Myweponsg00d

I live my life for what I believe to be the human goal: universal domination. I believe civilization should advance until man knows absolutely everything about everything and has dominion over everything. I'm here to help that cause.

Of course nature does not "know" existent from nonexistent, I would hardly say nature knows anything. Your argument is based on the presumption "If nature doesn't know X from Y, then it is abstract" I would disagree with this premise. The point is that existence is a word we created, but the thing that word represents is not an artificial construct. It is not abstract. Does the Sun exist? Yes. Would it have existed regardless of whether any intelligent life ever developed in this universe? Yes. The same cannot be said for a triangle, square, etc. It would have never existed if it were not for intelligent life. So? I would say that NO, a hole would NOT exist if it were not for intelligent life. As I said, there is NOTHING THERE. What would exist would just be cheese in certain shapes. Calling it a "hole" requires intelligent interpretation of, and classification of, intelligent observation. Is Carl Sagan the designer of the universe? No. He is a scientist. Our current scientific understanding of the speed of light would SUGGEST that, but we DO NOT have the absolute knowledge. And? It is still a different outcome than the three you proposed. You said there were only three possible outcomes. Logic is an abstract process of reasoning. Logic is seperate from making observations, confirming predictions, and other elements of the scientific process. Logic is basically what turns scientific observations into something argumentitive. Logic is an important part of figuring out things about the world, but it cannot act alone to make accurate judgments. "The cold hard truth"? How is it the cold hard truth? You act like "Oh god maybe we are wrong..." but that doesn't even make sense. The very moment you suggest that the things we see are not reality, you lose all possible ways of trying to figure things out. You keep going back to "talking about" things! I'm not talking about the fact that we are using language! I'm talking about the fact that we have some systems that are entirely invented by us, and nature which is not invented by us. We can know things about language and math because they are completely and totally man made. We created every single bit of it. We know the rules for certain because we made the rules and we could change them if we restructured the systems. But we did not create the stars, gravity, electromagnetism, etc. We cannot know these things because we didn't make them! Simple as that. Stop bringing in this crap about words and talking about it. My point has NOTHING to do with a lot of what you said in this quote! Sure, so we create words like "chair" and "stool" both of these things are objects with legs that you can sit on. But I AM NOT TALKING about language classification. I'm talking about the fact that an object in the physical world is a thing that we did not create. We might have created lots of crap to help us classify this object, but we did not create the thing itself, the atoms that make up the wood. Compare this to the concept of a triangle. We created every...single...piece of what a "triangle" means. Or maybe a better example: I know that the word "ball" is a noun. I know this for absolute certainty because I know what the definition of ball is, and I know what a noun is. We completely created this system of language and decided the rules that govern it. I can never know for absolute certainty that my chair can NEVER spontaneously phase through the floor. Sure we created all of the words to describe this system, but there is a part of describing this system that relies on nature doing something. Again, think of a 6 sided cube sitting on a table. You look at the cube and see the numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 6. You might be able to make a good guess that the number 3 is on the other side. However, if nobody ever lets you see that last side, would you ever say "I know for absolute certainty that the remaining side has a 3 on it."? This is an exact analogy to us figuring things out with scientific reasoning. We can only make observations, deductions, and conclusions from looking at things in the world. We never get to "look behind the curtain" and see if we are right. We can "look behind the curtain" with things that are abstract knowledge. How is "stop" spelled? I can just go look this up in the dictionary because we decided how "Stop" is spelled. We didn't decide how the physical world works, and we can't obtain an absolute truth about a physical event. CLIFF NOTES: Basically this post is extremely long and I wanted to just summarize the main point. You are basically stopping too short anaylizing these ideas. For example, lets say the definition of "existence" is "A thing that can be observed or detected." Okay, sure this is a definition we created. And yeah, maybe we defined observation, detection, etc. But eventually, you get down to nature. You have to use your eyes to look at something and see if there are any particles there. Eventually you get to something that we did not create. We might have created the word "existence" but if you dig down to the bare meaning of the word, it symbolizes something that we did not decide. The problem is that you stop at the fact that "Existence" is a word that has a definition that we decided. I'm talking about the things that we MEAN when we say "existence". If the definition of a "triangle" is "A shape with three sides" then we never ever have to rely on nature to know anything about a triangle. We completely invented the geometric idea of a "side" and a "shape." We also sort of "invented" the number three, and we have completely defined what "three" means. We made it up. Nature didn't give us "three", we came up with it to invent a system of mathematics. It's friggin difficult to talk about language while using language...

