The Flat Earth Society

Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth Theory => Topic started by: Wonderer on April 16, 2020, 12:32:22 PM

Title: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Wonderer on April 16, 2020, 12:32:22 PM
I previously posted a question (https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=16240.0) asking why, if the Earth is flat, evidence would have been falsified and the millions involved in keeping this secret for thousands of years wouldn't have let slip.

Pete's response was to point me to the FAQ - I'd already read this before posting my initial question and it held no information on the question:

If the Earth is flat why is there so much effort in saying otherwise?


We see in The Conspiracy (https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Conspiracy):

Quote
There is no Flat Earth Conspiracy. NASA is not hiding the shape of the earth from anyone. The purpose of NASA is not to 'hide the shape of the earth' or 'trick people into thinking it's round' or anything of the sort.

Okay, great! So no one is trying to put out false information about the shape. The page goes on to talk about a conspiracy around space travel but that diverges from our initial question.

Forget NASA or America, the idea that the Earth is round had been around for thousands of years before them.

For the idea to carry on we need every country to buy into it, we need physicists to construct laws of physics and spend their lives writing about this, assumedly fictional, work. We need handlers to make sure none of these people blab and we need to have had it for thousands of years.

Throughout the FAQ nothing addresses the question of why, if the Earth is flat, there so much effort in saying otherwise?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: MathJunkie1 on April 16, 2020, 02:49:32 PM
I'm glad we're getting down into the nitty gritty questions that Flat Earthers don't like us to ask. It really makes them start to sweat.
I have a follow up question which is comparable to yours:
How come all these supposed "conspirators" who say the Earth is ROUND agree completely on what that looks like, but there are so many different presentations of a flat Earth?
I've seen people say we live in a closed system where all the stars and other planets are simple lights in the sky, yet I've also seen the official Flat Earth Society post on Twitter that, unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be spherical! I think there's too much of people asking "how can we prove this" and too little of people asking "why do we need to prove this"
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Wonderer on April 17, 2020, 01:34:56 PM
I just think it's healthy to ask the whys.

There can be a lot of things that are confusing at first glance. If a person is looking out the window and thinks the world appears flat it might be difficult for them to reconcile that with what they're being told by scientists, teachers, pilots and so on. This might tempt them to search for an alternative view point that stays consistent with the belief the earth is flat. Fine if they want to explore that, but they should also be considering why, if the world is flat, the other people are saying otherwise.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 11:03:23 AM
Also, why pretend we have satellite navigation, satellite broadcasting, satellite communications including internet and phone, satellite imagery for cartography and weather forecasting if these things don't exist? If they were an illusion, keeping this illusion alive would be extraordinarily hard and expensive. So why create the illusion in the first place?

Some flat earthers seem keen to distance themselves from conspiracy theorists, but the naked truth is you just can't believe in a flat Earth and not believe in a massive global conspiracy.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 18, 2020, 02:36:06 PM
I'm glad we're getting down into the nitty gritty questions that Flat Earthers don't like us to ask. It really makes them start to sweat.
'Don't like you to ask' doesn't mean 'sweating,' it means 'bored.' Do you really think you're being original?

Obviously no one can give you the nitty-gritty details of what's by definition concealed, so there are a number of possibilities. My personal conclusion is that even as recently as the 60s they did genuinely believe the world was round, that was the conclusion they'd reached, established, and when the time came for space travel the issue had been soaked too much in political rivalry and tension that when they struggled to make it work (using RE physics for calculations), they ultimately chose to fake the images in line with what it was they believed to be the case to score points. Russia came up with that idea first, the US scrambled for a bit before deciding to dedicate their efforts to faking in turn, and one-upping the Russians.
That was how it started, and there's not exactly a good point to come out and say 'oh, no, we made all that up,' particularly when the other side hasn't. At this point it's self-sustaining. There's one RE model because they took the one they believed in at the time and basically put it above question.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 04:01:20 PM
The Wiki talks a little about the origins of Round Earth Theory.

https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Ancient_Greeks

It all started when some of the Ancient Greek Philosophers decided that they wanted to rebel against the scriptures by showing that the Earth and various phenomena could be explained through natural processes rather than divine intervention. They went out and found observations which they could interpret for a round world.

We later found out that this process of investigation is invalid, and that Scientific truth could only really be discovered through experimentation rather than the fallacy of human interpretation. Despite the bulk of truths in fundamental physics being experimental in nature, Astronomy remains observational (https://wiki.tfes.org/Astronomy_is_a_Pseudoscience).

When browsing the titles of science books at a local bookstore you will find that this whole secular movement and attitude of "Here are observations which disprove scripture" continues today. We find titles like 'The God delusion', 'Outgrowing God', 'Nullifying God', etc. Clearly an underlying motive there.

So yes, while not espousing any particular position, it really all has to do with religion. From the very beginning it was really all about science trying to disprove God. A shameful bias.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 04:27:18 PM
My personal conclusion is that even as recently as the 60s they did genuinely believe the world was round, that was the conclusion they'd reached, established, and when the time came for space travel the issue had been soaked too much in political rivalry and tension that when they struggled to make it work (using RE physics for calculations), they ultimately chose to fake the images in line with what it was they believed to be the case to score points. Russia came up with that idea first, the US scrambled for a bit before deciding to dedicate their efforts to faking in turn, and one-upping the Russians.
That was how it started, and there's not exactly a good point to come out and say 'oh, no, we made all that up,' particularly when the other side hasn't. At this point it's self-sustaining. There's one RE model because they took the one they believed in at the time and basically put it above question.

And no one involved ever exposed the plot? Such a conspiracy would probaby involve millions of people if not more. At least anyone working with anything related with satellites. Where are the whistleblowers? How do you make so many people keep it a secret?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 04:31:20 PM
When browsing the titles of science books at a local bookstore you will find that this whole secular movement and attitude of "Here are observations which disprove scripture" continues today. We find titles like 'The God delusion', 'Outgrowing God', 'Nullifying God', etc. Clearly an underlying motive there.

So yes, while not espousing any particular position, it really all has to do with religion. From the very beginning it was really all about science trying to disprove God. A shameful bias.

Show me one published scientific paper that claims to prove God exists or does not. Source, please.

Random books people write are not science, they are entertainment. People can argue God exists or does not, science doesn't touch that.

Science has NOTHING to do with religion, it's the exact opposite, science specifically does NOT argue for or against the supernatural or faith. That's why we have religion. Religion deals with questions science does not touch. Religion is faith based, science is fact based. If your faith is threatened by science, it's not sciences fault.


Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 05:04:09 PM
The people writing those books are often scientists themselves.

That sort of content appears in published scientific papers as well.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.genom.4.070802.110400

And from this paper we learn:

Quote
On October 10, 2002, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) Board adopted a resolution that registered its opposition to “so-called
‘intelligent design theory,’ also known as ID” (1).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the largest, oldest, and most prestigious mainstream science organizations. They officially oppose the doctrine of intelligent design. They officially declare their bias.

A science organization declaring official opposition to a theory. How, exactly, did they prove that God, or some unknown intelligence, did not guide evolution or biology like ID suggests? After all, the Scientific Method demands that science bases its truths on experimentation. Yet in this case they must argue and interpret this position, rather than demonstrate it. Such a declaration without such evidence is an unscientific position and not a search for truth.

ID believers may be guilty of the same, but two wrongs do not make a right. Science is still espousing things without sufficient experimental demonstration. Embarrassing and hypocritical.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: AATW on April 18, 2020, 05:07:52 PM
It all started when some of the Ancient Greek Philosophers decided that they wanted to rebel against the scriptures by showing that the Earth and various phenomena could be explained through natural processes rather than divine intervention.
I don't know if that was their motivation. If so it was misguided. Although I don't know what you mean by "the scriptures". Would the ancient Greeks have been that well versed in what we now know as the Old Testament?
But it's worth remembering they were working at a time when most things were probably understood by "God did it". Or, at that time, "the gods".
Volcano? The gods are angry. And so on.
Starting to understand how volcanoes work, what the physical processes make them erupt, doesn't detract from being in awe of the power they have.
Any more than understanding how sunlight reflects and refracts through raindrops detracts from how beautiful rainbows are.
It is possible to understand the mechanics of certain things and still be in awe of God and His creation.
In fact, the more you learn about science the more mind-blowing some of it is.

Quote
We later found out that this process of investigation is invalid, and that Scientific truth could only really be discovered through experimentation rather than the fallacy of human interpretation.

Any experiment has underlying assumptions and the results have to be interpreted.
You have a whole page about how if you assume a flat earth then Eratosthenes' experiment result could be interpreted as meaning a close sun.
But you've also assumed light going in straight lines which contradicts your EA theory so I'm a bit confused about that one.

Quote
When browsing the titles of science books at a local bookstore you will find that this whole secular movement and attitude of "Here are observations which disprove scripture" continues today. We find titles like 'The God delusion', 'Outgrowing God', 'Nullifying God', etc. Clearly an underlying motive there.

I'm going to do something I don't often do and agree with you there. There are some scientists who are clearly anti-God and anti religion.
You indirectly mention Dawkins. I wonder about him. I've read The Blind Watchmaker and it's really well written and explained.
But why does he feel the need to write books about God? I've not read The God Delusion. Part of me thinks I should if only to understand his argument and so I can respond to anyone who has read it. But the stuff I have seen him write or say about religion or God betrays such an ignorance of the subject I wonder why he feels the need to pontificate about it. It's not enough for him to not believe, he has to try and stop anyone else believing too. He's obviously got a real chip on his shoulder about religion and I wonder why. What has happened to him? He's of a generation where I guess he'd have been made to go to church as a kid so I'm guessing he had a bad experience. It's sad really.

But anyway, I'd suggest that people like him are in the minority in the scientific world. Maybe most scientists are atheist. I don't know. But I don't think many of them are actively trying to "disprove God". I don't know where this idea that religion and science are in conflict and you have to "pick a side" comes from. I really don't see it that way.

If you believe in a flat earth because you are a Biblical literalist, as Rowbotham was, then I'd ask what shape the earth is. Because there are verses talking about the "circle of the earth" but there are verses talking about the "four corners of the earth". Circles famously don't have corners.

If you see a bit of science which conflicts with your understanding of Scripture then you seem to be one of those people who assumes that the science must be wrong. But there is another option - maybe your understanding of Scripture is wrong. Note, your understanding of it, not the Scripture itself. I don't think many Christians believe in a flat earth - I don't know any that do. Pretty much all of us have come to understand that parts of the Bible talk poetically and aren't to be read like a scientific text.

If scientists are actively trying to disprove God then they are misguided. But if any Christians are trying to disprove science which disagrees with their understanding of Scripture then I'd suggest they're equally misguided. Science and Christianity can both answer questions about creation but in different ways. Science would be looking at the mechanics of it and Christians would be talking about the purpose behind it.

I'll leave the final word to Pope John Paul II, who once said:

Quote
Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 05:11:11 PM
A science organization declaring official opposition to a theory. How, exactly, did they prove that God, or some unknown intelligence, did not guide evolution or biology like ID suggests? Sad. The Scientific Method demands that science bases its truths on experimentation. Yet in this case they must argue and interpret this position, rather than demonstrate it. Such a declaration without such evidence is an unscientific position and not a search for truth.

You are deliberately misreading and misstating what they were saying.

Nowhere, nowhere in either of those references do they state that God does not exist. Not once. They are opposing groups that are anti-science trying to push their religious ideas into schools where it doesn't belong.

You can absolutely oppose a theory. My theory is that I have an invisible baby dragon in a box that can't be seen or detected in any way. Any scientist would reject that theory because it's unproveable.

What these scientists are against isn't religion, it's people trying to prove religion using science which just isn't possible. They are against intelligent-design 'theory' because it's not a theory. They are against teaching 'creationism' in schools because that's religion, and people should be free to follow whatever religion they want and not be forced to learn it.

"God did it" is not a theory.  You can't prove or disprove it. It's not science, it's religion, and we have churches for that. Science is for learning facts, religion is for figuring out what to do with those facts. You can have both if you want. It's not sciences responsibility to solve your existential crisis.

Try and wrap your head around this.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 05:21:26 PM
Quote from: JSS
"God did it" is not a theory.  You can't prove or disprove it.

