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mvassilev
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posted August 15, 2008 05:28 PM |
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TheDeath:
If Corribus ever shows up again, perhaps he should explain it to you.  He could explain it better than I could.
Doomforge:
That's true. But there are no Young Earth Creationist scientists. But I just don't see how the idea of a miracle is compatible with science.
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TheDeath
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posted August 15, 2008 05:34 PM |
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If Corribus ever shows up again, perhaps he should explain it to you. He could explain it better than I could.
Hmm... I think we already discussed that. In the end, every decent person knows that science has a lot of postulates or things "taken for granted" that it USES to find 'reproducible' evidence.
It's not a problem. It's just what it is. It also makes it "organized" from some people's point of view. So yes that is good, I never said otherwise.
However what you, mvassilev, fail to realize is that you can't possibly use that as an argument for 'explaining' things. Sure, you CAN predict certain phenomenons each time, so it is USEFUL, but that doesn't say anything about it's "explanation". (useful, is also a subjective term, depending on what you believe it is).
Science deals with "models" of the world, models that are based on postulates, models that WORK reproducibly. However, and this is where YOU fail, this is not absolute knowledge about a certain thing, so I can't see why you use the REPRODUCIBILITY or "evidence" factor in ALL areas, precisely those that are NOT (and you know that). Models are good, for what they are made for. They are not made for "knowledge", they are made for predictions.
It is fine (predictions) as long as you don't use that as an argument for claimed-to-be non-reproducible stuff (e.g: God). It's like using an argument that since the apple is red, then God doesn't exist
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But I just don't see how the idea of a miracle is compatible with science.
Hmm, no of course it can't, if your science means "today's science" or "what i know about science"
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mvassilev
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posted August 15, 2008 05:46 PM |
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However what you, mvassilev, fail to realize is that you can't possibly use that as an argument for 'explaining' things. Sure, you CAN predict certain phenomenons each time, so it is USEFUL, but that doesn't say anything about it's "explanation". (useful, is also a subjective term, depending on what you believe it is).
Whoa. Usefulness is not subjective. Let's say that there are two explanations for lightning.
1: Lightning strikes because of differences in charge.
2: Lightning strikes because God is angry.
The first is a scientific explanation (since it is based on testing and observation). The second isn't. But let us say that you think that God is angry with you, so you're afraid to leave your house. That's not useful.
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Hmm, no of course it can't, if your science means "today's science" or "what i know about science"
To quote Corribus:Quote:
By which I mean, a religious man and a scientist (understanding of course, we're generalizing) observe some phenomenon which is in some way contrary to what one considers "normal". The religious person believes that the observation is so unlikely as to be impossible to arise due to mere chance. And thus concludes, illogically, that a supernatural explanation is the best explanation.* The scientist, who understands statistics, believes that the observation, though unlikely, is within the realm of statistical possibility. If you were given a bag full of a thousand six sided dice, and you managed to roll one thousand sixes in a single throw: is that a (supernatural) miracle? or is it just lucky chance, a very unlikely possibility but a possibility that technically requires no divine intervention? or are the dice rigged? What about a million dice? Is there a difference between rolling a six on five dice simultaneously and a thousand? According to the religious person, maybe there is. According to the scientist, it's a statistical difference at worst.
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Eccentric Opinion
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TheDeath
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posted August 15, 2008 05:52 PM |
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Edited by TheDeath at 17:54, 15 Aug 2008.
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Whoa. Usefulness is not subjective. Let's say that there are two explanations for lightning.
1: Lightning strikes because of differences in charge.
2: Lightning strikes because God is angry.
The first is a scientific explanation (since it is based on testing and observation). The second isn't. But let us say that you think that God is angry with you, so you're afraid to leave your house. That's not useful.
How do you know that's not "useful"?? What does useful means? Maybe religious extremists think what you do is not useful, because you'll die and end up in Hell.
or maybe someone says we're in a virtual world, and that after we die we "wake up", then whatever we do is useless... at least as far as knowledge is concerned.
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Hmm, no of course it can't, if your science means "today's science" or "what i know about science"
To quote Corribus:
Did you even read my reply to him? Of course he is correct, but that is off the point.
Assume for a moment that Ghosts, for example, exist. Are you saying they are a "statistical explanation"? With statistical explanations you can prove anything.
