Evolution vs Creation

#901

This question is completely irrelevant. This is the same as if I asked you whether this color is black:


while the only alternative would be white. Of course you can decide not to make such a classification, the same way you can decide not to believe in anything.

Accepting something only as either true or false means that you are applying a law of excluded middle, which, when used in relation to science - with all the uncertainty of the gathered information - could, and eventually would, lead to false conclusions.

It is also possible to use a three-valued logic, i.e. accept something as either true, false, and unknown, so that a classification of beliefs as Theism, Atheism, and Agnosticism, respectively, makes perfect sense (disregarding the original intend of the author of the term “Agnosticism”).

Using a binary logic also means that you have to select something that I would call a “threshold of certainty” - all above that threshold would be accepted as true, and all below as false. Threshold by its nature is something arbitrary, so it’s another reason not to use a binary logic.

So what alternative would be to “believing” in things? The best thing I can imagine is accepting every peace of information with certain dose of certainty. For example, I think there are minimum chances that God exist, but there are big chances that the Universe was created in Big Bang. I wouldn’t say that I believe in Big Bang, because I realize that there are other possibilities, some of which probably I have never even considered.

You probably know that I expected such an answer and you are right. So, for all I know, statement “Sun revolves around Earth” cannot be called true nor false without additional information (it has nothing to do with fuzzy logic though). Now the question is - have you assumed that some conditions are met or certain point of view must be taken, therefore accepted this statement as false, or are you just blindly repeating what you have been taught in school? Because if the latter, how different are you from people who are blindly following the Bible?

#902

I disagree. To believe is to consider something as true and take decisions in your life accordingly to that belief, but not necessarily being closed to alternatives.

A simple example: once in your life you tasted strawberry ice cream and you didn’t like, so you begin to believe that you don’t like strawberry ice cream. That is a reasonable assumption, and you live accordingly by not choosing strawberry ice cream again. You might even know there is a possibility that you tasted a bad strawberry ice cream.

Suppose, now, your girlfriend is taking a strawberry ice cream. You decide to try it, and you like it. Did you die because of this? Do you regret your entire life for never having tried another strawberry ice cream after that bad experience? No. You just acknowledge you were wrong and move on. I don’t think it is as simple as associating a probability with an affirmation, it is more to what you allow yourself to do or not because of that belief.

This example clearly distinguishes a healthy belief from an unhealthy one. I know several examples of people that would die if they found out God doesn’t exist, or specially if their concept of God is wrong.

The problem is the so-called “faith” - these people believe they must have faith and they think faith is to make yourself believe in shit with all the inner strength you have. That is not faith, it is a trap to lock people inside a religion unintentionally. That trap is created by fear of what your religion folks would become if they leave that religion, that makes you do whatever you can to prevent them from leaving.

That is not faith. That is to ignore your own mind and fears. Faith is an attitude.

Once in Gandhi’s life he wanted to stop the revolution in India that he started because it was becoming violent, and he wanted peace. Gandhi then decided to fasten until they stopped. He literally almost died of hunger. He didn’t even believe the entire country would stop the revolution because of him, but you can’t possibly accuse him for lack of faith because of that. That is true humility. Not to have faith would be to say “My fastening is not working, so I’ll stop it, do nothing and let everything go to hell”.

He was the leader of the revolution, and he was dieing. People loved him so much they didn’t want him to die. The revolution stopped. That wasn’t the last nor the most amazing thing Gandhi did. He still had a goal in his mind - to lead Indian people to conquer independence from England, and, if he had given up by then, that would have been lack of faith.

All right, Gandhi did believe a lot in the strength of peace, that is for sure. But he didn’t think God would put his fingers in the world and do what Gandhi wanted as a reward for his fastening. His only hope is that people would see his determination and begin to believe in peace as well. Faith is more like determination than belief.

Now, people will read what I said and think what I mean is that faith means not to stop practicing your religion’s rituals. If you want to believe that, it’s not my responsibility, that is not what I meant at all. You follow rituals because you need them, and either you need them or you don’t.

#903

That is a wonderful way to define faith. The world would be a lot better if religious people practised their faith that way. Spread the message, the love, the tolerance, etc., not blindly believe in everything it says and not indoctrinate.

#904

Depends on the frame of reference I’d say.
On earth: the sun revolves around earth.
On sun: the earth revolves around sun.
On neither sun or earth: earth revolves around sun.

I want to add this Wikipedia quote:

Hawking has stated that he is “not religious in the normal sense” and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. Hawking compared religion and science in 2010, saying: “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority [imposed dogma, faith], [as opposed to] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”

Apart from the wrong explanation of authority (FAITH???) by the wikipedia author (the word faith was not even mentioned by Hawking):
Smart Hawk is smart. Any system based on imposed dogma will sooner or later be unable to explain certain new phenomena and thus break apart.
Or am I missing something gugamilare?

