Who turned out the light?



  • A few days ago, I've actually met someone who thought that the earth was 6k years old, everything revolved around the earth and the economic crisis is awful because she can't find the right color nail polish (she literally complained about this!). I've read about these people on some Internet forums, but I've always thought they were a myth.

    Apparently, science was created by the devil, the arabs are terrorists, americans are the smartest people in the world who are going to rid the world of all it's problems, cats are the devil's pet because they are the only animals that eat other animals (mice). I'm sure you don't believe "the americans" landed on the moon, because you've clearly seen "scientific" arguments that the moon landing was fake and mathematics is only made of addition and multiplication. Integrals, derivates, limits and everything else is bullshit which is wrong and made up by the devil; if you believe in anything more than multiplication, you're a tool of the devil (again, she said this literally, but couldn't pronounce integrals, derivates, limits and actually used integrame(ro) instead of integrale(ro), which means cross-word puzzles AND, as a bonus, she also didn't know that there was any differente between the meanings of those two words, believing that cross-word puzzles are the same thing as integrals). God loves everyone, with no exception, except those who believe in science and I'm sure her computer was the only exception to this rule, but I was afraid of getting into an argument with this person. The economic crisis is clearly a problem, because she can't find the right color nail polish any more (citation).

    Now, I'm convinced there is a God and all that she said was true, because I simply can't find any scientific answer to the question "HOW CAN THIS PERSON STILL BE ALIVE?"



  •  I'm a Christian and none of my christian friends think like that.

    In our group we regularly meet and discuss different science discoveries and different religions and how some are connected and history and so on. No-one I know thinks like that. I hate it when people give a bad name to christianity in a way like she does. Thinking that everything is from the devil and yadda yadda yadda...

    But then again, she's American and... let's just say that people in my school do not have high regards thowards American's and they're intellectual capacity.

     

    P.S.
    Yeah, I know, the TRWTF is that I used punctuation wrong... sue me!

    P.P.S.
    I don't believe that earth is 6k year old. That is something which is pretty obvious. The real age of earth is prettu disambiguous from the Bible point of view.

     



  • @BlackMan890 said:

    But then again, she's American and... let's just say that people in my school do not have high regards thowards American's and they're intellectual capacity.

     

     

    First of all, people are insane everywhere. Someone where i live built a scale model of noah's arc. America is not the only one that has loonies.

    Secondly, if you don't believe the bible why then believe god? 



  • I'm a sort of Christian, too. I am Christian, I believe there is some god, but I'm not religious.

    @BlackMan890 said:

    But then again, she's American and... let's just say that people in my school do not have high regards thowards American's and they're intellectual capacity.
     

    Who is the "she" you are referring to? If it's the "she" from my post, then she's Romanian and she looks at people from U.S. as if they were gods themselves and thinks, as most people, that U.S. = the American continent (I didn't dare ask nor explain about Canada or Argentina)



  • @rohypnol said:

    Who is the "she" you are referring to? If it's the "she" from my post, then she's Romanian and she looks at people from U.S. as if they were gods themselves and thinks, as most people, that U.S. = the American continent (I didn't dare ask nor explain about Canada or Argentina)

    Sorry, I thought the person you were talking about was American. My bad.

    @stratos said:


    Secondly, if you don't believe the bible why then believe god? 

    I do believe the bible. The problem is that the word used in the bible in Genesis when he's naming the family tree is disambiguous. For example:

    @Genesis 5:6 said:

    When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh.
    The original hebrew word means "relationship" and does not necessarily mean the age the son was born. This reference lengthens the original time from 6k to around 18k - 20k.

    That is what I mean by disambiguous and therefore to determine the age of 6k is pretty far off...




  • @BlackMan890 said:


    I do believe the bible. The problem is that the word used in the bible in Genesis when he's naming the family tree is disambiguous. For example:

    @Genesis 5:6 said:

    When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh.
    The original hebrew word means "relationship" and does not necessarily mean the age the son was born. This reference lengthens the original time from 6k to around 18k - 20k.

    That is what I mean by disambiguous and therefore to determine the age of 6k is pretty far off...

     

    So you believe the world is 18k - 20k years old?



  • @username_not_found said:

    So you believe the world is 18k - 20k years old?

     

    Didn't mean that either. Just saying that it's hard to determine the real age from the Bible point of view. I am not going to start and heated argument about the scientific point of view on the earth age either. :)

    My original point is that people like her give a bad name to christianity :(



  • @BlackMan890 said:

    But then again, she's American and... let's just say that people in my school do not have high regards thowards American's and they're intellectual capacity.

     

    Don't worry, this forum doesn't have high regards thowards (sic) you and you're (sic) intellectual capacity.



  • @rohypnol said:

    Now, I'm convinced there is a God and all that she said was true, because I simply can't find any scientific answer to the question "HOW CAN THIS PERSON STILL BE ALIVE?"

    She survives through the divine grace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as do we all, of course. RAmen!



