I was typing it at the same time molgrips…and my 24 hours off has given my typewriter diarrhoea. Anyway, my main point was this idea that morals come from religion, then I digressed after spotting a spelling mistake and went off on another one. Guilty m’lud.

At one point we believed that the Earth was flat.

Who did, and when?

What, you mean to tell me that if I go from Bristol to Norwich, and then keep going, I’m not going to fall off the edge of the world? Because that’s what it feels like.

For you to claim that this may prove Einstein was agnostic is fairly absurd. As I tried to make out though, blindly holding onto any other individual’s hand (even Einstein, gasp!) as justification for your own beliefs is fairly silly.

You seem to be trying to back me into a corner. I never brought Einstein up somebody else did. I felt he was being misrepresented and religion has been the most guilty of all at trying to put words into the mouths of other people. I thought it was right to redress the balance.

I have no need to wheel Einstein to reinforce my arguments, somebody else was doing that.

You are right to say I was wrong to call him an agnostic, I was doing this to help balance the argument. By all of the definitions you and others have used above he appears to be an atheist.

On this subject however I care not.

However I think it’s a little misleading to compare the scientific search for answers with a religious one. The two things aren’t really the same, which is why people can do both. Religion isn’t (despite what some on here seem to think) the search for the origin of the world. There are some “creation scientists” that occupy themselves, but really a debate on the validity of creationism is really a completely different thing from one on the value of religion.

That would be all well and good if religion was not prescriptive in our daily lives from the relatively harmless “thought for the day” to more insidious preachings of the Pope.
These religious beliefs impact us socially and economically each day and that is why atheists are becoming more vocal. If you decide to give a tax break to a religious movement then close a hospital wing though lack of funds you have a responsibility to qualify your beliefs!

Surfer- not trying to back you into a corner, just a bit bored as work is slow. Anyway, not trying to go back over old ground but I realised a typo in my last post- I meant that Einstein could be described as agnostic, but not atheist, rather than the reverse as I typed. A fairly crucial error 😉

Anyway, as we both agree that what he reckons is neither here nor there it shouldn’t matter. The only reason I got involved in this is that both sides claiming that quoting someone else could validate their beliefs seemed ridiculous, especially when there appeared to be some misunderstanding.

[Apologies for the confusion btw]

Seems to me that the concept of God can be pretty personal.

So it’s not fair to slam the entire concept of religion of any kind based on the problems with certain parts of it. That was my point last time this lot came up too 🙂

Apologies for the confusion btw

Apologies not necessary! 😀

Ok, so why jolly well have not chimpanzees ‘evolved’ anywhere like Humans?

Because you’re working on the assumption that everytime a species evolves, the old species dies out, ie, chimps become humans then die. It doesn’t work like that. Some chimps could have evolved to suit a different habitat/ set of conditions whereas another colony 100 miles away, had no need to. One set evolves, the other stays the same.

You’re also working on the assumption that ‘better’ in the context of evolution is directional, which it isn’t. Put another way, why should chimps evolve anywhere like humans? Or grow wings? Or gills? Or lose their legs?

Evolution involves some sort of selection pressure acting on a population. Evolution could just as easily work to make chimps more primitive if that pressure makes it beneficial.

Also, man did not evolve from apes, we share a common ancestor. I know somebody has said this already but it obviously needs repeating!

Now, the irony of followers of Science, dismissing religion as something which lacks ‘proof’, are happy to accept, as the Truth, stuff which is equally unproven.

Like, Jupiter is a big planet X miles from Earth, and consists of X chemicals and what not.

No Human has ever been to Jupiter, to collect any samples. So how can they claim, as gospel, stuff for which they have no evidence?

So presumably you think that gravity and the FSM/fairies in your garden should be be treated as equally plausible? Because there’s about the same amount of evidence for gravity as there is for the chemical composition of Jupiter.

I don’t follow the logic that says that a theory with a solid body of evidence to back it up should be regarded as no more valid than some speculation with absolutely no observable evidence, if it still has some gaps.

Now, the irony of followers of Science, dismissing religion as something which lacks ‘proof’, are happy to accept, as the Truth, stuff which is equally unproven.

Like, Jupiter is a big planet X miles from Earth, and consists of X chemicals and what not.

