IF- it’s a christian type monotheism, then yes, you want to accept large chunks of non-proven and non falsifiable (read:fantasy) information as part of your subjective reality.
Since most religious practices are such a bogus, I cannot tell you where they begin or end.
They have the habit of being totally out of touch with reality with no consistent cosmology on their own.
For instance, you could be a doctor working in a hospital where children’s genitalia are mutilated.
In the next hospital, those doctors are also affiliated with religion X but feel no need to sacrifice foreskin or labia to an invisible person.
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
IF- it’s a christian type monotheism, then yes, you want to accept large chunks of non-proven and non falsifiable (read:fantasy) information as part of your subjective reality.
Since most religious practices are such a bogus, I cannot tell you where they begin or end.
They have the habit of being totally out of touch with reality with no consistent cosmology on their own.
For instance, you could be a doctor working in a hospital where children’s genitalia are mutilated.
In the next hospital, those doctors are also affiliated with religion X but feel no need to sacrifice foreskin or labia to an invisible person.[/quote]
You do realize there is actually a scientific reason to now get circumcised depending on what part of the world you are raised in just due to hygiene issues.
There is also simply an aesthetic reason now.
Personally, I don’t know what I’m missing…but do think this should possibly be an adult choice and not one simply made at birth in fully developed countries.
You keep using words like fantasy and bogus.
Let me ask you…what if it turns out “life” was seeded on this planet by some Alien race?
I have yet to hear from one non-monotheistically influenced doctor that cutting foreskin or labia as a standard procedure for infants makes sense, medically speaking.
It’s here because of cultural, historical reasons.
An adult can mutilate himself however he wants.
@Aliens
Might be entirely possible.
Same as with gods and demons.
But: The possibility itself is irrelevant.
The implications and the degree by which this would influence my life, on the other hand, is what matters.
Pure cognition is a luxury.
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
I have yet to hear from one non-monotheistically influenced doctor that cutting foreskin or labia as a standard procedure for infants makes sense, medically speaking.
It’s here because of cultural, historical reasons.
An adult can mutilate himself however he wants.[/quote]
I actually posted the study done that proved a significant decrease in the risk of sexually transmitted diseases in Africa about two years ago here. Of course it is mostly traditional or cultural in this country, but that does not mean there is no use for it at all.
I also wouldn’t exactly call it “mutilation”…but to each his own.
I actually don’t disagree with you there.
[quote]
@Aliens
Might be entirely possible.
Same as with gods and demons.
But: The possibility itself is irrelevant.
The implications and the degree by which this would influence my life, on the other hand, is what matters.
Pure cognition is a luxury.[/quote]
I’m sorry, but that literally means you only care about things that directly affect your life…so why gift us with your “luxurious cognition” when you clearly have more important things to do?
Just a heads up…but your choice of words is doing the opposite of what you likely think it is.
Think about it: do purely cognitive subjects exist?
It’s a theoretical assertion.
Everything will have implications, to you and your environment.
At least if you understand yourself as a modern, enlightened man; which I’m sure everyone here does.
However, if there is such a thing as pure cognition, it’s probably metaphysics and religion.
If I make up a theory about the afterlife and present it here in this forum, will you lose sleep over it?
Same as with the vast majority of religions men ever made up.
Christian monotheism has most definitely some very physical attachments to your life, be it bec. of your education, your friends, family, whatever.
If you strip these down to the metaphysical meat, just as a philosophical exercise, (warning: this haunch won’t help bulking!) you’ll end with a bunch of bold claims without any proof at all.
A rational mind wouldn’t see the difference between this and an invisible spaghetti monster praise be his pastaliciousness.
Or would you say there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE for his noodly lordship?
