Re: [darkvapor] Christian Ministry to Skydivers

[lurch 0]

The atheists have completely hijacked this thread.
whoa.
Religious belief sets come and go through history...someday all forms of christianity, islam and everything else worshipping what is now called god...someday all these religions will be as forgotten as the greek and egyptian gods, the sumerians, the romans. Christianity is temporary. The notion of god himself is temporary.
But there will always be people who refuse to believe the currently popular mysticism.
Atheists are eternal.
This fact is the one hammer that dismantles any religion, as I see it. This stuff was thought up only in the last few thousand years but everyone who believes it thinks it applies to eternity. How unimaginative.
If I ever have kids I'll be doing my best to ensure nobody infects them with ANY religion, whether it be born again baptist, protestant, mormon, jehovahs, islam, wahabbism or hari krishna. So when someone tells them "we're all sinners we're all guilty" my kid will say "whatever, man".

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[mikeat10500 12]

Quote

If I ever have kids I'll be doing my best to ensure nobody infects them with ANY religion.....

I find I am just the opposite, I am raising my 3
boys 7,9,and 14 to think for themselves. I am
not going to insist that they jump from airplanes
or run from scary religions.
....mike

-----------------------------------
Mike Wheadon B-3715,HEMP#1
Higher Expectations for Modern Parachutists.

[billvon 3,099]

>Atheists are eternal.

Uh, there was a universe with atheists before, and there will be one again. All of us (atheists, christians, wiccans, whatever) have been here for a tiny sliver of time in the billions of years the universe has been around, and the somewhat less billions of years the earth has been around.

>If I ever have kids I'll be doing my best to ensure nobody infects them with ANY religion . . .

I hope you don't present religious belief to them as a disease. I've seen (or heard) that done with blacks, homosexuality, communism, islam etc. and it usually just generates more hatred. I hope my children are open minded enough to hear about religion and accept (or reject) it based on their own beliefs, not on what their parents told them they had to think.

[lurch 0]

>Atheists are eternal.

Uh, there was a universe with atheists before, and there will be one again. All of us (atheists, christians, wiccans, whatever) have been here for a tiny sliver of time in the billions of years the universe has been around, and the somewhat less billions of years the earth has been around.

>If I ever have kids I'll be doing my best to ensure nobody infects them with ANY religion . . .

I hope you don't present religious belief to them as a disease. I've seen (or heard) that done with blacks, homosexuality, communism, islam etc. and it usually just generates more hatred. I hope my children are open minded enough to hear about religion and accept (or reject) it based on their own beliefs, not on what their parents told them they had to think.



Pardon me. The atheists are eternal phrase was a theatrical way of trying to get my point across. Point being that there have been people who didn't know about/care about/believe in any gods since before recorded history. Seen from a long enough time frame christianity islam and the rest of current religions just look like the more popular cults of the times, ones among many. The "god" trip is something thought up by people.

