He is risen!

[dannubis]

So anyone who doesn't share your/his set of believes has no morality (other than the basic social rules covered by "external obedience")?

I think I have found another reason why religion so often leads to humanitarian disasters.

[Elok]

No, Danny, I don't believe most of us, religious or not, are truly moral, b/c we tend to think of morality as external rules. Orthodox Christian ethics are virtue ethics.

BTW, Rickety, you were awful late with that qualifier. I just gave a rich guy my life savings, then went down on a random hot chick I saw in the street. Long story short, I'm broke and typing this from a prison library. Giving a man crap advice like that? For shame! Is that how you'd want to be treated?

EDIT: second part was intended as a joke, hope that was obvious.

[ricketyclik]

My qualifier was obvious to me when I wrote the original statement, but I realised after you wrote your response that it isn't to you.

You still don't seem to really get it. It means treat the other as you would expect them to treat you if they were in your shoes, and expect likewise from them. Obviously there are those who don't do that, but generally they get their comeuppance, and even if they don't they've brought us all down, including themselves, because we're all part of the whole dude

[Lorizael]

None of which has anything to do with what I was talking about, which is the larger scale of what happens outside the behaviour we're able to study, I.E. the expansion resulting from the big bang. It is basically completely theoretical, and I've no idea why you'd try and argue with something that obvious.

Again, there's actually a lot of data about the specifics of how the universe has expanded which greatly constrain theories about that expansion. If your argument is "but the theoretical stuff is theoretical," then that's not a discussion I'm interested in having.

Except it isn't. You're looking at the local available data and basically saying that must mean that the bigger picture flies in the face of everything we know about the laws of physics. If the universe is only 14 billion years old then it has a distinct starting point before which nothing existed and the universe just appeared out of nothing and started existing. It doesn't take a wild stretch of the imagination to find that deeply unsatisfying and to find it inconsistent with everything else we know about anything. For all we know the 'universe' is just a very tiny part of a vastly larger system on a scale so immense we cannot even conceive of it.

Physics has no agreement on whether there is such a thing as 'true nothing', but if you're claiming the universe (assuming there's no greater body) is only 14 billion years old, then any form of less complete nothing would constitute part of it.

Again, physics has nothing to say about nothing. We have no reason to believe (from what physics tell us) that something couldn't come from nothing or that something could. I honestly think it's quite unscientific to assume the universe must be cyclical in nature because the alternative is "unsatisfying" or some such. The universe doesn't have to satisfy us, doesn't have to make sense, doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing or elegant or simple. The universe just is, and if we want to study it productively, we have to accept that it can be any damn way it pleases.

Presumably as you're so sure of yourself that a cyclic nature of the universe is nonsense, you have a competing theory you support that explains a linear path?

I don't think a cyclical universe is nonsense. The data we have right now simply don't support the notion that the universe is going to collapse back in on itself, and there's no data about the nature of the universe pre-Big Bang/inflation. The competing theory is the Standard Model of Big Bang cosmology. While there are hypotheses that the universe may be older than 14 billion years, the only data we have show that it isn't.

[Bereta_Eder]

What about the theory that man came to be because the universe needed someone to acknowledge its existence?
Delisiously anthropocentric.

[kentonio]

Again, there's actually a lot of data about the specifics of how the universe has expanded which greatly constrain theories about that expansion. If your argument is "but the theoretical stuff is theoretical," then that's not a discussion I'm interested in having.

Can you stop sounding like such an arrogant ass for even one minute? I don't think its that much to ask. I haven't been insulting you or picked a fight, I thought we were trying to have a decent conversation. If each time it's going to involve you just sticking your nose in the air though, then to quote a familiar source 'that's not a discussion I'm interested in having'.

Again, physics has nothing to say about nothing. We have no reason to believe (from what physics tell us) that something couldn't come from nothing or that something could.

Well that's completely untrue, despite you making it sound like you're now the worlds expert on physics.

I honestly think it's quite unscientific to assume the universe must be cyclical in nature because the alternative is "unsatisfying" or some such. The universe doesn't have to satisfy us, doesn't have to make sense, doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing or elegant or simple. The universe just is, and if we want to study it productively, we have to accept that it can be any damn way it pleases.

