[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
Tribulus, begin your answer like this please so I can understand:
“We know those laws are from God because…”[/quote]
Because 2+2=4, sorry, I’m going to bed now, take care.
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
Tribulus, begin your answer like this please so I can understand:
“We know those laws are from God because…”[/quote]I know those laws are from God because they are contained in a collection of writings that when believed by me, a thing I did NOT see comin, transformed me from the inside out. Again Joe. On the basis of autonomous human logic, NOTHING is certain. Kamui is absolutely right. ALL knowledge terminates in tautology. (To paraphrase my fine French friend)
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
ALL knowledge terminates in tautology.[/quote]
That is true, why do you think you are entitled to something more?
E: I reply tomorrow if needed.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
Tribulus, begin your answer like this please so I can understand:
“We know those laws are from God because…”[/quote]I know those laws are from God because they are contained in a collection of writings that when believed by me, a thing I did NOT see comin, transformed me from the inside out.
[/quote]
You’re using the God of the Gaps argument just like that other numb nuts.
You’re saying because your life improved upon believing in god, that means god is real? Ok well there’s your issue Tribulus, because that does not mean God is real. People have experiences all the time that can’t be explained. You don’t have to appeal to imaginary friends to be confident and happy Trib, quit being a pussy.
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:[quote]Tiribulus wrote:ALL knowledge terminates in tautology.[/quote]That is true, why do you think you are entitled to something more?[/quote]I don’t think I’m entitled to more which is why I’m so grateful I’ve been given the mind of Christ (1st Corinthians 2:16). That’s not just something more. That’s EVERYTHING more. Every man’s knowledge reduces ultimately to faith. It’s only a matter of what in. My faith is SUPPOSED to be foolish to unbelievers. The church fails utterly when she tries to accommodate sinners in defiance of the clear declarations of scripture. Read the 1st Chapter of 1st Corinthians. I have to go train legs.
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
If God wanted to deliver his message, why did he only deliver it to very few people using text, and then beyond that make it difficult to understand? Why wouldn’t he make it very clear so that there is no question at all?
[/quote]
This is the whole “Why isn’t God more obvious” argument. I don’t know since I am not God. [/quote]
Ok but what is your opinion on how ridiculous it is for anyone to accept that an all powerful being capable of creating other beings isn’t capable of coming to earth to talk to us and instead just gives some vague book to a few people? Don’t you think that it’s pretty bad communication for an all powerful God?
If there was a company on Earth called God and they had no phone system, no email, no building, no employees, no nothing except an old book that someone found, would you do business with this company? How would you even go about attempting to do business with a company that has no fucking system of communication? HELLO!? ANYBODY THERE?!
No but I’m supposed to dedicate my time and my life to worshiping some asshole who never came to talk to us. Oh but he left this book, see!
All powerful creator my ass. [/quote]
LOLOLOLOLOL! One of the best posts ever!
Joe, this stuff is so bizarre that I think ppl invented it just to short circuit the thinking process if someone followed it. Dummies afterall are easier to rule.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:<<< Yes and how do we know those are really the laws from God and not just made up by men?[/quote]The same way you know that a “scientist” with a 3 pound brain can tell you what happened billions of years ago in spite of the fact that he can’t even tell you how and why he knows that 2+2=4.
[/quote]
May the god you invented forgive you for such nonsense.
Numbers are a human construct to deal with units.
Really? A part 2 to this thread? The first one was so dumb I had to finally use the ignore function for such nonsense comments even though I didn’t really post in it myself.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Really? A part 2 to this thread? The first one was so dumb I had to finally use the ignore function for such nonsense comments even though I didn’t really post in it myself.[/quote]
Well the first thread wouldn’t allow anymore posts and we weren’t finished “discussing”.
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Really? A part 2 to this thread? The first one was so dumb I had to finally use the ignore function for such nonsense comments even though I didn’t really post in it myself.[/quote]
Well the first thread wouldn’t allow anymore posts and we weren’t finished “discussing”. [/quote]
Yes my point that the first one even got past the 1st page of posts.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:
If God wanted to deliver his message, why did he only deliver it to very few people using text, and then beyond that make it difficult to understand? Why wouldn’t he make it very clear so that there is no question at all?
[/quote]
This is the whole “Why isn’t God more obvious” argument. I don’t know since I am not God. [/quote]
Ok but what is your opinion on how ridiculous it is for anyone to accept that an all powerful being capable of creating other beings isn’t capable of coming to earth to talk to us and instead just gives some vague book to a few people? Don’t you think that it’s pretty bad communication for an all powerful God?
