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#481
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:08:27 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:
In article , says... On Friday, November 2, 2018 at 11:15:02 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote: Why is uncritical faith so desirable? To a dictator who wants to enslave his supporters it is, of course. Is God a dictator? "verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." -- Matt. 17:20 ....and yet, no single Christian has been able to actually move a whole mountain by merely using their will power. If someone did, it wouldn't go unnoticed, it would be clearly visible in seismographs all over the world. (1) Perhaps no one has that much faith. (2) Why would one who did have that much faith want to move a mountain. You, yourself DO exercise restraint, don't you? Another example of exaggreated claims and false promises, this time from the Bible itself. However, you failed to answer the question: why is uncritical faith so desireable? Why do you believe true faith is blind? and then, later, throw the non-believers in hell, to suffer and scream and anguish, for ever and ever until the end of time? I don't believe that. The Bible says so. Don't you believe in the Bible? That would make you an arrogant apostate who deserves hell... Nope. That would make me a skeptic that the Bible survived two millenia without without being changed by uninspired people. Matthew 5:29-30: And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell Mark 9:43-46: And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. Luke 12:5: But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Revelation 21:8: But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Need I say more than this? I already said it: All translations of the Bible that we have today have been influenced by the translators. Also, the Bible uses simile, rhetoric and metaphors. You claim "moving mountains" is exaggeration yet you now demand literalness :-) "in every instance in near death experiences of an encounter with the "being of light" in all of the above studies patients reported the experience to be one of intense love." https://www.magiscenter.com/love-and...h-experiences/ "In 69% of the cases, people who experienced Near Death (NDE) felt that they were in the presence of an overwhelming love in the company of family and friends or other mystical bodies." http://godloveletters.com/near-death-experiences/ Carl Sagan, in his TV series "Cosmos" of the 1980's, gave an interesting explanation for this. Near-death experiences often share some common things, such as pushing yourself through a narrow tunnel and then emerging into light were friendly beings of light are nice to you and take care of you. Sagan suggests that this actually is a vague recollection of an experience that all humans have - the experience of birth! Of course, that's just an opinion. If birth is such a great experience, why do babies cry when they're born? Maybe it's because they just LEFT a happy, friendly world and they have been cast out into the cruel world. So maybe NDEs are a recollection of the world of spirits that they just left, implying that there was such a world :-) Hmmm, I wonder what the other 31% felt. But don't worry Paul, since: "Interestingly, 75% of people who consider themselves atheists reported these divine figures." If you want to read about what it's really like: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.29793228ba55 An all-powerful God could of course do such a thing, but not a God which is both all-powerful and all-benign... Are you claiming that God is evil? YOU are the one who is claiming that. FYI: something which does not exist cannot be evil. But those who made up this "God story" certainly weren't all-benign... You're conflating those who wrote the Bible with those who copied and translated it. Nah ... all of them were humans, with human waknesses, weren't they? Yes, but some had more inspiration from God than others. You should be more skeptical of the models because they aren't reality. Actual measurements are of course preferable. So what does the measurements say? Do we have a global warming or not? What's your opinion? I believe that the earth is getting warmer overall, but it doesn't seem to be mainly because of CO2 increase. And I worry that we may NEED some extra CO2 if we head into another Little Ice Age. We already have this extra CO2. Several scientists believe this dosn't merely cancel any future "little ice age" but perhaps even the next major ice age. Which of course is a good thing, if the human civilization survives the heat wave in between. I don't think focusing on the wrong cause helps survival. Wrong! You'll learn more than you realize by actually looking upp support for your claims. Wrong! I DO look up support and I receive criticism from you and others. GREAT!!! Now write on Wikipedia about your findings. Don't forget to include the references.... Naw. Who knows, you might even find good reasons for changing your mind. And I have because of John Savard's point about temperature increase due to CO2 feedback through water vapor. I had to figure out how to apply that to modtran. And your modtran results disagree significantly from empirical data... And that's probably because CO2 isn't the main reason why global warming is occurring. Likewise, you won't find studies trying to find out if the Earth is flat or not. Should we therefore conclude that the claim "the Earth is not flat" is unproved? This is sophistry, Paul. There