Because it isn't about us using the WORD "exist"! It is about what the CONCEPT represents! "Existence" basically means "something in reality". No matter what we called this, the concept would still be the same. I am not talking about the WORDS I am talking about what the IDEAS behind the words are. It isn't about the label, it is about the square being a mathematical construct. We invented math, and we invented what a square is. No, a hole is NOT relevant. We use the word "hole" to represent something that is lacking. A hole isn't an actual thing. It is our abstract idea for the LACK of a thing. And yes, there is a distinction between what we can call impossible and what we cannot. For example, "Can Santa fly around the world in one night?" This is not impossible. However "Can Santa fly around the world in a night if he cannot fly?" THIS is impossible. You are limiting the idea to a more abstract sense. If he could fly, we would never be able to say that he cannot fly. Its like asking "Can there ever be an object that is scalding hot to the touch and freezing cold to the touch at the same time?" No, there cannot. Because if it was hot, we wouldnt call it cold. This isn't purely a physical question, you're now asking things after you have already classified them. It could break in half and land on the edge that is now exposed. The point is that you can't have science without logic, but logic alone does absolutely NOTHING to tell you about the universe. The rest of the scientific process must be included. For example, I think it is logical that if a person eats more fat, their body might store more fat. However, this actually isn't true. Only caloric intake dictactes whether or not you can store body fat, it doesn't matter where those calories come from. But if we can't even work from the assumption that what we observe is what exists, then theres no way we can even debate anything... I mean every debate can just be boiled down to "Well, you can't even prove we exist right now so what does it matter?" Also, no, a lie is a more abstract concept. Here's a simple way that you finally might be able to understand the difference between abstract and real ideas. Where would a "lie" be if humans never existed? Where would "existence" be if humans never existed? Lies would not happen if we did not exist in the world to talk about the truthood/falsehood of ideas. Things that exist would exist whether or not we were around to talk about them. You think that I am saying "Well we made up the word triangle so we know what it defines, therefore it is abstract." No. I am saying we created the CONCEPT of a triangle, we created what it is that the word triangle represents. We did not create existence...We created the word, but we didn't create what we are talking about when we say the word.

Yes we decide what the word means but our definition of this word doesn't impact the physical thing that the word represents. You're still missing the boat on this. When I ask someone "How many sides does a square have?" There is nowhere in nature that they can look for the answer. They have to look up what we defined as a "square". It doesn't exist in the natural world. It is abstract. If aliens somehow never invented the concept of a square or two-dimensional shapes, they would need to read about our knowledge in order to answer the question. Then I could ask a question like "What happens when I drop this bowling ball?" If you ask someone this question who speaks a different language, obviously the words won't be the same. But the answer to the question exists regardless of what we call it. If aliens never invented a bowling ball, it wouldn't matter. They could still look at the ball and see the same image. Their answer of what happens wouldn't depend on any sort of language. Sure, maybe their word for "fall" would be "banana" but they would just say "The ball bananas to the ground". You've still missed the boat on an abstract idea vs. a real object. The mouth thing is impossible, because as you said, it isn't really even an object; it is the lack of an object. But it doesn't REALLY exist, it is an abstract concept. If you could even grab a mouth then it wouldn't be called a mouth. It wouldn't be a "hole". Whether or not you can grab a "hole" is again not a question of the physical world. Holes aren't objects, theyre what we define as a lack of an object. For example, we think of a hole as containing "nothing". However, this isn't even really accurate. My mouth is a hole, but it is actually filled with air molecules. If I stick my hand in there and try to grab something, I could come out with a hand full of air. You're saying that the shape of the coin restricts the outcomes -- it doesn't. The coin in itself could do any number of things. The three outcomes you mentioned are by far the most probable outcomes, but they are not the only possible outcomes. You must be using a far different definition of logic than I am. Logic, by the way I understand the word, is merely used for reasoning through abstract ideas. I wouldn't say that we know having sex can lead to pregnancy through logic. I would say we know it through science. No, we actually don't know this. You don't know for sure that the world you see even exists, and I don't know for sure that we exist in reality. However, one of the working assumptions of scientific reasoning is that the things we see exist and that we exist in reality. Take for instance, the possibility that we are all asleep in a virtual-reality software program or something. Science would not be able to investigate this hypothesis because it would go against the assumption that what we see is a reality that other humans will also see.

Actually I think you mean "adult correctional facility"

From the US (pittsburgh) [hide]1. Jersey 2. Roundabout (we don't actually have these) 3. Blinker 4. Hatchback? 5. Crackers 6. Mall 7. Apartment 8. Mud flap 9. Black top 10. Elevator 11. Candy 12. Freeze pops 13. Pop 14. Trash can 15. Porch 16. Diaper 17. Flashlight 18. Soccer 19. Prison 20. Windsuits? [/hide] Heres my interpretation of what British people talk like: (no offense...meant to be an honest joke :)) [hide]1. Fuzzy-wonkers 2. Roundy-dos 3. Blinky-blonkers 4. Buttledonts 5. Salty crispers 6. Walky-spender 7. Tallybunder 8. Wheely covers 9. Wiky wokker 10. Upper-lifter 11. Sugary-bugaries 12. Freezey-lickies 13. Fizzies 14. Rubbage receptacle 15. Galdiblanker 16. Doodymadooders 17. Lightimaboodle 18. Footmadoodleball 19. Locky-ma-docker 20. Swishle swashers [/hide]

Why? It tells you how well you did in a class. Which should correspond to how much you learned about a topic, if the teacher is teaching properly.

Seriously? Until this last year (which didn't affect my college admission) and A was a 94%; now an A- is 90%. I believe grades should be reflected on a numerical scale. The GPA system has flaws that aren't consistent nationwide. I really don't know the differences between US and Canadian grading systems, definitely a lot different though. We don't really ever actually use letter grades, but I was just giving the general conversion (A=80+, B=70-79, C=60-69, etc.) We do everything on a percent scale, which is then converted straight to GPA for anyone looking to go to school in the States. So, what is considered an A doesn't really matter. I've heard there's a lot of inconsistencies with the GPA system though, hence why I much prefer the straight up percentage scale. An A is typically a 90+. B is anything 80+. C 70+ D 60+ F 59 or below

You're not taking any sciences..?

