MigL

Believe in Religion, or a use for Religion ? I myself, don't believe in Religion. My life has been good, and I've never suffered some thing like the death of a child, that would cause me to question the point of it all, and start believing in a higher power with a higher purpose. Some other people, on the other hand ... Do I believe in a purpose for Religion ? Of course. As explained above, it can provide a 'crutch' to support people who are suffering terribly; always a good thing. If not taken literally ( and adjusted for the times ), it can provide people with a moral compass to guide them through life. And, if you want to take advantage of others, there is nothing better than an easily corruptible institution, like Religion, which will allow you to prey on those who are weak and suffering.

Really ? How do you explain pair creation from energetic photons, or matter-antimatter annihilation to energetic photons ? Neither 'matter' nor 'mass' is conserved in these known processes; mass-energy ( they are equivalent ) and momentum are conserved. Your assumed model doesn't predict what is observed. Yet I can go backwards and forward on a number line; I can only go forward at a specific rate in time, a rate which changes according to relative velovities of different observers, and, depth in a gravitational well of different observers. Also a number line can be infinitely subdivided, there is no indication that space, time, or space-time can be. The geometric aspect of our best theory, GR, which is based on observational evidence ( not assumptions ), fails at extremely small scales. No geometry means nothing as simple as a number line, or even multiple number lines for multiple observers. Your assumed model doesn't predict what is observed.

Fiscal conservative, social liberal. Although I can be somewhat 'flexible', and like to think about, and explore, different situations/views. My world view is essentially 'out my window'; I don't worry much about things, or people, I can't affect, or be affected by. I know it seems kind of 'cold', but if you worry about everything, you die early from a stress induced heart attack or stroke.

Why does that seem 'logical' to you ? The universe is 'expanding', and separations between galaxy clusters getting larger, so if we wind the clock backwards, they start coming together. If we wind it back far enough, we get to the primordial Hydrogen and Helium gas, before the first stars and galaxies formed. If we wind back further, we are effectively 'compressing' and putting energy into the system , making it very hot. Back a little further and atoms cannot form ( where CMB comes from ) Back a little further and elementary particles can't even exist; it is all radiation and nothing has mass (forces recombine into electroweak ). The last wind takes us back to a point where the geometry of space-time is lost. There are no distances and no time; the universe is in a small hot dense state where the chaos of quantum fluctuations rule and 'bubbles' and (worm ) holes pop up indiscriminately. It makes no sense to speak of distances at these scales ( called Planck scale ) because there are infinitely many paths to any destination, nor does it make sense to speak of time, because past and future all occur randomly. J A Wheeler called this state, quantum foam, and this state would have been unstable; just like balancing a pencil on its tip, eventually it will fall over, and we don't know when. Similarly, the hot dense early universe was unstable, and it could have been in that state for trillions of years, or for an instant; it is irrelevant because there was no time. A quantum fluctuation 'tipped the pencil over', and the expansion resulted which we call the Big Bang. Notice that all this is simply winding time backwards, we don't introduce any 'causative actors' because if we introduce anything, it needs to come from somewhere or be caused by something. And, as you said ... Oh, and there is no such thing as 'absolute nothing'.

Assume you and I are prehistoric people who have no idea the Earth is round. We are both at the equator, but separated from each other by a couple of thousand miles along it, and we decide to do an 'experiment'. We both head due North, and after several hundred miles of travel, we notice that our lateral distance has decreased considerably. The farther north we travel, the faster our lateral distance decreases, until finally, at a place with the signpost "North Pole", we crash into each other. So what do we conclude from our 'experiment' ? Some mysterious 'force' seems to be drawing us together, and this 'force' seems to act without any connection between us. Now all this is due to the fact that prehistoric peoples didn't know they were living on a curved surface. We present day people, know the Earth's surface is curved, so we don't come to such foolish conclusions. But what if it isn't just two dimensional surfaces that can be curved; what if both space and time comprise a manifold that can be 'warped' or curved by the configuration of the energy contained within it, whether that energy is in the form of mass, momentum, stress, or even pressure. It seems some of us are still foolish enough to make those assumptions, and wonder what is connecting the two bodies drawn toward each other, when the 'path' ( known as a geodesic ) is simply constrained to the 'lay' of the land ( known as a 4 dimensional space-time manifold )