This is my analysis of John Webb’s article on possible changes in the Fine-Structure Constant and how it could affect radioactive decay. First, the Fine Structure Constant, a (read as alpha) is a fundamental physical constant that is used in Lagrangian equations to describe the strength of electromagnetic interaction in a system. Despite it’s name, there has been serious discussion since the early 1900’s on whether it can actually be a constant since a constant a is not compatible with observed data. Very recent experiments, including Dr. Kepp’s, have been showing that a may have been changing. These results are still being verified, but it seems that it is correct. What does this have to do with radioactive decay? None actually. The hypothesis was the discrepancy in the amounts of Sm-149 and Sm-150 was caused by a difference in a back then that led to an increase in neutron absorption, turning Sm-149 to Sm-150. This has since been ruled out and the discrepancy turned out to be due to the abundance of free neutrons due to fission in the natural reactor. Radioactive decay of radioisotopes are not dependent on a, they are a function of the decay constant for that isotope (I will cover decay constants in my next post on Dr. Plaisted) and time, both of which are measurable and quantifiable (again next post). Radioactive dating methods have been carefully constructed to account for neutron capture, which is extremely rare first by not using radioisotopes that have decay chains that have daughters that are affected by neutron capture and second through the use of multiple dating methods and multiple samples.
Petrov, Yu. V.; Nazarov, A. I., Onegin, M. S., Sakhnovsky, E. G. (2006). “Natural nuclear reactor at Oklo and variation of fundamental constants: Computation of neutronics of a fresh core”. Physical Review C 74 (6): 064610
J.-P. Uzan (2003). “The Fundamental Constants and Their Variation: Observational Status and Theoretical Motivations”. Reviews of Modern Physics 75 (2): 403?455.
F. Yasunori (2004). “Oklo Constraint on the Time-Variability of the Fine-Structure Constant”. Astrophysics, Clocks and Fundamental Constants. Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer Berlin. pp. 167?185.
J.D. Barrow (2002). The Constants of Nature: From Alpha to Omega?the Numbers That Encode the Deepest Secrets of the Universe.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Matt, not that I expect you to snap to like a Marine recruit in boot camp but I was hoping you’d answer this question that I posted awhile back:
Please show us how we can prove that the decay rate of potassium and uranium has remained constant throughout the course of the earth’s/universe’s history.
Maybe you just missed it or maybe you intentionally avoided it. I don’t know.
Do your best to present it in layman’s terms. Thanks.[/quote]
According to this Christian physicist, it is the telescope, among other things, that answers your question(s).
[/quote]
Thank you so much for posting this! You just saved me a bunch of time typing all that up myself. This addresses every topic I was going to cover and is an excellent answer to Dr. Plaisted’s article.
Based on your analysis of the links push provided, is it safe to assume that he either didn’t read the piece he was citing as proof or has no idea what he is talking about?
It IS interesting to see that “pro-YEC” piece dismantled on both a common sense AND scientific basis, though.
Feel free to thank Dr. Matt for answering some questions I had for you.
All that’s left are the following:
how do you reconcile plagiarizing your debate sound bites from other web sites with informing me and others that we are all intellectual lemmings? Is there anything ironic and/or hypocritical about that?
why did you think posting an article that states the universe is 13.5 billion years old while referencing data points originating 12.6 billion years ago would support a YEC position? Did you not read it or do you simply not understand something you profess to be highly self-educated in?
Is the egg on your face preventing you from seeing which keys to hit, or do you think your silence might convince those following along that you actually HAVE legitimate answers to the above and are just playing coy?
Please note that I’d prefer you answer the bolded questions first… that last part was actually rhetorical.
None of that changes what I wrote. You can NOT claim you are going by science and state you flat out don’t believe in God and that it was not a choice to make that decision.
That was what I was responding to…someone claiming they weren’t even making a choice at all but that they also did not believe in God.[/quote]
Okay, now answer this:
Do you choose to believe mixing red paint and blue paint will yield purple paint? Or does the overwhelming evidence for this force you to believe it?
I did not choose my disbelief in a god, I just haven’t been presented with good evidence for any god claims. If they ever met their burden of proof I would believe.
