Easy to make things up in science

[Poor Beggar]

Yes, because that's all that matters in the end in the Christian worldview. That's all any of us are to be judged for: whether we believe.

Actually we're judged by our works. That's what the bible teaches. As perfection is the requirement to pass through God's blazing holiness and enter into the fire of God's love, the only way our works will be deemed righteous is through the blood of the Lamb. That probably sounds stupid to you. The more time people spend denying the obvious presence of God in the design of this universe the more they will succumb to a debased mind. Eventually it will become impossible to "see" God in the world. In the end everyone will discover that God, not religion, exists according to reality. We get to argue against God according to our predilections about as much as kids get to argue against math facts in third grade.

By the way, I was a graduate degree holding atheist, so it's not for lack of thinking that I came to these conclusions. I suggest direct experience over argumentation any day. One only has to take off the blinders of animosity and preferences.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Actually we're judged by our works. That's what the bible teaches. As perfection is the requirement to pass through God's blazing holiness and enter into the fire of God's love, the only way our works will be deemed righteous is through the blood of the Lamb. That probably sounds stupid to you.

In other words, you are judged for believing in certain salvific doctrines. That's all you are held accountable for. Not how you lived, but what you believed.

The more time people spend denying the obvious presence of God in the design of this universe the more they will succumb to a debased mind.

What design?

By the way, I was a graduate degree holding atheist, so it's not for lack of thinking that I came to these conclusions. I suggest direct experience over argumentation any day. One only has to take off the blinders of animosity and preferences.

And I was a Christian.

 

[Poor Beggar]

In other words, you are judged for believing in certain salvific doctrines. That's all you are held accountable for. Not how you lived, but what you believed.

What design?

And I was a Christian.

Your first statement is wrong. Maybe that's why you're not a Christian?
As for the rest of it, I've said what needs to be said. You're probably either used to arguing with Christians who, at a certain level, don't really believe in the Judgment and feel THEY need to convince you, or, you simply like to argue.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Your first statement is wrong. Maybe that's why you're not a Christian?
As for the rest of it, I've said what needs to be said. You're probably either used to arguing with Christians who, at a certain level, don't really believe in the Judgment and feel THEY need to convince you, or, you simply like to argue.

My first statement is wrong? So you will be held accountable for your moral failings even if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and saviour?

 

[Poor Beggar]

"Find yourself in a black hole? Not to worry, says Stephen Hawking: you won’t split into particles or cease to exist. Instead, you’ll wind up in an alternative universe"

http://www.rt.com/news/313427-hawking-black-holes-universe/

Since no one can ever check, guess the guy is a genius!

You're right. One of the basics of scientific methodology is we formulate hypotheses that can be tested and theories that could be proven wrong. I remember being taken aback by that in school because the Greek thinking that predominates our culture had led me to assume a "proper argument" was one which couldn't be proven wrong. Science evolved to understand that not being proven wrong doesn't make us right, and if we can't be proven wrong the intellectual pursuit for truth is dead-ended.

 

[timewerx]

"Find yourself in a black hole? Not to worry, says Stephen Hawking: you won’t split into particles or cease to exist. Instead, you’ll wind up in an alternative universe"

http://www.rt.com/news/313427-hawking-black-holes-universe/

Since no one can ever check, guess the guy is a genius!

Stephen Hawking is not entirely wrong.

There's an independent and more recent study about the nature of our Universe. First, they estimated the mass of the Universe and this estimated mass produced a Schwarzschild Radius equivalent to the most distant object known from Earth - possibly the boundary of our Universe.

Knowing what a Schwarzschild Radius is, and it's correspondence to the known boundaries of our Universe, it only implies one thing - that our whole Universe is inside a giant Blackhole and the Event Horizon of this Black Hole is the boundary of our Universe!

We could of course keep wondering what's outside our black-hole home. Maybe people who created our black hole-Universe in their labs.

It is also possible that a "black hole" is nothing more than a "sand box" in computer science terminologies. We could be computer viruses or Artificial Intelligence awaiting evaluation for promotion or for destruction (deleted, formatted, etc.)

 

[Michael]

So can you prove it isan electric universe?

The term "prove" really has no meaning in science by the way. The best one might hope to do is provide empirical, tangible "evidence" to support any idea. I can certainly do that in this case by showing you evidence that lightening on Earth and other planets is an electrically driven process, aurora are an electrically driven process, solar flares are an electrically driven process, etc. I can also demonstrate the cause/effect relationships empirically, in a lab, in controlled experimentation. That's the best anyone can really hope for in "science".

Compare and contrast that with someone claiming that 'space expansion", or "inflation", or "dark energy" exist and have some tangible effect on a photon. They cannot experimentally verify the cause/effect relationships in a lab in controlled experimentation. Ditto for Hawking's ideas about 'black holes'. He could be right of course, but he has no hope whatsoever of demonstrating such a belief in a lab, in controlled experimentation.

In that sense, you are in fact correct that it's entirely possible in "science" to simply "make stuff up" and nobody can actually check to see if you're right or wrong.

