WWLabRat

Delain - April Rain

I always thought that missiles have the wings to help stabilize it during flight. Being that they generally are not "fired" from a barrel and generate their own propulsion, they wouldn't have or need rifling, but would still need something to stabilize them. Also I thought that they needed this stabilization to keep navigational systems in check. I am more likely than not incorrect on one or both of these points. I'm far from being a munitions/explosive ordinance expert.

I just wanted to make sure that someone reading the thread would not be misled by the word "experience" and get the idea that someone moving at high speed relative to something else (as we are ourselves) would feel time pass differently.

By experiences, I really mean that the two observers will notice a difference when the clocks are compared. Each individual obsever does not think anything "strange" has happened to himself.

Sorry, that was poor phrasing on my part.

I don't think we worship money, but we instead use it as a tool to aid in our survival and happiness. Perhaps it might be more accurate to call it a religion instead of a deity?

 

Also, if it weren't money we'd still trade other things... Spears, arrow heads, pottery, meat, fruits, nuts, animal skins, even services like assistance in tilling the land, fending off invaders, as well as sex.

 

None of those other things are a deity, are they? They are, however, essentially the same as money.

 

I think perhaps instead you are lamenting against what we as a culture choose to value. Instead of valuing clean air, we value corporate profits. Instead of valuing good health, we value convenience and comfort.

 

If anything, I feel that our approach to money has parallels with religion, but that your core issue seems to be with what we tend to value as a society... Access to copious amounts of currency instead of happiness and well-being and family, for example. It's about ritual, and I think you may be arguing for alternative rituals, not alternative gods.

 

 

 

In Purity and Danger, the anthropologist Mary Douglas wrote:

 

"Money mediates transactions; ritual mediates experience, including social experience. Money provides a standard for evaluating worth; ritual standardises situations, and so helps to evaluate them. Money makes a link between the present and the future, so does ritual. The more we reflect on the richness of the metaphor, the more it becomes clear that this is no metaphor. Money is only an extreme and specialised type of ritual."

 

Are you sure this is a true religious practice? Or is it a common construct based on our evolutionary journey as a social animal? To simply use money is just the decision to join a group behavior for personal gain. A primary behavior of humans throughout our history. It may be more utilitarian than say a formal ceremonial and cultural behavior like deity worship or marriage but none the less is motivated by social acceptance and by that personal gain. Money is power in the same way as marrying into upward social mobility.

To say that all things in the sky are movable but the Earth isn't is to say that the Earth is the center. Imagine a top spinning, only in this scenario, it stays in the exact same spot. In order for it to be unmoving, yet everything else move, it would have to be at the center of the spinning top. If it were anywhere else, then matter from the other heavenly bodies would collide or pass by the Earth.

And as for the verses you quoted, context goes a long way. So does the proper translation. In each of these the word "fix(ed)" is said more in the way of being established, not hammered to the floor. So if you look at it with this translation, each of them show that Yahweh has set things as they are supposed to be and nothing will be able to change that. All of these verses also draw from dogmatic law that God is infallible. Because of that they can say with "certainty" that the Earth is unable to be changed.

It says that God fixed the earth on a foundation so that it was firm and immovable. The idea, which was quite reasonable at the time, was that everything in the universe could move (especially things in the sky) but that the earth was different because it was immovable. This has been squarely falsified. If you want to start a thread I'll give verses and stuff.

There's not a single verse in the bible that states that Earth is the center of the universe. That belief came about from the astronomer Ptolemy and his Geocentric model of the universe. The church then picked this up and started professing it because there were no other theories at the time and this fit the evidence. Later the aspect of Earth being special was brought about and finally, Galileo was forced to renounce his teachings of a Heliocentric model because the church wanted Earth to remain important. So please, by all means, present us with this nonexistent verse that says the Earth is.

On another note, technically in the current model of an expanding universe, every point in space is the center of the universe. So at the same time it is justifiable in saying that the Earth is. But then again, so is the sun, the moon, Jupiter, Pluto (poor dwarf planet...), and even Alpha Centauri.

 

Sorry if I was unclear. I meant please don't respond to WWLR's tangent about "Money is the only observable god", so those posts don't get split to become a new thread. This will give him the chance to start the thread and title it on his own. Again, sorry.

Done

This is inspired by a post made in the Theistic Scientists thread.

