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Wrong, wrong, very wrong indeed. Particles with mass are qualitatively different from massless particles with the same amount of energy. To wit, they interact gravitationally, which no massless particle does.
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Nope. Photons being the main exception. But I could also have said "Particles with mass X are qualitatively different from particles with mass X-Y and energy Y." In such a case I'd probably point at their inertia instead of their gravity, though.
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I like how in the active Forums page this thread displays "If Al-Qaida were like..." and then the last poster's name. Like "If Al-Qaida were like... King of Men."
quote:Particles with mass are qualitatively different from massless particles with the same amount of energy. To wit, they interact gravitationally, which no massless particle does.
I suggest you look this up, KoM. Any stress-energy tensor, including that of the free EM field (the massless photon field), is a source for the gravitational field in GR.
Of course, there are qualitative differences between particles with zero and non-zero rest mass. This is true in both relativity and quantum field theory. But these differences all arise because such particles have zero energy when at rest.
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You're right that energy isn't matter. Neither is mass, I'd say. Both mass and energy are qualities (or properties or features) that matter can take on.
Where you and I still disagree, I think, is on the question of whether massless fields like the electromagnetic field should count as 'matter.' I would say that any energy-bearing field, whether it has rest mass or not, probably deserves the name 'matter.' But really it's just a terminological question about how we use words.
Stuff with mass can be transformed into stuff without mass. That's the physical fact. Whether we want to say that this means 'matter' can turn into 'pure energy' is just a semantic question about how we define our terms.
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Hum. Ok, I'm going to have to agree with you that this is semantics. However, I think that in the particular context we are talking about, we can resolve the semantic issue by reference to what Joseph Smith would have been talking about. I do not think he could possibly have been talking about light and heat when he referred to 'matter'; it's just not the way the words were used in the nineteenth century. (Or the twentieth, or twentyfirst, in my opinion - but there we're back to the semantics again.) To assert that he would, is to start twisting his words to the point where nothing means what it says it does; you might as well assert that the angel Moroni was really a fast-talking guy from Los Angeles.
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It doesn't make sense to me. Or, rather, I don't think it's true.
Having read several of JS statements on "matter" it seems clear to me that he was using an imperfect word to describe an idea for which there wasn't a sufficiently precise vocabulary at the time (and still isn't). Hence, his interchangable use of very different terms to describe the same idea.
<edit>The OED definition of "matter" has 24 distinct classes. Of the 24, I think the one closest resembling JS usage is 21, which (according to the OED) is now rare, but was in more frequent use in the 19th century.</edit>
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Also, the same could be said of several of JS teachings to a lesser extent. Take, for instance, KoM's facetius assertion about the angel Moroni. JS made it clear that Moroni was a resurrected being, and not the type of bewinged spirit that the term "angel" would commonly have been applied to. He used the best word (or at least a good word) he could in order to communicate essential meaning, but because of the lack of precision of language and the newness of the concepts he was teaching, there's necessarily a certain ambiguity about his words on all these subjects.
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In light of the current conversation, I found this interesting from Bob_Scopatz's most recent post in the "What's wrong with religion" thread.
quote:But, for the most part, [science and religion] simply deal with different things. And...speak a different language. Simple words have incompatible meanings in these two languages.
In short -- dialogue between scientists and religious folks is often made difficult, but not impossible, by the definitional differences.
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I think, in all honesty, this is special pleading. But I would like to hear BlackBlade's opinion.
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I can concede that if it could be demonstratably proven what JS meant by "matter" then a case could be made for showing his mistake, or otherwise. I made a mistake in that I quoted JS on an ambiguous topic for which I cannot easily demonstrate through other quotes or studies I have undertaken what JS definatively thought on this topic.
I initially thought the quote was useful in that JS was certainly speaking words that were to become canon and it was on a topic that interests science.
I maintain its a possibility that JS was mistaken, but I cannot with any certainty demonstrate a knowledge of JS's understanding of the principle of matter, without running the risk of saying things in his name that he never intended.
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KOM, JS statements on "matter and spirit" were written in the 1830s, a time when the scientific definition of matter was barely in its infancy and certainly not in common use or understanding on the US frontier. Pholgiston and caloric were still widely accepted thermodynamic theories. To argue that JS meant "matter" in the same way you and I mean "matter", one would first have to argue that matter and energy were clearly defined scientific terms during JS life, a contention which is indefencible.
Any attempt to associate JS's use of the term "matter" with the modern physics definition of the word is more than a major stretch but an out right logical fallicy.
