Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?

[KL-666]

This is not what has been said:

Not believing something does not equal believing something.

This is:

Not believing something does not equal not believing something else.

Whether this twisting of words is on purpose or by accident, it happens a lot, so in any case a course in comprehensive reading will do you good. And it will do us good too, so we do not have so much work correcting your errors all the time.

Kind regards, Vincent

[KL-666]

Apart from some unnecessary clashes between titanic beliefs, this is an interesting thread that triggered me to think about to believe and to know.

Any knowing contains a part of belief. We think we know a brick can not turn into something else suddenly, say a piece of plastic. But it is actually a belief that can not be proven. We say: It has never been observed, so it is probably not going to happen in the future either.

Subsequently we make an axiom out of it: Matter does not change into completely different matter. And we start building a complete science on such axioms. Within such science everything is made strict and provable. Giving the illusion that the science is very exact. But the basis is and can not be proven. Making the large internally exact building of science float on belief.

Consequently i can not claim not to believe at all. What i choose to do is believe on a "need to believe" basis. To have a bit of a functional life, i need to believe things about my direct surroundings, like that my city will be somewhat the same tomorrow. But there is no necessity to believe anything about: How did the universe start, how will it end? Did god do it, or do we come from a big fart?

People that want to believe big are free to do so. But it is insane to clash on big beliefs. That does not mean that you can not sometimes have an interesting discussion between big beliefs. But in the end everyone goes home practicing their own belief.

Kind regards, Vincent

[Lydiot]

This is not what has been said:

Not believing something does not equal believing something.

This is:

Not believing something does not equal not believing something else.

"Thus, from a mere behavioural angle, Atheism for example is as much a religion as any other."

Whether this twisting of words is on purpose or by accident, it happens a lot, so in any case a course in comprehensive reading will do you good. And it will do us good too, so we do not have so much work correcting your errors all the time.

Kind regards, Vincent

I find the above a bit odd considering this...

[Lydiot]

Apart from some unnecessary clashes between titanic beliefs, this is an interesting thread that triggered me to think about to believe and to know.

Any knowing contains a part of belief. We think we know a brick can not turn into something else suddenly, say a piece of plastic. But it is actually a belief that can not be proven. We say: It has never been observed, so it is probably not going to happen in the future either.

Subsequently we make an axiom out of it: Matter does not change into completely different matter. And we start building a complete science on such axioms. Within such science everything is made strict and provable. Giving the illusion that the science is very exact. But the basis is and can not be proven. Making the large internally exact building of science float on belief.

Consequently i can not claim not to believe at all. What i choose to do is believe on a "need to believe" basis. To have a bit of a functional life, i need to believe things about my direct surroundings, like that my city will be somewhat the same tomorrow. But there is no necessity to believe anything about: How did the universe start, how will it end? Did god do it, or do we come from a big fart?

People that want to believe big are free to do so. But it is insane to clash on big beliefs. That does not mean that you can not sometimes have an interesting discussion between big beliefs. But in the end everyone goes home practicing their own belief.

Kind regards, Vincent

I agree with everything I think, except I think the word "belief" is an unfortunate choice because it implies an equal status of all beliefs. That is to say that some beliefs are rooted in things we can test, as you pointed out, whereas others are not. We don't get on airplanes based on the same type of belief as we have when we say we believe in God.

Other than that I think I completely agree.

[jwocky]

As an example for your verbal aggression and at the same time for the typical arrogance followers in an expansive belief system show all the time:

That's a post filled with more stupidity than I've seen in a while (from Lydiot)

As an example for the absolute inability of zealots to read or understand any other opinion outside of their belief system:

You claim non-believers are believers and then start whining about being called on it for it being nonsensical - which it is, because it's a frickin' oxymoron (from Lydiot)

What I said is, so-called "non-believers" give themselves the label of "non-believers". In fact, they believe very firmly in something they can't prove by any scientific method: The absence of God or any other form of higher entity. And since their belief system is as much based as any religion on an unprovable tenement, it is exactly that, a belief-system.

