Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Monday, November 5, 2018 at 8:02:05 PM UTC-7, palsing wrote:

On Monday, November 5, 2018 at 6:15:00 PM UTC-8, Gary Harnagel wrote:

On Monday, November 5, 2018 at 3:08:27 PM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

Also "after having an experience" implies that you accept his claims
for what he had experienced. Why would anyone be even remotely inclined
to do that?

John Savard

That was just his first experience. He had quite a few similar
experiences, many with others who corroborated them. And then there
was the Book of Mormon.

“Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the
hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the
darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling
parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at
a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English.
Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his
principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother
Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another
character with the interpretation would appear. � (David Whitmer, An
Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Mo.: n.p., 1887, p. 12.)

Yeah, right, I'll buy that!

So you believe what Whitmer said, yes? Do you believe him when he attested
to this?

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/three?lang=eng

Also...

"One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide
stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork."
- Edward Abbey

So are you saying that the more people who are involved in an effort, the
stupider the result? What about thousands of people involved in promoting
AGW?

On Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 2:10:08 AM UTC-7, Paul Schlyter wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Monday, November 5, 2018 at 7:36:36 AM UTC-7, Paul Schlyter wrote:

I know. The way to find the truth is science. We have no better way than
that.

Nope. We've already discussed that science is incapable of discerning
truth where phenomena cannot be controlled.

OBSERVED !!! Not controlled... Science has e.g. been fully capable of
discerning many interesting facts about the universe, even though we are
unable to control the universe...

Which is a bit outside the scientific method.

A circular "proof". I already know the Bible says that the Bible is
correct. WHat else could you expect?

What else could a closed mind say?

A closed mind would think that quote was the "truth from God". A closed
mind is incapable of even considering any other possibility...

A closed mind might also accept ONLY that other possibility.

Another circular "proof". I already know the Bible says that the Bible
is correct. WHat else could you expect?

You are being dishonest. It's not really circular at all. It is saying
that a mortal has no right to interpret scripture by himself.

In Europe some 100+ years ago, that rule was enforced by the authorities.
Back then you could be sent to jail for having had a religious meeting
without any priest present during the meeting. That was then a strong
motivation for religious minorities to emigrate to North America. And
there you have the reason for the very strong religiosity of todays
Americans. In the U.S. it is unthinkable for a politician to publicly
admit being an atheist -- their political career would end very soon
after having done that. In Europe, doing the same thing wouldn't be such
a big deal. After all, running a country is not the same thing as running
a church.

It's been done in the past.

WHICH profet?

Mohammed, who created Islam?

Joseph Smith, who created Mormonism?

Both claimed that an angel explained "the truth" to them...

MANY people have claimed that they have seen and spoken to angels. THAT
alone does not give them the right to start a religion.

Are you against freedom of religion?

Not at all. One may worship whatever he wants, even atheism. I was unclear
as I meant "right in the sight of God." Just seeing an angel is usually a
private experience meant for the one seeing. There's the story about
misinterpreting signs:

http://www.wikipreacher.org/home/the...ree/plant-corn


Perhaps you are against freedom of speech too?

The ones who are against free speech are the AGW fanatics and those who
wound hound a family out of a restaurant because they have different political
beliefs.

"Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret
unto his servants the prophets.+ -- Amos 3:7

Yet another circular "proof". I already know the Bible says that the
Bible is correct. WHat else could you expect?

You have blinded your mind with this baloney. That scripture (and many
others) isn't telling you to believe the Bible: It's telling you to pay
attention to prophets.

If I don't believe the Bible, why should I care when the Bible says I
should pay attention to some prophets?

Maybe you SHOULD pay attention. You may be wrong, you know.

And who are these "certified" prophets? Is Muhammed included? Or Joseph
Smith?

Or Edgar Cayce? Or L. Ron Hubbard? Or William Miller? Or Charles Taze
Russell? The Bible says (I know, you don't care what it says, but YOU are
asking the question about prophets anyway :-):

"I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee,
and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that"
I shall command him.
"And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words
which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." -- Deut, 18:18-19

So GOD will call prophets. If they don't attest that He actually did that,
you can ignore them.

"When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not,
nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the
prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him."
-- Deuteronomy 18:22

So check out each of those people to see how they stack up.

So where is that list?

Of course, since religions aren't in ageement with each other, there can
only be either one or none in that list.

And you've already excluded that the list is empty. So your list must
contain exactly one religion. Which one is it? And don't just say
"Christianity" because that's too unspecific. Since you condemn most of
Christianity, you must tell what branch of Christianity you approve.

"I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the
sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that
all were wrong)?and which I should join." __ Joseph Smith

So your claim that an angel "explained the truth" to Joseph Smith is
egregiously incomplete and misleading. He claimed the Father and the Son
visited him. When he asked which church he should join, he was told none
of them.

OK, replace "angel" with "deity" then. But this doesn't apply to you
since you earlier said that your list of approvable religions was not an
empty list.

And he didn't run off and start a religion after having an
experience MUCH more profound that Mohammed.

So what do YOU KNOW about the experience of Mohammed? Not much I would
suppose...