I got my test (that I took yesterday) back today. He told us its basically the hardest test in introductory physics. But that really didn't make me feel any better. What I find funny is that I was going over the problems in my head all yesterday and today, and I knew exactly how to do them. I actually started doing them on a scratch piece of paper before I got my test back. So, it's not like I don't know how to do the problems. We do online homework, and I finish it all with ease for the most part without asking for any help (I've gotten 100% on all the assignments so far). The daily quizzes in class make sense to me, and I get full credit a majority of the time. I ended up getting a 42/100 on the test. He scaled it, though, but it wasn't much better. I got a 48% after the curve. Class average was 59%, the median was 55%. The test was over electric charge, electric fields, electric flux, gauss's law, electric potential and capacitors. I think I may just be a bad test taker... only in my physics class. Heh. All my other classes are fine. Quite easy for the most part. Its this one class where I get all nervous and freeze up during the test. Last semester, my exam grades were 86%, 64% (had the flu), 82%, 84%. I managed a 107% on the semester final, because he told the class the questions were going to be more in number but easier. So I relaxed a bit. It sounds like you have the same problem that many of my students do. My first advice is to give yourself "practice tests" with the homework problems, or with other problems from the book. Once you feel you've learned the material, pick a set of problems and try to solve them without using your book/notes (and whatever else you can't use on the exam). Physics is a type of class that is way different from most subjects. It is not enough to simply look over the homeworks and see if you understand the solutions. You MUST actually be sure that you are able to do independent problem solving. The other bit of advice I will give you is to always write as much as you know about a problem if it is giving you trouble. For example, if you see this problem on a test: "You fall off of a 6 meter tall roof and bend your knees as you land. While bending your knees, your center of mass moves a distance of 30 cm. If your mass is 80 kg, find the force that each leg experienced." Now, physics is NOT a subject where you look at the problem and can say "I don't get this problem." Even if you looked at the above problem and had no idea how you are going to get to the final solution, you can probably still figure it out if you just write down absolutely everything you know about the problem. So, for example, if I was totally stuck on that example, I would first write down stuff I know about energy. I would write down potential energy and kinetic energy. I would then write down F=ma, because I see the word "force" and I know I must find force. Well, then I also know that F=dp/dt, so I would write that down. After I get all this stuff written down, it seems that what I might have to do is find his velocity right before he hits the ground and find the time that it took him to stop. So I write down some equations that involve time. v^2=2ax and v=at. Now I would have all the stuff I need to solve a problem. Physics is NOT a field where you are going to get to the exam and look at the problems and be able to instantly say "I can do this one" and "I can't do this one". You must approach each problem with a determination in solving the problem. Write down every equation you know that contains some of the important physical parameters of the problem. Draw a picture. Draw a free body diagram. Make sure that you are getting your hands dirty, or else you're not really doing physics. If you continue into upper level physics, this will be even more important. I remember in my statistical mechanics class we were actually asked to DERIVE FORMULAS on the test, for things we have never seen before. Physics is probably the only class you have ever taken that is actually testing you understanding of information rather than your memorization of information. Also, yes, the electricity and magnetism section of Physics 2 is really really difficult. You will be getting into optics and circuits later, though. These are probably the easiest things in physics if you have a good professor. Keep your chin up and stick with the field. It is very difficult. I got a C in physics 2, which devastated me...but then by my senior year I was making As in my upper level classes that were much much more difficult. You'll find your stride.

OP: you're young and you learn. Stop worrying about this crap. Your parents or your friend's grandmom might be giving you crap for this, but they are just trying to micromanage your life. You did something stupid, now just learn from it. When I was learning how to drive, I was in my dad's old car and he said to me "Okay. Now I want you to run the car straight into this wall" We were in an old empty parking lot with big concrete walls on part of it. So we were buckled up and I hit into the wall at around only 15 mph. The car came to such a sudden stop, made such a loud sound, and it hurt like hell. He then looked at me and said "Now this was at 15 mph. If you crash the car going 4 times this fast, you're gonna die." Never forgot this moment. You can take all the drivers ed courses you want to, but nothing will teach you anything better than actually making a mistake. The only way to ever really be good at something is to mess it up first.

That's a fine quote that sums up my philosophy. I'd say it was unfortunate, but I couldn't care less about the state of the education system I've been through. I've learned what I needed to learn, I'm going to squeeze out as much benefit as I can for the least effort, and I'm not going to be the pushy parent my parents were. I notice a common pattern, parents that didn't have the wide range of opportunities their children have put it upon themselves to have their children succeed, nearly by any means possible. They never say it, but they internally treat that success as if it's directly linked to their own success, instead of the child's. The child, initially naive, goes along with what their parents say, until they become independent enough to realise that they have no interest in a lot of what they are doing. After that, they reject the continued advice of the parent instead of looking up to them, cruising at their own pace, for better or worse. I wonder what's going to be the story when the children have their own children. I think what it is is that the parents just don't like the life they had due to a lack of opportunity. At least thats how my parents expressed it. They told me "I'm not saying you need to be a doctor, I'm not saying you can't be a garbage man. What I'm saying is that I want you to get good enough grades so that you can do whatever you want. The A student could be a garbage man. The F student couldn't be a doctor. Graduate education is much different from undergrad education or even high school education. You can graduate from high school with a 2.0. If you make it to undergrad, and you still have a 2.0, theres not even a chance that you'd get into med school. There might be a "lowest" student in med school, but he probably would still have a 3.0 or higher. My masters program for example required me to maintain an 80 or higher in all classes.