If they can't disprove it then they shouldn't create an official position on it.

Max Planck said: "Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination."

If we take this as the absolute rule for science then we find that all we know is what experimentation tells us. The positions of "God did do it" and " God did not do it" are poetry imagination and up to interpretation. Rather than admitting this, they create and declare a position telling us that it is wrong.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 18, 2020, 05:24:18 PM
My personal conclusion is that even as recently as the 60s they did genuinely believe the world was round, that was the conclusion they'd reached, established, and when the time came for space travel the issue had been soaked too much in political rivalry and tension that when they struggled to make it work (using RE physics for calculations), they ultimately chose to fake the images in line with what it was they believed to be the case to score points. Russia came up with that idea first, the US scrambled for a bit before deciding to dedicate their efforts to faking in turn, and one-upping the Russians.
That was how it started, and there's not exactly a good point to come out and say 'oh, no, we made all that up,' particularly when the other side hasn't. At this point it's self-sustaining. There's one RE model because they took the one they believed in at the time and basically put it above question.

And no one involved ever exposed the plot? Such a conspiracy would probaby involve millions of people if not more. At least anyone working with anything related with satellites. Where are the whistleblowers? How do you make so many people keep it a secret?
Assume some basic competence on the part of the conspiracy-makers, seriously. If you assume everyone involved is terrible at their job, maybe you have a point, but otherwise?
Why would everyone involved in satellites need to be in on it? Most of those people just get the data, they don't need to know where it's from, so long as the pseudo-system is sufficiently well-made to simulate a satellite system. As for the people who monitor that pseudo-system, why on earth would you tell them that they're in charge of a replacement for satellites? They don't need to know that. They just need to know, say, they're complementing it, or trying out a new idea... why whistleblow when you don't think you know anything newsworthy?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 05:25:33 PM
Quote
"God did it" is not a theory.  You can't prove or disprove it.

If they can't disprove it then they shouldn't create an official position on it.

They should not take an official position on God's existence, which is why they DON'T.

I will repeat myself again, they are NOT taking a position on God's existence. Your references proved my point, they are arguing the teaching of things like intelligent--design in public schools. They do not say God doesn't exist. They just don't. You are making that up.

Your references are NOT saying God does not exist.

Science does NOT say God does not exist.

How many times do I have to say it?

Show me where they say "God does not exist" in that link of yours.

I asked you to show me a paper that said it, and you linked one that does NOT say it.

Sorry I'm repeating myself here, but I seem to have no other way of communicating this.

Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 05:29:15 PM
It doesn't say anything about the existence of God. ID says that evolution and biology is guided by intelligent processes. The science position is that this is wrong. Just read the paper.

Abstract:

Quote
Creationism, the rejection of evolution in favor of supernatural design, comes in many varieties besides the common young-earth Genesis version. Creationist attacks on science education have been evolving in the last few years through the alliance of different varieties. Instead of calls to teach “creation science,” one now finds lobbying for “intelligent design” (ID). Guided by the Discovery Institute’s “Wedge strategy,” the ID movement aims to overturn evolution and what it sees as a pernicious materialist worldview and to renew a theistic foundation to Western culture, in which human beings are recognized as being created in the image of God. Common ID arguments involving scientific naturalism, “irreducible complexity,” “complex specified information,” and “icons of evolution,” have been thoroughly examined and refuted. Nevertheless, from Kansas to Ohio to the U.S. Congress, ID continues lobbying to teach the controversy, and scientists need to be ready to defend good evolution education.

They believe that it has been thoroughly refuted. They believe that they refuted it and can create an official position that it is wrong.

Lets see the experimental evidence for this position, as the Scientific Method demands for our scientific truths. Ready? Go.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 05:32:45 PM
Just read the paper.

Abstract:

Quote
Creationism, the rejection of evolution in favor of supernatural design, comes in many varieties besides the common young-earth Genesis version. Creationist attacks on science education have been evolving in the last few years through the alliance of different varieties. Instead of calls to teach “creation science,” one now finds lobbying for “intelligent design” (ID). Guided by the Discovery Institute’s “Wedge strategy,” the ID movement aims to overturn evolution and what it sees as a pernicious materialist worldview and to renew a theistic foundation to Western culture, in which human beings are recognized as being created in the image of God. Common ID arguments involving scientific naturalism, “irreducible complexity,” “complex specified information,” and “icons of evolution,” have been thoroughly examined and refuted. Nevertheless, from Kansas to Ohio to the U.S. Congress, ID continues lobbying to teach the controversy, and scientists need to be ready to defend good evolution education.

They believe that it has been thoroughly refuted. They believe that they disproved it.

Lets see the experimental evidence for this, as the Scientific Method demands. Ready? Go.

"Common ID arguments involving scientific naturalism, “irreducible complexity,” “complex specified information,” and “icons of evolution,” have been thoroughly examined and refuted."

Do you see the difference? They are saying specific arguments have been refuted. They are NOT saying "God is dead" or any such nonsense as you claim.

"God exists."  This is a statement science will not touch.

"God exists because 1+1=3."  This is an argument, and can indeed be refuted by science.

Do you see the difference?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 05:35:44 PM
What are you talking about? ID is about whether biology and evolution was guided by intelligent processes. The existence of a God is not in the scope of that.

Rather than making up arguments, you should probably just admit that Science is espousing things without sufficient experimental evidence.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 05:38:08 PM
Assume some basic competence on the part of the conspiracy-makers, seriously. If you assume everyone involved is terrible at their job, maybe you have a point, but otherwise?
Why would everyone involved in satellites need to be in on it? Most of those people just get the data, they don't need to know where it's from, so long as the pseudo-system is sufficiently well-made to simulate a satellite system. As for the people who monitor that pseudo-system, why on earth would you tell them that they're in charge of a replacement for satellites? They don't need to know that. They just need to know, say, they're complementing it, or trying out a new idea... why whistleblow when you don't think you know anything newsworthy?

How many people do you think it takes to make a "sufficiently well-made" system that simulates thousands of satellites monitoring the whole planet in real time? And systems that appear to function exactly like they are supposed to function with a satellite, see for example how to align a satellite dish?

If the data from such systems is fake, do you think the people who get and analyze it would not realize after some time? If it's not, what could possibly simulate it? Balloons everywhere for example? Who launched them, where are them, how come nobody found about them?

No whistleblower, zero, nada in decades of satellite operations. Not a crack for more than 60 years in a global, international conspiracy. How do you explain that?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 05:45:49 PM
What are you talking about? ID is about whether biology and evolution was guided by intelligent processes. The existence of a God is not in the scope of that.

Rather than making up arguments, you should probably just admit that Science is espousing things without sufficient experimental evidence.

Wait.  So you quoted this... "Common ID arguments involving scientific naturalism, “irreducible complexity,” “complex specified information,” and “icons of evolution,” have been thoroughly examined and refuted."

You said that was evidence that science is declaring God does not exist because they are against the theory of ID.

But now you say that ID has nothing to do with the existence God.

So, if ID has nothing to do with the existence of god, how can refuting that theory be saying God doesn't exist?

You are digging a deep, deep hole here.


Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 18, 2020, 05:54:11 PM
Assume some basic competence on the part of the conspiracy-makers, seriously. If you assume everyone involved is terrible at their job, maybe you have a point, but otherwise?
Why would everyone involved in satellites need to be in on it? Most of those people just get the data, they don't need to know where it's from, so long as the pseudo-system is sufficiently well-made to simulate a satellite system. As for the people who monitor that pseudo-system, why on earth would you tell them that they're in charge of a replacement for satellites? They don't need to know that. They just need to know, say, they're complementing it, or trying out a new idea... why whistleblow when you don't think you know anything newsworthy?

How many people do you think it takes to make a "sufficiently well-made" system that simulates thousands of satellites monitoring the whole planet in real time? And systems that appear to function exactly like they are supposed to function with a satellite, see for example how to align a satellite dish?

If the data from such systems is fake, do you think the people who get and analyze it would not realize after some time? If it's not, what could possibly simulate it? Balloons everywhere for example? Who launched them, where are them, how come nobody found about them?

No whistleblower, zero, nada in decades of satellite operations. Not a crack for more than 60 years in a global, international conspiracy. How do you explain that?
How many people, who made that system, would need to know that it was being used to help fake the existence of space travel, let alone connect that to the shape of the Earth?
You could hire a dozen or so scientists, invite them to a research facility comparing the possibilities, see if there was anything more efficient than a satellite system, have them put together a few possible models, then bid them goodbye keeping their schematics, leaving them content in the knowledge they helped convince the government of the worth of satellite travel. Then commission or build what would be required, just telling the workers to get on with their jobs, and there you go. Most people who work on projects don't ever know every little detail, especially when the government or some private agency is involved, because why would they need to?
Stratellites in position, basic signals being sent out in specific directions, a line of code in the stratellite to delay the signal strictly on that end so that it appears to be sent from further up... That might mean maybe one or two people involved in the construction to help make it fake, but even then you could spin a story about it helping to work with the existing satellite system and thus it's best if it appears to be up there, and you end up with a very simple situation.

Why are there no well-known whistleblowers? Because nobody cares.
Look at Snowden. Huge, well-known whistleblower, exposed a lot of governmental systems, mostly a household name, but maybe 30% of people could tell you even the barest details of what he did by now and even fewer even tried to do anything about it, and that was dealing with huge-scale government surveillance. If someone came out and, rather talking about how your every move was being spied on, mentioned a couple of dry, technical oddities in how the vastly complex GPS system worked in this weird little corner of Utah specifically, why do you think that would make any kind of splash? Why would they even want to talk about it? Why would they have any reason to think what they did was in any way significant?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 05:57:57 PM
What are you talking about? ID is about whether biology and evolution was guided by intelligent processes. The existence of a God is not in the scope of that.

Rather than making up arguments, you should probably just admit that Science is espousing things without sufficient experimental evidence.

Wait.  So you quoted this... "Common ID arguments involving scientific naturalism, “irreducible complexity,” “complex specified information,” and “icons of evolution,” have been thoroughly examined and refuted."

You said that was evidence that science is declaring God does not exist because they are against the theory of ID.

But now you say that ID has nothing to do with the existence God.

So, if ID has nothing to do with the existence of god, how can refuting that theory be saying God doesn't exist?

You are digging a deep, deep hole here.

I didn't say that ID has nothing to do with the existence of God. ID is about whether evolution and biology is guided by intelligent processes, which may include, and is typically associated with God. ID is not about whether God exists or not. Got that?

Science is telling us that the ID has been thoroughly refuted, and there is an official position in the AAAS that ID is wrong.

How did they create this official position to tell us what is and is not wrong in science without the necessary experimental evidence that the Scientific Method demands? The standard mantra is that scientific truth can only come from experimentation. Where are the experiments?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 05:58:27 PM
What are you talking about? ID is about whether biology and evolution was guided by intelligent processes. The existence of a God is not in the scope of that.

Rather than making up arguments, you should probably just admit that Science is espousing things without sufficient experimental evidence.

I didn't say that ID has nothing to do with God. ID is about wheter evolution and bioligy is guided by intelligent processes, which may include, and is typically accociated with God. ID is not about whether God exists or not. Got that?

You did say exactly that.

Also, "Evolution is guided by some kind of intelligence which may be God or not" is not science, it's not asking a question that can't be answered. Got that?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 06:27:21 PM
What are you talking about? ID is about whether biology and evolution was guided by intelligent processes. The existence of a God is not in the scope of that.

Rather than making up arguments, you should probably just admit that Science is espousing things without sufficient experimental evidence.

I didn't say that ID has nothing to do with God. ID is about wheter evolution and bioligy is guided by intelligent processes, which may include, and is typically accociated with God. ID is not about whether God exists or not. Got that?

You did say exactly that.

You are mistaken. I said that the question of the existence of God is not in the scope of ID. ID is not about whether God exists or not. It is about what God, or an intelligence, did. The objective question of whether "God exists" outside of what this intelligent process may or may not have done is related, but not in the scope of ID.

Quote
Also, "Evolution is guided by some kind of intelligence which may be God or not" is not science, it's not asking a question that can't be answered. Got that?

