Phi for All

Watch a movie? You're obviously talking about some kind of induced hallucination. Can you tell us what you want to accomplish? There are some cool optical illusions you can do to yourself, but that may not be what you're after.

It's a matter of intelligence and experience, not of evolution. There's really no such thing as "evolved enough". It's more of a developmental concern. I agree. Every discovery in one field leads to more discoveries in other fields. Part of the way we adapt as humans to changing environments is to equip ourselves to deal better in them. As we continue to explore, we find new ways to expand our knowledge. This is one of the many reasons we need to keep funding science. Our intelligence and tool use are augmented tremendously by our ability to communicate and cooperate. Remove any of those qualities and discovery is hampered dramatically. I think we'll start harvesting materials from space in the very near future, for use offworld so we can continue to explore and harvest more. And in doing so, we're going to develop new technologies and new uses for materials to help us solve new problems.

I can live with that, I suppose, until someone tells me they're so confident in their hope for salvation that it lets them lie to me or cheat on their spouse or steal from a neighbor but still be forgiven.

To be fair, not every religious person is a creationist who denies evolution. And also to be fair, creationism offers a much quicker road to understanding than science does. For those who had trouble with biology in school, pearls of wisdom like, "If we evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys" offer easily digestible sound bytes that let them dismiss hundreds of hours of study and reading. And they don't even have to read their own Bible, they just have to learn to parrot what their mentors tell them. I've seen more than a few creationists misquote their own holy book because scriptures were bent to serve an agenda. So it's not really thickness, it's laziness. There are a lot of people these days who don't like to read and just want their education in small doses. So they trade accuracy and depth for convenience. It's magazine mentality.

Thanks for this. I thought I was explaining myself badly, but you grasp the concept very well. Just yesterday, someone told me, "Have a little faith", and I thought about this thread. Was he really asking me to hold out some hope that our work would pay off? Or perhaps trust that the efforts we'd made to improve our probability of success would tip the scales in our favor? But since he said "Have a little faith", and since I know this guy is somewhat religious, I think he was asking me to rely on his god's providence to make us successful. Overlooking the obviously oxymoronic "a little faith", I couldn't help but think that if he really was applying unquestioning, indubitable belief (faith) in our success, he's already be spending his commission check. I think most people use "faith" interchangeably with "hope", and that's a big part of what bothers me when I hear them justifying why their religion is the Truth, the Way, and that faith in their god provides miracles. Faith isn't magical, it's just hope with irrational rationalization.

That's funny. Crapp® for the iPad.

! Moderator Note After deliberation, it was determined that the level of abuse and foul language in rigney's post, along with a history of assertions based on little and supported by less, has earned him a permanent suspension. When someone questions your premise, it's not a personal attack. Thread closed.

rigney has been banned for abusive behavior and inappropriate language, on top of his history of failure to back up his arguments. We wish him well wherever he goes.

I think IKEA has desks with a sterile box where your feet go.

And at the same time I'm arguing that faith, doubt-free and unquestioning, should be replaced by trust in reality. Scientific method tells us that our reality is constantly being updated, like a jigsaw puzzle die-cut from the skins of an enormous onion, layer upon layer deep, piecing together explanations for phenomena that we should never consider complete. We should continue to question what we know and never assume truth, but rather trust that reality gives us the most reliable way to accumulate knowledge. Faith is too final, it claims something is True, and that that Truth be accepted without reservation. That's the part that seems dangerous to me, to accept something as ultimately True when we know that our knowledge of the universe can change. Trust is built up from a foundation of many observations and experiences and is a much more reliable place for our strongest beliefs, imo.

Do you cross your feet while they're under the desk? The bottoms are made for traction, and if the lace from the first shoe gets pulled by the bottom of the other shoe, the first one gets untied. I think it would be odd to spend six hours at a desk and not adjust your feet every once in a while. It also could be a software problem. I recommend rebooting.

There are multiple good reasons why we place importance on things we can't see. It played a heavy role in our evolutionary success to imagine predators in every shadow. It allows us to predict and prepare for multiple eventualities. These are good applications of belief in things we can't directly observe. I'm just saying that gods or the power of gods seems an unlikely place to invest your strongest, most doubt-free form of belief, your faith. I'm also beginning to think the people who describe their faith to me in those terms must be exaggerating, otherwise they would be like Moontanman's friend's neighbor who would allow himself to be shot to prove his faith,

I didn't contest that it can happen. I just don't think the first video showed combustion legitimately. Way too many opportunities for editing, and the final shot was so tight they could have had an open flame near the cotton to start the fire.

Here's an interview with the Mythbusters that covers cyanoacrylates. It could be that the first video used baking soda as an accelerator to make the cotton burn.

Because it's not FAITH in personal resilience, patience and fortitude. It's TRUST in those things, because those things aren't supernatural, you've come to trust yourself. Trust built from everyday experience, tempered by reason and rational judgement. Faith is unquestioning, without doubt, while trust overcomes doubt and invites a questioning, rational mind to continue exploring for explanations based on yourself and your abilities. God loses because he's not needed. The person who is resilient and patient, who overcomes his problems based on TRUST in his own abilities, that person doesn't just give up his responsibility to be persistent about looking for ways to protect his family, or ensure his health, or get that promotion at work, or pass that test, or avoid an accident while driving. I'd go so far as to say faith makes us weaker since we rely on it for no rational reason, and ignore our own strengths.

