Myweponsg00d

So theres something special about "mocking" that makes the idea discredited? If Pastafarianism said that Christians should be stoned, then youd respect Pastafarianism more? Since it is no longer mocking, but instead hating. Then imagine you existed 400 years ago. When astronomers said "Wait a minute, theres no reason to believe the Earth is the center of everything" would your defense be "WAIT! Billions of people currently think it is!" If you existed 150 years ago, when Darwin was developing his theories, would you have said "WAIT A MINUTE! Billions of people think man came from God...how can they be wrong?" Hell, 6 months ago, scientists discovered life that is based on cyanide. Would you look at this discovery and say "Wait a minute! Billions of people know that life is only made of carbon!" The defense that billions of people currently think something is not a valid point. You're using a story from the Bible to justify your opinion....this is like saying "Well Noah build that whole damn ark and got all those animals, do you think he did it for no reason?????" Replace the word "unicorn" with "God" and you have atheism. Atheism does not make any claims, it is the response to a claim. If someone said "Unicorns definitely exist" you would say "Show me the evidence, or else I don't believe you" This is what atheism is. If someone says "There's a god" we say "I don't believe you." Atheism is basically the only belief system that is classified by a lack of belief. The only thing you know about a person when they say "I'm an atheist" is that he does not support the God theory.

Precisely. I'm not too concerned about whether God does or doesn't exist, I'm more bothered by the process through which people arrive at their own belief. In my eyes, it's fine for someone to state they don't believe in anything that has no evidence, and then say there is no conclusive evidence that God exists, hence they're atheist. The problem is, some people take it further and say there is categorically no God based on no evidence either. It isn't consistent. People try and dress that up by saying, "Burden of proof should go to religious people." That's a cop-out in my eyes. That just says to me neither side has any conclusive evidence. Do you believe in unicorns?

Then every religion is true, along with Nazism, Marxism, and devil worship. Also I'm sure there are some psychos out there who died in the name of the voices they heard in their head. People have died in the name of Japan, is Japan the best country? Hell people have died for basically everything. People have died due to their scientific beliefs. I guess everything is true then? Why are there people who believe in Jesus and people who believe in Muhammad? Are both then true? First of all, I'm not sure that theres really evidence that any of the disciples died for Jesus, or that Jesus even ever existed. Secondly, why would people have died for Muhammad? Thirdly, why would people have died for Hitler if his cause wasn't worth supporting? Better fire up the gas chambers. And here we go around the circle again. We also don't have evidence for or against the flying spaghetti monster. We also don't have evidence that a giant undetecable beam of death isn't going to strike the Earth from a distant cosmic event. We also don't have evidence that people hearing voices in their head aren't actually hearing a real voice from a supernatural source. Yet these people get committed to a mental hospital. If you take your same defense of religion and apply it to any other scenario, it sounds completely crazy. The only reason "You don't have evidence for or against God" sounds like a reasonable argument is that you've been brainwashed into thinking religion must be accepted. You wouldn't say "You don't have evidence for or against unicorns, so maybe they exist"

Do people also have the right to believe that the Earth is flat and not be called "irrational"? I mean they just happen to believe in something that you don't believe.

Again, how do we know that the flying sphagetti monster DOES NOT EXIST? I know that the ideology was initially intended to be a mockery, but how does the intent of an idea determine if the idea is true? Again, the original intent of the idea of a wormhole was to amuse people with a work of fiction. Yet, we now are seeing wormholes could be quite possible. How does the intent of the idea determine whether or not the idea is true? Why? What evidence do we have that the soul, afterlife, and divine creator exist? Actually, Christianity openly denounces non-believers and homosexuals. Billions of people in the past believed that the Earth was the center of the universe...does that deserve merit too? We also thought that all objects had a distinct mass that can never change. Do we want to discredit special relativity and the relativistic mass? What? People died for Christianity and this somehow proves it is correct? People die for Islam...is that correct too? Are all religions correct because people died for them? People died for the Nazis. Are they correct also? I could replace the word "Bible" with "Torah" or "Baghavad Gita" or "Koran" or "Veda". Hell, I could replace "Bible" with devil worship, Nazism, slavery treaty, etc...anything. We enslaved humans for thousands of years and people died to perserve the slave trade. Is this cause right also? The people died for a lie because they believed the lie, obviously. This is like saying "If saturated fat doesn't actually cause heart disease, why did everyone start making low fat products and buying vegetable oils?" They did it because the scientists did bad science and people believed it. Humans don't have some inate ability to see whats true and what isn't. If the geocentric model of the universe is wrong, why did people accept it untill a few hundred years ago?