If there was a company on Earth called God and they had no phone system, no email, no building, no employees, no nothing except an old book that someone found, would you do business with this company? How would you even go about attempting to do business with a company that has no fucking system of communication? HELLO!? ANYBODY THERE?!
No but I’m supposed to dedicate my time and my life to worshiping some asshole who never came to talk to us. Oh but he left this book, see!
All powerful creator my ass. [/quote]
LOLOLOLOLOL! One of the best posts ever!
Joe, this stuff is so bizarre that I think ppl invented it just to short circuit the thinking process if someone followed it. Dummies afterall are easier to rule.[/quote]
Haha thanks, glad you enjoyed my post. And I agree with your thoughts. Religions try and control people.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]OldManJoe wrote:<<< Yes and how do we know those are really the laws from God and not just made up by men?[/quote]The same way you know that a “scientist” with a 3 pound brain can tell you what happened billions of years ago in spite of the fact that he can’t even tell you how and why he knows that 2+2=4.
[/quote]
In reference to the question of why 2 + 2 = 4, the answer is that it does not always do so. There are certain axioms that must be specified before the claim that 2 + 2 = 4 can be made. The first is that one is using modern Arabic numerals.
Next an actual counting system must be imposed, and numerals must be assigned to represent a number of objects. This will be completely arbitrary. The most common counting system these days is base 10. Other common number systems used in fields like computer science include base 2 and base 16. The ancient Sumerian civilization counted in base 60.
Base 10 means that using Arabic numerals, a single object is arbitrarily assigned a value of 1, and grouping another single object with that first object is assigned a value of 2, again arbitrarily since the symbols used do not really matter since it is just another way to represent real objects. A single object is 1, if another object added to the other one in some way, the group is arbitrarily assigned a symbol of 2, another object added to that group is assigned a value of 3 and so on up to 9 (zero is a number, and the only non-positive integer in modern set theory, as well as number theory, but instead of representing a number of objects, it represents an absence of whatever is being represented with numerals). It does not matter if you want to make up your own symbols to represent a group of objects, the symbol that you use to represent a single object will be equivalent to the value represented by the Arabic symbol 1.
This means that a single object in our counting system is one, another object added to that is 2 another object added to the group is 3 and another is 4. This can be represented symbolically, with the “+” symbol being used to represent objects being grouped together somehow (it doesn’t matter what is being grouped together or how in pure mathematics like this, all that matters is that that is happening. Imaging rocks being thrown into a bucket if it helps) and the “=” symbol meaning that the statements on both sides of the symbol mean the same thing. Now, the symbols used in the arbitrarily chosen number system must be defined based around the basic unit in the number system. For base 10 using Arabic numerals, that is 1, which represents a single object. It is really no different then using letters to represent sounds that a person is making. Without assigning arbitrary meaning to these sounds, by grouping them into words and assigning meaning to those words, they are meaningless. If you go up to a person who speaks only mandarin and speak English, they will not know what you are saying without some way of assigning meaning to those sounds since the sounds we make have no intrinsic meaning.
To symbolically define the symbol represents an absence of objects, one must state that adding that symbol to a single object, defined as 1, yields the same number of objects:
1 + 0 = 1
If, for instance, you wanted & to represent an absence of objects and * to represent a single object, you would state:
-
- & = *
As long as you define those symbols as stated above along with the counting system used and what “+” and “=” represent, that is the same as saying that “1 + 0 = 1.”
Defining the rest of the numbers, we get the following:
1 + 1 = 2
1 + 1 + 1 = 3
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 6
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 7
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 8
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 9
Using the guidelines that I outlined above, 2 + 2 = 4 is a true statement, since you have defined 2 as 1 + 1, thus you can express the above operation as 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, which is defined as 4 and can never be anything else as long as the above axioms are being followed, and if you are using the modern day version of counting in base 10 using modern Arabic numerals then you are following these axioms
Now, we are not going to go around declaring what number system and what kind of numerals we are using. That would be a waste of time since almost everyone in the world is taught to count in base 10 using Arabic numerals, which I just defined above; it is so common place that it is just assumed that we are following the above definitions, which are taught in some way to most people in school, even if they do not realize it. It is much easier to require one to specify when one is not following these axioms.
A society in crisis teaches itself to congeal into one story only, and sees reality through very narrow glasses. But there is never only one story
A. Oz
Dr. Matt,
Isn’t it something to do with how many interior angles are in the figure? For ex, a zero (the figure itself) has no angles. A ‘one’ with no horizontal basis has one angle, and so forth. Someone just noticed that two twos had four angles, just like the number four.