I didn't say it was a scientific assumption, I said (twice in fact) that it just appealed to me because it seemed to fit better than a linear solution. As for whether the universe needs to 'make sense' or not, yes it does need to make sense. Everything runs on a set of rules, and whether we know what they are or not is irrelevant. The universe is not a sentient being (as far as we know) that 'pleases' anything.

I don't think a cyclical universe is nonsense. The data we have right now simply don't support the notion that the universe is going to collapse back in on itself, and there's no data about the nature of the universe pre-Big Bang/inflation. The competing theory is the Standard Model of Big Bang cosmology. While there are hypotheses that the universe may be older than 14 billion years, the only data we have show that it isn't.

So you could have just said something like that originally instead of being a dick about it.

[rah]

No. You're saying that if you believe something that can't be proven you are closed-minded. You should be ashamed.

No, I'm saying that if you believe something that can't be proven but are unwilling to believe that because it can't be proven that other options may be possible, then you're closed-minded.

[ricketyclik]

It takes a cult to pry open Kid's mind.

[Lorizael]

Well that's completely untrue, despite you making it sound like you're now the worlds expert on physics.

Tell me what physical laws proscribe something coming from nothing.

I didn't say it was a scientific assumption, I said (twice in fact) that it just appealed to me because it seemed to fit better than a linear solution. As for whether the universe needs to 'make sense' or not, yes it does need to make sense. Everything runs on a set of rules, and whether we know what they are or not is irrelevant. The universe is not a sentient being (as far as we know) that 'pleases' anything.

That the universe must make sense in principle is a reasonable assumption (but that's all it is--an assumption), but there's no reason to believe that it must make sense right now or that we have the capacity to make sense of it. My greater point, however, is that we shouldn't let our intuitions about the universe affect how we study. The universe can be any damn way it pleases means we have to be receptive to what the universe tells us, because we have nothing else to go on.

When astronomers discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe in 1998, it was literally exactly the opposite of what they expected to find. Nothing in cosmology at that point would have led to that conclusion, yet it was what the universe was telling them, so as scientists they had to go with it.

kentonio: I'm not intending to come across as hostile. If I am anyway, then I apologize and I'll stop now and go do something else. All I'm trying to do is present to you the fact that physical cosmology today is not a speculative anything goes kind of field but one with a wealth of observations that strongly constrains possible cosmological theories.

[kentonio]

kentonio: I'm not intending to come across as hostile. If I am anyway, then I apologize and I'll stop now and go do something else.

I forgot the way I always end up reading you wrong. Despite this being what the third or fourth time now..

[Lorizael]

You may repeatedly read me wrong, but it's ultimately my own fault. You're not the only person who thinks I come across as arrogant, which is why I basically don't try to have conversations like this IRL.

Anyway, I'm off to shower, dress, and go take an astrophysics midterm.

[Bereta_Eder]

Knowing the absolut truth sure is a great burden especially when you try not to get across as arrogant.
I usually overcome such difficulties by letting the subject to whom my brilliance is directed believe that his ludicrous interjections during my narative actually matter and are interesting

[Kidlicious]

No, I'm saying that if you believe something that can't be proven but are unwilling to believe that because it can't be proven that other options may be possible, then you're closed-minded.

If something can't be proven then other options are possible you idiot.

[Elok]

My qualifier was obvious to me when I wrote the original statement, but I realised after you wrote your response that it isn't to you.

You still don't seem to really get it. It means treat the other as you would expect them to treat you if they were in your shoes, and expect likewise from them. Obviously there are those who don't do that, but generally they get their comeuppance, and even if they don't they've brought us all down, including themselves, because we're all part of the whole dude

I contest essentially everything you've said. A substantial portion of the population makes its living off something blatantly immoral by any reasonable standard, and gets away with it. Tobacco being the obvious example. Con artists. Hard sales of cheap crap. War profiteering. Most, or possibly all, politicians. Use your imagination. Examples range from the ridiculously petty to the outrageously vile. Our moral "system" is built to withstand a substantial amount of freeloading.

[Kidlicious]

Knowing the absolut truth sure is a great burden especially when you try not to get across as arrogant.
I usually overcome such difficulties by letting the subject to whom my brilliance is directed believe that his ludicrous interjections during my narative actually matter and are interesting

All truth IS absolute. If you don't believe in ABSOLUTE truth then you don't believe. You are double-minded.