#905

Is this a cat or a dog?

Atheism is not “accept something as false” in this comparison list.

It’s not blindly following anything. It’s the construction of the English language. If one cannot agree with another on the definitions of certain words, why don’t I just say “Tablet brick potato llama”?

Using the commonly accepted definitions for words, the sun does NOT revolve around the Earth.

#906

Faith is what you have when you can’t affect the outcome of something (so, superior to yourself) that you still have confidence in (so, something like a decision-maker). You endorse whatever comes from it, even if your wishes for it to benefit yourself are not fulfilled. That’s classic Authority.

#907

If you missed something, I’m not able to see it.
Smart Hawk is smart :slight_smile:

Indeed. And that is a faith that can really move mountains. The entire world needs desperately to learn Gandhi’s lesson :slight_smile:

#908

Sometimes faith can move more than mountains. :frowning:

#909

Sometimes it can move the very essence of human spirit. But for the most part, it sticks to rocks.

#910

I don’t think that my definition exclude being open to alternatives - considering something as true and accepting something as true sound pretty much the same for me. That what you are describing I would call fundamental believes - something that have strong implications on your life. Not all believes have to be fundamental - like believing that you don’t like strawberry ice creams or that there are 8 planets in our solar system. I think it’s very hard to change your fundamental believes because all other believes may be based on them and basically your entire world could just collapse if you altered them.

That’s quite a good answer, except that “on neither Sun or Earth” it is possible to pick a reference frame where Earth doesn’t revolves around Sun - imagine a planet which is revolving around Sun in the same direction and orbital period as Earth, where the rotation period is in sync with orbital period (like in case of Moon). In that case Earth would never had a full rotation around Sun. Another example of a reference - Moon.

And why this is a cat? Because people a long time ago “agreed” that an animal with certain features like that is a cat. This is merely problem of classification - human or animal brain is just created to classify things and we can even not be aware of it. All entities that you know - starting from simple shapes like triangles or circles and ending on complex objects like animals or machines - are simply a result of your brain tendency to classification. The fact that you call them “a cat”, “a fish”, or “a house” is because of a language that you been taught - some form of a social agreement.

OK, now how does this relates to my previous post? Because I just realized that you probably completely missed my analogy. My intend was quite clear - you are given a choice which is impossible to make. Or that you are forced to make a conversion from gray color to one of {black, white} colors, which leads to losing some portion of information. This is similar to converting from fuzzy logic to binary logic, where you also lose some information. Declaring that I believe in something would be only some simplification of my attitude towards certain aspects - that’s what I tried to show with my example.

If believing is “accepting something as true”, why disbelieving cannot be “accepting something as false”?

You are mistaken. Motion have only sense when is described in relation to some object - this object can be virtual, something that is called by physicists a reference frame. When you describe motion, you have to pick up a reference frame. Now, which reference frame should we chose when describing the relative motion of Sun and Earth? This is not as simple as it may seam. Copernicus chose Sun, because it produces a dominant force in this system. Historically this choice is very important, because it stretches the idea that Earth isn’t the most important body in the Universe. Mathematically however, there is no reason why not to chose another reference frame. This is just a matter of convention! From physical point of view a much more suitable reference point would be a center of mass of Earth-Sun system (however, I think it is located inside Sun). Another reference frame that I don’t see a reason why it should not be taken into account is a reference frame associated with Earth - Theory of Relativity already taught us that each reference frame should be treated equal. So, in this reference frame a statement “Sun revolves around Earth” is true! (At least in this case Sun does almost a perfect circle.) And yes, this is true while none of your precious English definitions was altered in any way by me, amazing isn’t it?

#911

It relates because some things are clearly black and white. The picture is that of a cat because it contains all the characteristics of “cathood”. It is certainly not a dog at all. It is “A” and “not B”.

Action vs inaction. You’re either driving a car or you’re not. You’re either playing Half-Life 2 or you’re not. Sitting on your ass, watching TV is not “driving a not-car” or “playing not-HL2”.

Not quite, duder. If you’re sitting in a moving car, the world outside isn’t moving whilst you sit rock still. If you’re in a boat, the world isn’t bobbing up and down whilst you stay still. The frame of reference is moving and you TAKE IT INTO ACCOUNT.

To try to bullshit-rationalize that frames of reference do not and cannot move based upon the fact that it’s a frame of reference is, well, bullshit.

The sun revolves around the Earth? Bahahaha! No.

The Earth revolves around the sun. Unless of course, when you drive down the road in your car, you think you, your car, the Earth, and the entire universe is rotating around the axle of your car.

And that’s just silly.

#912

What kind of example is that? Would the correct analogy not be:

  1. that to an object on the axle or the axle itself it might seem as if the exterior world is rotating around it?

  2. you sit in your car and feel like not your car is moving but the exterior world?

Please read the examples here and then tell me where my mistake is.

