>"who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them"
I could give you a lot of examples of treatments that exist for common health issues which aren't at all well known because they work and are cheap.
Example, resveratrol for joints/disc/back pain and arthritis
It actually helps repair joints.
Some people just cannot be persuaded or argued with and it's best to smile politely, back away while maintaining eye contact and leave them to their ideas unless you want to lose a friend or it is affecting other people's lives.I say, it depends on how well you know them. I think you'd be a bad friend if you didn't tell them the truth, but I agree that if they won't accept it, there's no point in pushing the issue.
Some people just cannot be persuaded or argued with and it's best to smile politely, back away while maintaining eye contact and leave them to their ideas unless you want to lose a friend or it is affecting other people's lives.I say, it depends on how well you know them. I think you'd be a bad friend if you didn't tell them the truth, but I agree that if they won't accept it, there's no point in pushing the issue.
the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.
the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.
the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.
So what's your take if those 'engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking' can prove their case without ANY doubt ?
Does the baseball bat get packed away or used on the messengers anyway... :scared: out of habit? :horse:
;)
yet continues to honestly believe that the world is a few thousand years old
How do you debunk people that does not believe in experimental facts?You don't.
Consider religious texts as 100% true and interpreted literally:scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:
Consider religious texts as 100% true and interpreted literally:scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:
We have countries filled with those people and (true to their religious texts' requirement) try to shove their religion down everyone in the world's throats. And they have bombs.
:scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:
Q: How do you debunk people that does not believe in experimental facts?+1
A: You can't.
Q: How do you debunk people that does not believe in experimental facts?+1
A: You can't.
And you stay away from them or the subject matter of discussion.
Yes. Very religious countries, like USA, middle east, africa. They have to put up with soo much bullshit in their daily life, I think their bullshit-o-meter just stops working. I mean if you live your life with thinking about the man in the sky (or whatever), believing things like Bigfoot is much easier, than empirical evidence. I think the concept of causality or critical thinking is just not working for these people, they have probably some kind of brain deformation. Believe it or not, half the population has less than 100 IQ, by definition.Consider religious texts as 100% true and interpreted literallyWe have countries filled with those people and (true to their religious texts' requirement) try to shove their religion down everyone in the world's throats. And they have bombs.
yet continues to honestly believe that the world is a few thousand years old
He doesn't honestly believe it.
What has happened is his brain is divided into different compartments, the scientific compartment and the religious compartment. When he argues for a young earth he is voicing the agenda of the religious compartment and suppressing the agenda of the scientific compartment. It has to be understood that most people, most of the time, have an agenda, and what they say is driven by their personal agenda. There is nearly nobody who speaks impartially, based on a purely rational assessment of the situation.
The American military did not believe that they would need to compensate for relativity when they commissioned the GPS constallation. They (reluctantly) encorperated a method of compensation with the assumption that they wouldn't have to turn it on. After finding that the position was wandering by about 10km a day it was turned on and the problem went away.This is an widely spread myth. GPS was one of the things which finally proved that GR explains reality very well. Without solid experimental evidence to base their design on, and with making relativistic compensation so cheap and easy to switch in and out, it made perfect sense to make it selectable. Of course, now that evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates the veracity of GR, nobody sane would build a navigation system which doesn't bring it into the calculations.
Q: How do you debunk people that does not believe in experimental facts?+1
A: You can't.
>"who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them"
I could give you a lot of examples of treatments that exist for common health issues which aren't at all well known because they work and are cheap.
Example, resveratrol for joints/disc/back pain and arthritis
It actually helps repair joints.
With respect, you know about it, Google knows about it, it's dirt cheap and available over the net without a prescription, it's even been talked about on Oprah, it's not exactly the cover up of the century is it...
Anyway, I can see this subject won't go anywhere but downhill so I'm bowing out gracefully.
Now we have two even better experiments up there. The Russians misfired their rockets and sent two of ESA's Galileo satellites on some awkward highly elliptic orbit instead of the usual circular one. Since the solar panels, control surfaces and the atomic clocks on those satellites still work, ESA repurposed those misfired satellites into experiments of GR time dilation effects. We will start to see papers coming in in the upcoming years.The American military did not believe that they would need to compensate for relativity when they commissioned the GPS constallation. They (reluctantly) encorperated a method of compensation with the assumption that they wouldn't have to turn it on. After finding that the position was wandering by about 10km a day it was turned on and the problem went away.This is an widely spread myth. GPS was one of the things which finally proved that GR explains reality very well. Without solid experimental evidence to base their design on, and with making relativistic compensation so cheap and easy to switch in and out, it made perfect sense to make it selectable. Of course, now that evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates the veracity of GR, nobody sane would build a navigation system which doesn't bring it into the calculations.
I've said it before on this forum but it's worth repeating: Just because science is uncertain about many things, does not mean it is uncertain about everything.
[ Sadly, he will generally return to his default state once you stop.