There's been many threads in this forum that, although unique in their beginning, eventually devolve to a battle between factions of those wanting to debate for the existence of God/god/deity and those in opposition. This has caused a great degradation in the quality and continuity of intellectual debates. Many times these debates over the existence of god cause members to be banned (whether permanently or temporary) or cause the thread to be locked by the moderators. These debates generally come down to the lack of physical evidence of any such deity (to say nothing of mythical creatures). But in this regard is where I make my stand. Everyone debates about the conventional deities: the God of Abrahamic religions, the polytheistic gods and goddesses of pagan religions, and the gods of Eastern religions. What I propose is a more "universal" deity. It's something that nearly everyone, including Atheists, "worship" on a daily basis. I say that in modern day we all worship the same god: The Almighty Dollar. Bear in mind that in this context I mean Dollar to be any currency.

I argue that Dollar is a god for many reasons. Majority of today's societies center around commerce and the global buying and selling of products. People work their entire lives to gain more money (knowing god) in order to buy things they believe will make them happy (reward for worship). Wars have been fought over resources that are valuable only because we use currency. Most people would agree that the world couldn't function as it does now without the continued use of some sort of financial exchange between people, companies, and countries. Third world countries could be seen as those that don't have a stable currency or don't know our "god" and so missions and collections are taken up through charity to help "spread the word of god". Companies (churches/temples) take the money from its customers (parishioners) to both pay for their needs and to recruit more followers. These employees are the clergy, the money they spend to buy resources are their sacrifice. They sacrifice so that they may gain more followers to help them attain more money (or faith) to be able to greater know Dollar.

Unlike conventional gods, The Almighty Dollar is a universal deity. Every society has its currency which shares parallels with other societies. And with the exception of a few groups of people (the unsaved) it is used everywhere. Even among those who are supposed to be detached from consumerism, such as the Amish, still use currency and trade in commerce. The Amish use money to purchase land, sell their overstock, and purchase feed for their livestock. And just like big business, they try to improve their product to better satisfy their customers which in turn will cause them to continue their devotion.

How do you think what you just said in any way disagrees with what I said? Galileo was falsifying a religious claim. His motive doesn't matter. I'm saying that it would have been anti-scientific for him to put the telescope down, and tell religious people that their idea is stupid and it's up to them to investigate the heavens because their claims about it are stupid.

I didn't say that he did.

How is it possible to consistently contradict yourself? You're accusing John of not reading through other people's posts when you yourself aren't even reading your own posts. You did claim in the post that he was replying to that Galileo was seeking to falsify religion.

You may be arguing against something I didn't say. I said to turn your statement around in order to make a point about the thread's title.

You'll have to show me exactly what you're disagreeing with and how. By "the falsification of religion" I mean, for example, proving things in the bible wrong.

Think of how much science was done by religious people who were trying to prove the claims of religion true (but ended up falsifying them). Those people... those theistic scientists... are doing science when they do that. Testing the claim "the earth is 10,000 years old", and proving it wrong, is what science is all about.

This means that the intention of science was not to disprove, but to prove.

By your own admission, you said that those scientists were trying to prove their religious claims, not falsify. So you agreed with me.

Eddington was testing Einstein's idea. One idea, not two.

 

You ask how a deistic god could be tested. One can't rule out the possibility that it could be. The storyline for stargate universe is the first example that comes to mind. If an intelligence created the universe then we may yet find evidence of that. It is verifiable.

 

You confuse that with falsifiable... I agree, a deistic God is not falsifiable while GR certainly is. They are, therefore, not even in the same ballpark. Relativity is far more scientific. Where you go wrong is calling my comparison invalid. This is what Moontanman said:

 

God and Dragons are equivalent in one undeniable way... the amount of evidence for their existence...

GR and Newton's gravity were equivalent in that same one undeniable way prior to Eddington. If that is all Eddington saw then he never would have been testing Einstein's theory. If "god is equivalent to dragon poop because they both lack evidence" is all an atheist sees then they likewise wouldn't be trying to falsify god.

 

A major part of science has been the falsification of religion. It is precisely for that reason that "god is equivalent to dragon poop because they both lack evidence" is profoundly anti-scientific.

 

Why does that matter to my point?

