted that NASA story to give yourself some legitimacy, then had the gall to tell us what they really meant, because NASA has no idea what they're saying. That's really poor form. Brilliant people performing work that is flat out amazing, helping us understand the universe, and it's just plain silly for you to come here and tell us that all their successes have been based on being wrong about everything. Bleh.

! Moderator Note I think Vexen has gotten what was needed from this thread. Since the wheels seem to be coming off of it rather quickly, I'm going to close it. Was that the bet? See how fast you could get called a troll? What about the SCIENCE?!

How could you? I've never heard a good explanation for the completely contradictory order in which things were created between Genesis 1 & 2. There literally is no way they can both be literally correct. Did God create the beasts, see they were good, and then create Adam & Eve? Or did he create just Adam, then create the beasts, then bring them to Adam to see what he would call them? Great question. Who decides? There are over 9000 versions of Christianity alone, and they aren't the only ones who use Genesis.

Given your second and third sentences, I'm having trouble placing the tone of the first. It seems contradictory, but maybe I'm misunderstanding. Hasn't everyone been advising him similarly? To be clear, I think this is a matter of Vexen using too many fallacious arguments, which are always a bit annoying. Ad hominem and Appeal to Authority in the same argument is really inconsistent with our purpose here. We want to focus our criticism on ideas, not on people.

I think the word "believe" is misused when applied to both religion and science. The system by which we validate an explanation, our individual belief system, has many types of belief within it. If I believe in god(s), I do so with nothing tangible to support that belief, the god(s) aren't willing to be observed, which to me is faith. If I believe the "consciousness" lives on after the death of the body, I have a little more support (energy can't be destroyed, only changed!), but this type of belief is more wishful thinking. I want it to be true rather than really thinking it's true. The preponderance of evidence favors the when-you're-dead-you're-dead explanation. The way I believe in science is more trust. I trust the explanations science offers because I know I can check everything about it, how the data was gathered, how the experiments were handled, the conclusions, the peer review, it's all out there. And I know there are thousands of people out there trying to overthrow each theory about how the natural world works. The more they're unable to refute an explanation, the more trustworthy it becomes to me. So, if you think about it, believing in miracles means putting some very strong belief in something we can't possibly be sure of. Where else in our lives do we do this? Would you cross a busy street blindfolded with ear plugs, trusting that the cars will avoid hitting you? I've also heard many religious people claim that believing in miracles goes against their faith. For them, trying to support faith with evidence of the existence of god(s) means your faith isn't strong enough by itself.

You're probably one of those raging, pedantic intellectuals who insist I learn what's inside the box before trying to think outside it.

Actually, what's "NEVER happened" is a "true" miracle. Not once. Do you have any examples where science has given up on an attempt to explain any so-called miracle?

! Moderator Note And of course, since this is a non-mainstream speculation, which can't live here in Classical Physics (because it isn't), I'm moving this to our Speculations section. Please remember that you need to back up any assertion with evidence, especially when asked for it. If you have a problem with this modnote, please don't discuss it here, just hit the Report Post button and other staff members will respond.

It's not a perfect system, but it's the best we've had in the last ten years, imo. We've tweaked it to suit the majority of situations and members, but we're obviously not going to please everyone. It seems to be part of intelligent human nature to walk into a situation and immediately want to change it to suit ourselves. But it's even more intelligent to wait, imo, give it time so you can see the dynamics of the system at work before you start changing any part of it. Without that knowledge, how would you know if your changes are really beneficial?

Maybe. It's a risk, it could happen. Don't forget, as you see the groups fighting each other, that you're probably seeing that because the media will always go for the story with the most aggression. We seem to stay on the same channel more often when the story is about something dangerous. But look beyond those stories, and there are many other stories of groups that are using knowledge gleaned from a myriad of sources to benefit many of our most noble ventures. And science has flourished in this century in large part because of improved communication and cooperation between nations and foreign scientists. The biggest problem you run into by not sharing knowledge is you have no way to review that knowledge. Until you share it with someone else who can help you confirm your knowledge is right in the first place, it's not really meaningful. And most ideas are wrong, so it's good to share so you can either find out if your idea can be made to work, or if it's completely wrong. And being wrong just means you can drop that line of thinking and move on to something productive. Yay!

