stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
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BatShit almost hit a prize I'm calling the BatShit77 10X Prize.
In response to this hazel post (formatting ignored because I'm lazy):
| Quote | Hazel May 20, 2019 at 7:06 am
You’re right, EDTA, I did bring up the subject of, to use a convenient term, humanism, by posting “When I’m Gone”
And I understand, very well I think, that many people believe in life after death, and, as you say, “that the next life is important also, and and that the wrong things here get set right there.” I don’t believe that, but I also know that that perspective is very important to those that do.
I pointed out that we discussed all this recently on the thread on humanism that I linked to in post 12: in fact, you posted something there at post 4 that moved the conversation along. I don’t know whether you continued reading that thread, but some of my thoughts were at posts 15, 18, 23, 24, and 32, before the thread veered off into some interesting metaphysics. If you haven’t already, you might read those.
You ask, “For you, does life have any transcendent meaning? Or is meaning all individual? If transcendent, what if humanity goes extinct before getting off the planet, reaching the singularity, etc.?”
I don’t think that either/or question is adequate to capture my beliefs, in part because I think essential parts of the subject of it are unknowable. I can say with some certainty that I don’t believe in any transcendent meaning about or for human beings that exists separate from human beings, so if human beings go extinct (which I am virtually certain will happen before the universe ends), then all human meaning will be gone. |
Which clocked in at 257 words, BatShit77 replied with:
| Quote | Hazel states:
I can say with some certainty that I don’t believe in any transcendent meaning about or for human beings that exists separate from human beings, so if human beings go extinct (which I am virtually certain will happen before the universe ends), then all human meaning will be gone.
Again Hazel, you have no scientific basis for your beliefs other than your own atheistic/nihilistic preference for how things should be.
Science could care less how you personally prefer things to be.
One of the primary places that atheists try to ‘scientifically’ claim that our lives have no meaning is with the Copernican principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity. Specifically, the ‘principle of mediocrity’ assumes that nothing is special about humanity’s situation
Copernican principle
Excerpt: In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle, is an alternative name of the mediocrity principle,,, stating that humans (the Earth, or the Solar system) are not privileged observers of the universe.[1]
Named for Copernican heliocentrism, it is a working assumption that arises from a modified cosmological extension of Copernicus’s argument of a moving Earth.[2] In some sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.......inciple
Carl Sagan coined the term ‘principle of mediocrity’ to refer to the idea that scientists should assume that nothing is special about humanity’s situation
https://books.google.com/books?i....f=false
Mediocrity principle
Excerpt: The (Mediocrity) principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of the Solar System, Earth’s history, the evolution of biological complexity, human evolution, or any one nation. It is a heuristic in the vein of the Copernican principle, and is sometimes used as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity. The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional, or even superior.[2][3]
per wikipedia
Stephen Hawking, via the Copernican Principle and/or The Principle of Mediocrity, once stated “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,”
“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,”
– Stephen Hawking – 1995 TV show, Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken,
And yet, despite the fact that practically everybody, including the vast majority of Christians, hold that the Copernican principle, and by default “The Principle of Mediocrity’, are unquestionably true, the plain fact of the matter is that the Copernican Principle has now been overturned by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Which happen to be two of our very best, most precisely tested, theories ever in the history of science:
Einstein himself stated that, The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”
“Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.”
Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.);
Fred Hoyle and George Ellis add their considerable weight here, in regards to General Relativity overturning the Copernican Principle, in these following two quotes:
“The relation of the two pictures [geocentrism and geokineticism] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view…. Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”
Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973.
“People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations… For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds… What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”
– George Ellis – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55
As Einstein himself noted, there simply is no experimental test that can ever be performed that can prove that the earth is not the center of the universe:
“One need not view the existence of such centrifugal forces as originating from the motion of K’ [the Earth]; one could just as well account for them as resulting from the average rotational effect of distant, detectable masses as evidenced in the vicinity of K’ [the Earth], whereby K’ [the Earth] is treated as being at rest.”
–Albert Einstein, quoted in Hans Thirring, “On the Effect of Distant Rotating Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 22, 29, 1921
Even Stephen Hawking himself, who once claimed that we humans are just chemical scum on an insignificant planet, stated that it is not true that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong,,, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.”
“So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. As in the case of our normal view versus that of the goldfish, one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.
Despite its role in philosophical debates over the nature of our universe, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.”