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Well, then, in that case BlackBlade should not have brought the matter up at all, should he? Which seems to me to be what he's saying. But I think it is extremely reasonable to say that JS absolutely did not mean light or heat when referring to 'matter'. This just isn't what the word means, then or now.
On a somewhat similar subject, I recall JS asserting that the people in his books had 'horses'. (And metalworking, IIRC.) Again, I would say that this is a demonstrably false statement, unless you are again going to say that horses don't actually mean the large, four-footed animals that JS was familiar with, but something different like, say, a llama.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I think it is extremely reasonable to say that JS absolutely did not mean light or heat when referring to 'matter'. This just isn't what the word means, then or now.
And I think it's extremely unreasonable, especially in light of the OED usages I linked.
quote:On a somewhat similar subject, I recall JS asserting that the people in his books had 'horses'. (And metalworking, IIRC.) Again, I would say that this is a demonstrably false statement, unless you are again going to say that horses don't actually mean the large, four-footed animals that JS was familiar with, but something different like, say, a llama.
If you want LDS rationalization about the mention of horses or metallurgy they're not too hard to find (the second is a general response to a couple of academic papers critiquing various BoM (apparent) anachronisms, including more than just horses and metallurgy).
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I am thinking "rationalisation" may be a good word, yes. That guy suggests tapirs as being the source of the horses; the things look like pigs, live in the water, have four toes and stand a meter at the shoulder!
At any rate, we may have to just agree to disagree on this. But I'd like you to think on this : If you were coming at the matter fresh, without a prior belief in the Mormon theology, would you go through these mental contortions to make JS's words come into some kind of conformity with reality? Or would you simply say that he was mistaken? It seems to me that you are not, in fact, evaluating this with an open mind, as BlackBlade suggested one should; rather, you are casting about for some way, any way, to fit this into your preconceived notions. Is this not precisely the behaviour that a genuine seeker after truth ought to avoid?
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It certainly doesn't seem we'll be able to come to any consensus. I fully understand how you don't see it as reasonable, and I wouldn't expect someone coming at it fresh with no prior belief in Mormonism to change their stance based on these arguments. They're not intended to convince you of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon; they are merely to assert that there are plausible explanations for the perceived anachronisms in the BoM. I was responding to your critique, rather than making one of my own. I could try to put you on the defensive by asking the common questions about how an uneducated farmer from 1830's NY could write a book as ambitious and internally consistent as the Book of Mormon, complete with Hebrew idioms and other similar internal evidences. We could play out the debate and in the end neither would be convinced, because we do come at it from very different places.
But I have a different question for you. If you had a theory, as yet unproven, and you decided to create an experiment to test it, and you started receiving observations that appeared to contradict that theory, what would you do? Would you throw out the theory as no good, or would you presume there were unmodeled effects that were causing the discrepency? And how would you know which was right? You could dedicate your life to pursuing the unmodeled effects, possibly fruitlessly because the theory itself is flawed. Or you could throw out an accurate theory, simply because there were things you hadn't appropriately accounted for but would have been able to had you perservered. How do you choose?
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quote:I could try to put you on the defensive by asking the common questions about how an uneducated farmer from 1830's NY could write a book as ambitious and internally consistent as the Book of Mormon...
You know, OSC tried to use this as an argument once, too. But again, I maintain that it is far more exceptional for someone to be chosen as a prophet of God than for someone to write a book.
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The question, though, is not how exceptional is it that someone wrote a book, it's how exceptional is it for _this_ someone to have writen _that_ book. Like I said, the debate's been had, over and over, and seldom is anyone from either side convinced. Nor do I think it's possible, given the arbitrariness of the probabilities we're talking about (i.e. how probable is it that there were a limited number of horses in the New World that went extinct between 400 AD and 1400 AD without leaving fossil evidence? And that would be an easy-ish one to quantify. How likely is it that a man of JS education, temperment and avocation could write a book with this or that internal proof. Try assigning a measure to that.).
What do you think of the other question, Tom? When (and how) can you rationally decide if a theory is inherently flawed or simply incomplete? Like Einstein's introduction (and later condemnation) of the Cosmological Constant.
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quote:The question, though, is not how exceptional is it that someone wrote a book, it's how exceptional is it for _this_ someone to have writen _that_ book.
How exceptional is it for New England farmboys to become prophets of God? If you're dealing with a single class of people -- "New England farmboys" -- and arguing that it's incredible for someone of that class to be able to write an exceptional book, why is it any more likely that members of the generic "New England farmboy" class will be contacted by angels?
quote:When (and how) can you rationally decide if a theory is inherently flawed or simply incomplete? Like Einstein's introduction (and later condemnation) of the Cosmological Constant.