On a personal side note: I never whine, I never cry, I never flinch. You try your usual Atheism zealot thing by jumping on everybody who resists your attempt to convert people (another symptom of religions which proves you a religious zealot in the religion of Atheism) by the use mindless insults and derogative terms. That has to me the same smell as the stories, other aggressive religions spreading similar derogative terms about "infidels" and shows once more the similarity between your brand of Atheism and the verbal outbreaks of for example some Muslim ideologists.

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If you know you're right about what you said then just explain just how one can be both a believer and a non-believer simultaneously. (from Lydiot)

One can claim to be a Christian and still kill people despite "thou shall not kill", one can claim to be a Muslim and still have an occasional drink and one can claim to be a "non-believer" while believing firmly in an unproven base of the own belief-system. The labels humans give themselves in following their religion or ideology are quite meaningless, mere stage thunder. I can claim to be a cheese gourmet, that doesn't change that I am allergic. The label someone gives himself counts for nothing, it is basically pure group-identification plus some propaganda. What counts is what a person does or in cases of religious questions, what a group of persons does. Look at yourself:

- can you prove the absence of God or any other higher entity with mathematical certainty (the probability>1 criteria)? I dare you to do this, in a clean scientifc way.

- only if you can do that, you know. If you can't you simple belief in the absence of such entities. Which means, you, the self-proclaimed "non-believer" only believes in the absence of any higher entity.

- Since you belief in an unproven and unprovable factor, you wear the label of a "non-believer" wrongfully. Don't worry, "non-believer" is no legally protected term, so it is no felony, just a little bit of non-court-worthy scam in which you and any other Atheist zealot pretends to be something, they aren't.

- Since atheists are unable to prove the most important tenement of their beliefs, the absence of God, their claim to have it all right and be the only ones who got it right is as weak or strong as the same claim, any other religion makes.

- given the other similarities, especially in your posts with the behaviour of other zealot preachers (for example some Muslim leaders, or also Westboro Church), the use of mindless angry insults, the derogative language against followers of any other belief system, the obvious urge to convert people ... I take you as a wonderful textbook example for the thesis, Atheism is just another religion.

About your little outbreak about this forum: We can discuss such things here. As you may have noticed, your posts haven't been deleted nor censored. Because this is a free speech forum. However, your use of language is even by the most generous stretch of that term insulting, personal and quite abrasive. I know, it is hard in a bout of religious zealotry to keep the most simple rules of courtesy and I refused to edit your attacks on followers of other (even in some cases similar) belief systems because they prove the point so nicely. Nevertheless, you better try to reign that in. You can bring reasons, anecdotes, mathematical formulas as far as the editor allows. You can bring pictures, videos and stories. What you can't bring in is personal insults because then you force reactions and you may be aware, those reactions are not limited to bans or deletions but can also entail to take you seriously, discuss your thinking errors and keep those posts undeleted forever, which means, you can be forever googled as a drooling zealot for a belief he hasn't even understood in its basics. I take it, you don't want that. So reign in your language and I don't have to use your own language on you, capice?

[Lydiot]

Do you think calling others zealots is insulting and offensive?

[jwocky]

I adapt to your language ... when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck ... it is treated like a duck. Which given the vicinity of Christmas and fact that I am a hobby cook with a German background could be a dangerous thing



People who don't have enough of relaitves to feed often make duck instead of goose ... just saying.

[Lydiot]

I adapt to your language ...

Ok, so then please give an exact quote of where I posted something that is as offensive as calling someone a "zealot", and also quote me using verbal (though it's really "literal") aggression. And before you quote those two instances, you should know that the word nonsense means non-sense. It is something that doesn't make sense. Telling you that something you said doesn't make sense doesn't equal aggression, it's just stating that something doesn't make sense.

It's actually no difference than you telling me something I don't agree with. To you what I'm saying could be nonsense. There's absolutely nothing aggressive in that.

