1

Technology, Science & Alt Science / Re: Nuclear Weapons Do Not Exist

« on: May 08, 2014, 11:10:41 PM »

The US will not carpet bomb Iran and certainly would never drop a nuclear weapon on that country.

The politicial bias of beast's statement is so obvious and has been dealt with so much already

[/quote]

I am glad this 7 year old topic is still active.  Going back to the first post, we see a specific prediction made by me, and two competing political ideologies.  As a scientist, I think making testable predictions is the best demonstrations of the value of an ideology.  In this case, we can compare how well my ideology and Dio's are at predicting the future. 

2

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Religious Freedom!

« on: May 08, 2014, 08:07:51 PM »

@DuckDodgers;

Didn't Jesus say something about the people who haven't sinned casting the first stones (although I believe the gist of the story predates Christianity)?

In any event, isn't it God's job to judge people, not people's?  Didn't Jesus say something about judging not, lest you be judged yourself?

If your religious beliefs indicate to you that homosexuality is wrong, don't engage in homosexuality, but tolerating homosexuals with the so called Christian values of empathy and forgiveness is surely not a sin.  If you're religious beliefs are true, you won't be punished for being nice to people, regardless of what they've done.  Doesn't Jesus say something about loving your enemies?  Doesn't Christianity teach that God gave us free will so we can choose to follow his teachings or not?  If you want to force people, against their will, to follow his teachings, or punish them yourself, aren't you contradicting God's will?

3

Technology, Science & Alt Science / Re: Event horizen

« on: March 12, 2009, 08:09:53 PM »

If you rewrite your post in a grammatically correct manner I'll attempt to answer the questions I think you're asking.

4

Technology, Science & Alt Science / Re: A few selective pressures removed

« on: March 12, 2009, 08:08:41 PM »

But if unnatural deliveries due to genetic factors are a very small minority, it will take an exceptionally long time before that gene or combinations of genes are found in a large number of people, and that's assuming they have some kind of advantage over people without those genes - which is hard to believe.

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Technology, Science & Alt Science / Re: A few selective pressures removed

« on: March 10, 2009, 11:25:13 PM »

Sorry couldn't be bothered reading all the posts.

The answer to the OP question is almost certainly no - humans will never evolve to a stage where we are unable to give natural birth.  The reason for this is simple.  For that to happen there would have to be a significant advantage in being unable to give birth naturally.  Parents who were unable to have natural births would have to have some kind of survival and breeding advantage over parents who could give birth naturally.  When you then consider the fact that they would have to have access to technology that allows them to give birth unnaturally, and that we can not see any advantage that reliance on technology would give, it's hard to imagine it happening.

We then need to consider that currently the majority of unnatural births do not occur for genetic factors, but things related to illness, the position of the baby in the womb or the convenience of the mother. 

For humans to evolve to not be able to give birth naturally there would need to be an advantage in having a genetic defect that makes natural birth more realistic.  What would be this advantage?  There certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence to suggest it exists at the moment.

6

Technology, Science & Alt Science / Re: Panspermia

« on: November 01, 2008, 04:43:20 AM »

I have a tainted image of panspermia after Ben Stein latched onto it in Expelled and illustrated the ignorance in the ID community. However, it does solve the problem of the improbability of abiogenisis on earth, but really just shifts the explanation off world. It is essentially the rational "god did it" cop-out.

I disagree that abiogenesis on Earth is improbable.  All the elements of life can be constructed easily using naturally occurring elements and simple life can be constructed from those elements.  Given all this has been done, it is not that far fetched to assume it occurred at least once in 6 or 7 billion years (the time it took from the formation of the earth to the first life to appear) without human intervention.   

7

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: why you should believe in god

« on: September 25, 2008, 10:44:31 PM »

I'm guessing you've become confused about Heaven and Hell with your last statement.

The resolution is far simpler than what you've claimed, and indeed I'm not sure you understand the wager.  Pascal's wager can be dismissed because the same logic can be applied to absolutely any claim, no matter how ridiculous.  Instead of constructing a claim that directed people to give me $100, I could have stated that the bible is wrong and that if you believe in God you go to hell and if you're an atheist you go to heaven, and then Pascal's Wager would say that the most "logical" response would be to be an atheist.  It puts no weight on the probabilities of statements actually being correct.

8

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: why you should believe in god

« on: September 25, 2008, 10:09:41 PM »

Well there are various definitions of axioms, so that's not necessarily true.  Generally axioms are either hypothetical - as in "what would the world be like if we assume this statement to be true" or they are self evident, as in "two parallel lines will never meet (in a Euclidean geometric space)."

In any event you haven't managed to demonstrate that people should take Pascal's wager seriously, but not send me $100.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: why you should believe in god

« on: September 25, 2008, 09:40:11 PM »

But what evidence do you have to prove those statements are true?

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: why you should believe in god

« on: September 25, 2008, 09:30:18 PM »

What are you basing those relationships on?   Your proof is like this.