I don't think any theory is inherently flawed. Inherent flaws, in fact, are merely symptoms of incompleteness. The theory that God created all chocolate in the universe, for example, is not "inherently flawed;" it just requires multiple steps that, themselves, are contingent upon other equally outlandish requirements. This is where Occam's Razor is convenient: while it's possible for any two solutions to explain a given result with equal effectiveness, the simplest solution that manages to deal with all the ancillary requirements is the best.
Consider the glee we feel when we look at a Rube Goldberg machine. It's an insanely complicated chain of unlikely events, all intended to produce something relatively simple. One of the things we appreciate about it is that we know that each step, in and of itself, is unlikely; if you asked someone "how did we turn the light switch on in this room," they are unlikely to say "well, first the mailman delivered the box of billiard balls to the trapped welcome mat outside the east foyer...." But it's certainly possible, provided that there are explanations for each and every step.
But, like you said, it's impossible to extrapolate likelihoods from single data points. In that vein, though, the argument that the quality of the Book of Mormon proves that it could not have been written by a farmboy directly compares the likelihood of a farmboy writing an exceptional book to the likelihood of a farmboy being contacted by agents of God. In other words, given the data available, it's a remarkably weak argument.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: How exceptional is it for New England farmboys to become prophets of God? If you're dealing with a single class of people -- "New England farmboys" -- and arguing that it's incredible for someone of that class to be able to write an exceptional book, why is it any more likely that members of the generic "New England farmboy" class will be contacted by angels?
Precisely the problem I pointed out with my statement about attaching likelihood measures to _any_ of these statements. If we could assign actual probabilities (even rough ones) to all these events, we could aggregate them and say which is more reasonable and which is less and with what degree of confidence. Absent that, I don't see how you can make a lot of headway with this sort of debate. I can say, "well, I think this is more reasonable" or "that is very unlikely" but it doesn't add up to much IMO.
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quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: The question, though, is not how exceptional is it that someone wrote a book, it's how exceptional is it for _this_ someone to have writen _that_ book.
I think this is loosely analogous to my feelings about the weak anthropic principle: given a certain probability, P, that the universe would wind up as it has, there is no value of P that is sufficiently low that I would consider it to support the idea of a designed universe.
It isn't strictly analogous, but I think the purported likelihood of a New England farm boy writing the Book of Mormon is, at best, extremely weak support for the assertion that the book is accurate.
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Well, I would first compare the percentage of New England farmboys who have been prophets of God to the percentage of New England farmboys who've written good books. This would require that we establish a baseline for "good books," and assumes that there's something unique about New England farmboys which affects the probability of either event.
I certainly wouldn't attempt to use the argument "this book is so good that God must have helped" until I'd done the former.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well, then, in that case BlackBlade should not have brought the matter up at all, should he? Which seems to me to be what he's saying. But I think it is extremely reasonable to say that JS absolutely did not mean light or heat when referring to 'matter'. This just isn't what the word means, then or now.
On a somewhat similar subject, I recall JS asserting that the people in his books had 'horses'. (And metalworking, IIRC.) Again, I would say that this is a demonstrably false statement, unless you are again going to say that horses don't actually mean the large, four-footed animals that JS was familiar with, but something different like, say, a llama.
KOM: Per Senoj's post, I think its reasonable to believe that in regards to horses, both possibilities are still on the table.
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Was Joseph Smith saying that every single native american was descended from the Jews, with no other ancestors? Including the Eskimos/Inuit?
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quote:Originally posted by c.t.t.n.: Was Joseph Smith saying that every single native american was descended from the Jews, with no other ancestors? Including the Eskimos/Inuit?
No Joseph Smith never said that. In fact he translated accounts of 2 seperate civilizations that immigrated to the America Continents (Only one of which came from Jerusalem). Though the furthest the records go is about 300AD that still leaves the possibility of others coming to America.
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quote:But I have a different question for you. If you had a theory, as yet unproven, and you decided to create an experiment to test it, and you started receiving observations that appeared to contradict that theory, what would you do? Would you throw out the theory as no good, or would you presume there were unmodeled effects that were causing the discrepancy?
Interestingly enough, this very thing happened to me the other day; I even made a thread about it, in which I summarily dismissed my theory. Later on I had second thoughts, though, as it occurred to me that there were other effects at play. (You should please note, I didn't think "What if there are unmodelled effects", I thought "Hang on, we know that the distribution is different for that bin, that might change the ratio; and anyway the statistics are way different.") What I ended up doing was to gather up my data and plots, and present them to the operations group of the detector in question, and ask them whether my theory made any sense to them. In other words, I sought an outside opinion informed by orthogonal data.