So again:

Quote where I called someone in this thread something equally offensive as "zealot"
Quote where I was actually verbally aggressive

[jwocky]

You called my post "the most stupid thing you have seen", that was rude (exact quote in the last post).
You called others in various threats stupid as well.
You insinuated that others would suppress what you consider "the truth" intentionally

So, "zealot" seems to be quite tame to me compared how often you generally dismiss all others not following your belief system as "stupid" and insinuating ulterior motives. You went even so far to turn against the whole forum as such not even considering that most of the members here didn't post anything in the 42 thread. So my suggestion is, you tune it back a little and you don't appear so much as a zealot which would make the need to call you one obsolete. And as an additional measure, you may want to read my posts more closely. I used the term zealot in general terms to describe the behaviour of aggressive because expanding religions. One could say, I left an empty shoe in the room. You were the one putting it on and proving the point in the progress. The interesting question remaining here is, why did you put the shoe on in the first place?

[SkyBoat]

Here are links to a video, a graphic and an article published by the New York Times on 24 November 2015 that explain in plain language important aspects of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and gravity. The video was published in March 2015 in celebration of his birthday on March 14th. He would have been 136 years old. The graphic explains the breakthrough Einstein had regarding what gravity is and how it works using an elevator, of all things, as his thought experiment! He presented his paper on this subject 100 years ago this month.

Here is the link to the graphic and the video:
http://nyti.ms/1FeU6y4


The Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/science/a-century-ago-einsteins-theory-of-relativity-changed-everything.html

Below is a photo of Albert Einstein at the Mount Wilson Observatory Library (perched high above Pasadena, California) sitting with several of the astronomers who worked at the site. The man standing directly behind Einstein is Edwin Hubble, who discovered that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is only one of millions and that all of the galaxies were moving at a speed that caused their spectrographic image to "red shift," due to the Doppler effect.

Think of when you hear a plane approaching, passing you and then moving away. As the plane approaches the sound increases in pitch until it reaches your position, from then on the pitch of the engines decreases. Light behaves the same way, only using a spectrograph (like looking at the colors of light through a prism), light waves coming toward you shifts toward the blue end of the spectrum and those going away from you shift toward the red end. Hubble studied thousands of stars in the galaxy, but what caught his interest were then called "planetary nebula" because it was disputed if there were any other galaxies other than our own. He saw that the red shift of these deep space objects was different than the stars he photographed, because our galaxy is rotating around it core and the super-massive black hole at the center called Sgr A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star) and all the stars are in motion, too, some moving toward us and some away relative to our position in the galaxy. But when he looked at the planetary nebulae, including the one closest to us, the Andromeda Galaxy, they were all consistently red-shifted.

After taking thousands of images and developing them onto large glass plates, and having his staff (many of whom were women, but got no credit), in 1929, Hubble published his paper stating that the Milky Way was not a solitary Island Universe, but was one of millions. Immediately, astronomers around the world trained their telescopes on the objects Hubble had identified in his paper. They got the same results, verifying his findings, and virtually overnight, the known universe expanded in the human consciousness from one compact sphere of stars to a cosmos whose size was beyond comprehension, and in many ways, still is.

Now, back to Einstein. Just two years later, in 1931, Einstein visited Mt Wilson and of course, they had to take a group picture to commemorate the event. The Library was in a dormitory building affectionately referred to as "The Monastery" because there were strict rules against women being allowed inside. In the early 1900s, it was a much different time regarding gender equality, or the lack thereof. Note the chair Einstein is sitting in.



In 2009 I toured Mt Wilson and when we went through the Monastery, we all got the chance to sit in the chair Einstein sat in for that picture. Here I am sitting in the chair, wishing I had a lot more hair so I could scruff it up to get that Einstein look, and also hoping there was some of Einstein's genius juju still in the chair that I might absorb through my butt. Alas, neither wish came true.



An excellent read on the Hubble's discovery and the history leading to it is:

Einstein and Hubble, among others are standing in front of the 100 inch Hooker telescope observatory where Hubble made his discovery.



The book is available in hard copy, paperback and Kindle. It is very well written, the author presents the story of how the science and the people are intertwined over the centuries leading up to the discovery, as well as the history of the development of the world's first large observatories. Every chapter reads more like a novel filled with intrigue and back-biting among the astronomers scrambling to find the answers than a non-fiction historical account. I highly recommend it and give it 5 stars.

SkyBoat