 

Einstein talked about how positivists lose something when they think that all meaning and truth comes from verified empiricism, as do positive (or 'strong') atheists. He can personally believe in a pantheistic god and still make the same point.

I'm not sure what scientific body you are a part of, but science has never sought to falsify religion. The two don't even mix. Science only deals in matters of, well... Matter. Science can only handle that which is measurable, testable, and physical. Religion deals in matters of spirituality and the nonphysical world. The two don't mesh. Science is water and religion is oil. There's matters of science that religion falls back on at times, but only when it's point is needing to be made. However this isn't reciprocal. Science doesn't rely on religion for squat. Science has no need or desire to disprove anything about religion. It is stable enough just on its own.

 

Well it is a fairly long ,drawn out event that is within the sphere of the Israel's nationhood. They appeared to find themselves as slaves to the Egyptians some 3500 years ago. One of their members Moses , came across a Bush ,that was on fire, but did not burn. God spoke to him out of the fire. This was the start of a long line of CONTACT . It is contained in the Book of EXODUS. . ISRAELs' left Egypt ( by an Exodus ) for where they are today ( bar a small interruption) that continues to this day. The experience ends with a visit ,by an actual Jew , who had seen the God of the Israels', Face to Face with pretty rigorous personal evidence. The sort of evidence that is hard to refute.

 

ps. the book of Exodus is second 1 Genesis, 2 Exodus in the Israel Talmud [5 books] or Christian Bible

They made a film of it . called 10 commandments

 

 

What does OMFSM mean ?

 

No. Not like your descriptions of Thor . These sort of descriptions are more thorough than the sort you describe ! The priests were not needed. just Rigor of Science ( Observation, Hypothesis, Experiment, Conclusions and Publicity )

A few things. First, the bible is not a book written directly by the hands of a deity. It was written by man after generations (many generations, in fact) of stories being passed down by the Hebrews by word of mouth. Thus, since it is fallible, it cannot be taken as absolute Truth in its form. Second, in regards to the burning bush... It is not said, in Exodus, whether the bush was alive or dead already. If it were alive, it's very much possible that an oil or other alcohol had been soaking in it's roots. As time went on, it would have made it possible, assuming the fumes from the oil hadn't dissipated, to burn the bush without the plant actually being consumed. Second, the only person who could attest to whether the bush had been consumed or not would have been Moses. He was the only one who climbed the mountain to observe it. Even his brother Aaron, who was his second in command, had not seen it. In fact, according to scripture, Moses wasn't even allowed to look at the bush per Yahweh's command. He was told to remove his sandals and hide his face. If he were to follow this command, he would not have seen it, so even this "eyewitness" account is inaccurate at best. Still further. it is said that one cannot see God and live. This is dogmatic law and as such, for it to be true, Moses would have died there on Mount Sinai.

Also, the burning bush wasn't the start of contact. Contact was first established in the Garden of Eden where God first created the birds of the air, the beasts of the land and the fish of the sea. At this time He created man in his image, later to steal a rib to create woman. In Genesis, God is in constant contact with Adam (First man) and Eve (First woman) as well as Adam's descendants, even going so far as to say that God walked with Cain after he killed his brother Abel. There was a break in communication leading up to the burning bush, or at least this is what's assumed between all the "begat"-s between Adam and Moses.

Sorry, wrong word. I meant "omniscience".

What you're talking about isn't self aware, it's omnipotence.

 

Yes I believe the same. I believe there is a superintelligence which is neither aware of itself nor sentient, nor does it care for our doings.

Wouldn't it be a bit difficult for something that was Intelligent, to say nothing of "superintelligence" to not be self-aware or sentient?

It's still true, and has been all along, that the intellectually sophisticated kinds of folks we might expect to see overrepresented among "scientists" and the the like have conceptions of deity available to them that do not compare with dragons and such.

 

This is so even within the Western standard monotheisms that have bred in their nether swamps so many avatars of grumpy old men smiting the kids who walk on their grass.

