posted
[quote[Do you honestly think scientists don't HOPE their explanation of the facts turns out to be true so they gain whatever benefit there is to be gleaned by such a success?[/quote]
Fine; but the minute one of us lets such a hope influence what he publishes, he's out. If your hope can't be backed up with demonstrable facts, it does not belong in a discussion of what is true.
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quote:I personally do not know the specifics as to how to brainwash somebody or to condition them. But I imagine it boarders more along the lines of (even if you dont like it keep doing it until it feels right) and not (do it and decide for yourself how it feels to you.)
It depends. Given that the actual conversion process is usually described as being "do it and decide for yourself how it feels, but you really should keep doing it until it feels right," the only difference is one of compulsion.
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posted
Let me sum up my understanding of the conversation thus far. You are saying that
a) Jesus/Joseph Smith say that you should try believing in them, and see if it makes you a better person. b) You have tried it, and it does. c) Therefore, their claims of divinity or supernatural experience are also true.
This third is the the point where the logic breaks down. That does not follow. To illustrate this, I have asked you to consider whether the claims of Scientologists to personal happiness are to be considered as proof of Hubbard's cosmology. It seems to me that you have yet to answer this.
We have also had a side thread about the role of hope in establishing belief, but I don't think this is as interesting as the main question I wrote down above, so again I think perhaps we could put this on the back burner.
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quote:a) Jesus/Joseph Smith say that you should try believing in them, and see if it makes you a better person. b) You have tried it, and it does. c) Therefore, their claims of divinity or supernatural experience are also true.
Alternatively, this throws some doubt onto your assumption that believing in the things that aren't true is always a bad thing, assuming that you don't believe in the entities in the first part but do believe that being a better person is a good thing.
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posted
Yes, well, in the first place I don't necessarily believe in BlackBlade's assertion. But in the second place, if you don't mind, I'd like to defer that discussion until later, and focus on what is reasonable to believe.
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posted
Sure. Though I think that the part you are putting aside destroys what you're talking about know. Epistemology is inherently limiting and an incomplete guide for living.
Also, what Hans Vaihinger said:
quote:the object of the world of ideas as a whole is not the portrayal of reality - this would be an utterly impossible task - but rather to provide us with an instrument for finding our way about more easily in the world
I should also mention, I do research on mild self delusion as a determiner of success in learnable task situations and the data is pretty clear than for a majority of people in situations like this, knowing "reality" leads to decreased performance in opposition to thinking one's initial chances and skills are better than they actual are. That is, take a population of people who are relatively unskilled in some task. The people who think that they are better than they are or that they have a better chance of succeeding than they do have several advantages of people who accurately judge themselves as unskilled and their chance of success as small. The self deluders tend to devote more attention and energy to the task and to persist longer in performing it. They also tend to ultimately succeed more.
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quote:Sure. Though I think that the part you are putting aside destroys what you're talking about know. Epistemology is inherently limiting and an incomplete guide for living.
If you say so. But at the moment we are not discussing 'how should humans live'; that's not really very strongly in dispute anyway. We are discussing what is true, and failures of logic are absolutely relevant to that.
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quote:Your hopes do not have any impact on what the universe is really like, nor should you allow them to influence what you believe. That way madness lies.
You're talking about more than just what is true.
These statements also ignore the fundamental existential dilemma. i.e. You have no compelling reason to believe that anything you experience actually reflects reality.
It is only through (generally completely unconsciously) choosing without any proof to believe that your perceptions reflect reality that people avoid a particularly paralyzing form of madness.
There is much that goes on a priori without which none of what you are talking about is possible.
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posted
Fine, but who cares? This is just not a very interesting discussion; on the other hand, I was quite interested in what I was talking about with BlackBlade.
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posted
KoM, But the basis for everything you are saying is false. Strict reliance on materialism fails at it's initial step. People have to make unsupportable assumptions to avoid madness. This is the exact opposite of what you said.
And we haven't even gotten into the objective nature of subjective experience, nor on its materially observable effects.
You want to have a discussion about epistemology, I've got no problem with that. But epistemology is a very limited field and you are trying to take it far outside any reasonable boundary to support an untenably strict materialism.
