The Faith & Religion mega Thread

You're right enorbet. Nobody knows it all - Especially me. I feel justified constructive criticism coming from you, and I welcome it. That's what I wanted out of this - not bombastic artillery blasts at each other or anyone. I was accustomed to researching at a scientific level as I need to go near a topic, then strip off the gobbledygook, and present the core concepts. To quote: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't know your subject well enough." Einstein? Richard Feynman? I forget.

@ntubski: I think it's a question of definitions. What I would have called expansion in the Universe, literature is calling expansion of the Universe. An adjustment in terminology is necessary on my part. So some of the questions I raised don't make sense. Hmmm. I'll factor these in, but not today or now - it's too late here now and I should look again at some stuff. I'll come back on this.

@jamison20000e: I looked at your link. Did you notice 'evolution' as portrayed is simply straightening the knees and correcting the (lack of)lower spinal curvature? You're apparently on tangents to the debate here, but it's difficult to gather where you're at usually. AI was programmed over many, many years by intelligent humans before it got off the ground at all. That's as much an argument for intelligent design of humans as it is for evolution. It just depends how you package it. But I won't go near evolution. I am among the few who hold sensible but non scientific beliefs, and people recite entrenched positions at me; they don't think. I gather you're not a believer, anyhow. There can be an educational insistence that you swallow evolution.

This world has too many cycles to spare for non-biological evolution to stop opinions, $o sudo kill/die on...

Ever buy (for example) a Maytag washer, I bet when the warranty runs out it breaks‽

&see we $ucker$!

What's the (non-technical) difference between any corporation and any church!

Not opinions.

Just a quick note - Evolution is insisted by reality first. Personally I consider arguments about macro and micro evolution to be somewhat silly but the fact remains BOTH, for those who think in such distinctions, have now been observed and actually millions of times, and in several different arenas like fruit flies, plants, and viruses.

Imagine that you were around and clever enough to invent a vastly improved buggy whip circa 1903. Do you think you'd be in good shape if you invested your life savings in a company to manufacture and sell them? Now multiply that with the vast level increases in technology that have occurred in more than a century and a half since Darwin. If his theories were deeply flawed, we'd surely have a clue by now. Charles Darwin couldn't have imagined anything remotely like RNA and DNA in his wildest fever dreams. They could have utterly destroyed any theory that came before that major breakthrough. Instead they bolstered it magnificently.

Denying Evolution is nearly as hsyterically blinded as Flat Earth. Is it the entire picture? Probably not but it is at the very least as solid as Newtons Laws. It will quite literally take confirmed discovery of extraterrestrial life to present even the slightest challenge, and even then it will still be valid on Earth.

People watch drama for entertainment...

Originally Posted by enorbet Just a quick note - Evolution is insisted by reality first. Personally I consider arguments about macro and micro evolution to be somewhat silly but the fact remains BOTH, for those who think in such distinctions, have now been observed and actually millions of times, and in several different arenas like fruit flies, plants, and viruses. Imagine that you were around and clever enough to invent a vastly improved buggy whip circa 1903. Do you think you'd be in good shape if you invested your life savings in a company to manufacture and sell them? Now multiply that with the vast level increases in technology that have occurred in more than a century and a half since Darwin. If his theories were deeply flawed, we'd surely have a clue by now. Charles Darwin couldn't have imagined anything remotely like RNA and DNA in his wildest fever dreams. They could have utterly destroyed any theory that came before that major breakthrough. Instead they bolstered it magnificently. Denying Evolution is nearly as hsyterically blinded as Flat Earth. Is it the entire picture? Probably not but it is at the very least as solid as Newtons Laws. It will quite literally take confirmed discovery of extraterrestrial life to present even the slightest challenge, and even then it will still be valid on Earth.

I note your bias. I won't correct what I see wrong in what I see as wrong in what you posted. There are questions, curiously enough, that evolution doesn't answer. I have defended my position against scientists over the years, and won their respect. And as there is no scientific way for life to originate, as we discussed in posts #9170-9210, it's apparently not the answer you think it is. But you guys have the floor. As I said, I'm not going there - no way.

@ntubski: I went back to your original article https://www.forbes.com/sites/startsw...ing-after-all/ Funny enough, I remember Alan Guth and kept an eye on stuff being said. IIRC that idea was advanced but never gained much currency at the time, or we'd have heard a lot more of it. For reference, I'll quote the entire paragraph where his speculative theory is outlined.

