Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Stormie, sweet girl - I'm guessing you're the 8 year old kid who thinks she has an average IQ? Just to remind you, it took _weeks_ to debunk some of the faked photos from 9/11. It took a team of historians to prove that Stalin had been rewriting history by redoing famous photographs - and that was long before the digital age.

"But we can have a current newspaper in the photo!" Yes, sweetling, and the newspaper image can be imposed in the photograph, just as modern cereals and soft drinks are being inserted into vintage television shows and images.

Not to mention that the current newspaper still wouldn't prove that the man in the photograph was Norfleet. But here's a lollipop for a nice try, kid. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

And by the by, Stormie - defending one person isn't the same as attacking another. But as someone reminded me that it's "Be kind to the differently enabled week", I'm not going to attack you today. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Since you like "At least / only one of these four need be true" games, here's one for you.

#1 : God is a sadist, given the way the world is.
#2 : God isn't a sadist, but isn't omnipotent either, or the world wouldn't be the way it is.
#3 : God isn't a sadist, he is omnipotent, but he forgot about us and thus the world went to ****.
#4 : God isn't a sadist, and he is omnipotent, but he's also incompetent and can't fix the mess he made.

One of the four must be true.

(Which is of course BS, but so are the four possibilities you mentioned.)

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Stormie, sweet girl - I'm guessing you're the 8 year old kid who thinks she has an average IQ? Just to remind you, it took _weeks_ to debunk some of the faked photos from 9/11. It took a team of historians to prove that Stalin had been rewriting history by redoing famous photographs - and that was long before the digital age.

"But we can have a current newspaper in the photo!" Yes, sweetling, and the newspaper image can be imposed in the photograph, just as modern cereals and soft drinks are being inserted into vintage television shows and images.

Not to mention that the current newspaper still wouldn't prove that the man in the photograph was Norfleet. But here's a lollipop for a nice try, kid. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Congratulations Cain, you have finally figured small part of this simple puzzle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif So there is hope for you after all. Who knows, maybe you even will get to the average IQ in the future for your age group, if you will try really hard. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif After all, brain and intellectual capacities can be developed, to the certain degree, up to the certain age. Don't give up!


Unfortuantley you are still not geting it, obviously. Now put your anger over humiliations and your romantic feeling to the Norfleet aside, and try to think a bit harder my friend. How it can be proved, beyond all reasonable doubts, that the person on picture with T34 is indeed Norfleet, and not some fabrication made out of old or modern photos?


Here is a hint for you - Norfleet is NOT a Stalin, neither he is the World Trade Center, surprising as it may be. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif C'mon Cain, I am telling you the truth - it is not that hard. Just try to think a little bit about it, that strange unpleasant sensation in your head will fade away eventually, I promise. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif


With best regards,
Stormbinder

[ July 29, 2004, 22:40: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

I'm always amused by people blathering on about an omniscient and omnipotent deity. Any such fictional construct would have to, by definition, be able to know, and to alter, the quantum state of EVERY particle in the ENTIRE universe, and to be able to do so instantly. An external oberver cannot observe the quantum state of a particle without altering it. Only the particles "know" their state. So, by deduction, such a omniwhatever deity would have to *be* the universe. If the deity embodies the universe (and is indistiguishable from it) it ceases to have an identity seperate from it. It's everywhere. Including in the humans that inhabit the universe. So (shocking as this may come), Norfleet is God. As am I. As are you. Of course, we, the "atoms" of God, still have a wee bit of a problem with the omnipotent ability to alter any particle, anywhere in the universe, instantly. This violates so many laws of physics that if it were true the universe could never have come into existence and possess the traits that we observe currently.

Well, the universe does exist, and we're having a very silly discussion, so God cannot possibly be omnipotent/omniscient or this discussion wouldn't be taking place.

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">When you start talking about proof, you're no longer doing science. The Theory of the Big Bang is just that, a theory. No-one has proof that the Universe started that way, even though it does do a good job of explaining the isotropic background microwave radiation.

