The purpose of the lights in the sky?

[Bradskii]

You miss the point, by assuming the universe a gallery. For whom is it being displayed? Art is not necessarily for public display either, think of for instance Raphael's school of Athens that was for the Pope's private study (that later became public as a court on account of it, perhaps). A great work in a backroom. Or the Parthenon marbles or the Bassae frieze, so placed that no one could have seen them. In the mediaeval period the assumption was that we were suburban to creation, the maleable area below the moon, in CS Lewis' phrase the mediaevals saw us as suburban to most of creation. We also don't know that it would be the most effort - finishing touches to something takes a lot of time sometimes, although the Herculean effort was making it in the first place - like carving tombs into solid rock and then decorating it for 20 years. Besides, time has no meaning to something beyond time.

More to the point, what is the purpose of building something that we cannot even access.

There is a small moon circling a rocky and lifeless planet in a tiny galaxy which has just passed into the unobservable portion of the universe. Which means we not only cannot reach it but we will never gain any information about it. It effectively doesn't exist as far as we're concerned.

What was the purpose of creating it?

I'll be honest. If the entirety of existence was literally the earth, moon and sun and the stars were just pretty lights in the sky then I wouldn't be an atheist. Some Christians say that the more we discover, the greater is God's glory.

It's completely the opposite for me. The further out we push, the smaller God seems to become. He seems to become more parochial.

 

[Lion IRC]

Where Is the Edge of the Universe?

“The universe is flat like an [endless] sheet of paper,” says Mather. “According to this, you could continue infinitely far in any direction and the universe would be just the same, more or less.” You’d never come to an edge of this flat universe; you’d only find more and more galaxies.
​

I believe that only our "observable" universe is simulated. The rest is moving away at faster than the speed of light because space can expand at that speed. So I don't think the theoretical infinite amount of space exists. I had thought that space is a hypersphere that curves back on itself. It wouldn't have a center or edge...

​

Hey there JohnClay
I remember you from TFF
The simulation theory is interesting but doesn't even that theory lend itself to us being the centre of attention?

 

[JohnClay]

Hey there JohnClay
I remember you from TFF
The simulation theory is interesting but doesn't even that theory lend itself to us being the centre of attention?

Yes it focuses on "players".... non-player characters don't necessarily have the sensation of consciousness (or genuine suffering) and might not be continuously simulated. Things like the 10^57 atoms in our Sun would just be approximated to whatever "level of detail" is required. I guess in normal Christianity all humans have the sensation of consciousness and suffering.... and that would involve an eternity in the afterlife (and I don't think a literal eternity is possible in a simulation).

 

[jayem]

You miss the point, by assuming the universe a gallery. For whom is it being displayed? Art is not necessarily for public display either, think of for instance Raphael's school of Athens that was for the Pope's private study (that later became public as a court on account of it, perhaps). A great work in a backroom. Or the Parthenon marbles or the Bassae frieze, so placed that no one could have seen them. In the mediaeval period the assumption was that we were suburban to creation, the maleable area below the moon, in CS Lewis' phrase the mediaevals saw us as suburban to most of creation. We also don't know that it would be the most effort - finishing touches to something takes a lot of time sometimes, although the Herculean effort was making it in the first place - like carving tombs into solid rock and then decorating it for 20 years. Besides, time has no meaning to something beyond time.

Thanks for responding. I was replying to a post stating that the Earth is “geoprominent.” I’m not exactly sure what that means. So I was addressing the general concept of prominence. And my art gallery analogy was to demonstrate an example of what I’d consider to be prominent. The Earth is definitely prominent to us because it’s where we live. But other than the fact that our planet supports carbon-based life (including intelligent life—supposedly ) is there any objective reason to believe the Earth is any more prominent than trillions of other planets?

 

[jayem]

I'll be honest. If the entirety of existence was literally the earth, moon and sun and the stars were just pretty lights in the sky then I wouldn't be an atheist. Some Christians say that the more we discover, the greater is God's glory.

I could possibly believe in the existence of some as yet undiscovered force of nature that creates matter/energy. And may have some function in maintaining the action of the known fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces.) It could be called a creator god if one likes. But it’s not supernatural. There’s no reason whatsoever to think it’s a personal entity that has a plan or purpose, or plays any role in our lives. The idea that it has any awareness, knowledge, concern for, or expectations of us, are products of the human imagination.

 

[Freth]

The book of Revelation has star symbolism.