ARE such studies every time a satellite or astronaut takes a photo of the earth from space. This clearly refutes flat-earth assertion. OTOH, there are no studies that refute MacDougall's work. I'm just mimicing your way to argue, to (hopefully) make you realize that it is flawed. Your argument is flawed. There IS evidence that the earth is not flat, and there IS evidence that there is a spirit which leaves the body at death. The latter doesn't have near the confidence level as the former, of course, but it's still data. The final numbers are 300.81 K and water vapor scale of 1.07. So we have a temperature rise of 1.11 K for a doubling of CO2 levels. From empirical data we've had a temperature rise of close to one degree compared to preindustrisl levels, Actually, reliable data from 1882 to 2015 shows temperature rise was -0.41 in 1882 to +0.98 K in 2015 (with 0 being the reference around 1950 to 1970, or thereabouts). I don't know what you want to call "preindustrial" but it looks more like 1.4 K to me. Well, that's even worse for you. No, it's not. It just demonstrates that CO2 is not the major cause of GW. A rise in CO2 levels of somewhat less than 50% (280 ppm pre-industrial to 410 ppm current) gives a temperature increase of 1.4 degrees, while modtran says that an 100% in CO2 gives a temperature rise of 1.11 degrees. "You still refuse to face the truth" -- J. J. Adams to Dr. Morbius If modtran is as accurate as you claim, how do you explain this discrepancy? Why do you keep repeating the question when I have answered it? despite that we haven't yet had any doubling of CO2 levels but merely an increase of less than 50%. The CO2 level in 1959 was 316 ppm and was 401 in 2015, an increase of 31% in POST-industrial. Furthermore, it looks like there was cherry-picking to come up with that 50% number: there were measurements as high as the 1959 number in the 1880's. Again, that's even worse for you: a CO2 increase of 31% yields a temperature rise of 1.4 degrees, while modtran claims a 100% rise in CO2 gives a temperature increase of 1.11 degrees. Why this discrepancy? You still refuse to face the truth Therefore modtran must be underestimating the global warming. Modtran was developed by the U. S. Air Force and has been used by them and climatologists and tested for decades, so that is unlikely. You are assuming that a certain increase ratio at lower CO2 levels is equivalent to the same ratio at higher CO2 levels. It's not. You COULD calculate it using modtran rather than making vacuous assertions, and you might learn something :-) And if I did, I would probably end up with the same result as you. And we would **still** have a big discrepancy between modtran calculations and empirical data. When this happens to REAL scientists who have models with proven accuracy, they start looking for other causes. Poor scientists just bang their heads against a wall. I don't think there are many non-Nicaean churches left. Virtually all conventional churches are Nicaean, I.e. they follow dictates by people you consider to have been apostates. Some protestants accept it after redefining the word "Catholic." Others don't use it because it's the "work of man" and lacks inspiration from God. And others accept it after defining for themselves what "one substance" means. Most people simply don't understand it and don't worry about it. Which just supports my point that most churches are wrong. And will God send all the members of those majority of churches which are wrong to hell because they are wrong? Have you even LOOKED at some of those NDE reports? Did you find any of that kind of rhetoric there? The word "catholic" really means "universal doctrine". Orthodox churches sometimes refer to themselves as "Roman Catholic" churches. They call themselves "Roman" because they refer to "East Rome" i.e. Constantinople (which became the capital of the Roman Empire around AD 300, and after the split of the Roman Empire, the East Roman Empire survived the West Roman Empire by almost 1000 years). And they call themselves "Catholic" because they believe that their doctrine applies universally to all Christians. So we have two differnet "Roman Catholic" churches. Confusing, isn't it? And so there is no such thing as "universal doctrine." Thank you for\ making my point. Anyway, you celebrate Christmans and Easter according to dictates from the majority of the Catholic and Protestant churches, even though you think that a majority, perhaps all, of them are wrong. Why do yo do that? Do you want to end up in hell, or what? Have you even LOOKED at some of those NDE reports? Did you find any of that kind of rhetoric there? Why do you believe God cares about when we celebrate Christ's birth and resurrection? |
#482
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:25:59 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:
On Sat, 3 Nov 2018 05:50:30 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel wrote: Apparently, it is true that information has no mass, but all of our understanding of information is that it must reside in some form of matter. Hence, it is not unreasonable to expect that "spirit" has some kind of mass. It is more reasonable that the spirit resides in the mass of the body. And if the body is destroyed, so is the spirit. Only in your conceited opinion :-) Muslims believe that on Judgements Day, not only the spirit but also the body is resurrected. Me, too. Does that make me a Muslim? And therefore they don't want the bodies of their dead to be cremated. Cremation might make resurrection a bit more difficult, but I'm sure God will manage. However, the claim that the human spirit somehow survives the physical death of the body, to go on living forever in heaven or hell (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), or to be transferred to another body (Hinduism, Buddhism), is highly doubtful. Why is that "doubtful"? Where is your evidence for this? You have none, of course, so you "doubt" in a vacuum. I didn't say "disproved", I said "doubtful". It is doubtful for two reasons. First, we know of no natural process through which this could happen. And, second, we have no reliable evidence that this does happen. "O ye of little faith" :-) Our worldview would become very unmanageable if we were to believe as a fact everything which has not been disproved - for instance that there are big green Pac-Man-like monsters living on an unknown planet orbiting Sirius. Nobody has been able to disprove that... But there IS evidence that spirits exist, some experimental and a LOT of anecdotal. Your argument is specious. But what happens after death is in the future Not for those who have had near-death experiences :-) Near-death is not death. Apparently you don't know what those words mean. In many NDE cases the patient was DEAD by medical standards - brain dead. Just like a nearly total solar eclipse is not a total solar eclipse, or nearly winning the lottery is not winning the lottery... Or almost making it to heaven and not making it :-) |
#484
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 10:52:48 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:
Likewise, even if most people with faith enough to move a mountain would refrain from doing it, some people wouldn't restrain from doing it. There are places in the Bible where Jesus, doing a miracle, notes that He just *asked*, but God the Father did the heavy lifting. Hence, even if someone has enough faith, if moving a mountain would be a bad idea in the particular case, there is no reason to expect God to cooperate. But if there ever comes a time when a Christian with enough faith has a good reason to move a mountain, and it doesn't happen, then a question would be raised. John Savard |
#485
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 10:52:48 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:
In article , says... On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:08:27 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote: ....and yet, no single Christian has been able to actually move a whole mountain by merely using their will power. If someone did, it wouldn't go unnoticed, it would be clearly visible in seismographs all over the world. (1) Perhaps no one has that much faith. If so, why does the Bible even suggests this? If faith beyond human capability is required, then it is not possible for a human to do this. Moses caused the Red Sea to part. Do you think he did this on his own? He didn't. Faith is a principle of power, and that power comes from God. And God doesn't do anything to satisfy someone's whim. (2) Why would one who did have that much faith want to move a mountain. You, yourself DO exercise restraint, don't you? I do, but that doesn't mean everybody does. Why would anyone who is drunk want to drive a car? They all know it is both very dangeous and illegal, and most people refrain from doing it. But some people don't, and drive drunk anyway. Likewise, even if most people with faith enough to move a mountain would refrain from doing it, some people wouldn't restrain from doing it. It's a bit like e.g. distributing nuclear weapons to everyone under the motto "Nukes don't kill people, people kill people". Most people would realize that the nukes are very dangeous and would not detonate them. But it is enough that only one or a few would detonate them for a great catastrophy to occur. Most likely, people doing so would be strongly religious people who believed they had "God's right" to do this to "destroy the infidels and apostates"... The faith to move mountains is based on righteousness, which is necessary to receive power from God. No righteousness, no power, no mobile mountains. Another example of exaggreated claims and false promises, this time from the Bible itself. However, you failed to answer the question: why is uncritical faith so desireable? Why do you believe true faith is blind? Isn't that the very definition of faith? Trusting someone or something without the tiniest bit of evidence... Nope. True faith is believing in what is true. Need I say more than this? I already said it: All translations of the Bible that we have today have been influenced by the translators. Also, the Bible uses simile, rhetoric and metaphors. You claim "moving mountains" is exaggeration yet you now demand literalness :-) If so, why do you quote the bible yourself from time to time? You know these quotes have been influenced by the translators (and I would add also by the original authors) and therefore are corrupt. There are basic truths in the Bible and there are errors. And people misunderstand the truths and some cling to the errors. The Old Testament had prophets to guide the people and Jesus corrected the religious rulers who were teaching false doctrine. So you bring up a good point: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who will correct the people today? And how do you even manage to form your own religious belief? I believe that everyone that comes into the world has a sense of what's right and wrong. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" -- John 10:27 If YOU heard his voice, you would follow him too. All of today's churches are corrupt, you say, because they don't follow the Bible. I didn't say that. I said ALMOST all do not teach the full truth. But even if they followed the ible, that wouldn't make much of a difference since even the Bible itself is corrupt. You are conflating having errors with rottenness. Still, you don't want to be "arrogant" against God's commands. But how do you even know what God's commands are? You think all available sources to them are corrupt, don't you? No. Carl Sagan, in his TV series "Cosmos" of the 1980's, gave an interesting explanation for this. Near-death experiences often share some common things, such as pushing yourself through a narrow tunnel and then emerging into light were friendly beings of light are nice to you and take care of you. Sagan suggests that this actually is a vague recollection of an experience that all humans have - the experience of birth! Of course, that's just an opinion. If birth is such a great experience, why do babies cry when they're born? Maybe it's because they just LEFT a happy, friendly world and they have been cast out into the cruel world. Babies cry to draw their very first breath of air. My first child cried her eyes out for WEEKS. I never said one's birth is all-through a pleasant experience. Being born is probably just as painful as giving birth to a child (ask any mother you know how that feels). Being hungry is not pleasant but forces you to become active to get food so you don't starve to death. Most diseases are not enjoyable - some are just more or less uncomfortable while others are really painful. In short, pain is part of life. And staying in your mother's womb to avoid getting born into the cruel world is no option - quite soon your mother and yourself would both die. If your mother dies first you will di from lack of oxygen - is that a pleasant death? Anyway, events in your life which you remember are not only pleasant events. You will also remember unpleasant, or outright painful, events. One tends to forget unpleasant experiences. Not carrying grudges is not so much a virtue with me as a sign of a poor memory. So maybe NDEs are a recollection of the world of spirits that they just left, implying that there was such a world :-) Is spirituality really a desire to re-enter your mother's womb? ;-) Non sequitur. Nah ... all of them were humans, with human waknesses, weren't they? Yes, but some had more inspiration from God than others. That's your belief, but you don't know that. You can only have faith ( = uncritical belief ). True faith is belief in things that are true. We already have this extra CO2. Several scientists believe this dosn't merely cancel any future "little ice age" but perhaps even the next major ice age. Which of course is a good thing, if the human civilization survives the heat wave in between. I don't think focusing on the wrong cause helps survival. I agree. The focus should be to avoid the heat wave in some 50-100 years and not to avoid an ice age 100 times farther into the future. This may be unavoidable; "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." -- Malachi 4:1 And your modtran results disagree significantly from empirical data... And that's probably because CO2 isn't the main reason why global warming is occurring. Any idea what that extra warming is coming from then? I wonder if we're having more cloudiness and humidity today than in the past. CLoudiness would have a long-term cooling effect but a short-term warming effect, and higher humidity would have a greater greenhouse effect. https://www.climate.gov/news-feature...imate-humidity "most regions experienced moister-than-average atmospheric conditions (in 2013 than in 1981-2010) including the midlatitude northern Pacific and northern Atlantic, Southeast Asia, and most of tropical Africa." Thus a larger greenhouse effect, which will warm the oceans and produce more moisture in the atmosphere. I'm just mimicing your way to argue, to (hopefully) make you realize that it is flawed. Your argument is flawed. There IS evidence that the earth is not flat, and there IS evidence that there is a spirit which leaves the body at death. The latter doesn't have near the confidence level as the former, of course, but it's still data. Precisely! It's the huge difference in confidence levens which is the reason for different conclusions. Millions of people have experienced NDEs. THEY are VERY confident about life after death. Perhaps doubters should try for an experience rather than doubt. After all, that's the scientific method :-) Well, that's even worse for you. No, it's not. It just demonstrates that CO2 is not the major cause of GW. Since you believe modtran is so flawless, can you suggest an alternative reason for the excess heating? See above response. A rise in CO2 levels of somewhat less than 50% (280 ppm pre-industrial to 410 ppm current) gives a temperature increase of 1.4 degrees, while modtran says that an 100% in CO2 gives a temperature rise of 1.11 degrees. "You still refuse to face the truth" -- J. J. Adams to Dr. Morbius If modtran is as accurate as you claim, how do you explain this discrepancy? Why do you keep repeating the question when I have answered it? I repeated it before you answered, silly. Now you've told me you think that the excess warming has some other cause than rising CO2 levels. So please explain these two things: (1) What other cause would this be? See above response. (2) Why is this other cause in perfect synchronisation with the rising CO2 levels? Correlation does not