 

[Michael]

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results

In the investigation, a whopping 75% of the social psychology experiments were not replicated, meaning that the originally reported findings vanished when other scientists repeated the experiments. Half of the cognitive psychology studies failed the same test. Details are published in the journal Science.

And by the way Dad, the problem you mention is not limited to any particular branch of "science', it actually applies to pretty much every branch of science.

 

[Poor Beggar]

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results

And by the way Dad, the problem you mention is not limited to any particular branch of "science', it actually applies to pretty much every branch of science.

That article is great. The problem is the human mind can't be observed and measured the same way science is designed to operate. Psychologists tried to follow the way of the physicists and chemists to gain acceptance and it just doesn't work. Mind is too malleable. This why older societies had shamans and priests.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results



And by the way Dad, the problem you mention is not limited to any particular branch of "science', it actually applies to pretty much every branch of science.

The authors' conclusion (Science 2015;349(6251):aac4716):

After this intensive effort to reproduce a sample of published psychological findings, how many of the effects have we established are true? Zero. And how many of the effects have we established are false? Zero. Is this a limitation of the project design? No. It is the reality of doing science, even if it is not appreciated in daily practice. Humans desire certainty, and science infrequently provides it. As much as we might wish it to be otherwise, a single study almost never provides definitive resolution for or against an effect and its explanation. The original studies examined here offered tentative evidence; the replications we conducted offered additional, confirmatory evidence. In some cases, the replications increase confidence in the reliability of the original results; in other cases, the replications suggest that more investigation is needed to establish the validity of the original findings. Scientific progress is a cumulative process of uncertainty reduction that can only succeed if science itself remains the greatest skeptic of its explanatory claims.

The present results suggest that there is room to improve reproducibility in psychology. Any temptation to interpret these results as a defeat for psychology, or science more generally, must contend with the fact that this project demonstrates science behaving as it should. Hypotheses abound that the present culture in science may be negatively affecting the reproducibility of findings. An ideological response would discount the arguments, discredit the sources, and proceed merrily along. The scientific process is not ideological. Science does not always provide comfort for what we wish to be; it confronts us with what is. Moreover, as illustrated by the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines (http://cos.io/top) (37), the research community is taking action already to improve the quality and credibility of the scientific literature.

We conducted this project because we care deeply about the health of our discipline and believe in its promise for accumulating knowledge about human behavior that can advance the quality of the human condition. Reproducibility is central to that aim. Accumulating evidence is the scientific community’s method of self-correction and is the best available option for achieving that ultimate goal: truth.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Interesting perspectives on the reproducibility project from Russ Poldrack and Dorothy Bishop.

 

[Michael]

The authors' conclusion (Science 2015;349(6251):aac4716):

After this intensive effort to reproduce a sample of published psychological findings, how many of the effects have we established are true? Zero. And how many of the effects have we established are false? Zero. Is this a limitation of the project design? No. It is the reality of doing science, even if it is not appreciated in daily practice. Humans desire certainty, and science infrequently provides it.

Kinda demonstrates dad's point doesn't it?

 

[dad]

It's nothing more than a hypothesis, and you disagree with it. Your point? There is nowhere in the article that Stephen Hawking even implies "This is what would happen."

This is what would happen if the tooth fairy clobbered an ant with a toothpick....ho hum.

 

[dad]

There are two major forces in the world -- Satan and God.

The guy who joins ISIS, well I don't think I have to tell you who he is following.

How about the guy who joins the US military?

 

[dad]

It would certainly give him a good laugh!

Fair enough, he gave me one.

 

[dad]

Stephen Hawking is not entirely wrong.

There's an independent and more recent study about the nature of our Universe. First, they estimated the mass of the Universe and this estimated mass produced a Schwarzschild Radius equivalent to the most distant object known from Earth - possibly the boundary of our Universe.

One must know distances and aprox mass sizes to do that. They don't. They create a universe in their minds based on earth realities and concepts.

Knowing what a Schwarzschild Radius is, and it's correspondence to the known boundaries of our Universe, it only implies one thing - that our whole Universe is inside a giant Blackhole and the Event Horizon of this Black Hole is the boundary of our Universe!

Show us how simply and in your own words?

We could of course keep wondering what's outside our black-hole home. Maybe people who created our black hole-Universe in their labs.

I no more wonder about that than I wonder how Alice's rabbit hole is doing.

 

[dad]

You're right. One of the basics of scientific methodology is we formulate hypotheses that can be tested and theories that could be proven wrong. I remember being taken aback by that in school because the Greek thinking that predominates our culture had led me to assume a "proper argument" was one which couldn't be proven wrong. Science evolved to understand that not being proven wrong doesn't make us right, and if we can't be proven wrong the intellectual pursuit for truth is dead-ended.

So you believe with no evidence. OK. That is called religion.

 

[Poor Beggar]

So you believe with no evidence. OK. That is called religion.

What?

 

[dad]

What?

If you think that one can have truth in science that is simply beyond any proof, that is religion. Hawking is a good example.

 

[Poor Beggar]

If you think that one can have truth in science that is simply beyond any proof, that is religion. Hawking is a good example.

You failed to comprehend what I wrote.