[/quote]
I’m sorry, what in science equals the paint analogy? You haven’t been presented with any evidence that our existence was not guided by some force that we don’t understand either.
What you do have…is an astounding amount of order in a system of chaos and randomness that is literally so rare it is mind boggling.[/quote]
I don’t choose to disbelieve in God. It is simply a concept that my brain comprehends as being illogical. Similarly, I have never made a conscious choice not to believe in Thor, Poseidon, Vishnu or leprechauns. How about you? I have a feeling we both just “know” that these are all fairy tales. I merely add one more deity to the list.
Based on your analysis of the links push provided, is it safe to assume that he either didn’t read the piece he was citing as proof or has no idea what he is talking about?
It IS interesting to see that “pro-YEC” piece dismantled on both a common sense AND scientific basis, though.[/quote]
Since he is not a physicist, I would not have expected him to fully understand Dr. Kepp’s piece. As for his post by Dr. Plaisted, the man is smart enough to convince people who are not knowledgeable on this topic that his points are valid. A little research would have shown this is not the case, but I would not really have expected him to know the man was a fraud and was seriously reprimanded, and nearly went to prison, for presenting his articles on his university’s website and for presenting them as valid scientific articles without having done any original research or having any experience in those areas or using valid citations, or having permission. The only reason I knew about him is because I testified at his hearing being a leading expert on potassium decay and as a visiting lecturer not otherwise associated with the school.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Personally, I don’t know what I’m missing…but do think this should possibly be an adult choice and not one simply made at birth in fully developed countries.
[/quote]
It’s a practice in Africa(don’t remember what country), but as a rite of passage, males are circumsized when they’re ~18-20. No flinching allowed either.
[quote]TORO wrote:
Apologies, but you are all way off mark.
We are organic robots, deposited on this planet 20 minutes ago,
with our memories implanted just before that.[/quote]
So the belief in sabertooth pandas is like a glitch then?
[quote]TORO wrote:
Apologies, but you are all way off mark.
We are organic robots, deposited on this planet 20 minutes ago,
with our memories implanted just before that.[/quote]
So the belief in sabertooth pandas is like a glitch then?
Tell THEM to fix it, I find it annoying. [/quote]
I am pissed that I got stuck with remembering years of sitting in a library studying physics instead of having a series of hot, wild girlfriends. Who do I see about memory exchanges?
[quote]TORO wrote:
Apologies, but you are all way off mark.
We are organic robots, deposited on this planet 20 minutes ago,
with our memories implanted just before that.[/quote]
So the belief in sabertooth pandas is like a glitch then?
Tell THEM to fix it, I find it annoying. [/quote]
I am pissed that I got stuck with remembering years of sitting in a library studying physics instead of having a series of hot, wild girlfriends. Who do I see about memory exchanges?[/quote]
Yeah is there like an email address? I have some questions.
[quote]TORO wrote:
Apologies, but you are all way off mark.
We are organic robots, deposited on this planet 20 minutes ago,
with our memories implanted just before that.[/quote]
So the belief in sabertooth pandas is like a glitch then?
Tell THEM to fix it, I find it annoying. [/quote]
I am pissed that I got stuck with remembering years of sitting in a library studying physics instead of having a series of hot, wild girlfriends. Who do I see about memory exchanges?[/quote]
[quote]TORO wrote:
Apologies, but you are all way off mark.
We are organic robots, deposited on this planet 20 minutes ago,
with our memories implanted just before that.[/quote]
So the belief in sabertooth pandas is like a glitch then?
Tell THEM to fix it, I find it annoying. [/quote]
I am pissed that I got stuck with remembering years of sitting in a library studying physics instead of having a series of hot, wild girlfriends. Who do I see about memory exchanges?[/quote]
Sorry, I might have missed your response.
Should I assume you squat at least 405 lbs?[/quote]
[quote]TORO wrote:
Apologies, but you are all way off mark.
We are organic robots, deposited on this planet 20 minutes ago,
with our memories implanted just before that.[/quote]