Einstein or Newton

[mgellan]

Originally Posted by maskedmelon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Those are all predictions. You cannot test any of them though. That was my point ^^

Absolutely, good point, if there's no way to prove something wrong it's outside the realms of science into faith (hence my definition of faith) -- Mg

[JurisDictum]

Newton seemed like a true genius. I think if he was alive today he would still be the smartest guy in the sciences. Not so sure about Einstien, even if he was brilliant.

Newton also sounds like a total aspergers case if I've ever seen one. It's funny how easy it was for this aristocrat named Hook to essentially troll Newton into a rage by suggesting he already knew what Newton discovered.

History makes its own heros. Someone was going to discover what both those men did eventually. What makes them special is they discovered a lot very quickly. Sometimes, I think this is more luck than we want to admit. But I think Newton was definitely the real deal.

[Ravager]

Originally Posted by maskedmelon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Intelligence is the ability to reliably predict outcomes ^^Science is a method of learning. The fundamental distinction between faith based claims and scientific claims is that is that scientific claims can be tested while their supernatural counterparts cannot be tested. Both can make predictions, but neither matters if you are unable to test the predictive capacity.

For example, Christianity teaches Christ will return, people who accept Christ will go to heaven and those who do not will go to hell.

Those are all predictions. You cannot test any of them though. That was my point ^^

When I said religion predicts nothing, I meant it predicts nothing about the phenomenon that it purports to explain.

They guess that when you die that you go to an afterlife (this is the theory), but there are no predictions about that guess that they can make. That is, they cannot make a distinction between what the world would look like if there is an afterlife vs what the world would look like if there isn't an afterlife, so the theory makes no predictions about what you can expect to see if the theory is either true or false [unless you die of course, but without your brain, you're not going to have any expectations, unless you modify the theory to say that when you die, an exact neuron for neuron copy of your brain is sent to wherever this afterlife might be, (and yes I assume that our brains are the seat of our person-hood because every observation mankind has ever made of the human brain supports this idea, as well as watching my grandmother lose her mind over the course of a decade to LBD), but if your theory keeps getting more and more complicated by details, the probability of its accuracy goes down so much that it may as well be impossible. (and when I mean complicated by details, the theory expects me to take as a premise that there is both a mechanism that copies a person's brain in a metaphysical fashion AND that it sends it to somewhere else to be with other metaphysically copied brains AND that these brains can communicate and interact with each other AND that there's not one place, but two places AND that one of the places makes metaphysically copied brains suffer AND that one of the places gives the metaphysically copied brains eternal bliss AND that this is all determined solely on whatever neurological configuration the brains happened to have at the time they were deprived of oxygen. This is a lot to accept even on faith)].

Contrast that to guesses you can make about death with scientific observation: Deprive a brain of oxygen and it stops functioning. Restore oxygen to a brain that has stopped functioning, and if the cells didn't get damaged or degrade for too long, the brain will start functioning again. The brain is where we think and get personality. Cut away one part of a persons brain and you can change their personality. Prod one part of their brain and you can make them smell pickles. From this kind of information we can reasonably guess that the entirety of a person as a sentient being is in their brain, when the brain is gone, they are gone.

I suspect that if technology ever got to the point of recreating a person's brain, neuron for neuron, for all practical purposes, they could be resurrected. As far as what this means in terms of self and person-hood is all just philosophy until we can figure out a way to observe those concepts in an empirical way.

I think fundamentally though, we both agree that Science is not faith.

[Baler]

Why are people so hung up on the word faith being attached to religion.

Example: a trust circle. a person stands in the middle and has to trust the people around them that they will catch them when they lean over to fall.
The person in the middle has faith that the people around them will catch them when they lean over to fall.

Trust in something. You trust that science is true so you can explain things. You have faith in science. Science is a faith for people.

edit: another example: I have faith that my jalopy will make it over this next hill.

[maskedmelon]

I think the problem Baler is that the word has multiple definitions including belief without evidence/proof and a strong belief in God. Those latter definitions are why faith is so often correlated with religion. The way in which you are using the term is not the same as it is used with regard to religion which is how most people associate it.

It's like telling two acrophobes to make sure they are high enough to reach the top shelf before stopping, while one of them is climbing a ladder and the other is puffing a hash pipe. ^^

[Ahldagor]

Faith is based in a trust. Blind faith or based in ecidence, it's still a trust regardless of any religious conotations attached to the word which stem from subjective valuations.

Still say Newton for predicting Aramageddon.

[AzzarTheGod]

Originally Posted by mgellan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Uhhhhh yeah thats why they treat them so well LOL -- Mg

You missed the point entirely...if you think harder it will come to you.

[AzzarTheGod]

Originally Posted by big_ole_jpn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

if the govt and big battery (duracell etc) hadnt suppressed tesla we would had shape shifting liquid metal sex bots by 1980

Woke

[Chaboo_Cleric]

Originally Posted by Loke [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation

For those of you who won't actually read this, nuclear transmutation could be considered modern day alchemy. In 1980 a professor at UC Berkeley actually turned atoms of bismuth into gold, which was one of the original aims of alchemy (albeit at a loss). I don't know if I'd consider a guy a quack for believing something was possible just because the technology to actually do it wouldn't exist for a couple hundred years.

Thanks for sharing. Link some more stuff if you got any.

[AzzarTheGod]

Originally Posted by Chaboo_Cleric [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Thanks for sharing. Link some more stuff if you got any.

So Rosicrucians aren't a joke afterall?