[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Science its just another religion. You need a lot of faith to believe that the age of a rock can be found.
I'm all for Technology, but Science, as in the theory of the big bang and the theory of evolution, looks to me like modern day religions.

In more ways than you know - when the various dating schemes are all tried on the same rock, they have a very strong tendency to disagree with each other by multiple orders of magnitude.

The 'date' that is most often used for the 'age' of the rock in question is based on the so called 'index fossils' found either in the rock itself or in the same geologic strata. However, the scientists then turn around and use the 'evidence' of the age of the rock to 'support' the theory of evolution, which is circular reasoning, as they used the theory of evolution to date the rock.

Even when the scientists go by one of the other dating schemes - perhaps potassium-argon dating - they will normally run the test numerous times on the same sample, and get widely disparate results, with many of the values returning zero (to within a few thousand years, anyway). However, the testers simply claim that the zero results don't make any sense, and throw them out, levying chages of contaimination on the sample. However, the only reason they 'know' the sample was contaminated is because the result doesn't agree with evolutionary theory, which again is an example of circular reasoning when the rock is then used to support the theory of evolution. The dates aren't experimentally determined, they are selected.

Further, when samples are taken of rocks that formed at a known time (via historical records, such as rocks form the lava dome at Mt. St. Helens) the dates of those samples sent back to the dating laboratory are generally in excess of the known date by several orders of magnitude.

Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

[Aloofi]

Jack, that was a great post, I encourage you to continuing posting in this thread .
I just don't like how scientists blame religious people of being "religious" when they are nothing more than another religion.
If just science were neutral the way technology is......

[Alpha Kodiak]

[quote]Originally posted by spoon:

quote:

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Originally posted by Alpha Kodiak:

The Big Bang theory really doesn't explain creation, since there must have been something in order for it to explode. It is entirely conceivable that part of the act of creation was a "Big Bang", but there must have been something that existed prior to it, whether an intelligence or not.

Unless time was also created by the Big Bang. Then there would be no "before".

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Given the relativistic nature of time, I would not disagree with you. Still, the Big Bang does not address the origins of itself. Even if time originated in the Big Bang (a distinct possibility), something had to start the process.

A side question: for a photon travelling at the speed of light, does time pass at all? I know that time "slows down" as you approach the speed of light, but I am not sure what happens to time at the speed of light.

[Mephisto]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Maybe we should implement that in classes at College... those Celts were on to something... j/k

Ah, better not. Don't want to be at the receiving end.

The Celts did have an egalitarian society for most of their history in which the women and men were fairly equal though. In fact, women were allowed to be chiefs and kings, and I recall that property was inherited through the mother's side, not the father's. The Celts also did not enslave anyone, unlike the Romans.

You might be right about equality. But the Celts did have slaves, a quick link is here:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/yesss/...Celt/celts.htm

If your argument is more on the line that the did not enslave as much people as the Romans: Well, the Romans didn't enslave everyone else either. In most cases only those who resisted them. Many Gallic tribes were not enslaves (make this almost all). They took hostages but that was not slavery.

[Ruatha]

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ruatha:
Didn't the monks erase Aristoteles works and use the pergament for prayer books instead?
Thereby eradicating valuable knowledge, some of which has been independetly discovered so late as in the 20:th century.

They did not. In fact, they copied his works preferentially because of their divine implications, i.e., that everything in the universe is striving for its perfect state, etc...

If we are talking about the European dark ages ~500-1400 then war/invasion/disease were all primary causes of technological stagnation, not the church! The church didn't really start to take control until the 1200s etc, and that was after the Europeans were able to manage a bit of stability. The church in 1500-1600s is more what you guys are referring to - but even to some degree, it was the thinkers who were stuck on Aristotle and not open to new possibilities that kept new thinkers from making a bigger splash then they did...

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Ahh, yes I remembered wrongly .
It was Archimede's works they erased and used to write again on.
Most notably the Principles that now exist only as a palimpsest.
And it was propably around 1300 if I remember correctly. (Can't bother to do a search tonight, G'night)

(Edit Spellling)

[ March 12, 2003, 21:42: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Jack, that was a great post, I encourage you to continuing posting in this thread .
I just don't like how scientists blame religious people of being "religious" when they are nothing more than another religion.
If just science were neutral the way technology is......

Technically, evolution isn't proper science, as it doesn't follow the scientific method:
1) Observe something
2) Hypothisize about what could cause it
3) Test Hypothesis via experiment
4) Check results against Hypothesis
5) Refine Hypothesis to better match results
6) back to 3, repeat indefinately

Evolution and cosmology can't follow this - one cannot test events that happened in the past, and any time scale on the order of thousands of years can't be done due to scientist death, and certainly could not be repeated. Evolutionary theory and modern cosmology use time scales on the order of millions of years. Thus they are not truely scientists. Likewise, even assuming the big bang actually happened, it was a one-shot deal, and cannot be repeated.

[Wardad]

Actually, Science is the Art of Repeatable Results. Since the results are repeatable they are open to use or abuse by anyone.

The scientific method is used to determine what is repeatable and help in turn predict what should be repeatable. Observation, theory, and experimentation all have their place in this pursuit.

Evolution is a theory. It is useful for explaining observation and maybe even predicting results.

Generally, a theory is wrong if it fails once. Often a theory is incomplete and does not encompass all variables. That's how we learn about other factors that also produce repeatable results.

Ex. Evolution theory may not account for third party intervention (Divine or Human) or even the nuclear core of the Earth increasing it's radiation. OR DOES IT???? Bwahahahaahaaaa.

Often in applied science an exacting degree of perfection is not needed. Sure mass increases with the speed of light, but I'm not going to lose a few pounds by sitting on the couch.

Some of the sciences are not true sciences. I think science got such a good name that every related subject wanted to cash in on it.
Take psychology, PLEASE! Ok now, it can benifit from the scientific method and statistics, but in application it is heavily affected by the whims and perceptions of the subject and observer.

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Religion depends on prayers and the whims of deities and/or demons (not repeatable).

What kind of deity would give us a universe with repeatable results that we can use/abuse? Maybe the same one who would give you a free will, watch your actions, and sit in judgement of your choices.
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Accepting religion is like declaring this exsistance a simulation. Accepting science is like learning the simulation.

[ March 12, 2003, 23:50: Message edited by: Wardad ]