No Human has ever been to Jupiter, to collect any samples. So how can they claim, as gospel, stuff for which they have no evidence?

I really cringe when I see stuff like this.

miketually – Member

Now, the irony of followers of Science, dismissing religion as something which lacks ‘proof’, are happy to accept, as the Truth, stuff which is equally unproven.

Like, Jupiter is a big planet X miles from Earth, and consists of X chemicals and what not.

No Human has ever been to Jupiter, to collect any samples. So how can they claim, as gospel, stuff for which they have no evidence?[/ quote]

I really cringe when I see stuff like this.

Amen.

[edit- hope the quotation style meets your approval miketually- i dunno how to do it properly 🙄 ]

I also cringe when I see people mess up quoting 🙂

No Human has ever been to Jupiter, to collect any samples. So how can they claim, as gospel, stuff for which they have no evidence?

If they took samples, how would they know what they were looking at? They’d put it in a mass spectrometer probably, which uses scientific principles to tell you stuff about the sample. Or, we could use spectrographic analysis to look at it through a telescope and see what it’s made of – also using scientific principles.

So why would one be better than the other? The science is fairly straightforward in both cases.

Could it be that you just don’t understand the science? Is it fair to cast doubt on someone’s conclusions just because you yourself just don’t get it?

So do I

Could it be that you just don’t understand the science? Is it fair to cast doubt on someone’s conclusions just because you yourself just don’t get it?

+1 That’s a fact of life on the intertubes though isn’t it? People spend 30 seconds thinking about something generations of scientists have spent their working lives thinking about, and haven’t the objectivity to wonder whether their conclusions are as sound.

deadlydarcy; what did you get an STW ASBO for???

Molgrips; my ‘proof’ thing:

Right. Just say we want to find out how long a field is. We will need to use some form of measurement, relative to something else.Oh, I’ll use my foot. The field is 300 of my foot-lengths long. So, I call it 300 feet long.

Ok. So my neighbour wants to measure his field, and uses the same method. But his foot is longer than mine, and so his field (let’s just say they are identical in size) measures something different. We plan to build a barn together. Whose measurement shall we use? We need to be accurate; no good using two differing measurement systems, so we develop a measurement we both agree on. Everybody else in the village, and ultimately the World, eventually adopt this measurement. This measurement is fixed, and is never changed. It becomes a standard for measurement. Therefore, if I use this system to measure anything, I will get results that everyone will agree are accurate. And if someone else uses the system, they will get results I will be able to accept as accurate.

So, we can use this agreed system, to measure anything, and the results will always be agreed upon by everyone, as long as we measure correctly. IE, 300 feet is always 300 feet; it is never 299 or 301. If I have measured the field, and find it to be 300 feet, and someone challenges this, I can PROVE that it is.

And I can use this system to estimate the length of stuff, too. I can say, ‘I reckon that field is about 300 feet long’, without measurement, and as long as others agree it roughly is, then we’re all happy. I’m not claiming my estimation to be 100% accurate, and without measuring the field, I cannot PROVE it is in fact 300 feet.

Still with me?

So stuff like Pi and other forms of measurement are based on the consensus that this measurement is fixed, and inflexible.

My problem with some scientific claims, is that the methods of investigation themselves may be flawed. Take the dating thing, as explained so well by a previous poster; it can only ever be seen as an estimation, not 100% solid unquestionable fact. With the Ceasium decay rate thing; what if a period of sudden intense heat or cold in that area, sped up or slowed down the rate? That might affect things to the point our estimations are no longer reliable. And we have no way of knowing this.

And then, we have stuff like ‘oh, that planet has a mass of Xkg’; how the **** can you tell that, to any degree of accuracy? Again, just guesswork. And what if the initial method of measurement is itself flawed, like they’ve missed out some essential bit of calculation. Then you get the situation where the scientists claim ‘this is so because we know X to be so, and Y to be so, therefore we can say that Z is so’. What if X and Y are wrong to begin with? Then Z would not be so, as claimed. Scientific theories, which are often presented as ‘fact’, are often based on this estimation on top of that estimation over another estimation. Like, if you used an innacurate ruler, then a faulty set of scales, follwed by a wonky clock, and then said ‘ta-daa! This is 100% proof’.