I could see how someone like you would consider being inescapely wrong as "uninteresting", but that doesn't change that your position is baseless by the very standards that you are purporting to represent.
You're attacking BB's position because it involves making non-materialistically verifiable assumptions. The thing is, and this is from a high school level of this debate, your position and in fact any position necessarily involves making non-materialistically verifiable assumption. It's basic philosophy.
It's like saying he's wrong because he breathes air.
---
I think that confronting bad thinking about what can be known is important. But these discussions need to be conducted from solid ground, not ill-conceived ideology, otherwise, what's the point? So, I take exception when people like yourself display such ineptitude and ignorance when doing it.
quote:The thing is, and this is from a high school level of this debate, your position and in fact any position necessarily involves making non-materialistically verifiable assumption.
If I may, I think the difference is that KoM is asserting that his assumptions are axiomatic.
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posted
Except that the axioms he's admitting are ones that are shared by all sides of the debate, as far as I can tell. Which is at least partly why they're axiomatic.
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posted
Before he said the terrible thing about religion is the certainty and claimed more rational virtue than the certain. Considering his own certainty, this is a Douglas Adams moment.
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posted
What I'm trying to say -- and maybe I'm not saying it well enough -- is that most people believe that asserting an axiom to which everyone involved consents in order to have a conversation is not the same thing as asserting a theorem. It's like granting a given.
Now, one of the virtues of science is that, as human knowledge expands, we have to assert fewer and fewer axioms to make shared conversation possible. But I suspect that some -- like "things which happen have an effect" -- will always remain with us, because there's no way to prove the alternatives.
In the old days, before we understood more of the mechanisms of the Universe, the existence of God was an axiom to which other "theorems" (if you will) could appeal. I have no doubt that other axioms -- like "conscious thought exists" -- will someday be refined even further or eliminated altogether. But unless the axiom you're being called upon to grant is one that you are unwilling to grant, I don't see that admitting to a limitation of understanding that nevertheless is universally observed necessitates accusations of hypocrisy.
(And note that I'm aware, and I assume KoM is aware, that some people do not grant certain basic axioms. Dagonee, for example, does not grant that things which happen have effects, for a given definition of "effect." This makes it harder to have a conversation about materialism with him, since he draws a distinction between observed reality and "essential" reality. If you've got issues with any given axiom, there's no harm in challenging it.)
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quote:Before he said the terrible thing about religion is the certainty and claimed more rational virtue than the certain. Considering his own certainty, this is a Douglas Adams moment.
Actually, I think those might be Tom's words, and not mine.
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quote:If I may, I think the difference is that KoM is asserting that his assumptions are axiomatic.
If there was any indication that KoM acknowledged that he was maing these assumptions I might credit that. However, he was coming from a very strict materialist position that does not admit that these are assumptions that he is making. As soon as you include them, it severely diminishes the impact of hiw categorical statements. "You shouldn't allow hopes to influence what you believe. Because that leads to madness. Oh, except for the hopes that everyone shares. They're different, for some reason."
The position then becomes not a categorical one "Doing this in any case is wrong and leads to bad effects." to a weaker "You should do this as little as possible." Once you grant that the behavior referenced is, in some cases, necessary and/or much better than the opposite, you've got a very different discussion on your hands.
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quote:Let me sum up my understanding of the conversation thus far. You are saying that
a) Jesus/Joseph Smith say that you should try believing in them, and see if it makes you a better person. b) You have tried it, and it does. c) Therefore, their claims of divinity or supernatural experience are also true.
Not exactly
A: Jesus says, etc etc. Joseph Smith pointed people at Jesus. I am absolutely convinced that a protestant, catholic, etc can test out Jesus teachings and be informed by God that Jesus is the real deal. But I also believe if you add Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon to the mix you will gain further confirmation of their worth. Jesus can be God with or without Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith can't be a prophet without Jesus being true.
B: You are correct
C: Therefore their claims have thus far shown to be true in so much that I have yet to see them lacking. Is it illogical to believe something until it is demonstratably false, assuming you continue to find their claims to have been true up to this point?
quote: This third is the the point where the logic breaks down. That does not follow. To illustrate this, I have asked you to consider whether the claims of Scientologists to personal happiness are to be considered as proof of Hubbard's cosmology. It seems to me that you have yet to answer this.