• Twelve stars—the twelve tribes of Israel.
• A third of the stars of heaven—the angels that fell with Satan.
• Seven stars in the sanctuary—seven churches.

But what about actual physical stars and future events?

• Stars of heaven fall to earth like untimely figs from a fig tree, coinciding with the sky rolling back like a scroll. —Revelation 6:13-14
  
• A third of the sun and moon and the stars are darkened. —Revelation 8:12
• Signs in the sun, moon and stars. Distress of nations with perplexity. The sea and waves roaring. Men's hearts failing them for fear, because they see these things happening. The powers of heaven will be shaken. —Luke 21:25-26

The sun, moon and stars serve many purposes. Time keeping, seasons, signs, separating night and day. In the end, they will be the final signs that the second coming is about to happen.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

More to the point, what is the purpose of building something that we cannot even access.

There is a small moon circling a rocky and lifeless planet in a tiny galaxy which has just passed into the unobservable portion of the universe. Which means we not only cannot reach it but we will never gain any information about it. It effectively doesn't exist as far as we're concerned.

What was the purpose of creating it?

I'll be honest. If the entirety of existence was literally the earth, moon and sun and the stars were just pretty lights in the sky then I wouldn't be an atheist. Some Christians say that the more we discover, the greater is God's glory.

It's completely the opposite for me. The further out we push, the smaller God seems to become. He seems to become more parochial.

Well, we humans built things and made art, that we cannot readily access and no one really looked at - such as the frieze at Bassae I mentioned earlier, or the great many deep cave paintings like Lascaux.

Purpose is a numinous concept, and not everything can be reduced to brute utility. For instance, the insistance of Serbia to retain Kosovo on historic grounds or societies going to great lengths to achieve sometimes awesome, but largely useless or ceremonial, feats. Not just things like building the pyramids or the tallest skyscraper, even the moon landings were largely useless - the US only did it to one-up the Russians that had always been first in space stuff. There are many stories to try and justify the cost, such as that NASA gave us teflon or putty or winglets or made titanium economically viable, but at heart nothing came from landing on the moon directly. It was a purposeless thing, as much as a distant moon is to a bunch of terrestial monkeys. I've heard people say we have to go to space or all our art and literature and cultures were in vain, as it will eventually pass away. That seems muddle-headed to me, as if there is no purpose or no meaning to a song sung if it was not recorded.

This is that childish tendency of us humans to worship superlatives: My father is bigger than yours; I am taller than you; the Nile is the longest river, and Mount Everest the tallest mountain; Royal thrones were the biggest or highest chair and Pharoahs always drawn bigger than everyone else. Why is our purpose lessened if the earth is merely an infinitesimal speck? Is a rock in my garden path more or less important than Mount Everest? Or Olympus Mons?

From my perspective, I feel the opposite. Parochial is such a nice word, and explains it perfectly. Our stuff is parochial, just about our human things. They don't really matter in any naturalistic sense. But we are a parish of Christ, and He is our Pastor or Shepherd - who else should have a parochial outlook than the Pastor himself?!

I am not religious because there are multiple galaxies any more than I would be if the earth was a flat disc that constituted everything. These are incidental. I am religious because I have come to the conclusion that Something has a parochial concern over my silly little bit of turf, and whether it is more or less important than the whole, bigger or smaller, seems immaterial. It is mine.

 

[Bradskii]

Well, we humans built things and made art, that we cannot readily access and no one really looked at - such as the frieze at Bassae I mentioned earlier, or the great many deep cave paintings like Lascaux.

Purpose is a numinous concept, and not everything can be reduced to brute utility. For instance, the insistance of Serbia to retain Kosovo on historic grounds or societies going to great lengths to achieve sometimes awesome, but largely useless or ceremonial, feats. Not just things like building the pyramids or the tallest skyscraper, even the moon landings were largely useless - the US only did it to one-up the Russians that had always been first in space stuff. There are many stories to try and justify the cost, such as that NASA gave us teflon or putty or winglets or made titanium economically viable, but at heart nothing came from landing on the moon directly. It was a purposeless thing, as much as a distant moon is to a bunch of terrestial monkeys. I've heard people say we have to go to space or all our art and literature and cultures were in vain, as it will eventually pass away. That seems muddle-headed to me, as if there is no purpose or no meaning to a song sung if it was not recorded.

