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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Thats a good point actually.. Science *is* a form of faith in itself.. very few of us have every performed any of the actions necessary to verify even the most basic of scientific principles. for ourself.
Supposedly, prior to Galilean times, it was assumed by nearly everyone that heavier objects would fall faster than light ones would. However it took thousands of years before anyone actually got around to dropping some items of different weight and noticing that they actually all fell at the same speed (assuming similair air resistance properties). So much for common sense.
I understand the behaviour of an intangible particle called an electron better than your average joe does.. I've studied its characteristics and how to make it do what I want for over 20 years. I think I'm pretty good when it comes to the "science" of "electronics". But do I know exactly *why* these positives and negative particles (opposites) attract each other ? Nope, it "just is" and not understanding why, I have to rely on faith that it will continue to be so.. I dont like it, but until I or someone figures out why, I will just have to keep trusting that it does.
In that respect, my "science" is founded upon faith, just as much as that of any religion in the world.
But, the main difference between science and religion as far as I am concerned, is that I can demonstrate to anyone, anytime that opposites attract, and electrons will flow if you produce an excess of them in any manner. I can even tell someone how to do it, and they can follow my instructions and prove it for themselves.
Noone has yet been able to provide any method in which I can do "xxx" and *prove* to myself that <deity> exists or not, so while I do not say it is definite that they do or do not, they get put in the same box as UFO's, Elvis, Honest Politicians, and Flying Pigs.
I agree that the big-bang theory, while logically self consistent also requires some pretty hefty leaps of faith as far I understand it at present. Again, I think this is one of the things that may be cleared up when we stop acting like a horse with blinkers on and insisting that time is an invariable linear dimension.
There have been some very interesting hypthesis about multi dimensional time that apparently clear up a lot of the paradoxes like energy appearing out of nowhere and quantum inseperability.. The problem is coming up with a theory that is proveable to people who are embedded within the thing trying to be measured. Try explaining water to a fish.. Its kind of hard to conceive of something outside of what you have lived your whole life within. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Sun Oct 10, 2004 8:42 pm |
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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quote:
Originally posted by Philip Taylor:
I wasn't saying science is a religion in the above post, but rather the many and varied evolutionary theories. The law of conservation of energy contradicts the theory of evolution. You should disgaurd or modify the theory when it contradicts a law.
Ah yes, I have encountered this sort of argument from "Creation Scientists" before (not saying that you are one Philip, just that its a technique they often use).. Scientist A disagrees with Scientist B on the exact details of the theory of evolution, therefore the whole concept is invalid and the creationsists are automatically right, after all, they have a book that tells us how it really happened. Its sort of the equivalent of saying "A does not equal B Therefore C is correct"
Can you explain how you believe the Theory of Evolution contradicts the law of conservation of energy ?
In most cases I have seen, the dis-proof of conservation of energy is a result of the observer failing to take into account the larger system that is the external source of energy that appears to be "free" within the smaller system. Niagra Falls powering Electric Generators looks like "free" energy, as long as you ignore the giga-terawatt nuclear reactor we call the sun that is powering the evaporation of water and moving it from places of low gravitational potential back up to the top of the hills so we can extract that energy over and over again.
> I can offer no direct proof of God's existance. I do see things
> such as the common bassis of life in creation and interpret that
> observation as pointing to a common creator.
I agree that there are many documented phenomena in existance that suggest the existance of another plane/dimension/reality that we cannot presently perceive.. The patterns that occurs repeatedly in nature, and the intriguing mathematical relationships that crop up in the physical laws and constants that define our world suggest that they are related on a deeper level..
Much like the inctricate patterns of a graphics fractal all stem from a reiterate loop passed through a simple equation like Z=> Z^2 +C. Run some numbers through this loop and you get
.
Does that prove that God is really a set of equations ?
> I see people being healed of incurable diseases when they
> are prayed for. How can this be explaned without God's power?
Many ways.. the ability of the human mind to influence reality in ways more subtle than our instruments can detect is well documented. I suspect such influence occurs beneath the level of the uncertainty principle by a bending of the laws of probability according to the expectations of the observer. If reality is defined as the collapsing of a quantum probability wave at the moment of observation, then it is not inconcievable that the mind state of the observer can affect the outcome of that collapse.
Such magic is not confined purely to those who believe in "God" and pray to right diety.. Satanists, Pagans, Witches, Bhuddists, Primitive Fire Walkers who worship a rock and scientists have all shown this ability on occasion. The key is in the intensity of the belief in the power of ones mind, not the choice of which religion to adhere to.
These type of occurences prove to me that there is more to how the world works than we presently understand.. they do not prove to me that there is a big bearded guy up in the sky who really gives a shit whether a semi-evolved tribe of primates all subscribe to his fan club or not.
> I simply observe the indirect evidence and make a theory.
> I have no direct proof of God's existence.
Observation of occurences and the formulation of a theory is fine, but unless the theory makes predictions that can be practically tested and verified or disproved, then it isnt a theory, its a fantasy.
I can "theorise" that somewhere out there in the universe is a planet populated by super beings who have a strange vulnerability to a substance called Kryptonite.. but because this offers no way to prove whether it is true or not, it does not deserve to be called a Theory, its just a story.
> I do not wish to push my veiws on anyone. I am happy to keep talking
> about this if others wish to. I am happy to stop talking about this if
> noone wishes to talk about this.
