Jack
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I haven't had time to read all of this thread but it looks rather interesting on a quick browse hope to have some comment later.
>>By planet ear (Monday, 24 Jul 2006 15:22)
The argument is pretty much over now. Maybe you could revive it though :p
>>By Flagg (Monday, 24 Jul 2006 20:59)
Hey PE
Dunno about reviving this one, but maybe we should go Fundie hunting. Wuddya say BiaM, Tchock, Sarco? up for some sport ;-)
>>By greenfyre (Tuesday, 25 Jul 2006 23:41)
Fundie?
>>By planet ear (Tuesday, 25 Jul 2006 23:48)
Oh you mean "Bible-believing Evangelicals" perhaps GF?
>>By planet ear (Tuesday, 25 Jul 2006 23:59)
Planet Ear, some of us understand human history...which began 6,000 years ago and involved giants, talking snakes, incest, and really, really big boats. Actually I've no idea what "fundie" means...sounds like a British candy.
At any rate, this "jack" board is about arguing, so I'll ask...How the hell could you have a "physics degree" and yet describe yourself as a "Virgo"? If you consider astrology anything other than utter bullshit, I dare say you got your physics degree from a gumball machine.
Don't make fun of Christians if you're just going to surpass them in stupidity.
>>By Just Jon (Wednesday, 26 Jul 2006 03:01)
Hello Jon
Thanks for your warm welcome to the board. Just asking GF if that was what he meant.
If you were to read my profile a little more astutely you'd perhaps note that the fuller reference to Astrology is "untidy Virgo". Tidiness is a supposed trait of Virgos which I don't exhibit. It could then be seen as a slither of empirical evidence against Astrology.... or just a "bit of fun". It's my profile JJ not my CV! ;)
>>By planet ear (Wednesday, 26 Jul 2006 09:26)
Actually while I'm not at all inclined to accept very much of Astrology wholesale, certainly in terms of heavenly bodies directly influencing our nature and fortunes, I wouldn't necessarily describe it as "utter bullshit" without a little more thought.
The position of celestial bodies can clearly be used to mark out the passage of time through the year. Is it not possible to some extent that weather and changing of seasons and the length of day can, affect for example the probability of an expectant mother having a particular set of body chemistry conditions and mood (which could affect endorphin production maybe?)? Perhaps more in times gone by I guess seasonal variations in diet would have also perhaps had some effect on body chemistry. I could conceive this could possibly give rise to some seasonal variation in individuals personality. Personality is a little tricky to measure or characterise but a quick Google reveals some evidence of seasonal varition in birthweight for example
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=
PubMed&list_uids=2439008&dopt=Abstract
Perhaps not the strongest of cases I concede (and I am rather playing Devils' Advocate I admit :) ) but I look forward for your scientific evidence supporting your assertion that Astrology is "utter bullshit" .
Cheers
Al
>>By planet ear (Wednesday, 26 Jul 2006 11:37)
PE
Strictly speaking 'Fundie' does refer to a certain group of evangelical Christians, however I'm inclined to go after any thoughtless ranting regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, gender, gender preference or politic. Self-rightousness, arrogance in any form is just asking to be taken down, particularly when it has no intellectual foundation.
It is something of an honour that the local fundamentalist lefties loathe me every bit as much as the fundamentalist right wing.
btw JJ, I would not be so quick to dismiss a scientist who explores other ways of knowing. Apocryphal or not, the anecdote of Niels Bohr and the horseshoe expresses a fundamental truth of how science was changed by the work of people like Heisenberg and Schroedinger. The mechanistic paradigm is easy to teach in 2nd yr, but in faculty lounges things tend to be wide open, expecially when dealing with systems people.
>>By greenfyre (Wednesday, 26 Jul 2006 20:59)
This board is great, people can talk about whatever they like.
All hail Jack!
>>By Flagg (Wednesday, 26 Jul 2006 22:49)
Thanks GF... thoughtless ranting seems a fair target I guess ;)...and yes Flagg I think there's definitely a virtue in having a discussion space on Flork without a prescribed topic. Presumably "Jack" is then "Jackshit" (an English expression meaning "nothing" whose origin is unknown (to me at any rate!))?
>>By planet ear (Thursday, 27 Jul 2006 02:03)
I find scientific fundamentalists - those that believe the only way of viewing the world is through the dictates of established science - as scary as the religious ones....scientists get things wrong too...