Does this make any sense to anyone else, because I’m afraid I lost the plot some time ago. Einstein, I’m not, it must be said.

But it’s some of Science’s wild claims, that I am wary of. And the way that so many people blindly follow, and believe in it, because ‘it’s Science, and Science is always right’. Regardless of whether or not they actually understand the complicated stuff in the first place. Hands up who understands that big collidey thing? Or this Quantum Physics malarky?

‘That planet is X million miles from Earth, has a mass of X trillion kg, and is made up of mostly of X, Y and Z elements’.

It’s stuff like that which annoys me.

What about..

‘That planet might be X million miles from Earth, it might have a mass of roughly X trillion kg, and it might be made up of mostly X, Y and Z elements’.

Or, it could be a bit of fly shit on your telescope.

How about that Beagle thing they sent to Mars? Got there, borked. **** useless. Some hairy bloke got all excited, but it was shit. What a waste of time, money and effort. How about trying to solve problems here on Earth, rather than sending **** remote controlled buggies to Mars.

I’m sorry, I’ve no idea what I’m wibbling on about any more. Take no notice.

I don’t think your field is exactly 300′ long.

Take no notice

OK

Oh except for the Asbo thing, what happened Darcy?

Rudeboy – tempting as it is just to agree that you don’t know what you’re on about, perhaps I’ll leave that and just point out that you’ve missed the point about the scientific method – scientists don’t claim that they have the absolute truth (that is the realm only of mathematics). What they do have is the best explanation for observable facts, and to be useful moreover a scientific theory has to be predictively useful. Sometimes new facts come along and the accepted theory has to be changed. Somtimes you can go on using one explanation most of the time perfectly well and only need the later tweak if you need super accuracy.

For example I’d say we have a pretty good understanding of Mars’ mass, speed, orbit etc., if we are able to get Beagle to land there, mostly Newton’s laws will suffice to work all this out though you might sometimes need to bring relativistic effects (Einstein) into things to get a really accurate result.

The fact that Beagle hit the ground slightly too hard or whatever probably reflects two facts – firing a thing the size of a dustbin full of sensitive electronics from here to Mars is flipping hard to do, and secondly takes probably more cash than the Beagle mission had, given that it was done in a very British (i.e., cheap) way.

Then you get the situation where the scientists claim ‘this is so because we know X to be so, and Y to be so, therefore we can say that Z is so’. What if X and Y are wrong to begin with? Then Z would not be so, as claimed.

Well then what happens is someone points out that X and Y were wrong to begin with, and then people do a shed load more science and work out X’ and Y’ and therefore Z’ and a bunch of other stuff. This is the whole point of science.

Compare to religion, where someone points out that X and Y were wrong to begin with and they get tied to a tree and set on fire (after a period of torture with hot pokers of course).

See the difference?

This measurement is fixed, and is never changed. It becomes a standard for measurement.

But what do you base this measurement on? If you pick an object, then this is dependant on temperature, pressure and whole host of other things. If you pick something like the distance light travels in a period of time, then how do you measure this? At some point part of this fixed measurement of yours is going to have to be based on a scientific assumption, and so your proof is just as valid (or invalid) as anyone elses.
Huge amounts of scientific effort have been spent defining the standard measurements we use, like distance and time, all of which in the end are based on assumptions of scientific knowledge

Oh except for the Asbo thing, what happened Darcy?

It was on the Jade Goody thread…I referred to someone on the breakfast radio show talking about the whole thing as…now, how do I go about this without getting a suspension again…something rhyming with Duck-head, spelling the first syllable in the similar manner to a slogan seen on tens of thousands of tee-shirts not so long ago.

Apparently, I was committing the crime of “swear-filter avoidance”, something which I do occasionally, and after a quick search through the forum, realised a lot of others do too. But there’s something about Jade Goody that gets the admins a little bit wound up – I noticed this since this whole Jade Goody cancer thing – every time a thread has started, they get a little bit touchy. So, I guess I got caught in a bad moment and got the 24 hour marching orders. No point arguing about it.

Anyway, back to science versus Rudeboy!!