I thought we were talking about the state of mainstream contemporary scientific thinking here, which definitely doesn't support your theory.

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, but that's only because we have to observe particles by operating on them in a physical way, such as arranging a collision with another particle.

As the creator of the physical Universe, I think we can safely assume that God has non-physical powers at His disposal, and so is free of the Heisenberg constraint (which He imposed in the first place).

And although the volume of information involved with being omniscient is staggering, there's no real limit on God's capacity to know stuff either. So I can't see that there's a metaphysical problem although, as I said before, it may cause problems with the consistency of Christian belief.

Regarding omnipotence, people always try to debunk it by pointing out that no being, no matter how powerful, can perform a logical contradiction or paradox. I think that's just linguistic trickery. We need to use the word "omnipotent" in the same way as the people ascribing that property to God, and I think those people probably meant that He could perform any logically valid physical (or spiritual, I suppose) operation.

Which would kind of make sense if He made everything in the first place.

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The God do not play dices with the Universe, huh? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I could try to play a devil's advocate here, but I think I'll pass, or we may go too deep into the realm of Godel's theory, provable and unpovable, and Geinzerberg's principle from the quantum theory, that you were refering to.

[ July 29, 2004, 23:28: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

Just a reminder to keep the barbequesqe personal remarks to yourself and future "Memoirs of People I Loathe". Those of you who are toeing the line know who you are.

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You lost me there. I completely agree to the first part of your posting. I do not understand however what you want to say with the qouted part. Lets assume we are the atoms of god, and earth might be a cell. Does a cell in my heart need to understand why it has to beat? Are the atoms of those cells even aware that something is beating?

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Surely as a skeptic you would be first in the house to put forward possibilities of how something could be outside the boundries of a prescribed theory ?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not my job. The burden of PROOF is upon those making the fantastical claims. If you say that you see and talk to a invisible, 6-armed, purple rabbit (or a deity), it's *your* problem to prove it. If I claim to have discovered cold fusion, it's my responsibility to prove it (provide evidence).

Skeptics study evidence to ascertain if the evidence is real.

There is NO evidence of diety, only hearsay. Until such time as there is quantifiable evidence, diety remains a fanciful concept that can neither be proved, nor disproved.

BTW, to the ancient Greeks, Zeus was as real as Allah is to folks today. If they were suffering from mass delusion, then logically so are all believers today. And if today's believers aren't delusional, then by corollary, neither were the ancient Greeks, and thus modern Judeo-Christian-Islam is wrong and there are many gods. Ergo, either way, religion is a falsehood. Prove otherwise. With hard evidence that can be subjected to scientific (or logical) testing.

Have fun.

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm sorry; I don't see a proof attached for critique; have you listed it elsewhere and I just missed it?

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">When you start talking about proof, you're no longer doing science. The Theory of the Big Bang is just that, a theory. No-one has proof that the Universe started that way, even though it does do a good job of explaining the isotropic background microwave radiation.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I might point out that the only reason I asked for proof was because the person I had been actively debating at the time had just gone on a bit of a tirade about proof being needed for extravagant claims. I suppose I should have been clearer that I was mostly just pointing out that my opponent was slipping a bit of a double-standard into his arguments. I might also point out that the second question, immediately following the segment you quote, was considerably less strict - asking for an observed instance of a violation of the apparently constant laws his theory of the universe required as variable. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Of course, having the modern, apparently unbreakable laws of physics not apply past a certain point is a variation on one of the four possibilies of the logical proof I listed, isn't it? After all, if the laws didn't apply once, under one set of conditions, it's almost certainly theoretically possible for a similar state of affairs to be manufactured on some scale, and thus to break them again, and so either conservation or entropy (inclusive use of or) can be broken (and thus one/both of those two laws aren't correct under their current form), no?

I notice nobody seems to be attacking an itermediary step in my proof without suggesting one of the possible outs from the proof-by-contradiction I listed earlier - people seem to just be picking one of the possible four, arbitrarily assigning it to what I mean and attacking it. A "straw man" approach.