And that's exactly how faith gets justified every time. I'm not saying it doesn't work for some people. I'm saying that the nature of faith is one of complete mental justification, so that faith is strengthened if it works, and faith is strengthened if it doesn't work. When difficult times are weathered, faith gets the credit rather than personal resilience, patience and fortitude. When difficult times get even more difficult, God's will is invoked and more justification for faith is generated. A life-threatening illness is overcome and faith in God rather than trust in the doctor is responsible. Angels watch over us rather than all the real-life steps you've taken to ensure your family's safety, but if something bad still happens, it's God's will testing your faith. Faith is God giving us the choice of heads-I-win, tails-you-lose. Reasoned thought is the only way God loses in these scenarios.

This is a great example of what faith has been described to me as (although taken to an extreme, life-threatening level). Unwavering conviction that your God will keep you safe, to the point where you'll do something irrational because of that strong belief. I know there are scriptures that tell Christians not to tempt God by putting themselves in these types of situations, but if you dial it down a notch or two you see numerous examples of faith so strong it leads Christian Scientists to pray instead of seeking medical help, or families to sell everything they have and give it to charity because they're convinced the Rapture is tomorrow. The part that makes me so skeptical of faith is that, in this instance, if the neighbor could convince someone to fire a bullet at him to test his faith, the outcome would always be attributed to God, no matter what. If the shooter had a last-second reconsideration and purposely missed, it would be because of the neighbor's faith. If he just simply couldn't fire at all, again it would be chalked up to faith. And if the neighbor was killed by the bullet, those who share the neighbor's faith would attribute his death to God's will ("The Lord called this faithful man home"). Every outcome is justified by feelings alone and rational thought is forgotten while the faith of those still living is "strengthened".

There's definitely an exothermic reaction taking place. I'm just skeptical that the first video didn't use something besides glue and cotton to initiate the combustion.

I really don't like how tightly the camera is pulled in as the cotton catches fire. It suggests to me that an open flame somewhere nearby was applied to provide combustion. I think this video is faked. I think this would lead to a major recall of the product if it were true. Have you tried this yourself?

Video evidence, please. [/MacGyver]

Again, claiming "all taxes trickle down" is a meaningless phrase in this context. If a tax is imposed on a product/industry, manufacturers can try to recoup those taxes by raising their prices. At that point, the consumer can choose to pay the higher price or look for a competitor who runs their business a little leaner, and has chosen not to pass the new taxes along to their clients. That's a better use of free market principles than trying to shelter profits from taxes, or arranging for no-bid contracts, or lobbying for exemptions and incentives the other guys in your industry don't get. And I think I implied that when I said there's nothing wrong with the concept. In practice, there are many problems and most are caused by artificial tampering with the relevant pressures. Come on. You took that out of context. What corporations are doing in the OP isn't illegal, but it shouldn't be part of what is allowed because those shelters are giving unfair advantage to certain corporations. Good examples where corporations are using tactics that shouldn't be allowed in a true free market economy.

It's also just as easy to point to a statement and show it to be a lie, which is not attacking the individual. For our discussion purposes, can we stick to this caveat? That means, of course, that pointing to individual acts as murder is going to be more in line with the rules than calling people murderers. The line is not really all that fine.

Objective truth doesn't exist, imo, although it would seem that we need further distinctions about "truth" the way I feel we do about "belief". The answers to me asking if you brushed your teeth today and me asking if God exists have differing values of "truth". Neither is very objective, since you could fall back on the literal meaning (you ran your brush over more than one tooth), while I meant the dentist's definition (two minutes of vigorous brushing with a dentifrice), but the answers to if God exists are so subjective as to be rendered meaningless for the purposes of defining "truth". I think my pets do more hoping than putting faith in me. They hope I'll share my sandwich, they hope I'll take them for a walk right NOW, they hope I'll stop typing and pet them.... Why is faith strong? It's based solely on feelings about things we've never really observed, and we know that our feelings are often capricious and biased. For something this important, shouldn't we look for more to judge?

I'm promoting LED lighting solutions at the moment, and besides the obvious superiority over incandescent and fluorescent lighting, two areas where LEDs are really gaining a foothold are aquariums and hydroponics. LEDs have no problems with being dimmer-controlled to simulate natural conditions, and you can use only the spectra you need. Does anyone have any specialty aquarium LEDs that highlight the blue and red spectra only? I know they're working great for hydroponics but I wondered if anyone has tried them with their corals. I heard about an amazing hyrdo setup for tomatoes where the blue/red LED tube (180 degree illumination) was fixed in the center, and the plants rotated slowly in a cylinder around the light. This not only simulated day/night, but the gravity changes helped the plants develop stronger stalks like being blown about by the wind would. I wonder if someone isn't doing something amazing for growing corals. No. The prize is for finding Waldo. Quit clowning around.

It's probably a cultural thing. Phrases like "time-wasting", "kicking the habit", and "panicked articles" don't have much of a counterpart in French culture. Les mauvaises habitudes sont de bonnes choses!