I don't know enough about scientology, Ill try to read up on it a bit more so my comments are more useful in this discussion. Does Hubbard state that his moral teachings prove the truthfulness of his cosmology?
quote: We have also had a side thread about the role of hope in establishing belief, but I don't think this is as interesting as the main question I wrote down above, so again I think perhaps we could put this on the back burner.
Agreed.
quote: Fine; but the minute one of us lets such a hope influence what he publishes, he's out. If your hope can't be backed up with demonstrable facts, it does not belong in a discussion of what is true.
Glad we can agree on this point.
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quote:"You shouldn't allow hopes to influence what you believe. Because that leads to madness. Oh, except for the hopes that everyone shares. They're different, for some reason."
I did not say any such thing. If you are going to use quotation marks, please make sure your quotes are accurate.
quote:I don't know enough about scientology, Ill try to read up on it a bit more so my comments are more useful in this discussion. Does Hubbard state that his moral teachings prove the truthfulness of his cosmology?
Well, it depends slightly on what you define as moral teachings. I was referring to the bits about getting rid of body thetans, which is supposed to grant you a clearer understanding of things and generally make you a better person. However, you don't have to know anything about Scientology; any religion, even an imaginary one, will do. Let's go back to Santa-Claus-ism: It might be reasonable to claim that a belief in Santa Claus makes children behave better. Suppose that were true. Would the better behaviour of children be evidence in favour of Santa Claus? Because that is what you are claiming.
Incidentally, the cosmology of Scientology makes Santa-Claus-ism look like an absolute miracle of plausibility. It is quite literally based on science fiction, and really bad fifties science fiction at that.
quote:Therefore their claims have thus far shown to be true in so much that I have yet to see them lacking. Is it illogical to believe something until it is demonstratably false, assuming you continue to find their claims to have been true up to this point?
Yes, it is, actually. You are treating totally unrelated claims as though they were similar; they are not. It is as though I were to claim
a) The sky is blue. b) I am a good person.
You can see that a is true, so you must admit the truth of b! Now, I grant you that you can work this the other way. If I had claimed that the sky were green, then you would be entirely justified in distrusting my other claim as well. But the accuracy of the first claim does not give you any information about the second.
In any case, though, you still have not answered my question. Why isn't the success of Scientology, or Santa-Claus-ism, in producing better people, evidence of their respective cosmologies?
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quote:I did not say any such thing. If you are going to use quotation marks, please make sure your quotes are accurate.
Err...quotation marks are used for other purposes than to explicitly quote what someone has said. There's no expectation that I was using them that way in what I said. In fact, I specifically mentioned, immediately before this, that you haven't even acknowledge these assumptions.
I was denoting a spoken statement not meant to be a direct quotation. This is exceedingly clear from the context.
And that's all you have to say? You don't think that you making unprovable assumptions of the sort you are saying it is always wrong to make isn't something you should address?
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posted
KOM: Because the morality of Christianity is tied in its factual claims. Within the religion there is a principle where a righteous person is rewarded with "light and knowledge" directly related to their situation.
Let me put it this way.
Say I am a Christian surgeon. I follow the teachings of my religion to the best of my ability and on the operating table I have a patient that I simply do not think I can treat using the techniques I have studied. As I work through all the possible solutions I can think of, I communicate this problem with God and suddenly my mind is illuminated with an idea that in my mind makes sense. I try it out and it yields the results I had thought were impossible.
This certainly does not PROVE Christianity right, but it does indicate thus far its claims are not WRONG.
Joseph Smith in the 1800's (under the alleged influence of God said) "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it is eternal." Then working off that statement explained that human souls are composed of spirit matter that cannot be seen by eyes that are unattuned.
Now we know today that matter indeed cannot be created or destoroyed (or at least nobody has yet shown this to be otherwise.) At least thus far Joseph Smith has not lead us astray, would you agree? Now I am certainly not sure that his comments on spirit matter are true, but if Joseph Smith (an illiterate farmer) says that God revealed those truths to him, and as far as I am certain he has been right, its at least rational to believe Joseph Smith may be right about spirit matter, you might even be able to say its likely to be true, as more and more of his other statements turn out to be true.