I agree. It's not science. Published scientific papers, scientists, the AAAS, and science are wrong to talk about how ID has been refuted. They are wrong to create a position that ID is wrong without sufficient experimental evidence. Scientists are wrongly espousing these positions, and are hypocritical.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 06:28:00 PM
You are mistaken. I said that the existence of God is not in the scope of ID. ID is not about whether God exists or not. It is about what God, or an intelligence, did. Whether "God exists" outside what this intelligent process did or did not do is not in the scope of ID.

You were using the papers arguments against ID as evidence the paper was arguing against God. That's pretty clearly you saying that ID is related to God.

Science is not anti-God, science doesn't say if God exists or not. People can be anti-God. Some scientists are religious, some are anti-religious, some don't care. Just like everyone else.

Lets try this again.

I state that no scientific paper says God does not exist.

Quote me a scientific paper that says God does not exist to prove me wrong.

Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 06:42:14 PM
They don't talk about that, and would not attempt such an argument. They are arguing about what God, or the intelligent process, did. You said it yourself:

Quote
"God did it" is not a theory.  You can't prove or disprove it.

It can't be proven or disproven. So these scientists are talking nonsense about things which have been refuted, and are hypocritical to create official positions on this matter.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 06:43:54 PM
They don't talk about that, and would not attempt such an argument. They are arguing about what God, or the intelligent process, did. You said it yourself:

Quote
"God did it" is not a theory.  You can't prove or disprove it.

It can't be proven or disproven. So these scientists are talking nonsense about things which have been refuted, and are hypocritical to create official positions on this matter.

I state that no scientific paper says God does not exist.

Quote me a scientific paper that says God does not exist to prove me wrong.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 07:16:05 PM
I never claimed that there were. If someone claimed that they disproved God in a physical science they would be laughed at. Science Journals have some standards. You have to at least be talking about something physical, even if the Science Journal contains a litany of pseudoscience otherwise. I am sure that there are probably papers which make or suggest that conclusion in Philosophy journals.

A particle physicist wrote this book: God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (https://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520)

I doubt that even a pseudoscientific physical science journal would publish a paper with that title. The journals have a modicum of standard to keep things physical, even if the scientists themselves do not and are blatant, biased, unscientific hypocrites.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 07:17:10 PM
I state that no scientific paper says God does not exist.

Quote me a scientific paper that says God does not exist to prove me wrong.

I never claimed that there were. If someone claimed that they disproved God in a peer reviewed physical science they would be laughed at. Science Journals have some standards. You have to at least be talking about physical evidence or something physical, even if the Science Journal contains a litany of pseudoscience otherwise. I am sure that there are probably papers which make or suggest that conclusion in Philosophy journals.

Ok, good to know you are no longer claiming that, but you did. Your first comment here claimed that science is trying to disprove God, that science is all about it's anti-religion bias.  I've quoted it again.

So yes, while not espousing any particular position, it really all has to do with religion. From the very beginning it was really all about science trying to disprove God. A shameful bias.

If you want to claim that as your opinion that's fine. But don't go stating it as a fact without proof to back it up. Saying "well a scientist wrote a book about hating religion" is the same as me saying "well a member of group X wrote a book about Y so all X are Y". There are plenty of religious scientists. There is no science King or science Pope that is calling down orders and commands. It's just people.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 07:38:59 PM
Obviously no physical science journal is going to approve a paper called "God Does Not Exist". Is the Journal of Applied Physics supposed to publish that one?

Why should it have to be in a science journal to know what the scientists, in general, are thinking?

The largest organization has an official position on ID. Scores of scientists are writing books about how God does not exist and that science prevails. Clearly a theme.

Back to the Ancient Greeks:

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/aristotle-on-religion/

Quote
Aristotle is highly critical of the anthropomorphizing of divinities, pervasive throughout Greek culture. He thinks not only that the stories told about the traditional gods are absurd, but that these gods do not exist, though he is prepared to allow that certain myths about the gods are possibly more edifying than others. So, Aristotle thinks that Greek "religion" is mostly irredeemably false.

Aristotile is somewhat of an athiest.

Quote
In the first chapter, Segev gives an account of Aristotle's reasons for rejecting traditional religion. As he demonstrates, Aristotle's rejection follows from his own scientific philosophy, especially as this is found in his physics, ethics, and metaphysics.

Aristotile used his science to try and reject religion.

This is how Western Science started; to try and reject religion. That was the purpose of it from the very start. It continues today.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 07:41:03 PM
This is how Western Science started; to try and reject religion. That was the purpose of it from the very start. It continues today.

Again, this is your opinion, which is fine. You can believe whatever you want, but it doesn't make it a fact. Saying it does not make it true.

A fact is science journals will not publish 'proofs' about the existence of non-existence of God.

A fact is that there are a LOT of scientists who are openly religious. They do NOT all hate religion.

I'm sorry that some scientific findings threaten your faith, but that's not science's problem. Plenty of people have no problem believing in both science AND religion. That you make it into a fight into one or the other doesn't mean everyone does.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 08:21:58 PM
This is how Western Science started; to try and reject religion. That was the purpose of it from the very start. It continues today.

Again, this is your opinion, which is fine. You can believe whatever you want, but it doesn't make it a fact. Saying it does not make it true.

I'm not the only one saying it. The historian said it.

Can you show that the historian is wrong?

Quote
A fact is science journals will not publish 'proofs' about the existence of non-existence of God.

A fact is that there are a LOT of scientists who are openly religious. They do NOT all hate religion.

I'm sorry that some scientific findings threaten your faith, but that's not science's problem. Plenty of people have no problem believing in both science AND religion. That you make it into a fight into one or the other doesn't mean everyone does.

I never claimed that they all hate religion. Nor does this have anything to do with threatening my faith, as I try not to ascribe to any. These are merely facts. Science and religion has a long, intertwined history.

I understand that you don't like that scientists tie themselves into religion, and are clearly threatened by this, as it shows these scientists to have an underlying philosophy. But that is simply the truth. There is, in general, an underlying philosophy in science.

The truth may be that you are threatened, because you have a faith.

A dirty, unscientific faith and philosophy which does not follow the Scientific Method.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 08:23:30 PM
This is how Western Science started; to try and reject religion. That was the purpose of it from the very start. It continues today.

Again, this is your opinion, which is fine. You can believe whatever you want, but it doesn't make it a fact. Saying it does not make it true.

I'm not saying it. The historian said it.

Can you show that this historian is wrong?

( "I'm not saying it, I'm just pointing out other people are saying..." the classic way to say things and deny you said them. )

I'm sure Aristotle said those things. So what? Are you calming Aristotle was the King of Science and that all scientists swear fealty to him and follow his commands to destroy religion?

Again, I'm not saying there aren't scientists that hate religion. But your claims that the whole of science is biased against religion and the it's purpose from the start was to destroy religion is bunk. I've been to college, I've never been indoctrinated into some secret cabal and ordered to fake research with the goal of destroying religion.  Nonsense.

Quote
A fact is science journals will not publish 'proofs' about the existence of non-existence of God.

A fact is that there are a LOT of scientists who are openly religious. They do NOT all hate religion.

I'm sorry that some scientific findings threaten your faith, but that's not science's problem. Plenty of people have no problem believing in both science AND religion. That you make it into a fight into one or the other doesn't mean everyone does.

I never claimed that they all hate religion. Nor did I claim anything about anything threatening my faith, which does not factor into this, as I try not to ascribe to any. These are merely facts. Science and religion has a long, intertwined history.

I understand that YOU don't like that scientists tie themselves into religion, and are clearly threatened by this, as it shows these scientists to have an underlying philosophy. But that is simply the truth. There is, in general, an underlying philosophy in science.

The truth is that YOU are threatened, because YOU have a faith.

I'm not threatened, I'm just annoyed that you keep claiming things you can't back up. I don't care if a scientist is religious, anti-religious, or other. I know there are plenty of all religious, moral and political affiliations.  You are the one claiming "science" has this evil God-killing goal, and all your proof is that some scientists don't like religion. Well, go figure. Scientists are human and have opinions.

The underlying philosophy in science is to understand the physical world.

I have seen zero proof there is anyone guiding it to destroy anything.

You want some examples too contrast to yours? Here. I'll just list some random ones from Wikipedia.

John Ray (1627–1705): An english botanist who wrote "The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation" (1691)
Isaac Milner (1750–1820): Lucasian Professor of Mathematics known for work on an important process to fabricate Nitrous acid. He was also an evangelical Anglican who co-wrote Ecclesiastical History of the Church of Christ with his brother.
Stephen Barr (born 1953): physicist who worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory and contributed papers to Physical Review as well as Physics Today. He also is a Catholic who writes for First Things and wrote Modern Physics and Ancient Faith.
George Francis Rayner Ellis (born 1939): professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, published in 1973, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology. He is an active Quaker and in 2004 he won the Templeton Prize.

So many.  I'll leave you with this.

J. Richard Gott (born 1947): professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University.

When asked of his religious views in relation to his science, Gott responded that "I’m a Presbyterian. I believe in God; I always thought that was the humble position to take. I like what Einstein said: "God is subtle but not malicious." I think if you want to know how the universe started, that's a legitimate question for physics. But if you want to know why it's here, then you may have to know—to borrow Stephen Hawking's phrase—the mind of God."[275]
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 08:31:09 PM
The truth may be that you are threatened, because you have a faith.

A dirty, unscientific faith and philosophy which does not follow the Scientific Method.

Two pieces of advice, try not to attack people, and maybe stop deleting your posts, re-posting them and editing them for ten minutes after.

Maybe sit and read it over a few times before you hit reply, so people don't miss all the edits and changes after they respond.

I think I'm done with this conversation.  I try and stick to things that can be argued like facts, and this is just too heated and full of opinion.  Religion and conspiracy theories are not arguments anyone can win.

I must strengthen my willpower and resist such temptations in the future...
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 08:39:47 PM
Those are interesting references but those some-scientists-are-religious references are generally about scientists redefining God from the standard historical religious contexts. Now find us a modern contemporary scientist held in high regard who claims:

"Creationism was right all along!"

or

"The world REALLY IS 6000 years old!"

or

"The Earth is the central body of the Universe!"

Support any of those positions and you are rejected from normal science discourse. You are deemed a quack scientist or whatever. They don't believe in the scriptures, or that they could be true.

Newton supported a young earth, but his alt-beliefs are usually hidden in Science education, as it goes against the vibe.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 08:40:00 PM
Those are interesting references but those some-scientists-are-religious references are generally about scientists redefining God from the standard religious context. Now find us a modern contemporary scientist held in high regard who claims:

"Creationism was right all along!"

or

"The world REALLY IS 6000 years old!"

or

"The Earth is the central body of the Universe!"

Support any of those positions and you are rejected from normal science discourse. You are deemed a quack scientist or whatever. They don't believe in the scriptures, or that they could possibly be true.

Newton supported a young earth, but that's usually hidden in the scientific education, as it goes against the vibe.

Oh God, here I am breaking my promise to myself 60 seconds after I made it.

Tom, when you say religion do you really mean Christian fundamentalists? Because they are the only ones who believe those things.

There is a whole world out there, full of Christians who don't believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. They actually greatly outnumber those that do.

You have a very narrow view of what 'religious' is. It's more than your extremely limited and narrow mindset. There are hundreds of religions out there.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 08:45:59 PM
Quote
Tom, when you say religion do you really mean Christian fundamentalists? Because they are the only ones who believe those things

I don't care who believes it. The fact is that if you are a scientist and believe or claim any of those things you are rejected. Science rejects possible truths on basis of an inherent underlying philosophy.

What if the scriptures were true?

Science would still try to reject any and all new physical and historical evidence suggesting that, automatically, and with prejudice. They would try to find some way to claim an alternative interpretation of evidence, or that the evidence was wrong, questionable, or an illusion. They are motivated to do that, based on an inherent, underlying belief system, regardless of truth. You know it. We all know it.