  • @BlackMan890 said:

    @Genesis 5:6 said:
    When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh.
    The original hebrew word means "relationship" and does not necessarily mean the age the son was born. This reference lengthens the original time from 6k to around 18k - 20k.

    That makes it [i]ambiguous[/i]. If "disambiguous" was a word it would mean the opposite.



  • @rohypnol said:

    ...science was created by the devil...

    Perhaps not science, but math definitely was.   Who doesn't hate math?

     

    @rohypnol said:

    ...the arabs are terrorists...

    Common mistake.  The Muslims are terrorists: many Middle Eastern Muslims are not Arab.

     

    @rohypnol said:

    ...americans are the smartest people in the world who are going to rid the world of all it's [sic] problems...

    I'd like to agree with this, except if we really were that smart we wouldn't be trying to rid the world of all its problems.

     

    @rohypnol said:

    ...cats are the devil's pet because they are the only animals that eat other animals (mice).

    :3

     

    @rohypnol said:

    I'm sure you don't believe "the americans" landed on the moon, because you've clearly seen "scientific" arguments that the moon landing was fake...

    Yes, and the Jews did 9/11.



  • @BlackMan890 said:

    Filed under: Can someone fix my punctuations please? and my grammar errors.

    @BlackMan890 said:

     I'm a Christian and none of my christian <font color="#dd0000">("Christian" should always be capitalized)</font> friends think like that.

    In our group we regularly meet and discuss different science discoveries and different religions and how some are connected and history and so on. No-one <font color="#dd0000">(no need for the hyphen) </font>I know thinks like that. I hate it when people give a bad name to christianity <font color="#dd0000">(see above) </font>in a way like she does. Thinking that everything is from the devil and yadda yadda yadda...

    But then again, she's American and... let's just say that people in my school do not have high regards thowards <font color="#dd0000">(not actually a word -- perhaps you meant "towards"?)</font> American's <font color="#dd0000">("Americans" not "American's" -- the former is plural, the latter possessive) </font>and they're <font color="#dd0000">("their" not the contraction of "they are")</font> intellectual capacity.

     

    P.S.
    Yeah, I know, the TRWTF is that I used punctuation wrong... sue me!

    P.P.S.
    I don't believe that earth <font color="#dd0000">("Earth" should be capitalized) </font>is 6k year old. That is something which is pretty obvious. The real age of earth <font color="#dd0000">(ditto)</font> is prettu <font color="#dd0000">(not actually a word -- perhaps you meant "pretty"?)</font> disambiguous <font color="#dd0000">(definitely not a word -- "disambiguated" is a word, but probably also isn't what you were looking for) </font>from the Bible <font color="#dd0000">("Biblical")</font> point of view.

     


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @rohypnol said:

    ...cats are the devil's pet because they are the only animals that eat other animals (mice).

    :3

    What does the :3 mean? I can't even STFG for it! Damn Google is getting so "natural" these days that it tries too hard to understand what you're looking for, thus making exact searches impossible. Is anyone aware of a way to find documents containing an exact piece of text or a regexp using any popular search engine? It's awful when you have to search for something like "1%2#3" or anything non-natural. The only exception to this that I've been able to find was Google's code search. I guess this would qualify as one one of the greatesr WTFs on the Internet (unless I'm mistaking and there is such a thing as a regexp search on a popular search engine).

    I suppose it's a mouse or the head of a mouse, from what I've been able to find until now: <font face="courier new,courier"><:3)---</font>



  • @rohypnol said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @rohypnol said:

    ...cats are the devil's pet because they are the only animals that eat other animals (mice).

    :3

    What does the :3 mean? I can't even STFG for it! Damn Google is getting so "natural" these days that it tries too hard to understand what you're looking for, thus making exact searches impossible. Is anyone aware of a way to find documents containing an exact piece of text or a regexp using any popular search engine? It's awful when you have to search for something like "1%2#3" or anything non-natural. The only exception to this that I've been able to find was Google's code search. I guess this would qualify as one one of the greatesr WTFs on the Internet (unless I'm mistaking and there is such a thing as a regexp search on a popular search engine).

    I suppose it's a mouse or the head of a mouse, from what I've been able to find until now: <font face="courier new,courier"><:3)---</font>




  • @BlackMan890 said:

    @username_not_found said:

    So you believe the world is 18k - 20k years old?

     

    Didn't mean that either. Just saying that it's hard to determine the real age from the Bible point of view. I am not going to start and heated argument about the scientific point of view on the earth age either. :)

     

     

    The people who treat the first chapter of Genesis as describing a 7*24 hour period didn't really come around until the Bible was translated into English (or maybe Latin, I forget). The Hebrew word originally used in those verses is (I think) "yamin", which simply refers to "a passage of time".  You have to remember that the language we call "Biblical Hebrew" only had a few thousand words--far fewer than modern day English, requiring the same word to be translated many different ways.  This yamin = day also shows up in expressions such as "The day (yamin) of the Romans" or "The day (yamin) of God's wrath", neither of which are referring to a 24 hour period.