Any dogma stifles the creativity and expression that we are all capable of.
Is there such a thing as a human that has entirely consistent, unified beliefs/views? or have I just described another flavour of fundamentalist?
Is there such a thing as a moderate fundamentalist?
"We are moderate extremists and are willing to pursue any means to ensure the middle ground prevails"
(a downside of tabbed browsers is that you can find yourself posting on the wrong board)
>>By Sarcophilus (Thursday, 27 Jul 2006 15:43)
That's an interesting line of thought Sarco. I have often felt that while science can provide an intelligent mind with "facts" (which are facts through being a tidy explanation that has not yet been demonstrated to be flawed - if one were to accept Popper and Occam's razor as defining the scientific criteria by which a proposition might be judged), equally there are many areas of thought, debate and decision-making (politics, the arts, belief systems through which socities are ordered might be among them) for which other sets of "truth/value determining tools" and language might also have their uses.....
Scientists can also on ocassion exhibit "fundamentalist" tendencies even within their own communities, how many scientists familiar with the power of a deterministic worldview derived from Newtonian mechanics were initially inclined to accept the body of evidence that NM could not be as complete an explanation as necessary to explain observed phenonenom in the period leading up to broad acceptance of relativistic/QM ideas? And I don't wish that to seem a criticism either, those older tools had been shown over a long period to be vastly powerful and highly accurate models in most situations, the newer concepts had to demonstrate that they were more powerful tools before moving from "interesting" to "commonly accepted" .......
>>By planet ear (Thursday, 27 Jul 2006 17:31)
I totally agree with you Sarco. I find it very interesting that, contrary to popular belief, science is not laws, it's just observations. So far, this is the way it's always been. There is absolutely no certainty that if you drop something it won't fall up instead of down. There's no reason to belief it will fall up, but science can't *prove* that it won't. Gravity isn't there, it's just a concept devised to explain a concept so it's easier for us to understand. And that's the most interesting thing my dad has ever told me.
>>By Flagg (Thursday, 27 Jul 2006 23:12)
See, when I think of gravity I think of it as a kind of shiny, gelatinous brownis black light. Maybe it reaches up and grabs things and pulls them back down. Except it doesn't, that's just how I see it in my head. Perhaps scientific fundamentalists get scientific concepts confused with the way they see those concepts in their head. And isn't that meant to be exactly what science avoids doing?
>>By Flagg (Thursday, 27 Jul 2006 23:16)
"Perhaps scientific fundamentalists get scientific concepts confused with the way they see those concepts in their head"
Well I'd put it like this: Maybe they start believing the concepts are "true" rather than "the best explanation with which we have currently been unable to find serious fault"? But I guess we're broadly on the same page :)
>>By planet ear (Friday, 28 Jul 2006 00:18)
Go see http://www.flork.com/miz+m.html ;-)
>>By greenfyre (Friday, 28 Jul 2006 02:31)
PE
Actually Jack is one of the great post-modern conceptual writers who's breadth is astonishing. Her work has been so encyclopedic that it is clear she is something of a polymath. There is scarcely any topic we could bring up that she has not covered, but her incisive critiques of the current US administration are particularly relevant to our current discourse.
In the spirit of Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail I am going to ask for a distinction between dogmaticists and extremists. As King said "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be."
As Gandhi might have put it, be certain enough of your core truths to die for them, but not so certain as to hurt others for them. Rule your own life as though they were written in titanium, treat others as if they were written in water.
So I am all for extremism in that sense, and totally opposed to dogma.
As for science ... does my profile mention I was a research biologist? can't remember ... anyway, PE has said what I would have.
But to take it a bit further, science has become the interpretation of observations, not the observations themselves. A good scientist does not require that a hypothesis be true, merely that it explain the observations in the most concise manner, better than the other possible hypotheses, and that it be useful.
Gravity is a very useful hypothesis as it can spare one no end of broken limbs and premature death.
Unfortunately the sciences are as rife with incompetence and mediocrity as any field. In my experience too many "scientists" are really little more than glorified technicians; not the majority, but a significant minority.
On the other end you get the really good ones, and again in my experience they are wide open. One of my great influences was a man who brought in grad students from all kinds of disciplines and the discussions in his lab were just wild - the most intellectually challenging and exciting environment you could hope for.
Not that astrology ever came up, but if it had and anyone could demonstrate a significant correlation between the data and that hypothesis I am sure it would not have been dismissed. Heck, most of what we believe now wrt QM etc makes Astrology and Tarot look positively tame.