No, a closer example would be Mr. Garrison's invention in the show South Park, IT. They use IT as an example to rip on airports, a stab at humor. Is the example impossible? Not really, except its highly improbable. After watching that clip, would you want to invest anything at all in IT, in real life? Only if you were protesting airports. Does anyone that invests anything in IT in real life take it seriously? Hopefully no, but if you don't understand parody/sarcasm/satire then you'd be left behind. Okay...and how you feel about IT is exactly the same way that I feel about Pastafarianism.. and Christianity. It certainly isn't impossible, but there is no concrete evidence at all to convince me that the idea is worthy of altering any part of my life to accomodate for IT. Would you respect someone who supports the idea of IT? Would you respect someone who believes in Pastafarianism? Would you respect someone who believes in Christianity? If any of the three above scenarios deserve special treatment, I'd like an explanation for why one is any more respectable than the other. None have any supporting evidence and all are simply dreamings of the human mind. Just because Pastafarianism and IT were created as jokes doesn't mean that they are less plausible. Christianity may have come from serious intent, but the claims still need to be evaluated on the same level. We don't think that a flying spaghetti monster is likely to exist, because we have never seen pasta come to life. Similarly, why should we ever think that an afterlife exists if we have never seen one? "The giant man in the sky made everything around us" is as much of a joke to me as Mr. Garrison's obscene device is to you. And I'm in this thread looking for reasons why the former is not a complete joke.

You and I are the lucky ones. I was also baptised and raised "Catholic" but my parents never really focused very much at all on my beliefs. Unfortunately, many people are not fortunate enough to have open minded parents. Heck, I look at my cousins...their parents raised them Catholic, basically reminding them every day for the things that "God did" and the things that you will go to Hell for if you think...They force them to go to church and other religious stuff where a bunch of kids sit in a room and recite Bible verses. I've recently "converted" one of my life-long friends to atheism. She was raised in a very restrictive Christian household, and felt forced and guilted into believing the religion. When I asked her why she never questioned her religion sooner, she said "Well...I guess I never really knew I could..." I think thats the stuff I hate when it comes to religion. "A parody (pronounced /ˈpærədi/; also called send-up, spoof or lampoon), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or make fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation." Hows that sound? It's something that a person created. How does this prove that the events are not the truth? Because the so claimed events are a satire on other modern religions. If you don't understand the sarcasm behind it, then there's no point in discussing this. This has nothing to do with what we're discussing. Wormholes weren't invented to poke fun at anything. So if they were created as a joke, THEN that would mean our modern scientists could never discover a wormhole?

If it weren't for hearing so many testimonies from people who were raised religious, I might share your opinion. However, I have heard too many stories of people who went through 16-20 (or more) years of their life thinking that the only right way to live was through Christianity. Now, they weren't raised in a house where their parents strapped them to a chair and shoved a bible in their mouth. But they were just raised in a typical house where their families said "We are Christian, and you are too." A lot of people actually have difficult experiences similar to "coming out" about homosexuality when they are feeling like their parents' religion is not for them. "A parody (pronounced /ˈpærədi/; also called send-up, spoof or lampoon), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or make fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation." Hows that sound? It's something that a person created. How does this prove that the events are not the truth? As I said, fiction writers invented the concept of a wormhole many years before scientists discovered the possibility. Does this mean wormholes arent actually possible? Since someone created it?