The only "deity" that could possibly be real, in the physical, measurable since, is money. "The Almighty Dollar" as it were. If you don't believe me, look at how highly a single dollar is sought after. In this sense, by dollar I mean any monetary currency. Entire civilizations function because of the constant moving of currency. People worship money as they would any other deity. People go to casinos and sit in front of a slot machine (or confessional) to pay their dues and hope they come out of it in the positive with more than what they went in. Entire corporations seek to appease their wallets by gouging prices on things that most people find they cannot do without. Sacrifices are made to the dollar by having to buy up land and other assets so that the company can expand. Wars have been fought over money, it makes the world go round (not in the physical sense, mind you, but in the sense that it helps society to continue functioning in its current capacity), and, unlike any deity out there, it is physical. Money can be measured. Its influence is observable on any scale. Even Amish people (who could equate to Atheists in this scenario) trade money with locals to purchase seeds, land, and feed for livestock. Some Amish even will sell their goods to locals (which the ones I used to live down from had amazing strawberries).

 

Obviously between two observers, one moving at a constant velocity, the other remaining stationary, the one in motion will experience time differently than that of the stationary observer.

A couple of points.

 

When you say one is moving and the other is stationary, that is purely a relative statement. You could say the first is stationary and the second is moving.

 

Also, the one who is considered to be moving will not experience time differently. Their time will be seen as different relative to the other observer. (And, because we can consider either as moving, the reverse is true: observer A sees B's clock running slow and B sees A's clock running slow.)

 

You do realize that both statements that you made are the exact same as what I had said. And the time experienced is going to be different. This is because he is moving. As AJB stated above, the moving observer's velocity is a non-zero number and therefore he will experience a time dilation. Being that this is a discussion on relativity, it's implied that everything said will be dealing with how everything is relative to which observer is being discussed.

I know it's an poorly phrased, or otherwise, question. It basically boils down to this: I have been wondering at what point there couldn't possibly be any time dilation. Obviously between two observers, one moving at a constant velocity, the other remaining stationary, the one in motion will experience time differently than that of the stationary observer. So we slow the velocity of the one in motion. And we keep slowing him. Mathematically, we could keep cutting his speed in half to an infinitesimally small amount to where as far as we could tell he would be stationary. By all measurements he would still be moving, so there must be some time dilation between the two. Am I right? However to the stationary observer, he would appear stationary as well, until a substantial amount of time had passed for him to have any noticeable movement.

This should be an easy question to answer... I'm curious. I know that time is relative between moving objects. I also understand that as an object's velocity approaches the speed of light, that difference in time is made more apparent proportionally. So my question is this: Is time relative between two stationary objects/people? For example, say there were two observers sitting in a room across from each other. Assuming neither is substantially closer to the center of a large mass than the other, would time still flow at a constant? Would they both experience time in the same way?

Follow up: What if they were both moving at the speed of light (as if the room were part of a "faster than light shuttle"? Would it still be the same if they were in separate shuttles?

First and foremost, if you're going to challenge an established theory, such as the Big Bang Theory, the forum rules dictate that you need to provide evidence to show how it is incorrect. Same goes for the other two you mentioned. Also how are they flawed?

The reason the constellations appear the same is two-fold. First is that all matter is expanding at a constant rate and relative to each other. This would mean that all the stars in each of the constellations would stay in the same position relative to each other. Think about looking at an object under a microscope at 10x. Now, without moving the slide, enhance the view to 100x. Nothing you are viewing actually changed its position, but it does appear larger. Second is that we are viewing those constellations as they were millenia ago and the light is just now reaching us.

The bible is not a valid source. This is a science forum and as such, anything religious in nature belongs under the religion subforum. Also along that line, "As above, so below" is a pagan and alchemy belief, not a christian one. Check your sources when quoting.

Mathematically it would be impossible for us to reach the "end of the universe" whether visible or not. The universe is not in any shape that we can conceive. It is expanding at the same rate from all points equally. In order for us to reach the present edge, even travelling at light speed, it would still take us 14 billion years to reach where the present "edge" is at which point it would already have expanded another 14 billion light years.

If we can't put these things into a nice little package, why have you attempted to do so?

I don't think I've ever had anyone work that hard to make my point... Animals do all sorts of things that do not contribute to their survival, they play, yes even as adults, all those things you claim are unique to humans are just more complex analogs of the human behaviors you cite.

 

Lets break it down dude...

 

...(edited to save space)...

 

WWLabRat, I think we have skidded way off topic, I suggest you start another thread if you want to continue down this road...

 

Well, unlike many in this thread, I know when to admit defeat. Being that I'm not a biologist, my "expertise" is limited in this argument. So, I'll throw in the towel. And I agree, we have gotten severely off topic on that one. Now if others could follow this example and drop it as well.