This is that childish tendency of us humans to worship superlatives: My father is bigger than yours; I am taller than you; the Nile is the longest river, and Mount Everest the tallest mountain; Royal thrones were the biggest or highest chair and Pharoahs always drawn bigger than everyone else. Why is our purpose lessened if the earth is merely an infinitesimal speck? Is a rock in my garden path more or less important than Mount Everest? Or Olympus Mons?

From my perspective, I feel the opposite. Parochial is such a nice word, and explains it perfectly. Our stuff is parochial, just about our human things. They don't really matter in any naturalistic sense. But we are a parish of Christ, and He is our Pastor or Shepherd - who else should have a parochial outlook than the Pastor himself?!

I am not religious because there are multiple galaxies any more than I would be if the earth was a flat disc that constituted everything. These are incidental. I am religious because I have come to the conclusion that Something has a parochial concern over my silly little bit of turf, and whether it is more or less important than the whole, bigger or smaller, seems immaterial. It is mine.

I'm always told that we are special. That this is all for our benefit. It's like God is the builder and he built somewhere for us. It's our house. Our home. But we only have access to one room. Maybe two. But there are an infinite number of rooms that we're not allowed to access.

If someone had not already decided, for whatever reason, that God existed, that would seem the craziest thing imaginable. It would simply not be credible.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Thanks for responding. I was replying to a post stating that the Earth is “geoprominent.” I’m not exactly sure what that means. So I was addressing the general concept of prominence. And my art gallery analogy was to demonstrate an example of what I’d consider to be prominent. The Earth is definitely prominent to us because it’s where we live. But other than the fact that our planet supports carbon-based life (including intelligent life—supposedly ) is there any objective reason to believe the Earth is any more prominent than trillions of other planets?

There is no reason to objectively believe anything, but prominence is a subjective notion. Something can only be prominent from a specific perspective, placed in a value judgement ahead of something else. So to argue prominence of the Earth is objectively null, sure, but that would be true of the grandest galaxy or the smallest atom.

I am human, so what is human is not alien to me. From a human perspective, nothing can be more prominent than the Earth - we literally have to see portions of it, even when we are trying to see stuff beyond it, and anything beyond has to be mediated via what light or radiation we receive over here.

I could possibly believe in the existence of some as yet undiscovered force of nature that creates matter/energy. And may have some function in maintaining the action of the known fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces.) It could be called a creator god if one likes. But it’s not supernatural. There’s no reason whatsoever to think it’s a personal entity that has a plan or purpose, or plays any role in our lives. The idea that it has any awareness, knowledge, concern for, or expectations of us, are products of the human imagination.

That sounds a lot like the god of Spinoza or the Stoic Logos.

The problem is with the concept of natural, or Nature if you like. Everything once 'understood' or framed as being understandable, are then lumped in as natural. That is why things like anger or such, which used to be per definition part of human personality, are today termed 'natural'. CS Lewis talks about this in Abolition of Man, where humans gradually deconstruct our position as more than merely natural, till man as concept is effectively abolished into instinct and nurture.

That is the problem here. If humans are natural in this way, then our decisions and will and what have you, merely beholden to the same natural process. The cascade of atoms that goes one way, and would have regardless of us, who are merely a part thereof. That is why Stoicism had such a tendency to Fatalism.

So if we humans I take you agree, are 'Persons', why not the Logos? Why must it be devoid of personage, as any argument that it must be so, is equally applicable to us humans. Person just means a mask anyway. To argue it is a Person is a judgement made from our anthropomorphisising eyes - but so is the one that it isn't. I see Art, where you may see stuff. I see purpose or design, where others may see chance or merely process. Same, same. We are both just taking human abstract concepts and applying them back, as much as when we express our observations mathematically. That, of course, is unnatural; to create a superstructure beyond the brutish fact. You may even say Supernatural.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I'm always told that we are special. That this is all for our benefit. It's like God is the builder and he built somewhere for us. It's our house. Our home. But we only have access to one room. Maybe two. But there are an infinite number of rooms that we're not allowed to access.

If someone had not already decided, for whatever reason, that God existed, that would seem the craziest thing imaginable. It would simply not be credible.

Who said we are special? That is laughable. We are a bunch of silly monkeys that think we are better than the bunch still hanging in the trees. No, the OT Israelites were the slaves in Egypt, the Patriarchs the Sojourners in strange lands, the Kingdoms wedged between mighty Egypt and Assyria. They weren't important, but they were God's. I am the Lord thy God, said He. That is the wonder of it all, that despite our insignificance, our unimportance that pales to utter nothingness next to a concept such as God, the Incarnation occurred. To think humans special is to my mind, just a species of setting ourselves up as gods. We would be less than an ant to a human being, but luckily He seems to have an interest in entymology.

