to infinity and beyond

whatshisname:

That assumes that you can divide something infinitely, which is not so. There are smallest particles of matter, and smallest divisions of time and distance.

And they are?

I thought it was making fun of the physicist's tendency to simplify things - assume a frictionless surface, or no air resistance, or whatever. Just because we're right to do it doesn't mean it's not funny.

But an engineer once solved a real problem for Perdue by assuming spherical, frictionless chickens. (I'm serious! Apparently they were moving them around with vacuum pumps, and needed to know how much underpressure to use... Okay, this is sounding faker and faker. But it's true!)

I concur that the site owner knows this is satire.

There are many articles on this site that answer Evangelical or Fundamentalist anti-Catholic polemics. I try to be mostly polite in my discussions, and toss in a little humor now and then.

The Einstein picture alone should be the tip-off. Current Catholic teaching is that faith and science can coexist. Neither can be used to explain the other.

God can't know everything and be immune to culpability at the same time.

1+1=2

St. Apatheism

I think that whatshisname is referring to the Planck length and time. I'm not sure what he means by the smallest particle of matter. (Last I heard, the jury was still out on that one.) You physics gurus, chime in and educate me.

yotta:

Current Catholic teaching is that faith and science can coexist. Neither can be used to explain the other.

Respect for the Catholic church has gained a level!

damn funny submission.

St. Apatheism:

"Current Catholic teaching is that faith and science can coexist. Neither can be used to explain the other."

Respect for the Catholic church has gained a level!

That was the major new feature in PJP 2.0.

cue LiberalAssKicker to emphatically defend the story as true in 5..4..3..

mookielove: Planck length and time

Because we exist we must be finite, what's so genius about that anyhow?

I agree with the wise Seer. Its funny to engineers, cause we do it, not cause cows aren't spherical. I'd make it a box. It fit in its square pen better.

it's about time someone started putting forward an alternative to general relativity. it's not even a quantum theory! besides, it's really damned hard to do the calculations. have you ever calculated the christoffel symbols? it can be really tedious, and all of the indices turn your head to mush.

I couldn't even read it past the first line...'it's only a theory, and not a very good one at that,' 'it's religious,' ha.

I hate these people who are ignorantly clutching at something that is just farking IMPOSSIBLE!

I'd sooner believe we're someone's hamster farm or something like that... I read somewhere that gravity is the only universal force (of the 4) that they don't know why it works, but they have mathemeticians who could explain it...using no less than 11 dimensions.

Yeah.

1. length
2. width
3. depth
4. time
5. x
6. y
7 z
...

crazy stuff.

proteus_b:

it's about time someone started putting forward an alternative to general relativity. it's not even a quantum theory! besides, it's really damned hard to do the calculations. have you ever calculated the christoffel symbols? it can be really tedious, and all of the indices turn your head to mush.

I did on another thread but it's too crazy to ever fit into anything but some future religion or something.

There comes a point in time where science needs to take a step back and realize it's done all it can and if we can't live with what we have then too bad. Crazy things are crazy because no one can explain them.

Well, we have a set of fundimental "particles." Eighteen, according to the Standard Model: six quarks, six leptons, six exchange particles.

By the way, excellent quote from Franky17's link:

"However, II Timothy 3:16 tells us that the Bible is authoritative in all that it touches upon, science included."

That's some of the best circular logic I've ever seen.

Who can explain the multiple gravitational forces theory? That different forces we lump into one called gravity. Dunno exactly what I'm talking about.

First off, I'll admit I haven't read this entire thread, so someone may have beaten me to it, but I think the linked site's owner knows it's parody, but hasn't really labelled it as such. The massive numbers of "Jesuses" and "Christs" on the home page probably leads a lot of people to false conclusions. But look at some of the other articles on the site, particulaly this one:

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p82.htm.

From the conclusion:
As we have seen, the idea of a universal deluge was the settled interpretation of the church for nearly seventeen centuries, but that changed as a body of compelling evidence undercutting that interpretation gradually accumulated. The cumulative pressure of general revelation can be ignored only so long. Christians must always be ready to reexamine even settled interpretations when a wealth of external data call these interpretations into question. God may be trying to tell us something!

