Razziel

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Posts by Razziel

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  52

  Good books against evolution?

  by bohm in

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  after reading 'the greatest show on earth' by dawkins, i have been intrigued by how biblical literalists explain the many findings that seem to support evolution and contradict various parts of the bible.

  in doing to i have browsed around on aig but i have generally felt let down by the quality of evidence and interpretations they present.

  so i would like to ask all non-evolutionists: if i wanted to learn more about the physical case against evolution, what books should i read?

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  Razziel

  What I find interesting is that the order that the creation of life is mentioned in genesis is in general agreement with the order that fossils have shown and evolution predicts. Plants and sea creatures, then birds and land-bound animals, and finally man. The only big discrepancy was that the earth came before the sun which doesn't agree with what we know of the cosmology. Even the "canopy" of water isn't a discrepancy since early in earth's evolution the planet was a lot hotter, which meant a majority of water would be in the form of evaporated moisture. (A global flood on the other hand is another story.)

  But this thread is about books and I'm on a tangent.
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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  Razziel

  I nominate "it is what it is" as the most overused cliche of the last year.
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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  Razziel

  Read the last sentence of the definition you posted, Terry. That's basically what you are arguing for.

  What I'm saying is that last sentence is a consequence of the uncertainty principle, it is not the uncertainty principle itself.
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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  Razziel

  Only humans require a concept such as CERTAINTY--not an observed or unobserved system. A system is what it is.

  Math has uncertainty. It's called probability. Humans go looking for certainty, yes. They want a definite answer. But often times when they follow the math down the rabbit hole, the answers are probabilities. The math shows that definitive certain answers to some questions are not possible in this universe.

  QM is very hard to grasp for logical people. I'm a logical person, and you are too, Terry. There were several occasions I was just completely stumped in truly understanding a concept because I was looking for a classical analog to compare the concept to. Sometimes (most times) there are none. Many of the predictions pointed to by the math do not make any logical sense whatsoever. But these predictions are being backed up by experiment and being used in modern technology.

  The point is, if you try to understand QM by using the logic of things we see and experience on an everyday basis, you are doomed to fail. The logic leads to predictions and understanding that are contrary to the way QM works.
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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  Razziel

  What in the world has the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle got to do with human beings and their Free Will??

  The act of observation affects the outcome of an experiment for tangible reasons. The observer must employ interference (electron microscopes, for example) which impact on the object of observation and disturb that object.

  I thought I took care of this one in the time travel thread. This isn't what the uncertainty principle is. It was originally developed by heisenberg to explain this, but was later shown to be much more encompassing. The uncertainty is inherent in the system. Sub-atomic particles with BOTH definite position and momentum, DO NOT EXIST in nature. This can be shown mathematically and has nothing to do with any physical measurement or limitations of instrumentation.

  Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is NOT an observer effect. That way of understanding was disproved over 75 years ago.

  (Sometimes it's still taught the old way in other science classes by non-QM professors, but it's misinformation.)
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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  Razziel

  Yeah, I'm not talking about money at all, that's why I put in figurative. I'm just trying to say someone with a lot higher intelligence might be able to apply, discern things, and build upon what they learn and experience to a far greater degree than the average person who learns and experiences the same things. To that extent, the gap between two people with identical education and life experiences, but different genetics would become more pronounced as they aged.
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  159

  CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

  1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

  2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

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  Razziel

  "it is reasonable to expect that genetic influences on traits like IQ should become less important as one gains experiences with age. However, that the opposite occurs is well documented. "

  What I would like to see instead of the bell-shaped IQ curve, which is reflective of what percentage of the general population has a certain IQ, is at what rate intelligence increases as IQ increases. I would bet money it is on a non-linear scale.

  The point I'm making is that if it is non-linear, then someone with a substantially higher IQ than average might see an exponentially higher figurative return-on-investment as they gain education and experience in life. (Disclaimer: that doesn't mean they're going to put it to beneficial use.) This would mean the influence of genetics would be more and more pronounced as one ages.
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  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

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  Razziel

  "Cleland wanted to see if he could find the size where the laws of quantum broke down and everyday laws take over."

  You can mathematically show that Newton's laws can be reduced from, and are just special cases of Einstein's relativity equations. Many quantum equations likewise can reduce to Newton's laws. I imagine when a "theory of everything" is finally developed, it will elegantly show there is just one set of governing equations that reduce to einstein's, newton's, or quantum equations depending upon the scale of the universe they apply to.
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  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

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  Razziel

  Here's an example in less abstract concepts. What is velocity? It is simply how position changes with respect to time at a specified moment. For example your car speedometer reads mi/hr or km/hr. What is acceleration? It is how velocity changes with respect to time at a specified moment.

  Both velocity and acceleration are just rates of change of position with respect to time, and you can give a definition of each only describing each concept by how position is changing over time, without using the words velocity or acceleration at all.

  It's the same idea with energy. Energy is directly related to how force actively changes with respect to time, position, or another force, or has the potential to change with respect to these. Power is analagous to acceleration in the above example. It is how energy changes or is transferred with respect to time.

  If you asked a professor to explain velocity or acceleration they're going to talk about position because that's where those concepts come from. The same is true with energy, they're going to talk about force. The words aren't dodgy so much as a part of the jargon used in academics.
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  110

  An Explanation of why TIME TRAVEL does not work

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed.. consequently, the building blocks of existence are actually finite parts.. to create things in "tomorrow" which are new, something has to be dismantled to leave spare parts for tomorrow's new thing.. the old thing deteriorates, (dies/disintegrates) and the parts become available to make the new thing.. time travel requires going to a place where today's parts are available to be rearranged.. some of today's things persist as they are, of course.

  they only travel through time by persisting as they are.

  (mountains, for example.).

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  Razziel

  A reason energy can be difficult to understand is that it is not a natural unit of measure. Energy is a derived concept. It can be derived from the fundamental units of mass, length, time, charge and temperature, but it is not a base measure in itself.

  The reason energy definitions contain the concept of "doing" something, such as the ability to do work, is because that's what the human concept of energy is.

  There are two ways I can try to explain energy, the top-down approach and a bottom-up approach. I'll use the bottom-up here.

  The concept of energy arises from the four fundamental forces in nature.

  We know there are four fundamental forces in nature: gravity, electro-magnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear force. There are 3 things that can occur resulting in a difference in force. 1. The force can change strength over a spacial distance. 2. At any particular point in space, the force can change strength with respect to time. 3. Two or more forces can be present on the same point in space.

  If you've had calculus, you'll recognize quickly that energy is just the derivative of force strength with respect to position, time, another force, or even all three. For those who haven't had calculus, energy is the rate of change of force strength when position, time, or the strength of another force remain constant.

  So energy is a consequence of changing force strengths. It isn't something that exists by itself. That's why it's a concept and can be difficult to understand.

  Is energy the motion of particles? In most cases yes, the interactions of forces with time, distance, and each other generally cause energy to be seen in the form of particle movement or vibration. Not in all cases though. Electric charge and electron spin are two examples. (Spin is a misnomer because it doesn't mean an electron spinning on an axis at all.)

  There are generally two ways energy is quantified. The first is a measure in comparison to the surroundings or environment. The second is in comparison to some ground state where no forces are present.