confirm causation. Again, that's even worse for you: a CO2 increase of 31% yields a temperature rise of 1.4 degrees, while modtran claims a 100% rise in CO2 gives a temperature increase of 1.11 degrees. Why this discrepancy? You still refuse to face the truth I see you've found a new religion - it's MODTRAN. Well, I don't share your faith that MODTRAN is the absolute flawless truth... Of course it isn't flawless. There are studies on this, but it actually works and gives excellent results. And if I did, I would probably end up with the same result as you. And we would **still** have a big discrepancy between modtran calculations and empirical data. When this happens to REAL scientists who have models with proven accuracy, they start looking for other causes. Poor scientists just bang their heads against a wall. So why don't you help them by suggesting what this other cause might be? And why this other cause is in perfect synchronisation with rising CO2 levels? Perhaps CO2 levels are a result of GW and not a cause. Or they may be independent. Modtran suggests that CO2 is only partly responsible for GW. And will God send all the members of those majority of churches which are wrong to hell because they are wrong? Have you even LOOKED at some of those NDE reports? Did you find any of that kind of rhetoric there? The word "catholic" really means "universal doctrine". Orthodox churches sometimes refer to themselves as "Roman Catholic" churches. They call themselves "Roman" because they refer to "East Rome" i.e. Constantinople (which became the capital of the Roman Empire around AD 300, and after the split of the Roman Empire, the East Roman Empire survived the West Roman Empire by almost 1000 years). And they call themselves "Catholic" because they believe that their doctrine applies universally to all Christians. So we have two differnet "Roman Catholic" churches. Confusing, isn't it? And so there is no such thing as "universal doctrine." Thank you for\ making my point. True. But there are several claims for a "universal doctrine". And one "universal doctrine" could be expected from one single God, couldn't it? Man doesn't necessarily obey God. But if we give up the idea of one single God, and instead view Christianity as a method for several gorernments in the world to dominate the other governments, then it becomes quite natural that several mutually different and mutually competing, "universal doctrines" co-exist. You're forgetting this: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us" -- John 17:21 |
#486
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 5:50:32 AM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:
"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother." -- Khalil Gibran “Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality |
#487
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 8:39:49 AM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:
There IS evidence that the earth is not flat, and there IS evidence that there is a spirit which leaves the body at death. Even assuming that your contention that the body loses weight coincidental with dying is true, that is far from evidence that that the loss of weight represents a spirit leaving the body. That is to say, there is ZERO evidence that the weight loss is due to a spirit or soul fleeing, regardless of how much you want that to be the case. "Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck." - George Carlin |
#488
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 4:21:26 PM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:
Moses caused the Red Sea to part. Do you think he did this on his own? He didn't. Faith is a principle of power, and that power comes from God. And God doesn't do anything to satisfy someone's whim. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.f952fe55e2ab |
#489
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
On Sunday, November 4, 2018 at 3:10:37 AM UTC, palsing wrote:
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality You show traits of an old Nazi as they leaned heavily on this guy, a sort of ChrisB of the 19th century who created a lot of noise at the expense of those who practice Christianity at a communal level by going to Church, celebrating festivals, participating in milestones and so on. Even the theorist who spent part of his life mocking his notion of God recently ended up with a Church service and a burial. https://wilsonquarterly.com/quarterl...and-the-nazis/ The idea of ubermensch/untermensch filtered through late 17th century 'enlightenment' doctrine that humanity is driven by strife and aggression was never dealt with after WWII as these doctrines escaped from behind of walls of universities and into the political realm - ” A lopsided education has helped to encourage that illusion. Man must realize that a fundamental law of necessity reigns throughout the whole realm of Nature and that his existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife. He will then feel that there cannot be a separate law for mankind in a world in which planets and suns follow their orbits, where moons and planets trace their destined paths, where the strong are always the masters of the weak and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed.” Hitler Better not to dwell on these things but that empiricism is as aggressive and ineffective as ever despite running out of road is turning people off science or viewing science as just another subculture with a political agenda. |
#490
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?
