Strange

What you said was: "Don't you think that's a rather loaded question? (e.g. Why do you kick your dog?) I don't like what some atheists have done including what they've done to me. I prefer more honest, polite, and rational behavior." It certainly soudns as if you are demanding that atheists, specifically, should be more honest, polite, and rational. So why aren't you insisting that everyone is more fair, polite, and rational? Why pick on atheists? It hardly seems far or rational.

But only from atheists.

No I don't. No one has denied that there are cases where people or organizations which are atheist attack the religious. However, there are also cases where atheists have been attacked by religious people or organizations. So you have only fulfilled half the brief. You have ignored the point about putting this in context. This is what is known as "cherry picking"; a highly dishonest activity. "In 13 countries around the world, all of them Muslim, people who openly espouse atheism or reject the official state religion of Islam face execution under the law, according to a detailed study issued on Tuesday." http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-religion-atheists-idUSBRE9B900G20131210 "Discrimination against atheists, both at present and historically, includes the persecution of those identifying themselves or labeled by others as atheists, as well as discrimination against them. As atheism can be defined in various ways, those discriminated against on the grounds of being atheists might not have been considered as such in a different time or place" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists I'm sure there are also cases where people who don't play football have attacked people who don't play chess. In other words, you have not established that there is a significant problem caused by atheism. People and groups attack other people and groups. This is a sad fact of human life. You have not established that atheists are a bigger problem than any other group. So it is still not clear why you are attacking atheists. (Apart from your own personal issues which you raised earlier.) BTW that Wikipedia article has a longish list of religious groups that have been persecuted in the sidebar. A quick review of those suggest that in the vast majority of cases, this persecution has been by other religious groups. Not by atheists. So why are you picking on atheists?

You look for independent corroboration. Someone claiming that have been attacked or insulted does not make it true. That is why we have courts of law, for example. Your repeated claim that the religious are being picked on by atheists. (Have you read the title of the thread and the posts by "Jagella"?) One has to assume that the number of such attacks is in some way disproportionate or the motive is clear for some other reason, otherwise it would be indistinguishable from a random person X picking on random person Y where religion or lack of it plays no part. It sounds like you are just being evasive now.

Now I am confused. You said that Aristotelian logic doesn't apply when we are not dealing with binary systems (because Aristotle himself said so), so surely in those cases it is OK to ignore his logic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe#Infinite_or_finite As you have provided nothing but (arrogant and simplistic) claims, I don't see why anyone should take you seriously.

Can you explain the relevance of that to transistor design?

Not really. No one in physics thinks there are (real) paradoxes; they are just named that. It is only those who don't understand physics who think these are real paradoxes and therefore undermine the theory.

The difference is that Creationists look at the eye and say: "Design. It couldn't happen by chance." Science doesn't just look at one artefact and draw a conclusion. We have many different types of eye in different species. Many of these are related so we can see how some eyes have evolved by looking at extant species. We can also look at the fossil record and see how eyes have evolved over time through various lineages. If the fossil record or living species showed that there were just two classes of animals, those with no sight at all and those with a complete advanced visual system, then that might be considered evidence for design or some sort of bizarre alien intervention. But we don't see that. Evolution can also explain why some animals lose their sight if, for example, they live in caves with no light. On the other hand, Creationists just have to assume that God decided to design some non-functioning eyes for them, for her own mysterious purposes. And it is one that is followed (more or less) by scientists but not at all by creationists.

I don't think it is as simple as that. Science tries to use objective (in some sense) and quantifiable evidence. So, for example, it makes measurements and compares them with the model. That is part of what makes evidence "scientific" or not. Anyone can look at the data and say "yes it falls within the range predicted by the model" (or, no it doesn't). For example, I don't know what people might consider evidence for God. But I have heard vague things like "the world is beautiful" or "love". These are unquantifiable and any such statement cannot be confirmed/replicated by others in any objective/quantifiable way. Even if you were to do surveys and get some measure of how many people share that feeling, there is still no way of relating it to the "god hypothesis" (as compared to any other explanation for why people think the world is beautiful or feel love). People have done studies of things that should be quantifiable (for example the effectiveness of prayer in curing disease). Apart from any psychological benefits to those doing the praying, I am not aware that this has show any measurable improvements in rates or speed of recovery. Similar problems arise with creationism versus the scientific theory of evolution. Creationism just says "God did it" and whatever data you find is taken as confirmation of that position (i.e. an extreme form of confirmation bias). The theory of evolution makes quantitative predictions that can be tested by observation and experiment; in that way hypotheses can be rejected or modified based on the data. And when Creationism wears the frock of ID, the argument is "it looks designed". But without some quantitative way of detecting design, we are back to "well it looks designed to me" as the only test. A common way of trying to make this claim stronger is to say that "it must have been created all in one go because no simpler version could work". The trouble is, every such claim has shown to be false: we can find simpler examples that work. Unlike science, ID doesn't then drop the claims (or even those specific examples) it keeps on using them, despite the evidence. So if you have some suggestions of quantitative evidence for God or Creationism/ID then they would be amenable to scientific investigation. But without that, it isn't science and it isn't evidence that can be used by science.