None of those apply, animals do all of them in some form or other, we might do it in a much more complex way but they do it as well. The money thing is the least obvious but animals do indeed exchange goods for services, ie animals that bring a kill to impress the female, birds and mammals do this, even spiders. Animals go out on organized hunts, that is the same as earning a living, you hunt or starve, pack hunting means everyone eats whether or not you actually down the prey... Animals will indeed get intoxicated, elephants are known as mean drunks and intentionally consume fermented fruit for shits and giggles, even invading breweries to get the beer... Squirrels will eat 'shrooms and go to a nest to sleep it off, can you imagine the psychedelic dreams of a squirrel? Nonhuman animals even pass down technology, apes teach the younger generation how to make simple tools, as do Crows... Many animals spoil their environment, locusts come to mind as well as fire ants, red tides, where I live schools of menhaden become so thick they use up all the oxygen and have massive kills for no reason other they are too stupid to spread out a little bit. No intelligence has no strangle hold on any of those. You are not giving animals their due...

 

You left out the one thing we do that animals do not do, animals do not store information to be passed down to the next generation, we build libraries, but it is also true that for much of mans existence nether did we...

And for reference...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3q6Cid1po

The point I was making with that paragraph was that much of what we do, as humans, is not necessary to our survival. An animal taking a large kill to impress a potential mate is not the same as us spending money to buy things that are not needed. In this example, that kill is still something that would be needed to feed the rest of the group. Buying that memory foam mattress may feel better, but it's not something that's essential. Also, bringing in a kill as a group is still essential for their survival, but is running a coffee shop going to make or break society as a whole? For that matter, almost any business isn't essential to humanity's survival. Animals may feast on fermented foods, but how does that scale with manufactured drugs that are bottled as prescriptions or worse? Things like Methamphetamine, cocaine, acid, PCP, etc all of which require a level of refinement to be created, that don't rely on natural means for their manufacture. And although locusts do destroy the land that they inhabit, they still do so in a moderation and the land grows back naturally when the locusts have died off. But they also don't pollute the air and sea. Yes, the red tide does increase the Oxygen Demand, this killing off other creatures in the bay, this again is something that cycles through the seasons (at least as much as I've read of it).

I do agree though that other animals do pass down knowledge. Sometimes in observable ways, sometimes in a form that's not readily observable, like instincts. And I didn't mention levels of intelligence because again, that's up for debate among many circles dealing with other terrestrial life. All I said was that they don't communicate the same way that we do and so it is difficult for us to be able to understand what they may actually be "saying".

And I do recognize that Koko is an exception to this, but an episode of Star Trek TNG that I recently saw (a couple hours ago) reminded me that when cultures are first starting to learn each other's language, what is said between the two may not be completely understood. In the episode, Counselor Troi holds up a clear glass of tea for Captain Picard to observe. She calls it a word in a foreign language and asks the Captain what she just said. He guesses at her having said "cup". She says in reply that she could just as easily have been saying "brown", "liquid", or "hot". So what Koko is able to sign to us may have been misunderstood when she was learning and is therefore being mistranslated when talking back to us.

Those unspoken rules that other species follow could be nothing more than an instinct based on survival. Imagine if a cub were to attack an alpha with actual intent. Many species would show that the alpha would then attack and kill that cub. So out of necessity for survival, it sticks with other cubs. The play fighting that they do also creates a basis for them to learn to hunt and defend territory. Being that these animals are not able to effectively communicate in the same range and degree that humans are, it's impossible to know if they have religion. This is a debate that has been going on for some time.

At the same time, we are talking about humans. There are many behaviors within humans that are not present in the rest of the animal kingdom. Examples of this would be commerce. We trade something that is not essential to our survival (e.g. dollar bills, gold, credit) for something that we either want or need (e.g. food, clothing, shelter). We have jobs that do not directly influence our survival as a species. Animals create a symbiosis with their environment, whereas the human race has destroyed vasts portions of the Earth. Many people purposely poison themselves with various substances, whether legal or illegal. There are so many things that set the human race apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. With this being the case, why couldn't religion just be one more thing that's added to that list?

I understand what you're saying, but if that were true, why is there no evidence of a society that had no religious beliefs?