In article ,
says... On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 10:52:48 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote: In article , says... On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:08:27 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote: ....and yet, no single Christian has been able to actually move a whole mountain by merely using their will power. If someone did, it wouldn't go unnoticed, it would be clearly visible in seismographs all over the world. (1) Perhaps no one has that much faith. If so, why does the Bible even suggests this? If faith beyond human capability is required, then it is not possible for a human to do this. Moses caused the Red Sea to part. Do you think he did this on his own? He didn't. Faith is a principle of power, and that power comes from God. And God doesn't do anything to satisfy someone's whim. Yes, Moses caused the Red Sea to part. And the world was created in merely six days some 6000 years ago. All according to the Bible, a book which even you have admitted is corrupt. (2) Why would one who did have that much faith want to move a mountain. You, yourself DO exercise restraint, don't you? I do, but that doesn't mean everybody does. Why would anyone who is drunk want to drive a car? They all know it is both very dangeous and illegal, and most people refrain from doing it. But some people don't, and drive drunk anyway. Likewise, even if most people with faith enough to move a mountain would refrain from doing it, some people wouldn't restrain from doing it. It's a bit like e.g. distributing nuclear weapons to everyone under the motto "Nukes don't kill people, people kill people". Most people would realize that the nukes are very dangeous and would not detonate them. But it is enough that only one or a few would detonate them for a great catastrophy to occur. Most likely, people doing so would be strongly religious people who believed they had "God's right" to do this to "destroy the infidels and apostates"... The faith to move mountains is based on righteousness, which is necessary to receive power from God. No righteousness, no power, no mobile mountains. How do you know that? From the Bible? You have yourself admitted that the Bible is corrupt... Another example of exaggreated claims and false promises, this time from the Bible itself. However, you failed to answer the question: why is uncritical faith so desireable? Why do you believe true faith is blind? Isn't that the very definition of faith? Trusting someone or something without the tiniest bit of evidence... Nope. True faith is believing in what is true. And how do you know what is true and what is not true? Critical analysis aims at believing in what is true. True faith aims at believing no matter what. Need I say more than this? I already said it: All translations of the Bible that we have today have been influenced by the translators. Also, the Bible uses simile, rhetoric and metaphors. You claim "moving mountains" is exaggeration yet you now demand literalness :-) If so, why do you quote the bible yourself from time to time? You know these quotes have been influenced by the translators (and I would add also by the original authors) and therefore are corrupt. There are basic truths in the Bible and there are errors. And people misunderstand the truths and some cling to the errors. The Old Testament had prophets to guide the people and Jesus corrected the religious rulers who were teaching false doctrine. So you bring up a good point: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who will correct the people today? And how do **you** know what is true and what is not true in the Bible? By your own judgement? Then you have become an arrogant ******* who believes that you yourself are God (and what about others, who use their own judgement and arrive at conclusions contradicting your conclusions - who is then right?). Or do you use some other source? If so, which source? And how do you even manage to form your own religious belief? I believe that everyone that comes into the world has a sense of what's right and wrong. Including Adolf Hitler? "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" -- John 10:27 Why do you quote from a book that is corrupt? If YOU heard his voice, you would follow him too. Indeed I would ... if I was a sheep, that is... All of today's churches are corrupt, you say, because they don't follow the Bible. I didn't say that. I said ALMOST all do not teach the full truth. If so, which churches teach the full truth? Please list them. But even if they followed the Bible, that wouldn't make much of a difference since even the Bible itself is corrupt. You are conflating having errors with rottenness. The only difference between "errors" and "rottenness" is the intents of the author. But to the reader, both is equally misleading. Now, the Bible claims, repeatedly at several different places, that those who don't believe will end up in hell, to suffer, anguish and scream, for ever and ever till the end of time. Is this true? Or is it an error? Or is it rottenness? Still, you don't want to be "arrogant" against God's commands. But how do you even know what God's commands are? You think all available sources to them are corrupt, don't you? No. Then please list the non-corrupt sources which informs about God's commands. That list ought to be quite short... Carl Sagan, in his TV series "Cosmos" of