 

[Bradskii]

Who said we are special?

I was told that God created heaven and earth for us. Then specifically created us. Then sent His Son to die for us so that we'd have eternal life. It just sounded like were special from that. Maybe that's just me.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I was told that God created heaven and earth for us. Then specifically created us. Then sent His Son to die for us so that we'd have eternal life. It just sounded like were special from that. Maybe that's just me.

Well, the Bible says God created Heaven and Earth - doesn't say it is for us. It also says He specifically created us, but that is just as true for the creeping things and fish and stars and whatnot. That He sent His Son to die for us is an example of His great mercy, because we Fell - it doesn't make us intrinsically very special outside of His regard for us. In fact, in Job for instance, we see the sentiment of our unimportance. We are said to be made less than the heavenly beings or angels, which makes us chief on earth obviously, but that says very little outside our little ghetto. To the mediaevals or ancients for instance, the Stars themselves were great intelligences - we humans merely the petty kids that made mistakes.

We humans are only special in proportion to how we embody Christ, and that is really not ours. Not I Lord, but You.

 

[jayem]

So if we humans I take you agree, are 'Persons', why not the Logos? Why must it be devoid of personage, as any argument that it must be so, is equally applicable to us humans. Person just means a mask anyway. To argue it is a Person is a judgement made from our anthropomorphisising eyes - but so is the one that it isn't. I see Art, where you may see stuff. I see purpose or design, where others may see chance or merely process. Same, same. We are both just taking human abstract concepts and applying them back, as much as when we express our observations mathematically. That, of course, is unnatural; to create a superstructure beyond the brutish fact. You may even say Supernatural.

As my avatar notes, I am a naturalist, and I see the world through that lens. I don’t see that recognizing human beings are products of nature—just like our planet and everything it contains—in any way devalues our existence. To me, it just makes it more wondrous and fascinating that the astonishing complexity and variety of life can result from matter and the fundamental forces of nature. It actually stimulates me to study and learn the processes and mechanics. My problem with supernatural beliefs is that they’re epistemological dead ends. A supernatural explanation provides no useful information that can be applied to everyday life. And what’s worse—if the known laws of nature can be suspended at any time, in any manner, and for reasons unfathomable to us, then we can’t make reliable predictions. Knowing what results can be expected when we know initial conditions is what makes natural science valuable. Thus, as a practical matter, supernaturalism is useless. And it’s a cop-out. Sure, we don’t yet know the exact chemistry of how life appeared on this planet. But that doesn’t mean we’ll never know it. Chalking it up to the actions of a god is primitive, ineffectual thinking. It’s a sort of intellectual surrender—an implied statement that the origin of life is something we can never know or explain. Which is why I say supernaturalism is an epistemological dead end.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

As my avatar notes, I am a naturalist, and I see the world through that lens. I don’t see that recognizing human beings are products of nature—just like our planet and everything it contains—in any way devalues our existence. To me, it just makes it more wondrous and fascinating that the astonishing complexity and variety of life can result from matter and the fundamental forces of nature. It actually stimulates me to study and learn the processes and mechanics. My problem with supernatural beliefs is that they’re epistemological dead ends. A supernatural explanation provides no useful information that can be applied to everyday life. And what’s worse—if the known laws of nature can be suspended at any time, in any manner, and for reasons unfathomable to us, then we can’t make reliable predictions. Knowing what results can be expected when we know initial conditions is what makes natural science valuable. Thus, as a practical matter, supernaturalism is useless. And it’s a cop-out. Sure, we don’t yet know the exact chemistry of how life appeared on this planet. But that doesn’t mean we’ll never know it. Chalking it up to the actions of a god is primitive, ineffectual thinking. It’s a sort of intellectual surrender—an implied statement that the origin of life is something we can never know or explain. Which is why I say supernaturalism is an epistemological dead end.

You know what you wrote here is basically a Petitio Principii? A circular argument? You are already assuming Supernaturalism as practically useless before thus declaring it a dead end.

Regardless, you missed my point. We have no Epistemology of any sort, without going beyond the Natural. We have to draw abstractions, create simulacra models, assume Uniformitarianism and repeatability, that we can even fathom natural laws and that such principles even exist. We assume some understandable order, but seeing that humans create order even in random lines or numbers, how do we know this can be so? Especially when we are allowed to infer forces, and when these fail to save all the appearances of phenomena, we infer even more (such as gravity, dark matter, dark energy or whatever).