I wouldn't present it to them as a disease, I simply view its behavior life cycle and propagation in much the same light. You're familiar with the concept of infectious memes? Information structures with behavior patterns? A real good example of a weird infectious meme is the All Your Base phenomenon. The internet provided a perfect medium of transmission, the humor part of it ensured its livelihood and virulence, and it still spreads wildly today. Its possibly the funniest idea virus I've ever seen. Ask the guy with the sig line "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN". Or, call up any search engine or msn homepage and type in those 3 words, all your base. you'll get some 23 MILLION results with all the answers to questions about all your base in the first few. All Your Base is a simple meme with a short code and I view religions as similar memes but with much more complex structures usually well blended with cultural aspects of the lives of the people carrying them. Some people are simply immune to some infectious memes. Some people learn about all your base and just go "uh whats so funny?" Personally I found it hilarious. I'm pretty much immune to religion, although I consider myself a deep person (think "spiritual", but I don't believe in spirits) I know what I see and no religion in all its complexity resembles the reality I see. Lots of people have tried to "save" me, I listen patiently, then write it off as "yeah right. sure ok." I would present religion to my kids as a cultural thing somebody else does for their own reasons like hindus or buddhists or wiccans, just don't believe it when someone presents you with religious information presented as fact. (creationism, concepts of "sin" concepts of being in need of "salvation" having a "lord" or talk of personal relationships with god) Its not just religion I would explain this way. Same dubious "yeah right" perspective applies when an advertiser tries to convince you that somehow his product will make your hair shiny and turn you into a supermodel and you absolutely cant get by without it, or some aryan nation asshole tries to tell my kids anything not white is a lower lifeform. Theres only one standard I judge people by in person...are they good people? Do they make me smile or do I want to get the hell away from them? Do they stand on their own two feet or whine demand and expect the world to revolve around them? Most people seem to have a religion of some sort so if I judged everyone I met wearing a cross badly I'd be rejecting way too many possible friends. Same goes for color culture and nationality. I bet there aren't too many racists skydiving...in the past year I've sat stuffed in a plane cheek to jowl and trusted my life with a jordanian, a kuwaiti, a brazilian, some hispanic rico suave looking type I couldn't quite identify, (spain? puerto rico? mexico? fucked if I know) a japanese, a russian, a korean, a chinese, some french guy whose helmet didn't fit him right and a whole lot of the generic who-knows-what-exact-flavor white folks that are the majority here. If I had hangups about race or culture I'd have gone insane by now. Most of them are better in the sky than I am so I listen carefully to all who speak to me. Is there any other way to be?

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[billvon 3,099]

>Point being that there have been people who didn't know about/care
>about/believe in any gods since before recorded history.

I'd be careful about using the period of time something's believed in to test its validity. The US has been around far less time than christianity, yet many people fervently believe in it - even though it consists, at its most basic level, of nothing more than people who believe in a piece of paper. Yet you'd be hard pressed to prove the US wasn't real. NMR is something that 99% of the people in the world can neither understand well nor demonstrate, yet when people go in to get an MRI they believe that the electrons around the hydrogen atoms in their bodies are actually getting torqued by an invisible all-powerful field, and that somehow produces pictures of the insides of their bodies. And NMR has only been around 50 years!

And that's not even that hard to believe - there are perhaps fifty thousand people in the world who have observed the NMR phenomenon directly and can prove it down to basic principles. How about scientists who strongly suspect that there's a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, or that the Higgs boson exists? That requires a lot of faith in things you can _never_ hope to prove; no one person could possibly ever replicate all the research that's gone into the hypothesis that the Higgs boson gives mass to all matter.

You might reply that that's different; the study of science is founded on rigorous experimental method, and I agree - I too believe a lot more in science than in some of the sillier aspects of some organized religions. But your average person on the street needs as much faith to believe in the Higgs boson than they do to believe in whatever god they choose to believe in.

Heck, perhaps it takes more. Many people (including people I trust 100%) have had near death experiences and have had a very common experience before they were resuscitated. That's a lot easier to understand, and better 'proof' for their version of an afterlife, than trying to understand that there is a fundamental problem in assuming that all elementary particles have different masses.

>Theres only one standard I judge people by in person...are they
> good people? Do they make me smile or do I want to get the hell
> away from them?

That's the same basic standard I use, although there are a lot of people who I can't stand who are still very good people. Some believe fevrently in god, and if that works for them, great. Some believe strongly in the _absence_ of god - and if that belief works for them, just as good. Their beliefs don't have to work for me; I've got my own. That they work for them is enough.

But to get back to the original topic, I'd have no more problem with a christian tent than I'd have with an "canadian skydivers" tent - even if they tried to convert me to a Canuck. I'm pretty good at saying no.