One of the most important qualities of a good scientist is acknowledging when some of the data do not fit and not getting wound up about it. That something does not seem to fit should not prevent exploring it.
One rich field of exploration is the ancient systems of understanding the world - a lot of really brilliant minds invested themselves in those fields for several thousand years. So by all means fiddle with astrology, I Ching, tarot, feng shui and any of the other ancient ways of knowing ... just don't publish until you have a good hypothesis that explains the data ;-)
>>By greenfyre (Friday, 28 Jul 2006 05:47)
I hope that by that last sentence you mean don't publish *as science* until you have a good hypothesis that explains the data.
>>By Flagg (Friday, 28 Jul 2006 13:12)
Ok GF, I'll throw you this one ;-)
http://www.hermes-press.com/seehear.jpg
>>By Lynn (Friday, 28 Jul 2006 20:12)
Don't know what that links to on yr Browser Lynn but on mine it just puts me straight onto Google :(
>>By planet ear (Friday, 28 Jul 2006 21:01)
Oh com'on PE... so I'll throw you Google.. means you figure it out!!! ;-)
Just kidding, here you go.. try again: http://www.savethemales.ca/seehear.jpg
>>By Lynn (Friday, 28 Jul 2006 23:04)
I got google to, so I went to the home page and I gotta say that's an interesting site. Ooooo, look at what you get when you click "World Resistance movement 8-0 ... BiaM would like this one; where are ya mate?
Yoiks! The United Activist Citizen Taskforce is pretty good too - check it out Tchock.
Whether you think these folks (and I suspect it is Norman D Livergood - just a hunch) are heros or zomboids, you have to agree they're sure into what they do. Some nice artwork and photos. Well read too. Reminds me a bit of http://www.pieman.org.
>>By greenfyre (Saturday, 29 Jul 2006 05:43)
Mm indeed a LOT on that site (www.hermes-press.com), see even Cindy Sheehan, there's a familiar name ;-)
“I just think people should have a right to protest,” said Fred Mattlage, an Army veteran. “And I’m against the war. I don’t think it’s a war we need to be in.”
Sheehan’s simple but bold protest obviously took both the Bush administration and the media by surprise. The instinctive and immediate reaction of the establishment press and TV networks to such an event could only be negative, if not downright hostile. This goes not only for the far-right gutter press, such as the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, but also for so-called “liberal” newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. After all, they all have promoted the endless lies given out to justify the war and continue to support the occupation of Iraq.
Under conditions of a worsening military and political situation for the US on the ground in Iraq, and an unbroken string of opinion polls registering rising popular opposition to the war and plummeting support for Bush, Sheehan’s initiative was a most unwelcome and disturbing development.
The fallback position for the American media when such things occur is simply to ignore them. More often than not, events that contradict the pro-war agenda of the corporate-controlled media never appear on the network evening news reports, or, if they do, they are noted and then discretely dropped. As for the press, let us recall that the New York Times, whose official motto is “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” did not see fit to report prominently the world-wide anti-war protests that occurred on February 15, 2003—the largest international anti-war demonstrations ever held.
Full article:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/shee-a18.shtml
Found something funny on pieman (odd name), didn't think of this development yet:
SPEND YOUR GAS MONEY ON SHOPPING ONLINE!!
Spend your gas money on something you really want. Gifts? Golf items? Job search? Music? High-tech items? Home or garden? Dating? Pets supplies?
Stop suffering through the malls, congestion, crowds, flared tempers, full parking lots, personality disorders, the price of gas, road rage, and the traffic jams.
Don't do this to yourself. Shop online here instead.
http://shop-for-stuff.com/
So.... online shopping, good for the environment? Bad for socializing though? And all these ordered items need to be delivered...
Ok, enough ramblings for the day ;-)
>>By Lynn (Saturday, 29 Jul 2006 13:41)
I think in terms of available Flork sports I prefer "Fun Debating" to "Fundie-Baiting", all the same, some may grow from the experience so perhaps it has a place....
Was Flagg hoping in vain?
>>By planet ear (Sunday, 30 Jul 2006 15:45)
I'm always hoping in vain.
I made another mistake. I should have learned but I didn't. I joined a forum about Final Fantasy games. I knew I should have stuck to talking about the games, but under the heading 'Non-FF Topics' there was this little box saying 'Debate Corner' and it just kept beckoning to me, and I couldn't resist its lure. So now I'm arguing about George Bush. Again.
