Prometheus

Don't apologise for ignorance, do something about it. I guess it's like the echo chamber of modern media: starts off reflecting society, gets retold a myriad times, ends up a distorted reflection of how it started which people then use to inform themselves. But historically with religion they had to rely on the priests on the retelling. Maybe that fracturing is a good thing: a greater variation of interpretations might mitigate against violent interpretations just by (memetic) competition. I personally think the decentralisation of religion is the best way to deal with it. For instance the reformation allowed northern Europe to progress - the Church of England today is relatively benign. Agreed. But given the majority of the world is religious, and will not just give it up overnight, how should we proceed to soften this hardline? Is the Church of England a good template?

So again you've offered no statistics to back up your claims. That's fine, it's a difficult topic to research. But you must be aware that taking such a strong position without data is how zealots are made. This is where the we in the west must be very careful: passing this off as simply religious shenanigans stops us from thinking it could ever grow in our hearts. But look at the hatred you wield with your words - this is where it begins, and you are not religious. I have never claimed that religion isn't part of the problem: particularly the Abrahamic religions, although Hindus have their fair share of fanatics. In their current form they are certainly not part of the solution either. Poverty has no doctrine at all - does that mean it does not motivate people? Strange idea. I suggest you learn about the Crusades - even if it's just the first one. You will learn that religion only played a part in that charade. We have the Byzantine empire instigating the whole thing as a way to reclaim lost lands, a pope in France trying to one-up a pope in Rome, minor nobles trying to carve out their own dynasties and Germanic counts whipping up local hatred for the first mass slaughter of Jewish people (opposed and resisted by local Catholic priests). Most of these are simple power plays. Religion, much like nationalism today, simply provides a pliant population to execute these plans. That is no small thing, religion is absolutely culpable here. Without an ignorant and pliable population it would be much harder to raise men to these atrocities. But to say it is only religion is to remain dangerously ignorant of the darkness that is in everyone's heart. Now, if Islam were the sole cause of these atrocities then we should see it throughout it's entire history. We don't. So what else changed? For a proper study of the rise of Islamic terrorism the end of World War 1 would be a good place to start. Just a small correction: Buddha's not a god.

Where did i say Islamic terrorists are not pious? It's obvious you think religion is to blame, but you claimed your position to be empirically established. My challenge to you was to produce that evidence. I'm not saying religion isn't one part of the equation, but you must be blind to think it's the only one. Socio-economic and geo-political factors, among others, are in play in all these theatres. Even the role of social media should be considered.That you claim to have quantified all these factors, understood how they interact and concluded religion is the greatest factor is either quite a feat or hyperbole.

How about recruiting a few deputies from the trusted membership and giving them powers to remove spam?

You've mentioned empiricism a few times: it would be good to see the actual evidence from which you've formed your opinion. At a cursory glance I could only find this. Then you've allowed the terrorists to win. They want people in the west to abandon reason and freedom and to fear and hate Islam so that Holy War can erupt and engulf the world in the end of all times. Don't get me wrong, hatred itself is not wrong - it is a reasonable response if you've had friends or family involved in these atrocities. But an enlightened society needs to consider a myriad other details too, and not turn it into a simple us vs them war as our animalistic bronze-age ancestors might have.

Some interesting stuff there. I'm trying to get hold of the full article of the first study: it's behind a paywall but i should be able to get access when next i'm at uni. But before that i'd just like to point something out: cessation of cardiac activity doesn't necassarly mean cessation of brain activity. If the medical team are doing CPR well, the brain will be perfused to some extent (sometimes we could get sats readings of 100% on a patient during CPR). That a few people can still hear and be vaguely aware of their surroundings shouldn't be surprising. I would therefore call that these particular aspects are not used as evidence of a soul surviving the body: it could just as easily be taken to be evidence that the brain can still function to some degree during a cardiac arrest.

One day you're a happy European citizen, the next - bam - your peers decide to take that from you. Don't take the risk.