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Apologies for my long absence from this thread, but here I am again.
quote:You find a pamphlet that describes Santa Clauses philosophy to the letter. You start following it, and you send letters to Santa Claus with your list. You consistantly get presents under the tree that you cannot explain how they got there. No matter what you do, you cannot figure it out, but the presents come when you are good, they do not when you are bad. Do you have a reason to disbelieve that Santa is real based on that scenario? Maybe. Could you come up with a multitude of reasons of how the presents get there without a Santa? Sure, but until you actually prove one of them, why would you simply stop believing?
In this scenario you would be quite justified in believing in Santa, at least until someone did succeed in finding an alternative explanation for the presents. (Mind you, once a year is not a lot of data.) But here we are speaking of genuine physical evidence that you can point to, touch, and get your teeth into. But there is no religion on earth that has any such evidence. However, there are lots and lots that claim better mental health for their adherents. Please do answer this question, now: If Scientology really makes its followers happier, is that evidence in favour of its factual claims?
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Apologies for my long absence from this thread, but here I am again.
quote:You find a pamphlet that describes Santa Clauses philosophy to the letter. You start following it, and you send letters to Santa Claus with your list. You consistantly get presents under the tree that you cannot explain how they got there. No matter what you do, you cannot figure it out, but the presents come when you are good, they do not when you are bad. Do you have a reason to disbelieve that Santa is real based on that scenario? Maybe. Could you come up with a multitude of reasons of how the presents get there without a Santa? Sure, but until you actually prove one of them, why would you simply stop believing?
In this scenario you would be quite justified in believing in Santa, at least until someone did succeed in finding an alternative explanation for the presents. (Mind you, once a year is not a lot of data.) But here we are speaking of genuine physical evidence that you can point to, touch, and get your teeth into. But there is no religion on earth that has any such evidence. However, there are lots and lots that claim better mental health for their adherents. Please do answer this question, now: If Scientology really makes its followers happier, is that evidence in favour of its factual claims?
Certainly not proof, but arguably evidence in favor of.
Within Mormonism you get the happiness, but you ALSO get the factual proof as you demonstrate willingness to obey even in the face of opposition.
"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."
Don't cloud that idea up with your "One True ReligionTM" nonsense. I firmly believe that if somebody honestly wishes to be a good person, regardless of whether they believe in a God, two Gods, or no Gods, God will reach out to them in a way that they can understand.
You can reject God because you have yet to see evidence otherwise (I'm trusting in your presentation of your perception of the world), if you found that greater intelligence makes you feel happier is it illogical to continue to pursue intelligence? Or are you completely stoical about science in that you feel nothing as you unravel its mysteries you are simply performing a necessary function for which you were designed to perform?
Maybe I am guessing wrong but I bet you find a sense of stability within the realms of science. That in of itself is a feeling of happiness. Does that happiness prove science is true? No, but its evidence that science can be good.
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quote:Certainly not proof, but arguably evidence in favor of.
Fine; but then you've got two sets of equally reliable evidences (does that have a plural?) in favour of completely contradictory facts. (I take it we agree that there is no way to reconcile the Scientologist and Mormon cosmologies.) How can you choose between them, then? You cannot very well argue that the historical accident that the Mormons got to you first is evidence for their factual claims!
quote:Within Mormonism you get the happiness, but you ALSO get the factual proof as you demonstrate willingness to obey even in the face of opposition.
I do not understand the distinction you are making. What is the factual proof?
quote:Does that happiness prove science is true? No, but it's evidence that science can be good.
But we are not discussing what is good; I don't think we disagree very much on that. We are discussing what is true.
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quote: Fine; but then you've got two sets of equally reliable evidences (does that have a plural?) in favour of completely contradictory facts. (I take it we agree that there is no way to reconcile the Scientologist and Mormon cosmologies.) How can you choose between them, then? You cannot very well argue that the historical accident that the Mormons got to you first is evidence for their factual claims!
Evidenci? Evidences? Evidencises?
quote: I do not understand the distinction you are making. What is the factual proof?
As stated quite a few posts before, you start out basic with feelings and impressions. As you follow them and observe the results of following such impressions you grow confident and are able to detect more distinct messages from God. And as quoted before
"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."
Purify your heart with righteous living and that is the result, at least according to Jesus. Would you agree that if there is a God and he could appear to you, he could do so in such a manner as to leave you bereft of any more doubt?
quote: But we are not discussing what is good; I don't think we disagree very much on that. We are discussing what is true.