My largest class in second year Physics at Brock University, Classical Mechanics, in78-79, had 22 students, only one of whom was a girl. In third year Physics there were four of us. In fourth year, just two. My fourth year course in advanced QM usually had us two and the prof ( Dr. Shukla ) at the bboard writing equations. The other guy ( who was a genious compared to me ) stayed to do a Masters degree; when I ran into him a few years later, he told me he had quit halfway through it, and gone into business/finances because there is no money in Physics

Most important metric ... Where would you rather live ? And if your answer is China, I will gladly start a crowd fund to buy you a one way ticket.

Yes. Essentially, the strong nuclear force that binds nucleons together in the nucleus, is 'residual' color force which binds quarks in the nucleon. It is obviously not the same mechanism as VdW forces, but it is similar in that VdW can be considered 'residual' electromagnetic force.

Significance to me, or to you ? A 'significance' is another of those subjective terms, it is obviously not the same for everyone. This being a science site, we should try to be more objective, or, at the very least, strive to define what a subjective term means to yourself. Not tell others what it should mean to them.

Is it the spirituality, or the people who corrupt it to their own ends that reduce other humans to garbage ? ( or is that the 'guns vs. people who use them' argument )

I believe I already have. Not quite. Vaccines with slightly better than 50% effectiveness have eliminated diseases which used to kill thousands of people. It would be troubling ( stupid actually ) if you didn't go with the odds. I believe I said that. I believe I said that too Well, at least Eise reads my posts ...

Yeah. The term 'Abrahamic' doesn't really cover Scientology and Tom Cruise. Maybe INow should have said "exposure to American Religious thinking" If D Trump gets back in, America won't become 'great again', it will be a 'sh*t-hole country' whose cult leader is blindly/religiously followed by a 'basket of deplorables'.

Thank you for taking the time to actually try to understand my position. You've hit the nail on the head, 'truth' is variable; we can constantly improve on it, but never quite reach it. It is the journey, not the destination. But, using your analogy, a person who has 'good enough' morals may be on his way to sainthood, but he/she isn't quite there yet, so we don't use the 'saint' descriptor for him/her. Similarly for 'truth'; if absolute truth is unattainable, it makes no sense to use that descriptor for our current knowledge base as it is in a constant state of flux. Other members definition of 'truth' fit the criteria of prehistoric man as well as modern man, but they are not the same, so saying prehistoric man did not have the truth, implies we do not have the truth compared to a future human. Sort of renders the term meaningless, doesn't it ?

Even a >6 in screen would drive me nuts ( or has that ship sailed already ? ) trying to read the miniscule text. They tell me my Samsung has a beautiful screen, but I need to change glasses to see it clearly. I do my Linux distro installs on 3x3x1/2 in Android TV boxes ( AMLogic 4 and 8 core chipsets ) hooked up to older 26-32 in flat TVs. Much easier on the eyes and at $ 40, much cheaper than a phone, even if you include the cost of an old flat panel TV and keyboard/mouse.

You believe in non-locality; I, and many others ( even Eise ), believe in the absence of local reality, and we had a long discussion about it several months back. I'm sure Mr. Anderson ( Neo's simulation in the Matrix ) thought the same thing, until he swallowed that red pill. What if it turns out Elon Musk's idea is 'true', and we are living in a simulation. Will you then claim your new 'truth' is the real truth, and the current one ( which you now claim is real ) was false ? Your 'truth' would need to have quite a bit of malleability, just like those sailors who had no lenses to see the horizon with.

What if the model itself tells us there is no local reality, simply probability densities, until a measurement is made ?