They can't accept that. They just can't. Science is a disguised faith at its basis. A belief system. It's not a search for truth if you have an inherent bias against some truths.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 08:49:11 PM
How many people, who made that system, would need to know that it was being used to help fake the existence of space travel, let alone connect that to the shape of the Earth?
You could hire a dozen or so scientists, invite them to a research facility comparing the possibilities, see if there was anything more efficient than a satellite system, have them put together a few possible models, then bid them goodbye keeping their schematics, leaving them content in the knowledge they helped convince the government of the worth of satellite travel. Then commission or build what would be required, just telling the workers to get on with their jobs, and there you go. Most people who work on projects don't ever know every little detail, especially when the government or some private agency is involved, because why would they need to?
Stratellites in position, basic signals being sent out in specific directions, a line of code in the stratellite to delay the signal strictly on that end so that it appears to be sent from further up... That might mean maybe one or two people involved in the construction to help make it fake, but even then you could spin a story about it helping to work with the existing satellite system and thus it's best if it appears to be up there, and you end up with a very simple situation.

That's completely out of touch with reality. Satellites are everywhere. You can't cover that up with a couple scientists. The amount of work to build systems that could function just like satellites but without actual satellites is tremendous. If you align your dish with anything different from the position of the geostationary satellite it's supposed to get its stream from, it stops working. You can't build a system that would simulate that with just a few people, and you can even less suppose they'll never question anything or say anything. And that's just geostationary broadcasting satellites. There are many other types, some of them can actually be seen with the naked eye at the exact position they're supposed to be, including for example the ISS.

Assuming it could be "very simple" is delusional.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 18, 2020, 09:10:33 PM
Quote
Tom, when you say religion do you really mean Christian fundamentalists? Because they are the only ones who believe those things

I don't care who believes it. The fact is that if you are a scientist and claim any of those things you are rejected. Science rejects possible truths on basis of an inherent underlying philosophy.

What if the scriptures were true?

Science would still try to reject any and all new physical and historical evidence suggesting that, automatically, and with prejudice. They would try to find some way to claim an alternative interpretation of evidence, or that the evidence was wrong, questionable, or an illusion. They are motivated to do that, based on an inherent, underlying belief system, regardless of truth. You know it. We all know it.

They can't accept that. They just can't. Science is a disguised faith at its basis. A belief system. It's not a search for truth if you have an inherent bias against some truths.

I'm afraid you have a deep misunderstanding of science.

You also have a misunderstanding of faith.

Faith is what you believe, that's between you and God.

You are claiming "the scriptures" are true, but remember those are only YOUR scriptures. There are many, many others. Which ones do you think science should believe?

Science doesn't reject 'the scriptures'.  Science just has nothing to say about if one book is the one and true word of God over another. You can't prove that. You can believe the world is 6,000 years old but nobody else has to. I'm sorry but your faith is not my faith, or anyone elses. It's yours alone.

Nobody can tell you your faith is wrong.

But you can't demand I believe it too.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 09:13:56 PM
Those are interesting references but those some-scientists-are-religious references are generally about scientists redefining God from the standard historical religious contexts. Now find us a modern contemporary scientist held in high regard who claims:

"Creationism was right all along!"

or

"The world REALLY IS 6000 years old!"

or

"The Earth is the central body of the Universe!"

Support any of those positions and you are rejected from normal science discourse. You are deemed a quack scientist or whatever. They don't believe in the scriptures, or that they could be true.

Newton supported a young earth, but his alt-beliefs are usually hidden in Science education, as it goes against the vibe.

No modern contemporary scientist will say this, because all of these claims have been proved wrong by modern, and sometimes not-so-modern science. Science didn't prove them wrong because of a bias against religion, but because it was looking for a scientific truth independent from belief.

In "A Special Day", Marcello Mastroianni said "I don't think I'm an anti-fascist - if anything, fascism is anti-me". The same goes with science and religion.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 09:29:53 PM
It was agreed here that the scientists claiming those things would automatically be put into the loony bin. That's called bias, and is unscientific. Anyone saying such a thing, and their so-called evidence, is automatically rejected.

There is a philosophy in science against scripture. Science claims to be in the search of truth, but only certain truths. That is disgusting to me.

Quote from: GreatATuin
all of these claims have been proved wrong by modern, and sometimes not-so-modern science

No it hasn't. In this discussion there was agreement that that there is no experimental evidence against Intelligent Design, as an example.

The standard for truth in science is experimental evidence and the Scientific Method. Where are these experiments?

You have declared and decided that something is wrong, but neglect to show experimental evidence showing this.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 09:47:54 PM
It was agreed here that the scientists claiming those things would automatically be put into the loony bin. That's called bias, and is unscientific. Anyone saying such a thing, and their so-called evidence, is automatically rejected.

There is a philosophy in science against scripture. Science claims to be in the search of truth, but only certain truths. That is disgusting to me.

Quote from: GreatATuin
all of these claims have been proved wrong by modern, and sometimes not-so-modern science

No it hasn't. In this discussion there was agreement that that there is no experimental evidence against Intelligent Design, as an example.

The standard for truth in science is experimental evidence and the Scientific Method. Where are these experiments?

You have declared and decided that something is wrong, but neglect to show experimental evidence showing this.

Shifting goalposts again? The claim was "Creationism was right all along". This claim was proven wrong by science, Scientific American describes how much better than I could (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/) (especially point 3, on how evolution is tested).

Intelligent Design, on the other hand, cannot be tested (https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/id_checklist) and therefore has no scientific value.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 09:52:58 PM
It was agreed here that the scientists claiming those things would automatically be put into the loony bin. That's called bias, and is unscientific. Anyone saying such a thing, and their so-called evidence, is automatically rejected.

There is a philosophy in science against scripture. Science claims to be in the search of truth, but only certain truths. That is disgusting to me.

Quote from: GreatATuin
all of these claims have been proved wrong by modern, and sometimes not-so-modern science

No it hasn't. In this discussion there was agreement that that there is no experimental evidence against Intelligent Design, as an example.

The standard for truth in science is experimental evidence and the Scientific Method. Where are these experiments?

You have declared and decided that something is wrong, but neglect to show experimental evidence showing this.

Shifting goalposts again? The claim was "Creationism was right all along". This claim was proven wrong by science, Scientific American describes how much better than I could (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/) (especially point 3, on how evolution is tested).

Intelligent Design, on the other hand, cannot be tested (https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/id_checklist) and therefore has no scientific value.

Creationism wasn't proven wrong either.

Scientific American: "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense" - Contains references to interpretation of fossil evidence, geologic evidence, etc.

None of it is experimental. You can only observe and interpret artifacts of the past, not experiment on it.

Can you pull out the Scientific Method and tell me exactly how those theories were demonstrated with experiment?

Carbon dating - observation and interpretation. Fossils - observation and interpretation. Nothing really in the way of strong experimental evidence and construction of artificial situations to determine that theories are correct. Only observation and interpretation. The Creation Scientists do have their own interpretations for those things, and say the same thing about how you can only observe and interpret.

If you aren't, or can't, adhere to experimental evidence as truth, it's not science. It's pseudoscience. Observation and interpretation. A fallacy as old as humanity.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 18, 2020, 09:54:55 PM
That's completely out of touch with reality. Satellites are everywhere. You can't cover that up with a couple scientists. The amount of work to build systems that could function just like satellites but without actual satellites is tremendous. If you align your dish with anything different from the position of the geostationary satellite it's supposed to get its stream from, it stops working. You can't build a system that would simulate that with just a few people, and you can even less suppose they'll never question anything or say anything. And that's just geostationary broadcasting satellites. There are many other types, some of them can actually be seen with the naked eye at the exact position they're supposed to be, including for example the ISS.

Assuming it could be "very simple" is delusional.
Reducing the number of even potential whistleblowers is simple. Don't move the goalposts, you asked how such a system could be faked and the secret kept, I answered.
The replacement system itself, yes, that would likely be more complex, but that's how these things go. It's the combination of trapping yourself in a corner because the lie was started, and the simple fact that they could and there are clear benefits to doing so in strictly practical terms. Everyone uses GPS. You're conflating the effects of satellites with satellites themselves though, any directional signal would require you to be pointed in the right direction, that's nothing special, and simply seeing something in the sky does not guarantee that it's in space.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: stack on April 18, 2020, 10:27:37 PM
There is a philosophy in science against scripture. Science claims to be in the search of truth, but only certain truths. That is disgusting to me.

Just curious, when you reference 'scripture' do you mean Christian scripture, i.e., the bible or is it meant to be euphemistic of all religions?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 10:39:43 PM
That's completely out of touch with reality. Satellites are everywhere. You can't cover that up with a couple scientists. The amount of work to build systems that could function just like satellites but without actual satellites is tremendous. If you align your dish with anything different from the position of the geostationary satellite it's supposed to get its stream from, it stops working. You can't build a system that would simulate that with just a few people, and you can even less suppose they'll never question anything or say anything. And that's just geostationary broadcasting satellites. There are many other types, some of them can actually be seen with the naked eye at the exact position they're supposed to be, including for example the ISS.

Assuming it could be "very simple" is delusional.
Reducing the number of even potential whistleblowers is simple. Don't move the goalposts, you asked how such a system could be faked and the secret kept, I answered.
The replacement system itself, yes, that would likely be more complex, but that's how these things go. It's the combination of trapping yourself in a corner because the lie was started, and the simple fact that they could and there are clear benefits to doing so in strictly practical terms. Everyone uses GPS. You're conflating the effects of satellites with satellites themselves though, any directional signal would require you to be pointed in the right direction, that's nothing special, and simply seeing something in the sky does not guarantee that it's in space.

It's not just "the right direction". It's the EXACT location of a geostationary satellite on its orbit over the equator. From any position on Earth, within range of that satellite. I'm not sure it's even possible to build an infrastructure without satellites that would achieve this result - let alone building it without anyone noticing something weird.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 10:48:45 PM
Carbon dating - observation and interpretation. Fossils - observation and interpretation. Nothing really in the way of strong experimental evidence and construction of artificial situations to determine that theories are correct. Only observation and interpretation. The so-called 'Creation Scientists' do have their own interpretations for those things, and say the same thing about how you can only observe and interpret.

If you aren't, or can't, adhere to experimental evidence as truth, it's not science. It's pseudoscience. Observation and interpretation. A fallacy as old as humanity.

According to your own definition of science, which is, to put it softly, highly personal. Scientists don't happen to agree with it.

We find fossils. We find DNA samples. We analyze them. That's how we test the theory against the evidence we have. I'll quote the article: "For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 200,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominin creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not—and does not—find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly."
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 18, 2020, 11:00:16 PM
Carbon dating - observation and interpretation. Fossils - observation and interpretation. Nothing really in the way of strong experimental evidence and construction of artificial situations to determine that theories are correct. Only observation and interpretation. The so-called 'Creation Scientists' do have their own interpretations for those things, and say the same thing about how you can only observe and interpret.

If you aren't, or can't, adhere to experimental evidence as truth, it's not science. It's pseudoscience. Observation and interpretation. A fallacy as old as humanity.

According to your own definition of science, which is, to put it softly, highly personal. Scientists don't happen to agree with it.

Yes, actually, they do agree with it. Experimentation is a part of the Scientific Method. "Observe and interpret" is not the Scientific Method and is widely defined as Pseudoscience.

First sentence of the Wikipedia article for Pseudoscience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience):

Quote
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.[1]

If it doesn't follow the Scientific Method it's a Pseudoscience.

Science website phys.org says:

How scientists can learn what distinguishes science from pseudoscience (https://phys.org/news/2014-11-scientists-distinguishes-science-pseudoscience.html)

Quote
Pseudoscience mimics aspects of science while fundamentally denying the scientific method. A useful definition of the scientific method is:

    principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

A key phrase is "testing of hypotheses". We test hypotheses because they can be wrong.

You have to test the hypothesis with an experiment, not observe and interpret.

Science historian Edgar Zilsel said (https://books.google.com/books?id=E4HWxB5dkAMC&lpg=PA175&ots=e0P89DwoCo&pg=PA175#v=onepage&q&f=false):

Quote
Why is experiment so essential to empirical science? Mere observation is a passive affair. It means but “wait and see” and often depends on chance. Experiment, on the other hand, is an active method of investigation. The experimenter does not wait until events begin, as it were, to speak for themselves; he systematically asks questions. Moreover, he uses artificial means of producing conditions such that clear answers are likely to be obtained. Such preparations are indispensable in most cases. Natural events are usually compounds of numerous effects produced by different causes, and these can hardly be separately investigated until most of them are eliminated by artificial means. There is, therefore, in all empirical sciences a distinct trend toward experimentation.