  • @DaveK said:

    @rohypnol said:

    Now, I'm convinced there is a God and all that she said was true, because I simply can't find any scientific answer to the question "HOW CAN THIS PERSON STILL BE ALIVE?"

    She survives through the divine grace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as do we all, of course. RAmen!

    Sauce be upon you.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @rohypnol said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @rohypnol said:

    ...cats are the devil's pet because they are the only animals that eat other animals (mice).

    :3

    What does the :3 mean? I can't even STFG for it! Damn Google is getting so "natural" these days that it tries too hard to understand what you're looking for, thus making exact searches impossible. Is anyone aware of a way to find documents containing an exact piece of text or a regexp using any popular search engine? It's awful when you have to search for something like "1%2#3" or anything non-natural. The only exception to this that I've been able to find was Google's code search. I guess this would qualify as one one of the greatesr WTFs on the Internet (unless I'm mistaking and there is such a thing as a regexp search on a popular search engine).

    I suppose it's a mouse or the head of a mouse, from what I've been able to find until now: <font face="courier new,courier"><:3)---</font>


    But should nevar be confused with  >:3


  • @North Bus said:

    The people who treat the first chapter of Genesis as describing a 7*24 hour period didn't really come around until the Bible was translated into English (or maybe Latin, I forget). The Hebrew word originally used in those verses is (I think) "yamin", which simply refers to "a passage of time".  You have to remember that the language we call "Biblical Hebrew" only had a few thousand words--far fewer than modern day English, requiring the same word to be translated many different ways.  This yamin = day also shows up in expressions such as "The day (yamin) of the Romans" or "The day (yamin) of God's wrath", neither of which are referring to a 24 hour period.

    This reminded me of [url=http://www.fstdt.com/fundies/]this site[/url] and especially of this quote: [i]"If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James --- your original Hebrew is wrong. If your original Hebrew agrees with my original King James, your original Hebrew is right."[/i]

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @tdb said:

    This reminded me of this site and especially of this quote: "If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James --- your original Hebrew is wrong. If your original Hebrew agrees with my original King James, your original Hebrew is right."
     

    Alternatively (and I don't think you'll find either of these on there):

    "Christian Biblical literalists are trusting themselves to an archaic English translation of a Latin translation of (help me out here...) Greek? Aramaic? source.  I wouldn't even trust a VCR manual to make it through that intact."  -- Dr. Dee

    "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -- Stephen Roberts



  • @PJH said:

     I wouldn't even trust a VCR manual to make it through that intact
     

    I wouldn't trust a VCR manual to make in intact through a reading.

    But that goes for the Bible as well.



  • @PJH said:

    "Christian Biblical literalists are trusting themselves to an archaic English translation of a Latin translation of (help me out here...) Greek? Aramaic? source.  I wouldn't even trust a VCR manual to make it through that intact."  -- Dr. Dee

    King James' Bible was translated directly from original sources, not from Latin.

     

    @PJH said:

    "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -- Stephen Roberts

    Logic fail.  Awesome.

     

    Well, thank you Mr. Asshat for reinforcing the notion that atheists are ignorant, disrespectful children. 



  • @rohypnol said:

    "HOW CAN THIS PERSON STILL BE ALIVE?"
    It's because we put warning signs on everything.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @PJH said:

    "Christian Biblical literalists are trusting themselves to an archaic English translation of a Latin translation of (help me out here...) Greek? Aramaic? source.  I wouldn't even trust a VCR manual to make it through that intact."  -- Dr. Dee

    King James' Bible was translated directly from original sources, not from Latin.

    "Original sources"?  It's not like they went back and interviewed the eyewitnesses, is it?  More seriously though, the integrity of the KJ as an exercise in translation was deeply corrupted by the political orders given to the translators to come up with a translation that suited the agenda of the CoE against the papal hierarchy, don't you think?




  • @DaveK said:

    "Original sources"?  It's not like they went back and interviewed the eyewitnesses, is it? 
    I'm sure they prayed about it.  Hopefully God was paying attention.



  • @DOA said:

    @rohypnol said:

    "HOW CAN THIS PERSON STILL BE ALIVE?"
    It's because we put warning signs on everything.

     

    QFTT



  • @bstorer said:

    @DaveK said:

    "Original sources"?  It's not like they went back and interviewed the eyewitnesses, is it? 
    I'm sure they prayed about it.  Hopefully God was paying attention.

    He's the defendant.  He's hardly impartial, now, is he?

    Anyway, I doubt he'd make a statement on the record or testify.  He's famous for ducking out to avoid service of papers.  That guy tried to file suit on him recently, all of a sudden he's conveniently not omnipresent any more!  I mean, WTF?


  • @PJH said:

    "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -- Stephen Roberts

    TRWTF would be if he said this while actually understanding that we dismiss all those other gods because God said "thou shalt have no other gods before me".