Purely Naturalistic mental processes are beholden to the matter that brought them to being, and thus have no way of affirming epistemic conclusions at all. So, for Science to be applied at all, you have to assume some ability of Reason to peer behind the veil of the material. Naturalism is a dead end epistemologically, as you either have to end with a general scepticism of everything or base your conclusions on hypocritical principles (as you are doing here).

 

[Bradskii]

You know what you wrote here is basically a Petitio Principii? A circular argument? You are already assuming Supernaturalism as practically useless before thus declaring it a dead end.

Regardless, you missed my point. We have no Epistemology of any sort, without going beyond the Natural. We have to draw abstractions, create simulacra models, assume Uniformitarianism and repeatability, that we can even fathom natural laws and that such principles even exist. We assume some understandable order, but seeing that humans create order even in random lines or numbers, how do we know this can be so? Especially when we are allowed to infer forces, and when these fail to save all the appearances of phenomena, we infer even more (such as gravity, dark matter, dark energy or whatever).

Purely Naturalistic mental processes are beholden to the matter that brought them to being, and thus have no way of affirming epistemic conclusions at all. So, for Science to be applied at all, you have to assume some ability of Reason to peer behind the veil of the material. Naturalism is a dead end epistemologically, as you either have to end with a general scepticism of everything or base your conclusions on hypocritical principles (as you are doing here).

I think that Jay was saying that you can't use supernatural concepts to operate within the natural world. Horses for courses as it were.

But we're all in the same boat even if you are right. If there is a God then he made us both. When it comes to the material world then you and I work on the same principles using the same information and formulating the same theories. And we'd use the same experiments to check them. Are there some supernatural methods that you'd use that would work better?

Let's say we're both cosmologists and you're a believer and I'm not. We try to work out what exactly it is that causes the universe to expand. We know it's caused by something so we need a name for this mysterious force. I suggest 'dark energy'. It sounds cool. What do you say? No, we'll call it God?

Unless I'm mistaken, as far as you are concerned, God is responsible for everything. So do we rename gravity 'God'? Do we rename black holes 'God'? We already know enough about them to say that they obey 'natural' laws and so we class them as being 'natural'. But is it ok for you if we try to work out exactly how God is doing it?

Wouldn't you 'draw abstractions, create simulacra models, assume Uniformitarianism and repeatability, so that we can even fathom natural laws' as a Christian scientist? Is there some other method that you and I can use to fathom the natural world.

And we 'infer' gravity? Well...oops, hang on...

Sorry, I dropped my pen. I infer that it was gravity that caused it to end up on the floor. But I may be wrong. P'raps the earth sucks. Who knows...but I reckon if you did an experiment where you live to see what the forces are that drag objects in a certain direction then you'd end up with the same (repeatable) results as me.

Ain't science wonderful!

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Ain't science wonderful!

Oh, yes. But it needs a lot of base ideas in place to work, that are themselves metaphysical notions - not natural ones. It is not coincidence that the only times when we approached Science, as in a systemic empirically-based attempt to describe phenomena, it was in Christian Europe and Islamic Transoxiana on the back of pervasive Aristotleanism. Only a mix of Aristotle and Abrahamic religion has ever created such, and even Hellenistic speculations fell short and withered. There is no other system as effective to explain the world (except arguably Evidence-Based Medicine in specific contexts, but that is a whole different discussion on the powers of Induction vs Deduction and the validity of findings outside the data used to determine them). After all, Scientific Method was invented by Franciscans.

Post-Christian Western Civilisation is moving beyond this, hence all this of mathematical formula being cultural constructs or why simple data is held hostage to fuzzy concepts like race or privilege. If you cut off the roots, the tree is weakened. Especially with the Sciences, you need to be able to affirm empiricism somehow, and Naturalistic Materialism fatally undercuts it as merely process of electro-chemical gradients - that would be different if the process was different, not from some fundamental conclusion that this or that is truly valid or Intersubjective.

You are confusing the practical how with its Telos, though. God is a teleological idea, the Final Cause perhaps in Aristotle's four Causes; and the strength of Francis Bacon's pivot of Scientific Method to the pragmatic, was in allowing us to gather data outside this. But they are not equivalent. Dark matter is not God, anymore than any other force here. They are different levels of thinking. Science and Theology don't operate on the same things, though the former's groundwork require significant assumptions historically drawn from the latter - such as an ordered, intelligible universe. There is simply no reason to assume we can even understand anything, or that we aren't just dealing with randomness, without it; since we plug all the randomness by inventing layers beyond it to make it 'ordered' in some way.

