Strange

How do we know that it exists? From our perceptions. How do we know that they reflect any external reality? We can't. The only way we could know that is if we had some access to "reality" other than through our perceptions. Oh well, that's it then. Lewis Carrol was a logician.

No, it isn't. I have been trying to tell you that for a long time. Are you suggesting that people don't consider alternative models? If so, you are wrong.

No, we don't know that. We know our perceptions and that's all. We don't know they correspond to any sort of reality. (There are some who would argue that we don't even know they are our perceptions.... But that is far too rabbit-holey for me.)

I would say that we can't know anything about reality. [Edit: Or, perhaps, given dimreeper's post, I mean we can't know that we can know anything about reality. But that is a bit too meta for me.] Which is odd because I am what is known as a "naive realist", so my belief that the "real world" is pretty much as we perceive it is, as the OP says, an act of pure faith unsupported (and unsupportable) by any evidence or reasoning.

It is hard to see what you are suggesting. The key line seems to be: There seem to be all sorts of things wrong with this: Dark energy has nothing to do with expansion and red-shift as described by Hubble's Law, so I don't know why you keep going on about it. I am not aware of any correlation between black hole mass and red shift I don't know what you mean by "redshift value fluctuation" And what is the relevance of angle of ascension? There is, as far as I know, no correlation between ascension, red-shift or black holes. Or is it this: This seems to contradict what you said above. Here you seem to be saying that there will be more variation/uncertainty in red-shift for closer objects. That should be relatively easy to test. But it seems unlikely that these errors will be enough to produce an apparent linear relationship between distance and red-shift, where red-shift values range from 0 to several hundred (or more). Again, this seems to contradict your opening paragraph. However, we are only able (as far as I know) to measure/estimate black hole masses in relatively local galaxies where there is no cosmological red shift. So I am not sure how this is either testable or relevant. No one cares. The universe certainly doesn't.

To side with the OP for a moment () that sounds like a faith-based statement. Why couldn't such a thing exist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape And now, back to the topic.

Firstly, worrmholes are purely hypothetical; they are a possible solution to the equations of general relativity but that does not mean they exists. They don't "randomly" create holes in space time, they can only exist under very special circumstance (such as at the centre of a rotating black hole). If the wormhole collapsed while you were travelling through it, I guess the result would be the same as falling into a balck hole - in other words: no one knows! To make it stable you need huge amounts of negative energy. As there is no evidence that even small amounts of negative energy exist, there are probably no stable wormholes. This may all change if/when we have a theory of quantum gravity. That might make wormholes more plausible or show that they are impossible.

And it may be that those and other (presumably non-trivial) corrections are part of the reason this approximation does not give accurate results - especially as r gets smaller.

Sorry, but I can only respond to what you appear to be saying. It often isn't clear so I try not to be too definitive in how I am interpreting your statements. You said (no "seemed" if it bothers you) that you always get the same strong reaction from atheist when you make these sort of posts. I was simply pointing out that there have been no strong reactions indicating that people are "defending their faith". You very clearly said there was evidence of God. Where have you been ridiculed? "Bad" because we are willing to discuss this subject with you?

There is an "expanding Earth" theory that covers some of this evidence as well as getting rid of plate tectonics, which is obviously some sort of conspiracy. (The most prolific promoter is some comic book artist whose name escapes me.) But I am not sure they have a mechanism as "plausible" as yours.

I haven't seen any particularly strong reactions to your comments here, so I'm not quite sure what your point is. There have been some very reasonable responses (mostly far better than mine, I am happy to admit) and no anger, no "stone the heretic". So it seems to me (and I may well be wrong) that you interpret any other opinion as an emotional and irrational response.

And that's all it comes down to. Some people's default position is to believe in their god or gods (even though there is no evidence) and other's default position is not to believe (even though there is no evidence). You seem to think that defaulting to belief is better (more rational?) than defaulting to not believing. That raises the question of which god one should believe in by default. But maybe it doesn't matter. Do you think people should believe in a god, any god, rather than none, until there is evidence to prove that god doesn't exist?

There has been some research; for example, whether prayer is effective. But there is no non-scientific evidence for gods, either. But religion is not really suitable to for scientific investigation as it makes no measurable predictions. And I'm not sure why it should be. People believe in their god because they have faith, not because of evidence.

But note that Einstein didn't just speculate that Brownian motion was caused by atoms, he theorized; in other words he produced a mathematical model that fit the observed behaviour.

The maximum value of that is 1. The amplitude is given by point 3 in imatfaal's earlier breakdown. So it increases as r (the orbital radius) decreases. (As this is an approximation, I'm not sure how accurate it will be at the extremes.)

Exactly. The simple wave equation you are looking at, at the moment has a constant frequency at all times and distance. But in reality, the source frequency is changing so the picture is a little more complex.

ah yes, very good point.

Note that the period of the wave at any distance is the same.

Valis, Philip K Dick

That is an odd definition of religion. I am not sure what you mean by "works". Do you mean books, paintings and sculpture? There are religions that do not worship such things. (And it is a sin in many. Including, I guess, yours.) Or do you mean deeds? Do people worship deeds? I suppose the popular Christian veneration of saints could be an example of this. But this has often been frowned upon by the Church. A broader definition of religion would include faith or belief in something, typically one or more higher or divine powers. That clearly does not include atheism as there is no belief involved and (obviously) no higher power. You certainly provide evidence of the dogmatic.

That is because you have a constitutional separation of church and state. This was put in place by the writers of the constitution to protect freedom of religion (i.e. to stop the state imposing a religion).

That's it. And how far through the cycle you are (the amplitude of h) depends on the time (because it is a constantly changing value) and where you are (because it is passing by you). The (t - R/c) bit captures both those aspects. Correct.

My favourite hobby is not being interested in stamps. Although I do feel the need to intervene when people misuse them or make false claims about them ...

It is the time at which you want to know the strain (h). The strain changes over time with the waveform. You are right. It is radians/sec not orbits/sec. So that is why the 2 is there.