[lurch 0]

Billvon, you'd be loads of fun to meet in person and debate things with, from religion to particle physics.
re: your reply:
I take your point, but then I put one TO you, based on it.
An MRI works whether you believe in it or not, it is objectively provable by direct observation. See a picture of a brain tumor? Open the skull, there it is. It isn't necessary to understand or believe. Its existence and effectiveness is objectively undebatable, it's solid reality, or a trickily obtained picture thereof.
Same goes for that theoretical black hole. All the available evidence put together forms a picture that says "the only thing that explains what we see here is a black hole in the middle". We know most of the plain old non-dark matter in the universe is hydrogen. We know all mass attracts other mass. We know given long enough hydrogen will attract more hydrogen till we have a ball big enough to ignite under its own weight in gravity, at which point radiation pressure and convection keep it from getting any smaller and we have a stable star. We can see em. We know if the star runs out of hydrogen it changes till it meets new conditions needed to burn whats left, helium, and again, lithium, oxygen, and every element until it reaches iron, which doesn't give a net energy gain under fusion. We know if the star was too big to merely burn out and settle down to dwarfhood it'll keep collapsing until it either novas out, (which we can see) or collapses so far the escape velocity exceeds that of light, it goes dark and a singularity point develops with a one-way event horizon....literally a hole right out of spacetime itself. The star is receeding in all directions simultaneously faster than the speed of light and no matter how close you get to it, the gravity well is so steep distance is stretched so much you'll never reach it. the distance is effectively infinite, and it's what the square root of -1 looks like when seen in the physical world. All this is observable mathematically provable objectively testable fact. We can "see" black holes by observing stars orbiting totally invisible companions...If its a mass big enough to make a nearby star orbit around it, and it's totally invisible, you probably have a black hole. Holes also can emit gamma ray jets from the poles, at the weakest part of the field, where matter accelerated to beyond lightspeed escapes the hole degenerated into nondifferentiated high energy radiation. Since nothing IN the universe can go faster than lightspeed, when the matter reenters the universe by escaping the field it exchanges its mass and speed and existence as matter for enough energy to exist as radiation. Kinda leaves me wondering what state it was in BEFORE it was radically downshifted by being squirted out the hole's pole.
But again we have stuff we can mathematically verify and test using real solid hardware and tools and even SEE with a good enough Hubble....(why the hell is that star orbiting in a tight little circle near an invisible gamma ray source in the multibillion-terawatt-range?) If the picture doesnt match the reality we see, we update the picture. Anything religious I've seen on the other hand requires faith, belief in something with no objective evidence to support the belief. Even if we can't see the hole, everything else we know implies a hole there. I can't see god either but I have zero evidence to lead me to believe or imply he's out there. The picture looks complete without an omnipotent judgemental paternal creator entity. But I'm just calling it as I see it, and letting it be, since I can't much influence black holes or religions either.
I know this is by now a very old and off topic thread hijack but since the original owner mined it and seems to have abandoned it, it seemed a good place to continue the debate it spawned rather than create a new thread to continue an in-progress topic as was previously suggested by somebody. What the hell, it IS making me think, which is why I'm still posting here.

If you came to my dz, steve, I'd leave you alone like I would any booth advertising or selling something I don't need, but I'm pretty sure nobody would mind or give you a hard time about it. You'd be another booth for people to cluster around like the Mirage tent we had last boogie. Good luck.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[mikeat10500 12]

Bill

Quote

SNIP>>>>And that's not even that hard to believe - there are perhaps fifty thousand people in the world who have observed the NMR phenomenon directly and can prove it down to basic principles.

I was not aware they could prove anything!!! Electricity and gravity are still theories...
right?
...mike

-----------------------------------
Mike Wheadon B-3715,HEMP#1
Higher Expectations for Modern Parachutists.

[Iflyme 0]

Quote

what their parents told them

The parents role is to equip their children with as much knowledge as possible, in preparation for making good choices and decisions out there in the world ... but we, as parents, cannot provide that knowledge without a predisposition ... our beliefs and ideas will influence our children's.

[billvon 3,099]

>An MRI works whether you believe in it or not, it is objectively
>provable by direct observation. See a picture of a brain tumor?
>Open the skull, there it is.

By those rules of reasoning I could prove religion exists. Read about Sodom and Gomorrah in the bible? Do an archealogical dig, there it is.

But, you say, where's the proof that god had anything to do with that? I could say the same about NMR. Sure, there's a picture of the inside of my head. I can do the same with an X-ray, or a CAT scan, or a PET scan, and none of those use NMR. How do you prove to me that it's an invisible, undetectable (to me) combination of fields that's taking pictures of the inside of my head?

