Re: [darkvapor] Christian Ministry to Skydivers

[billvon 3,096]

>Yeah but planck's constant is just that...a constant.

As are things like death. Everyone dies, Planck's constant never changes. Why are both the case? Trying to explain that leads some people to science, some people to religion, some to both. Why do we even try to explain it? Because often that leads to insight. Since we questioned why hot air rises, we got Boyle's law, hot air balloons, and started learning about weather - and predicting the weather is very useful. For other things it's very difficult (or impossible) to determine the why.

[lurch 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?

Hey, glad you enjoyed it and joined the discussion. Believe it or not I never even graduated from high school....like I said, I'm impatient. I wanted full control and responsibility, right now. I got it, but paid for it.
RE: your question:
I only accept it if it matches or closely matches the behavior profile the universe has a habit of absolutely NOT violating. For example, Lot's wife turning to a pillar of salt. Uh, can you say fairy tale? Where did her flesh go? where did the mass of salt come from? I can believe a nearby tectonic event destroyed a city with what sounds from the descriptions like a pyroclastic flow. I can't believe a human being suddenly transformed/transmuted into a solid mass of crystallized sodium chloride by looking at such an event, no matter the historical authority of the author. Where did the sodium come from? I'm no doctor but I know there isn't enough salt in a human body to build a pillar out of. A rather small pile, perhaps, but not a pillar. Same goes for everything from virgin birth to miracles. If the literary source has all kinds of evidence to back it up, I'll believe it depending on the solidity of the evidence...like the user manual and tech docs for an MRI scanner. Historical evidence usually contains much distortion, fantasizing or weighting to support the political agenda of the times. I find usually when you start questioning the specific dubious or unlikely sounding claims of old writers their claims and stories dissolve faster than a pillar of salt in a brainstorm.

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

[happythoughts 0]

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I did want to point out though that all of your arguments are based on mathematical proof and scientific evidence.

Some people. Always going on and on about facts and stuff. How does anyone expect a rational discussion if they keep throwing science into it?

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Do you accept anything as true based on literary, archeological, or historical evidence?

Exactly. That's why Christianity is definitely not the answer. There are older books around if you are looking for a religion. The Mormons and the Jehovahs Witnesses have the newest books, but everyone disparages them as cults.

If you are looking for simple answers to complex questions, stick to an older religion. The reason for lightning and thunder? Thors hammer striking an anvil, of course. If you don't agree, a really old book says it is true and effectively explained this to primitive societies.

The best part of the religion is the hats with horns. For most religions, the Big Invisible Person doesn't dress with as much style.

[lurch 0]

Now, see, me? When I really need a deity to back me up with a little moral support I ask the advice of Lord Rayden. You know, god of lightning and guardian of the Realm of Earth? Medium built bipedal vaguely oriental flavored entity made out of electricity with a cool twisty accent and bears a strong resemblance to Christopher Lambert? He starred in several popular videogames and at least one movie. Everyone can agree on what he looks like, he's right there onscreen whether you believe in him or not. He's easier to identify than most deities, he has a viciously wicked sense of humor, he's generally benevolent and will occasionally turn into lightning and smite your enemies for you if they're threatening to attack you and it isn't time to start the Tournament yet.
I have also occasionally solicited the advice and counsel of another favorite modern deity of mine, Captain Picard's eternal jokester nemesis/guardian, the indomitable "Q".
I asked him what the hell I was doing and why I shouldn't turn back when I was sitting in the plane on my way up to aff level 1. He told me the same damn thing he told the Captain in that mocking teasing tone..."The wonders of the universe are not for the timid."
Out the door I went. The asshole was right.

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

[happythoughts 0]

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...he's generally benevolent and will occasionally turn into lightning and smite your enemies for you if they're threatening to attack you and it isn't time to start the Tournament yet.

Excellent. After all, that is one of the cornerstones of a great deity, the idea of a Omnipotent Servant. A deity should be all-powerful and all-knowing, but at the same time, should do whatever you ask in the form of prayers or burning sheep on an altar.

In IBM manuals, it sometimes says "If this problem should re-occur, consult maker." However, around the office, they didn't want me burning a sheep on the keyboard. What should I do?

[lurch 0]

I just dug up the whole quote actually. It is written, Q has said:
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous; with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Now theres a deity with attitude.

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

[beemertec 0]

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Historical evidence usually contains much distortion, fantasizing or weighting to support the political agenda of the times. I find usually when you start questioning the specific dubious or unlikely sounding claims of old writers their claims and stories dissolve faster than a pillar of salt in a brainstorm.