Why does lightning appear? Well, there's a statistical probability that it does, no? Even though, in this example, we don't KNOW why and when.
you can use that to basically everything. By YOUR logic, science would be set in stone. Relativity can be considered a "miracle" because it wasn't explainable with classical mechanics (physics), at least IN THAT TIME. Are you telling me we should just accept relativity as a statistical probability?
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angelito
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posted August 15, 2008 06:08 PM |
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Why does lightning appear? Well, there's a statistical probability that it does, no? Even though, in this example, we don't KNOW why and when.
Now this is what I call a kind of an "evidence". Every time we discover something we can't explain (yet), religious people connect it with the existance of a GOD.
This is, imho, exactly the way religion and belief started. We can't explain something...therefor there has to be someone who created it.
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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TheDeath
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posted August 15, 2008 06:16 PM |
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Now this is what I call a kind of an "evidence". Every time we discover something we can't explain (yet), religious people connect it with the existance of a GOD.
This is, imho, exactly the way religion and belief started. We can't explain something...therefor there has to be someone who created it.
How is that different to the respective quote that says a statistician will always connect it with a statistic?
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bixie
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my common sense is tingling!
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posted August 15, 2008 06:51 PM |
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Edited by bixie at 18:54, 15 Aug 2008.
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Well, I did not personally make that statement. I'm one of those atheists that actually recognises Jesus as a pretty cool guy. The statement ''Jesus is a snow'' is a slogan from death metal-band Cradle of Filth, IIRC. It's just something they think makes them more ''hardcore'' by saying it, and hasn't got anything to do with the discussion about God. Take it with a grain of salt.
That is what i meant. thankyou Vexon.
I frankly said it to try and bait the religious nuts, really, to see what kind of rubbish they will throw in jesus's defence.
Yeah, Jesus's ideals were nice, but the way jesus has been used, however, in order to prompt causes and crusades clashes so much with his ideals. Jesus was not a ****, but was turned into one by the way he has been used. he is now one, but that could change in the future.
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mvassilev
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posted August 15, 2008 07:08 PM |
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How do you know that's not "useful"?? What does useful means?
Because people prefer not to be cooped up in their houses.
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Maybe religious extremists think what you do is not useful, because you'll die and end up in Hell.
And they're perfectly free to think so, as long as they aren't imposing their preferences upon me.
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or maybe someone says we're in a virtual world, and that after we die we "wake up", then whatever we do is useless... at least as far as knowledge is concerned
Hmm... Well, first, that knowledge might have a benefit in itself - many people derive an emotional benefit from understanding/discovering something. Second, if from that knowledge we derived a way to move at superfast speeds, that would certainly be useful.
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Why does lightning appear? Well, there's a statistical probability that it does, no? Even though, in this example, we don't KNOW why and when.
"There's a statistical probability" is not an answer to why lightning appears. It is an answer to the question "Why does lightning appear now?". It is one thing to explain how something works, and another to explain why it's happening at any given moment. Take, for example, a bowl that is standing on the edge of a table, and it falls and breaks. Why does it do this? The answer depends on what is meant by the question. If the question refers to the means by which it moved, the answer is Brownian motion. If the question refers to why it happened at that given moment, then the answer is statistical probability.
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TheDeath
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posted August 15, 2008 07:13 PM |
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Because people prefer not to be cooped up in their houses.
"prefer" is not a really objective term.
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And they're perfectly free to think so, as long as they aren't imposing their preferences upon me.
You do, however, impose what "usefulness" means upon others, like me, since you say it's objective
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Hmm... Well, first, that knowledge might have a benefit in itself - many people derive an emotional benefit from understanding/discovering something. Second, if from that knowledge we derived a way to move at superfast speeds, that would certainly be useful.
No, I meant if we are "hooked up" to a virtual helmet/device -- it most certainly is "useful" for the brain, and EVERYTHING we experience, even though 'technically' we aren't doing anything (we're staying with a virtual helmet) EXCEPT just in our "imagination" and brains (virtual helmet makes a 'virtual' reality, not "real", whatever that means).
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"There's a statistical probability" is not an answer to why lightning appears. It is an answer to the question "Why does lightning appear now?". It is one thing to explain how something works, and another to explain why it's happening at any given moment. Take, for example, a bowl that is standing on the edge of a table, and it falls and breaks. Why does it do this? The answer depends on what is meant by the question. If the question refers to the means by which it moved, the answer is Brownian motion. If the question refers to why it happened at that given moment, then the answer is statistical probability.