Part of this is admitting that there are few if any "facts". Just good explanations. And all of our explanations have holes and hand waving in them. Currently the biggest and most obvious include dark matter and dark energy.Good post, heh. It is hilarious to read or listen how the chemistry were taken as a science not long ago, but in view of todays scientifical consensus it were total BS, with all sorts of burning and nonburning airs and what nots. My own believe in science is that is the best approximate working explanation we atm. can get. If all goes well and I retire in old age I wouldn't be suprised that something that is written to the stone today will be then judged to be BS. One example that goes close to every EE is the complex circuit analysis with common concentrated circuit models, it is just an approximation (even with ideal components in ideal cases), not actually 100% precise. It starts to fall apart in long cables or high frequencies (the relative speed of light and wave state in components). Also something like operational calculus have not been here too long, actually my grandparents were born before it were scientifically accepted if I have understood correctly. While this is not a science either but a normal polar representation of complex number as |r| L angle weren't mainstream not until like ww2. ..Or tin whiskers something that is not fully understood by science, but certain engineers face it daily basis.
Many things that people pound on desks about as science are not as robust as we would like. Climate science is a perfect example. Climate is being predicted decades and centuries into the future. While most of those creating and studying these models do not do this, many others regard these predictions as delivered fact.
How many of you would trust an unverified Spice model of a circuit? Spice is far more mature, and the circuits you can model with Spice are far simpler and better understood than the climate.
None of this may help in convincing someone who doesn't listen to facts, but accepting that truth is hard to obtain and that you may not have perfection on your side can help in discussions with those of different views.
Also something like operational calculus have not been here too long, actually my grandparents were born before it were scientifically accepted if I have understood correctly. While this is not a science either but a normal polar representation of complex number as |r| L angle weren't mainstream not until like ww2. Science is usually right.
Not operational calculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_calculus and not polar representation with |r| L angle notation of complex number (|r|e^i*angle before it) weren't widely adapted not until of somewhere ww2 time period (atleast on electrical sciences. side note in book of Prof. D.sc. Martti Paavola, Sähköjohtojen laskeminen (calculation of transmission lines), 1947) if you have sources of its history I'm more that interested to read those.Also something like operational calculus have not been here too long, actually my grandparents were born before it were scientifically accepted if I have understood correctly. While this is not a science either but a normal polar representation of complex number as |r| L angle weren't mainstream not until like ww2. Science is usually right.
Errm, Calculus was devised independently by Gottfried Leibniz (b 1646, d 1716) and Issac Newton (b 1642, d 1726) so you must have very, very old grandparents! Complex analysis has been around since at least 1545.
Not operational calculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_calculus and not polar representation with |r| L angle notation of complex number (|r|e^i*angle before it) weren't widely adapted not until of somewhere ww2 time period (atleast on electrical sciences).Also something like operational calculus have not been here too long, actually my grandparents were born before it were scientifically accepted if I have understood correctly. While this is not a science either but a normal polar representation of complex number as |r| L angle weren't mainstream not until like ww2. Science is usually right.
Errm, Calculus was devised independently by Gottfried Leibniz (b 1646, d 1716) and Issac Newton (b 1642, d 1726) so you must have very, very old grandparents! Complex analysis has been around since at least 1545.
Interesting. Good to know that teh capital O makes a difference how one perceives that Operationa calculus/analysis. The note of the polar notation were a sidetrack and late addition, I should have phrased it better. I did spoke the notation, not actual complex calculus or analysis on that part. (With my perfect bad english, which I do not apologize .)Not operational calculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_calculus and not polar representation with |r| L angle notation of complex number (|r|e^i*angle before it) weren't widely adapted not until of somewhere ww2 time period (atleast on electrical sciences).Also something like operational calculus have not been here too long, actually my grandparents were born before it were scientifically accepted if I have understood correctly. While this is not a science either but a normal polar representation of complex number as |r| L angle weren't mainstream not until like ww2. Science is usually right.
Errm, Calculus was devised independently by Gottfried Leibniz (b 1646, d 1716) and Issac Newton (b 1642, d 1726) so you must have very, very old grandparents! Complex analysis has been around since at least 1545.
Sorry, in the rather fragmentary English I took the 'operational' as a mis-chosen adjective, not as meaning 'Operational' (The capital letter makes a difference). Polar representation is as old as the hills, Leonhard Euler certainly used it. Perhaps you're right in that it didn't catch on in electronics until late, but I doubt it.
An aside: The first proper description of all the operations of Complex Algebra is down to Rafael Bombelli, which I kind of knew. What amazes me is that I can download a PDF of a full scan of his second edition of L'Algebra from 1572 with a single click. Thirty years ago if I'd wanted to see a copy of this I'd probably have had to travel to Bologna to read it in the university library there. (It's in 16th century Italian, I haven't a hope in hell of actually being able to read it in detail, but it's fascinating to get a glimpse into the state of the art in 1572.)
My favorite are the flat-earthers. FLAT EARTH. They are real. It's unbelievable.So they have been a usefull fools for you then. :-DD Is the earth perfect sphere, nope, but still our popularized science usually approximate it as one.
I've learned so much because of them. Not from them, but indirectly because of them, trying to genuinely humor their argument. I've learned about celestial navigation, astronomy, geometry and trigonometry, land surveying, and even network time protocol servers. All because of them and the idea that I should try to not rely on any authority because...of course it's all LIES!
It really is fascinating and sad all at the same time.