Heres the thing though, many religious people don't stop there. If you want to have a spiritual personal voyage on your own, thats fine. I love that idea. I love the idea of a person connecting himself to the universe and finding a meaning in his life. What I don't love is people who insist that this idea is correct. For example, I'm a huge fan of meditation and I believe that it has changed my life for the better. But, the science of meditation is totally not convincing. Do I go around telling people that meditation is the only way to live well? No. I know it is the key to ME living well, but other people feel differently. I also find great happiness in the sport of weight lifting. It is one of the few activities that really let me work out some frustration and do something in solitude. Is it for everyone? No. But religious people always tell me they KNOW that THEIR religion is the only way to God and that people need to join their side. Also, I have a big problem with people raising their children to believe in some particular something. Religion and spirituality are an entirel personal journey and I firmly believe that it is a bad idea to have a child of 2 years old and call him a "Christian". Would you call this child a Rebublican? A libertarian? How can you possibly say that somebody has developed a view about the cosmos when they don't even understand how to read yet? No, its what you said. Maybe the point you're trying to make is different, but you're not doing a very good job of making it. No, what I said is to show me the well documented evidence that Pastafarianism is a hoax, that it is not real. What you showed me is that somebody created the story. Fiction writers created the idea of black holes and worm holes before they were ever discovered. Just because somebody creates an idea does not immediately qualify this idea as a non-reality. Hell, this is why I say that God COULD exist. Im aware that all religions came from people who just made up the ideas, but simply because someone came up with an idea out of nowhere doesn't qualify that idea as impossible. Oh and furthermore, what you showed me is not even evidence that he DID make up the idea. What you showed me is that somebody just decided to write down that his idea was a parody. Here, look at this: "Jesus was a liar. He made up lots of things about God as a parody to Judaism." Now this must be true right?? Since somebody randomly decided to write it.

I enjoy the argument. It gives me a chance to sharpen my debate skills dealing with this subject. Already I have had to shoot down a few arguments that I've never heard before. Now when I debate creationists in the future I will have more ammo. I dont necessarily see a problem with religion in the ideal sense, but I see a problem with the way that religion is currently implemented. I don't think that stubborn belief about events actually transpiring in reality is a good thing. I don't think anyone should believe that man was poofed into existence by an intelligent creator. Nor that Earth, the Sun, the universe, etc was poofed into existence by an intelligent creator. A few hundred years ago, people thought it was necessary to believe that man was created by God. People said "The only way religion can function is if we were created by Him!" Now, even the Vatican accepts the fact that evolution is responsible for all life on Earth. The Vatican has even gone so far as to announce that the existence of extra terrestrial life would not destroy Catholocism. Wake up people! You don't need to believe ANYTHING about reality in order to belong to a system of belief. You don't need to believe in a soul, you don't need to believe in an after life, you don't need to believe God created man, you don't need to believe God created the universe. You don't even need to believe a God exists. What religion does for man is gives him a way to feel thankful for the life he has been given, and unite him with those around him who share common views about morality. Hell, if religion wasn't so damned intwined with some stupid belief about making claims about physical things that happened, I would be fully eager to call myself religious. But I just can't get past the fact that so many people think that belief about the cosmos is somehow necessary for us to get together and celebrate the life we live. Zygimantas...what do you think about that? Another thing I despise about religion is the special treatment you get if you align yourself with a recognized religion. Places of employment will allow you to have the day off if it is a religious holiday of yours. Yeah well...you know what? October 11th is an extremely special day to me. It was a day of huge significance in my life and I even think about the day on every month's 11th date. In very many ways, I am emotionally, morally, and "spiritually" connected to this day. But if I tell my employer I want off on this day, it would have to count as a sick day. But if I followed some random religion, even if I wasn't a total devotee, people would suddenly care. Why? Just because "It's my religion"

See, now you're changing your argument because you were shown to be wrong. You're not being clever, you're being stupid. And frustrating. "Yes it happened" "No it didn't!" "Yes it did!" "No it didn't!" "Yes it did, and here's the proof." "Well, who cares if it happened." :rolleyes: Thats not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that whether or not the messenger of Pastafarianism thought it was a hoax does not change whether or not the stories of Pastafarianism are true. Personal anecdotal evidence is not evidence for or against any type of religion, including Pastafarianism. If I discovered evidence of the FSM, would that evidence be rendered false because the "Creator" of the religion intended it to be a hoax? Actually theres detailed historical records of stories of the Egyptian empire that have been found in Asia and Europe, dating as far back as 5000 years ago. Clear historical records that the word of something significant was happening thousands of miles away. Yet the son of god comes to Earth, and this is only 2000 years ago, and he resurrects from the dead...yet nobody other than the writers of the Bible feel that this is important enough to write down. Also...even IF historical records from 2000 years ago were not kept very well...then that renders the Bible pretty insignificant because we are then working from the assumption that historical records from that time period are inaccurate...