Sciences in which experiment is not feasible are handicapped. They try to solve their problems by referring to other sciences in which experiments can be performed.

Experiment is indispensable because you cannot otherwise distinguish something which can be a natural event caused by numerous effects of different causes, as they often are.

These were lessons learned at the birth of Modern Science. Observation and interpretation is bad and fallacious.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 18, 2020, 11:55:50 PM
"A key phrase is "testing of hypotheses" "

That's what biologists do. They test hypotheses, and the hypotheses of the theory of evolution have been thoroughly confirmed through observation and experiment, because comparing fossils and analyzing DNA samples is already much more that just passive "observation". Are they not the result of artificial means used to produce conditions that allow to obtain answers?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: stack on April 19, 2020, 01:37:40 AM
Quote
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.[1]

How is the above not the definition of the 'scriptures'?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: AATW on April 19, 2020, 11:13:45 AM
Scores of scientists are writing books about how God does not exist and that science prevails. Clearly a theme.

Is there a theme though? Are there "scores" of scientists writing books like that? You cherry picked a few books.
Go to a bookshop and look in the science section. Pretty much all the books are just talking about the science.
A few may have an anti-God agenda but I'd suggest it's a tiny minority of scientists. In fact, in your cherry picked examples 2 of those are by the same author, Dawkins! That doesn't shout to me that there's a huge anti-God movement in science.

As for Aristotle, from your source:

Quote
Aristotle is highly critical of the anthropomorphizing of divinities, pervasive throughout Greek culture. He thinks not only that the stories told about the traditional gods are absurd, but that these gods do not exist

So he was certainly against the polytheistic religion of the day. As a Christian, so am I and, I assume, so are you.
Whether he was an atheist...maybe, but what of it?
As JSS said, there is no "head" of science who is pushing an anti-God agenda. Scientists are individuals who will have individual beliefs and many prominent scientists down the centuries have been Christians. The idea that science was started and continues to this day as a concerted effort to disprove God is nonsense, as is the notion that Christianity and Science are in opposition to one another and you have to "pick a side".

The only "philosophy" in science is to discern truth about the physical universe we find ourselves in. It has nothing to say about whether there is any purpose behind it. And, conversely, religion should concern itself with our purpose and what, if anything, happens after we shuffle off this mortal coil. It shouldn't have anything to say about, say, the shape of the earth.

Now find us a modern contemporary scientist held in high regard who claims:
"Creationism was right all along!"
or
"The world REALLY IS 6000 years old!"
or
"The Earth is the central body of the Universe!"
Support any of those positions and you are rejected from normal science discourse. You are deemed a quack scientist or whatever. They don't believe in the scriptures, or that they could be true.

They don't believe in your interpretation of the scriptures. Nor do I. Nor do most of the people at your church, if you go to one. I don't know anyone at my church who believes most of those things. Probably there are more young earth Creationist Christians than flat earth ones. I believe them to be misguided in their interpretations. As I said earlier in the thread, some Christians when confronted with science which conflicts with their understanding of Scripture conclude that the science must be wrong. I would suggest they should consider that their understanding may be wrong. As I said earlier, if you're going to take everything literal in the Bible then how are you believing that the earth is a circle (Isaiah 40:22) and a square (Isaiah 11:12). Circles famously don't have corners. You are literally trying to square a circle.

Many people believe that the scriptures are "true" without believing that everything in them has to be scientifically accurate. The Bible often uses poetic language to teach us deeper truths.

The things you mention are not rejected by scientists because of an inherent underlying philosophy which is anti-God or anti-Christian. If that were so why would there be any Christians who are scientists, which there demonstrably are. These things are rejected because the weight of scientific evidence is against them. There are many ways to tell we live on an old earth, and a globe.

If someone came along with compelling evidence that we do not then would they be rejected out of hand? It's hard to know because there is no compelling evidence other than "but my book says...". I believe that scientists are always open to amending their ideas if newer ones come along which demonstrably model the world better - Einstein's theories overturned centuries of Newtonian physics. But the start would have to be some proper, compelling evidence of a young or flat earth and thus far none has been presented.

You are creating a false dichotomy where you claim you either have to believe in Scripture or science. I'd suggest no such dichotomy exists. The only reason you think it does is because of your interpretation of Scripture, one which is not shared by most people with faith.
You do not need to "pick a side", but you might need to amend your understanding of Scripture in the light of modern (and no so modern, in some cases) science.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 19, 2020, 01:33:18 PM
It's not just "the right direction". It's the EXACT location of a geostationary satellite on its orbit over the equator. From any position on Earth, within range of that satellite. I'm not sure it's even possible to build an infrastructure without satellites that would achieve this result - let alone building it without anyone noticing something weird.
You've already had it pointed out to you how it's easy to build almost anything without people finding it weird. You have to assume some basic competence on their part, they aren't going to share every little detail with every stray contractor and janitor.
It literally is just the right direction, it doesn't point to an exact location, it points to any one of a number of points along a line between the satellite dish and the point at extreme altitude where a satellite is said to be.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: inquisitive on April 19, 2020, 02:06:14 PM
It's not just "the right direction". It's the EXACT location of a geostationary satellite on its orbit over the equator. From any position on Earth, within range of that satellite. I'm not sure it's even possible to build an infrastructure without satellites that would achieve this result - let alone building it without anyone noticing something weird.
You've already had it pointed out to you how it's easy to build almost anything without people finding it weird. You have to assume some basic competence on their part, they aren't going to share every little detail with every stray contractor and janitor.
It literally is just the right direction, it doesn't point to an exact location, it points to any one of a number of points along a line between the satellite dish and the point at extreme altitude where a satellite is said to be.
We have many people spaced apart receiving from the same satellite with different angles depending on location. All caclulations are correct and based on a round earth and a geosynchronous position.
We can also receive from 20 GPNSS satellites from 4 systems.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 19, 2020, 03:27:26 PM
Quote
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.[1]

How is the above not the definition of the 'scriptures'?

The Scientific Method is a process of investigation. The Scientific Method is a process of investigating the world, which has been declared by Modern Science to be the correct way to do so.

The scriptures are allegedly historical records. It's a mix of observational claims, accounts of man, and alleged accounts from God. The observational accounts from man can be characterized as pseudoscience, but the accounts from God can only be a lie or mistake, rather than faulty science. They are claims moreso than an incorrect process of investigation.

If we take all which is claimed and said as true, there really isn't an alternative explanation to the assumed physical processes. Many of the supernatural accounts can only be a fib. God created man from dirt? What is the alternative physical process for that? Again, it is impossible to take all which is claimed as true to create alternative secular physical explanations. It can only be a fib or some sort of mistaken delusion which the writer thinks is true.

Quote from: GreatATuin
"A key phrase is "testing of hypotheses" "

That's what biologists do. They test hypotheses, and the hypotheses of the theory of evolution have been thoroughly confirmed through observation and experiment, because comparing fossils and analyzing DNA samples is already much more that just passive "observation". Are they not the result of artificial means used to produce conditions that allow to obtain answers?

Fossil evidence is interpretive. DNA evidence is more experimental, and is interesting when comparing living creatures. But there is still interpretation and assumption when attempting to deduce what occurred back in time.

None of the topics of Creationism, Age of Earth, or a Central Earth can be disproved or shown wrong by science. Aside from the tools and hypothesis for the Science explanations being based on pseudoscience and the possibility of other natural processes to any observation, the Creationists also alternatively say that God created a mature earth, just as God created a mature Adam. God created an adult Adam, not an infant Adam. It stands that God would have created trees with rings and rocks with layers, in instant fast forward mode, as he apparently did with the creation of Adam.

It is also said that there may be an unsaid gap of time between the creation of Earth and the creation of man (Adam and Eve) in scripture. It's missing the parts where God put in place the Watchers over the Earth, created the other Angels, etc. The creation of Earth and the creation of man are different chapters. The 6000 year timeline is based on lineage and starts at Adam, to which some have appropriated as the age of the Earth.

It is uninteresting to me to talk about what might have been or what might have happened. But it should be understood that it is unable to be confirmed or debunked. Like ID, the subject of creation is not really debunkable or in the realm of Science.

--

In regards to the topic of a Central Earth, this one is a little more interesting and tangible, since the official explanation of Astronomy is that it looks like we are at the center of the universe, but that it is merely an illusion.

Edwin Hubble says:

Quote from: Edwin Hubble
Such a condition [the red shifts] would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central earth. The hypothesis cannot be disproved but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. Therefore, we disregard this possibility and consider the alternative, namely, a distribution which thins out with distance.

A thinning out would be readily explained in either of two ways. The first is space absorption. If the nebulae were seen through a tenuous haze, they would fade away faster than could be accounted for by distance and red-shifts alone, and the distribution, even if it were uniform, would appear to thin out. The second explanation is a super-system of nebulae, isolated in a larger world, with our own nebula somewhere near the centre. In this case the real distribution would thin out after all the proper corrections had been applied.

Both explanations seem plausible, but neither is permitted by the observations.

The apparent departures from uniformity in the World Picture are fully compensated by the minimum possible corrections for redshifts on any interpretation. No margin is left for a thinning out. The true distribution must either be uniform or increase outward, leaving the observer in a unique position.

But the unwelcome supposition of a favoured location must be avoided at all costs… Such a favoured position, of course, is intolerable… Therefore, in order to restore homogeneity, and to escape the horror of a unique position, the departures from uniformity, which are introduced by the recession factors, must be compensated by the second term representing effects of spatial curvature. There seems to be no other escape.

Stephen Hawking says in A Brief History of Time:

Quote from: Stephen Hawking
...all this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe. In particular, it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe."

There is, however, an alternate explanation: the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too. This, as we have seen, was Friedmann’s second assumption. We have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption. We believe it only on grounds of modesty: it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe.

Funny that the universe should be that way.

And did you catch that there is a scientific belief based on 'grounds of modesty'? Truly, scientific.

See the observations at https://wiki.tfes.org/Cosmological_Principle
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 19, 2020, 04:25:51 PM
It's not just "the right direction". It's the EXACT location of a geostationary satellite on its orbit over the equator. From any position on Earth, within range of that satellite. I'm not sure it's even possible to build an infrastructure without satellites that would achieve this result - let alone building it without anyone noticing something weird.
You've already had it pointed out to you how it's easy to build almost anything without people finding it weird. You have to assume some basic competence on their part, they aren't going to share every little detail with every stray contractor and janitor.
It literally is just the right direction, it doesn't point to an exact location, it points to any one of a number of points along a line between the satellite dish and the point at extreme altitude where a satellite is said to be.
We have many people spaced apart receiving from the same satellite with different angles depending on location. All caclulations are correct and based on a round earth and a geosynchronous position.
We can also receive from 20 GPNSS satellites from 4 systems.
Anyone can say anything's true. The hard part would be showing that it and only it is true. Every time I ever see you post, it's always the same assertion, and you always leave the discussion when pushed to give anything more. Grow up.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 19, 2020, 08:24:10 PM
You've already had it pointed out to you how it's easy to build almost anything without people finding it weird. You have to assume some basic competence on their part, they aren't going to share every little detail with every stray contractor and janitor.
It literally is just the right direction, it doesn't point to an exact location, it points to any one of a number of points along a line between the satellite dish and the point at extreme altitude where a satellite is said to be.

From a given location, it could be indeed a number of points along a line. From another location, it would have to be along another line. And so on, for any given location within coverage of the satellite. How many floating non-satellite devices do you need to achieve this result?

We have many people spaced apart receiving from the same satellite with different angles depending on location. All caclulations are correct and based on a round earth and a geosynchronous position.
We can also receive from 20 GPNSS satellites from 4 systems.
Anyone can say anything's true. The hard part would be showing that it and only it is true. Every time I ever see you post, it's always the same assertion, and you always leave the discussion when pushed to give anything more. Grow up.

If absolutely everyone who uses a satellite dish, or a BGAN phone, says it works for them only when it points to the position a satellite on a geosynchronous orbit, could it be, just maybe, because that's what actually works?