What are your problems with physics? I have a degree in it and I am a physics teacher. If you haven't accepted Cs in the past, theres no reason to accept them now. Good grades alone aren't going to make you the best person in the world but they CAN give you an extra edge.

I've had my license for 10 years now and still drive like this. Well...not exactly like this. Obviously the stuff like doing a burn out is really dumb. But theres no reason to become a speed-o-phobic. Theres nothing wrong with speeding if you're not a total idiot about it. The traffic fatalities in your school have nothing to do with speeding, they're from reckless driving. I hit 80 literally every day going to and from work, and I have never been in an accident. Why? Because I pay damn attention to what I am doing. If you're gonna go 95 and be on a gravel road and talk to your friends with the radio blasting, then yeah you're gonna die and you probably deserve it. But if you keep your eyes open and focus on driving, theres nothing dangerous about going fast.

Because the only thing that is a physical thing when someone "lies" is that their vocal chords vibrate and make a sound. It is up to us to decide what those sounds mean, and whether or not they align with our definition of true. We can know for sure that a person is lying because we get to decide what is a lie. My statement would assume that aliens have eyes that work like ours. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics Quantum physics is the answer. Objects in this universe don't have a truly "fixed" location. Anything could be somewhere else at any instant. Something could pass through another thing. Now, again, it is completely improbable for this to happen to a cog wheel but it is not an impossibility. If we say that the coin must land and must stay intact then you are restricting the outcomes. If the coin is landing in a way that is congruent with our everyday experiences, then yes it would be impossible for any other outcome to occur. But, this is like saying "If the only thing I can do is walk through door #1, is it possible for me to walk through door #2 or #3?" If you want to restrict the outcomes, you can create impossibility. Logic just is not what we use to figure out the world. Science is what we use. Logic is a part of science, but using logic alone can never tell you anything reliably about the physical world. For example, many people's "logic" would tell them that no matter how dark of a room they go into, their eyes will eventually "adjust". This of course would be wrong if you were in a room with absolutely no light. However, it would seem logical to most people, since it is congruent with most of their everyday experiences. Logic alone cannot tell us anything about the world around us. I'm not picking and choosing, you're giving me things that are quite different from each other. Once you've called something "alive" you are claiming specific knowledge of what that thing is. This is a deeper level of abstract classification than simply saying "Can an object spontaneously melt?" We do dictacte what we would classify to be an "object" and "melting" but these words just represent physical processes. Calling something "alive" is very different. We have basically invented what "life" even means. Does nature know life from non-life? No. Its just a big assemblance of organic material. The classification of "alive" is very much determined by man. Would we call a star "alive"? Probably not. But stars go through cycles and have many processes that occur spontaneously when given certain stimulous. Theres no real difference when it comes to something like a rat or a dog. These things aren't really anything special in nature. We just call it "alive" I'm saying that there is absolutely no way to obtain any sort of COMPLETELY ABSOLUTE knowledge of why things happen in the physical world. The only way you could know something for certain about the universe is if there WAS a god, you met him, and asked him "Hey, so how does that gravity thing work?" We have no system that can tell give us absolute knowledge about the universe. We have a system that can give us reliable predictions (science) but it can't let us see behind the curtain.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a philosophical claim. Not a physical claim. The statement refers to claims about the physical world, as these are the only types of claims that actually have physical evidence. The claim just simply states how science works. If you want to disagree with the claim then you are just disagreeing with the philosophy of science. We invented science and this is simply how it works. Its like saying I need "evidence" to support my claim that 1=1. 1=1 is true because we defined what "1" is and what "=" is. The "evidence" for this is "Well...go look it up!" "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" has similar evidence. Go look up some works on the nature of science. You'll find that most people will tell you that grand claims require grand evidence.