>We know if the star was too big to merely burn out and settle down
> to dwarfhood it'll keep collapsing until it either novas out. . .

>But again we have stuff we can mathematically verify and test using
>real solid hardware and tools . . .

Well, no, we have never measured and tested stars before they collapse, then observed as they did collapse. That's our best _guess_ as to how it works; it's something we essentially have to take on faith. For all we know physics doesn't work the same in areas of intense gravitational stress and ultra-high temperature thermonuclear fusion. We have never even approached those levels of energy in the lab. We don't know what to expect. We don't even know how our own sun works! It isn't generating enough neutrinos if we try to use our current theories to explain how it works. So either we don't know how to measure neutrinos or our theories on stellar fusion are off.

>Even if we can't see the hole, everything else we know implies a hole there.

From the viewpoint of a great many people you've just defined god.

[JackC 0]

Quote

>An MRI works whether you believe in it or not, it is objectively
>provable by direct observation. See a picture of a brain tumor?
>Open the skull, there it is.

By those rules of reasoning I could prove religion exists. Read about Sodom and Gomorrah in the bible? Do an archealogical dig, there it is.

All that proves is that Sodom and Gomorrah or someplace like it existed. It does not prove any other aspect of the Bible or God. Religion exists because people believe it. An archealogical dig may support one aspect but has bugger all to do with the rest of it. Conversely, every aspect of an MRI scanner is well understood. The analogy is flawed.

Quote

But, you say, where's the proof that god had anything to do with that? I could say the same about NMR. Sure, there's a picture of the inside of my head. I can do the same with an X-ray, or a CAT scan, or a PET scan, and none of those use NMR. How do you prove to me that it's an invisible, undetectable (to me) combination of fields that's taking pictures of the inside of my head?

Read some books on nuclear physics, vector calculus, relativity etc. and then build the machine. It does work and anyone can do it if they can be bothered to figure it out. You can physically measure all the fields and deduce the effects according to well defined rules and you don't need a god factor to make the equations work.

Quote

>We know if the star was too big to merely burn out and settle down
> to dwarfhood it'll keep collapsing until it either novas out. . .

>But again we have stuff we can mathematically verify and test using
>real solid hardware and tools . . .

Well, no, we have never measured and tested stars before they collapse, then observed as they did collapse. That's our best _guess_ as to how it works; it's something we essentially have to take on faith. For all we know physics doesn't work the same in areas of intense gravitational stress and ultra-high temperature thermonuclear fusion. We have never even approached those levels of energy in the lab. We don't know what to expect.

Depends on what you mean by "faith". If you have "faith" that the theories and models predict correctly what you do know, you can be fairly confident that predictions made regarding what you don't know will be accurate within the regime that any approximations you might have made are still valid. If you mean "faith" in the biblical sense of the word then I have a bridge to sell you.

Quote

We don't even know how our own sun works! It isn't generating enough neutrinos if we try to use our current theories to explain how it works. So either we don't know how to measure neutrinos or our theories on stellar fusion are off.

Not true. The solar neutrino problem has been solved after various experiments at the Superkamiokande solar neutrino observatory in Japan. The shortfall is explained by neutrino "flavour" oscillations. The downside is that flavour oscillations are not predicted by the current Standard Model of particle physics but other models do predict this behaviour.

[mikeat10500 12]

Ok we're so far of topic " and it was getting old anyway" that I figure all's fair.
=====================================
A stranger was seated next to Little Johnny on the plane
when the stranger turned to the Little Johnny and said, "Let's talk.
I've
heard that flights will go quicker if you strike up a conversation with
your
fellow passenger." Little Johnny, who had just opened his book, closed
it
slowly and said to the stranger, "What would you like to discuss?"
"Oh, I
don't know," said the stranger. "How about nuclear
power?"
"OK," said Little Johnny. "That could be an interesting
topic. But
let me ask you a question first. "A horse, a cow and a deer all eat
grass. The same stuff. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow
turns out a flat patty and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why
do you suppose that is?" "Jeez," said the stranger. "I have no idea."
"Well, then," said Little Johnny, "How is it that you feel qualified to
discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?"
...mike

-----------------------------------
Mike Wheadon B-3715,HEMP#1
Higher Expectations for Modern Parachutists.