We do have the trigonometry approximation that the limit of sine of an angle when the angle is close to zero is the angle itself.My favorite are the flat-earthers. FLAT EARTH. They are real. It's unbelievable.So they have been a usefull fools for you then. :-DD Is the earth perfect sphere, nope, but still our popularized science usually approximate it as one.
I've learned so much because of them. Not from them, but indirectly because of them, trying to genuinely humor their argument. I've learned about celestial navigation, astronomy, geometry and trigonometry, land surveying, and even network time protocol servers. All because of them and the idea that I should try to not rely on any authority because...of course it's all LIES!
It really is fascinating and sad all at the same time.
not polar representation with |r| L angle notation of complex number (|r|e^i*angle before it) weren't widely adapted not until of somewhere ww2 time period (atleast on electrical sciences
It's a lot closer to a perfect sphere than it is to being flat though!Yes, naturally. If someone is a bit inclined to believe conspiracy theories or theories that claims that earth is flat, it doesn't help that "science" is not saying the same in every place. It creates more room for these kind of unfortunate believes. I mean if you are sceptic for certain facts it doesn't mean you need to be a fool and believe something utterly stupid like that earth is flat or that stars are holes in the skydome.
We do have the trigonometry approximation that the limit of sine of an angle when the angle is close to zero is the angle itself.??
Hah, I'm sure you are physicist by mind and education. "Math is only a supporting science for physics, but don't tell this to mr.X (Math lecturer)." - one physics lecturer. Nodding for the rest.not polar representation with |r| L angle notation of complex number (|r|e^i*angle before it) weren't widely adapted not until of somewhere ww2 time period (atleast on electrical sciences
I think it's important to recognize that mathematics is an art, not a science. Science deals with understanding the physical world, while mathematics is entirely conceptual, the product of the imaginings of the human brain. As such, the abstract notion of complex numbers being points or vectors in the complex plane goes way back in time to the beginnings of the theory. Just reflect that you get complex numbers by imagining there to be an imaginary number line perpendicular to the real number line, and the concept of magnitude and direction comes immediately from that.
Now mathematics is of course used as a tool in science, just as art of various kinds can often be used as a tool for many purposes (e.g. visual or cinematic art can be used as a propaganda tool). The failure of electrical engineers to adopt and see the application of certain mathematical concepts until around WW2 says more about the blindness of electrical engineers than it does about the lack of vision of mathematicians.
Those people are likely paid trolls. Its not so well known here in the US but its been clear to me for a long time that there are people actually being paid to be a****** online in order to "Shift the Overton window" on a great many issues. There, i said it. You wont read this in the news. Some of the people who went to the rallies of a certain political candidate were clearly these people. They figure heavily in online discussions where they try to drown out intelligent conversations. They get hired from ads looking for people to work from home. A growing number of them are not in the US, many are in Canada and more recently, the Philippines and India.
They are very well funded. Which should give people clues as to where that funding is coming from.
When someone cannot see beyond their immediate surroundings, they will believe in things like flat earth. It can be proved using basic math and physics and a little bit of calculus.We do have the trigonometry approximation that the limit of sine of an angle when the angle is close to zero is the angle itself.??
I had an extremely frustrating conversation with a decorator who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them, he's ordered a Rife machine so he doesn't have to rely on 'big pharma'.The same lot who despise "Big Pharma" are willing to rely on alternate medicine, which is the produce of a poorly regulated multi-billion dollar industry?
...and believe something utterly stupid like that earth is flat or that stars are holes in the skydome.
There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in
But they're ever so small
That's why the rain is thin.
multi-billion dollar industry?
The same lot who despise "Big Pharma" are willing to rely on alternate medicine, which is the produce of a poorly regulated
A long time ago I was working in the electrical power industry, doing site surveys for customer purchased luminairs (street lamps). I arrived at one older gentlemans location and he proceeded to explain to me that the power companies stored sunlight in those cylindrical cans up on the power poles and then fed into the light bulbs where it was released.
I could have told him he was totally wrong, angering him and possibly losing him as a customer for the overhead light. I merely mentioned that he was on the right track and had some details wrong. After some further discussion he was accepting the basics of power distribution. And really, his concept wasn't totally wrong. At that time our base power system distributed fossil sunlight. Still does in large part.
A head on approach is seldom the best way to change minds. The good ways take time and effort, nuance and understanding. Not something that can be done wholesale, it has to be done retail. One size does not fit all. May be more effort than you have time and energy to invest.
... the abstract notion of complex numbers being points or vectors in the complex plane goes way back in time to the beginnings of the theory.
not sure what theory is being referenced here
yes, the Polar Form is found in all Complex Plane work from Wessel onwards - what's bizarre to the modern mind is that the Euler Equation was published in 1748 and it took over 50 years for the Complex Plane interpretation to begin to appear, another 30 for it to be popularly recognized
the twisting history, multiple invention, unrecognized pioneers show that even in, at the time, cutting edge Mathematics had anti-factual dismsals, deniers
the Gibbs Vector Algebra vs Hamilton Quaternion Algebra 'war' of the late 19th century is full of examples of personal attacks, Professors behaving badly in print
and an amazing intellectual fail is Nobel prize winning Michelson apparently, to his death in 1931, still considering his Ether Drift experiment a failure, rather than a keystone for the development of Special Relativity
Baseball bat?The problem you have is that to some extent, your friend is correct. The pharmaceutical does definitely do everything it can to get its drugs approved even when in a number of cases, it should not have been approved. There are many cases that alternative solutions, such as dietary solutions are far more effective then the drugs, but there is very little money into research into dietary solutions.