You still provide zero explanation on how an alternative system without satellites could even be possible. Yet you want us to believe it would be easy to build it and keep it a secret. You have absolutely no idea how to build such a system or what it would look like or how it could even be possible to make it work, and you still assert it would be easy. Amazing. We're talking about building an absolutely massive infrastructure, that would have to be at least as complex as the thousands of existing satellites it's supposed to simulate. And having no one, ever, just wondering what this infrastructure is actually for. And no one outside the project ever noticing.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 19, 2020, 10:33:50 PM
From a given location, it could be indeed a number of points along a line. From another location, it would have to be along another line. And so on, for any given location within coverage of the satellite. How many floating non-satellite devices do you need to achieve this result?
Offhand, no idea, it's not exactly the easiest thing to calculate with how many unknowns there necessarily are. Again, you have to assume some basic competence on the part of the developers, they're hardly going to release schematics and figures for the whole secret. There can still be intersections of lines, and points that serve alternate purposes.

Quote
You still provide zero explanation on how an alternative system without satellites could even be possible.
You literally responded to me explaining how an alternative system without satellites would be posssible. Don't grandstand, it just makes you look desperate.

Quote
Yet you want us to believe it would be easy to build it and keep it a secret.
Ditto for explaining why. If you object to my explanations, say why, don't just pretend they never happened. You act like " And having no one, ever, just wondering what this infrastructure is actually for. And no one outside the project ever noticing," isn't something I haven't already addressed.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: stack on April 19, 2020, 11:00:05 PM
Quote
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.[1]

How is the above not the definition of the 'scriptures'?

The Scientific Method is a process of investigation. The Scientific Method is a process of investigating the world, which has been declared by Modern Science to be the correct way to do so.

The scriptures are allegedly historical records. It's a mix of observational claims, accounts of man, and alleged accounts from God. The observational accounts from man can be characterized as pseudoscience, but the accounts from God can only be a lie or mistake, rather than faulty science. They are claims moreso than an incorrect process of investigation.

If we take all which is claimed and said as true, there really isn't an alternative explanation to the assumed physical processes. Many of the supernatural accounts can only be a fib. God created man from dirt? What is the alternative physical process for that? Again, it is impossible to take all which is claimed as true to create alternative secular physical explanations. It can only be a fib or some sort of mistaken delusion which the writer thinks is true.

Why are you only narrowly focused on Christianity? What about the other religions of the world?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: AATW on April 19, 2020, 11:11:01 PM
If we take all which is claimed and said as true, there really isn't an alternative explanation to the assumed physical processes. Many of the supernatural accounts can only be a fib. God created man from dirt? What is the alternative physical process for that? Again, it is impossible to take all which is claimed as true to create alternative secular physical explanations. It can only be a fib or some sort of mistaken delusion which the writer thinks is true.

Maybe early Genesis isn't describing physical processes. Maybe the language is more poetic and trying to teach us deeper truths than the physical processes at work.
What's the important message of early Genesis? Is it the age of the earth of the physical processes of creation?
Or is it telling us that we are a creation. And it tells us who we are created by and what we are created for.
I'd suggest these are the important truths of Genesis.
Scripture can be "true" without being scientifically accurate.

Quote
None of the topics of Creationism, Age of Earth, or a Central Earth can be disproved or shown wrong by science.

Technically true, but when it comes to things like the age of the earth we have evidence from many branches of science that it's very old.
It's possible that all those branches are wrong by factors of millions but as the evidence builds up it seems increasingly unlikely.
Especially when the only counter argument from fundamentalists is "but my book says..." - and many people believe in that book and don't interpret it that way in the light of modern science.

Obviously you can't do an experiment to determine the age of the earth but you can make a hypothesis about things like the age of the earth and evolution and look at whether the evidence backs up those hypotheses. Yes, it's possible that God created the earth 6,000 years ago and planted a load of evidence which makes us think it's much older. Seems pretty unlikely though. A more plausible explanation for the apparent contradiction is that the Bible is not to be read like a science book. And why would it be? Scripture has a different purpose...

"The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.
- Galileo Galilei
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Wonderer on April 20, 2020, 08:41:01 AM
Phew -okay, read through all of those posts.

Looks to me like the common theme here is "we know better than the people who devote their lives to this".

A quick list looks like:

All of these people use the round earth model to get the results they do. They build things that stay standing, make predictions that come true and are continually vetted by their peers.

Flat earth belief requires the claim either all of those people are in on a conspiracy or that you know the subject better than all of those specialists who've spent their lives studying that particular area.

I'm not saying the minority cannot be right I'm just saying that when your position requires you to claim you're more knowledgable in such a wide variety of disciplines than all of those people perhaps you should be prepared to reevaluate that position.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 20, 2020, 02:18:12 PM
I'm not saying the minority cannot be right I'm just saying that when your position requires you to claim you're more knowledgable in such a wide variety of disciplines than all of those people perhaps you should be prepared to reevaluate that position.
Are you more knowledgeable than Einstein because you know how to work an iphone better than he ever did?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: GreatATuin on April 20, 2020, 02:28:01 PM
I'm not saying the minority cannot be right I'm just saying that when your position requires you to claim you're more knowledgable in such a wide variety of disciplines than all of those people perhaps you should be prepared to reevaluate that position.
Are you more knowledgeable than Einstein because you know how to work an iphone better than he ever did?

Do you compare yourself to Einstein?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 20, 2020, 02:30:31 PM
I'm not saying the minority cannot be right I'm just saying that when your position requires you to claim you're more knowledgable in such a wide variety of disciplines than all of those people perhaps you should be prepared to reevaluate that position.
Are you more knowledgeable than Einstein because you know how to work an iphone better than he ever did?
Do you compare yourself to Einstein?
And we're two for two in dishonest comparisons meant to manipulate rather than make a point. Who wants to make it three?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Wonderer on April 20, 2020, 02:32:04 PM
I'm not saying the minority cannot be right I'm just saying that when your position requires you to claim you're more knowledgable in such a wide variety of disciplines than all of those people perhaps you should be prepared to reevaluate that position.
Are you more knowledgeable than Einstein because you know how to work an iphone better than he ever did?

Exactly!
I'm glad someone gets it.

Its like flat earthers have only seen a boxed iphone, maybe talked to a few people who used one or to someone who has a friend who used one....and they're calling up apple and telling everyone that they know what the circuits inside the iphone are.

When apple engineers come out and say "Hey, no, sorry - thats not right" the flat earthers claim that its all a conspiracy and someone is putting words in the mouth of every engineer that thinks they're using component X in the phone.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 20, 2020, 02:45:28 PM
I'm not saying the minority cannot be right I'm just saying that when your position requires you to claim you're more knowledgable in such a wide variety of disciplines than all of those people perhaps you should be prepared to reevaluate that position.
Are you more knowledgeable than Einstein because you know how to work an iphone better than he ever did?

Exactly!
I'm glad someone gets it.

Its like flat earthers have only seen a boxed iphone, maybe talked to a few people who used one or to someone who has a friend who used one....and they're calling up apple and telling everyone that they know what the circuits inside the iphone are.

When apple engineers come out and say "Hey, no, sorry - thats not right" the flat earthers claim that its all a conspiracy and someone is putting words in the mouth of every engineer that thinks they're using component X in the phone.
Aaaand you completely missed the point, well done.

Expertise is not some catch-all. Einstein is not appealed to as an expert in biology, but in physics, and a specific subset of that. A child would be more knowledgeable than any of history's great thinkers when it comes to something outside their field of reference, such as a facet of modern life. Physicists use the round earth model to get their results, true, so? They use observations and contort what the model predicts to allow for them, the model didn't come about in a vacuum, it was nipped and tucked until it worked as much as they could make it, up until some new discovery came along and they had to nip and tuck a little bit more. They are experts in their specific model and nothing more, just as engineers are great with telling you how to get from A to B but really don't concern themselves with why any of it works.
Am I more knowledgeable than, say, Steven Hawking? When it comes to certain topics, yes, just as I'm sure you are. For example, I'd put money on the fact that he wouldn't be able to describe any aspect of any of the major FE models. His expertise is in a set few fields, making claims as to how knowledgeable one is in comparison to him is plainly misleading becaue you are granting him an omniscience no human has.

All those people you mention know only what is within the framework they were taught. That is their expertise, that is their knowledge, if that framework is flawed then who's more knowledgeable about it is meaningless. I contest the foundation of that framework, not the petty bickering about intricacies long after the fact. Forget the geologists, physicists, they're working with fruit from the poisoned tree. What you really need to ask is if you're more knowledgeable than some bloke who thinks the elements are earth, water, wind and fire, or more knowledgeable than someone who thinks sacrificing a rabbit will cure an illness, the 'giants' upon whose shoulders all modern scientific understanding is based.
I'd say yes. We have centuries more knowledge since then, some founded on observation directly as opposed to assumptions and a flawed basis, if we used that to build a model of the world upon, used that as opposed to a blank page as our starting point, we'd have something very different to the mess we now have. The number of cracks that show when you take modern conclusions and try to tie them into established claims is staggering.

Meanwhile, to use the analogy, you're saying iphones are pseudoscience just because Einstein wouldn't have a clue how they worked. It was beyond his knowledge, but according to you admitting that is the height of arrogance. Do you call that scientific?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: totallackey on April 20, 2020, 03:20:07 PM
It all started when some of the Ancient Greek Philosophers decided that they wanted to rebel against the scriptures by showing that the Earth and various phenomena could be explained through natural processes rather than divine intervention.
I don't know if that was their motivation. If so it was misguided. Although I don't know what you mean by "the scriptures". Would the ancient Greeks have been that well versed in what we now know as the Old Testament?
Yes.

It is called the Septuagint.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: AATW on April 20, 2020, 03:40:16 PM
It all started when some of the Ancient Greek Philosophers decided that they wanted to rebel against the scriptures by showing that the Earth and various phenomena could be explained through natural processes rather than divine intervention.
I don't know if that was their motivation. If so it was misguided. Although I don't know what you mean by "the scriptures". Would the ancient Greeks have been that well versed in what we now know as the Old Testament?
Yes.

It is called the Septuagint.
I'm sure they would have had access to some of that but the prevailing religion in ancient Greece, as far as I understand, would have been the old polytheistic one - a god of the sun, a god of the harvest, and so on. From the source Tom provides, that seems to be the thing Aristotle was railing against. And even if he was an atheist, what of it? He's just one person. The idea that science as a discipline is motivated by a rejection of God is not founded in reality. Some very notable scientists down the centuries have been Christians

https://www.famousscientists.org/great-scientists-christians/
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Wonderer on April 20, 2020, 05:50:34 PM
I'm not saying the minority cannot be right I'm just saying that when your position requires you to claim you're more knowledgable in such a wide variety of disciplines than all of those people perhaps you should be prepared to reevaluate that position.
Are you more knowledgeable than Einstein because you know how to work an iphone better than he ever did?

Exactly!
I'm glad someone gets it.

Its like flat earthers have only seen a boxed iphone, maybe talked to a few people who used one or to someone who has a friend who used one....and they're calling up apple and telling everyone that they know what the circuits inside the iphone are.

When apple engineers come out and say "Hey, no, sorry - thats not right" the flat earthers claim that its all a conspiracy and someone is putting words in the mouth of every engineer that thinks they're using component X in the phone.
Aaaand you completely missed the point, well done.

I knew what you meant - it was just that the analogy didn't fit. Perhaps the sarcasm doesn't carry well enough on the internet.

Expertise is not some catch-all. Einstein is not appealed to as an expert in biology, but in physics, and a specific subset of that. A child would be more knowledgeable than any of history's great thinkers when it comes to something outside their field of reference, such as a facet of modern life.

So what is it that you think you've got that all those other people haven't got? A questioning nature? A lack of education?

Physicists use the round earth model to get their results, true, so? They use observations and contort what the model predicts to allow for them, the model didn't come about in a vacuum, it was nipped and tucked until it worked as much as they could make it, up until some new discovery came along and they had to nip and tuck a little bit more. They are experts in their specific model and nothing more, just as engineers are great with telling you how to get from A to B but really don't concern themselves with why any of it works.
Their jobs are based around questioning why things works - models only work if they predict reality. Do you not think that something so simple as the Earth being flat wouldn't have been picked up by enough of them by now?

