Warp wrote:
>   I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
> of christianity.

What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should 
anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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andrel wrote:
> On 7-1-2011 17:51, Invisible wrote:
> 
>> And it's /still/ not science. You know why? No testable predictions. Not
>> a single damned one.
> 
> So mathematics is not science?

No, math is not science. Science is finding what versions of math (i.e., 
axioms and productions and such) are isomorphic to reality.  There are 
tremendous swaths of math that have nothing to do with science.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
> > only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
> > of christianity.

> What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should 
> anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?

  The question is literal interpretation vs. allegorical interpretation.
Just because something is written figuratively doesn't mean that it's not
describing a real event. The details may be fictitious, but it may still
be describing what happened.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> No, math is not science.

  Define "science" (in a way that excludes math).

  (And don't confuse "science" with "natural sciences", which is a subset.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> No, math is not science.
> 
>   Define "science" (in a way that excludes math).

Investigation into the workings of the real world. Including the real world 
of human behavior.  Math only applies to the real world to the extent it's 
isomorphic to reality. It's trivial to make up mathematical systems 
completely unlike anything in reality.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
>>> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
>>> of christianity.
> 
>> What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should 
>> anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?
> 
>   The question is literal interpretation vs. allegorical interpretation.

But we're not talking about the allegorical "sun rising" kind of thing (vs 
Earth orbiting the Sun). We're talking about whether some supernatural being 
intentionally created humans as they are, told them lies, then punished them 
and all their descendants for believing some other third party that pointed 
out the lies were lies. Then killed all but a handful because they disobeyed 
him some more.

I don't see how you can turn that into an allegory that makes "sin" still be 
a reasonable concept. What might have *really* happened that would make it 
possible for the death of a rabbi a couple thousand years ago capable of 
affecting what happens to you after you're dead? I just can't imagine what 
would give YHVH any moral authority to dictate what humans do and to punish 
them for failing to do so, if YHVH didn't actually create humans.

I'm honestly open to being educated here. It's fun to consider this sort of 
thing. I don't think you'll convince me, but I'm honestly and sincerely 
listening.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> Warp wrote:
> >>>   I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
> >>> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
> >>> of christianity.
> > 
> >> What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should 
> >> anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?
> > 
> >   The question is literal interpretation vs. allegorical interpretation.

> But we're not talking about the allegorical "sun rising" kind of thing (vs 
> Earth orbiting the Sun). We're talking about whether some supernatural being 
> intentionally created humans as they are, told them lies, then punished them 
> and all their descendants for believing some other third party that pointed 
> out the lies were lies. Then killed all but a handful because they disobeyed 
> him some more.

> I don't see how you can turn that into an allegory that makes "sin" still be 
> a reasonable concept. What might have *really* happened that would make it 
> possible for the death of a rabbi a couple thousand years ago capable of 
> affecting what happens to you after you're dead? I just can't imagine what 
> would give YHVH any moral authority to dictate what humans do and to punish 
> them for failing to do so, if YHVH didn't actually create humans.

  You are making many category mistakes here. The most prominent one is
"either the story of genesis is literal and God created the universe and
the principles we must obey, or the story is only an allegory and God did
not create the universe nor the principles we must obey". It think this
is called a false dichotomy.

  Just because the story might be told with allegories doesn't necessarily
mean that the gist of the story is not true. Just because something is
expressed as a metaphor doesn't make what the metaphor is referring to
false.

  Another mistake you are doing is straw man argumentation: You are taking
the (well, *a*) literal interpretation of the scripture and then mocking it,
arguing that since it makes no sense, nothing of it can be true (not even
the idea that is being expressed in allegorical form).

  Note that I'm not saying anything about the story is true. I'm just
saying that your argumentation is fallacious.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 8-1-2011 18:35, Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Warp wrote:
>>>> This is a rather fair assumption
>>>> to make because it's the result of a measurement
>>
>>> Actually, I believe einstein hypothesized that because Maxwell's
>>> equations (amongst others) had it down as a constant.
>>
>> What I meant is that if you were to deduce the Lorentz transformations
>> now (eg. for an article on relativity), you can refer to experiments such
>> as the famous Michelson-Morley experiment (which predates special
>> relativity
>> by almost 20 years). Even if Einstein had never even heard of such an
>> experiment (which I really find hard to believe, but whatever), it
>> doesn't
>> really matter. It's still a fair assumption to make because of that and
>> many other experiments.
>>
>
> I wasn't really disagreeing. Just pointing out where the hypothesis came
> from that the evidence turned into a theory.

A modern way would be to assume that there are 3 space dimensions and 
one time, with a distance between 2 points defined by x^2+Y^2+z^2-ct^2 
(though I am not sure if that was a necessary assumption, it has been a 
long time).
Investigate what happens if in this universe laws have to be invariant 
for translation and rotation.
That will give you Lorentz contraction and Maxwell's equations, and 
light that propagates with lightspeed. But that is just maths and not 
science. ;)
OTOH if this is not observed in our universe, we either have more than 4 
space/time dimensions or laws are not invariant, both do not seem 
compatible with reality.

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On 1/8/2011 2:07 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> I think, unfortunately, for something this fundamental to the structure
>> of everything, and poorly understood enough that we don't even 100% know
>> what we *should* be looking for, its a pure toss up as to if it produces
>> something that isn't coincidental. But, I don't know anything close to
>> enough about it to know if there is a reason to assume otherwise, or not.
>
>    I have been thinking that perhaps trying to find a unifying model is
> futile because gravity and quantum mechanics are *not* related to each
> other. They are two completely independent and distinct features which
> just happen to co-exist in the same universe. They can *affect* each
> other, but the laws that govern each one are distinct and independent.
>
>    If there are multiple universes, perhaps there are universes where
> there is no gravity at all, and others where there is no QM at all.
>
Possible, but, even if that is the case, you can still come up with 
formula that say *how* they do interact, which, given that its those 
interactions we will use to produce results, ends up being the same 
thing, for all intent and purposes.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 1/8/2011 11:26 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> I have been thinking that perhaps trying to find a unifying model is
>> futile because gravity and quantum mechanics are *not* related to each
>> other.
>
> I sometimes argue that perhaps the universe is not logically consistent,
> in exactly this sense, and I usually get shouted down. Maybe there isn't
> any mathematical way to describe everything in the universe, and
> depending on what you measure, you will *always* have errors due to the
> fundamental nature of the universe.
>
> Granted, I often raise this in the context of "scientists have faith
> that this isn't the case", in the sense that it would be very unlikely a
> smart scientist would give up looking, ever, for that elusive theory
> that applies everywhere.
>
The only problem with that is, it would have to only be non-logically 
consistent on a very small scale, since, otherwise, there is no evidence 
this would be the case. It also runs into the whole mess that *no* one, 
neither scientists, nor the religious (who love this argument as an "in" 
for their "faith"), would have any damn clue what is going on.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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