I don't see your point beside of what I already said.
case 1) Why did the bowl fall at that time? Because God wanted that.
case 2) Why did the bowl fall at that time? Because it had a statistical probability.
A typical reply to 1 would be: But that assumes a God exists!
A similar reply to 2 would be: But that assumes the Universe is probabilistic uniformly (mathematical uniform)!
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mvassilev
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posted August 15, 2008 07:24 PM |
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"prefer" is not a really objective term
Yes it is. Say I go up to a beggar in the streets and I offer him $10 or $100. He will choose $100. That means that he prefers $100 over $10. This is not subjective.
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You do, however, impose what "usefulness" means upon others, like me, since you say it's objective
Putting a rudder on a car if you're not travelling over water is useless. That's objective.
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No, I meant if we are "hooked up" to a virtual helmet/device -- it most certainly is "useful" for the brain
What you seem to be confusing are the terms "useful" and "used".
As for the rest, I don't understand what you're trying to say. 
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TheDeath
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posted August 15, 2008 07:30 PM |
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Yes it is. Say I go up to a beggar in the streets and I offer him $10 or $100. He will choose $100. That means that he prefers $100 over $10. This is not subjective.
Go to a person that does not want material goods and ask the same question. Ask Jesus that.
Seriously... for something to be objective it has to be independent on a human's point of view and preferences.
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Putting a rudder on a car if you're not travelling over water is useless. That's objective.
Where's the thing that says objectively, or measures objectively, and says how "useless" it is? Mechanistically speaking, the world doesn't have more or less energy -- there is no such thing as something being "useful", just certain reactions. Some people like them, some don't.
Something is considered "useful" only when a respective guy LIKES it (else he wouldn't do it). That is subjective.
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As for the rest, I don't understand what you're trying to say.
Hmm...
you have a brain, right? What's your goal? To feel "good"? To feel "pleasure"? Then, manipulating YOUR brain is all you'll ever need. That is the only thing that's "useful", in that context (virtual world).
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mvassilev
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posted August 15, 2008 07:59 PM |
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Go to a person that does not want material goods and ask the same question. Ask Jesus that.
You misunderstood me. What I meant was that it is objective that the beggar prefers $100 to $10. You can't go and say, "Actually, he prefers the $10", because he doesn't. Preferences vary from person to person, but that they are preferences is objective.
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Where's the thing that says objectively, or measures objectively, and says how "useless" it is?
Do you use the rudder? No? Then it is useless.
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you have a brain, right? What's your goal? To feel "good"? To feel "pleasure"? Then, manipulating YOUR brain is all you'll ever need. That is the only thing that's "useful", in that context (virtual world)
But here we run into a problem. What if I derive pleasure only from experiences in the real world? What if, if I know that I am deluding myself, I would enjoy it?
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TheDeath
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posted August 15, 2008 08:05 PM |
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You misunderstood me. What I meant was that it is objective that the beggar prefers $100 to $10. You can't go and say, "Actually, he prefers the $10", because he doesn't.
No, he doesn't, but another might. "preferences" are not objective.
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Do you use the rudder? No? Then it is useless.
Hmm.. maybe you did use it, since it slowed you down. You know that energy can't be created, or so the law goes... then it has been "used", albeit not everything is used as we "like".
If objective, things should be "used" without any human/animal/whatever intervention.
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angelito
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posted August 15, 2008 09:28 PM |
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Quote:
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Now this is what I call a kind of an "evidence". Every time we discover something we can't explain (yet), religious people connect it with the existance of a GOD.
This is, imho, exactly the way religion and belief started. We can't explain something...therefor there has to be someone who created it.
How is that different to the respective quote that says a statistician will always connect it with a statistic?
You miss the point. A statistician will try to prove the chances for a lightning to happen, but he won't explain where it comes from.
Science can explain, and I am pretty sure most of the religious people follow those explanations aswell...nowadays. Was for sure different 1000 years ago.
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baklava
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posted August 15, 2008 11:48 PM |
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You miss the point.
How can one miss the point in a pointless discussion?
Ok I'll stop with these comments now.
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is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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mvassilev
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posted August 16, 2008 01:53 AM |
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TheDeath:
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"preferences" are not objective
I think that we're talking about different things. What I'm trying to say is that a given person's preferences are objective - that is, they are what they are. But there is no objective standard to judge whether one person's preferences are better than another's. (Unless, of course, it is part of their preferences to impose them on others.)
