05-16-2005, 01:52 PM | #141 | ||||||
Quasi Evil
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My god its astounding the level of denial you maintain quite frankly…
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The formula is very useful for obtaining RANGES. Not an answer to the puzzle. You are quite wrong when you say "there are no actual measureable figures" and its all made up. We DO know the rate at which stars have been born in the Milky Way. We also are getting a better bead on how many stars have solar systems with planets and we are just now forming a picture of how many of these planets may actually be earth like. Beyond that things get hazy granted. But you never see anyone putting information in that formula and acting like its established fact. If they do then they aren’t scientists. The formula to date is always used as a RANGE at best. Why are you so afraid of approaching questions by using a range Rian? Quote:
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Awful convenient I say… Quote:
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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05-16-2005, 01:57 PM | #142 |
Quasi Evil
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dupe
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
05-16-2005, 02:05 PM | #143 |
An enigma in a conundrum
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Sometimes the axiom, "to those who believe, no answer is necessary; to those who do not believe, no answer is possible." applies.
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Vizzini: "HE DIDN'T FALL?! INCONCEIVABLE!!" Inigo: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." |
05-16-2005, 02:07 PM | #144 | |
Quasi Evil
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Quote:
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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05-16-2005, 04:28 PM | #145 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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Quote:
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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05-16-2005, 04:46 PM | #146 | ||
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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My comment was about the context in which you brought it up (hang on, getting a quote ...)
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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05-16-2005, 04:59 PM | #147 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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*pats IRex consolingly on the shoulder*
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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05-16-2005, 05:00 PM | #148 |
Quasi Evil
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Maybe I was talking to you.
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
05-16-2005, 05:28 PM | #149 | ||||||||
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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(comment on Drake equation, con't)
OK, here's the context - in the UFO thread, you said this: Quote:
So it just made me wonder what your numbers were and where you got them and what equations you were using and what assumptions you were making. Then in this thread, Spock puts up a post that refers to a "typical time from the origin of a planetary system to the development of a technical civilization to be 4.6 billion years". The use of "typical" just made me wonder, how can one use the word "typical" when we only have ONE example to look at (i.e., OURS) and that figure is totally a guess? But I refrained from commenting. Then in this thread, you put up that equation and say, "It expresses the number (N) of "observable civilizations" that exist in our Milky Way galaxy as a simple multiplication of several, more approachable unknowns." And given the previous posts, it just made me really, really wonder at the amount of conjectural data that you are willing to accept at a high enough level that you can say with such certainty that N is such a huge number. Let's look at the variables: R - I'll agree that we can get a ballpark figure for that one. That's one of seven. fp - given how many stars there are, I don't see how we can get a good figure for this one. ne - same as for fp, plus how many factors are they considering and how are they performing the analysis? Seems like an entirely conjectural number to me. fl, fi, fc, L - all just seem wildly conjectural to me. SO that's one of seven where we can even get a ballpark figure based on observation. It just seems kinda pointless, except as an interesting exercise to play with. And given the billions of chance occurances required for macroevolution, and the miniscule numbers that should be the best guesses for the other figures, I don't see how that number would be huge at ALL. And since IMO, fl and fi, and then necessarily fc and L, would be zero IF evolution were true, that gives you an N of zero. Now if creationism is true, I think N could be a positive value. Quote:
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(out of time )
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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05-16-2005, 05:30 PM | #150 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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Quote:
(I'm glad you took it ok - I put in lots of winkie smilies )
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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05-17-2005, 07:14 AM | #151 | |||
Elf Lord
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Am hoping to get it on video and speed it up, but every time you point the camera at him he stops what he's doing and smiles at it. So unprofessional. Quote:
But the same is true even in chemistry to a lesser extent: how many people have actually seen atoms? At all levels in all sciences, we come to a point where we can't directly observe and have to use theories like instruments to test out what we can observe. If you're interested in what much smarter people than us have said about this, I'm sure there's loads of stuff on the net about Instrumentalism. Here's the entry in Wikipedia which is quite a nice little paragraph. Quote:
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06-01-2005, 05:40 PM | #152 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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06-01-2005, 05:51 PM | #153 | |||||
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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edit- I see you said that later in your post. Quote:
First of all, I send you my profoundest sympathy for the pain you and those you know have experienced from the Holocaust. It was a terrible, terrible thing, and should NOT be forgotten. Yet I think we should think and reflect upon EVERY aspect of life, and I'd say first that PEOPLE were responsible, not God. Why blame God for this? The only way you can blame God is to say, as you did, why didn't He stop it? But then you get into the issue of free will. If God stops the Holocaust, then why should He stop there? Why shouldn't he stop when a kid is mean to my kid at school? Why shouldn't He stop our very THOUGHTS, if it comes to that, because actions come out of thoughts? So if you ask that question, I guess you have to answer that if there is a God (which I think there is excellent evidence for), then He chose to give us free will to a large degree, and full and complete justice will not be in this world, but instead in the next. If God is a loving God and wants to love us and have us love Him, then that can't happen unless we have free will. And as long as there is justice at some point, then I think things like the Holocaust are explainable in the light of free will. Not as good as I wanted to say, but I have to pick up the kids now ... but again, I give you my sincerest sympathy for the pain you've had over this terrible circumstance. And to bring it to the thread topic - I think, actually, that things like the Holocaust are the natural result of "natural selection", or "survival of the fittest" - and the fact that the Holocaust is repugnant to us should tell us something ...
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! Last edited by Rían : 06-01-2005 at 05:53 PM. |
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06-01-2005, 08:51 PM | #154 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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(darn thread is not showing up!)