I hope that’s clear. Imagine a two being like a big Z, with no verical bars.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Dr. Matt,
Isn’t it something to do with how many interior angles are in the figure? For ex, a zero (the figure itself) has no angles. A ‘one’ with no horizontal basis has one angle, and so forth. Someone just noticed that two twos had four angles, just like the number four.
I hope that’s clear. Imagine a two being like a big Z, with no verical bars.[/quote]
Are you talking about how the symbols used in the Arabic numeral system first came about?
That may well be how some of the symbols used to represent some numbers came about, especially since geometry was the most important field in applied mathematics until the industrial revolution came about and calculus took over as the most important applied mathematical field, but one needs to axiomatically define a counting system like I did (well, partially anyway) in my above post for those symbols to have any real meaning. There is no real way of knowing how the first people to develop counting systems did it. The early Sumerian counting system, which was base 60 was certainly based on spherical coordinates, and the ancient Greeks and Persians were very much concerned with geometry, which may well explain the phenomenon you described about the interior angles of geometric objects.
They could have been trying to quantify the amount of food that they had or weapons or tools, or they could have been looking at geometric objects and were trying to describe the angles and sides like you said. There is no definitive historical record, so it is anyone’s guess. No matter how it came about, it started with using symbols to describe a group of objects and developing more symbols to describe operations that can be performed on those objects and all of modern mathematics grew from the operations and axioms that they came up with.
I admit, I havent been able to read every post, so pardon me if anyone has already brought this up.
I think there is a misconception, that Evolutionary theory and the scientists that have contributed to the Biological sciences, are inherently anti-religious, or atheists. However, with the exception of a few (most of you know who they are), Scientists in many discplines make no such attempts to do so.
Science has not, can not, and does not answer anything with respect to a Diety, or Theology.
If Evolution were for some reason to be proven false, it would not mean that Intelligent Design would be correct, nor vice versa.
These two things are completely separate, as Inteligent design is not a Scientific Stance. In order for ID to be considered Scientific, it must make some sort of prediction, that can be tested. They have put forth nothing, rather attempted to find weaknesses within Evolution.
Going Back to a previous post of mine, I wanted to post a quick blurb, from the Kitzmiller Vs Dover Trial, in wwhich Evolutionary Biologist, Kenneth Miller is asked about Religion/Evolution, I think many of you will find his answer interesting.
Also, I urge all of the people on here, who currently do not believe in Evolution, to sincerely examine the Incredible amount of Evidence in support of Evolution, while realizing your Theologically beliefs can still remain intact.
"Q. Is evolution antireligious?
A. I certainly don’t think so, and I devoted a whole book to arguing why I didn’t think it was.
Q. Don’t some scientists invoke evolution in their arguments to say that, in fact, science and evolution is antireligious, it’s anti-God?
A. Yes, they do. And I can certainly think of any number of specific examples from distinguished evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins or philosophers who have written about evolution like Daniel Dennett or William Paley.
But as I said earlier, it’s very important to appreciate that every word that comes forth from the mouth of a scientist is not necessarily science. And every word that one says on the meaning or the importance of evolutionary theory is not necessarily scientific.
Richard Dawkins, for example, has been eloquent in saying that for him, understanding that life and the origin of species has a material cause frees him from the need to believe in a divine being.
I don’t know if I’ve been as eloquent as Richard Dawkins, but I have worked very hard in my own way to say that for me, the notion that we are united in a great chain of being with every other living thing on this planet confirms my faith in a divine purpose and in a divine plan and means that when I go to church on Sunday, I thank the creator for this wonderful and bounteous earth and for the process of evolution that gave rise to such beauty and gave rise to such diversity that surrounds us. Those are my sentiments, in the same way that Dawkins’ are his. But I’m not speaking scientifically, and I’m not speaking as a scientist, and that’s, I think, the critical distinction.
Q. So you wrote a whole book exploring this intersection between science and faith?
A. That’s correct.
Q. And is any of that kind of discussion found in your high school biology textbook?
A. No, of course not.
Q. Why?
A. Because it’s not scientific. And I’ve made the point earlier that just when you say something is not scientific doesn’t mean it’s not important, doesn’t mean it’s not true, doesn’t mean it doesn’t concern something that you really and deeply care about. And I deeply care about my own religious beliefs and my faith, and I also deeply care about science, and I wanted to explain to a general audience how I understand the intersection of those two beliefs, not just to reconcile them, but to confirm and enhance both beliefs.
Now, I believe in that very strongly, but I certainly recognize that my views on this are not science and they are not scientific. My coauthor, Joseph Levine, who also is a religious person, I have to tell you, has different views of faith, belongs to a different faith, and follows a different religious tradition than I do.
