spiritual stuff

[Di Wundrin]

I'm always looking for points to argue but I can't come at this one 'cos I haven't a clue what (fixing atmospheric nitrogen with electricity) even means.   damn.

I do have another question for Sparky though.    Where did the known universe come from?

Science doesn't know.  They know that it seems to have appeared in a nano second blast of sudden existence.  How they know I'll leave to them.  I don't need to understand it really, I trust them  to be telling us all that they know.

But none of them know where it came from.  Or what it was before it existed in the form we observe it.

The only difference between Science and Creation is that science admits it doesn't know. Religion makes up a story and sells it as 'fact'.  

But it was an unobservable event which cannot be tested, only theorised from the pattern of disturbance left behind as a trace.  
Yet this  event is accepted unconditionally by both science and religion because the result of it is ... everything.
But it had to explode from something else. What?
 
We   'know' that this universe was something else before  it became what it is now.  Had it been the same then it wouldn't have exploded from a singularity.  No one knows what physics does in singularities.  

They just know there are a few around.   .. there again is something unobserved which is known to exist.  No one can see a black hole.  
Black holes don't exist?  ... oh hang on, I remember now that the rider ... "If it's not observable, and I mean not at all," was used to cover the bases.   But not too long ago nobody knew black holes existed, somebody wondered about anomalous activity that didn't make sense because 'there was nothing there', and made some stupid stab at a theory that there was something there that we couldn't see.  ... how stupid was that?

So we 'know' there must be another unknown state of existence in which the universe existed before the big bang.
Is wondering just what kind of state that was, woo???   Seems kind of scientific to me.  After all, the woo brigade already know that God did it.

Is wondering if some of the components of that different state are still extant, but unobservable because they exist in a different form which is outside the 'normal' rules of physics wrong or something?   

"We are made of star stuff."
 We are constructed of the same atoms as the rest of the universe and restricted by the same rules that govern everything else .  Maybe we simply can't physically make contact with material that is not formed of "normal"  universal matter.  
The only way we can detect it is through our minds.  We may 'see' that something is there, by it's gravity signature, or because 'something is missing',  but it's  so ephemeral, so not constructed to 'our' rules that we can never actually touch it, nor may never be able to devise the tools to test it. 

Just because something seems weird doesn't make it woo, just makes it unknown.

Quote:Stanky:

The state of the biosphere and the likely hood of human survival would be much better without the contributions of science.

You've been channeling Cuz!  He said almost the same thing a few days ago.  
Something about scientists being in a competition.  The ones making hydrogen bombs are trying to kill us before the Medical scientists perfect a method of making us immortal.

I'd love to get you two in a room. 

[stanky]

Materialism, as a model, only requires one miracle at the onset.

Astro-physicists, unlike pedantic materialists, have to be pretty frisky in the imagination department.

Some will lean on energy fields blinking in and out of existence; using parallel universe and multi dimensional space ideas to grapple with the craziness.

For that matter, the very nature of consciousness is equally unknown and explainable.

Will we ever be able to explain it, in a nuts and bolts way?

I seriously doubt it...but that hardly matters. maybe we will; that would be swell.

Personally, I don't need to lean on god for answers.

(see grayman's sig.)

[stanky]

does 'cuz' drink a beer?

[sparks]

Di says: "Ummm. Dark matter, or whatever it's called this week springs to mind. They 'know' it's there but can't observe it. It's only 'observable' by the effect it has on other matter/ gravity. If they could test it they would be able to give it more than a 'theory' name wouldn't they Sparks? There seems to be a scientific tool that's missing from the box on that one."

No. It's effects are observable.

[sparks]

stanky says: "The state of the biosphere and the likely hood of human survival would be much better without the contributions of science.
In fact, a single scientific breakthrough (fixing atmospheric nitrogen with electricity) has enabled our population to far exceed the carrying capacity of the bio-sphere.

Anyone care to argue the point?"

Can I use all the people who'd have died as a result of a the lack of medicine and health care that would result if we didn't do science?

[sparks]

Di says: "I do have another question for Sparky though. Where did the known universe come from?

Science doesn't know. They know that it seems to have appeared in a nano second blast of sudden existence. How they know I'll leave to them. I don't need to understand it really, I trust them to be telling us all that they know.

But none of them know where it came from. Or what it was before it existed in the form we observe it."