My initial feeling was that reduces the value of logic, because we can't know when it applies or not. For example, some people reject the counter-intuitive results in QM and GR because they say they are "not logical". But actually, in both cases, the theory tells us what is expected and hence what is allowed by the specific form of logic that applies to that theory. I suppose this is similar to the point that all the so-called paradoxes in relativity are not actually paradoxes, they only appear to be so if one doesn't understand the theory.

So, as Aristotelian logic only applies where Aristotelian logic applies, the question arises of how one can know when it applies. If one finds a case where there appears to be a contradiction, how does one know if this is a violation of LEM (or some other law of logic) or if it just a case where the logic doesn't apply?

If you don't understand what makes credible evidence, you need to learn that first, before trying to argue a (very dubious) case. You need something more objective than one side saying "we are being treated unfairly". You also need to show the context. Yes, you might be able to find N cases where atheists have attacked religious people but, as my favourite radio show likes to ask, "is that a large number". You need to compare it with the number of similar attacks against that religious group by non-atheists (e.g. by different religious groups, or by members of the same religious group). That is the only way of determining if the number (whether it is 5 or 5,000) is significant. Perhaps you need to look at something where the nature of the attack is not in doubt. For example, you could compare the number of atheist bloggers killed in Pakistan with the proportion of Islamic bloggers murdered because of their writing. Or you could look at numbers from an independent body. For example, convictions of atheists for hate crimes against a religion, compared with the number of convictions of people of one faith for hate crimes against another.

And my understanding (caveats apply!) is that this is true for all fields: the electromagnetic field, the electron field, the quark field(s), and so on. I can't really comment on the main part of your idea. Although, if there were a mechanism like this, don't you think it would hve been considered and taken into account? The problem with this is that there have been many attempts to model and explain dark matter as a change in the way gravity works over large scales or with very large masses. None of these, so far, have been able to match what we observe. They are also rather ad-hoc, needing different adjustments for galaxies and galaxy clusters, for example. They also can't explain the other evidence for dark matter (gravitational lensing, large structure formation and so on).

Please provide some evidence to support this claim.

And you have rejected the analysis of the evidence because it does not support your predispositions. As it appears to be almost non-existent, that is hardly likely.

It wasn't summarily rejected. The dubious nature of the claims was explored in detail in several posts, with several other references to more information. Your position appears to be getting more bigoted and entrenched as time goes on. And IF your evidence were valid, then so is my counterexample which shows that you are supporting the bullies and attacking the underdogs. It was neither rejected or ignored. It was weighed, it was measured and it was found wanting. But rather than consider these objections you prefer to pretend that it was ignored. You are lying.

Actually, it isn't. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/ http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/why-and-how-energy-is-not-conserved-in.html If you think about cosmological red-shift, this is obviously true. Apart from that, this appears to have nothing to do with the subject of the thread. Although it is not entirely clear what that is...

Nonsense. I am very fond of religious music. I think the King James Bible is a great literary work. There are good moral lessons to be found in the bible (as well as some terrible ones). You need to back that up with data. All the research I have seen (and experience on forums like this) tends to show that, on average, atheists are much more knowledgeable about the texts, history and theology than most religious people. Nonsense. There are many people who study dreams (and other aspects of human life) that depend on first hand testimony. This is also nonsense. There have been many scientific studies of religious experience (which is obviously a real thing). That appears to be you. You appear to have zero understanding of how science works, what it is able (and willing) to study, or what relevant studies have been done. Again, nonsense. I have many friendly and interesting discussions about peoples religion: online, with work colleagues, with friends who were studying theology at university, and so on.

So are you just saying that in those situations where LEM applies (for example, binary logic) then LEM applies. And in the situations where it doesn't apply (quantum theory, multi-valued logic, etc) then it doesn't apply.

I doubt anyone here would disagree with that. But that is not what you have been claiming. So that is why you can't produce any evidence to support your notions?

You are constantly claiming that atheists are more guilty of offences against the religious and more in need of reforming their behaviour. I was just pointing out that the rate of prejudice against atheists is far worse. (Even though the numbers are actually pretty meaningless, as others have pointed out.) The numbers game. Of course not. But evidence that atheists create more problems for the religious than vice versa would support your case. I assume the reason you haven't yet provided any support for your claims is because you can't. So presumably your claims are groundless. I did answer: Burden. Of. Proof. It's up to you to support your claims.

Maybe what Jagella is trying to say is: with great power comes great responsibility (as Spiderman the French National Convention said).

So that's what it comes down to. You had a bad experience with some people who disagreed with you and now you are taking it out on all atheists, on the false assumption that all atheists would treat you equally badly.

And here are five examples of discrimination against atheists: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/12/1401480/-Five-Examples-of-Discrimination-Against-Atheists-in-America As atheists are in the minority, I win! Have you not heard of the concept of "burden of proof"? Do you think that a lawyer in court would get away with, "My client is innocent. Just google it."