Tom Sarbeck

Thanks, Reg, for the link to Feynman’s Technique. I’ve been looking for an illustration of Bayes’ Theorem I can play with and found it there. I will try the technique to design a talk I will give in a week or two on, you guessed it, the Electric Universe. BTW, three thousand cheers for Ireland’s weaning itself further from Catholicism.

Reg, the other gods (of which there were to be none) were the pagan gods that other people in the region were still worshipping. Baal was one of them.

Beth, about the trinity. It’s to test your gullibility. If you don’t question the trinity story, you’re gullible enoughn to join the religion.

A man I knew in SF, call him Ed, told me his daugh…[Read more]

Simon: “just a convention” makes it a habit of mind for people who were once, and who still are, emotionally committed to one of the Abrahamic gods. Which one? They do differ.

I associated with pagans for a time and found reason to prefer their environmentally aware gods. How many other gods does your preferred Abrahamic god exc…[Read more]

Re capitalizing the g-word

Besides rationalizations, there clearly are hard-to-break habits of mind.

IME (experience, not opinion), Emma, militant atheists still doubt.

A few months (or weeks or years) of agnosticism may help them erase their doubts and they will have more confidence in their freedom.

PB and Simon, in my not-very-humble (ergo non-theistic) opinion, explanations for capitalizing the ‘g’ in ‘god’ are more rationalization than reason.

Contrary to the widely-believed rumor, and your ambitions notwithstanding [:>)], inheriting the earth requires something more than humility.

Unseen wrote: “That energy and matter are two different states of one thing is a fact….”

’Tis an Einsteinian fact, supported only by his thought experiments. The support they provide exists only in the minds of those who worship at his altars.

PB, re fruitcake: I like the pic.

For what reason do so many here capitalize the g-word?

Who said philosophers talk about stuff few understand in words few understand?

I said it.

PopeBeanie wrote: We humans just love to frame everything that happens in the terms of some agency making them happen, because that’s the way we evolved….

PB, religious people certainly frame stuff that way, and formerly-religious people may do so until they clear the trash from their minds. However, I’m reluctant to say that doing so is a p…[Read more]

Reg, scientists and anti-science xians have different and conflicting uses for the word “theory”.

Scientists and those who govern societies have different and conflicting uses for the words “order” and “disorder”.

Cox uses order and disorder in a manner consonant with science.

BTW, do you agree that large and strong pond scum have stuff in como…[Read more]

Simon says: You could say that the waste is entropy being exported, leaving a reduction of entropy within the cell.

I could say that, Simon, but I won’t until I have evidence for entropy’s being a substance.

So darwinismrefuted.com says evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics — that systems should decay through time, giving less, not more, order.

Those people and Earle are not thinking clearly. What can be more orderly than big and strong pond scum eating (engulfing) small and weak pond scum?

Evolution changed that. What can be more di…[Read more]