I had an extremely frustrating conversation with a decorator who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them, he's ordered a Rife machine so he doesn't have to rely on 'big pharma'.
Baseball bat?The problem you have is that to some extent, your friend is correct. The pharmaceutical does definitely do everything it can to get its drugs approved even when in a number of cases, it should not have been approved. There are many cases that alternative solutions, such as dietary solutions are far more effective then the drugs, but there is very little money into research into dietary solutions.
I had an extremely frustrating conversation with a decorator who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them, he's ordered a Rife machine so he doesn't have to rely on 'big pharma'.
Just as an example, if you have low to mid level Type2 diabetes, you can control it with diet, or a cocktail of drugs. If you take the drug solution, you health is almost guaranteed to deteriorate significantly. With the dietary approach, your health would probably be on par with any other non-diabetic - but no-one can say for sure as the research into the dietary solutions is very sparse.
One of the tricks many drug companies has used is to make negative self-funded research results into their drugs disappear. That has lead to some countries introducing laws to say that drug companies cannot do this.
In one case of an anti-depressant, a major drug company had 3 positive and 3 negative seperate research results. On that basis, it would not have been approved. The solution was to combine the negative results into one of the positive results (that had a very large number of participants), and with some statistical magic, they had 3 positive results and no negative results. The drug was approved and there are now forums where people on the drug are in tears as they describe the side-effects and the addictiveness of the drug.
You are right to be skeptical about alternative medicine which often has zero research, but the way so much of the medical research is funded by the drug companies is a problem. It is a well known and acknowledged problem.
Thanks for your comprehensive post grumpydoc. I had considered something similar but..
Re: Type 2 DM - yes, first line treatment in the U.S. is diet, exercise, weight loss, etc. - but of course the patient who has an A1C of 10 at time of diagnosis may get a prescription for metformin too...
"your health would probably be on par with any other non-diabetic" - umm, well, no - you still have diabetes.Having Type 2 diabetes does not mean you are in any way unhealthy or on a progression to insulin. Diabetes is a complex that can have combinations of multiple causes, but in general, if you can completely control the blood sugar levels and not overstress the pancreas, you can probably avoid all the normal Diabetes health consequences. I say probably because there has been no proper long term research into controlling Diabetes with diet. Logically though, if the blood sugar never gets high, you will avoid the progressive vascular damage caused by the high blood sugar which leads to the degradation of health.
Type 2 diabetes is caused, simplistically, by progressive resistance to insulin. There is a long pre-clinical phase where your pancreas can make enough insulin to compensate and you don't realise there is a problem. Then, finally, it can't keep up and your blood sugar rises, you might (or might not) then get symptoms. In fact typically early diabetes doesn't cause any symptoms but it can be picked up on screening tests (so we see more people treated for mild diabetes these days). At that point reducing the insulin requirements by adjusting diet can bring things back under control. For some (lucky) patients that might be all that they need but in most the underlying process continues and it just buys some time.
So, yes you can get your blood sugar into the normal range but, no, you are not as well as a "non diabetic" because you still have diabetes (or pre-diabetes, if you like).
BTW you do know that clinical trials are now heavily regulated these days? - look for the "ICH Good Clinical Practice" guidelines if you are interested.In most cases, the actual research is fine. The problem comes at making conclusions from the research. That is where the science can fly out the door. It is a very interesting (and exhausting) task to look at health guidelines, and then look closely at the quoted research. Often the majority of sources are not from research but from guidelines from other bodies, so it is possible to have an infinite recommendation loop. It is not hard to find two medical professors that draw the opposite conclusions from the same piece of research.
Don't take this personally amspire - I don't know were your got your information but a lot (not all) of what you posted above is just not true.I don't take it personally, and what did I say that is not true?
I have definitely seen many cases of people with diagnosed sugar levels well over 10 permanently reducing this with diet only to 6-7 absolute maximum peak level during a meal without even using exercise. Add exercise and routine levels below 5 are achievable with no drugs.
I have definitely seen many cases of people with diagnosed sugar levels well over 10 permanently reducing this with diet only to 6-7 absolute maximum peak level during a meal without even using exercise. Add exercise and routine levels below 5 are achievable with no drugs. That is true for many people, isn't it?
As a matter of interest, have any of the patients you have treated been on a low carb diet (50G/day or less) for 20 years +?
When patients are first are diagnosed are they told about the low carb solution?
I suspect the point may be that the systemic problem of insulin resistance is still there. The dietary solution has mitigated or avoided the problem, but has not cured it. If such a person were to go back to an unmodified diet the symptoms would return.
Of course it may be argued that drugs only control the problem as long as you take them also, so the difference may be moot.
