TJ

[TJ]

More accurately,  scientific discoveries can be presented agnotologically.

This typically results in incorrect interpretation of the data, for the express purpose of misrepresenting it.

The purpose of misrepresenting the data, is typically driven by no credible data being available to use instead.

So, finding that stars formed in better accordance with faster models than with slower models,  after building a telescope designed to be able to test the faster and slower models…

… in no way shape or form supports creationism.

😀

 

[TJ]

The evidence is that “chaos” is present in all parts of the solar system,  including inner planetary etc…

…and, of course, what we observe,  is what is LEFT after everything that was less stable…is gone.

This is part of entropy…anything left to happen, happens, with the most likely to happen tending to happen before whatever is less likely.

The moon for example,  is spiraling away from earth… and, earth’s axial tilt is moving, and so forth, we have a wobble,  and, this sort of thing is happening all over the solar system,  and galaxies, etc.

🙂

It’s not really “fine tuning”, unless you define fine tuning as whatever worked being what’s left, for now.

🙂

 

[TJ]

Absolutely.

Keeping humans alive is hard enough under those conditions,  let alone happy, etc.

I do know that earth has an expiration date though, and that if we do not learn to colonize other planets,  eventually in other solar systems,  etc, we will go extinct,  and, perhaps the only known life in our galaxy,  etc.

Early colonies in America failed, but, we learned from the mistakes,  and, eventually,  colonized it…

… just as earlier migrations of our genus had kept trying until they could survive the new conditions.

If people want to volunteer to do this process,  knowing the first pancakes are typically thrown out, etc…

…that too is part of human nature.

Without it, our lineage,  and that of all earth based life,  will end up with those first pancakes.

🙂

 

[TJ]

It’s a good bet they’ll try to at least hang out longer-term than a visit, on the moon, before trying to set up a colony on Mars.

There’s just an awful lot of details to work out, and, that takes time.

I am all in favor of the Muskians leaving earth to colonize mars though, as soon as possible… and, preferably, not coming back.

If those are the people who colonize mars, it sounds like a place where no empathetic human would want to visit though, and we might consider it analogous to sending the criminals to Australia to colonize it…only without aboriginals to practice genocide on.

If there ARE aboriginal martians though, I am formally withdrawing my hope that Musk and his ilk colonize mars.

😀

 

[TJ]

I like movies that have a lot of lines that stick, and, some of my favorites in that category are Princess Bride, and, many of the Monty Python films.

That is because I like funny lines, and, while I appreciate the gold mine that the God Father, etc, provide, overall, I have a soft spot for well written comedy.

😀

[TJ]

I love your writing, it is really well done.

😀

 

I used to like cats, but, then the local Korean restaurant closed for some reason, and, well, I lost my preference for cats.

Other Korean restaurants opened, with different menus though.

Anyway, I prefer dogs now.

 

You know how it is, some people are cat people, and, some people are dog people.

The one’s who say they are “people persons” sound scary though.

 

On a less serious note, I have owned cats, and, they can be adorable, but, to truly appreciate them you need to be a bit of a Sub personality or something, vs a Dom, etc.

I am neither really, so, a dog just works better overall, in that dogs tend to want to participate in your life, as opposed to cats, who mostly just ask yours to overlap theirs, thermally and/or nutritionally.

Both can give love, but, I just can’t help feeling that cat’s are more manipulative about it.

And, cats like to play, but, some, again, will go through the motions to get you off guard, and wake you so you don’t die in your sleep…

.. but as soon as someone else moves into your place who would feed them, they crawl on your face at night, and suffocate you in your sleep.

😀

 

[TJ]

Knowing how things work, includes knowing that they can work in random fashions, such as in the radiation example.

The universe did not spring from nothing, or nothingness, it simply always existed.

Matter and energy, as two forms of the same thing, cannot be created or destroyed.   We know it was in a hot dense state about 13.8 or so billion years ago, and, has been getting less hot and less dense, overall, ever since that.

Everything existed before the Big Bang, but, not in the form we see (These stars etc), but as a hot dense plasma.

As it cooled and became less dense, going from very low entropy, to higher and higher states of entropy, overall, what we see today formed…from what already existed.

The reason the universe was not a sphere, smooth or not, is because the VISIBLE universe is the part that IS spherical, as it is DEFINED by our radius of sight, where light can still reach us from.

The hot dense state was EVERYWHERE, there was no explosion of stuff out from one point or single location.

That is why it is so homogeneous, according to the data.

So, to differentiate, the universe itself is infinite in size and age, but the stuff in it was in a hot dense state about 13.8 billion years ago.

“Stuff” in this case, includes space time.