For this generation, and the next, maybe. But my grandchildren would grow up in a world where people had stopped sharing what they know on a global scale. They wouldn't have the access to diverse perspectives that I do, and their grandchildren would have even less. There are a great many things that make humans special in our environment, but some of the most important are high degrees of cooperation and communication. If we didn't have them, our high intelligence would manifest itself very differently. We might not even be as intelligent without them. I think of knowledge as a tool, it isn't good or evil. Think of all the times you've heard of knowledge being used in a bad way. No matter how many you can think of, for each of those there are hundreds, thousands of times when knowledge is used beneficially. And since you can't know if the information you share will save us or doom us, I think you should just use your best judgment and share what you know, since the benefits seem worth the risks. We get saved all the time by sharing knowledge. Not once have we been doomed. Um, that I know of.

Vigilance is almost always a great thing. However, sharing information is such an important part of being human and especially being a human interested in science, that we can afford to take risks with it. The quickest way back to the Dark Ages, imo, is to stop sharing information.

You qualified first that this observation was "confirmed beyond doubt". What this would mean is that the phenomenon was observed, an hypothesis was formed, the data was shared, and other scientists were able to re-create the experiment or observe the phenomenon. Skeptics would challenge the methodology used until they were satisfied that everything was done on the up and up, then the skeptics would react the way the rest of the scientists would react, which is to start testing other theories against this new knowledge to see how it fits in with our models. It's not like if a theory were just a little stronger it would be a fact. That's not the right way to look at it. Theories are based on what is observed. They attempt to explain what is going on based on what we already know and what we're observing. When new data comes along, the theories adapt to take it into consideration. It is true we wouldn't have a theory without facts to observe, but I don't think looking at it this way is helpful. Without the theory, facts don't help us put the puzzle together. I do, but I don't think we see the same possibilities. I see a way to make sense of the world in a way that I can double-check if I have doubts, a trustworthy way to explain things that happen or don't happen. I see a way to minimize my guessing.

It is, but it often requires you to know the concepts thoroughly before they gain their crispiness. It's a huge part of the problem that the average person thinks these crispy clear concepts should be obvious as well, even if you haven't studied them.

! Moderator Note Since this is attempting to be a better explanation than current mainstream, I'm going to put this in our Speculations section. Try to provide as much evidence as possible every time you "assert" something. We can't keep speculation in the mainstream sections where students go to study. Thanks for understanding, and good luck.

It wasn't meant to be condescending, because you ARE in ignorance of the situation, just like the rest of us. We can't know what really caused the Big Bang. Even the theory only explains what happened very shortly after it started, and the way it's developed. There's a big difference between thinking on the possibilities, speculating by using what we know to support what we want to find out, and guessing based on intuition and what feels right.

I think the strength lies in the methodology. We make sure each step is not a leap ("Aliens from another universe!"), that we know how firm the ground is before accepting any path. It's a painstaking process, but it's a trustworthy one, the most trustworthy process we've ever found for explaining the natural world. I think the weakness lies in the sheer complexity and vastness of the knowledge we've accumulated. The average person is always looking for ways to understand without taking the time to actually study what's in "the box". The average person thinks they can somehow intuit what science is after, that because they don't know much of what's inside "the box", this somehow gives them a special ability to think "outside the box". Don't mistake a desire for productive solutions for a lack of curiosity. Anybody can come up with an idea that explains a certain phenomenon, but you won't get much productivity out of it if you don't approach the idea based on our current best explanations. "Anything's possible" isn't true. There are lots of impossible things. As for self-doubt, that's why we work with theory instead of concrete answers. We try to always look at theory as our best current explanation, subject to new information and observations. If there is any fizzling out in the science party, it's because of misconceptions within the general public. Popular media has warped the meaning of words that have very specific meanings in science, like theory, logic, and dimension. The more the general public decides that science is too much to learn, the more they start making up their own, and I think that's hurt science a lot in the last few decades.

! Moderator Note #1, the whole point of this thread is to find supportive evidence for a real Jesus outside of Christian scripture. You should have gleaned this by now. The Bible can't be used to corroborate its own claims. #2, please spend less time admonishing others about their study habits. In general, refrain from personal judgments about things you have no way of knowing. And #3, please spend less time concerned over the reputation system. Further posts about it in any thread not set aside for that purpose will be considered off-topic and will be placed in the Trash Can, as will any replies to this modnote that don't go through official Report This Post channels.

I think you should look at the misconceptions you had in your opening post, and then look at the knowledge that was shared with you. I think it's sad that all you took away from this is more misconceptions. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know anything. Your last sentence fills me with sadness. Postponing a search for knowledge until later (?) seems like giving up.

And now we can see why, "We don't know yet" is a much better explanation than guesswork based on ignorance of the situation. Btw, if you're going to pursue this line, it should be in Speculations. We have a mainstream answer to this question.

It also cats and dogs and monkeys and bears and bushes and bees as well. But us apples are the only ones that can spread our seeds off-planet. If nothing eats us first. Waldorf's Law.