Same as the UK I would imagine mmol/l - normal up to 6.9 mmol/l, HbA1c is also in mmol/l so up to 42 is "normal", 42-48 pre diabetic and over 48 diabetic (I think).I have definitely seen many cases of people with diagnosed sugar levels well over 10 permanently reducing this with diet only to 6-7 absolute maximum peak level during a meal without even using exercise. Add exercise and routine levels below 5 are achievable with no drugs. That is true for many people, isn't it?
I'm not sure what units for blood glucose are in use in Australia. In the US we use mg/dL. Normal fasting BG is 60-100. Post-prandial up to 120 or so depending on the meal.
Same as the UK I would imagine mmol/l - normal up to 6.9 mmol/l, HbA1c is also in mmol/l so up to 42 is "normal", 42-48 pre diabetic and over 48 diabetic (I think).I have definitely seen many cases of people with diagnosed sugar levels well over 10 permanently reducing this with diet only to 6-7 absolute maximum peak level during a meal without even using exercise. Add exercise and routine levels below 5 are achievable with no drugs. That is true for many people, isn't it?
I'm not sure what units for blood glucose are in use in Australia. In the US we use mg/dL. Normal fasting BG is 60-100. Post-prandial up to 120 or so depending on the meal.
the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap.
I thought to my self, what if the world we live in now is just an artificial world, a virtual reality just more sophisticated than 3-D movies, couldn't all this archaeological stuff just be "planted" there, for us to find, and make us believe we're on a planet billions of years old? After all, the actor in the 3D movie, playing the role of archaeologist, was doing just that, digging up some bones that the cinema crew had put there, just for the filming of the scene.
A true scientist or engineer will be realistic about what he can actually know to be the truth, and what it is he believes to be the truth.
OK interesting. Here HbA1c is given as a percentage (of total hemoglobin I think). "Normal" is less than 6 and 6 - 6.5 pre-diabetic. Treatment goal for DM is generally 7 or less.
I don't believe any engineering folk are "creationists".
I don't believe any engineering folk are "creationists".
They're out there, I've known a few, not very many but I'm sure I'd encounter a lot more if I lived in the bible belt. I'm not sure how it works but I think it goes back to an earlier comment about people compartmentalizing things in their brain.
The person said, maybe god was lonely and wanted some friends?
:palm:
Baseball bat?The problem you have is that to some extent, your friend is correct. The pharmaceutical does definitely do everything it can to get its drugs approved even when in a number of cases, it should not have been approved. There are many cases that alternative solutions, such as dietary solutions are far more effective then the drugs, but there is very little money into research into dietary solutions.
I had an extremely frustrating conversation with a decorator who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them, he's ordered a Rife machine so he doesn't have to rely on 'big pharma'.
I don't believe any engineering folk are "creationists".
Close. God wanted to create a world where he could walk about as an ordinary man, and forget that he was omnipotent, for awhile, believing that he was just an ordinary weakling in a mighty universe, a mere speck among the stars.
Creationists LOL.
I asked a religious person who believed this a question on a forum. I asked them, well lets say a deity created us - the question I have for you is - why? Why would an all-powerful god want to make anything at all? There's no challenge for it in this. What's the point?
The person said, maybe god was lonely and wanted some friends?
:palm:
I have no way to determine or prove one way or another whether some sort of higher power exists so I won't comment on that. The thing that gets me though is when people use the complexity of life and the unlikeliness of something as complex as a human evolving from nothing as proof of a higher power existing. Ok, valid point, it is pretty darn astounding, even given billions of years. That said, the idea of a being complex enough to create humans being created out of nothing or existing forever is even harder to believe. Then there is the fact that throughout human history there have been hundreds if not thousands of gods, everyone believes theirs is/are the true god(s) and that everyone else is wrong. They can't all be right, therefor I can only assume that they're all wrong to one degree or another.
It also strikes me as rather arrogant to believe we are the center of the whole universe. Earth is a tiny planet, one of several orbiting a rather mundane star in an obscure corner of a galaxy that is not particularly remarkable amongst the countless other galaxies. Given trillions of stars, each potentially home to numerous planets in a sea of galaxies mind-bogglingly huge I find it extremely unlikely that earth is the only inhabited planet in the universe. Given the scale of things, I know if I were a supreme being I would create a planet a bit more significant than the earth and perhaps do something about the billions of people living in poverty, dying of disease and starvation or killing each other off in wars. Then again, from what people tell me about god, he strikes me as a bit of a dick.
we should know what is right and what is wrong based on what is right and what is wrong..
I do think there is a right and wrong, but it needs to be explained ...I think that is kind of a universal truth.
I do think there is a right and wrong, but it needs to be explained ...I think that is kind of a universal truth.
Well, there's a universal right and wrong. Call it God or Nature, if you like, that decided this.
Wrong...causes pain.
Right...gives pleasure.
So, it's built into your DNA.
When you do right things, you feel good. When you do wrong things you feel, well, bad.
Well, there's a universal right and wrong. Call it God or Nature, if you like, that decided this.
Wrong...causes pain.
>Quote from: cdev on Yesterday at 19:09:40 (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=89339.msg1226329#msg1226329)I do think there is a right and wrong, but it needs to be explained ...I think that is kind of a universal truth.
Well, there's a universal right and wrong. Call it God or Nature, if you like, that decided this.
Wrong...causes pain.