[lurch 0]

I gotta admit it, the man is good...
here I go again.....
Sodom and Gomorrah...only problem I see with your comparison is that the only documentation we have of the events there is unrecognizably distorted tales and cities long crumbled to dust. We don't know and can't prove what happened there, unlike an MRI. You can't go back and forth along the logic train and trace it all out, go "ok heres the theory heres how we implement it heres how it does its thing and heres the resulting image." There's math and hardware docs that could lead you every step of the way through the process...
NMR you can research and prove. LOADS of documentation exists in incredible detail, you could follow the process every step of the way through from theory to hardware to image if you feel like spending years comprehending the exact functions methods and implementation. Hell, you could do little lab demos of the basic concepts at home if you got really arcane with it...I spent my childhood in a little room with a lot of scavenged electronics gear doing just that with everything I was interested in....radio control, arc physics, (the parents did NOT appreciate the fused smells crackling sounds and nova flares coming from my room...most parents worry about the kid playing with matches. mine worried about me attracting the notice of the FCC or the NRC, setting lightning bolts and small aggressive looking robots loose in the house and electrocuting the cat. Inquisitive ignorant mind with access to electricity metals wire and common industrial junk=dangerous child.) ttl and cmos logic, motors robotics...you name it. The proof of MRI is in the end product...the image itself. Kinda like back in school working math problems backwards to prove you solved it right. If your representation matches the reality all along the logic train, done both ways, its accurate. if not, not. If your representation predicts the existence of something, and you look for it and find it, (neutron stars/pulsars anyone?) you know you were right.
We haven't watched the stars do their thing "in person" due to the slight problem of timescale of the viewer, but we CAN see so many out there that we find thousands of examples of stars currently in every stage of stellar evolution from nebula to black hole/nova/dwarf/pick your ending depending on stellar mass... and every stage in between...a timeline slideshow, if you will. Every once in awhile we see an actual nova or supernova...we happened to be looking right when one of them hit a dramatic stage in the cycle. More weight added to confirming theories. In some cases the picture we have doesn't match the reality yet, so the picture keeps getting tinkered with to make it more accurate....such as the neutrino thing. They may find a loophole in the neutrino thing that revolutionizes our understanding of stars due to that neutrino discrepancy...or we may find we just didn't build a decent neutrino detector. Its another one of those 2-question answers I referred to earlier.
I guess one of my problems with the idea of god is when people attribute something to him, I'm supposed to warp my perception of the picture to meet expectations...water to wine? resurrection? Not in the real world. The basic assumption is believe first ask questions later and doctor/alter the results as necessary to support the idea of god. Whereas with science, the current pet theory may be junked grudgingly, especially if it was oh-so-close to accurate...but if it doesn't match what we know now, the theory does get junked. Personally I'm still rooting for someone to find the loophole that blows einstein out of the water and gives us the stars with the resulting technology...but I'm not holding my breath.

Even if we can't see the hole, everything else we know implies a hole there.

From the viewpoint of a great many people you've just defined god.

As for this, for now, all I can do is shrug. I think I see a fundamental difference in perspective or basic assumption here. Everything else we know implies a hole there. We are seeing the logical shadow of the hole, literally. From that viewpoint of so many you mention, this is the cause of their certainty and faith, I think. Even if they can't see him, everything else they know implies a god there. They're convinced they see god's shadow. I see it differently. We are the blind men identifying the elephant and we don't even know its an animal yet, let alone what kind of animal it is or anything about its life.... I think what looks like the shadow of god is really the shadow of something a good deal more complicated than that. Every other direction you look, up, down, in, out, telescope, microscope...everything continues on to infinity as far as you can resolve it, on every scale, infinite fractal complexity...the smaller you look, the more you see...and the bigger you look, the more you see...why should it be any different regarding that shadow? I think what looks like god is the manifestation of laws and cause and effect trains we can't even guess at yet. Personally I've given up on ever understanding enough to be satisfied with the picture...I can't follow all of what's currently known let alone what might yet be known. I can't possibly self educate enough....so I just chase the questions I come across and focus on that. I'd rather be lost in a fractal maze of neverending questions than secure in a rigid belief set...
Oh hell will you quit making me think? Like I said, I can't much affect black holes or religions either, but at least the time wasn't entirely wasted. I think I'll put this thought train in my book someday. Maybe itll even make sense.