     



  • The real WTF that those people still use cellphones (hell, and landline phones, too), watch TV, and use other technical achievements that are impossible without using very obscure scientific theories. Those theories that are linked to other theories, all in all used to date the fossils and also estimate the age of the universe.

    Amish, on the other hand, are honest about that. They don't use all things modern.

     



  • @alegr said:

    The real WTF that those people still use cellphones (hell, and landline phones, too), watch TV, and use other technical achievements that are impossible without using very obscure scientific theories. Those theories that are linked to other theories, all in all used to date the fossils and also estimate the age of the universe.

    Amish, on the other hand, are honest about that. They don't use all things modern. 

    Seriously, What The Fuck?  How are telephones and television related to carbon-dating of fossils in any meaningful way?  You also seem to mistake scientific theory for engineering.  Please, you're sounding just as bad as the whacko Creationists and Fundies but you don't even have the excuse of ignorance. 



  • @CDarklock said:

    TRWTF would be if he said this while actually understanding that we dismiss all those other gods because God said "thou shalt have no other gods before me".

     

     

     

    "...but you may have them after I'm done with them", is that correct?

     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @alegr said:

    The real WTF that those people still use cellphones (hell, and landline phones, too), watch TV, and use other technical achievements that are impossible without using very obscure scientific theories. Those theories that are linked to other theories, all in all used to date the fossils and also estimate the age of the universe.

    Amish, on the other hand, are honest about that. They don't use all things modern. 

    Seriously, What The Fuck?  How are telephones and television related to carbon-dating of fossils in any meaningful way?  You also seem to mistake scientific theory for engineering.  Please, you're sounding just as bad as the whacko Creationists and Fundies but you don't even have the excuse of ignorance. 

     

    You wanna know how? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!

    Our whole technology is based on scientific discoveries. Carbon dating, radio waves, DNA engineering, conversion of fuel to energy... they're all based on exactly the same principles. The foundation of everything we know and our whole way of living and thinking is based on some of the things Aristotel pondered about, such as logic. There was no such thing as logic in the middle ages and people simply did not know how to relate things. They saw a bird eating a fish and the fish eating plants, but they didn't realize that if they killed the plants (therefore starved the fish), then the bird would also perrish. An other example of a principle that we take for granted but they didn't realize was: if A leads to B and X is part of A, then X leads to B. All our discoveries are based on that and all scientists used mathematics and logic to find scientific answers to every day problems. After most of the problems they had were solved, they figured something along the lines of "hell, why not create new problems? we still need to find something to charge people for, so we may still make a living!" so they invented problems and needs that didn't exist before and started looking for ways to handle them. Again, they tried - and still try today - to find answers using logic. Before logic emerged from the darkness (Europe got the idea of logic after fighting the spanish arabs, destroying the rest of their culture, realizing what they've done and then studying whatever was left of their culture, because the spanish arabs found ways to get richer than the rest of Europe - doh, they were already using ancient Greek principles to solve everything), everything was related to God and The Holy Bible and some bits from Aristotel's philosophy; now, everything is based on other bits of philosophy that we also inherited from Aristotel, including carbon dating and television. Since they're both considered to be true on the same grounds, if one of them is wrong, then the other one "must" also be wrong (this is based on the same logic, which is a bit weird, because that same logic). This is just because of our way of thinking is based on logic reason instead of emotions and because, until now, doing things this way never proved wrong. We all agree mathematics are right and the same everywhere in the known and unknown Universe, therefore scientific arguments based on mathematics must be true (this is  considered to be valid as long as you don't model the world to fit your formula and you only model the formula to fit the world). If you say that carbon dating might be wrong, you are also saying that radio waves might be wrong, but they're all around us and everyone accepts them for what they are.

    The only alternative I can see is to say that carbon dating was given by the devil and God is laughing His pants off looking at us when we're trying to determine the age of the dinosaur fossils, which makes the TV a tool of the devil or God. As far as I can see, you either have to accept carbon dating and television together or dismiss both of them, because they are both rational conclusions based on the same logic and the same scientific experiments performed before their discovery and they were "proven" to be true even by scientific experiments performed after their discovery. And that, my friend, is how telephones and television are related to carbon dating.

    Science is our understanding of the physical Universe. Engineering is the application of science. If science is wrong, then so is engineering.



  •  I can't believe there are so many people who read the Bible and think it's a science book.

    It's not. It never aspired to be one. The stories are not meant to transmit the exact history and knowledge, but rather transmit a message.

    Now if someone says "hey, all of this is not true, therefore there is no god", there's no point arguing with that level of misunderstanding. On the other hand, if someone says "hey, this is all true and the pterodactyles are actually Satan and the world is 6k years old", there's no point in arguing either - it's the same misunderstanding, it's based on an opinion.

    It's just the opinion that is different.



  • @CDarklock said:

    we dismiss all those other gods because God said "thou shalt have no other gods before me"

    I think that's pretty uncompetitive behaviour. We should notify the EU.