I suppose there are other outs from that proof - induction isn't valid, say; it never has been logically proven (it's been off-the-cuff proven in a "how could it not be true" kind of way, and it has never been logically disproven, but to the best of my knoweledge, induction has never been logically, rigorously proven). Or perhaps logic simply isn't valid when discussing ultimate origins. Or perhaps there is an infinite amount of energy; entropy only really applies to closed systems; in an infinite-energy system, you can push some energy to a lower-order state and then throw it away into the distance to maintain a higher-order state on the energy that is important to you (Oh, wait - that would be a variation on entropy doesn't work). Or perhaps there are an infinite number of possible universes - in which case it is reasonable for us to live in one with probability 0 - after all, we only live in 1, and one possability of infinity has probability k*1/infinity = 0 for some defined k, doesn't it (oh, wait - I listed a variation on that one - although specifing time rather than universe - close enough to count as a variation). Or perhaps it's only possible for us to exist on the measureable entropy/some amount of order slice of history's infinitive, and so we on a probability 0 slice of time because that's the only slice of time we can exist on (of course, the slice of time itself still has probability 0...).

Of course, nobody's arguing on any of those bases.

Edit: fixed quote formatting

[ July 30, 2004, 02:22: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">*shrug* there's nothing in my proof that necessarily precludes that option. I could not figure out how to work it in, and so am not currently arguing on that basis.

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

The big bang is no longer the accepted theory. Its now Quantum strings and branes. And since that theory tosses out anything that was previously "proven wrong" by the rule of "energy/matter cannot be created or destroyed" we have a whole new ballpark for discussions of faster-than-light drives, teleportation, anything supernatural, and God.
We will have to wait for them to iron out all the quantum stuff alittle more.

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Is it (original post has scrolled off, and I can't be bothered digging for it)? If that's the case, then what is it, exactly, that you're proving? That contemporary physics plus some other more exotic ideas are all possibilities?

If so, then I guess I'm forced to agree http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Za? I thought those were being incorporated into the Big Bang theory to explain inconsistences between older Versions of it and observations. The BBT itself (which I understand to mean simply that the universe began expanding from a single point) wasn't in question, since it's pretty broad.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Za again? Since when? I didn't think that quantum physics violated those rules yet. An explanatory link would be nice.

[ July 30, 2004, 05:02: Message edited by: Sindai ]

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

Sindai,

You're correct in your thoughts.

It seems that Gandalf has misinterpreted the "new physics" that's he's read about in the popular press, and drawn some conclusions that are not justified from the theories. I could Google up a bunch of relevent links to show this, but you or Gandalf should be able to find out the facts just as well. If not, let me know and I'll post them.


-- Arryn

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

True, I was trolling abit. No "rules" have been broken yet. The new Quantum theory concerning big bang gives a crossing of membranes releasing matter/energy into our "brane" (their word, not mine). So there is still a bang but no need for a collapse and re-bang. And the matter/energy cannot be destroyed/created rule isnt void but with Quantum Theory comes 11 dimensions and infinite branes. New measurements and new energys and new sources for matter will mean that recorded phenomena cast aside under the old rules will need re-examined. Most of my reading is from .edu sites and more likely to give headaches than answers. But there are some sudo-scientific publications which strive to explain things at a more human level.

The era of scientific stability which causes theorys to become concrete just by the passage of time was predicted to be running abit long just before Quantum broke in. They hoped Chaos Theory would do it but it didnt shake things up as much as Quantum. Its hitting every area. Even in my area (computers) its hitting cryptography, media storage, cpu speeds and wide-area-networks. So far, all in theory of course.
http://www.theory.caltech.edu/people/preskill/ph229/
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/quantum/

-- I knew the future was coming,
but it seems to be picking up speed.

[ July 30, 2004, 14:52: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ah. Okay. But shame on you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No need, true, but it's possible. There is a particular "colliding branes" model that is very interesting ...