Right...gives pleasure.
So, it's built into your DNA.
When you do right things, you feel good. When you do wrong things you feel, well, bad.
Well, there's a universal right and wrong. Call it God or Nature, if you like, that decided this.
Wrong...causes pain.
So if I come to a stop sign, and look around and clearly see no other cars or police, and run the stop sign, is this right or wrong? It did not cause anyone any pain.
"Narcissistic Personality Disorder"Like Trump?
You can't do anything wrong in a world where the only person existing is you. i.e. from a "social contract" point of view. You can still break God's laws etc...
You can still break God's laws etc...Let's see...
| Bibliotical Text (Genesis 1:1-5) | Laws of Physics |
| In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. | 2nd law of thermodynamics. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics) The description of Earth is based on the (debunked) geocentric theory of Universe |
| And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day. | Conservation of mass-energy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence#Conservation_of_mass_and_energy) and Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion) |
Even so, people have a right to believe whatever they want in a free western society. Unfortunately, one toxic religion violently disagrees.
Even so, people have a right to believe whatever they want in a free western society. Unfortunately, one toxic religion violently disagrees.Only one?
The problem is the usual one: that there is no one to ask what was originally meant by such a description. "Formless and empty" could simply mean the prebiotic state, and darkness could be metaphorical, or refer to a heavy cloud cover. Add in problems of translation and it quickly becomes clear that you can use the Bible to support virtually any interpretation. "The first day" could be anything, since the distinction between day and night is subjective and depends on there being an observer to notice it.That is why I quoted 2nd law of thermodynamics there. A state of maximum entropy is "formless and empty" by definition of thermodynamic entropy. The first few lines in the Bible can describe the Big Bang where the concept of time itself is not yet stable, and no widely accepted theory exist as of now. It is totally possible that only Planck time passed in the reference frame of our universe, but in the Lord's frame of reference it really is three days or a week.
From an Engineering Point of view, think about it this way. If you as the Creator build a huge pile of robots who function flawlessly, with perfect software, what fun would it be to watch after a while? Especially if you know the exact probable outcomes of their function?. If you gave them the ability to learn, adapt, and think, and behave/ misbehave, would it not be a lot more rewarding from the programming standpoint? What fun would it be to create a pile of creatures as companions without spontaneity and the ability to develop an original thought? Would you like to spend your life around C3PO? The number of technologically sophisticated people who think they exist only in some sort of simulation is amazing. Think about it..
From an Engineering Point of view, think about it this way. If you as the Creator build a huge pile of robots who function flawlessly, with perfect software, what fun would it be to watch after a while? Especially if you know the exact probable outcomes of their function?. If you gave them the ability to learn, adapt, and think, and behave/ misbehave, would it not be a lot more rewarding from the programming standpoint? What fun would it be to create a pile of creatures as companions without spontaneity and the ability to develop an original thought? Would you like to spend your life around C3PO? The number of technologically sophisticated people who think they exist only in some sort of simulation is amazing.
Think about it..
I will mention that working in a multidisciplinary facility with tunneling microscopes, electron microscopes and some really sophisticated laser scanning microscopes has taught me that every time I think I remotely understand some tiny fraction of molecular and atomic structure, some new underlying feature pops up. The world just seems too sophisticated and well designed to have just popped up out of nothingness without a designer.
How does assuming the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent, infinitely intelligent, invisible sentient being with sadistic tendencies, who created everything, explain any single thing? :-// Why does your need to ask the questions "who" and "how" seem to suddenly vanish when they're no longer about the universe itself but the guy who singlehandedly created it?
You're assuming that any religion under discussion is one with a omnipotent (etc etc), male, single deity. You're missing all the polytheistic guys like the Hindus (Easy to overlook, there's only over a billion of them), Sikhs, the animists, the ancestor worshippers, and all the many other varieties of Sky (or Earth) Pixie worship. There's much more under heaven and earth than is dreamed of in Abrahamic religious philosophy.
You're assuming that any religion under discussion is one with a omnipotent (etc etc), male, single deity. You're missing all the polytheistic guys like the Hindus (Easy to overlook, there's only over a billion of them), Sikhs, the animists, the ancestor worshippers, and all the many other varieties of Sky (or Earth) Pixie worship. There's much more under heaven and earth than is dreamed of in Abrahamic religious philosophy.
An aside: One of the things that I find interesting in looking at most religious traditions that aren't Abrahamic ones is that the Gods themselves are subject to consequences and varieties of rules (moral rules or what would be called in mundane matters the rules[laws] of physics). They tend to contain much better explanations of why their gods permit/allow/can't stop bad things that completely stump adherents of Abrahamic religions.
Obviously most of the here assembled worship at the Temple of The Angry Pixies. (Watchers of AvE's YouTube channel will know what I mean.)
You're assuming that any religion under discussion is one with a omnipotent (etc etc), male, single deity. You're missing all the polytheistic guys like the Hindus (Easy to overlook, there's only over a billion of them), Sikhs, the animists, the ancestor worshippers, and all the many other varieties of Sky (or Earth) Pixie worship. There's much more under heaven and earth than is dreamed of in Abrahamic religious philosophy.