"Science doesn't know." Wrong. "But none of them know where it came from." Fail again. "Or what it was before it existed in the form we observe it." Meaningless observation. There was nothing before it existed whatsoever.


One more time and with feeling: Read Krauss' book "A Universe From Nothing."

[Di Wundrin]

Noted Sparky, archived it for future spare time activity. But if I have to buy it off Amazon then forget it. They're bloody burglars!

[stanky]

(07-14-2017, 05:42 PM)sparks Wrote:  stanky says:  "The state of the biosphere and the likely hood of human survival would be much better without the contributions of science.
In fact, a single scientific breakthrough (fixing atmospheric nitrogen with electricity) has enabled our population to far exceed the carrying capacity of the bio-sphere.

Anyone care to argue the point?"

Can I use all  the people who'd have died as a result of a the lack of medicine and health care that would result if we didn't do science?

No, you can't use them. 
You can use the billions that have had to die as a result of nitrogen fertilizer  enabling an explosion of growth...more people equals more deaths...it's a simple equation.

Hence, the wonders of science have increased human deaths 4 fold....from what was imaginable within the confines of sustainability.
Worse, our mindless ascendance to this crown of creation is trying to kill all the other species...almost with a vengeance, actually.

Science doesn't save lives. It helps create more lives...human lives. Which equals more deaths...because we die.

Had we avoided science of the type that is unobjectively 'pro-human', we might have managed maybe 1/2 billion people, living in paradise, relatively spaking.

Science helped us to become 7.5 billion, and has left us floundering
It has an agenda. It has a pro-human agenda.

That's not a very scientific thing to do.
And it has left us in an untenable mess.
Hubris, it is called.

We lost the embrace of the other species that we rely on. 

That agenda; that non-objectivity; has created this mess.
Religion, at best, creates localized kerfluffles; the normal, less toxic form of righteous murder.

Science wages war on the entire bio-sphere.

The method is flawed.
The method not only avoids ethics, it almost always tends to do the opposite.

Shiner said it best (and I paraphrase)  "Science  is Mammon's bitch."

And it is true.

Science could fix itself without resorting to any official dictum's of ethics...it would merely need to shed it's pro-human agenda.
(Which has caused a radical increase in human deaths.)

[sparks]

When you get to be emperor of the universe, you can do as you like.

And, oh: Fuck you. You sit there on your spotted behind enjoying the benefits of a technological civilization while decrying all the bad things about it. And all the while spouting bullshit about a nitrogen fixation process that went out in the fucking 20s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland%E2%80%93Eyde_process

OK then stankster. Off to the dark ages with you then and best of luck to you if you get a nasty scratch which turns septic. We shall all miss your sweet laughter. Especially when we consider that a simple mold growing in a petrie dish could have saved your life.

Where the fuck is BSB when this board so badly needs him?

BTW stanky--Your comparison of deaths with science vs. deaths without science is horseshit: There are more deaths simply because there are more people alive. The death rate is down overall. Some sort of logical fallacy. Science can do many things. However, it can't fix stupid. And that particular source of stupid is religion: Women have no rights over their own reproductive cycle for example. Whole populations are kept ignorant and dirt poor, ostensibly to serve Gawd. I could go on, but why bother. I know you know this. And I know, at least I think I know, that you actually read. Which makes it strange to me that you can come up with the kind of shit you do. What could possibly have happened to you that turned you against reality? Di, on the other hand is perfectly clear: She won't buy a book from Amazon because she's passed judgement on them as being burglars. Rather too convenient, that.

How fucking charming the both of you are. Willfully ignorant but from different backgrounds and for different reasons. Stanky, I think, is rebelling against something that, I'm betting, happened about 40 years ago, and Di, you simply can't be bothered and therefore blame others as a means of avoiding the work that must be done to gain some idea of the reality of things.

Of course, I could be wrong.

I ....

I was about to say that I await your evidences to the contrary.

Truth is, I do no such thing. Neither one of you has ever offered any real evidence of any of your claims here on this board. Di I can forgive because she, at least, admits her ignorance. You, stankster, do not. Claim after claim and no evidence at all. You simply crave attention from any dumb fucking slapper (Down Under Persons: Did I get the local vernacular right?) who'll listen to you.

I, for one, am done with it.

Bye now.

And....as always: Carry on.

[Shiner]