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
06-02-2005, 11:58 AM | #155 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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And to tie in to our beloved Tolkien, this subject reminds me of something he wrote:
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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06-02-2005, 04:00 PM | #156 | ||||
Elf Lord
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But, my point is: God helped Israel in the past (meaning, 1,000 BC or so) when they were in trouble. It did not affect 'Free wil' at all... he just helped them winning, for example, a seemingly hopeless battle, or survive 40 days in the desert without food or water. And yet, He would not help 6 millions of His believers - not that it matters, really. He wouldn't, you say, beat the Germans (helping the Allies) 3 years before and end the war when most of them were alive? Why not...? Quote:
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06-07-2005, 05:27 PM | #157 | |||
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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IOW, I don't believe in free-will because my "religion" says so; rather, my belief in my religion is strengthened because I believe free-will exists, and my religion says it does. Do you see what I mean? Quote:
It seems to me that we need to look at the "boundary value" situations here - either there is no free will, or there is complete free will. The fact that I see myself and others choosing against what would be the best immediate good for them leads me to conclude that there is not very good evidence for the "no free will" position. The fact that I cannot change my hair to a dark, raven black, cascading down past my knees, and the fact that someone rear-ended our van even tho I didn't want him to, leads me to conclude that there is not very good evidence for unlimited free will. Therefore, I conclude that the evidence best supports some type of limited free will. Since, on evidence I have discussed elsewhere, I believe Christianity to be true, and I have independently concluded that limited free will exists, I can look at what Christianity says about free will, and how God intervenes in the world and in people's lives, and see if I think that makes sense. It seems to me, after reading the Old Testament quite a few times, that God has overarching goals, but leaves the details to man's free will, so they have a chance to do well on their own and deserve God's commendation. One of God's goals that I see very clearly is the establishment of a people to Himself - i.e., Israel. The pictures of this start before Abraham, but it is with Abraham that it is clearly established: this idea of a "taking out" of a person of faith from the surrounding pagan cultures, and the sanctifying of this person to God. Another theme of the Bible, IMO, is the holiness of God. The descendants of Abraham went back to the ways of the surrounding cultures, including infant sacrifice, and God, rightly, abandoned them to their own choices for a time as a consequence, so they would learn that life apart from God's ways leads to death. They end up in slavery in Egypt, which is also a natural consequence of leaving God's ways, and when the time is judged right (i.e., hopefully they've learned something about leaving God's ways!) then God brings along Moses, another great man of faith, and leads them into the promised land - or at least, to the borders, because Moses has some failures. Finally, Joshua comes along, another great man of faith, and the Israelites enter the land and have great victories with God's help. So God's overarching goal is to consecrate a people to Himself, in a land He has chosen. This land they have lost several times due to overwhelming rebellion and sin, but God continues to re-establish Israel after a period of letting them "eat their cake" (experience the natural consequences of their own choices). I think things like the Holocaust fall into the man's injustice to man category, and are not directly "caused" by God in the way that He, for example, directly caused the Red Sea to part. I think God allows things like the Holocaust to happen to, among other things, let mankind know that on their own, these things will happen, and they (rightly) need God. Yet I imagine God worked miracles in the Holocaust, too - people have shared about some of them. I'm not expressing myself well, I'm afraid ... simply, I don't see either no free will or unlimited free will, so some position in the middle makes sense. It seems that God choses to perform miracles (i.e., temporarily set aside the natural laws of the universe) to accomplish specific goals, but largely lets us make our own choices, so we can have no complaint about His judgements, when that time comes. The establishment of Israel was a specific goal, and great miracles happened to bring this about, but at this point, I think God is letting us have the consequences that we deserve from our own individual choices, both good and bad. Quote:
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! Last edited by Rían : 06-07-2005 at 05:35 PM. |
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06-08-2005, 06:02 PM | #158 | ||||
Elf Lord
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God made Eliahu (pretty sure it has another name in English) live for 40 days in the desert, without water or food of any sort, because he wanted to see if he understands something (he did not), but he couldn't on the hand help soldiers to hit the Germans and win the war sooner? I'm not sure if it has to do with free will any longer.. as no one actually makes a choice of some sort. The Eliahu part was, IMO, since he really didn't want to go to the middle of the desert. He actually wanted to die IIRC. See? I don't understand that. And other parts. It seems, to me, that there were miracles only in the time of the Bible, and suddenly God cannot be found anywhere... no prophets, no miracles... nothing. Quote:
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06-08-2005, 06:05 PM | #159 | ||||
Elf Lord
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God made Eliahu (pretty sure it has another name in English) live for 40 days in the desert, without water or food of any sort, because he wanted to see if he understands something (he did not), but he couldn't on the hand help soldiers to hit the Germans and win the war sooner? I'm not sure if it has to do with free will any longer.. as no one actually makes a choice of some sort. The Eliahu part was, IMO, since he really didn't want to go to the middle of the desert. He actually wanted to die IIRC. I don't understand how can one be part of a greater plan, and the other can't... and how God can be seen as good when he chooses, by 'miracle', to save one person, and not a few millions. Quote:
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06-08-2005, 08:42 PM | #160 |
Queen of Nargothrond
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This thread is off topic and seems that the current discussion is more suited to the "Creationism thread" This is the "Evolution" thread.
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"Whither go you?" she said. "North away." he said: "to the swords, and the siege, and the walls of defence - that yet for a while in Beleriand rivers may run clean, leaves spring, and birds build their nests, ere Night comes." AboutNewJersey.com - New Jersey Travel and Tourism Guide |
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