But that act of speech is neither true nor false inherently! Without the human classification system of falsehood and language, we wouldn't be able to distinguish truth from lie. It is difficult to imagine a world where we had different terminology to refer to these things, but it is still something that we invented. Nature does not tell us how to know that things are true, we have invented the criteria for it. If we had never invented the concept of truth vs a lie, then all statements would just be statements. Someone would say "Hey, its raining fire outside!" and we wouldn't stop to think "Is he telling the truth?" Our rules define the logic that we interpret this statement with. There is nothing inherently true or false about this assemblance of vocal sounds. The concept of someone lying is only possible due to abstract knowledge of language. Again, I know it must be very hard to imagine a world where we did not invent a true/false classification system, but we could exist without it. When we hear a lie, we classify it as such because of abstract knowledge we have in our head. Depending on what classification systems a society has invented, it could be determined to be true, false, or something else entirely. Nothing is inherently true or false about the sounds that come out of your vocal cords. Imagine that aliens came to Earth and heard us speak. Now, if they didn't know any of our languages at all, all they would hear is just human vocal chords making noises. If I say to them "I come in peace" will they hear my words and classify them into true and false? No, it is impossible unless you know our rules, our classification system for abstract meaning. But if they come to Earth and watch a baseball game, they will see a baseball being hit by a bat, no matter what words they use to represent "baseball" "hit" and "bat". How else can I possible explain this to you? We invented what the concept of a triangle is. It is not anything real. It is a mathematical, abstract idea. We have absolute knowledge of the system of mathematics, exactly like we have absolute knowledge of the system of language. We invented these systems and we know absolutely that what we know is true. Because we invented it. I can respond to other parts later, gtg. This is a very good point. I guess whatever a God might be, he would exist in a place that doesn't follow the same set of expectations that our universe follows. This would make God more probable than a magical man because it doesn't have any contradictions that add to his improbability. The mass that comprises part of the green cog "spokes" can spontaneously pass through the mass that comprises part of the red cog wheel "spokes". It isn't very likely at all. In fact, if every person on Earth had been trying to spin these cogs since the beginning of time, it would still be very unlikely to have ever observed this event. The chances of many things happening are mind-bogglingly small, but they still exist. To say the chance is completely nonexistent is a disservice to the true nature of our universe. The coin could flip into the air and all of its mass could spontaneously be converted to energy. The coin could fall through the table, fall through the Earth, and come out the other side and shoot into space. The coin could disintegrate spontaneously. Again none of these things are realistically likely, but to call them a total impossibility is not correct. You didn't say that the Sun had to stay at its location and I had to reach it with a fishing line that has a definite length. There is nothing about this scenario that can be analyzed using "logic". Unless you are using a different meaning for logic, logic is useless for figuring stuff out about the physical world. Is there anything "logical" about a photon being a particle, but having no mass, and being a wave at the same time? No. But it is reality. If you are asking "Is it possible to have a dead living thing?" I would say no, it is impossible. Again, this dives into the realm of human classifications of things. It is beyond just simply decribing a physical event. Because, as I have said many times, the only method of "knowing" about the physical world is via science. Science is not capable of delivering absolute knowledge. Think of it this way. You have a die sitting on the table. Only one side is touching the table. You are not allowed to touch the die or move it in any way. You see the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 exposed. A reasonable deduction would be that the number 4 is on the 6th side. However, you are still never allowed to look and see what is actually there. This is how science works. We can never know for certain ANYTHING about physical phenomena. Why? Because we never get to "look at the last side of the die." We can only see certain things and the only type of knowledge we obtain is constructed from conclusions. Don't get me wrong, there are many scientific facts that are damn near perfect, with a reliability of more than 99.999999999%. But it still wouldn't be correct to call it an absolute knowledge. Knowledge about abstract man-invented things CAN be absolute. I know for sure that the definition of "baseball" is not the same as the definition of "monkey". How do I know this? Because we made the definitions. We decide what the definitions are, and hell, we could change them if we want to.

Chemicals, yes. Everything relates to chemicals. But NOT in the sense that the DNA gets "contaminated" by something. Variation of lifeforms isn't anything like when a baby gets born with 6 toes due to the fact that his mommy lived next to the nuclear plant. This type of DNA alteration is very different from the type that occurs naturally. Baby gets born with 6 toes, allows it to run faster and thus has a better probability of surviving. Baby becomes adult, has many children that all survive better. All of a sudden our species has 6 toes instead of 5. How is that not evolution? Mutations are the basis of evolution, and mutations occur because of chemicals or radiation. Get your facts straight. Mutations CAN occur because of these things. Radiation is not the only source, and it is not the most common source. Well. Wait. You slipped chemicals in there. All biological things are made of chemicals, so I suppose chemicals are definitely the cause. But not in the sense that "Oh wooops my lemur got exposed to some crazy chemical and now its a fox" Most evolutionary changes only occurred due to random variation. DNA replication randomly varries for no real reason at all. These variations produce small, helpful changes to the organism. (they could also be harmful) I just want to get this straight because it is important that you understand that things weren't running around with no toes, then all of a sudden something got hit by a cosmic ray, and its children had 5 toes. The development of beneficial traits takes a lot more time than that. For example, it might be beneficial for a short-tongued animal to develop a longer tongue. This doesn't mean that a few lucky animals developed really long tongues due to toxic exposure. The theory of evolution suggests that this process happens far more gradually. Say that some of the animal has a 5 centimeter tongue. Well, this thing can give birth to children that have something like 4.5 centimeter to 5.5 centimeter tongues. After many many years the ones with slightly longer tongues have slightly higher survival rates and these become the new standard for the species. These changes happen randomly. Think of it this way: are you shorter than your parents? If you are an inch shorter, does that mean your mom stood too close to the microwave when you were in her? No. Offspring vary randomly in small ways. These small variations in a system of natural selection will eventually breed themselves into dominance. Furthermore I would just like to add that the radiation crap doesn't even do anything to help your claim. There was plenty of radiation hitting the Earth.

