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Strange

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Everything posted by Strange

  1. I don't think that is a matter of opinion. Trust and faith are very different things.
  2. The same could be true for every god that man has invented, as well as invisible pink unicorns, aliens with three heads, or a teapot that orbits the Sun somewhere. But, after sufficient time, one can use absence of evidence as evidence of absence.
  3. And that is exactly what science does. We come up with lots of ideas and find out which ones work and which ones don't. Again, totally irrelevant to the subject of religion or belief. Do you want to try that again in English? To try and extract some meaning: "rationalism is what makes sense to me". No. A lot of people do seem to use "logical" to mean "it seems sensible to me". But that is not what logic (or rational thought) is. Science teaches us that we definitely should not always believe in what makes sense. Sometimes that is completely wrong. (Sometimes, just by chance, it is partly right. But that is not helpful, without some means to determine which bits are right or not. And so we are back to science.) Good. Then you are a fool. (And it contradicts your first sentence.) That is not relevant in any rational discussion.
  4. Er, no. the whole point is that if something works, we don't need to use belief. For example your computer works, because the underlying technology works, because the underlying science works. Of course, you are free to believe that your computer doesn't work, but the facts would seem to contradict that belief. On the other hand, when it comes to religions and gods, there is no evidence that they "work" in any practical sense (beyond giving some people a feeling of comfort). And so they depend entirely upon belief. Hop away. But if there is something you don't understand, why not ask.
  5. I don't see where belief comes into it. I don't "believe" in science; I don't "believe" it has improved the world. Obviously, though, when discussing gods, it is entirely about beliefs.
  6. I am interested in science and technology, true. And we don't know why I am interested on those things and others play golf or knit jumpers. I don't see the relevance of that. Unless you are saying that every human activity is a "religion"; in which case you are giving the word a definition so broad as to be meaningless. I don't "worship" ideas that work. That is an idiotic claim. I don't "worship" my computer, or the availability of fresh water at the turn of a tap, or modern healthcare. But they are bloody useful. And they were created by intellectual activity and not by religion. I think humans have evolved a certain religiosity, or ability to believe, to varying degrees. In some people this comes out as a belief in god or gods, in other people as a vague spirituality, in others as a belief in human abilities, and in others it is almost non-existent. (This opinion is, I'm afraid, partly based on the results of scientific studies.)
  7. I would say it is a relatively small set of things that are named after people. And these are usually things like the equations they developed to describe something. For example, we have "general relativity" (not named after a person) which is a good model of gravity and how the universe evolves. The equations that define how GR works are named after the person who developed them, though (the Einstein Field Equations). But its worse than you think. Most things are named after the wrong person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler's_law_of_eponymy But I don't see why the names we use matter. And you can usually avoid them. For example, you can refer to "the laws of motion" instead of "Newton's laws of motion". You just named several fields of study and natural phenomena without using any people's names. So it isn't really a problem. No. It is about creating useful models. Sometimes these models renamed after someone, and sometimes they aren't. Language evolves naturally. I don't think you have much chance of changing it. You could introduce new, invented names for things, but people would continue to use the names they are familiar with.
  8. How do you know that it is accurate? It is a very old text that has been copied by hand, translated, edited, copied, translated again, copied, translated, ... There seems a lot of scope for errors there. And, it may just be myth, anyway.
  9. Can you show such a proof then? That means you think that it is possible to perform an experiment to demonstrate the existence of god. Can you describe a suitable experiment and what the results would be?
  10. Do you have any evidence for this claim? Could you tell me what religion I "belong to" as they haven't told me yet.
  11. Strange

    What is faith?

    While I don't doubt that some atheists have some faith in things other than god, I would like to see some evidence to support your claim that "atheist have far more faith than theists". What do you base this on? And what definition of "religious" are you using when you say that "atheists are as religious as theists"? While it is true that "atheist" means not believing in a god, there are few religions that do not have a god or gods, so I find it implausible that atheists are as religious as theists. Do you have any evidence to support this claim? What "faith" are you referring to here?
  12. There are good theoretical reasons to think that matter and antimatter behave identically (ie they all attract one another). This has not been experimental confirmed yet, but the ALPHA experiment at CERN is trying to collect enough anti-hydrogen to test this. We know this. It is not just experimental confirmed but is observed everyday and is used in industry and medicine. Do we? I don't know anyone who believes that. Yes. This has been tested by the ALPHA experiment; the spectrum of anti-hydrogen is indistinguishable from hydrogen. There is no such thing as "antimatter EM waves". It is just electromagnetism; photons and anti-photons are the same thing.
  13. You would need to get it published in a mathematics journal. But that might be hard if you are not familiar with how to write a mathematics paper and a formal proof. Alternatively, you could present your idea here and maybe someone can explain where you have gone wrong. That is probably a bit unfair; mathematics is one of the few areas where amateurs do occasionally make breakthroughs!
  14. Some of us can barely remember what we had for lunch (we had lunch?), where we parked the car or even if we came by car. So not that good a test. And in some dreams, you know exactly how you got there (on the back of that flying lizard called Dave).
  15. If you are bald, why are you lying about having "black curly hair (strong like a wire),brown wavy hair (thinner than black),blonde very thin straight hair"? And then rudely complaining that no one has answered? And then criticising the answers? I can only assume you are being deliberately obnoxious so you can complain about being badly treated.
  16. Your “explanation” consisted of “no”. Not very convincing.
  17. You never “showed” anything; you just made claims based on ... well, nothing.
  18. You have a plasma-powered coffee pot? Impressed.
  19. QED has almost nothing in common with classical electromagnetism even though, naively, it can be thought of as a quantising of the classical theory. The consequences of quantising are profound, not just an add-on.
  20. That well-known documentary.
  21. You could just be dreaming that your conscious mind constantly gains more knowledge.
  22. ... when faith gets there first. Nicely put.
  23. That is a bit like saying that, classically, electromagnetic waves are continuous and therefore it is impossible to have a quantum theory of electromagnetism. Obviously not true. A theory of quantum gravity would, necessarily, be different from GR and so the nature of GR cannot be used to preclude a quantum theory.
  24. Yep. That's what "omni" means. Why so sure? It would only be slightly-potence in that case. Faith trumps reason.
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