Ditto, Intelligent discourse on why people believe in this or that is a good way of learning things, unfortunately, in my experience, it usually doesnt take long before one runs into a belief on the part of one party or the other that cant be supported by anything more than "its just what I believe", and things usually get ugly around then, because not many people enjoy having their unsupported beliefs exposed as such, so they get all defensive, irrational and accusatory.
If you're happy to keep following this path and can remain civil and polite, I dont mind the occasional theological debate either.. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
Last edited by Spockie-Tech on Tue Oct 12, 2004 1:25 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:59 pm |
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Philip
Experienced Roboteer
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
Posts: 3842
Location: Queensland near Brisbane
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If I recall correctly (it has been 20 years since I left school) the law of conservation of energy goes along the lines of In a closed system, without the input of energy, things go from a state of higher order to a state of lower order. Another that comes to mind is, Energy is neither created or destroyed it only changes from one form to another. The word entropy should go in there somewhere to deal with wasted energy.
There needs to be some input of energy to start the whole thing. There was nothing and it exploded to make energy just doesn't work with the above. You cannot get mass from nothing. If we skip over this little point, we move on to things evolving from a lower order to a higher oder by absorbing random energy from the sun. This reminds me of a Mavel Comic style of story with a radioactive spider biting someone to turn him into a super hero. Marauder absorbed some random enery from Annihilation. It might surprise you to find that it moved to a lower state of order.
"Observation of occurences and the formulation of a theory is fine, but unless the theory makes predictions that can be practically tested and verified or disproved, then it isnt a theory, its a fantasy." Can any of the evolutionary theories be tested and verified? A theory would become a law if it could be tested and verified. A theory is an idea based on observation IIRC. Could a schoolie confirm this definition, please? You would need to have some observations to lead you to a theory regarding your planet.
I have heard the guys from Creation Science speak. I agree with alot of what they said. I am not involved with Creation Science, however. I was not saying that the evolutioary theories contradict one another and are therefore untrue. I was just lumping them together for convenience. Do you have any particular evolution theory that you think is possible. I have read that you don't think that the big bang is quite there.
That is one of my longer posts. I must stop talking to you, Brett, or I will pick up your mega posting traits.
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Tue Oct 12, 2004 6:37 pm |
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Valen
Experienced Roboteer
Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Posts: 4436
Location: Sydney
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evolution in practise
inceticide resistant bugs
antibiotic resistant bacteria
that is evolution in its purest form (and demonstrating why biodiversity in things we want to survive is important)
conservation of energy as i know it goes along the lines of energy can neither be created or destroyed only converted and distributed.
that whole something from nothing thing has actually been demonstrated called "virtual particles" which is getting into some heavy duty quantum physics, short version is thats what all those zero point energy people are talking about (perhaps the universes only real free lunch) and from what ive read has been confirmed to exist. theory goes a bit like this. there is a small but finite possibility of particles just popping into existance matter and energy are basically the same thing so its possible to have electromagnetic radiation just "happen" too, you get 2 conductive plates and put them very close togther, now the wavelength of the fields that can "just happen" outside the 2 plates is say infinite, but the wavelengths in-between the plates is limited and thus less. so you have lots of these (possibly existant) waves on one side of the plates and fewer on the other. this leads to a *real measurable force* on the plates zero point energy however being incredibly low powered there *isnt much* but dont let that stop you. There ya go, something from nothing, the universes own free lunch and you can do it with your own photo-lithography micromachining setup.
a perfictly closed system wont move from high to low order, any energy disipated by the objects in the system is still within the system, thus the systems energy is the same, the entropy (distribution of energy) within the system will decrease however (ie more distributed). _________________ Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets
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Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:00 pm |
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chris
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
Posts: 160
Location: Brisbane
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quote:
Originally posted by Valen:
simpelst answer is often the best
re the ark story
for humans you need a minimum number of 16 males and 12 females i believe in order not to have inbreeding, so adam and eve dont work
Either that or adam was a machine
Sorry about that...
This seems to be a good time to share my view on religion as my little grey cells have been working all afternoon reading all the posts up until now:
Although My family and to a lesser extent, myself are religious I find that there is too little existing evidence to commit myself to a story that is thousands of years old and may have lost all sence of truth.
The biggest aexample of this is the unanswered question of what happens when we die. Now according to the Bible there are two places you can go, heaven if you lived a peaceful life and hell, if you lived a restless, cruel life.
This is the area where I am most skepticle, (and the area I think will create the most discussion, just wanna keep things interesting!) this is why:
According to the bible, God loves the sinners, so why would he send sinners to hell.
Another thought worth talking about is:
How are we supposed to know that there really is a heaven or a hell, an all powerful god or a Devil or anything else related to the death theory that is put foward in the pages of the Bible.
Dont get me wrong, its not that I dont believe in life after death but I am skeptical, and that brings me to my final thoughts on death:
If there is no such thing as heaven or hell then what happens after death, do we dissapear and how is disappear defined in this situation, Do we pass out of all existance (a very hard to explain thought cause there has to be something, doesnt there?), or do we become reincarnated (which is apparently impossible because right now there are more people alive than have ever lived before, so maybe an animal?) or do we pass in to an alternate reality like a parralel universe? _________________ Mr "squirt"
Team Blazing Star
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Wed Oct 13, 2004 6:33 pm |
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