Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
As I said earlier, you're taking the philosopher's definition, which is not what the average person means when he talks about "metaphysics.'
Huh? I have no religion. My family freed itself from that nonsense in the 1800s.
These are my own words, but no scientist has ever disagreed with that statement, and several have asked me if I'd mind letting them use it in their classes. Science is the scientific method. And the scientific method can only work if the natural universe is a closed system.
Why do you keep accusing me of having a religion? I consider that an insult, since religion--at least the Abrahamic variety--is arguably the greatest evil that mankind ever invented.
It's possible for scientists to make unreasonable claims, but when they do so they're practicing bad science. It's also possible for the flaws in a theory to go undetected, which is at least a more honorable type of mistake. When that happens the scientific method eventually finds the errors and the theory is either corrected or falsified. "Science" is the entire process.
Religionists use reason, and religious tracts are not devoid of reason. But many of the most widespread religions set up a powerful cognitive dissonance in their members that is the antithesis of reason.
Now who's being disingenuous and misquoting people, dude? That is not what I said and I'm well known enough around here that I'm not going to bother defending myself. Most of the members are familiar with my description of science because I restate it to newbies about five or six times a year, and they know what I said as well as you do. I made clear references to the falsification of scientific theories and the effect that falsification has on science.
* * * * NOTE FROM THE MODERATORS COMMUNITY * * * *
Misquoting someone in order to argue dishonorably is trolling, which is a violation of the rules. So stop it immediately or I'll ban you.
Once again, please stop insulting me and dishonoring my ancestors by pretending that the three generations it took them to free themselves from the cancer of religion didn't happen.
Scientists may do that when they fail to do their duty, but it's not science.
Huh? I've lost your place in the thread but I hope you're being sarcastic. Egyptian civilization was founded in, roughly, 4000BCE. By the time Abraham started making his noise 1500 years later, the Egyptians had established steady contact with the neighboring, older Mesopotamian civilization. Every Mesopotamian with a decent understanding of the world beyond his tribe knew of Egypt. Long before the time in which the life of the popular fictional character Jesus was set, there was a continuum of civilizations from Egypt, through Mesopotamia and India, to China. Educated people in any one knew of the other three. Only the Olmec/Maya/Aztec civilization and the Inca civilization were outside that continuum.
You're being disingenous again. That is not what respectable scientists say. Their answers range from, "We don't know yet," to, "We've got some of the little details but not the whole picture yet," to, "Space and time may prove to be not quite what we think they are, so the whole concept of the 'beginning' of the universe may be bogus."
I personally graph time on a log scale. There's no reason to assume that values of time earlier than the date of the Big Bang are valid. That's a mathematical construct but every mathematical construct does not automatically map to the physical universe. We can write the words, "A temperature less than absolute zero," but they are meaningless because such a temperature is impossible. It could well be that the time during which the universe exists is all there is, so it has no beginning and questions of "why" or "how" it got here become truly metaphysical and not scientific.
Again you're being disingenous. I have challenged that hypothesis because it relies on circular reasoning. You can say that a god created the universe within the limits that we are able to observe it, but all you have done is expand the limits of the universe to include the god. The question remains unanswered: Okay wise guy, then where did the fucking god come from? This time give a proper answer and not a circular one, or such a blatant violation of the scientific method will qualify as trolling. It's okay to say, "I don't know."
My wife says that men invented religion so we'd never have to answer a question with, "I don't know."
As I said earlier, religion relies on the establishment of cognitive dissonance. People are quite capable of being scientists during their working hours and superstitious cavemen on Sundays (or Saturdays or Fridays or whatever day their particular cult has chosen). As you pointed out, even Newton and Galileo fell into that category.
Good question. Does anybody moderate this board?