What, were you on a debating team somewhen?

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[lurch 0]

_lurch stands there aghast, watching as the others pick up his fallen baseball bat and commence beating the daylights out of the now long-dead thread with more ferocity and accuracy than he could manage himself, thinking "wow this is getting gruesome"_

Jeez, jackc just did a better job of arguing my point for me than I did and with less words and more accurate specifics. I feel like an amateur.

Um, yeah, what HE said!

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[apoil 0]

Quote

The atheists have completely hijacked this thread.

The CHRISTIANS hijacked this forum, which is supposed to be about skydiving, by sneaking in a subject that really belongs in Talk Back, under the flimsy guise of setting up a ministry tent at a boogie. Any thread to the relationship of this topic to skydiving got lost quite early on.

This thread should be locked or moved.

[lurch 0]

Not true. The solar neutrino problem has been solved after various experiments at the Superkamiokande solar neutrino observatory in Japan. The shortfall is explained by neutrino "flavour" oscillations. The downside is that flavour oscillations are not predicted by the current Standard Model of particle physics but other models do predict this behaviour.

2-question answers anyone? I'll be interested to see how they reconcile or integrate the two models, then. I don't know enough about the subject to know if theyre mutually exclusive or overlap, i.e. describing different behavior in different conditions. I'll bet the current gray area winds up explaining a lot of other minor discrepancies in other areas as well, that we can't answer yet.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[lurch 0]

Locked or moved? Hell no! why? This is degenerating nicely into a total intellectual free-for-all and I see nothing wrong with that. Its not as if having an off topic debate in an abandoned corner of the forum is somehow disrupting everyone else's skydiving forum experience. I DO agree there is a feel of a certain element of having christianity thrust upon me...I've never run around seeing how everyone would like it if I set up an atheist booth. That salesman feel again. But hey we had a paintball area at the last boogie, it was totally nonskydiving related and nobody complained about it. Like I told steve, I'd just leave him alone if he came here...if someone set up a wicca/newage booth selling bead necklaces crystals pentagrams and silver jewelry I'd browse it once and leave it alone the same way as something cultural I don't buy into. This is cyberspace...it's not like we're even using up actual real SPACE for this discussion and its the most fun i've had in the forums yet. And its the first civilized war between the christians and the atheists i've ever seen and very thought provoking. Most of the time when people discuss this kind of thing it quickly degenerates into name calling and insults. I'm enjoying it and willing to contribute my .02$ as long as anyone still cares to read or reply...I think both sides are putting up one hell of a fight and although theres no "winning" the discussion its awesome to see people really think about this stuff instead of name calling. Wheres the problem?
edit: when I say war I mean civilized conflict of opinion. Change and growth only come through conflict, and here we have a lot of conflicting opinions being compared and contrasted and there seems to be a lot of jockeying for the logical upper hand going on. This is cool as all hell and I invite anyone with ideas/thoughts from either side to contribute to toss them into the fray and see what happens.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[billvon 3,099]

>Conversely, every aspect of an MRI scanner is well understood. The
>analogy is flawed.

To a biblical scholar, every aspect of the Sodom and Gomorrah account is well understood. To a non-technical person, an MRI scanner is just plain magic. Such an analogy would make good sense to most people.

>Read some books on nuclear physics, vector calculus, relativity etc.
>and then build the machine.

Did that; built an NMR detector in college. I think most people just believe it can be done.