I'm talking about the new testament here. I'm quite aware that nobody was alive at the beginning of the universe. So you're talking about reported accounts of a bearded man who allegedly performed miracles. Oh, and somehow, nobody managed to hear about him except for those who lived in one tiny part of the world. The only thing that the Bible has going for it over Henderson's religious documents is that the Bible was a collaborative work of fiction, as opposed to a singular author's work. Also, what is the argument you are making? That the Bible is more likely to be true because we have less documentation about whether it is true or false? So if you find a note on the street and it says "YOU WILL DIE TODAY" do you think that note is reputable because you don't know where it came from?

Are you trying to be dense? No. I'm trying to be concise. If we have proof that Pastafarianism is entirely false then I would love to see it. We don't have proof that the events Pastafarianism describes could not have occured, but we do have proof that no pastafarian writer witnessed them and they can have been nothing more than a wild guess. We don't have proof that nobody witnessed the events described. We have proof that some guy wrote it down. Which is the same thing we know about the Bible. Uhh seeing as the creator of the writings admitted he created them in 2005 and could not possibly have been alive at the beginning of the universe...yeah, we do. Which is not the same thing we know about the bible. And we also know that nobody could have been alive at the beginning of the universe, Earth, or life on Earth. Thereby putting the accounts of Genesis in the same category. Who cares if he intended it to be a parody? I believe that the FSM gave him this inspiration to get the word out about His Noodly Appendage. Clearly the idea came from somewhere. If we were all created by the FSM then the FSM gave him this idea, as proof of His existence. Also if you view the official website for Pastafarianism, they say nothing about being a mockery of religion...Anti-Pastafarianists likely spread the false rumors about it being a mockery. People who don't believe in the FSM probably wrote that

Are you trying to be dense? No. I'm trying to be concise. If we have proof that Pastafarianism is entirely false then I would love to see it. We don't have proof that the events Pastafarianism describes could not have occured, but we do have proof that no pastafarian writer witnessed them and they can have been nothing more than a wild guess. We don't have proof that nobody witnessed the events described. We have proof that some guy wrote it down. Which is the same thing we know about the Bible.

Are you trying to be dense? No. I'm trying to be concise. If we have proof that Pastafarianism is entirely false then I would love to see it.

I used to think that my dreams predicted the future. Unique things would happen in my life, and I would say "OMG...I totally had a dream about exactly this." However, I started keeping a dream journal. It turned out that I never actually have dreams that predict the future. I talked to a psychologist and she said that it is not uncommon for people to experience new events, and have their brain "mess up" and think that they had experienced this event or foresaw this event. In other words, after something happens, many people look at that event and have a false memory of seeing the event before, either in a dream or a "vision" or just a random thought.

How do we know that the writings of the FSM are false? All we know is that somebody wrote them. Which is the same thing that is true about the Bible. Because it's well documented that they were written as a parody. Don't be ridiculous. If the bible and FSM truly had equal proof of exactly who by and for what they were written Christianity would be nonexistent. Show me the documents then, that prove pastafarianism to be a hoax...Where is the "well documented" evidence that the FSM is a parody? Also, the Bible comes from a time where there were less people keeping accurate historical records, and these records are more likely to have been lost, so that means that the lack of record makes the Bible MORE likely?

How do we know that the writings of the FSM are false? All we know is that somebody wrote them. Which is the same thing that is true about the Bible.

What do you mean? You mean the Bible, because it exists, can be seen as evidence for God? There are also writings about the FSM...