😀

 

 

 

[TJ]

Perhaps the focus upon the made up context of “free will” causes us to miss what we are actually valuing in our evaluations of reality.

For example, it seems we all have ideas about how things work, but when trying to find ways to tie that to the free will question, it becomes a tangled mess, because it is a made up concept… a construct.

That construct was erected by some sects of the Abrahamic religions to explain why an omnipotent and omniscient supernatural entity has a plan for everyone, but, fails to have it be germane to reality.

So, we run in circles trying to explain how that is possible or not possible, when it is not germane if there is no omnipotent omniscient supernatural entity with a plan for every atom, etc.

We do know the laws of physics allows randomness, hence radioactive materials decaying into isotopes at predictable rates, but, individual atoms potentially lasting for a tiny fractions of a second or longer than the known universe, and so forth.

So, knowing the physics does NOT tell us what will happen, to one atom.   It tells us what will happen to the atoms as a group, statistically.

So, there is zero expectation that starting at T Zero ~ 13.8 or so billion years ago, we would all be posting every character here as we have ~ 13.8 billion years later.

😀

We could predict that there would be stars and planets and galaxies, but, not THESE stars planets and galaxies.

And so forth.

Wasting time trying to prove that a made up concept is not relevant to reality, is not productive though.

 

[TJ]

Yeah, there’s no connection, and, the parties that every rational person would like to see drop their prejudices, never seem to equate their bigotry, with, well, bigotry in the first place….and, therefore, never seem to equate the way they treated blacks or other minorities (“If we let blacks and whites marry, what’s next, people and monkeys being allowed to get married too?”) – With they way they continue to treat any other group that they were told their book says are not their equals.

So, atheists and LBGT, and, even many members of other minorities, are still discriminated against…some more openly than others, depending upon the circumstances.

Just as atheists fare better out of the bible belt, so do LBGT’s, minorities, etc.   Blacks came north to escape the South’s bigotry, to a degree at least, albeit the LGBTs do not have as clear a demarcation of where they can be accepted as having simple human rights…as religion is more pervasive and distributed, and, its tenets are still socially acceptable in most locations, because the idea that religious “rights” to discriminate against others, means that their beliefs cannot be questioned, as if heresy/blasphemy laws were now incorporated into, ironically, political correctness.

All it would take for MOST bigotry to evaporate over time would be a loss of religious fervor over the control of other’s behaviors.

The second that religion’s grip on other’s behaviors was gone, a mere agreement that you cannot demand that others adopt your own beliefs, active bigotry and discrimination are gone.

 

 

 

 

 

[TJ]

The OP seems to say we are all evolved from the same sources, but some of us are predators, and some prey…but, also that the weaker sometimes ate the stronger….which is not supported as a premise, when you consider the involved scenarios.

Is a pack of hyenas “weaker” than a lion?

They tend to win in a fight at least, so, it would seem the stronger is winning, not the weaker.

That would imply that the stronger, not the weaker, win…and that it is because there can be strength in numbers.

A bait ball of anchovies, acting as a group, can confuse predators, but, they do not “win”, they merely survive.  They basically count on not ALL of them being eaten, as a survival strategy….and so forth.

“Nature” has no morality, in that it doesn’t exist as an entity, merely as an aggregate concept.  Individual members of what we might call nature exist, such as a man or a whale, etc…and, they might individually exhibit what we might call morality.

So, in essence, its not that the meek inherit the earth, its that they can survive in spite of weakness, typically via sheer numbers…and that in turn is typically due to reproductive prowess.

Humans almost went extinct according to the genetic and fossil records…and, our ancestors that got to pass on their genes, basically were better at reproduction…so, we inherited a horny tendency so to speak.

 

So, is the point of the OP meant to convey there can be strength in numbers, and a rallying cry to form a pack and attack?

 

😀

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TJ]

@What is God

 

God is the answer to what happens to where my lap goes when I stand up.

He is a mistake made by primates to help explain what they could not understand.

We are the force that created gods, a mistake.  Correction of that mistake eventually lead to understanding evolution, relativity, and the math involved in bill calculations at bistros.

Entropy involves falling from chaos.

Pure entropy does not exist.

Pure chaos does not exist.

Heaven is not entropy or chaos, as much as it is non-existent.

 

When your premises include what god, and/or heaven are, the argument is flawed.

Claiming givens is not the same as establishing facts.

Achieving the success of communicating a flawed concept, accurately,  is not the same as being correct.

I like where you were trying to go, I do, but, it is still a string of non-sequitur, albeit non-sequiturs of known derivation.

😀

 

[TJ]

@ Cruelty is always wrong

Cruelty may involve justice, say, a man tortures and kills your son, and, the sentence is you get to get even.