The very definition of atheism SAYS THAT IT IS DISBELIEF. It is the disbelief of the god hypothesis. It is NOT a belief of the opposite. Someone says "Theres a god" and we say "I dont believe you" Thats it. It DOES NOT SAY "A person who believes there is not a god and cannot be a god" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chemicals, yes. Everything relates to chemicals. But NOT in the sense that the DNA gets "contaminated" by something. Variation of lifeforms isn't anything like when a baby gets born with 6 toes due to the fact that his mommy lived next to the nuclear plant. This type of DNA alteration is very different from the type that occurs naturally. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The part you just said, in bold, was my very point. It isn't a truth or a lie until we call it that. Until then it is nothing but sound. Determining something as a truth or a lie is a completely man made system. If we somehow managed to never think of these classifications, a statement could never be anything but a statement (basically). On the other hand, something like a baseball flying through the air has its outcome dictated by the natural world. Something being true vs. false is decided by us. Something sitting still vs. moving is "decided" by nature. Again, you don't know that the spaghetti for sure cannot come to life. Maybe there IS a god and he is going to decide to randomly make it come to life, despite the fact that it is made up of all the wrong stuff. It isn't an impossibility. And again, the triangle thing is an impossibility by definition. Triangles play by our rules because we invented them, and we get to decide what is and is not a triangle. It is an abstract creation of mankind. We don't get to decide how physical objects behave, because they are not a product of our minds. We didn't create the rules, so we can never know them for absolute certainty. Fine. It is possible because we have no way of coming to any sort of absolute knowledge about the physical world around us. We can develop good enough predictions to serve for all practical purposes, but we can NEVER call something impossible. We just don't have a system that does that. Science is not a source of absolute knowledge. It is a source of knowledge that gets us as close as possible. I think you misunderstand the way that science works. Its not like we can see something and then instantly know the truth. It is a system of predictions and likely conclusions. If you want to talk about "the laws of physics" how about this? You are walking down the road, when all of a sudden you split into a human and an anti-human (basically just two humans). Sound impossible? Sound like it defys some "law" of physics? Well, it doesn't. In fact, you can use physics to predict the chances of this happening to you. Luckily the odds are less than 10^-100, but it is still technically a possibility. Stuff like that happens all of the time to subatomic particles (spontaneously splitting into a particle and anti-particle). It happens way more frequently for these particles since their mass is so tiny. As things get more massive, it is less likely for these types of things to happen. Yet still possible. You seem to have some understanding of the fact that properties of our universe dictate the outcomes of events around us. Well, its not like these properties are absolute. Like, its not like there is a universal "on" or "off" position for "Can things pass through each other?". The liklihood of certain events occuring is set by constants that have a value (for example, Planck's constant, one of the most important constants for understanding the behavior of objects in our universe). The objects in our universe behave according to probability equations, not absolute equations. Some of these effects are totally, completely, absolutely negligible for daily life. However, to say that there is a ZERO percent chance of you being able to jump through your wall is a slight misnomer. "Basic" science is a complete oversimplification of the real nature of objects in our universe. If you are interested in learning more, google something about quantum physics. What do you want to compare then? The fact that Santa does many "magical" things or that God does many "magical" things? What is there about God that is more congruent with the reality we see around us than Santa claus is? Have we ever seen an infinitely intelligent force? Have we ever seen a being create a universe? Have we seen a being that doesn't need a beginning? What is it about God that makes him MORE likely to exist than a magical guy who can fly around the world in a night? Tell me instead of just repeatedly saying that the comparison sucks. All you have done is spit out stuff about reciepts, which doesn't do anything to make it seem more unlikely that a man in a magical sled can fly around with raindeer. :mellow: Which is my entire point for why you should not be a theist. It makes more sense to be atheist. Again you still haven't shot down the comparison to Santa yet you seem to be under the impression that you have. All you do is say "But theres no photos, no reciepts...etc..." all that stuff. When I say that maybe we just don't have the story right, you just start from the beginning again and say "The Santa comparison sucks!" All your evidence shows is that if Santa exists, he must not be exactly who the stories say he is.

Why is it abuse? I don't know, maybe I'm mistaken in thinking stuff like: is abusive. Its abuse because you keep telling me my views are stupid, full of crap, incorrect, etc. over and over again. If I tell you something is full of crap, I then provide a reason as to why it is full of crap. And again, answer my question. If you insisted that the chemical formula for water was H3O and I told you that it was H2O, am I abusive if I tell you that your "view" makes no sense? This is correct. The reason there are different lifeforms has nothing to do with radioactive elements or carcinogens. The problem I had with your use of the word "mutation" is that you seem to have the idea that it refers to something like how in cartoons there will be a fish with 20 eyes after it swims around in nuclear waste. This process has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution did not occur due to genetic contamination, it occurs due to random variations. We are not the offspring of millions of generations of ****ed up freak babies. Actually my purpose is to convince people that there is no reason to believe in a god. I'm not saying you can't be moral or practice a philosophical religion, but pretending that an intelligent creator "guy in the sky" exists is just unreasoned. I have never heard a convincing case for why people need to hold unwarranted beliefs about the physical world

Why is it abuse? This is all just such crap. I hate it. I hate the "respect" that theistic views about the origins of the universe demand. If you thought that the chemical formula for water was H3O and a scientist explains to you that the scientifically accepted formula is H2O, would you be like "Its MY explanation, stop abusing me! H3O makes sense to me!"? Is there a difference between the two when we are figuring things out about the physical world? Name something that we accept about the physical world that isn't based on physical evidence. It could also make sense if telekinetic fairies existed inside matter and caused gravitational attraction. That makes sense. But theres no reason for anyone to believe that it is true. Also many things about the physical world DON'T "make sense". Does it make sense that an object gets shorter the faster it moves? Does it make sense that subatomic particles don't follow normal trajectories but instead follow probabilistic wave functions? No. Neither of these important scientific facts would have ever been discovered if we used "common sense" to explain the world. What you think makes sense has no bearing on reality. You might want to re-examine your use of terminology. An agnostic thinks that the question of God is completely unanswerable. Not just unanswerable at the moment, but that it could never be answerable. An atheist is anyone who says anything except for "I believe a god (or gods) exists" Also you again miss the point, in saying that I can't know if "I am right". I have nothing to be right about. This is an issue of burden of proof. When an idea is suggested by somebody, the person who supports this idea has the burden of proving that the idea is acceptable. I'm not proposing anything. All I'm saying is that I have no reason to accept your idea. I have looked at it completely objectively. You have provided your arguments, I have responded and I have pointed out where they break down. If you think that my counterarguments are flawed, then point out the flaws and defend your argument. The only subjective thing I may have said is that I doubt you have any real reason to believe in a god. I guess you may have some proof that you still haven't shared with anyone, but I have found that it is best to assume that any theist has made some type of logical error. The only reason I say this is just because I have been debating creationists for so long and I have heard all of the flawed arguments before. It has been a very long time since I have heard any pro-God arguments that I never heard before.