Mine too, but it's fun and interesting to chat with you anyway. I agree the evidence supports the notion of a big bang. You cite God as an uncaused cause. I would ask but what caused God. The standard reply is that God is and always will be - he himself is uncaused; never begun, never ending. Why not simply do away with the concept of God and just say existence is a stream that never begun and will never end. It's the exact same argument for God being the uncaused cause, except we have made it a little simpler by removing God. The dichotomy between creator and created is false. We are the big bang, still happening in a manner of speaking. Again, i agree that the specific chances of life existing on Earth are tiny. But it only implies some special, perhaps divine, intervention if there were the only draw from that lottery. But there are countless worlds in existence, and it becomes probable that some of them will have suitable conditions for life. By analogy, consider the chances of you winning the lottery - very small. But consider the chance of anyone winning the lottery - very probable. By focusing on Earth's chances alone you are already treating it as somehow special. Consider the whole universe, and it is not so surprising. No less beautiful though. The ghost in the machine. I think we can agree that if there is a spirit behind all our actions, then at some point it has to interact with matter. If it interacts with matter, then it is within the remit of science to investigate. As far as i am aware, no evidence of such a spirit exists. I find it simpler to think of my body and mind as one thing, rather than 2: one is simpler than two. All your above arguments are equally valid for Allah (and many others): i'd be interested to know whether you view Allah as the same God you believe in, and if not why not. EDIT: Can't change my name in the above quotes which did say jimmydasaint, on 04 Aug 2016 - 11:46 PM, said: when i posted: quite annoying. Nevermind.

And what about religions without any god, or a god so different as to be incomparable to the Abrahamic god? And atheists who claim to have a rich spiritual life for that matter. Theism does not own a monopoly on spirituality (whatever the term may mean). I often see this sense of awe and reverence cited as a reason for believing in a creator god, but i just can't understand it. Surely by saying this numinous thing you are experiencing is only possible through the grace of god you have separated yourself from that experience: no longer is it a direct experience that one part of the universe is feeling for another part, but is something you have to outsource to some other super being for validation. I can also never understand the 'merely' implied in '...sentient meat without a soul'. That one part of the universe (you) can experience such things for another (your child) is truly awe inspiring in itself - why the need to invoke anything else between that experience?

Just on the issue of scientists being closed minded: the track record proves otherwise. One small example: how much more fantastical is it for humans to have morphed over millennia from some other species than to simply have popped into existence. Got to be pretty open-minded to the evidence to accept that. Not to say that science itself is fantastical, but it explores nature who we find to be far more bizarre than we could ever imagine.

I'd agree with that analysis: but the question then becomes whether religious institutions are useful or harmful to modern society. Many countries have yet to get past religiously motivated (or is it simply religiously enshrined?) homophobia and misogyny etc. The particular problem the Abrahamic faiths have is that they are predicated on the infallible word of their creator, as conveyed in their holy books. Any changes to interpretation (to allow homosexual clergy, for instance) are done painfully (usually involves schisms), and very slowly. This lack of ability to be reactive to society means they are no longer relevant to the modern world. When we have Popes declaring Harry Potter as an evil, and Islamic institutions declaring Pokemon haram (forbidden), no sane person should take them seriously. Rowan Williams was the last clergyman i heard making any meaningful contribution to modern debates, but such lucid religious figures are rare. The Abrahamic faiths serve God first and humanity second: until that changes, they should become increasingly marginalised.

OK. The first bit is identical: i raised an objection to this in post #23 you may (or may not) wish to address. As for the second part, by moving the event forward in time you have still not addressed my problem. That is why i implore you that we move to the cancer at 65 example: if you talk me through how you understand that you will either realise your error, or you will show me my error.

You haven't addressed any of my points, you've just repeated yourself. Did you check out any of the links that i gave: that might help us understand each other a bit more?

Sorry, i meant to say that while your flawed Bayes model might find no change, others don't. According to your interpretation, on the cancer at 65 example, knowing someone is 65 doesn't change the probability of someone having cancer because we've already observed the person is 65.