>You can physically measure all the fields and deduce the effects
> according to well defined rules and you don't need a god factor to
> make the equations work.

You do need to believe in some things that just plain are, like Planck's Constant. There's no reason (that we understand) it is actually 6.62x10-34 j*s; it just is. That's one of the things that makes the universe behave like it does. You just have to accept it; you can't explain it. Some people treat god the same way.

>If you have "faith" that the theories and models predict correctly
> what you do know, you can be fairly confident that predictions made
> regarding what you don't know will be accurate within the regime that
> any approximations you might have made are still valid. If you
> mean "faith" in the biblical sense of the word then I have a bridge
> to sell you.

Some people see those two faiths as not so different as you do.

>Not true. The solar neutrino problem has been solved after various
> experiments at the Superkamiokande solar neutrino observatory in
> Japan. The shortfall is explained by neutrino "flavour" oscillations.
> The downside is that flavour oscillations are not predicted by the
> current Standard Model of particle physics but other models do
> predict this behaviour.

And I am sure that, once one of those models has some more validation behind it, that we will believe in that. Does that mean that the people who believe in the standard model are believing in a foolish myth? Could you, in your words, "sell those people a bridge?"

We are operating with incomplete information. We don't know everything there is to know about the universe; we discover new things (and we discover that we were wrong about old things) every day. Heck, some of our basic assumptions concerning the age or size of the universe or the amount of mass in it may be totally wrong. That possibility does not invalidate science. Science is all about gradually expanding our knowledge of the universe, sometimes discarding old beliefs in favor of new ones that better explain the universe we perceive.

Many people out there see that gap as a simple failure of science to explain everything yet. Some see god in that gap. Some people see the two as not really all that different.

[beemertec 0]

OK, so maybe everyone else is just ignoring you, but I thought it was funny and a much needed break from this thread.

Blue Skies
Steve
Ok, so it's pink, but I'm secure in my manhood, and I still look cool coming in under it!

[billvon 3,099]

"A horse, a cow and a deer all eat
grass. The same stuff. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow
turns out a flat patty and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why
do you suppose that is?"

Here's an even better question: why do rabbits poop in little pellets?

[PhillyKev 0]

Quote

Here's an even better question: why do rabbits poop in little pellets?

Unlike most other mammals, rabbits produce two types of droppings, fecal pellets (the round, dry ones you usually see in the litterbox) and cecotropes. The latter are produced in a portion of the rabbit's digestive tract called the cecum. The cecum contains a wild brew of bacteria and fungi that are normal and beneficial for the rabbit. In fact, the rabbit cannot live without them, since the cecal flora produces essential nutrients (e.g., fatty acids and vitamins) that the rabbit cannot produce on her own.

How does the rabbit get those vitamins? She eats the cecotropes as they exit the anus. Sound disgusting? Not for a rabbit. When she's enjoying her favorite, home-made snack, she'll tell you how delightful it is with that blissful, soft-eyed face and butt-twitch that signals all is well with the world. Cecotropes are not feces. They are nutrient-packed dietary items essential to your rabbit's good health.

A rabbit usually produces cecotropes at a characteristic time of the day, which may vary from rabbit to rabbit. Some produce cecotropes in the late morning, some in the late afternoon, and some at night. In any case, they usually do this when you're not watching, which might be why some people refer to cecotropes as "night droppings."


Normal Intestinal Products
Anyone who lives with a bunny has seen a FECAL PELLET. These are the small, brown "cocoa puffs" that we all hope end up mostly in the litterbox. They are round, relatively dry and friable, and composed mostly of undigested fiber. Rabbits do not ordinarily re-ingest fecal pellets, though a few bunnies seem to enjoy an occasional fecal pellet hors d'ouevre.

A normal CECOTROPE resembles a dark brown mulberry, or tightly bunched grapes. It is composed of small, soft, shiny pellets, each coated with a layer of rubbery mucus, and pressed into an elongate mass. The cecotrope has a rather pungent odor, as it contains a large mass of beneficial cecal bacteria. When the bunny ingests the cecotrope, the mucus coat protects the bacteria as they pass through the stomach, then re-establish in the cecum.

