Comment Re:Predictable. (Score 1) 196
So what would be the budget for creating a medium-sized star?
So what would be the budget for creating a medium-sized star?
To claim there is no god or supreme power in the universe requires just as much faith as claiming there is one God who gave you a book of rules.
Both beliefs require faith. Hell, all beliefs that are not the result of strict logic (given set of assumptions X, the set of conclusions Y must also be true) require an element of faith. The former belief can only be considered in the realm of "religion" and "myth" by seriously perverting the common definitions of those words.
To even entertain the notion of a god, "supreme power", or whatever you want to call it takes way more faith than not bothering with it in the first place.
How Windows 3.1 can be considered "good" in any sense of the word is beyond me.
True. I've heard of this position referred to as "Apatheism".
Yeah no. Not sure if this applies to software testing (although some cases can be so unpredictable that you might as well refer to them as random), but the results of some quantum events are indeed random. Even with perfect knowledge of all variables from some moment in the past, some future events are impossible to predict. There are no hidden variables.
To defend Mathematics a bit, it does tend to advance much more quickly than Physics since it isn't hampered by the restrictions of the real world.
Just think of General Relativity and non-Euclidean Geometry. Often times when a new scientific concept is created/discovered and a model is required to flesh it out, all you need to do is look around existing mathematics and, oh look, there's an app for that.
Mathematics cannot be the language of the universe as the vast majority of the universe does not communicate any ideas. The parts of it that do is an insignificant, tiny portion that includes us and whatever other self-aware/reasoning beings that may be out there.
What mathematics is are a set of insanely great tools that we use to create models helping us to describe the universe. One thing we've learned from math is that self-referential systems tend to have issues that can crop up in spots. And it's hard to get more self-referential than a subset of the universe trying to understand the whole thing.
Saying that mathematics is sufficient to describe the real world, no matter how successful it has been at it so far, is awfully presumptuous.
That sentence is so self-referential it nearly made my head explode.
Quantum Theory sure did appear to be wacky at the time by many, but since it was always based on testable predictions for which to understand nature it was at no point considered metaphysical or supernatural.
Maybe the closest things in science right now to metaphysics are the multiple interpretations if quantum mechanics. These are more frameworks to try and visualize how it works behind the scenes for lack of anything better. But I think most physicists take the "shut up and calculate" perspective instead of considering such things too much.
I never said, nor do I believe, that we know everything. Most of the claims I hear that the phenomenon can't be empirically measured comes more from believers in the para-sciences when one of their beliefs is put into doubt from a scientific investigation.
When you're saying something is "supernatural" you're saying it's beyond nature and beyond our understanding. But if that's the case then there's nothing really we can test, is there? And when you can find some claim you can test empirically then you're saying that it is both physical and can be understood as a natural phenomenon. And if it doesn't pan out the way you want, you have to learn to respect the results.
This para-scientific crap has been tested and re-tested for a long long time, and we still see nothing more than can be explained by wishful thinking and the usual statistical blips you'd always see from a set of data.
The real world is way too cool to abandon what is for we hope to be. Time to stop wasting our time with this pointless shit.
Heck, you could do parapsychology research today and, as long as it's properly conducted, it would be science.
No, it really wouldn't. Science only concerns itself with non-supernatural/non-metaphysical claims, and there's a reason for that. If you're willing to entertain anything more than that then you're dealing with quasi-claims for which no amount of evidence can be used to substantiate or disprove them.
Atheists would say "There is no God" and as this is a definitive claim, there must be a proof for it to be considered a true fact.
Wrong. For someone to be an atheist they only have to say "I do not believe God exists", just as the theist states "I believe God exists."
It's a bit much to demand that people prove the veracity of their beliefs. Justify them maybe, but not a full proof. Even the commonly held definition of the agnostic who chooses neither to believe or disbelieve because of insufficient evidence has to justify their stance. For all the infinite claims that are possible, must one really withold believe or disbelieve when there isn't a full proof? And if not, why is there a special dispensation made toward God?
MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.