An aside: One of the things that I find interesting in looking at most religious traditions that aren't Abrahamic ones is that the Gods themselves are subject to consequences and varieties of rules (moral rules or what would be called in mundane matters the rules[laws] of physics). They tend to contain much better explanations of why their gods permit/allow/can't stop bad things that completely stump adherents of Abrahamic religions.
Obviously most of the here assembled worship at the Temple of The Angry Pixies. (Watchers of AvE's YouTube channel will know what I mean.)
Yes, I'm aware there's more than one religion in the world - I'm an atheist, not a moron ;) My post was worded as a response to LaserSteve's use of singular "designer" but feel free to replace the "designer" with any other diety/dieties ever worshipped. It doesn't matter if you substitute the single male god with a merry bunch of multi-armed deities arguing the fate of the world or humanity with animal-headed dudes over dinner, like in a poor sitcom - it doesn't change a single thing as far as I'm concerned. Even if you refuse to call the entity "god" and start talking about shapeless, timeless cloud of sentient energy or whatever: the wheels fall of the cart as soon as there's a hint of an educated, will-driven act of design by any kind of self-aware driving force playing a role in shaping the laws of physics.
Yes, I'm aware there's more than one religion in the world - I'm an atheist, not a moron ;)
How could anyone be an atheist?
You're either a theist or an agnostic.
Gnostic and agnostic have no meaning by themselves regarding religious beliefs. For example I could be an aunicornist (without knowledge of unicorns). If I believed in unicorns I would be a unicornist, just like a person that believes in gods is a theist.
Gnostic:
adjective
1 Relating to knowledge, especially esoteric mystical knowledge.
1.1 Relating to Gnosticism.
noun
An adherent of Gnosticism.
Gnosticism
noun
A prominent heretical movement of the 2nd-century Christian Church, partly of pre-Christian origin. Gnostic doctrine taught that the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, the demiurge, and that Christ was an emissary of the remote supreme divine being, esoteric knowledge (gnosis) of whom enabled the redemption of the human spirit.
Agnostic:
noun
A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.
I ... invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic,' ... antithetic to the 'Gnostic' of Church history who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.
Agnostic:
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
Gnostic:
1. pertaining to knowledge.
dictionary.com
You're either a theist or an agnostic.
How could anyone be an atheist?
You're either a theist or an agnostic.
If you claim you're an objective scientist, and can see no "evidence" for God, then you can't claim there's "no God" either, since neither is there any "evidence" for that.
The general claims "there is a God" and "there is no God" are equally fantastic and equally unprovable. Both are personal beliefs.
the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.
A guy I knew at university is one of the leading lights of the British 'young world' creationists despite having a doctorate in biochemistry.
He's a perfectly rational man, can follow a logical argument, and is no stranger to scientific method. I just cannot, for the life of me, understand how he can hold the views he has. I can quite understand that a Christian upbringing, and not just any upbringing, but one in the Plymouth Brethren, can put a lot of pressure on him to want to think a particular way, but not how this otherwise intelligent scientist can ignore the evidence in front of him. Worse still, as he actively publicly argues for young world creationism, he gets faced with the conflicting evidence again and again. I repeat, he's rational and intelligent, and as a biochemist is well equipped to properly understand some of the most compelling evidence for evolution and against young earth creationism, yet continues to honestly believe that the world is a few thousand years old.
As I say, I cannot comprehend how he can still hold to his views in the face of all the evidence.
I'm using the terms the correct way in the context of explaining the four ways to hold or not hold religious beliefs.
I'm using the terms the correct way in the context of explaining the four ways to hold or not hold religious beliefs.
Ah, the Humpty-Dumpty approach. Look, if you want to chose your own meaning for words, fine, but only if you want to talk about the "skookumness of the schmoo", ...
Agnostic theism is the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. An agnostic theist believes in the existence of a god or God, but regards the basis of this proposition as unknown or inherently unknowable. It can also mean that there is one high ruler, but it is unknowable or unknown who or what it is.[1] The agnostic theist may also or alternatively be agnostic regarding the properties of God.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism)
The general claims "there is a God" and "there is no God" are equally fantastic and equally unprovable. Both are personal beliefs.
Indeed, however the rational stance is to not believe in a thing if there is no proof, not to believe in it. Therefore, the rational stance is to not believe in gods without proof.
This is not how it works. If someone makes a fantastic claim, and there is no evidence to support that claim, then you are entitled to believe the fantastic claim is false.
I'm using the terms the correct way in the context of explaining the four ways to hold or not hold religious beliefs.
Ah, the Humpty-Dumpty approach. Look, if you want to chose your own meaning for words, fine, but only if you want to talk about the "skookumness of the schmoo", ...
No, no you are incorrect sir. I'm being very precise and there is no need for insults.
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'?" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'?"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
If an agnostic lacks belief in gods, then what is an agnostic theist?
As you would have it, an agnostic theist would then mean "a person that lacks belief in gods, that believes in gods"
How could that exist? The term would be contradictory - but ... it isn't. The term exists and it means just what I said it did -
Further, you're choosing your own definition of atheist to suit your argument. Again, the dictionary defines atheism as "the theory or belief that God does not exist." [my emphasis]. Using the normally understood, dictionary based meaning of the words: Theism is a belief in a god or gods existing, atheism is a belief that they do not exist
There's this fella who's suggested that the Universe increased in size by a factor of 1030 between when the Universe was 1 x 10-34 seconds old and 2 x 10-34 seconds old with no direct evidence. If any claim is fantastical then, just on the scale of the numbers, that one is. By your standard of proof laid out above, we should label this claim false.