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Hmm.. maybe you did use it, since it slowed you down.
Then why use a rudder? Why not a few bricks?
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If objective, things should be "used" without any human/animal/whatever intervention.
Okay, then, a hammer is going to be used without anyone using it.
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TheDeath
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posted August 16, 2008 12:40 PM |
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You miss the point. A statistician will try to prove the chances for a lightning to happen, but he won't explain where it comes from.
Only that he assumes the probabilities and the world acts in an uniformly distributed model 
i have no problem with it of course -- I assume a lot of things (belief is a form of "assumption"). What I argue about is that an argument like "beliefs are bad" also cripples science since it's based on it.
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I think that we're talking about different things. What I'm trying to say is that a given person's preferences are objective - that is, they are what they are. But there is no objective standard to judge whether one person's preferences are better than another's. (Unless, of course, it is part of their preferences to impose them on others.)
You do realize what you're saying? You're saying that, for example:
Feelings are subjective, but the fact that they are feelings is objective???
Either way, why are we even arguing? That's completely off the point. You're saying something like: "The fact that a human is a human, and not a vegetable, is objective?" Really what does THIS have to do with anything? It's completely pointless.
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Then why use a rudder? Why not a few bricks?
Nature did allow you to use the rubber. Like I said, not all things are "used" as we like -- in that example, we wouldn't like to "use" that rubber to slow us down.
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Okay, then, a hammer is going to be used without anyone using it.
It isn't, because "objectively" it's just a bunch of molecules put in a specific structure. What does one do with a hammer? Depends on the person. Period.
One can use a hammer for different things that another. One can use a rock where another doesn't find any use at all. Or, all humans may NOT find a use for a specific object, but aliens can. It is why it's completely subjective. From a NEUTRAL viewpoint, nature "uses" absolutely every atom, everything. Thus, there is no such thing as "useless" and "useful". Thus, it is just a subjective term for what some people SAY it is for THEM or for the others THEY know.
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The above post is subject to SIRIOUSness.
No jokes were harmed during the making of this signature.
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mvassilev
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posted August 16, 2008 02:24 PM |
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Only that he assumes the probabilities and the world acts in an uniformly distributed model
Things happen. That means that there is a probability for them to happen.
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Either way, why are we even arguing? That's completely off the point.
You said that "prefer" is not an objective term. I'm trying to show you that it is.
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Nature did allow you to use the rubber. Like I said, not all things are "used" as we like -- in that example, we wouldn't like to "use" that rubber to slow us down.
That's completely off the point. If you want to slow yourself down (why would you if you don't like it?) then why use a rudder? Why not just a few bricks? Or why not just drive more slowly?
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From a NEUTRAL viewpoint, nature "uses" absolutely every atom, everything. Thus, there is no such thing as "useless" and "useful".
We're not talking about nature using something. We're talking about humans.
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TheDeath
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posted August 16, 2008 02:28 PM |
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Only that he assumes the probabilities and the world acts in an uniformly distributed model
Things happen. That means that there is a probability for them to happen.
You're again off the point. Please if you don't understand what I say don't reply at all. Here's again a copy of what I said:Quote:
Only that he assumes the probabilities and the world acts in an uniformly distributed model
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You said that "prefer" is not an objective term. I'm trying to show you that it is.
No, it is completely subjective and you didn't say anything at all. You only said that a preference (not "prefer") is objective just because... it is a preference??
Circular reasoning? Doesn't help that much.
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That's completely off the point. If you want to slow yourself down (why would you if you don't like it?) then why use a rudder? Why not just a few bricks? Or why not just drive more slowly?
This is the last time I repeat myself. YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SLOWED DOWN, but you know, things get "used" even if WE DO NOT LIKE IT.
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We're not talking about nature using something. We're talking about humans.
Thus subjective.
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DagothGares
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posted August 16, 2008 02:30 PM |
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What humans prefer is completely subjective.
For example, that beggar might prefer 100 dollars, but I for example might prefer to take 10 dollars, since it would be less of a disaster to lose it.
A rudder to your car? Modern art! Sell it for millions.
A dirty cabbage infested by germs and stuff would be less preferable to a perfectly clean one? What if I was trying to prove a point by saying that germs and bacteria are in all organic things?
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