>>By Flagg (Sunday, 30 Jul 2006 16:32)
I'm just happy that my astrology comment kept this discussion going. It's indeed cool as hell that we can use this board to just run ideas up the flagpole and see who salutes.
I won't spend any time debunking astrology because I'm going to give everyone here the benefit of the doubt and assume you have the ability to reason.
What really interests me is this view of science some people here present. Science is a way of thinking, not a list of "facts." Questioning "facts" is actually the whole purpose of science. No real scientist gives a shit what you believe. A scientist is interested in what the truth of reality is, whether or not anyone believes in it. The reason astrology, and Christianity, and patriotism are utter bullshit is because they cannot be tested--in fact, the systems are self-described as un-testable when you get right down to it. For instance, if you question patriotism, you're automatically "un-patriotic." Handy.
Whether it's a study of the efficacy of prayer (with normal controls), or a simple exposition of the flawed astronomy behind astrology, believers will say that the acting of testing itself makes the results moot. That's fine for those of faith, and if you're that type I appreciate you and wish you the best in heaven, or Wicca heaven, or kinda-Christian-but-open-minded heaven.
As for me, I'll be burning in hell with the people that gave you electricity, medicine, and the machines you use for typing and reading about bullshit theories.
>>By Just Jon (Monday, 31 Jul 2006 01:25)
Nervermind JJ I'd be embarrassed if I were you too.
>>By planet ear (Monday, 31 Jul 2006 02:19)
Electricity, medicine, typing machines and atomic bombs. But whatever.
That's a good argument JJ, and I think you're absolutely right about science. But objectively proven facts are only good if one can view the facts with objectivity, and not everyone can. Some people need things that science just can't provide. Science can't provide spiritual wellbeing. Some people need spiritual wellbeing to get by. I'm not a religious person, but I know for sure that science couldn't give me everything I need. And if science can prove that there is no god, and can use its methodology to find new knowledge about the universe which can be used for the greater good then great, but what am I supposed to do with that? On a personal level?
Does anyone follow me?
>>By Flagg (Monday, 31 Jul 2006 15:53)
I'm not interested in becoming Florks "scientist champion of astrology", I remain a playful sceptic at heart. I am though puzzled as to why you seem to prefer to dismiss it out of hand rather than actually provide evidence obtained via experiment JJ? I mean wouldn't something like the results of a study looking for seasonal variation in Myers-Briggs populations or somesuch be a pretty useful piece of info to throw at astrology fans who say "well sure the mechanism isn't planets influencing newborns personality types but for some reason I still feel there's something in it..."? I couldn't find any info like that via Google but if anyone else knows of such a thing I'd be curious to have peek...
Secondly JJ are you familar with the classic "two slit " experiment to demonstrate wave/particle dual nature of photons (it also works with electron scattering BTW so "masslessness" (ouch!) is not the issue)? Assuming you are you may also know then that the mere the presence of a detection mechanism to determine which of the slits the individual photons use will alter the diffraction/interference pattern produced on the screen. This is commonly used as supportive evidence that it is in some senses not possible to observe a system without affecting the observed system, the act of observation and the observer are not discrete systems. This goes way beyond bias or clumsy experimental technique it is intrinsic to the physics as we currently understand it. This is my understanding having studied the subject to graduate level in the 1980s although things may have developed in the science community since without me being as well aware.
I'm not going to get all pseudo-scientific about this and get into saying suddenly "Wow our brains affect reality miracles can happen and all religious thought should be re-evaluated" as I have seen some do...but clearly it should be worthy philosophical consideration that your pre-existing beliefs (and thus the information to seek to gain from observing a system) can (and to to best of my my knowledge necessarily do) affect the system itself not merely the nature of your observation.
I am then curious what can really be said "scientifically" about the notion of "objective observations" and "reality" not just from a sense of philosophical enquiry but as a practical outcome of current thought in physics?
Flagg I am curious if you have ever come across Don Cupitt, he is (for want of a better description) an "Athiest Theologian"? I think you might find his work interesting... I'd recommend "Lifelines" or maybe "The Sea of Faith" as gentler introductions to his work (although I had to read them with both a philosophy textbook and a dictionary open imitially as the gentleness seemed only relative to something utterly impenetrable ).
>>By planet ear (Tuesday, 1 Aug 2006 00:24)
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