Stephen Hawking – The Grand Design – page 39 – 2010
In fact, in the 4-Dimensional space-time of Einstein’s General Relativity, it is left completely open for whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe:
How Einstein Revealed the Universe’s Strange “Nonlocality” – George Musser | Oct 20, 2015
Excerpt: Under most circumstances, we can ignore this nonlocality. You can designate some available chunk of matter as a reference point and use it to anchor a coordinate grid. You can, to the chagrin of Santa Barbarans, take Los Angeles as the center of the universe and define every other place with respect to it. In this framework, you can go about your business in blissful ignorance of space’s fundamental inability to demarcate locations.,,
In short, Einstein’s theory is nonlocal in a more subtle and insidious way than Newton’s theory of gravity was. Newtonian gravity acted at a distance, but at least it operated within a framework of absolute space. Einsteinian gravity has no such element of wizardry; its effects ripple through the universe at the speed of light. Yet it demolishes the framework, violating locality in what was, for Einstein, its most basic sense: the stipulation that all things have a location. General relativity confounds our intuitive picture of space as a kind of container in which material objects reside and forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place.
http://www.scientificamerican......nlocality/....oca....ocality
Even individual people can be considered central in the universe in the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity,,,
You Technically Are the Center of the Universe – May 2016
Excerpt: (due to the 1 in 10^120 finely tuned expansion of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity) no matter where you stand, it will appear that everything in the universe is expanding around you. So the center of the universe is technically — everywhere.
The moment you pick a frame of reference, that point becomes the center of the universe.
Here’s another way to think about it: The sphere of space we can see around us is the visible universe. We’re looking at the light from stars that’s traveled millions or billions of years to reach us. When we reach the 13.8 billion-light-year point, we’re seeing the universe just moments after the Big Bang happened.
But someone standing on another planet, a few light-years to the right, would see a different sphere of the universe. It’s sort of like lighting a match in the middle of a dark room: Your observable universe is the sphere of the room that the light illuminates.
But someone standing in a different spot in the room will be able to see a different sphere. So technically, we are all standing at the center of our own observable universes.
https://mic.com/article....s-quirk
,,, Moreover, when Einstein first formulated both Special and General relativity, he gave a hypothetical observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe.
Introduction to special relativity
Excerpt: Einstein’s approach was based on thought experiments, calculations, and the principle of relativity, which is the notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers.,,,
Each observer has a distinct “frame of reference” in which velocities are measured,,,,
per wikipedia
The happiest thought of my life.
Excerpt: In 1920 Einstein commented that a thought came into his mind when writing the above-mentioned paper he called it “the happiest thought of my life”:
“The gravitational field has only a relative existence… Because for an observer freely falling from the roof of a house – at least in his immediate surroundings – there exists no gravitational field.”
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka.....85.html
Whereas, on the other hand, in Quantum Mechanics it is the measurement itself that gives each observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe. As the following researcher commented, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness – May 27, 2015
Excerpt: Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found.
“It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
http://phys.org/news.......ss.html
And as Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Anton Zeilinger –
Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?f....M#t=437
Because of such evidence as this from quantum mechanics, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, stated this “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”
“It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.
And yet, have you ever before read a sentence having meaning similar to that of my preceding sentence? Likely you have not, and the reason you have not is, in my opinion, that physicists are in a state of denial, and have fears and agonies that are very similar to the fears and agonies that Copernicus and Galileo went through with their perturbations of society.”
– Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics – John Hopkins University
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/quantum....ma.html
There is also evidence from Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) anomalies, as well as evidence that we live at the geometric mean, (i.e. ‘the middle’), of all possible sizes in the universe, that further falsifies the Copernican principle. But the main point being is that you Hazel, whether you even realize it or not, no longer have any scientific basis for your belief that our lives have no ultimate meaning and purpose.
And as was pointed out in the later half of this video I referenced previously,
Atheistic Materialism vs Meaning, Value, and Purpose in Our Lives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v....BSbFhog
,,, there are many more lines of powerful scientific evidence that can be brought to bear in overturning your atheistic belief in nihilism.
So to repeat, “you have no scientific basis for your beliefs other than your own atheistic/nihilistic preference for how things should be.”
i.e. You may very strongly want and desire your nihilistic opinion to be true, but without any scientific evidence to back up your claim, indeed with many lines of scientific evidence directly contradicting your claim, you belief is simply unwarranted, and even worse than that, your belief is an exercise in self-delusional since you have simply refused to accept reality as it really is.
Verse:
Jeremiah 29:11
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. |
Which hits 2,468 words. 102 more words and he would have replied to her with 10X as many words!
So Close!   
Edited by stevestory on May 20 2019,13:55
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