And we 'infer' gravity?

Yes, we do. We observe acceleration, weight, etc. and infer a responsible force called gravity. Prior to Newton, people had been investigating mechanics for millenia, his inference was just better. It came from assuming that things naturally stay in motion or stay at rest unless something forces it to change. Prior, people thought rest was the natural state unless something moved it and it would then decay back to rest, which is a natural conclusion to draw from observation in day to day life. Gravity has never been demonstrated directly, only inferred; the closest we came being Cavendish's experiments.

 

[Bradskii]

They are different levels of thinking. Science and Theology don't operate on the same things, though the former's groundwork require significant asdumptions historically drawn from the latter - such as an ordered, intelligible universe.

Gee, quite a block of text. Took me some time to dig out something relevant to which I could respond so we could keep the conversation from getting bogged down by trying to answer umpteen points at a time. And the ordered universe seems to be it.

Yes, it's ordered. Otherwise we wouldn't be here agreeing with each other. Theology assumes it was God who ordered it and science uses the order to contruct theories to explain how it works. Sometimes it's the same person doing the assuming and working on the theories.

The point being is that you'd never know if the scientist working within the odered universe to produce her theories is a believer ot not. Because science works whether you believe or not. Not many religious scientists think that oxygen willl combine with hydrogen because God makes it so. It's because it's a natural reaction.

If you want to say that it couldn't happen without God, then fine. I've no problem with that. But then you might say that about literally everything. And you know what they say about something (originally a theory) that explains everything...?

And gravity has never been demonstrated? Uh?

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Gee, quite a block of text. Took me some time to dig out something relevant to which I could respond so we could keep the conversation from getting bogged down by trying to answer umpteen points at a time. And the ordered universe seems to be it.

Yes, it's ordered. Otherwise we wouldn't be here agreeing with each other. Theology assumes it was God who ordered it and science uses the order to contruct theories to explain how it works. Sometimes it's the same person doing the assuming and working on the theories.

The point being is that you'd never know if the scientist working within the odered universe to produce her theories is a believer ot not. Because science works whether you believe or not. Not many religious scientists think that oxygen willl combine with hydrogen because God makes it so. It's because it's a natural reaction.

If you want to say that it couldn't happen without God, then fine. I've no problem with that. But then you might say that about literally everything. And you know what they say about something (originally a theory) that explains everything...?

And gravity has never been demonstrated? Uh?

Both these hypothetical people will be Westerners, or at least significantly Westernised. The thread of Christianity runs deep within that, to such an extent that Christendom used to be synonymous with it. If you pick at that thread, a lot unravels. Don't confuse the pervasive assumptions of your society as necessarily universal values, as a lot of our modern discourse actually demonstrates.

Their religious beliefs are immaterial because Francis Bacon and the New Philosophy specifically framed it to be - by largely taking things like Universals or the validity of empiric reasoning for granted.

Besides, just because it works does not make it valid. Newtonian mechanics works perfectly fine for most bridges and such, but we don't think it is; the Romans built excellent aquaducts off wrong ideas of flow and pressure. Science works pragmatically, since it is a pragmatic attempt to save the appearances of observed phenomena. This says nothing of its validity or its value epistemologically.

And yes, we have never demonstrated gravity. Only inferred it from other observed phenomena, as I have explained. Dropping your pencil demonstrates weight and acceleration, not gravity.

 

[Bradskii]

And yes, we have never demonstrated gravity. Only inferred it from other observed phenomena, as I have explained. Dropping your pencil demonstrates weight and acceleration, not gravity.

Not much there that addressed anything I said. But on the assumption that you have 'inferred' that gravity exists, how would you demonstrate it?

I just want to make sure I'm not wasting my time here by you answering a simple question like that.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Not much there that addressed anything I said.

Then I don't know really understand what your point was supposed to be.

But on the assumption that you have 'inferred' that gravity exists, how would you demonstrate it?

I just want to make sure I'm not wasting my time here by you answering a simple question like that.

Not a simple question at all. Probably we'd need to first find the gravitron or a cause. But I am not a physicist. Here is a nice pop-science article for you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...7f3696-a723-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html