in the discussion about race i adopted a position i am not entirely comfortable with.
i think there is a sense in which it is useful to distinguish categories of description that can be fruitfully defended (apples and bananas) and those that cannot (caucasian or other racial descriptions for example).
but there is a more fundamental sense in which i believe that everything is socially constructed, every single line you can think of.
Pi is the mathematical expression of the relationship between certain ways to measure distance in a circle/sphere. The relationship cannot physically be any different therefore the mathematical expression cannot be any different whilst we use base 10. Even if we were to use another base the physical relationship remains the same.
It is what it is.
my brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
We can see the Earth is round from space; unless there is a huge conspiracy...
We can see the Sun light illuminating the surface of various things in the Solar System and see the Sun not illuminating the opposite side of these same things (we can also measure the energy going into something and then radiating outwards again to gauge where the energy is coming from; that's outside this discussion though!).
We don't have to do the experiments ourselves because we have a class of people to do that work for us - scientists. We trust what they say because there is not world wide conspiracy to mislead. Unless there is, of course...
I don't need to prove that the person I am talking to every morning is actually my wife and not a construct of____ (insert any random nonsense idea here). I accept that she is my wife because not to do so is stupid.
"...care to discuss the substance???" - CG
You should read your own resources first; that does seem to be a common ailment with creationists and the like, insofar that when they link to something other than creationist webshite nonsense their links actually say something other than they assert...
Case in point; from your link:
"It was pondering these developments that led Einstein to discover the special theory of relativity in 1905. The discovery was not momentary. The theory was the outcome of, in Einstein's own reckoning, seven and more years of work..."
The original paper actually highlights and enlarges the bold text I've added; how did you miss this in the original?
You, captaingrl, clearly (very clearly) have no understanding of how things work in science. You pretend that you do and try to buoy that notion up with words (theory) that you clearly (very clearly) do not understand. You then get ridiculed.
"none of you guys are addressing my question" - CG
We have. You just aren't aware that we have...
Be honest with yourself (unless you are trolling...) about your level of knowledge on this subject...
"DNA is like 70 years ago... evolution 150..." - CG
So you are suggesting that our knowledge and understanding of these 2 ideas has either not improved over that period of time or that these theories have not changed...
Based on your posts, it is quite clear that you do not understand enough about science to realise you do not understand enough about science.
"tell me about the theory that has been discovered most recently?" - captaingrl
Can you tell us how a theory is discovered?
Sometimes 1 sentence can explain a lot about someone's background in education...
Aeroplanes were invented over 100 years ago.
Jet technology was discovered over 80 years ago.
There have been no advances in aeronautics in over 50 years.
It's stagnating I tell you!
As an aside, there is a reason for a stagnation of life expectancy. The longer we live, the more likely it is we get an incurable disease and die from that instead (lifestyle changes are also to blame of course). You sort one thing out and we find another thing waiting in the wings to kick us in the teeth. However, slowly but surely we are living longer and that is down to medicinal breakthroughs which is, of course, down to science...
Also, it is rare that a never seen before event happens in science nowadays. What is common however are the small incremental additions to our knowledge that never see the light of day (as far as the layman is concerned) as it only affects those directly involved in researching various things out there in the unforgiving, thankless, real world of researchers.
my brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
my brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
MrRoboto -
There is literally no evidence for a flat Earth. We will leave aside the fact that we can see the Earth is a sphere (for the purposes of this discussion) and instead consider that no 'evidence' that is presented for there being a flat Earth accounts for all our observations from this planet.
The notion of a 'ball Earth' works with physical observations, the notion of a flat Earth would require a whole new set of physical explanations that explains not only ball shaped objects but flat objects also.
In our observable Universe objects over a certain mass are ball shaped; gravity causes this. We can measure the mass of the Earth and we know this exceeds the minimum required mass to cause it to become ball shaped.
Most flat Earthers also consider the Earth to be the centre of the Universe with everything orbiting us. That raises a whole new set of questions (such as how can galaxies move faster than the speed of light) as well as meaning the answers we already have (including verified predictions) no longer explain anything. Even maths stops working...apparently.
But as I said at the start, we can see the Earth is a sphere therefore all suggestions that the Earth is flat have to be based either in a profound ignorance or a profound sense of troll.
my brother has been talking about the earth being flat and some big conspiracy going on to make people beieve otherwise.
what are people's thoughts on this?.
'Flat Earth Theories' are a good lesson in to how language can be used to beguile people who would otherwise just laugh off such things.
Yes we all know the Earth is not flat yet even then some of these explanations that 'prove' the Earth is flat are rather compelling; yet without some scientific knowledge and despite knowing that what you are reading is BS you can't explain away their points.
Now consider the creationist movement and their well funded articles that frequently rear their ugly little heads over on UCD and such like webshites. If such a ludicrous and obviously false notion of a flat Earth can allow reasonably sounding arguments to be made then it suddenly becomes plainly clear why less clear cuts ideas (we can't actually see life arising and evolving in front of our eyes) can attract such a following.