  • @rohypnol said:

    You wanna know how? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!

    Our whole technology is based on scientific discoveries. Carbon dating, radio waves, DNA engineering, conversion of fuel to energy... they're all based on exactly the same principles. The foundation of everything we know and our whole way of living and thinking is based on some of the things Aristotel pondered about, such as logic. There was no such thing as logic in the middle ages and people simply did not know how to relate things. They saw a bird eating a fish and the fish eating plants, but they didn't realize that if they killed the plants (therefore starved the fish), then the bird would also perrish. An other example of a principle that we take for granted but they didn't realize was: if A leads to B and X is part of A, then X leads to B. All our discoveries are based on that and all scientists used mathematics and logic to find scientific answers to every day problems. After most of the problems they had were solved, they figured something along the lines of "hell, why not create new problems? we still need to find something to charge people for, so we may still make a living!" so they invented problems and needs that didn't exist before and started looking for ways to handle them. Again, they tried - and still try today - to find answers using logic. Before logic emerged from the darkness (Europe got the idea of logic after fighting the spanish arabs, destroying the rest of their culture, realizing what they've done and then studying whatever was left of their culture, because the spanish arabs found ways to get richer than the rest of Europe - doh, they were already using ancient Greek principles to solve everything), everything was related to God and The Holy Bible and some bits from Aristotel's philosophy; now, everything is based on other bits of philosophy that we also inherited from Aristotel, including carbon dating and television. Since they're both considered to be true on the same grounds, if one of them is wrong, then the other one "must" also be wrong (this is based on the same logic, which is a bit weird, because that same logic). This is just because of our way of thinking is based on logic reason instead of emotions and because, until now, doing things this way never proved wrong. We all agree mathematics are right and the same everywhere in the known and unknown Universe, therefore scientific arguments based on mathematics must be true (this is  considered to be valid as long as you don't model the world to fit your formula and you only model the formula to fit the world). If you say that carbon dating might be wrong, you are also saying that radio waves might be wrong, but they're all around us and everyone accepts them for what they are.

    The only alternative I can see is to say that carbon dating was given by the devil and God is laughing His pants off looking at us when we're trying to determine the age of the dinosaur fossils, which makes the TV a tool of the devil or God. As far as I can see, you either have to accept carbon dating and television together or dismiss both of them, because they are both rational conclusions based on the same logic and the same scientific experiments performed before their discovery and they were "proven" to be true even by scientific experiments performed after their discovery. And that, my friend, is how telephones and television are related to carbon dating.

    Science is our understanding of the physical Universe. Engineering is the application of science. If science is wrong, then so is engineering.

    This is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever read.  Everything after you first mention Aristotle (see how that's spelled, by the way?) is a combination of pop psychology, flawed reasoning, and vague generalizations about epistemology.  I'd tear it apart point by point, but I don't think you'd understand and it's not worth my time to write nor everybody else's time to read.  Instead, I will leave it at this: when Newtonian physics were shown to be an incomplete model of the universe, bridges didn't suddenly fall down.  To suggest that all science is a single pillar with engineering resting on top is so patently flawed as to discredit you completely.


  • @bstorer said:

    This is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever read.
    Holy shit you actually read that?



  • @bstorer said:

    This is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever read.  Everything after you first mention Aristotle (see how that's spelled, by the way?) is a combination of pop psychology, flawed reasoning, and vague generalizations about epistemology.  I'd tear it apart point by point, but I don't think you'd understand and it's not worth my time to write nor everybody else's time to read.  Instead, I will leave it at this: when Newtonian physics were shown to be an incomplete model of the universe, bridges didn't suddenly fall down.  To suggest that all science is a single pillar with engineering resting on top is so patently flawed as to discredit you completely.

    Thank you for stating that so succinctly.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @bstorer said:

    This is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever read.
    Holy shit you actually read that?

    Off-topic: Nice avatar! 



  • @Spectre said:

    @CDarklock said:
     we dismiss all those other gods because God said "thou shalt have no other gods before me"

    I think that's pretty uncompetitive behaviour. We should notify the EU.

    I LOL'd. 



  • @bstorer said:

    This is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever read.  Everything after you first mention Aristotle (see how that's spelled, by the way?) is a combination of pop psychology, flawed reasoning, and vague generalizations about epistemology.  I'd tear it apart point by point, but I don't think you'd understand and it's not worth my time to write nor everybody else's time to read.  Instead, I will leave it at this: when Newtonian physics were shown to be an incomplete model of the universe, bridges didn't suddenly fall down.  To suggest that all science is a single pillar with engineering resting on top is so patently flawed as to discredit you completely.

     

    Newtonian physics was just an incomplete model of the Universe, it wasn't wrong. If you take the equations from relativistic physics and round them (simply remove the bits that turn out to be insignificantly small for small speeds and distances), you get exactly the same equations as in Newtonian physics. I dare you to take apart what I said, point by point... oh, btw, bring facts, because that was not my "flawed" reasoning, that was the way it happened. It wasn't psychology, it wasn't philosophy, it was history. Philosophy became science and science is what drives engineering. I never said anything about "a pillar with engineering resting on top;" stop putting words under my keyboard and please, stay off drugs!