#913

That’s quite a good answer, except that “on neither Sun or Earth” it is possible to pick a reference frame where Earth doesn’t revolves around Sun - imagine a planet which is revolving around Sun in the same direction and orbital period as Earth, where the rotation period is in sync with orbital period (like in case of Moon). In that case Earth would never had a full rotation around Sun. Another example of a reference - Moon.

Argh, you are right! It does not only depend on where you are, but how you are moving. My old physics teacher is probably rotating somewhere in his grave.

F***, messed up doublepost, sorry.

#914

You have to take into account that your frame of reference is moving as well. Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyJYPIWF3-0

Is the night sky rotating around the Earth or is it vice versa? I say vice versa because we have to take into account that the frame of reference (in this case, the camera) is attached to a moving object (the Earth).

EDIT: When I’m in a car, I feel like I’m moving, not the exterior world.

#915

EVOLUTION WINS. FATALITY

#916

intooblivion: To be fair to creationism, they were bringing…well, nothing to a gun fight. The biggest thing they have is “Well, evolution…”

#917

Come on, guys, you are embarrassing me. It’s not possible that you didn’t learn in Physics class that movement is always relative to where you are. It is obvious that, if you are in a car, the car is what is moving, but, from the point of view of the moving car, the exterior world is moving. That is the very definition of point of view - you must subtract the velocity of everything to the velocity of the point of view. For instance, the velocity of a tree that you are seeing from your car, which is 0, you subtract the velocity of your car, which is, say, 10 m/s, then the velocity of the tree relative to the car is -10 m/s.

You guys also say that, from outside the Solar System, the Earth is revolving around the Sun. There are various motives why this is not true.

  • By Newton laws, the Sun is also affected by the gravity of Earth, so it also moves, which means it is not a stopped point of view. The only reason it is almost stopped is because its mass is much bigger than Earth’s. If there weren’t other planets, the best would be to say that both the Sun and the Earth are revolving around a fixed point that is between the Earth and the Sun, but very close to the Sun.
  • You might think that the Solar system is stopped, but it is not, it is revolving around the Milky Way.
  • The Milky Way is also not stopped with reference to the other galaxies.
  • By now, you guys might conclude that at least the Earth is not stopped. But you are assuming that the Universe as we know is stopped. What if it is moving? What if the whole Universe is moving in such a complicated way that the Earth remains stopped in its position? Yes, yes, this is absurd and completely arbitrary, the Earth has nothing special. It is still possible.

That, my friends, is the theory of relativity. You can’t ever ask about the speed of something because that very question is meaningless, like asking whether a specific ice cream is tasty. That clearly depends on the person that will taste it. The meaningful question about movement is what is the speed of something from a given point of view. Most times the point of view taken is obvious, but that does not mean it is not there.

I have the impression that when people say “outside of the Solar System”, the point of view taken is the center of mass of the known Universe. As I said, from that point of view, the Earth is not revolving around the Sun, it is a much more complicated movement.

#918

What a retarded argument Seba is making.

“Durr, you call this fruit an apple, but how do we REALLY know it’s an apple. That’s just a label we assign to it in our flawed capacity as human beings. Look at me, I’m a philosopher.”

We also assign labels to gravity. You’re perfectly welcome to test out that label by stepping off a cliff. I do believe, and by this I mean it is a fact, that your acceleration due to gravity will be -9.81 m/s2.

This is what is meant when something is accepted as fact. There is no ‘gray area’ here. You fall. Period.

No matter what label you wish to assign to this fact, the laws of physics remain the same. Volcanoes aren’t created by the finger of God. Illness is not caused by demons. Dead cells did not reanimate without the aid of technology in a cave 2000 years ago. Science keeps claiming the ground Creationists keep trying to explain with magic. It leaves them less room to hide and makes answers like, “God did it” more and more silly.

#919

The thing is, guga, the question was posed whether the Sun revolves around the Earth or not (geocentric vs heliocentric solar system) not the complex movements of everything in the universe (or the universe itself). Therefore, the implicit frame of reference/point of view is that of being outside the Earth and the Sun and, in order to observe said rotations, one has to be traveling /with/ them in some fashion. Therefore, from your frame of reference, exterior to both the Earth and sun, the Earth revolves on the sun.

#920

Well, that makes more sense, but, again, you are creating a point of view that is travelling with the solar system to see whether the Sun revolves around the Earth or otherwise. So, even when you think you are describing the movement in an “absolute” point of view, you are not.

Anyway, I’m lost in the discussion. Seba started this discussion by saying:

Then, to defend his position, he argued that shit about Sun and Earth. I fail miserably to see that this has anything to do with the way a scientist must think. Each scientist sees the world as he or she wants to see it, and what measures if one is a good scientist is if one can think with a clear mind about what one is studying or researching, not if one associates a probability function with the affirmations one receives.

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