My point is, there is a difference between justified scepticism and active disbelief, and the criteria you supply for belief in falsity aren't sufficient.
To have a belief that something is false you must have evidence for that position, not merely the absence of evidence of something being true.
but as I've been a member here for years and know well how these types of threads are bound for a lockdown
Close. God wanted to create a world where he could walk about as an ordinary man, and forget that he was omnipotent, for awhile, believing that he was just an ordinary weakling in a mighty universe, a mere speck among the stars.
Well isn't that just precious.
what's bizarre to the modern mind is that the Euler Equation was published in 1748 and it took over 50 years for the Complex Plane interpretation to begin to appear, another 30 for it to be popularly recognizedThe 30 year period is likely sufficiently explained by the fact that Wessel published in Danish ["Om directionens analytiske betegnelse" (1799)].
1. The classical definition, described but not ultimately endorsed by Plato, specifies that a statement must meet three criteria in order to be considered knowledge: it must be justified, true, and believed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge
How could anyone be an atheist?
You're either a theist or an agnostic.
If you claim you're an objective scientist, and can see no "evidence" for God, then you can't claim there's "no God" either, since neither is there any "evidence" for that.
This is not how it works. If someone makes a fantastic claim, and there is no evidence to support that claim, then you are entitled to believe the fantastic claim is false.
Ah. But that's the whole thing. There is "evidence" for the existence of God.Now I know that you're just trolling.
The problem is that not everyone can "see" this evidence "today".
There's this fella who's suggested that the Universe increased in size by a factor of 1030 between when the Universe was 1 x 10-34 seconds old and 2 x 10-34 seconds old with no direct evidence. If any claim is fantastical then, just on the scale of the numbers, that one is. By your standard of proof laid out above, we should label this claim false.
Correct. One should not believe such a claim to be true simply based on a lack of evidence.
However, if you want get technical, and because you used it as a specific example, it likely wasn't an absolute claim, it was a scientific hypothesis.
Religion (and many other such things) are not scientific hypothesis, they are absolute claims of confidence based on faith without any real evidence, and in the face of evidence to the contrary to boot.
To us the analogy you did is a mistake.
Believing Elvis is still alive ranks in the exact same category.
QuoteMy point is, there is a difference between justified scepticism and active disbelief, and the criteria you supply for belief in falsity aren't sufficient.
Paraphrasing Doc Brown: There's that word again, belief, is there a problem with the understanding of the word in the future?QuoteTo have a belief that something is false you must have evidence for that position, not merely the absence of evidence of something being true.
Absolute rubbish.
Classic Russell's teapot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.
| Nature of evidence | Belief | ||
| Believes box contains cat | Has no conclusion | Believes box does not contain cat | |
| Concrete evidence of cat in box | Scientist/Agnostic | Fool | Insane |
| No evidence either way | Catist | Scientist/Agnostic | Acatist |
| Concrete evidence that box is empty | Insane | Fool | Scientist/Agnostic |
You speak as if there's a different standard of logic required when discussing claims about Pixies, creation or similar topics as there is to discussing any other. My argument is that the nature of claim that "There is a sky pixie" is the exactly the same as "There was inflation", and, in a rational world, the nature of the evidence, criteria for belief, active disbelief etcetera are identical.
But to speak of 'creating' it, means different things to people depending on how much they understand of that vastness.
You speak as if there's a different standard of logic required when discussing claims about Pixies, creation or similar topics as there is to discussing any other. My argument is that the nature of claim that "There is a sky pixie" is the exactly the same as "There was inflation", and, in a rational world, the nature of the evidence, criteria for belief, active disbelief etcetera are identical.
Of course they are not identical. Firstly, the universe exists and has observable characteristics. It has a past and has a history that we can reason about. Secondly, nobody was claiming there was inflation, they simply said, "If inflation happened, it might explain some of the observations we make now. What do you guys think?" It's a question that exists in a concrete world, a question that has logical consequences that can be considered based on observation and experiment.
Now let's try the same thing with sky pixies. "Hey guys, if there is a sky pixie, it might explain some of the observations we make now about the universe. What do you think?" To which the answer immediately becomes, "What difference in the universe might we expect if there was/was not a sky pixie? Where should we look for those differences and what should we see?" And of course this line of investigation becomes a dead end.
Of course they are not identical. Firstly, the universe exists and has observable characteristics.Which implies that you think pixies do not exist and do not have observable characteristics.
Ah. But that's the whole thing. There is "evidence" for the existence of God.Now I know that you're just trolling.
The problem is that not everyone can "see" this evidence "today".
For most people, parts of the scriptures are "sealed", i.e. blocked from direct understanding, and only become "unsealed" at specific times in the future, when men develop the ability to "see" and "understand" through their "increased knowledge."
Which brings us back to the original question, how do apparently rational people get to where they believe this kind of illogic?