Am I more knowledgeable than, say, Steven Hawking? When it comes to certain topics, yes, just as I'm sure you are. For example, I'd put money on the fact that he wouldn't be able to describe any aspect of any of the major FE models. His expertise is in a set few fields, making claims as to how knowledgeable one is in comparison to him is plainly misleading becaue you are granting him an omniscience no human has.
I'm not granting any single person omniscience - if anything thats what you're doing. The basis of the models has to be in physics, whether its FE or RE, now there are thousands of people whose job it is to test the boundaries of that, to come up with new ways to model things and test the predictions of that. No one has come out and said they discovered it was wrong. You'll claim thats because its taboo and goes against the grain but that is what these people do for a job. If they can find some definite proof with repeatable experiments to prove the earth is flat you bet some would be publishing it.

All those people you mention know only what is within the framework they were taught. That is their expertise, that is their knowledge, if that framework is flawed then who's more knowledgeable about it is meaningless. I contest the foundation of that framework, not the petty bickering about intricacies long after the fact. Forget the geologists, physicists, they're working with fruit from the poisoned tree. What you really need to ask is if you're more knowledgeable than some bloke who thinks the elements are earth, water, wind and fire, or more knowledgeable than someone who thinks sacrificing a rabbit will cure an illness, the 'giants' upon whose shoulders all modern scientific understanding is based.
I'd say yes. We have centuries more knowledge since then, some founded on observation directly as opposed to assumptions and a flawed basis, if we used that to build a model of the world upon, used that as opposed to a blank page as our starting point, we'd have something very different to the mess we now have. The number of cracks that show when you take modern conclusions and try to tie them into established claims is staggering.

Science moves on all the time - Einstein was completely against the idea of quantum mechanics, in fact a lot of people found it a tough pill to swallow. It went against everything that had been thought before but the theories could make predictions which held true. The framework changed. Round earth makes predictions that hold true.

There are some incredibly precise engineering fêtes that, in their construction, took the Earth's curvature into account. In the search for gravitational waves LIGO was constructed to bounce lasers between mirrors 4km apart several times. LIGO measures to precisions smaller than that of a proton. If asked where to place the mirrors the round earth and flat earth models would have disagreed by 1 meter. If round earth predictions hadn't held true this experiment would never have worked - the laser would have missed and some serious questions would have been raised. None of that happened though.

Meanwhile, to use the analogy, you're saying iphones are pseudoscience just because Einstein wouldn't have a clue how they worked. It was beyond his knowledge, but according to you admitting that is the height of arrogance. Do you call that scientific?

No, Einstein didn't come into my analogy. I was just saying that you're trying to tell people who spend their life studying a thing that they're wrong and you, as a hobbyist who probably watched a few youtube videos, are saying you know better. I'm not questioning whats scientific, I'm asking why you don't question yourselves more. Nothing I've read on here has given anything like definite proof and yet there are people who believe it with such fervour its basically a religion. If thats what it is then fine. God works for some people to feel like they've purpose and maybe flat earth is your thing.

My problem is that if you need to have faith to divert from what all of those experts have told you then fine but don't try to pretend to be scientific about it.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 20, 2020, 07:51:20 PM
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So what is it that you think you've got that all those other people haven't got? A questioning nature? A lack of education?
It's not a matter of having, it's a matter of doing. The modern scientific community is based on building upon certain principles, it's long since ceased re-evaluating them.

Science does move on, that's the problem. It needs to look back. We know more than we did a thousand years ago, why don't we use those things we've established to analyze the starting point they had? Until that happens, every conclusion reached by the modern scientific community is tainted. That's inescapable, like it or not, the only reason I'm saying it and they're not is they have their funding to worry about. It's not at all hard to see if you're willing to contemplate the possibility, it's just that everyone taught science by the mainstream is forced to deny it.

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Their jobs are based around questioning why things works - models only work if they predict reality.
You are confusing cause and effect. The model was tweaked and changed until it reflected reality. When something unexplained comes up again, they'll change the model that little bit more. They create equations with unknowns and then add whatever unknowns are required to make it fit the data they have.

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I'm not questioning whats scientific, I'm asking why you don't question yourselves more. Nothing I've read on here has given anything like definite proof and yet there are people who believe it with such fervour its basically a religion.
I'm not telling you what to believe. I'm giving you  a starting point and letting you come to your own conclusions. You meanwhile are telling me to stop questioning and go along with what They say. Which of those sounds like religion, and which sounds like science, to you?
'Definite proof' betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of any scientific process, what do you expect, a convenient few lines that point to just one option and render impossible all others? You're never going to get that in any scientific field. I've noticed REers have a tendency towards 'gotcha!' arguments, which seems to be the mindset you're expecting us to have: it's a flawed one. There is no 'gotcha' in science, no disproof, just a requirement to refine the hypothesis a little more. The 'proof,' as you call it, is just the comparison of options to see which hypothesis requires more unsubstantiated assumptions to be realized, and to compare that you'll need to learn FET to roughly the same extent that you know RET. That's the only kind of 'definite proof' that exists in science, and I'm at a loss as to how you'd expect to so easily see it.
This ties into the above as well; the RE model is tweaked until it reflects reality the best they can. The issues you'll find are not contradictions, any contradiction that gets exposed would in a week be heralded as evidence for some groundbreaking new Dark String Loop Quantum Teapot theory, you can explain away anything with sufficient imagination, the problem is the sheer amount of convenience that is required in some fields, or the interactions between newer concepts and old claims that were never developed with them in mind. Those are the only ways there could conceivably be objections raised in an actual scientific setting.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 20, 2020, 08:29:16 PM
You are confusing cause and effect. The model was tweaked and changed until it reflected reality. When something unexplained comes up again, they'll change the model that little bit more. They create equations with unknowns and then add whatever unknowns are required to make it fit the data they have.

Scientists see stuff and make a model about it. They see new stuff and add that to the model. You seem to be angry and upset that scientists don't always throw everything out and come up with totally new models. What is the problem with taking something that works, and making it work better? What bothers you so much?

Besides, science comes up with new things all the time. Einstein's relativity theories have no math in common with Newtons, and explain the universe in a completely new way.  Time dilation, the speed of light, mass and energy being the same thing.  Isn't that what you want?

Improve where we can, replace when we come up with something new. What exactly is your objection?


Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 20, 2020, 09:48:44 PM
Scientists see stuff and make a model about it. They see new stuff and add that to the model. You seem to be angry and upset that scientists don't always throw everything out and come up with totally new models. What is the problem with taking something that works, and making it work better? What bothers you so much?
Because it puts that which came before up on a pedestal. It refines, it doesn't replace.
To take your Einstein example, what the logical approach should have been was to take that, and look back, to start from ground level with the knowledge that such phenomena are even possible, as opposed to building everything up assuming such things never happen. The knock on effects for a new discovery like that should be tremendous, instead they affect only Newton in certain circumstances and affect plenty of things looking forward, but don't alter anything looking back.
Taking something 'that works' is making far too much of an assumption, something isn't above question just because it works, more often than not it works because it was forced to work, it started life as a failure, then was tweaked and made vague enough that values could be assigned that gave it the appearance of working, with no guarantee that the underlying process is actually an accurate description of why what happens, well, happens. It's always easy to answer the what, the why is much harder to figure out, but the scientific community has taken the lazy route of equating the two.

The modern scientific community is far too concerned with building up higher and higher that it's not checking its foundations. What of alternatives? If something is wrong with our current understanding of the world, odds are it isn't going to be something small, it would be some oversight made when our technology and knowledge was far less than it is now and the issues would have gotten bigger and bigger as time went by and more was built upon that error, constantly tweaking and nipping and tucking until it gave the appearance of working, while being an unwieldy, flawed explanation that's only going to keep causing problems.
And what you call science is woefully unequipped to even acknowledge such a possibility, let alone address it.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: BRrollin on April 20, 2020, 09:58:53 PM
Scientists see stuff and make a model about it. They see new stuff and add that to the model. You seem to be angry and upset that scientists don't always throw everything out and come up with totally new models. What is the problem with taking something that works, and making it work better? What bothers you so much?
Because it puts that which came before up on a pedestal. It refines, it doesn't replace.
To take your Einstein example, what the logical approach should have been was to take that, and look back, to start from ground level with the knowledge that such phenomena are even possible, as opposed to building everything up assuming such things never happen. The knock on effects for a new discovery like that should be tremendous, instead they affect only Newton in certain circumstances and affect plenty of things looking forward, but don't alter anything looking back.
Taking something 'that works' is making far too much of an assumption, something isn't above question just because it works, more often than not it works because it was forced to work, it started life as a failure, then was tweaked and made vague enough that values could be assigned that gave it the appearance of working, with no guarantee that the underlying process is actually an accurate description of why what happens, well, happens. It's always easy to answer the what, the why is much harder to figure out, but the scientific community has taken the lazy route of equating the two.

The modern scientific community is far too concerned with building up higher and higher that it's not checking its foundations. What of alternatives? If something is wrong with our current understanding of the world, odds are it isn't going to be something small, it would be some oversight made when our technology and knowledge was far less than it is now and the issues would have gotten bigger and bigger as time went by and more was built upon that error, constantly tweaking and nipping and tucking until it gave the appearance of working, while being an unwieldy, flawed explanation that's only going to keep causing problems.
And what you call science is woefully unequipped to even acknowledge such a possibility, let alone address it.

I don’t know about this. It looks like they DO look back when something happens. From what I remember, the Newton stuff still is correct and the reason why is because the Einstein stuff is small at slow speeds.

So not only did they look back, but they re-described newton as approximate and only good to do under certain cases.

Do you have any examples of scientists ignoring scientific finding that disprove these pedestal items?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 20, 2020, 11:09:55 PM
Scientists see stuff and make a model about it. They see new stuff and add that to the model. You seem to be angry and upset that scientists don't always throw everything out and come up with totally new models. What is the problem with taking something that works, and making it work better? What bothers you so much?
Because it puts that which came before up on a pedestal. It refines, it doesn't replace.
To take your Einstein example, what the logical approach should have been was to take that, and look back, to start from ground level with the knowledge that such phenomena are even possible, as opposed to building everything up assuming such things never happen. The knock on effects for a new discovery like that should be tremendous, instead they affect only Newton in certain circumstances and affect plenty of things looking forward, but don't alter anything looking back.

I'm still not sure what's so wrong about how science works. The knock on effects of Einsteins theories were tremendous, in the areas they affected. They didn't change say, genetics or structural engineering. It changed nearly everything about astronomy from stellar dynamics to entirely new fields like black holes.

Just what would you like to do with Newton, which is still damn useful when not dealing with extreme speeds or gravity? Throw it all away? And replace it with what?

You're still not explaining well what the problem is.  Science throws stuff away all the time. In fact right now scientists would LOVE to throw out Relativity AND Quantum Mechanics and replace it with something thats compatible, they just haven't found it yet. But they keep looking, to the tune of building massive colliders hoping to find SOME results that don't match. Thats where you are dead wrong. Scientists WANT to find new things, find data that doesn't fit. Because that means they found something NEW, and that, is why they are scientists in the first place.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 21, 2020, 02:02:46 AM
Why are you only narrowly focused on Christianity? What about the other religions of the world?

I'm not focused on Christianity. In the FE discussions we are usually talking about the Abrahamic religions in general. Many religions accept the Old Testament. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions) The Old Testament includes the creation of the world and Noah.

Other religions who do not specifically associate with the Old Testament have oddly similar stories to the Old Testament stories, such as the Flood story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths), immoral serpents, and depict the Earth as flat. There is possibly some common genesis.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: BRrollin on April 21, 2020, 02:22:16 AM
Why are you only narrowly focused on Christianity? What about the other religions of the world?

I'm not focused on Christianity. In the FE discussions we are usually talking about the Abrahamic religions in general. Many religions accept the Old Testament. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions) The Old Testament includes the creation of the world through Noah.

Other religions who do not specifically associate with the Old Testament have oddly similar stories to the Old Testament stories, such as the Flood story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths), immoral serpents, and depict the Earth as flat. There is possibly some common genesis.

From what I can tell, the argument from design has 3 things: irreducible complexity, arguments of fine tuning, arguments from beauty.

Since none of them can make a science claim, the design idea isn’t scientific.