    Saying "you're wrong and <insert words ignorant people are afraid of here>, but I won't bother to prove anything" means absolutely nothing and the only way you could prove I was wrong would be to prove history was wrong.



  • @rohypnol said:

    whatever
    You say that like you would actually listen and not dismiss his views because he disagrees.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @alegr said:

    The real WTF that those people still use cellphones (hell, and landline phones, too), watch TV, and use other technical achievements that are impossible without using very obscure scientific theories. Those theories that are linked to other theories, all in all used to date the fossils and also estimate the age of the universe.

    Amish, on the other hand, are honest about that. They don't use all things modern. 

    Seriously, What The Fuck?  How are telephones and television related to carbon-dating of fossils in any meaningful way?  You also seem to mistake scientific theory for engineering.  Please, you're sounding just as bad as the whacko Creationists and Fundies but you don't even have the excuse of ignorance. 

    Telephone and television use semiconductors. Carbon dating uses nuclear theory. Semiconductors and nuclear theory are based on quantum theory.

    If carbon dating is fundamentally wrong,

    then nuclear theory is fundamentally wrong,

    then quantum theory is fundamentally wrong,

    then semiconductors can work as they do,

    then your cellphone and your computer is just a figment of your imagination.

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @alegr said:

    Telephone and television use semiconductors. Carbon dating uses nuclear theory. Semiconductors and nuclear theory are based on quantum theory.

    If carbon dating is fundamentally wrong,

    then nuclear theory is fundamentally wrong,

    then quantum theory is fundamentally wrong,

    then semiconductors can work as they do,

    then your cellphone and your computer is just a figment of your imagination.

    Ok, I'll try one now:

    • TV designers use physics.
    • Physics uses math.
    • There are numbers in math.
    • Numerology uses numbers.
    • I will win the lottery



  • @rohypnol said:

    I dare you to take apart what I said, point by point
      You want it?  You got it:

    @rohypnol said:

    You wanna know how? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!
      Excellent way to start.  Everybody enjoys references to 17-year-old films.  Well, I can quote things that are even older: "There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."  That's Alfred North Whitehead.  He co-wrote the Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell.  Look him up some time, he was very interested in all of these topics: philosophy, science, religion, logic.  And he could reason successfully, something you've yet to grasp.

    @rohypnol said:

    Our whole technology is based on scientific discoveries.
    If this isn't a tautology, it's close.

    @rohypnol said:

    Carbon dating, radio waves, DNA engineering, conversion of fuel to energy... they're all based on exactly the same principles.
    And here starts your generalizations.  They aren't based upon the same principles except in the vague sense that they all inhabit the same universe.  Radio waves, for example, are a natural phenomena.  They exist whether we understand them or not.  Harnessing them requires more understanding, but nothing close to a complete understanding.  Marconi built a radio station roughly 40 years before the beginnings of quantum theory.  

    @rohypnol said:

    The foundation of everything we know and our whole way of living and thinking is based on some of the things Aristotel pondered about, such as logic. There was no such thing as logic in the middle ages and people simply did not know how to relate things. They saw a bird eating a fish and the fish eating plants, but they didn't realize that if they killed the plants (therefore starved the fish), then the bird would also perrish. An other example of a principle that we take for granted but they didn't realize was: if A leads to B and X is part of A, then X leads to B.
    Aristotle was probably the first to codify term logic, but he didn't discover it.  By the way, your example is an invalid syllogism, and in fact demonstrates on the of the downfalls of term logic: it lacks formalism.  For example, if a car crash leads to my death, and a Dodge Stratus is a part of the car crash, it is not necessarily true that a Dodge Stratus lead to my death.  Such fallacies are often easier to identify in predicate logic, which was demonstrated in Principia Mathematica (and you thought I was just showing off with that quote earlier).

    Also, I should point out that the Middle Ages were well after Aristotle's time.

    @rohypnol said:

    All our discoveries are based on that and all scientists used mathematics and logic to find scientific answers to every day problems.
    You are mistaking simple term logic with the scientific method (attributable to Alhacen's Book of Optics, circa 1021).  The scientific method demands experimentation in order to refute hypotheses, but makes no claims as to the accuracy or truth of a hypothesis which is not refuted.  By comparison, term logic deals in absolutes.

    @rohypnol said:

    After most of the problems they had were solved, they figured something along the lines of "hell, why not create new problems? we still need to find something to charge people for, so we may still make a living!" so they invented problems and needs that didn't exist before and started looking for ways to handle them.
      And thus we reach the pop psychology part of the program.  Do you really think Newton was sitting around thinking, "I sure could use a new suit.  What can I discover next?"  We seek answers, and each answer leads to more and more questions.