That was pretty much his original point: Which is entirely fine, but how many atheists actually leave it at a lack of belief? How many go around asserting that "God = Flying Spaghetti Monster, Santa Claus, invisible lizardmen running the Illuminati, four-sided triangles, etc." (hint: "I declare god fictional")? Please, I see just as many passionate atheists reciprocating religious people's unfounded claims with more unfounded claims. Did I mention I love it when an atheist argues in intricate detail how modest their belief is? The argument isn't "Heres a fictional character, I'll equate God to the FSM because I declare they both do not exist." The argument is that we have just as much evidence for a god as we do a FSM. It isn't saying that "the FSM is impossible and god is also impossible".

To fill you in, the discussion I am having with CGF stemmed from me defending atheists who use the flying spagetti monster as a comparison to a god. CGF was thinking that atheists use this comparison to say that it is impossible for a god to exist, when in reality the actual use of the FSM is just saying that if we have no evidence for something then we don't have a reason to believe it. He said it would be impossible for there to be a FSM, and my defense is that we don't really know what is impossible about the physical world. However, he also said that some atheists compare god to a 4-sided triangle. I said this is a faulty comparison because we know for certainty that a 4-sided triangle cannot exist, because a triangle is something that is a man-made concept and we have complete knowledge of how a triangle "works"

No. If it was truly 2 dimensional, you could not see it. It is a 3D object. All things you can see are three dimensional. There are no two dimensional objects in our space. What? Color contrast? How is that going to solve anything? You cannot see a line, a true line. All "lines" you see will have some thickness to them. This makes them not an actual line. Again it was interpreted by us and abstracted by us, but none of that matters at all if the rules of that system don't actually depend on nature. Even if the "inspiration" for geometry was a perfectly formed circle floating in the sky, our entire system of mathematics doesn't DEPEND on that at all. The inspiration could have come from literally anywhere, and the source of this inspiration does not have any impact on what we determined to be the rules. No, I wouldn't say that a hole is an object that can be detected. I would say that you can detect shapes of objects, but I would not say "look, I found a hole!" Hell, there technically isn't a "hole" in an object anyway. Heres a "hole". Now, this object technically isn't even missing anything...the object is one solid uninterrupted surface. The only reason we call it a "hole" is because we choose to interpret this brick wall as something that should be continuous in its lengthwise dimension. When we see a "hole", what we mean is that the object is lacking material in a place that the material is otherwise continuous. The object itself is still one entire solid object with a single surface. It just doesn't "look like it" to us. A hole is completely an interpretation, based on what we have decided objects "should" look like. See above. If you want to completely misuse the word "theory" then sure. But I assure you that no proper scientist uses the word "theory" the way you are thinking about it. The distinction between "law" and "theory" makes perfect sense. Laws are what we believe to be facts. Theories are what we believe to be explanations. For example, gravity is a law. Our current knowledge suggests that the force of gravity should always exist between two objects that have mass (though, massless photons are also affected by it). This is a law, because it tells you what happens. The "theory" of gravitational attraction is what is currently being worked on, to tell us why gravity exists, or how it gets created. Also, compare to biology. There is a law of natural selection that tells us that things that are stronger will stand a better chance of survival. There is a law of genetic variation, telling us that organisms will change over time. These are things that our current knowledge tells us will always happen with life as we know it. Then, we have the theory of evolution. This is a theory just because it explains the process of life coming about on Earth. It is not a theory because we are