IS it “wrong” to inflict pain upon the torturer in retribution?

IS punishment for a crime always wrong, as the party being “punished” is suffering (If you do it right at least, etc)?

 

I like to distinguish between objective and subjective morality in terms of context and exceptions.

If truly an OBJECTIVE moral, the context doesn’t matter, and, there are no exceptions.

The masochist says: “Hurt Me!”

The Sadist then replies: “No!”

 

To me, “Be fair” might be as close to an objective moral as I can get, as it automatically takes most contexts into account.

😀

 

Other attempts at morality seem to have exceptions and context dependent scenarios that they don’t work within…making them, therefore, subjective.

 

Many theists then argue that if there are no objective morals, then anything goes, and if someone thinks killing is good, and feeding the starving is bad, then everyone has their own morals, and, therefore, there are NO morals.

 

This, logically, is invalid of course, as, the very NATURE of subjectivity ACCOUNTS for these exceptions and context changes.

So, sure, the bible says “Thou Shall Not Kill”….yet, soldiers and cops and executioners, and Pro-Lifers, all feel justified in killing other people.

The soldier kills as its his job to defend his country (From not having another country’s resources, etc), the cop to protect himself from bad guys/innocent people mistaken for bad guys, the executioner kills whoever’s turn it is at the electric chair at the moment, and the Pro-Lifer waits for the fetus to finish medical school, and THEN aborts it.

And so forth.

😀

 

 

 

 

[TJ]

Rarely have I had a visit BECAUSE of my atheism, TO convert me, per se, albeit, random visits by missionaries, fishers of men, etc, do occur.

Most purposeful conversations about religion in this context seem to involve someone finding out, casually, that I do not believe what they believe…and, their disbelief in my disbelief.

They then tend to run all the usual tripe/wagers, and so forth, by me, expecting these pearls of wisdom to string into a lasso and pull me in.

I tend to address them one at a time, and break down the flaws in the reasoning/logic, give non-religious examples that illustrate the reasons for failure/lack of validity…

…and wait for them to regroup and go for other flawed arguments that they never actually thought about, just repeated.

So, if Pascal et al fall flat, they might try something sciencey, my absolute favorite direction to take.

Interestingly, it takes most of them a LONG time to get to a point where they even CONSIDER that every single logical reason to believe what they believe, is invalid.

They tend to hit that (800 lb gorilla) wall if at all intelligent.

MOST then pretend the gorilla is not there, and, say something like “Well, it makes me feel better”…and then they run for daylight.

The most open minded though, do sometimes get past the pacifier argument, and actually consider that they might have been wrong about religion/god. (Because all of the reasons they previously believed it were invalid)

A conversion from theist to atheist is not an instant sort of thing, typically, but the flip does happen from time to time.  Its far more common for the result to be more along the lines of rejecting organized religions as a starting point…if they are able to think about issues in conflict with worldviews, etc.

😀

 

 

 

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by TJ.

[TJ]

The affordable care act only changes the health care available to those who normally would not be able to afford it.  Those who were always able to afford it are not going to get much change in their level of care.

 

Its mostly about shifting the benefit to the insurance industries, towards the patients.

 

 

[TJ]

@ Simon

The premise though, that you postulate, implies that a religious god DOES provide morality.

This is simply not the case.

When HUMANS wrote down what they believed to be morals (How bad can you beat a slave before you are being unfair, etc), they simply ascribed what THEY felt to be moral, at the time they wrote it, to what god wanted.

 

We did not GET our morality FROM gods, we GAVE our morality TO gods.

 

😀

—————-

@ Strega

As for the prison statistics, as a rule of thumb, the people in prison, just as with the people outside the prison, are statistically, essentially whatever religion their parents were.

IE: Whatever they were raised to believe, is what they believe.

 

So, sure, many claim to “find god” in prison…and the parole boards are quite familiar with this pattern of claims, and even occasional happenings.  Statistically though, if raised a Catholic, or a Baptist, Muslim or a Protestant, etc, the prisoner remains as he was raised.

The “transformation” of the prisoners is not from atheist to theist…its from theist to theist, and, statistically, lasts until they are released, whereupon they find trouble, and not god…or both.

The recidivism rate for those claiming to have found god in prison is about the same as for those that don’t.

 

In a nut shell, the most common reason for being in prison, when I speak with prisoners, is “I didn’t think I’d get caught…and, I can still pray for forgiveness”.

 

That tells me that it was simply that some people are unfair to others, for whatever their reasons, and that asking the gods for forgiveness was a get out of hell free card….so they can avoid the responsibility for their actions.

 

 

 

 

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by TJ.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by TJ.

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