Instead of an arbitrarily hot, dense state, the Universe could have begun from a state where there was no matter, no radiation, no antimatter, no neutrinos, and no particles at all. All the energy present in the Universe would rather be bound up in the fabric of space itself: a form of vacuum energy, which causes the Universe to expand at an exponential rate. In this cosmic state, quantum fluctuations would still exist, and so as space expanded, these fluctuations would get stretched across the Universe, creating regions with slightly-more or slightly-less than average energy densities. And finally, when this phase of the Universe — this period of inflation — came to an end, that energy would get converted into matter-and-radiation, creating the hot, dense state synonymous with the Big Bang. The conclusion was inescapable: the hot Big Bang definitely happened, but doesn't extend to go all the way back to an arbitrarily hot and dense state. Instead, the very early Universe underwent a period of time where all of the energy that would go into the matter and radiation present today was instead bound up in the fabric of space itself. That period, known as cosmic inflation, came to an end and gave rise to the hot Big Bang, but never created an arbitrarily hot, dense state, nor did it create a singularity. What happened prior to inflation — or whether inflation was eternal to the past — is still an open question, but one thing is for certain: the Big Bang is not the beginning of the Universe!

The article goes on to point out it's an interesting concept. But not interesting enough that Guth, (who was a prolific scientist at this time) ever thought to write a paper about it. Before I say any more on it, I need to know; How seriously do you take a 2017 magazine article on a concept developed in 1979 that the scientist who had the idea didn't even bother to write up?

I also found the ideas conveyed in this Article graphic psrticularly hard to swallow, as it's assigning creative power to blind forces

If the silly notion of godS that have just always existed: then why can't matter/time and everything else, have just always existed instead‽

Oh because we're all born in to opinions, some just grow up past fairy tales and blind stupidity for poops* and laughs*. There should be another poll, what percent of people say they believe in silly things but actually don't.

Originally Posted by business_kid The article goes on to point out it's an interesting concept. But not interesting enough that Guth, (who was a prolific scientist at this time) ever thought to write a paper about it.

I found this 1981 paper linked from Guth's Wikipedia page: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstrac...hysRevD.23.347

Before I say any more on it, I need to know; How seriously do you take a 2017 magazine article on a concept developed in 1979 that the scientist who had the idea didn't even bother to write up?

I'm no physicist, so I don't really worry about the details of cosmology too much. It's sometimes interesting to read about. My impression of the article is that it's actually just summarizing mainstream science, with a slightly provocative title.

assigning creative power to blind forces

I think this is a recurrent theme in your objections to various scientific theories, but I don't really understand it.

If you look at something like http://www.random-art.org/online/, would you say that the output is not art because the input is random?

Agreed. It's an interesting tangent to read about. As a tangent, I for one won't explore it. I'm surprised you chose to raise it here. It teaches me to examine these things more carefully next time.

And I agree, assigning creative forces to blind forces is a common theme of mine. I don't like the this sort of thing: a theory that lumps of meat falling out of the sky developed wings. Nobody said that, of course. It's just a knee jerk reaction of mine when blind forces appear to solve their own problems. But I gather you're starting from a diametrically opposite viewpoint.

Originally Posted by business_kid I note your bias. I won't correct what I see wrong in what I see as wrong in what you posted. There are questions, curiously enough, that evolution doesn't answer. I have defended my position against scientists over the years, and won their respect. And as there is no scientific way for life to originate, as we discussed in posts #9170-9210, it's apparently not the answer you think it is. But you guys have the floor. As I said, I'm not going there - no way.

Thanks for your relatively civil post. I will respect your wish to not get involved in the issue of Evolution but since you once again responded as if you'vbe alreadt dealt a death blow I must respond to that. I've emboldened the conflict in my quote of your words.

It is true that we only have many of the steps leading back to origin "nailed down", both in Big Bang and Life as we know it, but we do have strong hypotheses that are actually scientific with considerable evidence, just not enough yet for Sigma level confidence all the way back, but progressing steadily.

On the flip side of that coin in both the macro of Birth of Our Universe and the micro of Life on Earth, ALL religions have at best an ancient book written by superstitious people that lived hundreds of years before the scientific method was in it's infancy. They depended on mysticism and magic, sacrificed animals including people, to invisible gods and feared multiple witches, demons and many supernatural beings. They are so far removed from modern humans to be inconceivable even though very large numbers of people still to this day believe in all manner of supernatural beings without one shred of evidence beyond assertions of stories from those ancient, even MORE superstitious people and times. That's NOT evidence. Those are unsubstantiated claims at best.

So in all fairness, I will take "almost answers" based on actual objective repeatable evidence that imply a completion at some point, over superstitious claims of magical words and waving of hands AND I have to question the intellectual integrity of anyone who always takes ancient texts over the scientific method.

Religion isn't Science and Science isn't Religion. They just overlap a bit in desiring to answer fundamental questions but methodology is diametrically opposed. So I can and will turn your concern right backatacha. I think Science has brought us much closer to the answers of how Life began and continues to chip away at the answers.

What does Religion, any Religion even just yours, offer as evidence that it's story is objectively accurate, especially added since 2000 years ago? What advancements has your Religion made that compares with Science?

I ran across two articles from David Bloom and thought they might be of interest to this group:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...cident/304425/

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...-faith/417357/

We return you now to the never ending "I'm right" thread.

8bit

Opinions, facts, new opinions and new facts: that's all there is!