uncertain. It is a theory because it is an interpretation of factual information. Laws are what we believe to be facts, theories are what we believe to be explanations. I would not say this re-worded question is impossible. Your previous conjecture seemed to be similar to "Can a dead thing be living?" I would say it was impossible because there would be no way for us to call something dead and living at the same time... If your question is "Can this pile of dinosaur bones start breathing?" I would say that it is not impossible, in the absolute sense. Again...how could we ever call it truly impossible? What is our knowledge from? We have arrived at the assumption that bones cannot breathe because we have looked at tons and tons of bones, and none of them were ever breathing. It is logical then, to submit that this stack of bones is nothing special and will probably not spring to life. But, take a look at that knowledge again. You didn't get any sort of absolute knowledge. All you did was draw a rational conclusion based on observations and inductive reasoning. Return again to my example of a 6-sided cube sitting on a table. You see only 5 numbers, and can make a perfectly logical conclusion about what number was on the final side. But, if you never ever got to see what was on the final side, would you ever say "It is impossible for the last side to be anything but a 2!"? I would hope you wouldn't say this, because it is entirely possible that the final side has a picture of a monkey on it, with no numbers what so ever. Us examining the physical world is not much different from this example. We never get to actually look behind the curtain and say "Hey bro, did I get this right??" We just have to draw as many logical conclusions as we can. Yeah the only reason I actually touched on it is because I took it to mean "fact that makes me feel uneasy" Okay, and? Does this affect whether we can call physical events absolutely impossible? If I knew how to create a quantum observation tool that does not de-quantize the phenomenon, I would be a nobel prize candidate. We just haven't reached this state of knowledge in our technology. I can't tell you how to eliminate the quantum observer effect because the tool hasn't been invented yet. Return to my gold mining example. Do you think ancient miners hundreds of years ago could have ever imagined what kind of invention would let you see below the ground before you break the surface? This is an entirely valid point...but my interpretation of what you just said seems to help what I am saying. Theres no possibility or impossibility in nature. We made up that concept. The only things that can be impossible are other things we made up. From what I have heard, the concept of "one" is thought to originate with the singular conciousness that you experience and reflect upon. Once man was able to recognize himself as "one", he started to see other "ones" in nature. To my understanding, this applies to all somewhat intelligent life. I completely disagree with this. The only thing science takes as a "known" is that the images that are being seen by us are reality. I wouldn't say that we have absolute knowledge that bones are dead, that gravity will always happen, that energy must be conserved, etc. Again, most of these are extremely extremely logical, predictable, and consistent conclusions. But even if we reach a conclusion that holds true for a billion years, the billionth-and-one year might shed completely new light on a subject. There's absolutely no telling what we might end up being wrong about, no matter how certain our current scientific understanding of the world is. We can never reach an absolutely certain scientific understanding. And your point is complete crap, because theres no similarity or difference between things unless we are there to decide it. Judging things by "are these the same?" is able to create impossibility because we decided they arent the same. Hell, a rhino and a penguin are made up entirely of the same chemical compounds. Maybe they'd look the same to somebody else. And they are definitely both made up of protons, electons, and neutrons. Who gets to decide what is the same and what isn't if we aren't around? This decision would take intelligent arbitration, and is not a "natural" property of the things. Show me what is meant by "one" then. Don't show me an example of "one". Show me what is the universal, undeniable, non-abstract meaning of "one".