This case study of the flood suggests the need for more humility and less dogmatism in interpretation. The arrogant attitude displayed by some commentators who have lacked appropriate scientific knowledge, especially in this century, is appalling. Christians must also be cautious in using extrabiblical data for apologetic purposes, since their data may eventually be supplanted by better information that demands a different interpretation. There is danger in basing an apologetic for our interpretations on a presumed agreement of the Bible with science.

AFAIK, Catholics are generally OK with evolution, etc.

Must sew the gravity and evolution threads together with a really dumb joke:

Q: If you hold a rock at waist level and release it, why does it fall to the ground?

A: Because all the rocks that don't are long gone.

Imagine someone from 2000 years ago being transported into now. They would go nuts. Brain's just can't take that kind stress. I guess in all reality we're going to keep going around the mullberry bush as long as we exist. But that dosen't change what I said.

My favorite is the "bicycles don't evolve so living things can't either" arguement. Classic.

/ignorance trumps logic?

Who let Bevets out of his can?

Anyhow real geniuses, like Ein, they see into the crazy and somehow find a way to relate it in a sane manner. Anyone can state a view it takes a genius to state something totaly nuts in a way that has practical use.

cuibono
Also, you know by now that those stickers have been removed.

No, pending yet another appeal...

"but", said man, "the bable fish is a dead giveaway isn't it?"
"oh, dear" said god, "I hadn't thought of that", and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

For an encore, man proved up was down, black was white, and got killed at the next zebra crossing.

-Douglas Adams , he knew the universe

meatman: -Douglas Adams , he knew the universe

Wouldn't the universe have become finite when God vanished?

"One thing I'll never understand about the theists is how you can rationalize something like a God. Basically you figure that the universe is SO complex and SO "just right" that there MUST be some kind of intelligent design. Yet, what created the thing that does this intelligent design? The usual answer I get from you people is "well it (God) JUST IS." WTF kind of answer is that? Apparently a universe needs a creator but a creator doesn't need a creator...you accept one level of something you cannot explain to explain something else you cannot explain. That is FAR too covoluted for me to accept."

Scientists supporting the Steady State theory believed that the universe could be the kind of thing that didn't need to be created. It was a perfectly acceptable scientific theory that claimed, among other things, that the universe could just be around for ever. It took 65 years or so of increasingly precise observation to tip the balance of opinion among scientists towards the Big Bang. Plenty of observations supported either theory equally, and it was only a little evidence of radio-wave background noise that might be better explained by the Big Bang theory that tipped the scales of scientific opinion.
Given this, how can it be unscientific to say that God could be the sort of thing that doesn't need a beginning, or a prior creator to make God? If that's true, shouldn't all the scientists who thought the Steady State model was possible have dismissed it instantly as basically contrary to the most fundamental principles of Science? Many religious people today don't claim that it's fundamentally, philosophically impossible for the universe to have been around forever, without needing a Creation, let alone a Creator. Instead, they claim that the evidence we have points to a kind of universe that rules out those other philosophical possibilities.
As a historical movement, Atheism has gladly siezed on alledged disproofs of God, from the Steady State theory, to theories about planets being formed only when two stars pass close together, and so being very rare (which supposedly means God would be very inefficent and wasteful if He existed, ergo He doesn't), Atheist writers as famous as Sir Bertrand Russell have argued from the science they thought was correct. Then when that science turns out to be wrong, and a new theory comes along that says the Universe has a moment of creation, or planets are probably very common, and life may be abundant through-out the universe, those same Atheists have said, in effect, "Well, the new theory isn't proof of God even if it disproves my disproof, and anyway, the burden of proof is on you, not me". Once, I agreed with them on that point, until I read enough to realize they never said that when their disproofs seemed to be holding up from evidence, but only where impartial science shot them down.

St. Apatheism

There comes a point in time where science needs to take a step back and realize it's done all it can and if we can't live with what we have then too bad.