He claimed the angel Gabriel visited him and commanded him to deliver the
message of peace to the world. I had a discussion with an Imam that seemed
to have a propensity to numerology (anything that didn't have a multiple of
19 involved in it had to be wrong).

By information from you, who admitted that there are errors in the
Bible. And since there are errors there, it's not an untrustworthy
source.

And since there are errors in the climate models used by the IPCC, they
are untrustworthy sources. If you maintain one is trustworthy but the
other is not, you are a hypocrite.

They should of course not be blindly trusted, as you tend to do with
MODTRAN. Science is, as always, about critical thinking, not about blind
faith.

If you don't investigate the details yourself, your "critical thinking"
is the same as blind faith.

However, even then you are biased, since you think there are errors
in my Bible quotes, but not in yor Bible quotes.

What evidence do you have that YOUR quotes are correct? None at all.
You're just playing word games. I explained how you can tell.

Well, what evidence do you have that YOUR quotes are correct?

Prophets and reports of NDEs.

You see? Not even Jesus is free from corruption....

I was asking YOU. I don't know for sure any mortals that are, but I know
MANY who are much closer than you or I.

Do you know any immortals who are?

Ummm, Gabriel, Elijah, Jesus Christ, Peter, James and John, etc.

And since you earlier said that being in error does not imply being
corrupt - I agree with that. Being corrput is having a bad intent to
deceive others. Everyone is in error from time to time, nobody is
flawless. But not everyone have bad intents.

And intentional errors can be inserted with the best of intentions by
a translator who KNOWS that the text could not possible mean what it says.

That's one major weakness of Modtran, or at least on how you use it.
The amount of water vapor is not a constant.

Umm, THAT'S why it can be changed in the program, of course :-))

So why do you have to enter a value, if the program sets new values by
itself?

It doesn't.

It is not even in a constant ratio relative to the saturation pressure
of water vapor. The amount of water vapor in our atmosphere is highly
variable, and can be anything between 0 percent and about 4 percent.

That's why the IPCC models just throw in the towel and ASSUME that that
the effect of CO2 is multiplied by a fixed constant.

Does Modtran match well with the very low humidity over the Sahara
desert?

Do the IPCC models? Of course not. "Sauce for the goose is sauve for the
gander."

**Any** GCM model of the atmosphere should produce low humidity areas
where we have our deserts, or else that model would be pretty worthless.

There ya go. The "G" in GCM stands for GLOBAL.

However, there are local models and there are global models. Which kind
of model is MODTRAN?

It's actually a local model. You selsct the area you're interested in:
tropical, midlatitude (summer, winter), subarctic (summer, winter), or
standard.

Of course. But when we can measure, we know more if we measure than
if we don't.

And MacDougall made measurements, so we know more than we did before.

Not nearly as much as we'd wish to know though. MacDougall realized that
himself, that's why he concluded that his experiment would have to be
repeated - not just once or twice but many times - before any conclusions
could be made.

Sure, three nines with four measurements begs for further experimentation.
But it also says that it would be imprudent to assume that a person is
nothing more than a body.

Palmer Joss asks Ellis Arroway to prove his feelings for his father. But
Palmer Joss does not question that the father did exist.

Right, but point is that there are important things, like love, memories,
and, yes, even experiences that lie outside of science. And some actual
evidence, even though it was captured by a fighter jet's targeting
computer, isn't "scientific" because it cannot be controlled
"scientifically."

Any subjective experience is of course outside the scope of science.
There is only one way we can find out if someone had a subjective
expericence or not: ask that person, and hope she doesn't lie.

One could then argue that religion is nothing but a subjective
experience, and I would happily agree with that. Religious experiences do
indeed exist, no doubt about that. But if God exists is much more
doubtful. However, we can feel much more sure about that some (actually
many) specific God does not exist. This applies to Thor, Woden, Mars,
Saturn, ...and also the Abrahamic "one and only" God.

I agree with you except for the last one :-)

But the religious experiences around this non-existend Abrahamic God,
these experiences do exist. Just like hallucinations exist even though
the objects being hallucinated may very well, and often are, non-
existent.

What about "supernatural" events observed by many?

"To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible
proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining
to the kingdom of God" -- Acts 1:3

I'm not questioning your religious faith. You could lie about your faith
of course, but I see no reason why you should lie about that, so I
believe you. After all, there are a large number of religious people, so
there's nothing remarkable about that.

So what I'm questioning is not your feelings, but the existence of the
object of your feelings.

If you require "scientific evidence" for that object, you're outta luck!

I know. As I explained earlier, those feelings are outside the scope of
science. However, I too have feelings, and these feelings I cannot
scientifically prove to others. But I find it reasonable that other human
beings, including you, also have feelings. Therefore I don't doubt your
feelings. But I'll have to view you as a "black box" (i.e. a device I
know nothing about the inside of, all I can do is to subject it to
various stimula and then observe the responses.

And I don't think you'll find any scientific study that concludes that
god does not exist, or the human soul/spirit/whatever does not exist.
THose questions are simply outside the scope of science.