I volunteered at the hospital enough to see many people at their moment of death. I'm not a doctor or anything but when they get a code, anyone in the area usually can do something to help... Although, I have never seen somebody die a violent death. Like being shot or something. I was around the corner when this happened though... http://www.wpxi.com/news/18810886/detail.html Heard it and saw the aftermath. Was really awful.

Patterns on a snake are not two dimensional either. Also a triangle needs to be made out of lines. The "triangle" you drew is made out of very small rectangles. You've never seen a true triangle. This isn't a triangle. You've never seen a triangle. It is a representation of a triangle. A triangle is an abstract concept. Like I said you can apply the shape to things and call things triangular, but it isn't actually a triangle, and therefore it doesn't make sense to treat it like it is a physical object. No physical object will really fit the definition of a triangle. Who cares if it was inspired by anything? How impact whats important, the fact that we created the rules that the system plays by? Not something that I can touch, see, and hear. But something that can be detected. If something can't be detected then it doesn't exist. Exactly...a void is present...but a void isn't an object, it is the lack of an object... It is not a fallacy, because scientists understand how laws work. Also, the word "theory" in science doesn't even mean "something we're unsure about" a theory is an explanatory model. For example, the theory of special relativity is not something that is still "up for debate" and trying to become a law. We are extremely certain about the theory of relativity, but its just that the thing is not something that is even capable of being a law, due to the way that the knowledge is used. Laws state facts, theories state explanations. We could get the facts wrong, or get the explanations wrong. Neither is better than the other. Another example, the "theory" of evolution is not called a "theory" because it is a proposition. It is called a theory because it is an explanatory model for how things come to exist, due to the law of natural selection. It's not got anything to do with words.....again...It's got to deal with the claim. When you call something a "fossil" you're calling it dead. When you call something "living" you're calling it alive. What could we possibly look at and call it alive and dead at the same time? Now let's change your question around. "Is it possible for a skeleton of a dinosaur to start moving?" I would say yes, it could be possible. Would I call this thing "living" or "dead"? I have no idea. But when you ask questions like "can a dead thing be alive?" I have to say its impossible because by using the term "dead" you are categorizing the thing into what you hold for the definition of "dead". If you're telling me that you know the thing is dead, how could you possibly ever think it was alive? Look at my question again: "Is it possible for a skeleton of a dinosaur to start moving?" I did not classify this object into any abstract categories of what the object may or may not be able to do. Now, I did use the word "skeleton" but if we had a skeleton in front of us, I could point to it and ask "Is it possible for that thing to start moving?" I would say yes. Now if I ask the question "Could a dead thing be alive?" I would have to say no. It couldn't, because you're telling me that you know the thing is dead, and if we can call it dead I can't see how we could possibly ever call it "alive"? I was just saying your use of the phrase "cold hard truth" implied negative feeling. I don't think theres anything negative about the fact that we might not even be seeing reality. I think its a possibility, but it isn't worth persuing as a base to make other decisions off of. So you're saying that you just want to treat scientific knowledge as absolute knowledge, just for convenience? It isn't that the act of observing the thing has an effect, its that our tools of observing the thing have an effect. Say we were miners, and we were looking for gold 500 years ago. We would slam our pickaxes into the ground and hope to unearth some precious ore. But, theres no way for us to know whats below the ground until we dig at it. So we swing our pickaxe at the ground and accidentally shatter a valuable ancient vase. This vase just experienced the "observer effect" (kind of...I mean, this is just an analogy). We wanted to see what was under the ground, but the only way for us to do that was to dig into the ground and disturb the way that things were sitting. Nowadays, we could use ultrasound to see what was below the ground before we ever broke the surface, and our destructive "observer effect" was reduced. The same is true for quantum phenomena. It's not that the act of a human detecting it affects the particle. It's that the only methods we have for detecting the particle will affect the particle. It is entirely possible for us to invent some type of device that will not create an observer effect. It isn't human existence that affects the particle. Okay then it isn't a pattern, it is skin. You just said the same thing again. I'm telling you yes, it was inspired by nature. But none of it is governed by nature. So what if it was inspired by nature? If the system doesn't have any rules that were created by nature then why does it matter? You've got this backwards. We don't have math because we saw that one bird is different than two. It is the opposite. We know that one bird is different than two because we have math. I reached that premise because if a part of our knowledge depends on something we did not create, then we may not know everything about it. There is no part of math that depends on something that we did not create. Is there any part of mathematical understanding that could ever be disproven by something that you see in the physical world? If there isn't, then math doesn't depend on the physical world and was therefore entirely created by us. I think this comparison just goes to even further demonstrate the effectiveness of the distinction between man-made and not man-made. We invented the system of classifying animals by name. If we call something a penguin, theres no possible way we would call it a rhino. Hopefully you are beginning to see the difference between questions that rely only on man-made classifications and questions that are about nature. Again, you're losing the line between pure physical questions and questions that break down due to classification contradiction. If your question was "Could there be an animal that is half-rhino half-penguin?" Then I would say this question could be influenced by observations in the physical world. But the question the way you phrased it "Can a rhino be a penguin?" doesn't even require observation. By calling it "a rhino" you can't call it "a penguin". The fact that you don't even need to think about biology or anything to answer your question should send off a flag that the question is not physical. Now take a look at the other question "Could there be a half-rhino half-penguin?" We could investigate this question by looking at DNA, looking at animals, etc. There is nothing about this question that immediately excludes possibilities due to our classification. A rock plus a rock is not math.