    @rohypnol said:

    Again, they tried - and still try today - to find answers using logic the scientific method.
    Much better.

    @rohypnol said:

    Before logic emerged from the darkness (Europe got the idea of logic after fighting the spanish arabs
      Perhaps.  There is evidence that Greek and Arab influence came from the Moors, but it's equally, if not more likely that the primary influence came from the crusades and the decline of the Byzantine Empire.

    @rohypnol said:

    destroying the rest of their culture, realizing what they've done and then studying whatever was left of their culture, because the spanish arabs found ways to get richer than the rest of Europe - doh, they were already using ancient Greek principles to solve everything)
    No, they were using Arab principles to solve things, such as the scientific method, algebra, irrigation, and so on.  You do the Arabs a great disservice to assume they were merely utilizing Greek techniques instead of advancing them.

    @rohypnol said:

    everything was related to God and The Holy Bible and some bits from Aristotel's philosophy;
    How you can claim that the Eurpoeans simultaneously had and lacked Aristotle's philopophy is puzzling to me.

    @rohypnol said:

    now, everything is based on other bits of philosophy that we also inherited from Aristotel, including carbon dating and television.
      See, this is why this is the stupidest thing I've ever read.  That you can come to this conclusion and not immediate say, "WTF?  That doesn't make any sense.  Where did I go wrong?" is troubling.  We'll delve into just how stupid it is below.

    @rohypnol said:

    Since they're both considered to be true on the same grounds,
    Fail.  Once again, science isn't truth.  Nothing we hold to be scientifically correct is necessarily true, but not yet proven false.  As I said before, Einstein proved previous "fact" to be false.  Hell, Galileo completely destroyed your precious Aristotle's notion of physics which had been thought true for hundreds of years.  And yet, bridges did not collapse.  No technologies suddenly ceased to work.

    @rohypnol said:

    if one of them is wrong, then the other one "must" also be wrong (this is based on the same logic, which is a bit weird, because that same logic).
    I love that you cannot even master Aristotle's logic that you hold so dear.  If it makes you feel any better, neither could Plato.  If I claim that all A are in B, but you demonstrate an A that isn't in B, this does not mean that the rest of the A's are not in B.

    @rohypnol said:

    This is just because of our way of thinking is based on logic reason instead of emotions and because, until now, doing things this way never proved wrong.
    WTF are you talking about.  This is wrong on so many levels, as you've inadvertantly demonstrated throughout your post.

    @rohypnol said:

    We all agree mathematics are right and the same everywhere in the known and unknown Universe
    That doesn't mean that our mathematics are right.  Math is no more inherently true than anything else we've discovered.  It's a shame we don't still refer to them as part of natural philosophy.

    @rohypnol said:

    therefore scientific arguments based on mathematics must be true
    Scientific arguments based upon the mathematics that actually govern this universe must be right.  Again, this is not our mathematics.

    @rohypnol said:

    (this is  considered to be valid as long as you don't model the world to fit your formula and you only model the formula to fit the world).
    And we've yet to model the entire world, and there are many who'd argue that we never will.

    @rohypnol said:

    If you say that carbon dating might be wrong, you are also saying that radio waves might be wrong, but they're all around us and everyone accepts them for what they are.
      Both might be wrong.  All we do is guessing.  We feel pretty good about the guesses because they seem to predict the things we see, but ultimately they're just guesses. 

    Consider if I gave you the start of a sequence 2, 3, 5, told you that it's generated in a systematic way, and asked you what the next number is.  You might feel pretty confident that the sequence is, say, all the prime numbers.  It fits all the evidence you have, so you say the next number is 7.  But then when I tell you that the next number is 8, you might think each number in the sequence differs from the one before it by an increasing amount because 2+1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5, 5 + 3 = 8.  So you declare the next number to be 12.  Wrong again, it was 13 and the sequence is all numbers of the Fibonacci sequence greater than one. 

    The point to take away from that example is that your first two hypotheses seemed right, but neither one was.  Before I gave you the next number in the sequence, each looked like a correct representation of my system, but they were never true. It took the creator of the system to give you the correct answer, otherwise you'd never know that your theory was anything but a best guess.  Don't take that as a statement that there must be a God, though.  Merely that you cannot necessarily know all the rules of the game from inside it.

    @rohypnol said:

    The only alternative I can see is to say that carbon dating was given by the devil and God is laughing His pants off looking at us when we're trying to determine the age of the dinosaur fossils, which makes the TV a tool of the devil or God.
    That's one of those lame, simple-minded arguments for atheism.  How can you proclaim to understand the motives of such a creature as God?

    @rohypnol said:

    As far as I can see, you either have to accept carbon dating and television together or dismiss both of them, because they are both rational conclusions based on the same logic and the same scientific experiments performed before their discovery and they were "proven" to be true even by scientific experiments performed after their discovery.
    Even if your basic hypothesis were true -- and it isn't -- this still wouldn't be the only logical conclusion.  Contamination, procedural problems, a fundamental mistake in the theory that creates a shortcoming in the technology.  Further, our theory well outpaces our technology.  In developing theory we are limited only by the expanses of the human mind, in developing technology we are limited to our ability to build at and measure the extremes.  We are limited by the materials at hand, and the hands that build them.  We are limited by space, time, and money.  We are always limited.