Joe and I both have enormous respect for religion. We both believe that the evolutionary theory is fully compatible with our different religious beliefs, but we also recognize that our religious beliefs are not scientific, that they are philosophical, theological, and deeply personal, and, as such, they don’t belong in a science curriculum, and they certainly don’t belong in a science textbook.
Q. And they’re not found in your high school science textbook?
A. Definitely not
"
edit:quotes
[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:<<< a long semantic exercise that missed my point entirely >>>[/quote]Dr.Matt581 I am honored sir that you would take time from your day to address my long standing challenge that has now found it’s way into this thread though it is much more comprehensively explored in several others. Before we go further I would like to take this opportunity to fully acknowledge that I do not pretend to command your expertise in any of the academic domains in which you have undoubtedly worked very hard to earn your truly commendable level of accreditation. I doubt I would ever have that type of formal discipline. I have also read enough of your posts to tip my hat respectfully to your rather impressive cerebral prowess. That is not in question either.
I cannot tell you how elated I am that we are speaking. I hope it continues.
I hope it continues because I intend to demonstrate, with your help of course, that the foundational position that I hold is utterly impervious to any attack from any human being, regardless of how capable, or level of academic achievement in any field or fields. Anything you can possibly be lettered in is built upon my foundation. Take note I implore you, that I did not say that I will defeat you in a debate. No sir. While I have grateful confidence in the giftings my God has blessed me with, the power is in my position, not my person. I am merely a vessel and a highly unlikely one at that.
Now. Your above post can be summarized as follows. Once we assign necessary but arbitrary axiomatic linguistic symbols to the abstract components of the equation, the outcome is self evident. Please verify, if you would, whether that is accurate or not before we go any further.
[quote]colt44 wrote:<<< your Theologically beliefs can still remain intact. >>>[/quote]No. My Christian ones cannot, but thank you. You’ll find plenty of deceived and deluded company around here who will be glad to take your hand though. I would sooner submit to being skinned alive.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:<<< a long semantic exercise that missed my point entirely >>>[/quote]Dr.Matt581 I am honored sir that you would take time from your day to address my long standing challenge that has now found it’s way into this thread though it is much more fully explored in several others. Before we go further I would like to take this opportunity to fully acknowledge that I do not pretend to command your expertise in any of the academic domains in which you have undoubtedly worked very hard to earn your truly commendable level of accreditation. I doubt I would ever have that type of formal discipline. I have also read enough of your posts to tip my hat respectfully to your rather impressive cerebral prowess. That is not in question.
I cannot tell you how elated I am that we are speaking. I hope it continues.
I hope it continues because I intend to demonstrate, with your help of course, that the foundational position that I hold is utterly impervious to any attack from any human being, regardless of how capable, or level of academic achievement in any field or fields. Anything you can possibly be lettered in is built upon what I’m talkin about. Take note I implore you, that I did not say that I will defeat you in a debate. No sir. While I have grateful confidence in the giftings my God has blessed me with, the power is in my position, not my person. I am merely a vessel and a highly unlikely one at that.
Now. Your above post can be summarized as follows. Once we assign arbitrary axiomatic linguistic symbols to the abstract components of the equation the outcome is self evident. Please verify, if you would, whether that is accurate or not before we go any further.
[quote]colt44 wrote:<<< your Theologically beliefs can still remain intact. >>>[/quote]No. My Christian ones cannot, but thank you. You’ll find plenty of deceived and deluded company around here who will be glad to take your hand though. I would sooner submit to being skinned alive.
[/quote]
Trib I Must confess, every time I see a post of yours I do one of two things, comletely skip over it (and I’d say that’s about 90% of the time) or read it. When I actually take the time to see what you have to say, you bring a smile to my face:) Perhaps not for the reasons you would want me to, but thank you for providing me with such wonderful entertainment.
[quote]colt44 wrote:Trib I Must confess, every time I see a post of yours I <<<>>> completely skip over it <<<>>> 90% of the time >>>[/quote]The day I write so that people like you don’t skip over me 90% of the time is the day I fall on my face and beg my God to forgive my unfaithfulness. Whatever groovy religious paganism you’re involved in, it has nothing to do with the living God and His Christ. Like I say. Don’t worry about me. You have plenty of friends here.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]colt44 wrote:Trib I Must confess, every time I see a post of yours I <<<>>> completely skip over it <<<>>> 90% of the time >>>[/quote]The day I write so that people like you don’t skip over me 90% of the time is the day I fall on my face and beg my God to forgive my unfaithfulness. Whatever groovy religious paganism you’re involved in, it has nothing to do with the living God and His Christ. Like I say. Don’t worry about me. You have plenty of friends here.
[/quote]
I love you