What am I missing here?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: Tom Bishop on April 21, 2020, 02:37:47 AM
Why are you only narrowly focused on Christianity? What about the other religions of the world?

I'm not focused on Christianity. In the FE discussions we are usually talking about the Abrahamic religions in general. Many religions accept the Old Testament. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions) The Old Testament includes the creation of the world through Noah.

Other religions who do not specifically associate with the Old Testament have oddly similar stories to the Old Testament stories, such as the Flood story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths), immoral serpents, and depict the Earth as flat. There is possibly some common genesis.

From what I can tell, the argument from design has 3 things: irreducible complexity, arguments of fine tuning, arguments from beauty.

Since none of them can make a science claim, the design idea isn’t scientific.

What am I missing here?

Science claims that ID is not testable. Neither is any alternative claim. One cannot experiment on the past. One can only observe and interpret.

Take Max Plank's quote “Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.”

If we stick to that as the absolute rule for science and knowledge, and avoid arguing by human 'logic', what do we really and truly know? Not much.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: BRrollin on April 21, 2020, 03:58:41 AM
Why are you only narrowly focused on Christianity? What about the other religions of the world?

I'm not focused on Christianity. In the FE discussions we are usually talking about the Abrahamic religions in general. Many religions accept the Old Testament. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions) The Old Testament includes the creation of the world through Noah.

Other religions who do not specifically associate with the Old Testament have oddly similar stories to the Old Testament stories, such as the Flood story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths), immoral serpents, and depict the Earth as flat. There is possibly some common genesis.

From what I can tell, the argument from design has 3 things: irreducible complexity, arguments of fine tuning, arguments from beauty.

Since none of them can make a science claim, the design idea isn’t scientific.

What am I missing here?

Science claims that ID is not testable. Neither is any alternative claim. One cannot experiment on the past. One can only observe and interpret.

Take Max Plank's quote “Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.”

If we stick to that as the absolute rule for science and knowledge, and avoid arguing by human 'logic', what do we really and truly know? Not much.

I’m no biologist, but haven’t they observed speciation in the laboratory? Can’t anyone show natural selection that makes preferred qualities in their own vegetable gardens? I think I’m just trying to understand your position.

Anyway, so what I’m hearing you say next is that sticking to a rule and avoiding logic means we don’t really know anything. So, does this include that we don’t know intelligent design or the shape of the Earth too?

I mean, isn’t every experiment thought of first with imagination? And even if plank is right, he didn’t actually say that experiments can only be done to test the present.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: AATW on April 21, 2020, 09:05:47 AM
Taking something 'that works' is making far too much of an assumption, something isn't above question just because it works, more often than not it works because it was forced to work, it started life as a failure, then was tweaked and made vague enough that values could be assigned that gave it the appearance of working, with no guarantee that the underlying process is actually an accurate description of why what happens, well, happens. It's always easy to answer the what, the why is much harder to figure out, but the scientific community has taken the lazy route of equating the two.

I'd say a good example of that is the geocentric model.
The heliocentric model was opposed for a long time because it was so revolutionary, the earth being at the centre of everything was so ingrained. Many attempts were made to tweak the geocentric model to make it fit observations. Ultimately though, the heliocentric model won out. It took a long time but ultimately science will replace models if new ones come along which fit observations. I don't think in this day and age it would take as long as it did in that case because of better communication and collaboration.

Ultimately, if a model has been demonstrably working for centuries it's going to take some pretty compelling evidence to replace it.
Einstein's work did revolutionise our understanding of certain things and you could argue that it has replaced Newtonian mechanics as our best understanding of the way things work. But the Relativistic effects are so small in normal circumstances that they don't need to be considered. When it comes to building a GPS system though with the speeds those satellites are going at, it does need to be accounted for, and it is.

The method of testing hypothesis, building models and tweaking them has demonstrably worked down the centuries, very occasionally a model may need to be completely replaced, and it has been at times, but if a model is making predictions which conform to reality, if it's useful then it's going to be retained. The geocentric model was a useful model and did a pretty good job for centuries. It was only when telescopes got good enough for people to make detailed observations of things like planets that problems were discovered. The end result of that was the entire model being replaced when it was realised to be wrong.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JRowe on April 21, 2020, 03:50:52 PM
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Just what would you like to do with Newton, which is still damn useful when not dealing with extreme speeds or gravity? Throw it all away? And replace it with what?

You're still not explaining well what the problem is.  Science throws stuff away all the time. In fact right now scientists would LOVE to throw out Relativity AND Quantum Mechanics and replace it with something thats compatible, they just haven't found it yet. But they keep looking, to the tune of building massive colliders hoping to find SOME results that don't match. Thats where you are dead wrong. Scientists WANT to find new things, find data that doesn't fit. Because that means they found something NEW, and that, is why they are scientists in the first place.

You're still doing it. You're holding the current system up and expecting me to answer in terms of it. I'm saying no, I'm saying that's the flawed approach. By rights there should be way more than one mainstream, all developed independently, held to the same standard of needing to provide accurate explanations, and allowed to develop to an equivalent standard rather than being rejected simply because a younger model would lack depth. Start from scratch using knowledge, possibilities and conclusions that we have come to using greater technology. Don't throw anything away, but be prepared to build other possibilities. There should be multiple mainstreams, all functional by tweaking and observation, but all with different basic principles. That at least would allow for error. And when there's a new discovery that would alter any starting point, make a new model based on that. The one held as true would be the one that wins an honest comparison to see which requires the most special pleading, but the door would always be open for another to take the reins. Science does technically do this, but on such a piddlingly small scale. It's verboten to question anything 'established,' and I'm saying that's wrong, open the doors to consider far more, put whole models to the test as opposed to tiny side elements on the frontier, that would at least be intellectually honest.
Would it be slower? Yes, absolutely, but speed isn't what matters. Accuracy and truth is.

Science isn't looking to throw out relativity or QT, it's looking to give it the Newton treatment, "Well it works so we'll say it holds in this situation, but not this one..." refining and adding, not replacing.

That's the problem. The scientific community just isn't equipped to deal with a long-held flaw. Even the examples you bring up of things that might get tweaked are more recent, comparatively speaking, developments. If a flaw gets brought up with something like, say, gravity, they're just going to assume the theory was right and invent, say, dark matter or some equivalent to make it work, rather than go back and rethink the starting point. And why? Because almost everything has been built on that starting point. The scientific community has become a top-heavy unwieldy mess, and its refusal to rethink the basics means all that's keeping it going is a hope, prayer and a whole heap of denial.







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Ultimately though, the heliocentric model won out. It took a long time but ultimately science will replace models if new ones come along which fit observations. I don't think in this day and age it would take as long as it did in that case because of better communication and collaboration.

Ultimately, if a model has been demonstrably working for centuries it's going to take some pretty compelling evidence to replace it.
That's a very flawed comparison. Flaws with the geocentric model, under RET, had been identified for ages, there was no good explanation for epicycles, it was merely 'we need this to happen, so it does.' The problem wasn't equipment, the problem was a theocracy. It isn't a sound basis for comparison because nowadays, at least internally, the scientific community lacks those specific pressures. The problem is that a 'new model that fits observations' is never going to happen because of the sheer amount of knowledge we now have compared to then, a new model that fits observations in even half the detail RET does is going to take decades to develop. That's no measure of truth, that just means math takes a while to develop, models time to put together, and the mainstream has been nipped and tucked and tweaked to force it in line with those experiments. Creating another that the mainstream would be willing to even consider is not going to happen regardless of what model is true.
RET hasn't demonstrably been working for centuries. It's run into problem after problem, it's just that they solved those problems internally as opposed to seeing what alternatives could do, and the longer that goes on, the harder it's going to be to make them look at anything outside their comfort zone. If a flaw in it gets pointed out tomorrow, we're a week away from it being heralded as evidence of some new facet of RET. That's how the community works now. There's no room to question the principles.
And that's where the comparison to Galileo comes in. Heliocentrism required fighting against the religiously enforced geocentric worldview to be accepted, but at least there was an enemy to disprove. Now the scientific community has taken on the same religious mindset when it comes to venerating those that came before, it is its own theocracy, and an enemy within cannot be fought so easily.

That's where we enter into 'tear it all down' territory. The modern scientific community has become so poisoned I honestly don't know how it can be fixed.
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: ChrisTP on April 21, 2020, 04:54:42 PM
The point in science is simply to observe and understand. What you describe as "mainstream" is simply what works best. You are welcome to come up with equations and such that work better and if they do work better then it will replace "mainstream". That's the whole point. Nothing is really set in stone with science and anything can be challenged, but the thing challenging it needs to be better.

You think alternatives to how we work with gravity should exist? Putting rockets into orbit etc, make one. Until someone finds a better way of course things will stay the same. This is the reason flat earth isn't "mainstream". A globe model functions much better with observation and reality. Go ahead and try to put anything into orbit assuming a flat earth. Go ahead and find a better explanation than evolution. Anything you come up with needs to better describe reality. We cannot have more than one mainstream scientific theory unless they both equally work.

Nothing is stopping you from starting from scratch and providing evidence to back up your claims and putting out a paper to be peer reviewed. 
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: JSS on April 21, 2020, 04:57:48 PM
Science isn't looking to throw out relativity or QT, it's looking to give it the Newton treatment, "Well it works so we'll say it holds in this situation, but not this one..." refining and adding, not replacing.

You keep describing how science works like it's a bad thing. You keep insisting science is flawed and broken because it doesn't come up with a dozen alternative theories to Newton.

You need to understand that is exactly what science is trying to do. There are not a dozen competing theories for how planets orbits behave not because nobody wants to discover them, but because we have tried and nothing else WORKS. You don't think there are people working on that right now?

You have to understand that if tomorrow someone came up with equations that work as well as Newton but on an entirely different principle, it would cause a massive storm of excitement. Everyone would be studying it, trying to figure out how to use it, how to create experiments to explore it, how it could lead to new physics and discoveries. it would be massive, international news. You seem to think it would be swept under the rug because 'science hates new things'. That's garbage.

You have repeated yourself a dozen times now, saying science is bad because Newton is still used. Well, what do you propose we use instead? It WORKS. You still haven't said what you expect science to DO with that 'old' theory. Just throw it out and not use anything at all?
Title: Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?
Post by: AATW on April 21, 2020, 10:08:48 PM
Science claims that ID is not testable. Neither is any alternative claim. One cannot experiment on the past. One can only observe and interpret.

Take Max Plank's quote “Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.”

If we stick to that as the absolute rule for science and knowledge, and avoid arguing by human 'logic', what do we really and truly know? Not much.
Unusually, you're sort of right here.
And I must admit I do get irritated by some programmes they show over here, there was one "Walking With Dinosaurs" which claimed far more detailed knowledge about their day to day lives and behaviours than can possibly be known for sure.

Darwin's observation which kicked all this off was the way finches on different islands had adapted to their differing environments.
It's a bit of a stretch from there to the whole theory of evolution but one issue here is time. We live and think in human timescales.
Imagining a thousand years is a stretch for us, let alone a million or even a billion years. But even over relatively short timescales we can watch evolution happening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybsSqcB7mE

You could say "well, that's just adapting", but if that can happen over 11 days then what could happen over a couple of billion years?

Obviously all we can sensibly do with something like evolution is look for evidence in the form of "if life has evolved then what would we expect to see?". We'd expect to see a fossil record which is consistent with evolution, which we do.
We'd expect to see species which we believe to have had a more recent common ancestor to be more genetically similar, which we do.
We'd expect to see hints of evolution in the anatomy of animals, which we do. We have a coccyx which hints at a tail from our past and we have an appendix which people seem to be able to survive perfectly well without.

Can we know for sure that evolution occurred over huge timescales? I guess not. But it's the best model we have which explains what we observe in the fossil record and makes sense of the genetics in different species. A decent article here on the evidence

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/her/evolution-and-natural-selection/a/lines-of-evidence-for-evolution

This is like trying to solve a murder where there were no witnesses. There's a good reason the law only demands a case is proven "beyond reasonable doubt", you can always cast doubt on things. One day a better theory may come along which fits the evidence better but right now it's the best we have and the evidence for it is pretty strong. The counter-arguments always seem to be people not understanding evolution or "but my book says..."