[edit]and if you don’t hear from me for another 24 hours, you’ll know what’s happened[/edit]

But it’s some of Science’s wild claims, that I am wary of. And the way that so many people blindly follow, and believe in it, because ‘it’s Science, and Science is always right’. Regardless of whether or not they actually understand the complicated stuff in the first place. Hands up who understands that big collidey thing? Or this Quantum Physics malarky?

I thought I’d put you right 4 pages ago. Science is not always right. Scientists are always putting forward theories and hypotheses that are subsequently proved by experiment and observation to be false. Einstein himself refused to believe in an expanding or contracting universe and fudged his general theory of relativity to accommodate his belief that the universe was unchanging. He was subsequently proved to be wrong by Hubble amongst others who discovered by observation with new telescopes and radio astronomy that the universe is expanding. Just as Newton’s theory of gravity (which is still a good model) was displaced by Einstein’s theory of relativity so has Einstein’s theory been built on by subsequent generations with new thinking and better technology.

As for understanding stuff before you can believe it you probably don’t understand quantum physics but it is still one of the best tested scientific models of the universe we have- the microprocessor and memory in your computer are a result of our understanding of quantum theory so I don’t have to take it on faith or understand that quantum theory works I can observe the results of it in front of me.

rube boy, two words: error bars.

With the Ceasium decay rate thing; what if a period of sudden intense heat or cold in that area, sped up or slowed down the rate? That might affect things to the point our estimations are no longer reliable. And we have no way of knowing this.

As far as I can remember, radioactive decay doesn’t depend on temperature. I think this has been ‘proven’ in experiments. So yes, assuming that there’s no weird effect that we don’t know about, we can date rocks.

The thing is (as has been pointed out) a good scientist doesn’t make those claims of absolute fact. The problem is that you don’t appear to be reading scientific literature but popular media instead. The media are very frequently guilty of heinous crimes against science by saying ‘scientists say x and y’ which is b*lx. What they say is ‘given x and y we can use these assumptions to show a possible link between A and B and here’s how we did it’. All scientists should (and they probably do) understand how their science is built on theories, observation and experimentation. There is an enormous pile of evidence that all agrees with itself from which we derive ‘laws’ and theories. This would be hard to argue with from a common sense point of view.

For instance, consider your measuring example. If you want to know how far it is to the moon, how do you measure that? There’s conveniently a mirror on the moon (left there by astronauts, explain that moon landing deniers) and you can shine a laser at it and measure the time taken for the pulse to bounce back to you. Now – how do you know that’s right? Does light speed up and slow down on its way to the moon?

You can also do another calculation. You know how long the moon takes to go around the earth, so you can work out using Newton’s gravitational laws how far away it is. How do we know if Newton’s laws are right? Well we’ve observed countless systems that obey the laws. Except they didn’t QUITE obey them, so up steps our Albert and works out why. His theories seem to fit the observations, so that’s what we go with. And hey presto, the distance to the moon we get from Newton/Einstein is the same as the one we get from the laser measurement.

Now, is our measurement still valid?

You don’t appear to understand the scientific method Rudey – perhaps you should read about it

Einstein, I’m not

Ain’t that the truth 🙂

* Note I didn’t read that wiki link, so I’m sure I’ll end up with egg on my face at some point.

rube boy, two words: error bars.

It’s ‘RudeBoy’.

Sorry, I’ve managed to boggle me own mind, thinking about stuff.

I love Science. I love the way that you can find stuff out, by investigating in particular ways. Science, to me, is far, far more exciting and awe-inspiring than Religion. Because Science mostly proves things to be so, whereas Religion merely offers theories and hypotheseseseseses.

And I am aware of certain basic scientific principles. I did a bit of science in college. Got a bit bored though, I must admit, when some bloke started droning on about valencies and atomic numbers and that. Decided it weren’t for me.

But I do know enough, to know that some Science is not much more than theories, yet many people will believe these to be facts. That’s the bit I’m getting at.

But this discussion is fascinating. I’m learning stuff, and it’s very interesting to see how more logical minds than mine see things.

And at least some of you agree, that blind faith in Science is not always the way to go. S’what I’m on about; keep an open mind, and be receptive to alternative views and opinions. The more information you have, the more informed your decisions can be, surely?

I don’t want to know why that bottle of milk I left out has gone green, though. I just want rid. Nasty.