If by my application of Christian docterine (i.e righteous living and communciation with God) I find that my understanding of things relevent to my life is accelerated, and that whenver I think critically certain ideas start to feel wrong, and others feel right. If time and time again the results of these decisions yield favorable outcomes, is it irrational to continue doing what I am?
Now of course its possible that my perception is simply flawed and that my seemingly accelerated understanding is merely a product of my own abilities, or even the confidence in myself that Christianity imbues me with.
But as far as I have seen. The teachings make me a better person, following the principles makes my life run more efficiently. I honestly feel I experience God on a more intimate basis. When I knowingly choose to not observe the docterine I see those benefits decrease.
I find that nothing I have learned contradicts the facts as far as I can tell.
Does that prove my beliefs to be perfectly true? No it does not, but it certainly does not lead me to disbelieve them.
If Christianity made me a worse person, as in I actually felt more and more miserable as I followed its precepts more and more, that would be evidence enough for me that something is wrong with it.
Believing in Santa Claus would not neccesarily make me a good person as it only say, "Be good and get presents." Its when we require Santa to define good and bad, that we find if his words are up to snuff.
How about this
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?
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quote:Now we know today that matter indeed cannot be created or destroyed (or at least nobody has yet shown this to be otherwise.)
Ok, look, I really have to work, so I won't respond to the rest until later. But I'm sorry, you are mistaken. Matter can indeed be destroyed.
Now, this is actually a rather interesting experiment. Joseph Smith was just plain mistaken about this. If indeed you are truly honest, then, should you not be reconsidering the whole shebang, by your own argument? On the other hand, if you are letting your emotions interfere with real reasoning, I would expect you to rationalise, to say that that particular statement isn't really important, or perhaps to redefine 'destroyed' in such a way that nothing could ever be destroyed anyway. (Now, there does exist a middle ground, here. I'm not saying you should instantly take my word that matter can be destroyed; it's certainly reasonable to inquire what my proof of this is.) But if we can agree that matter is indeed destroyable, what does this say about your faith? And if it doesn't say anything, what does that say about your argument? I await your response with great interest.
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posted
I'd be interested in seeing you explain how it can be destroyed KOM.
Also per your advice we should at least agree on what you mean by destroyed.
Certainly within science its important that all our terms are used in the same manner.
Ill wait until your explanation before I really respond to your statement that matter can be destroyed.
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posted
Consider the following experiment : Take a nuclear bomb. Enclose it in a shell of unobtainium, which for the purpose of this experiment has the property of being perfectly reflective and perfectly hard, so it'll contain the nuclear explosion. Measure the mass of the bomb. Now set it off. Inside the shell of unobtainium (from which, you should please note, nothing can possibly escape, that's why I'm using unobtainium in the first place) you will now have rather less mass than you had before, and it will be considerably hotter. That's destruction of matter.
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posted
By the way, I based my experiment on a similar one that was done back in the day, where they set things on fire. Since that's rather less energetic, they didn't have to use unobtainium to contain all the stuff; the point was that when you counted up all the mass of the smoke plus the ashes, it was the same as the mass of the wood you had before the fire; it would just look like less in the ordinary course of things, because the smoke would escape. Hence they concluded that matter couldn't be destroyed, at least not by fire.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Consider the following experiment : Take a nuclear bomb. Enclose it in a shell of unobtainium, which for the purpose of this experiment has the property of being perfectly reflective and perfectly hard, so it'll contain the nuclear explosion. Measure the mass of the bomb. Now set it off. Inside the shell of unobtainium (from which, you should please note, nothing can possibly escape, that's why I'm using unobtainium in the first place) you will now have rather less mass than you had before, and it will be considerably hotter. That's destruction of matter.
What evidence do you have that there is less mass? Has anybody ever done such an experiment? Or an experiment that suggested that less matter would be the result of the experiment you outlined?
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posted
Yes; this has been done many times with individual atoms. I admit that nobody has done it with a real nuclear weapon, for obvious reasons; unobtainium is so annoyingly expensive these days. But the same thing happens in a nuclear power station, it's just a bit less dramatic. Why not look it up on Wiki? It should be somewhere under 'nuclear physics', or perhaps 'equivalence of matter and energy'.