This could be a snag in our discussion. I believe true and good are equivalents. At least that all that is true should be sought after. If its good then it supports the truth.
The more truth you posses the more capable of good works you are.
But perhaps you are suggesting that there is no correlation between truth and happiness. Yes/No?
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quote:As stated quite a few posts before, you start out basic with feelings and impressions. As you follow them and observe the results of following such impressions you grow confident and are able to detect more distinct messages from God. And as quoted before
"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."
This is, I'm afraid, a steaming pile of crap.
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Well, I'm fairly confident that, of all the people who claim to have seen God, not all of them are pure and many of their Gods are mutually exclusive.
There's no direct, observable correlation between seeing God, happiness, or purity.
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You put the restrictions on the statement. You're adding to it in order to refute it. That's baloney.
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I'm adding to it to explain why I'm refuting it, since you -- in so many words -- asked why I was refuting it. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I'm telling you that you are refuting your own meaning, not the phrase itself. So, yes, what you are refuting is crap.
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That's true, Scott. But within the context implied by BlackBlade, the word "see" is -- at least by his intent -- meant to imply that the pure at heart are blessed with contact with God in this life as direct consequence of their purity.
Which is, as I've said before, a steaming load of crap.
You might get away with, say, "Blessed are the Mormons who are pure at heart..." if you're going to assert that all pure-hearted Mormons get to hear the voice of God. Alternately, you could possibly get away with "blessed are some of the pure at heart, and some who aren't so pure..." and so forth. But the idea that the pure of heart are "rewarded" with communications with God is clearly falsifiable.
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quote:Within Mormonism you get the happiness, but you ALSO get the factual proof as you demonstrate willingness to obey even in the face of opposition.
"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."
There's also a "shall" in the beatitude that's important.
quote:ithin the context implied by BlackBlade, the word "see" is -- at least by his intent -- meant to imply that the pure at heart are blessed with contact with God in this life as direct consequence of their purity.
Which is, as I've said before, a steaming load of crap.
You might get away with, say, "Blessed are the Mormons who are pure at heart..." if you're going to assert that all pure-hearted Mormons get to hear the voice of God. Alternately, you could possibly get away with "blessed are some of the pure at heart, and some who aren't so pure..." and so forth. But the idea that the pure of heart are "rewarded" with communications with God is clearly falsifiable.
If by 'falsifiable,' you mean 'demonstrably false,' I don't know what to say. I believe you when you say, "I believe I am pure of heart and I've never heard God."
How are we to be able to judge who is pure, and whether God has answered them or not?
In short, you're far too confident in your argument for the amount of data you have available to you.
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quote:How are we to be able to judge who is pure, and whether God has answered them or not?
Give me a commonly acceptable criteria for "pure," and I'll give you at least one impure person who claims to have "seen" God in this life and at least one person who meets the criteria but hasn't.
And if we don't have a criteria for "pure," if the only standard we have for "pure" is "I believe I've seen God, so I must be 'pure,' however 'pure' is defined," I think we're getting into very dangerous psychological territory.
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Did you ignore everything Scott just said? You are adding all sorts of restrictions that are not inherent in the phrase.
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quote:Give me a commonly acceptable criteria for "pure," and I'll give you at least one impure person who claims to have "seen" God in this life and at least one person who meets the criteria but hasn't.
There are a couple things that are at play here:
1) Pure, as defined by God. 2) Pure, as defined by the person who claims to have seen God. 3) Pure, as defined by you (or us), in relation to that person's motivations and actions.
Only one of the three actually knows what PURE means. And like CS Lewis noted, He doesn't tell other people's stories.
I'm not even sure what the last part of your post is supposed to mean... Dangerous psychological territory? Comes with being alive, IMO.
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quote:You are adding all sorts of restrictions that are not inherent in the phrase.
It's precisely because there are no restrictions on the phrase that it's falsifiable, Katie, for any given definition of "pure" -- and almost any definition of "shall," with the exception of "after death, where we have no evidence that anything happens and thus no evidence to the contrary, either."
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quote:I'm not even sure what the last part of your post is supposed to mean...
Setting up a cycle of supposed psychological feedback reinforced by the imagined word of God is a pretty good way to purge oneself of doubt, even doubt of one's own "purity."
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I reinforce my self-image based on input from God? *blink* Or are you referring to some other sentence?
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
The theory that God created all chocolate in the universe, for example, is not "inherently flawed;" it just requires multiple steps that, themselves, are contingent upon other equally outlandish requirements. This is where Occam's Razor is convenient: while it's possible for any two solutions to explain a given result with equal effectiveness, the simplest solution that manages to deal with all the ancillary requirements is the best.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