Cool. The only reason I asked is because a lot of people that do not believe in God, the bible etc. will blindly believe anything they read in a history book. I use the revolutionary war as an example. In the US the war is portrayed much differently than it is over in the UK. Obviously the war happened, but what is in the history books is as you said "weighted".

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

[Zenister 0]

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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.

unfortunately christian apocalyptist have been saying that for nearly 1800 years...since shortly after their savior alledgedly died they've wanted to believe they were living in "end times"

the problem with everything that science & mathmatics has shown us is that is still only really answers the questions "How?" it doesnt even begin to address the question of "Why?" for that you have to turn to philosophy and religion, and one who asserts that "there is no reason why." is making the same faith based judgement as anyone who professes belief in any other manifestation of divinity.

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[feelopen 0]

There IS vigirn birth on this planet! It mostly happens in the insect kingdom and in several "lower" vertebrates like amphibians. However, parthenogenesis (that's what it's called) has recently been shown in Burmese Pythons (article: http://www.albinoburmese.com/research.html) as well - which is a major jump up in taxonomy!

Now, if Jesus was a product of parthenogenesis there's a slight problem with him being a male, every parthenogenic offspring is a genetic female. However, this doesn't rule out the possibility of him be a parthenogenic baby - he could have been a hermi! Yes, it's technically possible to be a male with female genetics (IE... no Y chromosome) - it's called XX Male Syndrome (article: http://www.priory.com/med/xx.htm), does anyone know for sure if Jesus had soft and small atrophic testicles? Maybe that was the case and those old guys are telling the truth about the virgin birth. We'll have to ask Mary of Magdeline?

he he...

[JackC 0]

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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.

If I remember correctly the different models are mutually exclusive. The Dirac model (read Standard Model) predicts that neutrinos have zero mass whereas the see-saw model predicts a non-zero mass and allows flavour oscillations. The solar neutrino problem is solved if neutrinos actually change flavour and there is strong evidence to support that theory. The see-saw model also predicts that a neutrino is its own antiparticle so there is a possibility that it could anihilate itself! Spontaneous self destruction if you will. I don't think they will be able to reconcile the differences between the two models but I'm not a particle physicist so I could be wrong about that.

[JackC 0]

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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.

Just because something makes sense doesn't make it correct. To the biblical scholar he may well understand the biblical representation of the events at sodom and gomorrah but the bible is so contradictory in many areas that its reliability should be called into question as a historical recording of fact. If someone genuinely thinks an MRI scanner is magical then I would be pleased to explain its workings and dispel that misconception, but I doubt anyone honesly believes that.

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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.

Accepting that Planck's constant just is 6.62e-34js is nowhere near the same as accepting that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, invisible, undetectable, contradictory deity just is. One is a simple number that comes out of a well defined theory. The other is the most complex being imaginable conforming to none of the physical laws that govern the rest of the universe. Talk about leap of faith!

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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?"

The Standard Model does very well at predicting most stuff and fails on this one point. OK, so it got that wrong but that doesn't mean that we just write the whole thing off as a foolish myth. Newtonian theories are wrong but they do very nicely for most real world applications. And I appologise for the bridge statement.

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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.

Exactly, why is religion exempt from the same critical thinking?

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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.

A god of the gaps. As science fills the gaps what happens to God? When I read the term "Christian science" my initial reaction was to say it was an oxymoron. But this would be incorrect. Religion is a science. It's just diabolically bad science. Religion has always tried to answer the same questions that science addresses. The origin of man, the universe etc. The difference is, science does it from empirical data and logical reasoning whereas religion just tells a good story and says believe this or go to hell. Literally.

[kmcguffee 0]

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Talk about leap of faith!

Believing that the universe appeared out of nothing with one giant "bang" isn't a leap of faith? Believing that life then sprang from this same universe with no external stimulus when the odds are mind numbingly against that ever happenning (even over an exceedingly long time) isn't a leap of faith?

You have your faith, other people have their faith. Science and religion are not the same and are not mutually exclusive. The Bible is not a history book (although it has historic events in it) and it is not a science text. It tries to answer the question of 'why'. Science tries to answer the question of 'how'.

Believing in a God is not an indicator of a nonrationale mind or low intelligence. It is based on faith not intelligence.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[happythoughts 0]

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There IS vigirn birth on this planet!

These are called "haploids". Only one complete set of chromosomes. Hence the common reference to Jesus H. Christ. That is what the "H" stands for.