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posted
Let me look around KOM and Ill get back to you.
Do scientists without reservation say the matter is in fact gone? As in if we could create a reoccuring nuclear explosion that covered the entire universe that we could completely remove all matter in the universe?
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posted
The matter is definitely and decidedly gone, yes, being converted to heat. I don't think you could do this to all the matter in the Universe, because of the conservation of baryon number; but I'm not actually certain of this, it depends on physics at high energies which we don't really understand yet. In fact, if baryon number is exactly conserved, it becomes a bit difficult to explain how we got here. So I think that yes, in principle you could convert all matter to energy. But whatever the case there, there is absolutely no doubt that you can put in matter and get out heat. - if there were, nuclear power stations would not work.
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posted
Come to think of it, we can also create matter; I work at an experiment that does. To wit, we take an electron and an anti-electron, total mass 1 MeV, and bang them together to create a Upsilon(4S) particle, mass around 11 GeV. Matter from nowhere.
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The matter hasn't been destroyed it has merely transferred state into heat. I thought you were going to talk about anti-matter. While you may argue the semantics of it, J.S. certainly didn't believe or teach matter as restrictively as it has come to be termed in modern science (c.f. D&C 131:7-8). I don't think the changing of matter into heat (or conversion of energy into matter) would necessarily preclude Smith's teachings on the matter.
<edit>He also occasionally called it the pure principles of element, or somesuch, in the King Follet discourse, just to reinforce the idea that superimposing restrictive modern scientific terminology onto his assertion is probably not appropriate.</edit>
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posted
What on earth has anti-matter to do with anything? When combined with normal matter, both are destroyed, producing energy.
Pretty similar result to the nuclear reactions KoM is talking about. (In very general terms, not specifics.) Matter becomes energy.
If you didn't learn that was possible in your high school chemistry and/or physics class, your teacher(s) did you a disservice.
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posted
Indeed; that is what I call 'defining destroyed in such a way that nothing can ever be destroyed'. By that argument, you might as well say that I cannot destroy a cup by smashing it with a hammer, because all the constituent parts are still there.
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posted
Let me rephrase : Do you really and genuinely believe that if JS had been asked "Is heat a form of matter", he would have replied in the affirmative? I cannot see any possible way in which this would be a reasonable use of language.
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I didn't realize energy was released when matter and anti-matter combined. We've never talked about anti-matter in any of my Physics or Chemistry classes (including the undergraduate ones I took oh so many years ago) and my understanding of it is very limited. Does the conservation of mass-energy still apply to matter/anti-matter reactions?
fugu-
My disagreement was that when J.S. used the term "matter" he might have been applying it to a broader set of states than science would currently ascribe to it. I admit my statement that "matter hasn't been destroyed, it has merely changed state" was not scientifically accurate.
KoM-
I don't know how J.S. would have answered. He was trying to describe in physical terms of the 1830's a principle that was very difficult. His use of the term "matter" should not carry with it the baggage of 20th (or 21st) century science, since he specifically stated that his use of the term was broader than that.
BTW, I believe J.S. views on "matter" or the "pure principles of element" or "uncreated intelligences" are the bases for the powers OSC attributes to Alvin Maker, as well as the creation of the alternate Peter Wiggin in Xenocide(?).
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posted
Of course, the matter-energy distinction is in some sense arbitrary.
But even assuming matter-energy conservation, there's an interesting qualifier -- there's a window in which (among other things) extra matter or energy can exist out of nowhere, so long as it disappears within that window.
posted
So, in light of this discussion I decided I should determine what the exact physical definition of matter is. First stop, Wikipedia:
quote:In physics, matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed, not counting the contribution of various energy or force-fields, which are not usually considered to be matter per se (though they may contribute to the mass of objects). Matter constitutes much of the observable universe, although again, light is not ordinarily considered matter. Unfortunately, for scientific purposes, "matter" is somewhat loosely defined.
quote:In physics, there is no broad consensus as to an exact definition of matter. Physicists generally do not use the word when precision is needed, prefering instead to speak of the more clearly defined concepts of mass, energy and particles.