I never rejected that there was a difference between these two fields of knowledge. My point is that a "lie" (as in, the act of one person purposely telling another person something which is not true) could still occur without having a specific label to describe it, just as the entity "god" could exist even if we didn't have a word for him/her/it. It was in response to you claiming a "lie" can only exist because we call it such, in which the same could be said about a god then. Not true. If someone says "My cat is orange." this is naturally nothing more than an utterance of speech. It is not naturally true or false. It is a human distinction that makes us interpret this speech as true or false. We invented the classification of "true" Spaghetti does not possess the ability to be sentient, just as a triangle does not possess the ability to be four-sided. It's really just a contradiction of nature. Again, just because you haven't seen spaghetti move doesn't mean it can't. And again, a triangle is not something in nature. We define "triangle" into existence. Let me guess - simply because it's physical? Tell me, is it also not physically impossible to be damaged from a 10,000 foot drop onto cement? Yes. Possible You don't know for certain that you will be experiencing a great force. I'm calling something impossible if it can literally never happen. It sounds like you are calling something impossible if it has an extremely low chance of happening. All of this could be possible. We have no way of knowing for certain. Is a three-headed rat just as plausible as a twelve-headed rat that speaks Spanish, runs his own cheese business, has twelve beautiful human celebrity wives, can throw a football over a mile, can recite the first million digits of pi, is one of the top RS PVPers of all time, and is your next door neighbor? It does not merely come down to, "Neither have evidence, therefore they are equally likely/unlikely/ridiculous/absurd/plausible". Again, do you not see the flaw in this logic? You can't just lump everything that does not have evidence together into the same boat. There are other factors to take into account, such as whether the concept violates or contradicts a more well-founded truth. I already said that a claim without evidence that would be congruent with what we expect to see in nature is more probable than one that contradicts our expectations. Okay. There are trillions of things in the universe and none of them show evidence of needing an intelligent creator. Is this evidence for falsehood? Again nobody is claiming that God doesn't or can't resist. The point is that we certainly have no reason to believe that he does. Look at his response. "You're comfortable with your own belief" LOL This is typical crap that I get from a theist walking away from an argument. "Oh well I guess we all just have different beliefs!" Yea except you have no reason to have yours and you can't logically explain to me why you believe what you believe.

The point is that you're making a big difference between something physically existing and something being true in an abstract sense - when ultimately they both boil down to claims of knowledge. If you believe four-sided triangles are impossible, you are fully rejecting an idea. And rightly so, as the idea doesn't even make sense. No, these are two fundamentally different types of knowledge. It is virtually impossible to know anything about the physical world with 100% certainty. You cannot determine existence/nonexistence or causality/noncausality with 100% certainty. This is because humans did not determine things about the physical world. We just must interpret them using science, which is not capable of delivering absolute knowledge. On the other side of the coin, you have abstract knowledge. I can know for 100% certainty that the word "me" is not the same word as "yellow". How can I know this? Because language is a creation of ours. We determined the rules and we can know for sure what we want things to mean. If your definition of "possible" is "able to occur, given that the laws of the universe were altered", then I guess sentient flying spaghetti would be possible. What "laws of nature" need to be altered? We don't have any absolute knowledge of how nature must behave. I wouldn't say that it is impossible. Then why is this true for every person every year? Like I said, every gift from "Santa" could be traced back to someone who is not him. If there is just some guy who happens to be named Santa Claus by coincidence, okay, that's very possible but there would be no point in making an analogy about that then. When you mentioned Santa, you were probably talking about the Santa Claus story (a fat guy in red from the North Pole who flies around with reindeer and gives presents to good boys and girls via chimney). Every time I point out legitimate evidence suggesting that the story is fictitious, you abandon the story but stick with there being some guy named Santa. What is the point in arguing that some guy who just happened to be named Santa [that doesn't do anything special] is as plausible as a god? My suggestion is that maybe Santa Claus lives in a magical place where we cannot see him and he is only responsible for magical acts that have never been exposed to the public. He only gives gifts to people who aren't going to rat him out. Or, maybe Santa doesn't give gifts anymore. Maybe once we started to document things by having cameras and gift reciepts, he decided it was too dangerous to come around anymore. Maybe now Santa Claus just sits in his home and gives people the emotional gift of having the Christmas spirit. I see someone is very liberal with what they call "evidence". I don't consider the history channel to be evidence for existence, I just linked that because I think it is interesting. The part you decided to leave off is my evidence for the case of aliens. That's one form of it, but you've committed another. Appeal to ridicule is a logical fallacy which presents the opponent's argument in a way that appears ridiculous, often to the extent of creating a straw man of the actual argument, rather than addressing the argument itself. "Heres a supernatural claim for which I have no evidence" is not a straw man of the God argument. It is the same thing. The only difference is that people are too brainwashed into thinking the idea of a God is somehow more acceptable. The point is that suggesting the existence of something...ANYTHING else, sounds ridiculous. Any kind of magical or supernatural being that has no evidence sounds ridiculous. Thats the point. If you are so eager to find logical fallacies in arguments, how about you start with the God argument? Most cases for the existence of a God are fallacies in themself. Hell, the most common argument is an appeal to ridicule: "The world is just so beautiful! How could it have come about without a designer?" This is not what I am suggesting. For the 5th time. The comparison to Santa Claus is that the arguments are similar. I'm not saying that a theist should also believe every argument that has no evidence. I am saying that they would have just as much of a reason to. Where are the differences? Present them again please. All you have told me is that if Santa exists then we must have his story wrong. Conveniently, this is also how the God story operates. First God was in the sky, and so was heaven. Then we changed our minds and now hes somewhere else. Then God explained how man got put on Earth. But now we know that evolution happened, so people now just define him as "an overseer". If we can redefine the God story based on new evidence then why can't Santa's story change too? If you see a flaw in the logic, point it out and describe why it is flawed, instead of calling me oblivious. Works of fiction are exactly what I would call anything written about the existence of a God. It is just some random idea we made up that has no evidence for its existence. ========================================================================== He also needed to be alive in order to commit those atrocities. Therefore living is responsible for awful things and maybe it's not good for a living society to exist. Perhaps we should start electing dead people. P.S. I am thrilled that you chose to stop responding to me again. I see it as an admission that you cannot pass your hand-waving arguments past me.