    @rohypnol said:

    And that, my friend, is how telephones and television are related to carbon dating.
    And that, my friends, is how an idiot who took Introduction to Logic can waste everyone's time.

    @rohypnol said:
    Science is our understanding of the physical Universe. Engineering is the application of science. If science is wrong, then so is engineering.
    Let us close again with Whitehead: "Error is the price we pay for progress."

     



  • @bstorer said:

    Merely that you cannot necessarily know all the rules of the game from inside it.

    Your axioms are showing! 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @bstorer said:

    Merely that you cannot necessarily know all the rules of the game from inside it.

    Your axioms are showing! 

    *falls out of tree*


  • @bstorer said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @bstorer said:

    Merely that you cannot necessarily know all the rules of the game from inside it.

    Your axioms are showing! 

    *falls out of tree*

    Just like when Newton fell out of that apple tree and invented carbon dating! 



  •  That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read on a forum.

     Pesto, can I have your babies?



  • I didn't actually read your shit until pesto responded properly, but DAMN!

    @rohypnol said:

    <bunch of loose ends and cliff-leaps that he calls logic>
    Seriously, are you mentally retarded? Or do you just seriously fail logic this much?



  • @bstorer said:

    @rohypnol said:

    We all agree mathematics are right and the same everywhere in the known and unknown Universe
    That doesn't mean that our mathematics are right.  Math is no more inherently true than anything else we've discovered.  It's a shame we don't still refer to them as part of natural philosophy.

    I would like to offer a different point of view to this.  Mathematics is an exact science.  It consists of symbols (numbers) defined by us and rules for how to manipulate them (operators and functions), also defined by us.  We can take a simple statement we know to be true (either by definition or by earlier proof), and derive more complex statements from it.  Such proofs are absolute truths within our set of rules (provided that it has been proven correctly).  Even if someone else defines mathematics with different rules, that doesn't make ours any less correct.

    Now, it's important to note that pure mathematics is different from for example physics, which uses mathematical truths to arrive at theories about the universe.  Those theories may be incomplete or even incorrect, but tat doesn't make the underlying mathematics any less true - perhaps the mathematilcal truths were applied incorrectly.  And with a different kind of mathematics, also physics needs to be different.

    Having said all that, I'd like to point to Gödel's incompleteness theorem.  Simply put, it states that we will never be able to prove everything within any single consistent set of rules.  There will always be statements whose truth value can't be proven inside the system, even if we know it from thinking outside the system.



  • @tdb said:

    @bstorer said:

    @rohypnol said:

    We all agree mathematics are right and the same everywhere in the known and unknown Universe
    That doesn't mean that our mathematics are right.  Math is no more inherently true than anything else we've discovered.  It's a shame we don't still refer to them as part of natural philosophy.

    I would like to offer a different point of view to this.  Mathematics is an exact science.  It consists of symbols (numbers) defined by us and rules for how to manipulate them (operators and functions), also defined by us.  We can take a simple statement we know to be true (either by definition or by earlier proof), and derive more complex statements from it.  Such proofs are absolute truths within our set of rules (provided that it has been proven correctly).  Even if someone else defines mathematics with different rules, that doesn't make ours any less correct.

    Rohypnol wants to claim that there is a universal mathematics that is right everywhere.  Depends how you interpret "right", I suppose.  Does he mean that there is one system of symbols and rules which encompasses everything in this universe?  Such a thing either leads to unprovable statements or paradoxes.  Or does he mean, as you suggest, that given the numbers 1 through 4 and addition, 2 + 2 always equals 4?  That's a valid interpretation, but it doesn't tell you anything.  It doesn't allow you shed any new light on the universe.  Whitehead's problem (Different Whitehead this time) can be either true or false depending on what axioms you add to ZFC set theory.  But which one is right?

    @tdb said:

    Now, it's important to note that pure mathematics is different from for example physics, which uses mathematical truths to arrive at theories about the universe.  Those theories may be incomplete or even incorrect, but tat doesn't make the underlying mathematics any less true - perhaps the mathematilcal truths were applied incorrectly.  And with a different kind of mathematics, also physics needs to be different.
    Ah, now we come to the rub: which system are we using?  When you go to model the universe, which axioms are you picking?  Will you make Whitehead's problem true, or false, or undecidable?

    @tdb said:

    Having said all that, I'd like to point to Gödel's incompleteness theorem.  Simply put, it states that we will never be able to prove everything within any single consistent set of rules.  There will always be statements whose truth value can't be proven inside the system, even if we know it from thinking outside the system.
    Precisely.  And as loathe as I am to discuss it again, it warrants mentioning.


Log in to reply