I'm going assume Beast to be god.

Therefore Beast is God.

Q.E.D.

11

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: why you should believe in god

« on: September 25, 2008, 09:23:57 PM »

Can you prove that I am not God?  How do you know this?


More importantly for the context of this debate, how is your decision to assume I am not God any different to the position of atheists in Pascal's initial wager, to assume that God does not exist?  There's about as much evidence to suggest God exists as to suggest that I am God...

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: why you should believe in god

« on: September 25, 2008, 09:17:09 PM »

I am God.

                | Beast is God   |    Beast is not God   |

|believer    | infinite gain      |  $100 loss         |
|atheist     | infinite loss      |   no gain        |


Everybody who believes Pascal's Wager to be meaningful should accept me as their God, because they only risk losing $100 that way, while they risk losing their soul for eternity while gaining nothing if they choose not to believe that I am God.

13

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: why you should believe in god

« on: September 25, 2008, 09:12:31 PM »

If you send me $100 then you can go to heaven for all eternity.  If you don't send it you'll spend eternity in hell.


                   |  If I'm telling the truth    |    If I'm not      |

|believer       | infinite gain                   |  $100 loss          |
|non believer | infinite loss                    |   No gain          |



So basically if you don't send me $100 you gain nothing, but risk damning your soul forever.  If you do believe me you risk losing $100 but might gain salvation.  You can paypal me the money to beast9 at gmail dot com.

I expect everybody who accepts Pascal's wager to be a convincing argument to send me money.  If you don't send me money, how can you possibly accept Pascal's wager to be meaningful?

14

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: The MrKappa sub-thread of Evolution and Religion

« on: September 25, 2008, 09:05:24 PM »

I basically find MrKappa's posts impossible to understand because of his serious lack of grammatical knowledge, however I am going to try and comment on something he's said anyway, despite the high probability that he actually was trying to say that he wanted nap time now.

The intelligent design theory has not been refuted and until the other mysteries in the Universe have been solved. Intelligent design is probable

Let's imagine for a second that we live in a world where "intelligent design theory" really is false.  This imagined world is exactly the same as ours in every other aspect.  How could we possibly refute the "intelligent design theory" in this world?  What could we find that proves that there was no intelligent designer?  Would the bad design of our knees count?  The fact that Koala's pouches for their babies open towards the ground, despite them living upright in trees?  The presence of appendixes in humans?

The reality is that you can never disprove the existence of something that actually does not exist (unless you're very specific about what you're disproving, where it can be found and how it can be observed).


I'm also curious about the statement that "Intelligent design is probable."  How do you calculate that probability?  Did you look at how many universes exist with and without intelligent designers, and calculated the chance that ours is one of the ones with an intelligent designer?

15

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Another blow to evolutionary timeline.

« on: September 23, 2008, 10:40:27 PM »

Osama doesn't understand general relativity and how it applies to gravity either.

Gravity clearly exists.  I drop a pen right now, and the phenomenon that causes it to fall to the ground is called "gravity."  Gravity can certainly be described as a fictitious force, and you can certainly say that there is no such thing as a "force of gravity," but that isn't the same thing as saying that gravity does not exist at all.  The word "gravity" clearly applies to the apparent observation of attraction between matter, and does not imply that matter is actually attracted to other matter.

16

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Evolution and religion

« on: September 23, 2008, 08:09:14 PM »

Yes there are literally thousands of transitional fossils.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

17

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Another blow to evolutionary timeline.

« on: September 23, 2008, 08:07:56 PM »

Yes I read that, and I have no idea how it is a "blow" to the evolutionary time line.

The theory was not that the pools of methane are formed by the sun reacting with the methane atmosphere, the theory was an attempt to explain why the methane atmosphere continues to exist.  You've got the two things the wrong way round.

What this does show is that if you invent things in order to try and explain something (in this case the oceans of methane) then you're likely to be wrong.

18

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Evolution and religion

« on: September 23, 2008, 08:03:22 PM »

I don't understand how the fossil record backs up the creationist theory.


Over 99% of fossils are extinct, yet the Bible offers no explanation or mention of any of these animals.  It only mentions animals that we would have expected to existed during the time it was written if it's all just made up, and evolutionary theory is correct.

19

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Another blow to evolutionary timeline.

« on: September 23, 2008, 07:55:18 PM »

Ok now I understand.  The initial post is misleading and this entire topic is rubbish.


Titan apparently has an atmosphere of methane.  Sunlight breaks this methane down, and yet Titan's atmosphere remains.  Clearly then, there must be some kind of "methane cycle" operating on Titan.  On Earth the same thing occurs, but the cycle is driven by life.

So the claim about the age of the Earth is wrong on 2 fronts.

First it was predicted that there is a cycle, not an endless generation of methane out of nothing.

Second, it was not a historical prediction.  There's no evidence to suggest that the atmosphere of Titan has always been methane (for the last 4. whatever billion years).