the 1980's, gave an interesting explanation for this. Near-death experiences often share some common things, such as pushing yourself through a narrow tunnel and then emerging into light were friendly beings of light are nice to you and take care of you. Sagan suggests that this actually is a vague recollection of an experience that all humans have - the experience of birth! Of course, that's just an opinion. If birth is such a great experience, why do babies cry when they're born? Maybe it's because they just LEFT a happy, friendly world and they have been cast out into the cruel world. Babies cry to draw their very first breath of air. My first child cried her eyes out for WEEKS. None of my children did that. Most other children don't either. So your poor child must have had a disease of some kind, or some other unusual reason to suffer. I never said one's birth is all-through a pleasant experience. Being born is probably just as painful as giving birth to a child (ask any mother you know how that feels). Being hungry is not pleasant but forces you to become active to get food so you don't starve to death. Most diseases are not enjoyable - some are just more or less uncomfortable while others are really painful. In short, pain is part of life. And staying in your mother's womb to avoid getting born into the cruel world is no option - quite soon your mother and yourself would both die. If your mother dies first you will di from lack of oxygen - is that a pleasant death? Anyway, events in your life which you remember are not only pleasant events. You will also remember unpleasant, or outright painful, events. One tends to forget unpleasant experiences. Not carrying grudges is not so much a virtue with me as a sign of a poor memory. Well, most people do not directly remember their birth. My very first memories is from when I was 3-4 years old. So maybe NDEs are a recollection of the world of spirits that they just left, implying that there was such a world :-) Is spirituality really a desire to re-enter your mother's womb? ;-) Non sequitur. Nah ... all of them were humans, with human waknesses, weren't they? Yes, but some had more inspiration from God than others. That's your belief, but you don't know that. You can only have faith ( = uncritical belief ). True faith is belief in things that are true. A circular argument. Who wouldn't believe in something they knew was true? But you avoid the real problem: how do you know what is true and what is not true? You must know that in order to decide what to believe in. So how do you find that out? Yep, that's right, by critical thinking and examining evidence. Faith is belief without critical thinking. We already have this extra CO2. Several scientists believe this dosn't merely cancel any future "little ice age" but perhaps even the next major ice age. Which of course is a good thing, if the human civilization survives the heat wave in between. I don't think focusing on the wrong cause helps survival. I agree. The focus should be to avoid the heat wave in some 50-100 years and not to avoid an ice age 100 times farther into the future. This may be unavoidable; It's actually up to us and our actions. But even if some heat wave is unavoidable (we're in one heat wave already), our actions can still determine how severe that heat wave is goind to be. "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." -- Malachi 4:1 Another quote from a corrupt book... And your modtran results disagree significantly from empirical data... And that's probably because CO2 isn't the main reason why global warming is occurring. Any idea what that extra warming is coming from then? I wonder if we're having more cloudiness and humidity today than in the past. Cloudiness would have a long-term cooling effect but a short- term warming effect, and higher humidity would have a greater greenhouse effect. https://www.climate.gov/news-feature...imate-humidity "most regions experienced moister-than-average atmospheric conditions (in 2013 than in 1981-2010) including the midlatitude northern Pacific and northern Atlantic, Southeast Asia, and most of tropical Africa." Thus a larger greenhouse effect, which will warm the oceans and produce more moisture in the atmosphere. That's one of the tricky details which MODTRAN probably isn't very good at handling. I'm just mimicing your way to argue, to (hopefully) make you realize that it is flawed. Your argument is flawed. There IS evidence that the earth is not flat, and there IS evidence that there is a spirit which leaves the body at death. The latter doesn't have near the confidence level as the former, of course, but it's still data. Precisely! It's the huge difference in confidence levens which is the reason for different conclusions. Millions of people have experienced NDEs. THEY are VERY confident about life after death. Perhaps doubters should try for an experience rather than doubt. After all, that's the scientific method :-) Millions of people also "have seen" UFO's and even have been taken aboard a UFO and travelled with it for awhile. And they are very convinced that it actually happened. If this was true, the Earth must have had a massive invasion of alien spacecrafts. In the past, millions of people "have seen" elves, trolls, giants, witches, and various other kinds of creatures believed to live in the woods where people did not live. Some were believed to have lived near human settlements, or