While none of this is justification for my previous statements about "matter" (which I don't feel require scientific justification since they're more about semantics than science) I just found it interesting that there is a surprising lack of consensus in modern science as to how to accurately define "matter." (The wiki did specifically mention that, in a Chemistry sense, matter should be contrasted with energy; my statements about J.S. were that it's possible, judging from the breadth of other remarks he made, that when he spoke of "matter" he intended both of what modern science would call matter and energy.) <edit>Just to rephrase, since what I said wasn't accurate, the argument is one of scientific semantics; my issue is with application of current semantics to statements where they should not be applied.</edit>
quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: Does the conservation of mass-energy still apply to matter/anti-matter reactions?
Yup. It's really not nearly as exotic a substance as Star Trek might have you believe. ST was correct that it is a potentially HUGE energy source.
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posted
Well, only if you could find a source for it. Like hydrogen, if you have to produce it yourself, then it's just a convenient (or not so convenient) way to store the energy.
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posted
Hoo Boy. Is it possible to turn energy into matter. Why is this not conversion instead of being "creation?"
I was under the impression that beyond up quarks and down quarks scientists are really unsure how stuff at that level works.
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quote:Hoo Boy. Is it possible to turn energy into matter. Why is this not conversion instead of being "creation?"
Energy is not matter. Therefore, if you had energy, and now you have matter, you have created matter. If you want to argue that energy is, in fact, matter, you may have a point; I'm going to call that dishonest rhetoric, though. It's just not what the words mean.
Again I would refer you to the analogy of the cup. You can turn a cup into fragments by hitting it with a hammer. You can turn the fragments back into a cup with glue and skill. But that does not make it honest to say that the fragments are really a cup.
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Is there matter within energy? I know your not a physics PHD but you do seem to demonstrate alot of knowledge in several threads when it came to physics/chemistry.
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posted
Actually, I am a physics PhD, or anyway I will be when I graduate, which at my current rate of progress will be right after the Second Coming, which is all your fault for making me Hatrack instead of working. I do have a master's degree in it.
About your question, I'm not sure I understand it, but if I do, then the answer is no. Energy comes essentially in two forms: Kinetic and potential - all others can be reduced to one of these. Kinetic energy is just the movement of matter; I don't see any way in which you can consider movement as containing matter. Likewise, potential energy is just what you get when matter is placed into unstable positions, like, say, a rock being held above ground level. Again, I don't see how you could consider this as being a form of matter.
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posted
I don't quite understand then how the matter is actually turning into energy. Do the particles break apart so much to the point that there is literally nothing there? If so there cant be any kinetic energy right? Not sure if that also applies to potential energy.
edit: Or do you mean the mass that becomes energy merely turns into heat? Is heat devoid of any mass whatsoever?
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posted
Heat doesn't exist as anything, enery or matter. It's the property of the energy of vibrational motion of matter. When something is "hot" that means that the bits of matter making it up are vibrating (not the perfect word, but close to the meaning) faster than when it is "cold". Heat is transferred by these bits bumping into other bits and tranferring this energy as part of the collision.
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posted
It depends a bit on the process, but let's look at nuclear fission, as in my atom bomb experiment. Basically, a uranium nucleus turns into two lighter nuclei plus some neutrons, and the total mass of the products is less than the mass you started with. However, the kinetic energy of the products is quite high. This kinetic energy at some point gets converted to heat. (Since heat is nothing but the kinetic energy of lots and lots of atoms moving about randomly, this is just another way of saying that the kinetic energy gets transferred elsewhere and spread out.) Net result, less matter, more heat.
And heat has no mass, it's nothing but kinetic energy. Make the atoms move faster, they are hotter.
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posted
I feel like the mistake that's being made by all parties to this convsersation is a false distinction between mass and energy.
Mass is just the energy that an object possesses when it's at rest.
quote:And heat has no mass, it's nothing but kinetic energy. Make the atoms move faster, they are hotter.
I think you'll find that in relativity (either special or general), when you figure out the rest mass of a system of many particles, they have more mass if they're in motion relative to one another (ie, if the system contains heat).
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