Yes, they are, now.

Since when?

I was referring to the future, not the past.

Then you should have said "Yes, they will be in the future", not "Yes,
they are now"... :-)

It seemed clear to me. Sorry it didn't seem that way to you.

"I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection
arrogant men can come up with against him" -- Criss Jami


It is very plausible that H2O provides a positive feedback loop,
amplifying the heating due to increased CO2. Also, when the air gets
warmer, more water evaporates from the oceans, causing even more water
vapor in the atmosphere.

However, humans are burning fossil coal at a large scale. If we instead
had burnt hydrogen at a large scale, there would have been large amounts
of human produced water vapor in the atmosphere. But we don't burn
hydrogen at a large scale, we burn coal at a large scale. Therefore the
major human contribution is CO2, not H2O.

Two hundred years to double the CO2 level and produce a 1.1 degree rise
in global temperatures. Something else is happening and we'd better find
out what it is before our great great great grandchildren burn up.

Coal use has dropped significantly in the U.S. and probably will all over
the world in the coming decades.

That is your expectation. It remains to be seen what actually will happen.

That is true of all prognostications.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/glo...emissions-data

Electricity and heat production account for 1/4 of the GHG emissions,
industry almost as much and agriculture, forestry and land use an equal
amount. Transportation is only 1/9. So how do we cut the CO2 production
in half without cutting our throats, too?

And half isn't good enough. That still puts an additional 1 ppm/year
into the atmosphere (assuming the same ratio going into other sinks
as now). It'll just take twice as long for the burn to happen.

I believe that Whitmer believes it, yes, but I don't believe it myself, not a word of it, no. Why would I? Why would you?

And since you earlier said that being in error does not imply being
corrupt - I agree with that. Being corrput is having a bad intent to
deceive others. Everyone is in error from time to time, nobody is
flawless. But not everyone have bad intents.

And intentional errors can be inserted with the best of intentions by
a translator who KNOWS that the text could not possible mean what it says.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comme...the_monastery/

On Friday, November 9, 2018 at 3:38:21 PM UTC-7, palsing wrote:

I believe that Whitmer believes it, yes, but I don't believe it myself,
not a word of it, no. Why would I? Why would you?

So why would you believe the story about the stone and the hat?

And intentional errors can be inserted with the best of intentions by
a translator who KNOWS that the text could not possible mean what it says.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comme...the_monastery/

Yep :-)

Gets it: http://extragood****.phlap.net/index...e/#more-482896

On Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 6:51:05 AM UTC-7, wrote:
Gets it: http://extragood****.phlap.net/index...e/#more-482896

Yes: since evolution doesn't care for us, we shouldn't use our humble origins as
an excuse for not finding our human uniqueness valuable, and worthy of being
cherished.

So basically the article correctly rejects unsound attempts to derive values
from facts.

John Savard

On Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 8:47:32 AM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

On Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 6:51:05 AM UTC-7, wrote:

Gets it: http://extragood****.phlap.net/index...e/#more-482896

Yes: since evolution doesn't care for us, we shouldn't use our humble
origins as an excuse for not finding our human uniqueness valuable, and
worthy of being cherished.

So basically the article correctly rejects unsound attempts to derive
values from facts.

John Savard

But there ARE sound reasons for deriving values from facts:

“'Patriotism' is a way of saying 'Women and children first.'�

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../2758347/posts

On Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 2:52:25 PM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:

But there ARE sound reasons for deriving values from facts:

Facts certainly can enter into reasoning about values.

The philosophical concept of the "fact-value distinction" only means that it's a
mistake to deduce a value from facts alone. If you have a value to start with,
you can add facts to deduce other values.

So if you start from having fairness and justice as values, you can then add the
fact that while horses are less intelligent than people, African-Americans are
equal to white people in intelligence to deduce the value that Negro slavery was
wrong.

As to Heinlein's speech: there is much to applaud in it. I might quibble about a
few minor details. But it doesn't violate the fact-value distinction, since it
starts with the value that the survival of humanity is of value.

John Savard

On Sunday, November 11, 2018 at 8:36:43 AM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:

Astronomy and meteorology allow observation under many different
conditions and as time passes, the data mount up. Astronomy is also
aided by controlled physics and chemistry experiments in laboratories
and then ASSUMING that those conditions apply elsewhere. We know
that relativity applies throughout the solar system because we have
actually performed experiments with spacecraft. We ASSUME SR and GR
work all the way back to the Big Bang, but maybe they don't.

Well, for one thing, we can analyze the spectra of light from the stars. We
assume that the same pattern of lines stands for the same element in a distant
star, so we can tell what is in those stars - but the fact that we _are_ seeing
the same patterns of lines indicates that some of our laws of physics must be
working out there.

The fine-structure constant, which got its name from some characteristics of
spectral lines, is a ratio involving the speed of light, the inertial mass of
the electron, and the force exerted by its charge. So those spectral lines are
the result of physics.

And, of course, absent evidence to the contrary, that the laws of physics are
the same elsewhere and in the past is the most reasonable starting assumption.
It can be re-evaluated when we run into trouble.

John Savard