[billvon 3,099]

>We are the blind men identifying the elephant and we don't even
> know its an animal yet, let alone what kind of animal it is or >anything about its life....

I think that's exactly right - how you interpret the elephant depends primarily on how you want to see the world.

The pure scientist will claim there is only an impediment to his hand. He won't even claim it's alive, or that it has mass, or that it's large - because he can't prove any of that, although his intuition tells him those things are true.

The very religious guy will presume that it represents an elephant (or perhaps a buffalo, or even a snake) and will make assumptions about why the elephant is there. What does the elephant want? Why was it put there? Clearly the elephant wants to be revered - it is large, impressive and was waiting right there for him. The farther removed from pure science he is, the further he will go in assigning all sorts of causes and results. And when he leaves, he will create a rich story of the elephant that will be passed down - largely accurate, but changing a bit with time.

Most reasonable people, I think, take a middle ground. They feel something; it seems to be large and alive. They don't know what it is. It's probably an elephant. It might be a snake, and it might even be a horse. But to assume it's an elephant works for them. If they find a mane they might change their mind. It takes a little bit of faith to believe in the elephant, but most people are able to have that much faith even in an uncertain situation.

> I think what looks like god is the manifestation of laws and cause
> and effect trains we can't even guess at yet.

That is very close to my own definition of god. I'd go a step further and say that there are some things that we will _never_ understand, like why Planck's constant is the value it is, or how primal symmetry was broken. To me, god lies there, in the unknown (and probably unknowable) details that made our universe what it is, and continue to make our universe what it is.

>What, were you on a debating team somewhen?

No, I'm just a general pain in the ass.

[lurch 0]

, like Planck's Constant. There's no reason (that we understand) it is actually 6.62x10-34 j*s; it just is. That's one of the things that makes the universe behave like it does. You just have to accept it; you can't explain it. Some people treat god the same way.

ooo! Big hole in argument! ooo!

Yeah but planck's constant is just that...a constant. like the laws governing the behavior of electromagnetic radiation or the behavior of moving masses, you can build real devices taking advantage of, manipulating and using those constants, and if the constants and understanding thereof were flawed, the machines would not work. Nobody ever built a machine that runs on God....because there's nothing real behind the concept to implement anything on. There's no specifying, no math, no relationships, no physics, no physical involvement and no way to establish a connection (like building an NMR detector) between the god theory and the physical real world. Maybe I should try to build a god detector.....

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[beemertec 0]

I have to admit I have enjoyed reading this thread. I am a Christian and you are not, and that's fine. I am not going to spend time trying to convince you of anything. It is clear to me from your posts that you are intelligent and capable of making your own decisions concerning religion.
I did want to point out though that all of your arguments are based on mathematical proof and scientific evidence. Do you accept anything as true based on literary, archeological, or historical evidence?

Blue Skies
Steve
Ok, so it's pink, but I'm secure in my manhood, and I still look cool coming in under it!

[robskydiv 0]

Just one thought about the "era" that we are in. And I'm not trying to turn this into a debate about eschatology. But it seems to me that we are fast approaching the day when reading the book of Revelations will be much like reading the daily newspaper. Peace Out.

[lurch 0]

Sadly I'm not a pure scientist. My common sense keeps me from rigidly refusing to acknowledge anything I cannot prove. The rigor of that sort of thinking is absolutely necessary when prying at the edges of things, no assumption can go unquestioned where there is uncertainty. But I'm impatient. If it looks like a duck quacks like a duck lays eggs like a duck has feathers like a duck and behaves like a duck I see no reason to go exhaustively trying to prove from every possible view that it is in fact a duck. I tend to stick to applied practicality...Looks like a duck there. Can I eat it? Is it a threat to me? do I need to eat it or can I just leave it alone? Will it be in my way or will I not have to worry about it? If it does anything unducklike, I will then question the basic assumption of duckhood and examine it more closely to see if it interferes with what I'm doing....or if I will have to modify my plans and procedures to account for sudden misidentified ducklessness. But that's just me.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.