Those aren't triangles by definition. They appear triangular, or reminiscent of a triangle, but it is not a triangle. Maybe "abstract" is a confusing term to use, then. Maybe "man made" is a better term. By "abstract" I mean "entirely created and governed by man". No, it doesn't exist, because it is not a thing. How can an object be a lack of an object? Also, I agree that "lack of matter" would exist whether or not we talk about it, but is simply "lack of matter" the same thing as "a hole"? No, if so, we would call most of our universe "a hole". A "hole" by our definition specifically requires there to be an object that has a void inside of it. But this is nothing special, this object doesn't have some special property that makes it have a hole. It just looks that way, and it is how we interpret it. It is not a natural property. Yes. Laws are not absolute knowledge and you would be a fool to think that they are...Hell, if you asked somebody 150 years ago "Can an object ever get shorter if you just increase its velocity?" they would probably think the question was very odd and improbable. However, now we know length contraction to exist due to special relativity. In another span of 100s of years, the knowledge we have today will likely be outdated by more advanced theories. Just because we currently think that nothing can go faster than the speed of light doesn't mean we know this for absolute certainty. Newton's second "law" used to be F=ma. Now it is F=dp/dt. Laws are perfectly capable of error. And again, if you want to say "If only there are only three possible outcomes, then it is impossible for there to be any other outcome" then fine. But you are restricting what you are looking at and separating it into categories. It's like asking "Is it impossible for a red ball to look blue?" Yes it is. By calling it "red" you assert knowledge of the object, and if that knowledge were to change, then it wouldn't be "red". The same goes for your coin thing. If you want to define a coin as a flat cylinder whoose shape cannot be altered, and if you want to say that it HAS to "land" on something in order for it to be considered a "flip", then maybe anything other than those three scenarios cannot be possible. But you've just totally restricted the question to some outcomes that you have designated as possible. Its like saying "If I cannot possibly explode, can I possibly explode?" Youre restricting the premise of the natural event... Again, it is clear that you are talking about something that I am not talking about. When I use the word "logic" I use it to refer to a specific thought process. It sounds like by "logic" you mean "inductive reasoning, paired with observation." You are using the word "logic" to mean "all forms of rational actions". This is not what I mean when I talk about "logic". Logic is a part of scientific research, but it doesn't do the job by itself. I have not contradicted myself. I acknowledge that we might not even be seeing reality, but I don't let this impact my reasoning about the physical world. What it sounded like you were saying is "Crap, maybe we are wrong about reality, which means everything else might not actually be physical!" And again, it sounds like you are entirely confused about my whole point. You've just said we have no means of acquiring absolute knowledge that a rock even exists to begin with. This is my point, we don't know stuff about the world for absolute truths. The only things we can know for sure are things that only exist in our thoughts. A triangle only exists in our thoughts. Definitions of words only exist in our thoughts. And I didn't talk about your "observer effect" because you don't understand what it means. It doesn't mean that by the act of human eyes looking at something, it alters the thing's existence. The observer effect simply is that to observe an elementary particle, we need to do something to it that will impact its existence. The observer effect literally has nothing to do with anything you're trying to say. The pattern exists but it is not a triangle. I'm not contradicting myself, you've just managed to completely miss the idea of abstract versus non-abstract things for 5 pages and are starting to understand what the hell I am talking about. Just because we were inspired by nature doesn't make these systems governed by nature. What does 1+1 equal? Two, right? Well, when I asked that question, did you have to stop and thing "Now wait, if I have one rock and one rock, how many rocks will I have?" No. Our system of math is completely abstracted. Our understanding of "one" isn't based off of knowledge of nature. If it was, that means that there could be something we could see in nature that would change our minds about "1" and make it mean something different. Is there anything nature could show us that would make us need to change any of math? No. The system is completely man made. Now if I asked you "What happens when I drop this object?" you have to draw on knowledge of past physical observations to answer the question. Could nature show you something that contradicts your knowledge of objects falling? Yes, you could let go of the object and it could go up. This isn't likely based on our understanding of gravity, but it is still something you could see that could change your knowledge. There is literally nothing we could possibly see to convince us that 2+2=5, that a square has 6 sides, or that the dervative of 5x is not 5.