even in human houses. A large number of poor women were burnt alive because they were accused of witchcraft. You cannot just trust what people claim. People imagine things and fantasize about things. They hallucinate. Sometimes they even lie. But human stories all by themselves are not very useful for science, they must be supported by additional evidence. An example: for a long long times astronomers denied that stones could fall from the sky. They continued denying this until meteorites actually were encountered, and could be shown to have a different origin than terrestial rocks. After that, astronomers changed their mind. And here is the core of science: to change your mind if and when solid evidence for it is encountered. If trolls and elves actually did exist, one can expect them to leave remnants of some kind when they die. We ought to have found a large number of skeletons of "little humans" from these trolls and elves. And skeletons of "huge humans" from the giants. But these skeletons or other remnants have not been found. Likewise, "life after death" needs more solid evidence than just human stories to be taken seriously by science. Well, that's even worse for you. No, it's not. It just demonstrates that CO2 is not the major cause of GW. Since you believe modtran is so flawless, can you suggest an alternative reason for the excess heating? See above response. The above responses did not mention any such alternative reason. Please either answer the question, or admit that you don't have any answer. A rise in CO2 levels of somewhat less than 50% (280 ppm pre-industrial to 410 ppm current) gives a temperature increase of 1.4 degrees, while modtran says that an 100% in CO2 gives a temperature rise of 1.11 degrees. "You still refuse to face the truth" -- J. J. Adams to Dr. Morbius If modtran is as accurate as you claim, how do you explain this discrepancy? Why do you keep repeating the question when I have answered it? I repeated it before you answered, silly. Now you've told me you think that the excess warming has some other cause than rising CO2 levels. So please explain these two things: (1) What other cause would this be? See above response. (2) Why is this other cause in perfect synchronisation with the rising CO2 levels? Correlation does not confirm causation. True, but a correlation could have another common cause. It ought to be investigated. Since you're fond of statistics, please compute the probability that this correlation is due to pure chance, without any common cause whatsoever. Again, that's even worse for you: a CO2 increase of 31% yields a temperature rise of 1.4 degrees, while modtran claims a 100% rise in CO2 gives a temperature increase of 1.11 degrees. Why this discrepancy? You still refuse to face the truth I see you've found a new religion - it's MODTRAN. Well, I don't share your faith that MODTRAN is the absolute flawless truth... Of course it isn't flawless. There are studies on this, but it actually works and gives excellent results. I wouldn't think the quite large discrepancies you pointed out as "excellent results". MODTRAN is wrong by about a factor of two or more. And if I did, I would probably end up with the same result as you. And we would **still** have a big discrepancy between modtran calculations and empirical data. When this happens to REAL scientists who have models with proven accuracy, they start looking for other causes. Poor scientists just bang their heads against a wall. So why don't you help them by suggesting what this other cause might be? And why this other cause is in perfect synchronisation with rising CO2 levels? Perhaps CO2 levels are a result of GW and not a cause. Or they may be independent. Modtran suggests that CO2 is only partly responsible for GW. And what about the CO2 produced by us humans? Does it just vanish into thin air? (pun intended) And will God send all the members of those majority of churches which are wrong to hell because they are wrong? Have you even LOOKED at some of those NDE reports? Did you find any of that kind of rhetoric there? The word "catholic" really means "universal doctrine". Orthodox churches sometimes refer to themselves as "Roman Catholic" churches. They call themselves "Roman" because they refer to "East Rome" i.e. Constantinople (which became the capital of the Roman Empire around AD 300, and after the split of the Roman Empire, the East Roman Empire survived the West Roman Empire by almost 1000 years). And they call themselves "Catholic" because they believe that their doctrine applies universally to all Christians. So we have two differnet "Roman Catholic" churches. Confusing, isn't it? And so there is no such thing as "universal doctrine." Thank you for\ making my point. True. But there are several claims for a "universal doctrine". And one "universal doctrine" could be expected from one single God, couldn't it? Man doesn't necessarily obey God. And God made man that way, didn't he? ;-) But if we give up the idea of one single God, and instead view Christianity as a method for several gorernments in the world to dominate the other governments, then it becomes quite natural that several mutually different and mutually competing, "universal doctrines" co-exist. You're forgetting this: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us" -- John 17:21 Yet another quote from a corrupt book... |
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