Fail.

20

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Another blow to evolutionary timeline.

« on: September 23, 2008, 07:47:26 PM »

I think you need to provide more evidence on this.

I don't understand why methane being broken down in the sun should cause an accumulation of methane on Titan (and not anywhere else).

Can you at provide some links to that part of the claim, so we can at least understand the science that you are using to refute the age of the world on.

Surely the gravity of the Sun is such that no significant amount of matter escapes it.

21

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Evolution and religion

« on: September 22, 2008, 11:22:42 PM »

The statement was that the emotional impact of theories has no impact on whether they are true or not, and the context was evolution vs intelligent design.  If a person feels reassured and happy because of the theory of evolution, that makes it no more likely to be true than if they feel sad and meaningless because of that theory.

The placebo effect has no relationship with this discussion, to suggest that it does is to suggest that how life on Earth was created depends on how people alive today feel about different theories.  This is very clearly impossible.

22

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Evolution and religion

« on: September 22, 2008, 10:28:08 PM »

Are you retarded?

23

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Athiest World

« on: September 22, 2008, 10:27:03 PM »

But it's kind of interesting too (the "hatred") because if you considered the position of religious people objectively, and imagine that instead of holding those views, they held similar views that had no history behind them, it would be totally acceptable to dismiss them as crazy morons.  The only thing that gives religious views any respect it seems, is how long people have held that delusion for.

24

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Evolution, Religion and The Loss of Tolerance

« on: September 22, 2008, 09:49:59 PM »

What's most interesting about this debarkle is that the so called "new atheists" like Richard Dawkins have been defending Reiss (at least partially), which is a pretty good demonstration of how ridiculous many of the strawman attacks against them are.

Richard Dawkins wrote a pretty good response here;

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/dn14748-letter-richard-dawkins-on-the-royal-society-row.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

25

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Evolution and religion

« on: September 22, 2008, 09:44:36 PM »

Evolutionary theory is crucial in genetic and medical research.  It's likely that some of the food you eat and the drugs you take when you're sick are a direct result of scientists applying evolutionary theory to their work.

In any event, how theories make people feel has no impact on whether they are true or not.

26

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: So much for the separation of church and state.

« on: September 16, 2008, 11:30:25 PM »

That's from 2002. 

The most recent statistics are;

Catholicism   26.6%

Protestant   16.8%

---

Christianity   43.4 %

--- 

However this survey also suggested that what people label themselves is not the same as what they believe.

34% of Dutch citizens responded that "they believe there is a God".
37% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".
27% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".


The links I posted were supposed to be read together - not only the parts you agree with quoted, and the rest ignored, although I'm aware that's something religious people do.

27

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Is it morally permissable...

« on: September 16, 2008, 11:13:39 PM »

There is nothing logical about morality (or any action we can perform, really). It all comes down to our empathy and how we interpret it.

It is emotion and sentimentality; there is ultimately no "reason" in doing anything.

Not evidence, just opinion.

Moral Minds by Marc Hauser (Harvard psychologist) contains objective experimental evidence.  Not constructed philosophy or unsubstantiated opinion.

28

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: So much for the separation of church and state.

« on: September 16, 2008, 11:08:51 PM »

The first country in modern times to legalise same sex marriage was the Netherlands, which has no Christian majority (Christians make up about 38% of the population).

The majority of the Netherlands are Christian, you statistic is incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Netherlands

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/nl-netherlands/rel-religion

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_rel_all-religion-religions-all

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/nl.html

If you're not just making stuff up, please provide at least one source that backs up your claim.

29

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: So much for the separation of church and state.

« on: September 16, 2008, 11:05:19 PM »

Missing the point.  My point was that the claim that; "Every single country in the world that has legalized same sex mariage has a Christian majority." is wrong, and it's demonstrated in the fact that prior to Emperor Constantine, same sex marriage was allowed in the Roman empire.  I don't care whether you call it a religious decision or a chipmunk decision.  The point I was arguing against was that the only nations allowing same sex marriage are Christian nations.


The argument about whether homosexuality is natural or not is also illogical.  Even if it were not "natural" (whatever that means), it still wouldn't have any significant effect on the lives of anybody other than those engaging in the practice, so even if this argument were true (and science completely refutes it), it still doesn't suggest at all that same sex marriage should not be allowed.

30

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: So much for the separation of church and state.

« on: September 16, 2008, 10:51:07 PM »

Every single country in the world that has legalized same sex mariage has a Christian majority.

Actually the first records of same sex marriage were in the Roman empire until it became Christian.

The first country in modern times to legalise same sex marriage was the Netherlands, which has no Christian majority (Christians make up about 38% of the population).

So if we're either pedantic or factual, the statement that "every single country in the world that has legalized same sex marriage has a Christian majority" is just plain wrong.

Religious people often make up lies to try and strengthen their arguments, so no surprises there.