That was never my point. My point is that a lie's existence is just as "physical" as a god's existence. Did Billy tell you he was paying you back? Yes. Did he? No. He lied. The same action would still physically happen no matter what we decided to call a "lie". So, physical, abstract, whatever, it is still an epistemological claim about knowledge and truth. So then whats the point? A true lie would never exist because we wouldn't call it true and a lie at the same time. Obviously, since one of the prerequisites for being "mysterious" is to not have an explanation. But the big thing is that there are no such explanations. Santa Claus is just a fun absurd concept. Intelligent creation is the same thing. Its just a fun story that has no evidence or explanation. The whole point of the four-sided triangle is just to show that impossibility is possible. And I wholeheartedly agree with you - it is not possible for a triangle to have four sides, just like it's not possible for spaghetti to be sentient and fly, How do you KNOW that it is IMPOSSIBLE? Again, these don't disprove Santa. These just prove that if Santa exists, he didn't come to those people on those years. Or he decided that they weren't worthy of presents. Or maybe he forgot. It doesn't prove that this man is nonexistent. I'd like to see the evidence for this claim. http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/articles/evidence-of-ancient-aliens I'm no expert in the field of extra terrestrial existence but there are many historians who think that aliens may have meddled in human history. Also, the existence of aliens would not need to violate any of our current understandings of the laws of physics, biology, etc. This makes them instantly more probable than something that would violate our expectations of what could occur in reality. For example, imagine we want to investigate the question: "Is there life on this part of the ocean floor?" Imagine person A makes a guess that there are deep sea fish down there, and person B makes a guess that there are zombies down there. Person A's guess is more probable because it doesn't go against anything we have observed elsewhere, even though we might not have ever seen this particular part of the ocean floor. When did I ever say I was a creationist? My argument is just that equating God to Santa isn't very logical, but you keep finding entertaining ways to defend an appeal to ridicule. It isn't an appeal to ridicule. An appeal to ridiculue would be if I said "You think some magical dude with a beard just performed a magic act and created the universe? How silly!" That is appeal to ridicule. My comparison to Santa is that both beings have the same ammount of evidence for their existence. One who tries to argue for the existence of Santa has the same ammount of ammunition as someone who tries to argue for the existence of a supernatural intelligent being that created the planet, galaxy, life, universe, or whatever you choose.

Human definition dictates what constitutes as "physical", "object", "there". There's no cutting our humanity and subjectivity out of our claims. All knowledge eventually boils down to "abstract ideas". Language doesn't change anything about what is actually occuring in the physical world. Even if there was a scientific explanation for flying around the Earth in one night, that still wouldn't explain all the mysterious receipts and a handful of other enigmas. I still stand behind my claim that Santa is nothing but a fictitious child's tale and I have evidence for this claim. The flying around the world thing was just an example. If we had explanations for all of that other stuff then it also wouldn't be mysterious. Then what exactly does, "I don't fully reject any idea with 100% certainty" mean when I ask if you fully reject the concept of Santa Claus? If that is exactly what I said, then what I mean is that I don't fully reject the existence of an object or possibility of physical event. It is just a lot more convenient to say "idea" than to say "physical existence or nonexistence or probability of a physical event". A wooden four-sided triangle? First of all, no three dimensional object is a triangle. But, anyway, no. It still doesn't exist. You are taking something and abstracting it by calling it a triangle. If we had a wooden object that had 4 sides to it, we would never use the word "triangle" to describe it. If we knew that something had 4 sides, how could it make any sense to say that it only has 3 sides? But really it isn't even possible for a true triangle to exist in our space, let alone a four sided one. What is the point of all of this anyway? How does any of what you are trying to discuss help creationism? Every time I debate a creationist, I feel like I end up discussing what my definition of the word "is" is.