Re: OT: Racial superiority / Intelligent design was Re: OT:Thanksgiving

"Charles Hottel" <chottel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Charles Hottel" <chottel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Judson McClendon" <judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Charles Hottel" <chottel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Judson McClendon" <judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Judson McClendon" <ju...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Alistair" <alist...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Judson McClendon" <ju...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No, the problem is that non belief *also* requires faith, ...
including secular humanism and athiesm.

I have no religious faith. I do believe that the process of science
will prevail and wipe out the last vestiges of superstition (which is
what religion is). It is a regret of mine that I will not live to see
that day.

Sounds like Voltaire. He said in a hundred years Christianity would cease
to exist. Last time I checked, there was a Bible organization using his old
house. God does, indeed, have a sense of humor.

Yes, he created humans (malformed unstable evolutionary prototypes)
and has allowed us to poison our nest.

God created humans without flaw or sin, but gave them free will to choose
good or evil. Humans chose to sin and "poison our nest." (good phrase,
by the way. :-)

As to belief/faith: it is very difficult to believe in anything at
all. The human being perceives, cogitates and reacts to stimuli. Those
stimuli are past perceptions (it takes a measurable amount of time for
the stimulus to pass along nerve fibres and for a response to be
observed) which means that no human is perceiving the current moment
in time. So, do you still exist? You can not ever be certain of that.

Further, although we have debated in this group artificial
intelligence (perhaps artificial stupidity would be a better concept)
and the simulation of mice and men's perecrania and found the current
technology lacking, there is nothing to indicate that we are not,
ourselves, simulations. Cut me and I bleed. Or do I? Am I just
imagining it? What is reality? You subscribe to one version and I
subscribe to another and they are not the same. We are both hedging
our bets.

Well, my point is that we both have faith in our belief systems.

All I said was that science will prevail.

Neither
of us are 100% totally objective evidence driven in our beliefs.

How is any belief in science less than 100% objective?

You can prove that 100% objectivity to my satisfaction by answering the
challenge. Would you believe and submit to God if evidence you yourself
considered unquestionable and deniable were presented to you that the
Bible is true? So, 100% objective, evidence based, or not? Not! :-)

The vast
majority of non-believers are unwilling to admit this, because they much
prefer to insist that they don't need faith, they have "evidence,"

You're confusing a belief in a (religious) concept with a belief in a
verifiable and reproducible experimental result. No atheist can have
evidence that god does not exist. All we have is the refutation of
superstitions. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

You have failed to provide irrefutable evidence for a deity. On the
balance of probability there is no god.

while
insisting believers are somehow less valid because "they need faith."

Believe in your refutable and redundant concepts if you wish. The only
valid faith is that which can (for the observer) be experimentally
proved. Clearly, especially as you have taken such a hiding here, your
faith is very real to you. I would argue that your standard of proof
is not as high as mine and I would not be satisfied by your
experiences.

The premise you use to argue that is that my beliefs are "only" founded
"on faith," whereas yours are founded on "evidence". If evidence is your
only criteria, then your answer to my challenge should be clear. But you
will not answer my hypothetical question because evidence is not the
*real* issue for you.

And that is absolute rubbish! Atheists are just as faith based as believers,
and in fact, are believers in a religion: Atheism. Atheism is a man-made
"god" just as they insist believers have created.

There is no hint of divinity or deity about atheism. Atheism is not a
religion.

A religion doesn't require a divinity. In the place that believers put God,
you put atheism. Believers expect to go to Heaven after death because of
their beliefs; you expect to cease to exist at death because of your beliefs.
Believers take comfort in their belief in God, you take comfort in your
belief you won't have to face God. It is your religion. :-)
--
Judson McClendon judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."


I don't get the point of all this. Everthing is based to some degree on faith. We know that our senses only give us limited
information about reality. We have faith in them because they seem to allow us to build useful maps about reality, but the
map is not the territory. Even scientific belief requires faith. Science does not prove things true beyond all doubt.
Scientific truth is just a set of laws and propositions that have not yet been proved false or in need of modification. As I
have mentioned here before, Newton laws were confirmed time and time agin for hundreds of years but that did not make them
true. A day came when situations were found where they were inaccuarte and therefore had to be modfied.

Not quite, Charlie. Newton's laws were/are accurate (so much so, that NASA still uses them to calculate trajectories for space
probes.)

They just weren't complete. There was a creeping shift in the orbit of Mercury which they did not account for. At first
(because nobody was prepared to challenge Newton) it was believed that this was down to the difficulty of accurate
observation, Mercury being so close to the sun. It was only when Einstain explained the way in which Mass warps space and
affects anything passing through it (like a small planet), that the anomaly could be cleared up. (Better observation during
the 20th century showed that Mercury behaved exactly as Einstein had predicted, and the shift in its orbit was indeed caused
by the warping of space in the immediate vicinity of the sun.)

Newton was right. So was Einstein. The story is still not finished...

Good post, Pete. It always annoys me when people refer to Newton
as if he was simply "wrong". :-)
--
Judson McClendon judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."


I di not say they were wrong, I said there were situations where they are inaccurate.

But there aren't... :-) That was my point.

Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."


Then my recollection of phics must be wrong. I thougth that they did not apply to bodies moving close to the speed of light.

Newton was an extremely cautious and meticulous scientist. From the top
of my head (and not checking my copy of The Principia) IIRC, Newton used
terms something like M(rest) and M(vel), indicating he was allowing for
the possibility that mass might vary with velocity, though he had no data
for it. If my memory is accurate, then Newton was absolutely correct, and
the relativity equations basically supplied the missing mass adjustments
Newton already allowed for. For anyone but Newton, such a thing would be
virtually unthinkable.

IMHO, Newton was not only unquestionably the greatest scientist who ever
lived, but very likely the greatest intellect who ever lived. Who else,
with the information he had, could have done The Principia in 18 months?
And consider, he first did the proofs geometrically, then translated them
to analytical proofs. In 18 months. With a quill pen. Boggles the mind.
--
Judson McClendon judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."


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