People have been saying that for centuries; in the mean time, we've come up with penecillin, flourinated water, antibiotics, cars, planes, and computers. Perhaps more importantly we've refuted the notion that bathing should be done at most twice a year and invented deodorant. Unless you want to go around smelling like a professional World of Warcraft player, you probably shouldn't be dissing science.

dan131m:

People have been saying that for centuries; in the mean time, we've come up with penecillin, flourinated water, antibiotics, cars, planes, and computers. Perhaps more importantly we've refuted the notion that bathing should be done at most twice a year and invented deodorant. Unless you want to go around smelling like a professional World of Warcraft player, you probably shouldn't be dissing science.

Not bad, but you're still way too blatent. You, son, are NOT the One.

The debate over creation with regards to theism and atheism end at having to accept something. Either you accept that God created the universe and nothing created God, or that the universe just IS. You can't become atheist or thiest over this point of contention, or at least you shouldn't. Took me analyzing free will to become atheist.

Headline makes it sound like it is a mandate, not a columnist's opinion....
should means should
not will

N. S. Radieaux

What in God's name was that?.

Atheists are equal to theists in my book, just two sides on the same coin. They don't even realize it is the orgasmic humor of it all.

I love hearing Atheists claim that they don't take it on faith that God exists and then they use science as a basis for what is essentially faith. (But don't tell that to an atheist cause they will get crazy zelot mouth frothings on your pants.)

St. Apatheism
then they use science as a basis for what is essentially faith.

What do the words "atheism" and "faith" mean to you?

RoachAC
Use this link to blow up that pic

Enjoy, if you actually get to reading this.

Franky17: What do the words "atheism" and "faith" mean to you?

Got a dictionary? Why are you not using them?

A bite so soon, I swear some of you never learn.

CygnusDarius: That, my friend, was none other than the truth -- for youth.

St. Apatheism:

I love hearing Atheists claim that they don't take it on faith that God exists and then they use science as a basis for what is essentially faith.

Well, science has one principle which conflicts rather badly with religion: Occam's Razor. Essentially, it says that an explanation should contain all necessarily elements, and no unnecessary. "God" is not a necessary element in any of the simplest explanations of the Universe, and so scientific explanations exclude Her. Religions, in contrast, are built around this element, and so indignantly proclaim that She *must* be a necessary element, for no rational reason.

mistergecko:

Umm, if NASA used physics to hit a comet millions of lightyears away, then I sorta think they know what they're talking about.

/waiting for someone to catch it


A lot of people have said a lot of stupid things in this thread - but that's the worst.
I'm really just hoping you meant it as a joke. Then again maybe you've travelled a few million years into the future to see if nasa has done this. Guess its possible and I just don't know.
If you are not joking or a time traveler? Then you are an idiot.

Sloth_DC: for no rational reason.

Religion is, and should never be, rational. So... what exctally is your point?

warning should read physics is extremely hard and will melt your brain. no matter how much you study you will pass becuase of the curve. At least that is how it was for me.

St. Apatheism: Religion is not, and should never be,

your dog needs more Preview

St. Apatheism
Got a dictionary? Why are you not using them?

Because I know what the words you are using mean to me. I wonder what they mean to you.

Ukh. I hate to get all serious in such a fun thread, but lines like "So I don't even have to earn God's love?" kinda make me sick. I'm not trying to put anyone down, but by my lights, that's a horrible thing to say. The idea that moral value - which is what God's love is to many (most?) Christians - can be had unearned seems very wrong to me. I've never been one for quoting "scripture," but in the interest of dialogue, here's a relevant quote from the definitive text of my beliefs:

"A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking." - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Sir Charles:

the warning label is blue, and it says "If this label is red, you are moving waaaay too fast"

I JUST saw this bumper sticker for the first time yesterday. Made me giggle. That's what I get for living near Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley, Labs.

Franky17:

Because I know what the words you are using mean to me. I wonder what they mean to you.

Got a Dictionary? Look em up. Get your anwser.

St.Apatheism I agree with you completely, I remember reading a little bit of an atheist magazine. There seemed to be a structure to it that bordered on being an organized religion. Funny in a way. Personally I go the agnostic route.

I got to "Intelligent Creator" and stopped reading