Ancient peoples had a 'map' which told them the Earth was flat, and as far as they could tell, it was; that was their reality. We have a map which predicts the way to the Eiffel Tower, yet we know it omits some locations along the way ( or predicts some locations to be at infinity ), yet we get to the Eiffel Tower so it is true. Tomorrow we have another map, one which shows hidden locations and gives proper distances ( not infinities ) and still gets us to the Eiffel Tower. Is this second map 'truer' ? ( loose analogy of maps to scientific theories ) Science is never 'true'. It evolves, and can only ever be falsified in its description of reality, and reality, as Seth states, is very hard to nail down. Is our 'true' map good enough when it can't tell us the state of a cat in a box? Or more precisely, if anything is real before we make a measurement ? My definition of 'true' is absolute, and I know there is no such thing. Your definition seems to include "good enough, for now', implying that 'true' could change over time as knowledge expands. @Moontanman I do agree with you about 'holy' books, but why should 'true' apply to them when it doesn't apply to so many other things ? They are mostly allegorical writings meant to convey the morals of the times they were written in. Taking them as 'Divine Scripture', historical documents, or a guide for today's moral behaviour is foolish as only some parts are currently applicable ( just like todays 'maps' or scientific theories ), and no one has suggested taking them literally ( not even Dim ). As this discussion seems to have turned left at Albuquerque on the way to 'thoughts on Islam' maybe one of the mods would be so kind as to split it off at the appropriate point, and move this section to Philosophy.

That may be what you believe, I, however, do not. five thousand years ago, it was true that the Earth was flat, and that matched their reality as close as they could measure. Today our truth matches a different reality. To me, it makes no sense to define one subjective concept, truth, using another subjective concept, reality, because then I will ask you to define reality. And I don't think you can do that. ( I know I can't ) @Moontanman I assure you my stubbornness was not meant to offend you in any way, but I, just like you and others, am wedded to my beliefs. It seems, these days, we are all more agreeable to changing our minds about facts, than we are about beliefs.

Usually done by citing someone else's 'truth' which closely matches our own. It was 'true' that the Earth was flat until 2500 years ago in ancient Greece ( or was it Alexandria, Egypt ? ). So 'truth', can change, so it is not absolute; even in science nothing is proven tru, only falsifiable.

As long as it's not a 'flip' phone, you should be OK for your stated purposes. But phones are like computers ( sorry, are ); once you 'discover' the extra features, you eventually find a use for them.

Somebody doesn't like it but it's starting to sound like ULTRON to me 😁 .

That is not what I said. My truth is important to me ( and to Dim ) just as much as yours is important to you. That's the whole point, 'truth', as well as 'reality' and belief' are subjective, and ther are 8 Billion different ones on this world alone.

There's a reason we use different words for 'beliefs' and 'facts'. Only one of the two is evidence based. It is my belief that 'beliefs', 'realities' and 'truths' are subjective, and not factual. I'll leave it to you to decide if that requires evidence.

The low concentration fumigant would work if the YJ were contained in, say, a grain silo. Higher concentration Phosphene would result in a blowtorch.

This discussion has gotten pointless. Moon's objection to Dim's argument is that Religion tells Dim what to believe. He thinks that's wrong, so he's telling Dim what to believe. Both are forgetting that this is a belief, not a fact. And now someone is trying to force that belief under punishment of red demerit points ( way worse than burning in hell 😄 ). The argument that something is 'real' is also ineffective. If reality is what we perceive, signals subjectively interpreted by our brains, then someone tripping on acid sees a different reality than I do. I'm told it's pedantic, and sharing a reality is what makes it 'real'; would a group of color blind people who don't see the color red assume there is no color red ? Or for that matter, why is shared reality period dependent; in earlier times, no one could detect IR or UV radiation, so it didn't exist ???? As for Phi believing in humans, not Gods ... Donald Trump has a few stories to tell you; all his followers believe in him !