Well, yes, the probability of anything given it has occurred is one. But that doesn't tell us anything, which is why your Bayes model returns just returns its input: you haven't told it anything. Check out that Bayes wikipedia article.

We're all dicks, to a greater or lesser extent: just part of the human experience. The fact that you acknowledge this in yourself means your'e ahead of the curve. The real tricky part is working out when we are able to change certain aspects of ourselves, or when we should learn accept an aspect of our nature. Once you work it out, let me know how to do it.

The probability of life on Earth given we observe it is one. But the unconditional probability of life on Earth is less than one: it might never have got started, or a meteorite might have wiped it all out. Similarly, the probability of life on Earth given ET exists is less than one. Check out the cancer at 65 example on wikipedia's Bayes page. Even though we know the person in question is 65, the (unconditional) probability that the person is 65 is given as 0.2%, while the probability of being 65 given they have cancer is given as 0.5%. Following your example we would say both these events have a probability of one. A uniform distribution is not necessarily the best choice of prior in the absence of any other information. Fisher is reported to have said: We could equally say, due to complete ignorance of what is out there, each planet in the universe has a 50/50 chance of harbouring life. Then when we came to consider the chance of life on any planet, we'd have anything but an equal prior. For instance, in this paper, they model the prior probability of abiogenesis occurring as a Poisson process.

If only the phytoplankton population hadn't halved in the last half century.

If we had to sift through every single person's 'theory of everything', most of which have very little to do with physics, we wouldn't just be here all day, but years on end just to find the vast majority to be personal ramblings with no meaning other than to the rambler. Hence, it is sensible to vet someone before listening to their exposition on life, the universe and everything. Einstein certainly has earned the respect as someone worth listening to - he's been known to have some pretty good ideas. So much so, in fact, that many of his thoughts are very well documented. So well documented that if seems unlikely that a random person posting on the internet knows the innermost, and undocumented, thoughts of the long deceased Einstein. Such a random person will have to wait in line, just behind the guy who is in psychic communication with Leibniz claiming to have irrefutable proof of life after death. The wait is quite long, so don't hold your breath.

Cheers. It all seems to depend on a translation of a Hebrew word which could be taken to mean either circular or spherical. I think this quote from the second link summarises it best: In other words, ambiguous. Else there never would be any debate in medieval Catholic Europe about its shape: they could refer to the inerrant bible. Something unambiguous, would be like when Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference, by using knowledge that the Earth is round, to a good approximation.

I look forward to you providing the exact passages/verses so i can check out how they unambiguously state the earth is round. I think this issue is actually the crux of the matter when it comes to conflict between science and religion. The bible is very obviously a terrible source for factual information - it can't even get pi right. But that only matters if a religion is trying to make factual claims about the physical world. If religion gave up this pretence and instead focused its energies on the spiritual development of its followers, there would no longer be any conflict and our spiritual development might be able to catch up with our technological development.

Apparently about 60% of American gun owners site personal safety and 36% sports/hunting. Small sample though. Is personal safety equal to fear in this context? I think so, although fear maybe too strong a word for some owners - maybe worry/concern.

Many people will not tolerate a government dictating the number of children they have to the extent it would be impossible to impose, at least in the Western world. However, the birth rates of developed nations is considerably lower than developing nations, which i understand is thought to be linked to higher levels of education and autonomy in women. If true, a solution could be to encourage such education and autonomy (and any other societal trends that contribute to lower birth rates). Another solution might be to increase the productivity of the earth (e.g. GM crops) and improve resource distribution, effectively increasing the capacity before over-population bites. The alternative is to let nature sort it out (including resource wars).

From what i understand it would help curb greenhouse gas emissions, but you will never convince a free world to not eat meat: people enjoy it too much, the consequences be damned. A compromise might be to instil the idea that meat is a treat to be savoured, rather than some nebulous gristle to be found wrapped in breadcrumbs or in some ready meal. Unfortunately the organisations that might have the will and influence to instil such changes are religious, and they are far too busy wasting their time counting the angels on some pinhead.

If there is no way to distinguish between the simulation and 'actual reality', then there is no need to consider it.