[billvon 3,096]

>Just because something makes sense doesn't make it correct.

I agree there - it just means that it's correct 'enough' and a lot of people believe in it. Many of these are 'functional' myths, like the one about putting everyone forward in the plane helps it climb faster. In most cases, that puts the plane's center of gravity closer to ideal and helps increase safety, so that works. Some are _very_ functional myths, like the idea that gravity just attracts things to the earth. (In reality, there is an attraction both ways.) This is so functional that you can be an automotive engineer and never have to consider the full form of the gravity equation - even though gravity is critical to your designs.

So the corrolary to your statement above would be that if something is correct _enough_ it can be functionally correct even if it has a lot of flaws. If it usually works you use it. Newton's laws and the standard model would be examples.

>If someone genuinely thinks an MRI scanner is magical then I would
> be pleased to explain its workings and dispel that misconception,
> but I doubt anyone honesly believes that.

They don't think it's magic, they just take some things on faith (like the idea that a nucleus can have a 'spin' associated with it.) That's very similar to the faith that some people have that there's a god.

>Exactly, why is religion exempt from the same critical thinking?

I think there _is_ a lot of critical thinking going on in religion. Tens of thousands of people, some quite brilliant, study it. Most religions change with time; even their core beliefs can evolve, although that often causes them to become new religions. The progression of judaism to catholicism to lutheranism is one example. But even within each one of those there are wild variations in beliefs. There's quite a bit of flexibility there.

>A god of the gaps.

Perhaps better experessed as a god of what we can't know, rather than a god of what we don't know yet. Years ago Heisenberg taught us that not only are there things we don't know, there are things we can't know, and the very act of finding out can change what we're trying to find out. A universe that actually cares what you're looking at? That's again getting very close to some people's definition of a universe that has a god in it.

>As science fills the gaps what happens to God?

It's been my experience with science that, every time we find out one new things, it raises two more questions. So to answer your question literally, if it is a 'god of the gaps' god gets bigger and bigger. We won't ever know everything (indeed, from what we've learned so far, we can't know everything.)

>Religion is a science. It's just diabolically bad science.

I think religion does as well at hard science as the scientific community does to provide a moral framework to live one's life i.e. they both do pretty poorly. Science is there primarily because we want to understand and develop the world around us; religion is there because many people want to understand and develop themselves.

A tinkerer need not know much science to make a cool gadget, and someone who wants a moral foundation does not need any specific religion to do it. But science can help the tinkerer just as religion can help the person who wants to develop that moral framework. From that point of view, they are both quite useful.

[sducoach 0]

Send me a PM with your address to ship a book to. I will provide for you both a historically documented accounting that if you both are truly as "fact oriented" and "fiction opposed" you will enjoy reading. It's like the old saying that "if I had that much faith I'd be an atheist."

If you truly believe in the Laws of Science and evidence through scientific testing you just might have your "faith" shaken just a little. No threats to your heart felt passions, "Just the facts Man".

Blues,

J.E.

James 4:8

[Eatgrass 0]

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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

I would warn them about a couple of things for instance a few cults that got bad publicity last century. Might pay to discourage the Muslin faith
also......I mean if you love them in a god like way.
No sense in raising martyrs....no religion is without mishaps, not even the Christians...I'm thinking of a particular Crusade and the Inquisitions but that was long long ago....Its best to follow the great books like the New Testament, Torah and Koran rather than men in these matters. Study the different philosophies and think for themselves. The Koran and New Testament advise against killing, Torahs a little more bloody minded but the 10 Commandments states thou shalt not kill & the Levite laws gave a out. If you could reach the horns of the alter before being slain...it was against the law to kill you for your wrong. See where I'm going with this? The great religions have a common golden thread running through them. Justice. mercy & generally "Life is sacred" Teach them that ohm ohm

relax kids, all you need is airtime airtime airtime and the ability to relax of course
Plan your dive and dive your plan bsbs

[Erroll 80]

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Might pay to discourage the Muslinm faith also......

And then

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Its best to follow the great books like the New Testament, Torah and Koran rather than men....

This makes as much sense as the rest of the post.

[Squeak 17]

this thread was dug up by what must be a paelentologist, it's even PRE speakers corner


Although it will be relegated there soon I'm sure.

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[Erroll 80]

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Although it will be relegated there soon I'm sure.

That didn't take long!

[airtwardo 7]

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this thread was dug up by what must be a paelentologist, it's even PRE speakers corner


Although it will be relegated there soon I'm sure.

***

Damn Squeak...a burning bush must have told you that would happen?!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~